Take your free money and put into something with real, actual backing value. Ignore the gambler side - it’s just the devil on your shoulder. This is free money. Let it work for you over the next couple decades.
This seems to be the majority opinion. I'm thinking moving the majority to sound investments is my likely course. I do think keeping a little that wouldn't sting badly to lose still scratches the itch without risking regret.
You got the money in the first place because you stood apart from the majority. Don't assume they are better than you
I would not have kept it this long. I remember being mad it was gone when it hit $1000, because that seemed insane. It's realistic to think I would have sold then.
something with real, actual backing value. Ignore the gambler side - it’s just the devil on your shoulder.
The stock market or real estate are yet another form of gambling and another face of the devil
In the short term, sure. In the long term the S&P 500 averages 8%/year for 100 years. I would argue that is a much, much smaller gamble.
Bitcoin were designed so that you own them. Trusting your money on for profit corporations isn't going to pay off in the long term, i think you want to look a little further than your own wallet
I don’t understand your argument. Wall street was designed so that you and i could own actual shares in companies. Companies which produce goods and/or services. What is the backing value of bitcoin other than others possibly wanting bitcoin? What backs it other than demand?
I have owned crypto. I have made a lot of money off crypto. But to think it is safer than traditional investing i think is a bit naive. It’s, so far, a supposed solution looking for a problem.
I have owned crypto. I have made a lot of money off crypto.
Sounds like you never own many, someone else owned them for you. I encourage you to learn better how cryptocurrencies works
Sounds like you don’t have much left to say and can’t back up your point, so you get personal.
One in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Sell it. Invest that money in a less risky asset. You win no matter what that way.
I had to do a double take, I thought you said a 5 figure amount of BTC at first.
Cash it all out and shove it into a high yield savings account, or use it to increase contributions to your retirement accounts if you don't have any immediate need.
Not financial advice, but what I'd do is just put it in a medium-high risk ETF. Something that should turn a decent gain in the long term but has some real underlying fundamentals unlike crypto.
This.
Something that pays dividends, and live off of that
I just sold all my Bitcoin like less than a month ago. (It took me a week for it to sync before I could actually sell it. It was a royal PITA. And people say this is the future of currency?)
I didn't have anywhere near the amount you're talking about, but like you I don't believe there's ultimatley any future in blockchain.
I agree with what others are saying here. Sell it. It could well go permanently to zero at any time. Trying to time the market is how you end up walking away with nothing. Put it in, if nothing else, a savings account.
I'd pull it all out and invest into ETFs or maybe some individual stocks or REITs with high dividends. Maybe AA+ and higher rated bonds, if there's anything with a decent yield out there.
You're on track for early retirement. You're likely well-disciplined.
Take this windfall, or at least some part of it, for something to enjoy. A holiday, a reasonable new vehicle if you drive (I.e not a luxury car of course), or maybe home improvements. Hell, make it a classic car that appreciates in value and only drive it on the weekends in the summer.
You can't take your money to the grave with you and none of us truly knows if we'll even make it to retirement. It's great that you're disciplined financially, but you should also enjoy life while you're still young.
OR throw it all into whatever you're currently investing in, and retire a year or 2 earlier. Idk.
I'd buy a cold storage wallet, and put it there. (Write the password down and keep it with the drive though!!!) Bitcoin is the least scammy of the cryptocurrencies, and it's likely to keep going up for a while, since there's a limited amount. OTOH, regulatory changes--since it's so electricity intensive to mine--could means it gets banned in many places. Yes, it's a high risk "investment" (I don't think of cryptocurrency as an investment at all), but high risk can be part of an otherwise balanced portfolio. Since it was a windfall, you're not really risking anything by keeping it as bitcoin.
If you don't already have a financial advisor that has a fiduciary responsibility to you, you might want to consider getting one, and asking their advice.
I did already get burned by an exchange obviously, but I think I trust myself even less with cold storage lol.
Cold storage does neatly avoid the issue of getting burned by an exchange; your crypto is only stored locally with a cold storage wallet, so unless it's plugged in to your computer and accessible to the internet, it can't be hacked. OTOH, you can simply lose the drive (!), and forgetting your password means that the crypto is likely inaccessible forever (!!!).
I've misplaced things before, but I don't usually throw shit out unintentionally. So I've still got my old Tails drive that has somewhere around .01BTC in a wallet on it. Now if only I remembered my password for the persistent partition.
That's what I mean, that it's more likely to get lost/stolen/destroyed in my hands, if I were to bet.
New motorcycle
Whenever I have got a big lump sum of money I get worried, I have put it into my savings account to not accidentaly spend the money untill I know it is mine, just incase it was given by mistake.
So let's say that I had mined 12BTC right when bitcoin was started.
That would be worth 765702 Euros today...
I'd probably sell it off in peices, which would probably lower the value since I am flooding the market in a relatively short ammount of time.
Then I'd have to report my profits to the tax man, and since I didn't buy the BTC I'd have to check with them how exactly to report it, if it is anything like stocks where you don't know the purchase price, I'd have to pay 30% tax on 80% of the total ammount sold.
So for simplicity lets say that I managed to get 700 000 Euro for my 12BTC, I would need to pay tax on 560 000 Euro, meaning I would pay 168 000 Euro, giving me 532 000 Euro to play with.
Untill I got the all clear from the tax office, I would not touch the money.
I'd put 400 000 Euro into my retirenment right away, and use 80 000 Euro to try my luck at investing in lobg term funds.
I'd then have 56 000 Euro as fun money....
Most of it would just stay in my savings account, increasing my buffer, but I would spend part of it on a new camera and lenses, new monitors for my home computer and a new Ducky keyboard.
Nothing huge.
If you have enough other investments to be comfortable, don't especially want to change retirement timeline etc. and your wife is fine with it, I'd keep it as a potential hedge against a depression that crashes the value of index funds. I would not split it between whichever small crypto projects can sell you a convincing narrative that they have 'moon potential' when your financial circumstances mean you don't really need that anyway and that is specifically what would open you up to the 'scamminess' of crypto.
I'm not sure how much the bitcoins compare to your overall wealth, but it's generally ok to put 1-5% into high-risk ventures. Bitcoin is worth something at the moment, because people trust that it is worth something. It doesn't matter that you can't really use it for anything at the moment (i.e., it's not more efficient for transactions, or moving money across borders, and you definitely can't eat it, or make anything with it). Given that major institutions and retirement accounts (and even countries) are investing in bitcoin via ETFs or directly, you could say that there is a level of trust in bitcoin that it will maintain & increase in price.
Long story short, it's ok to have a small portion of your overall portfolio in a high-risk/high-reward venture. So you may consider keeping some of it in bitcoin, and converting the rest into low-cost index funds.
Honestly, it'd just go to stuff I need for the house. There's a lot of canning stuff I want but I need to import it from the US (pressure canning isn't a thing here in Japan and even water-bath canning is super rare so supplies are sparse and expensive). I'd also get a chainsaw and wood chipper. I would pay someone to do a full tune-up on my tractor and maybe get a mower attachment. Anything else, I'd basically put in the account that I use to pay my mortgage and for any home expenses.
Are you Japanese or did you move there and live on land?
I'm from the US and moved to Japan in my 30s. I lived in Tokyo up until a few months ago, but now live in rural northern Japan.
Can I come visit and mow your lawn? Are you on Hokkaido?
I got a ~6k Dogecoin windfall a few years back. (Found the coins I bought in 2014 at <0.1c, sold at 25c)
I think I put like 1k into my more conventional investments, blew like $2k in indulgences (new GPU, collectibles), and set most of the rest aside for the revenuers.
sell and depending on my economic status I would pay off debt by highest interest rate first, fund retirement, make improvements on my house. Pretty much in that order.
I’d buy myself and my parents some Oculus headsets so we can hang out together in VR when I’m too far away for a visit.
Sell it and throw it into your normal stuff.
Pay off my wife's medical treatments and other bills if there is anything left.
Me? I'd probably lose the key.
I'd listen to your wife.
HODL $VT
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