"It's not a loss until you sell" is not half as smart as those people repeating it again and again think

It's one of those phrases that get repeated a lot here. If someone complains that they're down X%, someone will surely come and say "just HODL! it's not a loss until you sell!" and feel very smart about it. And sure, you shouldn't panic sell at a loss as soon as there's a dip. But you can still make a loss, even if you don't sell.

I'm not even exclusively talking about scams and rug pulls that are completely worthless now. If you hold a ton of Bitconnect, Titan or Squid - yeah, you made a loss if you bought before the crash, it will never go back to former heights. But also other coins - look at this historical snapshot from the bull run in 2013. Still holding any of the top 3 would be great of course, but look at those others. If you bought Peercoin, Namecoin, Quark, Megacoin, Feathercoin, Primecoin... back then and held, you probably won't be very happy today, and you have, in fact, made a loss if you're not delusional - and those were top 10 coins!

Sure, if you want to see it like that, you haven't made a loss until you sell. But in many cases, it is very likely, or almost guaranteed, that you will make a loss whenever you decide to sell, as the token will never be as valuable as when you bought again. Saying this again and again just gives people false hope and might bring them to hold on to some worthless tokens while they fall further and further in price. Think about whether it really applies before you repeat it attempting to farm some moons the next time.