On July 17, an almost 70-person team led by Swiss cryptocurrency company Bitcoin Suisse conducted a BTC trade atop the Breithorn Mountain in the Pennine Alps on the border between Switzerland and Italy.
Having taken place at approximately 4,164 meters above sea level, the trade is believed to have ever been executed from a higher altitude.
Bitcoin Suisse Executes ‘Highest BTC Trade Ever’
Bitcoin Suisse uploaded a video of the feat on July 19. The video contains aerial footage of the troupe gathered on the mountain’s summit, while hand-held footage shows multiple people attempting to secure a laptop amid aggressive winds. Following the stroke of an enter key to execute the trade, the entire troupe erupts into cheers and aerial fist-pumping.
The feat comprised an elaborate PR stunt for Bitcoin Suisse, a cryptocurrency broker that has operated since 2013, which, on the day prior to uploading the footage of “highest BTC trade ever publicly recorded,” announced it had applied for a banking license with the Swiss Financial Markets Supervision Authority (FINMA) and a security dealer’s license under the country’s Stock Exchange and Securities Trading Act.
Bitcoin Suisse Seeks to Pre-Empt Tightening Cryptocurrency Regulations
Bitcoin Suisse announced the regulatory applications taking anticipatory steps toward complying with the “maturing” legislative environment surrounding cryptocurrency firms.
A Bitcoin Suisse representative expressed the company’s expectation that “in the long term, more regulation will follow, as soon as the legislation catches up with the technological developments of the space,” adding:
We believe that within this new regulatory environment, companies without the necessary licenses will have a limited ability to serve clients with the full spectrum of high quality, innovative crypto-financial products and solutions.
Mount Everest Cryptocurrency Publicity Stunt Goes Tragically Wrong in 2018
During May 2018, social network ASKfm sponsored four cryptocurrency enthusiasts with climbing Mount Everest to bury two hardware wallets storing $50,000 worth of the company’s tokens on the mountain’s summit to promote ASKfm’s upcoming initial coin offering.
Once buried, the company tokens were free to be retrieved by anyone brave enough to scale the mountain in search of the hardware wallets.
On May 31, 2018, ASKfm’s chief executive officer, Max Tsaryk revealed that the stunt had taken a disastrous turn when one of the local Himalayan guides who was accompanying the four climbers had been reported missing.
Several days, one of the climbers had told recounted to Financial Times: “At the top of Everest the weather was very bad, and then we were coming down. We were going down to Camp 4, which is at about 7900m, and one Sherpa [a Himalayan guide] was dying.” The guide is believed to have never made it back down from the mountain.
