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Comment by booleandilemma | Hacker News Reader

At $250 I was explaining to my parents what bitcoin is. At $19,000 I was overhearing Starbucks baristas talk about it.

At $10k, car service mechanics were buying into random cryptocoins. Nobody understood them, everyone just wanted to get rich. A speculative asset, not a currency.

But what could we have done about it? It's unfair to be liked by fools. The core idea is still interesting to experiment and explore but now it's tainted by greed.

Many of the core ideas (well, all of them or almost none, depending on what you consider the core idea) could have been implemented with regulatory instruments in place that optimize for stable prices/controlled inflation instead of being effectively deflatory, similar to how regular currencies do it. Anything that does not will either fail in other ways or be loved to death as a value store/greater fool game. The two can never be torn apart.

The problem is if they were implemented with regulatory instruments and whatnot, they would share their critical weakness. If tomorrow China says 'we know your banking computer systems are insecure and have no integrity. We do not trust that the numbers on them represent anything', the US economy is over. They can't prove that Walmarts net worth came from trade rather than from some malware or error or some other fraud. That would leave cryptocurrency being the only thing that can actually be proven to be real.

Basing your currency on trust is great... until the trust is gone. And trust can disappear with a glance.

At $4 I was trying to explain to my professor that my capstone project wasn't based on drug money.

At 4$ I was pissed I traded 150 for WoW gold. AT 10k+ I was once again reminded the universe hates me.

I think that's why crypto-currencies will be doomed. Because too many people see it as something they can maybe buy for a pittance and at some point in the future cash out for a 5,000% increase.

It's not currency, people don't want to use it like currency. They want it to be a viable get rich quick scheme. Because whenever you refuse to use it for normal commerce lest next week, next month, next year, you regret your purchase because of huge price swings. Everyone would engage in that sort of behavior and I'm sure it's not the basis for a healthy economy or currency.

>AT 10k+ I was once again reminded the universe hates me.

Why? You'd have sold them at 150.

Maybe, more likely I would have halved my amount each time I sold. Which is what I did with my cheap ETH.

At something less than 1¢ I was just playing with a thing I came across on some forum, or Usenet, or something.

I found the hard drive from that computer a while ago, but there was no trace of the coins. There was no reason for me to keep them, after I'd finished playing with the software.

When the cleaning lady asks if she should buy bitcoin, is when you should dump and sell everything.

"When the street gets in, its time to get out."

peter lynch

People have asked me if they should buy in. I've simply told them as a complete gamble. Suggested if they want to buy go with a small amount of money and not be concerned if they lose it all. I don't know they bought but I made it clear it is risky and volatile. Sure there is a possibility of a good return, don't take out a second mortgage.

I got the Starbucks barista effect last dec. When it pumped, people with no money asked me about it.

Glad i told them to stay away.

Memorably when it was at $15K+ I was on the phone with my dad (who still uses MapQuest and pronounces CD-ROM with a heavy emphasis on ROM) said "well I think it's time for me to put my money into Bitcoin."

Thankfully he was joking.

At $80 I was mining using custom ASIC. At $20k I was trying to convince myself not to sell and that I was in it for the long run. I'm still in.

How much does it hurt?

I never felt like I owned anything, so it's not that bad.

I virtually went from £0 to £4k to £800. The ASIC miner (which I can now use as a nice doorstep) was paid off by selling half the amount I mined back then, so as of today that is still a £800 profit.

At 330 shoe-shine boys were buying into the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It went down to 42. It's at 24,581 now.

Yeah, and 400 years of inflation later, tulip bulbs are still way down from their peak, as long as you want to draw conclusions based on irrelevantly long periods of time.

Same but I brought some at 19000 fomo

IDK how popularity matters here?

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