190: Bitcoin Hits All-Time High - Is This The Top?

Welcome back to another episode of the Bennebergs podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of Collective Shift. Alongside me as bergs, your favorite MBA and CEO Collective Shift. Join us as we bring in world class crypto research and strategies to help you dominate this crypto bull market as well as behind the scenes view of us going the leading crypto research company here in Australia. And if you like the podcast, we'd love for you to leave us a subscribe if you're on YouTube or follow us on your favorite podcasting app. Because we are back, ladies and gentlemen, for the bull market. We've, we've had a few days break. It's been a lot going on as, as you all know by now and Burke's bitcoin all time high, man. I feel as though the last three or four days just been, it feels like a month. I don't actually remember what's happened, but what a day we had. Tuesday, I think it was when bitcoin had its largest single ever growth day, when I think from 80,000, 86,000 we touched 92,000. Then as of recording, we're about that 89, 90,000 level. What a time to be alive.

How good is it, mate? You wake up and you're just 10% up every day. It's amazing.

It's. It.

I probably thought that this was going to happen, but probably not as fast. I mean, we just sort of went from like, you know, Trump being elected, that was a crazy day. And then literally it was just up only and we just ripped. And then you saw this institutional craziness. Some of the biggest ETF inflows we've seen ever. You know, bitcoin out his way surpass gold in terms of ETF inflows for, for, you know, matching it a similar period of time, like it's just been nuts. We've overtaken silver in terms of market cap. Like nuts.

Yeah, it's something crazy. Like the seventh largest asset in the world or something ridiculous. It's incredible.

But it's everything we, everything we thought was going to happen, right? And it's just happened extremely fast. I think it's called a lot of people out and gone, oh, you know, this space isn't dead, we got to go buy. And you know, we've seen all the social media metrics come back. We've seen, you know, Coinbase and Robin Hood lists and meme coins now. I think this is like largely what's driving this rally is the fact that the SEC and because of Trump's election. They know there's going to be way more favorable conditions for, for crypto. You know, there's even been rumors and this is not, this is, you know, this has not been approved or genuine yet, but rumors that Trump wants to try and make, you know, US based cryptocurrencies tax free in the US which is, which is pretty nuts.

And gates, that's huge.

Yeah.

And then their strategic bitcoin reserve where they're drafting a bill for it already, mate, it's all lining up.

Imagine if bitcoin actually becomes like the gold standard, mate, like that is that, that is the, the government, you know, backed asset.

It's incredible. And yeah, Trump's positioning quite a lot of surprisingly millennial bitcoiners in.

His cabinet.

Or whatever the equivalent is in America, which is incredible. So, so you got younger people in that understand bitcoin that are actually bitcoiners and they're promoting crypto, which is just unheard of. It's actually. We always said there was going to be fireworks in Q4, but I think it's better than the best case scenario we came up with.

Well, I think what we were, we were talking about earlier in the year is that Q4 was going to be the year and Q4 on a halving year is even better, which has played out plus the US election and, and now here we are. So like for those that have been following along and listening to us or members or whatever, well done. For anyone that is just, you know, or you just stayed in crypto, well done for accumulating because if you've accumulated during this period, you're absolutely crushing it. Now people that aren't crushing out of those are bought back in the peak of 2021, disappeared for three years and now come back and go, what's going on? A lot of those folks are still down because if you look at a lot of the old coins, a lot of them are still way, way under all time highs. Cardano down 81 XRP down something similar from all time highs. Like a lot of these coins are down so, so far from their previous highs. So if you haven't optimized and updated your portfolio like we've been screaming out for so long, well then your portfolio is still going to be probably down unless you hold a big chunk of bitcoin.

Exactly. I haven't been able to offload my power ledger yet, mate. It's not that time.

We're not there yet. And really like the biggest charts, you need to be aware of is like the bitcoin dominance chart. So bitcoin dominance is still, you know, at the time of recording, you know, around that sort of, you know, 58, 59% mark. While Bitcoin dominance is that high, you're not going to see altcoins really rally. And then also the eth BTC chart has been still on a downwards trend for essentially three years. And if you look like we Ethereum started to outperform just after the election we had a big run up against BTC when Ethereum went from 2400 to essentially 3300. Ethereum started to outperform, but it's given it all back. And if you look at the chart, we went from like.

Essentially 0.4, 0.04 back down to 0.03 over the last like week. So all those gains that Ethereum put against bitcoin are now back and we're back towards that trend line that we've been since like 2021 basically. Now when that does inverse. And if you look back in the previous years when altcoins rally, they rally fast.

Really.

The peak was back in March of 2021 where we went on this, you know, gigantic run of like eth back against btc, but it only went for about two months. So when altcoin season hits, you'll know about it because the alts will rally extremely fast. Bitcoin usually needs to settle and bitcoin will start to retrace and the money flows down and then the alts will start to rally. So don't be concerned if your altcoins aren't going yet. Like we're not, we're not anywhere near that point.

Yeah, that's exactly right. You'll know when things get really euphoric. This is not the euphoria. This is just the beginning of the beginning. This is just the test pump. Like, this is just the start and people are just starting to get a little bit excited. You'll definitely know when things are euphoric. We'll tell you when things are euphoric. When it's just buy anything number go up and happy days. And that's when the alarm bell should be going off thinking, okay, I'll, you know, sit with the stuff that I've got and then I'll start, you know, averaging out of these positions.

Yeah. And those sectors that performing well. Obviously, you know, the meme coins have been really well, like really the, the top performers of this whole week have been, you know, meme coins. We saw Dogecoin up 90% Pepe up 90%. Pepe was up 65% overnight. This is a $8 billion market cap project after it's listing on on Coinbase, which is wild. So out of the top, you know, 10 coins, top 15 coins, majority of these, you know, top performers this week have been meme coins. I shared with collectorship members two weeks ago that I was buying Pepe amongst two other. Sorry, there was three meme coins, Pepe and Dog with Hat. Both those are in the top 10 in terms of returns, up 40 to 80% this week. And another one we've spoken about a lot Berg Suey that we shared and invested in, that's also done really well. That's up to $3.20. Share that at $2.20. So the next gen layer ones which we've been talking about, meme coins, we pretty much nailed those. Both, both those two sectors which has been awesome. Ones that aren't still performing just quite yet are the sort of the defi space. But in saying that, you know, defi smart contracts, all that sort of space is going to perform really well this cycle now that the regulatory environment is going to be a little bit easier on crypto. And I saw rumors bergs that Gensa might be gone before Christmas, which is going to be great if that's true.

Mate, how good I saw that too. And even just Trump talking about deregulation of crypto so removing some of those harsh constraints, that's really positive for a lot of defi, is positive for Ethereum. A lot of chains out there where people don't necessarily want to build on them in case there's some kind of regulation. It just crushes their company that they've been building for like the last five years. They'd rather go to an area where, where you've got some clarity and spend their effort there. So, mate, very, very positive, Very positive.

The retail, you know, is definitely like they're, you know, there's still a decent chunk that are not here, but I would definitely say there is a lot of retail here. Like we saw Coinbase rocket to number one on the finance app. I think it's in the top 10 of all apps in the US so we're starting to see those people come back. But you know, ultimately I still think the majority of people don't really know what's happening. I think a lot of people are still down on their investments. As I said back from 2021, I think what we're going to start to see is the market continues to grow is once Those people that have been in the space for a little while or invested a long time ago come back to break even, then they're going to have a lot more confidence and want to pour more money in. And I think that's where we'll see mass speculation. I think we'll see a lot of these meme coins really rip. I think we'll see the altcoin market rip. And I think Bitcoin will continue to just keep going higher based on what we're seeing on the institutional level as well.

Absolutely. Even just the coinbase price, I've just looked it up. It's. It's up 42% in the past month.

Yeah, Coinbase stock. Yeah, Coinbase stock. You know what's micro strategy at Birds actually? Let's have a look at that. What's.

Oh mate.

They hit a near all time high, I think.

62% in the last month.

That's wild for a stock to be up that much.

And then, and then even Elon Musk made his new Government Efficiency department or Doge.

How good?

Love it.

So actually they did hit an all time high of 327. And the previous all time high was close to when they listed in like. Oh, when was that? 2000 10th of March.

200024 years ago.

So it's just been this completely flat and then pump.

So yeah.

So Doge is interesting. Right. So Elon's coming in. I think that's what giving the President elect a quarter of a billion dollars buys you some privileges. And he and Vivek are going to be in and lean out the government, which would be really interesting. So I really like, I'm always on the side of change. More entropy in the system because things swing too far one way, they need to swing the other way and then you find a kind of happy medium. And I think shaking things up from government life is bringing in efficiency. We'll see some really great, great results at least, at least change in another direction, which I think will be very positive for the United States and globally.

And, and for crypto, like they're just pro. It's gonna, it's gonna be pro economy, pro tech, pro innovation. And that's just all great stuff for, for crypto, I think. I think the crazy thing is bugs, like I don't see any headwinds right now, like touch wood, but like what foreseeable things could really deter the growth of this space right now? Like there's, there's nothing that I could think of on the horizon. Unless again, touchboard something really bad, bad was to happen.

Yeah, the, the worst thing I could think of was a presidential assassination. Right.

Yeah.

But then, you know, Vance just steps up and it's all the same people, all the same goals, everything's the same. You know, it might even like steal them, like strengthen them. I can't. Yeah, I, I honestly can't see a lot of headwinds for crypto. It's, it seems relatively smooth sailing, which is so weird to say in our space.

And we, and we haven't, we haven't even started like you know, QE or anything like that yet. Like we haven't really, you know, in terms of the, the economy like interest rates are, you know, finally started to, you know, come down, inflation sort of under control. But we haven't seen like what we saw back in 2021 was like, you know, the money printers were on. We'll, we're flying like that hasn't even started yet. So you know, that was to come into an account as well.

Now we're like, yeah, and interest rates are still high. You know, we're not in a zero interest rate policy environment. It's. And things are flying. Like this is the thing. Even just Bitcoin alone, you've got ETFs, you've got pension funds, you've got companies now buying it. Soon we will have nation states with the United States. We've got the smaller countries buying it already. They've already profited significantly. They, Germany fomoed out earlier in the year. They're looking at buying back in they paper handed billions. People are starting to understand that what this technology is, what this financial instrument is and what it can do for their countries.

Yeah, yeah. It's super bullish. So look, I think where we are at the moment, like I think it's, it's, it's, it's a patience game. Like the emotions are running hot. There's a lot of volatility. I do expect some big pullbacks. Remember in previous bull markets, you know we usually have, when the last cycle we had 12 plus 10 to 30 corrections. We're going to see more of those. We're going to see a lot of, you know, FOMO buying. We're going to see a lot of volatility. I just urge you to stay cautious, stay logic, keep your strategy in order. Don't go moving the goalpost too much. No, there's going to be a lot of, you know, a lot of growth, a lot of pullbacks. It's going to be nuts. Right. That is what crypto is, you can make a lot of money, but you can also, you know, get stuck and, you know, get caught out. So just be careful.

Bull markets are very hard. Bear markets are difficult because people aren't around. They're like, you're an idiot. The price is down, but all you do is accumulate really good assets. Bull markets are mental. You've got 30% drawdowns, you've got things moving really fast. It is just so much noise, so much money, so much euphoria. It is so crazy. And Ben, I want to talk about two things. One is what are some things that we're hearing from members? What are they kind of feeling and experiencing? And the second thing is what is actually happening in our business? So if we talk about those members first, what are the sort of things you're seeing that are coming up from members? What are they feeling? What are they experiencing? What are they, what are they asking?

I think it's a mix of euphoria and anxiety. It's like everyone's making a lot of money.

Isn't that just crypto in a nutshell?

It's like you, you, you're happy and excited, but you've got crippling anxiety at the same time. Like that is just crypto. And essentially what I'm saying is like people are making a lot of money on paper, but they're also shit scared that they're going to miss the top. And I think everyone is like very, very on edge and everyone is in the same boat. And we've got to remember this is a market, right? There's two, there's a two sided market. Not everyone can win in crypto. So there's going to be winners and losers. And I think it's just important that you have a proper sales strategy and you're taking profits and you're not getting too greedy. I think that's the biggest tip I can give you because this market makes you get greedy. And if you're too greedy, you know, you'll meet, you'll miss, you'll miss the profit taking opportunities and you'll miss the top. So yeah, that's, that's, that's my, you know, word of caution. That's what we've been, you know, really relaying to a lot of our members.

Definitely mate, you don't want to paper hand sell way too early. At the same time, you don't want to round trip it and not have an opportunity to sell and lose all of your money back to your original stack. They're probably the Worst case scenarios that you can have. Yeah. And even right now if you in your portfolio, if you've got enough money to achieve your goals, start selling down. We know we've got a long way to fly but bitcoin money, everything is just spending tokens to improve your life. That is the function of it. Yeah.

And I think also like thinking beyond just this bull market like how do you really want to create your wealth? Are you thinking about multiple cycles? Are you thinking about how you're going to build your bitcoin stack? Are you selling into stables? Are you selling into cash? What narratives you in? We need to be thinking about all these things because that's ultimately what's going to give you your edge and really compound your wealth over, over many cycles. Because crypto's not just going to die off this cycle but it's going to give you a good opportunity to buy back in. So you really want to make sure you've got a longer term strategy as well.

Yeah, I've actually changed my strategy. Ben, I haven't told you about this.

Oh here we go.

But yeah, I've decided what I'd like to do. We might actually hold this one back for next week. Oz Cryptocon and I'll reveal it during the live Bennett Bergs on the Sunday. Okay, I like it. Awesome.

And there you go.

It's really, really clarifying like the way that I'm thinking about it now and I'm very happy with it as opposed to what I had previously where I was like yeah this seems good but now I'm like yeah, this is the tits, this is the one.

Well on that point ladies and gentlemen we are going to be in Sydney.

Coming up for Australian Crypto Con. So the dates are the 23rd and 24th of November. Bergs and I will be there. We are the whole collection shift team will be there. We've got a lot going on if you want to come and say g', day we've got a booth there and we also have a live Ben and Bergs on Sunday the 24th. So Bergs and I will be talking 2pm in the Nexa Theater. We'll be going live. Bergs, we've got some alpha, we've got some merch, we've got some exclusive Ben and Bergs merch coming in.

It's finally happening. Alpha Merch is here bro. I can't wait. We've been working on this one and it's cracking. I haven't seen it yet. Ben has and I think he's in love with it.

It's pretty funny. So, yeah, if you want to come along, we've also got, on the Saturday, I'm doing a keynote that is going to be 3:15pm on Saturday, the 23rd in the keynote theater. Also, Matt and Nick have got our analyst. We've got a session at 145 and we're having a collector Shift community meetup on Saturday afternoon as well after my keynote. So if you want to come along, feel free to come across, grab your tickets, we'd love to see you there. Come and say g' day and yeah, it's very exciting time to be in crypto. It's gonna be. It's gonna be good fun.

It's great. And mate, let's cover off on that other point. What are we seeing in our business? So I've conveniently been on Lee for the last week and it's been amazing.

The busiest time in Crypto burgers is like, yeah, see you, mate.

I'm out, mate. You haven't allowed me to take leave for the last two and a half years, mate. And now you find like, oh, you could take leave. And they're like, well, oh, everything's going off. I'm so stressed. There's so much going on. Oh, Ben Simpson. So what's been going on in the business, mate? Come on, give me an update.

Just think about it though, folks. Berg takes leave in literally the craziest time in crypto. Like, the market's pumping, he's in the gym. Bull market. Super martinis. Well, I'm just, I'm holding the Ford up, mate. I can hold the ship up.

Super martinis, mate. I'm not you in Greece. What are you talking about? You're sitting there, oh, nice little sunset in me white shirt having a martini. Oh, I got my laptop out, showing the shift list again. Oh, Ben Simpson.

Much work.

Take like, one photo is like four seconds of work, mate. I'm training hard here for the bull market, son.

We're not the same.

This man just. He just figured out what a dumbbell is. But anyway, that's all right.

We'll.

We'll move on from that.

That's because I've been like, smashing, just hucking barbells, mate.

All right, yeah.

So what are we seeing in the business, mate?

Come on, what's your question? Oh, yeah, it's been nuts. So we, we, in terms of the membership numbers, like, it's been awesome. Like, you know, so many people are now really realizing that, you know, a lot of the information online is Absolute garbage. I think people are sick of losing money, people are sick of round tripping cycles and they're starting to realize that they need some help. And you know, it is a small fee to pay in retrospect to the growth you're going to get from working with us. And that's what people are really realizing. We had one of our biggest days ever yesterday I think we had, I don't know what it was, 30 or 40 members sign up in a day. It was absolutely nuts. It's been awesome to see so many people come on board and we can help them out. And we've really got a great product now where we've got the live sessions, we've got the shift list, we've got the community, you know, we've got onboarding calls. Like there's so much stuff that's happening at the pro level that you get all that inside, all that access to help you with your portfolio. And then on the platinum side that's just been, you know, we've got a wait list again like you can't, you can't join the platinum because there's just too many people trying to join and that is that one on one service for those high net walls. There's so many people trying to get into that because the feedback bergs is just phenomenal. Like people are up to their second years now. People are renewing, they're making a bunch of money, I'm getting messages, people making 50k in a week, you know, 100k, it's like, it's just nuts. So it's awesome, it's awesome.

It's so crazy. And just seeing on the activity in the platinum chat's been amazing and just seeing other people win and helping them win and also how we've changed that pro product. Just when you were talking I was like, yeah, we have changed that a lot. It used to be like kind of like a SaaS service. People come in, they get analysis but now we've wrapped that in, you get like the monthly Q&As, you can put your questions on, you can jump online, you can talk to other people. We've really worked on the community aspect as well. So you'll be connected with other people going through similar things on similar journeys as well as having the research and analysis and access to all of those researchers and ability to ask them questions. It's just, I'm really proud of the product man.

We don't get that anywhere else. Right? That's like, that's one of the best things Independent analysts like where on earth do you get that? You know you don't. So no, it's absolutely epic. And yeah, we're going to be showing off all of our insights and stuff at the conference so we'd love to see you there. I try to just get the coupon code to share with you on the pod, but we'll put in the description below. We do have some free tickets that we've bought that we can give away to Bennett Berg's listeners. So if you don't have a ticket yet, we'll put in the link, the, in the description, a link to the, the checkout and the discount code you can use to grab a free ticket to the Australian Goodbye convention.

Fantastic. I'm pretty sure the code is just collective shift or collective shift 10, one word, all capitals. Yeah, if you're life.

And I'll put in the description because I think one of them gets 10 off but one of them is actually completely free. So I'll put the free ones if we've got any left in the description. So yeah, awesome, mate.

Give it to the listeners.

They're champions, absolute legends and so, so excited to see you guys in person. This is the first gonna be the first live in Bergs, mate. It's gonna be. What are we even talking about? We know what we're talking about.

Mate.

I know it's gonna be up to me to prepare. You're just, yeah, you're just gonna walk.

Up, just wigga, man.

I've been Simpson.

You know how he's gonna be, guys. He's going to want to talk about his bread and you know how much he's lifting the gym.

Oh, mate, it's just.

It would be the Berg show if he, if he had all the, all the rights of the.

Of course it would be. I'm just giving the people what they want, mate. You even gave me that feedback during the week, like, oh, I was on some sales calls, man, people love you on the podcast. And I'm like, of course they do.

Well that's only one out of ten. Nine out of ten tell me they love me. But I was, I wanted to, you know, pump you up a little bit, mate.

Mate, like seriously, just stop bending the truth, mate. What are you, Fox News? What's going on? Like, you can lie to yourself all you want, mate. We know the truth.

I am the mainstream media, mate.

I am, I am the main character. So we're going to talk about, we're going to do like a market update. We'll have a bunch of time for Q and A. But we're actually going to talk about what's in our specific portfolios and I'm definitely going to talk about my strategy going forward. Are you going to do a similar thing?

Sounds like I am.

Well, you don't have to mate. It's. It's a two way street. See, I'm not like you, where you just, you know, autocratic. This is definitely what we're doing. I made a decision even though it's the worst decision in the world and you've Already run fucking 10ks ahead with your decision. And I'm like, nah, Ben, reel it in mate. So I like to get to a decision together, you know, it's the best way to do it.

This is why we work so well together guys. It's like, you know, Berg's with a prepared one. It's all played out, it's all prepared and I just rock up and just figure it out. I'll just, you know, this is how it works so well, you don't figure it out.

Like I build like the train, the railway tracks, like where we're going and everything. You just sit in the driver's seat and just press the little button. You just step on the gas a little bit and that's it, mate, it's all prepared for you. It's all just so comfy, mate.

Well, mate, this is the thing with, you know, people like you. If you were to build a track and just go around in circles, I'm the one with the directions. We know where the train wants to go, mate.

Mate, it must be easy just to show up and have everything done for you. Hey, you've been on holiday, mate. I've been on holiday. You've been to like Greece, London. You went to New Zealand. Where's the other place where you got the shits? Philippines. You went over there, mate. You've been on, you went to Bali as well. You've been on perpetual holidays, mate. I take five days off working and you crack the shits, mate. This is how much, how easily the business can fall apart without me being in it. Five days and everything's gone to, it's gone to.

We've had our biggest sales day ever. You never been here, mate.

Mate, that's got nothing to do with you.

It's all the months of training and preparing. That's why things actually bloody work, mate.

Right this, we're wrapping this podcast up.

So good by the way. This is now, like I forget we're even on a podcast. This is how we normally talk.

This is usually the pre podcast.

Right, enough talking guys. We'll see and ladies, we'll see at the oscryptcon. Love to see you there and for everyone else we are hosting a online free crypto growth summit in December, first of its kind so if you're keen to check out that we've got 30 plus speakers absolute free event. We've got the best, the best Zenica bergs and I doing a live better bergs checkmate. We've got Olympians, Chris Judd. We got awesome speakers come across Collective Shift o Summit. It's completely free. Get your ticket. I think we're already at 500 people are registered so it's going to be an epic event. You know should have a couple of thousand people there which is gonna be awesome so love to see you there.

It's gonna be amazing. Can't wait to see you all in person and mate live Bennebergs. So we'll see you there champions.

See you guys.