Latest / What Bitcoin Did / Did the Bitcoin Bull Market Just End? | Checkmate & Alec Dejanovic
Transcript
- 0:00When I see all this selling, who is buying?
- 0:06Who is buying?
- 0:07It feels to me like it's got to be banks and it could be sovereigns because it's in the
- 0:12spot market and the size, the size of it is just extraordinary.
- 0:16But this cycle has been very, very unique in just the scale, dollar value.
- 0:22Is it a new cycle or is it a super cycle?
- 0:24Is it a four-year cycle?
- 0:25Is it a five-year cycle?
- 0:26gold doesn't move until it wants to move and when it moves you should pay attention it's telling us
- 0:33that the system is bankrupt and we have to move to a new reserve asset all roads converge to there's
- 0:37going to be more dollars 200 would be fantastic um i do think it's gonna be a positive year
- 0:43get bullish because bitcoin's not going anywhere it's going to come back like a cockroach happy days
- 0:49all right it's rock and roll sweet jack mate you're on this show every week at the moment
- 0:56I know.
- 0:56How's it going, man?
- 0:57This is the first one in person, though.
- 0:59It is, yes.
- 0:59Since the new pod.
- 1:00We were talking about what we're going to talk about today.
- 1:01It's like, I don't know, maybe the red candle, the 80,000, might have something to do with it?
- 1:05Well, the plan was, I was obviously coming down here to do a couple of interviews.
- 1:09I wanted to record a show with you that was like evergreen so we could release it on the
- 1:12first episode of the next year because you started off the podcast.
- 1:16But Bitcoin didn't let us do that.
- 1:17No.
- 1:17A bit of volatility, though.
- 1:18I mean, like, I'll tell you what.
- 1:20How bored was it at 100K, at 110, going sideways, doing nothing?
- 1:24like and i've been thinking about this a lot of hodlers the 15 down sucks because it's like not
- 1:31enough of a discount where you're like yeah okay now jump in once you start talking about like 25
- 1:3630 30 something everyone's like okay now it's like uh now it's like cheap sats right now we're
- 1:43trying to find where that bottom is but like it's it just fires up the hodlers again i mean i felt
- 1:47myself 100k i'm like it's a dip like i stack sats up there but i'm like now we're at 80 i'm like
- 1:54let's go oh this is value oh yeah this is value but before we get into that alec welcome to the
- 1:59show man how you doing very good super stoked to be here you're the uh you're the man behind the
- 2:03scenes at check on chain and the scenes yeah so yeah introduce yourself wow well um yeah i'm alec
- 2:09i'm co-founder of check on chain and been working with james for about four or five years now we
- 2:14started a glass node together actually so i was like the first marketing hire at glass node um
- 2:19we were trying to build some stuff over there and then we decided you know what it's time to do our
- 2:23own thing bring back to home soil come to australia and kick off check on chain what's with the aussie
- 2:27contingent at glass node is that we were the only contingent okay yeah yeah no we were it so i think
- 2:31i was employee number eight you would have been like 12 or 13 or something like that um but alec
- 2:36and i we've known each other our whole lives yeah oh cool yeah yeah no since we're like three years
- 2:39old preschool buddies yeah yeah it goes a long way um and then we worked together because you know i
- 2:44was a civil engineer working at a data company sending marketing emails like i mean it's it's
- 2:50It's horrific.
- 2:50So I was like, I just need help.
- 2:51We were living together at the time.
- 2:52And I said, can you give me a hand with these things?
- 2:55Sending emails and all the rest of it.
- 2:56And next thing you know, we've got a marketing hire
- 2:58and lived in Mexico for what, nine months after the pandemic?
- 3:02Kind of building out all the different products and things there.
- 3:05And by the time we got to 2023, I was like, you know,
- 3:06it's time to set our own sail.
- 3:08And check on shame was always something I wanted to do,
- 3:11but it's really that challenge of like, let's start the business.
- 3:15You know, start from zero.
- 3:17You've got to find subscribers.
- 3:18You've got to keep them, right?
- 3:19You've got to actually give people value.
- 3:21And we spent a lot of time designing what the product was going to look like.
- 3:23And, you know, at the end of the day, you've got to give people something that's worthwhile
- 3:26reading and watching and, you know, value their time.
- 3:29And I'm also a big fan of valuing our time, right?
- 3:32So everything we do is paywall because it's, you know, I value my time, even like Alex's
- 3:37time and our customers, we value their time as well.
- 3:39So it's part of the mission.
- 3:40And yeah, we've got some exciting stuff coming up.
- 3:42I consider myself like an on-chain Padawan, kind of.
- 3:45I've been able to sit with Czech.
- 3:48I mean, I moved in in the pandemic.
- 3:50We had nothing to do.
- 3:50We couldn't go outside.
- 3:51So I'm just soaking up all this on chain information.
- 3:55And yeah, just over time, over osmosis,
- 3:58I'm kind of getting used to all these charts.
- 4:00I consider myself kind of like a pleb hodler,
- 4:02if you can think of that way.
- 4:04But yeah, I love helping and teaching
- 4:06and making sure hodlers are coming along in this journey.
- 4:10And just getting that data-driven side of the market
- 4:13is super important.
- 4:15Like getting off the price chart specifically
- 4:16and getting off X and just seeing all these crazy M2 charts.
- 4:21And by the way, which drives you mad,
- 4:23drives you mad.
- 4:23Yeah, the database approach with Bitcoin's beautiful blockchain
- 4:27is just so fascinating.
- 4:29So yeah, we're also building an exciting new project,
- 4:32which a bunch of people are going to be pretty happy to see
- 4:35coming out, our new charting platform.
- 4:38Long time coming.
- 4:39Yeah.
- 4:39I mean, right now, so the charting platform we had,
- 4:41I started building that in 2019
- 4:43and that was actually my excuse to learn Python.
- 4:46So back then, I'm a civil engineer, and what do civil engineers do?
- 4:50They use spreadsheets for everything.
- 4:52So I would download, I think CoinMetrics had the very first on-chain data set.
- 4:56I'd download that, plug it into my spreadsheet, all the charts would update once a day.
- 4:59I was like, I just can't do this anymore.
- 5:02There's got to be a better way.
- 5:03So I taught myself Python.
- 5:05And check on chain the software.
- 5:06It's like 150,000 lines now that runs every day.
- 5:10Oh, yeah, no, there's a lot of code.
- 5:11There's a lot of duct tape and a lot of zip ties in there, but I know where they are.
- 5:15So yeah, I mean, it's basically pulling
- 5:16all your different on-chain futures options.
- 5:22And that's what I love about,
- 5:23I think a lot of people know me as like an on-chain analyst,
- 5:25but I consider myself a Bitcoin analyst
- 5:27because we've got all these different market sectors.
- 5:30And more often than not,
- 5:31the ETS tell the same story as the on-chain DA,
- 5:34which tells the same story as the futures.
- 5:35They just have a different way of displaying it.
- 5:38But anyway, that software,
- 5:39I mean, it's literally the charting platform right now
- 5:41is a handwritten piece of HTML that I wrote.
- 5:43years ago it's it's real it's real basic but it's it's a journey to try and get it dude I remember
- 5:50I remember when we used to hang out when we were much younger and we played Counter-Strike
- 5:54like the Counter-Strike 1.6 which is like an FPS shooter if you're not aware um and he was coding
- 6:00up bots and like customizing in the console and doing all this wild coding stuff back then and
- 6:06like making all the custom maps for us so like I can really see he's basically all that was just
- 6:10All that was training.
- 6:13And now it's a giant code base of a million lines.
- 6:15You don't leave university.
- 6:16That's the other thing.
- 6:16I paid off my student debt for my engineering degree
- 6:20on the day that I quit to go and work at Glassnode.
- 6:22So that was kind of like a nice way to wrap it up.
- 6:24So it got me through my first 10 years of work experience.
- 6:28And then, yeah, I mean,
- 6:29I consider myself a Bitcoin analyst now.
- 6:30So it's one of those fascinating,
- 6:33you don't set out to be a Bitcoin analyst.
- 6:35You don't even know that Bitcoin exists.
- 6:36You don't set out to be a Bitcoin podcaster.
- 6:37You don't set out to be a Bitcoin podcaster.
- 6:39It's just one of those things where it pulls me back in, right?
- 6:42Sucks you back into the industry and you just can't leave.
- 6:45Honestly, one of the things I find most fascinating
- 6:47is when you meet people who have found out about Bitcoin,
- 6:50they know in a little bit,
- 6:51and then they can just go on about their life like nothing changed.
- 6:55Like, I don't understand how that mindset exists.
- 6:57What's the line?
- 6:59Nobody's a Bitcoin critic once you understand the difficulty adjustment.
- 7:02Yeah.
- 7:03Once that part clicks.
- 7:04And the other one, have you seen the Matthew McConaughey scale?
- 7:07Like, the grid of nine.
- 7:08Is this where he's like smoking on one of them?
- 7:10No, no, it kind of goes like he's really green,
- 7:12he's coming in, he's like looking all happy,
- 7:14he's got his cigar like before the bear market hits.
- 7:17And then as you go down, you go through the bear
- 7:19and he's crying and then by the time you get to six,
- 7:21panel six is where he's standing there with a shotgun, right?
- 7:24Standing out there like-
- 7:25I am number six for sure.
- 7:27But I was number six, that was like my 2019, 2021 era.
- 7:31I don't think you ever leave six,
- 7:33you always revert back to six.
- 7:34I feel like I'm a six right now.
- 7:36So I gradually get up into like a seven and an eight.
- 7:38No one gets to a nine.
- 7:39Like nines, you're living on a boat and all the rest of it.
- 7:42You get hauled back to a six, especially on drawdowns.
- 7:45Because you're like, I'm not crying.
- 7:47Because I know what this bear happens, right?
- 7:49Bears go down.
- 7:50The market's going to recover.
- 7:51Bitcoin's going to be fine.
- 7:53But you get that like hardcore, cold card wielding.
- 7:57I'm holding my ground.
- 8:00I'm standing on the floor.
- 8:01You know, keep stacking set.
- 8:02Stay humble.
- 8:02It's funny.
- 8:03When stuff like this happens, I love it.
- 8:06That's great.
- 8:07And obviously, I don't want to see anyone getting wrecked and all that stuff.
- 8:10And that is obviously happening right now because people are taking leverage or whatever.
- 8:13But I love it.
- 8:14It's like, this is the stuff that makes you feel alive.
- 8:17But it's weird because this year, we did off the first show on the new What Bitcoin Did was with you.
- 8:22We recorded it twice because the first time we recorded it, it was like 95k.
- 8:26And then it went over 100k.
- 8:27I was like, dude, we've got to do it again.
- 8:30I don't think if you ask many Bitcoiners then, if we would be at a lower price in 12 months time, they'd have said yes.
- 8:36this year has been really strange, I think.
- 8:38Agreed.
- 8:38It's not really gone up much.
- 8:42Now we're entering this period where who knows
- 8:43if this is just a dip or if we're going into a bear market,
- 8:46what that's going to look like.
- 8:47But has this year surprised you?
- 8:49It has.
- 8:50I mean, it has.
- 8:51And I think the back half definitely surprises.
- 8:54However, I think the story of where we are right now
- 8:57has unfolded progressively.
- 8:59So if I was to really just recap this cycle, let's call it.
- 9:032023, I would broadly just say, was the recovery from the bear.
- 9:06there's rumors that start to come in about the ETFs,
- 9:08but there was a lot of PTSD.
- 9:10That was the recovery of PTSD phase.
- 9:122024, ETFs go live.
- 9:14We get the pump to 73K.
- 9:15And then we had the first period of chop consolidation,
- 9:18which a lot of people were calling for a bear market there too.
- 9:21And just for a bit of context, the 2024 chop,
- 9:24the tariff tantrum, and right now,
- 9:27all very, very similar.
- 9:28All very, very similar in their structure.
- 9:30This particular dip is the angriest of them now,
- 9:33but back at 95K, and we'll talk a lot about 95 shortly,
- 9:36at 95k looks exactly like all the other dips. That level was where it actually looks just the
- 9:42same as it did. Now, this chop solidation thing, this sideways grind is obviously new.
- 9:472025 going sideways, in my view, there's three core pillars that I think have really driven this
- 9:54market cycle. And we were talking before about how data gives you just like, you look at all
- 9:59the Twitter narratives and you just don't see it happening in the data. How many people have seen
- 10:04of people talking about OG selling in the last like three weeks. I've been writing about it for
- 10:08six months because the, and that's not because I'm overly pressing, it's because literally you
- 10:13can see the amount of sell side that's going on. So the three pillars, ETFs, massive, big demand
- 10:18vector, in my opinion, just orders a magnitude more important than treasury companies in terms
- 10:23of the actual demand. And they're more like a passive bid. They've just been consistently buying.
- 10:26And honestly, we're seeing outflows. The outflows we've seen in this entire corrections, about 3
- 10:32billion that's been one day of hodler sell side in recent weeks so hodler sell side and people can
- 10:39argue and debate say oh long-term holders not really six months and they're not an og if it's
- 10:44only five years drop the terminology somebody had a opportunity cost of six months where they could
- 10:50have bought nvidia they could have bought literally anything else they held the coin for six months
- 10:54and the beautiful thing about the six month period ignore the fact that they're a long-term holder
- 10:59whatever your precondition of like, is it really long-term,
- 11:02they gave up six months of opportunity cost,
- 11:05and that naturally filters out the guy who bought yesterday
- 11:07and sold today, which is kind of just daily chop.
- 11:10You don't really care that someone bought yesterday
- 11:11and capitulated today.
- 11:12What you care about is someone who bought
- 11:14and is now selling later on.
- 11:16So the second pillar is that HODL or SEL side.
- 11:18It's been absolutely enormous and has been accelerating.
- 11:22It continues to accelerate.
- 11:23We're talking about billions of dollars a day
- 11:25in these revived coins.
- 11:26Now, not every single one of those coins is sold,
- 11:29but a lot of them are, you know, like a lot of them are. So you've got to just look at it from
- 11:33that perspective. And whenever you see revived supply ticking higher, the market is usually
- 11:38rallying and then peaks and then slows down and then backs off. So, you know, it doesn't take a
- 11:43rocket scientist to say there's a lot of old coins coming back to market and the market stopped going
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- 14:08So I want to get into like what's happening now and what you think the next few months
- 14:12will look like.
- 14:12But if we just go back to when we first recorded the show nearly a year ago,
- 14:17just passed 100K.
- 14:20Has this been a bull market?
- 14:22Good question.
- 14:23Good question.
- 14:24So I've been calling it more recently, to be fair, the great rotation.
- 14:28I think Geordie Visser actually had a really good piece,
- 14:30which captures like the zeitgeist of it.
- 14:32Now, I don't know if it's 100% accurate,
- 14:34but I do think that that essence of like the existing holder base rotating out,
- 14:39and this is the story that I think people really want to capture.
- 14:41So let me just quickly, before I forget, the three pillars I think change this market, ETFs, the HODL or sell side, and the IBIT options, which is going to move forward, be a massive, massive factor.
- 14:51But going back to the great rotation, huge amounts of coins being sold.
- 14:55Now, we did not see those show up as demand in the ETFs, not even close.
- 15:01When you compare the amount of sell side pressure, profit taking, no matter how you want to frame it up, the ETFs typically are 20% to 30%.
- 15:09So we're missing the other five,
- 15:12you know, there's five times more stuff
- 15:13happening in the spot market.
- 15:15Same for Saylor.
- 15:16When you hear these narratives
- 15:17of Saylor has cornered the market
- 15:18and he's the only one who's captured,
- 15:20all the ETS have captured Bitcoin,
- 15:22they're kind of forgetting
- 15:23that the existing spot markets
- 15:24are still out there
- 15:25and they're still the dominant factor
- 15:27in what's going on.
- 15:28Now, obviously derivatives and stuff
- 15:29are a layer on top of that,
- 15:30but when I see all this selling
- 15:32and we went sideways for 12 months,
- 15:35so 2025 has been a sideways grind
- 15:38up until very recently who is buying who is buying this is the thing it's an unanswered question at
- 15:44this point in time i'm dissatisfied with the answer but i like geordie fisher's idea of like
- 15:49this great rotation or this ipo moment i've been calling the great rotation all hands getting out
- 15:55no question it's been massive 110 billion in 24 and 25 combined from five-year-old plus coins
- 16:01to you know you don't move a five-year-old coin unless you mean it yeah i mean like you
- 16:05you don't just go moving it around because you want to there's a rhyme and reason to it
- 16:10who are the buyers because it's not happening in the ets so it's not some hedge fund it's not some
- 16:14like random entity it's spot so the fact that we went sideways under tens of billions i mean
- 16:21you could argue and i'll talk about today at the conference like hundreds of billions of dollars
- 16:24worth of sell side this year in spot markets and the price went sideways until very recently
- 16:30who's buying that's the really interesting question i don't have an answer for but i
- 16:34it's fascinating to think about just for anyone who's listening who doesn't know what the geordie
- 16:38visa piece was basically he called this bitcoin's ipo moment and he he sort of draws a parallel to
- 16:44traditional markets where people take an early stake in a company they're taking high risk
- 16:48and the ipo moment when they've gone through all the pain to get there go public like these are now
- 16:53publicly traded shares that's their opportunity to see liquidity for the first real time and so what
- 16:57happens is a load of those early investors will dump their shares who knows you normally get an
- 17:03an IPO pump and then price comes down. And he says that this is happening now in Bitcoin because for
- 17:08the first time, if you bought Bitcoin in 2010, 2011, you're sat on hundreds of millions or billions
- 17:14of dollars. In a legacy wallet somewhere. Yeah. And this is the first time you actually have the
- 17:18liquidity to get out with the ETFs and all the treasury companies and whoever else who's on the
- 17:22other side of that trade. I like that framing. I don't know if it's correct, but I think it's
- 17:27interesting. The other thing to think about is like, imagine selling, we saw that dude who
- 17:30offloaded 80,000 Bitcoin held from like 2011. Can you imagine offloading $10 billion worth of Bitcoin
- 17:37in the previous US administration? You'd have the feds up your ass. You know what I mean? Like you'd
- 17:41have your bank account shut down. So for the first time, the regulatory environment, there's the
- 17:45price, there's the demand, there's the liquidity, and there's just, you're not going to get taken
- 17:49out the back by the government. So I think there's a lot of elements here, which it kind of makes
- 17:54sense. And that's why I'm saying, I think it captures the zeitgeist of what's going on. It may
- 17:58not be perfectly correct, but we always have to use simplified models to understand the world.
- 18:02And I think it's actually a very valid way to think about it. It makes sense from just a
- 18:05narrative perspective. And importantly, he calls this like a sign of success, not failure. Like,
- 18:11this is a good thing that this is happening. Like, there's also the idea that this is moving funds
- 18:17from being like concentrated in a number of like massive whales to being in everyone's hands,
- 18:22which is again, good for Bitcoin. But I think, does he say that he expects this to last somewhere
- 18:27between 6 and 12 months.
- 18:28Yeah, I mean, it's hard to tell
- 18:29how long this whole process lasts.
- 18:31I mean, to be fair, this rotation,
- 18:32like the majority of the selling
- 18:34has occurred really within the last six months.
- 18:37So that was, and a lot of it was above 120K.
- 18:40If we look at, we use metrics like realized profit,
- 18:42which shows the delta between when a coin was acquired
- 18:45and when it was disposed of,
- 18:47we saw, you know, again, billions of dollars a day
- 18:50in realized profit.
- 18:51And this is the other thing you can see,
- 18:52coin day destruction,
- 18:53lots of old coins coming back to life,
- 18:56revived supply, the volume of them,
- 18:57how much profit they're locking in.
- 18:59All of these things were like record highs
- 19:02in the March pump in 2024,
- 19:04in November, December, January,
- 19:06when the kind of called the Trump pump.
- 19:08And then this has been a very sustained period
- 19:11of the back half of 2025,
- 19:13just tons and tons of sell site and ramping up.
- 19:15But what we're now seeing is the folks who are selling,
- 19:19there's a lot of people who are like six months,
- 19:21six months to a year.
- 19:22those guys are people who wish they had a board in video they gave up the opportunity cost they
- 19:27held bitcoin the momentum went nowhere there a lot of those guys are now selling and taking a loss
- 19:33crystallizing a loss and this is probably if there's one thing i can just help people understand
- 19:37right now 70 of all of the wealth that's ever been invested in bitcoin we price every utxo
- 19:44based on when it last moved 70 has a cost basis above 85k that's insane 70 this is bitcoin's new
- 19:51home. So, you know, if you're talking about 30K and 10K and 5K Bitcoin, the truth is it's like
- 19:56ancient history. It just doesn't matter. There's not enough wealth down there. The wealth is all
- 20:00up here. Now, because we're below it, that's a lot of potential sellers on the way back up. So,
- 20:05the bulls have got a lot of work to do to get us out of this mess. However, the rotation of this
- 20:10capital, think about who these new buyers are, right? These aren't retail hodlers putting in
- 20:15their pocket money. You know, no one's got these kind of deep pockets. We're talking, there has to
- 20:19could be banks could be sovereigns could be a bit of everything I saw the other day I forget which Gulf state but there a Gulf state that bought like half a billion dollars worth of ETF So like sovereigns are interested in this kind of thing And these folks feel like price insensitive buyers
- 20:33Yeah.
- 20:33Where they just accumulate,
- 20:34they're just forever allocators.
- 20:35So there is going to be this rotation.
- 20:37Markets have got to go through this process.
- 20:39It'll take time to hammer out this bottom.
- 20:41But at the same time, these guys probably aren't,
- 20:44you know, they're sailor types.
- 20:45They're not going to sell.
- 20:46So there's going to be this process of,
- 20:48you know, as we hammer out a floor,
- 20:50wherever we find that clearing price,
- 20:52you know, Bitcoin's got a really bright future ahead of it.
- 20:55In terms of revived supply,
- 20:57so what's the average age of coins being sold right now
- 21:00from the long-term holder cohort?
- 21:02Because when we studied this data,
- 21:04like long-term holder sell side has been incredible this cycle.
- 21:08Like nothing like it.
- 21:09We've never seen something like this.
- 21:10But a lot of it's from younger long-term holder coins,
- 21:13which kind of can be a little confusing,
- 21:15but it basically means one year plus held Bitcoin.
- 21:17They're all kind of just, get me out.
- 21:19that's the kind of vibe with that yeah so the way to think about it and glass and actually ran a
- 21:24really good study i think maybe last year um called time is money and they basically showed that there
- 21:29is a very clear power law relationship it's a beautiful power the perfect perfect power law
- 21:34relationship between the probability of a coin or utxo being spent on any one day and how long it's
- 21:39been held so in other words that means most of the coins like 90 of them that move on any one day
- 21:45moved yesterday or the day before.
- 21:47The vast majority of on-chain volume moved recently.
- 21:51The older a coin is, the less likely it is to be spent.
- 21:53But once you get to about five months,
- 21:56what's the difference between a probability of 0.01%
- 21:58and 0.0001%?
- 22:00In practical terms, nothing.
- 22:02It's the same probability.
- 22:03It's very, very unlikely.
- 22:05So five months is where they get to the point
- 22:06where for practical purposes,
- 22:09we can just consider them to be a long-term holder.
- 22:10But within that long-term holder set,
- 22:13they're very different to the short-term holders
- 22:15in their overall behavior.
- 22:16But you're right, the six-month-old long-term holders
- 22:19are more active than the one years,
- 22:21and the one year is more active than the two years
- 22:22in a power law relationship.
- 22:25And another fun fact is that the on-chain volume,
- 22:29if you break up what the size of a per transaction is,
- 22:32the average transaction right now is moving $1 million plus.
- 22:3675% of on-chain volume is moving $1 million plus.
- 22:39All-time high of that ratio.
- 22:41So institutional capital is what's moving around on chain.
- 22:45And you asked before, what's the average age of things?
- 22:48The baseline through most market cycles is the average coin that moves is 30 days old.
- 22:54On average, the average spent coin is 30 days.
- 22:57This cycle has been an almost linear uptrend and we're now at about 100 days.
- 23:00So that's more than three times as big as what your average is over any other previous cycle.
- 23:06So it always spikes in bulls because old money takes profits.
- 23:09but this cycle has been very very unique in just the size scale dollar value coin day destruction
- 23:16there's a metric we use called liveliness which shows all the coin days that have ever been
- 23:21destroyed and all the coin days have ever been created dave puerle and i when we wrote uh coin
- 23:26time economics we kind of described that since 2017 the 2017 bull was actually where the the most
- 23:33coins came back to life and a lot of them were because of the bitcoin cash hard fork they wanted
- 23:37to move coins to a new wallet,
- 23:38take advantage of the dividend.
- 23:41We've just broken to new all-time highs in liveliness,
- 23:43which means-
- 23:43I guess people were getting them off exchanges then as well
- 23:45so they could have the-
- 23:46All sorts of things.
- 23:47So there's just a lot of activity.
- 23:49And the thing with liveliness,
- 23:50it helps you understand how many coins are not lost, right?
- 23:53Because if a coin has been spent,
- 23:55it might be, you might move it to your wallet
- 23:57and then immediately lose the keys.
- 23:58But we're not going to know that
- 24:00until 10 years down the road
- 24:01when it still hasn't moved
- 24:02and the probabilities increase that it's lost.
- 24:04When coins come back to life and liveliness,
- 24:06It's just punched a new all-time high, which is honestly something I didn't expect to happen.
- 24:10I thought it was going to be range bound for a long time.
- 24:12We have seen just an old coin transfer that is, frankly, it's unprecedented.
- 24:18The only other time you can put anything similar is the 2017 bull.
- 24:22And a lot of that was the Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork.
- 24:24Yeah.
- 24:25And in terms of bull market correction, drawdowns, we have a chart that compares all of the drawdowns
- 24:30in the current bull market, if we still think it's a bull market.
- 24:33Right now, we're down 30%, I believe.
- 24:35that happened in the tariff tantrum back in april when trump announced his with that big huge board
- 24:40of crazy tariffs and everything new tariff the penguins yeah is this not more than 30 now what
- 24:4735 is the deepest okay yeah yeah but in term it's similar to the tariff tantrum but we were under
- 24:53100k at that point right i think the 100k having six figures is a very key like psychological level
- 25:00for a lot of human beings just looking at the price so people who got in a year ago at 100k
- 25:05because we're basically down on the year now.
- 25:08Like they held for a whole year
- 25:10and they got invalidated.
- 25:11They saw AI just ripping.
- 25:13And missed everything.
- 25:14They missed all of that.
- 25:15The government's very, very kind to AI.
- 25:17You can see like the Trump administration is very,
- 25:20it helps AI pump right now.
- 25:22They're doing whatever they can
- 25:23to like make sure regulation is lower.
- 25:25The smart money just go,
- 25:26I'm just going to rotate into AI.
- 25:29Why wouldn't I?
- 25:30Like Bitcoin just didn't do the thing.
- 25:32The AI is going through a generational run.
- 25:34like this why wouldn't the smart money this is my perspective anyway the smart money should rotate
- 25:40into something that is more of a guarantee and that's kind of to me it's kind of simple almost
- 25:44why bitcoin's a bit weak right now it's just because there's a more uh i don't know people
- 25:50lusting over ai and it's just a better trade right now well i mean the world's a relative place
- 25:54capital markets money will move where it's treated best market doesn't go anywhere that's why you
- 25:58see these six months guys they're momentum traders but also bitcoin will find a flaw we all know it
- 26:03find a flaw we're talking about this before shit coins the problem with shit coins is that you don't
- 26:07know if they will ever find a flaw you don't know if they're already going to come back bitcoin you
- 26:10know will find a flaw and will start moving and that momentum money will come ripping right back
- 26:15right back out yeah so for me as a hodler that's why 15 down you're like okay but once it's like
- 26:2130 you're like oh i could maybe i should start driving ubers as well like you don't be like you
- 26:26start thinking for other ways you can maybe i can delay that bill maybe i can sort this you start
- 26:32getting hungry for the sats again. So once that market finds a bottom and starts moving,
- 26:37a little bit of money is going to come roaring back in because the same reason I started buying
- 26:42Bitcoin in 2019, when like it finally dawned on me that, hey, the government's a bankrupt and
- 26:46they're going to have to print money to solve it. We were talking about it this morning over
- 26:49breakfast. When you play forward, whether it's AI is deflationary or if it's inflationary,
- 26:54I don't know which way you go, they're either going to have to pump the market because it wants
- 26:58to collapse because we're seeing the popping of a bubble,
- 27:01or they're going to have to UBI because it's displaced everyone.
- 27:03So pick your poison, all roads converge to there's going to be more dollars,
- 27:08and there's going to be 21 million Bitcoin.
- 27:09There's 5% left to mine.
- 27:10It's going to take 110 years or 130 years to finally mine them all.
- 27:15All roads lead back to Bitcoin.
- 27:16All roads lead back to Bitcoin, stack sats.
- 27:18One of the interesting things, and I think this is because we didn't have
- 27:21a bull market that almost anyone expected,
- 27:24is sentiment is absolutely shot, right?
- 27:26But it was shot 10% below the all-time high.
- 27:29It was shot so quickly.
- 27:31This has been a really interesting dynamic
- 27:33is watching how flaky sentiment has been.
- 27:36Now, I don't really have a good reason for that.
- 27:38I think it's because we didn't have a bull run.
- 27:39At least not one comparable to previous bull run.
- 27:42Yes, and I heard Lin say this in your pod,
- 27:44and I've been saying it for a long time.
- 27:46Expectations not meeting reality.
- 27:49Massive, massive reason,
- 27:50because people had the green, green, green,
- 27:52and the last green was the big green.
- 27:54And if you actually look at the average monthly performance,
- 27:57I've run this for like the whole of Bitcoin's history.
- 27:59I've run it for just from 2015 onwards,
- 28:01from 2020 onwards, from 2023 onwards.
- 28:03And the pattern is very similar.
- 28:05September is the only month where on average it's shit
- 28:08and every other month is pretty good.
- 28:10And then the last part of the year is the best.
- 28:12This year, every single month has been out of consensus.
- 28:16September was a good month.
- 28:17November has been terrible.
- 28:19October has been terrible.
- 28:20So like it's just been a different year,
- 28:22but expectations not meeting reality,
- 28:24I think is a big part of it.
- 28:25The other thing is like,
- 28:26no one cares about who wins the bronze medal,
- 28:29essentially.
- 28:29And we've had gold tearing, ripping,
- 28:32and we've had the AI.
- 28:34So Bitcoin's kind of like had bronze medal this year.
- 28:38And comparison is the thief of joy.
- 28:40Totally.
- 28:41Is a quote I love.
- 28:42And basically all Bitcoiners have been doing,
- 28:45especially on X,
- 28:45is comparing to things that have outrun Bitcoin,
- 28:48which just makes everyone so sad.
- 28:51Like there's no way to,
- 28:52even though Bitcoin ripped to 125,
- 28:53everyone should be joyous.
- 28:55It's like, goes down a little bit
- 28:56and then, but gold.
- 28:58But AR, oh, this sucks.
- 29:00Like immediately, especially humans,
- 29:03just like getting that third bronze medal
- 29:04is just never a good thing.
- 29:06It was so funny watching Bitcoin
- 29:08has become gold bugs
- 29:09when gold went on its run.
- 29:11And like gold is the other,
- 29:12like I have 90% Bitcoin, 10% gold.
- 29:14That's my portfolio.
- 29:15And I sleep very well.
- 29:17And I actually heard Luke Groman,
- 29:18I can't remember when he said it,
- 29:19but he said it some time back.
- 29:21someone asked him what's his like non-consensus opinion and he goes that gold's going to have a
- 29:25period of time where it outperforms bitcoin and that's stuck with me for a long time and like
- 29:29the reason i have gold is like it's almost like a ballast in my portfolio where it's the same trade
- 29:35it's just not as volatile i can tap it when i want it and also i just sometimes want something that's
- 29:41not going to rip go down from 125 to 80 that's where it sits like a ballast part of my portfolio
- 29:46And in fact, I always try to get gold to 10%,
- 29:50but as we know, Bitcoin runs too hard.
- 29:52So I'm always chasing.
- 29:53I literally have to continue to buy gold to get it to 10%.
- 29:56We might have finally hit it now at Bitcoin.
- 29:58I think the interesting thing about Luke,
- 29:59like Luke's clearly a genius.
- 30:00Like I love talking to him.
- 30:02I get his newsletter.
- 30:03I don't think there's really very many people
- 30:05that are better than him at doing what he does.
- 30:07But in one of his recent newsletters,
- 30:10he basically said, you need to start trimming Bitcoin.
- 30:12I think he might have even said,
- 30:14time to get out of Bitcoin.
- 30:15Do you think the fact that the bull market
- 30:17was obviously completely different,
- 30:19if it even was a bull market,
- 30:21the bear market is going to be completely different.
- 30:23Do you think if you're selling now on cycle expectations,
- 30:26that's a mistake?
- 30:27That's my view.
- 30:28So there's no reason that the four-year cycle has to play out.
- 30:33A lot of people are going to say that it has played out,
- 30:34but we are down 35%.
- 30:36My base case for now is,
- 30:40and I've been saying this for a long time,
- 30:42there's a model called the true market mean,
- 30:44which is 82k which we tagged overnight so the true market mean again dave puer and i built this in um
- 30:51in coin time economics there's a model called the realized price which is the average on-chain cost
- 30:56basis per bitcoin but the problem with the realized price we've actually traded below it
- 31:01way back in 2015 way back in 2018 like it's always been we trade below it and that's when
- 31:06bottom formation really starts i was of the view that we shouldn't actually have hit it in 2022
- 31:11And the reason why Satoshi, lost coins, early miners, they're sitting on tremendous unrealized profits, but they're not going to take them because they're lost.
- 31:21Put the quantum thread aside as a potential for bringing back to life.
- 31:24Those coins are not going to come back to market in just normal participants.
- 31:28So in order to hit the break-even level of the realized price, you need, let's say Satoshi's up $25 billion.
- 31:35People who are active in the cycle need to be holding $25 billion of losses to offset it, to get to break even.
- 31:41So the higher the price goes, the larger the market gets, the more those unrealized profits swell, which means the larger the damage has to be for people who are active.
- 31:50And what happens when people go underwater?
- 31:52They sell.
- 31:52They capitulate out.
- 31:53And those losses actually get kind of tempered because people respond to the sell-off.
- 31:59So the true market mean uses liveliness, and I won't go into all the details, but it basically zones in on active investors.
- 32:05the older coins that haven't moved
- 32:07and have just huge amounts of coin days within them.
- 32:10We start to discount them the more that they have.
- 32:13And from that perspective,
- 32:14that's like the average cost basis for active investors.
- 32:17And it's, statistically speaking,
- 32:19the price oscillates around this thing.
- 32:21It is the middle, statistically speaking,
- 32:23of the entire Bitcoin market.
- 32:26It's at 82K.
- 32:27You know what else is at 82K?
- 32:28The average inflow cost basis for the ETFs.
- 32:31Saylor, who I would say is, broadly speaking,
- 32:34the average dude in terms of like they buy all the time in a bull uh his cost base is at 74 which
- 32:39is not too far from 82 and the reason it's there is because they've been struggling to buy more
- 32:44coins which if there's one challenge i'd give to sailor it's like you need a bear market strategy
- 32:47here because these coins are cheap and for me as a hodler i'm happy as larry right i'm going to keep
- 32:53buying down here but the average hodler is about 82k the average etf investor is 82k that also
- 32:59tells you that the ETFs are also kind of the average market participant. The average market
- 33:04participant is around $82,000. If we were to bottom there, it was at $30,000 back in the previous
- 33:11cycle. What did it take to get us below that level? Because we bottomed there in like mid-2021,
- 33:16then we bounced off it. We came back down to it. We needed Luna to market sell $80,000 Bitcoin in
- 33:22distress. We needed Three Arrows Capital to be a fraud. We needed Genesis and Celsius and then
- 33:28finally ftx that's the kind of damage we needed to get below down to the realized price so i actually
- 33:34lost a hundred dollar bet with my colleague from glass node because like i don't think from first
- 33:38principles i don't think we get to the realized price i didn't know that fraud was there and that
- 33:43hundred dollars is worth a whole lot more now bitcoin with it um but for now i unless sailor
- 33:49implodes i'm not sure where that gfc grade deleveraging comes from that could take us down
- 33:57to the realized price of 56.
- 33:59Could it happen?
- 34:00Yes.
- 34:00It's not my base case.
- 34:02So my base case for now
- 34:03is that we probably hammer out a bottom somewhere.
- 34:05Like we might tag the 70s.
- 34:08I think getting down to the 50s is,
- 34:10you know, Bitcoin's a trillion dollar asset now.
- 34:13If you have 50K, it's,
- 34:14you're almost undoing the ETF.
- 34:16So like, can it happen?
- 34:17Anything can happen.
- 34:18Is it my base case?
- 34:19No.
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- 37:03on all past types the website is mina.b.tc and use code wbd for 10 off i think in a lot of ways
- 37:13the market is far more healthy
- 37:14than it was back in 2022.
- 37:15Like I can't think of,
- 37:16besides some treasury companies imploding,
- 37:18anything that could do that.
- 37:19I don't think there's any,
- 37:21I mean, touch wood.
- 37:22I don't think there's any like fraudulent businesses
- 37:24in Bitcoin at the moment.
- 37:25Like it seems like everyone's learned their lesson
- 37:27from 2022.
- 37:28And if we have a bear market,
- 37:29let's just say for argument's sake,
- 37:31we bought them at the true market mean, 82K.
- 37:33If we bought them at the true market mean,
- 37:34it's 35%.
- 37:35Is everyone going to reset their cycle chart
- 37:37at the same way that they did FTX?
- 37:40At the same way that they did,
- 37:41and this has been my case for a long time,
- 37:44I think the bull isn't going to be that,
- 37:45like we didn't have a blow off,
- 37:47but generally speaking, the bull market
- 37:48did exactly what a bull market does.
- 37:50Price go up, old hands sell.
- 37:52It's how they use things generally play out.
- 37:54My view was always that the bear was going to break people
- 37:57because they're not going to know when to reset their chart.
- 37:59And if we bottom at 35% down
- 38:01and in six months time we're toying with all time high,
- 38:05is it a new cycle or is it a super cycle?
- 38:08Is it a four-year cycle or is it a five-year cycle?
- 38:11And again, this is all speculation,
- 38:12but I just wonder if you have to be so flexible
- 38:15in your thinking moving forward.
- 38:17You've probably seen people sharing,
- 38:19there's like a big table of all the metrics
- 38:20that didn't hit zero out of 30 hit their on-chain top.
- 38:24And it's like, yeah, but that doesn't really matter
- 38:26because there was a tremendous amount of sell side.
- 38:29When we started talking, I think it was about 113K,
- 38:32I wrote a piece called On the Cusp.
- 38:34And On the Cusp is where I sold my MSTR of 300 bucks.
- 38:37And I said, I think, check the analyst,
- 38:40who's supposed to be very objective,
- 38:42said something doesn't smell right here.
- 38:44We're below the short-term cost basis.
- 38:45We've failed two all-time high attempts.
- 38:47Something's wrong.
- 38:47I'm selling my risk position
- 38:49because I want cash for the road down.
- 38:51And I started highlighting,
- 38:53and we were talking about it before that, 95K.
- 38:5595K is where we got about 60% of all the money underwater.
- 39:00And I said, look, the road from 115,
- 39:02we're down around the first line of defense.
- 39:05100K is the next line of defense.
- 39:07Once you get down to 95, we're really testing the waters
- 39:11and the trip from there to the 80s will be swift.
- 39:15So we've kind of watched this thing devolve over time.
- 39:19And again, no one can predict the future,
- 39:20but what we can see is where is everyone's cost basis?
- 39:24And just drawing that line in the sand and saying,
- 39:26and I called it the bull's last stand.
- 39:28And when we got to 95, what happened?
- 39:31Straight to 82.
- 39:32And that's not because I can predict the future.
- 39:34That's just because there's a lot of people
- 39:35suddenly underwater, we can see all of their cost base and you go, it's a sensitive spot.
- 39:41It's where people's sentiment is going to shift to, oh shit, we might've just flipped over and I
- 39:45could be late to this party now. So what's the check on chain take now? Is it that we're going
- 39:50to hammer out a bottom basically where we are? Or do you think we go lower? Yeah. So my base case
- 39:55for now, there's two elements. One, I do think so for the longest time, I think in 2024, I wrote
- 40:00the true market mean, wherever that was at the time, 40K or 30K or something. I said, I wrote a
- 40:05piece called Rethinking Bears. And I said, at some point when the bear shows up, here's the
- 40:10fundamental reason why I think the true market mean is more likely, which I was describing before,
- 40:14more likely to be that floor level. It's at 82 now. That doesn't mean that we bought them at 82,
- 40:19but that's kind of the realized price. I think we chop around it. It's kind of a center of gravity.
- 40:23I think the ETFs being there is also a very good confluence. We also have, unfortunately,
- 40:29in the very, very near term, so probably by the time people will listen to this,
- 40:32we've probably already seen this there's a ton of people longing the bottom with futures on leverage
- 40:37so what i suspect happens is we probably get a wick we probably tagged seven something but i do
- 40:44think that gets bought up so i would be very surprised if we go down too far below the 2024 chop zone my base case and again we can only work in scenarios my base case is that 2024 chop you know 70 plus
- 40:58I think that's going to work as support.
- 41:00I mean, you're going to give me coins at 70K.
- 41:02I'll think about this in the shower this morning.
- 41:04If price goes down to 50K,
- 41:05you can now with a 5K slug buy 0.1 corn.
- 41:09Give it me.
- 41:10I'm sorry.
- 41:11I'm sorry.
- 41:11Give it over right now.
- 41:12When you're going to give me five grand
- 41:13and I can buy 0.1 corn,
- 41:15suddenly people can start being whole coiners again.
- 41:17I'm sorry, it's too cheap.
- 41:19It just doesn't make sense.
- 41:20There's too many people like me.
- 41:21I'm going to step in before that.
- 41:22So my base case is somewhere between when we've tagged 80.
- 41:26Could be the low, probably get retested because of futures,
- 41:29but this zone, this air gap between 70 to 80,
- 41:34I suspect we'll find a base somewhere in there.
- 41:36That would be my base case.
- 41:37Yeah, I would take that all day, every day.
- 41:39It's too cheap otherwise.
- 41:41Have you guys been following this winter mute Binance thing?
- 41:45No, I'm sure there's bodies out there,
- 41:47but you know
- 41:47this is the thing
- 41:48everyone goes looking
- 41:49for a boogeyman
- 41:50you know
- 41:51from my perspective
- 41:52we broke below
- 41:53the base
- 41:53of what I call
- 41:53the hodler's wall
- 41:54where all that supply is
- 41:55a bunch of people
- 41:56are now scared
- 41:57that they bought the top
- 41:58they start responding
- 42:00there's no support
- 42:01between there and 85
- 42:02so you don't think
- 42:03it's down to these
- 42:04market makers
- 42:04so just for anyone
- 42:06listening who's not aware
- 42:07like the
- 42:07I've not been following
- 42:09this super closely
- 42:09but from my understanding
- 42:10it's that
- 42:11when crypto
- 42:12like the broader
- 42:13crypto market
- 42:14had that big crash
- 42:14a few
- 42:15like a couple months ago
- 42:16um binance's api stopped working for winter mute and they lost i think billions of dollars in it
- 42:21and so winter mute are now suing binance i believe um and like one of the theories that i've heard is
- 42:28that market makers are like pulling liquidity from the bitcoin market i don't know if you yeah i mean
- 42:34i'm sure all of that's true i think generally speaking there's 50 different things that are
- 42:39going on right so they all have different components uh but you know from my perspective
- 42:44we got below 95. We got below the bulls last stand. That was my thesis. Next thing you know,
- 42:48we're at 80K. Whatever the cause, the thesis was, there's too many people who are underwater.
- 42:53Keep it simple. So you talked a little bit before about who's buying here,
- 42:57because like someone's buying in massive size, volumes are high. Who do you think that is,
- 43:02if you had to speculate? Because you mentioned before banks, I could believe that. I think,
- 43:07especially in the US, the banks are going to be stepping into Bitcoin in a pretty big way over the
- 43:10next few years. I think they'll start custodying Bitcoin, offering loans and all this kind of stuff.
- 43:15Who do you think that might be? It is very interesting because it's not happening via
- 43:19the ETFs. That to me is the most intriguing part of it, which also means we don't know.
- 43:24Yeah. Right. So you can never know the buyers until later on. But what I suspect we will see,
- 43:29long-term holder supply takes five months till a coin reaches that level.
- 43:34The amount of buying that's occurred over the last six months, so we're probably getting close
- 43:37to it. I would say that long-term supply starts bottoming soon and starts moving significantly
- 43:42higher. If it breaks to a new all-time high, this is the only way we can really speculate
- 43:48about this stuff. It feels to me like it's got to be banks and it could be sovereigns because
- 43:53it's in the spot market, which is a strategic position. And the size, the size of it is just
- 43:59extraordinary. And how do we know it's big? Because we saw the selling. The sell side was
- 44:03massive like three billion two billion dollars a day i'm not bringing that in i'm talking about
- 44:08being happy with a 5k clip you know what i mean so like the average investor is not bringing
- 44:13tens of billions of dollars a week and it's in spot markets yeah feels feels meaningful like i'm
- 44:21buying here but the market doesn't care that i'm buying here we want i want to know who the big
- 44:24buyers are so uh yeah no very interesting one sold bitcoin is one sold bitcoin doesn't matter
- 44:29who's selling it that's why we use that six month cutoff because at least it's a sold bitcoin that
- 44:33we know wasn't just transacted day to day and part of the noise.
- 44:37Well, all these long terms that sold at above 100, they could buy back in.
- 44:42And they will.
- 44:42They just made the best decision of their lives to sell at 120, 110.
- 44:47Now they're going, oh, okay.
- 44:49I just clean that profit, jump back in slowly.
- 44:51Props to Mr. 80,000 Bitcoin who sold the Pico top.
- 44:54He literally could just have a bid now.
- 44:57What a go.
- 44:57Why wouldn't you?
- 44:58You can now rotate right back in.
- 45:01That sell side could literally just go, okay, thank you.
- 45:03imagine the tax bill on 9 billion oh my god that's a good problem you need a legal
- 45:09i always think about like the prep you need to sell that much bitcoin would be a nightmare
- 45:14like you're just sitting there with spreadsheets and just talking to accountants and being like how
- 45:18how do i get like i need to find the right otc i need to write find the right desk
- 45:22how do i even sell this thing i mean is it hard though or is it literally just like
- 45:27alex thorn i'm gonna send you loads of bitcoin selling to you with tax man yeah thinking about
- 45:32the tax part, I think that's what's really hard.
- 45:35If you think about it, if you're cashing out that much,
- 45:37you're setting up an estate.
- 45:39That's a job.
- 45:40That's like a whole thing.
- 45:41And there's a lot of people who are like,
- 45:42why didn't they sell the first time we got to 120K?
- 45:45It's like, because these decisions take time.
- 45:48It's a big job.
- 45:49It's a huge job.
- 45:50A lot of stuff to do.
- 45:51Yeah.
- 45:52Alex Thorne is the reason for this bear market.
- 45:55Cheers, Alex.
- 45:56Thank you, Alex.
- 45:57Obviously, while Bitcoin's been crashing,
- 46:01It's not like the whole macro world has been super healthy.
- 46:04Like everything's going down at the moment.
- 46:05I don't know what gold's at the moment.
- 46:07But how much of that do you think is playing into this?
- 46:09Oh, macro is a huge part of it.
- 46:10So I would generally just go and listen to your podcast with Lynn,
- 46:14who's going to have far more of a...
- 46:15I consider myself a macro tourist,
- 46:17so I certainly rely on other people to think about it.
- 46:18But I also like considering these ideas.
- 46:21My general view is that liquidity just hasn't been ripping.
- 46:25There's been a whole bunch of things,
- 46:26TGA, sucking liquidity and all that stuff.
- 46:28um my kind of if i was to give it a general description we're at the very tail end of all
- 46:35the money that got pumped in in covid and it's now as alec was saying trying to just find the
- 46:41place where it's being treated best and it's a bit of a dog-eat-dog world uh i think actually
- 46:46if you look at the way that the bitcoin crypto world has operated this cycle there's been bitcoin
- 46:51that's run and like the occasional pump somewhere right meme coins meme well they had their time in
- 46:57the sun then what do you hear about them anymore yeah um solana had a time in the sun then it's
- 47:01who cares like eth got there with like 50 bucks of its all-time line is now in a horrendous bear
- 47:06market so there's all these things where like it's money just kind of rotates so if you if you think
- 47:10about if you're awash with liquidity rising tide lifts all boats yeah if there's a limited amount
- 47:16and it's starting to get scarce this is also why i think and txmc and i have a very same opinion
- 47:22here that altcoins were a zerp phenomenon yeah we are now we there's no narratives left there's no
- 47:27reason for anyone to like be bullish on this stuff so they're just kind of chasing that final pump
- 47:32everyone's now decided the z cash is because like we can't pump all the tokens we can't pump 10
- 47:37tokens let's all just get a marketing team and just pump one it's just a vc company it's a vc
- 47:42company so everyone just goes for the one thing because like at least we can pump one coin right
- 47:46can we do that have we got enough money left for that so i really think we're at like the tail end
- 47:50and also interest rates aren't zero.
- 47:52Yeah.
- 47:53And that's a hard, like, it's not a hard money environment.
- 47:57The dollar's still a shit coin, but it is a hard-earned money.
- 48:00So as a result of higher interest rates,
- 48:02people have to be more, you know, they have to think about.
- 48:05I mean, if interest rates went to 20%,
- 48:07you better believe that people would only be buying stuff
- 48:09that's worthwhile.
- 48:10Yeah.
- 48:10It's the same idea of moving to a Bitcoin standard.
- 48:12People are only going to invest their Bitcoin
- 48:13if it's a good idea.
- 48:15So in a harder money world where it's not Zerp,
- 48:18fart coin doesn't make as much sense so i think people are going to start having to think that way
- 48:23i think when i was speaking to lynn she had a load of interesting stuff that um i'd not really
- 48:27considered before so she first of all was talking about like liquidity potentially drying up she
- 48:34actually said it's not that bad a spot right now but like qt is coming to an end um and she was
- 48:39talking about this idea of qqe but following gdp um obviously in bitcoin people like to talk about
- 48:45these huge print events. And if we're not going into that world, and instead it's just going to
- 48:50track GDP at 3%, 4%, or whatever that is, I think that's going to change Bitcoin's market dynamic
- 48:56completely. And I think it might look more like 2025 for a longer period of time.
- 49:02Potentially, but at the same time. So I do think that everything about rate of change. So a lot of
- 49:07people like to look at absolute value, but in reality, the rate of change is in most things,
- 49:12engineering systems in markets, the whole lot, rate of change is actually more important. So
- 49:16we haven't seen an explosive growth in liquidity. But if you think about what is likely coming down
- 49:21the road, QT comes to an end. So at the margin, the rate of change is that's going to be
- 49:26less restrictive. They're going to have to go back to balance sheet expansion. And my general thesis,
- 49:32like in the macro world, I don't have the skills and the chops to get into the plumbing and
- 49:38understand sofa rates and all of that.
- 49:41I certainly, I mean, we work with the Bitcoin layer.
- 49:43We rely on Nick for a lot of those types of things.
- 49:45Nick's the guy for that, yeah.
- 49:45Nick's the guy for that, Linz for that.
- 49:47Luke, understanding the plumbing.
- 49:49But I'm just, I'm a simple dude.
- 49:51I just look at gold, and I think gold and Bitcoin
- 49:53are two very special assets because their prices
- 49:55are not just a price, they're actually information.
- 49:58When you see something happen on a Sunday night,
- 50:01you see all the TradFi guys posting the Bitcoin shopping,
- 50:04like, look at shitty store of value this is.
- 50:05I'm like, that's your equity portfolio tomorrow, sir.
- 50:07what you're looking at is a lens into what's coming down the road.
- 50:11So gold doesn't move until it wants to move.
- 50:15And when it moves, you should pay attention.
- 50:17And it's clearly moved.
- 50:18The most overheated it's been since 1979
- 50:21in terms of distance from the 200-week moving average,
- 50:24no matter how you want to cut it,
- 50:26it's telling us that the system is bankrupt
- 50:28and we have to move to a new reserve asset.
- 50:30That is a very important signal.
- 50:33In my world, gold tells me where we're going.
- 50:36Bitcoin is much more sensitive to the near term.
- 50:39And the near term, the rate of change of liquidity hasn't been great.
- 50:42It may actually be kind of hairy moving forward.
- 50:44You get any weakness in equity market, that falls off.
- 50:47Suddenly collateral goes down, bond volatility goes up,
- 50:50and everything just gets squeezed.
- 50:52That doesn't mean that the follow-up is not going to be tremendously on the side.
- 50:55So I do believe there is a convergence between Bitcoin and gold that shows up.
- 50:59But I think Bitcoin goes the road to get there.
- 51:01And it's been telling you that the equity market probably is due for a pullback as well,
- 51:04kind of front runs that liquidity profile.
- 51:07So my base case is that Bitcoin will probably lead us back out of this thing
- 51:11when all the equity guys are going, shit, call J-PAL, it's all over.
- 51:15And Bitcoin's going to start bottoming out and moving and say, here it comes.
- 51:18Do you know one of my favorite, this might be a really stupid take,
- 51:21but one thing that I quite often watch is,
- 51:24so UK markets opened five hours before New York.
- 51:27And it seems like for those first five hours,
- 51:30all that those markets are doing is basically guessing
- 51:33what the US markets are going to do when they open.
- 51:34So there's no signal there.
- 51:36It's like, we think it's going to go down
- 51:38so everything goes red or whatever.
- 51:39But if you watch that happen
- 51:41and then you compare it to Bitcoin,
- 51:42like Bitcoin is actually the signal.
- 51:44And I don't know why the people trading UK equities
- 51:47aren't just looking at what Bitcoin's doing
- 51:49and be like, today's going to be a green day.
- 51:50Absolutely. No, I fully agree.
- 51:51And like on Mondays,
- 51:53I often see the Australian stock market
- 51:54doesn't know what to do
- 51:55because it's been the weekend.
- 51:56And then on Tuesday,
- 51:58America's done something in Australia.
- 51:59It's like, oh yeah, we got to sell off as well.
- 52:01Like something wrong.
- 52:02So it very much, it's a response type factor.
- 52:04I love the idea that Bitcoin is basically just a global prediction market.
- 52:08It's the index.
- 52:09And I think that is coming more and more into people's view.
- 52:12Like, again, let's think about where we are right now.
- 52:15We're at a point where sovereigns are taking positions in Bitcoin, right?
- 52:20We're 16 years into this experiment.
- 52:22We don't have to convince anybody that Bitcoin is going to stick around.
- 52:25Even the bears that are out there are like, okay, now it's starting to get a bit undervalued versus gold, right?
- 52:31It's probably going to come back.
- 52:32it's a cockroach that keeps coming back
- 52:34from these 80% drawdowns.
- 52:35Like, oh, it might go down further.
- 52:37It's like, yeah, but they also know
- 52:38that they should probably buy that dip too.
- 52:40I think even Andy Constant bought this dip.
- 52:42Yes.
- 52:42No, even guys who don't like it,
- 52:45like Peter Schiff,
- 52:47eventually he's going to realize
- 52:48that he should probably just,
- 52:50probably should just actually.
- 52:51And a couple of,
- 52:51or one of our orange subscribers
- 52:53said something very interesting,
- 52:54which is,
- 52:55I don't care about Bitcoin tops at all.
- 52:58I care about the bottoms.
- 52:59That's all.
- 53:00And these guys are like serious
- 53:02serious traders and so that's a really interesting way to start thinking about bitcoin especially as
- 53:06a hodler investor where is the bot like as long as the floor keeps rising over the long arc of time
- 53:12that is actually the success metric of bitcoin like there's always a fair value of bitcoin that
- 53:17and the price is like oscillating around it up and down up and down i will kind of a bit too high
- 53:22this is the way i frame it in my mind and now we're just finding that fair value and all the smart
- 53:26money they literally just go where's the bottom that's all i want to know i just want to know when
- 53:31And finally, after this really human organic hype cycle comes over
- 53:35and they're finally back at that fair value,
- 53:37which Bitcoin should probably have just been priced
- 53:38at that level this whole time anyway,
- 53:40if it was like not a human market,
- 53:42that's all they care about.
- 53:43So it's super interesting to think of that way,
- 53:46which is why this bottom formation period
- 53:47is going to be like super exciting.
- 53:49I'm super keen to just watch this bottom happen
- 53:52and be hammered out
- 53:53because that is the fair value of Bitcoin
- 53:55that is now being reset.
- 53:58So we're in like a new chapter now.
- 54:00And this is where you start thinking about the psychology
- 54:02of resetting cycles. We were talking about this
- 54:04morning, there's this process where everybody
- 54:06over the next couple of days,
- 54:09you were using the term, it's going to
- 54:10have to grieve this red candle.
- 54:12We need to grieve a little bit. So people are going to grieve,
- 54:14but even just having this... What does grieve mean?
- 54:16Go sideways for a bit? No, no, no. People need to
- 54:18come to terms with the fact that we're 80K. Personally.
- 54:20Yeah, yeah, they're going to come to terms with it. So I think
- 54:22people are going to go through that process. I mean, even just
- 54:24having this conversation, I'm like, fuck, I'm actually
- 54:26more bullish than I was this morning, and I bought the dip this morning.
- 54:28I don't know. When you see a 30% down and you've invested and been watching this thing and like
- 54:32been a fan and really excited, and then you kind of get denied and then Thanksgiving's coming up,
- 54:37Christmas is coming up. You have to see your family that you've been bullish to.
- 54:41You all just, you have this heavy, heavy heart.
- 54:43You sold them on it last year at a hundred and something K.
- 54:46Exactly. And you have this heavy heart, like especially men. We don't take the time to just
- 54:50sit and feel that. Oh yeah. I kind of have to like feel the loss and like breathe through it,
- 54:56talk to some friends, but you need to do that ASAP
- 54:59instead of sitting on X and just watching all these charts.
- 55:02Because every single person who was saying
- 55:03it's going to go to 250K is now calling a bottom
- 55:06and calling something.
- 55:07Calling for 50.
- 55:07We're going to go straight back up.
- 55:08It's fine.
- 55:09We're going to be 100K in no time.
- 55:10You need to stop looking at all that.
- 55:12You need to grieve a little bit.
- 55:13I think, yeah, and it's okay.
- 55:15It sucks.
- 55:16It's okay.
- 55:16It's a new chapter.
- 55:17It's going to be exciting.
- 55:18And that's the thing, bear markets.
- 55:20And I think the correct way to think about
- 55:22this current market structure is to think about it
- 55:24as a bear market.
- 55:24and do not anchor to bear market must go down 75%
- 55:28or must go down 55%.
- 55:30Drop those type of metrics.
- 55:32Bear markets are things that reset investor expectations.
- 55:36I think most people, after we hammer out this floor,
- 55:40will have reset their expectation to say,
- 55:43okay, we're probably not going to a million dollars
- 55:45on the fourth year of this halving cycle.
- 55:47People are going to have reset expectations.
- 55:49In fact, people are going to probably have expectations
- 55:51that go too far the other way.
- 55:54Everyone's going to converge
- 55:55and you'll start seeing those dudes on Reddit
- 55:57being like, I've sold everything.
- 55:58I'll buy it back at 12K, right?
- 56:00That's what we saw back down there at 15K
- 56:02when FTX blew up.
- 56:03When you start seeing everyone over-correcting
- 56:06in the wrong direction,
- 56:08we have now reset expectations,
- 56:10which is the job of bear markets.
- 56:12Probably a few treasury companies have to puke as well,
- 56:14but that's a different topic.
- 56:15Do you know, can you remember
- 56:17what we closed the year at in 2024?
- 56:19What, like, the final price of Bitcoin?
- 56:20I guess it was 92 something, I think.
- 56:23Okay.
- 56:23Do you know the thing that I'm most concerned about
- 56:25is that HODL's green, green, green, red is wrong.
- 56:28We need to get above 92K by the end of the year
- 56:30to keep that meme alive.
- 56:32If we get above 92K,
- 56:33I mean, that's a pretty significant bounce.
- 56:34I mean, again, 95 is a very important level.
- 56:37The Bulls have a lot of work to repair this price chart.
- 56:39No question.
- 56:41Not impossible,
- 56:41but I'm not anticipating all-time highs this year.
- 56:45I know some people-
- 56:46Oh, no, me neither.
- 56:47No.
- 56:47However, I also wouldn't be-
- 56:50Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised.
- 56:51I mean, my base case has been the true market mean.
- 56:53Now, again, true market mean, 82K,
- 56:54that doesn't mean that's like the wick of the bottom.
- 56:57We've historically traded below it,
- 56:59but that is the zone where investors
- 57:01are going to be so sensitive
- 57:03that they're going to have to reconnect.
- 57:05So if you think about an ETF investor,
- 57:07they've been DCAing since they went live.
- 57:10They are now underwater or at their cost basis.
- 57:12They now have a decision to make.
- 57:14Do I still like Bitcoin?
- 57:15I liked it at 95 and 100 and 110.
- 57:18And I liked it at 70.
- 57:19and I liked it at 45.
- 57:20Do I still like it?
- 57:22And if the answer is yes,
- 57:23we'll start seeing the ETF outflows slow.
- 57:26We'll start seeing realized profits on chain slowing,
- 57:29which we're seeing already.
- 57:30We'll see the people who bought the top
- 57:31and don't have the conviction,
- 57:32realize losses will spike higher.
- 57:34We saw a billion dollars yesterday.
- 57:36I'm sure it's higher today.
- 57:38We'll start seeing these signs of like a reset.
- 57:42People who bought high are going to get out.
- 57:43The people who bought high and kind of don't care
- 57:46are going to hodl.
- 57:47Long-term supply will start climbing.
- 57:49We'll probably start seeing bear market formations,
- 57:52I think, hammering out now.
- 57:54I thought back in 2022, the 17K,
- 57:59the first time we got them, three arrows blew up.
- 58:01That's when I think bottom formation started.
- 58:04And every metric I look at says that's when
- 58:06bottom formation started.
- 58:08I have a feeling that this might be,
- 58:11and perhaps with that wick to just get rid
- 58:13of all the leverage, I want to see all the degenerate
- 58:14leverage guys get washed out first.
- 58:16I have a feeling somewhat similar to that.
- 58:19We still went down lower because of FTX,
- 58:21but it was like down sideways
- 58:23and then straight back up.
- 58:24It was like a hyper extension
- 58:25and a lot of buying happened there.
- 58:27But bottom formation,
- 58:29I don't think we're too far away
- 58:30from starting to hammer out that flaw.
- 58:33That's my base case.
- 58:33Again, base case is just base case,
- 58:35but that's where I sit at the moment.
- 58:36Based on nothing analytical,
- 58:38I think we might be getting close to the bottom
- 58:39just because I've started seeing
- 58:40the flood of texts come in from people.
- 58:42I actually got my favorite one yesterday
- 58:43from one of my friends.
- 58:44He's been in Bitcoin for a little while,
- 58:45but he's not like a full-on Bitcoiner.
- 58:47I just got a text from him saying,
- 58:49why Bitcoin cheap?
- 58:50I think when you start seeing that,
- 58:52you're probably getting towards the bottom,
- 58:55at least from a sentiment perspective.
- 58:56Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- 58:57And bear markets aren't a drawdown percentage.
- 59:00They're not anything other than
- 59:01resetting investor expectations.
- 59:03What resets expectations?
- 59:05People flying high
- 59:06and then being brought right back down to reality.
- 59:09Once your feet are on the ground,
- 59:11you then go, okay, we're at 80K.
- 59:13I'm going to accept that we're at 80K.
- 59:15you're telling me if we go down to 50k,
- 59:17I can buy 0.1 with a 5k slug?
- 59:21I don't think we go there.
- 59:22So therefore, am I happy with 60?
- 59:23Am I happy with 70?
- 59:25Am I happy to start just like DCAing now
- 59:26and like taking nibbles?
- 59:27Like you start making decisions accordingly
- 59:29once you have just come back to reality
- 59:31and said, well, look, we're not at 100k anymore.
- 59:33So one thing's for sure.
- 59:35The top may be in,
- 59:37but we're not at the top right now.
- 59:38Yeah.
- 59:38Once people start doing the calculations
- 59:40to figure out their net worth,
- 59:41that's normally a sign
- 59:42that we might be getting too close to the top.
- 59:44Well, I mean, for me, I knew that the gold had hit its top of 4,300.
- 59:48Why?
- 59:49Because I updated my precious metals spreadsheet three times in a single day, right?
- 59:53Normally, I update it once a week at most.
- 59:55Did you sell any?
- 59:56No, I didn't.
- 59:57And the main reason is a tax thing.
- 59:59I still think the gold's going to have a good year.
- 1:00:00So for me, it just wasn't, it's not a good year for me to sell the gold.
- 1:00:04I thought about it for sure.
- 1:00:06I'm actually kind of thinking about like, even can I make the tax work?
- 1:00:09Because I like would rotate the gold into Bitcoin now.
- 1:00:11So I'm actually playing around with that idea.
- 1:00:13That's certainly where I sit,
- 1:00:14but I knew that it was the top for the meantime
- 1:00:16because I changed my spreadsheet three times.
- 1:00:19I'm like, that's it, it's over.
- 1:00:21So going, like there'll be a lot of people out there
- 1:00:23panicking at the moment.
- 1:00:24Sure.
- 1:00:25What would your kind of message to them be?
- 1:00:27So I think really you got to just,
- 1:00:29why are you here in the first place, right?
- 1:00:32Most often your expectations don't align
- 1:00:35with your timeframe.
- 1:00:36So a lot of people who buy
- 1:00:39and then the price goes down straight away feel bad,
- 1:00:42but you have to remember who did you buy that for when i'm stacking sats i'm buying them for like
- 1:00:48my future self in many many years i'm buying them for my son who's you know 10 weeks old i didn't
- 1:00:54know you said you had a son publicly no no no so i'm 10 week old boy at home um congratulations
- 1:00:59he's gonna be 18 it's the best fucking thing ever isn't it it is no it totally is so he's gonna be
- 1:01:0318 before he starts seeing any of those sats i'm like if i'm buying an 80k 82k and it goes to 70
- 1:01:09Where is it going to be when he's 18 years old?
- 1:01:12Substantially higher.
- 1:01:13We talked about this when we were moving our retirement fund across to Bitcoin That was the case It like okay I going to retire in 30 years I going to need this in 30 years Where the hell is Bitcoin going to be in 30 years time Much higher
- 1:01:25Yeah.
- 1:01:26I mean, I do the same thing.
- 1:01:28Since the day my daughter was born, she has a DCA that just hits every week.
- 1:01:31And like, if you're buying Bitcoin for that long term, just who cares about this?
- 1:01:37Exactly.
- 1:01:37So I think first things first, just accept what has already happened, right?
- 1:01:43Go through the grieving process.
- 1:01:44If you bought the top, it's okay.
- 1:01:46There'll be many tops.
- 1:01:47There's always many tops in Bitcoin.
- 1:01:49And you have to then make, I think,
- 1:01:50really the right way to frame this up,
- 1:01:52no one can predict the future,
- 1:01:54but if you prepare for it,
- 1:01:55like I've been talking about this 82K level ad nauseum
- 1:01:58when we're up at 100-something,
- 1:02:00and it seems completely irrational to get there,
- 1:02:03but the idea is that by the time we get there,
- 1:02:05we've already, like, our subscribers
- 1:02:07have already mentally processed it.
- 1:02:10So the grieving period for a lot of people
- 1:02:12who have no idea what's going on
- 1:02:13is going to be months. And what's going to happen is they're going to get increasingly bearish as
- 1:02:17the bottom gets hammered out and every sell-off goes down lower and lower and they're going to
- 1:02:21get disillusioned out and they're going to walk away. What you actually need to do is think about
- 1:02:26what would happen if we go to 80K. You can't control the markets like the tide. You get sucked
- 1:02:30out to see if you swim against it. The only thing you can control your decisions. I've already made
- 1:02:36my decisions at 115K when I sold my MSCR. I said, I'm going to start allocating that capital.
- 1:02:42if we get anywhere within a sniff of that true market mean.
- 1:02:45Here we are.
- 1:02:46What am I doing?
- 1:02:47All the money I sold for my MSTO is now allocated.
- 1:02:49And now any income that I kept coming in, straight in,
- 1:02:53because I believe this is a good place to buy.
- 1:02:55The funny thing as well is like when Bitcoin is flying,
- 1:02:57when it's 120K, people are like,
- 1:02:58oh, I wish it was 80K still.
- 1:03:00And then it gets here and everyone panics.
- 1:03:01Like instead of grieving,
- 1:03:02you should just celebrate the opportunity to buy more.
- 1:03:04If you're buying for the right reason,
- 1:03:05you're buying for the right timeframe,
- 1:03:06then just buy more.
- 1:03:08Absolutely.
- 1:03:08And for me, like I'm a simple dude, I don't trade.
- 1:03:10A lot of people think that you should trade.
- 1:03:14Trading is a horrible sport.
- 1:03:15I don't.
- 1:03:16It is a horrible sport.
- 1:03:17Everyone's tried to do it.
- 1:03:18I learned my lesson in 2017.
- 1:03:19Yep.
- 1:03:20You've got some stories for it.
- 1:03:21Oh my God.
- 1:03:22Same.
- 1:03:23Same.
- 1:03:24So trading is a horrible sport.
- 1:03:25It consumes, like for me, if I put a $100 perp on,
- 1:03:29I don't care about my net worth, which is 90% Bitcoin.
- 1:03:32I'm the same.
- 1:03:32It's so weird.
- 1:03:33I'm worried about the 30 bucks that I'm down on my perp.
- 1:03:35It's because it's gambling.
- 1:03:36I was talking to, me and Pete were in Vegas recently,
- 1:03:39And he was like, we were talking about betting, you know, $100 on blackjack or whatever.
- 1:03:43And he was like, why am I more worried about this when my net worth in Bitcoin is fluctuating
- 1:03:47in orders of magnitude more than that every day?
- 1:03:50Because you believe in it.
- 1:03:51So a few kind of tips for people.
- 1:03:53One, if you're levered and you're looking at a liquidation level that's like anywhere
- 1:03:56close to this, just sort it out.
- 1:03:59Don't dick around with it.
- 1:04:00Sort it out.
- 1:04:02As the market belts out of bottom, work out who you're buying for and what time frame.
- 1:04:08allow yourself to just like realize that we're not at the top anymore right so you now have to ask
- 1:04:14are we going much lower and if so by how much and like as a hodler you never buy and it goes
- 1:04:19straight up from there you always go down five ten percent so work out what your pain threshold is
- 1:04:24there is a thing called pain to the upside it's rare it's rare most of the time pain is always to
- 1:04:31the downside because you're allocated and the people saying the pain is to the upside generally
- 1:04:34is because they're super long
- 1:04:35and they want to tell Peter Schiff that he's wrong.
- 1:04:37Pain is usually to the downside
- 1:04:39and markets love to hunt pain.
- 1:04:41So if your liquidation level is close,
- 1:04:43get rid of it.
- 1:04:44If anything in your portfolio,
- 1:04:45and this is just like a general piece of market advice,
- 1:04:48if anything in your portfolio has you unable to sleep
- 1:04:51or you think about it every single day,
- 1:04:53you are overexposed.
- 1:04:55It's just really simple.
- 1:04:56If you are thinking about this thing
- 1:04:57and it is like drawing your mind power,
- 1:05:00for me, I don't think about my Bitcoin or my gold ever,
- 1:05:03honestly.
- 1:05:03so I avoid buying the tops, right?
- 1:05:06That's, for me, if I just stopped buying high
- 1:05:08and really I didn't buy very much above 100K,
- 1:05:11if I stopped buying high,
- 1:05:12I have cash to buy when it goes lower
- 1:05:15because it always does.
- 1:05:16So that's the same thing as selling the top,
- 1:05:18just minus the tax bill.
- 1:05:20Just understand who you're buying for,
- 1:05:21what your timeframe is.
- 1:05:22If your position is keeping you awake,
- 1:05:24you're too exposed, make some decisions
- 1:05:26and try and make them months ahead
- 1:05:28when you actually need them.
- 1:05:29Totally.
- 1:05:30I don't know how long ago it was.
- 1:05:32It was maybe, was it about two years ago we made our bet for the end of this year?
- 1:05:37It would have been 2024, because I think we would have just started Check on Chain when
- 1:05:41we had that.
- 1:05:41So it would have been early 2024, so maybe 18 months ago, a bit more.
- 1:05:45And mine and Pete's guesses look absolutely moronic at this point.
- 1:05:49I think I said 282k by the end of this year.
- 1:05:52And it was the maximum price by 2025.
- 1:05:54Yeah, Pete said 350k.
- 1:05:56And mine was 250, which to be fair, I think like back then, it's much harder to read this
- 1:06:01thing, right?
- 1:06:01The ETFs have just gone live.
- 1:06:03$250 was where I kind of said
- 1:06:05that's probably as high as we go in 2025.
- 1:06:08However, I would say a couple of months later,
- 1:06:10a lot of people have been calling me bearish all cycle
- 1:06:12because I said like $150.
- 1:06:14I'm one of the people who's been calling you bearish.
- 1:06:16I was saying $150 is, and to be fair,
- 1:06:19I wrote a piece at the top, right,
- 1:06:21where I said it's called Add Another Trillion,
- 1:06:22where I was like, you know, honestly,
- 1:06:23I think we deserve a run at $150.
- 1:06:25And that was because back in January,
- 1:06:27this is looking at capital flows
- 1:06:28and how much money had come into the ETFs and whatever.
- 1:06:31And my view was when we were at 100K in January,
- 1:06:33I don't think we deserve a run at 150.
- 1:06:35I don't think we've had the inflows yet.
- 1:06:37When we got to like, it was like 118,
- 1:06:39we're going for the second all-time high.
- 1:06:41I wrote a piece saying, look,
- 1:06:42I think we deserve a run at 150.
- 1:06:43We got to 126 and that was the end of it.
- 1:06:46The reality is we then have to adjust.
- 1:06:48And by the time we had that second all-time high fail,
- 1:06:51we had the liquidation event.
- 1:06:53By the time we got to 115, 113, 112,
- 1:06:56I'm like, I think something's up.
- 1:06:58So you got to update your prize and say, look,
- 1:07:00I still think we deserve a run at 150.
- 1:07:03People call me a bear
- 1:07:04because that's not high enough.
- 1:07:05It's like, yeah, but that is also the level
- 1:07:07where statistically speaking,
- 1:07:08people were going to offload.
- 1:07:09It just turns out they were offloading at 126
- 1:07:10rather than at 150.
- 1:07:12And to be honest, through the whole hundred zone.
- 1:07:15So you got to be flexible, right?
- 1:07:16You got to be flexible when you're thinking.
- 1:07:18And like Lynn said in the show we did,
- 1:07:19there's probably some amount of self-fulfilling prophecy
- 1:07:23that people think a cycle still alive
- 1:07:25so they start selling.
- 1:07:26But I think here right now,
- 1:07:28we should make our prediction for 2026.
- 1:07:30Oh, we can have, so I owe you 100k sats.
- 1:07:33Pete owes you 100k sats.
- 1:07:34I'm willing to concede that here.
- 1:07:35You're conceding December already.
- 1:07:36I don't think we're going to go to 282k
- 1:07:38by the end of December.
- 1:07:40What are you thinking?
- 1:07:42Honestly, I actually think 2026,
- 1:07:44I mean, it's going to be driven a lot by macro,
- 1:07:46no question.
- 1:07:47I think 2026 is actually going to be constructive,
- 1:07:49honestly, because I can't see a world
- 1:07:52where the liquidity doesn't come back in.
- 1:07:54I do think the Fed's going to have to expand
- 1:07:56their balance sheet.
- 1:07:57So if we think about like 150,
- 1:07:59I think probably happens, honestly.
- 1:08:02And the thing is, now that we've had this
- 1:08:04at another trillion, we've had the capital flows
- 1:08:07in my mental model to actually justify a run to 150.
- 1:08:12I don't think we had that in January.
- 1:08:14Let's have another year of bottoming out,
- 1:08:1780K, maybe it takes a couple of months.
- 1:08:20By the time we start drifting up towards the all-time high,
- 1:08:24the capital flows that I personally, and I stand by this,
- 1:08:26I still think that the capital flows justify that move to 150.
- 1:08:29there's going to be more capital coming in by that point.
- 1:08:31So then you start talking about, well,
- 1:08:33maybe the levels start drifting higher.
- 1:08:35So look, 200 would be fantastic.
- 1:08:38I do think it's going to be a positive year
- 1:08:40and it's a positive year coming off something like 80K.
- 1:08:43So for me, if I'm buying 80K
- 1:08:45and we're going to go up to like 150, 160, I'll take it.
- 1:08:48So look, let's stick with 150 as a level
- 1:08:51because we're talking about a 12 month timeframe.
- 1:08:53I think we could probably get there, truthfully.
- 1:08:55I hate price predictions, but they're quite fun.
- 1:08:58But it is a bit of fun.
- 1:08:58Like the thing, when I look at next year,
- 1:09:02Jerome Powell's out.
- 1:09:03Someone's going to come in, step in at the Fed,
- 1:09:05who is probably going to be more in line with Trump,
- 1:09:08if not just an outright Trump stooge.
- 1:09:10They've got midterms.
- 1:09:12They're going to want the economy flying.
- 1:09:13Like I can see a lot of reasons why macro starts going ballistic.
- 1:09:17Show me the incentive and I'll show you the result.
- 1:09:19I'll go higher than you just because I may as well keep the theme going.
- 1:09:21You want to get your 100k sats back.
- 1:09:23I'll go 190.
- 1:09:27Ooh.
- 1:09:27yeah well i mean you mentioned midterms um i think trump and the republicans are going to have a
- 1:09:32really rough 2026 like i i don't know if they're going to be able to keep the house um they have a
- 1:09:39stacked house right and senate if that flips to dem oof i don't know if that's looking good
- 1:09:44especially for ai and that type of trade so for me to make a prediction where bitcoin bottoms is
- 1:09:50super important if we bottom around the 80s yeah easily we're gonna surpass all-time high next year
- 1:09:57i think i think but it depends how low we go so my prediction is gonna be 126k just just tag just
- 1:10:06tag just tag by like end of year by this time pull an eath get 50 50 bucks below your and then
- 1:10:12we're gonna have this discussion again and we're gonna be like so now like it's the same as last
- 1:10:17year what the hell i feel like that's the type of vibe that i'm feeling is probably statistically
- 1:10:21that's probably the best guess i would say so yeah that's good we've got a nice spread actually
- 1:10:25there so there's enough gap between them i hope you're right i do too um is like if i would never
- 1:10:32have guessed we were going to end this year below 100 when we made that no that's that is surprising
- 1:10:36yeah it's uh it's exciting especially inflation adjusted yeah and to be like that's the thing
- 1:10:43right when you're at 126 it's actually not the worst year right i think a lot of people
- 1:10:47expected substantially higher, but like 126 is still within like reasonable bounds.
- 1:10:54But coming down to 80, I think that's surprised a lot of people, no doubt.
- 1:10:58Do you think that we're going to see a rotation from gold into Bitcoin?
- 1:11:01Oh, totally.
- 1:11:02Totally.
- 1:11:02I mean, I'm literally thinking about, do I take an extra tax hit to do so?
- 1:11:07But you're an outlier there because you're obviously, you're a Bitcoiner who has a bit
- 1:11:10of gold.
- 1:11:10Most people are gold bugs that maybe don't have any exposure to Bitcoin.
- 1:11:13Yes, but at the same time, people love momentum.
- 1:11:17And I think if we find a floor and then Bitcoin starts moving, because again, once the thing starts moving, everyone's going to go, oh, that cockroach didn't die.
- 1:11:26I get, oh shit, I sold one with Bitcoin.
- 1:11:27Maybe we should get back in.
- 1:11:28Smart money wants to find the bottom, man.
- 1:11:30Totally.
- 1:11:30They don't want to, they don't care.
- 1:11:32They want to find the bottom.
- 1:11:32I can't stop thinking about the just sheer magnitude of selling.
- 1:11:37Who are the buyers?
- 1:11:39Yeah.
- 1:11:39Someone serious.
- 1:11:40It's someone very, very serious.
- 1:11:41And we're going to find out at some point, but it's someone very, very serious.
- 1:11:44has to be because otherwise we'd be at zero.
- 1:11:46You know what I mean?
- 1:11:47Like the scale of it is just too big.
- 1:11:49When you say sovereigns,
- 1:11:50you mentioned that a couple of times in the show.
- 1:11:51If you had to guess,
- 1:11:53what kind of sovereigns do you think are buying?
- 1:11:56It's not some peewee country in Europe.
- 1:11:59You think it could be like Gulf States?
- 1:12:01So my base case is it's going to be
- 1:12:03either the biggest countries
- 1:12:05or the smallest ones that have nothing to lose.
- 1:12:08They're the most likely.
- 1:12:09Like Australia ain't buying Bitcoin anytime soon.
- 1:12:12Yeah, neither is the UK.
- 1:12:13Neither is the UK.
- 1:12:14Neither is like probably Germany sold theirs.
- 1:12:17I think these like middle of the road countries,
- 1:12:19they don't have the incentive.
- 1:12:21The little guys have the incentive
- 1:12:23because they could get shut out of the financial system.
- 1:12:25They could also just like, you know,
- 1:12:26like El Salvador, they want to get ahead in some way.
- 1:12:29And then you've got the big dogs, the Chinas,
- 1:12:31the US, the Russias.
- 1:12:33These are like the big countries
- 1:12:34who are like they have a real incentive,
- 1:12:35which is we need to save our money somewhere.
- 1:12:38Do you not even think like Australia's sovereign wealth fund
- 1:12:40could be buying?
- 1:12:41I don't think they're that smart.
- 1:12:43Because it's interesting. Was it the Belgian sovereign wealth fund that bought some recently?
- 1:12:46I'm not sure.
- 1:12:47I could be wrong on that, but a country like that has recently come out and said they bought Bitcoin.
- 1:12:51Was it Czech Republic?
- 1:12:52That would make sense. Yeah.
- 1:12:53Yeah. They're pretty bullish on Bitcoin, I think.
- 1:12:55I feel like any carbon neutral government isn't going to be able to buy it yet.
- 1:12:59Do you think that they still care about that?
- 1:13:01They don't understand yet. Like, especially Australia, like they'll get one bit of pushback,
- 1:13:07just it burns all this. And then they'll be like, okay, we can't touch it.
- 1:13:10Yeah, even though the economy's run on oil.
- 1:13:12There's a good story.
- 1:13:13There's a good story.
- 1:13:14There's up in Newcastle, which is about an hour north of Sydney,
- 1:13:18there's a bit of an uproar because it's a little bit old now,
- 1:13:22but there's these wind turbines that have been sitting on the docks
- 1:13:24for like years.
- 1:13:25And there's all these like government proposals about they want
- 1:13:28to build offshore wind turbines.
- 1:13:29People are like, no, the whales and blah, blah, blah.
- 1:13:31It's finally come out that those wind turbines actually aren't
- 1:13:34for the offshore.
- 1:13:35They're actually for like an inland wind turbine,
- 1:13:38but they can't fit them on the trucks because they don't
- 1:13:40fit on the roads. So these wind turbine blades are just rotting on the docks because they
- 1:13:45can't move them. That's your Australian government in a nutshell. So I don't think they'd be
- 1:13:50clinging to Bitcoin anytime soon.
- 1:13:51That's almost any government in a nutshell, I think.
- 1:13:53It's kind of sad.
- 1:13:54It's going to be, this year, even though it's been maybe disappointing from a bull market
- 1:13:59perspective, is probably the most interesting year in terms of what Bitcoin is going to
- 1:14:03look like in the future.
- 1:14:04A total reshaping of, and that's what I mean, the three pillars. The ETFs changed a lot,
- 1:14:09not because they're like the biggest buyer,
- 1:14:12not because they've changed market structure
- 1:14:14or the way the on-chain works.
- 1:14:15Like from my view, they're 20% of the demand.
- 1:14:18They changed the regulatory understanding.
- 1:14:21They allowed institutions to come in.
- 1:14:24They can put on basis trades.
- 1:14:25They can put on long positions.
- 1:14:27The iBit options are now 60% of the underlying.
- 1:14:31So you've got 60 cents of options.
- 1:14:33Now they can buy Bitcoin and rent it out with covered calls.
- 1:14:37And we're going to see a lot of that.
- 1:14:38So I think that the ETFs just completely changed the perception and the access.
- 1:14:43The hold the sell side and the great rotation has genuinely been a changing of the guard.
- 1:14:49It'll take time to process it and for the market to hammer out a floor and find that
- 1:14:52new equilibrium, but that has changed the holder base.
- 1:14:55And then the world of options is going to be very, very interesting moving forward.
- 1:14:58It's going to change market structure forever, already has arguably, but we're going to see
- 1:15:02a lot more of that.
- 1:15:03Again, gold's options are 120% of the underlying for GLD.
- 1:15:08If you look at iBit, we're halfway there.
- 1:15:09So they're going to get much, much bigger.
- 1:15:11Well, I think, so we should talk about why we're here.
- 1:15:14Oh, yes.
- 1:15:15Because there's a shitcoin conference going on in Sydney at the moment.
- 1:15:19I had no plans to come, but a few of my friends were coming down.
- 1:15:21I was like, okay, I'll come to a show.
- 1:15:23We can hang out, have a few beers.
- 1:15:25But I went to the opening party last night, and it really surprised me.
- 1:15:31So this was a room full of shitcoiners.
- 1:15:33A couple of people came over, joined in with our group, and started talking.
- 1:15:36and they couldn't understand why we only cared about Bitcoin.
- 1:15:41Crazy, right?
- 1:15:41Like, I don't know.
- 1:15:43I think we're really insured.
- 1:15:44We're in a bit of an echo chamber with like the Bitcoin community.
- 1:15:48Like we think everyone thinks like this.
- 1:15:49So being in a room with people that are like talking about meme coins
- 1:15:52and like whatever shit going under the sun
- 1:15:54and then them totally not getting why you're into boomer coin.
- 1:15:59Like how weird is that that still exists
- 1:16:01despite the market just absolutely tanking?
- 1:16:03Totally.
- 1:16:04And I tapped it, Matt, because I very much view being here as a business maneuver because
- 1:16:10I just want to get exposed because the Australian Bitcoin scene is actually very strong.
- 1:16:15There's some great Bitcoins.
- 1:16:16The great Bitcoins in Australia.
- 1:16:17The Bitcoin Bush Bash is fantastic.
- 1:16:19Bitcoin Alive is an actual conference, Bitcoin only.
- 1:16:21Really, really good.
- 1:16:23So the Bitcoin contingent, albeit small, right?
- 1:16:25The conference gets 400 people there.
- 1:16:27So it's a small, which by the way, makes them better.
- 1:16:29Yeah.
- 1:16:29Small, small.
- 1:16:30But they're like hardcore.
- 1:16:32Hardcore and really high signal.
- 1:16:33Yeah.
- 1:16:34But the Australian crypto scene has no idea we exist
- 1:16:37and we don't care that they exist.
- 1:16:39So I very much view this as like, it's like going to the zoo.
- 1:16:43And we were talking this morning about like the impacts of AI.
- 1:16:45And I'm a little bit more skeptical about like how much AI is going to,
- 1:16:52it's going to be transformative, no question.
- 1:16:54I don't trust it for anything that I use it for.
- 1:16:57Like it makes mistakes all the time and I find I'm constantly checking it.
- 1:17:00But I also like to think.
- 1:17:01like thinking is my one of my favorite things to do so for me i actually don't like outsourcing my
- 1:17:06thinking so for me as a professional ai doesn't help me but then we talk about like the zoo that
- 1:17:12we're about to go and see you then realize where the actual bell curve is people still think that
- 1:17:17ripple is going to be a thing um i was talking to a mate the other day who said that like the
- 1:17:21solana and the ripple etfs had really really strong inflows like the best etfs of the year
- 1:17:25and I'm like, okay, so AI may be retarded,
- 1:17:30but so are the people that's going to replace.
- 1:17:33So I'm like, it's actually not that AI is great.
- 1:17:36It's that the bell curve is kind of challenging
- 1:17:38and we're about to go and look at it.
- 1:17:39Yeah, the bar's not that high.
- 1:17:40I know, that's the scary thing about it.
- 1:17:42I was there for like an hour last night
- 1:17:44and then people around me were talking about shit coins.
- 1:17:46I was just like, I'm just going to go home
- 1:17:47and watch the ice shoes.
- 1:17:48I literally just bailed and came home
- 1:17:50and watched the cricket.
- 1:17:52Honestly, it's just fiat.
- 1:17:53that they're just stocks that can pump and make Aussies love just making money like we're a super
- 1:17:58rich country everyone just you just invest in ETFs here or property and there's just this new thing
- 1:18:04that's just stock it's just stocks yeah so people just can get rich off of it it's just rich guys
- 1:18:09doing rich things yeah they don't care about the fundamentals like there are no fun the reason they
- 1:18:13don't understand bitcoin is because they have never actually studied the thing all they know is that
- 1:18:17is this thing going to go up like that's kind of the questions that they have with each other is
- 1:18:20like is it going to pump like we don't talk about that with bitcoin really we like the fundamentals
- 1:18:25of bitcoin are why we're here and just a lot of people don't have the time or i don't know they
- 1:18:30don't have the uh long-term vision to actually buy into that so they just don't understand it
- 1:18:35like why would you buy that it's not it's not just going to rip a million percent it's like
- 1:18:39it's not about that well i've actually been enjoying because you've recently been going down
- 1:18:43the level six matthew mcconnell scale like getting into like the why bitcoin like you've been in the
- 1:18:48industry for years now. Ages, yeah. Tell us about like going into the actual Bitcoin rabbit hole,
- 1:18:54because it is, you go through this phase and it's very nostalgic. As you were telling me,
- 1:18:57the stories are like, damn, I remember when I went down the stairs. Oh, the great old days.
- 1:19:00Yeah. We like understanding mining and all that. Yeah. No, I mean, I got a little too attached to
- 1:19:06the price with Bitcoin and short term, and I really needed a way to zoom out a little bit,
- 1:19:11because Bitcoin is not a 2025 asset. You do not buy it. I mean, if you're a hodler and you're
- 1:19:17trying to accumulate for your 10-year self, price movements today shouldn't affect you as much as
- 1:19:23they do. And they were affecting me a lot. So I was like, I need to study UTXOs. I need to study
- 1:19:29how the blockchain actually works. I need to go deep, read the Stoshi emails, really understand
- 1:19:35the fundamentals to build my trust again in the actual asset itself, in the system, in the software,
- 1:19:41in the group of nodes in the world.
- 1:19:43And I just got like,
- 1:19:44I reinvigorated my excitement for Bitcoin
- 1:19:47because I'm like, no, this thing fucking is amazing.
- 1:19:50Was there anything when you were doing that
- 1:19:51that was like, holy shit?
- 1:19:53Like, even if it was just like learning something again
- 1:19:56or was there something that really sort of settled you?
- 1:19:58Oh my God.
- 1:20:00Just like the brilliance of the design of nodes and mining
- 1:20:05and how multiple nodes can have different copies
- 1:20:09of the ledger. And then you must require one node to decide that this is the next block. Is everyone
- 1:20:18happy with this? Yes. If something goes wrong, it auto-corrects itself. And then I was imagining
- 1:20:24how banks manage their ledgers and humans manage ledgers right now. And no one knows. It's a black
- 1:20:31box. Humans make wrong decisions all the time. It's not automated at all. They can shut down
- 1:20:36your accounts. They can move your money. So many governments just take people's money.
- 1:20:41Like I think in Lebanon, like a bunch of places, right?
- 1:20:43All over the world.
- 1:20:44And just the brilliance of the Bitcoin network and software to just automate and take the human
- 1:20:50error out of that. I was like, no, nothing can fuck with this. And nothing will ever get the
- 1:20:57amount of broad reach that Bitcoin has. I just don't think so. There's a first mover advantage.
- 1:21:02like the whole Satoshi story is also just fascinating.
- 1:21:05The fact that he hasn't come back,
- 1:21:07the fact that there's no guy that he can,
- 1:21:09imagine Satoshi could tweet.
- 1:21:11Like I feel like, dude, I swear,
- 1:21:14like he would say some whack stuff
- 1:21:16and like tank the market.
- 1:21:18I don't know.
- 1:21:18I just, I love the entire,
- 1:21:20it's almost like a biblical story.
- 1:21:22Like the narrative of Bitcoin is so strong.
- 1:21:24So I think just it has all the elements
- 1:21:27to be a long-term stalwart asset
- 1:21:31and price this year,
- 1:21:33it doesn't really matter.
- 1:21:34You know what's actually exciting?
- 1:21:35We can buy cheaper Bitcoin.
- 1:21:36Exactly.
- 1:21:37This is not something to be scared about.
- 1:21:38This is opportunity.
- 1:21:39The last bottom was,
- 1:21:40what was it?
- 1:21:41FTX was 16.
- 1:21:4215.6.
- 1:21:4315K.
- 1:21:44If our bottom now can be anything
- 1:21:46over that. That's fantastic. Again, if you zoom out, like if you zoom out to the 2028,
- 1:21:52when the politicians switch over in America, that's going to be a whole other world. Do you
- 1:21:58think Bitcoin will be up or down by then? It's like, I'm damn sure it's going to be up.
- 1:22:03Yeah. Less fucking-
- 1:22:04So fuck yeah.
- 1:22:05Yep.
- 1:22:06Get bullish.
- 1:22:07I'm excited to go and see this zoo. I'm going to go for exactly 20 minutes. I'm going to watch
- 1:22:11your talk, watch you dunk on the wall, and then I'm going to leave.
- 1:22:13And basically, a lot of the things that we talk about is the ETFs, granted, mine excluding
- 1:22:18the last couple of days, the ETFs are bigger in terms of capital inflows.
- 1:22:23Just the dollars people have actually invested are bigger than every single ASX stock in
- 1:22:27the Australian stock market, except for the big four banks and BHP.
- 1:22:30So the inflows are the sixth biggest company in Australia.
- 1:22:35And if you look at the AUM, where the AUM peaked, it was bigger than everything except
- 1:22:39ComBank, which is our biggest bank.
- 1:22:40So the scale of it is just tremendous.
- 1:22:44And they've been around for-
- 1:22:45Since January 24.
- 1:22:46Yeah.
- 1:22:47So it's remarkable just seeing the scale of it.
- 1:22:50And actually, I should close with my favorite metric in all of on-chain data, and it's the
- 1:22:54backbone metric, is the realized cap.
- 1:22:56The realized cap values every UTXO at the time when it moved on-chain.
- 1:23:00If you bought a coin in 2019 at 10K, it's saved at that 10K price.
- 1:23:04The realized cap is how much we as Bitcoiners have entrusted to the asset.
- 1:23:10$1.12 trillion.
- 1:23:12So whenever someone tells you that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value,
- 1:23:15there's $1.12 trillion that disagrees with you where Bitcoiners have gone,
- 1:23:19no way.
- 1:23:20I trust this thing to look after my savings.
- 1:23:23It's a monumental amount.
- 1:23:25At the all-time high, we had more unrealized profit.
- 1:23:28That's our cost basis.
- 1:23:29We're at two and a half trillion.
- 1:23:31We had the unrealized profit in Bitcoin is bigger than Berkshire Hathaway, right?
- 1:23:35Rat poison squared by R.
- 1:23:36So get bullish because Bitcoin's not going anywhere.
- 1:23:40It's going to come back like a cockroach.
- 1:23:42Happy days.
- 1:23:43Let's fucking go.
- 1:23:44All right, this has been awesome, guys.
- 1:23:45We'll be back in a year together.
- 1:23:47Can I add one more thing before we close?
- 1:23:49Because something I think is actually important,
- 1:23:52Charles Edwards has been on about the quantum threat recently.
- 1:23:56It's very hard to handicap what is true and isn't in the quantum space.
- 1:24:01I do think it's worth, like Bitcoin is just generally speaking,
- 1:24:04having a conversation about what we do.
- 1:24:06because you know what would just destroy the final piece of FUD that's out there
- 1:24:11is having a strategy, working out what it's going to look like.
- 1:24:15Whilst, you know, I'm not quite sure that I agree with like that it's coming in a year,
- 1:24:19it's coming in two years time.
- 1:24:21I still think Charles is very right that we should start talking about it now.
- 1:24:24And we should just have a game plan.
- 1:24:26If we have a game plan by the end of 2026, let's use this bear market, put aside the price.
- 1:24:32Let's work out what the strategy is.
- 1:24:34And if the strategy is we need to do more coding, more work, more research, which we will,
- 1:24:38I'm in no way qualified enough to understand what needs to go into it.
- 1:24:42Let's have that conversation now.
- 1:24:44Because I'll tell you what, when you solve that problem, there ain't nothing left.
- 1:24:48Well, let's have the conversation.
- 1:24:49Because I think this is super interesting.
- 1:24:51I, again, have no idea what the timescale is on this.
- 1:24:53But let's just assume it happens at some point.
- 1:24:56And if over a long enough time span, it will happen.
- 1:24:59Yeah.
- 1:24:59So the question is, like, what happens?
- 1:25:02we're going to move to an address format
- 1:25:04that is quantum proof.
- 1:25:06I don think that will be contentious because everyone will have to do that So that part easy The tricky part is what do you do about all the coins that are in these old PaithPubKey hash addresses or whatever
- 1:25:17Do you freeze them or do you let them be stolen?
- 1:25:20So first things first, I think separating those two, they're two separate issues.
- 1:25:25It is an absolute mistake to put them in the same bit.
- 1:25:29Two separate issues.
- 1:25:30We have to deal with them separately.
- 1:25:31So first things first, let's build, research, design,
- 1:25:35whatever we got to do.
- 1:25:36I know Bit360 is out there.
- 1:25:38Again, I'm not smart enough
- 1:25:39to understand any of it.
- 1:25:41Let's get the option,
- 1:25:43the option for people
- 1:25:44to upgrade build first.
- 1:25:46Yeah.
- 1:25:46Ship that.
- 1:25:46Well, that's happening.
- 1:25:47Like HuntsBeast is working on this.
- 1:25:48Like that's,
- 1:25:49maybe it needs more eyeballs on it.
- 1:25:50I think it needs more people
- 1:25:51to just understand what it is,
- 1:25:52how it works.
- 1:25:53So I think first things first,
- 1:25:54just get that done.
- 1:25:55Now on the second topic
- 1:25:56of what do you do with old coins?
- 1:25:58If you solve that first bit,
- 1:26:00this is lore of the jungle
- 1:26:01until proven otherwise.
- 1:26:02But at least you had people
- 1:26:04with an option
- 1:26:05Sort that out first.
- 1:26:06My personal view on the, what do you do with the old coins?
- 1:26:10They come back to market.
- 1:26:12I totally agree.
- 1:26:13I don't think, and the reason I want to go down that approach,
- 1:26:16there's two angles, and we had a big talk about this
- 1:26:18in a cheat code last year.
- 1:26:21There's the argument of if someone's coins get stolen,
- 1:26:24the security assumptions of Bitcoin get broken.
- 1:26:27But then the other side is if you freeze someone's coins,
- 1:26:30I think you taint the idea of Bitcoin, which is property rights.
- 1:26:34if someone has your private key,
- 1:26:37they legally don't own the coins,
- 1:26:39but they do own them, right?
- 1:26:42Possession is nine-tenths of the law.
- 1:26:44If you leave your private key in a desk drawer
- 1:26:46and someone gets it,
- 1:26:47or someone uses quantum to extract them,
- 1:26:50you have kind of made the decision to not upgrade.
- 1:26:53So if we take Satoshi, for example,
- 1:26:56if we freeze his coins,
- 1:26:58we are doing so before Q day,
- 1:27:00because otherwise they would have been stolen.
- 1:27:02If we freeze Satoshi's coins,
- 1:27:03we made that decision for him.
- 1:27:05What if it was on a Monday and on a Tuesday
- 1:27:08he comes back from the dead,
- 1:27:09or he is Hal Finney and he's frozen,
- 1:27:11and he brings back man in the coma and he goes,
- 1:27:13whoa, quantum hasn't been invented or it failed,
- 1:27:17and you bugger sold my, I froze my coins.
- 1:27:19If we freeze other people's coins,
- 1:27:22irrespective of flag days and all of that,
- 1:27:24we made the decision to take someone else's coins.
- 1:27:27Yes.
- 1:27:28If, on the other hand, we build the system
- 1:27:30and allow people to migrate, which will take time,
- 1:27:32and that's a whole process,
- 1:27:33Q-Day comes along and they get taken.
- 1:27:36In that instance, they chose not to save their coins.
- 1:27:39That's their decision, not our decision.
- 1:27:41Now, the one proposal, I think Hunter Beast talks about this,
- 1:27:44which I think is potentially worth thinking about,
- 1:27:47is a rate-limiting approach.
- 1:27:49Yeah, so he talks about only one transaction per block
- 1:27:52to be a non-quantum proof address.
- 1:27:54Yes, and I think the...
- 1:27:55Of the legacy coins.
- 1:27:57And I think that his rationale there is a sound one,
- 1:27:59which is that if you look at the current performance of the chain,
- 1:28:03you're very, like the on average is less than one per block.
- 1:28:05So right now, the rate limiting wouldn't affect anyone on average.
- 1:28:09Could you break down the rate limiting just for their play?
- 1:28:11Yes.
- 1:28:11So the idea is that you could set a rule where the miners
- 1:28:14could only include like the legacy addresses
- 1:28:17which are vulnerable to quantum.
- 1:28:18You could basically say that they're only allowed
- 1:28:20to include one of those spends per block.
- 1:28:22So quantum comes along, all the lost coins
- 1:28:25that we're going to upgrade, upgrade.
- 1:28:26The ones who don't, we presume they're lost
- 1:28:28and going to get stolen.
- 1:28:29Quantum shows up and they don steal them all in one big chunk they steal them one per block They have to drip feed them out Drip feed them Now the other thing I think is also worth thinking about Just quickly on that there also an interesting dynamic
- 1:28:42where, say, quantum computers can steal coins from these old addresses.
- 1:28:46There's then a fee dynamic that goes into it,
- 1:28:49where, say, you have a UTXO that has 50 Bitcoin on it.
- 1:28:52You want to steal that as quickly as possible
- 1:28:54before someone who owns that Bitcoin upgrades.
- 1:28:58So what do you put in as a fee
- 1:29:00to make sure you're the one transaction in the next block?
- 1:29:03And it might end up,
- 1:29:04instead of giving all those coins back to the market,
- 1:29:06just give them to the miners.
- 1:29:07Well, that's an interesting thing.
- 1:29:08And I think that comes down to the next point,
- 1:29:09which is who is going to invent this quantum computer?
- 1:29:12Because IBM invented it.
- 1:29:14What are they going to do?
- 1:29:15Steal Satoshi's coins?
- 1:29:16Like, what are you going to do?
- 1:29:17Launder it through Binance?
- 1:29:18Like, you're going to get a benevolent dictator, most likely.
- 1:29:21It's going to be Chinese or US government.
- 1:29:23It's going to be a high-flying tech company.
- 1:29:25And if you're unlucky, it'll be North Korea.
- 1:29:27Yeah.
- 1:29:27Right?
- 1:29:27it's not going to be North Korea. Exactly. So you've got to think about like,
- 1:29:30who is actually going to be the one to crack this quantum thing? What are they going to do? Start
- 1:29:34ripping into banks? Like, I don't think so. And again, it depends on access and all these types
- 1:29:39of things. Irrespective. I actually think all that stuff is kind of irrelevant. The threat,
- 1:29:44if you run the human experiment long enough, we will eventually break elliptic curve photography
- 1:29:49because we're smart. Don't bet against innovation. I also don't want to bet against innovation by,
- 1:29:54I certainly don't think Bitcoin's going to die.
- 1:29:56I think the coins come back to market.
- 1:29:58I think that's a separate conversation
- 1:29:59and it's a mistake to cloud the tech
- 1:30:02with that decision.
- 1:30:05Separate the two,
- 1:30:06get the option for people to upgrade first,
- 1:30:08do the requisite work.
- 1:30:10If we as Bitcoiners solve that problem
- 1:30:12in the next 12 months,
- 1:30:13just what we're going to do,
- 1:30:15have the plan,
- 1:30:17what's the FUD?
- 1:30:18What FUD is left?
- 1:30:20On that point though,
- 1:30:21I think there's a really short-sighted view
- 1:30:23on the sort of market impact
- 1:30:24of all these coins coming back to market
- 1:30:26in that, like, to me,
- 1:30:27I agree with you totally.
- 1:30:28Bitcoin enshrines property rights.
- 1:30:29That's like one of the
- 1:30:30absolute fundamental things to me.
- 1:30:32So if we as Bitcoiners say,
- 1:30:34we're going to freeze those funds
- 1:30:35so a bad actor down the road doesn't,
- 1:30:36then the property rights are broken.
- 1:30:37Agree, agree.
- 1:30:38And so if that happens-
- 1:30:39You break the idea of Bitcoin.
- 1:30:40And if that happens,
- 1:30:41what should the price of Bitcoin be?
- 1:30:43And to me, it's far lower.
- 1:30:44Agree.
- 1:30:44So like, even though there might be
- 1:30:45short-term impact on the market,
- 1:30:47if these coins do go to like bad actors,
- 1:30:49they dump them.
- 1:30:50Like, in the other scenario,
- 1:30:52Bitcoin doesn't have the same future value anyway.
- 1:30:54So it's actually a really short-sighted way of looking at it.
- 1:30:57I would put it in the realm of reputations take forever to build
- 1:31:00and one bad tweet to destroy.
- 1:31:02And I think that's more or less the way I think about this.
- 1:31:04We've built such a tremendous thing with Bitcoin.
- 1:31:08It will take one mistake like that to affect,
- 1:31:11you can't undo that from the idea.
- 1:31:13You're actually hitting the idea of Bitcoin.
- 1:31:16And if you take that to its log, for me,
- 1:31:19if I take that to its logical conclusion,
- 1:31:21I don't believe that the price is something we should care about
- 1:31:26when we make consensus changes.
- 1:31:28When we make consensus changes, that should be about the security
- 1:31:32and the decentralization and the properties that make Bitcoin
- 1:31:35worth something.
- 1:31:37The market will then value that.
- 1:31:38If we start making decisions because we're afraid of Satoshi's coins,
- 1:31:41which, by the way, Satoshi's coins come back to market,
- 1:31:44they're going to auction, and I don't know about you,
- 1:31:46but I'm going to buy some for sentimental value.
- 1:31:48How many Bitcoiners are going to go buy a million stats
- 1:31:50of Satoshi's coins.
- 1:31:51I'm totally let go.
- 1:31:52It's the ultimate ordinal.
- 1:31:54I don't, yeah.
- 1:31:56It my my my rare set Um I don think you know I really just don think that anyone gonna aren the ordinance guys gonna go nuts over that there your rare sets right um no look i i think
- 1:32:07the um the idea is build the tech have the option let's have the conversation now i'm not smart
- 1:32:13enough to work it out but i think more public discussion about this is going to be really
- 1:32:16healthy yeah it's going to set up become just a tremendous tremendous road ahead if bitcoin has
- 1:32:21freeze that that's the equivalent of the us freezing russian treasury i fully agree i fully
- 1:32:25Same framework.
- 1:32:26If you freeze Satoshi's coins on a potential
- 1:32:30that quantum is going to come out,
- 1:32:31there's older coins that are going to be aging as well.
- 1:32:34So do you start freezing more?
- 1:32:37Well, it'll depend on the address format.
- 1:32:38Address format.
- 1:32:39Yeah.
- 1:32:40But it would be a monumental mistake.
- 1:32:43And more importantly,
- 1:32:44I actually think from a pragmatic standpoint,
- 1:32:46I believe we can come to consensus on this.
- 1:32:49I think there's zero chance
- 1:32:50we ever come to consensus on this
- 1:32:51because immediately I'm not changing anything.
- 1:32:54So for me, my node says no.
- 1:32:55there'll be a lot of people
- 1:32:56in that same camp
- 1:32:57and there's a lot of people
- 1:32:57who want to freeze it
- 1:32:58because they don't want
- 1:32:58the market impact
- 1:32:59we will never hit consensus
- 1:33:01on freezing the coins
- 1:33:02I'll take an airdrop
- 1:33:03therefore
- 1:33:03exactly
- 1:33:04therefore
- 1:33:05the base case for me
- 1:33:06is you spend time
- 1:33:07arguing over this
- 1:33:08you're going to waste time
- 1:33:09let's focus on this
- 1:33:10yeah
- 1:33:11makes sense
- 1:33:11this has been fun
- 1:33:13it's been really good
- 1:33:14in person
- 1:33:14it's way better
- 1:33:15it's way better
- 1:33:16well I'll come down to Sydney
- 1:33:18whenever
- 1:33:18maybe we just
- 1:33:19refuse to do
- 1:33:20remote shows from now on
- 1:33:21I'll fly to Brisbane
- 1:33:22there you go
- 1:33:23done
- 1:33:23hell yeah
- 1:33:24alright thank you guys
- 1:33:25appreciate that oh actually before we close check on chain tell everyone about it yeah send us off
- 1:33:29oh well check on chain so we run a newsletter on substack and we basically help hodlers navigate
- 1:33:36the volatility that's kind of our major kind of selling point where basically your bitcoin personal
- 1:33:41trainer we have a big community now we have a couple of chats we also have check on chain orange
- 1:33:46which is for more institutional uh larger investors and we have a private telegram there a lot a lot
- 1:33:52of insights are shared and yet we generally just want to give people that data driven approach
- 1:33:57to stay calm stop looking at the price chart stop looking at x and believing any narrative and
- 1:34:02that big anxiety that builds up when kind of crazy movements happen our job is to help guide you
- 1:34:08through that so yeah we work every day we fucking love it uh we talk about this 24 7 um and yeah
- 1:34:15come join us come along with the ride and it's gonna be a fun next year honestly my main motivator
- 1:34:21i don't make price predictions i price calls i just want people to have made their decisions
- 1:34:28which is the only thing you can control months before you need to use it and if you make a
- 1:34:33decision like let's say we got to 95k and we just bounced to all-time highs totally was a valid
- 1:34:39thing if we didn't need our bear market decision framework for what am i going to do at 82 that's
- 1:34:45great i'll put it in my back pocket and i'll use it when it happens now that we're at 82 i don't
- 1:34:50want any of my subscribers to ever feel like a deer in the headlights. Not because I can predict
- 1:34:54that it was going to happen, but because we just thought about that scenario as a possibility
- 1:34:57ahead of time. So prepare. That's it. You prepare yourself. Can't predict, just prepare for it.
- 1:35:02I love it. It's one of the best newsletters in the space. I read everyone.
- 1:35:04Thank you, man.
- 1:35:05Thank you, man.
- 1:35:05Yeah, you guys are awesome.
- 1:35:06Thank you, man.
- 1:35:07Thank you for listening, too, man. Thanks for inviting me.
- 1:35:08Of course.
- 1:35:20Thank you.