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A comment on What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work?. Parent comment

Re:What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work? by simias on Monday July 03, 2017 @03:07PM (#14690619)
>If you put $2 into bitcoin at any point in history and held for 2 years, you have a 0% chance at becoming a millionaire and a 100% chance at breaking even.

That does not compute. What do you mean here exactly? Clearly if you invest $2 in BTC and the value of bitcoins increases 500,000% you're a millionaire. Conversely if it crashes and becomes worthless you've lost everything.

But more generally I wasn't arguing statistics, just pointing out that it's just a big gamble, like the lottery. It's extremely difficult to predict the future of bitcoin so investing in it is not entirely unlike playing the lottery.

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Re:What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work? by clarky07 on Monday July 03, 2017 @04:04PM (#14690997)
I believe he is referring to the past. The history so far is such that there haven't been many losing 2 year stretches. So far, it also hasn't gone up 500,000% in two years either. So, not nearly as risky as a lottery, and not quite the same upside either.
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Re:What is an Initial Coin Offering and How Does it Work? by sillysaurus3 on Tuesday July 04, 2017 @03:34AM (#14694205)
The risk is yourself, not the market. Losing your coins is equivalent to the market crashing to 0. And it's shockingly easy to completely lose your coins, even if you're not incompetent.
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