Making thousands Bitcoin explosion
changed his life.
He said: “If I wanted to sell £100,000 worth of property it would take around six to nine months and I would have to go through all of those problems. With Bitcoin I just click a button and £100,000 is in my account in seconds. There’s no hassle.
“I’ve earned more in two years using Bitcoin than I did over 20 years in property. I can cash that in whenever I want. People say ‘Oh that’s just joking money’ but Merthyr Tydfil. A former railway worker, Simon now owns his own Bitcoin company, Misoneism Limited, buying and selling Bitcoin to others.
Taking a gamble in 2015, he invested £12,000 to buy his first ATM, which now sits in the Castle Emporium, in Womanby Street.
He said: “I came across the exchange and started trading it through the web six years ago. People would come to me and I would charge a premium for finding Bitcoin and it was a lot faster.
“It’s much the same as eBay. You can auction the product and you might have some cheaper but then you might have someone whose reputation is better and you pay the premium.”
After coming across the concept in a hunt for a new investment, Simon advised his friends to get involved early.
He said: “I was looking for something to get my teeth into – something a bit like Apple. I take more risks than the average person so I told my friends about Bitcoin. When I started the price fell from £600 or £700 to £70. I remember sitting around a table in the pub with my mates and saying, ‘I know it doesn’t look good but if you have any money to invest now is the time’.”
After buying the ATM Simon’s biggest challenge lay with finding somewhere to install the machine. He said: “It was daunting. There were a lot of difficulties along the way.
“I knew it had to be in Cardiff but I had real difficulty finding somewhere to put it.
“It took me from November until February. People didn’t understand Bitcoin and it had had a bit of negative press so people were wary.”
Among the negative stories appearing in newspapers was a briefing by the Met Police, who said drug dealers were laundering illicit funds through London’s Bitcoin ATMs.
The chief executive of global investment management corporation BlackRock, Larry Fink, said in October that the rapid ascent of cryptocurrencies “identifies how much money laundering there is”.
And this month it was reported that authorities in Britain want to increase regulation of Bitcoin and other digital currencies by expanding the reach of European Union anti-money-laundering rules that force traders to disclose their identities and report suspicious activity.
As the current system ensures a level of privacy and anonymity, it has been suggested criminals can off-load sums of money into ATMs to avoid being caught.
Machine owner Simon said: “In the early days people thought it would only be drug dealers that were interested – it had that stigma attached, which isn’t the case.
“It is part of the system but people have to take that, it’s the same as when people use GBP.”
For now, with such a sudden spike in users, Simon’s biggest concern lies with keeping up with demand.