The Wolf Of All Streets - The Bitcoin Rally Is Coming, Are You Ready?

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

Join David Duong, head of institutional research at Coinbase, and Big Cheds as we study crypto markets and discuss the upcoming bull market.  David Duong: https://twitter.com/Dav1dDuong Big Cheds: https://twitter.com/BigCheds ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   ►►OKX Sign up for an OKX Trading Account then deposit & trade to unlock mystery box rewards of up to $60,000!  👉 https://www.okx.com/join/SCOTTMELKER  ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets   ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Are you ready for a Bitcoin rally if we see one in Q4 of 2023? I know that I am, but we also know that nothing is certain. That said, today's guest, David Jung, came on the show not so long ago, wrote reports about it saying it was time to be defensive in Q3, but also looking very optimistic about the prospects for Q4. We're going to discuss that and everything else that we've got going on in this market. And then of course, on the back, I've got everybody's favorite trader, Big Cheds, coming to discuss charts and trades. You guys don't want to miss this one. Let's go. As I said, Q3, not that great. Everybody expected a rough September and seemingly we got it. Although we're coming out of it relatively unscathed.

It feels like it was more of a sideways than doom. Just feels to me like right now, 26,000 is the natural home for Bitcoin in this part of the cycle. Excuse me. And any news to the up or downside really just eventually comes back to its home. It's like happy Gilmore. Go to your home. Are you too good for your home? Bitcoin's home is seemingly $26,000. I'm going to go ahead and bring on the guests now. I've got David Young here, head of institutional research at Coinbase. We got on here right

before and I found out you were also in Singapore staying in the hotel with all the McLaren drivers. They had like, you know, big signs and, and the simulators in the lobby. That's where I went to meet Oscar Pastry. What, what were your thoughts on the Singapore experience?

And also of course on being in that hotel. Well, I mean the hotel itself, I was on the elevator with McL mclaren crew uh at various points in the day so that was just kind of cool but uh i would say overall the vibe was awesome in singapore i don't know how you felt but like i thought it was electric like everyone thought it was absolutely electric and could not have been polar more polar opposite of what i've seen with sentiment in the united states certainly sentiment at conferences in the U.S.

Did you, by any chance, go to permissionless? Like, because a lot of people went from permissionless to Token 2049 and said it was just absolutely bipolar. And last year, you and I were at Mainnet in New York. You were supposed to go to Token 2049, but you had a passport issue. I flew off to Token 2049. We were planning to meet in Singapore, and I had the same sentiment even a year ago. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think like we talk about different things, you know, in the US it's so heavily focused on regulatory and what's going to happen. And the Bitcoin like spot ETF is just hanging on everyone's heads and for better or

worse. Whereas Singapore, you don't really talk about that. You know, like I felt like everyone in Token24.9 was talking about building, which was great. You know, like different interests, sure. People were there, we're talking about gaming, the metaverse, NFTs, where, you know, we've seen, of course, NFT activity drop off pretty sharply. But you don't hear that same kind of conversation

in the US as much. Yeah, there was literally no negative conversation at all, in my opinion. Hasib Qureshi, I actually, I had a podcast with him that came out on Sunday. We sat down maybe last Wednesday at token 2049, right when I basically landed. And he made the point that SBF has loomed over basically everything. And in the United States, we think that's the case everywhere in the world, but that he was just like a one-week news story in Asia. Basically, we're obsessed with him. He was an American celebrity. It was an American company. It was the American government that came down on him. And just like if a huge executive of a company committed fraud in China, we would probably see it in the news for one day. That's effectively what SBF was to the international market. And they've just moved on ages ago.

Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that. I got the exact same impression. Here, I'm kind of like, oh, when's his trial date? What's the clawback that they're doing? His parents are involved now. I don't feel like that's the same kind of news cycle that you get over in Asia. Well, I have to say, I think that the American media is inherently become gossip and TMZ. I can literally see in the comments, and I swore I wasn't going to say anything, but I only came for the BitBoy drama when BitBoy,

does anyone believe it's totally steroids? I'm just going to tell you guys, if you're here for BitBoy drama and conversation, this is not TMZ and find another channel. It's not what we're going to do. Anyways, so let's move on to the actual topic now that we've talked about how exciting things are in Asia, because I came back really reinvigorated, you know, and that's happened to me every time I leave the country and go to a crypto conference. And we have the title here, the Bitcoin rally is coming. Are you ready? Okay. It's a bit, it's a bit clickbaity, but you had the, this research was in August 18th and you came on the show, as I said, and you said, listen, Q3, we have very low expectations,

probably going to be down at best, some pretty depressing chop, you know, but now let's look to Q4. What are your thoughts on what we have coming now that we're entering October in a few days? I mean, it's not going to be precisely at the beginning of Q4, but I think a lot of people- By the way, though, I think it was two years ago that, or maybe it was two or three years ago, that literally on October 1st, September was a miserable month and price went up like 20% on October 1st. But yeah, I don't expect that. No, of course. I do think people suffer from recency bias. You know, so like you were saying, like, we're stuck at 26,000. Like, are we just going to keep staying stuck at 26,000? I've been hearing the same rhetoric I've been hearing all around.

People are just like, well, it's been down. It's going to continue being down. Like, not not really. I mean, my thesis and this was really back in May, I reiterated it in August. You know, I said that Q3 was going to be tough. It was always going to be tough. And that's why you had to be defensive. I didn't say that you should short anything.

I just wanted people to know that you had to be patient here. You kind of had to wait out that quarter because just, you know, not just the macro environment, but the way people were positioned, it just didn't lend itself to actually seeing a lot of upside. But the good thing about crypto now is that we've been washed out. Like a lot of prices are washed out. This is why after we got the FOMC last week, for example, you saw a move in stocks.

But really, the impact on crypto is still fairly limited. The correlation is low and it's kind of showing its colors. Problem is that I think that we have a lot of things waiting in the wings right now. And so there will be another spurt of just probably short-term volatility, just because I still think it's very likely we're going to get a US government shut down. For example, we really haven't seen a resolution to the United Auto Workers things, but I think those things are actually going to work in the favor of crypto, even if they work against probably some risk assets like equities. It's interesting. So you bring up, obviously, the shutdown. That was the next story that I sort of had queue up. US shutdown, assuming it doesn't run long, will slow, not cripple crypto

efforts. A lot of people were pointing out, listen, we have these bills, they're coming through. If the government shuts down, nobody's going to be talking about them. Let's be realistic. They're making it through committee. They might make it past Convict Chris, a few of them. They're all dead on arrival at the Senate and certainly at the executive branch. So right now, regardless of a shutdown, it's my opinion that we're just planting seeds, right? Nothing's getting passed that's crypto favorable, certainly before the next election. I mean, it's just not with the two, the Senate is too much controlled by Elizabeth Warren and the Democrats just not going to happen. Yeah, as far as crypto legislation is concerned, I think Patrick Toomey, who's, you know, he's an

ex-senator, but he's long been an advocate for crypto. He's still very clued into all this stuff. And he said a few days ago that effectively, even if the stuff gets out of house committee, even the stuff gets through the house, even it's very unlikely it's going to get through the Senate. Uh, but some of that's cuts, you know, it cuts two ways because you also see that Elizabeth Warren has also been trying to rally, uh, for her kind of crypto related legislation. It's very unlikely that that's going to get off the ground as well. So, you know, like, I think you kind of, you take the good with the bad. But I think with the government shutdown,

in particular, you know, we're also seeing that senators are proposing a lot of ways to kind of resolve this, but this impasse probably is going to stick around. I mean, it won't get through the House, because, you know, there's a won't get through the house because, you know, there's a lot of house Republicans who believe that, you know, anything right now is just a fiscal problem. And basically they're going to keep rejecting. The upshot on that is that you're also going to get, you know, the SEC, like 90% of their staff is going to be furloughed. So that's also going to throw a bit of a wrench into our plans with regards to ETF applications, all that kind of stuff as well. ETF applications, but does it also affect their ongoing court cases? Like the case against

Binance, the case against Coinbase, the thousand other cases of things we've never heard of that they're just tackling as low hanging fruit. I didn't even look into that. I definitely thought about the fact that we certainly won't see any ETF applications approved. Holy crap. I got to show you this, by the way, I just clicked onto the story about OptionsXPRI and you're on there speaking. I got freaked out. I was like, thought I was seeing double or something. Anyways, we can go back to that, but there you are being interviewed on Coindesk. Very funny. So yeah, but I definitely thought of it from the ETF angle, but could this also just slow any of the court cases? I mean, that's what we have to kind of watch for. A friend pointed out that these people who are furloughed in the government will eventually get back pay. Some of them sometimes offer to actually work pro bono for a period of time as well. But I don't know.

Like that, that all that stuff kind of factors into the, you know, ultimate outcome. And I'm not really sure. So, yeah, I. Either way, though, the government gets refunded and things pick back up. And I don't think that anything we're looking for is on such a tight timeframe that it's going to be meaningful. I mean, I have seen, and certainly the shutdown would probably come after that, but I have seen a lot of conjecture. Mike Novogratz just said that we're going to see very bullish ETF news

in October, right? Who knows if he knows something or if that's just playing to the press. But I've seen a lot of people saying they think the Valkyrie Ethereum futures ETF blended with Bitcoin futures because it's so similar to the Bitcoin product is likely to be approved in a week, sometime next week. I think October 2nd is the date for that. Yeah, I think the significance of that as well is there's still this probability or like, you know, the SEC could always revoke a Bitcoin futures ETF because they could either appeal to the Supreme Court, they could either appeal to the broader U.S. District Court of Appeals, or they can say, you thought we were being capricious and arbitrary about our decisions in terms of approving a futures-based ETF, but not a spot one. Well, then we'll just revoke a futures one,

which of course will introduce a lot of legal liability for them. But if they do approve this Valkyrie ETF, then what it's saying is it's very unlikely they could go that revoking ETF route, which doesn't leave them with other possibilities in terms of what they can do. They're definitely at a rock and a hard place either way, as you describe it. I mean, the optics for the SEC are bad no matter what happens, I think, at this point. And you got to love that, frankly, as a crypto enthusiast and watching what's happened in this space. It's been nice to see at least the pendulum sling slightly back. But I want to zoom back in on Q4, right?

I kind of interrupted you. October or whatever, I don't think it'll happen just on October 1st. But what is the general premise, even considering the four-year cycle and all the things in macro government shutdowns, what's the premise that we could see a more bullish Q4? Yeah, so I think in terms of crypto, the crypto specific catalysts are kind of well known at this point. A lot of it hangs on what does a ETF approval kind of look like, or what does a regulatory environment kind of becoming more certain in the US kind of look like? And those things are going to be in the background.

But strictly speaking from the macro point of view, what I think is going to happen, this is my timeline of events, I think that we get a shutdown, probably there's going to be knee jerk reaction negative for a lot of risk assets, i.e. equities, which will impact crypto to some extent. But there's also going to be a contingent of people who are going to say, actually, you know what, like Bitcoin as an alternative to a lot of fiscal messes, like the one that we're getting into, that's a good deal. Like at least like it's the hedge for things like this. So I think that people are going to recognize that. But then getting further into it, things like the Fed saying, hey, you know, the economy is doing well. We still need

to keep inflation under control. Well, we have an autoworker strike, for example, that's definitely going to put negative pressure on GDP for Q3. They won't have the data if we go into a shutdown. They won't have the data for inflation. So they can't really make a decision without that as well. You're going to see student loan repayments need to get made starting in October. So all these things I think are going to put pressure on them not to do anything when it comes to the November FOMC, which really kind of sets itself up for a nice rally from that meeting into December. So this is kind of what I'm looking forward to because crypto is going to play right into that, give it all the benefits of what crypto kind of represents.

I find it amazing that the best case scenario for assets is for the government to just step out of the way and basically be broken. I've always thought that maybe that's the best way forward for America at this point is just a gridlock and nothingness. But I don't know if that certainly plays out now in a vacuum. What if we had no news, no good news, no bad news. Do you look at the four year cycle and say,

listen, this is what happens six months before having eight months before having, I expect. I mean, I just kind of anecdotally, I look at it and I say in a year, things will probably be higher. And it will be six months after the having, and that's what's happened before. It doesn't necessarily mean it'll happen again, in a year, things will probably be higher. It will be six months after

the halving and that's what's happened before. It doesn't necessarily mean it'll happen again, but it's the most likely case. I thought it was interesting that Marathon Digital, like one of the big public Bitcoin miners, actually commented on this. And he effectively said he thinks the impact that the halving actually has on Bitcoin prices is diminishing. And I don't think that's particularly wrong per se. I think that if you look at the actual evidence, because we really only have three incidences of the Bitcoin halving. And only two count.

Yeah, exactly. And really the only one that I think you can actually look at it and say that Bitcoin having had a meaningful impact on price is the one in 2020. Because you can actually take out liquidity out of the equation. You know, you just do a factor analysis. Super simple. You take that out and just say, like, boom, like, let's look at the price. How does that measure up against the having itself? And you actually see that that had an impact in terms of positive performance.

But you don't really see that in other instances, the two previous instances, you know, that was kind of commingled with all these other issues, like a U.S. debt ceiling crisis, for example, or the Brexit in, I think, 2016. So I think that those things kind of make it more difficult to kind of determine what the actual impact of it was, even once you factor out liquidity, even after you factor out rates and other things from the equation. So simply looking at the chart and saying, here's the halving, here's price six months later is a dramatic oversimplification. I personally think so. This, this is why I like to do factor analysis, because I want to take out because you there's so many things going on any one time, like for one person to be able to kind of look at and say, like, oh, yeah, like it was 100% one factor, it just seems very antithetical to our understanding of things. So for me, like,

I like to say, like, what else could have been? Let's take those factors out. And then what we're left with most likely is probably just for you in this case, the Bitcoin having, for example, when we talk about a bullish Q4, are we talking about the spark of the next massive bull run and this massive bull market or is it kind of like, hey, maybe we'll be up at 30 and who knows what happens in Q1? Like when we talk about the, you know, a rally in Q4,

put it in context for longer term. Yeah, I think one of the issues I have, and, you know, so keep in mind, I'm very constructive on Q4. I think it's going to happen. I think it's as much about the fact that people don't really have a lot of positions here. Like if you look at the stable coin dominance, for example, we're at 11.6%. So it's kind of low at this point.

There's not a lot to kind of put in there. The issue is you do need to have those flows. So what worries me is that every day we come around without any major catalyst in here, are we looking at a lower top side? Right now, I'd say like probably upside is probably capped around the 200-day moving average, which is still higher than the max pain point we see on like the expiry, the option expiry for September 29th. That's about 28,000 000 you're talking about the weekly 200 yeah 28 000 ish just for context yeah okay yeah exactly i think that you know it might be a tad higher than that but like i i think that's a good framework for thinking about like where we are so i think the max pain point is somewhere at 26 500 which I think is somewhat a little low. But at the same time, you know, like trying to think where else can we be as far as, you

know, getting these catalysts? It worries me that we're not going to have something beyond this. I think we like the ETF is huge. Don't get me wrong. But I want to see other things kind of come into the framework, which is why I'm trying to think what else will motivate people. Like if we had that perfect blend of people going like, you know what, I'm very worried about what's going to happen with the U.S. fiscal situation. And I think that will happen as we approach like first quarter 2024, which is also going to coincide with the monetary easing, which is also coinciding with the halving, which is going to coincide with the ETF.

I think all of that is what makes me optimistic. And I think people aren't going to play just in Q1. They're going to move it ahead into fourth quarter. So that's kind of how I see this playing out. And in election year, right? So Caitlin Long came on and she kind of made that point. She said, listen, if the halving cycle is real, we start to see really high prices next September and October, right?

As all the presidents are being asked, presidential candidates are being asked questions about Bitcoin. And we all know nothing gets more voters excited about Bitcoin than higher prices on Bitcoin. Literally the only thing that will bring more people caring and calling their senators and congresspeople and asking questions to presidential candidates than if simply the price was higher. I mean, if Bitcoin's $50,000 in September, October next year, there's going to be a hell of a lot more people considering it when they vote. So I think that that's another potential, right? I mean, we have no idea what it will be, but I like that narrative. You brought up obviously here and here you are again, crypto traders braced for nearly 5 billion Bitcoin and Ether options at expiry. It's kind of funny because the max, they're saying that we're bracing for it in three days,

but the max pain point is 26,500 for Bitcoin and 1650 for Ether. Obviously, Bitcoin is currently 26,200 and Ether is currently $1,586. So, I mean, we are just sniffing a couple hundred dollars or tens of dollars away from these on both these assets. So really, the most likely scenario here is boring and sideways by that rationale. This tends to happen when we talk about options in general, you know, like it's, it's a, do you rely on like the options to inform the spot price or do you rely on the spot price to inform the options, uh, expiries and the, the, uh, the strike prices and I tend to think that it's more of the latter, you know, it's

like you're, you're paying attention to the spot price in order to play that opposite market, which is why it tends to be so close to those same levels. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Well, there's one person certainly who is not afraid to buy Bitcoin at these prices and has continued to buy Bitcoin at any price, regardless of market sentiment or timing. MicroStrategy bought 5,444 Bitcoin for 150 million since August. I love just how casually he just buys now like hundreds of millions of dollars worth.

But that, so that was at an average of 27,053 per Bitcoin, inclusive of fees and expenses. People love to say that he bought the top. To me, 27,000 is not the top. And this adds to their just absolutely massive stack of $158,245 Bitcoin, $4.68 billion in an average price of $29,582. I mean, what do you think in general about MicroStrategy continuing to just take every penny they can find in a couch

kitchen, every bond they had from their bar mitzvah and put it into Bitcoin here. So I've heard that same criticism level against them of like, hey, you never deny a chance to buy at the top. But if you have a long term view and Michael Saylor and definitely does, you know, you might say that looking back on it, when Bitcoin's maybe trading substantially higher, that actually he's doing well. So I think that's the mindset he's coming from. He's not coming from a short term investor looking to sell this off. He's buying and holding or hodling, whatever you want to say. And that's kind of the perspective. So I think that that also kind of supports some of what I'm seeing right now, because you're seeing a lot of upside in terms of the flows as well. I mean, he's buying, Tether's likely going to be buying because they've announced that every quarter they're

going to be accumulating some Bitcoin, for example. You're not going to get the selling pressure from Mt. Gox anymore. So I mean, all of that kind of lends itself to some of the positive, what I would call, technicals in this market. We've been fearing, I just laughed because we've been fearing the selling pressure of Mt. Gox Bitcoin since literally the day that I got into crypto in 2016. It's been a pervasive narrative that was always going to dump the market. I was actually trying to place if there's ever been a time, we've certainly had black swan events where there were major forced selling, but if there's ever been a time where one of these narratives that was telegraphed, like there will be this thing happening, that

will be forced selling, everybody panic has ever played out. I mean, we even have the United States government saying they would sell all of the Silk Road Bitcoin in three tranches and they've likely done it and we haven't noticed it in the market per se. Yeah. I think with these kinds of things, I mean, in the case of Mt. Gox in particular, I mean, it's a logistical nightmare, right? Like this is them trying to redistribute funds in 100 countries, all with their own like different laws that they have to respect, like much less like different languages that they don't may or may not know and need to kind of figure out. So I mean, this is not easy for them. And I think this kind of reflects that.

Yeah, I want to ask a question that I just thought of, and I don't really know the answer to, and maybe you don't either. If we get a spot ETF approval, a BlackRock ETF, for example, what does that mean for MicroStrategy as a stock? Oh, that's a good question. There's so many people who have been buying it as a proxy for the ETF. Does that take the shine off of MicroStrategy's stock and sort of decorrelated a bit from basically becoming this de facto ETF? So we can't know the answer

because we're speculating on this. But what I would guess is that probably, you know, and this doesn't just pertain to MicroStrategy. I think this pertains to a lot of what we are using right now is Bitcoin proxies that includes like the futures miners, for example, like public miners, you know, like there will probably be some kind of rebalancing because now if you can get access to an instrument that tracks the spot Bitcoin price more closely, well, why wouldn't I want to buy that instead? You know, like, so I don't think that this means we won't get net positive inflows. I think that will still happen. But yeah, there'll probably be like some outflows from other things, inflows into the spot Bitcoin ETFs, if they are, if and when they're approved. And, you know, that's going to be part of the course. This is

probably why we're seeing a lot of like the futures ETFs, for example, start to try to say, hey, what other things can we do? Should we do a blended Bitcoin ETH futures ETF instead? Like, should we do a like 2X Bitcoin ETF, which we already have one, you know, like, like, they're going to be looking for other ways to differentiate themselves. Quickly. So it said here, a comment. I read a story about MicroStrategy that if he had put it into ETH, then he would be better off. That to me is just, what about is a nonsense? There's always another asset just for that thinking. I'm not saying this to DemiGeek saying this to whoever wrote that story. There's always another better performing asset. Like why not just say, well, gosh, if MicroStrategy had put all their money in Nvidia at the bottom, look where they'd be now, right? And I don't really see any connection there between Ethereum as a choice versus Bitcoin.

And those equivalencies just drive me nuts. Oh, you have to think about the risk and reward. It's not about just the reward. Like anything can like 10X or 5X or 3X. Well, not anything, but you know what I mean? Like the possibility of something doing that exists, but what level of risk are you taking to achieve that gain? Like this is the whole point.

Like finance in my mind isn't like I've been, I was in finance for 17 years. And it's not like it's the most difficult job in the world. Like they were going to come after me now. But what's hard is balancing those two things isn't as easy as they just. It's just two things, but there's so much that goes into it. Yeah, kind of like me saying, hey, man, price is higher six months after the Bitcoin halving. It's definitely going to be that way again next time.

Right. What level of chances do I want to take that's gonna happen is really the question you know that's like if i was if it was a sure thing everyone would pile into it but it's not that's that's really what comes down to totally agree david well man always love your perspective thank you it was fun watching an interview with you while doing an interview with you that was very meta experience for me. I didn't expect you to pop up on the screen on the other side, but now you guys can see how credible our guests are. Obviously, we're not the only ones. I don't know if this means anything by my credibility,

but I appreciate that thought. Well, at least we weren't watching TMZ over there, like I said, which is what crypto channels have clearly become. So, dude, thank you very much. Everybody, do you tweet now? Because I know you changed your name. We talked about this last time. Are you actively tweeting? I'm not actively, but I've started to tweet more. I'm starting to do what the kids are doing. Yeah. It's like Steve Buscemi with the skateboard. Hey, fellow kids. Yeah. That's all of us, I think, at this point man thank you very much david i'll see you soon thanks god great perspective there as always the for him and for chad's obviously their twitter names are down in the description i've been trying to like gently coax david to start tweeting more on every show but i don't know that i'm having the uh the the effect that

i was in intending but really always incredible insight there i love to have and and now i don't know that I'm having the effect that I was intending, but really always incredible insight there. I love to have it. And now I don't know why it's been so long since I've had Cheds. It feels like it's been a hundred years, but it shouldn't be, man. How are you? What's up, man? Did you, I'm good.

Did you get that Lambo back? I heard you lost the Lambo somewhere. We're not doing it. Oh, sorry. Just kidding. Um, is that, is that my new thumbnail with me like this on top of a stolen? Oh, is this, is this, I don't get, is it like performance art or you guys just, he's just really, really, uh, lost the narrative or whatever the phrase is. I mean, I don't know, man, I tweeted, I tweeted this earlier today and I,

and I kind of stick by it in general. Yeah. I said, season one of true detective was amazing. One of the best shows ever made season two was so bad that I never made it through and chose to sit out every subsequent season. Some shows just become terrible. Crypto Twitter is currently on the equivalent of season 12.

Like I just can't get there with, I don't know why we care. I don't know why anyone cares i think it's just sad and i'd rather like even if the charts are boring i'd rather look at them yeah then i'm obsessed about that i don't tweet about it like what's the why insert yourself into it and um weird man all right all right yeah it's sad for these guys man i'm gonna tell you like we literally this morning uh now i'm talking about god damn it um you know crypto town hall obviously

we do the twitter spaces every every uh day at 10 15 a.m eastern standard time and i woke up to the usual like here's our topics for the day and i went on like i can be a kind of a dick but i went on an epic rant on like why this is below us and it's wrong. And I think it's just bad. And I don't care about the clicks. And I'd rather five people watch than 5,000 people watch. It's just how I feel, you know? Moral victories, right?

Moral or not, it's just like, if my goal with content, if our goal is to like get more people into crypto, even if you get more clicks, that's not bringing more people in. It's just cannibalizing us. You know what I mean? But anyways, let's talk about charts. What do you got you got for bitcoin man i want to know where you stand i haven't talked to you in a long time yeah how you been by the way i've been good i've been good had a little had a little of the covet last week uh that wasn't great but now i'm back it's better than a lot of the common yeah it's a tinge of COVID. Yeah. All right, brother. I had a COVID reduction. You had a COVID reduction?

Slight COVID reduction. You know, a nice chicken marsala with a COVID reduction. Chicken marsala with a COVID reduction. Talk about Bitcoin. Yeah, what are we talking about, though? I mean, what is today? What is like a Tuesday? It's one of the days where Bitcoin's 26,000-ish.

Yeah, I mean, here's our weekly chart. You know, I mean, we're still in an unconfirmed uptrend that's defined by the price below a rising simple 200 moving average in the weekly chart of a weekly time frame, right? High time frame. And prices above the high time frame break all level 25K. And that's all still true. And so we've been kind of dropping to the daily chart and trying to handicap these moves um you know and it's a question of like trading versus investing when you got long and if you're and there's been opportunities scott we've talked about them

um to get long so for example here on the spring on the false breakdown and recapture that was a pretty clean entry but like in this channel there hasn't been a lot of clean uh setups this is one of them and so i'm still like stepping back and saying range lows range peak i still think if we get up here 28 9 i'm fading and i'm looking to short if we can get there but i don't know if we're going to get there do we test we would be massively we would be already we would be massively overbought if we got there i mean you know small moves are moving indicators really hard right now um do you want to look at one i don't really look at them but yeah i mean we're in a cross bother you right there which one this one yeah i mean we're higher the price is higher than when we death crossed yeah so no yeah i mean me either i'm just curious that we had our cases one time i think it was gareth gareth and ben

coward and they were like you know you get this death cross and it's real bad and then but you do get a pump back up to retest it and so maybe that's what's happened did they add did they add the proper context right so um here's here's the deal right so moving averages right we're moving across a moving average not only that my good, you need a trend to cross in reverse from. So head it crossed here, you would have had more momentum. But you have a failure to cross, and now you have a cross in a sideways environment. So that's a muted signal. You have to look at the context of the price action, number one.

Number two, the price relationship, the price vis-a-vis price distance. So here, when we're crossing, we're already down you know a certain percentage so anybody who talks about moving average crosses it's important to add that context in classical charting so we were already down 70 from the cross so whatever right um and this all this doesn't tell us anything we don't already know based on the weekly time frame we've already marked out the trend we already know where to watch we already understand what's developing we know the history of bitcoin we know the double top with the up thrust we know the drop to the cova drop and i'm gonna know drop 15k and then we know the head and shoulders and we know we're above 25k so blah blah blah so that death cross doesn't do anything it's a talking point um and which is fine

people want talking points people want to wrap up everything neat, tie it up with a bow and hand it off and say, here's what we're doing. Here's what's going to happen. But as you know, you've traded markets a long time. It's not really that. A lot of it is hurry up and wait and hurry up and wait for price interaction with a major level.

So, you know, that's what I would say in regards. It's one of those ones where like in two months, they flatten out or whatever. And then we're talking about like the sideways golden cross that comes after it. You know, if you want to talk about a moving average cross, we look at the eight and the 34. So, I mean, it's a little messy in my chart, but if I go ahead and I drop off a couple of things, drop off the Bollinger band. Sorry, John, drop off that. Right. So look at the eight and the 34, the green and the yellow.

And you have after this topping pattern, it attempted to recross, and bull momentum was thwarted. And here we almost had a bull cross. So you've got a little bit of bears taking back over momentum. So what do we do with that information? So that just suggests to me, you know, we should be ready for a retest of 25 K. Right. And so that doesn't really, you know, shouldn't really surprise us based on kind of the candle bodies.

Sorry, the candle structure and all that. But we essentially see the failed lower term moving average cross into the 50 failure, which means maybe we're going to head back down there, but maybe not. But if not, there's nothing to do, brother. Dude, I share this. This is the same look at that at a four hour, right? I mean, this is the grayscale pump. These are not, there's nothing happening. Yeah. This was your buy. And listen, I, I, whatever I bought, you know, I said, I bought every, I bought every time it's gone to 25 because prove me wrong, you know, but like this little sweep here and on the daily, that's probably a wick, you know, I mean, there, there's your little deviation, but like this little sweep here and on the daily that's probably a wick you know i mean there there's a little deviation but like i mean look at look at this price action around the

middle of it i mean it's just like there's this is the clearest range we've had in a very long time and i don't see any reason to be interested unless you're here or you're here right yeah maybe here if you're really antsy right Right. So we know timeframes, right? Like, you know, we drop to lower timeframe after volatility, right? And when the price is at a key level. And a lot of times, one of the reasons traders lose money is that they're trading the chop. They're trading the lack of structure. So what they're doing is, you know, with the price here, they're dropping to like a one hour, four hour, 15 minute. They're convincing themselves. There's a head and shoulders, you know, the price here they're dropping like a one hour four hour 15 minute

they're convincing themselves there's a head and shoulders you know knees and toes pattern forming you know and they jump in and they over trade so um train yourself to um wait for volatility train yourself to understand that a good opportunity will jump up and hit you in the face training quotes and that's you know that's kind of the point you want something to really be obvious to you and you know maybe they're in altcoins I'm sure we'll talk about it Bitcoin isn't doing much you should buy it 25k right because that that's been defended by Bulls for a long time and until proven otherwise you know that's a demand zone right here. So we're talking

about now since June, it's been defended, you can argue really since May, kind of 25 zone. So until proven otherwise, you're definitely buying any test really in the 25K range. Totally agree. Okay. So let's talk about two theoretical scenarios because everybody wants to know. What makes you think, hey, we're in the next bull run. Like the next bull market is on. And also what then gives you less confidence in this? Is it a clean break of 25? And if so, you know, where are we going or in your mind, where would you then be bidding? Or are you shorting? I don't even know. Like, I don't know. What is the question? Like that's a narrative question. Let's start here. If we lose 25, how would you be looking to trade it? We'd be in big trouble. If we lose 25 K, I think be looking to trade it? We'd be in big trouble.

If we lose 25K, I think we're looking at a higher low test. I think we'd probably drop to 20K. 20. Yeah, that's my thought. We have the weekly MA200. We have the hammer off the weekly middle Bollinger Band right here, right around 20K. That's your higher lows. Any type of a bottom.

And we've seen this is a little bit of the structure we're seeing on the price action of the daily right now. So where you have a range low, it's lost, and then you have the recapture, right? And so then this is your low. And now we're looking for the higher low. Okay, it's got to be here. That's got to be defended. Here's the higher low we're trying to defend. So you think about a stair-stepping chart that continues and uses prior highs to continue to build momentum off of so all that being said should we lose this major higher low scott we are what on higher low watch um here sure we could chop around here but i think it would be devastating for the trend to lose 25k i think we will see 25 20 if we lose 25k yeah that that i mean that's

exactly my thinking and a lot of people i've had on we've kind of said the same thing it's like if if we lose 25 i don't know that i'm shorting but i'm certainly like 20 ish i would definitely short i'm because you can have a very short i'm assuming you'd short the retest of uh 25 as resistance which inevitably would happen yeah depending on what happened. But if we drop 25, I'd be looking to short and I'd add a... I've had my stop loss at like 25.4 or just above. I think it's a pretty obvious thing. It's a situation where the price had told us to watch here and we've been watching. So we really want to play off that level.

It's price interaction at a key kind of momentum pivot point. You conversely, Scott, we'd look for a spring. We'd look for a loss and recapture. We've talked about that. Right. And the reason, by the way, so then you said you'd had a tight stop and it would be a very small loss. And the whole point is to control your losses, right? Get the entry you want where your stop is tight enough that you're invalidated with the smallest loss possible. Okay. Just for people who may be new here and not watching. Okay. So let's say that we don't revisit 25. We get that move up to that 28-ish area. I know you said you would short there. What would

be the next long above? Because a lot of people obviously look to long a break of a clear resistance, something like that. So what would you be looking for if this continues up? And that gives us even more confirmation that 25 is yet again a higher low. That's a really good question. So upside trigger, I think a little more nuanced within this range. If you're looking potentially for maybe two candle closes above the MA50, you may use that because you have some grounds for a thesis based on the price rejections at the 50 here and there. It's a little more difficult, but using kind of like a two candle close above confirmation, maybe you

can use that. But for me with a horizontal strategy, I'd say back up above 29k would be significant because you have the price telling you this is a demand zone. It's from you know, all through July, it holds it holds it holds it breaks, you have a well defineddefined range low here right around 29K. So I think you can go long at 29K should that flip.

As you said, though, it's a very clear short on the first test. I think so. Hard to beat the risk-reward of that. Yeah, and especially think about what the structure of the Bollinger Bands may be should we get there because you may see it shoot up.

And then you'd be looking at a solid overextension, right? Or movement outside of a standard deviation of volatility above the Bollinger Bands. So that being said, Scott, right? It's not always the price, it's how you get there. So another scenario, should we slowly drift? If we actually slowly drift, I may not short. That's right, because everything might not be overextended. Yes, it consolidates along the way. When you bleed to a level, usually you'll go right through

it. But with a quick volatile move, you get the overextension, then you're more likely to snap back. I love that we've spent 15 minutes just looking at bitcoin in a boring sideways environment to me that's like uh extreme alpha so then the next question then okay you get long there but i do want to know like when would you be like damn it it's on like let's start talking about 40s and 50s and 60s and hundreds or do you just not think that way well i don't you know i mean like you know whatever i mean if i'm hanging out and i'm in between the first and second bottle of wine maybe but um you know i generally i think we're leaning we've talked about this a lot um generally leaning this is high time frame towards

a kind of sideways slow grind up i just i just think we are in a different phase yes this time is different we have weakening long-term trend. I don't think we're just going to automatically shoot up and make a new all-time high. I think we could very easily drift sideways for a few years between like 20 and 50K. I think that would be most logical and healthy. We still- That'd be awesome. This needs to consolidate. I mean, this is a very large price expansion from 3k to 60k down to 15. We really need to kind of just churn here 2025, 2026. I mean, we're talking about many years out. And so this will test your patience. Many traders will put market makers, children through college paying trading fees. And, you know, I think that's what we're looking at.

You know, in terms of it's on, it's on. I've always, you know me, we've done this many times. I'm level by level, step by step. I want to see the trend build strength. I want to see the trend. I want to see once it flips 29K, turn it into support. I want, you know, just the way since we've flipped 25K, we've held that as support so far. I'd like to

see that continue, the health and construction of the chart to continue to improve step by step. If I'm getting excited, my analysis will suffer. Yeah, totally true. Listen, I have the weekly here, right? Obviously, you can see that 25 level. It's so clear. But I've seen a lot of people this week saying, oh, my God, terrible weekly candle right here. We're going down. This one? This one, last week. Is it that bad? No, which I was just going to say.

I mean, isn't this just sideways? There's wicks up, there's wicks down. There's just utter indecision. I mean, this is just chop. That doesn't mean to me that we're going down. When I see that, it's all about context, right? Yeah, it's not that big a range either. This can't be a terrible candle when it represents really just 26.3.

I mean, we're talking about like a $1,000 range candle within this price structure, this array of candles. So that's not that big a deal. And again, it's within a sideways market yes you know you wanted some more follow-up given the large red small body momentum right nice green outside bar show you'd like a little more follow-through but but but but um you know you're below the 200 and you've got some bare momentum so it's fine you're just consolidating. And it's not great, but it's not terrible either. Yeah, I agree. So listen, I have to ask you the 100x gem question. Sure.

Do you even care about altcoins right now? Yeah, definitely. No, I do. I mean, for Bitcoin Live, you know, I'm covering them twice a week, so I have to stay on top of it. What are you actually looking at? I can tell you, I can just give you a quick rundown of what are the best, and you can see them here. This is what I'm covering. For example, like INJ is still one of the best looking alt coins.

We're right at the 200, so that's an area of interest. Ant looks really good. I've been covering this. This is a beautiful consolidation, now flexing a weekly breakout. I've been covering this one. This is a nice looking chart, right? Ant, Anty, right? Binance. I'm trying not to cover stuff on like

not too quiet yeah you know for me htx you know uh you know coin flex nine coin daddy like whatever coin data face balls like rune still looks pretty good here's rune daily chart still looks pretty good it's still shaking out it's still above most of the momentum uh most of the moving averages rune looks pretty good trx looks good look at that nice little ascending triangle dude i don't know if you know this i i think i'm gonna misquote this but i had done like maybe a month or two ago a newsletter on you know looking at the top 10 or top 20 or top 30 of previous cycles and looking at what they are now and just how different it is and how much they've been replaced. I think since last cycle, there's three things that are actually up in price. It's Bitcoin, Ethereum, and TRX.

No way. Nobody gives this thing credit, but it's actually one of the three best performing assets if you look at it cycle to cycle. you know every morning i meditate and then i pray to my shrine of his excellency uh justin's son because he's been no i'm just kidding but anyway yeah t-rex it's been i mean it's a nice chart though and then within the triangle it's perfect anytime but structure within structure do you see anything else in here you see anything nice and clean in here that just put yeah an inverse head and shoulders yeah beautiful shoulder head shoulder with a neck base clearly defined a breakout and a retest so this gave you i mean this is abc yeah so trx beautiful how about maker yeah that's cool i'm not loving that wick which one today yeah we're halfway through it's true but it ain't done just like me and you it ain't done yet

right yeah and we're pushing higher that's a nice so we've already covered some decent charts then we start to get a little more you know iffy iffy down here that we're covering but um like for example this one's pretty good trb this one came to my attention by a member requesting it now i'm gonna cover it look at trb that's a nice momentum we'll zoom out it's like a 4x in a couple days or a couple weeks right a couple days uh we'll go out. It's like a 4X in a couple of days or a couple of weeks. In a couple of days, we'll go weekly so we can kind of see what's going on. Sure, you're likely to pause here, but you've

got strong momentum. Sure, you're going to buy a weekly EMA test, but this is still some nice consolidation. Tons of volume too. Tons of volume. That's decent. I'm sure there's better stuff out there. This is all ranging stuff. This is bad. I didn't expect this, guys. I didn't expect this. I didn't expect to see all these bullish charts. I kind of get up on looking at all coin charts and there's a lot.

Yes. Well, that's this is a treatise, if I can sound fancy, you know, on relative strength, you know, when much of the market's not doing much. I mean, if I was to show if I were to show you this eth btc chart you tell me man all coin market sucks yeah and um because this is generally a proxy and look at this look at this underside retest potentially here rejecting um but there's not a proxy anymore i don't know i don't know we've ceased to ETH. Maybe we have so many altcoins that, you know, they all can't just follow Ethereum. Well, there's an argument for that because I opened up, I opened the door earlier, Scott, when I talked about the weakening high timeframe trend in Bitcoin, right? And so, you know, historically since the beginning that we've been doing this, you've had the

Bitcoin, then Ethereum, then Litecoin, and that's corresponded with neat and clean you know 80 moves and blah blah and so maybe with that change you maybe that is the case that we don't necessarily see our gain as much by watching eth btc and maybe because you know where's the ethereum pump at with all this consolidation it's been absent um yeah it is i don't know i can we just real quick i the whole like etf hype i'm not convinced that's good for us maybe i'm wrong maybe i'm too dumb it's one of those here's my theory i'm gonna let you give yours i shouldn't have interrupted you but now i'm already talking we're talking i think that the etf move was blackrock's filing that got us from 25 to 31. And now an approval would maybe get us to 31. I think we saw the move forecasted.

I mean, and then over time, I think it would be meaningful because obviously if it actually did AUM. But I think that that news event is like it ends up because now it's so priced in or so anticipated. It's got to be priced in. I think we saw the excitement of that on the announcement. That was it. 25 to 31 in a week was a huge move.

Right. But there's the theory, right, that these ETFs will have to buy the underlying asset and hold it, right? That's what I said. I think that's like a halving thing. It's like months over months, a slow grind up. Sure. But I'm talking about like you get that move that people buy on news and you just go crazy. So that's certainly true's Silicon Valley Bank.

Yeah. You know, when that happened, we saw that massive move, 20 to 25 or whatever. Yeah. We stepped up. Yeah. So. So I'm with you. I'm with you on that.

I think just my message to anybody who's listening to the four people listening. No, I'm just kidding because it's quiet out there. There's 12. My apologies to all 12 of you. Don't buy or sell based on the ETF. I mean, buy or sell based on Bitcoin holding 25K. Like, drop the mic. Yeah, I totally agree.

Any last thoughts before I allow you to exit the premises? Challenge yourself. Attack your weakness. Challenge yourself. Don't accept, you know, who you are today. Just try to get better and then uh say but today's pretty good today's a great day and i'm happy i'm here uh you just described exactly why i still play golf nice that's why i'm challenging myself you suck guys

it's gonna be fine it's gonna get better i i swear isn't that one of those things you know with i'd ask you because i i like to play basketball and I'm over time. Like, wow, I'm actually hitting more shots. Do you feel like you're all of a sudden? No, it's worse.

No, I, it's a degeneracy. I think it's, I don't know if it's all mental or whatever, like bad elbows, messed up wrist, shoulders,

swing changes. Just doesn't, doesn't improve much for me. Sad. Stop working on it. Now, actually when I play less, I think I'm doing a little better.

You can always take up knitting or, on the golf course yes no coup between shots i think that could keep the mental game tight that would keep it tight man all right man well listen guys everybody follow big cheds of course also uh any new books any new anything i haven't asked you in a while i've been working on a lot of like personal projects I'm still working on. So I'm, well, thanks for asking. So I, this year I rewrote all three of these books this year to reflect a more

mature trading style, trading quotes. I'm working on the audible. It's about a half done when it's done. I remember put the whole book out for free on YouTube. I'm just going to read one chapter at a time. So that's like been my project. The last six months is redoing the cancer memoir and reading it over and over and over again. It's

painful, but that's how you grow. So I'm working on this. And then my trading journal book will be out next year at some point, but I'm working on other projects. So that may be delayed a little bit. Love it, man. Well, everybody go buy all those things, read all those things. Get them for free on my YouTube. Yeah, exactly. Like whatever you got to do, just go work on your knowledge. As you said, perfect time for it. Thanks, Cheds. See you, brother. All right, guys.

Off to Twitter spaces. It's that time. It's in about 20 minutes, 10, 15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. I will, of course, be back here tomorrow doing this again. Guys, it has been a pleasure. It always is. I love being here.

Even if it's four or 12 people, it's not what matters. We do it because we love doing it. That's all I got for you guys. See you tomorrow. Peace. Let's go.