23 ms·

SoftBank founder lost $130M on Bitcoin

89 points by yyyyip 8y ago

yyyyip 8y ago
Masayoshi seems great at picking market tops and buying into them.
- strikelaserclaw 8y ago
  either he wins big, or no big deal, the advantages of having money.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - baybal2 8y ago
    So far, he lost more money in his funds than he ever made. But he makes $1B+ a year just from fees. This is a very twisted idea of "winning big"
    - onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
      He's not investing. He's laundering money at scale.
      - wp381640 8y ago
        also laundering reputations - lots of SV companies seem to have no issues with accepting Saudi money if it's via Softbank
atomical 8y ago
How I can read this without a subscription?
- jfk13 8y ago
  Looks like https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/softbank-founder-lost-130m-on-bitcoin-20190423 https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/softbank-founder-lost-130m... is the same article.
  - atomical 8y ago
    That has a paywall as well.
    - jfk13 8y ago
      Oh? Sorry - it doesn't for me. Maybe it's location-based (I'm in the UK)?
      - jfk13 8y ago
        Curious - now it does! The first one's free, maybe? https://outline.com/aN2Nkz https://outline.com/aN2Nkz seems to work.
        martin_ 8y ago
        I have no evidence of this, but it sadly (probably) makes sense to apply a paywall after N referrals from a particular domain, or even after X traffic over Y time as a social trick for getting people's peers to subscribe
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- kurmouk 8y ago
  If the click comes from Facebook or Google, you won't need a subscription.
  - siphor 8y ago
    sadly not true for me.
qaq 8y ago
Which in context of his net worth is pretty much noise
- MuffinFlavored 8y ago
  If you're worth $20k and you find $20 on the street, it's 0.1% of your net worth. If you're Jeff Bezos and you find 0.1% of your net worth on the street, it's $150,000,000.
  - skilled 8y ago
    Which street? Asking for a friend.
  - jermaustin1 8y ago
    Lets take that thought experiment further, would Jeff Bezos even waste the time in bending down to pick up the $20 since it is worth so little? The act of bending down, the minuscule risk of falling over, possibly scraping a knee, possibly wasting more time trying to get back up, etc. Is the $20 worth the potential hassle of picking it up? For me: without a hesitation. It's roughtly 130 times my average 5 second earnings. For Jeff: probably a net loss.
    - nashashmi 8y ago
      I hate such comparisons. How about just simply cleaning up after yourself and not polluting the world with 20$? If I dropped 20$ off a cliff, I would not get it, but I know I should.
    - avinium 8y ago
      Didn’t someone ask Bill Gates this exact question, and he confirmed that he would pick it up?
- zymhan 8y ago
  Yeah I would expect one of the world's richest people and a notable investor to put a decent sized bet on BTC, just like he has with countless other companies and ideas.
aphextim 8y ago
It's only a loss if he sold, HODL!
- aphextim 8y ago
  I do know he sold, was just being silly.
  - maxencecornet 8y ago
    I like how you can be a literal billionaire bank founder and still buy a speculative asset at it's peak and sell at it's lowest after a 90% crash Buy high sell low >>The investment came at the peak of the bitcoin frenzy in late 2017 after the digital currency had already risen more than 10 fold that year. The exact size of the bet couldn’t be determined, but bitcoin peaked at nearly $20,000 in mid December 2017 and Mr. Son sold in early 2018 after bitcoin had plummeted, the people said.
    - loceng 8y ago
      Well 10% is better than less or nothing, right? Shows his lack of confidence in it going up any further - or at least within a timeframe that there aren't better investments.
      - maxencecornet 8y ago
        >Well 10% is better than less or nothing, right? Shows his lack of confidence in it going up any further - or at least within a timeframe that there aren't better investments. Pretty much any good book about investing (eg. The Four Pillars of Investing) teaches you that following your human emotions and irrationality in investing is the worst you can do, basically selling when everybody IS selling is the worst move (Warren Buffett: Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful, https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/012116/warren-buffett-be-fearful-when-others-are-greedy.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/012116/warre...) So I'm pretty surprised to see Masayoshi Son acting like a rookie investor, and following the crowd of uneducated investors buying during the mania and selling during the crash It's the opposite of investing 101
thegranderson 8y ago
Full-text, for those blocked by the paywall: SoftBank Founder Masayoshi Son Lost $130 Million on Bitcoin Japanese billionaire made a huge personal investment in the digital currency as prices peaked By Rachael Levy and Liz Hoffman April 23, 2019 7:00 a.m. ET Masayoshi Son, the billionaire founder of SoftBank Group Corp. 9984 0.31% , made a huge personal bet on bitcoin just as prices for the digital currency peaked, losing more than $130 million when he sold out, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Son, who launched the world’s biggest venture-capital fund on the strength of his long-term investing acumen, made the investment at the recommendation of a well-known bitcoin booster, whose investment firm SoftBank bought in 2017, the people said. The investment came at the peak of the bitcoin frenzy in late 2017 after the digital currency had already risen more than 10 fold that year. The exact size of the bet couldn’t be determined, but bitcoin peaked at nearly $20,000 in mid December 2017 and Mr. Son sold in early 2018 after bitcoin had plummeted, the people said. Bitcoin closed Monday at $5,381.05. Mr. Son is known for quick investment decisions and big risky bets, most of which have paid off. He decided to back Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. after spending just five minutes with its founder, Jack Ma. He took a half-hour to greenlight a $200 million investment in a startup that grows vegetables indoors. Mr. Son’s previously unreported loss shows that even some of the world’s most sophisticated and wealthiest investors got caught up in the frenzy. With a net worth estimated by Bloomberg LP at $19 billion, Mr. Son will hardly notice, though it dents his reputation as a patient and prophetic investor. A SoftBank spokesman declined to comment on Mr. Son’s behalf. Mr. Son was encouraged to make the investment by Peter Briger, the co-chairman of asset manager Fortress Investment Group, the people said. SoftBank bought Fortress in February 2017, inheriting the asset manager’s bitcoin reserves along with its more traditional investment funds. Fortress under Mr. Briger first bought bitcoin in 2013, when it was still a fringe technology used mainly in the darker corners of web commerce. By the time the SoftBank deal was completed, its holdings were worth more than $150 million. Mr. Briger declined to comment through a spokesman. Mr. Son built SoftBank mostly on long-term technology investments and used his record to launch the $100 billion SoftBank Vision Fund. The fund, backed by the government investment fund of Saudi Arabia, owns big stakes in Uber Technologies Inc. and WeWork Cos., and has been credited with driving up valuations of some of the biggest private technology companies. The Vision Fund is facing a test of its success with the coming initial public offering of Uber, which is aiming for a valuation of as much as $100 billion, below previous expectations but still above where the fund invested. Even as it looks ahead to futuristic technology, SoftBank’s most immediate problem is its controlling stake in U.S. mobile phone company Sprint Corp. The 2013 deal has weighed down the conglomerate with debt, limiting its investing options. Last week The Wall Street Journal reported that Sprint and T-Mobile’s merger had been challenged by U.S. Justice Department staff lawyers, who expressed concerns that the all-stock deal would threaten competition. Sprint, hoping for approval, said in a regulatory filing last week: “Sprint is in a very difficult situation that is only getting worse. Sprint is not on a sustainable competitive path.”
duxup 8y ago
I can't read the article as I don't have a subscription. So if you're this dude, how do you make this investment? Presumably you just call your fiance guy and tell him to put a huge amount of money into Bitcoin and the order gets passed down to someone who knows what their doing and somewhere there is a PC out there with a bazillion dollars in Bitcoin sitting in cold storage? I gotta think the end guy who makes the buy is a pretty big target for criminal types as far as figuring out where such coins are stored....
- mindcandy 8y ago
  There are companies that specialize in coordinating large, off-exchange trades. I listened to an interview where they mentioned security practices such as: keys are stored on laptops that were bought new, had the hard drive replaced, and the Ethernet and USB ports epoxied shut. All transactions are offline and multi-sig. Etc...
  - duxup 8y ago
    Yeah I was thinking the security would have to be pretty high / multi layered / rightfully paranoid.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - atomical 8y ago
    Ledger offers enterprise grade solutions for this now. https://www.ledger.com/enterprise-solutions/ https://www.ledger.com/enterprise-solutions/
- mrlaserOO 8y ago
  there are Over The Counter (OTC) trading desks/companies who can help with that. One of them is Circle. I think Kraken also offers this service.
- tutfbhuf 8y ago
  https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox
wsdfsayy 8y ago
For all the perma-bears out there...Bitcoin is well off last year's low and now around $5500. Crypto has been trending up for weeks. Some top tokens like BNB (Binance's token) are at all time highs.
- hesdeadjim 8y ago
  It’s amazing what wash trading and fake volume can do to prop up an ecologically destructive and pointless technology.
astazangasta 8y ago
Why do we talk about this guy as if he is some sort of genius? He lost 99% of his wealth in the first dot-com bust. The only reason he is still around is he happened to invest in Alibaba. This doesn't demonstrate anything other than that if you have enough money, it doesn't matter what you do or how stupid you are, you'll remain rich.

89 points by yyyyip 8y ago

yyyyip 8y ago

Masayoshi seems great at picking market tops and buying into them.

strikelaserclaw 8y ago
either he wins big, or no big deal, the advantages of having money.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- baybal2 8y ago
  So far, he lost more money in his funds than he ever made. But he makes $1B+ a year just from fees. This is a very twisted idea of "winning big"
  - onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
    He's not investing. He's laundering money at scale.
    - wp381640 8y ago
      also laundering reputations - lots of SV companies seem to have no issues with accepting Saudi money if it's via Softbank

atomical 8y ago

How I can read this without a subscription?

jfk13 8y ago
Looks like https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/softbank-founder-lost-130m-on-bitcoin-20190423 https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/softbank-founder-lost-130m... is the same article.
- atomical 8y ago
  That has a paywall as well.
  - jfk13 8y ago
    Oh? Sorry - it doesn't for me. Maybe it's location-based (I'm in the UK)?
    - jfk13 8y ago
      Curious - now it does! The first one's free, maybe? https://outline.com/aN2Nkz https://outline.com/aN2Nkz seems to work.
      - martin_ 8y ago
        I have no evidence of this, but it sadly (probably) makes sense to apply a paywall after N referrals from a particular domain, or even after X traffic over Y time as a social trick for getting people's peers to subscribe
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
kurmouk 8y ago
If the click comes from Facebook or Google, you won't need a subscription.
- siphor 8y ago
  sadly not true for me.

qaq 8y ago

Which in context of his net worth is pretty much noise

MuffinFlavored 8y ago
If you're worth $20k and you find $20 on the street, it's 0.1% of your net worth. If you're Jeff Bezos and you find 0.1% of your net worth on the street, it's $150,000,000.
- skilled 8y ago
  Which street? Asking for a friend.
- jermaustin1 8y ago
  Lets take that thought experiment further, would Jeff Bezos even waste the time in bending down to pick up the $20 since it is worth so little? The act of bending down, the minuscule risk of falling over, possibly scraping a knee, possibly wasting more time trying to get back up, etc. Is the $20 worth the potential hassle of picking it up? For me: without a hesitation. It's roughtly 130 times my average 5 second earnings. For Jeff: probably a net loss.
  - nashashmi 8y ago
    I hate such comparisons. How about just simply cleaning up after yourself and not polluting the world with 20$? If I dropped 20$ off a cliff, I would not get it, but I know I should.
  - avinium 8y ago
    Didn’t someone ask Bill Gates this exact question, and he confirmed that he would pick it up?
zymhan 8y ago
Yeah I would expect one of the world's richest people and a notable investor to put a decent sized bet on BTC, just like he has with countless other companies and ideas.

aphextim 8y ago

It's only a loss if he sold, HODL!

aphextim 8y ago
I do know he sold, was just being silly.
- maxencecornet 8y ago
  I like how you can be a literal billionaire bank founder and still buy a speculative asset at it's peak and sell at it's lowest after a 90% crash Buy high sell low >>The investment came at the peak of the bitcoin frenzy in late 2017 after the digital currency had already risen more than 10 fold that year. The exact size of the bet couldn’t be determined, but bitcoin peaked at nearly $20,000 in mid December 2017 and Mr. Son sold in early 2018 after bitcoin had plummeted, the people said.
  - loceng 8y ago
    Well 10% is better than less or nothing, right? Shows his lack of confidence in it going up any further - or at least within a timeframe that there aren't better investments.
    - maxencecornet 8y ago
      >Well 10% is better than less or nothing, right? Shows his lack of confidence in it going up any further - or at least within a timeframe that there aren't better investments. Pretty much any good book about investing (eg. The Four Pillars of Investing) teaches you that following your human emotions and irrationality in investing is the worst you can do, basically selling when everybody IS selling is the worst move (Warren Buffett: Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful, https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/012116/warren-buffett-be-fearful-when-others-are-greedy.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/012116/warre...) So I'm pretty surprised to see Masayoshi Son acting like a rookie investor, and following the crowd of uneducated investors buying during the mania and selling during the crash It's the opposite of investing 101

thegranderson 8y ago

Full-text, for those blocked by the paywall: SoftBank Founder Masayoshi Son Lost $130 Million on Bitcoin Japanese billionaire made a huge personal investment in the digital currency as prices peaked By Rachael Levy and Liz Hoffman April 23, 2019 7:00 a.m. ET Masayoshi Son, the billionaire founder of SoftBank Group Corp. 9984 0.31% , made a huge personal bet on bitcoin just as prices for the digital currency peaked, losing more than $130 million when he sold out, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Son, who launched the world’s biggest venture-capital fund on the strength of his long-term investing acumen, made the investment at the recommendation of a well-known bitcoin booster, whose investment firm SoftBank bought in 2017, the people said. The investment came at the peak of the bitcoin frenzy in late 2017 after the digital currency had already risen more than 10 fold that year. The exact size of the bet couldn’t be determined, but bitcoin peaked at nearly $20,000 in mid December 2017 and Mr. Son sold in early 2018 after bitcoin had plummeted, the people said. Bitcoin closed Monday at $5,381.05. Mr. Son is known for quick investment decisions and big risky bets, most of which have paid off. He decided to back Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. after spending just five minutes with its founder, Jack Ma. He took a half-hour to greenlight a $200 million investment in a startup that grows vegetables indoors. Mr. Son’s previously unreported loss shows that even some of the world’s most sophisticated and wealthiest investors got caught up in the frenzy. With a net worth estimated by Bloomberg LP at $19 billion, Mr. Son will hardly notice, though it dents his reputation as a patient and prophetic investor. A SoftBank spokesman declined to comment on Mr. Son’s behalf. Mr. Son was encouraged to make the investment by Peter Briger, the co-chairman of asset manager Fortress Investment Group, the people said. SoftBank bought Fortress in February 2017, inheriting the asset manager’s bitcoin reserves along with its more traditional investment funds. Fortress under Mr. Briger first bought bitcoin in 2013, when it was still a fringe technology used mainly in the darker corners of web commerce. By the time the SoftBank deal was completed, its holdings were worth more than $150 million. Mr. Briger declined to comment through a spokesman. Mr. Son built SoftBank mostly on long-term technology investments and used his record to launch the $100 billion SoftBank Vision Fund. The fund, backed by the government investment fund of Saudi Arabia, owns big stakes in Uber Technologies Inc. and WeWork Cos., and has been credited with driving up valuations of some of the biggest private technology companies. The Vision Fund is facing a test of its success with the coming initial public offering of Uber, which is aiming for a valuation of as much as $100 billion, below previous expectations but still above where the fund invested. Even as it looks ahead to futuristic technology, SoftBank’s most immediate problem is its controlling stake in U.S. mobile phone company Sprint Corp. The 2013 deal has weighed down the conglomerate with debt, limiting its investing options. Last week The Wall Street Journal reported that Sprint and T-Mobile’s merger had been challenged by U.S. Justice Department staff lawyers, who expressed concerns that the all-stock deal would threaten competition. Sprint, hoping for approval, said in a regulatory filing last week: “Sprint is in a very difficult situation that is only getting worse. Sprint is not on a sustainable competitive path.”

duxup 8y ago

I can't read the article as I don't have a subscription. So if you're this dude, how do you make this investment? Presumably you just call your fiance guy and tell him to put a huge amount of money into Bitcoin and the order gets passed down to someone who knows what their doing and somewhere there is a PC out there with a bazillion dollars in Bitcoin sitting in cold storage? I gotta think the end guy who makes the buy is a pretty big target for criminal types as far as figuring out where such coins are stored....

mindcandy 8y ago
There are companies that specialize in coordinating large, off-exchange trades. I listened to an interview where they mentioned security practices such as: keys are stored on laptops that were bought new, had the hard drive replaced, and the Ethernet and USB ports epoxied shut. All transactions are offline and multi-sig. Etc...
- duxup 8y ago
  Yeah I was thinking the security would have to be pretty high / multi layered / rightfully paranoid.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- atomical 8y ago
  Ledger offers enterprise grade solutions for this now. https://www.ledger.com/enterprise-solutions/ https://www.ledger.com/enterprise-solutions/
mrlaserOO 8y ago
there are Over The Counter (OTC) trading desks/companies who can help with that. One of them is Circle. I think Kraken also offers this service.
tutfbhuf 8y ago
https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox

wsdfsayy 8y ago

For all the perma-bears out there...Bitcoin is well off last year's low and now around $5500. Crypto has been trending up for weeks. Some top tokens like BNB (Binance's token) are at all time highs.

hesdeadjim 8y ago
It’s amazing what wash trading and fake volume can do to prop up an ecologically destructive and pointless technology.

astazangasta 8y ago

Why do we talk about this guy as if he is some sort of genius? He lost 99% of his wealth in the first dot-com bust. The only reason he is still around is he happened to invest in Alibaba. This doesn't demonstrate anything other than that if you have enough money, it doesn't matter what you do or how stupid you are, you'll remain rich.