6 ms·

If someone saw it coming in 2010 they are extremely rich now :)

by umanwizard 7y ago

ionwake 7y ago
You forget how hard it is to look after it. Bitcoin is like fairy dust , nearly impossible to grasp.
- mc3 7y ago
  Printing the keys and sticking them a safe would have done the trick - but you'd need the foresight to know that not touching it for 10 years is the plan.
  - genidoi 7y ago
    That's the gotcha. If bitcoin hits $1M by 2030, the people reading your comment from the 2030 repost of this thread will have a good snicker. Bitcoin's entire value, literally all of it, is just an index for how widely and strongly felt HODLology is across the globe. The sale of a bitcoin is a cult member leaving, the purchase is a baptism, however transiently intended the purchase is, because the purchase represents the new recruits own belief in HODLology.
    - WA 7y ago
      Ok I make a prediction here for 2030: Bitcoin won't be at $1M at all, very far from it. Bitcoin will be between $0 and the cost of mining a single coin. Right now, this is around $7,000. Could be similar or less in 2030. I don't expect it to go anywhere. It seems to have a niche purpose, but will never gain mass adoption. I make another prediction: By 2030 not a single cryptocurrency will be used mainstream / have replaced fiat currency. The strongest will still be Bitcoin, but it'll be as weak or non-existent for normal people like it is now.
      - sodafountan 7y ago
        That's a bold prediction, I predict that gaming could see a huge uptick in crypto-currency usage. Could you imagine a game like Grand Theft Auto or World of Warcraft utilizing a crypto-currency rather than an in-game artificial currency? You could create entire in-game economies with real life value. People could actually make a living by playing games full time as scary as that sounds. Could you imagine the moral implications of someone robbing you of crypto-currency in a game like GTA or some survival game? I just think there's some very creative use-cases for crypto-currency that will pop up over the next decade.
        umanwizard 7y ago
        As for most proposed cryptocurrency use cases, it's unclear why your example couldn't just be a number in a database maintained by the game's producers. BTW, people already do make real-world money grinding for WoW gold.
      - mc3 7y ago
        That is the wrong way around. The cost of mining a coin is influenced by it's market value, due to economics and the difficulty adjustments. If BTC becomes worthless, it won't cost anything to mine a coin.
    - mc3 7y ago
      Probably a good strategy is sell when you can retire off of it. Having $10m but not having gambled it for $1bn isn't a loosing position to be in, IMO. Alternatively you could have 4 allocations, sell one in 2020, 2030, 2040, 2050. Or 10 going over the next 100 years (pass them down to kids).
DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
Or they sold it all in the 2013 bubble and now regret it. (This happened to a friend of mine - he sold it all off to pay-off his student loans before the 2013 bubble peaked - it'd be worth over $10m at the end of 2017).
- jamiek88 7y ago
  Or, like me, literally deleted my wallet with 100 ish coins in 'cos I couldn't be bothered finding a USB key. I though 'oh I'll just mine a few more next week' when I get my new laptop (!!! mining on cpu). Narrator: He forgot about it.
  - umanwizard 7y ago
    If you still have the old machine, it's not impossible that the deleted wallet is still on the disk and could be recovered using some sort of undelete tool.
    - jlokier 7y ago
      Good thinking. I'll be happy to supply expertise recovering data from old disk images if this is the case :-)
  - geerlingguy 7y ago
    I had something like 20 coins, but it was on a secondary computer that didn’t have backups and was long since recycled. You can believe I spent a few hours digging through all my backups to find the wallet back in 2017... ah well.
- koboll 7y ago
  Or they lost it all in the Mt. Gox hack... sobs quietly
- zifnab06 7y ago
  Or they did what I did - spent it. At the peak I would have had $8 million before taxes had I not turned it into cash to pay for the electricity my CPU was burning to mine it. Oh well. Good thing I actually enjoy my current job.

If someone saw it coming in 2010 they are extremely rich now :)

ionwake 7y ago

You forget how hard it is to look after it. Bitcoin is like fairy dust , nearly impossible to grasp.

mc3 7y ago
Printing the keys and sticking them a safe would have done the trick - but you'd need the foresight to know that not touching it for 10 years is the plan.
- genidoi 7y ago
  That's the gotcha. If bitcoin hits $1M by 2030, the people reading your comment from the 2030 repost of this thread will have a good snicker. Bitcoin's entire value, literally all of it, is just an index for how widely and strongly felt HODLology is across the globe. The sale of a bitcoin is a cult member leaving, the purchase is a baptism, however transiently intended the purchase is, because the purchase represents the new recruits own belief in HODLology.
  - WA 7y ago
    Ok I make a prediction here for 2030: Bitcoin won't be at $1M at all, very far from it. Bitcoin will be between $0 and the cost of mining a single coin. Right now, this is around $7,000. Could be similar or less in 2030. I don't expect it to go anywhere. It seems to have a niche purpose, but will never gain mass adoption. I make another prediction: By 2030 not a single cryptocurrency will be used mainstream / have replaced fiat currency. The strongest will still be Bitcoin, but it'll be as weak or non-existent for normal people like it is now.
    - sodafountan 7y ago
      That's a bold prediction, I predict that gaming could see a huge uptick in crypto-currency usage. Could you imagine a game like Grand Theft Auto or World of Warcraft utilizing a crypto-currency rather than an in-game artificial currency? You could create entire in-game economies with real life value. People could actually make a living by playing games full time as scary as that sounds. Could you imagine the moral implications of someone robbing you of crypto-currency in a game like GTA or some survival game? I just think there's some very creative use-cases for crypto-currency that will pop up over the next decade.
      - umanwizard 7y ago
        As for most proposed cryptocurrency use cases, it's unclear why your example couldn't just be a number in a database maintained by the game's producers. BTW, people already do make real-world money grinding for WoW gold.
    - mc3 7y ago
      That is the wrong way around. The cost of mining a coin is influenced by it's market value, due to economics and the difficulty adjustments. If BTC becomes worthless, it won't cost anything to mine a coin.
  - mc3 7y ago
    Probably a good strategy is sell when you can retire off of it. Having $10m but not having gambled it for $1bn isn't a loosing position to be in, IMO. Alternatively you could have 4 allocations, sell one in 2020, 2030, 2040, 2050. Or 10 going over the next 100 years (pass them down to kids).

DaiPlusPlus 7y ago

Or they sold it all in the 2013 bubble and now regret it. (This happened to a friend of mine - he sold it all off to pay-off his student loans before the 2013 bubble peaked - it'd be worth over $10m at the end of 2017).

jamiek88 7y ago
Or, like me, literally deleted my wallet with 100 ish coins in 'cos I couldn't be bothered finding a USB key. I though 'oh I'll just mine a few more next week' when I get my new laptop (!!! mining on cpu). Narrator: He forgot about it.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  If you still have the old machine, it's not impossible that the deleted wallet is still on the disk and could be recovered using some sort of undelete tool.
  - jlokier 7y ago
    Good thinking. I'll be happy to supply expertise recovering data from old disk images if this is the case :-)
- geerlingguy 7y ago
  I had something like 20 coins, but it was on a secondary computer that didn’t have backups and was long since recycled. You can believe I spent a few hours digging through all my backups to find the wallet back in 2017... ah well.
koboll 7y ago
Or they lost it all in the Mt. Gox hack... sobs quietly
zifnab06 7y ago
Or they did what I did - spent it. At the peak I would have had $8 million before taxes had I not turned it into cash to pay for the electricity my CPU was burning to mine it. Oh well. Good thing I actually enjoy my current job.