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(Bloomberg) -- Bitcoin climbed back above $71,000 on Tuesday after a choppy week of trading that saw it spike, retreat and spike again. But the messy price action is obscuring a quieter story: Wall Street keeps building around crypto regardless.

Last Wednesday’s 8% surge to $74,000 reminded investors that Bitcoin’s gains arrive in sudden, unforeseeable bursts that punish anyone trying to time them. This week’s rebound — fueled by President Donald Trump’s suggestion that Middle East tensions would resolve “very soon” — is landing against a backdrop of institutional scaffolding being quietly assembled whether prices are rising or not.

None of that guarantees the rally holds. But beneath the volatility, a bull thesis is taking shape — one that doesn’t depend on short-term momentum to ring true.

Start with the burst. Bitcoin surged last Wednesday to its highest level in nearly a month, with Ether following sharply higher. Most of that gain evaporated just as fast. The people who held through both moves are the ones now positioned to benefit from Tuesday’s recovery.

That is not luck — it is the math of an asset whose long-run returns can be concentrated in a handful of sessions each year. Miss them and the returns collapse. The only reliable way to catch them is to already be there. For beaten-up bulls who held through months of losses, the volatility over the past week was the argument made in real time.

“Bitcoin is 15-16 years in existence and over any rolling period Bitcoin has outperformed every asset class,” Tom Lee of Fundstrat said at the Future Proof conference in Miami Beach. “You’ve never lost money holding Bitcoin for three years.”