> But if you bought BTC and held it--at any high or low, for any significant amount of time--you made a lot of money (either realized or unrealized, that doesn't matter).

This isn't entirely true. If you bought Bitcoin anywhere near the height of the late-2013 mania (which is of course a lot of people, since that's why the price was so high), you lost half your value within a month or two and then had to hold until 2017 before you started to break even. You lost 70% if you held for a year and a half and gave up.

The market from June to November 2011 was even more disastrous, falling from $29 to almost $2 and not recovering until February 2013.

These are obviously cherry-picked dates, and you'd clearly have made a profit eventually if you kept holding, but it's still very possible to hold Bitcoin for years and lose money.

Right. You would had to have bought and held until today for my claim to be true (and it is only true at the time I write this). But it's still the case that you could have bought in any peak or trough in the periods you're referring to and still have significant realized/unrealized gains right now.

Sure it’s true, but it’s a tautology to say it when something is at an all-time high.

What's your point? I basically say that in my posts.

The difficult part is holding through the bear period. I'm pretty sure not so many investors can do that.

Correct. The most difficult part of trading/investing/betting (call it what you want) is often confronting your own tolerance for risk and uncertainty.