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Yeah you are right, because the way I see it, just saying I’ve been holding Bitcoin for years doesn’t really paint the full picture if the stack itself is too small to make a real difference. There are people who have been holding since 2018, but when you check, it is barely a few hundred or may be thousands dollars worth, and in reality the profit is nice but not life changing.
Frequently, it is going to be better to attempt to compare folks in similar situations, such as comparing the whimpy investor to the more aggressive one and without changing too many variable.
Surely the guy who came to bitcoin earlier (such as even a whole cycle earlier) than someone else is going to have a lot of advantages to someone coming to bitcoin later.
Yet, the earlier entrant ONLY really gets the advantages in the event that he actually acted upon his early entrance by stacking bitcoin.
If he sat on his hands and merely invested $1k or less in bitcoin in mid-to-late 2018 (let's say that he bought around $1k worth at right around $6,200 - which would have had been right around 0.1613 BTC), then surely, he would have had advantage over the guy who come to bitcoin four years later in mid 2022.
Yet the guy in 2018 just sat on his hands and was whimpy and did not continue to buy bitcoin. He remained nervous about bitcoin, even though he kept his $1k investment into it.
Let's say that the guy who came in 2022 decided to start out his investment with $3k invested over several weeks in early to mid 2022, so he started buying around upper $30ks and then the price dropped into the $20ks and into the lower prices, so he invested his initial $3k for around an average of $30k per coin.. So he got 0.1BTC for the first $3k that he invested into bitcoin, yet he did not lose conviction merely because the BTC price continued to drop in 2022 and stayed somewhat stagnant and uncertain in 2023.
The late comer decided to continue to invest around $100 per week, since that was in his budget.. and perhaps even about 15% of his income... since he ONLY made around $34k per year..
So if he kept up with the $100 per week DCA, right now, he might have had invested right around $15k and had gotten about an additional 0.45 BTC. So if we add up his initial investment and his DCA, he would hav have had invested a total of $18k, and he would have accumulate right around 0.55 BTC. Which one would you rather be? the one with $1k invested and 0.1613 BTC or the one who continued to invest with right around $18k invested and right around 0.55 BTC?
The late-comer would have had invested way more than the earlier comer (perhaps in the ballpark of 18x more than the earlier comer), yet the late comer who is ambitious, may well ended up catching up and surpassing the earlier comer in terms of quantity of bitcoin accumulated, with close to 3.5x more bitcoin and a persistence in accumulating and even continuing to accumulate.
After a few more years, the whimpy early comer may have no chance to catch the more aggressive late comer, since the early comer had ended up largely squandering his 4-ish year advantage.
Meanwhile, someone who entered just 3 or 4 years ago with a solid stack ends up way ahead of them. That is why I agree that size and time must go hand in hand, you can’t focus on only one and ignore the other. The smart play is to combine patience with consistent stacking, because that way even if you start small, over time your bag grows into something meaningful, and when the bull run comes, the rewards will actually feel worth the wait…
We have seen in bitcoin that even folks with fractions of the income of another person had ended up getting way ahead of the ones who had been either too whimpy or failed/refuse to take action in their stacking of bitcoin.
Even the guy who started stacking bitcoin in early to mid-2022, he might have gained even more conviction over his slightly less than 4 years stacking bitcoin, and he might consider that if he figures out some ways to increase his discretionary income, then he might b able to increase his weekly DCA to $200 per week and perhaps even throw in some bonus amounts in the coming years, and he may well have a goal to be able to start to draw upon his bitcoin in another 4-6 years with some thoughts that he might be able to get his stack up to 1.5 BTC or more in that amount of time if he continues to focus on BTC accumulation.
Yet can see from
my latest fuck you status chart that even if he is ONLY able to get to 1 BTC by mid 2033, that might be enough or close to enough to be able to support his current income of $40k per year.
Of course, he does not necessarily need to increase his level of aggressiveness in accumulating bitcoin if he might be feeling that he is already sufficiently aggressive, yet the fact of the matter is that he likely realizes that even he had missed some opportunities in his level of bitcoin accumulation aggressiveness, and he had identified ways to increase his discretionary income.. with a tentative goal of continuing to accumulate another 4 years. .perhaps increase his level of aggressiveness and reassess the situation in a few years... in order to see if he might need 1.5 BTC or less in order to already be in a position that he can either replace his current income through BTC or that he might be close to being able to accomplish that with options concerning if he wants to continue to earn bitcoin or to potentially live off of his bitcoin.
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You wouldn't blame anybody for the stack they've had over the years, that's the amount of stack they've been able to afford over years while holding, don't forget that you have to accumulated within your financial muscle, regardless of the fact that the amount they've been holding over the years is not mouthwatering, trust me there has been some significant improvement in the profit margin if look at it critically. People financial background are not the same, you could start stacking within few years and boom your up there, that's because of the amount you've been alloting to your accumulation and how buoyant you are.
I believe people should be allowed to stack within their means, and if the opportunity comes for them to increase their lot size, trust me they will, without hesitation.
In some sense you are correct Spaceman1000$ , yet I personally read Grace333's example to show that one person was being wimpy and the other person was being more aggressive.
Sure, sometimes the examples and the comparisons are not good enough to show similarly situated person and one chooses to invest into bitcoin aggressively and the other chooses to invest whimpily. Those ar choices that each person is free to take, yet the results are going to be different too, even if they might have had started out from differing perspectives.
The other confusion that Grace333 provided was to describe someone coming into bitcoin earlier as compared with someone coming into bitcoin later, and so sometimes it can be difficult to compare folks across time, and many times we presume that in bitcoin those who come earlier are going to have advantages over those who come later, yet if the ones who came earlier had failed/refused to either act or to be sufficiently aggressive in their bitcoin accumulation, then they might have had squandered away their early entrant advantage by conducing themselves in an overly whimpy way of acting in regards to his bitcoin accumulation approach.
You wouldn't blame anybody for the stack they've had over the years, that's the amount of stack they've been able to afford over years while holding, don't forget that you have to accumulated within your financial muscle, regardless of the fact that the amount they've been holding over the years is not mouthwatering, trust me there has been some significant improvement in the profit margin if look at it critically. People financial background are not the same, you could start stacking within few years and boom your up there, that's because of the amount you've been alloting to your accumulation and how buoyant you are.
I believe people should be allowed to stack within their means, and if the opportunity comes for them to increase their lot size, trust me they will, without hesitation.
All hands are not equal. And honestly someone who have the most discretionary income may not be the one who have the most stash in his portfolio. The one with the lesser discretionary income may be more committed and discipline in his accumulation. When it comes to investment through DCA every little amount bought goes along way. Those little peanuts may grow to become a giant fruit one day and sure no matter the pressure from peer group, online or in this conversation is enough to push anyone to invest more than what they can afford.
Of course, each of us is responsible for our own level of aggressiveness, and we should not let pressure from online or groups affect our choices in that there is nothing wrong with being aggressive as long as we do not end up overdoing it. If we overdo it, then we have to suffer the consequences, and it might be 10 years down the road that we realize that we cannot turn back the clock an hopefully we did what we were able to do without overdoing it and taking ourselves out of the game due to our own overly aggressive screw up(s).