Bitcoin Forum

There are a lot of threads here, there is a lot of activity on telegram and trading view and everywhere regarding charts, trends, indicators and general speculating. Still, I believe that a very small minorty of users ask themselves the fundamental question. Is speculation on Bitcoin and crypto markets even worth your time? I believe that it is not, and here are my main arguments.

1. Most Speculators and Traders lose money
Despite so many people calling themselves investors, traders these years especially in the cryptocurrency markets the data is clear: majority of retail traders lose money over time. Research shows that up to 90% of traders have unprofitable results over extended periods, such as several years. Assuming that you are willing to believe that data, one must wonder why that is?

Well, the market is heavily dominated by algorithms, institutional players and insiders that have better information, tools and execution. The deck is stacked against you. Just imagine the standard situation of a retail trader of Bitcoin. You are usually alone or with like minded amateurs, reading analyses by people who don't analyze things full time or you might be even trying to make your own analysis. You are trying to learn all kinds of indicators, metrics and even draw your chart. Meanwhile your opponent: has an army of full time analysts. One of them gathers more experience in 1 year than you will gather in a lifetime. They have algorithms that are data driven, automated, fast. Before you can even make up your mind what to do, they have already executed many trades.

Speculation in the cryptocurrency market is not like traditional investing, it is much more akin to gambling. You may be sitting a poker table where you are the player with the least experience.

Summary of pros for you:

• Fresh mind, open perspective. You may have some gut feelings or creative ideas that may lead you to expect market behavior that someone who has been working in the same job can't. They will simply think "that is simply not possible", yet the crypto market proves us all wrong all the time.
• Huge opportunity for profit. Compared to the time before the internet or even just before Bitcoin, making money on this scale and speed was reserved for the connected few or the geniuses who also had a business sense. There has never been a time like this for retail.

Summary of cons for you:

• Slow.
• Inexperienced.
• Odds are stacked against you in every way.

Sources:
https://www.quantifiedstrategies.com/what-percentage-of-traders-fail/
https://www.fxstreet.com/education/why-do-most-retail-traders-fail-and-what-can-i-do-to-improve-my-chances-of-success-202503311406
https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-retail-derivatives-traders-lost-18-trln-rupees-three-years-regulator-says-2024-09-23/

2. The massive opportunity cost is neglected
Let's be honest. How much does an average person who is trying to speculate on these markets spends in Telegram, X, TradingView, Reddit, forums such as these ones, and other websites? How many hours per day do you have charts open? Multitasking is not an excuse or minimizing argument here, the amount of hours spent on these things is insane. Everything counts here, from reading news to chatting with online colleagues about the crypto market. Data on this is scarce, and I don't like the surveys that are done as that does not represent the real picture at all. For the sake of simplicity we are going to assume a low estimated total of 3 hours per day average on all these activities.

That is more than 1000 hours in a year, and over 10 000 hours over a decade which is a notably number for sometimes being referred as the number required on average to become an expert at something. So every hour you spent on charts, indicators, X and whatever you could have been:

• Learning valuable career skills.
• Creating content.
• Building a business.
• Investing in long-term assets even if it is on a small scale.

Important lesson about this: Even if you have a decent profit, the return per hour is terrible. One of the worst ROIs that exists, most people would probably do better being waiters. For this to be worth it, you need to either spend a very little amount of time or make very good returns! Speculation tends to disguise itself as productivity, but in most cases is a distraction with high-stakes much more like gambling!

3. Emotional and psychological cost
If opportunity cost is neglected, then this cost is buried into the planet's Core.  :( Everything you do in life has an impact on you. Some things have smaller impacts, some have larger impacts but nevertheless they do impact you. They change you, however subtly! There is no risk free action and there is zero energy actions either. High stakes speculating or trading in the cryptocurrency market messes deeply with your head if done for a long time. Think about all the FOMO, constant stress, decision fatigues, dopamine hits when you are winning, sadness and panic when you are losing. The collateral of making a lot of money in something, then losing a lot in a scam, NFT, meme, something. The delusions you have to tell yourself that it is okay to lose since you made a lot of money initial and many other things.

All of these are changing your psyche for the worse, and they will leave a lasting imprint of damage in their wake.

Sources:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w11243
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36141519/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34152998/



4. Speculation and Trading are not for most people, DCA is vastly superior
My personal conclusion and view according to which I have always lived is that speculation and trading are not for most people. They should not do it at all. Whenever I have been asked by people to really speculate I never gave such responses. If they asked me what are my thoughts on the direction of Bitcoin's price today, whether it will go up or down I always said that I don't know and that I don't care. I meant it. Speculating to these markets reminds me on speculating on weather patterns. Should regular people ask themselves each day, why is it rainy today or why is it sunny today? Ridiculous waste.

Look at the proposed arguments here. It is clear that speculating and trading in these markets comes at a great cost, cost which are often hidden in order to delude yourself that you are spending time productively while you are mostly just distracting yourself and trying to become the lucky one. If no the lucky one then at least you hope to make a few bucks along on the trip. My conclusion is that DCA is impossibly superior to speculation and trading. Sure, your chances of making big money are diminished but for that tradeoff you forego all the costs that come with speculation and trading. With DCA you set it up and you can go and live your life peacefully. Remember, the most valuable currency that you have is time.


Imagine this. Someone comes to you to offer you an investment deal. He says it will cost you a lot of time even years of your life, it will cost you a lot in terms of your psychological well being, and the chance of failure is 99%. Would you take it? If you are smart, you would not. Please don't assume unrealistic exaggerated returns in order to justify a counterargument based on risk and reward disparity.


Please let me know what your thoughts are on this.  :)

When you’re not psychologically ready, you shouldn’t try and invest in cryptocurrency. The rewards disparity on the nature of crypto you’re investing into is there, but you should also know what you’re risking your money into. The percentage of failure of your investment varies depending on the type of crypto asset you’re investing into. Investing for long term as being termed the best form of investment, but if you’ve chosen the wrong cryptocurrency to invest into, a long term investment does not mean a profitable income in the long term. Chose wisely and be psychologically ready to take on the market volatility as you hold through your investment with patience and optimism. 100% reward is not guaranteed but with the best choice of crypto investment, you can always get the best and most rewarding profits in the long term.

You gotta trade for a side hustle not main income.
DCA is the only solid way to build your wealth. Trading is to scalp some money from the market and add it to your DCA weight.
Majority of people are losing in trading because majority of people aren't disciplined with their trades.

If they can keep low amount of money for trading and mantain DCA. I'm sure they will be successful easy.

Speculation is for everyone and just not limited to traders. I agree that DCA will help both investors and long term based traders still you cannot ignore the role of speculation along with DCA.

I mean, in my opinion, there would be no point of DCA in a year long bearish market; you may skip DCA for few months because it would greatly help to achieve better average-buying-price. So, even you are into DCA, I am sure that you still need speculations for ensuring that you are not dealing with a falling knife.

You can easily eliminate all the psychological factors when you plan for long term investment. DCA along with long term holding will help you to rid off all the blocking factors of a new investor.

I always assume that we are discussing about bitcoin and not about any altcoin or stocks or bond unless otherwise specifically mentioned.

You mean getting to trading and investing simultaneously? I am sure that most people do that. Because, long term holding is really boring hence people look for short term trading just to multiply their wealth. Honestly I am not into both because I lose more in trading than what I DCA at the given time frame.

You should had better asked the need for speculations instead of taunting its essence.
Just in case you don't know, speculations has a dynamic roles to play in the market which uproots enthusiasts optimisms towards adoption rate and as well influences market price in the upcoming.
Being aware that the market is volatile and unregulated, speculations serves as a driving force in price manipulations. While the bitcoin skeptics maybe full of criticism and mockery speculations that the market is not worth it, enthusiasts with positive mindsets believes in the worthwhile that it's a digital gold and so forth has outcomed a potential attributes that has given values to what bitcoin has attained up to date. We already got $100,000 from what we've anticipated based on speculations and we're Speculating for the least $180,000 before the year ends. Do you've problem with that?

Who exactly is psychologically ready? If that were the case, we would not be seeing so much stress and at times even people considering suicide because of catastrophic results of speculating in cryptocurrencies. People forget about these types of posts on social media, but they happened during the last cycle up to date.

Sure, but what does that mean in terms of time cost? Do you spend much less time on it? If you do, then do you realize just how much worse your already terrible chances get?

I love DCA.

Is that not a sign that the person should not do it instead of believing that they are better than most of the world?  :D

You claim it is for everyone, but you don't make arguments to support the claim.

What? I strongly disagree with this. Whatever your starting positions are, DCA buying during a bear market is the best! If you bought too high, it will lower your entry. If you are just new and have no crypto, you get a nice entry that is averaged across the price of the bear market year.

Primarily about Bitcoin, but also the wider crypto market. You can obviously still lose money speculating on Bitcoin, it is actually the main way how people lose money. Panicking in a crashing market is part of speculation. If you are not speculating, you can't panic as there is no reason to react.

I know why people speculate, that is the easier subject.

I don't get it and I don't agree at all. I don't speculate at all about the price and I am adopting Bitcoin as fast as I can get it. If you are red pilled, the fiat price is irrelevant. You always want more and primarily to keep so how is the dollar price relevant for me in this case?

I think that Bitcoin is one of the better things you could speculate on.  However, I always tell people that if you are going to buy Bitcoin as a trade, be prepared to hold onto it for four years in order to make money.  This is usually because people always ask about buying Bitcoin at the top of the four year cycle.  Funny enough, I try for years to get friends to buy Bitcoin, but the only time anyone ever does is when the cycle peaks and I tell them not to.  Then they lose money and spend years saying Bitcoin is a scam.  Just DCA is my advice these days.

It's easy said than done to be successful in trading. If you are a trader focus more on improving your trading skills and only trade with the amount of money that you can afford to lose. I don't see how discipline will help you make profit in trading when you don't know the right time to open and close a position in the market. It's better for people not to become gamblers through trading, rather, they should become long-term bitcoin investors.

Talking about the fiats here is a total digress towards what we've at hand. Speculations may have it market influence in communities towards adoption because those indifferent from the community will out of anticipation for what bitcoin may have in the future or usability be attracted to adopt it based on speculations influence. There're also those who're commonly risk bearers that'd only need guides on how to use it because their interests is already warming.
And besides you can't speculate realistically about bitcoin price when you don't have knowledge about it or not a user but if you do as a non enthusiasts, you're only acting as a skeptic unless you've proves if your speculations was against the reality of the assets.

They will because they are mostly influencers and not true traders or investors, many things we see on the social media are not the same thing that appears to be in real life with these people, market can come through any dimension and if we are not careful we will missed the whole idea and concept relying on these people, its time we begin to learn on being independent about how we speculate for the market since all the indicators are available for us to know how the market is performing before making any decision.

I highly agree on the point of number 4 that "Speculation and Trading are not for most people, DCA is vastly superior".  Not all people are gifted with analysis skills, besides it takes time to fully enhance one's capability to analyze the market.  Although anyone can speculate, only those who understand how the market work can give a logical speculation.  And yes not all people have knacks on trading, so to at least minimize losses, DCA is the way to go, especially if the investor is just a newbie in the field.

Of course DCA is the solution to those who do not usually buy Bitcoin when the price is at dip or during the bear market instead they wouldn't mind waiting till it's gets to peak that is when they would feel is right for them to invest but when the market goes on the reserve they started saying that they wouldn't had invested in Bitcoin that it's fake and the rest.
Your advise is what I usually dishes out to people who often meet me on the best time to accumulate Bitcoin.

This post primarily targets short-term speculators and day traders. A lot of retail folk have deluded themselves that they are traders just because they made a few trades in this high stakes high speed market. Speculating on Bitcoin using long-term perspectives is fine, that won't get you to spend that much time on it. Who cares if the price went down 5% today if you are looking at 4, 8, 12 year horizon or even longer? It is a pointless use of time to even look at the daily price.

The data shows that almost nobody is a successful trader except professional, because of that these general statements on trading skills are useless. The last part of your post is good, that is also part of my point here. Stop speculating, DCA and HODL long-term. Easy road to victory.

How many people actually care about realistic speculation though? All I see is people who want to be analysts but are as correct as a random coin toss.  ;D

This market is very crazy, and it never stops. There is nothing like it. I would not suggest most people to even try trading.

If a person has a very active and full life, there is simply no room for the time investment that is required to have any chance of becoming a successful trader. I've heard stories of plenty of people who were initially successful and lost most of their gains later down the road. This indicates that they were deluded about their success. For most the gains were not a result of skill, they were a result from being in the right place at the right time by chance.

I can really see how people invests in crypto and get scammed, some ignorantly invests in shitcoins that leads to the lost of their funds after a dump of the coins in the market cap while their intentions was to invest in Bitcoin but got mislead due to their lack of knowledge and ignorances and after on they says the entire crypto markets is a shit.

Ndabagi01 is telling the right thing and I wonder why you are being deceptive to yourself. That is by the way, no investment is risk free and Bitcoin as an admirable asset isn't exemptional via it effects of volatilities on the aspect that future price can not be predicted. So in other to stay healthy and successful investor in Bitcoin or any other crypto, you must be psychologically balance so where you don't have to panic on the approach of the volatilities so that you don not also think bitcoin is such a get quick rich and expect to become rich overnight after investing. However, to tell you, the essence of the psychological is to control your emotions so that you do not make decisions that will disrupt our disorganized your plans.


Get it right, side hustles are other means to earn more incomes aside your major source of income. So you have to act with caution by not giving all of your funds to it neither your time.

So you should always trade with funds affordable to loose and create a trading timeframe after you have attended to other necessary things because you do not have to trade when your mind is divided with other things or spending your whole time on it knowing it risks is not Worth reliable to your short and long term needs.

When we talks about speculation we are talking of things we don't see but yet believe that it would certainly or likely to happen with the predetermined given time or period, it could years to come provided it results to what we feels or closely to we thinks about it then we can say that is speculation or speculative.
When people invest or hold big shares of Bitcoin what they do is to give hope to people who is around them, make all sorts of post and noise just to attract people and make them think everything gonna happen as it's planned and for sure that would stir up the market making the price to rise above expected.

In reality, no one is psychologically certified ready before trading but everyone would think they're before then. Trading is practical and not some kind of theories. One has to be in the game to test ones psychological readiness. Only those who've seen it all trading, the good and the bad sides of trading but still don't give up are those who are ready.

About speculation in trading and the idea that it doesn't help much (if I got you right on that one?), we ought to know that speculation isn't only a trading thing. It cuts across everything we do as humans, ranging from household stuff to health, jobs/business. It's a planning mechanism.

You aren't alone in this. I've loved ones like that too. They never seem interested in crypto investments until there's excitation in the market and they start running like headless chickens, seeking help. Bear season is the opposite of that. It breeds calmness that's laced with anxiety as many self acclaimed experts are humbled by the failure of their predictions and what they thought was a holy grail.

I agree with this, but those people are not the target of my post. Only partially at a later point where I describe how people lose money after initially getting successful, believing that the success was the result of skill when in reality it was the result of luck.

I don't mean to imply that all speculation is bad or that there are not benefits from some speculation, but my view is that short term speculation is very damaging to most people. Long term speculation and positive views on the price and future developments of Bitcoin for sure attract more individuals to it. This does not change the situation regarding the obsessive viewing of charts daily, it remains very damaging for most people.

Yes, most people are not ready for most things that they engage in at first. I don't think that avoiding cryptocurrencies before you are psychologically ready is sound advice, we just don't live in that kind of world. Most people should not be driving cars if we were to go by this, yet most people have licenses and are terrible drivers.  ;D

Yes, I mostly refer to retail people who come here thinking that trading is a holy grail. This can also apply for others who are a bit seniors in crypto. I have seen individuals speculating on everything, riding all the waves but eventually never getting anywhere. Being glued to the screen for so many hours every day and not getting anywhere after 5 to 10 years is really a bad trade off.

No takers? The thread is too difficult compared to most price threads in this board? :'(

Speculation in bitcoin is basically gambling on what you think will happen without really controlling anything, people spend hours on charts and indicators trying to predict the next move but the truth is the market doesnt care about lines on a screen. speculation can give a short win but over time most traders get drained because the game is stacked against them, fees, emotions, leverage and bigger players who move the market at will.

Holding is different because you are not trying to outsmart every candle, you are simply betting on the long term value of bitcoin as a whole. every time someone posts hype or panic, the crowd reacts and that alone pushes the price one way or another, and the cycle repeats. the big holders know this and they use speculation and noise to shake out smaller players. So the real question is not if speculation works, because sometimes it does, the real question is if it’s worth all the stress compared to just holding through cycles and letting bitcoin do what it has always done. when you zoom out, speculation looks like noise, holding looks like the signal.

I don’t think technical analysis is useless I just think too many people do it incorrectly. Technical analysis and indicators such as moving averages work well when you zoom out.

Try using a moving average or even simple horizontal support/resistance lines and see if you have more success on the lower or higher timeframes? You will see that the higher time frames are more accurate and there is more profit to be made.

These days too many people day trade and it’s what causes them to lose money while trading stocks or crypto. Or pretty much any other commodity asset.

You get it! The reason that some people get things correctly sometimes is simply because pretty much every single possible movement was predicted by someone. This does not mean that their indicators worked, it only means that they were lucky. For indicators to really work they have to work consistently, and in that case people would be getting extremely rich from them all the time. This practically never happens with perhaps a few outliers in the entire history of market analysis.

Reading Bitcoin books would be much better than spending every day watching charts.

Did you read my thread fully? It does not matter what analysis you use or what indicators you use, the same arguments apply. Even if you are quite skilled in using them all it does is slightly improve your chances. All the negative consequences still remain.

Those who might say technical analysis does not work will be the ones doing it wrong. Technical analysis is the base of trading not only with cryptos but with stocks and forex as well. Technical analysis will teach us how to understand the market momentum and when and where to exit or enter the markets. Basic support and resistance levels are quite common but they still work for me.

Yes, we can't expect the same for lower timeframes as there will be a lot of manipulation and wick formations but for higher timeframes, the levels have never stopped amusing me.

Day trading is getting more riskier as a number of people are thinking of it as a get rich quick scheme. This will only swallow there portfolios and end up being left with nothing. Long term or mid term traders are the ones who are making profits after properly analysing the markets.

It can't work because it is flawed in the idea. How could it work? For it to work it means that it if you use it correctly it must always anticipate the right result. If someone can anticipate the market movements consistently they would be the richest person in the whole world. Either technical analysis does not work for markets or nobody in the world knows how to do it correctly. Which is it?

You want to say that analysis on longer timeframes is more accurate than lower timeframes? I agree, but I have also seen charts break TA on those too at least temporarily. It can't be the case that every time the chart does not correspond to the analysis that the analysis was wrong. It must also mean that the methodology that is the process of analysis is flawed too.

If traders can admit that their analysis only provides them answers about which outcomes are more probable, then surely overtime more of them should profit rather than not, yet it is likely true that mistakes are many times made so that a decent number of traders are either getting their analysis wrong or they are applying their own trading wrong.

There is a bit of a problem to proclaim that attempting to trade and/or analyze shitcoins is the same as doing so in bitcoin, even though shitcoins are correlated to bitcoin, so it is a bit problematic to be proclaiming that they are all the same, and to suggest that there is such a thing as "crypto" without differentiating bitcoin from shitcoins.

Many of us also have assessed bitcoin as likely to be trending up in the long term, yet it remains problematic to trade it in the short term without accounting for that it is most likely to be ongoingly trending up.  So, perhaps that the best that a bitcoin trader is to do is to attempt to hedge himself against some of the upside while mostly staying in bitcoin as an investment rather than as a trade... Maybe 90%-ish investment and then perhaps fucking around with 10% or less in trading, and not necessarily to get a profit, but just to hedge the downside within reasonable parameters.

It seems difficult for any trader to beat the performance of investing into bitcoin, especially over a couple of cycles or more, and sure there could be some exceptions where a trader has done better than the long term bitcoin investor, but not too likely.

Let me give an example, and say that in late 2013 and early 2014, a person may have had assessed bitcoin as a good investment, inspite of not knowing if the BTC price was at the top of the price range or not, so this person started investing into bitcoin at $200 per week, and so he invested for 11 years at that rate and ended up investing $118k and accumulating about 91.5 BTC (https://dcacryptocalculator.com/bitcoin/?start_date=2014-01-01&finish_date=2025-04-11&regular_investment=200&currency_code=USD&investment_interval=weekly&exchange_fee=2).  I have a hard time considering that a trader with the same budget could have had beaten the guy's performance by merely accumulating $200 per week of bitcoin for 11 years.

Sure there could have been at some point that even the accumulator might have had identified that bitcoin moves in approximately 4 year price waves, so then there might have had been some consideration of selling some in 2017 when the BTC price was going crazy and also in 2021 when the BTC price was going up a lot.  Whether the selling of BTC on the way up was with an intention to buy back cheaper or maybe just with an intention to hedge, just in case the BTC price dropped...

Even an investment of $200 per week would have resulted in most of the BTC stash already accumulated by January 1, 2017, with $31.5k invested and about 81k bitcoin accumulated (https://dcacryptocalculator.com/bitcoin/?start_date=2014-01-01&finish_date=2017-01-01&regular_investment=200&currency_code=USD&investment_interval=weekly&exchange_fee=2).  So perhaps there could have had been some desire to prepare to sell some of the bitcoin in 2017 if there was any ability to contemplate that the BTC price would go from less than $1k per coin and up to $19,666 in 2017... so there could have had been opportunties to sell and buy back, but also difficulties in assessing since so many folks were not really sure how far the 2017 price was going to go, even many of the analyzers had failed in that year, but those who mostly hung onto their coins did O.k. so long as they could get through the UP of 2017 and the down movements in 2018 and the other arguably ambiguous up and down price moves that took place in 2019 and 2020.

My point is that even if short term trading may be too risky, maintaining a view that the BTC price was mostly trajectored upwards was not a bad way of making sure to continue to accumulate bitcoin and/or to hold on to any bitcoin accumulated with thoughts of long term time horizons in mind.

Some people have high risk tolerance, while others have low risk tolerance. Risk lovers would never prefer a peaceful life.
I don't believe that DCA is some sort of long term financial panacea. DCA comes with the implication that the BTC price will keep growing forever(which might be true, at least in the next 5 years or more). Nobody knows how Bitcoin will perform after 10 years.
Yes, there are speculators on the crypto markets and most of them lose money. We also know that most gamblers lose money, but the gambling industry is thriving and the amount of new gamblers is growing. The same applies to the financial markets. Most newbie traders believe that they will succeed at timing the market and making a ton of money in no time. The amount of greedy and delusional people around the world can never be underestimated.
Dollar cost averaging is the safe and boring option, but day trading is anything else but boring.

Yeah. You got it.  So, the thing is, most folks lose money because they are after that thrill, not really the profit. It's why gambling is such a big deal, even if the odds are always against you and you're probably gonna lose. I think it's the same with day trading.  You are not just trading to earn, you are doing it for that buzz. When you win a bit, you get that happy feeling, making you think you're clever. It's addictive! But when you lose, you just wanna make up for it, so you take bigger chances.  It's a psychological trap, really.

With a working strategy. If you are careful with low amount in risk but you got no winning strategy, it will get to a point where you will be stocked in losses because you will definitely enter a wrong trade that will drain your capital and get you confused. But with a good strategy, you will understand the waters and the volatility areas. Trading isn't just about using low amount because you are afraid to lose because loses will surely come and then DCA will be difficult when you are not making consistent profit.

With the point of this discussion, all the features in the talk are relevant and have their own attributes to how it influences the markets and also the peripherals to how traders and investors can benefit out of it. Where the challenges lies is individuals risks management and greeds because if you're not getting it right, the outputs will always result to lost. We also can't associate trading to gambling even though price are unpredictable. Perhaps if you're well studied to understand the areas that influence the market price in the real world and also adheres to your risks managements, you'll be in the most chances to make profits after on than your looses because trading itself has strategies that can bring success while risks can't be buried beneath.
I'd say speculations might not be relevant to drive investors accumulating plans, instead, speculations would rather optimize your foresight and awakens your anticipations or drives your emotions towards what's possibly to occur in the future.

From my observations very few talk about it like this which I would consider very nuanced and correct. Most just say the kind of stuff that I responded to, either the analysis gives you the right answer or you did it wrong. Others which are perhaps fewer in numbers like me say that analysis does not work but I mean in the same sense as you. It does not tell you what is going to happen at all, it gives you probabilities if you did it correctly and one must always remember that things can go wrong because of external events.

You could see it a bit differently. If the analysis does not work for Bitcoin it for sure won't work on shitcoins, so from that I say wider crypto market. Shitcoins are extremely manipulated even the top ones but it gets worse and worse as you go down the ranking list.

Yes and I am trying to argue against this day trading. I attempted it a few times in the past and whenever I bought the price went down and whenever I sold the price went up. Inversely correlated as if by magic, I was worse than Jim Cramer.  ;D

Probably less than 0.01% of traders managed that and there was a huge luck factor involved. Exactly my point! Day trading takes so much time and since you are very unlikely to beat the DCA why waste your life away at this futile quest?

Long term trend speculation is fine with me, that does not require so much time and is less likely to cause errors. I mean everyone who speculated that gold and Bitcoin would continue a long term upward trajectory at any point of time was correct.

I disagree, it's not the same with day trading. I can understand getting some shitcoin low cap token could be same as gambling, but day trading isn't. Not knowing anything about day trading is the problem, it's the ignorance and confidence somehow combining.

For some weird reason, people who have no idea about charts, about indicators, about patterns, think they can make so much from it because they saw some influencer on instagram and they think they can do the same. What happens as a result? They end up losing, and that's the problem. We have to realize this isn't okay, because if you have no idea about how to do this, then it's not gambling, it's ignorance, wilful ignorance. Learn how to do it properly, and it would be a good thing, not a gambling.

You are exaggerating a bit, davis196.

There is a bit of a presumption within DCA that the general BTC price trajectory is up, yet there is not a need for BTC prices to go up forever in order for DCA to be a prudent and/or practical approach to getting and/or maintaining a BTC position.

DCA allows an adjustment of how much position to take based on a persons cashflow situation and other personal particulars that surely involve incrementalism, yet can still be designed as whimpy or aggressive or some personally tailored point in the middle.

So for example if a person is DCA investing on a fairly regular basis over 4 years, then the average cost per BTC is likely to be in the ballpark of the 200-WMA, yet so far in bitcoin's history, the BTC spot price has been spending an overwhelming majority of the time in the ballpark, of 25% or more greater than the 200-WMA, so in that sense, so far in bitcoin's history the 200-WMA has been moving  up yet the spot price has continued to mostly stay at least 25% above the 200-WMA.

Sure, a person can invest into bitcoin longer than 4 years and keep buying and/or holding for longer than 4 years, so there is also a bit of a presumption that an investor would be (or should be) coming into bitcoin with a 4-10 year time horizon or longer in order to consider bitcoin as an investment rather than as a trade, so in that sense bitcoin investors would not necessarily become overly focused on price, even though everyone gets into investing in order to improve their life position by investing as compared with if he had not invested or if he had chosen to invest into something other than what he had chosen to invest into.


I cannot disagree with you about any of these points.  Many normal folks might feel that they are forced into some kind of a trading and/or gambling approach to their money, since their money is not holding value, so they become more desperate to figure out where to put their money to either increase value or at least to stop their money from losing value as quickly as it would lose value if it were kept in fiat.  So, when the money is not holding value, people become more desperate and status quo rich, financial/government institutions seem to get pleasure in keeping normal folks in such vulnerable statuses.  That is not to say that there are not good people working within various status quo systems, so in that regard many of us can come to feel that we are trapped into not knowing what to do, except something like bitcoin does seem to provide some ways in which some hope can be found, even though not even bitcoin is guaranteed to help any of us escape from already existing problematic fiat and debt based systems.


I understand that you are likely attempting to criticize folks for their over reliance and bad use of technical analysis, yet I doubt that it is helpful to reinforce the negative aspects of technical analysis and act as if everyone is failing/refusing to account for their technical analysis as probabilities, since an overwhelming majority of the population is not trained in figuring out probabilities, and even in the real world layman's way of speaking we tend to communicate in terms of absolutes rather than probabilities.  Frequently it is more convenient to just give our base case view as if it were going to happen rather than going into nuances, even though surely, if we sit most people down, they are likely going to agree that an overwhelming majority of future outcomes are based on probabilities rather than absolutes, even though some of the probabilities are more guaranteed, such as the sun coming up tomorrow has a very high likelihood of happening, even though it is not guaranteed, yet it still seems to be better to talk about it as a certainty so that we don't get too bogged down in minority scenarios that are not likely to happen anyhow.


Fair enough.


It is very tempting to trade, just because we can.  Some folks will move their coins from exchanges so that it makes it difficult for them to sell in order to purposefully put a barrier up for themselves.


You keep mentioning day traders, but there are day traders and swing traders. I have not been differentiating, since trading can happen on a variety of levels, so for example some folks try to catch the cycle wave, or maybe some folks invest into bitcoin because they are saving up on a down payment on a house, and so there can be levels in which trading might overlap with investment, and we might argue about if someone is trading or investing.

I personally like to suggest that a person needs to have at least more than a 4 year time horizon to not be a trader, but also I even like to proclaim that even a 4-10 year time horizon for the investment might turn it into a trade unless the reason to have a 4-10 year time horizon is for age and/or health reasons, so even my own definition of investment has become a bit strict in terms of how most people are thinking about the reason that they are in bitcoin and/or how they might get out of bitcoin, since I am largely devolving into framing bitcoin as a life time investment, with a suggestion that once a person is into bitcoin there is likely no reason to get out of it, so then either price based or time based sustainable withdrawal becomes the way to deal with a bitcoin investment in order to mostly keep bitcoin as a lifetime investment rather than as something that is got into and/or out of unless there is some solid reason such as health or age that might cause some need to deplete the principle and to spend all of the bitcoin prior to death and/or incapacitation.


Fuck gold.

Bitcoin has been eating gold's lunch, and is likely to continue to eat gold's lunch, even though gold has been experiencing some recent bounce in its price..

https://www.longtermtrends.net/bitcoin-vs-gold/

Bitcoin is in the neighborhood of 1,000x better than gold, even though currently bitcoin's market cap it ONLY in the ballpark of 1/9th that of gold's.

Sure, there could be some folks who are already accustomed to investing in gold (even physical gold), yet I see no justification to keep any more than 10% the size of one's bitcoin allocation in gold, and even 10% might be too generous.


You think that normal people can train their way into being able to be profitable in trading and that trading is a good use of time for normies to figure out how to earn an income or to supplement any income that they already have?

What about if normies can figure out how to earn an income, and then to put extra money from their income into bitcoin, like an investment?  Sure, those who are more passionate about bitcoin could try to figure out how to spend more time, energies and value into bitcoin, so that they are also trying to work in areas related to bitcoin, and surely there are folks who are trapped in their own geography and their relations and their jobs (or their lack of abilities to earn more income), so surely there can be limitations and challenges in regards to what might be available (or not available) to some folks in terms of income opportunities and/or possibilities.

Find me one trader who knows these things and has outperformed a DCA strategy in the last decade. If you can't, then I don't get your argument. It is like arguing that rain is always purple but you've never seen purple rain in your life. Why?

You really believe this? My experience is the exact opposite of this. The deeper I go down with a person the more I realize just how superficial their knowledge is. Usually they don't know much, especially people who consider themselves crypto traders or whatever.

Temptation is not an issue if you are a fast experience based learner. Many people can't control themselves at all and in that case the example that you mention does help a lot. In my case I gave up very quickly, it just annoyed me too much.

Of course I have, because this thread is targeting many people who are glued to the screen trying to be traders. I don't think swing traders are relevant to this criticism as long as they are doing this on long horizons such as those trying to catch the cycle waves. Still one must also always recognize that there are risks with that too. One bad cycle trade could wipe out a lot of past gains.

Good points and a good view. Bitcoin as a life time investment. I do like how that sounds and it goes along with what I personally plan to do. I don't see a reason to ever get out fully, it just does not make any sense. At $500k or $1m I would like to buy some assets to reduce costs and generate cash flow. Other than that I don't need to sell ever. I think a lot of people will be surprised by Bitcoin's price performance in the future. It has always been underestimated, very few expected it could reach $100k if you go at least 2 cycles back or more. Most people calling any future maximal price are likely to be wrong than not. The power of hard money in a extremely inflating world, the effects compound in so many ways.

I am not advocating for gold though, I just gave an example other than Bitcoin that goes along with what you said. You can pick any other example that you see fit.

I would rather presume people are intelligent rationale (and even with mixed emotional motivations) actors rather than presuming everyone is retarded - even if they are not able to articulate their motivations or their views or the world or why they are acting in the way that they are acting...  ... Sure, some folks get sucked into wrong theories, and many of us studying bitcoin have come to realize that various aspects of the fiat and debt based systems have created a lot of bad incentives for folks in a game that is rigged - at least rigged in regards to the money being ongoingly debased and also rigged in the way that some players are able to advantage disproportionately as compared with others.. so yeah, a lot of folks are sucked into gambling and trading and even spending their money as soon as they get it on stupid stuff, since the money does not hold value.

A similar thing is true with Gresham's law.  People may well have hardly any clue what the fuck Gresham's law is, but they will likely follow it, which means that they spend the less valuable assets first and they save/guard the more valuable assets, which causes market dynamics in which the money will flow into the most valuable of assets/currencies - even if there might be various ways that governments and/or banks will create false incentives or obstacles to force a choosing of using and/or holding inferior assets/currencies.


Sure, there are a lot of folks who will come to believe that trading can get them to a better place as compared with investing, so they may well end up screwing up their own situation by losing focus into a world of trading rather than focusing on persistent, consistent, regular, ongoing and perhaps even aggressive buying of bitcoin within their means.. .and/or realizing that it may well take 4-10 years or more just to build up their bitcoin holdings to a decently large enough place, and that trying to trade is not likely to help them to get to their prefered destination in a quicker way.


I might have fallen into the wrong conversation, then, and surely  it can be difficult to figure out where to draw the line between the kind of folks you (or behaviors) that you are criticizing as compared to the kind of portfolio management ideas and/or practices that you might consider acceptable and/or reasonable.. since the longer term traders are not necessarily looking for a short term flip.

I will agree that it becomes more complicated if we start to consider the 4-10 year holder as a trader who might also suffer from merely wanting to flip his bitcoin into dollars (even though he has a longer time horizon.)


My sustainable withdrawal thread  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5479482.msg63398357#msg63398357)attempts to address these issues, which is that I largely frame sustainable withdrawal in terms of price based sustainable withdrawal and time-based sustainable withdrawal.

The underlying idea is that none of us should be withdrawing from our bitcoin until we have reached overaccumulation status, and so then if we have reached over accumulation status, then there is nothing wrong with spending from within the overaccumulated amount.

So for example if a guy had been investing for 10 years, and he had a income that started out at around $25k per year 10 years ago, and ended with an income of around $40k per year (currently), so by the time he got to his current income of $40k per year, he started to consider that if he were going to quit his job and completely live off of his bitcoin, then he would prefer his bitcoin to be able to sustain him at an annual income of at least $80k, so that he would consider that he would have enough of a cushion so that he would not be worried about whether he had enough bitcoin or that he had quit his job too soon.

We can look at my bitcoin value assessing tool, and we can see that if a guy had at least 15.1377 bitcoin right now, then he could sustainably withdraw at $80k per year (https://bitcoindata.science/withdrawal-strategy?U2FsdGVkX1+FS+i+zJ5MpTV2PRSmBJRK3SPjirhVoAMxm+eOPMLLKCZ0jyV+jgpXEMBxRU1s83oA8r70deQWFg==), including that he could give himself a 7% per year raise (in dollar terms).. and so he could do that forever by starting out with a current bitcoin quantity of 15.1377.

We can also see that if our hypothetical guy had started investing into bitcoin around September 2015 at $100 per week, within about 8 years, he would have had invested right around $42k, and he would have had accumulated right around 21 bitcoin, which largely leaves him with close to 6 BTC more than what he had calculatee to be his minimum number of BTC to constitute his desired income of $80k per year.

He can spend within the overaccumulated quantity of nearly 6 bitcoin, and never go below being in overaccumulated status as long as he is spending within the overaccumulated bitcoin so that the value of his bitcoin is on average going up faster than the rate that he is spending from it, which means that he can accomplish such sustainable withdrawal perpetually....

Even if he were to want to use the 21 bitcoin as his base valuation of his BTC holdings, then he will see that with that quantity of bitcoin, he is able to perpetually withdraw at $111k per year, including 7% per year increases in the cash value (https://bitcoindata.science/withdrawal-strategy?U2FsdGVkX19PCzYR9et9dw08+xjEUSUVX3UEGyaQVKSnQFSkmGbLFEIatbGN4OjF/mRpURnvI+7jzEAIUwG9yg==).


Sure, we sell at spot price, but we can figure out systems to sustainably withdraw in either or both of the price based and time based sustainable withdrawal systems that I discuss in my thread.. and yeah, for sure, each of us has to make sure that we are making our calculations correct so that we do not end up withdrawing our stash down below overaccumulation status, and I use the 200-
WMA to make such measurements, and so far in bitcoin's history the 200-WMA has only been going up, yet if we are worried about the valuation of our stash and if we might be withdrawing too much, we can withdraw at lower levels to make sure that our bitcoin continues to grow at least at the rate that we are withdrawing from it.
 

Since BTC spot price is quite variable, I project the 200-WMA out (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5376945.msg65653923#msg65653923) with an expectation that it is going to continue to diminish in its  rate of upward growth, and since we cannot really determine the future, I have been plugging updated numbers into my projection of the 200-WMA every 6 months, and of course if the spot price goes  up more then it will have an upward dragging effect on the 200-WMA, and then same is true if the BTC spot price does not go up as much then the 200-WMA will not move up as much, either...


Bitcoin is a paradigm changing technology, so there is nothing really to compare it to.. unless we take into account the s-curve exponential curve.  Gold is a mature asset, and even if we pick some commodities or property or rare paintings, we cannot use some of those items as currencies, so there are no comparisons, unless we want to compare shitcoins, which shitcoins are inadequate comparisons, too.

It is okay if dogmatism could light your paths in the crypto worid since we all have our unique form of reacting to the markets emotionally and of course our approaches of trying to actualize some valuables in the space since banks had failed and countries geographically and geopolitical economy sentiments has also drawn boundaries across. So the fiats are quite fading out while individuals haven the opportunity to hold their funds in the Bitcoin which has since of origin bren proven worth haven.

Infact, the system has been testnet and realistically reliable while it require risk bearers to go by its preferences on uncertainty.
So if you are optimistic, definitely your optimisms would serve as encouragement tool while anticipating regularly/irregularly towards what is likely to occur in the future leaving it "hopeful" for adoptors.

Therefore, if becomes obstinate, then must always be close-minded to fit-n the awakened era to foresee Bitcoin as a likelihood to restore our monetary values that is being shrink by economy sentiments.

Actually I agree with you, that kind of world view is optimistic and overall better than the alternative. Maybe I should have phrased my question a bit differently. Despite your belief in this, is this really what you have experienced in live? That more people are intelligently rational than retarded as you put it? Or have you had a different experience, but still hold to your view?

Maybe the mistake is mine, I could have adjusted the title before posting it. It would be more accurate to make it more focused on some types of speculation. The problem is that there are many subtypes to get a nice title that covers it with precision without it being too long. I tried to imply throughout the first post that my target is day traders and speculators. A lot of retail people did this in the last cycle because they were mostly at home because of the COVID stuff. If you think about it, the downsides that I mention are most strongly found with that kind of speculator. Those that trade based on overall trends like the cycle do not need to spend that much time on it when compared to this.

This is quite something and I have said this already in another thread where we are conversing. I have not encountered this strategy before and actually have not even heard anything similar from the people I have talked to over the years. That part in the middle proves the power of the DCA strategy and when combined with the strategy of withdrawing as you propose the situation becomes amazing. This is so much better than any of those Bitcoin-backed loans schemes because those tend to have a high interest rate even if you ignore all the risks that come with the potential bankruptcy of the credit provider.

I am sorry but it seems that we have completely misunderstood each other at this point. I was not making a comparison of anything. You were talking about a long term upwards speculation being a good move. I agreed and mentioned that basically everyone who speculated on Bitcoin this way at any point of time was correct. To this I added the example of gold too, but you can cherry pick many stocks or SP500 or whatever else you want. This does not mean I am making a comparison, I am merely giving examples where long term upwards speculation was proven to be correct.

What am I supposed to do?  Survey everyone?  I think that I am talking from experience, as far as I know.

Sure people do all kinds of dumb shit, and when I might be observing others, I might not understand why they do such dumb things, yet bitcoin gives us some remedies in terms of helping to create sound money and potentially better incentives, yet ONLY about 1% or perhaps slightly more of the world's population own any significant amount of bitcoin or understand what it is. 

Yes.  People have heard the word bitcoin, but they hardly have any clue what it is, even if we talk about bitcoin with them, including people who buy bitcoin might ONLY know bitcoin as number go up technology, and if number doesn't go up, then they might get discouraged in holding it.

So yeah people tend to want to gamble and to take chances when they should be more prudent, and part of the reason that they go down such paths is because the fiat and money based system is broken and sending out bad signals in regards to the rewarding of proof of work and/or proof of merit.


People tend to be busy attempting to lead a normal life, such as raising kids or whatever might be the case based on their life trajectory and choices that they make, and many folks do not have time to try to day trade, especially if they might be making a living in their regular job or maybe working towards getting into a job if they happen to be in their younger years and learning about the world or learning their trade.

Of course, if a young person comes up without very many resources and unable to find work, then he might get sucked into more desperate actions, and surely folks who lose their ability to earn might get sucked into trying to trade, too.

Just because we see a lot of traders in forums like this, it does not mean that trading is necessarily representative of what people do or want to do, even though it gets a lot  of hype and there are even "influencers" trying to train folks to be better traders (for a fee of course).


I am not saying anything new, even though I am attempting to tailor the situation towards bitcoin.

Investment consultants have talked about sustainable withdrawal for decades, and they tend to use a 4% withdrawal matter, yet after I built my own tool I found that it is likely that bitcoin can sustain a 10% withdrawal rate as long as valuation is based on the 200-WMA.

Of course if we are withdrawing bitcoin based on spot price, then the calculations might end up going all over the place.

Part of the key is getting to a status in which you have enough bitcoin and/or more than enough bitcoin, and so once you get to that status, then bitcoin is likely going to continue to be a great way to live off of your investment, whether bitcoin is the primary source of income or if bitcoin supplements other income sources that a guy might have.

It can still take a guy a couple of cycles, even if he were to be investing 25% of his income into bitcoin, to be able to reach a status where he can start to live off of his bitcoin at either the rate of his current income or at a rate that might be at a higher target level.  Guys have to engage in some calculations to make sure that they are not withdrawing too much too soon and that they are staying within sustainable withdrawal amounts.

And of course, there is an ongoing expectation that the BTC price (even the 200-WMA) will continue to slow down or lessen in terms of its CAGR (compound annual growth rate), so we should be attempting to account for these kinds of matters when we are working towards building our bitcoin holdings and/or once we might start to expect to be able to live on the income (the appreciation) of our bitcoin.


Then that means that we largely agree on this point, even if we might express our agreement in different ways, no?

Accordingly we may well agree that:

1) Historically bitcoin has been the best performing asset.

2) There is no evidence that bitcoin is not going to continue to be the best performing asset, so it likely is good to stay invested in bitcoin.

and perhaps 3)  The future is not guaranteed, so even though bitcoin is and has been the best performing asset, there are still uncertainties in the world (and even in bitcoin's future), yet that does not mean we should not invest into bitcoin, but instead the uncertainty might justify that we don't pu all of our eggs in one basket.

I am likely taking you away from your thread since I am largely wanting to talk about bitcoin as an investment, and I give few shits about others wanting to trade or inclined to trade or gamble on either trading bitcoin or playing around with shitcoins, even though they do it, I would rather talk about best practices in regards to investing in bitcoin, and perhaps anyone who has inclinations to either trade bitcoin or gamble or involve themselves in shitcoins, then they should attempt to limit their exposure to such inferior practices to less than 10% of the size of their bitcoin investment.

Survey everyone, I'll wait here for you to complete the survey.  :D Just kidding, I wanted to know. Sometimes people stick to their beliefs contrary to their observations. Sometimes this makes very good sense, other times it is very bad. I just wanted to get your take on it and now it is clear.

I wonder if we have really cracked the 1% mark. I mean retained 1%. Surely based on exchange registrations we have cracked this number but I am interested in the retained number of users. Those who have not registered in the last run, bought, sold after the price was going down and ran away.

Things can be funny during peak bull run euphoria on this subjects. Locally people emerge who proclaim themselves to be Bitcoin experts or know someone who has always an Bitcoin expert. It could even be your taxi man. These people are among the group that knows the last.

I try to make the case here that these kinds of activities are much more worthwhile that losing your life glued to a screen, for most people anyway.

Sadly this is also why so many scams of all kinds work. Their desperation and lack of education relating to scammers and their methods pushes them into believing that they have found the next Bitcoin.

Perhaps not but I have not really seen this strategy being advocated in Bitcoin or crypto circles. With so many alleged investment and trading gurus around one would expect at least 1 of them to dig up an actually good strategy.  :D

I also see that there is a huge difference between withdrawing based on spot price and the 200-WMA when I click the button in the tool that you linked. I really want to see some data after the fact from someone. Let's say a person who has been following this strategy consistently for 5 or 10 years. It is very nice that the website offers you a historical simulation but still I would like to hear someone's personal story with data.

Further I would like to see a chart that kind of tries to estimate the future, like the depletion rate of your balance even though it would have a big speculative elements since we can't be sure of the 200-WMA values in advance. But it could also have cases like this one, so perhaps a bearish, bullish and conservative estimation of 200-WMA and then simulate BTC balance depletion and total money withdrawal in USD through time. It would be very interesting for me!

We are in agreement indeed, on all three points. On the third one I would like to add that in general I see that argument as deeply flawed. That the future is not guaranteed is not a valid excuse for not investing in Bitcoin because that argument can be used against anything. Why invest in anything at all since the future is not guaranteed? Very weak argument that has been historically used against it but it does not directly apply to Bitcoin. It could perhaps only be added as a caveat or a note when talking about these things.

Well yes we are diverging a bit, but I don't mind. It is much better to engage with posts like this than with some generic responses that I see in threads. I hope to see more content like yours from different users. Anyway you can make a case that any kind of strategy involves some degree of speculation even if it is a very tiny amount, so even this discussion can be argued to be fully on topic.

The problem some of us have today is greediness and without greediness I don't think that most of us won't know when invest large and small, for the aspect of DCA, an experience person will invest what it can afford to lose so that when the market goes against expectations it will not really affect the invest...but the problem that affect us that much is greediness, whenever you invest in cryptocurrency what we expect is huge profit and that is applicable to trading, especially someone who has not understand the scenario's of trading very well will think that the best option to invest in trading is to put whatever you have in it, my advice is that invest on what you can afford to lose even in DCA, ensure that you invest on what you can afford to lose, do not because of the nature of the market at the moment and invest above your plans.

Yeah... it can be difficult to measure the extent to which we might be over or under 1% of world-wide adoption, and even those who own bitcoin, might not really have self-sovereignty over it if it is on an exchange or owned through an ETF.. but it still might count for something of owner-like - especially to the extent that it is backed by actual bitcoin that is not being fractionally reserved and/or double/triple (or more) counted.

And, yeah, there are questions regarding the quantity that anyone holds and if it might be a meaningful part of their wealth and questions about if they hold it for any duration of time.. so surely if someone might be a current holder of 0.1 BTC, but then any kind of scare or temporary glitch in the market and such person sells - so in that sense number of holders based on any snapshot would be changing and yeah, maybe they don't count if they have not held for a long enough period of time.


A few years ago (it may have been in the summer of 2021), i was talking to one of my relatives, and he had become a recent entrant into bitcoin and shitcoins (mostly shitcoins) and he was calling himself a crypto influencer, and he had not even been involved more than a year.  I asked him about one of his shitcoins, and he said that he was planning on holding it "for life," and I was quite surprised, since I was trying to let him know that he is not investing, but instead trading if he is not willing to hold for many years, perhaps a cycle or two.

The next summer when I saw him, he had sold all of his shitcoins and bitcoin, and he was being a bit coy about whatever he was doing.. like he was not involved in any of it anymore.. so surely he did not have any stamina, and a bit embarrassing to try to talk with him, since he acts a bit like a know it all type, and that did not really work out for him very well in regards to whatever he was trying to do in "crypto," and he did not seem to understand the difference (in any experiential sense) between investing and trading.


People are in differing stages of their lives, and surely some attend university or trade school and others go straight into working with something lucrative jobs and other times with dead end jobs that are not always known to be dead end jobs, so sometimes there can be challenges for guys to get themselves into situations where they can save and/or invest.

Accordingly there is a difference between earning a living outside of investing or believing that you are going to earn a living (or gain income) from trading when there may or may not be a good income source to supplement that trading behavior, that might not work as well if money is needed to draw out of it to be able to pay for living expenses.

There could be ways to set up an income fund that just pays expenses (so takes a bit of capital), and then have other funds that are traded without touching the income fund... So like right now, if a guy wanted to have an income fund of $20k per year, [b=https://bitcoindata.science/withdrawal-strategy?U2FsdGVkX19pDL0+w8ot4pLkZ3KWZ+eGgl7Tw5eUdp2pysTVcyvTr9+xhPxI/dZTkJvMBRbo+j35iPVTdj619w==]he would likely need to have something like 3.79 BTC in such account in order to be able to draw $20k per year or  $1,666 per month from such account[/b].

There can be ways to make trading sustainable, but frequently there needs to be some way of supporting oneself with a fund that is not put at risk and then figure out ways to build the trading fund separately.  Like you suggest, it might not be a very good quality of life to be trying to build up a trading account.


I have heard some strategies that are similar to my own.. and some folks complain that mine is overly complicated since it focuses on bottom prices (such as the 200-WMA) to valuate holdings and action versus focusing on spot prices.

So surely guys use the spot price and use something like a 4% withdrawal rate, and I was doing something similar until I realized that using the 200-WMA was much more useful, and stock to flow (plan B) likes to use the 200-WMA too... but yeah, I might have come up with my own way of framing of the matter that can resonate, even though I still claim that it is not completely original, since it is a spin off from other  approaches that I have come across over the years.


It is likely that we hedge our future in various ways, and yeah when it comes to investing, we also likely hedge... since we can have base case scenarios and then various back up scenarios, and sometimes some version of our base case scenario plays out and other times we might enter into realms of our hedge.

You are right though that we have to take action, and we might have a lot of mediocre choices, yet surely many of us have concluded that bitcoin is not a mediocre choice, so in the sense that bitcoin has come along, we may well have gotten lucky to have such a choice in front of us, and still some folks still either remain on zero or way underallocated to bitcoin.  There is ONLY so much that any of us can do to convince others to include bitcoin in their path forward, whether their initial allocation is 5% to 25% or some other amount that they deem suitable.. .and for years, staying on zero has seemed to have not been a very good path forward, even though something like 99% of the world's population remain at zero or somewhere close to zero allocation into bitcoin.


Some people might start in bitcoin with a very timid approach, yet their timid approach could incentivize them to investigate more, and as they investigate more they become more and more aggressive with their bitcoin investment.. so even if these days I am recommending that guys try to get to 5% to 25% allocation into bitcoin, prior to 2020, I used to recommend that newbies shoot to get to a 1% to 10% allocation into bitcoin.  I upped my recommendation of an initial bitcoin investment target based on changed circumstances in the world, and sure bitcoin has grown since 2020, yet still bitcoin has not seemed to have had grown anywhere near the levels that it could have had grown.. It just takes time for growth to happen, even when world events seem to justify greater and faster growth, yet bitcoin remains a bit of a niche, even though the word bitcoin is better known since 2020 as compared to before 2020.


Several years ago (it might have had been around 2018 or 2019, after our 2017 price run up), I let a relative know that my holdings had gone up something like 78x and then corrected back down to ONLY around 25x, depending on the then ongoing price fluctuations between upper $3ks and $8k-ish.  My relative's response was a suggestion that I was being too greedy, and I should donate to the church, which I thought was ridiculous, since I had not even put a large amount of my networth (or my investment into bitcoin), yet still even if I did not put large amounts into bitcoin, the size of the holdings ended up growing quite outrageously... which caused me to be perceived as being greedy since I did not give the money away (such as giving to the church).

We have to find our own balances, even though some folks are going to make presumptions about us and/or about the purity of  (or lack thereof) our motivations.

There are greedy traders who want to use small capital to achieve large profits. When you trade bitcoin there is possibility of not making profits from it, people do believe that trading is far better than gambling with your funds, in attempt to end the say that trading is like gambling but the truth remains, trading comes with a probability of losing or winning, meanwhile bitcoin investors don't incur any loss even the dip is an opportunity.

For this group of people I would still count them. I acknowledge that self-sovereignty is not that easy, especially for groups like the elderly.

These people are a bit funny but also sad, they do come in many variations of this type though..a lot of people think they are geniuses with their shitcoins and when that ends up burning them they sell Bitcoin too and put it into the same category of scams. Unfortunate but nothing can be done about it really. You can fix some people that you meet in life as a person, but most you can't and the world definitely not.

This one is definitely not something that I would recommend because of the data that I have provided but also other studies. The odds are stacked against you, the failure rate is similar as with startup businesses. Many of these would never take the risk of opening a business but somehow marketing tricks them into believing that they can make it by trading when the risk is the same or even worse!

Yes, I would consider it more sensible to take the risk with this if you had other sources of income. Still I would limit the involvement until or if it works out really well, only then would I consider it worthwhile to invest more time into it. Really very few people in the world should try to do trading as a career.

Complicated ??? Your strategy is elegantly simple, it is almost beautiful.. I find it very strange that someone could call it complicated.

Strong agreement here, I actually wrote a response that would be appropriate for this part before I read it. There is only so much that one can do and over the course of our lives we will only manage to convert so many people. Some don't get it. They didn't get it at $100, they didn't get it at $1000, $10k, $100k and they won't get it at $1m or $10m or more. There will always be an excuse that they will have for it instead of simply admitting that they don't get it!

The gradual increase makes perfect sense to me. Imagine if we reach the point where the world is on a Bitcoin Standard, obviously we won't recommend newbies to allocate 1% into Bitcoin. :P I just tell people to adjust your expectations. Whether something will work out financially does not determine whether it is a good idea or not. Life is not that simple.

Herewith I want to say the following. Is putting money into Bitcoin a good idea? All the data points to that it is a great idea and this is with putting aside any philosophical or practical usefulness of decentralization, freedom, self-sovereignty. We just consider financial data and economics. Does that mean you will profit off of it or that its continued rise is guaranteed? No. Speaking from some point in the future.. If you did not make a profit on Bitcoin, does that mean your past decision to invest in it was a bad idea? No!

If you adjust your expectations and understand the world the correct way, nothing can go wrong here. If things don't work out, sure you lose some fiat but you took the best decision possible at this point in time. I mean what else would you put your money in??...In ancient Japan there was once a very wise sage who said something roughly translated to... there is no second best.  :)

Yesterday was a case example against speculating, especially using leverage and it was also a strong case against TA. If short-term technical analysis worked it would never get defeated through external shocks. This market simply depends too much on world externalities.

While you are right that it wasn't a day for TA, it was still just a singular in its existence. To be fair, we may even say few days, not just one day but in general most days are TA days, and rarely we get to see days like these, so it should not be really the industry standard expectation of it. Keep doing TA I would say, because if you stop doing that, then what else do you have?

Yes, on those days like yesterday it would look like you made a mistake, but in all other days if you are doing fine then you should be making a good return. Obviously takes a long time to learn and be good at it, but you will have to take some time. If you study hard enough and learn then you are going to gain a lot more from it for sure.

The day was perhaps shattering some records but it is not singular in its existence. There have been many different wipe outs of this kind in the current and last cycle. You can't say that TA works because it works some of the time or some days and others it does not. Either TA does work or it does not, it is a yes or no position. For it to work then it must always work. In the very least I have proven the claim with sources and we can observe from data that short term TA does not work at all. It is just guessing and if enough people believe it it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Long term TA has a chance of working but even for that there exist cases where it may not work. If only a small set of TA works then how can we state that TA works? Imagine saying Bitcoin works but every other day it does not work?  :D