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After the Bitcoin Boom: Hard Lessons for Cryptocurrency Investors

nytimes.com

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Re: After the Bitcoin Boom: Hard Lessons for Cryptocurrency Investors

#81

Post by lifeformed »

oleganza wrote: post #42
cm2187 wrote: post #16

To be honest with bitcoin currently still over $6,000 there is a lot more pain to come.

Bitcoin has been through at least 3-4 major "run ups" already. Those who do not look at the log chart think that "this time it's different" and Bitcoin will surely die for good. Later it'll crash from $250K to $50K and then it will certainly be the end. 2011: $1->$30->$3. 2012: $5->$15->$10. 2013: $10->$270->$80. 2013-14: $100->$1100->$250. 2016-2018: $500->$20000->$6000 (so far).

And it'll keep going to quadrillions of dollars, right? Obviously there's a limit somewhere. It seems reasonable to think that $20k is already pushing it.

Re: After the Bitcoin Boom: Hard Lessons for Cryptocurrency Investors

#83

Post by cubano »

whoisjuan wrote: post #29
rib3ye wrote: post #5

Corrected title: After the Bitcoin Boom: Hard Lessons for n00b crypto Investors

That doesn't even make sense. Anyone that is attempting to invest in crypto is a noob, even the ones that claim to be 'experts'. Nobody had any type of signaling to predict a price deflation for any of the crypto assets. The hard lesson is about timing, not about expertise.

As a day trader for about 5 years, I could (and did) almost perfectly guess the price runups after breakouts, and knew 20k was sell time...it was a super easy chart to read in fact.

All the moves were textbook.

Re: After the Bitcoin Boom: Hard Lessons for Cryptocurrency Investors

#84

Post by danieka »

evancox100 wrote: post #13

Where do they find these people? Is this what a lot of "ordinary" people do? Take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans to invest in cryptocurrency? Are the people profiled in the article a representative sample? Or are we hearing about the worst cases only because they are so notable and out of the ordinary? Will this post ever stop asking questions?? Stories like these are full of anecdote and short on facts, i…

Was that a subtle riff off Newsroom? If not, post well crafted.

Re: After the Bitcoin Boom: Hard Lessons for Cryptocurrency Investors

#85

Post by benashford »

cm2187 wrote: post #19
hluska wrote: post #14

> Now, eight months later, the $23,000 he invested in several digital tokens is worth about $4,000, and he is clearheaded about what happened. > “I got too caught up in the fear of missing out and trying to make a quick buck,” he said last week. “The losses have pretty much left me financially ruined.” I think it's distasteful to criticize the decisions that lead to someone's downfall, but maybe someone will read thi…

I don't think any investor saw this as anything else than a bubble, they just wanted to enjoy the ride up. I would go all-in in a bubble if I had the confidence someone would tap on my shoulder to let me know when it's going to crash. Investing requires discipline.

That isn't what they were saying at the time. Even level-headed forums like Hacker News had a lot of comments (gathering positive votes, although I suspect not all were organic) trying to describe with a wide-array of pseudo-science why Bitcoin was the king of a new world of inherently superior currencies.

Of course it was nonsense, as anyone who'd read about previous bubbles could tell you. But it was a mad time last December.

Re: After the Bitcoin Boom: Hard Lessons for Cryptocurrency Investors

#86

Post by aaronbrethorst »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #56
pfortuny wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Axiom 1: whatever you invest can disappear... So easily forgotten.

My personal take on that is: don’t invest money you can’t afford to lose.

Think of it as gambling instead of investing, and you'll probably do better. Relatedly, if you work for a company where a meaningful fraction of your compensation is in the form of stock, that is also gambling.

Re: After the Bitcoin Boom: Hard Lessons for Cryptocurrency Investors

#87

Post by segmondy »

Any activity that simply involves spending money and not enough sweat equity is not an investment but rather speculation. Doesn't matter if you are buying stocks or real estate, and most definitely so with all cryptocurrencies especially when you are not mining.

Re: After the Bitcoin Boom: Hard Lessons for Cryptocurrency Investors

#88

Post by jonas21 »

paulpauper wrote: post #82
cm2187 wrote: post #16

To be honest with bitcoin currently still over $6,000 there is a lot more pain to come.

due to the mining aspect of bitcoin, unlike a stock, it does a a sort of floor, but that too can eventually fail

How does mining set a floor?

Re: After the Bitcoin Boom: Hard Lessons for Cryptocurrency Investors

#89

Post by gomox »

21 wrote: post #50
fru2013 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Then why do people say "invest in the stock market for the long run by buying an index fund?"

Amazingly only one of the three replies you got so far understood the point of your comparison.

Re: After the Bitcoin Boom: Hard Lessons for Cryptocurrency Investors

#90

Post by jonas21 »

Retric wrote: post #65
21 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why do people say "invest in the stock market for the long run by buying an index fund?"

Because of minimizing risk, and minimizing transaction fees. If you buy 100 stocks and 10 of them go to 0 you are out 10%. However, if the other 90 stocks are up more than 15% then you have gained a little money. But, if you buy 100 different stocks by hand then you pay 100 different transaction fees and have to keep track of them independently for tax etc.

I'm pretty sure you still need to pay taxes on the dividends even if you're reinvesting them.
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