The biggest advantage early Bitcoin investors had wasn’t money

[freedomgo]

Money alone does not make you last in a certain business or investment. It requires high conviction and patience to hold through extreme volatility without panic selling. And to keep in mind that bitcoin is not a get-rich-quick speculation but a multi-year store of value, and I think that's how early investors treat bitcoin.

Their biggest advantage is having the true mindset of a bitcoin investor, even without sufficient amount of capital, but the fact that they clearly understand how to navigate bitcoin investment to its maximum outcome, that becomes their biggest advantage as early bitcoin investors.

[BitMaxz]

Well, people who buy bitcoin in early days I think, had different visions and reasons why they buy and held.

The first thing that comes to mind is that they previously purchased Bitcoin with the expectation that it would make a profit in the future, as the Bitcoin white paper mentions the fixed supply and block halving, which could drive the price up.

Another reason is they buy bitcoin because they can only play online casino games if they have BTC, but most of them, I think, are starting to get bored and end up holding the BTC until they realize holding makes them profit.

Or some tech enthusiasts just mine BTC for study and knowledge purposes for future plans until they realize they are mining a coin that could be worth millions in the future.

So, in the early days, people had a different perspective on Bitcoin, whereas now, most new investors enter because they believe they can profit from holding.

[ThemePen]

Romanticized view of early adoption completely overlooks brutal psychological warfare of holding unproven asset. And you know you are when the whole world thinks your thesis is stupid, and your portfolio is down eighty percent overnight. I think that most of the people in market right now would have been freaked out and may have sold and sold during early cycles, in their opinion. Indeed, modern financial safety nets, such as exchange traded funds, function as psychological crutch which allows people to do what they think is safe course, but are simply joining in institutional herd. True beauty of these people is they were able to make it during hardest times of pessimism, and not only make it, but they earned it, and the majority of traders today, absolutely could not.

[marrcelo]

tbh it wasn't even about being "early" in the way people think. a lot of early holders sold at $30 or $100 thinking they already made it lol
the real advantage was conviction. and that's honestly harder to have than money. anyone can throw $50 at something, not everyone can hold through -80% drawdowns without panicking

[Alpha Marine]

Aside from people who forgot they bought Bitcoin and remembered after it was worth something, early adopters of Bitcoin are people who knew and understood what it actually was. I guess that one thing that pisses old timers off about the current bitcoin space. Previously, anybody who had Bitcoin knew and understood it, but now, they see people who don't know anything about Bitcoin talking about it like they know it all.

This is part of why I don't regret the fact that I didn't buy bitcoin when it was $1, because there was no guarantees of me not selling when it got to $1000, that is, if I would be able to hold it that long.
Another thing is, back then, people weren't really focused on how much they could get out of Bitcoin in profits as they are now. They just wanted to hold bitcoin and be part of something revolutionary.
To hold bitcoin for so long at that time, you would need to really understand what it means. They could see how undervalued it was.

There is also the fact that it was relatively cheaper. This in no way diminishes the effort they put in to hold, but when Bitcoin was $3 in 2011, you could get over 30btc with $100. So 2 years later, when it hit $1k, they can sell 5btc and make $5k and still have over 20btc left. Even if they had sold at differnet intervals, they would still had more opprtunities to buy.
This is also part of the reason why we hear different stories of misplaced seed phrases and all. It's because Bitcoin wasn't worth much, so people didn't pay much attention to securing it when they had it.

[ColdLava40]

Sometimes I feel people admire early Bitcoin holders without realizing how emotionally difficult it actually was to become one. Special respect to them, they deserved their accolades

Succeeding in Bitcoin means you believed in it and took advantage of the opportunity.

I will agree with you, the early investors didn't make it because of the cheap price, they success is as a result of their trust in a system which everyone criticized.

You can imagine the number of critics we had then when Bitcoin was nothing. We still have many now, but a lot has changed their view since Bitcoin proved them to be wrong in many regards.

If there are still people who are not buying Bitcoin because they still are not convinced enough, I'm not sure there's anything that can be done. They've made up their mind.

The early adopters were people who understood what Bitcoin stood for. They were not bothered about making profits then, they just wanted a system without being involved with the government.

[arzuo]

Most people were in uncertainty, so it was difficult to survive!
On top of that, a lot of negative news in the market broke the morale of the new believers. At that time, I also sold a lot of BTC out of fear.
Many people lacked deep knowledge on this subject, so many people underestimated Bitcoin, those who survived even in extreme uncertainty were the true believers!

[Uhwuchukwu53]

Yes I will agree with the statement of "not money" certain opportunity need sound information and the personal mindset of seen the future before it happens, if you doubt this are there no people who was more financial ok when Bitcoin was introduced that lack the possession of Bitcoin only such will tell you it's about information and mindset of focusing what the future yeild than money. But money can't be excluded because despite Bitcoin not been about money them many still lack the money to engage at the beginning with the little amount it's been acquired with.

[Bluedrem]

In fact, the situation was such that not many people believed in the digital economy at that time. And they could not even imagine what Bitcoin could reach in the future. They imagined Bitcoin as just an illusion. Most people forbade others from saving it. But among them, those who were able to take risks and were not fooled by the words of others bought Bitcoin and are currently enjoying its benefits. But among them, there are many who bought Bitcoin and sold it based on a small profit, and they are the ones who are now expressing the most disappointment and regret. They always think about how their situation would have changed if they had held the Bitcoins at that time.

[TheUltraElite]

Many of the early investors were not having conviction too. People bought at 100$ and sold at 500$ making a nice 5x profit but they could have sold at 100k$ too but never thought like that or did not have enough waiting period in hand. Hence we should not compare one generation with another. I have been seeing since the 600$ days and people carry weak hands and they are found everywhere, actual strong hands are rare and they often are not found on social media and forums like these. They invest and sleep on it working out tireless lives as their investment grows.

[aoluain]

Honestly, I don’t think early Bitcoin investors succeeded just because they bought cheap coins.... their real advantage was conviction.

Early investors succeeded also because of belief and patience.

Belief that one day many years into the future Bitcoin would be as popular as it is today.
Belief that targets like $1,000, $10,000 and $100,000 would be met and crossed.

Patience = Willing to HODL into the long term through all the negativity and Bear markets

Everyone can learn from this and apply to their own future!

[KiaKia]

Everyone should listen, You all can't blame what happened in the past on simply ignorance, you people are talking as if you knew what everyone was going through at that time, Bitcoin was the only thing that was cheap back then, some people's life was not.

Pray you don't find yourself on that sit where you have to choose to survive or hold Bitcoin for many years to come, you people just talk anyhow on here, many Bitcoin early buyers were able to life by that time because of Bitcoin, yes they sold to stay alive.

It was this terrible for some people at the time, I was into Bitcoin in 2017 but I can't even buy bitcoin in peace without something coming up the next few days, school, bills and other things.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

Honestly, I don’t think early Bitcoin investors succeeded just because they bought cheap coins.... their real advantage was conviction.

Today, buying Bitcoin feels much easier because millions of people already believe in it. There are ETFs, institutions, medias, lots of big companies talking about adoption everywhere… but imagine holding Bitcoin back when most people called it stupid, dangerous, or dead every few months lol. The kind of belief they had takes serious patience mehh.

Even now, with all the informaton available on and off the internet, many people still panic during corrections, they stop buying when fear enters the market, and keep looking for reassurance from the crowd before making decisions.

it honestly makes me wonder… If people struggle to hold conviction today with all the info, would they really have survived being early investors back then?

Sometimes I feel people admire early Bitcoin holders without realizing how emotionally difficult it actually was to become one. Special respect to them, they deserved their accolades

Well, you definitely have to first have the money to buy bitcoin back then before you begin to talk about conviction, because how  is it possible for a person to benefit from being convinced that bitcoin will become great as it is today when he or she doesn't have a single bitcoin and also don't have the money or means to buy?

So, the reality is that you can't talk about the biggest advantage early bitcoin investors had and try to push money aside, because money still is one of the major advantage those who invested in bitcoin early had.
Imagine myself now as an example, I discovered bitcoin in late 2015 when it's price $300/$400, but unfortunately, I had no money to invest, I believed in bitcoin then with my whole heart, but where I was working then, salary I get paid by the end up the month usually is not enough for me and my family to feed on, let alone, keeping extra to buy bitcoin..
If I had the means back then to invest in bitcoin like those who had the money did, maybe I would be a billionaire now as well.