Investors in the cryptocurrency frenzy
: "You have to cope with that first"
Photo: ROSLAN RAHMAN / AFP
manager magazin: In July 2020 you and your investment company Coinix invested 50,000 dollars in the crypto currency "The Graph" (GRT). Today that investment is worth around $ 30 million. A plus of 60,000 percent within seven months - can we still speak of a serious investment?
The fact that $ 50,000 can turn into $ 30 million in such a short time has to be dealt with first - nervously and mentally.
In contrast, the Bitcoin performance seems almost boring.
As investors with a long-term perspective, however, we know that such fairytale returns can change significantly again.
However, a return like our graph investment is not the result of an encounter with a fairy tale fairy tale, but the result of a number of different factors.
We would be interested in these luck factors now.
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Moritz Schildt
(54) is co-founder and chairman of the supervisory board of Coinix KgaA.
The investment company, founded in Hamburg in 2017, is an investment vehicle for cryptocurrencies.
It invests in various cryptocurrencies as well as in investments in companies that are active in the blockchain technology sector.
The investment strategy is geared towards long-term investments.
Photo: Picasa
We have been in the digital asset market for four years.
You have to do a lot of research and hold a lot of discussions in order to build up a large international network.
The contacts in the scene meant that we were able to purchase 16.6 million GRT tokens at a very affordable price of $ 0.003 in a pre-market presale.
In mid-December, GRT was listed for the first time on several well-known crypto exchanges, including Coinbase and Binance, and was thus also available to other investors.
When it was first listed, the price was 40 times higher than our initial price.
The desire to cash in on such returns must grow daily - before the quick millions vanish again. When do you get off?
One is very tempted.
In our case, we are prevented from doing so by a lock-up period.
This is an increasingly widespread means in the crypto market, with which reputable providers want to avoid early investors getting out quickly.
For us the question of a sale does not even arise, we have to wait at least twelve months.
That also prevents quick profit-taking and is easy on the nerves.
How does a lock-up work on digital assets?
In the case of share issues, such lock-up periods are implemented through agreements and blocked deposits.
In the case of digital assets, this lock-up can be stored directly on the blockchain via a smart contract: Compliance with the deadlines and the release of the tokens after the deadline is therefore purely digital and automatic.
It is therefore not at all possible to overturn a lock-up agreement through appropriate circumvention transactions.
This means that your current dream return could collapse again within a few months - if the GRT token crashes ...
Sure, it is possible.
The valuation of currently around two dollars per token can fall or rise significantly again.
However, our investment team is convinced that "The Graph" is working on one of the key technologies with which the blockchain will position itself in the market.
The ability to intelligently read and analyze data stored on blockchains will be crucial.
The GRT token is the means of payment for these queries, as if you had to pay Google a Google token for every search query.
In this respect, the concept and the logic of the tokens, the tokenomics, give us a good feeling for a long-term investment.
The year 2020 was not all about good feelings for your investment company. 99 Bitcoins were stolen from you and a wallet was hacked.
Yes, a nightmare.
We had to review and question the entire security concept.
We bought the stolen Bitcoins at a price of 6,000 dollars, which is quite cheap by today's standards, i.e. at a purchase value of around 600,000 dollars.
But such a hack shakes any company and is a risk that every crypto investor is exposed to.
And then the Bitcoin rate keeps rising and you do the math for each new record: That would now be three million, four million, five million dollars ... that would have been your price ...
That's pretty bitter.
At the current Bitcoin record rate, it is even more than five million dollars.
However, we work closely with the Cybercrime Unit of the State Office of Criminal Investigation and have also commissioned external Bitcoin tracers who can track whether and how the stolen Bitcoins have been moved.
A large part of the stolen bitcoins has not yet been redistributed, so we still see the chance to get the coins back.
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You can assume that we have drawn conclusions from this case.
We still have various cryptocurrencies in our portfolio, including Bitcoin, Ether, 2Key, GRT, and the new DAOMaker project.
The performance of these investments far exceeds the loss caused by the hack.
This also shows that you should rely on different currencies and blockchain projects if you want to survive in the crypto market in the long term.
The share price of Coinix AG has increased fivefold at times since the listing of the graph token (GRT) in mid-December. Should "The Graph" come under pressure, this should also apply to the Coinix valuation.
We assume so, because GRT is currently by far the largest single item in our portfolio.
However, we are not a bet on a single cryptocurrency.
If you want to bet on a single currency, you are better off as a direct investor in a crypto exchange.
We try to take advantage of opportunities in the crypto market by actively acting on the market and by spreading it across different projects and investments - some things may go wrong and some may work out.
Due to the crypto hype of the past year, there are now hundreds of different crypto currencies and company projects that have to do with the blockchain.
Many of them will no longer exist in a few years.
You should find out what idea and concept is behind a certain token - a few cheering posts on Twitter are a bit thin.
We rely on a wide range of different investments - as protection for your own nerves and as protection for investors.
How many times a day do you check the price of your cryptoassets?
Less than you think.
Sometimes not at all.
Anyone who cannot stand extreme fluctuations is wrong in this market.
The interview was conducted by Kai Lange