It's not fair. I know two guys from my local pub, both very unsophisticated about investing who took a drunken gamble and put all their (relatively-humble) savings into Bitcoin almost a year ago. They both sold out this week.
They quit their dumb jobs and bought beers for the whole pub last night. Yes, both are single. Life in America.
I dare you to short Bitcoin. Whatever it is.
"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." Lord Keynes about shorting the market.
And yet there will come a time when the smart move will be to short Bitcoin and now that there are Bitcoin futures, there will be those who do and some will make more doing that than The News Junkie's friends made on Bitcoin.
To cash out of Bitcoin with $1 M this week (before taxes) means you put in about $60,000 one year ago, that reflects major balls, these guys earned their good fortune. Hopefully they held it for more than one year and are just paying capital gains. If they are paying taxes.
They wisely (or accidentally) followed the Rothschild dictum: "Always sell too soon".
That's the cool thing about markets. They can reward you royally . . . or they can take no prisoners.
It's a much better way to make money than earning wages . . . if it doesn't send you to the poor house.
I don't really know what bitcoin is, how to get it or trade in it or how to mine it (I assumed that was a joke but they keep talking about it so who knows). But I do know a scam when I see one, I suspect when this is over there will be a dozen or so very rich but anonymous people and a couple thousand poor and angry people. This will either be stolen from them or the bitcoin market will crash and the insiders will all cash out the day before. Get back to me after the crash and tell me what the bitcoin millionaires are doing.