Don't look at All Time Highers.
I know, I know, I know, "we don't talk about price that much around these parts Uncle Marty. What the hell are you doing with this tweet porn on a Monday morning?!" Well freaks, if you could please forgive me for a day, the reason I'm bringing up this data is that it has helped me help others to begin questioning the mainstream narrative.
I've been saying it for years. Don't look at ATH's, look at yearly lows. That will tell you the growth in hodlers.
— Frogolocalypse (@1stCrassCitizen) December 31, 2018
2012 - $4
2013 - $65
2014 - $200
2015 - $185
2016 - $365
2017 - $780
2018 - $3200
That tells you the growth in the people who won't sell at any price.
The "price volatility" + "massive losses" memes reign supreme in the mainstream. Do these arguments have any validity? Certainly, but how they're pushed and framed by most of the mediocre scribes in the mainstream does not present the whole picture. By focusing on short-term losses and spikes in volatility without painting a longer-term picture, which the yearly low data does an incredible job of, these lowly bloggers do their poor readers a disservice. This harkens back to a problem at the core of our society at the moment, high time preference. These pundits don't have the attention span or ability to think beyond 3-month periods. Taking a step back and looking at the larger trend must be taboo in these newsrooms. The most recent price action is wholly indicative of the overall condition of the Bitcoin network. And it's funny because this is usually only true when the price is falling.
When we shift the framing and look at the yearly lows instead of yearly highs, we can see that Bitcoin's potential success seems much more optimistic as the price floor has risen 6 out of the last 7 years. Now, this is not an attempt to say that Bitcoin's success is a foregone conclusion, but to provide a framing that may cause people to consider Bitcoin more seriously and start peeling back the layers of what the hell it is. By not painting the whole picture, lowly blogs like the New York Times, The Guardian, and The Financial Times do their readers a massive disservice because they take their word as authority (please stop doing this, freaks) and dismiss Bitcoin off the bat. If the full picture is presented, people are more likely to explore this subject with earnest curiosity, which will hopefully lead to a betterment of the quality of their lives as they see the inevitability of a native digital currency with no central authority.
Framing, it's important.
Final thought...
Is it poor taste to drink out of the wine bottle on a Sunday night Amtrak back to the city? Asking for a friend.
