Posts Tagged ‘bitcoin’

Is it time to buy in to the cryptocurrency bitcoin? Is now the time when you should expend time, energy and effort to become a “bitcoin miner“, get a bitcoin wallet, or is bitcoin risk still too high?

At one point in late 2010 I read this article in Slashdot about bitcoin and started poking around to learn more about it. As I thought about this new digital currency in downtime during the holidays that year, I strongly considered getting in to bitcoin mining and was even online looking at hardware to buy.

My enthusiasm was muted, however, since all of us were just coming off the global economic crisis of 2007-2008. After having struggled to keep our business afloat, slashing costs and personnel, and getting into lines of business solely to generate cash—my trust level in entering in to the fray surrounding an unregulated, digital currency with a bunch of unknowns was pretty dang low.

It is also likely I probably would have not made much—or had seen my bitcoins stored, and then lost, at Mt. Gox—but even a few dozen bitcoins mined in early 2011 (when each one was worth US$1.00) means selling them at today’s value of $684 each would have yielded a nice little gross of nearly US$25,000.

Sounds like a lot of money, right? Not so fast there cowboys and cowgirls. The bitcoin space is still the wild, wild west and a tenderfoot often got shot or died of thirst crossing the desert. Read More