The Weekly Brief
Five years ago was a poor week to buy all at once. A little every week since has nearly doubled.
Bitcoin finished the week at about $81,928.00, down about 2.1% on the week and up about 1.3% on the month. Over twelve months it is down about 23.6%. A year ago it traded near $107,209.72. I've written about that one-year number for several weeks now, so this week I want to point at a different row in the tables below, one that quietly tells a better story about timing than anything I could argue.
Five years ago this month, Bitcoin traded near $61,971.59. That was within a few weeks of what was then its all-time high. Someone who put a lump of money in that week is up about 32.2% today. Over the same five years, prices at the store rose about 21.6%. So after inflation, that buyer is ahead, but only modestly, and they sat through a stretch where they were down by more than half before getting there.
Now the person who started at the same moment and simply bought $50.00 a week, every week, without trying to be clever. Five years of that is $13,050.00 put in. Today it is worth about $24,981.36, up about 91.4%.
Same coin, same five years, same starting week. The difference is not intelligence or luck. One of them committed everything at a single price. The other let the bad years lower their average cost, which works out to about $42,798.33 a coin, roughly half of today's price.
I'm not sharing that to say the weekly buyer was right and the lump-sum buyer was wrong. Over other stretches, buying all at once has come out ahead. I'm sharing it because almost nobody can tell in the moment whether they are buying near a top. A steady habit is a way of admitting that honestly, and then building around it.
Where Things Stand
Descriptive context. Not a forecast.
Solid line: price. Dashed: 200-day average.
What It Costs To Move Coins
The number that actually matters if you are moving to cold storage this week.
very cheapWell below normal. A good week to move coins or tidy up your wallet.
Fees moved a notch this week, to about 4 satoshis per byte, up from 3. In dollars, moving coins from an exchange to a wallet you hold costs about $0.46. Combining five small pieces into one costs about $1.15.
Here is the curious part. The queue of waiting transactions actually shrank, from about ninety-two thousand last week to about 52,015 now. So why would the fee go up while the line got shorter? Because the fee isn't set by how long the whole line is. It's set by how many people want to be in the next few blocks right now. A shorter line can still have a busier front.
You don't need to track any of that. The practical takeaway is the same as the past several weeks: moving your coins is still cheap, cheaper than many exchange withdrawal fees. If getting off an exchange has been on your list, cost is not the obstacle. Take the quiet hour, send a small test amount first, and confirm it arrived before you send the rest.
Steady Accumulation
$50 every week, never sold. What patience did over each horizon.
| Horizon | Invested | Bitcoin held | Worth today | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 years | $2,650 | 0.0345 | $2,824 | +6.6% |
| 2 years | $5,250 | 0.0613 | $5,019 | -4.4% |
| 3 years | $7,850 | 0.1119 | $9,166 | +16.8% |
| 5 years | $13,050 | 0.3049 | $24,981 | +91.4% |
| 10 years | $26,100 | 3.5118 | $287,716 | +1,002.4% |
Past results describe what happened. They are not a prediction of what comes next.
The lead covered five years, so here are the other rows of the same table, the flattering and the unflattering alike.
Over one year, 53 purchases of $50.00 add up to $2,650.00. Today that's worth about $2,824.24, up about 6.6%, with an average cost of about $76,873.41. Last week that row was up a little more. It moved with the price, as it always will.
The two-year row is still in the red. $5,250.00 invested is worth about $5,018.73, down about 4.4%, a loss of roughly two hundred thirty-one dollars. The average cost over those two years is about $85,703.35, a few thousand dollars above today's price. That is the second straight week it has printed red, and I'll keep printing it, whichever way it goes.
Three years turned $7,850.00 into about $9,166.18, up about 16.8%. Ten years turned $26,100.00 into about $287,716.02. Those longer rows include some brutal stretches, and they describe the past, not a promise.
There's a line in Ecclesiastes that says if you wait on the wind, you'll never plant, and if you watch the clouds, you'll never harvest. It isn't about money at all. It's about how waiting for perfect conditions becomes its own way of never starting. The five-year row is a small picture of that. The weekly buyer never got a perfect week. They just kept showing up.
What A Saved Dollar Did
Inflation and money supply from FRED — the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
$10,000 set aside ten years ago, measured in what it buys today.
| Horizon | Inflation | Money supply | $10k now needs | Bitcoin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 years | +3.7% | +4.9% | $10,372 | -23.6% |
| 3 years | +9.3% | +12.6% | $10,930 | +185.2% |
| 5 years | +21.6% | +10.3% | $12,160 | +32.2% |
| 10 years | +39.1% | +77.9% | $13,912 | +12,782.8% |
Every week I set Bitcoin next to the plain option.
Over the past year, prices rose about 3.7%, a bit faster than the figure I gave you last week, because the September inflation data came in. That means it takes about $10,371.73 today to buy what $10,000 bought a year ago. The money supply grew about 4.9%. Bitcoin fell about 23.6%. For the twelve months just ended, savings in dollars did better, and I'm not going to dress that up.
Five years is the row that connects to this week's lead. Prices rose about 21.6% over that span, so $10,000 then needs about $12,160.48 now. Bitcoin bought in a single week five years ago is up about 32.2%. It came out ahead of inflation, but by less than a lot of people imagine when they hear the word Bitcoin. Over three years it is up about 185.2%. Over ten years, a dollar has lost about 28.1% of what it could buy.
Notice how much the answer depends on which window you pick. That alone is a reason to distrust anyone who shows you only one of them.
The inflation and money supply figures come from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, right here in town.
And the guardrail, every week: I'm not telling anyone to move savings into Bitcoin. Keep your emergency fund in dollars. Keep money you'll need this year in dollars. This section is here to help you understand what a dollar does over time, not to tell you where to put one.
Self-Custody & Security
Keeping your coins yours.
Ledger Live shipped a new version in the past 10 days. If you use it, update through the official app or the maker's own site -- never through a link in an email or a search ad.
Giveaways and celebrity endorsements are always fake
One wallet shipped an update in the past ten days: Ledger Live 4.24.0, five days ago. If you use it, update from inside the app or by typing Ledger's website into your browser yourself, never from a link in an email or a sponsored search result. No relevant FBI fraud alerts this week.
This week's topic: giveaways and celebrity endorsements are always fake.
You've probably seen one. A video of a famous founder or a well-known business figure, a countdown, and an offer: send some Bitcoin to this address and you'll get double back. Sometimes it's a live stream with thousands of viewers. Sometimes it's a direct message that seems to come from someone you follow.
It has never once been real. Not one time. And it keeps working, because the videos are getting harder to tell from the real thing. Faces and voices can now be faked well enough to fool careful people, and the scammers fill the comments with fake winners to make it look like others got paid.
The rule is simple enough to memorize: any request to send Bitcoin first in order to receive more is theft. There is no legitimate version. No real company, celebrity, or charity runs a promotion that works that way. And because Bitcoin transactions can't be reversed, once it's sent, it's gone.
If you serve on a church or nonprofit board, it's worth saying this out loud to whoever handles your accounts. These scams sometimes arrive dressed as a generous donor or a matching gift. Generosity never requires you to send money first.
If anything in this week's brief raised a question, whether it's how to think about timing, how to spot a fake giveaway before someone you love falls for one, or what a careful first step into holding your own coins looks like, I'm glad to talk it through.
No pressure and no pitch. Reply to this, or reach out through the site, and we'll start from wherever you are.