• Kongar@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    24 days ago

    In 2010 I built a new computer. I was interested in bitcoin from a “this is technically neat” category. I set it up and was able to mine dozens of coins per day.

    I did. It was all set up and working. But it generated a lot of heat in my upstairs So. Cal. Apartment. So I stopped. Just deleted the coins because they were pretty worthless then.

    I don’t get too upset though because I never would have held them to $50k each. I would have sold them for a buck each.

    But I “could have” if it wasn’t so hot out. ;)

    • HarriPotero@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      Same. I bought some 70 bitcoins for 50€ when I first heard of it. Kept mining on a radeon 9770 or something at about 1BTC or 5€ per week. Electricity was included in my rent then, but I stopped because fan noise.

      I lost a bunch on mtgox. Cashed out for a down payment on a house way too early (2016). I’d be rich if I had hodled.

    • roux [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      24 days ago

      My friend told me about Bitcoin when it was about $8 per coin. I was young and making some extra cash from working and not really buying too much stuff so I could have easily tossed down $100 on some crypto and let it ride.

      The very next time I even bothered paying attention to crypto was when Bitcoin shot up to 78k from like 60k.

      So yeah, I feel this lol.

    • wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works
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      24 days ago

      Around the same time I almost bought around 250$ worth of BTC. I was broke rent was coming up, it would have made my month difficult so I passed. Could have never paid rent/mortgage ever again.

      • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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        24 days ago

        I made six months’ worth of rent off the 2017 surge. I sold in the 18k range, because people’s greed at the time was legit scary. I knew a guy who took out a second mortgage on his house to buy more $18,000-priced BTC.

    • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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      24 days ago

      Bitcoin showed up on my radar when they were worth pennies, but I was young and had no way to buy them and didn’t have a computer that could really mine them. Once I had the means to buy, I had no money. By the time I had a little extra money, they were already in the thousands.

      Same story with Tesla. They weren’t public when they popped up on my radar, and when they made their IPO I had no money to invest.

      • zod000@lemmy.ml
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        24 days ago

        I had the same experience with bitcoin. I had friends excitedly talking about it when it was around $1-$2 a coin and I dismissed it as a neat idea that would never fly. When BTC “crashed” at $10, I felt vindicated. Now I feel completely foolish :)

  • Vanth@reddthat.com
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    24 days ago

    I once got a reddit DM from a guy offering to be my sugar daddy. All I had to do was give up family, friends, hobbies, career, move in with him and have his babies. He assured me I would want for nothing. I turned him down, but I was just a simple “yes” away from being so wealthy and happy. He was also highly complimentary of my looks, despite never seeing even a photo of me, so I know he wasn’t shallow.

    Edit: ok, that’s all a lie. I got like 6 DMs like this. And that’s when I turned direct messaging off for my reddit account.

    • Alice@beehaw.org
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      24 days ago

      When you put long hair on your stupid snoo and suddenly male redditors think you’re the sexiest woman to walk the earth.

      • Vanth@reddthat.com
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        12 days ago

        Well, he didn’t assure me he was 6 foot or taller, ofc. Us ladies be wanting our 6-6-6 men.

        Six feet or taller, six-pack abs, six-figure salary or GTFO.

        /s

  • lgmjon64@lemmy.world
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    24 days ago

    I sold about $200 in Bitcoin I mined back in the early days, like 2009 and 10. Missed out on over $80 million.

  • intelisense@lemm.ee
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    24 days ago

    I had the idea to offload machine learning to GPUs back in the early 00’s. I was working for a company doing number plate recognition back then, so I was even in a position to act on my idea… but my boss thought I was nuts.

    I’m not sure how much money I would have made, but it’s got to be better than this!

    • intelisense@lemm.ee
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      24 days ago

      OK, it was a basic pattern recognition model, nothing nearly as sophisticated as we have now, but I think it would have performed significantly faster.

  • andrewta@lemmy.world
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    24 days ago

    Had the ability to buy in on Google right after they went public - passed on it

    Had the ability to buy in on Apple in the mid 1990s -passed

    Had the ability to buy bitcoin at $5 a coin, could have put in $5k at the time -passed

    Had the ability to buy in on Amazon shortly after they went public -passed

    Ebay -passed

    Starting to see a trend?

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    24 days ago

    My great uncle was a nice dude fucked up from war. It made he introverted and he turned to trucking and the road to make ends meet. It was basically all he ended up doing. He never married or had kids, and stacked up all this cash. Before he died, he had put 1 million in cash in a suitcase, put it in the trunk of a car, and gave it to my grandparents. They couldn’t get the trunk open, didn’t investigate, sold the car.

  • Talaraine@fedia.io
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    24 days ago

    Back in 1988 I had a school project with a few people, one of whom came from a wealthy family. The project was regarding the stock market, and each team was given a certain amount of imaginary money to invest, to see who would win out at the end of the semester. My friend with the wealthy family came back with a recommendation from his father, of course, and we won the contest easily.

    The recommendation? Put all our funds into Berkshire Hathaway.

    I had the golden goose egg right in front of me and never invested a dime.

    • zod000@lemmy.ml
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      24 days ago

      I had a similar school project around the same era. My wealthy grandfather suggested I invest in Phillip Morris. You should have seen the look on my teachers face when I bought the fake stock!. I actually ended up getting extremely into it and sold all of those “evil” fake stocks for an early tech company. I was quite certain it would do well, and I was right and I ended up winning the project by a wide margin. I tried to get my parent to let me use most of my savings account to buy real stock but they dismissed the idea because I was just a kid. It would have paid for my college education entirely if they had let me (they certainly didn’t help).

  • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com
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    24 days ago

    Nearly 30 years ago ago, I worked for a tiny li’l anti-virus software company that got acquired by one of the big boys, and everyone’s performance-based options they were holding were suddenly worth a lot. Being hungry for career growth at the time, I’d left the company and forfeited those options. Less than 6 months later, they announced the sale of the company.

    My options woulda been worth a few million at the time, maybe double that in today’s money. Importantly, it would’ve set me up with a nice house, car, etc, without any debt, in my early 20s.

    Not rich, but certainly comfortable.

  • socsa@piefed.social
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    23 days ago

    In 2009 I had 13k AMD shares at an average cost basis of $2.12.

    I sold them in 2011 for ~$8/share.

    Those shares are worth around $1.5M today.

  • mihnt@lemmy.ca
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    24 days ago

    I was ready to drop $2,000 on AMD stock when it was $3 a share. Someone talked me out of it.

    While it wouldn’t have made me “rich”, I’d be much better off than I am now.

  • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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    22 days ago

    35 Bitcoins back when they were $3/coin.

    I bought some camera equipment off of some short-lived Bitcoin eBay clone, and decided my credit card was easier.

    Did a little bit of buying/selling since for a mild profit, before swearing off all Blockchain tech as useless.

    • collapse_already@lemmy.ml
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      22 days ago

      When bitcoin first came out I looked into out of academic curiosity. I owned a high end video card. I never bothered mining because “I don’t have any desire to buy drugs on silkroad.”

    • Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone
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      24 days ago

      Yeah I am so pissed about this too.

      I had the money I was trying to convince my mum for months that I give her 100 dollars and she buys me a one time use card from the post office. She was convinced they could keep scamming more money from it somehow.

      Today it’s still a sore topic when I visit her.

      Millions and millions lost because my mum doesn’t know how a one time use card works

    • belathus@bookwormstory.social
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      24 days ago

      I have a similar story, except the people I asked about it convinced me it might be a scam. I bought some later, but it wasn’t the lifechanging amount it could’ve been.

  • Inui [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    24 days ago

    I bought some GameStop when it was $10 but chickened out and sold it a few days before it went to like $420 a share cuz I thought I was being baited by wallstreetbetters. I only later found out a close friend of mine who is a generally responsible investor was heavily in that and sold at like $200~ to pay off all his medical debt. He’s not rich either, but financially better off than before that happened.

    I don’t mess with stocks now.