[mabbo]

I used to go to these Wednesday night Bitcoin meetups at "Bitcoin Decentral" in Toronto.

Half the people who attended these were idiots looking to make easy money for no work. A quarter were guys who had gotten into bitcoins when they were cheap and had decided that they were geniuses, and not simply fortunate. The first half loved listening to these guys.

The last quarter were actually interesting people, into crypto and crypto-currencies, doing cool stuff. And some of them were into this thing called ethereum. Sometimes there were talks with that Vitalik guy.

And I did not buy even a single coin.

It was a bad investment. It was some random guy at that weird house on Spadina Ave who said he was making a better Bitcoin. Sane people do not give money to schemes like that. Those crazy idiots who wanted to get rich for no effort, let them throw their money at this ethereum thing, just like they'll throw money at every pyramid scheme and the Toronto housing market.

[sonofaragorn]

Wow. I could have written this and every word would still hold.

I think the one thing that was clear to me is that this Vitalik guy was some kind of genius. But, still I didn't buy/mine.

I wish my coding skills had been better at the time and that I had looked into the code (and not just the whitepaper which is kinda like a fairytale to me) and realized its value.

[mabbo]

Were you at the creepy house on Spadina too? If so, we may have met. I only went a handful of times, but if you really scouted them out the good people there were fascinating. I wish I'd kept in touch.

[sonofaragorn]

Yeah I think it is (was) called Bitcoin Decentral. I think I was only there two or three times but I definitely met all the types you described :)

[anothercomment]

I went to an Ethereum Hackathon and wasn't convinced at the time, that is why I passed. Hopefully/probably their technology has matured since then, but I stopped following their progress.

[wpietri]

Yeah.

It's really easy to look back and say, "I could have been rich!" But when I catch myself doing that, I try to look at the basket of equivalent choices at the time. I'm sure there were a zillion random guys in weird houses proposing schemes they thought were brilliant.

It's the same thing with startups. There are a million people who think they'll be the next Jobs, the next Zuckerberg. Approximately one of them is right. The people who come up with that guy will, exactly as you say, decide that they're geniuses, not just lucky.

[Confusion]

  I try to look at the basket of equivalent choices at the time

That's exactly what you must do.