As some of our regular readers may remember, around five years back in 2014 — a time when Bitcoin was trading between $250 and $700— Ben Horowitz and Felix Salmon appeared on NPR’s Planet Money podcast to discuss the future of digital finance. During their appearance on the show, the aforementioned individuals made a live bet regarding the state of Bitcoin in 2019.

For those who may not be aware, Horowitz is a long term crypto bull and partner at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. He has been associated with the altcoin domain for more than half-a-decade— with his business venture even pumping in millions of dollars into various cryptocurrency companies.

Horowitz had predicted that within a period of 5 years, Bitcoin would not only have entered the mainstream but would have also revolutionized the way in which e-commerce payments work.

In a similar vein, back in 2014 Felix Salmon who is now heading media operations for Axios, said that due to the rising price of BTC (on a near day-to-day basis), the asset would unlikely be used as a medium of exchange for daily transactions by the masses (an aspect which Felix believed would lead to the eventual demise of the cryptocoin as well).

More On The Matter

Horowitz and Salmon both agreed to meet after five years and assess the state of the market during their 2014 appearance on NPR’s podcast. They also agreed on an official bet, the conditions for which are as follows:

“If 10% of Americans or more said they’d bought something with Bitcoin in the past month, Ben would win. If the number was lower, Felix would win.”

Before declaring the winner of the bet on episode #891, Planet Money published a poll on their website in an effort to gauge whether or not BTC (or any other major altcoin) had really been able to break into the financial mainstream.

Not only that, even Ipsos recently conducted a poll that took into consideration the opinions of 900 Americans who were asked the simple question:

“Have you purchased anything using Bitcoin as your payment within the past month?”

In response, only a meager 3% of the respondents replied in the affirmative.

As a result of losing the aforementioned bet, Ben now owes Felix a pair of size 11 socks (as well as some of his pride).