This morning I was on the verge of launching a full room-by-room, fingertip search for my car keys, brushing off a “helpful” family suggestion that they were probably behind the kitchen radiator…but I should have listened more carefully because that’s exactly where I found them. If nothing else this domestic vignette highlights the virtue of keeping an open mind. So spare a thought for James Howells who has spent the last twelve years trying to find the hard drive of a computer thrown out by his partner (now his ex-partner) in 2013: it contained 8,000 Bitcoins which would today be worth $852,716,800. And although I have no specific evidence that dumping a billion-dollar hard drive played any part in cooling Mr Howells’ affections for his partner, it seems possible that it might have done, because Jim Howells is a man of conviction…
He is convinced, for example, that his hard drive ended up on a landfill site in Newport, which also seems a safe assumption because that’s where he and his delinquent partner were living at the time (in Newport that is…not on the landfill). But despite his best efforts Newport City Council have consistently refused to allow Jim to carry out an exploratory dig: even though the site is no longer an active landfill, and despite the fact that, aside from the potential pot of Bitcoin gold, nothing beyond 1.4 Million tonnes of rubbish is likely to emerge from the excavations.
Jim took his claim to Court (after unsuccessfully offering the Council a share of the spoils), but the Judge proved as stoney-hearted as the Burghers of Newport: if the hard drive was on the site at all, the Court found that it had long ago become the property of the Council, and anyway, Jim had waited far too long to bring his claim. It seems that, even for a lawyer, twelve years is too long. Undaunted, and appropriately enough using AI to prepare his submissions, Jim moved on to the Court of Appeal where he once again encountered a frosty reception from the Bench (in March this year). He’s either never heard the maxim that anyone representing himself in court has a fool for a client…or, if he had, felt sure fortune would favour the brave. But it didn’t…he lost the case and ran out of the road.
Perhaps the time has come for an enterprising investor to buy the entire derelict site from the Council and launch a grand treasure hunt. The rewards would seem to justify the risk, and the Council is almost certainly strapped for cash at the moment. Jim could be made honorary detectorist in chief.
On a more serious note, Jim Howells’ personal tragedy is also illustrative of a much more serious issue: graphically demonstrated by Bitcoin’s striking price trajectory over the years since Jim bought his batch of coins for relative peanuts. Within five years of losing them in 2013 his 8,000 coins were worth $3,631,920. Three years later, when Jim was celebrating his 35th Birthday (no doubt having long ago said goodbye to his partner) the same batch of coins was worth $46,264,880, and today (see above) they’re worth the thick end of $1 Billion. While it would be foolish in the extreme to lose sight of just how intensely volatile the price of Bitcoin has been over that period, the data is peculiarly suggestive of the increasing importance of cryptocurrencies in globalised and technology-driven marketplaces.
After all, Bitcoin and its crypto siblings are non-fiat currencies that exist as nothing more than blips of electrons on a screen. So why are they priced so highly?
The best available answer is that crypto, and Bitcoin in particular, have assumed an increasingly important function in nascent Blockchain Markets. Put simply, the use of decentralised digital ledgers enables transactions to be set up and executed directly between contracting parties and without the active intervention of intermediaries. Just think about how much you could save if you could write a policy of insurance without the intervention of a broker, or arrange a shipment of widgets without going through a port agent or shipping broker. The technology already exists to do that on a secure and confidential basis (note, for example, the Indian Government’s recent use of blockchain as part of its complex land registration system)…and cryptocurrencies are a key facilitator.
That’s also why crypto regulation is looking more and more likely across major international markets (the Indian Government’s Sandbox Programme is a particularly pertinent example): eventual joined-up regulation across the globe will undoubtedly ameliorate some of the worst excesses seen over recent years in Bitcoin and related Markets. It’s also why financial heavyweights such as JP Morgan, Bank of America and Citigroup have already established the foundations for their own Stablecoin Consortium (the largest and potentially most influential crypto collaboration ever seen on Wall Street: https://www.pymnts.com/cryptocurrency).
It might all be happening a little too late for Jim Howells, but it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on.
Red Ribbon Asset Management (www.redribbon.co) aims to harness the power of fast-evolving and emerging technologies to meet the needs of global communities as part of a circular economy: combining an understanding of emerging international markets with in-depth recognition of the demands of Planet, People and Profit.
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Red Ribbon Asset Management (www.redribbon.co) aims to harness the full potential of fast evolving and emerging technologies to meet the needs of global communities as part of a circular economy, fully recognising the compelling demands of planet people and profit.