im guessing you are younger than i. im on the wrong side of fifty. at my age i take less risk as im too old to start over. if i were younger i certainly would be increasing my stack as finances allow. i hope to get back to that too once certain new goals are met. but as of right now, other priorities are more important.

not depleting your stack and especially increasing your stack is always a good thing. for instance i have recently taken advantage of btcs currently lower price to replace some that i sold ~100% higher earlier in the year. but im still down btc from last year. i see btc as a tool. a new, experimental tool to manage value. and its still experimental really. there is still the risk it will fail. or, through personal error, my wallets could get compromised and coins stolen. so im using part of my stack to diversify into different non crypto holding in case it all goes south.

maybe because i got into it fairly early, i still see it as a tool to be used, not as a "get rich" thing. although i hope we all do. but currently im using it now to secure our (wife and i) future with as little risk as possible.
 
so on average for the last few years i have generally spent more btc than i replace. at this stage in my life  i have changed some priorities and used btc profit to try and ensure a more than comfortable retirement (if all goes even close to well). we were at the point that retirement should go well for us anyway but its time to revisit that position and nail down a few potential lose ends. once im happy with that i will go back to accumulation. at least i hope to.

 

im probably misunderstanding, but i read that more or less as "how is btc profit compared to my other investment goals that have the same amount of effort/capitol as far as my personal goals are concerned."

i do agree that if you have only broke even well thats better than losing but if the same amount invested in something else you knew of at the time would of done better then its less profitable than you could of done. so basically, a fail. but we can only be so knowledgeable about such things. we learn as we go.

so my investment in btc has fared unbelievably well compared to any other investments i have done. im so far past "made my initial money back" its stupid. now, i could of done better in the past (like buying early apple, microsoft, google etc stock) but the past is the past and hindsight can only serve as a lesson to learn. of my current investments, btc is king. even if it goes to zero today, as i have locked in so much profit.

so basically at this point im diversifying even at the cost of lower (but safer) returns but i am ok with that, im a belt and suspenders kind of guy. so i suppose one could say im leaving potential gains on the table but i realize that. when you are long term contingency planning, and take worse case scenarios into account, you know you have to throw money/time into things that may not have much, if any, returns. even to the point that that money/time is purely wasted if whats its guarding against never happens. but thats just like paying an insurance premium to me. i sure would feel stupid with all my eggs in one basket if that basket breaks.

so, at this point im more into making sure my wife and i have a secure future even if things go to crap than more profit. once i hit a certain level, my priorities shift. i am goal oriented, and once that goal is attained i turn to the next one. one can always go back and fortify any particular goal or position as needed later.

dude.

why is there still wine in the glass in these pics??

you need to drink more, post less. as in less until youre really loaded. cant wait to see those posts and pics.

hard to tell. back when i started and btc was so cheap i didnt really pay attention. i got in it for the experimental aspect more than any profit. all i know is, aside from the first few years, every year i have less btc, but the real world value of that lessor amount of coins is more. usually much more.

as a miner you can look at it as dollar cost averaging, more or less. like i "buy" coin every week, non stop as long as i mine. then sell as needed.

ive mainly used btc as a kind of a "level up" thing. as in i mainly used them to "upgrade" stuff like vacations, toys, gifts etc to a higher level than i would of without btc. occasionally i would lock a chunk of profit up and put it into efts or other non crypto assets that (hopefully) earn returns in a more conventional, less risky way but of course with much less potential profit.

i take it exactly as it looks, once your initial investment pays out in the tangible assets (money, physical items of worth, knowledge, whatever) its all gravy. i would think (hope) most people in this thread are in this category, ie playing with "house money." at this point even if my stack goes to zero the minute i type this i still made out.

now, one can always argue about lost profit opportunity from this point on, buts thats another animal to me.

im not Gyrsur but i mined btc back in 2011 onward and also buy/bought here and there over the years.

my answers are huge yes, big yes, and yes.

understood. but is was found and disclosed by responsible people eventually. if they hadnt come out with it intel probably would have happily ignored it even now assuming intel even knew about it internally at some point. flaws just ripe for the pickings.


lol heavens no. we are at the mercy of both the government and the hardware/software manufactures. neither really care about our security or privacy.

exploits are all over just waiting for someone to find them. hopefully white hats will get to the worst ones first.

pretty sure the btc wallet has called itself "bitcoin core v0.whatever" a long time before bcash_lol came out.

so calling it "bitcoin core" is kinda a habit really at least when referring to the wallet.

more or less: right now only those with very cheap power are making profit. unless you get the hardware very cheap you are generally looking at a ROI of years, and thats no guarantee.

personally i am still running 470 and 1070/1080 class cards. i retired my power hungry 380/390s over a year ago. so very meager profits at the moment.

if you mean specter etc or the intel MME stuff it was not intel that just came out and admitted it one day. it was others that found and publicized it, then intel admitted it to the public. so other "engineers," for want of a better term, did find it.

and just because there are/were no known exploits, that just means the possible exploits were not common or severe enough (for the general public) to be noticed by the general public.

so thats what, everything from smoke signals to every computer and smart device on the planet?

a back door into all communication devices. communications devices that the governments themselves need to securely communicate with each other. that hackers and "questionable" nations can use to access another governments internal, banking, law enforcement, infrastructure and businesses communications.

we all know how good governments are at keeping secret stuff secret. what could go wrong.

how does one tell between coins that are lost vs coins that have simply never been moved by the owner?

if bitcoin ever adds to the 21 million supply (for whatever reason) then it would be an alt,  not bitcoin.

there were no passwords for the bitcoin core wallet in 2009, the year i assume the OP destroyed his drive and made the backup. those came in sometime after 2011 (the year i started) and the wallet wasnt encrypted at that point.

OP im afraid that unless you find the wallet.dat or the keys themselves (paper wallet maybe, which is pretty advanced as has been pointed out) they are gone if indeed all you ran was the core wallet, and nothing else.

long shot here.. you have no drive image backups from that time period? a drive image would have all files, including "hidden" files, in it. you would just need to restore it to a spare drive.

and the file "name of wallet my wallet".wallet i dont recall any files that had a .wallet extension in the bitcoin core wallet filesystem.

maybe you sent it to some other wallet like armory? armory uses the .wallet extension, plus i believe it did/does word based backups. however i dont recall when armory was introduced, or what its early capabilities were.

i would think there are so many redundant backups, full and incremental, stored in so many locations, that it would be near impossible to wipe them all out. worse would be a days or hours of data lost.

i know just from my own backup strategies it would take a near end of world scenario to take them all out.

take out all internet and power in the world, that might do it. but then banking would be the least of ones worries.

guess i was just lucky then. it was construction, we all pulled out weight and got along great, and partied a lot outside of work.

my office gigs however.. many backstabbers there.

when i was a laborer, i noticed no one faked anything, we were all just ourselves. once i graduated to office jobs, thats when i noticed the fakers.

this forum is not decentralized. and its not meant to be, as it is privately owned. it is controlled by the owner and moderators, limiting what can be posted.

it is still one of the best "goto" forums on btc and alts at the moment, but post things contrary to what the owners and mods consider acceptable and posts will disappear.

a truly decentralized forum has yet to exist AFAIK, although it is being worked on.

i dont think so. if one can prove his data or analysis is wrong, he will admit his mistake. it has happened. thats not the mark of a cultist. cultists ignore facts.

it may seem hes inflexible but thats only because his logic, understanding of the subjects and research is very very good.

the mark of a true scientist is to go with the best theory that fits the facts as they are known. when something happens that invalidates that, the scientist will scrap that theory and search for a new one. thats shelby.

even his detractors generally admit he is very very smart. thats puts us average guys (like me specifically not mentioning any names here) at a distinct disadvantage. i would need to dedicate years to understand just some his theories, and even then i probably lack the brainpower to fully grok it.

well, except when forced by to lie by being given conflicting orders.

isnt this what we signed up for? the wild ride?

i mean who wants to be bored.