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...sell when you must, and only when you must!
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Even though I get the sentiment of "sell when you must, and
only when you must!," I still think that there are ways to attempt to engage in such BTC sales in prudent ways.
In recent months, I had been going back and forth in my own head in regards to some of my BTC sell orders that I had - both in terms of increments and in terms of amounts, which also led me to makeing some changes on at least a couple of occasions. I made some changes, then I thought about some better changes and I wrote them down for what I would do at a later date, and then several weeks passed, and then I had kind of forgotten my written down changes, and I had to go over them again and to actually put them live in order to make sure that was the additional changes that I wanted to put in place... . .which largely my own mostly went from $112.5k to $450k, and so I made some changes, then when I made some additional changes they ended up having affects through the whole range, even though the initial changes that I probably made in December or so were just to put some of my notes into action to add sell orders between $150k and $450k), but then after they sat for a while, I noticed some part in the middle that was uncomfortable to me, so then I largely ended up changing the middle, but once I changed the middle, then pretty much the whole range ended up getting affected.
Sometimes I feel that it is helpful to go through them and to fix them to my current "feelings," and even for me, it was much more difficult to transition into selling in the earlier years (referring to my having had started price-based selling in 2015), yet it seems to get easier and easier with practice, even if the amounts might sometimes seem large, but if you had already worked it out in your head (and maybe on paper), then you should already be "o.k." with the process playing out, since one of your assumptions that should be built into any price-based sale is that the BTC price could continue to go up after your price-based sale had executed and you already have that built into your formula..
so for example if you have sales of 1% of your bitcoin stash for every 25% rise in the BTC price, your formula should already account that if the BTC price went up 25% and you are selling 1% of your stash, then you are ONLY selling a small sliver of the new value of your holdings that likely should not make much of a difference, especially if you had already assessed your portfolio for having had crossed into overaccumulation status.
I know that one fo the horrible psychological things that any of us might be having is our thoughts that we can never have enough and also we realize that bitcoin is likely amongst if not the best of assets that are currently available, so it can become difficult to sell it, even when we might have had engaged in sufficient thinking through the matter.
Maybe it is a bit easier (and better) to conceptually work from doublings, even though for sure our sales might be within smaller increments, yet there can be a difference between our first sale.. that might require that our holdings be 10x, or 20x or some other 100x or some other convenient multiple/magnitude of appreciation, yet after we meet our first threshold level, then we likely are able to sell in various smaller increments (we don't need a doubling), we could even sell every 10% rise if we wanted, and just adjust the size of our sale for each increment.
So if we might say that our starting conceptual point is to realize that each doubling the profits within the dollar value of our stash is 50%, so we could sell up to 50% of our stash for each doubling and get back the full value of what it was, and it would remain at that same value, but then if we sold the whole 50%, then we would not benefit from any compounding of the value. .. so if we compromise and we say that we will sell 25% of the profits for every doubling, then we would then be extracting half of the price appreciation and allowing half of the value to compound.
I personally like to suggest that the absolute maximum (for my own preferences) is to extract 10% for every doubling, even though I personally have gravitated towards ONLY extracting 2% or so for every doubling.. .so in recent years, I have been under extracting from my own holdings based on my own calculations that the amount extracted is way more than I need to extract, but I still find some ways to use some of the extracted money, even though some of my own extracted money ends up getting deployed in order to buy back at lower prices in the event that we go there, even though I would prefer not to go there.. but the money is there and has been building up since 2015, so these days my outstanding buy orders go down to right around $30k, so it is just extra money that can also be available to extract if want to take some of the money then I just cancel some of the lower buy orders. I had recently extracted my money from buy orders that were at $26k, $27k and $28k. Earlier I had considered having orders going down to the 200-WMA or maybe 10% below the 200-WMA to be enough to maintain, yet these days (mostly since about 2022), I have come to believe that it is better to keep buy orders active that go to right around 35% below the 200-WMA, and since the 200-WMA is currently right about $50k, I am already authorize to extract from any of my buy orders that are less than $32.5k.
I am going to just hypothesize that you (and/or likely placed individuals of the WO thread) have an average BTC buy price that is at least lower than $5k... and to the extent that it is lower, is not really very material. So the essence of what I am saying that any sales that start at $100k or higher would therefore have at least a 20x price appreciation, so in that kind of a scenario, your first threshhold sales are at least 20x in profits.
So then we are all good because we have sales that are already 20x in profits, which is great even if you might have costs of $33k, which would only be a 3x in profits, but 20x is even better than 3x.
So then if we are already in 20x profits for our first sale then we are already good..to follow whatever formula we have, even if the very first sale might be 10% of the holdings. So then the next sale might be at $200k (a doubling) and then another 10% can be sold... yet at the same time, you might decide that you don't want to wait such large increments, so instead you decided to sell 1% every 10% rise in the BTC price, which largely should still bring you to right around 10% sales for every doubling.
So even if we might accept that we are going to do 10% sales for every doubling, we still have to consider that the other 40% is compounding in value amongst itself.. yet of course, 40% is really 90% since we have the other 50% that we are presuming to have had been the value of our holdings prior to the doubling.
I am feeling that I am starting to go into "insider baseball" or too many intricacies, yet my point still remains that even if you were to authorize yourself to withdraw up to 10% for every doubling, you are still having some thing like 40% of the value compounding upon itself, even though 90% of the value is really not being sold, but your bitcoin holdings is still going way up in value at a rate that is way faster than the amount that you are withdrawing... so why get worried about any amount of sales as long as you are not exceeding some internal threshold that you might have, such as 10% for every doubling or whatever other formula that you might have, to the extent that you have a formula and to the extent that you did not exceed such formula parameters.
By the way, in my own thinking we have a combination of price-based withdrawal systems and also time-based withdrawal systems, and I personally think that the price-based ones are easier to employ in the beginning, and perhaps when the BTC price keeps going up ad up and up, at some point we likely can advance to the higher level of time-based withdrawal systems, that would care even less about the price, just authorized BTC sales once a month, or once a quarter or twice a year or whatever other time-increment that you might choose to adopt.
I probably had been thinking that my bitcoin holdings were ready for time-based withdrawals some time in 2019 or so, when I had determined that as long as BTC prices were above $5k, then I should not be overly concerned about the extent to which I might need to (or want to) make some sales from time to time that might fit within a parameter of my then thoughts of 4% per year... I think that in 2019, I did not really have the parameters of my time-based sustainable withdrawal system worked out, so at that time they were kind of like theoretical parameters that were in my head about selling no more than 4% per year as long as the BTC price was at least above $5k.... I think that in recent times, I have improved upon the intricacies of my own thinking of other applicable parameters dealing with valuating BTC holdings within the 200-WMA and then so my time-based restrictions on withdrawal have to do more with where the BTC price is as compared with the 200-WMA, so even if I might be authorized to sell up to 10% of my BTC holdings every year as long the BTC spot price is at least 25% higher than the 200-WMA, I can still continue to time-base sell BTC, even if the spot price goes below 25% above the 200-WMA, yet only within acceptable reduced rates.
So I suppose that price-based withdrawal and time-based withdrawal could be employed simultaneously, but then I doubt that I could even authorized to go beyond the time-based sustainable withdrawal practices, if it were to appear that I would be getting close to my theoretical limit of 10% per year, and then the reduced rates that kick in when the BTC price is lower than 25% above the 200-WMA and then all the way down to no longer being able to sell any BTC if the BTC price drops to more than 35% below the 200-WMA, which right now would be right around $32.5k. (
my reduction of withdrawal rates are shown within the bottom explanations of the sustainable withdrawal tool).
When the BTC spot price is at least 25% above the 200-week moving average, then at least 1 month's withdrawal will be authorized; however,
A) if the BTC spot price is between 10% and 25% above the 200-week moving average, then you will be authorized to withdraw for only 90% of the current month's limit.
B. if the BTC spot price is between 0% and 10% above the 200-week moving average, then you will be authorized to withdraw for only 85% of the current month's limit.
C. if the BTC spot price is between 0% and 20% below the 200-week moving average, then you will be authorized to withdraw for only 70% of the current month's limit.
D. if the BTC spot price is between 20% and 30% below the 200-week moving average, then you will be authorized to withdraw for only 50% of the current month's limit.
E. if the BTC spot price is greater than 30% and 35% below the 200-week moving average, then you will be authorized to withdraw for only 40% of the current month's limit.
F. if the BTC spot price is greater than 35% below the 200-week moving average, then you will be not be authorized to withdraw any BTC from the budget.
I was thinking of "editing out" your post, but then I thought I should leave it untouched, as a reference to my reply.
You know, my sell order went through, and I felt odd about it, and I may have canceled it, had I remembered it being there, but still, I also felt happy and satisfied that I got some more chunk of fiat cash for "free". Free, in the sense that I consider my Bitcoin stash as a kind of "universe's free gift". It's kind of like "kissing the frog and getting your prince", so to speak. It's the reward for recognizing the value and ingenuity hidden in the Bitcoin white paper, for reading between the lines and realizing early enough that this has the potential to change everything in the monetary system of the world. Surely, there was a risk involved in kissing the frog, as there always is (there is "no free lunch" in the universe), but it was very small, in retrospect.
You're absolutely right, my average buy price is very low, under $2k to be more specific. As much as I despise fiat and the traditional monetary system, I know that it is (still) necessary to go through that system, in order to get things done. So, fiat is going to play a part in going from Bitcoin to realizing my dreams. I try to make that part a transitional one, hence the "...
when you must" part of my phrase above. Still, though, it's good to have a healthy chunk of fiat parked in a bank account, for low/mid-level value purchases here and there. The more Bitcoin one has, the more this makes sense, and the easier it is to achieve it. Also, many of us (myself included) are still employed, and still have a steady, healthy fiat income every month. At some point, the situation becomes self-sustaining, in that occasional, even regular, moderately sized Bitcoin-to-fiat conversions do not affect the total fiat value of one's stash. In fact, one can keep spending their Bitcoin, and their stash fiat value can keep rising still. You can call it win-win, or fuck-you status, or whatever, but once you get there you can see things from a different perspective.
I believe that, in the end, one's actions when it comes to Bitcoin may be governed (at least partly) by psychology, inner feelings, desires and irrational thinking, rather than pure logic. LFC is waiting to sell 25% in order to buy back lower later on (I hope it doesn't bite him in the end...), others just shave off small amounts as needed to do what they want, some have purchased massively expensive things that wasted a large chunk of their stash, only to regret it later on. In the other extreme, mindrust got scared of the price dropping to nearly $3k, sold his 10 BTC and got $30k, while now he would have more than $1M.
1 BTC. This is the threshold to reach as of now, in my opinion. Anyone having $120k to spare, go buy 1 BTC and store it away in a Trezor or paper wallet. Don't overthink it. Do it. Had I done the same in 2015 I would now own thousands of Bitcoin.