Bitcoin Investor? Stop Thinking Short Term

By Vincent Zandri on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

How many of you remember 1995? I was in writing school, a young man with wild ambitions. I was going to be the new Ernest Hemingway or perhaps Norman Mailer. It wasn’t going to be easy, and it would take a while for that kind of success to come my way.

Maybe Tom’s right or maybe he’s wrong…(courtesy iuhpconference.net)

Or, put another way altogether, it was going to be a long war, but it was a war I was willing to fight, casualties and wounds be damned. I was thinking of long term success here. Unless success miraculously came to me overnight, thinking in the short term didn’t even apply.

I recall how at that time, a new digital toy was slowly making global headway. It was called the Internet or the World Wide Web. A company called AOL kept sending me disks so that I might download their software for free. But the concept was so new to me, I didn’t realize you needed to hook your computer up to the phone line for it to work.

But once I figured it out, I found myself emailing for the first time ever and Lord knows, my life changed forever. I’d also cruise the web’s very rudimentary websites. They were clunky affairs that took forever to download, and there was always the risk that someone else in the house would pick up the phone and ruin your connection. I recall some heated fights with my wife over disrupted Internet service. However, I also remember skeptics saying the Internet was a fad that would eventually fade away.

Oh, how wrong they were. Companies like Amazon and AOL played the long game and in the process created unbelievable wealth for a whole lot of people. Example: can you remember what life was like before Facebook?

Now we have something called cryptocurrency. Its major attraction is, of course, Bitcoin. The digital asset is only ten years old which, when compared to the Internet, places it at that 1995 level. It’s still a little clunky. It’s unregulated. It’s very volatile. And most people have a hard time grasping what an actual Bitcoin is comprised of. They tend to think of it in terms of gold. Gold you can touch and feel. Bitcoin is, to many people, a giant nothing. Simply a concept with nothing behind it to give it value.

Yet, one of these Bitcoins is worth over $7K as of this writing. Chances are, it will be worth a hell of a lot more than that in a relatively short amount of time. We know this because the charts tell us it is so, and if history is any indicator of the future, Bitcoin’s success in the financial marketplace is undeniable.

But it’s not a get rich quick scheme. In fact, if you attempt to day trade it, you could very well quickly go broke. That said, one should look at Bitcoin as a long term investment. Sure you can make money in the short term, but that takes skill, plus a brain and a body that does not require sleep.

As crypto investors, we need to realize that Bitcoin is in its infancy. Despite severe ups and downs, it has a long way to go before it reaches some kind of market maturity. It will take volume, institutionalization, and general acceptance by a vast amount of common folk, just like you and me. The Internet went through the same song and dance. Come to think of it, my writing career has also.

If you’re investing in Bitcoin, do so wisely, and play the long game. The only game in town.