Reggie Middleton is an entrepreneurial investor who guides a small team of independent analysts, engineers & developers to usher in the era of peer-to-peer capital markets.
1-212-300-5600
reggie@veritaseum.com
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Tuesday, 31 January 2017 17:48
Those Who Say Bitcoin Has No Intrinsic Value Need to Imbibe the Gospel of True Education
Last week I queried "Is Bitcoin the Undisputed Best Performing Asset Class In the World?". The purpose of that piece and the piece before it was to debunk long standing misconceptions as to the actual investment performance of BTC (bitcoin) as portrayed by respected institutions such as the London Business School and the Financial Times, not to mention Money Magazine.
Now, it's time to get into exactly what value propositions are there to support bitcoin's price.
Published in
BoomBustBlog
Tuesday, 31 January 2017 15:59
Is Time to Short America? Macro Risks + Unpredictable Administration / Geopolitical Uncertainty = ?
The animal spirits are whispering... They are calling into question the stability of the US in light of the significant geopolitical uncertainties introduced by the new US administration and how that plays into increasingly unprecedented global macroeconomic forces coming into play as the EU and US achieve their long sought after inflation in a world of negative interest rates and central bank sponsored asset purchases to distort the markets.
These spirits are whispering... Is it time to short the United Stages of America?
Published in
BoomBustBlog
Monday, 30 January 2017 20:44
How Trump Can (and probably is) Weaponizing the US Dollar?
Trump's fiscal stimulus proclamations in addition to his border tax rhetoric puts a definitive boost behind the USD.
Published in
BoomBustBlog
Thursday, 12 January 2017 17:02
Is Bitcoin Too Risky? Whenever the Bitcoin is Mentioned in Financial Pop Media, Ignorance Ensues
I hate to be the one to break bad news to you, but most of the pop media/mainstream media financial pundits that I hear and see opine on bitcoin have absolutely no idea what the hell they are talking about. This article will be the piece that strips the pretense of knowledge away from all of those other "smart guy" media types.
Published in
BoomBustBlog
Monday, 30 June 2014 12:00
Stress Test on Banks’ Earnings Facing the Veritaseum UltraCoin Value Transaction Platform
My last post on the topic of disintermediation during a paradigm shift was Wall Street Should Be First To Invest In Reggie Middleton's UltraCoin, Much Of It Won't Be Here In 10 Years! I clearly illustrated the potential for growth of Bitcoin related companies and cited statistics for the transformation of the financial industry as we know it today.
This post introduces long form research from the analysts at Veritaseum, the same team that brought you the hard hitting BoomBustBlog research. The first page of the report says it all - "Stress Test on Banks’ Earnings Facing the Veritaseum UltraCoin Value Transaction Platform".
Excerpts from deeper into the report...
And of course the inevitable... What happens when a less expensive product is introduced into the market with similar or superior attributes? Margin Compression! We analyzed three big Wall Street banks, starting with the "Riskiest Bank on the Street" (time permitting, reference our hard hitting, prescient research from early 2008).
I invite all to download the free Veritasuem Research Report for July 2014. I also invite all to meet me for the soft beta launch of Veritaseum's UltraCoin Value Trading Platform in my suite at the Drake Hotel in downtown Chicago, the evening of Saturday July 19th (this is also the weekend of The North American Bitcoin Conference in Chicago, where I will be speaking on the topic of money center bank disintermediation.
You will get to touch, play with and trade value via UltraCoin. Below is a screenshot of UltraCoin running on a Mac. I will also be taking applications for large scale beta testers and entities who wish to have customized value trading solutions created for them.
Published in
BoomBustBlog
Wednesday, 04 June 2014 13:04
Bitcoin (and Apple) Mythbusting 101
Yesterday, I did a radio interview with Benzinga. In it I busted myths about Apple, Bitcoin and Coins in general (ABCs). Listen to the interview below and the info sheets afterwards and let me know if you knew this stuff was possible with today's tech - and Apple!
As for Apple...
And more on http://Ultra-Coin.com...
Why am I so bullish on Bitcoin? Note: this is not an offer to buy or solicitation for securities and is presented for illustrative purposes only.
As we roll out Veritaseum's UltraCoin ZeroTrust Smart Contracts, I'll be posting much more on "the new way of doing business".
Media Exposure
- Reggie Middleton Intro
- How Reggie Middleton's Start-up Patented The Future of Global Finance!
- Reggie Middleton on Wikipedia
- Who is Reggie Middleton?
- Bitcoin is not just digital currency. It's Napster for finance.
- Reggie Middleton's UltraCoin @ NYC CryptoCurrency Convention
- Reggie Middleton Wins CNBC Stock Draft for the 2nd time in a row - with the same stock
Published in
BoomBustBlog
Wednesday, 21 May 2014 15:14
Margin Compression Is Coming in the Payment Processing Space As $100 Million Pours Into Startups
After an interesting discussion with those in my laboratory, I've decided to apply the forensic analysis team from BoomBustBlog to the privately funded companies in the Bitcoin space. See my post from yesterday for much of the reason why.
As clearly predicted yesterday, the better funded of the payment processors will initiate a pricing blood bath they'd likely kill for...
From PayPal's subsite on Mass Payments:
As you can see, PayPal has already imbued its service with much of the attributes that are being offered by the Bitcoin payment processors. They also have a material advantage as of right now, a massive installed base.
I also cannot emphasize enough how damaging the all too necessary customer service option is to margins. You see, the problem is most service companies don't put enough into customer service and handholding of the customer. From an optimal perspective, this should actually be part of the marketing and sales process, but it's often either non-existent or implemented as an after thought after enough customers start bitching and complaining, or worse yet (and likely most often the case) leaving!
As a company with mature management, it appears as if PayPal is trying to head this off at the pass as it attempts to change consumer behavior and prod them into adopting its new electronic currency payment system...
Now, let's compare PayPal to the newly funded Bitcoin payment processors...
Bitpay
Funding Rounds (3) - $32.50M
- See more at: http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bitpay#sthash.yvlqpNtr.dpuf
An interesting departure from the per transaction/fee model, Bitpay implemented a subscription system which benefits those customers who perform a large quantity of relatively small transactions moreso than those who process large orders.
I calculate Bitpay's most recent $30 million series A round to have been at around 9.2x sales, valuing the company at $160 million. This is a guestimate, of course, since I do not have access to internal numbers.
Next we have Coinbase...
Funding Rounds (3) - $31.70M
- See more at: http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/coinbase#sthash.CD8IPTp6.dpuf
There's also Circle, founded by Mr. Allaire of Coldfusion fame (sold to Adobe Systems).
Funding Rounds (2) - $26M
-
$17M / Series B
Mar 26, 2014
-
- See more at: http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/nfc-direct#sthash.dd0DaxHc.dpuf
Circle has not publicly launched yet but promises to bring a new level of simplicity and user-friendliness to the bitcoin payment ecosystem, concentrating more on a banking paradigm then the technical bent that bitcoin is known to represent. This is all you need ot know about the Circle business model as it relates to this discussion of impending margin compression...
Free=Margin Compression!
Let's see how this plays out for customers. The most lucrative segments for this industry is the SME (small and medium business enterprises) who process anywhere between 10 and 1,000 transactions per month. Why? Because there are simply more SMEs than they are big companies in the world. Let's see what the two biggest bitcoin processors look like when stacked up against PayPal's Mass Pay product for the SME market...
Of course, the Bitcoin transactions are likely a loss leader for additional, value added services for many companies in the not too distant future. As a matter of fact, I feel that the payment space will quickly become commoditized by Bitcoin technology - forcing these companies and many more (I'm talking about you Mastercard, Visa and Western Union) to innovate and offer significantly and materially better value for the buck.
Imagine what this competitive landscape will look like when Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Discover and Western Union jump into the fray. Of course, before that a much greater portion of the VC and private equity community will wake up and realize the opportunity in Bitcoin to pour more cash into it than sugar into a Bubble gum machine (emphasis on "Bubble"). The key is to get in early, and get in right. But how does one do that and where will this tale of uber margin compression end?
Well, the research report from which this info is being prepared will be offered to accredited and instituional investors starting next week, at least those who have an interest in UltraCoin.
My next article on this topic will explicitly illustrate how UltraCoin can assist ALL players (that's right, including PayPal, Bitpay, Circle, Coinbase, Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Discover and Western Union) as well as their direct customers, in climbing up both the food chain and the value proposition ladder - thus rapidly repairing the margin compression damage they are about to bring upon thier business models.
Published in
BoomBustBlog
Saturday, 10 May 2014 17:02
Did Money Center Bank Ignorance of CryptoCurrencies Allowed A Start-up To Patent The Future of Global Finance?
Bloomberg ran a story earlier this week illustrating the human capital flight out of the Wall Street machine and into tech:
At elite universities, fewer MBA and finance candidates are willing to even consider a life of missed weddings, busted romances and deep-into-the-night deal negotiations. The percentage of Harvard Business School graduates entering investment banking, sales or trading dropped to 5 percent last year from 12 percent in 2006, while those entering technology almost tripled to 18 percent during that period.
At the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, the percentage of MBAs entering investment banking dropped to 13.3 percent last year from 26 percent in 2006, while those entering tech more than doubled to 11.1 percent.
Those of you who have been following finance from the Wall Street/Bay Street/Canary Wharf perspective realize that this is a cyclical occurence. Basically, Wall Street falls out of favor with MBA whiz kids every ten years of so. But!!!! This time is different. This time around, Wall Street, et. al. is about to succumb to the destructive forces of technology that transformed, revolutionized, disintermediated, gutted and absolutely reinvigorated the media, news and retail industries.
That's right! The Internet Paradigm Shift has finally hit Global Finance... and it's going to hurt, and hurt a lot!
As many know, the I've poured my time and resources into a start-up by the name of UltraCoin. Many have been clamoring for white papers and details, and I have been purposely secretive about such. The reason? I needed to entrency protection from my competition - the money center banks. How did I do this? Well...
I patented the future of Global Finance!
This video illustrates my presentation to both the mainstream and alternative media as I start my capital raising rounds from venture capitalists and strategic investos alike. Check it out!
We're looking for financial and human capital as we prepare to expand globally. Financial capital is self-explanatory. On the human capital side...
We're seeking a full stack contract developer. Must be proficient in: Java or C#; git, bzr, or similar. Must have a solid understanding of: race conditions and how to avoid them; scalable concurrency and data integrity architectural concepts (replication, sharding, etc.); software development processes and best practices. Proficiency in some CRUD technology (*SQL, NoSQL, etc.) as well as and some scripting language (Javascript, PHP, Python, etc.) is highly preferred. Experience with the Bitcoin protocol is a huge plus. Your first interview is to e-mail your resume along with a response to this challenge: https://gist.github.com/mbogosian/28815ae606c663c983c3
Must be willing to sign an NDA. You should be knowledgeable and competent, but we prefer grit to genius. Prima donnas need not apply.
Published in
BoomBustBlog
Monday, 14 April 2014 11:50
Facebook Takes Life Seriously and Moves To Create Its Own Virtual Currency, Increases UltraCoin Valuation Significantly
For those who didn't get the memo, I've been toiling away in my lab creating the world's first "investment bank, securities brokerage, asset manager, money transfer agent" in-a-box that allows users to perform all of theses functions themselves on a ZeroTrust (meaning you don't need to trust or even know the other side of the transaction), peer to peer basis.
Well, it appears as quite a few of the big boys and heavy weights have a similar idea and are in the market to make acquisitions. Wouldn't it be ironic if UltraCoin (my iconic venture) was acquired before it gets its seed round???!!!
[Facebook] The social network is only weeks away from obtaining regulatory approval in Ireland for a service that would allow its users to store money on Facebook and use it to pay and exchange money with others, according to several people involved in the process.
The authorisation from Ireland’s central bank to become an “e-money” institution would allow Facebook to issue units of stored monetary value that represent a claim against the company. This e-money would be valid throughout Europe via a process known as “passporting”.
Facebook has also discussed potential partnerships with at least three London start-ups that offer international money transfer services online and via smartphones: TransferWise, Moni Technologies and Azimo, according to three people involved in the discussions.
In the case of Azimo, Facebook offered to pay the company $10m to recruit one of its co-founders as a director of business development, according to people familiar with the situation.
Yes, this space is heating up. It makes me feel good! You see, the Visas, Mastercards, Western Unions and Paypals of the world make a lot of money selling a relatively cheap services for a relatively large amount. BUT!!!! The Goldmans and JP Morgans of the world make much more money by selling very deep margined products and services for a lot more while paying a lot less to create them. It is here where UltraCoin has staked its ground. As the competition amongst the big boys starts to heat up, they will want to crawl up the food chain and I already have the ladder built!
“Facebook wants to become a utility in the developing world, and remittances are a gateway drug to financial inclusion,” said a person familiar with the company’s strategy. Facebook recently passed 100m users in India, which is its largest national market outside the United States.
My last post on this topic illustrated how UltraCoin will operate in developing markets by allowing currency, stock and financial asset exposure trades of anywhere from $5 dollars to $5 million, as well as sending money to others for just a little more than nothing, as excerpted from "Hardware IS Dead" Thesis Has Now Torn Through All Handset Providers & Now Everyone Can Act On It:
I've created an infrastructure that significantly expands these investment markets by allowing anyone, anywhere with an Internet connection (of almost any speed) to participate in almost any of the world's public financial markets. Taking the subject matter of this article into consideration, we can short Samsung on its own home exchange of Korea for nearly any amount, from $10 million US down to $8 ...
These same young investors can even hedge thier currency translation risk with a Korean Won US dollar forex pair, for 55 basis points!
Armed with the information from simply reading my blog posts, your brothers from Haiti or Botstwana can now take short positions in these (margin)doomed hardware manufacturers - taking the other side of the trade from these big name financial institutions that don't seem to read my writings.
These are young brothers from Haiti who sat through an UltraCoin lesson...
Back to the FT article:
It also comes as other internet groups – in particular, China’s Tencent and Alibaba – race to turn their sites into mobile payment platforms.
Google has reiterated its commitment to expanding its mobile payments and wallet products, which have yet to be widely adopted by consumers. It is registered in the UK to issue electronic money, in a process similar to the authorisation which Facebook is seeking in Ireland.
In 2013, the company [Facebook] facilitated $2.1bn worth of transactions, almost exclusively from games, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Vodafone has acquired an e-money licence for the phone company to operate financial services in Europe.
“It’s great news that non-banks are challenging the traditional banking monopoly,” said Simon Deane-Johns, a UK-based lawyer and European payments expert at law firm Keystone Law.
It will be interesting to see how the potential bidding contest will form as these companies compete to build the next generation financial infrastructure. I believe that I am very well positioned, as excerpted from yesterday's missive:
These are interesting times indeed. For those who are not aware of how far I've come in transforming the way value is traded across geo-political and socio-economic lines, I urge you to view the following video and/or peruse the embedded presentation below it.
Related BoomBustBlog research
Published in
BoomBustBlog
Friday, 11 April 2014 10:25
My "Hardware IS Dead" Thesis Has Now Torn Through Every Major Handset Provider
I called the Apple short before it became vogue! I called the Blackberry short beforethey became the industry whipping boy! I warned about Nokia and made clear that Samsung Will Be Ready To Do That Fruit Thing! How'd I know all of this? It's quite simple, I explained it all in 2012 - Smartphone Hardware Manufacturers Are Dead. Well, now the chickens continue to come home to roost, as per CNBC:
In order to deal with such pressures, Samsung appears to be pricing the Galaxy S5 lower than its predecessor S4, according to Kang, who has collected pre-order prices for the device from around the world.
"It reflects the trend of smart phone commoditization – Samsung will have to learn to create profits at a lower price point," Kang said.
Earlier this week, Samsung said it's on track to post its second straight quarter of profit decline, as slowing smartphone sales growth continued to weigh on earnings.
Samsung Electronics 1Q profit view just shy of estimates
The South Korean tech giant estimated that its January-March operating profit fell by 4.3 percent to 8.4 trillion won, slightly below an average forecast of 8.5 trillion won, according to Reuters.
I've created an infrastructure that significantly expands these investment markets by allowing anyone, anywhere with an Internet connection (of almost any speed) to participate in almost any of the world's public financial markets. Taking the subject matter of this article into consideration, we can short Samsung on its own home exchange of Korea for nearly any amount, from $10 million US down to $8 ...
These same young investors can even hedge thier currency translation risk with a Korean Won US dollar forex pair, for 55 basis points!
Armed with the information from simply reading my blog posts, your brothers from Haiti or Botstwana can now take short positions in these (margin)doomed hardware manufacturers - taking the other side of the trade from these big name financial institutions that don't seem to read my writings.
These are kids that I taught UltraCoin to during my trip to Haiti a couple of weeks ago. Before you assume, the kids are actually quite bright and adept at math, and yes - kdis can easily trade with UltraCoin. My kids have been doing it for months!
My UltraCoin project will nearly double the available potential investors able to profit from these markets. By making the ability to participate in multi-asset class prices moves bi-directionally (that's right, long and short) I will be increase the liquidity of said markets by almost 2 billion people, as per McKinsey:
- 2.5 billion adults, just over half of the world’s adult population, do not use formal financial services to save or borrow.
- 2.2 billion of the unserved adults live in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
- Of the 1.2 billion adults who use formal financial services in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, at least two-thirds, a little more than 800 million, live on less than $5 per day (purchasing power parity adjusted).
- Regulatory and policy environments, as well as the actions of individual financial services providers, affect usage levels in a way that is, to a large extent, independent of countries’ socioeconomic and demographic characteristics.
I just had the pleasure of meeting this young lady from Botswana who's trying to spearhead Bitcoin adoption in her country. I've made friends and I'm going to supply her with the means to have the whole country trading a whole variety (UltraCoin can trade more than 10,000 tickers - stocks, bonds, options, futures, indices) of financial assets very soon.
I'll leave it up to you to determine who'll win those trades. These are interesting times indeed. For those who are not aware of how far I've come in transforming the way value is traded across geo-political and socio-economic lines, I urge you to view the following video and/or peruse the embedded presentation below it.
Samsung Follows Footsteps Of Apple, HTC, Nokia - Wasn't ...
Sep 6, 2013 - Smartphone Hardware Manufacturers Are DeadNov 29, 2012 - Two and a ... BoomBustBlog Mar 7, 2013 - applecutsabreandriod3d Two and a ...
Sep 27, 2013 - Here I go again – Hardware is Dead & Samsung Agrees Featured ... raw fundamentals and margins, let's look at the newest crop of hardware.
Jan 25, 2013 - A Glimpse of the BoomBustBlog Internal Discussion Concerning the Fate of Apple - This ... So, you ask, "How is it that hardware is dead?" Well.
Nov 29, 2012 - Two and a half years ago I declared in my mobile computing wars series that Google would commoditized the mobile computing space, thereby ...
Dec 10, 2012 - Last week I told the world that hardwarevendors are DEAD! At least the fat margin business modelhardware vendors (like those whose name rhymes with Snapple). ... Related BoomBustBlog Subscription-only Research:.
Published in
BoomBustBlog
