During this round of Bitcoin's surge, many people watched it approach 120,000, again reaching an ATH, and more people did feel like "maybe I should buy a little," but ultimately did not take action.
You check coin prices in a bull market, complain in a bear market, and recklessly gamble in a monkey market.
When it rises, you claim you had a premonition; when it falls, you blame the market makers for cutting the leeks; when it ranges, you start doubting life.
As a result, you missed the most straightforward trend every time.
This is how we are quietly losing sovereignty.
Many people think they have no sovereignty because they have no assets in their wallets.
But true sovereignty is lost when decision-making power is lost.
It's not that you don't have an account or channels, but you don't take it seriously. You complain that it rises too slowly, not stimulating enough; you are more accustomed to trading altcoins, chasing rewards, and watching contracts double.
In fact, you have also seen Bitcoin hovering at low prices and have heard many stories of "buy early for freedom." But as hotspots come one after another, your attention can't stop to seriously think about the long-term significance of this asset. You have chased various narratives: AI, RWA, meme... but Bitcoin has never truly been held.
Thus, when it rises, you are not in, and when it falls, you are still there.
The only thing absent is freedom.
You don't own Bitcoin. What you have is the anxiety, bitterness, and self-comfort of "I almost got in" after missing out.
You think you are in Web3, but in reality, you are just being led by its excitement, repeatedly stepping into the market, and repeatedly being washed out.
You think you are decentralized, but in fact, you have just switched platforms and continue to be controlled.
When Bitcoin rises, the whole network starts to shout, "Decentralization has won."
But when you look back, when was the last time you made a transaction on the chain? Recently, there has been a trend of casually browsing viral videos of karaoke in villas, checking if the yoga pants of the ladies fit well.
You have never truly experienced on-chain freedom. You are just standing outside the platform, watching others have fun.
You feel secure only when the platform rises; when the platform crashes, you are the first to be cut.
The coins you have on some CEX, you haven't seen the private keys even once; they periodically show asset proof, and you will also question it.
You think you have escaped the bank, but in reality, you have just switched to a new center.
This center is neither Chase nor BofA, but CEX, Tether, and a bunch of APIs and invisible capital flows that you do not understand.
You shout for Web3, but you are still applying Web2 methods: copying homework, chasing trends, gambling on luck.
You care about whether a certain macro track is popular, rather than whether its underlying structure is fair.
You want freedom, but you have never truly begun to understand what freedom is.
You think the coins are yours, but in fact, you have only experienced a "rise and fall experience."
You say, "I control my coins," but when the moment of rise and fall comes, what can you really control? When pressured by project parties, will you break the pot with the community?
When the coin rises, you can't hold it; when it falls, you can't sleep. It rises a hundred times, and you are still watching; it drops by half, and you immediately cut your losses.
You have neither participated in building nor set the rules, nor have you enjoyed the so-called dividends of "sovereignty."
You have merely experienced a roller coaster ride—neither the car nor the direction is yours, and even when you earn money, you hesitate to cash out.
You focus on K-lines and coin prices but overlook more changes behind the scenes: redistribution of computing power, concentration of governance structures, and interest reshuffling under protocol adjustments. To you, it is just a digital asset, not a systemic sovereignty choice.
What Bitcoin truly offers is not just price appreciation, but a kind of structural freedom.
The premise of freedom is not hoarding coins, but choice.
Whether you can freely choose the trading method, asset custody method, information sources, and collaborative objects, this is the underlying structure of sovereignty.
True holders often do not care whether it is fifty thousand or one hundred thousand in the short term. What they care about is whether it can support a lifestyle that does not depend on platforms, is not subject to arbitrary freezes, and can be freely migrated and preserved. Do you have that?
In fact, what you missed is not the market but something that originally belonged to you: sovereignty.
True sovereignty is "holding rights" + "cognitive rights" + "strategy rights."
True sovereignty is not about shouting slogans or setting flags under K-lines; it is about starting before everyone else has begun and knowing what you want when everyone else wavers.
True "holding rights" mean whether you have private keys, cold wallets, preparations for cross-cycle holdings, and contingency plans for emergencies. Most people do not truly "own"; they entrust their coins to exchanges, viewing their balance through an interface, mistakenly believing that this is safe wealth.
"Cognitive rights" is not just about shouting a few terms or sharing long articles; it's about whether you can understand the underlying mechanism design of a project, and whether you can judge if a technological upgrade is a restructuring of interests or a pseudo-innovation. More importantly, can you avoid being led by KOLs, not only researching during a bull market, and can you continue to ask questions beyond the "hot searches", rather than being led around?
And "strategy rights" are often the most easily overlooked. When to enter the market, how to allocate, and how long to hold, these decisions are mostly made by the market, not by you.
Without these three rights, your "sovereignty" is just an empty shell.
It's not that you don't know the value of Bitcoin, but even after knowing, you didn't choose to believe, didn't establish a method, and didn't take sustained action. You only placed it in "cognition", without dropping it into "choice."
Sovereignty is not a symbol but a responsibility. Can you take full responsibility for your assets and judgments?
Can retail investors regain sovereignty? Yes, but it's not easy.
Because what you need to do is not just to correctly predict the market and choose the right coins, but to gradually regain initiative in the daily battle for attention.
When Bitcoin just rose 10%, you felt it was "too slow"; when it fell 10%, you started to feel anxious. It's not that you can't hold, but you are too easily disturbed. Today it's a hot post, tomorrow it's a viral product, and there are new stories every day pulling you away.
In your leisure time, you still have to watch some viral videos of karaoke in villas, checking whether the yoga pants of the ladies fit well.
True sovereignty starts with returning from "what others say" to "what I want to do."
You need to learn to filter out the noise, look at the real transactions on the chain, read the details of the protocols, and establish your own judgment model. Not everyone has to become a researcher, but everyone can choose to be a long-term thinker.
The second step is to retreat from "opportunism" back to "abilityism."
Stop waiting for some genius to give you a chance to multiply your investment; instead, build your own judgment system: information sources, logical chains, action plans. Not everyone needs to be a researcher, but everyone should have their own belief structure.
You don't need to win every time, but you should have your own methods; you don't have to see further than others, but you should see more clearly than yesterday.
Sovereignty is not a posture of victory but a way of understanding life.
You think the end of a bull market is financial freedom, but for the vast majority, the end of a bull market is a repeated relinquishing of sovereignty, a series of compromises, and ongoing self-doubt.
But you don't need to go all-in from now on; you just need to, even if it's just a little time each day for yourself, turn off X, put away recommendation flows, stop chasing trends, and stop looking for the next ticket to freedom.
Stay still and reflect inward.
You will find that you are also strong; you can smile and appreciate the flowers, but you have long missed the feeling of having choices.
This is the starting point of sovereignty.