This does fascinate me. How many people who have won the crypto-lottery like that still keep invested? Is most of the crypto gain unrealised so far? Or most of it been drained out?
This does fascinate me. How many people who have won the crypto-lottery like that still keep invested? Is most of the crypto gain unrealised so far? Or most of it been drained out?
I.e. to someone who was early into Bitcoin, they might wish to never sell off all of their BTC.
And besides, even if you wanted to sell off your Bitcoins, there are a number of things to consider:
- Taxes. Why sell millions of USD worth of Bitcoin now, and pay taxes on all of it today? Possibly better in some situations to sell enough to live comfortably for a few years, and then sell more later when you need to again.
- What are you gonna do with the money instead? Put it in stocks? Buy a bunch of houses?
Whelp, spent the first 50 on a house all humans will drool over. Got the compulsory car. Got the compulsory jet. Got the compulsory yacht (not quite as large as Bezos' (ehmm, banana?) that could not leave its construction port). [1]
And with the other 600 million? Private air force? [2] Air craft carrier for your private air force? Or you end up like every wealthy human, dumping your money into real estate so that you can buy 1000 houses for every normal human, and completely "disrupt" the housing market.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koru_(yacht)#Koru_and_De_Hef
[2] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/32869/this-man-owns-th...
People quite literally just hand money to people who already have money. I have sat in a room, and watched someone nearby check their phone and say "There's a minor wealthy celebrity nearby! We all need to go and buy tickets to the stadium! We might see or meet them!"
I went to Dragon Con a few years ago, and people were willing to stand in line all Dragon Con, their entire weekend experience, to see a wealthy famous person. I'd go play games, go out, and see the people move in the line slightly. All weekend. Stretched all the way around the entire block and down the street. Wasn't even "that" famous (supporting movie character).
Citation needed. I got into bitcoin back when mining on your CPU was actually a reasonable thing to do. I tried selling it when it was worth about $50, only for mtgox to promptly fold.
Suffice to say I firmly believe bitcoin isn't really a solution to anything.
Of course anecdote does not data make, but neither does an unsourced claim.
The other crypto lottery winners I know (those who have admitted it, anyway) gave up a lot of their winnings either by doubling down in BitCoin at the highs or by gambling on altcoins in the hopes of a repeat. They started as believers and their early winnings only galvanized their confidence. After that, they were dumping their cash into crypto at every opportunity because they thought it was going to make them supremely wealthy.
I probably lost at least another ~1M$ worth (not projected: at the time. it sucks but you move on) through completely preventable ways when acting agains my own better knowledge. Check. Your. Backups. 3-2-1.
I made great "second-order-gains" from my dabbling in crypto I guess you can say, since I made a decent career in the crypto industry. Most people I know in the industry personally who have been around for as long are still invested to various degrees and defi people gonna defi.
I'd probably balance my portfolio more towards real-estate, commodities and maybe stocks if I'd be smart about it but I have enough of anxiety around taxes that I'm postponing doing anything that means having to file paperwork or that may be illegal. No accounts on exchanges. If it really comes down to it I guess I'd had to consider changing countries if my country of residence becomes hostile enough that using my crypto becomess untenable. I'm still very much a "true believer".
(throwaway for obvious reasons)
couple of points
1. You said fear of taxes - have you spoken to an accountant? I understand it's capital gains.
2. What's your view on why the price went up and stays up-ish? Speculation? Funnel for money laundering?
3. What's "believing"? If central banks all published their own coins does that solve the problem of native digital cash? or is this money without fiat type of thing (I am sorry for strange questions - I am sure there are places to dig this up online but it's only what I can glean from around)
Satoshi is in theory holding onto ~25 billion in coins. Trying to cash that out would however absolutely tank the current valuations.
But that’s hardly the only major risk. Bulgaria has something like 213,000 bitcoin worth nominally 5 billion or so and no particular interest in bitcoin, but trying to cash that out is again problematic.
I've personally watched sell pressure on Coinbase in the multi-million range get executed over the course of a few minutes, with only a modest temporary effect on the price.
Which is why very large transactions frequently occur either outside of open markets or across a surprisingly long period.