164. What Is Happening In Crypto? Time to Buy or Sell?

Now bitcoin is sort of teetering around that like at the time of recording, 62, 63,000, yet sentiments at the same point. Like human psychology is so fascinating, like it flips so quickly, people think so short term that just because there isn't a narrative or just because the market isn't just exploding that everyone turns negative and starts to panic. Welcome back to another episode of the Ben and Berks podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of Collective Shift. Alongside me as Burge, 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. And if you like the podcast, we'd love for you to share it with a friend. Leave us a follow so you get the notifications when we post a new episode. Because we come to you each and every week absolutely free. No advertisements, no commissions, no nothing. So we can give you independent analysis. And that's what we're doing today. Burgs giving the folks a download of where we are in the market because we haven't done one of these in a while because reality is there's not much going on, mate. It's pretty flat at the moment.

That's it, mate. People are getting bored. They're calling the end of the world. They're deleting their Twitter accounts. Just wait a couple of months, fam. It'll be fine. It's another gift, another opportunity for you.

You know what I do like about these like moments of consolidation. People just find things to do and we saw that Kevin Rose like deep dive today. Like people just get bored and they just go finding their the old web. Three guys have rugged everyone. That is a good positive sign of that.

It's like what am I going to do with my time? Like I'm bored either at home, in my mum's basement or at my job that I only really work 15 minutes a day. I think I'll go find someone, find this moonbirds Guy, write a 15 tweet thread on him. Takes me 6 hours to do. Got nothing else to do, my wild mate.

Absolutely wild. Or let's just, let's just create conspiracies and, and talk about like you know, what medical condition Joe Biden has. The amount of content I've seen on Twitter on the pre election is insane.

Everyone's a political expert and everyone like, oh, they're going to have to Hot swap him out and put someone else in. And Trump made a fatal error by having the debate too early. He should have had it later, then the Democrats would have been stuffed. I'm like, bro, calm down. It's okay. Not a political expert. People are just bored in their lives, man. We've got it so easy. We need to create, you know, drama and events to entertain ourselves for the day.

And it's wild, man. Like, even, like, because Trump doesn't even tweet anymore. He hasn't tweeted on. On X for a couple of years. But what's Biden's. Is it. His wife is a Jill Biden. What? I don't even know. Anyway, whoever's close to him, one of his family members, she's out there tweeting all this crap and she's getting all these community notes put out because she's basically saying all this shit that's completely false. And then like, community notes is coming in, like, correcting all of her tweets, saying like, oh, basically saying that Trump's lying. He's saying this, he's saying that it's just like, community notes, community notes, community notes. Like, it's just complete debauchery now. Like, no one gives a fuck. It's just like, post whatever you want.

I think this was. He wasn't his vp. Is the name Kamala Harris or something? Like about Trump. Trump and abortion.

It's like, oh, that's never said those. Yeah. And even Elon called her out.

And it just shows you how wild the world is. Like, people are literally just downloading their brains now saying whatever they want. They don't care, just to get that attention. And half of the tweets and threads are just so half assed, they don't make sense. There's no, like, effort put into them or insight. And you're like, what is your life? Why are people doing this?

Well, Biden.

And it brings us back.

Yeah, sorry.

It brings us back to crypto where, you know, you're investing and it's a 247 market. There's always things going on. You've had a couple of Big Bang events. There's a few coming up. But we're in that lull period where not too much is happening. There's some consolidation and people want the next thing. The next thing. Get those dopamine hits, get that money in your wallet, prove that you were right for the things that you bought. And it's just not happening. And people are freaking out.

Yeah. And it's, it's Like, I think at the moment, like we were looking at a sentiment chart just before, like, you know, sentiment is a, as a crypto, sentiment is at its worst since September last year when bitcoin was. I, you know, where were we even September last year, Bitcoin was probably around 25:30. Yeah. Not even 40. Yeah, sorry, 25:30.

Like, we weren't even, like, yeah, we weren't even that high. And now bitcoin sort of teetering around that, like at the time of recording, 62, 63,000. Yet sentiments at the same point. Like, human psychology is so fascinating. Like, it flips so quickly. People think so short term that just because there isn't a narrative or just because the market isn't just exploding that everyone turns negative and it starts to panic.

Isn't it wild just because it's not at all time high, which is like low 70s.

We're having 10% off all time high, like.

Yeah, exactly. And it's, we've had a retracement down to about 60 now it's gone up to 62, 63. And people are losing their minds. Like, hey, just, just look back like six months ago at where we were and look at where we are now. Like, those returns are unmatched in any market.

Yeah, 100%. And altcoins are taking the biggest beating. So most altcoins are probably down 30 to 50% for their local highs. And, you know, the reality is altcoins will continue to underperform, you know, while, while sentiment's, you know, so low. And I think we see a lot of retail investors, even on the, on Twitter, on Facebook, you know, even conversations I'm having, people do get quite spooked and panicked. And, you know, when we see this differentiation between fundamentals and sentiment, it's usually when we, we start to see a reversal. And the other thing as well, just historically, middle of the year for crypto has been a pretty, you know, poor period of time. Like usually on average, you know, eight times out of 10 during the year, you'll get negative returns for crypto. So I think at the moment it's, it's sort of this just consolidation period. Everyone's sort of cooling off from the bitcoin halving event. But if you look in comparison to previous bitcoin halvings, you know, the, the, the market really doesn't sort of kick off post bitcoin halving until you sort of around a hundred to 150 to 250 days post Bitcoin halving. And we're Currently sitting, maybe where are we both 3 months ish since then. So, you know, we are tracking previous bull markets, you know, very closely still. And I think it's just important to remember that, you know, crypto doesn't always just go up forever. Like, you always have these consolidation periods here to flush out the weekends, flush out the leverage and sort of reset sentiment before you can take the next leg up higher. And these corrections are actually quite healthy because if you just launch into the stratosphere without it, you know, ever cooling down, the fall on the other side will eventually be harder. So I think it's quite a healthy sort of period to grow, but it's just important not to panic and just maybe, you know, go away from crypto or just forget about it or, or even if you got money on the sidelines to dollar cost average back in like, man, our head of research has made a few altcoin positions and added. Added back to his positions because, you know, reality is a lot of these altcoins are, you know, potentially getting into quite undervalued territory. The, the fact of how far we've gone down.

That's it, man. And like a lot of the Tradfire guys sell in May and go away. The middle of the year is very, very boring. Right. Just for investments in general. And just with those altcoins, even though they're down 50%, we've got to remember, because they're further out on the risk curve, they're way more volatile and they have much higher swings. So you see less of a drawdown in ETH and BTC than you will in altcoins. But also when things are on the up, those altcoins will outperform BTC and eth.

Yeah, they're just like leverage positions. So when, yeah, like Berg said, when the market goes down, they're going to get hurt even worse. But then on the upside, they're most likely going to outperform. So just keeping that in mind and also corrections are very normal in bull markets. Like, you know, we've been talking about, you know, the last three or four cycles. Like, on average, bitcoin will go down, sometimes down to 70% drawdowns. Like back in.

Where was it back in the 2011-2015 bull market? You know, Bitcoin went down 70% even in the 2018-2021 bull market. Bitcoin went down 60% and 50% in the same cycle. So, you know, this cycle, bitcoin's only going only gone down 20% or 25% at its most in this, in this period of time. So if anything, Bitcoin's actually performing better than previous cycles in terms of, you know, the, the corrections and pullbacks.

That's it. Even in your superannuation account, if you go on the whatever is the highest level that they've got, the most risky level, it says expect out of every 10 years, two or three down years. And that's what we're seeing in bitcoin just on a shortened cycle. And even I woke up this morning, I bought a couple of grand worth of bitcoin. Look at it, look at the chart, look at the sentiment. I'm like yeah, cool, let's just buy some more. It's best place to put my money in that rather than the other options that are available to me.

Yeah, I think that's, I think it was a great time. If you've got money on the sidelines to dollar cost average or let's say you, you want to add, sort of add to your positions, you can Obviously add to BTC. BTC is probably down 10, 15% for its from its peak. Matt, our head of research has recently added to his position specifically in the Solana ecosystem. So Solana and Jupiter are two that we're pretty bullish on. Jupiter's going through some token upgrades which we recently shared in the, in the Collective Shift membership. So if you remember, go and check that out in the Shiftless update. But we are quite bullish on Jupiter and that sort of pumped about 20, 25% after the token upgrade mechanics. And then even Maker is another one that we've been bullish on for a little while also going through some token changes still we, we're pretty bullish on that. So yeah, I think, I think Ethereum, Solana, BTC all like, you know, pretty, pretty decent plays at the moment in terms of their, their corrections. And I mean usually when you make the best returns is when you buy into the fear and you buy into the dip. You know, when you go start chasing in a bull market it can, can get quite, quite what's the word problematic if you start chasing. And another thing as well is, is I wouldn't try to be switching coins in a pullback either. Like I've had a few questions for some of my members going hey Ben, like I've got this coin but it's going down more than these other coins trying to switch it to try and earn back some of the losses. It's like no, like in my opinion you're better off just holding, staying patient Trying to just minimize your losses by looking over a month or two period of time is, is dangerous because you start chasing, you get chopped out and then, you know, you just need to look longer term like you're not going to make all your profits in a down period. You see the. Remain patient, don't get worried. This is just another day in paradise, really.

That's it. It's another gift from the gods. And you know, when I have some additional capital to invest, I think, great, where do I put it? I could put it against my house, which is like 6%. Add 40% floors 24, about 8, 9% because you're doing post tax, pre tax 9% return, stock market 10 to 15%. And if I want, and if I'm thinking five years ahead, like where do I want to put this money for at least five years? And I'm like, okay, if I want to make more, it becomes riskier. But there's Bitcoin, which is actually for me less risky than the stock market and I believe will return more than 15% per year. So that's where I put my additional capital.

Yeah, yeah. And also think looking at these assets when others aren't, like if you look across the timeline, social media downloads, group chats, everything is just crickets at the moment. And again, when you look at this and you look at the fundamentals and sentiment is where it's at. The, the arbitrage between the two is where you tend to make the money. So you know, I would say now is a, is a pretty close time that we would potentially start to see a reversal over the next sort of few weeks.

And let's talk about if you do have surplus capital at this point in time, you are one of the lucky few. Housing's expensive, foods expensive, petrol is expensive, cost, cost of living is just ridiculous. If you have surplus capital at the end of the week and you're able to invest, you are one of the lucky few. You have an opportunity that not many people have. So take that capital, invest it where you see fit, leave it in there and then benefit. Don't buy into the fear, look at what other people are doing. Think about the people that have capital, what they're actually doing and how they're going to grow it and invest that money and reap the benefits in the future.

Yeah, I agree, Bugs, because we've got a few good things coming up. Like at the end of the month we've got the spot Ethereum ETF expected to start trading, which is going to be pretty, pretty bullish. You know, just the economics of Ethereum itself, 30% being.

State. Yep. You know, deflationary, you know, token burns and we start to get some inflows into eth. I think it's going to be quite, quite bullish. And then heading into the US Election, I think also that's going to be a good time for crypto with. But, well, I mean both, both Biden and Trump wanting to, you know, pander to crypto. But I think Trump specifically is being, you know, who he is and sort of a.

I wouldn't say an investor, but like, you know, someone that I think will continue to push the industry forward and maybe have less oversight and regulatory sort of focus on crypto, I think it's going to be quite bullish as well. So. And even also the SEC stepping back from a couple of their, you know, investigations specifically, you know, closing their investigation on these 2.0 and not in not pursuing them for, you know, secure to being a security, I think is, is really positive. And we've got Coinbase also suing the SEC for overstepping their boundaries and, and bringing, you know, trying to focus on crypto too much. So there's some good stuff happening I think at the moment.

Yeah. So you raised two things there, the etf, Ethereum ETF and the election. Let's go with the election first. So. And it's not necessarily less oversight, it's probably more regulatory clarity. Like this is where you are, this is where you play. You obey the law, you find no one's coming after you and if they do, they're silly and they're just wasting their time. And both candidates, Trump and Biden have both spoken about crypto. Trump's openly said like, he's pro crypto. He wants the majority of like, I can't remember if it was Ethel Bitcoin to be, you know.

Mined or, you know, read or rewarded in the U.S. he's like, it's going to be made here. I don't even know if he understands it or whatever. But, you know, just having that kind of sentiment and having it on that global stage and that awareness is something I didn't think would happen for a very long time. And we've started to see crypto companies, tokens, developers, whoever it is actually winning against regulate regulators, which is really important. And winning is, hey, you're telling me I'm doing a thing but you're not telling me the rules. So I'm going to do this thing because I think it obeys the rules and hey, it does you dropped your case. Give me more clarity. That is an amazing space to be in. And just getting the Ethereum ETF approved and not knocked back all the time like the Bitcoin ETF was, that was knocked back for so many months. And let's just talk about that event. Yeah, let's talk about that event. So when it was finally approved, think about Bitcoin. More and more is coming into existence and what can you really do with your Bitcoin? Yeah, you can muck around, you can like send value to people, you can potentially lock it up in some defi thing, which I don't know anyone that actually does that. I know some nerds that buy ordinals and a few other things. But then you look at Ethereum and you look at the burn that's currently happening with Ethereum, so it is actually deflationary, whereas Bitcoin is disinflationary. So it's increasing at a decreasing rate. 30% is locked up and when it's locked up, it's like a term deposit. You can't unlock it because you get severe penalties if you can do it at all. And then you can actually do a lot more. On Ethereum. People are still creating NFTs, DeFi stuff. Different contracts, different experimenting. Like there's that built in demand where you need to use will burn your Ethereum for network access. Right. So all of those things are currently happening. Like every transaction you do in your metamask, it costs you, it costs you. You're interacting with the contract. It's just, I think going to be fundamentally different to the Bitcoin etf and I think quarter three is where fireworks are really going to happen. After the end of July, when, you know, ETFs start trading, then you get more inflows into that and then you get more inflows into the ecosystem. I think it's going to be absolutely mental, like Q3 this year. Like Q3, yeah.

I think Q3, Q4 is usually when we start to see fireworks. Leading up to Christmas, historically as well is an exciting time and I just think people have sort of forgotten about crypto at the moment. Once we get eyeballs back, once we get even, things like Eigen layer drop is coming later in September, we got a lot of token upgrades. There's a lot of things happening behind the scenes I think will also congregate towards that sort of Q3 time, which is going to be exciting.

There haven't been many like, you know, airdrops the last month or two to get people Excited and get revved up. There's been one or two pretty crappy ones people aren't excited about. There's been things with like, you know, blast gold and games and like a few little bits here and there, but there's only the extremely nerdy people and the people that got in early. To those there hasn't been that big, oh my God, we're back kind of thing.

Exactly. And I think that'll come later this year. So I think, you know, the strategy at the moment is really just around preparing for that, you know, second half of the year.

You know, we fully expect, you know, prices to be highlighted in the year. And also I still think retail just haven't really arrived at all. And I don't think that's really going to happen until we start to see Bitcoin, you know, maybe towards that sort of US$100,000 level, at that psychological level, when we start to get the PR in, the media come back and, you know, we did the things like the etf, maybe the Solana etf and we start to get old coins really moving again. So look, it's just one of those times, very normal, don't panic. It's a consolidation period. If you, if you're worried, go, step away, get away from the computer, maybe come back in a month or two's time or if you're cash on the sidelines, I'd be looking at, you know, what are those coins you have conviction in and, you know, starting to build to those positions and maybe lowering your average buy price. I think it's a pretty good time to do that.

The whole strategy, if I could just kind of sum it up for me or a huge tactic, is just don't lose your crypto and invest in good stuff.

Yeah.

And be a bit patient. So I've in previous cycles chased a lot of the latest thing and I've never, like right on the edge of whatever it is. There's 50, 100 people before me. They'll make all the money. They know way more than I do because they're in contracts every single day, 55 hours a day, you know, just really, really nerding out with crazy tools set up. And if I just step back and I'm feeling FOMO or I found a new investment or something's happening, I'll just completely step away because it is much better to keep my positions that I know I'm very comfortable with. I know the landscape, the dynamics, how things are working in those ecosystems. And I don't want to sacrifice that capital. Unless I have huge conviction. Yeah. And if I don't and I'm feeling fomo, I step away. I come back in a few days with a clear head. And it's more about keeping your money in quality assets than finding the next big thing.

Yeah, yeah. Like, I think too many people are trying to chase new coins every week, every month. Like we might find something once every quarter, you know that we invest it, you know that we have conviction in and we do a D day and usually it's built around like for us the access we have is around like meeting the founders, meeting investors, meeting like we have like this really great access level where a lot of people don't and that gives us such better alpha where we've actually made some really good investments off the back of knowing a lot more details, information than others, which is, which has given us that edge. And I think that's what I wait to, to come across before just barreling in. Like, you know, I've learned from previous cycles as well. It's usually not a good, not a good tactic. So you know, one of the lessons and strategies that I have is once you find something, have conviction because you know, nine times out of 10, if you are right, that is where you're going to make potentially life changing amounts of money is when you back yourself into a project that you, you know, you have conviction in. Too many times in the past I've had conviction and haven't backed myself. Just put a little bit in and I've been right. But it hasn't made substantial returns because I, I sort of push it out on the final, the final step, you.

Know, I mean, even though you've made money, it hurts more than not investing at all. Isn't it wild man? It hurts so bad.

It's just like you don't invest, it hurts because you didn't invest. You invest, it hurt and it goes up, it hurts cause you didn't invest enough. And then if you invest too much and it goes down or never invested too much, like you could just never win. Yeah.

And if you invested too much, you're going to be freaking out every single night and it's just not worth it because you won't be sleeping properly.

No, you can't win, mate. That's crypto.

Yeah, that's it. So here we are, we're here to talk reasonable sense about crypto. You know, invest in the major things, grab some old coins along the way and don't FOMO into anything. Don't let anyone bullshit you check out the shift list, do your research, you'll be absolutely fine.

And get on one of our strategy calls. Every month we do these strategy calls for our pro members and our platinum members. There. The feedback's been phenomenal. Get in. Work on your strategy. Working that barbell strategy. Build up your bdc. Build up your property. Live a good life. It's good times. So good.

Throw them on the same side of the barbell, mate. Oh man. So good.

Thank you so much everyone for listening. Hope you enjoyed the a little crypto market update. If you like the episodes, we'd love for you to share it with a friend. Bring someone into the Benneberg's ecosystem. We'd love to bring more people in. We're growing the podcast each and every week and bring it to you free. No advertisements and no commissions. As you guys know who we are, completely independent. So thanks so much for listening and we'll see you on the next episode.

Thanks, champions.