I am not teetering on the edge of poverty so I would rather increase my volatility a tiny bit and stay EV neutral (or, more realistically, positive, since we’re talking about BTC) than incur a guaranteed substantial EV loss.

My suspicion is that your mental model for comparing volatility and loss is incomplete, given that you didn’t mention anything about the size of the transfer compared to your wealth, or anything else about local risk-aversion/utility convexity.