It seems that each of us has to figure out how to valuate our BTC holdings in way that makes sense to us, and now days, I like to use the 200-WMA, yet back in the 2014-2017 time frame, I was measuring the value of my BTC holdings in the same way that an overwhelming majority of folks measure such BTC values, and that is using the spot price.

I think that using the spot price is a kind of default, even though the spot price inevitably is fluctuating so much, we still tend to wand to use it, and surely we might compare the spot price to our average costs per BTC, and perhaps if we get into being several times in profits, then we start to feel that we have a cushion from price corrections, and surely I was not immuned from that kind of thinking.. which these days I continue to believe it is better to attempt to use something more solid (and like a bottom price) like the 200-WMA to valuate our BTC holdings.

In any event, whether we end up being correct or in error, each of us likely has to figure out what kinds of ways to measure our bitcoin holdings in order to help us to decide wether we are going to stick to whatever course of action that we have or if we might change our course of action based on our valuation of our BTC holdings.


You are likely correct with a presumption that I would have had continued accumulating BTC between $200 and $500 and perhaps I would have had continued even up to certain prices above $1k, yet at the same time, it was a combination of the quantity that I had accumulated (which reflects upon how much value that I put in), and not ONLY my average costs per BTC that motivated me in regards to self-assessing the extent to which I had enough or more than enough.  The tipping off point might not have had been exactly any kind of a bright line, but instead a combination of factors, and surely the size of the BTC stash happens to be a pretty major part of the assessment, even though the target continues to move in terms of its dollar valuation.

Part of an ongoing problem in using spot price to valuate our bitcoin remains that we may well continue to consider that we have a relatively large price cushion, and then all of a sudden the BTC price drops 70% to 80% or more.  Another factor that quite changed my own assessment of my status is that I had more than 20 years of investment experience prior to getting into bitcoin, which meant that I had been able to front-load my bitcoin investment, and so many normal folks (including many folks participating in these forum threads) are not coming to bitcoin with lump sum amounts, and they are going to have to tend to accumulate bitcoin for at least one or two cycles without even looking at the prices and/or the extents to which they are in profits, but instead their better financial interests (and perhaps even long term psychological interests) are likely going to be better served by their staying focused on ongoingly accumulating bitcoin without thinking too much about price - even if maybe they still are lured to the price, they might develop some tactics of holding back some of their ongoing bitcoin buys for price dips that may or may not happen, but they might feel good by their being able to have money during times when the BTC price does end up dipping.


I provided an approximate formula to briefly described the rate at which I was selling, yet my formula is incrementalist, so I was not waiting for the BTC price to double before selling, but the way that the formula was implemented, I would make sure that I did not sell any more than the allotted amount at various price increments - so for example, in the beginning, no more than 10% for every time the BTC price doubled, and surely as I already mentioned, that amount has gravitated downward (to currently less than 3%), and it is not exactly a precise amount but a ballpark amount that is mostly erroring on the side of holding an overwhelming majority of the value, allowing the value to continue to compound upon itself, so that after several doublings (several times compounding), there is way more options to sell larger amounts if I were to choose to do so, yet many times, I don't feel any needs to sell off larger amounts, even though I am authorized to do so.


I think that having some kind of a plan, and potentially ongoing activities is a way to feel that something is happening no matter the BTC price direction, yet I doubt that my BTC holdings (investment) needed me to stay active with it - since we can look back and see that historically, there are a lot of guys who had done quite well with their bitcoin investment by merely erroring on the side of accumulating and holding... so there can be a decent amount of variation inside of any BTC portfolio building and/or managing approach.


Surely there are a lot of folks who sell off way too much bitcoin too soon, and I am not sure if it is greed or what, since they may well be selling before they have even accumulated enough and they are frequently selling with a motive to buy back cheaper.. which I think that those are inferior ways of thinking about bitcoin and/or how to manage a guy's bitcoin holdings.

From my perspective, first there is a need to get to a state of overaccumulation.

Then there is a need to not sell too much BTC too soon so that even if you choose to start to sell some of your BTC, you are never overly selling it and you are not selling with expectations to buy back cheaper, so you set your BTC sales amounts to be at such a level that you would not consider that you had sold too much, even if the BTC price kept going up... so largely you are likely continuing to sell from your overaccumulated amount and you are never running out of your overaccumulated amount to sell because the amount that you are selling is relatively small within the overaccumulated amount.  

Surely, my whole system likely revolves around selling too little, and since I have already benefited from at least 8 doublings (compoundings), I have a lot of extra pent up bitcoin that could be sold, since the overaccumulated amount has been growing through the years rather than shrinking.. In other words, even though I have been continuously selling, I have not been overly selling.. so there continues to be a lot of extra that could have had been sold at earlier stages but it was not sold.. so it is just sitting within my BTC holdings as extra bitcoin that could be sold at any time, whether the BTC price is up, down or sideways.


It seems to me that we can proclaim that bitcoin has outperformed expectations, while at the same time, understanding and appreciating that bitcoin's performance is still within expectations.

Maybe another way of saying it is that bitcoin has performed amongst the most bullish of expectations, so if we had set up various bear-case scenarios, various bull-case scenarios and if we had assigned probabilities to the various scenarios, bitcoin's actual performance would be within the higher of the expectations but it is not outside of expectations... which means that any of us could have had seen these actual bitcoin performances as within better-case scenarios playing out rather than worse case scenarios.

Some folks might even proclaim that bitcoin is right in the ballpark of prices, adoption, etc, that anyone could have had expected. There surely have been reasonably smart folks proclaiming even more bullish scenarios and even back in the earliest days of bitcoin.  I believe within the first year of bitcoin's existence, Hal Finney had outlined scenarios in which he saw bitcoin's addressable market justifying well over $10 million bitcoin prices... so there surely have been a lot of bullish cases for bitcoin outlined over the years, even in bitcoin's earliest of years.


Of course, you can do what you like, yet I still have repeatedly stated that it is likely better to not begin such process of selling any of your bitcoin until you have reached a status of overaccumulation, so then the 10% that ends up getting sold every time that the BTC price doubles is overaccumulated amounts of BTC.

It seems to make less sense to start to sell BTC before reaching such overaccumulation status because you would then be engaging in selling and buying at the same time.

Surely, you might be able to come up with your own possible reasonable formula that might involve selling before reaching overaccumulation status, yet that seems more like trading to me, rather than investing.  I don't recommend trading bitcoin since bitcoin is amongst the best (if not the best) of investments that are currently available to everyone and anyone in all parts of the world.. so long as they have a discretionary income or they can customize their cashflows in order to achieve a discretionary income.


I agree that the lower amounts of cashing out are better, especially if you are still inclined to allow your BTC holdings to grow rather than withdrawing from them, and also if you have other sources of income, you might not be in a position of withdrawing from your bitcoin.  Surely at some point a guy might decide to quit work and then to life off of his bitcoin, and at that point, you would likely prefer that your bitcoin is either able to sustain you or at least to supplement other income sources that you might have that are able to sustain you at your current standard of living and any anticipated improvements in your standard of living.


Yep.  That is a good point.  Each of us should be attempting to figure out formulas in which our bitcoin holdings never run dry and they become sustainable, rather than guys who spend many years building their bitcoin holdings and then they end up selling too much bitcoin too soon or unwilling and/or unable to manage their bitcoin holdings in sustainable ways.


I am not much of a fan of trading BTC, yet surely there can be ways to modify the amounts that you sell to fall within a kind of a formula that you would be o.k. to keep selling even if the BTC price keeps going up (and you are not able to buy back), so there could be some cases in which you keep selling 10% of your BTC every time the BTC price is going up a certain amount in a short period of time, and then at some point you might find yourself running low on BTC.  

Another tricky part of your formula is figuring out how much of a price drop you need before you start buying back.. Perhaps every 8% price drop from the point that you sold, you buy back a certain portion of what you had sold (perhaps 20% of what you had sold?)?  or maybe you have some other formula for buying back...and if your formulas are not very consistent, then you can end up in a lot of dilemmas regarding what to do and when to do it and/or execution indecision.


There can be a certain stress that comes with not knowing where you are at and/or if you might get to the next stage of your investment journey, and for sure, the bitcoin accumulation stage can last for a long time, and so many times folks want to get out of their bitcoin accumulation phase and into their maintenance phase or some other phase, and so sometimes there can also be stress in regards to knowing when we might be out of our bitcoin accumulation stage.

And, yeah, the stages can sometimes overlap, since we might still be accumulating, even though maybe we have mostly accumulated enough or more than enough bitcoin, at some point.


Saylor is a bit of an outlier since he seems to have goals that are way beyond the regular goals of regular people who may well invest 5% to 25% of their investment portfolio into bitcoin, but they might not want to engage in leverage or to attempt to employ debt and a variety of other financial instruments to continue to grow wealth beyond their own standard of living and/or perhaps some folks might want to increase their standard of living by 2x to 10x, but they might not consider that there is any necessity to advance their standard of living in outrageous ways merely for status.

There are also other situations in which a person can increase their standard of living by 2x to 3x, and they can still allow their bitcoin to continue to grow as a kind of insurance, so they may well not be spending their bitcoin as fast as their bitcoin is growing in value, but at the same time, still living beyond their earlier standards and at the same time continuing to increase their standard of living each year, while not overdoing it.  Bitcoin seems to allow for those kinds of dynamics, especially if a person might have had figured out prudent ways to manage his money and/or cashflows.