Balaji loses $1 million bitcoin bet as U.S. dollar fails to collapse

Balaji Srinivasan, the former Coinbase chief technology officer turned investor, lost his bet that the price of bitcoin would soar to $1 million as the U.S. economy experienced hyperinflation. 

Conceding defeat yesterday, Srinivasan paid $500,000 to James Medlock, a pseudonymous Twitter user who proposed the bet in March. He split a further $1 million between the charity Give Directly and Chaincode Labs, a Bitcoin research center. 

“I settled the bet early with Balajis,” Medlock tweeted on Tuesday. “Took some time to work out the details but he proceeded in good faith and you can see the receipt of funds on chain in the next tweet. $500k to me (so I get 30% post tax as planned) and 500k to GiveDirectly.”

Balaji’s bitcoin bet

The bizarre chain of events was set in motion when Medlock posted a tweet on March 16 saying, “I’ll bet anyone $1 million dollars that the US does not enter hyperinflation.”

Srinivasan, who has more than 900,000 followers on Twitter, responded with, “I will take that bet.” He asked Medlock to buy one bitcoin and promised to send him $1 million after 90 days if the cryptocurrency’s price hadn’t climbed to $1 million.

“This is one of those tweets that just popped into my head and I sent it in 10 seconds without thinking about it. Wild to think how different my life would be if I had never clicked ‘tweet,’” Medlock tweeted on Tuesday.

Srinivasan’s failed bet drew mockery from some, with Bloomberg journalist Joe Weisenthal tweeting that it had helped “raise awareness about the soundness of fiat currency.”

As of the time of writing, bitcoin is trading at $28,517, according to CoinGecko data. 

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