The 10,000-Hour Rule in Bitcoin?

[Davidvictorson]

In the second chapter of the book "Outliers: The Story of Success" Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the “10 000-Hour Rule”.

According to Gladwell, the two(2) factors that contribute to achieving mastery or expertise in any field  are:

1) The number of hours of practice

Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.

Gladwell posits that the magic number for true expertise is ten thousand hours of focused and deliberate practice.

For example, he told the story of  Bill Joy, one of the most influential figures in modern computing, and Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and one of the richest men in the world. They both achieved expertise in their fields by spending an enormous amount of time focused on programming. As an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, Bill Joy was programming around eight or ten hours a day. And when he enrolled as a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, he was doing it day and night. Bill Gates spent around twenty or thirty hours every week programming as a high school student.

While I do not entirely agree with the 10,000-hour rule, I firmly believe that attaining mastery or expertise in any field is directly proportional to the number of hours spent deliberately focused on learning a particular skill.


2) The series of opportunities available for practice
While there is a positive correlation between the number of focused and deliberate practice in attaining expertise, there is the role that the opportunity available to practice plays in making it a reality.

Back to our example. Let's look at the series of opportunities Bill Joy and Bill Gates got to practice:-

a) Bill Joy

Just look at the stream of opportunities that came Bill Joy's way. Because he happened to go to a farsighted school like the University of Michigan, he was able to practice on a time-sharing system instead of with punch cards; because the Michigan system happened to have a bug in it, he could program all he wanted; because the university was willing to spend the money to keep the Computer Center open twenty-four hours, he could stay up all night; and because he was able to put in so many hours, by the time he happened to be presented with the opportunity to rewrite UNIX, he was up to the task. Bill Joy was brilliant. He wanted to learn. That was a big part of it. But before he could become an expert, someone had to give him the opportunity to learn how to be an expert.

b) Bill Gates

Opportunity number one was that Gates got sent to Lakeside. How many high schools in the world had access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968? Opportunity number two was that the mothers of Lakeside had enough money to pay for the school's computer fees. Number three was that, when that money ran out, one of the parents happened to work at C-Cubed, which happened to need someone to check its code on the weekends, and which also happened not to care if weekends turned into weeknights. Number four was that Gates just happened to find out about ISI, and ISI just happened to need someone to work on its payroll software. Number five was that Gates happened to live within walking distance of the University of Washington. Number six was that the university happened to have free computer time between three and six in the morning. Number seven was that TRW happened to call Bud Pembroke. Number eight was that the best programmers Pembroke knew for that particular problem happened to be two high school kids. And number nine was that Lakeside was willing to let those kids spend their spring term miles away, writing code.

These series of opportunities to hone their skills helped Bill Joy and Bill Gates become experts in their fields.

The principle behind the 10,000-hour rule also applies to becoming an expert in bitcoin and cryptocurrency. In this Bitcointalk forum, I have great admiration for members with world-class mastery and expertise in bitcoin and cryptocurrency. My subjective measurement of  bitcoin and cryptocurrency expertise in this forum are:

1) Legendary and Hero members (No offense to other members).

2) Members with a high merit count but who are yet to rank up because they lack inactivity.

My sincere desire is to achieve this level of expertise in bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Therefore, I want to ask two(2) questions to these groups of people:

1) How many hours did you deliberately spend learning about bitcoin and cryptocurrency?

2) What series of opportunities to practice were available to you that helped you hone your skills?

[Don Pedro Dinero]

I don't see the parallelism you raise, because you can be a legendary member of this forum with many earned merits and have hardly any technical knowledge.

I don't know how you apply the practice to bitcoin or to being on this forum. If you are talking about spending 10,000 hours reading technical bitcoin books, yes, you are going to get a lot of knowledge, but not simply by being on this forum.

[TravelMug]

Regarding the question though,

1. I don't understand what you mean by practicing bitcoin, nevertheless as per my experience when I started my journey, I spend hours learning bitcoin wallets. Because for me this is important as obviously this is where you stash your bitcoin. So I read about different kind of wallets etc. But I'm not sure how many hours I logged in because bitcoin investment is a journey.

2. Series of opportunities? again, this is all based on my experience. Learning to play with my wallet, and understanding the tx fees, custodial vs non-custodial. So I hone my skills as I practice and as I go thru the routines.

[NotATether]

I would disagree with your analysis as someone who meets your criterea. I definitely did not need to put 10,000 hours into learning Bitcoin, much less than that actually (maybe 1000-2000 hours). Also don't forget that cryptocurrency knowledge is decoupled from programming so the latter is not required to understand the former. Although a great many crypto experts are also programmers.

[cabron]

There are course in Bitcoin. Antonopolos has an ebook Mastering Bitcoin, you wouldn't need 10K hours for that. But Programming will definitely require a ton of practise for someone to become  an expert.

If you mean master in trading Bitcoin,that 10K hour may apply but you must be a slow learner to  spend that much time and money before seeing the pattern in Bitcoin chart.

[Despairo]

1) Legendary and Hero members (No offense to other members).

What about Legendary and Hero Members before merit system was begin? moreover they never earn any single merit even though they're active day poster, this because they're shitposting in altcoins discussions. Judging the higher ranks = higher knowledge about Bitcoin is completely wrong.

2) Members with a high merit count but who are yet to rank up because they lack inactivity.

Do you think someone give merit because of Bitcoin related post only? No, it's not completely accurate.

1) How many hours did you deliberately spend learning (and practicing) about bitcoin and cryptocurrency?

Now, I only logged for 6 days in this forum or 144 hours, though I'm not really have high knowledge about technical Bitcoin.

2) What series of opportunities to practice were available to you that helped you hone your skills?

Trial and error, practice is the most good learning way.

At least I know the 10,000 hour rule isn't correct analysis since the above legendary user can disagree with your opinion.

[mk4]

1. Pretty much almost every single day for almost 6 years. Like probably 330 out of 365 days of the year.

2. Proper risk management, and A LOT of reading, among other 'typical' things like patience and stuff.

P.S. Bitcoin is an asset; not necessarily a skill. The 10k hour rule would probably apply with trading/investing in general, rather than to bitcoin specifically.

[NotATether]

P.S. Bitcoin is an asset; not necessarily a skill. The 10k hour rule would probably apply with trading/investing in general, rather than to bitcoin specifically.

I'm not entirely sure that you could even employ the 10,000 rule for trading as well. There will always be a bunch of ameteurs who spend entire weeks and months day trading and reading signals but you can't say at all that they've mastered tradng. In my opinion, you'd need to read books, take courses and maybe get an internship at a hedge fund management corp. to get that mastery, not a bunch of hours in "practical experience" in trading crypto without knowledge of it.

[OcTradism]

It is in book and a good principle, good advice but in the end of the day, on the market, in front of computer or smartphone, people do opposite to what they was taught.

Crypto market has very little regulation now so there is more manipulation in this market by market makers than other market. It runs 24 / 7 and emotion of traders change quickly. Take $LUNA as an example, some were bankrupted yesterday and I hope that they are fine. However, there are people get rich from it quickly too.

After 24 hours, $LUNA rises 100 times. Today price is impossible yesterday in thinking of people bought it.

About the 10,000-rule in crypto, I don't think it is enough, in this market you might need more than that. Double of 10,000 hours or more. In addition there are people fail to learn from mistake even they spend 50,000 hour or whatever higher time.

[mk4]

I'm not entirely sure that you could even employ the 10,000 rule for trading as well. There will always be a bunch of ameteurs who spend entire weeks and months day trading and reading signals but you can't say at all that they've mastered tradng. In my opinion, you'd need to read books, take courses and maybe get an internship at a hedge fund management corp. to get that mastery, not a bunch of hours in "practical experience" in trading crypto without knowledge of it.

True — but I guess it applies to almost anything as well, whereas you barely progress and improve if you're practicing the wrong way.

I guess doing the signals thing can somewhat be a part of the progress though, as sometimes making big mistakes such as this and losing money is a part of learning.

[decodx]

I think you are simplifying things too much. The situation is more complex than that.

To begin with, not all members of the Hero and Legendary ranks are automatically experts in Bitcoin matters. On the other hand, there are many experts who do not spend much time on the forum, so their rank (and even merits) is not a true indicator of their knowledge and expertise.

At the same time, you don't have to be a pro-Bitcoiner to be competent. People can be experts in different fields with respect to computers or anything else, and not be experts in Bitcoin.

[DapanasFruit]

I would say that the takeaway here is the kind of focus one has to throw on something to be considered as an expert on it...and in today's many tools there are now many ways one can accelerate learnings so there is no need to undergo the 10K hours rule but if one has the time and energy then he is very much free to do so. Still, one has to be aware of the changing time so there is a big chance that what we learn today may not be exactly the same weeks from now.

[Wexnident]

This is kind of wrong imo, I mean at the early stage of things in general at least. Take for example drawing, there's the tip that most artists say that you just "need" to draw, but really, that "need" has a lot of underlying stuff that you'd need to do before even knowing what to do. You don't just draw anything, you draw things that can help you learn how to draw. Same with learning other stuff, you just don't put in thousands of hours into something and expect to be good at it, nor does having many hours under your belt make you better than others with less (it's kind of subjective imo).

If this were the case, really, players of various online games would have all gone pro.

[buwaytress]

Not a fan of these made up rules, anyone who does anything with his hands or brains for a living knows practice improves your art, and there's no limit to how long you practise for, and you put it off for a while and you lose some of your mastery, it's maintenance.

Now exactly how this applies to buying Bitcoin, I'm not sure. I can't really see how to improve or degrade my DCA if I just keep at it. I actually found that the more I tried to make it sophisticated, the less value or efficiency I got out of it. The simpler I kept it (rigid periodic blind buys) he more value and more efficient it became, the more time I got to myself mastering my actual art.

[Davidvictorson]

1. Pretty much almost every single day for almost 6 years. Like probably 330 out of 365 days of the year.

2. Proper risk management, and A LOT of reading, among other 'typical' things like patience and stuff.

P.S. Bitcoin is an asset; not necessarily a skill. The 10k hour rule would probably apply with trading/investing in general, rather than to bitcoin specifically.

Thank you @mk4 this is what I needed. Learning Bitcoin to me means learning about both the technical and non-technical aspects. Thank you once again.

I would say that the takeaway here is the kind of focus one has to throw on something to be considered as an expert on it

This is my thought exactly. The 10,000-hour rule has been critique by several authors and scientists has debunked the theory. The main idea here is competence is proportional to time spent on focused practice. The second point is that, the streams of opportunities the individual has to practice is a critical factor that aids competence.

[Vatimins]

     While I agree that rank and merits may help identify the ones that have more knowledge on bitcoin or on all crypto, this doesn't mean that it is a 100% accurate way to differentiate people. I have seen people in this forum that know a lot about bitcoin but are not of those ranks, some are even developers. I guess it depends on which things a person is interested about and what are his long term goals in this industry.

- I can't really give the exact numbers but as long as I can remember I read about anything related to crypto as long as there is reception. Even on vacations. Which I started doing since late 2016. I do not focus on bitcoin alone though.
- Devices and internet. I guess being in a circle that also is fond of this industry also helped.

[SatoPrincess]

Merits and ranks may sometimes be an indication that a user is knowledgeable in crypto, but remember not all merits were earned through quality posting some were airdropped merits. You would be shocked to find before the merits, there were legendary accounts who were able to get the rank by simply posting regularly. A newbie or member account can be owned by someone with vast knowledge of bitcoin. A perfect example is n0nce

[Darker45]

I don’t agree with everything that you said here. You spend 10,000 hours in programming, do you think you will end up like Bill Gates? I don’t think so. You spend 10,000 hours on painting, do you think you will end up like Michelangelo, Van Gogh, or Picasso? I doubt it. You spend 10,000 hours studying music, do you think you will end up like Beethoven or Mozart? You won’t. If I spend 10,000 hours on Bitcoin, I wouldn’t become like Satoshi. I probably won’t even come close to the likes of o_e_l_e_o or pooya87. My point is that it’s not just about the quantity of time. It takes more than that. People shouldn’t waste 10,000 hours of their lives trying to become the next Zuckerberg or Musk or Bezos or Jobs. They do what they love, and that’s enough.

[so98nn]

Bill Gates is pretty good though. I think skill grasping strength is also something which needs to be taken into consideration. Definitely the more you learn something the stronger you get at it. However, 10k hours or 1k hours it’s really thing of how everyone grasp it. Someone might do it quick someone might take ages. Also bitcoin is something which is on going stuff. You have to keep learning it. If it’s about blockchain then that’s entirely different subject area.

[BlackHatCoiner]

If I spend 10,000 hours on Bitcoin, I wouldn’t become like Satoshi.

Except that you would, if you really wanted to. With 10,000 dozens of thousands of hours, if you decided to figure out what's going on behind all that, you would. You would have the time to understand bitcoin, you'd have the time to study how cryptography works, you'd have the time to comprehend economic terms you were unaware of, you'd have the time to ask questions, things you don't understand etc.

This is what I did. I had the time. I had the passion. I had the willingness. My point is: The world is made by people who're not smarter than you are. You just need to put in the effort.