Check down the back of that old sofa

[Justin Passing]

If you dropped a One dollar Bitcoin down there, 13 years ago this week, it's now worth $50,000.

 

[charliegolf]

Surely with bitcoin, the hard drive would dig into yer a**e?

 

[algas]

Once found my daughters dead hamsted in ours, about 30 yrs ago, wonder how much its worth now

 

[mattylad]

I have a hard drive around here somewhere with my sons bitcoin on, problem is he cannot remember his password.

 

[Odds]

If you'd bought $1,000 worth of bitcoin in October 2021, two years later you would have just $400.​

In 2010, the cultural theorist Lauren Berlant wrote of ‘cruel optimism’, a desire that keeps us attached to something that ultimately harms us. Cruel optimism takes different forms and at the centre of it all are dreams of something we call ‘the good life’, where we seek comfort in tales of hard work rewarded, of winning the system. Why, Berlant asks, do people stay attached to these fantasies despite all evidence to the contrary? And ‘what happens’, as in the financial crash and, later, the pandemic, ‘when those fantasies start to fray?’

What replaced the fantasy of the good life, and who are these new dreams in service of? If the tale of hard work and upward mobility kept us yoked to our employers and our 9-to-5 jobs, the fantasy of the YOLO investment keeps its subjects attached to the market. To risking it all. And these dreams feed the market, as in the crypto winter of 2021 where many vulnerable investors were left holding the bag, or the post-GameStop frenzy where, despite feelgood stories about David and Goliath, the significant profiteer was the market-maker behind the Robinhood trading app.

Financial markets are no longer a space where investors allocate capital to businesses to grow a profit. It’s all about gambling on vibes in the gulf left by financial and social and political systems in total freefall. Nihilistic vibes, desperate vibes, hopeless vibes. The market is a giant lottery in search of the prize of security, gambling for a spot in the lifeboats. Of course, financial markets have been divorced from the so-called ‘real’ economy since the 1970s. But, maybe, in the era of post-truth and political apathy, what is new is an acceleration of these sensations, a total sense that nothing matters anymore. Hard work doesn’t matter. Good sense doesn’t matter, and neither do good bets or doing all the right things.

 

[Deleted member 294929]

I have about £830 in crypto.. it goes up it goes down

 

[Ihavenojob]

Has anyone ever sold any and been paid in real money?

 

[gas112]

And how quick do they respond to a sale instruction is it instant or hours or days

 

[nwgs]

If you bought for £1k would you sell @2k ? 3k?

Its too volatile to hold on to unless you’re either too rich to car or forget about like the bloke from Newport.

The first bit coins where actually a coin