[omgbananas]

I learned about Bitcoin here when it was just a whitepaper, but didn't recognize the opportunity then.

A year ago, another user mentioned Monero so I looked into and discovered it's more "bitcoin" than Bitcoin and bought what I could.

I'm not a millionaire, but it sure has helped me financially, so I'm really appreciative that I took advantage of that opportunity.

EDIT: and for something a little more intrinsic: Everyone's experiences on different things. I've read lots of great comments on raising kids, and hope to take advantage of that shared knowledge when I have a family.

[kbenson]

Tell me about it. I remember when it was single digit dollars, and it was a curiosity, but it didn't hold my interest.

Then it was double digits, and I was like, "huh."

Then is was somewhere around $40, and I thought "maybe I should get a couple? But money's kind of tight, maybe later."

Then it was over $100, and I thought "surely this can't go much higher? This definitely isn't the time to buy."

I thought that same thing when it hit over $300, and over $700, and then over $3000, and then when it was well over $15k.

I've learned a valuable lesson. I'm far too risk averse to invest in something like this, because I'm still not sure I could convince myself to invest even though it seems to have hit a bottom and is climbing again.

[snowwrestler]

I looked at bitcoin very early, when it was pitched as digital currency free from the problems of fiat money. My impression was that the proponents did not understand currency and that bitcoin would make a terrible currency.

As it turns out, I was right. But by being right, I missed a huge speculative windfall. While it would have been nice to make a bunch of money for nothing, I don't really have regrets because my decision was sound at the time.

I still wonder whether the early bitcoin marketing was uninformed but they lucked out... or if the early proponents knew it was a terrible currency, but that they had to sell it that way early in order to inflate the speculative bubble.

[godelski]

Most people I know invested in still talk about it as a currency. We talk transaction rates and all that, but they are still convinced it is the "money of the future." So I think a lot still luck out. There are clear market manipulations. But that's why I still stay out. I do not see it as a missed opportunity.

[gota]

Maybe I'm project the experience of people close to me and my own, but it helps to not feel left out that we have jobs in somewhat valued careers with somewhat guaranteed future employment.

I've been noticing that the more fragile the professional situation, the more people seem to regret or actively join the (already at full speed) bandwagon

[godelski]

I definitely see this correlation too. But I equate it to "I should have played on the craps table, tons of people just won." The part that bothers me is that people consider those that played that table as smart. And those that didn't play the table as dumb. Hindsight is 20/20 and there are still clear reasons to be wary of cryptocurrencies.

[TremendousJudge]

I take issue with the term 'invest' being used here. When somebody invests in something, they expect returns to come in the form of dividends, interest, or something of the sort. When somebody buys something because they expect to sell it later at a higher price, they aren't investing, they're speculating

[lloyd-christmas]

> When somebody buys something because they expect to sell it later at a higher price

I guess I should dump my AMZN, GOOG, and FB stock. I can't believe what I could have been thinking when I put money in such a speculative product like Amazon. Add in Berkshire Hathaway, and 4 of the top 10 largest companies in the world don't pay out. Between the 4 of them, they account for more than 10% of the S&P500, and they are just 4 of the nearly 100 companies in the S&P500 that don't pay dividends.

[bobbles]

Sounds like your views on transaction rates are about a month out of date now

[godelski]

Oh, sorry, is the pool not growing? Has crypto gotten to thousands of transactions per second? Because last I was aware they haven't even broken 20 transactions per second and the mempool is still growing.

It is going to take a hard fork to fix this.

[wyldfire]

> I've learned a valuable lesson. I'm far too risk averse to invest in something like this

I find myself often bathing in regret and telling myself "if I could travel back in time, I'd just ...". But these days I try to snap myself out of it and say "You are traveling in time, but you're traveling forward in time -- take that risk now and travel into the future and reap your rewards." It doesn't always work, but it helps give me some perspective.

[cheschire]

I remember reading about meltdown and spectre here first, and thinking “huh, I should short intel stock before this goes public.”

I was too green to understand just how far ahead HN is though, and I just watched instead as it all played out without me.

[aw3c2]

There really has not been a long-term drop in the stock so that would have been (and still would be) very risky. You were smart not doing it.

[cheschire]

Yes, shorting a stock is not a long term investment tactic, and it is risky. "Smart" is, in my opinion, too subjective a term to use in this particular situation. I was too risk averse at the time to take action, and part of my risk aversion was based on my lack of trust in the foresight of HN articles.

[gnode]

I think there's still a lot of uncertainty in this, given that Intel can benefit from everyone replacing their broken processors with new ones.

[novalis78]

My experience as well - Bitcoin was still in single digits when HN made me stumble over it. Many ycombinator applications and projects later I launched a Bitcoin related company and couldn't be happier. The first HN discussion I saw was the one where someone had asked how he could store data and make sure it's still readable 40 years later... the answers where so smart, funny, detailed and out of this world it got me hooked. Thanks HN &a community.

[abhishekjha]

Which story?