Slashdot Mirror
As Value of Cryptocurrencies Falls, a Lot of New and Risk-Taking Investors Are Suffering Immensely (nytimes.com)
After the latest round of big price drops, many cryptocurrencies have given back all of the enormous gains they experienced last winter. The value of all outstanding digital tokens has fallen by about $600 billion, or 75 percent, since the peak in January, according to data from the website coinmarketcap.com. The New York Times: The virtual currency markets have been through booms and busts before -- and recovered to boom again. But this bust could have a more lasting impact on the technology's adoption because of the sheer number of ordinary people who invested in digital tokens over the last year, and who are likely to associate cryptocurrencies with financial ruin for a very long time. [...] By many metrics, more people put money into virtual currencies last fall and winter than in all of the preceding nine or so years. Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency brokerage in the United States, doubled its number of customers between October and March. The start-up Square began allowing the users of its mobile app, Square Cash, to buy Bitcoin last November.
[...] Kim Hyon-jeong, a 45-year-old teacher and mother of one who lives on the outskirts of Seoul, said she put about 100 million won, or $90,000, into cryptocurrencies last fall. She drew on savings, an insurance policy and a $25,000 loan. Her investments are now down about 90 percent. "I thought that cryptocurrencies would be the one and only breakthrough for ordinary hardworking people like us," she said. "I thought my family and I could escape hardship and live more comfortably, but it turned out to be the other way around."
[...] In the United States, Charles Herman, a 29-year-old small-business owner in Charleston, S.C., became obsessed with virtual currencies in September. He said he now felt that he had wasted 10 months of his life trying to play the markets. While he is essentially back to the $4,000 he put in, he has soured on the revolutionary promises that virtual currency fanatics made for the technology last year and has resumed investing his money in real estate. "I guess I thought we were 'sticking it to the man' when I got on board," Mr. Herman said. "But I think 'the man' had already caught on, and had an exit strategy."
[...] Kim Hyon-jeong, a 45-year-old teacher and mother of one who lives on the outskirts of Seoul, said she put about 100 million won, or $90,000, into cryptocurrencies last fall. She drew on savings, an insurance policy and a $25,000 loan. Her investments are now down about 90 percent. "I thought that cryptocurrencies would be the one and only breakthrough for ordinary hardworking people like us," she said. "I thought my family and I could escape hardship and live more comfortably, but it turned out to be the other way around."
[...] In the United States, Charles Herman, a 29-year-old small-business owner in Charleston, S.C., became obsessed with virtual currencies in September. He said he now felt that he had wasted 10 months of his life trying to play the markets. While he is essentially back to the $4,000 he put in, he has soured on the revolutionary promises that virtual currency fanatics made for the technology last year and has resumed investing his money in real estate. "I guess I thought we were 'sticking it to the man' when I got on board," Mr. Herman said. "But I think 'the man' had already caught on, and had an exit strategy."
Those two anecdotes are stories of people hoping to magically get rich quick. The outcome is unsurprising.
Surprising Exactly Nobody...
Well, OK, surprising the poor suckers who bought into this high-tech reinvention of the classic pump-and-dump I guess, but no-one else.
Kim Hyon-jeong, a 45-year-old teacher and mother of one who lives on the outskirts of Seoul, said she put about 100 million won, or $90,000, into cryptocurrencies last fall. She drew on savings, an insurance policy and a $25,000 loan. Her investments are now down about 90 percent. "I thought that cryptocurrencies would be the one and only breakthrough for ordinary hardworking people like us," she said. "I thought my family and I could escape hardship and live more comfortably, but it turned out to be the other way around."
Am I supposed to feel sorry for this person? I make a comfortable living (80k USD) and in lat e2017 I bought 350 dollars worth of Ethererum. By January I sold it all because even I, a non-college educated computer nerd could tell this shit was way too toxic to consider a 'long term' investment. Don't be an idiot like Kim.
Have you heard about investing in tulip bulbs?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Pumps piss for them. I would just settle for getting my eight bitcoins back.
A sucker I mean. This should be a lesson for the next round of "get rich quick" vaporware.
Whether stock market or a casino, gambling is taking high risks so nobody should be surprised if they lose their shirt. If you buy into something that returns significantly more than what you can borrow money at, of course it's high risk (or else the bank lending you money would buy those same investments instead of lending you money).
He said he now felt that he had wasted 10 months of his life trying to play the markets.
There are some great big swingin' dicks playing the suckers trying to "play the markets," and at $4,000 you aren't a big swingin' dick. I do, however, know a prince in Nigeria who could use your help.
What the heck are these 'promises' they keep talking about? Bitcoin doesn't promise you any 'gains' or 'interest', whatever reason they bought into it, it wasn't based on any real understanding of the system, and more on the hype and scammers. Especially since even mainstream news knew that the price was artificially being inflated and would eventually crash as the responsible parties cashed out.
The software exists, and it does what it's supposed to. That's the exact opposite of vaporware.
Most of these investments (really speculations) were quite successful. You're just supposed to consider them - like any speculation or investment - as part of your entire risk portfolio and rebalance out of them as they rise. If every quarter you'd been taking out half of any Bitcoin gains and putting it into whole-market index funds, why, you'd have had a dandy experience. The silly thing is, you can't do that with most highly speculative investments (many have low liquidity) but you can with most cryptocurrencies! So the problem here was not the speculation, but the speculators.
I kinda hate jumping onto the bandwagon, but investing in anything on the basis of "someone dumber than me will buy it for more than I paid" always leads to the greatest number of people learning the hard way that they're the dumber someones.
Tuition can be wickedly expensive in the school of hard knocks.
Warning: This signature may offend some viewers.
It's not all bad.
All these crypto-miners have fostered better GPUs, and have driven demand for more generating capacity in the power grid. And now that it's over, the rest of us can use these for useful purposes.
So thank you, early adopters. Sorry that the inevitable happened to your wasted energy.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
"It will pay dividends."
Why do you think people still use that phrase for anything that will reward you in the future? "Spend your youth living healthfully, and it will pay dividends to your future happiness." That phrase is part of the idiomatic vernacular, because the only reason to buy was at one time to get in on that sweet, sweet cut of the real profits, known as dividends.
Of course, just like robbers broke into banks "Because that's where the money is", so too did the federal government begin ransacking dividends for tax monies; dividends are taxed higher than capital gains. The result has been obvious: A shift away from investment in dividends; people now invest in capital gains (and, often, that's all even well established companies offer), and thus the Greater Fool Theory has become the foundation of the entire U.S. stock market—the only alternative mechanisms for actually making money are relatively complex schemes for gambling, such as stock options, which are too difficult and dangerous for the average person.
I'm fairly averse to bitcoin for all the reasons previously expressed n /.; though I can't help but wonder if this is a good buying opportunity while the price is 'low'... Time will tell I suppose.
"I thought that cryptocurrencies would be the one and only breakthrough for ordinary hardworking people like us,"
And yet you were throwing debt at what was essentially a "get rich quick" scheme? That's not ordinary nor hardworking, that's just idiocy.
How does the currently bearish press resemble (or not) that after the previous Bitcoin bubble, or the one before that? Also, to those who enjoy citing tulip mania, how many bubbles did tulip mania go through before it crashed, and what as the approximate peak market cap of each bubble?
Transaction times and transaction fees are awful and not at all competitive with credit (let alone cash), and there is no clear way to address either problem. In fact, it looks like both problems will only get worse as bitcoin becomes more popular. Until both problems are solved, bitcoin is worthless as a currency because it can't be used like other currencies can.
in the last 47 years of my life. It always comes down to this. once the mass media hype starts and ordinary people are dragged into the next financial get rich quick scheme in the masses, it is better to get out if you are into something.
The pattern is usually that you get lots of press reports, that you should invest, that this thing is a totally new economy which works differently, that you are stupid if you do not invest. Once those reports crawl up, you can expect a crash between the next three months and a year.
I have seen this with the dot bomb bust, with the housing bubble etc... and the patterns 1929 were exactly the same, when Kennedy went out of the stock market 1928 because he got stock advices from people working on the street.
Also the bomb cycle always is the same, it starts to go down, the financial press and others are screaming hold... then it recovers slightly everyone is yelling it just was a hickup and then it goes down again everyone screams you have to hold and then over and over again with a few upwards pumps along the road. The people screaming hold, usually are the ones connected to the big investors selling big time to get out while everyone thinks they can recover.
The idea that something with N units (shares/coins) is worth N times the price the stupidest person is willing to pay for one unit is ridiculous.
Bitcoin never had a value of 600 billion dollars. I doubt there was ever 100 Million in play, in actual cash in play. If you tried to sell all existing bitcoins, the price would crash below the total value of the cash put in.
Don't believe short sellers FUD.
Not when it's easy for almost any company to create a new currency. There are more cryptocurrencies than there are real currencies.
If gold-standard libertarians were worried about governments printing money - well now we have your paradise where governments aren't in control of most forms of currency. Taking into account the ICO scams, how's your regulation free paradise working out now?
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Well, more reasonable prices anyway. I built my first PC from scratch last year, rather assembled. When I shopped for graphics cards I could not find what I wanted at a decent price thanks to the cryptocurrency miners. I ended up after much searching online buying a decent next lower tier graphics card at a good price. The card wasn't what I wanted but good enough.
At the rate the miners were going they were actually putting out as much carbon dioxide as a small country, not good. Let's hope for our sakes that crypto currencies won't created another bubble for our wallet's sake and our environment's.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Don't believe short sellers FUD.
Didn't your doctor say you need to get more sleep?
Currently, it's more than six thousand USD for one whole coin.
Whenever taxi drivers start giving you investment tips, it's a bubble.
Coincidentally that was when Wall Street approved and began Bitcoin futures trading.
I feel bad for the first family, but the second guy, who basically lost no money, what a joke.
I lost $5000 in the stock market, and no one felt bad for me, and I wouldn't want anyone too.
It's too bad we lose our focus on a drama queen.
One is a transaction medium. The other is store of value.
They are very distinct.
A currency, crypto or otherwise is a good transaction medium if, well, it lowers the cost of transactions. It need not be very stable in the long run, as long as it is convenient to use for a payment and be converted to something else at a rate that the holder accepts. Some crypto currencies satisfy the requirements for this category quite well.
But none of the crypto currencies satisfy the most important requirement for being a store of value. For that, you need a currency that has a monetary authority behind it and that authority is both committed and has the resources to maintain the value. For decentralized money instruments like the crypto currencies, this isn't true, and their value will fluctuate a lot depending mostly on demand for transactions and speculation.
So yeah, if you "invest" in a crypto currency be aware that it may jump a lot, especially in the long run. And that you may get burned, just like you will if you "invest" in the currency of a small country that lets it float freely.
Except that the crypto will be a lot more volatile.
Bitcoin don't care.
EoM
I owned a considerable amount of bitcoins which I had mined a few years before. When the price jumped to $19 000 in December 2017, I judged that this speculative madness couldn't continue any longer and decided to turn my BTC into cash. Turns out I was right.
Store of value. What are you talking about???
The USD has lost 97% of its purchasing power since 1913; hell, in modern times, it is policy to target a price inflation rate of 2%. Also, how many other currencies have we seen throughout history implode to worthlessness due to governmental counterfeiting?
In contrast, gold has held its purchasing power for literally hundreds if not thousands of years.
No, sir. A currency need not hold its value long term—if it holds its value, then it is something more than a currency: Money, which need not be a currency.
But there was an absurd amount of money to be made throughout 2017 and early 2018. If greed kept people in after Bitcoin $20,000, that's on them.
Old gamblerâ(TM)s saying: Do not wager what you cannot bear to lose.
They wanted to siphon money out of the system without doing actual work. As someone who does work for a living, I say fuck em. Cry me a goddamned river.
Power hungry cargo cult...
Unless you're shorting, the maximum you can lose is your initial investment. Which makes investing a dirt-simple risk proposition, since you automatically know before you invest your money exactly what's the maximum you could lose (all of it). So the amount these people have lost and are suffering is precisely measurable, and was precisely measurable before they ever invested.
If you borrow money to invest (loans or leveraging), or short stocks (where the maximum gain is the value of the stock, while the maximum loss is potentially infinite - the inverse of buying stock) without understanding the risks involved, it's your own fault.
I've bailed out friends and family members with loans - basically invested in them. But it's never affected me financially if they don't pay me back because I made each loan assuming they wouldn't pay me back and I would take a 100% loss. If they do end up paying me back, that's a bonus.
People joining pyramid game late are taking heavy losses while those at the top cash out.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ponzi schemes are built on the greed of their victims.
It's not rocket science, but some people are just too dumb to ever learn even when it's spelt out in the simplest terms.
An Investor is someone who puts his money into something that will actually create something long-term after careful consideration, and hopes for it to succeed, and make a long-term profit, while knowing it will be some time before it pays off, in which he will probably lose some money.
Those crypto currencies, and also Wall Street these days, is nothing but a bunch of gamblers hoping to make money out of thin air, and jump from one sinking ship to another.
What really scared me was the number of people that were throwing big money in at the top. Some of these people were very smart people and they basically dropped $30-50k.
They don't talk about Bitcoin so much anymore, and I don't ask.
Of course, to be usable as a token for transactions, they need to have some value retention as you need to be comfortable keeping them until you need them. Bitcoin has not found the right recipe for balancing its decentralized nature with being robust against the fluctuations in a supply-and-demand driven (and stupid crazy) market.
And it's not the loss of half its value in half a year that illustrates this as much as its explosion in value and consequent turn into an object of speculation.
Its large fluctuations make it suitable as currency only where its advantages are worth the price because the margins of the goods you trade using it are even higher. It works for that somewhat well in drug trades, money laundering, blackmail. Which is why it hasn't crashed harder yet.
Is whether or not it will ever die off completely or remain around very long term, even after all coins are mined and progressively more are lost due to mismanagement or wilful deletion. I think the value may rise and fall dramatically over time but staying power is an interesting factor.
So where are they guys on /. who were advocating buying in February, March, and April, stating that BTC was worth north of $100,000?
Did they cash out? Are they still buying now? What are their outlooks for the currency now?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Ponzi ponzi ponzi
Bitcoins is a bit like pumpkins. Pumpkins are also a great investment, but you want to sell before Halloween.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Entered in November with $5000 and pulled out with $7500 just on the day the bubble first started popping. In next months i was riding ALT wave and got to $12500 before pulling out completely. Now it looks sad but I'm staying clear of it at the moment ; or maybe it's time to get back in? It's like gambling.
Unsubscribe from the New York Times!
Cryptocurrencies won't have corrected adequately until they have a negative valuation. Whatever their greater than or equal to zero value is right now, it's still much too high.
Cryptocurrencies are completely worthless, and always have been, except to the morally bankrupt people above the bottom of the pyramid who knowingly suckered in the people below them. It stuns me how this was not obvious to everyone from the very beginning.
And the people who mortgaged their houses to burn it in the market are immense fools. My heart bleeds for them and their families, but that was immensely idiotic. My brain can't even comprehend that degree of stupid.
When I observed that first spike in Bitcoin value that was signal .... to sell then sure ticket to get rich.... ... ... do not laugh international transactions ... it is cheaper than bank transfers ... :-)
Oho! it is lure for morons
Time to sell and leave business
I bought some bitcoins early for
Of course I was happy when they went high. Bonus vacation money are fun.
I am net positive, but still working my day job
Risk-Taking Investors take risks. News at 11.
aaaaaaa
Unfortunately all of the hype around cryptocurrency basically created a whole lot of people thinking they were going to be zillionaires.
The reality was, it was an over-hyped, completely unregulated, and entirely speculative market.
While it's sad that people are losing lots of money, there was absolutely no rational basis to have ever believed they'd become rich.
This is a case of fools being parted with their money.
Cryptocurrency's anonymity attracted criminals from the get go. So I'm not surprised that cryptocurrency markets turned out to be even more a den of snakes.
The similarities between non-voting, non-dividend paying stocks and units of crypto are many. People get involved in both because they are games in which one can win money, with a suitable helping of luck, and maybe skill. Kind of like blackjack. Less like poker. Some people win. Most lose.
The key to these things - including also the art market - is the belief that there is a pool of demand out there for the item. Prick that belief and the game spins down.
https://www.investopedia.com/t...
Those who don't learn from the past are doomed to relive it.
TYS.
I can't feel bad if someone decides to take all their savings and loans to invest in anything.
"a 45-year-old teacher.... She drew on savings, an insurance policy and a $25,000 loan."
You know things are about to go tits up when "investors" such as these start crawling out of the woodworks.
Risk takers take risk. News at 11.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
There is a difference between "value" and "price".
What was falling was the PRICE of cryptocurrencies, not its value.
Now, arguably, since cryptocurrencies are, well, currency, the "price" and "value" are identical. Which would mean that the value fell along with the price.
Nonetheless, it is more accurate in general to use "price", especially when it's doubtful whether "value" applies....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Lol. If you have 90k to just drop on an investment you aren't poor.
I just hope Elon builds the rocket in time.
He's completed it! For some reason it looks a lot like a submarine with rocket fins bolted on, but I'm sure it's the real deal... Elon even said that anyone who doesn't like it is a pedophile.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
some make money, but most lose it.
Bitcoin is best investment you can make. I have made hundreds thousands dollars all the time. Remember last time naysayers and technology illiterates and SJW's said bad things about bitcoin I went up 10,000% and make instant millionares overnight! If you are smart understanding of economics and objectivism insight like me you should sell all your stocks and gold boullion and put all instead into bitcoin while our price is low. Just look at how many story's there are on News.Slashdot.Org about bitcoin, so you know it is here to stay. Guaranteed investment.
With dollars, you can stuff them in your mattress for a year and when you come back they'll purchase about the same amount. That's a good thing. You shouldn't have to take a risk just to store value. A currency that does its job ought to suck as a high-yield investment.
Maybe now we can get cryptocurrencies back to their best use, which is purchasing drugs on the dark web.
I've started hearing radio ads to add crypto currency to your IRA, that is government approved and everything. No different than the gold and silver spammers on television saying protect your assets, buy up some of our over stocked gold or silver, both are poised to explode to record highs. They've been poised for years.
When the price goes up, there's a lot of advertising to sell it to dopes, and when the price goes down, you hear nothing about it.
Who would have ever predicted that the price of digital currency would start to come into line with its value?
FTFY
If you wait until the mania to invest, you have missed the boat. The same thing happened to people during the dot com boom, the housing boom, the commodities boom, and now the remnants of the crypto boom.
The big money investors know that if they bid up a sector to outrageous price points, Main Street will want to get in on the action and transfer huge sums of wealth to the big money investors. Main street always waits until they feel "safe," but the problem is that Main Street is a dumbass.
This is a Buffetism or a Ben Graham thing. I forget.
People putting money into bitcoin are not investors. They are speculators. They are hoping that the price of an item goes up because they want it to go up. There is no underlying business model supporting the idea that the price of bitcoin will go up.
The implosion of bitcoin was inevitable and in 20 years it will be totally worthless unless it is still used for hookers and blow.
https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin...
It's all about the ride. Enjoy!
I was very lucky. Got it all into Bitcoin in November or so and left December 10, 2017. Made more than 150% in roughly a month with a bit of trading. A week after, the thing crashed here. I was very...very lucky, nothing more than that. Currently, I have nothing invested anymore.
Lets look at the history of Bitcoin. Mysterious figure comes on the scene, posts guidelines on it, has a ton of currency, a ton of people start getting involved early on.
BTC has been a pump and dump thing since 2014, where the entire design of the currency is to reward miners early on, back when GPUs or even CPUs could crank out coins as opposed to highly specialized ASIC farms. People late to the party pay the huge investment costs, which reward those who mined it back when it didn't take huge amounts of energy to make.
Early adopters -- rich, latecomers -- paying the costs. If it quacks like a duck...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX7wtNOkuHo
Crypto veterans and true enthusiasts have seen this happen before. The 2014 bear market lasted over 2 years. They are not worried.
It is disappointing however to see posts like this and the usual replies.
Those people mentioned taking loans or thinking about sticking it to the man are just pathetic and they deserve what they got. If it wasn't bitcoin, it would have been the dotcom bubble or something else.
Particularly the Korean woman who lost 90%. That could only have happened if she invested in shitcoins, probably expecting higher gains than typical.
When something goes parabolic, a heavy correction is inevitable and that is irrespective of the value of the asset, whatever you may think it is. Anyone who fails to understand basic concepts has no business investing in anything.
And again, nobody focuses on actually learning what the tech is about, how it can be useful and why. All they care about is making money fast and easy. I'm sorry it doesn't work that way and it's not bitcoin's fault. There is only one way this could go for people like them.
The others, who know why they put their money (not more than they can afford) into bitcoin and actually bothered reading up before doing so are not worried.
In the end, if you believe that bitcoin has a future and adoption will increase, today's marketcap is far too small, and (longterm) increase is inevitable.
If you believe it's just the latest craze and will die out, you should never invest a penny in it.
"I guess I thought we were 'sticking it to the man' when I got on board," Mr. Herman said. "But I think 'the man' had already caught on, and had an exit strategy."
Not quite. "The man" is still invested in hard currencies and real stocks. "The man" for the most part never needed an exit strategy, because they were never in to begin with.
Nope, no sig
Not a dumbass get-rich-quick sucker, don't care.
What I mostly saw from small investors was folks who had a small amount of savings (under $50k, often _well_ under $50k...) and were nearing the age where they couldn't work anymore. Buddy of mine's in that boat. Not a lot of skills. Not a bad guy just kind of a flake. Hard worker but hard work can only take you so far. Parents are still alive and a pretty big burden on him too. He got stuck taking care of them in a town with no jobs.
He threw a little of his savings at crypto because he's desperate and doesn't know what else to do. It's not "someone dumber" it's "maybe this'll work, and I've got very little to lose". It's like buying a lottery ticket. It's desperate hope of the kind that we wouldn't need if we had a better safety net and retirement system.
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multiple studies have shown people under high stress make poor choices. It's one of the reasons the cycle of poverty exits.
As for bad investments, the rich make them all the time. 80% of startups fail and they make their money on the 20%. The difference between a rich man and a poor man is the rich man can spread risk around in such a way to always make a profit. They're like bookie.
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It seems to me if you can come up with $90k in cash, there are probably better ways to escape "hardship". I don't know this lady or her situation, but at first glance, this statement does not engender any feelings of sympathy in me.
With the modification that you don't know when Halloween is until afterwards.
The AC gave you a better model.
You are conflating money and currency. They are not the same thing.
If explicit government policy works out, your $10k willl be worth only about $9804. That's a lot of lost purchasing power!
Now maybe the price of graphics cards will drop so normal Joe Six-Pack can afford them instead of all the bitcoin farms buying them up, driving the price of them up as well.....
If you stuffed $50k under your mattress about 5 years ago, it is now worth $46,347.31 in terms of purchasing power 5 years ago; by "saving", the government has stolen $3652.69 in just 5 years.
I'm afraid you've just revealed your sheltered life.
People who travel internationally are familiar with the need to exchange (or, rather, buy) various currencies; certainly, they are familiar with the fact that the value of one currency changes quite a bit relative to the value of another currency, on a day-to-day and definitely year-to-year basis.
Among these people, it is therefore quite common to invest in currencies, because they see indications that a currency's value might go up relative to their own major holdings in another currency.
You see, when you buy a currency, you are investing in the entire economy that is denominated in that currency.
When you buy the Russian ruble, you are investing in the Russian-ruble economy; when you buy the U.S. dollar, you are investing in the U.S.-dollar economy (which is enormous and virtually global).
When you buy bitcoin, you are investing in the bitcoin economy.
The current version of Bitcoin is whatever protocol is dominant among both miners and other users.
Your "Bitcoin cash" is NOT the current protocol or version of the software.
I think a better comparison would be to an asset bubble similar to tulips, 1990s tech stocks, 2008 housing crisis, etc. There is some value in bitcoins, and perhaps more general cryptocurrencies, but the market has clearly not yet figured out how to effectively evaluate and price them yet.
Go look at a gold chart and now use a stock picker to search through ETFs, if you search for lower beta or moderate growth ETFs there are tons of them that will make you much more money on anything except short term scales and have rarely lost any signifiant value.
If you have a nice diverse portfolio with gold I guess that's on you maybe you know something that I don't but the very existence of the uneducated gold fetish investor means that the price of gold could do anything at any time.
To illustrate this point let's say I invested in gold at a really good time, 16 years ago. My highest interest savings account pays 5%. You would have only double the money in gold vs the savings account. This is best case, also you would have gotten to enjoy the roller coaster, watching gold's value increase several times over around 2011 and then rapidly lose half of that, you having no idea when it would stop.
You need to invest broadly for stability, ETFs, mutual funds, etc. Not individual stocks or commodities. Even then stocks like Visa are still by far much better and more stable than gold by a long shot.
If you're investing in gold I suggest you spend an afternoon looking through a stock picker, learn what beta and p/e ratio means and look. Don't read blogs, don't listen to cnn or fox or reddit. Then when you have an idea of the investment options that are out there evaluate your reasons for investing in gold.
Gold is a stupid investment.
So a few people who were trying to get rich quick failed at it and lost money. Boo-hoo, cry me a river.
1849. Relive the dream. Again. Make 'murika Greedy Again.
If you stuffed $50k under your mattress about 5 years ago, it is now worth $46,347.31 in terms of purchasing power 5 years ago; by "saving", the government has stolen $3652.69 in just 5 years.
Inflation risk is just another risk to be considered
If an investment appears in the pages of tabloids then you'd better be shorting. No news here, just simple greed. Hope all the dealers on the darknets didn't get stung too badly, they were the only ones actually using it!
That is an objective datum. People are buying coins for that much; it's near-term history, which is a good indication of near-term future.
If you purchased Bitcoin last year this time it was around $4,000 USD. It's still over $6300 USD. People- including fellow slashdotters here- are just stupid. It was over valued, but it doesn't mean crypto currencies are worthless and its still likely been a better investment (not that I'd encourage anybody to invest in it) for most and anybody who has been investing in it for a while than any other investment your typical person would have made. Crypto currencies offer a lot of value in reducing the transactional costs of doing business and adding privacy and anonymity and control over ones money and transactions. For those who have been doing this for years none of what we have seen is a surprise. Suck it up- or quit while its down. It's your own undoing. If you don't understand why fiat currencies are so expensive economically, or think your not paying 6-12% more on near every transaction most of you make fooling yourself. You just don't understand the economics and costs of the banking system, credit card transaction costs, and so on that impact your spending power. Relative to crypto currencies even Bitcoin is amazing with "high" fees (today, compared to other crypto currencies in wide use like Dash and Bitcoin Cash, and no trading volume doesn't mean shit if there is no actual business being conducted, which is why Dash is on this list still, because Dash is actually being widely used in one of the few regions people are actually using crypto currencies; ie New Hampshire).
It was supposed to be a stable current to substitute for cash. Not as an investment opportunity.
Perhaps it will come down to a decent value, and stay there.
If you put 100,000 bolívares fuertes on the table on Monday, today they'd be worth 1 bolívar soberano. Maybe less.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Oh my, [e-currency of interest] is [up/down] by [random amount] over [trivial interval of time]. You have convinced me, that's for sure!
You have convinced me that you are Fool, and Your Money will be leaving your possession via a Different Door than You.
That's just the risk of investing in socialism.
Putting it under the mattress is not "savings". That's being the fool. Put it in the bank. Up to $250k, your savings are protected by the federal government. Even if you die, the US government will find your next of kin and give them that monies.
Do the same at other governments and see how it works out.
Seriously, why is basic investing & savings knowledge even a discussion on Slashdot?
This was simply a lesson for the young, inexperienced or foolish.
I'm actually surprised there aren't lawsuits flying about over folks losing everything they had on foolhardy investments.
Welcome to reality kids. You might want to hang on because it's a pretty rough ride.
Hey! Socialism will work when we do it this time.
Thatâ(TM)s not socialism. Itâ(TM)s a dictatorship. Thereâ(TM)s a difference.
... Is that, Gold, for instance, which used to back the U.S. dollar and has been a medium of exchange for thousands of years, requires very little technical know how to acquire. If you want some gold, you just have to find some by digging it up and separating it from it's surrounding impurities. Cryptocurrencies on the other hand heavily incentivize any users of it to keep their level of civilization at the point of which it can be utilized.
In other words, in order to mine cryptocurrency you need to be able to produce electrical power and you need to be able create the silicon chips necessary to do the calculations to mine it. In addition, computers need to be ubiquitous enough that people can hold and transact with the currency. Furthermore, if a particular cryptocurrency starts to misbehaving (the people running it or the majority owners of it start being nefarious douche-bags), all you need to do is fork the code over and start using a different currency.
Maybe cryptocurrencies will go the way of the BBS and some new and better way or version of, 'blockchain tech', will appear, perhaps something better than it. Maybe not.
The US Federal Reserve System is a stand-alone government entity, like the National Park Service or the IRS
Sure it is, in the same way that the Money Center at Walmart is a stand-alone entity.
I'm so glad I entered into bitcoin, made 150% profit over my investment and left one week after the crash with all my original money and profit intact. All of that in like a month or so. Many did not have the same luck. Money exchanged hands quickly in december and january...
Lots of people bitching here saying others were greedy, but without greed the financial market would never exist.
Humans are all hypocrites. No exceptions to this rule yet.
The idea of a decentralized authentication mechanism, the one underlying all crypto currencies, is very appealing. The people behind bitcoin and the blockchain knew it was an experiment, and recently they labeled the experiment as "failed".
Many will now jump on the bandwagon, but it was fairly obvious from the beginning that the blockchain has some deep flaws: huge energy expenditure, the 51% attack, the very limited bandwidth, and more. People who "invested" in cryptocurrencies were gambling. Some made out like bandits, but most have or will lose.
Nonetheless, the blockchain idea should continue to be researched. It is a very smart idea in spite of the flaws.
Producing slightly too much currency every year, as our Federal Reserve does, is a better approach
...which just happens to allow governments to fund themselves, under the radar of the common man, via currency devaulation. No need to be suspicious -- this is a total coincidence.
I am sitting here smiling. I did not participate in the cryptocurrency craze. I knew there was money to be made, or lost, but making money with cryptocurrency (not mining, but investing) felt unethical to me, so I didn't participate.
I am smiling at the karmic experience going on here. Many who were "investing" were trying to get something for nothing.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Unfortunately this is in the nature of risk taking. If you invest in something that has no risk, there will be little return. It is how things have always and ever worked.
By the time we average schmoes heard about cryptocurrency, the big guys were exiting taking their profits from our enthusiasm.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
> She drew on savings, an insurance policy and a $25,000 loan.
My investment perspective? Don't invest money you can't risk losing. Anything you don't mind losing is fair game.
With that in mind, drawing on your savings is a dumb idea, unless it's a small part of your savings you don't mind losing.
Drawing on an insurance policy is a plain dumb idea.
Now, drawing on **a fucking loan** to invest money is the dumbest thing of all. The money's gone, and she still owes it back.
All virtual currency investment is idiotic. Only morons invest. So I find it very hard to be sympathetic.
Won't someone think of the internet meth dealers!
A dictatorship of the proletariat.
Led, of course, by people who've appointed themselves the vanguard of the proletariat.
Funny how that always works.