The image is AI generated by Gemini
Many people say that if they had invested in a certain crypto earlier, they would have been millionaires by now. Others claim that if they had put just a hundred dollars into Bitcoin ten years ago, that money would have turned into over a hundred million today. But let us be honest. How sure are we that these probabilities would have ever happened for real people in real life? Nobody truly survives crypto by doing just one thing, which is to hold for dear life.
HODL is not a strategy. It is a story of staggering luck, accidental fortune, and a journey through unimaginable psychological stress. When holding becomes nothing but waiting across market cycles for a perfect number, that number will never be the right one. The only way HODL stops feeling like torture is when you hold and earn at the same time. When your assets grow through staking, curating, or other forms of passive income. Otherwise, holding becomes a slow emotional drain that most humans cannot endure.
We always tell people to HODL, that those who hold never lose because Bitcoin has proven with time that it can rise again after each falls and can rise more than what was before. However, humans are psychological beings that act based on emotions, and no human with blood flowing in his or her veins can endure the euphoria of seeing an all time high and losing 90 percent of that to a bear market for 2 circles by just holding.
To say that only those who hold to the end are the only winners in crypto is misleading, because this gives a false impression that everyone can mentally survive that journey. Actually, nobody is made to go through such kind of pain.
We learn something quite significant from this, and you need to know that HODL is is a meme born from a typo that became a survival mechanism for a market that demands more emotional strength than most humans have.
The person who sold because life hit them unexpectedly and they needed the money urgently… won.
The person who sold to settle debts or keep their family afloat during a tough season… won.
The person who sold because the stress became too much and they needed peace of mind… won.
These people won because they traded unstable digital wealth for real improvement in their lives. They stepped out of the chaos and turned something volatile into something meaningful. They did not fail. They succeeded by choosing peace.
Whether they live to regret for ever selling at the time they did is no one else problem. The fact that they sold to solve a problem in real life is enough a testimony of a winner.
The idea that someone can hold forever until they become a billionaire is a mirage. That kind of number only becomes reality for people who either didn’t know what they were doing, forgot that they have crypto in a computer file, or were imprisoned by technology. And one day they read in the news that Bitcoin is trading for a billion dollars and suddenly remember that they had crypto in their old computer and started looking for a way to recover their wallets.
So whenever someone says that only those who hold are the real winners in crypto, you can just nod and understand the full picture. Winning is not only about holding through impossible storms. Winning is when a person takes whatever they have in this chaotic market and turns it into something meaningful in their real life. Some people win by holding. Others win by selling at the moment their mind, health, or circumstances require it. Both of them are humans. And in an extremely volatile market like that of crypto, the real win is just to make choices that help you maintain your sanity, safety, and progress.