Bitcoin needs a $970K wick in the next 62 days for Balaji Srinivasan

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—by Protos Staff
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About a month ago Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase and general partner at VC firm Andreesen Horowitz (a16z), decided to make an incredible bet with people on Twitter: Bitcoin would crack a million dollars within 90 days.

Well, we’re checking in and, unfortunately for Srinivasan, it appears as though the bet isn’t going to go his way.

Srinivasan put $2 million worth of stablecoin USDC into an escrow account to be passed out to an individual going by the handle ‘@jdcmedlock‘ on Twitter and another unnamed third party. When offered a much more significant bet of $50 million from Dustin Moskovitz, ultimately destined for charity, Srinivasan turned it down.

The bet is stupid and one tweet sums up why

If it isn’t already clear, Srinivasan loses whatever happens: if hyperinflation somehow does occur, the million dollars would be trivial for “jdcmedlock,” and if hyperinflation doesn’t occur in the next 62 days (which it almost certainly won’t) then “jcdmedlock” has walked right into a million dollars — which is still over 10 times more than the median US household income as of 2021.

Twitter users have pointed out that losing one million ‘hyperinflated’ dollars doesn’t sound all that bad.

Read more: Is Peter Thiel’s inner circle behind the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym?

Some online commentators have postured that Srinivasan has won some sort of moral victory and proven some sort of point, but that seems far-fetched: inflation in the US seems to be falling fast, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting it dropping to about 5% over the last 12 months.

This is still more than double what the Federal Reserve claims to aim for (inflation of roughly 2% per year) but nothing like hyperinflation predictions from people like Srinivasan.

Since the bet, Bitcoin has rallied 11% — not nearly enough to hit the $1 million per Bitcoin price prediction set by Srinivasan. To win the bet, the currency would need to rocket by 3,200% in the next two months.

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