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There's the old saying:

Don't cry over spilled milk!

Its meaning, AFAIK, is that you should not cry/be sad/get hung up over losing something trivial which can easily be replaced. If you spill some milk, that's bad luck, but it doesn't really matter.

However, some of us had Bitcoins in the very beginning, only to lose them in various way (or even waste/spend them early on), and are now looking at the $33k USD price... and feel very bad about it.

Does "don't cry over spilled milk" really work in this context? "Don't cry over lost Bitcoins"? Isn't it very different from the milk in that it actually does have a huge value now, which it didn't back then?

Isn't the meaning of the proverb invalid in the context of lost/wasted Bitcoin?

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  • Sounds great to me! Commented Jan 2, 2021 at 22:50
  • That’s not what that saying means. Perhaps the version I’m used is more illuminating: “No use crying over spilt milk” Commented Jan 3, 2021 at 3:23
  • Hey, it happens every day. Commented Jan 3, 2021 at 21:05

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Being a proverb it's rather open to interpretation, but I don't think it implies that spilt milk can easily be replaced. It probably appeared among people who would struggle to replace it. I think it means the milk is irretrievable: you can't pick it up.

So I think the expression is used correctly. Bitcoins may or may not be replaceable but the opportunity is irretrievable. It is really the opportunity to make a huge profit that matters.

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I've generally heard "There's no use crying over spilt milk".

And I interpreted this to mean that once the milk is spilt (or spilled) you can't retrieve it, so there's little point in fixating on the event. The point is to put the event behind you and get on with life.

I'm vaguely recalling I once heard this idiom in a retelling of the story of Hansel and Gretel.

I think the pun of sorts using Bitcoin works quite well. Reminds me that I had an opportunity to invest in Intel in 1972 and didn't.

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Milk wasn't a trivial thing in the hey day of the original saying, with its first appearance in literature (as far as I can find) coming from the 17th century. Milk was a bit of a luxury in those days, and it's possible (if not likely) that the saying is actually much older than 17th century.

Also, consider a possible different interpretation of the original figure of speech, wherein the spilled milk belongs to a farmer who relies on it for his livelihood.

With these things in mind, it's not so hard to see "Bitcoin" as an exaggerated modernization off the original.

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