BURBANK, Calif., June 2, 2021 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- BitIRA has partnered with the United States Military Academy at West Point to assist students to apply their systems engineering skills to investigate real-world questions. Under the auspices of BitIRA U (the company's open technology education mission), two West Point cadets participating in the Advanced Individual Academic Development internship received access to BitIRA's anonymized data for use in their research.
This isn't as unlikely a partnership as you might think.
When you need a hill taken or a field army's logistics train untangled, you want a West Point graduate. The United States Military Academy at West Point, founded in 1802 as the nation's first military academy, trained leaders on and off the battlefield, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Buzz Aldrin, Norman Schwarzkopf, and David Petraeus.
When you want to diversify your retirement savings with a bitcoin IRA, you want BitIRA, the pioneer of the first insured cold storage solution for cryptocurrency retirement accounts.
Jeremy Warner, Head of Sales at BitIRA, said, "BitIRA U has always been about demystifying cryptocurrencies. Both Cadets A. Place and M. Raftery focused on questions we thought would help shine a brighter light on some of the forces we see at work in the digital IRA marketplace."
Warner reflected for a moment and added, "I knew they were good questions. When I mentioned it to my team, they had absolutely no idea what to expect. We wanted to find out just as much as the students did."
Surprising Findings
Cadet Aidan Place wanted to know how diversity affected asset diversification. In his own words, "I set out to determine how different people invest differently. To me, 'different' people means different races, ages, sexes, locations, etc. Investing differently could be investing in different vehicles."
In order to answer that question, Cadet Place needed a set of data with information not just about investors' purchases and holdings, but about them as individuals. After reviewing the data available from a number of partners, Cadet Place chose to work with BitIRA.
And now, to those surprising conclusions… Cadet Place expected BitIRA's data to line up with his expectations after reviewing the published research on the topic: the average cryptocurrency investors are "young, white, single males."
"Honestly I think he was a little disappointed with that conclusion," Warner mused. "He had the clever idea of running the numbers backwards, analyzing sales performance outside that stereotypical demographic, and, sure enough, it held up."
But the project wasn't without its high points. Cadet Place explained that "race was not necessarily a huge predictor of whether someone bought cryptocurrency, something that surprised me." So apparently we can strike "white" from the list of average-customer adjectives.
When asked whether Cadet Place's discovery surprised Warner, he shook his head. "I know anecdotes aren't data," he said, "but my team already told me that. Tell you what really did knock my socks off, though. He found zero correlation between income and a digital IRA investment."
Perhaps that means that, regardless of income level, an aggressive investor recognizes a high-growth opportunity? That's not the question Cadet Place set out to answer, though his surprising conclusion does beg the question.
How Does Media Sentiment Influence Digital IRA Purchases?
Cadet Raftery set out to discover whether cryptocurrency news coverage influenced BitIRA's new and existing customers. Using the machine learning platform TensorFlow, Cadet Raftery employed a natural language processing script to analyze the day's headlines for keywords related to cryptocurrencies along with their sentiment, positive or negative.
Then, she compared her findings to BitIRA's inquiries and sales figures. While she wasn't able to demonstrate mathematical correlation between the two data sets, she did observe "we could track and assess trends in the verbiage and overall sentiment of the article headlines."
Warner explained his own perspective on Cadet Raftery's research: "Media coverage and sentiment absolutely play a huge role in this area. Probably less so now than in 2017, as cryptocurrencies increasingly become mainstream and you get Goldman Sachs calling crypto an investable asset class. Megan had an extremely aggressive goal, though, measuring a correlation between general news coverage and our customers. That's gutsy."
BitIRA U: Educate, Tailor, Demystify and Satisfy
Since opening for business in 2017, BitIRA has participated in extensive educational outreach through its BitIRA U division. To Warner, education is by far the most important aspect of the company's work.
"I tell my team every day, 'We don't sell people anything. You're not a salesperson. You're a teacher. You educate customers about their options, and then, if they decide an option fits in with their plan, you assist them.' And that's all we really do," Warner said.
Among other educational content, BitIRA also has an extensive page on crypto taxes, a directory of CPA advisors from around the country who are knowledgeable of crypto taxes, and an exclusive guide on crypto taxes. BitIRA U has a number of explainers on topics including crypto custody, how digital currencies work, and even a crypto and blockchain for teachers resource.
Because education is such a fundamental aspect of their business model, Warner says BitIRA will continue to partner with researchers. "I'm already anticipating what kinds of questions the West Point class of 2022 will bring to the table," Warner said. "I can't wait to see what we learn together!"
About BitIRA:
Based in Burbank, California, BitIRA is a leading specialist in the setup and management of cryptocurrency holdings in self-directed IRAs. Founded by team members from Birch Gold Group with extensive precious metals IRA experience, the company was established on the belief that Americans should have easier access to the wide range of conventional and alternative assets available to hold in their tax-advantaged retirement accounts. Aside from facilitating the setup and management of digital currency IRAs, BitIRA advocates for public awareness of available investment options.
For more information about BitIRA or to sign up for a digital currency IRA, visit https://www.bitira.com.
Media Contact
Andy Klein, BitIRA, +1 8002991567, [email protected]
SOURCE BitIRA
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