Over half of China’s new bitcoin traders are women

December 2, 2013 Leave a comment

Over half of China’s new bitcoin traders are women

Staff Reporter

2013-11-30

The number of bitcoin traders in China increased dramatically in November as the virtual currency’s va ue rose to US$1,100. More than half of the new traders are women, according to Chinese bitcoin trading platform Huobi and the Beijing Morning Post. Huobi CEO Li Lin said the makeup of Chinese bitcoin traders changed a great deal in November. In the past most were people working at the IT or financial sectors, while newcomers over the past month have been from every walk of life and over half of them female.The trading website’s customer service has expanded from three receptionists to ten but still struggled to cope with the number of newcomers.

Trader numbers surged after the bitcoin’s value jumped in April and November this year. In November alone, bitcoin soared from US$200 to US$1,100.

One of the newcomers to investment in the virtual currency is a man in his 50s who amazed the website’s staff when he produced a wad of banknotes from his pocket to buy bitcoin after consulting with them and became one of their oldest clients. Several younger office workers have also brought thousands of yuan in cash to trade for bitcoin.

Despite the bitcoin’s soaring value, analyst Yao Guangzhi said the currency’s risk doubles when its value exceeds US$500. The biggest risk to which bitcoin traders expose themselves to are legal issues. Most countries in the world, including the United States and China, have not banned trade in the currency but neither have they legitimized it as yet.

The bitcoin’s value is closely tied to US government policy. The virtual currency’s value would plunge immediately if US authorities revealed any good news to the market. The US dollar is still the dominant currency in international trade, accounting for over 60%.

Industry insiders have warned that bitcoin has become overpriced and the surge of speculators may spur speculation risks drastically. They worry that bitcoin may end up as a Ponzi scheme which could collapse and furthermore that the currency’s trading platform may be susceptible to hacker attacks which could wipe out their value.

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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