How to NOT get CHOPPED UP in the “CHOPSOLIDATION” (sideways grind)

When an asset has the flu, how not to get chopped up in chopsolidation. So, I was thinking about this today and assets that are in bare markets are like when people have the flu. It doesn't last forever. It's not lethal. You know, you sort of have to wait it out. And Bitcoin is in its fifth bare market. A bare market is when things are pessimistic. Prices down. That's normal. all assets Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, um, Nvidia, and I think I named all the magnificent seven highest performing stocks of all time. Gold, silver, you know, commodities, they all go through periods of bare markets, and it's all like having the flu. It's like sometimes it's soybeans and it's like, why are the price of soy soybeans down for months or a year or more at a time? Then just the asset fell out of favor. It doesn't mean that nobody eats soybeans anymore. It doesn't mean that soybeans are not good for anything anymore. It's just they go through bare markets. So in a time of a bare market, the questions to ask are one, is there something wrong with the underlying asset? For example, are people not going to eat soybeans ever again? Like have they completely moved on to some new crop and soybeans are permanently out of favor? So I don't know anything about the soybean market, but I can assure you in Bitcoin, money has not fallen out of favor. The US dollar is losing, you know, 97% of its purchasing power over the last hundred years. It's lost 25% of its purchasing power in the last five years. The US dollar has the permanent flu. It is always losing value. The US dollar is never going up, only going down, down, down, down. Okay? And people need money. That's not going to change. So, it's not like money has the flu. It's not like we don't we're not going to use money anymore. Bitcoin still is more durable, divisible, portable, fungeable, verifiable, and scarce. The six monetary properties that matter for money. Bitcoin is still all of those things right now, better than ever in human history. So money doesn't have the flu. It's just Bitcoin has the flu right now because it's in a bare market. But the the flu is temporary. So how do you not get chopped up in the chop solidation? Chop solidation is up, up, up, down, down, down, up, up, down, down, up, down, up, down, up, up, down, down, down, up, up, up, down, down, down. It goes on for months. And most people get chopped up in that chop solidation. Chop solidation is a combination of the word chop, as in something that's, you know, chopping up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down. And consolidation where the price of an asset, a financial asset is going up and down. In this case, mostly between, let's call it, you know, $65,000 and $73,000. And it's just I mean if you just draw a line it's top top top. It's just crazy. Up and down up and down up and down up and down. Um so the first thing the number one way to survive chop solidation when your preferred asset and the best asset in the world which is Bitcoin has the flu. Don't check the price all the time. In fact I took the price of Bitcoin off of my Apple Watch. I used to be able to check the price of Bitcoin literally every time I took looked at my watch which was you know hundreds of times a day. I took the price off my Apple Watch. And I'm like, look, when I need to check the price of Bitcoin, I reach for my phone and I launch River or I launch Coinbase and I check the price of Bitcoin. I don't need to see it every time because when you when you see the price of Bitcoin and it's up from the last time you saw it, it feels like a pat on the back. When you see the price of Bitcoin and it's down from the last time you saw it, it feels like a gut punch. And in a day where Bitcoin's price goes up six times and down four times, you know, in it does 10 price moves in a day. Six up, four down. Guess what? Even if it's up, the four gut punches feel worse than the six pats on the back feel. So, nobody would take it if somebody said, "Can I punch you four times in the gut and then pat you six times on the back?" Nobody's like, "Oh, that's like 6040 in my favor." Like, I'm winning here. Because guess what? let the gut punches feel worse than the back the back the the pats on the back feel good. So, first don't check the price of Bitcoin all the time. Buy as much as you can. If you're in active accumulation mode, sure, check the price of Bitcoin all the time because, you know, you should always be thinking about Bitcoin and buying more Bitcoin and figuring out how to buy more Bitcoin and all of those things should be constantly in your mind. But if you are not in active accumulation mode, just put it out of your mind. Don't think about it. Uh let time pass. Bitcoin is typically in these bare markets, I don't know, from 6 to 12 months. Now, I think this one's going to be short. So, I think it's going to be more on the six month side. And we already have a lot of those six months behind us already because the high was back on October 6th. And so, we're already o November, December, January, February, March. We are already five months five and a half. We're really 5 and 1/2 months into what could be a bare market that lasts for somewhere between six and probably 8 months. Nobody's really predicting 12 months. I mean, unless you just look at a calendar and you think, well, you know, the low is going to be, you know, 12 months from the high, but that's really, you know, not a logical, sophisticated way to look at it. So, we're probably looking at, I don't know, 6 to 8 months, maybe 10 at the outside. Short take is, you know, Bitcoin should be over the flu, which is this bare market by July, August at the latest usually. Um, could be sooner, could be April, May, could be today. today could be the lowest we ever get in the history of Bitcoin. We don't know. But the short take is it's temporary. Like the flu, it's not deadly. You're going to get over it. It's going to be fine. Don't freak out. It's like we know, right? When people get the flu, we know sometimes it lasts a short period of time, the symptoms go away. Sometimes it lasts a longer period of time and the symptoms go away. But guess what? The flu doesn't kill you. If you live in a modern country, you know, in a modern world like the United States, you're not going to get killed by the flu, right? There's medicines, there's protocols, right? So, you just got to wait it out. Like, you again, and if you can buy more Bitcoin, great. That is the number one best thing to do when your asset has the flu is buy as much of it as you possibly can because it's on sale because other people are selling it and you can be accumulating it. But number one, don't check the price all the time. It just drives you crazy. It's like again the gut punches even if the pats on the back exceed the gut punches. The gut punches hit harder and you feel them more. So just stop checking the price unless you're in active accumulation mode in which case check the price as much as you can and buy as much as you can and accumulate as much as you can and obsess about how to get more Bitcoin. That's a fantastic thing to do at a time like this. But if you're not in active accumulation mode, you don't have any way of buying more Bitcoin, just ignore the price. It's going to be fine. We'll get probably a couple more months of this. It'll be fine. And this is the fifth time Bitcoin's done it. And like having the flu, you can go to the doctor. They can diagnose you with the flu and they'll tell you, "Hey, in somewhere between 2 and 10 days, you're going to be feeling fine again." Guess what? You just wait it out. It's fine. Or you take teraflu, which is like buying more Bitcoin. You're like, "Hey, I can do something that's going to accelerate this and make it feel better. Buy more Bitcoin. You can do that." Uh, but that nothing's wrong with Bitcoin. Everything's fine with Bitcoin. Every asset does this periodically due to a whole variety of behavioral patterns. If you want to know everything to know about why assets do this and how humans behave and how long it lasts and how low it could go, James Czech, who goes by checkmate, he's got his, you know, $29 a month subscription. I love it. It's, you know, two new newsletters a week. It tells you exactly what people are doing with Bitcoin, why they're selling, why they're buying, who's selling, who's buying. Of course, you don't know individual names, but you can see, is it long-term holders? Is it short-term holders? Is it people that own the Bitcoin ETFs? is that people that own, you know, Bitcoin and cold storage. You can get a sense based on that. And James Tekken gives you some, you know, really, really good insights. Uh, again, he's like a weatherman or he's like a doctor. Let's stick with the flu analogy. He's like a doctor who you're not feeling well and, you know, it's like you go visit the doctor twice a day and you're like, "Hey, is it still the flu? Is something else wrong with me? Do I have strep?" Like, and the doctor's like, "No, let's take another flu test. It's just the flu. You're just fine. Everything's on track. your symptoms are exactly the what they expected to be and your recovery process is going exactly the way it's expected. Like that's what James Czech does for you. He's like a doctor who can, you know, diagnose you twice a day or in the case of James Czech twice a week and say nothing's wrong with Bitcoin. Everything is normal. Everything that's happening right now we've seen before. Everything's on track. This is normal. Buy as much as you can. It's all going to be fine. So, um that's how I cope. you know, how do I cope with chop consolidation that goes on for months? I read James Czech's newsletter twice a week, and I'm like, great, everything's normal. Everything's expected. Everything's happening exactly the way you would expect it to happen because this is the fifth time Bitcoin's been in a bare market. And then there's a bunch of times, dozens of times when Bitcoin's been down 20 or 30%. Bare markets below where it's touched more than 50% down have only happened five times. This is the fifth time. And the lowest it got was down 52%. Which was from 126 down to 60,000. It was a 52% drop. And of course, it was only below, you know, it was only below like 64,000 for like a matter of hours. Um, so the low the low is more like whatever 64, 63, whatever. But it did touch 60 like very temporarily in a matter of minutes or hours. And I mean it touched 60 for like what, a second? Like a second. Uh but anyway, uh so it's just it'll be fine. Everything's fine. Just time. Time fixes everything in the world of Bitcoin. You just wait it out. Time fixes everything. When you have the flu, you just wait it out. Eventually, you start feeling better. And if you can buy more Bitcoin, buy more Bitcoin because then you'll feel good about the fact of where we are. Uh but anyway, that's how you survive it. You wait it out. You subscribe to James Check if you need a twice a week dose of exactly what's going on to help you understand where we are, how long we're going to be there, how low it could go, you know, probabilities of all that sort of stuff. James Check is fantastic. If you want the latest news on Bitcoin, the news block from Natalie Budell is fantastic. It's a once a week uh substack, but she also uh reads that once a week sub substack on her podcast. So you get once a week in the news, which again always reinforces that a ton of positive things are happening for Bitcoin worldwide. It's just in a slump right now on the price, but everything else is going fantastically well and eventually the price will catch up to everything else that's going fantastically well. And then of course I always listen to Jack Mor's uh his podcast every Monday night because it's just a really good view of the macro, which means big picture uh economy and the world and politics and all that sort of stuff. So again, if you need a ways to cope, the highest level of what's happening in the world is uh is uh Jack Malers, although that's less, you know, he's always talking about Bitcoin, but he doesn't necessarily apply it exactly to Bitcoin. So if you want to know like big picture macro, what's happening, Jack Malers is the best. If you want to know the news items that are affecting Bitcoin in a week, Natalie Brunell is best. And if you want that twice a week dose of the doctor stepping in and saying, "Let's take a fresh look at Bitcoin." you know, every Monday and Thursday. It's usually Monday and Thursday. Every Monday and Thursday, let's take a fresh look at Bitcoin. Is anything wrong with the patient? Does the patient still have the flu? Yes. Right now, how long will the patient have the flu? How long can it last? What's the probability that we go below 60,000 even for a second ever again? Which right now is James Czech says 60% chance we'd ever touch 60 ever again. you know, 40% chance we undercut it by, I don't know, like 1% 2%, you know, some ridiculously small percent and likely bounce immediately right back. Again, if you want if you want all of that and the reassurance that comes with that of just the confidence that everything's fine, nothing's wrong with Bitcoin, it's behaving exactly like it did the last five uh you know, the last four bare markets, we're in the fifth bare market, everything's normal, everything's on track, it's going to be fine. James Check is the best place to get that. And I've done multiple uh Facebook live videos about how to read his updates and how to interpret them and all of that. So everything's fine with Bitcoin. It's great. It's gonna be fine. Buy more if you can. Everybody's going to regret that they didn't buy more Bitcoin right now. I wish that someone had told me that in the 2018 bare market, which was my first bare market was 2018. My second bare market was 2022. I wish somebody had told me in 2018. Joel, everything's fine. Bitcoin's amazing. Nothing's wrong with Bitcoin. You should buy as much Bitcoin as you can right now at $4,000, $5,000, $6,000. Did I? No. Because I didn't have somebody like me back then saying, "Hey, Joel, everything's been fine with Bitcoin. Back then it was the third bare market. Then the fourth was in 2022. Then the fifth is right now." They could have said, "Hey Joel, look, let me show you what Bitcoin did before. We've been here. 2018, there's nothing wrong with Bitcoin. It's just like 2014. 2018 is just like 2014. It's fine. It's behaving exactly the same, except not as bad. See, every bare market has been not as bad as the one before. This bare market is not nearly as bad as 2022, which was not nearly as bad as 2018, which was not nearly as bad as 2014, which was not nearly as bad as 2012. So, every bare market is less worse because the asset is getting bigger and more mature. But if I had somebody if I had somebody back there in 2018 to tell me this is normal, everything's fine, I would own way more Bitcoin. Now, thankfully, I understand that. I understood that in 2022, which meant I was accumulating a ton of Bitcoin between 16,000 and 30,000, like a ton between 16,000 and 30,000 in 2022 and the first half of 2023. I mean, I bought Bitcoin at all prices, including 122 and 124. I bought Bitcoin at all prices. But if I had somebody back then um in 2018, I would have bought a ton of Bitcoin between 4,000 and 8,000, way more than I did. But instead, I had to buy that same Bitcoin for way higher prices, meaning I owned a lot less Bitcoin per dollar back in 2022. Uh because then I understood it. And guess what? You know what you're going to do? Everybody watching this video is going to buy a bunch of Bitcoin in the next Bitcoin bare market. See, you're too scared to buy it in this Bitcoin bare market because it's your first Bitcoin bare market. But in the next Bitcoin bare market, you're going to buy a ton of Bitcoin. problem is you're going to be buying a ton of Bitcoin in the next bare market between 180,000 and 240,000 or whatever the next bare market is. You know, Bitcoin goes to, I don't know, 350 and then drops down to 240 or something like that. I don't know. But the short take is the next bare market, you're going to be buying a ton of Bitcoin that's way more expensive than today's Bitcoin because the only reason you're not buying a ton more Bitcoin today is because this is your first bare market. If it was your second, third, fourth bare market, you'd be in hardcore accumulation mode because you would know Bitcoin always bounces back and you'd have felt this before and you'd have seen this movie before and you'd think, I get it. This is all normal. I've seen it. I've seen that. I've seen it. It's like betting on the probability that you're going to recover from the flu. Right? So, if you got the flu and somebody spun up Poly Market and Kelsey about the probability that you're going to recover from the flu and you've had the flu five times before, you'd get on there and you'd bet that you're going to recover. Guess what? Because you know how it feels. You're going to feel bad. You're going to get aches and pains and cramps and you're going to feel like not doing anything and you're going to sleep a ton and you might throw up some and you might feel nauseated. But guess what? You're going to be fine. You're going to recover and you can make a ton of money by betting on that because you've been there before. But if you've never had the flu and you don't know what it is and it's your first experience, yeah, you're like, "Hey, I don't know what I have and this is scary and am I going to recover and is everything going to be okay?" But once it's not your first bare market, this is my my third bare market. It's Bitcoin's fifth bare market. It's my third. I lived through 2018. I lived through 2022. Here we are in 2026. It's not automatically every four years, but it just cycle because the first bare market was 2012. Uh then it was 2014, but so far it's been even numbered years. Although 2025 was a down year. It wasn't the bare market down year, but the the bare market started in 2025. So it doesn't exactly line up, but obviously the low point so far was in 2026. So anyway, you'll be fine. Bitcoin is fine. Buy as much as you can. Hold on to it for as long as conceivably possible. Same advice as always. You will wish you had bought way more Bitcoin in this bare market. You will wish wish that you could rewind time to exactly right now and buy way more Bitcoin right now at whatever it's not on my watch anymore. $68,000 or whatever the price of Bitcoin is right now. You will wish you could rewind time in the future to right now and buy way more Bitcoin. Buy as much as you can. Hold on to it for as long as conceivably possible. That advice has never been wrong. has never been bad advice in the long term with Bitcoin. We've been at this 17 years. Bitcoin is 17 years old. We've been at it 17 years. That advice has never failed anyone who bought Bitcoin and held on to it. Have a great one. Buy more Bitcoin. You'll be fine. Bitcoin's got the flu. It'll recover. This is all normal. Nothing's wrong with Bitcoin. Worldwide adoption is the strongest it's ever been for Bitcoin right now. Ever. The price will reflect that. It's just a matter of time.