So yeah BItcoin price within the short term can indeed be unpredictable for when considering the long term, predicting it seems a lot more easier.
I disagree with you that bitcoin price is easy to predict in the long run because nobody knows what Thebes future has fod bitcoin which is the main reason why you are advised to invest with the amount of money that you can afford to lose. Just the way that the price is unpredictable due to Thebes volatile nature of bitcoin is the same in both short term and long-term, if not those early bitcoin hodlers who sold too early when bitcoin price increased to $10k wouldn't sell but should know that bitcoin price will hit $120k in future.
Bitcoin is price increases based on increase in adoption and the halving event but that doesn't mean that you can actually know the exact price that bitcoin will reach in the year 2029. You are advised to invest in the long-term because that's the only way to limit the risk in bitcoin investment because the price increases overtime based on history data since bitcoin is still in her early stage.
Yo mate, I said it’s EASIER (Not Easy) to predict witching the long run, compared to attempting to predict it within the short term. Historically, Bitcoin has been known for its long term growth, and even if it’s true that past performances doesn’t always guarantee future results, but to an extent we can believe beyond reasonable doubt that it’ll most likely continue in that trend within the long term, unlike attempting to predict the price of Bitcoin within the short term, because short term movement has never been in any particular trend, and that’s why I said that it is easier to predict Bitcoin within the long haul, compared to the short term.
Ultimately, most of us are likely investing into bitcoin because we consider that in the long term, the odds for up are greater than the odds for down, yet we still have to be careful not to put everything into bitcoin in case the down scenario ends up playing out, even though we speculate that the odds for up are greater. We could end up being incorrect in our prediction, so we hedge and we try to be careful.
Another thing that we do is choose our position size, so even historically, guys who were quite skeptical of bitcoin still ended up profiting from bitcoin, even if they took a whimpy position, so there are ways that we can choose our position size so that, even if bitcoin ends up going down or going to zero, then the most that we end up losing is 100% of our investment, yet on the other hand, if someone invested into bitcoin in between 2013 and 2016, then he may well would have had been able to get average bitcoin costs to be around $1k per coin or even lower than that... so right now his holdings are 100x of whatever he ended up putting into bitcoin,
so in that case, he should reasonably conclude that if he had put in more then his profits would have had been more, so there are risks in being overly whimpy an there are risks in being overly aggressive since there are guys who were overly aggressive and they end up losing because, they end up having to sell way too much (perhaps even all) of their bitcoin holdings too soon because either they did to manage their cashflow well, or they failed to sufficiently earn money so that they could pay their expenses during the time that they needed to be able to continue to accumulate and/or hold the bitcoin that they had already accumulated.
In other words, there are guys who figured out how to lose money or even to not make money, even though they knew about bitcoin and they involved themselves in bitcoin when BTC prices were much lower.
By the way, I would suggest that DCAing and/or long term investing does not take away risks, yet risks can be mitigated though such approaches that involve position size, and guys still have to figure out how aggressive that they are ready, willing and able to be without over doing it.
Yea, I believe that your explanation is reasonable. It is not an overstatement to say that it is quite easier to estimate the long term direction of Bitcoin than the short term moves, since the short term price movement is largely noise, fueled by leverage, speculation and news. Conversely, in the long-term chart, a recurring trend is seen which is connected to halving cycles and growth in adoption. This is why although nobody could predict precise figures it has been practical to assume hikes in highs in the 4-8-year period.
And yet you are correct too that easier is not certain. Many of the original owners sold at 10k since they lacked belief and cash flow to endure bear markets. That demonstrates the true danger lies not in making a forecast about the price, but in personal financial management that will enable you to be invested during those cycles to get the benefit.
Your point about position sizing is also proved by history. Investors who put in small sums 2013-2016 and just held are multiplying by large numbers today. Meanwhile, those who bet everything without a strategy had to sell when the economy hit lows and had no opportunity to ride the long-term trend.