INVESTORY
Every informed person needs to know about Bitcoin because it might be one of the world’ s most important developments.» – Leon Louw, two-time Nobel
Peace Prize nominee
-IOTA— Launched 13 June, 2015- listed a token designed for the Internet of Things micropayment and immediately fetched a value of $ 1.8 billion. At the time of writing this article, the value of one IOTA token stood at $ 1,39, which marks more than a 60,000 per cent return on investment since the initial coin offering in.-Ethereum— Ether’ s( ETH) issue price at the time of the crowd-sale in 2014, amounted to $ 0.311. Ether’ s all-time high hit $ 407.51 on June 13, 2017. At the time of writing, Ether was trading at $ 367.35, over a 90,000 per cent increase in value since its ICO.-Brave Software’ s lofty Basic Attention Token( BAT), sucked in $ 36 million in 24 seconds( a $ 180 million valuation) on the promise of using Blockchain technology to fix digital advertising’ s deep problems.-Tezos( XTZ)— one of the largest ICOs to date, raising $ 232 million worth of Bitcoin( BTC) and Ethers.-Augur( REP)— has practically created a betting platform where you can bet on « everything from
Million-dollar pizzas and the new Nouveau-Riche
The first purchase with crypto-currency happened on May 22, 2010. Laszlo Hanyecz, a programmer from Las Vegas, transferred 10,000 Bitcoins( worth $ 25 at the time) for two Papa John’ s pizzas. At today’ s price, each pizza would have cost him more than 40 million dollars! Let’ s hope the owner of Papa John’ s held on to those Bitcoins. He would be worth over 80 million dollars today.
Erik Finman, an American school leaver, made a bet with his parents that if he became a millionaire by age 18, they couldn’ t force him to go to university. He had the foresight to investment in Bitcoin when it cost $ 12 a coin. With the current record-breaking valuation, he has won the bet not to attend university.
« I can proudly say I made it, and I’ m not going to college,» Finman said. He currently owns 403 Bitcoins, which at the current $ 10500 a coin puts his Bitcoin value more that 4 million USD. Finman thinks the best days are still ahead. « Personally, I think Bitcoin is going to be worth a couple hundred thousand to a million dollars a coin,» he said. It should still be approached with caution, as Bitcoin is very volatile, and the value could decline rapidly. But Erik Finman feels very good about it.
The Winklevoss twins discovered Bitcoin in July of 2012, while holidaying in Ibiza. At 32 years old, the enviably athletic twins had both Harvard and Oxford degrees and seemed predestined for success. They had famously won a $ 65m settlement from Facebook after asserting Mark Zuckerberg had stolen their concept for a Harvard social network. The Winklevoss twins claim to own close to one per cent of the entire Bitcoin Market, which equates to about 120,000 Bitcoins. They spent about $ 11 million( less than 100 USD a coin), but the current price, their wallet is worth 1 billion USD. You win some, you‘ lose’ some Buried somewhere under mud and mounds of rubbish, in a landfill site near Newport, Wales, in an area about the size of a football pitch is a computer hard drive worth a fortune. It belonged to James Howells, who threw it out when he was clearing up his desk in mid— summer, 2013. Then he remembered that it held a digital wallet with 7,500 Bitcoins created for almost no money in 2009. The 7,500 Bitcoins on the hard drive were worth around £ 500,000 when it was thrown in the rubbish. Since then, the value has soared to over 78 millions dollars. As the saying goes, one man’ s trash is another man’ s treasure!
Hello Monaco – Winter 2018 / 59