Why do I STILL recommend buying bitcoin, even when James Check is cautious in the near term?

00:01 Why do I still recommend people buy
00:03 Bitcoin even when James Check, my
00:05 favorite Bitcoin analyst, is cautious in
00:08 the near term? Well, let’s walk through
00:09 some scenarios and I’ll explain why.
00:11 First off, Bitcoin has gone from zero 16
00:14 years ago to $124,000
00:18 in the the last two weeks. It peaked
00:20 about 2 weeks ago, something like that.
00:22 10 days, two 14 days, something like
00:23 that ago. And then it came back down to
00:25 $108,000, about 12 or 13% below its
00:29 all-time high. And I was recommending
00:32 people buy Bitcoin all the way through
00:34 from the very first time I bought
00:35 Bitcoin. Uh the cheapest Bitcoin I ever
00:38 bought was $6,400. And I’ve been
00:40 recommending people buy Bitcoin at every
00:42 price between $6,400
00:45 and $124,000.
00:46 So first, let’s talk about the high end
00:48 of that range, $124,000. So, as you
00:51 know, I follow James Check and all of
00:52 his analysis, which most of the stuff in
00:56 um the chart guys are just like
00:58 completely bogus and crypto bros, you
01:01 know, drawing chart lines on charts,
01:02 it’s all, you know, completely garbage.
01:05 James Check takes a completely different
01:06 approach, which is he analyzes uh the
01:08 price of Bitcoin entirely through the
01:10 lens of supply and demand. And supply
01:12 and demand is the right lens to analyze
01:14 any asset through. Okay. Okay. So, first
01:16 of all, at 124,000 based on every past
01:19 indicator, he would say, I would say,
01:21 and everybody in the Bitcoin world would
01:22 say that was not the 4-year cycle top.
01:25 It’s just if it is, it’s sort of
01:27 completely unlike anything we’ve seen
01:29 before, which is not impossible. It’s
01:31 just very unlikely. So, all the way up
01:33 to $124,000 strikes me as a good time to
01:36 buy Bitcoin. And because we know the
01:38 value of all the gold in the world is
01:40 worth more than $20 trillion.
01:42 And Bitcoin is only a $2 trillion asset.
01:45 So even if Bitcoin is only as good as
01:48 gold, then Bitcoin’s got a good 10x up
01:50 to a million dollars per coin. The vast
01:53 majority of of gold’s market
01:54 capitalization, its value, is due to its
01:57 monetary properties, not its decorative
01:59 uses in jewelry, not its industrial uses
02:02 as a conductor of electricity, for
02:03 example, but due to its monetary uses.
02:06 uh gold’s monetary attributes of its
02:09 divis its divisibility, durability, uh
02:12 scarcity, uh verifiability, you know,
02:15 fungeability, all that sort of stuff.
02:16 Now, Bitcoin is better on all of those
02:18 characteristics than gold. Um, which
02:21 means I believe Bitcoin is going to be
02:22 worth more than a million dollars a
02:24 coin. It’s not only going to reach
02:25 parody in market capitalization, meaning
02:28 all the Bitcoin in the world, I think,
02:29 will be worth more than all the gold in
02:31 the world, but I think it’ll be
02:32 significantly higher than that. But how
02:34 much higher, we don’t know. But
02:35 regardless, there’s a very clear path to
02:37 $1 million per Bitcoin just with Bitcoin
02:40 competing with gold as a store of value
02:43 sort of digital gold because again for
02:45 monetary properties, Bitcoin is
02:47 categorically better in every category.
02:50 Okay. So, so there’s never a bad time to
02:52 buy Bitcoin up to $124,000, which is the
02:55 highest it’s ever been. Uh because
02:57 again, I think on your way to a million
02:58 dollars, every price on the way to a
02:60 million dollars is cheap compared to a
03:02 million dollars. All right. So, right
03:03 now we’ve pulled back from $124,000 to
03:06 $108,000. And James Check, my favorite
03:08 analyst, is cautious. He’s saying,
03:10 “Look, we don’t know what the future
03:11 could hold. 50% chances goes lower, 50%
03:14 chance it goes higher.” He does not
03:16 think we go below $80,000, which I know
03:18 is sounds like a ridiculously low number
03:20 unless you’ve been in Bitcoin any period
03:22 of time, in which case it’s a high
03:24 number because Bitcoin a year ago had
03:28 never touched $80,000 in its entire
03:30 history. So only in the last 16 years,
03:33 the last one year, parts of the last one
03:35 year, has Bitcoin been above $80,000
03:38 primarily from the end of last year to
03:41 most of the present, not all, but most
03:43 of the present. Um, but anyway, so if
03:47 you have an asset that might go to
03:49 $80,000, might go to 90, might go to
03:52 100, but is at 108, but it also has a
03:55 very high likelihood of going to a
03:57 million, then let’s play out the
03:59 scenarios. What if I said it was a bad
04:01 idea to buy Bitcoin unless it was
04:04 100,000 or 95,000 or 90,000 or 80,000?
04:07 Well, the problem is you’re making a
04:09 very bad uh the odds are not in your
04:12 favor is I’ll put it that way. And
04:14 here’s why. If you’re going from 108
04:17 down to $80,000, you’re trying to save
04:19 whatever 25% whatever that is. The
04:22 problem is the upside is a,000%. So your
04:25 certainty that Bitcoin will visit
04:29 $80,000 has to be what would that be? 25
04:33 into a,000 would be 40 40x. You know,
04:37 you better be 40 times more certain than
04:41 it’s that it’s going to go to 80 than
04:43 that it’s going to go to a,000 because
04:45 otherwise it makes no sense to sacrifice
04:48 a 1,000%
04:50 upside chasing a 25% downside. that
04:53 ratio just makes no sense. And so the in
04:56 in the world of Bitcoin, it virtually
04:58 never makes sense to wait for a lower
05:01 price. I would say just categorically it
05:03 never makes sense to wait for a lower
05:05 price because you’re you’re potentially
05:08 forfeiting a,000% upside trying to
05:11 capture 5% 10% 25% downside which again
05:15 that mathematically just doesn’t make
05:17 sense because whatever the upside is you
05:19 can divide it by the percentage you’re
05:22 trying to capture on the downside and
05:24 you can have a good sense of sort of how
05:26 likely are you are to get left out in
05:28 the cold. This has happened numerous
05:31 times. I mean, just in the time I’ve
05:33 been in Bitcoin in the last 8 years,
05:35 there are numerous points where the
05:36 price goes somewhere and then people are
05:39 predicting it will go lower and then it
05:40 never does. Uh so, for example, uh
05:43 earlier this year, uh the peak last year
05:46 uh after the ETF launch in March of last
05:49 year was $73,800.
05:51 So, let’s assume you picked your number
05:53 and you said, “Okay, the highest it ever
05:55 got after the ETF launch, immediately
05:57 after the ETF launch was 73,800.
05:60 If it ever touches that price again in
06:02 2025, I’m buying.” Well, guess what? The
06:05 price dipped down to $74,600
06:08 and then it went up to 124,000. So, you
06:11 would have missed by about $800. And are
06:14 you seriously willing to sacrifice a
06:17 thousand% upside
06:19 because you’re you guessed less than 1%
06:22 off of how low it might go? The the
06:24 biggest place that this was absolutely
06:26 insane and I mean insane was in 2022. Uh
06:31 the price had gone up and then up in
06:33 2021, came back in 2022 and we spent 4
06:36 months below $20,000.
06:39 And in fact, I think we spent quite a
06:41 few months, weeks at least, below
06:44 $17,000.
06:45 And all over Twitter, people were like,
06:47 “Only fools are buying Bitcoin for
06:49 $16,000. I’m waiting for $13,800.” For
06:53 some reason, a ton of people on Twitter,
06:55 because they had all compared charts and
06:56 graphs, and they were all trying to
06:58 outguess each other, had been convinced
07:00 that Bitcoin was going to hit 13,800.
07:03 And so all of them were bragging about
07:06 how much dry powder they had and how
07:08 many US dollars they were sitting on
07:09 that they were just waiting to buy this
07:11 Bitcoin at 13,800. And the lowest
07:14 Bitcoin ever dipped after the FTX blow
07:17 up, which had nothing to do with
07:18 Bitcoin. It just FTX dra drug drag it
07:21 down because people didn’t know the
07:22 difference. Um the lowest it ever dipped
07:24 was 15,500. Now people like me, I was
07:27 buying I was buying in the 30s, the 40s,
07:29 the 30s, the 20s, the teens. I was
07:31 buying at every price level because I
07:33 knew that we didn’t know where the
07:34 bottom was and it was not worth risking
07:37 a massive mega upside in order to try to
07:40 capture a few extra percentages on the
07:42 downside. But there is a huge amount of
07:44 money, tens of millions, probably
07:46 hundreds of millions of dollars planning
07:48 to buy Bitcoin at 13,800 and they will
07:51 never buy Bitcoin at 13,800. All of
07:53 those people either paid a much higher
07:55 price than I paid when I was paying when
07:57 I was buying Bitcoin handover fist below
07:60 $17,000. They either paid a lot more
08:02 than that because once the price started
08:03 running, you know, they probably didn’t
08:04 want to. They were they got they waited
08:06 a long time for that 13,800 and the
08:08 price was in the 20,000s or 30,000s
08:11 before it became clear they were never
08:13 going to get 13,800 and they finally
08:15 capitulated and bought it at a lot
08:17 higher price. So that’s at least better
08:19 than just missing out completely. But
08:21 most people just miss out completely.
08:22 They’re like, “If it ever goes down to
08:24 X, I’ll buy more.” And then when it goes
08:26 down to X, they don’t buy more because
08:27 they’re freaked out because the price is
08:29 dropping. And every time the price is
08:30 dropping, people are think it’s going to
08:32 keep dropping, right? When the price is
08:33 going up, they think it’s going to keep
08:34 going up. When it drops, they think it’s
08:36 going to drop. So even if I knew there
08:39 was a 99% chance that Bitcoin would
08:42 touch $80,000, if somebody came to me
08:45 and said, “Should I wait?” I would say,
08:46 “No.” First of all, there’s a 1% chance
08:49 it doesn’t. But there’s a 50 to 80%
08:53 chance that if I tell them to buy
08:55 Bitcoin at $80,000 that if it ever gets
08:57 there on the 1% chance it does, I don’t
08:60 know what the percent is. I’m
09:01 hypothetically saying 1%. They’re not
09:03 going to buy it because everybody who
09:05 thinks they’re going to buy Bitcoin at
09:06 $80,000 at 108 right now is going to
09:09 freak out when it actually starts going
09:11 that way and decide not to buy it
09:12 because it might go lower. And the same
09:15 psychology is is is happens in my case.
09:18 I bought a lot of Bitcoin in 2013 20
09:20 sorry 2017 and 2018 around $9,000 and I
09:24 told myself if Bitcoin ever goes to half
09:27 its current price I’m going to buy a
09:29 bunch more which is $4,500. Well, guess
09:32 what? It went to $4,500. What did I do?
09:34 I did not buy any Bitcoin at $4,500 cuz
09:37 I thought, well, if it’s dropped this
09:39 much, it probably will keep dropping.
09:40 And yeah, it went into the 4,000s and it
09:42 with it touched for a little while there
09:44 the the high, you know, mid to high
09:46 3000s. And then it we’re sitting at
09:48 108,000. Do I wish I had bought a bunch
09:51 of Bitcoin at at you know 4,500?
09:54 Yes. Do I wish but I didn’t because
09:57 again I didn’t. I wish at $9,000
10:00 somebody had told me to just go ahead
10:01 and buy more because if they had told
10:04 me, Joel, wait for $4,500 and go all in.
10:08 I wouldn’t have done it because I
10:09 already told myself that and I already
10:11 planned to and I already didn’t. So
10:14 nobody nobody who thinks they’re going
10:15 to do that. Almost nobody ever follows
10:17 through. The price is falling. It’s
10:19 scary when the price is falling.
10:21 Everybody’s worried something’s wrong
10:22 with Bitcoin and they don’t buy the
10:23 Bitcoin. So, the best time to buy
10:25 Bitcoin is whenever you can buy Bitcoin.
10:27 Whenever you have US dollars that could
10:28 be converted to Bitcoin, that’s a good
10:30 time to buy Bitcoin. If you try to time
10:32 the downsides, you generally are going
10:34 to miss out because either the price
10:37 will never touch that or it will touch
10:40 whatever your magic number is and you’re
10:42 going to freak out and not buy it after
10:43 all. I mean, this is just chronic
10:46 classic human behavior, which again is
10:49 the reason I recommend buying Bitcoin at
10:50 all prices. Now, at some point, if James
10:53 Check says, “Hey, we’re in the
10:54 130,000$140,000
10:56 $160,000 per coin and all of his
10:59 indicators, which are all based on human
11:01 behavior. It’s based on how much profit
11:02 humans are in on their Bitcoin and how
11:05 much profit Bitcoin uh people are taking
11:08 on their Bitcoin and how how high the
11:11 value of all the Bitcoin is as compared
11:14 to the price everyone paid for it. So
11:16 all of those metrics are based entirely
11:17 on human behavior. It’s based on the
11:20 likelihood that humans sell something
11:22 when they’re in a certain amount of
11:24 profit or the likelihood that they
11:26 capitulate in pain when they’re at a
11:28 certain amount of loss. So all of James
11:29 Check’s research is not based on like
11:31 Ballinger bands and you know uh golden
11:35 ratios and you know all this crazy
11:37 stuff. It’s not based on that. It’s
11:38 based on human behavior. If the human
11:41 behavior he sees by watching the flows
11:43 in and out of the Bitcoin ETFs and all
11:45 this sort of stuff indicates that things
11:47 are getting quite frothy, meaning things
11:49 are getting a little crazy. Yeah, I’ll
11:51 probably recommend that you dollar cost
11:53 average, which means buy the same, it’s
11:55 just target price recurring buys. buy
11:57 the same amount of Bitcoin every week
11:59 and just leave it on as long as you can.
12:01 At some point I will probably recommend
12:02 you switch and you know dollar cost
12:05 average. Um and initially I thought if
12:08 it gets above $120,000 I’ll recommend
12:10 that. But we got to $120,000 and it felt
12:12 like there was still a lot in the gas in
12:14 the tank. So I’m like great. If you can
12:16 buy Bitcoin, buy Bitcoin. So yeah. Um
12:18 James Check, his specialty is to help
12:20 people not buy the very tip and then
12:22 have to sit underwater for a year or two
12:24 or longer. Um and again at that point
12:27 it’s better to just dollar cost average
12:29 but to me at least the yeah and even
12:32 James check I mean he’s never said we’re
12:35 close to the top for this cycle and uh
12:37 anyway so how low could we go? Nobody
12:39 knows. Are you going to buy it if it
12:41 goes lower? Probably not. Is now a good
12:43 time to buy Bitcoin? Yes, because the
12:45 only time you can guarantee you’re going
12:47 to buy Bitcoin is if you buy it right
12:49 now. And if you don’t buy it right now,
12:51 the the very high likelihood is it will
12:54 never hit the price where you think
12:56 you’re going to buy it. And if it does
12:58 hit the price that you think you’re
12:59 going to buy it, you’re not actually
13:01 going to buy it because it’s the price
13:02 is going to be down. You’re going to be
13:04 freaking out. It’s not going to feel
13:06 good. The best time to buy Bitcoin is
13:07 when it feels horrible. When it’s
13:09 radically on sale and everyone’s
13:11 worried. That’s when it’s the cheapest
13:12 and that’s when the least number of
13:14 people are buying it because human
13:16 psychology says everybody’s freaking
13:17 out. So, I think $108,000 is a great
13:20 time to buy Bitcoin. And again, if you
13:21 are worried it’s going to go down,
13:23 dollar cost average. Set up a recurring
13:24 buy for the same dollar, US dollar
13:27 amount every week. $100 a week, $10 a
13:29 week, $1,000 a week, whatever you can
13:31 afford, and just leave it on autopilot.
13:33 And then you don’t have to care about
13:34 what the price is. Because if it’s
13:35 lower, you’re buying it cheaper. If it’s
13:38 higher, you feel good about what you
13:39 already own and you just sort of leave
13:41 it on autopilot. But now is a great time
13:43 to buy Bitcoin. It’s 13% discounted from
13:45 the highest it’s ever been. Could it go
13:47 lower? Sure. But I wouldn’t bet on that.
13:50 And I certainly would not give up a,000%
13:53 upside trying to get it 5, 10, or 25%
13:56 cheaper. I’m never going to play that
13:58 game. And the reason I’ve ended up with
13:60 as much Bitcoin as I did is because I
14:02 don’t play those games and I know that
14:04 people who try to play those games lose.
14:06 So that’s why I’m still recommending
14:08 people buy Bitcoin even though James
14:10 Check is cautious in the near term,
14:12 extremely bullish in the long term. And
14:15 I guess I’m extremely bullish all the
14:16 time because I think there’s not a bad
14:18 time to buy Bitcoin. And the only time
14:19 you’re actually going to buy Bitcoin is
14:21 when you’ll pull the trigger. And if
14:22 you’ll pull the trigger right now, now’s
14:24 a great time to buy Bitcoin. And when
14:26 it’s 100 thou, it’s when it’s a million
14:28 dollars per coin. You will not care if
14:30 you paid 108 or 112 or 124 or 96 or 89.
14:36 None of those numbers are going to
14:37 matter when Bitcoin’s a million dollars
14:38 a coin in the long term. And that is all
14:40 that really matters.