In a rally we described yesterday as ‘parabolic,’ Bitcoin blew up to over $13,500, but then pulled back quickly this morning erasing about $2700 of those gains.
Now, it’s being reported that Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who were early Bitcoin investors, are billionaires – again! – based on this past week’s price action.
Bloomberg reported this morning that the twins’ Bitcoin fortune is at a peak not seen since March of last year, and has come up from just over $650 million at the beginning of 2019. That’s doubling in about half a year, and it highlights just how mammoth this week’s price action is.
“As early investors in bitcoin, the twins’ wealth now stands at its highest since March 2018 and has soared 120% from $654 million as of January this year, Bloomberg claims,” writes Marie Huillet at Cointelegraph today. “The current bitcoin bull-run has restored the twins to ‘bitcoin billionaires’ once again.”
This news says something profound about Bitcoin buy-and-holders.
It says that the Winklevoss twins, rather than dumping all of their Bitcoin in their previous enrichment phase, held onto at least some significant portion of that coinage until it spiked again this week.
That’s really something interesting in a market world where profit-taking is routinely encouraged – where investors typically want to buy low and sell high, and get out of whatever they’re in and plow it back into something else. If you made double your money on Wendy’s (we’re not picking on Dave Thomas!) or Ford or Oracle, would you keep that money in?
Clearly, buy-and-holders like the twins who experienced huge gains and held on through leaner times were looking for some kind of endgame.
It speaks to why Bitcoin is a unique investment – many believe that cryptocurrency, and Bitcoin in particular, has not hit its stride yet, or been assimilated into our financial lives in the ways that we’ll see in the years to come.
That may be why even though some investors like the twins have profited handily off of Bitcoin, they’re continuing to hold onto it for bigger gains later.
Another way to say this is that it’s easier to hold onto an asset through volatile markets when you think there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. By contrast, buying and holding some random commodity, it would be hard to hang on while seeing the investment in question head back down from euphoric highs and cut itself in half.
The other thing that this news says about the Winklevoss twins is that their strategy paid off.
Hodlers were waiting for a BTC market rejuvenation, and now they have it.
Huillet also cites remarks by Qiao Wang — director of product at crypto data startup Messari.
Commenting on recent highs, Wang refers to Bitcoin as “digital gold” and has this advice for investors:
“They should slowly accumulate Bitcoin and hold it for years to come,” Wang wrote. “They should not go all-in or trade frequently.”
Crypto fans are celebrating the new change in Winklevoss fortunes.
“They deserve it; they have put all in for the crypto community when times were tough, too.” writes Amrit Mirchandani in a comment on the Cointelegraph piece.
