Annual Review of Dip Buying Bravado

The price was down seventeen percent from the previous month. The month before that it had been down eleven percent. The person looking at the chart described this, to the person sitting nearby, as a great entry point.

No entry was made.

Dip buying bravado is the verbal move by which a price decline is reframed as an opportunity before the decision of whether to act on the opportunity has been made. It is not dishonest. The price is lower. A lower price is, by one definition, a better entry point. The bravado is in the framing, which presents observation as analysis and analysis as imminent action without committing to the action.

The crypto winter of 2022 was, in this sense, a stress test for a language that had been developed during appreciation. The vocabulary of digital asset investing had been built around rising prices and the people who had acted at the right moment. It contained many words for gains and for the wisdom of having seen the opportunity. It contained fewer words for the situation in which the opportunity had been identified on four consecutive occasions and had produced four consecutive declines.

Dip buying bravado was one solution. It preserved the framework. The framework said: prices go down before they go up, and buying lower is buying smarter, and the only question is whether you have the conviction. The bravado said: I have the conviction. The decision to not act was recorded, internally, as a timing choice rather than a loss of conviction.

The annual review finds that this language was doing significant emotional work in the first quarter of 2022. It was not delusional. The prices might recover. The prices might not. The language was not a prediction. It was a holding pattern, a way of remaining in the position of someone who had not sold and had not bought more and could still, on any given day, describe themselves as watching for the right moment.

The right moment has not yet been confirmed. The review is ongoing.