Yes, you're basically right. The problem is that even though "don't invest what you cannot afford to lose" is like one of the most important rules, people tend to ignore it. And if you invested the money, awaiting a pump, but your investment is going down and you need this money, then you sell and you lose. Or if you're just greedy/emotional. I had around $1k in BTC when it was $20k. I didn't sell then, and I tried not to sell when it was $6k. But the problem was that this bearish trend was out there for too long, and I simply needed money for things like food, so over the course of the year, I sold all of that, losing a lot, as you can imagine.