Why is Bitcoin still one of the stronger assets in the market? | Interview w/ Michaël van de Poppe

All right folks, we would like to welcome Michael Vandepop. He is a professional full time day swing trader in cryptocurrencies and based in Amsterdam and is interested in everything related to blockchain. He's also the CEO of the Consultancy and Educational Platform 8, which aims to provide ongoing content on the cryptocurrency markets in order to assist traders and investors in formulating a more efficient strategy. But more importantly, more Michael is also a contributor to our Ver Coin Telegraph where he writes articles based on technical analysis and market sentiment. Michael, thanks for joining us today. How are you today?

Well, the light is green today so I'm doing well. How are you?

That's awesome. Love to see that stuff.

Foreign.

I know we got a lot to unpackage this week with diving into some charts and stuff, but we want to kind of touch on a topic that that we've seen you speak on in the past. In in general do you think cryptocurrencies have received negative connotation because of like certain media coverage? What are your thoughts on that?

The thing is is that usually when it comes into media coverage it's only discussions about Bitcoin or it's Elon Musk content combination with Bitcoin. That's how it used to be earlier this year where Elon Musk was moving the markets so the media jumped on it whether it was positive or negative. The other way you get in into the media nowadays is whether through Floki Inu, Shiba Inu or all those meme coins taking over the entire coverage or Dogecoin that has been that has been the central topic for media regarding crypto now lately and I saw yesterday on CNBC they are going to include on chain analysis and it's getting a little bit more mainstream. So I think the entire momentum is shifting because of of adoption towards the mass with NFTs or the metaphors. It's getting a little bit more mainstream and the topics are shifting from meme coins to actual product.

So if a coin is on all time high like the sand is right now, what are the indicators that you need to see or confirm to to to be confident enough to buy during the all time high?

It's difficult to to get into coins that are currently at an all time high level. Especially I've raised the topic yesterday about the fact that I'm not buying sand mana or any of those metaverse tokens right the vertical price action that we've seen. What I'm looking at is that they retest some higher time frame Auto blocks for any, any trade at all. And second, it's just common sense that you use if something runs out of nowhere into an 8x. Devaluation is probably a little bit overvalued at this point because why are they running? They are only running because of a potential growth in the metaverse that we're going to have, which makes sense for the future. But the run itself is only built from the metaverse word. And the hype that we're currently getting, we've seen it happening all the time. We've seen NFTs, we've seen D5, we've seen ICOs in 2017. Anything related to that, those topics and what, what's happening often is that it gets the first run, then it crashes, it stabilizes, and that's the moment you want to step in. So especially if something starts to run in a vertical manner, I'm just avoiding taking that trade until it retraces for at least a few weeks or maybe even a few months. And then I'm going to take a trade from that one. How am I going to establish my take profits? Well, based on my portfolio. And second, just Fibonacci extension. Very simple and, and easy to navigate through the charts, I guess. You're back, Benton.

Yeah, so I. Yes, I am back. This was actually a question. You're not from Markets Pro. You. When you're. You're assessing new coins, Are there any particular routines that you go through when you're assessing new coins?

Yeah, I mean, there's, there's different strategies. When it comes to swing trading and investing, you probably have a different strategy than when you're day trading certain assets. So those strategies have to be used in a different way as well. But especially when something starts to run heavily. When it comes to metaphors, my routine is to just zoom out and take out the very important support levels that you have to look at. So higher time frame levels, we can show it in a little bit. I can still not share my screen, but just higher time frame levels that I'm looking at. And then you're assessing it from aggressive to less aggressive, and then you can start building your day into string trade positions. So aggressive means that that's the level that I'm going to look at for day trading or sculpt trading opportunities, the lower it gets. And those coins can easily just retrace 80% and still be bullish. The point is, is that they are currently just overvalued and the people that were into that project in the beginning will probably start Taking heavy profits and that's why they can come down heavily before they hit and heavy support zone. So I'm just using order blocks, price action, price levels, breakouts, support, resistance, flips. I guess if you're following me, that's, that's probably how I, how I used to trade instead of using Ichimoku clouds and whatever the market can bring.

Yeah, thanks, Michael. And kind of focusing on bitcoin with the like. There was a lot of hype around the bitcoin ETF and stuff, but how did you see the price action that kind of came about with that? Was it a disappointment or do you think we're going to recover from that in the future?

The ETF is something that is not going to have an immediate impact. I think it has to be built over time. Especially if we get multiple options in terms of ETFs or baskets of crypto or an Ethereum ETF or ETPs. There's different sorts of financial instruments and that is just something that has, that will be having an impact over time. So you will not be having a drastic or immediate price action from it, which is different than when the CME futures were launched. The only thing that will adjust or will change is the fact that macroeconomics and institutional investors will be moving the markets. So what we're seeing currently is that the impact of the dollar is having an impact on the price of bitcoin. The movements of the Fed are having an impact of the price of bitcoin. That is because the asset is just growing and institutional investors are getting into the market. So the markets will behave in a different way. And that's why plan B is fucked. And the four year cycles are done too.

Oh, I have a theory that we're going to start seeing longer cycles in the future. Do you think, do you agree with that too?

Yeah, I mean like imagine we are having a four year cycle and we're going to have that in the coming 50 years. It would mean that if that is going to be true, everyone will be a billionaire. Which is the. It does not make sense to me then. Second, in the, in the past we had the having cycles right and the having price actually impacted the price of bitcoin. Why? Because the actual price of Bitcoin was relatively close to the price of mining one bitcoin. Right now what we see is that the price is accelerating quite fast, which means that the gap between the cost of mining one bitcoin and the actual price of Bitcoin is pretty big. So the impact of the HALVING is just decreasing over time while the impact of macroeconomics is increasing over time. So that is where we are getting right now. And we are probably starting to realize that this one, the macroeconomics are taking over the having cycles and that's why we're going to get those lengthening cycles at some point. And actually that's what you want to have when it comes to Bitcoin. You don't want to have four year cycles, you just want to have longer cycles with lower volatility at some point because you want to have a stable currency.

Do you think that the recent China ban for example, shifted how bitcoin is being traded or the relationship with altcoins or stable coins are getting more used? What do you think changed after the China ban?

Well, what I've realized is that maybe you see it too is that there was during 2017, Asian coins or Chinese coins in particular were doing really well. And in the past year I've not seen many coins out of that region doing really well. So that impacted the markets then. Second, what I realized too is that the actual movements during the night for me, I'm in Europe and usually markets moving during the night because of America and China. That is slowly dropping off too because most of the movements are taking place during Europe time right now. That is what I see in the price action as well. And then finally, I mean we have seen the beautiful concept of miners shifting towards other countries and Bitcoin is still alive. So we are having a decentralized world and we are making the fundamental layers for that. So I think it's a good, good next step. If a country bans it, then we go to another one.

So do you still feel like bitcoin is, is one of the strongest assets in the world?

That I mean it's depending on the moment you're asking it, right? So if you're going to ask me when bitcoin is at 250k, I would definitely argue to say that probably the dollar is a better investment. But I think it's one of the strongest assets because it's getting the closest towards what it, what we really want to wanted to achieve, which is sound money. So definitely for what it could be in the future is that bitcoin is still a very strong assets in crypto in general. And what I find beautiful right now, it's also an answer to the previous question is that usually we had a pretty high correlation between altcoins and bitcoin, but right now it's more getting segments that are Having a correlation with Bitcoin metaphors don't really care about bitcoin dropping. NFT tokens don't really care about bitcoin dropping. Some particular layer ones like Avalanche and Elrond don't really care about bitcoin dropping. While in the past if bitcoin sneezed, you had a crash on altcoins happening all the time and that is not happening right now. And I would love to see that because that would make trading and investing a way more complex game and a way more fun game. So bit bull and bear cycles are going to shift a little bit.

And do you think we're going to get to from 60 to 120 faster than we got from 30 to 60 for Bitcoin or do you think that, that we might kind of extend that cycle.

Out a little bit longer? In the theory of. You were discussing it before I tuned in. In the theory of a parabolic movement you would probably expect it to run faster than the one from 30 to 60. However the, the entire run from 10 to 60k was quite vertical to be honest. Yeah, so if you expect it to be into a parabolic run like, like we usually get, then probably 62,120k will be faster. But if you assume that we're getting a lengthening cycle and we are having another bull run after the previous one, it will probably start taking a bit longer, but then the peak high will be way higher than the most most are expecting.

Okay Michael, I have a community question which is also a great doubt of for myself. Like do you have like multiple wallets? One for the short term, one for longer term. How do you hold your, how do you manage your risk while being a full time trader?

Well, most of my, my wallet is into futures. No, most of the wallets are into hard wallets. The investment portfolio which I just do not touch, I mean that's just on hard wallets that, that I'm not getting close to any exchange. Then I've got my swing trade portfolio and then I use a different exchange for day trading. So I've got three different portfolios. And then I also still have my staking portfolio as I want to try to get a passive income through whatever crypto has been bringing. So I've got four portfolios. So I'm just dividing it because if I shift my swing trade portfolio to the exchange where I day trade, it's getting confusing. So I think like it's the same as doing ta. If you had a pretty heavy night on Friday where you have been Drinking and whatnot. You want to understand the chart within two minutes, but you also want to realize which wallet you're trading with. And if you have your swing trade and day trading mixed up, you first have to calculate which one is the right one, and that is if you have a hangover. It's quite complex, I could say.

So, Michael, I want to know what coins are you watching most closely right now in the market. Whether it's Altcoins, Metaverse tokens, whatever that may be. Which ones are you kind of like looking at entering in potential positions here, maybe the weeks ahead?

I generally am watching what Bitcoin is going to do. If you look back at history, then Q4 usually is not a best period for altcoins to have them. So I'm looking for positions to be building them in the next few weeks or in the next month. And when it comes to building that position, I think it's going to be a mix between layer ones that have not been running yet and Defy. So we've seen Elrond doing well, Avalanche doing well, Solana, Phantom, Harmony too. But if you look at projects that have not been doing well, it's Polkadot, it is Cosmos. Those projects are still eager for that run. And the one that have been lacking or the segment that have been lacking the most is still Defy and Oracles, which I assume will be following suit of Ethereum and all those other layer ones. So then you get it to Curve, which is just breaking out Ave Synthetics, all those projects, Chain Link, which has been a big show during this entire year, but still Oracles are needed for D5. So if D5 does well, oracles will do well too. I think those are the segments that we still have to look at Metaverse. I mean, it's a beautiful run. They also told me that ICOs were the next big crowdfunding platforms. They died. Metaphors will be big at some point, but right now it's just, it has seen the run. So I'm only looking for shorts there and I'm looking for some sculpt rates.

And do you think like long term with your extending cycles, do you think we're gonna get another like 80 correction bear market like we did like 2018 to 2019 or do you think it's gonna. Institutions might provide a little bit of a buffer there?

No, institutions like institutions. It's not an argument to avoid 80 corrections. So institutions were also there during the dot com bubble. So why did that crash 90?

Yeah.

I think we're going to get lengthening cycles. But I think we are into the super cycle which is compared to the dot com bubble. I mean the size of the dot com bubble was around 12 trillion. If you use interest rates you get to 30 to 35 trillion in nowadays money and we are just at two and a half. So we are in the middle of the bull cycle and still a pretty long way to go. So I think that bitcoin and crypto will be running quite heavily in the coming year or maybe longer, but I think a year and in that period bitcoin will get to levels that it can easily crash 80% and come back to the peak high of May 2021. That's still one phase that we're going to get to. Especially if everyone dives onto crypto. You get that overvaluation of the markets and then you just have to come back down. The beautiful thing though is that you get bubbles in bubbles. So you have the metaphors bubble right now. We've just had a D5 bubble last year and that's going to happen all the time and that's just fun to trade with I guess.

Awesome. No you great insights today and it was a pleasure bringing you on. Would love to get you back on. Maybe next time we can run through some charts and stuff and, and kind of dive a little bit deeper. But super awesome to have you on. We appreciate you jumping onto the market port today.

Yeah, it's a pleasure man. Thank you.

Awesome.

Thanks Michael.

Good stuff Michael today.

Yeah.