I hate BFL as much as anyone. But in hindsight, I did ok...
- spent $1300 (credit card) on a Little Single and mined with it for about a month and then sold it on eBay for (I think) $3000. $100/GHs... crazy times!
- converted a Single and Jalapeño preorder (original purchase on credit card) on August 17th for a Monarch and bought 9 BTC on exchange for ~$100 each* to make up the difference.
- spent 3 BTC on Black Friday (BTC at $1100!) on a discounted Monarch and received a 5.5 BTC refund on July 1st.
- ordered 3 Singles on Black Friday for 3.7 BTC and received them the next week. The high price of BTC at the time made these decent purchases in hindsight. I certainly wouldn't have been better off if I had bought and held BTC at $1100, lol.
- received 600GHs of compensation cloudhashing for Aug 17th Monarch order on 6/24 which ran until ~ 9/1
- received 1st 700GHs Monarch at the end of August, 2nd 700GHs Monarch and 2.11 BTC refund a couple of weeks later.
* Sure, I would have been better off buying and holding the 9 BTC on August 17th. But that would have never happened. I wasn't interested in buying and holding and I'm still not.
"But that would have never happened. I wasn't interested in buying and holding and I'm still not." <- Cognitive Dissonance.
I'm not sure how this qualifies as cognitive dissonance. I've never been interested in bitcoin speculation (buying, holding, selling) for profit. The feeble attempts I made early on we're pretty spectacular failures, lol.
I simply mine BTC and sell it as needed to make purchases (NewEgg, TigerDirect or mining gear) or pay bills. I do hold some bitcoin in my wallets now but that's mostly because I've stopped buying new mining gear. If the price goes up while I hold the coins, great. But I won't be suicidal if the price drops much further.