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I wasted years of my life in crypto

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Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#721

Post by amrocha »

saalweachter wrote: post #619
teekert wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My advice is always: Just hodl some bitcoin, but not in amounts that make you cry when you loose it. It's been better for me so far than normal savings accounts.

My advice is always: invest in the assets I hold, and never sell. It really makes the value of my holdings rise.

This is the worst financial advice anyone could take.

For context, this is the equivalent of someone telling you to invest all your savings in the company you work for and use all your salary to buy more stock.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#722

Post by SirMaster »

KolmogorovComp wrote: post #713
SirMaster wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that relates to me. I made a singular choice. I am going to put in $1000 one time and leave it alone because there seems to be some potential here. I made the choice basically saying OK this $1000 I am putting in will either be worthless in 10+ years or it will be worth a lot. I am not continuing to buy, I am not dumping loads of money into it. I spent less than 1% of my yearly salary one time knowing…

The point is that, your "investment" was pure gambling. See how I can replace bitcoin with lottery ticket. > I am going to buy $1000 in lottery tickets one time and leave it alone because there seems to be some potential here. > I made the choice basically saying OK this $1000 I am putting in will either be worthless in 10 hours or it will be worth a lot.

But it's more than just a binary. Do you not think that the chance that bitcoin blew up big was more or less than my chance at winning a million on a $1000 lottery gamble?

I bought bitcoin because I perceived more potential around blockchain tech becoming either useful or at least drawing hype to explode the value. I wouldn't buy a lottery ticket because the odds of winning are astronomically low. I perceived there to be a far greater chance in bitcoin blowing up than winning the lottery, or even winning big at a casino.

Do you think I really over-estimated bitcoin's odds early on? At least with blockchain there were some potential real-world possibilities to it and that was a big factor in my choice to gamble on it. Is that kind of thought not at least somewhat more sound than buying a simple lottery ticket? To me it was.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#723

Post by VHRanger »

jobs_throwaway wrote: post #696
kanbankaren wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has proven neither to be a store of value nor medium of exchange though it is being used extensively for criminal activities.

How has it not been a store of value?

A store of value is an asset with as close to 0% volatility in price as possible.

Bitcoin is a speculative asset: it has very high price volatility. It is not a store of value in the proper term.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#724

Post by theplatman »

TZubiri wrote: post #702
earnesti wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never understood crypto, however I'm long term Bitcoin fan and user, and don't consider it "crypto". I think Bitcoin is pretty much opposite what the typical crypto project is.

Ethereum seems useful as well. But that's about it

the problem with ETH at its peak is that the gas fees made cost of doing anything real too costly

if there was a real use case it would have manifested itself at this point

i think the abstraction needs to be much higher to end user for this stuff to have value. having to manage your own wallet doesn't make sense.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#725

Post by SigmundA »

Dilettante_ wrote: post #643
amelius wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My freedom to put cameras in your home is your non-freedom to have privacy. Sounds like not such a great idea now?

You would have the freedom to try to put cameras in my home, I would have the freedom to try and stop you or take them down again. Shock horror, personal agency instead of surrogate power via government!

Unless amelius is stronger than you, or has better weapons, or commands a gang that is bigger than your gang, then you can't stop them.

Its almost like you need some sort of power structure with the monopoly on violence to enforce agreed upon freedoms, they could be called the "government" which enforces "laws".

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#726

Post by psunavy03 »

outside1234 wrote: post #717
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How has it not been a store of value?

It has an extremely volatile profile. You might as well stick your money in the SP 500 and call it is a currency.

Except the S&P 500 will give you a return. The stock market is not gambling, much as some people want it to be.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#727

Post by reducesuffering »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #257
fsh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an ingenious solution to achieve a "trustless" currency that prevents double-spending without a central authority. Unfortunately, this solves the wrong problem. Spending money usually involves getting a good or service in return, which inherently requires "trust" (as does any human interaction). Your fancy blockchain is not going to help you if you order something with Bitcoin and no package arrives.

> Unfortunately, this solves the wrong problem. Spending money usually involves getting a good or service in return, which inherently requires "trust" (as does any human interaction). Your fancy blockchain is not going to help you if you order something with Bitcoin and no package arrives. That problem already has solutions. The problems cryptocurrency is supposed to solve are, I want to buy subversive literature fro…

> I want to buy subversive literature from someone I already trust not to rip me off, or for an amount I'm not worried about losing, without anyone requiring me to give them a government ID. Or I want to sell it to people without requiring them to give anyone an ID. I want to donate money to Wikileaks. I want to commission art or software from someone in South America who doesn't have access to US banks.

So literally 0.1% of the financial needs of the average person. What a revolution

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#728

Post by SirMaster »

lxgr wrote: post #708
SirMaster wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think a $1000 gamble on this new paradigm of blockchain crypto was a sound decision? When the sum I was putting in was otherwise an insignificant sum to me. I bought in fully knowing it could go to 0, or maybe it could be worth a ton in 10+ years. To me it seemed like the chance it would blow up was well worth the tiny risk of losing a pretty meaningless amount of money to me. I am not even otherwise a gamb…

You had a positive outcome, but yes, despite that, I don't know if that was based on a sound decision. It's possible to vastly misjudge the expected value of a trade and still come out ahead. > This was the only singular "crazy gamble" I had ever made and I knew full well it was crazy. The only thing that matters is whether it's positive EV (and whether your methodology of coming up with the EV itself is sound). If y…

I mean I thought that there was a potential in blockchain tech back when I bought it. I also thought that there was also potential in the hype around blockchain to explode the value simply from hype and how humans behave alone.

At least WAY more of a chance than what I would get spending $1000 on a lottery ticket or at a casino.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#730

Post by kwar13 »

torginus wrote: post #512
kwar13 wrote: post #461

HN generally views blockchain tech negatively I've found, but I'll leave this here for the inevitable: crypto if a casino and has no real use. https://kaveh.page/blog/what-is-blockchain-actually-used-for

regardless of the true merit of crypto, crypto articles have the tendency to fill the HN comment sections with the most unbearable people. It's honestly kind of amazing, I never thought a person could be so intellectually condescending and smug while trying to sell you their shit at the same time.

I'm not trying to sell anything. I don't even work in crypto and have never had a full-time job in it. I am not even talking about crypto here whatsoever. The whole point of the article IS to distinguish between "cryptocurrency" and "blockchain".
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