My friend came over to my house wanting help listing and selling his 10,000 ICP. Then we talked, and he changed his mind. Here's the conversation — and the mistake from my own past that makes me so sure about it. This is entertainment and my opinion, not financial advice; I hold 6,700 ICP myself.
Why he wanted to sell
He wanted out because the staking APR had dropped from around 13% to 6%, and he figured he could get 6% elsewhere — stocks, real estate — while freeing up cash for a real estate deal. I told him to hold on: he's not looking at the big picture.
The unrealized capital gains argument
Here's the key. He's sitting on a possibly asymmetric position — something I think is at least 10x undervalued, maybe far more. And the 6% staking yield pays out on the unrealized capital gains. In the US you don't pay tax on gains until you sell, so if his ICP runs from ~$29,000 today to, say, $290,000, he's earning 6% on the larger value the whole time — without selling and without the tax hit. You won't get that selling to chase a flat 6% in the stock market. Selling near the bottom to capture a smaller yield elsewhere would be locking in losses he can barely even write off, while giving up the upside. He got it: "that'd be really stupid, wouldn't it?"
The Dash mistake I never forgot
I know this because I've lived the opposite. Back in 2016–2017, as one of the larger crypto YouTubers, I put about $11,000 into Dash and promoted it heavily; it ran roughly 8x and I sold for around $77,000 in five months. I felt smart — until Dash kept going from ~$87 to over $1,000, and I felt like a moron for years. The worst thing that can happen with ICP is that you find it, exit it, and then watch it go where it could go while you're left thinking "I had 10,000 ICP and dumped it for a few thousand."
Hold your position
To me there are basically two outcomes: either the world goes so sideways that nothing matters, or we logically progress to better technology that solves real problems — in which case everyone holding ICP who can hang on does very well. There's a third path where a big company ships a competing solution, but the longer that doesn't happen, the more it favors ICP, which already has first-mover advantage five years in. I'd genuinely rather my ICP go to zero than sell it and watch it rocket. I was proud of my friend for staying open instead of getting tunnel vision. Don't fumble the bag. If you want the deeper case, watch my ICP playlist here.