This anyway happened only twice in four-year cycles: 2016-17 and 2020-21.

2013 does not count because 2011-13 was clearly a cycle and lasted only two years. (OK, if you count from halving to halving instead of from peak to peak it's three times, but it's still quite a weak piece of evidence because the fourth already failed.)

This is one of the many reasons I think the cycle theory is based on extremely weak assumptions. The only thing I agree is that the miners' importance in the 2012-13 and maybe also in the 2016-17 era could have indeed led to a supply/demand imbalance after the halvings, triggering a supply shortage. But these times are long gone. >95% of all Bitcoins have been mined.

Research has also, as far as I know, only found evidence for the "miner selling pressure" effect in early halving cycles. The more recent "cycles" may have to do more with the psychological effect of the halvings, fiat liquidity cycles and a self-fulfilling prophecy loop.

IMO it depends heavily on the use cases that predominate in the future.

A Bitcoin which continues to be based heavily on short to mid term speculation could sustain the "4 year cycle self fulfilling prophecy loop" for some time more. If the attention switches to longer term saving, then perhaps a remnant could remain but with much less volatility (e.g. maximum drawdowns of 30% per cycle). And if currency use becomes a main use case, volatility may be even lower.

The worry I have is that a speculative Bitcoin with still remaining self-fulfilling prophecy loop but diminishing returns could run unto a "boreout" phase like the one Ethereum is currently probably switching to, where a long term bear market without new ATHs since 2021 seem to have had begun. I still believe that even if that happens, Bitcoin can turn to the upside again, but it could take much longer to become really relevant as a saving asset and even more as a global currency.

You can't prove it (with the exception of the freeze-deadline scenario I already mentioned). So I'd not waste a thought on it, but instead search for a non-cryptographic method.

Election polls for example are surprisingly good even with as few as 2000-3000 people answering for dozens of millions, above all for systems with proportional representation. Election markets are also quite good sometimes, let's think about Trump's victory in 2024.

So here's a new idea with even a new element: integrate a betting market similar to an election market

Of course we can't contrast the data with "real lost wallets". But we can make people for example bet on the amount of coins from >10 years ago which are moved or not. People then will try to find strategies to improve on these bets, as they do on election markets. And finally we'll have good data about for example the coins that will not be moved for 1 year or so, then for 10 years, and then "forever" -> which are  nearly the same thing as lost coins.

And then we already have 3 types of data: polls, moved old coins bets, and on-chain data. We can contrast all three, and then slowly build a way better theory as the "theories by Nerea" [1] which are common now and give so wildly fluctuating results.

I had done this already in the past in the German local forum: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5529628.0

The results were, not surprising, an overwhelming support for the 21 million limit.

However I may start another poll about this framing it explicitly as an emergency measure, which would also be my position - only if all other methods like merged mining/sidechains, fee market etc. fail.

---

[1] Slang term for someone who's completely incompetent but thinks the opposite. Very much the Southern american version of Dunning-Kruger.

No. That is impossible indeed. The idea here is to make people think a bit. At least those who are active Bitcoin supporters. This community alone can't decide the fate but it can contribute to the narrative. But if even in these forums and specialized X accounts we read more tips to ride the waves than to benefit from the long term price increase, then the narrative is pushed into the exactly opposite direction: Bitcoin is speculative and will remain so.

Safe haven assets indeed need some buildup, but Bitcoin has already 13 years of flawless operation even if we count the 2013 bug which led to a short chain split.

Of course it will take more years perhaps to be considered a true gold competitor. But there are stocks considered relatively "safe" which have only a little longer ancestry, like Alphabet/Google and Booking Holdings which never lost more than 50% after their initial growth phase.

I think for a part of the investors this is indeed true. The percentage has to increase however, because I think it's way less than 50% still. And I don't consider people like Saylor really safe haven investors.

Yes of course imo. Of course to reach this level of safe haven character it will take some time for BTC still. So it has to prove itself in other ways. And here I think the community can contribute, at least not distorting the message (into a speculative direction).

Regarding media FUD, imo it is often related to some kind of investors which could sell, with of course Strategy being the focus in the last months. Here the "antidote" could be simply to clarify that even a big investor's behavior is, if at all a temporary problem -- if they fail they'll go bankrupt and thus disappear from the Bitcoin universe too.

I think yes, and until people aren't educated in that at least at high school level it will stay this way. But it is not necessary imo to get all people on the "safe haven" train. If those who have influence as leaders of opinion adopt the narrative, the smaller investors are more likely to behave less emotionally driven too.

@mv1986: Mit dem "Problem" habe ich mich auch schon im englischen Forum auseinandergesetzt.

Teils hier z.B.: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5588208.msg66932254#msg66932254

Vielleicht noch nicht jetzt, aber wahrscheinlich noch vor 2030 muss Bitcoin, wenn es weiter interessant als Investitionsobjekt bleiben will, die Kurve kriegen vom jetzigen "fast noch Pennystock" mit astronomischen Returns und hohen Risiken zum soliden Asset für Sparer.

Wenn der Boden für diesen Bärenmarkt bei über ca. 50k liegt wäre dazu der erste Schritt getan. BTC wäre dann "etwa" so solide wie Gold, das in seinen Bärenmärkten auch rund 50% verliert, aber keine 75-80%. Die Volatilität geht ja weiter zurück, der Rückgang hat sich in den letzten Jahren aber etwas verlangsamt, was aber auch zyklische Gründe haben dürfte (Hypephasen und frühe Bärenmärkte wie Ende 2025 sind eben besonders volatil, und im Vergleich zu 2021 ist der Rückgang schon wieder sehr deutlich).

Dazu kommt ja noch Lindy, Bitcoin baut durch die reine Existenz ohne größere Probleme immer weiter Vertrauen auf. Die gefühlt deutlich zunehmende Akzeptanz durch Merchants ist imo auch ein Faktor der eine Rolle spielen könnte, auch wenn die Zahlungen mit BTC für reale Produkte derzeit noch recht wenige sind (aber nein, "jeden Kaffee" brauchen wir nicht, um einen bekannten Strohmann gleich mal zu entwerten). Daher bin ich eigentlich optimistisch dass das klappen sollte.

Yes, I sort of agree with this. I would normally argument against sharing accounts even in families and couples, with the exception the relationship is really trusted. There are such relationships. And even in this case, it could be a good idea to agree on a sort of safety net.

For example, instead of having one key for both, a multisig account made from two wallets with distinct seeds you regularly renew (to avoid it being exposed if one or both parties has better or worse knowledge) could be an interesting idea, because you then know whose key was affected if something goes wrong, and at least the simple "I was hacked!" excuse wouldn't work anymore. This would of course only work for saving/holding purposes, if you move the funds around it would become extremely complicated due to the continuous renewal of the multisig addresses,

Another idea could be that one of both has the keys, but there's a legal agreement that the coins belong to both, and a second key stored e.g. in a bank safe ...

Do you think this could work as an "official recommendation" for the OP list? I guess the details are a bit advanced - but something like "if you share a Bitcoin wallet with your partner, do it only in very trusted relationships, and know exactly what you do and agree on some sort of safety net for the case of a hack." could be a good idea to add.

Good tip, adding it!

I think the 3500 BTC sale which was only noted after the fact was a smart move. It may not be enough of course, but it provides some air to breath for Strategy during months where the market is full of fear and expects lower lows, which could be dangerous for Strategy without enough reserves.

Now I had first problems understanding this part:


It seems however that they refer mostly to a situation if STRC falls further, then MSTR could rise the dividends to appease the investors and prevent a further fall. And then the original cash reserves + the 3588 BTC sold would be no longer enough for 20 months, but perhaps less than a year if everything goes wrong.

Thus it would imo be an intelligent move to sell more BTC now, preferrably if the price stays well above 60k to prevent triggering lower lows. It may seem highly counter-productive as it may be a price near the bottom. But if the cash reserves can be increased further to 30+ months, then the risk of forced and unplanned BTC liquidations in the case of a further BTC price decline, which would be much more harmful to the market, would be minimized.

Yes I think there are more facts in play than the simple tail emission issue. I interpret that your opinion is that Monero is less easy to use and above all to buy (due to all the delistings). And yes, I have to agree here too. There is also Bitcoin's first mover advantage.

However, what I think is that if the tail emission issue was that important (i.e. the market decided that it was the better concept), then we should see a continuous growth of the "tail emission coins" like Doge, Monero or Grin. With the exception of Monero which has probably other reasons (privacy concept) the opposite is happening and these coins are losing importance and market cap. And even Monero on the long term scale is clearly losing value to BTC.

Or at least we could see a "Bitcoin Tail" fork with at least as much hashrate and market cap as another major fork like BSV or even BCH. In fact I haven't found a single fork with a tail emission, not even something minuscule like BTC, XEC or Bitcoin Diamond.

It's of course a possibility that the market is mis-pricing that, because of course it isn't popular in the Bitcoin space proper (e,g, Bitcoin maximalists). It would be interesting if someone tried such a fork, to see if it would reach at least the level of something like XEC.

I think this is not really necessary, and it is also not possible easily. With one exception perhaps: if Jameson Lopp's anti-quantum fork went through and the lost coins were frozen ... It's even likely that Lopp's timeline (freeze in 5-10 years?) would still be early enough to tackle the reward/security budget problem. But it would be an one-time "confirmation", later I hope we don't need such a freeze again (well I hope we don't need even Lopp's freeze). 

An alternative is to try different methodologies and see if they come to the same order of magnitude without sharing too many variables. I think there's a good chance the result would be accurate enough to at least give a rough idea about the magnitude of a tail emission. We don't need exact data for that, because it's not critical if Bitcoin's supply shrinks a bit. The opposite, that it expands too much, is more of a danger due to the "hard money" paradigm BTC caters to.

Regarding money I could have lost, I also think it should be in the 100$ in 10 years order of magnitude

I had interpreted the "keep coins separate" tip as the classic recommendation that you should not mix funds from different provenance on the same address. That's mainly for privacy reasons, and to avoid that a lot of coins become "tainted" when you for example in a P2P trade get some coins with a worse history. Also it's useful if you have larger funds to hold them in separate addresses so no malicious party can know the amount you hold (and plan a hack or $5 wrench attack).

But Joy-maker could indeed been a bit clearer what he meant there. Reading the post again it's indeed possible he meant something like an investment in a friend group or an extended family, where everybody claims that he owns a part of the coins, but without separate keys/addresses. This of course should be avoided, it could be justified only if you are a couple and both of you know exactly what you're doing. I didn't know this was even a thing, honestly

While I think the short term movements are more or less irrelevant if they're not too harsh, gold had long stretches of bear markets where the value sometimes declined around 50%, like in the 80/90s and 2010s.

But that seemingly hasn't harmed gold being considered a "safe haven". Neither has the 20% fall in the last months.

This means that Bitcoin doesn't have to be perfectly stable to achieve a similar reputation. Perhaps "technically" it is only necessary to reduce the volatility a little bit more.

The obstacle seems to be elsewhere. The dips when the interest rates increase, for example, or when the Nasdaq-100/S&P 500 goes down. This creates self-fulfilling prophecies everywhere ("the Nasdaq went down! Sell your Bitcoin too!!").

That would involve probably that you have to investigate first where the people learn about Bitcoin now. And which narratives they learn.

Studies from fields like Behavioural Finance such as this one by T. Sang look interesting. From the introduction:


I haven't read the paper still but it looks they were going for exactly that: trying to improve the narratives the new Bitcoiners learn when they get interested in the topic, to be able to control their emotions and other irrational behavior.

Yo no creo que haya sido por Trump que el precio rebotó (quizá fue lo que disparó el cambio de tendencia pero para mí no ibamos a ver nuevos mínimos solo por la venta de Saylor).

Creo que más que nada lo que el mercado sintió es alivio. Porque la venta se detectó en un reporte a la SEC, y los BTC fueron vendidos varios días antes. Es decir, el mercado vio que los 3588 BTC (creo que este fue el número exacto) no tuvieron impacto alguno en el precio. Fue dentro de un movimiento levemente alcista incluso, antes del 5 de julio si mal no recuerdo.

Y ahora Saylor se quedó con cash para bastante más de un año de dividendos. Es decir, el "riesgo agudo" que algo pueda pasar con la compañía todavía en 2026 por falta de liquidez, se esfumó. Lo mejor de eso es que se protegió un poco contra la "teoría ciclista", según la que todavía debería haber un drop del BTC más fuerte cerca de fin de año que marcaría el mínimo del ciclo (50k? 40k?). Es decir Saylor pateó el riesgo para adelante hasta el próximo mercado alcista.

Eso sí, es posible que el próximo bull sea menos pronunciado si Strategy vende demasiados coins y no corrige algo de su modelo de negocio. Si mal no recuerdo en 2028 vencían los bonos, hasta este año debería haber una solución que no dependa de que BTC valga 1 millón.

@GazetaBitcoin: I've linked all translations now (I hope so).

In the German translation thread there was an interesting answer by @jahead, which I'll integrate into the OP:

In short:

- He'd recommend Lightning and layer 2's for small payments.
- Take into account specific kinds of scams, like dust attacks, clipboard hacking and phishing. One scam I hadn't so much "on my radar", at least in the crypto space, is fake support, i.e. people pretending to be support staff and requesting addresses.

Perhaps his first tip is more for advanced users for now, but anyway it's not a bad advice.

If there are other translation threads where good tips are shared in the answers, y'all can feel free to post and link them here -- translate them to English please. (Be aware though that a lot of tips have already been mentioned. In the last two pages of this thread I haven't read anything new.)

Imo it depends on the degree of centralization. Of course, on super-centralized coins (say something like Sui or XRP) any opposition would not have any effect.

Zcash had, in comparison with coins like Ethereum, a relatively small premine (the dev tax would make up 10% of the total supply). The Ethereum founders in contrast premined 50% of the supply of the first years, even if they sold a part in an ICO. So they had more threat potential to dump the ETC coins. In Zcash's case probably a strong community still could create pressure.

It's however a bit a point for your side that Zcash seems to have extended its dev tax, and they were able to do it without a major hard fork (see tromp's answer).

I know people that have lost coins. It was only faucet rewards or small gifts at that time (pre-2015) but it would be worth at least some hundreds or even thousands of USD today.

I think if they really thought there would be at least a chance to get the order of magnitude.

For example, you could combine:

- a good poll on long term holders' behavior ("good" means: not a simple online poll, but at least an online panel)
- another good poll on lost Bitcoins
- the Bitcoins that are not moved since a year (5 years ago for example)

Most estimates are based only on one of these indicators, above all the "not moved Bitcoins". But that's too shallow. Ideally you do several polls over a timeframe of at least a year, and then contrast them with on-chain data.

I have found out that the Cane Island method is even worse: they derive their number from money that is "typically" lost in every economic system (e.g. lost banknotes and valuables, lost access to payment platforms or prepaid cards ...). But even then: Do you really lose 3-4% of your money per year? I've seen estimations of 1-2% but I think it's still a bit high.


Agreed. However it hasn't to be necessarily a 51% attack in progress. I think if Bitcoin had only a (raw, i.e. not marketcap-bound) attack cost of 2013/14 levels or earlier, then I would be worried and support such a measure.

I disagree that it would be much lower. I think the missed FOMO and the FUD about the security budget (which is a type of FUD that even "could" have a litte truth in it) should be roughly equivalent. The whole "mining death spiral" theory would probably collapse too, because it heavily is derived from the argument that the security budget is "too low due to the halvings".

This even strengthens your point however

Thanks, I was just looking for the answer of that question to answer Dogedegen's post.

I'm quite sure that this narrative was quite popular in the mid 2010s already. Here I found a little history of that narrative. There was even a book with this title from 2015. So I'd say Saylor's relevancy is limited.

"Safe haven" does also not mean "not currency". The P2P currency and the digital gold narrative are very compatible one with another. It is less compatible with the speculative "ride the waves" narrative.

It's abstract, but of course what I mean here is more in line with the concept of "leaders of opinion", i.e. influencers, forum members, all that stuff Or: All people who want to share their own thoughts on Bitcoin with others. Also those who are able to develop solutions for Bitcoin, like layer-2's, DeFi, and other stuff. These solutions can contribute too, see below for my take that the digital gold narrative is compatible with the currency narrative, but not with the volatility/speculation narrative, and thus layer-2's for example can help.

These actors won't agree all with that narrative, some will like to stay in the speculative camp. But perhaps some could re-think their stance if they become convinced that a "safe haven" narrative would be advantageous for a lot of use cases.

Disagree fundamentally. The market for safe haven assets is afaik much bigger than for high-return risk assets. So if people became to believe that it's a good idea to hold Bitcoin in the long term then this will cater to those who are looking to an alternative to overpriced real estate, for example.

The essential point for me is the risk-reward relation. If Bitcoin can prove that its risk is lowering, then the use case "long term value storage" should get more popular by the laws of logic.

However, everybody who whines about "only" an average 15-20% return per year (that's approximately what the SMA-200 is yielding), of course increases the risk because they implicate that Bitcoin is only worth something because of its exceptionally high returns, and create fear and distrust. So we have a "whining spiral", where the whiners are creating artificial volatility. Clever investors will buy it up at the bottom.

For me there is a big conflict between "volatility lovers" ("ride the waves" guys, shorters, leveraged traders etc.) and "long term holders". If the volatility camp wins, then Bitcoin in my eyes will have a very difficult time in the near future, probably as early as the 2030s.

You make a case for the volatility camp being dominant for a quite long time still because it currently may dominate the narratives (even if I'm not sure). My stance is, this is definitely possible, but then maybe we will have to go through a big bear market, and I mean big here, to shake out the volatility camp. But maybe "the community" can do better. See above.

The 800,000 Bitcoins are a lot but not a game changer. It's 4% of all Bitcoins currently in circulation. We have a lot of volume each day (200,000-500,000) being traded.

If Saylor's narratives are being questioned, that is good in my opinion - for the safe haven camp.

@Fortify: See early part of answer to DPD.

Yes, this is also a problem: "fake save haven preachers". Those that only preach about safe havens but only because they want to ride a bull market. This is one of the behaviors that in the end harms the narrative, and makes it more difficult for Bitcoin to become one.

It has been debated for some time now if Bitcoin is considered a safe haven asset like gold by the investors.

The opinions on that do not really match the price behavior. Since 2020, Bitcoin seems to follow the US stock indexes, and thus it's likely many people consider it "one stock more", or a speculative risk asset.

It seems also to be a fact that currently Fed interest rate increases influence the Bitcoin price negatively, as they do with stocks. Even if that doesn't lead to price jumps, it reforces the assumption that Bitcoin is not really considered a "safe haven" assets.

In contrast, there are some polls which say that a majority (in this case more than 70%) of Bitcoin investors consider BTC "digital gold". And digital gold should normally be a safe haven asset, isn't it?

---

Now the question I want to ask: Can the Bitcoin community do something to reforce the "safe haven" asset narrative?

I see some possibilities. Because the way the Bitcoin community communicates, does in my opinion trigger some decisions, like buying, selling, FOMO and panic.

So my proposals would be (above all for those who have some kind of "influencer" function, be them youtubers/tiktokers or influential forum members):

- Whine a little less about bear markets, and see them as an opportunity or "discount".
- Also don't whine about things like "Bitcoin being not anymore the most profitable asset". Nobody should care about that. If Bitcoin's concept is sound, it will attract investment anyway.
- Bitcoiners could try to talk a bit more about the long term and less about the short term. Above all, the whole "cyclist" narrative (hey, let's catch the bottom!) probably hurts the digital gold narrative.
- It also would help to talk about the benefits of Bitcoin which are not related to its price evolution, like censorship resistance, international payments, etc..
- Also a bit less exaggeration of the supposed danger of Saylor and friends would not do harm.
- And of course, promote DCA.

On the other hand, there are those that say "well, ok, we can do what we want in the community, but the whales are those driving the market! Wall Street decided it's a risk asset, and we can't do anything about it!".

I'm highly skeptical of that assumption. A single whale cannot move enough money to counter the sentiment of a big group of smaller Bitcoin investors. See also this thread: in 2024, a supposed "whale sale" (which even happened in another timeframe) of 30,000 BTC triggered more than 100,000 BTC being sold by other investors.

But what's your take on this? Has the community any chance to influence the narrative? And if yes, how?

That's what I think as well. In reality I think I liked the system where the group stage eliminates half of the teams. It made the group stage more exciting.

But it's sort of a dilemma. There was for example also an idea to have three-team groups, so you would have less games for the same purpose (elimate 33%). But then many teams would have only two guaranteed games. Perhaps then the lower ranked teams would put in less effort in their participation. Even worse if it was a knockout format from the start on.

There was another idea I read somewhere to indeed pursue one of these ideas (3-team groups or round of 64), but then add a second prize you could win in a sort of "loser's round", like in other sports, so the teams would not have to travel for 1 or 2 games.

Eine richtige Altseason wie 2020/21 oder sogar 2017 denke ich ist unwahrscheinlich. Die haben ja meistens davon gelebt dass irgendein Coin behauptet hat, was ganz neues und revolutionäres zu sein. Aber so viel neues und revolutionäres gibt es für Altcoins halt einfach nicht mehr zu holen, und die schlechten Erfahrungen mit Shitcoins in den letzten Jahren dürften da das Kapital doch zurückhalten.

Aber das so ein Zwischenhype kommt wie 2024 die Memecoin-Welle oder vor einigen Wochen Hyperliquid, ist immer möglich.

Im Moment sind Memecoins aber ziemlich abgemeldet und solche Sachen wie Ordinals sind sowieso tot.

Hm, ob Bitcoin noch ein deutlicheres Tief sieht? Ist für mich keineswegs ausgemacht (50/50). In den hohen 50ern scheinen die Leute weiterhin keine Lust zu haben, wirklich zu verkaufen und der RSI war ja schon ziemlich tief. 2022 hat ja auch FTX nachgeholfen, um Ende des Jahres noch mal neue Lows zu generieren. Saylor dagegen, der dieses Jahr sowas wie der "Bärenmarktbeschleuniger" ist, hat sich imo erstmal stabilisiert, indem er dem Markt gezeigt hat, dass er auch verkaufen kann ohne einen Dump auszulösen. Selbst der Iran und die Straße von Hormus juckt niemand mehr. Aber vielleicht kommt ja den Zyklisten doch noch ein Ereignis zur Hilfe, z.B. eine Binance-Pleite.

The Ordinals-based shittoken has probably only peripherally to do with the price spike I mentioned. Its price spike occurred at April 21 (see below):


Source is Coinpaprika.

ORDI and SATS had their price spike during the same time but not exactly the same day as "the unnamed token" I linked above: both on April 17 (on April 21 ORDI already had fallen around 30%).

According to Google Gemini the reason for the BRC-20 activity decline could have been instead the closure of the Ordinals section of the Magic Eden marketplace. I could confirm this news (from February/March) here. I had asked Gemini already before I started this thread but it seems it needed the info about the price spike to deliver that result. It looks quite a convincing theory.

The reason for the price spike at April 17 instead could have been a simple short squeeze.

You're of course correct but I was wondering more about the April 2026 spike at the same time when the activity of BRC-20 declined.

Edited the post for "reasons" (thanks @Satofan44, sorry for the merits, wasn't aware of this dishonest shitcoin promotion attempt as I saw this person only once before.).

User: RouteToCoast's big opus The End of ASIC Proof-of-Work (well, a slightly elaborated variant of the "death spiral" fud) seems to be at least partially AI generated.

I used a sample of the text:

Sapling says 76% fake (see here).
originality.ai is 99% confident it's AI.
GPTZero: 92% AI

Here he may even have admitted it indirectly.

Yes, that's what I initially thought could have been the reason. But the increase of Runes was already registered before April/May when the BRC-20 weight dropped to unprecedented levels.

I have looked at the price evolution of the most popular BRC-20 tokens and honestly I have more questions than answers:



This is ORDI measured in BTC (to eliminate Bitcoin price influence) - you see that there was even a price increase in April/May 2026.



This is SATS, the #2 at the BRC-20 rankings. Its price is low, but it didn't substantially change after late 2025. No April/May 2026 decline is visible. And still both tokens are firmly in the top #1000 in altcoin rankings.

So I'm still wondering if something happened in the Ordinals space. And what's that strange price spike in both tokens just close to the moment the volume drop ocurred?

Not that I'm unhappy with it. Some will know that I consider BRC-20 the worst token format ever invented. It was just an amateur experiment with Inscription that went out of control, it could even have fueled the mining bubble in 2023/24. And so I'm surprised the fad lasted so long.

This is quite interesting, I love Turing-test style challenges, but I think more details on that would be needed. What's the event's name, for example? Machine Arena?

Also I wonder how this can be related to gambling. Can people bet on the outcome of these tournaments with real money? Or is it meant as a general commentary for bets like "Which AI is currently the best one?"?