There's no smoking gun for this drawdown, which makes it feel different. Previous corrections had clear catalysts: FTX, Mt. Gox, China bans. This one? It could be the Clarity Act getting delayed. It could be the four-year cycle self-fulfilling. It could be general macro uncertainty. It could be all of the above. The honest answer is that no one knows for sure, and that ambiguity is uncomfortable.

The four-year cycle might still be real. A lot of people thought we'd break the pattern this time. We didn't. There was massive front-running of 2026 being a down year, which ironically made 2025 flat to down as well. People still think in these frameworks, and there's a self-fulfilling nature to it.

Coinbase went down again during volatility. Every time the market moves, people can't access their coins. They can't buy or sell. And you can't get anyone on the phone. As Brian put it: when a firm that size holding $500-700 billion goes down, people start wondering if something existential just happened. That's a problem.

Nick Szabo came back to Twitter and dropped a bomb. He wrote that the "current embarrassing centralization of Bitcoin at mega custodian Coinbase is a temporary phase in Bitcoin's bumpy path to maturity." His point: gold failed as money because of centralization in bank vaults. Bitcoin doesn't have to repeat that mistake because multisig lets you distribute risk in ways that were never possible with physical assets. That's the whole thesis.

Bo Hines (Tether US CEO) thinks the Clarity Act passes with 80-90% odds. He said the debate isn't really about yield, it's about UX and mechanics. Tether now has 530 million customers, growing 30 million per quarter, with only 300 employees. They'll be a top 10 purchaser of T-bills this year. And his view on stablecoins: they're the Trojan horse for Bitcoin adoption. People get comfortable with digital rails, and then saving in Bitcoin becomes a natural next step.

We wrestled with what's actually causing this drawdown and whether it matters.

The concern:
There's no clear catalyst, which is unsettling. It could be dead bodies we haven't found yet from the 10/10 crypto blowup. It could be institutions still viewing Bitcoin as risk-on tech and selling alongside software. It could be quantum FUD creating hesitation at the institutional level. The uncertainty itself is the problem, because it means no one knows when it ends.

The counter:
Bitcoin has been through eight serious drawdowns. It has a perfect track record of coming back. The network hasn't been hacked. The debasement thesis is intact. The ETF infrastructure is established. BlackRock, Fidelity, and Vanguard all say it's an asset class. Nothing fundamental has changed. The only thing that's changed is price, and price always recovers.

Where we landed:
If you've been through multiple cycles, this isn't as scary as people make it. We're in the infancy of what this looks like long-term. If you have conviction in the thesis, these are bumps in the road. It gets easier over time. But that doesn't mean you should ignore the operational risks. Custody failures, exchange outages, deep fakes, and AI-driven attacks are all accelerating. The macro uncertainty is real. The smart move is to use this time to get your infrastructure right.

If you believe the thesis hasn't changed (and it hasn't), then $65K is an opportunity, not a crisis. But opportunity without infrastructure is just exposure.

The pattern we see in every cycle: exchange collapses, custody failures, loss of trust. That hasn't happened yet this cycle, but Coinbase going down during volatility is a reminder that counterparty risk doesn't disappear just because prices are lower. It's actually when it matters most.

Nick Szabo's point is the right frame: gold failed because it centralized. Bitcoin doesn't have to. The technology allows you to distribute custody across multiple independent institutions while retaining control. That's not a nice-to-have. It's the whole point.

This week's action: Use the uncertainty to get your house in order.

Everyone's focused on price. Almost no one is focused on infrastructure. That's backwards.

Ask yourself:

The drawdown will end. It always does. The question is whether you're positioned to take advantage of the recovery or scrambling to figure out logistics at higher prices.

We help individuals, businesses, and institutions who own Bitcoin (or want to) secure it properly: institutional-grade custody, inheritance planning, financial services, and access to a team that knows what they're doing.

If you're holding serious BTC and haven't pressure-tested your setup, or if you're building a position and want to do it right from the start, let's talk.

Book a 15-minute call here

— Jackson

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