What do diamond hands and paper hands mean?

Diamond hands meaning is an investor who holds on through big price swings instead of selling. Paper hands is the opposite, someone who sells at the first sign of a decline. Both phrases are slang that moved from stock forums into crypto.

What does diamond hands mean in crypto?

Dictionary.com defines diamond hands as an investor who keeps holding despite downturns or losses, waiting for a future rise. River's glossary applies it to people who hold assets such as bitcoin through volatile markets, even under pressure to sell, and links it to HODL.

Dictionary.com notes the term can be praise for patience or criticism for stubbornness, especially when an asset is likely to keep losing value.

What does paper hands mean in crypto?

CoinGecko describes paper hands as an investor who sells at the first sign of turmoil out of fear of losses. The phrase is meant to mock early sellers as easily panicked. It suggests their grip is as weak as paper.

CoinGecko notes one twist. When a community posts paper hands out, it is usually cheering, because it implies the nervous sellers have left.

Where did diamond hands come from and what does the emoji mean?

Dictionary.com says diamond hands is thought to have started on Reddit's r/WallStreetBets, used there since at least 2018 and popular by 2019. It reached a wider audience in 2021 through meme stocks, shares that surged after online trends. CoinGecko ties the spread of paper hands to the GameStop short squeeze that year, when early sellers missed a later price jump.

Know Your Meme records the terms spreading to crypto communities, including a February 2021 Dogecoin forum post aimed at paper hands.

Diamond hands is usually written as a gem stone emoji followed by the raising hands emoji. Dictionary.com notes the emoji version became common around 2019. Know Your Meme adds that a roll of toilet paper emoji is used for paper hands. In May 2021, Elon Musk posted that Tesla had diamond hands using the emoji, which Dictionary.com took as a reference to Bitcoin.

Diamond hands vs paper hands, which is better?

Neither label says anything reliable about whether holding or selling is the right call. Diamond hands can look wise after a recovery and costly after a collapse, when the same holder might be called a bag holder. Paper hands can look weak in a rally and sensible before a crash.

The terms are mainly social pressure. Communities, including those around meme coins, use them to encourage people to keep holding, which can benefit those who want prices supported. Decisions based on your own research and circumstances are a different thing from decisions based on a forum's mood.