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Is that $4B worth of USD/CNY, or BTC? If it’s BTC then a) the real figure is much lower because they can’t sell $4B of BTC without drastically moving the marke

Is that $4B worth of USD/CNY, or BTC? If it’s BTC then a) the real figure is much lower because they can’t sell $4B of BTC without drastically moving the market, b) what portion of that is due to their BTC holdings increasing in value by more than 1000% in the past year? Either way it’s still a lot of money, though.

makomk 9y ago
A bunch of that is probably going to be in BCH, since they were requiring that for mining hardware purchases for a while, and that's an even shallower market.
wyldfire 9y ago
It doesn't matter much what the denomination is. Most sane businesses would convert to the currency of whatever their expenses are anchored in. a) I think you're mistaken. $4B per annum is unlikely to move the markets much.
- IncRnd 9y ago
  > I think you're mistaken. $4B per annum is unlikely to move the markets much. It sure will if you try to sell it. Holding it certainly isn't the issue.
  - wyldfire 9y ago
    The daily volume at the beginning of 2017 was $200M USD. The daily volume at the end was $8T USD. $4B over 365 market days is somewhere between 1-4% of the daily market. If liquidating their bitcoin tanked the market in 2017, it wasn't too noticable.
    - tlrobinson 9y ago
      I don’t think you can extrapolate liquidity from volume, especially when there are exchanges with very low or zero fees.
- tlrobinson 9y ago
  I’m guessing Bitmain can’t pay for electricity with BTC. Are there estimates of how much (fiat) money flowed into cryptocurrencies in the last year? It would have to be much more than $4B for Bitmain to be able to sell $4B worth of BTC and still see the 1000% gain.
kolinko 9y ago
You can't sell it all at once, but I'd assume they are selling it as it comes, just putting a stable downward pressure on the market.
- tlrobinson 9y ago
  Right, that’s my question: are they selling it as it comes in, thus have actually made $4B in USD (despite the downward pressure of selling), or have they been hodling BTC and now have $4B of BTC at the current market price (which is not actually worth $4B)?

makomk 9y ago

A bunch of that is probably going to be in BCH, since they were requiring that for mining hardware purchases for a while, and that's an even shallower market.

wyldfire 9y ago

It doesn't matter much what the denomination is. Most sane businesses would convert to the currency of whatever their expenses are anchored in. a) I think you're mistaken. $4B per annum is unlikely to move the markets much.

IncRnd 9y ago
> I think you're mistaken. $4B per annum is unlikely to move the markets much. It sure will if you try to sell it. Holding it certainly isn't the issue.
- wyldfire 9y ago
  The daily volume at the beginning of 2017 was $200M USD. The daily volume at the end was $8T USD. $4B over 365 market days is somewhere between 1-4% of the daily market. If liquidating their bitcoin tanked the market in 2017, it wasn't too noticable.
  - tlrobinson 9y ago
    I don’t think you can extrapolate liquidity from volume, especially when there are exchanges with very low or zero fees.
tlrobinson 9y ago
I’m guessing Bitmain can’t pay for electricity with BTC. Are there estimates of how much (fiat) money flowed into cryptocurrencies in the last year? It would have to be much more than $4B for Bitmain to be able to sell $4B worth of BTC and still see the 1000% gain.

kolinko 9y ago

You can't sell it all at once, but I'd assume they are selling it as it comes, just putting a stable downward pressure on the market.

tlrobinson 9y ago
Right, that’s my question: are they selling it as it comes in, thus have actually made $4B in USD (despite the downward pressure of selling), or have they been hodling BTC and now have $4B of BTC at the current market price (which is not actually worth $4B)?