Hello bitcoiners! I’m Jacob Parrish. I have been running Bitcoin Charlotte since 2013. Our intention with Bitcoin Charlotte is to connect like minded individuals, educate each other on best practices, and have fun while doing it!
To meet these goals, my sister Liz and I have been hosting socials, speaking engagements, chatrooms, resources on our website, and more. This two night event will be our largest. For Halloween, we decided to have some fun and name this event HODLween. But its more than just some wordplay…
What is HODL? Where did it come from? And what does it mean to be a true HODLer?
HODL is a misspelling of hold. It’s origin is quite comical as many of the memes are in bitcoin. It comes from a post in late 2013 on the original bitcointalk.org forum (before reddit and twitter). The poster goes on a drunk rant, “WHY AM I HOLDING? I’LL TELL YOU WHY. It’s because I’m a bad trader and I KNOW I’M A BAD TRADER.” He goes on to say a lot more funny ridiculous stuff in the post. That post was titled “I AM HODLING”.
If we dive a little deeper, to HODL means to hold your bitcoins for the long term. To not participate in the day to day price swings, because if you simply HODL, no one can ever take or buy your bitcoins. It’s a safe, conservative approach to making more money IF you believe the price will go up in the long term.
But let’s dive even deeper. What is a true HODLer? Is it really just about price?
When a new money comes out you ask the simple question of “What makes good money?”. Then you start to compare moneys that have existed which naturally leads you to study our current financial system based on the dollar. You realize the simple fact, that every time a new dollar is created, the dollar in your pocket becomes worth less. Good money is scarce. There will only ever exist 21 million bitcoins. No more. The early HODLers understood this deeply.
Way back when I started I was fortunate enough to understand a few things…
1- Bitcoins are scarce, no one could make more.
2- The bitcoin network couldn’t be taken down.
3- There were no rulers in control of this new system.
This meant owning a competing currency that no one could ever take from me and I could use it in a network that never went down. This sounded like a lot of freedom from a dollar system that kept stealing my value away. It meant more individual sovereignty. It meant more freedom for everyone who got involved. It was the beginning of the separation of state and money.
The transition to being a HODLer is not about making money, it’s about philosophy. It’s about preserving the endless hours of work at your day job in something that will not lose its value through time. For HODLers, It’s about saving for the future and creating generational wealth for their families and communities. When you understand this, it’s hard not to get emotional.
Newcomers typically see Bitcoin just like a stock — you get in, wait for it to go up, then sell it all for profit. HODLers understand this is a long term game. I’m not saying never sell, HODLers sell, but they always intend to buy back and increase their bitcoin holdings. HODLers care deeply about preserving their bitcoins because it means preserving their freedom.
I like to think of this first installment of HODLween as a house warming party. We are here to stay and it is an invitation to all, to join the HODLers. Take the orange pill, buy bitcoin, and come see how beautiful the rabbit hole is. Stay free & Happy HODLween.
