Bankless - Bull Market Price Predictions With Ledger

Episode Date: August 17, 2024

Has the Bull Market even started yet? And if it hasn't, what does that mean for prices looking forward? We're thrilled to be joined by Ledger who walks us through some charts and describes where he thinks we're headed. ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24  https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2    ⁠ 🦄UNISWAP | BROWSER EXTENSION https://bankless.cc/uniswap  ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle    🌐 OBOL | STAKE ON DVs, SCALE ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/obol  🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT  https://bankless.cc/toku  ----- ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/zora:0x0c294913a7596b427add7dcbd6d7bbfc7338d53f/50?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E  ------ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Start 05:37 BTC Dominance 11:04 Market Vibe Check 16:11 Price Discovery? 23:57 ETH BTC Ratio 30:28 Narrative Winds 40:24 Relative Weakness 46:01 Trading Strategy 48:54 DeFi Summer Breakout 52:43 Looking Forward ------ RESOURCES Ledger: https://x.com/ledgerstatus  ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠ 

Ethereum in the 2000s is cheap. I think Solana in the 100s is cheap. And I think Bitcoin under 100K is cheap. I think quarter million to half a million dollar Bitcoin makes complete sense. And I think that $10,000 Ethereum makes complete sense. And I think that $500 Salana makes complete sense. And I don't think those are that aggressive as targets. Welcome to Bakeliff, where we explore the frontier of Internet money and Internet finance.

And today we are exploring some charts, some technical analysis, some trade. trading charts and we're doing it with our friend Ledger, Ledger from Ledger Cast, Ledger from Up Only. Ledger is a friend of Pod, certainly. And whenever I want to look at charts, I need some help because I'm not a charting chart person. So we bring on Ledger to help navigate some charts. I present Ledger with four charts to kick the conversations off, Bitcoin dominance, the ETH-BTC ratio, the East Salonah ratio, and then the Solana USD price. As we have all kind of passed through the market turmoil of the Japanese yen unwind debacle that kind of permeated, rippled throughout all the markets. I think this is an opportunity to kind of just check in, check in and zoom out. I think these four charts that I'm

presenting Ledger with kind of tell a story, and I want to see his, hear his interpretations of them. And then he also takes over and starts to drive the charts as well, opening up the Dixie chart, the interest, the 10-year interest rate chart, as well as a few others. And just, you know, Ledger's a wise man. He's seen a sting or two in the markets. And so just always want to get his perspective as to where we are when we look at the charts and what this means for crypto as we move forward. So it's a pretty fun conversation. I hope you all enjoy it. Let's go ahead and get right to that conversation with Ledger.

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Just another way Uniswap is helping you swap smarter. Bankless Nation, I'm here with the lovely Ledger. Ledger, how you doing today, my mind? I'm doing great. How are you? Good. Good. Good to see you, dude. We always bring you on when I want to look at charts because anytime I look at a chart with just me and Ryan, I realize that it's just like it's embarrassing and I shouldn't be doing that, at least with interpreting them. With the recent yen trade unwinds that kind of just pummeled the markets, there's like an opportunity, I think, to kind of like zoom out and kind of do a checkpoint of like all of the crypto charts. So I'm sharing on the screen here four charts that I think are kind of, emblematic of maybe perhaps the current state of crypto. We got the Bitcoin dominance chart, which has been up only for a year and a half now.

We have the ETH-BTC ratio, which has been down only for like two years. Seoul ETH, which is painting new highs. And then Seoul USD, just because Solana has kind of been one of the meta-focuses of this particular cycle. I think this is hopefully just like kind of an opportunity. Just to look at these charts and get your interpretation as to like what the vibe is from a man who knows how to navigate charts. So maybe, I know you always have pretty deep analytical takes because you are both following the crypto industry while also looking at the charts. When I present to you these four charts that are all right next to each other on the screen here, what's the first kind of thought that comes to mind? What's the first thing you think about?

Yeah. I mean, I think first off, it's not too surprising that Bitcoin dominance has done well. I feel like a lot of, well, let's back up the narrative just a tad. Like, I think a lot of people are wondering, is this cycle over and that kind of stuff? And I actually think that the cycle, if you will, has probably hardly begun, not to get overly bullish, just to say, like, what we've done so far feels more like the experimental stage and the in-between stage of what's probably a longer market cycle than we're historically accustomed to, where I think you'll look back at the ETF launches and some of the dynamic, you know, the changes in the ecosystem as more of the beginning of a cycle or like an early cycle pause that feel if you're trying to give a corollary that's more like 2019-ish than anything else. Whereas there's a lot of people that they might have gotten rich and then poor again or whatever

on meme coins or something. Like that feels like a smaller meta to me within a broader crypto macro cycle. Like what people think of when they think of, you know, Bitcoin making new highs or stuff happening. I don't know if you see this, David, but I see this where like most people aren't really asking me about crypto at all in my real life. Like they're not excited about buying crypto. They're not like, or even stocks in general, even though you've seen some amazing runs on like Nvidia and other things. I feel like overall, I would say relative to inflation in particular, like the real. real values of the stock market has really just been chugging along more so than, you know,

in some kind of state of euphoria or anything like that. And I think, you know, Bitcoin's really been, or crypto has really been pretty modest as a whole. And it's been more of a zero-sum game within crypto markets. And so some things have won and some things have lost and a lot of things have round-tripped. And what you're showing on the screen right now is more of what are, what are the assets that have kind of showed up as as dominant assets. And one of the biggest things that I think you're presenting here with Solana is like Ethereum did in the last market cycle starting in 2020, Solana is essentially entering the big boy table where I think we can safely define Solana as a major, not purely by market cap or like total market cap, but like,

mind share development activity um people that care about it like people that care about it no matter what the price is um it's not like it's survived a thing it survived a hardship like with the ftx failure and going you know from a price perspective going from 250 plus down to eight dollars and then and then has recovered and forget whether it's in price expiration or something it's just that it didn't really impact the fact that people cared about it and kept building on it. And I think that makes, that's just as important as market cap in terms of it becoming a major. And so I think you create this network effect, this perpetual motion type of thing where it is in a new arena. And it's not a cathedral, like it's more of a bizarre, whereas a lot of these like defined L1s or L2 ecosystems are still like, well, hopefully if we've build it people will come and you haven't all you don't necessarily have like massive amounts of evidence of those doing so and so i think like soul eth in particular or even if you looked at so let me soul relative to anything i think it's it's fairly fairly well outperformed as it's a rival

if you will um and then but within that that's the that's the inner meta of soul becoming a major soul's not at all time highs you know what i mean like eath is not at all i mean eith is not at all time high east is underperformed probably because it because we're not necessarily pulling in so many brand new people that because soul is gained east is actually may like it may have gained but just not as as quickly as soul so it's lost on a relative basis um and and bitcoin has entered its own teenage years as a macro instrument to the legacy market. Like, and that's thanks to the ETS. And so, but a lot of this is still cyclical to me.

I still, I personally am like really bullish on all three of these assets. And so therefore, seeing these swings and relative values is more fun than it is anything else, because if they were static, then there's no trade to be made. but when they're not static, it gives you an opportunity to identify value. And so that's kind of the framing that I would use for these before we dig into like the specifics of what do I think is going to happen next or whatever. Let me throw some vibes at you that I think that you'll agree with. And so double check me if I'm wrong. Bitcoin dominance has been up for a year.

East BTC has been down for two years. Solana has been on the uptrend for coming up to a year now. And I kind of think that because I definitely have started to move in more towards your side of the argument of which we actually never have been in a market cycle, we're more in just like this period where crypto people are doing insular crypto things for the last 12 months. And as a result of that, because cycles historically have been defined as many new people come into the industry, retail comes in, there's a new game to play. Last cycle was NFTs. the cycle before was the ICO movement. We haven't had that. We've just had some crypto people doing crypto things inside of the crypto industry.

And as a result, there's been some trends that haven't had any reason to change, the growth of Bitcoin dominance being like a very big one. And I also would say like Solana, the rise of Solana is like the actual exception that kind of makes the rule. Whereas Solana had this idiosyncratic moment with the FTX collapse. which like oversold it by a large degree because it had believers in the Solana ecosystem even before FTX collapsed. And then it also rebounded alongside this like meme coin thing, which is this again insular self-referential crypto activity that a lot of DGens do. That also really kind of just went alongside the growth, the rebounding of Solana post-FTX.

Solana kind of all got re-rated at once, once with the double whammy of stopped being oversold in December of 2023 with the Gito AirDrop. And then you had the addition of just like, well, it's also, it's got, it's got the current casino that the DGens enjoy, which is the mean coins. And that's why, well, ETH BTC has been down for two years. Solana, ETH ratio has been only up for one year. And that's kind of like the, the middle, the middle of the lull market. That's been like the thing that has defined the last like 12 months or so.

But meanwhile, we have no actual, there's no market cycle here. We are kind of just like in this limbo period waiting for new people to come in and actually define what a new cycle might look like. That's kind of a vibe. Do you agree with that? Yeah, I think it makes sense. And I think Solana, it benefited from with meme coin mania, if you will, maybe that was its like Yams type moment for, you know, like, ETH's D5 emergence. I don't know if it has as direct of a corollary because I think what Salonnas actually doing really well is capturing maybe like this D-PIN market or you know the um this corollary to like

quasi real world assets or or instrumentation whereas ETH I think is is really further establishing its dominance for like big boy financial markets and what a what are those what do those look like for ETH like the the largest lend and borrow markets in the world can exist on ETH and and you know like there's things like I'm just I'm not shilling bags or anything it's just like I'm trying to think of some and been out of some of the main day to day but if you think of like the heliums of the world you know like putting networks real world networks on on chain and there's a lot of them I think Solana's done a really good job of capturing some of that and so I think you'll see you'll continue to see that where like different blockchains start to serve very specific purposes for the sake of speed or for the sake of durability or for the sake of reliability, you know, platforms will continue to choose certain assets over others. I mean, I've continued to be really impressed with like how well DFI works all the time, no matter what, no matter what you throw at it.

Like if you look at a lot of, like the curve liquidation drama was pretty funny. I mean, pretty sad, but also kind of interesting. But how well, like, even curve-oriented markets maintained themselves, much less, like, the derivative effects, if you look at AVE and other stuff. And, you know, compound got attacked recently and I guess figured it out. And, you know, like, there's there's a good stuff happening on all chains. And I don't think, I don't know, I'm kind of anti-maximalists, I guess, and especially so right now. But yeah, we're not, we're not seeing, like, the major narratives evolve and, like, seeing outside stuff come in. And even VC volume is down and things like that.

You know, like, despite price being good. These are all signs of this consolidation, you know, early cycle or mid cycle type stuff, not late cycle type stuff. And I think all the late cycle doomers are wrong, basically. I mean, the other thing that's kind of worth noting as we zoom out and look at the landscape of the charts as a whole is that Bitcoin has passed the 2021 all-time high only twice. It first passed it when it hit $72,000 in March and then it did it again where it hit $71,000 in May. Yeah. But we haven't been able to sustain. Bitcoin has not been able to sustain the all-time highs beyond that.

And so. Yeah. And then also, Eath, even with the ETF, even though like a lot of the EATF juice is still left to be squeezed, ETH is at sub-3,000 dollars. Like it got up to $4,000 within striking distance of its old, all-time high, but actually just never even got any closer than that. And now it's all-time high seems very, very far away.

And like you said, Solana also just not at its old all-time high. And I'm not at contrasting, whatever the opposite of contrast is, alongside with the fact that we don't have any new users coming into crypto, those things seem to make sense where we have like the ETFs but no new users and so therefore we only have like this being within like striking distance of all times highs but no any like net new price discovery so I think that there's like a lot of assumptions that people make like you know what just because we have we're going to have yet another four year market cycle you know because that's how the having works or whatever and I think honestly I think the ETS for example, might have a bigger impact on demand than the having itself. And it may be doubly so, but it also might just be on the opposite side of that, headwinds in the broader global market are better presented in crypto markets because they're in more traditional assets now.

therefore like election stuff that almost always creates like uncertainty and you know potential downside or kind of at best consolidation for a few months prior to getting certainty later in the election cycle i actually think that's impacting crypto right now in a big way especially because crypto is a policy item in in this election in america and i don't really think the election results will have a huge impact on price. It may have a huge impact on policy, especially down the line, like beyond Bitcoin. I think it could have a big impact on, you know, defy and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, I think, seeing, I'm on a monthly chart right now, seeing, like, six months of consolidation after prior all-time highs,

it may feel kind of depressing, but when you look at a monthly chart, like, there's nothing wrong with this, you know, like, this is just, you know, like, this is just, just, totally normal. Stop being bored. Like, go do something. You know what I mean? Like, people will chop themselves up to death rather than just sit on their hands. And probably don't do nothing. And do nothing. Yeah. Like, they will, they will just freak out all the time. And when you just look at Bitcoin by itself, like, we are not outside the world in crypto where you need this chart to be healthy for your other charts to be healthy by and large. Now, you can have this chart in consolidation and somebody's making like 100 X's on like a current meta.

And that's great because they're just getting wealthier. They're taking money from people that were worse at the game than they are. And then that money will be put into better and smarter hands theoretically in that kind of zero-sum environment. But then you're also preparing for what does it look like when broader markets are interested in this asset. And so all this correlates back to my mind like, you know, macro stuff like where rates where is the dollar where is all that stuff going on and all that stuff is honestly good people don't talk about that a whole lot but like the dixie looks like it's it's uh got downside potential which usually correlates really nicely with bull markets in crypto um i have

these lines that are essentially associated to where did bull markets begin and if you look at this It essentially looks like a mid-cycle. The Dixie is on a devaluing trajectory. And in my mind, I don't even know when I drew this right here, this little heads and shoulders consolidation thing. Because I haven't recorded a podcast in months. But like, not to brag. But it's like I didn't need to record a podcast.

I think, like I think you could. could see Dixie go down at like sub 100 over the next couple of years and get back to that mean in the 90s. And that almost certainly is good for crypto. Whether that, whether that vertical delta is the same as these, like these cycles are fairly similar in length. And they aligned pretty well with crypto bull markets. You know, this is December 2013, December 16, March 2020, November 2020. And this is, this is potentially, like, if that continues to go down, I think that's going to be good for crypto. Dollar down, crypto up.

Yeah. Generally in cycles. It's, it's much harder. Yeah. It's much harder when that's working against you. And so if that. If that. what the Dixie is. The Dixie DXY is an index of dollar strength. So when the Dixie goes down,

it means like generally assets go up. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, when you, when you compare that to the Bitcoin chart itself, like that consolidation feels more normal. Like it aligns up actually with a lot of that that consolidation in the dollar as well. And so I think the longer we consolidate here, it's not that bad. I do think if we go, if we, like if the broader economy, if the soft landing fails, which this is going to, might be a hot take for people, I think the soft landing is succeeding right now. I think, I think the burden of proof is on people who don't believe that at this point. Yeah. Yeah. Like, yes, are there struggles in the economy? For sure. But like, we're not in a we're not we're not in like inflation has not run away you know we got a two handle on

inflation for the first time and a long time i think this last last week or something that's right yeah and so can it is inflation still a problem or prices still a problem yes but they kind of always have been even when they've been hidden but they're it's not six or eight you know it's not 10. We do face a situation where economies are going to have to decide did they want to print money or control spending, and they're really bad at controlling spending. So, like, we'll see, can they print money? And that's bipartisan, bipartisanship. The only bipartisan thing that anyone believes in is, like, well, we still have to do all the things that we want to do. So let's just print more money. And so I think that's going to be the result again. If they can do it without. sending inflation right back to 6 and 8 percent, then I think that'll be really positive for assets, especially, you know, like disinflationary assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. And so I continue to see very strong macro reasons for upside. And then it's a matter of like, how do you play the cycles?

What do the cycles mean? And you talked about Ethereum earlier, and I think it's just looking at East BTC, again, like some levels that I've had on here for a long time. And it was really correlated to when Ethereum came out of the bear market in 2018 and 2019. It kind of established these local highs and it's now using that as support. That is not bullish. You know, like this is below, I love the 20 and 200 moving averages. Below the 200 moving average, like that's the mean, if you will. And so like, ETH is weak relative to Bitcoin, for sure. But it's nowhere close to where it was at the time. the lows at like sub point

018 it's at 0.04 do I think that it could go back to 0.14 yes but what's the narrative like you need yeah you need but you need real thing you need real stuff to happen in ETH that's a big

deal like real global financial stuff difference making applications and protocols that are probably at the scale of like large corporate, governmental,

nation state, even products that are utilizing the Ethereum blockchain to provide... For reference, a ratio of ETH.14 to Bitcoin is approaching market cap parity with Bitcoin. You're saying... Ledger is saying that in this potential simulation, Heath could get equal to Bitcoin.

Yeah, you could probably find some podcasts back when where David was, like, freaking out wondering if we were going to have the flippening. It's a word you probably haven't even heard in a long time. Yeah, I haven't said a really long time. Well, you didn't say it still. I did. And that's not what I'm banking on, but like those are the highs for ETHBTC. I think what's more likely is can it breach this like 0.075.08 type of territory and get back to like 0.1 of Bitcoin's price, which is not the flippening, but it is a very, very strong.

set. I do think that's possible. We are clearly in a multi-year downward trajectory. I'm not trying to polish a turd here. ETH has not been as good of an asset to own as Bitcoin or Solana. On its own, ETH is okay, although this may depress you a little bit. Like, if you look at the 200-week moving average on a weekly basis, which Bitcoin, except for, I think, the most recent cycle always used as bare market support because it was just always on such an upward trajectory Ethereum kind of held it as support but tested it several times. Ethereum looks like it's basically back in that range. So it kind of looks like it's in this sad state of affairs like it was in 2022 through 2020

23 recovered really nicely. And this is against USD, but now like that average is moved up. It's very, very weak in terms of like just dollar level strength, which it really shouldn't be in an inflationary environment like we've had. And so you may look at that different ways. You may say, like, well, this really sucks. I should just buy something else. Or you may look at this as a relative opportunity for value if you still believe in all the things that Ethereum is good for. I think both are completely reasonable.

like it's hard to fight a trend and if if bitcoin is strong and salonar is strong then um you know those might be better assets to own a majority of um i don't think that that means that eth is dead and i think eth is still a highly investable asset um i think you need to be on the lookout for what does a balance look like what does the narratives look like and actually the the the that the devalue trade that you were talking about earlier that caused not just ripples, but like tsunamis across markets and crypto. And a lot of people were like, oh, it's over. If you look at ETHUSD, it bounced off that 200-week moving average and actually made

a pretty nice weekly wick, which in my personal opinion means that there's some strength for ETH, like some native demand, well above $2,000. It is definitely not pretty, though. Like, you know, we went to $4,800 at the top of the last market cycle. So it has to double from here to get to all-time highs. I do think we'll see ETH all-time highs. I do think the ETFs provide a real positive flow environment. But – and it looked pretty good going into the ETF

and then also prior to that Yen-de-valuing meltdown, I think that the grayscale ethie stuff getting out of the ecosystem is extraordinarily healthy. You're kind of shedding off the bad stuff right now. And that's good. So you get rid of the ethie problem and then you have more of a natural, hey, people with ETF access with larger pools of money. People have larger pools of money in their retirement accounts where they have ETF access oftentimes than they do in liquid. What am I going to put in Coinbase today? It's really hard to convince yourself to go put something either on chain in Coinbase, Gemini, like whatever your exchange of choice is.

And people do that in smaller amounts of money than they're willing to roll their retirement accounts with. Like a lot of people our age have six-figure retirement accounts that they would totally buy crypto with. from those retirement accounts. I think people are discounting that that real buying power that exists and people will buy those ETFs. And I think that will be very good for both Bitcoin and Ethereum.

But you got to shed your problems and ETHI was a problem. You need people to be able to redeem against that discount that existed and whatnot. So I think like with Bitcoin, we're seeing that happen with Ethereum. That WIC that we experienced in ETH where it touched the 200-day moving average

from the yen carry trade unwinded. 200 weeks, excuse me. Like, I think a large part of that, the size of the wick was coming from jump capitals like dumping of ETH from the perceived leverage that the head- Which was a big deal, by the way.

That's a huge deal. Fun fact, turns out, it's actually not jump capital. The labels, the addresses are actually mislabeled, but everyone thinks that it's jumped capital. But somebody had a lot of leverage that they had to unwind at the bottom. And this is also, this also happened with the three hours capital liquidation when everyone found out that they went bankrupt. They were dumping ST. ETH into the bottom of the market in a very illiquid market.

And you also saw the ETH-BTC ratio just like take a huge pummeling down then back then. And then also kind of bounce back up. Because ETH is this capital asset that's used as collateral for leverage, when there are cascading liquidations in the market, ETH takes like a larger brunt of the force than other assets simply because it is the collateral. And so that's I think why that WIC is so big. But also to go back to like what you're saying with the trend, the trend is not ETH's friend at the moment. Right now the trend is Bitcoin strength and Solana strength. And I think that like if you are an ETH bull, you're kind of asking for a phase change in the market because the current market phase, whatever phase we're in.

is not in ETH's favor. So whatever like new retail coming in, new users coming in, new part of the bull market cycle that begins perhaps now, perhaps later, like I think if you're an ETH holder, you're just asking for something to be different because the trend is not. Like the trend is going to like run ETH into the 200 week moving average again, probably. Is that a fair take?

Yeah, yeah, it could for sure. And yeah, you're looking at when do I want to call the bottom of this trend or maybe more conservatively, like, tack on for the upside as the trend proves that it's reversing. And I don't know when that's going to be on ETH BTC because I think generally BTC is pretty strong. And I like, I would have no problem owning Bitcoin. And so predicting it relative to Bitcoin, I'm not necessarily prepared to do. I actually think Solana has been softening a good bit. and I think that's heavily correlated to the inevitable unwind of the meme coin stuff.

And people troll me all the time. And I'm actually trolling them oftentimes when I post like a with chart. And, you know, I started back when I was like, good luck with that or whatever. And people hated on me. And then every now and then, like pretty much any time it's getting dumped over on like a weekly trend, I would tweet something. Yeah, I would tweet something and they'd all get mad at me. And, like, I really don't care what happens with Whiff, but, like, you can't tell me this is strong.

That is a brutal chart. Yeah. So when I first did it, it was in this consolidation, and then it pumped. And so people are, like, trying to counter trade me or whatever, whenever I tweet stuff like that. This is not strong. And I think, like, this is representative of the meme coin market. Right. I would in an environment where you have a lot of real world value for for these majors that we've been talking about.

I just have no desire to be like, oh yeah, I can get a 10x on this too after somebody else got 100x already and they're distributing into this chart right now. What you see on this chart is people distributing their wins, like, or capitulating on their losses because they thought they were early but then realized they weren't early. and so like with people or whatever and whiff is held up way better than other meme coins like tons of meme coins are down 95% plus already they don't want to tell you that 80% of their portfolios in other crap and 20% of their portfolio is in whiff and you know they're giving me a hard time because like if i make a tweet about with when it's here and i say how bad it looks and they're like ah thank god ledger called the bottom again and i can be happy and then they start messaging me saying how dumb i am and guess what It's every time they do it, it's like up here. And then it's always the top. So like, just counter-trade everybody is the point. Like, just look at my tweets. When I do that, buy-with.

And then when people start saying, like, ha-ha, I told you so, then dump it. That's how to play the dual counter-trade, be a double agent. But this looks like crap is my point. And, you know, this is the game on. Salana. And so I think some of that weakness until some of these deep end ideas and other ideas like gain their own native traction, which I think what they will, and I think Salana is fantastic. Like, I think the weakness in meme coins will affect Solana itself. And I like Salana a lot. Like, I don't necessarily want that to be true. I just, I just think it will. And I think that

you see it right here. Like, this is consolidation, sure, but it's, it's, I see weakness. Like, this is the 200-day moving average, it's dropping below that. It just doesn't look very good to me. The 20-week moving average, it's dipped below. It is in a consolidating range, but like if Seoul went back to like sub-100, it wouldn't surprise me at all. And a lot of people would probably get pissed off about me saying that, and they control me in the comments down here below. And so I just think that, I think that that's not an unlikely scenario. I'm not saying I want it to happen. I'm not guaranteeing that it will happen.

I will say, like, in this range here, it needs to, it needs to, like, abide by that wick that it had during that meltdown that we had. Because what I would like to see for Salana's strength would be kind of bouncing off this, continuing to consolidate, and creating this, like, really exciting type of consolidation that's more at the highs, not at the lows of the range, so that you could have, you know, know, a breakout opportunity that would take it to all-time highs. I just think that might take to, like, after the election, end of year. That tends to be a good time for, like, strong upside is end-of-year post-election,

and then have a really strong 2025. Like, price discovery in 2025 across crypto assets would make sense to me. Trying to predict, like, where is that going to begin? It wouldn't surprise me at all. it's August, August, September, October, November, you know, you got 90, is it under 100 days now to the election, right around? Yeah, it's around then, yeah. Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me at all if 60 to 60 to 80 of those days include more chop on a relative basis where Solana underperforms Bitcoin and Bitcoin itself chops as well. It wouldn't surprise me at all.

And it just happens. It happens every four years and people are surprised about it about an election. And if we add to our kind of potential for weakness argument, Seoul Eath has had these kind of four drives. Now, it's still strong here, no doubt about it. It just wouldn't surprise me if it, like, went back towards the bottom of the range. And so, and Soul BTC, kind of similar, just in the middle of a range. Also, 200-day moving average here.

Like, those are just the things I would be looking for if I was doing more like swing-type trading and trying to in short-term capital gains positioning, trying to figure out would I rather own Solana, Ethereum, or Bitcoin right now. Personally, Solana is not, it's not first on my list. I think it's probably third on my list. That's also how it is in my own portfolio, I guess. I didn't think about it that way, but I just think there might be a little bit of relative weakness that can be disproven by a price to scope.

like, price discovery, like break out of this range against Bitcoin, you know, I'd have no, I'd have no problem on, on Solana,

like, buying something like that. But let it prove it. You know, like, you don't have to be a genius, you know? Like,

why bother with the consolidation? And so, I think it's kind of a boring time, like, to be honest, in terms of, in terms of crypto stuff, that's not a bad thing.

And, And I think you just, you're looking for kind of relative trades. Like we need to see considerably more strength than Ethereum. We need to see more strength than Solana. I think Bitcoin looks the best of all of them right now. But it too is under its 200-day moving average. And it's just in this choppy range that I think we can expect to continue to some degree. And if you're not prepared for that potential outcome, like what if Bitcoin goes

to 40k. Well, that's definitely your scenario for Solana under 100, Eth under 2K. And I'm not trying to be a bear, but that would wash out a lot of leverage. It would wash out a lot of like speculation that occurred in meme coins. All those things would get completely destroyed. I don't think it would be that bearish for the majors in the sense of I think those would be good relative values to buy at. And so how do you want to position yourself between now and the end of the year in a place to where you can take advantage of those opportunities because I think there's going to be some really great ones. I do the I think the pattern that a lot of people are seeing is that relative weakness that

you're seeing in Solana, the clear weakness and the trend of weakness that we were seeing in Ethereum and then the lack of breakout that we're seeing in Bitcoin. And especially in that Bitcoin chart, that monthly Bitcoin chart, where like if Bitcoin is consolidating below all-time highs. Like, consolidating below all-time highs is, like, kind of sick for, like, a little bit. But it's been a really long time. And I think in the crypto markets with the very impatient crypto traders, crypto investors that we have because of these four-year cycles,

if it's not going up, then that's a risk. Like, consolidation looks like, it's like, well, if it's not going up, it's going to go down. And if it doesn't go up soon enough, then, like, I think the fear is that people get impatient and they start to assume, like, oh, the cycle's over. over it's time to sell and get out. Well, it's especially depressing when you're underperforming the stock market. Oh, yeah, for sure. Which is occurring.

Yeah, buy a lot. Like, look at the wick that stocks created relative to what Bitcoin created. And what's crazy is it's not just the stock market. Like, if we go to gold, for example, like on a chart, now percentage-wise, I don't know how severe it is. But, like, on a chart, gold looks freaking great. like gold gold broke out of a yeah it's in price discovery and i'm sorry if that hurts your feeling it's just true you know like uh it had a four year four year consolidation and now has been doing very nicely for six months straight um i think that's a good thing for bitcoin to just rip it to pieces once it

actually goes, but it's lagging like crazy right now. And yeah, you know, one other element, you know, you talk about rates and whatnot. I think seeing consolidation in rates as well, which was absolutely a headwind on market, on crypto, like I think that if the 10 year goes back down to the mean, which is about half a percentage below where we are now, that would be. really good for crypto. So if you can do all that without actually going into a full-on recession and do it as the soft landing, everybody in crypto should be rooting for a soft landing because when you're the laggard in the room,

if the economy as a whole turns and you never pumped, like you're just the sad one that underperforms on the downside. So like you need to be rooting for that soft landing pretty much. And right now I think there's a lot of potential for it. I mean, even the NASDAQ, which has had some weakness, but it looks freaking great, like, on a relative basis. Like, this is much better to own than crypto over the past year or so. Earlier you said that, like, we're entering, like, the ETFs kind of broke the back of the four-year cycle. And I'm starting to also get behind this idea that, like, one of the reasons why I think, you know, the average crypto speculator,

crypto trade or crypto investor like emotionally feels bad is because we're expecting the four-year cycle and we're not getting it. And so expectations are dashed. But like we also do have the fundamentals of the ETF flows, which are not like crack cocaine. It is a steady trickle of just like, you know, good, solid like, like, no, dopamine. Like a slow, it's slow, right? It's like we're not jumping the gun here. Like we're just, it's going to be slow. But I don't know if you saw, if you've paid a of the numbers on this, but the top four or something Bitcoin ETFs are like the top four

ETFs in a long time. Right. Yeah. And the next one is Ethereum. Like Ethereum is behind I think the top four Bitcoin ETS or something like that. But it's better than every other ETF that's come out in like the last year at a minimum and maybe multiple years. I can't remember.

And so there's there is demand for those ETS. And I think that is amazing. Like that's amazing. You're seeing kind of the proof in the pudding, but the S&P, the NASDAQ, they benefit from these just every single month. People DCA, DCA, DCA, DCA, straight out their paycheck. Yeah, and that's what we're presenting an opportunity for, for crypto to be part of that basket. And that's a powerful basket.

Like if you bet on, especially as people are not being. boomers investing heavily in their retirements you know millennials are about to have their peak earning years and millennials are very open to crypto like don't forget these things and don't live on these like day to day timelines like for once in your life think on a on a 10 year spectrum and what that means like i absolutely believe somebody that's putting a hundred thousand dollars in a market now um is going to have seven figures by the time they retire if they're in their 20s, 30s and 40s. And I think that that is an amazing opportunity.

Don't get distracted and burnout on things and identify the fact that you have a 10x plus opportunity sitting in front of you. And I think that's what we have in crypto markets. Even with majors, like not even talking about all the stuff down the line. And I think that I think that Ethereum in the 2000s is cheap. I think Solana in the 100s is cheap. And I think Bitcoin under 100K is cheap. Like, I'm sorry.

That's just how I feel. And so I think quarter million to half a million dollar Bitcoin makes complete sense. And I think that $10,000 Ethereum makes complete sense. And I think that, you know, $500 Solana makes complete sense. and I don't think those are that aggressive as targets. Yeah, as Chris Berniske and many others say, don't fuck it up. And I think people very frequently fuck it up

because they think that these numbers are coming like in four months or three months, too short amount of the time. You know, you and I have been here for a decent amount of time. And one of the reasons that we're still here is that like we generally try to keep a level head, keeping your leverage down. Like, stop using leverage.

Like, you really suck at it. Like, 99.9% of you absolutely suck with leverage. I would much rather see people go in to crypto with conviction, if you will. Like, I would much rather, with Spot in majors, see somebody put 80% of their net worth in crypto than to put 10% of their, net worth in crypto, but then go leverage, trade it all the time. You will lose your 10% and get disenchanted, but if you put 80% and you're in spot and you averaged in over time during a time like this where you're either in consolidation, a bear market, whatever, like, I feel very confident in somebody feeling good about that decision over the course of years. I feel very negative

about somebody that thinks they're going to turn $1,000 into $10 million using leverage and buying the coin of the day. And almost everybody that in my life says they want to get in crypto, they struggle to not do that. They just can't help themselves. And they want to make stuff that's happening fast, but feels slow. They want it to happen faster. They want it to happen faster. They want it to happen now. When it's happening fast, but you've been going slow, you'll know and you'll be able to react. Like, you know, when 20, 2020 defy happened, when 2021

NFTs and all melt up on all the things happened. It happened fast and we all knew. We all knew, oh my gosh, the train is going and it's time to bet more. Like, you just know,

but it's because we were already there for years and you felt the difference in real time. I do remember that moment where Eith broke out from like being, it broke out higher than $330, which it hadn't,

for like two years and it hit $425 or something like this. And I had never seen a time on crypto Twitter in all my track groups, all my Discord channels, all my telegram servers, everyone was like, oh yeah, it's on. And we were all right. Like it was consensus and we were right. And the next thing that happened was Eath went from like $400 up to $1,100 over the next like six weeks. Same thing with Bitcoin. I think it was here.

Yeah, right then. Like we all knew here. Everyone knew it. And I have never felt like that ever again since that moment. Yeah. Well, and what's funny is, if I remember correctly, like, DFI Summer mostly happened right here when ETH was pretty sideways. Heath marked up and it killed DFI summer for a hot second. And then it consolidated again.

There was a continuation, I think, of some, or actually Bitcoin ran like crazy while ETH went sideways right here. and then you hit kind of the end of the year, new year, and by the way, look at this, this is an election year, and a lot of that uncertainty goes away, and it just went, it just went, bam, you know, just like absolutely nuts. And when you feel these breakouts happen, this is on a weekly chart, but on a daily chart, you just, if you look at charts all the time,

which most of the people watching this probably do. You open your phone. You don't have to look at the chart. You just see the price. You feel it happening. And it's like, ah, we're down today, but then, oh, look how fast that recovery was. Or we're up, like, we're up today and it's kind of relentless. Or it's a steady eddy.

And you just kind of feel this bubbling up. Like it's just gradually, gradually, gradually bubbling up. And there's this strength that you just feel in the market because you look at it every single day. and then when that lid blows, you're just not surprised. You're not surprised at all. And it's time in the market to let you know what that feeling is like. I do not feel that in the market right now personally. Like I feel a willingness to be patient, but I don't feel like the lid's about to blow.

I feel, if anything, like just expecting more of the same over these next couple months, would I like to start feeling that water to boil a little bit prior to maybe some election-centric resolution for the market? Yeah, I'd love that. But if we just nuke between now and the election, it wouldn't surprise me because that's the opposite, right? Like, that's the, that's the water, like, emptying out and you kind of feel it. You can, like, feel the liquidity in the market leaving. You know, you can feel pain or tremors that exist from a macro perspective. things like the fake jump blow up.

Like, whatever that was, like, that's one of those types of tremors that's the opposite of what we were talking about. So if you're patient and if you spend time in the market, if you pay attention, if you don't lose everything doing dumb stuff, then you will be there in time to feel when it's real. And that's when you start making aggressive moves. That's when David and I are texting each other about random, like, projects that we think are interesting and like two weeks later they've doubled in price and some people maybe you felt

that on on in meme coins or some of these smaller metas but like those were small metas those are not big level metas in my opinion yeah that's right wise words from ledger who is a wise man ledger thank you for coming on the show and walking through some of these charts i couldn't have done without you my man yeah i appreciate you having me i like my my podcasting sea legs are not there right now. Yeah, we got to keep you sharp for when you eventually return. Will you ever return? Will LedgerCast come back?

We'll Up Only come back? I don't know. I don't know in what formats, but yeah, I'll be around. I mean, it would be equal to all these mistakes I'm talking about for what we'll say, like people have been in the market for only a couple years or whatever. Equally stupid would be to have been here for what's it been, David, like seven, eight ears and then just be like oh you know now that this is major asset i'll just leave i just i just want to go i just want to go a little slower you know like i want to make more more measured moves

um i that has that has been the sentiment of the cohort that i've been in like i've been feeling it ryan's been feeling yeah i know anthony susano is just like yo like you can't keep on just like slamming your head into your screen for like six years in a row you need to have like a hobby or something you need to have like you know touch grass and be real i moved fast for a long time like i'm i like to trade like i told you beforehand like i need in fact if i'm going to like cash out i need to be pretty illiquid because i just want to buy stuff like i want to trade if i'm liquid if i'm overly liquid and um and like this last year was this is pretty embarrassing but it's like one of the only times in my entire crypto life that i'm

I had long-term capital gains. I was like, if I really never done this before? But it's because I like... I am best in kind of a swing trade type of format, like longer than a week, oftentimes longer than 30 days, but probably less than 90 days or 180 days. Not going like completely degenerate or anything, but swinging between things are like major ideas

that I have. And so, you know, there were a couple of times where I had long-term capital gains, but like, when the market's really hot, I'm probably not. Like, I'm going to be bouncing around a little bit outside of minor portions of my portfolio. But, like, I hardly traded at all between mid-20203 and mid-2024, like, hardly at all. And I just, I kind of made some choices, and those choices were fine. and I had long-term capital gains for really the first time in quite a while.

Okay, congratulations on the long-term cap gains, brother. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, thanks. Other than, like, angel investments and stuff, those tend to be, those are always long-term. But for liquid crypto to have long-term capital gains, it has not happened to me a whole lot. And so I need to do that more.

Well, it makes sense because the traders have their moment during bull markets when there's high volatility. and if anyone has experienced a bull market in crypto, time compresses in bull markets. Like one week in a bare market is not the same as one week in the bull market. In a week in a bull market, like 17 things can happen. And in the bear market, you know, only a few things happen. Yeah.

And if you look at kind of where charts are, like, it wasn't a bad decision to not do anything for a year because like we had consolidated into last summer and we had a pretty great year. And so I was pretty happy. And so I actually took some long-term capital gains. And now I'm kind of in a let's see what's next type of mode where I have flexibility to trade. And so, yeah, I mean, yeah, that's like the flip side of saying go slow.

But I want to continue to go slow or slower, slow-ish. But I'm definitely going to be around, I guess, to answer your question. Sorry, to prolong the exit there. No, not at all. And also going slower, I think that's what's happening to like, that's what's happening in crypto. Like, we're slowing down. Slowing down. The ETFs are slower.

The Fed is going to cut rates probably slower. That's kind of my prediction is like the Fed's not going to whip-lash us anymore. They learned their lesson. I think everything is kind of going to slow down from like these crack cocaine four-year cycles and they're going to smooth out to, you know, some some matcha, some more sustainable forms of caffeine, I would say. That's how I'm going to get to phrase it. Works for me. Works for me as well. Ledger, thank you so much for coming on. Bankless Nation. You guys know the deal. Crypto is risky.

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