I think the part that's hard is that there is a stickiness to hype. Hype starts as baseless hype, but the belief and interest of others is frequently enough to sustain a company or project that has nothing of actual benefit to offer. This makes it hard to dismiss hype-fueled bubbles entirely. There's a circular effect somewhere here that converts the initial baseline hype into value just by the sheer force of will of "true believers".
This applies not only to bitcoin/litecoin, but also companies, software, and all sorts of other things. Generating hype, goodwill, and other mostly-positive forms of human attention is inarguably more valuable to a project or venture's long-term lifecycle than providing actual objective value. Get enough attention or interest on something and any objective value that may potentially exist is liable to materialize, at least in part.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback#In_economics
Except to inflation ;). But adjust for inflation and selling enough to cover that gets you back the initial investment and also you don't lose money.
You most likely need to wait until it's close to 3 X the value you bought it because you'll need to pay short-term taxes after you sell it.
And once that happens, why sell half of it, vs all of it? 3 times the current value is a LOT of money and that usually takes at least 8-10 years in the equity market. Now that it happens, you're cashing out just to recoup your costs? Cash out everything, or cash out nothing and let it all ride until it's an even larger amount.
Agreed
> And once that happens, why sell half of it, vs all of it? 3 times the current value is a LOT of money and that usually takes at least 8-10 years in the equity market. Now that it happens, you're cashing out just to recoup your costs? Cash out everything, or cash out nothing and let it all ride until it's an even larger amount.
I agree "just recouping your costs" is not really exciting by itself. The idea is that you think it might go much higher, but - crucially - you're not sure. It's just about reducing your exposure to risk at the cost of some upside potential. It all depends on your risk appetite.
The net cost is 0 - cash in = cash out. And taxation is zero because your profit is (at the time) 0.
It also means you can do something else with your original investment.
If it goes up 100x - cash out whenever. If it goes down to 0 - you have lost nothing at all apart from some time.
you buy 2 at $5k it goes up to 10k and sell 1.
profit is current value - cost basis
10k - 5k = 5k profit that will be taxed
Because the 5k in the market is not a realized gain
This is a little fallacious because it assumes that the value of your money (Dollars or something?) won't continue to lose value against until it becomes worthless paper. This has happened in recent history e.g. Weimar Germany and is happening right now e.g. Venezuela.
At the end of the day, the rationality comes from a comparison of one currency against another. Just converting back from the currency you started with doesn't mean you "can't lose".