Picking Winners: Time To Be Bullish? | 1000x

The world, the world changes if Bitcoin gets above $70K. Very simple, because then you get animal spirits coming back in.

But the world changes if we're below $55K too. Then animal spirits start, people start liquidating.

I mean, you have Nasdaq at the highs, you have S&P at the highs, and BTC is not.

Like you said, there's dispersion going on, there's chop. This is a time to consolidate the portfolio, right? This is a time to like reduce line items.

That's, that's what I'm 100% on board with is just reducing complexity. In the book right now, there are going to be things that are going to do, that are going to do very well and you can, you can trade those. I think in aggregate you just want a more concentrated portfolio.

This episode is brought to you by Perennial Finance, the on-chain DeFi primitive redesigning derivatives for the DeFi native. You'll hear more about Perennial later in the show.

All right guys, welcome back to another episode of 1000x. We have been chopping around for a while, but today, this morning, a very nice move from the, from the crypto markets. This is the biggest candle we've seen in a while, and we've finally gotten over that $65K hump, and everything is up. A lot today. It's looking good. How are you feeling, Jonah?

Feeling good. I'm long. Don't really know, don't really know if I'm gonna get my chance to buy a dip or not, uh, but I don't care. I mean, if this is the last time we— it's like, if we're never gonna hit $60K again in Bitcoin, it's party time. I'm not going to be complaining. Um, I kind of lack conviction on a lot of the space right now. Uh, if, if everything nukes, I want to go shopping, as we talked about on the last podcast. If everything rips, I'm not going to do anything. And frankly, I just feel like we're going to keep chopping for a while. I don't, I don't have like a— outside of the, the Barbell portfolio that we talked about, I don't have a lot of conviction right now.

Yeah, I, I think so. The one thing, the one thing that was clear to me is that after we failed to break $60K again, I mean, we had, we had a few shots there. So last Friday we had that ridiculous sell-off on, on pretty low, low liquidity, low volume, where we went straight from $63K to $61K in like half a second, uh, and then we reversed that entire move. We bled out, we bled out again, and then we started, we started moving up. I mean, we've, we've attacked 60 a bunch of times at this point, and we haven't, we haven't been able to, we haven't been able to get through. But with the, uh, you know, on the, on the same side, we've attacked 65 a lot and we haven't really been able to get through. So let's see what this— let's see how we sustain this move here. My view is that we're still in, that we're still in for chop. I mean, alts during this time have bled out a reasonable amount. ETH/BTC has bled out a reasonable amount. Memes haven't actually done particularly well except for you inciting the entirety of the internet to buy Bowden.

Yeah, we got to talk about that.

But I, I do, I, I do think that while, while BTC is still, is still a good buy and there's some select alts that I like, like I was talking about it, you know, I've been talking about Arweave for a long time. Um, there are definitely some select alts that I still, that I still very like. I think as a general complex, the alt complex doesn't really interest me other than for bounces right now, uh, until we get a sustained rally from, from BTC. I'm sort of on the side of the, of the duck that tweeted that memes are, that memes are over for now. I mean, I don't think that they're over for the full cycle But I do think that on every, you know, move higher, people get really excited, and on every move lower, people get very bearish. And that— what that tells me is that we're probably just in for a little bit more chop through the summer. I'm not chasing every move higher and chasing every move lower at this point. I think what I said is, you know, I was happy to buy around $55, $56 on the last podcast, and that we were due for a bounce. Um, I still believe that, you know. I think some of my, uh, some of my, some of my takes were— so some of my takes were taken on Twitter out of context, you know, when I was saying—

I really, really— people on Twitter didn't give you the benefit of the doubt and they, they took things that you said and molded them in ways that would make you seem stupid? That's crazy.

Yeah, I know it happens. It's, it's honestly, it's insane. I, I can't, I can't believe that they did this to me. But to articulate it, what I was trying to say was that buying $55, $56, $57, that area that I was saying on the last pod when I said this is a good place to buy, it doesn't mean that we're never gonna reach that level again. It just means that I think if you buy there and you wait for an extended period of time, like 6 months, you're probably going to be very happy.

Yeah, I, I completely agree.

I'm saying this even though we're at $66. I'm not saying this because oh, we're back at my target. Like, we're, you know, we've done very well since then, but I think that, that got taken out of context because we traded back to $60 and everyone was freaking out. They're like, well, what about you said buying at $56 was such a great idea? And, uh, you know, now you're like, now, now we're back at $60 and you're actually a little bit, you know, you're a bit nervous. I think we were at $63 at times. Like, you're a bit bearish at $63 even though blah blah blah.

Like, well, and look, it's up now. You must be, you must be wrecked, Avi. I, I remember seeing a chart on Twitter of a few different, um For the record, Avi's just fine. Um, I remember seeing a chart of all the different Twitter personalities in crypto on these axes. One axis was like, um, degen versus normie, and the other axis was like, uh, like permabull versus doomer. And Avi, you, you got put like, you're the most doomer degen. Uh, basically you are the lower right quadrant, and according to some nobody on Twitter. And I guess what I, what I have to say about all this, like, people are doing the same thing to me. I'm getting, you know, I'm getting teabagged on Twitter today, uh, because of something I said about Bowdoin, which is interesting. We'll get into that later. But like, here are a couple observations. Observation number 1: the market is chopping up and down. The chart is red, green, red, green. That is undeniable. Observation number 2: last Friday when we nuked, it wasn't just us in crypto land that nuked. Oil nuked, the S&P nuked, everything nuked. Today everything's ripping. Why? Because CPI came in slightly less hot than expected. This is super important because it determines hike cycles or, uh, cut cycles, right? It determines Fed action, and inflation is basically the most important economic issue in America right now. So like everything gapped higher on a CPI print today, including Bitcoin. Bitcoin isn't like— there's no fundamental narrative here, nor was there a fundamental narrative to the sell-off last Friday. Observation number 3, um, if one thing that I noticed junior traders doing when they first join, right, is they chop themselves up. They buy high, they sell low. That doesn't mean that like selling something that's going down is a bad idea, or buying something that's going up is a bad idea. It just means that if that's all you ever do, you're going to bleed out, right? And there's a lot of that type of junior trader sentiment on Twitter and in the crypto world right now because people aren't making money. They're like, when the thing is chopping sideways, money's not really getting made. Like, sure, somebody caught the Pepe thing, or maybe some crypto person had some GameStop in a brokerage account somewhere and is bragging about it. But like, for the most part, the space isn't really making money. If anything, I would guess they're like buying highs and selling lows and chopping themselves up and losing money. Everybody's a little pissed off. Everybody's overinterpreting everything. Basically, let's, let's— so let's like break this down into time frames. Avi, you, you convinced me of something on the last podcast. You were like, this thing is gonna probably dip below $60K at some point, at which point I'd like to start shopping. Pretty, pretty heavily. I, I hadn't really thought about that. I, I was kind of in like blinders-on bullish mode. I agree with you. And so I'm prepared to blow the rest of my wad if that happens because I am, I'm medium to long-term quite bullish. But when we talk about like a potential pullback, we're not, we're not, you know, if it goes up without pulling back, neither you nor I is going to be crying upset, unable to, to— it's not like we're out of crypto, right? Right? So yeah, I think those are the sort of things that we need to observe going into this period of time. And the sentiment in the space, just to finish my thought, like, would you agree, Avi, that it's— people are losing a bit of money right now and kind of pissed off? That's how it feels.

Yeah, I, I think, I think everyone's gotten chopped up like crazy right now. And I think the other, the other thing that's pissing people off is that there's a ton of dispersion in the market. And so there are, there are some people that are making money Uh, but the majority of people are not making money, and that, that's actually what tends to lead to these ranges, is because people have probably stepped out of the market some amount. And whenever we trade lower, everybody goes, okay, well, now's my chance, now it's gonna break, let me pile in, let me actually finally make some money and catch this next move. When everyone shorts the lows, and then those shorts get taken out. And then it's the opposite to the top side. Whenever we have a rally to the top side of the range, because, okay, it's finally time to make some money, I haven't made money in a while, let me buy, let me buy here, we're gonna, we're gonna go. And then we don't go anywhere. And this is, this is just classic range trading behavior. Right now I think, uh, the range will, the range will resolve itself once people have detached themselves from the market. I think we're probably going to lose more people throughout the summer, and then that's when you know that this thing is finally going to, finally going to start to, start to pick a direction. I mean, the, the issue is that the two things that stand out to me are still that stablecoin balances are not going up and ETF flows are not really doing anything still, uh, you know.

So, so I'm ETF flows did too much. There's an amazing chart out there that I saw, basically in terms of like AUM accumulation on the— like AUM on the y-axis and time on the x-axis. Basically, these Bitcoin ETFs, the Fidelity one and BlackRock, accumulated assets faster by like literally orders of magnitude, 10 orders of magnitude than the second, third, and fourth fastest ETFs in history, right? So like, yeah, it's, it's slowed down, but if it had continued at this pace, it would have been pretty unprecedented crazy shit. So we're, we, we're taking a breather. Jury's still out. But yes, I agree with you, like, in the short term, um, in the short term, that's, that's not going to be driving a big bull run. In the medium to long term, who knows. I have the chart here. So iBit in 49 days has accumulated $18 billion. FBTC in 77 days has accumulated, um, $10 billion. Uh, then like GLD in 817 days from when it was first issued accumulated $10 billion. So same as like the Fidelity, uh, ETF. Accumulated in literally 10% as much time. So basically that goes to show— I'm going to post this, uh, we're gonna, we're gonna post this on the YouTube page so that everybody can see it. Like, it's, it's pretty crazy. It took 10 times as long for GLD, the gold ETF, to accumulate this much AUM— accumulate as much AUM as the second biggest, uh, crypto ETF, Bitcoin ETF.

Gold is harder to buy for the average person than Bitcoin is, in my, in my, you know, personal opinion. So basically the only way to hold gold is through an ETF. If you're an investor, the only way to hold gold is through an ETF. You can't really hold gold any other way.

You can go to Costco and buy like a gold bar, but it's a pain in the ass.

Yeah, so I would, I would, I would wager that the percentage of people that are in You know, the percentage of people that are going to hold gold ETFs as a proportion of gold market cap is actually going to be higher in the long run than the proportion of people that hold BTC relative to the BTC market cap, because you can hold BTC outside of the investor class. Yes, but like the human race, there are people in India holding gold that, you know, and also there's, there's central banks and yeah, whatnot and blah, blah, blah. But all that, all that being said, what I'm trying to articulate is that we're probably close to the end on BTC ETF inflows. Like, I would wager that there's probably $50 billion to $75 billion left in aggregate to come into BTC ETFs until BTC is priced reasonably fairly. So if you think about how, like, how big should BTC be relative to gold? Is it par? Is it half? Is it a third? I mean, to me, half would be like insane.

Party time, right?

Yeah, like that, that, that would be ridiculous. And I think another $50 billion in ETF flows probably gets us close to there. You get— if you get another $50 billion, $75 billion of demand, you're probably looking at half the market cap of gold.

I mean, the market cap of gold is $16 trillion, okay? And the market cap of Bitcoin right now is $1.3 trillion. So you think $75 billion worth of inflows drives Bitcoin's market cap from $1.3 to—

yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe it would drive it up 3x. I think another $50 billion to $75 would drive it up 3x.

Oh man, I mean, what you said when you said that you think we're sort of nearing the end of the ETF inflows for now, like, that's kind of a spicy take. I would take the other side of it. But then you said another $50 to $75 billion.

Yeah, yeah, I, I say, I say, I say it like the, the, uh, the ETF is not going to drive Bitcoin to infinity. I'm not, I'm not saying that What I'm not trying to say that we're actually close in terms of price appreciation. What I'm saying is that, you know, we're not in inning 1 of Bitcoin ETF, we're not in inning 2, we're probably inning 5, inning 6 of Bitcoin ETF inflows.

I don't know. I think the jury's out. Like, did you see that the Wisconsin— I think it's like the state Wisconsin pension fund for like government employees bought $160 million worth of Bitcoin ETFs. Like they just disclosed it. If that sort of— if, if like that pool of capital is what we're talking about here, if that's the type of person or institution that's interested in these ETFs, they— we could just be getting started. Like those pension funds manage tens of trillions of dollars. And if they're putting even a few basis points into iBit, it's like, it's a little crazy.

Is that, that allocation is, are they, are they going to put more than a few basis points in?

Not them, but there's, you know, 49 other states that have pension funds. And then there's, you know, fire departments and fire teachers systems. And, you know, these, these pension funds are just everywhere. They're enormous.

Yeah, and that'll account, that'll account for the next $50 billion that's going to come in.

Yeah, maybe it's all that.

We're probably, I think we're probably peaking at $100 billion of, of AUM. That's my guess. Which is that at $100 billion of AUM, you're probably, you're probably not getting much more. That's probably, that's probably stable in terms of what's coming in and what's coming out of. So, and I think, and so I think what happens is That's the main driver of BTC price action. And I don't think that happens over the summer. I think that happens in Q4. And so that's why I think that you probably get a summer of chop. And then in Q3, you probably get the people that are front-running those Q4 allocations, Q4, Q1 allocations into next year. And then that's when you get, that's when you get a crazy rally. That's my, you know, mid take. I think actually a reasonable amount of people agree with that, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's wrong.

No, I agree with it.

I don't think it's a mid-term thing in that, in that interim period before we get that. I think that you get some dispersion in the altcoin space, but because there's no— there's not a ton of new net capital coming in, you probably just get a bleed out from a lot of different assets, especially because there's a lot of supply coming online. And so I actually don't think it's the worst time in the world to just take a, you know, take a break from trying to trade ridiculously actively and just wait for, wait for the extremes. And you can, you can obviously take trades out. Like, for example, I think yesterday was a, was a good example of a good trade that you had a macro event that was reasonably priced in and watched, but you had a lot of people still shorting the lows, like shorting that $60K level. And so obviously they're going to get blown out. But will this draw enough new capital in to get to new all-time highs? My guess is probably no. But, you know, I could— I can always be wrong.

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All right, let's get back to the show.

New capital is what's key. Right? So I posted this framework for investing in tokens on Twitter. Basically, first thing is every token is a meme coin. Just accept it. Even Bitcoin is a meme coin, right? And where— so you, whenever you're holding something that doesn't fundamentally pass through earnings to you, or isn't like a commodity that will be bought incessantly by some consumer to, to produce buildings or transportation fuels or you know, wires or semiconductors. Like, if you're just holding something waiting for somebody else to buy it from you, which is kind of the state of crypto since, uh, you know, the regulatory picture is not so clear, you sort of have to ask yourself, who's the greater fool that's going to come take this off my hands? Well, like you said it, new capital. So what I'm doing is I'm just going through my portfolio right now and asking myself, like, is there more money going to come in to to buy this asset that I'm holding, right? For Bitcoin, the answer is unequivocally yes, like so yes, for all of the geopolitical and macro reasons that we've discussed ad nauseam on this podcast that it's not even worth like doing any further analysis for now, especially with the halving and less selling, um, and the prospect of ETFs debottlenecking like pension fund flows like we just talked about. For meme coins, I also deeply believe in meme coins, but Uh, when I see meme coins doing like down only instead of chopping with the rest of the space, especially ones that I hold, I'm like, time. I'm gonna de-risk rateably as they go down. Like, I'm gonna VWAP sell as this thing is trending down because, uh, there's no like earnings report that's going to come out that's going to lift this token back up, right? There's no— I'm just waiting for another pool of capital to come in And if it's— especially if it's like a cartoon coin, um, psychology can become pretty, pretty significant, and trends can accelerate. So in the case of Bowdoin, for example, I've been, you know, all in on Bowdoin for a while. I reduced about 75% of my position on the way down because I was just like, this is not a chopping asset. This is, this is people like just getting out every single day. Um, now, uh, it's rallied about— it's rallied about 100% from the lows of like a day and a half ago. So like my final fills of that VWAP sell are way out of the money, but I still think it's the right thing to do because as you lose conviction on something— like I'm sitting in that money's in Solana now, it's not in Bowdoin. And if Bowdoin goes to the moon, I still have a little bit, so I don't— I'm not gonna like kick myself. But it just doesn't— I, I think that I— for, for Bowdoin at least, and you should ask yourself, you ask this of yourself for any meme coin, like, what are the catalysts to bring in entirely new participant bases? That's question number one. And question number two is how either lettuce-handed or diamond-handed is the current participant base. So with, with Bowdoin, there are two kind of catalysts, right? One is like, um, people just buy it whenever Joe Biden says something stupid. That hasn't really played out in the past. The other potential catalyst is like you start getting a major cultural influencer like Joe Rogan or Donald Trump, like pounding the table on it to harm Joe Biden because he's an old man. And that's an easy, like, dead horse to kick, right? Those are the two big catalysts. I'm getting, like, less optimistic that a Rogan or a Trump will start— will start parading this around. But if so, I still have a little bit of risk on. And then in terms of the second question, lettuce hands or diamond hands, um, if you look at WIF, for example, like, it kind of chopped around. It went sideways. It didn't— it, like, people are really hanging on to that one. Same with Doge. Boden, the community is like a little bit shaken and scared because it's kind of unclear how this coin is supposed to trade after the election, you know, and or even before.

Don't you think, don't you think people will be diamond-handed into the election because of that? I mean, that's, that's, that's my take is that there's, there's kind of no reason to sell this thing pre-election. And there's a, there's another potential 10x. Yeah, definitely another potential 10x into the election, especially, you know, at least from like $150k market cap or $150 mil market cap after the 100% move, maybe, maybe 5, I mean 5x. Um, but I, I do, I do think that it's, it's kind of crossed over. I, I was at the Mar-a-Lago event and somebody asked Trump what he thought of Bowdoin, and he said $240 million for a coin doesn't seem like a great investment. And Bowdoin actually did quite well off of that. Uh, I, I think that you're just gonna—

went up and then people just sold straight into it, and then it went down straight line.

Because I, I think, I think the, I think the reaction there was a little bit mid-curve, which is, oh, Trump doesn't like it. But the reality is Trump knows about it now. And that's, that's, that's the thing. But I do think a lot of these, a lot of these secondary memes are just gonna, they're gonna find it hard to hold on, hold on to their audience in a, in, in a world of chop. But with that, look, with, with all, with all that being said, the world, the world changes if Bitcoin gets above $70K. It's very, you know, very, very simple because then, then you get, then you get animal spirits, animal spirits coming back in. Yeah, but you know, my, my—

the world changes if we're below $55K too, then animal spirits start, people start liquidating.

But my, my answer, my answer to the question, uh, you know, where are the new buyers of BTC going to come from, is I'm not, I'm not 100% sure right now at this stage. I mean, you have NASDAQ at the highs, you have S&P at the highs, uh, and BTC is not. And what that tells me is that they're, you know, big— whenever there's a divergence in equities and BTC, I view that as quite bearish for BTC. BTC doesn't normally catch up in that case. It normally— it actually normally goes down more.

I agree with that. Divergence is super important in crypto. So like when memes are down only and Bitcoin is up, or certain memes are down only, that's a reason to be cautious of those memes and rotate into something a little bit more benchmarky. I think like when, like you said, there's dispersion going on, there's chop. This is a time to consolidate the portfolio, right? This is a time to like reduce line items.

That's, that's what I'm 100% on board with is just reducing complexity. In the book right now, there are going to be things that are going to do, that are going to do very well, and you can, you can trade those. But I think, I think in aggregate, you know, you just, you just want to con— you just want a more concentrated portfolio. I mean, things and things that have a narrative behind them. I mean, all the, all the AI coins are doing extremely well, like the Near of the world, ARs of the world, LivePeers of the world. They're all, they're all doing, they're all doing very well. Whereas you look at something like a Blur or like a Link or any of the Filecoin, Flow, all of, you know, all of these other coins. MATIC hasn't done anything. And it's just because you're just not going to get— you're not going to get flows to these coins. I actually think a great way to trade this market is to just, you know, if you're worried about the downside because we're in a choppy market, you just short the things that don't really have a narrative or that have a lot of supply unlock. You know, you can probably get a good short on SUI. And then long the AR and just carry that trade for a few months and call it a day. I, I do, I do think though that, that like general market fears are a little bit, are, are a little bit overblown. And you can see that there was a, you know, there, there was a nervousness permeating the market about a month ago about high, high data prints, about high inflation and That today has been flipped on its head a bit, which is why we're, which is why we're trading at the highs. So I think general worry about the market is probably a bit, a bit overblown, which is why I'm not, you know, I was at some point in the past, um, you know, when we were at $70K last time, I was saying, well, I could see $52K. I don't really see $52K in this particular environment anymore. I mean, that's also why we were buying a lot in the last, last podcast, because I think that those fears are a little bit, a little bit solved for at this point. But with that said, um, you know, the way that I see this going higher, and something that you can probably watch for, is just if we're trading $67K, $68K, and funding is flat, and people are, you know, the general, the general consensus on the timeline is that we're still ranging, or people are trying— people are now trying to short range highs. That's a, that's a good indicator that we're probably on our way up.

Also, like, just zooming way out, MVRVZ is 2 right now. It's 2.0. Like, deadball FTX lows are like below 1, and Euphoric highs are like above 7. So we're kind of toward the low end of the range of basically the best macro cycle indicator out there. So yeah, like stablecoin balances, some of these shorter-term ETF flows, some of these shorter-term things aren't looking that great yet. Yet being the key term. Um, but like broadly speaking the space is still underpriced and there's still a lot of capital that can flow into Bitcoin in ways that it couldn't, you know, pre-ETF approval. So yeah, I'm not, I'm not too optimistic about people like buying altcoin bags. I'm very bullish on the idea that certain memes will perform, including Bowdoin.

Um, but so here's, here's, here's a trade idea, Jonah. Yeah, we have the ETH ETF decision on May 23rd. That's when the SEC has to come out and either delay or deny or whatnot. Nobody, no one thinks that this thing is getting approved. There's not a single person in the world.

Yeah.

And I think that a negative decision is already priced in, and there are probably a lot of people short ETH because of that already, and there are a lot of people underallocated to ETH because of that. But post that decision. So there's sort of two things that you have to, you have to look for in this decision if it's denied. So the first, you have to look why the SEC denied the application. Why did the SEC deny the BTC application for so long? Because they thought the Bitcoin spot market was manipulated. And this was their take. Right. And why do they have to acquiesce on it is because the futures market is highly correlated to the, to the spot market in the Bitcoin world. And so it doesn't really make sense to have a Bitcoin futures ETF and to allow Bitcoin futures but not to allow a spot ETF. Now, if they come out and make the same argument for ETH, then what that means is that as the big— as the ETH futures market matures and this futures market becomes more correlated to the spot market, that argument will go away eventually. That argument leaves at some point in the future. That argument leaves because you can't have ETH futures, you know, you can't have an ETH futures ETF, you can't have an ETH futures product and not allow a spot ETF if the futures product is perfectly correlated to the spot market. Right. So they only make that argument that's actually very bullish for Ethereum because at some point you're going to get an Ethereum ETF. What would be very bearish for Ethereum is if they come out and they say, well, we're still litigating that, you know, it might be security. We think that it's a security. We have to solve this issue. And that's actually the biggest reason why we're not allowing this, allowing this ETF. That would be very bad for ETH. So on, on the 23rd, if you can get a sense for why they're denying it, if they don't mention anything about ETH being a security or investigations into ETH or anything like that, and it's just about the market, then I think you probably can get a pretty nice move from, from ETH. I think people, I think people should start buying it because that means at some point you get an ETH ETF even if Trump doesn't get elected.

That's really interesting nuance. Like, oh, what if it's just the same argument as Bitcoin? I bet a denial would probably result in a small sell-off and maybe the ETH discount widens a little bit on that headline. But that's a, that's a dip you buy.

I don't even know. I don't even know if you get, if you got us, if you got us, if you got a, if you get the news that they're making the exact same argument that they did to deny the BTC ETF and no new arguments, you think it would just immediately rally?

I think, I think people would see denied and they would go down a little bit. Then you have like an hour or two.

That's my, yes, exactly. That, that's my bet is that you probably get a small sell-off on that headline, and then you just buy as much ETH as you possibly can. If the argument is the exact same as why they denied them, you buy, you buy ETH-E, right?

Because the discount would widen.

Oh man, like you, you rip, you rip ETH-E like crazy.

You don't buy ETH, you buy ETH-E.

You buy ETH-E because I think the discount is 24-25%, and that's right, that thing is going to close massively.

Well, first it, first it probably sells off as ETH holders are like, ah, shucks, selling. And then Um, yeah, you scoop that dip. I think that's how you're supposed to trade that. I agree with you. I think that if— yeah, if they go the 'it's a security' route and they try to prove that— like, there are millions of securities ETFs out there. It doesn't mean that you can't have a— have an ETF that references a security. It's just, will there be regulatory clarity under another 4 years of, you know, a Democratic president in the White House? And the answer is probably no.

Right.

So yeah, I think it's, I think it's pretty, I think it's less clear if they try to go after the security argument. That's kind of an interesting nuance you point out there. The other thing that I'm wondering is like baked into that decision, will there be anything relevant to adjacent tokens like Solana? Like, let's say that they do go, let's say that they mentioned staking and they say, okay, well, part of the reason why we don't like this is because it's a yield-bearing security, blah, blah, blah. Like, Does that hurt? Do you get like a mini sell-off in other staking-related ecosystems? I think you don't. I think that's mid-curving, but it's just something to be aware of. Like if you're about to load up on yield-bearing coins or altcoins that rely on staking, like if you're interested in buying Lido or Eigen or any of this shit, like maybe you want to wait until after that announcement before you go and lift.

I, I would agree. I would agree with that. I think that there could be, there could be some good information in that decision as to how other assets might be treated in the future. Yeah, if there's— if that— look, what if there's absolutely nothing about staking, right? What if there's absolutely nothing about it being a security? That sort of opens the road for Solana ETF in the future. Very bullish. That would be great. Maybe Solana trades $200 and we all get to retire again. These are, these are, these are, these are important things to, to look out, to look out for. I mean, if I, if I'm you and you're sitting there and you're thinking, man, I wish there was a good trade, like I wish there was something I could do to make money, well, the 23rd is going to be a great day for you to make money. You just got to pay attention.

Yeah, and sometimes the way that you make money isn't like going into a big uncertain event like that with a position and then trading being right. It's more like you go in kind of nimble and then buy stuff at good prices when it briefly trades there.

I think good prices is a great way to articulate how to make money.

Yeah, like if your entry price on a meme coin is a penny and then it 100x's and then you sell it up, you know, 50x or 20x or 70x, you're still happy. Meanwhile, if you're buying it for a dollar and it's this valueless thing and you exit liquidity to the people who bought it, you know, for a penny, then suddenly your life is so much more stressful. And so, yeah, entry price in crypto really is king. And a buddy of mine, buddy of mine, this dude John Woo, he says his saying about crypto is you have to be dumb. The reason why most people don't make it in crypto is because you have to be dumb enough to buy the coin and smart enough to sell it. And it's like, it's so true. The mentality that, that you, you have to employ in order to hang on to one of these valueless shitcoins and 500% something is exactly the opposite of the mentality that you need to take profit on it. So realistically, the only solution for any of this is to be early to stuff, right? Then that, that helps you avoid some of the, the problems of overthinking things and knowing when to sell. These parabolic rallies or, or nuclear sell-offs. Um, you just have to have a decent entry price. And so maybe the best thing to do is to like, like a vol catalyst like the ETF event, you can like identify a list of tickers going into that, um, and just be sort of like, instead of like positioned in all of them and then managing your shitty risk when you're wrong for reasons you didn't expect, just like have a relatively clean slate and then just be the, you know, the super silent native warrior crouching on a branch of a tree with the blow dart. Like, you know, as soon as the, as soon as the bomb goes off and you get some cheap tokens to buy on big sell-offs, I think that's the way to do it.

Yeah, I, I'm, I'm, I'm 100% with you. Um, so let's just, let's just wait. That, that's what we're doing now. We're waiting, hiding our time. We're biding our time because there just doesn't seem like— especially on a day like today where everything's up 20% in a market where you see chop, that's just almost always going to be a bad time to buy. Like, oh, just generally, uh, like, if you're not, if you're not in position now for this bounce, chasing it here is almost always the wrong, the wrong thing to do.

Yeah, if you're chasing it, it's because everybody else is chasing it, and So, you know, it's funny, this— the founder of AQR, uh, this guy Clifford Asness, has this, you know, legendary systematic trader, hedge fund manager. He has this quote, you know, which is that if I'm right 52% of the time, uh, then I'm, you know, consistently winning and everything's great. I'm paraphrasing here. Like, basically you're doing very well in systematic trading if you're right 52% of the time. You're just placing tons of little bets. But what he says is that means you're wrong 48% of the time, and that doesn't make, you know, 48% of your year fun to endure. So I think we're just going through one of those times where you have to be a mature trader, can't chop around. This isn't fun right now. This isn't like, uh, when we were just up only, you know.

100%. What do you, uh, what do you make of all of the insanity that's been going on with GME and, and the rest of the rest of the market there. Have you been paying attention to this at all?

So I've been watching it, but I feel no FOMO. I do not give a fuck because it is not an area that I, I consider myself to have an edge in. And I don't have a lot— my edge tends to be long-term views and staying power. Like, I can weather stuff. So I don't know anything about Roaring Kitty or Reddit. I didn't watch the movie. I don't care. Um, so I don't feel— I'm trying to avoid feeling FOMO. I think that in the absence of crypto, like, benchmark price action, people are looking at that, feeling FOMO, and starting to diddle around with it. But I think that's a bad idea, and I'm trying to avoid temptation. What are you— what are you doing?

I, I think— I think what it shows is it shows that there's still a tremendous amount of demand from retail investors. They just don't know exactly what to do, and they need to be— they need to be given direction. I think that's probably why meme coins are doing as well as these people. They— there's a lot of money to pile into things like GME, AMC, but they need a leader. They need somebody to shepherd them into the wilderness and tell them exactly what to buy and how to buy it and when to buy it. And that's you, Jonah. That, that could be— that could be you.

I mean, No way, that's you, man.

No, it's— that's really— it's Ansem.

But yeah, Ansem. Ansem is the leader.

Um, it was sort of— what's sort of interesting to me is that I, I wasn't— I wasn't actually clear on how much appetite there was for this type of, you know, for, for this type of price action. I mean, how much money was there waiting on the sidelines to go buy GME, to go create a short squeeze, to go pile into AMC, send these things up 100, 150%? Uh, the answer was, holy crap, a lot. Um, so maybe, maybe one thing that we're not, uh, taking into account is that despite all of the headlines, people still feel like they have enough money to gamble, and that in itself is very good for crypto.

Yeah, that is a good sort of meta point.

That's the—

it's not the mid-curve take, that's the, the right-curve take. Um, it's funny, it also might be the, the left curve.

GME up last time was followed by BTC up. GME up this time might also be followed by BTC up. Simple one-to-one correlation with one data point.

It's funny you mentioned Ansem. He's like the roaring kitty of crypto. Right. One of the ways that it just like having your finger on the pulse of sentiment in your space is important. One thing that you and I have luckily is a bit of a, like a small platform to gauge that sentiment that some random person with 2 followers wouldn't have. You know, I have a few thousand followers, so I can like put stuff out there and see what happens. Like I did this with Solana as well. Where I would tweet bearish stuff. And I learned from that experience, like, oh wow, like the community cares. It wasn't just crickets. And with, with Boden, I tweeted some bearish stuff and Ansem comes in 10 minutes later and he's like, you're smoking crack. It's not, it's not going there. It's going up only. Then like 100,000 people are like, Ansem, Ansem has spoken. And even me, I've got a little bit of— I'm a little starstruck. I'm like one of those War Boys in Mad Max. I'm like, oh my God, he replied to me! He looked at me! You know, I'm kind of— he— yes, I'm going to Valhalla! Right? And, and so I'm kind of like, uh, I get it, right? Like, all right, the community has spoken. There is money to be gambled right now. There is a leader. Like, people are engaged and they're willing to— they're willing to YOLO into random things. So that degeneracy means that the space is still sitting on some fucking gains and we're not totally like in December 2022 mode, which in and of itself is bullish, but it's not going to take us into a new price band. It's not going to take us to like— it's not going to take us to $100,000. You need like fresh— you need, you need greater fools. You need fresh capital for that.

Yeah. Well, I can say this, it's definitely been a very fun market. I do think that you can probably start to walk away for a bit at this point. You know, I think there was definitely a lot of money to be made, you know, in the last 2, 3 months. I think that people can probably take a bit of a break right now. I hope that doesn't come back to bite me in the ass. But, uh, you know, let's, let's, let's see, let's see, let's see if this GME rally leads to anything, anything, anything with Bitcoin.

I mean, I think inflation has bitten people hard. I think that if it costs $70 for a burger and a cocktail in Manhattan, like, you know, maybe it's more fun to spend that $70 on GameStop gambling at home than, uh, than doing something that used to cost $10. So yeah, I, I think, I think you're right. Take, take a break, uh, consolidate line items, figure out your favorite bets, and be ready to add new line items at great prices, not buy the highs on, on stuff that's rallying.

100%. And see if you can go buy some ETH.

ETH.

Yeah, on May 23rd. Take a look. If we all make good money on this trade, we'll do a little celebration.

Let's have a 1000x get-together.

Yeah, we'll buy you all the burgers. It's good stuff, Jonah.

Good stuff, Avi. Um, maybe we wrap it there. As always, not financial advice, but, uh, Great talking to you.

It's good speaking to you too. Always learn a lot.

Until next time.