- This would only be the "greatest trade ever" if they actually cash out, i.e. realise the paper profits. The other two examples of "greatest trades ever" did realise their profits. There are of course questions as to whether they could in this case.
- Assuming they could cash out and make $5bn, and if they did, who would the losers be? In the case of the George Soros trade, he made his billion at the expense of the British tax payers, who collectively had to pay an extra £3.3 billion taxes, and mortgage payers, who saw their interest rates shoot up to 15%. In this case, presumably it would be all the people who bought SHIB for a higher price than that at which it settles after cashing out, plus everyone else on the planet who suffers from the social, political and environmental fallout from cryptocurrencies. That $5bn would have to come from somewhere.
It's not a zero-sum game. Even if it was, the cost would be carried by the people paying $5bn for a shitcoin. The pollution etc. are just externalities and not necessary.
Tesla sold something like $100M to test the liquidity of Bitcoin. Nobody tested to sell $5B of a cryptocurrency, let a lone a meme coin.
Next month, $8B of Bitcoin that have been locked in Mt. Gox are expected to be released to their owners. That could become the biggest liquidity test in the history of crypto.
>>Next month, $8B of Bitcoin that have been locked in Mt. Gox are expected to be released to their owners. That could become the biggest liquidity test in the history of crypto.
Next month, Mt. Gox is only expected to officially ratify approval of a plan to distribute the remaining $8B USD in bitcoin. Although nobody knows when the distribution will actually take place (6/12/18/24+ months), based on the timing of steps outlined in the approved plan, the distribution is definitely not happening next month.
I fully expect the bitcoin market to absorb all $8b of the Gox coins rather easily. The market is a LOT more mature than when Mt. Gox was the big kahuna, and demand is a lot higher. I wouldn't be surprised if there were major block buys by large investors/institutions.
The chances these keys aren't lost is zero IMO. Nobody, and I mean nobody would go from an $8k account to $5.7B without selling a dime (no outgoing transaction in 190 days).
$8B is peanuts, $2B of SPY has already traded hands in 15 minutes today. $5B of TSLA call premium traded hands the other day. Crypto has pathetic liquidity.
It is not worth $5.7B, don't multiply huge amounts of shares, stocks, or coins by their market value, as it is impossible to cash out at that price. If he tries to do large sell orders it will sink to 1-10% of its current price.
It's funny then that every time another <insert hip tech startup here> gets VC inflow they value the entire company based on the 5% of shares that the VC bought, and this valuation gets parroted on every media outlet, including YC.
It just tells you that the nature of the beast does not change. We make fun of crypto but the same kind of shilling goes on in the supposedly more sophisticated investor circles as well.
I fully expect the price to crash gloriously once the pullback starts, to fractions of a percent, but 1% of the current is still impressive. 8 grand to $5 million? That's, uh, not too bad.
Not to mention, at its current volume, SHIB is only trading $5M/day. Even if you could continually trade at that volume, it would take you ~3 years to liquidate.
This does not make it less of a speculative bubble. Yet another tulip breed, in a growing tulip market.
Similarly, the upvote chart for this entry may look like it was shared on some place hours after being posted, and upvoted in bulk: https://upvotetracker.com/post/hn/29024311
[edit: removed "insinuating" bit, against HN guidelines]
What are you insinuating? I couldn't care less about Shiba Inu but someone buying something for $8000 which in 400 days is worth $5.7b is a crazy story worth upvoting. It doesn't need any vote brigading. Also:
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [email protected] and we'll look at the data.
I don’t think that’s necessarily the way to interpret that graph. Look at 2:12:08 PM. It still has only 5 upvotes but gets placed onto position 26 of the best list.
Sometimes posts that had few votes get put on the best list and given a second chance. Looks to me like that’s how this story started getting more votes, allowing it to gain traction.
I'm a super crypto n00b - I don't really understand altcoins. BTC makes some sense to me, it's basically the gold standard of crypto currencies (I think?) and ETH makes some sense because of the smart contract stuff built in (I think?) - should I think about all the alt coins like being nation state currencies? Do they have specific unique properties per coin that is relevant to their use-case? What's the theory behind them?
There have existed rapid, low-fee coins intended for usecases like tipping on forums (or quickly buying burritos) for a number of years now.
We're simply waiting on low-information speculators to figure things out at their pace and eventually declare the rightful heirs to the BTC "king of crypyocurrencies" throne, so even places like HN might feel comfortable integrating natively, instead of looking foolish later for adopting a "dumb method that takes an absurd amount of time/fees/etc" (BTC).
It's definitely quite hard to transfer this chunk of SHIB in an exchange. Imagine the eyes watching this address; it will be quite an overwhelming feeling.
[+] [-] astoor|4 years ago|reply
- This would only be the "greatest trade ever" if they actually cash out, i.e. realise the paper profits. The other two examples of "greatest trades ever" did realise their profits. There are of course questions as to whether they could in this case.
- Assuming they could cash out and make $5bn, and if they did, who would the losers be? In the case of the George Soros trade, he made his billion at the expense of the British tax payers, who collectively had to pay an extra £3.3 billion taxes, and mortgage payers, who saw their interest rates shoot up to 15%. In this case, presumably it would be all the people who bought SHIB for a higher price than that at which it settles after cashing out, plus everyone else on the planet who suffers from the social, political and environmental fallout from cryptocurrencies. That $5bn would have to come from somewhere.
[+] [-] dools|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] archibaldJ|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Icko|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ArtTimeInvestor|4 years ago|reply
Tesla sold something like $100M to test the liquidity of Bitcoin. Nobody tested to sell $5B of a cryptocurrency, let a lone a meme coin.
Next month, $8B of Bitcoin that have been locked in Mt. Gox are expected to be released to their owners. That could become the biggest liquidity test in the history of crypto.
[+] [-] otoburb|4 years ago|reply
Next month, Mt. Gox is only expected to officially ratify approval of a plan to distribute the remaining $8B USD in bitcoin. Although nobody knows when the distribution will actually take place (6/12/18/24+ months), based on the timing of steps outlined in the approved plan, the distribution is definitely not happening next month.
[+] [-] VHRanger|4 years ago|reply
They sold because it was the best way to have a book profit for the quarter
[+] [-] jdhn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulgb|4 years ago|reply
I don't read too much into that in terms of how much a large trade would move the market, but it's something.
[+] [-] BbzzbB|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quickthrowman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomlue|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mr2loco|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] kvakvs|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onion2k|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] short_sells_poo|4 years ago|reply
It just tells you that the nature of the beast does not change. We make fun of crypto but the same kind of shilling goes on in the supposedly more sophisticated investor circles as well.
[+] [-] bsanr2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbesto|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cunidev|4 years ago|reply
Similarly, the upvote chart for this entry may look like it was shared on some place hours after being posted, and upvoted in bulk: https://upvotetracker.com/post/hn/29024311
[edit: removed "insinuating" bit, against HN guidelines]
[+] [-] Kiro|4 years ago|reply
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [email protected] and we'll look at the data.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] codetrotter|4 years ago|reply
Sometimes posts that had few votes get put on the best list and given a second chance. Looks to me like that’s how this story started getting more votes, allowing it to gain traction.
See also this post by HN moderator “dang” about the second chance system and the comments he wrote there as well about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
[+] [-] personjerry|4 years ago|reply
Step 2. Create a coin, buy a lot of it for yourself
Step 3. Get friend to list your coin on Coinbase
Step 4. ???
Step 5. Profit
[+] [-] ajaimk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neom|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jstx1|4 years ago|reply
Just wow.
[+] [-] newacc9|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mettamage|4 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PY8qvapOfs
[+] [-] throwaway4good|4 years ago|reply
Let's make a HN coin! Who is in?
[+] [-] tata71|4 years ago|reply
We're simply waiting on low-information speculators to figure things out at their pace and eventually declare the rightful heirs to the BTC "king of crypyocurrencies" throne, so even places like HN might feel comfortable integrating natively, instead of looking foolish later for adopting a "dumb method that takes an absurd amount of time/fees/etc" (BTC).
[+] [-] tmaly|4 years ago|reply
At some point the music stops
[+] [-] tomhunters|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rchaud|4 years ago|reply
Otherwise WeWork would be a $50bn behemoth as its backers continued to insist right up until the comical S-1 dropped.
[+] [-] Aeolun|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] sevenf0ur|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lngnmn2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] 908087|4 years ago|reply
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