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Comment by hluska | Hacker News Reader

> Now, eight months later, the $23,000 he invested in several digital tokens is worth about $4,000, and he is clearheaded about what happened.

> “I got too caught up in the fear of missing out and trying to make a quick buck,” he said last week. “The losses have pretty much left me financially ruined.”

I think it's distasteful to criticize the decisions that lead to someone's downfall, but maybe someone will read this and take heed for the future. If losing $19,000 will genuinely leave you financially ruined, cryptocurrency is way too high risk of an asset to get involved in.

I feel bad for him and hope nobody ends up in the same spot.

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I don't think any investor saw this as anything else than a bubble, they just wanted to enjoy the ride up. I would go all-in in a bubble if I had the confidence someone would tap on my shoulder to let me know when it's going to crash. Investing requires discipline.

> I would go all-in in a bubble if I had the confidence someone would tap on my shoulder to let me know when it's going to crash.

literally you and everyone on earth would do this

someone would tap on my shoulder to let me know when it's going to crash

You don't need this; just sell a little at each ATH and you shouldn't have much to regret.

This is good advice. Just in case someone is reading this an doesn't know, ATH stands for 'all time high'.

That isn't what they were saying at the time. Even level-headed forums like Hacker News had a lot of comments (gathering positive votes, although I suspect not all were organic) trying to describe with a wide-array of pseudo-science why Bitcoin was the king of a new world of inherently superior currencies.

Of course it was nonsense, as anyone who'd read about previous bubbles could tell you. But it was a mad time last December.

I know people who still think there is value there and it will go back up.

Yes, I am one of them. This is what, the fourth Bitcoin bubble that has burst? The December bubble bursting is no surprise for most level-headed folks that have been following this for a while -- just for the newbies making extremely risk bets at the top of the latest bubble.

Also, most of us are not deluded enough to think it going up to $100k+/BTC is a certainty; there are a number of reasons the larger BTC experiment/bubble could deflate for good one day. But there's also rational arguments for betting otherwise.

That's the definition of speculating.

Investing requires more research and analysis.

I can’t really define a disctinction between investing, speculating or lending. They are all a calculated bet.

lolol

I had friends at my old job joining Coinbase with the full intent of "investing" significant dollars on Bitcoin. Soo...yeah.

Mostly agreed, but you can buy arbitrarily small amounts. The mistake is putting too large a fraction of your savings there. This is not like Berkshire Hathaway in any sense.

Yep. Axiom 1: whatever you invest can disappear... So easily forgotten.

My personal take on that is: don’t invest money you can’t afford to lose.

Cash can lose value too. Look at Turkey now.

Moreover, cash is guaranteed to lose value. The mandate of global central banks has moved from "price stability" to "2% inflation".

Think of it as gambling instead of investing, and you'll probably do better. Relatedly, if you work for a company where a meaningful fraction of your compensation is in the form of stock, that is also gambling.

What are you going to do with your savings then? It's enough to not put all your eggs in one basket. It also helps to listen to experienced people who were warning about crypto currency left and right.

I have a diversified retirement portfolio, thank you very much.

> maybe someone will read this and take heed for the future

He is young and learned his lesson. That's a lesson worth $19,000. It keeps you from doing what the Korean mother who lost her life savings, plus some, referenced further in the article did.

At least it was 23k not 100k

Unfortunately, from later in the article:

> Kim Hyon-jeong, a 45-year-old teacher and mother of one who lives on the outskirts of Seoul, said she put about 100 million won, or $90,000, into cryptocurrencies last fall. She drew on savings, an insurance policy and a $25,000 loan. Her investments are now down about 90 percent.

This is crazy. People don’t go from saving up 90k in their 40s to sinking all that into a gigantic lottery. Do they?

It seems that with enough hype, they actually do.

They do this when their 90k in savings isn't going to cut it in their retirement, or sending their kid to college. Desperation and duress cause people to make poor decisions, in finance, health, jobs, marriage.

It is this fact especially where "advice" doesn't really help. I have not seen that coping with need, whether perceived or real is something people tend to do rationally. And, unfortunately, once you are in that situation, telling real vs perceived needs apart becomes just as difficult.

my opinion/theory is that our social ties and cultural norms are meant to allow us as a group to help individuals out of this, but that our current culture has subverted this norm. It seems self-evidently true that it is better attempt to meet the needs of individuals before the costs of their poorly judged actions force us to deal with the ramifications.

Edit: double negative removed.

> 90k in savings isn't going to cut it in their retirement

$90k at 45 years old isn't great, but it isn't destitution.

I think the point is that it wasn't enough. In which case it makes sense to gamble, especially if the odds seem to be in your favor.

And the real question is: enough for what?

To give her the benefit of the doubt, enough to retire and live in dignity until she dies, I suppose.

If you buy into the story that Bitcoin is the future and your fiat currency is headed into oblivion, which is fairly orthodox on Bitcoin forums, then it starts to seem like a more sensible, conservative choice.

That is just gambling...They are at their own risk.

> I got too caught up in the fear of missing out and trying to make a quick buck

People that aren't FOMOing are still making money. Many people are still up for the year.

Just requires more calculation and precision and that can remove an outsized influence of luck, just like every other market on the planet.

I think it is disingenuous to make an article about retail traders that had never entered the market, and not mention how institutional investors and accredited traders are faring. They don't care if the market sold off 80% if they got a 90% discount, as they're probably still up 100%.

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