On the positive side, my BS radar is well tuned, I'm pretty good at putting tech trends in perspective and identifying the ones that have a good chance to be game changers. This is useful wisdom in my career as an engineer.
But I haven't really managed so far to switch from being a spectator into acting decisively & quickly to convert those insights into something valuable : the ROHMO (regret of having missed out) gets heavier the more of these trains I've seen come and go !
Bitcoin is the obvious (and trivial) one : I read the Satoshi paper a few weeks after its release, spent a few evenings understanding blockchain, downloaded a miner.. but never bothered leaving it running for a few days, for fear my computers would run hot for something intellectually interesting but of questionable monetary value :)
Any of you old timers want to share how they have turned "having seen things" into a valuable career or entrepreunarial edge ?