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I could not accept this part of your statement. I will never see investment directly as gambling or betting. Because gambling is completely dependent on luck, especially in gambling there is a house edge, which almost always benefits the gambling companies.
You don't seem to either understand the idea of gambling and/or the idea of what is discretionary funds versus non-discretionary funds, since if a person is using non-discretionary funds to invest in bitcoin, then by definition that money is needed for expenses.. so how the fuck are they going to pay their expenses if they are using that exact money to invest into bitcoin? The only way that they can pay their expenses with that same money is for bitcoin prices to either go up or to stay at the same price so that when they need to use the money, the amount is enough to pay their expenses. If the bitcoin price goes down between the time that they buy the bitcoin and they need the money for the expenses, then they won't have enough to pay for the expenses.. then what are they going to do? using money that is needed for expenses to invest in bitcoin is exactly gambling upon the BTC price either going up or going sideways, which it may or may not do.. and that is luck to be relying upon the BTC price to either go up or to go sideways so that the money that is needed to pay expenses is enough to cover the expenses.
But in the case of Bitcoin investment, important factors such as long-term perspective and risk management come into play. A person can invest a part of his discretionary income either regularly or at intervals. On the other hand, after gambling losses, people bet most of their necessary money on gambling in the hope of making more profits. Therefore, I will not at least combine Bitcoin investment with gambling.
You still sound confused, even though you generally seem to understand the differences between gambling and investing.
But yes, there can be a mentality issue in investing. If someone blindly invests their required money in an investment like gambling in the hope of quick profit and tries to become rich overnight, then that is gambling-like behavior. I would never want that. At least those who have basic knowledge about Bitcoin would never want it.
Ok. Since you understand this concept, then you seem to know enough about why using non-discretionary funds to put into bitcoin would be gambling rather than investing, even though you seem to want to continue to argue for the mere sake of arguing.. .which largely means that you are contradicting yourself in your own ways of attempting to explain the difference between investing and gambling. Maybe you just need to learn how to say what you are wanting to say in a better way, since you seem to understand the overall ideas.
Because Bitcoin always rewards those who give Bitcoin time to work for it.
Historically bitcoin has always ended up going up, so long as people would error on the side of buying and holding their bitcoin, the new ATHs would then guarantee profits - yet past performance does not guarantee future performance.. so bitcoin is not guaranteed to go to another ATH and it is not even guaranteed to go up from its current price into the future, whether we are referring to short term, such as in the coming days, weeks, months, or medium term such as 2-5 years into the future or longer term such as 10 years or more. There are no guarantees that the bitcoin price is going to go higher from our current prices of $71.3k - ish.
This means that Bitcoin investment can give us more profit only when we can hold it for a long time.
Part of the reason that it makes sense to invest into bitcoin for 4-10 years or longer is based on the likely inevitability of short-term price volatility in bitcoin that includes ongoing battles in regards to bitcoin, so if there is some confidence that bitcoin remains strong in terms of various aspects of its sound money attributes and even its paradigm shifting attributes that strengthen its investment thesis, then guys who invest into bitcoin likely can be assured that bitcoin remains an asymmetric bet to the upside which means that there are decently good potentials that they will gain in profits in regards to the amount that they put in, and in the meantime, so long as they do not use leverage or trade, then the most that they could lose would be 100% of the amount that they put into bitcoin.
Starting small can fix all kinds of matters.. I know that there are ways that guys can practice trading and/or investing with nothing, yet I personally think that it is better to have some stake in the game, even if the amount is a small amount, and if the newbie is nervous about the size or the investment or that he might lose it, he can keep adjusting the size of the buy down until he is comfortable and/or no longer worried about whether he loses it or not. Part of the rationale of investing no more than you can afford to lose really goes with getting started, and of course, if the guy is buying bitcoin every single week, then an incentive should develop to learn more about the investment and also learn more about cashflow management..
What do you mean by demo?
I have never used such tools, since I believe in investing actual money rather than fake money, but there are ways that guys can practice trading with fake accounts that allow them to learn how to become a better trader. I both believe in using real money, and also this thread is not about trading... yet, nonetheless, there could be tools to practice investing, yet surely I prefer to invest with actual money and if there are concerns about losses, then to adjust the amount invested so that the concerns about losses go away.. .. which is part of the idea that anyone who is investing 4-10 years or longer in bitcoin, we are investing with money that we can afford to lose, yet at the same time, no one invests into anything in which he expects to lose money.. We invest because we expect that we will have had put ourselves into a better position by investing into bitcoin rather than not, even though at the same time, we should recognize and appreciate that our investment is not guaranteed to be profitable within our expected investment timeline.
It can be an alternative for learning but I don't think it will be effective because regardless of anything when we start from demo there is always a feeling that doing with money that is not real even though it is a lot but we will not get any feeling.
That is part of the reason that I don't like it... and it is likely worse if we use such practice systems for long term, even though surely for short-term there could be some advantages - even though my own preferences would involve using actual money... even though I can see the rationale for learning tools to be used by some people... perhaps especially in something like an academic environment.
It's different when we do it with real money that we have, so in the end starting from the beginning even with a small nominal but in the end we will get a feel because this is related to the ownership that we have different from the demo because even if there are mistakes that we make in the demo it does not have any impact on ourselves and we may not learn anything in it.
Yep.. for sure.. both the positive and negative consequences are much more real if we are using actual money, even if we are purposefully choosing a small amount to get started and to get accustomed to the process of ongoingly and regularly buying bitcoin (such as weekly, even if it might end up being as low as $10 per week).
It can start because we are used to it and I think everyone who has been a beginner will feel a little fear when the value shrinks and their plans do not match the reality but that is where the learning lies that we have to face because with this condition when the longer we continue to add knowledge and experience I think the fear about investing and when shrinkage occurs will be minimized because we already have the material to anticipate with the learning and experience we have gained before.
You are exactly correct that guys who invest into bitcoin go through a real world difficult test when the price goes down after they expected the price to go up, and the price might even go down for several years, which will continue to test them, which surely I have considered both the size of the investment and the ongoing buying of bitcoin to be helpful for beginners and even helpful during periods in which the BTC price is going down rather than sideways or up, and surely, guys sometimes get more panicked because they did not financially and/or psychologically prepare for the price to go down, which also might mean that they ended up putting in too much time, energy and value into bitcoin in the beginning and at times when the BTC price was higher, which contributes towards their regrets, yet their inability to do anything to change the past (except maybe attempt to learn from it and to learn the right lesson from it.. sometimes guys will learn the wrong lesson from their past mistakes).
I have felt fear in the past when what I invested in bitcoin shrank in value (when I was just starting to invest) but over time things like this have become more and more normal because even if the value shrinks our bitcoin remains the same and in the end the longer the value increases.
For sure with bitcoin, historically, there has so far been a tendency for it to go up, so even if we have some periods in which we are stressed out about our level of profits (on paper), we may well start to feel more and more comfortable based on our having had ongoingly built our bitcoin stash size through ongoing buying of it, and also the stresses about price end up working themselves up. .so that even a guy who might ONLY be bordering on 4-ish years of buying bitcoin, there had become greater and greater likelihood that such guy would have very good chances of being in profits and perhaps even having less and less fear that his bitcoin holdings will fall back out of profits - so that with the passage of time, the cushion between the average cost per his coin and the actual price becomes greater and greater and greater, so long as he had been erroring on the side of buying and holding and not fucking around trying to trade (meaning not selling and expecting to be able to buy back cheaper, which may or may not be possible at any given time).
Of course, if guys had been fucking around with trading, then there status may end up having a lot of variation, since there might be some guys who were successful and other guys who had considerable losses, and surely I have not been (and continue to not be) any kind of an advocate for trying to build bitcoin holdings through selling and/or trading of bitcoin, rather than just sticking to ongoing, persistent, consistent and regular buying of bitcoin.. even though the larger a guy's stash becomes, then the more likely that he will be able to lessen his intensity in regards to ongoingly buying bitcoin... since at some point after ongoingly accumulating through regular buying (whether he had been able to front load his bitcoin investment or not) he might be getting close to having enough or more than enough bitcoin.
