While many consider bitcoin itself a speculative investment, there are many ways invest your bitcoin and make it work for you (or, alternatively, lose it all).

I’ve had conversations with many people regarding cryptocurrency, and most are under the impression that the only real investment you can make is into other altcoins or second generation cryptocurrencies.

While this may have been true 6 months ago, the bitcoin ecosystem has matured tremendously since then.

Through companies like Havelock Investments (https://www.havelockinvestments.com/) you can invest your bitcoin into a companies IPO.

Private companies looking for Venture Capital to start or expand their current business operations can apply to be funded by Havelock Investments. What Havelock does is then offer all of these shares in an IPO to the community in order to crowdfund the initial public offering.

When accepting thousands of BTC in an IPO it’s important for the company raising money to protect against price fluctuation (what if BTC crashes?). In order to protect against this, all the BTC raised in the IPO is instantly converted to USD.

At the end of the day, the company raised money in USD without having to go through all the regulations of raising in USD because they actually raised it in BTC, and then simply sold BTC they owned for the USD equivalent.

Depending on the specific companies offering & structure, you may be paid dividends on your investment (if profitable) – where your share of the profits are automatically sent directly to your BTC address on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.

Some of my personal investments on Havelock include:

PetamineX – https://www.havelockinvestments.com/fund.php?symbol=PETA

Petamine is a hosted mining project with a maximum initial capacity of 240,000 GH/s or 240 TH/s of hashing power. Each share represents 2.4 GH/s of the total hash power of the PETA-MINE, and shareholders will receive a weekly dividend payment every Friday. The PETA-MINE will deploy with an initial maximum capacity of 240,000 GH/s.

The core hardware for the mine will be the 28nm chip units from Cointerra and Bitmine. These devices have outstanding specifications when it comes to power consumption and hashing power, which, in turn, means CryptX will be able to keep power and hosting costs at a minimum.

Neo & Bee – https://www.havelockinvestments.com/fund.php?symbol=NEOBEE

Neo & Bee offers Cypriot residents depository and financial services. Customers can open demand deposit, savings, business, and merchant accounts. Though all customer deposits are held in full reserve in Bitcoin, many customers will use Euro-pegged accounts, allowing them to interact with their money like they would with Euro deposits at any traditional bank. Accounts will also be available that offer full exposure to the Bitcoin price level. Regardless of which currency they bank in primarily, all customers can seamlessly deposit, withdraw, or transfer either Bitcoin or Euros. Neo simplifies Bitcoin usage, to enable simple, easy transfers without requiring understanding of the complex technology. Neo will comply with all applicable financial and banking laws and regulations. The Flagship Branch and second branch are both planned to open in February 2014.

Crypto Financial – https://www.havelockinvestments.com/fund.php?symbol=CFIG

Crypto Financial is a corporation charted for the purpose of providing Fiduciary Financial Services to Individuals, Companies, Merchants, Traders, Investors, NGOs and Non-Profit Organizations that deal with Crypto Currencies.

SeedFund – https://www.havelockinvestments.com/fund.php?symbol=SFI

SeedFund is the first global seed-stage Bitcoin startup fund. The funds in bitcoin raised through this public offering will be invested in a diversified portfolio of international, Bitcoin startups to be incubated by Seedcoin.

A few weeks ago SeedFund announced the first class of companies it invested in, and today I finally got around to checking them out – some of which are verrry interesting.

SeedFund Class #1

Hive

Hive (www.hivewallet.com) is now live, which is an extremely easy way to create, manage and secure a Bitcoin wallet. Along with the ability to list and organize contacts, so you can send and receive bitcoins in mere seconds, Hive also has several native, built-in applications – positioning the best Bitcoin services at your fingertips.

Hive’s emphasis on security, which includes backups through Dropbox and Time Machine, is part of a broader series of safeguards.

Cryptopay

Cryptopay (www.cryptopay.me) is also live, and rapidly enrolling clients in Europe. Cryptopay provides merchants in the United Kingdom and the European Union with a secure, reliable and legal way to accept Bitcoins. Cryptopay offers several solutions: for retailers (so customers can “go cashless” at various shops, pubs, venues and large businesses), e-commerce (to slash processing fees) and charities (enabling them to traverse the globe and increase fundraising), delivering customized services from a team of financial experts and distinguished developers and engineers.

GoCoin

GoCoin (www.gocoin.com) continues to garner critical and commercial acclaim, as the leading platform for merchants to accept Bitcoin and Litecoin payments at checkout. In addition to sustained media exposure and positive profiles from VentureWire, Yahoo! Finance, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Payment Week, Coin Republic and CoinDesk – with this established credibility – GoCoin has another achievement of note: Opening the playing field for charitable and political campaign contributions.

zSIM

zSIM is another transformational application for smartphones, making these devices secure Bitcoin wallets (thanks to an original, proprietary solution conceived by zSIM’s engineers). These talented experts foresee significant growth opportunities in developing countries, where people will have the means to use mobile phones as a safe and convenient way to store or transfer Bitcoins.

CoinSimple

(www.coinsimple.co) facilitates the ability of e-commerce merchants to accept bitcoins by integrating existing Bitcoin payment processors into a business owner’s online store. In other words: CoinSimple is an added layer on top of these processors, with a subscription-based SaaS solution, which allows merchants to easily switch between payment processors and maintain customer analytics in one place.

This feature has strong appeal to e-commerce companies that want the flexibility, data and freedom – to try various processors – that best suit their individual or collective needs.

BTC.sx

BTC.sx (www.btc.sx) is a powerful trading platform that allows users to make leveraged directional orders on the value of bitcoin. The company’s impressive momentum – surpassing USD $35 million of trading – is a testament to its success. With no margin calls to manage and no need for greenbacks or other types of fiat currency, BTC.sx is the preferred service for traders and active users (more than 3,300) with long or short positions regarding Bitcoin prices.

As the company’s user base markedly expands – increasing by 45% since November – and the executive team grows, BTC.sx keeps its focus on providing the most intuitive FX-style trading platform – enabling members to profit from rising or falling Bitcoin prices. This exclusive service is the ideal resource for the exponential demand, worldwide, among traders seeking to hedge their Bitcoin investments.

MexBT

MexBT (www.mexbt.com) is in the midst of finalizing its state-of-the-art trading exchange platform, where the company already has a substantial presence among traders in Mexico’s OTC Bitcoin market.

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These IPO investments seem to be significantly less volatile than investing in altcoins / other cryptocurrencies. In my experience, these investments tend to fluctuate in value a lot less – granted, if the company goes out of business, or hits it huge, the price will likely reflect accordingly.

You can sell out of your investment at any time – so when you want to move your investment back into bitcoin, it’s a very quick and easy process.

Investing in company IPO’s aren’t for everyone, but its definitely an interesting alternatively to speculating on the next doge & kitteh coin.

If you have any questions about investments on Havelock or how to get started, feel free to Contact Me.

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– J