Latest / What Bitcoin Did / Bitcoin Is Running Out Of Sellers | Checkmate
Transcript
- 0:00This was by far and away the densest, most concentrated, what we call point of control.
- 0:07Tons of supply has been sold and therefore accumulated by somebody in this price range.
- 0:13So if I force the price to go down to 45k, the only bear market that is comparable is 2015.
- 0:20This is starting to look a lot like seller exhaustion.
- 0:22I'm sure there's a lot of wealth still to be generated in the AI trade, but I think the
- 0:26parabolic crazy money has probably happened now and now it probably won't be as explosive so
- 0:32investors are going to start going okay what what else is out there that is attractively priced and
- 0:36well positioned for the future i think because it really is but yeah really you're waiting for that
- 0:40demand and folks are like well what's the narrative that's going to drive bitcoin into the next bull
- 0:44market and honestly it's just the price going up a little bit i look at the world that's coming for
- 0:48us they're going to have to print the money none of this has changed the mathematics of the equation
- 0:53These things take ages.
- 0:54At some point in time, the debasement trade is going to come back.
- 0:57The fastest horse is going to get looked at.
- 0:59It just takes time.
- 1:02Mr. Checkmate.
- 1:04We're back, man.
- 1:05Rock and roll.
- 1:06We started already.
- 1:07We've got a lot of stuff to talk about.
- 1:09We do.
- 1:09For the price going absolutely dead flat, there's a lot happening.
- 1:12Well, I think that's the best place to start.
- 1:13I do want to talk to you about the cold card hack vulnerability
- 1:15and about the Bitponten failed fork.
- 1:19But we should start because these are two big events.
- 1:23especially the cold card vulnerability.
- 1:25This is something I've never seen in Bitcoin.
- 1:26I think it's hopefully a black swan we never see again.
- 1:29But while we've had all of this FUD,
- 1:31well, not even FUD, these problems,
- 1:33Bitcoin price hasn't really given a shit.
- 1:35Yeah, that's pretty remarkable.
- 1:36And not only that, you've had,
- 1:38not in the last couple of weeks,
- 1:39but you've had the ETFs,
- 1:41they puked eight and a half, almost billion dollars.
- 1:44You've had Sailor be a strategy, be a seller.
- 1:47So the two public entities, if we all remember,
- 1:50were the only ones propping up the Bitcoin price
- 1:52would be net sellers.
- 1:53there's a lot that's happened, and the price is hanging in there.
- 1:57So, I mean, that doesn't mean that it can't go lower,
- 1:59but from my perspective,
- 2:00this is starting to look a lot like seller exhaustion.
- 2:03It feels like we've been saying that for a long time.
- 2:05I think not even last show, the show before that,
- 2:08we'd started saying, like, clearly we're near the bottom,
- 2:11and I think the price was probably similar to today.
- 2:14This is just the time period.
- 2:15Totally.
- 2:16So I think we spoke, we had a podcast
- 2:18very shortly after we hit 60K in February,
- 2:21and my read at the time was we've just seen a major capitulation event uh likely that we're in
- 2:27the process of bottom formation and i think this is something that i talk about all the time a lot
- 2:32of folks worry about the bottom tick to me you're looking for those changes in when market structure
- 2:37changes investor behavior changes capitulation events they are generally very large you can feel
- 2:44it february felt like you could fear the fear you could feel how fearful people were yeah my inbox
- 2:49slammed. So that was a point in time where sentiment hit a level where we go, oh, okay,
- 2:55now this is a full scale bear. There was no denying it. But also we've seen a ton of people
- 2:59puke out coins. Then you go into the time pain chapter. So I call that the price pain capitulation.
- 3:04If we go back and look at 2022, that was June 2022. Luna collapsed shortly after three hours
- 3:10blew up. I think Genesis was then in the headlines. We'd seen the majority of people who are price
- 3:16sensitive puke. Then you have the chop. And I've described this before, but it was 17.6 in June
- 3:232022. That was the low, 17.6. Bounced back and chopped around the 20K. And then we bottomed it
- 3:2915.6. For most people, given Bitcoin is a long duration asset, the difference between 17.6 and
- 3:3615.6 is the eight months that separated them. It's a time thing, not a price thing. So here we are in
- 3:42our current bear market. And I believe that 60K level in February was the price paying capitulation.
- 3:47We just saw all the people who are price sensitive give up. And then you've got this choppy period.
- 3:53We rallied up to 80. We sold back down. Strategy sold 32 Bitcoin, took us down to 58K gang.
- 3:59You've got a second capitulation event. This is very similar in terms of the
- 4:03on-chain signatures, looks very similar to FTX. And then you've just got this quiet period
- 4:08where if you go back to 2022, after FTX,
- 4:12we technically bottomed in November,
- 4:15like 18th of November from memory.
- 4:16And then we chopped sideways until the 1st of January,
- 4:19doing absolutely nothing.
- 4:20And I remember writing a report over the Christmas period,
- 4:22which is always very, very quiet.
- 4:25Bitcoin traded with like a $250 range.
- 4:27It was just like complete nothingness.
- 4:29So look, I'm not drawing a perfect example, right?
- 4:32Markets are going to do whatever they're going to do.
- 4:33But from my perspective, there's a lot of similarities
- 4:35in terms of the investor behavior,
- 4:38the drawdown is nowhere near as significant,
- 4:40as we've seen in previous pairs, as most people know.
- 4:42But the overall investor behavior is remarkably similar.
- 4:46And I think we're going through that time pain chapter,
- 4:48but I think the reason that things take ages,
- 4:51there's no influx of new buyers, right?
- 4:54You're really left.
- 4:55And why the cold car thing is interesting
- 4:56is from an investor standpoint,
- 4:58it kind of hit the hardcore folks
- 5:00who've been here for a long time, the sat stackers.
- 5:03So that's why I think for us,
- 5:04even though it was small in terms of overall coin volume where I think 2 is ballpark of how many coins we believe were lost It a small number in the grand scheme of things but it hits us all really hard because it was cold storage
- 5:17It was, you know, all of those elements.
- 5:19So I think there's a lot of components here,
- 5:20but like this quiet, no volume, like volume is through the floor.
- 5:25All of these things are what you typically see
- 5:27in like peak apathy, late stage bears.
- 5:30It's only us, you know, like there's no people rushing in.
- 5:34So any kind of sellers that are there
- 5:35are being met with just the folks who are willing to stack away,
- 5:39but you don't have that influx of buyers.
- 5:41Like 2023, we spent almost the whole year below 30K.
- 5:45We just couldn't really get any momentum.
- 5:47So even the start of bull markets are really quiet
- 5:50and sometimes indistinguishable from a bear.
- 5:52That's why they call it the disbelief rally.
- 5:53No one believes it.
- 5:54And it's just kind of this nothingness, choppy period.
- 5:57Drives people mad.
- 5:58But I think most, I believe in February,
- 6:01most of the price paying damage was done.
- 6:03I would love for 58K gang to just be the bottom wick
- 6:06that would just be so poetic.
- 6:08Very Bitcoin, but we'll see how it plays out.
- 6:11I think the question that everyone probably has right now
- 6:12is while we're going through this time pain,
- 6:14how long do we have left?
- 6:16Because after the ETF, we were in that chop solidation.
- 6:19I think that's where you first coined the phrase.
- 6:21And that was a long time.
- 6:22I think that was like nine months.
- 6:23Eight months, okay.
- 6:24How far into this are we?
- 6:25Maybe five months, six months?
- 6:27Yeah, so it depends.
- 6:28So from my view, I think my broad picture thesis,
- 6:31I think we're very late stage bear.
- 6:33Yeah.
- 6:33Now, that may have another leg lower.
- 6:36I've modeled, and I get this question,
- 6:38I wrote a piece called, what if I'm wrong?
- 6:40Because my current working thesis is,
- 6:43I don't think we go below 50, right?
- 6:45I think that if we do get a leg lower,
- 6:47it's probably not going to be driven by a Bitcoin thing,
- 6:48it's going to be driven by a macro thing.
- 6:51Not, sorry, adding to what we were talking about before,
- 6:53not only have we had cold card, soft forks,
- 6:57sale of selling, ETF selling,
- 6:58we've also had equities pullback,
- 6:59The AI trade had a pretty meaningful pullback,
- 7:02probably not the end of the bull, but a pretty sizable pullback.
- 7:0564K, 64K, 64K.
- 7:07So we just hit this point where we've got rid of the vast,
- 7:10vast majority of sellers.
- 7:12So now it's people who are frustrated.
- 7:16There will always be this kind of slow drip of people
- 7:19coming out of the system.
- 7:21But yeah, really, you're waiting for that demand.
- 7:23And folks are like, well, what's the narrative
- 7:24that's going to drive Bitcoin into the next bull market?
- 7:27And honestly, it's just the price going up a little bit.
- 7:29Yeah, the narrative normally comes a bit later.
- 7:31Price just goes up a little bit
- 7:32because you get seller exhaustion,
- 7:33there's enough buy side that it just gets it above a moving average,
- 7:37suddenly a hedge fund buys,
- 7:38and it goes above another moving average,
- 7:40you get support level,
- 7:41and suddenly people just start getting interested
- 7:44because the chart doesn't look like ass anymore.
- 7:45So it's a process.
- 7:46I'm convinced the next narrative will be the same as the last one,
- 7:48institutional adoption.
- 7:49I've always been to the view that people are like,
- 7:51oh, it has to be sovereigns now.
- 7:52It's like, no, no, no, you just need corporates to go one extra step.
- 7:56Yeah, because I don't know if we really, truly saw institutional adoption.
- 8:00Like, I think one of the most obvious signs of that is Saylor's stretch product,
- 8:05which has obviously had a bad time, but it's like getting close back to par,
- 8:09been impressive, is like 80% retail.
- 8:12I think that proves that the institutions aren't here properly yet.
- 8:14Yeah, no, I think the whole industry, by and large, is still individuals.
- 8:18By and large.
- 8:19Now, there's certainly companies, and I think what I find very interesting,
- 8:22I mean, we're a Bitcoin company.
- 8:23We stack Bitcoin as part of our treasury asset.
- 8:26You know, we're a small firm, but there's a lot of us.
- 8:29There's a lot of small firms, Bitcoiners who are running their own business
- 8:31or, you know, whatever it is.
- 8:33There's going to be a ton of these.
- 8:33You hear it from the rivers and the like.
- 8:35They often say, like, our clients are plumbers, electricians.
- 8:39Dentists.
- 8:39Dentists.
- 8:40You know, various small businesses.
- 8:42Which is awesome.
- 8:43That's what I want to see.
- 8:43I totally agree.
- 8:44This is what Lynn's doing with Orange Juice, right?
- 8:46Looking for those businesses that are,
- 8:48they understand the value proposition of Bitcoin.
- 8:50They're profitable.
- 8:51They're small, but they're this consistent buyer.
- 8:54So I think all that stuff is great.
- 8:55The bigger corporates, and I think folks often, I mean, this is just very human nature.
- 9:01The reason why the TradFi bros were like the ETFs and Saylor is the only thing propping up the market is because they don't understand the market.
- 9:08So they look for the big boogeyman entity that they can blame or point fingers to or say this is the only thing to confirm their own bias.
- 9:15But in reality, those entities have been sellers.
- 9:18So who is buying?
- 9:19There's clearly a pool of people in these spot markets who are buying this thing.
- 9:24I'm buying.
- 9:24Totally.
- 9:25So you said ETFs have sold 8 billion, did you say?
- 9:28I think it was 8.2, I think, in total.
- 9:30And I think when we look back in the arc of history,
- 9:34this is like June, July, was the stretch, about eight weeks.
- 9:37When we look back in history,
- 9:39I think this will be a case study for an ETF capitulation
- 9:42because we've never seen what the ETFs,
- 9:44how they're going to respond in a bear.
- 9:46So 8.25, I think it was about a 12% total drawdown
- 9:50in cumulative inflows.
- 9:52And to give you a bit of an idea of like,
- 9:53what was the driving factor?
- 9:55I try to apply my own on-chain lens to this,
- 9:58which I think is all about psychology.
- 10:00What was the forcing function for the ETFs?
- 10:02Because they hodled through most of it.
- 10:03And they only gave up the ghost in June, July.
- 10:06Yeah, everyone used to say they were the best holders.
- 10:07And they were.
- 10:08They were.
- 10:08And that's why I think this was a notable capitulation period
- 10:12because in terms of the average inflow cost,
- 10:15we can't know the cost basis
- 10:16because you've got shares trading behind the scenes
- 10:19and all this kind of stuff.
- 10:20So you can know the exact on cost basis like we can for Bitcoin itself but we were about 30 percent below the average inflow So if you got like assume all the inflows
- 10:30like a big set of DCAs.
- 10:32Average cost base was like 80K, 82.
- 10:34We went 30% below that.
- 10:36And then if you look at all the inflows on the date they occurred,
- 10:39and again, this is not a perfect model,
- 10:40but 87% of the inflows had occurred at a higher price.
- 10:44So if you kind of think about that like percent supply and loss,
- 10:48right we're at 87 percent for the bitcoin side we got to more than 50 percent of supply and loss
- 10:53all of these things are enough and then we see the reaction function which is 8.2 billion of
- 10:59outflows so to me incentive a lot of people underwater by about 30 percent 87 percent of
- 11:05inflows underwater outcome 8.25 billion of outflows during a period where the market was
- 11:11scary went back to the lows of february feels like capitulation so we've been in bitcoin quite a
- 11:17while. And at 65k or whatever right now, you have to rip Bitcoin out my cold dead hands. There's no
- 11:21way I'm selling at this price. But with ETFs, is that just classic newbie behavior that they're
- 11:25selling the bottom? Look, I think part of it's going to be that. I also think that we can't
- 11:29underestimate just like the rotation. I want to put it in something else. Anything else? I think
- 11:34that that's been, honestly, with the AI trade, people have just been putting money into the AI
- 11:37trade. No matter what, they're selling everything, right? They could have sold gold, could have sold
- 11:40S&P, whatever it is. I think there's been this like, just, there was a point in time where I was
- 11:45looking at my trading view i've got my you know certain list of macro assets and things i was
- 11:49tracking and there was points in time over the last six months or so where you could almost feel
- 11:54the black hole of money as everything got sucked into your chips and your memory and korean stocks
- 12:00and all this kind of stuff and then interestingly they start lifting some of those companies on the
- 12:04u.s markets and that was the peak and you've got situational letters blowing up and like all these
- 12:08things, it felt to me like there was this black hole of money. At some point in time, I'm sure
- 12:15there's a lot of wealth still to be generated in the AI trade, but I think the parabolic,
- 12:21crazy money has probably happened now. And now it probably won't be as explosive. So investors are
- 12:26going to start going, okay, what else is out there that is attractively priced and well-positioned
- 12:30for the future? I think it comes in a really good spot. Yeah. See, this is a narrative that I really
- 12:34believe, just in my gut, is that
- 12:36when the AI trade does either slow down,
- 12:38roll over, whatever happens there,
- 12:40if you're looking for where to park that money,
- 12:42Bitcoin is the best option. It's something I spoke to
- 12:44Peter Dunworth about. Do you believe that's going to happen?
- 12:45No, I do. Honestly, I'm a simple dude.
- 12:48I think Bitcoin and gold,
- 12:50just as if I look at the world that's coming
- 12:51for us, they're
- 12:54going to have to print the money. None of this has changed
- 12:56the mathematics of the equation.
- 12:58These things take ages, right?
- 12:59Macro tends to move glacially, and then it happens
- 13:01all at once. At some
- 13:04point in time, the debasement trade is going to come back. The fastest horse is going to get looked
- 13:08at. It just takes time. Yeah. I was speaking to Luke Groman about the AI trade and he was,
- 13:13we were kind of asking the question of whether they're already too big to fail. And that's what
- 13:16sort of sparks the money printer next time. Well, it's really interesting how, what China
- 13:21is doing with the open source side of things. I think if you kind of wound back the playbook two
- 13:24years and said, China is going to be the open source and America is going to be. I would never
- 13:28have believed it. No, I don't think anyone could have picked this, but it's a fascinating part of
- 13:32their strategy, and this is what they've done for many industries, mostly like commodities
- 13:36and chips and all the rest of it, they essentially subsidize local businesses to undercut any
- 13:42Western price, which just drives them out of business.
- 13:44In the AI front, they've kind of recognized there's a ton of capital being burned.
- 13:50That's probably irrecoverable.
- 13:52You know, some of these frontier, you know, the open AIs and the anthropics, are they
- 13:55really going to be profitable long term?
- 13:57Ever, maybe.
- 13:58Ever.
- 13:58So then they do the open source side, which again is wild.
- 14:01Yep.
- 14:01And some of these models, I mean, Rob Hamilton and his red team,
- 14:05they can't use American models.
- 14:07That's a crazy, crazy insight.
- 14:09And it's not even that they just can't use the normal models that mean use.
- 14:12They're on the cybersecurity team, and they still can't use them.
- 14:14Totally.
- 14:15So from that instance, China has undercut them by offering a price of near zero,
- 14:20and the gap between a frontier AI model and an open source one
- 14:25that is as good is like three weeks now.
- 14:27So these things happen real quick.
- 14:29So I think from the whole AI perspective, again, I'm no equity analyst,
- 14:33but if I look at the memory shortage that's going on
- 14:36and I think forward five years' time, there's going to be just a glut,
- 14:40a total glut of memory because there's a massive incentive
- 14:44to spin up more production for these things.
- 14:46A lot of stuff is going to get commoditized
- 14:48because you've got infinite intelligence.
- 14:50You can produce things at lower and lower costs.
- 14:53This is very much the Jeff Booth thesis of everything is deflationary.
- 14:56at some point in time, like it's just going to bite.
- 14:59I listened to your interview with Luke.
- 15:00I mean, he's all over this kind of stuff.
- 15:01At some point, the pressures that the governments are under
- 15:04is going to bite.
- 15:06Bitcoin's going to be back in the headlines again
- 15:08because the price is going to go up.
- 15:09And then we'll find a thousand one narratives
- 15:11as to why it's going up.
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- 15:15there's going to come a time when you need some dollars.
- 15:17It might be a tax bill, a business expense,
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- 17:03If you own a Bitcoin ETF, especially if it's GBTC, you need to listen up.
- 17:07Spot Bitcoin ETFs provide price exposure to Bitcoin, not direct ownership.
- 17:11You can't withdraw it, you can't self-custody it,
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- 18:02of their team that's swan.com forward slash wbd do you think that ai coming out of china is is
- 18:11their form of essentially like economic warfare like they see how important the ai sort of trade
- 18:15the ai industry is to america and are just attacking that do you think that's why they're
- 18:19doing it yeah i mean it kind of when you actually put it in the lens of what have they done with
- 18:22every other industry it is the same playbook undercut so so heavily undercut that you can't
- 18:29be competitive so i think it's a fascinating but when the entire u.s economy is propped up by the
- 18:33ai trade at the moment like that's really dodgy it is but there's all i mean it's also very clever
- 18:37yeah i mean like that's it's um it's statecraft yeah so a lot of these chess pieces that are
- 18:43moving are very very big and have been thought about for a long time the scary thing is like
- 18:47I don't, who knows what's going to happen in the US,
- 18:49but I could see them trying to regulate the use of Chinese AI,
- 18:52which is such a losing move.
- 18:54It is. I mean, that's what governments tend to do, right?
- 18:56They tend to put more rules in, that'll fix it,
- 18:58and very rarely does, in fact, I was talking to people the other day,
- 19:02almost every time the government puts a regulation in,
- 19:04they achieve the exact opposite result of what they want to do.
- 19:06So I can only imagine this is going to happen at some scale.
- 19:09All right, back to Bitcoin.
- 19:11Last time we did a show, we were, again,
- 19:13talking about the bottom looks like it's in.
- 19:15I think so far, at least, it still looks the same.
- 19:17And I had a ton of comments under the show.
- 19:19I can't remember the guy's name that everyone was referring to,
- 19:22but everyone was saying 45K is the bottom.
- 19:23Sure.
- 19:24Why don't you think that's the case?
- 19:25Yes. So this is the piece I mentioned before.
- 19:28What if I'm wrong?
- 19:29So I wanted to run the study and say,
- 19:31look, I've seen this kind of general consensus forming about 45K.
- 19:3540K, 45K.
- 19:37Because I can't predict the future like anyone else, right?
- 19:40I'm just trying to use the data in front of me
- 19:41and look at how investors behave.
- 19:43Are we seeing certain things that look like bottom formation, in my view?
- 19:46Yes.
- 19:47What if we go to 45K and my thesis is incorrect and we go below 50K, right?
- 19:51Which, by the way, across a number of metrics, would be very consistent with previous bear cycles.
- 19:57So my thesis is that this cycle is a little bit different from the bear market perspective.
- 20:01I think there's a lot of angles there.
- 20:03So I forced all my models to go down to 45K.
- 20:07Now, one of the really cool things about on-chain data is we can see where all the coins have moved.
- 20:11What's their cost basis?
- 20:12where do people accumulate coins?
- 20:14The 200-week moving average is like $63.6 or something at the moment,
- 20:18basically where the price is now.
- 20:20This is the densest.
- 20:22We haven't seen something this concentration of cost basis levels,
- 20:26excluding the cold card thing, even before that happened,
- 20:29because obviously coins move.
- 20:31Even without that, this was by far and away the densest,
- 20:35most concentrated, what we call point of control.
- 20:37Tons of supply has been sold and therefore accumulated
- 20:41by somebody in this price range.
- 20:44So if we force the price down to $45k,
- 20:48all those coins right now, which are at their break in,
- 20:50level suddenly go into loss. The people who bought the top go even more into loss. The folks who are
- 20:55holding from 50 go into a loss. So you can actually model how the damage, like how many long-term
- 21:02holders are going to be underwater. What's the unrealized losses, all of these dynamics.
- 21:06So if I force the price to go down to 45K, this is not to say it can't happen, totally could happen.
- 21:13The only equivalent bear market on a damage done, supply and loss, long-term holders underwater,
- 21:19all of these dynamics.
- 21:20The only bear market that is comparable is 2015.
- 21:24Now, 2015, I wasn't there for 2015.
- 21:27Me neither, but the most brutal of brutal bear markets.
- 21:28The most brutal of all brutal bears, right?
- 21:30Down 90% and stayed there for a year.
- 21:33The market cap of Bitcoin back then at the bottom
- 21:36was a billion dollars.
- 21:37One billion.
- 21:38Tiny.
- 21:38Yeah.
- 21:39Strategy has $4 billion in cash
- 21:41that they raised over the last month.
- 21:43So there's that side of the equation.
- 21:46Mt. Gox had failed.
- 21:47like coinbase is only just started it's kind of like there's bit stamp is like the only exchange
- 21:52that's like meaningful um with the price history back that far so there's very little infrastructure
- 21:57back there um and if we the bottom formation zone that i've been talking about 58k which is our
- 22:03current low um to about 78k we can talk about why i picked that level but that's kind of the zone
- 22:08that i've been describing as the bottom formation like we're hammering out the floor um that is
- 22:14equivalents you go back to 2022 of like that 25 to 15 right it's a range where we hammered out the
- 22:20bottom takes time it's months there's leaky price all these things but it was the bottom formation
- 22:25no one who looks back even today at the ass end of a bear mark is going to go oh i really regret
- 22:29buying at 22k you know no one cares yeah so from that perspective in that bottom formation range
- 22:34we've got like 320 billion dollars worth of cost basis levels the market cap at the bottom of 2022
- 22:40two was 300 billion so the whole bitcoin market cap is just in this price range in terms of cost
- 22:48basis level people sold that much and other people bought that much so there's this like
- 22:53massive zone of accumulation that's occurred the last time we saw something of this concentrated
- 22:58magnitude was after ftx so from my perspective yes of course we could go to 45k because the
- 23:04market's going to clear where the market's going to clear if that does happen in my view it's going
- 23:09be very, very fleeting. I've got a model I use, which I call my mean reversion index.
- 23:14Markets are mean reverting. They swing away. Let's just take the two in a week moving average.
- 23:18It swings away for it for several years, and then it comes back to it in the bear. Swings away,
- 23:22comes back. On-chain, we've got cost basis levels. Why does the market oscillate around these levels?
- 23:27Because people bought, price goes up, they're in profit, they sell. Price goes down, they get
- 23:32scared, they capitulate. So it swings around people's cost basis because what people paid for
- 23:37it. So I've got a set of these different anchors. Some are technical, some are on-chain, different
- 23:41things. And we can then look at quantiles. You can look at the power law. What quantile are we
- 23:46in? We're in the bottom 10%, bottom 5%, upper 95%. Going down to 45K is like a Q1 or a Q2 event,
- 23:55which means it's like the bottom 1% of the distribution, bottom 2%. Can it happen? Yes.
- 24:001%, 2% of the time it does. It's just not something I can professionally form a base case on.
- 24:07And you'd have to imagine, like, if we did have a drop down to 45k, it would most likely be on some serious news.
- 24:13And further to that...
- 24:14The interesting is, like, at the moment, we've had two pieces of what I would consider serious news.
- 24:18I know it's a little bit inside baseball when you're talking about cold card and Bit110, but price hasn't moved.
- 24:22And I think there's like a meme that when price doesn't move on bad news, you're probably at the bottom.
- 24:27I don't know how true that is, but it seems true.
- 24:29Likewise, when bad news means nothing at the top of a bull, right?
- 24:32You've still got legs.
- 24:33Exactly.
- 24:34So you're looking at these sorts of things,
- 24:36but going down to that Q1 type event, it's possible.
- 24:41It puts us into a 2015 bear market type setup.
- 24:44To me, it just feels too much.
- 24:47That's like a major, major player break.
- 24:49And when I ran another study,
- 24:51because I had a fantastic question from one of my clients,
- 24:54and he was saying, look, a lot of us are DCAs.
- 24:56We've got a salary, we buy.
- 24:58There's a lot of other folks who they've just sold a business,
- 25:01they've got a bunch of cash, they've got a cash pile,
- 25:03and they want to know what's the best strategy for allocating.
- 25:06Obviously, I don't help people directly,
- 25:07but I wanted to go through the process of,
- 25:09because I'm a big fan of DCA.
- 25:11Even if you have a lump sum,
- 25:14DCAing just takes the emotional toll out of the whole thing.
- 25:18Because if you do want to allocate,
- 25:20if you're trying to pick the bottom wick,
- 25:22what ultimately happens is the price rallies
- 25:24and you think, oh, shit, I've missed it.
- 25:27And then you throw everything else in.
- 25:28Correct.
- 25:28But if you just DCA, you just buy the whole bottom.
- 25:30It's just a really good way to manage the human element of markets.
- 25:35Anyway, I tried to run an analysis and say,
- 25:36what happens if we go to Q20, Q10, Q5?
- 25:40So I've got my mean reversion index.
- 25:42If we get to these different quantiles, look at previous bears.
- 25:45How long are we at Q5 and below?
- 25:48How long are Q10 and below?
- 25:49Q20 and below?
- 25:51And the simple kind of summary of that,
- 25:54Q5 and below is like seven days.
- 25:56And every bear market has been between one and seven days COVID was like It the COVID week COVID week week It the 2018 You like dip down and then suddenly you trading around 4K not 3K Yep
- 26:07FTX, it was 15.6.
- 26:09And next thing you know,
- 26:09you're hovering around 16, 17,
- 26:11climbing back to 20.
- 26:12The crazy thing that I didn't realize
- 26:14until recently about FTX
- 26:15was the price when it blew up
- 26:16was only like 19K or something.
- 26:17It didn't drop that much.
- 26:19It went, I think it got to like 16 something
- 26:22on the FTX news.
- 26:23And then there was a couple of days later
- 26:24and then it had a final 15.6.
- 26:27and then chopping higher.
- 26:28But Q10, you're like three, four months, right?
- 26:32So that bottom 10% of the distribution,
- 26:34you've usually got four or five months down there.
- 26:38Q5 is like seven days.
- 26:40So it's like a week.
- 26:41And then Q20, sometimes it's eight months.
- 26:43So it kind of gives you a ballpark.
- 26:45To me, we've been in this bottom formation zone,
- 26:47which has been Q20 for eight months now,
- 26:51nine months in February or whatever that is.
- 26:54So in my view, we've kind of got all the statistics
- 26:57kind of look very similar to previous bears.
- 26:58So you said, you mentioned 78K before,
- 27:00as like the top of this range.
- 27:02Are we in a situation now where above 78K,
- 27:05you'll start calling the bull market back on?
- 27:07So the way I think about the recovery,
- 27:10like all things, you have more,
- 27:13it's easy to call it a bull market
- 27:14when you punch to a new all-time high.
- 27:16It's much harder to call it when you're further down.
- 27:19And it's really hard to say it's a bull
- 27:21on the day of the, like the last day of the bear,
- 27:23which is the first day of the bull.
- 27:24Yeah.
- 27:24So you look for levels where your confidence can start to build and increase.
- 27:29And I've got a fairly simple framework.
- 27:31The short-term holder cost basis is just a really powerful tool
- 27:34because it's people who bought in the last five months.
- 27:37Now, think about the last five months.
- 27:39It's been horrible, right?
- 27:42People who are buying in the last five months,
- 27:44normally we think about short-term holders as speculators, fast money traders.
- 27:49At the bottom of a bear,
- 27:51it's the only time where that interpretation flips over because the people who bought in the
- 27:56last five months are people like you and i who understand this thing it goes to 45k i'm certainly
- 28:01not selling i'm buying as much as i can so you get to this point where the short-term holder cost
- 28:05basis is actually representative of the hardcore folks who stuck with it through the bad times
- 28:11so that's like 67k at the moment getting above that my simple framework is until we're above the
- 28:18short-term cost basis, keep your bear market goggles on. Just assume that every rally is going
- 28:21to fail. But at some point, it's not going to fail. It's going to get above that level.
- 28:25And then it's going to hold that level. And then it will get above the 200-day moving average.
- 28:29And then your hedge funds start to notice, right? Because it shows up on their screeners.
- 28:33And then suddenly, momentum starts to switch in the other direction. So I try to build up confidence
- 28:37and say, look, above short-term cost basis, that's the first line of defense for the bears.
- 28:41Same way it's the first line of defense for the bulls when we break through it. It was 114K,
- 28:46breaking below 114 you go okay maybe not a bear but i've got one goggle on once it goes below the
- 28:53200 day i probably should have both goggles ready to go and then once it goes below you know 50 week
- 28:57moving average now your confidence builds and builds and builds you say okay now i think it's
- 29:01it's flipped so short-term cost basis is the first level 200 day moving average second level
- 29:07once you get of like 78 80 that's the the breakdown in the start of the year 80k was the low in
- 29:15November. That's just kind of punching new highs. Technically speaking, the chart's now in a
- 29:19weekly uptrend. Your momentum traders start to notice. That's the midpoint. The reason I use
- 29:2578K, there's a model called the true market mean. It's the cost basis for active investors.
- 29:31Now, active investors is an interesting idea because there's two models. I'll go a little
- 29:36bit into the weeds here because it is important. A lot of folks are looking at the realized price.
- 29:41The realized price is the average cost basis per Bitcoin.
- 29:45There is a problem with the realized price.
- 29:48The way it's calculated in the numerator is the realized cap,
- 29:52total value every coin in the supply at the price when it last moved.
- 29:55What was the price that Satoshi's 1.1 million coins moved at?
- 29:58Zero.
- 29:59So it's contributed nothing to the numerator,
- 30:01and it also holds a tremendous amount of unrealized profit.
- 30:04So hold those two ideas.
- 30:05But you have to assume that's never going to actually be realized.
- 30:08Which it can't take.
- 30:09Yeah.
- 30:09On the flip side, in the denominator is circulating supply.
- 30:14So you go realize cap, total wealth in the systems,
- 30:17just over a trillion dollars,
- 30:18and then you've got the total circulating supply.
- 30:20Satoshi, early miners, even the dude who bought it five bucks
- 30:23and still holds, they've contributed nothing to the numerator,
- 30:27but their full dilution in the denominator.
- 30:30So if you understand how a ratio works,
- 30:32that means that you are going to underestimate the cost base
- 30:35of people who are real and active and doing stuff in the market.
- 30:39So if we consider the realized price, which is 52, as the cost basis for the market, to
- 30:46get to the break-even level, you need to offset the hundreds of billions of dollars of profit
- 30:51that cannot be taken by lost coins by folks who buy the top and just hold.
- 30:57Now, a lot of people do buy the top and hold, but what do a lot of people do?
- 31:00They panic and they sell.
- 31:01So the unrealized losses can be locked in and realized.
- 31:05You can reduce that, but you can't reduce the unrealized profit.
- 31:08So as Bitcoin gets bigger and that unrealized profit in lost coins gets bigger you need a much bigger profile of people who buy the top in size and just tough it out But they don tough it out
- 31:20We know for a fact that they capitulate.
- 31:22So what that means is the realized price of 52,
- 31:26as the Bitcoin gets bigger, we should stop going below.
- 31:29We've gone below it in every previous bear market.
- 31:31So here's me, Mr. OnChain, saying,
- 31:33look, we've gone below this in every previous bear.
- 31:36The standard default OnChain analysts would just say,
- 31:39yeah, of course, we've got to go below the realized price.
- 31:41And I'm saying, maybe not.
- 31:43Why? Because it actually isn't correctly formulated.
- 31:46And the true market mean adjusts for that.
- 31:49It basically looks at all the coins that are high dormancy,
- 31:53have never moved.
- 31:54We discount them as a function of how much they've not moved.
- 31:57Can I ask a question on that?
- 31:58Would it have discounted the coins that were sold at the top last cycle,
- 32:01the 10,000 Bitcoin that hadn't moved since like 2011?
- 32:03So, yes, basically it's a self-correcting system.
- 32:06So think about every coin in the supply.
- 32:08This is not a perfect analogy, but I think it'll make sense for most people.
- 32:11Imagine every coin has a health bar.
- 32:14And every day, each coin produces coin days.
- 32:17So one Bitcoin will produce one coin day per day.
- 32:20Two will produce two.
- 32:21It's got a health bar.
- 32:23And when I say coin, UTXO, Satoshi, yeah, whatever.
- 32:27Satoshi's coins are 100% of that health bar.
- 32:29It's coin days created, never destroyed.
- 32:32The guy who spent his coins yesterday is 100% coin days destroyed.
- 32:36So what this basically does, it looks at the whole network of all the coin days that have
- 32:41ever been created in the system, how many have not been destroyed.
- 32:45The more people hodl, buy, put in a cold storage, it sits there, it does nothing, that's starting
- 32:51to accumulate more coin days.
- 32:52And the activity, the active investors are the ones destroying coin days.
- 32:57So someone sells, someone buys, the buyer, once they're a hodler, they change the ratio
- 33:01from 100% destroyed to 1% stored, 2% stored, 5% stored, 10%. The more hodlers, the more the health
- 33:09bar ticks in the other direction towards hodling. So what the active or the true market mean does,
- 33:14it corrects the realized price by discounting. Coins that are 100% CoinDays stored, never destroyed,
- 33:21we actually don't care about them. Ones that are active and mobile, we care a lot more about them
- 33:25because that's what people respond to. Satoshi doesn't respond to the market going up and down.
- 33:31The guy who bought at 100 absolutely does.
- 33:33He feels it every time he checks his portfolio.
- 33:35So to me, that's the angle that we should be looking at things.
- 33:39So if we don't go below the realized price this time,
- 33:41is that one of the things that kind of breaks the cycle theory?
- 33:45And I know this is a bias question,
- 33:47because I don't really, I just can't buy the cycles.
- 33:49They can't exist forever. I know you don't.
- 33:52But is that something that completely changes the structure?
- 33:54No, I think that's just a technical,
- 33:56like it's the way it's constructed,
- 33:57that it makes sense for us to stop going towards it.
- 34:00It's an underestimate of where the cost basis is.
- 34:03The reason why this is actually important,
- 34:05the cost basis for investors is what drives people to make decisions.
- 34:09When you've bought and it's gone up a lot,
- 34:12people feel the demand to sell, to take profit or do something dumb,
- 34:17go to 11.
- 34:19When they're well below their cost basis, they sell in a loss.
- 34:22So the reason we use cost basis levels is because it's that forcing function,
- 34:26the incentive for people to do something.
- 34:28If we're mismeasuring the cost basis,
- 34:31then we're going to mismeasure the results that come out of it.
- 34:34And my thesis was when we go below the true market mean,
- 34:36which was at 80K when it happened in February,
- 34:39selling off below that is probably going to precipitate
- 34:42the capitulation event.
- 34:44And that's more or less what we saw.
- 34:45By far and away, the largest like $1.5 billion a day
- 34:48for like a week, every single day,
- 34:50just massive, massive losses.
- 34:51People are going, no, I'm done, I'm out.
- 34:54So my thesis was the true market means a level
- 34:57that's going to precipitate the sell side.
- 34:59We went below it.
- 35:00We saw the sell side.
- 35:01And that's how I like to frame this stuff up.
- 35:03Now, in terms of the cycle,
- 35:04the four-year cycle debate is fascinating, right?
- 35:07My framework, I do not worry about it.
- 35:11I don't use it as part of my analysis.
- 35:13And the main reason is I'm just not going to look at the calendar
- 35:16and assume the market does what it should do on that calendar date.
- 35:20For me, the way I like to frame it up,
- 35:22show me when the capitulation happens,
- 35:25bottom formation dynamics happen,
- 35:26enough pain is in the system.
- 35:29Are we seeing bottom formation?
- 35:31Yes.
- 35:32What's the date?
- 35:33I will look at the mechanics
- 35:34and then I'll look at the date
- 35:35rather than say the date,
- 35:37oh, therefore bottom.
- 35:38You know what I mean?
- 35:38Like I just flip it around.
- 35:39Like I want to see the thing
- 35:40that puts bottoms in
- 35:41and then I'll check the calendar
- 35:43and the price.
- 35:44Yeah, see, I agree with that.
- 35:45But you have to give the cycle crew
- 35:46their dues.
- 35:47Like it did top when it should have done,
- 35:50quote unquote,
- 35:50like the number of days
- 35:51from bull market to bull market top.
- 35:53And if we do end up rallying
- 35:55into sort of Q4 this year,
- 35:56that kind of is the cycle.
- 35:57It is, but then if you assume that we must then top
- 36:00exactly 1,050 days in the next cycle and we don't,
- 36:05you're going to be looking at your compass going,
- 36:07what's going on, right?
- 36:08So from my perspective, if we're at 1,050 days
- 36:13and we're seeing no realized profit
- 36:15and no long-term fold of selling,
- 36:18it's going to be really hard to form a top.
- 36:20So you kind of flip it around,
- 36:22like are we seeing the mechanics that put a top in People messaging saying hey where do I lever up Long holders selling with massive profits massive volumes And to touch on this again in a technical detail
- 36:34a lot of folks asked me recently, has the cold card event,
- 36:37it was about 210,000, about 100 times more coins
- 36:41that were attacked, moved in that period of time.
- 36:44So a lot of people shifted their wallets and all the rest of it.
- 36:47Does that disrupt a lot of these on-chain metrics?
- 36:49And the truth is, yes, there is obviously going to be an impact
- 36:51because coins move.
- 36:52But the realized price went down from like $52 something.
- 36:56It went down by like $40, $50.
- 36:58So just to give you a bit of a sense of scale,
- 37:00we've got 210,000 long-term holder coins moving.
- 37:03Realized price moved by like $40, $50, $100,
- 37:06which is insignificant in percent terms.
- 37:09Imagine how much realized profit occurs.
- 37:12So when someone takes profit, it pushes the realized cap up.
- 37:15Realized price goes up.
- 37:16It's come from $20,000, $25,000 in the last bear up to $52,000.
- 37:21So if 210,000 coins moving in a short window drops it by 100 bucks,
- 37:27just think about how much profit-taking occurred in the bull
- 37:29to get it from 20,000 to 52,000, or it peaked at 54.
- 37:34It gives you a bit of a sense of scale that, like,
- 37:36there's a ton of sell-side in bulls.
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- 40:03it all makes you realize how small cold card was really as a again like this was the hardcore
- 40:09Bitcoiners, right?
- 40:10It would have been catastrophic
- 40:12if something like this
- 40:12had happened to Ledger.
- 40:13Yeah, I was asked that question,
- 40:15what would happen to Ledger?
- 40:16And honestly, my answer is
- 40:17none of us want to know that story.
- 40:18Yeah.
- 40:18If it was like a Trezor
- 40:19or a Ledger or a Coinbase,
- 40:20just pack it in.
- 40:22Yeah.
- 40:23Thank God it was a small company.
- 40:24Yeah.
- 40:24And like I knew they were small.
- 40:27I was surprised how small they were,
- 40:28honestly.
- 40:30And again,
- 40:30not all the coins that moved
- 40:32were going to be a cold car.
- 40:34There's going to be people
- 40:34who are always moving stuff.
- 40:35But when you see an event like that
- 40:37and then suddenly
- 40:38long-term oil supply has just been climbing
- 40:40because we've got more of that hodling going on,
- 40:42as I was saying before.
- 40:43You get a very significant drop.
- 40:45It's related.
- 40:46Yeah.
- 40:47I want to say that that sounded very flippant,
- 40:49saying, thank God it happened to a small company.
- 40:50I'm very sorry for anyone that lost money.
- 40:52It's just, it could have,
- 40:53like for the entire market,
- 40:54it could have been.
- 40:55And honestly, I think something,
- 40:56I wrote a couple of pieces on this.
- 40:58I think the industry did a really good job
- 41:00in a really stressful situation
- 41:01of doing something about it.
- 41:03Yeah.
- 41:03As an example,
- 41:04I had about four of my clients reach out and say,
- 41:07I got hit, which is just devastating.
- 41:10I had about 20 people reach out.
- 41:12And again, these are just the people who reached out.
- 41:14I had 20 people reach out saying something to the tune of,
- 41:16I'm not on social media.
- 41:17If you didn't send that notice, I would have got hit.
- 41:20Yeah, when I did the show with Rob Hamilton,
- 41:22I had quite a few comments underneath saying,
- 41:23I'm not on Twitter.
- 41:24Thank you for doing that.
- 41:25100%.
- 41:25But I think Rob, Calais, James O'Byrne,
- 41:29these people have done such impressive work.
- 41:31And the red team kind of is a bit scary.
- 41:34It is.
- 41:34They've been finding vulnerabilities in almost everything.
- 41:37It is.
- 41:39I think so.
- 41:39software has changed forever.
- 41:41One of my mates,
- 41:42so I had two friends that had a cold card,
- 41:45a Mark III.
- 41:46In fact, Alec, my co-founder,
- 41:48literally the version of the firmware
- 41:50on a Mark III, passphrase.
- 41:53So anyway, my other mate,
- 41:55and I said this at the meetup last night,
- 41:57thank God no one listened to me about Bitcoin.
- 41:59I only had two people to call.
- 42:01Anyway, he works in the airline industry
- 42:03and the legal side,
- 42:04and he had a great framework.
- 42:07The actual event is always a tragedy,
- 42:09than it is.
- 42:10It's a horrible thing to happen.
- 42:11And he used the analogy of airlines.
- 42:14The reason the airlines are so safe today
- 42:16is because we learn from all the disasters in the past, right?
- 42:19The disasters themselves are tragedies,
- 42:21but over the long arc of time, the industry hardens.
- 42:24We learn how to avoid those things in the future.
- 42:27This is engineering 101.
- 42:29Unfortunately, bridges fall down.
- 42:31And we learn how to make bridges earthquake resistant.
- 42:33You know what I mean?
- 42:34So we learn these things over time.
- 42:35So Bitcoin was always going to be on the forefront
- 42:38of these attacks.
- 42:39open source, codes visible.
- 42:42It was going to be on the forefront of these things.
- 42:44But if we wind the clock forward,
- 42:46it's going to be hardened much sooner
- 42:48than a lot of the other stuff in the world.
- 42:49And again, I mentioned this in the meetup,
- 42:51like, don't worry about banks and the like.
- 42:52Like, I'm worried about hospitals and water supplies
- 42:56and electrical grids and all this stuff.
- 42:58Like, there's a lot, I mean, imagine the bugs out there.
- 43:01And like, Bitcoin was always going to be at the front of this,
- 43:03not only because it was open source,
- 43:04but also like, you get someone's keys,
- 43:05you've got that Bitcoin.
- 43:06Like, there's no recourse.
- 43:07but like absolute tragic event.
- 43:10Can we get a bit of fun
- 43:11and talk about the bull market?
- 43:13Sure.
- 43:13This is pure speculation
- 43:14obviously at this point
- 43:15but what do you expect
- 43:16the next bull market to look like?
- 43:17Because one of the things
- 43:18that you always said
- 43:19throughout the last bull market
- 43:20was it authors the bear that follows
- 43:21and I think we've seen that.
- 43:22I think so.
- 43:23If this is the bottom
- 43:23we have seen that play out.
- 43:25Do you think we get
- 43:26any sort of blow off top style
- 43:28euphoria bull markets ever again
- 43:30or are they done?
- 43:31It's hard to tell.
- 43:31I'm very much of the view
- 43:32that anyone that says
- 43:34we can never go above
- 43:36or below a price again
- 43:37is wrong because of course we can.
- 43:39We can never have a blow-off top again.
- 43:42Silverbug's just got a blow-off top.
- 43:43They've been waiting 50 years for it.
- 43:45So no, I think Bitcoin can absolutely have a blow-off top
- 43:48because things can get just really euphoric and really crazy.
- 43:52So no, I don't think there's any reason we can't.
- 43:54I also don't think that we have to have diminishing returns.
- 43:57I think the market can, it'll find its level wherever it does.
- 43:59I don't like Anchorage saying this must happen,
- 44:01this cannot happen because how could you know?
- 44:04Does that actually work the other way
- 44:06where the bear market can author the bull that follows.
- 44:08We've set such a solid foundation here
- 44:10if this is the bottom.
- 44:11We've chopped around for a long time.
- 44:12Does that give us a better springboard to go from?
- 44:14Of course.
- 44:15I mean, every bear market, it's horrible at the time,
- 44:17but the reason it goes up
- 44:19is because you just get to sell or exhaust you
- 44:20and no one wants to sell anymore,
- 44:22and your ownership is disproportionately hodlers.
- 44:25People who want to be there.
- 44:26It's the same for any asset.
- 44:27This is not just a Bitcoin thing.
- 44:28We just happen to be able to see this
- 44:30with the on-chain side of the equation.
- 44:32I'd love to see the on-chain data for gold and silver
- 44:35because you would see all the long-term holders dumping a ton of it
- 44:38at the exact point in time when retail FOMO is kicking in
- 44:41and people are lining up and say bullion dealers.
- 44:43So, yeah, I think that the bear market always authors the bull
- 44:47and vice versa because you form the base.
- 44:50If we form a base at 60K, right, we're at 15.6,
- 44:54like the CAGR of the floor,
- 44:56the CAGR of the 200-week moving average is like 30%.
- 44:58And CAGR is a bit like inflation rate.
- 45:02So CAGR is a bogus metric.
- 45:05Part of the reason is like we've been chopping sideways for months,
- 45:08effectively sideways for months.
- 45:10The four-year CAGR has ripped from like 8% to 30%.
- 45:14How does that work?
- 45:15Price has gone sideways to down.
- 45:17Because we've taken our previous bull markets.
- 45:19Basically, it's literally an anchor.
- 45:21What was your exactly four years ago?
- 45:22What was happening exactly four years ago,
- 45:24we were puking down the ass end of the 2022 bear.
- 45:27So you're kind of measuring for a different starting point.
- 45:30So my preferred approach, if you're going to do CAGR,
- 45:33do it on something like the 200-week moving average.
- 45:36It's a little bit like inflation rate.
- 45:37What is it on the 200-week moving average?
- 45:39About 30%.
- 45:40But you've got to remember that it's like the inflation rate.
- 45:43It depends what you buy.
- 45:44The guy who bought 58K in 2021 and then just sat
- 45:48and is now looking at 58K and being like,
- 45:51man, this thing goes nowhere.
- 45:52The guy who bought at 15.6 is happy as Larry
- 45:55because his CAGR is significantly better
- 45:57because of his starting point.
- 45:59So, you know, that's why I'm like the bottom 10% of the distribution.
- 46:05What's the price of gold right now?
- 46:07Oh, 4,300, something like that.
- 46:10The reason I ask is, I remember you obviously told the story
- 46:12of when gold was at its peak and you went to the gold shop
- 46:15and there was queues outside.
- 46:17I was in a shopping center last weekend,
- 46:19a mall for the American listeners,
- 46:20and there was a queue outside the bullion place.
- 46:22Oh, interesting.
- 46:23And I wondered if Euphoria was coming back there in any way.
- 46:26That's interesting because I've been through Martin Place,
- 46:28not regularly
- 46:29but every so often
- 46:30recently
- 46:30and there was like
- 46:31lines outside ABC
- 46:32Bullion
- 46:32that seemed to have
- 46:33gone away
- 46:34maybe it's coming back
- 46:36I don't think there's
- 46:36any euphoria
- 46:37at this point
- 46:37in precious metals
- 46:38honestly I think
- 46:39precious metals
- 46:40were a good
- 46:40price at this point
- 46:41in time
- 46:42I thought when it
- 46:42gets to 6k Aussie
- 46:43which is about
- 46:44where we are now
- 46:45that's where I've been
- 46:46like yeah
- 46:47kind of happy to start rebuying because I still think golf has a very important role not that fuss on silver Honestly it was always a trade and a speculation for me But no I very much like a gold Bitcoin savings
- 46:59That's where I park money that I just,
- 47:00I know I don't need now.
- 47:01I might need in the future.
- 47:03I just put it there as safe harbor.
- 47:05Yeah, I pay basically no attention to gold,
- 47:07but I kind of get it.
- 47:09I just don't want it.
- 47:09I want Bitcoin.
- 47:10No, that's fair.
- 47:11What else have you been watching?
- 47:12What else is looking interesting right now
- 47:14in terms of the on-chain stuff?
- 47:16honestly I mean we've been in this bottom formation zone for a while and like I feel
- 47:21like I've hammered out the thesis fairly well it's why I'm like testing the extremes
- 47:25I ran a couple of pieces being like you know we've got the CAGR on the upside what could we
- 47:29potentially get to and like spitballing honestly I think spitballing like where the peak can be is
- 47:34much better in the bear market floor because once the market starts running it switches over but
- 47:39I thought the cold card incident was interesting to like just analyze how the market moved
- 47:44I know you spoke to Lloyd recently,
- 47:46who did a fantastic dashboard,
- 47:47like studying the attack
- 47:49and then how people started moving their coins
- 47:50and then this wave two and three.
- 47:52I think that stuff was fascinating to see.
- 47:54That show will probably go out after this one,
- 47:56but everyone should listen to that.
- 47:56Lloyd's done some really interesting stuff.
- 47:58He basically did the exact attack
- 47:59and got all the data.
- 48:01He's been crushing it.
- 48:02Yeah, yeah.
- 48:02No, it was amazing to see.
- 48:04So I think like that kind of stuff
- 48:05is really, really interesting.
- 48:07We're very much in a waiting game.
- 48:08You know, we're in peak apathy,
- 48:11which is why the market goes absolutely nowhere
- 48:13where even though there's a bunch of bad headlines,
- 48:16I really thought the cold card incident
- 48:17was going to be far worse than it did,
- 48:19and it's just sideways.
- 48:20So that's a data point.
- 48:22When it does start running,
- 48:23how quickly do you think we'll go back to 126k,
- 48:26or above 100k?
- 48:27It's hard to tell.
- 48:28I mean, look, previous bears take a long time
- 48:31to recover from.
- 48:32So for example, 2018.
- 48:34But when, in the last bull market,
- 48:36wait, which one was it?
- 48:37No, when we went back above 20k in 2020.
- 48:402020.
- 48:4020.
- 48:41That was a long time,
- 48:43obviously, hammering out the bottom.
- 48:44But once it started moving,
- 48:45we got above 20k quickly.
- 48:46And it also didn't stop.
- 48:48I expect us to chop around
- 48:49the all-time high then for a long time.
- 48:50It just didn't carry.
- 48:51No, the general way
- 48:52that Bitcoin is traded
- 48:53is you have the bottom
- 48:56and then you have the 2023 period,
- 49:00which was like nine months of nothingness.
- 49:02Just sideways grind.
- 49:04Every sell-off,
- 49:05there's a lot of realized loss
- 49:06because it's a disbelief phase.
- 49:07People think it's just not a lower high
- 49:09and they've got whatever
- 49:10a technical model that tells them it's all over again.
- 49:132019 actually is a very interesting bear.
- 49:15There's a lot of similarities.
- 49:16If you consider 2019 as a bear market in its own right,
- 49:20coming off 14,000.
- 49:22So we had the 2018 bottom.
- 49:23And then you had the scam work because of the plus,
- 49:26what was it called?
- 49:26Plus token.
- 49:27Plus token.
- 49:27So we rallied up to 14K,
- 49:29which is interesting because it's a miniature bull.
- 49:31Yep.
- 49:31A very heavy spot bid that sucked up like 2% of the coins.
- 49:34I went from 3K to 14K.
- 49:36Which was actually not dissimilar to GBTC in 2021.
- 49:40Hoovered up 2% of the supply in a very short span of time.
- 49:44Plus token was kind of the same,
- 49:45and then the CCP started mass selling it.
- 49:48For anyone who wasn't there,
- 49:48that was a Ponzi scheme running out of China.
- 49:50Yeah, it was.
- 49:51And so 2019, if you look at 2019 in terms of its own bear,
- 49:56remarkably similar to this bear market.
- 49:58It's actually the most similar.
- 49:59If you just map it on price and all these things,
- 50:012019 is actually the closest analog to today.
- 50:03We even had that like rounded top into a COVID sell-off
- 50:07when Strategy sold 32 Bitcoin.
- 50:08It's like the exact same chart.
- 50:10not to say that that's going to be a perfect analog,
- 50:12but 2018 bear market bottomed,
- 50:15and then we had a second bear, which is 2019.
- 50:182022 bottoms, then we had the 2023 just like sideways grind
- 50:22until the ETFs came in,
- 50:24and then we chopped around the all-time high of 2024.
- 50:26So generally speaking, the recovery phase is often a long journey,
- 50:32but it's also cheap prices relative to once it gets to the all-time high,
- 50:37long-term holders, and I think a lot of people
- 50:39understand it now,
- 50:41didn't see it at the time,
- 50:42long-term holder selling
- 50:43is almost always
- 50:45what kills the ball.
- 50:46Yeah.
- 50:46Almost always.
- 50:47There's always like,
- 50:48oh, CME futures went live
- 50:49or there's always a thing.
- 50:51But that comes after
- 50:52all this sell-side pressure
- 50:53has occurred
- 50:54and the real-life cap's gone up.
- 50:56It's a 52K in terms of price.
- 50:58It's a lot of sell-side.
- 51:00Long-term holders
- 51:01start really ramping up
- 51:03their sell-side
- 51:03at the previous all-time high.
- 51:05So they're generally quiet
- 51:06up until then
- 51:07and then they start to unload.
- 51:08And for those people who think the bull market starts
- 51:11when you beat all-time highs,
- 51:12you've missed 100% gain by the time that happens.
- 51:15Totally.
- 51:16And that's the way your CAGR depends on when you accumulate.
- 51:20And again, can't tell anyone what to do,
- 51:23but I'm of the view that when Bitcoin's in a level where it is now,
- 51:26I think it's really, really deep value.
- 51:28So if you've got that longer-term time horizon,
- 51:31I think it's a fantastic, fantastic zone.
- 51:33And that's why I'm a big advocate.
- 51:34Don't worry about the bottom wick.
- 51:36Just buy the whole bottom.
- 51:37It's a process.
- 51:38DCA just takes all the emotion out of it.
- 51:41For me, I've been in Bitcoin long enough where, like,
- 51:42I'm going to buy as much as I can now.
- 51:45I'm in a stage in my life where, like,
- 51:46I actually need to buy other stuff, right?
- 51:48Gold, equities.
- 51:50Just because, you know, you need a bit of diversity.
- 51:52As you get older, you've got dependents.
- 51:54There's just other things in life that force you
- 51:56to have to be a bit more conservative in some ways.
- 51:58Why do you think you need diversity?
- 51:59Because like the famous line from Saylor is diversifying is selling winners to buy what loses Totally understand that So my general view is that I not a portfolio of 50 things
- 52:11When I did that, it was shit coins and it was a bad mistake.
- 52:1410 grand to 10 cents, that's how you do it.
- 52:17Generally speaking, there's a handful of assets
- 52:19that are the dominant proportion of your returns.
- 52:22For example, I've used this for gold.
- 52:24It's just a great example for this.
- 52:26I save because I want to buy something.
- 52:29That could be my kid's schooling when he's old enough.
- 52:32It could be a house, house deposit.
- 52:35Imagine the Australian housing market's a great example.
- 52:38We're coming off the top over the course of the next 24 months.
- 52:42I think the Australian market probably comes down more,
- 52:43certainly in terms of purchasing power of other things.
- 52:46There is a potential world, I don't know what the structure of it is,
- 52:49where a ledger gets hit or something really bad goes wrong
- 52:52and Bitcoin just has a lot longer to chop at lower levels.
- 52:56but the house market is absolutely ripe for me to buy.
- 53:00If I'm all in Bitcoin, stiff.
- 53:03See, this is like a risk tolerance thing, I think,
- 53:05because we're in the same situation
- 53:06where we're both looking at buying a place
- 53:07at some point soon-ish.
- 53:09And I look at it like, have your money in Bitcoin.
- 53:12Like, in two years, do I think it's going to have
- 53:13broken all-time high again?
- 53:15Yes.
- 53:15So the price of the house essentially hurts.
- 53:17Sure, but how guaranteed is that?
- 53:21Not.
- 53:21No, it's not guaranteed,
- 53:23but I mean, it's not with gold either.
- 53:24I mean, for sure, it's probably going to be more stable.
- 53:29But if it does, I'll just wait a bit.
- 53:31No, that's fine.
- 53:31And look, I think everything is about duration.
- 53:34Yeah.
- 53:34I mean, duration matching.
- 53:36Bitcoin is my longest duration asset.
- 53:38What is Bitcoin, like from the way I think about it,
- 53:40my Bitcoin is there to clear my mortgage.
- 53:42Yeah.
- 53:43Right?
- 53:44It's there to get my kid through school because he's one, right?
- 53:47Not even one.
- 53:47So I've got 12 years until I have to worry about private school.
- 53:50So there's a bunch of things there where I've got a long duration.
- 53:52house this is something in the next like three four years right that's kind of the time frame
- 53:59so from that perspective yes bitcoin will probably be higher but i might need something that's not
- 54:04quite as volatile as bitcoin for that period of time because i'm saving relatively near term for
- 54:11example i would not buy bitcoin if i had a if i need to buy a car i'm not saving a bitcoin i'm
- 54:15saving probably cash honestly i wouldn't even go to gold so it's a duration problem the car one
- 54:20makes sense. I really don't understand the house one. Like, obviously, Jeff-
- 54:24What if the housing market is perfect in 12 months? I have to sell my Bitcoin at 60k. It's terrible.
- 54:30No, well, I mean, we don't know what it's going to be in 12 months. But also,
- 54:33I don't think the housing market matters. I think the moves in the housing market will always be
- 54:37disproportionately small compared to the moves in Bitcoin.
- 54:39They will.
- 54:40And so, like, even if in 12 months the timing is perfect for the housing market,
- 54:44you wait another 12 months, Bitcoin might have ripped another 70%. And the house,
- 54:48even though the house prices have recovered,
- 54:50you've still got a cheaper house.
- 54:51No, no, I understand that.
- 54:52But when it comes to housing,
- 54:54I think housing is a special case
- 54:56because buying your fortress is not about money.
- 54:59In my opinion.
- 55:00I totally agree.
- 55:00There's a part of that where it's like,
- 55:01it's actually just a thing
- 55:02where you just want security for your family.
- 55:04This is a different animal.
- 55:05I do not look at this as an investment,
- 55:06but I'm looking at like opportunity cost
- 55:09of where I can have that money.
- 55:09Oh, no, and look,
- 55:10there's no right or wrong way to do this.
- 55:12I'm not looking at this investment,
- 55:13but I wanted to buy as cheap house
- 55:14in Bitcoin terms as possible.
- 55:15Yeah, yeah.
- 55:16And that's why I think like for me,
- 55:18I actually don't really care about selling my gold ETF.
- 55:21Really don't care.
- 55:22It's purely a fiat instrument.
- 55:24Its purpose is to be sold for the deposit.
- 55:27The Bitcoin's there to clear it when the time is right.
- 55:29You know what I mean?
- 55:30So yeah, it's the way I do it.
- 55:31I'm sure you saw Jeff Booth talk about his house in Bitcoin terms.
- 55:34And I'll get these numbers wrong, but like directionally it's correct.
- 55:37He was like, when he first bought his house,
- 55:38it would have cost him 100 Bitcoin.
- 55:40And then by the time he sold it, it was like 12 or whatever.
- 55:43However those numbers worked out.
- 55:45That's the trend I'm betting on.
- 55:47For sure.
- 55:47And I've got a chart that shows the Australian housing market
- 55:49in Aussie dollar terms versus Bitcoin terms.
- 55:52And it's the same thing.
- 55:53Depreciates over time, which means your Bitcoin's kicking ass.
- 55:56Again, it's why I'm disproportionately Bitcoin.
- 55:59But also, for me, it just seems I would like to have other things.
- 56:05Again, it's really hard.
- 56:07I've said this before, but I try to get gold to like 10% of my portfolio
- 56:10and then Bitcoin goes up and I'm just like constantly chasing my tail.
- 56:14So like you actually need a Bitcoin to go into a bear market
- 56:16to hit your 10% level.
- 56:17So, you know, Bitcoin will always do its job,
- 56:19but yeah, it's just duration.
- 56:20It's funny, I was talking to Luke after the show we recorded.
- 56:23I hope he doesn't mind me saying this,
- 56:24but I was basically asking him for advice
- 56:25as to what he would do if he was in my shoes.
- 56:27And some of the advice he gave was really good advice
- 56:30in terms of just making sure I've got a more solid foundation
- 56:33rather than just being all in Bitcoin.
- 56:36I just can't make myself do it.
- 56:37I can't make myself sell Bitcoin to buy things
- 56:39that I think are way less interesting
- 56:41and have way less upside.
- 56:43And honestly, part of it is that emotional decision.
- 56:46It's hard to sell the Bitcoin.
- 56:48I don't care about the gold ETF.
- 56:49It's a number on a screen.
- 56:51So in a way, I'm saving there because I know I'm going to sell it.
- 56:54Yeah, it may not go up as much.
- 56:56But also, I know the wealth is going to be there when I need it.
- 56:59It's a psychological game.
- 57:01All this stuff is psychological.
- 57:03Work out what works for you.
- 57:05Don't worry about what other people are doing.
- 57:06Some people are going to be all in Bitcoin.
- 57:08I know I'm in a phase in my life where I could be all in Bitcoin.
- 57:11I've done that journey.
- 57:12I just need the 10 that not because that works for my current setup Yeah Gives me optionality Especially I got I don think I even said this but I got another kid on the way as well
- 57:23I know, congratulations.
- 57:24I mean, I know you know that,
- 57:25but that makes you think.
- 57:29I don't know, man, it's hard.
- 57:31It is.
- 57:31I just love Bitcoin too much.
- 57:33Yeah, no, and even with all the chaos
- 57:36that's gone on this week,
- 57:38the last couple of weeks,
- 57:39all the security, you know,
- 57:40You've seen lightning services get shut down left, right, and center.
- 57:43There's a lot of holes out there.
- 57:46After the disaster, engineering is about learning from the mistakes
- 57:49and it's going to be hardened as...
- 57:51Yeah, I think that's the silver lining that everyone has.
- 57:52It's easy to look at the stuff the red team are doing
- 57:54and be like, holy shit, so much stuff is broken.
- 57:56But at the end of this, we're just going to have a way more solid base.
- 57:59100%. There'll be consolidation.
- 58:01Lloyd used a great term, it's Darwinian.
- 58:03Yeah.
- 58:04And it's going to be Darwinian for a little while,
- 58:06but that's kind of the world we're now in.
- 58:08I forget the exact terminology,
- 58:09but it's like vulnerable world or something.
- 58:12There's like this framing that we're now in a,
- 58:14you know, you can't obscure things
- 58:16and just hope no one finds it.
- 58:18We're now in a vulnerable world
- 58:19where everything is exposed.
- 58:21We're so digital that there's going to be
- 58:22just holes found everywhere.
- 58:23Yeah.
- 58:25It's going to be interesting, man.
- 58:26Should we talk about Bit110?
- 58:28Sure.
- 58:29This played out exactly as I expected.
- 58:32I think it's one of those really hard lessons.
- 58:35Like I've got nothing against the normal people
- 58:37who sort of fell for the Bit110 narrative.
- 58:39I've got a lot of things that I find wrong
- 58:41about the people that were selling the Bitp110 narrative,
- 58:43but everyone's learned a harsh lesson
- 58:45about how Bitcoin consensus actually works.
- 58:47Do you want to just give a take on everything that's happened?
- 58:50Yeah, I mean, look, from my perspective,
- 58:52remove the politics of what Bitp110 was trying to do,
- 58:55because that's its own discussion today.
- 58:57And I was talking to a lot of guys at the meetup last night.
- 59:00I agree. I would love to stop the spam.
- 59:03I think it'd be fantastic.
- 59:03I think you'd actually be hard-pressed
- 59:05finding too many Bitcoiners who aren't on that side.
- 59:08And it's funny, that got so much noise in the argument,
- 59:10but everyone agrees on that, generally.
- 59:12Generally speaking, the challenge is
- 59:14devs will always find clever ways to hide the data.
- 59:18Anyway, that's part of the politics of it.
- 59:20I think what's a bigger lesson here,
- 59:23the default answer, there was a lot of talk about
- 59:26we need to launch a user-resisted soft fork.
- 59:29If you imagine a world where that was correct,
- 59:32every soft fork proposal that a government three-letter agency
- 59:37can cook up in a basement and rally a bunch of bots on Twitter
- 59:41to make a bunch of noise.
- 59:42By the way, I'm not saying that that's what happened with Bit110.
- 59:43I'm just saying if the network had to actively fight
- 59:46every single one of these things, we'd be bug squashing forever.
- 59:50You'd never get anywhere.
- 59:51Bitcoin's done.
- 59:51The default position of all Bitcoin is no.
- 59:56All soft work proposals, the default answer is no.
- 59:59Until proven otherwise.
- 1:00:01And I think the main lesson that should be learned from Bit110,
- 1:00:04there was a I think delusion is probably the right word as to how far down the rough consensus path
- 1:00:10they were I don't believe they'd come anywhere close to achieving rough consensus no there's a
- 1:00:16lot of talk about miners being a cabal that got together in a back room with sailor and shut it
- 1:00:21all down look mining there is a problem that is mining pool centralization it is a problem definitely
- 1:00:29I believe BIP-110 is a terrible case study to demonstrate that.
- 1:00:34Why?
- 1:00:34Because the miners must sell the coins.
- 1:00:37If the users won't buy the coins, then their mine effort is worthless.
- 1:00:41As there's still miners, I think they found a new BIP-110 block today.
- 1:00:44They did, yeah.
- 1:00:45They're mining something that's worthless.
- 1:00:47There's not even a market for it.
- 1:00:48So they're kind of just burning their money.
- 1:00:51The miners follow the users.
- 1:00:53And I think there was this delusion that this was going to play out like SegWit.
- 1:00:56SegWit had consensus by the users.
- 1:00:59Taproot had consensus by the users.
- 1:01:01We saw in speedy trial,
- 1:01:02the miners slowly and surely flipped the bit.
- 1:01:05And over time, we actually did have rough consensus.
- 1:01:08Now, rough consensus is really hard to measure.
- 1:01:10It's not node count.
- 1:01:11It's not number of bots on Twitter.
- 1:01:13It's really difficult to measure across the board.
- 1:01:16I think it's also worth pointing out
- 1:01:17the threshold that needed to be hit for Taproot.
- 1:01:20I think it was 95%.
- 1:01:2190% or 95%.
- 1:01:23Whereas they were asking for 55%.
- 1:01:24Yeah, I mean, to be honest,
- 1:01:26the fact that we didn't see any miners
- 1:01:29like pivoting to ocean in the months before
- 1:01:31and then using their BIP 110 pool,
- 1:01:33there was just no evidence of demonstrable rough consensus.
- 1:01:38So the miners, they did, I mean, not that I know,
- 1:01:41but if I was going to be, if I'm a betting man,
- 1:01:44I do not believe they got into a shady room.
- 1:01:47I listened to the stream that Canute hosted
- 1:01:49where they actually watched the thing come in.
- 1:01:51There was points in time where they said,
- 1:01:53oh, the Chinese government, the American government
- 1:01:54must have leaned on the pools.
- 1:01:56on my bro that's insane they don't know that this is going on no this is so irrelevant um i think
- 1:02:01that there was an overestimation of rough consensus having been achieved they believed it i think in
- 1:02:06many regards when it didn't play out as expected they needed to blame something the miners did what
- 1:02:10they should have done which is nothing they just pressed on with exact because there's no consensus
- 1:02:14so don't change the default answer to all soft forks is no user-resistant soft fork by default
- 1:02:21is doing nothing and just continuing to run the code you currently do um and i i love to use the
- 1:02:25of chess as explaining Bitcoin consensus rules
- 1:02:28to people who are like, why can't people just spin up
- 1:02:29your Bitcoin. It's like, okay,
- 1:02:32you got a game of chess for
- 1:02:34BIP 110 because they wanted to revert
- 1:02:35something. I'm like, alright, they're taking away
- 1:02:37the pawn moves to forward move.
- 1:02:40Right? I think it was like the
- 1:02:411500s where they brought this in.
- 1:02:44And then they go, okay, but chess is
- 1:02:45impure. We have to get rid of the two
- 1:02:47pawn forward move. It's the only way to play chess.
- 1:02:50But the rest of the world's like, yeah, but that kind of...
- 1:02:52No. We don't want to play that game.
- 1:02:55Chess has two pawns.
- 1:02:56This is how it works now. This is how it works. We've agreed on it.
- 1:02:58You can change the rules, but the problem is you're only
- 1:02:59going to have your small chess club who plays this weird modified version. No one wants to play
- 1:03:05that game at scale. I bet there's a chess club in the world that plays those. There is a chess
- 1:03:10club that plays with 14 queens, right? Somewhere out there, that's part of the game. But it's just
- 1:03:15not the consensus version of the game. It's a small clique of people in order to change the rules.
- 1:03:21Now, the reason I like to use chess as an example for Bitcoin, chess has changed. There have been
- 1:03:26evolutions of the rules. People in China agreed, people in America agreed, people in Europe agreed,
- 1:03:31everybody agreed these are the rules. So it can change. It's really, really, really hard to do
- 1:03:37and it happens very infrequently. And the longer that it goes on, you know, this is where you get
- 1:03:42to kind of ossification, I suppose. And that's not the perfect example, but I think that chess
- 1:03:46example is a great example for why we just resisted the change because we kind of like the rules as
- 1:03:51is you may want to change it
- 1:03:53and you may even have good arguments for it.
- 1:03:56It wasn't rough.
- 1:03:57We hadn't reached rough consensus.
- 1:03:59This is exactly how it was going to play out
- 1:04:00because there was an overestimation
- 1:04:02of how far down this pipe the system,
- 1:04:05the change was.
- 1:04:06One of the things that I found really frustrating,
- 1:04:08especially towards the end of the Bit110 thing,
- 1:04:10was they kind of took the Bitcoin mining pool centralization
- 1:04:14as their narrative,
- 1:04:15as if no one in real Bitcoin was talking about it.
- 1:04:18But this has been something we've been speaking about
- 1:04:19for years and years and years.
- 1:04:21And now they've got one miner.
- 1:04:22Yeah. But like...
- 1:04:24Yeah, well, exactly.
- 1:04:25Now they've got one miner.
- 1:04:26For now, until they're changing the proof-of-work algorithm.
- 1:04:28But like, the stuff that Straten V2 have done,
- 1:04:31Ocean with Datum, really like good moves.
- 1:04:34It was amazing seeing Ocean on both sides of the chain.
- 1:04:35It was the most beautifully ironic thing ever.
- 1:04:37It totally was.
- 1:04:38And the chances of...
- 1:04:39So for anyone listening,
- 1:04:41Ocean mined first or second block.
- 1:04:43Second block.
- 1:04:43Second block on the BIP-110 chain.
- 1:04:45And then they got the fourth block on the proper Bitcoin chain.
- 1:04:48And like, that shows,
- 1:04:50like Ocean and Datum
- 1:04:51very very cool
- 1:04:52fantastic
- 1:04:53I'm incredibly bullish
- 1:04:54on that company now
- 1:04:55Luke and Mechanic have gone
- 1:04:56and that narrative
- 1:04:57is not going to be driven
- 1:04:57as hard from that company
- 1:04:58I think that was
- 1:04:59a really really good
- 1:05:00thing to see
- 1:05:01you know I know that
- 1:05:02Foundry tried to do
- 1:05:03like a minor vote
- 1:05:04probably not the right way
- 1:05:05to do it
- 1:05:05but I hope that we do
- 1:05:07see that process
- 1:05:08where you give
- 1:05:09and we should probably
- 1:05:10separate there's miners
- 1:05:10and there's hashes
- 1:05:11right people providing
- 1:05:12the hash power
- 1:05:13and then the miners
- 1:05:13I don't even like that
- 1:05:14it's complicated
- 1:05:16but yes we do have a minor pool centralization problem I of the view and I used this example in the Meetup the other day Say what you will about quantum We can all agree I just going to use it as an example Let just imagine that quantum is like
- 1:05:29all right, shit, it's coming.
- 1:05:30We can see it, like they're starting to crack stuff.
- 1:05:32And it's like, we all agree that it's now happening,
- 1:05:33just for simplicity.
- 1:05:35Imagine that's happening.
- 1:05:37And then the miners refuse to put in some kind of a change.
- 1:05:40Now we have, that is a good example
- 1:05:42of minor centralization being a problem,
- 1:05:44or they want to force their own signature scheme.
- 1:05:47That is an example of a problem.
- 1:05:49The BIP110 is not a good example
- 1:05:51because we did not have rough consensus.
- 1:05:52So in the event where we do have rough consensus
- 1:05:55and the miners are causing trouble,
- 1:05:57that is a good example.
- 1:05:59The case where we don't have rough consensus,
- 1:06:00the miners have every incentive to do absolutely nothing
- 1:06:03because the existing chain is the default.
- 1:06:05The answer is always no and that's proven otherwise.
- 1:06:07I want to give a shout out to Bob Burnett.
- 1:06:09I heard him on a lot of spaces around the time of the fork.
- 1:06:11And I think he's been really good.
- 1:06:12As a board member of Ocean, I think he's on the board.
- 1:06:14He had some really good takes.
- 1:06:16And I'm glad there was some dissent at least amongst that company.
- 1:06:19No, I think a lot of people have reflected.
- 1:06:22And in my view, the correct thing to do is to reflect and go,
- 1:06:25what went wrong?
- 1:06:26Because clearly it didn't play out to plan.
- 1:06:29So rather than blaming a shady cabal,
- 1:06:32actually just self-reflect and go,
- 1:06:33well, what if there's actually a simpler answer,
- 1:06:34which is we just didn't achieve consensus?
- 1:06:36You know what I mean?
- 1:06:37You can always find a boogeyman if you think long and hard enough
- 1:06:40and you go digging through someone's emails.
- 1:06:42But at the end of the day, is there a simpler answer?
- 1:06:46Yes, you just overestimated where you're at.
- 1:06:48I think it's also interesting.
- 1:06:49They were claiming there's a shady cabal in Bitcoin Core or whatever.
- 1:06:52If you look at the two groups, they look like the shady cabal.
- 1:06:55I mean, there's a Discord server
- 1:06:56where they're picking a new proof-of-work algorithm now.
- 1:06:59Like, it's kind of, guys, it's a shitcoin.
- 1:07:01You know what I mean?
- 1:07:02And then in the circles that I've been in this entire time,
- 1:07:05everyone's like, please don't talk about Bitpontent.
- 1:07:07No one wants to even have the conversation.
- 1:07:09Everyone's bored of it.
- 1:07:10No, no.
- 1:07:10And I think it's probably time to move on and stop giving it air.
- 1:07:15Stop giving it oxygen.
- 1:07:17Because we have more important stuff to focus on,
- 1:07:19which, frankly, is almost anything else.
- 1:07:20Yeah.
- 1:07:21Do you think...
- 1:07:22One of the things that I think has been very interesting
- 1:07:23with the cold card vulnerability
- 1:07:24is the idea of covenants has come back a little bit.
- 1:07:27Sure.
- 1:07:28And for anyone that doesn't know,
- 1:07:29essentially, this just limits where you can send coins.
- 1:07:31It gives you control and constraints of...
- 1:07:33So you have to send it to a staging address
- 1:07:35or something like that.
- 1:07:36And I've always thought covenants sound like a good idea.
- 1:07:39Do you think this actually goes against the ossification narrative
- 1:07:42and might open the idea of having changes in Bitcoin?
- 1:07:45again yeah so i i do actually i think this has been a um a bit of wake-up call now again i'm not
- 1:07:50promoting any particular bit because i'm not i've read enough of them but like things like the great
- 1:07:53consensus cleanup is kind of just bug fixes in the world of ai i think we should actually really
- 1:07:58be taking these things seriously so i'll spend the time to review that and understand it a bit
- 1:08:02better um covenants this is one of those things where i think we have to be careful i'm for i'm
- 1:08:08pro covenants i think it a good idea uh however i also am very cognizant that this is gonna be of those things where we will assume that going to be much more powerful and then we don use a lot of the tech Taproot
- 1:08:20So Taproot is a good example. However, I've also seen a lot of people using Taproot for,
- 1:08:26you know, the Frostnap guys. Fascinating. Awesome piece of hardware. I think it's great
- 1:08:30in terms of like the UX and all the rest of it. Uses Taproot to its fullest extent. All
- 1:08:35of like over time different
- 1:08:37whether it be hardware. I can imagine
- 1:08:39for covenants where this is going to be really
- 1:08:41useful. You know, imagine
- 1:08:43an anchor watch or an unchained
- 1:08:45or a CASA. They would be
- 1:08:47able to use those types of things as part of their
- 1:08:49setup that the user
- 1:08:51is a bit more hands off, but they can
- 1:08:53opt in with a user interface.
- 1:08:54I think fewer people are going to be loading up their Sparrow
- 1:08:57wallet and building covenants
- 1:08:59by hand, but companies,
- 1:09:01insurance companies can suddenly start using as
- 1:09:03collateral because it can only go here
- 1:09:05and time locks and all this kind of stuff.
- 1:09:07I think that's where it's going to be really, really useful.
- 1:09:10There will be a lot of pushback.
- 1:09:11I mean, Sailor's a classic example of like ossification,
- 1:09:15doesn't want anything to change.
- 1:09:17I think that we should probably be a bit more open to like,
- 1:09:20but also let's not assume it's going to change the world.
- 1:09:24So maybe a bit more measured about all of these things.
- 1:09:26Yeah, no, that's fair.
- 1:09:27If you had to put like a probability on it,
- 1:09:29where do you think we will get changes to Bitcoin?
- 1:09:31And maybe take out like clean up, the consensus clean up.
- 1:09:34Like, that one seems obvious.
- 1:09:36I don't think there'll be many people that are against that.
- 1:09:37But a real change, like adding covenants or something like that.
- 1:09:40I do, actually.
- 1:09:41Yeah, I'm actually just gut feel.
- 1:09:43I feel much more constructive on Bitcoin is now going,
- 1:09:47okay, let's not argue over this small stuff.
- 1:09:50And I mean, you gave a good example
- 1:09:51when I spoke to you after the cold card incident.
- 1:09:53You said you put out a tweet that was saying, you know,
- 1:09:55elevating Rob Hamilton and some of these guys
- 1:09:57who have been fairly anti-Bit 110.
- 1:09:59Very.
- 1:09:59And there's a lot of Bit 110 folks who were liking the post.
- 1:10:02I thought that was a real unit.
- 1:10:03even though we disagreed on that one issue,
- 1:10:04there was a lot of unification at that time
- 1:10:06because we realized this is a bit bigger.
- 1:10:08Yeah.
- 1:10:09You know what I mean?
- 1:10:10So look, honestly,
- 1:10:11I actually kind of hope the gears
- 1:10:12have been unstuck a little bit
- 1:10:13and we start thinking a bit more from a technical,
- 1:10:16what are we actually going to benefit from moving forward?
- 1:10:19So I'm constructive.
- 1:10:21I couldn't give you odds on it.
- 1:10:23But I think there'll be a lot more technical discussion now,
- 1:10:25which is very healthy.
- 1:10:26Yeah.
- 1:10:27Do you think there's a path back
- 1:10:28for the very, very sort of loud Bitponten voices?
- 1:10:31I mean, not Luke and Mechanic, I don't think,
- 1:10:33but the other people, the sort of influencers
- 1:10:36that were on the Bitpontent train.
- 1:10:37Look, I'm in the view that Bitcoin has kind of two setups, right?
- 1:10:40It humbles you, no matter who you are in some way,
- 1:10:43whether by price or by technology.
- 1:10:45And you have to slay your heroes all the time, your regular thing.
- 1:10:49So, I mean, I certainly don't hold any grudges against any folks.
- 1:10:52I think that, by and large, the whole idea of Bitcoin is a single chain.
- 1:10:57If you want to go and do a proof-of-work chain,
- 1:10:58that's an altcoin, guys.
- 1:10:59That's a whole different thing.
- 1:11:01Bitcoin is unchanged at this point in time It hasn changed from however many days ago It the exact same system There a benefit from network effects I think anyone that wants to support the asset
- 1:11:12and by the way, Bitcoin is also money for enemies.
- 1:11:14There are people who are going to disagree
- 1:11:15as Bitcoin gets bigger on a lot of stuff.
- 1:11:18That should be the default.
- 1:11:19Yep.
- 1:11:19So, yeah, I mean...
- 1:11:21I hope they do.
- 1:11:21There's just not that many cases in history
- 1:11:23of people sort of doing something like this
- 1:11:25and then coming back to Bitcoin.
- 1:11:26Like Marshall Long is probably the best example
- 1:11:28of someone that did.
- 1:11:28He was, I think it was a Bitcoin Unlimited,
- 1:11:30the fork he did.
- 1:11:30But the shelling point is it's the money that everybody uses.
- 1:11:34And there's only one of them.
- 1:11:36You can't replicate this thing.
- 1:11:37You can't change the rules of chess
- 1:11:38and expect everyone to sit down and play your game.
- 1:11:40Yeah.
- 1:11:41It's going to be interesting, man.
- 1:11:42It is.
- 1:11:43Anything else you want to talk about?
- 1:11:44No, man.
- 1:11:44I think we've covered a lot.
- 1:11:45So, yeah, look, I think Bitcoin's really good value down here.
- 1:11:49And again, you've got to set your time horizons.
- 1:11:52In the short term, no one can predict anything in terms of markets.
- 1:11:56But from my perspective, have we seen the capitulation?
- 1:12:01I think we've seen two of them, one in February
- 1:12:03and then what I call the time pain in June, July.
- 1:12:07ETFs have capitulated.
- 1:12:09We've seen a lot of bad news.
- 1:12:11Prices have gone nowhere.
- 1:12:12The two biggest public buyers have been sellers.
- 1:12:15Prices have gone nowhere.
- 1:12:17I think we're close to seller exhaustion.
- 1:12:19If I just look at the equation, right, if we go to 45K,
- 1:12:22it's like a 2015 bear.
- 1:12:23Not that the market cares what I think we deserve,
- 1:12:25but do we deserve that?
- 1:12:27Probably not.
- 1:12:29I'm constructive, man.
- 1:12:30Let's go.
- 1:12:31One thing that I want people to do,
- 1:12:32so I went to the Bitcoin meetup in Brisbane last week
- 1:12:34and then last night we had the one in Sydney.
- 1:12:36I'm so bullish on those events.
- 1:12:38Like we need to get more and more people to them.
- 1:12:40There's almost been a case of, I think,
- 1:12:42shared trauma over the last couple of weeks.
- 1:12:43Totally.
- 1:12:43The cold card thing.
- 1:12:44But like the in-person events,
- 1:12:45I think are really important.
- 1:12:47So if you're in Brisbane,
- 1:12:48first Thursday of every month,
- 1:12:49Sydney, second Wednesday?
- 1:12:50I think so, yes.
- 1:12:51Go to local meetup.
- 1:12:53No, I agree.
- 1:12:53They're fantastic.
- 1:12:54We got a massive turnout yesterday, which was great.
- 1:12:57And just case in point, right, Bit110 is obviously one story.
- 1:13:01But we had the Q&A.
- 1:13:03It was all cold card.
- 1:13:04Everyone wanted to understand about entropy and, you know,
- 1:13:07how multi-sig works.
- 1:13:10And it was all about the technical side.
- 1:13:11So it shows that that was the shockwave.
- 1:13:13That was the real shockwave that affected people.
- 1:13:16And it was a unifying event, I think, across the industry.
- 1:13:19I think as terrible as the event was,
- 1:13:23given that bad circumstance
- 1:13:25the way the community rallied
- 1:13:27I think is tremendous
- 1:13:28again the Rob Hamilton
- 1:13:30and Callie and these guys
- 1:13:31I think it's incredible work
- 1:13:32it's hard to go through the storm
- 1:13:34but once you get to the other side
- 1:13:35it's greener pastures
- 1:13:37let's go
- 1:13:38thank you Checkmate
- 1:13:38thank you mate
- 1:13:39it's been awesome as always
- 1:13:40I'll speak to you in a few months
- 1:13:41good on ya
- 1:13:53Thank you.