Rant What was the point in being in IT, if we missed the bitcoin boom?

Im just sitting here, having spent around 2 hours... trying to buy litecoins. I wont go into the details of that other than to say I feel like smashing my screen into bits.

So on this Sunday afternoon before I head off to the office yet again to file nov over time and sort out some needfull april to oct 2012 tax returns.

Umm... im asking myself, what part of being in IT should have enabled me to have been in on bitcoins early, like lets be honest here, if we had bought bit coins, say £5 worth, or heck £100 worth you would be able to basicly move on now to another more interesting level of your life, like having flat out your own home, able to start your own business. Or if you wished to spend some of that money from the rocket climb from $0.1, to $1000 per bit coin.

Its like having been in IT right during the late 90s, and known about the up coming internet, but not spent two minutes to think enough to domain register bank.com

Im not sitting here feeling sorry for myself, we can spend a few moments thinking about people that have lost access to wallets worth many millions which im sure we have all read about.


Its just im sitting here having a honest think about it, and the truth is, is that IT and interesting aspects of... No one pinged me, no one clued me in, no one emailed me or said, hay listen mate you might want to buy £50 of bitcon its a good idea for the future.


And also in here.... who here is looking at the writing on the wall about litecoin, that is five times faster and is getting pulled up as well, hence the reason only because some guy on a boxing forum I go to is not letting go about the subject am I actually saying, sht actually this might be a good idea to look into.


The point im making, im not having a go or blaming any one , im just saying, we all should have been in on bitcoin to some extent, even if your wallet had £20 in there.

What was the point of being in IT that we missed that chance to make some serious money. Sure we are fixing computers and supporting companys/users but these extra bits should not be past us.


Just throwing it out there.... has any one actually stopped and thought about this a bit?


I feel not jelious, no not at all... I feel like im an idiot, like being a fisherman with the best ship, going past the best waters with the best fish but going to the worst waters for some one else and getting paid poor wages for a 65 hour week.


Where is your bit coin wallet with 2000 bit coins in there?

if you dont have that why not if your in IT, which part of your interaction with IT caused you not to be aware of what was to come about?


What was the point of being in IT?
You have to be a bit cynical about things some times, is it unfair to blaim yourself for having missed bit coins when at 0.20,
I never even heard about it, did any one here hear about it when it first started?

 

Basically, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

 

I wouldn't feel particularly sore if I missed out on a ponzi scheme.

https://twitter.com/ButtCoin

 

Mike Sacco ‏@mikesacco 25 Nov
never forget that the heart of Bitcoin trading is a site that used to buy and sell Magic: The Gathering cards

 

http://presstokill.com/coins/?mode=cosby This is essentially buttcoins.

 

I once worked for a few years in Deaf mental health --quite a niche field in clinical psychology. I published two models in it --one which I cooked up with a research assistant over coffee conceptualising the different types of deafness and their psychological impact and meaning, and one on neuropsycholinguistic factors in challenging behaviour in Deaf mental health (catchy). It was particularly the first model that created a stir. A few psychologists who had worked in the field for decades looked at it and said: "My god, that is so obvious and elegant. Why didn't I think of that?".

I'm not exceptionally bright --I got lucky, is all.

Thing is, just because you're in IT doesn't make you a geek. And just because you're a geek doesn't mean you happen to have that flash of insight at the right time. And just because you have a flash of insight doesn't mean it is well-developed, or that you'll act on it, in any meaningful way. There are a number of things I predicted: smartphones (at age 8 I postulated that everyone in the future would have a pocket-calculator-sized computer in their pocket, that could do, well, everything); touch tablet interfaces (in hindsight I note that the desktop that I hacked together on my old 2004 Motion Computing Windows XP tablet using Samurize, Yahoo Widgets and RocketDock is remarkably similar in look and function to today's Android tablet desktop).

Zuckerberg had an idea at the right time and followed through on it. Steve Jobs did. Many others did too, but their stuff fell by the wayside: Courier, WebOS. Others had the right idea at the wrong time: Leonardo's flying machines, Babbage and Lovelace's computer. Others bumped into a wall of misogyny: Beatrix Potter who kind of in a roundabout way predicted penicillin, but she was a woman, so nobody listened.

The only thing you can do is keep having ideas. In a natural selective way, a few seeds will take root, a few will evolve and a few of those may make it. And don't be bitter. It's a wasted emotion.

 

Survivorship bias.

For every bitcoin there's a 100 other crypto currencies which haven't managed to replicate the mania. Equally in 2009 there was no good reason to think crypto currencies would actually become popular.

https://blockchain.info/charts/market-cap?timespan=all&daysAverageString=1&scale=1&address=

 

Pretty much this.

Also, if everyone with a decent knowledge of IT realised what was going to happen then what has happened wouldn't have actually happened so there wouldn't be anything to miss out on

 

+1

+1 to this too (maybe...)

---

There are companies in stock market that make huge moves, only fraction from all of the investors/traders can catch them early. Same with BTC and LTC, how many of us expected them to be worth tens or thousands of US dollars? Not many...

How well do you think BTC or LTC will stay strong? Yeah, me neither... All I can say is that the value is totally speculative, the price can go to thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, heck, even billions. There is nothing to stop it from rising to infinity, only the downside is limited to 0, the value will be what people will be willing to pay.

LTC is still rather easy to mine so that's what I am personally doing, just to get few coins, so if the value really goes high (to thousands or tens of thousands) I can get some easy money for nothing basicly.

Personally I can sleep so much easier while owning company shares through stock market, because there is actually something behind the value of that single share, not just speculation (thou' there is some of that too for sure). Sure they might have only gained 10-50%, but risk is just so much smaller than in BTC or LTC so I can put so much more money into stocks than I would put into BTC or LTC. Also BTC and LTC can be cracked, like money can be printed, what will happen then when it's figured out.

What will happen with BTC and other crypto currencies, I don't know, but maybe... Tulip mania.

 

If all IT people had decided bitcoin was a fantastic idea in 2009 the speculative bubble would of occurred then. Maybe it would of petered out, maybe not.

As it currently stands not a single person buys a bitcoin because they need a bitcoin. They buy because they need a $1,000 dollars to spend in some TOR marketplace through this hard to trace medium. The merchant set their price in the same manner.

 

I don't think the OP is the only one who is kicking themselves about not getting into bitcoins early on. The thought of only having to have put down ~£20 a few years ago and to have it worth ~£1,000,000 would leave anyone sour. When I first heard about bitcoins, I thought 'ah, that'll die off quickly'. Well, they haven't - for the moment.

The bitcoin has to crash at some point. I hate the idea of a virtual currency. There again, it is possible to argue that the Stock Market is just as virtual - it's all controlled by computers now anyway.

 

I've had enough "predictions" to know that when my gut says so, act.

 

There's not a lot of point of getting upset about it. It's not too late to get involved if you want, although mining wouldn't be a sensible you could still buy into BTC.

Obviously it would have been nice to know it would bloom like it has, I definitely would have withdrawn mine before the pool failed if I'd known as I would certainly have liked the money but ah well.

No one could predict exactly how it was going to turn out in my opinion.

 

Stock give you an ownership stake in a very real business with assets and revenue.

 

Cheer up mate.

A friend of mine spent a few k on bit coins at the right time, he has happy life atm, I my self was thinking of doing the same but didn't. Do I have regrets? Yep,
Am I loosing sleep over it or still crying about it? Nope

Not saying I'm have good life but I'm enjoying my life with my kids, no amount of money could give me that.

 

Ponzi scheme written all over it!

 

I don't see how it is a ponzi scheme.
Even if Bitcoins are ultimately worthless, exactly what people are actually buying and selling is pretty transparent, which is exactly what a ponzi scheme is designed not to be.

Assuming it doesn't become a valid self regulating currency and it does all turn to **** at some point, I would say it's much more like a very high stakes game of musical chairs

 

Plenty of people also sold last year when they were worth $80 no one could of saw this coming. I had 10 coins last year and sold for about $105 per coin after change as I expected that to be its limits I made 1000 times my initial investment of $1.5. Bit coin was worth 15 cent when I brought 10 for a laugh my m8 did the same. We both assumed we were throwing cash in the drain.

I have no regrets paid for a nice computer upgrade that I would not of done otherwise.

Don't know anyone who had 100s of them early though like $30-$40 worth. Personally expected it to crash and burn.

It's like been on apples shares when they were worth $3-4 and selling when at $700.

By the time most relised what bit coin was all the easy coins from CPU mining where gone already. A lot of people where happy to sell up and break even in a lot of cases when the price hit $20-$50.

If America or China decides it does not want bit coin on there economy's you will see it drop to basically worthless again.

 

Bitcoin = money laundering made easy.

I hate to think of how much of the BC market is built from criminal activity.

 

I had this discussion with someone at work last night. Why didn't I buy BC when the price was so much lower.

I might start mining LC just for kicks and see what happens. Maybe make some money maybe not.

Most people ignored BC because it was designed for criminal purposes or purchasing black market goods.

The Mothership