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Comment by ramzyo | Hacker News Reader

Wow, admittedly my perception of these guys was totally skewed after seeing the movie The Social Network. When I read about their original investment in 2013 I totally wrote it off as being a hairbrained move. Clearly succumbed to my own biases in passing that unfair judgment. Good for them for being so savvy.

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Or....it was a hair-brained move, but it happened to turn out well for them, and now you're succumbing to post-fact rationalisation bias that rich gamblers who get a payout at a point in time actually know what they're doing...

Edit: ironically?, the fact that most people partake in this bias actually increases such people's likelihood of being successful in the future.

Or it was neither a brilliant nor a hair-brained move and was a reasonably calculated risk which paid off likely due to a mix of luck and prescience? There were many reasonable, intelligent people out there who weren't blinded by the anarchy/libertarian hype and yet still speculated Bitcoin's price would skyrocket based on rational predictions and bets.

The fact that these guys were partly on the ground floor for the rise of one of the most influential tech companies in the world and very much on the ground floor for one of the (so far) highest ROI assets and biggest technological advances (practical blockchain, consensus, and cryptocurrency tech; not Bitcoin in particular) of the past 50 years shows that at the very least they're probably not bozo meatheads in the way Sorkin and Fincher portrayed them (as entertaining as the movie was).

Folks, the word is spelled harebrained.

Thanks. I was so used to seeing hairbrained that I assumed it was the correct spelling.

I'm impressed that you created a new account to contribute to the conversation with such a substantive, thought-prevoking comment.

All sorts of things push people over the edge to finally make an account :). While it's true that his comment doesn't add much to the discourse, there probably are lots of folks that never realized that it's referring to a hare.

Your comment though is approximately an attack on a person who finally took the time to create an account only to get downvoted. A downvote is discouragement enough; no need to reiterate.

To be honest, if not for this comment, I would have learned something wrong today.

PS - English isn't my first language.

It's "thought-provoking", not "thought-prevoking".

Thank you, Merriam-Webster.

The name's Noah.

If you put all of your savings into Bitcoin, it is a stupid move, no matter what the outcome was. You might look smart now, but you really weren't.

If you knew about bitcoin in the early days (<$1000), it was a good move to invest a small percentage into this high risk, huge potential payoff, no matter what the outcome would be.

Considering the history of these twins, I think they are better at calculating risks and potential payoffs than most of us here.

> they are better at calculating risks and potential payoffs than most of us here.

They also have more play money to throw at risky ventures, and the connections to hear about them early

In the case of Bitcoin, that is a really cheap shot.

Most of us here are in tech, and I found out about Bitcoin when it was at $1. (which was already late according to some).

And about the play money, I hope everyone here has $50 that they would not miss that much if it would suddenly disappear.

Buy $1 bitcoins for $50. You do the math.

Could be, but a re-evaluation of my past harsh assumptions felt more constructive than further writing them off in my head as inept. I don’t know how many others are out there that I can say originated the idea for Facebook (at least in its Harvard-only original form) AND were early to get involved big with Bitcoin (and now, at least on paper, are billionaires because of that insight/luck/combo whatever).

Never trust a hollywood adaptation to be remotely historically accurate or honest.

That's why they say "based on a true story" instead of "this is a true story". They can change whatever they want and call it artistic license.

Yup, totally agree. Probably also because there’s no written record of what was actually said or done in the majority of micro-events that help to define personalities and setup plot lines (eg the opening bar scene at Thirsty Scholar in The Social Network between Mark Zuckerberg and his love interest).

Hmm, well clearly in this case I was wrong about these guys, but I have to disagree on your comment about never trusting Hollywood adaptations to be remotely historically accurate or honest. Personally I think Hollywood adaptations generally get the broad points correct, so they are generally accurate and honest (eg Howard Hughes was a reclusive hermit toward the end of his life, as portrayed by Leo DiCaprio in The Aviator).

That is one movie, Hollywood often portrays Jessie James as a Robin Hood-like figure, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. In reality, he was murderous bandit.

True, and yet those are also only several movies of many tens of thousands. I don't think this debate would be resolved back and forth example for example. Instead, replace the OP's use of the word never with "only sometimes", "don't usually", or even "more often than not don't", and the comment would be more reflective of its underlying nature: opinion, absent hard data.

The fun of some debates is that they are never resolved.

Agreed!

The twins are more or less villains in the movie, but I'd say they aren't presented as stupid or inept.

Agreed. One of my biases was to equate inability to execute on an idea but ultimately claim credit for its successful execution as ineptitude. Clearly this was an incorrect and unfair assumption.

You don't judge a move in poker by its outcome, but rather if it made sense given what information was available. You may not be this type of person normally, but I find that most people I come across have an incredibly hard time evaluating choices based on what information was available when they were made and not by their outcome.

They have net worth of $500m. They invested 2% of their net worth in to bitcoins. This is not savvy, it's just simple diversification that probably everyone in this net worth level is doing. The article reports it incorrectly that they are "first bitcoin billionaires". If you had $1 billion net worth you probably had at least a million dollars (0.1% of your assets) invested in such exotic things that would have high risk, high rewards.

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