An open question is what happened to the 15,625 shares that he received when he exercised his options in 1996?
If he had held on to those, they would be worth even more than the additional 9,375 shares he was entitled to -- about $1.7 billion using the same numbers in the post.
My guess is that he probably sold them when they were worth a lot less then they are now, and would have done the same with the additional shares too.
Yeah, that's the problem with this. Should one get the present day value of the shares (a billion), or present day value of the worth at that time (thousands)?
It's a bit the same as people making fun of someone buying a pizza with bitcoin, now worth a hundred thousand. It wasn't at the time, and most likely people would've sold it long before when it started to rise. And the hindsight should then be just as much "if you bought a pizza at the time in USD, why didn't you buy bitcoin instead??".
So to me one should get the latter of the two alternatives. People only come out of the woodwork because it suddenly happened to be worth a lot.
The pizza Bitcoin story is not about a mere $1 billion.
The guy that sold his Bitcoin for pizza, did multiple transactions (detailed in that forum thread), not one. Somehow this part is lost to history when the story gets told.
He liquidated tens of thousands of Bitcoins.
The tally is a lot closer to ~$4 billion at $82k per coin.
jonas21 · · focus · HN ↗
If he had held on to those, they would be worth even more than the additional 9,375 shares he was entitled to -- about $1.7 billion using the same numbers in the post.
My guess is that he probably sold them when they were worth a lot less then they are now, and would have done the same with the additional shares too.
matsemann · · focus · HN ↗
It's a bit the same as people making fun of someone buying a pizza with bitcoin, now worth a hundred thousand. It wasn't at the time, and most likely people would've sold it long before when it started to rise. And the hindsight should then be just as much "if you bought a pizza at the time in USD, why didn't you buy bitcoin instead??".
So to me one should get the latter of the two alternatives. People only come out of the woodwork because it suddenly happened to be worth a lot.
cryptoz · · focus · HN ↗
adventured · · focus · HN ↗
The guy that sold his Bitcoin for pizza, did multiple transactions (detailed in that forum thread), not one. Somehow this part is lost to history when the story gets told.
He liquidated tens of thousands of Bitcoins.
The tally is a lot closer to ~$4 billion at $82k per coin.
hlynurd · · focus · HN ↗
sethops1 · · focus · HN ↗