Bankless - Is the Crypto Bull Market Back? with Up Only's Ledger

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

On the show today is Ledger! Ledger is no stranger to market cycles and is here to answer the question... Are we back? Join us as we walk through charts, discuss market catalysts and get a full break ...down on how ledger is navigating these market conditions. ----- 🏹 Airdrop Hunter is HERE, join your first HUNT today https://bankless.cc/JoinYourFirstHUNT ----- 🔐 Get a Free Trial of Doppel https://bankless.cc/doppel ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE ⁠https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2   🦊METAMASK PORTFOLIO | MANAGE YOUR WEB3 EVERYTHING ⁠https://bankless.cc/MetaMask ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum ⁠ 🔗 CELO | CEL2 COMING SOON https://bankless.cc/Celo ------ RESOURCES Ledger https://twitter.com/ledgerstatus ------ CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 5:30 Are We Back? 11:21 Charting Bitcoin 24:39 ETH/BTC Pair 29:22 Four Year Cycles 34:29 Chainlink 36:13 DeFi Winners vs Losers 39:38 Solana 40:29 Beating Bitcoin 46:04 Important Future Events 49:03 Plan for Black Swans 54:18 Advice For Investors 58:45 Frontrunning Narratives 1:05:11 Ledger's Trading Strategy ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:06 Bankless Nation special episode for you today. Is the crypto bull market back? That is the question on my mind, on David's mind, probably on your mind, bankless listener. And we have the person who I think is best at answering this question, Up Only's Ledger. Ledger is back on the podcast, one of our favorite market commentators. And that is the question we are going to ask. David, are we back, baby? I don't know yet. What do you think? Yeah, that is certainly the question. And I'm pretty well convinced that Ledger is going to come on in a quick second and tell us unequivocally that we are 100% back. It's totally on. The bull market's 100% confirmed.
Starting point is 00:00:44 It's time to allocate. I'm just absolutely positive that that's going to be the answer. But without putting Woods in his mouth, I'll wait for him to actually be asked the question here in a second. Okay. Well, we're going to get right to that in just a minute. But we want to give a shout out to our friends and sponsors over at Dopple. Dopple is who you call when you want to fish the fishers, when you want to squash all the fissures out there that are coming for your community. So, David, what's the
Starting point is 00:01:09 who are you going to call? What is that? Doppel. Doppel, yeah. So, I mean, me, Ryan, many other people definitely have some fake accounts that have been spun up attempting to fish you. There have been people who have been on the receiving ends. To be clear, they're impersonating us. They're not actually us on the other side. They are not. They spell their names like us. They use our profile pictures like us. They attempt to copy our tweets, but they're not us. Doppel helps pretend. you and really this entire industry against all of the fishing scams and surface area for risk of you losing your assets that exists out there. So if you have impersonators or you need other additional layers of protection as you navigate the crypto space, Dopple is for you. There is a link of
Starting point is 00:01:52 the show notes to get started with Dopple. Who you're going to call? My logic rip off of that copyright. I don't know, but I'll call Dopple. Yeah. What they do is they play whackamol with all the fissures and do takedowns, get their websites taken down. It is really the most effective. method. Bankless is a user of Dopple. So go sign up. Dopple.com slash sign up. All right, David. A few questions, I think we're going to ask Ledger today when we come
Starting point is 00:02:15 back after the break, but why are the markets pumping? Was there a cause for this? That's top of mind for me. Are we ready for up-only bull market, or is this just a kind of a, you know, are we getting much ado about nothing? Yeah. I also want to ask Ledger what charts he's paying
Starting point is 00:02:31 attention to now. What are some of the key signals he's taking a look at? And also, maybe we should bring up macro. I mean, does that factor in? There's wars going on. The macro is very uncertain at this point of time. But does any of that even matter? And then we've got 2024, which is the year of the Bitcoin happening.
Starting point is 00:02:47 It's also an election year for the U.S. Does that factor into this? These are some of my questions for Ledger after the break. What else we got? Yeah, there's just been some sentiment shifts out of some smaller cap coins, smaller cap compared to Bitcoin and Ether, both Seoul and Link. both Seoul and Link have broken out of their like 18 month long bear market ranges. There's a lot of arguments to be made that sentiment has shifted.
Starting point is 00:03:15 I am someone who definitely feels that. I am kind of personally a weather vein when it comes to sentiment. So I need somebody like Brian to Ledger to give me permission to be uncategorically bullish, which I'm sure, like I said, is he's totally about to. give me. David, I don't know about that. He might not. He might be putting the brakes, easing on the brakes on all of this. I don't believe it. Well, I will have to ask him. We'll find out more when we come back with Ledger. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible, including our number one crypto exchange to purchase your Bitcoin
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Starting point is 00:05:18 This means that SELO needs you to weigh in and make your voice heard. Join the conversation in the SELO4. Follow at SELOorg on Twitter and visit sello.org to shape the future of Ethereum. Bankless Nation, I'm so excited to reintroduce you to Up Onli's Ledger. I've been listening to Ledger and his market commentary for years now, at least three ever since my POV crypto days way back when Ledger has seen a thing or two when it comes to market cycles. It's been not his first rodeo, maybe not his second. Ledger, welcome back to Bankless. Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, I guess should we be starting a new cycle now? This will be my
Starting point is 00:05:57 third go-round on a crypto cycle. Are you feeling old, man? I've been feeling old for a while. Wow, I don't know if I'm ready for another one. I guess that's the main question for today. Is that what we've just entered into? Is this like a new bull cycle that's been online? Is the bowl market back, right?
Starting point is 00:06:17 It's back, right? Right, Brian? Yeah, some things are back. I don't know about your bags. But there's reason for optimism in the market right now for sure. I think that there's, It's complicated. This is more complicated than it's ever been in terms of like what role does crypto play in broader markets.
Starting point is 00:06:40 So it's not binary. It's not yes or no. We actually have to talk about this. But there are, you know, some things that have been part of what we, we discuss every time that we talk would tell you we are in a bull market. So when you look at the technicals for Bitcoin in particular, we are in a bull market, like by definition. that said, you know, we haven't obviously breached all-time highs, and I'm not saying like wait until there is a new all-time high to buy. But, you know, we haven't hit the easy mode yet. You know, there's a lot of a lot of stuff to churn through in order to get to that kind of price exploration territory.
Starting point is 00:07:18 We don't know what price exploration would look like in today's market. What kind of baggage does that draw with it? If Bitcoin makes an all-time high, do we have, you know, a thousand shit coins that try to follow on? what does that do in terms of spreading out liquidity? Obviously, we had a lot of re-hypothecation of Bitcoin in the last cycle through what looks to be pretty clear fraud now. And so, like, you start taking some of that out. You increase passive flows through the ETF. Like, there's some real interesting stuff that could happen.
Starting point is 00:07:50 And so far, we're seeing serious strength in Bitcoin, a pretty serious breakdown on the ETH-BTC pair. Some alts are following along with Bitcoin and outperforming. Salon has been doing really well and some others as well. But on the whole, they're not. The mean coins aren't really following along. So like this makes for really interesting, fairly convincing early market cycle stuff. But that doesn't mean you just like buy every JPEG, buy every alt coin, like go all in across the spectrum and you're just, you know, going to make it. Like, I think you can still make pretty bad decisions right now.
Starting point is 00:08:31 And, but if you're, if you're in solid stuff, if you're letting Bitcoin do Bitcoin things, then, um, you have an opportunity for a solid reward. But, you know, Bitcoin is not, I don't, I don't, I don't, if Bitcoin 100 X is, we got bigger problems in the world. Um, so like if you're looking for 100 X returns, like, I don't think that's what this moment is about, you know, we're trying to establish a baseline for what is, recovery and strength look like. So happy to walk through some charts for that. And yeah, we're back in a way. Just don't get out over your skis too much. You know, like I wouldn't be going 100 X long anywhere at any time.
Starting point is 00:09:10 But, you know, that's not, I don't think that's the market that we're in right now. Yeah, putting on a more serious hat. What I've noticed is as bull market posting on Twitter went from having no engagement, to having like a hundred times more engagement. And this is just one signal of many of what it would take to incur some sort of just like change in the vibe, change in the sentiment. Now, like change in sentiment is just dubious because the prices could nuke 10% like tomorrow
Starting point is 00:09:46 and then all of a sudden that sentiment change would be out the window and then this show would be for nothing. But I am trying to navigate like at some point, markets are just exhausted being bearish. When you're bearish for two years in a row, at some point, people's bear market fuel runs out. And all of a sudden, that is itself a catalyst. And amongst many other actual fundamental catalysts,
Starting point is 00:10:11 like a Bitcoin ETF or any of the other like catalysts that are moving the lower cap coins, bullishness does beget bullishness. and I think we'll really only be able to kind of judge this week in hindsight. But I do think that there is a case to be made, an argument to be made, that like, that errant coin telegraph tweet of the approval of the spot Bitcoin ETF showed that a lot of people will actually off sides on that trade. And now they are getting on sides. And all of a sudden, Bitcoin is breaking above $30,000.
Starting point is 00:10:44 And then the short squeeze happens to $34,000. That's enough. That's like a lot of ammo to trigger bullishness, which itself. is another catalyst. And so again, like I said, a negative 10% candle could just nuke all of that and change the sentiment.
Starting point is 00:10:59 But to me, there seems to be like a lot of a lining of the stars, whether that's enough to kick off an entire bull market, TBD, but I think we would be able to look back on this week and specifically in history potentially and say like,
Starting point is 00:11:10 oh yeah, that is when it would start. How do you feel about that? David really wants to be bullish. I really want to be bullish. I'm really done being better. Can you give him permission to be bullish? Yeah, I'll show you a little bit about you know, your evidence for
Starting point is 00:11:23 bullishness. So I just pulled up a Bitcoin weekly chart and we've talked about this a good bit, but just using the 200 week moving average as a barometer of bullishness or bearishness or potential support. Now this is the first time in Bitcoin's history where the 200 week was not basically
Starting point is 00:11:47 just end of bare market support. You know, it's been such a young asset that previous market cycle, bare market bottoms were above that 200 week back in 2015, again in 2018, even COVID's 2020 or I'm sorry, 2020 bottom. The 200 week was support. And we spent a significant amount of time under it and then hovering basically at it, kind of walking that 200 week. once we, you know, got back to it from the bottom. And you're talking about is the bull market back, but the bottom was a year ago. Like, that's hard to believe.
Starting point is 00:12:29 But the bottom, we're coming up on November. And so we've been off the bottom for a year. And the question is, you know, is this a breakout, a breakup? And we're going to go into kind of that prior range that Bitcoin. spent a significant portion of the last bull market. Like it really, that that bull market was hottest when Bitcoin was not really making new all-time highs. If you all remember that, you know, local bottom in June, July, 2021.
Starting point is 00:13:02 And then topped in November 2021. It was a, it was an underperformer in that period, even though it went from, you know, 30K to back to 69, I think. but other stuff did way, way better. It had the meat of its move after DFI summer and the fall of 2020 time period. And then starting in January 2021, when Bitcoin went to 30K for the first time, it kind of, you know, sputtered relative to the rest of the market. The rest of the market did very, very well. And we had a very strange cycle where Alt outperformed for a very long time.
Starting point is 00:13:44 And that's what I don't know is going to happen again here. Like, could we have, could we be starting something like what we saw in the fall of 2020, where you did have this flight to quality. Larry Fink called Bitcoin that recently in reference to global markets. And in that scenario, we had this crazy microcosm, you know, of Defy Summer stuff. And then a bunch of money flowed into Bitcoin. and as the seasonality kicked in, I've become a pretty big believer in seasonality with Bitcoin,
Starting point is 00:14:18 whether it's the halvings, whether it's like tax cutoff timeframes, like end of year stuff. So could we have a run over the course of November and December that's like the ETF run for Bitcoin? I absolutely think that could happen. And then you might see flows in the new year where they kind of trickle down into other things.
Starting point is 00:14:38 Maybe that's when ETHPTC bottoms. Maybe that's when Ethan Salon. and some of the survivors of the bear market really start to pop off. Should we continue to see, you know, Bitcoin progress here? And that you brought up, Ryan, the role of crypto and macro. Like, it's kind of hard to operate completely in a vacuum. If the world blows up, you know, we go to World War III. Like, all it's aren't going to run.
Starting point is 00:15:03 You know, I don't really know what Bitcoin does. I've talked about in the past how I think Bitcoin is a bit of a chaos asset. So it's kind of hard to peg. Like, or is it going to do the same thing as gold? Is it going to do the same thing as risk on stocks? It's been weird over history. So Bitcoin may perform well in a world chaos environment. Or maybe Bitcoin and some other things are starting to do well, not just because of
Starting point is 00:15:31 ETF news, but also what if rates are topping, you know? It was Bill Ackman that talked about closing their short. on bonds. And if rates are peaking, then you may see Bitcoin and gold do very well together. Because, you know, rates, rates at high levels are going to have a hard, create challenges for unyielding assets. And so as, as you don't have as much conviction and yielding and yield continuing to improve through, you know, treasuries and whatnot, then you start looking at hard money, or if you think we're going to
Starting point is 00:16:14 start printing money, or we're going to have deflation or whatever, there's a chance that that's going to have a big impact, and we could see this kind of magic sauce for Bitcoin to do a thing. At the same time, ETF markets are coming online. And I could imagine a world where we get significantly higher moves from here, but don't ignore the fact if I put some drawings on here. like we're we're churning through what in my mind was pretty serious resistance you know it was resistance twice it was support in the bull market um and so this is a pretty clean breakout that 32 33k range um but where does this exactly fizzle out i don't know i think a pretty aggressive spot would be like high 40s that kind of 47k where we broke down from um back in march of
Starting point is 00:17:05 2022 and that was when it was so over right like it's just bad it's like back to the back to that because we had just week after week after week of punishment at that time and ftx didn't technically all the way fail until november of 2020 and that marked the bottom you know that that ftx failure in november 2020 was literally the bottom um and so you start to put some of these in context and that that gets interesting you know you can do some other stuff i don't I'm not intending to just draw endlessly here, but like if you're saying, let's do fib retracements, you know, that kind of thing.
Starting point is 00:17:42 From the all-time high to the bare market low, your 50% retracement would be around 41K. Your 0.618, though, is right at that same red line. I'm going to zoom into this a little bit so that people can see. And I apologize, this is, there's a lot going on here right now. That's worse. But a 0.618 retracement of that move, puts you at the same place as that weekly level at 47.
Starting point is 00:18:09 I think if we get there in the 40K something, like 40K range, I do think we'll see some resistance there. I think it's a little premature to say like, okay, well, you know, ETF's here. We had two green weeks and we're just going to moon and like never stop 100K. Here we come. Let's go. I'm buying calls.
Starting point is 00:18:33 you know, and it's going to go ballistic. I think that's, it's premature for that. Like you can, it's okay to take your time, build a base, climb a wall of worry, if you will. Like if you look back at, you know, crypto's bull market from the 2015 bottom. 2016 was a great year, but it wasn't like Instamoon, you know. We really made the biggest push in 2017.
Starting point is 00:19:02 That was when you have your. price exploration. We hadn't done any of that stuff here. So we might just, you know, take our time. It might take a year from now to reach all-time highs. Like if you're just saying all-time highs are imminent, I think you're stupid, to be honest. But to say, hey, yet again, the halving cycle in, you know, April or May or whatever, and that creates this supply constraint on Bitcoin, you know, we've continued to see a lot of mining capacity come on to the network. You know, these things have happened before and they've tended to be fundamentally bullish things for Bitcoin. And we could see that again, where over the course of the next year, you like climb that wall of worry.
Starting point is 00:19:50 And a year from now, we might be making new, like starting to make new all-time highs. But to expect them immediately, I think, is a bit premature. Sure. Okay, a few things I want to, you know, say, number one, if you are listening on the podcast, okay, you're getting some benefit. To get maximum benefit, we are looking at a whole bunch of charts. And so what you need to do is go click the YouTube link and actually view this. So you can see what David Ledger and I are witnessing on this episode where all the charts are happening. It's the first thing I'll say. The second thing I'll say, and I'll just make this very obvious, is you said the bottom was about a year ago. So November of last year. I think some people are not aware of that emphatic call that there has been a bottom. If you say there's a bottom, that means the bear market is over. Like we're not going to bottom again. And so it is up from here, at least up from the bottom. Now, however long that takes, whether it takes, you know, climbing the wall of worry and all of 2024,
Starting point is 00:20:52 we're not, are you saying that you don't think we'll go back to November, 2022, bottoms ledger, are you pretty like conclusive about that at least? Sure. I mean, you can't say it wasn't a bottom when you're up 127 percent from that bottom. You know, like that's a pretty big bounce. If we go like full, full recession in the U.S., which is definitely possible, like, that's part of what Bill Ackman's point was, was he just seized deflationary pressure in the U.S.
Starting point is 00:21:26 So like that could take this whole, that could make this take longer yet. In response to that, though, the U.S. will do what it does best and print money. And I think that'll, I just think that you have a lot of demand for Bitcoin in the 20K world. And so like making a,
Starting point is 00:21:45 yeah, going sub 15, sub 16K, I think is highly unlikely. I think you'll have a lot of buyers of Bitcoin well before you get there. I think, what I'd be watching for is what does it look like if we do retest that 200 week,
Starting point is 00:22:01 retests the range lows, you know, like in the sub 25, 27K, that kind of stuff. Could you do 42 to 47 and then back to 27? You know, like that's pretty painful too. And that's what I think if you're trying to be a savvy investor, like what you might want to be prepared for is what do you do in those scenarios? and it's less important what route does it take versus what do you do like are you seeking to take profit like are you hitting maybe long term capital gains because you did buy over the course of the last year and if we get into the 40k's 40k something like that you feel like you have an acceptable return or are you ride or die and you know you just plan to add to your position if we if we run back sub 30k after that and having a plan for yourself, I think, is important. And then when you might go pedal to the metal a little bit, it would be, all right, well, what do I do in the case of new price exploration?
Starting point is 00:23:07 Like, we make new all-time highs. We go above 70K. What does that look like for me? And where do I, where do I make these like bigger bull market targets? Barring that, we have a lot of prices where Bitcoin has existed over the past couple of years below where we are. and a lot of prices where Bitcoin has existed over the past couple years above where we are. And honestly, you're people that thrive in that kind of environment or what you call your level to level traders. You know, you think of the way like some friends of mine like Don and Cred and analyze markets.
Starting point is 00:23:40 They're just going to look at where is weekly resistance, where is weekly support. And they may make some intermediate trades and then also have this kind of like underlying bullish thesis of I want to have core exposure to crypto, but specifically to Bitcoin. I mean, I like JPEGs as much as David, who's got one sitting there in the background of his office there, but like it may not be the best time to go buy JPEGs. You know, like I don't think we're in that froth level of market where, you know, you buy some new mint or even like blue chips, punks or whatever.
Starting point is 00:24:17 And, you know, I think a punk is like 45th still. It's kind of been in that sub 50th range for a while. and it might stay there for a while. Like I think expecting, you know, NFTs to triple or quadruple in ETH relative terms is probably asking a little too much of this market. I think asking ETH itself, like, what is it going to do?
Starting point is 00:24:39 Heath has gotten punished lately. And that's why when you're asking if we're back, I'm like, you know, ETHBTC looks pretty bad. You know, all three of us like ETH, but that looks pretty bad. That same 200 week moving average that I was talking about. with Bitcoin, ETH relative to Bitcoin is losing that same moving average right now. And so you have to acknowledge what might the lows look like. And saying 0.04, you know, 0.043, it's not out of the
Starting point is 00:25:10 realm of possibility for ETH. You're talking about. ETH-Bitcoin ratio you're talking about right now. Yeah, ETH relative to Bitcoin. Now, I actually don't mind the ETH chart in USD terms, but it's just a no man's land. I'm sitting here looking at it with the 20-week moving average, 200-week moving average, in the same range that it's been in for two years, no real sign of a positive breakout at the same time that Bitcoin is having that positive breakout.
Starting point is 00:25:38 So maybe it'll have a short-term follow and it'll try to bounce off this ETHBTC ratio of 0.05, 0.0525, whatever it's at right now. But it kind of needs to save this level without basically going to jail, like, sub.05 on the, on the ratio. So, you know, if you're allocating some percentage to E, some percentage to BTC, might, again, want to know what do you want to do in that scenario? Because what's a bummer is, you know, if you're not allocated at all to Bitcoin,
Starting point is 00:26:14 and it goes to 40K, 47K, and ETH is at 1,700 or 1800 still in that scenario, like that's pretty painful. That's a painful trade. So what are you going to capitulate? Once, once it, you know, Bitcoin gets to 50K or something, 45K and you're like, oh, crap, I'm so screwed. I'm selling my ETH for Bitcoin. And that's the ETH BTC bottom. You know, like, you can still lose in a bull market. We've seen it a lot. So knowing what you're going to do and how you're going to respond and how you're going to allocate is just as important as are we, are we done going down? Two data points around this that I want to bring up is, um, the spot Bitcoin ETF approval, which everyone is anticipating, the recent price action in Bitcoin might just be the front running of that. I think that's the left curve take to that's pretty simple. So that's data point number one, data point number two is that if this is a bull market, a return of the bull market, a return of bullish sentiment, Bitcoin has always front ran ether
Starting point is 00:27:15 and has always front ran the market. I think that's true. I mean, you've you've been around the cycles a few more times than me and been looking at the charts. That is the way that historically bull markets have started. That's the way this is supposed to happen. Yeah, this is the way that it goes. But you have to, you have to understand where you are in that and what, like how, how you're positioned. And, you know, as an eth enjoyer, we're going to look at ultrasound money and find out, like, are we, is Eth deflationary? Are we burning ETH? Are people using it? That's narrative fuel. It is narrative fuel, but that's part of the conversation. and compare it to Bitcoin.
Starting point is 00:27:52 We're comparing that to the Bitcoin having is my point. Like, you know, it's what's happening to the supply and what are we facing. I think that's a reasonable thing to look at. Do you think the actual momentary inflation of ETH on is like 30-day time frame, even though that it is still significantly less inflationary than Bitcoin, that the narrative is part, the negative narrative that Ether is inflating is actually showing up in the charts? No, I don't think it's real. I think that in most markets, a good bit of Ethereum gets burned and it continues to be a pretty severe deflationary shock.
Starting point is 00:28:34 And I'm still a believer that L2 transaction volume will end up accruing a lot of value to L1. And I don't think layer two activity is bearish for ETH. And I agree. I think like Bitcoin needs a little room to shine. Like it's been a while, you know? Yeah. I mean, I guess I would just say as an ETH bull, like this is what I expected. This is exactly what I expected, right?
Starting point is 00:28:58 This is how the bull market always begins. You talked about 2016, right? First Bitcoin had its run and then kind of the alts followed. Then Ethereum followed among some others, right? I will say, I did not expect the ETH-BTC ratio to fall back down to the levels in which the three-hours capital was getting liquidated and then they were done. jumping their stake. Is that what it is?
Starting point is 00:29:18 Oh, it is. Wow. I did not expect to naturally return there. That's why I don't try ever trade or rarely look at the ratio. But like I, I, King Bitcoin has to have its run to make a bull market actually official. And, you know, that's the way it happened in 2020 as well. So Bitcoin had its run.
Starting point is 00:29:37 Do you remember, do you remember that 2020 run where there was like, some doubt as to whether ether was even a necessary asset? You just hold Bitcoin. And you hold defy and then you've got the entire. market, ether is not even new valuableness. And then of course, Eath followed up with a, with a monster run of its own before other alternative layer ones kind of had their run. Is that just the base case of how this plays out?
Starting point is 00:29:59 Time is a flat circle. Yeah. This is not hard, right? We just do this same thing every four years and now it's beginning. And so, you know, maybe this is 2015 going into 2016, maybe, or maybe this is 2019 going to 2020. This is always what happens, right? So is this just the same pattern?
Starting point is 00:30:18 I had that same worry in 2020. I was like, surely it can't be this easy that on a four year cycle, we just do the thing again. And now here we are like four years later. And I'm like, surely it can't be this easy. That I don't know four years cycle. Do you still say that anymore? Now that you're doing this the third time, are you just like, oh, that's how it's going to play out? No, I think that's extremely dangerous thinking.
Starting point is 00:30:39 Like, just to say, yeah, I think the history. I think it's dangerous to bet against that. Yeah. I think it's like why like why would you bet against it? I'm willing to. I'm simultaneously. I'm willing to bet on it and think surely this is too easy. Like that's exactly what I thought last bull market.
Starting point is 00:30:58 My first ball market, first bear market. I got into crypto like halfway through the bull market of 2017. And then throughout 2018 through 2020, everyone was like four year cycles. It's going to do it all over again. There's going to be another cycle. And I'm like, if everyone's saying there's going to be another cycle. then that means there's not going to be another cycle. That's just not how markets work.
Starting point is 00:31:19 And then the same exact thing played out to a T. And now this time I'm like, until proven otherwise for your cycles, until the pattern breaks for your cycles. And maybe that does, there is like a seasonality component that's very important there. And I wonder if, and this is me just speculating. I don't know. I'm going to bet on it too. Like I'm actively betting on it.
Starting point is 00:31:41 But I wonder if the magnitude of the cycle. is where you end up getting tripped up, right? Like, what if we go to 70K and then we struggle? And we go all the way through the halving there. You know what I mean? And like we, and the cycle that was promised, it's like, we were supposed to be at 250 this time. Sailor is supposed to be like the richest guy on the planet
Starting point is 00:32:05 and everything, you know, wag me. And instead, we're like, we two-exed and then we lost money because we were expecting this massive, you know, price exploration period that we didn't get. And then, you know, oops, like, alts didn't follow or, you know, whatever. Like, there's ways to lose. And maybe that's what happens is we just,
Starting point is 00:32:29 it's a little more lackluster. If you want to go way back, and this is going to be super boomer material, but like if you look at the, the run in the NASDAQ, the, the NASDAQ, the tech bubble of 01 popped the NASDAQ, the 08 cycle where the S&P made new highs and looked great and whatever.
Starting point is 00:32:56 Well, the NASDAQ didn't. It never got back to its prior all-time highs. The NASDAQ didn't break the prior all-time high for 16 years. Wow. It took from the tech bubble in 2000, which I mean, Honestly, I think you can compare. I think 2021 was bigger than 2020, 2017 in terms of like just
Starting point is 00:33:19 dollars in. And you, I think you can compare it. And it might take longer than we think. It took 16 years for the tech bubble to be breached. And then we saw what happened is, you know, I'm looking at a log chart right now,
Starting point is 00:33:34 but in linear, this was a huge move from 2016 to 2021 for the NASDAQ 100 and the largest tech companies in the world. They were all left for dead and underperformers for a very long time. We went through the Great Recession. It had not gone back to its all-time highs. And then it basically went back and retested the lows. And then it was, you know, April 2009 was the best time ever to invest in tech. But it took a long time. That was a bit, that was a talk about a
Starting point is 00:34:03 wall of worry. Like it took a really long time for that trade to play out. So the magnitude of the recovery could have easily been underestimated in that process because there were many trades. that were better than tech. I actually kind of wonder if maybe some subset of crypto assets might play out similar to kind of NASDAQ chart. Like if you just take defy tokens, right? There's nothing saying that's on a four-year cycle, and that kind of follows Bitcoin or even follows ether, right?
Starting point is 00:34:28 It could take a long time for defy tokens as an asset class to recover. I don't disagree. Yeah. Yeah. Are you pulling up some defy tokens? I am. Link is an exception. I think there's some worse D-Fi tokens you could look at.
Starting point is 00:34:45 I know, oh, there's definitely way worse, but this is something to be excited about. I'm looking at a monthly chart. I'm going to switch it to weekly. But like, this is a multi-year cycle. We're looking at the link chart now. Link-USD. Yeah, link-and-I don't own any link,
Starting point is 00:34:57 but I will acknowledge, I own some other stuff that's doing similar, but I'm not, I'm trying to not be biased here and show my bags. But May, May 2022 is when it kind of started this range. And it just broke out of that. And that's really, really interesting. Now that's a that is a a pain trade right there like that that range that link was in and some of this other coins were doing very well. But link didn't do like it just kind of stayed right
Starting point is 00:35:25 where it was. It basically looks like a volatile stable coin. But last week last week it broke out of that. And it like not a little bit. Like that is a lot big old candle. Yeah. It's a big candle. Yeah. It's a big candle and I don't know what that means but I'm interested in it like I'm really interested and if this and some other stuff can break long two year ranges and then what do they do because we talked I just showed you some charts about how long it took for some stuff to be able to to break out and do something links not to all time highs and you know same if you look at some others and there there's a lot of variation like uni has not done very well but link has done well AVE has done well.
Starting point is 00:36:11 And, you know, like, it's even a month. When you look at, like, Link and Ava and some of the ones that have done well versus some of the ones that have not done well, what do you think the differences? I literally have no idea. Like, I can't. This is where, like, I'm not as smart as, I think, a lot of your audience in regards to. Open up Avey. And then, because you said Avey is doing well.
Starting point is 00:36:30 And then Uni is not doing well. So, okay, so this is. Like, Ave hasn't had the breakout that Link has had, but it has had a breakout. And it looks really good. like it does look strong. Like a potential pre-breakout potentially token. Yeah, but then you go look at synthetics is another one that's like not still in no man's land, but it's not dying.
Starting point is 00:36:54 My left curve take on all of that dying. I mean, yeah, uni looks really bad. It's at the bottom of the range while those others are at the top of the range. You know what I mean? Isn't the easiest fundamentals explanation of this that like bearish like governance tokens, bullish tokens that have actual like value accrual cash flow token economics which a which abe does have and link does have in the form of kind of you know you see you have to stake your link yeah maybe maybe so I don't know I don't I really don't know I just I know that I'm
Starting point is 00:37:22 I've see I've started to see some of these patterns develop over the course of years right like and when you then see stuff breaking those patterns I'm not going to ignore that and I'm pretty interested in it and I don't I don't know you know which all are the the the right defy coins to look at. I'm mostly showing some, you know, boomer defy, right? Like, Maker's another one that's, Maker actually is the first one to go, right? Wow. Yeah, it looks, I mean, I haven't looked at Maker's short.
Starting point is 00:37:51 Those other ones, if Maker was at the same place as, say, Avey, it would be worth $900 right now, right? But it's worth $1480, $1,500. I went to $1,600 this week. Again, I'll point out a cash flowing kind of token. You know, burns MKR tokens based on fees that accrues at the protocol level. It's not just a valueless governance token. And I wonder maybe there's an impact here.
Starting point is 00:38:17 Like Arthur ZeroX is a good example of like one of the people talking about this. But there are people out there talking about the value of kind of liquid funds, right? Like they're just going to buy stuff that's working well on the market. And maybe you're seeing that in these charts is the people who are willing to bid some of these tokens. and they're obviously being selective. It's not a, it's not this like umbrella of everything going up. And I think that's good.
Starting point is 00:38:44 That's healthy. That's like fundamentally driven. You're seeing some stuff do better than other stuff. And we want to see more of that. And so let let, let, I'm translating this because we want to see what's next, you know, like let's say Bitcoin continues to run, like what follows, who's winning, You know, who's standing out amongst DFI, who's standing out amongst the layer one trade. Like I think sentiment-wise, it seems like Solana has been, similarly, it's at the top of its range.
Starting point is 00:39:19 Solana is back to pre-FTX and implosion levels. Yes, despite like there's still a tremendous amount of uncertainty with what's going to happen with some, you know, some coins that who knows who's control of there in. You know, I don't know. Is it like Mount Gok style, why they just end up like looming for years? Yeah, the Mount Gawks overhang. Yeah. But I mean, Solano went to eight bucks and it's at 30. That's a great trade.
Starting point is 00:39:47 If you just, I mean, I don't know who could have diamond handed that through all the craziness. But shoot, it's it's almost back into, I used to call that because it had this floor of, you know, $25 to $30 that it eventually broke. during that FTCS breakdown in November 2020. But now it's kind of threatened to get back in that range. Its prior range was like $30 to $50. That it's basically, if Alameda wasn't pumping it like crazy above $50, then that's where its life was, $25 to $50.
Starting point is 00:40:22 And it's trying to get back in that range. And that's super interesting to me. So I think what you can do is selectively say like, hey, what is the trade and also when? And I don't really think Bitcoin's done with Bitcoin dominance. Over time, though, I think that there's a good argument for some selective bets for where can I find outperformance beyond this trade and what does my allocation need to look like? So I think that's what we need, like that's what we're paying attention to, right, as we enter the new year.
Starting point is 00:40:57 And I think all of that should Bitcoin continue to beat the drum for the ETF and all that. The spot ETS is going to have a real impact on flows. It's just going to happen, right? People are still putting money in their 401Ks. And when their 401Ks have better optionality for what they can invest in, I think that we'll see real spot-driven, not futures, not, you know, paper trading, but spot-driven flows that goes into Bitcoin. and that's that could have a strong impact um the pink-haired punk that does all the good YouTube videos
Starting point is 00:41:32 I don't remember their punk number but y'all know who I'm talking about the analyst punk yeah yeah the proof punk yeah yeah that they weren't for proof but whatever the pink-haired punk right um they um they did put a chart on Twitter for what gold did after the first gold ETFs came out and gold went like five X or something um and you know gold's inherent value did not change. It's just access to gold improved. And even though a lot of people do have access through their Coinbase app or whatever, most people don't have near the buying power when they're using something the same way they'd use Venmo.
Starting point is 00:42:13 And they're like, sure, I'll buy a hundred bucks worth a Bitcoin. But a lot of people who are in the workforce and who save into their 401ks and have matches from their employers. and that's a lot of people, even though all of us are, you know, jobless in addition to bankless. We can understand putting a lot of our liquid taxable net worth into this stuff. But most people don't. When they are making investing decisions, they're doing it through their 401ks and their Roth IRAs and things like that. And I think that'll have a real impact on access to Bitcoin. I just snatched the screen from you, Ledger.
Starting point is 00:42:48 This is what you're talking about. Yeah. That's a heck of a move, isn't it? 400 bucks to average annual gold prices and the first US gold ETF in November 2004. And you just look at price of gold kind of skyrocket after that. Through 2008, yeah. You got a lot more to cover though, David. You want to tease us?
Starting point is 00:43:11 Yeah, I think there's two possible paths and then an infinite shades in between these two things. one is we get the spot Bitcoin ETF approval followed by the Bitcoin happening, followed by the Fed easening, and we just have the super cycle. Yeah, the easing followed by the super cycle, which Suu watches from jail, which is just hilarious to the ironic. That's like the most bullish version of events. And then there's like a bearish version of events, which is, you know, maybe the SEC has to approve the spot Bitcoin. So we get that one. the happening does happen, but no one really cares about Bitcoin. There's another Black Swan event.
Starting point is 00:43:50 Like there's a trade war going on with China. There's an actual war going on. The Fed doesn't have to ease. And maybe people just don't have the demand for Bitcoin that we thought. Plus like one more Black Swan like we got last time with COVID. There's like two possible versions of the future. And I kind of just want to suss these things out. So we will do that in the second half of the show.
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Starting point is 00:46:28 And overall, just the inside of the macro conversation ledger, what events, possible events, expected or otherwise are like the most significant to you? Like what's looming on your horizon? Yeah, I think one of the things. things that you might try to anticipate in advance is essentially if you're not allocated and you're getting more phoma like you're not Adam Cochran was actually just talking about this he's taking a lot of crap recently on on Twitter but he he made a post where he said it was only 20% allocated and kind of missed some of some of this push and I thought that was actually
Starting point is 00:47:05 pretty cool because most people won't admit when they're under allocated um sides Yeah, or when they're off sides. And I'm not sure that like right now we're still kind of in the in the meat of this move, I think. So it's probably not the worst thing in the world to just kind of ape in. But let's say you're like clenching your fists and waiting and scared, scared for lack of exposure. You're having FOMO. And we're at like 42K or 50K or something like that. And like it really is we've turned around.
Starting point is 00:47:37 I think the likelihood of what causes this macro impotement. like a significant change in rates, for example, is probably because we did have a Black Swan, right? So like you might have your March 2020, if you all remember when Bitmex had no bid. And it was simultaneously the start of an enormous bull market. And we'd already been in recovery for a long time. And yet you could have bought Bitcoin at like $3,300 or something that day.
Starting point is 00:48:06 And then it was at like $9,000, you know, in less than a month or something insane. we had gone to 14K before that. We went from 3,100 at the bottom in 2019 to 14K back to like 3,500 or something whenever it was brutal. Arthur turned off. Yeah, that was bad. That was bad.
Starting point is 00:48:26 But it was also a black swan, right? It was the start of COVID. And then, you know, we started putting money in the rest of history. But like, you can just act like that didn't happen. And it was so easy. But that was not easy. And what might create this impetus for people to. to say like, I want to own hard assets and I believe that, you know, Bitcoin Ethereum are hard assets.
Starting point is 00:48:48 And it might be because, hey, we start printing money because something went wrong, you know, like. Yeah, but so let me ask you that though, like philosophically as as kind of a trader investor. Because I know you're an investor, you also trade, like, but you do both, but you're very long term oriented. So you can't like, I guess my strategy in for Black Swan types of events is you always have some dry powder for for the Black Swan events because, you know, over time, something like that is going to happen. So you want to have some Fiat cash type reserve to buy when the market's fearful in those kind of like panic dumps. Although I will tell you in March 2020, that was a very difficult time to buy. It really did. This is where I learned lessons. Right? Well, it's like that's how we
Starting point is 00:49:31 all learn lessons, right? But also, you can't really plan for Black swans. Can you ledger? Like, you have to basically invest in allocate, you keep this dry powder type reserve for those black swan events. But with the rest of your stack and the rest of your stash, you have to allocate as if like a black swan's not going to happen because black swan by its nature, you can't predict it. It comes out of nowhere. You know, you don't know what like when it's going to happen or or how or what markets it's going to affect. So you can't really plan around that, right? you can always have dry powder like you said that doesn't mean you have like a hundred percent dry powder so like obviously you're going to if if you have this black swan event let's say bitcoin goes down 50% at some point in a week or a day or something crazy and yeah you can you can you know man up and deploy that dry powder for one the number two thing is just don't capitulate on something that you believe in strongly and like you end up capitulating the bottom of of it. Just staying in the market, staying exposed to your core beliefs is an accomplishment in itself.
Starting point is 00:50:39 But number three is what I've at least done. And I'm, I have to say, like, I am long-term focused as in I stay paying attention to the market. But sometimes I get paper hands, man. Like, I tend to be pretty active. Like, if it wasn't like a strategic investment, like a, you know, an angel investment type of thing, like my number of long-term, capital gains even on Ethan VTC and stuff are not that severe. Like I, I tend to trade, but what I, the way that it's worked for me and for better or worse, like sometimes maybe I could have just held for two years and done great. But like, because I was more responsive to the like temperature of the market, it gave me
Starting point is 00:51:24 some peace of mind. But I always was like, okay, I'm biasing bullish or I'm biasing bearish, but I'm also going to trade and I'm going to be willing to trade. So if you do feel like, hey, we're frothy, you know, you can put a little more dry powder aside if you want to be active. Now, you have to live with the tax consequences of those types of decisions. But if that allows you to sleep at night, then go for it. And for me, it's not the case anymore. But for a long time, like, I would say 2020 and through 2022, like, 95% of my net worth was in this stuff.
Starting point is 00:51:59 So it's like, yeah, I'm going to pay pretty close attention at times, especially as it's feeling profy. And what I did, for instance, in March 2020, I was down bad just like everybody else. But I was like, I am not stepping away and sitting on my hands right now. And I got active. I traded like a crazy person. And that's not for everybody. For some people, that just means I'm going to buy another clip. And I'm going to buy that clip more rapidly while I know this price is cheap.
Starting point is 00:52:24 That could be your version of me just overtrading. but I just traded more. Another real-time example is I felt fairly under-exposed to Bitcoin recently. Now, I was very closely watching how are the things that I own performing relative to Bitcoin, and I was confident in that. But I also knew like ETF goes live and Bitcoin's going to go nuts, and I won't have enough of it. Right.
Starting point is 00:52:50 So I could still be performing well on like Bitcoin relative pairs of things that I own, but should a big news event come along, I'm not going to have enough exposure. So I bought calls to the Bitcoin Futures thing. And so, yes, I can afford for those calls to go to zero. It's not like, you know, a significant percentage of my portfolio. But that's what they're for. That's what an out-of-the-money call is when it's on this kind of 30-day time frame.
Starting point is 00:53:19 And I kind of screwed up, honestly, because they expire, the ones I bought expire on Friday. And I would have made $50,000 more if I held them one more day. And instead, I rolled them to November to kind of maintain that exposure. So I still, well, it was great, you know, but like I would have made a lot more money had I, like, just held on to them deeper into their expiry. But you don't know when that news is going to show up and what it's going to look like. And you might spend money on that because it's like insurance. The way options are supposed to be used when you're long, long and like premium, whether you're buying puts or buying calls, but you're buying options, is it's insurance on the unexpected happening or this outsized event. So for me, it was a way to gain Bitcoin exposure if Bitcoin did something bigger than the things that I owned more of.
Starting point is 00:54:17 So there's lots of things like that that you can do to try to account for it. Leisure, a lot of bankless listeners, I think about half, we were in the middle of doing a user survey, I think about half, maybe more, started listening to bankless 2021 or later, as in the last like two years or so, or a new entrance into crypto, which means that, like, that was me when I got into crypto in the middle of the 2017 run, not before the 2017 run in the middle of it. It means they hadn't made money yet, basically. Yeah, exactly. You went up, you went down, and you're still around.
Starting point is 00:54:50 About half of bankless listeners are like at a wash at best in terms of whether they've made money in crypto or not. What advice would you have for them understanding where they are in their journey through crypto? And this is, they are actually at the very beginning of seeing a full cycle play out, if this does play out in a four year cycle, that they are at the very beginning of a four year long cycle where they will actually be able to make all of their money as the crypto meme goes. what would you say to them?
Starting point is 00:55:22 Know why you're here and know what you believe in. Because at the end of the day, when it hits the fan and it's time to like, okay, you know, I'm down bad right now and am I going to deploy this dry powder or am I going to capitulate? You're much more likely to make the right decision
Starting point is 00:55:39 if you know why you're here and you know what you believe. And that's the biggest thing no matter what, because it'll also prevent. you from digging into something that you don't believe in as things get frothier, it'll keep you more grounded of like, I'm here. I may trade, you know,
Starting point is 00:56:01 what was the one like Obama, Sonic Enu, Harry Potter coin. I might trade that, but like I'm doing it because I want to stack ether. I want to stack BTC or I believe in, you know, this bankless mantra or something else.
Starting point is 00:56:15 Like I'm, how do I maintain my core beliefs? And along the way, you know, you might gamble a little bit on some of the craziness that pops up. And to be very honest, you might make more money doing that than you do on your like core positions. But know while you're here and like be able to get, keep reality and check. You can be you can ride a wave and this is all assuming we get this, which would be great. Like we'd all be thankful for that.
Starting point is 00:56:44 But acknowledge reality at the same time. I mean, I am thankful that I took some off the table when it became, for me, at least life-changing money. And yet, I didn't sell enough. Like, and I was one of the more grounded, like, trying to stay realistic people. And some people were like, what are you talking about? You want to take stuff out of the market. What are you going to do? Like, put it in a bank and earn interest or go invest it and something else.
Starting point is 00:57:12 I was like, yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm going to do. And I got mocked for it. And yet I didn't do enough. If I had just like when I was having those inclinations, just wiped my account clean, accounts clean and been all out, I would have done even better.
Starting point is 00:57:26 But that's hard to do too. Like you're never going to time that perfectly. But like taking clips out the same way as putting clips in. Like if you say you got $10,000 to deploy, could you save money for a year or two years from your job. If you just put it all in at once, you're going to stress about it all the time. And if it's preventing you from sleeping,
Starting point is 00:57:47 then you're misallocated. So make it to where you can sleep at night. And then if you turn that $10,000 into $100,000 or a million dollars or whatever, like if you can't sleep at night, then you need to be able to consider what can I do, what changes can I make to where I can maintain exposure in this thing that I still believe in and I don't think is done. And yet, like, feel comfortable with the outcome,
Starting point is 00:58:12 even if it all goes to zero, you know. And a lot of people, We lost many because they did not take that mild amount of conservatism into account. And don't be one of those. Don't be one of those that was right on the big general themes and yet gained nothing out of it. You have to have a sell plan going into this. That is, I think, timeless advice. And while we're on the subject of advice, I really appreciate your perspective on this
Starting point is 00:58:43 because you're a bit more trader than probably myself and maybe David as well. And, you know, we're biased. I mean, we are zero out of 100 points allocated to the trader skills. Yes, very little. But you do so in a very patient way. But, you know, maybe I'll make a comment for those, I guess, second cyclers, those who came in, you know, 2021, 2022, on where I often see mistakes being made at this point in the cycle. And I'm wondering if you guys have any reflections on this.
Starting point is 00:59:10 And this is what I call kind of the chasers. So the type of person who look at the pumps and then readjust and reallocate their position to just jump and ape into the closest pump. And so one week, they'll be bullish ether, but then Bitcoin pumps, right? And they'll look on crypto Twitter and they'll see the narrative switch. And, you know, ether was always a shit coin. And now it's net inflationary. And like, these are all of the reasons why Bitcoin is king and still king and wins. And ether sucks.
Starting point is 00:59:43 and then they'll take their ether position and they'll sell that and they'll buy right into the the Bitcoin pump, right? And then Bitcoin will run a little bit and then next thing you know, ether's pumping. And so what they do is they chase all of the pumps that happen. They kind of, they crop rotate into all of the like narrative pump wrong positions rather than having that that conviction that you were just talking about. And I'm wondering if you could speak to them, Ledger, because I bet that's a failure mode that you often see under, under, kind of the trader lens. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:00:15 How does that go wrong? And how do you prevent that? Yeah. And that's not, that's not easy for me to manage either. I mean, I've had to work on that myself. Like the thing that I have not mastered that I would love to figure out this cycle
Starting point is 01:00:28 is what I would call like tax efficient portfolio management. So, you know, you may have this conviction in different ways that you want to take some more of these trades. And yet it's like, okay, here's one I believe in. I think it's going to 10,
Starting point is 01:00:43 K, right? Like, hey, look at that, guys. We got a 5x plus on our hands. And so, like, why would I not want tax-efficient portfolio management if I'm going to make, you know, an $8,500 profit per Ethereum that I own? If my cost basis is $1,000 or $2,000 or whatever you can get it one, $1,000, like, and you think it's going to $10K, why in the world would you want to get rid of the entirety of that core position other than your chasing? something or playing the ratios or some of these things. So you have to figure out how can you like satiate that desire and figure and also maintain your core position. There's risky ways to do that at like using leverage, right? Like you can deposit that ETH on something like AVE, borrow five percent against it, like a relatively small amount, something that you can repay and use that five percent to do what like more short term trades.
Starting point is 01:01:37 That's one route. That's not that risky. Just don't go and do like, I'm going to borrow 80 percent. You know, like now you're. quite levered and you might not be able to pay that back. But that's one potential thing that you could do. Another would just have a portion of your portfolio that is active trades to chase things to let small ideas become big ideas.
Starting point is 01:01:57 There's huge advantages for that. Like, DFI Summer was that way for me where I had a tiny amount in DFI early on, but I was convinced I need to go explore this. And then it turned into a bigger amount. And you allow these like smaller amounts to become bigger. and then you start building back to the core position with that or maybe you're committed to shorter term capital gains for those, I don't know, whichever way you look at it.
Starting point is 01:02:20 And yeah, I think you just, you have to know what your plan is in that regard too, because people don't talk about taxes. I talk about taxes all the time. I get made fun of a lot for it. But I also talk about taxes. Yeah, you and Ryan just love talking about taxes. Well, it is, you know.
Starting point is 01:02:37 It is the interest rates of crypto, as in you got to beat that amount. go talk to Zach at token tax sometime and like he's probably a good example of like somebody that he he hears your like hearts fears and stuff like going into tax season and yet like it's the same people like spouting off never talking about it in real life and then they're facing they're facing it and they're like holy cow I got to figure this out that's another way people go broke because they can't pay their taxes and like that's the worst right you don't want to do that um And just don't get taken out of the game. And that's one of the things that can take you out of the game. And if you're creating like needless tax impacts versus if you go into your strategy with that plan, then you might have some stuff that you're just committed to this. It is, this is what it is.
Starting point is 01:03:33 You know, I'm going to have, I believe in Solana. So I'm going to have this core position over here and 20% of it's going to be Solana. 30% of it's going to be Eith and 50% of it's going to be Bitcoin. And I'm not going to touch that. You know, like that's going to just sit there for the macro cycle. Now, if I want to go chase Obama, Sonic, Enu, Harry Potter coin, I'm going to go do it over here with this smaller.
Starting point is 01:03:57 Separate stack. Yeah, separate stack, smaller slice. I do that in my real life where I have literally different bank accounts, trading accounts, exchanges, wallets. And some of them are just, I'm not supposed to touch them. And if I go to, I need to make it hard. Like, I need to go, unlock a door, then unlock a safe, and then like dig through this thing and restore a wallet.
Starting point is 01:04:16 Because if I don't have to do that, like I will, I'm going to touch it. So, so Ledger, let's close this out for us. So we started with this, this big meta question of, is the crypto bull market back? So gun to your head. What do you think? Is the crypto bull market back? Oh, I said, yeah. I do. All right. It could take some time. You might caveat with that, but it's And I really hope it's not everything goes up. If everything goes up, I have very little faith in the long-term sustainability of it. You want the low and slow. I want low and slow. Let the Dan Matashuski calls it the hot ball of money. Like let it build up before it starts rotating around. And that basically means let Bitcoin, let Bitcoin be Bitcoin. We're back. We're back, baby. I feel like it's official now
Starting point is 01:05:01 that Ledger came on bankless and called it. Okay. So last question for you to close us, all this out. So how are you playing this market right now? Just put back on your trader hat. How are you personally investing in this market right now? Like I said, the most active stuff have been in is actually in an IRA, which is weird. Tax efficiency. It's not weird. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:05:27 So I'm like goofing around with very fast term trading with that. And then honestly, maintaining a core position, there's some stuff where I do have long-term capital gains from investments that have become liquid where I'm trying to consider my long-term planning options, right? So I can take profit with long-term gains on something and then transition it into like a larger core ETH position is the type of thing I'm considering right now. I think this is a pretty good time to make like if I'm, if I feel like I need more ETH, for example, and I have a lot of Bitcoin, you know, below 0.05 is probably pretty good, you know, for for for for eith um even though it looks bad just short little clips so that you keep earning from
Starting point is 01:06:14 upside in bitcoin but you might you know start reallocating your position in that way um and then for for bitcoin itself like i'm really hard at holding bitcoin for a long time i can hold eith for a long time but like for bitcoin i tend to be a little more traderish and it's mostly because i think the path for Bitcoin is so mainstream. The path for Bitcoin to go from 33 to 99, right, like a 3x, everybody in the world will be talking about it. But the path for me to find like some trade out there where I think I might be able to make a 3x, I feel like is more accessible. And so I'm degenerate in that way and I go chase that trade. Let me ask you this ledger. So Bitcoin's had a bit of a run. It might be in the early phases of that. We talked about Seoul and it's had a bit of a run.
Starting point is 01:07:04 it might continue to the future. How about Ether right now? I know your big Ether bullet. It feels like it's been left behind. Do you think? No, I think it's likely to follow whenever Bitcoin comes down. The greatest thing about a Bitcoin ETF is as soon as that spot Bitcoin ETF comes out, the next thing you speculate on is when is the Ethereum spot ETF coming out?
Starting point is 01:07:26 Because I think ETHBTC could bottom the day that the Bitcoin ETF goes live. like that would be a very typical type of crypto thing. And I think that's also more accommodating if rates have topped. And, you know, that's trying to extrapolate what's Ethereum going to do based on what's Jay Powell doing. But if long term yield comes down, then I think that could be good for risk assets in general and Ethereum kind of leading the bunch there. And I will say the spot ETH ETF is going to mean more for Ether than the spot Bitcoin ETF will mean for Bitcoin simply because of the sizes, the relative sizes of these two assets. Like I said, if I have strong conviction, BTC is going to 100K and ETH is going to 10K,
Starting point is 01:08:21 one's a 3X and one's five X. We're talking about, we're talking about comeback sledgeer. When is up only coming back? When's Cope coming back online here? If I knew, I probably still wouldn't tell you. I'll have to have you guys back on when that joyous event happens. Ledger, thanks so much for joining us. It's been a lot of fun.
Starting point is 01:08:43 Ledger's called it. We are officially back. We are back. Early stages of the bull market. The bull market is back. We're glad to have you on Bankless, all the settlers who stayed with us through these dark times. I think it's going to be well worth the wait.
Starting point is 01:08:57 Ledgers, thank you so much for coming on Bankless and chat. with us about this. It's always a pleasure to be with you both. Thanks for having me and keep doing good work. Awesome. Risk and disclaimers, Bankless Nation, of course. The bull market might not be back. Yeah. We should mention that. Crypto is risky. So is trading. You could definitely lose what you put in, but we're headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Bull market or not. Thanks a lot.

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