Bitcoin Forum

Why do so many people buy an alt near the top of a pump and ride it all the way to the bottom? As a matter of fact, many of them consider it a badge of honor that they never sold (even though their investment is now worth 10% of what it once was). Any thoughts?

Having bought into DOGE I just couldn't be arsed to sell. That being said I have never been so much of a trader. In total I made over 50% loss, finally sold them off at some point.
Why I bought in during the pump, which was almost over. Guess lack of expierence, lack of thought and lack of information. Wouldn't do it again. Guess it's a price to be paid when getting into this.
(Bought BTC at 600, bought DOGE at ~70-80, with the intention to just hold until moon, maybe even years, pure lazyness)

In this online gambling 24/7 community, people losing money is very normal. Only by experience and understanding how manipulation(PnD) works, they would be able to make some money.

Yes, but why do so many buy at the top of the pump and ride to the bottom of the dump and beyond without selling? Makes no sense. Why not cut your losses?

In general, every decision that a person makes, in every given circumstance (including inaction) is because they think it will make them feel better. So why do people "ride" as you put it, because they think it will make them feel better.

But I would also argue that most people aren't simply riding to the bottom they are buying on the way down. If you believe in your investment it is logical to lower your cost basis. Are they correct, are they wrong? That's why they call it speculation.

Yeah, but look at the short history of Altcoins. Most of them are in a terrible free fall. I'm sure that there a few coins that will pull out of their decline and eventually soar, but the majority of them are absolute stinkers, and those who bought them on the way down are in for disappointment.

I'm not going to name coins because I don't want to offend, but I'm sure we can all identify a number of really bad coins that offer nothing and are in the depths of an epic fail. Now just go to the thread of one of those coins and you will see that there are some really good people who believe strongly in that coin. We all know that they are wrong, and I doubt that those people are any smarter or dumber than the rest of us.

I wonder what it is that gives these people such faith in a failed project, and how can we avoid falling into the same trap (absolute faith in a failed investment) as they did.

Maybe they freeze. When you have real money on the line it's different.  It's like gambling.  There's a theory that some people subconciously like to lose when gambling.  It makes it more exciting fir them.  That's why there's a whole industry built around that theory even if they weren't aware of it.

Noobs do not know the coin is at the top of pump.. some of them do not cut their losses either even if the price is heading towards bottom, they believe the price would bounce back. If everyone is smart, then Crypto-cycle would not run. Your question is like "why don't people be smart like me and cut their losses before dump?".

I wish I were that smart. I got caught up in the Blackcoin pump and ended up losing in the dump. I did sell, however, long before it hit bottom. Does that make me dumb because I bought into the pump or does it make me smart because I got out before losing too much. I don't know, but I sure didn't feel very smart when it was over.

one thing that really stuck with me when I first got into crypto was the mantra that its only a loss if you sell... I think there was a time and place where that line of thinking could be feasible, but any more, shiiiiit...

for me crytpocurrency is not about fiat wins or loses. i neither trade fiat in or out, just trade between cryptos so since being in crypto just increase my holdings overtime (whether or not thats at any stage priced more or less in fiat i'm indifferent too).

I think the question here is why people are holding coins despite that everything points to decline in price (no matter what kind of intentions creator of the currency has) and miss oportunities for profit. Personally I had lost thousands of BTC on bad decisions (not bought when I had to, sold too early, bagholding). I think there is nothing wrong holding a coin, but lately that concept is not working very good.

Just asking.. is it 1000+ btc's or $1000+ . If its thousand btc's, you should very rich guy for you to gamble in altcoins

BTC. I can give few examples. I can't exactly remember how I did with Moon and EAC for example, but I do remember that I sold 10s of millions coins while they were dirty cheap. I do remember TIPS though. :) Back in those days I was mining with 6 x R9 270x with 2.7 - 3 MH in total. I was able to mine 130-160M TIPS/day with this hashrate. I was happy enough to sell them at 1-2 litoshi, because profit was bigger than to mine LTC directly. Probably many people remember that TIPS didn't exactly explode at first and difficulty was pretty low. It took probably 2 months until Cryptsy listed it and guess what happened? :) While you was able to buy/sell it at 4-5 litoshi on ConedUp, the price went up to 170 litoshi. I think I was holding 400M coins and participated in the "fight" for BTC pair with 227 LTC. The outcome was bad. My buy wall was eaten in under 1-2 minutes. At the end I sold my TIPS @ ~30-40 litoshi weeks later. Frankly speaking I believed that TIPS can make you very good profit, but the problem is that I am working with investor and I wanted fast results. That is why I didn't always mined TIPS directly, but I think that I've managed to accumulate about 3B coins. This is about 5327 LTC x ~$30 = $159,810.

Another example is BC. I was very active on CoinEx (nickname bulgar1an) and Smurf01 (or something like it...), which is a dutch guy who I was familiar with told me to buy when the price was 500 satoshi on Poloniex. I didn't listened to him, but then decided to buy at higher price (probably ~1000-1200 satoshi) and I bought about 250k coins. Probably a week later (don't exactly remember) sold them with x4-x5 profit and I was pretty happy. I wasn't very happy when it hit $0.58/coin 2 weeks later though. So 250k coins x $0.58 = $145,000.

So far my loses on bad decisions (I am talking about bad decisions (impatience for example).. not that I didn't make any profit) are $304,810 at only 2 coins.

Now assume that I am mining with 420MH scrypt since May 2014 and I was able to mine $800-1100/day worth of alts. If I tell you how much LTC I have and what is my loss on bad decision (not to sell them) your mouth will stay open for hours. :D I had several bad decisions again. :)

While I consider myself as a good trader, I did failed numerous of times by holding coins.

I think this will answer your question.

There have been coins which, according to me, have seen larger pumps and then dumped hard, but patience pays off if you can hold, as sometimes, even those hard dumped coins get pumped sometimes ahead after few months based on the interest of traders and the coin in talks.

That's where I disagree and where I think so many people lose money. Being "patient" and waiting for a pump is like playing roulette. The odds are long. Others patiently wait for a real recovery in the price of a coin. Why not cut your losses and get out when it becomes obvious that the price is going south. If the coin starts to recover, you can always get back in. By being "patient", we are losing money. Why not take that money and put it someplace productive?

Here's a dude who DOES NOT EVEN KEEP RECORDS... but "considers himself a good trader".

I think this will answer your question.

I know what you mean about bad decisions, or bad timing creating opportunity losses. Probably my worst opportunity loss was VeriCoin. It's been about a year ago that VRC was launched and I was its original community manager and in charge of PR. I mined the coin from day one and held over 100k VRC when the price hit about 55k. I was stuck. I was sitting on a huge profit ( it cost me less than $10 to mine those coins) and I couldn't cash in on my profits. That was a huge opportunity loss. After I stepped down as community manager I was more free to sell, but by then the price was much, much lower. I made a profit, but I still kick myself for putting myself in a position where I couldn't sell.

Don't you think it's better to remember when you actually make some profit rather than remember your losses? You can think what you wish.

EDIT: And there is no way to preddict pumps which occured back in the days. Even if you were Warren Buffett.

Though I've never researched VeriCoin (I was just not interested in it), I think it was raped, because it was pumped and dumped very hard. I don't think it's rise in price was normal. Currently it seems that VRC is doing good given recent situation on the markets and prices of altcoins.

That's why I said, there have been coins, but let me correct it for you, not all but a few coins were there and if you would have watched "CND", then you might have witnessed so many pumps happened to it within a specific time-range. By saying this, I am, by any means and in any case, not asking you to just wait and watch and try to get lucky. It's obviously your choice so you do what you can to cut your losses and get out of the game while you still can.

It was definately pumped. Like idiots, however, all of us ( myself, the devs, and others on the team as well as most of our supporters ) thought that it was real, organic growth. We were wrong.

I learned a valuable lesson from VRC. Never become too involved in a coin if you want to make money. It ties your hands ( you can't sell ), and it clouds your judgement. To this day, I have a strong emotional attachment to VeriCoin, and I doubt that I could ever make an objective decision about it. I did, however, learn a lot about the inner workings of crypto by being involved in VRC.

Not everyone cares about price. Not everyone are traders. Sadly, this makes scams so prevelent.

I like to support the technology of what I think is a good coin because I'm passonate abour it, and belive in it.

Honestly it is not all about the money. The love of money is the root of all evil.

VeriCoin is a Mintcoin clone with scammy parameters. If you understand how Proof of Stake works, you'll realize VRC is designed insecurely, and staking will only go to the very very very top few addresses. Gives insight into why it is called "Veri" coin. Only the Veri top makes the money.

Mintcoin is a much better coin. (Full disclaimer: I own some Mintcoin)

Actually, VeriCoin was a clone of BlackCoin with the addition of a variable rate POS. I say was because the POS portion of the code has now been changed significantly to reduce vulnerabilities. Also, you are mistaken about the staking going to the top addresses. What made you think that it did?

I think that often people are afraid to lock in their loss. As long they still hold the coin, they still have hope that some day they might break even. Once they sell, they have to admit that lost.

To be honest I think they can as long as people behind given cryptocurrency work on it's adoption. Otherwise the coin itself starts getting boring and therefore people are starting to dump it.
I can't understand why so many people are asking for features. It's like comparing US and Australian dollar bills.. first one is uglier imho, but it is more valuable.
I mean come on.. try go to some store and try to buy something. When the salesman ask you: "Why your coin is worth $2 and not $1?", you can then answer: "Because it has masternodes."... duh... like I care.
When people understand what is the MAIN purpose of cryptocurrencies, then they will not lose that much and long term concept can be changed.

It is human nature,  there is a sucker born every minute,  greed drives most people trading cryoptocurrency,
it is harder to think with a clear head when $$$ is on the line if that $$$ is important to the individual so that can cloud judgment.

Also if you study/read about classic economics there are parallels with stocks ect...

Thank you for answering me. Now I understand you only meant "lost opportunity".

Initially I thought you really lost 1000+ BTC's which you invested from your pocket.