I’m not a true believer in crypto, but I used to play around with it. I have received a 5-figure USD sum of bitcoin from the MtGox settlement, and I’m considering my options. It is a true windfall. It was worth maybe $100-200 when I used to play daytrader and shop silk road with it.

We are on track for early retirement as it is, but my “smart money” intuition says pay the long-term capital gains and invest in funds, how we do everything else. More money earlier is always good.

My gambler side says to withdraw some maybe, but split the rest into a half dozen likely candidates for someday real world crypto use which may take off. I don’t stay up to date on them anymore, so this would take some real research.

The weird Trumpy stuff going on with BTC makes me think it couldn’t hurt to hold through the election in case prepper types panic buy it lol.

My wife says it’s unexpected so just leave it as a high-risk part of our whole portfolio, but I worry she underestimates the risk and scamminess of it all.

  • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    Not financial advice, but what I’d do is just put it in a medium-high risk ETF. Something that should turn a decent gain in the long term but has some real underlying fundamentals unlike crypto.

  • candle_lighter@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Too be honest I don’t see a future in any crypto except for Monero. I’m not a crypto expert but it’s the only one anyone actually uses as currency because it’s designed to be more stable and transactions are kept private.

  • subignition@fedia.io
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    2 months ago

    I had to do a double take, I thought you said a 5 figure amount of BTC at first.

    Cash it all out and shove it into a high yield savings account, or use it to increase contributions to your retirement accounts if you don’t have any immediate need.

  • Beardwin@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Take your free money and put into something with real, actual backing value. Ignore the gambler side - it’s just the devil on your shoulder. This is free money. Let it work for you over the next couple decades.

    • index@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      something with real, actual backing value. Ignore the gambler side - it’s just the devil on your shoulder.

      The stock market or real estate are yet another form of gambling and another face of the devil

      • Beardwin@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        In the short term, sure. In the long term the S&P 500 averages 8%/year for 100 years. I would argue that is a much, much smaller gamble.

        • index@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          Bitcoin were designed so that you own them. Trusting your money on for profit corporations isn’t going to pay off in the long term, i think you want to look a little further than your own wallet

          • Beardwin@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            I don’t understand your argument. Wall street was designed so that you and i could own actual shares in companies. Companies which produce goods and/or services. What is the backing value of bitcoin other than others possibly wanting bitcoin? What backs it other than demand?

            I have owned crypto. I have made a lot of money off crypto. But to think it is safer than traditional investing i think is a bit naive. It’s, so far, a supposed solution looking for a problem.

            • index@sh.itjust.works
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              2 months ago

              I have owned crypto. I have made a lot of money off crypto.

              Sounds like you never own many, someone else owned them for you. I encourage you to learn better how cryptocurrencies works

              • Beardwin@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                Sounds like you don’t have much left to say and can’t back up your point, so you get personal.

                • index@sh.itjust.works
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                  2 months ago

                  You still don’t have idea what i’m talking about because you still haven’t put 5 minutes to learn about cryptocurrencies.

                  https://archive.org/details/bitcoin-whitepaper

                  Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.

    • EvacuateSoul@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      This seems to be the majority opinion. I’m thinking moving the majority to sound investments is my likely course. I do think keeping a little that wouldn’t sting badly to lose still scratches the itch without risking regret.

      • Mubelotix@jlai.lu
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        2 months ago

        You got the money in the first place because you stood apart from the majority. Don’t assume they are better than you

        • EvacuateSoul@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I would not have kept it this long. I remember being mad it was gone when it hit $1000, because that seemed insane. It’s realistic to think I would have sold then.

  • TootSweet@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I just sold all my Bitcoin like less than a month ago. (It took me a week for it to sync before I could actually sell it. It was a royal PITA. And people say this is the future of currency?)

    I didn’t have anywhere near the amount you’re talking about, but like you I don’t believe there’s ultimatley any future in blockchain.

    I agree with what others are saying here. Sell it. It could well go permanently to zero at any time. Trying to time the market is how you end up walking away with nothing. Put it in, if nothing else, a savings account.

  • kambusha@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    I’m not sure how much the bitcoins compare to your overall wealth, but it’s generally ok to put 1-5% into high-risk ventures. Bitcoin is worth something at the moment, because people trust that it is worth something. It doesn’t matter that you can’t really use it for anything at the moment (i.e., it’s not more efficient for transactions, or moving money across borders, and you definitely can’t eat it, or make anything with it). Given that major institutions and retirement accounts (and even countries) are investing in bitcoin via ETFs or directly, you could say that there is a level of trust in bitcoin that it will maintain & increase in price.

    Long story short, it’s ok to have a small portion of your overall portfolio in a high-risk/high-reward venture. So you may consider keeping some of it in bitcoin, and converting the rest into low-cost index funds.

  • stoy@lemmy.zip
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    2 months ago

    Whenever I have got a big lump sum of money I get worried, I have put it into my savings account to not accidentaly spend the money untill I know it is mine, just incase it was given by mistake.

    So let’s say that I had mined 12BTC right when bitcoin was started.

    That would be worth 765702 Euros today…

    I’d probably sell it off in peices, which would probably lower the value since I am flooding the market in a relatively short ammount of time.

    Then I’d have to report my profits to the tax man, and since I didn’t buy the BTC I’d have to check with them how exactly to report it, if it is anything like stocks where you don’t know the purchase price, I’d have to pay 30% tax on 80% of the total ammount sold.

    So for simplicity lets say that I managed to get 700 000 Euro for my 12BTC, I would need to pay tax on 560 000 Euro, meaning I would pay 168 000 Euro, giving me 532 000 Euro to play with.

    Untill I got the all clear from the tax office, I would not touch the money.

    I’d put 400 000 Euro into my retirenment right away, and use 80 000 Euro to try my luck at investing in lobg term funds.

    I’d then have 56 000 Euro as fun money…

    Most of it would just stay in my savings account, increasing my buffer, but I would spend part of it on a new camera and lenses, new monitors for my home computer and a new Ducky keyboard.

    Nothing huge.

  • j4k3@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Whomever can make a single efficient CPU architecture that can handle tensor math without the bottleneck of the present CPU caches, especially the L2 to L1 bandwidth bottleneck, is about to make a massive jump into leadership in computing tech. That is likely to come from AMD or someone with RISC-V in the next 9 years. The shift in technology between 1995 and 2005 for the average consumer will be dwarfed by the change from 2023 to 2033. The change won’t be proprietary AI. OpenAI is the Sun Micro of present AI. Meta AI is in position to play the role of maybe PayPal by parallel. At present, Google is about like Macintosh after firing Steve Jobs. Microsoft will absorb OpenAI after Altmann stalls out and quits his monopoly quest, but Microsoft has no vision and the agility of a handicapped senior citizen and twice as miserly. Apple will always sell dying tech, with great software, and a pretty dress to people willing to pay a premium for the nonsense hype and worship at the church of stupid if they can’t see the pattern of Apple riding dead architectures to their grave (6502/68k/PowerPC/ARM). If they were innovators they would lead RISC-V. Dying architecture yields deprecation control and dominance over the respective fabs, running them into the ground, while also having the advantage of well documented and shaken out hardware that no one has pushed to its true limits like what Apple can do. Apple will likely remain the most sound way to prevent inflationary losses.

    I’d love for China to recognise the opportunity of open source to disrupt the US status quo of market manipulation to milk stagnation for profit.

    This is the coming major opportunity space where the dominant winner will largely shape the future.

    However, given the dystopian nonsense of the USA, people like the Roman analogies, I’d say now is the time to get ahead of the market and buy property in Istanbul, wherever the money is going to travel when they all abandon the Italian peninsula after the consolidation of wealth leads directly to populism followed by massive civil wars. Fools side with the Caesarians or Pompeian factions. Smart people get the hell out of dodge. The billionaire prepers are building bunker island Hawaii; a likely fortress outpost with a sizable moat.

      • boonhet@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        It’s been deleted and I’m VERY intrigued. Do you still remember what it was all about?

  • viking@infosec.pub
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    2 months ago

    I’d pull it all out and invest into ETFs or maybe some individual stocks or REITs with high dividends. Maybe AA+ and higher rated bonds, if there’s anything with a decent yield out there.

  • boonhet@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    You’re on track for early retirement. You’re likely well-disciplined.

    Take this windfall, or at least some part of it, for something to enjoy. A holiday, a reasonable new vehicle if you drive (I.e not a luxury car of course), or maybe home improvements. Hell, make it a classic car that appreciates in value and only drive it on the weekends in the summer.

    You can’t take your money to the grave with you and none of us truly knows if we’ll even make it to retirement. It’s great that you’re disciplined financially, but you should also enjoy life while you’re still young.

    OR throw it all into whatever you’re currently investing in, and retire a year or 2 earlier. Idk.

  • tiredofsametab@kbin.run
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    2 months ago

    Honestly, it’d just go to stuff I need for the house. There’s a lot of canning stuff I want but I need to import it from the US (pressure canning isn’t a thing here in Japan and even water-bath canning is super rare so supplies are sparse and expensive). I’d also get a chainsaw and wood chipper. I would pay someone to do a full tune-up on my tractor and maybe get a mower attachment. Anything else, I’d basically put in the account that I use to pay my mortgage and for any home expenses.

  • HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org
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    2 months ago

    I got a ~6k Dogecoin windfall a few years back. (Found the coins I bought in 2014 at <0.1c, sold at 25c)

    I think I put like 1k into my more conventional investments, blew like $2k in indulgences (new GPU, collectibles), and set most of the rest aside for the revenuers.