In Crypto Patience Is Not Always a Virtue

“Patient dog eats the fattest bone”… sounds like an African proverb.

In any case, I don't know where it came from, and I'm not sure whether it's true. It was probably more correct a couple of years ago. Regardless, patience is a virtue; not always…, especially in crypto.

Bagholders are a special set of people in this space, the most valuable set of investors. Everyone bagholds, at least once in a while. Holding on to a ‘poorly’ performing asset is a struggle between patience and hope…‘hopium’. Or a struggle between patience and greed when the asset performs considerably well. Whenever you hold back from hitting that ‘buy’ or ‘sell’ button, any one of these wins. Well, patience is the base word.

That works, in a few cases; some other times, it just doesn’t. A fast-moving space like the one we have in crypto is one of those few instances where holding on turns out to be the wrong move most times. Gains or losses could come at any time; unfortunately, these two can happen in (very) quick succession. Anyways, if you are here for the technology, profit or loss might matter a little to you. Making a few quick bucks doesn’t sound bad either.

The popular sermon is to ‘hold on for dear life’. Let’s face the fact, most times this doesn’t really work. The path to bagholding is an easy one. Waiting for the millions and settling for a few thousand or hundreds is a quick turn of events here. The greed index is volatile, which in turn results in price volatility. Normal price movements are in response to human behavior. Apart from this, a space as unregulated as crypto might require you to “take what you can, when you can”. There’s hardly an assurance. The extent to which this happens depends largely on the nature of the project.

Highly speculative projects are prone to sharp price movements. They are prone to ‘accidents’ as well. Most times, these accidents are deliberate and investors are left to mourn grave to mild losses. Well, ‘patient’ investors. Impatient ones probably took all or part of their profits already; in this case, they win. This case is becoming more prevalent. The lack of regulation in the space gives way to the speculative short-lived project. Huge pumps, ridiculous dumps. Investors are easily taken unaware by the quick turn of events. Patience fails them here, unfortunately.

A rather clever move is putting patience to a halt and taking your capital out when a speculative project moves tangibly. The remainder can run along. If the dump strikes, your capital is preserved and a little profit if you’re impatient enough to take profits.

This is not financial advice anyways, just a piece from individual experiences. Holding on to relevant projects for the long term could be very rewarding. Finding these projects from grass root could be a very tedious task though.

Also published here.