How To Make Money in Crypto in 2026

Most people are still investing in crypto like it's 2021. Chasing coins, watching charts, reacting to every headline. And that just does not work anymore. In 2026, investors making real money aren't doing more, they're doing less with more structure. Bitcoin as protection income layered on top and patience is required to chop through the noise. And crypto is still so tiny, you know, in comparison to gold, bonds, equities. The opportunity right now is big, but the playbook has changed and today we're going to break down exactly how, where strategizing to make money in crypto in 2026. You know, no hype, just the frameworks we actually use and how Bergs and I are thinking about it because Bergs, you know, at the moment, you know, the clients we're working with and you know, the sophisticated investors are coming across. They have big property portfolios, they've got lots of stocks. But the reality is, you know, property may be making what, 8% a year, you know, a good ETFs making 10 to 12%, you know, S&P 500, it's all time highs. And then you look at inflation and you overlay that performance against like real true inflation. That could be 10%, 15%, heck, 20% in different markets. You know, some assets are not even outperforming inflation. And that's really where, you know, investors are thinking more around Bitcoin. Is that core hedge against that? You know, I think from a returns perspective, like depending on where you look, iShares reports, you know, between 2014 and 2024, 54% average annualized returns for Bitcoin, you know, it's, it's the single best asset, you know, over the last 10 years. And a lot of people are using bitcoin as that hedge. But if you've been in crypto for a number of years and you haven't updated your strategy, that's where a lot of people are getting caught out. They're still holding crappy altcoins they haven't updated based on the current market. And yeah, really excited to sort of talk about 2026. But the market's changed a lot, right?

That's right. And you know, bitcoin is the alpha asset. Like it's the shelling point. It's where everyone will naturally make. And when you do have money and you get to, you know, a certain level, you don't need to make oodles and oodles more. Right. But with bitcoin you actually can and it's simpler and there's actually some fancy things you can do with it that we're going to go through today. And just on your crypto strategy, bitcoin will be a big piece of it. But, but there's other parts as well that we need to look at for 2026 that we can tack onto that and have a really, really great portfolio that will perform for you.

Yeah, they're spot on. And so I think that the first big thing to think about, you know, at the moment, obviously the market, you know, has been sort of sideways and down for 2025, you know, 2026. We're hoping that things are going to be, you know, you know, better in terms of performance and returns. But I think the big thing is that know, heck, we've been investing in crypto now for eight, nine years. There are years where you have down years. Like, you know, in terms of my personal performance, I've had two or three years out of the last eight that have been red, but then those remaining five years that are green, you know, I constantly, sorry. Consistently getting, you know, 60 to 90% returns in a year. One year in 2021 I had a 3,000% return like you make back and more what you missed out on during those years that aren't green. But it's patience that you need to have and you need to update your strategy. And that means reallocating those altcoins. Restructuring. I've done that, you know, consistently over the last eight years. The market changes. You can't just hold the same thing.

The world's changing and you have to change with it. It doesn't have to be every day, 15 minute trading, nothing like that. But just be aware of what's actually happening out there and adjust accordingly and make sure that your thesis is still true. And for an analogy, people that invest in shares, the cycles happen slower. Stock 7 to 10 year cycle. And within that, if you're in high growth, you'll have maybe two to three down years out of the seven to ten. Yeah, with crypto it looks something like this. Like you're saying, Ben, like one year is plus 200% next year, minus 50 next year, plus 30% next year, plus 5% next year, minus 15%. But overall the returns are there and those cycles happen much faster.

The thing that, you know, is probably step number one in terms of, you know, how we plan to make money in crypto that this year, and I mean, you know, we're already doing this with our portfolio kicking off back in November is we've positioned, you know, A large percentage of our portfolio in stablecoins and we're earning a yield on that. So generating income when the market's going sideways is a great way to offset the, the growth that may not be there in terms of the asset class. And you know, we've been able to protect the downside of our portfolio by selling down, you know, our positions on some of those altcoins that have performed really poorly and during that period. And we're using USDC stablecoins to generate a yield. So essentially there's a range of different pools you can use. Personally I use syrup and they have a USDC pool on syrup. You can literally go to syrup finance. I've got a, I think it's currently 6.1% you're getting on your USDC, which is far higher than most banks would give you. There's no lockup period. You can get it out at any point and you know, you're getting that sort of consistent return, you know, no matter what the market's doing. All right, there are higher income generating yields. You can create anything higher than sort of 8%. You know, you really getting into some riskier territory. But it's really about just being able to offset, you know, the rate of just having cash and just letting it idle and sit there. You're being able to kind of use it elsewhere.

And just in that strategy itself that money came from when you're invested in alts and the market has changed. And with us, our analysis, we had all of these things we were looking at, a lot of them were triggered. We said, right, this isn't going in the direction, it's not going up into the right. Essentially these are the signals that being triggered. Sell these things off and people have like a lot of people like our staff have done, sold those off, very hard thing to do. And then put that money in USDC and invest it and you're getting a 6% return while you're waiting for market conditions to change and that opportunity to reappear where you can deploy your funds and all of that is liquid. It's instant, there's no lockup periods. It's a beautiful thing. You can just move on A dime is the most liquid thing on the planet. And when you start to get those signals and you're sure there's a reversal, you put your money in and you have a high chance of success.

Yeah, great, great callback. So that's probably the next thing. You know, how we strategize in 2026 is really about market timing. Far more important, you know, in this current market conditions, especially when altcoins are not performing and you know, the majority of the market has been really, really poor. We want to be able to time your entries and exits to position yourself to not be so exposed to, you know, huge volatility swings. So at a very basic level, you know, one of the things you can track is the 50 week moving average. You know, this has been a trend line that the bull market for the last, you know, three years has followed. And back in November it broke through that, you know, to the downside and that's where we position our portfolio to more defensive and stable coins. We're waiting for that level to, to break above that level, which currently I think is about $101,000 bitcoin. And that will give us, you know, a, a one indication that structurally the market is coming back to a more, you know, risk on sort of perspective. And that's where we'll start to deploy those, those stable coins. What a lot of people do is that they have sort of no risk, real strategy to enter the market. They just have a bunch of cash and they just rip it and just throw it in. It can in this market actually do a lot worse for you than previous years because, you know, one bitcoin is, is kind of been sideways for a little while now and altcoins really are having a very difficult time breaking out to showcase, you know, market demand. Because there's one, there's so many altcoins now, two, a lot of them don't have a lot of, you know, know, real world value. And three, there's a huge amount of inflation that happens with these altcoins that create so much cell pressure. And there's really no one, you know, buying. So you got to be, you got to be careful.

No one's buying. And that's the thing here where if there is a market reversal and things are trending down, I'm pretty sure that the majority of people have, you know, kept their bitcoin because that's gone down maybe 20, 30%. You can stomach that with altcoins. They get crushed, some of them go to zero. You're looking at 60% drawdowns. No one's buying. You're on the sell side. So you need to offload those, get into usdc, do something with it or just have it sitting there because it's difficult to off ramp to fiat then on ramp back again. And that's the kind of strategy where you're still in the accumulation period with bitcoin but you're waiting for a reversal for altcoins.

Yes. Yep. And that's the other thing. So in terms of bitcoin, you know, we, we, we see bitcoin as a completely separate asset class to altcoins. And, you know, bitcoin is, for me, you know, is still a great buy at these levels. Bitcoin is a great buy at 120. It's the same asset. Like, I think it's going, you know, well and truly into the hundreds of thousands, you know, into the, you know, hopefully millions in the next, you know, 10, 15 years because of the asset that it is.

I'm going to be buying bitcoin till I die. Let's put it that way. For every marginal dollar I have, where am I going to put that dollar? It's going to be into Bitcoin.

Yeah.

Like, even if bitcoin is a million dollars, I will still be buying it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it is the, you know, most purest, hardest form of money there is. It's a purely limited supply asset. You know, you could argue that's the only purely limited supply asset because of, you know, the blockchain and the math behind it, you know, and we're seeing these institutions come in at such a rapid level, whether it be blackrock, you know, Fidelity, you know, bank of America is now advising, you know, up to 4% exposure to their clients. Like, you know, that is happening behind the scenes. It's a huge amount of inflows that are coming. It's just, you know, it's just a matter matter of time.

Exactly. It's the hardest money. It's salable, and it's salable over time.

Exactly right. That is the opposite to altcoins. And that was what we just spoke about before altcoins. You know, a lot of people don't understand this with the tokenomics of different altcoins is that there's a huge amount of inflation that happens with these altcoins. As you have token unlocks. And, you know, this is something to track with your altcoins because, you know, a lot of different. These cryptocurrencies, you know, have early investors, VCs, the team, they might have just general unlocks that they create. And essentially this is the same as what happens with the US Dollar. Right. They print more, creates more supply, and the purchasing power erodes. Same with altcoins, but arguably they're far less valuable than fair currency.

And with most. Exactly. With most altcoins, like, although we think it's like blockchain it's better all this sort of nonsense. It's the same people sitting in a room as you would have at the Fed and if that company is not doing well, they need some marketing or stimulation. It's like let's update the contract. Bang another million tokens for an airdrop or we need to hire some devs. Bang another million tokens, will pay them in tokens. Let's get this thing going. Or we need a community bang. Let's reward these people in discord. These are the strings and levers these people are able to pull, which is why it's very difficult to invest in altcoins. Incredibly, long term you're in there generally shorter term and you're seeing where the hype cycle is at, what they're actually delivering, what the tokenomics are like and you're monitoring that heavily over time and you will get significant gains if you get that right.

Yeah, yeah. Bang on. So one way to offset that inflation rate is through staking. So you can stake your cryptocurrencies. You know, if it's a proof of, proof of stake blockchain you essentially you are giving or you know, utilizing your cryptocurrency, let's say Solana. You can stake your Solana by giving it to the Solana blockchain to help with the security of the network and, and to help the, the transactions of the blockchain and you get rewarded in Solana tokens for staking your assets essentially. And this is another way where you can offset the rate of inflation that happens with those altcoins by staking it and you get those staking rewards. Now you can do this through your ledger, you can do it through centralized exchanges like Kraken or Coinbase. You know, you do need to be careful of certain risks by doing it. You know, there are lockup periods on different exchanges, you need to be wary of that. But if, if you're in a long term position, you're not going to touch it and you're okay with the risks. It's definitely something to think about. Now the next one is lending against your Bitcoin now something you know, you need to be very careful about. You know, we don't give financial advice and it's definitely something you need to speak with your accountant or advisor about, but something that I've done in the past and that my plan is to continue building my bitcoin stack so I can lend against it. And I did this, you know, last year I went on a holiday to, to Europe and I was Able to sell, sorry, not sell. I was able to lend against my, my bitcoin to generate cash flow. The, the interest was 7% I think. And you know, you, you don't sell your bitcoin. You, you, you keep it there and you're able to still get the results of, you know, the compounding growth of Bitcoin. Now as long as the, the growth of the asset is out pacing the debt that you have to pay back, well then it's kind of a, you know, it can be looked as a win. You can also pay it down with your, you know, salary or however you want to do it. But it is a tax efficient way. It's how the wealth wealthier make, you know, a lot of wealth with property and stocks they can lend against it. That is now available for Bitcoin and something that I'm looking to continue to do this year.

Yeah, it could even be part of a buy borrow, die strategy. And if you think about bitcoin as property, things become simpler. So let's say you got an investment property, you get yield from that property in terms of rent. Bitcoin, you can chuck it in a contract, you will get yield same same. You can borrow against your property as well. So you can also borrow against your Bitcoin because you've got that asset there. Yes, the collateralization is a bit higher than property, but that's okay. It's, it's really starting to shape up as one of the primary assets on this planet. And they're just a couple of functions that bitcoin has today. And I can't wait to see the functions that are going to be created on top of it in the next decade. It's going to be incredible.

Yeah, yeah. It really is becoming a, you know, a recognized asset that people want to have on their balance sheets. And we're seeing that across the board with these institutions that are, you know, moving huge amounts of their treasuries across. And that probably goes to the next part around, you know, how we're allocating the portfolio and you know, the framework that we're utilizing. What do we even have in your portfolio? I think it's important again back to that timing PC, don't go too heavy on altcoins while we're in this period of, you know, a downwards trend because altcoins can bleed out really, really, you know, hard. You know, majority of your portfolio should always have bitcoin. You want to have those foundations. Personally I'd have a, you know, a decent chunk of stable coins and ready to deploy in the market when the time's right to generate that income. And then, you know, right now we're seeing really strong fundamental projects. Breakthrough this is that, you know, the, the things that we focus on, a collective shift and what gives us our edge and the things that we continue to focus on is primarily investing in fundamentally strong projects. You know, hype is an example of that. It's a derivatives protocol and it's got, you know, this really brilliant revenue buyback system where the revenue that it generates on the exchange, you know, 80, 90% of that revenue comes back and buys back the token. So you get this constant demand of people. Sorry, not, not people, but the protocol, buying back the token because the revenue it's generating, you know, I think overnight hype was up, you know, 18% because of, you know, the constant buybacks that's happening on the, on the exchange. Fundamentally.

I like it.

It's great. Right? And if you don't have those fundamentally strong mechanics, then in a downwards market, you know, you're relying purely on investors to buy the token. A lot of these tokens are down a lot because there's no, there's no interest, there's no demand to buy.

And imagine what you're asking, you're asking someone in a down market. And we've got to remember, it probably won't just be crypto that's down. It'll be, you know, stock market might be down, there might be liquidity, squeezes, interest rates might be high, business cycle might be down, unemployment might be high. All of these macro factors. And you're asking someone to come into the crypto world, okay, crazy big step, and then also buy something that's really far out on the risk curve in a very obscure way, using all these contracts and all these technologies. And you think there's going to be a buyer there?

Yeah, no, probably not.

You're asking a lot.

Correct. And that's really the thing that, you know, every investor needs to understand, crypto is that altcoins will continue to bleed if Bitcoin is in a downward trend. Doesn't matter how good your altcoins are. Like, if Bitcoin falls, altcoins will fall even harder. All right? So you need to be aware of that. And that's where that rebalancing really makes sense. And you know, where I did this back in November, you know, I did this back in February of 2025. I sold a lot of my altcoins back then as well, because of the market was changing the 2022, 2023 sort of downwards bear market. I was holding predominantly just bitcoin and ethics. So you know, you really need to have that rebalancing and adjusting based on what's happening in the market. And same on the flip side, when we move back into an uptrend rebalancing and going harder into these maybe altcoin positions or you know, whatever is the asset at the time is important because that's where you can outperform the market as well.

Yeah, and we see this in business as well. When the business cycle starts to trend downward, the larger businesses or businesses with good cash flow or treasuries are generally okay. The smaller startups are the ones that get crushed and go away into oblivion never to be resurrected again. And it's a similar thing with, you know, Bitcoin L1s and then all the way out on the risk curve like startups are to those crazy altcoins that are difficult to buy.

Yeah, yeah. And, and I think the, the thing that a lot of people forget if they've been in crypto for a little while is that you know, altcoins come and go like you said Bergs, but also like the interest and market dynamics change. You know, it was icos back in 2017, then it was NFTs and it was gaming, then it was Metaverse, there was AI and you know, it'll change. The narratives come and go but you know, it's about the risk to reward. And you know, I think for us like you know, yes, risk seeking investors are going to try and go more aggressive and find some of these altcoins to front run a potential trend reversal. But if the trend continues to go down like you are, you're going to bleed out a lot. You have to be very careful.

This is the whole thing. Don't try and paddle against the current, just go with the current. Don't fight the market, understand what it's doing and just go with the market, sail with it. You can choose the direct that you're going but you definitely cannot paddle upstream. You run out of puff, you'll lose all your money and then boosh, you come down.

Yeah, and, and that's where you know, at the moment the biggest, you know, barrier and biggest resistance we have again in terms of us, you know, looking to grow our portfolios this year is that $100,000 psychological level, like there's a big heavy resistance level there. A lot of swing traders, a lot of long term investors have kind of been waiting for these levels to sell which have been in the market for a long time. We saw that last year in 2025, a lot of people have been selling that got into bitcoin early.

That's something people don't talk about. Everyone's like, why are they, why are people selling their bitcoin? You never sell your bitcoin. Well, if you got bitcoin at a dollar and fifty cents and you're mining it on your laptop and now it's worth a hundred thousand dollars, you're going to sell that, you're going to buy a house, you're going to do whatever you want to do with it in the real world. It's no point in keeping this crazy Internet money and going from 1 million, 5 million, 10 million, a billion, however much you have when you were really, really early to bitcoin. This is, you know, well, geez, what is it? A 200,000x if you're going from 50 cents to a hundred thousand dollars. These people have a lot of bitcoin, More than you or I or anyone listening to this podcast will ever have. We can't accumulate that much anymore because that was so early. Of course they are going to sell.

Yes. And that's something that we, you know, constantly look at with our on chain analysis is looking at, you know, there's whales and who's moving. That's what we saw last year. You know, a lot of those people are selling. But now it's moving. Yep, correct. And now it's being bought by new buyers that are buying at $9,000, $100,000. They're not going to be selling until, you know, a lot higher than that. So we're getting new buyers and we're increasing that base foundational level, which is, which is really important. One thing you touched on there burgs in just terms of, you know, how early they got in. You know, it was funny yesterday at the time of recording, gold and silver had one of the largest retracements in history. It raised $1.7 trillion in 90 minutes. One of the largest reversals in history. Basically it lost the entire market cap of Bitcoin in 90 minutes. Like wiped out. That's how early we are. And that's the size difference, mate.

You see like the people lining up around the block to buy like silver and gold because it's just had this huge run up that they've waited, you know, 19 years to have.

Yeah.

And it's just, it's so crazy. And then it's just all see you later.

Yep, yep. Wild. Absolutely wild. And that's probably, you know, leads me to the last, the last part about this year is, you know, discipline is really important. You know, there's a lot of information everywhere. You know, you guys aren't struggling to listening this with more. You know, you don't need more information. You need clarity. And there's a lot of false content that will get you excited or get you upset or depressed or whatever it is. And I think it's about breaking through that and not listening to the craziness and chaos online and finding trusted sources of information to not make poor decisions and not make emotional decisions. And that's, that's the part where people go wrong.

That's the whole thing with this. There's no magic bullet. It's about getting to mastery with investing, and that is understanding yourself, your goals. Coming to someone like us that understands the market can say, hey, with your goals and what you want to do, look at these things. Work on that over time and you will become a successful investor. There's no just invest in this thing or become a trader in 15 minutes or sell all your bitcoin now because it's all going to zero. All of that is absolute, absolute nonsense.

Yeah, it's nonsense. And patience always wins in crypto, and you know it. It's the reason why, you know, you can make so much money is because it is hard. And when you go through these periods, you know, of like, you know, concern and worry and, you know, think that crypto's all over. This has happened every single year, forever in crypto.

It's patience and consistency over time. It's the same when you go to the gym. Be consistent. Do it over a long period of time with your job. Be valuable. Do it over a long period of time with your investing. Be consistent. Do it over a longer period of time. With crypto, you're lucky because the cycles are shortened, the gains are higher. So you can accelerate that, but you still need to be consistent.

Yep. And. And one of the best stories you know, that I've heard of one of our members and, you know, since we've been doing this was literally a couple of weeks ago, Martin, he posted this in our platinum chat. He said, hey, Ben, a personal thank you to you and the collectorship team. We both retired this week. Our 11th grandchild was born this morning. Today, we completely paid off our home mortgage. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. We basically followed your personal portfolio structure. We still own multiple Bitcoin Ethereum hype. Keen to continue the journey with you and your team. We were totally Broke five years ago. We are very thankful, Martin and Julie.

That is just incredible. That is such a beautiful thing to hear, man.

Yeah, yeah, it's awesome. And that's the, that's the patience, that's the dedication. And these opportunities, you know, are not done. These are, these are things that, you know, now when markets are down, sideways and boring, like, that's really where, you know, you make that capital by being able to take advantage when others aren't.

It's just so beautiful when someone executes, you know, they listen, they execute and they change their lives. Like that is. That is what this is all about.

Yeah, 100%. So again, you know, a lot of, lot of noise, a lot of information out there if you want to get that sort of breakthrough and cut through and work with this one on one and our team and, you know, be. Be able to have a personalized, you know, action plan and be able to have data and, you know, content and insights before everyone else and really being able to action that and, and join. I think we got close to 380 Platinum clients now from around the world, which is absolutely epic. We've got a video in the description of the podcast or YouTube video. You can check that out and see how we operate. Jump on a call with one of our team and, you know, see if it makes sense. But I definitely check that out if you're wanting to take the next step in your journey. But yeah, good little episode burgs, really, to recap, you know, making money in crypto now isn't about being first or being clever and having a crazy, complex strategy. It's really about being patient, structured during this period and use that bitcoin as a base. Use, yield, generate that income where it makes sense and time and patience does the heavy lifting. You know, the market comparison is still very small in the Runway. We've got a long way to go, so.

Exactly. Just your comparison to gold. You do have time and set it up properly and it's going to be an amazing 2,026, 100%.

Stay disciplined, folks. Stay positioned. And that is how wealth is going to be built in 2026. Thank you as always for listening. If you like the episode, love for you to share it around with a friend or family member and check out our other episodes if you haven't already, and we'll see you on the next one.

Thanks, champions.