Pain vs. Gain in Investing

Hey everyone. I figured I'd do a quick video on perspectives on pain versus gain. First of all, Bitcoin is about $70,000 uh coin right now, bouncing off of the low of 60,000, but obviously down from above 125 for mere minutes last year. So, Bitcoin appears to be in a bare market, which would mean sentiment is negative. But you have to zoom out. As uh Eric Belchunis, the head Bitcoin and ETF analyst at Bloomberg said, the problem with 2025 for Bitcoiners is 2023 and 2024, they got 10 times as many presents as everybody else at Christmas, and then in 2025, they didn't get any. So, everybody's all bummed out about the performance of Bitcoin, forgetting that Bitcoin is up 500%. uh from uh you know the start of 2023 and it just so happens that the amazing price performance just hasn't been the last three or four months. But the pain of being down on your investment first of all I I uh I run my own charitable giving foundation which is 100% Bitcoin. So I feel the pain in being down there uh even though by my lifestyle expenses I'm living for free and you know in a good spot for the long term with my charitable giving expenses. is when the price of Bitcoin goes up, I ramp up my expenditures and my grants and, you know, all the things I'm doing for Bitcoin education. And then obviously when the price of Bitcoin drops, you know, it creates anxiety and stress for me because I can't afford to do things at $70,000 Bitcoin that I could do at 120,000 plus Bitcoin, which means I there's stuff I have to say no to or there's stuff I want to do that I can't do anymore. And it's just life. That's just life. It's life and budgeting it anyway. But uh this was especially brought into perspective because last week uh for my charitable foundation, an invoice came due to do some uh focus groups and polling on people the opinions people have about Bitcoin. I'm planning to do this big in-depth uh research report on how people feel about Bitcoin, how they feel about inflation, the Federal Reserve, what they think causes inflation. Anyway, I'm going to do all this work, but the first invoice for polling and focus groups on that was $34,000 and it was denominated in US dollars. I had planned to pay that in Bitcoin for a long time, but ultimately the vendor said, "Look, it's, you know, I don't want to deal with the accounting just yet, so go ahead and pay it in US dollars." And my philosophy is if I have a close relationship with whoever I owe money, I try to pay it, you know, as soon as they ask. In the case of Georgetown University or some big institution, I pay it right before it comes due. But if it's an individual that I have a relationship with, I don't string out the payment, right? I pay them right away. Well, the point at which all of this settled, it had nothing to do with the price of Bitcoin. They weren't even watching the price of Bitcoin because they were going to get paid $34,000 in US dollars regardless. But it just so happened that when they asked, I liquidated the Bitcoin, $34,000 of Bitcoin to pay that invoice at $62,700. And literally, it was significantly higher than that hours before that. It was significantly higher than that hours after that. But yeah, it's painful. It's painful when you got to pay a $34,000 nonprofit charitable donation invoice for polling and focus groups and all and messaging research when the price is 62,700. But again, I zoom out and I'm like, "All right, let's get some perspective." If I zoom out, I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with the price of Bitcoin at 4x, 5x, 6x what I paid for that Bitcoin. All of the Bitcoin in my charitable giving foundation was bought at $22,000 average per coin. So, I've got to zoom out and say, "Okay, yeah, it's super painful." But if I zoom out, it's only painful because it's down from the 120s or above 100 for a extended period of time in 2025. It's down from there. But it's triple the price I paid for it at $22,000 a coin. So, I just got to take that perspective and I got to zoom out and I got to say, okay, look, I've been living for free on Bitcoin for more than three years. I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on personal expenses that were when Bitcoin was double, triple, quadruple, quintuple what I paid for it. I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on nonprofit charitable expenses, paying invoices when Bitcoin was double, triple, quadruple, quintuple what I paid for it. So, it's all perspective. But markets create pain. They create pain when you're down on your investment. They create pain when other assets are outperforming your investment in the short term, like gold and silver were recently. There's pain when gold and silver are running and Bitcoin is not. And there's time pain. This is one James Czech talks about a lot. Time pain is is when your asset is not doing what you want. And the longer it grinds sideways or, you know, down, the more people just capitulate. They lose interest. They just can't take it anymore. So even if they're not experiencing the pain of being radically down, they're experiencing the pain of going nowhere. And every market, whether it's the magnificent seven stocks, whether it's gold and silver, whether it's uh, you know, commodities, spends a long time going sideways. That's just what every asset in every market does. Uh, gold and silver are are famous for spending years on end, even in some cases decades on end, doing literally nothing and then suddenly they go up. Uh, thankfully, Bitcoin does not put anybody through that kind of pain, but it can put people through months of pain or sometimes a year of pain. And hopefully we're not headed for a year of sideways price action, but we could be headed for weeks or months where it's grinding around in the 60 and 70,000s. I mean, that's not unexpected. And then it'll march march march into the hundreds of thousands and everybody will be happy. When in doubt, zoom out. If you're new to Bitcoin, just realize once you've been here 2, three, four, five years, all your Bitcoin or the majority will all be significantly up on your investment. It'll be a lot less painful when it drops because it'll still be above your average price. Uh but anyway, when in doubt, zoom out. Even for me, I experience the pain of being down on investment or having to liquidate Bitcoin when it's down compared to what it was. And I just got to zoom out and realize, yeah, but it's still way up compared to farther back than very recently. And if you do the same, and if you invest in Bitcoin long enough, you'll be in the same position where the price of Bitcoin is 250,000 a coin. You know, the most expensive you ever paid for it was 124 or 122. And you'll think, well, heck, even my worst Bitcoin purchases, I'm still double. And you'll feel good about it in the long term when you zoom out just like I do. Even though nothing really makes the pain go away completely, but at least you can put it in perspective. Hope that helps.