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I made money on this, but the whole thing makes me sad. I feel sad cause I keep thinking, if I gambled more money I could have retired. And that makes me sad b

I made money on this, but the whole thing makes me sad. I feel sad cause I keep thinking, if I gambled more money I could have retired. And that makes me sad because it cheapens the value of work. To think that all the decades of work that I have to put in, I could have avoided by gambling more money. Idk, it feels totally wrong.

xyzelement 6y ago
There are two ways to look at life - by the quality of your decisions or by the outcomes. It sounds like you're doing the later, which means indexing your happiness to something you can't control. There's a lot of randomness in life, the question is "did I make the wisest decision under the circumstances when I made it?" Example: Should you take a bet which has a 99.99% random probability to win $100 and .01% probability to lose $100? The smart decision is to take the bet because probabilistically you will win. Even if you get unlucky and lose, the original decision is sound, and if the opportunity to bet comes up again, you should. Now this example: you and your friend have a choice to pay tuition or buy tuition's worth of lottery tickets. You chose tuition and land in a lucrative but not extravagant career. Your friend buys the tickets and ends up winning a life-changing amount of money. You'd be a fool to regret your decision, back when you made it, odds were overwhelming that whoever bought lottery tickets would end up destitute. The fact that your friend literally won the lottery doesn't make him less of an idiot, and chances are if he keeps making decisions this way he'll fuck up and be worse off than you sooner or later. That's the analogy for your situation. In fact, there's still a good chance that all the bitcoin millionaires wouldn't be able to cash out and can still crash and burn in a way that makes you much happier with your original decision. Personally, I "sat out" the late 90's dot-com boom and everyone told me I was an idiot and missing out... until it imploded on them.
wavepruner 6y ago
The part where hard work comes into play is this: When one understands the value proposition of Bitcoin so thoroughly that they have the confidence to buy a large amount and hold through the bad times. This takes a tremendous amount of research and confidence in your own ability to discern truth. Then, upon deciding that Bitcoin is worth the risk, one must tolerate derision and scoffing from their peers year after year. Many people in one's life will loudly express their desire for you to fail. It is very alienating. One must often create a completely new life for themselves. This is why revolutionary change is so difficult. The resistance to change is so massive that people will openly hate those who push for it. That you view it as gambling and low-effort makes it clear you haven't spent a lot of time understanding Bitcoin's value proposition. That's fine, but just know that there are a lot of people who have spent years of their lives researching and working on this technology. It is not gambling to them.
mancerayder 6y ago
It definitely paints a sour picture of the entire economic enterprise, I agree. Stocks feel like that sometimes, too. People are to dutifully follow conservative strategies that minimize risk (as they should, mostly) while a lucky few become independently wealthy. It's odd for sure.
tarboreus 6y ago
Yes, if you had a crystal ball you'd be rich. And if you had a cure for cancer you'd also be rich. Obviously the lesson here isn't that you can quit your job now and speculate your way to riches, so I'm not sure why BTC (or gold for that matter) going up should have any bearing on the meaning of your work.

xyzelement 6y ago

There are two ways to look at life - by the quality of your decisions or by the outcomes. It sounds like you're doing the later, which means indexing your happiness to something you can't control. There's a lot of randomness in life, the question is "did I make the wisest decision under the circumstances when I made it?" Example: Should you take a bet which has a 99.99% random probability to win $100 and .01% probability to lose $100? The smart decision is to take the bet because probabilistically you will win. Even if you get unlucky and lose, the original decision is sound, and if the opportunity to bet comes up again, you should. Now this example: you and your friend have a choice to pay tuition or buy tuition's worth of lottery tickets. You chose tuition and land in a lucrative but not extravagant career. Your friend buys the tickets and ends up winning a life-changing amount of money. You'd be a fool to regret your decision, back when you made it, odds were overwhelming that whoever bought lottery tickets would end up destitute. The fact that your friend literally won the lottery doesn't make him less of an idiot, and chances are if he keeps making decisions this way he'll fuck up and be worse off than you sooner or later. That's the analogy for your situation. In fact, there's still a good chance that all the bitcoin millionaires wouldn't be able to cash out and can still crash and burn in a way that makes you much happier with your original decision. Personally, I "sat out" the late 90's dot-com boom and everyone told me I was an idiot and missing out... until it imploded on them.

wavepruner 6y ago

The part where hard work comes into play is this: When one understands the value proposition of Bitcoin so thoroughly that they have the confidence to buy a large amount and hold through the bad times. This takes a tremendous amount of research and confidence in your own ability to discern truth. Then, upon deciding that Bitcoin is worth the risk, one must tolerate derision and scoffing from their peers year after year. Many people in one's life will loudly express their desire for you to fail. It is very alienating. One must often create a completely new life for themselves. This is why revolutionary change is so difficult. The resistance to change is so massive that people will openly hate those who push for it. That you view it as gambling and low-effort makes it clear you haven't spent a lot of time understanding Bitcoin's value proposition. That's fine, but just know that there are a lot of people who have spent years of their lives researching and working on this technology. It is not gambling to them.

mancerayder 6y ago

It definitely paints a sour picture of the entire economic enterprise, I agree. Stocks feel like that sometimes, too. People are to dutifully follow conservative strategies that minimize risk (as they should, mostly) while a lucky few become independently wealthy. It's odd for sure.

tarboreus 6y ago

Yes, if you had a crystal ball you'd be rich. And if you had a cure for cancer you'd also be rich. Obviously the lesson here isn't that you can quit your job now and speculate your way to riches, so I'm not sure why BTC (or gold for that matter) going up should have any bearing on the meaning of your work.