you seem so sure, you should sell everything and buy back lower, no?
With 24% capital gains it’s too much of a risk. I sold enough Bitcoin for six years of life expenses. In hindsight I should have sold more over 120k but I thought we would hit at least 150k this year.
Love to be wrong but this looks like frustrated OG’s and four year cycle believers dumping due to lack of bullish price action. It’s causing severe selling pressure. I think the bull run is over.
Clearly I hope it’s not as I become significantly wealthier with uppity price action. I just say what I see though without bias.
It seems to me you've done quite well with your strategies as well.
that's true
I'm a bit afraid that LFC is right again tbh

How could he be right about the future? No one knows.
He took some value off of the table in order to hedge what was an increasingly strong feeling that the top was in or the top was close, so then as more dip came, he became increasingly confident that more bottom was coming,. both in terms of amount of drop but also in terms of how much time that it might take to get back to ATH prices and beyond.
LFC is not so confident about further down in order to sell more BTC, even though sure, we have to give him some leeway in that since he is proclaiming that he needs at least a 24% drop from any selling point to be able to buy back and to merely break even in regards to the buy back... so surely it can be difficult to sell with an expectation of buying back cheaper, even if he has so far gotten perhaps slightly greater than a 20% drop from his around $120k sell point.. and yeah, we cannot really know if he would be able to buy back with a strong enough level of comfort, even though based on his earlier expressions of anxiety, it was good for him to take some off the table, yet he would have likely felt a bit silly about his choice if the BTC price had gone 20% up from $120k rather than 20% down...
So, yeah, currently there is a bit of momentum in regards to down and even further down and even some additional testing of $100k, and perhaps there is greater than 50% odds that the ongoing testing of down is not over (since we have slightly below $102k prices as I type this post.
Historically, I have seen all kinds of guys whining and proclaiming down and blah blah blah, and sometimes they were correct, yet many times they were wrong.. which may or may not be the case here in regards to the top being in, including LFC's expectations of something like a two year period before ATHs are reached again (even though my bet with him closes in ONLY 5 months.. which is does not even reflect his true sentiment in regards to how long he believe it is going to take to get back to (and above) $126,272 (on Bitstamp of course).
[edited out]
og watch out Japan is sending troops to your place due to the bear attacks.
I want to laugh at how silly you predictions will look in a few months.
So to start off ha ha ha .
Wow!!!! This is funny.
Finally Phil has found someone more loving and worshiping of fiat than he, him lil selfie.
Must be a sign that the top is in, since Phil does not tend to be correct very often.
Pack up your bags bois.

It seems a bit ridiculous to even proclaim $30k is in the cards.
I strongly agree with you on this. It's not impossible, and it would actually be close to fitting the metrics of the old school cycle bear winter -- in the neighborhood of a 75% draw down from what would have certainly been the all time high in this fantastic scenario.
But this definitely touches on my perennial "this time is different" theory about where we are now. I just don't see a 75% drawdown happening.
I would be willing to place up to a 100,000 Satoshi bet on this, with someone who thinks we do touch 30, as long as we define the timeframes and such, clearly.
I think that 75% drawdowns are possible - which is part of the reason that I have not been willing to proclaim that sub $100k will no longer be reached until we at least get above $300k.. ..
Yet, under current market conditions and the way that our so far "blow off" top has been playing out, there has already been way too much resetting of the bottom and/or failure to move up quickly that would provide sufficient fuel for something like a 75% drawdown even with various blackswan scenarios coupled with various strategic and dogpiling of FUDding attempts.
Like you mentioned the 75% drawdowns are not completely out of the picture, but they become less and less likely if there is not some kind of a meaningful top and/or alternatively some other major flaw found in bitcoin, or some other outrageous scenario that would increase the odds of such a scenario... ..
And, yeah we can imagine all kinds of scenarios that could play out.. . such as the BTC price shooting up to $180k within the next 20-3 months, then perhaps in that kind of a scenario, 75% drawdown would become more probable.. .but yeah, even that would not be very likely to get a draw down to $45k from $180k.. So probably we need to get some shooting up to something close to $300k .. and maybe even supra $250k for a 75% drawdown to return to being a possible reasonable talking point.
Frequently it can be difficult to rule out various extreme scenarios, since we do see them play out from time to time - in the sense
that bitcoin never fails to amaze (and surprise) those of us who are trying to pay attention to what it is doing and why it might be doing what it is doing.
There are several of us in bitcoin (who participate in this thread) (including but not limited to yours truly) who consider ourselves to be fairly conservative with our money...
Comically true in my case. I was just thinking this morning about figuring out ways to spend more money so that I don't end up leaving my kids so much. Lol.
I have been having the same dilemma for at least a couple of years now... even though when we dropped to sub $20k in 2022, that was a period that went through most of the second half of 2022 in which I was glad that I had retained a decently high level of conservatism in my own spending and the ways in which I had dealt with my BTC holdings up until that point.
My financial security has certainly changed over the last 15 years, but my lifestyle hasn't moved an inch.
y
Little by little I had been increasing my lifestyle and my standard of living since 2010.. Before that I was even more of a hoarder in regards to my money management... but yeah, getting into bitcoin in late 2013, I tended to revert back to some level of conservativism while I was building up my bitcoin holdings... so I had always felt concerns about how I was investing my money and trying to make sure that I was aggressive in investing in bitcoin yet at the same time staying within limitations.. so there was a bit of a crazy element to what was then my ongoing investment into bitcoin and considering my investment into bitcoin to be a hedge in regards to other investments (and income avenues) that I had at that time.
I was a starving musician for part of that and a well-paid IT worker for another part. I've always lived the same. I suppose some people will make a point of pride out of that. And I don't really. It's just a matter of preference.
Sometimes there can be ways that we are able to step-up our standard of living... and surely our historical practices help to inform us how we might attempt to approach spending versus saving matters.
I have an old client from the days I ran the studio who's also a friend and he is exact opposite of me constantly borrowing, spending, spending, borrowing. Money is like water through his hands and he's always right on the verge of bankruptcy. But he lives a lavish lifestyle before he was married. He drove a Hummer and lived at the top of some swanky high-rise in my town.
A part of me admires his way of handling money.
There are trade-offs, and sometimes there are even benefits in regards to "living beyond your means." I was working and investing for around 20 years before I finally bought a new car (versus always buying cars that were already at least 3 years old and sufficiently depreciated.. and never buying from a dealer).. I recall so many of my peers who had similar income situations as me, who always had new and/or nice cars, while my cars were mostly between 5 and 15 years old. while I almost always had a decent amount of savings and investments and also no car loan debts (payments).
By the way, I don't buy the OG's dumping bullshit.
Sure they might be selling some, but I really doubt that they are selling as much as the various anecdotal proclamations about their supposed selling.
Supposedly there is data to support such theory about OGs supposedly dumping.. yet so far I am not convinced.
So this narrative, which seems to have sprung up very quickly and recently, has been very interesting to me. I think for sure so-called OGs are selling. I think I would be the poster boy for this case. Some people claim to have diamond hands. I believe I deserve to claim that I have hands that are foolish in their firmness forged in the heart of the sun. Lol. And yet I am currently funding my very simple lifestyle entirely with my stack.
And my basic point is if
I am drawing down for the purpose of just living my life, then certainly many, many others who have been here for ten plus years are doing the same.
Your scenario does not seem unusual, since I would expect that OG bitcoiners would enter into some kind of a sustainable withdrawal plan that relates to sustainably withdrawing based on price and/or time... so I have no problem with those behaviors, and I doubt that they would contribute towards large scale selling.
My doubts relate to supposed OGs selling large portions of their stack.. There could be some OG who had accumulated 50 BTC, or 100 BTC, or 200 BTC or more in the period between 2011 and 2016.. and sure maybe this OG has average BTC costs that could be anywhere between $10 per coin to $1k per coin.. Yet, I hardly see any purpose of selling more than 20% to 30% of their stash, which might give them 2 to 6 years of cash to live off of.. and I have no problem with that... or even if they might want to make some BIG purchase.. NO problem.
And most of them do not even need to sell large portions of their stash in order to still profit stupendously by selling less than 30% of their stash.. even though sure, anecdotally there are some guys who might be selling higher portions of their stash (such as more than 30% of their stash.. and sure people can do what they want, yet I doubt such a thing of selling a superior asset for various inferior assets and/or consumption is happening as much as it is being made out to be happening.
Then the questions become, are there enough people unwinding the way I might, sort of along the lines of your simple savings thingamadoodgy (though my approach probably is more conservative than the mass of your very reasonable plans.) to exert meaningful downward pressure on the price.
My own sustainable withdrawal plan allows to selling up to 10% per year of the 200-WMA dollar value of the BTC holdings, even though I personally am probably selling somewhere in the ballpark of only around 1% per year, so I am way below my authorized amount.. so I have no problem with the idea of even selling some extra to make up for prior years in which the selling had been low.
And then secondly are some of the mega whales selling gigantic lots of Bitcoin into the market one way or another? Talking here about at least 9 figure USD Sales.
I don't buy it. Let's say a guy has somewhere in the ballpark of 1,000 to 10,000 bitcoin? Why would he need to sell the whole stash? Maybe sell 20% to 30% of the stash.. No problem with that as an idea and even as a description of something that might be happening.. but I still take such stories with a grain of salt.. since I doubt that they are happening as much as they are being made out to be happening. These are just ways to convince newer holders to either dump their coins or to not buy since OGs are supposedly dumping and keeping the price down (from going up).
So to the second point, I would think large sales in the realm of thousands of coins would almost always be executed on OTC markets. So in a way, I would not expect these sales to have the same kind of downward pressure, in a sense, then direct sales on exchanges. Not that they would not have an effect on price, but that it would be distorted by the fact that it would be a second and third order type of thing.
It sounds like a story to contribute to newer (weaker hands) to sell some or all of their coins or to dissuade newbies (retail) from getting into bitcoin at these prices. It is too convenient of a story. .and it is like a story that gets repeated every cycle in one variation or another.
But to the first scenario where you have people selling just what they need to buy their top ramen, a nice anniversary dinner for their wife and pay the bills and go on the occasional family vacation. I suppose you could assume sales of somewhere in between a half and a full Bitcoin each year from these type people at current price levels.
Sure. We might even say that a person could start to supplement his income or even completely replace his income and go to fuck you status.. so these guys might spend anywhere between 0.5 BTC to 5 BTC per year, depending on their lifestyle and other sources of income that they might have.
So then the question becomes, how many of them need there be to push the market down?
There need to be way more than actually exist. .which is part of the reason that the story is just made up and/or exaggerated.
And here's the stinger, I think. As long as retail is not buying Bitcoin en mass, then you would only need a few thousand of these types of people to make a significant impact, I would think.
That is the thing cAPSLOCK. The situation can be manifested into existence to the extent that it dissuades normies from buying and causes some of the newbies to give up on (or to whimpify - meaning become less aggressive) their plans to accumulate bitcoin at these prices.
Some dynamics can be manifested into existence.. at least in part.
Either way, I do not think this is a situation that has legs. It can't last very long. There are more buyers than sellers. I just think we see a price distortions based on who is using the exchanges.
But my question for you, my wordy brother, is if the OG selling narrative is not primary or even significant in the price action, what do you think is exactly?
Why do we need an explanation? Surely BTC price movements are caused by many things at the same time, and so if the momentum gets moving in a certain direction there can be attempts to push that direction and to cause cascading liquidations... so for example, a lot of leverage got sucked out of the system on October 10, and so there could have been some wreckening, but then a taking advantage of the momentum that starts to grow from events like that.. We had an ATH on October 6, and then a sudden large crash that was able to wreck some leveraged products and even to show weakness in various shitcoining and leveraging products that surely also affects bitcoin but also tries to play into the news in regards to whatever is happening with Trump and proclaim that OGs are selling and proclaim that the bull market is over (the top is in) and sure the momentum can play upon itself and get manifested into reality if the bottom does not hold..so leverage upon leverage, including several of the bitcoin treasury companies that were ONLY prepared for UP. .so then see how they do in an unexpected DOWNity scenario in which they had leveraged themselves for UP only.
I have no fucking clue regarding what is going to happen, yet we know that BTC price dynamics cannot e completely captured in a few simple explanations and we might not even know for sure until after the fact in regards to what was happening - and another thing is that I ongoingly have been preparing for either BTC price direction and don't change my behaviors based on what is happening.. I am like a bot.. even though I spout out various ideas, I never claim to know BTC price direction with any level of certainty.. except right now, I proclaim that we are in a bull market, until we are not.. .and we still seem to be in a bull market ..so we would need $95k and perhaps even $85k to break before I start to tentatively believe that we are no longer in a bull market, and sure, as I mentioned earlier, I will start to get worried if we spend a whole week or more below $95k.. even though that might still not be definitive for me in terms of conceding the bull market is over.