Author here. Thanks for all the comments, I've been hesitant to post this to the court of public opinion, yet curiosity about what the HN community would think caused me to push the button. My lawyers - who were really excellent - represented me (on contingency!) because it seemed the chance of a judge not accepting a motion to dismiss (for a variety of reasons I don't want to detail here) was non-zero. And the process of discovery would be very costly for NVIDIA with depositions from many executives who have better things to do.
As a 14 year old in 1995 I advised family to put the proceeds from the sale of a house into Microsoft stock, which based on a cursory search would have ended up as some absurd number. One online calculator I'm looking at says $204,000 of stock in 1994 would be $41.2 million today after multiple splits and increase in share value. But nobody takes investment advice from 14 year olds who've spent too much time reading USENET and talking to people on IRC.
Even if they'd only put a fraction of it into MSFT and held it until only 2003 or 2004 it would have been far more than enough to retire on comfortably.
Last year, I got an email from a college friend who reminded me that I'd told him to buy MSFT shares in 1986. Neither he nor I did, so I file this in my 'Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda' file, alongside similar stories about Cisco in 1991, Netflix in 2001, and Bitcoin in 2011.
I remember looking into Bitcoin in 2012, and thinking:
"This will never work as a currency, because of the max number of bitcoins it will inherently be deflationary, and the value will go up, which means that there will be a disincentive to spend it, because the value will just go up..."
I could have used BTC to buy into the ethereum ICO and I made up every excuse under the sun that a young kid who wrote shit python code could never compete with the gold rock.
Since then I've heavily revised my thinking. Primarily that I don't dismiss things as easily anymore. I try to focus on coming up with a reason to like it instead of disliking it.
Eric_Gullichsen · · focus · HN ↗
djmips · · focus · HN ↗
walrus01 · · focus · HN ↗
Even if they'd only put a fraction of it into MSFT and held it until only 2003 or 2004 it would have been far more than enough to retire on comfortably.
pjmorris · · focus · HN ↗
dummydummy1234 · · focus · HN ↗
"This will never work as a currency, because of the max number of bitcoins it will inherently be deflationary, and the value will go up, which means that there will be a disincentive to spend it, because the value will just go up..."
Yep... Did not buy any.
jodrellblank · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1943699">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1943699
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2060609">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2060609
when they were valued around $0.30 each, or about $4 of Bitcoin then for $1M now.
latchkey · · focus · HN ↗
Since then I've heavily revised my thinking. Primarily that I don't dismiss things as easily anymore. I try to focus on coming up with a reason to like it instead of disliking it.
I never sold.