We often stumble upon the term "HODL" when navigating through the cryptosphere. The acronym is short for "Hold On for Dear Life" and within cryptocurrency it essentially means that an investor keeps custody of a token rather than liquidating it - thus effectively becoming an asset holder. This may sound like an easy practice from a general perspective, but the human mind works differently amongst individuals when financial assets at stake shows signs of strengths or weaknesses - in crypto terms when investors signal bullish or bearish traits. This is moreover substantiated by the fact that cryptocurrency investments are somewhat known for being shortlived in comparison to stocks where investors typically withhold assets for longer periods of time due to shareholder rights and in hope of additional gains.
There's essentially no right or wrong answer as to whether an investor should HODL their asset(s) or not. In the end it's up to each single investor to decide what works in their favour rather than being influenced by others who may or may not know the situation of those seeking advice or guidance. There are however advantages and disadvantages to either choice. Those that don't HODL are often seeking fast profits and resort to some form of trading - this can result in positive or negative outcomes as the investor either takes a profit or loss based on their decisions. Those that do HODL oppositely realize different benefits of which staking is a popular option for many, although alternatives such as lending crypto by providing collateral, running masternodes amongst other options also exists. The resultant disadvantage for long-term holders is often the inability to generate the same economic gains in short time that regular trading brings with it. In addition, service providers such as exchanges and other platforms of curated services are increasingly requiring assets to be locked up for certain amounts of time giving investors less options to move assets around freely and thus not sell them on demand either.
Personally, I prefer to HODL for the most part as I'm not a particularly avid trader due to the associated risks as well as having limited time to track asset movements sufficiently. I tend not to HODL if there's no additional advantage apart from holding assets though and as such I have multiple tokens staked and earning interest on various platforms. I however keep an open mind towards other opportunities and have been contemplating on venturing into the masternode business recently albeit with the current elevated cryptocurrency market this remains a prospect for the time being.
