Happy Friday Bitcoiners!
My timeline this week was full of people convinced we're entering a multi-year Bitcoin bear market. Why? All because Bitcoin dropped below the $100k mark…
Let me get this straight: Bitcoin is up 300x over the past decade, hit $124k less than a month ago, and now at $99k people are calling the cycle top?
This is what happens when you don't have a system for learning from your past mistakes, you lose perspective.
Enter Black Box Thinking - aviation's method for turning disasters into lessons.
But here's the twist: black boxes aren't actually black (they’re bright orange, just like Bitcoin!).
This week we're diving into👇
What “Black Box” thinking is (and why the box is actually orange)
How Bitcoin learns from failure (and crypto doesn't)
Three habits to build your own personal “Orange Box”
Let's jump into it⚡
"Removing failure from innovation is like removing oxygen from a fire”
1️⃣ Black Box Thinking: When Failure Becomes Your Teacher
In 1977, two Boeing 747s collided in Tenerife, killing 583 people. The industry analyzed the black box recording and redesigned cockpit protocols worldwide.
Today, commercial aviation has one accident per 2.4 million flights. Every crash gets recorded, analyzed, and turned into a lesson. Failure is viewed as data, not shame.
The logical thought would then be… if black boxes are indestructible, why not make the whole plane out of that material? Because that misses the point. The box isn't there to prevent the crash - it's there to learn from it.
And the perfect detail: black boxes aren't black. They're actually bright orange for visibility 😂. When a plane goes down, searchers need to find it fast and the bright orange color means it won't stay hidden.
Black Box Flight Recorders (Source: Getty Images)
Most industries don't work this way though. Healthcare, for example, kills the equivalent of two jumbo jets daily from preventable errors. The difference? Aviation documents everything and learns. Healthcare hides and repeats.
So, the obvious question → “Do you have a black box for your Bitcoin decisions?”
2️⃣ Orange Box Thinking: Bitcoin's Approach to Failure
If Black Box Thinking is learning from aviation failures, Orange Box Thinking is learning from Bitcoin failures. That bright orange color? It's Bitcoin's reminder that mistakes should be visible, not hidden.
Bitcoin operates as the ultimate Orange Box system. The blockchain is a public ledger of every transaction, bug, and upgrade debate. Nothing gets hidden.
Bitcoin's Systemic Orange Box
Mt. Gox collapsed in 2014, losing 850,000 Bitcoin. The community's response? Build better custody models - hardware wallets, multi-sig, cold storage. The failure became today's security foundation.
The block size wars could have destroyed Bitcoin. Instead, that "failure" to scale, quickly became Bitcoin's greatest feature - slow, deliberate change requiring overwhelming consensus.
Compare that to crypto. Richard Heart launched Hex, promising exponential returns. The token collapsed. What was his response? Well, to launch PulseChain of course - same playbook, different name.
This week, a PulseChain investor posted on X, showing a snapshot of him swapping $5,000 into $PLS (Pulsechain’s native token). His comment read "I might be right or I might be retarded. I'm fine with both”.
That's refusing to open the box. He can't tell genius from stupidity - and desperately proceeds anyway. That's building another straw airplane.
The Lending Delusion
We could also take Bitcoin lending as a case study. Celsius, BlockFi, Voyager - all collapsed, taking their client’s Bitcoin with them.
The lesson was clear: not your keys, not your coins.
Yet Zone21.com tracks as many as 16 different Bitcoin lending platforms currently available. Ironically, only one gets a "safe" rating. That means 15 platforms are offering to custody your Bitcoin with questionable safety - and people are still depositing!
Only 1 out of the 16 total lending platforms ranked as “Low” risk score
The Orange Box lesson from 2022 was brutal and expensive. But without documenting that pain, people treat each new lending platform as a fresh opportunity rather than the same old failure with a new logo.
Terra Luna, FTX, countless VC tokens - all imploded without documenting what went wrong. No black box. Just fresh pitch decks for the next scam.
Your Personal Orange Box
Bitcoin's Orange Box is public - every failure on-chain, every lesson shared. You need a private Orange Box documenting your own mistakes, extracting lessons before the market charges tuition again.
Bitcoin learns from failure and gets stronger. Crypto hides from failure and repeats it. So which system are you running in your head?
3️⃣ Building Your Personal Orange Box: Three Habits
Your personal Orange Box needs discipline. Here are three specific habits.
Habit #1: Time Travel to Bear Markets
Two years ago, Bitcoin was $20-30k. No BlackRock ETF. No sovereign reserves. People thought Bitcoin could go to zero.
Today? Bitcoin at ~$100k with institutional adoption. And people panic because it's not consistently putting in all-time high’s of $125k+.
Set a quarterly reminder. Read your old bear market tweets. Remember how scared you were. Remember how Bitcoin's death seemed to be the consensus view? Then look at the chart.
Your fear was a lagging indicator, not a leading one.
Habit #2: Price Everything in Bitcoin Terms
I once rode a shitcoin (ticker $PRQ) all the way from $0.22 to $0.10. That's more than a 50% loss in dollar terms. But if I'd bought Bitcoin, I'd be up 2x over the same time period.
I personally lost a 4x difference and it haunts me to this day.
So keep a spreadsheet for yourself of your losses like I do. Make sure to update it annually in a spreadsheet and watch the opportunity cost grow over time.
Next time you chase an altcoin, hopefully you'll remember what it costs (I sure as hell do).
Habit #3: Calculate Your ‘Anti-Portfolio’
Over a decade, almost nothing has beat Bitcoin’s returns (except NVIDIA if you were lucky enough to catch it at the lows). Everything else was opportunity cost.
Calculate your losses from not being 100% Bitcoin. What did you allocate elsewhere? What would that be worth in Bitcoin today?
Write it down. When someone pitches "diversification," you'll have numbers showing what it cost.
Key Takeaway
Black boxes are orange for visibility. When a plane crashes, that box needs to be found fast. Your Orange Box for Bitcoin works the same way - mistakes visible to yourself, ready to teach.
I shared my PRQ disaster because hiding it would rob me of the lesson. That 4x difference in Bitcoin terms is data in my Orange Box now.
The real tragedy isn't making mistakes. It's repeating them because you're too proud to document them. Every cycle, people chase leverage and altcoins. Then they get crushed. Then they blame manipulation.
Your Orange Box needs three things: Time travel to bear markets. Price everything in Bitcoin terms. Calculate your anti-portfolio. These turn failures into sats.
The aviation industry bought its safety record with blood (brutal, but true). You can buy your Bitcoin education cheaper - just open your own Orange Box.
Stay teachable,
@Publius256
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