One of the world’s top bitcoin maximalists, Pierre Rochard, is launching an advisory service, Bitcoin Advisory. See this tweet in response to a related news article, “Maximalist for Hire” @ Coindesk:

https://twitter.com/KoenSwinkels/status/995039427209646083

The simplicity is deceptive

I think at a simplistic level, yes it is “Buy and HODL”, or even better, just regularly keep buying more Bitcoin. But the real skill in this comes in articulating why we should HODL. There is so much altcoin and ICO trash with multi million dollar budgets devoted to distracting you into these tokens of questionable value.

The question then, is: why HODL bitcoin and not be drawn into the latest ‘flavour of the week’ trash ICO/altcoin? That is where the skill of articulating bitcoin’s advantages comes in. This saves us from multicoiner absurdity and chaos.

What it takes

It takes an understanding of monetary economics plus at minimum, a basic level understanding of the technology behind bitcoin, with a sprinkling of HODLer resolve. These things are not easy for the average person to obtain and maintain. Even among those who do, some sell out on this vision to become an ICO/altcoin pumper.

Listing out some of the points you have to grapple with:

• What makes a good money.
• How sound money drives out easy money.
• The history of money and how it got co-opted by governments, how gold failed, and why bitcoin changes the game.
• Why deflation (correctly understood), is a good thing.
• The prudence of the conservative approach to Bitcoin development rather than the “move fast and break things” approach that is typical with tech start ups.
• Why with new altcoins, all that glitters is not gold – they may have fancy marketing budgets, booth babes and luxury conferences. But they don’t have sound money.
• How to run a full node and secure your bitcoins.
• Your desire to have nice things now, versus delayed gratification behavior enabling you to have more nice things in the future – not just for you, but your descendants also.

What happens if you do it wrong

It’s one thing to have bought Bitcoin early at $20. But without a sophisticated understanding of why we HODL, you would probably have sold out at $200, rather than holding on and waiting for the real pay-off: Bitcoin in the millions of dollars.

An adviser can help you ‘stay the course’ and avoid your own bias

People who sold out of the stock market during the crash of 2008 missed the great recovery rally in 2009. People who thought it was all ‘going to hell in a handbasket’ were stuck in cash, perhaps because of ‘recency bias’ making them not pay attention to the long term trend of growth.

Just like how a financial adviser can help you ‘stay the course’ with your investment, so too does it make sense to have bitcoin advice.

Ultimately, we should attune ourselves to what really matters in this market.