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Honestly, I'm not really sure if that's really true any more. I wasn't working hard when I bought Bitcoin at three bucks a coin. I was just intellectually curi

Honestly, I'm not really sure if that's really true any more. I wasn't working hard when I bought Bitcoin at three bucks a coin. I was just intellectually curious. If anything when I was working hard was two years before that on a soon to be failed startup. We crawled the web for ads just before the ad business went hyper targeted. I made -$20k from working hard. I made a lot more from Bitcoin. I would have made way more if I'd put that $20k in Bitcoin and slacked off at some day job. I guess I don't really follow my own advice though, as I'm presently working on a Sunday morning and I've only taken like two days off this month. Edit: Writing this comment briefly made me re-consider my whole life and I've come to the conclusion that being lucky and prescient observations are more likely if you've worked hard at some point. I did do an engineering degree with some economics electives at the best school in Canada, and understanding Satoshi's paper wouldn't have been possible without this background knowledge.

hellofunk 8y ago
You are equating money with success.
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  Yeah. I realized that at the time I was writing it. But in software it's usually that way. Very few data points are Torvalds. Most are Gates or Zuck. After writing the above, I Googled Linus. Apparently he's worth over $100m. But you're right. Plenty of really successful poets or athletes are poor.
WilliamEdward 8y ago
This is true even across generations. The reason white people (or anyone with a rich family) are able to live comfortably and not work today are due to the efforts of their ancestors at one point or another. "There's no such thing as a free lunch" is actually just true, and not a stupid idiom. At some point somewhere, work had to be done to get a reward.
da02 8y ago
How did you sell Bitcoin? For cash? Was it dangerous?
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  Well I mostly got out at $200 because I thought competent people regulated our economies and figured crypto would be banned by regulators, so it was pretty easy to spread it out over a couple wires. The remaining chunk I sold at the $10k-$20k window. I still think it could hit $50k/coin, but it was too large a percent of my assets and I figured I'd already made such a crazy return (1000x on average I think?) that squeezing out another 4x or 5x seemed reckless. If only I hadn't been relatively broke when I bought in. I was suffering burn-out and basically working odd contracts here and there to keep the lights on.
- AgentME 8y ago
  If you're in the US, then Coinbase and Gemini are mature exchanges that you can directly transfer dollars to or from your bank account. I assume he probably used them or an exchange like them.
johntiger1 8y ago
Great post, yeah sometimes doing nothing or something that seems unproductive pays off quite well actually! It's why I'm a little more lax when it comes to enjoying life nowadays. Ultimately, in my opinion a lot of luck is involved, so why bother? Enjoy the ride. Having said that, I still like to build things and hack just like you :)
bsder 8y ago
Pyramid schemes are very profitable if you get in at the beginning. The problem is that, by definition, most people are in a pyramid scheme at the bottom.

hellofunk 8y ago

You are equating money with success.

3pt14159 8y ago
Yeah. I realized that at the time I was writing it. But in software it's usually that way. Very few data points are Torvalds. Most are Gates or Zuck. After writing the above, I Googled Linus. Apparently he's worth over $100m. But you're right. Plenty of really successful poets or athletes are poor.

WilliamEdward 8y ago

This is true even across generations. The reason white people (or anyone with a rich family) are able to live comfortably and not work today are due to the efforts of their ancestors at one point or another. "There's no such thing as a free lunch" is actually just true, and not a stupid idiom. At some point somewhere, work had to be done to get a reward.

da02 8y ago

How did you sell Bitcoin? For cash? Was it dangerous?

3pt14159 8y ago
Well I mostly got out at $200 because I thought competent people regulated our economies and figured crypto would be banned by regulators, so it was pretty easy to spread it out over a couple wires. The remaining chunk I sold at the $10k-$20k window. I still think it could hit $50k/coin, but it was too large a percent of my assets and I figured I'd already made such a crazy return (1000x on average I think?) that squeezing out another 4x or 5x seemed reckless. If only I hadn't been relatively broke when I bought in. I was suffering burn-out and basically working odd contracts here and there to keep the lights on.
AgentME 8y ago
If you're in the US, then Coinbase and Gemini are mature exchanges that you can directly transfer dollars to or from your bank account. I assume he probably used them or an exchange like them.

johntiger1 8y ago

Great post, yeah sometimes doing nothing or something that seems unproductive pays off quite well actually! It's why I'm a little more lax when it comes to enjoying life nowadays. Ultimately, in my opinion a lot of luck is involved, so why bother? Enjoy the ride. Having said that, I still like to build things and hack just like you :)

bsder 8y ago

Pyramid schemes are very profitable if you get in at the beginning. The problem is that, by definition, most people are in a pyramid scheme at the bottom.