If you own bitcoin (BTCUSD) right now, you probably feel like the sober guy at a frat party. The S&P 500 SPX has been flirting with all-time highs. The Nasdaq COMP has been on a tear. Gold (GC00) has topped $4,000 an ounce. Artificial-intelligence stocks are priced as if AI has already replaced half of us.

And bitcoin? Down more than 20% from its peak. Stuck in a range. The financial equivalent of watching paint dry on a prison wall.

So what went wrong? Did the Great Digital Future get canceled?

No. Something much less dramatic and far more familiar is happening: Bitcoin is going through the same thing Amazon.com, Google and others experienced after they went public. It's having an IPO moment.

It's just changing hands from the people who got rich to the people who want to.

When bitcoin stopped dancing with the Nasdaq

For years, bitcoin behaved like a tech stock that had downed a triple espresso. When the Nasdaq went up, bitcoin went up more. When big tech sold off, bitcoin fell off a cliff.

That pattern broke in late 2024. Since then, the Nasdaq has climbed, the S&P 500 is near its highs, gold has gone parabolic - classic risk-on behavior.

And bitcoin? It isn't collapsing. It just refuses to join the party.

When an asset is strong enough not to crash but too heavy to rally with everything else, that's usually not a macro problem. It's a shareholder problem. In stocks, this is what you see after an IPO when insiders are finally allowed to sell.

The 'silent IPO': Bitcoin's early holders are finally cashing out. Relax.

A company goes public. Big first day. Feel-good headlines. But the early investors can't sell right away. They're locked up for months. When that lockup ends, they don't dump it all on a Tuesday. They distribute slowly into strength.

For instance, Amazon (AMZN) IPO'd in 1997 at $18, hit $100 within three years, then consolidated for two years despite the internet exploding. Shares of Alphabet $(GOOGL)$ $(GOOG)$, then Google, went sideways for almost two years after the 2004 IPO. Meta Platforms (META), then Facebook, after its IPO in 2012? Same pattern when the lockups expired.

Here's what matters: that these shareholders sell because they finally can - not because they think the business is doomed. The stock trades sideways while that overhang clears, even as the company keeps growing.

Bitcoin, of course, never had a formal IPO, but the same economics apply. The "founders and VCs" here are the miners and early buyers who picked up bitcoin at $10, $100, $1,000 - and held on while the rest of us called them lunatics.

Now we have SEC-approved bitcoin exchange-traded funds, Wall Street desks, institutional custody, even sovereign funds lurking. For the first time in bitcoin's history, you can quietly move billions without knocking the price off the table.

And that's exactly what's happening. For example, Galaxy Digital recently disclosed moving $9 billion in bitcoin for a single client, one of the original holders methodically exiting. Blockchain data from Glassnode show coins that have been dormant since 2010-13 moving for the first time - not in panic but in "persistent, staggered distribution."

What we're seeing now is like a silent IPO: early, oversized holders distributing to a much broader base of buyers who came in through ETFs, brokerages and corporate treasuries.

Don't believe me? Look at Circle (CRCL) and CoreWeave (CRWV) - both IPO'd in 2025, both popped early, both consolidating now despite strong markets. Same pattern. Different asset class.

Scared money vs. rich people taking chips off the table

In 2022, people sold crypto because they were scared and broke. In 2025, people are selling because they're rich.

If you have a vague PTSD flashback to bitcoin's "crypto winter," let's be clear. In 2022, people sold crypto because they were scared and broke. In 2025, people are selling because they're rich. Those are not the same thing.

In 2022, major exchanges failed, frauds were exposed and people sold because they thought bitcoin might go to zero. There was no deep institutional bid. The price collapsed 70% and more because faith and liquidity evaporated.

This time, bitcoin ETFs are live and functioning. Advisers, pensions and family offices can push a button and buy. Network fundamentals are near all-time highs. The sellers are winners taking profits at prices of $90,000-plus, not losers puking at the bottom.

When do the crypto 'whales' stop selling?

In stock markets, these overhangs usually run six to 18 months after lockups end. Bitcoin's "lockup" effectively ended when it broke above $100,000 and ETFs proved they could absorb huge blocks without chaos. That was late last year. If you buy the analogy, we're probably eight to 10 months into the process.

Could bitcoin go lower? Of course. But if your time horizon is 20 years, the difference between buying at $100,000 and buying at $80,000 matters more to your cocktail-party stories than to your grandchildren's net worth.

Bitcoin isn't a trade. It's a time machine.

Bitcoin is not something you scalp between Fed meetings.

If you're trying to trade this, you're in the wrong sport. Bitcoin is not something you scalp between Fed meetings. It's something you buy in a size you can live with and plan to hold for 10 to 20 years.

You buy it as one tool in a portfolio where every asset does a different job. Income-producing assets pay you while you sleep. Equities with rapidly growing dividends outrun inflation. Cash is your optionality. Warren Buffett sits on a mountain of it so that, when this expensive market finally trips, he has dry powder.

Bitcoin is none of those.

In my portfolio, bitcoin is the moonshot sleeve. It doesn't pay income. It doesn't replace cash. It doesn't send you a dividend check.

What it does is give you exposure to the possibility that, 20 years from now, nonsovereign digital money is as normal as smartphones and that the original, hardest-to-kill version still commands a premium.

10% of your portfolio is still the number. Here's how to use it.

I've argued that up to 10% of your investable assets in bitcoin is reasonable if you understand what you're buying and can tolerate big drawdowns. I haven't changed that view because bitcoin is sluggish and social media has gotten gloomy.

Here's how I translate that into action: If you believe the long-term story and your allocation is well below your ceiling, dollar-cost averaging in this range is defensible. You're buying while the old guard hands you the keys.

If you're at zero, don't sprint to 10% tomorrow. Start with a toehold. Live with it for a few quarters. This is not "all in or bust." This is portfolio construction.

I'm buying more. Here's why.

Bitcoin is a terrible day trade and an excellent 20-year hold for a specific slice of your net worth.

For the record, yes, I bought more bitcoin. Not because I know where the bottom is - I don't - but because my time horizon is 20 years, not 20 days.

I've put small amounts of bitcoin into accounts for my three grandchildren, ages 6 months, 2 and 4. If bitcoin is worth a fraction of what I think it could be 20 years from now, they'll have a meaningful head start, a little slice of generational wealth created by an asset that their grandpa refused to trade like a meme stock. If I'm wrong, their lives won't be ruined. It's a sleeve, not the whole portfolio.

Bitcoin is a terrible day trade and an excellent 20-year hold for a specific slice of your net worth. It may drift lower as the early adopters finish their silent IPO. It may frustrate you before it rewards you. But if you believe bitcoin survives and matures, your job is not to guess the next $10,000 move.

Your job is to decide what role it plays, how much you can afford to put there and whether you're willing to hold it long enough for your grandchildren to decide whether you were a genius or an idiot.

My bet is they'll thank me.

Charlie Garcia is founder and a managing partner of R360, a peer-to-peer organization for individuals and families with a net worth of $100 million or more. He holds positions in bitcoin and gold.