There’s a discussion on Reddit about being able to retire with 12 BTC. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/15sy8bf/retired_now_with_12_btc/
Would you consider feasible a permanent retirement with 12 BTC starting now?
The rationale:
Spending (no yield) as purchasing value increases. For 70 years max.
Expenses equaling $70k / year or more in today’s purchasing value.
Expenses per year:
- 2025 – 0.5 BTC
- 2026 – 0.8
- 2027 – 0.8
- 2028 – 0.8
- 2029 – 0.2
- 2030 – 0.3
- 2031 – 0.3
- 2032 – 0.3
- 2033 – 0.07
- 2034 to 2044 – 0.05 per year (0.5 total)
- 2044 to 2094 – 0.01 per year (0.5 total)
This would leave over 5 BTC for one time purchases of
- house of 1M+ ( 1 BTC after 2033)
- car 0.5
- kids education like supporting for study: 0.5
- apartments for rental yield: 2 BTC
- extravagant expenses: 1 BTC
Does this sound remotely realistic?
A comment:
This might be an unpopular opinion but I don’t think Bitcoin has reached a point where you can realistically even begin planning a serious retirement based on it unless you already have enough in dollar terms to retire today. You can’t make any retirement bets on future expected growth at this stage.
Yung-Split
Naturally, the calculations are way optimistic. Making a decision like that should account for a catastrophic scenario, and while I don’t think bitcoin is going to zero like some of the commenters, you have to consider it dropping in price significantly. I wouldn’t count out another price of 10k sometime in the future, and I’m not even bearish.
We’re talking about coasting on saved sats for your golden years, which might be a few decades depending on your wealth, with no other income, and increasing medical bills. It’s not unrealistic to be careful.
When it comes to retirement, people generally aim to accumulate enough wealth that their standard of living doesn’t diminish, even without a regular income from a job. So, how much is enough in terms of bitcoin to achieve this goal?
The answer to this question lies in large part on your lifestyle, expected expenses, anticipated longevity, and the potential future price of bitcoin. On one hand, if you live a frugal lifestyle, have low expected costs and anticipate living for another 20 years only, 12 BTC might be enough. On the other hand, if you have high living costs, expect a longer life span, and fear a significant drop in bitcoin price, 12 BTC might not even be close to sufficient.
First off, let’s optimistically consider 12 BTC at its current worth, which is around $29k per bitcoin. This accumulates around $348k worth of assets. If you retire right now, and live modestly off $30,000 a year, it will last 10 years. However, this calculation is missing one very crucial component – inflation. Currently, at a reported average of 2% a year and with a more realistic number being 12%, the increase in consumer price and considering future uncertainties, it is safe to increase your living costs considerably.
The point is, that even though we expect bitcoin to rise 200% per year, you’ll have to eat away at a significant portion of it during the first few years just to pay bills.
What do you think? Can you retire with 12 BTC or how many more?
Comment from @grayruby on Stacker news:
Depends when you want to retire. If you want to retire now and you need to start living off your stack you can probably get away with 15-20BTC if you can manage to live frugally and not sell more than 5 coins over the next 5 years.
Let’s play out the next 5 years.
2BTC between now and end of 2024 (halving around April)
.5BTC by end of 2025
1BTC by end of 2026
1BTC by end of 2027
.5BTC by end of 2028 (halving likely around March)
If you can get to the end of 2028 with only having spent 5 coins I think you will be good to live off 10 to 15 the rest of your life and have some to leave to your estate. Even if it’s 50 years. I think after 2028 if Bitcoin adoption continues volatility will start to dampen especially in the bear markets. I see it being more akin to stock market bears where 40% is a huge drawdown. This makes it easier for you during the lean years because if you have to only spend .1BTC or less in a bull year, maybe you only need .15BTC or .2BTC in a bear. Eventually we get to a point that price is very high and volatility is low and if you have more than 5 coins at that point you will easily live off 5M sats a year. Even as fiat erodes.