Bitcoin Forum

Now there are many hodlers among us ;D Is the practice of holding bitcoins good or bad for it's growth?

I had recently come across a statement that bitcoin is a settlement system rather than store of value/digital gold and holding bitcoins is somewhat making it accessible to rich people only.

Arguments in favor of hoarding bitcoins:

1. Since bitcoins are limited in numbers, holding would obviously increase the demand and thus the price.

2. Bitcoin as a commodity/hoarding, as a currency/spending. So once the price increases, what we earlier bought for 1 BTC can buy it now for 0.5.

3. Merchants would prefer BTC over USD. (In the hopes that prices would increase)

4. Bitcoin is divisible. Everyone cannot own 5 or 10 BTC, but still holding on to a few satoshis would be profitable in the long-term.

Now there are some arguments against holding:

1. Deflation.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Deflationary_spiral


2. If the elites gets hold of majority of bitcoins, the demand and price would be high, but since the common man would not be able to afford it, demand decreases, elites dump, price crashes, common man buys some, market stabilizes a bit, and elites buys back more. It kind of becomes a centralized holding affair.

3. Rather than hoarding, an environment where bitcoins are more used as a mode of payment for buying goods or services is more beneficial for it's growth.

So what do you think, is hoarding bitcoins good or bad for it's growth?

Edited the poll.

I believe it would be good for the price, since there are less Bitcoin being sold in the market. The bad news are, if you don't use your Bitcoin to buy stuff, why would merchants accept Bitcoin as a method of payment if no one wants to spend their Bitcoins? This way, Bitcoin would work more like a digital gold rather than a currency.

Also, your poll doesn't make any sense.

Is hoarding bitcoins good or bad for it's growth?
Yes / No

I believe the options should be "good" or "bad" right?

All the reason stated on your list are all true.  If people will hold, keep holding their bitcoins, its price would go up because its supply is less.  People who continue to know bitcoins and got interested will become many thus, the demand would be really high.  High demand less supply equals high price.  But as you also stated its main purpose was altered because everyone holds bitcoin.

It's called saving and no, there is nothing harmful about it.

Delayed consumption is actually beneficial in many ways, for the consumer (cheaper / better products), the environment (goods are only created when there is a demand), and the economy (less malinvestment).

The opposite, easy credit, leads to malinvestment and the boom bust cycle, which, combined with private profits and public risk, enriches the few at the expense of the many. It also hurts the environment as people are buying things they don't need and products are overproduced (see current automobile inventories as example).

A deflationary spiral is a thing made up in the minds of Keynesians to justify their attempts to control the economy.

It's good until it's bad. Growth. In price? Usage?

A ton are locked and will never be redeemed because of deaths, lost keys, etc.

I think there are less people trading crypto willing to hold them forever (rain or shine) than many expect as well.

When sales hit the exchanges you don't see the full extent of every price movement. 1k sell on one chart may have  really been a 5-10k btc sell on multiple exchanges or even more complex sells could be going on involving altcoins.


There's the tangible then the intangible and the tangible is still going to be the most important thing, you can re-aquire bitcoins at whatever price it happens to be. If you have something tangible you offer more than simply a voucher for tangible things.

When people hold, they believe they will earn more for holding and thus don't redeem their vouchers. When they don't redeem they perceive themselves to have gained or lost value based off the current market price. In actuality their initial holding is still denominated in a "coin" asset and until they successfully find someone to purchase that asset at whatever price they are using to value their holding their holding does not actually have any proof it will be capable of fetching that price on an open market by the time it is redeemed.

Market action can happen quick because all of the money on exchanges is hyper liquid. If you hold your coins for a long time, you might not want to trust exchanges but wallets can be slow. You must be in sync and be capable of securing your keys to redeem. Syncing can take hours, or tens of minutes if you haven't opened in 2 weeks or a month or longer. Then you need to have your transaction processed by the network and be credited by the exchange before finally selling your voucher on the market.

Exchange operators and really advanced traders will follow the margin markets on btc whichever way they go and when it goes it will go sharp. It could break up more but I think a huge short is going to wreck this bull-market eventually.

Many people are naive about how this market actually operates.

I think hoarding it's great. let's say for some reason you are the first person ever to discovery gold and you know eventually it'll be one of the most valuable assets in the world. Wouldn't you buy and store as much gold as possible? that's exactly what we are doing, just digitally.

For me I would subscribe to the position of in between that hoarding should be in-between in that it should not be to the extreme in other for the commodity in this case bitcoin becomes unaffordable for many and on the other hand should not be too available or liquid in other for it not to be cheap and thereby lose value as we have it in the case of so many alt who didn't recover from dumps.

if you buy a btc to hold it, I don't think that is bad for it as an investment as the price and since the price rise, interest would increase as well, but for it as a currency, hoarding the coins and not using them at all is bad in a way.
Most people here, although hoarding. buy things with BTC as well, both online and offline, so it would be even.

While personally for me, hoarding bitcoin is good because it will drastically increased the price. Imagine if you are a bag holders for the last several years and not selling it. Of course as the price increased, your savings will increased as well. So its gonna be a win-win situation especially on your end because of the huge profit you can make by holding/hoarding it.

Unlike hoarding foods and other necessary everyday stuffs, hoarding Bitcoin can actually be good for the whole market and the community as less liquidity in the market can mean there would be demand or orders that can not be meet as soon as possible thereby raising the value of the coin. I am sure that there are those who are doing it in hopes that the value can jump meteorically in the coming months. And it is already proven that Bitcoin is now becoming the best investment there is, much better than gold which remained flat and performing well compared to blue chips.

Certainly not the point at this moment, most merchants accepting business are using payment processors to handle their bitcoin payments.
They would rather have fast dollar in their pocket instantly that keep bitcoin and hope it will get more expensive in the future.

Isn't thins the issue with every possible currency/asset/commodity/security/bond etc.?
Elites will always be privileged class, there is no way to found a system to distribute wealth equally among all humans.

I think that today to buy some things or something like that, it makes no sense. It will be wasteful. If you look at the current growth trend of Bitcoin from there, then it is possible to say with certainty what will be there just tomorrow or even in a month. I think that you need to wait and save, and do not waste Bitcoin in vain.

I believe that is not the case that is a bad thing to hold bitcoins. If you are thinking that because they are limited in number their value will grow that is not totally true but only partially. In fact this is true in theory but not in practice because the last coin will be mined in the distant year 2140 a long time from now. Until then the existing bitcoins will change hands a lot of times and even if some people hold it that does not mean that they are the majority.

I personally think it's a matter of balance. Some people will hold, some people will sell while some others will just use Bitcoin as a means to buy something. The same applies with fiat money but inflation makes it costly & naive to hoard (since you're losing value by the minute due to the unlimited printing of bills backed by pure air).

Hoarding from my point of view is the worst thing to happen to bitcoin and I am sure its not the intention of the founder because it would mean just restricting it to function as a "store of value" which will not increase the amount of users needed for it to achieve full potential of becoming a global currency. Hoarding will mean if I want to come into fresh in bitcoin because of what I have heard, I then cannot do that because I can't get to buy when no one is willing to sell.

I believe the market regulates itself, so no action taken by the majority is bad. It's just a step in the life of currency, its evolution.
If people decide to save up the demand will rise and holders will start selling and using it in stores, because they'll at some point decide they need some things and they can buy so much for a single coin. No need to worry ;)

Nothing in excess is good, the same apply to holding Bitcoin. The main point of the list in my opinion is:


That is what determines the price, the demand and the supply, if people don't spend it a lot, there will be more people trying to buy BTCs and less sellers, so the price of BTC will increase and I believe everyone who is inside the game likes it. It makes Bitcoin more valuable and helps to make even more people have interest in Bitcoin, searching for it to buy.

On the another hand, if too many people hold it, newbies won't enter the game, and Bitcoin can become a small circle of members, delaying the global adoption.

I'd say hoarding is good, but in its current state I personally see it more as a store of value akin to gold rather than a currency. It just happens to be more easily transferable.


I think a stabler BTC / USD rate would be more important to merchants rather than steady increases at the price of high volatility.



As long as there are inflationary fiat currency to escape to, I think Bitcoin is fairly safe from a deflationary spiral. The question is where the equilibrium lies.

Even i prefer to see people hoarding bitcoin as that could reduce the number of transactions carried out per day and in turn reduces the transaction fees and faster confirmations  :D,i am sure if these things can be carried out in real life which i know is not possible but it will improve the hurdles we are facing right now with the network. ;)

Hoarding in my opinion is good because if the more you hoard then the need will increase and make the price increase. That's just my opinion ;D ;D

Hoarding bitcoin i think is a good choice for bitcoin's growth, it will leads to less bitcoin in the sirculation and the price will be increased. Actually this is not creator wants, bitcoin supposed to be a currency which means that we should spend them, sorry to say but seems like people are tired to pay higher fee and waiting confirmation.

Exactly this is why i'm afraid of when rich people come to the bitcoin and purchase lot of bitcoins well they such a have control over the price yeah i agree with you that it's not being decentralized anymore, price would be down once they sell all of their coins.

When it comes to bitcoins it is idea better idea if you can hoard them because it will make the value increase and gain profit as time passes by. Hoarding is not good if it detrimental to life such as hoarding basic necessities like foods and water. So my answer is good for bitcoin growth.

Hoarding bitcoins can have some bad effects in someways but spending bitcoins can help you alot in your daily life and your family.

Hoarding bitcoins can be a good for the people who got a lot of bitcoins in their wallet because of the hoarding process then they are forcing to have a small supply in the market and if the demand will go higher then the price will easily climb also but it is bad for the people who are just getting started to invest in bitcoin because they can't buy enough bitcoin at a fair price because of the force of hoarding.

In my opinion holding bitcoin iti good for you .. you better meni.bun bitcoin until bitcoin price is expensive and make you get maximum result. Maybe your capital will come back and get a big profit .. you just need to be patient and wait until bitcoin prices go up. Do not hesitate to store your bitcoin .. i am sure bitcoin prices will continue to rise .. because the demand is very much

Hoarding reduces the number of transactions, increases scarcity and demand, makes its price raise, which in turn attracts more users. Does not seem too bad to make it a good investment. Not sure if it's better for it as a coin, though.

in my opinion, hoarding bitcoin is good for myself because i can save a lot of amount of bitcoin no matter the price is down or up. i am only save it for my future and i am waiting the right time to sell my bitcoin, as long as i can save more, then i am no problem to waiting more longer. i think if we hoarding, in future when bitcoin is accepting by all country and all people is using bitcoin, then we have much of amount of bitcoin and i am sure that the price will be expensive too.

You have a good point. Holding or keeping your bitcoin have a good factor to yourself. But Supply and demand is not the biggest factor why bitcoin is increasing or decreasing its value.

In my opinion, I think that HODLing is good and bad for Bitcoin due to a couple of reasons

Good
Holding reduces how many transactions are being made and therefore it rises the price. With a high Bitcoin price people get attracted and bitcoin becomes even more popular

Bad
How will people ever think that Bitcoin is more than an investment if people just keep holding. There is no way for Bitcoin to grow and become a currency for the future if we keep just holding Bitcoin.

IMO, it doesn't really matter.

People hoard gold, but it is still considered to be one of the best stable assets available out there.

It's good to have some economic activity happening, but we really don't need a lot of it right now. A little bit is fine.

People are hoarding now because they see the potential of bitcoin. Right now not a lot of merchants even accept bitcoin. When bitcoin gets more recognition in the future, naturally people will start using bitcoin as a legitimate currency instead of a speculative tool. It's nothing to worry about, really.

Holding bitcoin leads to an increase in profits due to the price increase, but if everyone keeps it, the price will not grow and this will not affect its development positively. There must be a turnover between sales and holding.

The Bitcoin market is competitive, meaning bitcoin prices will rise or fall depending on demand and supply. I'm sure the bitcoin price will continue to increase, even if we keep it or not. In my opinion, better bitcoin is used for trading, rather than saved it.

hording can reduce the uncertainty if the bitcoin it can make you be secure and it can increase the demand and the price of the bitcoin and it will help you earn more money because the demand of the bitcoin will increase the price of the bitcoin and they will not be worry about the investment of the bitcoin so the hoarding of the bitcoin is not so bad yet according to me. 

Since the question is "Is hoarding good or bad for it's growth" I should say that it is bad for the growth of bitcoin.There are several reasons why and here are some of them:

1. If the price of this currency is too high why would a normal person use it for instead of his country's currency?
2. If it is limited only and there is alternative which is faster in terms of transaction. People would switch to this alternatives.
3. A good currency must circulate throughout for healthier economy and it is proven by the first class countries.

In general it is true that bitcoin is a good investment but hoarding it has negative effect on its growth and it would not be profitable in the long run.

I beg to differ with the result of this poll. There is nothing wrong with hoarding Bitcoin as we are still in the development mode and there is huge scope for the growth in the coming years.

However, I believe that we should more focus on the utility part of it rather than speculation part because spending would create awareness about it and movement would boost the growth of it. However, I agree that we don't have that kind of infrastructure to spend Bitcoins offline and even online in most of the countries so technically there is no practical option rather than holding Bitcoins.

Usually, I try to spend my 50% of the acquisitions and save rest of the part but unfortunately as mentioned earlier, there is no such environment to spend Bitcoins directly thus I have to hold or invest my Bitcoins.

All I can say is that hoarding bitcoin is not bad for it now but maybe in the future it would be bad. You are right about the advantages of hoarding, but the listed disadvantages is still not happening right now. Also even if elites got hold now of majority of bitcoins in the end they sell, then other people buys then that's when they lose control over it sometimes since the ones who bought from them might prefer to hold the bitcoin they bought.

Hoarding many bitcoin's are a good way because no one can disturbed it's growing price's and bill gates said that bitcoin is unstopable. So we better hurry up and hoard many bitcoin's after it blown and go to mooooon

it is not a simple black or white situation and nothing else. it depends on a lot of things in my opinion.

for starters when people accumulate/hoard bitcoin that means they keep buying it and holding it because they have a big target in mind and when we get there what they sell won't matter much in the price because market is too big by then. this is good for the price.

but also at the same time if everyone starts only holding bitcoin and never spend it then we can't really expect it to grow either. we can't expect adoption, merchants accepting it,... because there is nobody to spend bitcoin! and that is bad for both price and future of bitcoin.

bitcoin is a currency but since the value of it grows because of adoption, it is treated as an investment and that aspect has become more important than the currency aspect for some people.

I don't think that hoarding bitcoins is bad for bitcoin.
It's against the original idea of bitcoin that ment it to be a payment method.
But ideas sometimes change when they are confronted with reality.
People hoarding bitcoins increased the worth of bitcoin. News spread out even to mainstream media.
And that attracted more and more new people into bitcoin.
This is a very positive effect I think.

In the end all hoarders HAVE to "unhoard", i.e. offer. You can't live on bitcoins. On the off chance that you put every one of your belonging, reserve funds and income in BTC, each day of the year, you would even now need to exchange some of those BTC for sustenance and asylum - else you'd be dead.

So even the most insatiable hoarders should trade BTC for physical wares and services. The economy won't experience the ill effects of an "hoarding to death" situation - there will dependably be exchange!

Interesting thread and question - nice to see so much interaction on such an interesting topic :)

Even am not sure hodling for long time or Selling for good price like around 4000$ i am really confused so am selling half of my holding and keeping half for long term so that i will not regret if anything happens it raise too much or if it gone to deep . Always i am having something to get relax in both cases.

Yeah it is good because there are many benefits that the holding bitcoin has. I believe that if we hold our bitcoins, for sure the value of the bitcoin will increase. The demand of the people to the bitcoin nowadays is very high.

Isn't it obvious that hoarding BTC, will in turn increase its price. As people hold btc the available btc become less and and as demand increases if the available btc is less, the price will increase. But even the long time holders are not gonna hold btc till their death, sooner or later everyone sells it.

I don't believe that most people will hoard their bitcoins for a long time. Most of the type of people who holds bitcoins are traders so basically they are just doing buy and sell to gain more profit on it. The only growth I see on bitcoin are all for its own good..

I think it will bad for Bitcoin growth, the price of Bitcoin is depend on the transaction volume and if all people not spending their coin the cash flow will become stagnant and Bitcoin can't grow any further, it need a balance supply and demand to make a strong coin

These days it is very hard to hoard Bitcoins. Truly, you would need millions in order to do so. However, it is good for Bitcoin because maybe there will only be 15,000,000 coins because many coins will be lost over time (there are supposed to be 21,000,000) but if you keep them the demand will rise and therefore the price will rise too. ;)

When you hoard Bitcoins it isn't cool because Bitcoins are meant to be spent also not only for investing but also spending, just like physical gold many years ago before fiat.

The fact that people are hoarding bitcoins is good for the growth rates, but bad for the bitcoin. The main purpose of bitcoin is to become an alternative to Fiat money. Without circulation of currency this will not happen. I think you need to use the experience of the dollar. Why reinvent the wheel?

It is good if you consider hoarding for growing the price of your money. It increases the demand for bitcoin and as a result, a continual increase in its price (law of demand and supply).  Bitcoin is unstoppable, it may be volatile but looking at the big picture, the price of bitcoin is continuously increasing.

Neither, a currency can be used immediately or it can be stored for later use that is the way currencies of the world work, if this was not the case then durability will not be one of the characteristics of money but it is and that is why gold and bitcoin are very good forms of money.

You don't need millions to hoard bitcoins. You can hoard the few bitcoins that you have. Even the people scraping satoshis off faucets contribute to hoarding. In the end, it reduces the available supply and price increases.

Very often spending Bitcoin is the same as selling it, because businesses that accept it are selling it quickly to avoid losses from volatility. This is bad for the price in short term. But the fact that Bitcoin is used as money makes it somewhat better than just going to exchange and dumping your coins. But in the long term, speculative value of Bitcoin should play smaller role in its price forming, and factors like its usability, features, security will be determining its price.

I believe hoarding is good for those who wish bitcoin price to increase since there will be limited supply of bitcoin.  Hoarding does not affect BTC badly since there is still a fresh supply from the mining pool every 10 minutes.  Aside from that, those who are hoarding a huge chunk of Bitcoin are knowledgeable on how they unload their BTC without affecting the market price.  Who whould want their holding to plummet in price, of course no one.  So they will unload or sell their BTC slowly.

A tiny percentage of the world population really "uses" btc.
I'd say hoarding is good for price, yet it probably means the opposite for adoption.

I don't think it's bad because if a lot is saved then bitcoin is harder to aquire and therfore a lot more valuable. This would only increase the price and if that is what you want it can be considered as good.

We cannot live on bitcoins yet, it will come the day when we can and a hoarder will only need to spend as much bitcoin as it is needed for their survival and if things keep going in the same direction every year they are going to spend less and less since the price of bitcoin will keep going up.

On the contrary, hoarding does not actually portend bad for Bitcoin as it
favors it's value and stability. The value of Bitcoin and just about any cryptocurrency out there is all about people's perception of it. People don't get to hoard nothing except it is very essential or valuable. Suffice it to say that hoarding simply speaks volume of how valuable Bitcoin is. Take it away from Bitcoin, the dream of ever getting to the moon someday, would remain a forlone hope.

You're rather adrift here, because at no point would there be a consensus to not sell Bitcoin. You would rather  have few seller and as long as you're okay with whatever the current rate is, you would always be able to buy as much as you can afford.

the thing to remember is that we want bitcoin to be more of a currency than something that people "only" invest in. but at the same time there is absolutely nothing wrong with investing in bitcoin and "hoarding" it.
i say if people are willing to spend bitcoin that is more than enough even if they don't spend it. it will help the adoption, and if adoption grows the price rises too. otherwise the real boom to 100K$,... won't happen by just hoarding in my opinion.

,Your reason makes sense and there is no harm in stocking bitcoin from today,.  as more and more people buy bitcoin supplies will decrease and it keeps the bitcoin price up, and can assume it's future savings.

Correct, holding is not an activity done only by whales, even if you only have a few BTC then and you have not moved them for a long time then you are hoarding them, to be honest I do not see any kind of problem with that tactic, because bitcoin does becomes more valuable the more you hold it.