Norwegian student buys $27 in bitcoin in 2009, now owns an apartment | Hacker News Reader

Norwegian student buys $27 in bitcoin in 2009, now owns an apartment

news.com.au

53 pointsSealy21 comments

This guy's approach reminds me of Taleb's barbell strategy of investment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb#Philosoph... (described more thoroughly in his 'Black Swan' book). Basically: put ~90% of your money into stuff that's as safe as can be, and put the rest into highly speculative bets with a large upside.

The buyer actually was not investing in the sense Taleb describes. The buyer was simply lucky enough to be studying cryptography in 2009 (not in <2007 or 2011>) and saw a cool new approach.

He did not buy with the intention of huge upside else he would have taken a more prudent approach to securing his coins.

How many had heard of bitcoin until the first slashdot article or first reddit appearance? How many missed those and only heard about it when the first newspaper articles appeared?

Unless you were lucky enough to be following certain cryptography related mailing lists, chances of you coming accross bitcoin were close to nil until 2010.

Well that settles it. I'm sold. Just bought myself a bitcoin. Looking forward to moving into my new house in 2017.

Crowd funding sites should leap on this story; that's the dream..

I might be missing something—how is this related to crowd funding?

Buy stock low, sell it high?

It's all gambling. Sometimes you know you can beat the game. Sometimes it's for fun. People shouldn't get depressed when they miss a wacky investment that pays off big. Plenty of people lose their shirts doing that.

The article mentions that exactly, "He bought some for fun, then forgot about it."

Fair play to him for doing so! I guess he must have been in luck when the topic for his thesis lead him to Bitcoin. I bet he's glad he studied!

I had read that ~$300 investments may become mainstream; with such an investment, the investor is probably hoping for an equivalent outcome.

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