Why bitcoin reminds a former Skype exec of tech giant’s ‘beginnings’

“We’re seeing this tremendous interest from the rest of the world which is, for normal people, beginning to get terribly interesting,” Michael Jackson, Skype’s former chief operating officer, told CNBC. Jackson said that bitcoin’s surge is “great” but added that it was difficult to tell what the future holds for the digital currency.

“I bought a fraction of a bitcoin in October, and my little investment has appreciated about 150% since then. But if I want to cash out, I might have a problem — because apparently it’s not so easy to sell.

I bought my bitcoin through Coinbase, the most popular mainstream exchange for bitcoin and two other cryptcocurrencies, ether and litecoin. That’s where my bitcoin resides. To my mind, it’s the same as buying a mutual fund or ETF at Vanguard or Fidelity, which would then hold the shares and maintain the account.

But the frenzied buying and selling of bitcoin during the last several weeks has caused repeat outages at Coinbase, as the firm’s servers get overloaded. I don’t really want to sell my bitcoin right now, but what if I did?

As a test, I tried to place a sell order for $10 worth of bitcoin. Here’s the message I got:” Sell failed….Bitcoin / Yahoo
Bitcoin price fluctuates wildly / Pressherald