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There seems to be a bit of a time factor in investing too... even though sure we can imagine cases in which someone might have had accumulated a sufficient amount (and even more than enough) bitcoin in less than 4 years... yet many folks are not able to frontload and/or able to lump sum invest into bitcoin so much, so it does not seem very practical to be talking about the exceptional situations rather than the more common situation that is may well take 1-2 cycles or more for most normal people to even be able to invest a whole years of expenses (or their income which is a higher amount) into bitcoin.. .and then if during that one or two cycles, then there has also been time that passes, opportunities for BTC prices to appreciate and even the value of the investment to compound, which then tends to give more options to the person investing in regards to how to manage his bitcoin investment, and whether it is mostly holding onto the bitcoin, then that would seem to be investing, but if the person is mostly cashing out, then that seems like trading rather than investing.
I like how you specified and laid out emphasis on how important time is when making investments, I’ve come across situations where some investors have been able to accumulate a large quantity of Bitcoin because they were more aggressive in accumulating and building there portfolio even before completing a full circle, but it is never a good idea to be thinking about trading in that situation, in some cases most people even find it very difficult to accumulate sometimes because of their income and lack of capital management, but it’ is necessary to grab every opportunity to continue accumulating even when there seems to be a downturn in the market it also provides opportunities to increase our accumulation and build portfolio confidently whichever way it goes that someone successfully build a portfolio before the estimated period it is just better to continue accumulating and holding onto your Bitcoin. People who are mostly interested in cashing out Bitcoin when there is profit are traders and not an investor.
It is difficult to quantify how much is enough, and so frequently I talk about investing a whole year's of a person's income into bitcoin as a likely good measure of potentially starting to get to a point of investing enough, yet at the same time, if a guy invests a year of his income into bitcoin and bitcoin prices 10x, then that person has 10x the size of his income invested into bitcoin, yet at the same time, bitcoin tends to be quite volatile so we may well be measuring the value of the bitcoin holdings from the 200-WMA rather than from the spot price, so I have frequently suggested that a person who can measure the value of his bitcoin from the 200-WMA and he has 10 years of his target income for the value of his bitcoin using the 200-WMA, then he is at the beginning stages of having had accumulated enough and/or more than enough, and I still have troubles imagining how guys might get to that level of overaccumulation within less than a whole 4 year cycle... so frequently there is both a need for a passage of time and also for significant amount of either ongoing investment or perhaps some various lump sum investments along the way.
I would imagine that some investors who have been in the market for less than 4 years can be considered new investors. It takes a long time to accumulate Bitcoin in particular. If you reach the excess savings level in the middle of 1 cycle, you can sell if you want. But you have not reached your savings target and you have made some money and you want to sell and take a profit, this is never a sign of an investor but a sign of a trader. It is not right to sell your holdings until the time limit or until you reach the excess savings.
Ten years is too big to call someone a new investor because for me I don't think that's how such should be addressed, a new investor is someone who just came into Bitcoin investment within months or highest one year but anything more than two is no longer new because you have learned all the things you Never knew before and that makes you now different from someone who doesn't understand Bitcoin investment yet, actually there are people who only spent four years in investing on Bitcoin but if you see their portfolio they are like people who has been investing for ten years and you cannot see them as new investor.
You are correct that there are stages of bitcoin investing, yet there are a lot of folks who are still in their early BTC accumulation times even after 4 years of investing into bitcoin, and surely some of them might not have had treated bitcoin seriously in the beginning and may well had gotten distracted into trading and/or shitcoins, so surely they may take a bit of time to really get into focusing on accumulating bitcoin, and so surely getting through a whole cycle might allow them to graduate from newbie status.. perhaps? perhaps? their ability to graduate beyond newbie status likely has to do with how well they have learned, built up their bitcoin stash and also more importantly build up the strength of their cashflow management skills and back up funds. And, yeah there are some folks who come to bitcoin and they already have strong cashflow management skills, yet they still have to adapt their cashflow management skills to bitcoin, and yeah, some folks are faster learners than others and some folks come to bitcoin with more experience than others.