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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 like

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).

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).