There are many ways to spend an evening. You could go out on the town or have a relaxing night in front of the telly. However, Hayden Burgoyne from Los Angeles County, USA is busy betting cryptocurrency on stocks and he’s done rather well.
The 32-year-old is a clever chap as he works as a NASA engineer. His daytime is spent helping build the spacecraft that will shoot off into space and explore Jupiter’s moons. You’d think he would need a rest after that but Hayden is not one for a quiet night.
He spends his evenings looking through stocks and working out those that will do best. Then he bets cryptocurrency in an online trading tournament. Even though he’s up against thousands of other players, he’s been having some success.
Speaking to Bloomberg News, he said that his hobby is “more lucrative than most.” So lucrative in fact that his winnings have paid for both his wedding and a honeymoon in South America.
The event he takes part in is the Numerai Tournament. This is organized by a hedge-fund company in San Francisco of the same name. It was founded by 34-year-old Richard Craib. Those taking part spend their time evaluating market data. Then they bet a cryptocurrency entitled Numeraire on the stocks that have been chosen. More Numeraire is received depending on how well those stocks perform.
His idea to launch the tournament came five years ago. At the time he was working in South Africa and helped build machine learning algorithms. The hedge-fund company he now works for is doing well and the fund is up 9% as of August.
Speaking about the tournament, Craib commented: “There’s so much hype in crypto” but they have “actually used it to do something in the real world.” The rewards so far given out have totalled around $90 million and that makes the cryptocurrency worth approximately $45 apiece.
Burgoyne is celebrating his performances in the tournament as he owns 630 tokens. No wonder more players are interested in taking part. It’s more than a hobby now that is for sure. “Some people are staking half a million dollars on their models, so they could make $50,000 in a week if their models did really well,” said Craib.
While there are still many or are concerned about cryptocurrencies, those playing in this tournament probably aren’t included. Of course, it can be risky but it’s certainly working out well for this NASA engineer. In fact, you could say his success has been out of this world.
