Just wondering how those of you who have known about Ethereum for a while but didn't buy it feel about missing out on >3000% returns this year. I didn't buy any and dislike knowing I could've been rich.
Half the people who attended these were idiots looking to make easy money for no work. A quarter were guys who had gotten into bitcoins when they were cheap and had decided that they were geniuses, and not simply fortunate. The first half loved listening to these guys.
The last quarter were actually interesting people, into crypto and crypto-currencies, doing cool stuff. And some of them were into this thing called ethereum. Sometimes there were talks with that Vitalik guy.
And I did not buy even a single coin.
It was a bad investment. It was some random guy at that weird house on Spadina Ave who said he was making a better Bitcoin. Sane people do not give money to schemes like that. Those crazy idiots who wanted to get rich for no effort, let them throw their money at this ethereum thing, just like they'll throw money at every pyramid scheme and the Toronto housing market.
I think the one thing that was clear to me is that this Vitalik guy was some kind of genius. But, still I didn't buy/mine.
I wish my coding skills had been better at the time and that I had looked into the code (and not just the whitepaper which is kinda like a fairytale to me) and realized its value.
It's really easy to look back and say, "I could have been rich!" But when I catch myself doing that, I try to look at the basket of equivalent choices at the time. I'm sure there were a zillion random guys in weird houses proposing schemes they thought were brilliant.
It's the same thing with startups. There are a million people who think they'll be the next Jobs, the next Zuckerberg. Approximately one of them is right. The people who come up with that guy will, exactly as you say, decide that they're geniuses, not just lucky.
I try to look at the basket of equivalent choices at the time
Also, Bitcoin had a roughly three-year lull; it's entirely possible that another such lull could happen after you buy.
I still do regret the $50 I paid to crowdfund App.net, the Twitter competitor that was run by person with strong business sense, launched at a time when it was clear Twitter had no business plan and was killing its existing customer base and would be dead soon, and widely praised on HN. That was a much surer bet than this weirdo questionably-legal currency that only a bunch of nerds with heterodox view on finance were interested in.
These things happen. It's fairly random. The main thing I learned is never to confuse financial success with merit. (Obvious, but it sunk in more.)
Think I'll print it and stick it to the wall somewhere.
It's impossibly unlikely to capture all the gains, but you still can win. Even if it's not 30x+. I'm okay with anything that beats regular investment vehicles over time. Win some instead of griping about all that you could have won.
I just need another $10,000 :p
I also definitely think this tech will mature and interesting things will come of it. That is already happening, but, for most people, it is very hard to see the good from the bad when 'investing'. I did do a few ICO's because I wanted to try (again, with profit so no risk) that I found interesting and I'll just see if that was easier or harder coin than trading.
Kind of regret that decision now :P
But in the end I still don't trust all these tokens. None of them have so far been able to make me understand what they hell they're supposed to do (in terms of benefit to me, other than shitloads of money).
The first one that will be a success.
Not suggesting its wise to do so, but it keeps things in perspective.
Back then I evaluated Ethereum and decided against it. That is all there is to it. I don't know how justified the current hype is.
How rich would you have been - 3000%, so 30 times - would you have invested 100000$ in Ethereum, yielding 3 Million $? Or more likely just 1000$, yielding 30000 - nice money, but not really rich?
3000% does seem somewhat meager.