Bag holding - 5th Feb, 2021

Something we've all done at one point in our crypto journey, the inevitable 'bag holding', a right of passage if you will, where a coin is bought with so much promise (most likely at the top) then held on to for dear life until the inevitable happens, it starts to tank. Being newly married to your shiny new future of finance, you hold on to your investment with strong hands, confident that the dip will soon reverse and your little baby will take off to the moon and make you lambo rich!

In reality, the opposite happens, and what at first was an exciting investment with massive upside potential, now starts to slowly lose its value. Over time, there are glimmers of hope, with the odd random pump here and there, but the decline continues, and by the time you're 90% down it's almost pointless to sell.

'Welcome to the community' is a phrase often thrown around, but, for bag holders it's true. Some people still genuienly believe in their coin and live in the hope one day it will recover and give them all what it initally promised it would; spending days each week keeping on top of updates from the project, living in telegram channels with other bag holders talking about their coin, and generally just living a miserable bitter existence. Others just hold on to it as a badge of honour, that first coin that fucked them over, a reminder to never marry an investment again in the future. The former, i feel sorry for, the virtual shackles of bag holding in the hope things will recover or pump in the future are simply stopping them from moving on and potentially finding that next coin that will give them the gains they wanted. That's not to say all holds are pointless, i mean look at the market now, both BTC and ETH are at (or have been) new all time highs! And i believe if you're in crypto, you'll want to have some BTC and ETH in your portfolio (#notfinancialadvice), but, this isn't really about those coins, this is about the moon shots you go for, the lower market cap coins that have huge upside potential; you may well get one right now that keeps soaring higher and higher (let's face it that's exactly what the DeFi coins are currently doing), but, at one point, you will need to let go and sell. If you can't let go you'll never realise your gains and profit, and, more likely than not, you'll end up selling for a loss, or worse, becoming a bag holder for years living a miserable existence in telegram channels with the other community members in hope of a recovery pump, and (although you might not admit it), forever scarred by your experience of buying into crypto

I asked the question on twitter (link to tweet) 'What's your worst performing bag that you refuse to get ride of?' The responses were varied and i recognised a lot of the tickers (some bad memories resurfaced); below is a chart showing the coins that were mentioned at least twice, with Tezos a clear winner at the top, a CT favourite from the last couple of years :)

Coins mentioned more than once

To finish, i've pulled out some of the replies i had in that thread, which, if you can relate to any of them, i fear you might be one of the telegram-basement-dwelling-miserable-community-members that i mentioned earlier... time to cut that bag!

Bag holder quotes

  • "Sooner or later it will pump"
  • "Bought in 2017, rode it all the way up and all the way down, still sitting in my kucoin wallet"
  • "Hold the line"
  • "But it's showing life"
  • "But will rip faces"
  • "Will hold until the end as pointless to sell now, set my sell 100x from here"
  • "Refuse to get rid of because their value has gone too low. I can always wait longer, rather wait until delisting than take the loss. Never know when a coin gets pumped for no reason"
  • "Only time i let my hubby choose which coin to invest in, hahaha, i enjoy the continued joke about his skills (this was XRP)"