I have a question in mind. If a wealthy investor also pours a large part of his total assets into Bitcoin at once, won't a major market correction create mental and financial pressure?
Investment strategies sometimes change in the case of the rich and the poor, but if the plan is wrong, the loss is greater for the rich than for the common people. The rich may be able to absorb the loss, but for the poor, it becomes very difficult and they do not invest again later. In reality, in such a situation, both mental stress and financial risk are created very much, whether it is a rich or a common investor.
Since we are human, a big market correction affects all classes of investors mentally. Suppose someone invested 1 million dollars and the market fell by 50%, then negative things start coming to the investor's mind and at such a time many rich people panic sell and get out at a loss. As a result, the pressure also increases when the investment is large.
Actually, a 50% decline is a big number, but if it is a small part of our total assets, then the impact is the same. And if our livelihood security depends on that investment, then the impact is completely different. Rather than the question of whether the rich or the poor suffer more losses, I think it is more important how strong our risk management is.
If you are investing into bitcoin rather than trying to trade, then why the fuck should you care about a 50% drop in the bitcoin price, except that you are able to buy bitcoin at a lower price.
You have ONLY been registered on the forum since October, so I have a hard time imagining how you could have had been able to invest a lot into bitcoin, unless you lump sum bought (and/or front loaded) into your bitcoin investment, which surely can be problematic to lump sum invest into bitcoin without supplementing with either DCA and/or buying on the dip...
So I would think that if you started investing in bitcoin in October, at or near the current ATH, then you likely would have (or should have) continued to buy bitcoin since then (that is right around 4-ish months).
Understandably, for anyone - including bitcoin newbies - there can be frustrations if the BTC price is dipping, and then perhaps a person might choose to buy more bitcoin based on the dip, yet then the BTC price keeps dipping. So those kinds of concerns and/or difficulties in terms of trying to catch a falling knife can be real, so that a person who keeps buying is finding that whatever amount of bitcoin that he bought previously is losing value and he buys some more and then those additional buys lose value.. so yeah, there can be perceptions that the BTC price might not ever recover, yet we also see in bitcoin's history that down periods can last a long time, even though we cannot completely rely upon history either, so sometimes any of us who are investing into bitcoin might wonder if the BTC price will ever recover, and if the seemingly forever attacks might stop (or reverse) at some point.
Accordingly, we need to consider our own position and our own ongoing investment amounts, whether we are putting in weekly or otherwise, and perhaps we figure out some weekly amount that is acceptable to us, to the extent that we continue to have discretionary money and to the extent that we might not have had blown our whole wadd in earlier buys that cause us to overly hesitate in our ongoing bitcoin accumulation, to the extent that we were serious about accumulating and/or investing in bitcoin rather than maybe trying to trade it.
Major corrections in the market are nothing new. History shows that 30%-60% drawdowns in highly volatile assets are not uncommon. So it is wise for us to take positions that will not disrupt our livelihood even if they are reduced by half. Portfolio allocation, gradual entry i.e. DCA, and liquid emergency funds according to our own cash management. Having these three will reduce the chances of our investments panic selling.
Ok. Charcol. Fair enough. It appears that you have the right ideas in regards to how to attempt to manage bitcoin accumulation in light of volatility and/or seemingly ongoingly dropping BTC prices, and I see that you were largely just responding to the pessimism that was expressed in abaeze's post.
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You see, the plan to invest in Bitcoin is the most acceptable at the present time, because you earn fiat money, its value is gradually inflating. But if you earn money over time, you invest in that time, buy Bitcoin and keep it for a long time, then of course your investment will fill you with a very large financial deficit in the future. As a result, investing in Bitcoin will eliminate your financial deficit, but you will be able to make yourself financially independent.
So you should never trust fiat money for a long time, many people keep money in the bank. And over time, the value of the money deposited in that bank will decrease, but depositing Bitcoin with that amount of money is the best plan. So pay attention to Bitcoin investment
Even though we know that fiat is ongoingly losing value, we still need to keep a certain amount of fiat on hand in order to take care of our various monthly bills that are likely denominated in fiat... and if guys try to get too smart and they do not keep sufficient funds in fiat, then they may well find themselves having to sell BTC at a time that was not of their own choosing.
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This is basically what discretionary income is all about.
Alot of people in this thread just repeat the same topic all over and over again in different ways.
I personally feel we should talk more about Bitcoin's growth, and encouragement, we have talked about DCA and discretionary income as money for investments, more times than I can count. I feel we should be more creative in the thread.
This thread is about my bitcoin investment ideas, so maybe (in order to attempt to stay on topic), you (and other posters herein) would like to talk about those kinds of matters?
It makes no thoughtful sense that people should plan on investing for a long term as 4-6+ years with funds they can be forced to be in need of to take care of bills and personal expenses as may be required. Trying to invest in bitcoin without having a discretionary income to be used in progressively purchasing sats for accumulation (weekly or monthly) then such person is rather gambling with his funds with no proper timeframe schedule.
It's even a risk to lose funds when you're putting it into bitcoin in expectation to when an expenses needs arises to sell and get back funds. Expenses don't announcement itself before arising and it can happen when bitcoin price had drastically fallen where you would be in loss. That's why it's important that discretionary income should be used to bitcoin investment.
People have all kinds of ways to attempt to project forward their income and/or their expenses, and so it is not like we tend to either have the money in advance to cover expenses, even though we know that there are expenses that are coming in the future, so at any time in the present, we try to live within an amount so that we cover all of our expenses and perhaps save any extra money if we might project that our future income might not be enough to cover some of our future expenses.
And, you are correct, some expenses are known in advance and other expenses are not known in advance - even if we might have some general projections of various expenses, there may be some expenses that come in the future that were not exactly known.
Even when we're intending to have the funds in advance there could be some disappointment which can distort the plans on ground since the funds projected forward towards getting isn't an income which is sure of entering at the end of the week or month depending on when the individual's payday. Meanwhile future expenses are bound to surface which even income isn't sufficient enough to fix at once.
Surely projecting forward cashflows is likely improved with practice.
Personally, I have found that if I try to maintain a certain amount of cushion in my accounts (and my projections) then even if I make mistakes in regards to over projecting my income and/or under projecting my expenses, I still have a way sufficient enough of a cash cushion so that I am not going to get stressed about mistakes that I might make, as long as they are within reason. Of course, if the mistakes and/or the income/expense variance that comes up is of relatively large amounts, then I likely have to scramble to make sure that I have enough cash available at the time that I have to pay the expense(s).
Another thing that I do is to attempt to estimate the most conservative that I can, so if I were to know that I have a tendency to be receiving an income that varies between $2k and $3k per month, I will plug in the $2k amount for each of the future months so that I choose the low end for my forward income projection rather than the high end, so that if I end up receiving more than the minimum of $2k, then all that extra ends up counting as extra discretionary income that I can choose to allocate (towards investment, savings and/or discretionary consumption) once the actual amount becomes known to be available.
The same is true for expenses. I will project the expenses in the most conservative way as well, so for example if I were to know that my monthly utility bills tend to vary between $70 and $200 per month, I will plug in the $200 amount for each of the future months so that I choose the high end for my forward utility expense projection rather than the low end, so that if my utility bill ends up being lower than the $200 projected high end, then all that extra ends up counting as extra discretionary income that I can choose to allocate (towards investment, savings and/or discretionary consumption) once the actual amount becomes known to be available.
Let's say that a bitcoiner buys a car that is around 6 years old, and maybe the car is something like a van so the guy can use the vehicle for both work and for non-work purposes - so in that regard, the guy figures that the van will largely pay for itself after a few years based on some extra hauling utility that will increase his efficiency and income. Maybe the guy puts down a deposit of a few thousand dollars, yet he also has to make monthly payments for the next 5 years.. so perhaps he gets a loan that is $15k and the payments are around $400 per month.
So the guy can project out his various known costs on the van related to loan payments, licensing costs, and insurance, some of the costs such as gasoline and/or regular maintenance might depend upon how much he is using it, yet since the van is 6 years old, he already knows that there could be some surprise extra maintenance, and there also could be damage that comes from accidents (that might not be covered by his insurance). So sure the guy may well be buying bitcoin regularly, and he is keeping some extra funds on hand to cover variance in his income and/or variance in his expenses, and he likely will even keep some extra cash for the various unknown expenses that may or may not end up happening.
If the above guy makes mistakes in his buying too much bitcoin with money that he might need for his expenses, then he is overdoing it, so there is nothing wrong with being aggressive with bitcoin buys, yet guys cannot be so aggressive as to buy bitcoin beyond their discretionary income .. so if they make mistakes in that regard, they could either end up causing a lot of extra unnecessary stress in their finances and/or psychology which might also result in either their not being able to buy more bitcoin for extended periods of time and/or event their having to sell some or all of their bitcoin at a time that was not of their own choosing.
The closer in time that we are projecting out our income and/or expenses, then the more specific we can be in our projections and the more we likely have to make sure that we know that we have enough money for the shorter term projections, which is part of the reason that many times we suggest building back up funds at least up to 3 months of expenses and keep that amount of funds always available.. which is considered emergency funds, since it is the last defense prior to having to tap into bitcoin, and sure there can be various other funds that can be drawn from based on fluctuations in income and/or expenses.. yet maybe many times guys are not keeping track with precision in each category as long as they have enough income to cover their expenses and their cushion is also sufficient to cause them to not be stressed in regards to the fluctuations in their income and/or expenses.
It's true that we can't actually have it all as projected for future expenses as can be done for short term projection expenses because in the long projection certain surprises that can overwhelm us and stall our bitcoin usual weekly buying process and if it's such that we don't know how to contain it then selling the bitcoin we have managed to stash becomes an only alternative escape route.
If we manage these matters in a responsible way, then it should be quite rare that we ever need to tap into our bitcoin at a time that is not completely of our own choosing.. and another thing would be that we likely would have various lines of other cash (and perhaps other investments) that we would tap into first before we get to our bitcoin.
Surely a tempting matter regarding bitcoin continues to be that bitcoin is quite liquid and volatile, which could end up tempting us into taping into bitcoin prematurely - and of course, we are responsible in regards to the extent to which we might have had managed our cashflows in such ways that contribute towards our not having options in regards to which pools of funds to draw from first and/or if we are tempted to prematurely draw from bitcoin merely because it is "in profits." If we are likely investing 4-10 years and beyond (and most-likely more than 10 years for most normies), then we should not be "tempted to tap into our bitcoin merely because it happens to be 'in profits' " Yet, sure historically in bitcoin there have been a lot of normies who have ended up tapping into too much of their bitcoin too soon based on a variety of deficiencies in their own cashflow management set ups and perhaps their wrong thinking in regards to their bitcoin holdings, that might contribute towards their never being able to reach overaccumulation status through their own choices in regards to their practices and/or preparations.
Hence the advocacy on the importance of having a back up funds to stabilise emergency conditions can't be overemphasized. Some people would never grab the relevance of it until they're locked in between any emergency situation and the option of selling their bitcoin to tackle their emergency.
There surely are situations where normies put themselves into their own emergency situation based on their failures/refusals to keep sufficient back up funds to cover the likely and inevitable variance in income and/or expenses.
Your main concern is to build a sustainable Bitcoin holding. You need to use funds that you will not need very soon. Or you will not have to make a bad decision to withdraw Bitcoin in an emergency. You should pin the main point so that you do not make mistakes in investing (Accumulate Bitcoin through discretionary income). This discussion of discretionary income is repeated mainly to remind you of this important fundamental point of investing. Due to the variation in income from person to person, there will be differences in sentiment among investors but considering the risk you should follow the main idea of investing and accumulate Bitcoin.
You need to plan very well if you want, to build a sustainable bitcoin holding because you even need to have a sustainable income so that when you buy you don't have to worry about not holding.
I doubt that there are needs for perfection. Some practices are better than others in terms of guys wanting to maximize their bitcoin investment, yet the level of organization or even choices in terms of level of aggressiveness or level of whimpiness are optionally within the discretion of each of us to choose our levels. Sure there are likely to be consequences, and if a person is more aggressive, then he might need to be more organized and he may well make faster progress towards reaching his goals, as long as he does not end up overdoing it.
And you can not be withdrawing bitcoin as an emergency funds is not a good step as an investor you need to make provision for that separately. And the money you are investing is just reminding you that you are one way or the other putting your money into good use. Because you can be spending all your funds it is better to plan and have a specific amount for both DCA and emergency funds and then the rest can be spent on upkeep.
And in other to change things in every situation is to be patient and be disciplined because it is not everyone that can spend that amount of money when it comes spending it needs a lot of discipline in other to change a lot of things, and buying and holding don't have much risk but I know that a lot of things are going to be different for sure when you are able to buy and hold because there is nothing else to rely on than to be patient and also buy more to improve your portfolio that is the only way to succeed in this business.
I largely agree with the points you made in these last two paragraphs, except your seeming ongoing emphasis on their being "only one way," which seems problematic, since guys are able to tailor their approach to their
personal factors and their interpretation of their personal factors, and so there is likely going to be some flexibility in regards to interpretation, even though some approaches might end up in more comfort as compared with other approaches that might be available.