I am really starting to feel like a middle-aged HODLr these days, and as I age out as one of the “class of 2016”, I become more cynical in my view of the crypto market. As many did back in the 2017 ICO boom, I came out bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, thinking I found the next Bitcoin.
I bought a whole lot of shit coins with Bitcoin, some worked out, and most of them did not; I lost a fair bit of “ching ching” (side note, when was the last time you heard money rattle lol) in the process.
Losing money is hard, but I don’t see it as losing money; I see it as investing in education because I’ll NEVER make the same mistake again; sure, I’ll make a different one but that specific mistake, not again.
Losing money in crypto is part of the game; it’s also part of life. I mean, I lost more by inflation and poor investment strategies than I ever did with Bitcoin.
Impatience destroys capital
The idea of getting rich quick is firmly ingrained in many of us wage slaves thinking of the day we strike it on a trade, the lottery, or something else. It’s been glamorised in the media, and it feels like something to aspire to; it also fits in with our way of instant gratification and consumerism.
Being impatient means you have less time to decide, less knowledge to work with and often driven overly by emotions. As humans, we’re all about our wants and needs, and for most of us, a few more 0’s in the bank account would do just the trick.
It’s the carrot we can’t stop chasing.
Trying to stay ahead of inflation be like
I always think back to one thing Warren Buffett says,
“Time in the market is better than timing the market.”
I believe this; even though he benefitted wildly from being a “cantillionaire” as well as a great investor, I still think it’s true.
Chasing something you can attract is something many of us have yet to figure out; something compounding interest is all about mind you.
Save us from ourselves
I a world where saving is the unpopular thing to do, there are plenty of people wanting to get into your pockets. People don’t like saving, they don’t want to get into the habit of saving, and their banks and governments punish them for saving, so why save?
I get it, totally rational behaviour.
Then Bitcoin comes along with a savings technology that does nothing but preserves its hard cap and has a set monetary policy. It’s stale, boring its consistent, it’s so mechanical and does what it’s programmed to do.
Bitcoin has preserved and grown wealth since its launch in 2008, and when I think it got a market price around late 2009/10.
Bitcoin, the base chain and protocol is not meant to anything but be a baseline store of value, a peg from which we can measure value, that’s all it will ever be and all it has to be, but as people, we always want more.
All that glitters is not gold
The need for greed isn’t going to go away simply because of Bitcoin; it’s what Bitcoin is based on; the greedier you are, the more you hold the price up for others.
But greed and instant gratification are so firmly wired in us that we will work against ourselves and rationalise it. There are so many distractions; I get it,
- The dollar value is a distraction, so you leave to acquire those dollars
- The dollar value of altcoins becomes attractive, so you leave to acquire a different unit of account
- The technology of an altcoin sounds exciting, so you leave to jump on “better tech.”
- The percentage gains are higher in stocks or altcoins, so you leave because you see percentage increases.
There is so much that glitters in the market today, many of it not gold, but that’s how we’re wired; investing is far from rational even if you want to try and rationalise it with charts.
How altcoins see the market
All these reasons to leave to me are just swindling you out of your sats for a raw deal. I am not saying Bitcoin should NEVER be sold; if you want to take some profit and live a better life, do it.
I am just saying that chasing every high can and will leave you high and dry.
The real measure of success
If we split all the BTC in the world equally among the entire population, it’s around 70 000 sats per person. Think about that, sure there will never be equal distribution EVER, and it’s your chance to secure a position that no one can attain or would need to pay an absolute fortune to take off your hands.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll repeat it, your Satoshis are a measure of your stake in the network, the only network that really matters at this point.
