Latest / TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast / #713: Bitcoin Was Warning Us for Months with James Check

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#713: Bitcoin Was Warning Us for Months with James Check · TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast

0:00
James Check, we meet here in the bottom fifth of the spare market, of this capitulation.
0:05
Where are we?
0:07
It's time for the eulogies, mate.
0:08
It's Bitcoin obituaries are going to be flying left, right, and center.
0:11
Peter Schiff's having the best day of his life.
0:13
Bitcoin has died once again.
0:15
Yeah, mate, here we are.
0:16
It's amazing watching.
0:19
I mean, socials.
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Socials are just a cesspool at the moment.
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It's just noise, everything.
0:25
But yeah, look, it's a hell of a sell-off.
0:28
I think a lot of people are probably caught by surprise.
0:31
At a minimum, getting down to 70K wasn't too much of a surprise.
0:35
I think a lot of people are now shocked that we're back in the 2024 chop solidation range.
0:39
We're trading at like 63K as we speak.
0:42
But as you said, if you look at things from a mean reversion perspective, I know you had
0:46
Matthew Mazinskas on recently.
0:48
You can look at a power law.
0:50
You look at realized price.
0:51
You can look at 200-day moving average.
0:53
and the 200-day moving average,
0:55
in terms of the deviation we are below it,
0:57
only 4% of all days in Bitcoin's history
1:00
have ever been further below the 200-day moving average.
1:03
All these mean reversion models,
1:05
I checked a bunch of them this morning,
1:06
we're in like 18% of days or lower,
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15% of days or lower, 20% of days or lower.
1:11
So we're like in that bottom 20%
1:13
of a lot of these long-term mean reversion models.
1:17
And I mean, look, my general framework
1:18
is a lot of people, my inbox is just absolute chaos.
1:22
I've got people coming at me from all angles, terrified, scared, DMs are going crazy.
1:29
That's usually a good sign that we're at the real fear part, right?
1:33
People are now questioning their thesis.
1:36
Bear markets are a horrible thing because they just keep going until we run out of sellers.
1:40
You just got to exhaust the sellers.
1:42
And there's some combination of price down, time pain, and also just people watching their
1:48
unrealized profits get eviscerated.
1:51
Some combination of those.
1:52
and I want to add in another one.
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We could probably talk about this,
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but Parabola Envy.
1:56
I think the thing that actually,
1:57
like I know crypto mince people.
2:00
I know treasury companies mince people,
2:01
but you know what really just like caused
2:04
a mental rift is watching gold go up.
2:08
People just got smoked by watching gold go up
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because there was this expectation
2:13
that the world was going to choose Bitcoin on round one.
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The Romans used gold, guys.
2:19
I'm sorry,
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they weren't going to choose Bitcoin round one.
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but I've just got this like simple framework. Look at a decision tree. If Bitcoin is dead,
2:29
this is a fundamental question. If you truly believe that Bitcoin is now dead and the path
2:33
is towards zero, then this bear market has no flaw. And therefore, turn it all off. Walk away.
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You know, it's over. Who cares? None of this matters. If on the other hand, and I would wager
2:43
that pretty much everyone listening to this, except for you, Peter Schiff, everyone listening
2:47
to this believes the other path, which is it's probably not dead. Then you go, well, where are we
2:52
in the bear. We're in the bottom 20% based on every mean reversion model you can possibly imagine,
2:58
technical, on-chain, the whole thing. Are we at the bottom? Who knows? This is probably likely to
3:03
inspire some capitulation based on the fear that we've got. So we've got a lot of the recipes in
3:07
there and the ingredients for creating that capitulation. It'll take time. It'll probably
3:11
go down more. It'll be choppy. It'll be painful. You get bear market rallies. They get the hope
3:16
back in. You'll buy that rally and then it will sell back off again. It's going to be a process.
3:20
but unless your decision tree is that Bitcoin is dead,
3:24
this bear market has an end.
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And we've done a lot of the work.
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In my view, we've done a lot of the work.
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I used in my piece recently, I used two analogies.
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One, I like the idea of like the bison.
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Bison, when the storm comes, a snowstorm or a storm,
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they turn and face it and they basically go through it
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because it's the fastest way to get to the other side.
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Everything else runs away from the storm
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and gets rinsed the whole way.
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And the other one is you've got your mate
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on a desert island and he swims 80% of the way back to shore,
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gets tired, decides to turn back around.
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It's like, go the last 20%, push through.
3:59
Yeah.
4:00
I think, what are you seeing on chain
4:01
in terms of the archetype of seller out there?
4:08
Because I think there's a lot of speculation.
4:10
Obviously, I'm sure you've seen on X over the last couple of days,
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many are saying Bybit and Binance are blowing up.
4:16
There's bodies that are about to surface on top of the water, dead bodies at that.
4:22
Is there any validity to these theories in your mind?
4:27
Look, I've not done enough of a deep dive to give you like a I'm very confident what I have.
4:32
Like I had a quick check.
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Finance had like a 0.5% outflow of their Bitcoin.
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Like.
4:40
Doesn't look insolvent to me again.
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You know, I'm not going to make a claim about what's going on the inside of buying it.
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but I'm pretty sure they have a regulator sitting in the office,
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you know, tracking all this stuff.
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So, you know, this to me feels like people looking for a reason
4:53
for why we're down.
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Lots of people want to know what's the news?
4:57
Why is price down?
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Price is down because it's a bear market.
5:00
So from just like a big picture perspective,
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for the last couple of probably months since I would say
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at least November, I've been talking about this thing like air pockets.
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How many times have you and I talked about air pockets?
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And for those who don't know what I mean by that,
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In the on-chain world, you can also see in the technical world, if you look like a volume profile, where you've got long periods of price history, lots of coins change hands, lots of demand has been there.
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People have traded the coin, people have traded the asset, true for all assets.
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In the on-chain world, we can then see, well, where do people still have a cost basis?
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Where do they buy their coin and still hold them?
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80% of all the dollars that are invested are well and truly underwater, probably more than that now, actually.
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and then there's a chunk of about 10% of the supply
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in the 2024 chop solidation range between like 50 and 70.
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Between 70 and 80, which we just broke through,
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and I think this is actually an important element
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for people to get head around.
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Breaking through that 80 floor,
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you probably noticed there was a shift.
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People now accept that it's a bear market.
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We got to that final stage of grief where people now accept.
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Why was 80K important?
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First, it was obviously the low set in November
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and people were hoping it was like a one and done sell-off.
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printed a bear flag, bear flag, send a break lower. But the other thing is there's an on-chain
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model called the true market mean, which is really, statistically speaking, the middle of
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the Bitcoin cycle. It is the long-term cost base of active investors. It gets rid of Satoshi and
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lost coins. And the more dormant a coin is, the less it's considered active. Coins that are moving
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around and transacting, all those hodlers who sold, that's what's beautiful about this stuff.
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it will auto correct because those old coins that were previously discounted come back to life and
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we now know they're alive. So 80K is about 81, but 80K was that average cost basis for everyone.
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And it was also 82 and a half is the average cost basis for the ETFs. So breaking below that level,
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suddenly everyone realizes that everyone's underwater. It's like a common knowledge event.
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Everyone now accepts it's a bear market. And that supply air pocket between 70 and 80,
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which had no price history. It just shot straight through in November last year, no, 24,
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just shot straight through. We never really tested it during the tariff tantrum.
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And these things, I don't know why it is, same as CME gaps, these supply air pockets,
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they just want to get backfilled. Back in 2022, the air pocket that we had back then went from
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30K down to 10K. Where do we backfill? 15, right? We backfilled the vast majority of it.
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so from my perspective the move down to at least 70 was very predictable um just because it's
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bitcoin just does these things you're in a bearish trend bear flag supply air pocket
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and i described in my piece yesterday i think the easy part of forecasting this bear is now over
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and what i mean by that as we were breaking down from 110 i think we spoke when we broke through
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110 i said if we go below there the risk just compounds exponentially until you get to 95
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once you're at 95 you're probably going straight to 80 and you know your framework becomes bear
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market before that that part was easy enough to at least have a framework for the air pocket down
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to 70 also easy enough to have a framework for we're now in that last again that last fifth of
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the price action i would i mean based on mean reversion stats whatever we're in that last fifth
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of the price action where you've got to hammer out a floor. You've got to find where that bottom is.
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It's a process. It sucks. Everyone now believes it's going lower. Everyone's now lowering their
8:34
price targets. Everyone's now pulling their bids. Everyone's gone. And what will happen,
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this is what I've been waiting for for a long time. You want to see the capitulation by on-chain,
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on the on-chain side of things. You'll see a massive week, couple of days, whatever it is,
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the ETFs will just be flushed.
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You will see so much panic and fear when this happens.
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Realize losses are going through the roof.
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We're already seeing right now long-term holders
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who bought the top and have huddled through this whole thing.
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They're now starting to capitulate.
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Their losses are starting to spike higher as well.
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All this stuff, it sucks, but this is how bear markets end.
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It's a process.
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Just push through to the other side
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because unless your decision tree is Bitcoin is dead,
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things going to end and it's a journey between here and there
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yeah now if you look at the the backdrop of
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the macro landscape as well particularly here in the united states you're looking at case
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shiller pe ratios near.com bubble levels you're
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seeing a bunch of deleveraging with this geopolitical uncertainty that's
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out there and it just seems like a chaotic time and you
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get the epstein files you get the ice stuff going on here you've got greenland
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Venezuela, Russia, Ukraine.
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Very uncertain time out there.
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What's not to love?
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Why wouldn't everything be going straight up in a vertical line?
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Yeah.
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And it is a crazy time in markets and Bitcoin.
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And that's what I think really riles up the animal spirits too.
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Because you have not only the uncertainty of where Bitcoin is going to find its floor,
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but you have this external uncertainty that only seems to be building as well.
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It seems like a big get risk off the table moment globally.
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Yeah.
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And I mean, there's a very reasonable and rational interpretation that Bitcoin was just telling
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the world that this was coming for months.
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Been saying there's something wrong out there.
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It just ain't going all well.
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And it was kind of masked by there's a bunch of CapEx spend in AI.
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Precious metals are doing well.
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There was like, you know, stock markets kind of hovering around all time highs.
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And a lot of people just, you know, the human condition is people want to be optimistic and
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long.
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That's the default position.
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So when you see Bitcoin doing something, you're like, oh, it's just Bitcoin.
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It's like, no, but what if it's actually information?
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What if it's actually telling you what's going on?
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Likewise, we've got this bear flag.
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How many folks and just markets are a psychological journey.
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Something that I have learned and I think is really valuable is just like a market lesson.
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The only thing you can control in markets is your decision.
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So whenever you're feeling something, it's generally because of a decision that you did
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or didn't make.
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You can only control your decisions, right?
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markets are just purely information and your emotional response to it is a function of the
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decisions that you made up until this point so when it broke 80k and you get this like sinking
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gut feeling is that because you never thought 80k could possibly go there was some reason it couldn't
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go and people ignore that it looks like a bear flag retested the short-term cost basis and failed
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at 98 there's all these things like it kind of looks like it's not going higher anytime soon
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so then when it goes below 80 you know this is how i like to think about things
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sure my net worth goes down but i'm prepared for it i'm just like i'm mentally getting ready and
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i'm not doing anything stupid so i don't regret my decisions of just buying a fat stack thinking
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80 is the bottom and then it goes lower you know having that plan in place and just saying what
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could happen um there's this story about this we did i was at the um uh conference here in
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Australia and would have been after the 80k sell-off and uh this I did my talk and there's
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a bunch of people around me asking questions and this bloke comes up to me and he goes uh
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I've done something stupid I said oh yeah and he goes yeah I started leverage trading I said oh
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that is stupid right a bit of a chuckle and he goes um yeah I kind of put my like house money
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into a perp at 110 or 105 or something and like liquidation level at 70 and I was like
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I can't give you a tip for that,
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but all I can say is 70K is in play.
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If you're going to regret something going to 70K,
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you just go on for whatever you got to do.
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Go through the motions,
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but got to prepare for these things even if they suck.
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Get out of that trade.
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I hope he got out of that trade.
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Well, he's out now.
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Yeah.
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So if we're in a bear market,
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I think a lot of the discussion is,
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are the four-year cycles just replaying?
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Was it a gotcha moment, getting to 125,
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not going as high as many people thought,
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people thinking the institutions are here,
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we've got the green light from the US government,
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Bitcoin is here to stay,
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it's going to be implemented into the financial system,
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there's no way we're going to have these four-year
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regimented cycles like we've had in the past.
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It seems like that may be playing out
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in terms of finding a bear market bottom
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and crawling through that bottom,
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do you expect it to be similar to cycles past
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where we make it to the next halving
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and then six months later,
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things start creeping up again?
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Yes, I mean, my general framework.
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So first things first,
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I do not like actively look at the four-year cycle
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and say, this is how I'm going to design my analysis.
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Because in my view, it's, I think it's anomalous.
13:43
I think we've got a bunch of series,
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a series of beautiful coincidences.
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You can explain just about everything
13:48
in the Bitcoin market structure, right?
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Some cliff notes, 2017 was just a pure organic market.
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People are speculating on everything under the sun, like pure parabola.
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Barely had a trading view chart at that point in time.
14:02
You can look at 2018.
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We've got an overhang from a 100x move and many 100xs and everything else was in that cycle.
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And also no one really knew what Bitcoin crypto was going to be.
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2019, you've got the plus token Ponzi, followed by the distribution by the Chinese government of those plus token tokens.
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Then you've got COVID and the stimulus.
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Then you've got rate hikes and FTX and just a complete evisceration
14:25
of the lending markets.
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Choose your weapon, economy doing good, economy not doing good.
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I think you can explain just about everything.
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2025, why we stopped going up, a bunch of people sold.
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Why'd they sell?
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Doesn't really matter.
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They sold.
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So from my perspective, we're looking for whether it's on a four-year timeline.
14:43
Honestly, I think people get lost in the source just saying,
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oh, it has to bottom in October.
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must bottom in October, November, always bottoms in November. Maybe, but if you take away,
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it must do this thing Don impose your expectations that it must do this thing What we looking for is that capitulation event where there are no sellers left The only people left in the
15:04
trenches are people who actually want to own and hold Bitcoin. And we'll get there. Again,
15:08
unless your decision tree is Bitcoin is dead, you've probably turned off the pod. If it's not,
15:12
then at some point we're going to flush out all the long-term holders who bought the top,
15:16
huddle the bear, and they all sell at a loss at the same time. Short-term holders get washed out.
15:21
And really, I don't know if we'll see this.
15:23
We may, but I don't think it's as likely, but it's nice to have.
15:28
The third thing that happens at the bottom is you get long-term holders in profit sell
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because they're afraid it's going to go lower and they're cutting their losses.
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They're afraid that their $20,000 Bitcoin is going to hit that level as well.
15:42
So you see people take profit at the bottom as well.
15:45
That's like your perfect capitulation signal.
15:47
I need to check the data this afternoon to see whether we've got something like that.
15:51
I don't think so, but that would be a good signal that the low is truly in.
15:58
Do you think there's any treasury company overhang as well?
16:01
Oh, no question.
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Now, I mean, I don't think, and again, going into the deep dive of like, you got to study
16:07
each one of these things in depth.
16:08
And frankly, I just don't care enough to do that.
16:10
Strategy is going to be fine.
16:11
They've got billions of dollars of cash that can service all the dividends.
16:15
So I think strategy is fine.
16:16
You made a plan, it's the like, they're going to be fine.
16:18
that once you go down the list and you get beyond the big ones,
16:22
not like the market to the best of my knowledge,
16:25
the market just didn't really give these companies any leverage.
16:28
There's a bunch of pipe deals, which means a bunch of insiders got cooked.
16:31
There's a bunch of like the initial hype cycle and equity sales.
16:36
But a lot of it is just like it's going to come out in the share price,
16:39
less so in the fact that like the company has to sell all the Bitcoin,
16:43
even if they do.
16:44
I don't think there's that much coin there to be sold.
16:47
And you know what this reminds me of? This is just your 2026 version of the miner capitulation
16:52
that happens every cycle, right? The miners huddle all the way into the top. Now the miners are fine
16:56
because they've got AI revenue and stuff ticking over in the background. We'll see if some of these
17:00
treasury companies consolidate. I mean, let's face it. It was a silly idea. I think everyone's
17:04
kind of aware of that. There'll be some phoenixes that rise from the ashes. But this idea of thousands
17:08
of treasury companies, I just don't think it makes any sense. So we'll see some consolidation.
17:14
we'll see a bunch of them capitulate,
17:15
but I'm not too concerned about that being like a FTX grade,
17:20
you know, send it all to zero type event.
17:23
Yeah.
17:25
Yeah, I mean, they have the ability to be a bison
17:28
and run through the storm and just hold tight to their Bitcoin.
17:32
Yeah, as long as you don't have any debt
17:33
and you've got no leverage creeping up,
17:34
you just need to run whatever zombie company you had before
17:37
and just, you know, keep treading water.
17:40
I've seen you go back and forth on Twitter
17:42
are asking critical questions about the quantum FUD out there.
17:45
Oh, yes.
17:46
And I saw a thread of yours, I think it was a few weeks ago
17:48
or a couple months ago, about it.
17:52
And obviously there's opportunists out there
17:56
who are looking at the price going down.
17:57
See, I told you, we've got to be worried about this quantum risk.
17:59
We need to change Bitcoin.
18:00
That's why the price is going down.
18:02
What would you say to the people attributing this price drop
18:07
to fears of quantum at the institutional level?
18:10
Yeah. No, it's not like, so my general view, let's just start with like my general view on quantum. So I've spent meaningful time. Again, quantum is one of those things where if you know what's going on with quantum, I think you're lying because no one knows what the hell is going on with quantum. No one understands this.
18:27
I've done enough research to at least satisfy where my current thinking is at
18:33
I do not believe that quantum is coming in the next two years
18:37
I think that's not happening
18:39
I also understand that there's been meaningful developments in the field
18:45
they talk about logical qubits and error correction
18:48
all this kind of stuff
18:49
different fidelities of these things
18:52
again, if anyone pretends to understand this stuff
18:54
I think you're lying because no one understands any of it
18:56
I think there is a credible case.
18:59
So first of all, there is no question.
19:00
Some people are not allocating to Bitcoin.
19:02
Some of these big TradFi guys will probably sell
19:04
because very simply, if you don't understand something,
19:07
you should know that.
19:08
And if people don't understand the risk of it to their portfolio,
19:11
they're probably not going to own it.
19:12
So there's going to be capital on the sidelines
19:14
and capital that's selling, no question because of quantum.
19:17
There is no chance in my mind that it is the thing
19:20
that has caused us to go down to 63K, right?
19:23
I just do not believe that that is the reason.
19:26
We're in a bear market.
19:28
We saw a tremendous amount of sell size.
19:29
It's going to take months for all of those coins.
19:32
Because remember, when a long-term holder sells, right,
19:35
they've sold to some new guy, he's probably not going to huddle it.
19:39
It's going to go to the next guy, and then he's going to capitulate lower.
19:42
He's going to buy the dip, not the dip, not the dip, keeps going.
19:45
Eventually, those coins will find a cold card.
19:47
So my general view is that it's just going to take time to absorb that,
19:51
like digest all of the sell side. So, you know, again, more than, I have to check the numbers,
19:56
more than 80% of the dollars invested in Bitcoin are underwater. That's a lot of people. It's a lot
20:01
of capital. Like it's nasty. There's a lot of people who are going to be panicking. I've got
20:05
multiple messages this morning saying I'm terrified. So that's where we're at. So let's go back to
20:12
quantum. I'm of the view, there's obviously two issues when it comes to Bitcoin and quantum.
20:17
There's what to do with the lost coins and what do you do with quantum secure algorithms.
20:22
Lost coins, if I can just put one like, let's actually think about this rationally, the lost
20:28
coins debate is going to be the least productive, most destructive. We will never, ever reach
20:35
consensus on that. All breath spent on that before we have solved the other part, which is the
20:41
quantum secure address concept is just people arguing on Twitter, and it's just going to be a
20:47
distraction. So on the probably more important issue, we have to, as Bitcoin, be able to give
20:52
people an option. And this is where you get to a fork in the road. There's many folks, credibly,
20:57
who say there has been no progress in quantum. And for a measurable, like, what are the problems
21:03
that they're solving? Has Shure's algorithm been run? The answer is no. But could it be run if they
21:11
get there yes and this one of these ideas that if because right now with the quantum the qubits and
21:16
all this stuff there's too much error to actually run shaw's algorithm in the first place so they
21:21
kind of got a when they do factor 15 or 21 they kind of have to like give it the answer and be
21:26
like oh look it solved it so but once you get to a certain if if and once you get to a certain level
21:31
of fidelity and noise reduction suddenly shaw's algorithm can start doing stuff now i would suspect
21:36
that we will see that incremental progress.
21:39
But then you have the problem of it takes time to upgrade Bitcoin.
21:42
It takes time for us to argue online.
21:44
It takes time for us to move the coins.
21:47
So from my view, the most sensible thing truly is to look at what they do.
21:52
I think BIP360 is very sound because even if you pretend quantum isn't a thing,
21:57
just pretend quantum isn't a thing, BIP360 actually makes Taproot better.
22:02
so bit 360 purely as a sensible update to taproot makes a lot of sense and for the raid to leos out
22:11
there who don't understand it in the first place you can now say it's quantum secure because they're
22:15
gonna like that don't care like that's you've done something you've shown that we've done something
22:19
i actually think that supporting bit 360 makes a lot of sense because it's totally benign from like
22:24
a bitcoin without quantum perspective um it makes a lot of sense because it just like makes taproot
22:30
a bit better. And you're then going to waylay a lot of these fears by the folks who don't
22:34
understand and still won't understand, but they'll believe it's solved. So you're going to solve that
22:38
element just by actually doing a sensible upgrade that is useful even without quantum.
22:45
And then you argue about what happens when quantum comes live. Now, from my perspective,
22:50
first and foremost, do not reuse addresses. Because if you want to be quantum secure,
22:53
don't reuse addresses. As long as you're using Segwit, modern wallets, you're not using legacy,
22:58
paid a pub key your coins are safe the only place they're not safe is if you do address reuse and in
23:05
theory short range attacks in the mempool but let's let's be real here is google going to invent a
23:13
quantum computer and hack my thousand dollars i'm trying to send from my dca into my wallet no no
23:20
they might go after like binance moving their massive hot wallet but like binance has got
23:26
engineers that are going to be aware of this. I think they're going to solve for it. If we see
23:30
the incremental steps, then you go down the path of saying, do we actually need like quantum secure
23:34
signatures? Let's just start with something like Bit360. Makes a lot of sense to me.
23:39
Makes Tappery better even without quantum. Waylay the fears. Keep working on and preparing for and
23:45
planning for. So even for the quantum naysayers, I think it actually makes a lot of sense to have
23:51
a plan, have a credible plan. There are people working on it. This is great. I disagree with a
23:57
lot of this rhetoric that the developers are just completely asleep at the wheel. It's like they
24:00
literally had a quantum conference, like they're writing quantum papers. Sure, some people don't
24:06
believe it. Frankly, I don't believe it. I don't know how anyone can. It sounds all a bit fantastical.
24:11
However, we should at least account for the threat. If we think about things in terms of a
24:16
Risk matrix, what is risk?
24:17
Consequence times probability.
24:19
Probability, I'd say, is almost nothing,
24:21
but the consequences is really bad.
24:24
So therefore, you have to weight that thing
24:26
and say we at least need a credible plan.
24:28
Nothing wrong with having a credible plan
24:30
in motion on the table, ready to go.
24:31
And there will be people that want to work on this.
24:33
So that's my angle.
24:35
Yeah, I think the big if thing around quantum specifically,
24:39
to your point, I was following a thread
24:41
that you were in with Charles earlier today.
24:46
And it's just like, he was, I mean, my observation seemed like it was given like roundabout,
24:51
like beating around the bush.
24:52
But it's like, if you're handing the sort of quantum researchers, like a hard coded
24:58
variable that gets them to solve a logical qubit or factor 21, like it's like you're
25:05
cheating.
25:06
So you don't actually have actual quantum.
25:08
But to your point, if it is a worry, I think BIP 360 is the best way to do it, right?
25:14
Because it's opt in.
25:15
so for those who are unaware
25:17
BIP 360
25:18
put forward by Hunter Beast
25:20
would basically allow you to
25:22
manipulate a script in the Tapleaf that
25:24
creates an address that you can put Bitcoin in
25:26
that is quantum resistant
25:28
yeah because Taproot by default
25:30
exposes the public key I think they undo that
25:33
and makes Taproot quantum secure
25:34
great and remember
25:36
I think what's really important
25:38
the fear merchant side
25:40
of this whole thing
25:41
credit to it it has sparked the conversation
25:44
Good.
25:45
That's excellent.
25:46
It is now, in my opinion, well over its skates.
25:48
We're now at the level where it's like the coins are going to get market dumped and it's
25:53
happening in two years.
25:54
And 15 researchers who are paid by quantum firms believe quantum is coming.
25:59
That's one of my big issues with it.
26:00
And I spent a lot of time with Gemini and Grok because how else are you going to bloody
26:05
search this stuff?
26:05
I'm not going through all the paper.
26:06
People seem to like, you know, Arvix research papers.
26:09
You're like, I'm not reading that.
26:10
Get out of here.
26:11
I'm a quantum physicist.
26:13
So I basically just talk to the LLMs, test them against each other,
26:15
see what they come back with.
26:17
The general framework, and I've read a number of articles
26:19
just saying like, you know, quantum is bullshit.
26:22
And the consistent feedback that I got from the LLMs, both of them,
26:26
and they kind of checked and said, no, I generally agree with each other.
26:29
The general feedback was up until like 2025,
26:32
pretty much all the critique saying it's all horse shit was true
26:36
and very credibly defensive.
26:38
there's apparently been some updates in late 25 about error correction and all these things which
26:44
starts to look like maybe that's now an engineering problem rather than a can't be done problem so
26:49
that's why i think at the minimum even if you are skeptical spend half an hour just pinging
26:55
these llms and just like see what it comes back with because i actually found it quite useful in
27:00
exercise a good use case for ai i suppose um but again like i think this doom merchant side of like
27:07
everything's going to get markets sold and Bitcoin's dead because of quantum. And I actually
27:10
think we're now well and truly into the counterproductive stage because a lot of the
27:14
evidence, a lot of the evidence that is proposed is quantum company says quantum is coming. Quantum
27:20
expert who works for quantum company says quantum is coming. We surveyed seven of them. So they all
27:24
think it's coming. They're also paid by a quantum company. You can look at some government bureaucracy
27:29
agency committee says quantum is coming. Who's probably advised by those same experts who work
27:34
for the quantum company.
27:35
There's like a whole lot of things with like this guy,
27:37
this smart dude over here said it's coming.
27:40
And the skeptics go, well, I understand that there's a bunch
27:44
of people who say it's coming.
27:46
Can you factor a number bigger than the fingers on my hand?
27:49
Can you do this?
27:50
And, you know, maybe there's breakthroughs that need to happen,
27:53
but the gap between where we're currently at and what is needed
27:57
for breaking ECDSA is quite large.
28:01
there's assumed growth rates and expansion rates and again i'm not smart enough or deep enough in
28:06
this stuff to properly handicap it but if i just think about this from like a pragmatic if i was
28:11
an engineer and i was going to just solve this social problem have the plan this bit 360 looks
28:18
pretty benign solve some stuff that we need to do anyway waylay the fears and get the conversation
28:24
moving and just keep an eye on this thing and once we get developments we should already have
28:28
a quantum secure signature scheme planned out, mapped out, Bitcoiners are going to upgrade.
28:33
You know, like, I mean, if it really comes to fruition and they start cracking keys,
28:38
yes, I will support giving people an option to have secure Bitcoin. Like, I'm not going to nuke
28:43
my own net worth. And I'm sure there's a lot of Bitcoins listening who would do the same,
28:46
even if you're skeptical. The moment you see a key start getting cracked and then the next one
28:51
getting cracked, you know you're on that journey. And if you want to have the plan ready to go
28:56
before that happens, because then there is no capital that can say, I shouldn't invest in this
29:00
thing because of quantum. Just the whole thing goes away. Yeah. It's exhausting because it has
29:09
been FUD for quite some time. People have been focused on it within Bitcoin, within the development
29:14
community, as you mentioned. There was a whole conference about it last year, but then to your
29:18
point, it's like 99.8% of climate scientists agree that cataclysmic climate change is right around
29:25
the corner nine out of ten dentists say you should use this toothpaste it's like okay what are the
29:30
incentives behind all that but yeah correct so look i mean i think risk consequence times
29:35
probability consequences dire probability is not large some will argue about that's where people
29:41
can debate the end of the day what's the correct solution in my view start the process have the
29:47
plan be ready waylay all the fears show that bitcoin's going to be fine and what what what
29:52
cases there against it.
29:53
Just nuke the FUD with really you don even have to probably change Bitcoin Bit360 sure we can debate whether whether we do that But you don have to roll out quantum secure signatures until there a known threat
30:04
We just need to have the plan ready.
30:06
Well, I mean, that's having talked to Jonas Nick and Mikhail Kudinov, who wrote the hash-based quantum resistant or hash-based signatures for Bitcoin,
30:17
which is a way to bring quantum-resistant addresses to Bitcoiners.
30:24
You think about all the standardization that's been built around hardware wallets
30:28
and coordination via multi-sig lightning channels.
30:32
Oh, it's a huge job.
30:34
It's not an easy lift.
30:36
No.
30:37
The people funding Bitcoin because of the quantum risk
30:42
and under appreciating that sort of massive lift of standardization
30:48
and transition that will be necessary on the other side
30:52
if you sort of rush toward a quantum resistant address structure
30:58
is not in anybody's best interest at the end of the day.
31:03
Because that's the other risk too if you rush something
31:05
and it's not as big of a threat as we thought it was.
31:10
maybe we have 30 years, 50 years, maybe it never comes. And you make all these rash changes that
31:17
severely deprecate Caesar experience of Bitcoiners. You have to factor that in as well.
31:22
Yeah, exactly. And at the highest level, you segway coins unless you're reusing addresses
31:27
and you don't expose your X. And this is the other thing. There's a whole series of things that
31:31
just from a user experience, right? Xpubs. Pete McCormack had his whole thing where he's like,
31:36
xpubs the hell's an xpub and rightfully so no human alive should really need like a just a
31:42
typical user should ever need to know what an xpub is how many people have put your xpub into a
31:48
tax accounting software that just tracks your bitcoin wallet guess what if that tax accounting
31:53
software gets hacked and quantum comes to fruition all of your coins are now exposed right public
31:59
keys exposed so there's stuff like that that just completely nukes the user experience of this whole
32:03
thing. So consequence, massive, probability, up for debate, solutions, going to take a long time
32:11
to roll out. And I think to the credit of the folks who are pointing this thing out, because
32:17
of how big the lift is, that's why you need a significant lead time, which is also why you
32:22
probably don't want to wait for it to start cracking keys close to Bitcoin to do something.
32:28
It's going to take a long time to do this. But I also think a lot of the, in my view,
32:32
The rhetoric around we should do absolutely nothing is wrong.
32:35
The rhetoric that we need to do everything tomorrow is wrong.
32:38
The answer is somewhere in the middle, as it usually is.
32:40
That gray zone is really what we should be talking about.
32:43
Even if you're skeptical of quantum, just consider the magnitude of the risk.
32:47
And then even if you are for quantum, telling people that Satoshi's coins are going to get
32:51
market dumped on a Tuesday next week is completely and totally counterproductive.
32:56
You're actually wasting everyone's time by making people dislike you.
33:00
Therefore, your message stops getting heard.
33:01
work within the middle here because that's how you actually get to a solution.
33:06
Yeah, and I think that developers focused on this
33:09
problem have been operating in that middle path
33:13
that you're describing. Yeah, that's the engineering path. You've got to find the optimal solution given the
33:17
constraints that you have in front of you. Yeah. Speaking of constraints that we have
33:21
in front of us, what are the price levels that you're looking at? I read your newsletter
33:25
from this morning, last night for you.
33:29
uh 55k was that the long-term yeah so yeah so give a bit of a roadmap of where we are um so
33:39
uh we're in the 2024 chop zone we're at 63 almost 64k now uh this is underneath the 2025
33:47
zone uh this is the next biggest supply cluster transfer volume trade volume like this is this is
33:55
where Bitcoin spent eight months, every time it went below 50K, which is about a trillion dollar
34:00
market cap, the market bid it, right? So on the downside, we've got the realized price. This is
34:06
the average cost basis for all coins, everyone, Satoshi, the whole lot. So the realized price is
34:14
derived from the realized cap. And I'll explain what these things are for folks in the audience.
34:18
The realized cap is actually, in my opinion, the most important metric in Bitcoin,
34:21
because it is a measure of how much people have saved,
34:25
actually dollar value saved in Bitcoin.
34:28
The coins you bought back in 2019 at 8K,
34:31
they're saved at 8K.
34:33
They're saved at the price when they were last moved on chain.
34:36
Not a perfect measure,
34:37
but even if you run the most magical entity adjustments
34:41
and all that kind of stuff,
34:42
the realized cap never deviates for more than 5%.
34:44
It's one of those things where like at an individual level,
34:46
there's error bars around it,
34:48
but in aggregate,
34:49
it doesn't matter if finance is consolidating stuff,
34:51
doesn't matter if you're moving from a cold card to a ledger or back. The overall aggregate doesn't
34:57
move by more than 5% over all its history. So that number, the amount of capital that Bitcoiners
35:02
have saved in Bitcoin measurably is $1.1 trillion. That is about a 52, oh no, sorry, it'd be 55,
35:12
55K. So if we go down to 55K, you've got the 200 week moving average of like 57. That's like
35:18
every bear market wicks on that level. And by the way, there's no reason that every bear market of
35:22
the past is indicative of the future. Bear, right? This is one of those classic things in markets.
35:27
But if you just think about this from a core fundamental standpoint, it's kind of nice,
35:31
the 200-week moving average. So all the technical boffins out there are going to look at that and
35:35
say, that's where it's going to bottom. The realized price at 55, that is where everyone
35:39
has invested their capital. Let's think about this from a value investor perspective. A company like
35:45
ExxonMobil is trading at an MNAV, an equivalent book value of 0.9. They've spent all this money
35:53
building all of the infrastructure to pump oil. They've got all the smarts, all the people,
35:58
all the hardware, all the drilling rigs, all the pumps, everything. And you're going to sell that
36:03
for less than what people paid for it. That's where Bitcoin is at 55K. We as Bitcoiners have
36:10
invested $1.1 trillion into this thing. At 55K, you are buying Bitcoin at its all-time book value.
36:17
The actual book value for people who are real, like not Satoshi, who doesn't transact and move
36:23
and lost miner coins and all that stuff, that's the true market mean at 80K. So we're already below
36:28
the average cost basis for normal people who are actually alive in the cycle and active.
36:34
So we're in that, I would say, I mean, in my opinion, personally, I think we're in the deep
36:39
value zone. Below 70, I deem to be deep value because we're in that bottom 20% of all price
36:45
history across all models. Once you get down to the low 50s, you're now the territory where it's like,
36:52
please make me a case that isn't a bottom. You have to actually really go down the first path
37:00
and say, no, Bitcoin is dead. Once you get down to those low 50s, you're now saying something is
37:05
wrong with Bitcoin and we are truly going to zero. So that's kind of, that's the framework here. Now,
37:11
if we go below 50, imagine the capitulation week, but you're still going to ask yourself that
37:15
question. Am I buying an asset that's truly going to zero or are people just kind of overselling
37:22
this thing and it comes back and I didn't stay humble at this point? What am I doing?
37:28
what would need to be the conditions for the answer to the question of is this thing going
37:35
to zero what would what would it take for that to be yes in your mind yeah it's a very good question
37:41
i mean like you i mean you could argue that the the quantum thing if suddenly there's a quantum
37:48
break tomorrow yeah we're in trouble no question no doubt so if quantum does manifest tomorrow
37:55
Yeah, it's probably over, right?
37:57
That's hard to come back from.
38:01
I mean, I've been staring at this thing.
38:02
I mean, I dedicated my career to this thing,
38:05
not because I'm like, oh yeah,
38:06
I want to just jump on the Bitcoin train.
38:07
It's like I spent hours and hours and hours
38:10
and I still spend hours and hours and hours
38:12
studying this thing.
38:13
I'm like, you know, really?
38:15
What are the two things that kill Bitcoin?
38:17
Well, let's say three.
38:18
There's one overarching.
38:20
There's something like a quantum.
38:22
Could be a cryptography break.
38:23
Could just be like a code bug.
38:25
You import that same thing.
38:26
I put that in the same bucket.
38:27
Developers go and rush something.
38:29
They put something in the code, truly just kills it.
38:32
That's probably a zero mode, right?
38:34
That's not good.
38:34
No one wants that.
38:35
So something where like the fundamental properties of Bitcoin are eviscerated.
38:39
That's a problem.
38:41
I would also say that like, I mean, apathy is kind of the parent of a lot of this stuff
38:46
in terms of just like people just don't care.
38:47
And that's maybe where we can start talking about where gold fits into this picture.
38:51
because I think a lot of people have this parabola envy over gold.
38:55
I really think the gold rally cooked people because they thought,
38:59
but they didn't choose my coin.
39:00
They chose the old coin, right?
39:02
Assuming that we're going to choose the new coin first time.
39:06
And we're never going to choose Bitcoin first time.
39:09
Again, Roman money.
39:11
So it's pre-Roman money.
39:12
So I think from that perspective, I think there's a lot of people
39:16
who are saying, has the Bitcoin macro thesis broken down?
39:20
And my simple answer to that question is, maybe.
39:25
However, if Bitcoin bottoms and starts rallying,
39:30
how quickly do you think that narrative will drop off the map?
39:34
Just like it does every time.
39:35
Bitcoin was dead for a decade in November 2022.
39:38
That was the narrative.
39:39
It's over.
39:39
Finished.
39:40
FTX has completely nuked every reason why anyone would own this thing.
39:45
It's like, in my view, we're going to find a flaw.
39:49
We're going to look back at this period and go, oh, yeah.
39:53
Yeah, it didn't die.
39:54
How interesting, right?
39:55
Security budget's one, but like, no one's selling Bitcoin
39:59
because of security budget.
40:00
You know what I mean?
40:01
Like, that's years and years in the future, right?
40:03
Miners, as we found, miners are mining.
40:06
They're making a ton of money.
40:07
Some of their stocks are at all-time high.
40:08
So, you know, this is part of the industry.
40:11
that and it's funny that we're going through this uh this capitulation i mean i think we're
40:20
in the process of capitulation right now and i know we've talked about this in the past about
40:26
ai you were just mentioning going back with the models but i've been playing around with open
40:30
claw for the last two weeks and uh have had my my little agent spin up a phoenix d server i've got
40:38
at trading, just play money just to see. I really wanted to see if it could LNURL auth into LN
40:45
markets without me having to set up any credentials. And it can. And the point being, it's
40:51
fascinating to me that we're in this capitulation process where we have something emerging that
40:58
could be this incredible demand driver for Bitcoin, which is the machine payable web that
41:02
we've been talking about for over a decade finally manifesting because the the tooling and the
41:09
infrastructure is finally there to make it viable can you um would you mind giving it some of my
41:14
silver coins and seeing if it can you know make some money out of that or have we got a problem
41:19
there yeah exactly like hey maybe tether will will launch uh the equivalent of tether gold and
41:26
tether silver it could use that it could choose that maybe i'll prefer maybe we'll prefer tokenized
41:31
shares of stretch.
41:34
Who knows?
41:35
Yeah, maybe.
41:35
Maybe.
41:36
Yeah.
41:36
I mean, that's awesome.
41:38
That's one of those things
41:39
where like,
41:40
and, you know,
41:40
having held precious metals,
41:42
still hold precious metals.
41:43
I know that Bitcoin is better
41:45
in every possible way.
41:46
You know, like it's 2026.
41:48
You know, like gold has its place.
41:50
It's important.
41:50
It's going to continue to be
41:51
an important bedrock of the world
41:53
and the financial system.
41:55
But like Bitcoin is just better
41:56
in every way.
41:57
You know, you can teleport
41:58
around the world.
41:59
It's no storage cost.
42:00
It's, you know,
42:01
it has trade-offs there's user experience challenges but like you know i think about
42:06
my son is he gonna have a you know what's a bad user experience going to the gold bullion dealer
42:10
that's a bad experience like you know i don't mind it you get a cup of coffee it's part of a
42:15
process i don't mind it but like it's it's a job it took my whole morning it was it was it was a
42:20
bit of a process bitcoin is trivial is he going to be able to use uh a bitcoin wallet on a on a
42:26
mobile app yes of course it's gonna be second nature to him he's not even gonna think about it
42:30
So user experience is a process and it gets solved over time,
42:34
but don't bet against the young because they're going to outlive you.
42:37
Yeah, my five-year-old knows how to use a Bitcoin wallet already.
42:40
He's got any cash wallet.
42:41
Yeah.
42:41
Cash or money.
42:42
Has he bought any silver coins yet?
42:44
No.
42:45
Oh, really?
42:45
Why not?
42:46
Yeah.
42:46
Not yet.
42:47
Not yet.
42:48
But I mean, speaking of this, the bullion dealer,
42:50
I mean, you had a great anecdote on Twitter.
42:53
I think it was last week,
42:54
but you experienced the animal spirits for yourself in life.
42:57
I did.
42:57
Waiting for themselves.
42:59
Some of your physical silver.
43:00
let's walk through that experience and your your view of the animal spirits around that market
43:04
particularly yeah it was i mean it was some time back i'm pretty sure it was uh we had a pod and i
43:08
was saying like i think platinum platinum was my like speculative play but i ended up adding a bit
43:12
of silver and again we're talking about a small like five percent of my precious metals which is
43:17
like ten percent so that's yeah it's we're not talking about serious money here um but i wanted
43:22
to just like have a couple silver bars i got a something couple silver coins i've got a little
43:26
kangaroo here that i have next to me yeah i like it i think precious metals are great however
43:31
silver was an industrial metal i'm not i'm under no illusions here so it's platinum
43:35
precious metal but also industrial metal uh and my simple thesis was gold's gonna go up
43:42
for all the reasons that make sense people are gonna just go and buy poor man's gold because
43:46
that's what they do people love to trade shit coins just how it works so i was like silver's
43:50
at some point gonna run and my thesis was fairly simple i didn't know the exact kind of frameworks
43:55
like gold silver ratio goes down to like 40 45 50 it's kind of the lowest level it gets to in my
44:03
lifetime it was lower back when it was pegged has been pegged for a long time uh in the post
44:11
1970s gold standard era getting down to a gold silver ratio of like 50 is unlikely and if it does
44:20
stick the landing it's for a couple of days and then it's over so my view was i'll trade a little
44:25
bit of it, sell some of the bars and just get out of it. Anyway, I started seeing every community on
44:29
Twitter was just becoming a silver bug community. You just see froth, the price is going parabolic.
44:36
And for a bit of context, it was on the Friday, the Monday was Australia Day, 26th of January.
44:41
And obviously everything's closed on a public holiday. There's nothing open. And I'm watching
44:46
it on Friday. I'm like, I made the decision over the weekend. I'm probably going to go and sell.
44:49
I'm up 3X. I'm going to go and sell a third of my silver. And then I'm just risk neutral. I'm
44:53
totally clear never have to care I can hang onto the shiny coins that I like And I got a couple of bars that i flog off later on australia day comes and that when silver had like the full parabolic like vertical move you know adds two and a half trillion dollars in a day um slv the
45:09
etf traded like 36 billion more than the stock market did so like i was like oh my god this is
45:15
just chaos i was like this thing's gonna top but i can't do anything about it because it's australia
45:19
right american markets are open but i can't do anything because australia isn't um so then i was
45:25
like okay i'm gonna go in first thing on the morning because the people in the comments of
45:29
my anecdote of my thread all the gold bugs and silver bugs like oh dude you should have like
45:34
called your dealer and just negotiated a better deal it's like yeah on what day on what day it's
45:38
a public holiday everyone's closed like what do i do go on ebay um so my my view was i'll go in
45:44
there first thing in the morning my mate who uses the same bullying deal that i do he's like there's
45:48
just lines out the door all the time i was like okay i'll go in they open at nine i'll go in at
45:53
eight get a coffee stand there uh 8 30 i'm standing in the line i'm the first one there i was like
45:59
kind of surprising but very soon after i got there the line starts forming and it's wrapping
46:05
down the stairs and all the rest of it fairly close-knit place and i'm just listening to the
46:10
banter just listen to people talk there's like a dude who's telling him oh i've been telling all my
46:14
friends no one's been buying in they didn't get it you know i'm like are you a bitcoiner talking
46:19
about silver um oh yeah i just bought you know the lady next to him i just bought you know these
46:23
silver coins the other day i'm already up four thousand dollars like i'm making so much money
46:27
it's great i'm like oh my god and it's just like confirming why i was here um and actually i should
46:32
add another point as i was counting out and working out which of the silver i was going to sell i got
46:37
a message from one of my other mates who's very attuned with markets and he goes so uranium is
46:42
doing well he's like my uranium group is just all all silver and i was like oh i'm getting another
46:48
bar out because like it just something's wrong here anyway so i've got this chatter going on
46:53
behind me i finally go in um and i'm watching the spot prize again tuesday morning australia time
46:58
and in the line i'm waiting there i can see them setting up the shop and like i'm i lost like a
47:04
thousand bucks on the just waiting in the line uh for this thing to happen uh go in uh go to start
47:11
you know, counting out all the coins and selling them. And there was one other bloke who was in
47:14
there to sell. And he pulls up this just massive bag, thumps it on the table. And he's just
47:20
counting out bar after bar after bar. Dude was a pretty, it was a pretty serious looking dude.
47:24
So like, I know he's been stacking for a long time. And the lady next to me was saying, I want
47:29
new coins. I want new coins. And they said, we're completely out. We've only got these ones
47:33
secondhand. She goes, no, I want new ones. Anyway, they go and find some other brand that they've
47:38
got and she's like oh i like these um i sold like two percent below spot like 150 aussie um and she
47:45
was buying about like 220 aussie so the premium on the coins right next to me i'm looking at this
47:50
thing i'm i'm two percent below spot she's paying a huge premium and she said more more more and
47:55
she's pointing over to my coin saying i want those ones i said we can't sell those ones
47:59
porn broke a license we're gonna hold them for 14 days so you can't actually sell in case they're
48:04
stolen, you know, stuff like that. So my like thesis was froth gold, silver ratio, parabolic
48:10
move. I'm standing in line. I've got people saying they're making a ton of money of the coins they
48:15
bought like two days ago. The person next to me after that lady, the next one didn't know what a
48:21
troy ounce was. So I'm like, I've got people who don't know what a troy ounce is willing to pay a
48:25
$70 premium. My cost basis was $50. Like I was buying silver at $50 Aussie. She's paying a $70
48:32
premium on coins today.
48:34
It's more than my original cost basis.
48:36
And the only other guy selling
48:37
looks like he has 10 shotguns
48:40
and a big safe at home.
48:41
I think I'm in the right place.
48:42
I think I'm making the right move.
48:46
Well, you highlight the
48:47
benefit of Bitcoin's fungibility there.
48:53
You're sitting there right at the dealer.
48:55
So you can't buy these coins.
48:56
This coin is 70% more,
48:57
$70,
48:58
70 Aussie dollars more.
49:00
and that was another thing i don't know if brent johnson was trolling people but uh
49:05
i saw he sent out he sent out a tweet like i nobody's gonna buy my silver like does anybody
49:09
have a or somebody wants it to sell me 10 10 below spot does somebody have a better deal so
49:15
it was like 20 kilos like a massive amount like 200 kilos or something right some big chunk of
49:20
silver yeah for bitcoin you have these liquid markets 3 24 7 365 sent over the internet you
49:27
all these fungibility problems.
49:29
Yeah, the only problem is it's down 50% when you want to sell it.
49:31
But, you know, who's counting?
49:33
Yeah.
49:35
What should we tell the freaks out there?
49:37
How long do you see this persisting?
49:40
Look, bear markets come to,
49:41
unless you can come through that decision tree
49:43
and say that Bitcoin is dead and choose,
49:47
there's no shortage of fun, right?
49:48
Apparently Epstein wrote something in,
49:51
I just, the moment that I saw people associating Epstein with Bitcoin,
49:55
I literally muted Epstein.
49:56
I don't want to hear that shit.
49:57
It's pedoquin now.
49:58
I could not care less.
50:00
It's medically powerful.
50:01
I was just like, this is a political distraction if I've ever seen it.
50:05
So there are going to be FUD narratives oozing out the walls.
50:10
It's going to be a shit show.
50:14
Unless you can really, and I come back to this all the time.
50:18
There's two things that really anchor me around Bitcoin.
50:20
The first one is having spent a considerable amount of time
50:24
analyzing how us as Bitcoiners behave as shown by the Bitcoin ledger, nothing that I'm seeing
50:32
right now is abnormal in any way, shape or form. It looks like every bear market of the past.
50:37
I find very, like as an anchor, when I look at how people behave in Bitcoin,
50:42
I'm sorry, but there's people with extraordinarily high conviction. I mean,
50:46
long-term hold of supply right now, it's like 14 point something million, 72% of the supply.
50:51
it's almost at 2020 levels before the bull. So if we just think about like all the coins that
50:57
aren't moving, there's a ton of them that are just static. People are hanging onto their supply.
51:03
Bear markets are a process, but the first one, when I look at all of the data that we see,
51:08
it's so organic, it's so human, it's so real, it's natural, it looks normal, it looks like
51:13
people doing what people do, just following their emotions. So I find that just the fact
51:18
that on-chain data is such a clean, crisp signal of humans being humans, to me, just tells me
51:24
there's something about Bitcoin that attracts, that it just feels very real. It feels like a
51:28
real thing. It's a reminder consistently. And the other one, how many Bitcoiners have you met where
51:33
you're like, well, that guy's a moron. No, you meet Bitcoiners, you're like, you did what? You're
51:39
an astrophysicist or you're a doctor or whatever. Some of the smartest people I've ever met. I'll
51:44
never forget at the uh the uh chico conference last year and we're at the football the men's game
51:50
and there was like i don't know 15 of us left over and uh you know we're fairly sourced but
51:56
we were talking about how the moon was like really weird like there's just weird things about the moon
52:01
and anyway there's this bus of like 15 of us going back to uh back to bedford and people just like
52:05
lean over and go oh boy um you know about this you're a physicist like just tap some dude on the
52:10
shoulder you're a physicist what do you think about the moon's oh yeah no the moon's really
52:13
weird. And you just like have this conversation with people who are all super interesting,
52:18
right? And you just look at the macro minds, like the Lynn Aldens that come into the space.
52:22
You're like, you're telling me that all of these engineer types who are super bright in their own
52:27
field, in an environment, by the way, where the whole world was telling them that Bitcoin's a
52:31
scam, it's wrong, the media, the government, your weird uncle, everyone is telling you that Bitcoin
52:36
is just going to zero and that you're an idiot. All of these super smart engineer type people
52:42
came to a conviction to say, no, I think you're wrong and I'm going to keep buying this thing.
52:48
You're telling me they're all wrong. They were just like suddenly wrong and they all just like
52:51
missed something. The people in Bitcoin is the most bullish thing about it. So unless you can
52:58
convince me that all of those people are wrong and therefore the decision tree is that Bitcoin is dead,
53:03
then the decision tree is at some point this bear market is going to bottom out.
53:07
and then it's just a journey of where are we in that process, right?
53:11
And the only thing you can control is your decisions.
53:15
That's the only thing.
53:16
So if you're feeling emotions based on the price,
53:19
go and think about why that is.
53:21
Is it because of the buys?
53:22
Is it because your net worth is down?
53:24
Is it because you allocated too much?
53:25
These are lessons that you learn.
53:27
But once you can expunge those feelings from your life
53:29
and just look at the price as information,
53:31
where is it in this overall cycle?
53:34
Based on my current assessment, we're somewhere in that bottom fifth.
53:37
what do I want to do in the bottom fifth of every single previous bear market? Do I regret buying
53:42
at 8K, 6K, 4K in 2018, 2019? No. Do I care about if it's 20K, 22, 21, 17, 15? No, I don't care
53:51
because over that long arc of time, they were extremely high value, high probability,
53:57
highly stretched to the downside. Yeah, it's months. It could be months of just chopping around.
54:02
There could be further downside.
54:04
For another piece of context, from my perspective in an on-chain view, June, I think it was,
54:11
2022, when three arrows blew up.
54:13
We hit 17.6K.
54:15
We went down.
54:16
It was like the minor cost basis was down there.
54:18
There was a bunch of things.
54:19
That process from June through to November, pre-FTX, had bottom formation characteristics
54:25
in every way.
54:25
Looks like a bottom.
54:27
Then FTX showed up and took us down to 15, right?
54:29
We stuck down there for another two months.
54:32
It was like a hyper extension type event.
54:35
Do I really care?
54:36
Like now, do I really care about that process?
54:39
It sucks at the time.
54:41
It sucks at the time.
54:42
Be the bison, go through the storm.
54:44
We're in the value zone.
54:46
Probably going to go lower.
54:47
Probably going to take a long time.
54:49
Probably going to suck.
54:50
There'll be narratives out everywhere.
54:52
Come back to your original conviction and say,
54:53
why am I here in the first place?
54:55
And are all these people around me wrong?
54:56
Because if they're not wrong, stay humble.
54:59
what is the other what is the other option on the table to get through this too gold silver could
55:04
fall back on that doesn't seem very i'm a big advocate for a lot of bitcoiners probably should
55:11
have bought more gold they probably have none uh and here's the rationale like and again this is my
55:16
personal circumstance but i think it's a nice illustrative reason for why i started buying gold
55:20
platinum and silver purely speculative i'm just there to play them play the price their numbers
55:24
on a screen. Gold has a very particular role. Most of my holdings is an ETF. And I mean, for me,
55:31
I'm an Australian, I'm saving for a house. Our housing market is like many places, but particularly
55:36
bad. It's just an asset that just keeps running. The number is too big. The number to buy a house
55:41
is just too big. The gold, what happens if I did happen to find a place that I did want to buy?
55:47
Like now, I would kick myself forever for having to sell Bitcoin to pay for that deposit.
55:54
It would just kill me because I know it's a terrible trade.
55:57
Gold is doing exactly what I need it to do, not be down 50% when I might need it.
56:02
So gold is ballast in my portfolio.
56:04
Its job is the exact same trade as Bitcoin.
56:07
It's going to go up sometimes when Bitcoin doesn't.
56:09
It's going to go down sometimes when Bitcoin doesn't.
56:11
But I know it's not going to be down horrifically.
56:15
I don't mind selling gold down 20% because its job is to be the house deposit when I need it.
56:19
So I think a lot of Bitcoiners would have benefited this cycle from having some ballast in your portfolio.
56:27
In many ways, having ballast allows you to not sell your Bitcoin.
56:32
When gold goes through a tear, I'm happy because gold's gone through a tear.
56:37
Bitcoin wasn't doing so great, but gold was doing fantastically.
56:39
And when I think about diversification is one of these things,
56:42
but I'm also of an age where concentrated bets are also generally the framework,
56:47
which is why I'm like, just give me sound money assets and let me just sit tight.
56:51
But I'm increasingly interested in commodity markets.
56:54
Just, again, replacement value.
56:56
How much does it cost to replace an oil producing company?
56:59
A lot.
57:00
Do we need oil?
57:01
Yes.
57:02
Is there going to be value there in a commodity cycle?
57:04
Yes.
57:05
Are they a dominant part of my portfolio?
57:06
Not yet.
57:07
Probably not.
57:08
But just having that extra ballast that allows you to hodl,
57:11
to actually not be completely 100% emotionally anchored
57:16
to the Bitcoin price
57:18
is going to help you actually hodl through it.
57:21
It's just an easier strategy.
57:22
So have some ballast.
57:23
I think it's important.
57:25
Have some ballast, freaks.
57:27
Make sure you subscribe to James's newsletter.
57:30
Call it a lot of this.
57:30
Call these levels.
57:32
Tell people to watch out for them.
57:33
We're here now.
57:34
If you're reading the newsletter, you're not shocked.
57:37
So go check it out.
57:39
Highly recommend doing the paid subscription.
57:41
I've got my little agent
57:43
I hope you don't mind
57:44
I'm forwarding it
57:45
I'm forwarding it to him again
57:47
like alright
57:47
what's James saying
57:49
what do I need to look out for
57:50
he's done a pretty good job
57:52
yeah
57:53
and like you know
57:54
I often think about
57:55
sometimes I'm a Bitcoin therapist
57:56
right
57:57
you know just helping people
57:58
like rationalize stuff
57:59
but what I love about Bitcoin
58:01
and all the data that we have
58:02
whether it's futures
58:03
ETFs, options, on-chain
58:04
it just tells us
58:06
what everyone else is doing
58:07
we're all sitting at the big
58:09
poker table of life
58:10
you can't see all the cards but you can see how many people are bluffing you can see how many
58:15
people have been playing for a long time you can see how many people who are brand new to the game
58:19
are really really bad at bluffing you just get this like big picture view of like what are the
58:24
different cohorts doing i don't need perfect precision you just don't need it you just need
58:29
to get enough of an ebb and flow and say here's where things are likely um and you know a lot of
58:34
folks think like oh do you trade i'm like no i don't trade trading's terrible trading's a horrible
58:38
experience. Everyone who's done it knows. It's just like it melts your mind in terms of how much
58:43
stress it induces. I very much write for HODLers because at the end of the day, like this is why
58:48
our catchphrase is your Bitcoin personal trainer. You've got to go to the gym, do the reps, and
58:52
then none of this stuff should surprise you. And ultimately, what I'm trying to help people do
58:57
is eliminate the uncertainty component. If you can get rid of uncertainty, whether the price
59:03
moons to 100K tomorrow or goes to 55K tomorrow, doesn't matter which way it goes, you're going to
59:08
have a level of uncertainty, but if you've thought about why that might take place before,
59:13
when it happens, you're like, okay, cool. Now I just focus on my decisions. And I've probably
59:16
already made those decisions, right? Either sit tight, stack, whatever, whatever it is,
59:22
your decisions are the only thing you can control. Make them before the move. It doesn't matter if
59:26
the move doesn't happen, but you prepared for it. Be prepared for exchange. Thank you for starting
59:32
your morning with us here. Happy Friday to you. Hope you enjoy your weekend. Thank you. Good on
59:36
and uh we'll do this again hopefully uh hopefully we're in the uh the ninth inning bottom of the
59:41
ninth of the bear market the next time we talk but we'll see stay humble stack sets a job wisdom
59:47
there is there is never a better time for that to apply than right now be the bison go through
59:50
the snob cash flow according cold storage stay humble stack sets peace and love freaks