Should you buy Bitcoin NOW? Or wait for the price to START RISING first?

Should you buy Bitcoin now or wait for the price to start rising to validate that it's a good investment? Unfortunately, here we are again. Now, you all know the answer to this question. You should buy Bitcoin now. But let's walk through the psychology of why so few people do that. So, if I could change one thing about investing, I'm not sure off the top of my head what that what that would be, but a really good candidate would be for people to stop using prices as validation for the uh how valuable an investment is. People do this all the time. In fact, it's probably one of the number one fallacies that keeps people from making money in investing. Uh because when you use the price as validation for a good investment, you always chase whatever is going up, which means you tend to chase whatever is already expensive at the expense of whatever is cheap and is going to go up in the future. So for example, uh you can buy on the stock market something called exchangeraded funds, ETFs. Exchange traded funds can be a group of other stocks and often are that represent a bunch of different different things but a common one is to have a certain theme. So an ETF will be launched for AI or an ETF will be launched for you know medical technology software companies or things like that those ETFs typically underperform from the point they are launched. Now why is that? Well, because an ETF is launched when the prices in a certain category are rising, which means there's demand from the marketplace to have an ETF that makes it easy to invest in a bunch of companies at one time. The problem is what is driving the creation of that ETF is that the prices have already risen, meaning the return from those ETFs tends to be lower than other opportunities in the marketplace. Because by the time a company gets around to creating an ETF for a specific sector, that tells you that sector has already had significant price performance. Otherwise, they would not be creating an ETF. Nobody wants to make an ETF for a sleepy aspect of the market that people are not sure about or don't believe in. So again, this happens all the time. It's happening right now in silver. Tons of people are buying silver right now who have no idea why they're buying silver. They don't have an investment thesis for silver. All they know is that silver is way up. The problem is that means they're buying silver at 70 or $80 per ounce and then when it drops they're probably going to panic sell it at 50 60 you know 40 $30 an ounce or something like that and they're going to lose money or even if Bitcoin does sorry uh silver does keep going up a lot of the upside of silver has already happened. Now, some people will make a lot of money because they recognize that silver might do that before it happened. But again, the time you want to invest in an asset is before there's a huge price rise. Now, I know exactly what it feels like to own a bunch of an asset that is the number one asset performing asset of the year. So, in 2023 and 2024, Bitcoin was the best performing major asset two years in a row, 2023 and 2024. That did not repeat in 2025, but it will in the future. hopefully this year, probably this year. But I know what it's like to see news headlines that say Bitcoin's the best performing asset and think, "Wow, I bought a lot of that before that happened." Now, how did I buy a bunch of that before that happened? The answer was because I was investing based on Bitcoin's fundamental properties as money, not on its price. I was buying Bitcoin, you know, I bought Bitcoin at every price from 6,400 all the way up to 124,000. I've bought Bitcoin at every price, but I bought a lot of it uh under $20,000. Certainly even more under $30,000. I was buying back in 2022 as the price dipped below 40,000 before below 30,000 below 20,000. I was buying more and more and more Bitcoin all the way down. Now, why was I doing that? Because I was not using price as validation for the asset quality. I was using the attributes of the asset to set my expectations of future returns. Now, if you look at the price, everyone would say, "You're an idiot. Why are you buying in 2022 Bitcoin, which is just crashing, crashing, crashing?" And the answer is because the reasons it's crashing, are not good reasons. The reasons Bitcoin was crashing in 2022 were all reasons that had nothing to do with Bitcoin. The Terral Luna ecosystem blew up. FTX blew up. All this crypto garbage blew up. That honestly and truly had nothing to do with Bitcoin. And I knew it had nothing to do with Bitcoin. But most people couldn't tell the difference. They just knew that the whole crypto world was on fire. And I knew that yeah, a bunch of the crypto stupid stuff was on fire. But Bitcoin was not on fire. I mean, Bitcoin was doing fantastically well uh as far as its attributes of monetary properties and the health of the network and uh transmitting value and all of that. So, I had the foresight to buy a bunch of Bitcoin when it was cheap. And I would consider Bitcoin cheap right now. Now, most people are not reaching out to me right now at $90,000 per Bitcoin. Most people have lost interest. It's been going sideways for a month or two. They've lost interest. They move they've moved on. They're trying to find something else new and exciting to invest in. They assume the Bitcoin party is over. And that's just not true. Bitcoin will come raring back as an asset class. And the question is, how much of it are you going to own before that happens? Because what everybody does is they think, "Well, I own a little bit of Bitcoin. I'll keep an eye on it." And then they check it and it's 120,000 a coin. They're like, "Oh, that's up. I wonder if it'll set a new record." Then it goes to 130. They're like, "Wow, it did set a new record, but not not my not by that much." The previous record from a couple months ago was 126. Then it goes to 150 and they're like, "Oh man, this thing's really going. I I really ought to own a lot more than I do." Then it goes to 170. Then it goes to 180. Finally, they're like, "Okay, 180,000. I am buying Bitcoin right now. I am not getting left behind by this train." Now, are you not getting left behind by this train? Because you just got left behind from 90,000 to 180. So, Bitcoin doubles when it goes from 90,000 to 180. Yet, a bunch of people are going to buy a bunch of Bitcoin at 180,000 that that they could buy at 90,000 right now. So if you do that, you give up half of all of the future gains of Bitcoin. Because think about this, no matter what the upside of Bitcoin is, if you let half of that go by without buying it, you'll never get that half of the returns back. So if the upside from right now is an easy 10x, that means if you wait for it to double, you only have 5x left. 5* 2 is 10. So if something doubles, then you have to cut the potential future upside in half. I think Bitcoin easily has 10x upside from here in the next 5 to 10 years. So if you can easily make 10 times your money in 5 to 10 years right now in Bitcoin, but you wait for it to be 180,000, well then you're not getting 10 extra money, you're getting five extra money because half of the return has already passed you by. So this is just happening constantly with all assets, all investment assets that are like this where the people who make the most money are the people who understand the asset. They invest when it's on sale. They hold through the hard times like right now and you know in the good times they're way up on their investment and they can support their lifestyle and outrun inflation by a long shot and live the good life uh financially speaking. So now is the time to buy Bitcoin if that's what you want to do. But again, I can tell just from the buzz, the number of people messaging me on Facebook or Signal or text message, the number of people, you know, asking questions about how to set up a Fidelity brokerage, uh, you know, a Fidelity crypto IRA. Those questions and interest and inquiries to me are way down right now. The interest level is very low. The interest level should be very high because an entire year of sideways chop, which was 2025, is now behind us. all the pain of a year of sideways trop is already behind us and the you know we're halfway through almost the first month of 2026 uh which has most mostly been just a sideways grind. Um, so it's a great time to buy Bitcoin, but again, almost everybody will make the mistake of letting price be their validation, which means they're not comfortable buying Bitcoin until the price goes up, which means they end up buying Bitcoin a lot more expensively than they could. And instead of being thrilled at 180,000 that they've doubled their money, they instead are sort of licking their wounds. They're buying at 180,000 and then Bitcoin goes sideways for a year and they're like, "Well, I finally did the right thing. I bought at 180,000 and then 2028 or something like that or I don't know 2027 whatever it is grind sideways for a year and they're like Joel I did the right thing I bought it. I'm like yeah but why'd you wait for 180,000? I mean you could buy as much as you want right now at 90,000 and then you're doubled your money at 180,000 and so what if it goes sideways for an entire year or for six months or three months at 180,000? You don't even care because you've doubled your money. So right now when Bitcoin's going sideways and on average I'm up 3x on my total Bitcoin investment, uh my average cost price or uh cost basis is somewhere in let's call it the $35,000ish price. So I'm up in the ballpark of triple my investment. It's a little lower than that now, but you know it's averaged over the last let's call it six months, maybe triple plus my investment. Okay, that's fine. If it wants to grind sideways when I'm up triple on my investment, that's fine. If it's got to grind sideways while I'm up triple, that's fine. I'll be spending Bitcoin while it's triple what I paid for it. And again, it's a lot easier to ride that out if you bought it when it was cheaper than if you bought up at 116 or 122 or 110 and then you got to grind sideways at 95 or 90,000. It's just a lot more painful when you're down for for that sideways grind. So, my advice is the same as always. Buy as much Bitcoin as you can. Hold on to it for as long as conceivably possible. Don't use the price as validation. Use market adoption as validation, which is what's actually happening in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Who's announcing Bitcoin purchases? Who's adopting Bitcoin as collateral? Which banks are embracing Bitcoin? What is Congress doing with regard to clarity for digital assets? All of the things that determine whether Bitcoin will indeed be the future money of the world. Those are the things to keep an eye on because those things will eventually drive the demand that drives the price. And if you buy Bitcoin at 90,000 and all of those things are pointed in the right direction, then when Bitcoin's 180,000, you're happy and you're not stuck buying it at 140, 160, and 175 on the way up because once again, you're using your price as validation. Now, most people are going to use the price as validation. I know they will anyway, no matter what I say. I know as soon as the price takes off and Bitcoin starts outrunning everything else, my phone's going to light up. All these people are going to be asking, "How do I set up a Fidelity crypto IRA? How do I set up a you know, a Fidelity crypto Roth IRA? How do I convert my old 401k into Bitcoin?" You know, everybody's going to be asking me those questions as soon as the price uh, you know, takes off. Everybody's going to be asking me, "Hey, you gave me $100 of free Bitcoin. I never redeemed it. Can you send me a new link?" Yes, I'll send you a new link, but the $100 would have been$120 by the time I send you a new link. But guess what? I'm not sending you a new link for $120. I'm sending you a new link for just a hundred. [laughter] So, if you don't redeem the first river link I send you for $100 of Bitcoin, I'm not going to increase the $100 just because you missed out on 20 or 30% upside before you got serious about it. That's your job. Uh so, if I sent you free Bitcoin, please redeem it. Now's a great time to buy Bitcoin. Buy as much as you can. Hold on to it for as long as conceivably possible. It's the same recommendation I always give and it's the same recommendation that has never been wrong in the last 17 solid years. Have a good one.