Long time reader of Bitcoin, but never bought any or any other Cryptos... Below is from the WSO forum and best reflects my thoughts on Bitcoin.
As a former currency trader who now invests in technology businesses, I feel compelled to comment--this shit is nuts. The vast majority of these ICOs are going to 0. The vast majority of so-called 'blockchain' businesses are going to 0. I'm old enough to remember the dot.com bubble.
In 1997, any internet company was well bid precisely because the people investing in it did not understand what they were buying. I got asked by a waitress at a cocktail bar recently about whether she should invest in bitcoin. She has NO other investments and knows nothing about finance or the underlying technology. And while that anecdote doesn't implicitly scale to the larger market, I think it's an indication of it.
I had a friend in high school who went to jail for dealing drugs that killed one of our other friends. He's out of jail now, can barely spell, and has $1M worth of cryptocurrencies. While there are a few respectable TRADERS who are into this at the moment, there are few respectable INVESTORS who have jumped into the deep end of the pool as of yet.
Traders can make a lot of money in a bubble so long as they get out before the collapse, but as a former trader, I warn those of you who aren't professionals that it's exceedingly difficult to pick tops and bottoms. That's not how any trader makes money. And for those of you who don't understand A LOT of the underlying technology and the corresponding policy drivers that will invariably poke a hole in the sidewall of this over-inflated nonsense, I have another anecdote: I have never known a successful tech investor who doesn't understand the tech in which they invest.
Now, there is a chance that I'm simply too old, too dumb or too myopic to understand this newfangled technology, but I think not. One or two of these will work out. For ICOs that are ostensibly replacements for shares, I think they're almost all going to 0. For 'crypto' companies that change their name to 'reflect the new reality of what their companies do', they're almost surely going to 0. For people who think they're buying a currency with their investments in the space, they're likely to be disappointed. Most of these 'assets' will never become currencies. They will mostly become valueless commodities. For those of you who think you have the chops to pick the handful of winners out of hundreds of options, I say to you, "Good luck." For those of you who just want to make some money trading, keep it light and take profits when you can. For every person who made a fortune in the dot.com bubble, there were dozens of people who lost their shirts, their shoes and most importantly, their chance to take risk in their careers.
If you're not risking much, knock yourself out. But view this as a gamble, not an investment. And if you get lucky, and happen to pick the winner in this chariot race, congratulations. But try not to pretend ex post that you were some sort of genius, and saw the whole thing playing out precisely as it did. I know far too many dicks in the VC world who got lucky or were in the right place at the only moment someone like them could ever have made any real money. They concoct some narrative after-the-fact that paints themselves as some sort of sagacious prognosticator. Don't be that guy.