THE ETERNAL MISTAKES OF NEWCOMERS
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One only needs to observe a bull market to understand that humanity has never truly changed. The same gestures, the same frenzies, the same poorly concealed admissions of naiveté repeat themselves as if each generation had decided, with an almost touching enthusiasm, to reenact the exact same play. There are variations, different costumes, a few new technologies, a more modern set. But the substance remains the same. Newcomers aren't discovering Bitcoin. They're discovering their own psychology through Bitcoin. And that's where everything happens.
The first reaction is always urgency. A visceral impatience, a need to catch up with what seems to have already begun without them. They often arrive when the price skyrockets, when everyone is talking about it, when the promise of a better future enters every conversation. They don't want to change the world. They simply don't want to be the last to walk through the door. They think they're stepping into an elevator already in motion, convinced it will keep going up and up, carried by a momentum they haven't bothered to understand. They don't want to understand. They want to win. This detail seems insignificant, but it already foreshadows what's to come. Those who invest out of fear of being left behind almost always end up being right too late.
The second reaction comes quickly: magical projection. The newcomer looks at the graph not as a curve, but as a prophecy. They believe Bitcoin was invented to make them personally wealthy. They imagine that the protocol, in its cold algorithmic nature, holds a special destiny in store for them. They confuse decentralization with individual destiny. It is at this precise moment that they begin to cling to scenarios, fantasies, and illusions that resemble modern fairy tales more than finance or technology. They are not buying for sovereignty. They are buying for the hope of a better life. They want to free themselves from effort, not emancipate themselves from the system. At this stage, their understanding of Bitcoin is still a cardboard cutout. They don't see the structure; they only see the lights.
Then comes the third reflex. The most human. The most universal. Doubt. The kind that begins discreetly at the first retracement, the first slowdown, the first sharp market reversal. He bought high, often. He didn't buy because he believed in the protocol, but because he believed in a rapid rise. When that rise stops, his entire reasoning collapses. He no longer understands what he's doing there. He wonders if he made a mistake. But he never asks himself the right question. He doesn't ask himself why Bitcoin exists. He asks himself why the price doesn't obey him.
It is in this fragile mental state that perennial errors appear. They are known. They are documented. They are predictable. But they return, relentlessly, because they belong less to cryptography than to the human mind itself.
The first mistake is imagining that understanding Bitcoin can be accelerated. Some people embark on a learning frenzy. Others bury themselves in simplistic videos. Still others seek an “expert” who will explain the truth to them like a teacher explaining a lesson. But Bitcoin isn't something you understand. It's something you experience. It's something you observe. It's something you experiment with. You can't swallow the protocol's philosophy like a three-minute summary. You have to live it. The newcomer hasn't yet grasped that Bitcoin is an environment, not a trick.
The second mistake is imagining there's a shortcut. The newcomer thinks there are perfect times to buy or sell, signals, secrets, strategies. He believes others possess a hidden skill, esoteric knowledge, a mysterious indicator. The truth, however, is brutal. No one knows. No one ever has. Those who win do so not through a flamboyant strategy, but through the sheer banality of patience. What is simple seems too simple for him. He wants a method. He wants a formula. He wants a trick.
The third mistake is that of dispersion. Every newcomer gets lost in altcoins, promises, metaverses, tokens, exotic projects, and illusions of utility. They think they're discovering innovation. They're only discovering imitation. They don't see that they're exploring a market where everything is inspired by Bitcoin without ever coming close. The novelty seems seductive. But novelty in crypto is almost always an elegant way to recycle old mistakes with younger marketing.
The fourth mistake comes later, almost always at the same time. It's the belief that he can beat time. He thinks he can anticipate the market. He thinks he can outperform those who have been around longer. He imagines that rationality can overcome chaos. It's a touching, almost naive mistake. He doesn't yet understand that Bitcoin isn't an asset like any other. It's not a stock. It's not an investment. It's not a game. It's not meant to be predicted. It's meant to be understood.
The fifth mistake is the most dangerous. It's believing that Bitcoin rises for psychological reasons. He thinks the price increases because people are euphoric. He thinks the price falls because people are panicking. He's mistaken about causality. Bitcoin isn't an emotional thermometer. Bitcoin is a mechanical reaction to a crumbling monetary system. The price is a mirror, not a verdict. The newcomer often mistakes noise for signal. He looks at the news. He looks at tweets. He looks at influencers. He looks at everything he shouldn't be looking at. He never observes the one thing that should have obsessed him from day one: the protocol.
The sixth mistake is more personal. The newcomer thinks he will change his relationship to the world simply by changing his wallet. He believes he can become sovereign without becoming responsible. He believes he can become free without becoming disciplined. He believes he can own Bitcoin without Bitcoin transforming him. He hasn't yet learned that Bitcoin isn't an investment. It's a way of being in the world.
The seventh mistake is the one that almost always closes his cycle. He ends up believing that Bitcoin is just a phase. A fad. A wave. He thinks he's leaving the market like he's leaving a movie theater. He thinks his experience was personal when it was actually universal. He hasn't yet understood that Bitcoin isn't about him. It's about humanity. And humanity, for millennia, has been repeating the exact same mistakes.
What's fascinating is that these mistakes aren't related to education level, age, culture, or career path. They're linked to one thing: the relationship to value. Bitcoin doesn't invent new illusions. It reveals the ones we already had. It reveals humanity's inability to manage time, patience, doubt, responsibility, and sovereignty. It lays bare what every individual before it minimized. Bitcoin doesn't change us. It exposes us.
New entrants don't make technical errors. They make human errors. That's what makes their cycle so predictable. That's what makes their questions so repetitive. That's what makes their panic so similar to that of previous generations. Bitcoin isn't new. The technology is recent, certainly. But the human being facing it isn't. Their fears, their impulses, their naivety, their greed, their impatience, their guilt. All of this already existed in ancient societies. Bitcoin invented nothing. It simply offered a mirror.
And in this mirror, the newcomers see something they didn't expect to discover. They see themselves. They discover their fragility. They discover their susceptibility to manipulation. They discover their dependence on external validation. They discover their inability to accept the very risk they thought they were embracing. They discover the constant contradiction between their words and actions. They thought they were buying freedom. They discover they've bought a teacher.
Bitcoin teaches brutally. It teaches through price. It teaches through cycles. It teaches through pain. It teaches through solitude. It teaches through the silence of the protocol. Above all, it teaches through the endless repetition of these errors that seem inscribed in human DNA. Bitcoin is simply waiting for some to stop repeating them.
It's rarely the first entrants who become protocol veterans. It's those who have understood that perpetual errors aren't accidents. They're necessary steps. They aren't there to cause defeat. They're there to reveal. And when the newcomer goes through this cycle, when they emerge a little bruised but more lucid, they finally understand what they should have understood from day one. Bitcoin is a school. A school of reality. A school of patience. A school of long-term thinking. A school of responsibility. A school where the only rule is not to cheat yourself.
The next entrants will make the same mistakes. They'll buy too late. They'll sell too early. They'll look for a strategy. They'll flee at the first sign of volatility. They'll come back at the second. They'll leave again at the third. They'll criticize what they don't understand. They'll adore what they shouldn't adore. They'll repeat what's already been repeated a thousand times. They'll believe they're unique. They won't be.
Ultimately, there's only one mistake that overshadows all others: believing that Bitcoin is a market when Bitcoin is actually a transition. Not an individual transition, but a civilizational one. And in this transition, everyone goes through the same stages, the same fears, the same revelations. The perennial mistakes of newcomers aren't faults. They're rites of passage. One day, they'll learn to interpret them differently. And on that day, they won't be newcomers anymore. They'll become Bitcoiners.
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