Much Ado About Bitcoin

I really liked this article because it describes a feeling that I've been having in spades lately. The author describes the FOMO (Fear of missing out) that is being felt by many of us who were aware of bitcoin early on but failed to amass enough bitcoin to become wealthy from the recent gain in value.

I don't remember the exact price when I first found out about bitcoin on Hacker News but I'm sure that it was below $1. At the time I remember being incredibly enthusiastic about bitcoin. I learned all about it and told anyone who would listen.

I remember that there was a site that would give you a free bitcoin if you simply pasted your wallet address into a field. Over time as bitcoin became more and more valuable the percentage of a bitcoin that they would give for free became less and less.

I even had my little macbook mining for coins over the course of a week. And no I never successfully mined any.

My friends and I kicked around the idea of having an online store that accepted bitcoin but at the time there were no plug and play bitcoin processors for online merchants and we didn't have the expertise to build it out ourselves.

Over time my interest in bitcoin waxed and waned but I remember reading about someone paying for a pizza with 10,000 bitcoin. Then I remember reading about the silk road.

Slowly over time bitcoin was becoming more and more legitimate in the eyes of the world. Then I remember when bitcoin went to $10 and I was like 'Damn! I missed the boat! I should have bought at $1' And then it went to $100 and I was like 'I should have bought at $10!' Now it's at $1000 and I'm saying 'Damn I should have bought at $100!'

Though truthfully I feel that tying the value of bitcoin so directly to dollars undermines what is truly valuable about bitcoin in the first place--namely that it's anonymous, decentralized, and peer to peer. Also I feel that the incredible increase in the value of bitcoin is causing most people to just sit on it as an investment instead of spending it like a currency.

All that being said I still am incredibly excited about bitcoin and intend to be part of it's huge future but unfortunately I didn't get to be a bitcoin millionaire.

tl;dr author compares bitcoin to tulips, argues it's all mass emotion or something.