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I cannot disagree with anything you're saying above. In Bitcoinland anything is possible and it would not surprise me (but would somewhat disappoint me) if we saw the price climbing up to 10x of its current value only to soon drop down to 5 digits. Still I somehow doubt the swing will be that wild. Maybe dropping down to low-6-digit levels, and then gently climbing up to find its steady-state maturity value (a.k.a. sideways/ant-pump/dumps until the next cycle). Will that pattern hold true forever? I don't think so, but I do think price will be monotonically increasing on average ("going up forever, Laura"), just not at the same magnitude/cycle (slowing down, which is why
early adopters were (are) always the winners when compared to later ones).I agree with the point that earlier adopters are quite likely to always be better off than later adopters, even though I hate to bring up this point (or exception), that surely there could be waves in which some later adopters would end up being better off by entering bitcoin on on a great dip in the cycle rather than at the peak.. so someone coming into bitcoin balls to the walls in June 2022 would have had been better off than someone coming in balls to the wall in early 2021 (February 2021-ish)... .. Another thing is that since bitcoin is designed to pump forever, the later adopters of bitcoin are still going to benefit from getting into bitcoin, yet relatively speaking not as much as earlier adopters, especially if we are looking at dates of adoption that are several years apart (between the comparison points .. or comparison newbies entering into bitcoin and establishing their relative BTC positions) rather than just getting lucky in regards to timing BTC price waves that can be quite difficult to know with any level of confidence, which is part of the reason that almost no matter the BTC price (or even if there had been a recent BTC price upwards surge), I continuously suggest newbies get into bitcoin as soon as possible, rather than waiting for BTC price dips, since I really believe that even if BTC price shoots up, no one can really know that it is going to stop shooting up, and so in that regard, the ONLY way to prepare for further UP (or further potential UP) is by having bitcoin rather than waiting for BTC price dips that may or may not end up playing out.. and sure who wants to be a complete no coiner? Sure sometimes there might be reasons to be a bit of a low coiner in the process of building one's BTC holdings, yet the inclination for newbies (yet they gotta be responsible for their own inclinations) seems that it should be to make sure that they are always prepared for UP, so at least get out of no coiner status and try to minimize any kind of low coiner status, since anyone who transitions into being able to accumulate BTC as aggressively as he is able to do so as soon as possible, will likely end up passing through low coiner status
** within a reasonably acceptable time.
** By the way, I consider "low coiner status" to be a mental state of mind rather than a reflection of how many coins a guy happens to hold. If you happen to be making only $100 to $200 per week and you ONLY have $10 per week of disposable income and you are buying $10 worth of bitcoin every week with the totality of your disposable income, then I surely would not consider such a person a low coiner since that person is doing as much as he is able to do given the tightness of his budget, and sure maybe he is going to need to work on ways to increase his disposable income by increasing his income and/or cutting his expenses.About the 200-WMA, it is still my favorite indicator, although, again, small (or even larger) dips below it occasionally do not (and would not) surprise me. Its mathematical equation is far too simple to carry any significant/deep meaning that would make the indicator "intelligent" enough to capture the intricacies of a piece of code that's orders of magnitude more complex. Yet, it still does a pretty good job at setting a lower bound on the price, and giving us a frame of reference to assess things like "fuck-you" status thresholds and other such funzies. And, looking at the 200-WMA from a
fully zoomed-out perspective, I do not really see many serious violations of its role as a price lower bound (every rule has exceptions, etc.), so it still remains my go-to reference for helping me answer the "when" and the "how much" questions that often arise in the life of a HoDLer.
Surely when any of us are attempting to use the 200-WMA as a commonly referenced (and talked about) guide, we can acknowledge it as a lagging indicator, yet part of its power also comes from the fact that it is lagging, too. Between June 2022 and October 2023, there were a lot of folks wanting to abandon the 200-WMA, yet I think some of those folks had been overly reliant on such 200-WMA and so they ended up structuring "more than they could afford to lose" and even leverage around their speculations about the 200-WMA being a floor price, so surely 16 months of spending a lot of time either below the 200-WMA or just barely above it, really did end up recking quite a few folks, and surely some of the more crazy ones were getting reckt towards the beginning of such 16 months period, yet it seems that there were quite a few continuing to get reckt and then getting bitter over the whole matter, so there likely can be ways to still consider the 200-WMA as a guideline bottom without getting overly reliant on it.. since gosh even some of us guys who are fairly conservative in our BTC portfolio management, the longer that we are in bitcoin, the more cushion we seem to be building in regards to the amount that we invested into bitcoin as compared to the value (or price) of our BTC holdings. So yeah it likely helps when we are not screwing around with leverage, or entrusting 3rd parties with much if any of our coins for the purposes of earning yield or the other possible ways that we might permit others to legally (or not so legally) gamble with our coins.
I like your reference to the Lindy Effect, it does seem to fit the history of Bitcoin, in that each cycle more or less builds a foundation upon which further price increases can create a staircase effect. Couple that with the ETFs and the general adoption that we've seen in recent years, and it's difficult for anyone (even enemies of Bitcoin) to dismiss its future.
Even though I still appreciate Stock to Flow, I am becoming more and more accepting of bitcoin's power law attributes
Robert Breedlove interviewed Giovanni Santostasi
in the What is Money? (WIM) podcast for a little over 2 hours. Santostasi also had mentioned in other interviews
** that he considers stock to flow to merely be a sub-variant of the power Law model with additional layers of complication added in.
** I reference those other interviews/podcasts in this post from about two weeks ago..As for the price levels you mention in your last paragraph, I don't see any reason why we won't see them, especially near the end of 2025 when this cycle is likely to reach its peak. I think we are all in for some exciting times in the next 12-15 months. Perhaps many of us are going to reach very close to the end of this (never-ending, really) journey. Perhaps...
I understand what you are saying by end, but never ending, and I would prefer to consider that some of us go through various transitions into different stages of our bitcoin journey, and hopefully we would never be completely ending our journey, yet we are going to have various BTC price thresholds in which we might engage in lump sum or even some kind of more incremental withdrawal strategies - and hopefully we would not be making radical changes in regards to our bitcoin holdings in terms of shaving off large portions, and even something like 25% at a time might start to border on a bit much, yet each of us has to come to determinations regarding those kinds of risks and tradeoffs involved in cashing out those kinds of levels of our BTC holdings at any given time. Ultimately guys are going to do what they are going to do, and there surely could be "reasons" to plan out some larger quantity withdrawals that might otherwise seem to go higher than reasonable and/or prudent BTC portfolio management practices... and since each of us is in charge of our own determinations of "reasonable/prudent" some of us might not necessarily agree with (or understand) what another guy might choose to do at any given time..and we might even become scared/hesitant to share too many details of what we did on this thread.. hahahahahaha... sometimes I personally don't want to share while I am in the middle of doing it, even though I might decide to share some of my decisions at some later date.