Bitcoin

Instagram sold for $1B with just 13 employees

Shaan cites Instagram's $1 billion sale at 13 employees (5 hired in the last few months) as evidence that the size of the firm is shrinking, en route to the prediction that one person will eventually create a billion-dollar company.

“it's like, oh, Instagram, when it sold for $1 billion, was at 13 people. That was kind of amazing for 13 people. And really, they hired 5 of them in the last few months. So it really was like 8 people created a billion-dollar company.”

How a short squeeze drives the price up

Shaan explains the mechanism behind Bitcoin's ~$10K two-day spike: as price rises, heavily leveraged short sellers are forced to buy to close their positions, and their buying pushes the price higher, triggering more shorts to cover, just like Tesla.

“Um, but what happens is because all the shorts start worrying that the price is going to run up, they all start trying to close out their positions at the same time. So they all start buying. So the people who are betting against it, all of a sudden add all this buying pressure where they have to close out their position. They have to buy Bitcoin, which causes the price to go up and up and up and up.”

The crypto exchange Shaan killed before Bitcoin hit $100

Shaan recounts his Idea Lab nearly launching a crypto exchange when Bitcoin was under $100, only for his billionaire backer Michael Birch to kill it over SEC/Silk-Road fears. They did nothing, Shaan bought no Bitcoin, and he ended up chasing it years later at $20,000 a coin.

“So let's put the kibosh on our crypto exchange that you guys are trying to launch tomorrow. And I was like, ah, shit. So I go tell the team and blah, blah, blah. And long story short, we do nothing. So we don't launch the thing. I don't buy any Bitcoin at that time when Bitcoin's under $100. And we move on with our life. And then now, years later, I'm just chasing that crypto dream the whole time, buying it at $20,000 a coin instead of when it was at $20,000.”

$3M of Bitcoin became ~$100M

Sam recounts an investor whose ~$3M all-in Bitcoin position (bought near $3K) grew to roughly $100M when Bitcoin peaked around $63-65K in December.

“Well, last December, when it hit $65,000 or $63,000, his $3 million turned into around $100 million, and he sold about half of it.”

$3M of Bitcoin became ~$100M

Sam recounts an investor whose ~$3M all-in Bitcoin position (bought near $3K) grew to roughly $100M when Bitcoin peaked around $63-65K in December.

“Well, last December, when it hit $65,000 or $63,000, his $3 million turned into around $100 million, and he sold about half of it.”

Satoshi's hidden genesis-block message named the banks

Dan Held explains the only message Satoshi ever embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain was the genesis-block headline about a UK bank bailout, signaling Bitcoin was built to disrupt central banking, not Visa or PayPal.

“And it said, "UK Chancellor on the verge of second bailout for banks." So that was the only message that Satoshi ever put into the Bitcoin blockchain. And so it's a very clear signal that Bitcoin wasn't here to disrupt Visa or PayPal. Bitcoin is here to disrupt the existing financial system and central banking.”

The 'wrench attack' and why Bitcoin doesn't raise your kidnap risk

Dan Held names the 'wrench attack'—physically coercing someone for their keys—but argues holding Bitcoin doesn't make you a bigger target, since any wealthy person can be forced to convert liquid assets to Bitcoin and send it to a kidnapper anyway.

“And that's actually classically called the wrench attack in the Bitcoin world is that someone could come to you and just whack you over the head with a wrench right now.”

Bitcoin laser eyes as decentralized religious marketing

Shaan frames the Bitcoin 'laser eyes' profile-pic trend as a brilliant decentralized marketing tactic—a religious mark like a yarmulke, slightly mysterious so people ask about it, and inherently memeable so everyone can replicate it.

“Bitcoin in so many ways is a religion, and this is just yet another religious mark, basically. This is the yarmulke. This is the thing you wear that says, "Hey, I'm a part of this religion." And, um, you know, putting it in the profile picture, having it be slightly mysterious so people don't know what it's for, and then they ask, and then making it memeable where we could all do it”

Bitcoin is a country: a society organized by protocol

Maples reframes crypto networks as nascent societies. Bitcoin is a society of people who care about sound money, with the protocol acting as governance, the same way a country decides its boundaries, who gets in, and how to separate powers and protect individuals from the mob and the tyrant.

“What is a country really? It's a bunch of people who decide what their boundaries are, who decide who gets in the club, and they have a constitution where they decide how to separate powers and how to protect the rights of individuals against the mob and the tyrant. That's exactly what Bitcoin does with its protocol.”

When speculation IS the product vs. when it just fades

Shaan distinguishes Bitcoin from hype assets like Zed Run, Top Shot, and Clubhouse: for Bitcoin, higher prices from speculation actually make it a better store of value, so speculation creates the product. For games and collectibles, speculation eventually fades and there's nothing left.

“And both games and speculation sort of fade over time with everything except for Bitcoin because For Bitcoin, the speculation is actually what makes it valuable. You know, people speculate that the price will go higher. The higher the price goes, the more it actually is a store of value. So the speculation actually creates the product, whereas that's not the case for ZET.”

A 'scratch-off lottery' Chrome extension that drops Bitcoin

Shaan's gimmick idea: every new browser tab shows a little package you click to maybe win micro-amounts of Bitcoin, puzzle pieces, or coupons — a McDonald's-Monopoly-style game that drives installs, monetized with ads and affiliate coupon kickbacks.

“You give it a quick click and then you're either going to get nothing, you get air, you get a tiny little something. It's like a puzzle piece or maybe like a little something, I don't know, something. Or you can actually get some Bitcoin. You can get little satoshis basically. And so it would just become this little hamster game where every time you open a new tab, are you really going to not click the thing?”

Steal thisBolt a variable-reward 'scratch-off' loop onto a free utility to make installs sticky and viral.

NFTs are scarcity for the internet, but worth far less than Bitcoin

Shaan frames NFTs as a way to make digital things scarce, but caps the upside: the collectibles/trading-card market is ~$5-20B/year, while Bitcoin competes with gold's ~$10 trillion market cap, so NFTs are 'nowhere near' Bitcoin.

“the trading card market might be somewhere between $5 billion and $20 billion a year. Bitcoin, which is like a financial asset, financial system, like things in the financial system are worth trillions. You know, like if Bitcoin's digital gold, gold's market cap is $10 trillion. So they're just operating on different scales.”

Anonymity removes the central point of attack

Shaan argues Satoshi Nakamoto's anonymity is why Bitcoin succeeded: a known founder or company would have created a central point of attack to shut it down or question motives. Sam notes a ~$1 trillion asset was created under a fake name.

“If there was a person who had created Bitcoin or a company that had created Bitcoin, I would bet anything that it would not have had the success it's had so far because there would have been a sort of central point of attack where you could go shut it down. You could question their motives.”

Calacanis: Bitcoin could go to zero or under $1,000

Calacanis says with no use case beyond speculation and storage, a better technology could trigger Reddit-style mania and drain Bitcoin, making 'Bitcoin zero or Bitcoin under $1,000 a distinct possibility' over a slow ride. He advises holders to take profit and buy a house.

“So I think people being bullish on— I still think Bitcoin zero or Bitcoin under $1,000 is a distinct possibility. Now, would that happen overnight? No, I think it would be a slow ride as people realized Ethereum or whatever the next one is, is the better one, right?”

Grayscale: $24B AUM, holds 3%+ of all Bitcoin, charges a premium

Shaan describes Grayscale's GBTC as a money printer: $24 billion in AUM, holding over 3% of all Bitcoin, charging a 2% management fee plus trading at a premium to its underlying holdings, likely making its operators over a billion dollars.

“So they now have $24 billion in assets under management as a pretty new thing. They are buying some sick amount of Bitcoin. I think they hold over 3% of all Bitcoin now. And the crazy thing is everybody who's buying the Bitcoin from there is buying it at a premium because they have not only a management fee of 2%, they literally just trade at a higher price than their underlying Bitcoin holdings.”

Anchoring bias: buying Bitcoin at $19K after first buying at $400

Shaan explains how anchoring to an old entry price cost him money: despite higher conviction now, buying Bitcoin at $19,000 felt wrong because he'd first bought at $300-400. He's now forcing himself to buy $25K of Bitcoin every morning to hit his Coinbase limit.

“last 5 days in a row I bought $25,000 worth of Bitcoin. Just every morning I just wake up and I buy $25,000. I hit my limit on Coinbase of how much I can buy of Bitcoin. For a long time it was really hard for me to buy Bitcoin, even though I believe in Bitcoin. But it's like when I first bought Bitcoin, it was like in the the $300, $400 range. You know, now it's $19,000 per coin”

Steal thisIgnore your original entry price; size positions on current conviction, not what you used to pay.

Paul Tudor Jones' 2% Bitcoin position is a 'massive amount'

Shaan cites credibility signals driving his Bitcoin conviction: Raoul Pal moving 90% of his net worth into Bitcoin, and billionaire Paul Tudor Jones taking a 2% portfolio position — which at his scale is an enormous amount of Bitcoin.

“You see that Paul Tudor Jones, the billionaire hedge fund guy, said he's accumulated a 2% position in his portfolio of Bitcoin. 2% for Paul Tudor Jones is a massive amount of Bitcoin.”

Turn Western Union into a Bitcoin remittance Trojan horse

Shaan's favorite pick from the thread: Western Union, with ~$1B free cash flow on $5B revenue, compliance in 200 countries, and 500,000 agents. The play is to use that trusted brand and agent network as the on-ramp/off-ramp to turn it into a global Bitcoin remittance network.

“Here's the play with Western Union. You have Chamath, who at one point owned 5% of all Bitcoin that was out there.”

Steal thisBuy a legacy distribution network with global trust and retrofit it as the on-ramp for a new technology rather than building distribution from scratch.

Bitcoin wallets with >$10 went from 3.5M to 18M in three years

Shaan cites on-chain analysis showing the number of Bitcoin wallets holding more than $10 grew from 3.5 million in 2017 to 18 million by 2020 (roughly 6x), arguing adoption is far deeper than the last time the price hit this level.

“So back in 2017, so just 3 years ago, the number of wallets with just over $10 in them was 3.5 million wallets. Not that, not that much adoption, right? There's, you know, apps that tell you about plants that have more users. And, um, now just 3 years later, it's 18 million wallets have more than $10 in them.”

Bitcoin wallets with >$10 went from 3.5M to 18M in three years

Shaan cites on-chain analysis showing the number of Bitcoin wallets holding more than $10 grew from 3.5 million in 2017 to 18 million by 2020 (roughly 6x), arguing adoption is far deeper than the last time the price hit this level.

“So back in 2017, so just 3 years ago, the number of wallets with just over $10 in them was 3.5 million wallets. Not that, not that much adoption, right? There's, you know, apps that tell you about plants that have more users. And, um, now just 3 years later, it's 18 million wallets have more than $10 in them.”

Conviction test: panic reveals you don't believe

Shaan argues that panicking when a holding drops reveals you lack full conviction in the investment. If you truly believe in the long term, you bought knowing it would go down, so a 20% dip is irrelevant.

“The grandpa wisdom is that if I feel a crisis when I look at that number, it reveals the state of crisis within, which is that I don't believe— I don't have full conviction in my investment. Because when I invested, when I buy, I don't think about it like this is going to go up. I don't— you know, I need this to go up every day. No, I know it's going to go down.”

Steal thisUse your emotional reaction to a price drop as a conviction test: if you panic, you didn't actually believe in the thesis.

How Druckenmiller flipped from Bitcoin skeptic to buyer: the 86% diamond hands

Druckenmiller long called crypto 'a solution in search of a problem,' but Fed money-printing during the CARES Act gave it a problem to solve. The clincher came from Paul Tudor Jones: when Bitcoin fell from $17,000 to $3,000, 86% of holders never sold, proving a base of religious-zealot holders behind a finite-supply asset.

“Then the second thing that happened is I got a call from Paul Jones, and he says to me, uh, do you know that when Bitcoin went from $17,000 to $3,000 86% of the people that owned it at $17,000 never sold it. Well, this was huge in my mind. Here's something with a finite supply, 86% of the owners are religious zealots. I mean, who the hell holds something through $17,000 to $3,000?”

Bitcoin as 'high beta gold' while the Fed keeps printing

Druckenmiller coins Bitcoin as 'high beta gold,' arguing that as long as Jay Powell keeps running loose monetary policy, both gold and Bitcoin will have the wind at their backs, with Bitcoin amplifying gold's moves.

“Yeah, and I think, you know, as long as Jay Powell keeps acting like he's been acting, I think gold and Bitcoin— and Bitcoin seems to be a high beta gold— are going to have the wind behind them.”