One of the simple things is that if someone buys crypto from the dip and hold it , he must be able to make a good profit, otherwise if he cannot buy from the dip, the percentage will be reduced. Especially if the newcomers are doing this job i.e. bypassing the dip and then selling it then they will definitely be able to make good profit.
We are not talking about buying crypto here.. that would be dumb.
We are talking about buying bitcoin.
We are also not talking about selling...
So if you have some long term imagination or even enough a timeline that is 4-10 years into the future, ongoing buying is good and buying on dips is good to supplement your long term plans to accumulate BTC.. and maybe after 4- 10 years, you might reconsider if you still want to continue to buy or just hold or maybe consider if you might want to sell some.. later down the road.. not fucking around with short-term profits.. but hoping for longer term accumulation of a large enough BTC stash in order to feel like it was a good investment...
Because we are not merely “investing”, and if you ask me, HODLing Bitcoin is something every individual should do “just in case” you need to utilize Bitcoin’s main value proposition. Censorship-resistance. It is something you think you might not need, until you are forced in a situation that you might need it.
Well like you mentioned, you can call what you are doing what you would like to call it. You can also establish whatever timeline that you would like, which would also influence your thinking about the matter and your approach If you are into bitcoin for possible value appreciation or you believe that bitcoin gives you choices/options that you might not otherwise have, then those are your own choices regarding framing of the matter, too.
If you ask me, it’s both. Value appreciation is a feature. Censorship-resistance is a feature. You always have both if you’re HODLing.
I thought that our initial seemingly semantical quibble was about whether putting value into bitcoin would be considered as "investing," and since you seemed to be battling with the use of such a label upon what you believe that you are doing, I ended up ranting on the idea of what is investing versus what else you might be doing if you considered your approach to bitcoin to NOT be "investing."
I cannot disagree with the suggestion that both value appreciation and censorship resistance are ongoing bitcoin features and each of them (as well as both) can contributed towards motivations to "invest" into bitcoin or to continue to hold some portion of your overall investment portfolio in bitcoin.
Of course getting into bitcoin does seem to provide a lot more options, and with the passage of time, part of the seeming value proposition of bitcoin continues to be that its likelihood of down or going to zero becomes less and less the longer that it is in existence - but as an individual, even if you create a 1, 2, 4, 10 year or longer timeline for yourself to be into bitcoin, you have the power to override your earlier decision, change your mind abandon the investment or whatever you would like to do.
So, yes surely one of the reasons to be into bitcoin would be seeming to have more options, and of course, the better that you play your investment into bitcoin, the seeming likelihood that your options will expand even more.. so part of the reason that I had emphasized the longer term way of attempting to consider the matter - even though surely people are free to just consider bitcoin in some kind of a shorter-term time frame - but seems to me that even the premise of the title of this thread (even though you might not have even been clear about some of the underlying implications upon the creation of the thread) is that it considers bitcoin in a kind of longer time frame.. that is why you at least used the term "HODL" within the title.
I already explained that the “underlying implications” of creating this thread is clear. The original title was, “Buy every dip!”, then look at the date it was started. It was the best opportunity given to us to buy EVERY DIP with everything we can WITHOUT FEAR.
oh gawd...
Wrong.
You trying to act like some kind of a soothsayer.
Of course, in retrospect we can see that BTC prices had gone down in November/December 2018 from about $6k to almost $3k, and then largely got stuck in the $3,500-ish to $4,200-ish arena until late March 2019.
So yes on about April 1, 2019 BTC prices broke above $4,200 and largely entered into a 3 month UPpity journey to reach $13,800 by the end of July without any significant price correction during that time.
Surely, there was some kind of trepidation during late 2018 and early 2019 regarding whether the $3,124 bottom of December 17, 2018 was in.. so no one really knew that bitcoin was going to rip UPpity.. or to have further corrections, and surely there were quite a few people still anticipating or predicting that the $3,124 bottom was not in and that supposedly bitcoin needed to test sub $2k prices and even sub $1,500 prices (which would have largely been revisiting the price arena of our 2013 top).
Retrospectively you can suggest that you had some level of confidence regarding what to do but largely you are talking nonsense to the extent that a buying the dip strategy was any more advantageous or knowable at that time as compared with any other time... or that you were supposedly somehow smarter than everyone else at that time. I would suggest that with bitcoin the combination of DCA, lump sum investing and buying the dip are evergreen practices in bitcoinlandia and except maybe having some probabilistically informed ideas about waves, we largely should not be fucking around with either trying to time the market or trying to know where the BTC price is going in the short-term except maybe on the margin so our short-term strategies can largely be merely tweaked from time to time rather than making any kinds of drastic changes because bitcoin seems to continue to be quite decent asymmetric bet.... and yeah, if we are just consistently accumulating BTC with a combination of strategies (DCA, lump sum investing and buying on dip) then we are likely to continue to do well in the long term.. even if it might take a while to build our BTC stash.. depending on if we might have a decent amount of capital to inject upfront.
At some point weren't you even considering changing the title of the thread to something more specific and weird that would try to particularize what you individually think about when and how to buy on dips and maybe not always to buy on dips or some other nonsense like that - because 1) you seemed to be trying to get away from my ongoing refrain about the preferability of DCA in terms of when it doubt buy rather then getting caught up about how much of a dip and if the dip is maximized and all those kinds of difficult to actually carry out in practices, and 2) you were worried that sometimes buying on dips could cause the running out of money if buying too soon - especially if we were to prematurely go into a bear market?
Furthermore, you were also going through a kind of adamant and stubborn phase of NOT wanting to tell newbies to buy BTC or to even go so far as to tell them not to buy (was that occurring for most of 2021, and maybe even ramped up in the May/June/July time... and I am not even saying that you had not been doing that at various times in 2020 too), which I also spent a lot of time battling those kinds of emphasis on HODL and wait ideas, including my considerations that it was advise that was probably more hurtful rather than helpful... and our subsequent BTC price performance has largely been showing that ongoing buying of BTC probably remains as the best of strategies, even if psychologically it can feel better to have some supplemental strategies to attempt to buy on dips, too... and then just HODL when running out of money.. which also can sometimes happen.. and even no matter how long any of us are into BTC, it is ongoingly difficult to know exactly what mistakes people are going to make or even the reality of the difficulties to both determine the extent of any dip or how long such dips are going to last... even if there are a variety of structural ways that people (even newbies) can attempt to plan in advance so that they are not too likely to run out of money for buying, even if the BTC price dips lower than expected and longer than expected.
July 8, 2021, I said,
Watch John Bogle’s advice in how to invest in stocks and equities,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doKsy4itiREJohn Bogle was a HODLer-type, and was the founder of The Vanguard Group.
It’s obviously very applicable in Bitcoin’s HODL-style investing, and he also addressed and encourged a dollar-cost-averaging strategy. BUT, he also said that an investor should “get in right in the first place”. Is the current market the right time to enter?
I believe it’s an opportunity, but leave yourself more capital to average down because no one gets it in right unless you’re very lucky.
You can DCA your way, because maybe you’re rich, with unlimited capital. A pleb like me has limited capital. I can’t waste it by buying stupidly at any price.
We are repeating our lil selfies here.
You can fuck around all that you like with your own holdings and BTC strategies... so when it comes to BTC accumulation normies are likely going to be best served by considering the combination of strategies that prioritize DCA but also consider the use of lump sum investing (to the extent that they have upfront capital) and buying on dips (to the extent that they ongoingly want to hold some of their fiat on the side to be prepared to buy on dips when they inevitably happen). I doubt that I need to repeat more in regards to my never having had said that DCA should be the ONLY strategy, but if there was a need to pick ONLY one strategy then DCA is the best of the three.. especially for a newbie who might otherwise be confused about what to do and does not want to try to fuck around with anticipating whether a dip has happened or not or how much of a dip, how long the dip might last and all that baloney... so if the DCA buyer has at least a 4 year to 10 year timeline, then it likely is not going to matter too much if s/he might have been able to accumulate a few more sats here and there along the way.. and surely something like $10 per week might be a fairly whimpy strategy (but it is better than nothing), and something like $100 per week would be more aggressive for folks who are ready, willing and able to be aggressive in their DCA'ing.
Of course, we could get into individual particulars, but surely anyone who is quite new to bitcoin might well need to study bitcoin while determining how they feel financially and/or psychologically regarding their level of aggressiveness.. so right off the bat, if they are feeling somewhat hesitant, they might want to start with $10 per week as they study the matter, and if they end up learning more and increasing their confidence levels they may well want to increase their invested amount to $100 or more per week.. and surely incorporating lump sum investing and some strategies regarding buying on dips... after they have become more comfortable.
Again, of course, we can look at historical DCA levels to determine if such DCA strategies could have been beat or if we might have had more insight than just sticking with some of the purity... Whether we look at your forum registration date of May 2016 or my own BTC investing starting date of November/December 2013, and we can see that $10 per week would have put us at
$55.5k (nearly 1 BTC) (18.15x appreciation) and
$269.5k (nearly 4.6 BTC) (63.5x appreciation) respectively, and of course, we can multiply those same numbers by 10 if we want to assess how a $100 per week DCA strategy would have performed to have been at $555k (nearly 10 BTC) and $2.695 million (nearly 46 BTC) respectively....
Sure, there are ways to fuck around and to end up beating those kinds of results, but do any normies have time for that or to be taking chances with various gambling strategies?
So in essence, I see no reason to be poo-pooing DCA strategy as if it were not smart enough... because it remains the best of the foundational BTC accumulation strategies historically (and likely to continue to be), and sure play around with timing with part of your income or value but you are not too likely to be outperforming DCA, even if you feel that you have the luxury to play around with some of your value (even if you consider your luxury to be a necessity.. which it is not... DCA is a poor and ignorant man strategy that applies to everyone (which is the vast majority of peeps and has almost nothing to do with size) until they become more informed and sophisticated.. and to the extent that you feel your lil selfie to be more informed and sophisticated, then you can fuck around with an incorporate more sophisticated strategies - hopefully supplementing DCA but if you want to skip DCA all together because you believe that it is inferior or it is below you, then that is on you.. but still does not mean that what you are doing is superior to DCA... and including DCA as a foundational strategy that can be supplemented).
By the way, I will admit that when I came into BTC in late 2013, I had already established an overall decently large investment portfolio, so I did have lump sum investment funds that were available to me right from the start, so in that sense, I could take from my overall investment portfolio and to allocate into bitcoin. But merely the fact that I had the lump sum amounts would not necessarily mean that I should immediately go straight into bitcoin with the portion that I ended up allocating (which was 10%). When I first came to bitcoin I hardly had any clue regarding how much I was going to want to put into bitcoin in the longer run.. so my initial investment timeline was only 1-2 years.. and I had allocated an initial sum that I would invest over the next 6 months.. so with that initial sum, I divided it up into 26 parts (weekly) and I DCA'd with part of it and tried to buy on dips with the remainder for each week.. but in essence I was spending the whole budgeted amount per week over each of the 26 weeks. Of course, I had pretty decent confidence of various budget sources that I would have and when approaching the end of the first 26 weeks, I ended up extending another 26 weeks with a similar budget. and by close to the end of the second 26 weeks, I started to get some better grasps regarding the extent that I wanted to be in bitcoin and continued to study what I wanted to do in terms of allocation.. which I determined to be 10% at the end of the second 26 weeks and not at the beginning of my investment into BTC or even after I had been in BTC for a while.. I worked out some of those things through my first year of investing into bitcoin by getting to both know myself better and to know my views about BTC better.
As you suggested that I had been some kind of lucky fuck to have had a BIGGER budget or whatever, but even though I do admit that I had a budget from the start of my BTC investment, I still ended up mostly following a kind of hybrid DCA strategy in which I had engaged in some attempts to frontload my investment into BTC because I wanted to feel that I had a sufficient stake into BTC, but it still took me about a year before I started to feel that I had a decent stake in BTC.. and after the first year I could still relax.. and upon reflection even though I had always tried to NOT be too emotional about my BTC investment or the strategies that I employed.. I do feel that I became much more relaxed about my BTC investment once it started to go significantly into profits..so even then I am not sure that I was preoccupied with amounts because I had already established me stake within the first year but still there continued to be some gnawing aspect that allowed me to become more and more relaxed as my BTC holdings went more and more in profits.. while not really taking away my ability to relate to many others who might not have lump sums that they can invest but instead rely upon DCAing into BTC over several years (maybe even a whole 4 year cycle or longer) before they might start to feel some comfort levels with their BTC holdings and like you said they may well be able to supplement their DCAing strategy with both lump sum investing and buying on dips along the way (even though you personally seem to want to skip the most important of the investment strategies, which is the DCA portion).
Watch John Bogle’s advice in how to invest in stocks and equities,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doKsy4itiREJohn Bogle was a HODLer-type, and was the founder of The Vanguard Group.
It’s obviously very applicable in Bitcoin’s HODL-style investing, and he also addressed and encourged a dollar-cost-averaging strategy. BUT, he also said that an investor should “get in right in the first place”. Is the current market the right time to enter? I believe it’s an opportunity, but leave yourself more capital to average down because no one gets it in right unless you’re very lucky.
You can DCA your way, because maybe you’re rich, with unlimited capital. A pleb like me has limited capital. I can’t waste it by buying stupidly at any price.
The issue is that it is often only possible to tell whether you bought stupidly or smartly in hindsight. Bitcoin surprised investors again and again, me included. Yet I did buy the dips a lot, but as you said you need to be relatively rich or have reasonable income streams to also be able and buy the dips or to not get too stressed out when you thought you were buying a dip but you didn't. Those who had a lot of money before Bitcoin went for the first big rallies also made the most money. It is easer to justify holding when you have 10 million in the bank and your Bitcoins are now worth 30 million and you still don't sell compared to having 10k in the bank and the Bitcoins you are holding are now worth 30k. From a certain point onwards, and of course depending on your lifestyle, it is much easier emotionally to drive the Bitcoin rollercoaster.
I cannot really disagree with anything you say @temple because you are not really making any points that are much different from my own points in terms of the various kinds of strategies to both tailorize your approach to your own situation while at the same time that tailoring may well provide a certain level of comfort that likely comes more and more after you are in BTC for a longer period of time.. so long as you have continued to invest decently into BTC..
Of course, normies do not necessarily have lump sums of cash that they can just throw into BTC, and that is part of the rationale in which DCA remains amongst the most powerful of investment strategies for the vast majority of normies... and even folks who might have lump sums might not want to just throw it all (or a large portion of it) into bitcoin.. especially if they are either just learning about bitcoin or they are confused by bitcoin's future price direction (which we are never really going to know at the time that we are investing even though we see that over time there had been various times in which it would have been smarter to just lump sum into bitcoin.., but even then, we do not know with any kind of certainty..except after the fact).
