Unchained - Bits + Bips: Why Bitcoin Will Keep Going Down - Ep. 956

Episode Date: November 22, 2025

Check out our sponsor Uniswap! Bitcoin keeps drifting lower — and traders are asking the same question: where’s the floor? Host Steve Ehrlich brings on Markus Thielen, CEO of 10x Research, to walk through Bitcoin’s technical setup, ETF flows, institutional positioning, and why the recent selloff looks different from past dips. Markus lays out the metrics he’s watching, the levels that matter, and why the path downward may still be the path of least resistance. He also shares his views on Ethereum, altcoins, digital asset treasuries, and why some investors are stepping away from risk entirely. Host: Steve Ehrlich, Executive Editor at Unchained Guest: Markus Thielen, CEO of 10x Research Timestamps: 🎬 0:00 Introduction 📉 1:39 Why Markus is not optimistic about the current market 🐻 3:23 How he defines a bear market — and why we may already be in one 📊 8:02 The key metric institutions are watching and Bitcoin’s next support level 🔁 13:14 How to spot when a real rebound might be forming 🪙 17:29 Markus’ views on ETH and what catalysts could matter ⚠️ 19:57 Why Markus warns that “you don’t want to be exposed to anything” 🏦 22:10 Digital asset treasuries and what ETF flows are signaling 🧱 28:54How staking inside ETFs threatens DATs 🔮 34:35 What Markus expects to happen by year-end Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I think the key difference is also that, you know, a year ago, when Trump was elected, Bitcoin was trading around $67,000 and we very quickly rallied up 20,000 points or a little bit more. It was in basically a two-week frame. So there was not a lot of trading between $67,000 to $93,000. So there's like a window here where there's not a lot of support. It's almost like a, you know, like a void, really. Hi, everyone. Welcome back. Once again, I'm Steve Ehrlich, executive editor here at Unchained and host of Bits and Bips, The Interview. Let's take a quick break to hear from the ads who make this show possible. Are you a builder who needs to add on-chain trading to your product? The Uniswap Trading API from Uniswap Labs offers plug-in-play access to some of the deepest liquidity in crypto. It's on-chain execution at an enterprise level. More liquidity, less complexity.

Visit hub.uniswap.org to learn more. So I'm here now with Marcus Thielen, the head of research at research firm 10X research, a firm that produces daily intelligence and market briefings on everything happening in crypto. And we're here to talk about what's happened in the market, especially in light of Nvidia earnings, how to trade tactically during bearish times,

and also when it's appropriate to, to call a bare market, a bare market, and in light of crypto's heightened volatility. So welcome, Marcus. Yeah, thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Yeah. So let's just kind of dive right into it. Everybody was waiting with bated breath on Individia's earnings yesterday, wondering if they could outperform again

and perhaps lift the entire economy and the entire market out of this sluggish pattern. They did very well. What did you see? And how did crypto respond? Yeah, I think this is probably a temporary rebound that we're having right here for crypto, especially for Bitcoin. Of course, we still have the macro overhangs of the hawkish fat. We still have the on-chain data that indicates that there's a lot of outflows.

Of course, the ETFs are very overexposed right now. We can, of course, go in detail about those kind of flows, because those were the ones that were really pushing the market lower over the last couple of days or the last two or three weeks, really. And I don't think that's going to stop because people need to clean up their books into a year end. But nevertheless, we're coming into actually a period

where the RSI is very oversold, where the sentiment indicator is really negative right now. So it's hardly too negative here because we are already so low. And I think from a technical perspective, we can have some rebound, but the question really is, how long?

Is this going to last? And we suspect this is going to be a couple of days, maybe a week or two. But I think then the market is going to worry again about the fat. And the fat has indicated there might not be hiking. And I think we have seen the repricing already, of course, from 70% probability to just 30%. So it's unlike it's going to go much lower. But it's not going to give a lot of tailwind for crypto here.

And I think that's why we're coming into the year end, flows, clean up their books for institutional investors. And I think that's going to remain an overhang until the year end. Okay. So let's kind of break some of that down step by step. First, I'd love for you to kind of define a bare market, especially in terms of crypto. I know in Tradfi, usually a 20% drop from a local high is sort of the marker. But given, again, Bitcoin and Crypto's volatility, that seems to be way too shallow. So how do you define it? So of course, I think with crypto, we have to be realistic. The market does not go up all the time. You know, the market swings up and down. And I think the market reacts a lot to macroeconomic indicators. But to really define what is the bear market when Bitcoin is in a bare market, I think there is clearly defined on-chain indicators, you know, the MBRV, for example, that we look at.

But also there are certain moving average that indicate when Bitcoin is in a bare market. Can it be, for example, the 12 months moving average, so something like a 50-week moving average, or we prefer actually the shorter period, which is the 21-week-moving average. average. And we backtested this every time in Bitcoin is below this level. It is sort of like the stop level where we want to stop that of long positions. And, you know, we came into this period, for example, earlier in the year where Bitcoin broke the 21 removing average. So if you would have followed this rule, you would have been out of the market, you know, while Trump was really ramping up, you know, the tariff talk. And very similar to last year. Last year also during the

summer, you would have been out of the market. Yes, we're bouncing sometimes up and down to this level. But nevertheless, it is kind of like a rule of thumb is a little bit, I think a little bit more, you know, is technical in the sense. It's not just like a 20% drawdown and then we're in a bear market. Because historically, that's usually when we get some fat reaction function. But of course, that's when the fat was more forward-looking versus now the fat is backward looking. But again, we have, you know, come up with a whole rulebook of on-chain indicators when really the market is in a bare market. and based on those indicators, Bitcoin is clearly in a bare market since actually at late last months, really, when all of those indicators turned, you know, down.

And I think an easier indicator that we really like is really the short-term realized price, which is basically the average price of everybody who bought Bitcoin the last 155 days. And when Bitcoin is below this level, we actually start to see people being liquidated because, hey, I'm suddenly under water. I want to, you know, protect my capital. and are going to get stopped out. And then those people that are underwater had not, did not get stopped out. They are praying, of course, that the market goes back to this average price.

And once the market attempts to rally above this level, usually we see another way of liquidations because finally those people, you know, thank God we rally back to this level. Let me get out of my break-even price. And that's where we really struggled to really go above this line. And we came into this, like last year, for example, where the market struggled. We came into this early this year. And again, we are now there as well. And I think that's why sort of like the market struggles here a little bit.

But of course, it's a lot of the year end flow that we're seeing a little of the unwinding of the ETFs. But, you know, happy to talk about those, of course, in detail as well. Yeah. So we'll get into that. But I want to just stick on the topic of like comparing this fair market, which you say we've been in for a little while now with some of the others. You talked earlier this year. I mean, that had to have been around the Trump Liberation Day tariffs that that spook to everybody. And then another, I guess, analogy I've been hearing is, it's going back to

2022. And I know Bitcoin hasn't dropped down to like those levels yet. But at least like in 2022. And then again, with deliberation day tariffs, like there was a clear sort of like driver for this, a clear end for like when the market was going to reverse itself in 2020. It's like when FTX happened, that kind of flushed out the rest of the liquidity. In, uh, it's, um, in, uh, in earlier the spring, Trump reversed some of his tariffs or paused them, delayed them, the whole taco trade, everybody was talking about, and that sort of let everyone have time to breathe. This fair market, we're in right now, it's hard to see where the bottom is. I mean, there's some bearish factors, as you mentioned. I mean, low expectations for another Fed cut.

We had the China tariffs and the massive liquidations on October 10th that sort of drew out a lot of liquidity that I don't believe has returned. And people are kind of really wondering what's next. Is tech still too overpriced? So how do traders approach this particular market when they're not quite sure when the bottom sets in? As you know, nobody wants to catch a falling knife. Yeah.

So the key difference is that for the first time really in three years, Bitcoin broke the 50 week moving average. And I think that's like one of the rule of thumbs how a lot of, you know, institutional investors, long-term investors really, you know, based their decisions upon. And, you know, we didn't break it earlier this year. We didn't break it last year. You know, people were sitting on healthy profits. But of course, right now, people are not sitting on so healthy profits anymore.

And I think the key difference is also that, you know, a year ago when Trump was elected, Bitcoin was trading around $67,000. And we very quickly rallied up 20,000 points or a little bit more. it was in basically a two-week frame. So there was not a lot of trading between $67,000 to $93,000. So there's like a window here where there's not a lot of support. It's almost like a, you know, like a void really. And I think that's really like the difficulty when we, you know,

when we look back the last couple of months, you know, we had a trading range of, you know, 90 to 100 and then 100 to kind of like 116 for, you know, for many weeks really. And of course the market has really set that. technical levels there. But this time, we are really at a period where there's not a lot of support, you know, as you correctly said, you know, where is really the low here. There's some more liquidity, let's say, at 84,000. And I think 84,000 is also like a level where a lot of people suddenly sit really underwater. I think the market right now as a whole is still up around like 20

percent, but it's actually not that much, right? When you look at, you know, where Bitcoin really came from. so that the true short-term mean of really everybody who bought the last couple of years sits at 83,000. And of course, if we go below it, then of course a lot of people are going to be underwater. And then I think the next level is probably the 73,000. And as you probably remember, that was really the kind of like the seating where we saw last year. And that really stayed really between March of 2024 to really just before the Trump election. And we bounced around, we dropped to 50K, you know, we came back up, but we didn't manage to go above it.

So it really seems that this bull market is very different than all the other bull markets because we seem to, you know, trade in a kind of like stop and go environment. You know, there's a big catalyst. We rally up, you know, in a very short period of time in a week or two. But then we go sideways for a couple of months and a lot of stuff, you know, a lot of stuff seems to happen, but nothing really seems to push prices up. And of course, as you also pointed out, October 10s was suddenly a really important event because just like, you know, two, three days before Bitcoin was making new all-time highs. Really, we were at 126. But it was also sort of like a dangerous level at the same time because every time when Bitcoin makes a new all-time high but doesn't really accelerate and goes back to this level, it actually seems to be a level where it does collapse. So what we want is we want to make a new all-time high on high volume and then a parabolic move.

So we want to distance ourselves. And you might also remember like last year when Bitcoin made the new all-time high in March, and I think it was around like $60,000, $68,000, you know, we went up to a little bit above $70,000, but we failed to accelerate. So there was suddenly not a lot of money coming into the market, quite the contrary. with, of course, a lot of the OGs, a lot of the long-term holders were suddenly liquidating, probably a lot of people who got into the highs of the previous bull market work, really happy to see those levels again, and then really liquidate and really keep a seating on the market.

And I think that's very similar where, you know, we started to make a new high, but then we didn't really accelerate. And I think the biggest example is probably in 2021, when we made a new all-time high in, you know, in April, then we sold off in May. And there was, of course, you know, the end sort of like of the defy narrative. But then we started to make new all-time highs in October, November, based on the whole NFT story and NFT minting. But then, of course, new all-time high, but the market didn't accelerate and then we quickly

collapsed. And I think that's sort of like the worry here as well. But, of course, the issue, I think, is a little bit, you know, I think there's a lot of stories to tell. And I don't think the last chapter has been written about this October 10th crash, because so many people were stopped out, but I think what's most important, you know, we wrote about it and hardly anybody wrote about it, you know, I assume, but the liquidations on Binance were only 59% longs. And I think that's kind of like puzzling because the market went down, you know,

20%, a lot of Alcoins went down 30, 40, 50%, but how come only 59% of the people that were stopped out were longs, right? So instead of shorts, right? So, So a lot of shorts were stopped out, and I think there is a mismatch between people's trading books that were basically market neutral. They were suddenly stopped out at levels where they couldn't really reconcile the trades. Yeah, I remember that. Just anecdotally, because there were lots of people that had profitable short trades that were stopped out, and they were upset. And obviously they were upset, and some felt that they were perhaps even mistreated by some of these. changes because of because of what happened. We need to take a break soon, but I want to just ask you

before we do, what are some of the tactical ways that people might be able to trade in this type of bearish climate? You talked about how there could be some brief relief rallies from time to time. Maybe we might even be in one right now in light of the Nvidia earnings. So what are some the things that people can try to do. And what's like one or two signals to look for to know when like these perhaps brief respite's might be over? Yeah, of course there's, you know, the technical side. There's of course the, you know, the RSIs, the sarcastics, you know, every time they're

really oversawled levels, you know, there's a chance to be going to rebound. There's, of course, a lot of sentiment indicators. But of course, there's, I think, two kind of very interesting ones. there's of course the Coinbase Bitcoin premium or discount. And since actually end of last month, the premium has actually evaporated and went into a discount, which we can argue that a lot of institutional investors, a lot of U.S. investors really trade, you know, on Coinbase relative, let's say, on the global exchanges, relative on to finance. And of course, every time this is in a discount, it probably indicates that more U.S. flows are selling off.

So that's kind of like a level where, you know, we have been seeing the discount actually quite steep, but a discount sort of started to narrow a little bit. So maybe there's less outflows. And I think we saw this, you know, on Tuesday, basically there's a lot. You know, there was actually some net buying despite the market started to go down. So maybe some U.S. investors started to pick the bottom here a little bit. You know, the RSI actually started to turn around a bit. So there is some positive divergence happening.

But also something that we noticed was. that the skew, so the price or the implied volatility that is used for puts versus calls, which of course was in heavy favor over the last five weeks really, you know, in favor of puts, really. So a lot of people were buying puts relative to calls, but that started to actually shift a little bit. So it's still negative, but it's not as negative as it was on Monday morning. So there were some factors that looked actually that on the margin, the market is starting to trade a little bit more positively. And of course, maybe we're seeing Vedia, you know, story now, your earnings. So the market maybe looks a little bit more on the positive side, because the

AI spending room doesn't seem to be over. And that's kind of like the factors that we look at, you know, just a couple of, you know, top of my head that is more market timing perspective. Because very often in these bear markets, we see rallies of like 10% very quickly. And I think we can capture those rallies up until, of course, the price goes back to some resistance level. And I think the resistance level is around 100. thousand, so we're very difficult to go above 100,000, but it still can be a rally that we can catch here. Hey, founders and developers. If you're looking to bring on-chain trading to your product, wallet, or platform, check out the new Uniswap Trading API from Uniswap Labs. It's your plug-and-play

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Visit hub.uniswap.org to learn more. So I want to touch on a few other topics in the news. First, you were a little more bullish on ETH than even Bitcoin in one of your most recent reports. Can you just explain what you saw? So for Ethereum, we were actually more barracks. That's actually something that we recommended as a hedge, as a underperformance against Bitcoin. coin end of last month. So we actually, we predicted that Ethereum should drop from 3,800 to 2,700,

2,700, because we are still in this negative environment. We're pointing out that, you know, based on some transaction volumes from activity, on-chain activity, that there might be a value level. And we defined this value level, you know, below 3,300. It doesn't mean that people should buy, you know, Ethereum immediately if it goes below this level. But if we look into next year where, for example, we probably have a new Fed chair. We probably have probably a more Dovish environment.

And of course, maybe a lot more stuff is going to happen on the defy space. You know, if the market structure report is going to come out. So I think there's a lot of stuff brewing in the background. It doesn't mean we want to buy it today. But we want to define where there is value. And the value is not when it's at 4,000. The value is not really coming from the stable coin market. The value is only really going to come if there is more transactions on defy.

And defy maybe might be a bigger theme next year with the market structure built. But of course, we don't have this yet. But we just wanted to point people towards, you know, where is really the level to buy. If sort of like the market turns around whether it's really, you know, more value approaching. Because I think, you know, defining value in crypto has always been quite difficult. couple of years, I feel like it was more, it was a lot easier in the last bull market because there was a lot more revenue. Of course, Ethereum, they switched the, you know, the revenue mechanics, and, you know, there's a lot less revenue going around these days, but last cycle, we could really

define it, you know, certain, you know, NFT minting, you know, generated X amount of revenue and that usually associated with a price of Y. But this cycle, it's a lot, you know, there's not a lot of revenue because a lot of people are not really using defy, you know, the action is somewhere else. Yeah. Okay. Are there any other tokens that really stand out to you, privacy coins or alts that have really interesting charts or sort of like any like overlooked gems that investors might really want to pay attention to? I think that's a very tough one in this environment, you know, simply from the fact if, you know, if for example, Bitcoin dominant.

you know, grinds up a little bit as I think it's going right now a little bit higher. You know, while the market cap goes down, it's sort of like the period where actually you don't want to be exposed to anything. And I think very, you know, it's a little bit surprising because normally in these like sell-off periods, we see, of course, the Bitcoin dominance actually rising more sharply because people selling all coins and, you know, and putting the money back into into Bitcoin. But I think what we're seeing really the last one or two weeks is actually people, are off-ramping. So we saw, of course, that USDC had some, you know, redemptions. So that's, I think, a sign that people actually are not going from altcoins to Bitcoin. They're going from

altcoins to USDC to probably off-ramping. It's small. It's just a couple of hundred million dollars, but it's almost like people that don't want to, you know, keep a lot of money right now in the crypto space because also a lot of the altcoins they're seeing around, you know, around like $59 billion U.S. dollars of unlocks per year currently. So there's a lot of overhang and I think a lot of the BCs from, you know, from the previous bull markets basically have to really liquidate some tokens because their LPs want the money finally back and maybe want to, you know, go all into AI. So I think there's a lot of head to headwinds for some tokens. Of course, there is momentum and we are momentum traders in crypto. So if something is breaking out, you know, we are sort of like jumping on it. But, you know, all these like, you know, favorite of this, you know, cycle, you know, the ethinas of the world, you know, they're not. really great, great, you know, investments here unless really there is a lot more money coming

into the space. And it's really seemed, you know, as long as the Fed is hoppish, not a lot of money is going to come in. So I think that's why, you know, staying on the sidelines is probably, you know, the right approach. And we don't have to trade all the time, you know. Yeah, I guess moving money out of crypto to stable is off, off chain is the ultimate form of capitulation. So that is something interesting to follow. All right. So let's talk about that. and ETFs, because I know this is the topic that you also watch closely. It's no secret to anyone watching or listening that DATs have been struggling. MNAVs have been dropping.

Even strategy dropped below one briefly, although I don't know where it is exactly at this moment. But times are really tough. And I'm wondering if you can kind of give me your assessment there. But also, I know that you look at the interplay between ETF flows, which are net negative for a little while now and how that also impacts, negatively impacts, I guess, the ability of that's to try to begin to raise accretively again. Yes, so I think the very interesting aspect, you know, is really, I think there are two really notable points.

I feel like, you know, last year in February, end of February, when the market really started to ramp up after the introduction of the ETFs, you know, suddenly micro strategies, NAB was expanding, you know, significantly, really from, you know, a little bit above one, I think one point to depend of like 1.5 and there's 2 and higher. And people were really puzzled by this because people expected here's an ETF that trades at an envy of, you know, one. So why would somebody pay a lot of premium? And of course, people argue that maybe there are some restrictions where people cannot

buy ETFs, but they can only buy these companies, really. But we have a slightly different theory. And the theory is really that once Bitcoin went above $45,000 per Bitcoin, which is literally, you know, the average price of a car in the U.S., which is the average first year salary, people actually sell, you know, Bitcoin is actually quite expensive and, you know, I cannot really afford the whole Bitcoin. And I think there's some psychology, you know, going on here where people sort of like just bought so like the, you know, the cheaper alternative. But of course, the whole that trade, you know, they don't really use a lot of free cash flow to buy additional shares. They buy basically,

they used basically, you know, the NIV premium. And when we came into the summer this year, we're expecting that actually the volatility would decline a lot. And with a decline in volatility, you know, the right tail probability of higher returns were actually also diminished. And I think that really, you know, coincided with the NABs really being compressed. And of course, there was not really a lot of ability to raise more capital,

so not a lot of more capital were coming in into the space. And I think that's where sort of the theme ran out, really for the dads. Because there's no really real story about generating some additional yields. I think they have, of course, a big balance sheet now, especially in micro-strategy. And I think they should become more like hedge funds in the sense that they're selling, you know, upside calls. You know, because you can generate 15 to 20 percent yield with, you know, these overriding strategies. And I think there are some other, you know, tools in the box, really, that they can. can bring out, but it's no longer, you know, waiting for retail euphoria and then selling high

shares, you know, telling a great, you know, story. Because I think retail, you know, has been, you know, burned a lot. So we calculated that micro strategy raised around, you know, $45 billion dollars since August 2020. And around $20 billion was really raised with an NAV above one. So basically, retail investors who were ever bought, you know, paid a premium of $20 billion in total. And as you correctly said, the NAB is basically back to, you know, around one. So basically $20 billion has been literally evaporated, you know, into nothing, really. And I think that's kind of like a loss that. A lot of people probably like, you know, question if this is the right strategy for them to invest again.

And I think we saw something similar in Japan with Meta Planet where, you know, people were buying the shares at an implied Bitcoin price of 800,000 USD. And of course, now we are sort of like materially lower. because the NAB is also below one. So basically, a lot of money has been lost there too. And I think that's why it's very difficult to restart this narrative. But I think it brings also a very interesting concept because that Ethereum had around $10 billion of inflows year to date

for the Ethereum ETF. But they were only really in July and in August, and there wasn't really any material inflow before. There wasn't any material inflow after. But we're seeing, of course, this month a lot of outflows for the Ethereum VTF. And I think it's really the question now that because the futures traders, especially the perpetual futures traders, you know, almost like the crypto-native people,

they were literally all stopped out, you know, on October 10s. So basically, Bitcoin is down year-to-day. Ethereum is down more than 10% year-to-date. You know, the futures traders are basically sort of like, like neutral, you know, if you compare really the change in open interest where we are currently versus where we were on January 1st. So basically, you know, nobody is long except really a lot of the ETFs. And the ETFs, you know, the Bitcoin ETFs, they have net odd, you know, around like $23, $24 billion year to date versus the Bitcoin prices down year to date. So it's definitely some

over-allocation. And it's not that the 13F filings really make a lot of, you know, the harvings, endowment funds or some of the institutional investors really look good here if they have increased the exposure because they're looking actually not so great now because the price has gone down and very similar with Ethereum because Ethereum a lot smaller market cap but here the ETFs are net long $10 billion year to date versus Ethereum is actually down 10%. So that's why we were arguing with the last two or three weeks that we probably going to see more outrows from the ETFs because people need to be, you know, adjusting their books. And if you are a multi-strategy investor, you know, you're having some stocks, you're having some commodities, you're having some

crypto, and then you're sending out your statement to your investors. And they look at you see, it's like, oh, you're along, you know, a billion dollars in Ethereum ETFs, you know, but Ethereum is down 10%. It wasn't a great move. You know, why didn't you buy more Kukukukes? You know, why didn't you buy more NASDAQ? And I think that's something like the story that institutional investors want to get ahead and that's why they're probably liquidating some of their portfolios and that's where we're seeing this sort of like selling pressure now in the market. Just quickly, last couple things. One, with the rise of staking ETFs, how does that impact the debt calculus?

I would imagine it makes their theoretical hurdle rate now much higher. And I know you also pointed out some hidden costs that may not be apparent to an investors that actually lower the, lower the yield or premium that people might get from buying some of these debts. Can you just walk us through that quickly? Yeah, I think when we go back to the last bull market, which is, of course, you know, extremely exciting because, you know, retail investors were basically getting, you know, four to six percent yield on their, on their, you know, crypto holdings. And of course, the block price of the world, they were generating 8 percent yield. And they were generating

this yield really through, you know, lending to three. Aeros Capital or through Alameda, you know, research really, who really took, you know, billions and billions of dollars and leveraged it up. So it was really, they were really to pay high, high yields and they were passing some of the yields down. And back then, you know, the treasury yield was at the low 50 basis points. It was trading more between 1 to 3%. So there was a huge arbitrage, you know, for even institutional established players, you know, taking Tratify, you know, interest rates really and deploying the capital in crypto. And I that was the yield arbitrage that was possible.

This cycle right now, of course, we're having the Ethereum staking yield at 2.85% versus the 10-year treasury yield at 4.1%. So there's, of course, negative carry for anybody in TratFi. And I think that's why the staking yield right now is not that attractive. And I think when you look at, for example, Coinbase, they only, I think, pay 1.8 or 1.9. So there's even a lot more cost involved there. So in the end, investors sort of like, are they really going to give up more than 2% to stake in Ethereum that is extremely volatile as collateral versus the Tratfi market? Maybe, but maybe not.

And maybe that's where we've seen a lot of unwinding in Ethereum staking, you know, per se. But, you know, as you correctly pointed out, if, for example, Blackdrop can push through their ETF staking for Ethereum, and they're currently charging only really 25 basis points, and there were actually. charging, I think, only 12th until the summer, until they get a certain AUM really for their, you know, for the Ethereum UTF. So that's, of course, a lot less than what some of the other, you know, the dads are basically proposing, right? So of course, it's not really transparent. So we're not really so clear what the costs are, but a lot of the dads have, you know, 10-year contracts with, you know, with the strategic advisor and the strategic advisor usually gets, you know, 1% of the AUM per year. So that's a cost of.

you know, 100 basis points, then management gets also, you know, paid, you know, for, you know, for their compensation, basically. And then, of course, there are some other hidden warrants and hidden costs where some optionality where management can buy out, you know, 5% of the shares, for example, at, you know, at a really fraction of the price. So that's kind of like all these costs. And I think these costs can easily add up to sort of 1.5 to 2%, depending. on which data you look at. And I think that's sort of like a hidden cost that people are not really aware of because they're not really publicized.

There are, of course, a lot of SEC filings, but it's very difficult to go through. It's not really clear. You know, we have to try to go through it. But nevertheless, I think when you look that, you know, that you buy a lot of the dads, you know, initially before at the premium, you know, why should you buy it at the premium when you can just buy it at, really at an NV of one and then probably get your staking yield

as well. And I think because BlackRock is, of course, a huge player, they're probably, probably get, you know, a fair price really for, you know, for their, you know, staking yield that they're going to pass on because they want to be the, you know, one of the low-cost ETS. And I think that's why they were so successful and raised so much capital yet today. So I think there is really this, this big shift happening. And then one of the key arguments that a lot of the dads were playing might not actually be valid anymore from next year. So there might be also some story. And I think, I think, you know, if I may add one more point, because it goes, you know, to our Ethereum

comment like earlier, you know, so far we have not seen that BlackRock was pushing the Ethereum narrative. Of course, we have seen Larry Fink on TV quite frequently, you know, I slowed down a little bit, but, you know, Bitcoin is digital gold, and there has not really been a narrative around, you know, Ethereum. And we're waiting for, you know, the marketing department of Blackrock to push this story. But once they push this story, we might get a little revival in the defy story. And I think that's why there might be a level where we want to buy Ethereum and we want to be looking out for that, but we need kind of more of the macro indicators to turn around first. So thanks for all that, Marcus. Before we wrap up, I just want to see if you

have any final thoughts and anything that was kind of left on the cutting room floor, any contrarian opinions that you're itching to get off your chest as we move into your own. Well, I mean, yeah, end is, you know, it's almost there. So I think, you know, we're not going to see much. You know, we expect, actually, the Fed will stay on hold in December. I think that's not the news that we, you know, we crypto investors want to hear, but, you know, we just have to trade with whatever we get. And then I think, you know, even in January, it's not going to become so clear as well, right?

Because, you know, the Fed doesn't have economic data. It doesn't really seem that even like the employment data is as weak. you know, besides some, of course, anecdotal layoffs here and there. But it's going to be actually a very tough narrative unless really the Fed starts to shift a little bit, you know, daubbish year. And I think that's going to happen. And of course, then we're coming into, you know, next year. And next year is really the, you know, the fourth year of the Bitcoin cycle.

And, you know, we don't think the Bitcoin cycle has much to do really with the halving. But, you know, nevertheless, there is this, you know, force here where Bitcoin tends to be weak. and this year was supposed to, you know, of course, be a positive year. So maybe we still finish a little bit marginal in the positive side. But, you know, I mean, the human psychology, the human life is really built on, you know, on really these four cycles, right? Four seasons, you know, four quarters.

You know, I mean, I think there's, you know, there's also, you know, spiritually, you know, a lot of the science. So I think when you look deeper, there's more meaning in this sort of like fourth year where things need to reset itself. And I think that's why we actually be a little bit void, and that's why we think actually next year will also be a tough time. And it might be that, you know, we're seeing, you know, a law earlier in the year and then sort of start to rally because, you know, fat is going to turn dovish. I think that's, you know, almost like pretty clear. But the question is, are we going to be then at 84,000?

Are we going to be then at sort of like 73, 75,000? You know, at that level, it's probably very, you know, interesting levels because, again, if BlackRock files are staking ETF now, then means. they've got to get ready. They're going to get their marketing and their salespeople are ready for next year. They're going to push this product. I think there's no doubt. So as always, there's a lot of stuff happening in crypto. But right now, you know, the macro headwind is, you know,

still forcing us to be a little bit on the sidelines. But I think there's still some great opportunities next year. All right. Well, thanks so much for joining us. We'll have to have you back. Thanks to everybody for watching and listening. And we will be back next week with another episode of Bits and Bips, The Interview. You know,