The fact of the matter is that both things should be taking place. 

1) no one should be investing with money that is outside of their discretionary income. Traders probably should not be trading beyond their discretionary income either, yet trading has a tendency to devolve into degenerate gambling anyhow, except for people who are able to create some strict limitations in regards to how they categorize their pools of money.  Of course, investing and trading are not the same thing, yet sometimes some of the ideas can still overlap, and surely the more disciplined and strict traders might even reasonably be able to classify themselves as investor due to a kind of reasoned way of carrying out their trading activities... a rare group, perhaps less than 5% of traders would fit in such category, even if many might aspire to such disciplined practices. 

2) The idea of investing no more than you can afford to lose is a very common expression that can be used in either trading (especially the more strict forms as a referred to in answer 1) or investing, and part of the idea of investing no more than you can afford to lose is that you cannot really expect that any investment that you make gives you strong guarantees to gain more than it loses, and if the asset is really volatile and even a new category of asset, there is even more uncertainty regarding it playing out positively as compared with negatively or even preserving the amount of value that is put into it.  Surely, guys should be approaching their investment without expecting that they are guaranteed even if they might have decently reasonable theories in regards to the investment having greater chances of being profitable than to lose value... yet at the same time, if any of us keeps in mind that we could lose up to 100% of the amount that we invest into bitcoin, then we can also appreciate that bitcoin remains amongst the best of asymmetric bets to the upside (if not the best), since there are various upside scenarios in which bitcoin could provide considerably great returns, even though none of the upside scenarios are guaranteed, it still becomes considerably rationale and probably advisable to place a decent amount of value into bitcoin even while realizing that both upside and downside scenarios are true at the same time, and we don't know for sure which way the whole thing is going to play out, except to have pretty decent information (and understanding) about the asset in order to have confidence that bitcoin remains a very solid investment, and perhaps one of the best investments available to so many people across the world, yet still not guaranteed to be more profitable than not.



Even having a long term mindset does not cause the asset (referring to bitcoin) to become guaranteed to go up more than it goes down - even though the longer the timeframe, then more likely that various short term battles are worked out and probably the more likely that bitcoin is not going to end up dying in one or more the short term battles...   Again not guaranteed merely because it is longer term, even though we also have various theories, such as the Lindy effect that suggest the longer that some kind of technical thing (such as bitcoin) exists at its current level of existence, the more likely that it is going to continue to exist and to grow.. including various related ideas of Metcalfe law in which various network effects exist in bitcoin and continue to get built upon, and at the same time, the various long term dynamics exist to show strength in bitcoin and strength in bitcoin's investment thesis, yet still does not guarantee that bitcoin won't get killed or severely injured at some point in the midst of various short-term battles and/or attacks upon it that likely will continue to come from various angles of both external and internal... so within the confines of these various constraints, battles and even conceptualizing of the likely ongoing ups and downs of bitcoin, each of us still has to figure out our own position size so that we don't end up being a short term casualty during a process in which it might not always be clear about short-to-medium price direction or even if various juristdictions might become successful in their attacks upon bitcoin... whether banks, governments, status quo rich people, shitcoiners or otherwise. 

Sure many of the bitcoin naysayers seem like retards to anyone who is involved in bitcoin and who have been studying why bitcoin has value, yet it does not even mean that some of the bitcoin naysayers (or even the seeming friendly-fire folks from within) might not end up having some short-to-medium success in regards to keeping bitcoin down lower and longer than any of us can remain solvent, including that we have to continue to live our lives, and to feed and house ourselves and any family that we have. .and we ONLY have one life so we don't necessarily want to end up suffering financially/psychologically because we failed/refused to sufficiently balance our assets/currencies in order to be able to survive in the short-to-medium term.


I am not going to disagree with you on this point, especially since anyone in their very earliest years of accumulating bitcoin and building their bitcoin stash, they probably need to try to remain somewhat blind in regards to short term bitcoin price movements and to stay focused on accumulating as many BTC as they can, without wrecking themselves financially and/or psychologically... so in that regard, it can take quite a long time to both build up an investment portfolio and also to start to feel that we have brought ourselves to a better long term financial position, and surely if we employ various strong financial practices, our psychology is likely to follow in terms of becoming stronger too.  We also can strive to set up systems that mitigate the likelihood that we will become emotional in managing our bitcoin or managing our building of our bitcoin stash, and surely folks who are able to front load their bitcoin investment are likely going to end up in a position to get through some of the tougher stages of building their investment into bitcoin as compared with others who are ONLY able to invest from their cashflows that might not even be very large amounts, yet the fact of the matter is that an overwhelming majority of folks do not have resources to be frontload investing into bitcoin, and they can ONLY be as aggressive as they are able to be within the confines of their cashflow that they likely can ONLY work to improve in incremental ways and even sometimes having to tweak or to make sure that they don't overdo one thing or another, while at the same time, young people may well be building relationships and families, so sometimes they have to balance their own visions and short-term versus medium term needs with significant others within their lives, and they might not always agree in regards to how to make such balances.. and sometimes they might have to compromise in order to maintain good relations with people who see the world in different ways from them, yet they are sharing resources with such persons who have differing views of priorities. 


Even though I would agree with you that bitcoin's investment thesis is stronger in current times, there have always been differing views of it and even needs to sort through good versus bad information, and those kinds of battles do not seem to be disappearing - even if they seem to be taking differing forms... including that it might not even be good if various governments or financial institutions get too involved in bitcoin and then attacking bitcoin from within.
So it seems to me that each of us is always having to figure out how to protect ourselves within various kinds of volatility that likely will continue to exist both to the upside and to the downside.  We have to be careful to NOT get lulled into a false sense of security, and then pretty soon we are rug pulled or surveilled or even accused of engaging in illegal transactions/activities, and I doubt that bitcoin has won those various battles, even if there are various ways that the kinds of attacks may well be changing. .including lulling folks into holding all of their coins through KYC channels, which surely will play out way less empowering if large segments of the bitcoin holders don't even know how to keep some meaningful portion of their BTC stash (BTC price exposure) within their own custody and control...and perhaps even privately and out of the reach of those wanting to surveil and control.


For sure, any of us who are keeping track of our discretionary income levels, we are going to be in a better position than those who do not pay attention to such cashflow managing practices.. and even those of us who try to practice strong cashflow management, we will sometimes screw up or even end up with some surprises in regards to some ways that we are going to make adjustments in order that we don't become overbalanced in one direction or another direction.  Personally, I believe that I have been trying to do this for many years (even 20-ish years before getting into bitcoin), and I continue to make mistakes and need to make adjustments, even though some of the abilities to manage cashflow balances become easier when the various investments have become larger, so it becomes easier to create cash cushions (and reserves), yet there still can be difficulties in determining and identifying various ways that some cash or assets might be being held in insecure ways or in ways that are not good ways to hold them, whether there might be desires to use them to buy bitcoin or if they might be used for shortages in cash balances or maybe even concerns about whether they might be not working or incurring unnecessary fees.

Part of my point is that practice likely helps any of us in managing our cashflows and even identifying areas in which we might be vulnerable or where we could improve, including that sometimes we realize that we might have been putting a certain amount of our stash  or even our life situation at too much risk or maybe we were not building enough in one area because we were paying too much attention in another area.


I think that this is a fairly decent point about trying to control the things within our control, so in that regard, we likely can figure out ways to pretty close to guarantee our ability to sustain our investment, yet we cannot guarantee whether our investment will be profitable or the extent to which it will be profitable.. even if we might ongoingly be trying to employ the best of practices that we know about.


I agree with everything you say Jewan420, except that you seem to be implying that bitcoin is guaranteed to be profitable.. which surely is neither true and probably not even a good way of thinking about your bitcoin investment - while at the same time, many of us do recognize that bitcoin remains an asymmetric bet to the upside, which surely can reasonably establish that it is a good place to put extra money, and perhaps even the best place to put extra money, even if that extra money is not guaranteed to be more profitable tomorrow (or even in 10 plus years) than it is today.


Your not liking the expression (don't invest more than you can afford to lose) likely shows your lack of understanding what that expression means..and no, if you were to understand what it is actually communicating, it does not mean or sound like investing in bitcoin is like gambling or investing into shitcoins, even if you understand the expression to seem like that is how you are thinking about your bitcoin investment.. but hey whatever, you can interpret expressions however you like, even though you seem to be lacking in your own appreciation of the underlying idea or how discretionary income does not communicate the same message as "money you can afford to lose"...even if the ideas relate to one another they are saying slightly different and perhaps even overly subtle things that you are not quite seeming to grasp the idea...

From my own perspective, "money that you can afford to lose" seems to be a sub-category of discretionary income and other members have also described it in a similar way in regards to money that we lock up for 4-10 years or longer and we don't even necessarily expect to get it back (even though we are not wanting to throw the money away, at the same time, we understand that we are locking the money away for a long time, and we may or may not ever get it back for a variety of reasons, even our own death that would mean that we never spend the money that we could have had spent today, we defer gratification for later and we are not guaranteed to achieve such later deferred gratification), so money that you can afford to you seems to be very well describing an even more narrow category of money as compared to the more broad descriptive category of discretionary income. .that is merely any extra money that a person may have after accounting for all expenses (whether calculated and/or estimated on a monthly basis, weekly basis, daily basis or otherwise).