Will it pay off?
The global popularity of cryptocurrencies has had a substantial impact in Croatia as well. The Croatian BitKonan marketplace has doubled its turnover in the last month, as compared to the year before. On the other hand, Croatian retailers who accept payments in bitcoins have recorded a fall in demand for this payment instrument in recent days, reports Večernji List on September 7, 2017.
This is the result of a significant jump in the Bitcoin value. At the beginning of the year, it traded for 1,000 dollars, in May for 2,000 dollars, and a few days ago its value jumped above 4,700 dollars. Just when people began to talk about breaking the 5,000 dollar barrier, the Chinese central bank announced it was banning the possibility of crowd-investing and launching IPOs using cryptocurrencies, so on Monday’s Bitcoin’s value dropped to 4,319 dollars.
Tomislav Vajić, a co-founder of BitKonan, says that he receives about 20 phone calls a day about investing in bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency platform in the world, whose market capitalisation exceeds 71.5 billion dollars. “The only advice I give to anyone is to be realistic. Everyone has to be aware that this is still a volatile market and that investments in cryptocurrencies are high-risk endeavours. You should not invest more than five or ten percent of the assets you are willing to lose,” said Vajić. He stated that interest in cryptocurrencies is growing, adding that, compared to last year, the monthly turnover had doubled to 300,000 dollars and is growing.
Industry insiders say that the number of Croatian citizens trading in bitcoins, as well as other cryptocurrencies, is now over 25,000, which was the figure last year, according to research conducted by Perpetuum Mobile, PBZCard, Symantec and BUG magazine. Vajić said that the recent growth in price was significantly influenced by the start of the implementation of the new smart deal technologies. Also, big financial players have recognised in Bitcoin a good replacement for gold. “But, that does not mean that there is no room left for unsettled reactions, like the one that followed the latest news from the Chinese central bank,” added Vajić.
Retailers are also happy. Mario Petrić, the CEO of PC Shop, said that Bitcoin was introduced as a means of payment just ten days ago. “No one is buying at the moment, everyone is waiting for the price to rise again,” said Petrić. Tihomir Stančević from Future IT stated that they had a significant demand for payment in bitcoin in the last three months, and Zlatko Uzelac, the founder and director of UZI Shop, stated that such offer was not risky for them. “The payment service we all use immediately turns bitcoins into dollars, so the retailers do not feel differences in the exchange rates.”
Translated from Večernji List.
