I’m gonna cure your Bitcoin FOMO

Let’s talk about the very small chance that you would have, could have, or should have been a Bitcoin millionaire.

Don’t worry. I don’t judge. You’ll feel better when you get it off your chest, so let me be your six-minute sounding board. Granted, this isn’t going to be an actual two-way conversation, so just use your imagination. Pretend we’re sitting over beers and you’ve just awkwardly pushed your Bitcoin Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) to the forefront for the first time.

Great. Admitting it is the first step. Now, let’s put this to rest once and for all.

I know. It sucks. You first heard about this new thing called Bitcoin back in 2011. Or 2013. Or 2015. And at the time you laughed about it, but maybe somewhere deep inside you, you knew that there was something viable there. What you didn’t do was act. You didn’t chip off a sizable-but-losable chunk of free cash and plunk it down on a few dozen or a few hundred or a few thousand Bitcoin.

You had your moment. Any time up until April 14th, 2011, Bitcoin was under a buck. That wasn’t even seven years ago. You were alive back then and you had money, probably even disposable income. Just think, $1,000 invested on 4/14/11 would have been worth $20,524,210 on 12/18/17. Even after the crash, you’d be sitting on tens of millions today.

Let’s just let that fester for a minute.

Now breathe. Don’t worry, I’m an idiot too. I didn’t buy Bitcoin back then either.

The psychology of gambling

If you’ve heard about “the gambler’s lament,” you should know that this cautionary tale about losing everything to gambling actually started as a kind of prayer to the gambling gods.

Gambling a powerful drug. They put those Powerball numbers on TV so that every idiot like you and me will see four or three or two of “our numbers” and realize we were that close.

FOMO is what fuels gambling. It’s what sells lottery tickets. It’s why lottery jackpots are nine figures.

I fight the lure of gambling. I’m not even a gambler, but I’m a poker player, and I like to think I’m a pretty good poker player. But every time I fold a 2 and a 7 (or something like that) and the flop comes up 2 7 7 (or something like that), I still have to fight the urge to throw money at the next few hands because of what could have been.

This is human nature.

So as Bitcoin, this… oddball science project, went from something laughable to something real to something stupid, it seemed like 2 7 7s were coming up every day for a while there. Everybody, I mean everybody, felt like they could get rich overnight.

Because that always works, right?

So here’s why you wouldn’t have made $20 million on Bitcoin.

You wouldn’t have caught Bitcoin early

Maybe you knew about Bitcoin in 2011, but are you sure about that? It wasn’t 2013? Or 2015? I knew about Bitcoin in 2011. I read the articles and started playing with the theory and technology of blockchain. I can tell you, back then very few people really knew what it was, what to do with it, or why.

We’re only now starting to talk about blockchain as an investable technology. The idea that you would have taken any amount of money, let alone $1,000, and shoved it into Bitcoin instead of a television or a vacation or Amazon stock, would have seemed crazy back then. You would have invested what seemed like an irresponsible amount of money into a fad.

This is how people turn $1,000 into $20 million. But for every $1,000 that hits, they blow $99,000 on crazy shit that never pans out. You don’t have that kind of scratch.

You wouldn’t have held on

A lot of people who got in for pennies got out when the return seemed astronomical. For some that was when Bitcoin hit $1, for others, it was $10, for others it was $1,000. Because people kept buying.

I met a guy on the golf course who did get into Bitcoin at (what he claims was) 8 cents a coin. But he, like any other sane individual, got out over time and wound up with what was about a $1.4 million stake. That’s great. That’s awesome. He had really nice clubs. But chances are you would have turned your $1,000 into $10,000, thanked your lucky stars, and went out a bought a television or a vacation.

And then, even if you got past hurdle #1 and hurdle #2…

You would have to have avoided buying into the run up

You would have to have stayed out. A lot of people didn’t stay out. You know how I know? The price kept going up. You know when a lot of people really started to know about Bitcoin?

Riiiight around November, 2017.

Bitcoin isn’t quite 10 years old yet. That’s the blink of an eye in investment years — younger than Facebook, younger than Netflix. But a short time becomes a long time with perspective. And 10 years is a long time when you’re talking about the 30-day run up in Bitcoin that happened from November 18th to December 18th, 2017. If you got in at $4,000, you didn’t sell at $6,000, because that gambling prayer was telling you to hang on until Bitcoin topped out at $100,000.

That’s called HODL (hold on for dear life).

Oh, and you wouldn’t have told anyone

Don’t believe a lot of what you hear. There was and still is a lot of incentive to pass misinformation around. I’m not sure I believe 50 Cent. By my math one third of the entire sales of his album were bought with Bitcoin. In 2014.

[Update: On 2/26 The Blast reported that court documents show that 50 Cent “has never owned and does not own” any Bitcoin. Be careful, kids]

That said…

Look, I know a bunch of people out there made very good, very real money on Bitcoin and that many of them are still holding it today. I believe in blockchain, I believe in crypto and digital currency. There is something huge there.

But what I don’t like is this sense, and admittedly it has died down some since December 18th, that coin is something that can make anyone rich overnight, especially right now. This is how stock markets crash and how people get took. One person’s greed is another one’s FOMO, and if American Greed has taught me anything, it’s that it takes two to wipe out a bank account.

All of the FOMO and the sham and shenanigans that prey upon that FOMO do harm to the actual value of blockchain and applications of it like Bitcoin. If this technology is going to be worth something, it’s not going to be on the back of a Ponzi scheme or a pump and dump. And the only thing fueling that is our FOMO.

So stop chasing what could have been and start chasing what could be. There is a ton of opportunity out there with blockchain and coin, but you can’t go into it thinking you’ll get rich overnight.

I’m going to get a little self-promotional here. I’ve put together some stuff for you to take away from our 6-minute conversation.

Read this crash course I put together on blockchain and crypto. That will fill in the gaps between what you’ve heard and what’s actually real. Spend some time getting to know the technology and the use case.

Then take a look at four ways to invest in blockchain, which will reinforce some of the things I’ve said here and put some of this money-chase into perspective.

Finally, when you’re ready, open a Coinbase account, and that’s when your research really starts. Go small and give yourself limits. Think of coin as a wild, long-term investment crapshoot, a gamble, and only spend what you’re willing to lose.

I’m not saying you’ll make a bunch of money or any money at all, but at the least you’ll understand how this stuff works, and that FOMO will disappear for good.