Sunday Summary, OCT19
A week in review from the Editor
There’s the scene
in “The Big Short,” when Michael Burry is holed up in his office listening to Metallica, fund tanking, and angry investors burst through the door saying, “We have no confidence in your ability to identify macroeconomic trends.”
After some cheeky back-and-forth regarding the merits of his massive short position, the associate chimes in, “So, Mike Burry of San Jose, a guy who gets his haircut at Supercuts and doesn’t wear shoes, knows more than Alan Greenspan and Hank Paulson?”
The answer, as we know, was yes.
Benjamin Graham’s (maybe?) famous quote, “In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine,” wasn’t about stocks or funds alone. It was about temperament. In the short run, people vote with emotion: fear, greed, impatience. But in the long run, truth settles in like a gravitational force. Fundamentals always eventually outweigh narratives. And Bitcoin, perhaps more than any other asset in history, reveals who understands that distinction.
Every few months or years, the same play repeats. Bitcoin drops 15%, and the chorus returns: “It’s over.” “Regulation will crush it.” “It’s a bubble.” If you zoom in, it’s a panic.
Zoom out, and you see a rhythm, waves on the surface of a deeper tide. Each cycle shakes loose those who mistook volatility for value and rewards those who understand that price is just the crowd’s mood, not Bitcoin’s merit.
It helps to treat your Bitcoin like a black box.
You acquire, you self-custody, and then, you forget. Check it monthly, quarterly, or yearly. Anything more is self-torture disguised as diligence. Because the moment you start treating your holdings like a ticker symbol rather than a mission, you’ve lost the plot.
Bitcoin isn’t a lottery ticket, it’s a savings technology, a hedge against systemic failure, and a long-term bet on human freedom.
Consider other parts of your life where short-term turbulence doesn’t shake your faith in long-term worth. A good education doesn’t feel valuable mid-semester. A business investment often bleeds before it blooms. Raising a child comes with tantrums, late nights, and doubt—but the value compounds unstoppably.
Bitcoin works the same way. Each found block strengthens the network, each halving enforces scarcity, each cycle expands global awareness.
The fundamentals don’t fluctuate—they accrete.
Bitcoin surely tests conviction, time preference, and emotional control. The impatient vote daily with their trades; the patient weigh their future with their keys. The voting machine is loud, fickle, and emotional. The weighing machine is quiet, disciplined, and inevitable.
Bitcoin just continues producing blocks ~every ten minutes.
And maybe the best strategy is to follow its lead: do the work, stay steady, and let time do the weighing.