Ask HN: Is it too late to get into Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general?

Too late for what?

To get rich? That's a lottery situation. Good luck, be in the right place at the right time.

To use? No, of course it's not too late.

> didn't see the potential and thought it to be very risky.

This hasn't changed.

> Is it too late to invest in bitcoin now?

It's too early to "invest" in Bitcoin, but you can certainly gamble in it.

It really depends on how much time you have to invest. On the low effort end, you can put some money into coinbase and speculate that way. On the high effort side, you could mine the "up and coming" alt coins on a box.

Personally, I'm telling a lot of my friends to put a few hundred bucks (money they won't mind losing) into coinbase and evaluate afterwards. At the least, it's an interesting tech/story so having some money involved makes it fun. There's also speculative upside, though idk if we're past the "easy money" stage or not.

I still think "investing" in bitcoin is a gamble and I'm not convinced it should have a place in your portfolio. Not only because of the speculative risk, but the added risks of forks, hacks, etc. I'm really concerned about how liquid the market is and should an event happen, the little liquidity that exists will dry up.

Depends what "the bus" means to you. If you mean 10000%+ gains, BTC may not see that sort of growth again. However other coins/tokens may, and there is plenty of volatility to exploit if you're into high-risk daytrading.

That being said, the real, long-term value of crypto is in practical commercial applications. Each coin may surface a "killer app" in time, and you could be the one to build it. Crypto is still nowhere near mainstream in this area. There is also a mountain of legal and logistical groundwork to work through which will take decades.

Remember: investing your money is not the only way to get in; you also invest your time.

Too late? Surely it's too early, with the vast amount of hype circulating around cryptocurrencies. Wait out the inevitable crash, unless your interest is techonlogical rather than pecuniary. Granted, my advice is like telling you not to invest in internet stocks in the late '90s, but you can't tell whether this is 1995 or 2000.

Buying Bitcoin is not investing, it is speculation. This may sound pedantic, but its not. It really is a gamble to hold Bitcoin, you are betting on specific uncertain events happening in the future. If they do not happen, then Bitcoin will be worth $0.

You can invest in equipment to mine Bitcoin, but if you hold the Bitcoin that you mine, then you are speculating.

To answer (or dodge) your original question: nobody knows for sure if its too late.

As of right now, the market is betting that it is better to own a Bitcoin than to hold $5,663 in cash. (The current price is $5,664.)

Coinbase is your best bet for getting started in the US.

    > Buying Bitcoin is not investing,
    > it is speculation. This may sound
    > pedantic, but its not.

    > nobody knows for sure if its too late.

I would have said it was too late when it was ~350 a coin, then it went up to ~4k. I then would have said it was definitely too late at ~4k, right now it's at ~5.5k. That said you really have to look at the graphs and decide for yourself; and remember all of these coins are essentially zero-sum, a lot of suckers have to lose money for you to make it (or vice-versa).

Hacker News isn't a trading forum or a place for investment advice!

But here's a hacker-friendly strategy for investing in cryptocurrency:

Buy some tokens. Then spend your time, energy, and genius on significantly improving the protocol and ecosystem for those tokens, and then enjoy your return on investment!

Fred Wilson from AVC is pretty bullish on bitcoin. His advice was to have 10% of networth in bitcoin! but, I don't know if he meant you should buy in at the price it's at right now.

But, unlike the stock market, or the housing market, there doesn't seem to be any PE ratio we can keep an eye on to determine whether or not bitcoin is over valued or under valued, so it really feels like a crapshoot.

It is positively the correct time to shovel some money into the trash fire ^W ^W ^W ^W ^W ^W ^W invest wisely, in BTC.

Definitely BUY bitcoin now. I think it will keep growing for the next 3 years while trump is in office. His admin will not regulate it, allowing it to continue to expand. However, if a democrat is elected in 2020, sell immediately. Dems will regulate it, suck it dry, and destroy it. Full disclosure - I own no bitcoins or crypto currencies for that matter. Just my 2 cents

Because there is an upper limit (from my understanding) of the number of Bitcoins that can be created, their worth will still multiply by 10 or 100 or more, IF they exist and grow as planned. Splits only increase that value if you own pre-split.

If you want to buy bitcoin, open a coinbase account and buy some, then transfer to a hardware wallet. I think they will appreciate because I believe China is coming back online and hedge fund money is coming [1]. Also 20k users join Coinbase every single day. Imagine if 20k users joined the stock market every single day and there was only 1 good stock? What do you think will happen?

https://news.bitcoin.com/hedge-funds-investing-in-cryptocurr...

Bitcoin is dead. Long live Litecoin!

Also Ether is just a sound investment. They're willing to make hard forks which allows the protocol to be updated (an no one seems to care). Bitcoin has trouble with that and it can only sustain so many BTC/XBT and Bitcoin Cashes. First mover is not always a good thing! Not to mention lots leaving circulation because its such a new thing.

If you have to ask this question, you're not ready for this kind of risky investing.

It's still pretty early in the adoption phase. I think cryptocurrencies still have room to appreciate in value.

As for Bitcoin, it will still probably increase in value, but I believe Monero will increase more.

A lot of people have the misconception that Bitcoin is anonymous, but it's a public ledger. It's not fungible - a key requirement for any currency. Monero is fungible and is what people thought Bitcoin was originally. If you want financial privacy, use Monero.

Bitcoin will most likely always be considered "crypto gold" though, so if you decide for yourself that it's not too late and want something safer, you probably will do okay by just buying Bitcoin.

It is never too late to throw in some money and play around with Bitcoin. Just be aware of a few things:

1) Assume whatever you invest is lost instantly. Don't assume you'll get profits at all.

2) Start with small amounts ($100-150) and ramp up once you feel more comfortable.

3) Most alts are either "pump and dump" operations or scams. Do your research before transferring out of Bitcoin into an altcoin.

4) Take any hype about Bitcoin with a grain of salt. Just like any other trendy topic, there is a lot of misinformation out there.

5) Do your research.

6) Do your research.

7) Did I emphasize research enough? JUST DO IT.

8) Don't bother mining. The mining has been controlled by China for years.

And finally, research the underlying tech (blockchain). That's the real reason why Bitcoin is becoming so popular.

Bitcoin market cap is around 92 billion, 2/3rds of IBM.

If bitcoin becomes the global reserve currency, that will probably go to 10 trillion, a ~100x gain.

If you think bitcoin has >1% chance of becoming the global reserve currency, you should buy at the current price.

Predictions are hard, especially about the future. Cryptocurrency is still quite risky. I made a decent living for several years as a private investor. It gets old and on average is hard work, unless you're lucky enough to get a few solid serious wins in there, which makes anyone look good. Now I have what capital I'm willing to risk engaged with "a trading pool that uses artificial intelligence" to trade cryptocurrency. There's still risk of course but it fits my desire to avoid feeling a need to be knee-deep in my investments.

If anybody on HN knew, they wouldn't be on HN.

Bitcoin seems to be following Metcalfe's law[1] down to a tee. So, based on that, it seems it's not too late.

https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@eric-blair/does-metcalfe-s-law-...

Because the price just went up, may be wise to dollar cost average at this level: ex. buy $XX worth once a week. I think Coinbase has an option to set up automatic weekly buys. Less reward if it spikes next week, less risk if it crashes next week. Removes emotion from trading decisions. Something to consider, be sure to factor in fees.

I think the buy-side support has been surprisingly strong after this recent push, so I think this rally still has a bit of legs, but Bitcoin is always hard to predict.

Just my two cents, but I think Monero has a fair amount of potential

It's not too late.

It is risky, but then no good investments aren't. The trick is to diversify.

You can still mine GPU-based cryptocurrencies. Two examples are ZCash and Ethereum.

It'd definitely not too late to get into smart contract development on Ethereum. It's what I do for a living, and demand is high.

If you want to just buy some coins, it's pretty easy to set up an account on a solid, regulated exchange. In the U.S., Coinbase, Gemini, and Kraken will let you fund an account directly from your bank.