In 2010 I built a new computer. I was interested in bitcoin from a “this is technically neat” category. I set it up and was able to mine dozens of coins per day.
I did. It was all set up and working. But it generated a lot of heat in my upstairs So. Cal. Apartment. So I stopped. Just deleted the coins because they were pretty worthless then.
I don’t get too upset though because I never would have held them to $50k each. I would have sold them for a buck each.
But I “could have” if it wasn’t so hot out. ;)
Bitcoin showed up on my radar when they were worth pennies, but I was young and had no way to buy them and didn’t have a computer that could really mine them. Once I had the means to buy, I had no money. By the time I had a little extra money, they were already in the thousands.
Same story with Tesla. They weren’t public when they popped up on my radar, and when they made their IPO I had no money to invest.
I had the same experience with bitcoin. I had friends excitedly talking about it when it was around $1-$2 a coin and I dismissed it as a neat idea that would never fly. When BTC “crashed” at $10, I felt vindicated. Now I feel completely foolish :)
Same, I just had no cash. I was very much involved in the discussions around it though.
Same. I bought some 70 bitcoins for 50€ when I first heard of it. Kept mining on a radeon 9770 or something at about 1BTC or 5€ per week. Electricity was included in my rent then, but I stopped because fan noise.
I lost a bunch on mtgox. Cashed out for a down payment on a house way too early (2016). I’d be rich if I had hodled.
Around the same time I almost bought around 250$ worth of BTC. I was broke rent was coming up, it would have made my month difficult so I passed. Could have never paid rent/mortgage ever again.
I made six months’ worth of rent off the 2017 surge. I sold in the 18k range, because people’s greed at the time was legit scary. I knew a guy who took out a second mortgage on his house to buy more $18,000-priced BTC.
HODL failed.
Had the ability to buy in on Google right after they went public - passed on it
Had the ability to buy in on Apple in the mid 1990s -passed
Had the ability to buy bitcoin at $5 a coin, could have put in $5k at the time -passed
Had the ability to buy in on Amazon shortly after they went public -passed
Ebay -passed
Starting to see a trend?
Let me know next time you decide to pass on a stock.
Will do
Congrats! You passed all your tests with flying colors.
I shall wear this badge with honor
inscription on badge “I’m a Moron”
Quickly what was the last investment opportunity you were presented with?
Nvidia about a year and a half ago
Damn lmk when the next one comes up
Can we subscribe to your opportunities, so we can invest?
Just $29.99 /month for my ideas. Please note I’m not an adviser just a guy putting his thoughts out there.
Rivian
I had the idea to offload machine learning to GPUs back in the early 00’s. I was working for a company doing number plate recognition back then, so I was even in a position to act on my idea… but my boss thought I was nuts.
I’m not sure how much money I would have made, but it’s got to be better than this!
OK, it was a basic pattern recognition model, nothing nearly as sophisticated as we have now, but I think it would have performed significantly faster.
I sold about $200 in Bitcoin I mined back in the early days, like 2009 and 10. Missed out on over $80 million.
My great uncle was a nice dude fucked up from war. It made he introverted and he turned to trucking and the road to make ends meet. It was basically all he ended up doing. He never married or had kids, and stacked up all this cash. Before he died, he had put 1 million in cash in a suitcase, put it in the trunk of a car, and gave it to my grandparents. They couldn’t get the trunk open, didn’t investigate, sold the car.
Decided to OpenSource instead of Software Patent (as my employer was urging me). Nowadays, that technique is used in every decent Image CDN + compression tool. Still proud to see it everywhere. Maybe it wouldn’t have made it if had been patented.
You contributed something for the common good. You can be proud of your decision
Without open sourcing it, it would probably been hard to market it and keep improving it though. Like if Linux was not open source project it probably would have had the same fate so many other OS before it had.
You may not have gotten rich, but at least you can say on your resume that your technique is in every decent CDN + compression tool!
I was ready to drop $2,000 on AMD stock when it was $3 a share. Someone talked me out of it.
While it wouldn’t have made me “rich”, I’d be much better off than I am now.
You shouldn’t regret not gambling $2000 just because you saw it would’ve worked out.
… you should regret not gambling $200, “because fuck it.” If you’re really worried about any greedy investment, just lower the stakes.
Buying a bunch of AMD at 19 was my best trade. I haven’t sold.
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I was big into crypto at the very beginning. Lost a hard drive that now has about $8 million on it somewhere.
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When bitcoin first came out I looked into out of academic curiosity. I owned a high end video card. I never bothered mining because “I don’t have any desire to buy drugs on silkroad.”
Didn’t get “rich” per se, but I got in on dogecoin when it was at a penny, missed the peak, and ended up selling in the 30 cent range. I also picked up a ton of oil stocks in March 2020 when it bottomed out that I later sold for more than 15x their original value.
The irony is that I invested in dogecoin because Robbing Hood locked down investments into Gamestop. I didn’t realize that would be such a lucky development at the time.
Those investments paid off my student loans and got me a down payment on a condo. I still have five-figures in my investment account that I’m growing into early retirement. My current focus is gambling stocks, in large part because every election year it seems like there’s a smattering of states legalizing online sports betting. (MO and NE have it on the ballot for this year.)
Not fuck you money or ‘rich’, but life-changing.
Bro you got the “what could have been” ending
I didn’t quite get that but I am in a way better place than I expected to be thanks to those choices.
I don’t know about rich, but my household would be much more well off had my biological mother not been a mentally unstable gold-digging asshole.
One parent had a growing business when I was super young, they brought home well into the 6 figures. However two things happened 1: the internet started getting bigger so that started to hurt their business and 2: the 2008 housing crash happened and for a business that worked with banks on mortgages (I was too young to fully understand what the business did) it was fatal. Then we were dirt poor! The family never really recovered but after many years we did manage to get on our feet, then a parent died and shit went down hill again lmao.
I could’ve grown up a rich kid, instead I grew up with a family oats pot for meals. Though I’m probably a healthier grounded human for it.
2: the 2008 housing crash happened
My dad’s 50 year-old roofing business never fully recovered either, which is partly why I hate our government and how it works for the wealthy.
He now drives for DoorDash, at age 80, using my car. The alternative is starvation.
Well, isn’t it exciting? We may just witness a second crash! /S
But for real, it’s getting really bad again, it doesn’t seem sustainable and I honestly expected something to crack by now, but it hasn’t. The longer it gets delayed the worse it’s gonna be
There will be, no doubt.
The thing with crypto is to just add small amounts over time, so when those spikes happen you can take advantage. It’s pointless to try and time it.
I was talking about the housing climate, but crypto is fairly volitle too so I wouldn’t be surprised
Ah, yeah. Thanks for clarifying.
There has to be more to the story than that. Your parents probably didn’t disclose to you the other hardships they faced, whether they were self induced or not
Oh there definitely was as far as why the business went down, I just clipped it. But it caused one side of my family to be permanently removed from our lives as well. Though the increased stressors of the crash also aided in that whole deal
I bought 100 shares of Gamestop when it was $4 in November 2020 and sold at around $10
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