Why you shouldn't regret having "missed the boat" on Bitcoin

So this is something I've struggled with a lot: why didn't I buy Bitcoin back when it was cheaper? I'd be rich right now! I'd have more money, more financial freedom, more everything. Why didn't I make that one simple move and just buy some stupid Bitcoin when it was cheap?

It's a very easy thing to ruminate on. You know that you missed out on it before, and now you see the price going up so you have to buy in before it gets any higher. I'm not missing this boat again!

Pictured: me. (ok not really. source)

But to be honest, you shouldn’t really be thinking about it that way. Of course that’s hard to do, I’m certainly guilty of it. But I’m taking a couple steps back, and I’ve come up with a few reasons why you (and I) shouldn’t be too sad about having missed out on when Bitcoin was cheaper.

Those decisions were made based on past circumstances, and now you're thinking back with present knowledge

Think back to when you first heard about Bitcoin. Were you skeptical? Were you unsure if it would take off? Did you think it was a risky investment? Or (and this was me) did you want to invest in it but never really got around to it until you saw it spike almost overnight?

Your decision to not buy in was based on your knowledge and circumstances of the time. You couldn't have predicted that it would suddenly take off. You didn't know there would be insane growth. You decided it wasn't worth the risk and didn't buy in. That's perfectly fine. It doesn't mean you were wrong - it could very well have fizzled out and your investment would have disappeared.

"But @xerdo!" you might say, "I would have bought into Bitcoin immediately if I had known about it, I just didn't know about it until now!" That's a reasonable sentiment, but unfortunately that's just a fact of life that we have to accept. You are going to miss out on opportunities, guaranteed. Instead of complaining or ruminating about it though, your energy would be better spent in learning whatever lessons you can from it and trying to find new opportunities for yourself. Remember that crypto is not the only possible way to invest your money in a high-stakes way.

source

This is still a very new technology

Bitcoin’s been around for, what, 8 years or so now? The United States Dollar and money in general (even issued by government) have been around longer than that. A lot longer. They’ve had a lot more time to grow and mature and develop. Compared to them, Bitcoin is basically a baby currency. There’s still a lot of time for things to change and fluctuate and grow. Even if the estimate that there are around 10 million people using Bitcoin right now is true (see https://coinjournal.net/report-estimates-10-million-bitcoin-holders-worldwide/) that’s still not even 1% of the world population. It’s barely even 0.1%!

You don't know where the market will be long term

We can speculate on where Bitcoin will be in the next few days, weeks, months, even about 3-5 years or so. But do you really, honestly, truly know where it will be 15, 20, 50, 100 years in the future? I guess realistically we only care around 15-20 years or so, but even then there’s still a lot of uncertainty. Even just considering the next 5 years nobody really knows what will happen, there’s just speculation based on current trends and support and adoption. Maybe in the next 5 years 1 BTC = $1 million, maybe it’s worth nothing. Do I think the latter is likely? Not really, but that’s what we’re dealing with here. Investors mean it when they say Bitcoin is highly volatile.

Growth doesn't mean always moving upward

I’ve seen people say that Bitcoin is always going to go up in price, that in this current trend the price is just going to skyrocket and take off and leave them behind. How true do you think that is? We’ve seen some historic new highs for Bitcoin and a number of other alts this year certainly, but just look at this graph from this past week:

Source: coinmarketcap.com

At time of writing there’s a current downward trend, and it only started yesterday (5/25). It may just be a short-term pullback, or it could be the start of a longer trend (I don’t really know, I’m not a market analyst).

Corrections and pullbacks like this are actually pretty normal, what’s abnormal is the meteoric growth - the price has nearly doubled since April! You really don’t see that without at least a little bit of mania in play, regardless of what the asset should really be worth.

There are always new opportunities

Just look at the rise of altcoins in the past few years. Some of them have seen massive growth along with Bitcoin, and still others could potentially be even profitable in the future. And even barring cryptos for a second, there are likely stocks and other assets you could invest in right now that could still see huge growth in the next few years. Of course I don’t know which ones those are, that’s why investing is tough. But that’s not really my point - my point is that Bitcoin or Ethereum or “pick your favorite alt here” and even crypto at large aren’t really the only places to be looking.

At the risk of being accused of copying what other users on this site do, I couldn't resist throwing in this cat ^_^ (source)

Final thoughts

At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself “why do I want to invest in this?” Seriously. Are you just interested in the space and want to see it grow? Are you in it just to try to make some money by playing the market? Do you want in because everyone else is buying in? The reasoning really doesn’t matter. What matters is that you understand your motive and why you want to invest in this, quite frankly, bleeding edge technology. Hopefully that way you’ll be able to make better investment decisions, and not just buy because of FOMO* when you see the price spike.

*FOMO = Fear of missing out