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I’ve invested in Bitcoin – it’s been a...
MSE_Luke
MSE Staff 295 Posts
'You know what, the headline is wrong. I didn't invest - I gambled. I bought £250's worth of cryptocurrency - Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin - in December. I know nothing about them, I just saw the price rising and thought I could make a quick buck.'
Read MSE Guy's full blog: 'I've invested in Bitcoin - it's been a roller-coaster. Here's what I've learned'
Read MSE Guy's full blog: 'I've invested in Bitcoin - it's been a roller-coaster. Here's what I've learned'
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Gambling = long run negative expectation of return, traditional investing = long run positive expectation of return.
4% transaction costs! And to think that the sort of people who gamble on Bitcoin say things like "I don't want to be ripped off by the bloodsucking vested interests of the financial industry" - vested interests who charge around 3% for regulated advice (less for larger investments) plus transaction charges in the region of a quarter of a percent.
I wish MSE would stop calling it investing and start calling it gambling. Hopefully this post is a start to a change! I love my Bitcoins and alt coins but how anyone can call them anything other than a gamble is beyond me!
<rant over>
Then there's some extremely poorly educated people in this tech savvy world. Common sense alone should be enough.
Classic speculator behaviour. Investing in something that you know nothing about because the price is rising is almost the very definition of speculation. This would be true of buying equities, or any other asset too.
You could argue that, but you would be completely wrong.
I, and lots of others, predicted those swings. It wasn't exactly hard.
"So I decided to buy into it!" :wall:
By the sounds of it, not just with cryptocurrency, but with any form investments, given the nonsense written within this blog that displays zero understanding of how markets work.
Whereas, I, like many others, thought, "Look at that enormous bubble; I won't be going anywhere near that with my money!"
Always a bad reason to invest in something. "I had a tip from a friend [who also knows nothing about what he has invested in]."
Good luck.
Why would it return a profit? You've already commented on the wild volatility, so how can you even begin to know when to sell? Have you considered the intrinsic value of the asset? No, because, you "know nothing" about it.
Nothing like doing your homework is there? And that was nothing like doing your homework.
4%!!! :eek: If someone's equities investments were costing them 4% they would be up in arms about it. 4% is ridiculous. Exactly what is your 4% buying you?
Once again, the lack of understanding of investments shines through. You saw the price starting to fall so you sold. This is the way to lose money. Keep going!
Yes, they saw you coming! It's aimed at the credulous who invest with no understanding or knowledge, so they charge high fees that experienced investors wouldn't even consider paying.
Yes, I read your colleague's blog, and once I'd picked my chin up off the floor, I wondered why anyone would have used such a service without checking first what the the process was for getting at your money.
And given the volatility, the whole process means that the price could have swung wildly between when you chose to sell and when you actually were able to.
Now there's an investment I don't want to be part of!
Only if you are either completely credulous, or you have so much money that you just don't know what to do with it all.
Is your attitude to risk one of being prepared to lose absolutely everything you put in and not being able to sell when you actually want to, and paying sky-high fees for the privilige?
Let me correct that for you: "What I would say is you are an amateur in this field, just like me,"
There are much cheaper ways of betting.
I'm not sure you read the rest of the sentence after "wild swings". When Bitcoin was at £1,000 common sense dictated that it would rise to £15,000 and then collapse to £7,000 etc?
Pretty much no-one predicted it would go through yet another bubble (or it wouldn't have been at £1,000 at that point). Once it rose to £15,000 then yes, common sense dictated there would be wild swings between the mugs piling in on one side and the economic laws of gravity on the other. But Guy was saying that nobody could have predicted this when Bitcoin had only just recovered the all-time high from which it previously collapsed in 2014.
Any advise gratefully received.
You have been had. The money is gone.
Write it off. Change your phone number / email address / however they contacted you - you are on a suckers list. If you fell for this obvious scam you are at high risk of falling for more scams in the future, and might lose more than £1,000 next time.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/bitcoin-scam-website-using-dragons-12350545
https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/news/well-known-names-being-used-in-cryptocurrency-scams-apr18
However, to disagree with Malthusian in post #2 That is merely his opinion of gambling vs investing, that is not a factual definition of either.
The thing about Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general is that you will get a lot of advice and opinion from people who don't know what they're talking about, don't understand what it is, have money already tied up in traditional stocks and shares but the worst opinion comes from those who feel threatened by it.
There's only three criticisms I would make towards Guy Anker' investment...
1: He invested at the wrong time (could have got in at a much better price)
2: He didn't invest anywhere near enough!
3: He doesn't understand what he's investing in and how to go about it (exchanging currencies in coinbase is a no no)
Actually, the more I read, the more issues I have with the whole blog...
That's why you need a balanced portfolio, and to do your homework!