Hacker News Reader

Comment by cuteboy19 | Hacker News Reader

70% of people who bought Bitcoin bought it in the past year. With these statistics, it is very likely that more people lost money through Bitcoin than gained it.

Someone has to pay for all the Bitcoin mining around the world, so it's probable that Bitcoin as a whole is net negative. That is, the average investor loses money on Bitcoin.

View on HN

What about anyone who fully understood its value proposition and held for a 3-4 yr timeframe?

EDIT: let’s check back in in 1-3 yrs here and see if people who bought last year and held are doing :-)

I'm sure such people exist, its just that there are probably more losers than winners in this net negative game.

Analogously, there are some people who have won a lot of money from casinos but the average gambler loses money because the house always wins. Miners are 'the house' for this analogy

I don’t buy that analogy one bit.

BTC supply is growing at a rate of less than 2% now. 90% of the supply is already mined.

Miners play a very small role now in getting new supply

mining rewards in the form of new supply is not the only way miners make money - they are the house because they take a cut of every transaction. admittedly I don't know the ratio, and I've always been puzzled by the end game - will fees continue to rise as the difficulty ratchets up such that the only incentive to mine is transaction fees? Anyway they can keep winning regardless of price volatility.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com