Is Bitcoin About To Break New Highs? | Will Clemente

Ethereum, uh, is that the XRP of this cycle, or is it gonna be a— is it gonna finally perform at some point?

No, I think Ethereum's screwed. I tried to— I tried to give ETH BTC a shot, especially around the ETF launch, and got hosed on that. So I think it's— you just gotta look at the SOL ETH chart, and you know, just knowing how reflective these assets are, it's hard not to be bullish solely.

Yeah, dude, this is completely and utterly— I've been saying this for so long and I will continue to say this.

Avi actually talked me out of my ETH. I— he literally ruined my day and thank God he did. All right, we're live, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of 1000x. The usuals are back, myself and Avi Feldman here, and we are joined by Will Clemente, uh, co-founder of Reflexivity Research and a very big name on crypto Twitter. We are thrilled to have you, Will. Um, thank you very much for joining.

Thanks for having me, guys. I listen to the show every single week, so it's great to be on. I apologize I can't show my beautiful face to the listeners, but unfortunately my Wi-Fi is equivalent to a potato right now. I'm running on the Helium Wi-Fi, so We'll see if maybe I can get the camera on at some point.

But it seems to be like a disease that this podcast inflicts upon guests and hosts alike. Just terrible Wi-Fi and internet problems.

Jonah, wouldn't you think, given this is a crypto podcast and Bitcoin's above $70K, everybody can afford a good internet connection, can afford a good camera? I don't know.

Anyway, Will, thank you for being you and showing up here. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how you got into crypto and how you ended up becoming like the Michael Jackson of crypto Twitter?

I, I don't know if, uh, I, I would say all that, but yeah, I could give a little high-level background. Um, I— and we can get to the, the, uh, doxxing part and, and kind of the pros and cons to that because I've kind of found it that, you know, it goes, goes both ways. Um, originally got into the space at the beginning of 2020, so if, if I guess we take a look bit of a further step back. At the end of 2019, you know, I was in college. I needed some like beer money in between semesters. I was working an overnight stocking job at the arts and crafts store called Michaels. Some people on like the East Coast of the US may be familiar with the store. I come in at like 2 or 3 in the morning, you know, brutal shift. There's like 3 other people there, tend to get some interesting people that you aren't, you know, having the greatest of conversations with because it's the night shift at Michael's. And so I was losing my mind. It's like 8 or 9 hours overnight and I'm coming in at 3 in the morning, leaving at like 10 o'clock, unload the truck, whatever, and then stock everything. So I started listening to podcasts. At the beginning, it was just like brain rot, like Joe Rogan conspiracy theory stuff. And I was like, "Maybe I'm going to try to learn a few things. Maybe I'll make a couple dollars." I started listening to just generic investing stuff. Stuff. So started with all the Warren Buffett value investing. Shout out to this guy named Preston Pysh. He runs this podcast called We Study Billionaires. I literally just started at the first podcast, listened all the way up to episode 100, 150 or something. Kind of fell down, fell in love with how a lot of people do with a lot of the traditional value investing stuff. Phil Fisher, Ben Graham, all those guys. I've got this big fat security analysis book behind me on my shelf, which is just a paperweight now. Tried to do many discount cash flow models at my desk in college, never went anywhere. And then very shortly after, COVID hit. So obviously, big drawdown in all asset prices during COVID and then quite a quick recovery after. And at the time, I was very bamboozled by why are asset prices going up, but the economy seems to not be in such great shape. Kind of figured out, okay, all this stuff is just driven by liquidity and the amount of monetary units in the system. And then kind of came to the conclusion that the thing that you want to own in that environment is Bitcoin. So, you know, the very small amount of money that I had at the time, I just started putting everything into Bitcoin. I then had transitioned from working at Michaels to then I was working at Target doing like the in-store, like shopping orders. And so I would go around Target doing that, fulfilling the orders, listening to Bitcoin and investing podcasts. And then I started, as I was like DCAing my very small size into Bitcoin, I was just, you know, started tweeting about my thoughts about Bitcoin. So I think I got on Bitcoin Twitter, crypto Twitter, it was like June or July of 2020. And, you know, it was just like relentlessly bull posting. Wasn't saying anything that was like that groundbreaking, but continued to just, you know, post on Twitter. You know, started to— the account started to blow up. I put out an article about why Bitcoin was like a great, you know, macro, you know, asset debasement hedge. That started to get picked up by a couple people in like kind of the Bitcoin maxi circle. That guy Preston Pysh I mentioned gave me some love early on. And then Anthony Pompliano, Pomp, he asked me to come on his podcast. I had like 5,000 followers or something. Went on, basically like gave the Bitcoin thesis. Kept, you know, basically putting out a bunch of content. And then, you know, obviously Bitcoin went from, you know, $8K to like $60K to $65K within like a matter of months, you know, as soon as I had gotten on Twitter. So, you know, I had like some great tailwinds for the account. And then towards kind of the back half of the year into 2021, I started thinking, okay, you know, I think I kind of have the big picture of what's going on here, you know, just in terms of debasement driving Bitcoin, and like, you know, this thing is clearly here to stay. Um, and then started to think about, you know, how can I kind of a little more tactically maneuver and, and maybe make some, some money in this market. So, you know, lost a ton of money at the beginning trying to trade my own PA. Um, you know, still, still figuring it out today. You know, we're not talking about that much, that much long ago. Um, through 2021, you know, ate some glass. I'm sorry, through 2022, ate some glass, obviously, you know. Trying to, trying to trade as the market just proceeded to go down only. And then towards the back half of 2022, decided to launch Reflexivity, which is the research firm that I'm still helping out with. We recently got acquired back in February, but launched the research firm with, with Pomp. The kind of thought process there was really just, you know, we had kind of a competitive advantage, I felt like, in terms of the distribution of the two of us and kind of the social presence. Was able to kind of utilize that to build some early partnerships and eventually built the firm out. Had a couple of great early analysts. So, you know, Fee Zhao, who's now at Blockworks, one of my favorite macro guys, found him early on. He had like this banger thread that like brought a bunch of eyeballs to his account. So we brought him on. He was like a contractor for us doing some macro work. Noah, who, Avi, I know you're very familiar with, really smart guy around my age as well. And so I think, you know, the firm became pretty well known for putting out some decent, you know, thought leadership work and then, you know, worked with a ton of the crypto protocols as well as we launched an events business earlier this year. Like I mentioned, got acquired back in February. So, you know, still fairly, you know, involved with the business, making sure that everything's you know, running day to day. Um, but yeah, other— that's how we got— you also, you know, just generally kind of managing my own money in the background as well.

I think that's a good, good background. One thing that I always found interesting about the way that you came into crypto is, I mean, you're pretty young. Uh, you're probably the only person like under the age of 30 at this point that got into Bitcoin first. So I feel like everyone else that got into crypto got into altcoins. That are like at least on the younger side. And you normally see the Bitcoin maxi side is like the guys that got in in 2013 or sort of older, more conservative people. So you started off just basically only BTC, if I, if I remember correctly. Yeah. Can you tell me a little about that? I mean, obviously you must have, given the time that you got in, you must have been exposed to altcoins. But what, why did you end up just focusing so heavily on BTC?

Yeah. It's funny I mentioned Fiji. Obviously, we've become pretty good friends and this is something that we relate to each other on because he was also originally in the value investor bucket, which I think goes to show you that there's something to be said about understanding the way that investing is supposed to be when you have the correct cost of capital. And all this stuff is in a wonky world post-2008 because of all the you know, all the inherent, uh, you know, manipulation that's taken place within our monetary system, um, that's messed up the way that, you know, investing has, has worked and the way that markets have moved. Um, I think when you come from the perspective of this is, you know, how investing is supposed to work, then you understand why it isn't that way. And then you come to the conclusion of, okay, well, you know, all this stuff is messed up because of all the, you know, shenanigans around, you know, going off monetary policy and then you come to the conclusion of, this is why I want to hold Bitcoin. But I'd say where I kind of mid-curved it early on, and this is kind of my bone to pick, if you will, with a lot of the Bitcoin maxis. I think a lot of them are, you know, they mean well. And, you know, obviously I was originally in that camp of like, everything but Bitcoin is a scam. I obviously no longer think that's the case. I think a lot of the stuff is, you know, not worth anything. But even if you do, the same kind of properties of what takes place that would be conducive for Bitcoin to do well over a perhaps decade, two-decade time horizon are the same kind of things that you need for a kind of speculative mania. So one of my favorite books about just crazy periods of financial turmoil is When Money Dies. and it's about Weimar Germany when the, you know, the mark basically went parabolically worthless and had hyperinflation. Um, everyone's probably seen the chart of like the mark measured against, against gold. Um, obviously, you know, gold went to the moon in, in Marx terms, but another aspect that's very loosely talked about or kind of like strategically not mentioned by a lot of the Bitcoin-only crowd is that you also had this tremendous period of financial speculation. And that's just a byproduct of, you know, wealth inequality. People feel like they can't, you know, they can't get ahead. You know, the prices of everything is going up. And obviously, I'm not saying that we have hyperinflation in the US, or I think that we will. But, you know, as people get further behind, as, you know, wealth inequality increases, which is driven by poor monetary policy, and the people that own assets, you know, those assets continue to go up while the people who don't own assets continue to get further behind. That type, you know, that type of dynamic encourages more and more speculative behavior. And so that was kind of the moment for me where I said, you know, if I'm a little more cynical, you know, not only is this— is the same thesis that, you know, I've applied to being bullish on Bitcoin, that should also apply to a lot of the speculative activity within the kind of broader crypto market as well. I do think, you know, people are generally trying to build good things, and there are some interesting things going on, but even if you were to take that out, let's say it was like only meme coins and nothing else, um, I, you know, I still think the, the same backdrop that's conducive for Bitcoin, um, should be conducive for alts. And it took me a good kind of year and a half for, for me to come to that conclusion.

That's a really interesting take. Um, a couple of things unpack there. So the first thing is, uh, how you learned basically how to trade, how to invest from podcasts. Uh, that's That's something that I wish I'd had available to me when I was 19. I too picked up Benjamin Graham's Intelligent Investor and it fried my brain after a couple of pages and I turned it into a paperweight, but I couldn't listen to an executive summary or hear it debated back and forth between people on Spotify back then. So I kind of— I don't know. To me, that hammers home the idea that financial education is much easier to digest through through podcasts than pretty much any other format. So shameless plug for everybody out there, keep listening to the 1000X Podcast and podcasts like us. I really appreciate hearing that. Also appreciate that you listen to ours. One other thing that you said that interested me was that value, a value investing framework helped you basically hold on to Bitcoin, which I thought was interesting because most value investors I talked to think that Bitcoin produces no income. So it's worth $0 a token, so it should go to zero. But I think what you probably did was you probably took that value investing framework, assigned some really high value to Bitcoin because you saw it as digital gold before the rest of the world did. And then, you know, ultimately, the real, the real juice in the value investing framework that Ben Graham and Warren Buffett set forth is basically the idea that you should ride a trade until it converges to your, your perception of fair value. So I, when I was your age, I was like, when I was a little older than you actually, but when I was younger, I, I would like buy Facebook for $19 a share, sell it at $30 a share, and high-five myself for making 50% on my trade. I would never like think that it, that this could happen. So yeah, I mean, in the spirit of riding trades, what other, you know, you mentioned you're, you're now not really a maximalist anymore. What are some of the other spaces or sectors or tokens or things that you're applying this mentality to? And, you know, where are you riding the tiger, basically?

Yeah, for sure. I just want to, before we move on, on the first point, you know, totally agree. I've always mentioned on the pod before, I think especially in crypto, there's just such an openness to share insights with people that you don't know and reveals some of your edge to people that you don't know. And so, you know, I think getting active on Twitter, having somewhat of a degree of being able to filter out, you know, total larps and people who like halfway know what they're talking about, um, you know, I kind of use Twitter as like a screening tool to an extent. Um, you know, podcasts, going back to 2021, you know, Up Only was lovely, and I religiously would listen to like every episode of that. I think this podcast is kind of taken UpOnly's spot as like the premier trading podcast that everybody's listened to. But, you know, also just getting active in TG and like building a group of friends to kind of navigate the markets with. I totally agree. I think the ease of access to information is greater than ever, just broadly for almost any discipline outside of like maybe like engineering or something like the medical field, especially with trading, but— or investing. But that's amplified even more so, I think, in crypto. Um, yeah, to go on to the, the second question, I think there's, there's a couple plays that are, that are, have been and continue to be quite obvious to me going back towards the middle of last year. Um, you know, some of these are probably not going to be that controversial. You know, the first is Solana. Right? Solana's just been the barometer for all the activity going on, you know, with meme coins and all speculation there. Um, I also just think you generally have this kind of like cyclicality that's embedded into the people that are participating in crypto's minds. And so I think Solana is the ETH of last cycle. It's very much been ingrained into a lot of people's brains. And, you know, being kind of in the camp of reflexivity. I think, you know, if you just look at the SOL/ETH chart, it's just the momentum is too far gone at this point. I'm not saying that SOL can't go up, but I, I think, you know, I don't see any logical explanations as to, as to why SOL won't continue to outperform ETH. Um, so like SOL a lot. Um, I've been pretty vocal about Coinbase from, from kind of late last year, so I, I went pretty long, you know, like longer duration calls on COIN around like $70 in October of last year and still kind of hold the thesis which I did then, which is basically that I think Coinbase is generally kind of a venture style play, very similar, I guess, probably the most venture style play in public markets since maybe Tesla like 10 years ago, just because they're launching several different verticals, within the business that didn't exist in 2021 that they really kind of laid the groundwork for throughout the bear market of 2022 into 2023. You know, I think Base is a great example. It would be interesting to hear the earnings call after we get off of this in a bit and hear maybe they're touting Base pretty hard, but now that seems to be kind of the premier ETH L2. So, you know, that the, the custody stuff, you know, their stake in Circle, there's their wallet as a service, and there's several— the staking stuff— there's several different kind of verticals within the business that kind of have slowly diversified it away from just being an exchange. And now I think you can kind of see it as somewhat of a kind of crypto super app, if you will, or somewhat of an indexation type of play on the, on the broader crypto space, excluding Bitcoin. Um, I also like MicroStrategy. Um, I like them even more after Saylor just said he's gonna buy $42 billion of Bitcoin. I haven't looked into that or, or what, what that even means, so maybe Avi, you've looked forward a bit on this. But, um, I, I think, I think the thing with—

well, I mean, I, I can tell you, I can tell you MicroStrategy is down a lot after hours because obviously this, this means that stock's gonna hit the market, right? Like, he basically sells sells MSTR to buy BTC. It's what— it's effectively what he does. And so, right, I think the premium— the premium— I mean, the premium should converge a lot if he's announcing this is his plan. But we've all said that before because he's tried— I mean, he's basically done this in smaller size and the premium just stays where it is, which is kind of interesting. Um, so I don't— I don't— I don't know how I feel about MSTR.

I think go—

it's funny, going into the ETF It was such a consensus play. I mean, I believe that too, that the MSTR premium would shrink, and it just hasn't. It's just blown out, just keeps going up. It's like one of the, one of the mysteries of the market.

I think it's like this positioning thing where I was, uh, we had Quint Thompson, our crypto investor, we talked about this on, on this, on the last panel of the day. Um, it's one of those things where the premium in a lot of people's eyes shouldn't exist. And so therefore you have a lot of these tradfi funds that are going to come in and short MSTR, long BTC, and keep getting blown out. And so I think you may have this dynamic where people kept— keep trying to, you know, step in and basically play that convergence and then perpetually keep getting blown out. So I think there's some kind of positioning stuff there that makes MSTR pretty interesting. But regardless, they're basically kind of leveraged yield generating ETF. And then you get kind of these positioning targeting shenanigans that maybe are sprinkled on top. So I like MSTR as well. And then—

Hold on, hold on. Quick question on that. I haven't done the work on MSTR, but to me it looks like another financially engineered GBTC-like equities phenomenon where there's just this lurking risk that I don't know how to quantify or understand. Just anywhere where there's a premium and like locked BTC that you can't really redeem as a shareholder. Like, are you at all worried about that? Or should— should— am I just being irrational here?

They can't keep issuing equity if there's no longer a premium, right? Because basically what Saylor's doing is, you know, anytime it trades above the value of Bitcoin, he just dilutes the shares back to whatever the par value should be, um, with BTC. We did a deep dive into like the debt structuring of MicroStrategy. I haven't looked in a long time. I don't own MicroStrategy, but I do generally like it. Um, we did a deep dive back at the end of 2022 when everybody was saying that Saylor was going to get liquidated. We basically said the only debt that was at risk was the Silvergate loan, and he ended up actually making money on that. So I think the way that the debt's structured out, as long as obviously the software business is able to keep paying the debt payments, then they're fine. So I guess you technically have risk there, but obviously if Bitcoin keeps going up, then it's fine. Um, yeah, the other, the other big one on the crypto equity side has just been a lot of these miners that are transitioning to AI stuff. So, you know, obviously with the build-out of AI infrastructure, people need power, and a lot of these Bitcoin miners have not been doing well, not generating a lot of shareholder value, in a lot of cases just diluting their shareholders into oblivion. So, you know, I think a lot of these, a lot of these Bitcoin miners are becoming very compelling, um, in terms of kind of a play on, on AI stuff. Um, you know, we've talked about Wolf before in the, in the Nigerian Delta Avengers group chat. Um, make sure you're in there if you're not. Uh, Avi shared a very, very detailed thesis. I, I didn't do nearly as much work on the play as him. I just rotated all of my, my coin calls from last October into, into Wolf. Like, it's $420 or $430, and that's done nicely so far. But a lot of the other ones look nice as well. I mean, I don't know if we're able to screen share, but if you just pull up a lot of the charts for some of these Bitcoin miners, and a lot of these look pretty crazy on, you know, weekly, monthly time frames.

Yeah, I really— and I still like Wolf a lot. I'll say that the Wolf thesis for me it hinged more— I mean, my analyst did a lot of work on it, uh, and came, came to realize that just what— there's a very specific site that was being underappreciated on both, which I just think is like par for the course for miners in general. People just don't study them enough and don't actually understand their businesses enough. There just isn't, you know, a tremendous amount of coverage, especially the lower market cap ones on Wall Street. And so you end up with situations where You know, you have a site that you're building out that's going to add, you know, it's going to double or triple your capacity to mine Bitcoin, and that's just not priced in. And that's kind of what's happening with Wolf. Um, and I think that generally that's my play when it comes to crypto equities, is look for things that people have overlooked. Um, because I think if you're looking for beta, you can look in just crypto in general, uh, to get, to get beta. I mean, maybe, maybe you just want to keep money, you know, in a brokerage, but at least with miners, it's about finding those specific, specific edges, which is why I still, I still like Wolf a lot because, because if you, you know, you found a specific edge in Wolf, because I do think across the board mining is just such a tough business. Yeah, it's just so, it's just so cyclical. And also it's almost, they're, they're only, you know, a few months at a time, maybe a year, where you actually end up really profitable as a miner, and then everything just readjusts itself, uh, either because Bitcoin prices collapsed or a ton of new mining machines come online. So, you know, it's just such a tough business to hold these things long term.

I think some of the, the financing stuff that wasn't around in the 2017 cycle, I think a lot of that took out maybe some of the capitalist cyclical nature of how Bitcoin mining and the cycle around it's supposed to take place and the capitulation around inefficient miners. And I think there were, there was, there's a lot of kind of excess that was able to stick around after the last bear market that maybe, maybe without the, you know, access to financing, a lot of those firms maybe wouldn't have made it through the bear.

So interestingly enough, I, in 2022, I was asked to speak when I was Mr. White Collar Professional Crypto Guy, um, and it was like my full-time job. I got asked to go speak at the executive offsite of one of the major miners. I'm not going to dox that particular miner's name, but basically I went and talked to them about my views about crypto. And then I— there was like Q&A where they were sort of explaining their strategy, and I got a little peek under the hood. And what— this is obviously one of the most successful miners, if not for a while, the most successful. And what I— what blew my mind was that basically the way that they deal with that cyclicality is essentially by accumulating gains from holding on to Bitcoin, not selling all of their Bitcoin essentially during those run-ups, and then attempting to kind of lock in profits near local peaks or tops. And, and then, you know, obviously on the way down, they're financially buttressed because they've you know, achieved greater returns from just riding the sort of upward waves than, you know, just constantly mining and selling, mining and selling. And when I heard that, I was thinking to myself, like, okay, you guys are obviously very good at this, but you're valued like a, like a stable business, but you're actually a trading company. And so if you invest— and so at that point, I was thinking, like, you know, it's great to be them, they get that richly valued stock, but as an investor, you're basically investing in a trading business with a trading business should be valued at like 2, 3 times earnings, right? But you're investing in a trading business at like, I don't know where these things trade, like 20 times earnings or something. So to me, I thought that just sounded like a bad investment. Now, post-AI, you like, they basically just opened a new business line, these guys, so they can do the Bitcoin thing, but also earn consistent money from, you know, whatever they're doing for AI to demand, and maybe it's a more diversified, better investment now. Back in the day though, I just felt weird about it. That's not to say that it isn't an incredible beta trade to crypto, and Avi's played that really well. I just, I couldn't wrap my head around it.

Yeah, um, no, I generally agree. I used to, I used to kind of think of Bitcoin miners as just beta to BTC, but toward the back half of last year, they, they've very clearly weren't trading like that. I think a lot of that was just the, uh, the miners just continued to dilute shareholders. So, um, I think the green light for me, uh, kind of the light bulb moment for Wolf was I read this, uh, investment banking report from, uh, Cantor Fitzgerald, and they basically just looked at the multiples that were put on, you know, the traditional Bitcoin miners valued as Bitcoin miners and then kind of compared that to some of these data centers that are being used for AI. And so, you know, there's a re-RAI trade just for, I think, the transition of how the market is pricing these things categorically as an operating business.

I mean, I guess just pivoting back to crypto for a second, though, like markets are getting interesting. Markets are getting about as spicy and exciting as they've been in— what do you think, Abhi? Maybe since March, uh, February?

Yeah, I definitely, definitely since— definitely since March. I mean, I was just reading the MicroStrategy announcement. I mean, this is pretty nuts. $46 billion capital plan.

There's so like— I'm, I'm literally like—

equity offering.

Oh, and all of that money's good.

Is it just like a fluff headline, or is there actually—

I mean, that, that's a little bit of what I'm trying to read and figure out. I mean, but that's what it says. Look, it says, uh, it says announces a $21 billion at-the-market equity offering, which generally means that they're raising money to go ahead and buy BTC with that, right? I mean, they want to raise— they're, they're announcing a strategic goal of raising $42 billion of capital over the next 3 years. Now here's the question, uh, do we know how much they've actually raised? Okay, yeah, so in Q3 2024 they raised $2.1 billion, right? So they're really— if you expect them to keep going at the rate that they're going, uh, they would raise $25 billion over the next 3 years. So really what they're talking about is about a hundred you know, a little bit less, I guess, an 80% increase in the pace of what they're already doing. So, you know, you can basically say MicroStrategy is doubling the speed of their buying of Bitcoin. That, that's really what the announcement is. It's a big headline, but that's really what the announcement is, is we're doubling the pace of buying BTC, which at the margin should have an impact. But the headline $42 billion, I think, sounds a lot more insane than actually, when you, when you think about it. Yeah, I mean, still, they're doubling, they're doubling the pace of buying their BTC. That's pretty substantial. Uh, BTC probably is— I mean, I, I, I've been, I've been finally bullish for a bit. Um, I think the biggest, the biggest question, which I'll pose to you, Will, is of the Bitcoin that's been bought heading into the election, how much of it is sticking around and how much of it is coming out.

Yeah, this is the whole like the, the Giver debacle from the last episode. Yeah, I mean, look, I, I tend to have a, I have a bit of a bullish bias when it comes to Bitcoin, um, so keep that in mind when it comes to some of these things, if I'm being completely honest. But I, I tend to think that on a net basis there's going to be more capital that comes in and buys BTC on a Trump headline because of kind of, you know, the doge effect, as you mentioned, just in terms of the, you know, him mentioning it, but then that decays over time. But then I think more broadly, just the perceived regulatory clarity, you know, perceived decline in career risk that, you know, is brought on by the president and vice president both endorsing it relative to the amount of you know, buying, buying bets kind of come in and potentially selling the news. So that's kind of where I stand. Um, I, I don't really think the election entirely matters. I mean, there's probably, you know, like a bunch of maybe, you know, vol hedging, especially in equities, that will come off on the back side of the election that can fuel asset prices higher. Um, even if Kamala wins, I think, you know, you get a dip on BTC, maybe it, you know, flushes out some leverage, and then you buy that alts. It's it's less clear, but I'm not really concerned about BTC as it pertains to the election. I just think high level again, I think I'm a bit longer term in terms of how I position myself, especially relative to you, Abi. But I think regardless that the deficit widens no matter which of these two get in office. And I think just the amount of people that are talking about the deficit as a tailwind for asset prices is incredibly bullish for Bitcoin. It's just been over the last 2 or 3 months, especially, you know, PTJ and Druck coming on and, you know, talking about basically, you know, shorting sovereign debt, longing hard assets, and kind of the, you know, they sprinkled equities in there because, you know, they kind of have or benefit from that tailwind as well. I think that's tremendously bullish for Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Um, I guess where I'm a bit more stuck, stuck up in kind of my thought processes as it pertains to alts, um, you know, I, I've, I've kind of highlighted this on Twitter, kind of 3 big categories of, of assets that I liked 2 or 3 weeks ago. One was Bitcoin just as a debasement hedge. Um, the second were these miners transitioning to the AI HPC stuff and those, those kind of two subcategories have done quite nicely so far. Um, there's the meme coin stuff too, but that's just, you know, smaller portion of the portfolio. You just kind of hold the assets that you like. Um, but then the third, the third big one has been I've liked alts, especially some of these VC alts that have gotten beat down and really hated heading into the election. Um, my confidence has, has definitely gone down on that, just given the price action of how these things are trading with the election a couple days out. But, you know, I think some of these assets that did quite well in the back half of last year into Q1 of this year, I mean, you tend to get this thing where, you know, you get the assets that kind of, you know, moved on the first major move, you know, at least in terms of majors, tend to kind of see follow-ups in the next leg up. Um, so I, I've been eyeing some of those things. I'm getting pretty close to my invalidation on, on some of those assets, um, in particular TIA and, and SEI. Um, we've, we've talked offline about the, the TIA one, Obby, and, you know, today's price action has been, you know, not, not that surprising based on, on the unlock taking place today. But something like that, you know, I think you got to look at, you know, what's, what's the OTC activity that's taking place, you know, how is it traded into the unlock, like all those factors. And, and then you sprinkle on top of, um, on top of all that, the price action from Bitcoin. I'm leaning into the camp that I don't think that this is a super bearish unlock. Um, again, I'm getting pretty close to my invalidation on, on the idea, but, you know, I, I think that a lot of these things are probably trading higher in the next couple months. I, I think my, my big controversial take, if I were to have one, because I don't think, you know, mentioning Bitcoin, MicroStrategy, Solana, or Coinbase are like that controversial of takes, I don't think that all of the VC alts are like entirely screwed. Um, you know, I'm obviously bullish on meme coins. I, you know, I'm not saying that Murad copied anything that I've I said in the past, but I was talking about a lot of these things months back in March and April. I went on Pomp's Pod, which maybe it's the last podcast that I've done, and just talked about the bullish case for meme coins. And I don't think they're going away. I think there's a lot of valid arguments around, obviously, the markups and private side and the float dynamics with all the alts. I mean, we've heard about all that stuff. I think the big kind of, uh, you know, argument against this idea that none of the VC alts are going to do well is that, you know, people that are allocating capital want to have a thesis. Even, even if, you know, even if all these things, you know, I think with the L1s you can make a strong argument that, you know, there's some commodity money-like properties of them. It's just something like a SOL or some of these, some of these L1 tokens. Um, but even, even regardless of that, you know, I think people allocating capital generally want to have some type of fundamental thesis that even if it isn't fully, you know, it doesn't fully have merit, they want to feel like they have something to hold on to to sleep at night that kind of gets them through the volatility. And, you know, I think, I think there'll be a lot of guys that are around my age that maybe, you know, have money to, to just mess around with that are gonna, you know, punt meme coins and just buy and hold meme coins. That 100% is going to take place. But I also think there's going to be a good chunk of, you know, new, new people that, that onboard that are going to come in and say, hey, I want to have some type of thesis, whether it's, you know, network activity of whatever, you know, token that this is associated with, or some type of, you know, story that I can paint to say, okay, this is why I'm justifying holding this thing over the next, you know, 3 to 6 months.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's, that's a great point. And your, your whole sleep at night heuristic for why somebody would want to hold a token is it's really important, right? And I think that that's why people feel comfortable investing in L1s. Well, we don't even need to make the case for Bitcoin. That's obvious. But like ETH and Solana, you know, you kind of— if you have— if you're younger than 30 and you believe that decentralized computing is going to exist in one form or another sometime in the distant future, like you can definitely sleep at night holding ETH or Solana. Like that's definitely going to be the commodity base layer for all of, you know, for the app, for some sort of application stack someday in the future. I think the problem with altcoins that are a little bit further out the risk curve than ETH and Solana is that, you know, it's like, how do you sleep at night holding one of these coins with a high FDV and a low float, like wondering whether it's even going to be legal or not? And I think the, the whole, the whole altcoin thesis behind, you know, maybe a Trump victory would be if Trump wins, crypto becomes legal. Right now it's kind of illegal, you know, like I'm borrowing words from, from Chiefing Zaa, friend of the pod. He said that, not me, but it's sort of true, right? Like Trump wins, crypto legal, crypto legal, apps on crypto legal. It's really like, I wonder if it's more complicated than that. So obviously you have to pick and choose much like meme coins, right? You can't buy everything that comes out of Pump.fund. But, you know, certain things, maybe helium, we joke about it all the time on the pod, but maybe things like that, Deepin, you know, maybe Aave. There are a few of these things that'll just, you know, as soon as they're allowed to eat the markets that they've basically already disrupted, they just will. And then you're looking at some pretty insane valuations. I don't know, I, I'm too, I, I'm too nervous to catch a falling knife in that sector. I lack the confidence, so I'd rather just sort of like wait to buy stuff on the way up. Like, I'll be— I'm— if Trump wins, I'm going to be like pretty locked in in December watching what outperforms and buying the highs for a momentum trade in a couple of different crypto assets. What do you think?

Yeah, I think kind of, you know, I mentioned I'm getting pretty close to my invalidation, I would say. You know, I guess I will call out my exact invalidation based on price, but on like a more qualitative basis, I think if these things— if Trump wins, which I'm in the camp that he wins, I think maybe there's like a micro bubble in Trump winning expectations and they've got a little ahead of themselves. But I think he's going to win. If these things continue to trade, you know, as weak as they have been, you know, after the election, then I'd probably cut all this stuff, and that'd probably be my, my invalidation there. But I'm, I'm with you. I, I don't think, uh, I don't think it makes sense to hold a lot of this stuff if, if Trump doesn't get elected. I also don't know, you know, if Trump gets in, if these things have sustained moves. But I would suspect that you probably get a good multi-week trade in a lot of alts, um, you know, on the, on the back half of that, just because they've gotten beaten down so poorly. Um, I think, you know, there's, there's a good amount of shorts built up on, on some of these things, and on a relative basis, I, I think they're, they're fairly under-owned. But by no means am I, am I shitting on the, the meme coin thesis because I have a decent meme coin allocation myself.

Yeah, I mean, I'll just echo that statement right there, which is that all, all, all are primed. I think you have to think about the psychology of why they're not moving as hard right now, and it's because Bitcoin's about to do one of two things. It's about to break out of a range that it's been in for 8 months, in which case it probably has a pretty significant and quick move to the upside, and when that happens, it sucks liquidity out of the system. Or Bitcoin's going to break down from the high of this range and probably not going to fall to $70K but probably fall to back down to $65K, which is a reasonably significant move. So what am I trying to say? I'm trying to say that this area is a pretty unstable price. Alts do best when Bitcoin ranges at a good price that people feel safe, right? That's why alts can actually— and I'm not— Bitcoin doesn't need to be necessarily a high price. Alts did really well when Bitcoin got above $60,000. It's just, okay, well, we think now that Bitcoin's above $60,000, it's not going to go back below $60,000 for a while. Uh, maybe it'll range here for a bit and that'll give time for alts to, alts to go. Right now everyone's betting that Bitcoin's going to make a really big move, and so I don't think alts are going to do much until a big move happens. But you know what has proven to be the right move almost every time is the moment that Bitcoin puts in a fat candle, like a 5% candle above the range, 10% candle above the range. Alts haven't moved, you just start buying alts and then you wait a week. And even if the like first 2 days are still bad for you, by the end of the week, all— everything's up like 70%. So that's, that's my thought process behind, uh, you know, how to buy alts and memes.

Um, I want to hear what memes Will holds. I like that thesis, by the way, Avi. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that because I'm wondering when to rotate, and maybe you're right. I was gonna wait for alts to make new highs and then just buy them, but, uh, I like, I like your way better. Will, how do you invest in memes?

Yeah, um, yeah, just to touch up on the thing with Avi real quick, I think one of the, one of the most interesting charts to me is just looking at total minus BTC, SOL, and ETH market cap. And it's pretty remarkable that, you know, Bitcoin is a hair away from all-time highs, yet this is down 50%. So I, I'm, I'm with Avi, and I, I think if Bitcoin puts in a God candle, then you probably start to see a rotation to some of these things. Um, on the meme side, so I think there's kind of two ways to play the memes. I think at this point, you know, I, I agree with a lot of what Murad said in the sense of the new memes are very tough because they don't have the price history and the distribution that that's going to allow them to see these really crazy moves higher. So you generally want to look at memes that are older, you know, 6 months or older. I think if you just want exposure to memes and you don't really care, you just want exposure to the subcategory in your portfolio and you've got more size, then you probably just buy the giant winners because they're probably just going to reflexively keep trending higher. Or the other way to play them, I think, is just buying things that you like. And maybe you have somewhat of an edge if you're younger in understanding culturally. Um, so, you know, examples of this for me have been things like, uh, I've been pretty vocal on, on Zincoin. So, you know, I, I Zin, um, originally, you know, bought, bought Zin at a million market cap just because I like Zins. And it's like a very culturally acceptable thing amongst people my age. It's associated— there's been this huge shift towards like based culture with people in their low 20s. And so I think, you know, Zinn is kind of an embodiment of that. There's been some recent talk about now Tucker Carlson's got—

what did you say? What culture? Based culture?

Based culture. Yeah, it's—

explain it to the, the olds like me. Just break it down.

I think, I think, I think it's just people have shifted more towards a lot of conservative values culturally. You know, I think the pendulum has just swung so far to one side that now it's starting to mean revert back the other way. And so I think, uh, you know, maybe just like my micro bubble of people that I hang around, but it seems like there's a big shift back in that direction. Um, but yeah, there's been people talking about, um, there's now this pouch launched by Tucker Carlson, and he was saying that Zinn PMI donated to Democrats, which isn't true. I think that's That's an interesting kind of play on the kind of cultural zeitgeist that people my age— another one is Giga, that's been shilled by Murad and obviously has done very well. I think like the GigaChad kind of meme orients with people our age and that kind of base culture. And then the other one I like, which I fumbled very, very poorly, was lock in. That's just to say everybody my age says lock in. I tend to think that like MOG can do fine. But like nobody my age really said— and people, the MOG people are like, you know, complete cult. They like spam you on every post, but nobody my age says MOG, but everybody says Lockn. Like, you're like, all right, I gotta, I gotta lock in. Um, so I like that one as well. I originally, I, I bought a bunch of Lockn at like $4 mil. It ran to $20, and then I puked it as it rolled over. It went down 80%, and then of course after it went down 80%, proceeded to run up like 50x to where it is now. Um, but even though I, I don't hold any, I'm not a salty bagless, bagless holder, so I, I still am supporting that, that meme as well. I like it. Um, but yeah, I, I like the memes that I feel like I can resonate with because I feel like I have an edge in being able to identify them. I, I think this is going to sound a little wonky, but I think people who are generally younger and grew up on social media, um, you know, things, things like, you know, especially like Vine, rest in peace to Vine, or Instagram. You have to really be aware of a lot of these social trends because they turn very quickly. And so I think by people in my generation, I mean, every generation has sayings and phrases and things like this, but I think the memetic cultural aspect of it is even more relevant with younger people. And so I think you've kind of had to have to kind of like develop this eye for, for that type of stuff. Um, so I think younger people probably have a bit more of an edge in, in kind of identifying these things. The other reason why, and maybe I'm biased, uh, I like memes that I think people around my age will resonate with is because I think like guys who are, you know, 18 to 25 are probably gonna have more money than any other subcategory of younger people that are punting memes. And, you know, these are guys maybe like frat dudes or like people, you know, on investment banking desks, you know, trading floors that I think are going to probably be more apt to like punt some decent-sized money, $5,000 or $10,000 or something into memes. So that's why I like them as well.

I guess what really caught me about that was invest in the memes that resonate with you. Like, I've only made money on one meme, but I did really well on it. It was Bowdoin. And that's kind of a meme that appeals to people like me, right? And like slightly older people. I don't understand the whole GigaChad-based culture stuff, but listening to you talk about it, I can see 100% why that or Zinn or anything else would resonate with you. And, you know, like young crypto conservative culture, like, I guess I'm sort of in the middle-aged conservative culture. We use different language, but yeah, I can, I can totally now understand why you would buy buy one of those things at a $1 million market cap. Like, that's awesome. Um, I guess that should be the takeaway for listeners, is invest in what resonates with you if you're early. If you're late, then you're just somebody else's exit liquidity. So yeah, you really have to—

I mean, it has to res— it has to resonate with you and with, you know, the rest of the people. And I don't know, you know, if you're, if you're 75 years old and something resonates with you, not sure that's going to catch on in the crypto world. So best to talk to people younger than you every now and then, Jonah.

That's what I'm here for, Grandpa Simpson to weigh in on this stuff.

Yeah, I do think generally stepping maybe even further out, I think the animal memes are very difficult. Like, I think you need, unless you've got like a, you know, kind of cult holder base, as Murad likes to talk about, with maybe something like Pepe or Popcat. I think it's really tough for any animal-related meme to get escape velocity because there's just nothing that's tying you to the thing. Not to shill the hell out of Zinn, but for example, I just, I Zinn, I have a positive dopamine association with Zinn because it's a nicotine pouch. And it's just, you know, I want to hold, I want to hold it, or like lock in. I call the lock-in guys, you know, they're in the, in the chat, you know, spamming like, look, like, let's lock in. Like, it's a, it's like a cultural, it's like a cultural thing that they feel like they're kind of— the token somewhat, you know, kind of gives them an entrance into this, uh, or like it, you know, uh, amplifies this like cultural thing that they, that they connect to.

I think that you guys hang out with each other, do you have like meetups and do I don't know what?

Um, I haven't, I haven't done any, any, uh, meme coin, any meme coin meetups yet.

But obviously I'm not sure if you, uh, I'm zero and I don't, don't plan on that.

The Ether Rock?

I don't, I don't, not, not, not a huge fan of crypto meetups in general.

Meme coins, just like me, the memes just enrage people. It means meme coins piss off non-crypto people so much because like, if you think about it, 50 years ago, like with a government job, you could have a house in the hills in California or, you know, someplace nice. And if you were a doctor or a lawyer, you were like crushing it. Now, if you're a doctor or a lawyer, you live in the exurbs and it's the friggin dollar sign Zincoin people who are living in like penthouse apartments in the middle of New York City. It's ridiculous. So I guess, I guess it is like a kind of generational counterculture. And I, I tend to be more on the receiving end of the anger from the people that aren't, quote, in that culture. They more just like, oh, you're in crypto, what the heck, and complain to you about it. But for you guys, for you youngsters, it's like, it's literally like a way to a way to develop kind of a parallel track in life and earn some, earn some serious cash if you're early on one of these things.

Jonah, do your friends bet on sports like avidly?

They used to. Yeah, they used to big time. I think a lot of them have calmed down now because they're like, your, your risk appetite— if you haven't hyper-gambled your way into elite status and you end up as a wage cuck, which is, you know, kind of like where a lot of people end up, just by the luck of the draw, like your risk appetite for, you know, YOLOing $15K into the Bears game, like that kind of dissipates as you get older, hopefully.

Yeah, well, with people my age, almost everybody that I know that's on sports, or at least all of my non-crypto friends that are on sports, like this is like a— it's a very, very widespread thing. I would, to take it even a step back, I would say I think there's a dopamine epidemic amongst people my age. I mean, you can just log on your phone and get access to infinite amounts of dopamine, and I think it's fried the dopamine receptors of everyone my age, including me, who's glued to Twitter all day and checking every, every tick of Bitcoin, even though there's no reason for me to be doing that. Um, I, I think that's kind of, that's kind of driven people to be like predispositioned to want to punt on memes as well. And then you add to that like all the, you know, hyper-speculation type of attributes that, that, you know, the monetary backdrop has been conducive towards. I think, you know, if people start to get a taste of meme coin gambling that are very avid sports bettors, then that could, that could, that could be quite a catalyst for, for retail money to, to come in. But for now, I mean, none of my non— I mean, obviously by definition they're not non-crypto people, but a lot of my normie friends, they, you know, they're putting like 15-leg parlays on like every other night, right? And this is like their— I, I think a lot of people now, you kind of have this, you kind of have this mindset of like, I'm not going to make it from my job, so I have my job and that's like how I generate my cash flow, and then I'm going to make it by doing something on the side. Side. And I don't know if that's always been around, but that's very, very prevalent with guys that have just gotten out of college that I'm friends with. Maybe it's just that age, but the sports betting is definitely one where people are like, "All right, I make money and then I'm degenerately gambling it in sports." Some of the more prudent friends are putting it in something like the S&P, but they're cognizant that it's going to take decades for them to really make it, you know, in any sense doing that. But yeah, this guy Travis, you know, I'm going to say the same thing. Yeah, I think a lot of that money will— my point is I think a lot of that money will come into the meme coin stuff.

Yeah, I mean, your point is so valid. Like when I was your age, like the side hustle wasn't really a thing. Maybe 1 out of every 50 people had one, but your career was sort of where you were on track to go in life. And now I take your point. Everybody does seem to have like a few side hustles and ways to earn money in untraditional ways. I also like, I also had my first big dopamine kick from a meme coin, like hitting a 50-bagger over the course of like a few weeks. You know, I've been like investing in venture capital deals and like trying to be smart and trade my way around. My whole career, and then suddenly, you know, just like a stupid coin that looks like a shitty cartoon is a 50-bagger, like the best VC investment ever. Like, these things are— once, once you hit one of those, like, it's impossible to go back.

I tend to think it's worth it to take, especially if you're, you're, you know, sub-25 years old and you're probably not trading with crazy size, then it's definitely plus EV to take 5 or 10% of your portfolio and try to gamble on the memes, or, or, you know, try to, try to hit on, on a meme. And, you know, if you don't, worst case, obviously, you know, you're, you're down 5 or 10% on your port. You know, best case, you've doubled the entire portfolio. So I, I think that's probably how a lot of people that are coming into the space think, and that's at least, you know, anecdotally been how a lot of people that I've, I've kind of got into the space have thought.

Just question from somebody that doesn't really have friends that bet on sports a ton. There seems to be just like a difference in mindset, or maybe I'm just misinterpreting it. People that are gambling on sports, and it's like sports, yeah, they can make some money, a little bit of a side hustle. But people that are buying meme coins are trying to just like hyper gamble and like really make it. Are people that are betting on sports like taking like 1,000-to-1 payouts? Like, like really trying to make it? Like, I don't know, I'm asking a question.

Yeah, yeah, no, these are, these are crazy. I mean, I mean, it depends on the person. Um, you know, some, some are like very tactical and trying to like, you know, compound like small wins. But yeah, a lot of my friends will show me, hey, you know, on the front, hey, I've got like a 12 or 15-leg parlay and they're trying to, you know, turn $25 into like you know, a grand or two grand or something. Um, it's very much like this like YOLO kind of, kind of mindset.

Okay. Yeah, I mean, it would be great, great to catch.

I just don't think they know that crypto exists, right? I, I just think like they don't even know. It's, it's still early enough for a lot of— I just don't even think they know what a Phantom wallet is. They don't even know that this stuff is out there. People think it's, you know, it's so difficult, there's such a friction to to getting involved with it that I think they're just like, oh, I'm familiar with, with doing this. Um, but I, I think it only takes 2 or 3, you know, screen recordings of, of somebody's MetaMask or Phantom wallet on TikTok or Instagram to go viral for a ton of, a ton of this, this money to start flowing into the stuff.

Just thinking like 20 years ago what people would have said if somebody was like posting wins, like posting screenshots of their bank account on the internet. It would have been the most cringe phenomenon ever. And now maybe that's why people want to be anon. They want to do that, but they don't want to dox themselves.

Like, I think it goes back to this like make it culture. Like there's this mindset of like, I'm not going to make it with my normal job, so therefore I'm in the trenches with all these other people. And then, hey, you know, I've I'm clawing my way out, you know, here, here. It's, you know, signaling to all your other, other friends that you feel like you're in the trenches with. It's— I don't know, it is these, these meme coin group chats. I'm in some of them. I can't even open them up because it's just, you know, a shitfest of, you know, like the bottom of the barrel, you know, worst, worst meme coins that you could think of that people are just like, you know, dumping on each other, um, before the thing gets to like 100K market cap. But there is somewhat of a culture of like, we're kind of in this together and people are sharing their plays. They're trying to get things together. So I do think it kind of goes back to this community aspect that really wasn't brought on until social media.

It's funny you mention it. Just talking about your generation, it's kind of crazy. My former tenant, who shall go unnamed, and I'm going to say the word allegedly because he hasn't been convicted of it yet, maybe never will, but probably will, allegedly stole $121 million from California state taxpayers. And instead of doing what he was granted to do with it, which is rehabilitate roadside motels and inns during COVID that had been abandoned into housing for the homeless. He spent it all on private jets and yachts and presidential suites in Tulum and Vegas and other places like that in Paris, handbags for his girlfriend, all that stuff. So kind of listening to you talk about your generation feeling like they're not going to make it in their typical jobs and then thinking about my tenant among the— in that generation, I'm sort of like, oh, this makes sense. But crypto feels a lot more legitimate. Um, so anecdotes aside, uh, what happens, what happens to that mindset? Like, if that's already going on, if that greed, that hyper-gambling, that insanity is already going on, what does it look like if Donald Trump wins the election and by December 31st Bitcoin is trading like $110 and things are just popping left and right. Like, what, what happens then? Does it just like— does that draw in new, new, uh, new gambling money? Is— are the Bitcoiners going to rotate out the curve? What are these— what's going to happen? Because it's possible.

I obviously want to hear Avi's thoughts over my own on this, but I think with the, with the meme stuff, um $100K is probably a nice round number for normies to, to come in and start punting on stuff. You know, a lot of— if you just talk to somebody who's not in the space, I think the average person has no idea that Bitcoin's back trading near all-time highs and nobody's paying attention. I think a lot of them have still written it off as, as, you know, a scam or whatever. Um, but I, I— so is this— is, I think $100K. It's like a very nice round number, also probably generates a tremendous amount of headlines in the media, and normies are going to read that and probably come in and punt on stuff. But to the altcoin thing, I think it goes back to, to what Avi said earlier. I think if Bitcoin puts in a giant God candle, then people probably start rotating out down the risk spectrum.

My view is very much so in line with what I've said, what I've said before, which is that we're in for, we're in for pretty fucking great party, uh, if that, if that happens. Yeah, I mean, for sure.

You like 8 out of 10 long? 10 out of 10 long?

Uh, okay. I mean, like, at this moment in time, right here, right now, yeah, like 8 out of 10, 9 out of 10. I mean, um, I, I just— this, this just goes off of what I was talking about on the previous podcast, which is, you know, I, I think if Trump doesn't get elected, I'll have time to slam out. Uh, but if Trump gets elected, I mean, this just turns into one big Dogecoin. Like, BTC just turns into one big Dogecoin. And so the asymmetry is there. I mean, um, you know, you know, trading and investing, you always have to take in the context of where, where you are. Like, right, like, if you've taken a bath over the last if you got chopped up really hard in this range, then you're probably not ridiculously long here just because you want to manage your risk. Um, but if you're looking at this with like— if I'm like closing my eyes and looking at it with a fresh set of eyes and saying, hey, I've never positioned this before, where should I— like, where should I position? Um, yeah, I mean, I'm pretty— I'm pretty damn long.

Yeah, I guess I think you and I—

I think the only, the only thing to be a little concerned about. Just some of the, some of the leverage. But I'm in the camp of, you know, if you look at the beginning of 2021, we had this period where open interest just absolutely exploded. And then you had funding rates, you know, going back and forth between upwards of 30% all the way up to like 40% between, you know, funding rates and the 3-month futures basis. I don't know if we ever get back out to 30 or 40%. But my point is, you know, at some point open interest is going to make significantly higher all-time highs than the peak of 2021, both on BTC alone as well as, you know, just the aggregate open interest on, on all alts. So I, I, you know, obviously you get these crazy, you know, shakeouts that, that the crypto market's very well known for during those periods because the markets, you know, trying to, trying to shake out some of the leverage along the way. But I, I think, you know, every, every few years— again, this is my second cycle— but it seems that every few years, you know, in Bitcoin, you, you get this kind of period where there's, there's a 2 or 3 month stretch where you kind of just, you want to be long. And, you know, funding is just, it's just a reflection of everybody wants to be long and it's the price to, to be long. So, you know, I think, you know, things can change, but But, you know, as things stand today, you know, I'm holding all my positions for at least the next couple months here, and I don't really intend on changing my net long exposure to crypto. You know, I can either draw down— basically just chilling in spot, and then I have, you know, longer-dated calls on Wolf that I've outlined, which obviously I can't get liquidated on. Um, but, you know, I have no idea if we, we see a flush out or whatever, you know, but it's plausible we could. But I think like the bigger, the bigger picture, you know, the Fed, you know, we all, we all talked about how the Fed couldn't raise rates and like including myself, like psyopped ourselves out, you know, the, the beginning of the drawdown after, after 2021. Then, you know, manifesting rate cuts for so long, then they finally came and everybody started saying that they were bearish, you know, you, you know, when the context of the rate cuts is what's really important to pay attention to, you know, the Fed, the Fed's cutting into, you know, a strong economy. And, you know, then you've got some, some very, you know, well-respected macro figures that are coming out and basically highlighting, you know, the Bitcoin thesis in broad daylight, um, you know, that people that have been advocates of Bitcoin have been highlighting for a decade. So Yeah, I think it's just you've got a lot of apathy in the market. People have lost money, got chopped up over the last 7 months. Every, every breakout has, has gotten faded, and I think that's kind of conditioned the market to, to not trust, you know, a move, a move like this. But, you know, whether we get a short-term flush out or not, I, I tend to think that I don't want to touch anything for 2 or 3 months here.

So let's, uh That's a nice segue into a little speed round for you, Will. We're gonna pepper you with rapid-fire questions. Avi, I can think of a couple. Uh, let's keep the answers short. Let's just like take this moment to extract as much knowledge as we can, uh, from Will Clemente here. So first question, how long are you right now on a scale of 1 to 10?

Um, 8.5.

Nice. Um, okay, next question. What, what are your big tools that you use to trade and monitor OI and all that other good stuff?

VeloData. Shout out to— shout out to VeloData.

It's, uh, that seems to be a popular answer. Um, we were—

I got, I got Anthony here. I think he was one of the first checks into VeloData. We've been involved with them Papaliano, you know, I was, I was involved. That's an advisory, I love to Velo from the beginning. So BitHedge is a great dude, younger guy, super, super smart, great team that they have there. So super bullish on Velo. I think they're going to be the dominant data platform for Bitcoin derivatives and crypto derivatives this cycle.

I think so too. Shout out to Velo. Okay, scenario: Kamala wins, crypto nukes. Are you, are you buying the nuke on like week of election, week after election, or are you waiting?

I don't know. It's tough to say. Depends on how much leverage gets flushed out, where Bitcoin trades down to. But generally, I think you want to buy the dip even if Kamala wins on BTC.

I think so, too. Another speed round question. You mentioned for somebody who talked about meme coins and is as into the space as much as you are, WIF, like it or hate it?

Yeah, it's good.

It's good.

Okay, what about PopCat?

Yeah, I mean, look, both of these I think fall into the category if I mentioned, like, if you've got a lot of money and I think, you know, you want— you come in and you're like, I want to buy memes, like, there's probably 3 or those 2 fall into the basket, like the 3 to 5 ones that have a lot of liquidity. They're on CEXs, right? You know, you could trade them on leverage. So I I think, I think those will keep reflexively getting flows for people that just want to allocate to memes. So probably that's fine.

Okay, good, good answer. Um, Ethereum, uh, is that the XRP of this cycle, or is it gonna be a— is it gonna finally perform at some point?

No, I think Ethereum's screwed. I tried to, I tried to give ETHBTC a shot, especially around the ETF launch and got hosed on that. So I think it's— you just got to look at the Sol/ETH chart. I mean, you know, just knowing how reflective these assets are, it's hard not to be bullish Sol/ETH.

Yeah, dude, ETH is completely and utterly hacked. I've been saying this for so long and I will continue to say this.

Avi actually talked me out of my ETH. I— he literally ruined my day and thank God he did.

What's your favorite supercar?

Oh, you know, I lived in Miami for a year and I got to see some pretty cool cars. I'm not a big supercar guy. I like the cars that are like a little more classy. Like I like the Bentley Continental, like very boring answer, but I think that's a nice car. The Maybach, I think.

I think it's a complete— I genuinely think, as a tangent, it is a complete farce and a lie that supercars cannot be classy. That's a Miami invention. Like, if you go back to 2012, 2013, like, look at the Ferrari 458. Look at it in gray. That is a classy car. That's not— I mean, it's a beautiful, powerful, aggressive car, but it's not a flashy Lamborghini. You know, same thing if you go back to 2006, you look at the Lamborghini Gallardo. It was, it wasn't this, it's not flashy. I mean, it is obviously aggressive and large, powerful, but it's not flashy, you know. So you might, you're good at crypto, but we got some, got some still.

Maybe after this cycle I'll get on the road with you.

We'll see. Will, uh, last speed round question for the part of the podcast where we say that we're we're just idiots who don't know anything and none of this is financial advice. Why don't you turn on your video so that we can all prove that we interviewed the real Will Clemente? Now that the, uh, now that your Wi-Fi speed doesn't matter. There he is.

No, see, he's real.

He's real. Thank you so much for coming on the pod, Will. This was awesome talking to you. None of this is financial advice, obviously, uh, Yeah, wow, what a fun one.

Thank you guys.

Nice to set this up in the Niger Delta Avengers chat too. Thank you for being in there.

Yeah, hell yeah, everybody's got to get in there. Great, great group chat, great energy in there.

Yeah, all right, well, appreciate it.

All right, thank you, gentlemen.

Thank you so much.

Take care.