Are you an investor?

[Veltas]

I'm interested to know whether or not people are trying to make some money out of the rising price of Bitcoin.  It sounds like an easy enough idea; buy some BTC, wait a bit, check to see the price has gone up and then sell it when it looks like it's reached the turning point in value.

So how many of you are planning to make a bit of money out of this?  Or are you interested in just investing money in Bitcoin for its advantages like P2P payments with no governing bodies?

Please tell me what, and if possible; why.

If you're an other I'd also love to hear exactly what Bitcoin is as an investment to you, or not.

[Stephen Gornick]

The technical analysis from s3052 has been amazingly spot-on:
  http://mtgox.com/blog/

[mpkomara]

I am trying to match my future liabilities (BTC-denominated rent, mortgage, car payments, groceries, children's education) with assets (BTC).

[ribuck]

I have three Bitcoin wallets, of approximately equal size.

One wallet will sit untouched until I retire in a few years, then I'll sell the coins over time to provide some retirement income. Obviously I'm hoping that the value of this wallet will grow considerably.

Another wallet is for members of my family. I will give it to them when Bitcoin is easy enough (and safe enough) for non-technical people to use.

The third wallet is for day-to-day spending. I'm quite free-and-easy with this one. Sometimes I send funds to a new Bitcoin business because I want to encourage Bitcoin entrepreneurship, even if I don't really need what they are offering.

I give 10% of any blocks that I generate to organizations whose goals are consistent with Bitcoin, e.g. EFF and TorServers.

[Veltas]

I have three Bitcoin wallets, of approximately equal size.

One wallet will sit untouched until I retire in a few years, then I'll sell the coins over time to provide some retirement income. Obviously I'm hoping that the value of this wallet will grow considerably.

Another wallet is for members of my family. I will give it to them when Bitcoin is easy enough (and safe enough) for non-technical people to use.

The third wallet is for day-to-day spending. I'm quite free-and-easy with this one. Sometimes I send funds to a new Bitcoin business because I want to encourage Bitcoin entrepreneurship, even if I don't really need what they are offering.

I give 10% of any blocks that I generate to organizations whose goals are consistent with Bitcoin, e.g. EFF and TorServers.

Wow, that's a large investment.  I hope it works out well for you.

[ribuck]

Wow, that's a large investment.

I didn't say how much is in each wallet. But see the discussion How many bitcoins is "enough"?

[Veltas]

Wow, that's a large investment.

I didn't say how much is in each wallet. But see the discussion How many bitcoins is "enough"?

Well if it's for stuff like retirement it should be a decent amount at least, shouldn't it?

[S3052]

The technical analysis from s3052 has been amazingly spot-on:
  http://mtgox.com/blog/

thanks a  lot!! I am trying hard to keep this forecast accuracy for long time (while I am sure there will be a few times when I will be wrong as well)

[ribuck]

Well if it's for stuff like retirement it should be a decent amount at least, shouldn't it?

My hope is that a modest amount of bitcoins now might just be worth a much larger amount later (if I am lucky).

[ptd]

Well if it's for stuff like retirement it should be a decent amount at least, shouldn't it?

My hope is that a modest amount of bitcoins now might just be worth a much larger amount later (if I am lucky).

In other words you've identified Bitcoins as a high risk, high reward investment and have brought a small amount to balance risk and reward. Wise move.

[ribuck]

In other words you've identified Bitcoins as a high risk, high reward investment and have brought a small amount to balance risk and reward.

Exactly. In ten years time, my "retirement bitcoins" will either be worth nothing, or will be worth enough for a comfortable retirement.

There's no need to hold a lot of coins, because no-one needs "twice a comfortable requirement", if you know what I mean.

I'm not saying how many I have, but elsewhere on this forum Vladimir suggested 2100 bitcoins (one ten-thousandth of the total amount) for a long-term investment fund, and I think that's a wise suggestion. It's still possible for a determined user to buy mining equipment to gain that many, or to buy that many on the open market with some investment funds. But of course you need to accept the possibility of losing your investment if Bitcoin somehow fails.

[Timo Y]

I buy Bitcoins both for investment and spending.  My investment account currently holds more BTC than my spending account.

Tell someone at a dinner party that you invested EUR 100 in a fully virtual internet currency in beta testing stage, with no backing and no guarantees.  They will probably think you are a gullible fool who throws away his money.  Yet large numbers of people, even very intelligent people, happilly spend EUR 100 a year on lottery tickets. 

Maybe I'm just a hopeless optimist regarding new technologies, but somehow the odds of making millions with a Bitcoin investment seem vastly superior to the lottery.

 

I must admit that morally and easthetically, I don't like the idea of "easy money". But I've come to realise that few people in the world ever got rich just by trading their labour for money.  If I don't invest in Bitcoin, somebody else will, and that person is just as undeserving as I am.

[rebuilder]

Tell someone at a dinner party that you invested EUR 100 in a fully virtual internet currency in beta testing stage, with no backing and no guarantees.  They will probably think you are a gullible fool who throws away his money. 

That's not my experience. If you tell them  you expect your investment to be worth 10,000 times what you originally put in in a decade or two, they'll likely laugh at you. If you make it known you understand the high risks involved, I don't see many people giving you much flak about it, at least with small investments. Now, putting in any appreciable amount of your assets into Bitcoin would likely seem unwise to your hypothetical dinner guests. They'd be right too, it remains a very high-risk investment.

[just a man]

I want enough bitcoins so that spending less than 0.01 percent of them would be enough to throw a big wild party and invite all my hired friends.

I don't know how many bitcoins that might be in five or ten years time, but I guess the more I have, the sooner the wild parties. So, same plan regular money really.

[ribuck]

If you tell them  you expect your investment to be worth 10,000 times what you originally put in in a decade or two, they'll likely laugh at you.

Do you think it will grow that much? I think it will grow by 100 times, at most. But I don't tell that to other people, because they'll think I'm crazy.

I tell people that it's a speculative investment which has 50% chance of being worth 10 times as much, and 50% chance of being worth nothing.

[Local]

 
I must admit that morally and easthetically, I don't like the idea of "easy money". But I've come to realise that few people in the world ever got rich just by trading their labour for money.  If I don't invest in Bitcoin, somebody else will, and that person is just as undeserving as I am.

Wow I completely disagree. There are only a few things more beautiful to me than the idea that the people who can see the future and put their money where there brain is getting rewarded for it.

[Ricochet]

When I first bought into Bitcoins, I did so because I was curious about the ideas and the uses of the currency.  As it started rising in value rapidly, I started thinking of it more as an investment opportunity.  Right now I'm kinda in the middle of the two camps.  On the USD side I'm now even, so any remaining coins I have are what I've got, whether they're to be used to buy stuff or to sit there and (hopefully) gain value.  I don't exactly know at the moment.

[kiba]

Wow I completely disagree. There are only a few things more beautiful to me than the idea that the people who can see the future and put their money where there brain is getting rewarded for it.

That's right! Bitcoin investors don't get a free ride. They get a really death-rattling ride in which their investment could be made worthless at any time.

Bitcoin is extremely high risk, high reward investment.

[Steve]

Wow I completely disagree. There are only a few things more beautiful to me than the idea that the people who can see the future and put their money where there brain is getting rewarded for it.

That's right! Bitcoin investors don't get a free ride. They get a really death-rattling ride in which their investment could be made worthless at any time.

Bitcoin is extremely high risk, high reward investment.

A few things should be pointed out here:
- by buying bitcoins as an investment, you are forgoing something else that you could have done with that money (a nice dinner, a new ipod, a vacation, a new car, or some other investment)
- by buying bitcoins you are increasing the value of existing bitcoins in circulation, that gives others that hold bitcoins more options to do more things with that additional wealth...such as spend more time working on the bitcoin infrastructure
- by holding bitcoins, you have incentive to help build out that infrastructure to ensure the future value of bitcoins is secure
- by investing in bitcoins you are allocating resources to the bitcoin community rather than allocating them to other types of investment or to consumption

So...I too completely disagree with the premise that it's easy money...it's hard earned money that you've chosen to not use for consumption, but rather to invest in and support an idea that you believe may one day be successful and bring about a positive change for many people.