Even if Bitcoin Rises, It May Not Concern You

This article is excerpted from my new book "The Narrow Gate of Bitcoin: A Methodology for Ordinary People to Combat Non-Transitive Wealth."

Chapter 12: Asset Appreciation Does Not Equal Your Personal Outcome

Issues Addressed in This Chapter

In the previous chapter, we discussed the latest reality of Bitcoin: it is no longer an early niche experiment.

These historical milestones indicate not a "smooth sailing after buying in," but rather something more important: Bitcoin will continuously switch between long-term trends, institutional entry points, market euphoria, and deep pullbacks. What ordinary people truly need to train is not to see a certain price, but to avoid getting knocked out during these switches.

These facts illustrate one thing:

The opportunities of Bitcoin are becoming increasingly real, but the outcomes for ordinary people will not automatically improve.

Assets have their own curves.

People have their own paths.

Bitcoin can rise from $60,000 to $125,000, but it can also fall back to around $60,000 from $125,000. Whether you make money depends on what you did along this path: when you bought, how much you bought, whether you used leverage, whether you sold too early, whether you switched assets, whether you chased high interest, whether you were liquidated, and whether you underestimated volatility under the guise of an ETF. (Reuters)

Therefore, what this chapter really wants to convey is:

Asset appreciation does not equal your personal outcome.

Bitcoin hitting a new high does not mean you will get rich.

Bitcoin being accepted by institutions does not mean you can hold onto it.

1. Asset Returns and Investor Returns Are Two Different Things

Many people confuse these two statements:

Bitcoin has risen.

So everyone who bought Bitcoin made money.

This is incorrect.

An asset rising only indicates that the asset has completed a price path.

It does not indicate that every investor has completed their wealth path.

Some bought in after the ETF approval in 2024, experiencing a breakthrough of $100,000 in December 2024.

Some only entered around $125,000 in October 2025 due to FOMO.

Some panicked and sold when Bitcoin fell below $90,000 in November 2025; during the same period, Reuters reported that BlackRock's flagship Bitcoin ETF IBIT experienced a net outflow of about $523 million in a single day, the largest single-day outflow since the fund's inception. (Reuters)

These three individuals bought the same asset.

But their outcomes are completely different.

The first person may still have profits.

The second person may soon face significant unrealized losses.

The third person may exit before the market recovers.

Thus, the long-term curve is not your report card.

Your report card is:

Your own purchase price;

Your own position;

Your own cash flow;

Your own custody method;

Your own leverage;

Your own reasons for selling;

Your own behavioral discipline.

Bitcoin has no obligation to average its long-term results among everyone who has touched it.

2. ETFs Solve Entry Issues but Do Not Solve Outcome Issues

On January 10, 2024, the U.S. SEC approved 11 spot Bitcoin ETPs. Reuters stated that this marks the first batch of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. and signifies a watershed moment for Bitcoin and the broader crypto industry; the next day, the first trading day of the U.S. listed Bitcoin ETF saw a transaction volume of approximately $4.6 billion. (Reuters)

This is certainly a historic advancement.

ETFs allow ordinary people to gain exposure to Bitcoin prices without having to set up wallets, directly interact with exchanges, or manage private keys themselves.

Reuters also explained that spot Bitcoin ETFs enable investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin prices without directly owning Bitcoin, thus avoiding the complexities and risks of setting up crypto wallets and exchange accounts. (Reuters)

However, ETFs only solve one type of problem:

How to more conveniently buy exposure to Bitcoin.

They do not solve another, more important problem:

Whether you can hold onto it after buying.

BlackRock's IBIT is the best example.

By the first half of 2026, IBIT had already achieved a scale of hundreds of billions of dollars and high liquidity, but the historical return range on BlackRock's page also reminds investors: traditional financial packaging does not eliminate Bitcoin's price volatility. (BlackRock)

These numbers are very important.

They tell us:

Buying BlackRock's ETF does not mean you are buying a stable income product.

Using a traditional securities account does not mean you have obtained a traditional low-volatility experience.

Avoiding the self-custody dilemma does not mean you have avoided the path dilemma of Bitcoin.

ETFs are a bridge.

Not a safety net.

3. The Larger IBIT's Scale, the More It Illustrates That "Buying In" Does Not Equal "Holding On"

The success of IBIT can easily give ordinary people the illusion:

Since BlackRock is involved, and since the scale is already so large, this thing should be stable.

This is precisely where the danger lies.

BlackRock's page clearly states that IBIT's investment objective is to generally reflect Bitcoin's price performance; at the same time, it is not registered as an investment company under the Investment Company Act of 1940, and investors should carefully consider the risk factors in the prospectus. The page also clearly warns that investments carry high risks, including the potential loss of principal; this trust is not suitable for all investors and may be considered speculative, and should not be viewed as a complete investment plan. (BlackRock)

This is not a standard disclaimer.

This is a reminder for ordinary people:

IBIT does not turn Bitcoin into an index fund.

It merely packages Bitcoin's price risk into a form that is easier to buy and sell within a securities account.

Easier to buy often also means easier to sell.

When Bitcoin drops from above $125,000 to below $90,000, IBIT experienced record single-day outflows. Reuters reported that in November 2025, investors withdrew about $523 million from IBIT in a single day, marking the largest single-day outflow since the fund's inception; during the same week, Bitcoin fell below $90,000, reaching a seven-month low. (Reuters)

This illustrates the gap between personal outcomes and asset outcomes.

The long-term logic of Bitcoin may not have changed on any given day.

But investor psychology will change.

Funds will flow out.

Positions will be reduced.

Some will exit.

Some will lose their positions before future rebounds.

Thus, the more successful IBIT is, the more it proves the core proposition of this book:

The easier the entry, the more important the behavioral system.

4. Liquidation: The Most Cruel "Asset Appreciation Has Nothing to Do with You"

The most extreme break between asset appreciation and personal outcomes is liquidation.

Liquidation means:

You may have seen the long-term direction correctly, but the market first uses short-term volatility to push you out.

The cruelest aspect of leverage is that it does not care about your long-term judgment, only whether your short-term margin is sufficient. Each round of sharp declines will clearly demonstrate this point.

Reuters reported on February 2, 2026, that CoinGlass data showed that as Bitcoin and other cryptos followed stocks, precious metals, and other risk assets down, Bitcoin investors were liquidated for $2.56 billion in recent days. (Reuters)

On February 5, Reuters reported that Bitcoin fell by 12.6% to about $63,525, hitting a low since October 2024; approximately $1 billion in Bitcoin positions were liquidated in the past 24 hours, and the global crypto market has evaporated about $2 trillion since its peak in October. (Reuters)

This is the truth about leverage.

You can believe that Bitcoin will be monetized in the long term.

You can believe that $60,000 is not the endpoint.

You can believe that there will be new highs in the future.

But if you used leverage, the market does not need to prove you were wrong in the long term.

It only needs to make you unable to bear it in the short term.

Once your position is liquidated, the subsequent rise has nothing to do with you.

This is a phrase that this book repeatedly emphasizes:

Being right in the long term does not mean surviving the path.

5. A Rebound Will Not Automatically Save Those Liquidated

Even more cruelly, the market often rebounds after forcibly pushing you out.

On February 6, Reuters reported that Bitcoin once fell to $60,017.60, a 16-month low; it then rebounded to $70,231, but the global crypto market still lost about $2 trillion compared to its peak in October. (Reuters)

Such market conditions are the most brutal for ordinary people.

If you did not use leverage and only faced unrealized losses, you still have choices.

You can continue to hold.

You can rebalance according to the rules.

You can wait for recovery.

You can reassess the long-term logic.

But if you are liquidated, you have no choice.

When the market rebounds, you are no longer there.

Thus, the risk of Bitcoin is not just about "falling."

The real danger is:

You lose the qualification to participate in future rises when it falls.

This is non-transitivity.

A single path interruption can make all subsequent correctness irrelevant to you.

6. When Prices Return to Cost Levels, Short-Term Holders Are Most Easily Shaken

On-chain data can also reveal this pressure.

Glassnode's on-chain report in week 18 of 2026 noted that when Bitcoin rose to around $81,000, breaking through the True Market Mean of $78,200 and the cost basis of short-term holders at $79,100; standing above these levels indicates that the previous "deep value phase" may be very short, with $85,200 as the next key resistance. The report also pointed out that long-term holders' profit-taking rose to about $180 million per day, but still far below the peak level of over $1 billion per day during the cycle. (Glassnode)

It should be noted that Glassnode's True Market Mean is a cost model indicator based on active on-chain supply design, not the ordinary average price of spot transactions on exchanges.

While this data is valuable, it does not mean ordinary people should trade short-term based on on-chain indicators.

They remind us:

There are different groups of holders in the market.

Short-term buyers care more about their cost lines.

Long-term holders may take profits at high levels but do not necessarily exit completely.

The same Bitcoin price means completely different psychological pressures for different people.

If you chased high at around $125,000, $80,000 is painful.

If you bought as planned around $60,000, $80,000 is recovery.

If you established a core position earlier in the cycle, $80,000 may just be a fluctuation on the long-term path.

The same assets, different fates.

7. Ordinary Financial Markets Have Long Proven: Behavior Can Eat Away Returns

Some might say:

These are just too special for Bitcoin.

Not at all.

In mature markets, investors often fail to capture the returns of the assets themselves.

Barber and Odean studied 66,465 household accounts at a large discount brokerage from 1991 to 1996 in "Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth" and found that the households that traded most frequently had an annualized return of 11.4%, while the market return was 17.9%; the average household annualized return was 16.4%, with an annual turnover rate of 75%. The authors concluded directly: individual investors pay a significant performance cost for active trading. (SSRN)

This is not a problem with Bitcoin.

This is a problem of human behavior.

To this day, this issue persists. Morningstar's 2025 Mind the Gap study shows that over the past 10 years, the dollar-weighted returns that investors actually received in U.S. mutual funds and ETFs lagged the funds' own returns by an average of 1.2 percentage points per year. It indicates that ordinary people often miss out on results, not because the assets have no returns, but because behavior leaks away the returns. (Morningstar)

If even index funds, mutual funds, and mature stock markets can be mismanaged by people, then Bitcoin, with its 24/7 trading, high volatility, noise, leverage, and strong narratives, is even less likely to automatically deliver long-term returns to ordinary people.

8. Bitcoin Amplifies Behavioral Gaps

Bitcoin is more likely to amplify behavioral gaps than traditional funds.

The reasons are not singular but a group.

First, Bitcoin trades 24/7.

Stocks at least have closing hours. Bitcoin does not. Panic in the middle of the night, impulsive actions on weekends, and news stimuli can immediately turn into trading actions.

Second, Bitcoin's volatility is extreme. Its historical drawdowns are not just intraday fluctuations but have experienced multiple deep declines that could make long-term holders question their life choices; this makes any "I'll handle it on the spot" mentality dangerous. (Bitbo)

Third, Bitcoin's narrative density is too high.

ETF, halving, regulation, the dollar, interest rates, gold, AI bubbles, miners, quantum computing, geopolitics—each narrative could become a reason to buy or sell.

Fourth, there are more temptations surrounding Bitcoin.

You hold Bitcoin, but there are always altcoins, meme coins, DeFi yields, airdrops, contracts, leverage, and structured products calling you to "not be too conservative."

Fifth, the custody and security responsibilities of Bitcoin are more complex.

When you buy a fund, you mainly worry about price fluctuations. When you hold Bitcoin, you also have to worry about exchanges, wallets, mnemonic phrases, signatures, phishing, platform risks, and inheritance arrangements.

Thus, the real difficulty with Bitcoin is not buying it.

Buying is becoming increasingly easy.

The real challenge is:

After buying, not being forced or tempted by this market to make mistakes.

9. Personal Results Are Most Likely to Break at Seven Points

If Bitcoin continues to rise in the future, ordinary people may still not see results.

The most common breaking points are seven.

First, Always Waiting

He believes Bitcoin may have value but is always waiting for a lower price, clearer regulations, more certain trends, and fewer negative news.

The result is that he has no position.

Without a position, there are no results.

Second, Position Does Not Match Judgment

He buys a little to prove he has "participated."

But the position is so small that even if Bitcoin rises significantly, it cannot change the balance sheet.

Cognitive positions are reasonable, especially for those just starting to learn.

The problem is not the small position, but that a person has not established clear rules after years of study: when it is just a cognitive position, when it can become a small long-term position, where the position limit is, and where the risk boundary lies.

Third, High Position FOMO

High position FOMO, or fear of missing out at high prices. He does not build a position during the quiet of a bear market but suddenly enters during the news frenzy at $100,000 or $125,000.

The asset itself is not at fault.

The mistake is that he takes others' enthusiasm as his own plan.

Fourth, Leverage Liquidation

This is the most direct breaking point.

The multi-billion dollar liquidation waves repeatedly remind us: leverage can push you off the table before long-term logic is proven, due to short-term fluctuations.

Fifth, Panic Selling

The ETF era did not eliminate panic.

In November 2025, when Bitcoin fell below $90,000, IBIT saw about $523 million in single-day outflows. (Reuters)

This shows that even when holding through traditional financial products, investors will still retreat under pressure.

Sixth, Switching Assets

When Bitcoin is not fast enough, many people will chase the "next Bitcoin."

This mistake is the most insidious.

Because it is not about not believing in opportunities.

It is because they want to seize the opportunity too much, ultimately giving up the chance with a higher survival probability.

Seventh, High Interest and Custody Risks

Some people neither sell nor leverage.

But they take their core Bitcoin to chase yields or place it on platforms they do not truly understand.

Platform issues, withdrawal suspensions, custody failures, and hacking attacks can completely disconnect asset curves from personal results.

10. The Real Change This Chapter Seeks Is Your Questions

You should not only ask:

Will Bitcoin rise?

You should also ask:

If it rises, do I have enough position?

If it falls, will I not be forced to exit?

If it halves, will I not die from leverage?

If it hits a new high, will I not FOMO in uncontrollably?

If ETF outflows, will I not panic?

If altcoins surge, will I not replace my core position?

If the platform offers high interest, will I not hand over my core principal?

If the market recovers, will I still be in the game?

These are the real questions ordinary people should care about.

The long-term opportunities of Bitcoin cannot rely solely on faith.

It requires structure.

Without structure, even if the asset rises, it may not be related to you.

11. Chapter Summary

An asset's rise does not equate to your personal results.

Mature stock markets have repeatedly proven that investors do not capture the returns of the assets themselves, often not because the assets did not rise, but because they bought, redeemed, and switched positions at the wrong times. Morningstar's 2025 Mind the Gap study shows that over the past 10 years, the average annualized return rate that investors actually received for every dollar invested in U.S. mutual funds and ETFs was 1.2 percentage points lower than the funds' own returns.

Bitcoin will only amplify this problem.

Therefore, what this chapter truly emphasizes is not the price on a certain day, but the path itself. ETFs can open the door, new highs can create excitement, bear markets can create doubt, fund outflows can create panic, and liquidation waves can terminate positions. The asset curve belongs to the market, while the personal path belongs to you; the gap between the two is the true source of ordinary people's investment results.

These facts collectively indicate:

There is a door between Bitcoin's asset curve and your personal wealth path.

This door is called behavior.

It is also called cash flow.

It is also called position.

It is also called security.

It is also called rules.

Without these, even if Bitcoin rises, it may not be related to you.

This content is provided for general informational purposes only and doesn't constitute financial, investment, legal, or tax advice. Any events, rewards, online promotions, or related information mentioned herein should not be considered a recommendation, solicitation, or invitation to purchase, sell, trade, or otherwise deal in any crypto assets. Crypto assets are highly volatile and may result in loss. The availability of WEEX services, products, and related events may vary by region. You are responsible for ensuring that your participation is in accordance with applicable local laws and regulations.