Not sure which makes me more sick to my stomach..... having not jumped on BitCoin when it first started and was around a single dollar, or the fact that putting hundreds (or thousands, by the time you read this) of dollars of my hard earned money into a non-existent, unsecured, irrational "currency" of bits that inherently are biased towards inflationary pressures due to its fixed nature.
This is a bubble, clear as day! Some are not going to have a good time at some point, whenever that point comes.
There is seriously something wrong with an economy when millionaires are made for nothing but being first.
>There is seriously something wrong with an economy when millionaires are made for nothing but being first.
Tell that to every land speculator or homesteader who struck gold, oil or fertile land (but ignore the natives, they only complicate this). Being first is a huge part of any economy. They took the risk with their cpu cycles, electricity or money, if it's successful, they will get the payout.
Risk does not equal value. I can play russian roulette for an ultimate bet and win 5$ if i dont die.
It is still daunting for me, that i have bought bitcoin and made a few bucks on it, that someone that bought 10k bitcoins last year is now a multi-millionaire.
I have thought the same thing. However, after a little thought I realized I would have sold as soon as their price got multiplied by 10x. I don't have the nerve to keep them from 1$ to 1000$. In no possible universe I am rich.
Being first is actually kinda important. Obviously (as others have noted) first to mine Gold / find oil at a spot, first to find diamonds somewhere, but more importantly:
First to invent something (Automobile, Computer, Smartphone, postit, ...). In line with Henry Ford being first means doing something or inventing something, i.e. believing in something even though most others thought it was a futile or stupid attempt. When cars were invented, most people thought they were stupid and useless. Carl Benz and Henry Ford believed in cars, nevertheless.
They were so smart to be among the first to believe in an idea. Same goes for the early bitcoin miners. Now you may say that the car needed to be invented, but even in early mining days, the algorithms had to be ported to the GPU, and then people build huge rigs and spend all their time coding and building the mining system even though bitcoin was still worthless. Of course, some people just installed the client and generated a couple hundred of coins, but even these, they were early believers, much like an early employee at a startup, who is willing to work for sub-par payment because the likes the idea.
Thing is, the fact that this is still newsworthy in the tiny HN community means that it's on the bleeding edge for people in the real world. I was talking about bitcoin to my workmates the other day and none of them had even heard of it (I've been following it since the Wired article in 2011).
While it's clearly too late to be first, second isn't a bad place either. Just that the arbitrary line is the sand is higher. You can still ride the wave created by the early adopters (who took on the initial risk and validated the entire ecosystem).
As an aside - it would be interesting to see the adoption curve for BTC as compared to Paypal (probably the last disruptive financial platform) and whatever else preceded that (Western union, gold, seashells?).
Nonetheless, I share your pain of not having invested more at the beginning, but that's just the nature of any speculative investment / bet.
This is a bubble, clear as day! Some are not going to have a good time at some point, whenever that point comes.
There is seriously something wrong with an economy when millionaires are made for nothing but being first.