Balaji Forfeits and Settles $1 Million Bitcoin Bet

Balaji Srinivasan, the former CTO of Coinbase, has withdrawn from his infamous $1 million bet on bitcoin, betting $1 million in USDC on the bitcoin price hitting $1 million.

However, the investor sticks to his hypothesis that the US dollar is on its way to hyperinflation, stressing that the economy will not face the “soft landing” promised by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

Burn a million dollars

in tweet On Tuesday, Balaji announced that he had mutually agreed to settle his bet on the extremely bullish Bitcoin price in advance. He provided proof of chain in three payments of $500,000, including one payment to Medlock (the counterparty of the bet), another to the Give Directly charitable organization, and another to Development of Bitcoin Core.

That’s 50% more than the previous CEO had to commit – and it comes 46 days ahead of schedule. Speaking at Consensus 2023 last week, he said Charged There is about a 10% chance that he predicted that a financial disaster would actually happen during that time.

“The reason I did this is because I believe in the common good, but unfortunately we can’t rely on the public sector anymore to tell us when something is wrong,” Balaji wrote. “So I spent my own money to send an expensive signal that something was wrong with the economy.”

In an accompanying video, the investor explained that financial turmoil can happen quickly — and without warning from regulators or the government. For example, Ben Bernanke said that the economy could go into a period of “mild recession” in April 2008, just five months before the Great Financial Crisis officially began.

Similarly, it took the Fed just two days to inject $300 billion into the economy after the Silicon Valley collapse, and two weeks to flow $500 billion from commercial bank deposits into money market funds.

The economy is collapsing

According to Balaji, multiple areas of the economy are on the verge of collapse. The US debt ceiling is fast approaching, most US banks are now close to bankruptcy, and assets held by failing banks are now comparable to 2008 in value.

Moreover, bonds suffered their worst year ever in 2022, which were largely bought by banks and insurance companies. Student loan debt and credit card debt are also at an all-time high, at $180 billion and $960 billion, respectively.

Balaji also believes that countries are “de-dollarization” at a rapid pace, echoing the views published It was reported by BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes last month that the dollar may be on its way to losing its status as the global reserve currency.

“If you think there is a high probability of these simultaneous economic crises causing a massive print in 90 days, or 900 days, or even 90 months — you expect some kind of default, you expect a fiat crisis,” Balaji wrote. location. “And you’ll want to be prepared, whatever that means to you.”