Bitcoin Forum

I'm just interested in knowing how many "Bitcoin pensioners" are already out there.
 ;)

I'v got 4 BTC. I think I could live off of that?

That would be sweet, but even if I could I think I would be afraid or worried about it the whole time.

So if pirate does not default until I die, maybe ;)

No, I have no money with that guy but you get the idea: If the value of my assets keeps getting more at a rate of 20% per month and I'm happy with 500$ per month (there are places in this world where that is a lot of money), I could live on as little as 2500$ worth of bitcoin (which is only 5 block rewards) for the rest of my life. If you are skeptical about bitcoins security, you might answer "no" even with Satoshi's 2,000,000BTC.

You could even buy insured pirate-bonds, so even in the case of a default it would probably not affect you much.

You can't insure investments... that is why it is called "investing"/"venture capital"/"chancing it"/"believing in a company" and not "money in the bank"/"money under the bed"/"risk-free".

The risk involved in ANY investment is why you as an investor is paid anything - it's YOUR premium. So if YOU are getting a premium exactly covering the risk involved; how can an insurance provider ever hope to operate in the case of a default?

Such insurance firms have zero funds, they spend or drain any premiums they can get and fold at first trouble.


An "insured" or "risk free" investment translates into "RUN RUN RUN" to any experienced investor.

(not saying I'm experienced here, just common sense)

EDIT:
No I could not live on my BTC, but maybe one day in a not so distant future. Right now I hold BTC and invest directly in food/energy production.

My bank account is insured.

Well that is not really an investment. It's a bank account.

The government usually guarantees such in return for regulating their business and posing demands for liquid capital.

Still even bank savings have been known to be lost if the economy got really bad. Since its rare your premium (interest rate) is low. My point stands.

Given the state of today's banks I don't think running to BTC/gold/other would be a bad move though.

To live only with your bitcoins you need like... dunno, 100k bitcoins? more? we have so much ppl with so many bitcoins?

Maybe in a cardboard box...




...a really small cardboard box.

a cardboard box with WIFI!

 ;)

Who insures the insurers?  ???

---

Yup, in a perfectly logical (Austrian?) economic system, there'd not be much difference between a John Doe's savings account at a bank and an investment fond, they all do carry risk.

Depending on your expenses you can deal with far less. I think the retirement extreme guy (http://earlyretirementextreme.com/) used $250k for early retirement but he spends very little. So you'd still need 23k BTC even in those circumstances.

The Bitcoin exchange rate (to loaves of bread etc) would have to go up by a factor of a few hundred for me to do this :(

If/when it does - I intend** to be running at least one BTC generating enterprise, rather than just completely retiring and lounging around on a boat somewhere.
(not that there's anything wrong with that)



** assuming I'm not 100 by the time BTC are worth that much.

Yes.

No.

There are really two very different options under "yes" -

1. Living off of bitcoin-related income (three or four top-volume exchanges, SR and SR sellers, few of the payment services maybe). This really means living off of your work that happens to involve Bitcoin one way or another.

2. Living off of your btc savings, assuming you mined them or bought them bravely at a fraction of today's value. If you are not in this category, but hope to be in the future, you've got to ask yourself where this value will come from. Seriously, the only way is to work hard on making Bitcoin useful and accepted. Otherwise your investment will be worthless.

Hah, I wish I could answer a straight 'Yes' like Tycho :).

I probably couldn't live off my Bitcoins (or even my entire pool) indefinitely.  But I've spent the last 18 months being very careful with what I've earned, and started investing it into two new businesses that should be able to provide reliable revenue streams.  If all goes well, I'm hoping to be able to pay off my mortgage in the next year, which will reduce how much I need to pay the bills each month by about 50%.  Maybe then I'll be able to answer yes :).

Mining in Thailand you would need about 2.2 GH/s to make a typical local monthly salary.
I only have 920 MH/s so sadly cannot live off that but I do have other income and don't need to have a job... and I don't pay rent, and food and beer are cheeeap.

Out in the rice fields along the highways the farmers can get free electricity up to a limit but none of them know about mining.

I certainly can't at their current value, but I think I could in an optimistic value growth rate scenario. I fully intend to never earn another dollar though. Bitcoin all the way for me.

With 13 Ghash/s, I earn almost 50 % of my income from mining. I could afford not to work, but with the upcoming rise in difficulty and reward halving it would be a big risk to depend solely on that income.

2*FPGAs (CM1s) + 2*6770s produce a weeks worth of groceries per month

I want to expand to 15*FPGAs, or ASIC equivelant when / if they become real, as this will cover my monthly mortgage after pay back period...

No. Even if I put everything I have in high return (pirate) investments I wouldn't be able to live off my bitcoin income.


Tell them about it. If they don't want to invest anything you could install your own miners there and pay them.

I thought about that, of course. But it's not very safe to put expensive stuff out there unless you plan to sleep next to it.

I was talking specifically about my mining income, it's comparable with average salary in those countries.
Of course I can't rely on just this because difficulty and USD/BTC rate are unpredictable, but as of today - yes, it's enough.

Also this won't work for many other people and they should note that bitcoin is not a money-from-thin-air scheme, but a "currency-like" thing. You don't mine your plastic card, you use it for money transfers.

There are additional possibilities:

Some people can live off the yields from their Bitcoin mining operation. Once you have a running mining operation there should only be very little work you need to do and if it's large enough it can generate enough Bitcoins for you to live off.

Another is to live off the yields from Bitcoin investments. Possibilities are various stocks/bonds on GLBSE which yield between 1% and 7% per week. Some of them are stocks in mining operations for example.

Actually, you only need about 2000 BTC and then invest them in various stocks/bonds on GLBSE.com with yields around 3% per week on average (you can diversify your portfolio for security).

That would give you about 240 BTC per month or about $2400 per month. Which is good enough to live from for most people.

If 2000 BTC give you more than 200 BTC/month that is a greater than 10%/month interest and a sure way to lose all you have :)

spiccioli

I don't see the logic of this argument. You mean if something yields >10% month then it's impossible? There are no Internet millionaires?

That's not a safe way to live off your BTC:
1.One or more stocks/bonds could fail (also: maybe one of them is a scam/ponzi…)
2.If GLBSE gets hacked, you may lose a lot.
3.If the value of BTC suddenly goes down to $2 you only have $480…

Edit: 3% of 2000 BTC is 60 BTC  ::)

The same thing can happen with conventional investments.
Look at the Madoff and MF Global scandals.
Plenty of people have lost their life savings from stock market crashes.

It's all about managing risk and what you consider safe.
Life is never totally "safe" anyway.

I consider Bitcoin quite safe enough at this stage that it won't drop to $2. I don't think we'll even ever see $6 again.

Bitcoin would need to be at about $5,000 to $10,000 for me to live off of my current Bitcoin at my current lifestyle.

I definitely need more bitcoins.

That would be the Reinsurer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinsurance) (Wikipedia)

Before someone asks who insures the reinsurer, you do in higher premiums.

And 4 times 60 equals 240. Damn I feel like a first grade math teacher :)

Who's the Reinsurer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinsurance) for an insurer for pirate?  ???

You could setup a Bitcoin reinsurer who could reinsure many of the Bitcoin funded businesses/investment groups.
Then the Bitcoin businesses or their funders would be insuring each other through premiums.

you mean similar to the intertwined ponzi economy of today's financial politics?  :D

Yes, with CDS and everything.  ;D

Problem is, there would be no government or central banks to bail us out!
 ;D ;D ;D

Sorry to resurrect an old topic but there's no need to open a new one when we already have them. Looking back at this discussion I could comment only this: a whole world of possibilities at the heart of the hurricane. If you were there, here's the memories to go with the tingles. If you weren't, just get a load of what you missed (quote from here http://www.oocities.org/sunsetstrip/studio/6627/vhsvideos.html)

I personally missed it back then but today I'm doing my best to create the opportunities to live off Bitcoins! And I'm lovin it (you all know this corporate quote)  ;)