Record Global Uncertainty: How to Invest in Crypto During Maximum Fear

Global uncertainty is at record highs, higher than 2008, higher than COVID, higher than 9/11. Gold's down, stocks are down, crypto is down. This is what maximum fear literally looks and feels like. And in moments like this, so many investors panic or have already panicked. So today, Bergs and I are going to break down exactly how we are positioning and how to think about investing in crypto during these peak uncertain times, because it has occurred so many times before in crypto, these big sell-offs and sentiment, you know, in and as low as it is now. So we're going to talk about the frameworks, the positioning, and the mindset, protects capital and prepares you for what is going to come next. Let's get into it, Bergs. Let's talk about what's actually happening right now. This is not a crypto-specific sell-off. It is, you know, globally we are seeing the highest level of global uncertainty. There's actually an index for this, the first I've ever seen this index. The World Uncertainty Index is at historical highs. It's like twice nearly the uncertainty that we had of COVID you know, more than the Iraq War, more than 9/11. Like, there's a lot of uncertainty in the world right now.

There's a lot of crazy things going on. You've got, like, Trump's a big one. What's he going to do tomorrow? All the people underneath him. You've got wars going on. You've got a lot of inflation. You've got tariffs. It's all kind of interconnected and a lot of things are down apart from my real estate. That's pumping in Australia. But everything else is really taking a hit and is quite volatile.

Yes. Yes. And, you know, why is that? Well, There's a number of different reasons. One, we've seen, you know, huge uncertainty caused by the disruptive power of AI. Like I think the tech stock unwinding has been kind of wild to witness, you know, especially, you know, SaaS companies and, you know, the, you know, even some of the, like the top 10 companies like Amazon and Microsoft, I think, you know, Microsoft's down 20 or 24% from all-time highs. Huge amounts of volatility on the stock market, which you don't see very often at all.

Bro, people are shook about AI. I'm not an AI doomer, okay? I reckon things are going to work out pretty well. But for what's happening right now is a buddy of mine, he works at Amazon and they are just living in perpetual fear. So big tech company and their whole mandate is replace everyone with AI. There's layoffs every single quarter. Your team gets reduced. Their entire Slack, because the global Slack is just What's happening? Are you okay? Are you safe? And you can't even think about doing your job. It is just absolutely, absolutely crazy. That also affects the Amazon shares, which is a big part of the majority of people's portfolios. The people that work there, they'll have crazy vesting schedules and that'll be a lot of their wealth as well. And it's kind of this big tech thing where big tech was the darling that took us out of the GFC. Right. We had all these brilliant companies that came out of it. They went up in huge amounts of value and they are renowned for overhiring and overfiring and big investments. That's what we're seeing now. And this is really affecting the stock market.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, and that is kind of, you know, creating ripple effects across so many different markets. But, you know, on top of that, what you also mentioned at the start there, you know, with the US policy You know, political uncertainty with the Trump administration. You know, Australia home property prices are doing well. The US though is not looking good at all. The US home sales data came out extremely, extremely poor about a week ago. You know, new monetary policy and uncertainty around a new Fed chair. There's just like everywhere you look, people are, you know, just uncertain and unsure. And when you get that, you know, peak fear and uncertainty, you get people that want to move assets and cash away from riskier assets into more risk-off areas. And that basically means, you know, you see these big sell-offs and that is correlated to crypto. And it's not just crypto as we just mentioned, but crypto is currently, you know, as on the recording, Fear and Greed Index is at, just ticked down to 5. So it's the worst crypto sentiment. The lowest ever recorded for crypto. Sentiment's never felt this bad.

That's so crazy. And we've had quite a few big events in crypto. If we look back through them, they're just like, you know, even like FTX, everything like that, like we just go, oh my gosh, this is just the end. And this is actually worse than that. And when we think about what's happening here, think about how globally connected we are. If you jump on, you know, a news site or Reddit or whatever, what's happening in the world today and how is it going to affect me? And we have these changes happening in other countries, but we're so interconnected that it affects us as well. And that is where people are actually quite frightened. They're quite fearful. A lot of things are happening even in the background over the last month. The US dollar's gone from $1.65 Australian to $1.40. We're raising interest rates in Australia. We're bucking the trend. There's so many different levers that you have to try to understand. That it is just, it's quite overwhelming at times.

Yes. And it's played out, you know, you know, continually from, from 2025, which turned out to be, you know, really, really tough year. Like, you know, our outlook, you know, earlier in 2025, I think for similar to most people was, was looking really good and really positive. But then, you know, sort of coming into the second half of 2025 and then into the last quarter of 2025, you know, we really changed our outlook and had to, you know, reduce our expectations quite significantly on what we thought, you know, was going to play out. And we, you know, started to position less into, you know, less exposure into altcoins, you know, sitting a little bit more into stablecoins and kind of watched it play out. And then since that point, you know, there's been, you know, continuous, you know, sell-offs. Really right now in terms of the market, it's about capital protection for us and has been for a little while now. Not the time to be cute, not time to be aggressive on altcoins. That period will come. Like we're not going to be V-shaped here out of the bottom straight back up, but having a proper amount of Bitcoin in your portfolio has always been the recommendation for us and how we've always invested into crypto. So we're quite protected when we have these big downwards periods. But yeah, if you've got lots and lots and lots of money in the altcoins and you haven't, you know, repositioned or rebalanced. You know, it's certainly a super tough time to see how things have played out. And you know, a lot of these altcoins have, you know, down 70, 80, 90% from all-time highs.

It's full on. An example is like Cardano needs to go up 1,000% from where it is today to get to all-time highs. So that's a 10x. It is crazy. Bitcoin is down 45% from all-time highs. And when we talk about this point around capital protection, a lot of people say the first rule of investing is never lose money. The second rule is don't forget the first rule. When you're investing in riskier assets that have high volatility, because the volatility, make no mistake, is what you want, but you need to remember volatility swings both ways. And this is the thing, protecting your capital. And let's say you started in crypto 3 months ago and you were buying the top at $120,000 and you only bought Bitcoin. Let's just keep this argument simple. You would be down 45% and you're thinking, what the hell is going on? Like I'm supposed to protect my capital. It's up only, it's only supposed to grow. And you have to adjust your mindset to nothing has fundamentally changed in Bitcoin. It's actually an accumulation time and you haven't lost that capital. Yeah. Like if you've locked in, you know, a sale or something like that, then yes. But again, you can rebuy those kind of things, but it is hard to see your net wealth go down. And it's counterintuitive to investing, which is supposed to make you money, but you have to, and we'll get to this later in the pod, but really update your psychology to be able to handle that and take advantage of it.

Yes, that's a good point, Beau. So, you know, if we talk about risk management, you know, I look back and I did a post for our members a couple of days ago just around, I took a loss on SUI last year. Like I, Thought that, you know, SUI being a quality layer 1 gaming project, fundamentally strong project, but the market was not going the way, you know, structurally that it needed to for altcoins to do well. I took a 30% haircut on SUI, you know, at about $1.64 I sold and, you know, copped a lot of flak for the fact that I took a loss on SUI. Since then, SUI is down another 42% since that point. Of selling. And I look back even further to February of 2025 when I sold some altcoins that, you know, from the 2024 that weren't going that great, you know, things like PopCat, Ronin, you know, WIF, took the loss, took the haircut. Since that point, since I sold those altcoins, those are down 80 to 95% since I sold and rotated that money into hype. Which has outperformed. Hype's actually up 22% since then. So the point being is that yes, fewer the plays you're going to get wrong. I got wrong. We're always going to get some wrong. Every investor will. But in crypto, you have to take those losses sometimes because what is even worse than not doing that thing is just holding and hoping and watching your capital continue to evaporate even more. And that's the hard part about crypto, that you have to have proper risk management. You have to have a good allocation and you have to update when things change.

So I caught up with a buddy of mine and he was telling me, he's like, oh, I'm down like $100,000 and something in crypto. And I was like, oh yeah, okay, no worries. Start talking and then he's like, oh, what are you investing in? And he was just holding all of these alts and he didn't de-risk. And he just took on way too much risk. I was like, bro, what are you doing? Like, and I was telling him like, in my portfolio, I'm probably down, I don't know, 35, 40%, something like that. And he was like, what, you're down? I'm like, oh yeah, from all-time highs. But you know, I've been in this game a while, up overall, like considerably. And he's like, oh no, no. Like I started buying like 2 years ago, bought all this stuff, bought all these alts. And I'm like, mate, you're like 90% alts in your portfolio. And he was kind of like, oh yeah, I haven't told my wife about it or anything like that.

Fuck.

And yeah, if you're going into the really risky categories, you need to stay on top of it.

Yeah.

And you need to understand the level of risk that you're taking. And just to highlight your point with SUI, SUI's down 81% from all-time highs. You need a 451% increase to get back to all-time highs. Like this is what happens to alts and it can even go down a further 90% from here, which people don't realize. So just realize the risk that you're taking on. Why are you taking it on? What's your time horizon and what do you want to get out of it?

Yeah. Yeah, that's real. It's a great point, Bergs. And I think, you know, we talk about this a lot in crypto and, you know, when we're looking at altcoins and how, you know, preparing for the next run-up and what altcoins are we looking in. Well, you know, some of the altcoins that we might buy back into may not even exist yet. You know, and that's where really the biggest opportunities likely come from cycle on cycle and new tech, new use cases, new products that don't even exist. So you can't keep holding those prior cycle altcoins because technology evolves so rapidly. It's about preserving capital and getting ready for that next point. And you know, we're looking at a lot of different stuff at the moment, you know, in crypto, whether it be, you know, AI agents, whether it be prediction markets, like what is going to be that next thing that comes out of this bear market? That's the most important part.

I'll give you like an analogy on this as well. This is what my business mentor told me. He said, okay, you're going to hire a new person in a role. You're paying them $120,000 per year, $10,000 a month. If after 3 months, you need to decide, like you put 3 months of investment into them, are they going to be further investment? Are they going to be a cost or they're going to be a profit center? What are they going to be in this business? And if after 3 months you're still investing and, you know, they're not shaping up to be very good, you've got a decision to make. And that decision is, do I continue with this employee? Do they become permanent? Or do I say, sorry, it's just not working out. You know, it's not a good fit. We'll help you to find another role. And then of that $120K I had, I've got 3 more chances, 3-month lots to get it right. And this is like altcoin investing. If after that 3 months it's not working out, the fundamentals have changed, the market has changed, you've eaten up some of your capital, but you've still got some left, you have multiple opportunities to get it right in investments that have better opportunity for growth.

Yes. Yep. And that's where this next part of this accumulation phase, and you know, really where we are right now, like, you know, we expect things to be structurally, you know, heading sideways, down a little bit, up a little bit. You know, you had these sort of relief rallies, but you know, this is not about deploying all your dry powder all at once. It's about not trying to catch the exact bottom and time it absolutely perfectly. You want to deploy gradually. For us, we're not adding any risk into altcoins just yet, but when we do, I expect usually that we see when getting into the right assets, a huge outperformance on those altcoins against Bitcoin. And we've seen this in, you know, previous cycles, like back in 2018, 2020, it was a 3-year sideways period, right?

From—

went from all-time high back to all-time high again. When we crossed past that, uh, you know, Bitcoin was like $17,000 back in 2017, dropped down, went sideways for 3 years before coming back to $17,000. In 2023, the last sort of, you know, correction, it went to 2 years. You know, we would think that this cycle as well, and this downwards period will be shortened again. So like the cycles are getting, especially on the downwards period, the corrections, they are starting to reduce in time. But the altcoins that come out of these periods, for us, it's about fundamentals and it's like what projects are actually delivering quality revenue, delivering a value, like some sort of value to the world. Hyperliquid's obviously done really well. Even syrup continues to do well, but you know, we got really low entry prices on those assets. You know, structurally when the market is the way it is, it doesn't matter what altcoins you're in, they're going to, you know, tend to, well, outside of those couple, continue to perform really poorly against Bitcoin. So it's, yeah, it's about making sure you're timing it correctly because on the way back up, when Bitcoin starts to go back structurally back into a bull market, it's where a lot of money gets to, to find the altcoins here, that big outperformance.

Absolutely. So now is the time when people are fearful to look at research, look at those coins. What are the ones that have a good future that you can scoop up cheaply, that you can tuck away in the back pocket for when you've got a lot of tailwinds, things are very favorable. So you can offload them and make significant profit. Yeah. This is the way you need to be thinking about what's happening right now. If you're down in your portfolio, it'd be weird if you weren't down in your portfolio. You need to put that behind you and start thinking about the future. It's not, I'm super sad this has happened and I'm a terrible person. I'm a bad investor. Fuck all that. Like you don't need that negativity. Do not waste your time. You're like, all right, I'm here. I'm still going, I've still got capital. Which direction am I going? How am I going to make this right or make this better? And that is the kind of mindset that you need to bring to investing to succeed. Yes.

Yep. And especially in crypto, like when we get these prices that we're at now, you know, for us really, you know, like we saw back in 2023, Bitcoin, you know, tends to trade in the deepest of corrections around the 200-week moving average, which is around $58,000 for Bitcoin. Anywhere below $70,000 for us as an outlook is really good long-term value. I mean, it was only a month ago Bitcoin rallied to $97,000. All right. So, you know, it is a period here where we usually will get accumulation period for sometimes 12 months, sometimes 24 months. We'll, you know, yet to be seen, maybe less than that, but it's about starting to accumulate and thinking about these lower prices of Bitcoin. Not going heavy into alts, not even worrying about alts really until the structure changes. Because just because your altcoins are down 80% doesn't mean it can't go down another 90% or 80%. Um, it just really requires patience and discipline during these periods. It's tough. Very tough.

And I've said on the, um, pod, I've been quite cash heavy for a while, and that's not due to any market things or anything like that. It's been personal preference. But now I do have that cash and I'm just salivating. I'm literally looking at this. Another thing I'm doing is self-managed super fund. So, um, because Bitcoin's just so attractive and it'll be 20+ years before I can access that, and I'll be putting the majority of that into Bitcoin. And when I deploy personally, what I'll be doing, let's say I have $100 to deploy, um, I like to make sure I don't miss out. So I'll be putting in $20 of that $100, let's say next week, and then from there I'll be averaging in and I'm doing the same in other markets as well because I see this opportunity. And when you have cash to deploy or you've got cash flow, this is where you start to scoop up the cheap assets. And over the long term, you do make a significant amount of money.

Yep, I agree. And when it comes to altcoins, you know, it's about timing. But when the timing does come, for us it's about, again, fundamentals, as I mentioned. And just to put it in perspective, you know, over the last 12 months, you know, basically, you know, February to February 2025 to 2026, you know, Syrup is up 140%, Hyperliquid's up 25%, and Bitcoin is down 30%, and others are down 35%, meaning like the average altcoin return. So there are some assets that do well when you find the mix of fundamentals and revenue, but everything else is severely underperformed. So make sure you are being very selective when it comes to your alts on the way back out, and that should do you well.

Absolutely. And just like, you know, 2025 was hard for a lot of people. I think even just outside of investing, I think 2025 was quite challenging for a lot of people. And if you look at the charts, everything you would have made in 2025 in crypto, you would have given back. So it was relatively flat year. That's hard for a lot of people. We think in a linear way. We think I make 15%, 30% every single year. That's not really the way it works. The way it works is One year I make 200%, then I make 50%, then I'm like down 30%, down 60%, up 18% the next year, and it averages out to that. If it's just Bitcoin, like, you know, around the 30 to 50% mark, and altcoins are significantly more. But that is a hard pill to swallow. And especially if your first experience is down bad. Which is everyone's experience, let's be honest, right? Like, that's how you really cut your teeth and you earn your stripes and you're like, right, I understand what this is now. And the whole thing is to just keep going through the storm because you want to get through those negative or down or only slightly up years because you know those good years are coming and you want to be able to capitalize on those.

Yeah, great point. And you know, if it's your first cycle, you haven't been through these corrections before, I should have mentioned this at the start, but you know, this is not the first time Bitcoin's down, you know, 55%, you know, Bitcoin has gone down to 75, 80% a number of times in its, in its life. And it's the most liquid asset people can get access to. So when there's uncertainty, people will go to crypto to get liquidity. And that's where you see these sharp sell-offs.

Yeah. So I don't give myself too much grief about all the nonsense I did with ICOs, right? Like all that ETH, that $80 ETH I put into ICOs would be worth like over $5 million today, right? And I don't give myself too much grief. I was very, very green. The one I do give myself grief about was in 2022, I think I was catching up with you in Melbourne. Open and overnight Bitcoin went from like $30K to like $20-something and it stayed there for a while. And I was like, oh, buy some, gotta buy some, gotta buy some. Didn't buy some. And I was like, you dickhead, like, you know better now. This is a similar thing to what's happening now. And don't, even if it's just a little bit of your money, if it's 1% of the deployable capital you have, consider making a move. Just build that buy muscle and it's the most difficult thing to do. Because you don't want that regret in the years to come.

Yeah. Yeah. Great point, Bergs. So to reiterate there, folks, anything below $70,000 in our view is good long-term value. We don't think Bitcoin is bottom yet. And also trying to time the absolute bottom is far too risky. Buying into altcoins at the wrong time, especially here, we believe is very risky. So we're personally not doing that. It's all about your entry price and there is potentially a lot more downside and pain to come. So you don't want to be jumping the gun too soon.

Exactly right. So a lot of my mates message me, Bitcoin's at $68,000 today. And they're like, what's the bottom? No bullshit, just tell me. I'm like, well, first of all, no one knows that. And second of all, if I say the bottom's $50K, let's say I look at a chart and that's the bottom. If it gets to $52,000, you're still not buying. Yeah.

Yeah, correct.

Right. And that's the thing. You should be averaging in and when you sell, you should be averaging out. What does that mean? If you've got $100 to deploy, fucking buy $10 worth of it today. And then as things go day by day, week by week, start to buy a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. And you'll get a really nice average buy price. And in a year or two, that buy price won't even matter anyway. What will matter is that you actually bought. Yes. Yes.

100%. And that is the point I'll end on, Berg. Peak uncertainty, especially in crypto, doesn't mean peak danger. It's just peak emotion. And this is where people make mistakes. They try and time the absolute bottom and do all this crazy stuff. No. Don't do that. Just be disciplined, protect your capital, you know, allocate in, and, you know, don't try and be a hero and pile in all at like, you know, $57,500 or whatever point you have because no one knows the exact bottom. It's just about accumulating and time in the market.

Yeah. And that's the thing, like time in the market fixes a market timing problem. Yes. So if you got in late last year and you bought Bitcoin at $120K, it's now down to $68K. That's a timing problem. The longer you are in this market, the more opportunity you have to buy at lower prices, the more opportunity you have for growth. That is the mentality you need to bring. And please, I used to have this, everyone has this. I'm down 30%. I need to take on riskier stuff because I have to make that 30% back by next month or the month after. That is the way you lose your capital. You take on too much risk. You don't need it. Time is on your side. Use your time because that reduces your risk because you can buy less risky assets. Practice your craft, do whatever else you need to do. Sit on your hands, get those really high quality assets. Don't go further out on the risk curve and try to make it all back. It'll fix itself with time. It's pain at the moment. It will not be pain forever.

Great call, Bergs. We might leave it there, folks. If you want our full market playbook and to see how we work with our clients and how, you know, you can jump on board and get our research and get exactly what we're doing with our follow. We've got a description in the description below. You can click the link and see how we work with thousands of clients across the world. And if you want to especially get access to crypto and you're new, getting exposure during these periods is, you know, it might be in the best time, especially for Bitcoin at the moment. So check that out. And yeah, it's nice if you're brand new, getting 50% discount.

It's good. Oh, it's like, this is the perfect time to come in. Like a lot of people are going to be rich. Like if you start to put these things into practice now, you're buying at a price much lower than everyone else that has been in the market. And you're going to have a good time.

I like it. Check that out in the description below, folks. Otherwise, thank you so much for listening again. Please share it around the episode. If you have any friends or family that are also going through this, this sell-off and needs a bit of direction and guidance, make sure you send them this episode so we can keep spreading the word and help people around the world make sure they're doing crypto properly. So thanks so much, folks, and we'll see you next time.

Thanks, champions.