Trading or timing bitcoin is very difficult. Much easier to buy and hodl and sell when you need some spending money Lots of whales lost their stack over the years or traded for forks or other altcoins. Even Bitcoin Jesus Roger Ver with over 200,000 bitcoins have fallen on hard times, got liquidated on an exchange recently unable to pay margin call Look at you, got shaken out on your bitcoin long, all your talk got you nowhere but losses on going long bitcoin several times $15k to $30k and you've had nothing but losses, what have your method of buying the uptrend got you? And your fiat lost value... that's guaranteed
Not sure where you got the idea that I've had losses. Buying the uptrend has worked out fairly well. Much better than holding from the top like some people. But that's neither here or there. You don't have to be concerned about how I'm doing. My networth is greater now than when when we first discusses the pros and cons of trading vs buy and hold. What part of Asia are you calling home now?
As John already said, trading successfully will only work out for a small percent. Few will have the discipline of CTO, and he also has a stack that he will never sell. I think that many of us realize that there could be an explosive move one day that will leave everybody in the dust. We are dealing with a truly scarce asset here that cannot be faked or manipulated. Reading about all of the current ETF offerings and how these might one Day end up getting wrecked is something that you do need to consider. Imagine if one day someone does a calculation and finds out that the value of all the ETFs cannot add up to the actual supply of Bitcoin available. This is the beauty of Bitcoin. The supply is 100% verifiable. We all know about paper gold but I also heard the same thing when it comes to Egyptian cotton. So many manufacturers of bed sheets like to claim they use Egyptian cotton but apparently this adds up to 10 times more cotton than Egypt even produces. So maybe one day you think you are smart trading Bitcoin and protecting your downside, but then all of a sudden the price jumps and you have no way to get back in unless giving up all the profits that you made.
Pull up a long-term chart of BTC. It's not that hard to spot the start of a possible parabolic move, and get in fairly early, and then get out when it starts to fizzle out. Unless you think BTC is going to undergo a sudden step-change revaluation, say from $30k to $100k over a few days. Gold and silver bugs have been pushing this narrative for years. Buy now before the price explodes, or you'll miss out. Never happens of course.
I'm not sure how I give up profits? Why wouldn't I be able to get in? I usually like to buy stuff making new highs. If BTC takes off without me, I haven't lost anything but opportunity. Thinking that I have lost because I didn't own any BTC is FOMO. It's not something I'm concerned about. Now if I hold bitcoin and the explosive move is to the downside,(could happen) then my liquid net worth suffers. I might not have any cash to take advantage of the low price and my capital will be tied up so I can't take advantage of other opportunities. As a speculator my number one priority is to protect the capital I have and that is why I cut losses quickly. BTC is trending upward and I'm playing it with ETFs, adding to the position as price increases. If it breaks the trendline I'll be out. I don't worry about how much I might make, I worry about how much I could lose!!
Yes, this is what I think. Imagine a report coming out, just as I outline, that the total ETF holdings exceed supply. Take the market cap of bitcoin, $580B. Now add all the coins lost, all coins held by Saylor, etc. Now assume that one day, these ETF's say they hold 500B (of course these numbers will be bigger in the future once the ETFs get up and running). This would be like 80% of all supply, and yet we know this is impossible. So now, once again, everyone learns the importance of holding your own keys, and there is a mad rush to buy or even just a mad rush to withdraw. By now, the amount on exchanges is much lower, and hence, a 10k hourly bar will be very, very possible.
Excellent discipline. I just meant that lets say you sell at 69k, assuming there is a double top, and it instead blasts through this price. Then you of course don't want to buy, as it could be a fakeout, and then you wait as you see it cross 80k and 90k. At this point, some major news comes in about adoption by either some other country or corporation, etc, and well, now you're convinced it won't retrace, so you are forced to buy in at 90k. Of course not forced, but if you know you wanted it long term since you're convinced its going to 1 million, 90k is still not bad. But if you only made 20k on your win, but now have to pay 20k higher than where you sold, there go all your profits. Clearly this probably won't apply to you if you are so diligent with your entries, but I really do think there will come a day where buying interest will overwhelm exchanges and they might even be unwilling to quote prices. I realize that exchanges work on the principle that matches buyers and sellers, but with fast moving prices, I'm sure exchanges take on some risk as well. Its like a money maker who sells someone a call, and then has to buy the stock in order to cover this position. Some exchanges might not be able to match the buy and sell orders nearly as well when they know they will have to deal with supplying the actual bitcoin for withdrawl. FTX is of course the best example. 80k bitcoins on their books, and none in their vault.
I'm not so sure about the last part. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9159387/ https://www.pymnts.com/cryptocurrency/2022/in-crypto-market-manipulation-remains-a-problem/ https://mashable.com/article/crypto-prices-up-market-manipulation-bitcoin