Risk of holding bitcoin forever

[krishnaverma]

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 ?

[JangoUnchained]

What are you saying? They lost their money because they failed to keep their recovery seed safe, it's not about holding for too long, and yes if you know that you are going to be careless with your recovery seed later on maybe it's best you don't hold for long but what I won't accept is you saying their lost their money / Bitcoin because they held too long, that's false.

[Easteregg69]

How about if you not encrypt your wallet.dat?

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

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 ?

They might have same problems or might not have such problems. Their endings will depend on their practice with wallets and whether they make wallet backups properly or not.

If they believe that everything is fine and will be fine forever with their original wallet that is the only wallet they have, they might have big problems in the future.
Otherwise, if they learned from past stories of people who lost bitcoins by ignoring wallet back up, and do make their wallet backups, they will not face with such problems and will not lose their bitcoins.

How to back up a seed phrase?
21 tips for securing your bitcoin.

[Luzin]

How to back up a seed phrase?
21 tips for securing your bitcoin.

Currently it is different, storage is becoming more sophisticated and varied. There are many techniques to ensure that storage is not lost or damaged. In my local forum, this issue is also discussed. One method is using a ring plate that contains one word from the seed. This is a local thread in our country [Edukasi] Seed Storage - Tempat Penyimpanan Mnemonic Phrase. I think that as users of Bitcoin think more progressively, there will be fewer who forget or lose it. We need to continue upgrading storage methods so that our assets do not vanish or get lost due to personal errors.

[Die_empty]

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 ?

I don't think anyone wants to keep Bitcoin forever. Or maybe you mean people who want to hold for a long time or want to keep it as an inheritance for their descendants. In my view, everyone has plans on how to use their Bitcoin in the future. Unforeseen occurrences like sudden sickness or death could be one of the reasons why a bitcoiner could suddenly lose their money.  

Some people have been hodling their coins since the creation of Bitcoin, and they are still intact to date. The age of Bitcoin does not affect its safety.  If you keep your seed phrase safe and also have backups, your coins will remain in the wallet.

[348Judah]

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 ?

Holding bitcoin for too long is not the risk here, you must not hold bitcoin for too long on a centralized exchange, while you should also be reminded that your bitcoin you hold for too long on any non custodial wallet is on the blockchain, you may only play safe by getting an alternative means to have your private keys or seed phrase stored to avoid complete loss of coin, you can lose your coin within a week if you lose access to the storage key, except you create an alternative storage as well to fall back at.

[Asuspawer09]

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 ?

I mean that is just depending on how you are going to handle those kind of things on your investments, those who are invested on Bitcoin from the very start did a great decision but they just didnt really put a lot of thoughts into it since they dont take care of there private key, seed phrase or password what so every, It was your password and from the very start we already know that there was no way you could recover your Bitcoin if you lose your key, they didnt put anything into it, should atleast write it down on a paper it they know that it is that important, so the carelesness surely is going to hit them back hard.

I wouldnt going to say that those who invested lately are going to suffer the same fate, it is still going to depend on you on how they are going to handle it, but for sure it might happened to them as well, if they are careless as well, but if they know what they are doing, they save there passwore or keys, have backup, have them on steelplate etc. there should be a good tool for them as a investment they are doing the best they can to handle it, so that it is secured and in the future they are not going to encounter this kind of problems. Bitcoin or the wallet doesn't have anything to do here, this is more like human error.

[Bluedrem]

They will definitely want to learn from the past and they will try to collect the keys to their wallets in the right way so that the wallets are not lost even after being unused for a long time. In the past, i.e. at the beginning of the birth of Bitcoin, those who invested here did not give much importance to Bitcoin because the value of Bitcoin was not that high, as a result of which they lost the keys to their Bitcoin portfolio due to negligence. But today, Bitcoin is much more valuable and people want to store valuable things safely, so someone will store the keys to the wallets where they keep Bitcoins safely.

[Frankolala]

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.

[Yamane_Keto]

If password isn't strong enough, you might regain access to those coins in a few years, and by then their value will be greater than spending them now. Keeping your files safe is essential, and losing your password alone doesn't mean your coins are lost forever. awareness is higher than in the past, and Bitcoin's value makes considering multiple wallet copies a necessity.

[DanWalker]

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.

Is this method really safe? Because paper is a material that is easily torn, easily flammable, and easily damaged over time. Therefore, I do not think using paper to store seed phrases is appropriate, especially for those intending to hold bitcoin long term. Furthermore, creating multiple copies and storing them in different locations poses a risk of exposure or theft if not properly secured.

In my opinion, use a metal plate to store the seed phrase instead of paper, and you dont need too many duplicates, focusing on keeping it safe is enough.

[pawanjain]

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 ?

With bitcoin, we have to become extra cautious with our seed phrase and keep it in a very secure place.
I understand your point that holding bitcoin for too long will increase our probabilities of losing the seed phrase at some point of time.
But that doesn't have to be necessary if you do your due diligence well enough and keep securing and accessing your seed phrase in a timely manner.
Just because we might lose our seed phrase doesn't mean we should stop holding bitcoin for long term.

[Lucius]

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

What is the point of "holding forever"? If you have such ideas in your head, then you have never understood what Bitcoin is - a decentralized cryptocurrency that allows you, me and anyone else to make transactions 24 hours a day/365 days a year without asking the bank, government or any institution.

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

[aoluain]

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 ?

Erm, I think this statement is incorrect. Anyone who bought Bitcoin and forgot about it or lost their
password/keys and access to their wallet is not a fault of holding too long, its a fault of the individual.

There are many more people who are still holding and who still have access to their wallets, so for
them "holding for a long time" doesnt have any consequences.

Holding Bitcoin is not like a biodegradable bag, you go to the drawer after a length of time and all you
find is tiny pieces of plastic, not a bag!

[noorman0]

Holding it forever, that means you'll never spend it? That's no risk to you, because you've basically lost from the start.
To really ensure there is no risk of volatility for other investors, say you are a Michael Saylor and are terrible at keeping key reserves, you simply send your bitcoins to the burn address.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Bitcoin holders aren't "holding forever". Your time alive is finite and life is good. Therefore, you always have a preference of consuming something today rather than tomorrow. All human beings have this time preference embedded.

Bitcoin asks you this question: "do you want to consume something today in exchange for more things tomorrow?" And it is up to you to decide. But, you will surely prefer "today" one day.

[YOSHIE]

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.

I've read the history of those who invested in Bitcoin with the keys lost and the Bitcoin frozen in their wallets for eternity, but I judge that situation didn't hurt them too much, the reason is, they did it when Bitcoin was priced at $10/btc, yes of course they had 1000 btc at that time, not now.

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

This is a different story, if at today's value, from the experience that has occurred, perhaps those investors who invested in Bitcoin first secured Bitcoin keys, because we know how Bitcoin works, it is not the same as before in 2010 perhaps, many took it lightly and trivially.

[nakamura12]

Yes they did lose their money but it wasn't the same as now since the price isn't the same as before. If you talk about 1 bitcoin before and now then the amount of money you will spend will be different. If you think about it, it is worst for them since they can't access their wallet when they can sell their Bitcoin if they didn't forget it and it would have been a very huge profit. One more thing, some did still able to access their wallet so not all who bought bitcoin and stored it for many years have lost access to their wallet.

[Dunamisx]

Bitcoin is so designed in a way that not everyone of us will eventually end up holding it forever, we have the stipulated time we may decide to hold until sale, once we are profitable, we are good to sell and also continue the process over and again, at the end, there is nothing like risk in holding because we are mostly going to make more profits over time.