The Great Derisking of Bitcoin

By Matt Hougan | CIO, Bitwise Asset Management
April 3, 2025

The first time I heard about bitcoin was in February 2011.

I was working at ETF.com at the time, managing a team of young financial analysts running the world’s first ETF data and analytics service. We had a weekly meeting where we talked about what was happening in the market. In February 2011, bitcoin first crossed $1, and one of my analysts called out this historic “dollar threshold.” He then led an amazing conversation about what bitcoin was, how it worked, and what it could become.

If I had invested $1,000 in bitcoin after that meeting, it would be worth $88 million today. Instead, I left the office and got a coffee.

I share this story because everyone—everyone—feels this way. We all wish we’d bought bitcoin sooner.

But the thing we forget in these stories is that there were huge risks to bitcoin at the time.

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