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Winklevoss twins become first Bitcoin billionaires
- pussypusspuss 9y agoFor now... It’s still too early to be making claims of Bitcoin wealth. I foresee a crash in the near future.
- raintrees 9y agoOnly if they sell, and wouldn't a $1B sale pretty much tank it? Is there enough financial coverage from the banking sector behind the exchange houses to cover such a large sell?
- TAForObvReasons 9y agoThis is true of any company equity as well. If Bezos decided to unload his entire stake in amazon, for example, the stock price would tank. At that level, it's all based on valuation, not liquidation value
- noobermin 9y agoI'm pretty sure bitcoin is hell of a lot more illiquid than amazon stock is...
- bestnameever 9y agoWell, according to marketwatch, if I am reading it correctly, the average trade volume of Amazon stock is 3.5 million. USD trade volume of bitcoin is between 2 and 11 trillion. https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/amzn https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/amzn https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/historical-data/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/historical-data...
- MBCook 9y agoRight, but there is a fundamental value to Amazon. The stocking never go to zero dollars just because of Bezos selling because the company is clearly worth more than that. If the Winklevoss twins tried to sell just 1% of their stake, $10 million, what would happen to the price of bitcoin? Would they have $990 million of bitcoin left? I’m guessing it would be a hell of a lot less. I think it would cause a panic. I’m not going to say would go to zero, but I’m willing to bet it would drop a TON more than Amazon stock would if Bezos sold 1%.
- sowbug 9y agoNot much would happen if recent history is a guide. One day in mid-September 2017, $4.2 billion of Bitcoin changed hands, and the price that day went up about 5%. That volume followed a rumor that China was cracking down on cryptocurrency exchanges. I can't say I spend much time watching the tape, but I have seen >100-BTC trades on GDAX in the past, and at current prices your what-if scenario involves a sale of about 909 BTC. https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/11-billion-24-hour-cryptocurrency-trading-volume-hits-new-record/ https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/11-billion-24-hour-cryptocur...
- bestnameever 9y agoUSD trade volume for bitcoin has been around 2 to 11 trillion in the last month. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/historical-data/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/historical-data...
- weddpros 9y agoaccording to the depth chart on GDAX, you could sell 10M$ in BTC and the price would dip by.... les than 300$ to 10850$. 100M$ in BTC would send the price in the 7000s
- amorphid 9y agoIf Bezos just hopped into his Etrade account and hit the "sell all" button (just pretend it works that way), the stock would absolutely crater, at least for a bit. In practice, he'd find institutional-ish investors who were interested in buying a sizeable investment in Amazon, and he'd sell directly to them in a private deal. That kind of stuff happens all the time; I think, it's called a block trade... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_trade https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_trade
- hateduser2 9y agoWell surely they don't have to sell all at once.. they can bleed it probably at a pretty high rate for a long time.. they may never get to $1B, but surely they could make tons of money selling.. so long as they pick a rate sufficient to not tank the coin. Also we know $11m is not all the money they had.. so these guys have been crushing it otherwise for a while now I believe.. Its pretty incredible how successful they are.
- sowbug 9y agoDaily trading volume of Bitcoin is around $500M: https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/volume/24-hour/ https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/volume/24-hour/ Obviously they wouldn't place a single sell order for the whole lot. If they wanted to get out of Bitcoin entirely, they'd do it gradually.
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- mrwong 9y agoDaily trading of bitcoin is 5b$ Thats just one single exhange fuer one single fiat currency pair Guess what there is Euros, KRW, Jen, Rimimbi. Insane to see how buthurt HN is ober missing out on one of the best tech opportunities in the last decade. Many here will probably hate the big family Christmas gathering because every relative assumes that the geeky guy surly must have bought some bitcoins. But HN is no better then IBM or Dell. Its always easy to bash IBM and the way they went under, but beeing mid 30s and dismissing Cryptocurrency as fad of some kid traders is just the same. Having said that, does anyone have an inspirational name for my Yacht? Satoshicruise?
- dmitriid 9y ago> missing out on one of the best tech opportunities in the last decade. Can you enlighten me on what's "best" is in this tech opportunity? To compare: During Singles Day AliBaba had a peak of 325 thousand transactions per second. Bitcoin struggles to make 4 while consuming a power equivalent of several small countries.
- mrwong 9y agoThats like WarnerBrothers saying in 1995 That movie streaming will never be a thing because its ridiculous to stream with a 56k Modem. Now we have Netflix and Youtube etc. I could go on and on, but the kneejerk resistance is extremely polarised and I feel like preaching the Internet in 1995 to some 65year old Executives at a newspaper. Watch this to remind yourself that the internet was not always around. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L3Y2_YiT-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L3Y2_YiT-A There was some other interview where Marc Andressen holds a presentation of the Netscape browser and is asked by a reporter what cool websites he can show or think of. He didn't have a good answer and for sure were not able to predict products like Facebook. Watch this if you want to here some good arguments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SYVX2wcMVM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SYVX2wcMVM
- zarify 9y agoI guess I don't really understand the point of it, but what is $1B "worth" of Bitcoin actually useful for? I saw one of the other comments link to daily trading volume, but I read those values as consisting of putting a dollar value on Bitcoin movement within the ecosystem, not crossing boundaries - am I correct? So given the practicalities of shifting the value outside of the Bitcoin economy, the main value seems to be in speculating that this specific cryptocurrency is the future and will take on a dominant value in the real world in exchange for goods and labour, and its volatility seems to make that less likely lest everyone turns into the person who "paid X Bitcoin for a pizza on YYYY-MM-DD and now it's worth Y". Am I missing something important here? I'm not an economist, and only have a broad understanding of the technology behind Bitcoin, but I don't see the point unless one day we start saying "$1 buys X bitcoin" and not the other way around. Edit: It's telling that I hit post and then spent minutes obsessing over 'YYYY' and 'Y' being used in same sentence to mean different things :/
- bestnameever 9y agoJust think of it as owning a share of a stock.
- hateduser2 9y agoThis comment is totally Off topic. Thats a warning so that if you'd rather stay on topic it doesn't waste your time! I'm not sure if your account is banned @pussypusspuss.. but it seems like a cruel fate to be commenting, have your comments removed, and have no knowledge of your punishment. I think itd be better if you knew your condition so I'm leaving this comment to let you know. I hope the rest of hacker news doesn't mind this!
- ramzyo 9y agoWow, admittedly my perception of these guys was totally skewed after seeing the movie The Social Network. When I read about their original investment in 2013 I totally wrote it off as being a hairbrained move. Clearly succumbed to my own biases in passing that unfair judgment. Good for them for being so savvy.
- ProAm 9y agoNever trust a hollywood adaptation to be remotely historically accurate or honest.
- gozur88 9y agoThat's why they say "based on a true story" instead of "this is a true story". They can change whatever they want and call it artistic license.
- ramzyo 9y agoYup, totally agree. Probably also because there’s no written record of what was actually said or done in the majority of micro-events that help to define personalities and setup plot lines (eg the opening bar scene at Thirsty Scholar in The Social Network between Mark Zuckerberg and his love interest).
- ramzyo 9y agoHmm, well clearly in this case I was wrong about these guys, but I have to disagree on your comment about never trusting Hollywood adaptations to be remotely historically accurate or honest. Personally I think Hollywood adaptations generally get the broad points correct, so they are generally accurate and honest (eg Howard Hughes was a reclusive hermit toward the end of his life, as portrayed by Leo DiCaprio in The Aviator).
- lamarpye 9y agoThat is one movie, Hollywood often portrays Jessie James as a Robin Hood-like figure, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. In reality, he was murderous bandit.
- m3kw9 9y agoI always think once you are lucky, twice you are good
- fouc 9y agoUnpacking that for others: The Winklevoss twins were onto something with social networks. Then they were onto something with bitcoin. So basically they're not just lucky but good at catching onto the next new thing.
- lucaspiller 9y agoWithout seeing how many failed investments they’ve made that’s not really a fair assumption.
- ramzyo 9y agoMy opinion as well!
- tw1010 9y agoLottery winners hailed as geniuses, news at 11.
- megadethz 9y agoWell deserved.
- fragsworth 9y agoSatoshi Nakamoto was the first bitcoin billionaire, quite a while ago. Assuming Satoshi is one person. But I suppose nobody really knows who it is.
- gaspoweredcat 9y agothat was my first thought too, satoshi is if memory serves worth around 11 billion now so even if the reality is that he is a few people theyre all probably billionaires
- m-i-l 9y agoIt is claimed Satoshi has around 1M BTC[0]. But this is only "worth" something if the private keys haven't been lost, forgotten, or intentionally or accidentally destroyed, and given the lack of movement there is no evidence of this. [0] https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/ https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-f...
- olalonde 9y agoLi Xiaolai reportedly had over 100,000 BTC as well (https://www.coindesk.com/chinas-bitcoin-millionaire/ https://www.coindesk.com/chinas-bitcoin-millionaire/).
- megadethz 9y agoRoger Ver is also a Bitcoin multi Billionaire.
- simonebrunozzi 9y agoProof?
- megadethz 9y agoHe signed a message a while ago with a large amount of BTC and is known to be one of the earliest BTC whales.
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- drumhead 9y agoHow long I wonder before we reach the top of this particular bubble. If anything, this story is likely to perpetuate the bull market in Crypto for a while longer. We'll probably get more stories of the most unlikely bitcoin billionaires over the next few months which will just add more fuel to the fire. My guess is that some sort of action by financial regulators will cause the bubble to burst, but quite when that happens who knows. In the meantime, its going to be fascinating to see how it develops. Its history in the making, a case study for the future.
- nroets 9y agoUp this. In the last few months, I've seen people buy mining computers without doing their homework. Who controls the bitcoins that's mined ? They can't really say. Will it still be profitable when the next generation mining equipment is plugged into some very cheap electricity source ? No clue. All kinds of advertisments for shady bitcoin services aimed at the general public.
- down 9y agogold is a 2000 years bubble, which financial regulator, US accounts for 25% of the trading volume, in Japan is legal tender, the problem for 1 single country to let's say ban it, is that you don't want to be left behind, unless you're a dictatorship.
- paulsutter 9y agoMeanwhile Mark Zuckerberg is worth $70B so the nerds still win
- criddell 9y agoAt the current growth rates, they will easily beat Zuckerberg to $1 trillion of personal wealth. If the current growth rates could be sustained, in 10 years their personal wealth will rival the GDP of the entire country.
- jacknews 9y agoThey seem to have a knack of making big money from other people's projects.
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- khazhoux 9y agoI don't understand the liquidity of bitcoin, maybe someone can please explain to me. If I'd bought what today is, say, $100M, and I wanted to cash all of it out tomorrow, could I do it? Could I actually have $100M in my bank account the next day? Edit: ok, not in one day. Let's say, over 6 months, whatever it takes. Can I withdraw $100M?
- adammunich 9y agoVery, very much no.
- infinii 9y agoMost exchanges have limits on how much you can cash out per day so it's very unlikely you could do 100M in one pop.
- FreeRadical 9y agoAccording to coinmarket cap, daily volume is consistently 5bn+ a day now
- jeffwass 9y agoA guy I used to work with quit many years ago to trade bitcoin. He developed some buy/sell strategies that netted small profits, but he said it was hard to scale it up. IIRC he said some days his trades alone counted for 10% of trading on the exchange. No idea which exchange it was or how long ago. This also is basically buy-sell neutral, trying to get in/out same number of coins per day or per week. A number of other bitcoin market makers probably do something similar. Given that, I wouldn't naively assume a daily volume number on exchange means the exchange could absorb an increase of one-sided sell orders that's even a good fraction of that volume notional without a major price drop. Also given the lack of regulation I wonder how much of that volume is churning. Ie, fake trades just to increase volume (something illegal on regulated exchanges for stocks, swaps, and other financial products). Bitcoin billionaires have major incentives to keep BTC prices high, and I could seem them easily paying 'negligible' transaction costs to create artificial volume. But of course I have no idea (like everybody else on this thread).
- missandei 9y agoTo me this is just the typical example of people that profited handsomely because of: 1- being sons of rich people and 2- being disgustingly lucky Bitcoin is a braindead bubble with no fundamentals whatsoever, these guys just happened to have a few million lying around, they put it into something that made absolutely zero sense and ended up billionaires.
- EGreg 9y agoThey finally got their wish after they weren't able to do it with Facebook.
- nickpp 9y agoYou could've bought 100 bitcoin when it cost $0.01 and today be a millionaire. Did you?
- missandei 9y agoAs I could have bought dogecoin and a million other examples of total nonsense. Instead I bought stocks that trebled in price and made some financial sense, and will keep making financial sense in the future.
- nickpp 9y agoSo did they, but they choose differently. Then why do you accuse them when you had the exact same chances and only your respective choices produced the different outcomes?
- jimbob21 9y agoYeah, but dogecoin still isn't worth anything and most of the altcoins from christmas past aren't either. You know what is, Mr. Skeptic? Two things: the jealousy you're feeling because they made a calculated risk and it paid off, and the fiat value of BTC as an asset. So run back to your stocks, keep making the same trades everybody else does in the name of "sense" and tell me how you feel when all that "sense" your talking about collapses in two years when the economy cycles.
- SimonPStevens 9y agoThe only unique thing about this story is the amount of money they initially gambled. There are lots of people who gambled on bitcoin in 2013, and the only difference is that they couldn't afford to gamble $8million. I don't really find that particularly interesting or newsworthy
- down 9y agois not bad, if they sell and the bitcoin price crashes, so what if it crashes, will only get more adoption, because is more useful than gold, especially with the new generation, and gold market cap is so much bigger than bitcoin, I would love a crash to buy some, rather than spending it on things I don't really need.
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- sAbakumoff 9y agoGlad for these guys. Murky Marc stolen their idea and fucked it up, 1b is a nice compensation for that!
- VeronicaJJ123 9y agoWe do not know about their other investments that tanked. This is how investment world generally works. You lose most your bets but the one bet that gives result pays for it and more.
- FabHK 9y agoThis dude on HN is worth some $3bn, assuming he HODLed (EDIT to add: he/she bought 259684 BTC for $3000 in the wake of Mt Gox) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2676263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2676263