Topic: The mind of a HODLer (Read 513 times)

Well here we are with yet another exchange hacking. This time it is $40million from Binance, and it is well worth reminding Crypto owners of the oft repeated statement -
If you don't own your private keys, then you don't own your coins

I've made a small profit on CoinBase, and I'm going to move the coins into my Core wallet. I'm comfortable with using CoinBase, but I still think it is better to control my own money. I ws going to take the profit, as I think Bitcoin is due to pull back a bit, but I missed the start of the drop. I'm moving the coins into savings, as I think Bitcoin has a strong future, and I'll top up my account with some fiat. That way I can take advantage of the next rise in the price.

I'm also going to start using Bitcoin to buy a few things online. If I'm sensible with my CoinBase wallet management, I will be able to get a bit of a price reduction if I'm careful with my coin purchases.

Not entirely true that hodlers believe in technology behind every projects, it is that it might bring profits in the future that’s why hold it. Not every hodler is a believer.

I've stepped back to review my attitudes and abilities. I missed out on all the profits available in the recent price increases, and I doubt if I made more than £100 profits from my trading account. The HODL account still has not had any withdrawals, so that is reaping the benefits of course. I think my problem is that I tried to maximise my trading profits, and as a result I seem to have kept missing the chance to reap small profits. I seemed to keep misreading the market, and trying to buy too low, and sell too high.

 It looks as if we will be starting a nice bull run this year, so I'm going to try a different approach. Instead of trying to predict the bottom in a correction, I'm going to say "this is a good time to buy", and then try to buy at the current level. I'll take a similar approach to selling. If it looks as if I have misread the market, and have made a short term loss, then I will just move the Bitcoin into my HODL account, and replenish the trading account with fiat. I've missed too many bull runs because I had an open order at too low a price. I've just cancelled a buy order at £3,200 because the current price is around £4,400. I don't use any gearing, so I don't have any prospects of losses. This assumes that the long term prospects for Bitcoin are bullish of course.

[Alternative coins]

I've also been looking at a few other coins for HODLing. There are three that I've been able to collect for no investment, and these are BAT ( Basic Attention Token ), Steem and Bit Blocks. BAT looks to be the best of these, and it is linked to the Brave Browser. If you are thinking of using the Brave browser, then click on the affiliate link for your favourite Bitcoin Talk member, and you will collect a few starter coins.

[My new buying position]

I think we may have a correction soon, so I've opened a buy position at £4,301. I suspect it will go lower than that in the short term, but I'm a bit fed up with missing out all the time, and I believe that we will have a strong bull run later this year, or even this month.
Another update - that buying order closed at about £2 above the low of the day. It will be interesting to see how the price moves now. I still think it could drop a bit more tomorrow or Monday, so maybe I should top up my account with a bit more fiat.

I have been off the grid for few months.
I have a little amount of btc that i keep on hodling since i make life in real world and now i came across to know about the price and it is making me lose hope to crypto, but i do have this strong belief that someday my tenths will turn into thousand.

However, it will be a long run. I'm not that good in trading or any statistical strategy to make my fund grow big, atleast I have a small amount of btc to Hodl for my last option.

Hodling does not make you worry if you believe.
#safehodlplay

Personally I'll prefer to call myself a trader becaus hodling little amount of btc isn't really worth it so I prefer to trade and then use the profit to acquire more btc call me greedy but that's just my style

I agree HODLers doesn't care about the fluctuation they wouldn't care about the current price since they wouldn't do anything no matter what.
They would hold it untill it reach their expectation or when they already need it.

Sounds like a nice strategy, but it requires time to do it I assume, especially those traders that you mentioned buying at the bottom and sell when they reach some points (maybe fibbo or resistance line). That's probably one of the challenges or maybe the factors in which people differ. I personally don't have enough time to find the bottom or do any trades, so accumulating and wait for the next bull run is probably a better choice for me. I'm not saying it's the best strategy to get profits, because you risk your chances to exit early when there's an incoming dump and then buy later.


Holder doesn't earn an income, but profits. Just for the sake of clarity.

it's really true and it's a true holder who will never panic when the market experiences a drastic decline like last year. because the thought of a good and good holder is better to be patient, wait for a long time, but can earn a huge income. and that's what a true holder thinks

I thought I would revisit this thread now that I've had a bit more time to play with the market.

I'm coming to the conclusion that there aren't just two categories - traders and HODLers, but there is a third category. This is the accumulating investor. I've seen some traders say that they would have made more money by just buying coins when the price was bumping along at the bottom, and holding the coins until the price went up. This would have freed them from market watching during the bull run. Of course the rules are different once Bitcoin turns into a bear market again.

I've been doing a bit of trading to increase the amount of Bitcoin I can buy with my investment deposit, and as soon as the price turns against me when I am holding Bitcoin, then I move the coins into my savings wallet, and I replace the investment fund with fiat. I believe that it is important to make sure that all savings are kept in a wallet over which you have complete control, and free from the temptation to speculate with it. I will watch the market, and at some stage in the future I will start to take profits. I don't intend to HODL and leave my Bitcoin in my will. I'm not sure of a name for a medium term investor, who optimises his accumulation price.

Well I've got a difficult decision today, but it's a nice decision to have to make. I noticed a bull cross a couple of days ago, and I opened a buy order and went to bed. In the morning, I discovered that the order had filled on a red wick, and I had bought about £2 above the low for the day. That makes a change, I usually set the price too low, so I only end up buying when the market turns bearish. So now the whole of my trading account is held in Bitcoin, and it's showing a nice profit.

So now I have to decide if I'm really a HODLer, or a trader. There has been a bit of profit taking, but nothing that looks to me like a significant correction is on the way. I've got a few choices.

Move my trading coins into a HODL wallet, and refund my trading account with fiat.
Open a sale position to try to catch a green wick, and rebuy later.
Sell and take the profit,
Do nothing and just watch the market.

I've opened a sale position at a madly high price, but I might cancel that. If it does get triggered, it will mean that the price is in a bull stampede, and who knows where that will stop. I'm still a long term believer in Bitcoin, so probably the most sensible thing for me to do is to move the coins into a HODL wallet, reload my trading wallet with fiat, and get out of McDonalds and sell some of the rubbish in my garages to rebuild my fiat savings. That is a bit like admitting that I'm rubbish as a trader though.

[10:45 English time]

Edited later to save face - I was completely wrong about the price, and I missed the bear cross. Now I know why they are called crosses.

I think you are under-estimating the capability of the people who will build or are building crypto based products. At the same time you are over estimating the importance of bankers or investment trusts. Bankers are a reality but value creation cannot come without crypto becoming something bigger than another wealth management tool. I also understand that this may seem as an overly optimistic view considering the range of scams and vaporware that has made the rounds in name of blockchain innovation. Yet, the bankers/ big money still wants its stake so it doesn't miss out when real value creation starts.

The new products don't necessarily have to emulate bitcoin or compete against it. In fact, Bitcoin was supposed to enable these innovations.(Till Ethereum became the next best option(. As far as developers are concerned (Both the sincere ones and the scam-artists), Ethereum has leveraged this better than bitcoin.


The oft-quoted comparison with Gold is apt but incomplete. Bitcoin is so much more than just a micro-payment system or a store of wealth. I agree that exchanges are basically Bitcoin banks. In fact, that is why exchanges are the ones which are fostering the most competition in cryptosphere. They are doing this by listing coins left, right and center. And allowing fiat on-boarding for more and more pairs. Banks ultimately need assets they can invest into. In the process, they foster innovation/ entrepreneurship. I'd mention again that my view may sound overly optimistic, but that is what the exchanges are doing.

I don't agree with a couple of your comments. Whilst your comment about the stakeholders may have been true in the beginning, I think the people you have mentioned are being squeezed out, and they are being replaced by bankers and investment trusts. Bitcoin is a unique product, and there can never be another equal creation. In its early days, it was vulnerable to a 51% attack, but this wasn't realised, and there wasn't sufficient value to warrant such an action. Now that the technology is understood, any product that attempts to emulate Bitcoin will become the victim of such an attack.

The usage case is another interesting point. Bitcoin was created with restrictions that appear to be designed to prevent it ever becoming a volume global payment system - the 10 minute block generation time, and the 21 million cap are two examples of this. However, it is a tremendous system to use as a store of wealth, and a means of wealth exchange, and in this instance, it is very similar to gold. In the same way that gold was used to gain initial credibility for the fiat monetary system, Bitcoin can be used to build a fast micro-payment system based on an underlying asset value. However, you can bet that once it gains acceptance, the bankers will be there with fractional reserve banking. We can already see this happening with some exchanges. It is for this reason that I will only leave trading funds in an exchange wallet. I'm about to move my Bitcoin out of my CoinBase wallet, and into one of my HODL wallets. This is not a reflection on CoinBase, as I think they are one of the more reputable exchanges, but a reflection of my opinion of the whole banking ethos. An exchange is basically a Bitcoin bank.

Thanks for sharing this Jet. It gives me a chance to analyze and put my own views on this.

I am a HODLer by circumstance. There is no way for me to legally spend BTC around here. If i had, I'd probably be spending and selling stuff with it. I cannot be a trader as it seems to be mostly a game of networking and shilling in the crypto space. If you are at the right place at the right time (for the right announcements), you can make some money selling to others. As far as trading only BTC is concerned, it seems an uninteresting, technical exercise and I cannot, for the life of me, gather enough patience to watch all those wick/candle/trend videos.

So that leaves me to answer the question if I am a maximalist. I don't think so. I see more potential in bitcoin being the main currency for an alternate economy based on blockchain products. Open sourced information/ knowledge and products that have a market of their own. The hobbyists, small entrepreneurs and the good samaritans are the three main stakeholders in this ecosystem. The only problem is this sounds too anti-government and anti-tax for the comfort of masses as well as those hallowed institutional investors.

I totally agree with you on the best use i can put my little fractions of BTC into as of now.  A Lightning node and I am on it.

 

They make trading incredibly complex, and I'm not sure that it is justified, given the quantity of wash trading and other manipulation. I backed away a bit from TA, and all I do is to trade EMA crosses, and I don't use gearing. It's starting to help me to build my Bitcoin wallet, but it's pretty slow, and I don't make spectacular profits.

I find it really interesting to watch the market activity, and it does help me to get a better understanding of the potential for crypto.

[COFFEE BREAK UPDATE]

We've just gone though a death cross on the 15 minute EMA, and I'm pleased that I have no open positions at the moment. Well maybe I have from a conceptual position. My account balance is solely in Sterling, so that means I am long in GBP, and short in Bitcoin. I'll wait for a golden cross, and I'll open a couple of buy positions.

Well as a hodler, hodling actually means hoping for me, I tried trading to be honest but it is not my type, too stressful to track prices every second. Now I am wishing a better market.

A hodlr could be considered as a trader as well since you are actually buying from low and thinking of selling it when the price went high. As a Hodlr, you can't also speculate things and must be committed to your plans, strategies, and goals.

If you have nothing to lose and you consider your coins as investment/asset then that would be enough and fine. Believing in long-term projects/operations isn't bad but you also need to be passionate.

But most people are capable of developing more than one skill. For example, one can be  good statistician, and a good gardener, and the knowledge gained in each discipline can help in the other. With fiat money, one can have a long term savings account which is kept for a specific project in the future, at the same rime one can have a current account that can be used for daily transactions.

I decided that using fiat savings for Bitcoin price speculation ( or another alt ) was a way to build my HODL wallet. My point is that the two disciplines can coexist, but one has to be strong willed enough to leave HODL deposits untouched, and not to use them for price speculation. You must follow this rule even if you are sure that Bitcoin is in a bear market.

I agree. In fact I consider them to be completely opposite.

A HODLer accumulates bitcoins for the long term and considers short term fluctuations to be irrelevant.

A trader is only concerned with short term fluctuations in order to make money regardless of what happens in the long-term.

HODLers are real believers and understand technology better!!

HODLers look more at what the technology will become in years and have high expectations

HODLers are very hopeful individuals

HODLers are brave at heart 

A hodler believes in the project. If you kept your Bitcoin during the big bear market it means you have faith and you believe bitcoin will bounce back one day. A trader believes in the profitability of the trades he makes. These are based on the information he has about a project, negative or positive. A trader is probably not that interested in the future of the projects, long term. He buys and sells what he believes will result in the biggest profits.