Also, who remembers the $1k Bitcoin party...
I do. Didn't last long though.
It wasn't the most fun for me as I was coming to realize I wasn't going to get my 50 coins back from Gox and I had <100 coins left.
Luckily 2014-5 gave me the opportunity to buy back many more than I lost.
This time I was much calmer. The day my Bitcoin stash was first worth over $1mCAD, I spent $1.2k on a new ultra-light powerful bass amp (bought with fiat) and had a few beverages.
I'm still gonna wait for the price to double a few more times before getting into my stash and making any real purchases. Anything under $10m is still just comfortable. I'd like to experience being
rich before I get too old to enjoy it.
You don't need to disclose any further details or admit to anything; however, I am going to place you in the about 160BTC club (give or take 15 coins); therefore, having a $10million portfolio is going to require $62,500 value for bitcoins, and surely you do not need that much dough, as an old foggie to live comfortably.
I am actually going to quibble with your target and suggest that anything in the $2million to $5million territory is going to be sufficient for you to start withdrawing some value - and surely you need not withdraw principle, because it is likely that anything you withdraw is going to be far and above your principle investment. Therefore with a more splurgy investment, you could start withdrawing at $12,500, and the most conservative of the range, you would start withdrawing at $31k - which really I think is much too unnecessary, especially given your old foggie status.
Hahahaha... that is called "unsolicited advice"... I concede that we all hate unsolicited advice.
Without disclosing exactly how many I have (your estimate is a bit off), I could have started spending some of my coins a while ago but since I'm still earning elsewhere, I'd rather keep acquiring more coins, albeit in much smaller amounts. Keeping busy helps keep you young and I learned long ago that prosperity comes in cycles.
When I was 20, my GF was the ex-wife of a brain surgeon so we lived pretty high off the hog. We had way too much spending money for kids our age.
After Uncle Sam decided I wasn't contributing enough to the American economy and suggested I leave of my own free will, I fell on tougher times back in Toronto. I moved into a cheap rooming house and scrambled to keep myself fed. Only stubbornness kept me from moving into my parents' home, collecting welfare, or getting a job. I scraped and hustled to earn any money I could and learned to live on almost nothing.
When I finally broke down and got a job I maintained my thriftiness. I kept spending to a minimum and earned extra money playing music at night while keeping up my day job. I only bought things that were cheap enough to resell at a profit. I kept hustling any buck I could. Slowly I accumulated enough to finally quit employment for good and live completely off of music and hustles.
If a band broke up and my musical income was interrupted, I was back to scrounging to feed myself again. I still tell the story about how, after we'd eaten all the stale pasta with takeout squeeze-packet sauce, all we had was oatmeal. We had it with old brown sugar for breakfast, chicken bouillon cube porridge for lunch and Oxo porridge for dinner. Employment, welfare and panhandling were not options.
By the time I was in my 40s, I'd managed to acquire 3 properties in downtown Toronto while still maintaining dirt-cheap tenancy in an old house next to the train tracks. My 8 tenants paid my mortgages, taxes and maintenance costs, and gave me a good income as well. I slowly started falling into bad habits. I started to eat in restaurants and take taxicabs. I bought a trailer and kept a country place. I started living high off the hog again.
When prime minister Brian Mulroney "Cooled down the over-heated Canadian economy to wrestle inflation to the ground" everything changed again. My mortgage rates tripled, I had to lower my rents because of soaring unemployment and a collapsing local real estate market. My properties weren't worth what they were mortgaged for. Then I was involved as a passenger in a head-on highway collision.
Since I wasn't an employee and had no registered business, the insurance company gave me nothing. They offered me an insulting pittance for pain and suffering, but I refused it and retained a civil litigation lawyer. It took 2 years to see a penny. In the meantime I was unable to earn, confined to a wheelchair and crutches. The banks foreclosed on my mortgages and I was forced to declare bankruptcy.
Due to a precedent in an Ontario court in the 1920s, it was determined that the bankruptcy trustee couldn't touch any receivables from an auto accident settlement. Meanwhile the insurance company played hardball, not reaching a settlement until we'd already set a court date. I was forced to go on welfare, which paid for
most of the cost of my rent. To subsist I was forced to sell some of my instruments and roll up my old nickels and pennies to buy cheap raw food. I ate a meal a day at a local soup kitchen. Then finally my lawyer called to say he'd received the minutes of settlement from the insurance company. I went and signed the papers and went straight to the trustee to declare bankruptcy. The next day, I went and picked up my settlement check, took it to the bank where it was written and got it certified, then went straight to my local bank branch and opened an account, withdrawing $5k in cash to pay off actual people I owed money to. I was a real person again.
Since then, I've done okay for myself but I'll always try to maintain my poverty buying habits. Never borrow. Buy only to earn, not to spend. Avoid banks. I'll try to maintain this attitude even if I become very wealthy.
This is why I'll keep holding, and buying the dips.
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