Title: How much money have you made speculating on bitcoin? Post by: HappyFunnyFoo on September 08, 2011, 04:56:44 PM Just like it sounds. Due to the price of btc dropping as I expected it to, I thought I'd come out and see who has been making out with the big bucks, and who has lost money speculating. If you're a miner or just use btc as short-term exchange, and hence don't really speculate, select that option.
I'll bite - I've lost 50%, but 5 of my 7 coins were mined, and they were mined in the glory days! So I've lost about $15... What about you guys? No need to reply if you want to stay anonymous. Title: Re: How much money have you made speculating on bitcoin? Post by: Ekaros on September 08, 2011, 05:32:14 PM I lost some, but no I got balance of 0, so some electricity and I have some key caps on their way.
Title: Re: How much money have you made speculating on bitcoin? Post by: bji on September 08, 2011, 07:43:47 PM Just like it sounds. Due to the price of btc dropping as I expected it to, I thought I'd come out and see who has been making out with the big bucks, and who has lost money speculating. If you're a miner or just use btc as short-term exchange, and hence don't really speculate, select that option. I'll bite - I've lost 50%, but 5 of my 7 coins were mined, and they were mined in the glory days! So I've lost about $15... What about you guys? No need to reply if you want to stay anonymous. I paid ~$100 for 3 bitcoins on eBay back when that was the going rate a few months ago. I did it mostly out of enthusiasm for the bitcoin concept. If you can understand the white paper you cannot help but be impressed by the genius of it. I don't really care about lost value, $100 is not alot of money for me and I consider it all having been spent on "entertainment" so if I never get anything out if it, that's fine with me. I have lost a little bit of the three bitcoins already by playing around with the bitcoin client; I hacked it to try to send out thousands of transactions to see if I could DOS the network, just for fun, and the 0.5 bitcoin I had in that wallet is probably gone forever since the client choked completely and mucked up the wallet file so badly that I am not sure it's recoverable. Well I am sure it is but I don't think I'll ever bother to spend the time necessary to recover that 0.5 bitcoin. In the intervening months my enthusiasm for bitcoin has waned considerably. While it is a cool concept and well thought-out, the implementation leaves alot to be desired. I think that Satoshi should have made a much more robust piece of software before unleashing it prematurely on the world. As it is, there are so many technical limitations and difficulties with using bitcoin, mostly due to the immaturity of the software, that it's hard to believe that it will ever gain major traction. I think that as long as bitcoin can be used for transactions in which pseudo-anonymity has extreme value (e.g. buying illegal goods), there will be a positive pressure on the value of bitcoin. But I don't ever expect it to 'take over the world' or to make up a significant fraction of any financial transactions. There are just too many other financial instruments with built-in advantages over bitcoin as well as having decades/centuries of a head start. I think that mining bitcoins is probably the only really valuable way to acquire them, because that is the only way to have true psuedoanonymity. The bitcoins I bought on eBay can be traced to my Paypal account so I couldn't use them for 'illegal' transactions even if I wanted to. I have never mined bitcoins and don't know if mining pools guarantee pseudoanonymity (seems like they could since they don't need any way to identify pool members to function properly), but I think that self-mined bitcoins will always have intrinsic value above and beyond market-bought bitcoins for that reason. Title: Re: How much money have you made speculating on bitcoin? Post by: HappyFunnyFoo on September 08, 2011, 10:35:05 PM I realize I should've added more "gain %" options to the poll. Sorry about that!!
Title: Re: How much money have you made speculating on bitcoin? Post by: Transisto on September 09, 2011, 05:32:25 AM more "gain %" options to the poll. like, "Mined but did not sell any" Some people die-hard don't care about USD value. Title: Re: How much money have you made speculating on bitcoin? Post by: RyNinDaCleM on September 09, 2011, 07:00:05 AM more "gain %" options to the poll. like, "Mined but did not sell any" Some people die-hard don't care about USD value. I've mined about 130 coins; spent about 20% BTC on goods, sold 35 @$13.30 on the first drop from $30, and doubled the rest playing the market since! I plan on keeping BTC, though I want to get as many as I can before they POOGO, and mining is getting a bit tough @ 1coin/day! So, the BTC I'm holding (or the cash value) is about even in the sense that I have 2x as many BTC, selling for ½ the price! Cash value is even! Title: Re: How much money have you made speculating on bitcoin? Post by: zby on September 09, 2011, 07:17:39 AM I've made a lot of money on bitcoins (bought in March, sold in July - after the crash but still for more than twice the current price) - there was no option for me.
Title: Re: How much money have you made speculating on bitcoin? Post by: dancupid on September 09, 2011, 04:25:40 PM I bought 900GBP on Britcoin today, moved them to mt.gox and exchanged them immediately for $ without loss. ie the functionality of Bitcoin is intact irrespective of the $/btc exchange rate. You can move stored value to anywhere in the world irrespective of the exchange rate (it would have cost me a lot more using a Bank) ie The purpose of bitcoin is not speculation.
Title: Re: How much money have you made speculating on bitcoin? Post by: zby on September 09, 2011, 04:39:09 PM I bought 900GBP on Britcoin today, moved them to mt.gox and exchanged them immediately for $ without loss. ie the functionality of Bitcoin is intact irrespective of the $/btc exchange rate. You can move stored value to anywhere in the world irrespective of the exchange rate (it would have cost me a lot more using a Bank) ie The purpose of bitcoin is not speculation. The problem is that if miners quit - then you'll wait long for your transfers to confirm.Title: Re: How much money have you made speculating on bitcoin? Post by: Reckman on September 20, 2011, 07:34:25 PM 5k in mining equip, mined and sold 3000 usd worth after electricity, holding 215BTC, and holding my asset values, for a net of 1200$ =).
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