Tech Millionaire Zhenya Tsvetnenko Brings Bitcoin to Australian Stock Exchange
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It seems like every Tom, Dick and Harry feels obliged to weigh in about the manic action of the their favourite virtual currency, yet I am curious how many of these crack pundits have ever even transacted in bitcoin. This is the story of macro energy bitcoin stock great bitcoin bungle, a tale painful to repeat, but should really be put to paper, so I can forever remember, what a knob I am….
It comes from a story about a macro energy bitcoin stock who joined a friend down at the docks. They were working in a fish market. All day long the price would change dramatically, the action was fast and furious. Buying and selling, selling, buying, etc.
Making and losing large sums of money. There was a great speculation, and the price of fish rose macro energy bitcoin stock levels that did not justify fundamentals.
Eventually, the market collapsed, and our new trader found himself long way too many cans of sardines. The man was hungry so he opened one of the fish containers he had been trading and took a bite.
Back to my bitcoin story. What is important, is that it was well before most macro energy bitcoin stock on Wall Street had ever heard of bitcoin. How do you stop from being ripped off? So you basically have a ledger in the sky, that is controlled by no one. Yet we are going to use this as currency? No one controls it, so no one can screw with it. We should really buy some. At this point, I shook my macro energy bitcoin stock in disbelief. In my opinion, about cents too high.
Over the years I have gotten a lot of things wrong in my life, but my bitcoin call takes the cake. I really think this technology is catching on. We should have a look at it. People will wise up and realize they are buying nothing but bits in the cloud, and that fad will be over before you know it.
In the next few months, the price of bitcoin started to accelerate. Granted, much of it was for clandestine illegal goods or services, but hey, the great alcoholic beverage conglomerates of today started out as bootleggers. I had seen enough bubbles in my day to know that fundamental value means jackshit.
So I asked the kid to teach me all about bitcoins. I created a wallet. I bought some bitcoins. We transferred them between ourselves. I learned what it was like to actually use this technology. And I hated it. The transactions took forever to commit to the blockchain. The process was confusing. You needed a computer science degree to actually use bitcoins.
It did little to convince me that this was anything more than a fad. We started with some simple mining using an extra computer we had laying around the office. The kid quickly became somewhat of a bitcoin expert, and convinced us to buy these specialized computers macro energy bitcoin stock butterfly labs that were much more efficient at mining bitcoins. We spent a bit of bread, ordered a couple of these computers, and plugged them in.
In the meantime, the price macro energy bitcoin stock bitcoin was exploding higher. Next thing we knew, the value of our mining was rising so quickly, the computers were paying themselves off in a matter of a couple of weeks. Then bitcoin became a little more mainstream. Suddenly, the Wall Street guys were coming for macro energy bitcoin stock, and the price started gapping higher.
What had started out as a bit of a joke had suddenly turned into a real business. And here is where the story gets more interesting. Not content to simply mine bitcoins, we started trading them. You can mine all the bitcoins you want, but eventually, to lock in your profit, you need to sell them. For people in the macro energy bitcoin stock industry, we take it for granted that when you execute a macro energy bitcoin stock, you will get your money.
Send macro energy bitcoin stock the stock certificate to your broker, execute the sale on the exchange, collect your money.
But government regulation makes sure that process flows smoothly. Back then, bitcoin exchanges were like the wild west. It was like depositing money in a freshly opened Montana bank in the early 19th century.
Yeah, it might be perfectly legit, but the recourse if one of these banks might fail was limited. We had noticed that amongst all the exchanges, there were a couple macro energy bitcoin stock persistent arbitrage opportunities. Gox, a Japanese exchange, in particular seemed to consistently bid bitcoins at prices that were above the offers at other exchanges eventually Mt.
Gox would go bankrupt and bitcoin traders would lose almost everything. But how would we know which exchanges were macro energy bitcoin stock So we went about testing them. We transferred small bitcoin positions, made a trade, then requested the money. We timed how long it took to get our cheque or wire.
The longer the delay, the less likely we were to trade with that exchange. Once we had figured out which exchanges were somewhat trustworthy, we went about creating automated programs to arbitrage between the two exchanges.
In bitcoin, there are no rules, so there were not only locked markets, but often straight arbs where you could buy on one exchange and immediately sell it on another exchange, locking in a profit. We had bought so many computers that our office became so hot, we were forced to move them to an cold, Canadian un-heated garage. When the price spiked, and then sold off, I figured the mania was over. Not only that, but the media attraction to bitcoin had made mining and arbitrage much more difficult.
We sold the last of our XBT, and retired our mining computers. Sure, bitcoin got quiet and drifted lower. Yet, then Xi came into power with anti-corruption regulatory drive.
The Chinese government clamped down on capital flows, and gave bitcoin a second life I never expected. Since the end ofthe price of bitcoin has gone parabolic. A lot has changed since our early days of bitcoin mining and trading. It has become much more professional. It is no longer simply a currency to buy illegal goods on Silk Road, but a real alternative to fiat government currencies. Yet I feel my experience gives me a better filter in which to judge the recent bitcoin mania.
I am not some bitter old man yelling at the kids to get off my lawn. When it comes to bitcoin, I can objectively say I have used it, and understand the pluses and minuses of the new technology.
But make no mistake, I have not changed my view. I am still a big bitcoin bear. And let me walk you through my reasoning. Although I understand the supply of bitcoins is finite, the supply of virtual currencies is infinite. There is nothing stopping another virtual currency from coming along and supplanting bitcoin as the main currency.
He highlighted the fact that Ethereum could be a better system, and might eclipse bitcoin. Today it is Ethereum, tomorrow it could be another new virtual currency. The supply of bits in the sky is infinite. I understand the macro energy bitcoin stock affect, but do you really want to own something that is reliant on it macro energy bitcoin stock popularity?
Even if you are the biggest virtual currency bull in the macro energy bitcoin stock, you might get the macro picture correct, but miss the micro decision by picking the incorrect eventual winner. How many technologies have seen the original incumbent eventually go bankrupt, while another company ends up dominating the industry?
Is anyone using their Rio MP3 player anymore? Yet they were way ahead of Apple. As it is currently implemented, it can handle a theoretical maximum of about 7 transactions per second. The energy required for macro energy bitcoin stock transactions is also staggeringly high. It has been estimated that a single bitcoin transaction takes at least a thousand times more energy macro energy bitcoin stock a VISA transaction.
But many of these individuals using bitcoin are doing so through exchanges. These transactions are by no means anonymous. To think governments are not going to get involved in regulating these exchanges is naive. At the end of the day, the internet is run by macro energy bitcoin stock that answer to governments.
But what if governments outlaw bitcoin exchanges? Or at least heavily regulate them?