I thought this Bitcoin cycle was different
This is an opinion piece by Cory Tucek, CEO of Movies Plus and host of the “Bitcoin Made Simple Podcast.”
To all the plebs who came before me, listening to your tireless explanations and warnings saved me from some terrible mistakes. Thank you.
“As a Bitcoin novice, I thought this time was different.” Me (and every Bitcoiner past, present and future)
The statement above is something I said to my wife just a few weeks ago, before the carnage that brought us down to $ 20,000 again. I was sure this time was different. There would be no 70% move in bitcoin anymore. This was hyperbitcoinization, the moment bitcoin would soar past $ 100,000. This was when bitcoin was to become the world’s reserve currency.
It was … until, it was not. Don’t get me wrong, that day is still coming. It’s just a little longer than I first thought.
The purpose of this article is not to resume what all Bitcoiners who have been here before already know; there is more to serve as a warning to future Bitcoin beginners. When you enter Bitcoin, you will think, “This time is different. Thank God I came in at this price before it takes off and will never come back!” You want to think, “It’s good that bear markets and moves are just a saga.” That is, you want to think all the wrong things, and you want to think about it right away.
To give you perspective, here is my Bitcoin journey.
I first heard about Bitcoin in 2012 when a filmmaker I had worked with, Nick Mross, posted on Facebook about a documentary he directed. It was untitled at the time, but eventually became the movie “The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin”. I looked at it, considered speculating, but, like everyone else, my next thought was, “It will be hacked.”
The following year I saw the price rise to $ 100 per bitcoin, and I considered throwing $ 1000 in and taking 10 bitcoins for hell, but like everyone else I thought I was out of the game too late and would definitely lose my money. Instead, I added a few extra days to my honeymoon with that money. “Hi dear, I got us three extra nights on our honeymoon for only $ 200,000,” is what I should have said.
I told that story to Ben Prentice and the Heavily Armed Clown, and they reassured me and said that if I had bought 10 bitcoin for $ 1,000, I would have sold them for $ 1,200 and thought I was a genius. Sanitized words have never been said.
For a while afterwards, bitcoin was something I occasionally looked at, but never enough to fully understand. In 2017, the price took off, and again I was out too late – Bitcoin to $ 10,000 was too rich for my blood. It was guaranteed to crash, and this time I watched closely enough to feel justified when it crashed. It was over; bitcoin was dead, but it hung around through 2018. It did not die. Then I started looking closer to see if it could come back, and it did. In the spring of 2020, I was ready to FOMO into bitcoin.
At the beginning of the pandemic, it started with “We own a little bitcoin”, and quickly escalated to “Stop everything and buy everything we can!” I was determined to buy as much as I could before it reached its previous record high of $ 20,000 again. I did, and then the bitcoin run started. It passed $ 15,000. I was a genius! It went through $ 20,000. My IQ increased by the second!
When it broke $ 30,000, I started telling people how I was knew with 100% certainty that this will happen. I even had another great idea that no one else had thought of, “I’m going to start a podcast! About Bitcoin! “The podcast network” Bitcoin Made Simple “is the only good thing that comes out of this phase, not because I am good at podcasting or understanding Bitcoin, but because the interviews I have done made me realize more how little I knew about Bitcoin, and how much I had to learn.
Then Elon Musk invested. I knew I was smart, but now I was even smarter than the only guy who sent rockets into space that are not shaped like male genitals.
Bitcoin broke $ 40,000. I tried to get everyone I knew to invest before it took off and blew through $ 100,000. My streaming platform, Movies Plus, had just brought in investors, and I convinced them to make the entire investment in bitcoin, because ” To the Moon! ”
Bitcoin broke through $ 50,000. I was so ahead of the game that I made Hal Finney look like a noob.
Then it broke $ 60,000. It was Satoshi and me. We had done this together, just the two of us.
Then suddenly it went back a bit. I confidently told people that it was an expected downturn because this one time I saw someone post a chart with an arrow. “Just look at S2F (stock-to-flow), it’s just up from here and out.”
Then the bottom fell out. It crashed down to $ 30,000! What happened?! All this must be Musk’s fault. What an idiot. The day it crashed, I even sent a text message to Guy Swann saying, “So I got my bear market badge today?” I literally blushed when I wrote it. I was so naive. I could just as easily have tattooed: “Hey, I’m new to Bitcoin. Here’s how to fix it, ”on my forehead.
I spent the summer nights of 2021 on Twitter Spaces raging against the powers that be, pushing everyone to fight for freedom, but I noticed that I slowly stopped talking about how much I knew about Bitcoin. The realization was that I did not know anything about Bitcoin. I needed to shut up and learn. That’s when I thought I finally understood Matt Odell’s great quote, “Stay humble and stack rate.” I was back to being humble, back to just stacking bets and learning.
Then bitcoin started to come back and I thought, “Wow, I’m lucky, we only had a 50% dip.” Bitcoin was on its way to its record high level, so I “came to zero” and went all in on bitcoin.
When we came back over $ 60,000, we all knew this was it. This was the moment we had been waiting for. Hell, look at the tweet which I sent right at the top of the price action.
No one saw what was coming. (Except for HODL Magoo, and you can hear him explain it in this podcast.) The price was lowered again. It fell and fell, and landed in the area where we were stuck all summer 2021. “It’s all right,” I thought. “The task has not changed, and I still have not had to experience the maximum pain.”
At this point I started to take my own advice: just invest money that you can leave untouched for four plus years (sorry, “get on zero” gang), keep your head down, find ways to smash it in “fiat” mining World to increase your cash flows, and stack bitcoin. Or as Odell puts it, “Remain humble and stable.”
It finally sank in: Bitcoin is a test of many things, but it really tests your ability to remain humble. Being humble goes a long way in life. I’m on a journey towards trying to be more humble in all aspects of life, thanks to Bitcoin.
I was happy to be humble, but even more happy that I did not have to deal with the 70% plus features because “This time was different.” Until recently, when this time began to resemble the past.
I never understood why the “get humble” part was so important until recently. If you wander around Twitter and notice the emotions, almost everyone is down. They have taken every blow they can take, and it feels like everyone is retreating into the corner. Everyone, that is, except for the real plebs who have been here before and are not going anywhere. Follow their leadership. That’s why it’s so important to stay humble, it helps you keep your chin up when it’s hard.
Bitcoin is not about me, and it’s not about you. It is an opportunity to escape the clutches of the fiat world. It will not happen on your timeline and it will not wait until you are ready. It will only continue to produce blocks, one by one.
So if you are new to this room, listen to other plebs, those who have been through hell and are still standing. They are the ones to listen to. If they are trying to sell you a currency other than bitcoin, block and move on. If they seem too “toxic”, they are honestly just trying to look after your best interests. Ask questions, learn from their mistakes, and most importantly… be humble and stack your efforts because the next time will not be different from the previous one – until one day it is not.
This is a guest post by Cory Tucek. Expressed opinions are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.
