Most, if not all Bitcoiners have heard of the term ‘hodl’, identify as hodlers, or reside behind pseudonymous screen names that include ‘hodl’, as seen in the latest Twitter trend where people add ‘.hodl’ to their name.
While being the most used and well known term within the Bitcoin community, do you actually know where it comes from?
The origin of HODL dates back to 2013.
This was the year where the Bitcoin price rallied from $13 to over $1,100. I discovered Bitcoin in late 2013, after acquiring my first physical bitcoin and I still vividly remember the euphoric feeling of that rally. As a precious metals collector, I had never experienced the feeling of holding an asset that quintipled in value in less than 90 days time. I remember staring at the charts and witnessing Bitcoin breaking the $1,000 barrier for the first time.
My heart was pounding and I think I even experienced a small adrenaline rush. But enough about me, back to the story!
Most of us have been through one (or multiple) of these rallies, the insane dips that follow and all of the emotions that come with it. On December 18th 2013, after seeing the price drop from its new $1,100+ high, all the way down to $420, a brave Bitcoiner decided to fight these filthy human emotions and stand his ground! No more panic selling, no more FOMO buying and no more missing dips!
He looked around at his fellow Bitcoiners, took a deep breath, stood up and valiantly shouted
“I AM HODLING!”
Allright, maybe I’m making this sounds a bit more heroic than it actually was. In reality it was a whiskey drunk Bitcoiner who tried typing ‘I AM HOLDING’ twice, but failed miserably and decided to give up correcting his drunk spelling. Bitcointalk user ‘GameKyuubi’ created a post titled ‘I AM HODLING’ to vent his frustrations of being a bad trader:
GameKyuubi’s legendary post ended up as one of the most merited posts of all time.
Within minutes his thread was swarmed by other Bitcoiners, hilariously copying his misspelling. After a few pages filled with ‘HODL!’ replies ‘GameKyuubi’ made another post:
“oh wow I passed out for four hours on my floor and what is this”
Another Bitcoiner replied to his post:
“Haha, you’re a star mate.”
And just like that a legend was born. What, at first sight, looked like nothing more than an illegible drunken rant from a frustrated trader turned out to be the foundation of a steadfast conviction, eventually resulting in an army of tens of thousands of hodlers. The message he was trying to send is crystal clear: Don’t trade if you’re not an experienced day trader, you’ll end up getting rekt.
The current Bitcoin price is over 24 time higher than it was when ‘GameKyuubi’ posted his rant, which perfectly shows that he was right in the end. He closed his post with a message that everyone should remember when they’re thinking about selling in turbulent times:
“In a zero-sum game such as this, trader can only take your money if you sell.”
HODL on!
M.BTC is a Dutch Bitcoiner who got red-pilled in 2013, and decided to find out how deep the rabbit hole goes. He got very intrigued by the concept of digital scarcity, and according to Rockstardev, he is also incredibly handsome.