That might be fun and useful, the reality is neither (https://dentacoin.com) -- it's literally your dental records on the blockchain for some reason. It's been top-100 in the coinmarketcap rankings for ages.
This seems much more like an ultra-wealthy individual's means of diversification. Holding 1 million in Bitcoin as an insurance policy is relatively small hedge against the end of the (non-digital?) world. I don't think this move is much different than if he were buying up gold for a worst case collapse of USD.
I don't really understand that as an argument, honestly. It's like saying "holding $1M in lotto tickets is a great hedge against the end of the world" or "$1M in macaroni." You can buy all sorts of things, why this thing? If the world ends the first thing shutting down is the thing that's using all the power. We'll need it for things like showers and eating.
I'm not a huge Bitcoin fan, but it has proven flexible in cross border transactions. The network can run out of any country. If the USD goes to zero for some unknown reason, you get out and land in Russia, your USD could be worthless and you can only fit so much gold in your private jet. Private keys though? Those go with you, and as long as the network is still live, you aren't broke.
Lotto tickets are tied to a short time frame and country. Macaroni has a shelf life and does not transport well. Bitcoin is volatile but deflationary, so short of a network collapse it will likely retain value.
I am not seeing the deflationary part. They just split it and created twice as much Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash. There is a new Bitcoin like currency minted every 5 minutes. It is far cheaper to create digital currencies than paper money and far easier to steal. I think it is a delusion. That is not to say the technology cannot be useful. It has a lot of problems. Wait for Bitcoin 2.0
You think he is planning on having to leave the country? How would he have time. The average CEO is working 80Hrs per week. Much more than their over paid thralls. He is CEO of 2 companies. That is 160Hrs per week. Plus the 10 day silent meditation retreats. You guys do not realize the excruciating demands placed on todays CEO's. They truly are our modern hero's. He should be given his own reality show.
Yeah, (a) in totality, Bitcoin is still being mined and therefore inflating, at a rate of 3.81% per annum at the moment meaning the BTC inflation rate today is approximately double the US dollar. Obviously that's slated to change, but it's definitely not true now. It's been inflating massively all these years and yet its' value is still going up; fascinating. Almost like inflation isn't a bad thing?
(b) The effective inflation rate is massively negative because everyone keeps losing their keys. A friend asked me re: Satoshi "If he didn't believe in what he built and the future, why isn't he moving his genesis coins? What kind of man would do that?" My answer was: "the kind of man who lost his keys."
(c) The inflation rate of the crypto space in totality to your point is astronomical, since anyone can just fork a currency, give a few tokens to some promoters/shills/exchanges, get listed, and boom, that's a dump-truck of sweet sweet crypto.
(d) I'd watch the hell out of the Jack Dorsey reality TV series.
> They just split it and created twice as much Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash.
Not really - Bitcoin Cash is an entirely different "currency", that shares the history of Bitcoin up to the point where it forked.
> You think he is planning on having to leave the country?
I seriously doubt it. $10k / week for Jack Dorsey is a reasonable amount to use as a hedge against Bitcoin going exponential again. If it does, he's even richer. If it doesn't? Meh, so what. It's "only" $520k / year, and it's unlikely to lose all of its value anyhow.
So you are saying that if I owned a bitcoin before the split worth X and owned a bitcoin and bitcoin cash worth X + Y after the split that is not identical printing money.
If the US made dollarsPlus and gave you one for every dollar you currently have and said you can spend them just like dollars. That is a different currency and would not be inflationary I suppose.
Yea, sure, you can cherry pick dates. Like if you bought the S&P 500 last September at an all time high. However, it's not about making and losing money when you're hedging against major crashes. It's about it retaining some semblance of value when something else tends to zero. I'd be very happy to own $100k of BTC if my (hypothetical) 5 billion USD suddenly evaporated, even if that $100k of BTC used to be $200k.
Except if you bought the S&P at the all-time high you'd still have 95% of your money, instead of 10% of your money. Further when the stock market crashed, BTC did too, it didn't help. My point is there are so many hedging options out there, why this one?! If gold dropped to 10% of its value one day how many goldbugs do you think would be screaming HODL and STORE OF VALUE? Or "what if there's a financial apocalypse" when their portfolio looks like they've already weathered Black Tuesday. There are tons of assets out there that haven't dropped huge amounts. Is it sunk cost? Religiosity?
I guess what I'm trying to say is nobody would declare nascent tech stocks to be a great store of value and a hedge against the apocalypse. There's tons of volatility and by most peoples' assessment (not mine though) it's the young up-start go-getter. What makes this different?
If the USD goes to zero then I absolutely guarantee you that your bitcoin will not retain a shred of purchasing value. This statement reminds me of people who buy CDS on US Treasuries assuming that in a world where the US really defaults on its debt (not some technical default without meaningful economic consequences) then your counterparts will still exist to pay up.
Consider a Venezuela scenario. Inflating currency and limits on currency conversion and transfer to prevent money escaping the border. With crypto your money is already across the border.
I've never understood the Venezuala argument about Bitcoin. When someone is buying Bitcoin with a volatile currency (like the Bolivar), it means someone else now has that volatile currency. The volatile currency doesn't suddenly dissappear and take it's problems with it. How is this different from buying dollars or euros with the volatile currency.
Am I missing something?
Yeah, I've spent a long time considering the Venezuela scenario. You can't mine there because all the good mining setups get nationalized ([1], [2]) so let's leave that method of acquisition off the table.
That means the only way to get some is by exchanging. You can either:
(1) Exchange with someone else in the country someone who already has bitcoins (let's say they mined them). In Venezuela, there remains the exact same number of both Bolivars and Bitcoin, so it's zero-sum. Neither Venezuela nor Venezuelans are better off by this exchange because nothing's changed.
(2) Exchange with someone outside the country. Problem 1: Who on Earth will take your worthless Bolivars? Problem 2: If you do manage to find someone who will take your worthless Bolivars, why wouldn't you take US dollars instead (since you can trade freely, you may as well just open a USD bank account somewhere). Or some other asset that hasn't lost 80% of its value in the last year? Gold? Equities? Gold equities? The list is truly endless. If you find someone to take your worthless Bolivar bags for real assets there are much, much better assets.
The fiat-value behind Bitcoin doesn't just spark into existence, willed by the devout masses. It's not like Venezuelans can suddenly mine Bitcoin in a way nobody else can because of their bad government. They also definitely don't all have Bitcoin in a way they can just ignore the balance of their bank accounts.
How do you solve the initial distribution problem in a way that makes sense?
Right. One solution is to do buy crypto many years in advance, during good economic times. Whenever disaster strikes, it's best to have bought the insurance policy when the threat seems unlikely and far away rather than imminent.
Admittedly, I don't know what could be done with crypto to help the average Venezuelan at this point.
The solution "predict which upcoming cryptocurrency is going to be the currency of the future, then wait for the apocalypse and be wealthy" doesn't seem like the most reliable way forward - or even a solution to any given problem other than "I'd like to be wealthy, but I'm not."
Jack has a way to go as his current strategy will only get him to 0.01% in a year. He has said before that he owns quite a bit of bitcoin already though.
You have to own a certain amount of BTC to have a seat at the table. My sense is that JD needs to accumulate to influence BTC either directly or via Cashapp. He probably has a very long way to go....
>Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has been buying $10,000 worth of Bitcoin per week
>Speaking on the Tales from the Crypt podcast, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has revealed that he has been exceeding his weekly buy limit for Bitcoin
>Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has revealed that he has been exceeding his weekly buy limit for Bitcoin, purchasing $10,000 worth of the cryptocurrency every week.
The first three sentences contradict each other. Later we learn that $10K is the limit for purchasing bitcoin in the Cash app... is he exceeding the limit or not?
"has been" and "a week" indicate that something is recurring. Nothing in the article supports that. It just mentions that Jack claimed he had already exceeded his limit. That is one week.
Do we know that Jack has the same limits as his customers? The blog post just references a tweet that claims the limit is $10K/week. That's where the $10K in the headline comes from.
Listening to the referenced podcast doesn't yield any points for the "per week" side... Around 8:05 is the part they talk about and Jack says he exceeded his limit so he couldn't join in the #stackingSats drive the podcast is endorsing. Jack then says he thinks he can join tomorrow because his limit resets. I mean, it's a symbolic gesture, perhaps he will just buy his supposed $10K per week and say that $25 was part of #stackingSats who really cares... The point is this article and headline are poorly written.
Dumb and impatient money buys at the peak of speculative mania, refuses to sell as the trend turns, then capitulates at the bottom for an 80% loss.
Smart and patient money sells into the speculative mania, then takes the other side of the capitulation trade so they can sell again into the next mania.
Then there's Jack Dorsey and the Winkelvosses who are smart and patient, but they don't trade. They accumulate through both highs and lows because they see a transformative opportunity beyond the boom-bust cycle.
To put things in perspective, Jack Dorsey has an estimated net worth of 5.2 billion dollars. His weekly wealth adjusted spending on Bitcoin is almost certainly less than the pennies in your car's cupholders.
Good to know that Jack believes that putting his money in Bitcoin will give him greater returns than having it in Twitter or Square:0 How should that make Twitturd and Square investors feel?
43 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 95.5 ms ] threadNot recommended for the average person however (and I say that while being involved in crypto)
;-)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurengensler/2018/12/13/billio...
Lotto tickets are tied to a short time frame and country. Macaroni has a shelf life and does not transport well. Bitcoin is volatile but deflationary, so short of a network collapse it will likely retain value.
You think he is planning on having to leave the country? How would he have time. The average CEO is working 80Hrs per week. Much more than their over paid thralls. He is CEO of 2 companies. That is 160Hrs per week. Plus the 10 day silent meditation retreats. You guys do not realize the excruciating demands placed on todays CEO's. They truly are our modern hero's. He should be given his own reality show.
(b) The effective inflation rate is massively negative because everyone keeps losing their keys. A friend asked me re: Satoshi "If he didn't believe in what he built and the future, why isn't he moving his genesis coins? What kind of man would do that?" My answer was: "the kind of man who lost his keys."
(c) The inflation rate of the crypto space in totality to your point is astronomical, since anyone can just fork a currency, give a few tokens to some promoters/shills/exchanges, get listed, and boom, that's a dump-truck of sweet sweet crypto.
(d) I'd watch the hell out of the Jack Dorsey reality TV series.
Not really - Bitcoin Cash is an entirely different "currency", that shares the history of Bitcoin up to the point where it forked.
> You think he is planning on having to leave the country?
I seriously doubt it. $10k / week for Jack Dorsey is a reasonable amount to use as a hedge against Bitcoin going exponential again. If it does, he's even richer. If it doesn't? Meh, so what. It's "only" $520k / year, and it's unlikely to lose all of its value anyhow.
If the US made dollarsPlus and gave you one for every dollar you currently have and said you can spend them just like dollars. That is a different currency and would not be inflationary I suppose.
I guess what I'm trying to say is nobody would declare nascent tech stocks to be a great store of value and a hedge against the apocalypse. There's tons of volatility and by most peoples' assessment (not mine though) it's the young up-start go-getter. What makes this different?
That means the only way to get some is by exchanging. You can either:
(1) Exchange with someone else in the country someone who already has bitcoins (let's say they mined them). In Venezuela, there remains the exact same number of both Bolivars and Bitcoin, so it's zero-sum. Neither Venezuela nor Venezuelans are better off by this exchange because nothing's changed.
(2) Exchange with someone outside the country. Problem 1: Who on Earth will take your worthless Bolivars? Problem 2: If you do manage to find someone who will take your worthless Bolivars, why wouldn't you take US dollars instead (since you can trade freely, you may as well just open a USD bank account somewhere). Or some other asset that hasn't lost 80% of its value in the last year? Gold? Equities? Gold equities? The list is truly endless. If you find someone to take your worthless Bolivar bags for real assets there are much, much better assets.
The fiat-value behind Bitcoin doesn't just spark into existence, willed by the devout masses. It's not like Venezuelans can suddenly mine Bitcoin in a way nobody else can because of their bad government. They also definitely don't all have Bitcoin in a way they can just ignore the balance of their bank accounts.
How do you solve the initial distribution problem in a way that makes sense?
[1] https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/05/31/officials-in-venezuela-be...
[2] https://bitcoinist.com/venezuela-now-requires-bitcoin-miners...
Admittedly, I don't know what could be done with crypto to help the average Venezuelan at this point.
https://www.investopedia.com/news/every-portfolio-should-hav...
Jack has a way to go as his current strategy will only get him to 0.01% in a year. He has said before that he owns quite a bit of bitcoin already though.
>Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has been buying $10,000 worth of Bitcoin per week
>Speaking on the Tales from the Crypt podcast, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has revealed that he has been exceeding his weekly buy limit for Bitcoin
>Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has revealed that he has been exceeding his weekly buy limit for Bitcoin, purchasing $10,000 worth of the cryptocurrency every week.
The first three sentences contradict each other. Later we learn that $10K is the limit for purchasing bitcoin in the Cash app... is he exceeding the limit or not?
"has been" and "a week" indicate that something is recurring. Nothing in the article supports that. It just mentions that Jack claimed he had already exceeded his limit. That is one week.
Do we know that Jack has the same limits as his customers? The blog post just references a tweet that claims the limit is $10K/week. That's where the $10K in the headline comes from.
Listening to the referenced podcast doesn't yield any points for the "per week" side... Around 8:05 is the part they talk about and Jack says he exceeded his limit so he couldn't join in the #stackingSats drive the podcast is endorsing. Jack then says he thinks he can join tomorrow because his limit resets. I mean, it's a symbolic gesture, perhaps he will just buy his supposed $10K per week and say that $25 was part of #stackingSats who really cares... The point is this article and headline are poorly written.
Smart and patient money sells into the speculative mania, then takes the other side of the capitulation trade so they can sell again into the next mania.
Then there's Jack Dorsey and the Winkelvosses who are smart and patient, but they don't trade. They accumulate through both highs and lows because they see a transformative opportunity beyond the boom-bust cycle.