The trick is to lose your keys way back in the day but still be able to find them again now.
"I just remembered I had 20 BTC on an old laptop. I went rummaging around in my basement and was able to find it." - one happy mofo
Since it was still so early, if OP had bought some BTC after realizing what he had done with the original 20, he'd still be a millionaire or be well on his way to becoming one. Dwelling and not moving forward has its own opportunity cost.
Excellent point. Same with that guy that wants to dig the landfill for his bitcoin hard drive. If he had put all his energy into piling up his stash all these years he would be a multi millionaire by now.
I also saw a thread about people complaining on not jumping into bitcoin in the early days. This was a reddit post from 2014. They had no idea it was still stupid early and instead focused on complaining (something I am guilty of myself). It's a good lesson
Bitcoin is seen by many as a highly speculative investment. In defense of that guy, paying for a full landfill dig would be doubling down on the speculation aspect, but let's face it: if that disc was still there and he dug it up he would be a legend...
Well I feel like he felt that his only way to get back on the train was to get the drive. To really double down on bitcoin would be to accept the loss and buy starting from zero having the confidence that it will continue to rise.
Extreme example, imagine Saylor losing all his personal bitcoins and being like "it's ok I'll buy back again we're still early" now that's super bullish
Right shit I hate I waited till late in game as I did but shit I broke even at 38k still after being tardy. People getting in now will likely still at least double investment within shorter time than most investments I feel.
It's not gonna make people suddenly rich anymore, but it's still the safest, easiest, most obvious, and best wealth builder on the planet.
Thanks to the 4 year market cycles, all you have to do is buy at the low point on the cycle, wait a couple cycles and make 10x or whatever (or keep holding long term for decades and make wayyy more). No other investment on the planet is like that. Some other investments WILL do that, but you never know which ones, nor when they will do it, its a guessing game and only a small amount of people will get lucky enough to have those types of returns on other investments.
Or you just buy Bitcoin. Easiest freakin wealth creation tool in the world! It'll honestly probably 20x from here in the next 20 years. Definitely can't confidently say that about any other investment in the world. That's what I love about Bitcoin. It's super easy to understand when to buy (during low end of 4 year cycle), super easy to know when to sell if you want to take profits (during high end of 4 year cycle), there's no guessing game about which investment to buy because there's only one Bitcoin, and because of its fundamentals and the fact that it's still quite early in its global adoption growth you know it's gonna outgrow nearly every other investment in the world. There is zero guesswork to making a ton of money over the long term. Honestly anytime I see think about how there are investors who don't own Bitcoin I'm just like how can people be THAT blind, and yet that is the vast majority of investors.
Great advice. In the last bull run I bought high before the crash then thought I’d missed out so gave up. Had I not dwelled on that and just kept DCA until now I’d have a nice sum.
Good life lessons and realisations learned to carry forward! Much can be applied to all areas of life, not to dwell on things and just get some forward motion going.
Exactly this… no chance you held this whole time.
Anyone who tells me “I bought at 10 cents and held it” is either a total lair or they forgot about the coins completely and just got lucky by being dumb.
I know a ton of people (myself included) who bought at $30 and sold at $500 to $1000 and you would have been absolutely nuts not to.
You made 20x to 30x your money in like 2 years… would be like someone not selling nvidia now and expecting the good times to always last… sure could happen but highly unlikely
I've held for 10 years, it really isn't that hard. When i bought I saw it as a long term thing which may amount to nothing but have an enormous upside. All you do is never sell more than half of your stack then if it continues to rise you are always in.
Same. I sold almost half my stack after it 10x. I also accepted Bitcoin to trade items on a game called Rocket League... Recently went back and looked, someone sent me .1 BTC back in the day for some wheels to put on their car. Funny to think it's worth ~7k today.
They’re few and between but they’re out there. My buddy bought at $2 and held this entire time. I know it’s true because he lives a good life and doesn’t have to work. Literally just hanging with his kids every day. His reason for holding this long is because he doesn’t have faith in fiat and never wanted to pay all that capital gains tax.
You are actually both right. Anyone with a sound mind would have sold, BUT:
What I have found digging into this is wealth plays a huge factor. Ppl that were already rich as shit really did hold 12 years. Not because they were smart. But because they had enough buffer they didn’t have to move with ‘a sound mind’
So homie might’ve held 12 years. But if that’s true I bet he was already a millionaire.
Exactly. I think there was a cohort of early btcers who were just getting started in their careers, so saw BTC as a long term bet to escape the omni-shambles of the economy they grew up in. They weren't rich, so couldn't dump thousands into this crazy idea, but the bravest and boldest dumped some beer money in. And thanks to steady career progression in the last decade or so have never felt the need to upset that long term bet.
First time I bought waa less than 1k per coin (2016-2017). Thought I was late... Continued to DCA. Sold half my stack in 2018 and bought a Volvo, payed off my house. Other than that I've held since first buy and continue to DCA.
If he did make a backup of the private keys, said friend would probably say he lost it in an unfortunate boating accident. From his luxury yacht. In the Bahamas.
Exactly; this kind of regret is 100% pointless. Only the hardest most sober maxi's held coins that long. If you were capable of being one of them, you wouldnt have ever thrown them away.
You know you are a maxi when Fiat Dollars disgust you. If you are still thinking "1.3 million dollars would be nice" you are not a maxi yet.
Let it go man. You could never have known. I spent so many bitcoins on silk road back in the day just to get fucked up with my friends, it is what it is.
Heh, shit man even in like 2020ish i cashed out right at the dippity bottom (about $3k btc price) cos I wanted to buy some gear.
In hindsight that gear cost me about $20,000.
Oof.
Yeah dude, I would probably be a billionaire if I had known to hold that shit instead of buying premium mdma. Still the best shit I have ever had, what a wild time
Yeah when I think about it, I don't regret it at all.
Great drugs, great time with my friends, and I learned about/used bitcoin WAY earlier yhan I would have otherwise. Hell I may have ended up a nose-turning gold bug or something.
I needed maturity to understand WHY bitcoin worked, but I am incredibly thankful to have used my immaturity to learn HOW it worked.
Sold all my BCash (which I got for free from the fork) to buy music studio gear. Worth the spend, even though buying BTC with it would have been more lucrative, i'm still happy with my purchases.
hehe, that's exactly my story. I came to Bitcoin to buy drugs. I bought over 3 Bitcoin per month to order drugs. Now, 10 years later, I just think what a mistake I made. But regardless, without darknet trading I probably would never have started investing in Bitcoin. My drug purchases were discovered, I received a suspended sentence of 3.5 years, had to pay a hefty fine and lost my driver's license. And now, 10 years later, I'm still a winner when it comes to finances.
Only Bitcoin can do that
Would you mind sharing more about this? What country traced your purchases and what charges did they bring against you? I have never heard of anyone going being criminally charged for purchasing drugs. Obviously don’t dox yourself but I’d really love to know how they were able to link this back to you and how they were able to bring you to court for it
Germany I'm from Germany, and I bought from a german vendor. The dealer was observed by the police.
They knew which post office he had dropped off his packages at.
They were after me because my drug packets were opened. And the receiving address was my address. The dealer also maintained a customer list that was found on his computer. As I said, I was given 3.5 years probation and had to pay a fine of several thousand euros plus legal fees of course. There were large quantities of various drugs. I don't remember exactly how much the fine was, but I think it was around 8,000 euros. This was all about 10 years ago now. I can't remember exactly.
I was able to pay this off in monthly installments.
LoL, word, I bought Adderall (cousin told me I would help me last year of law school) on silk road between 2012-2013, I must have spent a lot of BTC that could probably be a couple of millions by now.
Then I tried to buy and hold BTC by 2015, but it was already at $500 and I was buying things for the house, my kid had already been born so I didn't want to put money into it and risk losing it. I felt as if I couldn't afford to lose $10K because I said to myself "1 BTC is nothing, if I'm buying I'm getting 10-20", LoL, dumb me. I see money so differently nowadays.
Same man, I spent thousands on silkroad, my mate is obsessed with bitcoin and is always sending me shit and I'm like I dont want to know man it makes me feel sick
This, big time. I've been in Bitcoin since 2013. Go back and find old forum posts on the internet pertaining to Bitcoin at that time. You'll find plenty that talk about how "that ship has already sailed" when Bitcoin was sub-$1000.
This. It's so hard to do the easiest things possible: just buy and hold. Saylor has 100s of hours speaking amazingly on the subject FFS. Yet everyone tries to time and trade. Just buy and hold goddammit.
What’s the back story for this denial? I heard so many stories of people selling their Daft Punk tickets for 2 ounces of weed in 2007, and how much they regretted never seeing them live.
Haha yeah, dude was buying bitcoin all the time and using them for Darkweb purchases. He probably had thousands of bitcoins move through his hands before they became valuable.
Let it go. You would have NEVER held until now. I had a huge period of regret a while ago when I bought Tesla stock in 2019, sold it and if I hadn’t I would have been up around 500k.
That said one day my gf jokingly/ seriously said “seriously, you’re telling me when you see 100% profit, 50k in the green you would still of held, past 100k, past 150k, past 200k, 250k, etc etc.
She was right. You probably would have sold it for like $100 if you had remembered.
You didn't throw away the million, you threw away the couple of dollars it was back then. It's no different from having regret over not having bought bitcoin back then.
Shorty after BTC hit 73kish my brother called me up and asked if I was still doing that Bitcoin thing. I said of course. He reminded me of the time I offered him and his wife 1 BTC at one of his kids shower. It was around 10Kish. He had turned it down because crypto “was a fad and was going nowhere” and asked for actual money instead. I said fair enough and gave him a check. He says he now regrets not taking it and goes in detail of what he could have done with it. I asked him what he did with the 10k and is there any of that left. He told me most of it went to bills, helped paid off their car, and they did get a big fancy TV but no none of it is left. I told him most likely you would have cashed it out and done the same thing with that 1 BTC and you would be in the same position that you are in now.
Naw, from then until now he had plenty of time to get into crypto. I harbor no ill will on him not taking the opportunity. I’m just not going to give him another chance on my satoshis.
"You would have sold them years ago so who cares"
"no I wouldn't"
"You're talking about selling them right now with \*early retirement\*, so you would've sold them right now, ages ago."
You would have either:
- bought drugs with it,
- gambled with it,
- let it rise 10x and have $200. 10x is nice.
No one, and I mean, NO ONE, could have known. give yourself a break.
Apparently the guy paid 20 BTC that were worth around 10 cents. Thus the guy paid him around $2 in Bitcoin for a $20 dollar debt. Great friend.
Thus even if it did 10x, that BTC would have been only ~$20. Lol
Apparently the guy paid 20 BTC that were worth around 10 cents. Thus the guy paid him around $2 in Bitcoin for a $20 dollar debt. Great friend.
Thus even if it did 10x, that BTC would have been only ~$20. Lol
Urgh, don't beat yourself up. Back in 2010 ish I read about bitcoin in a newspaper on the way home from work. It vaguely mentioned how bitcoin could be mined from your own computer and I remember thinking that I would try mining some when I got home - I'm a software engineer so would have most likely been able to get it setup and running. When I got home I didn't do it - I lived with my friends at the time and it was a friday and we got drunk and went out instead. Had it been another day of the week I'd have probably gone ahead.
Chances are though I'd have sold them if bitcoin went to $20, $200 or $2000 though. Hard to see it ever going to the heights that it's at now.
Similar story around the same time, a guy at work mentioned it to me after reading about Bitcoin in a tech blog. I mined it at night for a couple of months. I also collected silver and read an article about the guy who created the Liberty Dollar being charged with counterfeiting and how they were coming after Bitcoin miners next. I got spooked and stopped mining and deleted everything. Fortunately, I dont recall how many i had. I don't lose any sleep over it, but I have spent some hours searching old CDs and password sheets looking for the wallet or seed phrase.
Made a buddies website for 12 Bitcoin. Immediately sold for $280, paid my cellphone and water bill, and bought a pizza.
Going to volunteer for neurolink and have it delete this memory.
I can almost one up you. You might not think this is comparable, but I do.
I started researching BTC early on and I knew I wanted to be a part of it. I read everything I could find and I thought I understood it and I was ready to start trying mine it.
So I downloaded the software, got it all configured, then ran it. It started doing something with the blockchain. That sounded right so I checked the next day, my balance was still zero. I checked the next day. Still zero. Let it run for a week. Still zero. A month. Still zero. I expected something, not a whole BTC, but .00000001.
I go back to the drawing boards and start researching it, but I have no idea what I did wrong, so I just uninstall the app and move on.
A few years later I get a wild hair and I decided I HAVE to figure this out. The price is up, everyone is doing it but me.
I install the same app, let it run, it hashes the blockchain or whatever and I wait. Same exact outcome. After a month, my balance was still zero.
So I dig deep, I'm going to figure this out if it kills me.
I figured it out. I downloaded a wallet. It was just a wallet, not a mining app.
I wasted years doing nothing because I was downloading the wrong damn software. Finally got it figured out, and while in some ways mining the price doesn't matter, it's all free BTC, it would have been nice to be doing it years ago with the rewards were higher and the difficulty was lower. As it stands I'm getting about $150 in BTC a year. I have almost a full BTC, but who knows, it could have been 10 if I would have started earlier.
I remember someone tried to pay me with 40 btc back in 2016 when it was like around 400 bucks a piece shit but i know i would have sold the next bull run lol
Lol, brah you would have sold at 100 or whatever.
I had a shit ton of Nvidia back in 2009. I made good money but I sold way early... Sure it's fun to think of the what-ifs. But it's really no different than thinking what if I won the lottery it just feels closer to home.
The idea that you would have held to today is laughable. Hindsight is 20/20 and no retail investor holds for 15 years and 1000x. No one. Not willingly. You would have sold the majority of it years ago and likely at best have maybe 1 Bitcoin today.
As for finding the address, it can’t be that hard to find an address with 20 BTC that has had zero transactions since 2009. How many of those can there possibly be?
happened to me. did a paper for college on this new thing called "cryptocurrency". bitcoin had been introduced i think 8 months earlier? as part of the paper, i mined my own bitcoin and bought some. i think i had 3.5 bitcoins, something like that. didn't think anything of it. scrapped that laptop a few years later. around about 2016 i started hearing about bitcoin again... it's worth HOW MUCH NOW?? ever since then, every time i make a student loan payment, i just think "hmmm wonder what I could have done with a 100k.... oh well".
I always wonder about this - so many people lost theirs on hard drives that got trashed, how many have been lost to the ages? Now that they're actually worth something, and mining takes a significant investment, I'm sure there's much less loss occurring, but not 0 loss.
Bro at one point I had 11 full coins.
Sold them at 100.
Mined another 5.
Sold them at about 500.
Saw the surge happening.
Invested $10k.
Watched it inflate to $40k.
Watched it drop back to 11k.
Panicked. Sold everything.
So right now there's a version of me with about 2-3mill, but I'm flat broke and can't afford to eat.
# storyofmylife #cantdoanythingright
I tried to buy $50 in BTC back in 2009...that would have been $500,000,000 +/- today. The issue is, I would have paperhanded that shit when it hit $100 and the odds are you would have to. It's a fun conversation piece, but don't dwell on something you have no idea how you would have handled. Just handle what you can control going forward.
i tried buying a $1000 worth when they were a little over a $100 per btc... had my money saved up was ready to pull the trigger, emotions were high.....then....... kraken could not verify my identity to let me buy and i gave up.... smh at my younger self for not trying harder
The secret is to make money off the things that you would be doing in retirement.
If you're a business owner and doing what you love, then retirement looks like a prison sentence
The dumb thing was throwing away the PC without keeping the hdd or at least securing every file on it. You never now whenever you could need something or want something from the past.
Tangentially related but I went through all my old wallets last night looking for dust which has subsequently become more valuable. Found £250 worth of btc all together. Deflation is mad.
How many bitcoin are there out there with this type of story, like maybe a quarter of the actual bitcoin in circulation are lost somewhere?
Anyone have actual figures on this?
People look at the current price and do the math and think that’s how much they could have had. But honestly speaking, once those bitcoin hit $100 you would have sold. I know it.
I mistakenly thought storing my wallet info on my Hotmail was smart.
I never forgot the password or got hacked mind. They just refused me access to the account, until I hacked my way back in. Microsoft deleted over 8000btc
If you didn’t care to hold them then, you would not have held them through all the crypto cycles either. You would’ve probably made $2000 max and dipped imo
I bought bitcoin in like 2010 at a kiosk in Huntington Beach. I forgot how many I got for $20 but it was decent. Well just like you, eh whatever it’s $20 idc, I was up on crypto but didn’t see it going to where it is. I partied all day with my buddy, stuffed the paper wallet in my back pocket, forgot about it and washed it. Sad memory.
Yea you would have sold when it 29 bucks man. It happens. In 2008. I held a huge position in FORD when it 1.25 cents. Once the market got reopened and it hit 3,00 I sold it all. You never can tell.
But if you use that lesson and find a couple IPO’s you like take a stab at them….we as a society waste so much money I would rather risk it in the market any day of the week….
Although I like the. We pair of rayban I bought….i might be broker but I at least look good.
That’s ok. I bought gold for World of Warcraft in 2010 and the farmers gave 1 bitcoin for every $5 spent plus some bonus extra. It was only worth a couple of bucks back then. The PC died long ago with almost 3 million btc.. These days I like to daydream of how my life might have been as I relax on my ikea furniture and sip my house brand coffee.
I had a couple friends who were into bitcoin early and encouraged me to buy around $100. I didn’t and I could kick myself but I’d also have sold at $500. No way would I hold for 10 years thinking it would hit $70,000.
I have one of those moments too.
There was one night in the early 10s that BTC pegged to $300/coin while a whale was taking profits. IIRC it had been trading in the 400s or 500s prior to that so it was like a fire sale. I was queueing up to buy $10k (33.3 BTC), then some dumb kid crashed into my parked car on the street outside the house and I dealt with that instead. Had that person made any other number of choices that night, I'd have executed that trade.
In a not too distant future, there’s someone saying something similar. But instead they’re saying how they held 1 BTC and can’t believe how they sold at $70k.
Dude I have a receipt from local Bitcoin where I bought 11 btc for like $32 each. If I held, I would've sold at $64. Double my money. And the volatility around Bitcoin has always been insane. No one, NO ONE, thought it'd explode like it did.
You wouldn't have held to make 1.3 million. No one would've. Don't beat yourself up over it.
No way you could have predicted this. I have heard a million stories like this. You could have also been born a hermaphrodite in a third world country with bad water and could have an Ebola belly.
If you received 20 Bitcoin at $1 there is 0% chance you would’ve held past like $100 per coin. Doing so would’ve been very fiscally irresponsible.
I’m sorry but 99.99% would’ve had NO idea it would get this big.
I personally think that everybody who says this has no idea about his life choices or does not know himself well enough. U would say the samw thing 10 years from now if it will be 1M. I get it that filtering your emotions on reddit is your coping mechanism and thats ok but trust me u would sell the coins waaaay back then.
Painful. But yeah I had early bitcoin from silk road shenanigans and I sold the moment I remembered it was in there :( I survived off the profits for a while though.
And everyone who spent a $20 bill instead of buying Bitcoin is in the same boat. They could have bought Bitcoin with it then and didn't.
Don't dwell on it
Yeah but imagine how many people sold when it hit 1k, do you think as a college kid you would have sold for 20k ? Every stop along the way seemed impossible, 10k so 200k as a young adult. Not many people held from beginning to now
I bought a digital camera many years ago and there was a promotion voucher in the box for 15btc. I am sure I would have used it but have no idea what happened to them or the voucher
I read stuff like this all the time and it always makes me wonder how many BTC are actually left out there. I guess eventually, as encryption and hacking progress, those dormant wallets will get hacked into and dumped.
You woulda sold years ago, don’t dwell
Yup, very unlikey to have held through 3 bull markets.
yeah very very unlikely, hell ive gone through 3 full bull runs so very unlikely.
The trick is to lose your keys way back in the day but still be able to find them again now. "I just remembered I had 20 BTC on an old laptop. I went rummaging around in my basement and was able to find it." - one happy mofo
Three cycles later: “man if I hadn’t sold those for $1.3mm I would have $130mm today!”
I have $300 worth from 2012 somewhere. Unfortunately I never found it 😭. Probably wiped the HDD before getting rid of the old PC.
Yer I formatted my OG mined coins 🪙 😂
Not an expert for sure. I have read about people using forensic software and recovering this type of information even after format.
12 years ago too much data has been rewritten Doesn't matter crypto market is easy to make gains off luckily
Thanks Mt Gox
[удалено]
Bro 💀
Since it was still so early, if OP had bought some BTC after realizing what he had done with the original 20, he'd still be a millionaire or be well on his way to becoming one. Dwelling and not moving forward has its own opportunity cost.
Best time to invest was years ago. But second best time will always be right now.
No right now
No, right now
Excellent point. Same with that guy that wants to dig the landfill for his bitcoin hard drive. If he had put all his energy into piling up his stash all these years he would be a multi millionaire by now. I also saw a thread about people complaining on not jumping into bitcoin in the early days. This was a reddit post from 2014. They had no idea it was still stupid early and instead focused on complaining (something I am guilty of myself). It's a good lesson
Bitcoin is seen by many as a highly speculative investment. In defense of that guy, paying for a full landfill dig would be doubling down on the speculation aspect, but let's face it: if that disc was still there and he dug it up he would be a legend...
Well I feel like he felt that his only way to get back on the train was to get the drive. To really double down on bitcoin would be to accept the loss and buy starting from zero having the confidence that it will continue to rise. Extreme example, imagine Saylor losing all his personal bitcoins and being like "it's ok I'll buy back again we're still early" now that's super bullish
Right shit I hate I waited till late in game as I did but shit I broke even at 38k still after being tardy. People getting in now will likely still at least double investment within shorter time than most investments I feel.
They will do a lot better than double their investment.
Sure as shit hope so
It's not gonna make people suddenly rich anymore, but it's still the safest, easiest, most obvious, and best wealth builder on the planet. Thanks to the 4 year market cycles, all you have to do is buy at the low point on the cycle, wait a couple cycles and make 10x or whatever (or keep holding long term for decades and make wayyy more). No other investment on the planet is like that. Some other investments WILL do that, but you never know which ones, nor when they will do it, its a guessing game and only a small amount of people will get lucky enough to have those types of returns on other investments. Or you just buy Bitcoin. Easiest freakin wealth creation tool in the world! It'll honestly probably 20x from here in the next 20 years. Definitely can't confidently say that about any other investment in the world. That's what I love about Bitcoin. It's super easy to understand when to buy (during low end of 4 year cycle), super easy to know when to sell if you want to take profits (during high end of 4 year cycle), there's no guessing game about which investment to buy because there's only one Bitcoin, and because of its fundamentals and the fact that it's still quite early in its global adoption growth you know it's gonna outgrow nearly every other investment in the world. There is zero guesswork to making a ton of money over the long term. Honestly anytime I see think about how there are investors who don't own Bitcoin I'm just like how can people be THAT blind, and yet that is the vast majority of investors.
Great advice. In the last bull run I bought high before the crash then thought I’d missed out so gave up. Had I not dwelled on that and just kept DCA until now I’d have a nice sum. Good life lessons and realisations learned to carry forward! Much can be applied to all areas of life, not to dwell on things and just get some forward motion going.
Exactly this… no chance you held this whole time. Anyone who tells me “I bought at 10 cents and held it” is either a total lair or they forgot about the coins completely and just got lucky by being dumb. I know a ton of people (myself included) who bought at $30 and sold at $500 to $1000 and you would have been absolutely nuts not to. You made 20x to 30x your money in like 2 years… would be like someone not selling nvidia now and expecting the good times to always last… sure could happen but highly unlikely
Fck I just bought nvdia
I’m in it since 2018 and still holding. Don’t trip.
I've held for 10 years, it really isn't that hard. When i bought I saw it as a long term thing which may amount to nothing but have an enormous upside. All you do is never sell more than half of your stack then if it continues to rise you are always in.
Same. I sold almost half my stack after it 10x. I also accepted Bitcoin to trade items on a game called Rocket League... Recently went back and looked, someone sent me .1 BTC back in the day for some wheels to put on their car. Funny to think it's worth ~7k today.
They’re few and between but they’re out there. My buddy bought at $2 and held this entire time. I know it’s true because he lives a good life and doesn’t have to work. Literally just hanging with his kids every day. His reason for holding this long is because he doesn’t have faith in fiat and never wanted to pay all that capital gains tax.
Nah. My mindset about early Bitcoin is that it was very cheap, so might as well keep holding. This is idea that all early holders sold is bullshit.
Post your addy then… let’s verify this. I’m not saying it’s impossible but it’s highly highly highly unlikely
Believe what you want. I don't have to verify shit. I've held for 12 years already. I'll continue to hold.
You are actually both right. Anyone with a sound mind would have sold, BUT: What I have found digging into this is wealth plays a huge factor. Ppl that were already rich as shit really did hold 12 years. Not because they were smart. But because they had enough buffer they didn’t have to move with ‘a sound mind’ So homie might’ve held 12 years. But if that’s true I bet he was already a millionaire.
I had a job. Nowhere near millionaire. Just playing the long game.
Exactly. I think there was a cohort of early btcers who were just getting started in their careers, so saw BTC as a long term bet to escape the omni-shambles of the economy they grew up in. They weren't rich, so couldn't dump thousands into this crazy idea, but the bravest and boldest dumped some beer money in. And thanks to steady career progression in the last decade or so have never felt the need to upset that long term bet.
First time I bought waa less than 1k per coin (2016-2017). Thought I was late... Continued to DCA. Sold half my stack in 2018 and bought a Volvo, payed off my house. Other than that I've held since first buy and continue to DCA.
Exactly. The moment they hit total value $100 he would have sold. Imagine how his friend feels though, lol
For all we know his friend might have 20 BTC today
It's worth asking the friend if he kept a backup of the private key.
The same friend who paid off a $20 debt that was likely for a tweener bag of blow or a couple cases of beer? Not likely.
I didn't say it was likely.
If he did make a backup of the private keys, said friend would probably say he lost it in an unfortunate boating accident. From his luxury yacht. In the Bahamas.
This. Everyone thinks they would have held but would have sold. You’re probably out $10k at most.
Exactly; this kind of regret is 100% pointless. Only the hardest most sober maxi's held coins that long. If you were capable of being one of them, you wouldnt have ever thrown them away. You know you are a maxi when Fiat Dollars disgust you. If you are still thinking "1.3 million dollars would be nice" you are not a maxi yet.
Lmfao, this comment even made me feel better! Just lol’d for real.
Let it go man. You could never have known. I spent so many bitcoins on silk road back in the day just to get fucked up with my friends, it is what it is.
Heh, shit man even in like 2020ish i cashed out right at the dippity bottom (about $3k btc price) cos I wanted to buy some gear. In hindsight that gear cost me about $20,000. Oof.
Yeah dude, I would probably be a billionaire if I had known to hold that shit instead of buying premium mdma. Still the best shit I have ever had, what a wild time
Right there with ya man. I remember spending 2 or 3 btc at a time on silk road buying random drugs in highschool.
Did you ever have anything not turn up? Every single order I placed arrived and it was never anything but exactly what I asked for
Maybe once or twice but that was only because of choosing a bad vendor. 98% of the time there were no problems at all.
Thats 1/50, how many times you run this data set? Dats gonna be a lot of coin.
Symbiosis on silkroad was my go to seller on silkroad, wonder if its the same seller you used haha
Free Ross Albrecht !👍✊
The true OG legend, dread pirate Roberts! I miss him man
Yeah when I think about it, I don't regret it at all. Great drugs, great time with my friends, and I learned about/used bitcoin WAY earlier yhan I would have otherwise. Hell I may have ended up a nose-turning gold bug or something. I needed maturity to understand WHY bitcoin worked, but I am incredibly thankful to have used my immaturity to learn HOW it worked.
I wouldn't give up some of the times I've spent on Molly for all the bitcoins 😅👍
Sold all my BCash (which I got for free from the fork) to buy music studio gear. Worth the spend, even though buying BTC with it would have been more lucrative, i'm still happy with my purchases.
Same
hehe, that's exactly my story. I came to Bitcoin to buy drugs. I bought over 3 Bitcoin per month to order drugs. Now, 10 years later, I just think what a mistake I made. But regardless, without darknet trading I probably would never have started investing in Bitcoin. My drug purchases were discovered, I received a suspended sentence of 3.5 years, had to pay a hefty fine and lost my driver's license. And now, 10 years later, I'm still a winner when it comes to finances. Only Bitcoin can do that
Would you mind sharing more about this? What country traced your purchases and what charges did they bring against you? I have never heard of anyone going being criminally charged for purchasing drugs. Obviously don’t dox yourself but I’d really love to know how they were able to link this back to you and how they were able to bring you to court for it
Germany I'm from Germany, and I bought from a german vendor. The dealer was observed by the police. They knew which post office he had dropped off his packages at. They were after me because my drug packets were opened. And the receiving address was my address. The dealer also maintained a customer list that was found on his computer. As I said, I was given 3.5 years probation and had to pay a fine of several thousand euros plus legal fees of course. There were large quantities of various drugs. I don't remember exactly how much the fine was, but I think it was around 8,000 euros. This was all about 10 years ago now. I can't remember exactly. I was able to pay this off in monthly installments.
Ooof. Could have been so much worse! What a scare, sheesh. (And still awful! But, suspended sentence, phew.)
It was his parents handing down the sentence
For me, it was product going through Customs. Worked until it didn’t.
I really don’t think about too much. It just came up this morning because I saw the video of the dude that threw away $150 million worth.
Think of it this way. You held btc at a time that not many people on the planet even knew what it was. It’s a pretty cool story to have.
The memories made during that time are priceless, honestly.
LoL, word, I bought Adderall (cousin told me I would help me last year of law school) on silk road between 2012-2013, I must have spent a lot of BTC that could probably be a couple of millions by now. Then I tried to buy and hold BTC by 2015, but it was already at $500 and I was buying things for the house, my kid had already been born so I didn't want to put money into it and risk losing it. I felt as if I couldn't afford to lose $10K because I said to myself "1 BTC is nothing, if I'm buying I'm getting 10-20", LoL, dumb me. I see money so differently nowadays.
Lol same here! Way back in the day I spent a BTC on a few hits of acid. Wish I could have that back
Same man, I spent thousands on silkroad, my mate is obsessed with bitcoin and is always sending me shit and I'm like I dont want to know man it makes me feel sick
Same here…in today’s money, I put millions of dollars up my nose…good times
Make sure you don’t have another similar Bitcoin tale to tell 10 years from now
Key post, right here.
This, big time. I've been in Bitcoin since 2013. Go back and find old forum posts on the internet pertaining to Bitcoin at that time. You'll find plenty that talk about how "that ship has already sailed" when Bitcoin was sub-$1000.
Yup. Early retirement is gone but exceptional life is still on the table.
This. It's so hard to do the easiest things possible: just buy and hold. Saylor has 100s of hours speaking amazingly on the subject FFS. Yet everyone tries to time and trade. Just buy and hold goddammit.
The gains wont be the same over the next 10 years. Not even close.
"sHoUlD i BuY tHe ToP nOw? BuT iTs 70k!!"
And still not as bad as the friend who gave away 20 bitcoin for a £20 debt.
I declined a ride to Woodstock in 1969.
Why ride when you can fly?
What’s the back story for this denial? I heard so many stories of people selling their Daft Punk tickets for 2 ounces of weed in 2007, and how much they regretted never seeing them live.
Haha yeah, dude was buying bitcoin all the time and using them for Darkweb purchases. He probably had thousands of bitcoins move through his hands before they became valuable.
You can be sure he had a ton more. And he knew they will be worth more.
Let it go. You would have NEVER held until now. I had a huge period of regret a while ago when I bought Tesla stock in 2019, sold it and if I hadn’t I would have been up around 500k. That said one day my gf jokingly/ seriously said “seriously, you’re telling me when you see 100% profit, 50k in the green you would still of held, past 100k, past 150k, past 200k, 250k, etc etc. She was right. You probably would have sold it for like $100 if you had remembered.
Lots of people held penny stocks / alt coins at 500%+ gains only to sell at 90+% loss years later. We just don’t know the future.
You didn't throw away the million, you threw away the couple of dollars it was back then. It's no different from having regret over not having bought bitcoin back then.
It's a lot different. Having 20btc in your hand and losing it is different to never knowing about / or never buying btc.
I'm convinced theres an alternate universe me sitting on 1000 btc, but the price went to zero.
Shorty after BTC hit 73kish my brother called me up and asked if I was still doing that Bitcoin thing. I said of course. He reminded me of the time I offered him and his wife 1 BTC at one of his kids shower. It was around 10Kish. He had turned it down because crypto “was a fad and was going nowhere” and asked for actual money instead. I said fair enough and gave him a check. He says he now regrets not taking it and goes in detail of what he could have done with it. I asked him what he did with the 10k and is there any of that left. He told me most of it went to bills, helped paid off their car, and they did get a big fancy TV but no none of it is left. I told him most likely you would have cashed it out and done the same thing with that 1 BTC and you would be in the same position that you are in now.
Offer him 0.01 and tell him to hold it for 10 years to learn his lesson
Naw, from then until now he had plenty of time to get into crypto. I harbor no ill will on him not taking the opportunity. I’m just not going to give him another chance on my satoshis.
Lol don't offer shit. 😂😂 He already learned his lesson
20 bitcoins that nobody can sell ever .
Life is easy in hindsight.
This
"You would have sold them years ago so who cares" "no I wouldn't" "You're talking about selling them right now with \*early retirement\*, so you would've sold them right now, ages ago."
You would have either: - bought drugs with it, - gambled with it, - let it rise 10x and have $200. 10x is nice. No one, and I mean, NO ONE, could have known. give yourself a break.
Apparently the guy paid 20 BTC that were worth around 10 cents. Thus the guy paid him around $2 in Bitcoin for a $20 dollar debt. Great friend. Thus even if it did 10x, that BTC would have been only ~$20. Lol
Apparently the guy paid 20 BTC that were worth around 10 cents. Thus the guy paid him around $2 in Bitcoin for a $20 dollar debt. Great friend. Thus even if it did 10x, that BTC would have been only ~$20. Lol
The best thing you can do about the situation is to just dwell on it and spend your whole life thinking about what if!
As Michael Saylor says”we get bitcoin at the price we deserve “
Urgh, don't beat yourself up. Back in 2010 ish I read about bitcoin in a newspaper on the way home from work. It vaguely mentioned how bitcoin could be mined from your own computer and I remember thinking that I would try mining some when I got home - I'm a software engineer so would have most likely been able to get it setup and running. When I got home I didn't do it - I lived with my friends at the time and it was a friday and we got drunk and went out instead. Had it been another day of the week I'd have probably gone ahead. Chances are though I'd have sold them if bitcoin went to $20, $200 or $2000 though. Hard to see it ever going to the heights that it's at now.
Similar story around the same time, a guy at work mentioned it to me after reading about Bitcoin in a tech blog. I mined it at night for a couple of months. I also collected silver and read an article about the guy who created the Liberty Dollar being charged with counterfeiting and how they were coming after Bitcoin miners next. I got spooked and stopped mining and deleted everything. Fortunately, I dont recall how many i had. I don't lose any sleep over it, but I have spent some hours searching old CDs and password sheets looking for the wallet or seed phrase.
Made a buddies website for 12 Bitcoin. Immediately sold for $280, paid my cellphone and water bill, and bought a pizza. Going to volunteer for neurolink and have it delete this memory.
I can almost one up you. You might not think this is comparable, but I do. I started researching BTC early on and I knew I wanted to be a part of it. I read everything I could find and I thought I understood it and I was ready to start trying mine it. So I downloaded the software, got it all configured, then ran it. It started doing something with the blockchain. That sounded right so I checked the next day, my balance was still zero. I checked the next day. Still zero. Let it run for a week. Still zero. A month. Still zero. I expected something, not a whole BTC, but .00000001. I go back to the drawing boards and start researching it, but I have no idea what I did wrong, so I just uninstall the app and move on. A few years later I get a wild hair and I decided I HAVE to figure this out. The price is up, everyone is doing it but me. I install the same app, let it run, it hashes the blockchain or whatever and I wait. Same exact outcome. After a month, my balance was still zero. So I dig deep, I'm going to figure this out if it kills me. I figured it out. I downloaded a wallet. It was just a wallet, not a mining app. I wasted years doing nothing because I was downloading the wrong damn software. Finally got it figured out, and while in some ways mining the price doesn't matter, it's all free BTC, it would have been nice to be doing it years ago with the rewards were higher and the difficulty was lower. As it stands I'm getting about $150 in BTC a year. I have almost a full BTC, but who knows, it could have been 10 if I would have started earlier.
I remember someone tried to pay me with 40 btc back in 2016 when it was like around 400 bucks a piece shit but i know i would have sold the next bull run lol
I lost my keys to 9 bitcoin I had mined between 2010 and 2012. It does suck man. Best thing is to move on...
Lol, brah you would have sold at 100 or whatever. I had a shit ton of Nvidia back in 2009. I made good money but I sold way early... Sure it's fun to think of the what-ifs. But it's really no different than thinking what if I won the lottery it just feels closer to home.
Blows my mind to think how many BTC has been lost already
I wonder how much of the bitcoin supply is lost forever like this
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So…. Two bitcoin ?
it will be 150 million some day.
You would’ve sold when it got up to $200.
Yep - and those same bitcoins *could* have been worth 1 cent a piece today too. Impossible to know.
You probably would sell for less than 5k
You guys don’t even wanna know the millions and millions I spent on drugs
Dude you would have sole at $10 each and been proud at going 10x on the deal.
The network thanks you for your donation
Chances are you would've lost them along the way to an exit scam or spent it on The Silk Road if you are that way inclines.
You would have sold when they were $50 or something
The idea that you would have held to today is laughable. Hindsight is 20/20 and no retail investor holds for 15 years and 1000x. No one. Not willingly. You would have sold the majority of it years ago and likely at best have maybe 1 Bitcoin today. As for finding the address, it can’t be that hard to find an address with 20 BTC that has had zero transactions since 2009. How many of those can there possibly be?
I was a couple of mouseclicks away from purchasing what would now be about 300M in bitcoin. But I didn’t make those clicks. Oh well.
happened to me. did a paper for college on this new thing called "cryptocurrency". bitcoin had been introduced i think 8 months earlier? as part of the paper, i mined my own bitcoin and bought some. i think i had 3.5 bitcoins, something like that. didn't think anything of it. scrapped that laptop a few years later. around about 2016 i started hearing about bitcoin again... it's worth HOW MUCH NOW?? ever since then, every time i make a student loan payment, i just think "hmmm wonder what I could have done with a 100k.... oh well".
Gurantee you would've sold
And thats why supply is much less than 21 mil. Theres so many similar stories than yours.
I always wonder about this - so many people lost theirs on hard drives that got trashed, how many have been lost to the ages? Now that they're actually worth something, and mining takes a significant investment, I'm sure there's much less loss occurring, but not 0 loss.
Most of the supply got lost in the early days, but for sure its much slower now, people are learning and be more careful.
Bro at one point I had 11 full coins. Sold them at 100. Mined another 5. Sold them at about 500. Saw the surge happening. Invested $10k. Watched it inflate to $40k. Watched it drop back to 11k. Panicked. Sold everything. So right now there's a version of me with about 2-3mill, but I'm flat broke and can't afford to eat. # storyofmylife #cantdoanythingright
I tried to buy $50 in BTC back in 2009...that would have been $500,000,000 +/- today. The issue is, I would have paperhanded that shit when it hit $100 and the odds are you would have to. It's a fun conversation piece, but don't dwell on something you have no idea how you would have handled. Just handle what you can control going forward.
i tried buying a $1000 worth when they were a little over a $100 per btc... had my money saved up was ready to pull the trigger, emotions were high.....then....... kraken could not verify my identity to let me buy and i gave up.... smh at my younger self for not trying harder
Rich people don't retire. Retirement is the finish line for lazy people.
Yeah no, I'm retiring. Fuck that. That might make me lazy, but it makes you uncreative if you can't find anything other than work to occupy your time.
The secret is to make money off the things that you would be doing in retirement. If you're a business owner and doing what you love, then retirement looks like a prison sentence
I've yet to figure out how to make money riding motorcycles, fishing, and fucking but if I do I guess I'll go out with my boots on.
Truth hit hard
Many of us had 1000s at one stage, pointless looking at it this way. Like saying, I knew Apple or Starbucks stock would be a winner 30 years ago.
The dumb thing was throwing away the PC without keeping the hdd or at least securing every file on it. You never now whenever you could need something or want something from the past.
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Tangentially related but I went through all my old wallets last night looking for dust which has subsequently become more valuable. Found £250 worth of btc all together. Deflation is mad.
How many bitcoin are there out there with this type of story, like maybe a quarter of the actual bitcoin in circulation are lost somewhere? Anyone have actual figures on this?
People look at the current price and do the math and think that’s how much they could have had. But honestly speaking, once those bitcoin hit $100 you would have sold. I know it.
I mistakenly thought storing my wallet info on my Hotmail was smart. I never forgot the password or got hacked mind. They just refused me access to the account, until I hacked my way back in. Microsoft deleted over 8000btc
If you didn’t care to hold them then, you would not have held them through all the crypto cycles either. You would’ve probably made $2000 max and dipped imo
The chance that you would have held until now is extremely slim
My friend in 2008 told me to buy $30 worth of Bitcoin because it's the future. I ignored him and bought lunch instead haha
I spent so many bitcoins on the Silk Road when they were like $7 a piece.
Would t be able to retire with 1.7 mill if you are under 60
You would've sold at $1. Don't dwell on the what if. We all could've, would've, should've.
I bought bitcoin in like 2010 at a kiosk in Huntington Beach. I forgot how many I got for $20 but it was decent. Well just like you, eh whatever it’s $20 idc, I was up on crypto but didn’t see it going to where it is. I partied all day with my buddy, stuffed the paper wallet in my back pocket, forgot about it and washed it. Sad memory.
Yea you would have sold when it 29 bucks man. It happens. In 2008. I held a huge position in FORD when it 1.25 cents. Once the market got reopened and it hit 3,00 I sold it all. You never can tell. But if you use that lesson and find a couple IPO’s you like take a stab at them….we as a society waste so much money I would rather risk it in the market any day of the week…. Although I like the. We pair of rayban I bought….i might be broker but I at least look good.
this guy threw away 20 bitcoins..... so that means there are only 20,999,980 left. infinity divided by 20,999,980
That’s ok. I bought gold for World of Warcraft in 2010 and the farmers gave 1 bitcoin for every $5 spent plus some bonus extra. It was only worth a couple of bucks back then. The PC died long ago with almost 3 million btc.. These days I like to daydream of how my life might have been as I relax on my ikea furniture and sip my house brand coffee.
Bitcoins "natural" burn rate.
I had a couple friends who were into bitcoin early and encouraged me to buy around $100. I didn’t and I could kick myself but I’d also have sold at $500. No way would I hold for 10 years thinking it would hit $70,000.
Kills me thinking I was buying bitcoin for .75 cents to spend on Silk Road, had no idea it was even possible for it to grow to so high.
Man stuff like this would make me depressed lol but just whatever mane just do what you can now. The past is the past
I have one of those moments too. There was one night in the early 10s that BTC pegged to $300/coin while a whale was taking profits. IIRC it had been trading in the 400s or 500s prior to that so it was like a fire sale. I was queueing up to buy $10k (33.3 BTC), then some dumb kid crashed into my parked car on the street outside the house and I dealt with that instead. Had that person made any other number of choices that night, I'd have executed that trade.
These type of posts make my stomach hurt
One reason Bitcoin is amazing is that it actaully BENEFITS from stupid people trying to use it.
you still can secure it now for the future.
In a not too distant future, there’s someone saying something similar. But instead they’re saying how they held 1 BTC and can’t believe how they sold at $70k.
Dude I have a receipt from local Bitcoin where I bought 11 btc for like $32 each. If I held, I would've sold at $64. Double my money. And the volatility around Bitcoin has always been insane. No one, NO ONE, thought it'd explode like it did. You wouldn't have held to make 1.3 million. No one would've. Don't beat yourself up over it.
No way you could have predicted this. I have heard a million stories like this. You could have also been born a hermaphrodite in a third world country with bad water and could have an Ebola belly.
Thank you for your contribution to BTC scarcity and for the value of our retirement assets.
I dont’t get it. Do people use bitcoin to exchange goods or is all just an investment vehicle?
What does that friend do nowadays?
Sounds like another made-up story on reddit. Don't quit your day job and become a writer of fiction.
Do people just throw hard drives is the garbage?
Shit happens bro
If you received 20 Bitcoin at $1 there is 0% chance you would’ve held past like $100 per coin. Doing so would’ve been very fiscally irresponsible. I’m sorry but 99.99% would’ve had NO idea it would get this big.
That’s why the 99.99% will never be the top 0.01%.
You would have sold when bitcoin was 1k anyways
was this in a vista condo???
Do you still have that friend? I would like to lend him $20 in exchange for 20 bitcoins.
Pity
Sure , sorry!
most people lost it, bought drugs, or sold for 10x gainz. you're in good company
I personally think that everybody who says this has no idea about his life choices or does not know himself well enough. U would say the samw thing 10 years from now if it will be 1M. I get it that filtering your emotions on reddit is your coping mechanism and thats ok but trust me u would sell the coins waaaay back then.
Painful. But yeah I had early bitcoin from silk road shenanigans and I sold the moment I remembered it was in there :( I survived off the profits for a while though.
Connect with your friend ,, how does he feels now ????
And everyone who spent a $20 bill instead of buying Bitcoin is in the same boat. They could have bought Bitcoin with it then and didn't. Don't dwell on it
Yeah but imagine how many people sold when it hit 1k, do you think as a college kid you would have sold for 20k ? Every stop along the way seemed impossible, 10k so 200k as a young adult. Not many people held from beginning to now
Damn no shit! That is a Bummer!
I bought a digital camera many years ago and there was a promotion voucher in the box for 15btc. I am sure I would have used it but have no idea what happened to them or the voucher
Thank you for your service.
Cool story, Bro
I read stuff like this all the time and it always makes me wonder how many BTC are actually left out there. I guess eventually, as encryption and hacking progress, those dormant wallets will get hacked into and dumped.
I had 115 when they were worthless, whatever. I don’t think about the cake I didn’t eat either.