Former Coinbase CTO Loses $1 Million Bitcoin Bet

Balaji Srinivasan, former chief technical officer of Coinbase, has won the bet he made in March that the price of Bitcoin will hit $1 million over the next 90 days. However, he continues to warn the public that he believes hyperinflation will occur in the near future.

Srinivasan began his Twitter thread by saying, “I just burned a million to tell you they’re printing trillions,” while noting that he made the wager not to make money but rather as a method to draw people’s attention. He went on to say that he made the bet as a way to bring awareness to the issue.

“So I spent my own money to send a provably costly signal that there’s something wrong with the economy, and that it’s not going to be a’soft landing’ like [Fed chair] Powell promises — but something much worse,” the former Chief Technology Officer of Coinbase wrote. “So I spent my own money to send a provably costly signal that there’s something wrong with the economy.”

Things can go wrong very quickly.

In the meantime, the former chief technology officer of Coinbase provided an explanation for his decision to settle his bet early in a video that was also released in the same Twitter thread. In the video, he made the argument for why the current issues facing the economy might very quickly become much more severe.

As an example of how quickly things may develop, Srinivasan cited a number of historical incidents, the most recent of which was the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and the subsequent two-day period during which the government issued a total of $200 billion in currency.

He keeps on to explain that it took just two weeks for $500 billion to make its way out of local banks, that it took two months from patient zero of the Coronavirus until lockdowns in the United States, and that it took two quarters from the time that Ben Bernanke in 2008 said that there would be “a mild recession” until the Global Financial Crisis was acknowledged. He concluded his explanation by saying that it took two years from patient zero of the Coronavirus until lockdowns in the United States.

Srinivasan, who is also a notable venture capitalist, stated that “in each of these cases, too slow was being too late,” and the “thing is that right now, in the economy, many things are breaking at once,” he added.

The crisis of the fiat currency

He then followed up with additional information in the form of a blog post, in which he began by claiming that the present banking crisis in the United States and Europe is “not a financial crisis.” It’s a crisis of fiat currency.”

“[…] flooding the system with money when it’s already under stress and experiencing high inflation will cause the fiat crisis,” Srinivasan said before describing how he expects events will unfold: “[…] flooding the system with money when it’s already under stress and experiencing high inflation will cause the fiat crisis.”

“A loss of global faith in the US financial system, followed by the attempted introduction of digital lockdown via a CBDC-equivalent, accelerated physical emigration from blue states, and associated capital flight from the dollar to assets like gold, Bitcoin, and foreign currencies that are outside of the control of the Federal Reserve.”

The “BitSignal” bet

The “BitSignal” bet Srinivasan entered the $1 million bet over Twitter with an anonymous Twitter user named James Medlock on March 17. This was in response to a post from Medlock in which he stated that he would “bet anyone $1 million dollars that the United States does not enter hyperinflation.”

“I am willing to accept that wager. You buy 1 BTC. In a now-famous tweet that he referred to as the “BitSignal,” Srinivasan responded by saying that he would send $1 Million USD.

Bitcoin Bet coinbase Former Coinbase CTO