To truly overcome the challenges of investing in today’s marketplace, innovative and forward-thinking strategies are not only helpful but absolutely essential. This is the belief that defines the investment philosophy and drives the investment activities of Eric Rivera and Gurmukh S. Oberoi’s startup, Bithmic.
Bithmic is an online educational platform that offers a wealth of information and insights on the subject of digital asset class. It specifically reaches out to a target audience of people in search of non-traditional investment opportunities in cryptocurrency.
Long before he decided to help people seeking guidance in the cryptocurrency investment space, Bithmic founder and Chief Executive Officer, Eric Rivera required a push in the right direction himself. In fact, when asked to name the best business advice he has ever received, he goes back to 2011 and a “gentleman named Chris Bunn” who suggested Bitcoin as a great investment opportunity.
In Eric Rivera’s words, “buying bitcoin is likely the number one business advice that I’ve been given from a good friend.” Considering his stunning depth of knowledge and his widespread reputation as a visionary, this is quite a statement from the former Executive Director of Lehman Brothers.
About The Founders of Bithmic
A graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Eric Rivera has fostered professional and academic interests that span areas such as logic, set theory, category theory, game theory, information theory, number theory, numerical analysis, abstract algebra, geometry, topology, analysis, dynamical systems, optimization, computation, probability, and statistics.
In addition to his leadership role at Lehman Brothers, Eric Rivera has served tenures as Chief Executive Officer of Independent Film Exchange Holdings, Vice President of AFG (American Financial Group), and President of 21st Century Capital. Over the course of his career, he has built a reputation as an outstanding creative force in the business world. Those who know him well have universally attested to his ability to see beyond the norm and develop elegant business solutions with the imaginative approach of a true artist.
In light of his “out of the box” outlook, it is perhaps unsurprising that Eric Rivera has become a leading force in the rapidly evolving field of alternative asset investment. Beyond the immense profit potential of cryptocurrency and other alternative asset investments, he points to their ability to act as a hedge against inflation as the primary reason to gravitate toward them.
Growing Interest in Crypto and Beyond
No matter what happens to draw people to the alternative asset investment environment, Eric Rivera established Bithmic to offer valuable information to those with a serious interest in alternative asset investment and guide them through the complexities of the new alternative asset class space. The stated mission of Bithmic is to emerge as an authoritative “translator of a new culture.”
Eric Rivera describes Bithmic as an advisory firm in the digital asset class. “We currently work with our own money and private clients, as it relates to helping them understand this digital asset class called cryptocurrency,” he said before adding that the firm is “basically going through the process of becoming a hedge fund.”
Joining Eric Rivera on this journey is Gurmukh S. Oberoi, the Chief Investment Officer of Bithmic and the head of its Los Angeles offices. Oberoi is a graduate of the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business who has worked at Houlihan Lokey and Citi Bank among other leading investment bank conglomerates.
In a recent interview, Gurmukh Oberoi detailed the vast opportunities that the current cryptocurrency space offers to savvy investors. “There are about 12,352 cryptocurrencies as we’re talking right now,” he said. “There are about 420 exchanges globally. There are a lot of projects, a lot of scenarios that are happening. There are crypto IRAs that are happening where clients are putting their 401k money in to use IRA.”
Oberoi goes on to illustrate just how deep and far-reaching the cryptocurrency space really is. “A recent news is that U.S bank has started custodian services that came out as of yesterday,” he said. “There is C20, something that resembles S&P500 like the top 20 cryptocurrencies that are in the market in terms of market cap. There is this whole NFT crate when it comes to art, distinct tokens, where you have companies like Sotheby’s coming into play and selling art into millions. You have lending services coming into play with cryptocurrencies in DeFi. You have mining services, cyber security in terms of its hardware wallet from a perspective of protecting people from getting hacked.”
Crypto for Investors
Despite the numerous benefits of cryptocurrency investment and its bright future, investors still tend to approach it with a considerable amount of trepidation. And this is perfectly natural considering its supremely disruptive nature.
Like any disruptive force in the business world and investment marketplace, cryptocurrency suffers from the lack of a longstanding and reliable performance track record. Because of this, a number of unsubstantiated myths about the cryptocurrency space have taken root within the larger investment community.
If nothing else, Eric Rivera endeavors to dispel the most damaging of these myths, which might easily scare away uninitiated investors from the worlds of cryptocurrency and alternative assets. In his estimation, the very worst rumors about cryptocurrency revolve around fears over its supposed instability and its supposed connection to illegal activity.
The mistaken belief that crypto is the currency of criminals has been widely disproven by thorough analyses of the global marketplace. Eric Rivera holds overenthusiastic regulators at least partially to blame for drawing a direct and pronounced connection between cryptocurrency and illegal activity. “I think that a lot of the times, regulators want to jump out there, and anytime something is so brand new and not really fully understood, they want to say it’s being used for something illegal,” he says. “That’s not the case at all.”
Eric Rivera also blames overzealous regulators for unfounded fears about the stability of Bitcoin and other forms of cryptocurrency. “Now that a lot of our major banks like Standard Charter Bank, Bank of America are involved, I believe that it’s eliminated the thought process, which regulators have stated previously, that bitcoin can go to zero,” says Rivera. “That is not a possibility right now.”
When it comes to legacy coins that are bound to hold exception value well into the future, Eric Rivera places particularly faith in Bitcoin and Ethereum. “Those are the two that really make up most of the market cap in the cryptocurrency industry,” he said. “You can put your money in those two and sleep well at night.”
Having said that, Eric Rivera can point to any number of cryptocurrencies that can provide a broad range of specific benefits to more advanced investors in the alternative asset space. In fact, this was a driving force in his decision to establish Bithmic. “Part of what we’re going to really do is help people make the decisions on the altcoins that they don’t know too much about,” he said.
As a forward-thinking business leader who keeps a close eye on future developments, Eric Rivera believes that savvy investments in the cryptocurrency space go hand with a rapidly evolving consumer marketplace as well as major social changes that may sound like science fiction to some. “I believe that cryptocurrency meets a lot of that criteria, as it relates to in metaverse purchases or what we would call in-app purchases,” he said. “I also believe and seasteading [developing permanent dwellings at sea], and I believe in space exploration.”
When asked what types of monetary units will fund this remarkable new world and sustain its business operations, Eric Rivera has a very quick answer. “If you are going to buy a slice of pizza on another planet, you are probably not going to use any fiat currency,” he said. “You’ll likely use some type of digital currency to get a slice of pizza on Mars.”
