Did ETH Just Signal Alt Season?

As we were talking about reflexive assets, that's the pattern. Things go into these crazy downtrends, then they break the downtrend. Then Crypto Twitter starts to pick up on the narratives that were already there about why the asset is bullish. That narrative brings more capital into the asset, which feeds the cycle like a flywheel. The new participants spread the narrative, and you get this reflexive, virtuous loop. We have to find tokens that are starting to turn.

1. The ETH/BTC Trade

This is a good one because we get to shit on some haters who told us we were dumb for buying ETH. I think what's really funny to me is that this encapsulates one of the most common trading errors I see day in and day out. This goes for somebody who first got into trading as well as somebody who's been trading for 20 years. The hardest thing you can do is buy something at a higher price than when you first started looking at it, or after you sold it. If you sold something and want to buy back in at a higher price, that's the most difficult thing you can do as a trader, and it's a huge mistake I see people making all the time. I saw all you fucking haters in the comments making that mistake over and over and over.

Let me give you an example. Jonah and I have been hating on ETH for a while. We started hating on ETH when the ETH/BTC ratio was around 0.06.

That's where you started hating on it. I got on the bandwagon around 40% down from where we started hating on it. The lows from where we started hating on it were a 70% drawdown.

Then, as we've said on many podcasts, you guys need to get this through your heads: we made a little mistake. We maintained no exposure to ETH for a little bit too long. Then ETH started rallying and going up, and we were still like, “We don't like it.” ETH went up a little bit more, and we were like, “Okay, we still don't really like it.” Then we came around to the idea that maybe we should buy some ETH because these treasury companies started buying a ton, the technicals started looking a lot better, and there was no leverage in the system. We were like, “Okay, fuck, maybe.”

This, by the way, was around 0.03 on the ETH/BTC ratio. We were like, “Okay, maybe we should buy some.” This is what we said 14 days ago: “Okay, maybe we should start buying some ETH because it's starting to look good.” We didn't pick the bottom. We didn't pick the absolute lows, but ETH is up 20% since then, and we both made 20% on our money since then. That's pretty good.

We literally YOLOed it on the podcast while we were sitting and talking to each other.

I don't think it was a mistake not to buy the lows.

To be clear, I think we were bear-pilled because we were so negative on ETH for such a long time. We didn't see the green shoots. The treasury-company thing and the technicals happened probably 2 to 3 weeks before we bought ETH. We could have probably made the same argument 2 weeks earlier, which I get. That's why people were like, “Well, you were kind of blinded by your hatred.”

But what I don't understand is why, after we said we bought ETH, there were a lot of people in the comments going, “You fucking losers. Why are you buying ETH now after the move is done?” And it's like, because we trade. We're fucking traders, and we saw an opportunity that had pretty good risk-reward, so we bought it, and then it worked. This is not a complicated thing to understand, or it shouldn't be for most people.

For you, the listener who was in our comments about this, maybe it's difficult to understand. In which case, I'd say take a seat on the bench. It's one of those things where you just have to be mentally flexible. You can't say to yourself, “Just because I missed the move, that makes it a bad idea to buy now,” right?

Yeah, it's like saying Bitcoin traded at $50,000 over the summer and then all the way back up to $70,000–$72,000, which were the highs of the range. After Trump got elected, it went to $75,000, and you're like, “Oh, fuck, I missed a 50% move. Terrible idea to buy it now. I can't buy it now.” Then it goes to $107,000. You idiot.

This is a reflexive asset class. Buying things after a large move can sometimes be the wrong thing if it's a terrible asset. If it's a Worldcoin and there's a ton of adverse selling going on, or if you activate new supply, sure, okay, whatever. But the reality of the situation is that when the technicals align, it's not that you necessarily missed the move. You might not have gotten the perfect entry, but you didn't necessarily miss the move.

You're allowed to trade. You're allowed to be a trader. You're allowed to say, “Okay, maybe I'm not going to invest in this thing and buy it and hold it for 3 years.” You're allowed to say, “I think this is due for a 20% to 25% move because of everything that we're seeing.” That's kind of what we did with ETH. I don't know. I just thought that was really funny, Jonah.

Yeah, I thought it was funny, too. The online loathing that came at us for buying ETH at a level other than the absolute dead-ball lows of a 4-year-long, extremely smooth sell-off is shocking. I want to say I'm surprised, but I'm not, because I guess people expect us to just have all the answers.

Personally, I rotated all my ETH into Bitcoin when the ETH/BTC chart was around 0.055. No, I did not rotate it all back into ETH at 0.02 on the lows. I rotated it all back in at 0.03, and now it's up 20%. That's called buying low and selling high. That's not called making a mistake.

The accounts that I think are totally full of crap are the ones that bullposted ETH every single day from the absolute pico top of 2021 all the way to the pico bottom of April 2025. They're still bulling it, saying, “I was right. I told you.” It's like, “No, you didn't. You were just wrong, and now, finally, you're less wrong.” Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

The broken clocks on Twitter who are just ETH-pilled to the point where they can't see reality or price action are right once every 4 years, and that's not good enough in trading. You have to be right more often than that.

I got the same kind of hate for HYPE. You didn't really post HYPE. I used to bear-post it when HYPE was trading around $35 a token, back in March or so, and then I bought it after one of our podcasts for $12. People were like, “How could you possibly be bear-posting it and then like it?” Nothing's changed. The story is still there. It's like, “Well, actually, the price sold off by 65%.” That's what changed, and I learned a little bit more from Flood.

2. Crypto’s Reflexive Flywheel

To your point about a reflexive asset, it's a pattern, right? Token X sells off for a very long time, so long that you can totally be forgiven for missing the pico bottom, because pico bottoms occur by definition when very few people are buying. Only a very select, special handful of people manage to bottom-tick this. I'm not talking about the people who rode it all the way down from the top and are now kind of happy about it. I'm talking about the people who entered on the lows. That's a very rare group by definition.

I think there's a case that ETH could probably double, maybe triple, from here. But I'll certainly be rotating back to Bitcoin just for a trade if ETH's market cap breaches $1 trillion. I think you need to fulfill some pretty stratospheric expectations at the societal level for ETH to justify that valuation, whereas I think Bitcoin still has quite a ways to go. I could be wrong; I'm willing to reevaluate that.

But as we were talking about with reflexive assets, it's the pattern. Things go into these crazy downtrends, then they break the downtrend. Then Crypto Twitter starts to pick up on the narratives that were already there about why the asset is bullish, why ETH is bullish, why Galaxy is bullish, and why Aerodrome is bullish. That kind of reflexive cycle brings more capital into the asset, which feeds the cycle like a flywheel. The capital brings more attention and more interest to the narrative. The new participants spread the narrative, and you get this reflexive, virtuous loop.

So I guess what we have to do—you and I, and the listeners—is find tokens that are starting to turn, right? It's okay if we don't buy the pico bottom or buy it while it's just listing around and the rest of the space is rallying. I like to buy breakouts in crypto. I think catching a falling knife is a recipe for losing all your money.

You want to wait for these things to bottom out, then start to rally, then start to get the random bull posters, like what happened with Galaxy, talking about how Galaxy is the greatest thing to be incorporated since ExxonMobil or Apple. We have to look for those narratives. Before the call, you were talking a bit about Aave, which seems to be potentially a breakout to buy if it happens. What were you thinking?

I mean, on that one specifically, I think that if you just look at TVL, it's kind of what happened with Ethena. USDe just starts absolutely printing obscene amounts of itself, going from $5 billion to $10 billion in the span of a month over the last 30 days. And Ethena's price is tracked alongside it.

Aave has experienced something similar. I mean, the TVL, if you go look for Aave, has really exploded in the last 3 months. Starting on June 26—sorry, the last 6 weeks—TVL was $25 billion; today it's $38 billion. That's a pretty massive increase, and I don't think we've seen a substantial run yet from Aave, which is why I'm getting kind of bullish on these.

We talked a little bit about it last time on the podcast, but this cycle, I think we both came to the conclusion, is more of an institutional cycle. It's the institutional capital. It's where trad folks—where are Wall Street folks going to put their money? Ethena seems to be capturing some of that attention.

I think Aave is a great place for that money to go. It just needs to get a little bit easier to access. Ripple, ETH, and Bitcoin. My best guess for what happens over the next 6 to 12 months is that everything in crypto puts in a crazy rally. Through the end of December—or maybe October or November—you see a crazy rally in crypto where money starts to get stupid, and then you start to see collapses across the board.

You start to see Bitcoin come down a decent amount. You start to see ETH—I think basically everything ex-Bitcoin—start to collapse pretty aggressively. Bitcoin maybe sees a 25% to 35% drawdown, and then it just continues trucking along because I think Bitcoin is going to continue to attract flows. It's in 401(k)s now, it's in IRAs, and basically, at this point, almost everybody who wants to buy this thing can buy it. It's just a matter of time before more gets allocated.

I do think we're setting up for something stupid ex-BTC, and you kind of want to be positioned for that. You want to be positioned in the names where money can flow. For the next few months, I probably just want to have a portfolio of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, maybe a little bit of Ethena, and then obviously the 1000x token—shameless shill.

3. Finding Breakout Trades

You know what I think is about to get stupid? I think the tea leaves are readable now. We are going to get an ETH alt season, right? The reason why Ethena is up is because as ETH rallies, ETH basis rallies. As participants look for leverage, they buy the derivatives. The derivatives extend relative to spot, and basis increases. Ethena helps you capture that.

So ETH yields—basically, USDe yields on Ethena—go up as ETH basis goes up. Capital flows in, people see the TVL chart go up, and they buy the Ethena token, right? That's another flywheel. Aave—same thing is about to happen there. Basically, as ETH starts to bounce off the lows of this crazy bear cycle, ETH-related altcoins are going to full-send. So maybe that's where we get our alt season this time.

Then, just looking at Bitcoin, I'm not a technical guy. I'm not a chart reader, but I just don't see what stops this thing. My gut is tingling. It feels like Bitcoin is going straight to $150K. Do not stop. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $100, $200, whatever it is—like the Monopoly analogy. This thing is just going to teleport higher.

For me, it's Bitcoin. I hate being long ETH because of how accustomed I am to hating ETH, but I'm long ETH with leverage like a degen. I think it's time to start rolling risk out the curve. I think it might be a little too late for Ethena. Maybe not—no opinion there. But I think Aave is looking good here. I think once Aave starts to rally, I'm going to buy a breakout.

Aerodrome—I freaking love that token. I think it's going to flip Uniswap. You just look at the tokenomics.

What about it do you really like?

Buybacks. The way that they share their fees with stakers. I think another great thing about Aerodrome is the fact that the team's tokens are locked. There aren't VCs ready to dump on any rally.

Basically, the Aerodrome team only gets paid if the token generates emissions—basically, if the product is useful. If the product exhibits utility, then the team gets paid off of emissions. But it's not like they're just sitting on gigantic bags waiting to sell a pop, which is, I think, a very difficult way to set up a crypto project or even a company.

It's hard to be generous when you create equity agreements or tokenomics. You want to create some sort of windfall outcome for yourself, like that EOS founder who just bought a $200 million villa in Sardinia. That's kind of what's going through the minds of all these greedy 22-year-old crypto wannabe-rich kids, right? It takes a really mature group of people to build a product that's both useful and value-accretive to the stakeholders, not just a couple of insiders.

Uniswap, I think—you look inside what's going on on Base—Aerodrome dominates most of the liquidity for a reason, right? It's just cheaper to trade there, and people who create pools get bigger rewards by putting them on Aerodrome. The tokenomics are better for Aerodrome.

Uniswap, meanwhile—every VC from Paradigm on down, and Hayden Adams and a16z—they all have gigantic bags to puke on people, just like they did during the previous cycle. The product itself is less useful and less interesting for LPs.

So, for me, if you just design a better product and you're less greedy, this is the same thing that the founder of likely Vitol did when he set it up. He limited his ownership stake to 5%. He's like, "I can own 90% of a billion-dollar company or 5% of a company worth 20-plus. I'll probably have the same net worth in either case, but the latter option allows me to live a more interesting life. I can incentivize the smartest people to work with me, I can travel the world and do cool things, and change history."

He wasn't just right. He was so right that he created something that was worth 50 to 100 by doing that—by being generous when it was difficult to be generous, by handing out equity to the people that could help him build something bigger than what he could have built just by himself.

That's why likely Vitol is this massive, dominant, extraordinary company, and their closest competitors, like Gunvor, which is 90% owned by one kleptocrat—Gunvor's a great company too, but it's just a piddling little afterthought compared to likely Vitol. Aerodrome is kind of taking the likely Vitol approach, right? They're building for the long run, and that's why I think that token will perform.

There's just stock and flow: less selling, better product, higher token price. You're on mute.

I think that's as great an explanation as you're going to get. You really think this thing can flip Uniswap, though?

Yeah, I mean, now's the time, right? It just broke out. It was selling off randomly for—I don't know what reason—but now it just broke the downward trend channel. We trade crypto. We know how to trade reflexive assets.

George Soros's book is fresh in our minds, you and me. You recommended that book. It's great. Now it broke the downward trend channel, and you can't open Crypto Twitter without seeing 15 different people putting together these long theses on why Aerodrome is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

That's just going to attract more capital and more stakeholders, more influencers, higher token price, et cetera, et cetera. But there's no dumping, right? There's nothing to stop this one. That's why I like it.

I also think one thing that's obviously really helped it is the integration of onchain with Coinbase. It's unbelievable. The fact that you'll basically be able to interact with Base completely and fully within the Coinbase ecosystem at some point in the future—that's going to be incredible, right?

One of the issues with onchain that everyone's always talked about is just how difficult it's been to access and how difficult it is for your average person to use. If Coinbase can integrate this, then at some point in the future, I assume Robinhood's going to integrate it. Then, at some point in the future, you're going to see Fidelity probably, like 3 or 4 years from now, actually integrate it.

But by this move, you kind of see the writing on the wall, where you're going to get these applications that exist on top of this on-chain infrastructure. You can use that on-chain infrastructure in any way that you possibly could, but through an easy-to-work-with interface that you just sign up for instead of creating a wallet.

MetaMask is going to be the equivalent of using the terminal on your computer, right? There are still people who use a terminal because it gives you greater access to your computer, but most people, instead of looking for a file or creating a directory in the terminal, are just going to right-click and select “New Folder” in their Finder app on their Mac, right? They're not going to be messing around with the terminal, even though the terminal has a lot more functionality.

That's the way that I view wallets moving forward. That's the way that I view your Phantoms of the world and your MetaMasks of the world. I just don't think that they'll be able to compete with a combined on-chain, off-chain experience. I think they're going to be obsolete in the next 2–3 years.

Interesting. What you're going to see is all of this infrastructure basically pass through a Coinbase or a Robinhood, which is super bullish for stuff like Aerodrome. Specifically right now because it's Base, right? The thing that's being integrated right now is Base on Coinbase. They're not going out and integrating Solana on-chain. They're not integrating base-layer ETH on-chain. They're integrating Base. In the future, that's obviously going to be widened out a lot, but for now that's just ridiculously bullish for everything on Base.

4. Alt Season?

Yeah, it's crazy, right? Coinbase has, what, 100 million users, and Coinbase has a really slick user experience. The more flow, the more markets that are on Coinbase, the more people will trade them. The more trading that goes on, if some of it is getting routed to a DEX, to the DEX ecosystem that Aerodrome is just dominating, then obviously there's a lot of upside for Aerodrome token holders.

It feels like a moment where you have this product that's going from the backwater world of esoteric, on-chain, degenerate trading to prime time, where retail will just click and deal. I think the shitcoins that are listed on Aerodrome right now are sort of just the beginning. Eventually, you'll have prediction markets on there. You'll have FX and other sorts of markets. Basically, this is an interesting way to have the on-chain world merge with the centralized, off-chain world.

Aerodrome doesn't have a monopoly on the funnel. It's not like Coinbase has just anointed them. They just earned it, right? They just sort of won pole position there. Unless Uniswap changes its tokenomics and structure, and unless the VCs are done selling UNI, I don't really see how anybody gets them impeached from their current pole position. I just don't.

Maybe that's a good momentum trade right here. Maybe you can land a 3-bagger or a 5-bagger. Not that that would be financial advice. You could also lose all your money. Who knows? These are just magic internet coins, but it feels good.

Yeah, it does. It certainly does feel good that there are things happening again and that there are interesting products that are really gaining traction. For a while, we would sit here and go back and forth and be like, “Oh, fuck, it's kind of just Hyperliquid right now.” Now we've added 2 more. We've added Aerodrome and AERO to the list of things that we could buy.

What I've noticed, just as a tangent, is that my group chats that used to be shitcoin group chats are kind of popping off again. They're throwing out all these random, esoteric coins. It's like the gambling spark. I think a lot of people on crypto Twitter got very jaded, Jonah, and they were sitting there like, “I'm going to basically look at the same list of things that I've looked at for the last 2 years.” To their point, most of those things are not doing particularly well. If you look at the stuff that's been around, it's not really doing that kind of—

Down bad.

Like, where the fuck is WIF trading, right? Dogwifhat at 95 cents, not doing so great now—

Stagnating.

Now, I don't own this, nor am I telling you to buy it. I don't own it, and I'm probably never going to buy it myself. It might just go up, but, for example, the shitcoin group chats are talking about something called KTA, which is Keeta Network.

If you go to the website, it looks like something straight out of 2017. The tagline is, “Where networks connect.” And then the second is, “Keeta serves as the common ground for all payment networks and assets.” It's like, yeah, it's more scalable than others. It's fugazi, woozy-wazy bullshit. But somehow they got Eric Schmidt, the founder of Google, to invest in it.

I have a theory about how, but I can't share it on a public call.

Yeah. No, shit. Please share it. I need you. I need you. Basically—I think I know what you might say, actually—

I think I know exactly what you're going to say, and we can talk about it. Anyway, tell me more about the future of money. What's it called? KTA?

Keeta. And it's been up only. It tripled over the last 2 months. It's at a $1.5 billion FDV, and people are just really excited about it. There's another one called REI Network that people are getting really excited about.

Have you heard of this?

Yeah, but I thought it was spam bots. I keep banning people from our group chat, from our 1000x Niger Delta Avengers room. They're like, “Have you seen REI? It's incredible.” I assumed it was just one of those spam bots with the anime-woman profile picture, just putting drain-your-wallet links in our chat. I didn't realize this was actually a real coin with actual—

In my personal opinion, once again, it's a complete scam. 0xREI's website says, “REI is a dynamic collective of AI and crypto enthusiasts committed to revolutionizing the intersection of artificial intelligence and blockchain. Our mission is to pioneer innovative methods for—” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay.

But if you look at the chart, since April 1 of this year, it's gone from a $16 million market cap to $200 million, in kind of a straight line.

Yeah.

All of this is to say, I'm not—again, just to reiterate, because sometimes people are kind of dumb and they think that I'm playing a game. They think that I'm saying, “Oh, no, I don't own this.” No, I genuinely don't own these things, and I'm genuinely not going to touch them. I bring them up—

To point out that the gambling is back. It's just in an area that you might not be paying attention to, right? There are these weird, esoteric—I don't want to say weird and esoteric, because it might just be that we're not, quote-unquote, plugged in anymore. Your average crypto Twitter participant might just not be plugged in to the same places that these things are happening. Maybe you need to change your sources of information if you want to go gamble and make this type of money on crypto, if you want to play that shitcoin game.

Yeah, but it's happening. The gambling that we've so sorely missed for 4 years is happening in certain areas. Let me just provide another anecdote to support yours and then ask you a question. For me, what really gets me—you might be too young for this—but have you ever seen Magnolia with Tom Cruise?

No.

Basically, the premise is Tom Cruise is a guy with shoulder-length straight hair and a ponytail, and he goes around, Tony Robbins motivational-speaker style, speaking to groups of young incel men and teaching them how to get women. It's so comical. It has a late-night-infomercial kind of feel. The director is the great director Paul Thomas Anderson, the same as There Will Be Blood. It's just a genius, genius film.

Anyway, he looks and talks exactly like Murad, the SPX6900 guy, who will be like, “You are joining a cult movement that will take over the entire world. The market cap of SPX6900 is going to $100 trillion.” I'm just watching these videos online and thinking to myself—here comes the question for you, Avi—

Nice to see the animal spirits are back.

Nice to see that the comical Tom Cruise persona—not comparing Murad's looks to Tom Cruise, just for the record; I'm saying he's got the same hairdo as Tom Cruise did in Magnolia—is showing up in late-night infomercial shills for memecoins. I don't know whether this means that things are just getting started or whether this is the ultimate top signal, the froth—get the hell out of the way because this is all going to zero again—indicator.

I think it means things are just getting started, but I feel like we should talk about it because it's too ridiculous to ignore at this point.

Murad is a really interesting case. I've known the guy for a long time. He blew up his first fund, Adaptive Capital, in the COVID crash. He was a brilliant trader—an extremely aggressive guy.

To his credit, people give him shit for blowing up. I don't, because it was very difficult not to blow up in that crash. Actually, most people blew up in that crash. Most people just didn't do it in the ballsy, spectacular way that he decided to do it, which was to lever up his whole fund, right? But the reality is that a lot of people blew up. So, I don't hold that against him in any way.

He was a deep Bitcoiner, a pure Bitcoiner, and he's just gone deep on this SPX6900 thing. He's really gone deep on the whole memecoin thesis: that memecoins are the future, that gambling is the future, and that all this stuff has staying power. I just don't buy it, Jonah. I genuinely just don't buy it.

He's a smart guy, so I saw the performative act he was putting on on Twitter, and that's kind of what I assume it is—a performative act. But I'm sure there's some kernel of belief in this. He does genuinely believe that the memecoin thesis plays out, which is that attention is all that matters and that people will just throw their money into things that provide them a sense of community, or that they get to enjoy being part of a cult.

I consistently see these memecoin communities fracture day in and day out. Two and a half years ago, dogwifhat had the strongest memecoin culture, and then it completely fractured, right? You can insert any memecoin here. That's kind of been true for everything except for Dogecoin.

Dogecoin kind of only exists today in the state that it exists because the richest man in the entire world took it under his wing.

Right. Yeah. I think without that, Dogecoin is probably 90% lower. It's down 90% from where it is today.

It's kind of hard for me to really understand what's going on. But the conclusion that I come to is that these periods of gambling come around once every few years, and you kind of just need to be positioned for them, right? There's going to be a 2- to 3-week period where all these weird, shitty things go 10 to 50x. If you're not already in it, you're probably not going to catch it.

And that's probably what he's trying to do here.

Yeah. It's sort of funny. Nobody ever talked about gambling on Ponzi schemes when I was a kid. The word gambling was associated with, if you're rich, you go to Vegas; if you're less rich, you go to Reno or Atlantic City, and you sit in a smoke-filled room and pull the slot machine.

Now that I think about it, that isn't necessarily any more or less exciting than investing in an online Ponzi where you just get to click refresh on Twitter all day and see who's talking about your bags. In fact, Ponzi schemes like memecoins are probably a lot more entertaining than going and sitting next to a 78-year-old woman at a slot machine on a casino floor.

Nothing against 78-year-old ladies. My mom's 78. She's great. Love you, Mom. It's just a different form of gambling.

I think at this point, nothing I'm invested in right now is going to 50x in 3 weeks. Maybe this is something that you and I can talk about: how we're approaching this as guys who are starting to get more mature. We've been in it for a couple of cycles, especially you.

We're starting to mature out of the real online Degen Discord, 24/7 monitoring of the shitcoin space. We're starting to have more macro theses and invest more money in things with lower return profiles but less risk because we're trying to protect capital instead of grow it.

Are we just getting old? Are we the boomers that we used to make fun of, who would just look at crypto as an entire sector and dismiss it? Should we really be investing in these things that we have absolutely no belief in and that promise ridiculous stuff just because it's all going to 50x, or do you think it's more likely to selectively 50x?

5. How To Trade This Cycle

I think the reason why I'm not FOMOing is because I think there are too many coins for all of it to go up. I think it's going to be a very selective few assets that do that sort of move.

Well, I think it's important for us to really try not to be those boomers, because we can do one of 2 things with this podcast and with each other. We can either talk to each other about how we would invest, or we could try to use the skills that we've built up over our entire lives to figure out what somebody who isn't in our shoes—what a 22-year-old who isn't in our shoes—is going to do.

How are they going to look at the world, and how can we help them navigate this whole shit?

Right? We can talk about trading Bitcoin and trading ETH and all this other stuff, but I do think we owe it to ourselves and our audience to dive into what else is out there. That's why I spent 45 minutes reading these shitcoin chats, trying to understand: Where the fuck are these people getting their information from?

I need to know who's shilling Zora, who's shilling KTA, and who's shilling REI. What's happening here? I do think that there is an opportunity to scan for things, try to find them early, and make these $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, or $50,000 bets that turn into $100,000 to $250,000.

I think what we can do is say, “Hey, maybe look at that stuff now.” At the end of August, if we feel like things are getting overheated, we can say, “Hey, maybe stop looking at that stuff now, because now you're in value-extractor mode.”

I think that's the hardest thing for people to do: switch their mentality from “This is when I play” to “This is when I leave the table.” People don't know when to join the table, and they don't know when to leave the table. I think we've sort of figured that out.

That's definitely a skill that we have. We know when we should be playing the game, and we know when we shouldn't be playing the game.

And right now, it seems like the beginning. The game is getting started, and at some point in the next 3 to 5 weeks, the game is probably going to be over for this type of trade. So I guess what I'm saying is, hey, maybe start going on TikTok and reading the comments, and try to play this roulette for the next 4 weeks. That might actually be a reasonable strategy.

6. Why ETH Needs To Pump

You know what I'm realizing just talking to you about this, Avi? ETH is really the benchmark of online degeneracy. Bitcoin was full send: it went from $20,000 to $120,000 in a straight line. People weren't rolling out of Bitcoin to bet on stuff.

I think the Bitcoin participant base is just a little bit too tinfoil-hat weird—Bitcoin maximalists, institutions, or mom-and-pop investors believe in that, but not the rest of it. Not in crypto.

But once ETH started pumping, that's when all of the little random woodland creatures came out of their holes and started shilling all of these random tokens, and they started to send. So, to me, maybe our barometer should be—just for the purposes of listeners out there looking to decide when to invest in risky crypto assets—maybe you just take Bitcoin off your board and watch what ETH is doing.

If ETH is above a short-term moving average, like 4, 8, or 16 days, you can feel comfortable with this stuff. But as soon as ETH starts to tank—and by ETH I mean ETH/BTC—I think some of this could unwind.

Maybe another way to look at it is, rather than moving averages and ETH price action, you could look at ETH treasury companies. You could say, “All right, how many billions are left to buy? Who's doing it? Let me make a list of all the treasury companies and the sizes that they've lined up, and monitor them every day and see which ETH treasury companies are buying ETH, how much they have to buy, and when they're going to buy it.”

As long as that flow is coming in, all of the weird stuff is going to keep rallying, including NFTs. CryptoPunks just blasted through their floor price—the previously established floor price. There are sweeps going on. Punks OTC bought a Monkey Punk, Ape Punk, whatever it's called.

This stuff is all rallying bigly. I think as long as the ETH treasury companies keep lifting, we’re in the safe zone for the riskier assets. And then if ETH gets less frothy, get out of the way, because all that stuff is coming right back down to earth. Treasury companies, though—you would know more than me. What’s their time frame? Are they going to be buying for a while, or is this all just a flash in the pan?

They’re going to be buying until people start giving them money.

Yeah. And people will keep giving them the money. Reflexivity again. They’ll keep giving them the money as long as it works. This is nuts.

I love crypto.

Yeah. This is totally nuts. I mean, look, it’s when Wall Street runs out of appetite, but for now, they just keep going. And that’s the thing: I think you’re right on ETH. ETH is the harbinger of alt season, and so now that ETH is really pumping, people are probably going to start allocating elsewhere.

7. Are NFTs Back?

Have you checked NFTs at any point? Have you looked at their prices and what they’ve done? I follow Punks OTC’s analysis of the Punks market. I haven’t looked at the other stuff. I see that Fidenzas are going, Punks are going. I don’t think people are buying expensive NFTs on other chains. I don’t think we’re seeing the Azuki phenomenon this time. Solana feels like a bit of a ghost town right now, for I don’t know what reason. It’s all about ETH-based, ETH-related.

Yeah, I mean, things are up in ETH terms. That’s what I’m seeing, a decent amount. Punks over the last 30 days are up 32% against ETH. Even Bored Apes are up 20% against ETH. Pudgy Penguins are up 34% against ETH.

Oh, wow. Pudgy Penguins—I always forget, they just ran so freaking hard. They were selling them in Walmarts. I mean, they produce all these cute TikTok videos. If you’re on TikTok, you’ll see these videos. They’re everywhere. It’s like—

Are you on TikTok, Avi?

I am on TikTok. It’s like these cute little penguins hang out with each other.

I don’t know, women really like it.

Chromie Squiggles are up 50%.

Another project I just don’t vibe with. But yeah, people love it. They’re like, “Oh, this is the most important artwork since Da Vinci.” But I can’t see it. I like Fidenzas. I like Fidenzas. I love CryptoPunks. The EtherRock thing is awesome. I love Autoglyphs. Larva Labs under new management is a cool thing.

But yeah, I like that the quirkier side of crypto is coming back. I hope it comes back to stay this time and doesn’t become something that we all get mocked for.

Yeah, let’s find out what to talk about here. I think basically, wait for ETH to run out of steam and then stop playing the game. But one thing that I’ll leave you with is I pulled a Jonah.

What’d you do?

I tweeted out, “Tell me about KTA and REI. What are these things? What are these complete scams? Up only. Who is buying this stuff? Where are the gamblers getting their information from? I don’t see it on CT anymore,” as an attempt to rage-bait these people into giving me their information.

I love that.

Because if I ask somebody nicely, I’m like, “Hey, guys, how do I find out what you’re seeing? Where should I go?” They’re going to be like, “Fuck off, man. That’s my information.” If I’m like, “Dude, you’re a fucking idiot. You like these things? They’re complete scams. Show me that they’re not complete scams,” they’re like, “Take all of my information.”

It is amazing how well that works. People fall for it every time. Nobody’s like, “Oh, you’re just trying to rage-bait me for information. I’m not going to tell you.” They’re like, “What? What?” No, it’s literally like the way that you’ve seen it on shows like Planet Earth, or maybe in middle school—the way that a couple of dudes will go at each other on the playground. Yeah, it’s ridiculous.

Definitely rage-bait people more on Twitter, Avi. We miss you on Twitter.

I’m back.

Oh, yes, Avi’s back.

8. What's Happening In TradFi?

I have a question for you. What if there’s another black swan in the macro space that I’ve been monitoring? It hit my radar this week. Avi, what if the legal system in the United States strikes down Trump’s unilateral tariff stuff? Normally, you’re supposed to have congressional approval to slap tariffs on foreign countries, and he’s kind of been negotiating all these trade deals under the guise of a national emergency that he kind of declared, which is legally borderline and possibly spurious.

I think I’d put an 80% chance that all of this sticks, but there’s a 20%, maybe 25%, chance that this could go to the Supreme Court and they say, “Actually, Trump acted illegally. He had no authority to do any of this.” Does the stock market just gas higher if that happens, and crypto with it, or do we just get another spat of insane volatility and lower prices?

It’s kind of hard to say, to be honest. My general take on these types of things is that whatever happens, it’s short-term. The market has a predetermined path at this point, and that’s up and to the right. So if it goes higher, then it probably comes down a little bit and returns to its march up. If the market panics and freaks out, then that’s probably also short-lived, and it goes back to its march.

I mean, look, Jonah, if massive tariffs on countries couldn’t nuke the market, it’s over. What truly is going to nuke the market unless it’s a war?

An actual nuke. Yeah.

Like an actual nuke. One area that politics could have an influence on is weed. I saw this. Hear me out.

If Trump reclassifies marijuana, then that’s going to be extremely good for the weed complex. Isn’t there an ETF with all the different weed companies in it?

Let’s pull that.

Yeah, a cannabis ETF is up 52% over the last month.

Oh, wow.

And if he approves it, it’s just going to go even higher. And if he genuinely follows through on this, it’s going to be a lot higher.

Hold on. Polymarket cannabis. Let’s see: “Weed rescheduled in 2025.”

Do you know what’s actually really interesting?

38% chance on Polymarket.

Yeah. Tasty. So maybe you got a 2-bagger on Polymarket.

Could be. Could be a good punt. That’s all I’m going to say. Could be a good punt for you guys. Anyway, I’ve got to run. Jonah, this has been a pleasure, as always, talking to you.

Likewise.

Have a good one, man. I’ll see you in a week.

Adios. Good luck out there, everybody.