I usually don’t believe in motivational quotes. However, there’s one that has been sticking in my head for a while now. It’s a dialogue from the movie Rocky (ft. Sylvester Stallone)
It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are. It will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it.
But, it ain’t about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.
How much you can take and keep moving forward.
That’s how winning is done.
-Rocky balboa
But why are we discussing this today? Especially for a crypto–junkie like me, it is indeed an unusual start to a blogpost right? A couple of minutes and I might be able to change your mind. Bitcoin’s journey hasn’t been much different from the excerpt mentioned above. In fact, it is the only asset in the world that has fallen to a rock bottom and then risen back to a new high each time.
For the uninitiated, let me give you an example from the stock market. When markets crashed in 2008, it took S&P 500 about 6 years to reach back to the pre crash levels. And your beloved BTC is just over a decade old and it has already seen deeper crashes and higher highs! So today, let’s acknowledge those moments which really segregated the loyalists from trolls. Biggest crashes of Bitcoin with key details:
The Summer of 2011:
Bitcoin just started gaining popularity. Primarily due to it’s association with the crime world, people started discussing about this newly emerged medium of exchange. As a result, the price of Bitcoin rose to $32. However, in June 2011, it came tumbling down to $2 which was a gargantuan 94% fall. Imagine if someone would have sold at that time, they would have missed millions.
For the ones who held BTC even then, things weren’t as rosy either. Bitcoin didn’t return to it’s ATH of $32 for two complete years after that.
The Fiasco of 2013:
Bitcoin started getting attention of mainstream media and investors came buzzing around into this new asset class. Eventually, this euphoria took BTC to a high of $260. But (there’s always a but), Bitcoin became a victim of it’s own success.
Trading was so intense that at it’s peak, Mt. Gox, a crypto exchange from Tokyo couldn’t handle the volume and crashed. Amidst this crash, hackers attacked the vulnerability (which typically means hacked the exchange). This forced Mt. Gox to shut down it’s operations and there was a panic sell off in the market. Bitcoin came down from a high of $250 to $50. Yup. That’s wiping of 80% of your wealth within a short span of a week.
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Harvesting Season of 2017:
Soon after, Bitcoin started it’s insane rally and this time to hit the five digit mark price. 2017 was a landmark year for Bitcoin where it broke all records and made a high of $20,000 a piece.
But, on December 27th, 2017 there was a FUD which led to a narrative that Bitcoin is a bubble and will burst soon. As a result, long time investors who jumped in early, decided to book their profits and leave. Thus, harvesting season led to 84% crash in the market taking the price back at $12,000.
The Pandemic:
After the profit booking of December 2017, BTC pretty much stabilized. The price settled around 10k and didn’t move much. But just like all of us, pandemic didn’t spare Bitcoin either.
In March 2020, Bitcoin corrected over 50% with prices hitting a rock bottom of $4000. Ouch!
The Elon Gate:
We all know what happened in 2021. Bitcoin touched newer heights with big corporates like Tesla and billionaires like Mark Cuban, Kevin O’Leary and Elon Musk, vouching for it. At this point, Bitcoin had reached an ATH of $64000. That’s just massive.
However, a couple of factors ruined it for all of us.
A. Chinese government posed stricter bans on investing and mining of cryptocurrencies.
B. Elon Musk suddenly realized that Bitcoin isn’t a green technology and hence declared that Tesla would not accept Bitcoin as a b of payment anymore (they started accepting BTC a couple of months ago).
With this we again saw a drop of 50% in the market with prices forming a bottom of $30,000.
Conclusion:
After the recent fall of April 2021, Bitcoin has again been on the rise. After staying at a level of $30k for a while, it has touched $50k twice and as I am writing this one, it’s moving between $46k and $48k. Where does it go from here? Well, if you were to listen to the “Experts”, half of them would predict a big crash while the other half is looking at $100k.
As I always, say, in the end, one has to make their own narrative. What’s yours? Do you have diamond hands or paper hands?
Got questions? Want to take it to the next level? Reach out to me using your preferred platform from the links below
Until next time..
Psst.. Struggling to save money?
I just managed to save Rs. 10,000 by investing my ‘Chillar (Change)’ in mutual funds. Investing amounts like Rs. 5, 8, 25, 45.. and 4 months later, Boom! I have 10 grand to spare. Interested in knowing how I did it? Read more here.
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On a side note, I use CoinMarketCap for all my crypto related research. You can access it through multiple modes. Sharing the links below:
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