Don't Trust Analysts, Trust Bitcoin - Regarding Bitcoin

Hey everybody, my name is Jonathan Lejeune and my path from cult survivor to crypto trader to Bitcoiner taught me all about sound money and why we desperately need it in the form of Bitcoin. Along this path, I followed many analysts who gave many predictions about where Bitcoin was going, and I am here to tell you not to trust those analysts but to put your trust in Bitcoin, and let's talk about why. I've teamed up with the Consensus Network, a Bitcoin-only enterprise which publishes and translates books about Bitcoin from a variety of respected Bitcoin educators. The link to Consensus is in the video description, and if you decide to make a purchase, you'll be supporting this channel as I receive a small percentage of each sale. Thank you in advance for your support. This is my Substack where I write about Bitcoin, and then I discuss those articles in these videos. The one I'm going to talk about today is called Don't Trust Analysts, Trust Bitcoin. Reaching the promised land takes grit and endurance as we pass through the desert of the real. So, let's get right into it. One of the first things I did after learning about Bitcoin and getting excited about its future possibilities was go in search of estimates for where the price could be in the future. At that point, I was still thinking in terms of fiat and gains that I could achieve through my investment. Naturally, I discovered myriad analysts who were happy to give price predictions with ranges all over the map. The analysts had what appeared to be sound reasons for their estimates, sometimes using macro and fundamentals, and sometimes using technical analysis and charting. I learned a lot from these analysts about the way the world economy works, about the Federal Reserve, money printing, inflation, Elliott Wave Theory, support and resistance zones, accumulation, bull traps and bear traps, and how whales— large buyers and sellers— dupe retail investors and take their money. I am grateful for this education. And I know my experience is not unique. I know this because many of these analysts had large followings. Some had YouTube channels, others didn't. Some had membership upgrades, some didn't. Some were lesser known, and others had truly massive audiences. Some used to manage hedge funds or had been traders for decades. Others had learned on their own and appeared to be doing well from their hard-won expertise. None of that mattered, though. Because they were all wrong. After years of following these analysts and looking back on their claims and expectations, I could have done just as well by tossing darts at a paper chart listing a bunch of prices and going with the one I hit first. I did well swing trading the first year, so I can't say these analysts and chartists didn't have any short-term capabilities, but in the bull market, you could pretty much pick anything in the top 100 crypto market cap and make a lot of money if you sell when you're significantly in profit before the inevitable crash comes. When it came to long-term predictions, however, they were all wrong. To their credit, most of them admitted they were wrong, though few of them stopped making new predictions. I still follow a few of them, the ones who appeared to be better at short-term predictions, but not because I have any intention of swing trading again, because I don't. I made some good money trading, but not because I was smart. I was lucky. A lucky guy in a crypto bull market. That's it. My 3-year crypto experience? Taught me that I was better off just buying what I believed in and hodling it. Today, that means Bitcoin. I'm no longer fiat-oriented. I'm Bitcoin-oriented. It took a long time and a come-to-Jesus moment in the market when so many crypto institutions began collapsing, culminating in the massive destruction wrought by FTX. That's when my time preference changed. High time preference means you favor short-term results over long-term ones. Low Time Preference is the opposite. You're willing to wait it out for outsized benefits in the long run. The crypto community is High Time Preference. As a rule, they're looking to get rich quick and are eager for the opinions of analysts and their picks. All the analysts have boilerplate messaging saying, I'm not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice. That covers their butts for when you inevitably lose your shirt listening to what they have to say. People follow these analysts in the bull markets, Because they appear to be right. When everything is going up, naturally they're going to be right about this token or that token going up most of the time. Where the rubber meets the road is when the bull market ends and the bear market begins. How many of them saw that coming? Very few, if any, did. In contrast, Bitcoiners are generally low time preference. They believe their finances will benefit greatly from hodling Bitcoin. But they also know that it may take a long time, and they're willing to wait. They're principled because their primary incentive isn't money, it's freedom, and not just for themselves, but for the whole world. I'm not going to call out the analysts I follow by name because I don't believe most of them had bad intentions. It's easy to be convinced your system works in a bull market, and many of them I researched had legitimate careers in finance and trading. So it's not like they were just outright frauds. They were wrong because they were overconfident, and crypto bull markets make everybody overconfident. I was no exception to that. Because I can't be sure of any individual's specific intent, I don't feel comfortable in calling them out as frauds. Besides, given that my background is not in finance, I don't have the expertise to know who's a fraud and who's just overzealous. However, Many Bitcoiners have no problem calling fraud on analysts and influencers. The one I respect the most is Corey Clifton from Swan Bitcoin. He called out Celsius, Terra Luna, FTX, and lots of others long before their collapse. I wasn't sure how many people heeded those calls since he's a hardcore Bitcoiner and it was mostly altcoiners that were impacted by those fraudulent companies. So I asked Corey, and this is what he said. Quote: Thousands of people saved hundreds of millions of dollars worth of BTC because of my warnings. I've received hundreds of DMs and emails thanking me and others for ringing the alarm. End quote. Some Bitcoin holders that didn't self-custody their coins were hurt, but I don't classify anyone letting any third party hold their coins as Bitcoiners. One of the primary mantras of Bitcoin is not your keys, not your coins. I don't call letting a third party have custody of your coins hodling either. It's a reckless decision, nothing more. However, Corey also stated that another benefit of his calls being correct is that the mainstream media takes him more seriously, and he's been able to get a number of interviews calling out the scams and pointing to Bitcoin as the only true path to change. The truth is that all Bitcoiners know that Bitcoin is going to change the world. But none of us know when. We can look at on-chain data showing adoption rising rapidly and people finally getting their coins off exchanges, which rids the system of paper Bitcoin— BTC claimed to be held by exchanges that they don't really have— which suppresses price by artificially inflating supply. We can cheer small countries like El Salvador and the Central African Republic adopting Bitcoin as legal tender. Those are good things that show Bitcoin adoption and its use is growing. But that still doesn't tell us much about when the flip from the fiat standard to the Bitcoin standard will happen, and ultimately that's what all Bitcoiners want. When Cory is asked to make price predictions, the one I've heard him give is $1 million a coin by 2030. It's a reasonable prediction, even a modest one given Bitcoin's price appreciation from inception until now. I wonder if he just throws that out there because he knows that question will be asked and he wants to have a reasonable answer to give. Regardless, none of us can know what the fiat price of Bitcoin will be at any point down the road past maybe a few weeks or a month or two if technical analysis is to be believed. Nor should such short-term changes be very important. If you feel they are, then you're not a Bitcoiner. There's nothing wrong with wanting to make some money, but you should understand that unless you're out to change the world, that title doesn't belong to you. Low time preference is hard. A lot of pain must be endured while you wait for your dreams to become reality. You might have to put up with ridicule or skepticism from family and friends as huge price fluctuations cause fiat-oriented people to question your sanity or intelligence. But you believe, and so you soldier on. Here's the bottom line for me: I believe Bitcoin will achieve what it set out to do. I believe it will restore the world to a sound money standard and fix or improve so many socioeconomic ills caused by the current fiat standard. But even if it failed, I wouldn't regret my decision. It's a principled one, and I know that I'm on the right side of history. I would rather die with the truth than profit from the lie. The world is in the mess we see today because so many people chose the easy path, the path that goes along with the status quo. It reminds me of my life in the cult I grew up in. Before you walked into the church, you put a smile on your face no matter how awful you felt that day. You pretended to be happy because we were supposed to be the happiest people in the world due to having God's blessing. But most people weren't happy. They were stressed and tired and miserable. The world we live in is a lot like that. To look at social media and the curated lives people put on display, you would think most people are living wonderful, prosperous lives free from worries or financial and personal woes. But how many people do you personally know whose lives are like that? Yeah, me either. It's a sham, a fraud induced by the lie that fiat money can bring happiness and a world we want to live in. It hasn't because it can't. The rat race is real, it's harsh, and it's uncaring, benefiting the few at the expense of the many. Bitcoiners believe in a better world, and we're willing to wait it out and risk it all in order to see it come to pass. However long it takes, we'll hold on with tears in our eyes and hope in our heart. The promised land is in our future. We can feel it. We can taste it. We just have to get through the desert of the real to arrive at our blessed destination. May it be so. Well, that's all I have for you today. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, be sure to click like. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel, and I will see you next time.