Your acquaintence is going to be very wealthy. Not from this trade, but from the instinct to see the leverage opportunity and take that risk. Sure, bitcoin could go to a small fraction of what it's trading at, and he is out $2k minus whatever he netted on the leveraged trading. The cost to account for it properly outweighs any profits at that level, but it's a scrappy trade by someone who saw the opportunity.
As someone who still mainly makes money with labour, I was impressed anyway.
What leverage opportunity? He's gonna lose big on any prolonged downward trend.
Much depends on his age and family situation.
If he's young, single, able-bodied and with no debt, why not? He can always take a night job at a micky dee's to pay back the credit card debt.
It's a gamble I would have taken in my 20s.
Way better odds than going to Vegas and same thrill.
At least its not hiding behind the might of massive banks and being sold as prime stock.
I was just discussing Bitcoin 'investing' with a client last week and one of his engineers overheard us and told us a friend of his (another fresh Lebanese immigrant) maxes out his credit cards on the first of the month buying bitcoin, then sells it on the last day of the month and pays off the credit card and pockets the difference. I just...had no response to that. It seemed so obviously dangerous and irresponsible that I couldn't believe a grown adult would do that.
AND THEN he told me about another friend who does the same thing--but with the tuition/living money his family scrapes together and sends him from Lebanon. To me, that was not only stupid, it was a staggering betrayal in trust. Imagine your entire family scrimping and scraping to get money together to send you to college in the US and then you just casually betting it on Bitcoin.