A common advice platitude that is carelessly thrown about in /r/Bitcoin is something to the effect of "Bitcoin is a speculative asset; no one can know how it will play out and it could go to zero. You should never invest more than you can afford to lose"
I find this to be a particularly meaningless and nonsensical statement. First the assertion that Bitcoin is a speculative asset should immediately disqualify the person from giving advice. Not only does this statement reveal that the person making it does not know if Bitcoin is going to increase in value, it also implies that no one else can know this as well. This is a profoundly arrogant claim and is of no use. Contrast this to this article written by Pierre Rochard back in February of 2013. At the time of this article Bitcoin was worth $22/coin and was widely viewed as toy money and ridiculed as a joke. Pierre's article assesses the monetary policy of this "toy money" and concludes that it has a superior monetary policy to the US Federal Reserve and will therefore necessarily grow to overtake the US dollar and end the fed. Bitcoin has increased in value over 500x since Rochard's article was published.
If you hear someone giving advice and they say that "no one can know if Bitcoin will succeed" they are revealing their profound ignorance of monetary economics and their arrogance that no one else could possibly know something they fail to understand. Conversely we have people who have looked at Bitcoin when it was considered a joke and correctly concluded it would grow to take over the global economy and kill every central bank in the process. It should be obvious who is more qualified to speak on the matter and who should be ignored.
The last part of the advice is rather curious and reveals a glaring and very dangerous status quo bias. What is meant by "Do not invest more than you can afford to lose"? More importantly, if you choose not to invest in Bitcoin you are necessarily invested in something else. The investment in something else--USD perhaps, is dismissed as if that investment cannot lose. No one ever says "Do not invest more in the US Dollar than you can afford to lose", but perhaps they should. Considering the fact that the USD has been rapidly losing market share to a new currency competitor with a monetary policy unlike anything humanity has ever seen, perhaps this would be the best possible advice as it suggest there is a risk most people are unaware of.
My personal advice to people is this- If you do not understand monetary economics you have no business investing in a currency because you have no idea what you are doing. Most people would agree with this if I state this with regard to Bitcoin, but it is also true for holding significant amounts of US Dollars. Currencies can and do fail; currencies perceived as stable and "strong" collapse when they encounter competition from a currency with a superior monetary policy. If you do not understand this, you should educate yourself perhaps starting with people who correctly predicted Bitcoin's rise when it was worth $22/coin.
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