- Bitcoin holding takes courage, but the rewards have always been worth it
- Bitcoin is known for its volatlity, but the odds are heavily in favor of holders over sellers
- If you’re down on your Bitcoin investment, contininuing to hold is almost always the best option
Bitcoin has a reputation, chiefly perpetrated by the mainstream media, of being a risky, loss-making enterprise. However, as we pointed out in our recent article about Bitcoin’s Underwater Window, there have only been 19 days in Bitcoin’s 4,073-day history on which you could have bought Bitcoin and still be at a loss. There is a reason why the saying ‘if you’ve lost money on Bitcoin you haven’t held long enough’ is in existence, because, 99.53% of the time so far, it has turned out to be true.
Don’t Panic, Just Hodl
As we reported on Thursday, the only people who are currently holding Bitcoin at a loss are those who bought during four small windows:
- December 16-19, 2017 (4 days)
- January 5-9, 2018 (5 days)
- June 26, 2019 (1 day)
- August 6-14, 2019 (9 days)
Everyone else, no matter when they bought during Bicton’s eleven-year history, has had the chance to sell at the price at which they brought in, and in most cases for far higher. Those who bought at the top of the 2017/18 bull run were, by mid-2018, likely wishing they had never invested. Many would have taken the advice of the mainstream media and sold for a loss, thinking it was never coming back, only to see the market rebound in 2019 and further in 2020, cursing their decision to sell.
There’s Always a Next Chance
This is no coincidence. The same pattern has played out before – those who bought at the top of the two peaks in 2013 were likely going through the exact same thought process after the bubble burst in December of that year, but the fact is that those that held through the pain would be sitting at 33x and 7x their buy in prices respectively today. In fact, those who bought at the local top in April 2013 only had to wait seven months to be back at break even.
Compare this to gold, where those who bought at the peak of the last bull run have so far been waiting for almost a decade to recoup their losses and are still 18% away. That should give you some perspective of what a real bear market (and manipulation) feels like.
Hodl and be Rewarded
History tells us therefore that if you have the strength to hodl your Bitcoin you will be rewarded, and this is not luck – Bitcoin is intrinsically designed to increase in price over time through its four-year halvings:
Image courtesy of digitalik.net
Now of course there is no guarantee that this scenario will continue to play out over time, but the combination Bitcoin’s design, historical patterns, and current data suggests that Bitcoin will likely follow a path similar to this, all of which reinforces the notion that, even in the darkest times, it always pays to hodl.
