There are a lot of threads here, there is a lot of activity on telegram and trading view and everywhere regarding charts, trends, indicators and general speculating. Still, I believe that a very small minorty of users ask themselves the fundamental question. Is speculation on Bitcoin and crypto markets even worth your time? I believe that it is not, and here are my main arguments.

1. Most Speculators and Traders lose money
Despite so many people calling themselves investors, traders these years especially in the cryptocurrency markets the data is clear: majority of retail traders lose money over time. Research shows that up to 90% of traders have unprofitable results over extended periods, such as several years. Assuming that you are willing to believe that data, one must wonder why that is?

Well, the market is heavily dominated by algorithms, institutional players and insiders that have better information, tools and execution. The deck is stacked against you. Just imagine the standard situation of a retail trader of Bitcoin. You are usually alone or with like minded amateurs, reading analyses by people who don't analyze things full time or you might be even trying to make your own analysis. You are trying to learn all kinds of indicators, metrics and even draw your chart. Meanwhile your opponent: has an army of full time analysts. One of them gathers more experience in 1 year than you will gather in a lifetime. They have algorithms that are data driven, automated, fast. Before you can even make up your mind what to do, they have already executed many trades.

Speculation in the cryptocurrency market is not like traditional investing, it is much more akin to gambling. You may be sitting a poker table where you are the player with the least experience.

Summary of pros for you:

• Fresh mind, open perspective. You may have some gut feelings or creative ideas that may lead you to expect market behavior that someone who has been working in the same job can't. They will simply think "that is simply not possible", yet the crypto market proves us all wrong all the time.
• Huge opportunity for profit. Compared to the time before the internet or even just before Bitcoin, making money on this scale and speed was reserved for the connected few or the geniuses who also had a business sense. There has never been a time like this for retail.

Summary of cons for you:

• Slow.
• Inexperienced.
• Odds are stacked against you in every way.

Sources:
https://www.quantifiedstrategies.com/what-percentage-of-traders-fail/
https://www.fxstreet.com/education/why-do-most-retail-traders-fail-and-what-can-i-do-to-improve-my-chances-of-success-202503311406
https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-retail-derivatives-traders-lost-18-trln-rupees-three-years-regulator-says-2024-09-23/

2. The massive opportunity cost is neglected
Let's be honest. How much does an average person who is trying to speculate on these markets spends in Telegram, X, TradingView, Reddit, forums such as these ones, and other websites? How many hours per day do you have charts open? Multitasking is not an excuse or minimizing argument here, the amount of hours spent on these things is insane. Everything counts here, from reading news to chatting with online colleagues about the crypto market. Data on this is scarce, and I don't like the surveys that are done as that does not represent the real picture at all. For the sake of simplicity we are going to assume a low estimated total of 3 hours per day average on all these activities.

That is more than 1000 hours in a year, and over 10 000 hours over a decade which is a notably number for sometimes being referred as the number required on average to become an expert at something. So every hour you spent on charts, indicators, X and whatever you could have been:

• Learning valuable career skills.
• Creating content.
• Building a business.
• Investing in long-term assets even if it is on a small scale.

Important lesson about this: Even if you have a decent profit, the return per hour is terrible. One of the worst ROIs that exists, most people would probably do better being waiters. For this to be worth it, you need to either spend a very little amount of time or make very good returns! Speculation tends to disguise itself as productivity, but in most cases is a distraction with high-stakes much more like gambling!

3. Emotional and psychological cost
If opportunity cost is neglected, then this cost is buried into the planet's Core.   Everything you do in life has an impact on you. Some things have smaller impacts, some have larger impacts but nevertheless they do impact you. They change you, however subtly! There is no risk free action and there is zero energy actions either. High stakes speculating or trading in the cryptocurrency market messes deeply with your head if done for a long time. Think about all the FOMO, constant stress, decision fatigues, dopamine hits when you are winning, sadness and panic when you are losing. The collateral of making a lot of money in something, then losing a lot in a scam, NFT, meme, something. The delusions you have to tell yourself that it is okay to lose since you made a lot of money initial and many other things.

All of these are changing your psyche for the worse, and they will leave a lasting imprint of damage in their wake.

Sources:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w11243
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36141519/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34152998/



4. Speculation and Trading are not for most people, DCA is vastly superior
My personal conclusion and view according to which I have always lived is that speculation and trading are not for most people. They should not do it at all. Whenever I have been asked by people to really speculate I never gave such responses. If they asked me what are my thoughts on the direction of Bitcoin's price today, whether it will go up or down I always said that I don't know and that I don't care. I meant it. Speculating to these markets reminds me on speculating on weather patterns. Should regular people ask themselves each day, why is it rainy today or why is it sunny today? Ridiculous waste.

Look at the proposed arguments here. It is clear that speculating and trading in these markets comes at a great cost, cost which are often hidden in order to delude yourself that you are spending time productively while you are mostly just distracting yourself and trying to become the lucky one. If no the lucky one then at least you hope to make a few bucks along on the trip. My conclusion is that DCA is impossibly superior to speculation and trading. Sure, your chances of making big money are diminished but for that tradeoff you forego all the costs that come with speculation and trading. With DCA you set it up and you can go and live your life peacefully. Remember, the most valuable currency that you have is time.


Imagine this. Someone comes to you to offer you an investment deal. He says it will cost you a lot of time even years of your life, it will cost you a lot in terms of your psychological well being, and the chance of failure is 99%. Would you take it? If you are smart, you would not. Please don't assume unrealistic exaggerated returns in order to justify a counterargument based on risk and reward disparity.


Please let me know what your thoughts are on this.  

You gotta trade for a side hustle not main income.
DCA is the only solid way to build your wealth. Trading is to scalp some money from the market and add it to your DCA weight.
Majority of people are losing in trading because majority of people aren't disciplined with their trades.

If they can keep low amount of money for trading and mantain DCA. I'm sure they will be successful easy.

You should had better asked the need for speculations instead of taunting its essence.
Just in case you don't know, speculations has a dynamic roles to play in the market which uproots enthusiasts optimisms towards adoption rate and as well influences market price in the upcoming.
Being aware that the market is volatile and unregulated, speculations serves as a driving force in price manipulations. While the bitcoin skeptics maybe full of criticism and mockery speculations that the market is not worth it, enthusiasts with positive mindsets believes in the worthwhile that it's a digital gold and so forth has outcomed a potential attributes that has given values to what bitcoin has attained up to date. We already got $100,000 from what we've anticipated based on speculations and we're Speculating for the least $180,000 before the year ends. Do you've problem with that?

I think that Bitcoin is one of the better things you could speculate on.  However, I always tell people that if you are going to buy Bitcoin as a trade, be prepared to hold onto it for four years in order to make money.  This is usually because people always ask about buying Bitcoin at the top of the four year cycle.  Funny enough, I try for years to get friends to buy Bitcoin, but the only time anyone ever does is when the cycle peaks and I tell them not to.  Then they lose money and spend years saying Bitcoin is a scam.  Just DCA is my advice these days.

Talking about the fiats here is a total digress towards what we've at hand. Speculations may have it market influence in communities towards adoption because those indifferent from the community will out of anticipation for what bitcoin may have in the future or usability be attracted to adopt it based on speculations influence. There're also those who're commonly risk bearers that'd only need guides on how to use it because their interests is already warming.
And besides you can't speculate realistically about bitcoin price when you don't have knowledge about it or not a user but if you do as a non enthusiasts, you're only acting as a skeptic unless you've proves if your speculations was against the reality of the assets.

I highly agree on the point of number 4 that "Speculation and Trading are not for most people, DCA is vastly superior".  Not all people are gifted with analysis skills, besides it takes time to fully enhance one's capability to analyze the market.  Although anyone can speculate, only those who understand how the market work can give a logical speculation.  And yes not all people have knacks on trading, so to at least minimize losses, DCA is the way to go, especially if the investor is just a newbie in the field.

This post primarily targets short-term speculators and day traders. A lot of retail folk have deluded themselves that they are traders just because they made a few trades in this high stakes high speed market. Speculating on Bitcoin using long-term perspectives is fine, that won't get you to spend that much time on it. Who cares if the price went down 5% today if you are looking at 4, 8, 12 year horizon or even longer? It is a pointless use of time to even look at the daily price.

The data shows that almost nobody is a successful trader except professional, because of that these general statements on trading skills are useless. The last part of your post is good, that is also part of my point here. Stop speculating, DCA and HODL long-term. Easy road to victory.

How many people actually care about realistic speculation though? All I see is people who want to be analysts but are as correct as a random coin toss. 

This market is very crazy, and it never stops. There is nothing like it. I would not suggest most people to even try trading.

If a person has a very active and full life, there is simply no room for the time investment that is required to have any chance of becoming a successful trader. I've heard stories of plenty of people who were initially successful and lost most of their gains later down the road. This indicates that they were deluded about their success. For most the gains were not a result of skill, they were a result from being in the right place at the right time by chance.

When we talks about speculation we are talking of things we don't see but yet believe that it would certainly or likely to happen with the predetermined given time or period, it could years to come provided it results to what we feels or closely to we thinks about it then we can say that is speculation or speculative.
When people invest or hold big shares of Bitcoin what they do is to give hope to people who is around them, make all sorts of post and noise just to attract people and make them think everything gonna happen as it's planned and for sure that would stir up the market making the price to rise above expected.

I agree with this, but those people are not the target of my post. Only partially at a later point where I describe how people lose money after initially getting successful, believing that the success was the result of skill when in reality it was the result of luck.

I don't mean to imply that all speculation is bad or that there are not benefits from some speculation, but my view is that short term speculation is very damaging to most people. Long term speculation and positive views on the price and future developments of Bitcoin for sure attract more individuals to it. This does not change the situation regarding the obsessive viewing of charts daily, it remains very damaging for most people.

Yes, most people are not ready for most things that they engage in at first. I don't think that avoiding cryptocurrencies before you are psychologically ready is sound advice, we just don't live in that kind of world. Most people should not be driving cars if we were to go by this, yet most people have licenses and are terrible drivers. 

Yes, I mostly refer to retail people who come here thinking that trading is a holy grail. This can also apply for others who are a bit seniors in crypto. I have seen individuals speculating on everything, riding all the waves but eventually never getting anywhere. Being glued to the screen for so many hours every day and not getting anywhere after 5 to 10 years is really a bad trade off.

Speculation in bitcoin is basically gambling on what you think will happen without really controlling anything, people spend hours on charts and indicators trying to predict the next move but the truth is the market doesnt care about lines on a screen. speculation can give a short win but over time most traders get drained because the game is stacked against them, fees, emotions, leverage and bigger players who move the market at will.

Holding is different because you are not trying to outsmart every candle, you are simply betting on the long term value of bitcoin as a whole. every time someone posts hype or panic, the crowd reacts and that alone pushes the price one way or another, and the cycle repeats. the big holders know this and they use speculation and noise to shake out smaller players. So the real question is not if speculation works, because sometimes it does, the real question is if it’s worth all the stress compared to just holding through cycles and letting bitcoin do what it has always done. when you zoom out, speculation looks like noise, holding looks like the signal.