Rain\’s streaking down my office window again, matching the red candles on my trading screen. Third day this week. Funny how London weather syncs up with crypto winters sometimes. That stupid \”BTFD\” meme keeps blinking in my Discord feed like some persistent neon sign in a dive bar. Buy The F*ing Dip. Right. Tell that to my buddy Mark who went all-in at $69k. His Tesla\’s repo\’d now. We don\’t talk much anymore.

Remember 2018? Christ. That proper gut-punch bear market. I was younger, dumber. Thought spotting \”dips\” was genius. Like that time I bought OMG coin at $28 because some YouTuber screamed \”HISTORIC BUYING OPPORTUNITY!!\” while pounding Red Bull. Watched it bleed down to ninety cents. Ninety. Cents. Still got that bag somewhere, probably fossilized in a forgotten wallet. A $5000 lesson in ignoring hype. Feels ancient now, but the patterns… they rhyme. Always rhyme.

Now? Everyone\’s a technical analyst. Twitter threads with rainbow charts predicting $100k BTC by Tuesday. Same clowns who missed Luna cratering to literal dust. Saw that one unspooling live on my screen last May. Terra\’s anchor chain snapping. UST de-pegging wasn\’t some gentle drift – it was a fucking cannonball off a cliff. My stomach dropped watching my small position evaporate in minutes. Felt physical. Cold sweat on my neck. That metallic taste of panic. No chart pattern saves you from algorithmic death spirals. No \”BTFD\” bravery. Just… silence afterwards. The eerie quiet when a billion dollars vanishes before lunch.

This current chop? Feels different. Heavy. Institutional money sloshing around like cold gravy. BlackRock\’s ETF approval felt less like a triumph and more like… colonization. Remember the wild west days? Dogecoin funding a NASCAR? Vitalik donating SHIB to India? Chaotic, stupid, alive. Now it\’s macro this, Fed pivot that. Jobs reports moving Bitcoin like it\’s the damn S&P 500. Feels… sanitized. Managed. Boring, almost. Dangerous boring. Like the calm before regulatory hell breaks loose.

Predicting BTFD price? Honestly? Feels like reading tea leaves after three espressos. Pointless. Exhausting. Maybe $25k holds. Maybe it doesn\’t. Saw some \”expert\” call for $12k yesterday. Another screamed $48k by month-end. Noise. Just noise. The only truth I know? Real bottoms aren\’t loud. They\’re hollow. Quiet. When the memes stop. When your feed goes silent because even the degens are too tired to post loss porn. We ain\’t there. Not yet. Too many \”generational buying opportunity!\” tweets still floating around. Too much hopium clinging to the rafters.

My own strategy? Pathetic, really. Mostly watching. Small, mechanical buys way below spot. Like picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. Took a tiny position in Solana around $8 after the FTX implosion. Not because I believed – Christ no. Because the fear was so thick you could taste it. Pure contrarian spite. Sold half way too early at $24. Kicking myself now, obviously. Greed always battling fear, and fear usually wins a few rounds too many. The rest sits in cold storage. Forgotten passwords acting as forced HODL. A safety net made of my own forgetfulness.

The alts? Don\’t get me started. Walking corpses mostly. Remember the \”Ethereum killers\”? Avalanche, Fantom, Near… all down what, 90%? 95%? Ghost chains. Fees low, users lower. Innovation feels stalled. Everyone\’s just rebuilding the same Lego castle with slightly different colored blocks. NFTs? The PFP bubble pop was spectacular. Watched a Bored Ape rug pull live on Discord last year. Some influencer dumped his entire vault mid-AMA. Voice chat erupted. Pure chaos. Angry, betrayed voices cracking over mics. Digital dreams turning to dust in milliseconds. Haven\’t touched an NFT since. Feels… dirty now.

Regulation\’s the elephant stomping around the room. Can practically hear Gary Gensler sharpening his knives. Every time Coinbase gets another Wells notice, my cold storage wallets feel smarter. The exchanges? Glorified honeypots waiting for the SEC bear trap to snap shut. Saw my German buddy\’s account frozen on Kraken for \”compliance review\” last month. Took weeks. No explanation. Just… frozen. His life savings inaccessible. That cold dread isn\’t something charts predict. It\’s the human cost of this unregulated mess. Makes you wonder if the real \”dip\” is trusting a centralized entity with your keys.

So yeah. BTFD price prediction? I got nothing profound. No crystal ball. Just this bone-deep weariness. Maybe the real dip is our collective sanity. Maybe we\’re all just buying the dip on hope itself. Crumbling, devalued hope. All I know is I\’m not levering up. Not chasing. Sitting tight feels like the only move that doesn\’t end with me chain-smoking on my fire escape at 3 AM again, staring at portfolio charts like they\’re Rorschach tests revealing my own stupidity. The market doesn\’t need your heroics. It needs your patience. And maybe a therapist.