Bitcoin, a fantastic way to get rich (?), but certainly nuts

So you can buy Bitcoin futures now to enjoy an even more emotional thrill ride. They are in contango. Even better. Several possible reasons for this. I liked the following and just reading it gave me sweaty palms.

Here is Bloomers Matt Levine on the fun side of where to put your private key to your immaterial treasure.

I half-joked yesterday that "perhaps the cost of bitcoin storage -- keeping your private key in a vault, worrying about hackers, etc. -- is so high that arbitrageurs need to charge $1,000 for a month of it," but maybe it's the right explanation? Everything I read about bitcoin storage is utterly exhausting. "A private key printed out on a sheet of paper, cut into pieces, and distributed among family members who don’t know how to put it back together; an encrypted file loaded on a USB stick and buried in the backyard; a password committed only to memory;" a private key engraved on a metal plate and stored in a safe; a safe deposit box at a bank; an account at an exchange that gets hacked and loses its customers' bitcoins. Buying bitcoin futures is a way to get exposure to bitcoin and avoid the bitcoin-storage problem: You never have to store bitcoins because you never own bitcoins; you just get paid dollars for the amount that bitcoin goes up. But the storage problem doesn't go away; you just offload it to the arbitrageur who provides you the bitcoin exposure. Maybe the arbitrageur needs to charge you $1,000 to cover her storage costs. If you think these markets are efficient, then the gap between the futures and the spot is telling you how much -- in out-of-pocket expenses, in theft risk, in psychic pain -- it costs to store bitcoin.

Join Sean Everett and watch yourself being robbed live.

Sean Everett wasn’t sure how his bullish bet on cryptocurrency would turn out. But he definitely didn’t expect it to be over so soon.

In March, he sold all his stocks, including Apple and Amazon, and used a chunk of the proceeds to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum on a site called Coinbase. The decision made Everett, the CEO of artificial intelligence startup Prome, almost instantly richer, as the blockchain-based currencies’ value rocketed up exponentially over the next several weeks. But then, while he was out walking the dog after 10 p.m. on Wednesday, May 17, Everett got the call. It was T-Mobile, ringing him to confirm that it was switching his phone number to a different device.

It was a suspicious move that Everett had most certainly not requested. But even as he pleaded with the agent to block the switch, it was too late. Less than five minutes later, Everett’s cell service abruptly shut off, and as he rushed to his computer, he saw himself being robbed in real time. A raft of email notifications confirmed that someone had taken control of his main Gmail account, then broken into his Coinbase “wallet.” They’d gotten in with the help of his switched-over phone number: Everett’s account required him to log in with a two-factor authentication code sent by text message, as a second safeguard—and now the text had gone straight to the thief.

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