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Should You Buy Bitcoin While It's Under $85,000? | The Motley Fool

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Should You Buy Bitcoin While It's Under ,000? | The Motley Fool

Bitcoin’s price has fallen 25% from a recent all-time high. Is this a buying opportunity or the start of another crypto winter?

Bitcoin (BTC 7.46%) soared to an all-time high of $106,182 per coin in January. With the fourth Bitcoin halving firmly in the rearview mirror and a more crypto-friendly regime in the White House, the original cryptocurrency looked ready to skyrocket like it did in 2020 and 2017.

But it hasn’t worked out that way. Bitcoin is down to $79,200 as of this writing on April 8. That’s a hair-raising 25% price crash, well ahead of the S&P 500 (^GSPC 9.52%) stock market tracker’s 19% drop.

Is this the start of a three-year crypto winter like the one you saw after the 2017 peak, or is it a temporary pullback like in the spring of 2021? Nobody knows for sure, but here’s how I look at the Bitcoin situation today.

Bitcoin’s volatile roller coaster

Bitcoin has a long history of extreme volatility. The oldest cryptocurrency swung from $785 per coin at the start of 2017 to $19,345 in mid-December. About one year after that, it ended 2018 at $3,880 per coin. The S&P 500 gained a modest 12% over that period, which looks like a horizontal line by comparison:

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Bitcoin Price data by YCharts

The recent price swings are actually quite modest from a historical perspective. The cryptocurrency’s daily standard deviance is about 2.7% in 2025. This volatility measure was twice that size in 2017 and just astronomical in 2009 and 2010:

Chart showing Bitcoin's annualized volatility declining from over 200% in 2010 to around 50% in 2025, illustrating the cryptocurrency's gradual market maturation.

Data source: Coin Codex. Chart by the author.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results, but this volatility chart shows a couple of helpful trends.

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  • Bitcoin’s volatility tends to rise and fall in the same four-year cycle as the underlying halving process. Things calm down during each crypto winter, followed by a sharp spike in the year after each halving event. As a reminder, the fourth halving took place in April 2024. Bitcoin may be due for a much more volatile price chart in 2025.
  • The current year-to-date volatility is comparable to last year’s, which was one of the least fickle years in Bitcoin’s history. The price swings over the past week or so should boost the volatility rating, especially if the wilder changes continue.
  • This chart lumps price jumps together with price drops as a single value. But there is a certain mountain-like shape to Bitcoin’s cyclical tendencies, with game-changing jumps typically followed by a long, slow drop back to a somewhat higher plateau than the previous cycle’s.
  • The introduction of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) appears to have disrupted the standard pattern a bit, pre-loading Bitcoin’s chart with a short-lived price increase in the spring of 2024. The 2024 election results also gave most crypto names an unusual price boost. Other than these events in the run-up to 2025, the leading cryptocurrency still looks ready for the usual price gains in the second year of each halving turn.

Not just fancy chart art

You didn’t come here for the math, and I can’t blame you for distrusting Bitcoin’s charting patterns. Technical analysis is more performance art than financial science, and the chart-based musings above are kinda-sorta an example of that nonsense.

Then again, I’m also basing the discussion on more than the basic chart squiggles. There are reasons for Bitcoin’s four-year cyclicality, because the economic model of producing more coins keeps changing at that pace. Every turn of the wheel is unique, as the economic environment around the crypto sector keeps changing. Still, the halving events make a real difference — hard to predict with pinpoint accuracy, but still useful as a guiding rule of thumb.

My two Satoshis (digital micro-cents): Why Bitcoin’s future still looks bright

And after all of that, I’m convinced that Bitcoin will recover from the recent price cuts. It could take a few months, and there may be more pain to come, but I’ll be shocked if the tide doesn’t turn in the second half of 2025.

This digital currency was designed as a secure long-term storage facility for monetary value, also known as wealth. Strategy (MSTR 23.44%) chairman and co-founder Michael Saylor will talk your ear off on that topic while turning every possible stone to buy more Bitcoin for the company. One of my college-age kids just started her investment journey with an early Roth IRA account, and about 2% of that portfolio holds a popular Bitcoin ETF.

I’m no Saylor-style Bitcoin maximalist, but a small amount of exposure to the original crypto name seems appropriate for most investors. Getting in below $85,000 per coin is a serious discount from just three months ago, making the cryptocurrency about 25% more interesting.

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Jim Rickards Asked Robert Kiyosaki to Read One Manuscript, Then His View of Global Finance Changed

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Jim Rickards Asked Robert Kiyosaki to Read One Manuscript, Then His View of Global Finance Changed

Key Takeaways

Why Did One Manuscript Change Robert Kiyosaki’s View?

Robert Kiyosaki, the author of the best-selling personal finance book Rich Dad Poor Dad, said an advance manuscript of “The Entropy Trap” shared by Jim Rickards prompted him to rethink how he views global finance. Rickards is an economist, lawyer, and financial commentator known for writing about currencies, debt, and systemic market risk. Kiyosaki said the early reading changed his perspective on where the financial system may be headed.

The reaction was framed around a warning about financial change. The book, written by Mickey M. Maini, “blew my mind and opened my eyes to what & why global financial change is coming,” Kiyosaki described. His comments focused on what he described as a shift in the rules behind wealth, assets, and trust.

The central claim is that wealth could move away from people relying on traditional financial assumptions. Kiyosaki asserted:

“The informed will be tomorrow’s ULTRA RICH. Todays uniformed operating by the old rules of money… will become the new poor.”

The Warning Behind the Claim

The warning centers on assets that depend on trust, including U.S. bonds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and mutual funds. Kiyosaki framed those instruments as vulnerable under the financial shift he says is coming, placing commonly held investment products at the center of the risk.

That claim is severe, but he presented it as a warning rather than a proven outcome. He also pointed to large bondholders, including Japan, saying they have already started dumping U.S. bonds. He did not provide supporting data in the statement.

The acclaimed author shared:

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“Message from book… ‘All assets that require trust, assets that most people have… such as U.S. bonds, ETFs, mutual funds will be flushed down toilets, all over the world.’”

The broader conflict is whether traditional financial assets remain reliable under the conditions Kiyosaki described. His framing divides investors between those preparing for a changed financial system and those still operating under assumptions he says may no longer hold.

What Still Needs to Be Proven

A planned August study session could clarify the warning Kiyosaki described. He said his study team would examine the message and that Rickards may join, though the evidence behind the claims has not yet been laid out.

For now, the warning rests on Kiyosaki’s account of a manuscript that changed his view. He urged readers to prepare, writing:

“I want you to be one of the world’s new rich.”

What remains unknown is whether market data, policy moves, or investor behavior will confirm the risk he described.

His recent commentary has focused on what he describes as fragility in the global monetary system, particularly around the U.S. dollar. He has pointed to rising debt, central bank policies, and inflation as risks that could trigger a sharp market downturn.

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Alongside those concerns, he has repeatedly highlighted bitcoin, gold, and silver as alternative stores of value. In his view, those assets may help reduce exposure to traditional financial instruments during periods of currency weakness and market turbulence.

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Strategy Is No Longer Just Going to “Inoculate the Market,” Selling Crypto May Be Much More Common. Here’s What That Could Mean for the Stock | The Motley Fool

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Strategy Is No Longer Just Going to “Inoculate the Market,” Selling Crypto May Be Much More Common. Here’s What That Could Mean for the Stock | The Motley Fool

When Strategy (MSTR 0.69%) sold a modest amount of Bitcoin earlier this year, it was a noteworthy development given that the company’s business has centered around buying up as much of the cryptocurrency as it can, and vowing to never sell. And it often boasts of being the largest corporate holder of the digital currency.

The company brushed off the sale of 32 Bitcoins, with management saying it simply wanted to “inoculate the market.” Well, now it appears that Strategy is doing much more than just that, and there could be more significant cryptocurrency sales in the future.

Image source: Getty Images.

Strategy unveils a Bitcoin monetization program

On June 29, Strategy released a framework going forward that it says will “enhance liquidity, preserve long-term Bitcoin exposure, and support long-term value creation for shareholders.” Among the notable components is its Bitcoin monetization program.

Within that program, the company says it may sell some of its cryptocurrency holdings for multiple reasons, including to fund a USD reserve, fund dividends or interest expense, or to fund repurchases of digital credit securities or common stock.

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While the company says it remains committed to Bitcoin for the long term and it’s the company’s “primary treasury reserve asset,” it’s a significant change of course for Strategy, which was previously heavily against ever selling the digital asset.

Strategy Stock Quote

Today’s Change

(-0.69%) $-0.69

Current Price

$100.08

The stock is as risky and volatile as ever

Whether or not Strategy buys or sells Bitcoin doesn’t change the fact that this is a highly risky and speculative stock to own. While crypto fans may be disappointed in the company’s change in strategy, selling Bitcoin will likely not be enough to make the business any better or worse as an investment.

In just the past 12 months, the stock has plummeted a whopping 75% as volatility in digital assets has drastically weighed on its earnings, with the company incurring $12.8 billion in losses over the trailing 12 months, on revenue of $490 million.

That’s not likely to change significantly, even if Strategy offloads some of its crypto holdings, because with such a large exposure to Bitcoin, how the cryptocurrency performs will inevitably impact the company’s bottom line in a big way. This year, the leading cryptocurrency is down 28% as investor excitement around it has largely cooled off, which has proven disastrous for Strategy’s stock as well. And at this stage, there’s little reason to anticipate a recovery anytime soon.

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An Easy-to-Miss Radio Traffic Jam Is Behind Many Home WiFi Slowdowns

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An Easy-to-Miss Radio Traffic Jam Is Behind Many Home WiFi Slowdowns

Key Takeaways

Your WiFi can feel rock-solid at midnight and oddly sluggish by breakfast, even when you have not touched a single setting. The culprit is often outside your walls: a crowded slice of public radio spectrum where your router has to negotiate space with every nearby network, plus a grab bag of household gadgets that leak interference. Add peak-hours demand and the signal-blocking quirks of building materials and weather, and “slow internet” starts to look less like a billing issue and more like an invisible traffic problem you are forced to share.

When WiFi slows down without warning

One day your home WiFi feels snappy, the next it drags, even though your router hasn’t moved and your internet plan hasn’t changed. That swing is real, and it’s usually not your imagination or a “bad day” from your ISP. WiFi lives on shared airwaves, and those airwaves get crowded, noisy, and sometimes just plain finicky.

Think of your connection as a conversation in a busy room. Your laptop and router may be talking just fine, but the room itself can fill up fast with other chatter. What looks like a mystery slowdown is often the result of invisible competition and interference that changes hour by hour.

The battle of competing networks

Most homes still rely heavily on the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi bands, which are unlicensed spectrum in the US. That “free for everyone” reality is convenient, but it also means your network shares space with your neighbors, their smart TVs, their work laptops, and every nearby router doing the same thing.

Congestion has a rhythm. During common work-from-home and school-from-home windows, especially 8-10 AM, and again in the evening 6-10 PM, more devices are streaming, video calling, syncing, and downloading updates. Even if you pay for fast broadband, your WiFi link can become the bottleneck when the local radio environment gets packed.

Interference inside your home

Your own house can sabotage you. A microwave is the classic culprit because it can leak noise near 2.4 GHz, exactly where many WiFi networks still operate. Older cordless phones, some baby monitors, and even dense clusters of Bluetooth gadgets can add more clutter, especially in smaller apartments where everything sits close together.

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Then there’s physics. Concrete, metal, and even water (think aquariums or thick pipes in walls) absorb and scatter radio signals. A router shoved behind a TV, tucked into a cabinet, or stuck in a far corner forces your devices to “hear” through more obstacles, lowering speeds and making dropouts more likely.

Weather, channels, and what you can do tonight

Environmental changes can matter too. Higher humidity and rain can slightly increase signal loss, and shifting temperatures can change how radio waves propagate around a neighborhood. You might never notice on its own, but paired with congestion it can tip a marginal connection into a frustrating one.

The 2.4 GHz band is also channel-limited. In the US there are 11 channels, but only 1, 6, and 11 don’t overlap. Many routers default to “auto channel,” so nearby networks can hop around trying to escape interference, sometimes creating instability. Practical fixes: prefer 5 GHz (or 6 GHz if you have WiFi 6E/7 gear), place the router centrally and higher up, and use a WiFi analyzer app to pick a less crowded channel instead of leaving it on auto.

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