i take it exactly as it looks, once your initial investment pays out in the tangible assets (money, physical items of worth, knowledge, whatever) its all gravy. i would think (hope) most people in this thread are in this category, ie playing with "house money." at this point even if my stack goes to zero the minute i type this i still made out.
now, one can always argue about lost profit opportunity from this point on, buts thats another animal to me.
Probably we think differently about this matter.
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Therefore, I always thought that I needed a cushion, and therefore, I always considered that I had to monitor my system and approach to investing, to live within my means and to keep a certain aspect of my investment portfolio profitable.
Part of my point in my above response is to suggest that in my own view and opinion, it is NOT enough for me to merely assert that "I got my principle back and I am 'in profits' " and I continually want to know more about my performance than those kinds of mere simplicities. I don't necessarily expect others to carry out the same as me, but I still will question if anyone who seems to be asserting that it is enough data for them to conclude that they are "in profits" and they don't want to engage in further self-improvement.
I am NOT referring to standards that are imposed on anyone from the outside but merely about standards that are imposed on oneself in his/her own aspirations and monitoring of his/her own progress. I actually tend to resent when standards are imposed on me from someone else or someone suggest that I need to do x, y or z, but it does not seem unreasonable in my thinking to attempt to impose standards upon yourself and to attempt to monitor whether I am reaching my standards.. and that is part of the purpose of continued analysis rather than merely throwing up ones hands and asserting "I am in profits because I got my principle back."
im probably misunderstanding, but i read that more or less as "how is btc profit compared to my other investment goals that have the same amount of effort/capitol as far as my personal goals are concerned."
Well, many times the points of discussion can be taken into another direction or even raising other points, and surely it is fair to consider how BTC performs in comparison to other investments, but merely because it performs worse does not necessarily make it a bad investment unless it is always going down without going UP, which we know has not been the historical case with bitcoin.
Sometimes, people bring up their "other investments" in this thread in order to either denigrate bitcoin or to pump some other shit coin, and surely from my signature, it can be seen that I have been a bit down on the need to diversify into various alt coins; however, at the same time, I can certainly accept that other people might want to take a much larger (percentage-wise) position than me in various alt coins. I do appreciate that there can be some utility in other people investing in various other crypto currencies, and I can even appreciate that sometimes their level of profits or even differing correlation (as compared with bitcoin) can cause those investments to be more profitable than bitcoin at various points in time. Sometimes part of the bothersome aspect of various alt coins is that they frequently will appear to lack fundamentals, so their pump or even their differing correlation to bitcoin does not necessarily come from market fundamentals and reasonable movements in the market, but instead based on some kind of insider job pumping that comes from insiders and DEEP pockets based on their ability to move an illiquid market rather than actual broader possible appeal of the project based on fundamentals.
Ultimately, if we are merely considering how to structure personal finances and to fit bitcoin into one's overall strategy, then likely there is going to be considerable variance from person to person, not only in terms of how much of a percentage of his/her overall investment might be in bitcoin 1% to 10% or some other number, and also there might be differing strategies based on how much the person put into bitcoin and subsequently, if that allocation had gained relative to other investments. My initial goal in 2013-2014 was to establish a 10% position in bitcoin (as compared with my other investments), but the down turn of the market and the tweaking of my strategies caused my allocation to reach in a 12% to 14% territory by nearing the end of 2015. When BTC did nearly an 80x price increase in 2016 and 2016, that caused my allocation to be much more weighted in BTC just based on mere BTC price appreciation.. so yeah, then there can be questions about whether to reallocate or how much to reallocate or other strategies that might be employed to feel comfortable to UP or DOWN volatility... accounting for personal timeline as well (so for example if someone got into an investment and considered letting it ride for 10 years or more, s/he might not be too inclined to make significant short-term reallocations).
I think that in my earlier response, I was largely asserting that it can be quite lazy and superficial to just rest on some kind of superficial laurels to assert.. "I am all good because I got my principle out," especially if there might be longer time considerations in terms of a more specific investment strategy that can not only contain better attempts to tailor the investment to yourself and to learn from your investment and NOT merely be satisfied that you got your principle out.. which also could be a bit of a cowardly approach to an investment or showing that you are unnecessarily leery and gun-shy about the investment (namely bitcoin in this case).
i do agree that if you have only broke even well thats better than losing but if the same amount invested in something else you knew of at the time would of done better then its less profitable than you could of done. so basically, a fail. but we can only be so knowledgeable about such things. we learn as we go.
Probably, you are saying similar things to me here that not only involves our inability to know how one investment might perform compared to other investments, and we might just be making best guesses from time to time about the extent to which we might need to reallocate or if their might be some advantage in that... including the fact that we do not know. Just because Ethereum may have done 10x better than Bitcoin for short terms, and maybe even if we had decent inklings that such blow up might happen, does not necessarily mean that we should invest in ethereum for those periods - because that remains unknown, in spite of our inklings in such direction that subsequently might end up being proven to be correct (even though we did not invest in that direction). Many of us who are active in this thread likely remember the ethereum is better than bitcoin because it is performing better blah blah blah flippening.. similar to dashening, and bcashening and rippling.. and even with all that pump bullshit, and maybe even some of us had inklings that they would pump more than bitcoin, but it is not necessarily a bad thing to have just stuck with bitcoin.
Oh, by the way, I can think of very wimpy scenarios in which someone may have invested in BTC at various points and then had an average of $500 per BTC or something like that, and then got out all of his principle at a way too low price point, and missed opportunities to profit more from bitcoin because of underinvestment and too bearish and too gunshy, but keeps come back to assertions that s/he got his principle back... blah blah blah.
so my investment in btc has fared unbelievably well compared to any other investments i have done. im so far past "made my initial money back" its stupid. now, i could of done better in the past (like buying early apple, microsoft, google etc stock) but the past is the past and hindsight can only serve as a lesson to learn. of my current investments, btc is king. even if it goes to zero today, as i have locked in so much profit.
You are correct that from time to time there are going to be more profitable investments whether in the crypto space or in the traditional investment (non-crypto) space. It is difficult to know (without attempting to compare dick sizes) about how profitable you are or could be or could have been, and even if any of us long term HODLers made a lot of mistakes, we could still be in a position with BTC that it has stupendously outperform any other investment that we have ever made and our profits (and/or equity) has been sufficiently secured as to provide some bullet-proofness to us, if BTC were to go down (perhaps to zero). However, I would not want to assume too much about having "locked in profits" because some times when push comes to shove, and if the BTC price were to go below certain points, we might assume the price is going back up and overinvest based on those kinds of bullish assumptions.. and end up getting screwed in spite of what we had considered to be be "locked in" profits.
so basically at this point im diversifying even at the cost of lower (but safer) returns but i am ok with that, im a belt and suspenders kind of guy. so i suppose one could say im leaving potential gains on the table but i realize that.
Yes, that might be a more conservative approach, but it also might be prudent. Each of us has to decide for ourselves about how much we want to put in and how much profits we want to take off the table or lock-in.
when you are long term contingency planning, and take worse case scenarios into account, you know you have to throw money/time into things that may not have much, if any, returns. even to the point that that money/time is purely wasted if whats its guarding against never happens. but thats just like paying an insurance premium to me. i sure would feel stupid with all my eggs in one basket if that basket breaks.
Of course, each of us make differing choices in this regard. There are some folks who started out in BTC or perhaps other cryptos, but they do not have any other investments. I personally already had a decent amount of time (more than 20 years) investing before bitcoin, so I consider quite a lot of my current bitcoin profits to be icing on the cake and I am o.k. keeping those in bitcoin, even if they go down... especially since my strategy continues to systematically buy on the way down, and there is a bit of a presumption (which could end up proving to be wrong) that bitcoin is going to go up in the long term and it is going to go up higher than it is today, so it is therefore presumptively profitable to buy BTC if the price goes down. I feel more comfortable making such UP presumptions in bitcoin as compared to any other crypto investment and I feel that I have enough other traditional investments that sufficiently hedge my BTC investment in the event that BTC actually does go down (and stay down) a lot further and a lot longer than expected (perhaps to zero, which seems a very long shot, but NOT completely out of the realm of possible considerations).
so, at this point im more into making sure my wife and i have a secure future even if things go to crap than more profit.
Nothing wrong with that.
once i hit a certain level, my priorities shift. i am goal oriented, and once that goal is attained i turn to the next one. one can always go back and fortify any particular goal or position as needed later.
Actually, each of us should always considered empowered over our own investment plans and tweaking them from time to time as needed or as our views might change or as our financial situation or timeline or risk tolerance might change. That could apply to only bitcoin or it could apply to all of our investments. Surely, when bitcoin might have considerably outperformed other assets, sometimes, it might be prudent to reallocate, but it still seems a bit weird to me that those kinds of thought would just be coming now at $6,200-ish rather than having some carrying out of such plan at various points on the way to $19,666. To each his/her own regarding whether you plan ahead or become emotional about our current down situation and might take too BIG of actions now, based on NOT having done anything previously when prices were in the supra $10k range.
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