Saying I’m glad I bought Bitcoin may seem an odd thing to say bearing in mind the fall in value it has suffered. And no, I didn’t buy pre-2011 which would mean I was still in serious profit. In fact I am currently down on my money. But I’m still glad I bought Bitcoin.
I have history in this regard. I was part of a team that floated a company on the London Stock Exchange back in 2000. It was a shares information company, riding on the back of frenzied investment in the fast moving stock prices of digital businesses. We got the listing away in quick time and our share price went from 10p to 62p in three days. Then the dot com bubble burst and the price dipped below 5p. As a Director of the company I couldn’t sell my shares when it was above the listing price, so more money lost there too. But I’m glad I was on that ride too.
It’s not that I like losing money. Far from it. But I have learned so much from the experiences. And one thing I have learned is that when the frenzy has calmed down, when the get rich quick merchants have moved on, there is a lot of value left. After the shares information company - which is still listed on the Alternative Investment Market in London - I went on to set up a digital marketing agency. I had to talk people down from the rooftops of despair over the dot com crash and convince them there was still value in the underlying technologies and thinking of the Internet. Time has certainly proved that correct and I sold my agency in 2011 to one of the big ad groups.
And I believe there is still a huge amount of value in cryptocurrencies and, even more so, in the underlying technology of Blockchain. Indeed, in the same way the Internet has rewired Society, Blockchain could do so all over again. Blockchain has the capability to make organisations that use it transparent, democratic, decentralized, efficient and secure. But it has the flexibility so that organisations can also choose the values they wish to espouse.
So the main reason I am glad I bought Bitcoin is that it is too easy to talk a good game on new technologies, to put together punchy Power Point decks and to post motivational messages on LinkedIn saying that we should all be brave and fail fast. It’s a lot harder to do it. But if you do get involved you learn where there is value and can go on to reap rewards in the longer term.
So get involved. Up your fluency in cryptocurrencies and Blockchain, be curious about how it could apply in your situation and start experimenting. May be even buy some cryptocurrency. You’ll be glad you did.