One more story that has given me a lot of courage, believe me, it is not over yet, more stories will be made.
Mr. Smith worked at a Silicon Valley tech company when he purchased $3,000 worth of Bitcoin in October 2010. “I had no idea how much to invest, but I was getting paid pretty well at the time, so I decided on $3,000.” Because Bitcoin was worth only $0.15 a piece at the time, his initial investment gave him around 20,000 Bitcoins.
From the very start, Mr. Smith knew that he was playing the long game, deciding to see just how high Bitcoin could go. For the next three years, he hodled his investment, only occasionally checking how Bitcoin is performing. But when Bitcoin hit $350, and then $800 just days later, Mr. Smith knew that it wouldn’t be wise to wait any longer.
He cashed out $2.3 million, quit his job
He should never have cashed out as thats worth $190,000,000 today.
OTOH, going from wage slave to 2.3M is categorically different from going from 2.3M and free to 190M and free.
You need 2.3 million to not be a wage slave?
Then you need to re-evaluate your life and how wasteful you are.
You go ahead and live your own meager life. I don't need your judgmental ass to tell me how to live mine. Especially as you are telling me how wasteful my postulated $2.3M life is in the next breath after castigating some other schmuck for not waiting til $190M.
Back when I was a wage slave, $3M was my eventual target. I was on track. Then bitcoin happened.
Actually, you have a good point there, picnic bear.
I was in a very similar situation, prior to bitcoin, so when I started investing in bitcoin in late 2013, I had considered bitcoin as a kind of supplement to my earlier 401k contributions and the various other investments that I then had, so largely I had considered myself to be on track in terms of the status of my various other investments and my ability to live within comfort with the anticipated income of my various other investments.
I understood bitcoin to be a bit risky, but also to have an upside potential, and I was largely just anticipating that on average bitcoin might go to zero or it might do stupendously, so, on average, if my bitcoin portion merely just performs on par with my various other investments, then I am o.k. either way.
There is a certain reality that even though my bitcoin proportion was way less than all of the other investments, but at some point its value surpassed the value of all of my other investments combined, and that was not based on anything that I did beyond just taking what I had considered to be a meaningful and significant stake.
So, to me, the whole situation seems to be like doubling, tripling, quadrupling or more the prior anticipated budget. For sure, I am still prepared that bitcoin could possibly go to zero, but of course, the cushion from the BTC profits has already increased my lifestyle and my standard of living beyond the levels that had been anticipated.
I am neither increasing my stake in bitcoin nor am I taking out considerable amounts of profits, but the ongoing allowance to let my bitcoin investment ride in more or less a seemingly reasonable appreciating state allows my current and my future anticipated standard of living to go up.
Many of us will likely have to learn some ways to spend our money, and I surely am not planning to feel guilty about a seemingly increasing likelihood that my future standard of living that is merely an extension of what has already been realized is likely going to be a whole hell of a lot greater than my earlier expectations... which were not bad (nor uncomfortable) in and of themselves.
By the way, I recall one of our fellow wall observers suggesting that his means were modest, and he could live off of $500k in appreciated bitcoin. Of course, at today's prices, there would be a need for more than 50 BTC, but of course, if bitcoin gets even some modest price performance up from here, then 5BTC to 10BTC might be sufficient to establish such $500k - even though, as discussed earlier, it still remains important to consider cushions and all of that, and hopefully before such person were to pull the fuck you lever, then a $500k valuation would be based on either a floor BTC price or at least the assets have been significantly diversified to feel comfort that a $500k valuation would be based on a floor price. An irony is that person had recently sold all of his BTC and currently only has a modest BTC position, so it could take more time and efforts to reach the personal goals (even if such personal goals can of course be shifted too, based on changed circumstances and/or changed considerations).