What I WISH someone told me in 2018 when I first bought Bitcoin

Let’s time travel back to 2018. The Bitcoin price is up and down around $6,700. About exactly 10% of where it is today. One10enth. I f bought my first Bitcoin in the tail end of 2017 at a price of 12,600. Exactly 10% onetenth of the recent all-time high back in October. I am down 47% on my investment. Here is what I wish I could go back and tell myself back then if I could time travel. So I’d go back and I would say, “Hey, first, congrats on buying your first Bitcoin late 2017, early 2018.” And I would say, “Yeah, but but I bought it at 12,600 and now I’m down 47%.” My advice to myself would be, “Well, you should buy more Bitcoin and hold on to it for as long as conceivably possible.” To which I would respond, “But wait, I’m down 47%. Uh, how does that work?” And I would say, “Oh, you need to go look back at the history of Bitcoin. This is completely normal. It does this every so often.” At which point I would say, “But wait, when I look at the chart, I don’t see it doing this.” And that’s where the big revelation is. You have to look at the chart on a logarithmic scale in order to see those ups and downs because in the early days, those ups and downs are so small. When you look on it on a standard scale, you don’t see it. So when you look at the price of Bitcoin over time, what you see is what looks like a completely flat line for the first five to seven years and then it starts chopping up and down because you can’t see the scale. You don’t see that huge price spike up to $32 and then the drop down to $2. You don’t see the huge price rise up to $1,200 back down to $92. You don’t see the huge price rise. You barely see the huge price rise up to 17 or uh $19,000 down to $3,200. So, all you can really see when you’re back there, you can only see the most recent price action. And the most recent price action in 2017 is the price went up to $19,000 and came down ultimately to $3,200, but again, I bought it when it was 12,600. I tried to buy it when it was $15,500, but my bank rejected the transaction and by the time I actually could get it to go through, the price had actually dropped to 12,600. So lucky me, it rejected my first expensive transaction which was only for $5,000 a bitcoin. So you know for me not enough in the grand scheme to matter. Although you know fast forward to today it’s like a third of a bitcoin versus you know 40% of a bitcoin or whatever it is or you know 30% 25% etc. Um so actually to kind of uh you know it is real money if you forward to the the present. Uh but anyway, so uh my first $5,000 Bitcoin purchase got rejected. When I actually was able to get the bank to take it, the price had dropped to 12,600. Okay. So I would go back and I would say, “Look, you need to zoom in. You need to zoom in on the early days of Bitcoin and realize what it’s doing is exactly what it always does.” And I would say, “Yeah, but I’m worried. I’m worried that I’m at the tail end of the party, that I’m late to the party, that I missed the boat, that Bitcoin has run its course, that the huge price rise everybody got excited about, which was up to $19,000 in 2017, was the last one. And I would tell myself, “No, no, no. You’re getting this wrong. Go do exactly what I recommend to people now. Go read VJ Boyat’s book, The Bullish Case for Bitcoin, which I think back then was just a essay, but ultimately was transformed into a book. So, I guess the book didn’t exist, but the essay did. Anyway, it outlines in a really good way why assets, high growth assets, go through these price cycles. It’s not unique to Bitcoin. It’s uh the same price cycles happen with all high growth assets. So, I would tell myself to go read that and understand the Gartner hype cycle and the effect it does has on prices. And I would tell myself that what it’s doing is completely normal. Of course, I would be skeptical because I’d say, h, you know, not sure I believe that. But the only advice somebody really needed to give me back in 2018 was buy as much Bitcoin as you can and hold on to it for as long as conceivably possible. Now wait, you’re saying that’s exactly the same advice you’ve been giving since day one. And the answer is yes, because it’s exactly the advice I wish somebody had given me because again, I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand back in 2017 and 2018 that p the prices of even the best performing assets go up and down like that. And I didn’t understand why. I didn’t understand the buying behavior that leads to prices getting overheated in the short term and then undersshooting the fundamental underlying value and then ultimately a few years go by and it overshoots it for a period of time. And of course you don’t know what the underlying fundamental value is cuz if you did you could only buy it at that price. Uh but we don’t know. What I do know is it’s on sale right now. Bitcoin is absolutely positively on sale. Uh James Czech this morning said if you look at the entire price history of Bitcoin against numerous different metrics, Bitcoin is higher uh 85% of the time and lower 15% of the time. So essentially you’re buying it in the bottom 15% of the best prices. So it’s like watching a price of something go on sale on a sale rack and somebody comes along and says, you know, that that thing only sells for less than that 15% of the time. 85% of the time, everyone who buys that thing has to pay more for it than the price you can buy it for right now. Well, you don’t know if the very last sale of the season already happened, which means the price you’re staring at is the cheapest you’re ever going to buy it. And if that’s the case, obviously you should buy it. Um, and if even if that’s not the case, you should absolutely buy it because you have no way of knowing. Just like we have no way of knowing if the current price of Bitcoin is the cheapest it will ever be. We don’t know. We just have no way of knowing that. We just know Bitcoin 85% of the time is more expensive relative uh to major metrics. Um and only 15% of the time is cheaper, which means the the odds are 85% in your favor buying it now and not in your favor for waiting. So um so anyway, I wish I could go back and tell myself that look, this is normal. What Bitcoin’s doing is totally expected. It did this after a big price rise in 2011. It did this after a big price rise in 2013. It is now doing it after a big price rise in 2017. Now, back then we didn’t have the same history we have now. Uh now we have the history of this is Bitcoin’s fifth major bare market, meaning major meaning, you know, greater than 50% price draw down, etc. This is the fifth one. Uh now it’s only down, you know, I don’t know, 45 42 43 whatever percent now, but back when it was uh down to $60,000. That was more than 50% because 126 down to 60 is greater even though it lasted very, you know, very short period of time. It is a greater price drop than 50%. So this is the fifth time Bitcoin has done that. Back then in 2018, it was only the third time. So my my my historical self would have probably been a little bit more um uh skeptical saying, “Hey, this has only done it twice.” Uh not sure I want to trust that for the third time. Uh now it’s done it four times. This is the fifth time. It’s, you know, kind of a thing. Um, and because we have VJ Boyat’s book, The Bullish case for Bitcoin, we can understand why the price of things do exactly what they’re doing and why Bitcoin goes through this cycle and why all um high upside assets go through cycles exactly like this. We we know that now that book is available and I think uh VJ Boyati is doing an update to that book, The Bullish Case for Bitcoin. I I forgot to check whether the update is out already, but uh I think it was supposed to come out this year or something like that, but I haven’t seen it on Twitter, so I’m not sure if it’s out yet. Uh but anyway, the old version is still just as good and has all the same information. Uh so anyway, I would tell my 2018 self, buy more Bitcoin. I would tell them what Bitcoin’s price is doing is totally normal. I would tell them one day, the day will come when the price will be 10 times its current price and everybody will be complaining that it’s way down. And of course, I wouldn’t have believed my former self. I would have said, “What? You’re telling me in the future Bitcoin’s price is going to be 6768 69,000 $1,000 and everybody’s going to be moping around because, you know, the price is uh down and it’s on sale and all this sort of stuff.” And the answer would be yes. That’s exactly what the future had in store for everybody. The price is, you know, 67 68 69,000 and everybody’s complaining about a bare market. So anyway, my my advice is the same as always. Buy as much Bitcoin as you can. Hold on to it for as long as conceivably possible. The same advice that held up great in 2012 and 2014 and 2015 and 2016 and 2018 and 2019 and 2020 and 2022 and 2023 and 2024. Same advice today. Buy as much Bitcoin as you can. Hold on to it for as long as conceivably possible. In the long term, it won’t matter. You won’t care exactly what price you paid for it. Time in the market beats time in the market every time. And so just buy as much Bitcoin as you can. Everything that’s happening is normal. Nothing’s wrong with Bitcoin. The price uh behavior of Bitcoin is completely consistent with with everything it’s done historically, including the 2018 bare market, which I live through, and including the 2022 bare market, which I live through. And this one is exactly the same, just not as bad. If you think this is bad, well, those two were a lot worse. Bitcoin was a lot earlier. It was a lot more volatile. And the things that were happening to Bitcoin, including the bankruptcy of F FTX and a gazillion other things, were much more directly related to Bitcoin. Right now, it’s just, you know, world events have everybody skittish and Bitcoin is the only thing you can buy and sell on a weekend and, you know, on a whim and it’s always liquid and, you know, you know, and a lot of people are still up on their investments, so they feel like they can liquidate it when they can’t do that with their house. So, um, anyway, same advice as always. Buy as much Bitcoin as you can, hold on to it for as long as conceivably possible. Eventually, you will be absolutely glad you did. It’s that simple.