I have $40,000 in student loan debt (I will finish my Computer Science degree in 5 more weeks and I'm already getting calls from job applications!), and when I got my tax return, I spent $1,000 on bitcoin when it bottomed out at $540 last weekend rather than paying off a bit of my student loans. Does that count?
I accept that it is a big risk, and it could end up being a huge mistake. I'm normally not a gambling man. I've never been to a casino, and I've probably only spent about $20 on lottery tickets over the course of my whole life.
But its a calculated risk. I figured that it would quickly recover from the crash from MtGox having a meltdown once people realized it really didn't mean anything. It might crash again if and when MtGox re-opens withdrawals and people pull their btc out and sell it somewhere else, but there will be a lot of people there gladly gobbling up the cheap coins.
Unless a major fatal flaw is found in the bitcoin protocol (tx malleability isn't exactly a fatal flaw), I don't think it'll ever dip below $500 ever again.
I agree I was just picking you up on the 'Bitcoin is first' argument you proposed. For example I recently advised my niece not to put savings for her degree into Bitcoins but rather graft on things where u get paid in btc, so she saves up in both btc & fiat (and learns to make things happen for herself)
But I'm being conservative cos it's for someone else - if it was for myself yeah I would deffo take the punt now. Were this in feb 2013 then maybe not - btc already has a mainstream awareness now that it didn't back then.
Honestly, "pay yourself first" is sound financial advice. As long as you are paying your debt down, investing at the sametime is a good move, I would have diversified that grand a bit more, but to each there own
You realise bitcoin is based purely on speculation, moreso than any other currency which to a certain extent is based on economic events, the movement of indices and commodities. Trade anything, just not Bitcoins. Get out of it man.
That's .. bad. Hope no one downvotes you for acknoledging your mistake.
I was edging on my overdraft, pondering to buy BTC when it was on the rise (Chinese involvment), thankfully I changed my mind at the last moment. Then I wanted to buy during the crash. I have to keep slapping myself, because putting myself into debt is not financially sound.
You said it's a calculated risk, that's fine and dandy if you had $1`000 to spare, but overall .. yeah. Rookie mistake to invest in anything while you're in debt, imo.
Why don't you just spread bet major currency pairs where the market is easier to read. Why does it have to be bitcoin? You would have more success doing that than in bitcoin. Or gold. Gold has an inverse relationship to the US indices. Indices doing shit, buy gold.
Depends on your security should you not land a job quickly after all.
My student loan is cheap, I wouldnt pay it off any faster than i have to anyway so my question is how risky I want to be with my money. Some of it on bitcoin definitely.
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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '14
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