money
The chart and the feeling
The numbers and the experience of living through them are almost never the same story.
For about five years I kept one price on a screen. Bitcoin, in dollars. I told myself I was studying volatility. Mostly I was feeling it.
What the numbers say
Here is the real series, the CoinDesk composite, rendered the way From Wu renders data: light, one accent, no red and green.
| month | close | return |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-05 | $76,660.47 | -5.86% |
| 2026-04 | $81,434.43 | +18.27% |
| 2026-03 | $68,852.96 | +2.37% |
| 2026-02 | $67,261.55 | +7.08% |
| 2026-01 | $62,811.67 | -32.98% |
| 2025-12 | $93,720.48 | +3.66% |
On paper that is a good outcome. Up about 85 percent over five years, a 13 percent compound rate, a Sharpe near 0.55. If you only ever saw the first number and the last number, you would call it a win and move on.
What it felt like
The drawdown is not a number. It shows up at 2am, as a question about whether you were a fool.
The same series fell 73 percent from its peak along the way. That is the part the summary hides. A 73 percent drawdown is not a statistic when you are inside it. It is a slow argument with yourself, every night, about whether to sell. The chart recovered. Plenty of people did not hold on long enough to find out, because the feeling was not on the chart.
A talk I keep returning to
The thread that reframed it
The thread continues. In our house style we re-typeset the rest rather than embed the whole chain, so it stays quiet and loads nothing extra:
Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep.
Keep the worksheet
PDF Decisions worksheet 2 KB
What I know now is that a chart is a record of what happened, not a record of what it cost to be there. Keep both. Size your bets to the feeling, not just the number.
Wu · Da Nang · May 2026
Scaffold sample: real market data via the CoinDesk MCP, a real YouTube embed and a real tweet, plus the PDF viewer. Replace with a real essay.