Bull Market Mania

Happy Bitcoin Friday! — Jan. 24, 2025

Bull Market Mania

“The world is full of foolish gamblers and they will not do as well as the patient investors.” —Charlie Munger

Bitcoin and crypto bull markets tend to come every four years. That also means that bitcoin gets conflated with crypto by newcomers every four years.

This year is no exception.

2025 is the year of caveat emptor.

Buyer Beware

While it's always the case that the responsibility of trading or investing in anything ultimately falls on the buyer, it's especially true right now.

2025 is witnessing bitcoin all-time highs alongside mainstream acceptance of the broader cryptocurrency industry.

• It's going to get messy.

• It's going to get harder to focus.

• There will be endless noise.

• Focus on the signal.

Distinguish bitcoin & crypto at every turn.

Trump Wk 1

We saw a complicated mix of the bull and bear cases I put forth last week, leaving me with a sense of trepidation regarding bitcoin in the year ahead.

To be clear though, the bull market is here. Bitcoin remains at all-time high levels and all signs point to it entering the second half of what is typically a year-long bull market within its larger cycles.

The trepidation comes from the heavy emphasis on crypto by the Trump administration and business leaders in finance and technology.

Every market cycle is an opportunity to educate newcomers on bitcoin's ability to be a tool for financial empowerment and yet, bull markets distract everyone from the long term task at hand of integrating bitcoin into the individual or institution's financial toolkit. Instead, we get brief acknowledgement that bitcoin is now part of the zeitgeist followed by much more discussions around crypto and speculative markets.

Trump did free Ross.

He followed through on his promise to libertarians to free Ross Ulbricht, the creator of Silk Road, the infamous darknet marketplace that once leveraged bitcoin as a payment option.

Trump went full crypto.

We saw official meme coins launched for both Trump and Melania just ahead of the inauguration. It was a weird start to everything… Of all people, I think it was Elon Musk who said:

The most entertaining outcome

is the most likely.

Entertaining is one way to frame the meme coin launch. Unnecessary and distracting is another way to put it. The only good thing about these meme coins is that they are outspokenly meme coins, not claiming to be anything more than that.

The new president signed an executive order aimed at developing a national strategy around the "digital asset industry."

This could lead to a strategic stockpile that would feature various cryptocurrencies beyond bitcoin.