That's part of the scam I suppose, makes it a lot easier to con someone into dropping money into this shit if there were folks who made money with it some time in the past.
Bitcoin wasn't a scam, it was created by an actual ideologically driven AnCap and for years the main bitcoin peddlers were people who genuinely believed in it as the currency of the future. It wasn't until Ethereum that the floodgates opened and it became scams all the way down.
Bitcoin is still inefficient and will never replace centralized currency, but I think it was created by someone who genuinely thought it would be a good thing for the world. It wasn't, of course, because AnCap beliefs are simply wrong, but I do think it was supposed to be a sincere effort.
Chances are if you were in early enough to get rich from it, you would have been one of the people taken by the early hacks like Mt Gox or have them on a hard drive you forgot about
Even without all the problems with exchanges, lots of people just plain misplace/lose their private keys. I spent some time doing customer service for a wallet app (don't ask) and I'll just say....many such cases.
lol I had a hundred of them in college when they were worth pennies or a few dollars. at the end of the school year, we scrapped that computer for parts and I'm pretty sure the hard drive went to a landfill. the coins were a novelty and I was pretty sure they wouldn't replace money so I didn't sweat it. I did sweat when the coins went north of 20k, though. slightly more hoarder tendencies and I'd have had "never work again" money.
it sort of does in that the public key associated with the wallet is used to derive what's inside it. that key is extremely lost and I didn't keep backups. if I had it, I'd be able to restore the wallet.
I'm still sitting on a fifth of a bitcoin that I got for free. It was worth $12k at one point, no idea why I didn't sell it then. Not rich enough to not need to work, but still a good bonus.
I actually had a fourth but I cashed some of it in 2018 to buy a Switch and some games.
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That's part of the scam I suppose, makes it a lot easier to con someone into dropping money into this shit if there were folks who made money with it some time in the past.
Bitcoin wasn't a scam, it was created by an actual ideologically driven AnCap and for years the main bitcoin peddlers were people who genuinely believed in it as the currency of the future. It wasn't until Ethereum that the floodgates opened and it became scams all the way down.
Bitcoin is still inefficient and will never replace centralized currency, but I think it was created by someone who genuinely thought it would be a good thing for the world. It wasn't, of course, because AnCap beliefs are simply wrong, but I do think it was supposed to be a sincere effort.
Even investing in a Ponzi scheme can be profitable if you exit at the right time
Chances are if you were in early enough to get rich from it, you would have been one of the people taken by the early hacks like Mt Gox or have them on a hard drive you forgot about
I wonder how many coins have been taken out of circulation by hardware loss/failure? It's gotta be a significant number.
Even without all the problems with exchanges, lots of people just plain misplace/lose their private keys. I spent some time doing customer service for a wallet app (don't ask) and I'll just say....many such cases.
lol I had a hundred of them in college when they were worth pennies or a few dollars. at the end of the school year, we scrapped that computer for parts and I'm pretty sure the hard drive went to a landfill. the coins were a novelty and I was pretty sure they wouldn't replace money so I didn't sweat it. I did sweat when the coins went north of 20k, though. slightly more hoarder tendencies and I'd have had "never work again" money.
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it sort of does in that the public key associated with the wallet is used to derive what's inside it. that key is extremely lost and I didn't keep backups. if I had it, I'd be able to restore the wallet.
deleted by creator
I'm still sitting on a fifth of a bitcoin that I got for free. It was worth $12k at one point, no idea why I didn't sell it then. Not rich enough to not need to work, but still a good bonus.
I actually had a fourth but I cashed some of it in 2018 to buy a Switch and some games.