201. Get Ready For Altcoin Season. Here’s How

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 me as Bergs, your favorite MBA and CEO of Collective Shift. We're here to bring you world class crypto research and strategies to help you crush this crypto bull market. Plus, get an exclusive behind the scenes look as we scale Australia's leading crypto research company. And today we're giving you a little bit of a market update on where things are at. Altcoins had a bit of a correction. Bitcoin is still at massively high numbers in contrast to where we were six months ago. We hit all time high nearly just under two weeks ago at this point and we're seeing a lot of people just, I don't know, burgs like I don't know if it's concern, panic, worry, fear about the market. I think the underlying issue is in my opinion, portfolio allocation. I think a lot of people are over allocated on alts. They went probably too hard pre Christmas on altcoins. Some altcoins are down 50, 60, 70%. But the market is not really in a position to reward super high risk on altcoins right now, which is okay, doesn't mean it's all over, it just means the market and the macro conditions aren't there yet, which we'll talk about in a second. But yeah, I think just looking at bitcoin alone, Bitcoin's up 140% in the last 12 months. Six months ago if you were to say that bitcoin was at US$100,000, you would have been over the moon. Now it's sitting at $104,000 and everyone, you know, it's got panic stations, it's.

At prices not seen since last week, mate, so you better freak out. And I'm not too sure what people were expecting when Trump got elected. We're expecting a rally which we got, we hit all time highs. And I think you're very correct with portfolio allocation where if you're in majority kind of, you know, L1s top 10 kind of thing, you're doing okay and you're not freaking out. But, but we've seen a lot of people, even some of our members.

Quite worried about their portfolios and a few of them actually want to deploy a significant amount of money and are looking for significant gains, but perhaps on the wrong area of the risk curve.

Yeah, I think we've spoken about this before, like really the way I'm thinking about 20, 25 is there's, I think there's a lot of money to be made in crypto, but I think we've really got to continue to focus in building up our, our bigger bags of the top end of the town like bitcoin, Solana, Sui eth, these, the big dogs outside of minus eth, those other three have performed really, really well. And if you've got the allocation that we've been talking about, like at least having 40, 50% of your portfolio in bitcoin, you're doing pretty well. We were looking at our company portfolio just before we're up 6% over the last two months. And, and, and while the most the market's been in the correction, bitcoin continues to hold strong.

Exactly right. And my personal portfolio is down about 8% since all time highs and all time highs were 10 days ago.

So like, I think it's perspective bugs. Like I think one thing that happens in crypto is people get super, super like worried about the near short term and everyone's like looking intraday and overlooking everything and you know, it's just like, oh my God, the market's down 3%, you know, end of the world.

I did see this in one of our groups where someone got in early to a coin, made hundreds of percent, someone got in late and said, oh, I only made 25%. And I said, mate, that's a fantastic year in any other market. So we do lose a bit of perspective because we have had quite a bit of euphoria. We've had euphoric moments in December and early January. And I think if you're not sleeping well at night, if you're feeling like you've missed out, if you're concerned about this correction in the altcoin market, you need to look at your portfolio allocation. So an example, Ben and I, we've got what, 10 or less than 20% of altcoins in our portfolios.

Yeah.

So we're sleeping well. We're not too concerned. We know that they will fluctuate wildly because they're higher out on the risk curve. If you've got more than that and you're in very risky things and you're looking at it every single day, you need to think about your portfolio construction.

Yeah. And be more patient. Like, shit. Been doing this for too long now to know that when you have down periods, that's not the time to panic and sell. You know, like people buy into these narratives. You know, people are calling the end of the altcoin season, they're calling into the bull market. Like, that's because the market's correct. I tell you what, when bitcoin was at 9,000 and it went to 3,000 within like two days, that felt slightly more painful than where we are right now, you know, 10 days. After all time, high prices. You know, the reality is the macro conditions right now, you know, and not that favorable for crypto yet it's still doing reasonably well. You know, we had the FOMC meeting this morning. They're still doing quantitative tightening. You know, like, that is not. That is not, you know, amazing conditions for crypto. We know the M2 money supply. When the government prints money that finds its way to bitcoin and risk on assets. That's not happening right now. You know, that we're not going to see these huge crazy movements in altcoins. And to be honest, we haven't really seen it outside of meme coins. That had a pretty decent run last year, you know, that, that was. And also 27, you know, 2017 coins. We haven't, we haven't seen much else sort of move. But I think the big thing burgs is like, we've got a lot of tailwinds with Trump coming into administration. He's literally pro crypto, he's pro business. He's hired, you know, a crypto executive team. He's put together the executive order. They're going to be talking about, you know, creating more legislation and frameworks for crypto. He literally owns World Liberty Financial, who are stacking crypto right now. He's buying a heap of eth. You know, like, I think this is in preparation for, you know, some things are going to go down later in the year.

That's it. Trump's in. Give him some time. He's let us know his intentions and his administration's intentions. Give him time to accumulate. It gives you time to accumulate, too. And Ben, just as you were saying before, like, bitcoin went down from 9,000 thousand to 3,000 back then we would have been like, geez, is bitcoin going to be a real thing? No one cares about this. But since then, we've had bitcoin developments, we've had regulation, we've had ets, we've got companies buying it, we've got family offices buying it. People are reporting on it now. It's definitely here to stay. It's completely different to where it was like, you know, 2017, 18.

Yeah, yeah, bang on. And I think the other thing that's really changed this cycle compared to previous cycles is that the are literally millions and millions of coins this cycle compared to previous cycles. Like it's not as easy just buying something and then it's just going to go up. Like if you look at the total market cap, the total three, which is the total market cap of crypto minus Bitcoin and Ethereum, you know, we're actually pretty much sitting just below all time high. We hit an all time high at 1.15 trillion in December. We're currently sitting at 1.02 trillion. So we're essentially like 10, 15, 13% down from all time high market cap of old coins. Like if I told you that and you're looking at your portfolio, you'd probably be like, where, where is all that money gone? Primarily it's gone into the top 10. You know, like XRP, Solana, Sui have done extremely well. Like a lot of the low caps have not done so well. So I think really the narrative right now and the way to be thinking about it is if you want to add more money in the market, if you've got 100k, you've got 10k, you got 1000, whatever, I would be looking at the top guys, I'd be stacking your Bitcoin, I'll be looking at the next gen layer ones, I'll be looking at Solana, you know, I'll be looking at Sui, I'll be still looking at eth. Like I hold a lot of eth. Like I think they're sort of the lowest risk plays for the cycle right now.

Exactly right. And I'm just looking at Coingo Live. So all time high cryptocurrency list going from number one downwards. So we look at ETH, it's 55% away from the all time high. Look at Salana, 25% away. BNB, 17% Doge, 121% Cardano, 221% Link, 120% Avax, 335% away from all time high. We've got XLM 120% away from all time high. Shib 364% Litecoin, 245% Polkadot, 839%. Like these are nowhere near the euphoria of 2021. And you and I were talking before this about what that euphoria felt like in 2021. And I don't have those signals. I've got a lot of signals, but I'm not super euphoric where my portfolio is going up $10,000 every single day. My mates aren't even talking about bitcoin or buying it. My Uber driver is not talking to me. I wear my Vandenberg shirt, we kiss my assets on the back. First of all, people laugh at the front because it's got our stupid faces on it. But then no one talked to me about bitcoin. One guy stopped me at Costco and he said, he's like, oh, you need to go and talk to the Australian government about this lad. Oh, so good. Like obviously a bitcoiner. But no one stops me and talks to me about that kind of thing. I got a few, like a lot of obviously auscryptocon and after that when I was walking around Sydney, but since then it's just died right off. Like we had a little bit of euphoria, a little bit of meme coins that, that lasted, you know, less than a month. But we don't have that prolonged period of euphoria that really brings people into the space, gets them activated and then wanting to buy. And we see that by not even touching the all time highs of those top 20 coins.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. And if you look over the again, macro conditions over the last few years, we haven't had quantitative easing. Like the Biden administration have been tight, you know, for, for basically the whole administration. I think Trump will turn out at some point. But even like looking at the ETH BTC chart, like, you know, it's been in a downwards trend for three years. The ratio at the moment ETH BTC is, you know, 0.03, which is pretty much in line funnily enough, at the inverse. Back in 2021, just before we had altcoin season, the East BTC chart from went from where we are about now at 0.03 to 0.08 and nearly tripled in a space of about.

Three months.

Right.

We know how fast crypto turns and when it turns, it goes fast and momentum goes from it's all over to oh my God, we're all going to make it.

That's a really good point. Like at no point have I seen incredibly violent movements across the board where you're like, oh, like I need to pay attention. I'm totally missing out. 50, 60 in a day. Crazy, crazy movements across the board. We've seen them in certain select stages sectors and that tells me that there are people in those sectors that are activated and buying, but it's not the common retailer that buys across sectors. This is very like targeted and it's more people that are in our group that know what the current narrative is it's those people that have been here for a while.

Yeah, yeah. And a lot of the bitcoin growth has come from institutions this time around. Right. Like we've got a lot of, you know, micro strategy for example, just keeps buying and buying and buying and buying. Like there's a lot bigger money floating around which is buying bitcoin. And guess what? A lot of those projects, a lot of those companies and institutions don't give a flying for Hoosier about like you know your shitty number 110 altcoin. So like, you know, I'm not saying don't buy old coins. I've definitely got old coins. But back to the whole idea of this podcast is portfolio allocation. Don't go overexposed, don't go too hard, don't try and chase and have super high expectations because the reality is it's probably going to do the inverse because you're over allocated on a shitty old coin and now it's down 60% and now your entire portfolio is hurting because of it.

We had a few posts that we saw where someone wants to deploy a significant amount of money and they're looking for a 3x5x but they're looking for it in an L1. And what generally happens, and this has happened to you and I and everyone else where you'll get maybe a 2x and which is fantastic in any market you won't sell because you want a 3-5x and you'll round trip that money during the bear market. And for those who don't know, round trip is just come back to where you were or even lose money from that position because you didn't sell when it was 2x because you're expecting 3 to 5x. If you're expecting those returns you need to go further down the risk curve. And I think now Ben is a good time to talk about what does a good portfolio construction look like in terms of altcoin allocation as well the split between sectors and how much to put into those in terms of managing risk and also sleeping well at night.

Yeah, and it depends on your risk appetite. But I like to have at least 50% of Bitcoin in the portfolio. Like I think our company portfolio probably has a bit more than that at the moment. And you know, I think whilst we're in these macro conditions where it's not super risk on I, I, I'd much rather be heavier BTC than than alts. Like I do think alts are going to come and have their day But I've always said, you know, you probably want to have maximum 5% per altcoin and that's quite high. But you know, really you're probably down towards that 1% mark. But that's where I had my meme coin allocation, around like 1% of my portfolio. And then I think like your next gen layer ones and the other big projects like you know, Salana, Sui, Eth for example, maybe they're about that 10%, 10 to 20% depending on where you want to land. I like to offset those. So like you've got a lot of eth, you know, make sure to have some Sal and Sui or you can split it evenly. But I definitely think having the big dogs at the moment is, is important. You can start to add like, you know, altcoins in your portfolio, but you've just got to be patient. Like I think a lot of people buy altcoins thinking they're just going to go up and triple in like six months. When they don't, they get frustrated and they settle the loss. Like that's not the play. Like you've got to wait for the conditions of the market to promote and push these projects up. If the market was pumping, we're in altcoin season and your altcoins are doing shit at that point. Different story. But you know, you don't want to be selling at a, at a, at a, you know, probably a local bottom and in poor macro conditions because you haven't tripled your money.

Exactly right. And for those that are really twitchy and want to be active and get amongst the action, you do the barbells within barbell strategy. So you have your long term portfolio, which is the construction that Ben said. You know, you have your BTC, the majority BTC, you have your L1s and then not more than a few percent in each altcoin. And let's say you've got $100, that will be 90 of your dollars. Take $10, put it in another portfolio. This portfolio has a different mindset. It is not long term, it's more trading, mucking about, scratching that itch. And you can go nuts with that. Like if you're a very twitchy person, you have to be active and you have to gamble or be on the latest thing or the $10 market cap coin that just came out and you are the liquidity. This is your portfolio for that, so you can have your fun over there. It's a different mindset. You go absolutely crazy and you don't ruin your long term Portfolio, the thing that's going to make you money, you can make a lot of money with that 10% as well. And if you do, you send your profits over to your long term portfolio, that other 90% and if you start losing money there, that's okay because it was only a small portion of your stack and you knew the purpose for which it was there and the purpose was a hedge and not risk your long term stack.

Yeah, I think that long term stack, like the way I'm really thinking about that long term is building wealth through Bitcoin. Like it's only a savings account. Like you know, that leftover money from your salary or you know, profits from your business, push it over to btc, like stack that bitcoin. I think you're going to get a much better return on that where you are, you know, than just, you know, any other asset class again. And I think, you know, being able to stack sats and thinking about your BTC dominance. So denomination of btc, like increasing your dominant denomination of BTC is really important. Like I think that's, that's kind of the play at the moment.

And let's talk about people that are in their first cycle. So people that have joined us or are listening to this podcast. You'll see a lot of people doing advanced things in their, you know, third cycle. Some are even fourth cycle. And cycles last roughly four years with the bitcoin halving around that. So you're going to be having a lot of fomo. You won't have experienced a lot of things before. And the lessons here are get that long term portfolio sorted, don't worry about the gambling side. And the thing I want to communicate to you is you are not missing out. You will have many more cycles after this. Think about long term, think about multiple cycles at least eight years in advance. Even now we've been through, we've been in crypto like 8 years each and we are still early and we still have time. You are not missing out. You are so far ahead of everyone else in the world. Get the basics right. And Ben and I want to communicate this to you because if we got the basics right, we'd be multi millions better off in our portfolios. If we had just held that $80 ETH, if we didn't buy so many ICOs and altcoins, if we didn't buy NFTs or APE into scams or have our money lost to a whole bunch of things, if we just did what we know now back then we would be so much Better off. Even though it's slower and you're not as active and you don't feel quite right. You get rich slowly and slowly is like you know, four to eight years, which is actually very, very quick. And you don't touch your portfolio. The whole thing is don't over trade, don't lose your bitcoin, don't lose your layer ones and just let time do the work for you.

Yeah, yeah, I couldn't say about myself. Bergs crypto is just this dopamine fueled 24,7 ADHD market where you think you always have to do something where the reality is like you're going to outperform pretty much everyone if you just sit on your hands, buy good assets and just not stress.

That's it. Like you need to be able to be the master of the marshmallow test or put a marshmallow in front of you. If you don't eat it in 10 minutes you get two. You don't eat those in 10 minutes, you get four. That's what investing is. Money moves from the hands of the impatient to the patient. You want to be the patient person that keeps stacking and accumulating quality assets that grow over time. And in the crypto market those assets are Bitcoin and L1s and a few other coins that we mentioned on collective shift. You hold those over time and instead of doubling your money every seven to 10 years in traditional markets that will be shortened to like two years or within a four years you'll quadruple your money. If you look historically, yeah, and, and.

Again stepping back like the, the macro conditions haven't been favorable for crypto. But we, we're, we're very confident that's going to change, you know, over the course of 2025. And when it does, it's going to be game on and everyone's going to be bullish again and everyone's going to be, you know, saying we're, we're, you know, we're geniuses, you know, just like the same, we're dumb now. Like it's just the same shit over and over and over and over again.

And stop trying to run, just crawl, walk, then run. It's okay, you have time. Take your time. You're not missing out. Just get it right. And even now I take my time. Like our analysts are crazy. They're into absolutely everything because they do it every day for a job and all this opportunity and it triggers my FOMO and I look into it. I'm like, you know what this is not for me. I can't be bothered. It's not how I want to spend my life. I want to spend it with my family, go make a barbecue. And I know that over time my assets will accumulate and I will be fine.

Yeah, yeah. Bang on bugs. And again if we know your time poor we know you probably have a decent chunk of money in crypto if you need help, guidance, access to us, that is what we're here to do at Collective Shift. Like that's generally what we do. We've had such an amazing sort of last few months especially with our platinum service. You know I think someone made 120,000 bucks the other day off the Trump Trump meme which goes against everything we just said by the way of what we, what we've been speaking about. But you know there is, there is that you know like shorter term stuff that is available if you, you know, not necessarily if you have the time but if you have access to the information and that's the benefit.

That's right. So this was. We have a degen chat. Right. So this was the smaller barbell within barbell portfolio I was talking about where if you want to be really active and get into things early, our platinum service has a degen chat and there's quite a few degens in there where they're looking at deck screeners are seeing the latest things come up. It then gets confirmed on Twitter and immediately you've got the contract address you can ape in. It's probably the highest risk thing you can do on the planet but the rewards are almost instant like within a minute or within the day if you hold and you can make a significant amount of money but it's ultra high risk. The majority of the time you will lose but it's with that smaller stack you have so it won't affect your overall wealth and your long term goals in the crypto space.

Yeah, yeah. Bang on bugs. And I think too like managing a big portfolio and being busy can be very difficult and that's really you know we got over 100 Platinum clients now. They get those, you know, access to us, one on one sessions support. You can message us. We have in person events. We're about to announce our, our in person event for this year. So so much awesome stuff. If you are interested I've got a couple of spots open in February. Head over to our website and you can book in a strategy call or there's a platinum page you can read a bit more about is by application. We, we try and keep it very, very High level in terms of who, who gets in. So yeah, if you got and you have to have minimum of a quarter of a million in crypto. So if that is you, you're interested, you can book a time, have a chat, we'll see if it's a good fit and we'll go from there.

And we saved a lot of people as well, Ben. Where a day later people are reading the messages and they're saying, oh, where do I buy this? And we said, well, in terms of how altcoins work, you know, this thing has already gone up, it's already pumped, it's already in the top 50. Wherever it was, the risk to reward is pretty much now gone. Yeah, this is not something you want to get into. And we save people a lot of stress and a lot of loss of funds.

Yeah, 100. Yeah, and that's exactly right, man. Because like, you know, everyone that we work with is busy. They've got a business, their career, family, whatever. Like you're not always going to be in front of the computer. So having the ability to talk to analysts and myself and bergs directly who are doing this full time is, is invaluable in my opinion. And that's what everyone says to us.

So that's a key thing as well. Like if you want more risk, you're gonna have to put in more time as well because these things are very time sensitive. Or you're really gonna need to know your shit where you're gonna buy something and it needs to be. You need to have the tooling where the second you buy it, you can put in your sell orders so you can walk away from the computer.

Yeah.

Like you need to be honor. You need to invest a lot of hours into this if you wanna be that sniper. Yeah.

Otherwise you can have some people help you to it long.

That's exactly right, mate.

Awesome. Well, I think we might wrap it up there folks. Hopefully that was helpful. Again, we love bringing this content to you. We don't do ads, we don't do affiliates, we don't do anything like that. So if you have any friends or family or colleagues or anyone that you think would find this interesting or help them out with their crypto journey, we'd love for you to please share it with them. We'd really, really, really, really appreciate it. It's how we grow the podcast. We're over 200 episodes now. We'd love to, you know, keep bringing it to you and. But we need to keep seeing the, the podcast. Growing it is. Which is super exciting. So thank you, everyone that's tuning in. We love bringing it to you every week. And we'll see on the very next episode.

Thanks, champions.