Mandelbrot
I first noticed crypto the way most people do. Prices were moving. Headlines were getting louder. Everyone seemed to have an opinion.
This was 2021. Bitcoin was climbing fast. I watched. I stayed out. I told myself I was being disciplined. Skeptical. Rational.
Then, sometime in 2022, as prices pushed toward what was then the all-time high around $60,000, something shifted. The hesitation that had felt like prudence began to feel like paralysis. The conversation had changed too. It wasn’t just speculation anymore. It was inevitability. Institutional adoption. A new financial order.
I bought in. Over $50,000.
It didn’t take long for the story to unravel. Prices fell. Then kept falling. I sat on the losses, repeating the mantras that circulate in these moments. Long-term conviction. Diamond hands. Ignore the noise.
But conviction built on narrative is fragile.
Six to twelve months into the crypto winter, something else took over. Not fear, but a more respectable-sounding idea: opportunity cost. Capital tied up in a losing position felt wasteful. The broader sentiment was relentlessly negative. The story had flipped completely.
So, I sold.
That decision felt analytical at the time. Clean. Disciplined. In hindsight, it was just the mirror image of the earlier one. I exited not because fundamentals had changed in a way I could clearly articulate, but because the narrative had become unbearable.
Then the cycle repeated.
Prices started rising again. Slowly at first. Then decisively. Once Bitcoin crossed $100,000, the tone shifted again. This time it wasn’t about survival. It was about missing out on the next leg. The doubts returned, followed by familiarity.
I bought again.
Different entry. Same mistake.
What bothers me about this sequence isn’t the losses or the timing. It’s the realization that at no point was I really acting on independent judgment. I was oscillating between skepticism and conformity, never quite owning either.
I wasn’t early because I understood something others didn’t. I wasn’t patient because I had a clear thesis. I was late both times, pulled in and pushed out by shifts in collective confidence.
That pattern forced an uncomfortable question.
If someone trained in finance, accounting, and investment analysis can still be swept along by narrative momentum, what does independent thinking actually require?
And why is it so hard to maintain precisely when it matters most?
Signal → Frenzy → Justification
Once I saw the pattern in my own behavior, it became hard to ignore elsewhere.
What I experienced in crypto wasn’t unique. It was a compressed version of something that plays out repeatedly in markets, organizations, and careers. A cycle that looks different on the surface but follows the same underlying structure.
It usually starts with a signal.
Something real appears. A technological shift. A regulatory change. A new business model. At this stage, the facts are incomplete and the implications uncertain. The people closest to it speak cautiously. There is curiosity, but also disagreement.
Then comes the frenzy.
Prices move faster than understanding. Stories become cleaner as reality remains messy. Participation itself becomes evidence. Being “in” starts to signal intelligence, relevance, or foresight. Skepticism, once healthy, begins to feel like denial.
This is the phase where I hesitated. Where many of us hesitate. Not because we lack intelligence, but because we sense that something real is happening without being able to anchor it properly.
Eventually, the discomfort of standing apart outweighs the discomfort of not fully understanding.
That’s when justification enters.
We tell ourselves that we have done the work. That the thesis is clear. That this time is different. The language sounds analytical, but the decision has already been made. The analysis arrives after the commitment, not before it.
This is where borrowed conviction takes hold.
Borrowed Conviction
Borrowed conviction feels like confidence, but it isn’t rooted in understanding. It is conviction outsourced to consensus. You believe not because you can explain the economics cleanly, but because enough credible people seem to agree.
It’s a fragile kind of belief. It holds as long as the crowd holds. When sentiment shifts, it collapses quickly, often dressed up as prudence or discipline.
That was true when I bought near the highs. It was true when I sold into the depths of pessimism. And it was true when I re-entered once confidence returned.
The story changed. My behavior followed.
What makes this unsettling is how familiar the pattern feels beyond personal investing.
The Parallels
Corporates are not immune to this dynamic. In fact, they may be more exposed to it.
Today, companies are expected to have an AI story. Not always because AI is central to value creation, but because investors, analysts, and boards expect to hear one. Absence raises questions. Presence reassures.
So narratives form.
Pilot initiatives are elevated into strategy. Efficiency gains are framed as transformation. Language runs ahead of cash flows.
This doesn’t require deception. It only requires incentives.
Markets often reward coherence before they reward truth. Management teams respond accordingly. The result is a subtle drift where reporting, guidance, and strategy begin to optimize for narrative momentum rather than economic substance.
Accounting sits uncomfortably in the middle of this. Between what is technically defensible and what is economically real. Between telling a story that satisfies the moment and presenting numbers that reflect underlying performance, even when that performance is uneven or incomplete.
The pressure to conform is not abstract. It is professional. Reputational. Career-defining.
Which brings the question back to judgment.
Judgment vs Momentum
Independent thinking is not about being contrarian. It is not about avoiding every trend or sitting permanently on the sidelines. Some innovations matter. Some shifts are real.
The harder discipline is resisting momentum until understanding catches up.
That means accepting the cost of being early or late. It means tolerating periods of looking wrong. It means separating signal from noise when noise is loudest.
Momentum is seductive because it feels like clarity. Judgment is harder because it requires friction.
But judgment compounds. Momentum doesn’t.
In the end, what failed me in crypto was not intelligence or information. It was the willingness to hold a view that was fully my own through uncertainty and social pressure.
Knowledge, I’ve learned, doesn’t make you immune to frenzy.
It gives you a chance to notice when you’re no longer thinking for yourself.
In a world optimized for movement, that pause is expensive.
It may also be the only thing worth protecting.