There is a classic joke on the internet that really hits home:
If you had bought Bitcoin for 1,000 yuan in 2010 and held onto it until now, it would have turned into 10 billion.
It sounds easy, "Was it just about holding on?"
But if you lay out the profit curve, you will find that the journey of that 1,000 yuan Bitcoin is completely unbearable for any person.
1,000 yuan → 100,000 → 1,000,000 → plummeting to 30,000 → surging to 5,000,000 → halved again to 800,000 → skyrocketing to 20,000,000 → pulling back to 3,000,000 → suddenly 500 million → crashing down to 80,000,000 → ultimately 10 billion.
How many times were there "zero-style" retracements in between? How many times did you watch your account drop from astronomical numbers back to a mortal level? How many times did you stay up late scrolling on your phone, wanting to smash your computer, wanting to cut losses and run?
Think about it, those who truly managed to "hold from beginning to end" are almost all psychologically damaged:
Some people collapsed and left the market when the first bubble burst in 2011, dropping 93%.
Some couldn’t endure the three years of zero feeling during the bear market from 2013 to 2015 and sold.
Some saw their assets evaporate by over 85% when it dropped from 20,000 dollars to 3,000 dollars in 2018, leading to a complete mental breakdown.
Not to mention 2022 and this year's situation (rapidly halving from a high of 126,000 dollars), many went directly bankrupt or liquidated.
And those who truly held on and achieved the miracle of "1,000 → 10 billion" often experienced far more than ordinary investors:
For example, Binance founder CZ (Zhao Changpeng), who was deeply involved in Bitcoin early on, went all in by selling his house to create the world's largest exchange, going through countless market crashes, regulatory storms, and FUD. In the end, he was even sentenced to four months in prison in the U.S. due to compliance issues (imprisoned in 2024, and during his time served, he also experienced life in prison).
It’s not that he lacked money or understanding, but that even the top players in the entire industry had to pay a huge price—time, freedom, mental health, family... even prison.
So the real cruelty of this joke lies in the fact that "holding on" has never been a technical issue, but a human issue.
The vast majority of people, during any severe retracement of the curve, are highly likely to have already mentally collapsed and exited at a loss. Those who can really make it to the end are not the smartest, but the most "crazy", the most resilient, and those who do not regard money as life.