Ser, selling is not part of DCA, because DCA - or Dollar Cost Averaging - is a buying strategy to accumulate an asset for a long term hold, also called in the Bitcoin community as the "HODL". The philosophy behind DCA is the acceptance that most of us "investors" can't predict market price movements accurately, which can make it a very good strategy for plebs like us who don't know much about trading.

That is why listening to FUD is not always a strong reason, this will be too late in making purchases, many people tend to do something that is not based on research, this is not a good solution when making decisions, because when prices start far from unbalanced, panic will be hit them.
How could people be able to control investment, to see opportunities and make the analysis they cannot do.
That is why caution is always needed, before doing something.

Yes, trading is not DCA but DCA is almost exactly the same as HODL.

I started out with HODL buying dips and came back HODL for a long time.

Second, I started with DCA accumulating this is different from HODL, DCA every week purchase and HODL buying the lowest dips.

This strategy is a little different but I'll be comfortable with it.

What you need to know is that HODL and DCA are good things in the long run..

remember JayJuanGee said that 4-10 of us will feel better and feel it.

Sure, you are correct that when bitcoin prices are extremely volatile to the downside, then bitcoin HODLers might either question bitcoin's investment thesis or they might question their own strategies in regards to accumulating bitcoin, and of course, not only newbie bitcoin HODLers are vulnerable to such second-guessing of their own BTC accumulation strategies.

There are quite a few ways to deal with these kinds of extreme BTC price volatility matters, but of course, the strategy is well going to differ between different users, so in that sense they need to attempt to figure out how to tailor their approach to their own situation which involves assessing cashflow, other investments, view of bitcoin as compared with other investments, timeline, risk tolerance, time, skills and abilities to strategize, plan, research and learn along the way including tweaking strategies from time to time to consider trading, reallocating, use of leverage and/or financial instruments.

At the same time, if someone has already figured out that bitcoin is a solid investment for them, then like you mentioned there are some people who may have more trouble continuing to buy when the price is down, and that may have to do with their cashflow, and surely it is usually not a good practice to overly invest into something and not be able to keep a cashflow because your ongoing cashflow had depended upon the asset going up in price, so if the price moves against you, then you end up being in a pickle of a financial situation.

So if someone is in BTC accumulation mode then the strategies are DCA, buying on dip, and lump sum investment, and if you run out of money then you go into HODL mode.  Of course, the strategies might be different for someone who feels that they have made it out of BTC accumulation mode and they might either be in maintenance mode or in liquidation mode.. but most of the times, we are assuming that people are in BTC accumulation mode or have to get passed that stage first and then the strategies might be a bit easier for maintenance mode or liquidation mode.. but still any mode is going to be affected when the BTC volatility is high to the downside and there is a decent amount of uncertainty regarding ongoing price direction like it seems to be now.


The way you are framing this comes off as a bit confusing, ajiz138.  Of course, if you have already accumulated a lot of BTC, then you might have an ongoing dollar cost investment amount that continues to add to the size of your bitcoin stash, but it is adding in such a small proportion, that the amount added is not making any kind of large difference to the overall value of your BTC holdings, so in that regard, DCA might be similar to HODL.

It seems to me that HODL is a kind of status that might be telling us to NOT sell when we might be tempted to sell, but I also frequently consider that it can be a strategy that might be employed in buying on dips that seems to happen when the dip keeps happening and the bitcoin HODLer has largely run out of money.. so then when they are faced with the choice to sell in order to get more money to buy back lower, then better advice seems to be to just HODL through it and do not sell.. but instead either wait for the BTC price to go back up or to wait for more cash to come in so that you will be able to buy more if the price goes down more.


I think that you are describing a situation in which surely someone like you had increased your options because once you accumulate BTC for a decent amount of time, whether you do it by buying on dips or DCA or some other methods, then your calculations might change regarding what you want to do when the BTC price is down or in a seemingly long period of ongoing consolidation (and perhaps more dips coming, too?).    


The practices can still overlap.  Sure there are pure forms of various kinds of practices, but many people will not necessarily employ a BTC accumulation strategy that is a pure strategy, usually if the person is into bitcoin for long enough, it will end up playing out as a combination of strategies.. Of course, someone who has not been in bitcoin for very long may have ONLY started out by employing one strategy, but it seems that the longer that they are into bitcoin, they might end up changing their strategy(ies) or adding new strategies, too.


I hate to be argumentative, but HODL might not be very good if the amount of BTC accumulated is really whimpy - even though we know that even whimpy BTC accumulation amounts can end up adding up to a lot of value in the future.  I don't always agree with some of the strategies that Wind_FURY describes, but he has been into bitcoin for a long enough period of time that I think that he has set himself into some comfortable positions in regards to his various ways of buying BTC over time, and even if he will not necessarily admit it, he could probably look back and verify that he has likely employed a combination of strategies, even if he does not like to admit to his having had purposefully followed any kind of DCA strategy.. but sometimes even buying on dip does end up looking like DCA depending on how the BTC price plays out.


Just for clarification, I do believe that people can do whatever they like, but I also think that bitcoin's investment thesis has gotten stronger in the past few years, and also remember that I am just some random person on the internet who has views about bitcoin so you do have to come to your own conclusions in regards to assessing the ongoing strength of bitcoin's investment thesis (and if it has strength).

I have also suggested that setting an investment timeline of at least 4 years is better and if you are able to set an investment timeline of even longer, such as 10 years or longer, then you are likely going to do very good in terms of having had invested in bitcoin, but at the same time, we always should be attempting to frame these matters in terms of probabilities in that ongoingly bitcoin's investment thesis seems to be getting stronger, even when we are experiencing these various kinds of strong price dips and even depressing periods in terms of where BTC price has gone and trepidations about where the BTC price might go in the short term.  

So in the end, we cannot know that bitcoin will end up as being a good investment and each person has to take responsibility for themselves in terms of why they are investing into bitcoin, rather than relying on JJG says or anyone else says for that matter... and of course, there are a variety of experts in bitcoin, and there are even bitcoin naysaying experts (or supposed experts, even though many of the bitcoin naysaying experts seem to have not studied bitcoin very well or do not know what the fuck bitcoin is, but still, they may end up being correct about bitcoin failing in the long run - even if the evidence does not seem to currently support that it is very likely that bitcoin is going to fail absent some lesser likely scenarios playing out, such as a bug in the code or successful internal attacks or some other various possible attack vectors that could end up gaining traction and suppressing bitcoin's price much longer than any of pro-bitcoin folks had thought to be possible).

A lot of newbies have gotten boxed out of buying BTC because they had been waiting for lower BTC prices that do not end up coming, so you can assert that you are getting your buying and waiting matters correct on a regular basis, but I have quite a bit of difficulties believing that.  The essence of the matter is that there are ONLY a few days of every year that you better be in bitcoin in order to not lose out, and I doubt that you are going to be able to proclaim that you are in bitcoin on those days that you need to be in.. unless you are always holding and buying.  Don't get me wrong.  I am not asserting that there is no benefits in waiting for dips, but I am saying that many times  newbies overly think the matter .. and I am NOT sure if you consider yourself a newbie or not because according to your forum registration date, you have well over 4 years registered on the forum, so you should have had a decent amount of opportunity to establish a position in bitcoin and maybe also if you are still building your BTC position then sometimes you still might be trying to buy on dips to maximize your buys, but if you have been buying for more than 4 years, you may well also have less to worry about in terms of already having some BTC in your holdings versus someone who is much newer to BTC and initially establishing his/her BTC position which might end up having more emphasis on regular buying rather than strategizing and/or trying to time dips and/or overly thinking the matter.


The BTC price does not need to drop below your average purchase price in order for you to benefit from ongoing buying, especially in times like these where the BTC price has been much below the 200-week moving average for about 2.5 months.. Historically speaking that's a long time for BTC prices to be below the 200-week moving average.


Hopefully, you are not investing money that you need to cover your various monthly expenses.  It is likely going to be much better to make sure that you maintain enough funds to cover your various monthly expenses, including having funds that you can draw upon if you ever have any emergency needs to have funds.. because ultimately you want to draw upon your bitcoin funds that are ONLY at a time that is completely of your own timing and your own choosing rather than being forced to do it at a time that is not of your choosing, even if you might conclude it is NO BIG DEAL - and in that regard, there are many people who start spending from their BTC funds when the BTC funds are profitable, and then end up losing out on the compounding effects that historically has come from holding BTC funds for a long time.


I think that I agree with you about this point, which seems to be that ultimately, the upside potential for bitcoin means that any newbie does not necessarily need to invest a lot into BTC in order to have the potential to still gain a lot from having had invested into BTC.

However, at the same time, there still can be some advantage in terms of engaging in a strategy that is sufficiently aggressive and not overly whimpy nor overly aggressive, and of course, where and how to draw those kinds of lines regarding how much is aggressive is enough and not too much is going to be discretionary and some people may realize that they had not been aggressive enough or that they might get into a situation in which they realize that they were too aggressive.

Sometimes the newbie stigma is overly opinionated about the price of BTC, even though the BTC price has dropped to $15k lower then the newbie stigma says it will soon reach $10k or it will dips more, so the newbie mindset needs to be corrected that they have to understand the year to year movement of bitcoin so that they understand what a margin call is so they don't miss the momentum of the lowest BTC market price.

We must have effective financial management to ensure we allocate funds for different needs, generally we must have multiple allocations for monthly needs funds, investments and emergency needs. So if we optimize funds for each allocation then we can make sure it won't interfere with historical compounding for long term investments, I agree some expert opinion says margin calls start at current price although we don't need to rush into DCA strategy because we have to make sure the $17k area market can hold or will fall deeper.

I tend to have quite a few reservations trying to figure out if there is a bottom and whether the bottom is already in or if the current local bottom will hold, and for sure, your framing of the question erep is quite relevant to this thread topic in which guys may well be trying to figure out buying the dip strategies and how much BTC to buy at certain price points.

For sure, another fact is that we had our earlier dip down to $17,593 about 2.5 months ago, and surely if there had already been some buying on the dip and also some attempt to hold some fiat in reserves in case there is more dip, then in the meantime, anyone who has had a cashflow for the past 2.5 months may well be in a position of having had been sitting on the extra cash that came in within the last 2.5 months and considering under what conditions to deploy it in the direction of more BTC purchases - that is if they had not merely decided to DCA with the incoming funds at these price points in which at the same time the BTC price has been under the 200-week moving average for the past 2.5 months too, which surely has not been a common historical experience to have the BTC price below the 200-week moving average for such a long period of time (and I am not even proclaiming or presuming that such below the 200-week moving average is inevitably going to end any time soon). 

More power to you erep if you believe that it might be possible to figure out when the bottom is in or if you can have decently high levels of confidence regarding seeing market conditions that will tell you that it is time to deploy more value into bitcoin.

On a personal level, since about early 2022, I had a BTC budget that pretty much accounted for the BTC prices dropping down to as low as $20k, even though I speculated that it was pretty damned likely that I was not going to need to use any of the funds that had been allocated towards BTC purchases between $20k and $28k, so in around early May 2022, when the BTC price rapidly dropped below the 100 week moving average (which was then at about $35k) and the BTC price did not recover back above the $35k price threshold within a couple of days, I realized that I needed to rethink how much BTC I was buying at various price points down to $20k, and ultimately I made some adjustments to my allocated amounts including injecting more cash into such allocations - and surely the ongoing level of BTC price drops had caused me to have to make several adjustments and even to allocate cash into BTC that I had anticipated would never get reinjected back into being dedicated for BTC purchases.

And the fact that the BTC price dropped down to $17,593 so quickly, I had nearly 24 hours in which I had to pull several of my (below $19k) BTC buy orders and to reassess the situation because I was going through my own shock when largely I had considered that either the then 200-week moving average of $22.2k(ish) would be the absolute bottom and that if there were any spikes below the 200-week moving average, they would be short-lived. 

So I suppose that part of my point is that the past 2.5 months have gotten me to continue to make adjustments and to even attempt to shore up my own preparations for possibilities of the BTC price to go in either direction from a perspective (place) that I had considered that we would not really be in such a place, yet I always attempt to have potential back up plans even when it seems that extremes had already played out.. and in any case, the way that any of us may well have been preparing our strategies in the past 2.5 months is going to vary in terms of how much we may well believe that we should be preparing for possible further dips below our already reached local low of $17,593 and/or what kinds of strategies that we are going to employ in terms of whether we have any cash left that we feel comfortable deploying or if we might have already run out of cash in terms of what we feel that we are able to financially/psychologically part with, which may well have put us into a HODL rather than a wait for dip position... or even a DCA position if we either don't have a sufficient cashflow coming in or maybe we might conclude that we have already overly bought at these price points and we just do not have enough cash in reserves to continue to DCA at these prices.

I am not even saying that there would ONLY be one way of considering the matter because our past approach in terms of buying, selling or waiting to buy BTC may well have either limited us or may have given us more options in the event that we feel that we are sufficiently and adequately prepared for either BTC price direction.

For beginners I think should be excluded in terms of readiness to take part in investments, they are completely dependent on conditions at the time of purchase, regardless of how bitcoin has performed in previous years. Because the ongoing trend sometimes reacts the same as the previous market reaction, which is why analysis and viewing quarters can provide insight into their investment journey, although in reality not all processes experience the same thing, at least when the trend is going down and the market react not as expected, then they can wait for the right time to release bitcoin.
If panic occurs at that time, then generally they will release it, resulting in losses that they cannot avoid, I personally started practicing this in investing, but specifically for bitcoin.

The most important thing is to stay calm under any circumstances, because panic is the closest to loss

To invest in bitcoin there is no need to wait for a low decline, because under any circumstances bitcoin can be bought, it's just that we need to wait for the time to pump up, from investments made at a certain price.
Regardless of market analysis and trends, I think bitcoin can be bought for now, if you look closely, the market quarter will be heading towards the green line in the next few weeks or months.

I know many of you fellow HODLers, who probably have an average buying price that's higher than Bitcoin's current price, are very very frustrated right now. But it's the bear market part of the cycle, and there's nothing plebs like us can do to change it.

BUT there is ALWAYS a BULL MARKET after every bear market, and Bitcoin will surge again, and to six digits, https://twitter.com/btcmemecreator/status/1560993253754687488

Just believe that bitcoin will recover, maybe this year we will continue to feel a continuous bearish but if you have bought above the average of the current price better hold on because in time we will see an increase in the assets we have bought during the Dips.
Trust me the market cycle will not go down forever there will be time to recover so be a little patient for us as bitcoin holders as long as we buy at high prices from now on.