Oh... thanks for providing that. It is nice to hear real individual perspectives from time to time. Of course, we do not need to agree or even share the same view, exactly, but there still may be some aspects of our history that we have in common.
Regarding your last point about trading... especially, if we may experience some kind of exponential growth period or two, I believe that there are ways to structure such trading, and really investors should consider approaches beyond the buy and HODL approach.
Certainly, I am not going to advise anyone or to suggest that anyone attempt to do anything that is outside of his/her comfort zone.
Even though I don't agree with the extensively mathematical approach of Rptiela, nonetheless, I think that he provides a good start for conceptualizing going beyond a buy and HODL approach.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=345065.0More or less the concept is that from time to time investors in BTC need to have a plan for taking some profits off the table from time to time.
In the end, probably, you are correct with a suggestion that either reinvesting or any kind of trading has too many screw up potentials, and so just removing some profits, from time to time, could be an intermediate compromise approach, for some folks.
How's Rptiela doing haven't heard from him since he started pushing monero too hard and left this sub, does he still have that castle?
I cited Rptiela's thread for some of the framing of the ideas therein, not necessarily, for the various lunacies of Rptiela and his going to Monero pump, etc.
Like, I mentioned also, there can still be some good ideas contained in a discussion - even though a person may not agree with everything contained therein, and I specifically referred to my own issue with over reliance on mathematical predictive models when there are a lot of human and political variables and even emotional actions that may alter quite a bit of the mathematical calculations.
As far as trading it's a wild wild west, you tell me how much of your strategy accounts for a major exchange going under, or Dell announcing that they'll start accepting BTC, or China banning BTC, or
BTC170k sale by US masrshals, or
BTC24k sale by E&Y, or 10% spread with Chinese exchanges, or China banning BTC again, or some trader just putting up a sudden
BTC26k ask wall, or Adam getting drunk and leaving this sub etc etc etc fundamentals can only be traded very long term on such thin market and long term fundamentals say HODL
In essence, you are asserting that the best strategy is HODL, and I am suggesting that guys need to consider their own strategy, which may be something slightly different from HODL.. which in essence, my recommendation boils down to buying on the way down and selling on the way up. When employing such a trading strategy there is no real significant and meaningful attempt to predict the short-term price directions, but you likely need to moderate depending on short term ideas about trends and allocating the ratios of your holdings between BTC and fiat.
Yes, you have mentioned a variety of factors that may or may not cause BTC prices to shoot up or down greatly or cause stagnation of BTC prices.... and your trading strategies can make attempts at accounting for these kinds of anticipated unanticipated events.
Initially, for the first nearly two years that I was investing in BTC from November 2013 my only strategy was to buy and HODL and to continue to accumulate BTC on the way that BTC prices were continuing to go down during that time, and in essence, it was a practice of buying BTC on the way down and selling on the way up, except the BTC market did not significantly go up between November 2013 and August 2015, and even during the June/July 2015 price spike to $317, I was not yet then prepared to begin to sell any of my BTC. Actually, throughout this period, whenever I used any BTC, I would immediately replace it within about 24 hours.
For me, I was only beginning to be able to sell any coins on the way up in about October 2015, after it was my conceptualization of my BTC holdings into three components and that I had sufficiently accumulate a sufficient quantity of BTC during 2015 at below $250 and accordingly, I was able to come up with a plan to divide all coins that I had acquired under $280 in order to justify to begin selling a very small fraction of those coins on the way up (which I began to start employing once BTC prices crossed above $250).
In order to conceptualize whether BTC trading is a good plan (and you seem to be focusing on overall profits and overall ability to accumulate coins). When we trade, we are also reapportioning our risks and we are not only attempting to figure out how many coins we can accumulate at how low of a cost but making attempts to provide ourselves some protection from downside price spikes... and one very effective way to protect from downward price spikes is to have money in your btc portfolio to be able to buy coins when the price spikes downwards.
Initially, I began to sell only a small fraction of the coins that were within the category of those that I had acquired under $280, so for example, I would only authorize myself to sell within the profits of those coins and only up to about 50% of the profits of those coins, and those coins represented only about 10% of my total BTC holdings.
So for example, if I had owned about 100 coins in total (this number is for explanatory purposes only), then I had only 10 coins in the below $280 category, so for every $1 the price went up, the value of those 10 BTC went up $10, and for every $10 BTC prices went up, my profits went up by $100. Therefore, I ONLY authorized myself to sell up to $50 for every $10 raise in BTC prices.
To make a long story less long, as BTC prices continued to go up, I was able to increase my authorizations up to the point in which I was able to trade the whole BTC portfolio.
Still the authorized trades of 100BTC would only be $50 for every $1 the BTC prices went up and $500 for every $10.
The accumulated money would be used to buy back BTC on price dips and to help to prepare my portfolio for potential larger price dips.
Surely it is true that some of these BTC trading planning matters I was working out on the cuff, and through experience I hve been gaining more and more knowledge regarding how to better prepare my BTC portfolio for various possible price directions.
I wasn't really sure about what kinds of proportionment of my BTC portfolio would be allowable or a good practice, and as you likely recall we had a price spike to $502 and then back down below $300 for a short period and then more or less stabalized between $360 and $460, if you can call that stable. And, after being able to accumulate and rebuy, for a while I had begun to consider that maybe I should attempt to maintain an allocation of about 95% BTC and 5% fiat... but then as you may recall when prices went from $403 to $470 without any major correction, my BTC portfolio had dropped to about 92%, and then when we experienced about 3 corrections back down testing $435, my BTC portfolio was then about 98%BTC and 2% fiat, which seemed a bit unsafe. Recently, I had been thinking that maybe I should attempt to keep my portfiolio between 85% and 95% BTC, and currently, I am toying with some thoughts regarding that, and currently I have about 91.5% BTC and 8.5% fiat.
Since I started this BTC trading (and BTC portfolio risk management), from October 2015 to present, I have been able to increase my total BTC holdings by about 10% with all time high holding amounts that occurred in the mid $400s, and I have been able to stack fiat that feels vary comfortable psychologically in the even that BTC price spikes downwards or downwardly corrects. Of course, if I have sold nearly 10% of my BTC, I do not make as much money when BTC prices spike upwards, but I don't really care because I feel more comfortable and there is no real need to get greedy. Accordingly, the about 10% that I may hold in fiat gets put to work from time to time. I can use it for arbitrage opportunities, and just to have a psychological safety net.
Yes, I do consider various predictions about BTC price direction, short term and long term, and accordingly, I can adjust my 90/10 apportionment to reflect my views, maybe buy a bit more or sell a bit more and to attempt to accomplish all of this with a degree of moderation... which I believe is better for me (and possibly other people too) than employing a 100% BTC / 0% Fiat allocation within your BTC authorized funds, as what you seem to be advocating.
Poll
