[edited out]
Well, JJG, I will say it. I'm jealous. Jealous of you, and many other early adopters, and most of the WO brothers. Jealous in a good way. I love you all (no homo) and wish you the very best. As much as I understand the inner workings of Bitcoin (and that was the main force that drove me to it), I can't help but admitting that I could have done better. Much better. I had the fiat. Lots of fiat. A good part of which I used to buy BTC. But not when I should have. I waited, and ended up buying much less than I could have bought. Sometimes we must take risks. And not just take risks, but take them at the right time. Because if you time it wrongly, you end up risking more for less. So, hats off to you guys 'n' gals, you deserve it.
Probably the vast majority of us fucked up in one way or another. So why kick ur lil selfie about that?
I started buying at the top of the 2013 market, so it took a decent amount of time to be profitable, and surely I could have had 2-3x more BTC by just waiting to buy lower.. but I thought that it was much better to just keep buying because I did not know when the bottom was going to be in, even when I was buying BTC in the $900s and all the way down to $180 was my lowest purchase, but way too little because I hardly had very much money by that point to really stock up on satoshis (we called them bitcoin back then.... hahahahahaha).
By the way, in about September, October 2013, I was already trying to look for a place to put some investment to largely supplement a 401k that I had but I was not able to further contribute to it.. so when I finally got around to reading about bitcoin in mid to late November 2013... I did not need a lot of convincing regarding bitcoin being the supplemental thing that I was looking for that would fit in well as a kind of 401k replacement (even though I still had - and still have the 401k that I have not added value to since late 2013.. but it still has grown, about 30% over 6.5 years).
It's cash. That's the beauty of it. You don't need to know who I am, I don't need to know who you are.
I think that is called a bearer asset. Whoever bears it, owns it. In other words, once you transfer the private key to me, I own it (or vice versa).
Add to this the ability to transact over-the-air, via a channel that only needs to be able to transfer information, and you're entering Star Trek territory.
you don't have to sell me.
You're Captain Kirk and I'm Scotty and we're thousands of miles away from each other and we're beaming up cash to each other. It's as clean and pure as it gets. And the more you understand how it all works, the more it sucks you in. It's like a beautiful woman you just can't take your eyes off of. And she wants you too. She accepts you for who you are...
Whoa... that's deep.
No, I'm not smoking leaves from the elephant garden, although it sounds like it. The second time I felt so excited about something was when I watched a BBC documentary about Fermat's Last Theorem. The next day I called BBC and asked for the transcript (there was no YouTube at the time), which they kindly sent me. Such mathematical theorems may sound boring and pointless to most of us, but they really are maps. They're mapping the universe. It's like being in a pitch-black room without a single clue of what's inside. So you start to feel the objects, forming some images in your mind, of their shapes, their function, their significance. And at some rare moments during the course of this exploration, a brilliant mind comes along and flicks a switch, which illuminates part of the room, helping you see the treasures that exist right next to you, waiting to be harnessed, to be understood. Satoshi Nakamoto helped illuminate part of that room and gave us this brilliant mathematical construct called Bitcoin. That's the way I see it anyway...
Wish that I would have emphasized the hard sciences a bit more than the soft sciences (to the extent that they could be called sciences).
As for Lambos, hookers and blow, this is something that may happen, but not just yet. Not for me. My stash's current value is far too small to be spending it on such indulgences. Their time will come, but we're (I'm) not there just yet.
That was just an example of a possible future transaction.
Regardless of where this path will lead us, though, I feel lucky and blessed to be part of this. Let the riches come when they should (fully agree with your "why not both" comment), but let that not be a target, but a consequence.
Much more lucky to already have learned about it.. and it kind of sank in, which reminds me of your above comment about "mistakes were made."
I know that I was in bitcoin in the very lat 2013 and all of 2014, but there are a lot of folk who could have come to bitcoin in 2015 or even 2016, and either would have been much better than me, or at least NOT worse than me - except my only advantage was that I spent the whole of 2014 convincing myself why I was "in" bitcoin, so by the time 2015 came, I had already convinced myself that I was "in" bitcoin.
There might have been some people who came to bitcoin in 2015 or 2016, but they were not convinced that bitcoin was a thing of importance...
I forgot your story, AlcoHoDL, are you saying that you were one of those could have been earlier adopters, but you did not rise yourself to the level of action which would likely mean figuring out some kind of reasonable budget to get "in" at some earlier date? When are we talking? and why did you NOT act? would have it made a difference? I had some asset that I had invested into in early October 2013 and I would have had that money available for bitcoin, but I will say that I did withdraw all of that money that I had invested in that October 2013 asset and I invested into bitcoin between about October and December 2014 which I believe largely played out better for me.
What is your "could have," "would have," "should have," and would have it made a difference in terms of what you did, your resulting financial status or even your mindset?
Looking at the data above, I have to agree it should continue until Q4.
