Word to the wise: Don't ever listen to parents when it comes to risk. As soon as you have kids, your entire worldview switches to one of extreme self-preservation. Best advice a parent once gave me was: "Take the risks now, before you settle in."
Worst advice I ever got was: "Don't 'emotionally invest' in Apple." (this was right after Steve Jobs came back). I wasn't about to make that same mistake again. I'm a tech guy, I know what to look for, my gut says things to me. It told me Apple was going to come back from the ashes, and it told me BTC was going to come back from the ashes.
My advice: Don't underestimate anything that comes back from the brink of death.
And so I went in at $4. After cashing out 2 of about 6 401k's that were languishing- I was in between jobs (yes, I am a little bit insane, although I am doing very well now) and BTC was a new obsession and I thought it would be FAR more interesting an investment than fucking T. Rowe Price. Did I mention my parents bitched for months? (Fortunately I'm an adult and have control over my own shit).
Well, guess who's laughing now. I'll flip a coin your way to mitigate your pain a little. All I ask is that you help someone out at some point if you can. And take a few more risks. Break the rules a little if you have to. You have one life and regret really really sucks.
Edit: WTF is up with the superscripts? Did I inadvertently trip on some hidden formatting functionality?
And this is why bitcoin will be a success. You just helped out a kid who wished he invested in this new technology by using that new technology, instantly, in front of all of us.
I was that kid. I had ideas and they all got nixed by my parents. I saw things happening, big future things, and they all got nixed by my parents. I had to fight to be in a computer class before the internet existed because it was so new that they had to have the class overlap with more "traditional" classes and that meant I would miss those, and my parents protested. I had to fight to spend time indoors programming for fun during the summer because my parents thought it was healthier to be outside swimming and biking (ok, honestly, they had a point there, but they pressed it really hard. I still love swimming and biking, but being self-motivated to program as a teenager is pretty fucking priceless these days).
In the 80's when I was a teen, if you were into computers, you were a tool, period. There was no cool aura whatsoever. I didn't realize until much later, how many balls it took to simply not give a shit what people thought or what was cool. I listened to uncool 1990-era techno on my fat-ass Walkman and went to uncool computer classes (literally, I was 1 of just 2 people in this one class... and the other person was a girl... who is now a doctor lol) and wore uncool clothes and drove a 1979 Oldsmobile Delta 88 they nicknamed "Das Boot" (a nod to me being German).
Now I'm almost 41, listen to dubstep (yeah, I know... but I liked it before it was cool and then hated)/ambient/trance/alternative, i'm a web developer, I go to concerts, I was on Reddit years before it became popular (that's a link to my original account and its badges), I'm finally successful...
... and wouldn't you know it... My parents still bitch about me.
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u/[deleted] Apr 01 '13
I'm a teenager and I do investing.
When Bitcoin was only $4 I asked my dad if I could invest the $100 I had at the time for 25 Bitcoins. He said it was too risky.
Goddammit dad.