Having entered the industry in 2017, I am celebrating my 9th Christmas with Bitcoin!

On Christmas 2025, staring at the market quote of $87,760, I suddenly remembered what it was like when I first saw Bitcoin in 2017—just before Christmas that year, it surged to $13,926. I had just entered the scene as a community operator, and the office was filled with the frenzy of "hundredfold coins." No one expected it to drop over 70% the following year.

These nine years have been like a roller coaster. On Christmas 2020, at $23,736, everyone treated it as a safe haven during the pandemic; in 2021, when it surged to $50,822, some mortgaged their homes to buy more, while others completely exited during the bear market at $16,822 in 2022. Compared to the high of $94,120 on Christmas 2024, the recent dip to just over $6,000 isn’t much—after witnessing the despair of falling from $19,000 to $3,000, I understand how rare and precious stability is now.

Old friends on the X platform are sharing screenshots again: someone bought in over $10,000 in 2017 and now it’s multiplied eight times; others, like me, held through the 2022 bear market with dollar-cost averaging, and survived the rebound to $43,665 in 2023. Now, institutions are the main players, with BlackRock ETF holdings exceeding 800,000 coins. The era of retail investors is long gone, but the ritual of reviewing prices at Christmas remains—the tacit understanding among us old players to remember our original intention amid the ups and downs.

Though there are small waves of ETF fund outflows and old players cashing out in 2025, institutional holdings now account for 24%, and the narrative of “digital gold” remains intact. Watching the market stabilize and fluctuate gently, I suddenly realize that Bitcoin’s Christmas isn’t about who rises the fastest, but about who lasts the longest.

The clock of 2026 is about to strike. As someone who has been in the industry for 9 years, I believe that in this new cycle, it will carry our perseverance forward, becoming more stable and going further.