Replying to Avatar HODL

Thought experiment.

Option # 1

Let’s say you have 10 bitcoin and we hit 2 million in the next few years.

You’re tempted so you sell it for 20 million dollars.

After taxes you’re be left with 16MM.

Which you use to comfortably generate 1.2MM a year in the tradfi markets.

So you take the money and retire.

Bitcoin crashes 60% back to 800k.

For a few years you feel like a genius. You enjoy your new rich person lifestyle.

You even buy back a few bitcoin. 2 to be exact. 20% of what you used to have.

Then bitcoin rises over the next decade to be worth 50 million per coin.

You’re worth 120 million now. And you decide to sell a little over half a coin and upgrade your lifestyle again to be able to generate an additional 2 million a year.

You’re now on paper worth 120 million, you generate 3.2 million a year (266k a month) and you’ve been largely stress free for the last decade.

Your kids will inherit roughly 1.62 bitcoin from you upon your death.

You have some level of regret about not hodling through, but you’ve been largely stress free and the mental health benefit was worth it in your mind.

Vs.

Option # 2

You have the same 10 bitcoin but you Hodl them.

Your stress levels are persistently higher.

You also decide to retire when Bitcoin hits 2 mil, but you decide to do so in bitcoin terms.

Your plan is to sell a little bitcoin as needed in order to fund your lifestyle.

This is roughly 1-3 million sats a month. Depending on bitcoin price.

Over the course of 10 years you end up selling or spending 2.4 bitcoin and are still left worth 7.6btc when bitcoin reaches 50 million.

Your net worth is 380 million.

You’ve reduced your lifestyle in bitcoin terms down to a million sats a month. (500k) or 6 million per year. You’re 46, Assuming you live until you’re 90 you will pass down 2.32 bitcoin to your kids.

You have no regrets about the way you played it, but your stress was consistently higher and there were a few scary months along the way.

Which option do you choose?

1 or 2?

While there are exceptions to every rule, a lot of these comments imply to me that many of these respondents have never really, honestly considered what it'd be like to have their nest egg and spending power abruptly cut in half, what it be like to be left wondering: "how much lower will it go?", "how long is this going to last?", "at what point will I not be able to come back from this?", "bitcoin represented a fundamental change in the system, did it change again?", "did I get things wrong?", "did I fail my family and all who count on me?", etc.

When you're accumulating, you have a long way to go, and the price of sats gets cut in half, then that's exciting, but when you're living off nothing but you're savings, and some conviction, the story changes when everything abruptly becomes twice as expensive. Must of trad-fi's lessons are dumb, but it definitely has some to teach about psychology in a downturn during retirement.

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