Against Going Into Debt to Buy Crypto

Some people have taken the Fear of Missing Out to a subprime mortgage extent, and done such things as taken out a mortgage to buy more Bitcoin:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-feeding-frenzy-sees-people-put-their-house-on-it

When an experimental asset or venture shows up, it will filter for more risk-seeking individuals. That's natural and predictable. And a subset of those will take their risk-seeking to unconditional extremes, such as taking on credit card debt to buy more. And of the people who do that, some of them do well.

But what if Bitcoin happened to go down 80% or more? That has happened. Though I would claim that the odds of that happening are lower at this point; believe it or not, Bitcoin has become less volatile over time.

Losing your life savings to a disaster is already pretty harsh on your long-term quality of life. But if anything goes wrong in the leveraged scenario and you lose your investment, you are still going to spend years paying that mortgage, for nothing. Your potential losses become qualitatively different, in a deeply alarming way. People doing this with Bitcoin may have done well so far, but historically, people who use such methods are prone to getting blown up unexpectedly.

Further, think about which type of society you want to live in. A society where people will collectively get very leveraged and indebted is a society that is more prone to bubbles, financial disasters and waste. I want to live in a society where other people's risk-taking won't also put me in a recession. That's just as true for crypto as for traditional assets.

Don't be in that group. You should be able to accept that there is a greater than zero chance of your crypto investment going to zero, whether through a hack, theft or some catastrophe. And in the subset of worlds where that happens, and you bet your house on it or maxed out a few credit cards, you are hurting very badly for a long time. It's already high-risk to put my savings there; no need to start doing daredevil stunts that would eventually destroy me.