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Poll: How many Bitcoin do you own?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: How many Bitcoin do you own?

#131

Post by sentenza »

mcantelon wrote: post #79
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aw... Man. $8310. I sold 5 coins at the first peak of $31/BTC. Thought I was pretty damn sly for getting out ahead of the following crash ($8/BTC). Joke's on me! I've now lost out on $1230 and counting.

I was going to buy $300 worth when they were 30 cents each. I didn't, though, as it involved travel to a nearby town and I was working on a book and thought I should be practical and spend the weekend on that. Ah well, one less house.

Dude, you made the right choice. Just because things have been heading up for many Bitcoin users doesn't mean it's not speculation. Bitcoin will always have large value fluctuations since it is, unlike "real world" currencies, decoupled from the rest of the economy.

And if I was you, I'd do myself the favor of not torturing myself about what could have been.

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoin do you own?

#132

Post by dwaltrip »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #52

This whole poll just serves to illustrate the problems with bitcoin. Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency, but people are treating it like an investment. The more relevant statistic to bitcoin's popularity as a currency would be how many bitcoin transactions people have participated in over the past year.

It's supposed to be a decentralized, unseizable, un-inflatable value transfer mechanism. Looks like it is succeeding. Also, you have to bootstrap a stateless currency somehow. Day to day transaction volume will always trail speculation/exchange trading volume. Analogously, forex trade volumes for traditional currencies dwarf global GDP.

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoin do you own?

#133

Post by laichzeit0 »

elliottcarlson wrote: post #50
austenallred wrote: post #18

13 people with 100+ bitcoin? Unfortunately I think this is another example of HN polls becoming completely unreliable.

At one point I owned about 150 bitcoins, but I sold the majority off at the $30-something peak a few years back. I also paid for my bitcoin miner back when bitcoins were $11, and my cost was 58 bitcoins. The miner that I finally received, has made me 5 bitcoins. Sad times.

I also bought at around $30. Back when the only way I could realistically get BTC was on IRC on #btc-otc using PayPal. I still have the original Excel spreadsheet I used to track the purchases and marking the ones where I got ripped off. Then it all went to shit in a few hours. Forgot about the coins until now.

It's equally probable that people are going to laugh their heads off in a few years that people were selling their coins at $300. I mean it was ridiculous to us that the $30 coins were selling at $250 in April.

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoin do you own?

#135

Post by dwaltrip »

yeukhon wrote: post #49

I have an increible hard time to get started with bitcoin. Which website? How? Can someone pull through the right path for me? I want to start investing in mining and buying.

Mining is a lost cause for the average Joe. The simplest way to buy for U.S. citizens is coinbase.com. Local bitcoins is pretty good too, and has somewhat of a global presence. Look up creating an offline paper wallet to securely store your invested coins (short version: disconnect internet, print out a few copies of paper wallet using offline version of bitaddress.org, and then reset computer before reconnecting the net). Practice a few times with small amounts first. For everyday use, security is not as important and you can keep small amounts in a smartphone wallet or desktop client.

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoin do you own?

#137

Post by dwaltrip »

sireat wrote: post #126
dwaltrip wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is impossible. It never dropped to $6 after hitting $36. In fact, it never dropped below $30 after that point (March 2013). Did you mean $32 (June 2011)? That would be possible, but also extremely poor timing, as it was only at such a price for about 24 hours. With something as volatile as bitcoin, dollar cost averaging is your friend.

Didn't it hit $36 in 2011 before the drop? Was 30+ then.

Bitcoincharts.com says the high was 31.91, for a few short hours. Either the parent comment has ridiculously bad timing and less than 20 months of patience, or is trolling us.

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zigHourlyzczsg2...

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoin do you own?

#138

Post by stuhood »

zachlatta wrote: post #22
KyeRussell wrote: post #16

Mine are all stuck in MtGox's clutch, I've just about tripled my current investment. I hope it doesn't crash before they give it up.

I'd transfer them over to another exchange and sell them, if I were you. The USD price on Mt. Gox can be considered fake because nobody can get their money out.

Well, you don't necessarily need to cash out to USD to withdraw from MtGox. Instead, you can transfer to an offline wallet with a few physical and/or cloud+encrypted backups.
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