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If it makes anyone feel better. When the Bitcoin whitepaper came out, I read it and thought it was neat. Then came the first mining program and I installed it o

If it makes anyone feel better. When the Bitcoin whitepaper came out, I read it and thought it was neat. Then came the first mining program and I installed it on my computer and it ran the CPU up. I said, "This is dumb." and uninstalled it. Huge mistake.

sp00ls 9y ago
Similarly, I was living in dorms (free electricity) at the time bitcoin made its debut (well not really, but it was still very early). I started mining using my fairly beefy desktop. After months I decided it wasn't worth the small amount of 'money' I had made and just deleted everything. That PC is long gone, wonder how much money I would have now if I still had that wallet. Damn.
chrisabrams 9y ago
It's not too late. If you think that it was dumb then, imagine 10 years from now..
- electic 9y ago
  Oh, I totally agree. It is not too late at all to buy now. However mining, can't do it as an individual.
  - chrisabrams 9y ago
    Yeah profitable mining is going away soon too with all the chains trying to reduce energy consumption with proof of stake :O was fun while it lasted.
    - ktta 9y ago
      Not Bitcoin, no. I think it would be atleast a decade before talks for PoS start.
- joering2 9y ago
  Unsure why you being downvoted; its actually quite good advise. If you disagree then let's get into time machine and I tell you 10 years ago that one bitcoin will be $6,000. As laughable back then as it is to think one bitcoin will be $25,000, which I believe will become once all coins are mined and there is limited quantity available in circulation.
  - chrisabrams 9y ago
    I meet people in NYC all the time that get angry when the topic of cryptos comes up. Not everyone likes change.
    - companyhen 9y ago
      I think once it becomes more user friendly more outsiders will adopt. My friends complain about there being so many different exchanges and the process of buying altcoins too complicated. They don't like signing up for more than 1 different site, etc.
  - DigitalJack 9y ago
    My future self is chuckling about the crypto attack that decimated the value of bitcoin in 2019. Upon reading about the attack, cryptologists around the world sat back from their computer and uttered approximations of the phrase, "Well shit."
  - noitsnot 9y ago
    It's unpredictable to say it will be worth more in 10 years when it fluctuates rapidly and is not even 10 years old to begin with.
- make3 9y ago
  that's not how it works. having bought a lottery ticket was still not a good idea even if you won. meaning, bitcoin is still a risky asset, like back then, there is no reason little reason to reliably assert that it will still go up, and not down.
  - raw23 9y ago
    This analogy is comparable to an extent. The odds of making money off bitcoin compared to a lottery ticket are several orders of magnitude higher. When making investments if you want to make large gains some of your money has to be in riskier assets. Obviously don't put your life savings in bitcoin, anyone who does is not making an intelligent choice. But if you have money to spare that your willing to lose, I wouldn't consider it a horrible investment.
  - chrisabrams 9y ago
    Why is crypto a lottery ticket? I've never viewed it that way. Just because something is a risk to you doesn't mean it's a risk to me. I firmly believe that cryptos are just at the beginning of their value. Maybe you dont. There's many types of investing.
joshstrange 9y ago
Lol, well I did the exact same thing, mined 100 BTC on my CPU, turned it off, and forgot about it. That computer had been formatted at least twice before 1 BTC even hit $1. I comfort myself with the fact that I would have sold when it hovered around $8.
- shubhamjain 9y ago
  I have no idea if it's a solvable problem but this is a ridiculous issue with bitcoin when you think of it as a serious currency: not only that its supply is artificially limited, a large number of early coins are either in possession of its owner (who we are not even sure will ever show up) or are lost in accidents like these.
  - slamdance 9y ago
    true - however what has been happening in the last 20 years with paper fiat is not how fiat is "supposed" to work - though granted, it seems that EVERY paper fiat eventually leads to increased inflation/hyper-inflation. With Bitcoin, that is impossible. This allows the whole bitcoins, as well as the individual sitoshis to increase in value - much like the dollar of 1900 (it has since lost 99% of its purchasing power due to all the increased printing, loss of the gold standard, etc... while I don't think it will ever fully replace fiat currencies, it will - and already is - acting as a secondary money/value exchange, so there is NO downside to getting in. None.
    - jonknee 9y ago
      > so there is NO downside to getting in. None. Well except the part about possibly losing everything you put in...
      - slamdance 9y ago
        so not much different than the stock market or ANY speculative investment, right?
  - 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
3pt14159 9y ago
I bought in at $3 USD / $4 CAD after trying to find someone to sell it to me while I watched it go from $1 to $4. I was broke at the time so I borrowed money off my credit card. Sold almost all of it at $200 to $400. Felt like a complete baller. Who else has made 50x to 100x their money in a couple years? Who else takes a credit card cash advance and is right about it? Sold some more at $6k CAD, overall I've cashed 250x my investment and still have some, but right now it's worth 2000x my original buy price and it's a bit batty to look at the current price. Could have bought a really, really nice house in Toronto if I'd just held on until today. But you know, 2000x is, on a log graph, not that far from 250x. So unless bitcoin goes to $50k or $500k a coin I'm not going to be a touch sour. Edit: Also, this reminds me. I should go through my comment history and find people like tptacek that were very confident that bitcoin couldn't be securable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2607706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2607706 It was a pain in the butt, but I secured bitcoin just fine. Bitcoin is one of those thing where you can go through what you said 10 years later and say "What did I say there? Yep that was right, nope that bit was a bit off, yep it wasn't banned by x, nope that person was wrong that it'd get shutdown within the year." So much of what we arguable is unknowable, like generics in Go or whether mutable state is a good thing for certain programming applications. But the nice thing about investing is you get to find out how right you were. And you're only really, truly right after the gains are realized.
- dplgk 9y ago
  I remind myself of this all the time. If I owned a decent amount of BTC early on, I absolutely would have sold it when it hit $1,000 or even before that. So no use in regretting not buying low and selling at $6000 per BTC
aw3c2 9y ago
So did you reconsider your thinking that it is dumb as a concept or do you regret not speculating actual money on it?

sp00ls 9y ago

Similarly, I was living in dorms (free electricity) at the time bitcoin made its debut (well not really, but it was still very early). I started mining using my fairly beefy desktop. After months I decided it wasn't worth the small amount of 'money' I had made and just deleted everything. That PC is long gone, wonder how much money I would have now if I still had that wallet. Damn.

chrisabrams 9y ago

It's not too late. If you think that it was dumb then, imagine 10 years from now..

electic 9y ago
Oh, I totally agree. It is not too late at all to buy now. However mining, can't do it as an individual.
- chrisabrams 9y ago
  Yeah profitable mining is going away soon too with all the chains trying to reduce energy consumption with proof of stake :O was fun while it lasted.
  - ktta 9y ago
    Not Bitcoin, no. I think it would be atleast a decade before talks for PoS start.
joering2 9y ago
Unsure why you being downvoted; its actually quite good advise. If you disagree then let's get into time machine and I tell you 10 years ago that one bitcoin will be $6,000. As laughable back then as it is to think one bitcoin will be $25,000, which I believe will become once all coins are mined and there is limited quantity available in circulation.
- chrisabrams 9y ago
  I meet people in NYC all the time that get angry when the topic of cryptos comes up. Not everyone likes change.
  - companyhen 9y ago
    I think once it becomes more user friendly more outsiders will adopt. My friends complain about there being so many different exchanges and the process of buying altcoins too complicated. They don't like signing up for more than 1 different site, etc.
- DigitalJack 9y ago
  My future self is chuckling about the crypto attack that decimated the value of bitcoin in 2019. Upon reading about the attack, cryptologists around the world sat back from their computer and uttered approximations of the phrase, "Well shit."
- noitsnot 9y ago
  It's unpredictable to say it will be worth more in 10 years when it fluctuates rapidly and is not even 10 years old to begin with.
make3 9y ago
that's not how it works. having bought a lottery ticket was still not a good idea even if you won. meaning, bitcoin is still a risky asset, like back then, there is no reason little reason to reliably assert that it will still go up, and not down.
- raw23 9y ago
  This analogy is comparable to an extent. The odds of making money off bitcoin compared to a lottery ticket are several orders of magnitude higher. When making investments if you want to make large gains some of your money has to be in riskier assets. Obviously don't put your life savings in bitcoin, anyone who does is not making an intelligent choice. But if you have money to spare that your willing to lose, I wouldn't consider it a horrible investment.
- chrisabrams 9y ago
  Why is crypto a lottery ticket? I've never viewed it that way. Just because something is a risk to you doesn't mean it's a risk to me. I firmly believe that cryptos are just at the beginning of their value. Maybe you dont. There's many types of investing.

joshstrange 9y ago

Lol, well I did the exact same thing, mined 100 BTC on my CPU, turned it off, and forgot about it. That computer had been formatted at least twice before 1 BTC even hit $1. I comfort myself with the fact that I would have sold when it hovered around $8.

shubhamjain 9y ago
I have no idea if it's a solvable problem but this is a ridiculous issue with bitcoin when you think of it as a serious currency: not only that its supply is artificially limited, a large number of early coins are either in possession of its owner (who we are not even sure will ever show up) or are lost in accidents like these.
- slamdance 9y ago
  true - however what has been happening in the last 20 years with paper fiat is not how fiat is "supposed" to work - though granted, it seems that EVERY paper fiat eventually leads to increased inflation/hyper-inflation. With Bitcoin, that is impossible. This allows the whole bitcoins, as well as the individual sitoshis to increase in value - much like the dollar of 1900 (it has since lost 99% of its purchasing power due to all the increased printing, loss of the gold standard, etc... while I don't think it will ever fully replace fiat currencies, it will - and already is - acting as a secondary money/value exchange, so there is NO downside to getting in. None.
  - jonknee 9y ago
    > so there is NO downside to getting in. None. Well except the part about possibly losing everything you put in...
    - slamdance 9y ago
      so not much different than the stock market or ANY speculative investment, right?
- 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

3pt14159 9y ago

I bought in at $3 USD / $4 CAD after trying to find someone to sell it to me while I watched it go from $1 to $4. I was broke at the time so I borrowed money off my credit card. Sold almost all of it at $200 to $400. Felt like a complete baller. Who else has made 50x to 100x their money in a couple years? Who else takes a credit card cash advance and is right about it? Sold some more at $6k CAD, overall I've cashed 250x my investment and still have some, but right now it's worth 2000x my original buy price and it's a bit batty to look at the current price. Could have bought a really, really nice house in Toronto if I'd just held on until today. But you know, 2000x is, on a log graph, not that far from 250x. So unless bitcoin goes to $50k or $500k a coin I'm not going to be a touch sour. Edit: Also, this reminds me. I should go through my comment history and find people like tptacek that were very confident that bitcoin couldn't be securable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2607706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2607706 It was a pain in the butt, but I secured bitcoin just fine. Bitcoin is one of those thing where you can go through what you said 10 years later and say "What did I say there? Yep that was right, nope that bit was a bit off, yep it wasn't banned by x, nope that person was wrong that it'd get shutdown within the year." So much of what we arguable is unknowable, like generics in Go or whether mutable state is a good thing for certain programming applications. But the nice thing about investing is you get to find out how right you were. And you're only really, truly right after the gains are realized.

dplgk 9y ago
I remind myself of this all the time. If I owned a decent amount of BTC early on, I absolutely would have sold it when it hit $1,000 or even before that. So no use in regretting not buying low and selling at $6000 per BTC

aw3c2 9y ago

So did you reconsider your thinking that it is dumb as a concept or do you regret not speculating actual money on it?