Let's take a longer term example.  Let's say that someone came into bitcoin in 2014 and spent a couple of years accumulating bitcoin, so maybe he accumulated around 50 BTC at around $500 each. So his total investment is $25k.  So when the BTC price shot up to $2,000, he could not resist, and he sold all of his BTC, and so he ended up selling them for $100k, and so he has around $75k in profits... that is pretty good, right?  He is still not doing as good as the longer term investor who still has the 50 BTC, and maybe the longer term investor has more BTC and his average cost per BTC is more than $500 per BTC.. we can imagine a lot of scenarios, and bitcoin has tended to be a good investment to hold onto for the long term, even if you might get enough BTC and you might want to shave off some profits along the way, you can still consider your investment as something that you mostly hold onto rather than converting into dollars and then ending up with dollars or some other inferior investment or maybe consumption good that you would be better off to have more BTC at a later price, even if your cost per BTC might end up being much higher.