It’s 2024. Donald Trump just won the election again, Bitcoin hit a new all-time high, inflation is higher than a DeLorean’s flux capacitor, and everyone’s wondering, “What’s next?” As we all struggle with the wild pace of history, there is a flash in the sky, a crackle of lightning, and who should appear but Doc Brown himself. He jumps out of the DeLorean, wild-eyed and even wilder-haired, and says, “Forget the sports almanacs, Marty! We’re going back – not to 1985, but to 2009, before anyone knew what a Bitcoin even was!”
Yes, we would all love to jump in that time machine and go back to January 3, 2009 – the day Bitcoin’s genesis block was mined. Buy it cheap, stock up in our purses, and maybe even tuck a few under the couch cushions. But here’s the catch: Bitcoin doesn’t work that way. His greatest strength? “Everyone gets the prize they deserve.” No one gets a free ride, and Bitcoin has no rewind button – only a path forward.
Doc Brown was on to something when he said, “Roads? We don’t need roads where we’re going!” The path Bitcoin is following is not one of shortcuts or regrets. It’s a one-way ticket to the future, with a price tag that keeps moving forward. It doesn’t matter whether we wish we had started with $1 or $100 – it’s brutal, and that’s the point.
Today, people dwell on the current price, haunted by unitary biases and plagued by a ‘missed opportunity’ that only exists in retrospect. But Bitcoin’s value doesn’t lie in some magical price from the past; it lies in the present – in its steady march towards the future. And standing on the sidelines, waiting for an impossible dip or trying to catch the 2009 prizes, is like being Biff: always scheming, always missing the point.
If Marty has learned anything, it’s that you can’t just sit on the fence and hope everything works out. Biff, forever clueless and out of touch, is the perfect example of what happens when you miss the future and it’s staring you in the face. Imagine Biff in 2009: he would mock Bitcoin, laugh it off, and then regret every satoshi lost for decades. Don’t be a Biff. Don’t let hindsight or wishful thinking keep you from participating in the future.
We all wish we could have gotten our hands on Bitcoin for the price of a cup of coffee, but that opportunity for DeLorean is long gone. Doc Brown told us the same thing he told Marty: “The future is what you make it, so make it a good one.”
So the next time you look at the price of Bitcoin today and your heart is pounding like you’re about to hit 90 miles per hour, remember: there’s no going back to 2009. There’s only the next block, the next satoshi and the next step forward. Where Bitcoin is headed, we don’t need time travel – we just need the courage to act. And as Doc would say: when it comes to Bitcoin, where we’re headed, we don’t need any regrets.
This article is a To take. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.