Quote from: Qartada on May 23, 2017, 09:14:41 PM

...Well.

The total cryptocurrency market caps, trading volume and prices have gone up extremely dramatically in the past few weeks. You could have literally picked nearly any existing coin and it would have gone up by about that much - doesn't mean that you could repeat it and have the same thing happen again.

If you were to do it, you'd have to have a big appetite for risk.

If you have no other money to put in, then you could take a loan, but don't take it if you would fail to pay it back through other means. There's always the possibility of something going wrong even if you're in multiple coins, and last time altcoins went back up they went back down again in a couple of months (although this time it's more dramatic and that may not happen).

EDIT: IMO, the bubble will last ~2-3 months tops if there is one. It's likely for crypto to go further, but previously there have been some serious bear markets which take coins a lot lower. You'd need balls of steel.

Given future income potential I know I'll be able to pay off an additional 10k so it won't alter my life nearly as much as being on track for 300k loans. Maybe an option would be to let money grow for a few months, take it out then see how the market is before deciding whether to invest again.

Quote from: testerx on May 23, 2017, 09:21:56 PM

Whatever you do don't go crazy all in. I actually paid the IBR minimum while I was in residency because I was spending all the rest of my money on bitcoin mining equipment. It did pay off, though probably not as much as you'd think since I mined them mostly at a cost of about $500 per bitcoin.
But honestly if you budget well you can get out of your debt just by being a physician.

That said, there are a LOT of junk investments here and a lot of nonsense posted and we are definitely in the middle of an altcoin bubble. So I am honestly not sure what is good to invest in at the moment. Right now it's mostly good for people who've already made those investments a while ago.

If you do do this I would set a budget for yourself and then diversify into like 3-4 really promising tokens, and try to get in early on the more innovative ones that really have a shot of greatly changing things. BUT even if you do so, realize that you can lose every last penny and it wouldn't even be unlikely. Most altcoins become worthless over time, just look at the list of altcoins that were popular 1-2 years ago and compare them to today's lists.

Right now the growth in my wealth is about 50/50 cryptocurrency and my work as an attending, but the cryptocurrency side is insanely volatile.

Right now we're on summer break and I'm planning to do research on which coins are a solid investment then put the money in. Congrats on having the crypto side match your attending salary, even that is a great feat!

Quote from: The Pharmacist on May 23, 2017, 09:22:10 PM

Dude, don't take a loan to invest in an extremely volatile asset that's currently at its all-time high. That's crazy. If you're really in med school, just focus on that. Doctors make more than enough to repay their loans. Hell, I had my college loan paid off pretty damn quick just making a pharmacist wage--and that's way less than a physician would make (depending on specialty, of course). $300K is a lot, but you'll pay it off soon enough. I would suggest keeping your exposure to crypto at a minimum. Even though I'm a huge fan of bitcoin, none of us know when the bubble is going to blow up. You could lose everything and then you'd be screwed.

My tentative plan for the summer is to determine which coins are worth investing in while we're on break then focusing almost exclusively on school during the year. Given future attending salary, losing 10k seems like it'll have a minimal impact on the timeline to repay loans based on physician salary alone. I'm not certain if you have to go through residency after pharmacy school but accumulating interest is the primary negative to large loans when you're living an additional 3-7 years on 50k/year resident salary. A lost 10k may increase to 15-20k by the time training ends but that's nowhere near the lions share of the pre-existing 300k, no? Thanks for your input.

Quote from: BitWhale on May 23, 2017, 09:24:39 PM

Quote from: The Pharmacist on May 23, 2017, 09:22:10 PM

Solid advice. Also, most hospitals will pay your student loans if you sign a contract to work with them for a specified period of time. I know it's this way with nurses as multiple people in my family have paid off their thousands of student loans in this manner. Maybe you can find something like this?

I know Lovelace & Presbyterian (both USA hospitals) offer this type of deal. For nurses, it was 3 years you had to work for them.

I'm not aware of hospitals paying the entirety of medical school loans since its such a substantial amount. I can see with nurses since they have significantly lower debt after their training. While loan repayment assistance is fairly common it is still primarily on the student to repay the vast majority debt (sadly).