Li Ka-Shing, Asia’s wealthiest man, knows what the future looks like: virtual currency.
Having backed a number of tech startups early in the game via Horizons Ventures – like a small site called Facebook, Summly, Waze and that Facebook comic strip app Bitstrips, it’s obvious that Li has uncanny foresight when it comes to doling out investment dollars.
One golden example is when Li invested in Facebook back in 2007, when the social network was just three years old. Another is when he invested in money-losing Skype in 2005, years before Microsoft acquired it for $8.5 billion. Or Siri in 2009, a year before Apple bought the voice-controlled personal assistant. The list goes on.
Li’s latest investment is in BitPay – a virtual currency service that acts as an intermediary for merchants selling a product, and buyers using Bitcoin. In simpler words, it’s likened to a “PayPal for Bitcoins.”
According to Tech in Asia, anyone wanting to get into the Bitcoin business should take Li’s lead and consider investing peripherally to minimize risk. Invest in the infrastructure and services that have spawned in light of Bitcoin’s popularity, but not in the volatile currency itself.
While Bitcoin’s price continues to swing wildly, BitPay has seen steady success. The payment service provider has since September 2013, cultivated a 10,000-strong merchant network spanning 164 countries – with more than $34 million worth of Bitcoins passed through its platform to date.
The takeaway from all this? If Li Ka-Shing has done it, others are likely to follow suite and we’re interested in seeing how this Bitcoin-peripheral-investment saga unfurls.
Our own Casey Lau was recently in Vancouver, Canada and snapped these images of the world’s first Bitcoin ATM machine – what innovations will come out of Hong Kong? We’re already tracking one called Seedcoin here in Hong Kong which is a Bitcoin startup incubator.
(Photo: Reuters)
