Back in early 2012, I was introduced to Bitcoins. Wanting to try them out, I decided to put $50 into Mt. Gox in hopes of exchanging it for some bitcoins. At the time, bitcoins were at an all time high…of $5. Thinking that it was too much, I decided to wait for them to go back under $5 before I bought any.

Fast forward to 2013. I see a Reddit post about bitcoins reaching an all time high of $260 each. I looked at the charts and kicked myself for not buying bitcoins when they were only $5 each.

So for the past few months, everytime bitcoins came into the conversation, I would tell my misfortune of not buying bitcoins when they were just $5 each.

Just recently, I decided that since I already had $50 in Mt. Gox, it was useless to have it just sit there. So I went back onto Mt. Gox with the intention of spending that $50 for half a bitcoin. When I log in, I see that I have a balance of less than a dollar. What had happened, I thought. Then I looked at my BTC balance: “Your wallet: 9.94000000 BTC”.

Turns out I actually DID buy bitcoins back in early 2012, but I just never withdrew them into my wallet. After my fair share of expletives, I quickly re-downloaded Bitcoin-QT logged in, and withdrew my bitcoins, netting a $950 profit. This was probably the best investment I had made in my entire life so far.

All in all, my experience with bitcoins shows the volatility of them. The fact that in just over a year, a widely used can increase in value twenty-fold worries me. Who knows, maybe one day they’ll fall back to $5 again.