The Strength Not to Let Go

The Most Common Failure

In investing, the most common failure is not buying the wrong thing. It is selling too early. The person who bought bitcoin in 2013 and sold in the 2014 crash. The person who rode past the 2017 peak and cut their losses at the 2018 bottom. The person who was drunk on the 2021 rally, took on leverage, and was liquidated in 2022. What these people lacked was not analysis. It was the strength to endure.

Practice is no different. Many people begin meditating. Very few continue past three years. The first ten days feel fresh, the first month feels rewarding, and by the third month it has become dull. Most stop here, because nothing seems to be happening.

Buddhism confronted this problem directly twenty-five centuries ago. Its answer is virya paramita, the perfection of energy.

What Virya Is

Virya, the fourth of the six perfections, is not simply working hard. The Sanskrit word has its root in heroic strength. The hero here is not a warrior on a battlefield but a person who does not retreat in the face of tedium and despair.

Virya has three layers.

Armor-like energy. The resolve not to be broken by whatever difficulty arrives. This is energy at the outset. In Bitcoin terms it corresponds to the initial willingness to accept volatility.

Energy that gathers good actions. Actually accumulating good acts, steadily. Sitting every day, reading the sutras every day, giving every day. In Bitcoin terms it is the process of saving regularly, managing your own keys, and studying the network.

Energy for the benefit of beings. Going beyond practice for oneself to work for the good of others. In the Bitcoin ecosystem, this is contributing to open-source development, making educational material, and carrying the value of financial sovereignty to others.

The core running through all three stages is the same: not stopping.

How HODL Was Born

On 18 December 2013, bitcoin fell 39 percent in a single day. On the Bitcointalk forum, a user named GameKyuubi wrote a post while drunk on whisky. The title was "I AM HODLING", a typo for HOLDING.

"I am a bad trader and I know I am a bad trader. The good traders can spot the little dips and sell the top, and I know you traders are laughing at me. I am still holding."

The typo became a culture. HODL was reinterpreted as an acronym for Hold On for Dear Life and became a core value of the Bitcoin community. When the market collapses, when the media declares bitcoin dead, when the people around you say they told you so, you still do not sell.

The Real Enemy Is Not the Market

The opposite of virya paramita is not laziness. Buddhism names three enemies of energy.

Indolence. The postponement of "I will do it tomorrow." In HODL it is the rationalisation of "let me take some off now and buy back later." And later usually means buying back at a higher price, or never returning at all.

Attachment to inferior things. Pouring energy into what has no value. Checking the chart every five minutes, wasting time gambling on altcoins, being swayed by a price-prediction channel. It is the same as sitting in the meditation hall and watching the window instead of practising.

Self-deprecation. The surrender of "someone like me could never awaken." The resignation of "bitcoin has already risen too far, it means nothing for a small investor like me." This is the most dangerous enemy, because it stops you from beginning at all.

The Buddha offered reflection on impermanence as the way to overcome all three. The awareness that life is short and that this opportunity may not come again. The same question is valid for the HODLer. Knowing the structural problems of the fiat system, with an alternative in front of you, will you do nothing?

The Four-Year Rhythm

Bitcoin has a four-year cycle called the halving. Every four years the mining reward is cut in half, and historically there have been large price swings around that event. For the HODLer, four years is one cycle of practice. Each time a crash arrives. Each time the fear that this time is different presses in. Each time you get up again.

Buddhist practice has its cycles too. There is the ninety-day intensive retreat, and the Zen masters say that before a great awakening there must come the darkness of great doubt. You cannot stand on the summit without having been in the valley.

A HODLer who has endured four years has practised one cycle. One who has endured eight has finished two. Almost nobody has endured sixteen, because bitcoin was born in 2009. This practice is still early.

Patience Is Not Passive

Virya paramita must not be misread. It is not sitting still and putting up with things. There is a reason the Sanskrit carries the sense of heroism. Virya is active patience: sitting every day while holding the koan, studying the sutras every day and deepening understanding, keeping the precepts every day and ordering one's life.

HODL is the same. Real HODL is not buying bitcoin and forgetting about it. It is studying the history of money, understanding how bitcoin works technically, keeping your own keys safe, and sharing what you know with the people around you. The reason you are not shaken when the price falls is not blind faith but deep understanding.

A Zen master asks the student, what is your koan? If you cannot answer, you have only been sitting, not practising. The same question can be put to a HODLer. Can you explain what bitcoin is? If you cannot, that is not HODL. That is neglect.

How Long Will You Sit

There is a Tibetan saying. Practise ten years and nobody in the village recognises you. Practise twenty and the birds in the mountains no longer suspect you. Practise thirty and even the wind becomes your teacher.

For the Bitcoin HODLer, time also runs differently. In the first year you watch the price. In the third year you look at the technology. In the fifth year you look at the monetary system. In the tenth year you see the world differently. You are not holding bitcoin for a long time. Bitcoin is changing your eyes.

The ultimate aim of virya paramita is awakening, and the ultimate aim of HODL is financial sovereignty. Neither is a question of how much. Both are a question of how long. Time, not quantity, is the real variable.

Endure. That is the practice.