Why Stacking Bitcoin at All-Time Highs Still Makes Sense in 2025

Briefing Notes contain: (1) a summary of podcast content; (2) potential information gaps; and (3) some speculative views on wider implications for Bitcoin. Most summaries are for Bitcoin-centered YouTube episodes but I also do some on AI and technological advance that spill over to affect Bitcoin.

Summary

The November 22, 2025 episode of the Robin Seyr Podcast features Stephan Livera explaining why disciplined stacking around $85–95K can still be rational in a maturing market. Livera argues that deepening institutional participation, treasury companies, and emerging sovereign interest are reshaping Bitcoin’s drawdown profile and long-term price behavior away from simple four-year cycle thinking. The episode also examines governance conflicts over a Reduced Dust Transaction Set (RDTS), spam filtering, and node implementations, highlighting how protocol choices and verification tools will influence Bitcoin’s resilience as it monetizes.

Take-Home Messages

1. Stacking Through Volatility Still Matters: Livera argues that consistent accumulation, even near all-time highs, has historically rewarded patient holders once bull markets resume.
2. Treasury Companies Amplify Both Upside and Risk: The episode explains how firms using cheap equity and debt to buy Bitcoin can outperform spot, but warns that buying their shares at 5–8x MNAV leaves investors exposed when sentiment cools.
3. Self-Custody First, Structures Second: Livera insists that individuals and firms should build a self-custodied base position before adding ETFs or treasury equities as optional overlays.
4. From Four-Year Cycles to Power Law Adoption: He contends that Bitcoin’s price path increasingly follows a power law trend, with institutional and sovereign flows likely driving more moderate 50–60% drawdowns instead of historic 80% crashes.
5. Governance and Node Design Shape Future Resilience: Debates over RDTS, spam, and alternative implementations sit alongside efforts like consensus cleanup and validating clients, which Livera sees as crucial for preserving monetary functionality while broadening verification.

Overview

Stephan Livera opens by challenging the intuition that buying Bitcoin near all-time highs is reckless, arguing instead that disciplined stacking around $85–95K can be a rational response to structural monetization. He notes that while nominal prices feel intimidating, the relevant question is whether listeners believe Bitcoin will ultimately reach far higher valuations and serve as a core monetary asset. Against that backdrop, past cycles show that those who kept accumulating during drawdowns and periods of fear later benefited disproportionately when bull markets resumed.

The conversation then moves into the mechanics of treasury companies that use cheap fiat equity and debt to build large Bitcoin positions on their balance sheets. Livera explains that operators can combine equity issuance, convertible notes, and longer-term low-rate borrowing to acquire more Bitcoin than they could otherwise hold, potentially outpacing spot returns over time. He contrasts operational companies that generate cash flow for bear-market stacking with more “pure play” financial engineering models, emphasizing that both can work but carry different sensitivities to market conditions and capital markets access.

Livera is sharply critical of recent episodes in which investors paid 5–8x MNAV for treasury stocks during hype phases. He argues that while some premium over net asset value is justified for strong management and smart financing, those extremes made shareholders vulnerable when price momentum faded or Bitcoin traded sideways. For him, the lesson is that treasury equities should be treated as leveraged instruments that require sober risk management, not as simple proxies for spot Bitcoin exposure.

From there, the episode widens to changing market structure and sentiment. Livera notes that fear-and-greed readings and comment sections currently resemble the 2022 bear market, even though price now hovers around $95K rather than $16K, which he finds revealing about emotions and time horizons. He links this mood to a broader shift away from classic four-year halving narratives toward power law adoption, where institutional investors, ETFs, corporate treasuries, and eventual sovereign and central bank buyers dampen extremes while driving a steadier “grind up” trajectory.

Stakeholder Perspectives

1. Retail savers and DCA participants: Weigh whether continuing to stack at high nominal prices fits their time horizons and risk tolerance, given evolving drawdown profiles and power law adoption trends.
2. Corporate treasurers and Bitcoin treasury firms: Focus on structuring equity and debt, managing MNAV premiums, and maintaining shareholder trust while using Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset.
3. Institutional investors and ETF providers: Care about liquidity, governance clarity, and long-run adoption dynamics as they design products that route large pools of capital into Bitcoin exposure.
4. Developers and node implementers: Balance pressures to curb spam and manage block space against preserving monetary scripting capabilities, client diversity, and clear consensus rules.
5. Regulators and central banks: Monitor how treasury companies, ETFs, and potential sovereign accumulation interact with existing financial stability frameworks and reserve management practices.

Implications and Future Outlook

The episode implies that Bitcoin’s monetization is entering a phase where power law adoption and institutional flows increasingly dominate short-run cycle narratives. If drawdowns stabilize in the 50–60% range rather than collapsing toward 80%, risk models used by households, corporates, and funds will need updating to reflect a different balance between volatility and long-horizon reward. Decision-makers who continue to treat Bitcoin as a purely speculative asset may misjudge both its resilience and the potential consequences of under-allocating during consolidation phases.

Treasury companies emerge as both an opportunity and a vulnerability in this outlook. Well-run operators that secure long-term, low-interest financing and avoid abusive MNAV premiums could become important conduits between fiat balance sheets and Bitcoin reserves. Poorly governed firms, by contrast, may amplify downside shocks if they over-rely on short-term, high-cost debt or encourage retail investors to treat leveraged equity as a shortcut to Bitcoin exposure.

On the governance and infrastructure side, Livera’s comments highlight a fork in the road between narrow spam-focused changes and broader efforts to harden consensus while expanding verification options. If the ecosystem prioritizes consensus cleanup, robust alternative implementations, and validating clients that ordinary users can operate, Bitcoin’s decentralization could strengthen even as participation scales. Conversely, repeated conflicts over RDTS-style proposals risk fragmenting developer attention and distracting from merchant adoption, education, and risk-reducing protocol improvements.

Some Key Information Gaps

1. How can investors systematically assess when MNAV premiums on Bitcoin treasury companies are justified versus dangerously overextended? Better valuation heuristics are needed so that households and institutions can distinguish sustainable treasury plays from speculative excess.
2. How robust are power law models compared with alternative frameworks for guiding long-term Bitcoin price expectations and planning? Clarifying which models best capture adoption dynamics would help investors, firms, and policymakers design more realistic scenarios and stress tests.
3. What institutional and legal pathways most realistically enable nation-states and central banks to add Bitcoin to reserves at meaningful scale? Understanding these routes would inform both domestic reforms and international coordination on reserve composition and financial stability.
4. How can the Bitcoin community evaluate soft fork proposals like RDTS in ways that transparently weigh spam mitigation claims against losses in monetary scripting capability? Clear evaluation criteria would support more legitimate governance processes and reduce the risk of divisive protocol changes.
5. What combinations of full nodes, lightweight validating clients, and UTXO-proof-based wallets best balance decentralization with usability for non-expert users? Identifying workable architectures would guide standards for wallet and client design that preserve verification while accommodating everyday constraints.

Broader Implications for Bitcoin

Power Law Adoption and Monetary Benchmarking

If power law dynamics continue to describe Bitcoin’s trajectory, the asset is likely to evolve into a long-horizon monetary benchmark rather than a purely cyclical trade. Households, firms, and governments will increasingly anchor planning around a gradually appreciating base money, reshaping savings behavior and capital budgeting. Over several years, this could erode the intuitive appeal of short-term timing strategies and move more participants toward systematic accumulation and reserve allocation.

Institutionalization Without Re-Centralization

The rise of treasury companies, ETFs, and potential sovereign buyers raises the prospect of deep Bitcoin liquidity flowing through a limited set of large intermediaries. While these actors can stabilize markets and broaden access, they also risk reintroducing concentration, governance capture, and political pressure points that Bitcoin was designed to sidestep. Constructive policy and industry design will hinge on ensuring that these institutional channels complement, rather than replace, a robust base of self-custodied, self-verified holders.

Governance Norms as Systemic Infrastructure

Debates over RDTS, spam filtering, and consensus cleanup illustrate that Bitcoin’s governance norms function as a form of critical infrastructure in their own right. How the ecosystem handles disagreement over soft forks and implementation diversity will influence confidence not only among developers, but also among regulators, treasuries, and institutional allocators assessing long-term protocol risk. Over the next 3–5 years, credible, transparent decision-making processes may become as important to adoption as hash rate or liquidity metrics.

Verification Access and Digital Citizenship

Efforts to build alternative kernels, UTXO proofs, and validating clients point toward a future in which meaningful verification is accessible beyond technically sophisticated users. If successful, this shift would let more individuals and organizations participate directly in Bitcoin’s trust model, reinforcing its role as a neutral settlement layer rather than a black-box asset. In the medium term, broad verification capacity could become a component of digital citizenship, analogous to understanding basic financial literacy in prior monetary regimes.

Education, Sentiment, and Long-Term Commitment

Livera’s emphasis on podcasts, reading, and ongoing education underscores how information ecosystems shape conviction and behavior in high-volatility environments. As more jurisdictions and institutions grapple with Bitcoin, the quality of educational material will influence whether populations adopt durable savings and risk practices or simply chase narratives around tops and bottoms. Over time, well-designed educational efforts could reduce the frequency of panic-driven capitulation and help align public expectations with the slower, structural forces driving monetization.