Why We Convince Ourselves the Opportunities We Missed Were Actually Bad
How Bitcoin became our favorite retroactive villain
There's something peculiar about how we discuss Bitcoin today. At $115,000 per coin at time of writing, it represents one of the most dramatic wealth creation events in modern history. Yet listen to conversations about it, and you'll hear an unusual amount of energy spent explaining why missing this opportunity was actually wise, rational, or even morally superior.
This isn't really about Bitcoin. It's about how humans process regret.
The Retroactive Villain
When we miss life-changing opportunities, our psychology kicks into overdrive to protect our self-image. We can't simply admit we failed to recognize something important. Instead, we rewrite the story to make our decision retrospectively correct.
Bitcoin provides the perfect target for this mental gymnastics. It's technical enough that dismissing it sounds sophisticated. It's associated with enough controversial figures that moral objections feel justified. It consumes energy, attracts speculators, and challenges traditional institutions in ways that make criticism feel principled rather than defensive.
But consider this: YouTube consumes more electricity than the entire Bitcoin network. Netflix's energy usage dwarfs most countries. Yet nobody writes think pieces about the environmental catastrophe of streaming cat videos or binge-watching television series. We've accepted massive energy consumption for entertainment while condemning it for monetary innovation.
The difference? We didn't miss out on owning YouTube or Netflix stock at penny valuations.
Selective Moral Outrage
Watch how quickly people develop strong opinions about Bitcoin's legitimacy, environmental impact, or social utility after learning they could have bought it for dollars instead of thousands. Suddenly, concerns about energy usage become paramount. The speculative nature becomes deeply troubling. The association with libertarians becomes disqualifying.
These same people happily use energy-intensive air conditioning, drive cars for convenience rather than necessity, and buy products shipped across oceans. Their carbon footprint includes dozens of choices made purely for comfort or pleasure. But Bitcoin? That crosses a moral line.
This selective application of environmental standards reveals something uncomfortable about our motivations. We're not really concerned about energy usage. We're concerned about feeling foolish for missing an opportunity that seemed obviously worthless at the time.
The Rationalization Machine
Human brains excel at creating post-hoc explanations for decisions that turned out poorly. We transform missed opportunities into evidence of our superior judgment, moral clarity, or risk management skills.
"I was smart enough to avoid Bitcoin" becomes a more comfortable narrative than "I failed to recognize a paradigm shift happening in front of me." The first preserves our self-image as rational actors. The second forces us to confront the limitations of our pattern recognition and judgment.
Bitcoin skeptics often point to its volatility, but every transformative technology experiences extreme price swings during adoption phases. The internet bubble of 2000 didn't invalidate the internet. It simply separated sustainable innovations from temporary speculation. Yet somehow Bitcoin's volatility becomes evidence of fundamental worthlessness rather than natural growing pains.
The Comfort of Complexity
Technical complexity provides another psychological escape hatch. Bitcoin involves cryptography, distributed networks, and monetary theory that most people find challenging. Dismissing it as "too complicated" or "probably a scam" requires less cognitive effort than understanding how revolutionary technologies actually work.
This same pattern repeated with personal computers, the internet, smartphones, and electric vehicles. Each breakthrough seemed unnecessarily complex or impractical until suddenly they weren't. The people who dismissed them weren't stupid. They simply prioritized immediate comprehensibility over long-term potential.
Missing vs. Choosing
The most revealing aspect of Bitcoin's journey involves the complete reversal of institutional positions. When Bitcoin launched in 2009, it existed in complete obscurity. Only a handful of cryptography enthusiasts and cypherpunks even knew it existed. For years, it operated below the radar of 99% of the population, including financial professionals.
When Bitcoin finally gained enough visibility to attract mainstream attention around 2011-2013, the response was swift and brutal. Major financial institutions didn't just ignore it; they actively condemned it. JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon called it a "fraud." Goldman Sachs dismissed it as speculation. Warren Buffett compared it to "rat poison squared."
These weren't casual dismissals. Financial giants spent considerable resources explaining why Bitcoin was a Ponzi scheme, a bubble, or outright criminal enterprise. They published research papers, gave conference presentations, and issued client warnings about the dangers of cryptocurrency investment.
Today, those same institutions are spending millions acquiring Bitcoin reserves. BlackRock launched Bitcoin ETFs. JPMorgan offers Bitcoin services to clients. Goldman Sachs trades Bitcoin derivatives. The "rat poison" is now part of their balance sheets.
The Next Opportunity
Understanding how we rationalize missed opportunities offers practical value beyond Bitcoin therapy. Right now, technologies exist that seem weird, complicated, or morally questionable. Some will fail spectacularly. Others will transform entire industries.
Our challenge isn't predicting which specific innovations succeed. It's recognizing when our skepticism stems from genuine analysis versus psychological self-protection. Are we evaluating opportunities based on their merits, or are we already preparing excuses for why missing them would actually demonstrate our wisdom?
The people who bought Bitcoin at $1 weren't necessarily smarter or more prescient. They were simply willing to remain curious about things that seemed strange rather than immediately explaining why those things were obviously worthless.
Sometimes the weirdest opportunities are weird precisely because they're pointing toward futures we can't yet imagine.
And sometimes our strongest objections reveal our deepest fears about what we might be missing right now.