Well, its like the Laszlo pizza story... we must not be too critical of the past.

The human mind is a strange thing, and there exist something like a "mental optical illusion" when it comes to viewing the past. We cannot, in fact, view the past honestly. All of our present-time knowledge is imposed upon the past in way that makes it almost impossible for us to really see the past for what it was.

Consider a present day example. Imagine I sent you 10000 blue pixels....yes effectively a png of 10000 blue pixels....and someone else said "if you send me that pic I'll send you 2 large pizzas". That other person was not a wall street exec dressed in a suit, but rather a 18 year kid who liked to smoke weed.

You would probably feel like the "png for pizza" was a pretty good deal. Who would ever know that would become worth $500M....

But funny enough, even this contrived present-day example is clouded by the past. Thanks to bitcoin, we now mentally know about "digital scarcity" and know that purely digital things can become worth lots of money....

My point is that we must drop all those anxieties about "I should've held on to that..." etc because it was literally a different world with different rules.

At least it was only 1/4 bitcoin right?

Said story, man! It's not that you lost 1/4 BTC, but you lost the golden opportunity to mine Bitcoin over the years following 2012.

I wonder how many others have thrown away such opportunities. 🤔

However, as BitcoinLovers always say, you (we) are still on time to stack some sats.

Thank you for your service 🫡

Could've been much worse, still hurts, though.

Man, that's tough but, like you say, it was a journey and everything you did lead you to where you are today. I don't have a story like that, as I didn't even get that far, but I have defining moments that I can think back to when I was super curious about bitcoin as a gen X, technologically challenged mother XD. But I got suuuper busy with the kids and everything life was throwing at me. I wish I'd acted much earlier on my curiosity and been less distracted with pointless crap but, like you, my journey got me and my family to where we are today.