New Bitcoin All Time High, What's Next For Crypto? | 1000x Live

No matter what you type in that chat, the answer is probably it's going up at this point. You know, you can say ENA, Lido, Eigen, AAVE, Doge, whatever it is, because of the capital flows that are about to, that are about to come in. Even USDT is going to go up, guys. USDT is going to hit $2, right?

I've started messing with leverage for the first time in my, like, kind of PA. I've been breaking my rule. I thought I was max long like 6 times already, and I just keep getting longer because the price goes up. And I keep getting longer because I add more fiat into this and get more convicted. And then I get longer because I decide to use some leverage. Like, I'm just getting increasingly degenerate with this because I, at this point, I really do think we are going to take off. I don't really see why this would— this rally would stop. I don't.

We're live. We're live and Bitcoin's fucking ripping and we're going up and we're all gonna, we're all gonna fucking make it.

We're going to Valhalla.

Remember when I said, when I finally capitulated on being bearish, I said you just got to be max long.

You know, that was kind of timely, timely capitulation right at the end of an 8-month-long range-bound, um, like boredom fest. You were like, all right, that's it, I'm long. And then boom, basically got God candle.

And now, now I'm just gonna stay along and close my eyes. I mean, you know, if, if you've been long for a while and you've made a ton of money, maybe you should just clip some profits. But honestly, the next, the next 4 years of our life, it's gonna be pretty, pretty fucking fun, Jonah. I mean, this you can just see the moment in the charts where crypto got legalized across the board.

Crypto is legal now. That's all I have to say. Don't overthink it. Crypto is legal now.

Yeah. So as a side, you know, it's like a side thing. I got this, I got this tablet. Oh, you know, those people. It's called, it's called Remarkable. It's like you write on it and it's kind of like paper. And I take—

I know what it is. My tenant who stole from me left one in my house. And then I sold it on eBay because I thought it was stupid to have to pay for something that's like paper, which is—

yeah, but it's like useful because you get to keep all of your notes in one place. So, you know, what I get to do now is I get to go click around and I get to go back to the notes that I took on the podcast where we discussed the Trump election, which is like all of them. And the number one thing that I kept saying, which, by the way, I did not do. But the number one thing I kept saying was that you should buy all the SEC coins. Like, the moment that you think that Trump would be elected, you just buy all the SEC coins. And that was— I had UNI, AAVE, uh, and Lido, and they're all up infinite right now. So that was great if you listened to my advice and you did that, you made a lot of money, uh, because basically right after you know, as like the odds went up, there was actually a delay.

Look at Uniswap. It's up like 30, 35%.

It's just like boom, like straight up.

Avi, can we victory lap for a second? Remember all those people who kept telling us on Twitter that the election didn't matter that much or that this was a fade? This wasn't a fade. This was as real as we said it was going to be. So I do think we should pat ourselves on the back for that. Now, I think the real ballsy call was Trump winning, right? Like, normally you're not supposed to bet on a coin flip like this with serious amounts of your capital. But I think for me, what made this a little bit more of a comfortable situation was the idea that pollsters cannot adjust for people who don't respond to their polls like that. That sort of— there's, there's sample bias in the people that won't respond to a poll. In that Trump voters are less likely to respond than non-Trump voters. So if you're a pollster, there's no way to adjust for that without committing malpractice, right? Like, you could say, oh, in 2016, I was, you know, my Trump estimate was too low by 7 points. In 2020, my Trump estimate was too low by 4 points. So this time I'll just do my poll and then adjust it up by like 4 to 7 points. Like, you can't do that. That's malpractice. So to me, it was just like, given that there's literally no way for people to adjust for Trump polls for Trump's outperformance on polls. I'm just going to do it myself. I'm going to commit the sort of pollster non-practice malpractice that they can't commit. And that's what got me comfortable with being long crypto. But like, I don't know, there was a surprising amount of FUD out there on Twitter about how even if Trump won, it like wouldn't matter for crypto. And now like you can see the space is only beginning to rally. Like this is the beginning of, I think, a a pretty solid trend. What do you think?

I agree with you. I think that we're going to be trending for— I mean, look, obviously there are always going to be ups and downs, but if you ask me where we are in 3 months— are you drinking wine right now? I should crack open a beer.

Yeah, dude, come on. Like, I didn't have any champagne, so I just picked this bottle of wine. Go get one. Go get one. I'll monologue or something.

I'm in Puerto Rico right now, and the only beer I have is like this shit-tier beer called Medalla. Do you think that means it's like, it's like Bud Light but slightly better?

Um, go get it, go get it.

Seriously, I'm gonna, I'm gonna drink my Aquafina. I'm gonna be healthy so I can laser focus and make some fucking money on this market. This is, this is a great day, Jonah.

This is, I mean, just like across, across the board, this is just so—

this is the most fun that I've had in a while. I, I basically just like checked out up until the election, and now I can check back in and look.

I've been pretty checked in.

I mean, okay, I'll tell you, I'll tell you one thing that I wish I had done but I didn't do, and I did a little bit but in bigger size, is, is the Doge trade was so obvious. It was like so obvious to go long Doge versus ETH. You could have put that on in huge size. I actually still think that there's a really good trade for Doge. I mean, it came off, it kind of came off from the highs a bit. You know, I, I wasn't like you. I didn't position aggressively before the election betting on a Trump win because to me— yeah, I didn't, I didn't. I was like, okay, I was, I was positioned aggressively not because I felt 100% Trump was going to win, not because I looked at the data and I'm like, oh, I think Trump is going to win. I just thought that there would be a— there's like a very easy trade, right? Like if Trump wins and everything just giga, giga rockets. And at the time that we had spoken, we had already come off a little bit from the highs. So I thought that even if— and so that was pricing in a little bit of a Kamala win. So I thought even if Kamala won, then I could get out of my trades, right? So for me, it wasn't like a I'm gonna go gigalong because I'm confident that Trump's gonna win. It was I'm gonna go super long because there's good asymmetry. And what that means is that the concept that I had of like giga long wasn't probably long enough. But what, what happened on that night is when, when the Florida results came in and Trump outperformed in Miami-Dade and just crushed it, it was like, all right, it's all right. In my mind, it was over at that point.

That's, that's what did it for you? So that's when you bought— where was Bitcoin trading at that point?

I, it was just broke. I think it was just above 70-ish. I bought, I mean, I like double, I'll tell you, I doubled down on AAVE at $1.44 and I doubled down on Doge at 18 cents. Those were the, those are the levels that I cared about. Um, and I think that what ended up, what ended up happening I mean, we, we called that—

we called AVE on the pod.

Like, we've talked about this multiple times, multiple times. And here's the thing, this is really good not just because Trump won, but because a lot of very pro-crypto candidates won. Like, across the board, the crypto candidates did well. And what we're looking at right now is We're looking at the embrace of crypto by our political system. We're looking at a non-zero chance that a big strategic reserve of Bitcoin is created over the next 4 years.

I think, by the way, let me just put it out there, if a strategic Bitcoin reserve is created, million dollars a token, like every country is going to create one, uh, like it's going to be like lemmings, uh, following America into that sort of, uh, mentality. It's going to replace gold basically on central banks' balance sheets. Million dollars.

It's going to be unbelievable. Yeah, we're going to win so bigly that you won't even know what to do with yourself.

I mean, Brian Armstrong tweeted this. Even if that doesn't happen, Brian Armstrong tweeted, welcome to the new members of America's most pro-crypto Congress ever. 219 pro-crypto candidates and counting. Have now been elected to the House and Senate. Like, Avi, dude, we have been in an industry that has like— okay, fine, you know, we've made some money in it and that's great, but like, people have vilified us for being in this. Like, it's, it's considered a disgusting gambling habit, not even a, a hobby. It's a habit. But now it's becoming legitimate because this is economic freedom for people. This is like the internet of value. This, this is obviously better technology than existing payment rails. All of, all of the disruptions that this technology has created via Bitcoin are now being embraced by the mainstream. And sure, there's no like tangible application for that yet because these things take time, but markets price the future. So like, I don't think it's too early to get excited about this. Like, I really think you need to start buying now. I'm getting— I'm starting to get friends reaching out to me like, hey, I bought my first Bitcoin. What do you think? Like, I want to accumulate a stash. Even my hardcore Kamala supporter friends are like, yo, I think Trump's going to like maybe turn America into, you know, 1930s Third Reich Germany. Like, if I wanted to get all my money into Bitcoin to move it out of here, like even those kinds of conversations are happening. So I think most people have been blackpilled on Bitcoin and it's kind of important to—

I agree.

To price the future.

I 100% agree with you. Bitcoin is— obviously a huge winner, but everything is going to be a huge winner, and this isn't getting priced in fast enough. Yeah.

And so are you saying— are you calling for alt season, Avi? Like, are you calling for alt season?

I mean, we're, we're gonna be in a, in a dynamic over the next— and alt seasons— I do—

is Ethan alt? Is Ethan alt?

So, so there are two things I want to say here. One is I like ETH now for sure. For, for, for a short, for a short period of time, I think ETH can do well. And I— the main, the main reason is that I think that what you're seeing right now is there's going to be no hesitation of people coming into— very little hesitation when it comes to allocators right now. People are going to just start allocating and people are going to buy ETH because it, because it exists. And it exists in the form of an ETF and it's easy to buy. And so there are going to be people that can't buy anything that doesn't trade on the, on the stock market, and then they're going to buy the ETF. It's trading at a premium today for the first time in a very long time. So, and ETH beta coins, I think it's true, Lido, Eigen, Aave, these things are going to do well because now they can operate in a regulatory-friendly environment. So now you're not worried about the overhead, right? And it's, it's invigorating, right? There's a, there's a sense of momentum now that people are going to work harder on building good products. People are going to be more interested in using, in using crypto and using, and using DeFi. Somebody said DNA as well. Yeah, like, I mean, basically the, the issue, the issue is, guys, no matter what you type in that chat, the answer is probably it's going up. At this point. Like, you can, you could, you can type basically anything there, you know. You can say ENA, Lido, Eigen, Aave, Doge, whatever it is, because of the capital flows that are about to, that are about to come in.

And so don't churn too much.

Yeah, they're—

you—

even USDT is going to go up, guys. USDT is going to hit $2, right? Like, you— I think my target for USDC is 10. It's gonna— somebody's— because some idiot's gonna come in and buy it.

Are you joking? Are you— are you talking— yeah, okay. For a second I was like, hang on, hang on, I'm the one drinking here.

Like, winners, winners, winners, average winners. Look guys, what you have to understand is that we are a small group of people. We are a small little circle in the world. We can all agree with each other and still be right. That's what happened in 2021. Shit just went up in a straight line and everyone was bullish for an extended period of time because there was new money coming in. I think new money is about to come. Now remember this, now please remember this: alt seasons only last like 3 weeks because what ends up happening is that they just go up so unfathomably high that they just overprice themselves immediately. And so if Dogecoin trades $0.65 in the next 3 weeks, that doesn't mean it's going to $1.80. That probably means you want to sell. Now, uh, you know, that's, that's just my take. They, they just tend to not last. I mean, even Bitcoin, right? Like, you look at Bitcoin price appreciation, it all happens really fast.

I think, I think we're in like the second inning of one of those parabolic moves.

One of those, but like, it all, it all happens really fast, and then everyone revises their price targets higher. Like, Bitcoin will go to $120, and then everyone will call for $250, and then $120 will be the top, right? I think that's, that's just like how it works almost every time.

Um, yeah, maybe, maybe that's like the, the 1000x podcast heuristic. It's like when the market's just rallied a lot and the average pundit on Twitter is calling for a 2 to 5x from, from there, you're supposed to You're supposed to take them off.

Yeah, you're—

so like, but the market hasn't rallied a lot yet. It went from 70 to 76.

Basically what I'm saying is right now, on a massive paradigm shift, yeah, people keep saying that I don't sleep. Now I, I just, I just want to like set, you know, put this, put this to bed, guys. I sleep like a solid, solid 5, 6 hours a night. Like, this is— come on, like That's fine. I, I sleep the right— the rest of the time, who knows what I'm doing, but I do, I do sleep. But thank you guys for, for caring. Do I have any concerns about an FOMC putting a halt to this run?

No, no, we're not, we're not talking about the Fed right now. We're still talking about the political— we'll get to the FOMC. Let's talk about the political implications of this.

Like, let's, let's, let's, let's talk about how to make money.

Yeah, I've got a few ideas.

I think this is a key. Now, I mean, not, not to like give out specific items, but I do think that like SOL meme coins are just gonna continue to rip really hard. Uh, I do think that there's going to be a pretty tremendous amount of capital allocation to these, to these things. And I also think that what we're looking at right now is we're looking at a revival of the stuff that was kind of hated for a bit, right? Like, if you look at DeFi, like Eigen, like, yeah, like, like a lot, a lot, a lot of the, um, a lot of the things that were like heavily shorted, I think, are gonna, are gonna rip because basically nobody wants to be short in this environment. And that brings me to why I think ETH BTC is going to do well. I think that everyone uses, everyone uses ETH as a hedge, and so a 20% ETH BTC move is not off the table. In fact, I think it's probably likely that in the next 3 weeks ETH BTC moves up 15 to 20%. That would be— sorry, sorry if I'm wrong, but this, this is my take.

I agree with everything. I think ETH BTC might pop. But I think we should be looking at SOL BTC. I don't think there's anything on ETH that you want to do with your ETH right now, whereas on Solana there is all— as a crypto native, as a degenerate gambler, there is all kinds of opportunity inside of Solana. So unless you think that there is going to be a major catalyst that drops for ETH in the next 2 months where like BlackRock just straight up announces that they're going to be deploying some insane— they're migrating their back office solution Aladdin to Ethereum and all of Wall Street's going to be using it to settle index trades. Like, that seems unlikely to me. Um, I don't— I wouldn't want to bet on ETH going up even if they did say that. Uh, I think that Solana is— SOL/ETH is going to outperform, which means that everything you just said about ETH/BTC is true, but you will make more money if instead of buying ETH BTC, you buy SOL BTC. And also, you will have Solana bags to go and mess around with meme coins when you want to, whereas there's absolutely not— like, like, you're not going to go buy an NFT right now, are you? There's too much opportunity to lock your dough up like that.

I'm telling you right now, I think that SOL ETH has topped.

Oh, okay.

For the next 3 weeks.

For the next 3 weeks, because honestly, Sol-Eth was like— I was a big Solana hater. I started— you, you convinced me to start rotating some ETH into Solana, and then I tweeted something out like, I think it was a month or 2 ago, where I— that was basically the end of my, my rotation, where I was just like, most of my what used to be ETH is now in Solana, uh, less a CryptoPunk of course. And I'm very happy with that trade, and I, I was expecting to— I'm kind of hoping to ride this for at least 6 to 12 months. Uh, so you're bearish, you think it tops in, you think it's topped for 3 weeks, but what do you think on a longer time frame?

I still think over, you know, the next year, sure, um, you're probably gonna, you look, you're probably gonna see Solana outperform. With that being, with that being said, I'm bullish ETH because as you get new Really, it's 3, it's 3, 3 pieces. One is that everyone used ETH as a short leg and nobody wants to be short crypto right now. So that's going to— that's all going to unwind. The second is I think that this brings in new, like, new allocation into crypto, especially from TradFi people who are going to either one, allocate to ETH as part of a portfolio, and or two, what they're going to— because the reason that you didn't see a ton of that in my personal opinion, prior in the ETFs is because a lot of the ETF flow was coming from people that were betting on the election, like it was traders, and they were using BTC to trade. I think what we're going to see over the next few weeks is we're actually going to see long-term allocations coming as people make a lot— like a strong bet on the future of crypto, and that's going to include ETH as part of the portfolio.

I see what you mean.

And then the third, the third is that it's a It's, it's a momentum thing. I, I'll, I'll paint it like this. ETH BTC is the lowest it's been in years, 3 years, I think.

And, and it's, it's not like flatlining here, it's, it's trending lower. Like, it's— you're talking about catching a falling knife.

And so, and so if you get a, if you get a strong reversal in a bullish market like this, people are going to hop on that momentum and it's going to lead to that it's like, it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy until people again realize that ETH is not probably going to be used a ton and then it comes back in. But that's good. I mean, a 25% move, which is what I'd be looking for, you know, if we can get above 0.4, you know, maybe 0.45 on ETH BTC, like, I'm out.

I think that's a really good idea. Now here's— I kind of have a new framework for evaluating alt L1s. Um, I guess you could call ETH and Solana L1s at this point. So my framework for evaluating L1s, I've been spending a lot of time on this. I used to just think like, okay, fat protocol thesis, like ETH plus L2s are an ecosystem. Solana is an ecosystem. Where's the dough going to go? If it goes to Polygon or Base, it doesn't matter. That's all value accrued to ETH. What I'm realizing is that what really drives token pricing is like how big of a wallet are you going to maintain in the ecosystem in order to facilitate what you want to do? And to me, the reason why Solana has pumped so much and outperformed ETH so much is because in order to have fun with Solana and use Solana for what Solana is good for right now requires you having, you know, thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars of, you know, Solana on that chain so that you can like quickly rotate it into and out of meme coins, which are ultimately like kind of trades, right? They're not investments. Um, for ETH, you kind of— during 2021, you had that like big money rationale when people were buying Fidenzas and Rocks and CryptoPunks and stuff, but like if the whole like ETH is back office, ETH is the global settlement layer thesis is true, yes, that's bullish ETH, but what does it mean like realistically? It means that institutions will probably just need to have gas fees available to settle stuff on— well, let's, let's call a spade a spade, like they got to settle stuff on Base, right? So maybe is there like, like, are people going to be settling massive microtransaction— massive amounts of microtransactions on the mainnet? No. So if you're just trying to like hold some bags to pay for gas, Base is pretty cheap. Like, I think it might even be cheaper per transaction than Solana. So you don't need to hold a big wallet. I don't think— I don't think there's like high value. I don't think there's anything going on inside of ETH that's going to require new people to come into the ecosystem and acquire tons of ETH in order to do what they want to do on ETH. Whereas for Solana, uh, because I think this meme coin thing is just the beginning of like basically disrupting the total addressable market of the global lottery system, like I think among other applications, I, I think honestly like Solana is probably the better play for an L1, uh, over the course of the next, again, longer term, medium to long term.

Yeah. I mean, look, I don't think we disagree. I think this is just a question of a question of time frames.

Now I was just pontificating. I agree with you on the short term.

Okay. And like, not to debate like L1s, because I think that both, I mean, both, both are going to go up. It's just a matter of this, this is the type of market where it's about maximizing, right? And also not getting, not getting shaken out. Yeah, it's kind of what I was saying earlier. Like, you can probably— like, if I go to my list of things that I look at and I ask what's going to be up in the next, I don't know, 2, 3 weeks, I think the answer is basically everything. And so the question— and so the question is like, what is going to be up the most? And that's really, that's really what we're trying to— what we're trying to figure out right now.

I, I've started messing with leverage for the first time in my like kind of PA Um, like I'm using mild leverage on Bitcoin just because I think that Bitcoin's gonna have the best Sharpe in crypto. So I feel comfortable levering up a little bit. Like, I, I've been, I've been breaking my rule. I thought I was max long like 6 times already, and I just keep getting longer because the price goes up, and I keep getting longer because I add more fiat into this and get more convicted, and then I get longer because I decide to use some leverage. Like, I'm just getting increasingly degenerate with this because I, at this point, I really do think we are going to take off. And I've thought that since before the election because of my view about how polling is done. So I don't really see why this would— this rally would stop. I, I don't. Well, they're really only—

they're really— they're really only two reasons. Uh, one, I mean, the, the first reason why the rally stops is people get people get over their skis, right? So you see funding rates roof for a week, you see people chasing random shit, uh, multiple days of having altcoins and memes trade more in volume than their market cap. It's probably a good sign to start taking some profit off the table. And also very likely, uh, what you're gonna, what you're gonna see in close to the top is you're gonna see, you're, you're gonna see people, you're gonna see things like go 100x. Like new launches are going to start coming out, people are going to start creating coins again, and these things are going to go 100x really quickly. And then you probably want to say, okay, let me, let me get some, let me, let me get some money off the table.

Now, Nashti brings up a good point. If the missiles start flying, we could— that could be an unexpected retracement. And I don't know, I think we should probably do an oil corner at some point in this podcast, as euphoric as we are, because this election means big stuff for geopolitics and macro, and it could cause some turbulence for our sector in Bitcoin. So we should talk about that too.

But dude, I, I genuinely I mean, I don't think Iran's gonna do shit now. Now that, now that Trump's in, they're, they're gonna be, they're gonna be way too scared to get hit back really hard.

Yeah, but that, that, but Israel is empowered, right? So if Bibi takes out Karg Island or a couple of refineries or something, oil's gonna, oil's gonna do something. And I think that could, that could create a little bit of, like, I wouldn't fade I, like, I would— I wouldn't anticipate a risk-off move by selling my Bitcoin or selling my stocks here, but I'm just saying, like, you don't want to get too levered because there is going to be volatility to the upside.

Have you— I maybe— I think— I mean, like, look, like, you know oil better than most. If Iran's oil gets taken out tomorrow and price spikes there's a ton of excess production available. Like, people can, you know, it's not like we're running up against the limits of the amount of oil that could be produced. Saudi can just start pumping more.

That's right. Yeah. Iran's entire production could get plugged in by Saudi. However, if their entire production gets taken out, they could shut the Straits of Hormuz, and 30% of the world's oil flows through that strait. And they would, they like, if, if, if their entire production was taken out and they were an animal backed into a corner, they, you know, they produce, they export 1.6, they produce more because they consume it domestically. Um, they export 1.6. Saudi plus the others have like 2 to 3 million barrels of spare capacity. So Iran's production is not an issue. But if Iran prevents everybody else, including Iraq, uh, Qatar, like Saudi Arabia, from exporting oil, and suddenly the world is short 30 million barrels a day of oil instead of 1.6 million, then the entire economy collapses, right? So that's probably not going to happen. But if there's even a 5% chance of it happening, which is kind of on the table if Israel takes out Karg Island, which they've like stated they kind of are interested in doing, then you're, you're going to see volatility. And so don't get too levered is my point. Like the last thing you want if you're a crypto trader and just like, hear me out, the last thing you want is to be like 5 to 10 times levered. There's some like geopolitical volatility that leads to Bitcoin volatility, you get liquidated, and then the market just go like, like fucking melts upwards and 5x's, and you can't participate because you've lost all your money. So don't do that, right? So I'm like, mild leverage is appropriate, I think.

Yeah, look, I, I'm not as concerned about these geopolitical shocks as you are, right? I'm— in terms of what's going to stop this rally, I'm 95% sure that it's going to be people getting ahead of themselves and like really, like really adding on a ton, a ton of leverage, right? And then that— what, what ends up happening there is that people see that, they go, okay, time to cut my positions. Market gets flooded with supply, you get a ton of liquidations. And that kind of crushes the momentum.

Not a lot of leverage yet per Velo data, our favorite.

Nothing. Um, I, I actually, I love this comment. Is Avi on Adderall or Coke or both? I'm on green candle P&L.

Oh my God, dude, how good, how good does today feel?

Like, I, I love, I love the fact that green P&L and a good day can make it seem like you're on stimulants. I, I didn't even have coffee today. Really?

No, I've been, I've been up since like 4 in the morning following this. Um, and yes, I'm, I'm feeling very good. I had a coffee though.

Yeah, I mean, look, my, my view right now is it's nothing, nothing is ever going to go up in a straight line. And so the reason I don't like leverage is because who knows if we trade $72,000, if we trade $72K from here, I want to be able to add. I don't want to be— I don't want to be nursing my wounds, right? Because I know that the leverage— the issue with leverage, in my personal opinion, is that it makes trading too path-dependent, right? You can be right on a 1-month time horizon, but if you're levered and you're wrong for 3 days and it goes down a lot, you might panic, you might cut your positions, you might be taking too much of a hit. And so then you actually take yourself out of the game, right? And so that's why I don't love using leverage in these particular types of scenarios where I, I tend to only use leverage when I think things have really collapsed. Like, I use leverage in an FTX-type scenario. I use, I use leverage when there's, there's a tremendous amount of liquidations and I'm using leverage for a very short time period, right? And because I want to use leverage to catch a mean reversion. Anyway, long story, long story short, I forgot my train of thought. This, this is a great market environment, not just for crypto, for everything. And why? Because what a lot of people don't recognize is that one of the reasons that the economy did so well in 2016 to 2020 is because Trump, when he comes in, one of the first things that he does is he cuts a ton of regulations and he allows businesses to make more money.

Cuts taxes for business too. Like, that makes—

I think, I think regulations are actually even more important than tax cuts.

And regulations have been a killer for crypto in particular. Like, obviously it hits oil, it hits banking, it hits everything. But like, for crypto, you know, we were at Permissionless The, the people there, they can't even build like what they want to build because they're going to be stuck in court for 5 years. The whole industry is like on pause.

And that is, in my personal opinion, the single worst thing about regulations is that it stifles innovation. Why? Because if you're building something in crypto, you don't know if what you're building is going to land you in jail, like you said. So you just end up not building anything. You just go, okay, I don't want to touch too much. You know, we kind of have this product right now. I'm not going to be too, you know, innovative. I'm not going to do anything too crazy because what if I do this crazy cool thing and the SEC comes after me or the government comes after me? Or, you know, I don't want to deal with it. And so what it does is it stifles innovation because people— you're not even in the mind frame to think about it, right?

You know, it's not just building, it's trading too. Like, we're not allowed to trade perps in America. You're not allowed to create a crypto trading company in America. Part of the reason why these massive basis ARBs exist is because most legitimate tradfi companies can't just like buy spot and sell futures. Because they're worried they're going to get taken out by the SEC. All of that's over. Like, Gensler is going to get fired on day one. It's over. Like, it's literally— this is a paradigm shift. Donald Trump ran on a hashtag pump your bags platform. And, you know, he at least last time, he kind of followed through on some of his promises. It would be weird if he suddenly just decided to go anti-crypto at this point. Like, we basically have to bet So I'm a little different than you. It's good on you to pick bottoms with leverage. That's a very dangerous game. For me, I pick— I like— this is kind of my first time using decent leverage in crypto. Usually I use it in commodities, but when I use leverage, it's to express a view when I think that the underlying asset is going to perform very smoothly with a high Sharpe and low volatility. And I think that Bitcoin fits that description right now. Like, I think that sure, you can probably get higher absolute returns investing in Doge or investing in something else, being very active, paying short-term capital gains tax. But if you just want to sit on your hands and hold something for a year, the absolute best, like, P&L per unit of volatility return, your best Sharpe ratio, is going to be in Bitcoin. I don't think they're going to be very big drawdowns at this point. And so I think it's okay to lever up a little bit now. Like, I think we, I think we should all feel some, like, feel like we have permission to expect the market to rally gradually or even rapidly and steadily, primarily because, um, this new regulatory paradigm and this new set of, you know, congressional members is, is kind of going to attempt to create for crypto what just hasn't existed. And there's so much potential under the surface, Avi. Like, there's there's so much, there's so much value to be unlocked here. Also, like, you know, I remember you said something very powerful that resonated with me when we first started doing our podcast. You said, you know, I've been in crypto since I think it was 2017 or '16. You said that, you said like, I've been told that I, that crypto is a scam every single year except 2021. And then in 2022, you were told it was a scam again. I've experienced the same. I've either been in crypto and been told that I'm working on a scam, or been kind of on the outside looking in thinking it's a scam, for every single year except 2021. And for the very first time, uh, since 2021, it feels like crypto is not a scam anymore. It feels like crypto will be accepted by the broader community as something legitimate because the United States will kind of bless it, right? And I think that more than anything is a big deal.

Yeah, I couldn't have said it better myself. This is, this is probably the first time that crypto is going to be considered not a scam, and it's not going to mark like the crazy, crazy top because it's really like We've reached the point now where the sitting president of the United States of America has hinted at creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve, has spoken at Bitcoin conferences, went to a Bitcoin bar, has made a transaction with Bitcoin, launched a DeFi project, launched, launched a DeFi project. I mean, guys, this is unbelievable. In 2017, I remember seeing Bitcoin on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and thinking to myself, oh my God, we've made it, because it was on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. In 2035, you're right, Sky Jones, maybe we do have a strategic mudang reserve. Maybe we do. It's possible. It's not improbable even. It's very improbable, but you know, but that was fun to say.

Uh, let's talk for a second about what a strategic Bitcoin reserve would mean. Just like, let me quickly explain this again. I, I love commodities. Bitcoin is a commodity. A strategic reserve for an asset is important because it serves more than just a monetary purpose. It's not just meant to pump the price, it's meant in case of emergency. And if, if Donald Trump follows through on this promise to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve, it basically lends credence to the idea that Bitcoin is non-sovereign global reserve currency-grade money of the same caliber as gold. And that in an emergency where, God forbid, the dollar is degraded, or God forbid, um, our trading partners no longer want to use the dollar, we as a nation do not lose our our sort of potency. We don't lose our international clout if this happens. It says that— it says that Bitcoin should eat market share from the dollar, the euro, the pound, um, the yen, the yuan. And at that point, like, you know, if we're talking about things like the things you can count on one hand that send Bitcoin to a million dollars a token immediately, it's like Bitcoin becomes a global reserve currency. Like, hydrocarbons get transacted in Bitcoin. Like, $1 million a token overnight. And so on sentiment alone, it should go there. That's why I think it's so important. And it's like it went from like a 5 delta to a— or like a 1 delta to a 50 delta in the last 8 months, 6 months.

It's, it's genuinely, it's genuinely unbelievable. And man, this is, this is just so much, so much fun. I'm not gonna lie, like, this is just so much fun to imagine a scenario where that happens. I mean, look, Bitcoin— we all know what the benefits of this thing are, right? This is what it was destined to be if it was going to work. This is, this is kind of how it had to go, right? Yeah. And so when I look at what's actually been accomplished, it kind of feels like a simulation sometimes because everything just worked out kind of perfectly for Bitcoin. And what I think is very likely to happen over the next 4 years is if there's even a hint that we're taking this strategic reserve seriously, if there's even a hint, other countries are going to move on it. It's not just going to be, you know, the United States is actually, in my opinion, if it does get established, if the strategic reserve actually gets established, The United States is unlikely to be the first because what's going to happen is that other countries are going to see that the United States is doing it, they can move more quickly, and then they will do it. Yeah, right. And so the way that I view this is by the time the United States announces it, it's like a continuation of a trend, and that's going to be— that's just going to be next level incredible. And so yeah, the, the game theory, exactly. It's so, it's so favorable towards, towards BTC. Like you kind of, you know, there's very little downside to starting it for a smaller country if you have like a 25% chance in your mind that the US is going to— that the US is going to start it. Because also, it's like you adopting it and your friends adopting it is going to make it more likely for the US to adopt it, right? It's like, oh yeah, right. It's like it's, it's literally one big Ponzi that's going to last.

Yeah, it's the ultimate meme coin. So like maybe, maybe what you do is you have like 50 to 80% of your portfolio in Bitcoin until it hits $100K, and then the, uh, you scale out as it gets there. And then what you do with the proceeds is like, you have some in Solana, some in Ethereum, some in meme coins. And then, um, I really like your thesis about how these SEC lawsuit coins are going to pump. Like, they've already pumped a lot, but they're coming off of some pretty abysmal lows. Imagine if Trump shows up on day one, pardons Ross Ulbricht, then suddenly just like installs a new SEC chairman within the first 6 months. The new SEC chairman immediately ends the lawsuits against Uniswap, Coinbase, Cumberland, like name your company that they've just gone and sued. Like all these lawsuits are just a complete waste of taxpayer money. Hundreds of millions of dollars are getting paid out to lawyers in Washington, D.C. for absolutely no reason. Like, as soon as the market catches on to the fact that that's literally about to happen, I think all of these coins are going up another 300%, right? Um, XRP even, like, I, I don't— it does definitely feel like we could be in for one of those, like, nonsensical crypto rallies in some of these coins that, like, that are being— that have been beaten down for SEC reasons. Now, obviously, you're gonna, like, to your point, you're gonna want to get out Uh, like, you're not going to want to sit in those things when they have, like, you know, $50 billion valuations, but, um, for a trade, those might be great pumps to ride.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is, this is going to be a time where you just kind of need to stare at your screens, stare at DexScreener, taking all the right information, be in the right group chats, discuss with people, just kind of sit in front of your computer and do nothing other than stare at the markets because you can make millions and millions of dollars.

How much of your trading capital is on-chain versus on a centralized exchange? This is something that I'm not really good at yet. Like, I have most of it on a centralized exchange right now because I'm not meme-coin-ing.

Yeah, it's kind of like I, I just have like a slightly different situation where most of my capital is, is on exchanges, like trading it. Um, but I have like a non-trivial portion of that capital on-chain as well, probably about 15%, because the way that I have, you know, on-chain— and that actually grew from— that actually grew substantially because of Geeko. So I aped a lot of Geeko, and that's done nicely. Um, and I also— yeah, anyway, so that was good.

I aped Geeko and then sold it for a 20% loss because I was like, I don't— this one doesn't resonate with me. Good job holding on to it.

Yeah, I mean, that was— that was— I still think that's like a billion dollar coin, but yeah, I'm, I'm also kind of delusional.

You're also Asian, right? It's just something you can relate to more than me.

Kind of. Not really. Not, not— I'm not that— I'm not that kind of Asian, but Anyway, it's, uh, you know, it's— they're— the way that I view— the way that I view on-chain for me is that I use it just to ape like really small-cap meme coins and then just hold them and forget about them for a long period of time, and then hopefully they do really well. That's my on-chain strategy, which is very different from a lot of people's on-chain strategy. Where like people will actively trade on hype, you know, on things like Hyperliquid, dydx. Like people will have like a substantial portion of the trading stack on, you know, like on-chain, uh, and people will also be running different types of strategies on-chain. You know, they might even buy, you know, they might even trade ETH on-chain. You know, for example, like a, like a thing like Nero that has done very well today. A lot of people might have bought that, might have bought that on-chain. So, but my, my wallets are almost exclusively, uh, for just things under like 50 million market cap.

Okay, so basically you're, you're in it to like invest in— it's like a, it's like a perverse VC-style investing, uh, casino thing that you have going on. You're basically just buying low market cap coins and then recycling gains into new low market cap coins on-chain. And then on centralized exchanges, you're doing what I'm doing, which is basically like, okay, the opportunity is here, invest. All right, uh, this thing's looking toppy, move into something with higher opportunity. And if I can't think of anything, like rotate it all back into Bitcoin, because literally, like, do not have $1 in fiat right now of your crypto allocation. This is just too good.

Well, one thing that I'll say is that I think it's, it's like really easy to lose money when your money is everywhere. And that's why I don't love on-chain, um, in terms of—

just repeat that. Everybody needs to hear what you just said. That is so true. I'm gonna, I'm gonna take this.

It is really easy, really easy to lose money when your money is everywhere because there's just like a lot— there's just like a lot of mental friction. Like, for example, if you use Robinhood and Fidelity and Coinbase and like you have 13 wallets and some is on Solana and like some, some is on this chain and that chain, like you just end up forgetting about things and you end up not managing all of your trades effectively. And like everyone but the few most disciplined people on the planet that like go check everything every day and like monitor everything every day, you just end up forgetting about things and missing opportunities and losing money.

There's no point of spreading yourself out unless literally you're running a portfolio of, um, like VC-style bets. Like if you're just like holding a bunch of call options or throwing spaghetti at the wall, or pick your analogy, then it's okay to have a bunch of different tokens. But I think once you're, once you're past $100 to $200 million market cap, you should not have more than 10 coins.

Yeah, I, I would agree with you. Um, I don't know, is there anything, uh, anything that the crowd wants to ask us? Like, what else is going on? Talk about Peanut, dude. I, I do.

Oh, that's a good one.

I love Peanut. I think, I think, I think Peanut— I think Peanut is like the perfect combination of political meme, animal meme.

I love Peanut.

Like everything. Like, I think it's just I think it's just perfect. Um, I don't— I actually do not own any. I need to—

me neither. I just— I think it's a great meme. I, I feel a little too— like, Peanut and Goat are my two favorites right now. I think I can, I can totally resonate with them. Goat just ripped again. Um, yeah, this is why you want to have capital on-chain. Like, if, if I had a bunch of Geeko, which I don't, I would be selling some to buy Peanut and Goat. Here, here's what I like, you know, honestly, I'm a lifelong Democrat who obviously got a little bit red-pilled through the crypto world. Um, one thing that I love about this Trump win, and since we're talking about Peanut, I feel like I can bring this up. If you're in crypto, if you're a crypto trader, doesn't it feel like you've been a little bit gaslit for the last 4 years? Like you're participating in some underground, uh, terrorist economy of grifters and, and crime? Like, that's what everybody's sort of branded our industry as. And now that it's not that anymore, I think just that alone that alone will bring in investment. And I think that some of the memes like Peanut are kind of an outlet for that. I don't know, that angst that, you know, I— the image behind me is from The Shawshank Redemption. The guy obviously gets his— has his moment at the end of the difficult period in his life. And I honestly think that us in the crypto space, we've been through a rough few years. You know, if you'd invested at the pico top of 2021 and held on, which many people didn't, at best broken even, right? So now is kind of the time where people are starting to feel a bit vindicated. And I think that like the peanut meme kind of, kind of encapsulates that zeitgeist, you know, that's why I like it.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I like it because it's a squirrel, but like, I like it. I mean, that, yeah, that makes sense, bro. But like, it's also just like a squirrel that got murdered by the Democrats.

So I mean, that's just kind of like, yeah, but when the squirrel gets murdered like by the Democrats, you— what's going through your mind when you click buy is what I just articulated, even though he's, you know, on the surface of it, it's a cute squirrel. I think we're, we're talking about two different layers of the very same onion, Avi. That's my point.

I, I agree. I'm trying to find the address for this thing so I can just go eat some peanuts. I feel like it's big enough that I can talk.

You know what, this is a live stream. We don't have to be super structured. I'm gonna buy some fucking peanut right here.

Yeah, I'm gonna buy some peanuts.

Give me that. Give me that peanut.

No, give me— no, you, you fucking give me that peanut. That's what I'm talking about. Actually, I gotta go, I gotta go to dinner in like 5 minutes. I forgot about that.

Dinner, meaning you have to, you have to move more funds on chain to buy more peanut. Okay, well, have a nice dinner wherever you are. I know what you're going to be doing.

I'm in Puerto Rico because I own— well, anyway, I have, I have property here and it's like really difficult to manage if you're not here every once in a while. So you're like, for example, my— like, the— I'm trying to rent this place out and the showers don't have hot water, so I'm trying to figure, figure that out so that when I rent it to somebody, they don't call me in 3 weeks and tell me that there's no hot water. Anyway, not crypto, not—

and not your problem, but sounds like you need to sell some of that GECO and get it— get a guy. Like, you need a guy. If you have real estate, you need to do it.

I do. I do. That's the issue.

Oh, like you're getting taken. Okay, fair enough.

The issue with Puerto Rico is— I'll end with a story for you. So like 3 years ago, because I used to live here, I don't live here anymore. I was getting a generator installed for the house. And so I call up the generator company and I say, hey, I need this specification of generator. 'Can you install it in the, in the house?' 'And can you install it here? I picked out an area for you, so it's all good.' They come over, they look, they're like, 'Yep, we have it. Give me 6 weeks, I'll install it, no problem, done.' So 5 weeks later, I decide, because it's like a, it's like a week before, so I call them up and I say, 'Hey, so you guys ready? In a week you're gonna go install that generator.' And they go, 'Oh, oh, that generator, that generator that you already paid for that is supposed to be installed there.' Yeah, we don't have that anymore because we installed it somewhere else and that was our last one. And I'm like, wait, I'm like, wait, wait a second. The generator that I paid for that you said that you were going to install, that you said that you started me for, it's no longer there and you don't have any other generators on the entire island? And the guy goes, yeah, sorry, that supplier is out. And so I asked a very simple question. I said, Do you have any other suppliers? And the guy goes, oh yeah, I do. Hangs up, calls me back in 15 minutes and says, oh, we found a generator from other, other suppliers. Oh, okay.

Well, thank you for suggesting it.

Listen, why did I have to suggest to him to call another supplier?

If it makes you feel any better, Avi, I've experienced the exact same story as you for my place in LA, except Replace the word generator with fence or, you know, iron gate or metal, aluminum, steel gate, whatever it is. And the end of my story is sad because the guy didn't end up finding another source of metal. He just disappeared into the ether. So may I humbly suggest paying half, half now, half later? The next time you—

Yeah, yeah, that's better.

As traders, we're so transactional, like we're used to stuff happening quick, right? Like we don't like to— we don't want to like haggle with people, but that's how the world works outside of crypto.

FYI, for anyone, I think people are talking about this, that there's no cap gains tax in Puerto Rico, blah, blah, blah, there's good tax benefits. I lived here for 3 and a half years, almost 4 years. I loved Puerto Rico. I loved being a citizen. Obviously saved a ton of money. But I ultimately had to make a hard choice to move back to New York just because my philosophy is now just make more money.

Make more money.

Like, just make more money. Like, if you're moving somewhere to save on taxes, don't. Just make more money.

I'm all about a tax move for short period, like small periods of your life, but just like permanently relocating yourself to a haven if you don't want to be there seems weird.

I think, I think that's, that, that's a better way of saying it, is like, yeah, just, you know, there's no reason to move somewhere unless you like really have a strong view that the next year, 2, 3, 4 years of your life you're going to make like a ridiculous amount of money. Otherwise, just, you know, live, live where it makes you happy.

Yeah, where makes you happy, Alvi?

It's a good question. Uh, honestly, I, I do, I do love PR. I'm not gonna lie. Um, now more than, more than I did before because I got like into water sports and whatnot and started like off-roading, which is really fun.

What's your favorite, like an ATV, or do you just use your Like a four-wheeler?

I have a Bronco. Super fun.

That's awesome. I love the Bronco.

What's this? Hold on one second. Dude, Peanut's ripping ever since we mentioned it.

Are we— do we count as micro-influencers? None of this is financial advice. We don't know what we're talking about. We're talking about a friggin' Peanut. Coin.

Don't listen. I don't know if I— I don't know if I can sell Geeko for this. Geeko looks like it's about to rip anyway. Okay, anyway, I gotta roll. Love you, Jonah.

Love you, buddy. Uh, congrats on surviving this. Not financial advice. Uh, stay, stay safe, you all, and do your own research. Good talking to you, Avi.