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Douglas_Knight comments on Contrarian LW views and their economic implications - Less Wrong Discussion
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What was the lesson?
The Big Theory only told you about the long-term behavior of the currency. Four years is not the long term! It applies just as much today as it did four years ago. What has happened in the interim, the thing you regret, has nothing to do with that Idea and everything to more people hearing about bitcoin, and maybe a bit to do with black markets. The only lesson I can draw from this is that if you think something is clever and technically interesting, other people might, too, which seems to be opposite from the lesson you draw.
You're right. It does apply just as much today as it did four years ago, but the buy-in hurts a lot more.
The lesson is to not interpret my beliefs as some abstract, god's-eye-view observation with no real-world consequences. Instead of answering the question "should I buy some Bitcoin?", I answered the question "is Bitcoin the flawless transcendental currency that its proponents claim it to be?" and let that guide my decision on whether to buy Bitcoin.
I obviously have this irrational in-hindsight regret of not whimsically buying a massive pile of Bitcoin in 2010, then selling them in early 2014 and rolling around in a big pile of cash, but I didn't have any good reason to do that. A more pertinent regret about my past actions is that I had a good reason to buy dirt-cheap Bitcoin when they were dirt-cheap by my own material standards, rather than simply dirt-cheap by the standards of history. I didn't act on that good reason and I should have. Even if the currency crashes into oblivion tomorrow, I'll maintain I should have.