Business intelligence vendor MicroStrategy reveals it’s bought a billion bucks of bitcoin Business intelligence software vendor MicroStrategy has revealed it’s sitting on a billion bucks worth of bitcoin. The company on Monday published a statement revealing that it recently purchased “approximately 29,646 bitcoins for approximately $650.0 million in cash in accordance with its Treasury Reserve Policy, at an …
You do realise that the money in your fiat bank account is effectively also just e-money and equally imaginary? It only exists as binary data on the bank's computer database - just as bitcoin only exists as binary data in a blockchain.
Many people will however agree to give you something of real value if you cause the requisite changes to be made in your account database and their bank account database.
Just as a there is a huge base of people who will make similar transactions if you cause the requisite additions to be made to the Bitcoin blockchain.
It all depends on what people agree on. There is pretty much zero intrinsic value in either bitcoin or a £50 note.
Except the £50 note is backed by a nation of 60+ million people, with a long history of relative stability.
Even Mutant-Home-Counties-Covid and the French playing silly buggers only knocked a cent or two off Sterling.
I'll concede a spread bet holding a tiny percent of your net worth in Bitcoin might be prudent, but Queen Lizzie, Boulton & Watt (or a dead President) are still my main preference.
But your "investment" in sterling has not done very well. The pound is worth a small fraction of the value it had just 50 years ago. Just compare what £10 could buy in 1970 compared with today. Now compare what 1 bitcoin was worth in 2012 compared with today.
You are, indeed, cynical. I'm sure you're the type that believes that going back to the gold / silver standard would be such a great idea.
Your example of Venezuela is perfect. Venezuela's currency didn't just collapse overnight, a move on a fiat currency - backed up by governments - takes time, even as an outlier in world economic examples.
https://www.exchange-rates.org/history/VES/USD/T
Bitcoin can, and has, collapsed / recovered numerous times - volatility, thy name is Bitcoin
https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/price/
Yes, when Bitfinex/Tether can no longer kick the can down the road, the music stops and the players realise the chairs themselves are imaginary. They've been printing exponentially more tethers to support each pump of the bitcoin price and that can only go on for so long. Or until they can no longer extract all the real dollars from the system, of course.
Bitcoin price is strongly correlated with the market-cap of illegal drugs.. so will floor if they are legalised, or the FBI think they've identified enough of the drug users/traders to swoop,
On the plus side, it provides hackers with a nice big target for penetration + good of them to let the NSA know that they're not a major drug baron.
Well put it this way: I spent around £150 in small transactions buying Bitcoin some time ago, and for the past 3 years or so it's paid my VPN ad hosting bills. When (if) my stash finally runs out I'll go back to using "real" money. I always view Bitcoin as electronic money of the spending kind, rather than an investment.
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As a way to make easy money for a while, I can understand - but as a way to store them, not so much.
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Depends how long-lasting bitcoin turns out to be compared to any other financial instrument such as fiat currency, stocks & shares etc. Any of which can become worthless overnight in the right (or wrong) set of circumstances. Ask any Venezualean about the life savings they had securely deposited as Bolivar in a bank. The pound could go the same way. Or the people who had a fortune invested in Lloyds shares.
Anything you own that is not tangible goods with a real intrinsic value (such as land, buildings, fishing boats etc) is subject to sudden and unexpected changes in value - some instruments are just less likely to undergo sudden large change than others. And most things with intrisic value are subject to also subject to more tangible acts of fortune - flood, storms, fire, earthquake, acts of war etc.
The degree of risk is as much perception as it is reality.
You say that now, but i bet a large number of people who say that would still try making more money. Whats better than 1 billion, 2.
Greed gets most people and if you have been able to make that money yourself, then you will start to think that everything you touch turns to gold and you can never be wrong.
"Greed gets most people"
Warren Buffet wouldn't turn down an opportunity to grow a 1 billion net worth into 2 billion. And he is noted for living in an upper middle class neighborhood and driving a plain sedan. His is the thrill of doing something, not having it. Or the shiny stuff it can buy.
Yes you would. Otherwise you wouldn't have made 1B in the first place.
The super rich that I know have the perks that go with it, the private (owned, not NetJets) aircraft and so on, but to them those are just instruments so that they can keep practising their favourite hobby: making money.
In my life I have been quite good friends with several extremely rich people. I have also been good friends with several people who are well below average in terms of tangible money and assets. Overall, the poor people led a happier and more content life than the super-rich. Unless you inherited wealth or won a big lottery, making loadsamoney tends to be very stressful, and there is rarely time to just relax and enjoy what it can buy. Sure, the millionaire may have a private jet that can take them anywhere - but at the end of the day it is perhaps better to be 100% happy staying where you are and not be driven to keep moving to different places.
Not necessarily pay it out in dividends, but I'd be interested in seeing it put to useful use within the business' core area of expertise. Assuming they actually have any, a quick google search suggests they make phone apps and were established in 1989.
Alternatively, a quick, once-off bit of speculation *might* be tolerated for a short time provided that a sufficiently solid opportunity is seen. I'd still run this through the board first, though.
Quoted from their website, which also has a nice photoshop'ped image of him with a very attractive person.
"Bitcoin is a bank in cyberspace, run by incorruptible software, offering a global, affordable, simple, & secure savings account to billions of people that don’t have the option or desire to run their own hedge fund."
~ Michael J. Saylor
Well, first off cryptocurrencies aren't hedge funds.
Two, Bitcoin isn't affordable. The transactions fees are quite expensive in comparison to common modes of fiat transfer, especially in the 'every-day' purchase sized transactions and can wildly gyrate day to day.
At the end of the day Bitcoin (BTC) has gone from an instrument of value to an instrument of speculation.
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Two, Bitcoin isn't affordable. The transactions fees are quite expensive in comparison to common modes of fiat transfer, especially in the 'every-day' purchase sized transactions and can wildly gyrate day to day.
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Huh? I had a small amount of BTC which I used to move between wallets (and finally sold recently at a modest profit of a few £k). The transaction fees for each move were typically under £1 per transfer (and you have a choice how much you are willing to pay). OTOH a foreign currency transfer of £100 I made recently via Barclays bank (to a country where it was not possible to do it online) incurred a transfer fee of £25, and that's on top of a hefty currency exchange fee charged by the receiving bank.
Yes, you do have a choice in how much you want to pay in fees. But that may mean that your transaction will take longer to settle while your transaction sits in limbo waiting for a miner willing to accept an underwhelming offer.
Looking at a website which tracks transaction fees paid (https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee), it indicates that the average transaction cost per day for the last several days have varied between $6-11USD.
Foreign currency transfer... that's simply not something that I deal with on a regular basis and it wasn't a point that I brought up, so I'm not sure why you did. However, I'm sure that it is a benefit, but I'd gander that most of your transactions that you undertake across all your accounts on any given month aren't foreign wires/foreign BTC transactions, making it an edge case and not a general use case.
Starling and Revolut don’t charge anything to transfer money to my Italian bank account. The Italian bank has a 0.35% conversion margin if I transfer £. Starling charges 0.4% if I transfer €, and Revolt is 0% for the first £1000 per month, then 0.5%, plus an additional 1% at weekends.
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