The Winklevoss Twins Are Now Bitcoin Billionaires (theverge.com)

The twin brothers who gained notoriety for suing Mark Zuckerberg over the claim that they started Facebook have done remarkably well in the wake of Bitcoin's record gains. From a report: Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss won $65 million from the Facebook lawsuit, and invested $11 million of their payout into Bitcoin in 2013, amassing one of the largest portfolios of Bitcoin in the world -- 1 percent of the entire currency's dollar value equivalent, said the twins at the time. Their slice of the Bitcoin pie is now worth over $1 billion after Bitcoin surged past $10,000 last week to now trade at $11,100, according to CoinDesk. The cryptocurrency has surged over 10,000 percent since the Winklevoss' investment, when one coin traded at around $120.

Comments

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Try selling that off. I guarantee they won't get anywhere close to $1 billion, as the price drops while selling.

Re:LOL

[Megol]

That the value of bitcoins will reduce drastically if they try to cash out. And I'll add that the exchanges doesn't have to $$$ to give.

Maybe worth a virtual billion dollars

[qzzpjs]

Unless they can actually cash out that billion at any moment, I wouldn't consider it real.

Re:Maybe worth a virtual billion dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

So I guess the stock market isn't real either.

You can't take that much money out of a bank in one go either. I guess banks aren't real.

Re:Maybe worth a virtual billion dollars

[110010001000]

Correct. Until you sell your stock investment you haven't made any money at all. That is why you are taxed on sale.

Re:Maybe worth a virtual billion dollars

[Anubis IV]

I agree that having assets that are fully liquid is a silly standard to hold something to, but that's not the issue here. If you own real estate, its value may change over time, but selling your properties wouldn't drive the fair market price down across the entire market. There's nothing stopping you from selling any or all of your properties fortheir full value. Those assets may not be liquid, but they still have a worth that can, for all intents and purposes, be redeemed at full value.

In contrast, when someone owns a large chunk of stock in a company, the very act of attempting to sell that stock usually devalues the stock to the point that they aren't actually getting anywhere close to the price on paper. The problem isn't that they aren't liquid: the problem is that not all of the stock can be redeemed at full value, and because the stocks can't be redeemed at full value, they aren't actually worth what they're listed at.

Re:Maybe worth a virtual billion dollars

[AlanBDee]

There is a similar scheme involving whole life insurance. If I understand it correctly (and I don't promise that I do) you can put your money into the whole life policy. As it grows you would have to pay taxes on it if you pull it out. Instead of pulling it out you get "loans" against the policy which is tax free. Then, when you die, the policy passes to your heirs tax free as part of the policy pay-out. https://www.nerdwallet.com/blo...

It looks good on paper but I actually question how well it really works. For example: if your investment only grew at a meager 4% in the life insurance policy after fees while an index mutual fund grew at 8% then you'd better off just paying taxes on the growth of the index fund. (The actual numbers depend on your tax level but you get the idea)

I have no intention of getting a whole life insurance policy to do this.

I hope they didn't put it in Mt. Gox

[poached]

Because you know, that would be sad.

Slashdot

[gatfirls]

..The premier news source for bitcoin.

Re:Slashdot

[leonbev]

I'm convinced that the new owners of Slashdot have a big stake in Bitcoin, and this is how they make their money.

Hey... it beats interstitial advertising, anyway.

Reality of All Billionaires

[sycodon]

This is the same reality faced by Bill Gates, Bezos, Musk, Buffet, etc.

Billionaires don't have a billion dollars. In fact their actual income is quite modest compared to what you think when you say, "Billionaire". Wealth doesn't mean cash in your bank account.

To be sure, they have NO financial hardship, even if they spend like idiots. But they don't "have" a billion dollars in cash.

Re:Reality of All Billionaires

[alvinrod]

You don't need a billion dollars (or really even a million for that matter) in cash for any reason. What the hell would you actually buy with it? Perhaps you could perform a (hostile) takeover of some other company that's publicly traded or just for sale by the owner, but the kinds of people who'd do that would be looking at it as an investment instead of like buying a car.

You don't even need to be cash rich at all as long as you're just rich. Banks will always be willing to lend you money when you have billions of dollars worth of assets.

Re:Reality of All Billionaires

[WrongMonkey]

Exactly! I've tried to explain this many times and usually get modded down. Valuation of personal wealth based largely on securities should not be compared to cash in the bank.

This is a real problem for the Gates Foundation because it limits how much they can cash out to spend before it disrupts the stock market.

Re:Reality of All Billionaires

[sycodon]

Even with a hostile take over, most of the consideration is in the form of shares.

Re:Reality of All Billionaires

[Killall -9 Bash]

If currency was guaranteed to have a specif value, inflation wouldn't be a thing.

Re:Reality of All Billionaires

[mindstormpt]

Slashdot: Jeff Bezos Just Sold $1.1 Billion in Amazon Stock

You're funny.

Re:Reality of All Billionaires

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'll tell you what I'd do, man: two chicks at the same time, man."

Re:Reality of All Billionaires

[14erCleaner]

What the hell would you actually buy with it?

Today's stylish billionaire starts his own space program.

Not really... look at Ars

[CrashNBrn]

bitcoin site:arstechnica.com :: About 48,700 results (0.51 seconds)
bitcoin site:slashdot.org :: About 4,460 results (0.46 seconds)

Re:Better business model

[icejai]

If you think Bitcoin fights manipulative billionaires and Wall Street assholes, you're in for a seriously rude awakening once Bitcoin futures starts trading on the CME.

Satoshi Nakamoto Did it First

[DanielRavenNest]

Whoever he/she/they are, they have an estimated 800K bitcoins, from being the first miner, in the days it was easy. We know those coins have never moved since being mined, because the blockchain tracks every transaction. So they would have become a billionaire for the first time, when the price peaked in Nov, 2013, then again in Mar and Apr of 2017 when it crossed $1250/BTC.

It is always possible those early coins are lost, or the private keys intentionally destroyed. It is also possible Nakamoto is waiting until they can buy HSBC, just because they can. The message in the Genesis Block (the first one in the blockchain) is "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks", so they are not a fan of banks.

Re:Good luck selling that...

[ghoul]

Over 300 million folks have bought iPhones when you can make calls from a 5 dollar flip phone. Sometimes a need is not known to exist till a product is created. BTC is a product and needs are constantly getting invented for it.