I was just reading an article about the chap who bought $26 worth of bitcoin in 2009 and completely forgot about his virtual wallet. A few months ago, it was worth nearly $900K. So for entertainment purposes I calculated what a $50K investment would look like. Kind of blows away MSFT, DELL, YHOO, AMZN, GOOG, AAPL etc. even for those who bought on day 1 IPO. For those who traded high beta nasdaq tech stocks in the 1990's. Have we arrived yet to year"1999" for BTC or are we in 1995 or 1996?
Right. Thanks for pointing that out. The data/price as of that article is now very stale. However my calculation based on the $50K was with a little better current pricing assumed in the $1050 range per BTC around the recent highs. At $800 BTC that $50K would be around $7.5B. But its relative. Because the guy in that article got in at cost basis of .00532. I believe when BTC first came available, you could have gotten in the .004ish range.
Sorry but not quite. bitcoin at that time did not have enough coins to go around to meet the liquidity of acquiring $50K worth (for pennies). Even now, I'm pretty sure it will be very difficult to acquire $7.5B worth of bitcoins (or sell that much).
50k in 2009 prices would represent ALL the bitcoins that exist TODAY, but back then. But as we know there weren't as many coins in 2009 so the discussion is fundamentally flawed.
palawan & arbs - Great points. Did not even think of the liquidity. No way to accumulate that kind of size with the float in 2009 and even if you hypothetically could have; there would have been a massive move to the upside. So I should have just titled the thread. $26 invested in 2009 = $4M in 2014 and the kicker is, it actually really did happen.
What is happening is you are witnessing history in the making. One day, all over the world you will see stickers in store windows that say "Visa, Mastercard, Amex, and Bitcoin accepted" Most of the world still doesnt even know what bitcoin is. Bitcoin is going to make alot of people billionaires and quite possibly one person the first trillionaire. This is so much bigger than most people can imagine. This is a one world currency and there will never be another opportunity like this ever again for the average person to buy in now and make astronomical returns.
Tulip bulb like events last only over a very short period. Bitcoin has been continuously going up in value for 5 years. In fact the reason the tulips originally went up so much in value was because the dutch created a futures market that year where people only had to put up 2.5% of the price of the tulips. There is no such leverage with bitcoin...its all cash. In fact if you try to buy bitcoin, you will find it next to impossible to even buy it with a credit card. There is no forced selling like what happens with leveraged instruments. Sure the price is volatile because there is not much liquidity in the bitcoin markets. Only about $20-$100 million per day trades hands on the exchanges in bitcoin. When there is massive selling and the price drops 50%, you can see from past experience that people start buying bitcoin back up again. I don't blame you though for thinking its tulip mania....on the surface it does look like that and/or a ponzi scheme. I was even convinced it was 6 months ago before I read more into it.