Spencer Mecham

Stories By Spencer Mecham

• 

  0

  News

  News By Spencer Mecham

  Is Bitcoin Failing, Forgotten or Simply Fluctuating

  Earlier this year, one of the most prominent developers of Bitcoin, Mike Hearn, wrote an article on his Medium account about the failure of Bitcoin. Hearn claimed to have sold all of his Bitcoin ownership and broken all connections with the currency. According to Hearn, "Bitcoin is an experiment and like all experiments, it can fail." One would think that an announcement of that nature would cause the value of Bitcoins to take a significant drop. And that is exactly what happened. The Bitcoin price fell from $429 to $358 in a single day. This this isn't by any means the biggest drop Bitcoin has seen in a single day, it was still a significant blow to Bitcoin advocates. Many people joined Hearn in claiming that the age of Bitcoin was over and that it would eventually lose all value. Here is a quick look at Bitcoin values since then. As you can see, Bitcoin has done anything but fail since January 2016. Instead the value has continued on a steady march upwards, at times nearly doubling its value from early January. Many are left wondering if Bitcoin is a valid long term investment solution, or even a short term solution for money transfer. The simple answer to the question is that nobody knows. There are some things that will need to happen for Bitcoin to survive and thrive. The first thing is more familiarity. Bitcoin uses something called Blockchain, which is basically a digital ledger of transactions that can be shared amongst computers. Blockchain is relatively new, as are the concepts behind it. Many people are unfamiliar with Bitcoin, Blockchain, and the entire idea of cryptocurrency. This obviously leaves people wary and unwilling to use it as their preferred method for currency transfer. If Bitcoin can become a household word and creative positive media vibes, they should continue to excel. The second thing is regulation. People will only feel more comfortable with Bitcoin if it is regulated and they know they will not lose all of their money. The problem is Bitcoin cannot really be regulated because it is a decentralized currency. This is partly why so many criminals use it for various nefarious activities. However, currently there are plenty of experts working with European and US regulators to try and develop logical regulations. Should they succeed in finding a way that works, Bitcoin should continue to see gains. The last thing, and this is already happening, is that big names need to start validating Bitcoin. You can already use it on Expedia, Overstock, Dell, and multiple other large brands websites. However, it is not an option with most purchases. As more online retailers add Bitcoin payment options to their portals people will begin to feel more comfortable with the currency. Bitcoin has also become an easy thing to trade. There are plenty of Bitcoin specific brokers, but there are ways to trade in Bitcoin ETFs via just about any broker now. Here is a list of online stock brokers that allow you to trade in Bitcoin. Currently it looks as if Hearn was wrong in his thoughts on Bitcoin. Yes, the currency has quite a few issues to work out. Yes, it is being controlled by a few individuals making it extremely hard to advance the technology. However, in the end, Bitcoin, or at least the concept of it, is the future of currency.

  By Spencer Mecham Read More
• 

  0

  Robotics

  Robotics By Spencer Mecham

  Rise of the Robo Advisor

  We live in the age where computers far outstrip the abilities of the average brain. Just look at the two billion lines of code Google uses as it finds what you are searching for in less than a second. Or try to play chess against your iPhone and watch it run circles around your smartest friend. The next big thing for robotics is in the financial sector. There is a reason for this and it is the reason for a lot of things in the world - money. In a financial world where owning a supercomputer that is 1 millisecond faster than a competitors can make the difference of millions of dollars, it is no surprise that money and research is pouring into robo investing. There are two ways in which we are seeing the trend arise, via individual wealth management, and via high frequency trading. High frequency trading refers to using extremely fast and powerful supercomputers that trade millions of times in a single day. They capitalize on tiny irregularities and by buying up shares milliseconds before a slower computer, then turning around and selling for a higher price to that computer's owner. As one can imagine, having a slightly faster supercomputer, or finding a slightly better algorithm can result in billions of dollars when so many trades are on the line. The second way in which we are seeing an explosion of robo computing is in private wealth management. This refers to using complicated algorithms to take in large amounts of data about an individual's situation, market's situation, and world's situation, then making investing decisions based on all the available data. The more data, the better the decisions. These companies, such as Betterment, or Motif Investing are still unproven to be able to beat humans in long-term investing strategies. Part of this is the length of time they have been around, another part is the sheer amount of data and chance that goes into an investment decision. An algorithm may be late in catching onto the success of a company as it cannot recognize the usefulness of a product, or how a certain company may get virality, such as the recent boost of Pokemon Go. It will not be long before a large majority of investing decisions are made by robots and algorithms. As data becomes more readily available and shared, and robo advisors and machine learning comes into play, those that lead the pack will find themselves making more money than they thought possible.

  By Spencer Mecham Read More