Crypto: The Hunt for the "God Candle"!

Between 2012 and 2025, crypto lived through one of those moments that are hard to forget. With the benefit of hindsight, investing in Bitcoin and Altcoins would have been an excellent move—one of those choices that would have brought millions of euros/dollars into your bank account. I’m not joking: looking back, many, perhaps almost all cryptos on the market, saw growth of a thousand percent, and even more in certain cases. A practical example: Bitcoin went from being worth a few cents in 2009 to 120,000 euros in 2025. You do the math. No other asset IN THE WORLD has had speculative growth as rapid and massive as the entire crypto market. So yes, those who invested years ago in this crazy world are now rich, or at least find themselves with at least five zeros in their account... provided they were able to get out and keep their greed in check.

And now? In 2026, does the concept of crypto still have relevance? Is there still room to make gains? Before 2025, I would have said "Yes, but not much." Then 2025 arrived, and I would say "Yes, a lot, but under certain conditions!"

Just to be clear: I am not a financial advisor and this article is not an invitation to empty your bank account. I am only sharing my reflections on the crypto world. Remember that crypto is a bit like a roller coaster: fun, but decidedly volatile. Before making any move, use your head and do your own research!

Now, we can begin.

The Upsides

A Microscopic Market

If you look at the capitalization of the crypto sector, you read a huge number: three trillion dollars. A figure comparable to the GDP of large nations. One might think: 'Wow, to move a market like that by 1%, you’d need 30 billion real dollars! How is it possible for Bitcoin to grow as it did in the past?' It’s a legitimate line of reasoning that would seem to make investing in crypto something slow and non-remunerative compared to the past.

2025, to everyone's great surprise, was the year that gave us proof that if the market wants to, it can move immense sums of money and blow up assets that seemed impossible to explode. I’m talking about the speculative bubble that hit gold, but all metals in general. In the fourth quarter of 2025, gold grew by 60% in a few weeks, and the same happened with silver, which took a 139% leap. We are talking about an asset that usually grows by 3% annually and has daily liquidity (the amount invested daily) higher than the capitalization of almost all cryptos. And yet, in 2025, gold exploded by 60%.

This surge added over 10 trillion dollars to its global valuation. Of course, that doesn't mean 10 trillion was actually injected into the markets; it just means the perception of value changed so fast that it created immense virtual wealth in a very short time. It is estimated, in fact, that against this growth in value, the real investments that entered in 2025 were about 300 billion dollars.

Now the question is: if those 300 billion entered crypto, what would happen? If 300 billion entered, there wouldn't be enough coins for sale on the exchanges to satisfy the demand. Thus, you would have a financial shock that would cause prices to skyrocket. This would create a "green candle" on the charts never before seen in the history of finance (the long-awaited "God Candle"), leading to hyper-speculative madness.

Given that Bitcoin usually catalyzes half of all investment in the sector, with an inflow of 150 billion, the price of a single coin could easily jump from about $77,000 today (as of April 26, 2026) to over $450,000 - $500,000 per coin. We are talking about 700% growth.

This phenomenal and impulsive growth would drag the rest of the crypto market along with it. Ethereum, with a capitalization of about 280 billion, if it experienced an inflow of just 50 billion in real money, would see its price go from just over a thousand dollars to stellar figures, potentially above $20,000 - $25,000. Solana, being "smaller"—we're talking about 50 billion in capitalization—10-20 billion real dollars would lead it to compete directly with Ethereum, with a price that could do a 10x compared to current values. If 5-10 billion real dollars ended up in Dogecoin or Cardano, we would see triple-digit percentage increases in a few days.

Not only that, but it could also happen that even those who have never participated in the crypto market might enter en masse to avoid missing the opportunity of a lifetime, driving the price even higher. It would be a speculative bubble that would make the "Dot-com" bubble look like a joke by comparison.

If gold with 300 billion does an "honest" +60%, cryptocurrencies with the same amount would probably do a +500% or +1000%. This is the potential. It’s not guaranteed to happen, but given the madness with gold, in lean times or in fat times, we could truly have a crypto explosion... and with so many dollars in circulation, it would be something wonderfully insane.

The Downsides

An Enormous Market.

I know the title of this paragraph seems almost like a mistake, given how contradictory it reads immediately after the previous one. However, it is not an error. As small as the crypto market is compared to the S&P 500, for example, internally it is a very large market. The crypto market is composed of thousands of projects, all with their own coin or token that can be bought, owned, exchanged, and speculated upon. In today's crypto market, there are about 25,000 possible coins and tokens. At this point, the challenge is singular: among these 25,000 possibilities, find the winning project.

It’s like looking for a single black grain of sand among all the grains on Copacabana beach. It is an impossible mission. For this reason, the crypto market is a difficult one, where very few are truly active. A Wall Street man needs a certain stability and security in his returns. Not only that, he also needs the means to predict what will happen in the future.

This is why the stock market is so active. Between financial, political, and general news, it is easy for an investor to predict the market's next move, position themselves, and make money. The metals market lives on the same premises. For example, you can track what a trend might be by observing the geopolitical situation and the reserves of this or that material. Thus, you can anticipate your move and make money.

In crypto, you don’t have this luxury because growth is irrational and impulsive. Everything is based on rhetoric, narrative, and speculation. Since all cryptos are decentralized, no one can control their behavior.

If you take Tesla, a publicly traded company, the company can play with its own shares to find capital, creating new ones or buying existing ones to regulate supply and market price. With Crypto, this doesn't happen. The coins are only a reward for those who keep the Blockchain network secure and active, and since there are hundreds of "actors" for a single Blockchain, you cannot control what hundreds of people might do. This makes market performance absolutely unpredictable, as everyone could sell or hold their coins at once. Not only that, Tesla's performance is regulated by many factors (production, crises, economic data, etc.). A crypto is not a company: it is just a coin, often without any project behind it (Memecoins)! Just one piece of news going around the internet is enough to see the price decuple or lose 90 percent.

In the past, we’ve seen coins do a 200x in a couple of weeks just because they were talked about on Instagram, completely at random.

With crypto, there is no safe way to earn. You might think you're playing it safe by investing in the top 10, being sure you're making a good investment, only to discover that those ten "projects" don't grow, while others do, because other sectors of the crypto market are much hotter. Or exactly the opposite could happen: you don't invest in the top 10 because they're too "mainstream," and then find the mainstream exploding while you're left with nothing. With so much choice and so much irrationality, making the right move is simply impossible.

Acceptance.

For years, cryptos were seen as scams or as the perfect tool for criminals. And in a sense, at the beginning, it was true. Given their nature, cryptos do not show names and surnames on the Blockchain, but only strings of numbers and letters. This detail initially made them popular on the Deep Web, where crime flourishes.

I thought so too. For years I believed Bitcoin was a creation "by criminals, for criminals." But then I asked myself a question: if Bitcoin were truly just an illegal tool, why haven't governments simply turned it all off? Perhaps because cryptos are not "illegal," but just terribly honest about one point: privacy.

Today, for everything we do, we leave a trace that financial giants, banks, and social media can read and use (often to profile us or sell us something). A bank knows who we are, how much we have, and how we spend it. This doesn't sit well with many people: we want to be free to manage our money without every single transaction being under a magnifying glass.

The privacy issue is always one of those problems that those in power do not want to solve. I understand. Humanity is criminal by nature, and if you give full privacy to everyone, many would use that privacy to commit crimes or move illegally, as the State would no longer know who is paying whom.

However, a solution exists, and it is Blockchain technology. Every coin (not Token) has its own blockchain that records transactions using cryptography, making transactions "private" (regarding identity) but public (for verification). It is the basis of Web3—an internet where the user becomes the owner of their own data and exchanges once again.

At the moment, unfortunately, no one uses these kinds of platforms. Right now, we are still in an embryonic phase. The technology is not yet fully "understood" or easy for the masses to use. Furthermore, this WEB3 doesn't have much to offer compared to WEB2 (the one we use every day). Yet the technology and security for one's data are there, ready to be explored.

Recently, even the European Union—a political body famous for living in the Stone Age regarding technology—has seen the potential of the Blockchain and will even introduce its own Stablecoin in 2029, helping the crypto cause.

However, acceptance is not "mainstream" yet. It will still take some time to reach that point. When there is much more widespread acceptance and various cryptos WITH A PURPOSE become standard, we could see exponential growth, not just in usage but also in price.

Speculation.

We have a damn small market, incredibly dense, with very little liquidity compared to gold or the Forex market (currencies), which lives on rhetoric. The result can only be one: speculation and extreme volatility!

Growth of 1000% doesn't happen in a large, highly liquid market. The crypto market is a high-potential market in both directions.

Just look at what happens with Bitcoin. In the growth phase, everyone enters the market, billions are invested, and the price shoots up. When everyone starts selling, the price collapses by as much as 70 percent. Finally, when interest is absent, people with a few million dollars available can easily influence the price up or down, earning millions more.

Unfortunately, since cryptos are still a niche market, there isn't much money in circulation. For this reason, they are famous for always being too weak from a speculative point of view, allowing the "rich" to manipulate the market when there aren't many investors. In this market, even just 10 billion—a paltry sum compared to a financial market like the Nasdaq—can manipulate market trends. And those who have that much money are not thinking about you or me. They are only thinking about making money.

If you want to invest, you must keep two things in mind.

The first is to have a strategy. Depending on what you want to achieve with crypto (daily speculation or long-term speculation), there are different moments to enter the market. Hitting the right moment, based on your goal, is fundamental to making gains.

The second thing is to accept the fact that the market will be volatile. There will be days where you lose 10 percent and others where you gain 15 percent. It is the current nature of crypto. If you are unable to accept this volatility, then it is better to forget it and look for something that gives less return but is safer.

Final Reflections.

Ultimately, crypto remains the greatest gamble of our age: a market where 300 billion can buy an entire future or feed the largest bubble in history. Blockchain technology promises us privacy and independence, but the reality of the market offers us, for now, only a crazy carousel maneuvered by a few big actors.

If you decide to enter, do it with your eyes open: don't look for the "black grain" on Copacabana beach hoping for a miracle. Choose a strategy, accept the risk, and above all, remember that in the game of speculation, the only real victory is the one you manage to take out of the market and put into your bank account.

M.