What would you do with a bitcoin windfall? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by EvacuateSoul@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

56 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

Update: I sold the account down to 0.1 BTC today. I may sell more later on. Thanks everyone for your input.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] kambusha@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 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.

this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2024

67 points (85.3% liked)

Asklemmy

43811 readers

884 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS