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What is HODL?

HODL is a term derived from a misspelling of "hold" that refers to buy-and-hold strategies in the context of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Understanding HODL

The term HODL (or hodl) originated in 2013 with a post to the bitcointalk forum. The price of bitcoin had surged from under $15 in January 2013 to a high of over $1,100 at the beginning of December 2013. In the 24 hours to 10:00 a.m. UTC, Dec. 18 – possibly in response to reports of a Chinese crackdown – the price of bitcoin fell 39%, from $716 to $438, according to CoinDesk's bitcoin price index.

I AM HODLING

At 10:03 a.m. UTC on Dec. 18, GameKyuubi posted "I AM HODLING," a drunk, semi-coherent, typo-laden rant about his poor trading skills and determination to simply hold his bitcoin from that point on. "I type d that tyitle twice because I knew it was wrong the first time. Still wrong. w/e," he wrote about the now-famous misspelling of "holding." "WHY AM I HOLDING? I'LL TELL YOU WHY," he continued. "It's because I'm a bad trader and I KNOW I'M A BAD TRADER. Yeah you good traders can spot the highs and the lows pit pat piffy wing wong wang just like that and make a millino bucks sure no problem bro." He concluded that the best course was to hold, since "You only sell in a bear market if you are a good day trader or an illusioned noob. The people inbetween hold. In a zero-sum game such as this, traders can only take your money if you sell." He then confessed he'd had some whiskey and briefly mused about the spelling of whisk(e)y.

Within an hour HODL had made its way into memes: the movies 300 and Braveheart provided the initial source material, but there are now countless HODL memes floating around the internet (Game of Thrones' Hodor is a favorite subject).

HODL soon became a byword for an approach to cryptocurrency investing that shuns trading based on short-term price moves. This approach mirrors GameKyuubi's rationale: novice traders are likely to botch their attempts to time the market and lose money or make less than they would simply holding onto their coin.

From: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hodl.asp

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