I'm calm about it now because I've had years to reflect and learn. I began in 2013 buying small sums of bitcoin around ~$50. I amassed ~$500k by 2017, the most I had ever seen in my life, and throughout the year I made some profitable trades on btc-e.com. I had a competitive advantage on that platform because my orders would be filled prior to the blocks those transactions would be in. btc-e was seized by US authorities in July, but much of their funds were already gone.

This was entirely my failure. What did I learn?

* diversify crypto holdings (such as OP's hot and cold wallets)

* diversify outside of crypto

* use regulated platforms (traditionally these are banks)

* understand fundamentals (I was so painfully naive)

* help others avoid these pitfalls (if I had a single friend I trusted to disclose my holdings, I'd almost certainly have made better choices)

I just responded to another comment below, which you might find helpful https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28910361. The foundational elements a blockchain provides - namely transparency and ownership of digital assets - are absolutely critical to our future as a society.

Crypto in its current forms is mostly noise, but there are also really pivotal things being build by people I choose to trust far more than the World Economic Forum.

You are being illogical about your investment. Go back to the moment you bought the Bitcoin. You apparently thought they were worth $1000 per Bitcoin at that moment, there is nothing wrong with that.

That you invested in Bitcoin means you expected them to rise, do you remember how much you expected them to rise? In what timespan? Does the price going down for now affect that estimation? In what way? Why would you sell your Bitcoin?

There's answers to all those questions that go in every direction, but they lie in the future, so the only thing you can do is make a reasonable prediction, and hope it was realistic enough.

Some people think Bitcoin will go to $10k, some people think Bitcoin will prove useless and die out. Decide in which camp you are.

About MtGox: If MtGox would somehow mess up bad enough that your money/btc is not safe there, that would hit the BTC so bad that its value would at least half, if not more, at every exchange. Trying to withdraw your bitcoin now is madness, you're just risking getting it stuck.

Be careful with your panicking. I myself am too afraid to go long on Bitcoin, if I had I'd have over 10x my original investment now, instead I just speculate and profit from panic sellers, it's fun and pretty low risk. I sell whenever Bitcoin is stable, and buy whenever there's panic.

I don't believe in Bitcoin being worth $1000 right now, but I do believe that the technology and ideas are solid enough, that whenever there's a panic the price will recuperate fairly quickly as people realize not actually all that much changed.

Secondly if you can't stomach the swings in Bitcoin, it's not the speculatory investment for you. You need to have a plan and stick to it. Buy and hold for 5 years is a reasonable plan.

I'm sorry if this isn't sympathetic, but you need to learn from your mistake.

I hold both envy and respect for you.

So according to your research 99% of people who have bought it have lost money. That's complete bullshit, I personally don't know anyone who has lost money, they have all made significant returns, so unless they represent your 1%, I say again, you are talking bollocks.

You'll find grave yards of people that panick sold during the Mt Gox meltdown. There was this one guy who dropped his entire life savings on bitcoin when it was $850 and then sold at $350. I think the math turned out to be in the multiple millions had he held the same amount today.

I understand what you're saying and peace of mind is a big part of investing, but you clearly lost out on massive gains.

The truth is that if one really wanted to assist Bitcoin, they'd buy a few; not a treasure trove for speculative investment.

The really sad thing about this situation is that Bitcoin investors are not the usual class of investors that measure safety, volatility, and other factors. These are your hardware monkeys and computer geeks who have 15k saved up, find an investment they can finally relate to, and foolishly attach all their emotion to their savings floating inside a glass ball. I wish our kind could be more rational when it comes to enthusiasm and unbridled ignorance surrounding bits and bytes. Because it usually doesn't hurt us but when it does, we never see it coming.

Buying BTC at an all time high was dumb, but stopping now that it's low would be dumber.

Saying that they lost millions is incorrect - they haven't lost anything because they haven't sold any of their BTC yet. And it's only been a couple years. We won't know if this was a good or bad investment until 2050.

I made what I believed was a rational risk assessment at the time (back when MtGox was spinning up... Not exactly the most credible days for BTC) and decided to avoid the hype.

Could I use the money now? Sure. It's money.

But I don't regret the decision now because I was acting on the information I had.

Heck, even now, it's possible for someone to buy BTC and for it to crash. Should those people regret their decision even if, in their estimation, it's rational now?

To be blunt: if you spend any time regretting these types of things you're a gambler, not an investor, and will find yourself tricked into trying to time markets. And that will eventually bite you in the ass.

As for me, the same reasoning that kept me out of the market then keeps me out now: I don't believe in the fundamentals and I'm not a gambler. Full stop.

For those who do, the should buy and hold for the long term to realize the most gains.

But "it's worth a lot more now than it was 10 years ago" is not fundamentals. It's just the irrational assumption that past performance predicts future behaviour.

edit: this is good for bitcoin, apparently.

I mean, apart from the fact that you left it on MtGox, that investment had a 6,000x return. What's so bad about that, and why did it "hit you" in 2013? I can't make heads or tails of your comment. How did you manage to lose money buying Bitcoin before 2013?

Also, everyone that sold when you did are also feeling regret of what could have been. It's a fantasy, no one knows the future.

There are better ways to use your time than to regret a fantasy.

I wonder how many of these fall into the following categories:

1. The mined the coins themselves back when it was cheap to mine, or bought them when they are cheap. They are not actually much worse off then before they got into Bitcoin.

2. They put a lot of money into acquiring those Bitcoins. They are going to actually end up a significant fraction of that $600k worse of than when they started. However, they have millions of dollars or dollar equivalents elsewhere, and this loss is not really going to impact their lifestyle in any noticeable way.

3. They put a lot of money into acquiring those Bitcoins, and are going to end up a significant fraction of that $600k behind where they started. That represents a significant fraction of their wealth, and it will impact future plans to live a more extravagant lifestyle, but it won't knock them down to a lower class. They'll keep living where they live, and buying the same kind of luxuries they currently buy.

4. Similar to 2 and 3, but they had most of their wealth in this. They may have to move down a class or two on the social/financial ladder.

5. Similar, but they had so much of their wealth in this that "ruined" would be an accurate description. They basically have to start over financially.

This is the best way to take this sort of loss, and hopefully when you think of it over the long-term you have not lost a significant amount of money. At this point it's better to write off the loss as a lesson learned and move on with other things.