If you haven't sold then you haven't made a profit.
Why would it matter if it's volatile or stable?
The value of any asset might change significantly in two days, but the odds of that are much, much higher with Bitcoin.
For those who would rather live in a world where headlines are true one day and false the next, and wealth is ephemeral, Bitcoin is a good place to find that thrill.
And prematurely reporting unrealized profits seems to fit the Bitcoin mindset nicely. Goes well with "money" not actually used for (legal) transactions and a "store of value" that regularly changes value more than 10% in a day. The hype train must keep on moving, lest the party end.
- 1 has AMAZON shares worth 5000 USD as collateral - 2 has BITCOIN worth 5000 USD as collateral
you can say for example, you can grant 4000 USD credit for 1, maybe 2000 USD credit for 2.
1 share might be equivalent to 100 dollars, 1 billion shares is unlikely to be equivalent to 100 billion dollars.
Maybe Amazon is worth less without having a strong leadership. At least Apple gained a lot from the co-founder coming back. But in general, if he sells in small packages, he should be able to convert his stocks into cash if he wanted to.
Selling in small packages, alleviates one problem (lack of instantaneous demand), but it still increases the supply of shares in the market, which is going lower the price. That's before you consider effects like strong leadership or that the apparent lack of confidence from the big share holder is going to decrease the price.
Edit: Incidentally if you look at Bezos's trading history, you'll discover that he has been doing the "sell in small packages thing". I'd speculate that he's doing it as fast as he thinks he can get away with: https://finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx?oc=1043298&tc=7
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_mergers_and_ac...
1. You have to go back to 2000 to find a purchase > 200B (AOL bought by Time Warner, for 182, 270B inflation adjusted).
2. The only other >200B purchase was Vodafone Airtouch plc bought by Mannesmann (281B inflation adjusted, 183B in 1999 dollars), "it happened twice" isn't routine.
3. That 270B is 1/6th of Amazon's market cap.
If you'd like a proof on how this works in action, let your gain in a stock (or Bitcoin) evaporate, sell your position at break-even, and then demand to be paid your former unrealized 'profit,' see what happens.
What does any of that have to do with Gates or Bezos holding stock in a company?
This is a hilarious statement on the very day that The Guardian reports that Elon Musk is no longer the world's richest person precisely because that wealth is locked up in assets that lost value. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/23/elon-musk...