This is not always true. Not every trader loses money and not every investor makes money. Look at the stock market for example. Sure the people who invested in the popular stocks like AAPL, AMZN, TSLA made good money because these typically are breaking ATH after ATH however look at how many stocks there are that are trading now at huge losses.
Remember how big Zoom was during the pandemic? I think it almost hit $600 a share and yesterday it broke $200. And same with Peleton, it hit like $80 and now it’s worth less than half. These people who bought are investors and all lost money.
I have seen many people who ended up losing over long term as well, because they invested into things that didn't make sense. It does happen in the crypto world and it happens in stock or other things as well. However if we were to talk about bitcoin then no long term person could possibly lose money looking at the historical chart. If you are losing money by being long term, then you are not long term enough.Remember how big Zoom was during the pandemic? I think it almost hit $600 a share and yesterday it broke $200. And same with Peleton, it hit like $80 and now it’s worth less than half. These people who bought are investors and all lost money.
I can see that as long as you hold bitcoin long enough, that means you are going to profit from it, it is also true for some of the top coins like ETH and BNB as well. However there are "long term" people who sell when they see a crash, and those people are not true long term investors, they are just short term investors who convinced themselves they are long term because they didn't sell for like 3 months. That is still short term to me, long term starts with few years and goes above, you can't be long term and hold "months".
