
SoftBank founder lost $130M on Bitcoin - yyyyip
https://www.wsj.com/articles/softbank-founder-masayoshi-son-lost-130-million-on-bitcoin-11556017200
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astazangasta
Why do we talk about this guy as if he is some sort of genius? He lost 99% of
his wealth in the first dot-com bust. The only reason he is still around is he
happened to invest in Alibaba. This doesn't demonstrate anything other than
that if you have enough money, it doesn't matter what you do or how stupid you
are, you'll remain rich.

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duxup
I can't read the article as I don't have a subscription.

So if you're this dude, how do you make this investment?

Presumably you just call your fiance guy and tell him to put a huge amount of
money into Bitcoin and the order gets passed down to someone who knows what
their doing and somewhere there is a PC out there with a bazillion dollars in
Bitcoin sitting in cold storage?

I gotta think the end guy who makes the buy is a pretty big target for
criminal types as far as figuring out where such coins are stored....

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mindcandy
There are companies that specialize in coordinating large, off-exchange
trades. I listened to an interview where they mentioned security practices
such as: keys are stored on laptops that were bought new, had the hard drive
replaced, and the Ethernet and USB ports epoxied shut. All transactions are
offline and multi-sig. Etc...

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duxup
Yeah I was thinking the security would have to be pretty high / multi layered
/ rightfully paranoid.

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qaq
Which in context of his net worth is pretty much noise

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MuffinFlavored
If you're worth $20k and you find $20 on the street, it's 0.1% of your net
worth.

If you're Jeff Bezos and you find 0.1% of your net worth on the street, it's
$150,000,000.

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jermaustin1
Lets take that thought experiment further, would Jeff Bezos even waste the
time in bending down to pick up the $20 since it is worth so little? The act
of bending down, the minuscule risk of falling over, possibly scraping a knee,
possibly wasting more time trying to get back up, etc. Is the $20 worth the
potential hassle of picking it up?

For me: without a hesitation. It's roughtly 130 times my average 5 second
earnings.

For Jeff: probably a net loss.

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nashashmi
I hate such comparisons. How about just simply cleaning up after yourself and
not polluting the world with 20$?

If I dropped 20$ off a cliff, I would not get it, but I know I should.

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yyyyip
Masayoshi seems great at picking market tops and buying into them.

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strikelaserclaw
either he wins big, or no big deal, the advantages of having money.

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baybal2
So far, he lost more money in his funds than he ever made.

But he makes $1B+ a year just from fees.

This is a very twisted idea of "winning big"

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onlyrealcuzzo
He's not investing. He's laundering money at scale.

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wp381640
also laundering reputations - lots of SV companies seem to have no issues with
accepting Saudi money if it's via Softbank

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thegranderson
_Full-text, for those blocked by the paywall:_

SoftBank Founder Masayoshi Son Lost $130 Million on Bitcoin

Japanese billionaire made a huge personal investment in the digital currency
as prices peaked

By Rachael Levy and Liz Hoffman April 23, 2019 7:00 a.m. ET Masayoshi Son, the
billionaire founder of SoftBank Group Corp. 9984 0.31% , made a huge personal
bet on bitcoin just as prices for the digital currency peaked, losing more
than $130 million when he sold out, according to people familiar with the
matter.

Mr. Son, who launched the world’s biggest venture-capital fund on the strength
of his long-term investing acumen, made the investment at the recommendation
of a well-known bitcoin booster, whose investment firm SoftBank bought in
2017, the people said.

The investment came at the peak of the bitcoin frenzy in late 2017 after the
digital currency had already risen more than 10 fold that year. The exact size
of the bet couldn’t be determined, but bitcoin peaked at nearly $20,000 in mid
December 2017 and Mr. Son sold in early 2018 after bitcoin had plummeted, the
people said.

Bitcoin closed Monday at $5,381.05.

Mr. Son is known for quick investment decisions and big risky bets, most of
which have paid off. He decided to back Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. after
spending just five minutes with its founder, Jack Ma. He took a half-hour to
greenlight a $200 million investment in a startup that grows vegetables
indoors.

Mr. Son’s previously unreported loss shows that even some of the world’s most
sophisticated and wealthiest investors got caught up in the frenzy. With a net
worth estimated by Bloomberg LP at $19 billion, Mr. Son will hardly notice,
though it dents his reputation as a patient and prophetic investor.

A SoftBank spokesman declined to comment on Mr. Son’s behalf.

Mr. Son was encouraged to make the investment by Peter Briger, the co-chairman
of asset manager Fortress Investment Group, the people said. SoftBank bought
Fortress in February 2017, inheriting the asset manager’s bitcoin reserves
along with its more traditional investment funds.

Fortress under Mr. Briger first bought bitcoin in 2013, when it was still a
fringe technology used mainly in the darker corners of web commerce. By the
time the SoftBank deal was completed, its holdings were worth more than $150
million.

Mr. Briger declined to comment through a spokesman.

Mr. Son built SoftBank mostly on long-term technology investments and used his
record to launch the $100 billion SoftBank Vision Fund. The fund, backed by
the government investment fund of Saudi Arabia, owns big stakes in Uber
Technologies Inc. and WeWork Cos., and has been credited with driving up
valuations of some of the biggest private technology companies.

The Vision Fund is facing a test of its success with the coming initial public
offering of Uber, which is aiming for a valuation of as much as $100 billion,
below previous expectations but still above where the fund invested.

Even as it looks ahead to futuristic technology, SoftBank’s most immediate
problem is its controlling stake in U.S. mobile phone company Sprint Corp. The
2013 deal has weighed down the conglomerate with debt, limiting its investing
options.

Last week The Wall Street Journal reported that Sprint and T-Mobile’s merger
had been challenged by U.S. Justice Department staff lawyers, who expressed
concerns that the all-stock deal would threaten competition.

Sprint, hoping for approval, said in a regulatory filing last week: “Sprint is
in a very difficult situation that is only getting worse. Sprint is not on a
sustainable competitive path.”

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jsnider3
A true hero.

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aphextim
It's only a loss if he sold, HODL!

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aphextim
I do know he sold, was just being silly.

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maxencecornet
I like how you can be a literal billionaire bank founder and still buy a
speculative asset at it's peak and sell at it's lowest after a 90% crash

Buy high sell low

>>The investment came at the peak of the bitcoin frenzy in late 2017 after the
digital currency had already risen more than 10 fold that year. The exact size
of the bet couldn’t be determined, but bitcoin peaked at nearly $20,000 in mid
December 2017 and Mr. Son sold in early 2018 after bitcoin had plummeted, the
people said.

~~~
loceng
Well 10% is better than less or nothing, right? Shows his lack of confidence
in it going up any further - or at least within a timeframe that there aren't
better investments.

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maxencecornet
>Well 10% is better than less or nothing, right? Shows his lack of confidence
in it going up any further - or at least within a timeframe that there aren't
better investments.

Pretty much any good book about investing (eg. The Four Pillars of Investing)
teaches you that following your human emotions and irrationality in investing
is the worst you can do, basically selling when everybody IS selling is the
worst move (Warren Buffett: Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when
others are fearful,
[https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/012116/warre...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/012116/warren-
buffett-be-fearful-when-others-are-greedy.asp))

So I'm pretty surprised to see Masayoshi Son acting like a rookie investor,
and following the crowd of uneducated investors buying during the mania and
selling during the crash

It's the opposite of investing 101

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tellak
You’re oversimplifying.. selling while everyone else is often due to
irrationality, but quite often it is the best move. In the case of a crashing
asset that is determined to be unlikely to recover, selling with “everyone”
else is the rational action. cf cutting your losses. In fact I’ve feel like
more experienced investors are prone to the opposite problem... irrationally
holding on to a hopeless asset when they could have cut it.

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evanweaver
Cut your losses and let your winners run.

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atomical
How I can read this without a subscription?

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kurmouk
If the click comes from Facebook or Google, you won't need a subscription.

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siphor
sadly not true for me.

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wsdfsayy
For all the perma-bears out there...Bitcoin is well off last year's low and
now around $5500. Crypto has been trending up for weeks. Some top tokens like
BNB (Binance's token) are at all time highs.

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hesdeadjim
It’s amazing what wash trading and fake volume can do to prop up an
ecologically destructive and pointless technology.

