Miner to Pay in Bitcoins for Work at Tungsten Project

November 13, 2013 Leave a comment

Miner to Pay in Bitcoins for Work at Tungsten Project

A Canadian mining company agreed to pay a contractor in Bitcoins for exploration work to be carried out at a property that contains tungsten. Alix Resources Corp. (AIX) said today in a statement it will pay Ridge Resources Ltd. for the work at its Windy property about 15 kilometers (9 miles) north of Cassiar, British Columbia.As Ridge completes the work, it will quote payment in Canadian dollars and Vancouver-based Alix will convert the price into the digital currency, Alix Chief Executive Officer Michael England, 50, said in a phone interview.

“We are a mining exploration company so yes, this is a bit different,” he said. “There’s a lot of expectations that Bitcoins are going higher, so why not start accumulating?”

The shares rose 33 percent to 4 Canadian cents in Toronto on trading volume 17 times the three-month average, giving Alix a market value of C$2 million ($1.9 million).

“I’m surprised someone’s willing to take payment through Bitcoins,” Brian Huen, managing partner with Red Sky Capital Management Ltd. in Toronto, which manages about C$220 million, said by phone. “I certainly personally wouldn’t take that currency for services I’m rendering.”

Alix has also teamed up with a software vendor to operate a Bitcoin exchange. Depending on the success of the venture, Alix may shift its focus to Bitcoins entirely, England said.

“We want to take advantage of this niche, this explosive sector,” he said.

Bitcoin has surged this year. It opened today at $343.63 and traded as high as $357 on BitStamp, an online exchange. The virtual currency was introduced four years ago and exists as software that’s designed to be untraceable, making it an attractive tender for those seeking to trade anonymously via the Internet.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eric Lam in Toronto at elam87@bloomberg.net

Filed under Macro Trends

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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