I bought it at the roughly same price, but sold like 80% of it once it hit $200. Once I actually made 50x my money the price just seemed way too high.

Shrug. At least I got a decent return. Calling the top is hard.

This is how I (and perhaps others) console myself for not buying at all. With the capital and risk appetite I had at the time, I would have made a nice five-figure profit before selling thinking 'this is the top, for sure'.

As for past performance, absent a rational basis for the price, you could equally write a post "Why I'm Putting All My Savings into Tulips (1635)".

And as for civil liberties — Ross Ulbricht might want to have a word with the author regarding the drug use case. And I don't think even the most hardcore libertarians would consider the ransomware business a civil liberty.

What's more free market and "personal responsibility" than allowing ransomware to weed out the weak/unfortunate? That sounds exactly like libertarianism to me.

Didn't read the links completely, but isn't this just a case of survivorship bias?

In 2011 maybe what he spotted was how human greed was going to make the whole thing skyrocket, but over-analyzing it made him think BTC is a solution for the future, etc, etc.

It was a pretty ballsy bet either way, and I could see it being reposted even if BTC had crashed and burned to $0 like many expected it to.

Meanwhile, we're still waiting for John McAfee to consume his reproductive organs on TV:

http://dickening.com/