Bitcoin Forum

What do you guys think of them? What's their angle? It's my opinion that they're not the simple Bitcoin evangelist/enthusiasts that they portray themselves to be. What I do know is that they're interested in a regulated Bitcoin, and especially after their recent SEC filing, I've been running through a number of theories as to what their ultimate goal might be in all of this. I'm interested to see what you guys think.

They just invest about $20,000,000 in BTC I believe. I hope they can make progress with this as it would surely make the price of BitCoin rise. On the other hand, if it goes that far, then banks and government gets involved... hmmm, I dont know

If you read the articles they state they will charge an undisclosed fee for their new instrument.

I think they want to make money.


/thread

Because clinging to Bitcoin is the only way for them to get in front of a camera or do an interview to feel important, because nobody else gives a fuck about them

Because when they lost their idea they went out and found a bigger and better one. Time will tell.

Ether way, its another outlet for Bitcoin into the mainstream, which is good.

People don't like thm because of that movie. They fail to realize it was nt a documentary; it was a MOVIE.

The winkleface twins are taking a huge risk with this bitcoin ETF, but if it succeeds it could make them a lot of money and be HUGE for bitcoin. This could easily be the best thing to happen to bitcoin in 2013.

Yeah based on a true story. I do think they portray themselves as a bit desperate though and that they have put all their eggs in one basket.

/tinfoil mode

They have a kind of credibility for being elite and rich and are used by the world banks as a test drive into bitcoin. Then somehow they fuck shit up and they will be the news icon for how bitcoin is not worth it so the sheeples are scared back into their wonderful grass planes of fiat.

OR

They are so mad at all their people for making fun of their broken fb project and go for bitcoin as the last refuge.

Tldr: they want to be the bank of bitcoin

The Twinkle Wins   ;D

It's because they want to dump their 200k BTC on the unsuspecting public.

One of my suspicions is that they want to be the head of a new and centralized Bitcoin that they hope to create. Their role in driving the legitimization (through regulation) of the currency in some hope of making it accessible to the masses might just be a front for putting it under their ultimate control. That's just one theory I've had...

they have publicly stated that regulation would be good for bitcoin

now its announced theyre aiming to create a bitcoin derivative for wall st, the bitcoin etf

we arent hearing anything from them on how to develop the bitcoin economy, improve merchant takeup, kickstart the thousands of new and drawingboard bitcoin businesses out there, or how to get african people and so forth into the scene ...

so im guessing their only concern is their own investment bottom line, which is fine and understandable, but ...

also confirms 95% of this community is being left behind, its every man/woman for him/herself !!

 

Right. They bought a large number of Bitcoins. Now they want to unload them. But how? Mt. Gox isn't paying out USD to traders who sell, and nobody with $20 million would trust it to Mt. Gox. Tradehill probably doesn't have the volume to sell that many without crashing the market.  By creating an exchange-traded fund, and funding the initial offering with their Bitcoins, they have a vehicle for dumping 200k BTC.

Nagle, it's you! Missing you over at the speculation forum. What would you say is the Bitcoin endgame at this point?

They are in it to make money. Don't judge them by the film. They appear to be successfull business men who are ruthless sometimes but that's how they make money. I don't like them personally but their investment and interest in bitcoin is probably a good thing until they sell their stock!

Yes, I suspect they have pump and dump planned, but not all at once and not for awhile.
They'll let it grow and pump and sell some off and then let what's left grow etc.

That's what the who nasdaq thing is about.

If this is true they would've done this earlier. They bought at a very cheap price. When they announced months after purchasing, their 1% stake was worth $11M
they're in this for the long haul. They understand if bitcoin is to succeed, it must get into the hands of as many people as they can, in a way only people like them can.

see:

I agree they seem to be in it for the long haul.  An ETF is a very positive because it opens up the BTC market to anyone with a brokerage account that has access to US markets.  It makes it easy for someone's mom or aunt or sister or son to buy "just a few bitcoins, just in case."  The costs involved setting up an ETF are not insignificant (I would think in the 6-7 figure USD range given the legal, regulator etc hurdles) and it seems as if this would be an expensive way to liquidate their positions.

Whatever the cost of their investment and relative to their other holdings their BTC portion is small percentage-wise (even now) and they do not seem stupid enough to cash out something that has a lot of potential for something that they do not need now.  Would you cash out a few percent of your portfolio if it had a huge appreciation potential and you didn't need it?

 :)

It will probably NOT be approved by the SEC...
In which case they will have to go offshore hedge fund for accredited investors.

Discussed by a pro here:

[–]etfamigo 5 points 4 months ago

So hey. I structure ETFs for a very large company.

A couple of three things: 1) The biggest issue you're going to run into is related to the concept of exemptive relief- that is, ETC (formerly a company called Faithshares, kind of funny) does not have the requisite permission from the SEC to launch non-index based products. Don't worry about making a bitcoin index, the SEC will only allow securities-based indices. Bitcoins, like all currencies, are not actually securities. 2) The best route for you would be a commodity pool built through the 19b-4 process, whereby you partner with an exchange to request permission from the SEC. Best case scenario this will take at least six months to get through, but honestly, you would not get through. 3) Seed is the last thing you should worry about. Lead market makers/IBs will put this up, provided you have (very) strong relationships with them. 4) Ok, serious here. The biggest issue is the lack of arbitragibility (not a word, but bear with me) between the ETF and the underlying bitcoins. This market is pathetically small and insanely illiquid. It simply is not a mature enough space to package into a product.

PM me if you have questions.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/19hxuv/bitcoin_etf/

 

^I mean if the SEC was investigating Pirate@40's BTCST scam...why would they have if Bitcoins aren't securities?  Wouldn't that prima facie not be in their jurisdiction?

I hope someone better versed in security law can weigh in here, i'm just speculating

That pro is also assuming Bitcoin is a currency. I argue (along with Germany) that it behaves like a commodity.

Besides, a bitcoin ETF wouldn't be the worst thing the SEC approved

Herb Greenberg's Weird ETFs Revisited (http://www.cnbc.com/id/100449625)

Interesting, thanks for sharing!

Wouldn't this depend on the definition of the nature of Bitcoin? Some would argue that it's more akin to a security than a currency. I've also heard people suggest that spectacles like this (SEC filings and regulations) are a way to formally define Bitcoin before moving forward with whatever plans these big players have.

Weird is not a criteria for ETF approval/disapproval.

The "pro" said BTC is really a commodity (I agree)...
But that a "commodity pool" would likely not be approved by SEC or a Futures Exchange.

So you are back to:

(1)  Offshore hedge fund like the one in Malta.

(2)  A listed company that holds most of it's assets in BTC...
For example, takeover a junior gold miner and put all assets into BTC.

The Winkle Twins probably know their "trust" is a longshot.

Wait, so what would happen if they bought a junior miner? What if they bought an ASIC miner/farm? I'm not familiar with what you mean at all.

I'm from Canada where gold, silver mining is BIG...
There are probably 100s if not 1000s of dodgy junior gold mining stocks globally...
Probably 90% of which are outright scams...
They are designed to sell a "Great Story About Finding Gold" to investors...
Then pump and dump as much stock as possible to complete morons...
While the principals keep paying themselves $200k/year... and keep "looking for gold" eternally.

The LAST thing these guys wanna do is actually find gold...
Then you gotta build a mine, break a sweat, etc...

90% of the stocks on the late Vancouver Stock Exchange were gold mining scams...
Now this exchange is called the Toronto Venture Exchange.

So you buy one of these bankrupt junior gold mining companies...
Pump some capital into the corporation... and buy BTC...
So you have a listed Corporation whose assets are 100% BTC...
You can have 10% gold and 10% silver and 80% BTC = nice diversified commodity miner.

Or you could do it in London or Ireland, whatever...
It's only a matter of time before this becomes common.

Of course they want to make money, that's what every investor in the world wants!  Now, the way they go about making money is providing a valuable service to the rest of the BTC economy.  If they succeed in doing this, we're all better off, both them, and us.

qft

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/07/02/bitcoin-exchange-traded-offering-seen-facing-tough-regulatory-scrutiny/ (http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/07/02/bitcoin-exchange-traded-offering-seen-facing-tough-regulatory-scrutiny/)

Personally, I think the guys, in spite of their perceived arrogance, are quite brilliant and should be given more respect then they have been.

First, the fact that they even came up with the idea (or helped come up with the idea) of Facebook should lend some credit to their ability to be inventive and see where the future is going.

The fact that they see Bitcoin as a worthwhile investment should be taken seriously (based on their past successful ideas) and the fact that they are so bold about it, in spite of the heat they keep taking for it, is a big deal too!  It is not easy being in the public eye and having your every move scrutinized.  I feel for them really and I respect them for that.

Just my thoughts.

Off course they want to make money. Who doesn't want to make money with Bitcoins?
Off course, adoption and business is what drives bitcoins, and speculation, but.. we need drivers/leaders, or the value of Bitcoins will diminish.

Not saying they are the best people for it.. However, if they came up with the FB idea.. they must have some sort of value to add in the industry.

Here's some gossip:

At the Bitcoin London 2013 conference, there was a panel of a few start ups.

A question from the audience for a 23-year old start up CEO:

"What's it like to have the Winklevoss twins as your investors?"

"No comment"

Sounds like a smart answer to me. ;) 

What was he supposed to say?  I guess he could have said he appreciates their support or something and still evade the question.

 +1 :)

Better the way they are doing it then dumping them on an exchange somewhere though. 

And there's a bet on it!

http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=1685

The Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust will be approved by the SEC within 6 months.

They have the resources and all the legal means to get their project launched. Which will benefit the growing bitcoin community.

If they actually own 1% of outstanding BTCs as rumored then they are idiots, with the kind of money they have they should be able to invest in the REAL value, currency exchanges, payment services and other forms of infrastructure that are always the real cash cows and which if diversified into any possible BTC successor will be immune to lose of value as coins fluctuate relative to the dollar or each other.   Investing in the coins themselves is a suckers bet and only profitable if you can manipulate the market which they can't do from that sized position.

You are totally out of touch, I'm sorry.

They're inviting the process of legally defining Bitcoin. This is how I see it at this point. Not only are they inviting it, they're guiding it. This is why I see this is a potentially detrimental set of circumstances.

the winklevoss twins are a pretteh cool guy who dont afraid of anything https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70799740/winklevoss%20twins.jpg

LOL. What the heck?

Hey does anyone know if the Winklevoss Twins bought huge amounts of bitcoins before this big drop in price? I wonder how do they stand now.

Winklevoss Twins are running a pump and dump.   In the interview they said its so much easier to get some one interested in bitcoin than it is to explain to them how to use it.   They see that as a flaw they are fixing with the etf.  They want to make btc like gold.  THEIR WORDs.  Keep in mind now one uses gold for commerce.  Clearly they don't care about the true goal of the project of creating an alternate currency/payment system that is superior and controlled directly by the community of users as opposed to the government and powerful banking cartels.  Thats what makes the blockchain not only worth TRILLIONs, but also improves humanity with a free people's money the Government & Friends can't use to exploit us.  The etf, make it like gold route will only make the blockchain worth some Billions.

The don't care about creating a reliable currency and unit of account for people living in oppressive 3rd world regimes, so that people and work and trade and feed their families without the terror of having their national currency constantly becoming worthless in their hands.  See Zimbabwe...iran...venuzuela

Now thats fine for you if you are in the camp that bot a few grand under 100 and when it goes to 10,000 and now you quit your job and retire.  But its not what i'm here for.

I pray this etf thing flops and never gets approved.

More and more I am starting to understand why satoshi got PO'd and left this community.   Most of you folks here are just buying up BTC hoping for it to shoot up so you can get rich.  Well good for you.  But what if this incessant focus on making btc work is blinding us away from building something better.

All the alt currency attempts (with maybe namecoin as an exception) are really low grade forks, designed as pump and dumps.  Shame on us.  By now we should have launched a 2.0 cryptocurrency that solved the blockchain bloat problem, and moved to a better more efficient record keeping system.

If i had the technical chops, I'd do it, but i don't.  A while ago I posted a few ideas for a better cryto, and got very little interest.  Every one is hell bent on taking bitcoin all the way regardless of whether its the best we can come up with.   I think even satoshi is surprised people are still pushing this system so aggressively whilst no one is genuinely doing a 2.0...

I've cashed out completely.  I guess i just woke up to the idea that there is a better way to do this, and will wait for the better system to invest in this concept again.

A LOT of people had the facebook idea.  Friendster, Bebo, Myspace...so many others.  Fact is, Zuckerberg figured out how to build the community and attract users better than the rest.  The Winkle-cock jerks think they deserved a cut of the dough because they talked the idea over with Zuck, and maybe designed a layout or two. 

These guys are punching well above their weight.  I hope they buckle and dump this fucker down to $2.  Maybe then we can work on a better crypto currency, after we flush out the get rich quick folks.

Well, they started buying at $8 - $9... I don't know if that's when the bulk of their purchase was made, but I'd say they're doing alright.

Ya man, the Twins need various exemptions which they are unlikely to get.

Many people use radical political philosophies as a Road to Power and Wealth...
Even on a small scale = having 1,000 Twitter followers like some 4th string porn starlet.

Get rich quick folks are what make technology mainstream. Some get rich and most get burned, but the fact is without these idiots we wouldnt have things we do today. Look at the dot com bubble for example. People threw away millions in failed crappy online websites and companies that lost them all their money, but without them we wouldnt have the few sites that got it right. Long story short, we need everyone in the community because eventually they will be back and we might as well take their money now, if they dont wait it out. :)

Without bad investment good investment is impossible.   These are the same fallacious arguments made by defenders of the credit-bubble blowing schemes of central banks.   Without the cheap dumb money, good ideas would never come about.  

It is a complete fallacy.  By diverting money into get rich quickism bs schemes like pets.com many good ideas were never funded.  You fall into the trap of believing that credit bubble ACTUALLY expand resources.  That ponzi's draw in new investment dollars and make things happen.

Its all wrong.  Bad ideas and ponzi's shread and destroy good things.  The Winkle-cock twins see another angle to play to suck value from the productive without innovating or creating a dam thing.  Just like they did with facebook.  Love or hate the company, zuck built a product people like and use and benefit from in some way.  The Winkle-cocks cried foul b/c they thought the value was in the idea.  It wasn't, plenty of losers have good ideas.  They just don't have the creativity, work ethic, management skill and ability to martial the wherewithal to achieve the dream of the idea.  

Then there are the leaches like the Winkle-cocks, who use the courts and the scamish infrastructure of society to suck out value without producing a god dam thing.

Listen to what they say, they are open about it.  They don't really talk about what they will do to make  Bitcoin succeed as a system that will benefit their users.  They are talking about overcoming a regulatory challenge to shuffle paper and let people speculate on its future as oppose to helping to actually shape and contribute to that future.  They literally say they are looking to sell the idea of Bitcoin only, and make it easier for people to "buy-in" to the idea.

That make them leaches, not inventors or innovators, but why would you expect an old dog to learn new tricks?  First with Facebook, now with Bitcoin.  A leach is a leach.

I'm happy we have people who are sincerely interested in a free and open system of finance. While your suggestions might not have been given much credence whenever you posted them, I'm sure there are many other people here who aren't just interested in a get-rich quick scheme. There are enough developers and enthusiasts interested in the concept of cryptocurrencies for many of these drawbacks in the Bitcoin protocol to be addressed sooner rather than later. The problem is that the development process can take quite a while and most people who are working on their own projects don't like to divulge all their developments until they have working prototypes available. The ball has already started rolling. I expect a bright future for open source currencies.

"Listen to what they say, they are open about it.  They don't really talk about what they will do to make  Bitcoin succeed as a system that will benefit their users.  They are talking about overcoming a regulatory challenge to shuffle paper and let people speculate on its future".

I think that's already more than most people do. Not all speculation is bad speculation. Without speculation, no liquid markets and increased interest. Don't confuse the Ponzi you know as the 'markets' for real capitalism.

I have a win brother, can I play the same role? NOT.

Maco's brother FTW...

Hey doobadoo,

I discovered your great call to exit fully around $235. I see that you are still completely out.

I'm worried you might be taking too much risk this way?

I can follow your reasoning how bitcoin can be improved and how many are motivated by greed, and not by the fundamental freedom values bitcoin represents.

I once read a book about innovation within Sony or Philips and there the rule was followed that a new technology/product needs at least 7 advantages to be able to beat the established one, if it does not have this, then they wouldn't try to launch and market it as most users wouldn't find it worthwhile doing the switch and the tipping point for mass conversion would never be reached, ending up in a failure.

I'm often thinking this will be true for bitcoin too. I see you can point to some innovations but I'm thinking you'll need a lot more of them before you can get one of the ground that would actually motivate people enough to make the switch. Hence why I think that investing in bitcoin until then is wise. I wouldn't want me or you to be left behind.

What are your thoughts about this?