Sure.. several times it may seem that either I am responding to some of your personal specifics, but also I am responding to ideas within a public thread that I feel to be in need of clarifying, and for sure many of us are going to both have differing opinions and also differing ways of expressing ourselves in regard to the topic.

For sure, you could argue that frequently I am taking this topic way beyond your original intentions, because you could force a kind of narrow interpretation of the topic, and assert if responses are not within those narrowly tailored parameters, then they are off topic, too... also another way would be to create a self-moderated thread and to delete any responses that go beyond the parameters that you had described in OP.


You know that there can be variations on this, too.  If you have gotten  up to $100 per week, but then your realize that $100 per week is beyond your budgeting capabilities, you could cut back to $50 per week, or $100 per month or $100 per quarter or whatever variation of cutting back that you deem to be appropriate rather than going all the way back to zero.

A lot of times, people get into all or nothing kinds of thinking and frequently they may need to either learn how to approach the topics in more incremental ways.. so yeah.. it could end up being a common error that some folks react too strongly to some situation and then end up screwing themselves because they may have approached their investment too much in "all or nothing" thinking kinds of ways.



That seems to be a kind of all or nothing kind of thinking.  People are going to end up making choices regarding how much they are going to allocate towards bitcoin, versus other possible investment including whether or not they will invest in any shitcoins.   And, surely there seems to be little reason to invest in shitcoins in the long term, especially if you have identified bitcoin as the leader in the sector, but there could still be some short term gambling  in those various shitcoins that might make sense for some people.. and even if you consider yourself to have developed a bitcoin maximalist perspective, you still might want to hold various kinds of assets beside bitcoin and dollars (or whatever happens to be your local fiat).



Some people come into bitcoin quite whimpily, so sure $100 could be considered sufficiently aggressive, especially if you may be in a position in which it is not very easy for you to ensure that you are actually going to have $100 per week.  And, of course there are some people in which $100 per week would be considered a kind of pocket change level.


Sometimes it is important to figure out whether increasing or decreasing your level might be good for your own circumstances, and of course, no one should be feeling like s/he does not have enough emergency funds and end up dipping into bitcoin at a time that is anything other than your own choosing, so in that regard, sometimes we are going to be able to determine ahead of time if we might be stretching our budget too much.. and sometimes some people do not realize that they are overly investing because they have not sufficiently buttressed the remainder of their budget - which means that they may well be taking too many chances if they do not have a sufficient amount of cash reserves on hand for various emergencies or just for various changes in the cashflow that can happen from time to time.. and sometimes unexpectedly.

Much of the reason that I emphasize 4-10 years or more for an investment and strategy into bitcoin is because I recognize that is one of the most difficult aspects that new investors have so much troubles really to put into their head and also to actually follow in practice.

Yeah, lots of newbie investors will put lip service to the idea, but when push comes to shove, they both have difficulties setting up their systems to really account for that way of investing and they have difficulties actually following the practice even when they might have set their own systems up to actually have success in such.

I have gone through similar levels of mistakes where I have both inadequately planned and also prematurely drawn upon some of my earliest investments (some of those were before bitcoin).

Also, when I first got into bitcoin in late 2013, I was not really sure if bitcoin had a strong enough investment justification to lock oneself in for 4-10 years or more, but I do believe that bitcoin currently has a strong enough investment justification for such timeline of 4-10 years or more... oh actually in late 2013, my idea in getting in was a minimum of 1 year (in order to take advantage of long term versus short term capital gains) but I was thinking more on the lines of at least 2 years - however, as I ended up getting up to 2 years invested into bitcoin (late 2015-ish), my BTC holdings were still NOT in profits, but the strength of my conviction regarding the future direction of bitcoin was getting stronger by then, so I really had already stopped even considering getting completely out of BTC at any time, but instead I had started to lean towards developing plans in which bitcoin would always be a part of my total package of investments, but it would just be up to me to decide and continue to figure out how I wanted to reallocate (or cash out some from time to time) in order to attempt to balance my various kinds of holdings and even to tweak along the way to the extent that my opinion might change along the way.. including the consideration of my various other personal circumstances that would include my cash flow, my other investments, my view of bitcoin as compared with other investments, my timeline, my risk tolerance and my time, skills and abilities to tweak from time to time that would include considering various strategies and investment tools to the extent that I considered that they might be helpful to me.


Sure, it is better to go with what is sustainable to you.... And, for some people several thousand dollars is a lot of money to build up, save and potentially earn.

Other folks want to get to fuck you status, and very difficult to get to fuck you status unless you are a bit more aggressive, but if you have a 20-30 year investment timeline, then even small amounts might end up leading to fuck you status.. even with starting now and even with something like $10 per week... though these days I do believe $100 per week is better - even though I continue to acknowledge that there are some people with budgets that do not allow for that much set aside.. so  doing what you can.. without suffering in other parts of your life remains important... it would not be good to have ONLY your investment in bitcoin because then you are frequently going to be tempted to tap into it in order to otherwise make your current living situation better.. if you are not building other aspects of your life at the same time.


I agree that it is much more challenging to invest on a regular basis if your cashflow is not exactly regular... You could still decide to invest a certain amount (such as $10 per week) no matter what.. and then adjust as needed.. and that might just mean that you hold some value in fiat that you have that is available to invest into bitcoin on a weekly basis no matter what.

I have had times in my life in which my cashflow was sporadic and irregular too.. it can be similar with expenses as well or if you have people in your family that you are supporting with sometimes seemingly erratic needs... so the more complicated your finances, then the more needs that you might have to have a larger cash cushion and also project out your cashflow for longer periods of time to make sure that you have your expenses covered out into the future, and even projecting worser case scenarios.. just in case and to make sure that you are going to be able to have things covered even if some of the worser case scenarios play out.. and the longer that you are investing and building various aspects of your finances, the more you should be able to live without as many financial and psychological pressures.. and that is part of the reason for investing and building your finances in order that you have more options, and you likely can live in more comfort both financially and psychologically.  

Sure, there can be some luck involved too.. but if you prepare badly, there will be more likelihoods that you will get yourself into trouble at various points.. but if you prepare well, then you have better chances, even though nothing is guaranteed.. just sometimes helping to put yourself in better chances of being able to profit from good luck that might come along the way with your having some levels of ongoing preparations.


For sure, if you build it as one of your habits, then the habit can become stronger.. including that you might feel that you can adjust the amount up or down a bit that are comfortable for your whole situation.


In those situations in which people are barely able to live, it is more difficult to suggest that they save part of their cashflow into bitcoin.. .. .but sometimes, even very impoverished people do have practices of trying to save some money into an emergency fund.. but if they need to dip into their emergency fund every 1-2 years, then bitcoin might not be good for them.. because they are not even able to consider a 4-year investment time horizon... so there is a bit of case by case in terms of if there might be a fund that anyone who is very poor might be able to establish that allows them to continue to live and not to dip into their savings (bitcoin) for something like 4 years or more.  Each person has to attempt to figure that out, and surely sometimes people are willing to consult, but also sometimes people figure out their own systems that might or might not work out very well for them... yet knowing that bitcoin is an option is likely going to continue to become part of the awareness of even really poor people.. Oh and the internet connection or having a smart phone can be an issue too for some folks who may not have access to those kinds of things (even though access to those somewhat basic kinds of current technologies is becoming more and more widespread - even into the most seemingly out of touch places around the world)


I agree.. It is not easy.. and especially not really easy to know the longer term ramifications, sometimes.

There are likely people in bitcoin who end up taking short term cash outs from their bitcoin, but then they would have been way better off to just leave their bitcoin alone and to figure out their expenses from other sources.. so sometimes, you might start to consider that you have put enough into bitcoin, but then another question might be whether you just leave it or if you try some other fancy tactics of trying to sell some and then buy lower.. but then your opportunity to buy lower ends up not coming.. so that's another error that some people end up making within their bitcoin investment journey....


Yes.. you have to decide for yourself, if you believe that the amount that you have already invested in sufficiently aggressive, or if you should continue to be aggressive, or you are in a position in which you can lower your level of aggressiveness...

And, sometimes if you are younger, you might be considering that you want to be able to cash some out along the way, and your investment timeline is really not 4-10 years or more, but instead, if there is a 3x or 5x run up in the BTC price from here, then you want to cash some out.. and that is for you to decide if that is how you want to deal with the matter.

Oh, by the way, if you have a pretty decently strong conviction in the long term potential of bitcoin, then you should not even be thinking at all about including selling into your strategies as a means to increase your BTC stash.. unless, you have come to a level of BTC accumulation that you can see is quite a bit overallocated.. so you can create charts to show an amount of BTC that you can shave off along the way at various price points... So if you ONLY have a total of $20k in all of your investments, and your allocation target for bitcoin is 25% then you could go up to $5k without really being overly allocated into BTC... but if your BTC value went up 3x to 4x but your other investments remained somewhat flat, then all of a sudden, you might have $35k in your total investments, but $20k (57%) of that value is in bitcoin so then you are faced with a decision about whether you should reallocate or not or if you might feel more freedom to sell (shave off) a bit of your BTC at higher BTC points in order to attempt to keep better balance in your overall investment portfolio (BTC as compared to some other assets that you might hold).


For sure, members will have differing opinions, and for sure, I appreciate hearing some of the differing opinions too... yet we likely realize that so many people have trouble considering bitcoin as a long term investment and to really follow something like you are doing.. but yeah.. I think that your thread has been very helpful to reinforcing some of the ideas of how anyone might get started in attempting a regular plan.. and even some of the difficulties that even you have to keep it going.. because for sure people are way more excited about your plan when your holdings are in profits, but if your holdings are either negative or flat, there seems to be a wee bit less excitement, even though those remain good times to keep building your BTC holdings (at least from my perspective of the way to attempt to continue to deal with BTC as a potentially longer term investment).

There is nothing wrong with attempting to buy dips within your budget.. so you can maintain both a DCA and a buying on dips at the same time.

You are much stronger off if you are able to plan out your budget in advance.... Even 6 months in advance...

I am going to outline an example that could work for anyone, including if you are a newbie or if you already taken some stake in bitcoin.  In this example (I know that this is not exactly your situation aysg76, but I am using it for illustrative purposes), you know that you have at least $4k that you are going to be able to invest into bitcoin in the next 6 months, and that $4k comes from a combination of an amount that you have saved, which is about $1k, and a conservative estimate of your cashflow that you have coming in, and you have high levels of confidence that $500 per month (or $3k for the whole period) will be able to be set aside for BTC.  So the three categories that you have is lump sum investing, DCA and buying on dips.  You surely could set aside $100 of that per week (which adds up to $2,600) that is going to be DCAed into bitcoin no matter what, and with that DCA you could attempt to strategize at what time of the week to buy to attempt to buy mostly on the dip for that week, but also to know that you are not carrying over any of the amount so by a certain day in the week that you have already determined, you are using that $100 that you have allocated for that week to buy BTC with it no matter what the price.  

Ok.... so if you know that you have about $1,400 that is NOT part of your regular DCA, then you can attempt to set some of that aside for lump sum and/or buying on dip.  Furthermore, if you have already established your budget pretty solidly for the next 6 months (and of course that is a rolling time period that you continue to establish as the time passes so you are always minimally prepared for the next 6 months from any date in which you are at), then you would know that any extra cashflow that comes in, then you can plug that into your already existing system in ways that are totally of your own choosing.. to plug the additional amounts into DCA, buying on dips or lump sums.  

Some people know that a few times a year they do end up getting additional cash flow, but they are not always sure in advance when those extra cashflows will be coming in and maybe they do not even know the exact amounts of the extra cashflows, and historically, I have always dealt with those situations by not spending any of that money until either it hits my bank account or that I know for sure it is coming and even when knowing for sure it is coming, sometimes there is a need to be careful to not spend it until it is actually in your possession... just to be safe from things that can happen.  Things happen, as they say.


Let's say that we are referring to something like starting from nothing (just the basics), graduating from highschool or whatever, and entering into the working world or college or some combination.  It can take several years, just to get your cashflow coming in.. but let's say we are starting with a cashflow coming in, and if we are considering getting to some kind of entry-level fuck you status (just meaning that you can quit your job and live off of your investment without doing much work beyond just managing your investment), then 10 years does not seem very long to me at all.   You can look around and find all kinds of people who are working into their 60s and 70s and really not living well, and maybe you see young people living it up and proclaiming that they are going to be rich in less than 10 years.. but those young people get older, and then they realize that they have not made as much progress on their getting to entry-level fuck you status as they thought that they were going to achieve..

I personally do not believe 10 years as a minimum is a long time, especially when we can witness so many people full of talk but not actually making it anywhere close to fuck you status.. and sure, maybe you might proclaim that you do not want to make it to fuck you status.. I am not sure.. so that is up to you.  I am largely using the idea of making it to entry level fuck you status as a kind of goal that causes a lot of freedoms to both be able to get to that point and then to be able to have options not to work because you have made it to that point.  

Largely the fantasy people are talking about getting to entry level fuck you status in 10 years or less, and to me it seems that bitcoin has provided possibilities to get there more rapidly than other methods and even perhaps cutting down the time in half or more than cutting the time in half.



I think that no matter what there are not guarantees.. so each of us just need to attempt to be as prudent and reasonable as we can, and surely there can be some levels of aggression (and assertiveness) in there too... As long as we are not gambling very much of our principle, and if we are still building up our principle, then it seems to me that including bitcoin within your various allocated assets (investments)  puts you in a better position than if you did not have bitcoin as an option and you cannot figure out which of the fiat related places to put your investment. .including some of the potential problems that come with property, equities and precious metals... including some of their artificial inflation from fiat (as you mentioned).

By the way, we already mentioned several times, that it may well not even take too much aggression/assertiveness in order to still advantage yourself tremendously by both investing in bitcoin and continuing to put money into bitcoin.. and sure, I am not sure about just putting in a lump sum and sitting on it, but surely, each person can measure those kinds of matters in light of his own finances, too.... so in that regard, if you had already put $5k to $8k per year into bitcoin for several years, then after several years, you might decide to either stop putting more into bitcoin or maybe only to buy on dips.. or whatever you believe is reasonable.. because if you end up having income in which you are barely living well, but your bitcoin had become worth $100k or $500k or even more after several years, you might feel that your continued investing into bitcoin is not as important as your being able to enjoy the income that you have coming in and to just let your bitcoin ride.. and hopefully being able to have enough will power to be able to resist tapping into the bitcoin very much.. even though maybe you might even feel like tapping into a few thousand of your bitcoin value here and there along the way, which probably there is nothing wrong with that approach, either...so long as you attempt to figure out maximum amounts that you can tap into it and maybe even attempting to time your tapping into your stash when the BTC price is going up (hopefully the BTC price is going up a lot when you tap into it rather than tapping into your BTC when the BTC price is going down).



Many of us have seen that the longer that you are in bitcoin, then the more likely you have put yourself way to the advantage of your peers in terms of how much it costs to accumulate the amount of BTC that you had accumulated.. so sometimes it can be grueling and take a lot of time to build a decent BTC base, but also sometimes you may well end up seeing that you have accumulated several times the amount that any of your peers had accumulated.  

Just consider for example, some folks got into BTC in the 2015 to early 2017 timeframe when the BTC price had moved from $250 to $1,000, and let's say that some of these people spent two years or more accumulating BTC, so maybe over two years, they were able to invest $10k into bitcoin, and their average price per BTC was around $700 (mistakes were made along the way), and so in the end, they accumulated around 14.3 BTC for $10k, and it took them 2 years to build that BTC portfolio.... they are way ahead of their peers in terms of accumulating BTC... and even though 14.3 BTC seems a lot now, there were periods in 2015 in which you could have bought 14 BTC for around $3k..

So sometimes, even if it might cost more to acquire your BTC over time, there seem to be quite decent chances that even if you are able to acquire 0.21BTC or 0.5 BTC over one or 2 years, you are likely going to put yourself in a place in which your peers are not even close to being able to accumulate close to as many BTC as you because of the fact that BTC prices are likely to go up and to make those levels of BTC accumulation to be much more difficult to achieve for normies or people who are already struggling to set aside money to invest in anything (whether BTC or other assets).


You are not going to get any argument from me regarding this point. Not only does a newbie have to get used to the idea of investing into bitcoin, it is likely that the newbie is going to have to put some kind of a system in place and get comfortable with that too.. and surely it can take a while to learn about bitcoin.. even though there are some people who learn really quickly.. take Michael Saylor, for example..  and even though Saylor seems to be an exception, there are people out there who are like him in their ability to really figure it out quickly and then to become aggressive in their investment into BTC quickly... but even with Saylor, you can see that he started researching into BTC in mid-2020 and then started investing soon thereafter, but still it took him more than a year to really continue to increase his stash.... and I am not sure if he feels that he even has enough BTC yet ... hahahahahaha.. he is a bit of an aberration (probably) in the way that he studies and learns quickly, but he has been quite aggressive in regards to both his bitcoin investing and his teaching of bitcoin to others, too..


Yep. individually tailoring budgets and situations is helpful..


Agreed.

Personally, I believe that DCA is more powerful than buying on dips, because none of us really know what is a dip or not a dip, except for after the fact so many people want to say, " you should have done this or that" and in my opinion trying to strategize around what is a dip and what is not a dip remains a bit of a fools errand in terms of possibly causing too much attempts to calculate matters that are not calculable.

So, yeah as you mentioned, figuring out your budget is one of the most powerful things to figure out how much you can DCA on a regular basis and how much you might want to supplement your strategy with various kinds of buying on dips and/or lump sum investing.  There can be a bit of a fine balance between how much is enough and questions regarding are you being not aggressive enough or too aggressive in the amounts that you are DCA'ing and as aysg76 mentioned whether there might be times in which you might want to tweak your strategy to increase or decrease the amounts/frequencies that you are DCA'ing.

Another personalized aspect is to also figure out what might be your target amount of BTC that you would like to accumulate in terms of your overall investment portfolio.  Do you want BTC to be 1% of the value of your total investment portfolio or do you want it to be 25% or some other amount, and do you want to attempt to maintain those levels, tweak from time to time or possibly to diversify (or reallocated) from time to time too. 

Even though there are likely some matters that are more important than others, including getting some kind of initial stake in bitcoin is likely important, of course, you do not have to establish all of your particulars from the start of your BTC investment, because you may well start to invest in BTC with a DCA amount and then you continue to study BTC along the way and then you tweak your strategies and adjust your goals as you are investing and learning about BTC (and yourself and your own finances) at the same time.

If you are already having trouble feeling that you are able to put enough into bitcoin, then investing in altcoins (aka shitcoins) is another topic that does not fit into this same philosophy because the calculations are different.. including the fact that they might not even be necessary at all.. so yeah, you are diluting how much you are able to put in bitcoin by playing around with that shitcoin nonsense.

The secret to riches is just determination and cutting off cost of expenses which would be nomatter how little it is in other to invest some quoter for the future.
Then it'd afford you multiple of those past you missed out.
I think your mean and strategy to your achievement in the bitcoin investment is uniquely attractive.
Congratulations to you.