Before you can reach HODL status, you have to get to an adequate BTC accumulation level, which surely can take a decent amount of time for guys who are not already coming into BTC as already existing millionaires or some other variation of high net-worth individuals.
Yes, if I could rack status of "BTC spent" over the years, then it would blow holes in the competition, but my current holdings are microscopic in comparison. Still, it's enough at stake to get me emotional in an unprofessional way at times.
I understand how any of us might consider how those flow through BTC matter, but in some sense, they really do not - except perhaps to establish that some of us may have had access to BTC, and even a decent number of BTC to flow through our various accounts, but in the end, the ultimate decision still remains concerning which form of currency any of us chose to spend first - and whether we might have been reasonably capable of hanging onto a few more BTC.
The punchline does remain the punchline, and that is how many BTC that you decided to hang onto, and if you did spend some BTC, did you replace those in a timely manner or consider that maybe you will replace them later if the BTC prices drop, and the BTC price never did drop.
I recall some time in mid-to-late 2015, Circle had instituted a policy in which they allowed you to convert your whole BTC balance to dollars,. which was kind of weird and even a bit deceptive, and I know a couple of people who were adversely affected by that policy.
One person accidentally clicked that button at around $225 per BTC, and had not realized that all the BTC had been sold at that price (and just thought that it was to show the BTC balance in dollars), and I said "holy fucking shit" what the hell did you get into BTC for, if you are just going to sell them all at a whim.. It is not like you have that many BTC anyhow.. (something like 20 BTC). Within a few days the person did convert the whole account back from dollars to BTC.. .so maybe there was a loss of a few dollars per BTC.
The second person heard about my story regarding what the first person had done, and when BTC prices went from $250 to $500 in October/November 2015, that person decided to convert the whole Circle account (of about 17 BTC) at $350.... Crazy.. that person never had 17 BTC ever again.. funny that... Selling too many too low does have a very strong psychological affect on people, and no one really wants to buy back BTC that they sold for a higher price.. for a certain amount of time that person 2 was a no coiner, and I was continuing to chide about the situation of not having enough coins and not being prepared for UP.. so at some point around the lower $400s, a decent amount of those sold coins were bought back, maybe around 12 BTC or something like that.. or maybe it was even a wee bit below 10 BTC..
If you believe that people are hesitant about getting into BTC, these days, I find very few changes in overall what real people are doing or they are inclined to do.. and many times one of the principle ways that they start to get excited about possibly investing into bitcoin is when they discover some kind of an edge that exists with some cheaper variation (and yeah, maybe part of the reason that institutions and well to do peeps are starting to get a bit of an edge in terms of sucking up the BTC supply because once the lightbulb goes on for the well to do person, they start to buy way more than their fair share of BTC... so even though retail has a lot of advantage in not being blocked from being able to buy into bitcoin and being able to front run institutions and rich people, they are still having troubles looking a gift horse in the face and actually figuring out that they still be sufficiently early).
Ultimately we cannot be acting like we do not understand the ramifications of spending some of our BTC at various points historically, and sure after the fact, we realize that we were too chicken shit and we realize that we got more pleasure by locking in our dollar profits rather than boring deferring of gratification. We are not going to live forever, right? It's better to enjoy hookers when we can still self-stimulate rather than being too old, right?
I understand that some guys like to describe some of their situations in kind of "baller" scenarios, but probably an assumption should be that not too many of us are already coming to this thread with an already existing baller status or even quasi-baller status.
No "baller" here, aspiring to be humble (work in progress). I focus on learning new things, knowledge is wealth to me, and trying to rack up some Bitcoin as well because it makes sense.
Of course, there is balance. I spent a lot of money on my education, and I believe that it was well worth it, because even though I have some tendencies to be stubborn, the various skills that I learned in college relating to learning how to learn really have paid off several times, even though my central goal was not even making money, I just wanted to be a more rounded person and able to relate to people from a variety of backgrounds which can be improved through schooling.. believe it or no.. and for sure people are going to come to differing calculations regarding the value of education and/or what skills that they might need to learn.. and even recognizing that they do not know what they do not know - and even question if the degree or the certification or the training ended up paying for itself or not, those remain personal choices in terms of spending capital (and time) in that direction.
Even a guy or gal who comes here with an already existing investment portfolio of something like $100k, might well be well pressed to get to fuck you status in 15 years of BTC investing and accumulating because so many times mistakes can be made along the way, and really seems to be the exception rather than the rule for mistakes NOT to be made - even assuming that some of us might be willing to share some of the outlines of our mistakes, but not too many of us would be able to share the specifics of our mistakes- especially if sometimes they might rise to the level of something approaching mindrust's mistake, and we might want to be stubborn in public and even show more how difficult it can sometimes be to save peeps from their lil selfies.
Agreed, admitting mistakes is good. I once sold 100 BTC after solo mining two blocks in a month, we live and learn.
Well the reward was 50 BTC until about late 2012.. so surely, another challenge would have been to hold some decent portion of the BTC through the two exponential BTC price rise periods in 2013.. Lots of people have trouble figuring out the balance of how much value to hold and how to hold it and they want to lock in some profits... for sure. I recall even when some of my US Govt bonds had matured 5-10 years later (after purchase), and instead of reinvesting them (perhaps into a better performing asset), I some times would plug them into my consumption, and that shows some of my own problems in terms of really being able to continue to let an investment portfolio build when value has built up in such investment portfolio.
And, then if you had been able to HODL your BTC (100 BTC or perhaps more) through 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016, what would have been your ability to HODL fate in 2017? Seemingly another good selling opportunity when we are thinking in terms of fiat, but at what price woudl have come the sale (at $3k? $7k? $10k? $14k? or $19,666? - never going to completely get the top, right?), and how much of it to sell, too.. ? one thing being in the midst of it, and another thing looking at the whole matter retrospectively.
Here's a "night shot" of my mining rig at the time, before ASIC, during the GPU era.
good fortune for some of the folks mining back then, even if they might have ONLY been able to hang onto a fraction of their coins.
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ibb.co%2FynLqsPW%2Fmodrobert-mining-dark.jpg&t=665&c=O72HzGknkn7k5A)
The GPUs were running 24/7 at 102C (215.6F) for roughly a year (two AMD 6990 cards), sounded a bit like a jet plane on the runway.
Hahahaha.. another sacrifice (the noise, the heat and likely the energy consumption), even though the lights look pretty.
Another mental mistake seems to be that almost everyone comes into bitcoin believing that they are "too late," so when any of us start to explain to the newbie that I believe that you should try to do x, y and z because I have found those to be amongst the best of strategies, including attempting to account for my various mistakes along the way. Understandably, the newbie still might want to "improve upon" the shared system because he believes that there is some kind of rush for him to catch up or some other dumbass bullshit about bitcoin no longer having sufficient pumpamentals in order for the similar x, y and z approach to work. .and gosh the truth of the matter still remains that even newbies coming into bitcoin have a very asymmetrical bet staring them in the face - and can relatively easily get caught up in some kind of an inferior practice rather than just figuring out their BTC accumulation targets and tailoring their BTC accumulation plan to involve various kinds of lump sum investing, DCA and buying on dips in order to make progress towards having a sufficiently assertive preparation for the possibility of UPpity, even though UPpity is not guaranteed in the short term or the long term, but merely has decent chances (likely better than anything else.. but whatever.. not guaranteed, for sure).
In any event, my point is that buying and accumulating BTC may well be a strategy that persists for a decently long period of time for a large number of us thread participants - even if some of us are further on the road than others in terms of reaching our BTC accumulation goals, whether that be 0.21BTC or some other amount that works for our lil selfies.
Yes, common mental block, and good advice, it's never too late for Bitcoin.
For sure, we are still early boyz!!!
![Wink](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/wink.gif)
I just a crab 1-10 coins
I could be more than 50 if I approached it differently years ago.
It is still early boyz!!!!!!!! especially for us who already know about BTC and we have our various modes to buy (or earn) BTC.. and we also have been studying the space too (including knowing about various ways to liquidate some or all of our BTC, and maybe also why we might well decide to spend from some of our other funds and resources before going below a certain level of BTC quantity, if possible and feasible).
![Tongue](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/tongue.gif)
10 coins is more than 352 average humans taken together could ever hodl, so it is MUCH more than being 1% (in bitcoin terms)..js.
Exactamente..!!!!!!
JS
it is still early boyz.
Gather what you can.. whether it is 0.21 BTC, 1 BTC, 2 BTC, 5 BTC, 10 BTC or some other reasonble, feasible and/or practically and prudently reachable amount... that may well be within your reach and harder to reach now than it might have had been a few years ago, but it is not easy to even attempt to turn back the clock, except maybe to learn how we might have done our accumulation MOAR better and perhaps chosen to HODL rather than SODL when push had come to shove, no?
We might consider that it is difficult to accumulate 0.21BTC now, 1 BTC now or even 2 BTC now, and maybe at some relatively near point in the future.. supra $100k or whatever, it may be even difficult to be trying to accumulate 0.021BTC or .1BTC.. or whatever the reasonable, feasible and prudently reachable BTC accumulation targets might need to transition into.