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That's the reality we'll have to accept, sadly we can't go back in time to accumulate more or start the investment as the case may be,
Frequently, I try to use the past or even to input some data into various DCA calculating websites, like this one:
https://newhedge.io/bitcoin/dollar-cost-averaging-calculatorThere are abilities to compare various strategies and how they might have had played out, and frequently, I like to use the data from the DCA websites to try to shut up the twats proclaiming that trading is better, especially if we are referring to a timeline that is 8 years or more, frequently when we start to refer to timelines that are 8 years or more, it would be quite rare that a trader would be able to beat guys who were concentrating on ongoing and persistent accumulation and holding without selling (except maybe spend and replace).
Even though my own experience in bitcoin has ONLY been since 2013, it seems that quite early in my own bitcoin journey, I had been emphasizing ideas of ongoing buying and holding and deemphasizing trying to trade, and so many times when I had been trying to support my assertions, the short term data (including any period less than 4 years) did not tend to look very good, and frequently there were needs to get into periods of 6 years or longer before there would start to be data to objectively show decent amounts of progress (and even compounding) starting to take place... .and for sure, I would not even be arguing that no guys can beat a DCA style of investing, yet it tended to become quite apparent that many guys who had been selling bitcoin with hopes of buying back cheaper were putting themselves in a worse position both in terms of tending to sell too many too soon but then also putting themselves into a waiting posture rather than an active buying posture, which has both mindset and activity components, even though guys frequently will characterize ongoing buying (and holding) strategies as if they were boring.. which surely I have my doubts about that especially for guys who might be in a position of actively earning money and who might have income and/or expenses that fluctuate.. and may also have other investments too that they might be considering whether to merely just compare with bitcoin or to reallocate funds from their other investments into bitcoin.
Depending on where we are at in life, there might not even be needs to reallocate other investments that we might have into bitcoin, and surely I went through some of those considerations mostly in my first couple of years into bitcoin, and by the time I got a couple of years into bitcoin, I felt that I had resolved those reallocations for myself in terms of reallocating some of my other investments into bitcoin, yet a pretty decently high amount of my other investments just stayed mostly in what they were in, with only some relatively minor dickering around here and there along the way.. yet, even the growing of bitcoin, may well also end up forcing some other investments too... which ended up happening with me, too.
So yeah, in regards to our past and whatever we might have had done, or failed to do, we are mostly locked into whatever actions or inactions that we had ended up taking through the years, and so maybe mostly we might be looking back and making various comparisons in order to attempt to improve whatever we might decide to do going forward, to the extent that any changes might be justifiable.
But alot will actually change if the price starts appreciating,
Sure. One of the benefits of ongoingly stacking bitcoin and preparing for UP is that the preparation has already been done once (and if?) the price starts to go up. Several of us longer term bitcoiners who had been stacking bitcoin and not really selling, have had several times of getting stuck with seemingly depressing BTC prices for decently extended periods of time, and surely if we were largely erroring on the side of stacking, then the ongoing stacking would end up paying off, at least so far in bitcoin's history, even though there have never been any guarantees that the BTC price is going to resume UPpity... even though surely the underlying presumption of ongoing and continuous buying (such as DCA buying) is that ultimately the bitcoin's price curve is sloping upwardly.. and so of course, everyone ongoingly investing in bitcoin hope that the bitcoin price curve continues to slope upwards.
There have been some pretty strong and ongoing HODLers in this very thread who have had periods of either seeming panic or just removal of themselves from bitcoin discussions for some time, especially during some of the frustrating downward price periods.
For sure none of us have not tended to get as bad as Dave Portnoy (here is a very
recent Portnoy panic example making the rounds, currently), and it can be quite comical to see some guys panicking, even though many of us still feel some versions of those kinds of sufferings when the price is going down, even if we might believe that we had mostly already prepared ourselves financially and psychologically.
so I really think we have to be more aggressive in accumulating so as to get a significant result after 2 cycle.
When I was referring to investing 15% to 25% or even 50% of a guys annual income into bitcoin each year for several years, I consider those to be quite aggressive accumulation approaches, especially since many normal people struggle to consistently invest and/or save 10% of their annual income. Another thing is that all investment and/or building of back up funds needs to come from discretionary funds, so it seems to me that the more aggressive a guy is going to try to be, then the more likely he is going to have built and maintained decently strong back up funds, especially since if we increase aggressiveness, we are also tending to put ourselves at risk of making mistakes and/or accidentally going too far or overdoing it or not accounting for some changes that might happen with our income and/or our expenses that could end up causing us to have to sell some bitcoin at a time that is not of our own choosing, so the back up funds can serve as a bit of a cushion for the more minor mistakes, but it won't save us if we totally screw up in major ways...so we cannot expect that our back up funds are going to rescue us from all of the possible things that could end up going wrong in regards to loss of income and/or increases in expenses, whether short term or long term.
If Bitcoin has a massive appreciation in the next 2 cycles today stackers will eventually be in a good position.
Not going to argue with you about that. Generally there tends to be various up periods every single year and especially several times each cycle, and we cannot even really know when the various UPpities are going to happen... sometimes they can drag out, and other times, they just happen quickly and then correct back down. I think that the April to June 2019 3.5x UPpity from $4,200 to $13,880 is such a great example of a kind of outrageous UPpity....even though it ended up correcting back down in late 2019 and then again with the flash crash in March 2020, yet surely the rebound ended up happening by late 2020 and largely causing sub $15k to never be seen again (and surely it seems unrealistic if anyone believes sub $15k might still be in play and even the guys expecting sub $45k might be overly presumptuous, even though at the same time, outrageous BTC price corrections cannot be completely ruled out either, yet many guys who spend one or two cycles accumulating bitcoin, a large number of them are not waiting for BTC price corrections in order to stack.
One thing is for market to form a cycle the other is to make the price difference significant to be able to realise a good amount,
Right now, we are having a decent number of arguments regarding both whether cycles exist, and if they do exist, how much do they tell us about where we are at, how we got here and/or where we might be going? Even though I frequently have my own theories, I never tend to have high levels of confidence, so I just attempt to balance what I am doing based on my own comfort levels and mostly attempting to account for
my own various 9 factors - and those are not static assessments, even though they may well not contribute towards any erratic changes in whatever I am tending to do to attempt to deal with the ups and downs of the BTC price.. that are largely inevitable, without exactly knowing in which direction or how far or for how long, even though surely some guys will tell you that they know (I have my doubts).
2 cycles may not just be enough if the price difference from the previous high and the recent high isn't significant enough, if that is the case 3 - 4 cycles may be required to be in a good position, if you take a look at the last two cycles you will see the difference,
I doubt that any of us (who are trying to invest in bitcoin rather than trying to trade) should be attempting to count on specific BTC price moves to happen in order for us to ongoingly continue to build our bitcoin holdings and perhaps also to develop systems in which we can valuate our bitcoin holdings, our progress and figure out the extent to which we might need to change what we are doing. So for example we likely start out in an accumulation phase, and then progress to a maintenance stage and then we likely would go to a liquidation phase (whether it is sustainable or not), and yeah, sometimes we might be overlapping the stages.. so sometimes we may well have to figure out where we are at so that we are tailoring our conduct (and psychology) to where we are actually at rather than some fantasies about where we wished we were at.
The recent high price difference just increased by 84% while the previous performed excellently by increasing 261%, if you should have 2 cycles similar to the first in the picture, that is enough to be in a good position even if the price makes a future dip, but if you have cycle similar to that of the second that you will require more cycles to be in a good position.
I have found that it does not tend to hurt to be somewhat conservative in expectations, and so if the BTC price dynamics end up outperforming expectations, then there can be some satisfaction in having better results than expected.
I frequently have told the story of my own giving a ballpark expectation in late 2013 that my bitcoin would perform somewhere in the 6% per year category, since historically that was what I had considered my various other investments to have had performed, on average... so if my bitcoin could perform somewhere in that same 6% per year category, then I would feel that my bitcoin was largely performing on par with my then historical performance... so surely the first three years that I was in bitcoin, my BTC spent a lot of time in the negative, so it probably did not start to average out to be at least 6% per year and to stay above those levels until after around early to mid-2017, yet I think that overall, my own BTC holdings have probably performed somewhere in the north of 60% per year, and yeah it is not really easy to calculate the bitcoin holdings over that time in terms of some of the years there were sales so then there could be optional ways to treat those holdings.
But what we can do now is to hope for a significant cycle difference, and we will not have to wait long to be in a good position.
All I said here is not in respect of entry quality, I'm talking about overall accumulation
I am not going to claim to know BTC price direction in terms of how much or how long, and if I were in my bitcoin accumulation phase or my early accumulation phase (which you seem to potentially be around the time of finishing a first whole cycle of bitcoin accumulation), then I would just continue to stay hunkered down on ongoing and continuous bitcoin accumulation (of course through ongoing buying), so at some point the size of the accumulation might start to affect if you should change strategies, yet also I knew that frequently when I was in my early accumulation phase, I had to regularly assess my bitcoin buys, and I frequently had a weekly budget that was already established, yet my system tended to be that if I had any extra funds that would come in, then half of the new (unexpected funds) would go towards bitcoin buying and the other half would just go into my back up funds and potentially the part that would go into my back up funds would have some flexibility in terms of how it could be spent after expenses were assessed each week or month. As far as the unexpected amounts, I recall that frequently, my amounts were relatively petty, such as less than $100 or maybe from time to time a few hundred, yet if I had any incidents of receiving larger amounts, such as greater than $500, then I might have to spend some additional time to think about whether I was going to do 50% into bitcoin or if I might take some other tactic with that money.
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