The crazy swings of Bitcoin prices added more than $100 million to megastar Amitabh Bachchan’s fortunes within days, but most of it got wiped out even faster — thanks to a small stake in a hitherto unknown firm associated with the web of cryptocurrencies.
There may be further such fluctuations with the craze for Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies continuing to drive their prices and the regulatory risks remaining a big drag for the prices that saw Bitcoin skyrocketing to near $20,000 just a few days back before plunging back by almost half and then again recovering to $15,000 level.
While lakhs of Indians are said to have taken a fancy to the Bitcoin and other such virtual currencies, Bachchan is probably the first big name from the country to get associated with this big buzzword — albeit indirectly and because of a small investment that is at least 3-4 years old.
The link is a Hyderabad-based company named Stampede Capital, which describes itself as a “research-driven global trade house” and a “liquidity provider and market maker” at various exchanges driving “millions of dollars trading volume every day across the globe in nanoseconds”.
In its regulatory filings, the company lists Bachchan as an “individual non-promoter shareholder” with a small stake of 2.38 percent at the end of last quarter. As per the BSE records, Bachchan figures on the list of shareholders (with 1 percent or more stake) since at least June 2014, though the quantum he is holding has been changing somewhat.
As on June 30, 2014, Bachchan held 3.39 percent in the company which could have been worth around Rs 9 crore at that time (going by the share price around then), while the value of his latest holding is almost half at about Rs 4.7 crore.
The Bitcoin-driven top-up to Bachchan’s fortunes comes in the backdrop of Stampede recently listing one of its subsidiaries, Longfin Corp, on the Nasdaq exchange in the US.
Longfin got listed on Nasdaq last week with a market cap of $370 million after it sold shares in a public offer at $2.5 apiece.
Stampede now owns 37.14 percent stake in Longfin, by virtue of which Bachchan (with his 2.38 percent stake in Stampede) becomes an indirect beneficiary in the US-listed firm.
The stock suddenly saw a huge two-day surge of 2,500 percent post announcement of an acquisition of Ziddu.com, a website that claims to specialize in providing warehouse coins, powered by the blockchain technology, to importers and exporters of commodities against their warehouse receipts.
This made Longfin one of the few listed stocks with direct or indirect association with the Bitcoin buzz.
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