.
Most folks who are merely investing DCA from their income, they might ONLY be able to invest 10% or less of their income, so if a person invests 10% of his income, it would take around 10 years for him to have had put a whole year of his salary into bitcoin.. and so frequently we have the investment being a product of both time and how much we put into it, so some guys get excited to cash out their profits, but if they have not put very much into bitcoin, then their profits would be less likely to be meaningful. We have all kinds of examples through bitcoin's history where guys had been cashing out way too many bitcoin too soon because they got interested in short term profits, but then they ended up selling way too many bitcoin too soon and ultimately were not really managing their bitcoin holdings in a way that would really bring meaning to their fnances and their overall net worth.
Of course ,If you are only putting 10% or less of your income into Bitcoin, you have gotta accept that it is a slow game. It is like filling a jar with coins, at first it feels like nothing is happening, then one day you realize it is really actually getting pretty heavy. The problem is, a lot of people don’t wait for that heavy jar moment. They see a little green in their portfolio, get excited, and sell , then a few years later they are kicking themselves because those small gains could have been life changing if they just held on.
I still remember one guy on who told his sad or should i say unfortunate story on Reddit, who sold his whole stack for a used Honda Civic back in 2016. At the time, it felt like a smart move because he bought a new car, feeling good. Fast forward to today, and those same coins could have bought him a house… maybe two. That is the beauty of Bitcoin, u will need to have patience, look into the long term, because the short term wins can trick you into missing the big picture. If you want it to actually move the needle in your life, you have to give it time to do its thing.
Yep.. it is a slow process to accumulate bitcoin, and it is not good to interrupt the process.
Regarding the Honda Civic in 2016, we can do an approximate estimate that if the guy bought a medium priced Honda Civic in 2016, he may well might have ended up spending around $20k...
So bitcoin in 2016 ranged from $350 to $900. Let's say that he sold around $700... so then he needed to have right around 28.5 BTC in 2016 to generate $20k of cash.
Right now 28.5 BTC has a 200-WMA of $1.5 million and a spot price of $3.4 million. Surely right now, any of us could do quite a bit with 28.5 BTC, whether we started to generate income off of it or we cashed out chunks of it. The current sustainable income from 28.5 bitcoin would be $146k per year.
Generally lump sum cashing out for consumption (or even investing in something else that is usually going to be inferior) is not a good idea or a good way for a person to manage their BTC holdings.
This your analysis or point really shows how crazy the difference can be over time. Selling 28.5 BTC for a car back in 2016 might have felt smart at the time, but now, That same stack could have changed his whole life. It’s wild to think about. He traded something that could’ve made him a millionaire for a car that’s probably not even running anymore.
And to be also be honest with you, I also did the same thing, In my first year I sold a chunk of my Bitcoin, both the gains and some of my stash, and spent it on things that honestly didn’t even make much sense. At the time it felt good and it felt like the earth was just spinning around me alone, but looking back I wish I had known better. Once I really understood what long term holding means I was able to chill and stop making those quick decisions. It’s all about learning and growing right thou ......The hardest part is staying patient when the price goes up. People see green and want to take profits, but if you treat Bitcoin like long term savings it changes how you think.
Yep. I am not really sure how any of us can make sure that we have the right mindset because it can become quite tempting to sell and to take some profits, and the guy may have had sold the 28.5 bitcoin with around 2x profits.. so he was selling out of profits since maybe he bought the coins at $350 or less... then at the same time, he just took for granted the significance of his having had accumulated that many coins...
And currently we have guys who may have had bought a lot of coins in the $17k to $35k prices through 2022 and 2023, so they might not even realize how valuable it is merely to have had accumulated so many bitcoin at those prices, and so some of them were selling their bitcoin at around $100k, so they ended up getting 3x and 4x profits, but then they are never going to be able to accumulate the quantity of bitcoin that they were able to accumulate in 2022 and 2023 for the amount of dollars that they put into their investment.
We have seen that so many times in bitcoin, and guys are not able to come even close to buying back the quantity of coins that they ended up selling, and they don't realize how difficult it will be to get that quantity of coins in the future.
It is hard to see while we are in the midst of the price, and even our current prices could well end up being really good when it comes to a few years down the road, and even 5-10 years down the road, and right now we can accumulate as much bitcoin that we want at the current $117k-ish prices.
For sure. Very critical, having the right mindset in the "moment" when the price goes up and profits are calculated right there, not selling too early takes so much discipline with long-term vision. By now lessons should have been learnt from others, many people, like you mentioned, looks back and realize they undervalued what they had.
Accumulating Bitcoin some years back like in 2022 and 2023 was not flashy, it was strategic. Like now, even though $117k seems high, it might actually look cheap 5 to 10 years from now, just as $17k or $35k looks cheap today when it comes to holding Bitcoin asset.
It’s hard, but being focused on long-term conviction instead of short term profits is what separates two classes of people (people who keep wealth and people who just taste it for a moment).
I believe emotional intelligence and personal need assessment can help to harness discipline and long-term vision.