How I’m Positioning My Crypto Portfolio for 2026

If you give me just 20 minutes, you're about to get over seven figures of crypto investing portfolio advice and over eight years of experience from me. After going from really bankrupt and leaving school and going all in on crypto nearly eight years ago now, and building a multi seven figure portfolio, helping clients, literally thousands of clients around the world now working with the likes of Coinbase, Coinspot, SwiftX as research partners of ours. I want to help give you all the lessons, experience shares, so you can avoid all the mistakes I made and you, you can get further ahead and get prepared for 2026 because it's shaping up to be completely different to every other bull market. As you will know, this year has been completely different. So I want to share with you every step of the process so you can get fast track success. I made over seven figures in crypto since 2017 from investing full time in this space and I made a lot of mistakes over the journey. And what I wanted to do in today's video is really just give you a real market update, like the real beans of what's going on, what I'm doing with my portfolio, how things have shifted. And I want to share with you how exactly why this year has been so frustrating and how I'm navigating it to get prepared for 2026. So before you make the next trade, just be locked in on exactly what I'm about to share with you so you can make sure that next investment you absolutely nail so we can make sure the 2026 is a great year. Now, while most crypto influencers are screaming it's going to the moon or it's going to the zero, usually the truth is somewhere in the middle. And you know where we are right now. I'm kind of calling the Great Depression or the great frustration of 2025. It's been a super tough year for crypto investors. Looking at the charts like really, you know, at the moment, the pretty much level year to date, if we go, you know, right back to the start of 2025, like altcoins, the others market cap is down 42%, meaning on average, altcoins are down 42%. Bitcoin's even down. There's been a couple of outliers that we've nailed this year, including Hyper Liquid and also syrup that done really well on. They're still outperforming. Even though the market, you know, is down. There's been a few outliers. But I want to share with you why this year's been so frustrating. Now Before I get into that, I wanted to really just, you know, share with you, like my audited returns from my tax accountant. Here's my. The last five years of returns. We haven't quite finalized 2025, as you can see here. You know, I made a, you know, huge return back in 2021. And we had these two years of, of sideways movements. Real frustration. And I think, you know, these frustrating, sideways, sideways years are the time to get accumulating, to start getting your portfolio right, but also to understand and reflect on what's gone on in this space. And ultimately, like, it's been very, very different. You know, 2025 feels like this boring bear market because there hasn't been a lot of capital rotation from the big institutional investors that's gone into Bitcoin are used to flow into eth, into altcoins. But that hasn't really happened. We had this like, huge narrative, you know, earlier in the year around Meme Coins and, you know, the Meme Coin Casino. But since then there's really been no narratives. We don't have Meme coins, we have DeFi NFTs. There's really been nothing that's gone on. If I was to really boil it down, you know, this cycle is playing out very differently because we're not seeing that hype driven boom. We're seeing institutions allocate over retail. We're seeing ETFs have changed everything. There's no longer that constant buy pressure of altcoins and it's liquidity driven. It's really tied into rate cuts, you know, QE, you know, M2, money supply and the political tailwind. And that's really it. You know, what we saw early in the year was huge meme coin volatility. There's a lot of money that was made and lost. And I think that was kind of the start of the end of a lot of altcoins. Like, if you remember Trump as an example, Trump had this crazy, crazy run, you know, earlier in the year. Actually, one of our clients jumped on it. We had it in our WhatsApp group that came out and he actually made $120,000 off this trade. But, you know, if you look at actually what was going on behind the scenes, like, you know, some of the ownership of Trump was, was really, really poor in a sense of, you know, who was actually owning behind the scenes, you know, a lot of this token capital and the supply. And a lot of people don't understand that when getting into crypto that, you know, one of the problems with A lot of these altcoins is they have awful token economics. A lot of these altcoins have really low float, meaning there's you know, very little circulating supply. A lot of the tokens are owned by the founders or early VCs and essentially they're just creating more and more supply that comes into circulation which then the retail is the exit liquidity for. And what we've seen, I guess over the course of this year is a huge liquidity fragmentation. You know, this is too many chains, too many altcoins, capital spreads too thin, no pumps, no big setups and everyone is just, you know, is losing because of it. And that's why we're seeing such a big sell off on the altcoin side. Then all you really have is, you know, these like, you know, big narrative pumps that come and go that really sucks the liquidity out of retail investors as well. Like retailers have just absolutely been smashed this cycle with the celebrity tokens, with, you know, remember, you know, all the celebrity tokens that come out on top of Trump, like, you know, the Hawk tour girl, like where's she gone? Like all of these things have just, you know, been a massive, massive distraction from what's really been going on behind the scenes. With a lot of great fundamental growth of the asset, a lot more institutional, you know, buyers. We've seen Vanguard recently come into crypto like they've been anti crypto forever now. They've, you know, opening their platform up to crypto. You've got the bank of America actually advising and endorsing who 4% crypto exposure to their clients. We're seeing record inflows of ETF volumes. We're seeing huge, huge institutional players come into the space. But it's not playing out like the previous cycles because we're not getting that retail driven speculation. We're not getting altcoins really move. And you know, from a personal level, really where I've made most of my money in the entire career of being in crypto over the last eight years is focusing on the fundamental side of altcoins that is so important. Because when you get speculation, you know, ending and when you don't have that retail hype, you don't get that narrative, you don't get that excitement. You get this sort of like tide going out, you know, environment where you've only left with fundamentals. And some of the best fundamental projects have continued to outperform like hyper liquid and like syrup. And you know, the reason, because of that, like in the way we do our research is focusing on quality, fundamentally strong projects. And we do that because it drives revenue back to the token. Like hyperliquid, right? 99 or 90 plus percent of the revenue that hyperliquid creates goes back to the token, which is really exciting. Where a lot of these other coins that come and go really, you know, driven by speculation. And when you don't have retailers in the market, well, you're not going to have any growth. So how can you avoid these traps? Well, you really need a system. You really need to avoid the traps of, you know, getting sucked into the noise of, you know, meme coins and, you know, altcoins and all these sorts of things. You end up with 20 different coins. You have no idea what they do. And, you know, for me it really comes back to looking at some institutional grade data. One of the sites I like to use is Far side Investors for the ETF inflows. This really just gives you an overview of, you know, the amount of, you know, volume of institutional investors coming in and the accumulative flow of those, you know, ETFs. Now, again, one of the biggest things you need to understand is that for these ETF holders, they're not buying Bitcoin, as I said back, sorry, they're buying bitcoin. They're not rotating that money into altcoins. That's really important. Liquidity is now stuck at the top and that's why retail feels dead. The next one is like the stable coin market cap. So this really gives us a good indication of like the growth of, you know, on chain capital, how many people are coming into crypto, what is the growth? And for me, you know, this is a really, really strong, you know, narrative that continues to drive the market is we are seeing more and more growth come into the market. Again, that's not flowing into altcoins, but we've got to be selective at the time that we're buying them. And, you know, one of the best ways to kind of cut through the noise and understand, well, okay, what chains are actually doing something like what altcoins should I buy? And I think the important thing to remember is altcoins at the end of the day are speculative startups, all right? And they are startups building a product that the world may or may not need in the future. But that's the speculation. If you look here, like, this is a great site to kind of look at the, you know, developer report on, you know, you know, different chains. You know, you can see here like this a huge, huge, you know, decrease On a lot of these altcoins, on the amount of development activity, like if you go that the top five here, Bitcoin, Solana, Ethereum, you know, is all up, you know, year to date and over the last two years. And also Coinbase also there's been a growth, you know, a bit of growth in SUI and a couple of these other ones. But this is a really good understanding is to look a little bit deeper in some of the tokenomics of projects. And you know, this is what we do for our clients. We kind of do the research for them and you know, we kind of do the due diligence. But one of the most important things is looking at the developer activity because if the developer activity is dying off and there's not a lot of growth and know roadmaps are being delivered on altcoins, well then that's where altcoins sometimes go to die. And that's something to be really aware of. So, you know, one of the great sites there is a developer report on altcoins. One of the other things I like to look at is the on chain analysis. This is really beautiful in terms of Bitcoin and Checkmate does content and analysis for, for our members. And you know, one of the best things about, you know, looking at some of this data is, you know, understanding like where the cost basis of investors are at. And there's been a huge rotation of investors that were buying Bitcoin early and now rotating a lot of their Bitcoin into, you know, new buyers and you know, essentially they're taking profits. And what happens when you start to get new buyers of bitcoin, you start to get this new mean of the average cost base of investors. And you can see here there's been a big sell off, you know, in terms of Bitcoin and that's, you know, started to slow the cost base at Bitcoin. So as we get that cost base higher, it means that we actually starting to, you know, build a new platform for where bitcoin investors are buying in, which means they're going to take a lot longer before they take profits. All right, so on chain analysis is really good to kind of understand where, you know, these cost bases are at as we see it is a little bit harder, you know, as we get ETF volumes and whatnot. But it's really good to understand. Again, on chain analysis is one of those core metrics. Now let's talk about the elephant in the room. I think the biggest thing that everyone is aware of that maybe, you know, consciously or otherwise is not understanding though, is the opportunity cost of holding assets right now. Why the debt, the US debt is as high as it is like the US debt is now going into. You know, I think we're up to nearly 38 trillion in debt, which is absolutely wild. This is a great site. We can check the, you know, constant increase of debt. Yeah, $38 trillion worth of debt, which is absolutely wild. So as we get that and we get an increase of supply of fiat currency, you know, we get that growth of supply and we start to get that devaluation of currency. And when you're buying assets that are valued in that currency world, that yes, you might be buying property, but you know, the property price is going up, but you go and sell that property and guess what? The next door neighbor's house has gone up just the same. So for me, coming back to why I'm so bullish on this space and why I want to accumulate as much bitcoin as I can, is because bitcoin for me is the solution to the debasement of currency. It's the solution for offsetting the global, you know, macro elements of growing supply of money. And as the growth of money supply increases and we start to see more and more devaluation of currency, it, it goes into risk on assets. And for me, Bitcoin is that solution. Yes, we're still early on. Yes, you have that volatility and there is that conversation of like, well, why is it so volatile and why does it go down, you know, when, when it should be doing its thing? Well, it's still a very new asset. Like in terms of gold, gold has been around for forever, basically. You know, bitcoin's only been around for, you know, less than 20 years. And you know, it's starting to become that safe haven asset. But more and more people need to understand that and that's where the opportunity rises. Because we are essentially speculating on the fact that bitcoin's going to be a lot higher in the future once understand they need to get out of the inflation rat race. So that's all well and good, but, you know, this isn't about getting rich quick or it's not about, you know, trying to time the top and bottom of the market. But I'm trying to give you an understanding of how I'd be best positioned to, you know, make the most of what is to come in 2026 and beyond. And for me, you know, this is kind of my plan. It's a 60, 2020 rule. I think about, you know, foundation, growth, liquidity. One of the things that I always say, especially where we are in the market right now, where we're not getting that huge momentum in the market is you want to have 20%, you know, stored away in cash or stable coins, right? You put it into stable coins, you can start to like build a bit of a yield on that. You can earn 7, you know, up to 15%. We've done a lot of content on that. You can check it out if you remember. Otherwise, hold that in stablecoins ready to buy the fear if we, if we continue to go down. Now for me right now, you know, the focus point is layer ones. Layer ones is the growth engine. It's where all of the focus and attention of the market is. It's where the VC capital goes. And really I'm not allocating too much out of that. I've got one defi play that, you know, the members would know that I'm excited about. But outside of that, it is majority bitcoin, right? And I update and optimize this as the cycle goes on. I recently trimmed my, this is not my portfolio right now, by the way. This is what I'd have if I, you know, was, was recommending some, you know, someone to, you know, the space. But for me right now, you want to make sure you're in a position to take advantage of the market goes lower. But also, you know, there are all these tailwinds that we know are coming and we're just being patient, you know, waiting for those liquidity events to happen. I'd be thinking now is a great time to accumulate Bitcoin, Bitcoin and, and knowing that, you know, the old coins, you've just got to be far more selective now to really create a legacy and really be able to take this portfolio and, and think long term because that's really where you're going to be able to use, you know, crypto and bitcoin is really a wealth generation, you know, machine as a way to really grow. You want to be able to not have to think too short term. If you think too short term, you're going to make poor mistakes. Emotionally driven. And I think about the wealth formula that I, you know, shared recently with our clients around thinking about wealth is a multiplication of a few things. It's capital times time times conviction times structure. And the reason I have this is because a lot of people make mistakes of not having enough time in the market. They don't have conviction in what they hold, which means they sell or panic or they're just making poor decisions or they don't have the right structure. And you know, one of the biggest things I think you need to understand when thinking about this formula, bring it together, is this is the way that we can also utilize Altcoins to increase our exposure to Bitcoin. The only reason I hold Altcoins is to buy more Bitcoin. So if we're not in a cycle where we're out forming Bitcoin, you know, if we're not, you know, actually getting in these assets that we've done really well on this cycle, well then why are you holding Altcoins? You want to be able to be in an asset where you're taking that right risk to reward framework. And this is exactly what our clients have been doing recently, like, you know, avoiding this retail noise and following an institutional grade portfolio with the data. Martin literally put this in, he's in one of our platinum clients, put this in WhatsApp. I had to screenshot it because I wanted to mark out his, his number. But he talks about how, you know, my allocation. Happy to pay for the wisdom because it's been totally life changing. Or you know, one of our other clients who recently sold 85% of his Bitcoin to buy his apartment in Greece. That was his goal. How was he able to do that? Well, because he had data driven research and support and the guidance from a team that is giving him insights ahead of what retailer are sharing, which allows you to front run everyone else. If you're listening to what everyone else is doing, you're always going to be behind. So if you're wanting to get prepared for 2026, it's actually about getting that data source right. So if you're interested in learning how these clients of ours are really winning and all the results that we share, there's a link in the description below. Check out the free training and you'll be able to see exactly how we operate and see how these clients are winning. So what are we looking forward to here? Well, really the key action point that I'll leave you guys with is these are the things we're looking at. You know, we've got a bounce, right? We have had, you know, a bit of a relief rally, the Santa rally as we call it. But we are still, you know, not in a overall confirmation that the downtrend is broken. We have a lot of institutional support that is here that is clear. The negative media you've got to cut through. But the real conclusion here, folks, the real action point I wanted to leave with you is crypto will test you. All right. My portfolio proves it. Like these returns showcase that you're going to have down years. That is why the upside is so brilliant is because if you survive the hard years and you get prepared for what is to come in 2026 and you know how to invest and how to allocate and you can cut through the crazy retail noise, then you will win. All right? Have the portfolio allocation be prepared for what's to come. And you know again, do you think you can get these returns anywhere else? Absolutely not. That's why crypto tests you so much. So if you're interested in learning how you can invest with confidence, how to actually have a systematic proven process, check out the link below. Click it. It's a free training. You can see exactly how we operate and how our process works. Otherwise. Thank you again for watching. Hope you enjoyed the video and we'll see you on the next one. Thanks.