Bitcoin Forum

Hodling bitcoins seems a pretty profitable business. You just earn/buy them and then you send them on your cold storage thinking that you'll spend them in the distant future. In the April Fools of 2020, bitcoin's price was around €6k and today it has jumped to €50k. I didn't even catch it up, it just happened from one moment to the next one!

I then realize that if I keep on hodling until the late '20s I'll most likely have a sufficient fortune, assuming that it'll reach €1M, which doesn't seem that impossible. What is the problem:  I'm not sure that I'll be strong enough to withstand my feelings and thus, in the last days I have been thinking of time locking my funds. If you rethink it, it's like inheriting your own funds.

Thoughts?

Why would you want to lock it if you can just hodl it the traditional way. What if there is an emergency and you really need the money for that emergency, wouldn't locking it make it difficult? You can also invest your bitcoin in gambling sites so your hodling can help you make more money. Also, if you can control your urges then you don't really need a locktime just to hodl.

I think this question was asked somewhere i can't remember and this was some answers presented. Locktime is good but mostly dangerous to those who don't have other sources of income, emergency is inevitable in the world we live in and for anyone to solely follow the Locktime rule might have self to blame when these unforeseen emergency emerge. The only advise i would give to any HODLER out there is always to hold unto what he's hodling right now and always remembering the future. This is liken to more reasons why Savings accounts are more in use in the Banks than the fixed deposit or current accounts. 

NEVER! I want to be fully in control of my Bitcoins, even during the times I’m only HODLing them. I like the feeling of power it gives me that no one can consfiscate my coins anytime, or that no one can censor my transactions anytime if I decide to buy Heroin from the dark market dealer.

We should be the ones holding it and that's why we have the option to hold it on our cold storage which we also hold the private keys, so if the times that we have to spend it, there's no lock time that we're going to think of.

How long you're planning it to lock? I guess we have our own strategy how we should deal with our own coins but it's better that you're free to touch it anytime you want.

Well for some of us it is hard to control it so we might need the locktime to successful HODL our crypto.
But I don't also like the idea of locktime specially if you would lock all of your crypto and something came up that you would need a money.

I'm a proponent of applying willpower over forcing yourself by external means. I'm not good at it, but that's one of the reasons why I wouldn't go so far as to timelock my own funds. Another reason is emergencies or other black swan events in which having access to these funds would be crucial.

On the other hand, making it harder, but not impossible, to access your long term funds may already be beneficial. That way you can still access them if need be but have some time to think it through before selling coins on impulse. I'm not sure how such a set up would ideally look like though. But think of it as storing your cookie jar in a hard to reach place rather than locking it up and throwing away the key.

Other than that, do you have an exit strategy? Not in the sense of leaving Bitcoin completely, but as in certain price points where you'd be willing to sell parts of your holdings? If not it might be time to consider it, because staking these things out ahead while you have a clear head and are not clouded by the heat of the moment -- be it FOMO or panic -- can help immensely with keeping your feelings in check.

Not my preferred method since I never know when I'll need to liquidate for an emergency perhaps. I suppose there are ways to write in an override but I'll admit I'm not daring enough to use even if I could find a reliable guide.

I trust my self-discipline. It's worked well for me through the bear winter and through 3k BTC after seeing 20k, so I'm pretty sure I can withstand another 85% drop.

I don't like it. I don't like the idea of losing control on my coins, I don't like the idea to leave a transaction hanging around unconfirmed for too long. I don't know what the future holds and I see it as an unnecessary risk.

Ofcourse. But I would prefer to use one that  unlocks automatically when price reaches to a certain level.
And I wouldn't lock more than I can afford to risk

I don't suggest doing this if your income is just enough and the reason you invest in crypto is because of its potential value. When an emergency happens and your holdings are locked you will be forced to take a loan. If there is a bad news about bitcoin then the price dumps and never recover you will lose a lot of money. You really don't know what can happen in the future so what's the reason of locking it. There is no platform where you can stake your bitcoin. Just keep those bitcoin of your on a software or hardware wallet and secure it properly.

I don't find OP_CLTV that suitable for long term holding.

Most people that are holding Bitcoins for a long period of time tend to have a significant amount of Bitcoins and could use those funds in the case of emergency. Having it locked up would freeze up some available funds at least. Let's the realistic, the reason why Bitcoin is priced as it is now is mainly because of the institutional buying and general acceptance (not adoption) of it as an alternative currency. It hasn't increased exponentially due to time and if it did, it would align more with the deflation rate. Holding Bitcoin longer means that you're trusting that it would go big sooner or later but the time will NOT guarantee this to happen. Any change in the general perception of Bitcoin either due to unfavourable policies or discovered network weaknesses would result in a steep price job. As such, since OP_CLTV is designed to lock it for a specified period of time, unless you're betting on the price of Bitcoin to increase in the long term due to external factor, then it is fine.

The more glaring issue is the problem with network weaknesses. If for some reason, quantum computers becomes an imminent threat, you'll probably want to move your funds elsewhere and you can't because it hasn't expired yet.

Well, it depends on what our target is going forward and also the trend of bitcoin.  If our target is 1m euros but bitcoin has not been able to achieve it anytime soon, and the trend is bearish it would be better to profit a little profit and buy back by taking advantage of the bearish market.

If someone wants to pull-off this trick of locking bitcoins as a forced mean of hodling then putting restriction on UTXO using CLTV opcode is a better way to do so than locking transaction with nLocktime. In this way, there won't be a issue of transaction being dropped from mempool.

May be the hardest moment for the author of this topic is not to touch his Bitcoins on the balance at all, sometimes via emotional side, sometimes because of other circumstances. As I have understood he just can not control the desire to cash out or exchange his BTCs into something another, and only because of this reason he regret nowadays about lost opportunities. That is why he would like to lock or  freeze them somehow. May be it sounds strange for some people, but it can work to others.

How would we make sure we will live until reach €1M Bitcoin price? I am not against holding or storing Bitcoin, but the question still exists for how long? When Bitcoin was approx $20K in 2017, then I thought I will sell my Bitcoin once it touches $30K. But it hasn't happened and we encounter a huge dump. I wasn't sold and bought a few shitcoin those haven't recovered yet. Now imagine if I sold Bitcoin even in $18K then I would buy back once dumped into $3K. So, my suggestion is to hold Bitcoin for life, not for a lifetime. For me, when I need and think there is a reasonable price then I will sell my Bitcoin. Because I learn from the past. Currently Bitcoin trading approx $60K, but we don't know when it will touch $100K or a million.

I think @ETFBitcoin is talking about the process of sending the funds to the scripthash address with the CLTV condition? The transaction won't be in the mempool in the first place as it's non-final and having a signed transaction intended for so far in the future comes with a plethora of risks and vulnerabilities as well.

locking bitcoin for future planning is an option that every bitcoin holder wants, almost 50% hope so. but for those of us who only rely on income from bitcoin profits, it is very difficult, given the many needs that even though we fulfill to survive the money crisis caused by the pandemic last year, so the impact is still felt today. so if you want to do bitcoin locking, then you already have other income options to make ends meet.

For me no since we don't know on what will happen in future and if our money has been lock for longer period of time with no withdrawal anytime option somce it was set on lock in period well then might provably we cannot use our money especially if there's an emergency situations happen. We can still hold even without lock time since we can decide to put our balance on hardware wallet then forget(didn't mean the password since you should wsave this safely) until such time the bitcoin price pump again.

There is no need to lock, just self-discipline will be needed, there are times that in an unexpected time bad things occur so what if we need money that time but you can cash out your money because that is locked, always think about the other things or consequence that may occur once you have done something.

I think that locktime is needed only if a person feels strongly about hodling BTC for a certain period of time but knows that wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to sell. I don't think that this is for me because I'm pretty fine with making decisions and keeping promises I make to myself. So if I decide to hodl, I know that I will. At the same time, not locking the coins allows acting swiftly in case something unpredictable happens (a sudden financial need due to new circumstances, Bitcoin moving down to zero because a truly superior coin gets created, people turning to something new and cryptos becoming pagers). So I think it's better to control oneself and to be able to move the coins when needed.

Bitcoin always has a certain era where it will push to pump and get the Bullrun. But there will be also a certain time where it will fall and get to the bearish one.
That is likely a kind of common cycle.
Many people may regret not buying Bitcoin when it was in $6k after seeing the recent price and probably the next ATH again.
Of course, it is nromal.
For me personally, I am still holding some BTC, but willing to sell them in steps every time reaching a new ATH. ANd probably will sell them all when it is almost ended bullish time.

I am sure doing about this. And then planing to buy some Bitcoin when it has fallen in the bearish amrket.

It doesn't make sense to me though since locking it means that you are planning to hodl your Bitcoin for a long time. It means that you should not feel any emotions towards of your investment and let it rest until the time is up. But with the high volatility movement and anytime or anywhere there could be something that might happen to our investment so why need a time lock when you could just simply hodl it in a traditional way? It's more like you follow what the banks are doing by putting a time lock to your wealth.

Sometimes the holding power is very large, as is the case nowadays, doing BTC holding with large profits so far. But what you can see is that people are afraid to hold because of the risk. So my mind is that if I have a chance I will continue to hold for profit whenever it happens

it is not a good idea in my opinion and i don't think the OP codes that do that were meant to be used for "holding" even if they are unofficially called OP_HODL. if someone is not capable of controlling themselves when it comes to long term holding then they have more serious problems that locking up coins is not going to fix.
these OP codes are meant to be used in certain scenarios that the smart contracts need such as making a payment only when some time is passed.

Ive been  keeping my own bitcoin for so many years now and I dont even need that locktime. You just need a good  and tight self control for holding it.

But it is still your choice OP, if you really wanted to go on and hold it without further attempt to touch and withdraw some of it. In terms of emergency circumstances wherein you need to cash out some of it, then you can't sell it off until the time you set it off.

I guess when you lock some coins you do that because you will get some interest for that locking coins! So it's not like just locking and forgetting about them, it's like you let your coins work for you. I am always for that kind of locking!
But I don't have locked Bitcoins, but I have locked some other coins... and I expect some return from that! People talk about volatility, but I am only interested in making more coins! I believe in crypto in long run, the prices will rise more... in the meantime we will have ups and downs as always, but generally we are going up and most of the good coins made nice progress this year! Even if the entire market drop, it will recover eventually!

Holding bitcoin will be the profitable thing that we can do, especially if we already bought bitcoin at a very low price. But it is not easy to hold bitcoin as if we do not have control to see the market movements, and we can become panic and sell bitcoin when the price drops. We can set a lock time for the holding bitcoin and sell bitcoin in that target time or price, so whenever the bitcoin price moves, we will still hold it if that does not reach our goals. But to have that works, we need to follow our plan, no matter if that will be hard for us.

While I understand why you'd want to lock your coins in respect of being disciplined so as not to panic sell them before time when the price is in a bearish trend, it is important to note that there are times when you'd actually need money to cater for some expenses. What if there are emergencies that you need to solve and you don't have money.
I think the best option is to keep the coin in a traditional wallet rather than locking the coin so that it is readily available for use at any time

I rethought it and yes it seems a really bad decision, after all. It'd be too dumb to burn my coins for a certain time, just for hodling. There are some cool ways to use locktime, though, like inheritance and gifts. But, locking them for 10 years? Who knows what will have changed until then?

I shouldn't put my worrying feelings above common sense. As @Coolcryptovator wrote, hold for life, not for lifetime. I'll now lock this topic to prevent any unnecessary discussion.