Haven't the last couple of days been interesting for bitcoin and crypto markets? First, we all wait for some surprise big bull move that was supposed to happen in December, according to all so called crypto experts and gurus. That didn't happen. Ok, we can wait a little longer. Perhaps, there is a slight delay due to supply chain delays happening in the world, and everything would go back to normal and January we correct the course back to the original destination, Moon. Did the wisdom of the crowd fail again, or crowd failed the wisdom?
Bitcoin and crypto prices keep going down and down. It is starting to look real when Eth drops below 3K, btc goes below 40k, hive drop below $1, ltc drops to almost a hundred dollars. I was ok with thing prices dropping right? Why should it bother me? After all hodling is long term and short term prices don't mean much. To hide the painful reality of things, we may even say - "happy if it is down, happy if it up" and carry on with daily routine. That does sound like a good strategy. Except it doesn't work with humans. Humans aren't capable of being happy all the time under all circumstances. This is especially true when it comes to markets.
Wether we like it or not, human emotions play great role in how markets move. And the biggest culprits of all are fear and greed. I have read several books on trading, investing, and markets. One thing they have in common is they all warn about fear and greed and try to teach about how to be more disciplined traders and investors. However, one can't learn managing emotions by just reading books. I am not even sure fully managing emotions is even possible when it comes to trading. Watching portfolio going up and down, and not having emotional reactions is not an easy task.
Hodling may have changed this a little bit. Emotions are linked to logic and reasoning. We try to make sense of things as they happen and experience emotional responses to them. When hodling, we can remove logical decision making with only one initial decision to hold regardless what. Then everything else kind of becomes irrelevant. Yet, we still experience fear and greed when we see wild price swings. Since, decision not to react has already been made by when decided to become hodlers, these emotion do not affect us as much as they otherwise would.
But even hodling is not the ultimate solution or answer. Because it means different things for different people. I realized I became a hodler when I couldn't sell btc when I was actually ready to do so last year. I never considered myself to be a hodler and but since I never had a good opportunity to sell for few years, that kinda became a norm. It didn't matter any more. But this doesn't remove the fear and greed from the equation. Let's say we decide we will sell btc if it reaches 100k. Will we actually do it when that happens? Chances are, whoever held for more than 3-4 years would still keep at least some of them. Why? Greed. Because we want more than 100k. We want it keep moving up and up.
The same applies to other crypto assets as well. Why not wait for more. We always want more. This might be a good thing, if we are lucky to be in one of the good performing assets. What if we are invested in not so good performing assets? Btc keeps going up and up, and this coin we own doesn't do anything. All it does it keeps losing value against btc. What if we are in a wrong asset, thoughts keep going through the mind. What if we are missing out on something better. Doge? Shiba? What about BNB? No, I don't think we can shut our emotions down and completely get rid of fear and greed. But over time we become better at it and perhaps can use this reality to our advantage.
In fact, this is the message many trading and investment book try to convey. They will tell us that professional traders, market makers, and institutions master the way to manipulate markets and take advantage of fear and greed of retail traders. Books can inform us about such tings, but can't really teach. When it comes to fear and greed, I believe we learn the skills through experience and participating in the markets.
For example, one thing I am very confident and convinced about is that btc always goes back to its previous all time high prices given enough time. It has done so many times already. Why should the next time be an exception. Just knowing the historical performance and looking at charts doesn't not necessarily provide such confidence. One must go through bear and bull markets and experience the true fear and greed, perhaps even make bad decisions. As more time goes by, easier it gets.
This is not always true for all markets. There has been many times throughout the market histories when assets go to zero and disappear. Holding on to such assets neither would be logical, nor even in sync with emotions. That is even beyond fear and greed. This is something else. This is an irrational emotional response that is only trying to prove ourselves that we were right in investing in these assets and market has been wrong. Being in such situation is probably much worse than fear and greed.
Luckily, bitcoin is not an asset that will go to zero and disappear. Chances of something like this happening are very very low. This means, we don't need to spend a lot of time doing research and worrying about fundamentals, technicals, etc. We can just let btc do its thing. Whatever it does, it will still be around. I am yet to see a good reason why it wouldn't be around for many years to come.
Btc has also become an indicator for the rest of the crypto market. If btc is doing well we are probably in a bull market for the rest of the crypto, if btc is struggling that means trouble for most of the crypto as well. Fortunately, we on Hive have many things to do on this blockchain, and keep ourselves distract with participating in content creation, communities, games, etc and keep building crypto equities too.
When things look boring or bad in the crypto markets, it is probably a good time to get more active on Hive and get things done. We are just humans. Not sure what will markets do next. It is still fun to be part of them. It is fun to be part of Hive. Let the fear and greed do what they do. Just don't let them make decisions for you.
Obviously, none of this is a financial advice. Figured it would be more productive to put my thoughts on these not so impressive crypto market days into a post and send it to the blockchain for permanent safekeeping. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.