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What If Bitcoin – Shoot I didn't invest

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Re: What If Bitcoin – Shoot I didn't invest

#11

Post by pjc50 »

TekMol wrote: post #9

But does that mean anything? You could have made this kind of ROI with many assets. For example with stock options. I have been telling people for years that "I am sure Bitcoin will grow a lot. I probably should invest. I'm just too lazy to dabble with the tech.". And I have not invested even though I thought it would be a great investment. But what if I did? I would not have invested more then $10k. Because it's suc…

Not only is it tremendously volatile, it's very easy for it to be lost or stolen from your wallet, or defrauded by the exchanges.

(Unless you're really good at information security and very disciplined. I'd be very uncomfortable keeping a £10k investment on a PC in my house.)

Re: What If Bitcoin – Shoot I didn't invest

#12

Post by Tade0 »

keyle wrote: post #5

As much as I see myself as wild person when it comes to offshoot bets, I still can't reason myself into buying bitcoins. Not sure I must be too Gen X to find this reasonable. Anyone here comment "how well they did?" and if you've pulled out or are seriously thinking about pulling out? I feel silly, but I'm still not going to put my hard earned cash in it any time soon... In fact, I wouldn't really know how.

I guess there's another side to this story: Some people got their bitcoins stolen.

Also all this wealth is purely speculative. If everybody converted their bitcoins to fiat currency now the exchange rate would collapse quickly.

Re: What If Bitcoin – Shoot I didn't invest

#14

Post by davidgerard »

The hype is full of survivorship bias.

* What if you lost it in Mt. Gox?

* What if you lost it in another of the roughly-monthly hacks of exchanges?

* What if you lost it on an accidentally thrown-away hard drive?

* What if you lost it to your own error?

* What if you lost it on one of the many scams the crypto space is absolutely suffused with?

For some reason these are never mentioned by people saying "but if you'd bought in 2011".

Look at all these coins you also didn't "invest" in! http://deadcoins.com/

Cryptos are gambling. Good luck if you won! But it's still not a sensible thing to recommend to others.

Re: What If Bitcoin – Shoot I didn't invest

#15

Post by znebby »

Tade0 wrote: post #12
keyle wrote: post #5

As much as I see myself as wild person when it comes to offshoot bets, I still can't reason myself into buying bitcoins. Not sure I must be too Gen X to find this reasonable. Anyone here comment "how well they did?" and if you've pulled out or are seriously thinking about pulling out? I feel silly, but I'm still not going to put my hard earned cash in it any time soon... In fact, I wouldn't really know how.

I guess there's another side to this story: Some people got their bitcoins stolen. Also all this wealth is purely speculative. If everybody converted their bitcoins to fiat currency now the exchange rate would collapse quickly.

> If everybody converted their bitcoins to fiat currency now the exchange rate would collapse quickly.

You can say the same about literally any asset or currency. If everyone sells, and no one is buying, then yes, the value drops to 0.

Re: What If Bitcoin – Shoot I didn't invest

#17

Post by ggambetta »

davidgerard wrote: post #14

The hype is full of survivorship bias. * What if you lost it in Mt. Gox? * What if you lost it in another of the roughly-monthly hacks of exchanges? * What if you lost it on an accidentally thrown-away hard drive? * What if you lost it to your own error? * What if you lost it on one of the many scams the crypto space is absolutely suffused with? For some reason these are never mentioned by people saying "but if you'd…

I lost it in Mt. Gox, and this website made me very sad.

Re: What If Bitcoin – Shoot I didn't invest

#18

Post by TekMol »

pjc50 wrote: post #11
TekMol wrote: post #9

But does that mean anything? You could have made this kind of ROI with many assets. For example with stock options. I have been telling people for years that "I am sure Bitcoin will grow a lot. I probably should invest. I'm just too lazy to dabble with the tech.". And I have not invested even though I thought it would be a great investment. But what if I did? I would not have invested more then $10k. Because it's suc…

Not only is it tremendously volatile, it's very easy for it to be lost or stolen from your wallet, or defrauded by the exchanges. (Unless you're really good at information security and very disciplined. I'd be very uncomfortable keeping a £10k investment on a PC in my house.)

That's actually the biggest issue with Bitcoin. And what I meant with "dabble with the tech".

There is just no way to securely create a secret key.

Because the algorithm is so complex, you have to trust somebody else's software to create the key. How do you know that software is neither malicious nor buggy?

Re: What If Bitcoin – Shoot I didn't invest

#20

Post by DennisP »

pjc50 wrote: post #11
TekMol wrote: post #9

But does that mean anything? You could have made this kind of ROI with many assets. For example with stock options. I have been telling people for years that "I am sure Bitcoin will grow a lot. I probably should invest. I'm just too lazy to dabble with the tech.". And I have not invested even though I thought it would be a great investment. But what if I did? I would not have invested more then $10k. Because it's suc…

Not only is it tremendously volatile, it's very easy for it to be lost or stolen from your wallet, or defrauded by the exchanges. (Unless you're really good at information security and very disciplined. I'd be very uncomfortable keeping a £10k investment on a PC in my house.)

So don't keep it in your house. Keep it in a safe deposit box, just like you would keep gold coins or bearer bonds.

Paper wallets are easy to make, and hardware wallets have been available for years.

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