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0 pointspanarky5y ago0 comments

It's like a tax on confirmation bias.

It's easy to imagine having early awareness of cryptoassets but dismissing them as tulips when the total market value was $1m.

It's also easy to imagine not admitting the mistake after the next 10x to $10m. In fact, that explosive growth helped confirm the skeptics' thesis that it's a Ponzi about to implode.

So now that we've 10x'd five more times since then, it would be a tremendous psychological blow to capitulate now.

Those who preferred the comfort of confirmation bias to the discomfort of admitting they've been wrong all these years have paid an enormous price for that comfort.

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vkou5y ago

> So those who preferred the comfort of confirmation bias to the discomfort of admitting they've been wrong all these years have paid an enormous price for that comfort.

Suppose I bought $10,000 of BTC 8 years ago. The only reason I would have done so would have been for speculation, because I don't need to buy drugs on the internet, I don't need to send remittances to, (to use a shorthand) some 'other' country[1], and just like how I don't want to churn my own butter, I don't want to be my own bank.

Had I done so, I can safely predict, knowing everything I know about my psychology and temperament, I would not be a Bitcoin millionaire today. I would have closed my position at any one of a million points in between then and now.

It's a pretty easy temper on FOMO.

[1] To use a long-hand, that country would have to be legal for me to send money to, have a functioning and nearly-always-on internet system, and have a robust network of local bitcoin-for-cash money lenders, while also being almost entirely disconnected from traditional international banking.

panarkyOP5y ago

If you had bought 8 years ago and sold after the first double or triple, you'd have the same confirmation bias problem as if you'd never bought at all.

Most people would find reasons why they were right to sell and forgo all the 10x's after they sold. They'd be on HN talking about speculation, tulips, buying drugs on the internet, terrorist financing, and wasteful energy usage.

I'm not immune from this. I bought Tesla and Netflix early, and sold after the first triple. Then I spent a lot of time finding fault with Tesla and Netflix as they continued to rise without limit while I watched from the sidelines.

I was wrong about Tesla and Netflix. I made tremendous errors in judgment by selling far too soon.

At least for me, it's much easier to pretend I've been right all along and the entire market is wrong, than to admit my own judgment and decisions were faulty.

dang5y ago

You've got a good point but can you please make your substantive points without being snarky? This is in the site guidelines and is an important condition for curious conversation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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