I doubt that the whole concept of storage of value and investing is not as contradictory as you are making it out to be.

If you actually bought some coin rather than treating the matter theoretically (as a detached no coiner), you might come to understand the bitcoin situation a little bit better.

Perhaps?

Perhaps?

You said crypto and you said bitcoin.


You are actually referring to bitcoin or some shitcoins?

In any event, sounds like guy might be over-invested and does not read WO... or maybe the guy does read WO and his name is BMB, or Rosewater or some variation?



#metoo

It seems that your elaboration is largely correct, yet it should be considered that BTC prices tend to go up and down a quite a bit, but largely UP in the longer run.   So in that regard, it might just be better to merely buy and hold, but if you feel more comfortable employing some downward risk strategies, then you can be better off, and even have more bitcoin when the price does finally go up.  Of course, you have more bitcoin and less cash, but the value of your bitcoin is higher, so ultimately it still seems to me that your overall portfolio is stronger if you attempt to prepare your portfolio for either price direction - while presuming that in the longer run, BTC prices are going up (even if it takes 5 years or longer to accomplish such UP based on peaks and troughs that we are used to experiencing in bitcoin).



Hopefully, higher is the case with bitcoin, and surely we are investing in a risky and pioneering asset, so maybe part of the contribution to the space is appreciating that BTC might not go up, and in that sense, you end up losing money on your investment, even though you had invested in something that you had believed to have a positive future price potential.



I don't recall talking or reading about mark to market in this thread, so it might be a conceptualization that is lacking in this thread.   Surely, I am open to whether it applies to what we are doing, or whether we might be helped by further discussing it.  I think that whatever d_eddie has been doing has been profitable for him, and will likely continue to be profitable, whether it fits with some other kind of accounting theory or not.



I have my doubts regarding HODLing being the "best" strategy, even though it seems to be the easiest.  One of the most inevitable dynamics of bitcoin is that it ongoingly experiences decently large sizes of volatility.  So, engaging in various trading practices could cause both volatility insurance and an ability to profit from something that is nearly inevitable.  Of course, life might be less stressful and it might take less work to merely buy BTC and HODL BTC, and even if a large number of folks are likely to lose money and time from their trading efforts, there can still be more solid systems (and perhaps d_eddie has found one) that allows for greater returns (even accounting for fees and time spent) from employing such system rather than merely buying and holding.



Edit also:
You better be ready for another matter that has shown to be nearly inevitable.   

Of course, I don't short bitcoin, but I do sell small amounts of BTC on the way up.   It seems to me that shorting can be employed merely to amplify the system that I already employ; however, such amplification is not so great as to overwhelm the longs including either not using stops, or putting the stops out so far as to have less chances of being manipulated out of the position.

Accordingly, the longs might be something like 10 bitcoin, but the shorts would be less than 2 bitcoins and perhaps even frequently less than 1 bitcoin.  In other words, the shorts are just a small fraction of the longs, and end up providing a kind of insurance against the longs, even while, overall, it would be more profitable for the BTC price to go up, rather than down.   

So, because of dickering around with shorts, there is NOT as much profits from when BTC's price finally does go up, but at the same time, profits are made when BTC's price goes down in a much greater way than merely selling a few BTC on the way up and buying back at lower prices.

There is a lot of value to attempting to invest in something that you have some level of comfort, and even if you are attempting to learn along the way - given that none of us should get paralyzed by attempting to study too much.


I understand that if you are not ready for anything else, then you are not ready.  I can understand why you might keep higher percentage in cash, if you have not invested in anything else (such as index funds or anything like that), but your ratios still do seem to be kind of high... 33% bitcoin and 66% cash - something like that.  Whoaza.




Well, yeah all fiat is largely depreciating, but some fiat depreciates faster than others, and the dollar has been  pretty strong for the past 10 years or so, which kind of has surprised people, but it is what it is. 



I kind of wonder how you do it.  When I first started buying/accumulating bitcoin in late 2013, and through 2014, I established  my bitcoin buying budget based on how much cash I had in hand and how much cash that I anticipated for cashflow coming in for a six month period.   Then I extended the buying/accumulating for another 6 months with largely the same budget as the first 6 months, and I figured that by the end of 2014, I would have about 10%-12% of my total investment value in bitcoin, and largely I met those targets.

After 2014, I thereafter did not feel any kind of compelling reason to accumulate BTC beyond mere DCA with my then incoming cashflow.  In other words, I was not allocating more to BTC (by taking from my other investments) but instead just regularly investing with excess incoming cashflow.    That second phase lasted through most of 2015, but I had thought that I had reached my target.

You should be in a kind of stage that you have reached your maintenance target (even if you don't really feel like you have enough in BTC).  You have a floating balance of fiat that you keep in on reserve in case the BTC price dips more - which seems to be a kind of a 50/50 situation now..... even if I might be thinking that there is a bit of a bullish favoritism, but even if that bullish favoritism were to be true, in mind, such bullish favoritism, remains only so slight.   So really I don't feel like I have any kind of confidence, either direction, at least in the very short term, but a year from now, we should have higher prices than we have today.. but I remain only slightly confident in that, too.

Back in the good ole days, having your own day was like a blemish on your records.  A character flaw. Like the scarlet letter. 

Now-a-days, having your own day is almost like a reward.  A perk.  An entitlement.

My have times changed in these here parts!!!

Let's just clarify that this hypothetical is not about mindrust, because mindrust has subsequently clarified (somewhat) that his ratios are quite different than the above scenario - and I had gotten confused in considering that the only way that mindrust would have reasonably had $100k or more in cash would be if he had $500k in BTC... which mindrust had shown me to be wrong in that speculation....

So in some sense, I am all mixed up about what would be reasonable because he seems to be describing a whole different set of circumstances in which a person might chose to invest only in BTC and fiat and not have any other significant or meaningful investments.  Sure, such a strategy could be made to be reasonable, but I had kind of presumed that mindrust had other investments (and seems to be that I was mostly wrong).  By the way, mindrust seems to be more in the territory of $60k value in BTC and $100k+ value in cash, so surely his situation seems to be a bit more skewed in favor of cash, currently...

I guess ultimately each guy (or perhaps gal) is going to have to figure out his/her balance, and in a hypothetical situation of $500k in BTC and $100k in cash we might want to get an approximate idea of the cost basis of the BTC in order to figure out a strategy for the $100k that is in cash.  In any event, when we are referring to these kinds of investible cash reserves, I am kind of assuming that there is other cash that is available to cover 6 to 18 months worth of expenses (including possible emergencies), yet just knowing how much a guy has right at this time, does not give us enough information, unless we presume that he has his 6 to 18 months covered which might end up presuming some kind of assurances of how much cash flow is ensured to be coming in during that time (and some people vary more than others in regards to how certain is their cashflow and whether they would have back-up cashflow in case their primary cashflow sources were to dry up or somehow get interfered with).

I also have no real problems with play it by ear strategies.  So let's say that a certain amount of the extra cash is set for buying on dips (even with buy orders set), and another part of the cash has been scheduled into DCA projections over the next several months, there also can be circumstances in which another $3k comes into the picture because of some additional cash flow.  Then in those circumstances, if all the other monies are accounted for, I would thereby immediately plug the additional $3k into my existing strategy that has three parts a) buying on dips, b) DCA and c) immediate buying.  I personally would do equal thirds for each of those branches of my strategy.

So, for me, anytime that I am rethinking the amount of cash that I have available and reallocating that cash, I am similar in my thinking as you, Biodom, I never would employ a strategy that immediately invests the money, but instead I divide the money into my system, in which only a third of the money, at most would end up getting invested immediately and the rest is scheduled based on other system that I outline for myself falling into dips and DCA.



Possibly  we agree, Biodom.  I don't really consider investing in alts to be diversification because they are mostly in the same asset class as bitcoin, and therefore it is just adding risk upon your bitcoin investment to invest into the same area.  I know that some people want to consider alts differently, so that is their choice, but they should be attempting to recognize that the there is not a BIG difference from bitcoin, and therefore would not justify any kind of high percentage into them (10% at most in my thinking even though I could still accept more risky and crazy allocations that might go as high as 30% into such alts (aka shitcoins))



I agree that we are living in a bit of a dilemma, these days, and there are so many people who have written off traditional investments, so sometimes it can be hard to relate to that.  I do believe that bitcoin is accomplishing a lot of the same things as gold, but yeah it is possible to have a portion of value into gold, traditional stocks and realestate, like you said.  Ultimately, we likely have confidence that bitcoin is the better of the investments, even though risky, which likely causes us to put a lot less into any of those traditional investments that are of a different category from bitcoin.

Another dynamic that I understand is that when anyone is first starting to invest.  Let's say that they are in their early 20s or even in their late teens, and they are just leaving home, so they do not have a lot of money to invest.  I understand that in those circumstances, they might not diversify very much because they hardly have anything that they are working with. So they may start out by investing in one asset at a time and building their wealth and then adding assets after their wealth has crossed certain thresholds, such as going over $20k  or $50k or $100k.  Each person might figure out differing triggering levels that would cause them to make their diversification decision and take action upon their diversification decision and plan at their preset thresholds (which of course they can tweak those thresholds too, based on changing life circumstances and perhaps even changing views).

"We" haven't really been using Thursdays to their utmost effectiveness, so they could be made available, too.   

You'll thank me later.

Too bad that we could not get rid of you a bit earlier, fatty.   

I had guessed pretty close to your BTC size because you had largely provided it in your earlier posts   , and I added a little bit on to the earlier disclosed amounts to account for some passage of time.. including possibly projecting out.

Of course, you can do whatever you like in terms of your BTC allocations relative to other investments, and of course, the circumstances of guys are going to differ including based on: 1) their age, which surely could affect a) how many past opportunities that they may have had to invest in other assets, besides crypto and b) how much urgency that they feel towards their planning their necessities to liquidate (of course, younger guys might sometimes get impatient in wanting to get rich quick, but that is a bit of a different question) and 2) the cost of living in the area that they live - which also might end up affecting how much cashflow that they are able to generate, even if they were to possess amongst the best of skills.

I surely have a decent amount of sympathy for various perspectives including the fact that for some younger guys might NOT have ways to meaningfully and easily get into the investment of non-crypto assets, so accordingly, they end up investing all of their investible assets into crypto and keeping the remainder in fiat, which could be something that you are doing, mindrust, even though you are not diversifying amongst crypto because you just have bitcoin, and the other part is fiat... without any other meaningful investments in other asset classes

So, in that regard, I never really thought about fiat as an investible asset, so earlier (and frequently) when I suggested that early adopters into bitcoin should invest 1% to 10% of their investable capital into bitcoin, I am assuming the other 90% to 99% to have been invested in other asset classes, and surely I never really thought about fiat as being one of those asset classes - except upon further reflection, I could appreciate 10% or more that a guy might hold in fiat that is just available for investing (that is apart from emergency expenses and things like that).

So, yeah, you are considering this whole allocation matter in much different ways than me, and it just seems a bit overly risky to me that guys would be considering their whole investments to be divided between bitcoin and fiat and even considering fiat to be a kind of investment (even though concededly fiat does serve as a kind of offset of possible downside volatility, in the event that bitcoin and fiat were the only investments that peeps were to have).

So, ultimately, you could be correct to have higher allocations in fiat when you are already singularily focusing on bitcoin as your only investment, so in that regard, you may be balancing your risk out better to maintain higher levels of fiat (in those kinds of circumstances, even though you know almost certainly that fiat is losing value on an ongoing basis, but surely when BTC prices are correcting violently, then relative to BTC, fiat is largely holding its value).  



I don't know what is "plankton."



I kind of have to rethink this whole matter, if you consider that the only things that you hold are bitcoin and fiat, and that kind of throws me for a loop about how to prepare exactly.  I do presume that if BTC is going up rather than down, then you are becoming more wealthy (even in terms of fiat) because the BTC is going up relative to the fiat.  There are various forumulas that you can calculate from such wealth appreciation in order to decide how much BTC to sell on the way up because of such increases in your wealth, but since you are waiting until somewhere between $45k and $60k before you even sell any of your BTC, then for sure, if those price amounts are reached, then you should be much more wealthy, of course unless the value of your fiat that you had been holding were to go down in value in the same amount or more, then you would not have become more wealthy from such BTC price appreciation.

So yeah there is a bit of a presumption that your overall wealth, in terms of fiat, is going up with the appreciation of the price of bitcoin, but there is also a bit of a presumption that you are continuing to dollar cost average invest into bitcoin and also to buy on BTC dips, which may or may not cause your overall available fiat to remain the same or to change in either direction.

I would go 80x on that, gold king cat.    

From time to time, you come out with some real doozies, mindrust.

Based on my round about idea about the total size of your BTC investment, how  the fuck could you have anywhere close to 6 figures of fiat available?  You must be joking, right?  

Note: Remember this is the dollars/BTC thread so our general reference point is dollars, when we are referring to fiat.

Surely, I cannot tell you any kind of exact formula, but before anyone invests in BTC, they should have the rest of their life in order, and have their bigger bills paid and have their cashflow figured out for 6-18 months into the future.  Therefore, when considering what funds that they have available for BTC investment, they have the rest of those matters accounted.

Accordingly, you also said that you largely only buy BTC and HODL, you do not sell, so accounting for your own practices, you have also said that you DCA buy, buy on dips, and sometimes mistakenly FOMO buy.  Anynow, therefore, in the past 3 months, there have been all kinds of ongoing buying opportunities, so in that regard, I would be quite surprised if the value of your fiat should be anywhere close to the 20% or more of the value of your BTC.

Therefore, if you were to have 6 figures of fiat, then you would have $500k of value in BTC (which at current prices would be about 59 BTC  - that is $100k/.2  = $500).  

Something that you are saying is quite off, unless you had been largely contemplating and calculating some kind of gambling (overleveraging) move that would involve taking money from somewhere that you should not be taking it, in order to bet on bitcoin.  That does seem to be what you are contemplating/calculating.  In my thinking, those kinds of moves tend to be desperation moves, and not necessary in bitcoin, even if there could be some decent probabilities that they could pay off quite handsomely - even though personally, I rarely play those kinds of gambling approaches.**

**I will concede that from time to time (and historically), I have used zero interest credit card promotional moneys to increase my cashflow, and thereby buying bitcoin with a decent portion of that increased cashflow funds, so I am not completely immuned to a certain amount of leveraging/gambling that could have ended up going sour on me.

Do you have a link to the source of that chart, or is the chart behind some kind of firewall?

You are sort of correct, Bossian, that merits are not the be all end all in the world... but they do tend to show which members are more actively involved in the community (this forum).. which may or may not be important to you from your own personal assessment of what is important in life.

Accordingly, if you just post whatever the fuck you like (or don't post, or just read various content), maybe you will get merits and maybe you will not.  There is no real compelling reason to focus considerable energies in the pursuit of merits for the sake of it, like you suggested, especially if you are otherwise comfortable with your forum posts, whatever level of acceptance you have in the forum and your chosen level of participation.

Yeah... continue being an asshole.  That should earn you some merit.   

Surely we know that healthy is a relative term.  But, if you are playing BTC long term (which is what many here suggest and many BTC long term HODLers suggest), then your longs are "healthy" if your average cost per BTC is close to the same as the current price or lower.  

That is why investing in BTC is both a psychological and a financial long play, not a blowing with the winds attempt.



What he said.



Oh gawd... not more lame attempts at shit coin comparisons.

Of course, LTC is a different beast, but if you would like to consider LTC as a related beast, it would be the tail (not dee doggie).    

It seems to me that in the past couple of years that you have been discussing your trading strategy here, you have developed a kind of niche for yourself and also an information sharing angle that complements other BTC strategies in this thread.  

I have come to consider my own strategy of a series of longs, and closing of longs, so I don't employ shorts in part because I am nervous about employing such, even if your posts have described a variety of ways in which shorts can be employed in BTC in order to possibly improve upon a long only strategy.

TLDR:  I agree that your way of posting about BTC shorting seems to be quite different from the troll/shills, who seem to be suggesting balls to the wall strategies rather than hedging strategies.


Maybe you are joking, but fact of the matter is that greed and hedging are two different things.

Bear trolls disappearing, too?

Whiteboy420's BTC shorting orders should have filled.  That is if he is actually putting his money where his BIG mouth is, as many WO regulars would likely doubt to be the case, since most troll/shill nocoiner bitcoin naysayers fail/refuse to put their money where their frequently too BIG for their britches mouthes are.

In reviewing the chart, it is a bit funny that we think about the BTC price break out as breaking above $4,200 on April 1, but in reality there were gains in February and March, too.

Yeah,  little cooling off from the BIG ASS 3.5x upward spurt might not have been a bad idea, and it would surely be nice if such cooling off is over, but I am financially and psychologically prepared for either way as long as we don't go below $4,200 at all and below $6k for any meaningful amount of time, beyond a week or two, at most.   The better case would be that the bottom is in at $7,714 - but I am NOT going to rest in any kind of meaningful comfort, unless we get back above $9k territory.    4th quarter.. let's see how she plays out.