What is HODL?

What is HODL? It's crypto slang for holding onto your coins through price swings instead of selling, born from a 2013 typo of "hold" in a Bitcoin forum post. It matters because it captures a whole investment approach: ignore short-term panic and ride out volatility rather than trying to time the market. People later turned it into a backronym, "Hold On for Dear Life," which fits the mood during crashes. A trader who bought Bitcoin at $60,000 in 2021 and kept it through the drop to $16,000 in 2022, without selling, was HODLing. The term now applies to any crypto asset, not just Bitcoin, and gets used both sincerely and as a joke about ignoring bad news.