Buy the Dip

About

Buy the Dip, sometimes written Buy the Fucking Dip and abbreviated to BTFD, is a catchphrase and piece of financial advice widely shared among investors at moments when the market is trending downwards. It exhorts participants in the market to double down on an asset that is doing poorly, buying more of it in hopes that the price will recover and they will eventually make a profit. During the early 2010s alongside the rise of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the phrase became a common slang expression among the crypto community whenever various coins dipped in value. It is also used similarly in meme stock circles online.

Origin

The exact origin of "buy the dip" is unknown, but it's been a catchphrase among investors long before the invention of the internet and its use online. Articles in publications covering the financial markets such as Forbes and The Wall Street Journal make reference to “buying the dip” in headlines dating as far back as the 1990s.^[1] With the proliferation of cryptocurrency and internet-based communities of investors in the early 2010s, however, buy the dip became a frequent motto repeated by people whenever the value of something dropped, particularly when it was expected to eventually recover.

One of its earliest online uses comes from an entry on February 28th, 2011, to Urban Dictionary^[2] by user Cocomaan, who attributed the rise of the phrase to the “quantitative easing” period, in which an easy money policy conducted by the Federal Reserve encouraged investors to buy even when the market was doing poorly. The entry for "Buy the Fucking Dip" is defined as:

To purchase a stock or commodity during a price decline. Became popular during the post-housing bubble quantitative easing trend, where stocks were guaranteed to rise until a new dawn of American capitalism magically occurred or, alternatively, the money supply exploded resulting in uncontrollable inflation.

Spread

Over the following years throughout the 2010s, the expression became increasingly popularized among crypto enthusiasts. For example, in communities like Reddit's /r/bitcoinmemes, “buy the dip” was a common phrase in the early, volatile days of the cryptocurrency (examples shown below).

In 2020, with the explosion of meme stocks and the cryptocurrency world gaining more mainstream acceptance, buy the dip became the subject of memes shared by prominent investing communities such as /r/wallstreetbets (example seen below).

In early 2022, amid a major downturn in cryptocurrency values, buy the dip memes were widely shared by those still committed to cryptocurrency all around the internet. El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, announced in a highly memed post that the Central American country had “bought the dip” and doubled down on the position he had staked out as the sole country on Earth to accept Bitcoin as legal tender (seen below).^[3]

We just bought the dip.150 new coins!El Salvador now holds 700 coins.#Bitcoin🇸🇻

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) September 20, 2021

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References