Bump:I want to avoid having my responses merged by the admins.
They are too long..
[edited out]
To me it seems difficult to even put certain types of investments on a spectrum of gambling, but i also get where y’all are coming from. Let’s say you’re buying something like gold or silver, you’re getting exactly the amount you paid for and your investment can’t vanish even if market prices fluctuate(the gold will always stay in your hands). Not really a gamble.
Maybe the gambling factor comes into play when the underlying asset is ignored by the investor and the only focus is the market price and higher returns, like waiting for something to go parabolic without understanding/ being interested about what you were investing into/ or wanting to actually own the asset, if it wasn’t for money.
It is quite likely that there are a lot of overlapping ways that terms can be used, and likely when I am trying to proclaim a preference to aim for investing and to minimize or exclude gambling practices, I am attempting to suggest various ways to attempt to approach bitcoin investing in ways that are meant to have a longer time frame (such as 4-10 years or longer) and also to not be taking undue chances to make short-term bets or otherwise engage in practices that and putting capital/principle at risk.
I am not really intending to talk about edge cases in which some of the concepts of investing and gambling might overlap, because ultimately anyone can end up in an edge case kinds of a situation, and surely guys have discretion to make adjustments that might violate the preferred practices - yet at the same time, if there is an attempt to talk about general practices, then we would attempt to talk about some of the broader principles and practices and if there is success applying the broader principles and practices, then maybe edge cases might come to play under some kinds of scenarios and I might not even have any answers regarding how to deal with some of the edge case things that might come up anyhow because I am attempting to suggest some systems that are meant to have more general applicability..
Also if guys apply the various general principles that I discuss for long enough and establish their stack in BTC or meet other personal BTC accumulation goals, then some of the answers to other kinds of questions may well come into place or at least become more apparent because ultimately any investment practice should be carried out in such a way that it becomes personally owned and not following some suggestions of a somewhat random person on the internet.
Maybe I am repeating myself but the mere fact that someone is speculating on the future price of an asset does not cause that to be gambling merely because they might get it wrong. In other words, there seems to be a kind of element in investing that involves attempting prepare, plan and account for risks (and alternative scenarios) better than a gambler who has higher reliance on luck rather than having a plan that works for a broader variation of circumstances.
Now if someone is risking their asset they didn’t previously gamble on, like the people that got their Bitcoin liquidated now, because they were over-leveraged, then we’re getting into high gambling territory. This has nothing to do with sane investing anymore.
I mostly agree that employing leverage that fails to account for extreme scenarios that could happen does seem to rise to the level of gambling rather than investing, so there might not be anything wrong with employing leverage as long as there might be plans to deal with extreme scenarios that could happen (which probably just means not to over-leverage, which might be easier said than done because there likely were some of the leveraged payers who said that they had not been over-leveraged because the BTC price does not tend to go below the 200-week moving average..anyhow, you can see where this is going, no? Maybe if they were playing margin, then an investor might have a plan for if the BTC price goes up and a plan for if the BTC price goes down, they would not ONLY have a plan for one price direction.;.. a gambler might have a plan for only one direction and/or an insufficient hedge for if the opposite happens).
But if i actually wanna own a part of x company trough good and bad times, because i believe they deliver a great value, i dont see how it’s gambling(then owning a company would be gambling too), its simply providing liquidity to where actual value is created. It’s more like keep tuning a car till it can win a race and beyond.
It seems to me that the difference regarding investing versus gambling for owning part of a company might relate to how much due diligence that you did before making your decision, and maybe even the tolerance of risky versus safe practices within the business can make a difference between if the part ownership of the business would fall into the category of investing versus gambling. For example, you could have everything perfectly set up in the business, but if the business is engaging in some kind of risky practices such as something illegal (even though it does not need to engage in such risky/illegal practices in order to make a profit and to fulfill the various investment targets), then that way of carrying out the business might start to fall more into something more like gambling rather than investing.
You should be able to imagine business versus gambling approaches with the fitting of a car for racing too. there could be ways in which the behavior is reckless and ill though you (which would be more like gambling) and behaviors that are more systematic, and maybe even with long-term thinking that might fit more into a kind of an investing approach to the car.
To me this was the original thought behind doing investments, tho i agree that this is getting more and more lost, but people who invest with strong principles will succeed more.
I doubt that strong principles make a difference because it ends up most likely relying on luck if the principles are not focused in a kind of productive way that preserves and builds principle/capital rather than consuming it and just not really having any kind of meaningful plan that is a bit more systematic about both building and not losing capital and having plans that accounts for a variety of scenarios (and learning along the way), so the difference between investing versus gambling likely relates to having the right kinds of principles rather than merely having strong principles.
For example, maybe I have strong principles that I am going to party like a wild animal and meet a lot of girls.. so I am going to have a lot of fun and I already know that the girls love me, so I am very popular until I run my whole life (and potential opportunities to build) into the ground.. but the whole time, I had strong principles and a lot of energy and charisma in regards to my philosophy and people liked me because I was confident, popular and full of energy. but I was not really building or engaging in good risk management either.. but I had a lot of fun during that whole time in my 20s and into my early 30s. and maybe even made a lot of money while assuming that the money would keep coming in, so I continued to consume it.. but by the time I reached 35, I had not really developed any skills beyond just having fun, my system of pushing boundaries all of the time strong principles was not working anymore like it used to work back in the good ole days. and my energy levels are not like what they used to be, either. I lived in a lot of nice houses, and I even tried to save for my own house several times, but things came up. I went on a lot of good trips, and some of them even involved some business deals, too. but they did not really pan out. even though I kept busy and I had strong principles the whole time too including that I told everyone that I was going to be rich some day (and people seemed to believe me). but I never really ever stayed focus on building anything . including my own skills beyond being able to party with the best of the.. and bouncing from one deal to the next.
Now sure if i go into 100 companies in 5 days, it’s nothing else than gambling, because no one can possibly gather enough info about the underlying assets in this short amount of time.
Now if we go into the section of investing were no more underlying asset is bought, like derivatives, we’re coming closer into gambling territory.
So i see why the both are on a spectrum.
There are possibly systematic ways to play large numbers too, if you have an edge and you are looking for specific things when you go into 100 companies.. so maybe going through 100 companies allows you to screen down to 5 on some kind of a criteria that you have developed.. . . but yeah, if you are lacking focus and you do not have a system, then that probably would be more like gambling.