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Panic in the streets, Bitcoin just tanked over the weekend down under 75K,
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officially more than 40% off last year's all-time high. Now we're back up to like 78K,
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but of course everyone's still freaking out. And guess what? It might drop even more from here.
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Could we hit 70K? 65K? Could we revisit the 200 week moving average, which
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ironically sits at the 58K gang meme? Who knows? All I know is, I genuinely do not care,
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because my time horizon is measured in years, and if yours is measured in days, weeks, or months,
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you're definitely not going to make it. That's why this video is about conviction,
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and why outsourcing your conviction to someone else guarantees you'll panic at the worst possible
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times and never hold anything long enough for it to matter. My channel is not about predicting
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Bitcoin's price, but maybe that's a little bit confusing because sometimes I talk about why I think
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Bitcoin's price is going to go up. But make no mistake, that's never about the short term,
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or really even the medium term. Everything I talk about with Bitcoin is through a long-term lens.
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I am never predicting short-term price. I'm talking about where I believe this is heading over years.
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For example, last week I did a video about the theory that gold runs first, and Bitcoin comes next.
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And since gold's been running wild for a while now, the theory goes. At some point,
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Bitcoin's going to catch up and pass everything that gold has done in the last 12 months.
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But more than one person commented over the weekend that that video had aged poorly after three days.
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Oh yeah, it aged oh so poorly. If you have the time horizon of a f***ing dung beetle,
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but maybe that's on me, and maybe I need to be more clear when I said gold runs first and
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Bitcoin comes next, I didn't mean one on Friday the next on Saturday, and I definitely didn't mean
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I guarantee there won't be a 5% drop over the weekend. I meant, you better learn to stomach
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of the volatility, or you're going to miss out on the entire party when it finally does happen,
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because the problem with people who comment things like that, or maybe most people in general,
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is that they are looking for someone else to tell them what Bitcoin's price is going to do,
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especially in the next day, week, or month. And if that's what you're looking for,
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you've definitely come to the wrong channel. The goal of my channel is to help people learn how to
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not outsource their conviction, but to better understand and grow their own conviction in Bitcoin.
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So they can stack smarter, hold through the volatility, and actually participate in the
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tremendous asymmetric upside that Bitcoin represents in the long term. If you're new here to this
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channel, you're watching The Sad Stacker Show, which is a Bitcoin show for people who think deeper
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about money. I'm your host, my name is John aka The Sad Stacker, so hit the subscribe button
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if you want to learn how to stack smarter and grow your conviction in Bitcoin. But it turns out
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most people don't want to actually put in the work to study and understand something.
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They just want to know what's going up next, when should I buy it, when should I sell it,
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which of course is a trader mindset, not an investor mindset, and definitely not a hotler mindset.
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As if you outsource your conviction to someone else, you will spend all your time being anxious,
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insecure, and frustrated with your positions. If the price goes down, you'll be thinking,
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oh, that stupid person who told me to buy was wrong. You'll have the urge to sell and cut your
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losses, or you're desperately waiting for it to catch a small bounce back up so you can get
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out without too much damage, but you'll have no idea whether it's going to go down more first
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or when the hell to try to get out. And even if you buy something and it goes up, you'll be trying
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to figure out, oh, should I sell it now? Is this the top? Will it keep going up? Please somebody
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else tell me the future. You're constantly looking for someone else to tell you what to do,
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because you never knew why you bought it in the first place. You were just letting your little
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lizard brain run the show, which we call gambling. It's the same thing as strolling into the casino
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and asking the dealer if you should put it all on red or black. Might as well do another six leg
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draft Kings parlay on the Super Bowl, because some paid shill on YouTube said this one's a sure thing.
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If you never put in the time or put in the work, you'll never grow conviction, and having no
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conviction creates constant insecurity. You don't feel confident even if it goes in your direction,
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you just feel anxious. You're watching the price instead of studying and understanding the fundamentals.
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Price is the least interesting thing about Bitcoin. Price is simply an exchange rate. And if you
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can't see that simple short term fluctuations in an exchange rate mean absolutely nothing
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about the fundamentals of Bitcoin or its long term path, then you're not going to make it.
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When you're a slave to chart watching and outsourcing your conviction to other people,
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there's no agency in that. You're not even in control of your own choices.
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Maybe you're subconsciously outsourcing it to someone else on purpose because you're too afraid
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of being the one who made the decision and got it wrong. You don't actually want to win. You just
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want someone else to blame when you lose. But more importantly than that, you'll never buy and hold
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anything long enough to ever really see the true gains show up. So it reminds me when you see people
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who are like, oh, Bitcoin's $100,000 I wish I would have bought Bitcoin at a dollar or $100 or $1000
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dollars. That would be amazing. And you can be like, yeah, we always do that. But you can't go back
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in time. So it's 40% off its high today. We want you to buy some now. And of course,
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they'll probably say, oh, no, it's way too expensive. I think I already missed it. I can't buy it at
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$78,000. Hey, dummy, you don't understand it at all. You have no conviction. If you bought it at one
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dollar, you would have sold it at $2. And then spent the rest of your life bending yourself and
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do a pretzel to psychologically defend the stupidity of your decision. When you have no conviction,
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every rally is just going to look like an exit opportunity. So you'll sell and you'll take profits,
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not realizing the two most important things. Number one, exiting theot for Bitcoin is how you take
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profits, not the other way around. And number two, like I just talked about in my interview that
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just came out with James Check, historically, the most significant portion of Bitcoin's gains come in
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just 10 total trading days out of the year. Just 10. You miss those 10 days and you take the best
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performing asset in the world and you turn it into a loser. That means 355 days out of the year,
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you're twiddling your thumbs, watching Bitcoin go sideways or down. And if you have a low conviction,
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Bitcoin will always shake out the weekends and the tourists and punish anyone with high time
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preference. Then it will reward the patients of those who spend their time studying and growing
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their conviction and touching grass during the boring and bare markets. Because when it finally
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rips, that conviction is rewarded handsomely. Until you build that conviction, you will never hold
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anything long enough for it to matter. And that doesn't just apply to Bitcoin. That applies to stocks
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or businesses or real estate or whatever you want to buy. Bitcoin just exposes weak conviction
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faster because of the volatility. Any tourists who ventures over from traditional assets into Bitcoin
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without first doing their due diligence is guaranteed to get their face ripped off and go
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running home to mommy begging for their dividend stocks back. And it sounds like I'm talking about
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other people, but I'm actually talking from firsthand experience. I've outsourced conviction before
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and the insecurity of it sucks, whether it's stocks or even anything else in Bitcoin or crypto
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related that I've ever bought that isn't straight BTC. I've bought ETH in the past. I've bought
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MSTR. I've bought MSTY. I feel 10X worse when those things drop because part of me is just begging
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for a bounce so I can get out and relieve myself of the stress and the stupidity of not having
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just bought Bitcoin. Because even though I might understand the thesis on things like MSTR to a
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degree, I don't understand them like I understand Bitcoin. I've never had conviction in anything else
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like I have in Bitcoin. That's why you want to reach the ultimate level of ZenHodler where you are
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legitimately happy when Bitcoin drops and you feel pangs of sadness when it moves to the upside.
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If you really just sit back and think about where we're at today, we were at $126,000 Bitcoin
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last year. Today you can stack 40% more sats with every dollar than you could like six months ago.
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That is amazing. That's a gift from the gods. You think 10 years from now you're going to care
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about this little six month period where it dropped a little bit or even though over the weekend
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where all it dropped from 80k to 75k, I'm going to sell. It might keep going down more. Bitcoin has
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been known to do much worse drops than just 40% off in all time high and I understand part of your
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brain would feel pain mind to to see it drop to 60k or 50k or lower than that. But it's my belief
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that if you don't also have a genuine part of your brain that would be excited to get the chance
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to stack at those levels then you probably don't have enough conviction yet because my belief is
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basically always that in the short term I have no idea what's going to happen. But one year from now
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we are still much likely to be higher than we are today and four years from now we are all
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but guaranteed to be much higher than we are today. What happens in between is completely unknowable.
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That's why the most important things to always remember are no timing the market, no leverage,
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no shit coins and if you just stick to those rules the volatility is not something to be afraid of.
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It becomes your superpower. If you build conviction and you just use the simple power of dollar cost
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averaging which just means buying the same amount of regular intervals regardless of the price
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then the volatility works for you not against you. There's absolutely no four year period in which
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a regular DCA Bitcoin buyer has been in the red. If you're the unluckiest bastard in the world
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and you ape into Bitcoin with your entire life savings at an all time high then yes you are
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taking the chance that an extreme bear market hits and you might end up waiting four or five
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years to get back in the green. But probably no one actually does that and if you just buy regularly
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no matter what all the ups and downs in between then you're never missing an opportunity to
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average down and stack more sats when they're on sale. Dollar cost averaging is an anti-fragile
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strategy. It's the perfect low time preference companion strategy for buying Bitcoin because it
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removes all the emotion it removes timing pressure it captures all the volatility so that you buy
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all the highs and all the lows and everything in between you don't need to guess you just need to
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be consistent. There's a reason the cliche says time in the market is better than timing the market.
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I will say there is a slightly deeper layer to this dollar cost average conversation that I touched
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on in my conversation with James check because he talked about how he optimizes his DCA strategy
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so that he's maximizing the likelihood that he's always buying bottoms and he's minimizing the
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likelihood that he's buying tops. So you can go watch the full interview if you want to better
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understand that. I'll probably also do an actual long form video on my own to explain it soon.
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So that's why you should definitely be subscribed to the channel. But the key to all of this is that
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conviction is not certainty about what's going to happen in the short term conviction is understanding
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why you own something why you bought it in the first place accepting drawdowns or volatility
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as part of the process and having a time horizon that's measured in years if not decades zoom out
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not just on the chart but on your mindset and your thinking because if you need reassurance
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every three days that you bought the right thing you don't need to sell and buy another asset
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you need a better framework short term volatility changes nothing when your conviction is real
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which is why I highly suggest you quit slacking and start stacking