After the Bitcoin Boom: Hard Lessons for Cryptocurrency Investors

Megalith

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Following the significant de-valuation of the virtual currency market, the New York Times has published a piece documenting the unfortunates who betted almost everything on the crypto surge and now potentially face financial disaster. Financial analyst Tony Yoo gambled with a $100,000 contribution last fall, but his investment has already lost 70 percent of its value, while Englishman Pete Robert’s $23,000 toward digital tokens is now worth about $4,000. In another example, teacher Kim Hyon-jeong raised $90,000 by getting a loan and drawing from her savings and insurance policy, but barely 10 percent of that now remains.

The virtual currency markets have been through booms and busts before — and recovered to boom again. But this bust could have a more lasting impact on the technology’s adoption because of the sheer number of ordinary people who invested in digital tokens over the last year, and who are likely to associate cryptocurrencies with financial ruin for a very long time. Almost all of the new customers on Coinbase and Square would be in the red if they bought cryptocurrencies at almost any point over the last nine months and held on to them.
 
To those who got in and made some bank. . .good for them.

To those who gave in to greed and lost as much. . .good for them.
 
Honestly this is no different than investors in the stock market. One does not have to look hard to find thousands of stories regarding individuals burying themselves in debt by investing into areas they were ill equipped to succeed in.

It's greed. I mean, who doesn't like a get rich scheme? And for a lot of people, they saw it was working. But it comes at a very likely event that it will fail, and you will lose a lot. It's like XIV on the stock market a few years ago. It was an ETN that tracked volatility. And from about 2012 to 2017, it went up 100% every year. A lot of people thought they were stock market geniuses from just dumping their money in it. After all, doubling your money, year after year, for 5 years? What else gives you those types of returns? Then, literally overnight earlier this year, it collapsed and lost more than 90% of it's value.

The same with Bitcoin. Many people became rich through it. And it seems like a safe bet when the direction only goes one way. But people need to pay attention to possible risks. This isn't investing. This is gambling.
 
I don't feel bad for anyone. I remember when I first started buying/selling stocks. I had a few lucky investments and got cocky. I then made other investments that failed - hell, anyone remember Lucent Technologies? I lost a chunk of change on them. Even so, that was only a small amount of money I had. I never bet large amounts.
I still try to keep a small amount of money available to buy in riskier assets - but if I lose it all, it's a calculated loss and won't kill me at all.
 
I don't feel bad for anyone. I remember when I first started buying/selling stocks. I had a few lucky investments and got cocky. I then made other investments that failed - hell, anyone remember Lucent Technologies? I lost a chunk of change on them. Even so, that was only a small amount of money I had. I never bet large amounts.
I still try to keep a small amount of money available to buy in riskier assets - but if I lose it all, it's a calculated loss and won't kill me at all.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have a little empathy for people who lost everything. It’s not like they tried to rob a bank here, they were simply following the rest of the herd, and the advice a *lot* of investors were peddling. It’s easy to say they were being greedy, but all they were doing was trying to get in on the party like everyone else who was making out like a bandit. I wish to god I could go back and buy some Apple stock in the 90’s. That doesn’t make me greedy, I just wish I would have made a good investment like some other people.

I got lucky and made a nice little chunk of change off this whole ordeal, but I’m not a psychopath who lacks basic compassion for the people that had their lives ruined for doing what thousands of other people were doing and trying to improve their lives. Was it dumb to gamble money they couldn’t afford to lose? Probably. That doesn’t mean they deserved to have their lives ruined, or that I should be gloating about it.
 
Good. Let's see the secondary market flooded with graphics cards!

Don't buy used cards from miners. Let them eat their costs.

People who are into get-rich-quick schemes are not trustworthy. I tried picking up some R9 290s last time around and they were all DOA or died randomly. Only one lasted more than a year and the DisplayPort died early on.
 
That doesn’t mean you can’t have a little empathy for people who lost everything. It’s not like they tried to rob a bank here, they were simply following the rest of the herd, and the advice a *lot* of investors were peddling. It’s easy to say they were being greedy, but all they were doing was trying to get in on the party like everyone else who was making out like a bandit. I wish to god I could go back and buy some Apple stock in the 90’s. That doesn’t make me greedy, I just wish I would have made a good investment like some other people.

I got lucky and made a nice little chunk of change off this whole ordeal, but I’m not a psychopath who lacks basic compassion for the people that had their lives ruined for doing what thousands of other people were doing and trying to improve their lives. Was it dumb to gamble money they couldn’t afford to lose? Probably. That doesn’t mean they deserved to have their lives ruined, or that I should be gloating about it.

When you make emotional decisions, you tend to lose out. Being involved with crypto myself, it was plain to see that things were way overvalued, too fast. Pure greed got people in trouble and they are paying the price. The people who took out loans or invested their savings are simply poor investors and deserve no empathy.
 
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That doesn’t mean you can’t have a little empathy for people who lost everything. It’s not like they tried to rob a bank here, they were simply following the rest of the herd, and the advice a *lot* of investors were peddling. It’s easy to say they were being greedy, but all they were doing was trying to get in on the party like everyone else who was making out like a bandit. I wish to god I could go back and buy some Apple stock in the 90’s. That doesn’t make me greedy, I just wish I would have made a good investment like some other people.

I got lucky and made a nice little chunk of change off this whole ordeal, but I’m not a psychopath who lacks basic compassion for the people that had their lives ruined for doing what thousands of other people were doing and trying to improve their lives. Was it dumb to gamble money they couldn’t afford to lose? Probably. That doesn’t mean they deserved to have their lives ruined, or that I should be gloating about it.
Maybe I sounded a little overly harsh, but when ever someone borrows to make an investment - it's generally a bad idea. Heck, I used to listen to Jim Cramer a lot. I still do when I have time - he pounded Lucent Tech a lot (buy buy buy). I listened to him all the while the ship was sinking and taking on water. I lsot 90% of my investment (although it was only a few thousand bucks I was playing with)
I think a lot of these people were overly greedy and got burned. I don't delight from it - I just think they made a very poor decision.
I've also known people that have taken money from their 401k to buy lotto tickets. Again, dumb move. Motivation was likely greed and perhaps laziness (win & quit job)
I also wish I could go back in time and buy some Apple stock from the 90's. I bought some before Steve Jobs died and have more than doubled what I bought. I still only bought what I could afford to lose. Anyway, people lose money all the time and what can I do about it?
 
I don't have empathy for not researching investments and how they work. NEVER BORROW for one. Use what you have. Also, WHAT IS THE STANDARD BACKING IT? All money is backed by a gold standard, dollar against ounce of gold. There was no standard or Hard unit of measure. It was AIR. 1 bits and 0 bits.

Only 30% paid taxes on the coin they sold. Guess what the next story is? Not only did they lose on investment, the IRS is coming for the those who lost, sold, and didn't pay taxes on it. THIS IS JUST THE START of their [H]ardship. Don't get into a big time game without knowing the rules.

Sorry, not sorry.
 
I don't have empathy for not researching investments and how they work. NEVER BORROW for one. Use what you have. Also, WHAT IS THE STANDARD BACKING IT? All money is backed by a gold standard, dollar against ounce of gold. There was no standard or Hard unit of measure. It was AIR. 1 bits and 0 bits.

Only 30% paid taxes on the coin they sold. Guess what the next story is? Not only did they lose on investment, the IRS is coming for the those who lost, sold, and didn't pay taxes on it. THIS IS JUST THE START of their [H]ardship. Don't get into a big time game without knowing the rules.

Sorry, not sorry.

US Currency hasn't been backed by gold for almost 50 years.

Also since the IRS wants taxes on gains do those people get to deduct losses?
 
US Currency hasn't been backed by gold for almost 50 years.

Also since the IRS wants taxes on gains do those people get to deduct losses?
If they have anything left to write off at this point...
 
I bought salt in Carthage but when I got to Rome nine months later, its value was one third what I paid for it instead three times higher like I was told! Waaaa!

Who could have known the 1st Punic War was a troublesome event between Carthage and Rome! Everyone thought it was just sabre rattling!
 
Don't buy used cards from miners. Let them eat their costs.

People who are into get-rich-quick schemes are not trustworthy. I tried picking up some R9 290s last time around and they were all DOA or died randomly. Only one lasted more than a year and the DisplayPort died early on.

Miners run cards as hard as they possibly can.
 
You don't lose anything until you sell at a loss. Folks selling at a loss right now are not in it for the technology or to be their own bank. They aren't needed at this phase.
 
In a nutshell:

This was never any different than stock trading, except that trading with bitcoin had absolutely no oversight or rules

Ehh
Smart people should've seen it coming, I figured it would've never been a long term investment

It's something to gamble with, buy low, sell high
I'm not sure what's so difficult to get, if anything I'm shocked how easy it seemed to be for, let's say mundane every day people, to get such huge loans from banks for basically nonsense they had no idea how to do it/it works

Taking a loan for a few thousand bucks for gambling would've been fine
It's not live crippling like 100k or more
 
Miners run cards as hard as they possibly can.
No
The basic idea is to run as efficient as you can

Usually they're undervolting running at 80% or so

Because just like overclocking, the higher you clock, the higher the voltage the higher the wattage
Electricity needs to be payed too
 
No
The basic idea is to run as efficient as you can

Usually they're undervolting running at 80% or so

Because just like overclocking, the higher you clock, the higher the voltage the higher the wattage
Electricity needs to be payed too

While true, mining cards also work 24/7, something no gaming GPU is doing. That is 168 hrs a week, whereas what is your average gaming GPU doing a week, 14-28hrs a week?
 
Load of crap. Miners undervolt to 70-80%. Cards are way less prone to burning out and the actual decrease in mining is only about 5%.
all the ones I spoke to did. They also had flat rate energy costs. They would toss cards all the time.
 
While true, mining cards also work 24/7, something no gaming GPU is doing. That is 168 hrs a week, whereas what is your average gaming GPU doing a week, 14-28hrs a week?

It really doesn't matter that they run them 24/7, its environment temps that do. Most of my machines at home run all the time in low 20c environment and they go on for years and years without problems. Pretty much the things that I only ever see fail are the hard drives but now I only have them in my storage array. Everything else is SSD so I can't even remember last time I had to deal with them. Frankly, I don't think any of my personal SSD failed and at work it's also very rare to see one die.
 
I'd love to know if we saw these types of stories in 2014 when bitcoin lost 90% of its value. I've been watching closely since Summer of last year. I am not sure if it will be coming back as high as it was in Dec but a lot of people who invested act as if it is a sure thing.
 
Load of crap. Miners undervolt to 70-80%. Cards are way less prone to burning out and the actual decrease in mining is only about 5%.
Yes that's why lot of people report Vega hbm degradation due to... Pushing it too hard and that it's typically hotter than the gpu off the bat, first to throttle typically.
This is what happens with memory intensive hashing.. Memory speeds = more sheckels.
 
I'd love to know if we saw these types of stories in 2014 when bitcoin lost 90% of its value. I've been watching closely since Summer of last year. I am not sure if it will be coming back as high as it was in Dec but a lot of people who invested act as if it is a sure thing.


False hope convincing themselves they didn't fuck up.

I'm waiting in my loto ticket. Should be my turn now.
 
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