
Ask HN: Do you feel bad about 'missing the boat' on investing in Bitcoin? - rblion
I could&#x27;ve bought some week of Thanksgiving and it&#x27;s value could&#x27;ve doubled. I could&#x27;ve bought some a year ago and it&#x27;s value would be almost 20x. So on and so on.<p>In my gut, I feel this feels like mania and a crash is coming in 2018. Yet, I don&#x27;t have any solid reasons outside of the things people usually say. Makes me wonder if we are all behind the times or missing something, like this is the future of the global economy.
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setra
HN said bitcoin was a bubble when it was at $10. HN said bitcoin was a bubble
when it hit $500. HN said bitcoin was a bubble when it hit $4000. HN said
bitcoin was a bubble when it hit $10,000.

The issue with knowing something is a bubble is that unless you know when the
bubble is going to pop its nearly useless knowledge.

Bitcoin has demonstrated that the end of the bubble is NOT obvious and that
there has been plenty of money to be made. My recommendation (what I did) is
buy some amount of bitcoin in the off chance that its worth a million dollars
in a few years. Because bitcoin is a deflationary system there is at least a
good reason to think it will rise in value forever.

~~~
rblion
I just sold a domain for $500. If I put that into bitcoin, could I easily sell
it when it's worth $1500 you think? I don't want to buy it and be forced to
keep it.

How can it rise in value 'forever'? At some point, government regulations or a
major scandal is going to affect the market. Is it not?

~~~
setra
Bitcoin is deflationary with a cap on the number of units. If there is
economic growth the value of each bitcoin will increase. Every current
conventional currency introduces more monetary units as the economy grows.

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btc_throughaway
I didn't miss the boat.

I bought the boat, was known as the shipmaster, and then set my boat on fire,
along with myself.

Bought $10K+ of BTC in 2013 near the peak, traded it up to $60K even though
BTC had crashed, talked to everyone and anyone about it and was known as the
"Bitcoin guy". This was a lot of money for a high schooler / freshman.

By 2015 I had added another $10K of my own money. Much to the chagrin of my
friends and family. Discouraged/depressed, and wanting to just lead a normal
life where every waking moment wasn't spent thinking about BTC/alts, I took
riskier and riskier positions until I blew up.

And I was relieved, for a while, until BTC started rising again. Now I can't
get away from the discussion, and people are messaging me about it even if we
hadn't spoken in years.

I would be okay with just losing $20K, but I'm honestly losing my sanity
seeing and hearing about Bitcoin everywhere, even at work. The worst part is
that no one knows I've lost anything. They all think I'm some genius.

~~~
slyfocks
I can definitely relate to this. I was an early Ethereum adopter and mentioned
it to friends fairly often when it was around $2. I’m usually pretty
dispassionate around others, so my friends took my zeal for Ethereum seriously
and bought a bunch of it.

Once Ethereum hit $6, on a market cap basis it felt overvalued for what was
essentially an early stage startup. I was afraid it would have scaling issues
with smart contracts. I convinced myself it was overly hyped, even though I
now realize that very few people outside of my bubble had heard of it. I sold
the first time it dipped from $6 to $3.75.

As soon as I sold, it started heading higher. Every day I told myself it was
overvalued, and yet it continued higher. New coins that contributed nothing of
value were suddenly raising tens of millions of dollars, so I refused to
believe that the bubble could continue much longer. This was early 2016.

I then repeated the cycle with Monero—bought early, told others, sold early,
missed out on 2000% gains.

Most of my friends have enough money to retire at 25 and while I’m happy for
them, it’s definitely negatively impacting my mental health. Crypto isn’t my
first case of bad luck, but it’s the only one that I’ve had to relive nearly
every day—it’s practically inescapable with the current hype.

Try not to let it impact how you view yourself, though. You seem like an
intelligent person who made a couple of impulsive decisions that ended up
being magnified by hindsight.

~~~
btc_throughaway
Thank you.

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strangecasts
_" You know it's time to sell when shoeshine boys give you stock tips. This
bull market is over."_

Go with your gut, honestly. When you imagine "I could've" scenarios, it's not
based on probability, it's just imagining situations where you got lucky.
Nobody goes around saying "If only I'd put it all into Mt. Gox" even though
people _did_.

Consider what "there's still money to be made, I just have to sell off before
the crash" looks like if _lots of people_ believe it and act on it
simultaneously.

~~~
rblion
Thanks, this is the healthy way of looking at it.

My hunches are based on my underlying understanding of psychology and
economics.

> Consider what "there's still money to be made, I just have to sell off
> before the crash" looks like if lots of people believe it and act on it
> simultaneously.

A market correction event is inevitable since the amount of money going into
it wouldn't be able to go into circulation as a viable currency for
goods/services. I know some companies are starting to accept BTC as viable
payment, they will remove that function in a heartbeat if something drastic
ever happens to the market.

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rthomas6
Yes, sometimes. I learned about Bitcoin in 2011 at the age of 23. I read the
whitepaper, thought mining it sounded pretty cool, then just... didn't,
because I didn't feel like setting it all up. I had a PC with a capable GPU,
which is all you needed back then. I just used my GPU to play Starcraft 2 and
Minecraft instead.

I got into it again in 2013 but didn't put much money into it because it was
"too late" to make those huge gains, in my mind. I sold them when I needed
some extra money one month.

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georgewsinger
Let's consider Bitcoin. You haven't missed the boat to 10x-100x your
investment, but you have missed the boat to 100x-10000x your investment.

This is because if Bitcoin manages to replace even 10% of all storage assets
(or even further replaces 10% of all exchange mediums), then there is still
ample room for it to 10x-100x in value from its current price. From an
expected value standpoint, it's roughly rational to invest in Bitcoin if you
think there's a 5% chance or greater chance it will "dominate the world" like
this.

