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?
Edit: ok, not in one day. Let's say, over 6 months, whatever it takes. Can I withdraw $100M?
If you were withdrawing $100M in BTC you wouldn’t do it using an exchange, you would use an OTC dealer, and yes you could absolutely do it in far less than 6 months.
Here’s a good intro blog post, you can find more by searching for “bitcoin otc” or various phrases containing “whales” (term for someone with lots of digital currency). https://vinnylingham.com/the-1-dont-use-bitcoin-exchanges-ff...
Also, noting: this article’s title is misleading or false. There are other and previous bitcoin billionaires who are not as public about it, though the actual article qualifies the claim a bit. Finalky: seeing all of the replies that state emphatically “no” and explain why makes me doubt all answers on hacker news that I trust.
> There's still a semi-central location you have to go to in order to get any real, actual currency out of it
This is definitely still the case. The exchanges themselves, though, could potentially be implemented via blockchain. This would likely reduce transaction costs and could make them more secure. In this case the would actually be decentralized.
He developed some buy/sell strategies that netted small profits, but he said it was hard to scale it up.
IIRC he said some days his trades alone counted for 10% of trading on the exchange. No idea which exchange it was or how long ago.
This also is basically buy-sell neutral, trying to get in/out same number of coins per day or per week. A number of other bitcoin market makers probably do something similar.
Given that, I wouldn't naively assume a daily volume number on exchange means the exchange could absorb an increase of one-sided sell orders that's even a good fraction of that volume notional without a major price drop.
Also given the lack of regulation I wonder how much of that volume is churning. Ie, fake trades just to increase volume (something illegal on regulated exchanges for stocks, swaps, and other financial products). Bitcoin billionaires have major incentives to keep BTC prices high, and I could seem them easily paying 'negligible' transaction costs to create artificial volume.
But of course I have no idea (like everybody else on this thread).