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.
I have seen many people who earn bitcoins and manage all their life expenses with it. I agree with you that investment in Bitcoin needs to be long-term. Because it is not possible to extract full profit from Bitcoin if not in long term. According to me, some part can be spent for special needs and the rest is better to invest.
With the way bitcoin have widely spread across the world, some were already choosing it as their major currency of payment and live by it, if we are going more wider in the usefulness of this digital currency, we can derive as many as thousands out from what bitcoin is giving to their individual and collective economy and financial development, when we are also a long time bitcoin investor's, we could be able to point out on many ways we could go by with our investment as in other not to affect us through our holdings, because we have already been investing overtime and can point out on more successful seasons we have been profitable with our investments, i don't think there's a way we can hodl bitcoin and regret doing so because the profitability enough will speak and silence any other contrary objections towards that our investment with bitcoin.