Post your n00b mistakes!!

[tonto]

I'll start with mine.. so wasn't still quite sure how bitcoin worked in relation to difficulty, hashing, etc, so I bought a second HD 5770 when price hit $30 thinking I could get a 6990 with not much more work after that....
 
and then the crash, and then the difficulty hit where now my 5770s are earning "half" of what they were when coins hit $30 ea. 
 
Had I not been a n00b, I would have sucked up and got a 6990 instead.
 
So now I'm still less than 10btc, and waiting to build back up *sigh*
 
What n00b mistakes did/have you made???

[airdata]

my first new mining card was a 6870 I bought for $180 on amazon.. not researching enough to realize it's hash rate wasn't the greatest for the price I paid.

also, not dumping all my btc at $30 ^^

[mjsbuddha]

I sold 400 btc at 75 cents in April. Only thing I consider a mistake thus far

[hawks5999]

Getting the 6990 would have been the n00b mistake. That 5770 will pay for itself in a couple of months. The 6990 will take much much longer.

And OT: lost $150 to a scammer on OTC.

[Maria]

I sent 5,000 BTC to MT GOX and did not let bitcoin client confirm the transcation. Waited 2 days then started bitching on the forum. Somebody here helped me and minutes after my 5K BTC were all MT GOX. 16 hours after that MT GOX got hacked...I got Goxed. Then they came back online. Paid off my mortgage.

Maria.

[dinzy]

Got cocky with the static market and went to sleep the other night with open buy orders.  Not a big loss, but it taught me a little more caution.

On the hardware side I would classify putting a 69xx and a 58xx card on the same Win7 machine as a little neo-n00bish, even though I have been building my own PCs for 16 years.  Why the fuck did I think it would be stable? Has Windows ever functioned smoothly in a configuration that didn't have the slightest chance of being foreseen by anyone 6 months ago?

[Elwar]

Back when I first heard of Bitcoin about a year ago I downloaded the client and got it running and started mining.

I got an error message soon after and didn't spend any time trying to get it working. Missed out on a year's worth of mining.

[dinzy]

I sent 5,000 BTC to MT GOX and did not let bitcoin client confirm the transcation. Waited 2 days then started bitching on the forum. Somebody here helped me and minutes after my 5K BTC were all MT GOX. 16 hours after that MT GOX got hacked...I got Goxed. Then they came back online. Paid off my mortgage.

Maria.

If this story is true and US based, which seems unlikely given the time involved, then this is a huge n00b mistake when it comes to taxes.  Even if you paid all the capital gains taxes, you would then loose out on the mortgage deduction.  There are far better investments than paying off a 5% Mortgage that only costs ~3.5%. 

[Maria]

Not US based. Not worried about taxes.



Maria.

[tonto]

Not US based. Not worried about taxes.



Maria.

Jesus H!  I'm jealous!  I have 9 btc to my name   that's right *nine*.
 
I'd totally pay off my house if I had those funds

[MiningBuddy]

Not US based. Not worried about taxes.



Maria.

Fair play to you! 

[error]

That is most certainly NOT a noob mistake!

[davux]

I gradually spent like 200ß on Bitcoin Toss, because I thought I could bet the double of my previous bet at each game, and end up winning my previous losses + an extra. I spent the first 100ß this way, and the other 100ß because of a copy-paste problem and the author was not honest enough to allow me to actually bet them or get them back.

The problem is that you can't verify that such a game is not a scam, and in this very case it turned out it was.

This is my painful n00b mistakes, and lessons:
1. Double-check the bitcoin address you pasted in the client.
2. Beware of the Scam.
3. More specifically, don't trust Alex Beckenham (the actual n00b advice is: don't trust anyone by default).