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well, Captn. Hindsight I had 3.6BTC and 3700€ in it and I didn't realized the sad state of Mt.Gox until it was to late. Funny enough, I had contact with their

well, Captn. Hindsight I had 3.6BTC and 3700€ in it and I didn't realized the sad state of Mt.Gox until it was to late. Funny enough, I had contact with their support desk on friday and one of my fiat withdrawals reached my banking account on friday as well. All those countless examples with their wrintings on some wall since forever must have escaped me. Good for you wise man. I actually thought that the biggest exchange is also the one with the best reputation and capable of handling those transactions.

corford 13y ago
I'm truly sorry you've taken a hit but hopefully you can take this opportunity to learn from the mistake and in the future avoid investing large sums of money in something you don't fully understand. I know what I've just said makes me sound like a smug c*nt but it really is the truth. If you don't understand something inside out don't directly invest in it - it's that simple. This is why I personally stay away from stocks and shares as I don't know enough about them to be sure I wont get fleeced. Even if MtGox had been the best run exchange in the world and was still going strong today, you should not have left 3BTC sitting in a wallet under their control. None of the exchanges have been going long enough nor is the BTC ecosystem itself mature enough to be granted that level of trust. If you need to trade a large BTC amount always do it in a hit and run fashion, making sure the coins or cash are only on the exchange for the absolute minimum amount of time needed to make the trade. An exchange should be viewed as just that, an exchange. Not a bank or savings account.
- wpietri 13y ago
  This is wrong: "If you don't understand something inside out don't directly invest in it - it's that simple." It's a great thing to say when you want to be, as you say, a smug cunt. But it's not how investment works. Risk and reward are strongly correlated. Some of the best investments ever have been in things that nobody understands very well. I think there are great lessons that people can draw from this. And as somebody who hasn't put any money into BTC, I can certainly suggest a few. But "wait for perfect understanding" is not one of them. For the smart, that means, "wait forever". The less smart will just wait until they've run out of known unknowns. But there are always unknown unknowns waiting in the weeds to ambush you. Life is risk.
  - corford 13y ago
    I'm sorry but for your run of the mill private investor that's awful advice. Unless you know what you're doing and have a very strong understanding of the investment, you are almost _always_ better off sticking your money in a fund (i.e. outsourcing the expertise to someone who does know what they're doing). Any investment involves risk taking but that doesn't mean you should just throw your hands up in the air and double down on 16 red.
    - wpietri 13y ago
      You are taking advice that I didn't give. I didn't say that all risk was good, just that waiting until there is zero apparent risk is futile.
      - corford 13y ago
        Of course it's futile. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do as much homework as possible to reduce the chances of an unknown unknown wiping you out (unless you just like a straight gamble, which is fine too).
        wpietri 13y ago
        I'm glad to hear we agree completely.
    - bryanlarsen 13y ago
      Sticking all your investments in a fund is pretty awful advice too. A fairly diversified stock fund is made up of a bunch of risky investments that are all fairly highly correlated. Pretty much all investment advice is based on the history of American stock markets over the last one hundred years, which is anomalous globally and not a lot of history for the typical investment horizon of 20-50 years. Why the US? Risks add funny. That's why you're always told to put 15% of your investments in bonds. It's not because bonds are less risky than stocks, but because they are counter-cyclical and less correlated. For the same reasons, putting a small amount of your wealth into very risky investments such as bitcoin can reduce your overall risk.
- PakG1 13y ago
  If you don't understand something inside out don't directly invest in it - it's that simple. This is advice is really not plausible to follow. Even the professionals can't figure out all the issues they need to figure out. That's why: a) so many old corporations get disrupted from the blind side and die b) so many acquisitions become a waste of of the acquiring company's money c) so many startups fail d) etc, etc Any type of investor in any type of industry or stage of life will know that there is still risk exposure because they know they are not omniscient. How many all-star teams are there who look like sure bets? Many, many. History shows that they're not sure bets. Yes, to do proper investing, you should do your analysis as much as possible, try to understand your target investment subject inside out, and make decisions based on sound logic and evidence, not hearsay and flimsy ideas. But you never know if you've missed seeing the black swan. The black swan doesn't hit you because you failed to do your analysis inside out. The black swan hits you because you had a blind spot that nobody could see, and you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time, despite all your intellectual understanding. The people who worked on the trading code for Knight Capital knew their stuff very well, they still missed the bug that caused their fund to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. The people at NASA were the best in the world at what they did, the Challenger still blew up. Peyton Manning won the NFL MVP and still lost the Superbowl. Stuff will happen when there are many unknown variables in the air, and you won't know where your exposed to risk, even if you know the subject inside out, until it hits you. The only thing you can do is mitigate all the risks you do see and diversify so that the risk that you don't see don't hurt you as much as they would if you put all your eggs in one basket. edit: I'll say that I agree with you to not put large amounts of money into things you don't understand. But I think the emphasis should not be put into that, but rather into diversification. Putting money into something you don't understand can be very lucrative if it looks good, as long as you can stomach the risk and afford losing all that money. So maybe I would say you should revise your statements from being about "large sums of money" and instead about "unacceptably large proportion of your money".
  - corford 13y ago
    You're both taking my advice a little too literally. There's a huge gulf between the impossible ideal of somehow achieving an "all knowing, zen mastery" over an investment and the "this looks fun, prices keep going up and everyone else is doing it". If you're going to risk large amounts investing in to something you should to try and get yourself as far away from the latter one as you can.

corford 13y ago

I'm truly sorry you've taken a hit but hopefully you can take this opportunity to learn from the mistake and in the future avoid investing large sums of money in something you don't fully understand. I know what I've just said makes me sound like a smug c*nt but it really is the truth. If you don't understand something inside out don't directly invest in it - it's that simple. This is why I personally stay away from stocks and shares as I don't know enough about them to be sure I wont get fleeced. Even if MtGox had been the best run exchange in the world and was still going strong today, you should not have left 3BTC sitting in a wallet under their control. None of the exchanges have been going long enough nor is the BTC ecosystem itself mature enough to be granted that level of trust. If you need to trade a large BTC amount always do it in a hit and run fashion, making sure the coins or cash are only on the exchange for the absolute minimum amount of time needed to make the trade. An exchange should be viewed as just that, an exchange. Not a bank or savings account.

wpietri 13y ago
This is wrong: "If you don't understand something inside out don't directly invest in it - it's that simple." It's a great thing to say when you want to be, as you say, a smug cunt. But it's not how investment works. Risk and reward are strongly correlated. Some of the best investments ever have been in things that nobody understands very well. I think there are great lessons that people can draw from this. And as somebody who hasn't put any money into BTC, I can certainly suggest a few. But "wait for perfect understanding" is not one of them. For the smart, that means, "wait forever". The less smart will just wait until they've run out of known unknowns. But there are always unknown unknowns waiting in the weeds to ambush you. Life is risk.
- corford 13y ago
  I'm sorry but for your run of the mill private investor that's awful advice. Unless you know what you're doing and have a very strong understanding of the investment, you are almost _always_ better off sticking your money in a fund (i.e. outsourcing the expertise to someone who does know what they're doing). Any investment involves risk taking but that doesn't mean you should just throw your hands up in the air and double down on 16 red.
  - wpietri 13y ago
    You are taking advice that I didn't give. I didn't say that all risk was good, just that waiting until there is zero apparent risk is futile.
    - corford 13y ago
      Of course it's futile. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do as much homework as possible to reduce the chances of an unknown unknown wiping you out (unless you just like a straight gamble, which is fine too).
      - wpietri 13y ago
        I'm glad to hear we agree completely.
  - bryanlarsen 13y ago
    Sticking all your investments in a fund is pretty awful advice too. A fairly diversified stock fund is made up of a bunch of risky investments that are all fairly highly correlated. Pretty much all investment advice is based on the history of American stock markets over the last one hundred years, which is anomalous globally and not a lot of history for the typical investment horizon of 20-50 years. Why the US? Risks add funny. That's why you're always told to put 15% of your investments in bonds. It's not because bonds are less risky than stocks, but because they are counter-cyclical and less correlated. For the same reasons, putting a small amount of your wealth into very risky investments such as bitcoin can reduce your overall risk.
PakG1 13y ago
If you don't understand something inside out don't directly invest in it - it's that simple. This is advice is really not plausible to follow. Even the professionals can't figure out all the issues they need to figure out. That's why: a) so many old corporations get disrupted from the blind side and die b) so many acquisitions become a waste of of the acquiring company's money c) so many startups fail d) etc, etc Any type of investor in any type of industry or stage of life will know that there is still risk exposure because they know they are not omniscient. How many all-star teams are there who look like sure bets? Many, many. History shows that they're not sure bets. Yes, to do proper investing, you should do your analysis as much as possible, try to understand your target investment subject inside out, and make decisions based on sound logic and evidence, not hearsay and flimsy ideas. But you never know if you've missed seeing the black swan. The black swan doesn't hit you because you failed to do your analysis inside out. The black swan hits you because you had a blind spot that nobody could see, and you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time, despite all your intellectual understanding. The people who worked on the trading code for Knight Capital knew their stuff very well, they still missed the bug that caused their fund to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. The people at NASA were the best in the world at what they did, the Challenger still blew up. Peyton Manning won the NFL MVP and still lost the Superbowl. Stuff will happen when there are many unknown variables in the air, and you won't know where your exposed to risk, even if you know the subject inside out, until it hits you. The only thing you can do is mitigate all the risks you do see and diversify so that the risk that you don't see don't hurt you as much as they would if you put all your eggs in one basket. edit: I'll say that I agree with you to not put large amounts of money into things you don't understand. But I think the emphasis should not be put into that, but rather into diversification. Putting money into something you don't understand can be very lucrative if it looks good, as long as you can stomach the risk and afford losing all that money. So maybe I would say you should revise your statements from being about "large sums of money" and instead about "unacceptably large proportion of your money".
- corford 13y ago
  You're both taking my advice a little too literally. There's a huge gulf between the impossible ideal of somehow achieving an "all knowing, zen mastery" over an investment and the "this looks fun, prices keep going up and everyone else is doing it". If you're going to risk large amounts investing in to something you should to try and get yourself as far away from the latter one as you can.