We're posting up notes from the 2013 Value Investing Congress in New York. Next up are Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss of Winklevoss Capital. They gave a presentation entitled "Bitcoin: The Internet of Money."
The Winklevii Value Investing Congress Presentation
-->
Harvard undergrad, Oxford
Masters. Opened saying they were
not here to talk about FB.
Bitcoin
Basic explanation of it. Creator: Satoshi Nakamoto: a 36 year old
Japanese man, left 80k pages of post, 39k lines of code. No trace of who he was as a person.
Could be a group of people, British style or English. Did not identify with any group, or political thought. Engineer type frustrated with an
economic system that crashes often.
Could be arrested for creating a currency in the US.
Current cap is $1.5B.
"Root problem is all
the trust that is required to make the system work."
Fixed supply of Bitcoins,
mined until 2040. 21M coins, each
about $140, can divide it. It's
never been counterfeited. Bitcoin
does not have widespread use.
Compares to Cyprus banking issues - bitcoin doesn't have this issue.
You can save bitcoins in
your brain with a multi-word password. Countries with more
inflation have higher bitcoin premium. China is the most active
on the Bitcoin network.
They are trying to do an
exchange-traded fund.
Every transaction from the
beginning of Bitcoin is traceable, on the public ledger. Can't shut it down because
it's decentralized. Even in US
regulates it, it's still a protocol.
They say Bitcoin is
volatile because it's a new currency, not due to the idea - over time the price
will stabilize.
Be sure to check out the other presentations from the New York VIC here.
