Last night I had a poker game with a few friends. One of them announced he had put 300,000 yen into Bitcoin and Ripple.
Actually, that is not as much money as it may sound, but more than a month's salary for him. I think he is genuinely trying to get rich quick as he will be reaching retirement age in about ten years.
The thing is he is not very savvy at things like this and decided to invest because a mutual friend of ours who likes speculating and gambling had done the same. He said he had sent money to "a guy" who could buy cryptocurrencies and then bought them a few days later ("after the price had risen!"). Since then the price has fallen, and he isn't able to cash out, but apparently can only sell in other cryptocurrencies.
Now, on the one hand, what he hopes for is the price goes up again and ends up more than it was when he went in. In that case he should probably sell and consider himself lucky. Or he can cut his losses and sell now, hoping not to lose too much (although it sounds dodgy that he is unable to take out his cash immediately. Why not? He doesn't seem to know.) Of course, maybe he won't accept anything less than a stratospheric rise, when the other, likelier, alternative to that, is a catastrophic decline.
And if he is doing it, there will be many other people doing it too.