Types of Early BTC Investors and Their Success Rates

I've been thinking about the early BTC investors who went all-in. You know, those bold folks who dumped their entire savings into Bitcoin back when it was still pretty much in its infancy and wasn't seen as a legit asset yet. And they didn’t cash out until 2021 when BTC hit that $1 trillion mark (around 50k per BTC). So, I grouped them by the year they invested and assigned a color and zodiac sign to each group. Then, I crunched some numbers to see what percentage of these investors became millionaires and billionaires in USD. Here’s what I came up with: 2009 RED OX 100% (millionaires), 100% (billionaires) 2010 GREEN TIGER 100%, 100% 2011 YELLOW RABBIT 100%, 30% 2012 BLUE DRAGON 100%, 10% 2013 BLACK SNAKE 95%, 2% 2014 WHITE HORSE 80%, 0% 2015 GREY GOAT 90%, 1% 2016 BROWN MONKEY 80%, 0% 2017 PURPLE ROOSTER 30%, 0% 2018 ROSE DOG 15%, 0% 2019 ORANGE PIG 15%, 0% 2020 PEIGE RAT 10%, 0% For instance, if someone invested everything in Bitcoin in 2012 and held on until 2021 without selling a single satoshi, they’d be a BLUE DRAGON in my little system. And maybe we shouldn’t even call 2015 or 2020 investors early; how about super investors instead? Their returns blow traditional investments like Gold or S&P 500 out of the water. Just a heads up, these success rates are just rough estimates.

Nice thought experiment but I'm afraid it has little to do with reality. Really? Someone in 2009 putting all their net worth in bitcoin? That’s not realistic, unless they had a net worth of like $8. According to the AI, the first BTC-USD exchange took place in late 2009 at $0.00099, meaning that with $8 you could have bought 8,000 bitcoins, but this scenario is unrealistic. The figures for the other years might be more realistic, but the idea of holding on until 2021 without selling if you bought in 2010–2012 isn’t very realistic either. Especially given that you say to have gone 100% all in, and you might need the money to live on. Most people sold when they reached a much lower profit, others sold even at a loss and others lost their keys.

I really didn't find anyone with the idea of ​​"investing in bitcoin" on this forum in the early years of bitcoin development which predates the New Liberty Standard (the first bitcoin exchange). Because I think the only people who played a role at that time were contributors to the development of new currencies, not users or investors of established currencies. But there is a user who are trying to build the first bitcoin exchange before the NLS,  whether it works or not because supposedly people will prefer to mine rather than buy it.

Exactly! People sold with little profit never knowing price will surge up to a humongous figure beyond one's imagination. How will you classify this set of people??? 0.01%

I want to assume that you made up these names and the entire post just for fun because I have not read about such classification anywhere and some of the information here are so abstract and cannot be corroborated to any reliable data. I don't know if you think there are many people who bought Bitcoin since 2009 that are still holding till date, for those who mined, it could be possible but I doubt there are people that intentionally bough to hold that still have those coins intact without selling. We may see people who bough then, sold and bought again but seeing those who bought and never sold is something hard to see.

This your writeup is almost very unrealistic and I don't you must have put this up based on unfounded assumptions. I tried to understand the bases of this calculation, the "ifs" and I still can't figure it out. Anyways, most early investors in bitcoin would have forgotten their phrases or sold off their bitcoin at the initial period bitcoin hit the $50k margin and a few fractions could have only sold a part. The real genius is believing in bitcoin in the early days when many people thought it was all a scam. There are also some few percentage who are very patient and risk takers. But not when they went all in because whoever goes all in with all his resources would not even succeed in bitcoin because what if he needs to attend to real life problems? Bitcoin has gone through stages and it still has a lot in stock.

I tried to classify real hodlers not others. Of cause most sold when BTC reached 2x, 3x, 10x - it is natural behavior. Being hodler, being hero is not natural.

I don't think there was even a single person who went all-in with Bitcoin in its earliest years and "did not sold a satoshi before 2021". By all-in I mean everything. I've read about CZ, for example, selling his apartment in China way back 2014 to invest entirely on Bitcoin. If it were true and not just a story created for the media, was that enough to consider all-in? I read about Erik Finman, though, the young boy who spent all the money that his grandmother gave him on Bitcoin. That was perhaps all the money that he had. But he didn't hodl until 2021. He eventually sold years before.

The names she listed out was given by her. I can’t find any information on the internet that confirms those terminologies/names. Anyone who had Bitcoin in 2009 by now have sold their Bitcoin. Perhaps they sold them all, got rich and bought Bitcoin again when they feel like.

Maybe the number of investors who buy or mine Bitcoin in 2009 is not many although we don't know the real numbers. Maybe people started invested in Bitcoin in 2011 as the price reached $31,91. But if you want use them as your spirit to accumulating more Bitcoin, that is okay so you can stay motivated. You should focus on your accumulation if you want to be heroes for yourself. But that is not easy because you need to manage yourself passing the price fluctuation. We have our own story so we will achieves our own success rates and no need to think others and keep your focus.

I don't know if we need this kind of distinction though, it just doesn't make sense or it will just complicate things for us. And I'm assuming that all investors have one goal in mind, and that is to make profits along the way. The only difference is that there could be early investors. But it doesn't mean that they are in the profit as they could have sold early. And then then there could be late investors around 2017 that have bought a lot and didn't sell for almost 10 years now.

Yes, the definition of "going all in" is important. "Going all in" means here investing all your sacred money. Sacred money does not include selling your home, taking loans and other extreme measures that are not sustainable in the (very) long run.

All I know is that investors in the past and now are still making income from bitcoin, what investors are making from their bitcoin now that is increase their wealth, a time will come in the future that will make the income a small income to the eyes of other investors in the crypto because this current price investors is referring to bearish season,  it was a bullish season in the past, and it helped many investors to make what some used to established business and also invest in other projects.

In reality, most of the old timers made a couple thousand dollars, sold their stack, and walked away. The ones who stayed were mostly people who were here to harass others or chat with the community out of boredom. Very few people grabbed a stack early and then just sat on it to get rich.

The question how big is the number of hero-hodlers of every type is more difficult to estimate than their success rates. The first step is finding out BTC-lovers of every year. I use the the number of Bitcointalk accounts as rough estimate of BTC-lovers: 2009: 19 2010: 3,127 2011: 48,827 2012: 76,680 2013: 207,357 2014: 406,833 2015: 710,256 2016: 935,550 2017: 1,346,000 2018: 2,464,000 2019: 2,718,000 2020: 2,916,000 Did 1/100 of them went all in? No, it is definitely less. Did 1/1 000 000 of them went all in? No, it is definitely more. Did 1/1000 of them went all in? No, it is probably less. Did 1/100 000 of them went all in? No, it is probably more. Therefore the hodler-heros % is probably somewhere 0.1-0.001. For example there are probably (with 80% probability) 1-100 BLUE DRAGONS and 30-3000 PEIGE RATS. The first world famous hodler-hero was YELLOW RABBIT Rick Falkvinge https://falkvinge.net/2013/03/06/the-target-value-for-bitcoin-is-not-some-50-or-100-it-is-100000-to-1000000/

I agree that being a holder isn't natural. Because of how bitcoin went through tough times for so long, a lot of doubts, a lot of fud and even people mocking the holders and make fun of them during the early days. Selling at those periods when they're in profit doesn't make them fools but they did the right thing which suits their lives and the tenure of their holding. Someone who's been holding for more than a decade, they're super investors and can be said as the real legends but lately we saw a lot of them waking up after a long time to take some profits.

Profit is profit. It doesn’t matter what the amount might be. There was a chance that you could hold and loss due to a decision that would stern from a place of use in times of emergencies. If you sell at the ATH today, it would be the best price in today but, Bitcoin has the potential of gaining more value and selling today would feel wrong in the future. If we continue to think that way, how then can we enjoy the ROI. People need to sell and that’s okay so long as they don’t completely liquidate their portfolio.

They were classified as non-speculator users, much like today's people who earn sat by sat through whatever means they can, then sell or exchange them for something when they need to spend it. They generally tolerated small gains or losses. For them, the real benefit wasn't in price, but in utility.

They were more focused on sufficiency when they had little so they didn't think about large or small profits. Clearly when they needed something the only way was to sell what they already had. For them needs were prioritized, even if it meant selling below their expectations. The important thing was to have something. As they put it if they had a job they could eat, and health was their top priority. They no longer thought about saving for future assets but rather focused on current needs, forcing themselves to keep exchanging what they had to survive.

Yes, the probability of RED OX existing is very small, and even GREEN TIGER is unlikely - not only because there were relatively few people involved in the Bitcoin 2010 (only about 3000 Bitcointalk accounts), but also because the mentality of most Bitcoin-lovers in 2009-2010 was not focused on accumulating as many BTC as possible, but was focused on the existential problem of BTC (will Bitcoin survive or not?).