I cannot resist trolling you here, bryant... .. you made a couple of points and even though I largely agree with your sentiment, they seem worthy of discussion and/or clarification.
The logic of saying that we are closer to $0 than $100k makes sense because let's say at just shy of $36k, we could lose 100% and then we are at zero. But if we gain 100%, we are only at $72k.. but there is some lack of appreciation for how difficult, at this point to get bitcoin to actually go to zero or even anywhere close to zero.
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Hmm.. yeah.. have to agree.. I didn't calculated it properly. You are right in saying that a 100% spike would take us to $72K, and a 100% drop would take us to $0. Although practically it is impossible for Bitcoin to drop to such low levels, I understand that theoretically it makes sense.
I guess that I was attempting to give some benefit of the doubt to a largely dweeb assessment that was saying merely that we are closer to $0 than $100k - which we already know in bitcoin's history that it has had a large number of doublings, triplings and even 10x-enings...
So, even if it is possible that we never reach $100k, the comment about being closer to $0 seems to be quite detached from reality and maybe one coming from a nocoiner/bitcoin naysayer.. or some other variant of nonsense spreader.
And regarding the "millionaire" question.. once again I can't deny your claim. But how many of the users will able to invest >$100,000 in Bitcoin?
I was throwing all kinds of numbers out there in terms of attempting to show various ways to get to $1million, including a scenario of getting there overnight... So, surely if you are investing more, such as investing greater than $100k or investing $750k, then it is going to be easier to reach $1million.
You are saying that in 2013, you considered $1 million as your minimum entry level.
I was not necessarily saying for myself specifically, but moreso asserting for a kind of average Joe Blow, even in an average western world city, $1million would be a very good target to begin to consider that he could largely support himself with $3,333 per month passive income. Of course, there are a lot of expenses that people have, and surely the more complicated his/her life than the more difficult it would be to get $3,333 per month (or $1million in capital to work for you).
So, $1million was not really mine specifically - even though I thought that it was a good place to start to consider and surely talking about the matter in terms of a $1million target would be something that people would be able to relate to and to consider if they would be able to get by for less than that or if they needed more. I surely had heard responses from people saying that they were humble and could get by on $500k, and others proclaiming that they needed $6million to $10million as their bare entry level for that. Some of those higher numbers do seem a bit ridiculous for me, in terms of both considering entry level entry into fuck you status.. and also, a kind of failure/refusal to recognize the power of having passive income of even $3,333 per month (the $1million point).... I am not denying that people could create those higher levels as their personal considerations for entry into "fuck you" status because maybe they have already considered that they are already spending at those levels, they are considering maintaining medical insurance, they are wanting to live in a more expensive area (by choice rather than a job causing such an obligation) and/or they are thinking about the dollar losing its value so they need more cushion for their income level.
Personally, I believe that the error of the real high entry level thinkers is that they are mixing up entry level fuck you status with some form of richie status or rich as fuck status, even though - there are degrees to those higher levels of rich too and many of us are not going to agree what thresholds are needed to enter into those various statuses... but I did concede to move my consideration of an entry level into fuck you status from $1million to $2million.
I made my first investment one year before that. Back in 2012 I got 15 BTC for around $150. Well.. that was my minimum entry level.
Well one thing is investing early, and another thing is considering your thereafter plan. Yeah, $150 to start out is NOT a very BIG amount to invest. My first purchase was $1,500 in November 2013 to get 1.248BTC. Of course, I continued to invest because I created an investment plan for 6 months, and then I extended another 6 months and mostly I reached my BTC accumulation target levels in late 2014 - so I graduated a bit into more of a maintenance stage which still involved some BTC accumulation.. and surely my BTC maintenance and even some of my periodic liquidations (scraping of small portions) has been tweaked over the years in a variety of ways in an attempt to keep my BTC holdings in a position of comfort for me and my situation.
BTC is such a seemingly crazy investment, that I find it difficult to conceive of someone NOT really actively continuing to invest in various ways through a 8-9 year period, or to be taking other measures to manage their BTC investment - and surely one of the questions of this thread is what to do when the BTC price drops by around 53% from, and surely the questions raised for longer term BTC holders is going to be quite different than someone who is newer into the BTC space and still figuring out his/her BTC investment strategy (or maybe even considering BTC as a gamble or not even knowing why they are in BTC - and a 53% price drop can cause them to reconsider their involvement in BTC).
By the way, bryant.. if you bought 15 BTC in 2012 for $150 and you have not bought any BTC since then, I would consider you a likely NOT very active BTC investor - or maybe a rare duck. I know that there are some folks out there in the real world who have bought some BTC in early days (maybe even more than one session of buying) and then have not really bought more or actively engaged.. just considered their investment as a kind of "cold storage." I have hard times relating to that kind of investor, especially when it comes to BTC, even though I know that they exist in the real world.
And I agree with your last point, regarding the 4-year minimum period for holding. I am holding coins from 2012 onwards, and the returns that I received in the long run validates it.
For sure, bitcoin has been a very powerful long-term value for HODL, so I kind of expect that the returns are going to slope off with the passage of time. So for example from your approximate buy price to the 2013 peak (of $1,163) there was about a 116x price appreciation.. And if we look at the bouncing off point of the 2017 price peak from 2015, there was a price appreciation of about 78x from $250 to $19,666. Currently, our $64,895 has had about a 16.5x price appreciation, if we use March 2019 price of $4,200 as our round about spring board.
So there seems to be decent evidence that the price appreciation peaks are getting smaller, but I am NOT even proclaiming that those past levels of BTC price appreciation are necessary in order for BTC to serve as a very good and solid long term investment and an ongoing consideration to continue to hold a decent amount of value in BTC, even if the price appreciations might become way less.
For sure you know, bryant, that the 4-year minimum timeframe for holding has to do with a historical assertion that BTC has so far never been priced below any previous 4-year price - yet I am not even suggesting that it will always be greater in price 4 years later, but still 4 years does seem to be a great starting point for considering any investment made into BTC, even though each person will also retain full discretion to pull out of BTC at any time, but still coming into BTC and considering any further purchases of BTC having at minimum a 4-year hold time is likely a good long-term investing mindset. By the way, before I got into BTC I had quite more than 25 years of investing under my belt, so I can appreciate that it takes a whole hell of a long time to grow an investment portfolio from scratch.. so longer timelines does really seem to help for capital to compound upon itself...
There can be a kind of doubling and doubling and doubling, but if the amount in the fund is only $200, then doubling is not going to seem to be very much money.. but once the amount is $400,000 or even greater, then doubling can seem to add up a lot.. so for example, if someone had been investing in bitcoin for a year prior to the 2017 price run up and then got up to 10 BTC, the price run from $1k in the beginning of the year ($10k portfolio) to $19,666 ($196,666) is going to feel like a pretty decent price appreciation.... So when the BTC price drops during 2018 and bounces around mostly between $5k and $11k during most of 2019 and even most of 2020, there could have been opportunities to acquire another 10 coins or so. Therefore, when the price ended up going from $10k to $65k, the 20 coins may have gone from $200k to $1.3 million.... so there is a kind of compounding going on, but if someone is still buying coins, then they likely have to just let any of those new coins at least build for 4 years.
And sure, if your budget has been a lot more modest than the guy who had been able to acquire 10 BTC for the 2017 BTC price run and then another 10 BTC during the crash, maybe you made a lot of mistakes along the way, and you were only able to acquire 1 BTC in 2016/2017 and then you were ONLY able to acquire another 1 BTC in 2018 - 2020... then in that case you only got up to 2 BTC, so your price run in 2017 ONLY went up to $20k and in 2021 it only went up to $130,000. Each of us has to start somewhere, and we just build what we got, and maybe you can attempt to learn from all of these matters and if you are still buying more and more BTC, then this particular dip down to $30k should be considered as a potential opportunity to continue to stack and maybe get more BTC. And, maybe your feeling that you ONLY have 2 BTC is very small, but there are all kinds of people who have not even set up BTC accounts yet, and they are struggling to get their first 0.21BTC, while you are working on getting your 3rd BTC... and maybe it will take you 4 years to go from 2 BTC to 3BTC, so there are all kinds of levels of BTC accumulation and abilities to budget for sure, and it does seem to take a long time to build up any kind of investment portfolio, whether we are referring to BTC or otherwise other combinations that might be decided (not talking about shitcoins, here.. but some people might include them in their overall portfolio).
