Ask HN: Is it too late to get into Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is it too late to get into Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general?

36 pointseibrahim56 comments

I missed the bus. I recall playing with bitcoins like 10 years ago and didn't see the potential and thought it to be very risky.

Is it too late to invest in bitcoin now? How would you even get started?

PS: I am not talking about mining because the consensus is that it is too late for that - at least for an individual with a laptop.

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Buying Bitcoin is not investing, it is speculation. This may sound pedantic, but its not. It really is a gamble to hold Bitcoin, you are betting on specific uncertain events happening in the future. If they do not happen, then Bitcoin will be worth $0.

You can invest in equipment to mine Bitcoin, but if you hold the Bitcoin that you mine, then you are speculating.

To answer (or dodge) your original question: nobody knows for sure if its too late.

As of right now, the market is betting that it is better to own a Bitcoin than to hold $5,663 in cash. (The current price is $5,664.)

Coinbase is your best bet for getting started in the US.

    > Buying Bitcoin is not investing,
    > it is speculation. This may sound
    > pedantic, but its not.

There's no such generally agreed-upon definition of what constitutes speculation and investing[1][2][3]. The most common use of the word "speculation" just seems to mean "high-risk investment", but what constitutes "high-risk" is a matter of taste.

    > nobody knows for sure if its too late.

If it ends up replacing all money then the value of a single bitcoin will be around $200B, but I'd happily characterize that claim as speculation :)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculation#Speculation_and_in...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment#Related_terms

3. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/speculation.asp

4. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=8113.0

> If it ends up replacing all money then the value of a single bitcoin will be around $200B, but I'd happily characterize that claim as speculation :)

Assuming "the total amount of money in the world is $84 trillion" http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-compared-to-all-of-th...

BTC currently has a market cap of ~$94b

$84t / $94b = ~894

894 * $5625 (current BTC price) = ~$5m/BTC

Am I missing something? I may be. But from my calcs seems like your $200b estimate is off by a factor of 40,000x.

Your number sounds correct, I just remembered it was some really high number and incorrectly skimmed that thread looking for it.

That sounds like a good guestimate :) it would be interesting to take into account how diluted normal money vs bitcoin will be which could push the numbers to something like 250t (5% inflation over 20 years) vs idk how much extra bitcoin will be created, i'm guessing not much

Investments generally have some reasonable “safety“ of principal, which typically means they’re based on something with an intrinsic value. A stock gives you a claim to future profits, a loan/bond: legal claim on underlying collateral, and currencies back in the day: gold.

Investments are a bet that intrinsic value will increase.

Speculations are a bet about beliefs and psychology of future buyers.

Right now, bitcoin is purely speculative.

If it becomes sufficiently pervasive, it will enter the territory of most fiat currencies that have left the gold standard. With sufficient volume, liquidity, and traders, arbitrageurs will make it tightly track some asset/assets with intrinsic value.

It really depends on how much time you have to invest. On the low effort end, you can put some money into coinbase and speculate that way. On the high effort side, you could mine the "up and coming" alt coins on a box.

Personally, I'm telling a lot of my friends to put a few hundred bucks (money they won't mind losing) into coinbase and evaluate afterwards. At the least, it's an interesting tech/story so having some money involved makes it fun. There's also speculative upside, though idk if we're past the "easy money" stage or not.

I still think "investing" in bitcoin is a gamble and I'm not convinced it should have a place in your portfolio. Not only because of the speculative risk, but the added risks of forks, hacks, etc. I'm really concerned about how liquid the market is and should an event happen, the little liquidity that exists will dry up.

> I still think "investing" in bitcoin is a gamble

Maybe there's more to be gained than an increasing exchange rate.

I've gained a lot of knowledge by running Bitcoin Core on testnet, grabbing some free test coins from a faucet, and learning how to use the API.

There's a lot to learn! Not only sending and receiving, but also importing and exporting private keys, signing and verifying messages, M-of-N multisig transactions, paper wallets, brainwallets, etc.

And there are now several implementations of the Lightning Network for instant and very low cost transactions which make micropayments feasible that you can learn using the testnet.

Then once you understand the fundamentals of Bitcoin, you might do the same for Ethereum and its smart contracts, solidity, and ERC20 tokens.

true but then again if you wait until the liquidity is similar to that of the stock market, bitcoin will likely be 20 times its current price. thats the other side of huge risk: huge reward.

It is never too late to throw in some money and play around with Bitcoin. Just be aware of a few things:

1) Assume whatever you invest is lost instantly. Don't assume you'll get profits at all.

2) Start with small amounts ($100-150) and ramp up once you feel more comfortable.

3) Most alts are either "pump and dump" operations or scams. Do your research before transferring out of Bitcoin into an altcoin.

4) Take any hype about Bitcoin with a grain of salt. Just like any other trendy topic, there is a lot of misinformation out there.

5) Do your research.

6) Do your research.

7) Did I emphasize research enough? JUST DO IT.

8) Don't bother mining. The mining has been controlled by China for years.

And finally, research the underlying tech (blockchain). That's the real reason why Bitcoin is becoming so popular.

>> The mining has been controlled by China for years.

Can you elaborate on that? Afaik the very advantage of Bitcoin is that no single entity can control it.

I think he is referring to the mining operations themselves mainly being in China. Not that the majority of bitcoin is owned by chinese individuals. At least, not yet.

China has around 70% [1] of the Bitcoin mining power, and the top three miners hold around 50%, which is so massive, it makes everyone else seem negligible, like an experimental error.

[1]: https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/china/

China has the advantage of cheap power, so where you pay $0.14kW/h they pay a fraction of that amount. You can mine crypto, but don't expect it to become profitable unless you have access to cheap power and are ready to break through some of the hardware costs......

Or if you have free student trials for things like AWS/AZURE and can just spin up an instance and run till the trail dies.

Or if you have nationalized power like Venezuela does.

Cheap electricity + ASIC Miners means chinese companies outcompete just about everyone else. Mining becomes unprofitable. Some alt coins manage to sidestep this by ensuring an ASIC for them would be an ASIC for general computing, therefore a CPU.

You missed step 5.5) Do your research.

Research what?

If you want to buy bitcoin, open a coinbase account and buy some, then transfer to a hardware wallet. I think they will appreciate because I believe China is coming back online and hedge fund money is coming [1]. Also 20k users join Coinbase every single day. Imagine if 20k users joined the stock market every single day and there was only 1 good stock? What do you think will happen?

https://news.bitcoin.com/hedge-funds-investing-in-cryptocurr...

Bitcoin market cap is around 92 billion, 2/3rds of IBM.

If bitcoin becomes the global reserve currency, that will probably go to 10 trillion, a ~100x gain.

If you think bitcoin has >1% chance of becoming the global reserve currency, you should buy at the current price.

Interesting reply / good point with your math, but the United States will go to war before ever letting that happen.

The people who run the government now I know aren’t the best, and they are hemmed in by systems that have accidentally been created, probable elitism, and many other sins.

That being said I would much rather them, the United Nations, any socialist candidate, or any populist candidate govern before letting some new global financial elite take the helm for no reason at all other than a speculative bubble.

That's not enough; it needs to be better than the alternative uses of the money, not just have a positive expected value.

The whole space is tiny at the moment. Crypto will turn into a fully fledged asset class, and bubble or not, there will be money to be made. But it's likely there will also be a major correction at some point, if we reach trillions of dollars in market cap.

But hey, the .com bubble went to $6.5tn before correcting, and the entire crypto space is at $200ish bn at the moment. Assuming most of those gains will end up with both Bitcoin and Ethereum (which I do), you could easily see Bitcoin go 15-20x, and Ethereum 20-40x once institutional capital starts buying in (and average folk). It's still hard to buy crypto for most.

And those were US equities.. there is only one Bitcoin, and one Ethereum in the world.

I would have said it was too late when it was ~350 a coin, then it went up to ~4k. I then would have said it was definitely too late at ~4k, right now it's at ~5.5k. That said you really have to look at the graphs and decide for yourself; and remember all of these coins are essentially zero-sum, a lot of suckers have to lose money for you to make it (or vice-versa).

I disagree that Bitcoin is a zero-sum game.

If the network continues to grow it could enable things that provide value that didn't exist before. When that happens, worldwide productivity increases and wealth is created. Therefore everyone wins.

Yep, that type of thinking is a trap.

I thought investing in Apple was too late in 2006 at $12/share, then again at 2010 at $45/share, then again at 2014 at $90/share.

> didn't see the potential and thought it to be very risky.

This hasn't changed.

> Is it too late to invest in bitcoin now?

It's too early to "invest" in Bitcoin, but you can certainly gamble in it.

Investing is not the right word - gambling isn't either, but it is closer :).

Hacker News isn't a trading forum or a place for investment advice!

But here's a hacker-friendly strategy for investing in cryptocurrency:

Buy some tokens. Then spend your time, energy, and genius on significantly improving the protocol and ecosystem for those tokens, and then enjoy your return on investment!

Because there is an upper limit (from my understanding) of the number of Bitcoins that can be created, their worth will still multiply by 10 or 100 or more, IF they exist and grow as planned. Splits only increase that value if you own pre-split.

It's still pretty early in the adoption phase. I think cryptocurrencies still have room to appreciate in value.

As for Bitcoin, it will still probably increase in value, but I believe Monero will increase more.

A lot of people have the misconception that Bitcoin is anonymous, but it's a public ledger. It's not fungible - a key requirement for any currency. Monero is fungible and is what people thought Bitcoin was originally. If you want financial privacy, use Monero.

Bitcoin will most likely always be considered "crypto gold" though, so if you decide for yourself that it's not too late and want something safer, you probably will do okay by just buying Bitcoin.

Bitcoin could be tulips[1] instead of gold. Low transaction throughput and the insane lack of privacy for transactions via the public ledger. I concur more with your Monero position.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

Depends what "the bus" means to you. If you mean 10000%+ gains, BTC may not see that sort of growth again. However other coins/tokens may, and there is plenty of volatility to exploit if you're into high-risk daytrading.

That being said, the real, long-term value of crypto is in practical commercial applications. Each coin may surface a "killer app" in time, and you could be the one to build it. Crypto is still nowhere near mainstream in this area. There is also a mountain of legal and logistical groundwork to work through which will take decades.

Remember: investing your money is not the only way to get in; you also invest your time.

Because the price just went up, may be wise to dollar cost average at this level: ex. buy $XX worth once a week. I think Coinbase has an option to set up automatic weekly buys. Less reward if it spikes next week, less risk if it crashes next week. Removes emotion from trading decisions. Something to consider, be sure to factor in fees.

I think the buy-side support has been surprisingly strong after this recent push, so I think this rally still has a bit of legs, but Bitcoin is always hard to predict.

Predictions are hard, especially about the future. Cryptocurrency is still quite risky. I made a decent living for several years as a private investor. It gets old and on average is hard work, unless you're lucky enough to get a few solid serious wins in there, which makes anyone look good. Now I have what capital I'm willing to risk engaged with "a trading pool that uses artificial intelligence" to trade cryptocurrency. There's still risk of course but it fits my desire to avoid feeling a need to be knee-deep in my investments.

You can still mine GPU-based cryptocurrencies. Two examples are ZCash and Ethereum.

It'd definitely not too late to get into smart contract development on Ethereum. It's what I do for a living, and demand is high.

If you want to just buy some coins, it's pretty easy to set up an account on a solid, regulated exchange. In the U.S., Coinbase, Gemini, and Kraken will let you fund an account directly from your bank.

How did you get into contract ethereum development? What does that require in terms of skill set (C/C++)? Where are you finding these jobs that claim high demand? I'm thinking about breaking into contract development and working on block chain tech, and this seems like a good opportunity.

You need a reasonable understanding of how Ethereum works (and blockchains in general). The primary language is Solidity, which is pretty simple but has some security gotchas to be aware of. Javascript is most important for writing UI. There's also an API for Go, so that can be pretty helpful. The main clients are written in Go, Rust, C++, and Javascript.

Write some open source code, blog about it, participate in the community, and if you impress people they'll come to you. Resources:

ethereum.org

https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper

https://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/solidity-in-depth...

https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/JavaScript-API

r/ethereum

r/ethdev

https://gitter.im/ethereum/home

ethereum.stackexchange.com

truffleframework.com

https://github.com/ConsenSys/smart-contract-best-practices

https://medium.com/@weka/announcing-the-winners-of-the-first...

An impressive and thoughtful response, thank you Dennis for taking the time to inform me!

Good luck, and if you go for it, welcome aboard!

Fred Wilson from AVC is pretty bullish on bitcoin. His advice was to have 10% of networth in bitcoin! but, I don't know if he meant you should buy in at the price it's at right now.

But, unlike the stock market, or the housing market, there doesn't seem to be any PE ratio we can keep an eye on to determine whether or not bitcoin is over valued or under valued, so it really feels like a crapshoot.

Too late? Surely it's too early, with the vast amount of hype circulating around cryptocurrencies. Wait out the inevitable crash, unless your interest is techonlogical rather than pecuniary. Granted, my advice is like telling you not to invest in internet stocks in the late '90s, but you can't tell whether this is 1995 or 2000.

Too late for what?

To get rich? That's a lottery situation. Good luck, be in the right place at the right time.

To use? No, of course it's not too late.

to invest and get a decent ROI (vs other investment like stocks, real estate, etc...)

If someone had an knowable answer to that, wouldn't they invest all their money into it already?

Its a speculative investment, not 1% savings account. The original question is a bit naive.

Bitcoin seems to be following Metcalfe's law[1] down to a tee. So, based on that, it seems it's not too late.

https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@eric-blair/does-metcalfe-s-law-...

It is positively the correct time to shovel some money into the trash fire ^W ^W ^W ^W ^W ^W ^W invest wisely, in BTC.

If you have to ask this question, you're not ready for this kind of risky investing.

I think this attitude is silly. Finance academics and banking executives (i.e. Jamie Dimon) who have spent their entire lives studying finance and working in banking are still grappling with this question. Are they also not ready?

It's not too late.

It is risky, but then no good investments aren't. The trick is to diversify.

Just my two cents, but I think Monero has a fair amount of potential

If anybody on HN knew, they wouldn't be on HN.

I feel like I've read a lot of anecdotal stories of successful Bitcoin "investors" here on HN. So they're still here!

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