My stand on cryptocurrencies is a bit different from my friends or others around me, most everybody I encounter, considers HODL-ing the best thing they can do with a cryptocurrency, However, I have a different opinion.
I believe that HODL-ing is one of the reasons that cryptocurrencies entered a long bear market and don't see much of rise!
The one thing that gives a currency it's value is the demand for it and the demand is driven by it's usability, when people can buy items or services with a currency, they will buys some of it. the more uses a currency have, the more demand for it and the higher it's price will go.
if everybody sticks to HODL-ing, obtaining that currency would become harder and harder, even f there's lots of demand for it, once a currency is not obtainable for a reasonable price, people will move on to another ways of transferring value. the demands would go down and the price will drop.
The currencies are the blood of their market, if the circulation slows down, the market becomes ill and once it stops, the market will die. if we want the cryptocurrency market to thrive, we have to use our currencies and create more use cases for them. I personally am guilty of hording some cryptocurrencies, a bit of it because I forgot one of my wallets password, but mainly because the things I want to buy are not sold in cryptos and I have to go through an extra step of converting them to fiat.
In the other hand, I started offering my services cheaper for the clients whom can pay through cryptocurrencies but in all of these years, I had only one client paying with them.
I know many of us bought cryptos at a higher price than now and using them means a bit of loss and that's the reason we are HODL-ing, but we should accept the fact that: not everybody can benefit from the same market, your benefit has to come from somebody else's pocket. there's no way around it.
the reasons you are drawn to cryptocurrencies should be,
- they are safer
- faster
- more reliable
- open new markets to you
- can be transferred and used around the world
- not controlled by governments
- and have extremely low fees
if your reason is because you want to make a huge sum of money by HODL-ing or trading them, you might be better off gambling. next time you've checked the coinmarketcap and felt sadness or fury seeing the prices staying put or dropping, ask yourself, what have I done to push this market up? did I incorporate cryptocurrencies into my business? did I help anybody to join the market? did I offer cryptocurrencies as an alternative method of payment while buying something?
a good question often is the first step towards the solution.
Store of value is he most important use case of money. HODLing is using. The most important type of usage.
You can have easily transactable money, but if you cant store your value in it, you will try to get rid of it asap. Bad money moves faster.
it's true that HODL-ing is a use case, but the problem is: HODL-ing doesn't create more demand, and without more demand the price remains stagnant.
Hodlers (and smart money) are the only ones buying the bottom and holding the price.