Ask HN: Should I buy bitcoin? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should I buy bitcoin?

4 pointsflippyhead8 comments

I've heard arguments for all variety of stratagem, am generally inclined to invest a good portion of my savings, but can't shake the feeling that a ridiculous rally is afoot and soon to come crashing down. I'd love to hear the advice of this esteemed community! Thanks.

View on HN

Can you handle the risk? If so, yes. You should have a non-zero amount of Bitcoin in my opinion.

Yeah I can. It's more that I can't tell if it's going to soon drop and I should wait, or if that should even matter. Something feel wrong about buying today when things are at an all time high.

If you want long-term exposure to a stock but don't want to implicitly make a bet on short-term value, chunk your purchase up into smaller amounts and do it over time (1/10th every day over the next week).

Forget what this is called, but think it's a standard maneuver for wading in to a big long-term position.

I believe that's called "dollar cost averaging". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_cost_averaging

If you think there's a 1% chance that a Bitcoin could be a million dollars, then buy 0.01 Bitcoins or something right now. Just do a risk analysis and figure out how much and when you want to invest. I agree it could go down in the short term or long term.

>If you think there's a 1% chance that a Bitcoin could be a million dollars, then buy 0.01 Bitcoins or something right now.

That only tells you whether to invest, not how much. I.e. if you think there's a 1% chance a bitcoin might be worth a million dollars, that tells you you should buy it if it's worth less than $10k. (and then probably half that again to cover the delay)

Here's a novel thought: do something good with your money instead: e.g., education, investment in socially-responsible companies, etc.

Let's say I already do but I need quite a lot more to make any significant impact. I'll be pissed if I had the chance to make that happen but balked.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com