Let's be fair to mindrust though. He sold in panic and disappointment at the price he had bought. Although he was not overexposed as he claimed - 2 to 1 in favor of fiat is anything but overexposed.
There is quite a bit of variety of ways in which bitcoin HODLers/accumulators arrive at their "overexposed" assessment. I have beaten this to death in a variety of ways, but it remains a topic that comes up so frequently because of there being so many ways in which folks come into bitcoin and then fact BTC's volatility can end up causing different assessments in regards to whether the overexposure (or over accumulation) came from investing dollar value or did it come from the BTC price appreciating and a failure/refusal to cash out while profits were higher.
For sure, we have to attempt to figure out "overexposure" from the financial and psychological position of the HODLer/accumulator, so in some senses there are going to be variables that are difficult to figure out, unless the HODLer/accumulator discloses those kinds of specifics to us.. and for sure if we happen to be the at-issue HODLer/accumulator, then we should be in the best position to figure out our own specifics in regards to both finances and psychology.. but we know that the reality of the matter is that sometimes it can be difficult for normies to really grapple with getting accurate assessments of either of their finances or their psychology, even though that information should be within their grasp to accomplish.
Mindrust did help us out quite a bit by being a decently longer-term forum member (and WO participant up until March 2020), and he seemed to have been pretty honest and specific about his finances and his psychology in the couple of years preceding his March 2020 panic... and yeah, he had showed quite a few signs of getting close to panicking prior to 2020.. which contributed to part of the unbelievable revelation when he did end up panicking in March 2020.
But still, even though he disclosed quite a few of his specifics, there are always going to be ways in which some of us (including him) are holding back some of the personal details.. it is not easy to disclose very many personal details, and maybe it is not even advisable, even though some members do seem to voluntarily choose to share quite a few of their specifics from time to time.I would imagine that mindrust regrets telling us so much, and that seems to be part of the reason that he refuses to come back to this thread.. and that's too bad.. and he also did get involved in some shitcoins too.. which may also make it difficult to come back here in his current avatar.. so would be a good reason to create an alternate identity if wanting to still participate in this thread but without that historical baggage.
It is hard to blame him for not wanting to come back.. It seems like almost an impossibility..
never say never around here, though.
I am thinking that from what we may well know about mindrust specifically is that in the 2017 price run, he got caught up in a lot of shitcoins, so he made a shitton of mistakes, and came away from that whole experience with hardly any bitcoins (and regretful too), so during the mid-to-late 2018 to early 2020 period, he was putting quite a bit of financial and psychological efforts into building up his BTC portfolio and trying to focus on BTC accumulation.. part of the problem, may have been that he was also trying to make up for his mistakes, even though that does not tend to be a good strategy and many of us know that, even while we are engaged in such beheviors.. we are hoping that we will end up being successful. and then getting out of that psychoogical/financial trap of feeling like we have to make up for past mistakes.
So essentially mindrust's overaccumulation into BTC between late 2018 and early 2020 came through overinvesting while the BTC price was going up and down and sideways, so then by the time we got that big correction in March 2020, there was a kind of psychological and financial build up (and presumption) that the BTC price would not go below certain price points anymore (perhaps $5.5k?), so when the BTC price went shooting below the price floor, there was hardly any ability to hang on..
To the extent that we can believe some of the details about he extent of the investment of something like 40% or more (when he should have been 10% - and maybe 20% at most).. then it even though it seems to not make sense for him to sell (and preserve himself on the way down) or not not buy back (when there was a temporary blip back down) .. but there seems to be some rationale to a lot of his thinking, too. Part of the reason that we do not have more examples of mindrust seems to be that guys do not say anything.. remember rosewater foundation/blindmayor.. He likely did something similar, but we have a lot of those kinds of folks over the years, but most of them do not post about it.. or at least not that many details.. We know some of them too but it would not be fair to mention them or speculate about what their details might have been.. because they really have not publicly disclosed even close to that much information.. so we usually just have snip-its of information that provide decently strong inferences about their having had mindrusted.
I guess my punchline point is that there is a difference between overinvesting that comes through smaller amounts of value put into bitcoin such as overinvesting by going from 10% to 20%.. so that level of overinesting may well be more bearable when the seemingly inevitable shitty times come and so some level of modest overinvesting seems somewhat reasonable.. as compared to the level of over investing that mindrust had done.. which was north of 40%.. which was 3x additional value than what he should have been putting into bitcoin. He knew that too.. but he could not stop himself.
For me it is a different story to feel overinvested into BTC because the BTC price appreciated and the HODLer/accumulator failed/refused to cash out any on the way up. For me the person who gets to an over accumulation status because of failure/refusal to cash out any BTC is in quite a bit of a less bad situation as compared to someone who is over investing, measures that overinvesting by the value that was put in, and never getting into profits.. Of course there are variations of each, and it could even be the fact that we are not even sure which one we might be because the facts are murky.. and admittedly there can be various murky zones and various ways to measure where we are at and how much new value did we put in as compared with whether the BTC price value has gone up or down. I don't even proclaim to know my own situation, but it seems to be a lot easier when in profits.. but just having difficulties figuring out how much profits as compared with measuring various forms of not being in profits.. and realizing that how much you put into BTCis 2x, 3x, 4x or more than what you can afford to lose .. Even though mindrust may have still been in a bit of a murky area of profits or not, he did not achieve any kind of overinvestment that came from BTC price appreciation, thus he seemed to have been selling at break even prices more or less.
Maybe some day, he will clarify some of these facts because I know that even with me, sometimes I will make an assessment in one time frame that ends up being different from an assessment that i make at later dates. Of course, there could be some whitewashing and spin that happens depending on on when the assessment is made and if there might be new perspectives about how to frame the issues - without necessarily going into fantasy (make shit up) accounting.
For example, maybe in the earlier time, the HODLer/accumulator was calculating his/her BTC exposure based on measurements of adding the value of all equities, cash and BTC in order to arrive at the value of his/her quasi-liquid investment portfolio, but was purposefully not including shitcoins as part of that package, and was also choosing to completely exclude the value of his/her residential property.
One or two years later, the HODLer/accumulator decided to add up the value of all of the shitcoins that s/he owned and also to assess the fair (quasi-liquid) value of his/her house at 70% of the then market valuem and to add those values to the value of the quasi-liquid investment portfolio. Upon making those changes to his/her overall quasi-liquid investment portfolio, the overall size of the total quasi-liquid investment portfolio went up, so therefore the changes caused his/her exposure to bitcoin to be considered as 30% rather than 40%, and therefore the explanation and the rethinking of what happened might be characterized differently based on various reassessments..
It would be up to the HODLer/accumulator to figure out if his/her reframing of the whole matter helps him/her to understand his/her financial/psychological situation better in order to better learn from it, or if the reframing of the whole matter could be a way to present the facts and story in a way that are to create a better depiction of reality or just to describe a situation that allows some abilities to save face in regards to helping to not look so bad.. Both of the reasons could be justifiable reasons to reframe the accounting, and if a person knows shy s/he is reframing then the reframing can be empowering rather than merely a way to escape into fantasyland.
Many of us are 100% in favor of bitcoin in terms of savings. I personally had exhausted the credit card limits and had taken a loan from the bank with which I had bought the day before at 7K. If I wasn't afraid of covid, I swear, I would go the next day and take out a 5x bigger loan and buy bitcoins for 4K. Whatever.
For sure, leveraging can increase the exposure too, and sometimes we might lose track of how much overexposed that we might be, including if we had leveraged against various assets that we own.. rather than just playing straight longs..
But in the last year we have seen something even more unfortunate, not to say ridiculous. We see an influx of institutions, thousands of them, who have invested in bitcoin and even more companies and retail behind them. However, over 90% of them have no knowledge, no beliefs, no intention to hold for at least 4 years. Some of them were quite influenced by the tweets of elon musk, which shows what their intellectual level was. That is why these crashes last year and this year turned out to be so big. All these companies and retail lost over 50% of their money. And this can be easily checked on the glassnode website. What I noticed, for example, I see today that many others have noticed on Twitter. From the Canadian purpose ETF were withdrawn 24K bitcoins at the end of Friday (50% of the bitcoins). It is almost certain that this is a company that has found a way to sell them on the exchange the next day. Something that caused the big crash.
Surely, sometimes we hope that some of these BIGGER players will never get their coins back, and we find out that sometimes when they do their massive dumpings, they are not even playing with their own coins. So if they end up fucking up, then their customers/clients may well end up paying for the games or the bad situations that some of those custodians get themselves into.
So, several large companies have practically gone bankrupt, and others are moving in that direction. Probably over 90% of the companies. There, in addition to the fact that customers want an annual interest rate, contracts are often made, in case the price falls to a certain level, the asset to be sold immediately. This is de facto a long position with a margin call. Michael Sailor did something similar, but there the calculations are better and even at 3K he is not in danger of liquidation. Not to mention the companies that use bitcoins as collateral for their collapsed shitcoins.
For sure, some of the folks playing with leverage are way more sophisticated than others.
What follows from now on? This process of exodus of the institutions and the weak hands will probably continue for another 2-3 years at least. But even afther that, we clearly cannot rely on them for sustainable price growth. In addition, until the very end of 2020, despite the withdrawal of 650K bitcoins from Greyscale from the market, the price could not pass 10K due to the ugly Bart manipulations on 20x+ derivatives exchanges such as Bitmex. The paypal sensation had to appear before the bull market could start. Assuming that the ETF will be given to Greyscale within 3 years, this means that these bitcoins will return to the exchanges. And if there is no sensational news like PayPal, there may not even be a significant bullish market despite the halving.
Wow.. 2-3 years to get out of this mess? I hope it does not take that long.
So, let's hope that the ETF will not be given and the institutions will not inflate the price and then bring it down. What is sure to happen is that the convinced hodlers will continue to increase their stash and will not sell on a loss.
Not selling at a loss seems to be a very good practice, highly recommended.
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