저자: ChamathPalihapitiya · 외국인
요약 보기
비트코인은 결제 수단보다 금처럼 금융 헤지 수단으로 대중에게 받아들여질 것이라는 주장. 비트코인의 핵심 용도는 결제 기능이 아니라 금과 같은 금융 헤지 수단이며, 대중은 분산원장보다 이해하기 쉬운 '헤지'라는 개념으로 비트코인을 매수하게 될 것이라고 주장한다. 발언자는 2010년 Wences Casares의 권유로 비트코인을 처음 매수했으며, 당시 약 80달러 수준에서 '백만 개를 사라'고 가족 사무실에 지시했다고 회고한다. 가격 급등락에도 장기 보유 원칙을 강조했다. 개인 보유 물량은 Grayscale ETF 출시를 위해 DCG에 넘겼고, 포트폴리오 내 비중은 약 1% 수준을 유지하려 한다고 밝힌다. 직접 보관의 행정·보안 부담을 피하려고 ETF 주식을 매수하는 방식을 선호한다. 코로나 공포로 주식과 비트코인이 함께 하락한 현상은 단기 투기 세력이 동일하다는 점을 보여줄 뿐이며, 보유자 저변이 넓어지면 상관관계가 줄어들 것이라고 본다. 금은 산업용 수요도 있어 설명이 복잡해지므로, 비트코인은 '멍청이를 위한 보험'처럼 단순하게 설명해야 대중 채택이 가능하다고 주장한다. 이더리움 등 다른 코인에는 긍정적이지 않으며, 시장에서는 1위 승자가 대부분의 수익을 가져간다는 논리를 든다.
다듬은 글
If your bet on Bitcoin pays off, it will be catastrophically destructive for the world. And that will have huge consequences for many people we all know and care about who weren't covered by Bitcoin. And that's why you almost don't want it to happen. And, literally, you can only see one path to their success.
You see no other reason for it to succeed, even in a world where not everything else is collapsing. Actually, no. Well, I think people could say it's a frictionless payment mechanism or payment method. I really don't believe it. I believe there are much easier-to-use products that, over time, will become virtual payment mechanisms that connect the world, whether it's WhatsApp, Cash App, Venmo, or WeChat Pay.
Well, all these things will eventually be brought together in an underlying framework that will allow for the smooth, cost-free, instant transfer of money, you know, in a ledger that will give you a sense of security and transparency. I believe all these things will eventually happen. Therefore, I believe that the use case for Bitcoin will be less and less as a product and more and more as an instrument.
And, again, we need to think about what the underlying value of the instrument is. You know, people are constantly trying to defend gold as an industrial use. And I would say yes, but most people use it as a hedging instrument for other parts of their assets and other parts of their portfolio. Likewise, we will continue to defend the industrial value of Bitcoin to the end.
But the predominant use case for most people will be as financial hedging. And I think that's enough. Well, that's what will make our, you know, proverbial grandmother or grandfather species buy this thing, it's that concept because they can understand it much more easily than they can understand distributed ledgers and, you know, fluid payment gateways and this and that, because it's all a bit of gibberish on a certain level.
Correct. And out of curiosity, when you first heard about Bitcoin, did it take you a while to understand its potential? Because many people say, "Oh, I dismissed it at first." And I was wondering if you also adopted that position. There is a very well-known person in the Bitcoin ecosystem. His name is Wences Casares .
He was the one who introduced me to him in 2010. In fact, we were going to Las Vegas for his 40th birthday. And that's when he proposed it to me. And I remember that I landed, 3 days later, I called my family office and told them: "Buy a million Bitcoin." That's how I started. And, uh, it cost, you know, $80 or something like that at the time.
And it sounded very interesting. But then it took me a few years to really understand it. I did n't fully understand all the mechanics . And to be honest, I've now forgotten most of the mechanics. I studied it at that time. I made the purchase decision and then never thought about it again. And, in general, I never thought about it again.
I mean , I remember my family office going crazy when, you know , Bitcoin was at 20,000 a coin. They said, "Guys, don't tell me. I don't want to know. This is like, just take it off the balance sheet. Don't ever look at it. Keep it at cost. And, uh, you know, don't let this number get to you psychologically.
It doesn't mean anything." And then it went back down to 3000 or something like that. Then they called me again. They said, "Guys, I 've told you. It just doesn't matter what's going on here." And well, you know, I don't know where he is now. 9000, 8000, 10000, whatever. 9500, I think. Yes, I don't know, uh, I couldn't tell you what the price is.
Well, I was curious. You said at one point that your funds held almost 5% of all Bitcoins. I no longer believe that's the case, so I was wondering what percentage of Bitcoins you own now. I don't know, honestly, I couldn't tell you. Don't know . But yes, we were quite aggressive buyers. I believe we also sold some parts of the fund because I also bought some in my fund for myself and my limited partners.
I bought it for myself personally. I have a lot of coins that I gave to DCG so they could launch the Grayscale ETF. So, I don't know. But yes, I'm quite happy with what I have. I consider it as if, as I said, it should have 1% coverage, and I try to keep track of that just to make sure that it remains nominally so.
So , you're rebalancing? Well, I have n't actually actively rebalanced. I have received distributions from other people. And when I get more, I just give it to Grayscale, honestly, because I don't want to deal with the coins themselves. I prefer to buy back the shares from the ETF because I find it easier to manage them.
So I don't want access to Bitcoin. I think it's a huge administrative and logistical burden that I do n't want to bear. In a way, it's also a security issue that I don't want to take on. Well, that's a problem for Grayscale or Coinbase. Yes. Yes. Well, one other thing I was going to ask you, I know you just said you don't follow the Bitcoin markets very closely, but have you heard how Bitcoin has also been greatly affected at the same time as the coronavirus panic has affected the stock market?
And I was wondering if that affected your thesis that it was an uncorrelated coverage . Well, I think that further reinforced the idea that, for now, the people who day trade or speculate are the same people who day trade or speculate in other financial markets. Therefore, they will experience the same psychological ups and downs.
Therefore, when people sold shares, it was because they wanted more liquidity, either due to margin pressure or because they had a directional view of the stock market. And I think the same is true for Bitcoin, because many of the day market participants actively trade it in the same way they would trade any other stock, bond, or commodity.
Therefore, I wasn't surprised that Bitcoin traded lower when stocks did. It simply shows that there is a segment of the population that sees it as a cover and will never consider it. And then there's a much larger portion, to be honest, that sees it as a financial instrument with which you can, you know, speculate and make money in short-term increments.
And to the extent that those people are greater than or equal to the number of people who see it as a hedge, it will correlate with other financial markets. When there's a drop in stocks, you'll probably see a drop in Bitcoin. When there's a rally in stocks, you'll see a rally in Bitcoin. And in general, I suspect that's what we've seen.
And that speaks more to the short-term nature of people in the asset class today. But that will probably change over time too. Because, again, you know, when there's a prolonged adoption of this, when there are, I don't know, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people who own it, they'll be more like me, you know, lazy forks.
They bought it for a very different reason than speculation. And they have neither the time nor the inclination to worry about what he does on a daily basis. And that will be very good for Bitcoin. And another thing is that you also said in another interview that you disagree with the narrative that Bitcoin is digital gold.
And I was wondering why you didn't agree with that. I don't think that's necessarily incompatible with the idea that it's an uncorrelated hedge. Yes, but I think the problem is that people get very philosophically strict when they talk about gold. Well, I think some people have it because they believe that at some point we will return to the gold standard or they firmly believe in it from a philosophical point of view.
Other people legitimately believe that it has some industrial use and that part of its commercial value is based on its industrial value, which is not false. I don't think enough people see it as a pure hedge against inflation or as a market hedge. That's my comment, which is that painting it with a golden brush only complicates the explanation.
If you want mass adoption in the market, what I've realized with any product is that you need true simplicity. That's why I encourage people to truly embrace the simplicity of Bitcoin, which is basically insurance for idiots in case the people in charge screw up . Well, I was curious too. Do you see any merit in any of the other crypto assets?
Uh, in particular Ethereum? No. And why not? Well, it's like when you have a reference instrument. The winnings usually go to the winner. So I will use an example of capital to argue. When Obamacare was passed, there was going to be a clear tailwind for health insurance. Well , you could have bought a basket of health insurers or you could have just bought United Healthcare.
And the basket would have worked well. United Healthcare has grown tenfold in the last 10 years. Well, if you believed in smartphones, you could have bought a basket of stuff in 2010, or in 2008, or in 2009, when the iPhone was first launched, you could have bought Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and HTC , or you could have just bought Apple.
And Apple, frankly, crushed everyone else. The point is that in any market, when there is a clear winner, it doesn't mean that other things can't win. But there is a strange psychological effect that almost drives these second and third-tier winners, which is a desire of the people, almost out of insecurity, not to want to admit that there is a winner simply because they were not the ones who chose him first.
And then what they do is create these convoluted narratives and pieces to basically anoint other winners. And yes, can they win? Clear. But do they ever win as the category killer? No. I mean, do you really want to be long on Lycos and DuckDuckGo, or did you just want to be long on Google? There simply hasn't been a single market where you've been rewarded as generously for being long on the number two, three, and four players as you have been for being long on the number one player.
And again, it goes back to when things go wrong and become a mass market, the average buyer makes the simple decision. And the simple decision is to go to the category-defining winner , then establish it and forget about it.
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