Bitcoin Forum

Assuming that, nowadays, BTC's hodl could be as long as 5 or even 10 years from now.
How long is a long time hodl in alt-coins?
For example, if I'm looking to hodl ARK/STRAT/XMR, what is the right time-frame? is it just for a few months to a 1 year, or can I leave them for 5 years with the hope of weathering the storms and coming out strong?
And besides, do these kind of coins have a 5-10 year lifespan?

For some shit alts long term is a week. I had one coin go 16000% in less then 2 months. Depends on how shitty they are the shittier the alt, the shorter the "long" term hold.

LOL that's a lot of shit in just one phrase. :D
How will a newbie like me know if a certain altcoin is a shitcoin or not?

from a couple of hours to a week tops.

you can take a quick look at some of the history of the altcoins to see what i am talking about. and then compare it with bitcoin history.
in bitcoin apart from the Mt Gox period (the infamous 2013 pump to $1200 in 1 month) you can only see rise in long term with lots of fluctuation but in the end it is rise.

now looking at altcoins specially smaller ones such as ARK and START you can only see fast and big rises in a short period of time (like in a couple of hours) and they usually last less than 2 days and it is down the hill from there.

some coins have some usefulness so they stick around after the dump but most of them die.

Despite what anyone can say, Long term hold is holding a diversified portfolio for years, just with little changes between your holdings and some new serious projects or other real opportunities.

It's very hard to do because you need to have balls to endure through the corrections, that's why most people just hold for weeks maximum.

It doesn't make sense.

If you really believe in a project, why selling ?

That's a good question and at the same time hard to answer. I'll take a shot.

1. It's like below 50 market cap on: http://coinmarketcap.com  (but some above 50 are crap they just got pumpt there  temporary).
2. There is hype about the shitcoin like: this is a great dev team we are going to the moon. it's a great value 200 sat next stop then moon. The shit pumpers use words like this and then you know it's not a real coin but a shit coin just know what it is you can still make money
3. just the feeling it has no real world value other then to dump the coins they pre-mind and mind on the newbies who give real bitcion for them

so it's basically musical chairs. You see the big spike and next month you see crash! Well, someone lost!

From experience of trading altcoins, the longest time I have hold bitcoin, eth, litecoin, strets and sys is six months. Long-term investment hold altcoins more than a year or two but for now I will advise you to do hold six months except bitcoin.

i think 1-2 years sometimes, some coins increase a lot after 1 year, look at lbry for example it remined there for one year at very low level after the first pump and now it's increasing, other coin can be pumped after two years like feathercoin or spreadcoin

Well depend on your strategy investing on there and how much will getting profit from there, you must choose the target taking profit include cut lost before buy the altcoins, if you looking for short profit use time prime one day up to one week, but if you looking for long profit with big amount, you can invest for couples years later. So choose your target first.

I think long term is a year+. There is a difference in crypto between a coin useful for quick price speculation and those coins really building a long term community. Do your research to find those you believe will have a strong community in the future.

So that does mean that the more efficient as well as highly priced coin it is, the longer the time duration for its rise to take place.
But that's what we call stable because when those shitty coins get dumped hard on us, we people only cry hard and ask why only we faced it.
So it's better to hold only those who we really know have potential in them.

It depends on everyone what are someone's goals and what kind of tokens or coins are in possession for long term. Usually long term is considered to allow the team to complete the project or some alpha/beta release to be ready for gaining large portion of market cap. It can be various from few weeks to months totally differently.

I think if for bitcoin it seems you can decide to save or save how long because from year to year its development is very rapid and no doubt, But if for altcoin nobody knows the fate of new coins that keep popping up. And easy to die, So basically want to save bitcoin or altcoin how long your decision because human point of view must be different.

When it comes to alt coin market we are not in a position to say for certain that a long term investment is the safest route you can go,technology keeps on changing and which ever technology keeps on updating with time have the longest stay and in my opinion i would say a long term investment in the crypto market could mean a few months. ;)

In general its at least 3-6 months.
But nowadays even couple of weeks can be enough to profit and out back to btc or ether.
So it differs lot. LOT.

Everyone has their own opinion about how long they hold the coin. You just take the conclusions from each of their answers. I myself have never held a coin for a long time or until a matter of years, maybe a few months for me is enough, and if it feels like a little profit I will sell altcoin.

What is the coin?

i think everyone has their own strategy about it. to me i will consider long term investment for more that 4 to 5 years. but you also need to check the situation, because for different investment you need to prepare different strategy.

I think it was dgb. Now we know that this coin was very dump, but i think it will raise again, even reach 1$ hope so 8)

For long term hold, i think it depends on what the target price you want. I know some people hold their coins atleast a year and it paid off.  They staked 1337 coins for a year and now they made good profit. I am currently holding xem for almost six months. Bought it at 400sats and still holding till it gets 5$.

One year or more. I belive that this time is enough for a person to earn a good amount of money. Otherwise, you the coin you are holding increase more than 10000% in less than 1 year, I blieve that it is a good time to sell it or it will be dumped and you can get nothing from the big pump

From my understanding, not depending on specific coin price:

Short term: From 1 week to 1 month
Middle term: From 1 month to 6 months
Long term: From 6 months to 5 years

Above 5 years, it is extremely long term.

This is pretty much spot on with my descriptions, except short term can sometimes even be less than an hour if I want to get in quickly and get back out again a few percent up!

Sometimes I get out if I have 10% profit, or sold only 50% if I know it has still the potential for short trading. For long term I  think ore than a year is enough, but sometimes I lost patience and sold it whenever ?I have a good profit.

Many strong people hold a coin for a long time. For me it is risky, for 5 months or 6 months it is very possible and reasonable like DGB and RDD. But if a year or 2 years I think it is very risky. Unless you are holding BTC instead of altcoin.

yeah,we should choose  a coin which had basic on technology,it will alive for a long time
small project is easy dead

As long as you take hold though there is a short volatlity or there is a short flactuations and you are still holding because you believe the coin you are holding have a potential to flacutuates more that should be considered as long term hold.

Nothing more than a year. I don't think you want to leave your stash idle for periods longer than that.
I would be especially nervous about the current rally. You never know when the market will turn.

Depends on the coin and the person who is trading. If coin is established such as Etherium, long term could be two years or even more, and for smaller coins like DGB, the longer term could be from a week to a month or even longer if you believe you can get more profit.

Will based on how much tge amount your going to hold its better to put it on a trade then if you think its enough for you then hold it for a while and wait to its pump.

There is no basis in considering long term hold. However, in my own definition, long term hold should be months or even years since if it's weeks, I don't think it's long term since it's very short time period where in our goal for that time is just to trade with profit but not to invest.

Thank you for your replies, your opinions help me get a better perspective on the market.
Initially, when I entered the market, I was only interested in BTC, LTC and ETH, and my plan was to invest a (very) few $k and forget about it for 5 years, accepting whatever state they'll be in when I return to them.

However, with the recent turn of events in the market, I found myself invested double the initial plan (still just a few $k), in 20 different coins, reading non-stop, and just being involved hours daily.

I think, taking your opinions into account, a good strategy will be to dilute my holdings in the most profitable alt-coins (except ETH and LTC). Say, to sell an amount equalling to double or treble my investment on the coin, and leave the rest to freeroll for 6-12 months.

I think whatever under 2 years is not a HOLD.
as I see you have bag holders, day traders and investors.. You probably know who first  two are. Investors are the ones that invest in coin when is cheap, so accumulate in phase when something is planed. and sell soon after that gets implemented and pick up profits.

dude, buy some coins and forget about them for good couple of years, in meantime you can start to think about Porshe or Ferrari?))

I wouldn't try to hold alt coin for too long, unless it has a solid background and got a lot of future project like ETH, other than that it is very dangerous to hold alt coin for 5 or 10 years, alt coin is not suitable for long term, you can go bankrupt if try to hold alt coin for long term
The longest time to hold alt coin is 1 year, it is better to hold it around 3 to 6 months

For XMR, then long term hold would be 3-5 years because this is one of the coins that being mentioned does have potential and remember it is commonly being used on darkweb/deepweb just like bitcoin.Possibilities on rising up its price on future would really be there.For other altcoins i can say that 1 year would be the max on holding them.Ive seen already some coins which do pump after a year.

Short term : 1 year
Mid term : 2 year
Long term : 4 year

Short term : 1 year
Long term: 5 year
Super long term: 10 years

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on how long their long-term HODL is. It depends on how you interpret the long part when trading, because there are some who see a week or a month as long already. But for others like myself, long-term would take around 6 months or more but wouldn't reach up to 6 years though except for bitcoin which I can say I could HODL until like 10 years or more.

Well for me long-term for altcoin is 6 month
but i'm playing short time in the altcoin,it's about 2 weeks,because altcoin can be change anytime
like BitShares now,its up 1000% and i missed the train :'(

You missed the train because you were only holding coins for 2 weeks. It's unlikely to catch a large jump like that without holding longer. There's going to be ups and downs, you just need patience. As long as the coin has potential, then you'll catch that pump.

ACOIN is my big long term move right now. It has been a solid investment for over 6 months now and I'm still holding. I don't expect it to slow down any time soon.

http://pepeauctions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/acoin6m.jpg

https://yobit.net/en/trade/ACOIN/BTC

In alt coin you have to set your profit margin once you reached sell and invest in other just have a patience till the coin is pumped

Cryptocurrency is risky investation like no others that ever exist so the result is unpredictable !
IMO, altcoin far more riskier than bitcoin as there are many new coin occur and scam at the end. Some of them can't exist as long as bitcoin's life span
So, if you have enough fund and guts to invest on altcoin, just make sure that you're ready to loss all of them !

I agree! Everyone's opinion is actually good but it really depends on someone if how long is the "long-term hodl" for him/her. As for me I will hold a coin with a great team and promising project for 1-2 years and If i have a little doubt with a certain coin then may I will hold it for a couple of weeks or months as soon as I will meet my target profit then I will sell it or sometimes I will only take my capital and little amount of profit then leave the remaining to the coin. What ever happens to that coin that's already profit so I don't need to worry that much.

I think this is a very subjective question because as you seen the range goes from literally hours-years. Personally, I would say that a long term hold is 3 months+ and I would imagine touching it unless it went crazy through the roof, or for some reason was gonna go *POOF* and be gone soon. Truly does depend on you, and the coin you are investing in imo. Some you will want to hold longer than others, some you wont want to hold longer than a weekend.

For altcoins it is few months, a year max. Anything more that that and you might loose it.

Altcoin is more fluctuate and there is no guarantee that altcoin values will go up unless there is a new investor, not recommend hold altcoins too long because they might go up and down within a few hours, for the length of time everyone has his own opinion, i think for 2-5 weeks is too long

My personal definition for a long-term hodl is 3 months. FYI