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It’s been a decade since that conversation, yet it still clings to me. And that too, for a matter I don’t know of. Am I financially envious, emotionally charged, holding on to hindsight like an epistemic drug? For whatever reason, it inclines me to write my first post on LessWrong, perhaps in the hopes of letting this go.
In 2016, at ten years old, I told my father to buy Bitcoin. I do not remember my reasoning. I cannot reconstruct the chain of thoughts that led me to that conclusion. I had no personal devices of my own but I suspect it to be some mixture of internet osmosis and the vague but intoxicating idea of quick money. I doubt I could have articulated anything persuasive to my father yet I said it with enough conviction that it remained memorable to both of us.
He dismissed it. And reasonably so. It was speculative nonsense at the time and still is to many now, I mean look at how people percieve the digital currency ecosystem like NFTs and the speed of which public sentiment oscillates between utopia and scam. Though that doesn't remove the fact that the surrounding ecosystem has matured beyond with decentralised systems and stablecoins.
Needless to say my father seeing the boom in cryptocurrency over the years took a dip in the bucket, and that too at the deepest point, in 2021. It was around this time when Bitcoin was reaching it's peak price and was the hot talk. Nevertheless, we lost money.
I was not a prophet in 2016, and he was not a fool. Consequences alone cannot be the arbiter of wisdom. Timing can manufacture genius just as easily as it manufactures incompetence. One moment rewards imagination and another punishes enthusiasm. Neither proves virtue. Neither proves folly.
Though sometimes I wish, I had never known of Bitcoin in 2016.
It’s been a decade since that conversation, yet it still clings to me. And that too, for a matter I don’t know of. Am I financially envious, emotionally charged, holding on to hindsight like an epistemic drug? For whatever reason, it inclines me to write my first post on LessWrong, perhaps in the hopes of letting this go.
In 2016, at ten years old, I told my father to buy Bitcoin. I do not remember my reasoning. I cannot reconstruct the chain of thoughts that led me to that conclusion. I had no personal devices of my own but I suspect it to be some mixture of internet osmosis and the vague but intoxicating idea of quick money. I doubt I could have articulated anything persuasive to my father yet I said it with enough conviction that it remained memorable to both of us.
He dismissed it. And reasonably so. It was speculative nonsense at the time and still is to many now, I mean look at how people percieve the digital currency ecosystem like NFTs and the speed of which public sentiment oscillates between utopia and scam. Though that doesn't remove the fact that the surrounding ecosystem has matured beyond with decentralised systems and stablecoins.
Needless to say my father seeing the boom in cryptocurrency over the years took a dip in the bucket, and that too at the deepest point, in 2021. It was around this time when Bitcoin was reaching it's peak price and was the hot talk. Nevertheless, we lost money.
I was not a prophet in 2016, and he was not a fool. Consequences alone cannot be the arbiter of wisdom. Timing can manufacture genius just as easily as it manufactures incompetence. One moment rewards imagination and another punishes enthusiasm. Neither proves virtue. Neither proves folly.
Though sometimes I wish, I had never known of Bitcoin in 2016.