Breaky Bitcoin Blues

Slideways · 10-09-2018 2:51pm #1

I was having the porridge this morning with a few colleagues, and the chat came around to cryptocurrency. Turns out they all got roasted buying bitcoin, Ethereum and other coins during the bubble in November and December of last year. Two of the lads are going to sell their remaining coins this week, and put the whole thing down to getting greedy and falling for a classic pyramid scheme. One other lad (a hard-living Scot) was threatening to track down an ex-colleague of ours and ‘put the slipphery wee kunt in a grave’ for talking the group into buying these coins in the first place.

One of them was worth almost 900k Aussie dollars at the height of the bubble. He was boasting back in December about buying a yacht, moving to Puerto Rico, and shacking up with some local bird with his epic crypto gains. His investment is now worth less than 3k.That’s shocking stuff. You’d hear very little these days about the space in the papers, or on the telly. Did anyone here lose the arse of their trousers gambling on these coins, and did you learn a lesson? Has it any future at all? Was it greed, stupidity, or a mixture of both that caused young lads to throw their savings into this stuff? You’d have to stroke your chin and wonder what they were thinking.

Woke Hogan · 10-09-2018 2:56pm

I work with a few lads who invested in crypto currencies last year, and they're all regretting it now. I can't help but laugh at those fools, you could see it was a bubble from a mile away.

callaway92 · 10-09-2018 2:58pm

Woke Hogan wrote: »

I work with a few lads who invested in crypto currencies last year, and they're all regretting it now. I can't help but laugh at those fools, you could see it was a bubble from a mile away.

Thank you captain hindsight

Under His Eye · 10-09-2018 2:59pm

Pyramid scheme from the get go. Zero sympathy for those suckers.

valoren · 10-09-2018 2:59pm

It's all a modern day tulip mania. Been happening for centuries and will continue to happen.
I read about bitcoin in 2009 but to actually own them was such a technical mind melt I ignored it.

We're a nation of gamblers not investors and something like Bitcoin and Crypto was always going to dupe risk takers.
Same with pyramid schemes which always manage to find 'investors' here.

Ciaran_B · 10-09-2018 2:59pm

I know nothing about crypto but when I saw ads on the side of Dublin Buses selling Crypto services I knew the jig was up.

Woke Hogan · 10-09-2018 2:59pm

callaway92 wrote: »

Thank you captain hindsight

Grow up.

10-09-2018 3:01pm

Slideways wrote: »

...........

One of them was worth almost 900k Aussie dollars at the height of the bubble........His investment is now worth less than 3k..............

I'm struggling to see how that's possible tbh. We aren't 99.7% off peak values.

chakotha · 10-09-2018 3:01pm

I cashed out in July and lost 60% of initial investment.

callaway92 · 10-09-2018 3:05pm

Woke Hogan wrote: »

Grow up.

Odd comment

kneemos · 10-09-2018 3:06pm

Was this a porridge binge?

10-09-2018 3:06pm

I made a profit off of it. I first started using bitcoin when it was worth about $500. I used to buy drugs of the darkweb with it. Unbelievably handy. I happened to have a small amount when it jumped but sold when it was worth around $2000. I went on to do a ton of daily trades. It was so easy to make money tbh. It's so volatile. Buy at X, sell at X+1. Repeat ad nauseam. I bought some ethereum a few days ago when it hit 180. I find it bizarre when people freak out and sell when it hits its lowest point or refuse to sell when its high to lock in some profit. Some people just aren't made for it.

10-09-2018 3:09pm

Or maybe I just got lucky. The amount of people online claiming they know what they are talking about is insane. Nobody really knows whats going to happen.

seamus · 10-09-2018 3:11pm

It's standard bubble greed and naivety that burned people. The same old nonsense about crypto was being spouted that we heard about property back in the 2000s.

The age-old rule still applies; once the dogs on the street and the taximen are giving investment advice, you've already missed the boat and the wheels are about to come off.

If your colleagues are talking about it over lunch and your Ma is asking you about it, sell up.

A couple of colleagues claimed to be sticking some money in it, they may have lost on it, I dunno.
One Aussie colleague managed to gather a ****load of coins way back in 2010/11, for no real reason. Just fncking about on the internet, installed a miner, load of coins, pure luck. In 2017 he mostly cashed out before it went crazy, paid off some huge tax bills, bought some stupid amount of land like 200 hectares in Tasmania and threw 2 million dollars into a pension account. His reasoning was that he was now set up for retirement, he had a few coins to keep him going day-to-day, but he would still need to keep working while still having the freedom to not have to worry about being paid a huge salary. In his words, if he didn't do it this way he would have, "blown the whole lot of it up my nose and died at 35".

The concept is sound, the fact that it's a pure free-market unregulated currency means that it's always going to be abused by investors/speculators. Even if bitcoin were ever to become a real currency, it will be forever intensely unstable and unreliable.

Aongus Von Bismarck · 10-09-2018 5:35pm

A complete scam of course, and it just goes to shows what happens when large amounts of people who don't understand economics, the creation of wealth, and the systems behind it, attempt to 'get rich quick'.

That said, not everyone lost money. Over 90% of people did. I made some money off Bitcoin completely by chance. A number of us here at the bank in Frankfurt bought some of them a number of years back. We had intended to give them to one of C-Suite in the bank as a joke present - the 'future of money'. We didn't however, as he died of a massive heart attack before we had the opportunity to do so.

Anyway, we forgot about them, until last December, where we saw that each coin was valued at over 10k dollars a pop. We cashed them all in at 14700k a pop, which wasn't the height of the bubble, but no point getting greedy with this sort of thing, and ending up being a bag-holder/owner of worthless digital 'beany babies'.

I paid the required tax on the profits, and was able to purchase a small holiday home in West Cork with the proceeds. I also had enough left over to purchase a golf course membership down there, as well as a Paul Henry painting for the kitchen. So all-in-all, a pleasant experience.

Don't even bother reading about it these days. There's this idea that those of us who work in traditional banking are terrified of bitcoin. We aren't. It's silly libertarians playing silly games with silly virtual money.

RIGOLO · 10-09-2018 5:45pm

Aongus Von Bismarck wrote: »

A complete scam of course, and it just goes to shows what happens when large amounts of people who don't understand economics, the creation of wealth, and the systems behind it, attempt to 'get rich quick'.

That said, not everyone lost money. Over 90% of people did. I made some money off Bitcoin completely by chance. A number of us here at the bank in Frankfurt bought some of them a number of years back. We had intended to give them to one of C-Suite in the bank as a joke present - the 'future of money'. We didn't however, as he died of a massive heart attack before we had the opportunity to do so.

Anyway, we forgot about them, until last December, where we saw that each coin was valued at over 10k dollars a pop. We cashed them all in at 14700k a pop, which wasn't the height of the bubble, but no point getting greedy with this sort of thing, and ending up being a bag-holder/owner of worthless digital 'beany babies'.

I paid the required tax on the profits, and was able to purchase a small holiday home in West Cork with the proceeds. I also had enough left over to purchase a golf course membership down there, as well as a Paul Henry painting for the kitchen. So all-in-all, a pleasant experience.

Don't even bother reading about it these days. There's this idea that those of us who work in traditional banking are terrified of bitcoin. We aren't. It's silly libertarians playing silly games with silly virtual money.

So that would be economists and leaders of large financial institutions like yourself then ...

JohnnyFlash · 10-09-2018 6:03pm

seamus wrote: »

The concept is sound, the fact that it's a pure free-market unregulated currency means that it's always going to be abused by investors/speculators. Even if bitcoin were ever to become a real currency, it will be forever intensely unstable and unreliable.

How is the concept sound, dude? Bitcoin mining is an environmental disaster (using way more electricity than the entire island of Ireland), the scene is awash with wash trading, spoof orders, painting the tape, and other scams that have been banned in other markets for decades. It's slow, expensive to use, if you forget your password then you've lost your bitcoin forever, theft is rife. It's one of the most retrograde technological developments ever created.

7aubzxk43m2sni · 10-09-2018 6:07pm

JohnnyFlash wrote: »

How is the concept sound, dude? Bitcoin mining is an environmental disaster (using way more electricity than the entire island of Ireland), the scene is awash with wash trading, spoof orders, painting the tape, and other scams that have been banned in other markets for decades. It's slow, expensive to use, if you forget your password then you've lost your bitcoin forever, theft is rife. It's one of the most retrograde technological developments ever created.

You're conveniently ignoring the decentralisation aspect and the benefits of the blockchain.

pleas advice · 10-09-2018 6:15pm

I don't know what a blockchain is

10-09-2018 6:35pm

pleas advice wrote: »

I don't know what a blockchain is

A type of distributed decentralised database.

A giant ledger that everyone has access to. Each trade is shared onto it.

WhiteMemento9 · 10-09-2018 6:44pm

Augeo wrote: »

I'm struggling to see how that's possible tbh. We aren't 99.7% off peak values.

It depends on the holdings. Stuff like BitConnect actually was a proper pyramid scheme which went from hundreds to worthless almost overnight. Verge is another one that had ridiculous valuations at one point and has lost almost all value. Plenty of other altcoins went from big valuations to fractional amounts off height value. It is hard though to see how 900k ----> 3k happened but it is possible if holdings were in absolute trash coins

Manic Moran · 10-09-2018 7:42pm

I'm about breaking even right now. Running a small loss. Didn't sell when I should have, but it's all completely academic until I actually press the 'sell' button.

I've well into five figures into it. The rule is "Don't put in what you can't afford to lose". I'm sure as hell going to notice if I lose it, but neither am I going to be on the streets or begging during retirement.

Since I don't need it to live, I'm just going to keep holding. If it goes up again, fantastic. If not, well, I wouldn't be the first person to lose money on an investment.

Ipso · 10-09-2018 7:53pm

It will come in useful to buy shotguns and beans when Immortan Joe takes over.

Jack Moore · 10-09-2018 8:32pm

Slideways wrote: »

I was having the porridge this morning with a few colleagues, and the chat came around to cryptocurrency. Turns out they all got roasted buying bitcoin, Ethereum and other coins during the bubble in November and December of last year. Two of the lads are going to sell their remaining coins this week, and put the whole thing down to getting greedy and falling for a classic pyramid scheme. One other lad (a hard-living Scot) was threatening to track down an ex-colleague of ours and ‘put the slipphery wee kunt in a grave’ for talking the group into buying these coins in the first place.

One of them was worth almost 900k Aussie dollars at the height of the bubble. He was boasting back in December about buying a yacht, moving to Puerto Rico, and shacking up with some local bird with his epic crypto gains. His investment is now worth less than 3k.That’s shocking stuff. You’d hear very little these days about the space in the papers, or on the telly. Did anyone here lose the arse of their trousers gambling on these coins, and did you learn a lesson? Has it any future at all? Was it greed, stupidity, or a mixture of both that caused young lads to throw their savings into this stuff? You’d have to stroke your chin and wonder what they were thinking.

I don’t u derstand this
Bg has fallen from a peak of 17 k to a current 5.5 k so how has he lost 99.7%

Ipso · 10-09-2018 8:35pm

Jack Moore wrote: »

I don’t u derstand this
Bg has fallen from a peak of 17 k to a current 5.5 k so how has he lost 99.7%

It depends when he bought, he might have got in very early. And he may be looking at losses the way people looked at house process back in the day.

Jack Moore · 10-09-2018 8:39pm

Ipso wrote: »

It depends when he bought, he might have got in very early. And he may be looking at losses the way people looked at house process back in the day.

No I get how he got up to 900k
But 900k at peak is worth 300k now

Ipso · 10-09-2018 8:43pm

Jack Moore wrote: »

No I get how he got up to 900k
But 900k at peak is worth 300k now

Right, I get you. Unless his broker charges "miscellaneous" fees.

JohnnyFlash · 10-09-2018 8:45pm

Ipso wrote: »

Right, I get you. Unless his broker charges "miscellaneous" fees.

Might have bought altcoins. Some of them have lost >95% of their value.

10-09-2018 9:36pm

No point selling now, ride it out and see what happens is my plan.

JJJJNR · 10-09-2018 10:03pm

Just spent a year researching projects, happy to say I'm down 5% and looking to get more in the next few weeks.

Slideways · 11-09-2018 8:17am

I notice there’s a few doubters as to the legitimacy of my post.

This guy (the biggest loser bought financially and in real life) bought in early and rode the wave to the top. Instead of cashing out and enjoying his money he got greedy. He’d come across some emerging altcoin after reading a white paper one of his mates sent him and and thinking he was the next Richard Branson got in early and bought a huge stake in it.

I don’t recall the name of it but it crashed spectacularly and old bud is left with the half of fcuk all.

As my old man always says, “A fool and his money is easily parted”

Breaky Bitcoin Blues

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