I bought my first sats in December 2013 and subsequently watched the price drop by about 80%.
I didn't have much money then, I was a self-employed surf coach, living off money earned from one surf lesson to the next.
I bought the sats with physical cash, and had to learn how to run a Bitcoin Core full node to receive my first payment. (The person selling me those sats didn't know any other wallets.)
I will never forget the experience, bumming public wifi, waiting for more than a week for the blockchain to download...
Despite my modest means, I did buy enough to make it a painfull experience watching the price go down, down and down...
That bear market forced me to learn.
And I acquired more Bitcoin by adopting it as a method of payment for @UnravelSurf in 2015.
Obviously, running a business and using Bitcoin as medium of exchange, I couldn't hodl everything, but I could save some of what I earned, and, more importantly, it taught me the true value of what I was holding. Which is NOT accurately reflected by the fiat price. Not even today. Not nearly.
When 2017 rolled around, and again turned into a brutal bear market in 2018, people who knew me and knew I used Bitcoin kept asking: "Are you selling?!?!"
The answer was: "NO!! Bitcoin is the most valuable thing I own, and the most stable thing I know of."
The moral of the story is this:
People who panic sell when the price drops, or sell when it goes up, to make 'profit' measured in fiat, only understand one thing about Bitcoin, and that's the price as its measured in some shitty fiat currency.
That's the least interesting thing about Bitcoin.
And people like me (and probably you too, if you're reading this) will be called lucky when, ten or twenty years from now, the price of Bitcoin cannot be measured in fiat, but only in how many sats you need to buy a new house.
The fact is, and the reason I share this, is to put it out there, on the record, at a time when the price is dropping and some people are again panicking, that in fact, no.
We were not lucky.
We did the work to understand what we own. And that is why we will still own it, one day, when Bitcoin goes to infinity against fiat.
The only luck I had was that I stumbled accross it.
But that's nothing compared to what it takes to hold it through multiple draw downs.
And the fact that so many people still don't get it, shows how early we still are.
I still own Bitcoin, today, and for the rest of my life, not because of luck.
But because I learnt, and am learning, to understand it.
DeepSeek increases my conviction that Bitcoin must be the hurdle rate for capital deployment. AI innovation at this speed and scale will substantially disrupt valuation metrics across industries and is not currently priced in. Those who secure a war chest of Bitcoin will be the long run winners, picking up distressed assets for pennies on the dollar. Focus on three things: AI, Bitcoin, and energy.
Meine Rede zur Vertrauensfrage.
Vielen Dank für das bisher überwältigende Feedback! 🧡
Und danke für die Resonanz auf meine Frage, was ihr der Bundesregierung zum Abschied mitgeben wollt. Wir sind ein tolles Team. :)
Mehr #Freiheit wagen!
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Watch the full film—available for FREE—below or at our website. #godblessbitcoin#Bitcoin@BrianEstes32
https://t.co/vwYGU3UHMp
Why the SEC pivot?
Because banks get crushed being forced to buy negative real yielding bonds. Selling #Bitcoin and now “Crypto” ETFs help them to monetize insane debt levels and inflation.
Banks call the shots, not government.
In the end, there is #Bitcoin and everything else