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Billionaire Mike Novogratz says 10% of his money is in Bitcoin and Ether
- Chaebixi 9y agoToo bad for him the future is in Dogecoin.
- magma17 9y ago"Novogratz ranked #407 in the March 2007 Forbes list of world billionaires with a net worth of $2.3 billion [...] By 2012, after the decline of Fortress' stock price, his net worth had shrunk to $500 million." following the tendency, he may be a hobo right now. 10% of 100 bucks, probably
- JorgeGT 9y agoFollowing the tendency he's $1.3 billion in debt!
- lawless123 9y agoCryptoDebt.
- jonnathanson 9y agoHe needs to rebillionize, pronto. He'll be a laughingstock at Davos without that third comma in his net worth. Next thing you know, he'll have to buy a car with doors that open side to side, like a non-billionaire.
- afghanPower 9y agoMight as well throw away that three comma painting and those comma pillows, eh? (Looking forward to season 4!!)
- droidist2 9y agoAs I was reading this I got the taste of tequila in my mouth.
- mnw21cam 9y ago"Your video will play in ..." Really? My video?
- isk517 9y agoYeah, your video. When I loaded the page it said "mnv21cam's video will play in ...". Congratulations on the video I guess.
- catenthusiast 9y agoSomething tells me he won’t be a billionaire for long.
- 1001101 9y agoI beg to differ. He had a 48 bagger on Ether, and I know he and Fortress were in early on Bitcoin, so I bet his cost basis on BTC is sub 100, so a solid 10 bagger. I think he's right about this being the third inning. I hold some BTC, and am looking to diversify into ZCash.
- coldtea 9y ago>I hold some BTC, and am looking to diversify into ZCash. Diversify into some non-monopoly assets too.
- atemerev 9y agoNot a billionaire, but also trying to keep some percentage of my net worth in cryptocurrencies. Worked great so far. 10% seems to be about right. (I have much more trust in blockchain than in government retirement schemes).
- pedrocr 9y ago>Not a billionaire, but also trying to keep some percentage of my net worth in cryptocurrencies. Worked great so far. 10% seems to be about right. I don't see how people can look at cryptocurrencies as investments over the long term. It's like saying you have all your money in Swiss Francs in a checking account that returns no interest because you think the Swiss are doing a stellar job at setting up an economy/banking system. In the short term you're basically betting on cryptocurrencies gaining adoption and thus more of the economy needing them. In the long term it's just a currency not an investment. >(I have much more trust in blockchain than in government retirement schemes). That's not the alternative, some kind of diversified portfolio of stocks (a simple index fund is usually the easiest) is the right benchmark. Personally I will always feel safer with owning a (very small) percentage of the total productive companies in the world than a currency that's only worth something as long as someone is willing to keep trading in that specific one and not change to some other one. I look at the value of my stock holdings in euros only because it's also my day to day currency but the underlying value can be repriced in any currency over the next 50 years (my investment horizon). What I would really like to do is price my stock holdings as percentage of total world stock market capitalization (with plenty of decimal points). Anyone have a good source for that number?
- kolbe 9y agoHas anyone noticed the disparity between how many articles get written about btc's price, and how little gets written about its real-life uses and benefits?
- statoshi 9y agoThat's because writing about price changes requires little knowledge or research into how the system works. I write meaty articles about Bitcoin; if that's what you seek, check out: http://www.coindesk.com/author/jameson-lopp/ http://www.coindesk.com/author/jameson-lopp/ and https://medium.com/@lopp https://medium.com/@lopp
- EthanHeilman 9y agoIf you are using Bitcoin as a store of value then price is a major part of its real-life use and benefit.
- Mahn 9y agoThat's because Bitcoin is still today too cumbersome to be used for anything other than speculation and drugs. No one goes to the grocery store thinking "gosh, I sure wish I could transfer some money to an exchange, buy some BTC, set up a wallet, transfer the BTC, wait for confirmations, scan a QR code to pay, and wait for confirmations again to pay for my groceries". The only people that want this are early early adopters with a large stash that cannot be made liquid easily, but otherwise adoption doesn't seem to be going anywhere besides the existing use cases.
- xapata 9y ago> [Novogratz] recalls that Buterin, ... showed up late, which struck him as shocking -- and a bit ballsy. He figured it was worth paying attention to Buterin. The lesson is to be impolite? I think I saw this in an episode of Silicon Valley.
- louprado 9y agoThe lesson is to be so good they can't ignore you.
- xapata 9y agoThat may be true, but is not what the author seems to imply.
- MadManE 9y agoI think that "paying attention to" could just mean watching for other bad behavior to justify action. Not necessarily paying attention to take notes from.
- xapata 9y agoAt that point in the article, it seemed clear the context was investing in digital currencies and why that might be advisable.
- satysin 9y agoDon't forget season 4 of Silicon Valley starts on Sunday :)
- rdiddly 9y ago...and in Office Space, where the hero's indifference gets him a promotion
- nugget 9y agoYou can tell Buterin is really smart (and focused) within a few minutes of talking to him about Ethereum. He showed up a few minutes late to an event I helped coordinate. Given his personality, I just assumed he had been off somewhere lost in his thoughts or finishing some critical task; it would never cross my mind that he took the event less seriously or meant to be impolite.
- dmix 9y agoI was reading his Wikipedia and apparently it was his sister who started Acumen, the non-profit VC firm: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Acumen_(organization) https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Acumen_(organization) His brother has a TV show too: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Robert_and_Cortney_Novogratz https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Robert_and_Cortney_Novogratz Talent runs in the family.
- angersock 9y agoTalent, or money?
- T-A 9y agoThe actual quote is "Ten percent of my net worth is in this space", said at the "Blockchain Disruption" forum [1]. A reasonable interpretation would be that 10% of his money is in blockchain companies. [1] http://www.hbscny.org/s/1738/cc/index2.aspx?sid=1738&gid=4&pgid=54757&cid=116461&ecid=116461&crid=0&calpgid=13&calcid=78389 http://www.hbscny.org/s/1738/cc/index2.aspx?sid=1738&gid=4&p...
- mrb 9y ago"Novogratz says he bought Ether when it was trading for about $1. Today it's worth over $48." He is worth ~$2B. Assuming he put 0.2% (only $4M) in Ethereum during the crowd sale, 3 years later Ethereum appreciates 48× and represents 10% of his net worth. Of course he says he is also invested into Bitcoin, not only into Ethereum. Say he purchased only $2M of ETH, that's 3300 BTC as of the crowd sale's initial phase (22 Jul - 5 Aug 2014 when 1 BTC was ~600 USD and purchased 2000 ETH,) so he got 6.7M ETH which is 9% of the total ETH supply at genesis. Edit: oops. He didn't say he purchased at the crowdsale (0.0005 BTC or 0.30 USD per ETH) but when it was 1 USD per ETH. So he would have needed to plunk 0.6% / $12M of his wealth into Ethereum. Still a tiny fraction.
- Pxtl 9y agoI don't know much aboute Etherium but wouldn't he be owner of a substantial fraction of the blockchain at that point? If so, he can't sell it without tanking the value so hard he'd never be able to get a decent fraction of its "worth".
- clarkmoody 9y ago> owner of a substantial fraction of the blockchain No, the blockchain is the data structure that stores historical transactions. He could be a large owner of the circulating currency, and he would face issues trying to sell a huge chunk of value all at once. The crypto markets are not very liquid compared with mature financial markets.
- mrb 9y agoSelling ~7M ETH is easy without affecting the markets too much. Kraken and Poloniex each do an average weekly volume of 3M ETH on the ETH/BTC pair: https://cryptowat.ch/poloniex/ethbtc/1w https://cryptowat.ch/poloniex/ethbtc/1w If he spread the sale over 10 weeks he would only increase their weekly volume by 10%. That's not even talking about alternate ways to transfer his wealth out of ETH (eg. approaching his billionaire friend: "how about you sell me that mansion for 100k ETH?")
- no1name 9y agoWhat are the first 2 innings in the digital asset revolution? He says Bitcoin is the 3rd.
- klhutchins 9y agoI'm speculating, but it could be moving from paper to databases or using EFT to move assets?
- jeremyt 9y agoThe people in this thread hating on crypto are missing the point. Complaining that you can't go into CVS and buy something with Bitcoin right now is like complaining that all you can do with the Internet is send "electronic mail", which nobody reads, in 1990, or like complaining that Facebook is nothing but a glorified campus directory in 2006. The truth is, you can't buy things with Bitcoin at CVS because the technology isn't there yet. Right now, Bitcoin is suitable to be digital gold, but with a much higher possibility of return because it's a new asset. In a couple of years, the addition of the lightning network on top of the Bitcoin network will enable you to buy things at CVS. Right now, buying Bitcoin is like making an angel investment.
- martinrue 9y agoI'm surprised there's no mention of Dash in the comments yet. Having spent some time researching different crypto currency technologies with regards to becoming a better, decentralised payment network, Dash is (in my opinion) a far better Bitcoin. It's also the first example of a functioning DAO. The organisation is funded entirely by the blockchain (new blocks reward the miner, the master nodes, and fund a treasury). It has a second network of 'master nodes', which are collateralised and incentivised to provide security and additional features to the network, including Instant Send (really fast confirmations). The most impressive thing is that it's already positioned to make decisions about future changes by way of master node voting, so it doesn't suffer from the same issues Bitcoin does currently, where proposed changes have no means to be agreed and actioned quickly. I'm really impressed with Dash and I hope it gets more attention.