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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

#741

Post by SirMaster »

ForHackernews wrote: post #720
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…

Why didn't you buy $1000 of NVDA instead? It would have paid off better. Clearly, NVDA shares are the future of currency.

No it wouldn't have.

I bought 10 bitcoin for about $1000 in late 2013. It's currently worth about 900K and was a peak of about 1.2M.

$1000 in NVDA shares in late 2013 was about 35 cents per share, so about 2850 shares. That's currently worth 521K with a peak of 590K.

And why? Because in 2013 I thought there was a greater potential for bitcoin blowing up substantially due to the new concept of blockchain and what it could potentially do, or at least the hype around what people perceived that it could potentially do. Compared to what I thought the potential for NVDA to do.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#742

Post by lxgr »

darrenf wrote: post #605
SirMaster wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it was dumb of me to buy my bitcoins back when they were less than $100 a coin just in the slim chance that it completely blew up? I don't see what was dumb about a decision to put less than $1000 into 10 coins just in case. Worked out really well for me in the end and a less than $1000 gamble doesn't seem like that crazy of a gamble, at least to me.

I shoved £500 down in Sept 2017 knowing full well it was a gamble, and still have a roughtly £500 balance now -- having skimmed enough off the top over the years to buy a couple of iPhones and whatever else. I 100% consider this profit to be literal dumb luck.

Unironic congratulations on being self-aware enough to take your profits without it affecting your reasoning. Anecdotally, not many seem to come out of crypto net positive with that mindset.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#743

Post by alphazard »

amrocha wrote: post #731
alphazard wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is going to run a database for you unless you pay them. If you want to write data to an existing public ledger, then you are going to have to get some of the token that allows you to write to that ledger. Paying for a token to use the ledger is not speculative, it's pragmatic. Holding the token and not using it to write to the ledger is speculative, and encouraging people to do that in order to make money your…

Or the university could pay 3$ per year to host a DB that all clubs can use. I’m sure you can imagine a make believe world where no one has money and everyone cares and is tech savvy and yet no one can be trusted at the same time, and in this world somehow blockchains are useful. But that’s not the world we live in.

> no one has money and everyone cares and is tech savvy and yet no one can be trusted at the same time

lol, you perfectly described a group of college students.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#744

Post by dogman144 »

If you work in cybersecurity, I’d table many views in this thread and just understand it’s the place to be to cut your teeth in fairly hard security problems and make money along the way. If 1980’s security culture seemed cool with a new BoF everyday and Bill Gates himself calling you a bad word for doing it, and toss in advanced threat actors, a sec career in crypto isn’t too far off of that. Of course company by company variations apply and the above could include explaining EDR to small teams with absurds amounts of funds tied to a private key in a .txt.

That said, much of the feedback in this thread applies to working in it imo, as the other side of keeping these companies and their treasuries not hacked and capitalized is it exposes you to a lot.

That said, I’ve done big tech too, and the nonsense in crypto just has a couple less rungs of management insulation than the rest of tech. The rest of tech lives with the consequences of asinine decisions over 4-5x quarters and in crypto you live with it month to month. Pick your poison on preferred version of nonsensical tech instability.

There’s a twitter comment that covers what I’ve come to think - natural state of crypto is just a more direct instantiation of what’s going on everywhere else, crypto just doesn’t hide it (sort of). Hard not to believe that with tech selling “trade in your IRA!” as if that’s not offering a beer to my 20 yr sober Uncle Bob, in terms of products that are cancerous for “the people.” So I see nothing in crypto that’s not reflected everywhere in tech and civics right now.

The crypto tech or integrations to pay attention to - btc, atomic swaps cross-chain, trading firms, whatever finserv is testing for payment and settlement infra. All of these have deep building, are functional and funded. Wouldn’t bet against it over a career.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#745

Post by tokai »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #655

Like most kids, I had my Randian phase. But I grew out of it before moving to Sili Valley. I've always been a bit of a fan of Adam Curtis' documentary style, and "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" (named after the Brautigan poem) is worth watching. I'm not sure how much of his narrative of Rand is accurate, but it's well presented: https://youtu.be/I6EBpLfLHCA?si=SE93Dp9nsl11vnU3

Most kids don't have a Rand phase. It is a good indicator for low empathy selfish idiots tho.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#746

Post by ericmcer »

> I wasted years of my life in crypto

Yeah you are a software engineer. That means like 80% of your work will probably get minimal traction for a few years before burning into nothing. 8 years on crypto, probably a ton of people interacted with things he created and now it will dwindle to nothing and be replaced by the next hot thing. Sounds like a win imo.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#747

Post by atomic128 »

kanbankaren wrote: post #681
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.

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

Monero is used for criminal activities, not Bitcoin. How do I know? I monitor crime, mostly but not exclusively drug crime, on Tor's hidden services: https://rnsaffn.com/zg4/ Monero is the cryptocurrency of choice.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#748

Post by kayamon »

ranguna wrote: post #315
stavros wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you convert them into bread and milk the same way you convert little pieces of paper into bread and milk: You find someone who's willing to give you bread and milk in return for them.

Good luck finding someone who will accept btc for literal bread and milk

bitrefill.com

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#749

Post by bawolff »

npoc wrote: post #377
bawolff wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me. Bitcoin has a great mythology associated with it. People over emphasize the technical aspects, i think its the "story" that made it succeed. Its about taking back "control" from the man. People love an underdog story, people love a rebellion story. Lots of people in the tech space are anti-establishment…

You say bitcoin is "so silly". Please give me an example of anything better for nation states to hold as reserves and to transact with other nations with. I'll even allow you an imaginary thing as long as it's constrained by the real world.

Fiat currency. (So-called petro dollar)

Gold.

There is a reason why no countries are using bitcoin as a reserve currency.

Re: I wasted years of my life in crypto

#750

Post by KptMarchewa »

mothballed wrote: post #542
Almondsetat wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Foreign property ownership is not like buying an Armani bag when you visit Italy. The financial regulations are complementary to the legal ones. Besides, even if you just sent 2 bitcoins, what about all the remaining documentation? It's not gonna fill out itself

And this is [part of] why Dubai has the highest per capita influx of high net worth individuals. You can call them a dystopic theocracy, which is a bit true, but you can literally just fly over and buy a condo in a neighborhood with basically zero violent crime, with 2 bitcoins with essentially no questions asked.

Fine, let's just give up civilization and praise the disneyland for oligarch and rich brats, build and maintained by slave like labor.
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