Thread

image Bloomberg's calling it "Bitcoin fatigue." Fourth annual loss. First one without a scandal. No exchange collapse. No founder arrested. No rug pull. Just... boredom. The tourists are leaving. Good. You see, the tourists never understand: the boring parts are the feature, not the bug. Every technology follows the same arc. Hype. Crash. Silence. Then dominance. But between crash and dominance? There's a long, quiet stretch where nothing seems to happen. That's the dip. That's where most people quit. Not because they failed, because they got tired of waiting. I watched this in 2014. In 2018. In 2022. The headlines screamed death. The builders kept building. The difference between a tourist and a settler isn't conviction. It's tolerance for boredom. Tourists need dopamine hits. Daily gains. Green candles. Excitement. Settlers understand that positioning happens in the quiet. The same information is available to everyoneβ€”the Fed's moves, ETF flows, macro headwinds. But information without patience is just noise. Risk isn't volatility. Risk is a function of information and control. If you know why you're here, a down year isn't a crisis. It's a filter. Bitcoin didn't change. The 21 million cap didn't change. The code didn't change. What changed is who's left. The question isn't whether Bitcoin will recover. The question is whether you'll still be here when it does.

Replies (6)

πŸ’― Best thing I’ve read in a long time. I remember running a node in January 2019 and sending my first Lightning ⚑️ transaction around the world in seconds. I could not sleep and a few of us were up all night zapping new friends on different continents. Bitcoin had crashed to about $3500 a month prior. I realized I had asymmetric info. Tied myself to the mast and rode it out. Sideways chop in late 2019 was boring πŸ˜‘ AF and I loved it
I was just learning how to run a node at that time. I remember vividly riding that wave from sub $1k to $20k back to $3k so well. My conviction never dipped though, because I was learning more and more every day and seeing how Bitcoin just kept working day after day regardless of the market panicking. Such an exciting time! I was in the red for most of that next cycle but I've never been in the red since. I think all Bitcoiners have to go through something similar to test their metal and make sure they learn to focus on education, not trying to get rich quick. - Zach
Do you remember the website called Tradeblock dot com I think that was the name. It showed the mempool. You could see the dollar amount of transactions moving from one wallet to the other in the lower right hand corner. I checked it daily during that run up to $20k and then down to $3k. I just kept seeing transactions and blocks being mined. Between seeing that live feed of bitcoin transactions, running a node, using different wallets to move coins and then getting in on the birth of The Lightning Network really made me a believer I guess. The volatility of the price of bitcoin (the asset) is just part of the monetization experience I guess. But once you interact and become one with bitcoin (the network) and different layers -> zen πŸ§˜β€β™‚οΈ
True that technically parts of the code have changed, that's always been true. But as Satoshi said "The nature of Bitcoin is such that once version 0.1 was released, the core design was set in stone for the rest of its lifetime." You can still use ancient versions of core and they still work. You aren't forced to use any code you don't want to and because of how Bitcoin works, any fundamental changes to the code sufficient enough to actually alter the protocol, it would create a new chain and not actually alter Bitcoin itself. -Zach πŸ§™