Winklevoss twins become first Bitcoin billionaires

[ranzino]

I hope they are smart enough to cash in those fake currency before the massive bubble bursts in a dramatic way!

Quit while you are ahead guys!

you cannot, at least not such amounts and in a very short time.

[oxymoronic]

You are one of those beneficiaries of said entitlements, yet we don't see you setting an example and choose to opt out of welfare.

Ironic really, but sadly common as plenty of your kind love to ask for handouts while denying others of theirs.

oh no he didnt! "your kind"? WHAT YOU MEAN BRO, my kind? do we have a racist in the house? i think so

[Barnabas]

I hope they are smart enough to cash in those fake currency before the massive bubble bursts in a dramatic way!

Quit while you are ahead guys!

Why would they cash out when they have a licensed chartered LCC exchange of their very own? People assume this is all about money but there is a bigger goal for them. That is for a seat on the board with regulators in new york. That is what they truly want. Two years ago their bitcoins were worth 35m usd.

[Daelak]

You have stuff I don't, gimme gimme gimme

The comprehensive grasp you have on economics and taxation is uncanny. Where did you go to school, Common Sense University, no wait, you use the GI Bill, one of the most redistributive handouts given by the government that had radically changed the wealth and lives of generations of people after WW2.

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Yeah, it's hard to take people seriously who base proposed tax policies on envy instead of utility

Higher tax rates would make the ROI's in the most wealthiest portfolio's higher than they are now. You just don't understand the ROI of public spending.

[ro9ue]

what an inspiring story of two impoverished men pulling themselves up by their bootstraps

I lol'd.


Yeah I invested in Bitcoin but I was way late to the party. I made some money but not enough to cash out yet.

[oxymoronic]

Higher tax rates would make the ROI's in the most wealthiest portfolio's higher than they are now. You just don't understand the ROI of public spending.

tell us then smart guy. i want details not shitty speaking points.

[matt4pack]

Yeah, it's hard to take people seriously who base proposed tax policies on envy instead of utility

Yeah like the tax policy you love worked out so well in Kansas.

But of course you love spending other people's money on useless military toys.

[Barnabas]

Yeah like the tax policy you love worked out so well in Kansas.

But of course you love spending other people's money on useless military toys.

Kansas isn't doing that bad with public ROI. They are ranked 18 out of 50 states.

https://wallethub.com/edu/state-taxp...i-report/3283/

[Daelak]

tell us then smart guy. i want details not shitty speaking points.

Higher rates of taxation would mean larger discretionary spending, giving way to more funds allocated for infrastructure. Consider the ROI from Eisenhower's interstate highway system, it is orders of magnitude larger than any private investment in our times. Or from another angle, higher taxation rates on the wealthy would comprise a nominal rise in their overall wealth and income, but the multiplicative effect of that additional taxation would end up funding more programs, grants, infrastructure projects that would inevitably see larger GDP growth gains than in a scenario where there is austerity or tax cuts. Finally, since all equity portfolios are tied into the stock market, private equity, or real estate, which all have a positive correlation with GDP, pushing a tax policy that makes the vast majority of consumers no federal taxation burden would free up hundreds of billions of dollars in the form of real estate appreciation (equity to pull out), higher consumer sales and confidence, and larger private investment by middle class investors.

[shifu]

Except most people in this forum fail to understand that if the winklevi twins decided to cash out that "Billion" It would crash the value of bitcoin and their "Billion" would go up in smoke. So hears to them shitting their brains out hoping to god the value of that crypto currency does not implode because in order for them to become "Billionaires" some other real billionaire would have to purchase their coins or a bank would have to back them.

[Sinyc]

As with most things, if you have money...you can make more money as you can take risks than other people can't. If I was a millionaire I'd invest 50k in every new crypto currency, one of them is bound to take off and pay for the failed ones.

Right? They had 11 million dollars to blow and threw it into Bitcoin and got lucky. Must be nice to be so rich you can just throw 11 million at something and not even care if you lost it all.....

[Misuteri]

Not once but twice they will make a killing by not doing a damn thing

And, if four years ago, you had bought $70 worth of bitcoin instead of going to the movies and paying for a month of WoW you would have $10,000,000 but you didn't do that.

So guess what, by not doing a damn thing you're sitting here complaining about not having a damn thing.

[Deleted]

It's not stealing, it's about making our system (which the rich benefit from more than anyone) function better. And is there anything in my post that sounds like I'm jealous of them? It's not jealousy - I just think it's inefficient and an unfortunate outcome of flaws in our system.

The next problem is making sure the new money gets put to use properly instead of going into the pockets of those collecting it.

[Daelak]

Right? They had 11 million dollars to blow and threw it into Bitcoin and got lucky. Must be nice to be so rich you can just throw 11 million at something and not even care if you lost it all.....

That's equivalent to their tax burden in terms of percentages.

[Deleted]

As with most things, if you have money...you can make more money as you can take risks than other people can't. If I was a millionaire I'd invest 50k in every new crypto currency, one of them is bound to take off and pay for the failed ones.

No, this is not how it works =/

[Cyberowl]

They aren't billionaires until they cash out. Their balls to hold it until now though...

[DSRilk]

in order for them to become "Billionaires" some other real billionaire would have to purchase their coins or a bank would have to back them.

Or what normally happens could happen... this kind of story leads a lot of people with moderate incomes to buy into it hoping to make good money while the twins slide this investment into another, so that when it collapses, it only really takes down a ton of middle class people with more hope than sense.

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No, this is not how it works =/

That's pretty much exactly how it works. There are several different new technologies, one of which will likely rise to the top. Guessing is a gamble most people can't afford, so they don't - or they invest very little (not that most people have a lot to invest in the first place). However, if you dump a good amount of money into each, then as things start to shift, you move out of the lesser investments to cut your losses while watching the successful one vault you into big money. Whether you're talking about VCRs, PCs, tech money, or I suspect electric cars, the same thing always happens. The reason middle class people rarely ever get rich when the wealthy do is because they simply cannot take the same risks. 11 million dollars to someone who has 100 million is basically nothing. Percentages don't really apply the same way because 89 million left is not the same thing as dropping from 50k to 40k (i.e. a roughly 10% investment).

Here's a more tangible example. A bunch of townhouses were built right behind my neighborhood and initially sold for 225k. Many of them are now owned by people in MY neighborhood. Why? Because the people here knew it would rise in value and are wealthy enough to have cash on hand to take the "low risk" of investing 50k as a down payment. Those houses are now selling for over 300k each less than 10 years later. Of course the real money is coming from renting those properties and paying someone else to manage them. Not everyone has 50k cash to drop, however, only people already in the higher income brackets can do it. People who can afford to invest 50k and risk having a property that may not see rent on occasion. The same thing works on much larger scales when it comes to stocks.

It's certainly possible, if you're born with and nurture the right skill sets, to rise up in the world. I know because I've personally done it. I've also seen people who happen to be very smart, but not in a field people are willing to pay a lot for, unable to break out of a more moderate income. Breaking into the truly upper echelon, however, requires being at the right place at the right time (or having the right parents).

[LedZeppelin]

They are only billionaires if a lot of stores start accepting bitcoin (which isnt true currently) or they can turn those bitcoins into USD. Now I dont know exactly how liquid bitcoin is but exchanging all of their bitcoins for USD would definitely have a negative impact on the bitcoin market.

[Orlong]

How Winklevoss twins used $11m Facebook payout to become world's first Bitcoin billionaires

The twin brothers who sued Mark Zuckerberg claiming he stole the idea for Facebook are worth more than $1bn after capitalising on the astonishing rise in Bitcoin.

An $11m (£8m) bet on Bitcoin made by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss over four years ago has ballooned by almost 10,000pc after last week’s price surge. It is believed to be the first billion-dollar return made by a cryptocurrency investor, a landmark moment for the controversial asset.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...-billionaires/
(paywall)

Not once but twice they will make a killing by not doing a damn thing

They didnt get rich doing nothing. They helped create Facebook while in college and then got a big payout when they sued Zuckerberg after his greedy ass denied that they had anything to do with it. Im guessing they invested some of that money in Bitcoin and got where they are now.

[shifu]

Jeez its scary what people in this thread are suggesting how they would invest given they had the same opportunity as the winklevi twins. I would encourage anyone in this thread interested in investing to read the two books below:

A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing - By Burton G. Malkiel. As well as The Future for Investors: Why the Tried and the True Triumph Over the Bold and the New - By Jeremy J. Siegel. . If you are truly interested in getting familiar with the basics. And understanding the history of investing, current market state, and most importantly current investment strategies. These two books are an excellent starting point.