As with most investments, you need to think medium and long term. Barring some kind of final(!) crash, there isn't anywhere to go for BTC but up. Mainstream media and ordinary people are just now starting to talk about it. Stay with your investment, and don't sell before it at least doubled. If it crashes temporarily, that's fine too: chaos is a ladder.
Within reasonable confidence, I'd say: Whatever you do, do not sell at a loss. That's the moment when it becomes a loss. Don't lose your nerve.
Personally, I had a bit over 100 BTC. When it reached $20 the second time, I sold it because I could use the money and also because I became nervous. While it wasn't the biggest money mistake of my life, it's certainly a whopper in retrospect. Don't be like me ;)
But wait, it gets worse. Even just going back a year, if you had bought and sold the right stocks at the right times, you'd be the richest person on earth by far, even if you only started with a few bucks.
But don't worry, you could do the same thing over the next year. You've learned from your "mistakes," right?
In all seriousness, your financial advice is pretty bad and akin to recommending gambling strategies for Roulette. If you both realize you are gambling and are cheering each other on for fun, that's one thing, but I get the sense that you really don't understand that you are in fact gambling.
I have never seen a clearer speculative bubble (as seen from within the midst of the bubble and not hindsight) in my lifetime than this one. You just don't invest for the medium or long term on a speculative bubble. Bitcoins do have some intrinsic value, but as the author of the article we're all commenting on noted, the price of Tulips still hasn't recovered to its 1637 peak.
I bought and sold my bitcoins when prices where bellow 100$. Well, given the fact that I doubled the money I should be happy and brag about it, but I'm not. I could be holding 10k now and it hits in the stomach when I'm thinking about it.
On the other hand, I would never invest more than I can afford to lose.
There are thousand, if not tens of thousands of trades that can get someone that RoR.
I can point towards other instruments that can have that much or more risk to reward ratio. I calculate speculative risk at 100% value + incidental costs of the trade. So if someone said they doubled their investment that would mean a ratio of 1:1 aka a coin flip.
Though if someone did not know that these regulated speculative opportunities are abundantly available, they most likely should stay away.
I have a problem classifying random things like this as a mistake. You didn't have enough information at the time to predict that BTC would exceed $1000, and you don't have enough information now to predict what it will do, either.
It's just a game of musical chairs. The only "mistake" is to play. Some mistakes we pay for, while others ultimately benefit us.
Good call divesting some of your BTC in favor of physical assets.
this is utter rubbish right here.
"> Barring some kind of final(!) crash, there isn't anywhere to go for BTC but up."
That's quite a difference there to what you implied.
> but there is nothing wrong with stating an opinion based on personal experience.
And that's really all I did.
Regarding investing: telling someone who just bought a shitload of BTC to sell at a loss after some minor and entirely expected market fluctuation is just malicious.
Why? BTC is, for our purposes, infinitely divisible. BTC is just as useful when it is worth $1, as when it is worth $1B. I believe the bitcoin network has value, but 1BTC doesn't hold any more intrinsic value than 0.1BTC. They both leverage the same network.
So the difference between 1BTC and 0.1BTC is that there are significantly fewer of the former than the latter.
