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Comment by jarboot | Hacker News Reader

The little pile of bitcoins I had laying around from a couple weeks ago has doubled in price. Should I spend them now in anticipation of a bubble bursting or wait for the price to possibly go up?

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Oh, you should probably sell them. Just like when I sold all of my Apple stock when it shot up to $30, purchased at ~$20. :/

Depends what you expected those initial coins to do. Did you get them as a speculative investment with a chance of "interest" of x%/year? Then a 100% increase is pretty damn good as far as investments go, you shouldn't feel too bad about selling now. You'll have regret if it continues to grow to the moon, so maybe sell half or 3/4. But also calculate the potential unrealized earnings if it went to the moon -- i.e. if your little pile was only worth $100, now $200, even if it doubles twice more the difference is just $600.

As with any volatile investment you should get out when you are ahead, or in need of the money. You may lose out on further gains but the likelihood of another crash is high. It's better to win than lose.

> It's better to win than lose.

Mathematically that's just not true. In objective terms not winning an extra $100 is exactly the same as losing $100.

This psychological fallacy (called 'loss aversion') is the primary reason the average player loses at poker. They're afraid of losing $100 when they might be behind but they constantly fail to extract that extra $100 value bet when they know they're likely ahead.

My logic is always sell half, keep half. Less regret maybe.

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