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What helps me sleep at night is that even had I entered all this time ago with BTC I would have exited 100 times by now. There have indeed been many 2x,3x,5x mu

What helps me sleep at night is that even had I entered all this time ago with BTC I would have exited 100 times by now. There have indeed been many 2x,3x,5x multipliers with BTC but there have been so many instances when it was unclear how everything is going to turn out which would personally prompt me to consider exiting with what I had. As my friend nicely put it: only way we could have gotten rich from BTC is had we bought it when it was pennies and forgotten about it up until last year

ur-whale 6y ago
AKA : no risk, no rewards.
petercooper 6y ago
That's exactly my attitude towards it too. But this has also given me a strong lesson for the future. If I get in on the ground floor of anything and decide to sell out, always keep a little skin the game that you don't touch.. because you never know if it'll go big. If the GP had sold 99% of his 3650 coins and kept 1% till now, that would still be $1.8m.
- SilverRed 6y ago
  When do you sell it though? If you had coins from 2011, is now the time to sell? What if it goes up 100x next year.
  - dmwallin 6y ago
    Set yourself a threshold amount that you are okay with a 100% loss on, and a periodic schedule based on your risk-appetite. At each interval if you are above your threshold you sell your excess holdings and if you are below you sit tight. Alternatively you can set yourself a price threshold. For example, sell half your holdings every time the price doubles. Essentially this acts as a log function on your gains in exchange for lowering risk. There's a ton of room for fine tuning a set of rules to manage risk, as long as you are willing to stick to them.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - petercooper 6y ago
    Personally I would sell what I'd call the "FOMO holding" once it's worth a "life changing" amount of money. So if I held 100 Bitcoin as such a fund, that might well have been years ago, but then I'd also be retired and not care. The sister comment here is more nuanced and surely a better answer, though.
belval 6y ago
Same thing here, I made a good profit a while back. To believe that I would be a millionaire today requires ignoring everything I know about my risk tolerance and while Bitcoin worked, it could've gone the Ponzi scheme way and crash to 0$ overnight. There were risks of Chinese miners going for a 51% attack, regulation in the US to downright outlawing mining in Canada.
loopz 6y ago
Or the wallet got cracked. Most online wallets were. Or the HDD died..
MarkPNeyer 6y ago
Or if you have totally unshakeable faith in it, because you see us heading towards a game-theoretic attractor where bitcoin is the primary global store of value. That's worked for me :)
tshaddox 6y ago
Well, if you have the power to go back in time and change your decision to buy BTC, you might as well also go back in time and change your decision to then not sell it. :) That's basically what the "hodl" meme is: just decide to not sell until you need the money or until the money could significantly change your life. Of course, that's not exactly a new "investment" idea: there's always been a big difference between day-trading and just buying stocks (and index funds, etc.) with the intention to hold essentially indefinitely.
IkmoIkmo 6y ago
Yup, same. Hell if I put in money now and it did 2x and went to $100k, I'd get out, too. There's just no way I see myself not getting out at $100k or say $200k. And I'm not risking my money on an investment that can 'only' do 2x or 4x. Bitcoin was cool as it could do 10x or 100x in the span of 1-2 years. But with the numbers where they're at and knowing myself, I'd cash out way before that. In the end because bitcoin isn't being used by virtually anyone, and is only valuable because of the momentum/hype (i.e., the reason I'd buy it is only because other people buying it solely for the purpose of thinking even more others will buy it only for speculation and not use, and the price rises), it's just not an interesting investment for me long-term. Short-term it could be but I'd be as not surprised if it did -50% as if it did +50% in the next year. Not really interested in that kind of exposure, given that I don't think I'll ever hold enough to enjoy the extreme potential upside.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  Interesting to read this, as my instincts are completely different. Wouldn't a better strategy be to e.g. wait until Bitcoin doubles (which you believe is likely to happen), then sell half (so that you get your money back, sans inflation)... and then for the following twenty years, sell 5% of the remaining Bitcoins each year? The greatest risk is that maybe Bitcoin never doubles, and maybe you lose all the money you put it. But at the moment the price doubles and you sell half, so you get your money back... why throw away the chance of maybe getting insanely rich in the future?
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    To me, it really depends on one's financial situation. It's much easier to hodl if you have a good-paying job with benefits, a 401K with a healthy amount stocked away, a decent savings reserve, or equity on a house. Also helps if you've played a lot of poker.
  - IkmoIkmo 6y ago
    You're making a mental difference that's not an actual difference. Suppose you have 100k, invest 20k of it in bitcoin and it doubles. You now have 40k bitcoin and 120k in total. You could say, sell half the bitcoin, you now still have 100k in other assets and 20k in bitcoin. Even if you lose the entire 20k, you'll never lose more than what you put in. But what does it matter? Fact is, you still lose 20k if bitcoin goes to zero. The fact you already made 20k on it doesn't change that fact. The source of your wealth should not indicate whether a loss is good or bad, or bearable or unbearable. At the end of the day, a loss is a loss. All your wealth goes into one big pot, you can't say 'this part is from savings, this part is from bitcoin'. It's just money, and losing it sucks. Of course there is something to be said about reducing your exposure to bitcoin as you grow richer and need to take less risky bets. But that's only great after the fact that bitcoin keeps going up in price. If bitcoin goes down in price, it's of course a poor idea to sell slowly instead of all at once. Again, a loss of $X is a loss of $X. At the end of the day, virtually everyone holds bitcoin not for the actual value of e.g. owning a small portion of Apple which sells something hundreds of millions of people use daily, profits, which flows back to you. Instead virtually everyone holds it simply because others are, and by doing so together, it keeps going up in price. You could apply the same to any other (scarce) good. Like a useless but rare metal. Or indeed, a useless copy-paste of the bitcoin software, to start a new crypto. Bitcoin's price isn't because it's valuable, it's because of a common idea to buy it because it'll make us rich. And that idea cannot hold true on anything but faith. Humans are pretty crazy and so I wouldn't be surprised if bitcoin goes to $200k within 2-3 years. But it's still an insane investment proposition to me. (coming from a person who held 100% of his net worth in bitcoin for 3 years or so, btw).
worker767424 6y ago
I did a version of that a few years ago, but I basically turned $5 into $500 and cashed out. Guess I'd have $5,000 now. Still don't care.

ur-whale 6y ago

AKA : no risk, no rewards.

petercooper 6y ago

That's exactly my attitude towards it too. But this has also given me a strong lesson for the future. If I get in on the ground floor of anything and decide to sell out, always keep a little skin the game that you don't touch.. because you never know if it'll go big. If the GP had sold 99% of his 3650 coins and kept 1% till now, that would still be $1.8m.

SilverRed 6y ago
When do you sell it though? If you had coins from 2011, is now the time to sell? What if it goes up 100x next year.
- dmwallin 6y ago
  Set yourself a threshold amount that you are okay with a 100% loss on, and a periodic schedule based on your risk-appetite. At each interval if you are above your threshold you sell your excess holdings and if you are below you sit tight. Alternatively you can set yourself a price threshold. For example, sell half your holdings every time the price doubles. Essentially this acts as a log function on your gains in exchange for lowering risk. There's a ton of room for fine tuning a set of rules to manage risk, as long as you are willing to stick to them.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- petercooper 6y ago
  Personally I would sell what I'd call the "FOMO holding" once it's worth a "life changing" amount of money. So if I held 100 Bitcoin as such a fund, that might well have been years ago, but then I'd also be retired and not care. The sister comment here is more nuanced and surely a better answer, though.

belval 6y ago

Same thing here, I made a good profit a while back. To believe that I would be a millionaire today requires ignoring everything I know about my risk tolerance and while Bitcoin worked, it could've gone the Ponzi scheme way and crash to 0$ overnight. There were risks of Chinese miners going for a 51% attack, regulation in the US to downright outlawing mining in Canada.

loopz 6y ago

Or the wallet got cracked. Most online wallets were. Or the HDD died..

MarkPNeyer 6y ago

Or if you have totally unshakeable faith in it, because you see us heading towards a game-theoretic attractor where bitcoin is the primary global store of value. That's worked for me :)

tshaddox 6y ago

Well, if you have the power to go back in time and change your decision to buy BTC, you might as well also go back in time and change your decision to then not sell it. :) That's basically what the "hodl" meme is: just decide to not sell until you need the money or until the money could significantly change your life. Of course, that's not exactly a new "investment" idea: there's always been a big difference between day-trading and just buying stocks (and index funds, etc.) with the intention to hold essentially indefinitely.

IkmoIkmo 6y ago

Yup, same. Hell if I put in money now and it did 2x and went to $100k, I'd get out, too. There's just no way I see myself not getting out at $100k or say $200k. And I'm not risking my money on an investment that can 'only' do 2x or 4x. Bitcoin was cool as it could do 10x or 100x in the span of 1-2 years. But with the numbers where they're at and knowing myself, I'd cash out way before that. In the end because bitcoin isn't being used by virtually anyone, and is only valuable because of the momentum/hype (i.e., the reason I'd buy it is only because other people buying it solely for the purpose of thinking even more others will buy it only for speculation and not use, and the price rises), it's just not an interesting investment for me long-term. Short-term it could be but I'd be as not surprised if it did -50% as if it did +50% in the next year. Not really interested in that kind of exposure, given that I don't think I'll ever hold enough to enjoy the extreme potential upside.

Viliam1234 6y ago
Interesting to read this, as my instincts are completely different. Wouldn't a better strategy be to e.g. wait until Bitcoin doubles (which you believe is likely to happen), then sell half (so that you get your money back, sans inflation)... and then for the following twenty years, sell 5% of the remaining Bitcoins each year? The greatest risk is that maybe Bitcoin never doubles, and maybe you lose all the money you put it. But at the moment the price doubles and you sell half, so you get your money back... why throw away the chance of maybe getting insanely rich in the future?
- chrisco255 6y ago
  To me, it really depends on one's financial situation. It's much easier to hodl if you have a good-paying job with benefits, a 401K with a healthy amount stocked away, a decent savings reserve, or equity on a house. Also helps if you've played a lot of poker.
- IkmoIkmo 6y ago
  You're making a mental difference that's not an actual difference. Suppose you have 100k, invest 20k of it in bitcoin and it doubles. You now have 40k bitcoin and 120k in total. You could say, sell half the bitcoin, you now still have 100k in other assets and 20k in bitcoin. Even if you lose the entire 20k, you'll never lose more than what you put in. But what does it matter? Fact is, you still lose 20k if bitcoin goes to zero. The fact you already made 20k on it doesn't change that fact. The source of your wealth should not indicate whether a loss is good or bad, or bearable or unbearable. At the end of the day, a loss is a loss. All your wealth goes into one big pot, you can't say 'this part is from savings, this part is from bitcoin'. It's just money, and losing it sucks. Of course there is something to be said about reducing your exposure to bitcoin as you grow richer and need to take less risky bets. But that's only great after the fact that bitcoin keeps going up in price. If bitcoin goes down in price, it's of course a poor idea to sell slowly instead of all at once. Again, a loss of $X is a loss of $X. At the end of the day, virtually everyone holds bitcoin not for the actual value of e.g. owning a small portion of Apple which sells something hundreds of millions of people use daily, profits, which flows back to you. Instead virtually everyone holds it simply because others are, and by doing so together, it keeps going up in price. You could apply the same to any other (scarce) good. Like a useless but rare metal. Or indeed, a useless copy-paste of the bitcoin software, to start a new crypto. Bitcoin's price isn't because it's valuable, it's because of a common idea to buy it because it'll make us rich. And that idea cannot hold true on anything but faith. Humans are pretty crazy and so I wouldn't be surprised if bitcoin goes to $200k within 2-3 years. But it's still an insane investment proposition to me. (coming from a person who held 100% of his net worth in bitcoin for 3 years or so, btw).

worker767424 6y ago

I did a version of that a few years ago, but I basically turned $5 into $500 and cashed out. Guess I'd have $5,000 now. Still don't care.