Bitcoin Forum

Hi.  I thought I would post because some of you might find it interesting that a normal "housewife" might get into something like this.  Granted,  I am married to a computer programmer which is how I found out about bitcoin, but I am now probably more obsessed with it than he is and I am the one here on the board and checking the charts in an obsessive manner.  He mentioned it to me a couple years ago.  I shrugged it off.  I vaguely remember saying maybe we should by a few just in case it becomes something.  He said he was worried about the Feds knocking on our door thinking we were into some illegal activity so I said, "Hmmmm.  Probably better not to invest."  I did not understand it could be done in a pretty anonymous way so I wish I would have argued more. ;)

Skip ahead to March of this year.  We decide to invest for the first time.  (Hubby read that there was going to be some regulation for withdrawing more than $10,000 without reporting which would help with money laundering so in a way it was a stamp of approval we needed to feel more comfortable buying in) We bought at about $48.  Not alot of coin, just 8 or so.  Then it went crazy!  We thought at $90 we should by more, then at $120 even more and we finally stopped at $145.  Granted, we should have sold at $250 or then repurchased more (we have used all of the money we could play with at this point) but we had never seen anything like the growth so we had no idea what it was going to do.  We decided to just to hold the amount we have and ride out the wave.  We did not invest anything more than we can afford to lose.  It is still so volatile, but it is exciting too.  It feels like a gamble in a way, but I see it as more of an investment in something new that has a really good chance of taking off in the future.  There are some people that have good reason to believe that they could be worth $1000, to $100,000 or even $1,000,000 a coin someday.  It is hard to imagine but we really don't know.  People are so caught up in the risk of investing.  What about the risk of NOT investing?  Opportunities like this may never come up again in our lifetime. 

Well said!

Most people do not realize that to do nothing (not investing) has also some risk attached to it. I think in these times we live in with all the economic uncertainty it becomes more probable that a conventional value preservation strategy (putting the bills under the pillow) will get punished.

No risk no reward, early adopters of anything are always on a roller coaster. This is one that you can ride all the way up to $1000 and beyond.

I am curious, what age range are you guys?

Well if you invested that money 3 years ago you would probably be rich now...
If you could live with possibility of loosing all the money you have put into bitcoins so far - then there's no reason to sell them...
Maybe in a year you'll be able to buy a new car or with that coins you bought this year.

Once again - if you can stand that risk (of loosing it all) don't sell. Just sit and wait...
If you can't sell them and never look back...

So far things are going good.
It's getting more and more adopted online as a form of payment, new services are being developed, it's getting more and more media attention...

I have told my husband "Why didn't you just invest in bitcoin back then!!!"  He said he was not even really sure where to get coins.  It was not that simple in the early stages, plus he was concerned about it being used for drug trafficking.  We really don't want to support that, honestly.  That and we really did not have a lot of extra spending money at the time.  We were trying to run our own business.

We are in our early 40's.   Two kids, two dogs, white picket fence.  That kind of thing. ;)

The funny thing is I consider myself pretty conservative so it feels kind of risky for us to put money into Bitcoin. (Hence why we only put in what we could afford to lose without any real financial pain)  We did try having our own business once a few years ago.  We invested quite a bit of money into it but it never took off so maybe we are more willing than some to take risks in that way.  But many successful entrepreneurs have said that success comes with trial and error.  So when one thing does not work, just try another.  Also, the best financial advisors say to diversify your investments.  Bitcoin is perfect for that!  We have a little real estate, 401K and some Bitcoin.  Who knows, Bitcoin might be the most valuable of the three?!  It will be interesting to see anyways.

It wouldn't hurt to throw just a little at some alt. coins as well, because as with BitCoin, you never know. I personally love BTC, but have LTC, FC, TRC and PPC. I think LTC is your next best bet, although BTC still has a long way to go...

Yes.  Husband is going to throw a little money into Litcoin as soon as we get our $500 back from Bitfloor.  We had just put it in to buy more cheap coin the day it went down!  ;)  That is just the way it goes. 

One thing for sure is creating a successful business is not easy but never give up. I have been doing hair for years and my husband and I decided to open a hair salon a little over two years ago. Online marketing coupled with great customer service has allowed our business to pay us back our initial investment and now is growing to possibly a second location. I like to dabble in investing but nothing has paid out better for me then a solid focused career which has now become a small business. As much as I love bitcoin and the possibilities the most sound advice for creating growing wealth is building a business.

I would like to suggest that you promote that you accept bitcoin for payment. Also, ask your suppliers if they might accept bitcoin for payment.

I agree that the best way to become wealthy is to build a business.  There are only maybe a couple dozen people that have built bitcoin related businesses (and they have already become wealthy), while thousands of people sit on their coins and hope something happens. The opportunities presented by bitcoin are wide open. The lesson to be learned is that the small number of people didn't get wealthy by just sitting on a pile coins.

Yes, when have we ever seen a currency increase in value during our lifetimes? I mean really. This is a point Jeff Tucker makes in his article here (http://lfb.org/blog/discussion-with-austrian-bitcoin-skeptic/), in which he overcomes the Austrian economists' skepticism of BTC.

BTW, creative screen-name ☺
Also, it's good to see housewives getting into BTC, too.

Although I don't know much about the risks or possibilities of Bitcoins....I DO know that there is inherent risk of not investing your savings.  Inflation will literally eat away at any money you have, so if you're not earning at least 4-5% on it, it is slowly degrading in value, no question.

But do people keep their savings in currency? Most people I know own stocks, bonds or real estate (via mortgage).

This makes  a lot of sense to me i gues...

That's because most currencies devalue.

I tried to explain to my Mum what Bitcoin was but she kind of lost it at when I explained that everyone can mine them.

2nd year uni student here.

I realised how easy it was to buy Bitcoins not long ago when they were ~$60, the next day they were at $75, so I thought I'd wait until they came down a little. Now they're at $140, so I'll have to wait for the next price drop since I have limited funds and I'm risk averse :P

I think I looked at my husband cross-eyed when he tried to explain mining.  ;)  What some of us less technical people want to know is if I invest $100 in bTC it could someday be worth $1000 or $10,000 or $100,000.  That is all I needed to hear and I was interested! 

Yes, the cost of not investing is something huge to consider.

I started hearing about bitcoin a few weeks ago by a friend on Facebook posting about it and asked him for more info. He sent me all kinds of links and a few coins to get started and already excited to learn about all this! I have a lot of researching to do! Good to hear your success Bit Chick :)

Yup, first heard of Bitcoin in March of 2013.  Invested 10K in hardware, 3K for 129 GIG/h of BFL stuff which we have yet to see and the other 7K i custom built 4 rigs with 8 7970 cards, so far those 4 rigs have mined about $4800 CDN worth of BTC as of Apr-23 plus various ALT coins so we're doing okay but have a ways yet to break even on hardware.  The Wife is into it now and she scarfed one of my rigs to mine PPC :)

I kind of wish my husband had decided to mine.  We have enough computers around here.  However, electricity costs are so crazy high here in California.  I can see why some people have computers under their desks at work. ;)  That is really "stealing" though so there is no way he would ever do that.  The temptation is there though.  Too bad it can't be done on laptops.  It would be Starbucks, here I come!  Coffee and free bitcoin. ;)

are you one of those "desperate housewives" then  :P

Yes. Desperate for more bitcoin.  ;D

Just figured some people might like to see BTC going a little more mainstream.  Until "housewives" start using BTC, it will not take off to the level it needs to if you want to see big numbers.  Just sayin'

It was mainstream from the start. If anything, you adopting it detracts from mainstream more than it adds. Moron.

I'm not a house wife, but I'm house-bound at the moment and got started into this as a good way to justify a video card upgrade ;)

Stupid idea. You missed the beginning. YPMF

If you have money to invest, i say go for it.

LTC is where its gonna be at soon.

Probably going to throw a little money into LTC too.  Why not?  It is cheap for now. 

The problem with the crypto-currencies is the difficulty in purchacing anything with them in the 'real world'. If that gets addressed, the price will rocket further. But to take worldwide standardization in implementation is far from a sure thing. Far far from a sure thing.

There are certainly issues that still need to be resolved when it comes to buying and selling in the "real world."  I was looking into using it to buy and sell on Esty and I am really excited about the fact Paypal might start using it too.  I sell alot on ebay so it would be great for me.  It will be an exciting journey for sure. 

So many words come from the female gender, yet such little meaning, if any at all, in their words.

Yes.  Gold.