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Comment by beaner | Hacker News Reader

Selling the Bitcoin for dollars rather than keeping the wealth as Bitcoin is the myth that still hampers most people's thinking.

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I quoted the USD value to aid people in understanding the enormity of the purchase, not to suggest USD is a better repository of wealth.

(But I also happen to think USD is a better repository of wealth for reasons I'd be happy to discuss.)

Unless you can find a way to pay for your retirement almost entirely in Bitcoin, you will probably need to transfer it out to something more liquid. No one wants to sell you a house in Bitcoin only for the value to drop significantly overnight before they could convert it to cash all because some tech billionaire made a funny tweet. Maybe a stablecoin has more potential for a payment system but Bitcoin is just too risky to hold onto if you aren't trying to make money off of it. If someone really had that much Bitcoin laying around, they might as well just take out a large chunk now to throw into a stable index fund and just live off the dividends. Even just a yearly return of 1% from $100M would provide a lavish lifestyle where you'd never have to do anything you don't want to ever again. Set your whole family up with trust funds, make a huge donation to get a hospital wing named after you, fill a garage with supercars, the choices are endless. Or you could just sit staring at a computer screen as your crypto bounces around waiting for some huge crash or new legislation to fuck you over.

You say that, but luxury real estate agencies representing multimillion dollar homes in Los Angeles will and do accept Bitcoin. It’s not just a PR stunt, I’ve seen many legitimate brokerages state they’ll accept Bitcoin (the article I link makes it sound like it’s only homes worth tens of millions of dollars, but I’ve seen it for homes as little as $1.2M)

Disclaimer: I have no stake in Bitcoin (0.00 crypto balance), but I did recently buy a home in Los Angeles. You’d be surprised how many sellers said they would treat Bitcoin as better than cash, as if competing for a home wasn’t hard enough already

They only accept it because the luxury housing market is a money laundering mechanism.

Also Book Deals and Artwork

You will still have to pay capital gains tax in $ once you pay for something in Bitcoin though (assuming that your bitcoin has appreciated versus the $)

Is it wealth if you never turn it into anything else tangible?

It's like how billionaires are able to get loans by putting up collateral and greatly reduce their taxes. Bezos isn't actually worth $200 billion until he sells the stock, which is a bit like what would happen here. He's going to die a very, very rich man with a 3-4% tax rate each year while he's alive.

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