Blake Dowling
Now that the 2018 Legislative Session is in full swing, lawmakers and lobbyists have taken over our great city.
Last night, I bumped into a couple of lobbyists I know, who were hiding from the masses at Whole Foods. Which is genius.
Whole Foods has it figured out, they have sports on by the deli, and pour beer and wine, so you can hang out and have a beverage. Dilly-Dilly indeed.
You can also buy a steak from the meat market, and they’ll cook it up for you on the premises. Love it.
Plus, nothing makes inflated prices seem much for reasonable than downing a couple of 10 percent IPAs.
Back to the lobbyists; we talked shop for a minute when the dialogue switched to digital currencies.
One of the gents mentioned he had seen a 500 percent increase in his digital currency investment. Fantastic. He also shared a video (you must watch) for a very simple and comedic description of digital currencies.
“Shut up Margaret, you didn’t understand any of that!” … comic gold, courtesy of Late Night with Seth Meyers.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=aeMv9uKpAZg
This all began back in the dark ages of 2008; someone named Satoshi Nakamoto announced to the world: “I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.”
For the official definition — bitcoin is a type of digital currency in which encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of units of currency and verify the transfer of funds, operating independently of a central bank.
There are various types of cryptocurrencies but this is the one you hear about most often.
As of April 2017, one bitcoin is worth $1,223 – a considerable jump from late 2016, when it was around $770 (according to Investopedia). Last month it spiked up to $20,000. To summarize there are two ways to get into bitcoin: mining and investing. Investors go to an exchange and purchase bitcoin at the market value. Miners setup powerful computers and get paid for the work that the computers produce.
There are bitcoin ATM’s around the state of Florida in use right now.
In our state, the legal and judicial ramifications are under scrutiny as criminals love new ways of doing things. They jumped into digital currencies quickly – as the transactions are more anonymous – which is why new laws were put in place last year to address this issue.
According to the Miami Herald: “Cybercriminals have taken advantage of our antiquated laws for too long,” said Miami Republican Rep. Jose Felix Diaz, who sponsored the bill. “Bitcoin bypasses the traditional banking system, and our state’s laws simply had not caught up to the upsurge in criminality in the world of cyber-currency.”
Is this the future of the investing? Maybe.
However, be advised that some digital currencies have seen 80 percent swings in value in a single day. This is not your grandmother’s blue-chip stock.
Where is this all going? The only thing I can say for certain is where it is not going – away.
___
Blake Dowling is CEO of Aegis Business Technologies and can be reached at [email protected].
