I've responded to this sort of ugliness before, but I'll do it again now because it's so offensive. Yes, there are probably a few people who bought hundreds or thousands of bitcoin on a whim in 2011, properly secured it, completely forgot about it, then came back years later, remember they had it, remembered their passwords/whatever, etc...

But most of the people who held (or bought) through the 2011 crash were different. They did the math on the potential bitcoin represented, and continued to hold a *very* unpopular position, and a 90% mark-to-market loss for many. That's really not easy at all. And contextualize yourself to the timeframe: the media was declaring bitcoin dead (yes, quite more strongly than now), it was almost embarassing to talk about in polite company, no reputable public figures, VCs, or tech people had come out with much support, and it wasn't *that* hard to think that the experiment was just that... Most of the "whim" people bailed. It took considerable vision (and risk-tolerance), backed by solid analysis, to hold or buy more.

But I guess if you hang around the alt-forum too long, you just auto-assume that everyone is a shallow-thinker making snap-decisions...


It's been theorized for years that if bitcoin achieves its success case, we're going to get scads of people dismissively calling the early folks "lucky". Well, bitcoin's volatility actually strongly minimizes the luck factor vs other really high ROI assets... It's *much* harder to psychologically hold through massive down-up-down swings than it is to hold through stocks like Apple and Google which may go down 10-20% then up 50%. Bitcoin has been far more brutal (and that's just price-action; nevermind the public/professional opinion and social forces one must overcome). It's taken real analytical conviction to make the right call all these years. Don't bloody call it luck.