Nobody is getting rich with Bitcoin
I joined the crypto space several years ago, now more than 2 cycles of bull and bear market, and of course I made some friends in these years. Naturally, many of them, by virtue of being in this space long enough and surviving (many others got lost along the road), a good number of these friends have "made it" by any standard you may want to measure.
So, a lot of them speak from a position of comfort and privilege, rightfully earned, sure but still. A position from where getting more is good, but they don't need to strive or won't materially change their condition or social class anymore.
Every so often, a lot of retail traders get rekt trading memecoins, or celebrity coins, or a leverage flush in alts becomes a large liquidation event, and crypto twitter timelines is a sea of misery and crying. Whenever one of these events occur, many of the "retired" friends above comment: "eh, retail should just stay in $BTC" or "they wouldn't be rekt now if they simply stacked $BTC".
These assertions piss me off very much, they are so detached from the reality of people trying to make money in this space, and the maturity and reduced opportunity window offered by $BTC at this point.
At the time of writing (September 2026), $BTC is around $80,000, with a previous all time high of $125K. Assuming next bull run tops $BTC at $250K, it's roughly a 3x. $500K? Unrealistic given how Bitcoin is now integrated into the fabric of traditional finance (ETFs, Strategy, etc.) and how muted its volatility is becoming... still, it would give a 6x.
If one wanted to take additional risk, with a max leverage of 3x, barely protecting from 40% drawdowns that still happen, you could aim for more or less a 10x return for the next bullrun.
Now take Timmy, freshly graduated from highschool, let's be generous and say he has $2,000 of savings to his name.
You know what Timmy can do with a 3x on $2,000 in 2029? FUCK ALL.
$6,000, but hell, even $10,000 or $20,000 will not change his life, he'll be closer to 30, and still having to work for the rest of his life.
Hardly "making it" money.
What people sitting on 7-8 figures do not seem to realize anymore, is that there is a scrambling and panicking race to make it out of the permanent underclass in the next 5 to 10 years, and it is not a surprise that they are looking for explosive returns in gambling avenues with high variance:
- meme coins
- sport betting
- trading cards
- leveraged perps
- 0 day options
and so on.
Yes, 99% of them will lose everything, but people did their math and accepted that it's worth the risk for them to go bust, just in case they end up being the 1% that make it big and retire their bloodline.
They want the 1000x, and they will laugh in your face if you tell them to simply stack $BTC in 2026.
And it's difficult, in my opinion, to say they're wrong.