Knowing When to Come Inside: The Plan Nobody Writes
Tuga comes in at dusk. Not because she is told to, and not because anything has gone wrong — she simply has a rule about the light, and the rule exists before the evening does. Cats without that rule are the ones out at 2am in the rain, making a decision they are in no state to make.
Almost everything written about bitcoin is about getting in. Buy this way, hold through that, secure it like this. I have written a great deal of it myself.
Nearly nothing is written about coming inside, which is strange, because every single person who has ever profited from this asset did so by eventually selling or spending some of it. Wealth that is never converted into anything is a number you were briefly responsible for.
1. Why Nobody Plans the Exit
Three reasons, and they're worth naming because they're all a bit embarrassing.
It sounds like disloyalty. In a community built on conviction, discussing selling feels like admitting doubt. So people who have thought carefully about it mostly stay quiet, and beginners conclude nobody does it.
It's harder than buying. The buy decision has one variable — when. The sell decision has price, amount, tax, timing, what the money is for, and a strong emotional pull in both directions.
Optimism costs nothing until it does. Not planning feels free right up to the moment a decision is required at speed, and then it is the most expensive gap in the whole plan.
2. Selling Is Not One Thing
Most of the confusion dissolves once you separate the reasons, because they have completely different logic:
Spending it. Using bitcoin as money — the flat, the trip, the thing you were saving for. This was always the point. It requires no market view whatsoever.
Rebalancing. The position grew until it's a larger share of your wealth than you intended. Trimming back to target is risk management, not a prediction.
Life happening. A house, a medical cost, a business, a year off. The asset did its job: it stored value until you needed it.
Thesis broken. Something you said would need to be true turned out false. This is the only one that's actually about bitcoin, and the only one that requires you to have written down what would change your mind.
Notice that three of those four have nothing to do with the price. That's the most useful thing in this article.
3. Write the Rules While It's Daylight
The whole trick is deciding before you're in a state where deciding is hard — which means both euphoria and panic, not just panic.
A workable structure:
A purpose, named. "This position exists to fund X." A deposit, an education, a freedom number, a retirement. A position with no purpose can never be complete, which means it can never be right to sell any of it, which is how people ride full cycles up and back down.
A ladder, not a moment. Nobody calls the top. So decide in advance to sell portions at intervals — by price levels, or by portfolio percentage, or simply by calendar. Selling a fifth of a position at five different prices guarantees you won't get the best outcome and guarantees you won't get the worst one either.
A floor you never touch. Decide the amount that isn't for sale at any price, and hold it separately, in different custody, so that "selling" is never a question about the whole stack.
Check the tax rules where you live, before you sell, not after. Treatment varies enormously by country and can change the optimal size and timing of a sale considerably. One conversation with someone qualified, once, is cheap.
4. The Trap on Both Sides
Two failure modes, and they're mirror images.
Never selling anything, ever. The position becomes an identity rather than a tool. Cycles pass. The money never becomes a life. There are people who were rich on paper three separate times and still live exactly as they did, which is a fine outcome if it was chosen and a sad one if it wasn't.
Selling the floor in a panic. The drawdown arrives, the reasonable case for giving up arrives with it, and the part that was never meant to be sold goes with everything else. This is why the floor needs to be physically separate — a different wallet, ideally a more inconvenient one. Friction is a feature at 3am.
The plan protects you from both. That's its actual job: not maximising the outcome, but removing the two ways you'd wreck it.
5. The Version I'd Suggest to a Beginner
Not advice, just the simplest thing that works:
Decide what share of the position is never for sale, and move it to the most inconvenient custody you have.
Decide what the rest is for — a specific thing, written down.
Set a rule for converting it: price levels, a percentage per year, or on reaching the purpose. Any rule beats none.
Re-read it once a quarter, and change it only from the written plan, never from the chart.
That's the whole discipline. It takes twenty minutes and it's the difference between an asset and a habit.
The Point
Tuga's rule about the light isn't caution and it isn't a forecast about the weather. It's a decision made in advance, in daylight, by a version of her that wasn't cold, wet, or being chased by the neighbour's dog.
You are going to come inside eventually. Everyone does — by choice, by need, or by panic. The only question is whether you decided the terms while the sun was still up.
Decide when you're coming in before it gets dark. 🐾⚡
Nothing here is financial or tax advice — I feed a cat and write about Bitcoin, which qualifies me for neither. Tax treatment of disposals varies enormously by country; check yours before acting. Do your own research.
Tags: Bitcoin, Investing, Crypto Market, Risk Management, Cryptocurrency
⚠️ On the $86M Ledger drains: Ledger says it's linked to a reseller, not a device-wide exploit. Still unconfirmed.
Either way, the rule holds: buy direct from the manufacturer. Never a reseller. Never used. A pre-filled recovery sheet is the theft. 🐾⚡
Tugathecat.com
