Maybe not war in Ukraine itself but fall in Russia’s imports ("to levels not seen since the early 2000s" [1]), and therefore lack of foreign currency? So some billionaires there could decide to get out of crypto?
How a Russian billionaire can get in crypto now? All he can is to suck all bitcoins on local markets, I can not see any possible connection between US miners and Russian buyers with dollars.
It doesn't have to be that direct. I mean, if we're taking billionaires, they have connections in various industries - I'm sure they could organise some services/shipments from China to be paid in rubles on one side and crypto on the other. If it's worth doing for them for the future, they can setup discounted pay-in-btc gateways today. As far as I know, Chinese market is still not restricted for them. Same for India.
I am a long-term cryptocurrency bull. I love the ideals of cryptocurrencies. To be fair, I am also very cynical about the current price of bitcoin.
With that said, given the glut of cryptocurrency articles on HN that have a very similar nature, I wish I could downvote this submission back to 1 point.
Lower than 20k? Alright, that’s not interesting from a technical perspective. It’s also not interesting from an economic perspective because it’s very hard to have an analysis about it that we haven’t heard in recent months. And if there is such an analysis, the chances that it comes from Coindesk is very low.
That is all to say: I find that this submission is flirting with going against the guidelines of this site. I don’t see how this is intellectually stimulating or interesting for anyone on HN. Also, realize that the real cryptocurrency fans (me) either: hear this through friends or check themselves. So this is not news to cryptocurrency fans either. All this is news to is to cryptocurrency neutral people and people that dislike cryptocurrencies
Decentralized also means no centralized rules of law. I'm not sure we want the wealthy crypto whales running around enforcing their own idea of what laws should be. Sounds like a path towards crypto cartels acting like the drug cartels in Mexico killing anyone that wrongs them. I'll take mainstream western courts and law enforcement over that horrific future any day of the week.
Many cryptocurrency proponents see it as a path to a more decentralised economy, and a way to facilitate anonymity, autonomy (giving people more control over their financial assets), stuff like that.
Not saying anything about my ideals, just answering your question.
(plus to the things being told) Also immutability of storage and an ability to fork the thing and proof of being able to be anonymous for a someone nowadays.
Anything negative crypto-related ends up on front page of HN. It used to bother me a bit but its become quite amusing to observe. Honestly its a meme at this point.
I hope it continues to evolve too! But c’mon, lower than 20k? Not newsworthy IMO, not with an attempt at a strong analysis behind (e.g. some on-chain analysis of outflows/inflows)
While I get what you're saying, it is important that it has dipped a significant amount because I think it questions the value of BTC as a store of value and it allows a lot of discussions on the level of volatility, and likely invokes a lot of emotions in people who do believe in the goals of BTC as an alternative store of money.
One of my colleagues is from north Africa and worked in Europe to send money to his family and friends, investing in BTC as it was easier to handle the international transfers. This was a great use for BTC in my opinion and it helped him raise his close ones out of poverty on paper :)
But with the dip, and people believing in the staying power of BTC, a lot of those funds are compromised now. They're not ruined and people are still better off than others, but there's a real concern on if it will be worth it to continue with BTC; the buy-in price is now higher than the current price by far and the total investment has devalued greatly and continuesto devalue without a lot of insight as to why or what can even be done.
So I think the personal stories like this emphasize the importance of the drop, especially since 20k was a fairly signofjcakt growth point for BTC as I remember it.
> Alright, that’s not interesting from a technical perspective.
Alright, but HN isn't strictly about the technical perspective of things... you will find politics (sometimes!), philosophy, culture and variety of other topics that are welcomed by the community.
I know that, I tried to point that out in my comment as well, apparently I wasn’t clear enough about that. I love all kinds of topics. With that said, how is this interesting from those perspectives?
You sort of made no point. Bitcoin falling below a certain price threshold is implicative and interesting to a lot of people. You aren't the target for this article maybe.
I may not be. Then, since I don’t see it then I genuinely wonder: what do you find interesting about it?
The most interesting thing to me is how correlated it is to the S&P 500. It’s interesting in the sense that people used to say it’s an inflation hedge but it isn’t. Suddenly, we don’t see the opposite message so much (that it isn’t an inflation hedge). This shows a positivity bias and points to a certain information asymmetry.
Just to point out how I believe an article with the headline of it falling below 20K could be interesting. The submission here is just a chart, not interesting. I guess this comment can be seen as showcasing some factors as to why it is below 20K :P
I think that the smart money is running for the hills because the FED is performing quantitative tightening. Moreover, more and more retail traders are panic selling, realizing that it isn’t an inflation hedge (but not being vocal about it).
> It’s interesting in the sense that people used to say it’s an inflation hedge but it isn’t.
It's still a strictly speculative instrument which target (say, in 50 years) value is still unknown - may be anything, for example $1k, $100k, $0. As such, it's currently a terrible inflation hedge. Precious metals are much better for that.
Checkout Patrick Boyle and the Plain Bagel. One of them gave convincing arguments that precious metals are not great inflation hedges. They tend to be academic yet practical about explaining financial markets.
This particular level ($20K) is actually very interesting. Because it's the top from the previous bull run. And cryptobro TAs everywhere were parroting incessantly the mantra "Bitcoin never falls below the top from the previous bullrun". Well, oops.
Not sure what would you like me to elaborate on. I'm just saying that there was widely held stupid belief that it's not possible for BTC to fall below $20K. Hence the "interestingness" of this level.
> Because it's the top from the previous bull run. And cryptobro TAs everywhere were parroting incessantly the mantra "Bitcoin never falls below the top from the previous bullrun". Well, oops.
So world events impacting the entire economy should have no effect on bitcoin whatsoever? That seems a little reductive.
According to cryptocurrency maximalists, the value of crypto should go up relative to fiat in times of uncertainty, it'd protect you from inflation, be a store of value in case of war, help transactions cross-borders and cross-sanctions, etc.
All bullshit but that was the peddling going on for years, I don't think it's entirely reductive given how the cult tried to propagandise itself.
That might have been true in theory but since crypto has become a highly volatile speculative asset its the first thing that will be sold in times of crisis therefore bringing its value down.
Eventually, but maybe not this cycle. I think it’ll get to 3-5k and remain there for 2 years and then go up again for the next hype and get-rich-quick-everything-must-be-blockchain cycle. Even when Tether collapses, I see still too much hype and believers for it to reach under 1000$. Or course there is always a chance the US/EU ban cryptocurrencies (they already regulated the hell out of fiat/crypto conversions for ML purposes) and then it’s gone.
Everything seems to be underperforming. Most tech stocks are at their 2020 levels or headed towards it. Almost all tech IPOs in the last year are down. With everything being down, how is Bitcoin's performance an outlier?
Exactly this. If the great promise of crypto was that it would just be another market asset, then the comparison with stocks is fine. It's that all the great promises of crypto being different, better, than the 'fiat currencies' and centralized stock exchanges. If you called bullshit on it they condescendingly accused you of just not getting it. This crash shows that it was all bullshit and still is.
Tech stocks are down about %40ish and some IPOs I tracked are half or less. Bitcoin has gone down from $70k to $20k in a year, that’s close to 350%. Not to mention it’s down 500% since the $100k high.
Not hard to understand why. During a crisis the assets that are considered the most risky are the first to go, and crypto assets fall in that category. Then it becomes a spiral, where new lows bring new sellers until it reaches an equilibrium at some point.
and it will probably continue to fall long term relative to better assets, unless the protocol or tech changes drastically - or if PoS somehow proves to be untenable.
but contrary to a lot of HN commenters in these threads, this is not nearly the death of crypto currencies that they think it is.
b.) most of the highly valued companies which are publicly tradable will continue to provide value to the world or their customers, contrary to the crypto crap.
Regarding b) this is irrelevant to the stock market which is a secondary market used mostly for speculation. Trading company stock after IPO and not for active governance has no impact on the company itself and the economy. Company results are just a narrative for speculation between traders.
No, whatboutism is a lazy way to not present any conjecture but imply something else. And it sounds snarky as fuck at the same time, it doesn't foster any discussion and just devolves into exactly the kind of commentary you just wrote: shallow, combative and useless.
Modern crypto has to be the most ostentatious display of our generation’s detachment from reality and laze. I pray the big players pumping these like penny stocks on a much grander scale are eventually held accountable. While digital currency and decentralized finances are ideas societies should explore, modern crypto has served no other purpose than to funnel drug money and fund North Korea. I hope a crash becomes a reminder to at least some people that actual “value” involves natural resources being extracted and prepared with a lot of time and ingenuity required by humans, not thin air.
When you see people you think are not as smart as you get rich via crypto, it is very natural to think that you should go at it, too. Fortunately, about 10-12 years of stock market investing showed me a lot of patterns. There will be stories, there will be wondrous companies that seem to grow magically and yet what lies beneath is most critical. Cash flow and the embedded estimate in the market cap vis-a-vis this cash flow (reverse DCF). W.r.t crypto, I never could fathom a cash flow or what a certain value for a bitcoin actually represented. I took a pass (probably my profits would have been 3x at max with BTC at $20k) , but useful to remember this when another new fangled thing makes others rich.
> Fortunately, about 10-12 years of stock market investing showed me a lot of patterns.
Fortunately in what sense? You're talking as if BTC was worth nothing. 19K is still a really good price if you zoom out.
I understand young people whose first investment was BTC 1 year ago and bought at 60k and are -70%. But if you have been investing for 10+ years as you mention then there's nothing fortunate about not having bought BTC.
Are you implying that Bitcoin only had a 1 in a thousand or 1 in a million chance of it's price blowing up, and it got lucky? As in, the outcome comes out of pure randomness (think chaos theory)?
The median price of Bitcoin over the last 3 years is $20,471. That means, today, half of the people who bought in the last 3 years are down.
Yes, you could have bought Amazon stock in 2001. But if you're trying to judge rational investment strategy, 3 years of most people losing money sounds like a pretty significant figure.
For reference, the S&P (boring market index) 3 year return is +50%.
> The median price of Bitcoin over the last 3 years is $20,471. That means, today, half of the people who bought in the last 3 years are down.
To be more specific there, the people that are down in that 3 year time range are only those that bought since DEC 2020 (so 1.5 years ago). But even if you ignore that, that doesn't sound bad at all.
It makes no sense to compare to the SP500, of course the 500 largest companies combined are less volatile. Keep in mind something like NASDAQ 100 took like 10 to 15 years to recover after dotcom, and even QQQ isn't comparable to something as volatile as crypto. I think something like TQQQ is the most comparable, and they overlap quite a bit.
But going back to what I was commenting, my point was that if I was a 10+ year investor as parent said, I would not feel fortunate about not having bought bitcoin throughout my years. Of course very recent years are different.
> But going back to what I was commenting, my point was that if I was a 10+ year investor as parent said, I would not feel fortunate about not having bought bitcoin throughout my years. Of course very recent years are different.
That's exactly the point. Most investors are happy to not have gambled on cryptocurrency over the last 10 years. That's why their money is in USD and not Casino Chips. You're only looking at the outcome. You don't control the outcome. What you control is your methodology for your deployment of capital.
If you regret not investing in Bitcoin because you've established some new thesis, then now is the time to employ that thesis. But if you regret not gambling because someone else hit 00 and got 35 to 1, that's not investing.
> Most investors are happy to not have gambled on cryptocurrency over the last 10 years.
You can argue that it would have been a bad decision. Sometimes a bad decision ends in a good outcome due to luck, and a good decision ends in a bad outcome. And that doesn't make it less good or bad of a decision.
But happiness here is about the outcome. I would for sure would be happy to have gambled all my money into bitcoin 10 years ago now that we know the outcome. And I'm sure people would think that way too. I would be happier to have made a (arguably) bad decision and be rich, than be "right" but non rich.
So going back to what he said
> Fortunately, about 10-12 years of stock market investing showed me a lot of patterns.
It's the opposite. It was bad fortune, as if he had been (according to him) more ignorant he may have invested in bitcoin (even if it was a bad decision), and he would have made a lot of money with such investment.
Yours might be. Happiness in general is about your personal narrative of reality. I'm happier than you are to have not invested in Bitcoin 10 years ago, because I thought it was a bad idea then. I'm not unhappy at the fake money I didn't gain, because I have more exciting fantasies than that. Being unhappy that you didn't win a coin flip sounds like a pretty unfortunate way to structure the narrative of your life.
> It's the opposite. It was bad fortune, as if he had been (according to him) more ignorant he may have invested in bitcoin (even if it was a bad decision), and he would have made a lot of money with such investment.
Or they might have invested in any of the periods where it went down, or in any of the exchanges or coins that collapsed, or gotten too much money too early in their life to develop the skills necessary to make it last. The problem with romanticizing some alternative past is that it's literally just fiction.
Investments are made against Expected Value. The goal is to have enough money to always be making more. Over a long time horizon, you need the probability of gain to be greater than the probability of loss, otherwise in an infinite game you will always run to 0. Engaging in gambling, as defined by Expected Value being less than Principle, is not a possible action for a rational actor interested in keeping their money forever.
You're looking at Bitcoin today like the game is over, like you bought 10 years ago and sell at $20K. What is your selling thesis? What made you buy 10 years ago that allows you to sell today? Or is it more likely that you'd keep holding? What are the probabilities of gain or loss over the next 10 years? 20? All investors see is a financial instrument with no backing, facilitating services we already have, at higher cost than existing solutions.
> Yours might be. Happiness in general is about your personal narrative of reality. I'm happier than you are to have not invested in Bitcoin 10 years ago, because I thought it was a bad idea then.
You might be an odd one out and value things differently, but going back to what you said
> Most investors are happy to not have gambled on cryptocurrency over the last 10 years.
I'm sure most investors are happy if the outcome is more money, above anything else. After all that's the goal of investing.
> I'm not unhappy at the fake money I didn't gain, because I have more exciting fantasies than that. Being unhappy that you didn't win a coin flip sounds like a pretty unfortunate way to structure the narrative of your life.
I don't understand where this being unhappy thing comes from. I never mentioned such thing, so I don't know what you are arguing about. Also don't know what you mean by fake money. I'm talking about realized gains.
> Or they might have invested in any of the periods where it went down, or in any of the exchanges or coins that collapsed, or gotten too much money too early in their life to develop the skills necessary to make it last. The problem with romanticizing some alternative past is that it's literally just fiction.
The topic being discussed in the original comment is very clear: Bitcoin / Crypto in terms of price and fundamentals. Things such as "what if earning too much money too young ended up being bad?" are completely unrelated. You can make up any evil genie situation "he gets rich from crypto but he ends up being hit by a bus on his way to withdraw some cash" but such imaginary situations are besides the point.
The point is that having bought bitcoin and held for a few years would have been an outstanding investment in terms of returns, even if you disagree with it's price.
> The point is that having bought bitcoin and held for a few years would have been an outstanding investment in terms of returns, even if you disagree with it's price.
The point of the original comment was that they were happy not to invest. You disagreed. I attempted to explain how someone could be happy despite forgoing short term returns; mainly that the process by which you make those short term returns will produce long term losses.
When the price is higher, it’s likely more people were buying (more demand = higher prices). So if the media price is 20k, likely more than half lost money.
>Fortunately in what sense? You're talking as if BTC was worth nothing. 19K is still a really good price if you zoom out.
Fortunate in the sense that I learnt that the only way to reliably value any asset is to calculate cash-flows -- for me anyway. There are a million things (BTC,ETH whatever) in which you can invest and some of them will make money but I learnt these weren't for me because I can neither predict how high/low something can go
> I understand young people whose first investment was BTC 1 year ago and bought at 60k and are -70%. But if you have been investing for 10+ years as you mention then there's nothing fortunate about not having bought BTC.
Investing in company stocks that I somewhat understand, yes. Fortunate about not having bought BTC .. well. I don't seem to understand how BTC can be worth anything at all so I didn't/won't :)
82 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] threadMaybe not war in Ukraine itself but fall in Russia’s imports ("to levels not seen since the early 2000s" [1]), and therefore lack of foreign currency? So some billionaires there could decide to get out of crypto?
[1] https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/05/25/russias-imports-fa...
Russian Rouble and risk its volatility?
USD in bank and risk its freezing?
Physical printed USD? Not available in sufficient quantities.
With that said, given the glut of cryptocurrency articles on HN that have a very similar nature, I wish I could downvote this submission back to 1 point.
Lower than 20k? Alright, that’s not interesting from a technical perspective. It’s also not interesting from an economic perspective because it’s very hard to have an analysis about it that we haven’t heard in recent months. And if there is such an analysis, the chances that it comes from Coindesk is very low.
That is all to say: I find that this submission is flirting with going against the guidelines of this site. I don’t see how this is intellectually stimulating or interesting for anyone on HN. Also, realize that the real cryptocurrency fans (me) either: hear this through friends or check themselves. So this is not news to cryptocurrency fans either. All this is news to is to cryptocurrency neutral people and people that dislike cryptocurrencies
What ideals?
Again, these are ideals. They are by no means met. The reality is a sad state of affairs, mostly, IMO.
Not saying anything about my ideals, just answering your question.
One of my colleagues is from north Africa and worked in Europe to send money to his family and friends, investing in BTC as it was easier to handle the international transfers. This was a great use for BTC in my opinion and it helped him raise his close ones out of poverty on paper :)
But with the dip, and people believing in the staying power of BTC, a lot of those funds are compromised now. They're not ruined and people are still better off than others, but there's a real concern on if it will be worth it to continue with BTC; the buy-in price is now higher than the current price by far and the total investment has devalued greatly and continuesto devalue without a lot of insight as to why or what can even be done.
So I think the personal stories like this emphasize the importance of the drop, especially since 20k was a fairly signofjcakt growth point for BTC as I remember it.
Alright, but HN isn't strictly about the technical perspective of things... you will find politics (sometimes!), philosophy, culture and variety of other topics that are welcomed by the community.
1 upvote: 50 people agree
1 downvote: 50 people disagree
I have no data for this simple model. If I had, then it would be updated already ;-)
According to my simple model, I’d venture to guess that more people disagree than agree.
The most interesting thing to me is how correlated it is to the S&P 500. It’s interesting in the sense that people used to say it’s an inflation hedge but it isn’t. Suddenly, we don’t see the opposite message so much (that it isn’t an inflation hedge). This shows a positivity bias and points to a certain information asymmetry.
Just to point out how I believe an article with the headline of it falling below 20K could be interesting. The submission here is just a chart, not interesting. I guess this comment can be seen as showcasing some factors as to why it is below 20K :P
I think that the smart money is running for the hills because the FED is performing quantitative tightening. Moreover, more and more retail traders are panic selling, realizing that it isn’t an inflation hedge (but not being vocal about it).
Anyway, I’m just brainstorming.
How do you find it interesting?
It's still a strictly speculative instrument which target (say, in 50 years) value is still unknown - may be anything, for example $1k, $100k, $0. As such, it's currently a terrible inflation hedge. Precious metals are much better for that.
You literally have answered your own question.
The chart is not enough context for me.
So world events impacting the entire economy should have no effect on bitcoin whatsoever? That seems a little reductive.
All bullshit but that was the peddling going on for years, I don't think it's entirely reductive given how the cult tried to propagandise itself.
If an asset drops from $70k to $20k, that's a 71% drop. If it went from $100k to $20k, that's an 80% drop.
For Bitcoin to drop 350% would mean that someone who purchased it lost more than their initial purchase cost.
The all-time high for Bitcoin is about $61k, not $100k.
but contrary to a lot of HN commenters in these threads, this is not nearly the death of crypto currencies that they think it is.
a.) we are not at pre-corona levels yet and
b.) most of the highly valued companies which are publicly tradable will continue to provide value to the world or their customers, contrary to the crypto crap.
We are if we account for inflation.
(Although the original goals seem interesting, speaking of an inflation defying currency. It's hard to imagine the problem wouldn't pop out elsewhere)
Fortunately in what sense? You're talking as if BTC was worth nothing. 19K is still a really good price if you zoom out.
I understand young people whose first investment was BTC 1 year ago and bought at 60k and are -70%. But if you have been investing for 10+ years as you mention then there's nothing fortunate about not having bought BTC.
Yes, you could have bought Amazon stock in 2001. But if you're trying to judge rational investment strategy, 3 years of most people losing money sounds like a pretty significant figure.
For reference, the S&P (boring market index) 3 year return is +50%.
https://www.statmuse.com/money/ask/what%27s+the+median+price...
https://ycharts.com/indicators/sp_500_3_year_return
To be more specific there, the people that are down in that 3 year time range are only those that bought since DEC 2020 (so 1.5 years ago). But even if you ignore that, that doesn't sound bad at all.
It makes no sense to compare to the SP500, of course the 500 largest companies combined are less volatile. Keep in mind something like NASDAQ 100 took like 10 to 15 years to recover after dotcom, and even QQQ isn't comparable to something as volatile as crypto. I think something like TQQQ is the most comparable, and they overlap quite a bit.
But going back to what I was commenting, my point was that if I was a 10+ year investor as parent said, I would not feel fortunate about not having bought bitcoin throughout my years. Of course very recent years are different.
That's exactly the point. Most investors are happy to not have gambled on cryptocurrency over the last 10 years. That's why their money is in USD and not Casino Chips. You're only looking at the outcome. You don't control the outcome. What you control is your methodology for your deployment of capital.
If you regret not investing in Bitcoin because you've established some new thesis, then now is the time to employ that thesis. But if you regret not gambling because someone else hit 00 and got 35 to 1, that's not investing.
You can argue that it would have been a bad decision. Sometimes a bad decision ends in a good outcome due to luck, and a good decision ends in a bad outcome. And that doesn't make it less good or bad of a decision.
But happiness here is about the outcome. I would for sure would be happy to have gambled all my money into bitcoin 10 years ago now that we know the outcome. And I'm sure people would think that way too. I would be happier to have made a (arguably) bad decision and be rich, than be "right" but non rich.
So going back to what he said
> Fortunately, about 10-12 years of stock market investing showed me a lot of patterns.
It's the opposite. It was bad fortune, as if he had been (according to him) more ignorant he may have invested in bitcoin (even if it was a bad decision), and he would have made a lot of money with such investment.
Yours might be. Happiness in general is about your personal narrative of reality. I'm happier than you are to have not invested in Bitcoin 10 years ago, because I thought it was a bad idea then. I'm not unhappy at the fake money I didn't gain, because I have more exciting fantasies than that. Being unhappy that you didn't win a coin flip sounds like a pretty unfortunate way to structure the narrative of your life.
> It's the opposite. It was bad fortune, as if he had been (according to him) more ignorant he may have invested in bitcoin (even if it was a bad decision), and he would have made a lot of money with such investment.
Or they might have invested in any of the periods where it went down, or in any of the exchanges or coins that collapsed, or gotten too much money too early in their life to develop the skills necessary to make it last. The problem with romanticizing some alternative past is that it's literally just fiction.
Investments are made against Expected Value. The goal is to have enough money to always be making more. Over a long time horizon, you need the probability of gain to be greater than the probability of loss, otherwise in an infinite game you will always run to 0. Engaging in gambling, as defined by Expected Value being less than Principle, is not a possible action for a rational actor interested in keeping their money forever.
You're looking at Bitcoin today like the game is over, like you bought 10 years ago and sell at $20K. What is your selling thesis? What made you buy 10 years ago that allows you to sell today? Or is it more likely that you'd keep holding? What are the probabilities of gain or loss over the next 10 years? 20? All investors see is a financial instrument with no backing, facilitating services we already have, at higher cost than existing solutions.
You might be an odd one out and value things differently, but going back to what you said
> Most investors are happy to not have gambled on cryptocurrency over the last 10 years.
I'm sure most investors are happy if the outcome is more money, above anything else. After all that's the goal of investing.
> I'm not unhappy at the fake money I didn't gain, because I have more exciting fantasies than that. Being unhappy that you didn't win a coin flip sounds like a pretty unfortunate way to structure the narrative of your life.
I don't understand where this being unhappy thing comes from. I never mentioned such thing, so I don't know what you are arguing about. Also don't know what you mean by fake money. I'm talking about realized gains.
> Or they might have invested in any of the periods where it went down, or in any of the exchanges or coins that collapsed, or gotten too much money too early in their life to develop the skills necessary to make it last. The problem with romanticizing some alternative past is that it's literally just fiction.
The topic being discussed in the original comment is very clear: Bitcoin / Crypto in terms of price and fundamentals. Things such as "what if earning too much money too young ended up being bad?" are completely unrelated. You can make up any evil genie situation "he gets rich from crypto but he ends up being hit by a bus on his way to withdraw some cash" but such imaginary situations are besides the point.
The point is that having bought bitcoin and held for a few years would have been an outstanding investment in terms of returns, even if you disagree with it's price.
The point of the original comment was that they were happy not to invest. You disagreed. I attempted to explain how someone could be happy despite forgoing short term returns; mainly that the process by which you make those short term returns will produce long term losses.
Fortunate in the sense that I learnt that the only way to reliably value any asset is to calculate cash-flows -- for me anyway. There are a million things (BTC,ETH whatever) in which you can invest and some of them will make money but I learnt these weren't for me because I can neither predict how high/low something can go
> I understand young people whose first investment was BTC 1 year ago and bought at 60k and are -70%. But if you have been investing for 10+ years as you mention then there's nothing fortunate about not having bought BTC.
Investing in company stocks that I somewhat understand, yes. Fortunate about not having bought BTC .. well. I don't seem to understand how BTC can be worth anything at all so I didn't/won't :)