Beyond Hodling

I first got into Bitcoin in 2013, when someone offered to pay me in the currency for a small gig. I would probably have done it for free as a favour for a mate anyway, and the payment they were offering me was better than nothing, as I struggled and scrimped to make rent, which is how I came to be a bitcoiner.

The bitcoin that I was paid never did go on rent. It was kept as a novelty item...even if I wanted to cash it out, I wouldn't have known how. When the price shot up at the end of that year, had I known how to cash out, I may have been tempted. But my ignorance saved me and got me through my first crash in 2014.

Your first crash is the one you remember. That sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realise the money you thought you had is disappearing before your eyes and the self reproach for not being savvy and getting your money out quick. Dont invest more than you can afford to lose they say...but I'm pretty skint and cant afford to lose anything. After the crash, I read up a bit more on bitcoin and got hooked. A paper wallet is a great savings scheme for those whose actual wallet rarely contains much paper, and for years now, my bitcoin has been my emergency stash, only to be cashed out when I absolutely need it.

Most bitcoiners fall into two camps, there are the hodlers and the speculators. Hodlers are sanguine about the price, until it drops and drops and drops and the excitement of cheap coins gains a grip. The speculators on the other hand endlessly pore over charts, make predictions based in mystic-math and keep a btc ticker on their phones, always looking for a way to make a quick buck on a price hike. Most bitcoiners are also relatively rich...or at least considerably richer than me.

The thought of cashing out and having no emergency funds has turned me into a dedicated hodler. Occasionally slipping a spare tenner into a bitcoin atm when my boat comes in and only spending tiny amounts to demonstrate to friends how easy it is to use. These demonstrations usually fall flat on their face it must be noted, as the waitress in the only bitcoin accepting cafe in town looks at you as if you just offered to pay in pigs blood. Or the shop assistant in CeX, blithers on about how brillant it is to use bitcoin, while reading instruction manuals, calling over the manager and fumbling his way through a transaction.

I believe in Bitcoin, not because I think it will make me rich (although richer than having to count pennies to get milk would be nice) but because I believe is it a genuinely revolutionary technology that opens up a whole load of opportunities to get us off this hideous capitalist trajectory. And I want to see it work: hodling doesnt achieve that.

I'm not ready to cash out, but I need the money. Given the rise in the value of bitcoin over the past year, my emergency fund has swelled. At the same time my income has remained low, and prices have risen, to the extent that I'm panicking and rebudgetting every time a bill comes in, and all the time money gets tighter. I've wrestled and wrestled with this for about 6 months. It seems daft to have an emergency fund but to still lurch from financial crisis to financial crisis, but I can never bring myself to actually cash it in.

Longterm hodlers insist that by the time bitcoin has reached its full potential, you wont need to cash out as traditional money will be on its way out...but that doesnt help me now. So a new strategy I'm implementing is that I will pay for what I can in bitcoin - there are a number of services now available to let you pay bills or purchase things online with bitcoin - then trying to save at least some of the money that I would have used to buy the bitcoin back at the end of the month.

Bitcoin infrastructure is still patchy, and it takes a bit of time to get used to using bitcoin services. The knowledge that you are you are your own bank and fully responsible for any bitcoin transaction with no nice man at the bank to get your money back if you put in the wrong details is sobering, and fears of scammers and hackers stealing my precious bitcoins make me a little anxious. But this is the brave new world we live in - giving up security for liberty is scary, but necessary.

Maybe I'll regret this in years to come, but I like to think that the experience and confidence I will gain from using bitcoin as an actual currency, will outweigh any monetary loss....and in the meantime, at least I can afford milk.