Richard Ramberg
Whether you are invested in cryptocurrencies or just an outside observer, one thing remains clear to all. The cryptocurrency market is volatile. The cryptocurrency market is far more volatile than the stock market and cryptocurrencies can – unlike most stocks – easily move 25-30% in one single day without any apparent news causing such movement. During the 30 day-period starting on 6 January, the cryptomarkets fell heavy with the BTC losing more than 50% of its value. A phrase that kept getting repeated during this time was: HODL. HODL, HODL, HODL.
If you don’t know what HODL means, you won’t figure it out without researching it either. The acronym is not really possible to decipher without research. It stands for Hold On for Dear Life and means that you should not sell in a bear market, rather you should hold on and wait for the market turn that (according to the HODLers), will eventually come.
Where does the expression HODL come from?
The person commonly credited as the inventor of “HODL” is elux, at bitcointalk.org. In a thread started by GameKyuubi on 18 December 2013 where the subject was supposed to be “I AM HOLDING” but was misspelled to “I AM HODLING”, elux quickly responded a few minutes later “HODL!” and the rest is history (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=375643.0). Who came up with the idea of the meaning of HODL being Hold On for Dear Life is still unknown.
Future of HODL
HODLing, however, might not be as easy as it seems. During 2017, when investing in cryptocurrencies became more widespread among the general public, many new investors who had seen the massive price increase of cryptocurrencies during the past year entered the market hoping to become crypto millionaires within the near future. Many such investors that only had experience from the stock market were chocked by the relative volatility of the crypto market.
It is one thing to hear that the crypto market is volatile when you are a bystander; it is a whole other thing to experience it when you have a decent amount of money at stake. Accordingly, these investors who were faced with negative return and expected easy gains and were unfamiliar with the aggressive volatility of the crypto market, started complaining. More such investors will come and more such investors will complain. The complaints may be directed towards the friend who recommended them to go into crypto. It can also be directed towards the wife and kids or be directed towards anybody who wants to listen really. Cryptowisser believes that a new phrase should be established to cover this practice: HODLACL.
HODLACL
HODLACL stands for Hold On for Dear Life And Complain a Little.
The HODLACLers are the people who are in fact HODLing, but are not as cool as the “standard HODLer” but feels the need to express his discomfort or concern with how the market is shifting. The HODLACLer will most often be heard in a bear market, whereas the reason for his/her complaints are less strong in a bull market…
One might ask: is it healthy for these nervous investor to complain? Or are they just being a nuisance to themselves and everybody around them? We don’t know. Both sides can possibly be argued for.
The one thing we do know is that the HODLACLers are here to stay. They will also increase in numbers as more and more people from the general public enters the crypto markets.
