Bitcoin News Today: Bitcoin HODLing Strategy Outperforms Altcoins by 86%

Bitcoin has long been hailed as a revolutionary asset, and its strategy of "HODLing" has proven to be a successful one. The term "HODL," which originated from a typo in a forum post, means holding onto bitcoin regardless of market fluctuations. Over the years, this strategy has yielded significant gains, outperforming other investments. However, the success of HODLing with bitcoin does not necessarily translate to other cryptocurrencies, known as altcoins.

For an asset to serve as money, it must possess certain properties such as scarcity, durability, portability, fungibility, divisibility, and recognizability. Bitcoin meets many of these criteria with a fixed supply of 21 million, a decentralized ledger, and divisibility into one-hundred-million 'sats.' In contrast, altcoins often lack these properties, relying on mutable monetary policies, perpetual inflation, or venture funding, making them more akin to penny-stock warrants than bearer cash.

A recent study of over sixteen-thousand tokens launched since 2015 revealed that fewer than 4% ever recover after their price falls 75% from peak. Since the first quarter of 2024, the pattern has intensified, with almost 86% of tokens debuting at valuations north of half a billion dollars having collapsed at least 75%, and more than half having bled 90% or more. This market dynamic, where a few illiquid tokens see price surges while most fail, makes diversification attempts akin to buying multiple lottery tickets and hoping one wins. The CoinDesk 20, a fund designed to spread risk across "blue-chip" digital assets, has performed worse than bitcoin alone, indicating that investors were underwriting a single risk factor: demand for speculative narrative and crypto hype.

Bitcoin's market share has grown from roughly 40% of aggregate token capitalization at the start of 2023 to over 55% in midsummer of 2025, despite waves of ETF inflows making it easier to purchase exposure to rivals. This shift highlights that capital migrates toward assets with the deepest order book, most immutable rules, and lowest probability of terminal failure. The strategy of converting fiat into bitcoin, self-custodying it to avoid exchange risks, and waiting for the gap between government paper and a fixed-supply digital bearer asset to close has been consistently profitable. Some HODLers refer to this as "mining fiat," where time acts as leverage.

HODLing is not a universal strategy; it is specifically tuned for money, and currently, only bitcoin satisfies this definition. Altcoins, on the other hand, require constant diligence, deep market knowledge, active risk management, and a willingness to sell when the story changes. Mixing bitcoin and altcoins under a single investment philosophy is akin to storing heirloom gold and lottery tickets in the same vault and pretending they constitute a "portfolio." For long-term wealth, the playbook remains unchanged: buy bitcoin, hold the keys, and ignore the noise. Everything else is entertainment, and the house always takes a cut.