Josh Riddett is one of the rising names in the cryptocurrency world. His company, Easy Crypto Hunter, is one of the biggest cryptocurrency hardware suppliers in the UK. Riddett doesn’t just know machines, he also knows the ins and outs of cryptocurrency markets. Not long ago, he talked to Bitcoin UK about the past, present, and future of crypto.
Where Did Riddett Come From?
Josh Riddett was always one of those standard, typical entrepreneurial kind of kids
, selling sweets to schoolmates on the playground. His crypto story begins later, however, when he was attending Lancaster University. Finding the schoolwork tedious, be became involved in extracurriculars. In 2013 when he first came across Bitcoin, he was president of the Lancaster Entrepreneurs, a student organization for those interested in business.
At that moment, Bitcoin GPU mining had already been around for some time. Companies were racing to make and deliver newer ASIC machines. In the race, many companies made promises they could not keep.
I managed to gather a couple of friends and did a presentation that kind of sold the dream of Bitcoin,
said Riddett. Maybe they were stupid or maybe I’m more persuasive than I give myself credit for, but I managed to get the £5,000 together and we bought this big ASIC machine.
The machine never came. He and his friends got a refund, but Riddett lost his taste for cryptocurrency for the next two years. He returned to the Bitcoin business and his regrets now have less to do with the ASIC machine fiasco and more to do with the fact that it discouraged him from crypto.
If I would have put the same tenacity and effort into the business that I have now back then, who knows where I would be,
Riddett said.
How He’s Changing the Market
Now that Riddett runs a company that manufactures GPU mining hardware, he’s all about transparency. It’s not just about making sure that people get their machines, it’s about promoting understanding.
From day one, we’ve got offices, we’ve got real staff, anyone can come and see our facilities, anyone can come and see the premises, and probably 95% of all of our sales have come from face-to-face meetings,
he says. I want to be that missing link between the non-tangible, crazy, online crypto world and real physical hardware.
Riddett holds that a lot of the uncertainty surrounding cryptocurrency comes from people not knowing where it comes from. Educating people about what crypto mining is helps to remove that uncertainty.
I want to be that missing link between the non-tangible, crazy, online crypto world and real physical hardware.
Because we know there’s this decentralised network, we need this physical infrastructure to voluntarily power those networks,
said Riddett. Once people realize that there’s all of this going on in the background, physically and infrastructure-wise, I’ve certainly found that it makes people an awful lot more confident… that’s all crypto mining is. You’re getting paid a service fee for providing a service for somebody.
His Advice on Trading
Naturally, when the price of crypto is high, everybody wants it and business goes up for Riddett. But, what happens when the price of crypto isn’t so high? Riddett’s business doesn’t weaken, and neither does crypto.
As the bear market sets in, we’ve had twelve months of pretty much descending prices consistently. What we’ve seen is a smaller number of customers, however, what we’ve also seen is […] a much better-educated customer,
says Riddett. A year ago you would have, by chance, made a crazy amount of money, but eighteen months ago the physical infrastructure and the commercial adaptation of cryptocurrency was nowhere near where it is now.
Changes in the market, society and technology don’t just change the kind of investor that Riddett sees. They also change the way that people should invest in cryptocurrency. When Bitcoin was the only cryptocurrency, you had to believe in Bitcoin. Now there are thousands of cryptocurrencies.
All you have to do believe in is not a certain coin or a certain project,
Riddett explains. You just have to believe in the future of the market, full-stop. And, right now, every logical indicator dictates at the moment that that’s a pretty sound investment, especially if you’re taking a multi-year approach.
That means a broader understanding of the market.
People understand Bitcoin, they understand Ethereum, they don’t look at all of the other altcoins, and that’s where the money is to be made,
said Riddett. I have no desire to mine $1 of Bitcoin a day on a Bitcoin machine if I can use the same amount of money to mine $5 of altcoin and then sell it into Bitcoin and end up with five times as much.
His Advice on Mining
The tougher pill to swallow has to do with how many different aspects of crypto there are to understand. If you’re only buying and selling cryptocurrency you only need to know the markets. If you’re mining cryptocurrency, you need to know the machines, particularly graphics cards. Graphics card technology is changing all the time. Further, different graphics cards have different abilities.
Two years ago, or eighteen months ago, at least, when everyone was chasing Ethereum […] the types of graphics cards that we used were a lot of the AMD cards,
explains Riddett. Even though these graphics cards, technically, can mine every algorithm for every coin out there, the problem is just the way they’re physically built, the way they’re made.
Devoting yourself to one cryptocurrency doesn’t only limit you in the market, it limits you in mining. The alternative is higher-end but more versatile graphics cards.
At the top end of the graphics card spectrum, those cards are so much more vastly powerful,
said Riddett. Yes, they’re a few times more expensive, they might be three times more expensive but in some algorithms they’re four, five, six times more powerful and it’s that difference at the top, it’s that kind of flexibility where you can really make some nice headroom.
Better graphics cards don’t just mean versatility in mining, they mean versatility everywhere else. If you pull a bunch of those graphics cards together, you’ve basically got a super computer
that can be rented out for doing things like computer learning. That’s where Riddett’s views on the future of crypto mining get deep.
All you have to do believe in is not a certain coin or a certain project. You just have to believe in the future of the market, full-stop.
His Views on the Future
What happens when we have millions of graphics cards distributed throughout the world in a decentralised fashion?
asks Riddett. Why would you not be able to mine ‘Disney Coin’ and render the next big blockbuster animated film overnight saving them millions and millions of dollars in infrastructure costs?
Recalling that the animation for “Avatar” took something like seven years, Riddett returns to his earlier idea that cryptocurrencies are really just service fees. I think the crypto token will just become an exchange token for traditional commercial services as the market continues to mature.
We’ve gone past the point of no return now.
As for the future of blockchain and crypto, Riddett says that we’ve gone past the point of no return now
. He doesn’t think there’s anyone who’s deeper in the space, that genuinely thinks this isn’t the future of technology for business. He believes that 2018 was the year that brought massive backend infrastructure adoption.
If we are looking at the fundamental future of the market, I think the advantages for technology are just too much. It integrates too well into every single commercial sector.
You can watch the full interview here.
