A couple weekends ago I was driving along the mountainous backroads of Virginia with my family. My brother and I were in the front while our wives were in the back and eventually our conversation turned to the trip we took to Colorado a year or two prior. While we didn't ride together on that trip, my brother in law and I did both drive out to Colorado and we both noticed many of the same things on the trip.
The majority of the drive was a stark contrast to the tight winding roads we were driving in Virginia. I've mentioned this before, but the funny thing is, when you go out West towards the Rocky Mountains, you expect these dramatic elevation changes. It's something that is just ingrained in you I think,
West = Mountains.
While that is technically true, you really don't get to the mountainous area until you are about fifteen minutes outside of Denver, Colorado. From there on things get pretty exciting. For the majority of the trip though, it's just a slow, uneventful, gradual climb to that mile high mark.
I was thinking about it the other day and as we approach that downward slope of 2025, I can't help but think this year has been quite similar to the drive out west as far as the crypto markets go. I think many of us were expecting fireworks this year just like you expect "mountains" when you think Colorado. What you don't realize is that the first half of Colorado is pretty unimpressive.
As such, the majority of 2025 has been relatively unimpressive. Sure, we got the new ATH thrown in there somewhere, but I don't think any of this played out the way most of us were thinking or hoping. Even with operation chokehold 1.0 and 2.0 squarely in the rear view we still are struggling to reach those peaks we had hoped to see.
Despite all of that, people are still building and I think that is pretty awesome, because heaven knows I probably would have given up a long time ago if I were in their shoes.
The Pub
The new community that was born out of the ashes of BRO/The Mancave is growing really well. We have a number of channels in the Discord server now with different people highlighting their projects. We also have a vibrant community with lively and entertaining conversation. Additionally, The Pub on HIVE is getting a decent number of posts each day and hopefully that will continue to grow.
My hope is that eventually some of the bigger curation groups will start paying attention to our community and give it some love.
COTI
It's a fact that the prices of most alts are down across the board. With HIVE under $.09, ETH heading towards $2000, and BTC looking like it wants to fall below $80K, there isn't a lot to be happy about. The price of COTI is no exception, but the project still continues to develop and grow. They just announced this week that they have now opened a USDC/COTI pair on Binance. I think that is pretty awesome.
It might not be the thing we need to turn the markets around, but I have a soft spot for projects that continue to grow and develop even when the world makes us feel like this is all going to crap.
Silver
Well, I screwed up. I made that buy a week or two ago of silver from APMEX and I was hoping for it to be here by now. The only problem is, one of the pieces (the Coca-cola one) was a pre-order or backordered, so they weren't going to ship any of my stuff unless they could ship all of my stuff. I reached out to them and being the stand up company they are, they agreed to cancel the Coca-cola piece, refund me the money, and ship the other stuff out right away.
The only problem is, that left me one piece short for my Christmas gifts. So I did what any good degen would do and I went back on APMEX and bought two more pieces. The only problem was, the spot price of silver was now about $1.50 higher than it was before, and since I didn't hit that $200 threshold, I had to pay shipping on the other two pieces.
Ugh!
At least my Christmas shopping is done now...
Black Friday
This time next week, we will be on the cusp of Black Friday shopping. In fact, by now there is a chance that many folks in the US will have already been out and gotten their shopping done and are back in bed at 7:30 AM.
Not me. I've never really jumped on the Black Friday bandwagon. I don't like buying stuff I don't need simply because it is a good deal. I went down that path in my past life and it doesn't lead anywhere good. It doesn't bring as much joy as you might think either.
Even my favorite stocks are getting hammered right now. At this point, I can only hope that maybe 2026 will bring those mountains that we have so desperately been longing to see.
My Sports Account - @bozz.sports
Come hang out in The Pub
Or Check out my Grilling and Smoking Community on HIVE
All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or 