That's what matters when you're holding bitcoin. You shouldn't depend on it as if it's going to give you daily income. The profit that you'll get from it will be coming from how long you hold it as the market gets into fruition and takes time in doing so. Most of the holders that are successful understood this matter and they have just left their Bitcoin on hold and does their things while waiting for its value to pump. Unlike the newbies that think that it's different the way you've described it, they don't realize that they need to have other source still.
Exactly and that shouldn't have been the thing that someone should be doing with bitcoin anyway, the mere fact that the growth of bitcoin isn't going to happen overnight and the daily movement of it's price is so volatile that we're all warned to take precautions when trading and only trade what we can afford to lose means that we all should've been not relying on bitcoin as a means to make money for our daily needs and at the end as you've said, bitcoin's better when you're hodling it the longer. My take on this people that are still doing this reliance on bitcoin for daily money is that they're admirable because they don't mind the risk and that they're crazy enough to do this not just once or in a day.
I also do admire those people that have been completely reliant to Bitcoin in all means of their survival. Like how? through trading or any other tasks that they're paid to do so. But if it's with trading, I'd say that it's kind of hard to survive with it and be wholly reliant on it having no other source of living. But I know the fact that there are traders, full time, that can make as much as they can but with the perspective of not a trader or just do it casually, it's truly hard.
Living off of your trades is one thing, yet one of the important things about bitcoin is that it is a great investment vehicle.
So if a guy is able to live off of trading and live a regular life, while at the same time having enough left over that he is able to save between 5% and 25% of his income into bitcoin, then he is doing even better because he is saving for a future - otherwise, he is going to be working his whole life and never getting anywhere.. so I am not sure if that would be a very good way to live... and so yeah, sure how are you going to measure the matter in terms of comparing to other kinds of work that he might be able to do.
Let's say that he generally could get work for $4k per month, and so his expenses might be $3k, so then he ends up investing $1k per month and/or $250 per week into bitcoin. Historically we could look this up to see how many bitcoin he would have had after 5 years or 10 years of investing in that kind of a way. A guy who trades might be skimming off value to live, but then he also might be building his investment capital so that he is able to work with more and more capital the longer that he is trading, the more investment capital he is able to build up... But then is he putting that capital at risk? probably. The trader has a mentality to always be putting his capital to work, and so maybe a question of success would be how much is his investment capital growing, and is it growing at a similar rate as someone who had been able to have a regular job and to put aside $250 per week for the past 10 years.
My Hypothetical 2 guy has right around 115 BTC after 10 years of investing $250 per week into BTC, which surely is not a bad place to be. Is the trader going to beat hypothetical 2 guy? and hypothetical 5 guy shows that $250 per week would have resulted in around 5 bitcoin up until now if his investment timeline had been for 5 years.
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Yes, there is atom of truth in the claim that being a trader is the way to riches because trading will enable one to have a better understanding of the system which is the major factor that will enhance the riches. In otherwise, trading can also have some disadvantage when the prerequisite skill is not well conceive and develop, for one to be a good trader and make riches out of it there must be unprecedented determination and consistency as well as endurance and dedication.
An overwhelming majority of regular people are going to be way better off by just investing into bitcoin regularly rather than trying to trade it.