I have some Bitcoin, and have made some money on Bitcoin[1], and am currently a software engineer at a Bitcoin startup, where I’ve been working since the beginning of 2015.
I have complicated feelings about this. Obviously I invested in Bitcoin because I thought it was +EV, and I did make a nice profit by doing so. That doesn’t necessarily mean I was correct to imagine that it was +EV, and I struggle to understand whether my choices were reasonable or just lucky. I think Eliezer’s recent sequence about adequacy probably has something useful to say about this. But I also think that a lot of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency behavior is fundamentally a function of the psychology of the market, rather than actual value, and the psychology of the market is a dangerous thing to bet on.
Of course, it’s not wrong to take dangerous bets with good upside. Ultimately I think cryptocurrency investing may or may not have been the correct decision for people depending on their circumstances. There’s no conventional wisdom or obvious right answer to fall back on.
I might have more to say on this later.
[1] Bitcoin is very hard to store safely. Don’t ask anybody how much Bitcoin they have (at least in public non-anonymously). They would be very foolish to disclose it, and the more it is the more foolish they would be.
I have some Bitcoin, and have made some money on Bitcoin[1], and am currently a software engineer at a Bitcoin startup, where I’ve been working since the beginning of 2015.
I have complicated feelings about this. Obviously I invested in Bitcoin because I thought it was +EV, and I did make a nice profit by doing so. That doesn’t necessarily mean I was correct to imagine that it was +EV, and I struggle to understand whether my choices were reasonable or just lucky. I think Eliezer’s recent sequence about adequacy probably has something useful to say about this. But I also think that a lot of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency behavior is fundamentally a function of the psychology of the market, rather than actual value, and the psychology of the market is a dangerous thing to bet on.
Of course, it’s not wrong to take dangerous bets with good upside. Ultimately I think cryptocurrency investing may or may not have been the correct decision for people depending on their circumstances. There’s no conventional wisdom or obvious right answer to fall back on.
I might have more to say on this later.
[1] Bitcoin is very hard to store safely. Don’t ask anybody how much Bitcoin they have (at least in public non-anonymously). They would be very foolish to disclose it, and the more it is the more foolish they would be.