It is the sideeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeways I fear the most... that is the worst of the worst.
+1 Sideways sucks the most
Dunno, for traders maybe yes. For hodlers, down is most painful...
“Sideways” means low volatility; the extreme of sideways-ness is
price stability.
The theoretically ideal form of money is price-stable. Volatility only benefits traders, at the expense of everyone else.
There are several kinds of traders. some influence, some panic, some play big swings, etc, etc (
edit: It's not a zero sum game, either)
If BTC could become price-stable,* then I would prefer that. The world cannot run on volatile money alone, nor on deflationary money alone. (Note to Jay: I am perfectly well aware that price-stable BTC will never happen.)
I doubt that it is good to be using the word "never" to the extent that it matters anyhow. We already should be able to anticipate that the larger the BTC market cap gets, the more likelihood for it to be less voilatile because the BIGGER the market cap, it takes more value to move it.
In other words, if we are trying to figure out what to do in present times or even trying to plan for various longer timeframes of 1-5 years, 5-10 years, 10-20 years etc, then we might consider what volatility is right now, and how much if any is volatility likely to change in future time frames.
For example, if BTC becomes less volatile over the next 10 years or so, then we can make adaptations to our presumptions about what we had thought it was going to be and also adapt to various financial preparations that might had been in play to respond to such changes in volatility...
For sure, the state of what bitcoin is now, and what we expect it to be in the future remains a bit of a moving target because we cannot exactly know all of the various factors that will cause much if any difference between what we had expected to happen, and what ended up happening will be 10 years from now (or whatever relevant timeline), even though we can put our expectations in a speculation view about what we might believe to be more or less likely based on information that we currently hav ( I expect that some of our information is imperfect, and for sure some of our logic is imperfect, but also there are just things (information) that we might not be able to know with any kind of precision beyond speculating that certain kinds of other human behavior or events might end up playing out).
By the way, my frequent and ongoing criticism still is when guys proclaim either a prediction or a wish that BTC prices are going to be stable in current times or in the short term, and I can have a pretty high level of confidence when I label them as a wishful-thinking dweeb who has no fucking clue.. because bitcoin prices volatility is pretty damned close to 100% inevitable in the current times and short-term time frames.... so anyhow this seems to be one of the only times that I can proclaim with a pretty high level of confidence and almost certainty that such proclaimer and wisher of stability is living in la la landia.. but still my arrogance in certainty does not mean that bitcoin is not on a path of increasing and increasing movement towards less volatility which is also known as stability.
Since I don’t swing-trade, the only thing uncomfortable to me about a sideways market is that I never know whether it’s about to crash, or about to moon.
Join the club. No one does, even though some folks claim to know.
* I mean price-stable according to an index of goods and services. That means rising against the dollar, as the dollar depreciates from inflation. The dollar is not price-stable; to the contrary, the dollar is a volatile currency. Have you seen dollar prices lately!? Not only the obvious increase in prices, but the fluctuations as markets adapt to price shocks.
You are a fucking goofball, sometimes. The dollar has had a pretty long stead of having quite a bit of stability (aka mostly lacking in terms of experiencing a lot volatility) .. of course, the dollar has been depreciating in at a very slow rate .. but it is not volatile.. and for sure, one of the concerns in recent times, is that its decline has started to increase in ways that are really difficult to hide and bordering on points of unsustainability - it's been a good run.. while it lasted.. but at the same time, the dollar is not dead yet... it is the strongest of the fiats, currently. There are possibilities to continue to milk the system another 5-30 years.. I am not sure if it can last that long, but the dollar is not dead yet... and we are lucky to have this life raft called bitcoin (I did not come up with such life raft term.. but many bitcoiners have been using such analogy)