New York | During our travels over the past two weeks, we tried to keep up with the financial press, particularly the growing sense of unease felt by many observers with the relentless rise of valuations for equities and other asset classes engineered by the Fed and major central banks. Suffice to say the number of queries we receive about bank stocks being overvalued has soared.
Last week saw some real gems from the world of crypto currencies. Bitcoin and the enabling technology known as “blockchain” are just the latest shiny objects to fascinate the less cautious members of the investing public. The folks at Grant’s Interest Rate Observer flagged this precious headline from Bloomberg News:
“This Company Added the Word ‘Blockchain’ to Its Name and Saw Its Shares Surge 394%”
The world of “investing” in blockchain schemes has always given us a feeling of amazement, but tempered with a tinge of chagrin for those credulous souls caught up in this web of intellectual fraud. Sure blockchain has some interesting attributes, but other than enabling the bitcoin phenomenon, it has limited uses that make commercial sense. Blockchain rather blatantly violates the Three Laws of technology investing – cheaper, better, faster – but nobody seems to care.
Even more amusing than blockchain, however, is the fact that some of the sponsors of various “initial coin offerings” of nouvelle crypto currencies have taken the position that the ICO is an act of charity and that the investment received is a “non-refundable donation” rather than a distribution of a stake or equity in the issuer.
Source/More: Bitcoin, Blockchain and Bank America | The Institutional Risk Analyst
