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How the Winklevoss Twins Found Vindication in a Bitcoin Fortune

nytimes.com

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

#41

Post by frenchie14 »

saalweachter wrote: post #29
aplummer wrote: post #21

Does anyone know the actual value of the money put into bitcoin so far vs this market cap of recent sale price x count? I'm keen to know actually how many people could withdraw at similar sale prices to now before it evaporated. Because it's so exponential, I would imagine a rapid sale of 5% would remove 90% of the value, but I'd love to know the specifics.

Money isn't "put into" Bitcoin. Every USD "put into" an exchange in exchange for Bitcoin was simultaneously taken out by the person on the other side of the trade. The future value of Bitcoin in USD is entirely dependent on people in the future wanting to buy Bitcoin for USD; if no one wants to, it is not worth any USD.

I guess the question should be rephrased then as "how much have the current owners of bitcoin collectively exchanged for their coins?" This question also becomes more interesting when you factor in every coin that has been mined but not yet exchanged for money. I believe the GP is correct in guessing that the number will be much smaller than the current market cap of BTC

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

#42

Post by gruez »

felipeko wrote: post #37
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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).

platinum. i will agree that gold is easier to tell apart (it's yellow) than platinum. although realistically that's a moot point because you're going to want to do chemical tests when dealing in non-trivial amounts of precious metals.

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

#43

Post by dahdum »

felipeko wrote: post #15
TheBiv wrote: 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,…

"So I'd agree that the sum of all e-coins will surpass gold, but I see no reason for Bitcoin to do it alone."

We could pick any number of gold-like commmodities, but like Bitcoin, gold has had a history of large expenditures to acquire it. Both are buoyed by that past.

So many tokens and blockchains are coming out with incremental improvements or niche capabilities, but in the end I think consolidation of market cap is inevitable. I think it ends up Bitcoin as store of value, Ethereum as contracts/api and a large amount of application specific token/chains. Most applications would be backed by ethereum (like most tokens are now), but ones like Ripple could definitely be top 5.

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

#44

Post by 21 »

saalweachter wrote: post #29
aplummer wrote: post #21

Does anyone know the actual value of the money put into bitcoin so far vs this market cap of recent sale price x count? I'm keen to know actually how many people could withdraw at similar sale prices to now before it evaporated. Because it's so exponential, I would imagine a rapid sale of 5% would remove 90% of the value, but I'd love to know the specifics.

Money isn't "put into" Bitcoin. Every USD "put into" an exchange in exchange for Bitcoin was simultaneously taken out by the person on the other side of the trade. The future value of Bitcoin in USD is entirely dependent on people in the future wanting to buy Bitcoin for USD; if no one wants to, it is not worth any USD.

You can say the same about many (most?) things.

Every USD "put into" AAPL is simultaneously taken out by the person on the other side of the trade.

Very few things truly destroy money, and I'm pretty sure all of them are done by banks or treasuries.

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

#45

Post by aplummer »

frenchie14 wrote: post #41
saalweachter wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money isn't "put into" Bitcoin. Every USD "put into" an exchange in exchange for Bitcoin was simultaneously taken out by the person on the other side of the trade. The future value of Bitcoin in USD is entirely dependent on people in the future wanting to buy Bitcoin for USD; if no one wants to, it is not worth any USD.

I guess the question should be rephrased then as "how much have the current owners of bitcoin collectively exchanged for their coins?" This question also becomes more interesting when you factor in every coin that has been mined but not yet exchanged for money. I believe the GP is correct in guessing that the number will be much smaller than the current market cap of BTC

Yeap this is what I meant, using 'put into' like "putting money into stocks". Good point about bitcoins that have never been exchanged.

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

#46

Post by dahdum »

meritt wrote: post #22
dahdum wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Novogratz sold $250M of Ethereum earlier this year when the market cap was $25-35B. Bitcoin market cap is $291 billion right now and the trade volume an order of magnitude higher. So pretty sure they wouldn't have much problem unloading their position.

> trade volume is not the same thing as liquidity

They are linked very closely, especially with a volatile market like crypto. Besides, the volume is 10x what it was when Novogratz unloaded $250M on a smaller market cap. A billion would certainly move the price, but it doesn't appear it would crash it.

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

#48

Post by felipeko »

gruez wrote: post #42
felipeko wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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). platinum. i will agree that gold is easier to tell apart (it's yellow) than platinum. although realistically that's a moot point because you're going to want to do chemical tests when dealing in non-trivial amounts of precious metals.

You got me! :)

Now find a few hundreds more and we will be closer (not really) to Bitcoin's rarity of kind.

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

#49

Post by mlevental »

can someone tell me something i've been wondering for a couple days now (considering taking the plunge and toying around with bitcoin): how fast can you execute trades on coinbase/gdax? obviously i'm asking if i could experiment with hft-esque strategies. is that possible or the clearing time too long?

note: on a very small scale (like ~100$ total "aum")

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