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Comment by r0fl | Hacker News Reader

I have a ton of Bitcoin FOMO. I have two friends who are holding ~5000 coins each. They bought in the $15 range. I can't think of anything that's gone up 125x

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When I was 16 I begged to the point of shouting at my father to buy AAPL. In fact I forced him to take all my life savings ($5000) and put a good chunk of his own in.

This was in 2005 before the stock split. So not quite 125x but can't complain (I also used to time it a bit back when it was an iPod company and not an iPhone company, it used to be very predictable).

Cigar buds are always out there. Some years I have no ideas so I simply don't invest in anything (haven't for the past 5). I'd just as soon buy Bitcoin as I would tulips or beanie babies -- in other words, I'm not skilled enough to invest in what I don't understand. I understood iPods. My other investments from that time period were Seagate (undervalued compared to peers), and Macromedia/Adobe.

Not even Satoshi himself can tell you the future of Bitcoin, it is entirely speculation.

"Not even Satoshi himself can tell you the future of Bitcoin, it is entirely speculation." that is very true.

Although I have not studied the blockchain technology I dont doubt it works...in theory, its the human side I am not sure about.

But with all this currency crisis talk, dont you think silver is the new AAPL?

5000 coins @ $15 cost the $75000 to buy. Think about it this way, even if you had known about bitcoin back then, would you have been willing to gamble what probably amounts to the average persons life savings into some barely heard of internet fad. Sure, it's easy to look back and see bitcoin as the sure bet, but when it was $15 it was small and nobody knew where it would go.

100% agreed. I wouldn't have the guts to hold on this long either. Would have sold the second that 75k turned into 200k.

People underestimate how difficult it is to do nothing and jus hold.

If you invested $10 in April 2010 (BTC at $0.003) it would be worth $7 million today.

Far, far greater returns than any stock in history in a period of 7 years.

Yeah, but in 2010, bitcoin was a barely heard of crypto paper with no exchanges. To get in you would either have to mine it yourself (probably using command line tools with a bunch of manual steps) or find someone to buy from in person or on a mailing list. That's a lot of effort for something that at the time just looked like a cool 3rd year project.

For every person that picked bitcoin and made a gamble, there are 1000 people regretting that they invested in some other idea that just quietly didn't go anywhere. Investing that early is not much different to gambling. You probably have better odds of winning the lottery that picking the next bitcoin.

There were at least 2 exchanges in 2010: BitcoinMarket.com (opened in April) and MtGox (July).

Bought my first Bitcoin at $15. My second at $30. 20 more at $100. Through a series of bad trades, I barely made a profit once it reached $250. I sold all of them, got some more at $750, then sold them at a loss at $250. I'm an horrible trader...

Key with most investments is not to panic sell when the price starts dropping. Diversify then just accept that some investments will go to zero, some will 2X, and maybe a couple will >10X, which is where you'll make your money in the long term.

Can they turn it into cash as of right now?

If they can, OK. Otherwise, it is just wishful thinking.

yeah you probably could, but you would have the price slide on you if you liquidate that much, most people get off the train at price stops, let other people on.

I haven't looked it up, but I think you're underestimating Bitcoin's volume and market cap if you think selling $5M will shift the global price.

Unless that ~$10M bitcoin is a pretty small fraction of the individual's net worth, it sure seems like a good idea to at least sell half and put it somewhere less risky...

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