Küfner & Reike: Heroes of the Bitcoin Boom
Each era has its heroes, and those of the Bitcoin boom are Robert Küfner and Florian Reike. “The moments somehow blur,” says 29-year-old Küfner. All those days and nights he and his 22-year-old business partner and roommate Reike spent sitting with burning eyes in front of the computer. Even now, the clock in their shared apartment in Berlin Mitte is showing it’s well past one o’clock at night. Around the clock, the duo, having met each other in April at a meeting of the Bitcoin community in Kreuzberg, follows the course of the digital currency — sometimes the twitching of the market quotes still puts sweat on its forehead. “You can only invest in Bitcoin if you’re ready to lose everything,” says Küfner. His voice is screeching with excitement.
For him and his buddy Reike, the war of nerves has been worthwhile: The two are among the winners of the Bitcoin hypes. At the temporary peak of their speculative success, they decided to move their flat temporarily from Berlin to a Florida villa — with a pool and floating plastic insects. A tabloid called Küfner and Reike “cryptomillionaires”, the “Manager Magazin” sent a photographer to the villa. That’s what fame feels like.
Meanwhile, the two are back in Berlin, for ten days, maybe even two weeks, Küfner estimates. As I said: the moments are blurred. How much money they actually earn with their Bitcoin speculation, he does not want to share exactly. Just so much: “This year has spawned many multi-millionaires in the Bitcoin industry, and we’ve been very successful.” The Bitcoin hype that made Reike and Küfner rich shows all the typical signs of a well-developed speculative bubble. Bitcoin has risen from $ 1,012 to over $ 15,000 since the beginning of the year, and by about two-thirds in December alone. Bitcoin is not backed by any real value. Unlike equities, there are no machines or patents that investors acquire ownership of. Unlike bonds, there is no promise to pay the debtor. There is no raw material to produce, and no real estate that promises rental income. The Bitcoin rate is driven solely by the fact that more and more speculators jump on the train and demand bitcoins — faster than new units of the virtual currency can be generated.
An upswing that can very quickly turn into the opposite as soon as too many speculators get off and take their profits. And yet there are always those nagging questions: Why do others become rich and not me? Why did not I get in early? Is it still the right time? Will Bitcoin’s price multiply tenfold before the bubble bursts? ECB Vice-President Vítor Constâncio called the Bitcoin “a kind of tulip” in reference to the tulip price speculation of the 17th century. It seems that humanity has learned nothing since the run on flower bulbs began in Amsterdam almost 300 years ago. At that time tulips were the object of desire. Today, it is a virtual currency whose functional mechanisms only a fraction of the Bitcoin speculators might have understood.
Translated to English from Handelsblatt, December 8/9/10, #237.
Robert recently published a book detailing the evolution of cryptocurrency over its first ten years. Here’s a link to the official website: http://krypto-jahrzehnt.de/
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