With the little idea I have gotten so far in bitcoin investment I think long-term holding has always been the option for every bitcoiner who is ready to benefit immensely in the business because bitcoin has shown a lot of encouragement, I don't know why people still have doubt or think that the best investment strategy here is to their money and pull it out in the couple of months, though their are premature sellers because of market speculations but this is not suppose to be so, that's why it is advisable for every bitcoiner to have a knowledge of how to things are been done in Bitcoin before we can investment to avoid unnecessary panic.
I think choosing to take profits is never wrong.
That is not true. If you consider that the meaning of taking profits is that you have gotten more dollars, and then you take profits in dollars, your dollars might not be holding value as well as you believe that they are, and so you are being mislead about the benefits of taking profits and/or even when it might be prudent to "take profits." Another thing is that if you look at bitcoin over the long term, then even if there is a lot of up and down volatility, the ultimate direction of volatility has been in the upwards direction, so taking profits from the most sound (pristine) asset that has ever existed may well end up putting you on the wrong side of the greatest wealth transfer of our time (and perhaps in history).
Maybe they determine that their current investment in Bitcoin is a short-term investment. When the time and profit level match the rules they initially set, they will take profits, whether that strategy is good or not good depends on each person's goals. I know a few friends who went through the 2021 cycle with the expectation that Bitcoin would reach 100k USD to take profits. They had really strong hands for a very long time to achieve that target, but then they missed the rising wave that year when Bitcoin price only reached 69k USD and turned around. And now, those friends of mine no longer play the old way, but they play according to every wave of the market. And from the beginning of 2023 until now, they have had very significant profits.
It is a dangerous game to be fucking around with trading the best asset... but hey do what you like and hopefully you don't get caught on the wrong side of a trade... and another problem might be playing with leverage to make it even worse if you are on the wrong side of an asset that is generally already has been winning quite a bit and likely to continue to win and you don't even have to play with leverage, which makes it available to everyone so long as they mostly buy and hold and don't be fucking around with getting in and out and taking chances.
By the way the guys who might have bought at the top of the 2021 periods are likely now back in profits, and even more so if they had been buying all along rather than fucking around with getting in and out, which might not work out very well... so in that sense, ongoing buying becomes almost a sure bet (even though nothing is guaranteed), and so even if their costs might have ended up relatively high because of their buying at relatively high price times, there were a lot of opportunities over the last couple of years to bring down their cost per BTC and to be sitting in a very good position right now, and they would not even be needing to sell, merely because if they are in profits and have the option to sell, there likely will be a lot of opportunities and additional options if they continue to hold and perhaps even continue to buy and especially if their investment timeline might be for longer terms such as for the next 4-10 years or longer.
According to you, how long do you think long-term holding should be?
4-10 years or longer from any additional purchase, and surely if a guy might start as a brand new investor, he might consider regular investments might take 30-40 years to play out and to start to draw from them, but it well could be the case that the time before starting to draw from bitcoin might even be reasonable to cut in half, such as 15-20 years, even though nothing is guaranteed.
For people who are not brand new investors, they might have to consider how much of an investment portfolio that they had already built up prior to coming into bitcoin, but I would still consider that any new purchases should be considered with a 4-10 year time horizon.. and if your time horizon is less than 4 years, for every new purchase of BTC, then you may well not be a longer term investor... and you may still have your reasons for getting bitcoin exposure for shorter time periods, but I would not necessarily consider new investments of less than 4 years to be long term, but more like gambles that may or may not pay off, so there might need to be some care in regards to position size, especially when devolving into gambling rather than investing.
Or just hold it without thinking about the profit-taking phase. This topic is clearly discussing about long-term holding, but we must know how long we will hold Bitcoin? Because basically buying Bitcoin and holding it is just an investment process, and investing requires thinking about profit.
In long term investing, besides being narrowly focused on profits, you can also think in terms of potentially having more options, especially with an investment like bitcoin that is likely better able to hold its value as compared with the dollar or any other asset that might be held.. so if you hold long enough then your investment likely compounds upon itself, so then you have way more options if you are 3x to 5x to 10x to 50x up in profits as compared to taking simple profits that are less than 100%, which a lot of folks tend to be taking profits way too soon and then they end up interferring with bitcoin's compounding process. Look at the power of compounding
in my post that includes some examples.
We can't just hold on without paying attention to how the market goes up or down.
To simplify some of the calculations, if you hold your BTC long enough then you likely will have more options in terms of how much profits you are already in, so let's say that your cost per BTC is around $1k per BTC. And, so if the price of BTC is below $10k per BTC in 2020 (so you are around 10x in profits), and then if the BTC price goes up to where you are 70x in profits and then comes back down to where you are 16x.. does it make big differences if you might just cash some out at various points in time? It is not like you necessarily have to cash out large portions at a time in order to enjoy having BTC in your holdings.
Yeah, sure you can cash out some extra when the price is 40x, 50x 60x or more, but you are not totally screwed either, even if you might have ended up having to cash out some at lower multiples of profits... and should you worry right now that the BTC price is going to go back to $20k (only 20x in profits)?
I would think with the passage of time, you see that the 200-WMA continues to move up (which tends to mostly be a bottom indicator). In 2020, the 200-WMA was ONLY right around $6k, and BTC's price action of 2021 brought it up to $20k, and then currently it is around $31,600.. which mean the bottom is moving up, and the bottom is now 31.6x for the guy with an average cost per BTC of $1k. You can look at the historical 200-WMA values
here.
If you are getting in and out of BTC, are you able to bring down your average cost per BTC? and/or are you able to increase your BTC stash (and your options?) I think that you are in a much less certain place if you are getting in and out.. rather than engaging in more simple ongoing and consistent BTC building.