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Comment by matsemann | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, that's the problem with this. Should one get the present day value of the shares (a billion), or present day value of the worth at that time (thousands)?

It's a bit the same as people making fun of someone buying a pizza with bitcoin, now worth a hundred thousand. It wasn't at the time, and most likely people would've sold it long before when it started to rise. And the hindsight should then be just as much "if you bought a pizza at the time in USD, why didn't you buy bitcoin instead??".

So to me one should get the latter of the two alternatives. People only come out of the woodwork because it suddenly happened to be worth a lot.

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> People only come out of the woodwork because it suddenly happened to be worth a lot.

I used to work in pharma with a chemist whose medicinal chem team had invented 3 different multi-billion-$ prescription drugs.

He told me ... no one gives a shit about your patents unless you start to make money. when that happens, your competitors suddenly remember that they invented your drug before you did.

He spent a considerable amount of time being deposed by lawyers from rival big-pharma companies.

Aye, quite so. I once wiped a drive with a whole bitcoin I mined myself on it.

I'm not that upset because I know for a fact I would have cashed out at the obvious peak of about $30.

The one that does cause the occasional pang of remorse is the million or so dogecoin I gave away, as by the time I realised it was worth anything at all it was worth more than my house

I did the same but with 16 and maybe somewhere around 30 coins in two wallets I thought I backed up. I was angry but at the time I maybe lost $3-6 (probably way less) so I moved on with my life.

I had 20,000 Bitcoin at one point from selling RuneScape gold when I was 9.

Yeah, I tell myself this every time I remember clicking "Cancel" on Ameritrade and deciding not to buy Apple stock in 1995. I probably would've sold when it doubled, thinking myself very clever. I wouldn't still have it today.

I bought bitcoin at $200 and sold at $400 thinking myself clever.

> People only come out of the woodwork because it suddenly happened to be worth a lot

Isn’t that the entire point of agreeing to be paid in options instead of salary?

The pizza-bitcoin story is about $1B, not a measly $100,000, FWIW. Assuming you're referring to the 10k BTC for 2 pizzas story, anyway.

Maybe, not sure if I'm referencing something concrete or just some common argument, heh. Anyways, my point is that the opportunity cost is the same whether you held bitcoin worth a pizza or usd worth a pizza at the time.

The pizza Bitcoin story is not about a mere $1 billion.

The guy that sold his Bitcoin for pizza, did multiple transactions (detailed in that forum thread), not one. Somehow this part is lost to history when the story gets told.

He liquidated tens of thousands of Bitcoins.

The tally is a lot closer to ~$4 billion at $82k per coin.

Then there's the question if it would have gotten to 4 billion today if he hadn't used it back then...

Bitcoin is still useless as a currency, so I'm not sure that using it to buy some pizzas 20 years ago changed anything.

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