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At this point everyone remotely interested in blockchain should buy $1-5k of bitcoin and hold it forever. Much better odds than a roulette table, and decent cha

At this point everyone remotely interested in blockchain should buy $1-5k of bitcoin and hold it forever. Much better odds than a roulette table, and decent chance it's worth 100x by the time you retire. Or you lose it all. But if you are a rich HN tech nerd then what do you care anyway?

QAPereo 9y ago
My 70 year old, cant-even-use-a-Mac uncle wants in! I don’t know what to tell him, paper wallet in a vault? How does a guy who can’t even use an iPad buy bitcoins?!
- imustbeevil 9y ago
  Same way anyone else does, give someone else your real money and believe what they give you is more valuable.
- leereeves 9y ago
  > My 70 year old, cant-even-use-a-Mac uncle wants in! That reminds me of a story from the dot-com boom, about an investor who knew it was time to get out when a grocery store clerk asked how to get in.
  - mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
    I’m also skeptical and feel a huge bubble popping eventually, ruining many lives in the process. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      The sad fact is that some people will look at a highly volatile investment and dip in, others will commit their life savings. You really can’t help the latter, and the former doesn’t need help.
- sergers 9y ago
  Find a Bitcoin ATM. https://coinatmradar.com https://coinatmradar.com My friend who is all over Bitcoin, yet is technology inept, used one of these
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    Smart, this is going to appeal to him, thanks. Thanks as well to the others who offered lots of good advice.
  - atomical 9y ago
    Bitcoin and technology inept? Sounds dangerous.
- AlexCoventry 9y ago
  Give him a loaded Ledger for Christmas.
- STRiDEX 9y ago
  coinbase makes it simple. I think they'll be able to hold onto it as well.
nosuchthing 9y ago
decent chance it's worth 100x by the time you retire. At this point it almost seems like bitcoin is a cult. It's a piece of software running a database/blockchain. There's now several hundred blockchain service networks up and running. Why should anyone pay more than a few cents for a bitcoin or database-backed-blockchain-token where the supply was produced for minimal effort and is now being artificially inflated by unregulated exchanges suckering in people who don't know what they're buying? Maybe blockchains will someday be efficent, but as they stand the only proven use case is speculation due to psychological assumption that the supply is limited . In economics, the Gini coefficient is the standard measure of how inequitable a society is. This is tricky to determine for Bitcoin, as it's not quiet a "society" in the Gini sense, one person may have multiple addresses and many addresses have been used only once or a few times. (The commonly-cited figure of 0.88 is based on one small exchange in 2011.) However, a Citigroup analysis from early 2014 notes: "47 individuals hold about 30 percent, another 900 a further 20 percent, the next 10,000 about 25% and another million about 20%"; and distribution "looks much like the distribution of wealth in North Korea and makes China's and even the US' wealth distribution look like that of a workers' paradise Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir found in a 2012 study that only 22% of then-existing Bitcoins were in circulation at all, there were a total of 75 active users or businesses with any kind of volume, one (unidentified) user owned a quarter of all Bitcoins in existence, and one large owner was trying to hide their pile by moving it around in thousands of smaller transactions. (Shamir is one of the most renowned cryptographers in the world and the "S" in "RSA encryption")" [1] via https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidgerard https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidgerard
- vasilipupkin 9y ago
  why should anyone pay more than 50-100 bucks for a shiny metal that carries no value beyond the fact that it's shiny and maybe is used in some industries? why should that metal cost 1000 plus dollars an ounce?
  - lukasb 9y ago
    you need it to pay taxes.
gtcode 9y ago
No, if you are taking the long view, then Dollar Cost Averaging or other strategies are recommended. This eliminates the risks involved with trying to chase the trend.
goseeastarwar 9y ago
This sounds rational until you realize this is the only reason the price continues to rise.
- Beejeepa 9y ago
  There are fundamental flaws to paper money, and the global reserve currency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma This is why Bitcoin is winning.
  - goseeastarwar 9y ago
    Winning what precisely? Making early speculators wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, causing extreme FOMO, while in no way effecting world policy? I’ll pass on that train wreck.
jlgaddis 9y ago
In 2011, I bought $11K (USD) worth of BTC (at $7 each), but I got uneasy when it went over $30 and sold it all. :/
- mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
  Ouch. Welcome to the club.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

QAPereo 9y ago

My 70 year old, cant-even-use-a-Mac uncle wants in! I don’t know what to tell him, paper wallet in a vault? How does a guy who can’t even use an iPad buy bitcoins?!

imustbeevil 9y ago
Same way anyone else does, give someone else your real money and believe what they give you is more valuable.
leereeves 9y ago
> My 70 year old, cant-even-use-a-Mac uncle wants in! That reminds me of a story from the dot-com boom, about an investor who knew it was time to get out when a grocery store clerk asked how to get in.
- mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
  I’m also skeptical and feel a huge bubble popping eventually, ruining many lives in the process. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    The sad fact is that some people will look at a highly volatile investment and dip in, others will commit their life savings. You really can’t help the latter, and the former doesn’t need help.
sergers 9y ago
Find a Bitcoin ATM. https://coinatmradar.com https://coinatmradar.com My friend who is all over Bitcoin, yet is technology inept, used one of these
- QAPereo 9y ago
  Smart, this is going to appeal to him, thanks. Thanks as well to the others who offered lots of good advice.
- atomical 9y ago
  Bitcoin and technology inept? Sounds dangerous.
AlexCoventry 9y ago
Give him a loaded Ledger for Christmas.
STRiDEX 9y ago
coinbase makes it simple. I think they'll be able to hold onto it as well.

nosuchthing 9y ago

decent chance it's worth 100x by the time you retire. At this point it almost seems like bitcoin is a cult. It's a piece of software running a database/blockchain. There's now several hundred blockchain service networks up and running. Why should anyone pay more than a few cents for a bitcoin or database-backed-blockchain-token where the supply was produced for minimal effort and is now being artificially inflated by unregulated exchanges suckering in people who don't know what they're buying? Maybe blockchains will someday be efficent, but as they stand the only proven use case is speculation due to psychological assumption that the supply is limited . In economics, the Gini coefficient is the standard measure of how inequitable a society is. This is tricky to determine for Bitcoin, as it's not quiet a "society" in the Gini sense, one person may have multiple addresses and many addresses have been used only once or a few times. (The commonly-cited figure of 0.88 is based on one small exchange in 2011.) However, a Citigroup analysis from early 2014 notes: "47 individuals hold about 30 percent, another 900 a further 20 percent, the next 10,000 about 25% and another million about 20%"; and distribution "looks much like the distribution of wealth in North Korea and makes China's and even the US' wealth distribution look like that of a workers' paradise Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir found in a 2012 study that only 22% of then-existing Bitcoins were in circulation at all, there were a total of 75 active users or businesses with any kind of volume, one (unidentified) user owned a quarter of all Bitcoins in existence, and one large owner was trying to hide their pile by moving it around in thousands of smaller transactions. (Shamir is one of the most renowned cryptographers in the world and the "S" in "RSA encryption")" [1] via https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidgerard https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidgerard

vasilipupkin 9y ago
why should anyone pay more than 50-100 bucks for a shiny metal that carries no value beyond the fact that it's shiny and maybe is used in some industries? why should that metal cost 1000 plus dollars an ounce?
- lukasb 9y ago
  you need it to pay taxes.

gtcode 9y ago

No, if you are taking the long view, then Dollar Cost Averaging or other strategies are recommended. This eliminates the risks involved with trying to chase the trend.

goseeastarwar 9y ago

This sounds rational until you realize this is the only reason the price continues to rise.

Beejeepa 9y ago
There are fundamental flaws to paper money, and the global reserve currency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma This is why Bitcoin is winning.
- goseeastarwar 9y ago
  Winning what precisely? Making early speculators wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, causing extreme FOMO, while in no way effecting world policy? I’ll pass on that train wreck.

jlgaddis 9y ago

In 2011, I bought $11K (USD) worth of BTC (at $7 each), but I got uneasy when it went over $30 and sold it all. :/

mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
Ouch. Welcome to the club.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]