story [...] 21 coins.. if peeps are interested, [...]
By the way AlcoHoDL, is this diptwat cousin of yours starting out with zero coins, which seems to be the case.... I can surely excuse someone who already has some coins to take a bit more of an aggressive stance or have a more greedy stance in terms of buying more coins.. but I was getting the sense that your cousin is a nocoiner until the BTC price crosses below $34,100. Surely better than nothing, but still...
Please go ahead JJG, love to hear stories about lost fortunes.
This seems to me to be more of a story about peeps having differing perspectives and matters seeming to work out pretty well, even though there are differing perspectives, so it is not even really a story about lost fortunes, even though some peeps are kicking themselves to fuck because they used to have 21 bitcoins or they were damned close to having that quantity of coins.
I went back and looked at some of my bitcoin related communications and even transactions from late 2014 (and bitcoin was around $385 at that time), and I bet that I had more than 40 people that I sent e-mails, text messages or had other kinds of communications to let them know about bitcoin and that I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread...... or some variation of that. There were perhaps somewhere more than 20 in which I made some kind of follow up and maybe somewhere in the ballpark of 15.. maybe even 20 if we spread out the timeline a wee bit, who I sent some small amounts of bitcoin.. usually at least $5, but sometimes $10 or $20 or even up to $80-$100 in the case of a few event-related gifts that i gave out.
It was quite rare that anyone would get into any detailed discussions with me about the bitcoin topic, but this person decided to actively buy some bitcoin and expressed quite a bit of hesitations, but still bought around $4k worth of bitcoin in that $385 territory. So let's call that an initial purchase of 10.5BTC.
As we realize the BTC price did not really do so well after late 2014, so throughout 2015, the BTC price bounced above and below $250.. and $250 might have even been considered a higher point for that period, so I am not even really sure about all the details of how this person had gotten to 21 BTC by late 2016 and into early 2017 because sometimes I would make strong recommendations NOT to get involved in various shitcoins (which the person did anyhow and even made some money and lost some money) and not to be trading very much of their bitcoin stash (which the person had fucked around with that a few times too - and probably lost over all.. so it is sometimes difficult to know when peeps have admitted gambling tendencies if they are telling the truth about their gains and their losses), and I even suggested several times in late 2015 and throughout 2016 that BTC prices would likely be going to between $3k and $5k at some point in the coming 1-3 years but that it was quite difficult to know with any kind of precision, and such person would proclaim that I was living in a fantasy and blah blah blah... but still mostly seemed to have hung onto the acquired coins and probably overall had an investment of somewhere between $8k and $10k in the whole scheme of things that ended up reaching 21 BTC at some point... so somewhere in the ballpark of $400 to $500 per BTC.
I recall detecting quite a bit of skepticism from this person about how long to keep HODLing BTC and even to cash out of some or all BTC at various points. We specifically had a conversation in early 2017 when the BTC price had gone into the $1.5k to $1.8k arena, and I reminded such person that the old time high of $1,163 created a kind of no man's land dynamic and that I am not really going to blame such person if cashing out some or all BTC once the price went above $2k, but there should not be any meaningful touching or shaving off of BTC before that point, and who fucking cares what I said because such person was nervous and ended up shaving off a few BTC around $1.5k to largely get a decent chunk of the principle back... so let's just say at that point, the person's BTC stack was down to 17.5 BTC-ish and there was some comfort in mostly playing with house money.
I said whatever do what you like. I already gave my suggestion of what I would consider a reasonable approach based on the size of the investment and attempting to account for the circumstances. So, we preceded to pretty much spend quite a bit of that time just below $3k..and then of course an exploding of BTC price from $3k to $20k.. and I think that the person was so damned frustrated by having had sold several BTC around $1,500 that there was considerable hesitancies to sell more.. but the price went from that $20k high and then had some correction that caused an additional desire to sell some more around $14k. .. around 3 more BTC were sold (which would have been late 2017).. to get close to $35k from that sale.. and to reduce that persons stash from 17.5 BTC to 14 BTC... and some goodie luxury item was bought with that $35k..
I am not exactly sure but I believe that during the 2018-2019 period there were a few more BTC bought that brought the stash up to around 16.5 BTC again and then sold, so somewhere along the way another $30k was cashed out that brought the stash back down to around 14.5BTC... which I believe would have been counted in the tax year 2020.
I remember some of these various conversations between about 2017 and 2020 with assertions that "I don't think that I will be able to get up to 21 BTC again" and even later some suggestions that "I don't want to get up to 21 BTC again because I don't have a long time to live, and this is already a potential problem to be cashing out $30k to $50k every year and to still continue to have more value each year in such a way that "I am never going to be able to cash all of it out at this rate."
But then when BTC prices went up to new ATHs there was some holding back on cashing out, but decisions to cash out 0.5 BTC on a couple of occasions in early 2021 that would have resulted in around $50k in proceeds and cause the BTC stash to go down to around 13BTC.
So, I have my doubts about his story being exactly any kind of tragedy, because the total invested was likely less than $10k in those initial days and there might have been some farting around with buying and selling that caused some further investing that went over the $10k, but in the end any of that further money had been cashed out again along the way.
So if you look at 13.5 BTC in terms of the $65k high then that would have reached a dollar value of $877,500, but even when the BTC price dropped to $30k, the dollar value of the BTC would still have been a bit over $400k, so over the years of continuing to cash out BTC there has built increasing confidence over the years in terms of the ability of BTC to continue to retain its value even though the number of BTC in the stash continues to get smaller little by little... and sometimes when a person is older, they are not in a stage of trying to build wealth but instead either maintaining or liquidating or a combination of both so even if there had seemed to have been liquidating going on, the person was considering that the value of that BTC just continues to go up in a kind of maintenance kind of way.. so yeah, even if there are not guarantees about what is going to happen to the BTC price, there is also some assurance that the amount withdrawn continues to be way more than the amount invested.
I think that the essence of the story is that this person had been playing their BTC in such a way that they were mostly withdrawing gains of close to $50k every year since 2017.. and the 2021 gains have already been taken, so that person has largely taken out $250k from an investment of perhaps around $10k (that has been taken out too), and still has a portfolio that has bottomed out at around $400k from an earlier high of $877.5k.. which hardly seems like either a sad story of losing BTC or one of irresponsibility - even though a younger person might feel way more compelled to either just let the BTC profits continue to ride and get folded into the BTC holdings, there are differing kinds of opinions and approaches that can allow for considerable prosperity and even life changing increases in living standards... in the ballpark of doubling income in the past 5 years.. and no real sign that will not be able to continue at least some variation of that even with our current BTC price dynamics that are not really even close to guaranteed, either.
Agree with JJG @AlcoHoDL, very risky strategy. Any current price is a good price, waiting for it to go lower is just speculating (against a 12-year trend!).
I know that you did not ask me bitebits, but I am having trouble resisting to suggest that any new money should be considered in three categories and then apportioned accordingly. So there is lump sum investing, DCA and buying on dips. Of course, the apportionment can be made in accordance with personal preferences, yet the initial default position should be 1/3 in each category. Of course, personal circumstances should allow for both not ONLY how much to apportion in each category, but then how to manage such apportionment within the categories in terms of how much, price intervals and time intervals.
So my suggestion is to start with the defaults and then tailorize.
If a person is a no coiner, then it would seem to be smarter
(not saying that no coiners are capable of being smart) to be more aggressive in terms of making sure to get a starting stake in BTC.. whichever categories of achieving the initial allocations, and of course, if someone has been a coiner for a long time, including reaching fairly aggressive accumulation levels of something like 10% or more, then they they would have more psychological and financial liberty to spread out their amounts more and not to be worried if they end up NOT buying more BTC with whatever cash that they have had stumbled across.
Seems to me that AlcoHoDL's cousin is approaching this whole matter as if he is already a coiner with a decent allocation into bitcoin, but whatever, peeps can do whatever they are going to do.. including failing and refusing to appreciate that when they do not make sure that they get a stake into bitcoin, that they already tend to have a lot of other investments (including their income) that is likely already allocated into various kinds of fiat denominations.
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