Risk of holding bitcoin forever

[Yaunfitda]

Those who invested in bitcoin at the time when it was launched and forgot about it, there are many among these who forgot their password. That is like losing all your money just because you held very long. Those who are investing now and plan to hold forever, are they in better position or their fate will be similar ?

In the early days of Bitcoin cases of Bitcoin loss due to lack of access to a storage wallet were probably much more frequent. However, now people are much more careful about this issue. Every time they create a wallet, they first save their passphrase so they can recover it in case something unexpected happens. Everyone learns from their mistakes and I believe now people are much more careful about this issue and will try to be much more thoughtful about storing their passphrases. Nowadays, storage methods are much more diverse, with certain methods available, but even small mistakes can also endanger their assets, as recovery cannot be achieved. That's why storing their passphrases properly is so important.

And most likely in the early years, they might not thought that Bitcoin will go this big and so they might have written down their password and mnemonic phrase or private key somewhere else. And when Bitcoin goes up and become well-known, they remember but unfortunately, they've lost it already. Hopefully, instead of chasing it, why not start from scratch and re-invest your time and money into it and moved forward. So that at least you won't be haunted by the ghost of that mistakes and you can continue to accumulate and still take advantage of Bitcoin instead of "“crying over spilled milk”.

[Easteregg69]

People made use of it. Not like loosing it.

Milk goes in the coffee.

Stereotypes that is not you. Cheers. Write down your mnemonic phrase and keep it safe.

[FortuneFollower]

People made use of it. Not like loosing it.

Milk goes in the coffee.

Stereotypes that is not you. Cheers. Write down your mnemonic phrase and keep it safe.

Stop baking bread that hard, Easter, you will fill the kitchen with too much sense

[Hewlet]

Those who invested in bitcoin at the time when it was launched and forgot about it, there are many among these who forgot their password. That is like losing all your money just because you held very long. Those who are investing now and plan to hold forever, are they in better position or their fate will be similar ?

forgetting your password while you are still invested is not a function of how long you have invested and wether or not you were around at the time bitcoin started or became a popular asset. it is rather about knowing the relevance of keeping to the right security details and ensuring that you are keeping at it to the latter. you can not and should not think of holding bitcoin forever because such a plan is completely what worthless. your investment should be time bound and there should be a clear plan as to when you are opting out and what becomes of you as well as the plans you have made that will sustain you when you are opting out.

[Lida93]

Those who invested in bitcoin at the time when it was launched and forgot about it, there are many among these who forgot their password. That is like losing all your money just because you held very long. Those who are investing now and plan to hold forever, are they in better position or their fate will be similar ?

This typical wrong. Do you want to say that those that safely kept their wallet seeds all those early years of bitcoin till now don't they have access to their bitcoin with full custody to it? It's a different matter when you got careless and lost your wallet seeds and want to blame on the idea that it's because you attempted to hold for long. You were just careless not to know how to safely keep your seeds.

Also, no investment is held forever and ever. There must come a time when you would liquidate your investment with the profit towards other areas of necessitation as life goes on, and this doesn't exempt bitcoin investors.

[qwertyup23]

Those who invested in bitcoin at the time when it was launched and forgot about it, there are many among these who forgot their password. That is like losing all your money just because you held very long. Those who are investing now and plan to hold forever, are they in better position or their fate will be similar ?

Well.... what is the true purpose of an investment? Aren't we investing both for profit and to protect our interests given that BTC has a huge store-for-value?

Personally, I do not see the need to HODL forever given that it eliminates the purpose on why we invest in the first place. If you just HODL without even converting it for currency, then nothing is really "invested" given its meaning.

Those who invested in bitcoin at the time when it was launched and forgot about it, there are many among these who forgot their password. That is like losing all your money just because you held very long. Those who are investing now and plan to hold forever, are they in better position or their fate will be similar ?

When they invested in Bitcoin at the beginning, Bitcoin had not become a potential asset or Bitcoin did not have a good future. As a result, many people may have ignored or neglected Bitcoin since Bitcoin was not a valuable asset at that time. But is the current situation like that time? Now Bitcoin is fighting for superiority in terms of valuable assets, when someone holds Bitcoin at present, that person has already made a Bitcoin recovery situation.

I am somehow guilty of this given that I failed to realize the true value of HODLing until I hindsight. Well the truth is, treat your first year of investing as the journey. Expect BTC to skyrocket on its price in the near future!

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

Well.... what is the true purpose of an investment? Aren't we investing both for profit and to protect our interests given that BTC has a huge store-for-value?

Personally, I do not see the need to HODL forever given that it eliminates the purpose on why we invest in the first place. If you just HODL without even converting it for currency, then nothing is really "invested" given its meaning.

Investment is made for profit and depends on financial status as well as financial preparation before and during investment, investors will have different needs of taking profit after several months, in a market cycle or just hold it for a longer time with very little pressure of taking profit for money. However, it's the same purposes that investors invest money in Bitcoin for profit, it's just when they will take profit.

HODL is a term used for marketing and psychology manipulation, that sounds cool but that does not necessary to be used for prohibiting anyone to take profit.

[Nwada001]

Their fate can’t be similar to someone who is investing now. As you said they forgot about it and even forgot their seed phrase which might be a case of carelessness, although some certain circumstances might have taken place. Because seed phrase are meant to be kept safe and it is advisable to safe both online and offline since it is very important to you and you as well have a goal to achieve which is why it is very important to keep safe.

I will never advise anyone to save their seed phrase online; that's a very risky thing to do. Anything that you save online is a great risk; if your cloud storage or wherever it's being saved gets compromised, that will be the end of your holding, as the person who gains access to the wallet will get things emptied. The best thing is to make all your backups offline and make sure you protect them. Look for secured locations and keep each backup.

[Faisal2202]

Those who invested in bitcoin at the time when it was launched and forgot about it, there are many among these who forgot their password. That is like losing all your money just because you held very long. Those who are investing now and plan to hold forever, are they in better position or their fate will be similar ?

Yes, they are in a better position, and their fate will be much better than the previous one. Because a lot of people are talking about crypto, a lot of articles have been published, and AI is also helping us to learn about crypto. The only reason people lose in the start is that they started crypto, they did learned about a few things, but how to secure their bitcoins for the long term after buying was not something they thought worth exploring.

But nowadays everyone when mentioning how to buy, they also add how to securely hold our bitcoins for the long term without losing them and also without selling them.

It is important for us to learn first, if we want to survive, otherwise we will repeat what others have repeated.

[Stormisover]

There are also early people that were able to access their bitcoin and still holding. It's a norm that some investors will be careless with keeping their bitcoin safe and lose access to their funds in future because they take little things for granted. Anyone that wants to hodli for long term should write down his seed phrase on a piece of paper and make three duplicates. Store them in three different locations far from each other.

Anyone who doesn't plan for the security and safety of their Bitcoin doesn't really believe in Bitcoin and while they are can be so careless about it, because just as they say that whatever you treasure so much that's where your heart and your mind will be always, Bitcoin is a treasure and having it should give anyone who values it a different kind of sense of reasoning for safety, I could also understand that most people who misplaced their seed phrase never in their wildest imagination believe that Bitcoin will get to this point and while they took things for granted.

[DubemIfedigbo001]

~snip~
Those who are investing now and plan to hold forever, are they in better position or their fate will be similar ?

Those who buy Bitcoin and never do anything with it are in the worst position.

It is still very much possible it was bought to serve as an inheritance for the family, just like is applicable with family businesses and other kinds of investments. The person that bought it may never have anything to do with it but his successors would.

It all boils down to the main reason it was purchased in the first place of which different people have peculiar reasons for coming into bitcoin. The term "holding forever" isn't very feasible to me, unless the investors destroyed the keys/phrases backups while they were alive and that is a very stupid things to do IMHO.