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Comment by quicklime | Hacker News Reader

My brother blew what would've been a few million dollars worth Bitcoin on pizzas and some other frivolous crap back when the novelty of doing that was worth more than the Bitcoin itself.

Whenever I heard these kinds of stories, I remind myself that loss aversion is a cognitive bias that we all share.

Sure, maybe some people passed on an opportunity to invest in 1994, but the general public had the opportunity to invest in Amazon any time after Amazon's IPO in May 1997. Someone who invested $50k then would be holding shares worth $95 million today. It's not quite billionaire territory, but it's still a very successful investment by anyone's standard.

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For much of Amazon's early history, it was something of a laughingstock, as the company had clearly stated that it didn't plan to make money in the foreseeable future, if ever. At a minimum, it made the company difficult to value (and still does).

One of Amazon's important achievements was to attract and retain investors willing to go along for the "their margin is our opportunity" inexorable slow-boat ride to dominance.

>For much of Amazon's early history, it was something of a laughingstock, as the company had clearly stated that it didn't plan to make money in the foreseeable future, if ever.

I still remember John C. Dvorak saying how awful amazon is and that it will never make money just ~10 years ago.

People could have gotten rich investing in anything that Dvorak poo poo’d

https://512pixels.net/2009/01/early-macintosh-reviews-show-d...

Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately, leaves the “why” out of the equation — as in “why would I want this?” The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse’. There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I dont want one of these new fangled devices.

I could never be sure if Dvorak was actually serious or just always writing stuff that was purposely inflammatory to get a reaction. Basically the print/magazine version of clickbait before that word was even invented.

“I was talking with Dvorak at the Vloggercon party this evening, and he started telling a story about how he deliberately pisses Mac users off to get flow for his stories…” – Dave Winer

http://scripting.com/2006/06/09.html#When:10:38:44PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMQv0j29WHA

He would also say that stuff outside of articles as well tho

Another way of looking at this is, stock value doesn't just not mean what reasonable people think it means - the meaning of prices is 200% wrong.

Another way of looking at this is, no one is going to be able to redeem all the Amazon stock there is for cash at this price, that only mark-to-market is wrong.

Another way of looking at this is, Jeff Bezos was happy doing what he was doing for peanuts throughout Amazon's early lifetime, so would wealth taxes or CEO compensation caps or whatever boogeyman really have dissuaded him from taking other people's money?

> Another way of looking at this is, no one is going to be able to redeem all the Amazon stock there is for cash at this price, that only mark-to-market is wrong.

Maybe, maybe not. Amazon’s daily trading volume is about 3 million shares, and there are around 500 million shares outstanding. In 150 days the entire market value of the company trades.

It would be weird if the whole thing was sold at once, but there would be people interested in buying. The company has real value.

https://finbox.com/NASDAQGS:AMZN/explorer/volume_avg_3m

https://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/shares_outstanding

A wealth tax would have limited the amount of early investment available to Amazon (and the start-up ecosystem as a whole), and it very well might have forced liquidation of shares at critical points in the company's early history when Bezos was wealthy on paper as an Amazon shareholder.

> For much of Amazon's early history, it was something of a laughingstock

This seems like a real stretch. Amazon IPOed in 1997 for $0.5B, and grew to $30B by 1999. It crashed to $3B in the dot com bust, but that was the case for the entire tech industry. Between 2001 and 2007, it grew 10x from $3B to $30B.

Even including the dot-com crash, Amazon had grown ~60x in its first decade as a public company. I don't think anyone would be laughing at those growth rates.

https://m.benzinga.com/article/15517613

Yeah it took me a while to accept this. There are 50 different ways you could be a multi millionaire in a month if you were willing to place big bets but the reality is this a pretty insane way to act for most people on most circumstances.

I guess in some cases it feels more tangible like if you specificly had the chance to invest but it really isn't much different than all those other things you could have done.

I sold 4 Bitcoin when they hit 1000 and I'm not even mad. I liked them in a Dell laptop with a discrete laptop graphics card back when that was possible using pools.

Probably less than half of the $95m. AMZN opened at double its IPO price, and climbed up from there. The only way you could have gotten the IPO price is if you had a major account with Morgan-Stanley or the like and had a good relationship with them (i.e. you did a lot of trades so they got lots of commissions).

But yeah, there was still plenty of time for anyone to make a spectacular investment in Amazon.

This is not just about loss aversion. What if you give your family and friends now such an opportunity. Some of them will win some of them lose.

It's quite hard emotionally I guess. To see some of them who just by pure chance got rich and others who are poor. You can't give it afterwards. Money at times is just a gift from the devil in disguise.

It's a great cognitive bias. I myself was buying $5 bitcoins when I was 12 at 7-11!

I'm sure there's a million and one other amazing investments right now that I'm not aware of, but they're not obvious.

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