My $11k bitcoin odyssey

[dyland]

I generally sit down to write about something because it has somewhat of a therapeutic effect. You know, the whole 'get the demons out' thing. Well, I'm not sitting down. I'm reclining in boxer briefs in a newly bought house and my daughter is offering to shove some green play-doh in my nose in between the plot points of "My life as a teenage robot".

We bought the house through really careful saving over three years, mainly, and a couple well-timed promotions, which got our earning potential high enough for a decent mortgage.

Great. House, car, decent job, health, some money in the bank. Some money in the bank. Some money in the bank.


I first learned about bitcoin in 2011 off metafilter. It piqued my interest because I had argued with a thesis advisor for a couple years starting in 2006 that virtual currencies and properties were just as salient as our real life ones and to the extent that they could be made limited, just as valuable. Anyway, I had little money in 2011, and I didn't quite fully understand the problem that the blockchain solved.

Fast forward to March 2012. I had just gotten married and had a bit of cash. Again, I hear about bitcoin on mefi and it's now at $70.00 or something (this recollection may be inaccurate). I had enough then to have 700 BTC now if I had thrown my weight at it--and I was seriously contemplating doing it (I still remember the pause I had when I was opening my car door before I went to work, mulling it over in my head from the night before: if I lost that much I would be a fool, wouldn't I?)

I didn't do it.

December of 2013 rolled around and now I knew I was a fool. My heart pounded. I had missed my shot.

No, I hadn't.

I started buying in February all the way through the downtrend.

Then, I got into mining: a large group buy investment, script asics since the beginning (dual miner, grid seed, g blade, black widow, thunder, a train where each engine you add slows you down).

All told I have probably thrown 11k (maybe more) or so at BTC in varying ways and I have about 6.5BTC to show for it. It depresses me when I really think about it. But, here I am in my boxer briefs in my new house all the same (they're black btw). I guess there is some solace in being in your underwear in a house you own.

I am trying to turn this into a positive any way that I can, demons out notwithstanding.

Thanks for the read.

[retrend]

Woulda, shoulda, coulda.

Sounds like you aren't doing too badly anyway.

[dyland]

I took myself for an incredibly expensive ride as some sort of psychological ego wish fulfillment bullshit that I coulda woulda shoulda done sort of thing, true, the farce of mining at the present inclusive of that, and also my willingness to buy into it.

[franky1]

even at the peak of $1200 in december..  your $11k buys would total more than 6btc..

going by your story you bought a load of coin at $450ish so lets say you threw $3k at the markets in february to get the 6.5BTC, what did the other $8k go to?

[Cranky4u]

I had a chance to buy 1000 BTC @ $2 in 2009 and bought hardware instead. At it's peak, that would have netted me well over $1M and change but instead the hardware  only produce $7k in profit.

Oh well, you do what is thought of as the best option at the time...and $7k profit in 12 months is nothing to sneeze at! 350%!!!!

[DannyHamilton]

what did the other $8k go to?

My guess would be mining losses due to getting involved in mining without fully understanding the costs associated and the difficulty in generating a return on the investment.

[Bit_Happy]

...here I am in my boxer briefs in my new house all the same (they're black btw)

When I first discovered BTC, I looked a lot like this:


Three years later I still look a bit better than:


When you start to live the Bitcoin Life remember to get exercise and eat healthy.  
Note: This is 'satire' both extremes are exaggerated versions of the truth.

[dyland]

what did the other $8k go to?

My guess would be mining losses due to getting involved in mining without fully understanding the costs associated and the difficulty in generating a return on the investment.

Bingo.

[dyland]

...here I am in my boxer briefs in my new house all the same (they're black btw)

When I first discovered BTC, I looked a lot like this:


Three years later I still look a bit better than:


When you start to live the Bitcoin Life remember to get exercise and eat healthy.  
Note: This is 'satire' both extremes are exaggerated versions of the truth.

Haha I feel better already. (Until I think about the fact that I could have taken a sweet vacation with my family for the amount lost.)

[dyland]

I had a chance to buy 1000 BTC @ $2 in 2009 and bought hardware instead. At it's peak, that would have netted me well over $1M and change but instead the hardware  only produce $7k in profit.

Oh well, you do what is thought of as the best option at the time...and $7k profit in 12 months is nothing to sneeze at! 350%!!!!

Well, it's much better than I'm doing at the moment. I've lost more now than I was contemplating getting thrown away in 2012.

The only way out of this self-imposed hubris-ridden predicament is for BTC to hit about 3.5k USD.

[cr4sh0verride]

I generally sit down to write about something because it has somewhat of a therapeutic effect. You know, the whole 'get the demons out' thing. Well, I'm not sitting down. I'm reclining in boxer briefs in a newly bought house and my daughter is offering to shove some green play-doh in my nose in between the plot points of "My life as a teenage robot".

We bought the house through really careful saving over three years, mainly, and a couple well-timed promotions, which got our earning potential high enough for a decent mortgage.

Great. House, car, decent job, health, some money in the bank. Some money in the bank. Some money in the bank.


I first learned about bitcoin in 2011 off metafilter. It piqued my interest because I had argued with a thesis advisor for a couple years starting in 2006 that virtual currencies and properties were just as salient as our real life ones and to the extent that they could be made limited, just as valuable. Anyway, I had little money in 2011, and I didn't quite fully understand the problem that the blockchain solved.

Fast forward to March 2012. I had just gotten married and had a bit of cash. Again, I hear about bitcoin on mefi and it's now at $70.00 or something (this recollection may be inaccurate). I had enough then to have 700 BTC now if I had thrown my weight at it--and I was seriously contemplating doing it (I still remember the pause I had when I was opening my car door before I went to work, mulling it over in my head from the night before: if I lost that much I would be a fool, wouldn't I?)

I didn't do it.

December of 2013 rolled around and now I knew I was a fool. My heart pounded. I had missed my shot.

No, I hadn't.

I started buying in February all the way through the downtrend.

Then, I got into mining: a large group buy investment, script asics since the beginning (dual miner, grid seed, g blade, black widow, thunder, a train where each engine you add slows you down).

All told I have probably thrown 11k (maybe more) or so at BTC in varying ways and I have about 6.5BTC to show for it. It depresses me when I really think about it. But, here I am in my boxer briefs in my new house all the same (they're black btw). I guess there is some solace in being in your underwear in a house you own.

I am trying to turn this into a positive any way that I can, demons out notwithstanding.

Thanks for the read.

Not sure what the issue is here?

You still have the 6.5BTC right?
They're not worth anything until you sell them...

[theblacksquid]

You still have the 6.5BTC right?
They're not worth anything until you sell them...

Not necessarily. They have value in themselves. The USD price is just a placeholder.

But, dude...

You're still ways ahead of many of the newbies into the BTC market. I would love to be in your shoes.

I wasnt even old enough to earn my own money when I first heard about BTC back in 2011.

[dyland]

I generally sit down to write about something because it has somewhat of a therapeutic effect. You know, the whole 'get the demons out' thing. Well, I'm not sitting down. I'm reclining in boxer briefs in a newly bought house and my daughter is offering to shove some green play-doh in my nose in between the plot points of "My life as a teenage robot".

We bought the house through really careful saving over three years, mainly, and a couple well-timed promotions, which got our earning potential high enough for a decent mortgage.

Great. House, car, decent job, health, some money in the bank. Some money in the bank. Some money in the bank.


I first learned about bitcoin in 2011 off metafilter. It piqued my interest because I had argued with a thesis advisor for a couple years starting in 2006 that virtual currencies and properties were just as salient as our real life ones and to the extent that they could be made limited, just as valuable. Anyway, I had little money in 2011, and I didn't quite fully understand the problem that the blockchain solved.

Fast forward to March 2012. I had just gotten married and had a bit of cash. Again, I hear about bitcoin on mefi and it's now at $70.00 or something (this recollection may be inaccurate). I had enough then to have 700 BTC now if I had thrown my weight at it--and I was seriously contemplating doing it (I still remember the pause I had when I was opening my car door before I went to work, mulling it over in my head from the night before: if I lost that much I would be a fool, wouldn't I?)

I didn't do it.

December of 2013 rolled around and now I knew I was a fool. My heart pounded. I had missed my shot.

No, I hadn't.

I started buying in February all the way through the downtrend.

Then, I got into mining: a large group buy investment, script asics since the beginning (dual miner, grid seed, g blade, black widow, thunder, a train where each engine you add slows you down).

All told I have probably thrown 11k (maybe more) or so at BTC in varying ways and I have about 6.5BTC to show for it. It depresses me when I really think about it. But, here I am in my boxer briefs in my new house all the same (they're black btw). I guess there is some solace in being in your underwear in a house you own.

I am trying to turn this into a positive any way that I can, demons out notwithstanding.

Thanks for the read.

Not sure what the issue is here?

You still have the 6.5BTC right?
They're not worth anything until you sell them...

Well, the issue is this: I would have about 20+BTC if I had never gotten into mining and instead just bought. 

[mkc]

again, bitcoin is not a scam, but mining is...

[onlyu]

what did the other $8k go to?

My guess would be mining losses due to getting involved in mining without fully understanding the costs associated and the difficulty in generating a return on the investment.

Bingo.

Most new comers hothead made the same mistakes.

[keithers]

even at the peak of $1200 in december..  your $11k buys would total more than 6btc..

going by your story you bought a load of coin at $450ish so lets say you threw $3k at the markets in february to get the 6.5BTC, what did the other $8k go to?

I think it went to mining equipment...right?

Even though you don't have too much BTC, you have been pretty financially successful to be posting this from your new home.   Owning a home is an accomplishment in itself.  The playdoh in the nose is priceless. 

[weather b0y4]

Here is my story too i feel like doing the same lol:

I first learned about bitcoin in 2011 through a story on yahoo as the price skyrocketed to $31. Not wanting to buy into a bubble, I limited myself to learning about bitcoin only, determined it was great, and decided to try to time the bottom. In December of 2011/January 2012 I figured it was about at the bottom, and my plan was to buy 200-300 btc, then slowly increase that amount to 1000 btc if the prices stayed low.

Well, I bought 200 btc for about $1200, and kept them on mtgox. Because I am such an idiot, I did not learn about paper wallets, and someone hacked my mtgox account. Thankfully they did not know what bitcoin was and did not take them, but I was scared someone else would hack me, and so I sold eneough bitcoins in order to withdraw my initial investment. I had about 40 bitcoins left at a price around $10 each. Essentially I kept them "just in case", so I would not end up kicking myself if they were to rise. Well, I did great with those 40 bitcoins, multiplying that investment by over 200 so it all turned out good.

HOWEVER,

I can distinctly remember, when bitcoin fell from $31 to $2, thinking to myself "Well this is probably the last time I can afford 10k bitcoin if I really really wanted to go all in" And I was almost 100% sure it was a perfect investment. (Would now be worth $20m if I had went in and traded the same, going x200)

Then later, as the price rebounded and was about to hit the 2011 ath of $31, I remember saying "Well this is the last time I will ever be able to afford 1k bitcoins", being almost 100% sure again that the price would spike once the ath was broken. (Would have been worth $1m+ if I went in at this point, from my trading)

And the whole time I held just the 40 bitcoins (increasing it slightly with litecoins). This was all while being a college student who really had no expenses, so the rest of my money just sat in a bank when it would have been so easy to put like x10 more in.

And the worst part is that I recognized that putting $10k or $20k in at such a young age would be perfectly fine... If i lost it all it would not really change my life at all, but it could have turned into a life changing sum. And the only thing that really stopped me was not figuring out how to use a damn paper wallet and being paranoid about someone hacking my mtgox account LOL   (Or simply just adding 1 more zero on my initial fiat deposit)

I should say that turning $400 into $80k while in college feels like a life changing amount of money, but in the grand scheme of things, it is not when you live in a first world country. It's also interesting looking for an entry level job after just graduating college, when you were so close to not even needing a full-time job for a while, and then trying to explain in interviews what bitcoin is in order to avoid the "why didn't you have an internship" questions.

Anyway, heres to hoping we enter another bubble/adoption wave, which I think will start the instant we break $700. Maybe this time i'll hold 50 bitcoins instead of 40 haha.

Anyway, i think everyone that has been involved with bitcoin for a while has a similar story and some regret, no matter how much they made. Maybe it is the case that they earlier you got into bitcoin, in general, the more money you made and the more you regret not buying more, so by no means am i complaining. The key to investing/speculating though is to realize that there is ALWAYS another opportunity, and I am confident bitcoin still has massive upside potential.  You may be able to sell your 6.5 bitcoin for much more than $11k in total, hopefully sooner than you think  

TLDR: Hindsight is always 20/20 and everyone involved with bitcoins has at least some regret. Perhaps many bitcoin buyers are just hoping to hedge against future regret, which is perfectly fine.

[Ektra]

Why was it either spend $49000, or nothing?

[fran2k]

Oh man, that ASICs had done nothing well for this community.

[goose20]

Oh man, that ASICs had done nothing well for this community.

Absolutely right on that point. Satoshi stated that we should stay away from asics for some time to enable more people to get onboard etc etc.

But the greed in people took over....bitcoin would be in a better place if asics didn't come along so quickly IMO.