This is such a naive take. It's not "Well maybe I'll lose some modest savings I have, maybe I'll hit the jackpot and make $1m". It's not a 1% chance you make $1m. It's not 0.1%. It's not 0.0001%. That 1 in a million chance? It's not even 1 in a million. It's more like a 0% chance. You're taking your modest savings and you're trading them for the incorrect hope that someone is going to hand you $1m for nothing. You're buying magic beans but you don't live in a fairy tale.
Do you know what happens after you throw your money into the wishing well? You work for the man for 40+ years and you won't enjoy a modest retirement.
Reminds me of the film "The Graduate". Benjamin's dad was trying to get him in to a career "plastics" where Ben might have some freedom / financial freedom.
Ben had no interest in it and instead by rejecting it is heading for a far less desirable outcome, even from Ben's point of view.
:shrug: I made about $80k off a ~$5k risk speculating/gambling during one of the earlier crypto waves. Did I know what I was doing? Hell no lol. Was I aware that there were a ton of people out there manipulating these markets using any and all insider info they could get their hands on? Of course
But the fact of the matter is, that $75k profit was incredibly useful to me that year, whereas having or not having that $5k wouldn't have made any difference. And gambling on crypto was my only chance to get the 10x+ return I needed in such a short time span
Playing the lottery can be a perfectly sensible and rational strategy if it is your only chance of escaping wage slavery before 60+, as is the case for the majority of people, and you are someone who values financial independence highly enough
> But the fact of the matter is, that $75k profit was incredibly useful to me that year, whereas having or not having that $5k wouldn't have made any difference.
[...] And gambling on crypto was my only chance to get the 10x+ return I needed in such a short time span
Are there no roulette tables close to where you live?
I'm not even being cynical here: If the upside of winning 15x your bet is more than 15x more desirable to you than that of losing your bet, the rational solution for your problem is called a casino. They offer all the odds you could wish for and more, transparently and usually at a moderate price point too (1/37th of your bet in the case of roulette).
No, yeah, I considered that also, as well as MTTs. Very possible that it would have been higher EV, but I think my risk of wiping out would have been higher. With crypto, even if the bubble had burst before I thought it would, I still would have been able to recover some portion of my $5k, and/or would have been able to hold on to the coins until the next bubble
This is not good advice. The fact that it worked for you is an absolute fluke, and it is not sensible nor rational to gamble like that, especially if you need money badly.
I agree it was a fluke, and I'm confident it was a significantly -EV play - but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good play or even the best available play
That's much different from someone "bankrupting" themselves over crypto. Making a $5K bet when you have decent savings carries pretty minimal risk, like you said.
Your profit came at someone else's loss, though. Gambling at a casino and winning means the casino loses money. Gambling on crypto is essentially taking money from other people, who may be gambling addicts, or suckers that have been fooled into buying crypto "because it's a good way to hedge inflation".
Casinos aren't legally allowed to tell anyone they're "investing" their money with them. When you are at a casino, you know you're gambling your money.
Do you know what happens after you throw your money into the wishing well? You work for the man for 40+ years and you won't enjoy a modest retirement.