Missing the Boat

I got my first connection to the internet in 1993. I accessed via a DOS prompt and used a 2400 baud modem. I could use email, download files from file servers and use bulletin boards. It was a far cry from what we know as the internet today. Although I was fresh out of law school and on my way to qualifying as a solicitor, I felt that the internet was going to be big. And if it was going to revolutionise the world then I wanted to be in there first. I wanted to be a player, somehow.

Despite being ‘in’ so early, the developments in the internet and the web in the 1990s and 2000s were so fast that it was impossible to keep up, and so I settled on being a user rather than a player. I felt like I’d missed the boat.

I first came across Bitcoin in early 2015. Bitcoin, blockchains and cryptocurrencies were some of the topics that crossed my radar when I attended SXSW in March that year. It seemed like this Bitcoin thing might be an idea that had some legs and I decided that I should buy myself a Bitcoin or two when I got home. They were a couple of hundred dollars or so at the time.

But I didn’t get round to buying those Bitcoin.

And by the time I did get around to acquiring some crypto a couple of years later, Bitcoin was at about £5,000, so I felt like I’d missed the boat.

I didn’t buy Bitcoin and went for something much cheaper called Ethereum. I bought a couple of those instead.

I’ve never been good with stocks. The few times I have dabbled I’ve tended to get burned. From time to time I have pondered buying some of the better known US tech stocks, but they always seemed to be valued way too high, and it always felt like I’d missed the boat.

We shouldn’t spend time and energy beating ourselves up about missing the boat. We should remember that there will be another along shortly.

But we must also remember that if we want to go somewhere we have to get onboard. Otherwise we will stay exactly where we are.