Topic: Trade vs. HODL - avoid traps - page 5. (Read 2005 times)

That sounds like a dumb question... or at least it is a kind of hostile question, especially given bitcoin's history, various battles and even a lot of the negative (naysayers) that are out in the world in regards to bitcoin.  If you try to attempt to figure out what bitcoin is, then you may well come to realize that you are the one who needs to figure out for yourself whether you are going to get involved in bitcoin in terms of your energy, your learning, your activities and even your finances and psychology.

And, if you do not see any reason or purpose to get involved in bitcoin, then you may well not have any kind of sufficient understanding of what it is.. and perhaps it would be a good idea to look into the matter.

It could be possible that bitcoin serves no purpose for you.. and you are likely in the best position to figure out those kinds of matters in terms of assessing various aspects of your own particulars.


Bitcoin is for everyone... but some people might believe that it is not for them, so they can choose to opt out and then see how that goes for them to choose to not participate in bitcoin.


Are you just making shit up?  You seem to know something about bitcoin, but then you are hypothesizing some dumb-ass situation that is not even true... what's your point?  You are wanting to suggest that bitcoin is not fair because some people knew about bitcoin earlier than others?  

Another thing.. you are suggesting that there is some kind of unfair hoarding of bitcoin that might be taking place?  It sounds like you have some kind of an agenda. and you are not even trying to approach the topic in a way that is trying to figure out what is going on...


Who is we?

You can do whatever the fuck you want with your bitcoin, in the event that you choose to get some.


The goal for any individual (including yourself) should be to figure out what you are going to do with bitcoin in the event that you choose to participate, and bitcoin is still pretty new (a little more than 14 years live so far) , so it takes a while to build various network effects (such as the ones outlined by Trace Mayer) and even to develop various systems around it.  Some areas of the world have more bitcoin opportunities than other areas of the world, so there is quite a bit of geographical diversity in terms of both being able to get access to bitcoin or to figure out how you might use bitcoin in your own life to the extent that you are actually interested in learning about bitcoin rather than making some lame and seemingly presumptuous arguments/accusations that seem ill-informed at best and perhaps troll/shill intentional.


Getting involved in shitcoins is stupid at almost all times.  You are wasting your time and your energies, when they likely could be better focused on figuring out how to accumulate bitcoin and to manage bitcoin and to learn more about bitcoin and perhaps even involving yourself in bitcoin in various ways that go beyond buying it and studying its prices.

We joined cryptocurrency market when it is hot in a bull run. We mostly join altcoins and skip Bitcoin because we think Bitcoin is too expensive and we are not ready to buy Bitcoin but want to use a same capital to buy altcoins. We feel more happy when having 10k, 100k of altcoin in our portfolio than having only 0.01 or 0.1 bitcoin in our portfolio.

First it looks like we are genius with quick profit from altcoins. Later, it turns to be sad stories as altcoins don't have good fundamentals so fast comes fast goes. We will mostly end with losses together with altcoin bear market. We can DCA bitcoin in bear market as it is very good but DCA with altcoins are stupid in bear market.

Most of those that have found themselves involved in cryptocurrency today, isn't about the purpose of using it for a digital currency. Many prefer using fiats in local mobile banks to fill up for this but, when it comes to transferring or making payments across borders, the moneygram comes handy but surely, none can serve in the capacity bitcoin would.

The ability of bitcoin to increase in value has caused this shift to being an asset and even with the knowledge that holding is profitable over time, investors still hope to make the most of the now and still benefit on now in the later time when the coin goes up.

This is why most investors tend to look towards trading but, more of the experienced users that have known bitcoin market for the uncertainties it comes with prefers to wait (hold). That's what the beginners should do.

It's to be an alternative payment system and be the actual currency at the same time per se. But time has changed that its value changed overtime and people want to hold it instead because of having a limited supply.

Satoshi doesn't need to buy it, during the early days, bitcoin can easily be mine by everyone and it's not believing that it will reach its success that it has got right now. So, we're all going to end up with questions about what ifs.

Maybe we'll still have it because of the supplies that can still be mined as of this moment.

You got me on this and you've got the right question. The main purpose of bitcoin going to the first question is to be an actual payment and currency which shouldn't be held. Thus, the spenders and users of it should be the one to be praised for adding that activity in the network but I do believe that every holder is also a spender but, not all that they hold is ready to be spent.

What is actually the goal of bitcoin? Is it to be held by a few people? What if Satoshi and the early adopters bought and held all the bitcoin when it was worth nothing. Would we have own even a sat of bitcoin today? Why do we praise hodlers more than spenders?

"If we hold the price of bitcoin gets more stable." This is very interesting. Then the second version of it is that "if bitcoin gets more stable it will increase the demand of bitcoin as a store of value." Is the goal of bitcoin to be a currency or a store of value.?

Your story is similar to mine when I started trading, when I started trading I remember I made a profit of around 10-15 dollars on an alt-coin, and then I made a good fund on investment together, without DCA management, an now I am still bearing that loss lost. And there is not much hope that I can recover my fund or earn profit from it, still I am waiting for the next bull-run, even though its supply is increasing. Bitcoin is very good in this aspect so now I have started an investment idea with 10 dollars per week for my savings.
Holding Bitcoins is also a part of trading, it is long-term trading strategy. There is doubt about that Bitcoin holding is the best, but there are options to do both long-term and short-term trading together.
I don't think professional traders just sit with one investment strategy, it's not bad to try something new with time. But if you don't want to take risks, it would be better to hold a good bitcoin fund with a hardware wallet after finding a good dip.

That is one of the reasons why many people say that holding bitcoin will be more profitable than trading because in trading many investors and even I personally feel the same way as you so that we rarely meet traders who are able to come out with big profits, different from holding which has been proven so far. able to provide greater returns if we are able to hold ownership especially in the long term, if we do not have good skills in trading then we should just hold on to our bitcoins even though by holding we cannot immediately get profits such as profits in trading.

We all know the phrase " Hold is Gold" and it's perfect when we say about Bitcoin. I am not like those who are only a short term trader. I think Bitcoin should buy at a deep price and hold until it pumps at the bull season. And anyone can't predict Bitcoin's price accurately as it isn't possible but we can predict support and resistance area and it helps day trader to enter and exit from the market.

As a cursory response, fuck shitcoins, including that crappy coin called ethereum.. it is also a shitcoin, if any of you might not have had realized it by now.

Regarding the thrust of this thread, I agree with the overall idea of not trading and mostly HODLing your BTC; however, the vast majority of normies (or even people of considerable means, institutions or governments), do not tend to come into any investment in terms of one lump sum investment (or already having the capital to go straight into the investment and to establish their actual target allocation amount - whether a percentage of their wealth or some amount that they want to have in the asset class - in this case bitcoin), so the idea of just buy and HODL hardly makes any sense on its own without some kind of exploration regarding how anyone might get to their target BTC stash level and including whether they might be in their BTC accumulation stage or in their BTC maintenance stage, and depending upon which stage they are in, then their priorities may well end up changing based on those kinds of considerations.  

Accordingly, there is a need to attempt to put the decision to buy bitcoin and the subsequent decision to act upon such decision to buy and to start to accumulate bitcoin in such a way that allows for the reaching of some kind of a suitable accumulation target, and thereby graduate from the accumulation stage and into the maintenance stage of such investment into bitcoin.

For sure, it could take quite a long time to get from the BTC accumulation stage and into maintenance stage, and part of the matter may well depend upon if someone is a new investor who might be 18 years old or maybe in his/her early 20s, and barely just starting to invest and build an investment portfolio versus someone who might be in his her mid to late 30s or even older and may have already spent a large number of years building such investment portfolio.  There could be some uncertainties regarding whether you have arrived at your goals. .and surely part of the dilemma that newbie (new to BTC) normies have is to falsely believe that they can reach their accumulation target faster by selling BTC and buying back lower, which yeah is another way of describing trading... so surely, just like the OP, I do not agree with any such trading approach as a strategy to reasonable/prudently build an investment portfolio.. whether BTC or any other asset class, unless there is some desire to become a professional trader or to focus on building such skills, and that could well be a very long job and there are ONLY a small number of traders who likely figure out ways to actually beat something like a buy and hold strategy or even a DCA strategy (which is amongst the best of strategies for many people, if not the actual best strategy).

Of course, there are some folks who do come to bitcoin after they had already spent some time building their investment portfolio, so they might have a lump sum that optionally they could allocate to bitcoin and to take it from some other area in which they are are already invested, but it seems to me that, even if someone has the ability to optionally lump sum into an investment (or to allocate into BTC because they have funds available for such), a lot of people still do not tend to lump sum into their investments (whether BTC or other investments), and that the better practice (and even the one that many people follow) is to largely add bitcoin to their investment portfolio in a kind of DCAing kind of way.. whether it is a spread out DCA or perhaps a more aggressive DCA that might take place over a relatively short period of time, and then to bring up their investment amount to their target allocation level by focusing on increasing their BTC investment amounts and letting their other investments ride (whether that might be equities, bonds and maybe property and commodities), and sometimes there might be some abilities to move out of one of the categories of investment that they already hold and to add to the bitcoin investment from that other allocation that they have decided is in need of being reduced.

So, let's say for example that a newbie to bitcoin might spend 6 months or one year or even longer to attempt to allocate various buys into bitcoin in order to reach their own target BTC accumulation level.. and then when they reach their target BTC accumulation level then maybe at that point they might go back to directing their investment over other assets that they might hold or perhaps they might have to consider (or reconsider) whether they should reconsider any of their investment strategies once they have reached their BTC goal level.. .. yet if they have not yet reached fuck you status.. then they may still continue to invest into BTC on a regular basis...

Maybe there is some ways to fairly easily flesh some of this out?

Surely at some point while we are building our BTC investment portfolio, we may recognize that either the target allocation level has been reached, whether that is a specific amount of BTC (or dollar value) or perhaps a certain percentage of the overall investment portfolio; however, the dilemma might not be over once we believe that our target is reached because let's say for example that a newbie to bitcoin has $100k of investments in their investment portfolio that is what is in the investment portfolio value prior to getting involved in BTC, so that person's BTC accumulation target is to allocate bitcoin until the bitcoin portion becomes 10% of the investment portfolio.

Depending on cashflow or how the assessment of the investments might be, it could take a year or more to reach such an initial 10% target investment level, and for sure, the BTC price does not stop moving (going up and down) while the BTC accumulation is going on, and surely even once the target is reached, BTC prices might go up or down and cause some reconsiderations about whether to buy more BTC or to sell some BTC in order to keep the allocation amount at the 10% allocation levels.   Reassessments can be made along the way, and surely it is likely that reassessment is going to be much more concrete when dealing with actual BTC accumulation levels that have been achieve rather than the speculation of how much might be achieved into the future, so there is some advantage (and more concreteness) that happens when going from a low coiner or a no coiner and into a preferred BTC accumulation level.  

If the BTC price goes shooting up while we are allocating into it or even after we have reached our initial 10% allocation target, then personally, I do not believe in the necessity to reallocate a "winner" like bitcoin, yet of course, each person is going to differing conclusions regarding the extent to which they feel comfortable with BTC becoming a larger portion of their investment portfolio, and there may well be some needs to diversify into other assets (and I am not referring to diversifying into shitcoins) in order to feel some comfort - especially if BTC and dollars had been the ONLY two items in the investment portfolio.

Surely some folks who had been in bitcoin for a while, might have started out with a 10% allocation into bitcoin, but then after some exponential bitcoin price rises along the way, then maybe in some cases, the bitcoin allocation might have gone up to 70% or some other higher amount that is way out of alignment with the original 10% target amount, and then maybe the BTC allocation corrects back down to 30% or 40% and then goes up again, so there can be questions along the way whether some of the profits should be shaved off or maybe if there might be some needs to buy other assets (investments) during those periods in which BTC prices are going up, and I surely would not suggest to sell high amounts of your BTC, but I believe that it is prudent, reasonable and perhaps even necessary to have diversification into some other assets (including cash) (and again, I am not referring to shitcoins), so of course, there is a lot of discretion regarding how to potentially handle some of those kinds of high levels of likely ongoing BTC volatility and if your investment has reached high levels in which it needs to be diversified or if you are still in early building stages, then it might not even be necessary to diversify it until it gets to a certain high level.. (that is determined by you regarding how much that amount is).  

Any such bitcoin "HODLer" has to decide how to deal with such BTC price volatility that may well include upside price appreciation and throws off his/her allocation targets, and maybe at the point of being greatly in BTC profits, there are more liberties to sell some of the BTC off, without necessarily considering yourself as a trader, but selling off some BTC may well not even be the better choice unless such selling is done in ways that are relatively small.. and just continue to let the winner (in this case bitcoin) continue to ride, even though it might continue to have high levels of price volatility.. which includes both UP and DOWN prices...

Even if there might be some seeming dilemma in managing BTC holdings that I am presenting, the overly price appreciation of bitcoin (which is not guaranteed) is NOT a bad problem to have because it allows for options to sell whenever you want when you are in such a status of profits in your holdings.. and if you just sell small amounts of your BTC holdings or maybe live off of other sources of income during periods in which you might have had been investing those, then you are in a place in which your BTC value might continue to go up and down, but you are not as worried about it because you are largely in profits and you feel that you have way more options because of that wealth effect, and to the extent that you have shaved off and diversified some of your BTC into other investments might still not take away that your initial allocation to bitcoin was way smaller than the allocation (or the value of your holdings) became merely because the bitcoin went from not being in profits (or maybe even being in the negative) during accumulation to being in fairly high levels of profits (and surely it is not even guaranteed that bitcoin will go into profits, but part of investing into something like bitcoin is to be able to attempt to plan for how any of us might deal with an investment that may well go into profits and if we will feel confident enough to mostly hold through the whole price volatility process even if we might shave some profits off along the way too.

So questions regarding how to deal with BTC once reaching accumulation target levels, can become a bit of a different one, which at the same time, there can be questions or even lack of confidence regarding how to get to a point of profits, and surely there is dollar cost average buying, buying on dips and lump sum investing that compliments those periods in which you might either hold through the rough periods or to buy more BTC while in the BTC accumulation stages, but if you have run out of money at various points, then you might only be able to HODL through such periods in which cash is tight and perhaps buy a little bit of BTC every couple of weeks if that is how cashflows might come in... so once you have accounted for various ways that you continue to buy BTC and try to build up your portfolio, I doubt that trading serves any meaningful and or productive role until well after you have exceeded your BTC accumulation goals and then you have more options in regards to how you want to maintain your BTC holdings, but trading (or selling) in order to try buy back BTC at lower prices seems like a bad strategy when it comes to either building your BTC holdings or even to follow through with a plan that might involve selling some BTC on the way up, but there is no need to expect that the money will be able to be used to buy more BTC if the price drops, but if the BTC price does drop, then you might have options to use some of your freed-up money to buy back.. .. and I would not even characterize a selling of BTC on the way up strategy/approach as trading.

Whoever invested 0.15BTC in ETH years ago would have made a bloody good profit when the price of ETH reached $4k in 2021. You're a bad businessman if you don't profit from your investments. I'm sure there were some greedy poor investors who didn't take profit when Bitcoin hit $60k two years ago. BTW, I wouldn't call ETH a shitcoin; ETH is the best thing that has ever happened to cryptocurrency.

Life is all about risk, and if you want to make a good profit, you have to take the risk of hodling altcoins with money you can afford to lose. I will be eternally grateful to $BANANA. I made more money with this shitcoin than I ever did with BTC since 2016. Hodling $BANANA was a worthwhile risk.

I tried the both in my crypto journey. Trading is about losing and winning with being risky. I trade most of the time last year and didn’t get that much profit. I was holding for a few weeks now and I can say the holding is better. Trading and holding somehow will make profits but the risk involve in it is much specially trading.

I suggest to hold and add more on your btc holdings.

When I first started trading I became successful.  I failed the second time.  And suffered huge losses which I still can't avoid.  However, Bitcoin trading requires extensive practical experience and an understanding of various exchanges and purchases.  I am currently busy with Bitcoin holdings.  And I held some assets through Bitcoin which I am still seeing part of the profit.  I like holding more than trading.

Good point, it's really difficult to find such Altcoins and people tend to "diversify" by buying multiple Altcoins for HODLing and the result is a huge loss for most Altcoins, while only a few Altcoins will deliever good gains. On average, "diversified" Altcoin HODLers will make a loss.
I'm sure we could make some great statistics here but I've tried to describe it here: Is diversification into different coins really a good advice for Newbies?

In addition, Bitcoin is very suited for HODL because it's capped at 21M coins.

There is this saying in crypto that says ''to make profits in crypto you must learn how to hodl''. I have not been relenting from it. Any other thing I am being advised to do apart from that(hodl) doesn't work for me. I can't go into technical analysis when I know how unpredictable and volatile the crypto market is. I prefer sticking up to my bitcoin plan of long-term profits than trading for short-term  profits

A few months ago, I tried to trade again because I saw an increase and decrease in bitcoin. But it turned out to be not as easy as I imagined because at that time when the price goes down, it doesn't increase immediately but often, the price goes down again and stays there for some time. This made me have to wait a bit longer and I had to endure it.

And since then, I've been trying to just buy at a low price and collect it and hold it because I know that analyzing the movement of bitcoin is not easy and the price can also move anywhere. If you want big profits in the future, you just need to buy and hold it until the price reaches the new ATH again. And if it's still under $40k, that's a good price to buy.

Well,I am not a fan of trading because I don't trade,but I'm now seeing that if I should follow what you said,It will work,and I'm going to try is this tnow.And ofcourse I am aware that if you trade,you can get immediate profit,which long term hodlers won't get.but in thesame vein,I still prefer hodling because I don't see the much risks involved,rather it will just required your patience,as long as you can wait,then there is every tendency that your investment won't be a waiste considering the fact that you didn't rush  while others where rushing to trade.

As they have said, you will never learn in trading if you don't try it, so it is expected that you will encounter losses while you are trading and trading does not mean you will always make a profit. Sometimes you need to gain knowledge from experience and an expert in trading will never call an expert if they don't have experienced massive losses in trading. So if you don't want to get a loss, never do trading but instead hold which is safe than trading. We have different preferences on how to gain profit in the crypto market, in holding you will never see a quick gaining profit, it takes a matter of time, not like trading, it is just a matter of an hour you will see your profit if you are good at it.

The market is so unpredictable so even if you have the best of your technical analysis, that won’t work anymore. That is why trading these days may mostly turn out into gambling, except for those professional traders who really have their own guts to trade and still succeed. But for beginners who aim to trade to maximize their profits, it’s better to just focus on hodling first and when they think they’re ready to lose, they can start trading at their own calculated risk.

I also tried trading and failed every time. Because once I made a profit, the second time I became emotional with the trade and lost that profit and capital with it. And in this way I lost a huge amount of funds. Trading seems very stressful to me.

So I reduced the amount of trading funds and focused more on holdl, thereby reducing the stressful life a lot.

Base on Trading vs HODLing of Bitcoin, Obviously Hodling is simply the best way to profit from investing in Bitcoin along the run.
Trading is risky and hard to profits ,However I don't discourage whomever that finds passion in trading and is making profit from it, I have a long term Bitcoin holding and also have a portfolio where I trade Bitcoin to get more Bitcoin.

But for Newbies into the space, the best option for them to navigate profitably is HODLing.