Srinivasan conceded defeat and sent the lost amount to the winners, providing a publicly available on-the-chain confirmation.
“I burned a million to show everyone how the U.S. administration prints trillions of dollars out of thin air,” the businessman wrote on Twitter.
Srinivasan transferred $500,000 each to USDC bitcoin developers Give Directly and Bitcoin Core, as well as economist James Medlock.
The reason for the bet was Medlock and Srinivasan’s differing views on the timing of the U.S. economy going into hyperinflation.
Srinivasan insisted that the situation in the economy was more than critical. And this “will force the population to flee into cryptocurrency,” inevitably leading to the so-called “hyperbitcoinization”.
Srinivasan offered Medlock a bet that the market value of bitcoin would reach $1 million by June 17. Despite the loss, the former Coinbase CTO remained of the opinion that the U.S. is entering a “fiat crisis.”
“I spent my own money to send everyone a provably costly message – something is wrong with the U.S. economy, and we are not in for a mild drawdown as government agencies promise, but worse events.
I’m not in the habit of publicly burning a million bucks. The reason I did it: I believe in the public good, but unfortunately, we can no longer rely on authorities who hide from us that something is going wrong,” Balaji Srinivasan proclaimed.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced in early May that the country could face default if Congress does not allow an increase in the limit of U.S. sovereign debt.
As of Wednesday afternoon, May 3, the first-capitalized cryptocurrency is trading at $28 547. Over the last seven days of observation, the total decline in the value of the VTS was about 1.5%.