u/ChangeNOW_Community

2014: Ethereum holds its crowdsale at about $0.31 per ETH.

2015: Ethereum mainnet launches on July 30. ETH starts trading near $2 to $3.

2016: The DAO hack hits in June while ETH trades around $20.

2016: Ethereum hard forks in July. ETH trades near $12.

2017: ETH starts the year near $8 and ends the year above $700.

2018: ETH reaches about $1,400 in January, then falls below $100 by December.

2020: DeFi summer begins. ETH moves from around $130 in January to above $700 by year-end.

2021: NFTs, DeFi and EIP-1559 push ETH into the spotlight. ETH reaches an all-time high near $3,578 in November.

2022: The Merge arrives on September 15. ETH trades around $1,600 that week.

2023: Shanghai/Capella unlocks staking withdrawals in April. ETH trades near $1,900.

2024: U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs get approved in May. ETH trades around $3,700 to $3,900.

2024: Spot Ethereum ETFs begin trading in July. ETH trades around $3,400 to $3,500.

2025: Everyone argues whether Ethereum is undervalued, overbuilt or waiting for its next narrative. Price goes over $4,400.

2026: Maybe this is the year. Price drops to $1,733.

What's next? Maybe It wasn't about the price after all?

Maybe 2026 is the year.

2009: Bitcoin launches and almost nobody cares.

2010: 10,000 BTC buys two pizzas.

2011: Bitcoin hits $1, then gets called dead.

2013: BTC crosses $1,000, then crashes hard.

2014: Mt. Gox collapses and trust gets wrecked.

2017: Bitcoin hits nearly $20,000 and everyone becomes a chart analyst.

2018: The bear market humbles the whole room.

2020: Institutions arrive and Bitcoin starts sounding serious.

2021: BTC reaches new highs, then the laser eyes get tested.

2022: FTX falls and everyone relearns counterparty risk.

2023: Bitcoin survives another funeral cycle.

2024: Spot Bitcoin ETFs launch in the U.S. and the halving hits again.

2025: Pro Crypto Trump Elected President, people argue about the cycle like it’s ancient scripture.

2026: Maybe this is the year. What do you think?

There's just way to much dirt in my eyes from seeing these graphs with rainbow charts and parabolic talk.

At this point you start to wonder what social media infuence is becoming nowadays.

You have KOLs promoting what they get paid for, market makers spinning narratives and celebrities doing everything in their power to convince you that the token they invested is is going to the moon.

Honestly, when will people start ignoring this?

You see the Fear and Greed Index posted all the time.

When it says "extreme fear," pros consider it a time to buy, casuals write obituaries.

When it says "extreme greed," pros understand the top is near, casuals think it won't go higher.

Then the market does whatever it wants and everyone starts acting like they knew it all along.

We get why people look at it. It gives a simple number for market mood even though its infinitely more complicated but simple is nice in crypto, because half the time everything feels like panic, hype, or both.

But I’m curious how people here actually use it.

Do you check the Fear and Greed Index before making a trade, or only when someone posts it?

Have you ever bought because it showed extreme fear? How did that go?

Have you ever sold because it showed extreme greed, then watched prices keep going up?

Do you think it works better for Bitcoin than alts?

Is it useful at all, or is it just a fancy way to say "people are scared" or "people are getting greedy"?

What do you trust more: charts, volume, funding rates, on-chain data, news, gut feeling, or nothing because crypto is insane anyway?

So get this, Put $100k into STRC for yield, $50k into MSTR, hold at least 1 BTC, retire.

This guy makes this plan sound simple until the market does its usual thing.

Curious how people here actually handle this kind of advice:

Would you ever follow a "simple" crypto retirement plan from X, or only use it as a starting point?

Do you prefer BTC only, crypto stocks like MSTR, yield plays, alts, or a messy mix of everything?

What was the best financial advice you followed in crypto, and what was the worst?

Have you ever copied someone’s strategy and regretted it, or did it actually work out?

Following on on a great summary by Rypto.

Monero is one of the strangest success stories in crypto.

It has dealt with exchange delistings, regulatory pressure, limited mainstream promotion and years of being treated as the asset nobody wanted to touch publicly. Yet $XMR still has one of the clearest value propositions in the market: private digital cash that people can actually use.

That is the part you keep coming back to.

A lot of crypto demand is built around attention cycles. New listings, influencer pushes, VC rounds, airdrop farming, points systems, exchange campaigns, narrative rotations. Monero has had very little of that compared with most major assets. Its demand comes from users who understand the product and need the function.

That Product is Privacy.

Sounds simple, yet it is rare in crypto. Monero does one thing extremely well: it makes transactions private by default. Users do not need to opt into privacy features, route funds through extra tools or hope that the rest of the market treats financial privacy as acceptable this week. Monero made privacy the base layer.

Which in turn gives $XMR a durable reason to exist.

You use Monero because you want financial privacy, censorship resistance and peer-to-peer payments with less exposure. Some users care about personal security. Some care about business confidentiality. Some care about avoiding public wallet tracking. Some care about holding an asset that serves a purpose outside speculation.

This is also why delistings failed to kill it.

Delistings hurt liquidity and access. Regulatory pressure adds friction. Fewer major exchange listings limit casual retail exposure. Yet these hurdles can also filter demand. The people who still seek out Monero usually want the asset for a reason beyond a short-term chart setup.

Monero’s strength comes from product clarity and a community that has kept the network relevant for more than a decade. It has survived multiple cycles, multiple privacy crackdowns and repeated claims that privacy coins were finished. Each cycle makes the same point clearer: if people value private money, Monero stays relevant.

The current debate around $XMR feels bigger than price.

It asks whether crypto still cares about the original idea of usable peer-to-peer money. Bitcoin became a macro asset for many holders. Ethereum became infrastructure for apps and finance. Solana became a high-throughput consumer chain. Monero stayed focused on private payments.

There are fair concerns too. Privacy coins face regulatory scrutiny. Access can be harder. Liquidity can vary by venue. Users need to understand wallet practices, network rules and local laws. None of that removes the core reason demand exists.

Monero wins because it serves a need that never disappeared.

As more onchain activity becomes traceable, clustered and analyzed, the case for private digital cash becomes easier to understand. Monero has spent years building around that one idea while much of the market rotated from one trend to the next.

$XMR keeps proving that utility with conviction can survive a hostile market.

These guys are easy pickings for this sort of news. It sure sounds scary when there's a word loss and 9 zeros in the same sentence. But lets be real here.

Both Saylor and Lee are feeling the dip more than anyone. It sucks having 800k+ coins right? Wrong!

These positions are huge, so the headlines look huge too. That is the whole trick.

An unrealized loss means the market price is below the average buy price today. It also means the coins are still there. No sale, no locked-in loss, no final score.

Same goes the other way. When BTC or ETH runs up, nobody writes the headline with the same panic:

"Company sits on billions in unrealized gains."

Because that sounds less dramatic.

The part worth watching is simple: can the company hold through the cycle, manage debt, keep liquidity and avoid being forced to sell at the worst moment? Because if they do(Blackrock) that unrealized loss is, you guessed it - realized.

That is where corporate crypto bags differ from retail bags. Retail often gets shaken out because rent, leverage or panic enters the chat. Companies like Strategy and Bitmine have boards, financing options, public reporting and a very different time horizon.

Still, size does not make volatility painless for you and your friendly neighbourhood crypto guy. A billion-dollar paper loss can pressure sentiment, stock price and investor confidence.

So yes, the headline sounds brutal.

But "unrealized loss" is only one frame of the story.

The better question is whether they are forced sellers.

If they are not, then the scary number is just the market marking their position today. Tomorrow it can look better, worse or completely different.

That is crypto.

Big bags, big headlines, big overreactions.

Twitter is the only place that starts the week in a bull market and declares a bear market by Thursday.

Monday: "We are so back."

Tuesday: "Healthy pullback."

Wednesday: "This chart looks dangerous."

Thursday: “Cycle top confirmed. See you in 2028.”

The market may have moved 2%, yet the timeline has already processed denial, conviction, panic, macro analysis, liquidation screenshots and a full identity crisis.

Crypto has a strange way of compressing emotion. A small green candle turns everyone into a long-term visionary. A red candle turns the same people into risk managers, historians and recession analysts.

The funny part is how normal this feels after enough time in the market. Sentiment changes faster than price because people trade their expectations. One headline, one rejection candle, one whale wallet transfer and the whole mood resets.

This is why having a plan matters. Entry, exit, invalidation, position size and time horizon should exist before the timeline starts screaming. If the market needs Twitter to tell you what you believe, the trade was probably too emotional from the start.

Bull market on Monday. Bear market by Thursday. Same chart, different mood.

ChangeNOW has completed another scheduled $NOW token burn, removing 61,418 tokens worth around $20,532 from circulation as of 24th of June. The transaction is on-chain and publicly verifiable.

What makes this worth watching is the structure around it. The burn is part of a long-term token management strategy tied to ecosystem usage. $NOW already has several roles inside the product suite: cashback on exchanges through ChangeNOW and NOW Wallet, payment for ChangeNOW Pro subscriptions and staking with up to 6.25% annual yield with automatic compounding.

The idea is simple: utility and supply management work together. ChangeNOW is continuing with planned burn events while keeping $NOW tied to actual use inside the ecosystem.

Crypto confusion has a pattern.

A rushed swap. The wrong network. A missing memo. A token contract that looked familiar enough. A trade entered because the crowd sounded confident for one more candle.

Failed trades often come from process leaks. People check the price five times and the address once. They study the chart and skip liquidity. They buy with emotion, then look for a thesis after the loss.

The useful lesson is simple: every trade needs a checklist before it needs conviction.

Which network am I using? Is the contract verified? What fee am I accepting? What invalidates this trade? What happens if price drops 20% right after entry?

Crypto will stay volatile. A cleaner process makes mistakes smaller, decisions calmer and losses easier to study.

Reddit is split again.

BTC looks tired, ETH is getting dragged in public and altcoin bags are taking the usual emotional damage.

Still, this is also where better conversations start: risk, entries, conviction and which projects survive.

If your thesis only works on green candles, Reddit will find out first.