Bitcoin Forum

The forum is slow today, so I thought I'd share a thought that hit me yesterday.  

"I don't want to make early adopters rich."

I've heard this said in person and I've read it in reader comments on MSM articles.  But is doesn't actually make sense.  The benefit to early adopters moving forward in time is exactly the same as to adopters who choose to buy today.  Early adopters may already be rich, but if that's true then it's already happened.  As of right now, it is just as risky to continue to hold, as it is to choose to buy.  

Consider this:  Alice and Bob each have $1,000,000 in financial assets.  Alice is an early adopter of bitcoin and holds half her wealth in BTC.  Bob just learned about bitcoin today, and holds 100% of his wealth in US treasuries and stocks.  The risk Bob takes by moving $500,00 into BTC simply puts him at the same risk level as Alice moving forward in time.  The fact that Alice's bitcoins performed well in the past has no bearing on portfolio allocation moving forward.  Alice choosing to continue to hold $500,000 in bitcoin is just as risky as Bob deciding to buy $500,000 of BTC.  

The public cannot make early adopters un-rich by not investing in bitcoin.  And by investing in bitcoin, the public makes early and current investors rich to the exact same degree from this point in time moving forward.

True enough

Smart folks get this, but a lot of vestigial fear of being manipulated

not true it is not teh same thing, your analogy is pathetic.

Alice probably $1000 as an early adopter to own $1Million in financial assets. Bob on the other hand spent $500,000 to buy bitcoins as a late adopter.

Both alice and bob HOLD bitcoins despite crashing value that reached $0

at the end of the day Alice lost $1000 , while bob lost $500,000

Alice will work a week to recover, Bob will never be able to recover that much money in his lifetime

what counts is the initial capital you put in, the fact you don't cash your profits out is irrelevant. Alice is not taking risk by not cashing out, atleast to recover your initial capital she's just being greedy / silly , while Bob took a massive risk on a Peaking investment which he hoped will give him returns.

The whole 'early adopters benefit too much so it's a ponzi scheme' is a load of bollocks, while I get your example, I've got an even better one, why does no one jump and down in a rage over people buying penny stocks and suddenly getting rich overnight holding them? Why does nobody attack people like Peter Schiff for example who said he bought gold back when it was $30 or so?  It's the exact same thing with Bitcoin, people who invest in early are taking a huge risk and could easily lose it all, there's no real different from Bitcoin to anything else, it's just the technology behind it and as we've come to get used to the ignorant old morons on television just don't get that because it's too new to them so they go on a rabid attack.

I don't know why people act so surprised when they see people go after Bitcoin this much, we've seen it with the internet, we've seen it with games, we've seen it with 3D printing, I'm also sure that the older ones here will remember the time when rock music was considered the 'devils' music and the came up with all sorts of bullshit surrounding that as well. Ignorant old people will always fight the progress of humanity, it's a constantly repeating pattern.

So remember these lines when something new comes along and we're all old and don't get taken in by other peoples' bullshit:

. Rock music is devils music

. Violent video games corrupt our children and desensitize them to violence making them kill other people

. The internet is evil and it must be regulated to protect our children because child molesters use it etc.

. 3D Printing must be regulated because people can use it to make guns that kill people

. Bitcoin must be regulated because it's used by Terrorists and Criminals, they're taking a more diplomatic approach now and saying it 'can' be used by terrorists and criminals :P

Even longer ago here in the UK the church once banned football ( Soccer for you Americans ) and attacked it because they were terrified about how people were enjoying it more than going to church.


p.s. You don't buy Bitcoin because of the USD price, you buy it as a store of value and a convenient means of transferring wealth, people who buy it for other purposes are going to lose money.

The OP simply points out a logical fallacy: the truth is that early adopters benefit/lose equally to current adopters from this point in time forward.

You seem to be debating the ethics of whether it is fair for investors to make large gains in general. Your post belongs in the "Politics & Society" section, and is an interesting debate.  I agree that it may be unfair that some people benefit more than others, but the question is: should society "do something" about it?  

The problem is that there are many things in life that could be perceived as "unfair."  You know that picture of your pretty little girlfriend that you've been proudly posting around the forum?  A lot of other women would feel it is unfair that she was born so beautiful.  Maybe we should "do something" about this too?  

On second thought, maybe not.  

The problem here is that you (like most people) don't understand "sunk" cost. When Alice (the early adopter) bought the bitcoins, the money she spent can never be recovered. Any gains or losses since then cannot be reversed. The past cannot be undone, so it is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how much she paid for them because that doesn't change anything. Alice has what she has -- nothing more, nothing less. The money she originally spent is a "sunk" cost.

If Alice and Bob have bitcoins worth $1,000,000 and the value drops to 0, then they have both lost $1,000,000. How the values of their bitcoins got to $1,000,000 is irrelevant. The values went from $1,000,000 to $0, so they both lost $1,000,000.


BTW, most people also don't understand "opportunity" cost. They don't understand that they need to evaluate buying bitcoins vs. mining them.

In five year's time, looking back, we are early adopters now. It is not too late buying in now.

That's a good point, and I edited the OP to reflect this.    

If you buy now--whenever now is--you feel like you are a late adopter since you were the last person to buy.  But this was true in 2013, 2012, 2011, and 2010.  There are early adopters and there are current adopters.  Current adopters become early adopters as time passes and bitcoin adoption continues to grow.  Given that less than 0.1% of the population hold even a small amount of bitcoin, I'd say there is still a lot of room for growth.  

I think there's an ancient Chinese proverb that speaks to this:

"The best time to buy a bitcoin was 2010.  The second best time is today."

It's a foolish statement people make because an early adopter in any business or technology is going to be rich.  Even if the very earliest of adopters put out little monetarily, they still needed the foresight to see Bitcoin's potential.  To sum it up simply, if it were easy, everyone would do it.

I agree, but you left out an important point. If Bitcoin never took off, how many people would be complaining that they were not early adopters?

Here is my suggestion for anyone who is upset that they are not a wealthy early adopter of Bitcoin: create your own coin (crycoin perhaps?) and be the earliest adopter and make billions of dollars.

I figured the success of the tech was implied.  Also, early adopter is subjective.  I recall people complaining when they had to pay $50 for a BTC when "early adopters" only had to pay $1.  Then people complained when they had to pay $100 when "early adopters" only paid double digits.  It's an ever moving target when these people should realize that even today, you can still be an early adopter (assuming Bitcoin continues its trajectory).

I did a bunch of those free ads from back in the day that gave away free bitcoin. This was 2 years ago i think. Yes i was that bored lol. I just recently got re-interested due to the DOGE coin craze. Thinking about that old hard drive that since has been replace with SSD i pulled it back out hooked it up and, holy chit i had almost 5 bitcoin from those free ads. Funny how a lil time changes things.

Now im sure this is not a drop in the bucket compared to early adopters, and part of the reason i quit was because i could not afford to be competitive with them and make much with the nvidia setup i had then. But for me it was a valuable lesson enough that now i mine just about any newer popular coin in hopes that the same thing will happen agin a few years down the road. Probably not but i already gained way more then i had with nothing and can now afford a few gadgets to get in the game a bit. Early adopters win because like me now is they didnt have it to lose to begin with, and that is ok, it is just part of the game too. Without those guys my bitcoin would still be worth a few bucks liek they were then.

dont do anything until you visualize it ...

 :-X

You should change your name to DumbAsFck..... Thats the best you can ever be in life

Go scream at Apple shareholders that bought its stock in 1999, dumbass

Thats sad, Humanity at its best.
We've seen it way earlier too. When bitcoin was hitting double digits, some pricks started making alternative coins like crazy to suck all those "i dont want to make early adopters rich" in..... in the end only those coins creators are rich.

Most newbies on this board dont even own BTC, they're those suckers that bought altcoins because ..... its cheap and they want to be early adoptors that they hate so much.

They even troll bitcoin forums just because they cant have any btc.... cough.... cosmofly....cough

I used to be a bit envious of the "early adopters."  Having heard about BTC when it was only around $5 a coin it was frustrating to buy in a small amount at $50.  Of course it then shot up within weeks and I purchased the bulk of the coins I have at over $100 thinking "if only I had bought sooner."  But it is interesting how once I understood that in a way I am still investing very early, and many of the so called "early adopters" have already sold some of their shares, it really is more about how long I decide to hold and when I decide to sell, more than how many coins I actually have.  This is why everyone that has any belief that Bictcoin could actually grow to any greater level of adoption should just invest what they can afford to lose, and hold as long as they decide.  It isn't so much a matter of "how much" it is mostly about just joining in and enjoying the "ride" so to speak.  ;D

BTC is NOT a Ponzi.
However it does have some real similarities to a Ponzi scam.
People who start worthwhile projects are helping BTC grow long-term; If you are sitting around hoping for new "bag-holders", then may you get what you deserve.

You don't only need early adopters for such statement, you need early adopters who cared at all about they wallets through all of this time. Some people might have mine a lot of bitcoins in 2009 for fun and forget about them .

You guys are not getting what the op is saying.
To make it simpler:
Earlier adopter (A) bought a house for 100k
Later adopter (B) bought an identical house of the same value five years later for 300k
Today the houses are worth 400k
Tomorrow child molesting zombies decide to populate the town and the home values go to 50k.
What if earlier adopter A had kids that are now out of the house, and was going to use the proceeds of his home sale to pay for a smaller home, and to supplement his retirement income? 

You guys are viewing it as well A is only down 50k, while B is down 250k. 
In reality they are both down 350k.
If it is an investment, the logic you tell yourself at a casino when you lose form doubling down does not apply. 
If you invest money and have the money at your disposal, it is your money, it is at risk. 
If your financial planner took all of the proceeds out of your investments you've been building, and lost them all would you go, well I didn't lose since it was profit.  If that's the case i'll gladly invest any profit you have made, since apparently you people do not count it as money for some reason, even though the purpose of investing is to make money and then use the money you made.   

Yeah, why should the smart people profit from their intelligence? That's not fair. Just because they have higher intelligence and are willing to take risk shouldn't mean that they should have an advantage in life.

I guarantee this is the case.  While 21 million will be mined, I'm sure a lot of those early coins are gone due to loss of the private key.  How much we'll never know but I think it's more than people realize.

Why does bitcoin exist? Don't most people argue it is a response to the "unfairness" of the fiat monetary system? The gist generally being that banks and special political interests are provided with an unfair amount of control via mechanisms that cause inflation. If I feel like arguing why fiat is fine, can I borrow your pretty girlfriend argument to make my case as to why it shouldn't bother you? I work for a multibillion dollar banking firm and it all looks fine from my perspective.

Bitcoin exists because it is a powerful and useful new technology.  It enables users to store, transport and exchange wealth with other users across the world without the assistance of a third-party or the permission of an authority.  

Fair/unfair/libertarian/statist/smart/dumb/get-rich-quick/ponzi-scam are labels that people project onto the technology to rationalize their "feelings."  



Yes, that could be their attitude.  

Well, while technically true, the reality is that you (the average joe) will need that assistance and implicit permission because bitcoin doesn't exist in a vacuum, and it is going to be heavily linked to fiat for some time to come.


Well, then I think you're going to have to do a better job explaining how the potential investor should accept it if you want to convince people to utilize the "store of wealth" aspect of bitcoin, because it does not come no strings attached. "Deal with it" isn't very convincing.

As a wealth/portfolio manager, you have every week your chance to allocate assets however you wish. It is irrelevant whether your wealth is in the past generated by holding bitcoins or something else. Today you make decisions for the future, and holding bitcoins is a decision against selling them.

The whole "early adopters" thing is a generalization, which has its uses for classifying people. But it is nothing that they have miraculously been given unfair gains. Rather an early adopter is a person who has for hundreds of days decided to not sell, despite the opportunity to diversify and in this sense "make huge profits".

risk was very high at the beginning of btc and in the end the early adopters won. if you bought gold in the year 2000, you won. if you bought google, MS, apple etc some years ago, you won.

To add to my previous post, there is no lock-in with Bitcoin. If you buy today, you can sell tomorrow. The early buyers did not buy a lottery ticket that won. They accumulated assets that they could have sold any day 24/7 for the going price, so the decision was not a one-off type the least.

Today, I made a decision to not buy bitcoin with all my non-bitcoin assets (significant). This makes me an early anti-adopter, as well as all my peers who could have bought today but did not :)

(In most cases, I can't understand people who have a portfolio but disregard Bitcoin and not invest even 1% into it. That would be a maximum 1% loss and a potential 10-bagger in 3-5 years, something that should appeal to rational people.)

Such hypocrisy... For the noobs who don't know, rpietila IS an early adopter.
His claim that because he chose not to buy today, somehow makes him an 'early anti-adopter' is bullshit.
He knows that in today's bear market there is little profit to make, but risks are high, so he (and his buddies) simply don't buy today.

You don't know for years if you are an early adopter! You just spend money on hardware or buying bitcoins while your wife and friends think you are nutters, then one day they stoped laughing!

I mined on average 1 Bitcoin a day worth 5$ spending slightly more on power feeling like a looser constantly.

+1   Why it would hurt anyone to put 1-2% of their retirement planning into bitcoin, or even all their savings is beyond me. Worst case your net worth declines a small amount. Best case, you end up 50+% in bitcoin and then sell some to balance out your asset allocation. If you end up 98% in Bitcoin fantastic, but I would then sell some to diversify your risk.

A potential 10-bagger in 3-5 years? I think the potential is bigger than that and also a shorter time frame

I mean your total portfolio can at most go down 1%, at most go up 900% (equals a 10-bagger)

To be honest, its more of the fear of what is really going on, since a few people are playing around with the worth of crypto and it is so volatile.

It is just basic laws of economics . Early expenses are not similar to late ones. Sow hats such big deal any way?!

This happened to me with name coin (which, btw, is an awesome idea and complement to bitcoin).  I had a miner doing name coin for the web value, and at some point I stopped mining.  I kind of forgot all about it.  Fast forward where I realized name coin was trading over a dollar (I forget what it is now, like 2 and half or something?) and I realize "oh shit I never backed up my name coin folder".  500 name coins gone, *poof* vanished.  Oh there're out there I s'pose, out there in the nether, but it's 500 i'll never be able to use *sigh*  :)

...

I am late to this thread, but I do not have any problem with early adopters getting rich!  They took the chances, hey, why should they NOT reap some rewards?

As long as I get rich too, bully for them!

I think the harder decision now is deciding when to sell!  BitchicksHusband and I have debated this a bit.  I am more of a long-term holder (why not wait until the coins are worth $100,000 each ;D) but he is very sold on your SSS plan, Rpietila.  I cannot argue with the logic and at some point it will be good to actually realize some of the gains.  We did not take advantage of the spike in price last time.  It has to be an "unemotional" response that is calculated out ahead of time.  As a female I have a very hard time not being "emotional" about anything though. ;)  But hubby is planning on taking out 10% when we start hitting some new ATH.  At that point we can perhaps take advantage of dips if and when they come as well and build up our portfolio a little by using the volatility to our advantage. We will have nothing to lose if we are already planning on selling coins systematically.

Envy is generally a disgusting emotion that pushes people to entertain all manner of irrational ideas in order to justify the insidious cognitive bias that if someone else does well they were just lucky, if someone else does poorly they were stupid, if you do well you were a genius, and if you do poorly you were just unlucky.

This logic does not make any sense.

People should be rewarded for taking risks. The early adopters took on a lot of risk when they used/mined bitcoin in it's early days. As of 2010 or 2011 the chances that bitcoin would catch on to the level that it is at now were slim to none.

They should be rewarded by this.

If you are referring to the MSM as in the liberal media then I would expect an article to say exactly what you said.

Can't people accept those who mined the earliest bitcoin are already rich and there is nothing we can do. Think what bitcoin could do in a few years and WE are early adopters NOW. Stop complaining and do what you think is best for you now, whichever you views are.

Money already have being made by early adapter.

And those are not easy money. It takes vision and huge risk to buy large amount of coin in the early days.