To assume it will be "easy" to liquidate your speculative position when the market begins to bubble and froth on its way to a blow-off top is, in my opinion, a "miscalculation" -- to say the least. The media fervor will be unrelenting, the calls for a Bitcoin "supercycle" or "the last cycle" from which we will go up and only a little come down or will meander generally upward before learning to behave like a proper stock will be all-pervasive. (Bitcoin is not a company, nor a security, nor a bond, thus why should it act like one?) Indeed, all present conservativism will be gleefully hurled out the window. Targets as high as $400k, $500k, and even $1 million will be the norm. The collective market mentality will soon forget the cyclical nature of this asset and "the impending doom" that awaits us after the last possible dollar is spent to buy block space on Bitcoin's imaginary ledger. The Bitcoin bears who don't soon go into hibernation will - if they are not first converted to bulls - begin to be systematically hunted by market optimists into temporary extinction, leaving only outside observers to sound the alarm of a crypto meltdown, their voices which, of course, no one will heed, being the irrelevant "no-coiners" that they surely are.
A far greater miscalculation is the assumption that you'll "simply" buy the bitcoin bottom next winter. I can assure you that when the price starts capitulating below the $1 trillion dollar market cap (roughly $55,000), it will be accompanied by some sort of seismic announcement that the media will use to justify the collapse, be it unfavorable regulation by the SEC, a Bitcoin mining crackdown in Europe, or another unforeseeable "catastrophe". The best scenario would be what we witnessed during the 2018 bottom which was met with media indifference and little justification for the lagging price. No one really cared. But - insofar as this present run is completely out in the open and fully self-aware - I highly doubt 2023 will be similarly as quiet. Perhaps it will be a stock market meltdown and Bitcoin will be spared any direct condemnation making it easier to buy from a psychological standpoint, but I doubt it.
The only reason I presently sit on any sort of bitcoin stack is that I rather mindlessly began dollar-cost averaging in late 2018 almost against my better judgment which said, "this thing is dead." When it didn't die, I tried to figure out why - hence my 4-year journey began in earnest. Because Bitcoin's unstoppable march to global dominance is no longer a secret held in quiet trust by a few lucky fools or long-time zealots means that millions will be looking to stack Sats at or near what they think to be the bottom, and it is for this reason that I believe the price will need to be helped to those basement levels by a healthy dose of FUD, the likes of which will convince even the staunchest of advocates to say, "this thing might once and for all be finished." Achieving success in this market cannot, as a rule, be simple and easy, because if it was everyone would do it. If you can turn off and tune out the incessant crypto banter until we reach sub-$50k next year -- all the better. Unfortunately, tuning out soon becomes impossible once you've thrown even a little money into the pot. To make matters worse, it takes a full 4-year bear/bull cycle to truly begin to understand the nuances of this ecosystem which, for better or worse, is "the future of money" and should at least be attempted.
The four-year journey is crucial not only for "investors" but, in my opinion, every living human being if you want to remain relevant and conversational with regards to the imminent digitization of money and value unfolding before us. As you undergo the process, you'll start equipping yourself with the tools to not merely be tossed to and fro by the wax and wane of the age but you'll also be insulating your finances and perhaps even your mind from undue coercion that will surely be attempted by the centralized powers who will desperately be looking to maintain their grip on the levers of control in the coming years. The four-year journey is a four-year education that, if taken to its conclusion, will arm you with the psychological weapons needed to defend yourself against misinformation, disinformation, deceit, lies, scams, and, most importantly in this industry, distraction. Not only will it give you a shield but also a sword to enable you to spot opportunities in this market, be they in Bitcoin or someplace else. If, at the end of your 4-year journey, you can honestly say that another project is a "better investment" than bitcoin that can safely and securely be considered well into the future, then so be it. The important thing is to invest the time and do the work yourself. This process cannot be circumscribed nor abbreviated. I am convinced, not only based on my own experience but the experience of countless others, that you will be rewarded in a tangible way for undergoing the totality of this process. A four-year journey of self-education is not what our high-time preference, short-time horizon mentality wants to hear, but the fruit it bears extends to areas of life beyond one's personal finances.
More than anything, the question of Bitcoin versus altcoins is a matter of time horizon. Altcoins are, of course, rooted in the childish, short-term, high-time preference mentality that fiat has entrained us into embracing for decades. "Savers are losers", right? Where once our grandparents could save 10% of their income until the age of 65 and feasible live off such until death, this concept is now so archaic it seems impossibly naive, innocent, even quaint. Because today we see "the price of everything always going up" we instinctually know the value of our money is continually going down thus we either need to spend it (usually on worthless consumption items or entertainment) or invest it (either in stocks or the housing market) otherwise we will lose it, not absolutely, of course, but of its present value which will always be worth more now than tomorrow. One needn't reflect long upon the deleterious moral, ethical, cultural, and social consequences that arise from this sort of mentality. Altcoin "investing" epitomizes the desire to turn a quick buck so that one can, in turn, spend the worthless fiat on some equally worthless depreciating item, a loop which further dependences one's thinking and actions upon that ever-elusive present-focused emotion known as "happiness".
Ours is a culture obsessed with and perpetually beholden to not only the idea but also the feeling of happiness. Lives are cut short because of its lack. Marriages are ended prematurely. Indeed, the allure of something or someone better "out there" who might make one "happier" is far too titillating for many unhappy spouses to bear. Careers are cut short because of its absence, goals are unreached, creative projects are left unfinished, great cultural and civilizational achievements in the arts and sciences are never attempted because at any given moment the difficulty required to complete a challenging task might jeopardize our delicate happiness. Bitcoin, on the other hand, doesn't care about your happiness.
I'm not sure what it cares about, but if, in the Bitcoin world, "reward" is synonymous with "increase" (in more ways than dollars), my experience has shown me that it rewards self-education, patience, reason, truth, unemotionality, and prudence by increasing one's long-term thinking, none of which appeals to our high-time preference mentality - especially in a bull market when it feels as if everyone is getting rich off jpegs of "Bored Apes" and unfunny meme coins.
To repeat for the thousandth time: if Bitcoin does not constitute the bulk of not only your portfolio but also the amount of time you invest in your crypto education, you will miss it - the revolution, I mean. You'll ride your pet projects down to less than 5% of their inflated bull market value over the next 18 months. What's more, I can guarantee, even if faced with an imminent government ban of a certain altcoin or platform you might be holding, if you've spent most of your time and energy with non-Bitcoin projects, you'll opt for fiat over Bitcoin, every time. You won't move your altcoin wealth into bitcoin when the bear market is confirmed (Bitcoin being the only place to be in a bear market, not merely the safest) and you surely won't buy ol' "Boomer Coin" when the time comes to accumulate. As I've said above, it won't be easy for many Bitcoin veterans to buy bitcoin at the bear market low; it'll be virtually impossible for altcoiners to make the bitcoin "leap" because, if such ones were unable to justify buying Bitcoin when euphoria is in the air, they most assuredly won't do it when there's blood in the streets.
It might seem ridiculous, but I examine and scrutinize my 2021 exit plan and 2022-2023 accumulation plan at least once a week, adjusting here and there as the market unfolds. I even rehearse the actual decisions I plan on making, i. e. which exchange I will use to liquidate my Eth, how has the liquidation timeline changed, where will I store my stablecoins, how will I calculate my capital gains taxes, and so on. If most of these exchanges can't handle the demand on a volatile day, how do we think they will perform when global FOMO grips the market? Bitcoin will go from $135k to $280k in a week - if we're lucky. It'll probably do it in a few days. We could easily go from $200k to 280k in a single day, the same for Ethereum. The blow-off period will be pronounced but incredibly brief; if one does not rehearse one's plan prior to the market frenzy, you could very well "miss the whole thing" if not entirely, then at least the most explosive period. Again, if you are not mentally prepared to take decisive action when the rest of the market is doing the opposite, you won't. Such is why I never recommend attempting to trade the market in the first place unless your risk tolerance is high. The far better option is to simply put your head down and dollar-cost average, day in and day out while you self-educate, all the while allowing the process to help you break free from our society's high-time preference mentality.
I recently watched a YouTube video (purely for laughs) in which the host brought up a sound but obvious point that I have often eluded: if you want to succeed in an immature, emerging new industry like crypto which promises incredible growth opportunities, the best thing to do is to pick an area of the market and simply focus on it. Maybe it's gaming, NFTs, DeFi, Layer 1 blockchains, whatever. Study the space to the point that you know what you're looking at so you can judge potential trends before everyone else. Of course, I always recommend and would only choose bitcoin for my own focus, not only because it has the highest addressable market and will be the sole project to survive a state-level attack, regulation, as well as the rest of "crypto's" attempts to dethrone it, but because I genuinely find many of the things the Bitcoin network is attempting to accomplish quite interesting -- even important for civilization and human flourishing. With that being said, however, I still have to continually invest in my own education in order to keep from dabbling into the altcoin frenzy of which I am confident I can make a lot of money -- on paper. I am also equally confident that I probably won't "get out in time" before either the altcoin bottom falls out, or the curtain falls on the fiat world system.
Good luck to you all.
NSV