Unchained - Udi Wertheimer on Why Bitcoin Could Reach $400,000 by Year's End - Ep. 872

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

Bitcoin is up over 25% year-to-date, but what if this is still the beginning? Udi Wertheimer joins the show to share a thesis that’s grabbing attention across crypto: that we’re entering a generational Bitcoin rotation, where old holders are out, new institutional buyers are in, and price targets like $400K may arrive faster than anyone expects. He explains why the emergence of “forced buyers” like Michael Saylor’s Strategy changes everything, why he thinks the altcoin cycle is already lost, and how the biggest mistake Crypto Twitter is making today is thinking this is the top. Visit our website for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com Xapo Bank Ledn Mantle Udi Wertheimer, long‑time Bitcoin advocate and customer support intern at Taproot Wizards Udi’s article: This Bitcoin Thesis Will Retire Your Bloodline Unchained: Bitcoin Sets New All-Time High, But Eyes Even Bigger Gains Timestamps: 🎬 0:00 Intro 🐶 5:19 How Dogecoin’s 2021 run mirrors what could happen with Bitcoin today 🧠 21:31 Why Udi says most people misunderstood the rise of DATs 📈 30:38 Where bitcoin could be headed next, and how fast it might reach $400K 🏦 33:49 What makes this new wave of BTC buyers so different ⚠️ 39:52 Whether bitcoin-holding companies pose hidden risks 🪦 45:06 Why Udi believes altcoins, including ETH, may be finished this cycle ⏳ 51:50 Why Udi thinks Bitcoin’s next runup is “imminent” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We don't need to accelerate in order for the price to go much higher. If we keep the same pace of inflows, the price is going to go much higher because I think we've already worked through most of the old sellers. I think most of who wanted to sell already did, not everyone, but I think most who wanted to sell these levels already did. So you don't need to accelerate, you don't need the inflows to double or 10x in order for price to go much higher. In fact, if everything stays the same, we probably just go much,

much higher just based of that. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained. You're no high resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. We love featuring listener comments on the show. Today we have one from Jade Herrick, responding to my recent interview with circles Dante Desparte

on the passage of the Genius Act and why it might be too conservative for banks. On X, Jade said, banks often resist regulation until they see competitors gaining advantage. Then suddenly they want it. I've seen this pattern repeatedly in FinTech. If you want your comment featured, write a review of the podcast overall or leave a comment on our video on YouTube, Farcaster, or X.

This is the July 22nd, 2025 episode of Unchained. One early bitcoiner sold 30,000 BTC too soon, missing out on over a billion dollars. Don't want to make the same mistake? With Zopo Bank, eligible members can get instant cash without selling their Bitcoin. Check out Zappobank.com slash Unchained for more. Leden is a leading platform for Bitcoin-backed loans, offering a secure and transparent way to unlock liquidity without selling your Bitcoin. Issuing loans since 2018 and earning over 1,000 trust-pilot reviews.

Learn more at leaden.io. Mantle is pioneering blockchain for banking of revolutionary new category at the intersection of Tradfi and Web3. Follow Mantle underscore official to learn more. Today's guest is Udi Werthheimer, longtime Bitcoin advocate and customer support intern at Tapparet Wizards. Welcome, Udi. Yeah, that's me. Hey. Hey, excited to have you.

So, Udi, you wrote an essay on X recently called This Bitcoin Thesis Will Retire Your Bloodline. Very catchy title. You started it by saying, I believe Bitcoin is entering a generational run, the likes of which we've never seen. And you gave an example of a coin that had experienced something similar to what you believe. we're on the precipice of experiencing with Bitcoin. So go ahead and explain what you mean. Yeah. So, you know, I, based on all the market data that I've seen,

based on just the behavior of Bitcoin price action in this last cycle, I think we're the very end, the tail end of a rotation of old holders out of the Bitcoin asset. And what that means is there's, there's, you know, obviously there's a lot of people who got Bitcoin early. And, you know, I remember when I when I got into Bitcoin, we used to joke me and my friends that Bitcoin will either go to $10,000 or to zero. And if it goes to $10,000 will be very happy, right? And, and here we are today at $100,000, I think similarly. Sorry, similarly to 10K, I think 100K is this number where a lot of people are just like, yeah, I'm out, I'm done. That's enough. I don't need more billions of dollars and I'm just out of here. And I think we've seen that. I think we've seen there's been, I mean, there's been a big one just last week that, you know, that that has been in the headlines a lot. There's mysterious 80,000 BTC whale that is presumably selling their Bitcoin. We don't know if they're done.

unselling and if I had to guess probably not. But the point is a lot of old whales are waking up and selling their Bitcoin. And yet, you know, price is going up, not down. Right. So another way to look at it is to look at the inflows into Bitcoin and just say, well, okay, there's billions of dollars. They're going in every week into Bitcoin. And for this longest period of time, price didn't actually move upward that much either, right? Like, we've been stuck in this range of $7,200K for quite a long time. And that means that someone has been selling. Because we know that a lot of people,

we know that we have the data. And that's something that we didn't have in the past. But we have very clear data of, you know, sailor accumulating. A lot of those newer Bitcoin treasury companies accumulating. The ETFs, we're seeing there's a ton of inflows and very little outflows. So we have that data.

We know that they're sucking up all the Bitcoin, yet the price stays within that rage or stayed, within that range. And I think that just means we had a lot of sellers. And I think to me it seems like we're almost, almost out of sellers in that range. People who didn't sell at 100K are not going to sell at 130, I don't think. So I think there's going to be like this massive run up. But it's hard to imagine, right? Like it's like what am I saying here? Like, you know, we're talking about inflows and numbers and whatever, but it's hard to imagine. And I think a similar thing happened with Dogecoin a few years ago. And that's maybe something that I think a lot of crypto natives that have been around for more than three, four years would remember.

Those kind of was crazy in 2021. Right. Like all of us looked at all of us were amazed. I'm sure you remember it. Like the, it seemed like it's almost out of the blue. One day, all of a sudden, those goes up 10x in, and that's 10x in size, right? We're not talking about one of these small shit coins. It's a big coin goes 10X.

within like two or three weeks, and then again, a couple of months later, which is just, you know, it was just unheard of. And I think the reason that happened was the crypto natives didn't notice that those was being accumulated by basically a completely new breed of people, completely new cohort of holders for a long time. That took over a year. If I remember correctly, I think it was in 2019, I think that Elon Musk tweeted. about Doge for the first time. And, you know, I don't know if people understand. Today we see Doge as

this obvious king of meme coins. Every meme coin wants to be like Doge, right? And everyone knows this is the biggest meme coin. But at the time, I think there were very few people who are crypto-native who saw Dogecoin as a thing that has a future. It was always kind of a joke and something that you would trade up and down in order to accumulate more dollars or more Bitcoin or whatever it is. I don't think anyone took it very seriously. And obviously it's a joke today too, but it's a joke that people take more seriously now. And when Elon Musk shows up and says,

yeah, I think Dogecoin is my favorite cryptocurrency or something along those lines. I think most of crypto people look at that and they say, okay, that's amazing. That's Elon Musk talking about our meme. And so, you know, they do a little, there's a little pump, you know, like it goes up like 50%

or whatever. Everyone is excited and people think, oh, I made it, you know. And, and, and they continue selling because, okay, it was a joke, nice. But it turns out that since Elon did that and a lot of attention from Normies kind of shifted to Dogecoin, there's been like this whole year where basically a bunch of TikTok people, and TikTok is getting much more popular in 2020, right? A bunch of TikTok people realize that Dogecoin is available in Robin Hood. At the time, there were very few coins on Robin Hood. There was Bitcoin and Ethereum and Lightcoin and, I don't know, Ethereum Classic, a bunch of boring coins. And Dogecoin is the only one that's like interesting.

And TikTok dancers realized that there's something that they can buy that it's cool and Elon likes it and it's funny. And that the crypto people keep selling it. And just as a reminder to the audience like this was also, of course, the period where Robin Hood was. super popular was the pandemic and, you know, the game stop trade was going on AMC, like all those things. So yeah, it's true. There's all these all these guys are on Robin Hood trading all the meme stocks and they realize that they can trade meme coins too or one meme coin. And at the time they started, they called it the Dogecoin challenge on TikTok, which was basically people were supposed to share screenshots of themselves buying Doge. And then

singing songs about how it's going to a dollar. And us on crypto Twitter and, you know, crypto-native funds and whatever, we were just not paying attention to any of this. We didn't know what was going on. At the time, I don't think, you know, I don't think crypto-natives were paying attention to TikTok, period. I don't think we were paying a lot of attention

to Robin Hood and meme stocks. Obviously, we all knew what was going on. Obviously, you know, people were trying to shield Bitcoin to people who were buying GameStop. It was going, but, but, you know, it was kind of two different worlds. And so for this entirety of, of this full 12 months since Elon first, like, talks about it, apparently TikTok kids and retail keeps buying those coins for the entire time. And the price doesn't move because crypto natives keep selling it.

We don't, we don't understand what's going on. We just keep selling it. and eventually, obviously, around the same time that Bitcoin hits a new all-time high, I think end of 2020

or the beginning of 21, obviously a lot of coins run up, but Doge has this explosive move that nobody was expecting or for 10X in basically a couple of weeks, and nobody understands how is that possible? Like, how did that happen? And the reason it happened is because

we were just out of literally all, All the old holders sold. Yeah. And by the way, that also was like Doge at that point was less than a penny. It was 0.8 cents. And then it spiked up to 8 cents. So these are, yeah, the numbers are wild. Yep.

So spikes. And if we're talking about market caps, that's $1 billion to $10 billion in a couple of weeks. At the time, a billion was considered a lot in crypto, right? Like at the time, a billion was one of the big ones. But the real crazy stuff is a few months later, it does another 10x, right? Then we go from 10 billion to 100 billion. Because what happens is after you have this, and in the article I call it the first mind fuck. After you have the first time everyone gets shaken and realizes that other people were accumulating the coin for this entire time.

Once you realize that, you think that it's a very. over, right? Your first instinct is to assume that you missed it. But really, and we've seen a lot of people when the first run-up was happening, we've seen a lot of people kind of doing, you know, bragging about trades of 2x and 3-X on Doge, not realizing that this thing is going to actually moon again. The other thing that was really interesting about it was all those kids buying up Doge on Robin Hood didn't really have a concept of the history of the price chart. They were not anchored to old prices. For one reason, because obviously they weren't looking at it at the time.

Two, they weren't necessarily able to see it because when you look at your Robinote app, it doesn't go as far back as we PTSD-ridden, crypto-nated remember. Yeah, actually, and just to like you, one other thing I wanted to mention there was like you wrote in your piece that the OG crypto people were like their anchor was the old doge poises of like less than a penny. And you said, everyone knew this. If it briefly goes up above a cent, that's a bubble. We use that to stack more stable coins and we leave. Yep.

And that's what everyone thought. And we had, you know, we used to have these charts about how we expect, you know, doge to go up 5x and then we sell. And that was everyone was expecting. And everyone did that successfully for multiple cycles, right? So when it happened the next time, that's what everyone expected again. What's interesting with Bitcoin today is people who are getting Bitcoin exposure, the new people who are getting Bitcoin exposure, we're not talking about retail meme traders, right?

We're talking about most institutions. And they're buying it through IBIT or through IBIT is the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF. Or they buy... you know, micro strategy or some of the other Bitcoin Treasury plays. So they don't see the past either on their charts, right? If you buy iBits today, I think it's, I know, about $65 per iBit, right? That doesn't sound too much. It doesn't sound crazy.

65 to 150 doesn't sound like a crazy thing to me. That happens all the time. So I think a lot of the, and, you know, when you know, when you. when you buy the ETF and you look at the chart, you don't see it going up from, you know, half a cent to 65. It got listed at 30, and now it's 65. It seems perfectly reasonable to expect that,

you know, another 2X in a few months is completely normal. So I think we're actually set up in a very similar place. A lot of old holders have sold over time. By the way, you see, you know, I think you and I, Laura, I've been talking about basically quite maxies before, one of a few episodes in the past. And I think you'll notice there are a lot more quiet this time around. You don't see as much of them as you used to. And some of it is, you know, whatever, they're, they moved on to, I don't know, do other things.

But I think a lot of them retired and left. I think a lot of them sold. I think it's pretty clear, you know. Yeah, but before we keep talking about Bitcoin, can you finish the Dogecoin story because we need that context for the Bitcoin. Yeah. So really, you know, with Doge, that really was,

of course, at the end of it was the final, the so-called second mine fuck from 10 billion to 100 billion from like $0.00 to $0.60 or whatever it was. the peak was I think Elon Musk going on Saturday Night Live. And by the way, I'm not at all convinced that's the end of those. I think we... Yeah, it was 70 cents.

But, yeah, keep going. But, you know, like, that was obviously, you know, those completed 100X in, I don't know, three, four months. That was pretty heated. And of course, it was going to take it a while to recover, which it might do again soon. But I think the point is it exceeded everyone's expectations wildly. Crypto people had the opportunity twice, basically, to see what's going on, get in on the wave,

but they assumed, you know, just like every other time, this is going to end badly. And basically all of us sold all of our coins to retail people. That's basically what happened. And they made a whole lot of money. Of course, some of them got in very late and did not much. make a whole lot of money. But, but, you know, we, we basically sold them all of our coins very early. And I think that's what's, that's it. That's basically the end of the story. And I think, I think we're doing the same with Bitcoin now. I think we have been for the last three months or

so. I think people have convinced themselves that, you know, 100K is, is what Bitcoin is. And if things get very bullish, then maybe it'll go up another 10, 20%. I actually, yeah, I don't think it's that they think it's all that is. I think it's that they've made so much money that they don't really have a need to, you know, to hang on to it much longer. Like, you know, if we look at the the Adam Back deal, the new Bitcoin Treasury Company, the Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company that he's doing. I mean, there's a lot of speculation that that's who was selling the 80,000, BTC, the whale. I think that's unlikely, by the way. can talk about that. Oh, okay.

Well, you know what, let's, yeah, let's, we'll take a quick word from the sponsors and, and then we can pick up with that. Selling your Bitcoin just to get cash? One early Bitcoiner did and missed out on over a billion dollars. With Zappo Bank, you can access up to $1 million instantly without selling a single set. Eligible Zappo Bank members can borrow up to 40% of their Bitcoin's value. No stress, no selling, no buying back in. Use it for what matters most. Your dream, home, your child's education, a getaway or that can't miss investment. With Bitcoin-backed loans, you're in control. Set your installments and repay in Bitcoin or US dollars, your choice. Enjoy competitive

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platform, the blockchain for banking, that enables financial services on-chain. UR unifies and vertically aligns Mantles focus on payments, trading, and assets, MI4, METH protocol, functions FBTC, supported by developer grants, ecosystem incentives, and the industry-leading distribution platform through the UR app, Reward Station, and By-Bit launch pool. All economic activity within UR will be captured by Mantle Network to further drive value to token holders, and establish its significance in blockchain for banking. Follow Mantle underscore official to learn more. Here's another comment responding to the recent episode about the Genius Act.

On YouTube, my name is B. Maya said, when it comes to a law such as this, to be fair, the people should prioritize freedom. What is money without freedom? And that does not exist with the Genius Act considering the central bank digital currencies. The other problem is if there was ever a need to reset, there are no safeguards against protecting the people.

If such a law exists, the bankers should pick up the tab and not the people unlike what transpired in 2008. Again, if you want your comment featured on Unchained, please write a review or leave a comment on an episode on YouTube, Farcaster RX. Back to my conversation with Udi. So, yeah, let's dive into the Bitcoin piece. And if you want to address that bit about the Adam Back Treasury Company, Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company, you can do that. But we should really, yeah, let's talk about your Bitcoin. thesis. Yeah. So, you know, essentially, essentially I really think that Bitcoin is setting up in the same way the Doge was before. And, you know, people are going to, people are maybe going to look at this on a

kind of daily time frame, but I think bigger picture. I think similarly to the course that Doge was taking, I think we're almost out of Bitcoin sellers. I think that over the, the last, over the last six months, I think most people were just not paying attention to the fact that, for example, I think over the last week, literally seven days, I think literally over the seven days, a lot of people starting to understand that the treasury play better because Ethereum companies have started doing that. And I think a lot of people have paid attention to that. So I think people start to understand the flywheel of what's going on there. Wait, I'm so confused when you said that for the last six months, you feel like people

haven't been paying attention. I actually feel like post-election, there's been way more people, like, not just people. So I'll explain what I mean. Yeah, what did you mean by that? I'll explain what I mean. So I think a lot of people could not over the last six months explain how micro-strategy works. Like, how does it work? How does Sailor keep showing up with more money? How does he keep buying up more Bitcoin. What are the risks? What are the benefits of that strategy? I think most people could not explain. I think most people just assumed, oh, he's crazy, he has some cash on the bed and he buys Bitcoin with it. And that's it. And I think that's the length of how how much attention people are paying to it. And every week. Yeah. You know, but it seemed like that's,

you know, because for example, I think a lot of people did not notice that the micro strategy stock was up, like, what, 20x in the last cycle? That's something that people only realized very recently. And I think because partly because of the ETH treasury plays, I think people are starting to understand how this works because you're seeing there's a lot more people in crypto that are now getting involved in the treasury plays. So I think they understand what happens there more than they used to. but for the vast majority of, let's say, up until a month ago, maybe a month or two ago, I don't think anyone understood, not anyone, but I don't think, I think most crypto-native, including sophisticated investors, and I talked to sophisticated investors a lot, I don't think they understood what was going on there.

I don't think they were paying attention. I mean, actually what you're saying there reminds me about how so much of CET, and you're right, like really smart people in crypto, we're discounting the circle IP and saying, like, this is not going to, you know, do well, like their business model is this and that. Like, you know, they pay, like, Coinbase takes more than half their revenue, like all these things, which, you know, I, the truth is I probably agree with them somewhat. But I think what crypto people didn't understand was the limited ways that Tradfi can get crypto exposure and how so we're at this moment where TransFle is interested. And for that reason,

yeah, it creates the situation where anything that can be sold to the public markets will have a little bit of this bubble activity. And so you're right. I think a lot of OG crypto people missed that. But yeah, Circle was probably the first clue. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was a pretty strong clue, yeah. And I think from there, I think more people started paying attention. Sailor, you know, Sailor has been around since 2020, right? He's been buying Bitcoin since then. And I think a lot of people put him in that box, myself included, of just like a Bitcoin Maximilist podcaster. But over time, you know, the strategy that he's running became extremely. extremely successful. And I think most of, yeah, most of CryptoNative just completely discounted.

I think never even looked at the numbers up until maybe a month ago. And what that means is for that entire time, people didn't really realize that that someone's buying up, Wall Street, basically, is buying up all the Bitcoins. We just, because we, we were just not paying attention to it. And so I do think that, you know, a lot of people are under exposed. because they didn't realize that we're going to run out, quite literally run out of Bitcoin. And the thing with, and again, that's something that I think if people are starting to notice too in the last week,

this strategy is very reflexive. People used to assume, well, if Sailor and the ETFs, they keep buying Bitcoin eventually, people are going to run out of money. But no, it's the other way around. The higher the more they buy, the higher the price goes, the more capital they can raise. And of course, you know, one day that will end. But I don't think we're particularly close to that.

The rate at which they're buying up Bitcoin just keeps increasing. And if I'm right that this is similar to Doge in the sense that crypto natives have been kind of asleep at the wheel for the last year and essentially has been, you know, either selling or at least not buying up Bitcoin for the last year, that means, you know, what like what's going to happen is pretty similar. Most people are one, under-exposed. Two, there's not that many lift that are willing to sell because a lot of the new buyers have bought, you know, whatever, 20% ago, 30% ago, they're not looking to sell yet. So we've got this rotation where we have new holders, new buyers. And the new holders, unlike old holders, the new holders keep buying more.

That's, by the way, another thing that I think we haven't had enough. Not enough, sorry, we haven't had before. just structurally, we always had in crypto forced sellers. Those are people who are forced to sell Bitcoin. SBF, a famous example that have, you know, 3AC, Luna, a bunch of of these guys that blew up and had to sell. Yeah, or even like minors. And to an extent, minors, miners, if they're not too leveraged, they might have some flexibility. But we had a lot of players who are very leveraged. And basically, you know, one day they wake up, they have to to puke all their bitcoins into the market.

And again, this might happen one day with this scheme too. I just don't think we're very close to that. But my point is, for the first time, we have forced buyers. By forced buyers, what I mean is, Saylor cannot choose to not buy Bitcoin next month. That is not an option he has. He has to keep buying. Micro Strategy has to keep buying Bitcoin

because that's what the company does. the company has no right to exist otherwise. All of those other Bitcoin Treasury companies are in the same situation, maybe even more. They have to keep buying Bitcoin. They have to keep coming up with ways to get more capital, to get more Bitcoin. And there's a lot of capital in the world.

So if the bet is that they're going to run out of capital they can raise next week, I really doubt that. I don't think we're anywhere near that. Yeah, I mean, we're not near that, but it could happen. One thing I wanted to say earlier, or two about this dichotomy between how CT views things versus like how other markets view them is just, you know, the CT way of viewing how micro strategy buys is why do they always buy

when the price is high? Why don't they wait for the dips? Why don't they buy when the price is low? Like they, it's so clear they don't understand like what creates the demand and like when he's able to purchase. And it is when the price is high that he's able to get investors. And so, So that's why it's like it is the opposite mindset and not only the opposite, but it's, it's so true that we're at this phase where like a lot of ways that CT or just cryptoGs have thought about, you know, accumulating is it's flipped on its head in the public markets. Yeah. Yeah. And even in the resolution, there's another little clue, which is even when you look at on a weekly basis, right? Sailor and a lot of these other companies they would post every

week on Monday the purchases they made last week. And like you said, it tends to be at the top, right? Like people would always make fun. Why is he buying at the top? There was like for the entire week, there are so many other opportunities to buy and he buys the top. Well, the reason he's buying the top, he's buying all the time, right? He buys all the time. But at the top, like one, like you say, it's easier for him to raise capital, but also the sellers are at the top, right? So most of the, most of the volume, the trading volume ends up being at the top because he keeps generating more demand. And when sellers come in, they create the top. And that's why you see, but Saler is, that is the other thing that I think people need to understand.

Sailor and all these other companies, they're insensitive to what the Bitcoin price is. in their mind, I'm going to deploy 100 million this week. I'm going to deploy 500 million this week, whatever it is. It doesn't matter what the Bitcoin price is. They're just deploying the cash that they can get.

And that's just a new form of buyer that we didn't have before. A buyer that's completely insensitive to price. They're not thinking, oh, 100K is high. Six figures is a lot. None of them are thinking that. There's saying, we have cash. We need to use that cash to buy Bitcoin

as soon as possible. Yeah, so now let's map Bitcoin's trajectory onto the Doge story. Explain, yeah, where you think we are in the comparison with Bitcoin. Yeah, I think we're at the tail end of the rotation phase. But wait, is it, are we before the first mind fuck as you called it? Yeah, or after. I would say we're probably starting the first mind fuck now, yeah, is what I would imagine. Because what I think, of course, we need to understand with Bitcoin, the scales, Bitcoin is already a much bigger coin.

I'm not saying it's going to 100x, right? It's already a much bigger coin. And I think the movements are going to be slower. It's not going to be like two weeks for 10X. So, you know, but I could see something like a first mind fuck goes to like 300, 400,000 K in, let's call it, you know, three, four, five months. And when that happens, I think people absolutely lose their mind because it's, you know, even as I stand here right now and I talk to you, you're probably thinking I'm insane talking about 300k in a few months

or 400K in a few months, and the chat probably thinks I'm insane. But I think it's actually very possible. And once people see that, right, I think there's going to be this collective, you know, everyone was expecting, oh, retail will come in at 100K. But 100K is not, you know, it's just 2X what we had, you know, before. I think when people see a 3, 4X in a few months, I think they're going to lose their shit, yeah.

And that, which means at that point, we can start seeing the kind of sick and absolutely crazy, you know, overblown, over the top rally that will come later. Yeah. Honestly, just everything you described with the Doge story and your hypothesis about the coin, it reminds me of how. So in the Doge example that you gave in your piece, you had the price chart. And you know, you had it for like each period of time, right? And so when you look at the second Mindfuck chart, then the first Mindfuck, you can't even see it. Like. And so, yeah, because like when it goes to 70 cents, then 0.8 cents to 8 cents.

It's just like it's nothing, right? It seems. Yeah. It looks like nothing. Yeah, and we've seen that before in Bitcoin, you know, like if you think about people who got in in like 2011 and then it went from like two to, I think like 31 and then it, sorry, I don't know where it started, but went to 31 and then it dropped back down to two. And then even in 2013, there was like another little run where it went to like, I forgot like 400-ish and then it dropped back down. And then at the end of the years went across for 1,000 for the first time. And then it keeps going.

You know, it's like then the next run was the 20K. So like, so all of these, you know, if you look at where Bitcoin is now, like, yeah, maybe you could see that spike to 20K. Well, probably you could. But like the one to one K is like probably really on that. Yeah. So I did also want to ask those. So like with Bitcoin, you keep saying like all, all these people have left.

Just like talk a little bit about. who you feel like the buyers used to be and like and and then also talk about like why you think they're selling now and how we get to the 400K because that yeah you're right that that that was a a number that I took notice of yeah yeah so who we used to be Bitcoin buyers you know actually I think in the last bull market the pre let's call it like 2021 I actually think Bitcoin did not have as many retail buyers as it had in cycles before that. I think a lot of people went straight to ETH, maybe even some of them straight to Solana and, you know, Avalanche and other stuff. I think a lot of people onboarded through NFTs, for example, there was this kind of NFT bubble, and a lot of people bought ETH in order to buy NFTs and they completely skipped Bitcoin, right?

And I think there was a lot of that. I think there was actually not that many new retail buyers. There are some, but if you compare that to how many retail buyers other coins had, I actually think it wasn't a ton. And I don't know if this time it's completely different. I still think that there's not a ton of retail flowing into Bitcoin. There's, again, there's some, but I think it seems to be mostly institutional capital. One is through the Bitcoin Treasury plays, like we said, and the other is just screwed

ATFs and both of it seems to be mostly institutional capital. You do see retail interested again in doing stuff like, and by the way, that's another thing. I think crypto kind of CT is missing completely. A ton of people now can go with a Robin Hood account and leverage trades on either Bitcoin or some of the Bitcoin treasury companies through buying coal options, basically. which is something you couldn't do before. So Americans in the past did not really have exposure to leverage in the way that the rest of the world does.

Now, you could, you know, go get a VPN account, get a, I don't know, a Ku-coin account without KYC or something. And of course, a lot of the crypto-native people did that. And today, people can do that with hyperliquid with a VPN and so on. But that's, you know, that's a niche thing. Most Americans don't do that. but a lot of Americans, I don't know how many, but it's definitely more popular, especially within kind of the younger generation of traders

to trade options. And you couldn't trade options on Bitcoin up until, I don't know, a year or a year and a half ago, that you just couldn't do that. So there's like this new generation of retail that is leverage trading Bitcoin that they couldn't before. So that's one thing. But mostly, it's obviously mostly institutional.

And all of that, did not exist before, right? Before that, you know, in the previous cycles, we would have people talking about, oh, you should go to, you know, strike and swan or whatever, buy some Bitcoin and move it to your cold storage. And you don't hear any of that anymore. People are even talking about this stuff because that's so much smaller. Like, of course people still do that. I'm not saying I do that. But a lot of people don't, most of the new buyers are not like that at all. And they're not interested in that. They just want to have some I bet in their brokerage account. options. So I think the retail picture changed pretty much completely. And of course, the institutional

went from zero to to a hundred in a matter of a few months. So it's a completely different landscape of buyers. But do you see like additional changes that get us to the 400K or do you think that's enough? I can think of a few things. But I just, I don't know the exact timeline of the rollouts for some of them. So I don't know, you know, of course we're going to have stuff like, Like you're going to be able to buy Bitcoin on your bank account. Obviously, that's coming. I think most banks have been pretty clear they want that. So at this stage, this is going to happen.

I think there's, you know, it's probably going to become more acceptable to have Bitcoin in your retirement account and stuff like that, that I think people are going to, you know, like portfolio managers are going to start advising people to do that. So I think we're going to see much more of those kind of things. But also, I guess the point. that I'm trying to make with the article is we don't need to accelerate in order for the price to go much higher. If we keep the same pace of inflows, the price is going to go much higher because I think we've already worked through most of the old sellers. I think most of who wanted to sell already did, not everyone, but I think most who wanted to sell these levels already did. So you don't need to

accelerate, you don't need like the inflows to double or 10x in order for price to go much higher. In fact, if everything stays the same, we probably just go much higher just based of that. Yeah, I mean, but I could see demand really going up, like things like the Schwab announcement that they're going to offer spot trading and, you know, this executive order to allow crypto in 401Ks. Like all of those things I think will turn the spigots on. Like even if you think about Rick Edelman, who is a well-known financial advisor who is seen as like a guru in that, world. He was saying for an aggressive investor, he could see advisors recommending a 40% allocation, which is obviously well beyond the, forget what they were seeing before, maybe 5% or something.

So, you know, I do think like obviously once that rolls out to hundreds of millions of Americans and to other, you know, people in other jurisdictions, like, yeah, of course, that's going to catalyse things. I just don't know on what timeframe like 400 came by the end of the year. That personally seems a bit optimistic to me, but you said you think it might be conservative. I did want to ask you, though, because everybody's talking about how the public treasury vehicle trend is kind of trending toward a full-blown mania, which, you know, even today, there's like new announcements. It's like Athena, another Ethereum one. So, you know, even like months ago, we were seeing people saying that they could see this ending badly. And that was when, you

And the craze was a lot smaller than it is now. So I wondered, you know, do you think that these types of companies could blow up? And we can just focus this conversation on the Bitcoin holding companies. And if so, do you think that would hurt the price of Bitcoin and how much? Yeah, that's a great question. So could they blow up? Of course they could. I would say most of the risk is in the newer ones.

Because what's going to, you know, micro strategy, actually, if you look at the data, if you look at their balance sheet, they're extremely. extremely healthy. They took a bunch of debt, you know, years ago when Bitcoin was much lower, they bought Bitcoin with it. Now, you know, I'm hearing people saying that they'll blow up if Bitcoin goes down. I mean, maybe if it goes down on 5K. I mean, what are we talking about here? Like is, is they, because they really, their balance sheet is very, very healthy. So I think it's a little hard to imagine. Of course, one thing that might happen is that micro strategy start accelerating here, starts taking more leverage in much bigger quantities.

But so far they have been, I would say, to my untrained eye, they seem to have been relatively responsible with it. Yeah, I would think that of all the companies they have the least need to finance their Bitcoin purchases in risky ways. I would say, yeah, some of the other ones. But the new ones, if they want to compete, and, you know, everyone's looking at micro strategy and saying, I don't remember how much do they have 500,000 Bitcoin or whatever it is. Everyone's looking at that moving target that keeps growing. And they're saying, how do we ever get anywhere?

I mean, they're not going to get there, but how do we outperform strategy? Now it's 607,000. It's really 608,000. It's just shy of that. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. So, you know, so people are like, okay, how, and new companies are like, how are we going to outperform those?

guys. And I would imagine that a lot of them are going to try to outperform by just taking a lot of leverage and taking a lot of risk. And some of them will blow up. It's very possible. Some of them will set themselves up in a way that they cannot even withstand, you know, or whatever, a 30% drop, which we all know is very normal. And Bitcoin happens all the time. So I'm sure we're going to have some of those blowing up. But what does blowing up look like? Okay, some company raised, you know, a billion bucks, they found some creative way to take a lot of leverage on that. Now they're blowing up and they're forced to sell, I don't know, 80 cents on the dollar. Okay, well, first of all, Say what is going to want to buy them out, right? Now, he's maybe going to do it at a price that

their investors are not going to like. But a lot of people are going to want to buy that out, right? So, like, there's, I'm not even sure that immediately all that Bitcoin goes directly to the market. But, but of course, you know, of course those things can and will happen. I just, I guess what I'm saying is people need to understand the scale, right? I think Trump media announced today they acquired $2 billion worth of Bitcoin. That's awesome. Micro Strategy does that in two, three weeks, right? So, okay, you know, let's say, let's say those $2 billion.

go back into the market. Okay, so micro strategy buys them out in a month, two months. You know, that's, those are those, that's the scale we're talking about. So I don't think it's as terrible as people make it out to be. I think it's a lot more dangerous with, with the other treasuries of other coins that are not Bitcoin because, especially the small ones, because what you get with Bitcoin, it's almost kind of easy. If you, if you start a new Bitcoin treasury company, you don't have to think too hard. You just you just buy as much Bitcoin as you can. And you're assuming that, you know, Sailor is going to keep pouring capital into Bitcoin. The ETF buyers are going to keep

pouring capital into Bitcoin. And the new kind of small companies just kind of ride the wave. But if you want to do one with, you know, I don't know, if you, if you wanted to start a Cardano treasury company, then you would need to be the Michael Sailor of Cardano. You would need to do all the heavy lifting yourself. And that's... Yeah, but I think Cardano was thinking about putting Bitcoin. Yeah, yeah. Because as I said, that's a very easy thing to do.

All right. Well, so I did want to ask, you know, I mean, you kind of started to talk about this, but it's funny because so the last section of your essay is about all coins and you wrote, you're out, your out coins are fucked. Most of them will not be able to keep up with a sheer amount of capital flowing into Bitcoin. So explain that piece. It's actually a note before we do that. I did also want to ask you because this fits in. You also had especially spicy words about ether, and you said the biggest loser of the cycle will probably be Ethereum.

MSTR probably flips Ethereum market cap. Ethereum will literally fulfill the prophecy. There is no second best as it leaves the number two spot and gets replaced by MSTR. You said it's cute that Heath holders are starting treasury companies too, but they won't be able to catch up this cycle. So obviously this is very spicy. So explain the all coin thesis, but in particular why you sing. Ethereum.

Yeah. So, you know, I think that we've always seen this. Whenever a new narrative comes up, obviously, everyone else in crypto is going to try to do the same. And that's smart. That's what you should be doing. I think that what people are going to be maybe a little surprised by, and I said that in the article too, all of these old coins are going to have periods of outperformance.

the article said that. Obviously, Bitcoin is not going to outperform for the entire time in a straight line. And especially when you find, like, things that you can copy, like the Treasury companies, there's going to be like a repricing.

But I think that what's going to continue is that basically most of these coins are going to keep printing lower highs. So they're against Bitcoin, not against the dollar. So whenever, you know, for whatever reason, there's some momentum in, in other coins. You're going to see them going up sometimes violently. But the thing that I think, you know, Sailor has proven over

five years is that they're just going to keep buying. And I don't know anyone else who's proven that they can keep doing that in such a velocity for such a long time. So you will see, for sure, you'll have a month and two months and whatever of, of other coins outperform in Bitcoin. But the question which you've got to ask yourself is, are they going to be able to keep up with inflows of billions of dollars every week for that long enough to be able to compete? And I just don't think it's,

I don't think it's going to happen this cycle. And one of the reasons is even if, I think Bitcoin worked through a lot of the sellers already. Like we've already had that very long, despairing period of time. where Bitcoin tries to break out and fails. We've already been through that. I think a lot of people already sold their Bitcoin bags.

I think other coins have a lot, have a lot of old holders that are waiting to sell. A lot of old holders. So they would need, I would expect, again, I'm talking about big picture here, not about like a day to day or week to week thing, but big picture. I think, for example, you know,

Tom Lee and Joe Lubin, I think are doing an amazing job in the last few weeks. with kind of explaining Ethereum to an institutional mindset. And that's fantastic. I think it's going to take a while to work through all of the old holders that haven't sold yet. And that's something you can see, I think, with the Ethereum community, compared to the Bitcoin community, there's not many new faces in the Ethereum community, and a lot of the old faces are still around. That is not the case in Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is, I mean, you can see the rotation in your own eyes. in your own eyes, you can see how so many people are new, and so many of the old people are quiet. In Ethereum, that's not the case yet. And I think it's going to take a time to buy out basically a lot of the old holders and allow a rotation that eventually, in my opinion, maybe next cycle will allow Ethereum to really blow up. And again, I'm not talking about, you know, people,

I think people think in terms of like a 2x or whatever. I'm not talking about that. I think Bitcoin is going exponential. I think the other coins are not going exponential yet. And I think some of them could next time. But we still have a lot of old holders to work through. Yeah, yeah, you wrote in your piece about Ether. The problem is that the old bagholders are still around.

But, you know, Ethereum obviously is younger than Bitcoin. It's going to have its 10-year anniversary next week. So who knows? Maybe in a few years we'll be saying something different. I do think one other piece, though, is like, you know, Bitcoin has a much simpler narrative and investment thesis, whereas for things like Ethereum or Solana, there's other factors. And I do think, like, usage on the network kind of will have a factor or, like, developer activity.

Like, there's just, it's kind of like more of a combined tech and monetary play. So it's, yeah, it's more similar to investing in a company. I love the stable coin story. I've heard totally talking about it a few times. I think it's very simple and easy to grasp and understand. Just saying, okay, stable coins are. I think I've seen him and a bunch of people saying you can position Ethereum as you can position stable coins as the chat GPT moment of crypto.

And I think that's a good, you know, that's a good sound bite. Yeah, I just, I do think though, like if we were to imagine that we were in like 1998 and we're evaluating gold versus like Apple stock as an investment, I think it's just apples and oranges, right? Like, I think a person in 1998, the gold thing is a little bit more easy to grasp, obviously similar to Bitcoin, whereas Apple stock, like, you know, 1998, like one of us knew what was going to happen with Apple. You know, if I remember my first, what did they call those? The little Macs that were colorful, like Mac Mini or I forget what the name of that was, but the IMAQ. And yeah, maybe. And then it had a handle on top. And like, anyway, do you know what

I'm talking about the colorful ones. Yeah. Yeah, I think that was like 2000 or 2001. So anyway, all I'm trying to say is like, you know, a person in 1998 would have a hard time being able to really understand like what might happen with Apple and computers and laptops, mobile phones, iPads, the internet, like they wouldn't be able to predict all that. And so like deciding to put your money in Apple stock in 1998 versus gold, it's just like a harder thing to wrap your mind around. So that's another reason why I just feel like the simpler narrative for Bitcoin will also help it and distinguish it basically when it comes to these treasury companies. Yeah, and I think the 1998 comparison is actually, in my opinion, a really good one.

And here's why. And like I said in the article, I don't think, you know, that old coins are dead. I think they're going to have their moment. People are saying that it's old season now. I don't know. you haven't seen alt season if you think that's all season like I think they're going to have their moment I just think that will need time to happen I I guess the point of my my article about Bitcoin the biggest and most important message I can give people is about the urgency I think this is

going to happen imminently I think like we're out we had time I think we're out of time I think this is it and this so it's not like if when you're looking at Bitcoin it's Bitcoin is on the stage of buying tech stocks in 98 and waiting, you know, a decade or two to become filthy rich, which, you know, could happen, in my opinion, in crypto outside of Bitcoin. I totally agree with that. But with Bitcoin, we're not talking about like a 10-year thing. I think this is a very, very imminent thing, very imminent. Yeah, we'll have to see. We did recently run an article where we talked to some stock annulus and they were using more like technical analysis, but they were saying they felt like

we could reach 135 this quarter. And then, like, they were saying 168 in 2026. So very different numbers from your numbers, but we'll have to see. We'll see. So, wait, Udi, it's been great chatting with you. What are your handles? Man, good luck typing Udi Wurthimer on Twitter. You can find me through Topwood Wizards.

Maybe that by way easier. Okay. Great. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks so much for joining us today to learn more about Utti and his Bitcoin thesis, check out the show notes for this episode. Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin, with help from Matt Pilcher, Brian Ivanovich, Pamajumdar, and Marka Korea. Thanks for listening.