Hello Reader,

All,

In my last newsletter, I wrote about why Bitcoin bear markets are often where conviction is built.

For those who purchased bitcoin at or near its recent highs, I know that idea may not feel especially comforting right now. Watching the dollar value of an investment decline is painful, and it is completely understandable to wonder whether the original decision was a mistake.

I do not want to dismiss that concern or pretend that volatility is easy.

But I do want to encourage us to separate two very different questions:

What is bitcoin’s price today?

And:

What is Bitcoin actually worth as a monetary system?

Price is what the market is willing to pay at a particular moment. Value is what the network can do and price will eventually follow.

Every ten minutes or so, the Bitcoin TimeChain produces another block and settles transactions for people around the world. It does this continuously, without closing for evenings, weekends, or holidays.

It allows value to move directly from one person to another without requiring permission from a bank, credit card company, government, or other intermediary.

That matters.

Consider the enormous value the market assigns to payment networks such as Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. Their primary function is to help people and businesses move money, while collecting fees and retaining the ability to reverse, restrict, or deny transactions.

Bitcoin provides a fundamentally different settlement system.

It is global.

It operates continuously.

It is open to anyone.

It has no central gatekeeper.

It allows final settlement across borders without relying on a network of correspondent banks.

And unlike every fiat currency, its supply cannot be expanded beyond 21 million bitcoin.

None of those properties disappeared when the price declined.

The network did not stop operating.

The supply cap did not change.

Blocks did not stop being mined.

People did not lose the ability to send value globally without permission.

In fact, the contrast between Bitcoin and our existing financial system may be becoming clearer.

Our current system is built on debt expansion, monetary dilution, and an assumption that prices must rise over time. Yet human innovation naturally pushes in the opposite direction.

Dentistry is a good example.

Technology has made imaging faster, treatment more predictable, materials better, communication easier, and many procedures more efficient. Across the broader economy, innovation should allow us to create more value with less time, labor, and energy.

In a healthy monetary system, those productivity gains should gradually make goods and services more affordable.

Instead, the purchasing power of our money continually declines.

That loss of purchasing power is not merely an economic abstraction. It represents the erosion of the time and effort we exchanged to earn that money in the first place.

Bitcoin offers an alternative.

It gives ordinary people the ability to save in an asset that cannot be diluted by a board, central bank, legislature, or executive order. It also gives people the ability to move and hold value outside of traditional financial gatekeepers.

That does not mean bitcoin’s price in dollars cannot fall further in the near term. It can. However, zoom out ant you will see that the dollar price over any 4 year period is dramatically up and to the right.

It does not mean every purchase was perfectly timed. Very few investments are.

And it certainly does not mean anyone should ignore their personal liquidity needs, risk tolerance, or financial circumstances.

But a lower market price does not, by itself, prove that Bitcoin’s underlying value proposition has failed.

That is why I believe bear markets are so important.

Bull markets make it easy to focus on price.

Bear markets force us to ask deeper questions.

What problem does Bitcoin solve?

Why does a fixed monetary supply matter?

What is permissionless settlement worth?

What is censorship resistance worth?

What is the ability to hold and transport wealth without relying on a third party worth?

Those questions are much more important than whether the market is optimistic or pessimistic this week.

My hope is not that anyone blindly holds, buys, or sells based on something I write. My hope is that you continue learning before making an emotional decision.

Revisit the original thesis.

Study how the network works.

Understand what makes Bitcoin different from every other digital asset.

Then decide for yourself whether the value proposition has changed.

As always, I welcome your feedback, especially if you are skeptical, discouraged, or still trying to make sense of the current market.

Those are exactly the conversations the Bitcoin Dental Network was created to encourage.

For more curated Bitcoin education, visit:

​https://thebitcoindentalnetwork.com​

To your Financial Freedom,

Mark R. Link, D.D.S.