by kel » Tue Jun 08, 2021 5:41 pm
I considered hopping in last year (and of course sorta wished I had, seeing the growth...) but a few things gave me pause:
1. There seemed a steep learning curve to the cold and hot wallets, fees, exchanges, hidden fees, etc. to get in in the first place. I didn't want to get suckered by fees if I didn't have to, and it all seemed to have penalties to entry.
2. The "is this whole thing a Ponzi / vaporware deal?" vague uncomfortablity. I mean, if tomorrow all the world's governments say "We hold Dogecoin to be invalid for any public or private debt" or somesuch, I'm - what - stuck trying to use it to buy things on or some Silk Road-esque underground analog of an opium den / fence / pawn shop? (Luddite, here I know, but I don't NEED the risk if I can avoid it...)
3. I like to invest in tangible things. I learned a lesson in investing on near-insider-trading / "hot tips" many years ago, where a can't-pass-this-one-up! stock deal fell in my lap. I took a chance, bought some shares, watched it skyrocket as it was being blown to the moon by insider forces I didn't know were at work... and then the company went bankrupt after the owners had pumped and dumped their positions... and investors like me in the cold with worthless certs. Hmm. Cheap lesson, I wasn't out too much, but it's stuck with me. Rammed home that little lesson of the Great Depression: The crash happened to people that didn't know what they were doing, dabbling in investing as gee-whiz amateur spectators: those were the ones that really got the poop end of the October 1929 stick.
4.) RE: People that don't know what they're doing. We are probably all familiar with the apocryphal Joe Kennedy story about his getting out of the market days before the crash because a shoeshine boy in front of the Exchange was telling him he'd heard some good investing advice to pass along. He promptly went to the office and liquidated, missing the coming death spiral. Kennedy was attributed as saying: “If shoeshine boys are giving stock tips, then it's time to get out of the market.” I have some of my investments with two good financial advisors that do this stuff 24/7/365 for decades, and they have gotten me proven track records of good returns, in down and up market times. "Leave it to the pros" has worked for me, and I only invest on my own in either: "Things I am willing to have fun/gamble on" (and I treat losses or gains there just like the ponies), or "Things I actually know about" (buying and selling tangible goods from my industry, based on my decades of experience in said industry and knowing how it trends and works.)
Long story short: Bitcoin and such, if you want to get in, sure have fun, I'd treat it like a bet on the horses. Totally might go up. Probably will. Lots of people winning in the past year. BUT that also could just mean that the early/smart/lucky people have nailed down early positions -- by the time grandma/shoeshine boy is reading about this newfangled thing... it's past time for the early adopters and now it's the suckers time to get in. I might still buy just a single coin just to see what happens, seein' how it fell almost half in value this month. It's probably got at least one more good rally left in it this year. Shrug.
When you read an article in the normal slow media that "The housing market is going crazy in Boise!" it doesn't mean it's time to buy a house in Boise. It means you SHOULD have bought a couple years ago. Analogous to bitcoin articles talking about the sky being the future, IMHO.
*All this I'd take with a grain of salt. I sort-of-retired at age 44 or so, and so naturally my investments lean towards the safer and sure-bets these days.