Raoul Pal: I've seen every single panic, and they are never the end.
Original Title: Crashes, Manias and Panic's
Original Author: @RaoulGMI
Translation: Peggy, BlockBeats
The feeling outside is too cruel, there is no hope. It's all over. You missed it. You messed things up again.
Everyone is angry, confused. Even those who foresaw all this early on can't help but feel a bit smug, but many are also aware of how much damage such price action can cause. These moments always feel like the worst of times.
I've been in the market for 38 years (today's sell-off is my "birthday gift," plus food poisoning last night!), and I've seen all kinds of crashes and panics.
They all feel the same, utterly awful.
I entered the crypto market in 2013, buying my first bitcoin at $200. It rose for a while after I bought, then dropped 75%... and that was still a bull market, eventually the price rose more than 10 times my purchase price. I didn't sell because it was a long-term investment, and I understood the risks. Then in the bear market of 2014, it dropped another 87%.
Next, in the bull run leading to 2017, I experienced three 35%–45% pullbacks... brutal. Finally, due to the bitcoin fork war, I sold around $2000 (the previous high in 2013). I had made over 10 times my initial purchase price. But then it rose another 10 times (!!) before the end of the year, followed by a new, big, and ugly bear market.
I managed to avoid that entire bear market, feeling good at the time.
During the pandemic crash, I bought back at $6500 (3.5 times higher than what I sold for). It turned out to be a costly mistake of "thinking I did the right thing."
From April to July 2021, bitcoin dropped 50% in a market environment similar to now. The sentiment on Twitter was terrible, really terrible. But back then, the market was not as severely oversold as today...
By November 2021, the market had returned to new all-time highs: SOL had risen 13 times from its low, ETH doubled, bitcoin hit a new high, rising 150%.
I've experienced all of these, all those terrifying, heart-wrenching moments, all happening within a long bull market.
My first buy-in was at $200, and now the price is $65,000. Even with terrible timing, I missed out on a 3.5x gain in the middle.
The first key lesson (for me): In a long-term uptrending asset, the best strategy often is to do nothing. The reason "HODL" became a meme is for a good reason. It's more powerful than the "four-year cycle" meme.
The second lesson: Be decisive about buying the dip. Even if you can't perfectly time the bottom, continuously buying in during weakness, increasing your overall position size, can have a compounding effect on returns that may even outperform Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA) in the long run.
I haven't always had enough cash to go all-in during a dip, but I buy a little each time — this is crucial for training your psychology.
It always makes you feel like the opportunity has passed, won't come back, and everything is about to collapse.
But that's not the reality.
Ask yourself two questions: Will tomorrow be more digitalized than today? Will fiat be even less valuable tomorrow than today?
If the answers are "yes," then keep moving forward. Buy The Freaking Dip (BTFD), let "time in the market" beat "timing the market" because it always does. Buying heavily on a major pullback significantly lowers your average entry, and that difference is massive.
Stress, fear, and self-doubt are inevitable "taxes" in this journey.
Your position size should align with your risk tolerance. Don't worry, everyone feels overextended on a price drop and underinvested on a rise. What you need to do is manage these emotions and find your own "sweet spot."
One more key point: Don't borrow someone else's conviction.
"DYOR" is a very crucial meme; without it, you wouldn't survive these phases. Earn your conviction. Borrowed conviction is like leverage — it will eventually blow you up.
Remember: When you're busy blaming others, you're actually blaming yourself.
Yes, it feels dark right now. But soon, the sun will rise again, and this will just be another scar along the journey (assuming you didn't use leverage! Leverage leads to permanent capital loss — you will lose your chips in the casino). Never lose your chips.
When will all this end? I don't know, but it feels more like April to November 2021 — a panic phase in a bull market. I think it will end soon. Even if I'm wrong, I won't change course: as long as I have a bit of cash, I keep buying.
But for you, the situation may be different. Try to build a regret minimization
portfolio: if it drops another 50% from here, can you handle it? If not, reduce your position, even if it seems foolish to do so. The right mindset is crucial for survival. My mindset is how can I buy more
, while yours may be the opposite.
There will always be some market timers who can perfectly catch the dip, sell everything, or short. They will always exist. But truth be told, all you need to tell yourself is: this kind of thing can happen at any time. By doing so, when it happens, you won't be as anxious because you already anticipated it! It's just part of the story, not the whole story.
So what am I doing now?
I am starting to buy some digital art (which is also effectively increasing my ETH exposure) and planning to further increase my allocation to crypto assets in the coming week—just as I have done every time I've seen this kind of opportunity.
I've bought during the pandemic crash, the 2021 pullback, the 2022 downturn, the 2023 dip, and the same in 2024 and 2025. I will do it again this time. Every time, my P&L hits a new high before the market does, almost like magic. Once again: BTFD!
Good luck to you. It has never been easy.
Volatility is the price we pay for long-term compounding. Embrace it.
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