Wonder what happened to those that invested in Bitcoin as soon as it made front page here in Hacker news. At that time it was selling like 40 cents for 10,000 coins, if I remember correctly.
I turned down a 3,000 bitcoin payment for a website I made in September 2011. I told the rather elderly man who suggested the exchange that I didn't accept "magic beans".
I've talked to loads of people with the same sort of story. Truth is that I never believed BTC could be worth what it is and in a way I still don't. I think its valuation is ludicrous given its economic design issues and scaling problems.
My take away from the whole saga is that it's totally debunked any notion that I had that markets or their participants are rational. I honestly find it a bit depressing. Maybe I should give up trying to do useful work and invent the next pet rock fad.
I've spent several Bitcoins on pizza. I have no regrets; if nobody used the magic beans, nobody would be interested in them. In other words, if early-ish adopters hadn't "taken one for the team", we wouldn't be discussing Bitcoin now because it wouldn't exist.
In a way the person who bought that famous pizza for 10,000 Bitcoin only lost "wealth" that wouldn't have existed without the buzz generated by that transaction.
The problem is that this illustrates what's wrong with highly deflationary currencies. Who wants to spend a currency that could appreciate by over 10,000X if you just "hodl" it? That's why Bitcoin has actually been abandoned for a lot of commerce. Why spend it ever?
I would still spend it if it were easy. I bought my first Bitcoins when they were around 10 USD, so anything I buy is at one 1000th of the dollar price. Could it go to a 2000th? Yes, but apart from something huge like buying an apartment it would be hard to care about the difference.
But yes, this is not an answer that applies to deflationary currencies in general, nor to people who came later to Bitcoin than I did.
Edit: Although again, the only way Bitcoin can appreciate is if people do spend it. Tragedy of the commons.
Yeah, I had at one time like 57 or something like that bitcoins, I losed them in a HDD failure (External hdd against the floor kind of failure xD) and if there is ocasion I tell to people about it because I like how they think I would have sold at the peak point and make more than a million dollars and then I break them reality saying that not, I would have sold them at... 50$? 100$? For all of them? It would have been an awesome profit and I didn't generate any income at that time so I would have SURELY sold at that price or even less. Its like thinking some people were idiots because they didnt invest in Apple, or Microsoft or Uber and that it was really clear and blah blah blah... And yeah, the next Apple is probably some startup starting now and you know what? They are not investing in it.
