Barry Silbert: Why Holding Bitcoin Beats Early Crypto Investments
Sometimes, doing nothing is actually the best strategy in crypto. Simply holding Bitcoin for the long term can deliver huge returns with relatively low risk. Barry Silbert, CEO of Digital Currency Group, learned this firsthand — he said he would have made much more money if he had just held onto the BTC he invested in during the early days of crypto projects, starting around 2012.
How to invest in cryptocurrencies the right way
On the April 17 airing of a podcast called Raoul Paul's Journey Man, Silbert revealed that he first learned about Bitcoin in 2011, buying coins at a rate of $7 to $8.
When the price of BTC rose, he started looking for early cryptocurrency companies to invest in.
”I was using Bitcoin to make a bunch of those investments, and you would think, if you invested in Coinbase you would have done really well. Had I just held the Bitcoin, I actually would have done better than making those investments.” he stated.
There are quite a few so-called Bitcoin maximalists on the cusp of popularity in the cryptosphere today, including Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor.
He and other experts are predicting a Bitcoin price in the millions of dollars over the next decade. For example, in the summer of 2024, Sailor voiced a legendary prediction with three scenarios for Bitcoin for 2045.
The entrepreneur believes that in the worst case BTC will be valued at 3 million dollars. The best case scenario would be an increase to 49 million dollars.
The head of the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI) think tank, Zack Shapiro, said the day before that the price of Bitcoin could well reach $1 million per coin if the U.S. government purchases at least a million BTC. Here's a comment on that.
If the U.S. announces the purchase of a million BTC, it would cause a real global seismic shock.
A government purchase of bitcoins is one possible scenario - especially after incumbent President Donald Trump won the election last year. He is actively promoting the idea of creating a national crypto reserve in the United States and has already signed an executive order to that effect. However, at least initially, this reserve will include only bitcoins already confiscated by the government without additional purchases.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin shows a relatively stable price movement, even despite macroeconomic instability. According to Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas, this trend is explained by the stability of holders of spot Bitcoin ETFs and the continuation of aggressive purchases by Strategy.
These ETFs and Saylor are buying up all the discarded coins on the market from victims of the FTX crash, GBTC holders, coin unlocks, confiscations and so on.
He emphasized that spot Bitcoin ETFs have raised $131.04 million in the last 30 days, and $2.4 billion since Jan. 1.
Balchunas called this an ”impressive result.” Especially considering the novelty of this instrument, which appeared in the U.S. in January 2024.
As a reminder, Michael Saylor's company made its latest round of BTC investments on April 14, purchasing 3,459 bitcoins worth $285.5 million at an average price of $82,618 per coin. Strategy owns 531,644 BTC at the time of publication.
According to sources, the BTC exchange rate has fluctuated between $75,000 and $88,000 over the past thirty days amid macroeconomic uncertainty. The latter is predominantly caused by tariffs from US President Donald Trump and uncertainty over the future interest rate in the US.
Crypto scams
Fraud, which is one of the main obstacles to the mass popularization of crypto, marked new trends this year. As it turned out, the number of so-called rag-poll schemes, when fraudsters sell project tokens and abscond with investors' money, decreased by 66 percent compared to 2024. However, the scale of each individual case has become much larger.
According to the report by analytics platform DappRadar, there were 21 major such incidents in early 2024, while only seven such incidents have occurred so far in 2025. Nevertheless, since the beginning of 2025, investors have lost nearly $6 billion due to the aforementioned schemes. 92 percent of this amount is related to the OM token crash from the Mantra project.
In comparison, during the same period in early 2024, the total losses from such schemes amounted to 90 million dollars. DappRadar analyst Sarah Sara Gherghelas commented on the results of the study.
This change indicates that these schemes are happening less frequently, but are becoming much more destructive. Fraudulent projects are proving increasingly sophisticated, often run by teams with professional branding and a preconceived narrative.
According to Sara Gherghelas, the nature of the rug pulls is evolving. In the first quarter of 2024, the majority of cases occurred in DeFi protocols, NFT projects and among mem-tokens. In the same period of 2025, it is memecoins that account for the largest number of such cases.
One of the most notable examples is the Libra token (LIBRA) on the Solana network. It reached a market capitalization of $4.56 billion on Feb. 14 after Argentine President Javier Milay published a Twitter post about it. As a result, the token fell more than 94 percent, triggering serious losses for investors.
Barry Silbert's example perfectly demonstrates that simply holding Bitcoin can be the most profitable strategy in the crypto world. Against the backdrop of an unstable economy and growing institutional interest, BTC continues to prove its viability - both as an asset and an idea.
Barry Silbert: Why Holding Bitcoin Beats Early Crypto Investments
Sometimes, doing nothing is actually the best strategy in crypto. Simply holding Bitcoin for the long term can deliver huge returns with relatively low risk. Barry Silbert, CEO of Digital Currency Group, learned this firsthand — he said he would have made much more money if he had just held onto the BTC he invested in during the early days of crypto projects, starting around 2012.
How to invest in cryptocurrencies the right way
On the April 17 airing of a podcast called Raoul Paul's Journey Man, Silbert revealed that he first learned about Bitcoin in 2011, buying coins at a rate of $7 to $8.
When the price of BTC rose, he started looking for early cryptocurrency companies to invest in.
”I was using Bitcoin to make a bunch of those investments, and you would think, if you invested in Coinbase you would have done really well. Had I just held the Bitcoin, I actually would have done better than making those investments.” he stated.
There are quite a few so-called Bitcoin maximalists on the cusp of popularity in the cryptosphere today, including Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor.
He and other experts are predicting a Bitcoin price in the millions of dollars over the next decade. For example, in the summer of 2024, Sailor voiced a legendary prediction with three scenarios for Bitcoin for 2045.
The entrepreneur believes that in the worst case BTC will be valued at 3 million dollars. The best case scenario would be an increase to 49 million dollars.
The head of the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI) think tank, Zack Shapiro, said the day before that the price of Bitcoin could well reach $1 million per coin if the U.S. government purchases at least a million BTC. Here's a comment on that.
If the U.S. announces the purchase of a million BTC, it would cause a real global seismic shock.
A government purchase of bitcoins is one possible scenario - especially after incumbent President Donald Trump won the election last year. He is actively promoting the idea of creating a national crypto reserve in the United States and has already signed an executive order to that effect. However, at least initially, this reserve will include only bitcoins already confiscated by the government without additional purchases.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin shows a relatively stable price movement, even despite macroeconomic instability. According to Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas, this trend is explained by the stability of holders of spot Bitcoin ETFs and the continuation of aggressive purchases by Strategy.
These ETFs and Saylor are buying up all the discarded coins on the market from victims of the FTX crash, GBTC holders, coin unlocks, confiscations and so on.
He emphasized that spot Bitcoin ETFs have raised $131.04 million in the last 30 days, and $2.4 billion since Jan. 1.
Balchunas called this an ”impressive result.” Especially considering the novelty of this instrument, which appeared in the U.S. in January 2024.
As a reminder, Michael Saylor's company made its latest round of BTC investments on April 14, purchasing 3,459 bitcoins worth $285.5 million at an average price of $82,618 per coin. Strategy owns 531,644 BTC at the time of publication.
According to sources, the BTC exchange rate has fluctuated between $75,000 and $88,000 over the past thirty days amid macroeconomic uncertainty. The latter is predominantly caused by tariffs from US President Donald Trump and uncertainty over the future interest rate in the US.
Crypto scams
Fraud, which is one of the main obstacles to the mass popularization of crypto, marked new trends this year. As it turned out, the number of so-called rag-poll schemes, when fraudsters sell project tokens and abscond with investors' money, decreased by 66 percent compared to 2024. However, the scale of each individual case has become much larger.
According to the report by analytics platform DappRadar, there were 21 major such incidents in early 2024, while only seven such incidents have occurred so far in 2025. Nevertheless, since the beginning of 2025, investors have lost nearly $6 billion due to the aforementioned schemes. 92 percent of this amount is related to the OM token crash from the Mantra project.
In comparison, during the same period in early 2024, the total losses from such schemes amounted to 90 million dollars. DappRadar analyst Sarah Sara Gherghelas commented on the results of the study.
This change indicates that these schemes are happening less frequently, but are becoming much more destructive. Fraudulent projects are proving increasingly sophisticated, often run by teams with professional branding and a preconceived narrative.
According to Sara Gherghelas, the nature of the rug pulls is evolving. In the first quarter of 2024, the majority of cases occurred in DeFi protocols, NFT projects and among mem-tokens. In the same period of 2025, it is memecoins that account for the largest number of such cases.
One of the most notable examples is the Libra token (LIBRA) on the Solana network. It reached a market capitalization of $4.56 billion on Feb. 14 after Argentine President Javier Milay published a Twitter post about it. As a result, the token fell more than 94 percent, triggering serious losses for investors.
Barry Silbert's example perfectly demonstrates that simply holding Bitcoin can be the most profitable strategy in the crypto world. Against the backdrop of an unstable economy and growing institutional interest, BTC continues to prove its viability - both as an asset and an idea.