How many LWers bought Bitcoin in 2011 and ended up with poor returns due to the demise of Mt. Gox?
I almost ended up losing a little of my money that way, but was stopped when my KYC evidence was rejected for no clear reason. I ended up doing well by buying Ripples a couple of years later, but I don’t know whether I would have done that if I had lost money in my first attempt.
More broadly, someone aggregated reported BTC theft from 2011-2020. The spreadsheet linked from the article includes a graph where you can see that about 1-5% of BTC was stolen each year from 2011-2014. Since 2015, BTC theft has been lower, around 0.02-0.7% annually. For comparison, 3% of the US money supply is about $150 billion.
I’d be curious to know how that compares to other forms of theft. Unfortunately, statistics seem to include crypto theft in larger theft statistics, so it’s hard to evaluate whether crypto or dollars is safer from theft. I have to imagine that dollars are generally safer (FDIC something something?).
How many LWers bought Bitcoin in 2011 and ended up with poor returns due to the demise of Mt. Gox?
I almost ended up losing a little of my money that way, but was stopped when my KYC evidence was rejected for no clear reason. I ended up doing well by buying Ripples a couple of years later, but I don’t know whether I would have done that if I had lost money in my first attempt.
I have 2-3 friends I know about who lost $5k+ on Mt. Gox going down, and didn’t hold crypto anywhere else.
More broadly, someone aggregated reported BTC theft from 2011-2020. The spreadsheet linked from the article includes a graph where you can see that about 1-5% of BTC was stolen each year from 2011-2014. Since 2015, BTC theft has been lower, around 0.02-0.7% annually. For comparison, 3% of the US money supply is about $150 billion.
I’d be curious to know how that compares to other forms of theft. Unfortunately, statistics seem to include crypto theft in larger theft statistics, so it’s hard to evaluate whether crypto or dollars is safer from theft. I have to imagine that dollars are generally safer (FDIC something something?).