Of course, anyone in their first whole cycle should not be too preoccupied by price in the first place, especially if they are just ongoingly accumulating bitcoin, unless maybe they had front-loaded their investment, which might cause them to be more concerned about such a thing, even though I consider that even someone who might have had lump sum invested in bitcoin in recent times, they likely should be supplementing their lump sum investment by DCA and/or buying on dips...
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You seem to be focusing a lot on the BTC price, and surely if you are largely in your BTC accumulation phase, then I see little to no reason to even concern yourself about the extent to which you might be in profits or not... since many times guys might be thinking about 10 years or more before they even start to consider selling parts of their stash.. . but yeah, some people feel that they cannot wait that long and they maybe are confused about their investment timeline.
I personally consider that no one should have investment timelines that are less than 10 years unless it is for age and/or health purposes, so otherwise, a guy might spend a couple of cycles accumulating BTC and even a whole another cycle just holding before he might consider starting some kind of a sustainable withdrawal that might be based on price and/or time.
When I started investing in BTC in late 2013,
my portfolio was not really in profits for about three years.. even though surely, I did start to worry less about it after 2 years since it was close to break even at that point and it was holding its value, so yeah, I do understand that our morale can be affected by perceptions about our bitcoin holdings being in profits, yet really, for any of the newer investors, it seems better to try to focus on ongoing accumulation rather than concerns about the extent to which they might be in profits or not.
It depends on how people look at things because not being in profit for the first three years after beginning to build a portfolio essentially means that you were able to buy at lower and lower prices. Some people don't get that point I think when they were able convince themselves that bitcoin is a great investment, from day one they would like to see prices go up, which actually is wrong as it means less BTC for the buck.
For some it might sound counterintuitive, but as a beginner you would want prices to stay where they are or go down as long as you are convinced that there is long term potential.
But it is still possible that people hope for a quick flip because they look at the charts from the past, see how quickly bitcoin could gain momentum sometimes and then they hope for that flip. While retrospectively there has been a lot of flipping potential in the past, I think now it has turned more into a long term game that pays off those who consistently stick to their investment plan. I wouldn't waste too many thoughts on flipping, if any at all.
The time horizon is incredibly important now because if there is someone sitting on maybe $10k, asking themselves what to do with it knowing that they need the money in 12 months from now, I think bitcoin might not be for them. Fact of the matter is that it's quite easy to get stuck in bitcoin if the time horizon is merely a year.