in Uncategorized

Spring Break in California

Laguna Beach, CA

Laguna Beach, CA

Last year we stayed home during Spring Break, but this year we decided to take the kids to a warmer destination. We decided on California, because it’s in the same time zone as Vancouver and the flights are relatively short.

Disneyland California

Scott’s favorite part of the park was Cars Land

We flew to Los Angeles where we started our holiday with a visit to Disneyland California. The kids had been to Disneyland Hong Kong a few times, but this was their first time to the park in Anaheim. Disneyland California is quite similar to HK, but the kids loved it anyway. We bought tickets for both Disneyland and the California Adventure park next door, and we visited both parks.

I personally like the California Adventure better than Disneyland. I had been there a few years ago with my sister during a road trip in California, and since then the park had grown a bit and now also includes Cars Land (from Scott’s favorite Disney movie Cars & Cars 2).

Disneyland California

Scott and Elaine with Mater

What surprised me is how many obese persons there were in the park. Not just overweight, but really obese, in the sense that many of them needed an electric scooter to get around the park. So many people were using these things that it almost became normal to ride on one. Good for them I guess, but it’s kind of shocking to me. This kind of obesity is still a typical American thing (mainly thanks to the food and sedentary lifestyles), but I see a trend towards it in Europe and in China (especially with spoiled kids in one-child families) as well.

Because we booked quite late we could not get decent rooms in the Disney Resort anymore, but the Hyatt Regency where we stayed turned out to be a good alternative. Most people stay there for Disneyland, and the suite we booked had a bunk bed for the kids in their bedroom. They loved it, but it was a bit hard to get them to sleep the first night. The kids also loved the outdoor pool, so even after a full day in the resort they still insisted to go for a swim with me.

Legoland Hotel (Carlsbad, CA)

Legoland California Hotel, Carlsbad CA

After Disneyland we drove along the coast on Highway 1 to Carlsbad for a visit to Legoland. There we stayed in the Legoland Hotel, which was a big hit with the kids. Not only was every room full of great Lego models, but there were Lego bricks to play with in the room and the kids had their own TV next to their bunk bed. Our room had a medieval castle theme, and the decoration was very well done. We had a room next to the pool, so the first thing Scott wanted to do upon arrival was to swim. If you plan to go to Legoland with kids you should consider to stay in the hotel, it’s next to the park’s entrance and your kids will be very happy.

Legoland California

Entrance of Legoland California

Legoland itself is very different from Disneyland. It’s a great park for young kids, but for parents it’s less interesting. Everything feels a bit less well maintained, especially after just spending time at Disney where everything is perfect. The attractions are not as good, but the park entrance fees are also a lot lower than Disney. For young kids it doesn’t matter, however, and Scott and Elaine had a great time.

Legoland California

With Scott in one of the Legoland rides

After the 2 parks we drove to Palm Springs where we stayed in a villa with a nice pool. Palm Springs is one of those places that you either love or hate. 10 years ago I probably would not even think of going there, but right now I love it. The climate is great, 350 days of sunshine and it’s always warm (except maybe at night during the winter months). While we were there temperatures averaged about 28 Celsius during daytime, which I find very pleasant.

Downtown Palm Springs

Palm Springs, CA

My parents also joined us in Palm Springs and it was nice to have them around. The main thing we did during the few days there was relax at the pool, play with the kids and have dinners in good restaurants. Palm Springs and Palm Desert have some very good restaurants, actually better than the restaurant scene in Vancouver (which is already not too bad). When the kids were in bed my dad an I often had a nice bottle of wine at the outdoor fire place in the back garden.

After a 22 km run in Palm Springs

After running with my dad

We compensated the food and wine with some running. I found a nice 11 km route around the airport where there were hardly any traffic lights or side streets. My dad an I ran it a few times and one morning even ran the loop twice. Because Palm Springs is almost completely flat running was quite easy there, very different from the hilly courses that I normally run back home in Vancouver.

Grace went shopping a few times with my mom. There is a great designer outlet close to Palm Springs and El Paseo in Palm Desert can compete with Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Lots of high end brands of course, but also a lot of nice galleries. We didn’t buy any art this time because Scott and Elaine are not big fans of galleries, but maybe we’ll do so in the future. The cars on El Paseo are great as well, there were more Rolls Royce and Bentley Convertibles there than I had ever seen before in one day!

Working in the shade @ Palm Springs

My temporary office in Palm Springs

I also did a bit of work, and created my own office in the shade in a corner of the backyard. From there I had a good view of the pool where the kids were normally playing, but they would not interrupt me too often.

Malibu, CA

Malibu Beach at sunset

We flew back home again from Los Angeles and spent the last night there. In the late afternoon we walked around Marina del Rey and Venice Beach and later had dinner in Malibu, which has some nice restaurants and obviously great ocean views. It was a nice end of a great holiday!

More pictures of our holiday here in a set on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chijs/sets/72157643198799293/

in Uncategorized

OKCoin Raises $10 Million to Become China’s Largest Exchange

Bitcoin is far from dead in China and that was proven by the fact the Bitcoin exchange OKCoin just announced that they raised $10 million in a Series A round. I wrote an article on Coindesk about this, that I copy/paste below. The original article is here.

OKCoin, the exchange claiming to be China’s largest by trading volume, has announced a $10m Series A funding round.

The investment round was led by Ceyuan, one of China’s earliest venture capital firms, followed by Mandra CapitalVenturesLab and numerous high-profile angel investors.

Despite the nation’s recent crackdown on cryptocurrencies, it seems Chinese venture capitalists are still bullish on bitcoin exchanges and the currency itself.

Bitcoin in China

Back in November 2013, the focus of the bitcoin community was on China – the world’s hub for bitcoin trading. At that time, BTC China was the biggest exchange in the world, having managed to raise a $5m Series A funding round from Lightspeed Venture Partners (Snapchat, Nest). There were even rumours that a bigger round was in the works for the young company.

However, things change quickly. After the Chinese government began regulating bitcoin in December, trade volume plummeted and the world’s top exchange was no longer Chinese.

Local exchanges came up with creative solutions for customers to continue to buy and sell bitcoin, and players like Huobi and OKCoin claimed to pass BTC China in their daily trade volume, although these figures have been the subject of much dispute.

OKCoin has grown rapidly over the past few weeks and is now the biggest Chinese exchange, according to its CEO Star Xu. He claims the exchange’s current daily trade volume is approximately 50,000 bitcoins per day.

Interestingly, on top of that, the exchange allegedly trades 5 million litecoins per day. The company claims that at its peak it reached over 300,000 bitcoin and 13 million litecoin trades.

Future growth

Mr Feng Bo, founder and partner at Ceyuan, commented that he has a tremendous amount of confidence in the future of bitcoin and the continued growth of OKCoin:

“We are delighted to invest in the pioneer of China’s bitcoin exchanges; given the company’s leadership under Star Xu and his team, we know there is much more good news ahead.”

Ceyuan is a well-known fund with investments in successful Chinese companies like Qihoo 360 (NASDAQ: QIHU), Light in the Box (NASDAQ: LITB), UC Web andVANCL – among others.

Interestingly, Silicon Valley investor Tim Draper was involved in the round, as a partner of VenturesLab. He and his son Adam remain active in bitcoin-related investments, mainly via Adam’s Boost.vc incubator where Tim is a mentor. Tim also invested in OKCoin’s angel round.

OKCoin overseas

The investment in OKCoin will be used to expand the team, fund product research and development, further security enhancements, but also to expand OKCoin’s operations beyond China.

This a different strategy from the other Chinese exchanges and it may prove to be a smart move, given the current regulations in the state.

Mark Mai, VentureLab’s China partner, stated that as the regulatory environment in regions such as Singaporethe US and Hong Kong becomes clearer, it will open up opportunities for OKCoin to operate in geographies where it can offer maximized safety and protection for OKCoin clients.

Mai said that the growth of virtual currency is inevitable, and that many countries are coming to terms with the fact that they have to regulate these currencies, because their citizens are using them regardless.

He added that OKCoin welcomes oversight because he believes it will help the company to serve its customers better, allowing them to open up regulated bank and trading accounts so it can engage in third-party clearance and settlement.

All eyes will be on OKCoin’s global expansion in these uncertain times. Will the exchange make it as a large player outside China? Only time will tell.

 

in Uncategorized

Auroracoin: Innovative experiment or innovative scam?

Auroracoin logo

A new cryptocurrency was created in February, the Auroracoin. It is comparable to Bitcoin (actually it’s based on Litecoin, but that would be too technical for this blog post) and on March 25 every citizen of Iceland will get 31.8 Auroracoins. For free. Just by using their ID number.

That in itself is an interesting experiment, because what will happen when everybody gets a small amount of a crypto currency? Will people start using it and create a second economy or will it not take off? When I first heard about it last month I did not really believe it would work but I still followed the coin a bit.

When Auroracoin was launched the value was very small, so 31 coins did not have a lot of value. But then something unexpected happened: people outside Iceland started to buy the currency before it was even distributed to the citizens of Iceland and the price shot up. Last Friday it was worth about $7 I think, so the total value of the 31 coins would be about $220. At that amount of money it would be likely that most people would claim their coins and maybe start using them.

Auroracoin market cap

But what happened over the weekend is unbelievable. The coin’s price exploded, and from $7 on Friday it is now worth over $66 per coin! (Update: while writing this post the price went up to $80 per coin!!!) That means that each person in Iceland will suddenly get over $2000 at the current market value. What might happen now, is that most people will sell the coins the moment they receive them and so the price will plummet. And of course traditional media will pick up the story saying that a Bitcoin experiment showed that people do not want to use Bitcoin.

Or something else might happen: maybe, just maybe, the hackers who created Auroracoin are just some very smart guys who created a hype to get rich quickly. The total value of the coins that they created last month is now worth over $700 million. Today over $17 million was traded, so they have a huge incentive to just forget about the whole experiment and slowly start selling their coins. They could earn a few million dollars per day over the next 22 days (until the coin should be launched on March 25). Not bad for a few weeks of work.

I am not saying that this will happen, but after the Mt. Gox disaster last week nothing surprises me anymore. It turns out that the name of the person that created the coin does not exist in reality. That does not mean that this is a scam, because Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s creator is also a pseudonym. Coincidentally Sathoshi holds about 1 million Bitcoins which as today’s market prices is alos worth about $700 million!

Let’s just say there is a big incentive for the creators not to distribute the coins and make themselves rich beyond belief. If they decided to do so, probably nobody would even be able to sue them. The perfect financial crime!

We will find out on March 25 whether the so-called Iceland airdrop will really take place. I personally think it will happen (I still believe that most people are intrinsically good), but I would not be surprised if the whole idea turns out to be a big scam.