[edited out]
Yeah I agree, in my post, since this reply above...you can see I have little to lose and currently I am bored...somewhat...so it is a modest goal the 8.5 BTC I'd like to recover yet..and trying to use it as a lever to clean attic out on eBay sales to BTC. So I am in a 'hugely' better position to be in 'dubious' HODL mode now..even if it is just to add some dust back to the panic sell of me being now only 8.5 BTC down. But indeed that was my FIRST real panic dump of any BTC since 2013...or ever for that matter....sure I ran through altcoins from mining for early retirement etc..but, it kinda was I had to dump the BTC also with altcoins or go back to work.
Sh*ty choice waited too long, panic'd for that real-life money, yech!
Ultimately, you have to decide for yourself what you want to do. Personally, I think that it is a pretty BIG ASS waste of time to become too preoccupied with attempting to make up 8.5 BTC or whatever the artificial goal of 100BTC that you are trying to make. Having 100BTC is too fucking arbitrary, especially for a guy who is 65 years old and may or may not live another 25 years. To me it seems that having 100BTC just does not matter.
The more important consideration is just figuring out where you are at and I really think that you are no longer in accumulation mode, but instead either in maintenance mode or liquidation mode, which means that you can just decide the amount that you are willing to liquidate each year, and if it remains a possibility that you could panic sell again, then you should just figure out how much is the maximum that you are going to permit yourself to sell each year.. whether it is between 4% and 6% or if you choose some other amount that you believe works for yourself.
You have already suffered from what could happen if you do NOT liquidate enough, which is you end up panic selling. So to avoid that, it is good to just periodically sell a small portion that fits within guidelines that you choose ahead of time, and likely between 4% and 6% could work... and also maybe you need to consider whether you are ready to start right now, or not. Regarding using some of your extra cashflow to buy BTC or to get to your artificial goal of 100BTC, fuck that shit. Just keep that money in cash, and if the BTC price happens to drop, then just use it to buy small amounts on the way down, otherwise don't fucking worry about trying to get to some artificial goal because it is causing you to overly obsess on that number and then to overly invest in such a way that it is nearly inevitable that you are going to cause yourself another possible panic situation - because we know that King Daddy bitcoin has these tendencies to overshoot in various directions, and sure it is better if it is overshooting in the upwards direction, but it cannot be guaranteed to overshoot in the upwards direction.
What BTC was on Jan 18th, 2018 and close to ATH and me saying looks good for retirement prices and end of year $3,965 BTC prices..well ...ugly is being kind as a statement...but circumstances have changed from the middle of 2019....so 4.5 BTC back in the HODL hoard is a win IMHO.
Yeah, overall it seems that you did good to recover some of the amount that you sold, and by the way, BTC prices did go down to $3,124 in December of 2018... so when you sold, you did provide yourself with some insurance during that period.. and insurance is not free, and also hindsight might be 20/20.. but we cannot be kicking ourselves for better ways that we might have played the matter, but instead hopefully learning from the situation in order to figure out if there are ways that we could currently tweak our approach in order to become a bit more comfortable with where we are currently at... including being prepared for either BTC price direction on an ongoing basis.
Only 8.5 BTC is a fun self-deprecating goal for all of you on WO following my 'dubious' antics and a lesson on NOT to panic like a small 9-year-old girl in such circumstances, even though the panic sell was for real-life issues and probably justifiable with the massive dump in BTC and Crypto prices I was relying on for retirement at least until 66yrs 2months and not go back to work (shudder) for 1.5 to 2 years till that full retirement)
I am not going to say that you did the wrong thing.
Although you could easily make the case I should be blowing a % of my BTC/Crypto on women of easy virtue and of dubious moral character (ie Golddigger)
..but alas, that has not come up yet to tempt me to dump BTC/Crypto now. (Damn it!)
Brad
The hookers, lambos and blow part is up to you, and surely it is good to make sure that your investment situation is stabilized before going too much down the consumption rabbit hole. At the same time, it does not hurt to have some consumption and pleasure budget, especially if you already have various aspects of your investment in decent shape and order.
Sometimes, also, you are going to have a bit of excess of wealth that is building up (and BTC can contribute towards causing that), and in those circumstances, it surely does not hurt to step up the standard of living a bit. Does not need to be BIG stepping ups, but incrementally stepping up the standard of living can be a good thing.
Sometimes there can be ways to reasonably include expensive chick kinds of expenses into your budget, as long as you are largely calling the shots rather than letting some cute and manipulative chick trick you out of your BTC and other assets more quickly than you would prefer.
If one, two or 10 chicks slowly milk you out of a decent proportion of your excess BTC over 25 years and such ongoing serial milkenings gives you a lot of pleasure along the way, then it may be well worth the time and money that is spent on such... as long as you are figuring out a way to balance it, too. Yeah, if you are not used to it, then you surely don't want to jump in too quickly...
Don't get me wrong, I have not paid directly for the company of cuties in any kind of transactional kind of way, but sometimes I have been in relationships in which I have been engaging in expensive consumptive activities including going on trips and going out to eat at nice places (of my choice of course), and spending a decent amount of extra money to wine, dine and travel in various circumstances, so those extra expenses are likely to have taken away from some of my investing in BTC or even preserving my BTC stash, but there are still ways to step up your level of consumption in incremental ways that you can handle and control, and the amount of pleasure can be quite good too..
it can be considered as the whole hookers, lambos and blow idea that is the aspiration that is a bit of an exaggeration, because you might not just jump straight into such increases in luxury... but instead transition into some of those kinds of excesses, and I don't think it is a bad thing to perhaps transition into some excesses in consumption as long as you figure out ways to do it in a way that is good for your own situation while you are cognizant of the limitations of your investments including the reasonable cashflow that you can derive from your investments including the timeline that you have for the investment to last that includes your ability to step up consumption levels, too, and ultimately, you have to be the one that feels good about your uses of your time and money.. including not getting too far over your head into situations that you have screwed up your personal security and/or control over your finances.
Yeah, I agree..everything you say is spot on...it is silly the whole 8.5 BTC kinda thing...but bored...have the discretionary income now outside of traditional investments and not living off
crypto anymore...thus my ratio of silliness to boredom ratio has been massively expanded...
Also, a good way to get at least SOME motivation for eBay sells via attic mining...some of this is just me being silly...for no real reason outside of boredom lately. I always have to
remember *Boredom* is HOW I got into bitcoin to get an idea of how clueless I've been on a lot of stuff since 2013...
I'd peaked out at my job/lifestyle/$$$/etc and in reality, the job was a dead-end, applying for other jobs in the field (age discrimination is real) ...everything was kinda meh!
A part-time faculty as Adjunct went away, another side job also got eliminated....so was looking at retirement at 70 years and being a greeter at Walmart after for lifesyle....was not good.
I was bored to tears...Summer of 2013...looking at putting up old game server (below) stuff to do. So I got that KNC 550gh Jupiter miner (ordered on July 1st, 2013) when BTC was
about $91.02....*newbie* could just as well bought BTC would have had the same amount of BTC that the unit made..more if you count electric I ate out of the unit.
meh!
So I got the KNC Jupiter because I was *bored* and wanted to put up the free old game server towers that would have cost me $60 a month to run just in electric
*yeah, it was that big*.
It seemed a hell of a lot of work and monthly expense though, just because I was bored...figured It would have put me back $2.5 to $3k. But needed hobbies till 70 years and Walmart Career.
I also had some game of throne swords from the BOOK version pre-HBO...rare collectibles...
so I heard about BTC and the KNC machine and kept walking by the collectible swords, with HBO series coming out, finally snapped and sold coins and took game server fund
and between what I was gonna put into the game server (without the pesky I eat the electric costs for the game server) and the sale of the swords at around 4x what I bought
them for (new in the box)....that covered the $5,131.80 for the KNC unit and I decided to get into BTC mining for something more useful to do with my time than the game server.
As a long term plan, (the KNC machine eating electric costs) I figured I could ROI in 8 months and MAYBE pay my house utilities for say
another say 6 months with this as a hobby, before the KNC unit became a doorstop. Boredom issues solved. Stuff to do before becoming a Walmart Greeter! Yea!
And by god, I would not be bored anymore and have something *useful* do mining 'dubious' 1 BTC out of the sky a day in a mysterious fashion...all very cool! (It had been a
long time since I was cool don't ya know)
Also, the news was big on crypto and micro-lending projects to India ao hell, I thought BTC could do some good. Right after that, of course, BTC went parabolic in price.
So the combination of ...Boredom/Newbie Cluelessness/and dumb luck was my *in hindsight* 'business plan it seems. I have learned the power of boredom and trying stupid stuff!
Thus here I am *bored* again, attic mining, whining about BTC 8.5 lost (mostly in jest to motivate attic cleanup), etc...
So as 'silly' as all this is likely to seem to the outside world, this all keeps me *amused* and *less bored* and I always have to remind myself that doing somewhat clueless
and dubious stuff in the past to overcome what I may consider *boring* at any given time has been very, very, good to me.
So some of this dust accumulation is just that, going with the clueless flow and *gut* feeling of accumulation of dust and tongue in cheek whining about
my puny 8.5 BTC lost and what to do with my 'free-time' beside this dust accumulation and posting on
www.bitcointalk.org. (I type as fast as I think so that is not
a real-time issue either on here either as folk may think)
I am not a hermit I teach Shotokan Karate at the local university, play with retro computers, am in clubs...but again, it is frigging *winter* in the frigging midwest...so I'm gonna bet on
*boredom* one more time with my dust BTC/Crypto endeavors and see where I end up next!
God help me if FPGA mining ever takes off again, or I'll likely fall down that rabbit hole
next!
But with me, NEVER, underestimate the power of having 'too much' free time and indeed a case can be made that I HODL too
much BTC. But my background in wealth/job/lifestyle etc was 'quite' modest before 2013 and has stayed more or less the same via circumstances...it has thru luck/some long term
traditional investments/no debts/paid off house/and BTC/Crypto of which all of such, both traditional and BTC/Crypto are sorta 'paper' profits I've not touched and now without
living on BTC/Crypto due to circumstances change and monthly income off estate/traditional investments...I can be even more 'odd' and just leave both of them alone. I am likely
fine living off either at my present lifestyle etc. So again, the whole conspicuous consumption was killed in my lifestyle long before 2013. So in my mind lately it is 'what risk?'
So, anyway, being boring and all, if no BTC/Crypto in this Universe, I'd likely be playing this game with stocks and traditional investments. As it is, bleeding what I consider
excess into BTC/Crypto with what I see as another major Recession coming...alleviates the more risk than that IMHO..and gives me silly goals that 'supposedly' will pan out in the future.
So again, Boredom/Cluelessness/too much free time and silly ass project goals have been very, very, good to me!
But again, you are completely right, I am a silly, old man, odd, somewhat clueless, lucky, crypto nerd of dubious sanity in the dead of winter...pining away my lost 8.5 BTC sold with dubious
dust/BTC/methods of accumulation.
But again, it is the dead of winter the midwest and dubious ASIC mining is done for me now, in any manner, at 10c kWh. Thus I shall fall back on my tried and true
method of luck/boredom/dubious projects/etc..and sh*t maybe lightning will strike twice.
Maybe by the time I'm 70, I'll be a Walmart Greeter anyway, not needing the money, they always seem pretty happy right?
later
brad