159. Our Updated Crypto Strategy As Bull Market Kicks Into Gear

When there's strong fundamentals, strong growth and really negative sentiment in a bull market. In a correction, historically there are amazing times to buy. So we bought the Dip on Ethereum at 3100 on March 26th because we felt the fundamentals were super strong. We had the successful Dankun upgrade, we had the L2 slowly getting more and more attention and as of time of recording layer 2 has just hit an all time high TVL so that played out perfectly. Welcome back to another episode of 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 ce. Oh 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 scaling a fully remote subscription research business here in Australia. If you like the podcast, we'd love for you to leave us a follow so you can listen into all our episodes which come to you each and every week. Completely independent. No affiliate links, no commissions, no advertising, none of this nonsense which all your other favorite influences do. We are coming to you trying to give you the best insights and analysis to help you succeed in crypto. Right Bergs, Lots happening. Probably one of the most bullish weeks we've had in crypto in a long time from a fundamental perspective, but yet the market really hasn't taken into account sort of these these things that have happened. I just want to quickly summarize what's happened in the last week. So we had the surprise approval of the ETH ETF which went from a 7% likelihood to to being confirmed in the bank. Two or three days later we had the fit 21 bill passing. Now that bill was basically a bill that was passed for the administration in the US to become or trying to work closer with Congress to ensure there is a comprehensive and balanced regulatory framework for digital assets. And they are hoping that this will promote the responsible development of digital assets and payment innovation and help reinforce United States leadership in the global financial system. So we'll speak about that more in a second. But that was a pretty big bill. The other one that got passed through that wasn't discussed a lot was an anti CBDC bill that was passed through. We'll talk about that as well. Then the Biden administration, quote, eager to work with Congress to ensure a comprehensive and balanced regulatory framework which I just mentioned. Wild because they were never pro crypto. Then Trump stated if he is elected he will ensure the future of crypto and the future of bitcoin will be made in the usa. Quote support the right to self custody, quote keep Elizabeth Warren and her goons away from your bitcoin and quote commute the sentence of Ross Albright. Wow. Bergs like not only is this one of the most bullish sort of news from the US we've seen a long time.

The prices are still well below all time highs but sitting about yearly year to date highs. So man, who would have known crypto was going to play a meaningful part in like a political battle in the U.S. and.

Yeah, I don't know man, I'm just, I'm just so bullish. This is ridiculous how, what's it kind of come out? How the prices have barely reacted.

Isn't it weird that the battleground the election is being fought on is now crypto? Like where the weird people over there and it's like no, to get votes I need to look at crypto and this is going to put me in front and enable me to be president, which is absolutely crazy man.

I couldn't agree more. And Adam Cochran put it really well. He said this isn't just about an ETF or one vote. This is an entire change in messaging and strategy. I cannot begin to tell you how big of a deal this is. While Warren might continue to fight, the White House has just given and other Democrats a pass to now support crypto and blockchain innovation and has backed off on blocking via authority. Maybe the war isn't fully over, but it is a major victory and a shifting of alliances and the enemies without support or resupply. After decades of indecision, confusion and chilling effects, blockchains in America will finally be open for business.

Isn't it crazy where you look at these lists that come out like if you're participating in an airdrop or some initial offering and places that are excluded are like you know, North Korea, some South American countries and the usa. So they're basically killing off innovation and people are going to Dubai and other areas to innovate. And America has a huge tech scene, they've got Silicon Valley, yet people can't operate there because of their hokey legislation that is likely going to be changed or at least discussed and everything is just accelerated. Look at the Ethereum etf. So just on that parts of it have been great green lit. Now they've got to do the nuts and bolts people saying kind of six to eight weeks before it starts trading. We don't know how long that's going to be but they need to know the people that are actually going to be offering ETFs how they do it, how they get liquidity, the rules staking what they can and can't do. And we haven't seen that shift in price yet. ETH has gone up a little bit but not that much as Bitcoin did when an ETF was approved.

Yeah, I agree bo from the local bottoms at 2800 at time recording eth is up about 38%. Um but yeah in terms of its all time highs I think it's all time high was.

Got to close to 5k.

Yeah, I think it got to 4900 in November of 2021. So still, still fair while to go. But I think you're right like the supplied economics of ETH is so fascinating because about 30% of Ethereum is staked. It's currently got a deflationary token supply burn and now you're going to get ETF inflows like this was one of the reasons Burges we put out that that poster members in I think it was March that we were buying Ethereum. So one of the biggest things that we saw was a real. And this is a bit of a cheat code. Well it's not a cheat code but this is a bit of an insiders how we buy it when there's strong fundamentals, strong growth and really negative sentiment in a bull market. In a correction historically there are amazing times to buy. So we bought the dip on Ethereum at 3100 on March 26th because we felt the fundamentals were super strong. We had the successful Dan upgrade, we had the L2 slowly getting more and more attention and as of time of recording layer 2 has just hit an all time high TVL so that played out perfectly. Institutional adoption was growing.

25% of ETH supply was staked back in March. Now that's out 30% and the supply strain continues with a deflationary supply plus the ETF approval. We didn't predict that but you know if, because that's played out that's been an epic trade done about yeah probably 25, 30, 25, 28, 30% since then in a couple of months and now I believe Ethereum will be the narrative for the back half of this year and I think where I'm looking to play is assets inside or on Ethereum that'll play pretty well. I still think Solana will play well but I think Solana will play catch up to Ethan. Eth will go through Breakthrough 4000 get the even Flows and then yeah, it's game on.

I think so too, man. Like it's. I watched the Big Short again the other day and Bullish just. Yeah, one of the lines was just.

Those two young kids, they're looking at, you know, when the, the honeymoon rates stop. I think it was second quarter of 2007 and what's going to happen. They looked at delinquencies, they looked at everything lining up all of these fundamentals and they're just like, everybody is wrong, we are right and everybody is wrong. And in this game you are made to feel like you are wrong and you are weird because you understand something that other people don't. If you're listening to this podcast, you're one of the very few with information that the majority of people don't have or don't want to listen to or don't understand. And you have a huge opportunity here, an opportunity for success because there's information asymmetry. It's just an amazing place to be in and you need to have that conviction like they did in the Big Short, that it is going to play out and you are going to win 100%.

Right. But you got to have that conviction and you've got to make the bets when people aren't. And I think even those corrections that we saw a couple of months ago back in March, like people sort of deserted, they disappeared, they weren't really interested. But that, that was the time to buy. And as a time of recording, ETH exchange balances are at a six year low. Perks, there's never been less. In six years there hasn't been less Bitcoin, less Ethereum on exchanges than there is now. Meaning there is confidence Back with Ethereum people are buying up and I think the, the narratives coming off the back of that are kind of interesting. So anything on Ethereum I think is going to perform pretty well. Layer twos have performed, haven't performed well at all the last couple of years. But we hit a max TVL today or yesterday time recording on ETH layer 2. So I think hopefully we might start to see, you know, the likes of Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum start to perform.

Another interesting space bugs is the political memes or politify as that is now being called.

Oh wow.

So we saw a few weeks back Vaneck started their own meme coin index to track some of the largest meme coins. I think this is an interesting play that I'm looking at. I haven't pulled the trigger yet because I kind of feel as though it's so obvious that it kind of might be a counter trade, but also then we're in crypto and nothing makes sense. Playing Trump and Bowdoin coins coming into the election, I think it could be a pretty decent buy the buy the rumor, sell the news event, especially if Trump gets elected.

Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's interesting where even Nathan a few episodes ago was saying, you know, meme coins, scene coins, culture coins, whatever you want to call them, they are fun. And you think about people sharing memes on the Internet. Like I wake up, I've got all these private chats, heaps of memes going through. Makes my day better. And then you attach some kind of monetary gain to it as well and it heightens that sense of fun and it's what people like to do. And if you do it on a cheap L2 or you're doing it on Solana, it's relatively cheap to do. I think this will be a huge narrative, particularly around the election.

Yeah, I, I agree. Bur the other one for me that I think will start to maybe perform better because of the hopefully reduction of focus on on regulatory scrutiny is defi. So I still a big believer of defi. Maple is one that I'm, you know, still continue to be bullish on. I hope that starts to perform better now that the, the SEC may not be scrutinizing as hard, but we'll wait and see. But just generally things on Ethereum I think RWAS is still a good play like something like pendle. It's now up 65 xberg since Matt posted that to our members on February 20th century. He posted that at 5 cents. It hit $6.50 recently which is just insane. And another one that's been performing really well Bergs that we're both invested in is DMT or Dream Machine token. So posted that at about 30, somewhere between 35 and $50 depending on what exchange you look at. That recently hit a high of about $160. So it did about a 2, 2 and a half x in the local high. That's a layer 3. It's building a web 3 twitch kind of versions called Senko and they're getting growing, growing users, growing content, growing consumers. They're doing token burns. They just received a $250,000 grant from Arbitrum and they're building some pretty good stuff, completely bootstrapped. And yeah, the tokenomics on it is pretty good. So yeah, bit of a high risk play but again that's done pretty well in just A little over a month or two. And for those members listening, I did another write up about two or three weeks ago as to why I'm still bullish on that. So you can have a read of that, mate.

And just yesterday, something happened, man. Something on crypto, Twitter, and then the rest of the world. We're at the part of the cycle where celebrities are coming out and they're promoting coins. So everyone thought this was a scam where Caitlyn Jenner was in her dressing gown talking about crypto. Getting to crypto. And I looked at it and I'm like, oh, it's just an AI Video.

I thought it was a defect too. Yeah, yeah.

But then it was posted from her real account and I'm like, oh, her account must be hacked. But then she's actually promoting a coin. Okay, Legendacoin. Getting into crypto, everyone's like, whoa, did Caitlin just come out and promote an unregulated security? Like, oh, sorry, a regulated security. And then, like, Kim Kardashian started promoting it. There's been a few, like, SEC things saying, like, you know, brief that she's going to be, you know, charged with promoting a regulated security. And again, where this is, like, literally just happening. So we don't know how much of this is, like, legit and not. But even from Caitlin's account, she's replying to everything saying, you know, these investments are risky. They may not be for you. Consult your financial advisor. It's like, holy crap, we're at that part in the cycle. But the plot thickens, man, because the person that somehow convinced Caitlin to do it is the same person that has done a series of celebrities previously and got them to promote different coins.

Somehow convinced them, and now has apparently rugged the project taken all the locked up coins with them.

Yes. This is what's being reported all across Twitter. It is so, so crazy. So this person's got in, got another celebrity on board going, yeah, you can make haste from crypto. They've then gone and promoted it, which is not legal within the fr. Within the way that they're operating. And then this person has now gone and rugged that coin.

Is this a hill guy?

Yes.

So he's the one that created it. And now he's rugged. He's rugged the project.

Yeah. And he's done. And he's done a series of celebrities before. It is just. It is amazing. So really what we take away from this is we're at the part in the cycle where crypto is getting noticed. People are talking about it. We've had multiple ETF approvals. It's now in the political landscape and Trump and Biden and the administration are talking about it now that celebrities are saying, hey, I can make some money not understanding what they're actually doing. Celebrities out there, please get some better financial advice and get legal advice before you do any of this and people get burnt. And Ben, you've got a chart from previous celebrities that have released coins and it's pretty abysmal to see how they've.

Actually done this is fascinating boost because this chart is looking at the Caitlyn Jenner price is down 34% overnight. Is, is looking pretty, pretty in line with where the rest of celebrity tokens have gone. Just to name a few Bergs, Kevin Hart's Confessions, the Shaq Astrals, Kim Kardashian, Lana Rhodes, Floyd Mayweather, Chris Brown, Rich the Kid, Soldier Boy, DJ Khaled, Snoop Dogg and Bergs.

I just, they're all brown people.

Oh, geez. Part of the culture, mate.

Hey, I'm not, I'm not commenting on that.

On average, Bergs just did a rough calculation. The current average return ROI of any of these investments is 99% negative in the red. Most of these are completely rugged. Yeah. And they've got a current status. Dead rugged. Rugged. Rugged. Dead rugged. Rugged. Rugged. Like they're just all rugged or dead.

That's it. Like, I think these people aren't going to hang around and deliver value for the token. It's a flash in the pan, a bit of fun, and you're just putting your hand in a trap. So if you do it, you need to be sophisticated, you need to be quick and understand what you're doing. But for 99.99% of people stay away if it's got a celebrity endorsement.

There you go. Caitlyn Jenner 12 minutes ago tweeted, fuck Sahil, he scammed us big time.

Jeez.

I can't believe that these, like top tier social media, you know, reality TV people are now in the crypto space as well. Not only do we have.

Presidential candidates, we've now got people like Kim Kardashian in there bringing awareness to crypto. It's crazy. It is so crazy.

Wow, guys. Yeah, please be careful of that. But look, on a, on a, on a lighter note, I think, you know, I think Ethereum is going to continue to perform well. I still think it's the best risk reward play you're going to have this year, in my opinion. And for me, it's about mindset. It's about timing, remaining patient for the remainder of this year. I think there's good things to come. We're going to get the inflows of the etf. We've got the presidential election. There's some really good macro crypto tailwinds. I think it's really important to start thinking about your exit plan and timing and how you're going to be taking profits in the back half of this year. And really it's a time to get your strategy together and really try and ride this wave. Because I think it's going to happen when it happens. It's going to happen fast. Now whether it's tomorrow, whether it's a month, whether it's six months to a month, we don't know. But we know it's coming. So you want to be prepared and you really want to have that exit plan dialed in. So again, if you need help with that, we'd love to chat with you. You can book in a strategy session with us below. There's lots of Ben and Bergs listeners that we help and yeah, book a note. No no, no obligation chat. We want to help. We've got a bit over 1100 members now Bergs globally paying members which is amazing and off to London on Saturday to to meet some of some of the UK folks which we find and then yeah it's, it's good, it's, it's really awesome community we've been able to build and, and hopefully help more people make good money.

Absolutely mate. Love to see it.

Awesome guys. We'll wrap it up there hopefully as by the time this episode comes out. Nothing crazy has happened with Gender Coin but yeah it doesn't look, doesn't look too too great. Charts looking pretty bizable. But yeah, we'll wrap it up there folks if you like this episode we'd love for you to share with a friend. It's how we grow the podcast each and every week and we'll see you on the next episode.

Thanks. Championship.