Trading is not a form of investing, even if you want to convolute terms and call trading investing.  You are wrong and you are likely misleading people, including yourself (to the extent that you are not trying to cause such confusion and convolution of terms on purpose?).

short-term bitcoin investment = trading too... why should we quibble when there are more clear ways of explaining the matter?

It is true that a trader might build up an amount of working capital that he considers to be an investment and his trading capital might grow larger and larger with the passage of time, yet there are no reasons to get into the weeds of those kinds of specialized kinds of cases.

It is much more clear to attempt to think about investing in terms of building up a position in an asset like bitcoin.  So when you build up there are three forms of accumulation which is DCA, lump sum and buy on dip.  If you sell in order to buy back cheaper as an accumulation strategy that is trading and it may or may not work out for you, so you are kind of gambling, which is part of the reason that trading does not fit as an investing strategy... unless you are trying to confuse people with overlapping terms.

If you want to accumulate more bitcoin, how does it make sense to sell bitcoin to accumulate more bitcoin. Surely some traders also will get confused because they are not trying to accumulate more bitcoin but they are trying to accumulate more dollars, so it can be a bit confusing if we cannot at least agree that if you invest into an asset you are trying to accumulate that asset, and in this case we are talking about accumulating bitcoin not accumulating dollars, even though in the long run we have a bit of an anticipation (that is not guaranteed) that our bitcoin are going to be worth more dollars in the future as compared with what they are worth today.


When you are describing seeking more profits, you are likely referring to dollar profits and surely those are trading ideas.. since investing is building the asset (namely bitcoin), and yeah further down the road bitcoin is likely to be worth more in terms of dollars and to give more options to people, but the focus on accumulating the bitcoin rather than dollars likely helps to frame how to consider the difference between investing and trading... including that there are people who call their less then 4 year time line an investment, but they are largely trying to play the wave which is also a kind of trade, even if they might call it a short-term investment, they are likely misleading themselves and misleading others by convoluting terms in such way that makes it more difficult to figure out what they mean or to distinguish between the difference between investing and trading.

You can call it what you want, but when we are in threads like this, we may well just end up battling over semantics rather than really getting into the meaty details which may concern if a person is in their accumulation stage and trying to build more bitcoin, then if they start to sell  bitcoin in order to accumulate more, even if they are trying to invest, they would be engaging in trading tactics and practices in order to attempt to build their BTC holdings (and presumably their investment), but it still becomes confusing unless maybe they might say that they have an investment stash and a trading stash and from time to time, they move money from their trading stash into their investment stash in order to build it.. but they still might not be selling any of their investment stash... so there are variations in what people do, and we should not give up on attempting to clarify differences between investing and trading so that people might recognize the difference in terms of their own choices of what to do and potentially how to manage their BTC in the event that they decide to get into bitcoin in the long term such as 4-10 years or longer and invest into it rather than playing some kind of a shorter term play which would likely be a trade, even if they might change their mind later and convert from a trader to an investor..  Those kinds of transformational and conversion things happen too.


I would suggest that there really is no such thing as short term investment in bitcoin that would be less than 4 years, since that is a kind of confused idea, and perhaps a hybrid, but it still seems to fall more in line with trying to catch a price wave rather than being an investment that aims to build up and hold the asset (namely bitcoin) so if someone is getting into bitcoin for less than 4 years they are just wanting to take some kind of a dollar profit.

Of course, 1-3 years can still be a decently long time for people, yet I think it is confusing to call it a short term investment when you are really talking about a trade to make some quickie dollars.. and sure, people can do what they like if they want to take chances and they think that they are going to be able to improve their financial situation, they surely can do that kind of a trade, yet is problematic and confusing if they are referring to it as an investment rather than what it really is when we really consider the matter.

We just confuse ourselves when we try to describe investment periods as being less than 4 years in bitcoin, and even 4 years is not a long investment period in terms of bitcoin or any investment, yet some elderly people, or people with poor health or even there could be some other reasons that shorter investment timelines might be justified.. so maybe 4-10 years as a timeline would tend to be a short term investment, and 10 years plus would be a long term investment. both categories are investments, but one is shorter and one is longer and in order to even be classified as an investment in bitcoin, there should be at  least be a 4 year timeline in order to not be classified as a trade.. That seems more logical than just willy-nilly throwing around terms and not clarifying what you mean?  what is the difference between a trade and  an investment?  Those can be good terms to clarify, especially if some members are seeming to mix them up and potentially create additional confusion..


Why can't you call some of those short and long term trades, and investments in bitcoin can be 4 years or longer.  Investments do tend to be for longer periods, yet it seems that there are cases in which investments in bitcoin could be as short as 4 years, otherwise what is the problem of calling less than 4 years as trades rather than investments?

If you are getting into bitcoin and you are wanting to play this upcoming wave in 1-3 years, then why would you consider yourself as a bitcoin investment, since you are just seeking dollar profits during that time period, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to get dollar profits if that is what you want to do, even though many of us have already asserted that investing in bitcoin is superior to trading it, yet there are people who might end up being able to make a trade and come out profitable and they might not end up selling too much bitcoin too soon, which historically has happened with a lot of people when the try to play a relatively short-term BTC price wave and then they end up selling too much bitcoin too soon... but whatever people can do what they want, and they can try to trade, and they might get lucky and profit from doing that... even if it might not be the greatest way of approaching bitcoin, and it seems problematic to be referring to that kind of a practice as investing.

I also already mentioned that there are ways that bitcoin buyers could be both trading and investing, and that is not necessarily better, but there are times when some folks might choose to do both, and frequently the pure investors will end up doing much better than those who are incorporating trading strategies, especially if we might look at comparison timelines that are a couple of cycles or more.. so surely in the short terms traders might show themselves to be way more  profitable, but it may not end up working so well for them in the long term if they compare what they did and where they got to someone who had been mostly just focusing on accumulating BTC and holding it.

Past performance also does not guarantee future results, yet overall traders do not tend to do better than investors, even though each person can decide for himself whether to trade and/or invest, whether to do one or another in a pure form or to try to do some  kind of a combination of both.... and when it comes to bitcoin I tend to recommend doing pure bitcoin investing, yet if you cannot help yourself in regards to trading, gambling and/or shitcoining, then at least attempt to limit that activity to no more than 10% of the value of your bitcoin including the time and energies you put into each, too.  Of course, each of us has to decide for ourselves and we have to live with the consequences too.. so it would be problematic if we are not figuring out what is best for ourselves, even if we might also be convinced by some person on the interwebs (whether me or anyone else), since no one is going to care as much about your financial and psychological well being or be able to build, protect and safeguard those individual particulars apart from your own assessment in regards to how these ideas apply to your situation and also the extent to which you might want to tailor what you do to your 9 individual factors.


Newbies should consider all three accumulation methods, and of course, DCA tends to be the best in order to attempt to maximize their investment if they have a lot of discretionary income at their disposal, they can decide their DCA amounts.

So maybe there is really no dilemma for the newbie since DCA tends to be the best of starting out approaches.

So if a newbie starts out with $100 per week, then it could take a year for the newbie to invest up to $5,200 into bitcoin, yet if the newbie comes to bitcoin and he already has $6,000 that he can invest right away, then he may well want to consider that $6k in terms of the three categories, and his decision on how to treat the $6k might also end up how he considers to treat the $100 per week that he had already been planning to do.

It is not necessarily easy to figure out how much of a lump sum such as $6k to put into each category, and maybe he could start by considering if he put $2k into each of the three categories, and then figure out if that makes him happy, or maybe he considers the matter and says screw it... he is going to buy right away with the $6k, and he will only spread out his buys over 3 weeks.. $2k per week.  There is a lot of discretion and a lot of ways to divide up such decision, and if we assume that the person already has an emergency fund and some back up funds and maybe he earns $2k per month and his expenses are $1,500 per month, so he has at least $4,500 in his emergency fund (3 months expenses), then he has more liberties, yet if he does not have good cashflow situation, he might want to allocate some of his $6k towards those categories of back up funds and/or emergency fund.  I understand that guys tend to want their capital to be working for them, yet at the same time, there tends to be a lot of value in maintaining back up funds, which an emergency fund is the most important of such.