Emin Gun Sirer recollected on how long Bitcoin has come. We can’t fault any large institution for not buying coins; there were no custody solutions 9 years ago. The thread is here to illustrate with tangible examples how far crypto has come.

4x more courses 4x Mars Rovers 4x as many TAs in each class (except CS systems) 4 Arecibo telescopes, 3 intact 4 times as many CS theoreticians, exhausting the world’s theoretician supply 4 of one of the world’s best undergraduate experiences

As a techie who has been around crypto for a very long time, I find discussions around price to be somewhat nauseating. I’ve managed to nail a lot of trend/price/investment decisions, but my trick has generally been to follow the tech trends and bet on the best tech on hand.

In cutting edge, high growth areas like crypto, returns are typically characterized using X’s and not %’s. BTC did 6X over the last year. AVAX did 115X. If a portion of a big, diversified portfolio does not include some tickets to such returns, it’s remiss.

Cornell’s endowment grew by ~1% in 2020, by 42% in 2021. While 42% growth is excellent by traditional standards, by crypto standards, it is officially characterized as “what’s that? Returns for ants?”

That’s 3x Cornell’s current endowment. Bitcoin’s recent rise made me revisit this. 9 years ago, I suggested that Cornell put some of its CIS budget into Bitcoin at $11. Had they done that, the School of Computing and Information Science would now have….checks notes…..$30 billion.

Community response:  And had they helped legitimize cryptocurrency even more, it’s possible it’s environmental effects could be so much worse that climate change would have already collapse human civilization, as opposed to the current state where it’s threatening to do so in the near future.

And of course you’re also basing this on the idea that they would never sell. Literally your quoted tweet mentions them buying out other CS departments. Which would require them selling the bitcoin. Which means they wouldn’t have 30 billion.

Is BTC more useful today in any way compared to the past? Its price has skyrocketed but that means nothing.

If you treat your currency as an investment vehicle you don’t actually have a currency you just have tulips.

Yes, Emin talk about what is the state of crypto and blockchain in 5 years when gas fees are already zero, privacy enabled, cross-chain interoperability is seamless, well established AI automated token exchange and staking algorithm, nodes are decentralized. What’s next?