Wow, admittedly my perception of these guys was totally skewed after seeing the movie The Social Network. When I read about their original investment in 2013 I totally wrote it off as being a hairbrained move. Clearly succumbed to my own biases in passing that unfair judgment. Good for them for being so savvy.
I don't understand the liquidity of bitcoin, maybe someone can please explain to me.<p>If I'd bought what today is, say, $100M, and I wanted to cash all of it out tomorrow, could I do it? Could I actually have $100M in my bank account the next day?<p>Edit: ok, not in one day. Let's say, over 6 months, whatever it takes. Can I withdraw $100M?
How long I wonder before we reach the top of this particular bubble.<p>If anything, this story is likely to perpetuate the bull market in Crypto for a while longer. We'll probably get more stories of the most unlikely bitcoin billionaires over the next few months which will just add more fuel to the fire.<p>My guess is that some sort of action by financial regulators will cause the bubble to burst, but quite when that happens who knows. In the meantime, its going to be fascinating to see how it develops. Its history in the making, a case study for the future.
To me this is just the typical example of people that profited handsomely because of:
1- being sons of rich people
and
2- being disgustingly lucky<p>Bitcoin is a braindead bubble with no fundamentals whatsoever, these guys just happened to have a few million lying around, they put it into something that made absolutely zero sense and ended up billionaires.
Only if they sell, and wouldn't a $1B sale pretty much tank it? Is there enough financial coverage from the banking sector behind the exchange houses to cover such a large sell?
The only unique thing about this story is the amount of money they initially gambled.<p>There are lots of people who gambled on bitcoin in 2013, and the only difference is that they couldn't afford to gamble $8million.<p>I don't really find that particularly interesting or newsworthy
This dude on HN is worth some $3bn, assuming he HODLed (EDIT to add: he/she bought 259684 BTC for $3000 in the wake of Mt Gox)<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2676263" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2676263</a>
is not bad, if they sell and the bitcoin price crashes, so what if it crashes, will only get more adoption, because is more useful than gold, especially with the new generation, and gold market cap is so much bigger than bitcoin, I would love a crash to buy some, rather than spending it on things I don't really need.
We do not know about their other investments that tanked. This is how investment world generally works. You lose most your bets but the one bet that gives result pays for it and more.
This comment is totally Off topic. Thats a warning so that if you'd rather stay on topic it doesn't waste your time!<p>I'm not sure if your account is banned @pussypusspuss.. but it seems like a cruel fate to be commenting, have your comments removed, and have no knowledge of your punishment. I think itd be better if you knew your condition so I'm leaving this comment to let you know. I hope the rest of hacker news doesn't mind this!