Who is Balaji Srinivasan and why should we care about his $1 million Bitcoin prediction?

On Friday, Balaji Srinivasan, a man of considerable influence in the tech and crypto world, made an impressive bet: $2 million that bitcoin would skyrocket from the mid-$20,000s to $1 million per coin within 90 days. With these efforts speaking tongues, the question on everyone’s lips outside the Silicon Valley club is: who exactly is Balaji Srinivasan?

Srinivasan, or @balajis, as he is known on Twitter, has a resume that could be a model for the tech and crypto industry. He is an angel investor, technology entrepreneur and best-selling author of The network state (where he argues that technology will usher in the end of the era of the nation-state). His experience ranges from being the CTO of Coinbase and a general partner at the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, to being a co-founder of several companies that were later acquired. Srinivasan is hailed as a polymath, with degrees in electrical and chemical engineering from Stanford University, who has a penchant for seeing the forest for the trees.

And boy, he spares no detail in describing these forests. His podcast appearances regularly clock in at over three hours each, as he gets right on everything from prime numbers to trends in lifespan research (if you have eight, yes eight hours to spare, you can hear what he has to say about these topics at Lex the Fridman podcast).

The bitcoin-will-hit-$1-billion-by-mid-June prediction is wild, and it’s hard not to dismiss it as hyperbole from a longtime crypto booster. On Twitter, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz tried to up the ante to a $50 million bet. Moskovitz deleted the tweet, but while it was up, Srinivasan encouraged Moskovitz to bet against him by buying treasures instead.

Critics like Swan BitcoinBTC
Founder Cory Klippsten has suggested that the bet could be a pure marketing ploy or even a pump-and-dump scheme, given Srinivasan’s history of promoting altcoins — a move that has made him something of a heretic among bitcoiners.

In other quarters, Srinivasan’s bets have sparked a backlash, with critics accusing him of being the latest technology bridge to encourage banking — fiddling while the financial system burns. “Fed mismanagement crashed the system,” Srinivasan tweeted. “And now they are going to print trillions. A creeping devaluation of the dollar.”

It’s a dire prediction, but not one that’s without precedent. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sounded the alarm about hyperinflation in November 2021, warning that it “is going to change everything.” Of course, Dorsey parted ways with Twitter to focus his efforts on building around bitcoin and is a staunch proponent of the digital currency. And while inflation has plagued Americans, it’s not the Weimar kind, where buying a loaf of bread costs a wheelbarrow of dollars.

Also, some have questioned whether Srinivasan really has anything to lose by betting.

He is known to own a significant amount of bitcoin, leading some to speculate that even a modest gain in the currency’s price could more than offset his loss on the stake. Attempts to reach Srinivasan for this story were unsuccessful.

With such a strange prediction, it is easy to dismiss Srinivasan as a fool or a charlatan. After the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, it’s easier than ever to spot the kings and queens of Sand Hill Road. But most of the other royals who occupied that part of Palo Alto would kill to trade their own merits or reputation for his. He is the man behind the concept of the “idea maze,” a framework that venture capitalist Ben Horowitz called essential reading for budding entrepreneurs.

Since Srinivasan’s bet on Friday, bitcoin’s value has risen slightly, from $26,000 to $28,000 on Monday. Only $972,000 more to go.