Why is crypto pumping?

Sa. Foreign. Hello everyone. Welcome and thank you very much for hanging out with us today on the Market Report with cointelegraph. My name is Joe Hall. I'm going to be your host today. And we are joined again by our resident experts, Marcel Peckman and Sam Borgi. Now, Sam Borgi is a business editor at Cointelegraph, where he brings a decade of experience economic analysis and financial market writing. Marcel Peckman applies his 17 years of experience trading derivatives options and futures to the crypto derivatives markets. Hello, gentlemen, how are we doing today? Sam, why don't we start off with you this week? How are you? And how's the new police notice or drinking notice behind you? It's not yet a bitcoin mural, but we'll get there.

Yeah, the bitcoin murals are still in transit and hopefully they arrive soon, but things are fine. I mean, the bitcoin price action seems favorable and obviously my emotional state is tied to bitcoin most of the time. So seeing Bitcoin around 23k is, is not so bad. I think we might have some more room to run, but overall we're still over a year from the happening, so I'm not getting too excited yet.

Okay. Okay, great. I mean, I completely relate to you there. Emotional state and bitcoin price far too intertwined. They're like this. And I also actually googled the halving date yesterday and started to think where I'm going to be in April 2024. So yeah, obsessed is probably the right word. Marcel, how about yourself? Similarly obsessed, starting to google the half the halvening for next year?

No, not yet, Joe. I think my main concern right now remains when will regular people, regular folks realize that they're being stolen still? Like if the government raises the debt limit, and they will for another $2 trillion, who's gonna pay for that? There's gonna be interest rates paid for the debt. And who's going to pay for that? For the debt, the interest rates? You. So you're being played. So my biggest concern is how on earth can we make normies open their eyes and understand that they're being stolen?

It's a really good point and it's what Cointelegraph does on a daily basis. And I think it's something your article, which we're going to touch upon today, also tries to bring to light, you know, how to make it clear to new people, to the space that there's a lot of money being printed at the moment. There's a lot of debt being created at some point. Someone's gonna have to pay for it all. So, yeah, welcome guys, to all those in the chat. I can see it's going off today. That's good to see. Could be because the market is, is pumping somewhat. So the market report brings you the information you can't find elsewhere on the web. And so today, Sam, Marcel and I are going to discuss what's been making the headlines in the crypto space as well as the wider business and financial markets. Most importantly though, we're here, guys, at home, our loyal viewers, to try to help you navigate through these sometimes trying and sometimes pumping times. So we're looking forward to chatting with you today and to answering any questions or concerns you may have about the crypto market or even, you know, what Marcel had for breakfast. We're here to have a chat and to hang out and talk about the markets. I don't know why that came to my head just now. Anyway, here is a breakdown of today's show. So we're going to kick off with the market roundup, which is the weekly highlight Real. Then it's time for a Laugh with Meme time, followed by market news updates, a quick crypto tip from myself, Marcel's Trading Insight, and then a Markets Pro subscription giveaway. You can find the link to that in the chat down below. And yeah, let's get it all kicked off before, before we get there, I do just want to remind viewers that there's a 20% off discount for Markets Pro in the link to this, in the descriptions of this video just down below. So click that, sign yourself up to Markets Pro and try to enjoy some more of this, you know, liquidity and more of this upward price action that we're seeing at the moment. Gents, is there anything we should check in or discuss before we take it away with the huddle?

Yep, let's get it going.

Let's do it. Take it away. Danil. Four. So who else is enjoying that new music, the sort of housey techno vibe to the Weekly Review. Pretty good, eh? I also noticed that Dennis Porter got two tweets in the Weekly Review this week, one about energy and one about Jamie Dimon's comment from the World Economic Forum where he basically said that Bitcoin's hard cap of 21 million can't really be trusted. I don't think we need to go into that today, but it's a couple of lines of code and we can all trust it. If you run a node, it's very easy to verify it's the same criticism.

Was There anything for the past 10 years. They don't even change what they are complaining. It makes no sense. Like after 10 years you don't give up. You're gonna say the same thing and the hard limit of 21 million coins still gonna be there. You're gonna do the same thing for the next 10 years. It doesn't make sense.

So does it mean that the. His clients, you know, Jamie Dimon's clients, JP Morgan's clients, are they then therefore they're not buying bitcoin, which means that it's not priced in, or is it that he's just using that line to cover up the fact that maybe some of his clients are buying bitcoin, which could be behind this monumental price pump? Do you think there's a bit of smoke and mirrors at play here?

No, my personal opinion, he doesn't get bitcoin. He doesn't want to understand it. There's no game in there for him. He's doing fine. Just side by side with the Federal Reserve printer. So that free basically cheap money. What's your call, Sam?

Okay, who's closest? Yeah, he who's closest to the money supply doesn't, doesn't want Bitcoin to succeed. Right. So. But we know that JP Morgan is active in the digital asset space anyway, so that's the, the funny part of it is that nobody can keep bitcoin out of their mouths. You know, you see how bitcoin seems to invite opinions, strong opinions one way or the other. And this is no different. So with or without you, Jamie, we'll. We'll do just fine.

That sounds like the beginnings of a new bitcoin friendly song. We've got a lot of disbelief in the YouTube chat today as well. People calling it a bull trap. I mean Rene Montenegro there, epic bull trap. I'm still in denial. I think a lot of traders are too. What do we, what do we tell these people? What do you think, Marcel? Got a grin on your face there?

I think after 12 months of bear market, we saw the entire year of 2022. And even worse than that, some of the biggest news came out in November, which was the FTX collapse. So it was. We, we hadn't got any two consecutive months of breeding market. I'm not saying 50% rally, but at least a meaningful recovery. We didn't have two months of Britain. Now for the first time ever, we're getting like three weeks, three weeks in a row, maybe a month in a row of continuous going up movement and everybody's gonna scream that's manipulation because we are in a bear market until we breach 40,000 or 35,000 or 50,000, whatever. It's normal for people to take some time to reassess their opinion and check. Well, maybe if the second largest exchange, FTX collapsed and cryptocurrencies are still working, still surviving, still valued, still trading, there's still demand, maybe there's future for that. So some of the people who were skeptical are no longer. So it's a good thing that it happened, but people need to understand that the perception from the general public changes after it survives a major crash.

Okay, okay. I mean, if you chat for Cointelegraph is anything to go by right now, then the Bull Run is almost back on. You know, lots of disbelief, some comments. There someone asking for or saying Bitcoin to 100k. I mean the name of that account is literally called Bull Run. So I wouldn't expect anything else. Thank you for your comment. Bull run. And then Reza 2020 stating that commercial banks, Blockbuster Video, I mean, this is what Trist Ontanopoulos said back in 2013 or 2014. You know, he, he said that, you know, Blockbuster became Netflix in the same way that, you know, the postal service became email and commercial banks are going to become Bitcoin. Sam, before we jump onto the next segment, what do you reckon? Is this finally the reckoning? Commercial banks are being done away with by Bitcoin?

I don't know about done away. I think they'll always have a place so long as the Federal Reserve is giving them the, the right and the privilege of printing money. And I think that commercial banks do serve a positive purpose if they're properly functioning. I think that obviously fractional reserve banking is a huge risk. And Bitcoin, I think, empowers a lot of people to build wealth in a parallel financial system using honest money. For me, bitcoin, the entire premise of bitcoin is that I don't trust the monetary system. I think there's a really big problem with the monetary system. If you don't believe that's the case, then I guess you have no reason to hold Bitcoin. But we'll see what comes out in the wash in the next five, 10, 15 years because at the rate we're going now, this system isn't sustainable. And Marcel touched upon the debt bubble earlier in the U.S. how is that sustainable? Like, what the hell is that all about? So that's just something to really keep in mind as to why I'm so into bitcoin. That's my thesis.

Okay. No, I completely understand. I mean, maybe in five years time when I have a stable Internet connection and we're doing this market report, Bitcoin will be trading in the 1 million or what we, what we're seeing. So we've got 100k, 1 million per bitcoin from Dragon 7 in the chat. Let's, let's calm down guys. We've had a, you know, 20 rally or so. Let's not get carried away until we're up in the. The 40Ks as Marcel says. In the meantime, let's roll the meme review and have a little giggle. Last week's action.

Bitcoin crypto. I believe that's ethereum. They're talking because there's layer two, there's layer three, there is the Shanghai update, then there's the next Shanghai upgrade. You, you never get to, to the point that you say, yeah, it's working, let's stay here for a couple of years and try to understand where we are. No, never gets to that point.

And that, that line over there is running to Vitalik. Every time there's a problem, that's. There's another one right there. So you never know.

Yeah, Vitalik is the guy in red. Yeah, that's Vitalik run to God.

And then there's a picking his nose. But it's not centralized, remember? It's not centralized. Of course not. Things on Earth, speed of light, change of sentiment in the crypto market. Oh, oh, I feel attacked. Hit me where it hurts. Memes, true sentiment switches, you know, flips on a dime, doesn't it? And right now we are, I mean, look at the chat. It's going off. It's only 23k, guys. Let's keep it, keep it, keep it measured. In six months, 3ac, lunar Celsius, Voyager, FCX Block 5, Genesis have all collapsed. Collapsed. Meanwhile, my bitcoin in self custody. This meme is amazing. Good. That is a good, accurate, you know, depiction of it.

My daily railroad.

Do we think? I thought bear market memes were better than bull market memes, but this one's amazing.

This one's so good.

I mean, we're all still here, aren't we guys? And this is our day job. We're not, you know, slam dunking the baby anytime soon, are we? No resignation lessons.

Not below 200k.

No. Good to know. Well, we'll throw a leaving party for you at 200k, Marcel. How about that? On your yacht somewhere.

That would be nice. Yeah.

Anyway, I'm getting way too Carried with this, with this bullishness. Sorry. Good to see the chat being so lively this week we're going to try and give you some informed analysis and some observations about the market. Of course, none of it is financial advice. Don't forget as well that you can subscribe to Markets Pro and get ahead with your trading Strategy with a 20 off. Description Links down in the chat below. And yeah, let's take a look at the first article of the week, which is that stablecoin data points to a healthy appetite for bulls and a possible bitcoin rally to 25k. And the good thing about this article is that it was written by none other. Am I right? This is the one that you wrote to Marcel. If I just switch screens, I believe this is written by. Yeah, Marcel Packman with the lovely graphic of the the drifting. Is this your car or is it your 200k car?

No, that's the Porsche NFT that didn't sell this week, it was a flop.

Oh, is actually, yeah, there was a.

Porsche official NFT collection. They had like, I don't know, 10,000 units. They only sold like 2,000 at least on the first day.

I mean, if poor NFTs at this rate, then maybe the NFT market really is on the way out. Why am I pleased by that? Anyway, in this really, really good article, actually, Marcel explains what's going on with the market and in particular he's focusing on stablecoins. And there's one thing here I'd like to highlight before we jump into some questions, but essentially traders should note that the tech heavy Nasdaq 100 index also gained 5.1% between January 20 and January 23, fueled by investors hope in China reopening for business after its COVID 19 lockdowns, which seem to be never ending and weaker than expected economic data in the US and the Eurozone. So not, you know, Bitcoin is pumping. Of course, crypto's pumping, but also the NASDAQ is on the way up. China is doing well and the US market as well. It's all seeming to be on a bear market rally or the beginnings of a bull run. That's what we're going to get into right now. Marcel, why is crypto pumping and will it last?

Well, we are on the phase of the market that bad news is good news, meaning people are waiting for layoffs, they're waiting for weaker corporate earnings, weaker economical data so that the Federal Reserve, the central banks can sit and say, well, maybe our job is here, work here is done. We don't need to further raise interest rates. The economies are going down by themselves. So we can stop raising interest rates, maybe do 1 or 2, 25 basis points additional, but stop over there before the middle of the year, before June or July. So the markets is hoping that more bad news emerges and it's rallying based on that, which is definitely not a good thing. And leaves that sentiment to the investors saying, well, those tech companies just laid off 70,000 person, 70,000 people in three months. The economy is collapsing. The whole housing price, there's no demand for housing. So how is the market rallying? So it's counterintuitive, but the traders are thinking six to 12 months ahead. So they're thinking if the central banks stop raising interest rates, that's going to be good for the companies, that's going to be good for the economy. So they're targeting a longer time frame. So that's why there's such a disconnection.

Interesting. Yeah, I guess it explains the fact that markets are always, you know, forward looking. Okay, what's the economy going to look like in six months? Will all these people that have lost their jobs be back in employment? Will they be starting up companies? You know, what's the economy going to look like in June, July of this year? We know that 25k is inevitable at some point as bitcoin tends to go up into the right over a long period of time. But 25k on the horizon, you know, that is to say, are we going to get 25k in the next couple of weeks? Sam, what do you think we still bullish?

Yeah, I, I mentioned, I think it was last week or the week before that I think bitcoin could probably rally towards 30,000 in the short term. 30k seems to be a magnet and the price action I've seen now, the gain and the consolidation lends me to believe that we are in an, in an uptrend. Again as I mentioned at the outset, I'm not going to get so excited before the next happening. But in terms of the short term outlook it does seem, seem positive. I know some people are looking at fractals back to 2019 when Bitcoin I think went up 4x peaking around 14 000. I think it was in the summer of 2019. Some people are getting a little bit excited about that. But just to remind you, in 2019 we saw that rally and then we dipped again pretty heavily heading into 2020. So again, temper your expectations. But I think price action has been pretty favorable in the last few weeks. And I'm not going to be a conspiracy theorist and say that it's just all fake until I have more evidence of that it aligns with the four year cycle that we bottomed, you know, in Q4 of 2022. That seems to be the case. So again, anything can happen. And I'm not making any short term predictions, but everything looks pretty good right now from a price perspective.

Interesting. I know that that period in 2019 all too well as that's when I started to really take bitcoin seriously and started to buy a lot. Well, what for me was, was a lot of bitcoin and then chase that run up to 14k. And I hadn't done enough studying, I hadn't done enough learning about bitcoin. My conviction was not where it is now. And so when I saw the price, I think it went from like 14k to 8k in a matter of days. And I of course was terrified, sold everything and was like, sod this, you know, I'm going back to gold and you know, real estate. You know, this is where my money needs to be. And had I been watching the, you know, the market report, if it existed back then, I would have. Sorry, Sam, what are you going to say?

No. Were you also subscribed to a lot of the Perma Bear newsletters that tell you to buy gold and have been telling you to buy gold for the past 10 to 15 years. But if you joined in 2019, Joe, you missed the, the range from hell, which was back in 2018. That was a fun time when Bitcoin was 6k for like six months. That was a good time. You know, that's. Sorry, I'm getting a little bit sentimental now.

No, of course it's good to, it's good to look back and reflect because we can take a lot from these experiences. But I mean, for me, 2018 was my blockchain year. I thought that blockchain was the future. And so I've actually got certificates and various things that I've shown off on my LinkedIn profile that say that I'm proficient in blockchain courses. I still to this day have no idea what that means. But you know, I can talk about merkle trees until the cows come home. So completely, you know, useless learning. Anyway, I'm digressing now. What about 25k for you, Marcel? Are we looking at a 25k before February? You know, that's only a week. You know, it's only a week to get to 3k more. We might be on mute.

Okay, Joe, I think it's a risky call because we have Federal Reserve meeting next week. I also have a bunch of corporate earnings like 20% or 25% of the S and P is going to report over the next 10 days. So as long as the correlation to traditional markets remain high, we cannot expect a full decoupling, a rally toward, towards 30,000 because it's not going to happen for the traditional markets. So I don't think bitcoin is going to rally above 25 over the next two or three weeks. I don't think so.

Okay. Okay. The, the chat here is getting quite lively. Bull run, for example, calling 25K this week, Cardano just shouting bitconnect and lots of interesting emojis. But idyllic India, they're saying that he, he thinks there'll be Bitcoin@30k by the end of January this year. That's, you know, an extra 7k on the market, which I don't know how much that equates to. In terms of, you know, total market cap. It must be in the tens or hundreds of millions added to. No, sorry, tens of hundreds of billions added to bitcoin's total market cap in the next coming weeks. That would imply that an institution is buying or that, you know, some really big whales are gobbling up the supply or that, you know, shorts are being wrecked, which is what it seems to be at the moment. I'm not a trader, I'm not a market analyst the way that these guys are. Marcelo, Sam, anything to add on, on the liveliness in the chat? Why is crypto pumping so much and could it pump as hard as I've just said?

Well, there's the guy. Crypto Elf of Rivendell. Halving is priced in. I mean, first of all, we traded at $70,000 a year and a half ago, and now we're trading at $23,000. So if you're saying that the halving is priced in, you're saying that we had a major bubble and it's going to take another five years or more until we reach the $70,000. So I don't think that the is priced in. The scarcity of bitcoin is really hard for, for people who are outside to grasp. And when you first enter the market, you see those coins traded at sub $1 or you see an altcoin that pumped 500% in a month. So you kind of get excited and you say, well, bitcoin is old technology. Bitcoin is too expensive. So you're going to, first you're going to try altcoins, then you're going to get rug pool and then you move back to bitcoin. It's a cycle, it's a circle that everybody face. And I don't think that we're going to have the $30,000 anytime soon. And I don't think that the having is priced in.

Yeah, if, if you think the having is priced in. Let me just give you some information. Bit Bitcoin's inflation rate is currently about 1.8% and it's going to decline by half during the next having. So even if demand stays the same, Bitcoin is going to rally because supply and demand dynamics work that way. We know it's the inflation rate because we have the, you know, the data for it and we know bitcoin, Bitcoin's algorithm and Bitcoin's calculation. So a 1.8% inflation rate is going to be cut in half again? No, it's not priced in as far as I'm concerned.

Okay, okay, so let's move on to a slightly different article which is all about the how the SEC Commissioner reminded us about the point of crypto, which I thought was a really interesting headline because I'm not sure she does understand the point of crypto. I'm not pointing fingers there too much, I hope, but essentially the article from my seemed colleague Ezra Regera mentioned that securities and Exchange Commissioner Hester Pearce highlighted that despite a very bad year, there are less industries to learn. And there's one quote here that I just want to highlight because the Commissioner, Commissioner clearly had a thesaurus to hand that day. She said that in 2022 it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for both the crypto space and the regulators. Presumably referring to ftx, Luna, Celsius, Voyager. You name the company that went up in flames, blockfi. There were issues last year. So yeah, it wasn't a great, great time to be in the crypto space, but things could be looking. And apparently she's going to fall off the point of crypto. Gents, what were your takeaways from this sort of interesting diatribe from the SEC commissioner? Is this sort of pointing away from the bizarre, the bitslatto debacle? Sam, what's your take first?

Well, for me, I, I tend to listen to what the SEC commissioners have to say, whether I like them or not. I think they have, you know, they're, they're, they're a gauge of where the regulator is headed and obviously we can't ignore the regulatory aspect. But Hester Pierce is a very pro crypto and she always has been. I think they call her crypto mom. Is that not the case?

Case.

So I think basically what she's saying is that don't wait for regulators to come in to stamp out bad practices from the industry. Crypto has a long term value proposition beyond the short term pain that we saw in 2022. And in that I, I definitely agree with her. I mean, we've seen similar meltdowns in the traditional financial sector around the dot com era. That era was in many ways very parallel or very similar to digital assets today in that the Internet companies of the 2000s and late 90s, they were, you know, scratching at the surface of a new industry that would eventually change the world. A lot of those companies went under an epic fashion and a very select few of them actually survived. I think we have similar parallels now with digital assets and bitcoin. I personally believe that the biggest value proposition remains bitcoin. I haven't seen a lot of really unique innovation beyond that. I mean, at cointelegraph, our job is to cover the market as is and to cover every facet of the blockchain industry. There are some positive use cases that I think are pretty interesting. You know, the privacy side, I think the decentralized social media side for me is, is particularly interesting. We haven't seen though a lot of use cases for blockchain outside of money, which is bitcoin. But that could change. And I still think that the future is very bright once we get past these, these, these crooks like, like Sam Bankman Fried. Sam Bankman Fried was, it was a fraud regardless of the industry he was dabbling in. You know, bitcoin digital assets don't promote wire fraud and money laundering and commingling of funds. That's a Sam Bankman Fried issue, not a bitcoin issue.

But Sam, I think you're. Okay, you're missing a point here. Everybody has a boss like. And when the SEC screws up, meaning FTX us was huge there. They had huge sponsorships, they were in the media, they had investors from North America and they missed, they dropped the ball, they didn't do any protection to traders and investors, etc. So I think the SEC boss, whoever it is, if it's the Minister of Finance, if it's the treasury, if it's the president himself, he went in the room and said, what the hell is going on here? Aren't you guys gonna regulate and fix and do your job. So when somebody from a higher hierarchy goes down to your office and screams after major flaws are discovered, things finally starts to change. Either for good or for bad. Doesn't matter. But change are gonna happen. Yes, regulation is slow. It doesn't take three months because it has to go to the Senate and Congress and votes and etc. But we can be sure that bit Laszlo was not a single case not connected to Binance and other exchanges. You're dreaming. If you think that that's the only case that's going to be persecuted. Persecuted, you're dreaming.

Sorry.

I think things are going to get uglier for regulation, but I think in the end that's good for crypto, because once you have a regulation in place, everybody who's outside can decide from themselves. Okay, I understand this is not a security or this is a security, so we're going to have to pay a fine. But after the regulation, after fines, you have a regulated market. So it is good. It attracts more investors.

Source. Okay, well reasoned there, Marcel. I think. I think I approached this article with. I'll explain. I'm currently halfway through watching the. I don't know if you guys are watching this, but the Bernie Madoff documentary on Netflix. I mean, it's more edutainment or, you know, entertainment than educational or factual. But you can't help but think, oh, my gosh, what was the Essie doing for so long letting this massive case snowball seemingly right under their nose? And it just makes me wonder, okay, in crypto, we have this same thing happening over again. I'm of course, not as familiar with as our US Team, which Sam is part of. But you do wonder. CC has dropped the ball, as Marcel says, several times in the past 12 months with regards to crypto, and it's a way of making recompense for this was, you know, throwing the book at this small exchange that no one had heard of, which I can't even pronounce, you know, bits latto or bits or tomato. So when you see these comments about how the SEC is now going to make things more clear and is going to try harder and looks back on 2022 and says, oh, it was a tricky year, but next year will be better, I can't help but feel that the SEC is maybe not doing its job as well as it could do. Could be. And maybe Marcel's point about the boss has come downstairs and said, you know what? You need to kick up a fuss to make it sure that we're actually doing our jobs. Here I can't help but be cynical is where I'm going with this. Sorry. Is there anything else you'd like to add to this article? Guys, move on to another or should I stop ranting about the sec?

I think I'm good.

We're good.

Yeah. Okay. In which case, the third point, this, this week third article was again referring to the bitcoin price and how it's staying near 23k as the Hodlers here are not selling bitcoin. So the key point about this article from William Seuberg, part of the markets team, is regards to Hodlers or the bitcoin, the bitcoiners with conviction. The bitcoiners who are hodling their bitcoin for a store of value or for generational wealth, whatever it may be, they appear to be setting this floor and they don't see 3k as a good price point to sell their bitcoin, spend their bitcoin. As you can see, we've got the big price pump that we experienced, what was it like 3 days, 4 days ago now that brought us into this sort of middling 20k range. And essentially while technical analysts point out a correction is due, they seem to be unaware that central banks are buying every ounce they can get their hands on. This is in response to gold, which is also doing quite well at the moment, whereas DXY has also been range bound for the past couple of weeks. Now we discussed this last week. What I wanted to touch on today was the Hodlers. So from Glassnode and we've got interviews with Glassload on our YouTube channel. The analytics firm that are responsible for these funny metrics that are hoddle waves or long term Hodlers behavior, these sort of metrics, they're able to understand what these Hodlers are doing. There's one quote here that I've highlighted. Remain broad in their resolve to not exit the market even after more than a year of losses. Of course the price has been trending down for the past year, but. And these Hodlers are not selling, they are hodling. Marcel, what do you reckon to this here? Do you think 23k is a nice price point to part with your bitcoin? Or do you think that these Hodlers are going to be waiting for a lot higher prices? Or do you think they're just hodling until eternity?

I agree with the glass note analysis. I mean if you saw your position that go from $30,000 or 26, whatever, down 10 and you did not sell, so you're down at a 50% loss or 40, 50% loss, you're not gonna sell for a meager 30% gain. It ain't gonna happen. It doesn't make any sense. Unless the guy. Of course I'm a miner. I need to pay my bills. I need to sell at least 30% of my position. But other than that, if you're not really forced to sell and you just experienced a 40, 50% drop in price, you ain't gonna sell, dude, you're gonna wait at least for 100% or 150% gains from the bottom.

Exactly. And these are, I mean, that's also trading behavior, isn't it? What about yourself, Sam? Is 23k an appealing price to part with your bitcoin?

Absolutely not. Even though I've been a hodler for a long time, I think we saw the price potential of bitcoin during the previous bull market. I think with the next halving, you're going to see more price potential. If you're looking to sell eventually, you should at least sell for a hefty profit. And at that point, when you do sell, you're going to have to ask yourself, now that I've parted with my bitcoin, what's next, Right? Where am I going to put that money? So, you know, this constant cycle, something that you have to think about, But I think 23k is not a good level to sell at. And that's somebody who's been in the market for a long time, know the cycles. I wouldn't sell these levels personally.

Yep, absolutely. I mean, Reza 2020 is joining you on that. He's still accumulating. As he mentions in the chat there, you bring up an interesting point. You know, if you're selling your bitcoin, are you selling for dollars or are you selling because you're spending your bitcoin on say, a house or, you know, a car or whatever. It may be something to make your life better or maybe you're investing in yourself. But I remember this during last year's bull run. You know, if you're looking to sell, what are you doing with that money? You know, if it's going to be something worthwhile, then okay, maybe it's worth thinking about. And sometimes, of course, life does throw stuff at you and you've got to react and you've got to spend money on certain things. But if you're just selling for the sake of taking profit, it does seem a bit, a bit worthless to do so at the 23K range, you know, it's so low compared to the 60 50s case that we saw last year. Okie doke. I'm just going to check in with the chat before we move on to the next article, as I know that it's been quite popular this week. So we've got another question from Queen or a comment from Queen even. She says we need Bitcoin over 24,588 in in my opinion or when rug pull. I don't think Bitcoin's going to rug pull anytime soon. Not financial advice of course. I don't even know how you'd commit a bitcoin rug pull at this stage of the game because it's got to be, you know, it has to pass through my node and my node is only going to accept the longest chain. So Queen, why don't you explain how bitcoin could rug pull and in the meantime we'll move over to the final article of this week, which is going to really change things up. It's all about Ethereum and the Ethereum devs. As Marcel joked about in the intro today, there is the Shanghai Update on the horizon. This article comes from Tom Blackstone on the on the US team. He says Ethereum devs create shadow fork to test conditions for Ether withdrawals. As you may or may not know, Ethereum or Ether, sorry is currently is currently locked up as per Proof of stake. So if you have 32 Ethereum you can lock it away and supposedly it will gain interest or yield which you can then withdraw at some point. But right now we don't know when you can withdraw it, how you withdraw it, what are the costs withdrawing it, that sort of thing. And this is developers look at right now and you will be able to withdraw them when the Ethereum Shanghai Update comes through. Again, we don't know the date of that and as you might have gathered from me trying to explain Ethereum to you, a lot of the developments are quite flexible. You know, they'll put a date out there and then it might be pushed back further or it will be changed in some way or there'll be a development because they're constantly trying to work Reese's and work to bring these these products to the to the market without them breaking. And this is also why Proof of Stake took eight years to deliver because Proof of Stake was discussed when Ethereum was first actually announced but you know, only came to us last autumn. Okay, so let's get into the actual nitty nitty gritty or the nuts and bolts of this. Effectively the the Devs have been trying to make these staking withdrawals a reality and on January 6th they held a meeting which they agreed to exclude the proposed EVM object format from the Shanghai upgrade. So EOF was intended to make Ethereum easier to upgrade in the future, but because of its complexity, the devs decided to leave it out of Shanghai for fear that it would delay withdrawal implementation. That was a word salad. Marcel, help me out here. What's going on with Ethereum, what's, what's happening with the Shanghai updates and when will I be able to withdraw my stake? Let's just pretend I've got some staked.

Eth, okay Joe, so as for withdrawn Ethereum, the 32 that needs to be staked for you to become a validator or you can delegate to someone using Lido or some of the staking services but once you stake it becomes locked and right now there's no possibility, there's no estimate on when it's going to be implemented. And the devs were saying well, during the next phase of the implementation we're going to bundle the additional change so people can withdraw the staked Ethereum. But we don't have a time frame for for that. And the market interpreted that with really some negative remarks even within the Ethereum community. So what the dev said, okay, so let's split that. Let's do the possibility of Ethereum staked Ethereum withdrawal first and then after a couple of months or later in the year, we're going to implement the necessary chains for the sharding for the parallel processing capabilities that will someday cause Ethereum to become faster and more scalable without requiring layer two solutions for them. The thing is, they're always delaying and they never give a definitive deadline for those implementations. And even more worrisome is that the day that the withdrawals are allowed, let's assume it comes live in two or three months. It's going to be likely a selling a bear pressure for the price, not something positive that investors should be waiting. Well, people have been staking for two years now, are going to be finally able to withdraw. Yes, if they want to withdraw, they're going to be selling for cash because they had been locked for two years. So when you open those gates, when you open the door, more people will come out than come in because right now you can join, you can transport your 32 Ethereum and staked it, but you cannot withdraw. So I don't think it's a bull case for Ethereum. I don't think people should create any expectation based on that.

Very good analysis, Sam. Anything to add to that?

I think Marcel covered it perfectly and I'm glad he's covering Ethereum so I don't have to. I don't have to.

So fantastic. Yeah, we don't give Ethereum enough air time sometimes, I feel. And it is of course, the. The world's second largest cryptocurrency with all sorts of developments going on. If you have any questions specific to the Shanghai upgrade in the that come to mind, then feel free to pop them in the chat. Guys, we're here to answer those sort of questions to you. And I know that. For example, the article also brought up the malicious nodes and the idea that they're really trying to attack this shadow fork. So a fork which is working sort of alongside the chain so they can work out any of those kinks or any of those problems in advance. And this is what the developers are working on currently. Do you guys have Ethereum staked, for example, and are you concerned about the lockup period and the fact that right now whether or not you can get that staked Ethereum back? So let us know in the chat. If not, we'll move on to the final articles because I think we do have time for this article this week and it's all about how the bitcoin logo was projected onto the tallest building in Berlin, possibly even Eastern Europe. I'm not actually sure about the heights of buildings over there, but if we can share my screen one last time, then I'll be able to show you this article written by a fabulous writer, I have to say, who hosts the Market report this week. Berliners could see the bitcoin be projected onto the Berliner Fernsturm Tower on January 21st. If you've ever been to Berlin, you will have seen this building. It's a giant TV tower, looks a bit like this. And a man who chooses not to be named for legal reasons now he decided with it, with some friends, to project the Berlin Tower. And the reason why, he told me in a phone call, was that we just want to call attention on bitcoin. We're fans of guerrilla actions like this and will keep on track, you know, guerrilla actions. The idea that, you know, you take sort of power into your own hands or take responsibility into your own hands and do these sort of small exercises that really bring attention to something. And projecting the Bitcoin B onto the Berlin's tallest tower is definitely a way of doing so. This has actually happened across lots of landmarks around the UK in my Home country, the uk for example. Printing money is stealing from the poor was printed onto the bank of England sometime last year and some people thought it was Banksy, the famous artist. I don't think it was, but it'd be very cool if Banksy was a bitcoiner. Anyway. Yeah, this isn't the first time that the man who's called Tilo, that's all he, the whole name that he wanted to share with us, has also projected the bitcoin B onto the Berlin Wall, another iconic landmark in Berlin, which used to be the segregation between East Germany and West Germany. What do you think, Marcel? Is o' here getting himself into trouble a bit? Or is this the sort of pirate like act that we celebrate in the bitcoin community? I mean, it looks quite cool, right?

Yeah, I think we should celebrate. As long as there's no destruction, there's no public stuff like putting fire on central banks and et cetera. I don't think people should do that. Yes, you can throw lights, you can cut the power of the building, maybe create some trouble, but do not destroy anything. So just showing some light on bitcoin. I think the community should embrace the decision, the act.

Nice. Yeah. No, don't set a fire to central banks. I feel like that should be a tweet or something and also secondary this story. So Tila realized the importance of sort of obfuscating his identity and so he's created a Twitter account called, I think it's called Bitman, a play on Batman, because of course, Batman used to project his logo into the night sky when he was protecting the city of Gotham. Was it? I don't know where I'm going with this knowledge anyway. Sam, do you like this sort of thing or do you think it's a bit of a marketing gimmick, is it? You know, not really helping the bitcoin movement. What do you think?

I'm not sure it's helping. I mean, there's many ways we can give. Give credence to bitcoin or promote bitcoin. I'm not against this, as Marcel mentioned, as long as it's not resulting in any kind of violence or any kind of destruction of property, I'm okay with it.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, the Reddit group for Berlin, you know, the subreddit for Berlin, there's a lot of hate in that group. A lot of people were calling it light pollution. Some were saying, why do we support this coin that's based off turbo capitalism without limits and morals? Gosh, wait till they find out about the fiat system. But yeah, clearly Berlin is, I mean Berlin in European terms is more of like a left leaning sort of socialist city. It's definitely more liberal in terms of, you know, political thinking, but economically speaking it's definitely more social. They had huge handouts during the pandemic this summer. For example, Berlin had free transport across the whole city. Just everyone could travel for free, which is kind of amazing, but obviously more of a left wing sort of economic idea. So yeah, they don't like the turbo capitalism that bitcoin represents. Yeah, go ahead, Marcel.

Joe, there's a question from the audience. I think it's directed to you like stock origin. Do you really think that bitcoin, who is slow and expensive to transact, will be used as a daily money on our lives and will reach the all time high in the next years? I think it's a good question for you.

It's a great question. I mean, bitcoin isn't slow or expensive to transact with. Firstly, it depends who you are and what you're used to, of course, but 10 minutes to wait for a transaction to be confirmed, you know, on average it's pretty good. And if you're not happy with 10 minutes, then use the Lightning Network. It's pretty much instant and it's faster than fiat payment rails and it's way cheaper as well. So try the Lightning Network. If you don't know how to use the Lightning Network, DM me on Twitter. I'll put my name in the chat below and I'll show you how to download a Lightning Wallet and you can. I'll send you some stats you can play with yourself. Sats are of course short for satoshis. What was the second point and which will all time high in the next years? I mean it's probably better, but I would say yes, of course, absolutely. I mean I would give it maybe three years till we hit another all time high. I think that's fair to say. Anything to add, guys? No. Or did my message get lost by the Internet connection there? I'm really sorry about that.

We can move on.

When you pay by credit cards, maybe.

Is that what's happening? Yeah, there we go.

Sorry, when you pay by credit card, I just want to remind the viewers that the transaction can be cancelled, revoked after 30, 60 days. So it's not a final transaction. When transacting bitcoin wait for one or two blocks, it's a final transaction. So it's 10, 20 minutes stops.

Fantastic. There you go. I hope that answered your question. Stark Origin. Thank you very much as well for popping it in the chat. I really hope you don't stop shilling Ripple or XRP to us because this is usually how these questions start. I've been here before but yeah, as I say the offer is still open if you want to ping me on Twitter. I'll happy to send you some stats over the Lightning network. And let's move on with the show. So next up is a little segment talk you through a crypto tip. So this week we're going to be talking so this week we're going to be talking about cryptocurrency copy trading. This is a nice and straightforward one as crypto copy trading is an automated strategy that lets one copy and experience traders trading methods. It enables you to buy and sell crypto assets to earn profits without putting in a lot of time researching or or skilling up or gaining proficiency in crypto trading. Now basically, crypto copy trading is all about identifying skilled traders. So finding those traders that are regularly registering a profit and re executing their moves, literally copy paste their moves. A trader doesn't have to spend a lot of time studying market trends or learning complex trading methods or putting all those hours into, you know, getting that those notches to your belt. Rather, the software just mimics what the expert trader is doing. For instance, if the trader the copy trading software is following invests $100 to buy coin A, for example, Bitcoin, the software will also spend a hundred dollars on Bitcoin too. The tool not only helps amateur traders to use the expertise of other traders, but it also helps them learn the skill of making smart investment decisions. Because of course while you're copying these traders, you're also mimicking and learning from that process which will help you in the long term on your trading journey, if you're so inclined. Yeah. So don't forget to send us your comments and questions for your chance to win a one month subscription to Cointelegraph Markets Pro. That's of course worth $100 and if you fail to win that, then there's still a 20% off markets pro voucher in the link in the description. Cool. I think we're now moving on to Marcel and his trading tips for this week. And Marcel, what have you got lined up for us?

Okay Joe, so let me tell the viewers a little secret. Year to date, in 2023, Bitcoin gained 38 and a half percent. So how much do you think on average the remaining top 20 coins performed? I'll tell you the answer. They gained 37.5%. So 1% less than Bitcoin. And notice that this was greatly helped by solana, which gained 144% in the period. If it hadn't been for Solana, the altcoins would have underperformed Bitcoin by 5%, so gaining 32% in the year. So first of all, does that not mean that the evento 40% rally from here on bitcoin would also be detrimental to altcoins? That altcoins will underperform? It doesn't mean that. But one thing you should note is that Bitcoin's dominance increased over the past 12 months. So Bitcoin's dominance is Bitcoin's market share. Danilo, I want to share my screen here please. So excluding stablecoins, Bitcoin's market share increased from 43% late 2021 to the current 51%. But more importantly, that number was 64% until March 2021. So you want to know what happened that caused Bitcoin's dominance to drop from 64% to 43%? I'll tell you the answer. It's shocking. Thank you for sharing, Danilo. Bitcoin had rallied from $11,000 to $61,000 in six months. So the dominance stayed at 64 or higher. But once Bitcoin hit the resistance at 61 and a half and came down to $50,000, that's when those whales and investors decided to seek additional gains by pumping altcoins. So it was not during the bull run that altcoins outperformed. That is not true. People think that if a rally is coming, if bitcoin is going from 23,000 to 30 or $40,000, then the altcoins are going to rally more. Now, just to show you that in the past that was not the case. But I don't think people should obsess with a single metric. For instance, if retail traders, there's a new demand for retail traders buying crypto. No matter the reason, we already know how those newcomers behave. They're going to seek higher gains or lower face value investments. So shifting the demand to low volume coins the altcoins and causing a huge bump. The point in case remains altcoins are losing market share and until there's some FOMO from retail, the fear of missing out. So newcomers in space, only a handful of altcoins will surpass Bitcoin. So yes, Aptos, Lido, Decentraland, Optismin and Curve, they all gained 100% or more in the year but they were not the top 50. They were ranked 60, 70, 80, 90. They were not top 50 coins. And if you're gonna have a lot of, if you're gonna have some exposure in altcoins, at least you have to know what you're doing. Don't try to chase gains, don't buy the coin after it rallied 150%. Remember, the majority of the altcoins lost versus Bitcoin performance in 2023 in the year. And remember from last year we had Luna ftt, Helium, Wonderland, Serum, Harmony, Plating, Moving Amp Flow, Oasis. A bunch of them were top 100 coins and they lost 70% or more against Bitcoin. So I'm naming over 10 coins that were between. There were top 100 coins last year and that lost over 70% against Bitcoin. So the thing is, we get easily impressed when you hear that the coin rallied 20%, but we easily forget when a coin drops 90% or 100% as it has happened. So guys, be very careful during this bull run.

Really valid analysis there. Thank you. Marcel, love that you're living up to your name of no shitcoins there as well. That's really good, healthy stuff. Interesting is you well that you say that they are dropping in value against Bitcoin and bitcoin also dropped in value. So measured against the dollar, you are really getting wrecked on some of these coins. So be careful out there, traders. Speaking of which, why don't we talk about another top tip for the traders out there. We've got something special for you guys from the Markets Pro team. So yeah, let's roll up the transition. Very good. So this week we're talking about Rocket Pool, which featured in a newsquake for Markets Pro. Now news is what moves the crypto market and the Newsquake service by Cointelegraph. Markets Pro helps traders stay on top of important developments. Newsquakes are automated alerts that instantly notify users when market moving events happen. Thanks to them, Markets Pro subscribers like yourself, I hope, often beat the crowd to the most important news of the day. That's what we saw this week with Rocket Pool. So Rocket Pool, as you may see this week had a gain of 48.5%. That's a pretty solid game off the back of a newsquake that was registered by the Market Pro team this week. So yeah, don't miss out on those and take advantage of some of these newsquakes as they are delivered straight to your notification center with Markets Pro. A second cointelegraph market is the Vortex score. It's a really useful feature. It's an algorithmic metric and basically a coins Vortex score is a comparison between its current market and social conditions of those in the past. So a high score means that, judging from historical data, the asset's current outlook is bullish for the next 12 to 72 hours. These are very short trading periods. Conversely, A score of 80 and below sorry, 80 and above is considered bullish and a score of below is bearish. So here we have optimism, which scored a 75 score on Coin Telegraph's Market Pro and rallied a whopping 40p 46% off the back of this score popping up on your dashboard. That's a pretty strong gain. It flashed up on Wednesday, January 18 to inform markets Pro subscribers that the token's patterns mirrored historically bullish conditions. Remember, scores under the threshold of 80 are still worth noting, so 75 is still pretty good. The assets price soon climbed from $1.65 to a peak of $2.41, an increase of 46%. So yeah, these are the sorts of tips, tricks and tools that you can take advantage of with the Market Pro subscription product. So don't forget to take advantage of 20% off in the description down below. And yeah, click like click subscribe and share these videos with your friends or trader buddies. And I don't know what the feminine word for buddy is. And friends, girls and boys, to ensure that they're all getting informed about their trading and improving their trading journey. Made a real hash of that one there gents. Sorry about that. We're moving on to sum up this today's show which ended up being quite a long one, but I guess it's probably because this bullish sentiment we saw in the chat. Very nice of you all to hang out in the chat with us today. I saw wrong again. Long standing viewer pumped dropped in and made gains off of this one. I hope you made gains thanks to the cointelegraph Markets Pro Tools. It really is a useful service for those traders out there. Sam, any closing comments for this week? Any advice, any ideas, anything you'd like to share with with the viewers?

We're still in the early stages of the next four year cycle I think. So have patience and have a well defined investment horizon and I think you'll be fine in the long run if you invest wisely in the future. Not financial advice. I think Bitcoin is probably going to be the center of most successful investment portfolios for the next cycle.

Very good. Excellent. Almost echoing Marcel's point, there as well, you know, have some exposure to bitcoin. Not financial advice, but, you know, these are the sort of things that these guys are doing and they've been in the markets for a long time and probably longer than you watching at home. Marcel, any closing comments?

Well, I would say, Joe, if you're going to invest in cryptocurrencies, it doesn't matter if it's Cardano, xrp, Ethereum, bitcoin, whatever you're going to do, don't panic if you see a 30 to 40% price drop. There's too much volatility. So hang on tight. Wait two or three years for investment to mature.

Excellent. Good point as well. Yeah. I mean, Michael Saylor says that as well, doesn't he? Says, you know, if you're holding an asset and you're looking to sell within less than four years, then you're greater. You know, you haven't really got conviction for that product. And it's the same for a house, it's the same for a lump of gold, and it's the same for bitcoin. See yourself through one full cycle and then things start to really make sense. I mean, it started to make sense for me. So I really hope they make sense for you guys around the world. One last thing to do this week and it's just to announce the winner, who have just been informed 2020. Put a handle in the chat. If you don't have Twitter, feel free to ping us an email and we'll get you that Markets Pro subscription sorted for you. Well done and thank you very much for your comments this week. Thank you everyone else for dropping in and hanging out with us. It's been a really good week for the markets. I hope it's another good week so that next Tuesday, my Internet is a lot better because I'll be able to afford an ethernet cable, for example. You're very welcome, Reza. 2020. Thank you very much as well to Sam and Marcel for hanging out and for showing off that amazing bitcoin merch. When Bitcoin's 40k, I'm gonna buy Sam a nice bitcoin sort of mural to have behind himself. How about that?

Sounds good.

You can hold me to it as well. All right, thank you very much, everyone for tuning in and we'll see you next Tuesday at the same time. Sa.