Where did the money of the billionaire Popescu go? Bitcoin is a “Tontina”
Controversial Bitcoin billionaire Mircea Popescu, 41, suddenly died, leaving behind a huge fortune in cryptocurrencies that could be worth as much as $ 2 billion and which some speculate could be lost forever.
Popescu, known to be among the largest individual Bitcoin holders in the world at one point, drowned last week off the coast of Costa Rica near Playa Hermosa after taking a morning swim, according to local news.
Popescu was reportedly "swept away by the current and died instantly". Which is a bit strange for a person who already knew the place. The death was confirmed by three women who were part of his closest entourage. His website has not been updated since the day of his death.
Popescu's estimated wealth was 2 billion in April at the height of the bubble and 1 billion at current prices, but where did they go?
Alexander Marder, research analyst for Crypto Briefing, said on Twitter that Popescu's Bitcoins could be lost forever, along with those of John McAfee, the antivirus software pioneer who hanged himself in a Spanish jail cell last week. .
The disappearance of Popescu, if it brings with it the private keys of its BTCs, will make them useless, practically disappeared, so the number of BTCs on the current or future market has decreased. The deflationary thrust becomes even stronger
According to Chainalysis, 20% of Bitcoins were canceled by the loss of secret keys. Every time a Popescu dies, taking private keys with them and thus eliminating a certain number of Bitcoins from the market, there is a deflationary push and, theoretically, the value of the remaining BTCs increases. Unfortunately this makes BTC appear more and more like a “Tontina”, that is a scheme in which a certain number of participants pay a premium but the total income will be collected only by the survivors, as in the financial system born in the 17th century and spread in the 18th. A macabre way to get rich, but that's how BTC works, at least theoretically.
Thanks to our Telegram channel you can stay updated on the publication of new articles of Economic Scenarios.
The article Where did the billionaire Popescu's money go? Bitcoin is a "Tontina" comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/dove-sono-finiti-i-soldi-del-miliardario-popescu-bitcoin-e-una-tontina/ on Sat, 03 Jul 2021 09:13:21 +0000.