Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Sells His Bitcoin Stash
Smart Planet
Steve Wozniak, the Silicon Valley celebrity best known as co-founder of Apple Inc., has revealed that he sold all of his bitcoin holdings at the Nordic Business Forum in Stockholm. In a Q&A session with American author Seth Godin, Wozniak said: “I don’t want to be one of those people who just watches the numbers.”
In the past, the technology entrepreneur disclosed that he had purchased the digital asset “out of curiosity” when a single coin cost $700 USD. At that time he said: “I was just playing around trying out how to buy and sell stuff and I didn’t care I lost a ton of money, but now I’m way up.”
Bitcoin’s Speculative Nature Bothered Wozniak
It seems Wozniak did enjoy the bitcoin frenzy for a while, following the highs and lows of the cryptocurrency. However he soon noticed price movements were bothering him and building up worry. Wozniak, nicknamed “Woz”, then said he cashed out his holdings when BTC hit its $20,000 milestone in December 2017.
BusinessInsider reported that Wozniak has never taken much interest in money matters — including trading Apple stocks. Last year, he compared bitcoin to gold and the U.S. dollar, where he marked USD value as “phony”, as the government can always print more and more. Additionally, he declared cryptocurrency to be even better than gold, as gold does not necessarily have a fixed supply. On the contrary, bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21 million coins.
Bitcoin Is Great, Blockchain Is Better
In the past, Woz also mentioned his interest in Bitcoin’s underlying blockchain technology. He explained the reason why banks are more intrigued with the technology — it is seen as more secure and interoperable than the current banking infrastructure.
Woz said: “My goal was to travel to a place like Stockholm, and go to restaurants and hotels that only accept bitcoin, and only use bitcoin when I travel,”. However this will remain a dream for now — whether it’s due to high fees or difficulty for regular people to understand, Bitcoin has failed to convince the broader public of its utility.
Over the past 12 months, the bitcoin price has surged by 1500 percent, only to become seen as an asset and not a currency. If in the future it enters the mainstream, BTC would more likely be classed as an asset.
On a more positive point, Woz must have banked a huge profit from his bitcoin investments — although the exact figure remains undisclosed.