Bitcoin Surges Toward All-Time High as Everyone Forgets What Happened Last Time

Bitcoin’s price surged past $63,000 and then receded just a bit under on Wednesday, reaching a level the crypto coin hasn’t seen since November 2021. While it still has a little way to climb to reach an all-time high of $68,000, that level feels comfortably within reach. And if you’re feeling uneasy about the rally, given what happened two years ago, you’re not alone.

What’s causing Bitcoin’s dramatic climb? The consensus seems to be it’s all FOMO, or the fear of missing out.

“We’ve been talking FOMO rally for a while now. And people just looking for places to potentially earn money and maybe earn money quick,” Yahoo Finance reporter Josh Schafer explained during a segment Wednesday morning.

But others insist there’s something else happening here. The true believers in Bitcoin are ecstatic, as they see the crypto coin’s climb as evidence they were right all along about “the fundamentals.” Prominent X accounts sharing video clips of CNBC’s Joe Kernen calling Bitcoin a “store of value,” the theory that the cryptocurrency retains its worth and doesn’t depreciate.

The hype on Wednesday even reached into religious territory, as Bitcoin fans celebrated Michael Saylor, the CEO of Microstrategy and a longtime believer in Bitcoin as the currency of the future.

“2029, Michael Saylor is the richest man in human history,” one X account wrote. “People gather in churches to chant ‘there is no second best’ and listen to the hum of Bitcoin miners as they are fed tiny sacramental extra slices of pizza.”

Microstrategy currently holds roughly $10 billion of bitcoin, according to Fortune magazine.

To be clear, bitcoin is no more useful or stable today as a currency than it was back in 2022, when FTX collapsed and investors immediately lost billions. The “fundamentals” are all the same, which is to say very few people are using Bitcoin as a currency to buy goods and services. Well, almost nobody. The U.S. Treasury Department recently released a report noting that Bitcoin is the cryptocurrency of choice for human traffickers and child abusers.

The simple fact that investors lost $2 trillion between November 2021 and November 2022 should give people pause before they start dumping money into crypto again. But that won’t stop people from trying to time the market.

That’s why it’s called FOMO. People see the rising price of bitcoin and want to get in because they want to make money. What they don’t know—or know and can’t fully appreciate because humans are often irrational actors—is that the big players in crypto got in six months ago and are ready to sell, leaving retail investors holding the bag.

Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund reportedly bought $200 million worth of crypto beginning in the summer of 2023, according to Reuters, a fact we only learned about a couple of weeks ago. That means Founders Fund probably bought Bitcoin at a price of roughly $25,000, less than half what it is today.

If history is any guide, many retail investors are about to FOMO themselves into a lot of financial pain and heartache. You’re free to invest your money however you like, but it’s probably wise to only invest money you’re willing to lose. You’d think humanity learned its lesson in 2022, but it really does seem like we’ll just keep riding this Bitcoin rollercoaster for decades to come.

Bitcoin’s price surged past $63,000 and then receded just a bit under on Wednesday, reaching a level the crypto coin hasn’t seen since November 2021. While it still has a little way to climb to reach an all-time high of $68,000, that level feels comfortably within reach. And if you’re feeling uneasy about the rally, given what happened two years ago, you’re not alone.

What’s causing Bitcoin’s dramatic climb? The consensus seems to be it’s all FOMO, or the fear of missing out.

“We’ve been talking FOMO rally for a while now. And people just looking for places to potentially earn money and maybe earn money quick,” Yahoo Finance reporter Josh Schafer explained during a segment Wednesday morning.

But others insist there’s something else happening here. The true believers in Bitcoin are ecstatic, as they see the crypto coin’s climb as evidence they were right all along about “the fundamentals.” Prominent X accounts sharing video clips of CNBC’s Joe Kernen calling Bitcoin a “store of value,” the theory that the cryptocurrency retains its worth and doesn’t depreciate.

The hype on Wednesday even reached into religious territory, as Bitcoin fans celebrated Michael Saylor, the CEO of Microstrategy and a longtime believer in Bitcoin as the currency of the future.

“2029, Michael Saylor is the richest man in human history,” one X account wrote. “People gather in churches to chant ‘there is no second best’ and listen to the hum of Bitcoin miners as they are fed tiny sacramental extra slices of pizza.”

Microstrategy currently holds roughly $10 billion of bitcoin, according to Fortune magazine.

To be clear, bitcoin is no more useful or stable today as a currency than it was back in 2022, when FTX collapsed and investors immediately lost billions. The “fundamentals” are all the same, which is to say very few people are using Bitcoin as a currency to buy goods and services. Well, almost nobody. The U.S. Treasury Department recently released a report noting that Bitcoin is the cryptocurrency of choice for human traffickers and child abusers.

The simple fact that investors lost $2 trillion between November 2021 and November 2022 should give people pause before they start dumping money into crypto again. But that won’t stop people from trying to time the market.

That’s why it’s called FOMO. People see the rising price of bitcoin and want to get in because they want to make money. What they don’t know—or know and can’t fully appreciate because humans are often irrational actors—is that the big players in crypto got in six months ago and are ready to sell, leaving retail investors holding the bag.

Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund reportedly bought $200 million worth of crypto beginning in the summer of 2023, according to Reuters, a fact we only learned about a couple of weeks ago. That means Founders Fund probably bought Bitcoin at a price of roughly $25,000, less than half what it is today.

If history is any guide, many retail investors are about to FOMO themselves into a lot of financial pain and heartache. You’re free to invest your money however you like, but it’s probably wise to only invest money you’re willing to lose. You’d think humanity learned its lesson in 2022, but it really does seem like we’ll just keep riding this Bitcoin rollercoaster for decades to come.