208. Is The Crypto Bull Market Over? What Is Happening And Where To From Here?

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 CEO of Collective Shift. We're here to bring you world class crypto research strategies and insights to help you crush this crypto bull market. Plus an exclusive behind the scenes look as we scale Australia's leading crypto research company. And the market has been on a huge downward slide over the last or pretty much all of this year so far and especially over the last couple of weeks. Everything is really sold off. There's a lot of fear in the market.

I think the fear got to as low as 10, which has not been seen since Luna and the FTX crash, which is crazy.

It's the fear and greed index, right?

Yeah, fear and great index. Yep, absolutely nuts. And a lot of people are worried, a lot of people panic. They're asking me, is the bull market over? Have we missed it? You know what's happening? Because we all were promised that Trump was going to roll in and just pull, pump the markets and essentially the absolute opposite has happened. So first of all, it is very hard sometimes for newcomers and even existing investors to sort of stomach these downturns like it is really.

It can be very.

Gut wrenching, I think is probably the best way to put it when you're seeing your portfolio go down and you're like, wow, my portfolio was at this number and now it's down here. But I think the really important thing here is to, is to understand is that this is not just a crypto thing. Crypto is not changed or fundamentally nothing's wrong with the space. The macro conditions like we've been talking about for a long time are not ideal. Right. And the stock market is also enduring just as much short term pain and big selling off. So the stock market over the last couple of weeks has sold down, sold down nearly, I think 4.5 trillion in a couple of weeks, which is nuts. We're seeing stocks like Tesla down 55% from their all time highs, which is crazy. The Dow Jones S and P and Nasdaq are down 9.4% to 13.7% from all time high. And sentiment is at its worst in the stock market since 2022. Now what I always do in periods of fear and panic is step back and think about what's going on and think about previous times. We've had corrections, we've had a number of corrections. I say this all the time. We've had 12 plus 25%. Sorry, 12. 25% plus corrections for Bitcoin. Bitcoin's currently down about 30% from its highs. This is not unusual for bull markets. It's happened a number of times before.

This is why bull markets are harder than bear markets.

Bull markets are very hard, very hard. And people get fearful and panicked because of what's going on online and fear and sentiment of people buying all this stuff. These traditionally have been amazing buy opportunities. In these deep corrections, we look right back over every single cycle and we have these big deep corrections where a lot of retail sell out, a lot of money gets thrown off the table, and we see bigger whales. We see institutions literally scoop up these assets for cheap and they ride it longer and harder for the retail, and they are the ones that make the money. And as a really simple strategy, if you were just to buy in the fear and sell in the greed, you'd be laughing, right? Easier said than done. But that is ultimately what plays out time and time again.

So really my thoughts and strategy here is that I have been buying the dips. I have been predominantly buying bitcoin for the last year because I have been saying for a long time that the macro conditions are not great. While rates are still high, while there's concerns of inflation, while the dollar has been quite strong, these are not great conditions for risk on assets. However, there's so many tailwinds behind us and that have come out of the last few weeks from the U.S. whether it be the strategic bitcoin reserve, whether it be the M2 money supply, increasing the executive order at this crypto summit, potentially about buying bitcoin based on, you know, making sure that the balance, the budget balance is out, there's so many amazing, fundamental things that are happening in crypto. But because the macro is not great and it's pulling us back, which is the opportunity, and that's the most important thing.

Let's highlight that all of the things you just said with the crypto summit, strategic reserve companies buying blackrock, buying heaps, listed companies buying bitcoin, Bitcoin has never been stronger than it is today, fundamentally, right? Even crypto in general has never been stronger than it is today. If you look at that and those fundamentals, it's like, whoa, game on, let's go. Plus, all the things are going to happen in the future. The reason that people may be feeling the fear is because the other side of price, if the price Today, Bitcoin was 160K, you'd be laughing. Everything's great. The only Thing that's different is that number. Nothing has fundamentally changed. If you are a long term investor, it is fucking go time. Like, seriously, these are the times where you should be accumulating bitcoin. Yeah, buy other people's blood, other people that are being shaken out. If you yourself are getting shaken out and you want to sell, ask yourself why? First of all, what are you selling? Are you selling your good shit? Like, you know, top 10 coins, whatever it may be, the big L ones, Bitcoin, why are you selling that? It better have a bloody good reason. If you are, you know, rotating into other coins or, you know, reforming your portfolio because you've been heavy in meme coins and a few others, by all means move those across and that should only be a small percentage of your portfolio. But if you look, fundamentally this is an incredible opportunity. And yeah, the price hasn't happened, but it's like the other episode we're talking about with delayed gratification. For me, that price action is inevitable. Things are only pointing in one direction and people are freaking out. This is your buying opportunity. Wait longer term and you will be rewarded. We've seen this time and time again and there's so much pressure, Ben. The way people are speaking, people are leaving the space. People have lost money. They've got no more faith in it. Everything's a scam. It should have pumped under Trump and people get shaken out and they lose money. They are the people that don't think long term and they won't succeed. And they are not capitalizing on this amazing opportunity that was us for the previous few cycles and, and we're sure as shit not doing that now.

Yeah, man, that's the same for everyone. Like, it's, it's, it happens every cycle. You get these corrections everyone gives up and throws in the tower. Bitcoin's at nearly $80,000. Like, I remember when I bought a bunch of bitcoin, pretty much all the cash I had back in 2020, I think it was in 2021 at 10,000 US and then it literally dumped to four and a half thousand US over the next couple of weeks. Like, that's painful because no one gave a flying fuhuza about crypto then anyway. And that was completely dead. Bitcoin's at 80,000. And then you got the US president buying crypto. Like, are you kidding me? Like, everyone just take your fucking chill pill, bro.

And back then would have been, you're buying a 10K. We were thinking, is bitcoin going to be a real thing? Like, are people, do they want this? Am I just in this weird echo chamber now? It's definitely a real thing. There's legislation about it. It's definitely real. Even the accounting standards have changed because of bitcoin. It is 100% here to stay. You'd be guaranteed on.

I think one thing that we've been really hot on in terms of our strategy and talking a lot about, especially in our platinum group is around over the last few months, we've really adjusted our portfolio to be less risk on. So we reduced a lot of our altcoin positions, we built up our BTC and our top assets. And yes, the market's still down. Don't get me wrong. However, the whole market's down and our portfolio is outperforming most portfolios because we're not still sitting in a bunch of crap that was good to be in middle to late last year, but not good now. And I think that's a real key point is that I think the market's going to shift back towards good fundamentals. We saw maple or syrup, my, my favorite alt the other day had a, had a listing on Coinbase. And the TVL continues to grow, even in the bear market. It was up 70% in the last 30 days. Right. That is an outperforming fundamental asset that is going to be rewarded when the market returns. And I think that shift back towards fundamental assets and layer one blockchains that are doing actual stuff in the space and actually building and generating revenue and token fees and things like that are going to be the ones that outperform. Not to say meme coins and stuff won't perform. I think they will, but there's not going to be as many as we saw when we had like the whole pump fun era.

Exactly. And if your portfolio is down significantly, just look at it and ask yourself why. There's no shame in it. You know, you don't have to tell yourself, I'm wrong, I'm crap, I did this. Market conditions will change and all that needs to happen is you need to realize, hey, the kind of fundamental things and theories and thesis that I had in the market few months ago, is that still true today? And if it's not, update it. And update your portfolio as well.

Yeah.

Because you don't have to hold this stuff into oblivion, into the ground and be like, oh, it's I'm going to be rich next cycle. I'll sell it then. No, get rid of the crap. If you would not buy it today, do not have it in Your portfolio, structure it for the market and, you know, the next few months and what we see is coming up.

Yeah, it's a great point. I think one big area this cycle that we all need to be aware of is. Is not being.

What's the word? You know, we, we need to be a little bit more proactive or even faster reactions on when the market shifts and of complacency. Complacency is what's going to kill a lot of people's portfolios based on the fact that they don't act when it's time to act and hope that things get better. And that is where a lot of people go wrong.

Exactly. This is why we're also getting more platinum members than ever, because we keep them up to date. Right. Even our pro members as well. We keep those guys up to date with alerts and what we talked about fundamentally, like you put out a post a few weeks ago about restructuring your portfolio because of what's happening in meme coins and where the space is actually going. And this keeps people apprised. You don't have to be on this every single day, but you do need to be across the conditions because things are volatile. Like, you got Trump with all of his executive orders, you've got tariffs, you've got things happening globally with the war and different economies. All of these interact. And crypto is probably the most liquid thing on the planet. Right. It's 24 7. Pull your money out, decentralized. When people get shook and they're unsure, that's the thing that's going to be affected. And if it is, then you need to change the. With those market updates.

Yeah, totally agree. So, yes, it's fearful. However, those are the opportunities and the smart money knows that these are the, the, the buying opportunities. Value and price, as Berg's mentioned, are two separate things. The value of an asset doesn't always correlate with the price. And when you get these huge corrections, these are the opportunities where you can see the value of an asset and know the price is cheaper. That is the investment and that's the buy.

And I do two things when I'm feeling like this and I'm in the crypto Twitter space, I read everything and there's a lot of negativity. One is, hey, if my friend had my exact portfolio, what would I advise them to do? And that's a lot easier for me because it's not me, it's not my money. I'm not thinking in that way. And utilize that mental model and you will succeed quite a lot. Just having that kind of one step removed that has helped me so much to see things as they are. Don't be afraid to make change. Don't get shaken out. And if you are worried about where your pl your portfolio is at, just ask yourself why. The answers are there. You'll know why. Make those changes.

Totally agree and huddle on exactly like like.

Huddle on like. And again, the other question I ask myself is when these numbers are down and I want to buy, how am I feeling and if it hurts me to buy, if it's painful, am I going to be wrong? Why am I buying when 99% of people are saying this is going to 60k or to zero or whatever when I have done that in the past. They have been my best buys and my most profitable buys when it hurts the most. It's very easy to buy when everything's going up 2,3000 per day, that is the easiest time to buy. When it hurts, ask yourself why it hurts and smash that buy button.

Be fearful when people are greedy and greedy when people are fearful hasn't changed. Right folks, that's enough from us. If you like this episode, we'd love for you to share it with a friend, a fellow crypto enthusiast that's down at the moment that needs a bit of Hopium. Shoot this to them. It's how we grow the podcast. We'd absolutely appreciate you sending it around. So thank you again and we'll see you on the next episode.

Thanks champions.