Ray Tong bought Bitcoin when it was $10 and hasn’t sold since 2014. Why doing nothing was his best trade

Ray Tong's best Bitcoin trade was not selling at the perfect price. It was holding on. He bought his first Bitcoin in 2011, when the cryptocurrency cost just $10 and he has not sold any Bitcoin since 2014.

He told Coinbase that a decision he initially made because he was unsure about the tax implications of taking profits eventually became a long-term investment strategy. Tong said, “I just kept buying and held off selling,” adding, “Which obviously helped tremendously with the 2017 bubble. So the best trade I’ve done is probably literally doing nothing.”

So instead of trying to predict every market move, Tong found value in staying invested, setting clear targets and also resisting the urge to react to every price change.

Ray Tong's Investment Strategy: $10 Bitcoin Purchase to a Long-Term Holding

Tong first came across Bitcoin in 2011 while working on a college project. Buying the cryptocurrency meant visiting a Walgreens store and sending a Western Union payment to a stranger overseas.

When Bitcoin's price quickly climbed to $30, he became more interested. After college, he traded cryptocurrency while working at Facebook, where he participated in a popular internal crypto discussion channel.

During the time of his Coinbase interview, Tong was a product manager at online fashion retailer Farfetch, building internal tools unrelated to cryptocurrency. Managing his crypto portfolio remained a separate part of his life.

His decision to hold Bitcoin began because he did not know how to handle the tax implications of selling for a profit. However, as he saw Bitcoin's potential as a store of wealth, he continued to hold, and it became a strategy.

Ray Tong Believes Doing Nothing Can Be a Winning Trade

Tong said he had not sold Bitcoin since 2014. So that meant he remained invested through the 2017 price surge which he said helped his portfolio considerably.

His experience also taught him that even investors who buy early can feel they have missed an opportunity as watching a cryptocurrency rise can create pressure to buy more, while a falling price can make selling seem urgent.

Tong's advice is to accept that no investor will get every decision right. He said, “One thing that helps is setting targets,” and gave an example, “Say Ethereum is $500 now. Set a target to sell maybe 10 percent of it when it hits $1000. And 10 more percent when it hits $1500. Having that kind of framework is really useful,” as quoted by Coinbase.

Ray Tong's Advice: Decide How Much Crypto You Can Afford to Hold

Tong believes investors should start by deciding what share of their overall investment portfolio they want to allocate to cryptocurrency.

He said, “Once you've come up with that number, you can break it down even further into three buckets — the percentage you want in Bitcoin, the percentage you want in Ethereum, and the percentage you want in all the other coins,” as quoted by Coinbase.

Research, Set Targets and Stop Chasing Every Price Move

Tong reads cryptocurrency publications such as CoinDesk and Mercari, and follows investors and analysts on Twitter to keep up with the market. Among the accounts he recommended were Three Arrows Capital founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, the Spartan Group and the Paradigm team.

He shared that, “I also follow pretty much the whole team at Paradigm – they’re brilliant and the stuff they post is super technical,” adding, “If I read their posts and don’t know what they’re talking about, it forces me to dig in.”

Tong also suggested looking at a portfolio in terms of the cryptocurrency an investor believes in most, rather than focusing only on its dollar value. The aim is to consider whether trades are increasing the amount of that asset held.