WasiRose

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bitcoin hit $65k and nobody cared. here's why that might be the real story

let's talk about something most crypto people don't want to admit: bitcoin might have already won its biggest battle and lost its biggest opportunity at the same time.

the uncomfortable truth about bitcoin's next 10x

in my view, bitcoin no longer has the potential to increase in value by 1,000x, 100x, or even 10x. i know that sounds bearish, but hear me out.

fifteen years ago, bitcoin emerged at the perfect moment right after the 2008 financial crisis when trust in governments, banks, and fiat currencies was at historic lows. remember occupy wall street? the tea party? that was real rage. bitcoin offered something different: decentralized, scarce, and completely outside the traditional financial system.

back then, the extreme volatility (70% to 90% drawdowns, multiple times) was tolerable because it was always followed by 5x, 10x, sometimes even 100x rallies. much of this growth was driven by waves of new, highly leveraged investors attracted by returns that were literally impossible to find in traditional

the discovery phase is over

today, bitcoin is widely known. your parents have heard of it. your barber has an opinion on it. that one friend who still uses a flip phone? yeah, they know what bitcoin is too.

this dramatically reduces the likelihood of massive new inflows purely from discovery. the "wait until people find out about this" narrative is dead. people found out. they either bought in or decided not to.

at the same time, investors seeking speculative upside now have alternatives: gold, silver, tech stocks like tesla, or other high-risk assets that offer more stability while satisfying the same appetite for outsized gains.

we got what we asked for (and it killed the dream)

here's the paradox that nobody wants to acknowledge:

bitcoin spent years fighting for mainstream institutional and governmental acceptance. that day has arrived.

etfs exist ✓

banks offer exposure ✓

regulators have frameworks ✓

institutions are accumulating ✓

yet this acceptance has not translated into widespread use as a medium of exchange for goods and services. instead, financialization has deepened.

large institutions can now trade "paper bitcoin" through derivatives, potentially expanding synthetic supply through futures and short selling. the original scarcity narrative — the thing that made bitcoin special — gets diluted within the modern financial system.

"we wanted wall street to accept bitcoin. they did. then they turned it into another tradfi product."
~ every og bitcoiner, probably

so what's the path forward?

i struggle to see a clear trajectory for bitcoin under its current setup. the explosive growth phase was fueled by:

novelty (now gone)

distrust in traditional systems (institutions co-opted it)

extreme volatility cycles (being smoothed out by institutional participation)

now that bitcoin is widely known, institutionalized, and deeply integrated into mainstream finance, the asymmetric upside that defined its early years appears structurally harder to repeat.

the one scenario that could change everything

one potential catalyst would be genuine, large-scale adoption as a unit of account for globally traded commodities — oil, gas, strategic resources.

if major exporters began pricing and settling contracts in #bitcoin , demand would shift from speculative to transactional. that would represent a structural transformation, not just another hype cycle.

however, this would require:

geopolitical realignment

sovereign-level coordination

price stability (the irony)

and here's where it gets really interesting...

the cruel irony: legitimacy kills volatility

paradoxically, if bitcoin achieved that level of real-economy integration, investors would have to say goodbye to the volatility that historically drove outsized returns.

a currency used for large-scale commodity settlement cannot swing 20-30% in a week without creating systemic risk. stability would become a feature, not a bug.

and while stability could validate bitcoin as infrastructure, it would also kill its appeal as a high-beta speculative asset.

in that scenario, bitcoin might mature into a low-volatility settlement layer — valuable, sure, but unlikely to deliver the exponential gains that early adopters experienced.

the identity crisis

this is bitcoin's real problem in 2026:

is it:

digital gold? (then it competes with actual gold)

a payments network? (then it competes with visa/mastercard)

a speculative asset? (then it competes with tech stocks)

global reserve currency? (then it needs stability, killing returns)

it can't be all of these things simultaneously. and trying to be everything to everyone might mean it ends up being nothing special to anyone.

what this means for crypto broadly

if bitcoin — the flagship, the original, the most trusted — is facing this identity crisis, what does that mean for the rest of crypto?

defi promised to replace banks. instead, it became a casino.
nfts promised digital ownership. instead, they became jpgs of monkeys.
web3 promised decentralization. instead, it became vc-funded startups with tokens.

the pattern is clear: crypto gets absorbed by the system it was supposed to replace, then loses the properties that made it interesting in the first place.

the uncomfortable question

in short, the path to legitimacy and the path to extraordinary returns may no longer be the same path.

and as a result, i'm genuinely not sure what purpose bitcoin and crypto serve today beyond being another asset class for speculation.

maybe that's enough. maybe being "just another tradeable asset" is the final form.

but if that's the case, we should stop pretending it's revolutionary and just call it what it is: a speculative tech stock with better branding.

#RiskAssetsMarketShock $BTC