For my purposes, I rate the middle option lower than the last. I’m not interested in merely “having some Bitcoin” (or other cryptocurrencies, some of which look more promising going forward). My only reason for doing this is for a significant chance of making some useful amount of money. By “useful” I am roughly thinking in terms of at least 6-figure sums of money. Proper security is essential at that scale, and caution over who I deal with. My currently trifling amount of BTC was only to test the basics of how to do it, and in fact I haven’t yet tested the other half of the matter, i.e. turning BTC back into conventional currency.
a significant chance of making some useful amount of money
It sounds like you’re talking about a different bet than the one the article is about. Gwern’s 0.05% is not “a significant chance”.
I agree that for your totally different case, you should put more effort into security.
[Edit: The 80⁄20 for crypto security is to buy from Coinbase if you’re in the US, or the most credible local exchange if not. If you’re buying altcoins, convert from BTC/ETH on poloniex or shapeshift. Then put it in a hardware wallet such as Trezor or Ledger, with paper copies of your private key in a couple secure locations.]
For my purposes, I rate the middle option lower than the last. I’m not interested in merely “having some Bitcoin” (or other cryptocurrencies, some of which look more promising going forward). My only reason for doing this is for a significant chance of making some useful amount of money. By “useful” I am roughly thinking in terms of at least 6-figure sums of money. Proper security is essential at that scale, and caution over who I deal with. My currently trifling amount of BTC was only to test the basics of how to do it, and in fact I haven’t yet tested the other half of the matter, i.e. turning BTC back into conventional currency.
It sounds like you’re talking about a different bet than the one the article is about. Gwern’s 0.05% is not “a significant chance”.
I agree that for your totally different case, you should put more effort into security.
[Edit: The 80⁄20 for crypto security is to buy from Coinbase if you’re in the US, or the most credible local exchange if not. If you’re buying altcoins, convert from BTC/ETH on poloniex or shapeshift. Then put it in a hardware wallet such as Trezor or Ledger, with paper copies of your private key in a couple secure locations.]