We can still maintain that neither bitcoin trading nor bitcoin investing are guaranteed, while at the same time saying that trading and investing tend to be different kinds of practices and/or mindsets.

You are causing confusion with attempt to make some kind of a point that makes little to no sense, including that sometimes even the concepts of trading and investing can also overlap, yet do we  need to get into some kind of a description  in  regards to what each of them is merely because you do not  seem to understand that trading and investing can be different when neither one guarantees either profits or  guarantees that the price might not go to zero, yet each tends to have differing time frames as a differentiator - even though surely there can even be long term trades, and  there could be short term investments..  including that sometimes an investor might plan for investing in  the long term, yet either something about his individual circumstances changes or something about the investment changes to cause the investment thesis to no longer be valid (or sufficiently strong) from the investor's perspective.

Perhaps  with either investing or trading, a person might say, don't invest any more than you can afford to lose, and we might proclaim that if they do  not  employ leverage, then the most that they could lose would be 100%, yet some traders will  employ leverage and other financial tools, and even  investors might  engage in those kinds of behaviors to attempt to frontload and/or otherwise boost their investment..

The concepts of trading versus investing do tend to overlap in some places, yet an investor will not tend to sell BTC  with an intention of buying back cheaper, and also a investor might try to figure out ways to mostly stay in his investment for  sustainable ways rather than selling it all at once, yet there still is no real bright line in  regards to what differentiates traders from investors, since there is a  package of behaviors/practices and a package of mindsets that might  distinguish between traders and investors, and so the change in  one practice or mindset might not be enough to change one's overall  category in regards to whether he is trading or investing.


Several shitcoins may have several similarities to bitcoin, yet almost every one of them is trying to  copy bitcoin, or an affinity scam, and so we should not get distracted by their various ploys to try to appear to be similar  or better than bitcoin, yet really not offering anything new, except maybe an opportunity to potentially pump and dump if there might be opportunities to get in and out without ending up on the wrong side of the trade.  With any protocol level kind of change or offer, there would be a need for the competitor to be 10x better in order to dethrone the leader,  which is both part of the rationale that no shitcoin has come even close to bitcoin, and also is part of the rationale that bitcoin is likely going to dethrone the dollar, gold and various other inferior places in which monetary value is  currently being held (including properties, equities, art, etc). 

Sure bitcoin will not likely take all of the value from those various assets that have monetary premiums, yet bitcoin is a more efficient and effective store of value in terms of its various monetary properties,  so bitcoin will continue to eat away at the various inferior monetary property assets - even though it could take 50-200 years to play out in a more comprehensive and/or obvious way...even though it should be somewhat obvious that it has already been happening and will likely continue to happen.


Bitcoin does not become guaranteed merely because we are looking at a longer timeline.

Bitcoin can be both amongst the best (if not the best) of investments, and at the same time, not guaranteed, even if we are looking into the future at 6-10 years or longer.


Many times we like to say that bitcoin is amongst the best (if not the best) of asymmetric bets that is currently available across the planet to everyone, which means that it has a decently high upward potential, and as long as you do not use leverage, then the most that you could lose is 100%. 

Surely, not everyone can invest into  bitcoin, since not everyone has discretionary income, yet bitcoin still is available to anyone who can generate discretionary income.

Another aspect of investing into bitcoin is figuring out how to plan and to maintain cashflow that allows for holding the bitcoin investment (and perhaps continuing to add to it) for 4-10 years or longer.  Cashflow management can be challenging to a lot of people, and a decent number of people can probably learn how to maintain and/or improve their cashflow management in such a way that they are able to make sure that they can maintain and continue to add to their bitcoin investment for the period of their investment into bitcoin, hopefully 4-10 years or longer.


I agree with the proposition that both newbies and experienced bitcoiners (investors) can have periods in which they are afraid, yet I would suggest that the experienced bitcoiner is able to distinguish himself from the newbie, merely from the passage of time that had allowed him to continue to build his bitcoin stash, to build his cashflow management practice, to build his back up funds, and perhaps also to start to move into areas in which his bitcoin investment is in profits.  Older investors are not guaranteed to have had worked out their fears or even to have learned (and put into practice) good cashflow management practices, which could then end up causing the old time investors to make rookie mistakes, including panicking rather than having a reasonable plan and carrying out their plan.

Even though profits are not guaranteed, historically we have seen that guys who had continue to invest into bitcoin for anything close to a full cycle (even if they might have had started investing at the top of the cycle) are tending to gravitate towards being more and more into profits with the passage of time so long as they errored on the side of mostly buying bitcoin and holding and not selling bitcoin to try to buy back cheaper (trading).   

So there becomes a lot of truth in the value of time in the market tends to beat trying to time the market, and so having your portfolio in profits can help to bring greater comfort, and so far with bitcoin, there has been more and more profits with the longer timeline, so long as the person had mostly been focusing on buying and/or holding and not fucking around trying to trade.  There is value to having time in the market, yet there is also value in building good and strong cashflow practices,  and if you have good cashflow practices, it is quite likely that better emotional management practices will fall into place.


Bitcoin prices are not guaranteed to come back up when there is a dip, yet it seems to me that developing a practice to continue to buy bitcoin, including buying on dips  is a great way to continue to reinforce conviction, yet surely sometimes normal people run out of money to buy dips, so they might buy on the dip, but the BTC price keeps dipping, and so then when the BTC price keeps dipping, those buyers are mostly just stuck with buying whenever they get paid and with whatever money they know is within their discretionary income and that they are not going to need for expenses...

so since there is no guaranteed that the BTC price is going to come up after a dip, then each person has to figure out  how much he is going to invest into bitcoin, and so far in bitcoin's history, the one who had been able to continue to buy during dips and to hold onto his bitcoin has been subsequently rewarded by engaging in that behavior, even though it is not guaranteed to be rewarded.. which largely means each of us has to pick a budget level of ongoing investment into bitcoin that is comfortable for us, whether we are buying during dips, flat periods or while the BTC price is rising..and so we continue to hope that our efforts and or level of commitment and allocation to bitcoin is reasonable and prudent for our situation, including that we may well consider that we want to invest into bitcoin in a way that is as aggressively as we are able to do, without overdoing it.


It could be true that older investors might already prepare mentally (and perhaps even financially) to just continuing to buy no matter the price, whether it dips or not and whether they had held back some extra money for buying during dips or not... so surely continuing to buy during dips tends to be good, and continuing to buy quite regularly (especially for newbies) also seem to be good, which is also part of the reason that I have tended to suggest that newbies try to figure out ways that they can buy bitcoin every week, and why I think that trying to buy every week is better than trying to buy every month, unless there are some fairly strong financial reasons that buying weekly is not practical based on cashflow and/or expense irregularities.


I agree that old investors can get distracted by shitcoins, bad habits and also failing/refusing to consistently, persistently, ongoingly, regularly and perhaps even aggressively continue to buy bitcoin.  They sometimes get distracted into trying  to time the ups and the downs so to buy more on dips and to buy less during price rips, which may also end up getting them into a wrong mentality and a wrong approach (even though, yeah, guys can do whatever they like, even dumb shit that they consider to be smart.. and so some guys take a lot longer to learn as compared with other guys).


Of course, there are some guys that learn faster than other, and some guys are able to both learn from the mistakes of others, yet also to put solid plans into place in which they are either completely buying regularly no matter what through DCA and/or they might be DCAing and supplement their buying with buys on dips.  There is quite a bit of variance in regards to good and/or better practices that can be and likely should be tailorized to the 9 individual circumstances.