What Bitcoin Did - Everyone Was Wrong About This Cycle | Andy Edstrom
Episode Date: February 17, 2026"Bear markets are about both price and time. We've had quite a bit of pain on price, we haven't had that much time yet." Andy Edstrom, author of Why Buy Bitcoin, joins the show to discuss capital pr...eservation and portfolio allocation during a downturn. We analyze the structural health of the market, why the "This Time is Different" narrative failed, and why institutional treasury strategies might be creating a drag on Bitcoin's spot price. THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: ANCHORWATCH BLOCKWARE LEDN BITKEY SWAN CAPE CLUB ORANGE FOLLOW: Danny Knowles: https://x.com/\_DannyKnowles or https://primal.net/danny Andy Edstrom: https://x.com/edstromandrew
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Is Bitcoin stupid cheap yet?
Based on my experience, no, it's not stupid cheap yet.
If you have no Bitcoin, like should you be buying?
Yeah, you should be buying.
If you're under-allocated, should you be buying?
Yeah, probably.
I mean, DCA works.
I'm still of the mind that it is a bear market.
Bear markets are about both price and time.
So we've had quite a bit of pain on price.
We haven't had that much time yet.
Like if Bitcoin nuked to, yeah, to forehandle something in the 40s now, would I want to be buying that in size?
Yeah, probably I would.
Andy Edstrom, the guy who called the top said that this wasn't different, this time wasn't different.
And it looks like you were right, man.
Well, Danny, it's always a pleasure to see you.
I don't know if I, I don't think I quite call the top.
I did call the bear market with 60% probability at a time when price was much higher than where it is today where we're recording.
So, you know, I hope I saved some Bitcoiners some pain.
And we can talk about, we can talk more about that, you know.
I'm still long-term bullish, right?
I haven't changed my 10-year price target when I published YBy Bitcoin in 2019.
I think price was, when I went to press, I think price was eight and a half, and the target was 400.
And, you know, it was a 10-year price target.
So we're six years in.
We've come a good part of the way.
And haven't changed the target.
400 by 2029.
Seems totally reasonable.
You know, neither total Bulltard nor Andy Wise so bearish.
although I've definitely gotten a lot of Andy Wysow-Barrish comments over the years.
So, yeah, you know, pain of cycles, the four-year cycle, or is it the 3.8-year cycle,
we could bust that myth, remains intact.
And there were many, many people in this space who spoke with great confidence and certainty
that the four-year cycle had ended.
Or better yet, there's some people who said it never.
existed. That, that I really won't understand. You're talking about me here. Oh, no, that's you,
Danny? This is stuff that I, so I'm, I want to get into this because yes, I definitely said those
things. I think this time being different was something that I totally got caught up in. I still don't
know if it, it still might be in my opinion. I'd be interested in your take on this. But like,
why did you not get caught up in that? I guess a painful experience, I suppose, is the first
answer. So I'm class of 2017, like late 2017. I bought my first coin the day after the B-cash
hard fork, okay, August 2nd, I think it was. And not because I was waiting for the
weird time to buy. Yeah, no, it was a great time to buy. And it's not because I was waiting
for the hard force because there were some people out there who were like, oh no, the hard fork's
coming. Is this going to, you know, is this going to kill Bitcoin? No, I had just discovered it.
And I couldn't fund my Coinbase account fast enough, right?
So I was desperately trying to buy.
So did not get any free coins in that little event, unfortunately.
But yeah, man.
So I've lived through two painful bear markets.
And there was a time when I was almost all in, right, substantially all in, definitely all in crypto.
And then all in Bitcoin because I sort of figured out that crypto was not the thing in Bitcoin.
and what's the thing.
And, but I've also lived through two savage bear markets and I'm only human and I feel pain.
I felt pain in those bare markets.
And even though I've sold coins along the way, the pain of loss for me exceeded the opportunity cost of, you know, not having ended up with more coins.
I guess if I would have ended up with more coins.
But yeah, so that's how it's, that's how it's gone for me.
And, you know, I did, part of it was based on analysis.
Well, okay, let's go back to the, I'll go back to the why.
So I'll try to keep this short because people know the story.
Like, okay, why for your cycle?
What was the premise originally?
Well, the first time it hadn't happened yet.
So people are like, oh, are the miners like really going to do this?
Are they really going to cut the supply to them, you know, by half to themselves?
And they did it.
Okay.
So that uncertainty was removed.
And perhaps that caused the, you know, the rally after the first cycle.
You know, after the second cycle, obviously it was still a major supply shock.
And there might have been some doubt, I think, especially among those who were newer to Bitcoin at the time.
This was still before my time.
So I'm sort of speculating here.
Okay, eventually you get a few cycles in and you say, okay, it should be irrelevant.
But there's still the fact that if anyone's going to attack the network, the optimal time to do it, honestly, is right after having.
because that's when the most mining equipment, the most A6s are sort of marginally profitable.
So if a government or consortium of governments or whoever we're going to try to tip the thing over, the time to do it would be right after a halving.
So that's still a fundamental characteristic.
And that will never go away, though, as the issuance falls more and more, it becomes less and less relevant.
But then, of course, you still have the fact that whales have a lot of coins.
You know, if Galaxy Digital is telling the truth, and it was one guy that sold 80,000 coins that Fateful Day last year, right?
That means there are still whales that have a ton of coins.
By the way, you have to ask yourself, if he sold 80,000, like, how many did he have?
Because he probably didn't sell them all.
So, yeah.
So whales always could cause the end of the cycle because they could dump on all of our heads if they chose to.
and then it happened again last year.
And so I think that was definitely a factor in my thinking in terms of, oh, yeah, how concentrated is the ownership?
Okay, it's still pretty concentrated.
And then, you know, the whole bare market, bull market thing, it's also empirical in terms of how price behaves relative to information.
So it's almost definitional that in a bull market, when you get good news, price pumps, and when you get bad news, it doesn't matter.
And then, of course, the opposite in the bear market.
And I started to see signs of that, you know, as the year wore on last year when good news wasn't helping price.
And bad news, you know, was basically causing, causing down draft.
And so kind of reading the tea leaves.
And then obviously looking at the liquidity element, like I follow Michael Howell a bit and others who are in the liquidity space watching that closely.
and the words coming out of their mouths were getting more hedged and sort of more wishy-washy and mealy-mouthed.
And they were saying things like, yeah, we don't think the liquidity cycle's over yet, but it's looking kind of weak.
And it's looking short-term week.
And maybe kind of we think it's not over yet, but we're not as sure as we used to be.
And so, yeah, it was a number of factors that came together to cause me to conclude that it was more.
more likely than not that a bear was upon us.
And, you know, someday I'll be wrong.
Someday you'll be right, Danny.
Maybe it's this year.
Maybe this will be the year where we get to new all-time high in a short period of time.
And the cycles will end.
And by the way, it won't matter because all the damage is already done.
And the pain has been felt.
And the bitcoinsers who were using leverage got liquidated.
And all the bit corners that went heavy into the treasury companies got completely wrecked.
which is a shame because I know a lot of those people.
And yeah, it's just a shame.
It's an unmitigated disaster.
Anyway, I digress.
Yeah, so the Michael Howling is interesting because I like this idea of like the quidity cycles.
And I think he said this one's rolling over basically now.
I think he said the first quarter of 2026, which obviously like historically has not been good for Bitcoin.
And so when you look at the four-year cycles, like American Hoddle's green, green, green, green, red meme.
I mean, that one broke this cycle because we had green, green, red.
Okay.
Sorry.
Sorry.
I'm going to interject and cut you off there.
So, and this is one of the myths I want to bust.
Four year cycle.
Okay, yes, but people say four year cycle.
What they really mean is, you know, epoch.
He having epoch.
And we know those actually aren't quite four years.
You know, it's three point eight years or something.
And if you look, this was another factor too.
I didn't mention.
I should have, I'm glad you brought it up because I didn't mention it.
It was the literal top, right, was the same number.
of days past the having to the day in this cycle that it was in the in the prior cycle.
So if you're so yes, I understand the calendar year thing, but if you're talking about like days
past the having yeah, no, then the cycle's unbroken.
But what do you think that is?
Do you think that's it being a self-fulfilling prophecy or something else?
Because excuse me, because the actual like supply issuance is becoming less and less relevant.
Yeah.
No, no argument there.
I definitely think, yes, it's a partly self-fulfilling thing.
When I say that the whales can dump on all our heads, they can and they do.
By the way, it might not be a terrible thing in the long run.
It depends on your view, right?
Okay, if you want cheap, if you want cheap corn, great.
Number go down.
Fantastic.
You know, bring it on.
Take us lower.
Show me 50K.
Show me 40K.
You know, show me lower numbers.
So that's definitely one perspective.
Another perspective is if we actually ever want this thing to be money, then maybe 50% drawdowns happening on the regular isn't optimal.
And so the thing about the whales is some of them sell the top and then help set the floor, right?
They rebuy the bottom.
Granted, there are others who are new to Bitcoin who come in and scoop up coins.
they have dry powder in the down cycle. But as we know, if you're a nub to Bitcoin and you're still
kind of getting your footing and building your conviction, it's really hard to buy those
bare markets, those winters. It's really hard to buy those bottoms. Some people do. My hat is
off to them. And that's great. But yeah, I mean, I think the good news, bad news about the
self-fulfilling element and the fact that whales can cause a peak is that also.
so they'll have dry powder to help set a floor, you know,
so that those DGens who are using leverage in Bitcoin
don't all get taken to the cleaners,
don't all get rinsed in the downturn and only some of them do.
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So do you not think then that things like the ETF, obviously Michael Sailor buying as much Bitcoin as ever,
do you not think that's changing the dynamic of how the market works? Like Sailor buys all the time.
So four year cycle is kind of irrelevant to him. ETFs are seemingly,
will be the same. They've actually been really good in this bear market so far, at least, I
believe. The outflows haven't really been that high. I think they've been better holders than just
Bitcoin holders. So do you think that will change the market dynamic going forward at some point?
Yeah, but also you said it. Sailor buys, you know, at any price. Wouldn't it be nice if he just
bought at low prices? That might help the cycle. I guess what you're saying is, you know,
he's a buyer at any price.
So that also says he's irrelevant to the cycle, right?
He's buying the bottom.
He's buying the top.
I think actually he buys tops.
I think empirically he buys tops more than he buys bottoms.
I'm sure someone smarter than me has studied the details on that.
But that makes sense because that's when money is more readily available for him, right?
It's when his stocks likely trading at higher MNAV.
He can dilute shareholders so he can hit the ATM.
He can go and raise money in other ways.
So he'll always be a buyer at the top.
But that is on its own will surely change the market dynamic a little bit,
meaning that like if it's not running out, if buyers aren't getting exhausted at the top
because sailors just continuing to buy, will that not change how these sort of four-year cycles work?
Yeah, I wonder.
I mean, I'm thinking through it as you're saying it.
I think what I'm thinking is the opposite, which is if he's a net buyer on average at the top,
then he is incremental demand that's pro cyclical as opposed to anticyclical.
So that implies he's pushing peak higher at the margin, but he's not there, you know, as a buyer of last resort in the downturn.
So then you might say, okay, yeah, but at some point, Andy, won't it be different?
Like, won't there just be sort of adoption, upcycle, omega candles, governments buying, you know, federal government.
buying central banks, you know, Bitcoin becoming money, the Bitcoin rapture, hyper-Bitcoinization.
Did I miss any of our favorite terms in there?
You know, will it happen someday?
Yeah, it might.
It might.
And I look forward to being there when it is happening.
By the way, I kind of hope it doesn't actually happen all that soon because I'm not sure that the world
is ready for it. I'm not sure most Bitcoiners are ready for it. But yes, I am still struggling to
see whether the new players in the market are net countercyclical as opposed to just pro cyclical.
Now, the ETFs so far seem to be holding in there, right? It seems like people are not panic selling
the ETFs. And part of that is probably wealth managers like me, right, who
although I trimmed exposure for my clients when I saw what I thought was kind of the writing on the wall of the cycle,
you know, we still have a position because it's like any other investment.
Okay, here's some more heresy.
Bitcoin is a lot of things.
Obviously, it's uncensurable money that you can carry across a border when you need to.
Okay.
That's unique.
And that's an amazing characteristic of Bitcoin.
But it's also a financial asset. And when I say it's a financial asset, really, I mean it's an investment, which for me is not the same as savings. We can get to that sacred cow in a second. I'll say it first, Bitcoin is not savings. Bitcoin is an investment. And if Bitcoin is an investment, it's a really attractive investment in my estimation. You know, if my price target remains unchanged at 400K for 2029, that's, I don't know, more than that's more.
than a 5x in three years. Do I want to hold an investment that my price target is 5x in three years? Yeah,
you bet you. On the other hand, if I am still a believer in the cycle, like, did I want to trim my
position, you know, an appropriate time? Yes, also. Also, yes, I did. You know, and by the way,
last year, last year was the first year in a long time when I looked around and I saw a number of other
investments that interested me on a risk-adjusted basis. You know, Bitcoin was like, was the true
North Star and it's still an important, you know, it still plays an important role. But there are
other ways, you know, there's other ways to make money also in other financial assets.
Okay, let's get to the sacred cow then. Bitcoin is not savings. I mean, Pierre Ashard will be
livid at that statement. Why don't you think it's savings? Because can savings and investment,
And do they have to be mutually exclusive?
Yeah.
So, and look, reasonable people can disagree on exact definitions.
So, you know, words are important here, obviously.
But to me, savings is the thing where you have it in case something bad happens and you need cash and you need purchasing power in short notice.
And so that thing is not supposed to regularly lose half its purchasing power, right?
So let's say wealth managers or financial advisors talk about the savings component.
They're talking about you know, you want to have six months of savings, you know.
And that's basically generally Fiat because if you lose your job or you crash your car, you got to replace it or someone has an unforeseen medical expense, you know, that cash is there and available.
Now, saving is another thing.
saving is the thing that happens when your income exceeds your living expenses and you have that
surplus. And what you do with the amount that you save, you can put it in savings or you can
invest it. And for investing, you have a longer term time horizon. Probably most people who are in
Bitcoin will agree that you want to think about the Bitcoin you hold with a multi-year time horizon.
and that is kind of the definition of investment.
Oh, and by the way, you're expecting your purchasing power in this investment to go up over time, right?
We wouldn't be calling it an investment if we expected number to go down and keep going down
or number to not go up ever.
So, you know, these are some of the factors to consider.
So, yeah, so to me, saving or savings are the things that always hold,
purchasing power over shorter periods of time.
They do erode their purchasing power over longer periods of time.
As we know, that's a problem with Fiat.
But, yeah, it's hard to see how Bitcoin can be savings for people in the world today.
Now, I'll caveat.
You know, you talk to Gladstein and Gladstein may say, oh, yeah, but in hyperinflating countries,
like Bitcoin is rock solid in terms of purchasing power.
And that's true, usually.
but also those people can now get stable coins, right?
They can get probably they can get dollar stable coins if they want.
So is any of this to say that you should not hold Bitcoin or not own Bitcoin?
No, none of this is to say don't own Bitcoin.
All this is just to say, let's be reasonable and level-headed about Bitcoin in the context of, you know, our lives and our overall portfolios of assets.
So when do you expect Bitcoin to become savings?
then. Do you think that it will get to a point where the volatility is, you know, minimal?
So the answer is, I don't know. And then the answer is, I don't know, but optimistic. So when it comes to Bitcoin, like hyper-Bitcoinization or Bitcoin becoming common transactional money because the purchasing power is less volatile, that would be fantastic. That would be a better world. I'm here for it. Okay.
also we're probably a long way from that.
So when I think about will Bitcoin reach its potential, its ultimate potential, yeah,
I think it has a good shot at it.
I don't know what probability I put on that, but that would be fantastic if and when it happens someday.
And then with respect to displacing gold or taking significant market share from gold, yeah.
Now, there my confidence level is much higher.
I mean, my key pillar of the thesis I put forth in 2019 in the book was around taking market share from gold.
I had already, in that analysis, scored Bitcoin versus gold and Bitcoin versus the dollar.
And Bitcoin already outscored gold on my criteria at that time.
And if anything, it's more so now, right?
it's more stable even than it was then.
Like, okay, is it that stable in terms of purchasing power yet?
No, as we've seen from the recent downturn.
But it's more stable.
It's less volatile.
And it's, you know, basically its characteristics have either held steady or improved for the most part.
And gold, you know, gold's characteristics haven't changed in probably a couple of millennia.
although there are new, you know, liquid paper forms of gold, I guess, like tether gold, you know, that can be transacted.
I don't know if you want to get into that. But yeah, so, look, taking market share from gold,
much higher probability. In fact, at the margin, I'll say that's 100% probability right now.
I'm quite certain that in my client's portfolios, because I'm the one buying the assets for them, okay, Bitcoin has taken market share from gold.
My clients own Bitcoin, my clients own gold, they own monetary metals.
And in a world in which Bitcoin did not exist, their gold allocation would be higher.
So already, you know, for the tiny amount of money in the grand scheme of global assets that represents my clients, I can tell.
tell you that Bitcoin is taking market share from gold and I expected to take more in the future.
And I hope Bitcoin reaches its ultimate potential. But I've no idea what the probability of that
is and I don't have much idea how long that's going to take either. And correlate to that
is the dollar, which is, yeah, I think the death of the dollar has been much exaggerated.
And yeah, there's so many ways for Fiat to keep limping along, especially for the dollar to keep
glimping along for a very long time. I'm not sure that's such a bad thing overall for the United
States, for me personally as a citizen, you know, for the world. I'm of two minds. I'm conflicted,
right? Like Andreas, like Andreas, like Andreas always used to say, you know, if we can, basically if we
can bring forward the death of fiat, you know, one day sooner than Bitcoin will have been worth
it. I think he said that. Something to that effect.
And I kind of agree with him overall with the caveat that, yeah, I don't want it to be totally mad max and complete mayhem in the transition.
So, yes, I wanted to happen on a reasonable time scale.
I want to happen faster because fewer people will suffer in the long run, except for, you know, I'm selfish for me and my family and I don't want to live through a total disaster type of scenario in which it happens too fast.
One of the funny things, whenever anyone mentions Andreas,
I do think of all the Bitcoiners that got in sort of from 2021 onwards who might not know who he is.
And if you don't know who Andreas Antonopoulos is, go back and watch all of his videos.
He was like so instrumental in my whole Bitcoin thing.
Incredible guy.
So as like a wealth manager, you said something a little earlier in this, which is interesting.
You said like this for the first time in years is it's the only time you've seen other interesting investment opportunities.
Like what else have you been looking at?
So last year was a very active trading time for me personally.
And it was mostly about commodities.
And that now is becoming, I would say, much more consensus.
So it's definitely not that much alpha, you know, arguably, at least at the moment.
And the timescale matters too, of course.
So obviously, you know, sorry Bitcoin lovers.
I'm still a Bitcoin lover too, but I bought gold last year, I bought silver, I bought, you know,
I was a degen trader playing in that stuff.
I even, you know, gold is a core holding for clients too, but, you know, I even bought
silver for clients and sold it well.
And so that was a good trade.
But then also industrial metals, you know, also the whole energy complex.
And I'm talking about stocks, really.
I'm not talking about like, like I don't trade spot oil price or anything like that.
I'm talking about, you know, Exxon and the majors and the, you know, basically companies that pull stuff out of the ground have been a great trade with, that was so undercapitalized and so underowned for so long that it just got ridiculous.
And then you kind of caught the, you know, you caught the momentum aspect of it too, which is not different from Bitcoin in a lot of ways, right?
So I have a thesis on what Bitcoin should be worth. You have a thesis on what Bitcoin should be worth.
Everyone listening, most people listening, let's say, probably think fair value of Bitcoin is much, much higher than it is right now. Okay? I agree with you. But then, of course, you also get these momentum factors at play in Bitcoin. A lot of that is also at play in much of the commodities complex. Plus you had the sort of fundamental underinvestment.
for so long that now, yeah,
that basically too many people got on one side of the boat.
They got on the on the software is eating the world side of the boat,
which wasn't wrong fundamentally.
There's also the ESG narrative putting people off owning the oil stocks and things like that.
100%.
I was sitting at lunch with the guy I've known for years who works at a kind of a value-focused
mutual fund and they are heavy commodities.
And they've been banging the drum for a while.
and they were arguably early.
But that was one of the things we talked about.
Yeah, it was evil to own,
it was evil to own companies that produced carbon, right?
Carbon-based energy.
So, yeah, so that reshuffling, you know,
has been happening in a big way.
Now, going forward, you know, I'm of two minds on it.
It's moved so far, so fast that it sort of looks overbought at the moment.
so I'm not the guy pounding the table like, you know, go buy oil stocks right now or go buy commodity assets right now.
But then you have the broader super cycle or call it 20 year cycle that tends to play out in commodities.
Speaking of historical patterns that someday might not be the case, but remain, you know, the track record remains unbroken.
You have these longer cycles and commodities whereby there's some big.
big demand.
Okay.
Last time it was China, basically.
China was hoovering up all the metal and all the cement and all the materials as they
built their economy.
And then eventually they got sufficiently built or overbuilt.
And then supply responded, right?
This, of course, is different than Bitcoin.
But with most commodities, more supply comes online as the price goes up.
So then you get overinvestment and then you get a crash in the price of the commodity being
produced and then it's a long bear market and then underinvestment and then there's some
there's some catalyst from the demand side that restarts the whole thing it seems like right now
the catalyst from the demand side is both AI right in a major way obviously the buildout
plus the geopolitics which is rearmament you know reindustrialization and this is across the world
right i mean it's the u.s of course but it's also japan um is you know the sleeping sleeping
giant Godzilla's waking up as we speak. And there's all these areas around the world where
societies and their governments are figuring out that they need to allocate capital differently,
and one of the places they need to allocate that capital is to industry. And that's probably got
legs. So I look at the short term and I say, you know, am I rushing, would I be rushing to buy
commodities assets like right now today, maybe not necessarily, but do I think it has legs
over at least several year time horizon? I think probably. And then Danny, there's another,
there's another factor here, which is scenario analysis. So, okay, sorry, I own more than one
asset. I don't just own Bitcoin, right? I have a portfolio. Why do I have a portfolio? Well,
one of the reasons I have a portfolio is because I want to own stuff that does well in certain
scenarios that might not be high probability, but those scenarios are scenarios in which other assets I might own get whacked. So I think about war, basically. And obviously, you know, we've already got the Ukraine situation. We've already got stuff going on in the Middle East. But I'm talking about a major escalation or, you know, a standoff in Taiwan or actual hot war between the U.S. and China, something along those lines. And in that scenario, many assets get taken to the cleaner.
But you better believe that oil and gas and other commodities are going to be in demand.
You know, we haven't electrified the U.S. military just yet.
And so, yeah, industrial inputs are a major factor in that type of a scenario.
And that's the type of scenario where a lot of other assets could lose purchasing power.
And by the way, that's a scenario where I don't know what happens with Bitcoin, at least in the short term.
you know, some would argue, okay, demand goes up, you know, because more people will be, whatever, fleeing whatever jurisdiction they're in, they pile into Bitcoin so they can move assets or they pile into Bitcoin because, you know, other things are going down.
Maybe that could happen that way or it could happen a different way, right?
It could be that demand goes down.
It could be that for reasons of national security, the buy button on Coinbase has been disabled temporarily.
things of that nature.
I mean, we know that the like Nidja quick reaction will be Bitcoin crashes.
Like it happens every time as a major geopolitical event.
Like when the US bombed Iran, Bitcoin Prize crashed.
Like the same thing would happen, I'm sure.
I mean, longer term, if it was something that played out over weeks and months, I don't know.
But I know on the announcement, Bitcoin would be crashing.
Probably pre-announcement because it's a prediction market.
I think that's a good bet, good bet, Danny.
But I want to know, like, you said you were in the precious metal trade, got out of silver at a decent price.
Like, when do you start rolling money back into Bitcoin as a wealth manager?
Because we are now down pretty significantly.
Like, how do you think this bear market plays out?
Yeah, that's a great question.
And I struggle with it daily.
Okay.
So, yes, Bitcoin is for me and for clients, one of those assets that's a asset.
strategic core holding, okay? Gold is too, by the way. In other words, the world would have to
change a lot fundamentally for me to not want to hold Bitcoin, to not want to hold gold.
And then most other major asset classes are also fundamental core holdings in some amount,
talking about U.S. stocks as an example. Like, am I ever going to own zero U.S. stocks? Probably not.
I'll probably get more selective about which ones I own, and I'm probably less likely to go market cap-weighted,
because although that's worked really well for more than a decade, we might be in the later
innings. We might have already passed the peak on that situation. And so, yeah, so then the
question is you're getting at is, well, yeah, at the margin, you know, maybe around the core holding,
when are you getting greedy, right? Not yet, I guess is much sure.
short answer. You know, I think that you had Joe, I think you had Joe consortium recently. I think he was, I can't remember, was he calling for a three handle or something or maybe four handle? He said he thinks we might hit 40, yeah. Yeah. And that's entirely possible. Like that would not surprise me at all. But equally I'm not going to bet, like, I probably don't put greater than 50% chance on that. That's probably a less than 50% chance scenario for me. By the way, another, yeah.
Yeah, just a reminder.
Always think in terms of percentages and uncertainties, right?
Nothing is certain.
Nothing is certain in this world.
Not even death anymore, I reckon, but we'll see how that goes.
Taxes, possibly, possibly.
So, yeah, so, like, is Bitcoin stupid cheap yet?
In my experience, based on my experience, no, it's not stupid cheap yet.
If you have no Bitcoin, like, should you be buying?
Yeah, you should be buying.
If you're under-allocated, should you be buying?
Yeah, probably.
I mean, DCA works as a general principle by definition
because you buy more coins when prices down
and you buy fewer coins when prices up.
I'm talking about DCA in dollar terms and fiat terms.
And so, you know, that's kind of always a good idea.
But yeah, we're still, I'm still of the mind that it is a bear market, most likely, feels that way.
I'm still of the mind that bear markets are about both price and time.
So we've had quite a bit of pain on price.
We haven't had that much time yet.
And we haven't really had ultimate pain on price either.
I sort of think you have to believe that this time is different,
which it might be to think that the bottom or to have confidence around the bottom being in.
So my guess is no, probably the bottom is not yet in,
but I don't have confidence in that.
And, you know, like if Bitcoin nuked to, yeah, to forehandle something in the 40s now,
would I want to be buying that in size?
Yeah, probably I would.
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Like, I always tell people to ignore anything I ever say about the price because, like, really, I've got no skin in the game in some ways because I'm never, I'm not selling Bitcoin.
Like, even if like you'd have told me the problem, like in November when you started saying we're getting close to the top, I still wasn't thinking about selling because like I just don't.
I just buy and hold Bitcoin.
and like when we hit 62, I think I put a bit of money back in.
Like, because I'm obviously, I have cash flow.
So I have money coming in all the time.
So like I am buying at these prices.
I've seriously up my DCA.
And I wouldn't be shocked if 60K was a bottom,
but I also wouldn't be shocked if it goes lower.
Like this is Bitcoin.
Weird things happen.
But like the one thing I am still convinced about is that we are seriously
undervalued at these levels, in my opinion.
And like I have just this like,
maybe this is pure coat, but I think this time might be different.
Like, I wouldn't be surprised if the economy runs really hot in 2026, and we do see Bitcoin go back up to, like, near all-time highs.
It wouldn't shock me either if that happens, and that would be great.
I own Bitcoin.
That'll be great.
And, yeah, you know, this is the fundamental question is, well, first of all, I like your statement about, you know, stacking harder or DCing harder.
I think that's a rational approach.
you're never going to catch the bottom.
That's pretty much impossible.
You're never going to catch the top either.
I mean, I didn't catch the top.
I never caught the top.
And so, yeah, you have to kind of, I think CheckMady on your show recently framed it well.
Yeah, stacking harder, you know, kind of being in really harder of accumulation mode.
You know, having some dry powder.
The amount of dry powder is different for different people.
And, you know, if you're comfortable having no dry pattern and literally, you know, putting every incremental fiat dollar or Aussie dollar or whatever that you earn into this thing, more power to you. You're built differently than I am. Maybe you're a better human. I know, I know some of you out there. You know, some of my friends are literally every dollar they make. They put into BTC and they just don't think about it. It's not for me. And each of us has different lives.
circumstances. But yeah, stacking harder at stacking harder as a general principle when
prices down by half in the long run, that's likely to work. That's likely to work very well.
One of the things you sent across some notes before this show. And one of the things you put in
there was that you don't think anyone should be all in Bitcoin. I am all in Bitcoin. Like this
is basic, like apart from a very small amount of cash, like the business has cash. It also has
Bitcoin, but it has some cash because I have expenses there. But like personally, I basically have
no money in the bank. It's like all Bitcoin. Why do you think that's a bad decision? Because this
actually gets back to the savings idea a little bit. Because while Bitcoin is not great savings,
if you buy it, you know, if you'd have bought it 126K, like, and now we're at 65, whatever we're at,
like that's not been a great savings vehicle. But I've been buying Bitcoin since like 2016. So
these price drops don't really, like it still kind of behaves a.
savings to me because we're still way above my cost basis. So given enough time, does Bitcoin become
savings? Interesting. Interesting framing. Okay. First, I'm going to defend myself. I said it makes,
being all in makes no sense for almost anyone, almost anyone. Okay. I hedged my language as I usually
do, Danny, because, you know, like nothing's 100%, right? There are, there are rare superhumans in the
world like you, and my hat is off to you. You know, if that makes sense for you, except for I think
you also said you were stacking extra hard in the downturn.
So I'm not sure those things can both be true.
How can you stack extra hard if,
little dividends from the company,
that's how.
Okay, okay.
All right, all right.
All right.
Well, anyway, yeah, I think it's true that for some people who are early enough,
where their average cost basis is so much lower than the purchase price,
then, yeah, it, uh,
It's gone great for you.
You've lived, there's two things there.
First of all, not only are you way above your cost basis, your average cost basis,
but also you've been forged in the fire of Bitcoin bear markets, right?
You've already lived through several.
So if you've already made it through this many, then, yeah, then your conviction is ironclad,
and you're probably going to be fine.
and you know but also i know i know a number of people and i'm probably i mean i'm definitely
in this category which is i'm bullish on bitcoin i had pretty high conviction and success um still
still i feel pain in the bear market and then also you know the magnitude of the numbers
matters for me so like when i first started stacking you know it was a large percent
of my net worth, but like it wasn't
in absolute dollars.
It didn't, it wasn't all
that much really at the time, relatively
speaking. You go through a couple cycles
and if you stay all in,
you know, pretty
soon you're talking about real money, as they say.
And so then the swings
in purchasing power can be big,
you know, then the up and down is like,
oh, plus or minus a really nice house
or, you know, whatever else.
And so
so I think some people, I think different
people respond differently. I think some people, when the nominal numbers go up, even though
one Bitcoin is one Bitcoin, they have to reckon with the fact that most of the real world
in terms of living expenses is denominated in Fiat. And so, yeah, losing significant amount of purchasing
power, like, you know, years of income, in some cases, decades of income, if you've really,
you know, if it's really gone up for you, you know, that that can weigh on you psychologically, I think.
I think that can weigh on a lot of people psychologically. So, you know, obviously everyone's different.
You know, if you got diamond hands and you don't feel pain and you got alligator blood,
what's the, I was think of the, of that movie Rounders and the Russian Teddy KGB talking about how Matt Damon's got alligator blood.
then you're fine.
But if you're a mere mortal like me and some of the rest of us,
then maybe 100% isn't necessarily for you and that's okay too.
That is okay too.
Funnily though, I'm the opposite.
Even though the dollar number that Bitcoin drops for me
is higher than it ever has been,
I feel less emotionally attached to it than I ever have.
The first bear market is way harder for me psychologically
than the one we're going through right now.
even though the numbers are greater, which is, I don't know, maybe that.
I think the reason is, like, buying Bitcoin is super easy.
Selling Bitcoin's really hard.
Like, I can, because I have, like, so much conviction about what Bitcoin will be in the future,
parting with Bitcoin becomes a very hard thing.
Like, I just don't do it.
And, like, the question is always, like, what are you selling it for?
Like, am I going to sell Bitcoin for more dollars?
Like, I don't, I don't care.
Like, I'm okay holding this for longer.
Like, I have conviction that Bitcoin price will be higher in the future.
So, like, I don't need dollars in my bank account right now.
The, the, like, equation changes because, like, at some point, we're going to buy a nice house and that kind of thing.
And at that point, I will sell Bitcoin.
But right now, like, sell it for what is always my question.
Yep.
And that's where I say, yeah, sorry, Bitcoiners.
Last year, I sold some coins and I bought a house.
Well, see, that's awesome.
Like, the thing, like, time is more scarce than Bitcoin, right?
You need to enjoy your life as well.
But I do find pressing the sell button impossible.
Yeah, you know, and there's different, it all depends on, you know, what your asset layout is too.
I mean, I, so speaking for myself, like, you know, taxable coins are hard to sell, but I did sell some and, you know, took the pain.
And I'm a California taxpayer, so let me tell you, it's, it is a lot of pain.
You know, and then I have retirement assets.
and those there's no cost to trade.
And so like, I don't know, like a, like a, not like a lemming.
I'm searching for the, you know, for the metaphor, but I look around and I see the world of potential things that I can trade and I don't have to hold them for a long time.
I can hold them for a week or a month or a year or I can hold them for one day.
And so, you know, when I have a sense, and by the way, this is not the way to operate for 99.
I've been trading markets for whatever 25 years.
So I really don't want to advocate this for people.
But yes, when Bitcoin is in a bull market, nothing keeps up with it.
It's severely undervalued, you know, as a long-term investment, I think it makes sense to have a sizable allocation for most people.
and then, yeah, as far as the asymmetry and the variant perception, I think you have to ask yourself.
So, like, for example, when I, you know, put out my thesis in 2019, my sense was there was a major variant perception.
What does that mean?
It means that the average person with money or the average investor or speculator in the world didn't think too much of Bitcoin.
And I thought a lot about Bitcoin.
and my probability of success multiplied by the potential valuation was very different from the markets.
Today, how much, you know, how variant is the perception?
Well, it's definitely very variant for some bit corners who think that, I guess the
Bitcoin's, you know, go into a million next year.
That's an exaggeration, but, you know, you get the idea.
I think the variance, let's put it this way,
a lot more people in the world have done their homework
on what Bitcoin's potential value is.
So it's probably not a secret
or not as much of a secret anymore.
Obviously, we know there's all the naysayers,
there's Professor Fax Machine, Paul Krugman,
and God knows how many who say it's either worthless
or going to zero or never going to reach its potential.
blah, blah, blah. And so, yeah, so I guess what I'm saying is, I feel like for the first time in a long time,
I have a variant perception on more than one asset in a sizable way. And so for me, it makes sense to
hold other things. But look, for many people, it probably doesn't make sense. And also for many
people, you know, they claim they're all in, but also they own house, you know, really they have other assets that they, I guess, don't think of as investment assets. I do think of the housing stuff as investment assets because, unfortunately, housing has been monetized. And so, you know, there's so much capital there that you kind of have to think about it as an investment, even though you live in the thing and you consume it. So, yeah, I don't know. I digress. I forgot your, your original.
question or comment, but those are
a few thoughts. Yeah,
it's interesting. One of the other things you put
in your notes was around the
Treasury companies.
How much of
actually, I guess there's two questions here.
One is, do you think
they impacted the bull market in a
negative way this time?
And how many of them
do you think you can survive this
bare market?
So, yes, I think
they impacted the market
in a negative way, because if the marginal purchasing power coming into Bitcoin is fiat
denominated, right?
Let's say it's dollars.
And the question is, is the dollar flowing into Bitcoin or is it flowing into an entity
trading at a premium to Bitcoin, right?
Then the entity is absorbing more fiat capital per dollar of Bitcoin purchased than
it otherwise would.
So yes.
Like,
you know,
like throwing a punch.
Just to left curve that,
it's like if something's trading
at 2XN nav,
then you're getting actually
half the Bitcoin demand.
Yeah, right,
exactly.
Well said.
You said it much more
succinctly than I did.
No,
I was just trying to figure it out.
So I think,
yeah,
I think that happened.
I think that happened.
So, yeah,
so.
I need to ask the question there
because I don't know if that's right.
Why would,
if something's trading,
a 2xm nav and you put $100 into that stock, they're still buying $100 of Bitcoin with it.
So why is that negative?
I think that if you're putting, they're still buying $100 a Bitcoin.
Well, I guess the capital flow, you're selling, I have to think about it, honestly.
So let's say you're at the margin and you're some, you're some bitcoiner who owns coins and you're
saying, okay, I'm going to sell some coins because I'm going to buy some company, you know,
that I like because I think it's going to be a higher return on investment, mostly because I think
they're going to raise debt capital efficiently, right? They're going to borrow money from somewhere.
That's another factor, too. How much of the debt capital funded into these companies otherwise
would have bought BTC. The argument is you're tapping new markets is that there are
investors out there who can only buy convertible debt and they can't buy outright coins or they
can't buy the ETF, you know, they can only buy preferreds, you know, or some kind of debt
instrument. And then obviously, yeah, you had all these convertible, convertible issuance.
which were, I think some hedge incremental,
there were definitely incremental hedge fund money
who were just kind of hedging it out, right?
They were saying, you know,
I can essentially lock in a profit
if I short the right instrument
against what I'm long.
But yeah, I don't know.
You put me on the spot, Danny.
I had to think about it, honestly.
But I'll follow up with you.
It seems like, it seems like,
it seems like, I mean, a question is like, how do you bid up the stock to a premium? Like, where is that
premium coming from at the margin? I think maybe the answer is, like, how does MSTR trade for whatever
one times MNF to three and a half times MNAV? I think it's because there's marginal buyers,
there's marginal capital just buying the stock and bidding it up. You know, where did the capital come from?
I think that marginal capital into the equity for a lot of people came out of coins.
I mean, certainly people I know, you know, sold BTC basically to buy MSTR.
But I'd have to think about the, about the, about the, about the, about the, yeah, I heard a lot of that as well.
That's one of the things that I'd be really curious on the truth in some of this.
Like, people always say that these treasury companies, it's like unlocking new pools of capital.
Like, especially outside of strategy, I don't know how true that is.
I think this is just Bitcoiners looking to basically get leverage on their Bitcoin.
I don't really believe, you know, the call whatever, the 20th biggest treasury company is getting, you know, real institutional capital coming in.
I just don't believe that.
100%.
I agree with that take.
That's how the market's shaken out.
You know, MSTR is sort of a unique beast.
And the long tail of all these tiny cats and dogs are not size enough, not relevant enough, basically to entice real money, institutional money.
in for the most part yeah do you think next cycle will still have a big treasury company pump
interesting question so let's take well let's let's let's parse it out let's take msterr as an
example how many coins can mstr buy how many coins can sailor buy i think at some point there might be
a limit and i don't just mean because number goes up and so you know for
for each Fiat dollar that they can raise, you know, it doesn't buy as many number of coins.
I'm thinking in terms of how big a target gets painted on that pile of coins, you know, when it gets to be, whatever, you know, 5% of the, 5% of the total outstanding, you know, 10%.
It's probably not going to get to 10%, but you take the point.
I think that Van is an investor, you have to say, well, if governments, you know, need to get their hands on a big pile of coins, like, where are they going to turn?
And then you also get, you know, single counterparty risk in general.
You know, as an investor, you say, okay, if there's a dominant player in an industry, do I want to own that because dominance is sort of a
a reflection of a durable monopoly position or ability to over earn.
This was part of the debate, I don't know, a year and change ago.
I remember having a debate.
I can't remember who it was, which pot it was.
You know, and there was a lot of noise about, well, what, imagine the things you could do,
the miraculous, wonderful things with the world's biggest pile of Bitcoin.
And my response was, yes, I had, imagine.
How about just tell me.
mean example. There was no concrete, there's no concrete, you know, actionable ideas about
what is actually the implementable business model that uniquely you can capture, you know,
because you have more than half a million coins or a million coins or whatever. Yeah,
are there economies to scale there? It's not obvious to me at all that there are economies to scale.
You know, I used the model, I think I talked about this on Preston, on the bear market episode I do with Preston, which was most of these things are kind of like closed-end funds, you know, they trade at, sometimes they traded a premium to book value, but oftentimes they trade it a discount.
If they're excellent capital allocators, then maybe they trade it some modest premium to book, you know, like Berkshire or Markell Corp or any of these any of these.
conglomerates. And then if you look at the bank model, you know, really well-managed banks,
like exceptionally well-managed banks, sometimes traded two times book, which is like two times
M-nav. And if they trade higher than that, you know, that's a sell. So will there, will a premium
come back into the market? Maybe that's a better question. Like if you have, if the question is,
will these things trade up? If Bitcoin goes up, well, if they still on Bitcoin.
then yeah, hopefully they trade up.
If they don't, then we've got a real problem.
I think the better question is do they trade to,
does the discount go away,
or does the discount contract a lot,
or even does it flip to a premium?
I suspect it'll be,
I will suspect the discount will contract a lot.
So there'll be some point in this cycle
where if you can buy these things that,
you know, 30, 40, 50 percent discounts,
or whatever, 0.5MNAV or 0.6 or whatever that is, you know, it's probably going to go pretty well.
The real tricky question is, yeah, is where does spot go and where does discount go?
Like, that's another example. Like, if I saw names that were trading it, you know, less than 50%, or greater than 50% discounts or less than 0.5MNAV, then even if I'm bearish on
Bitcoin spot for a while or I don't have confidence, you know, that could still go pretty well.
Like, as long as the thing doesn't unwind, as long as it's not a fraud, you know, then actually
you could make a nice trade there.
And then the question is, well, is that a trade or is that an investment?
And my sense is it's probably a trade.
It's like, do you want to be a long-term hoddler of XYZ treasury company?
I don't.
Not really.
Yeah, exactly.
Do I want to trade it with no tax effect, you know, no tax effect with my Roth IRA?
Am I a buyer at some level?
Yeah.
There's a trade there probably.
You know, have I put the trade on yet?
No.
Yeah, so that's probably the framework, probably the framework for me.
Yeah, I think one of the really interesting questions that you brought up then is like how many coins can say their own.
and like it seems pretty inevitable that he'll probably get to a million coins at some point given
enough time like he's really not that far away right now um but at some point it's going to get
really hard for him to incrementally increase his stack but he has to constantly buy otherwise
there is no like case for him to be trading at a premium and so like when like what what is the
end game here like it can't like being an etf's not interesting like he has to continually try and acquire
coins and like how many coins is too much.
Like I don't know.
These are just all the questions I have in my head.
I don't know the answer to these questions, Danny.
I think that what's really interesting about him and their situation, but also of lesser,
let's call them lesser Bitcoin treasury companies, is that, yeah, the valuation models
and the frameworks really depend a lot on the assumptions, rate of accumulation.
price of the underlying, how much and how fast can they raise debt capital or quasi debt capital, whether it's preferreds or anything else.
And the confidence intervals or the bands, you know, around these potential outcomes for these variables are huge.
Like one of the, there was a lot of discussion I think about around, I can't remember the term, but, you know, basically the rate of accumulation.
I guess it's BTC yield. Is it BTC yield?
And the question is, yeah, you can.
You can look historically and see the BTC yield.
Like that's a historical fact.
What's it going to be in the future?
I have no idea.
You know, what's the, how much variance is there around the base case?
Huge variance.
Yeah, I really don't know.
When you're trying to value a stock in general and you're thinking about earnings or cash flow,
you're saying I can see what the earnings and the cash flow were.
or I had some model of how they'll evolve over time.
And obviously, nobody knows the future.
So, you know, you had scenario analysis.
You have your downside.
You have your upside case.
But it seems to me that the, yeah, the width of that window is quite high.
It's a very wide window.
And so I think it's really hard to value these things or make projections about how it turns out.
I don't know the answer.
I wish I knew the answer, Danny.
It's going to be interesting.
I don't love the idea of a single entity owning 5% of a supply.
Certainly not 10%.
But there's nothing we can do to stop this.
Yeah.
And I wonder from evaluation perspective,
the funny thing is we know about MSTR is,
you know, you got your hardcore bitcointers who just want leverage.
So they're greedy.
Let's call it what it is.
Greedy bitcoins.
Bitcoiners who are bullish on Bitcoin, but they say, ah, but I can make even more holding this thing with leverage.
You know, and then you have, there's some institutions there, obviously.
And then now, you know, there's some indexation inclusion, right?
Some robots are buying this thing mindlessly.
And each of those pools of capital is kind of different.
I do wonder what a clear-eyed, you know, sort of not-bolt-hard Bitcoin.
analyst says about how big that stack can be.
I don't want to say allowed to get,
but I kind of mean allowed to get, right?
It's like at what point did the powers that be start to,
start to worry about that?
Or at what point do rational investors just say,
yeah, that's too big a, that's too big a honeypot?
Now you could say, oh, well, Coinbase has already had,
I forget the number now, but, you know,
they have more than 10% of the coins physically.
Maybe it's, I'm trying to remember.
It's like between 10 and 20, we think.
There's a difference between just custody and coins on behalf of someone else, though,
and being the owner of those coins.
And I guess you could maybe argue that you're still custody on behalf of the shareholder,
but it's different.
Yeah.
And then you get the, I mean, obviously you got the key man risk, you know,
I want Michael Siller to live long and prosper.
But, you know, to the extent that he has control,
a rational investor has to ask, okay, well, if there's, I don't know, change in leadership or an ownership for whatever reason, yeah, does the board keep sticking with the strategy?
Under what circumstances would the, would or could the board capitulate if he's gone?
I don't know.
I don't know.
So many questions, man.
You know, this is what makes it fun, though, Danny, which is gets back to one of the themes that we're talking about earlier, which is.
anyone that says anything with certainty about anything bitcoin or otherwise run in the opposite direction
be uh you know ask questions you know have some doubt about things and uh assume that the range
of possibilities around your base case is wide basically uh that's that's my approach to life
maybe i'll end up poorer maybe i'll end up with fewer coins uh you know maybe the uh the all
in Bitcoiners, lifers who never sell coins, will be laughing all the way to the digital bank of the
future, you know, and I'll be stuck in my, yeah, I don't know, I'll be stuck eating the bugs because
there's been so much inflation that all my other assets lose all their purchasing power.
Even then, I have a suspicion that if Bitcoin gets anywhere close to reaching its potential,
hopefully fingers crossed, you know, I and my family will have enough coins.
but who knows what the future holds.
I'm sure you will, man.
This has been awesome, Andy.
We'll have to do it again.
When you think the bear market is over
and we're back in a bull market,
let's do another show.
Where do you want to send anyone
who wants to find out more about you?
Yeah, I guess why buy Bitcoin is the book
and I guess on X, Edstrom, Andrew.
I have the book here somewhere.
I just can't see where it is.
You're checking the shelf.
The thing is, there's so many Bitcoin books these days
is that if you actually, if you keep a shelf of all the books, there it is.
There it is. Good man. He's got his copy. You knew it was there. You knew it was there.
It was right in the middle. I should have seen it earlier.
It's great. Great book. It's been a pleasure, Danny.
Yes, it really has. Thank you, man. And I'm sure I'll see you again soon. We'll try and do one in person at some point. Thank you, Andy.
Looking forward. Thanks, Danny.
