Imagine making a 2-3% gain in an investment and calling it a major profit, no wonder bitcoin traders are never successful, they cash out on something this small and they start acting like they completely understand the bitcoin market but the truth is that they understand nothing, an investor will most likely make at least 100% of their investment at the end of their investment period which can be around 10 years, even more if their investment stays for a longer period of time and the benefit of this is that they don't cash out on everything like a trader would, an investor will just cash out on a percentage of his/her profit and investment continues, this is what makes investing in bitcoin 100% better than trading in it.

Sure there is a product of time and quantity in terms of the amount that any of us is able to invest into bitcoin and to go through the process of the investment potentially being able to serve some kind of a purpose - which surely with something  like bitcoin it would seem strange to invest 4-10 years or more and then just cash out.. even though surely some people end up doing something like that rather than maintaining bitcoin as an investment once they built up a position.

Part of the way that any of us could attempt to project forward is to consider how much of our income we actually might be able to put into bitcoin over time, whether that is 5% to 25% or some other amount, and then to figure out how much of our income we might be able to put into bitcoin over time. Surely there could be lump sum amounts to start out or at various points along the journey, and surely there could be some possibility that if we let our bitcoin investment build up and play out for a while, then we have a product of both what we put in and the hope that the BTC that we had bought may well have had gained in value over time.. It is not guaranteed that the bitcoin that we accumulated would have had gained in value, but surely it could become possible that both with the combination of the amount that we put in and the gain in value, then we might well could have had been able to start to withdraw from the bitcoin to partially or fully replace the income that we might get from work or other ways that we get income could end up being supplemented, replaced and/or insured against in the event that those other sources of income could dry up.  So in the sense that bitcoin could replace our income, then it becomes important to guard large portions of it.. maybe even being careful to have an overwhelming majority of our coins (such as 70% or more) in self custody and hopefully lessening (or mitigating) our exposures to 3rd party risks (such as custody and/or even transactional risks).

Some guys cannot resist taking short term profits, which might relate to their not necessarily understanding and/or having confidence in terms of holding value in bitcoin, which surely is understandable that guys are going to have those kind of discomforts to even get used to how to hold bitcoin, to protect it and how much value to hold in it in terms of comfort levels that it is sufficently safe in the various ways that it might be held and/or backed up.

Some guys might come into bitcoin and not really be sure if they are going to have an income for 4-10 years or more so that they can continue to hold bitcoin and/or to pay for their expenses through their income, and surely they may end up investing into bitcoin and then needing to figure out how to continue to earn income so that they do not cash out of too much of their bitcoin too early, and no one is saying that is it easy to even be able to hae systems in place in order to not cash out too much too early.,. since there may well be guys who hardly have any income, savings and/or other investments, and if their bitcoin holdings becomes one year or more of their income (the cost of their expenses) they may well be tempted to tap into it.. even though it may well be better for their own good if they can get their bitcoin up to 10-25 or more of their annual income/expenses.. and also measuring the value of their bitcoin from bottom prices (such as the 200-WMA) rather than getting distracted by spot prices, even though surely any sales would end up happening at whatever the BTC spot price happens to be a the time of any sales..


The power of compounding value can be quite amazing. .which is the idea that over time there can be doublings built upon doublings.. and sure it could take  several cycles to go through a few doublings, yet surely there ends up being profits that are likely several of the 100% building upon themselves, and even if the person might cash out of some of his bitcoin along the way, perhaps a large amount of value stays in the bitcoin investment in order to potentially keep the doublings going into the future, even if the doublings might become less frequent.

Even look at my charting out of the bitcoin doublings (compounding value) since 2015, and we already have 8 doublings and we are going onto 9 doublings.. so  8 doublings is 256x and 9 doublings is 512x.

Of course, these days we are staring out with a much higher BTC price, yet at the same time, there is still the product of time that likely has to play out with any investment and in order to really appreciate the power of compounding value.


Yep, each of us likely faces ongoing decisions in regards to how aggessive that we are able to be on an ongoing basis in terms of how much of our discretionary income that we want to (or are able to) dedicate towards bitcoin investing rather than serving our current wants and needs.  They are not necessarily easy choices, so for example, maybe we are developing relationships, and we know that a 2-5 times a month our partner (spouse) wants to go out to eat, and each time it costs around $100.. and we know that in order to preserve the relationship we have to engage in some of these kinds of activities and/or expenses, yet at the same time, there may be ways that we can try to cut down on the expenses in terms of frequencies and/or amounts and still come to some kind of an agreement that still preserves the benefits of the activities... and so we can have varying expenses like that. .and even something like knowing that we need to buy a new phone, but we might be able to figure out some ways to save money on it or to get it used rather than new or to defer the expenses for a bit of time... and so the point is that our level of aggressiveness in bitcoin investing can have real world consequences both in terms of current expenses but also in terms of future circumstances, and surely we might have some expenses that will improve our income, so the expenses end up paying for themselves, and we have to be careful that we are able to differentiate between expenses that might have pay outs that are sometimes difficult to know exactly.


I, surely, like the idea of investing every week especially for newbies and/or even guys in their first whole cycle of investing into bitcoin, yet at the same time, guys might have some irregularities in their income and/or expenses that makes it difficult to set a budget that they can invest every week... and so there could be a guy who has an income that varies between $500 and $2,500 every month with a usual amount of $1,500 and he may have expenses that vary between $750 and $1,100 with a usual amount of $950.. so he may well feel that he can buy $100 worth of bitcoin every week, but he also has to prepare himself for his variance in income and/or expenses, so he may well decide to invest $40 or $50 every week into bitcoin no matter what, and then have some reserve funds and/or float money that he keeps so that he is able to buy additional bitcoin at various times in the month in the event that his income might be higher and/or his expenses lower than expected.. but he does not spend that extra money on bitcoin until he is sure that he does not need it for something else, yet at the same time, no matter what he is buying $40 to $50 on bitcoin because maybe he even has a fund that is set aside and he keeps replenished that is specifically to be able to buy bitcoin every week no matter what.


You have strange ways of expressing various ideas.

Sure a person cannot invest into bitcoin without discretionary income, yet discretionary income does not need to be stable, even if it would be better for guys to have steady, stable, regular and even a lot of discretionary income, yet many people do not have steady financial situations, yet they still can invest in bitcoin within their abilities and continue to work on improving their discretionary income situation.. and even their steady income situation into the future.. but even some folks might start out investing in bitcoin with steady income, and then they might end up losing their steady income situation and get stuck with sporadic income, which does not necessarily mean that they should sell any of their bitcoin or even that they need to stop accumulating bitcoin depending on their total situation and any back up funds that they have.

Emergency fund also does not need to be established before getting started investing into bitcoin, and it might even be disadvantageous to put off bitcoin investing when someone already knows that he has discretionary income and/or discretionary funds, he may well be better off to get started buying bitcoin right away, even if the starting off amount might be relatively small.
 
Some folks might first hear about bitcoin and they might have had all kinds of bad habits and debt and messy finances and psychology, and surely they can get started investing into bitcoin, as long as they can determine that they have discretionary income/funds.  They suely might not be in a position to start to invest into bitcoin aggressively, yet they still might figure out how aggressive that they are able to be without overdoing it, and surely if they are in a situations that they have made bad decisions in the past, they might need to be careful that they don't end up overdoing their bitcoin investment, and they may well need to work on improving their finances and perhaps their psychological improvement will follow their better organizing of their finances.. and yeah, some of these guys might see that they have enough of an income that they could invest between $100 to $200 per week into bitcoin, yet if their finances are so messed up that they have debts and they have hardly any back up funds and they have not really calculated the specifics, then they may well be better off starting out at $40 per week and then use the remainder of their discretionary money to get their debt situation in a better position and to build up emergency funds and take other actions to get their finances in order before they might be able to increase their weekly purchases of bitcoin up to $100 to $200 per week. 

Even though we may well want things to move fast, some guys might have themselves in bad financial and/or psychological situations, and it could take several years for some of these guys to establish investment and cashflow management systems, put them into practice and to get their finances in a position in which they have invested 3 months of their expenses into bitcoin and they also have built up an emergency fund that is equal to or more than 3 months of their expenses.  Surely if guys have identified their issue, they might be in a place to increase their discretionary income by increasing their income and/or cutting their expenses, yet there might be guys who are also stuck with the discretionary income that they have because they have already increased their discretionary income within their current abilities and their current situation..so they have to work with what they have..


O.k... so if you have figured out for yourself that bitcoin is a good investment, and also it has a lot of growth potential because a lot of people in the world do not recognize its value, so in that sense you are early in terms of identifying something that you consider to be ongoingly growing.

You also might recognize that in the short-term, the bitcoin price might not reflect its future value, so in the short term, the bitcoin price can go up and down and not even necessarily accurately reflect bitcoin's current fair present value.  So, maybe you did not come to this realization right away, and you have  been studying bitcoin for a little more than 3 years (going by your forum registration date - congratulations in crossing into more than 3 years) while investing into it, and you have increasingly become more and more and more convinced that bitcoin has a lot of unappreciated value. so over the years you have become more and more aggressive in your bitcoin accumulation.

Ok... no problem... nothing wrong with any of that.. even though it still seems to continue to be your responsibility and your obligation to figure out how to be as aggressive as you are able to be in your ongoing bitcoin accumulation so that you are accumulating as much bitcoin as you can without overdoing it within your own financial and/or psychological circumstances.  We all have balances, and we have personal expenses, and perhaps we have limitations in our income that might be able to be improved upon, and we might even have some things in our lives that we could sell in order to buy bitcoin... .. but then there can also be questions about productive use of time to try to continue to learn about bitcoin or to figure out to increase income or cut expenses and also mental health balance to develop social (and familial) relationships while at the same time making sure to improve and/or preserve physical health.

There surely is some value to identify good places to direct time, energy and value.. and then surely at the same time, sometimes sharing such information in our real lives, which may or may not be good uses of our time even though surely there can be times in which we may well need to spend time to help others to learn about bitcoin and/or to get introduced to bitcoin in terms of potentially helping them to understand some of the asymmetric information that we have come to realize. We also surely have to be careful not to put ourselves too much at physical risk in terms of our security and the security of the coins that we hold, so we may well need to make sure that we are engaging in practices to meaningfully balance our security... so sometimes with strangers (or maybe they are not completely strangers since they are members of our community), we might interact with them, even in a financial transaction, and we might ask them if they accept bitcoin for their goods and/or services, and they may or may not act like they know what is bitcoin, and we might suggest that bitcoin can be a good way of directly transacting in terms of goods and services, and we might not even proclaim  to know much about bitcoin beyond having had heard about it as a good way to transact. .and so even though we are talking about bitcoin, we are not necessarily proclaiming to be bitcoin rich.. which could be problematic for our own security and privacy.

In my own opinion, any investor that's sells their portfolio due to price fluctuation of the market,the very moment he sold his Bitcoin investment based on the excuse that the market is not on his favor disqualify him from been called an investor but a trader. Since Bitcoin is a speculative asset,Market fluctuation shouldn't be a problem to any investor with a long term investments plan because  it's the nature of Bitcoin to be violatile as the price may likely change all of a sudden. An investor that is not ready to go into Bitcoin investment with a long term perspective should forget about maximizing profits from Bitcoin as his financial status may continue to remain unimproved .
Following the rules and applying them accordingly is our best chances of generating huge profits from Bitcoin, which is to Invest for the long term and to be consistent in DCAing buying and accumulating Bitcoin using our discretional income and within our financial limits. Our Emergency and backup funds should also be built alongside our portfolio to protect our investment from any unexpected occurrence that may arise.

Some people are very funny, imagine investing $200 and then getting $4-5 in a short period as profit, this doesn't make any sense because if someone can afford to invest $200 then what is $4 or $5 profit? This explains lack of understanding because how will someone risk $200 just to make this little profit and this set of investor always sells their investment when the price is going against their  wish. Long time is always the key to every successful investment and is not like some Investors don't know or understand but they decide to go the wrong direction.

Actually if you think about such short-term profits, you can never achieve great success, the only way to achieve great success is through long-term holding. In the short term, the market will continue to fluctuate like this, for some time the market will go up and for some time the market will go down a lot, in this way the instability will continue, but through this you can never achieve such success that it is possible to improve your financial situation a little, because along with the high risk through this, your profit will also be very low, that is, in general, you can never achieve success from such short-term Bitcoin trading. The only way to Bitcoin success is long-term holding, and buying Bitcoin continuously through DCA.

This may be possible, because if someone invests $200, there may be a profit of $4-5 in a short period of time. Now if you expect to make such a quick profit you will not be a successful investor. If you expect profit soon after investing then it is not wrong to call you a trader, to be an investor you have to buy bitcoins and hold on for long term. Now it is normal for the market to fall, so don't despair here. If one is disappointed to see the market down, he will not be able to hold for a long time, and if he cannot hold for a long time, he will not be a successful investor.

Fear is one of the human traits that will always exist especially for those who are new or beginners and if we talk about Bitcoin for those who do not know it well and do not have enough experience and knowledge will definitely feel afraid and panic when Bitcoin experiences a decline and in my opinion that is a natural attitude because it is the same as when we were new to Bitcoin even though we have studied everything well and when we first feel a decline there will definitely be fear and panic. However, all of that is the process and the beginning of them to become strong and intelligent Bitcoin owners and the negative things that happen are just adjustments that will eventually get used to and the most important thing is that belief in Bitcoin remains because that is what will make everything okay and even though feeling excessive fear or panic so that you do wrong and when you start it again the incident will not happen again because to dive into Bitcoin requires a strong mentality and realize that treating Bitcoin with a long-term method is the most appropriate solution to deal with everything that happens to Bitcoin and the decline that occurs in Bitcoin will eventually rise again and this is what must really be instilled in yourself besides belief in Bitcoin and forget the fluctuations that are indeed in nature and will not care if your goal is for the long term.

It is a natural thing because fear is a natural trait considering that in the end anyone will definitely feel it especially when the nature is losing something but in the end do not make our fear greater than our confidence in the investment we make because in this case it is important for us to understand that in the end investment especially in bitcoin involves risk so that with this we can manage our fear in a better way.

The most important thing in this case is not to make the mistake of making our fear excessive because for now we still often find especially for those beginners or even fomo whose fear is much greater which actually harms themselves.

The rise and fall of the market is a natural thing because bitcoin is volatile but in the end our focus does not have to be there if we really want the long term as a goal because in the end it is precisely by looking at the temporary conditions (currently) that makes us forget our goals for the long term.

You may be correct that it is getting more and more difficult to get BTC prices below $100k and to keep them below $100k, yet historically bitcoin has come back to touch upon the 200-WMA and even to sometimes temporarily go below the 200-WMA.. and it seems to me difficult to consider that such pattern is not going to continue with various extremes in BTC price movements  that are also accompanied by both blow off tops and then over-correction.

Sure it could be possible that this time is going to be sufficiently different in order that such sub $100k levels are not reached again... yet even if that "this time is different" becomes true, there still seems to be some need to gravitate the 200-WMA upwardly, and currently the 200-WMA is merely at about $49k, and it is merely going up between $45 to $55 per day.  Even if we can get the 200-WMA going up $100 per day, that is still ONLY going to bring the 200-WMA to barely touching upon $100k by the end of 2026.. so even in my thinking, even if we speculate that this time is different, I have my doubts that the amount of different can really completely disregard historical patterns, even if we are not necessarily bound to the historical patterns... but at the same time, it seems problematic to completely ignore historical patterns as if they were to not have any meaning and/or legitimacy in terms of outlining future possible parameters.


If we are regularly buying bitcoin, such as every week, when a dip comes, we might have extra money to buy more, yet we might not have any extra money to buy more.  Either way, if we had been regularly buying bitcoin, then we still are likely in a position to not be worried about whether bitcoin prices dip or do not dip.

Sure, the longer that we are in bitcoin, then the more we have likely built up our systems of regularly buying bitcoin and otherwise managing our cashflows, and it could be possible that we have also been stacking away some dollars to be able to buy in the event that some dips might come about.. yet at the same time, whether we buy on dips or just buy regularly, we are likely more advantaged by the just buying regularly rather than strategizing around dips that may or may not happen.

In some sense, dips are inevitable in bitcoin, yet the dips are not necessarily going to go any lower than current BTC prices, so we might have dips in the future, but at the same time, such future dips might not even be at cheaper prices than current prices.

Historically, especially in my early BTC accumulation days, I would sometimes get excited to buy the dip, yet frequently the BTC price would just keep dipping, so I came to consider that whether the BTC price dipped or did not dip was not as important as just continuing to buy bitcoin on a regular and ongoing basis, which largely just meant that I would strive to make sure that I bought bitcoin every week and even within each week, I would try to catch dips, but still there was really no solid way to figure out which way the BTC price was going to be going in the short-term, even though there have always been folks proclaiming that they both knew where the BTC price was going and they also supposedly knew that we were going to be in the price location that we currently were...and after a while it became more and more clear that short term BTC price moves were not easy to figure out, yet it tended to seem to be reasonable to consider that the ongoing thesis that in the longer term bitcoin prices would be inclined more towards going up rather than down - even though the short term remained difficult to figure out.


I think that you (ChocolateBitcoinK) are correct with your proclamation that the longer the timeline, then the more difficult it becomes for the trader to beat the guy who ongoingly accumulates bitcoin, yet the shorter the timeline, it can be more difficult to have confidence that long term accumulator had really beat the overwhelming majority of traders in that same period... and surely don't get me wrong, since I am not suggesting trading as a good idea.

Let's take an example from your timeline of 5 years, and let's say that 5 years ago, we had a guy who was in his mid 30s, and so maybe he had been saving and investing around 15% of his income for 10 years prior to getting into bitcoin, and he had an income of around $30k per year, and maybe he had accumulated an investment portfolio that was worth around $70k, and so 5 years ago, he decided to divert his 15% into bitcoin and to also divert around 15% of his then investment portfolio into bitcoin.

So 5 years ago, around mid 2020, he put $11k into bitcoin, so he got right around 1.16 BTC with an average purchase price around $9,500 per BTC.

He also immediately started to put 15% of his income (about $100 per week) into bitcoin, so over the past 5 years, he invested right around $26k through DCAing and he got close to 0.9BTC.. So his total investment into bitcoin has been about $37k with an accumulated BTC stack of about 2.06 BTC, which has a 200-WMA value of about $101k and a BTC spot price value of $217k... .. which surely would not be a bad place to be right now.. even after ONLY 5 years investing into bitcoin.  

It would be hard pressing to consider that very many traders would have had been able to show better performance than the BTC accumualtor during the last 5 years.


You are speaking in gobble-dee-gook HOPE25

You believe that guys need some kind of a pep talk?

Many of us will come to bitcoin at differing points in our lives, so we likely need to figure out what our bitcoin strategy will be within our budget and then hopefully we will employ such strategy, learn along the way and potentially tweak our strategies as we go and through the process of learning.

Some of us are more capable of learning than others, yet it is likely that we are going to make mistakes along the way... so what are we going to do when we make various mistakes?  How about we identify that we have various flaws, what are we going to do?  We are merely going to tell ourselves that we are good and to have confidence in ourselves?

I will agree with you that our most likely better approach to investing into bitcoin relates to our figuring out our own budgets and then staying within our budgets while establishing and maintaining back up funds... so in that sense, there are needs to focus on making sure that we are staying within our own limits.. but it surely does not mean that we are necessarily starting from a good place in terms of where we are at and potentially figuring out which areas we might need to improve.


Holy shit Jostern.  Are you exaggerating or what?


The BTC price is a mere 5% to 6% distance from $100k, and you are now proclaiming that it is impossible to go back below $100k?

Why do you feel a need to make extraordinary claims?

Sure. You might be correct, but I doubt that your odds are very high?  Your odds of being correct might not even be greater than 50/50, yet you are proclaiming that it is "extremely impossible."

How do you define "extremely impossible?"   Less than 5% odds? or some other number?  Are you willing to bet based on such odds that you purportedly believe in?


Efven though bitcoin's price is not guaranteed to go up, it is also not outrageous to proclaim that bitcoin's price might be 10x higher than it is today in a period of 10-20 years.  Those are quite conservative numbers, since it could well end up being the case that bitcoin prices are 100x to 1,000x higher than today within a 10-20 year time line.

Sure, at the same time, it is possible that BTC prices go down rather than up, so it is good to account for a variety of possible scenario - even though at the same time, we likely would not be putting equal efforts or even close to equal efforts into scenarios that we might be considered to be a lot less likely and/or even extremely unlikely scenarios.

Many of us should recognize and appreciate that it is possible to prepare for multiple scenarios at the same time.


It seems that we would not invest into bitcoin if we were not optimistic about it.  At the same time, we can adjust our position size to coincide with our level of optimism.. If our optimism is high then our position size would be relatively high, and if our optimism is low then our position size would be relatively low.  Accordingly, there should be no need to invest one way or the other outside of our self-assessment of our level of optimism in regards to the asset (in this case, bitcoin).


Each of us should adjust our level of aggressiveness within our own assessments, and so our level of persistence, consistency, regularity in regards to our bitcoin investment versus how much we might put into our back up funds versus how much we might spend on consumption or on other investments may well just be chosen levels in regards to the extent that we are striving to be on the whimpy side of our bitcoin emphasis and/or focus or if we might work towards being on the aggressive side in regards to how much of our discretionary income we are putting into bitcoin as compared to putting into other places that might be available to us for putting such discretionary income.

In other words, each of us chooses our level of whimpiness or aggressiveness and our persistence and consistency might merely be manifestations of the choices that the we had made... meaning that we can be more consistent or less consistent, more persistent or less consistent, more regular or less regular.. etc etc etc.. the mere fact that we are one or another is a matter of degree and not absolutes in and of themselves.


If these matters that relate to the buying of bitcoin are so "simple," then why do we have 904 pages of posts batting around such matters?


It seems natural to be scared at various points within an investment, and surely it helps for the investment to be in profits, yet even a person who is considerably in profits may well start to get scared if the BTC price drops 50%, 70% or some higher amount. A person could go from profits to losses or even he could go from 3x to 10x profits to only a fraction of his earlier (on paper) profits.  These can be difficult for anyone to deal with, een if they might have more experience and/or even if they may well have more of a "profits" cushion.