[jamroom]

I think a lot of HN users like to think of themselves as early adopters of new technology and are disappointed for missing out on the crypto highs at the end of 2017. I think they feel if they could have been in the loop at that time they could have cashed out. Thus crypto discussions are going to have a lot of negativity in the comments since the best way to make yourself feel better about it is to pretend it was a scam all along and you really didn't miss out. My 2 cents of course :)

[thefounder]

So the solution BTC solved was to make some people rich. Is that it?

Funny story: I'm a non-believer. However sometime this year I bought bitcoin to buy some stuff. By the time I got home its value decreased too much and I no longer had enough bitcoin to buy what I wanted. Now I've found out that my bitcoin is worth a considerable amount. Did I cash out? Of course!

Do I feel "smart" about this investment? Of course not. It's just a gamble and pretty much this is the story of bitcoin. Would I "invest" again? Not really. I don't need this kind of investment for the same reasons I don't do gambling in my spare time. I think gambling is a weakness.

[bdcravens]

Your comment sums up pretty nicely why HN is against it: you're focused on the price, which is only tangentially connected to the technology. "But rich!" is a pretty shallow argument in the HN world.

I would like to point out that I'm in a category that I think many HNers are: I'm critical of Bitcoin, yet I hold some (been involved since 2010, when I mined). Most of my criticisms are legitimate even while the price is rising; again, price is tangential.

[jamroom]

To be honest I'm not focused on the price - I too have held bitcoin for a long time. This was just my observation having been on HN for a very long time - it just seems the negativity around BC really spiked up in early 2018. As much as we like to think about the tech behind crypto, many users simply look at it as an investment and were pretty depressed when they didn't cash at the 20K high and were hoping for it to go even higher.

[majewsky]

Alternative explanation: People just got sick of blockchain after the umpteenth Ponzi scheme makes it onto the frontpage.

[conductr]

Or if your like me, you bought at $10 held until $20000 and decided was time to sell. That’s when I found out the wallet file format was no longer readable by the bitcoin client. So my coins are in cryptopurgatory. Maybe someday I’ll hire a dude to come help me. But he will probably steal my coins instead.

[jki275]

Just extract the keys. Your wallet is nothing more than a vehicle to hold the keys. If nothing else, just download an old version of electrum or the bitcoin client and export your keys that way. That's trivially easy, you don't need anyone to help you do it.

[majewsky]

> That’s when I found out the wallet file format was no longer readable by the bitcoin client.

Another bold innovation from the fintech industry! Imagine if that happened with regular bank accounts.

[verdverm]

I did not miss out and yet I still have left the BC space to work on more interesting things.