The world's youngest self-made billionaire
bbc.com
bbc.com
I was floored that Patrick was a billionaire, and then got super nervous and exited the line.
I say the same exact thing to my friends who are mesmerized by rich and famous people. Both money and fame are man-made and didn't exist in pre-historic reptile era of the earth.
Whenever the hierarchies are unestable primates can behave very violently. Hierarchies preserve status quo and reduce violence.
Also, the studies done with Bonobos were flawed as well, because they were only studied in captivity. Bonobos when free are only a bit less aggressive than chimpanzees, and they don't avoid all violence by using sex.
What does Stripe do that makes it a better choice for companies than PayPal?
That said, I think that Y Combinator was crucial for Stripe's success. So many developers read HN and pracyically all of them needed a better alternative to PayPal.
So the UX was simply better for the buyer. And the API is drop-dead simple to implement.
Now a days PCI caught up and requires some compliance for users of Stripe like platforms but still nowhere near as much as the ones who see the card.
Also, being able to be up and accepting payments in less than 15 minutes is pretty great.
And as other's pointed out, Paypal has (had?) a nasty habit of taking people's money. To be fair I know some stripe merchants where Stripe held back payments as protection against chargebacks. But that is just a delay, not flat out taking the money like Paypal used to do.
most users don't know about it, but the depth of the stinky pile of their history is breathtaking in its depth.
What worries more is that this article, like the one about Musk, are really too ego driven. Not a word on teams. That is more understandable here I guess, but the Musk article took it to the next level - the lone genius furiously and successfully solving the world biggest issues with nothing else than his own brain and the moral support of his family.
The moral of those article: there is no place for sidekicks in this world, you are at the top, or you are a loser. And that's where all those ultra-secretive, "I will give you 1% of the company, all you have to do is implement this idea in software", "that will make you a millionaire if we exit don't complain", founders are born.
What was the point of this article ?- To showcase an already predictable scenario ?
Either way, congratulations nonetheless, I do admire and respect the work they put in for Stripe.
Paper ones might be able to take a haircut on their assets for additional liquidity, but that haircut might be enough to make them not a millionaire.
People need cryptocurrency to be illiquid for their peace of mind instead of just facing the reality that they made bad choices.
In the crypto space the lending facilities are just getting started, SALT, the central bank of Mauritus and others will also provide fiat liquidity for cryptocurrency collateral.
Saying he isn’t a billionaire because of that is sort of a double standard though. Most billionaires don’t have billions in liquid cash, they almost all have illiquid property, stocks, bonds, etc. Selling off some of these assets would cause a very similar effect, and often they can’t easily be sold at all.
Agreed on the first, the latter are pretty liquid, save for say 20% of Stripe's market cap, for which a private buyer can likely be found.
> Selling off some of these assets would cause a very similar effect, and often they can’t easily be sold at all.
I'm sure you can find buyers for them though, I'm not sure who's going to buy >$1B of ETH.
1.1 billion would take a few days, but it would be shopped around to other firms that want to buy that much without moving the market.
eh same as any asset class really.
That said OTC price of everything could still be over $1 billion.
Also, Ethereum won't mix inputs from different sending addresses, so it would have to be done in multiple transactions if he has multiple addresses. This would be indistinct from all the other transactions on the network.
OTC markets would try to price his assets at a lower value, and thats where you negotiate, and find counterparties yourself. If you know of several hedge funds that want to BUY ethereum without moving the markets UP, then you can sell straight to them, and tell the OTC trader that they won't get any volume and then you'll get a better price.
35,369,012,164*2%= 707,380,243
"Patrick successfully applied to study maths at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, near Boston in 2007. Two years later John was accepted nearby, at the equally well respected Harvard University."
In the context of saying that MIT is highly respected for math(s), it was then important to point out that Harvard is also highly respected in the subject (and not, say, a globally-known liberal arts college that might be surprisingly weak in math).
Still, it amused me.
"Boss"
What they did right was their developer first approach. They eliminated all of the bullshit you had to do to start accepting payments. They took something that more and more companies needed to do, was unusually complex, and made it easy. It certainly qualifies as “special” if you’ve ever had to do it.