Cut your bitcoin winnings – not your bitcoin losses
Some people like to be losers all the time; nothing is ever good enough. If only, if only, they moan and whinge. Just my luck, just my luck.
You know who I mean, the one who goes out to the petrol station to buy some Ginger Nuts and comes back with Digestives because there are no Ginger Nuts left. Just my luck, just my luck.
Rather like the same type of person who stakes £2 on the football and wins £200, but beefs and bitches because they only had four winners, not five, and if the other team had won, they’d have won two grand. Just my luck, just my luck.
Dude, you won £198, but you think you’ve lost £1,800. You will ALWAYS be a loser if you think like that.
Oh, and by the way, you can ONLY say ‘just my luck’ if you’re a badge-wearing Democrat on a day out at the Capitol on January 6th. Or a scarf-wearing West Ham fan going in the wrong end at Millwall in the 1970s.
Just my luck… my arse.
This attitude is very prevalent in crypto. The amount of times people bang on about how much (fiat) money they would have now if they hadn’t sold their bitcoin in 2012 or whatever.
Those, like this writer, who were hacked and lost 163 Ethereum (still no word, Binance, here when needed) and won’t stop going on about how much that is now worth. Others who have lost passwords, USBs or pieces of paper meaning they cannot access their unforeseen millions.
They can’t stop telling everybody about their terrible luck. Losers the lot of them, including me.
It doesn’t stop there. There are those who still behave like losers even when they’ve made huge profits and suddenly the price of bitcoin or other major alts suddenly crash down or even… dips.
And so it was last week. Anybody who is reading this column knows how much profit investors have made when bitcoin hit its ATH recently. But some don’t stop, they look upwards at figures ranging from $50K to $100K to $144K to $288K to a million dollars because they read a bit and the smart people tell them so.
That’s what they’re expecting. To make more and more money. They like to think of themselves as valiant spearheads of a digital vanguard, bravely going where no investor has boldly gone before.
Then, they screech like a neonate at a breast when, boo-hoo, the price goes down and they panic. Just my luck, they say, just my luck. Just as the price was set to rocket to all those high places that those intelligent people had told them about and it’s all going to go to pot.
They catastrophise, their brain now changes direction, like those humanist socialists who now support QAnon, and all they can see are other articles that bitcoin is worth nothing, the Government is going to ban it, they’re going to lose everything… even if they’ve lost everything anyway because of the stupid way they think.
But let’s go to Kipling and the country’s favourite poem and some of you, readers, are more of a loser than I thought if you don’t know the line.
Yes, keep your head while others are losing theirs. Don’t lose your head, don’t be a loser, don’t panic, Janet. Have a think about it.
Banks pay 0.1% interest on savings and it would be a miracle of Lazarean proportions if the housing market and stock market don’t crash this year. Sometimes it’s time to stop that head and win your head, not lose it.
Cash out a bit, mofo. Cash out a bit. So what if you didn’t cash out at the top and the price has gone down 15% and you’re ‘going to wait a bit’. This isn’t a videogame where you have to top the leaderboard, it’s real life. Calm down a bit, take some of your dough.
Don’t be one of those who in five years’ time says they cashed out some of their bitcoin when the price was only $32,000 and it’s now two million. Just think about it, what do you need?
Take out what you like. If you don’t like paying Capital Gains tax, then take out the maximum tax-free. Why not buy a family holiday? Actually, forget that one until 2022. Why not just transfer some of your profit to your bank, take some of that money out of an ATM and feel the money you’ve made.
You’re a winner, baby, whatever happens. I’m sure you’ve made more than 0.1%; sometimes you can’t wait forever and forever to enjoy your profits.
And then, instead of watching the crypto prices every five minutes and polishing your little pile of digital money, you might regain some perspective about what’s going on around you.
Crypto prices, of course, will continue going up as inevitably, and less sadly, as the Covid deaths in all of the world’s countries. Stop thinking about your clever long-term HODL strategy, take out some profits and maybe put it to good use for yourself, your family and friends or, perhaps even to people who need it. There are millions who do.
Then you will be a winner, baby, and you will always be a winner, not a loser who flaps and whines at the first time of trouble. You are choosing to win, not being forced to lose.
Be brave, cash out a little, remember the great man or woman you always knew was inside you. By cutting your winnings, you’ll be cutting the losses that surely lay before you.
Hopefully you will and if so… just our luck.