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Offered A New Business Development Job? These Signs You Should Turn It Down

Offered A New
Business Development Job?
These Signs You Should Turn It Down

In the world of business development, opportunities often arise for corporate leaders take on an executive role at another company. These organizations recognize exceptional leadership skills and business vision, and will frequently head hunt C-level talent to help them get to the next stage of growth.If you've been asked to consider an executive position, you're likely feeling flattered and honored. But as with any career move, it's important to consider all the pros and cons of the new role before you jump ship.We asked members of the Forbes Business Development Council to share some red flags that might dissuade you from taking the new job.

 

  
  

No Resources Or Support For Your Vision

Most successful business development executives manage against time. They see opportunities to create something bigger for the company and their partners and need cross-functional support to execute the vision. If it's not there, you may have a difficult time succeeding.

Lack Of Clear Positioning

I like Geoffrey Moore's outline on this: Who are your customers; what do they need; what do you do; what are their alternatives; why are you better than the alternatives? This is the foundation for all sales and marketing activities, so if they can't already state it, or you can't frame it out quickly, that's a problem.

Lack Of Control Over Resources

If you're charged with hitting a goal, but have no way to affect the necessary change to reach that goal, then you're setting yourself up for failure.

Egotistical Team Members

The biggest red flag when evaluating a team is if there are one or more people who are "in it for themselves," rather than the benefit of the company or team overall. This type of team member can work at cross-purposes to the rest of the team and company and can lead to failure, other team members leaving, and decreased productivity.

You're Not Excited About The Company

I think this advice is important for everyone looking to make a career change. Is this a good fit for you? If you don't feel the excitement and passion in your gut after meeting the team, your new manager, and your new job description, you may want to continue looking.

Poor Alignment Of Personal Values And Culture

Most people just look at the salary before evaluating an open position. Other people just get excited about the challenges. Yet, if you are looking for a company where you will be comfortable and growing, you need to be aligned with it on a personal and professional ground.

Nonexistent Mission, Purpose Or Values

The first thing I look for is the mission, purpose, and values of the company I wish to dedicate my life to. If it is nonexistent or my intuition tells me that their values are not practiced, then they simply are not evolved enough to merit my participation.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about – Inbound Marketing.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Bitcoin rival Ripple is suddenly sitting on billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency

Bitcoin rival Ripple is suddenly sitting on billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency

  • Blockchain start-up Ripple built a digital payments network for real-time financial transactions.
  • It suddenly has billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency on its balance sheet.

  

Bitcoin rival Ripple is suddenly sitting on billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency 

Blockchain start-up Ripple is in a precarious position for a 5-year-old company.The business is still in its very early days but suddenly has billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency on its balance sheet.Ripple, which built a digital payments network for real-time financial transactions, is also the creator and biggest owner of Ripple XRP, a digital currency that has increased in value by 40 times this year.There's a total of 100 billion XRP in existence, each priced at about 26 cents. The $26 billion of total value is second among cryptocurrencies, behind bitcoin, which is valued at $41 billion.

Ripple owns about 61 percent — or $16 billion worth — of XRP. If that were factored into the company's valuation, Ripple would be worth more than all but four U.S. start-ups — Uber, Airbnb, Palantir and WeWork. XRP is surging alongside Bitcoin and ether as well as smaller digital currencies like dash and monero. They're all benefiting from the growing interest in Blockchain, a distributed electronic ledger that makes all transactions trackable. Unlike other cryptocurrencies on the market, XRP is tied to — and majority-owned by — a single company.

That's led to concern among XRP investors and enthusiasts that Ripple will one day decide to capitalize on its massive stake and flood the market with currency. Some venture investors would surely welcome cashing in on some of that value after pouring about $94 million into the company. But for people with thousands (or millions) of dollars wrapped up in XRP, the fear of a sudden excess of supply has been unsettling, particularly considering the volatility of the currency. The price fell 13 percent late in the day on Thursday and double-digit daily moves are normal.

'Off the table'

To create some long-term stability and ease those concerns, Ripple announced a plan last week for the structured sale and use of its currency. By the end of 2017, the company will put 55 billion of its XRP into escrow and will unleash up to 1 billion into the market every month. Thus, investors will have some sense of what's coming. "We decided to take the issue off the table," Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in an interview. "We wanted to make sure we were combating any uncertainty about supply."

Garlinghouse is a well-known name in Silicon Valley. He had senior executive roles at Yahoo and AOL and was CEO of Hightail (formerly YouSendIt) from 2012 to 2014. He joined Ripple in 2015, and earlier this year took over the CEO role from founder Chris Larsen, a serial entrepreneur, who previously started online lender Prosper. Garlinghouse likened Ripple's situation to Yahoo, which derives almost all of its current value from its large stake in China's Alibaba. (Yahoo's core business is being sold to Verizon and the Alibaba stake is being spun out into a new holding company called Altaba.)

The analogy only goes so far, as equity investors haven't ascribed a big multi-billion dollar valuation to Ripple. The company last raised money in September, when the XRP currency was worth a tiny fraction of its current price.However, Ripple's business has picked up quite a bit of momentum since then, which helps explain at least some of XRP's rally. Last month, Ripple signed up 10 new financial institutions, including BBVA, to its payments platform that supports speedy transactions by eliminating all the friction that exists between various currencies and financial systems.

Global banks including Bank of America, RBC and UBS are also customers. While bitcoin is the more established cryptocurrency, it's primarily used today as an investment vehicle and has run into big latency problems with handling transactions. Ripple and ethereum have emerged as the early leaders in enabling business arrangements, with Ripple trying to build the digital payments standard for the financial sector. "Some of those banks are all in and some are still in the early stage running a pilot," Garlinghouse said. "We have real customers touching real production systems. We're the only company you can say that about in our space."

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Kik maker launches cryptocurrency to fight Internet ‘giants’

Kik maker launches cryptocurrency to fight Internet ‘giants’

  

Launching its own cryptocurrency called Kin

Kik Interactive Inc., the maker of anonymous chat app Kik, announced today that it is launching its own cryptocurrency called Kin in order to push back against what Chief Executive Ted Livingston calls the “copy-and-crush strategy” of giant Internet companies.

“We’ve reached a worrying point in the evolution of the internet: More and more of our everyday digital activities — from talking to friends to ordering food to share photos — are controlled by fewer and fewer companies,” Livingston wrote in a blog post. “The biggest companies use their scale to  mass advertising dollars and give everything else away for free, making it nearly impossible for smaller competitors to find sustainable business models.” According to Livingston, Kik’s new cryptocurrency will allow developers to “link arms to compete with the giants together, building a better future for society while also making money.”

Kin is based on the Ethereum blockchain, and it will be integrated directly into Kik for in-app purchases, which Livingston says will help generate demand for the cryptocurrency. He noted that Kik’s existing digital currency, Kik Points, has already demonstrated that Kin could be successful. “Despite its intentional limitations, Kik Points saw a transaction volume three times higher than Bitcoin’s,” Livingston said. “As the default currency inside Kik, Kin will go far beyond Kik Points by allowing people to participate in an economy based on buying and selling stickers, hosting and joining group chats, creating and using bots, and much more.”

Livingston said he hopes Kin will help create an open, decentralized digital ecosystem, which would allow consumers to move to other platforms without losing apps or services that they have already paid for. Kik users will be able to earn and spend Kin through the app, which could allow the app’s predominantly younger user base to spend money without having to use a credit card. Kik will have also parental controls for Kin to prevent underage users from spending the currency without permission. Each day, an algorithm will also distribute Kin to developers through the Kin Rewards Engine based on how much their service contributed on the platform. The idea behind this rewards program is to compensate developers without having to rely on an advertising model, which Livingston says will “lead to a virtuous cycle in which the ecosystem grows in both size and quality.”

To oversee the new cryptocurrency, Kik is founding the Kin Foundation, an independent not-for-profit organization that will operate the reward engine and manages transaction services and a decentralized user identity. “It’s like Mozilla for the mobile era, but with payments built in,” Livingston said. Livingston did not name any names when describing the big “copy-and-crush” companies, but one of the most likely candidates would be Facebook Inc., which has been increasingly expanding its products to compete directly with newer social apps. For example, Facebook-owned Instagram has introduced a number of features over the last year that gives it functions similar to Snapchat.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
TCC-Bitcoin.

 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

The bitcoin and cryptocurrency bubble is just getting started

The bitcoin
and cryptocurrency
bubble is just getting started

  

 I attended one of the most important events in the blockchain world

The consensus is an annual blockchain technology summit in New York where industry leaders discuss all things bitcoin and blockchain, and where new blockchain companies come to pitch their ideas. Regular readers are familiar with bitcoin and blockchain. Bitcoin is digital money that is created and held electronically. At the core of Bitcoin technology is a super database called the “blockchain.” The blockchain contains every transaction in the history of bitcoin and is accessible to anyone. A lot of people think that blockchain will eventually be used to process everything from stock trades to voting.

I first recommended buying bitcoin back in March. Over the next two and a half months, the price of bitcoin soared 72 percent. Earlier this week, I reiterated my recommendation to buy by saying: “stop procrastinating!” Guess what? Bitcoin is up another 20 percent since then. But the rollercoaster ride isn’t done yet. One of my biggest takeaways from Consensus was that the boom in bitcoin and blockchain is just getting started. Everywhere I looked, conference attendees were on mobile phones and laptops trading cryptocurrencies throughout the course of the conference. Here are just a few of the things I learned at the summit:

The bitcoin boom is fuelling more cryptocurrency rallies

The market capitalisations of the two largest cryptocurrencies, bitcoin, and ether, have increased by nearly US$40 billion in the past three months. The total cryptocurrency market cap is up by $65 billion (a nearly 300 percent gain) to US$85 billion. As a result, holders of these currencies are sitting on huge wealth and they are now looking to “diversify” into other cryptocurrencies. This means that instead of being 100 percent in bitcoin and/or ether, investors are looking to take 5 or 10 percent of their cryptocurrency portfolio and buy other cryptocurrencies. This is fuelling a boom in second-tier cryptocurrencies.

Rampant speculation

As I listened in on pitches from new blockchain businesses, the most common single question was this: “when is the ICO?” (ICO means “initial coin offering”, the cryptocurrency equivalent of an IPO, or initial public offering, for a stock). Market participants are expecting immediate multiples of return on capital, regardless of the business case (if any). ICOs are viewed as near-guarantees of immediate big gains. I see a lot of parallels here with the tech bubble of the late 1990s. And there will be some spectacular blowups ahead.

But let’s be clear: at the peak of the dot-com bubble, the market cap of the NASDAQ index was near US$6 trillion. The entire cryptocurrency market cap right now is currently less than 1.5 percent of that. The point is, for all the noise in the media, the level of general public participation in bitcoin and cryptocurrencies remains extremely low. Just think about your own group of friends and associates. How many of them even own bitcoin? So this bubble is just getting started.

Regulators at the gate

The legal and regulatory system is far behind what’s actually happening in the cryptocurrency space. How do you treat cryptocurrencies? Are they securities? Currencies? Assets? Something in between? Remember, all cryptocurrencies offer different characteristics. Some offer the equivalent of a coupon or a distribution of profits, for example. But at some stage regulators (most likely the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)) will step into this market. Especially as the financial stakes increase. There are scam-like cryptocurrencies taking advantage of the huge boom. When investors start crying foul, you can expect the SEC to start weighing in. When they do, you can expect increased volatility and big drops in the scummier cryptocurrencies out there. But SEC participation will only make this industry more mainstream and bring in more money.

In the meantime…

This was just a quick wrap-up of what’s going on in cryptocurrencies. I’ll be bringing you more insights on this space in the future. But for now, everyone should be accumulating a little bitcoin. A few hundred dollars, a couple thousand… whatever you can afford to allocate in the super-speculative portion of your portfolio. Now, bitcoin will not keep increasing in value at its current rate of growth forever. At some stage, the market price will correct.

But everyone needs to familiarize themselves with the process of buying, trading and storing cryptocurrencies. Blockchain and Bitcoin are here to stay. This technology will only grow in scale and opportunity. And being on the outside (and not understanding it) will limit your ability to profit from it. Remember, this rollercoaster ride is just getting started. So there’s no reason not to be buying now.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
TCC-Bitcoin.

 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

The Kin Token Is Set To Kick Off On Kik Messenger

Ontario Canada’s Kik Interactive will dive into the cryptocurrency market with Kin, an Ethereum-based ERC20 token.

  

The company plans to extend blockchain technology

May 25, 2017, during Token Summit at New York University (NYU), Kik's founder Ted Livingston announced a whitepaper outlining the creation of Kin, an ERC20-based token. A designer of the popular messenger app Kik, the company plans to extend blockchain technology into the messenger market, allowing users to make transactions in cryptocurrency. Kik's rise as a messenger is indisputable; the company boasts 300 million users according to Tech Crunch and received a nearly $1 billion valuation in 2015 after Chinese investment firm Tencent invested $50 million in the company. Now Livingston has set his eyes on blockchain technology.

During the announcement today at Token Summit in NYU, Livingston stated he doesn't want to simply create a token, he wants to build a system of value. "We give Kin value," said Livingston. "Could we use some of that value to spark the creation of a new ecosystem of digital services?" Livingston also emphasized that his intentions are not to create an advertising platform. "We just built a place that people come to together to provide value for each other, and if you do that, you can make a better future and you can also make money," he said.

Kik did tests with virtual currency in 2014 with a service called “Kik Points” which could be traded for limited edition emoticons. Now, Kik plans to manifest Kin as an ERC20 token which can be used as a general purpose cryptocurrency for services like chat, social media, and payments. To meet financing goals, a trillion units out of 10 trillion total will be distributed at a token sale to be later announced. The company plans to use the remaining unsold tokens to fund Kik operations and deploy the Kin Foundation.

The roadmap for token allocation is clear and laid out in the Kin Whitepaper:

  

It will take four straightforward steps to reach Kik's goal; first coining the Kin tokens, next integrating Kin tokens into the Kik platform. Then, development will begin on a system called Kin Rewards, which will introduce Kin into circulation as a daily reward, distributed amongst developers whose contributions are gauged by a disbursement algorithm. The final step will be to launch the Kin Foundation as a non-profit governance body to manage the entire ecosystem surrounding Kin. Kin Rewards presents users the opportunity to earn Kin for engaging other users in transactions. The proportion of rewards received is relative to transaction engagement.

If a good or service is provided in exchange for Kin, the total amount of transactions completed by that vendor is logged. Rewards are provided based on the percentage of those overall transactions that were made with Kin on a daily basis. Fred Wilson, a partner at Union Square Ventures and Kik board member, said in a release, “cryptocurrency is the next important business model innovation in tech.” He went on to say, “Kik will be the first mainstream application to integrate a cryptocurrency. This could be a watershed moment for the blockchain sector.” Kik's capability to advertise Ethereum to its numerous users may be a boon to holders of the currency as mass awareness may cause a surge in the value of Ether, which recently rose above the $200 USD mark.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
TCC-Bitcoin.

 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Did this not-safe-for-work internet sensation just signal a top in Bitcoin?

Did this not-safe-for-work internet sensation just signal a top in Bitcoin?

   Dan Bilzerian’s penchant for automatic weapons,

high-stakes poker, fast women, and faster cars have made him an unfiltered internet phenomenon. Now you can add go ahead and bitcoin BTCUSD, +3.10%  to his list. Bilzerian told his 22.3 million Instagram followers on Wednesday afternoon that he “just bought a sh*tload of Bitcoin” and that “it’s so crazy watching that sh*t f**king go up it’s like… betting a bunch of money on the Super Bowl.” Do you trust this guy’s judgment?

Bilzerian, of course, knows all about betting a bunch of money. He once claimed he won $50 million over the course of a year playing poker. He also said that he flipped a coin for $2.3 million and lost. So, yes, Bitcoin sounds about right, considering the cryptocurrency’s volatility. On Thursday, Bitcoin rallied to yet another record high and has now jumped almost 50% in the last week alone. Since last year, Bitcoin has surged more than 400%. As you can see, however, Bilzerian’s endorsement didn’t exactly thrill many of the investors frequenting Reddit’s Bitcoin group:

“If that’s not a sign of a bubble IDK what is lol.”  “NORMIES INCOMING!”  “F**k I just sold some because of this, not even joking.” Does Bilzerian’s post, indeed, mark a potential top for bitcoin, like a cab driver tipping you off about the next hot semiconductor stock?  Who knows, but he has backed a winning long shot before.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
TCC-Bitcoin.

 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Bitcoin’s appeal is at an all-time high

Bitcoin’s appeal is at an all-time high

  

Global stock indexes are not the only asset

class making new highs on a daily basis. Cryptocurrencies — specifically Bitcoin soaring to fresh levels as well. Despite two major setbacks for bitcoin in 2017, it has soared nearly 55 percent from its year-to-date lows as Asian investors flock to the new-age currency. Bitcoin prices are now trading at previously uncharted levels as the value of the cryptocurrency reached a high of $1,588 on CoinDesk on Friday morning. In January the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, launched a crackdown on bitcoin, believing that citizens were using it to move wealth out of the country. Prices fell as low as $750 on Jan. 12 before recovering.

In March the cryptocurrency had a run-up on anticipation that the Securities and Exchange Commission would decide in favor of a bitcoin exchange-traded fund driven by the Winklevoss brothers. Bitcoin prices reached a high of $1,350 before the feds nixed the proposal, sending prices to a low of $891 soon afterward. Prices began to recover as Japan officially acknowledged the use of cryptocurrencies and passed legislation allowing retailers to accept payment in digital form. Russia and India have also loosened restrictions on cryptocurrencies, leading to wider acceptance within their borders as both countries — India especially — struggle with their own internal currency crises.

The SEC announced in April that it would take a second look at a bitcoin ETF by reviewing its ruling in the Winklevoss brothers’ application. No timetable has been released on when that may happen. Bitcoin’s market cap is now north of $23 billion, which is chump change for any asset class. But with more acceptance and wider appeal, the digital currency can be divided into smaller units such as decibits, millibits, and centibits to make smaller transactions possible. Ethereum, which is the second-most prominent cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, struck a new all-time high Tuesday as well, trading at $85. It now has a market cap of $7 billion on the strength of its acceptance in gaming circles in Asian countries.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
TCC-Bitcoin.

 

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Blockchain Could Move Self-Driving Cars Into the Fast Lane

A future with autonomous vehicles is fast approaching 

and with it, the idea that blockchain could connect automobiles and other Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices is getting its fair share of attention. Even though smart houses (where doors, thermostats and appliances are connected to the internet for added functionality) may have seemed more trendy a year ago, blockchain startups are becoming drawn to the potential of connected cars. "Timing is everything," said John Gerryts, co-founder and CEO at Oaken. "Now is the perfect time to begin building this stuff out."

He went on to explain:

"Everyone is in turn with it and on the same page with autonomous vehicles being within reach, depending on who you talk to, in the next 5–10 years."

The "stuff" Gerryts is talking about includes developing a mechanism that would allow autonomous vehicles to be truly autonomous. This means that a car could refuel, recharge and park on its own – and pay for those services as well.

Opportunity at the edge

Most entrepreneurs in the self-driving car space, said Gerryts, are focused on mobility. However, Oaken is focused on the layers and support systems that could underlie this operation. To the startup, these edges of the industry could use smart contracts running on a blockchain to connect everything. Plus, cars equipped with a repository of cryptocurrency could purchase services – say, a tune-up or an oil change – using an instantaneous and inexpensive payment rail.

Oaken sees itself taking care of the attestation of vehicles, inputting data on the blockchain to give vehicles a kind of digital identity. Once this identity is in place, Oaken can use GPS to follow the car, time-stamping its location on the blockchain. The data gleaned from the connection of the vehicle to the internet such as seasonality and traffic patterns, can also be used by consumers, application developers, and manufacturer "If everyone had everyone else’s data it would be a faster path to autonomous cars," according to James Johnson, co-founder and chief marketing officer at Oaken.

He said:

"If these [original equipment manufacturers] and others want to accelerate the path to level-five autonomous driving, the best way to do that is through the blockchain to share all that data."

But before autonomous cars, Oaken is looking to equip today's cars, those that could be manned by a human with the ability to purchase services using cryptocurrency. The company recently built out a proof-of-concept (PoC) for a United Arab Emirates-sponsored hackathon, which won first place. The project allowed Tesla cars to pay road tolls over the ethereum network. While nothing commercial has come out of the PoC yet, Gerryts said, the company has been head’s down on the project for the Toyota Research Institute, which announced this week that it will form a consortia with multiple blockchain startup partners to focus on potential uses of Blockchain.

Oaken has also been developing a system for short-term vehicle leasing. Whether it's individuals, manufacturers or other companies with fleets, the firm wants to find a way to allow them to rent out or lease vehicles in exchange for payment. And all that data and monetary transfer will happen over a blockchain. The startup has come up with a decentralized application (dapp) on the ethereum testnet that allows people to register their vehicles for short-term lease, and one at the other end that allows people to go in and sign up to lease those vehicles. With the announcement, Oaken and the other blockchain startups in the Toyota consortium – including Gem, BigchainDB and Commuterz – aim to capture the interest of large original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). That effort, they hope, will help get the blockchain-connected hardware into vehicles' components before market.

Unlocking the middleman's money

Uber’s valuation is more than $60bn, and all the company does is act as a matchmaker.

Johnson asked:

“What if there was a direct relationship between the vehicle owner and the consumer?”

By cutting out Uber or Lyft as the middleman, drivers would make more money without the up-to-20% fee they charge, and consumers would get cheaper rides. All manufacturers and OEMs are looking at how to get a piece of this pie. And while manufacturers might be selling less cars, Johnson continued, they’ll get more revenue per car – or rather than selling cars, offer pay-per-use models. Further, as Oaken is thinking about the future of smart cities, it makes sense to utilize the roadways for ride-sharing, because, in most US cities, there are about 100 times more roads than there are mass transit lines, Johnson said. “The opportunity is so big that I think all these different players in the [blockchain] space are now trying to get that solution built,” Johnson told CoinDesk.

Reinventing insurance

One area that will absolutely change as short-term leasing of individual cars becomes more popular is car insurance. “Insurance has always been built with 12 months in mind,” said Johnson. “Now, we’re building insurance products for five minutes or 20 minutes.” Many experts have predicted a move towards usage-based insurance (UBI) or 'pay as you drive' (PAYD), not only because of short-term leasing, but because of the proliferation of telematic devices and smartphones that can be used to monitor the driving behaviors of individuals in an effort to give them discounts or better premiums for good driving.

“Usage-based insurance will be dynamic enough to charge you less on Tuesdays than Wednesdays if you're a better driver on the former day,” said Gerryts. The problem with these models is that insurance is supposed to be a pooling mechanism for distributing costs across multiple people and, in turn, keeping them down. Plus, telematic monitoring can sometimes put certain demographics at a disadvantage. For instance, most insurers will dock points for driving late at night into the early morning because statistically speaking that’s when most accidents happen. However, this puts people that work late-night and overnight shifts at a disadvantage. However, Toyota’s insurance entity is also part of the research initiative, so these challenges are being worked through, according to Gerryts.

Johnson said:

“The discrimination of usage-based insurance – autonomous cars could solve this.”

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Here’s how blindingly fast bitcoin has been surging

Here’s how blindingly fast bitcoin has been surging

The digital currency has blown through $100 milestones nearly every day

  

That’s how long it took the cryptocurrency bitcoin,

back in April 2013, to rise from $100 for a single bitcoin to $200.

Six hours—that’s how long it took for it to rise by its latest $100.

While the latter is an easier accomplishment—bitcoin only needed to rise 3.7% to add another $100 to its price, compared with 100% when it doubled to $200—it is also indicative of just how astonishingly fast the digital currency has been rising lately. It is up nearly 500% over the past 12 months, a sixfold rise, according to pricing site CoinDesk. Thus far in 2017, it is up 187%. Over just the past 10 days, it is up more than 60%. Here’s what gains like that translate to, If an investor were to have put $1,000 into bitcoin in 2010, that stake would be worth tens of millions of dollars today. Earlier this week, Charlie Bilello, a research director at investment adviser Pension Partners, created a table to show just how quickly Bitcoin has been bursting through $100 milestones. It hasn’t needed a double-digit number of days since April when it took nearly two months to move from $1,200 to $1,300.

Bitcoin BTCUSD, -0.57%   jumped another 12% on Thursday, an increase of $300. The speed and scale of the rally have raised questions about whether prices could possibly be sustained around current levels, something analysts seemed mixed on.“We’ve watched the volatility in Bitcoin ever since we first bought it, and we’re not blind to the fact that prices are driven by speculation to a certain degree. However, we think its utility is very underappreciated, and that there isn’t as much speculation as people think, necessarily,” said Cathie Wood, chief executive officer of ARK Investment Management.

ARK has two actively managed exchange-traded funds that offer indirect exposure to bitcoin, counting the Bitcoin Investment Trust GBTC, -7.23%  among their holdings. The BIT trades on the over-the-counter market and operates as a private, open-ended trust that invests solely in Bitcoin, with the value of its shares entirely derived from price moves in bitcoin.  The BIT typically trades at a high premium to bitcoin itself, but it has nonetheless followed the cryptocurrency higher in 2017—much higher. It is up more than 300% thus far this year, and it has more than doubled this week alone.

What is the future of bitcoin?he gains in bitcoin have been so large that the trust has become one of the top holdings of both the ARK Web x.0 ETF ARKW, +0.85%  and the A Innovation ETF ARKK, +0.18% the two actively managed funds that own What is the future of bitcoin?he gains in bitcoin have been so large that the trust has become one of the top holdings of both the ARK Web x.0 ETF ARKW, +0.85%  and the A Innovation ETF ARKK, +0.18% the two actively managed funds that own the trust (the ETFs only hold the trust, not bitcoin itself).the trust.

The trust is the largest holding of the Web ETF, comprising 8.24% of the portfolio. At 7.8%, the trust is the second-largest holding of the Innovation Fund. According to Wood, the ETFs both first bought the trust in July 2015, when it comprised 1% of the portfolios. Both ETFs have gained more than 40% in 2017, in large part due to the gain in the trust. And because they are among the few vehicles available for investors to get some kind of Bitcoin exposure—without buying it directly, something that can be complicated and risky—both have seen heavy increases in investor interest. The Web fund has seen inflows of $10.8 million in 2017, with $6.5 million of that coming over the past month, according to FactSet data. The Innovation ETF has had inflows of $16.6 million years to date, with $12 million of that coming over the past month.

Both funds have less than $30 million in assets, meaning the inflows this year have increased their size by about 50%. Wood said ARK may sell some of its BIT holdings soon, as the rules of the funds stipulate that it can’t have more than 10% of its holdings in an illiquid security—something the trust qualifies as. Despite the recent rally, she said she wasn’t necessarily worried that prices had gotten ahead of themselves. “Bitcoin is less than 50% of the crypto space; it used to be 80%,” she said. “That happened while its price was escalating; it’s just that the price of other crypto assets has escalated more, which suggests more speculation in those. But you can see that bitcoin transactions relative to the trading volume have been moving up, while developers are developing more. Both of those are good fundamental signs.”

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about –
TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Bitcoin is soaring — Here’s what the Cryptocurrency is all about

Bitcoin is soaring —
Here's what the Cryptocurrency is all about

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

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