Comment by throwbtc711 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwbtc711 | Hacker News Reader

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I disagree. I don’t want to play the smartass, but I’ve been into Bitcoin since late 2012 and I just started to sell very recently, when a small investment (low 4 figures) and some lucky events like particiating in early ICOs (for ex. Ethereum in August 2014)became a life changing amount of money (high 7 figures).

This is not entirely true because I sold a little (very little) in November 2013 just to be able to “touch” those paper profits. I needed to see they were real and could impact my life. Anyhow 95% of my stash remained untouched until very recently.

The rationale for me was crystal clear: this technology has the potential to change the world forever (yes, I’m a true believer). This shit can be the biggest revolution since the internet. Sure, it can go to 0, but the downside is clear: I could just lose everything that i invested, which definitely was money I could comfortably afford to lose. On the contrary the potential upside is enormous, 1 dollar could easy become 10k.

Therefore I simply decided I was not going to sell unless I could comfortably retire on the profits. And that I would leave a little btc for my kids, no matter what.

I really can’t understand how anyone could buy Bitcoin early on with a different mindset.

I bought at $4 with the knowledge that it could hit $50k a coin in a relatively short period. But I sold most of it anyway. In my mind the odds of bitcoin being banned go up every day. People on HN underestimate how much we rely on the financial system to enforce regulations. Governments are not going to just give that up. It’s lasted longer than I though it would, and it might last forever if there is a way to get regulators involved, but 7 years ago I estimated that at 5% odds.

But the thing about Bitcoin is that it’s made to be censorship-resistant. It is resilient. If you read Satoshi’s posts on Bitcointalk he simply assumed Bitcoin would have been banned at some point, and that’s why he made the design choices he made. Bitcoin is designed not only to survive but to thrive in an adversarial environment.

But then, even if a government ban could really destroy Bitcoin (i’m certain it wouldn’t, I remind you that Russia banned it for a while and 0 fucks were given... what about sharing films on Bittorent? Did the ban do something?) you say there’s a 5% chance the ban will not happen.

I will take any day a bet that gives me a 5% chance that every dollar i bet becomes $10k. And I won’t exit that bet unless i’ve made enough money to retire comfortably, which is what is happening to me now.

Unlike websites governments can do a 51% attack on Bitcoin which would 'kill' it in weeks.

No, they can’t. And even if they could the network would just fork to a different hashing algorithm, which means that the attacker would have had burnt hundreds, if not thosaunds, of millions for nothing.

China can take console of all of their miners in the country which would all for a 51% attack to be profitable ignoring opportunity costs.

In this case forking does not help as they maintain control of the equipment and have access to massive CPU and GPU resources to swap to alternative architectures.

Now, if you think bitcoin maintains value if there are zero transactions for ~6+ months you are clearly mistaken.

Never underestimate what a government can do. If they want, they can make bitcoin as popular to hold as child p//n on your PC. Go ahead then

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