Welcome to January!

2023 highlights, a 2024 resolution, price action, strategy for the year ahead, and more.

+157% in 2023

Bitcoin gained 157% in 2023. December added another 10-11% on what was already a stellar 11-month stretch. We’ve come a long way since the collapse of FTX. Good riddance. It’s nice to put yet another centralized fraud behind us so that we can focus on what really matters—true financial empowerment and optionality.

Instances like FTX are a distraction. They happen when newcomers get sucked into a centralized entity posing as the future of money. The reality is that cryptocurrency exchanges like FTX and other platforms like BlockFi and Celsius are nothing more than irresponsible or criminal actors gambling with your hard earned money.

Self-Custody

Start 2024 off right. If you own bitcoin and haven’t moved it into a self-custody bitcoin wallet, now is the time to do that. Make it a New Year’s resolution. Read this post about holding bitcoin off exchanges to get started.

If you hold bitcoin on an exchange, the exchange owns your bitcoin, not you. The entire point of bitcoin is to enable self-sovereign ownership over a digital asset. So, make 2024 the year that you truly participate in the bitcoin network.

2023

Last January, bitcoin turned 14 years old. This week, it turns 15!

Happy birthday bitcoin—many thought it wouldn’t make it this far, let alone gain the kind of mainstream traction is has. Bitcoin is still here, 15 years later.

By April 2023, bitcoin had nearly doubled year-to-date. The hole created by the collapse of FTX was already behind us. Then, bitcoin stabilized throughout Q2 and Q3 before surging in October through the end of the year.

Last year, we had the same old critics spouting falsehoods about bitcoin. Jamie Dimon and Sen. Elizabeth Warren once again lied to the American people about bitcoin only being used by criminals, drug traffickers, and money launderers.

Watch what they do, not what they say. Weeks after attacking bitcoin on Capitol Hill, JPMorgan was named an authorized participants on BlackRock’s application for a US spot bitcoin ETF.

The largest bank in the world will team up with the largest asset manager to ensure their ETF is priced accurately and that normal trading conditions are upheld once it goes live.

2024

• institutional wave?

• spot ETF

• 4th halving

• price action

• my strategy

Institutional Wave?

Four years ago, I thought we were about the witness a wave of institutional bitcoin adoption. Several famous Wall Street investors and hedge fund managers came out publicly in favor of small bitcoin allocations. Companies in the bitcoin space such as Block, along with a growing cohort of publicly-traded bitcoin miners, began to make headlines. Tesla even bought some bitcoin. MicroStrategy’s CEO and now chairman Michael Saylor made their initial bitcoin purchase. It was all happening. Then, the institutional wave kind of petered out.

As we enter 2024, it feels as though the groundwork has been laid for true institutional adoption. Saylor and MicroStrategy now hold almost 190,000 bitcoin on their balance sheet, worth more than $8 billion. They’re currently sitting on about $3 billion worth of profit from their bitcoin purchases.

The ETF

Beyond the rare actors like Saylor though, 2024 is a chance for other institutional players to start building positions. A US spot ETF is an easy was to do that.

The ETF would enable financial advisors to offer their clients exposure. Individuals and pension funds alike could add bitcoin to retirement accounts. People generally will start to find bitcoin in the places they’re used to using without having to seek out a cryptocurrency exchange or other newer financial services product.

An important reminder about the bitcoin ETF—it will be a derivative of bitcoin. The ETF will offer exposure to the asset class. While a spot product will technically have to own the underlying asset, investing in it is still trusting a centralized third party with ownership over that asset.

The ETF will be great for introducing people to bitcoin and for adding it to investment portfolios people already use. If you want to own bitcoin yourself though, self-custody bitcoin remains the only real way to do so.

The Halving

If there’s one thing I’m certain will happen in 2024, it’s the 4th bitcoin halving.

Come mid to late April 2024, the amount of bitcoin that miners receive for the efforts securing the network will be cut in half. The bitcoin block reward will be halved. Halvings make bitcoin more scarce and occur roughly every four years.

The 4th halving in particular could coincide with the above mentioned institutional interest via a US spot bitcoin ETF.

Even if the ETF gets delayed or rejected though, the halving will happen. That’s a fact. Bitcoin will continue to do what it does best, every single day so long as bitcoiners like myself are still here.

2024 Price

Last month, I gave some insight into my thoughts around price. In December though, bitcoin gained 11% and already entered a level I thought we’d see immediately following a drove of ETF approvals.

It’s worth noting too that bitcoin has really only traded above current prices for about 6 months of its entire 15 year existence.

$45,000 and above is considered all-time high territory in my mind. We’re knocking on that door again as 2024 kicks off.

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