Here it is again – that familiar knot in my stomach when Bitcoin’s chart looks like a ski slope. I’ve been here before: researching about bitcoin in 2017 in the living room of our San Diego apartment, when everybody suddenly started talking about it for the first time – $3k sure felt like a steal in hindsight, but at the time, it was “too risky.”
Now, after plunging from $126K highs in October to a seven-month low around $80K last week, BTC is rebounding slightly to ~$87K as of November 26, 2025. (For real-time checks, it’s hovering between $86.7K-$88.2K today, per exchange data.) I find myself once again researching about bitcoin and wondering – is it a good time to buy?
Skeptical – I’m nervous about FOMO-ing in late, haunted by the constant “what if it drops more?” Yet the believers (especially the institutional ones) are piling in, treating this 30%+ correction like a fire sale. There’s no doubt Bitcoin has become almost too big to fail, even though the wild volatility still undermines its “digital gold” image.
If this dip is my entry point, the real question is: how much should I actually buy?
- If I put in too little – say $1,000 – and Bitcoin eventually hits $1 million (roughly 10× from today), that turns into about $10,000. A nice gain, sure, but nothing life-changing.
- If I go too big – say $10,000 – and Bitcoin crashes back to $10k, I’m looking at a painful 90%+ loss.
So I’m stuck: scared to miss the rocket, but terrified of catching the falling knife.
I did have a really close call just recently.
Just a month ago, when Bitcoin was hitting $120K highs, I was desperately trying to convince my husband to buy two whole coins. “Analysts say it’ll be $1 million in a few years”, I said. He refused. To keep the wifey happy, he did put in $5,000… which has since dropped about 25% (we laugh about it now so he can tease me).
Honestly? Thank goodness for his stubbornness this time. 😅
Bitcoin is Faith.
I envy the believers. My friends who bought Bitcoin early and never sold (through the crashes, the bans, the “dead coin” obituaries) are now millionaires. I watched from the sidelines, always too cautious, always waiting for one more confirmation, one more dip, one more sign that it was “safe.” I was the one who thought $3K was expensive in 2017 and $19K was the top in 2021. Every time I hesitated, I told myself I was being prudent. Slow and steady wins the race, right?
Except slow and steady could also mean missing the race entirely.
Here’s the cruel irony: while I chose to invest more in the “safer” index funds (the S&P 500 and the like) and rode that wave without flinching, the voices calling AI a bubble are growing louder every day. After all, AI stocks alone have accounted for roughly 11-12% of the index’s 15-16% YTD gain – meaning they’ve driven about 75% of the S&P 500’s total return this year.
We’re not buying earnings anymore. We’re buying a story about a future that hasn’t arrived yet. Expectations, not profits. Hopes, not revenue.
Sound familiar?
If I can suspend disbelief for the Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that doesn’t exist yet, why can’t I do the same for a decentralized digital currency that is supposedly the digital gold? Both are bets on an automated, digitized tomorrow. Both are narratives sold by visionaries and bought by believers. The only difference is the story I’m willing to tell myself.
Bitcoin is faith. AI is also faith.
Maybe the real moral isn’t “slow and steady wins the race.” Maybe it’s “pick a damn race and run.”
Course to Paradise 