As the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies approach their previous all-time high price; it has put me in a reflective state of mind. Sometimes while investing in crypto, it can actually be very hard to see your own progress. There are a few reasons for that. Perhaps you began investing during the bear market or even just a lull in the market. During this time your crypto holdings are increasing, but your dollar value may not be changing or potentially are even decreasing. A lot of people can lose their focus or patience during this time and decide to sell. Buying high and selling low. In reality though, those are the best moments to be buying. You are pulling down the coil further and further, building up the tension and pressure, and when things explode, your portfolio will see growth that may shock you.
For those of us who have been in the market for a while now, we are now beginning to enjoy the fruits of our labor. That coil that we had kept investing into and putting more pressure on, has finally jumped up and moved in our favor. It is important that you take a moment to marvel at the progress that you have made. For a lot of us, investing in crypto has not only changed our lives financially, but perhaps even more importantly has changed our financial mindset and thinking. But now that prices are increasing and may go up to heights that just a few years ago most would have thought to be impossible. We need to consider what our own personal future is in this market.
By our own personal future in this market; I mean what our next steps will be. Will you sell out of the market for fiat? Perhaps you will start to dial back your investments into crypto as it will become more difficult to accumulate the amounts of coins that you could in the past. Maybe your confidence in the market has increased significantly and you will be putting even more money and focus in the market. There is no correct answer, and each person will need to do what is best for them.
But because I am in a reflective mood, I think it is a good idea to think about what your original purpose was when you began investing into bitcoin, ethereum or any other cryptocurrency.
For the vast majority, I would wager that they entered the market to make money. I know I was the exact same way. That tends to be the reason that most people enter the market. But once they have invested, and have some "skin in the game." That is when they begin to go down the rabbit hole and after that happens, there is no going back. A lot of these people will no longer be able to see the world in the same way that they did before.
I always find it fascinating to hear how people first got into the cryptocurrency market and thought it would be fun to hear from all of you as well. My story is like so many of you out there. Years ago my brother had become interested into bitcoin. He came to me and wanted to share the exciting new technology that he found. He urged me to look into it and buy some. At the time, bitcoin was still in the double-digits of price. Naturally, I ignored him and thought it was a scam, or just not interesting. But to be honest, I just had other life things happening and wasn't open to any other investment opportunities that would take away from the current goal of mine at the time. Time went on and he stopped trying to convince me to get into bitcoin. As it would turn out, I would move away from the USA and live overseas. I quickly found sending money back home was a chore. It was slow and expensive. That's when I remembered bitcoin and began looking into it more. Yep, I initially began investing into it for remittance purposes, but I quickly fell down the rabbit hole and that is when everything changed. While I didn't get into bitcoin during it's double digit days of being under $100, I still was fortunate to get in very early.
How about your future with crypto?
For me personally, crypto has over-taken my life and become a mainstay. For that reason, I think it would be very difficult for me to ever sell out of my position. Instead, I'm actually increasing my focus and investment into bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies even more. Trying to explore the market and everything it has to offer. How to increase my passive income made from crypto, setting up nodes or even running a Lightning channel. Experimenting with DeFi and also looking into NFT's. The people who learn these simple skills or tasks now, will be in a great position in the future. If I do want cash from my crypto gains, I would most likely take a loan out using my crypto as collateral. This would allow me to hold onto my assets and also avoid the heft crypto taxes.
But if selling would help you out, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. After all, we all probably got into this market to try to improve our lives in some way. If you are able to do that, I think selling is something that you definitely need to consider.
How about you? How did you get into crypto? What is your future in this market?
As always, thank you for reading!
My story is similar to yours in that I saw what crypto was doing, and that people were indeed making money from it. But I had considered it to be essentially "fake" money, and so I had no interest in it at all. I eventually changed my mind, joined noise and read, and my perspective has changed quite dramatically since then, as I take more time to dig in a bit more and actually research what it is and what it does, and of course how it can make money for me.
That is my primary aim with it. To make money.
So far, because my crypto is such a small percentage of my total investment portfolio, my decision is to simply HODL most of it. Even when I take profits right now I simply convert it into different cryptos. I don't need the money right now. The stock market provides well enough for me. But I do think that there will come a time when I may decide to yank some out for fiat, especially if I see an opportunity in the stock market that presents a better one than another crypto might when the decision is made to "convert."