My First Shots - Bitcoin

My $200,000 bitcoin odyssey

I spent about $2,000 while he put in $15,000. At the time, it seemed super speculative, but over the years, bitcoin surged and Mike seemed downright prescient. I had since relocated to Los Angeles and had been texting Mike about the 2,000 percent rise in our investment.

Strangely, I wasn't getting much of a response from him. He had 10 times as many bitcoins as I did -- shouldn't he at least have been excited? Finally, when the price of one bitcoin broke $4,000 this summer, I sent him this message: "You do still have those bitcoins right?" That's when he broke it to me: "Maybe not ..."

If something goes wrong in the traditional economy, there's supposed to be someone there to help you. A hotline. A customer service rep. A support ticket. But with bitcoin, there was no institution to save us. We had to do that ourselves. People like JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon ridicule cryptocurrencies, dismissing bitcoin as a scam, a Ponzi scheme or a bubble. But he is the institution, after all. He wants a world where we need a JPMorgan Chase to manage our money.