and of course coin security is very paramount but yet if one finds themselves in the early accumulation stage then self custody is probably a second step towards seriousness in holding for a long term yet the first step is to begin with the least one can afford to do without in a certain length of years not necessarily what one can afford to loss however it's most encouraged personally to start first and every other steps will be figured out along the line.
I think that personal financial (cashflow) management is much more important, and still guys can figure out how many BTC they have that might trigger them to put some of their bitcoin (if not most, if not all) into self-custody. I personally think that there will be some advantages to continue to use various custodial solutions for some portions of stash and when transacting BTC with others, yet there will also be value to figure out how to engage in practices to transact directly with others, whether businesses or individuals.
I’m solidly in with you on this one. Personal financial management is indeed very crucial and it’s sometimes very pitiful how many people overlook and pay less attention to this factor. When a person’s finances is in perfect order or just in order, then you can easily think of ways to manage your Bitcoin Stash.
I also think it’ll be a very smart move to have some kind of a mix of custodial and self custodial solutions. This is because custodial solutions are pretty much convenient and very easy to use, particularly when you’re just a beginner and haven’t built a large stash for yourself. But as you advance in your accumulation and have been able build a much larger stash, the need to take control of your wallet keys arises because the the best safety solution for your wallet remains self custody, because it give you more protection, freedom and flexibility, especially when you wish to transact with others.
Although, using a custodial wallet could also have its own benefits and advantages too, especially when you’re dealing with a very large transaction or financial arrangements that are more complex than the usual P2P transactions that we know. The custodial wallets in such case can provide us with some layer of security, not to also mention that they are mostly equipped with more advanced tools and features that helps to facilitate such advanced transactions.
I am not sure what you mean by advanced transactions, since I would think that we have more advanced transaction options when we might learn how to use various self-custodial solutions. Third party custodial solutions might have some advanced options too, and sometimes folks get worried about relying too much on self-custodial based on their concerns about inheritance.. which ends up in situations where we might want to give some information to heirs in advance, yet they would not have the full information until after our death.. but then maybe at the same time, there can be dilemmas in regards to heirs potentially knowing that they are heirs, which could contribute towards their having incentives that conflict with our own incentives to live long and healthy and to not pass down our wealth prior to our own choosing, our death, our incapacitation or some other reason.. and even if we might be partially incapacitated (such as mental), we still might want our heirs to be inspired to use our bitcoin wealth to our benefit while our body is still alive rather than not... and sometimes incapacitations can have some quality of life or even some abilities to recover some, if not all, functions. So there can be questions regarding when our wealth would pass down and even potentially preferences that our wealth be used to our advantage and questions about the level of integrity that our heirs might have once they were to obtain complete control over our bitcoin wealth...
Everyone has what works much better for them and every individual have their own preferences, So I believe the best solution is to find some kind of a balance that works pretty well for you.
We might not even know what works for us, since sometimes we might not know about certain options that we might have, and sometimes we could even have bad ideas in our head about whether our solution is already "good enough," and many folks might not even prepare for a variety of scenarios, whether it is their death/incapacitation or even various ways in which keys might become vulnerable by lack of security or even become vulnerable by putting too much security (and/or complications/puzzles) into place that might mostly be in our heads as compared with an ability to communicate with someone else who we might pass down our wealth, yet not wanting to pass down too early and maybe not even wanting our heirs to know how many bitcoins are going to be available to them upon our death/incapacitation.
Perhaps, using a custodial solution for some of your Bitcoins and for specific purposes, while also having a self custodial solution for the Bitcoin or portfolio that’s more valuable or for sensitive transactions. It’s all about finding what works best for you.
There are people who have KYC and non-KYC stashes too.. or at least they categorize their stashes in those kinds of ways in order to try to retain some level of privacy and/or security.
It can become difficult to maintain various kinds of separateness.. and even if we have some coins in lightning network wallets or in more hot wallet kinds of ways that we consider spending wallets versus others that might be medium hot wallets and then other wallets that are more cold.. but then maybe we would still need to check and verify our ability to access our cold wallets from time to time, even if we might set them up in ways that might be cumbersome to access.
And just as you rightly said, it’s indeed definitely worth learning how to transact directly with others. Because that way, you get to build a more personal relationship and connection within the Bitcoin ecosystem, not to also mention how efficient and cost effective it can be to move money around.
Surely it could be an ideal world if a lot of folks were to already have bitcoin and we can just interact directly with them in ways to get our food or to pay for various services, yet we likely already know that it may well take a long time for bitcoin to get to such a point, since higher levels of adoption would be needed, yet then also higher levels of folks keeping some of their coins and/or wallets in ways that are available to transact.. and yeah, understandable that merchants could have those kinds of set ups, but also understandable if individuals were able to have those kinds of set up too... but there are also some obstacles to direct transactions, even though we can attempt to inspire our friends and acquaintance to have direct ways to transact, yet many of them might not be in such practices, even if they know about bitcoin, they may hold bitcoin on exchanges or other third parties and they might not even have their own self-custodial wallets, whether to have for spontaneous transaction purposes or in order to have for longer term storage - self-sovereignty purposes..
It seems to me that in the earliest years of someone becoming a bitcoiner, they may well be spending a lot of time accumulating bitcoin and trying to accumulate bitcoin, so if they start to get into situations that they are able to transact, then they may well end up doing some kind of a spend and replace so that they are continuing to build their bitcoin holdings. Later down the road, they might more end up in a kind of maintenance mode in which they are neither growing or depleting their bitcoin stash..and then perhaps even later they might be o.k. with attempts to draw down on their BTC, even if the BTC value might continue to grow faster than it is being spent.
I saw a report that if all the rich people in the world tried to buy Bitcoin, no one would be able to buy a whole Bitcoin. Because there are 58 million rich people in a token with a supply of only twenty-one million. Where Bitcoin exists for only $80,000. Buying it is not a big deal for a millionaire. So if everyone starts buying, will there be Bitcoin in the market worth buying? Have you ever thought that there may be Bitcoin in the market, but it will almost skyrocket?
Many folks, even millionaires are way less liquid than we might imagine, so even for millionaires, it may cause a certain amount of struggle and effort to be able to set aside enough funds to buy a whole bitcoin.
Even if we exclude the personal residence from the wealth status of someone we consider to be a millionaire, it still could take a millionaire several months, perhaps even up to a year to be able to generate enough extra income in order to buy a whole bitcoin, and perhaps they could think about selling some asset that they have in order to have the cash to buy bitcoin, yet many times rich people do not like to sell assets and create taxable events, so they might have to think about some other creative way to generate income. Even the bare basic million dollar investment is likely ONLY generating around $3,333 per month of income (if we consider 4% as the annual withdrawal rate), so if the millionaire does not have extra working money, then a million will only generate $3,333 per month, and it is going to take 30 months just to generate $100k worth of income, and do we even think that we would reach the accumulation of 1 BTC after 30 months of buying BTC at that rate? By the way $3,333 is $40k per year and so therefore about $770 per week or $110 per day.
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It seems that we have given several of these kinds of examples in the past in which some guys are more whimpy than others, since some guys are overly preoccupied with his cost per BTC rather than consistently, persistently and perhaps aggressively buying bitcoin, so yeah, there may well be guys who end up with way more bitcoin, and sure their cost per BTC are higher, yet we likely would rather be the guy with more bitcoin rather than the guy with less bitcoin and lower costs per BTC.
The longer the timeline the likely greater the variance, but yeah, in the short-term some guys are going to act like they are geniuses based on their whimpy approach towards buying bitcoin, and sure they end up with lower costs per bitcoin, but perhaps they also end up with way lower quantities to bitcoin, too.
Don't get me wrong.
I am not even obsessed with having to have a lot of bitcoin, yet there is quite a bit of comfort that comes from having our bitcoin investment work for us once we get it to a certain size in which we have more than enough bitcoin.
I love this point of yours.. Ever since I was young and have understood what money is all about, that you must work and invest in order to become balanced in life. I have always thought of which investment that I will put my funds into and allow it work for me instead of having people to work for me or work for someone till retirement without having something that you can rely on.
This was why when I learned about bitcoin and checked past history, I started taking my bitcoin accumulation journey very serious with consistent and persistent to keep my investment ongoing. I buy aggressively when I can and if I am opportune, I also buy at the dip. Infact, I have plans to keep on increasing my DCA buying overtime based on increasing my financial strength so that my dreams will come to pass in future when the size of my bitcoin portfolio will continue generating more profits for me due to its compounding value.
Surely we have compounding value that is going on, and surely in the past several years, I have really come to appreciate the power of valuating BTC holdings based on the 200-WMA. So, surely after we get past 4 years of accumulating bitcoin, our costs per BTC likely goes below the 200-WMA... so there is a certain amount of value that comes from our bitcoin value going below the 200-WMA and then our abilities to figure out at what point we might want to convert into more of a maintenance stage in which we are no longer obsessed with accumulating bitcoin and then even later to transition into a place that we can start to withdraw from our bitcoin holdings in sustainable ways that can be price-based and/or time-based..
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How you would considered out peak? If ever you have decided on taking up some short term profits? This is where some people do missed out on taking up such steps on securing their profits at the moment that Bitcoins price do hit up a particular level. They will always be thinking that we might be able to break up some new all time highs on which this will be that the primary thing that comes up into your mind when it comes into this one. For the question about if its late to buy Bitcoin? These are people who do think that the current price is already at peak or already that high. They would be always having those doubts that the current price is already that premium or oversold on which they've been waiting up for the price to dump before entering.
The case on here is that whenever they do made out such act then the price continues to shoot up on which this will be that resulting for them to have those impressions that they should have bought earlier and wont be able to missed up that potential profit. This is the usual case that do really happens.

Surely you have pointed out part of the justification that so many folks should be getting started investing into bitcoin sooner rather than later, and don't preoccupy themselves with the BTC price. Surely if they spend 4 years or more just accumulating bitcoin, even if it is relatively small amounts, then they may well be in a position to reassess what they are going to do from that point forward. Surely, if a person had been just accumulating modestly, such as ONLY 5% or less of his income, then he might get the sense that he had been accumulating BTC too whimpily... but yeah, none of us know the future, and surely it can be quite difficult to inspire anyone else in regards to what his accumulation aggressiveness should be... whether somewhere between 5% and 25% of their income (as I suggest for a beginner) or some other amount that they determine to be appropriate for their level of education and conviction about bitcoin.