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How the Winklevoss Twins Found Vindication in a Bitcoin Fortune

nytimes.com

31–40 of 309 posts

Re: How the Winklevoss Twins Found Vindication in a Bitcoin Fortune

#31
post #17
post #3

>> They said they might look at selling when the value of all the Bitcoin in circulation approaches the value of all gold in the world — some $7 trillion or $8 trillion compared with the $310 billion value of all Bitcoin on Tuesday — given that they think Bitcoin is set to replace gold as a rare commodity. But then Tyler Winklevoss questioned even that, pointing out the ways that he believes Bitcoin is better than go…

Interesting. What are the economics arguments for Bitcoin replacing gold? Does the “ease of transaction” of Bitcoin provide an implicit value over gold and is that factored into the price of Bitcoin as maybe a fixed value?

Gold is just non-scalable and is bound to die eventually. If you think about it, if you're going to start a new country and a new federal reserve, how much sense does it make to ship tons of gold to Mars for example?

Any store of value that makes sense for humanity in the long term has to be both digital and reflect the work/real value creation process that matters in the future. I'm not sure it's going to be bitcoin but it's definitely not gold.

Re: How the Winklevoss Twins Found Vindication in a Bitcoin Fortune

#32
post #5

is it liquid in the way gold is ?

Let's call it "differently liquid". Your question implies that gold is itself liquid, but it can't be spent in the way of cash, and in its physical form it cannot be as quickly traded for another asset the way a paper asset could be traded.

In this sense, bitcoin and gold are similar, though it is probably easier to trade gold as a paper asset, and easier to spend bitcoin as a currency.

But I don't think any of the above are a fair characterization of bitcoin beyond the current moment. It is changing too quickly. Over the next 6 months I can easily imagine bitcoin having further liquidity issues as popularity gains, block size limits # of transactions, etc. I can equally imagine the next 6 months easing these issues as the inflection point of these issues force change that has been unpalatable until no alternative was possible.

All speculation though, and probably not very insightful for anyone familiar with the topics. My point is simply that gold and its market dynamics will not change in that time frame, while bitcoin's must change, so comparisons to gold are stretching an analogy at this point.

Re: How the Winklevoss Twins Found Vindication in a Bitcoin Fortune

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference about Gold's rarity and Bitcoin's. Gold is rare on its kind and rare on its abundance. It may be hard to mine more gold, but it's way harder to find another gold-like commodity. Bitcoin is only rare in the abundance sense. It is hard to mine more bitcoin, but it's pretty easy to find a (arguably better) substitute for what it does. I can agree with it being better (having more utility) than gold,…

What do you mean gold is rare on its own kind? Aren't there tons of other pretty metals? There doesn't seem to be any unique property of gold (other than sociological) that would help it defend against competitors like bitcoin or any other new asset.

Gold is insanely useful as a conductive metal.

Re: How the Winklevoss Twins Found Vindication in a Bitcoin Fortune

#34
post #17
post #3

>> They said they might look at selling when the value of all the Bitcoin in circulation approaches the value of all gold in the world — some $7 trillion or $8 trillion compared with the $310 billion value of all Bitcoin on Tuesday — given that they think Bitcoin is set to replace gold as a rare commodity. But then Tyler Winklevoss questioned even that, pointing out the ways that he believes Bitcoin is better than go…

Interesting. What are the economics arguments for Bitcoin replacing gold? Does the “ease of transaction” of Bitcoin provide an implicit value over gold and is that factored into the price of Bitcoin as maybe a fixed value?

> Does the “ease of transaction” of Bitcoin provide an implicit value over gold...

I know this doesn't answer your question but it's still relevant. Currently Bitcoin is the most expensive, least convenient currency available. According to estimatefee.com it would take about a $25 fee in order to get your transaction through in an hour.

My point is that nothing about Bitcoin will ever really be "implicit" like it is with gold. Gold exists as it exists, cryptocurrencies only have the properties that are created by the developers, and/or are run on machines by participants in the network. In Bitcoin's case, the developers and the network have not been able to handle the load of all the transactions.

I used to be in the "Bitcoin is the new gold" camp. But after seeing what's happened with Bitcoin, I'm certain it's not that simple.

Re: How the Winklevoss Twins Found Vindication in a Bitcoin Fortune

#35
post #3

>> They said they might look at selling when the value of all the Bitcoin in circulation approaches the value of all gold in the world — some $7 trillion or $8 trillion compared with the $310 billion value of all Bitcoin on Tuesday — given that they think Bitcoin is set to replace gold as a rare commodity. But then Tyler Winklevoss questioned even that, pointing out the ways that he believes Bitcoin is better than go…

If you understand the computer science behind Bitcoin, you'll realize how ridiculous the false equivalency to gold is.

1. The claim of "rare" doesn't exactly hold true.

Consider the 10,000 BTC pizza - how did this happen? This was the direct result of Satoshi's economic policy, granting vast sums of BTC to mint out very quickly very early for a short duration to the very small pool of people who ran the software. Satoshi's algorithm produced BTC in plentiful quantities enabling the 10,000BTC pizza - thus it wasn't rare if you were Satoshi and the dozen other early whales hording as much as possible, until the algorithm begins cutting off the production and limiting later users from producing coins, starving the economy. Now there's a psychological game being played, where public relations and marketing must convince new users to buy in. Because the exchanges are unregulated, they can manipulate the spot price though wash trading and painting the tape [2] (where trades are falsified and you just sell the same item back and forth to your friend for a higher and higher price).

The supply was created by running a piece of software. It's not magic. Most of the supply was produced very early on and as much as 30% of all Bitcoins are owned by less than 100 people.

  Best estimates are that there are about one million 
  holders of Bitcoin;  47 individuals hold about 30 percent, 
  another 900 hold a further 20 percent, the next 10,000 
  about 25% and another million about 20%, with 5% being 
  lost.  So 1/10th of one percent represent about half the 
  holdings of Bitcoin and 1 percent close to 80 percent 
  (http://www.businessinsider.com/927-people-own-half-
  of-the-bitcoins-2013-12). The concentration of Litecoin 
  ownership is similar 
  (http://litecoin-rich-list.blogspot.com).  
  Most of the big wallets have been in place from early on, 
  so sitting back and watching your capital grow has been a 
  very successful strategy.


  The distribution of Bitcoin holdings  looks much like the 
  distribution of wealth in North Korea and makes the 
  China’s and even the US’ wealth distribution look like 
  that of a workers’ paradise

2. Easy migration to more advanced e-cash services, LTC, XMR, ETH, so on See: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/views/all/

3. Bitcoin network requires ASIC miners, largely centralized in China [3]. Assuming the inveitable surpassing of a more advanced cryptosytem making Bitcoin obsolete, as the market is informed there will be a decline in BTC's spot price and once this falls below the cost of OPEX for miners, the hardware goes offline and the network will cease to function. Maximalists will attempt to offer an emergency fork, in any attempt to save their "investment", just as they have developed the lightening network to create centeralized payment hubs, so "investors" can act as liquidity providors and take fees, instead of miners.

4. Electricty usage is unsustainable, GOTO 3

[1] https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/86/is-it-possibl...

http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-inequality-2014-1

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r04gfWfRkE

[3] https://qz.com/1055126/photos-china-has-one-of-worlds-larges...

Re: How the Winklevoss Twins Found Vindication in a Bitcoin Fortune

#36

This seems like a good indicator of a bubble. Everyone and their uncle knows a crash is coming, and these guys are shooting nonsense about regret and disappointment. 1b is a lot of money. Even for these guys.

> Everyone and their uncle knows a crash is coming

A crash is always coming. Be it stock market or bitcoin. Everyone knows that but nobody knows when. It is just like saying we all are gonna die. Nobody knows when.

Re: How the Winklevoss Twins Found Vindication in a Bitcoin Fortune

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference about Gold's rarity and Bitcoin's. Gold is rare on its kind and rare on its abundance. It may be hard to mine more gold, but it's way harder to find another gold-like commodity. Bitcoin is only rare in the abundance sense. It is hard to mine more bitcoin, but it's pretty easy to find a (arguably better) substitute for what it does. I can agree with it being better (having more utility) than gold,…

What do you mean gold is rare on its own kind? Aren't there tons of other pretty metals? There doesn't seem to be any unique property of gold (other than sociological) that would help it defend against competitors like bitcoin or any other new asset.

You can't find another precious metal that will have the rarity of gold and it's "non deterioration" property, both that made gold what it is (it's also a really useful commodity).

But i agree that's not enough to defend against competitors like Bitcoin, but the same cannot be said of Bitcoin. Other than sociological factors (that are arguably much stronger on gold), there's nothing that would help it defend against others e-coins.

Re: How the Winklevoss Twins Found Vindication in a Bitcoin Fortune

#38
post #3

>> They said they might look at selling when the value of all the Bitcoin in circulation approaches the value of all gold in the world — some $7 trillion or $8 trillion compared with the $310 billion value of all Bitcoin on Tuesday — given that they think Bitcoin is set to replace gold as a rare commodity. But then Tyler Winklevoss questioned even that, pointing out the ways that he believes Bitcoin is better than go…

There's a difference about Gold's rarity and Bitcoin's. Gold is rare on its kind and rare on its abundance. It may be hard to mine more gold, but it's way harder to find another gold-like commodity. Bitcoin is only rare in the abundance sense. It is hard to mine more bitcoin, but it's pretty easy to find a (arguably better) substitute for what it does. I can agree with it being better (having more utility) than gold,…

Another critical difference is that there are commodity uses of gold. The price of gold will never go to zero; it might go to $100 or $10 per oz if all speculation and hoarding were removed from the market but it wouldn't go to $0.

Re: How the Winklevoss Twins Found Vindication in a Bitcoin Fortune

#39
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. What are the economics arguments for Bitcoin replacing gold? Does the “ease of transaction” of Bitcoin provide an implicit value over gold and is that factored into the price of Bitcoin as maybe a fixed value?

Gold is just non-scalable and is bound to die eventually. If you think about it, if you're going to start a new country and a new federal reserve, how much sense does it make to ship tons of gold to Mars for example? Any store of value that makes sense for humanity in the long term has to be both digital and reflect the work/real value creation process that matters in the future. I'm not sure it's going to be bitcoin…

Gold is definitely useful for building the spacecraft going to Mars though. They cover the entire spacecraft in the stuff.

It might be too useful for Mars to use as reserve!

https://www.itmtrading.com/blog/aerospace-gold-the-next-fron... https://www.geek.com/news/geek-answers-why-does-nasa-use-so-...

Re: How the Winklevoss Twins Found Vindication in a Bitcoin Fortune

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference about Gold's rarity and Bitcoin's. Gold is rare on its kind and rare on its abundance. It may be hard to mine more gold, but it's way harder to find another gold-like commodity. Bitcoin is only rare in the abundance sense. It is hard to mine more bitcoin, but it's pretty easy to find a (arguably better) substitute for what it does. I can agree with it being better (having more utility) than gold,…

What do you mean gold is rare on its own kind? Aren't there tons of other pretty metals? There doesn't seem to be any unique property of gold (other than sociological) that would help it defend against competitors like bitcoin or any other new asset.

There aren't that many metals that behave similarly to Gold.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_metal

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