Hodlers are unscrupulous parasites. Here's why

[tee-rex]

Broadly speaking, we all are unscrupulous parasites in one way or another as we are ruthlessly exploiting nature without thinking twice what we leave behind us unless it starts to backfire (like with global warming, pollution, etc). But in this case we are all in the same boat, so it doesn't really matter who is to blame and who is to be blamed.

But this is different with the so-called hodlers. By these I don't mean early adopters who wait paiently until they can spend their coins directly without fiat. I mean those who bought bitcoins (or some other coins) and hope to sell them at hefty profits later when bitcoin gets universal recognition and adoption. So why are they parasites? The answer is simple.

Basically, they are expecting that the price will grow as they sit idly on their hands. But this growth is not possible without other people actively using bitcoin, paying with it and selling for it - all those people who help create real value of bitcoin. And I know what hodlers are going to say in reply. That they diminish the supply and thus also contribute to this growth.

But this is a lame excuse. First of all, they can't in any way contribute to real growth which is caused by genuine adoption. All they do is add up to volatility. Second, if their words were true, that would mean that more holding would lead to higher prices. In real life though, it means that a coin (in this case bitcoin) will get abandoned and lose all its value eventually.

Therefore, if we are to bravely face the harsh and unpleasant truth and call things their real names, these people who proudly call themselves hodlers are in fact hoping to get something out of nothing, to get a share of the common pie when they themselves didn't bring anything to the table in the first place. Sounds familiar? So who are they if not parasites?

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[cellard]

Why would anyone want to use their cold storage to buy things they can already buy with fiat, thus spending the bad money (easy money) and holding the good money (hard money). You can't create incentives for this to change, fiat needs to fuck itself up to the point that it happens organically and things are measured in BTC and not in fiat anymore.

Until then, spending BTC doesn't seem too bright to me. It is already a better store of value than gold, it can be a way to make payments too through second layers. It just has to be ready for when the real, organic demand happens. You aren't going to create this real, organic demand by using it when you don't really need to.

There's nothing wrong with holding Bitcoin. If you want to contribute start coding, create content about Bitcoin, etc, but telling people to use it when they don't really need to isn't going to help.

[BrewMaster]

at the end of it all it won't matter if they are parasites or angles! this is what it is. there is always some kind of balance in the market between what you call "parasites" and others such as "day trader parasites", "weak hand idiots", "manipulating whales", "wall street and bank evils" and "daily spending contributing others"!

and that balance will result in the price that you see at any time. complaining about existence of a group will accomplish nothing in my opinion. they will exist whether we complain about them or not.

lets start from ourselves. what have YOU done for bitcoin?
for instance i am running a full node and contribute to the decentralization of the network.

[tee-rex]

Why would anyone want to use their cold storage to buy things they can already buy with fiat, thus spending the bad money (easy money) and holding the good money (hard money). You can't create incentives for this to change, fiat needs to fuck itself up to the point that it happens organically and things are measured in BTC and not in fiat anymore.

Until then, spending BTC doesn't seem too bright to me. It is already a better store of value than gold, it can be a way to make payments too through second layers. It just has to be ready for when the real, organic demand happens. You aren't going to create this real, organic demand by using it when you don't really need to.

There's nothing wrong with holding Bitcoin. If you want to contribute start coding, create content about Bitcoin, etc, but telling people to use it when they don't really need to isn't going to help.

It is easy to refute all your arguments at once. If there is nothing wrong with holding as you claim, then what gives bitcoin value then? If bitcoin weren't used everyday and everywhere, where would this value come from? You can profit from holding only and only if someone else is using bitcoin and creating this value. If everyone stopped using it in one way or another, bitcoin would die the same very moment. The rise in value, which hodlers hope to take advantage of, comes through its use, not holding. Holding doesn't produce value, all it produces is volatility via diminished supply until supply runs dry and the coin dies in the agony of volatility.

[franky1]

what the OP is talking about is not HODLers.. but fiat investors.

HODLers hold and want to keep bitcoin.. HODLers can even spend bitcoin. but they then get more bitcoin because they want to stay with bitcoin as their main currency.. what they have as their assets is majority bitcoin and not much fiat. and they dont wish to hold fiat..

but those only looking for a great time to exit bitcoin and be fiat rich are not HODLers

i think insulting HODLers is wrong. call what your describing by its real term and insult them.. FIAT LOVERS

[cellard]

Therefore, if we are to bravely face the harsh and unpleasant truth and call things their real names, these people who proudly call themselves hodlers are in fact hoping to get something out of nothing, to get a share of the common pie when they themselves didn't bring anything to the table in the first place. Sounds familiar? So who are they if not parasites?

This couldn't also be further from the truth. By holding Bitcoin you are raising the amount of money at stake within the network. The more money held in Bitcoin the more credibility it goes to potential hodlers, because they see that big amounts of money have been kept safe for years.

"hoping to get something out of nothing" is so wrong. They are taking the risk of being pioneers, and pioneers should get the reward for this risk, naturally, and this is how Bitcoin works as it grows in price through time. So think again before you call risk-taking pioneers "parasites". The real parasites are the fiat whales, if anything. Fiat whales get infinite money doing nothing through interests. In Bitcoin your BTC count stays the same in your wallet. So if you want to grow your BTC you must do something, contrary to fiat which if you are rich, as I said you can sit on your ass all day and watch your fiat account go up.

[trecore4]

Basically, they are expecting that the price will grow as they sit idly on their hands. But this growth is not possible without other people actively using bitcoin, paying with it and selling for it - all those people who help create real value of bitcoin. And I know what hodlers are going to say in reply. That they diminish the supply and thus also contribute to this growth.

That make sense surely. I mean without any trade of the coins for real use there will never be rise in the value. The more demand we create by using the crypto the more value it will gain over the time and that the truth about it. I mean if we have 100 X coins and people are buying them then they will be adding the value because they are buying it and putting money into it. But the actual value will rise a lot when those coins will start trading amongst the people or investors and as soon as it reaches to 80 X coins or more then demand will suddenly rise and thus value will follow as well. This is just my way of looking at it and I guess this is what OP is also trying to say here.

[BrewMaster]

what the OP is talking about is not HODLers.. but fiat investors.

HODLers hold and want to keep bitcoin.. HODLers can even spend bitcoin. but they then get more bitcoin because they want to stay with bitcoin as their main currency.. what they have as their assets is majority bitcoin and not much fiat. and they dont wish to hold fiat..

but those only looking for a great time to exit bitcoin and be fiat rich are not HODLers

i think insulting HODLers is wrong. call what your describing by its real term and insult them.. FIAT LOVERS

that's the whole point of a censorship resistance currency and a free market. anybody who wishes can come get involved and own bitcoin and do with it whatever they like. from Satoshi and Hal Finney down to banksters like JP Morgan own bitcoin. and you can't prevent any of them without turning bitcoin into a centralized and censored currency.

[Samarkand]

...
Therefore, if we are to bravely face the harsh and unpleasant truth and call things their real names, these people who proudly call themselves hodlers are in fact hoping to get something out of nothing, to get a share of the common pie when they themselves didn't bring anything to the table in the first place. Sounds familiar? So who are they if not parasites?
...

The hodlers are also the people that stand to lose the most
if Bitcoin never truly succeeds. Of course a holder that is sitting
on hundreds of Bitcoins isn´t really contributing to BTC merchant adoption.
Nevertheless, he has put a lot of money into Bitcoin (only very few people got
in so early that they managed to acquire huge amounts of BTC for a few dollars)
and has therefore given a huge vote of confidence for Bitcoin.

I´d therefore disagree with the pejorative "parasite", because a parasite
isn´t taking on so much risk and is instead piggybacking off the success
of others.

[Al-e_x]

I think they are a candidate of miliyaders, how do you rate the old bitcoin holders from 2009 to this day? are they parasites?

I think some of them save a lot of bitcoin assets, but they keep forgetting, I think their analysis is very good and always on target, although not limited by time.

[tee-rex]

at the end of it all it won't matter if they are parasites or angles! this is what it is. there is always some kind of balance in the market between what you call "parasites" and others such as "day trader parasites", "weak hand idiots", "manipulating whales", "wall street and bank evils" and "daily spending contributing others"!

and that balance will result in the price that you see at any time. complaining about existence of a group will accomplish nothing in my opinion. they will exist whether we complain about them or not.

Yes, I agree with your point, but my post was intended as a thought-out objection against the rhetoric prevailing across the forum that holding (or hodling) is a good thing on its own, which adds a lot of value to crypto. It doesn't, and in this post I'm trying to explain why exactly. In other words, I'm trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, to reveal who actually adds or creates value and who doesn't. If someone doesn't want to add value but plans only to take that value after it has been added by someone else, who are they really?

And I'm not complaining, I'm just making things clear and showing them in their true light and perspective. See the difference?

lets start from ourselves. what have YOU done for bitcoin?
for instance i am running a full node and contribute to the decentralization of the network.

Honestly, I'm not so much into bitcoin these days since I'm more interested in litecoin, and specifically because it has more value for me as an everyday means of payment. I often have to convert LTC to fiat before buying things like groceries and whatnot, and believe me I would be happy to pay with crypto directly. By and large, I use crypto to avoid using banks as much as possible.

Apart from that, I'm also using a plain vanilla litecoin-qt wallet, and if that counts as running a full node, then so be it.

[krishnapramod]

Quoting a paragraph from an article on the virtue of hoarding from Mises Institute.

As Menger, Mises, and others have written, a commodity becomes money only gradually, as increasing numbers of market participants, on their own, decide to use it rather than other consumer goods. To become a common medium of exchange, a commodity needs to possess certain objective characteristics, such as being durable, transportable, recognizable, divisible, fungible, and scarce. Another needed quality, often overlooked, is a commodity's suitability for hoarding.

Menger has pointed out that the special suitability of goods for hoarding, and their consequent widespread employment for this purpose, has been one of the most important causes of their increased marketability and therefore of their qualification as media of exchange.

With all the characteristics including scarcity, hodlers also do create value by simply hoarding and I don't think it has anything to do with diminishing the supply. At this stage of adoption what matters is demand, be it through spending/merchant adoption/medium of exchange or store of value/holding and looking at the overall spending options and market sentiment, we can agree latter is what is happening, SoV/demand/MoE/liquidity/maybe even UoA.

https://mises.org/library/virtue-hoarding

[1Referee]

Honestly, I'm not so much into bitcoin these days since I'm more interested in litecoin, and specifically because it has more value for me as an everyday means of payment. I often have to convert LTC to fiat before buying things like groceries and whatnot, and believe me I would be happy to pay with crypto directly. By and large, I use crypto to avoid using banks as much as possible.

That's a great alternative. Litecoin is probably the best on-chain crypto currency in existence, but when LN gets ready for the mass, it will lose its only advantage over Bitcoin. Have you ever thought about what you would do at that point? Good thing is that with atomic swaps you can hop from Litecoin's chain to Bitcoin's chain conveniently without using any exchange in the process.

Apart from that, I'm also using a plain vanilla litecoin-qt wallet, and if that counts as running a full node, then so be it.

That's considered a full node client, but are you only opening it when you're about to send a transaction (and thus closing it when you're done)? Full node clients only serve their purpose if you leave them open so that other peers will be able to download data from a honest node.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

Happy to be an unscrupulous parasite & sit on my bitcoin's until they allow me to become very wealthy, lazy & eat fine food & drink fine wine whilst holidaying constantly.

Been HODLING since 2014 & bought mostly in the $150 - $400 range. Power to my fellow HODLERS.

[badaovodich]

You can not include many individuals to generalize about who is holding. If you have $ 1,000 and you lose $ 800 a day, then you can calm down and have no other way but hold back to get your money back.

[Criptomen]

Broadly speaking, we all are unscrupulous parasites in one way or another as we are ruthlessly exploiting nature without thinking twice what we leave behind us unless it starts to backfire (like with global warming, pollution, etc). But in this case we are all in the same boat, so it doesn't really matter who is to blame and who is to be blamed.

But this is different with the so-called hodlers. By these I don't mean early adopters who wait paiently until they can spend their coins directly without fiat. I mean those who bought bitcoins (or some other coins) and hope to sell them at hefty profits later when bitcoin gets universal recognition and adoption. So why are they parasites? The answer is simple.

Basically, they are expecting that the price will grow as they sit idly on their hands. But this growth is not possible without other people actively using bitcoin, paying with it and selling for it - all those people who help create real value of bitcoin. And I know what hodlers are going to say in reply. That they diminish the supply and thus also contribute to this growth.

But this is a lame excuse. First of all, they can't in any way contribute to real growth which is caused by genuine adoption. All they do is add up to volatility. Second, if their words were true, that would mean that more holding would lead to higher prices. In real life though, it means that a coin (in this case bitcoin) will get abandoned and lose all its value eventually.

Therefore, if we are to bravely face the harsh and unpleasant truth and call things their real names, these people who proudly call themselves hodlers are in fact hoping to get something out of nothing, to get a share of the common pie when they themselves didn't bring anything to the table in the first place. Sounds familiar? So who are they if not parasites?

Based on your logic, almost everyone who has bitcoin, parasites. The price of bitcoin is very unstable, that's because of this there are a lot of holders who try to speculate and it's normal thing in my opinion. I don't think that the progress of bitcoin depends heavily on whether people will use it right now to buy things, the progress of bitcoin depends on the states and large companies that so far do not accept and do not use bitcoin as fiat money

[franky1]

that's the whole point of a censorship resistance currency and a free market. anybody who wishes can come get involved and own bitcoin and do with it whatever they like. from Satoshi and Hal Finney down to banksters like JP Morgan own bitcoin. and you can't prevent any of them without turning bitcoin into a centralized and censored currency.

i never said anything about censoring out fiat lovers. i just said insult the correct category of people
HODLers in my eyes hold bitcoin. this can also mean spending some and buying more. but fiat lovers that just want to exit bitcoin soon are not HODLers

but as for "censorship resistant freemaket".. that would be 100% true if 100% of market trades were done OTC. these days its done on regulated markets cencoring out certain users based on location and wealth. and charging fees to deposit, trade and withdrawal. so i take the term  "censorship resistant freemaket" very losely these days

[avikz]

what the OP is talking about is not HODLers.. but fiat investors.

HODLers hold and want to keep bitcoin.. HODLers can even spend bitcoin. but they then get more bitcoin because they want to stay with bitcoin as their main currency.. what they have as their assets is majority bitcoin and not much fiat. and they dont wish to hold fiat..

but those only looking for a great time to exit bitcoin and be fiat rich are not HODLers

i think insulting HODLers is wrong. call what your describing by its real term and insult them.. FIAT LOVERS

Correct mate! You may call them "fiat lovers" or "short term profit seeker". They are not HODLers at all because HODLers are those who believe in the potential of a particular currency and the underlying technology. Profit definitely plays a role but that is not the primary reason a HODLer will stack bitcoin or any other altcoins. HODLers are the biggest supporters and strong believers, certainly not parasites within the system, instead they are one of the strong pillars of support to the entire network!

[Jannn]

Great mindset and exactly my thoughts. Holders are just trying to squeeze bitcoin for as much as possible so they can sell out later to fiat where it will remain. If they truly believed in the technology it wouldn't hodling, it would simply be storage of funds, just like a bank. I think that the largest proportion of BTC holders are actually speculative holdlers which really is unfortunate.

[Phlaser]

HODLERs are the core soul of the Cryproworld in general. You probably should have thought of who buys when you sell off your asset(s), definitely someone somewhere unknown who has a very strong conviction about the asset and he's very willing to bag as much as he can. So, are you saying it's a terrible thing to be HODLER?