Bitcoin: Push Through the Storm to Get to the Clear Blue Sky

We've just endured a pretty much direct hit of a typhoon here in Shanghai. It honestly wasn't that bad within the city. However, Typhoon Lekima was a lot worse in surrounding Zhejiang Province.

As you can see from the picture below on the left, we were fairly close to a disaster in the city limits. A couple more inches of rain and the Suzhou Creek would have overflowed its banks, causing god knows what kind of damage throughout the city.

Instead, the rain basically just kept us all inside for about 36 hours, which made Sunday all the better! Everyone was outside enjoying a late summer breezy morning after going stir-crazy all weekend long.

Of course, the volatile weather got me thinking about the volatile markets. Both crypto and the old-fashioned bourses have been going up and down like bobbleheads these past couple of days.

As usual, crypto traders keep nattering on about price. Will it be $12k tomorrow or is it going to $10k? Will we ever see $20k again? That line of reasoning just makes me want to scream: 😤🤬🤯

Who cares about the price of Bitcoin?

Anyone that tells you that they know what is going to happen in terms of the price of any financial asset is neither being honest with you nor with themselves. The cold, hard facts of the bitcoin situation at this moment in time is quite simple. At the $11,400 per bitcoin price level, the Bitcoin price is up almost exactly 300% on the year. So let's be honest with ourselves here. The $7600 level for bitcoin is still a double for the year. If you had told me on New Year’s Day that bitcoin would double in 2019, I would have been extremely happy. There’s no reason for me to change that response now.

What other asset class is up even 2x this year?

The investment thesis for buying bitcoin right now is still very much intact. An investment in bitcoin is an investment in a new asset class that is almost completely uncorrelated to traditional financial assets. As such, it is the perfect addition to almost any investment portfolio. That impetus only becomes more true as systematic risk across global financial markets increases with each passing day.

Where do I think the markets go from here?

Prices could go up. Prices could go down. What I do expect is that 1 BTC will be worth significantly more in USD terms in 2025 than it is today. And that is the only consideration one needs to make if one is an “investor”... The shorter the timeframe, the more oriented towards “gambler” one becomes. I, personally, am not very comfortable gambling. That's because when I gamble, I usually lose. But when I invest, I historically have a much higher success rate.

I like Arthur Hayes a lot. That dude is one incredibly smart guy. But I don’t use BitMEX. Never have. Never will. The whole idea of that platform makes me about as comfortable as Arthur looks in this picture from his recent summer vacation.

That's a great view, but that is no comfy couch. That's for sure.

Which brings me back to the recent Shanghai typhoon. 28 people died and there were lots of dramatic rescues that made for highly shareable videos on WeChat. But in the end the typhoon, with gusts of wind up to 130 mph and the threat of buckets of rain equalling more than a foot, was a whole lot less worse than expected.

Similarly, when it comes to almost all financial markets and adoption of paradigm-shifting technology, we most definitely have to go through bad times in order to get to the good times. In fact, it's those bad times that let us appreciate the good times all the more. That we've been moving mostly sideways in this $10k-$12k range for bitcoin, with the alts slowly running out of gas at the same time, is probably a good indicator for the long-term health of this game-changing industry. Right now, we need to put in the work, both from a technical analysis perspective and just from a development perspective. We really don't deserve all-time highs yet.

As @khaleelkazi just pointed out in his SteemLeo #4 podcast, sometimes parabolic price moves distract us from what we need to be doing as an industry.

It may just be better for it to rain like cats and dogs outside, leaving us with no other choice but to #BUIDL for a better tomorrow. When the storm is over, you won't believe how blue the sky can be!

Have a great weekend, everybody!

PEACE ✌🏼