LessWrong is where I learned about Bitcoin, several years ago, and my greatest regret is that I did not investigate it more as soon as possible, that people here did not yell at me louder that it was important, and to go take a look at it. In that spirit, I will do so now.

First of all, several caveats:

* You should not go blindly buying anything that you do not understand. If you don't know about Bitcoin, you should start by reading about its history, read Satoshi's whitepaper, etc. I will assume that hte rest of the readers who continue reading this have a decent idea of what Bitcoin is.

* Under absolutely no circumstances should you invest money into Bitcoin that you cannot afford to lose. "Risk money" only! That means that if you were to lose 100% of you money, it would not particularly damage your life. Do not spend money that you will need within the next several years, or ever. You might in fact want to mentally write off the entire thing as a 100% loss from the start, if that helps.

* Even more strongly, under absolutely no circumstances whatsoever will you borrow money in order to buy Bitcoins, such as using margin, credit card loans, using your student loan, etc. This is very much similar to taking out a loan, going to a casino and betting it all on black on the roulette wheel. You would either get very lucky or potentially ruin your life. Its not worth it, this is reality, and there are no laws of the universe preventing you from losing.

* This post is not "investment advice".

* I own Bitcoins, which makes me biased. You should update to reflect that I am going to present a pro-Bitcoin case.

So why is this potentially a time to buy Bitcoins? One could think of markets like a pendulum, where price swings from one extreme to another over time, with a very high price corresponding to over-enthusiasm, and a very low price corresponding to despair. As Warren Buffett said, Mr. Market is like a manic depressive. One day he walks into your office and is exuberant, and offers to buy your stocks at a high price. Another day he is depressed and will sell them for a fraction of that.

The root cause of this phenomenon is confirmation bias. When things are going well, and the fundamentals of a stock or commodity are strong, the price is driven up, and this ...

Ricardo Kittrell

Ricardo Kittrell