I remember when I first heard about Bitcoin around 2009 or so. I thought about mining some coins as an experiment and then, being in my Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand phase at the time, thought “Cool philosophical idea, too bad it will never amount to anything” and never set it up on my laptop.
That was actually the best possible outcome for me. Now I tell the story about how my stupidity and shortsightedness caused me to miss out on tens of billions of dollars, but it’s no more than a life lesson like any other missed opportunity.
You see, I’m several laptops beyond the laptop I had in 2009. If I had actually had tens of billions of dollars in my hands and lost it because I disposed of an old hard drive, I’d be in a padded room gibbering and painting the walls with my own feces.
Instead, I clawed my way up the hard way over many years and learned some lessons along the way.