No, this was actually the plan since the beginning, before IPO. They had a filing with the SEC stating they were going to do this (Peter Thiel also sold 16.8 million of his shares as part of this).

Ah ok, good info!

This is really common. One reason you IPO is to monetize your investment in the company.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen have been selling off chunks of shares for decades and it's not like they don't believe in Microsoft.

Yup. Twenty billion in shares is just a number in a book somewhere if you never sell.

This could be a good thing. Liquidating wealth means opportunity for charity or other investments.

The dude just got married. Maybe he wants to buy a nice house.

1B would buy you one heck of a nice house.

I'd be thinking "island".

He just bought a $7 million house last year.

Yeah, you're right, his stake in it is only $18bn or so after this.

What sort of half hearted investment is that?

For better or worse, the man has never exercised traditional business practices.

And here I thought I was really beginning to understand how and when to engage in the discussion, yet the HN demigods seem to be proving me wrong more often than not lately...

Well, for one thing, a move like this is traditional. You were just piling more wrong on top of wrong.

Point taken, though I don't think it's unreasonable to say that the headline misrepresented the true nature of the transaction, as a layperson unfamiliar with such fiduciary transactions (notably myself) would understand it.

While lwhi's "correction" better reflected my (admittedly ill-communicated) sentiment, it still feels as though there's a Digg-like oligarchical groupthink seeping into Hacker News as of late, which is no more preferable to the Wild West antics of r/programming... =\

For better or worse, the man has never exercised ethical business practices.

(there you go, fixed it for you... )