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by dave_sullivan 4371 days ago
No, he didn't buy it on the open market as this was essentially a private transaction between two parties. What it means is there's now someone trying to sell (instead of hoard) bitcoins worth $what_he_paid_for_it + %target_return.

That will have an effect on the price, but he's not going to dump them and drive the price down because he paid a lot for them and wants to make a return (unless there's some kind of panic in bitcoin and he just says screw it). Kind of interesting actually.

At the very least, bitcoin is going to be a data driven economists wet dream for years to come.
1 comments
danielweber 4371 days ago
Do we know his plan to sell them? It's what I would do, but has he stated his intent?
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jackgavigan 4371 days ago
Well, in TFA, it's pretty clear that he plans to team up with Vaurum "to provide Bitcoin liquidity to emerging markets."

So, it sounds like he may end up selling them to other people but only as part of a broader strategy to (and I'm guessing here) make it easier to transfer money to and from emerging markets.

If that's what he's doing (and bear in mind I'm just guessing here) it's a very ambitious goal. I used to trade emerging market equity swaps (which involved hedging FX exposure) and I've worked on international, cross-currency payments systems for one of the biggest banks in the UK. You need to know what you're doing when you're playing around in the FX space. You really need to know what you're doing when you're dealing in emerging markets currencies. I once lost $16,000 in the space of twenty seconds because I made a single, simple mistake.

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voltagex_ 4370 days ago
I've always wondered - what do you do when you lose that much money? What happens next?
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jackgavigan 4370 days ago
You turn to the desk head and say "Boss, I just lost $16,000." and he says "Don't worry. It's happened before, it'll happen again."

That incident happened just a few weeks into my (short) career as a trader. I later learnt that everybody makes a mistake once in a while. It's unavoidable. It becomes a problem if you try to cover it up or if you keep making mistakes.

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