You should know more better that, you will only have this problem when you are chasing a short term profits in bitcoin. But if you are in for the long term, you shouldn't be having this problems, trying to strike a balance wether to take profit or not. Especially if you are still in the early stage of your accumulation, your focus should just be on the accumulation and allow whatever that's happening in the market to play out it is not your business. If you successfully hold your bitcoin for at least a circle, you won't be having any problem again when you want to take profit, because bitcoin price might have appreciated far more than what you got it for. So at that time any price you want to cash in will be profit for you. Because over the years bitcoin price is expected to be making more of an upward trends than downward trends.
The real question with what pattern does someone chase profit in the short term because if it is done on investment then there will be no problem because even if bitcoin gets a correction they can wait for the next increase after the recovery process occurs. Except when people are involved in future trading then the potential for loss or loss will be very large especially if they do not understand trading properly. If you invest, I think it won't be a problem because we can wait for the next price increase even though the purchase price is much higher.
That's why investing is much easier to do and people don't need to think much as long as they understand that bitcoin will continue to gain momentum to rise after the correction occurs. Investing also allows someone to avoid panic because they don't need to check the price all the time, so the focus can be more on how to accumulate and we can slowly collect bitcoins in a more effective way.
It just seems to become quite tempting for newbies to second guess some kind of a BTC accumulation process that might involve ongoing buying of BTC for one or more cycles prior to a point that they might be in a position to potentially be able to modify their BTC accumulation process away from ongoing BTC buying.. and some folks might still not be in a position to stop their ongoing BTC buying even after more than a whole cycle, and I would not even be suggesting that such measuring is easy for anyone, yet at least, it would not be as bad of a problem if the newbie at least had spent quite a bit of time accumulating BTC, so then his assessment of whether to start to modify his BTC accumulation process would at least presumptively be informed by his having had already accumulated a decent quantity of BTC.
How are you going to manage your coins if you get into a situation like these two guys after 6 years accumulating and feeling that you have reached your BTC accumulation goals?
I would answer this question with regard to my knowledge before and that of present.
Earlier before now, without much knowledge on the value prosects of bitcoin and the compounding effect on the profitability of investments on a longer-term goal, I would have been the guy in the second scenario who sold off a lot to enjoy his life momentarily and loose the future gains that came with holding for longer.
But armed with the level of information I have received since joining this forum and most especially locating this thread, I wouldn't even sell any bitcoin if I don't need funds on an emergency note but would continue to hold as long as I can to boost my profitability. I would be like the guy that sold a few bitcoins from his investment or more so a better version of him who might not sell any and would continue accumulating to further increase my portfolio for more profits in the future.
I am glad that you feel that you are learning better about yourself and what might be better courses of action, especially since it remains very difficult to figure out what to do because any time that BTC starts reaching ATH prices again, we reach a kind of dilemma about whether to sell some or all of our BTC, and sometimes guys even end up regretting that they had not sold any BTC and then we end up in a 2-3 year or longer correction period, in which they might even question if the BTC price has decently good chances of getting back to the higher prices that were experienced prior to the long correction period... So we likely need to know that at any time we could end up going through a decently long correction period, which becomes even more challenging when our BTC portfolio might already be in decently high profits, yet at the same time it may or may not be starting a long period of dipping.
I am not going to claim to know any kind of exact answer since there can be feelings of you are damned if you do and damned if you don't in regards to building up a cash reserve and then also attempting to assess what your cashflow might be in the coming 1 to 2 to 3 years in which you might not want to sell any of your bitcoin, yet you had been tempted to sell some... and surely sometimes continuing to buy might be helpful, yet that might not even feel like a practical choice given the amount that you had already invested into bitcoin.. so many of us can end up going through extended periods of feeling like we are in a bit of a dilemma, and we may or may not be in a position to keep our cashflow going well enough during such period so that we don't end up panicking into doing something (or even making a purchase instead of delaying gratification) that we might end up regretting later.
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Hypothetical 1 approach of holding onto most of his coins definitely seems like a solid strategy in the future. Especially due to bitcoin potentials for growth, by holding onto most of his btc he could benefit from the long-term growth potential of Bitcoin.
For sure, Hypothetical 1 may well also be through a lot of dilemmas in regards to if he did the right thing by mostly holding through the whole period and even seeing his peers living it up and having a nice house and nice cars and even going on trips and going out to eat, and Hypothetical 1 is spending a lot of time paper rich (with his bitcoin), but not enjoying his richness, and he might even start to feel more regrets if he sees that hypothetical 2 ended up selling decent amounts (if not close to all of his BTC) at much higher prices than the value of hypothetical 1's coins since hypothetical 1 coins could end up correcting rather than going up in value. From my own perspective, the answer is never completely obvious, and it is less obvious while we are going through such dilemmas because we don't end up having any advantage of hindsight, and we are also not guaranteed that the BTC price will correct back above and at prices that we will be able to sell at higher prices later.. or even to recoupe BTC anywhere close to the same price that Hypothetical 2 was able to sell decent amounts (if not all) of his BTC.
Sure perhaps many of us are coming to realize that some kind of incrementalism is likely the better way to deal with managing our BTC holdings, while at the same time realizing also that we still might end up having to go through extended periods of suffering and we are not guaranteed that we will be better off financially and at a later date after having had gone through such suffering.