Voyage to Nowhere
"REGRETS, I'VE HAD a few. But then again, too few to mention."
What was true for Frank Sinatra most definitely isn���t true for me. I���ve had more than a few regrets, and I want to mention the most recent one.
Late last year, Mark Cuban offered me $100 in bitcoin to download the Voyager app, deposit $100 and make a $10 trade. For those of you who are lucky enough not to know what Voyager was, it was an app that offered ���a secure way to trade over 60 different crypto assets using its easy-to-use mobile application.���
I���ve been retired now for a few years. Since idle hands are the devil���s workshop, I���ve used some of the time to accept bonuses offered by brokers, banks and financial institutions. Besides the obvious reward, I find these offers to be educational, though this time it was a little too educational.
Like most people, I was intrigued when I first heard about bitcoin. After a colleague explained to me its inner workings and all the benefits of the blockchain, I was fascinated. I really thought that bitcoin might be worthy of investment.
This didn���t last long. I realized that bitcoin may not be all it was cracked up to be when, a few hours later, I tried to explain it all to my wife and none of it made any sense.
I should have gone on living bitcoin-free. But when Cuban made me the offer, I figured that���even if bitcoin went to zero���I would still have my original $100. I decided to play it safe. I made the required $10 trade with a quick roundtrip in and out of tether, a cryptocurrency designed to trade one-to-one with the U.S. dollar.
In the end, I decided not to sell the bitcoin that Cuban gave me. I figured that if there was something to this cryptocurrency thing that had eluded my less-than-discerning eye, I could use the rubric ���nothing ventured nothing gained��� and ride it all the way to financial independence. It also allowed me the more tangible benefit of mentioning at cocktail parties that, ���Of course I���m invested in bitcoin.��� That said, I should have transferred the $100 in cash that was mine back to my bank, but I may have become preoccupied with taking Personal Capital up on its $25 offer.
Well, on July 1, 2022, Voyager informed me that it had ���made the difficult decision to temporarily suspend trading, deposits, withdrawals, and loyalty rewards,��� though it would still allow users ���to view market data and track your portfolio.���
I could view my investments. I just couldn���t withdraw them. Apparently, my money had been loaned to an outfit called Three Arrows Capital. The crypto hedge fund failed to repay the $670 million it borrowed from Voyager, which triggered Voyager���s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on July 6.
While I always knew my bitcoin investment could go to zero, I figured that the sliver of bitcoin and the $100 in my account would still be mine. I never thought they would be loaned to another company. Yes, I should be more concerned about my losses in the stock market year-to-date and not the measly $100 I ���invested��� in Voyager. Still, the whole thing is rather upsetting. Nobody wants to be the mark, especially for someone like Mark Cuban.
Voyager is currently exploring ���strategic alternatives with various interested parties while preserving the value of the Voyager platform.��� I hope this will allow me to ���access��� my $100 and 0.000046 of a bitcoin, but I���m doubtful. I���m just thankful I didn���t ���invest��� more. I now have the meager benefit of being a little warier of making similar future investments���though I���m also thinking Garlicoin may be a way to make my money back.
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