“Too volatile to be a store of value”: the objection that is really about time

Of all the objections I hear at sessions and in conversations, this is the most understandable one: “Bitcoin swings far too much to be a store of value.” It is understandable because the observation is correct. Bitcoin has lost more than seventy per cent of its price several times, most recently in the drawdown from 2025 into 2026. Anyone who lived through that needs no lecture. And yet the objection contains a misunderstanding, and it is not about Bitcoin. It is about time.

Nothing becomes money overnight

The things we now treat as self-evidently stable went through their own finding phase. Gold took centuries to move from ornament to universally accepted store of value. And even that ancient, finished money turned wild once more when it had to be repriced after the dollar left gold in 1971: up 73 per cent in 1974, down 24 per cent the year after, up 121 per cent in 1979, down 33 per cent in 1981. Anyone judging gold by those years alone would have dismissed it as a gamble.

Bitcoin is seventeen years old. Expecting a new money to be understood, accepted and calmly priced by everyone after seventeen years is not a high bar, it is an impossible one. People need to get to know the properties of a thing before they trust it, and that cannot be shortened. The swings are not a sign that the monetisation is failing. They are what a monetisation in progress looks like: something growing from zero towards trillions simply cannot travel that path in a straight line.

Volatile, measured against what?

“Volatile” is always a statement relative to a reference currency. Seen from Switzerland, with the franc among the hardest currencies in the world, Bitcoin’s swings look enormous. Seen from many other countries, the same calculation looks different: the Turkish lira lost more than eighty per cent of its value in 2021 alone, the Argentine peso devalued through a year of roughly 276 per cent inflation in 2024, the Nigerian naira fell 43 per cent against the dollar in 2024. Those currencies do not swing. They move reliably in one direction, downwards. Bitcoin moves in both.

Many women in our international community know this not from charts but from family history. This is not a direct argument to buy anything, and please do not read it as one. It is a change of perspective: “stable” and “volatile” are not properties of a thing on its own, but of the pair being compared. Even the franc has lost a substantial part of its purchasing power over fifty years, just slowly and without headlines.

What the time horizon changes

A store of value does not need to be calm week to week. It needs to preserve purchasing power over years. Historically, Bitcoin’s record over multi-year holding periods has been positive almost every time. Almost, not always: whoever bought near the 2021 peak was still underwater in mid 2026, more than four years later, the longest stretch in Bitcoin’s history. Which is exactly why I say the same thing in every course: Bitcoin is not for money you will need in the next few years. Thinking short term simply means not committing that kind of money. And it means saving, not investing.

There is also something practical that makes the swings almost invisible in everyday life: a savings plan. Buying a fixed, comfortable amount at regular intervals means you automatically get more when the price is low and less when it is high. The entry point, the thing so many people agonise over, loses its power. You notice little of the drama because you are not trying to time it. “When do I get in?” turns into “how long do I stay with it?”, and that is a question you control yourself.

• Volatility belongs to the making of a store of value, it does not refute one
• As size and ownership have broadened, the swings have historically tended to shrink, though that is a tendency, not a guarantee
• Volatility is always measured in a reference currency, and many national currencies lose value more reliably than Bitcoin swings
• The time horizon decides: never commit money you need in the short term
• A savings plan takes the drama out of the entry point