Category: General

One of the hottest topics these days are cryptocurrencies (“cryptos”), such as Bitcoin. The noise created by cryptos is unfortunately currently stealing the thunder of its underlying technology, the so called blockchain.

Cryptos are one of many applications that can run on Blockchain technology. Put simplistically Bitcoin is to Blockchain what Email used to be to the Internet. Which means cryptos are one of many viable and useful applications on the Blockchain but not necessarily the most impactful nor commercially meaningful one, although the jury is still out on this.

Moreover, we believe that Cryptos are potentially close to peaking in terms of the “hype-cycle”. However, we are only at the beginning of grasping the wide-ranging potential of the underlying blockchain technology.

While this notion of “Cryptos: not so sure” vs. “Blockchain: disruptive” has already become somewhat of a consensus view amongst many academics, tech-entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, we’d like to share a couple of simple insights into the discussion.

Continue reading “The REAL disruptor: Blockchain, not Bitcoin.” →

Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies have seen an astronomical ascent in the last years, culminating in an extraordinary rise in 2017. As to the reasons behind this unprecedented rise, they actually seem far less nebulous than the identity of Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto: good old ANIMAL SPIRITS. However, the sustainability of the rise remains one of the most hotly debated topics of the year.

All this has many people asking us to opine on the whole cryptocurrency landscape and determine whether or not we are just in a bubble here – and this is something that we here at Blackbird Capital have debated vigorously as this isn’t an easy topic to come to a landing on. So to put simply, let’s start by breaking down the arguments for and against bitcoin…

Continue reading “The Debate on Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies” →

…who could’ve imagined that Nokia, which at one point accounted for 4% of Finland’s GDP, 21% of its exports and 70% of the Helsinki Exchange’s market capitalization would now be a largely defunct company?

We believe that imagination is a key ingredient to investing for the future – how do you see the world in 5, 10, 50 years and how do you want to be positioned to take advantage? Our advice: Invest with a lack of imagination at your own peril.

I’ve met very few highly successful stock market “investors” or “traders” and I could not help but notice a very specific pattern as to why most people fail to make money investing in stocks. We all seem to understand that the stock market goes up over time (with a long-run average return of 9% p.a.) but yet many individuals fail to even achieve the market average or worse yet, erode their capital. So let’s look as to why…
Continue reading “Investing is a Loser’s Game” →