🧪 When Conviction Gets Tested
FIRE BTC Issue 64 - Fear at 14. Fundamentals at all-time highs. This is where stackers are made.
The Fear & Greed Index hit 14 this week.
For context, that's "Extreme Fear" territory — the kind of number we haven't seen since the depths of 2022. Bitcoin is sitting around $79k, down nearly 30% from its highs. ETF holders who bought in at $84k on average are now staring at red portfolios. Even Michael Saylor's 712,000 BTC stack briefly went underwater.
And yet.
The S&P 500 is at all-time highs. Gold has been on an absolute tear. Silver just broke records. Traditional risk assets are partying like it's 1999, and bitcoin — supposedly the apex risk asset — keeps bleeding.
It doesn't make sense.
🤔 The Great Divergence
Let's talk about what's happening here, because if you're feeling confused or frustrated, you're not alone.
The fundamentals for bitcoin have never been stronger:
Nation states are accumulating
Corporate treasuries are adopting the Strategy playbook
The ETFs exist and have pulled in billions
The halving supply shock is working its way through the system
The macro case (debt, deficits, debasement) gets stronger every quarter
And yet the price keeps falling.
Markets don't always make sense in the short term. Bitcoin trades 24/7/365 across the globe, which means it's often the first asset to get sold when uncertainty spikes. It's the most liquid thing in the world at 3am when someone in Asia needs to raise cash.
Right now, we're swimming in uncertainty. Tariff headlines. Fed policy questions. Political chaos. The bitcoin market, gold, and silver are telling us something is broken or in the process of breaking. We just don't know exactly what that is yet.
But I firmly believe that the divergence between bitcoin's price and bitcoin's fundamentals has never been wider. And historically, that gap doesn't stay open for long.
💪 What Conviction Actually Looks Like
Let's talk about Saylor for a minute.
Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) holds 712,647 bitcoin. That's roughly $56 billion at current prices. Their average cost basis is around $76k, which means their entire position briefly went red this week.
You know what Saylor did?
He bought more. Last week alone, Strategy added 855 BTC at an average price of $87,974. While everyone else was panicking, he was stacking.
Strategy also increased the yield on STRC, the company's preferred equity instrument that targets cash-like stability through monthly dividend adjustments. It now pays a robust 11.25% annually. He's sticking to his plan, despite the market pressure.
That's what conviction looks like. It's not about being right in the short term, but about having a time horizon that makes the short term irrelevant.
Most people don't have Saylor's conviction because they don't have his understanding. They bought bitcoin hoping it would go up. He bought bitcoin knowing why it will go up — and more importantly, why it doesn't matter if it goes down first.
