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Re:The ownership and future of Mullvad VPN by Fnoord on Thursday September 16, 2021 @01:37PM (#28554669)
Not really. Say I buy Bitcoins in 2012 and sell them in 2014. I paid the very market value in 2012, and received the very market value in 2014. All this 'regret' with 'hindsight 20/20' fails to take into account that one cannot know how the market value is going to be in 1 month, 1 year, or any time table. That is why its speculation.
Re:The ownership and future of Mullvad VPN by godelski on Thursday September 16, 2021 @01:53PM (#28554869)
The above comment doesn't really come down to speculation though. It really just depends how much of that BTC they turned into cash to buy infrastructure or pay people. Considering that it is logistically easier to do this with just money rather than exchanging, then it isn't unlikely that they maintained a fair amount of that BTC, and thus the "they probably have a bunch of money" conclusion.

I'm not sure why FOMO has to do with any of this. Your logic also just doesn't make sense when talking about any investment. If the market value goes up and you continue to hold then you can sell it for more than you bought it for. No one is talking about regret here except you. All investing is speculative. That's the nature of investing.

Re:The ownership and future of Mullvad VPN by Fnoord on Thursday September 16, 2021 @02:48PM (#28555611)
> The above comment doesn't really come down to speculation though. It really just depends how much of that BTC they turned into cash to buy infrastructure or pay people. Considering that it is logistically easier to do this with just money rather than exchanging, then it isn't unlikely that they maintained a fair amount of that BTC, and thus the "they probably have a bunch of money" conclusion.

Yes, I misunderstood the point.

The US government gets rid of Bitcoins ASAP, and I know of businesses who accept Bitcoin and who also sell it ASAP.

Re:The ownership and future of Mullvad VPN by Y_Y on Thursday September 16, 2021 @02:07PM (#28555054)
All investing involves some speculation, that's true. But gold and t-bills and startup equity and shitcoins all involve very different kinds of speculation.
Re:The ownership and future of Mullvad VPN by Forbo on Thursday September 16, 2021 @02:16PM (#28555163)
Would we be having the same conversation if they had stock in GAFAM instead of Bitcoin?
Re:The ownership and future of Mullvad VPN by Y_Y on Thursday September 16, 2021 @02:59PM (#28555779)
Maybe if it was the early days of Microsoft. Even then there was a lot more data available about investing in businesses, even revolutionary computer ones. Nobody had knew for sure what was going to happen with Bitcoin, and the plausible outcomes varied hugely.
Re:The ownership and future of Mullvad VPN by godelski on Thursday September 16, 2021 @04:53PM (#28557421)
Yeah but if someone was buying a service from you in MSFT and you didn't need to cash it all out to pay expenses and salaries, would you? Or would you keep some of the stock saying "ehhh fuck it. Let's see what happens?"

Also, considering that early day cryptocurrency enthusiasts were also bullish on the technology that adjusts the chance that they'd keep some. I'm not sure why this is such a debate. The original comment just said "hey, they might have kept some of that crypto that people would pay them in. If they did, then they probably don't have to worry themselves with money." That's a speculative comment but also has a decent likelihood of being true.