Felix salmon bitcoin bet
Basically, we offered to be their bookie. Fortunately for us, they accepted. For more on the bet, see our post: Janelle Monae's " Tightrope - feat. Download the Planet Money iPhone App. Accessibility links Skip to main content Keyboard shortcuts for audio player. A Bet Over Bitcoin: Planet Money A big-time venture capitalist thinks bitcoin will change the world.
A prominent writer thinks bitcoin is going to disappear. On today's show, they make a long-term bet on bitcoin's future.
And so first, let's just talk about duration. What kind of timeframe are we talking about here? So I think it makes sense, you know, in the kind of 5 to 7-year timeframe because it is a big thing to upgrade the payment infrastructure of the internet, you know, if not the world. There's no way that bitcoin is going to be a common payment mechanism in five year's time.
So we got a time frame. Next question, what to bet on? And this was kind of tricky. They didn't just want to bet on the price of a bitcoin in dollars. That could just be the result of people speculating.
They wanted to bet on whether people were actually using bitcoins to buy stuff. So they figured they'd pick a retailer and they'd bet on what fraction of that company's sales were done in bitcoin. But they went through this list of different retailers arguing over which one to pick. And frankly, we were worried that even if they did agree on a retailer, we might not be able to know in five years what share of that retailer's business was actually done in bitcoin.
And, Jacob, we'd thought about this problem. And we thought we'd found a solution. So we proposed this to them. If you want to see if people are really using bitcoins, here's what we'll do.
We'll do a poll. We'll ask a statistically significant sample of Americans a simple question - have you used bitcoin to buy something in the past? Whatever time period you want. I like this a lot.
Let's take a representative poll of people and ask them this question. Have you used bitcoin to pay for goods in the past - yeah, I think month. A month is good. We could say a week, but let's say a month because I want to be generous to Ben here. What percentage of people are going to say yes in five year's time to that question?
Let's say 25 percent. What do you say to that? I would say that, like, that seems a little higher than both. I would predict and then I was thinking more in the, like, if 5 to 10 percent of the people who made payments used bitcoin, like, that's a lot of payments. To be frank, I think that the answer to who has won this bet is going to be blindingly obvious by the time we get to five years from now. The niceties of trying to work out, oh, have we managed to get to 10 percent or 25 percent or anything like that, we're not going to even need to run the poll.
It's going to be obvious who's won. So, Felix, if it's going to be blindingly obvious, the low end of Ben's range was 5 percent. Is that right, Ben? You said 5 to 10 percent. So we have the terms of a bet. Five years from now, we're going to do a poll of a representative sample of people living in the United States.
We will ask them the following question - within the past month, have you bought anything with bitcoins? And if greater than 10 percent of those people say yes then, Ben, you win. If less than 10 percent say yes, then Felix wins. What if exactly 10 percent say yes? Well, I think we should bet in bitcoin.
But I think that I would like my payment in bitcoin. Also, Felix, if you turn out to be right and bitcoins are worth nothing - you win nothing laughter. Well, what was like the first big item to be sold for bitcoin? Everyone always talks about these alpaca I think a fine pair of alpaca socks is something I do not have and could probably use from time to time.
Alpaca socks it is. Of course you do realize, Ben, that part of the reason why I'm going to win this bet is exactly that everyone who bought alpaca socks with bitcoin two years ago is kicking their warm feet right now, saying I wish I hadn't bought those alpaca socks. I wish I just held on to the bitcoin because I would now be a millionaire. So one last thing. Will you guys both agree to come back on our show, hopefully graciously and talk with us five years from now in ?
I have lost more than my fair share of bets over time. And frankly, I'll be happy - I think - because I hate the current payment system. The current payment system is broken in a million ways. And I would love something frictionless and global. I would love to be able to pay money anywhere in the world really easily in a way that anyone else anywhere in the world could accept really easily. It would - the world would be a much better place if I lose this bet.
I will either feel extremely sad if nothing has changed, or I will feel fine if some cryptocurrency has taken hold and solved the problems that bitcoin aims to solve. You're going to feel extremely sad. My base case is absolutely that nothing is going to change. Thank you guys for stepping up and making a bet instead of just talking about what's going to happen. Singing You can't get too high. We can't get too high. I said you can't get too low. We can't get too low.
You can't get too high. No, you'll surely be low. In the meantime, we will put links to Felix's column that started this whole thing going, as well as to a piece that Ben's colleague wrote in The New York Times about bitcoin. We'll post those on our blog at npr. If you want to let us know which side of the bet you would take, you can send us email - planetmoney npr. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc.
This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. Accessibility links Skip to main content Keyboard shortcuts for audio player. A Bet Over Bitcoin: Planet Money A big-time venture capitalist thinks bitcoin will change the world. A prominent writer thinks bitcoin is going to disappear. On today's show, they make a long-term bet on bitcoin's future. A Bet Over Bitcoin.
February 5, 6: Facebook Twitter Flipboard Email. And they said, OK. And so I said, well, why don't we just bet? And you said that in public, right? You challenged Felix to a bet. And you're sort of from the computer science side of things? I'm from the computer science side for sure. I live in the world of solutionism, no doubt. Ben, why do you think bitcoin does have a bright future? How do you make sure it's only in one place at one time? That would be a bad problem, yes.
That would pretty much defeat the money. And so that was the breakthrough, basically - someone figured out how to do that. You have to pay a very high fee to accept money on the internet, 2. Ben, why would people spend them? And now for the fun part - the bet.
Felix, are you OK with a 5-year timeframe? It will probably not even exist. It's just going to be a sort of vague memory. But in any case, it's not going to be used as part of the deep architecture of payment. You guys do disagree? We have a fundamental disagreement. That's what makes a bet so excellent. Come back at him, Ben. Well, it depends how much they use. Because if you only used it once a month Laughter But you're saying it's going to disappear. I think so, yeah. If you make it past week, I'll do it - 5 percent.
Past month I want 10 percent. I thought you just said it was going to be blindingly obvious? I think it is, but I'm negotiating a bet here. I'm not going to Laughter Wages in bitcoin. Your choice of 5 percent in the past week or 10 percent in the past month. All right, well, let's go 10 percent last month. If exactly 10 percent say yes, then clearly I've won.