156. Our New Altcoin Strategy - AI, Gaming, Memecoins, and Culture Coins

Looking at the post bitcoin halving performance, like prices really rise about three to six months after bitcoin halving. We're only about six weeks in, right? So I think we're probably still going to a couple of months of chopping, a sideways action. And then if you look at the last three halvings, the bitcoin price has just gone parabolic, you know, afterwards. And we're really at the start of that. There's a lot of short term things that you know, are on the horizon that aren't really attractive but I think will be later in the year. The biggest for me is the US election. Trump recently came out and said he's pro crypto. If that was to happen, if Trump was to be elected, then things like Gary Gensler, Elizabeth Warren will all be replaced. That's one of the biggest, I guess, short term downfalls of crypto right now, is that the SEC continue to pile on. Welcome back to the Ben and Bergs Podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of collective shift alongside Ms. Bergs, your favorite MBA and CEO of Collective Shift. Join us as we bring you world class crypto research and strategies to help you dominate this crypto bull market as well as behind the scenes view of us scanning a fully remote subscription research business here in Australia. If you like the podcast, we'd love for you to leave a subscribe if you're on YouTube or follow us on your favorite podcasting app. It is how we grow the podcast each and every week with no affiliates, no commissions, no advertising coming to you completely independent, giving you the beans of what you need to know about the crypto market. And today we're talking about a bit of a market update, some altcoin sectors that we've been looking at. We're in a bit of a slumpbergs. Bitcoin's been trending down for the last seven weeks. We had a massive run up for six months straight. We're in the green and we're sort of in this little lull period. We're post bitcoin halving and I wrote this actually to, to basically the tea, funnily enough to cointelegraph pre bitcoin halving of what was going to happen afterwards. And I felt that we're going to have this correction, this pullback period because there's this real lack of narrative, there's a real lack of excitement, there's nothing really to get excited about at the moment. There's a few things which, which we'll Touch on in a minute. But these corrections are very, very normal for a bull market. So uh, you probably heard about, you heard me talk about this before but in the last bull market where we went from US$4,000 to 65, US$000 from the COVID lows to 2021, Bitcoin went down 13 times, 10% plus, which is quite wild if you think about it. So we had drawdowns ranging from, you know, a couple of percent right down to like 35, 40% in some of the deeper corrections. And we're in one of those right now. And I, I guess the, the point I want to fundamentally nothing has changed for bitcoin or crypto. There's just a lower inflows coming in. The ETF has really dried up. You know, the fear and greedy. Next is back to October 2023 levels. Really there's a lot more fear in the markets. I'm starting to see people talk about that the four year cycle isn't real and the bull market's over and you know, it's all happened.

Yeah, they've already called it mate. They're like, no, that's it. That was the bull market.

That's it boys, wrap it up. But I think that people lose a lot of perspective. I mean bugs, we're only at 40,000 in February, right. And we're still Bitcoin's at 61,000. It's just al have sort of been smashed.

People forget I was buying bitcoin. I remember when I went over to see you in Melbourne, it was like 30 something thousand. And now we've doubled that. Like just think about how far we've come in a short period of time and. But you're right with the sentiment. I feel it too. Like a month and a half ago I was waking up every morning, first thing I do is check my portfolio, look at my phone. And now I don't do that at all. And I'm like, you kind of lost that momentum and that thing to look forward to. And price is the thing that happens that spurs everyone on. Then those narratives follow after that.

Spot on, man. And you know, again, what I really want to stress is these corrections are very normal for bull markets. So you know, in the 2013 bull market, Bitcoin went down nearly 65% in, in just before it rallied from like $40 to $4,000. Right. In 2021, Bitcoin pulled back close to 50% before it went from, you know, $3,000 to nearly $60,000. Like these corrections really do bring about a flushing of the, you know, the, the leverage, the, the weekends. There was a really interesting chart that was looking at recently showing us that who was actually selling and predominantly the amount of sellers that have happened for bitcoin over the last couple of, couple of weeks or you know, four weeks have been those that have owned bitcoin less than three months. There you go, in and out, mate. On chain analysis gives you this really good insight as to who's buying and who's selling. And primarily it's a lot of the weak hands that bought the top panic and now I'm selling down and I.

Think people need to reframe this as well. Like there's a part where there's not a lot of price action. Things are down like 15%, maybe more if you're in alts. This is an amazing buying opportunity. Like I really think that, I believe that especially for, let's just keep it simple. Bitcoin and Ethan, I still believe amazing buying opportunity. You are not going to get that many pullbacks in your lifetime. Think about the excitement and everything that you had when Ethereum is peaking, Bitcoin is peaking and now it's on sale. What has changed? Nothing except the sale.

Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. And it's just the narrative, right. And even looking at the post bitcoin halving, you know.

Performance like prices really rise about three to six months after bitcoin halving. We're only about six weeks in, right. So I think we're probably still going to the couple of months of chopping a sideways action and then if you look at the last three halvings that the bitcoin price has just gone parabolic, you know, afterwards. And we're really at the start of that, you know, there's a lot of short term things that you know, are on the horizon that aren't really attractive but I think will be later in the year. The biggest for me is the US election. Trump recently came out and said he's very well, not, not, I'm paraphrasing, but he's pro crypto. And you know, if that was to happen, if Trump was to be elected, things like Gary Gensler, Elizabeth Warren will all be replaced. And that's biggest, that's one of the biggest, I guess short term downfalls of crypto right now is that the SEC continue to pile on, you know, more and more, I guess force to defy, you know, Ethereum, different, you know, businesses in crypto who they believe are, you know, doing things against the law when Ultimately they haven't really made it clear. They just don't like crypto, which has been super frustrating.

It's interesting where when you get to strategy it's kind of institutional power where they want the things to be the things tomorrow. They want it to be the same as today, which is the same as yesterday. Like you don't want too much change too quickly and it has to be slow over time and you want to maintain the power base you've had, the organizational structure you have, the funding that you have. There is so much tied to those SEC decisions. Way more than just hey, we want this thing, it's the long reaching implications. So I think it will take a lot of time. But while all of this is happening, Ben Alts are down significantly and you've seen that as an opportunity mate.

Yes, we've made a few investments over the last little bit. So we announced the members I think two weeks ago that we added to eight altcoins, seven of which already had. We actually added one new one to the portfolio which I'm pretty excited about in the, in this sort of. Well, it's a bit of a crossover but gaming and AI predominantly. But some of the old coins have done really well for us recently. I mean Jupiter's still up 80% since we invested back in February. Make has done really well, up about 30% DMT a small cap in the layer 3 space, up 100% since we invested in March. That's after all the corrections. One interesting space that we've been delving into more recently is the gaming AI space. So yeah, one gaming play that I've been invested in for a little while now has been Ronin. I think Ronin's a good infrastructure play and after speaking with Nathan Bergs, hearing that the VCs are still focusing on the infrastructure level, that's a real confidence booster for us just to, to keep building our structure and our portfolio around some of the more heavyweight layer 1 blockchains that are really gaining attention. I think some of the older ones like Cardano Polkadot, I'm not too excited about. But some of the newer, more purpose built blockchains I still think have got a bit of room to run.

Yeah, definitely. And we've seen that narrative play out time and time again where it's a lot of value accrues to those infrastructural protocol level tokens where other things are being built on it. So it's, it's a really good play.

The other one is AI, which I know you've got A few thoughts around Bergs. I think we'll talk about sort of the narratives of AI. I think there's a wave of unlaunched projects that are going to come out of this sector. I think price action will probably follow the AI stocks for a little while. Like, there's a lot of correlation there. We've. We've got the Nvidia earnings coming out middle of next week, which will be interesting if they sort of pump. Also, we had ChatGPT4O that, that came out the last couple of days. Bought a look. Pretty crazy, my mate.

Okay. My Twitter has been taken over by all sorts of nonsense. Oh my God. You thought chat GPT4 was amazing. Have you seen chat GPT4? Oh, here's 15 things that he didn't know it could do. And it's like every single prick is an absolute, you know, oh my God. They're just like, right, this is. This. I found this. You must see this. Everyone's an AI expert again. It is absolutely crazy.

Welcome back.

Oh my God.

But I think, you know, there's a lot of narrative there. I think a couple that we've been looking at are render and also near protocol, like a couple of ones that are sort of probably leading the space in the AI. I think there's a lot of narrative to be, to be drawn upon there from retail investors and I think it's pretty. A pretty hot area for VCs as well.

I agree. And I crap on AI and crypto a lot because I know how difficult it is to actually make this stuff. I know how difficult it is to run a crypto project. That's just ridiculous. That's why I don't do it. I know how difficult it is to run AI projects. That's why I don't do it. I spent a lot of my life in data science. Combine those together, very, very difficult.

And. But a lot of people don't have that knowledge. And what they're doing is they're taking AI is amazing over here and applying it to crypto. And if you think about who's investing, 90% of the people will have that level of knowledge. So these tokens will go through the roof because they're saying it's great over here. I've seen what AI can do. I can use AI now. AI is going to be amazing in crypto long term. That's all going to get flushed out. But as a narrative, I do believe it's a very strong narrative.

Yeah. My green narratives drives crypto prices, or prices drive narratives, depending on how you want to look at it.

That's it. It's like you have a narrative. All of a sudden, the price pumps and you're like, oh, well, it must be true. You get that confirmation bias. And then that hype cycle just absolutely spins up. That flywheel starts going.

It's a good transition in terms of that hype cycle around Meme coins. And meme coins have been an interesting one. I still don't invest in Meme co. I'm actually seriously considering it. Just off. A couple of things have happened recently. One, we had the game, the GameStop stock pump bergs. Did you see that over the last couple of days? We had the. The guy come back.

Okay, so Roaring Kitty is back. And folks, I've been on leave. Ben actually let me out of the basement for a week. He's like, mate, go get some sunshine. You know, you burnt it after two years. And so. And what do I see on Twitter, Ben? He's posting these videos where they're just amazing scenes from movies that he's just cut together. He would have done about 10 movies over 10 little clips over a day. The best marketing you have seen in your life. And GameStop is just pumped. It's like, oh, guess what? And like, man, the amount of shorts that he's busted through just by posting videos on it, wasn't it?

I saw a Billy shorts were liquidated, mate.

How good. And like, anyone that hasn't watched Dumb Money go and watch the movie, it is amazing.

This guy's just absolutely taking the mickey. Every two or three hours, he'll just post another meme and just consistent, like, for the last, like, 48 hours, it's like, every hour, she's got these, like, just epic memes.

And he said nothing, but he's just spurring people on. And even one where, like, Thor came down and there was, like, this lightning thing, and everyone's like, oh, my God, it's the Ethereum logo. Like, he's not really. There's no narrative or anything there. It's just a guy that's attached to a stock and he's stirring all these emotions in people and getting them to buy. It is amazing that someone can do that. And this is the way that culture and the Internet works, where the fastest way to spread something is through a meme. And, like, people get it. There's so much, like, behind it. And it's just fun, right? Like, people want to do this thing.

Yeah, yeah.

Classic example. So, mate, you're looking at meme coins. Are you going to buy. We had questions like when we had our member meet up, they're like, how much like Dogworth hat do you own? I'm like, none. And you were the same.

Have you changed your mind, mate? Meme coins. After speaking with Nathan and just doing a little bit more research.

Or even even Vaneck recently that Vaneck have started a meme coin index.

Wild right. We've got a fund manager that is running a index tracking the top X amount of meme coins that you can actually buy.

As like a. I don't know if it's actually an etf, but it's some sort of like accessible product where you can basically get exposure to meme coins through your brokerage account.

Wild right, Nathan. Nathan reframed this. This is. This will be the episode before this or the one before with Nathan Gurr. Amazing guy, used to work for Collective Shift. He's reframed it from meme coins where they just seem like they're a joke to culture coins. I think that reframing is so good because that's what they're capturing. People are identifying with it and buying it and going with that hype and being a part of that culture.

They're tokenizing community and tokenizing the Internet. And I'm like, wow, that's actually that now it's sort of reframing this to like, this is kind of like not a fundamental investment for like something you want to hold for like value for long periods of time, but something that if you can catch the right hype wave and you can, and you can get onto these communities. I mean Pepe hit all time highs a couple of days ago. It's in, it's in the top 30 now. Like wild, right? When the market's retracing, you got some of these memes still hitting all time highs. So a couple that we've been looking at, again, just full caution. These are super volatile, super risky. 99 chance you're gonna go to zero. I would only allocate what you're willing to lose and probably have a little degen bucket just to kind of keep it separate. But a couple I'm looking at with, with Matt is Bowdoin, Joe Biden. So Bowdoin on Solana and then also Trump which is on eth. Both are sort of the leading, you know, coins tracking the, the election and, and the two candidates pretty much going toe to toe. And yeah, we, we think that might have a bit of a run up as we head into the election, which is fascinating. And then also dog with Hat Wif and also popcat are probably the picks that we have so far. So I haven't invested just yet, but seriously considering it. But if you look at the chart, man, it is volatile. Like these things are, you know, they're not for the faint hearted, mate.

That's exactly it. Like it's. I think of it as like, imagine you go to a pub, right, and you can drink with anyone and you want to. Who are you going to drink with? You're going to go to the Rowdy Bunch because you know you're going to have a lot of fun. And it's like you go over there, you know you're going to have a good night and then, okay, you're three beers in. Four, five, six beers. When you're six beers in, do you think you're going to stop and not have the seventh? And you're having so much fun. The sun's still up. No, you go for 7, 8, 9, 10. So this is the thing, you got to be careful with these meme coins. You go in there, you have a lot of fun, but at some point you need to be like, okay, I'm willing to ride this to zero. Or I'm willing to call it take it out and the rest is house money or take some profits along the way. And you have to be willing to do that because it is like you're on your seventh or eighth beer and you're like, well, I've had this many, I might as well drink all these friends like you just, it's very, very hard to not going.

And after eight beers I'm texting that girl I've been talking to with a, with a pretty, pretty poor message. And.

This, see, this is it after, after eight to ten beers, mate, you're going to get your phone out, you're going to be like, oh, let's just open up the exchange. What are these other meme coins we got? Oh, let's get on those as well. And then you wake up with a hangover, sore head and $8 billion you've lost in meme coins, mate.

And the chick you were talking to has blocked you.

That's it, that's it. You look at the text that you've been sending your ex, mate, you're like, oh God, just hang your head in shame. It's gonna feel shame for the next month. It's all over, no dignity left.

Wow, that's. That's too true. That hits home a little bit.

So, yeah, anyway, that's what we've been looking at as always, you know, what we do is we share sort of our investments, live with our members, and there was eight coins that we invested in recently, one new one. The rest I sort of just topped up to my portfolios. You know, I focus outside of bitcoin this time. I've got a lot of bitcoin. I focus on Eth, Solana, some of the big caps, you know, Roan and a couple other plays in there. Added an AI sort of gaming play in there as well. But, yeah, ultimately I think, you know, this sort of correction period right now, you know, has sort of really brought prices down to a pretty decent level. And if you've got some kahunas, this is really where you can make a good return on the, on the upswing when we get out of this correction.

I've been reflecting a lot on the podcast we have with Nathan. Just saying how he, he's got a hot wallet, he connected to everything, he tries everything. And how you can be your own VC where you had, you could be on chain, you have Uniswap, you have a few other things and you can invest. And now is the perfect opportunity to pause and reflect on where you're at. He even clarified my thinking about the barbell strategy, where I was thinking stocks and properties on one side, cryptos on the other, but he's like, no, no, no, Bitcoin is on your property side. And I was like, whoa, all right. If we use that framing, which I do say, because I say, you know, at 70k, Bitcoin takes over the market cap of silver, 700k, it takes over the price of the market cap of gold, 14 trillion, and then it comes after property. I say that all the time, but I've never really thought that through, that it's coming after property, but it actually belongs with property. It is property. So now I'm looking and I'm pausing, I'm looking back at my portfolio going, well, if bitcoin's in the property bucket, I need to take on some more risk. I need to get that side of the barbell up to scratch. So I'm looking at my portfolio and mate, I'm giving you a call after this and we're going to sort it out.

Yeah, no, I like it, man. I think that barbell strategy is a good one. And I've been working a lot more with some of our platinum members recently about getting that structure and alignment, especially those larger portfolios. Like, I think this is really where you can make a lot of difference and really increase the returns. If you can, you can find those sectors and you know, build for that long term and short term strategy. So, you know, on that, on that point, if, if you are a lister, I mean, we've had a lot of Bennett's listeners end up becoming members books, which is really awesome. We love to see it, mate.

Even meeting them in person, so good in person.

We do have a nice little special membership offer for those that are Bennett Burke's listeners. So if you are at a point where, you know, you're still in crypto, you know, you're down a little bit, you really don't want to stuff up this next cycle. Maybe round trip, the last one, maybe you just want to get that exit strategy in order. You know, you're busy, you got stuff going on, you got family, you know, wife telling you you need to be, you know, spending more time at home and you're trying to manage a decent crypto portfolio. Honestly, feel free to book a call with me. We've got a few spots that we open up every, every week for serious guys. There's a bit of an application form. If you sort of pass the filters, you find an access to my calendar you can book at a time. It's a 30 minute session. We'll go through your goals, go through your challenges, what you might need help with and then I'll see how we can help. And we've got, you know, an amazing service that, or a couple of services that can help you, depending on where you're at. And if it's not for you, I'll try and point you in the right direction. It's, it's absolutely zero obligation and hopefully we can help you, you know, get ready and crush this bull market.

Mate, I'm getting ready again. I thought I was ready, but mate, I'm reassessing. I'm really getting ready now.

We had a good session about you menu. We did the strategy session, that was.

Fun, just having some time off. I've actually looked over it again and I'm like, be conservative, mate.

Yeah, let's really go for this. I've got some bigger goals now. I see where the market's going and I'm like, no, let's really do this properly. And now that that bitcoin is in the property bucket and it's de risk and it's a significant part of my portfolio, it's like, all right, let's restructure.

And let's go book another call, mate. Let's go.

Easy, easy. By the way, on these calls, Ben just gives me Heaps of. He's just like, nah, you're an idiot.

You.

You need to do this. Why are you doing this? Why are you doing it? Doesn't really. You're actually really good. I expected you to give me a lot of. Because. Because we're mates and we work together. You're like, oh, you dickhead. You should know this. But you're like, nah, mate, how much have you got here? What do you have over there? How big's your mortgage? What's going on there? Be like, mate, why don't you just do this, this and this, and then you achieve all of your goals?

I was like.

This guy actually might know what he's talking about.

Oh, mate.

It was.

It was really so clarifying for me and I was so thankful I had that call with you, man.

Like, no, awesome, man.

And it's weird to say because I work in the business, I talk to you every single day. And just that, like, 10 minutes with you, I'm just like, great. I could sleep better at night. Weirdest thing. And I hate giving you credit, mate.

I know.

I like giving you.

No, I love doing it.

I love doing it. I love.

Because I've got so much experience talking with different people. Like, I can see what most people's challenges are and. And how you can sort of unwind them and create a, you know, a plan to success. So I like doing it.

That was a key thing as well. Where, like, with me, I know generally what the team's doing or what I'm doing, a couple of my friends. But then, like, when you speak to so many different types of people and help them out with that, and then bringing that knowledge back, that's incredible. Like, having those kind of insights that I don't have. And that was the difference for me.

Yeah, there's a lot of data. I can collect it and pass it on. There's a lot of fast tracking of challenges that you might face and how you can sort of navigate it. So, yeah, that's good fun. Okay, well, guys, if you're interested in jumping on one of those, there's a link in the description. It's collectorshift IO strategy book in a time. It's a video. Call with me and we'll crack into it. Thank you so much, guys. I hope you found that valuable. Yeah. Jump in the link below, click that strategy button, and I'll see you on a call, hopefully. Otherwise, we'll chat to you next episode.

Thanks, champions.