sport football: Most Will Quit Here

A Note from Big T: With Thanksgiving upon us, I know many of you are getting ready to gather with friends and loved ones.

I'll be with my partner, my three daughters, my granddaughter, my 21-month-old son and my brother this Thanksgiving. What a gift they all are in my life.

From my family to your family, I want to wish you and your loved ones a very Happy Thanksgiving.

Our offices will be closed for the remainder of the holiday weekend, and on behalf of me and my team, I also want to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving!

Big T

I was dreading going home for the holidays.

It was December 2018. I had just told the people closest to me back home in Wisconsin about bitcoin – passionately explaining the research, the adoption curve, the long-term potential… Only to watch it collapse by 60% in a matter of weeks.

Nothing stings more than seeing someone lose money because they trusted your research.

So when I met a friend for a holiday drink at a bar in Green Bay the night before Christmas, I braced myself. And sure enough, within minutes, he asked – with that nervous half-laugh we all know too well – "So… what's going on with bitcoin?"

What he expected was an apology. An admission that maybe the critics were right and I was wrong.

Instead, what I told him was simple and honest. "Yes, things are ugly. I won't pretend otherwise. But when you zoom out and look at the long-term adoption story, the case for bitcoin is stronger than ever."

Then I told him, "This is the buying opportunity of a lifetime."

Since those lows, bitcoin has rocketed 3,097%.

Much like that holiday season seven years ago – the market is puking again. Bitcoin has been down as much as 32% since its all-time high over $126,000 last month. Sentiment is in the dumps.

And that's exactly why I wanted to revisit this story with you today.

I know how easy it is to feel worn down by the volatility. You might even be tempted to walk away – just like my friend almost did.

But if you and I were sitting together in a bar today, I'd tell you what I told my friend back then: The ugliness you're seeing right now is just a speed bump on the highway to mass adoption.

Now, I can't promise the worst is over – just like I couldn't promise him. Maybe the selling stops in a month. Maybe it drags on longer.

But when I look at where this asset is headed – not over the next five weeks… but over the next five years – I see a far brighter path than the day-to-day prices suggest.

That's why I want to walk you through the three rules that helped me survive every ugly stretch since 2018… And why they matter so much right now.

Rule 1: Don't Lose Sight of the Big Picture

When I first started working with Daily editor Teeka Tiwari in 2018, he drilled a single idea into my head: Price is the least important part of understanding the bitcoin story.

What matters is adoption.

Bitcoin's supply is capped. Its demand is not. When adoption increases – even quietly in the background – the long-term price direction becomes inevitable: up.

That framework saved me during the brutal stretches of the 2018-19 Crypto Winter, the pandemic crash in 2020, and the FTX implosion in 2022.

Those years were filled with drawdowns that would've scared anyone out of the asset. But behind the scenes, something far more important was happening. Institutions were building financial rails for mass adoption.

The market didn't reward any of it at first – it rarely does. But over time, the people who stuck with Teeka's simple blueprint, like I did, were the ones who ended up with the chance to make life-changing gains.

Let me walk you through all three of those drawdowns and what happened after.

We'll rewind to that Christmas Eve in 2018 – my friend and I sitting in a dim bar, the market bleeding out – and me doing everything I could to convince him walking away from bitcoin would be a mistake.

While bitcoin was getting slammed with pullbacks of 45%, 52%, and 70%, both Wall Street and Silicon Valley were quietly stepping into the arena.

Around that time, Robinhood, one of the leading brokerage platforms, launched crypto trading.
The New York Stock Exchange had announced plans for a bitcoin trading platform.
And Goldman Sachs was helping Circle launch USDC, a stablecoin that anyone could use to send and receive digital dollars on the blockchain. (Today, USDC is one of the most popular stablecoins in the world with a market cap of $75 billion.)

From the depths of that Crypto Winter to the next cycle high, bitcoin exploded 2,105%.

It was a similar story during the 2020 pandemic crash when bitcoin dropped 58% in seven days. Yet that same year, in the background…

Billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones told his clients he believed bitcoin will serve as a hedge against inflation.
Block (formerly Square), a financial technology company, invested $50 million in bitcoin. The publicly traded company said at the time, "We believe that bitcoin has potential to be a more ubiquitous currency in the future."
We also saw firms like Stone Ridge, MassMutual, and Ruffer announce $114 million, $100 million, and $750 million investments into bitcoin, respectively.

Then 2021 came along, and everything that had been happening under the surface finally burst into the open. Bitcoin went from a low of $3,858 to a high of $69,000 – and the entire crypto market cap increased 2,704%.

The same script played out again in 2022.

The FTX exchange imploded – wiping out roughly $8 billion in customer funds. The headlines were terrifying. Bitcoin plunged 30%.

But adoption didn't just continue – it accelerated. That same year:

Fidelity, one of the world's largest asset managers with $4.9 trillion assets under management – had launched a crypto platform.
Google announced it would start accepting crypto for payments.
Even ExxonMobil – yes that ExxonMobil, the world's second-largest oil company – announced it was testing bitcoin mining.

If you held on through the volatility of 2022, you'd see bitcoin rise from a low of $15,460 to a high of $126,300 – that's a 717% gain after one of the most spectacular crashes in history.

But you don't need to travel to the distant past to see how these pullbacks turned into huge rallies.

Just this year, bitcoin had drawdowns as much as 32% during the spring tariff tantrum. And 13% in a matter of minutes during the leveraged wipeouts of last month.

Yet here in 2025, the mass adoption trend is stronger than ever.

Earlier this month, the Czech Republic's central bank publicly announced it added bitcoin to its reserves. This is just the beginning. Teeka has said for years that virtually all central banks will become bitcoin holders.

Deutsche Bank agrees with him. In a September research report, it stated: "There is room for both gold and bitcoin to coexist on central bank balance sheets by 2030."

And just last week, BlackRock – with $13.5 trillion under management – registered a staked Ethereum fund in Delaware. That's the world's largest asset manager positioning itself for the tidal wave of institutional demand heading straight toward this asset class.

If the past is any guide, we can expect bitcoin to eventually break through its previous all-time high of $126,000 once the bull trend reasserts itself.

Rule 2: Stay Rational

Bitcoin may be the ninth-most valuable asset in the world by market cap, but it's still really young when compared to gold, real estate, and securities. And like most youngsters, it's prone to messy, emotional swings.

It will mature over time, the same way gold did. But we're not there yet. And until we are, volatility is the price we pay for life-changing gains from this asset class.

The only way to survive that volatility is by using small, uniform position sizes and absolutely no leverage.

Unfortunately, there isn't a one-size-fits-all formula for how much you should own, because everyone's financial situation is different.

But as a general rule of thumb: If you're losing sleep or refreshing prices constantly, you're overexposed. It's not a character flaw. It's just a sign you're carrying too much weight.

Trim down your positions on strength and let the trend work for you – not against you.

Rule 3: Hold Some Cash

The truth is, no one knows how long a pullback lasts until it's already in the rearview mirror – and that's exactly why holding some cash matters.

Here's why…

The last two bear markets dragged on for about a year and saw bitcoin fall roughly 80%.

I don't expect something like that this time around, given how quickly adoption is accelerating… But historically, these pullbacks have given new buyers great entry points and long-term HODLers (those "holding on for dear life") the chance to judiciously add to their stack.

Cash gives you flexibility. It allows you to buy on weakness instead of watching opportunities slip through your fingers. It prevents you from being forced to sell good assets at bad prices just to cover life's expenses.

We're at the Edge of Another Generational Wealth-Building Opportunity

I can't tell you when or where bitcoin will mark a final bottom. But our research still points to $1 million per bitcoin by the end of 2030.

If that's the case and you're using proper risk management, there's no reason to panic over a 30% correction. This is par for the course with bitcoin.

You need to focus on the 3-5 year outlook, not the next week or two. Because once you step back, the bigger picture tells a very different story.

Earlier this year, Bank of America surveyed 211 managers overseeing $504 billion in assets, and the results were eye-opening. Seventy-five percent of global fund managers still have zero allocation to digital assets.

Let that sink in.

Even now – after bitcoin has cemented itself as the ninth-most valuable asset on the planet – most professional money managers still have no exposure to bitcoin or altcoins at all.

Meanwhile, nearly half of them maintain at least a 2% allocation to gold. If institutions eventually make a similar allocation to bitcoin, it would push the price toward $1 million per coin.

This tells us something critical: Wall Street has barely scratched the surface. If this trade were anywhere close to "mature," we'd already see bitcoin allocations creeping toward gold levels.

Instead, the gap is wide open – which means we are still very, very early.

Every time the market gets rough like this, I think back to that night in that Green Bay bar – my friend staring into his drink, convinced the story was over, and me urging him to stay the course.

He didn't see it then, but he was sitting on the edge of the greatest wealth-building opportunity of his life.

Just three years later, he watched a small bet turn into a sizable nest egg… Propelling his financial goals years ahead without having to bet the farm on one idea.

Today, you're sitting in that same seat.

Don't Watch the Future Happen. Own It!

Houston Molnar