Bitcoin Forum

How can a person go about investing in Coinbase, Circle etc? They are not on the stock market.

I guess they had some sort of IPO and now you are out of the possiblity to invest or something.

If you have a lot of money, contact them directly with a proposal. Anything under $200k they may not listen to you or reply though.

I guess we have to wait for some of the early companies to IPO. :)

It's too hard to get into the bigger ones right now, but you can always invest in the smaller ones.

My current business is funded in pure BTC from outside investors. That's not an invitation / solicitation, and I am not taking any investments at this time, but is just to make the point.

If you want to invest in BTC businesses, you certainly can. Just go find some that you believe in, and make sure you do it all legally, to protect yourself from the feds and from scammers.

But how do we get in? every single IPO in town seems like a scam to me.

Check out the security section on bitcointalk subforum. Lots of bitcoin companies to "invest" in.

To be honest, you should be researching what you want to invest in extensively as many of these so called companies seem extremely shady.

I was going to invest in Moolah, other than that I haven't seen an IPO for a company that looks half legit. Everyone is trying to get your money for nothing.

You would need to invest in them via VC (venture capital) funds. A VC fund is basically a hedge fund that invests in very new companies. The min to invest in one of these funds (you would not be investing directly in any specific company) would likely be well into 6 figures.

If you wanted to buy equity in one of these firms then you would likely need to invest 7 (but probably 8) figures into a company.

I am not sure if any of these companies are listed here, but you could also buy stock in many non-publicly listed company via second market

Agreed. Some companies think that just because they are associated with bitcoins, people will be ready to invest in them.

In the US the companies are generally restricted by law to offer only to accredited investors:

 To qualify as an accredited investor, one must meet one of the three following criteria:
1.Have had an individual annual income of $200,000 for the past two years with an expectation that it will continue
2.Have had a household annual income of $300,000 for the past two years with an expectation that it will continue
3.Have a net worth of at least $1 million, excluding a primary residence

Then you have locate companies that need investors.  try https://angel.co/  and https://www.secondmarket.com/ to start looking.

Bitcoin "investments" are in general just scams. Scams or mining "companies" that, when are honest, aren't even profitable. We had an exception with Just Dice, but it was closed because of government interventionism.

Yes, even if they are not scams they are extremely high risk.  You have some real idiot-savants in Bitcoin who know Bitcoin very well but do not have the slightest idea how to run a business or even basic common sense.

Investing is a risky business. Always do your homework, don't rush in to decisions and feel confident about your investment before pulling the trigger.
Also keep an eye on our Pipshares. We will make it a success and investors of the Pipshares will be handsomely rewarded.

In the case of bitcoin "investments" it isn't just very risky, but it has a negative expected profit in the majority of cases. So why even risk anything?

Things will change a lot when some serious broker lets people deposit their bitcoins to invest in the real stock market.

That is what I thought too unless you hit a lucky winner.  Listen to the Bitpay in Dec 2012 talk about the fees and all the pushback from the audience.  It is hard to make a profit in Bitcoin if you just collect fees because everyone expects very low fees.  Bitpay investments probably went well but many other companies probably did not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH4rH6wu25U#t=2008

Yes. that is true. Some big names are always on the cover to put a large amount of  VC to some specific bitcoin business. The bitcoin startups are risky investment. The capital invested by them is just small fraction of their possessions. They are afford to lose them.   

If you are an accredited investor get on a bitcoin angel list syndicate managed by good people. That's prob your best shot at getting exposure.

You need to be able to do your due diligence and be able to spot companies that have a high likelihood of being successful. If a company is already successful then it is probably too late to invest in this fashion (unless you think the company will become even more successful)

Lots of companies to invest in the security section. Just be aware of the risk.

The urge to invest in bitcoin companies is the old meme that you don't get rich digging gold, but selling the miners spades.

For bitcoin, this is not correct. Just buy some coins.

Someone have to invest in companies, but it doesn't have to be you.

actually you can only invest in a startin company,for example I invested in Storj (with a good profit BTW)
you can invest in big companies,but you have to invest a really high amount

The companies/investments listed in the 'securities' section of this forum are almost all scams. I think it would be advisable to stay away. The best place to find investments of this nature would be second market however they require that you have a lot of money ($250k+ per year in income or $1mm+ in assets)

Also quite a few scams going on though, so def do your research before investing Bitcoin in ANYTHING.

what kind of company this company bitcoin? if the company is engaged in mining, we could invest our bitcoin to the company, in the hope we will get the advantage of a lot of bitcoin, bitcoin prices currently being experienced ups and downs, so we should be cautious in investing ....  8)

Not all mining companies mint money. With the fall in bitcoin prices, the profitability of mining companies would also be impacted.

Also, there are some companies which are offerring stocks in  Coinsortium  (http://www.coinsortium.co) and they're very easy to take.

I would disagree. Many bitcoin related companies can be successful regardless if bitcoin is successful (or if some other altcoin is successful). They are simply 'investing' in any crypto currency taking off. With bitcoin on the other hand you will only profit if bitcoin is successful

Bitcoin companies are strongly reliant on the community, the mainstream still sees Bitcoin as a huge risk and fraudulent system, while the exaxt opposite is true, Fiat and the financial system = Fraud. It's our job to get this in the open and to make GOOD bitcoin bussinesses a succes! So yes, it's hugely inmportant to support and invest in bitcoin companies if you have some btc to spare :)

Most bitcoin related companies do not allow anyone to invest like that. The only real way to invest in any bitcoin related company now is via VC

Dude, read about it, plenty of options to invest but also SUPPORT, support means using or buying shit you support

Too many frauds relating to bitcoin company also.

There is no way to stop the owner from running away after he raised enough and decided to leave everything behind and enjoy the beach.

lol..

Many Bitcoiners are involved in fraud (look at this forum) and many Bitcoin businesses are run in an incompetent or fraudulent manner (Mt Gox, CoinLab, Bitfloor, CoinLenders, ...) so I would not make that comparison.   

If the trend and pattern hold, that mean libertarian society and community do not work.

Ever seen the real world, all scams!! Pharma, oil, it's al run by psychopats who don't care about anything else then money. Electricity should have been free from the 1920's and the electric car was invented in 1918, with 200 miles on one fucking charge, read and learn.....

This is not a libertarian society, it is a bunch of goofy teenagers who think they can get away with stuff.  What happens here says nothing one way or another about libertarianism.

So are you saying this one is a scam?

There is some good info here but I would never answer any of the ads or invest in any business recommended by the people who run this site. 

They ran BFL ads for a long time, they collected "donations" that are now worth $millions that is being saved in case they get into legal trouble, and a whole history of other things like this:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=115669.0

Then there was inputs.io/coinlenders that was promoted by this site.  This was a wallet service and fake bank that was suddenly "hacked" and most of the funds were lost. 

Go to BTC Conferences and network. You'll see legitimate companies there, and chances are you can discuss angel opportunities with the CEO, who's likely to be there as well.

This is not unique to bitcoin. The same can be said regarding fiat based companies as well. The same is true for smaller businesses which fail at a very high rate when they have similar levels of revenue. The difference is that bitcoin made it easy for people to invest in these companies