Buying on margin would either be the best or worst decision of your life, depending on whether you got margin called before BTS started going up.
Personally I wouldnt do it because if you buy entirely with your own money, you can hold as long as it takes and you can never lose your BTS. If you buy on margin you might lose it all and then feel horrible when it went up later on.
So my answer to this poll would be: No, because margin is too risky. I have a lot of confidence in the bitshares team that we are going higher in the long term, but that doesnt mean it is impossible for it to go down more. All it takes for it to go down is for someone with a ton of shares to decide to dump. That can happen in the short term, even if Bitshares later surpasses bitocin and becomes the #1 crypto.
The bitshares chart looks like bitcoin's chart to me, but 1 month delayed.
We bottomed at the start of november, not october.
We went up, but then down again. I think we now make a higher low (above .084 CNY). Just like bitcoin's bottom in the low 300s two weeks ago.
My goal is just to get as many shares as possible before the marketing campaign starts. I am buying 2 bitcoin worth every two weeks, no matter what, until we go higher.
I have stopped buying everything that I can: coffees, meals out, games, etc. Absolutely no non essential expenses, just put absolutely every possible dollar into bitshares right now.
But no margin. Margin can be the end of all of your dreams.
How can you lose your BTS if you immediately buy BitUSD after taking your loan?
Why would you buy BTS just to hold BTS when you have BitAssets which can't crash?
I'm in this cognitive dissonance place where I actually think that if I took out a loan to buy BTS (or similarly, drew down my savings to buy BTS), I'd make money. However, I'm too risk-averse to actually go out and do it.
I guess you won't be making any trades on the Bitshares exchange because you'd be risking money?
The only way some of us can become a millionaire is to take these sorts of risks. Is the million dollar reward worth the risk? It sure is worth it if you can have a million dollars worth of BTS off $30,000 of loaned BTS.
I think people take bigger loans to pay for college and most people who go to college don't earn $1 million over their entire lifetime. So if it is your one chance to become a millionaire do you take it?
BTS seems pretty sound but isn't guaranteed to succeed. Paying back your loan is a certainty though.
The choice is yours.
So you're worried BitUSD wouldn't hold the peg or are you worried that BTS will never reach $1?
If you believe it will reach $1 then you'd be like the people who took out loans to buy Bitcoins. Some people also dropped out of college to start Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and then they took out all kinds of loan as well.
The people who became billionaires and millionaires are the ones who weren't afraid of risk. The people most afraid of risk are the people who gain the least. It's just a matter of how much risk you're comfortable with.
If you're wrong about Bitcoin or Bitshares then you could end up with bad credit. You probably wont lose your house off a $30,000 loan but your credit will be ruined for 10 years. College loans don't go away after 10 years and honestly people take a bigger risk taking out loans to fix up their house yet they do it all the time.
Do you think your home value is more likely to go up than BTS? Suppose you buy $30,000 worth of BTS off of a loan and immediately buy BitUSD. Now suppose the price crashes down a bit so you sell some BitUSD and you have more BTS than when you started? Now the price goes up to $1 and you've managed to keep at least $30,000 in BitUSD the whole time while also watching your BTS skyrocket?
It's a risk and for sure BTS could crash but so could Bitcoin. The housing market could crash too and maybe after you get your degree the economy could go through a crisis. To be realistic there are risks no matter what you take out your loan for yet everyone still takes out loans for some reason so why not take a risk with Bitshares? The chance for success is about the same as all the examples I mentioned while the examples I mentioned don't have rewards nearly as big because you will not become a millionaire from your college education or your home improvement.
For a couple of years now I’ve been watching bitcoin move up in value. I first bought a few back in late 2011 or so when they were going for about $4 each – just a few months after the first big run-up to $30 and ensuing crash. At the time, it was thought by most bitcoin people that bitcoin would never again reach that price. Over the next year I bought a few and used them for various purchases. By the beginning of 2013 they were approaching $20 again, and I was kicking myself for not buying more when they were cheap. It was so obvious, looking back, that they were going to move up! I bought a few at $20 early in 2013 and watched as they rocketed up to more than 10 times that amount (followed of course, by a big crash). Again, I wished I would have bought more back when they were cheap. It was so obvious, looking back, that they were going to move up!
Having missed two opportunities, I didn’t want to miss a third. I didn’t have a lot of cash on hand, and so decided that I would take a 401(k) loan for $10,000 and put it all in bitcoin.
Last week, I put all my life savings into Bitcoin. I'm only 30 so I know while it is a risk, I still have a chance to recover if it crashes, and I have a full time job anyway. I just thought how the people around me are putting money into their houses, into children and expensive weddings, and they will never get a return on that. It just disappears. I also thought how most people will go their whole life and not take a risk and 'go for it'... and when I'm older, I will not be able to things like this. I will be a lot more conservative. Now is the time for me to take a risk.
So I put a total of about $50,000 USD and bought in. I don't know how long I'll keep it in, but I'm thinking at least 5 to 10 years, maybe longer. I haven't told anyone and I don't plan to, but I feel good about it. Another thing I think about is that there will only be 21 million bitcoins ever released, and that is NOTHING when I stop and think about it. To me it seems like a great opportunity.
Really? Common consensus is that in 10 years Bitcoin will be worth orders of magnitude more, or nothing.
If you invest 100% of your life savings, you will either make lets say $10mm, or $0.
If you invest 50% of your life savings, you will either make $5mm or $0. Yet you still have $25k contingency in your savings for when you need it.
You're first millions will have the most utility to you, your later millions will have far less utility to you. Exposing yourself to increased risk on the chance you'll make more millions that will have far less impact on your life is basically greed.
Investing 100% over 50% your savings has moderately better upside in terms of impact on your life, but a disproportionate downside being that you've got no savings for a long time.
Why not just invest 50% of the savings. You're still going to make millions if it pans out. And you'll still have savings if it doesn't pan out. And you might need money in the future.
Investing 100% of your savings in a super high risk super high reward place is gambling, plain and simple. Do you really have the character to write it off if it zeros out and carry on life as normal? I wouldn't, not many people can tolerate that sort of loss. Don't romanticise about big losses and big gains. It's going to blur your judgement. And when you actually are sitting there $50k down in the future you'll feel like an idiot, and you'll feel like shit for a long time. It's sobering. I've been there, and it hurts.
Don't egg people on to invest everything they own. Highly unethical. I can't stress this enough. There's a chance this guy could be setting himself up to ruin his life. No one here knows how he would cope with that loss if it did happen.
I can't beleive people are actually supporting this idea. People are generally rubbish at evaluating risk and reward. And the worst thing about it is that people often think they are good at evaluating it. Very high risk very high reward isn't something you throw your entire life savings at obviously. Obviously.
If that's the best investment advice you've seen for a long time, well, I don't know what to say really. It's the worst investment advice I've read, pretty much ever. The stuff about writing off potentially devastating losses like this as "experiences and memories" that will "be with you always" made me laugh out loud just from the total absurdity of it.
I don't care if this post makes me look like an asshole, because I want to try and stop people destroying their lives.
Yes the choice is definitely yours.
References
http://defiantsaint.com/?p=8http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1kpsi5/i_put_all_my_life_savings_into_bitcoins/https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1kpsi5/i_put_all_my_life_savings_into_bitcoins/cbrjhoa
Topic: Is now the best time to buy BTS? Would you take out a loan to do it? (Read 26834 times)
