This week the price for 1 Bitcoin has gone beyond 14.000 euros. It must be the biggest bubble ever that will burst at some point and leave a lot of people wondering how they could have possibly ever fallen for this. The chart on the left says it all. Perhaps they should have bought tulips instead?
So while we wait for the bubble to burst there are people who wonder why they didn’t see this coming and bought Bitcoins when they were just worth a few cents. After all, they could be insanely rich by now. And then there are those who bought Bitcoins early on and spent amounts on Pizza deliveries that would be worth tens of thousands of euros today.
And then there is me who experimented with Bitcoins about one and half years ago when a Bitcoin was ‘only’ worth 400 euros. At the time I thought this was already way over the top and that it couldn’t possible rise much higher. If you are interested, my Bitcoin intro can be found here (part 1) and here (part 2). Part of the experiment was to spend them on something and I’m really glad I didn’t spend them on Pizza deliveries.
Instead, I donated my 0.25 Bitcoins (worth around 100 euros at the time) to the EFF, Libreoffice, Tor and Openstreetmap. If they held on to my donation they can cash it in today and get a total of 3.500 Euros. Of course I have no way of knowing if and when they have spent my Bitcoins but I hope they hung on to it and sell them before the bubble bursts. In any case I feel much better on this ‘investment’ in a cause than if I had ordered Pizzas at the time.
> Of course I have no way of knowing if and when they have spent my Bitcoins but I hope they hung on to it and sell them before the bubble bursts.
Well if you still know which BTC you gave them, you can track what happened to it. That’s http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/why-criminals-cant-hide-behind-bitcoin.
I think https://blockchain.info allows to do that, though I have never dipped my toes in bitcoin and thus haven’t tried the website.