Bitcoin Forum

I generally sit down to write about something because it has somewhat of a therapeutic effect. You know, the whole 'get the demons out' thing. Well, I'm not sitting down. I'm reclining in boxer briefs in a newly bought house and my daughter is offering to shove some green play-doh in my nose in between the plot points of "My life as a teenage robot".

We bought the house through really careful saving over three years, mainly, and a couple well-timed promotions, which got our earning potential high enough for a decent mortgage.

Great. House, car, decent job, health, some money in the bank. Some money in the bank. Some money in the bank.


I first learned about bitcoin in 2011 off metafilter. It piqued my interest because I had argued with a thesis advisor for a couple years starting in 2006 that virtual currencies and properties were just as salient as our real life ones and to the extent that they could be made limited, just as valuable. Anyway, I had little money in 2011, and I didn't quite fully understand the problem that the blockchain solved.

Fast forward to March 2012. I had just gotten married and had a bit of cash. Again, I hear about bitcoin on mefi and it's now at $70.00 or something (this recollection may be inaccurate). I had enough then to have 700 BTC now if I had thrown my weight at it--and I was seriously contemplating doing it (I still remember the pause I had when I was opening my car door before I went to work, mulling it over in my head from the night before: if I lost that much I would be a fool, wouldn't I?)

I didn't do it.

December of 2013 rolled around and now I knew I was a fool. My heart pounded. I had missed my shot.

No, I hadn't.

I started buying in February all the way through the downtrend.

Then, I got into mining: a large group buy investment, script asics since the beginning (dual miner, grid seed, g blade, black widow, thunder, a train where each engine you add slows you down).

All told I have probably thrown 11k (maybe more) or so at BTC in varying ways and I have about 6.5BTC to show for it. It depresses me when I really think about it. But, here I am in my boxer briefs in my new house all the same (they're black btw). I guess there is some solace in being in your underwear in a house you own.

I am trying to turn this into a positive any way that I can, demons out notwithstanding.

Thanks for the read.

Woulda, shoulda, coulda.

Sounds like you aren't doing too badly anyway.

I took myself for an incredibly expensive ride as some sort of psychological ego wish fulfillment bullshit that I coulda woulda shoulda done sort of thing, true, the farce of mining at the present inclusive of that, and also my willingness to buy into it.

even at the peak of $1200 in december..  your $11k buys would total more than 6btc..

going by your story you bought a load of coin at $450ish so lets say you threw $3k at the markets in february to get the 6.5BTC, what did the other $8k go to?

I had a chance to buy 1000 BTC @ $2 in 2009 and bought hardware instead. At it's peak, that would have netted me well over $1M and change but instead the hardware  only produce $7k in profit.

Oh well, you do what is thought of as the best option at the time...and $7k profit in 12 months is nothing to sneeze at! 350%!!!!

My guess would be mining losses due to getting involved in mining without fully understanding the costs associated and the difficulty in generating a return on the investment.

When I first discovered BTC, I looked a lot like this:
http://www.mensworx.com/media/catalog/product/cache/16/thumbnail/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/c/o/cotton_comfort_boxer_brief_black_2.jpg

Three years later I still look a bit better than:
http://i659.photobucket.com/albums/uu314/gameshowpup/Rolly3.jpg

When you start to live the Bitcoin Life remember to get exercise and eat healthy.  :D
Note: This is 'satire' both extremes are exaggerated versions of the truth.

Bingo.

Haha I feel better already. (Until I think about the fact that I could have taken a sweet vacation with my family for the amount lost.)

Well, it's much better than I'm doing at the moment. I've lost more now than I was contemplating getting thrown away in 2012.

The only way out of this self-imposed hubris-ridden predicament is for BTC to hit about 3.5k USD.

Not sure what the issue is here?

You still have the 6.5BTC right?
They're not worth anything until you sell them... ;)

Not necessarily. They have value in themselves. The USD price is just a placeholder.

But, dude...

You're still ways ahead of many of the newbies into the BTC market. I would love to be in your shoes.

I wasnt even old enough to earn my own money when I first heard about BTC back in 2011.

Well, the issue is this: I would have about 20+BTC if I had never gotten into mining and instead just bought. 

again, bitcoin is not a scam, but mining is...

Most new comers hothead made the same mistakes.

I think it went to mining equipment...right?

Even though you don't have too much BTC, you have been pretty financially successful to be posting this from your new home.   Owning a home is an accomplishment in itself.  The playdoh in the nose is priceless. 

Here is my story too i feel like doing the same lol:

I first learned about bitcoin in 2011 through a story on yahoo as the price skyrocketed to $31. Not wanting to buy into a bubble, I limited myself to learning about bitcoin only, determined it was great, and decided to try to time the bottom. In December of 2011/January 2012 I figured it was about at the bottom, and my plan was to buy 200-300 btc, then slowly increase that amount to 1000 btc if the prices stayed low.

Well, I bought 200 btc for about $1200, and kept them on mtgox. Because I am such an idiot, I did not learn about paper wallets, and someone hacked my mtgox account. Thankfully they did not know what bitcoin was and did not take them, but I was scared someone else would hack me, and so I sold eneough bitcoins in order to withdraw my initial investment. I had about 40 bitcoins left at a price around $10 each. Essentially I kept them "just in case", so I would not end up kicking myself if they were to rise. Well, I did great with those 40 bitcoins, multiplying that investment by over 200 so it all turned out good.

HOWEVER,

I can distinctly remember, when bitcoin fell from $31 to $2, thinking to myself "Well this is probably the last time I can afford 10k bitcoin if I really really wanted to go all in" And I was almost 100% sure it was a perfect investment. (Would now be worth $20m if I had went in and traded the same, going x200)

Then later, as the price rebounded and was about to hit the 2011 ath of $31, I remember saying "Well this is the last time I will ever be able to afford 1k bitcoins", being almost 100% sure again that the price would spike once the ath was broken. (Would have been worth $1m+ if I went in at this point, from my trading)

And the whole time I held just the 40 bitcoins (increasing it slightly with litecoins). This was all while being a college student who really had no expenses, so the rest of my money just sat in a bank when it would have been so easy to put like x10 more in.

And the worst part is that I recognized that putting $10k or $20k in at such a young age would be perfectly fine... If i lost it all it would not really change my life at all, but it could have turned into a life changing sum. And the only thing that really stopped me was not figuring out how to use a damn paper wallet and being paranoid about someone hacking my mtgox account LOL   :'( :'( :'( (Or simply just adding 1 more zero on my initial fiat deposit)

I should say that turning $400 into $80k while in college feels like a life changing amount of money, but in the grand scheme of things, it is not when you live in a first world country. It's also interesting looking for an entry level job after just graduating college, when you were so close to not even needing a full-time job for a while, and then trying to explain in interviews what bitcoin is in order to avoid the "why didn't you have an internship" questions.

Anyway, heres to hoping we enter another bubble/adoption wave, which I think will start the instant we break $700. Maybe this time i'll hold 50 bitcoins instead of 40 haha.

Anyway, i think everyone that has been involved with bitcoin for a while has a similar story and some regret, no matter how much they made. Maybe it is the case that they earlier you got into bitcoin, in general, the more money you made and the more you regret not buying more, so by no means am i complaining. The key to investing/speculating though is to realize that there is ALWAYS another opportunity, and I am confident bitcoin still has massive upside potential.  You may be able to sell your 6.5 bitcoin for much more than $11k in total, hopefully sooner than you think  ::)

TLDR: Hindsight is always 20/20 and everyone involved with bitcoins has at least some regret. Perhaps many bitcoin buyers are just hoping to hedge against future regret, which is perfectly fine.

Why was it either spend $49000, or nothing?

Oh man, that ASICs had done nothing well for this community.

Absolutely right on that point. Satoshi stated that we should stay away from asics for some time to enable more people to get onboard etc etc.

But the greed in people took over....bitcoin would be in a better place if asics didn't come along so quickly IMO.

Your main problem with mining was buying scrypt asics. As far as I can tell, scrypt ASICs have always been extremely overpriced. I did the math a while back, and best case they would have hit ROI in about 9-12 months.

If you don't take the time to do the math on projected mining ROI, and follow difficulty like a hawk, you should not be mining unless it's just a hobby and you don't mind losing money.

I'll stick to BTC mining with a 3-4 month ROI if hardware purchases are well timed. If you had used that money to purchase Antminer S1s instead, you would be in a much better position right now.

My only opinion would be to not invest more into btc (more than you can afford) and just ride the train now to 2015. Good luck with your btc savings.

Check me out: I discovered Bitcoin in 2009, didn't do further research as it was always, aaalways linked to criminal activities (unless you were in specialised webpages about crypto and shit).

So fast forward 2013, I see the news in the mainstream new sites, bam BTC climbing to 700 USD. Needless to said I feel suicidal as fuck and this hasn't changed, as im perpetually broke and that could have saved my life.

The only positive stories I remember from gains with crypto is when I mined 500K DOGE in the early days, which after ups and downs leave me with less than 1 BTC. I've never had 1 BTC. Pretty depressing considering I heard about BTC in 2009. Guess some people just have bad fucking luck  :(

Yeah, I always think of that Morpheus/Neo bitcoin meme with respect to intrinsic bitcoin value.

Well, I guess I am ahead relative to others, but that's true ad infinitum, unless bitcoin doesn't work out in the long-term.

I myself would love to be in almost anyone's shoes who entered before me and held more than 6.5 BTC without losing anything.

I don't think it's a scam per se (for the mining industry en masse; there are some scammer companies, though, to be sure), because the writing is on the wall if anyone cares to look at it, but there is some woeful and willful ignorance occurring alongside some gross profiteering.

I think part of me wanted a more palpable connection to the whole thing, which is why I got into mining. I also thought (erroneously, so, so erroneously) that it was a decent hedge in a declining market, when in fact the best hedge was not buying or attempting to buy low instead of spending expensive BTC on mining equipment.

Really glad you shared this. It's interesting to me, I wonder which stings the worse: -11k, +80k (with missed chance at $1.2M)? I for one would still trade places with you.

I still need to make a paper wallet though. https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/ - - this site is legit, right?

Agreed on the main problem.

I wasn't totally naive--I did the math, and my ROIs were 90-110 days out, but the scrypt asic market started to move incredibly quickly. I am also very busy with work and family life, so I couldn't really devote time to the research needed. I was putting pretty heavy money (for me) into a hobby-level personal engagement.

Funny you mention antminer s1s. I got into a hosted group buy on those in March and they returned less than half my ROI.

thank you. I will not buy unless we go under 500.

Yeah! I had that same sinking feeling too in November 2013 (and I still have it to some extent), which I think is part of the reason why I really threw myself financially at it as I was sure not going to miss out this time around. A lot of other people must have been thinking the exact same thing.

If Bitcoin gets up to some of the projections, you will be doing fine!

That is right; buying scrypt mining equipment with expensive BTC.

Indeed, home ownership is definitely an accomplishment, though I don't really feel like I own it yet (mortgage).

So true and thanks about the comment re: the play doh; reminds me of a quote from Wilde. “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

ASICs make botnet mining futile.
ASICs allow the bitcoin network to be much more secure and more efficiently.

...You make a good point.

Any rebuttal on that? (I'm not sure I have one except I am clearly a witting financial victim of asic mining to some degree.)

asics make cheaper to buy than to mine...
so buy, hold, moon incoming...  :D

Think of the positive sides: You've hopefully got a decent life and people who care about you! Yeah, it's quite a lot of money but believe me, there are people who are far worse off than you!

I agree with this.  Mining has become like a small arms race...which is why I never got into it.   I never had the time to do the proper research and to learn what to do.   I think the problem is that there are all these success stories floating around the net on how people amassed a huge number of BTC (in the beginning stages), using their desktop computers...and made riches..   

There are still myriad ways to get into bitcoin and be successful. It starts with working hard. This is the same thing in bitcoin since I got into it in 2011. Its been a lot of hustle. I have made and lost a lot of bitcoins. It has been exhilirating and devastating. Such is life. I really enjoy it.

As for the ASICs, oh well. Was it greed or innovation?

I remember really early on seeing people start mining it when the difficulty was extremely low.
At that time I didnt have a second computer to mine on, so I would have to tie up my computer,
and at the time I didnt think it was worth doing. Here I am now smashing my head on the table going
"why(smash), why(smash). Haha Oh well, I have since figured out ways to get back in the game.
Good luck!

Trust me friend most if not all of us have a similar bitcoin story.  Don't even try to trade altcoins it will drive you insane when you look at a coin, choose not to or simply forget to invest and off to the moon it goes.  Don't even get me started about taking your money out at the wrong time..

Think of it as a learning experience preparing your for the perfect moment when you make all the right decisions.  HODL

I honestly get where you're coming from. There is always that slight sting of missing out on amazing chances; but all we can do, is move past it. It's not like we all have clairvoyance right? And if we did, these sort of chances would never happen.

I've also missed a whole bunch of chances in the past (both with bitcoins and with altcoins). Now I just bide my time and let things come as they may. After all, there are much more worse things that can be lost other than an opportunity.

This is why im not going to miss the ethereum bus! I will buy some ether.

Why not buy some now, and buy more if it goes under 500? There's a good chance we never drop below 500 again. When bitcoin hits 5000 you'll really wish you had bought at 620.

You should keep focus on one thing and do it as best as you can. You didn't so there is losses

Its not just you who miss the train a lot people have decide but dint do it and then regret

I have once have over 1k BTC when the price are $7-8

And i sold them at $30

I earned and do i regret ?

Well, on the bright side, you could have done what I did.  I bought about 20 BTC a couple weeks ago when the price was $650.  The price has since gone down to about $617, I could have gotten them for about $1,000 cheaper.  Oh well, I'm still confident that it'll go up to above the price where I bought it in the long run.

Well, $660 is quite a bit less than $1000, but I get your point.

You could have gotten 21.07 BTC for the same price that you paid for the 20 BTC.

Somewhere along the thread I got the impression that the OP bought his BTC for $450.  Although I just checked bitcoincharts.com and it says the price was around $800 in February, so I think it was a bit more expensive than that.  Yes, you're right, it would have gotten me a little over an extra bitcoin had I waited.

Yes, I regret that trade and I'm not even you.

Through the 3 years of on and off mining, I have came to the conclusion, that whenever you are itching to buy some mining hardware, buy the coin instead. 99% of the time, buying the coin is better than buying hardware.

That's the plan indeed. PS you meant <1 BTC, right?

Yeah, it's true, and that's priceless for sure.

However, it's not like I missed an opportunity, it's like I failed badly at it.

I was definitely influenced by such stories...

I have been trying to find a way to fit into the ecosystem outside of just buying into it for a while. Met with Bitpay Sales Director, but they do not have any positions in my area.

Thanks very much. It looks like 6.5 BTC is where I end up. I, like you, face-palm the fact it could have been 20+ BTC if I had been smarter about it.

Thanks for that.

I don't know when the perfect moment is, but my odyssey has ended at 6.5 BTC

That's a great perspective. The thing that stings though is not much I missed the opportunity, but that I failed badly at the opportunity. It's like I got called to center court to throw the basketball at halftime and I decided to get a pump out and deflate it instead.

I got the t-shirt! I am wondering when it will be open to buy?

I feel like I have invested far too much already to be honest. I want to spend money on stuff now. Honestly a great vacation with my family now is worth more to me than any financial gains in the future.

A little vague, but I get your meaning, I think; I should have stuck to just buying or just mining?

Well, you sold at a good profit. You are on the plus side regardless, whereas I have ground to make up.

You still have significantly less loss than me (not to mention all the time and worry--setting up miners, shipping, waiting, pools, etc.)

It's a mistaken impression. My average buy price was probably about $675. I bought through to the downtrend.

Makes me glad I put mining in the too hard basket straight away.

It's fair that you want to catch another bus. I on the other hand, am not entirely convinced that's a bus worth getting on. But we'll see what happens. That's the beauty of this type of hectic and fast-flowing market, you never know where you'll end up until you're there.

This is a difficult decision, and is the nature of a highly volatile currency that will eventually be deflationary in nature.

Is a great vacation with your family this year, worth more to you than multiple great vacations with your family in the future?

Perk up! You gambled what you could afford to risk- that was a smart move! You were just as likely to have lost it all! Cheer up! Bitcoin is still young! The glory days are still ahead of us!

Looking at my old PMs it's crazy to think where things are from just a few years ago.  I have a PM of where I sold a guy an Xbox game for 1.5BTC.  Older ones I was buying useless crap for 15BTC. 

Look it is a learning curve. I'm sure you are not the only one who had to live thru it and lost a ton off K.
I myself was scammed and scammed again, even my mining efforts came out to be negative.
The advantage now is that I have the right experience to take on something different... within the BTC world of course.

Best of luck to you.

I m gonna say the only thing I keep repeating these days on this forum: BUY more, don't cry and be a man. :)
Bitcoin is going to be huge in the next couple of years and IMO we might NEVER have this kind of opportunity to make some serious money this way in our lifes. Get yourself a couple hundered BTC and wait. Just wait.

Good economic thought experiment. I would argue that the vacation now is a certainty whereas the future multiple vacations stand a chance of not happening altogether. I would also argue you get more value out of vacations take earlier in life because you can draw on that experience for a longer time.

Thanks, the irony is that I thought the more conservative gamble was diversifying with some mining, but I'm only at roughly 20% of where my BTC position should have been had I just bought (20+BTC).

Mind if I ask what that may be? I have so many ideas now about disintermediation personally and how I might be able to apply it to some industries of which I am a part btw. That's been pretty valuable just in terms of possessing what I hope is a prescient perspective on the world.

I do not have the disposable right now for a couple hundred BTC unfortunately. (If I did, I would for sure.) I may buy one a month or something if it doesn't go above 700--see how many I get with that, maybe 2?

Does it matter how much someone has lost?

Either way, everyone has lost Bitcoins or money. Some people more than you, some less. Does it really matter? You still lost money. A mystical thought created by humans, so... Yup.

I also heard about bitcoin back in 2009 and did not think much of it... and then again in 2011 I looked at it but did not get into it... and yes now I am kicking my self for not digging deeper.. but I am here now and have been in to it for only 6 months... and still do not have 1 btc but I do have 400+ VRC and other Alt coins... and you never know... in 3-5 years things may look bright... as I do not think bitcoin will be the only coin to make it big in the future...

Also back in 1997 I bought a business online and reg a domain for it and some others... and I thought hey what if I reg some good 1 word and 2 word domain names and hold them will they be worth anything in the future.... but back then at $200 a pop for a domain name I did not want to risk it... well I wish I did... still kicking myself over that one..

So this time I am not going to miss the train...

Yes, but the multiple vacations in the future will probably end up also costing significantly more than they do now since the cost of almost everything keeps going upwards

Sometimes I guess life takes over, especially when there are others who depend on you - not that I know this from my own experience.

Perhaps the best solution is a compromise, keep some investment while spending a little more. There are plenty of opportunist trading moments out there - providing that the price doesn't get silly very quickly, again...

I know you're all gonna doubt me, but you guys owed it to yourself to check out the cryptonote technology and make up your mind about which of its implementation is the best to invest in.

Everything starts there: https://cryptonote.org/ - good luck.

really? You don't think ethereum is the next big thing? I would like to get some insight from you if you don't mind.
why do you think it's not a good bus?

OP,

You should take solace in the fact the you have been able to provide comfortable life for your family. You should also be pleased with your participation in a global financial revolution. I'm sure you learned a thing or two through your experiences. I'm a big believer in just buying the coin rather than trying to keep up with the Jones on the infrastructure end. I bet you reach ROI in the next 12 months just by holding your coin despite getting in on the high side. Thank your for the read.

Look at the bright side: In the good old days, you could have mined 10,000 BTC in a week on a cheap laptop...

...and then put them up at MtGox.

...or not.

It's easy to look at things in the past as missed opportunities without considering all the 'gambles' and great things you've achieved... eg. your wife/daughter... perhaps if you'd never gambled on chatting up your now wife, you'd not be with her and not have a daughter... maybe if you'd spent an extra 5 minutes in a casino 10 years ago you'd have left and got hit by a car. It's easy to forget about the good things in life and get bogged down by all the things that in retrospect seem like no brainers.... what if I'd bought Coca Cola shares in the fifties, or invested in Microsoft in the 80s or short sold British Airways Stock before 9/11, so many ifs, buts and maybes... try to focus on the things that matter, living life is much more important than counting it.

Toying with the idea of making a "what if" website. Input the date you first heard of bitcoin (or apple or google) and cash you have available right now to spend at a whim (summer 2011, $5 for a latte). Click to calculate what such an investment would be worth today, and weep.

Oh man, you sound like me trying to do IM. I spent thousands of dollars on software. Then I went back to programming, because it was a waste of money trying to cheat the system.

Hold on to your 6.5BTC, its a respectable amount. If you use some, replace it. Build your savings over time like a 401k, $100/week or month. Whatever you can afford to throw away.

I think it will hit $1k by end of this year with all the mainstream adoption going on. Its going to be a hurdle to get past this BitLicense bullshit, but hopefully the people will prevail and not some government regulatory agency who doesn't understand shit about it.

Can you explain why you bought mining equipment? I think it was pretty clear that people over invested in mining and I'm curious why that happened, why buy mining equipment and not just bitcoins?

Because free money yo.
At least, that's what it looks like until you do the math. I have a feeling though, based on the posts in this sub, that most amateurs have stayed away from mining this year.

So the moral is don't mine? That was a mistake but looking back to 2011, you gotta let that part go.

You have 6500000 bits. Unless bitcoin fails, that amount will make you pretty darn rich in the future.

Thanks for sharing your story. I remember first hearing about bitcoin in 2012 when I heard about the deep web. I didn't think much of it, except that it was just a digital currency. If only I had researched it, just like I do with everything else. But oh well, I am a holder :)

Same situation as me, were not too late tho - right now you've just bought in before Wall St, before financial institutions are even beginning to implement it, just at the start of the curve where BIG retailers are opening up to accepting it but still mainstream adoption and regular Joe knowledge is low..

Youre at the real start my friend - investing your entire life in it back then would be insanely risky. It wasn't then, what it is now, it could have gone many ways from then.. now is the solid ground floor - hold those 6.5 for 3-5 years and youll be laughing!

Sure:

I was initially attracted to mining based on stories of GPU mining of BTC. I knew I had missed the boat on BTC mining, but I thought that I might be able to get ahead of curve with scrypt, but I was mistaken, clearly.

I also thought it might be a good way to diversify on my investment, things with BTC were pretty shaky around Mt. Gox time, and I thought that I could always sell the scrypt miners, or, if I got hacked, my investment sat in the miners and not in a wallet.


It was a decent diversification strategy in theory, but it underestimated difficulty increases and also the amount of time I had to invest in getting miners running.