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The Winklevoss twins are now Bitcoin billionaires

TAForObvReasons 9y ago
Related discussion from a day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15836087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15836087
Bishonen88 9y ago
Looking forward to a similar article in 10 years: "The Winklevoss twins are not Bitcoin bankrupts" /s
learnstats2 9y ago
Meritocracy in action.
- meri_dian 9y ago
  They took the risk, gambled on Bitcoin when others were too afraid to. They were rewarded for their gamble. Seems fair to me.
  - learnstats2 9y ago
    Sure, and how did they have the money to gamble (sic) on Bitcoin?
    - ringaroundthetx 9y ago
      By successfully pursuing their claim against Facebook till the end to the tune of 65million USD Of which they put 1/5th of the Facebook shareholder money into Bitcoin
    - meri_dian 9y ago
      They were entrepreneurial enough to get entangled with Zuckerberg and Facebook. And to do that they had to be at Harvard at the right time, which involved being born in the right circumstances of course.
  - bubxo 9y ago
    If you're already a multi millionaire, gambling a few million on bitcoin isn't really a risk. If you're poor, you aren't "afraid to" take a gamble - you can't afford too. Maybe this is all fair by the rules of the current economy. But maybe the rules aren't fair to begin with.
    - TAForObvReasons 9y ago
      > gambling a few million on bitcoin isn't really a risk They didn't just invest a few million, they also stuck their necks out in a very public way and made efforts to bring Bitcoin to the investment masses (via the ETF). A failure in Bitcoin would have reflected very poorly reputation-wise.
      - drzaiusapelord 9y ago
        Again, a slight social hit that is completely excusable (no investor is perfect) is a far cry from losing your home, savings, car, job, etc like a middle class person would have.
      - bubxo 9y ago
        Ah, so what non-millionaires like me are doing wrong is we're not starting a bitcoin ETF. I'll have to start one in the spare time between my two jobs. Meritocracy!
        meri_dian 9y ago
        And if everyone started out with the same amount of money in life you'd still be bemoaning the unequal distribution of advantageous genetic traits.
        bubxo 9y ago
        I'm not saying everything must be equal. It's people saying "meritocracy" who act like everything already is.
SirensOfTitan 9y ago
Good for them. The other thread here on this was filled with people complaining about how lucky the Winklevii were here. Most success scenarios I'm aware of are heavily driven by chance. People tend to attribute success to luck whenever they don't think it was deserved (it's a very "what the thinker thinks, the prover proves" type of arrangement). In this case, I find attempts to discredit these guys as quite absurd. They took an early plunge into a technology they found had potential and built one of the finest exchanges for it (Gemini).
Nokinside 9y ago
Can anyone give an credible estimate of the net currency flow between bitcoins and conventional Forex market? (no investments in mining) By all means be Bitcoin fan, but unless you can answer my question, you know nothing. Every time the market sell side , the BTC value drops like a stone. Bitcoin has large market liquidity risk and Winklevoss brothers have liquidity problem. Bitcoin markets don't seem to have any resiliencey and breath. There are no controls for market manipulation.
- scalesolved 9y ago
  I cannot answer your question but BTC comprises $191 billion market cap out of $342 billion market cap of all crypto currencies. Perhaps they'll diversify into other coins, withdraw to Fiat via this too.
  - Nokinside 9y ago
    Market liquidity problem means that they can't diversify easily. Any large withdraw would collapse the price. That's why I was asking the question. Market cap can be billions or trillion, especially in manipulated markets, but if you can't withdraw your money with that price it was not real value.
hprotagonist 9y ago
as my investment banker grandfather was keen to drill into me very early, the proper ending to this sentence is “[...] when they sell.”
- hectorr1 9y ago
  This is true for anyone who has substantial wealth in a single asset class, and also relatively meaningless. You can't get liquidity without impacting the price, especially if your reputation is closely tied to the asset. When you are talking wealth, you use dollars as a unit of account so you don't have to compare bitcoin addresses to tech equity to Manhattan skyscrapers to oil tankers. Obviously all those things are hard to liquidate quickly especially when you own a lot of the supply. For the actual human expenses, there are plenty of private bankers who will figure out how to lend you USD against those assets for whatever you want to buy.
- pen2l 9y ago
  Oh yeah, I learned this lesson this month. My stock holdings doubled in a relatively short time a few weeks ago... and then this last week (and now today) they came back down. I'm slowly learning the lesson that for nearly most people speculative investing is a waste of time and money. I'm now going to be deleting all of my apps where I "check" things like I check the news when I wake up every morning, will now just peak in every other month or so.
JustAnotherPat 9y ago
One day only about 1 bitcoin (worth 1 trillion) will be actually tradable. Everyone else will be holding.

Related discussion from a day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15836087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15836087

Bishonen88 9y ago

Looking forward to a similar article in 10 years: "The Winklevoss twins are not Bitcoin bankrupts" /s

learnstats2 9y ago

Meritocracy in action.

meri_dian 9y ago
They took the risk, gambled on Bitcoin when others were too afraid to. They were rewarded for their gamble. Seems fair to me.
- learnstats2 9y ago
  Sure, and how did they have the money to gamble (sic) on Bitcoin?
  - ringaroundthetx 9y ago
    By successfully pursuing their claim against Facebook till the end to the tune of 65million USD Of which they put 1/5th of the Facebook shareholder money into Bitcoin
  - meri_dian 9y ago
    They were entrepreneurial enough to get entangled with Zuckerberg and Facebook. And to do that they had to be at Harvard at the right time, which involved being born in the right circumstances of course.
- bubxo 9y ago
  If you're already a multi millionaire, gambling a few million on bitcoin isn't really a risk. If you're poor, you aren't "afraid to" take a gamble - you can't afford too. Maybe this is all fair by the rules of the current economy. But maybe the rules aren't fair to begin with.
  - TAForObvReasons 9y ago
    > gambling a few million on bitcoin isn't really a risk They didn't just invest a few million, they also stuck their necks out in a very public way and made efforts to bring Bitcoin to the investment masses (via the ETF). A failure in Bitcoin would have reflected very poorly reputation-wise.
    - drzaiusapelord 9y ago
      Again, a slight social hit that is completely excusable (no investor is perfect) is a far cry from losing your home, savings, car, job, etc like a middle class person would have.
    - bubxo 9y ago
      Ah, so what non-millionaires like me are doing wrong is we're not starting a bitcoin ETF. I'll have to start one in the spare time between my two jobs. Meritocracy!
      - meri_dian 9y ago
        And if everyone started out with the same amount of money in life you'd still be bemoaning the unequal distribution of advantageous genetic traits.
        bubxo 9y ago
        I'm not saying everything must be equal. It's people saying "meritocracy" who act like everything already is.

SirensOfTitan 9y ago

Good for them. The other thread here on this was filled with people complaining about how lucky the Winklevii were here. Most success scenarios I'm aware of are heavily driven by chance. People tend to attribute success to luck whenever they don't think it was deserved (it's a very "what the thinker thinks, the prover proves" type of arrangement). In this case, I find attempts to discredit these guys as quite absurd. They took an early plunge into a technology they found had potential and built one of the finest exchanges for it (Gemini).

Nokinside 9y ago

Can anyone give an credible estimate of the net currency flow between bitcoins and conventional Forex market? (no investments in mining) By all means be Bitcoin fan, but unless you can answer my question, you know nothing. Every time the market sell side , the BTC value drops like a stone. Bitcoin has large market liquidity risk and Winklevoss brothers have liquidity problem. Bitcoin markets don't seem to have any resiliencey and breath. There are no controls for market manipulation.

scalesolved 9y ago
I cannot answer your question but BTC comprises $191 billion market cap out of $342 billion market cap of all crypto currencies. Perhaps they'll diversify into other coins, withdraw to Fiat via this too.
- Nokinside 9y ago
  Market liquidity problem means that they can't diversify easily. Any large withdraw would collapse the price. That's why I was asking the question. Market cap can be billions or trillion, especially in manipulated markets, but if you can't withdraw your money with that price it was not real value.

hprotagonist 9y ago

as my investment banker grandfather was keen to drill into me very early, the proper ending to this sentence is “[...] when they sell.”

hectorr1 9y ago
This is true for anyone who has substantial wealth in a single asset class, and also relatively meaningless. You can't get liquidity without impacting the price, especially if your reputation is closely tied to the asset. When you are talking wealth, you use dollars as a unit of account so you don't have to compare bitcoin addresses to tech equity to Manhattan skyscrapers to oil tankers. Obviously all those things are hard to liquidate quickly especially when you own a lot of the supply. For the actual human expenses, there are plenty of private bankers who will figure out how to lend you USD against those assets for whatever you want to buy.
pen2l 9y ago
Oh yeah, I learned this lesson this month. My stock holdings doubled in a relatively short time a few weeks ago... and then this last week (and now today) they came back down. I'm slowly learning the lesson that for nearly most people speculative investing is a waste of time and money. I'm now going to be deleting all of my apps where I "check" things like I check the news when I wake up every morning, will now just peak in every other month or so.

JustAnotherPat 9y ago

One day only about 1 bitcoin (worth 1 trillion) will be actually tradable. Everyone else will be holding.