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1000x · · 47 min

Picking Winners: Time To Be Bullish? | 1000x

Avi FelmanJonah Van Bourg

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TL;DR
  • Bitcoin’s decisive levels are $70,000 for renewed animal spirits and $55,000 for forced liquidation, with the territory between them still a punishing range. Avi no longer sees $52,000 as likely in the current macro environment, but he highlighted a bullish tell: BTC holding $67,000-$68,000 while funding stays flat and traders keep shorting the range high. “The world changes if Bitcoin gets above 70k.”

  • The latest rally looked macro-driven rather than crypto-specific, weakening the case for chasing it. CPI came in slightly cooler than expected and lifted Bitcoin alongside equities, while stablecoin balances and near-term ETF flows remained subdued. Buying $55,000-$57,000 was a six-month thesis, not a promise that BTC would never revisit those prices.

  • ETF demand has been historic, but Jonah’s mid-curve view is that Bitcoin ETF inflows may already be around “inning five or six,” not inning one. IBIT gathered $18 billion in 49 days and FBTC $10 billion in 77 days, versus 817 days for GLD to reach $10 billion. Jonah estimated perhaps $50-$75 billion of additional inflows and guessed that AUM may peak around $100 billion; Avi called the near-end view a spicy take and took the other side. Jonah’s counterexample was Wisconsin’s disclosed $160 million position: a few basis points from pension systems could mean institutional adoption is only beginning.

  • The preferred portfolio is smaller, more narrative-driven, and willing to pair winners against tokens without a narrative or with substantial supply unlocks. Avi highlighted NEAR, AR and Livepeer while arguing Blur, Chainlink, Filecoin, FLOW and MATIC lacked comparable flows; his clean expression was “short SUI and long AR” for several months. “This is a time to consolidate the portfolio” because dispersion and supply unlocks can keep broad alt exposure bleeding.

  • Jonah cut roughly 75% of his BODEN position because a meme without fresh buyers has no earnings report to rescue it. He retained some upside for an election-driven move but saw weakening odds that Donald Trump or Joe Rogan would champion it. Avi asked whether holders might remain diamond-handed into the election; Jonah said there was potentially another 10x, perhaps 5x from the roughly $150 million market cap after the move. The investor test is both catalysts and holder quality: “How paper-handed or diamond-handed is the current participant base?”

  • The May 23 ETH ETF decision offered a conditional event trade rather than a blind pre-position. If denial reused Bitcoin’s market-manipulation and spot/futures-correlation rationale without calling ETH a security, Avi expected an eventual approval path and favored buying a headline dip—especially ETHE, whose discount was cited at 24%-25%. A security- or staking-based denial would be much more bearish and could inform how markets price Solana, Lido and Eigen-related assets.

  • GME and AMC showed that retail still has substantial gambling capacity, but that is not automatically fresh capital for a Bitcoin breakout. Jonah saw the 100%-150% moves as evidence that sidelined retail money will mobilize when given a leader; Avi refused the trade because he had no edge in Roaring Kitty or Reddit. Ansem’s ability to reverse BODEN sentiment showed the same reflex inside crypto, yet “you need greater fools, you need fresh capital” to reach something like $100,000 BTC.

Digest · the substance, structured for research

1. Bitcoin remains a range trade until $55,000 or $70,000 breaks

  • Jonah opened long but deliberately uncommitted: if the market nuked, he wanted to shop; if it ripped, he would do nothing. “If we’re never going to hit 60k again in Bitcoin, it’s party time,” but his base case remained more chop.

  • Avi’s evidence was repeated rejection on both sides. BTC had attacked $60,000 and $65,000 several times, including a low-liquidity plunge from $63,000 to $61,000 “in half a second” that fully reversed.

  • The range itself was trapping impatient traders: people shorted each low to catch the breakdown, then bought each high to catch the breakout. “This is just classic range-trading behavior,” likely to persist until enough participants detach over the summer.

  • Avi’s map was explicit: above $70,000 revives animal spirits; below $55,000 prompts liquidation. A more subtle bullish tell would be BTC at $67,000-$68,000, flat funding, and a consensus that the range high should still be shorted.

2. Historic ETF growth supports the cycle, but may not drive the summer

  • Avi’s near-term caution rested on two missing inputs: stablecoin balances were not increasing and ETF flows were “not really doing anything.” With the Nasdaq and S&P at highs while BTC lagged, he treated the divergence as bearish rather than assuming Bitcoin would catch up.

  • Jonah’s pushback was scale: IBIT accumulated $18 billion in 49 days, FBTC $10 billion in 77 days, while GLD needed 817 days to gather $10 billion. Continuing at the initial pace would have been “pretty unprecedented.”

  • Jonah estimated another $50-$75 billion of inflows until BTC was reasonably fairly priced, potentially enough to drive its $1.3 trillion market cap up roughly 3x toward half of gold’s stated $16 trillion market cap. He later guessed ETF AUM might peak around $100 billion, while also saying pension adoption could mean the process was just getting started: “We’re probably in inning 5 or 6.” Avi called the near-end view a spicy take and took the other side.

  • Jonah argued Wisconsin’s disclosed $160 million allocation could be a template for state and occupational pension systems managing trillions. Their shared timing scenario was summer chop, Q3 front-running, then Q4 or Q1 allocations potentially producing the “crazy rally.”

3. New buyers—not nominal narratives—separate tokens from bags

  • Jonah’s framework began bluntly: “Every token is a memecoin.” Without earnings passed through to holders or commodity-like consumption, the practical question is who supplies the next pool of capital—the “greater fool” willing to take the asset off your hands.

  • That logic drove his roughly 75% reduction in BODEN. It was trending down rather than chopping, and no earnings release could reverse its psychology; he VWAP-sold and moved that money to Solana while retaining enough exposure not to regret a surprise election-driven rally.

  • Jonah saw two catalysts: purchases after Joe Biden gaffes, or a major cultural figure such as Joe Rogan or Donald Trump promoting the joke. At a Mar-a-Lago event, Trump said a roughly $240 million coin “doesn’t seem like a great investment”; Jonah said BODEN initially rose on that awareness before people sold into it.

  • Holder behavior mattered as much as catalysts. Jonah framed the test as how “paper-handed or diamond-handed” the current participant base was. Avi asked whether holders might remain positioned through the election because of another potential 10x; Jonah agreed there was potentially another 10x, perhaps 5x from the roughly $150 million market cap after the move.

4. Concentration and relative value beat indiscriminate alt exposure

  • Both hosts wanted fewer line items because dispersion had replaced broad beta. “This is a time to consolidate the portfolio,” Jonah agreed: reduce complexity, concentrate the book, and stop assuming every lagging alt deserves to catch up.

  • Avi identified active narrative flows in NEAR, AR and Livepeer, while Blur, Chainlink, Filecoin, FLOW and MATIC had done little. With unlocks adding supply, his simple relative-value expression was to short SUI and go long AR for several months.

  • His macro fear had nevertheless moderated. When BTC previously traded around $70,000, Avi could envision $52,000; after softer inflation anxiety and the earlier fears becoming stale, “I don’t really see 52k in this particular environment anymore.”

  • Jonah added the longer-cycle check: MVRV Z-score was 2.0, versus below 1 around FTX lows and above 7 at euphoric highs. Short-term flows looked weak, but that measure still placed crypto toward the low end of its broad cycle range.

5. May 23 turns the ETH denial rationale into the trade

  • Jonah expected almost nobody to believe the ETH ETF would be approved on May 23, leaving a negative headline substantially priced in. The critical information was not simply “denied,” but the SEC’s stated reason.

  • A denial based only on spot manipulation and insufficient spot/futures correlation would repeat the earlier Bitcoin logic. As ETH futures matured and correlation strengthened, that objection could eventually disappear; Avi therefore considered the rationale bullish even if the first headline caused a selloff.

  • Avi favored ETHE, citing its 24%-25% discount; Jonah expected a small selloff and a temporarily wider discount as disappointed holders sold. The proposed trade was to buy the dip, with the discount potentially closing materially if the decision preserved an eventual ETF path.

  • A security or staking rationale would be materially worse because regulatory clarity might remain distant. Jonah suggested waiting before lifting staking-linked assets such as Lido or Eigen; conversely, no security or staking language could “open the road for a Solana ETF in the future.”

6. Entry price and patience are the available edge

  • Their event-trading lesson was to enter nimble, build a ticker list, and buy temporary dislocations after the decision. On a day when everything was up roughly 20%, chasing was “almost always going to be a bad time to buy.”

  • Jonah’s favorite formulation came from John Wu: crypto requires being “dumb enough to buy the coin and smart enough to sell it.” Those are opposing mentalities, so being early—and therefore owning a forgiving entry price—is often the only practical solution.

  • He pictured the trader as a “silent native warrior crouching on a tree branch” with a blow dart, waiting for the event to create cheap inventory. Even a systematic trader winning 52% of the time must endure an unpleasant 48%; maturity means not chopping yourself up.

7. Meme-stock mania proves risk appetite, not a Bitcoin breakout

  • Avi felt no GME FOMO because he had no edge in Roaring Kitty, Reddit or the meme-stock complex. He was trying to avoid the temptation to wander into unfamiliar risk while crypto lacked benchmark price action.

  • Jonah drew the broader signal from GME and AMC rising 100%-150%: retail still had “holy crap, a lot” of money available to gamble, but needed a leader to coordinate it. That appetite was constructive for crypto even if it supplied no immediate Bitcoin price target.

  • Ansem played that role inside crypto. After Jonah posted bearish BODEN thoughts, Ansem replied that he was “smoking crack” and the coin was going up-only; the crowd’s response showed engagement and willingness to gamble, but not enough new capital for $100,000 BTC. The closing prescription was to take a break, simplify, and wait.

Avi Felman

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. You have Nasdaq at the highs, you have the 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, a time to reduce line items.

That's what I'm 100% on board with: reducing complexity in the book right now. There are going to be things that do very well, and you can trade those, but 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've been chopping around for a while, but this morning we had a very nice move in the crypto markets. It's the biggest candle we've seen in a while, and we've finally gotten over that $65K hump. Everything is up a lot today. It's looking good. How are you feeling, Jonah?

Jonah Van Bourg

Going good. I'm long. I don't really know if I'm going to get my chance to buy a dip or not, but I don't care. If this is the last time we ever hit $60K again in Bitcoin, it's party time. I'm not going to be complaining.

I kind of lack conviction on a lot of the space right now. 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. Frankly, I feel like we're going to keep chopping for a while. Outside of the barbell portfolio that we talked about, I don't have a lot of conviction right now.

Avi Felman

I think so. The one thing that was clear to me is that after we failed to break $60K again—we had a few shots there—last Friday we had that ridiculous sell-off on pretty low liquidity and low volume, where we went straight from $63K to $61K in half a second. Then we reversed that entire move, bled out again, and started moving up.

We've attacked $60K a bunch of times at this point, and we haven't been able to get through. On the same side, we've attacked $65K a lot and haven't really been able to get through either. Let's see how we sustain this move here. My view is that we're still in for chop.

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 Boden.

I do think that while BTC is still a good buy, and there are some alts that I like—I’ve been talking about AR for a long time—there are definitely some select alts that I still like. But as a general complex, the alt complex doesn't really interest me other than for bounces right now, until we get a sustained rally from BTC.

I'm sort of on the side of the duck who tweeted that memes are over for now. I don't think they're over for the full cycle, but I do think that on every move higher, people get really excited, and on every move lower, people get very bearish. That tells me we're probably in for a little bit more chop through the summer. I'm not chasing every move higher or every move lower at this point.

Jonah Van Bourg

Yeah, we have to talk about that. I do think that some of my takes were taken out of context on Twitter. When I said buying $55K, $56K, $57K—that area I was talking about on the last podcast—was a good place to buy, it doesn't mean that we're never going to reach that level again. It means that if you buy there and wait for an extended period of time, like 6 months, you're probably going to be very happy.

I completely agree with that, even though we're at $66K. I'm not saying this because we're back at my target. We've done very well since then, but I think that got taken out of context because we traded back to $60K and everyone was freaking out. They were saying, “What about when you said buying at $56K was such a great idea? Now we're back at $60K, and you're actually a bit nervous. We were at $63K, and you're a bit bearish at $63K. You must be wrecked.”

For the record, Avi's just fine. I remember seeing a chart on Twitter of a few different Twitter personalities in crypto. One axis was degen versus normie, and the other axis was something like perma-bull versus doomer. Avi got put in the lower-right quadrant. According to some nobody on Twitter, you are basically the most doomer degen.

People are doing the same thing to me. I'm getting criticized about Boden, which is interesting, and we'll get into that later. But here are a couple of 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 that nuked. Oil nuked, the S&P nuked—everything nuked. Today, everything is ripping. Why? Because CPI came in slightly less hot than expected. This is super important because it determines Fed action, and inflation is basically the most important economic issue in America right now. Everything gapped higher on the CPI print today, including Bitcoin. There was no fundamental narrative for Bitcoin, nor was there a fundamental narrative for the sell-off last Friday.

Observation number 3: One thing I notice junior traders doing when they first join is chopping themselves up. They buy high and sell low. That doesn't mean selling something that's going down is a bad idea, or buying something that's going up is a bad idea. It means that if that's all you ever do, you're going to bleed out.

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. When something is chopping sideways, money isn't really being made. 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 for the most part, the space isn't really making money. If anything, I would guess people are buying highs, selling lows, chopping themselves up, and losing money. Everybody's a little pissed off, and everybody's overinterpreting everything.

Let's break this down into time frames. Avi, you convinced me of something on the last podcast. You said this thing was probably going to dip below $60K at some point, at which point you'd like to start shopping pretty heavily. I hadn't really thought about that. I was in blinders-on bullish mode. I agree with you, and I'm prepared to blow the rest of my wad if that happens, because I'm medium- to long-term quite bullish.

If it goes up without pulling back, neither you nor I are going to be crying or upset, unable to participate. It's not like we're out of crypto. Those are the sorts of things we need to observe going into this period of time. Would you agree, Avi, that people are losing a bit of money right now and are kind of pissed off? That's how it feels.

Avi Felman

Yeah, I think everyone's gotten chopped up like crazy right now. The other thing that's pissing people off is that there's a ton of dispersion in the market. There are some people who are making money, but the majority of people are not.

That actually tends to lead to these ranges, because people have probably stepped out of the market to some degree. Whenever we trade lower, everybody says, “Now's my chance. Now it's going to break. Let me pile in. Let me finally make some money and catch this next move.” Everyone shorts the lows, and then those shorts get taken out.

Then it's the opposite on the top side. Whenever we rally to the top side of the range, people say, “It's finally time to make some money. I haven't made money in a while. Let me buy here. We're going to go.” Then we don't go anywhere. This is just classic range-trading behavior.

I think the range will resolve itself once people have detached themselves from the market. We're probably going to lose more people throughout the summer, and then that's when this thing is finally going to start picking a direction.

The 2 things that stand out to me are still that stablecoin balances are not going up, and ETF flows aren't really doing anything.

Jonah Van Bourg

ETF flows did too much. There's an amazing chart out there that I saw. It shows assets under management on the y-axis and time on the x-axis. These Bitcoin ETFs—the Fidelity one and BlackRock's—accumulated assets faster, by literally orders of magnitude, than the 2nd-, 3rd-, and 4th-fastest ETFs in history. It's literally 10 orders of magnitude.

It has slowed down, but if it had continued at that pace, it would have been pretty unprecedented. We're taking a breather, and the jury is still out. But I agree that in the short term, this isn't going to drive a big bull run. In the medium to long term, who knows?

I have the chart here. IBIT, in 49 days, accumulated $18 billion. FBTC, in 77 days, accumulated $10 billion. GLD, in 817 days from when it was first issued, accumulated $10 billion. The Fidelity ETF accumulated the same amount in literally 10% as much time.

I'll post this on the YouTube page so everybody can see it. It's pretty crazy. It took 10 times as long for GLD, the gold ETF, to accumulate as much AUM as the 2nd-biggest crypto ETF.

Gold is even harder for the average person to buy than Bitcoin, in my personal opinion. 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 a gold bar, but it's a pain in the ass.

I would wager that the percentage of people who are going to hold gold ETFs as a proportion of gold's market cap will actually be higher in the long run than the proportion of people who hold BTC relative to the BTC market cap. You can hold BTC outside of the investor class. There are people in India holding gold, and there are central banks and so on, but all that being said, we're probably close to the end of BTC ETF inflows for now.

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. If you think about how big BTC should be relative to gold—is it at parity, half, or a 3rd?—to me, half would be insane parity time.

Gold's market cap is $16 trillion, and Bitcoin's market cap right now is $1.3 trillion. You think $75 billion worth of inflows drives Bitcoin's market cap from $1.3 trillion to maybe 3x? Maybe it would drive it up 3x. I think another $50 billion to $75 billion would drive it up 3x.

Avi Felman

What you said about nearing the end of the ETF inflows for now is a spicy take. I would take the other side of it. Then you said another $50 billion to $75 billion.

Jonah Van Bourg

I'm not saying that the ETF is going to drive Bitcoin to infinity. I'm not saying we're close in terms of price appreciation. I'm saying that we're not in inning 1 of the Bitcoin ETF. We're not in inning 2. We're probably in inning 5 or 6 of Bitcoin ETF inflows.

I don't know—the jury is out. Did you see that the Wisconsin state pension fund, for government employees, bought $160 million worth of Bitcoin ETFs? They just disclosed it.

If that sort of pool of capital is what we're talking about—if that's the type of person or institution that's interested in these ETFs—we could just be getting started. Those pension funds manage tens of trillions of dollars. If they're putting even a few basis points into IBIT, that's a huge allocation. Not them, but there are 49 other states that have pension funds, and then there are fire departments and teachers' systems. These pension funds are just everywhere; they're enormous.

Avi Felman

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

Jonah Van Bourg

Maybe. I think we're probably peaking at $100 billion of AUM. At $100 billion of AUM, you're probably not getting much more. That's probably stable in terms of what's coming in and what's coming out.

I think what happens is that Bitcoin ETF flows are the main driver of BTC price action, and I don't think that happens over the summer. I think that happens in Q4. Then in Q3, you probably get people front-running those Q4 allocations and Q4-to-Q1 allocations into next year. That's when you get a crazy rally. That's my mid-curve take. I think a reasonable number of people agree with that, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's wrong.

Avi Felman

I agree with it. In that interim period before we get that, I think you get some dispersion in the altcoin space. Because 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.

I don't think it's the worst time in the world to take a break from trying to trade ridiculously actively and just wait for the extremes. You can obviously take trades. Yesterday was a good example of a good trade: You had a macro event that was reasonably priced in and watched, but you had a lot of people still shorting the lows—shorting that $60K level—so obviously they were going to get blown out.

But will this draw enough new capital in to get to new all-time highs? Probably not, though I can always be wrong.

Jonah Van Bourg

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All right, let's get back to the show. New capital is what's key. I posted this framework for investing in tokens on Twitter. The first thing is that every token is a memecoin. Just accept it. Even Bitcoin is a memecoin.

Whenever you're holding something that doesn't fundamentally pass earnings through to you, or isn't a commodity that will be bought incessantly by some consumer to produce buildings, transportation fuels, wires, semiconductors, or something like that—if you're just holding something and waiting for somebody else to buy it from you, which is the state of crypto given that the regulatory picture isn't clear—you have to ask yourself who the greater fool is who's going to take this off your hands.

Like you said, it comes down to new capital. I'm going through my portfolio right now and asking myself, “Is more money going to come in to buy this asset that I'm holding?”

For Bitcoin, the answer is unequivocally yes. That's true for all the geopolitical and macro reasons we've discussed ad nauseam on this podcast. It's not even worth doing further analysis for now, especially with the halving, less selling, and the prospect of ETF-bottlenecked pension-fund flows that we just talked about.

For memecoins, I also deeply believe in them. But when I see memecoins doing down-only instead of chopping with the rest of the space, especially ones that I hold, I'm going to derisk ratably as they go down. I'm going to VWAP-sell as the thing is trending down.

There's no earnings report that's going to come out and lift that token back up. I'm just waiting for another pool of capital to come in. If it's especially a cartoon coin, psychology can become pretty significant and trends can accelerate.

In the case of Boden, I've been all-in on it for a while. I reduced about 75% of my position on the way down because I was thinking, “This is not a chopping asset. This is people just getting out every single day.”

Now it's rallied about 100% from the lows of a day and a half ago, so my final fills from that VWAP sell are way out of the money. But I still think it was the right thing to do, because as you lose conviction in something, you should act on it. That money is in Solana now; it's not in Boden.

If Boden goes to the moon, I still have a little bit, so I'm not going to kick myself. But for Boden, at least—and you should ask this of yourself for any memecoin—what are the catalysts to bring in entirely new participant bases? That's question number 1. Question number 2 is: How paper-handed or diamond-handed is the current participant base?

With Boden, there are 2 kinds of catalysts. One is that people buy it whenever Joe Biden says something stupid. That hasn't really played out in the past. The other potential catalyst is that a major cultural influencer like Joe Rogan or Donald Trump starts pounding the table on it to harm Joe Biden, because he's an old man and that's an easy dead horse to kick.

Those are the 2 big catalysts. I'm getting less optimistic that Rogan or Trump will start parading this around. But if they do, I still have a little bit of risk on.

Avi Felman

Don't you think people will be diamond-handed into the election because of that? There's kind of no reason to sell this thing before the election, and there's another potential 10x.

Jonah Van Bourg

Definitely another potential 10x into the election, especially from a $150 million market cap after the 100% move. Maybe it's a 5x.

I was at the Mar-a-Lago event, and somebody asked Trump what he thought of Boden. He said, “$240 million for a coin doesn't seem like a great investment.” Boden actually did quite well off of that.

I think it went up, and then people just sold straight into it. Then it went down in a straight line. The reaction was a little bit mid-curve: “Trump doesn't like it.” But the reality is that Trump knows about it now, and that's a good thing.

A lot of these secondary memes are going to find it hard to hold on to their audience in a world of chop.

Avi Felman

With all that being said, the world changes if Bitcoin gets above $70K. It's 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 and people start liquidating.

My answer to the question of where the new buyers of BTC are going to come from is that I'm not 100% sure right now. You have Nasdaq at the highs, you have the S&P at the highs, and BTC is not. What that tells me is that whenever there's a divergence between equities and BTC, I view that as quite bearish for BTC.

Bitcoin doesn't normally catch up in that case. It normally goes down more.

Jonah Van Bourg

I agree that divergence is super important in crypto. When memes are down-only and Bitcoin is unchanged, or certain memes are down-only, that's a reason to be cautious of those memes and rotate into something a little bit more benchmark.

Like you said, there's dispersion going on and there's chop. This is a time to consolidate the portfolio. It's a time to reduce line items. That's what I'm 100% on board with: reducing complexity in the book right now.

There are going to be things that do very well, and you can trade those. But in aggregate, you just want a more concentrated portfolio.

Avi Felman

Things that have a narrative behind them are doing well. All the AI coins are doing extremely well. The NEARs of the world, ARs of the world, and Livepeers of the world are all doing very well.

Whereas something like Blur, Chainlink, Filecoin, Flow, and all of these other coins—MATIC hasn't done anything. It's just because you're not going to get flows to these coins.

I actually think a great way to trade this market is that if you're worried about the downside because we're in a choppy market, you short the things that don't really have a narrative or that have a lot of supply unlocks. You can probably get a good short on SUI, then long AR, carry that trade for a few months, and call it a day.

I do think that general market fears are a little bit overblown. There was nervousness permeating the market about a month ago over high data prints and high inflation, and today that has been flipped on its head, which is why we're trading at the highs.

General worry about the market is probably a bit overblown. That's why I'm not as concerned as I was in the past. When we were at $70K last time, I was saying I could see $52K. I don't really see $52K in this particular environment anymore.

That's also why we were buying LDO on the last podcast. I think those fears are a little bit stale at this point.

The way to see this going higher—and something you can probably watch for—is that if we're trading at $67K or $68K, funding is flat, the general consensus on the timeline is that we're still ranging, and people are trying to short the range high, that's a good indicator that we're probably on our way up.

Jonah Van Bourg

MVRV Z-score is 2 right now—2.0. FTX lows are below 1, and euphoric highs are above 7, so we're toward the low end of the range for basically the best macro cycle indicator out there.

Stablecoin balances and some of these shorter-term ETF flows aren't looking that great yet—“yet” being the key term. 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 before the ETF approval.

I'm not too optimistic about people buying altcoin bags. I am very bullish on the idea that certain memes will perform, including Boden.

Here's a trade idea, Avi. We have the ETH ETF decision on May 23rd. That's when the SEC has to come out and either delay, deny, or do something else. Nobody thinks this thing is getting approved. There's not a single person in the world who thinks that.

I think a negative decision is already priced in. A lot of people are probably short ETH because of that, and there are a lot of people underallocated to ETH because of it.

Avi Felman

After that decision, there are 2 things you have to look for. If it's denied, you have to look at why the SEC denied the application.

Why did the SEC deny the Bitcoin spot ETF application for so long? They thought the Bitcoin spot market was manipulated. That was their argument. Why did they have to acquiesce? Because the futures market is highly correlated to the spot market in the Bitcoin world.

It doesn't make sense to have a Bitcoin futures ETF and allow Bitcoin futures, but not allow a spot ETF if the futures market is highly correlated to the spot market.

If they make the same argument for ETH, that means that as the ETH futures market evolves and becomes more correlated to the spot market, that argument will eventually go away. You can't have an ETH futures ETF or an ETH futures product and not allow a spot ETF if the futures product is perfectly correlated to the spot market.

If they only make that argument, it'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 say, “We're still litigating this. It might be a security. We think it's a security, and we have to solve that issue.” That would be the biggest reason why we're not allowing the ETF. That would be very bad for ETH.

On May 23rd, if you can get a sense of why they're denying it—if they don't mention anything about ETH being a security, investigations into ETH, or anything like that, and it's just about the market—then I think you can probably get a pretty nice move from ETH. I think people should start buying it, because that means you get an ETH ETF at some point, even if Trump doesn't get elected.

Jonah Van Bourg

That's really interesting nuance. 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 dip you buy.

I don't even know. If you get the news that they're making the exact same argument they made to deny the BTC ETF, with no new arguments, do you think it would just immediately rally?

Avi Felman

I think people would see “denied,” and it would go down a little bit. Then you have an hour or 2.

Jonah Van Bourg

Exactly. That's my bet. You probably get a small sell-off on that headline, and then you buy as much ETH as you possibly can.

Avi Felman

You buy ETHE. You don't buy ETH; you buy ETHE, because I think the discount is 24% or 25%, and that thing is going to close massively.

Jonah Van Bourg

First it probably sells off as ETH holders say, “Ah, shucks,” and start selling. Then you scoop that dip.

I agree with you. If they go the security route and try to prove that ETH is a security, there are millions of securities ETFs out there. It doesn't mean that you can't have an ETF that references a security. The question is whether there will be regulatory clarity under another 4 years of a Democratic president in the White House, and the answer is probably no.

I think it's less clear if they try to go after the security argument. That's an interesting nuance you point out.

The other thing I'm wondering is what will be baked into that decision that's relevant to adjacent tokens like Solana. Let's say they mention staking and say, “Part of the reason we don't like this is because it's a yield-bearing security.” Do you get a mini sell-off in other staking-related ecosystems?

I think that might be mid-curve, but it's something to be aware of. If you're about to load up on yield-bearing coins or altcoins that rely on staking—if you're interested in buying LDO or EIGEN, or any of this—you might want to wait until after that announcement before you go and lift.

Avi Felman

I would agree with that. There could be some good information in that decision about how other assets might be treated in the future.

What if there's absolutely nothing about staking? What if there's absolutely nothing about it being a security? That sort of opens the road for a Solana ETF in the future. That would be very bullish.

Jonah Van Bourg

That would be great. Maybe Solana trades at $200 and we all get to retire again. These are important things to look out for.

If you're sitting there thinking, “I wish there were a good trade. I wish there were something I could do to make money,” May 23rd is going to be a great day for you to make money. You just have to pay attention.

Avi Felman

Sometimes the way you make money isn't by going into a big uncertain event like that with a position and then trading based on whether you were right. It's more that you go in nimble and buy things at good prices when they briefly trade there.

Jonah Van Bourg

“Buy things at good prices” is a great way to articulate how to make money. If your entry price on a memecoin is $1 and it goes to $100, then you sell it at $50, $20, or $70, you're still happy.

Meanwhile, if you're buying it for $1 when it's a valueless thing and you're exit liquidity for the people who bought it for a penny, suddenly your life is much more stressful. Entry price in crypto really is king.

A buddy of mine, John Wu, has this saying about crypto: You have to be dumb enough to buy the coin and smart enough to sell it. It's so true. The mentality you have to employ to hang on to one of these valueless coins as it goes up 500% is exactly the opposite of the mentality you need to take profit on it.

Realistically, the only solution is to be early to things. That helps you avoid some of the problems of overthinking when to sell these parabolic rallies or nuclear sell-offs. You just have to have a decent entry price.

Maybe the best thing to do is identify a list of tickers going into a catalyst like the ETF event. Instead of being positioned in all of them and managing your bad risk when you're wrong for reasons you didn't expect, just have a relatively clean slate.

Be the silent native warrior crouching on a tree branch with the blow dart. As soon as the bomb goes off and you get some cheap tokens to buy on big sell-offs, that's the way to do it.

Avi Felman

I'm 100% with you. Let's just wait. That's what we're doing now. We're waiting and biding our time.

There doesn't seem to be a lot to do, especially on a day like today when everything is up 20% in a market where you see chop. That's almost always going to be a bad time to buy, generally speaking. If you're not in position now for this bounce, chasing it here is almost always the wrong thing to do.

Jonah Van Bourg

If you're chasing it, it's because everybody else is chasing it. The founder of AQR, Cliff Asness, has this legendary systematic-trader and hedge-fund-manager quote: If I'm right 52% of the time, then I'm consistently winning and everything is great. I'm paraphrasing, but you're doing very well in systematic trading if you're right 52% of the time. You're just placing tons of little bets.

What he says is that this means you're wrong 48% of the time, and that doesn't make 48% of your fund easy to endure. I think we're just going through one of those periods where you have to be a mature trader. You can't chop yourself up. This isn't fun right now. It's not like when we were up-only, when we were up 100%.

What do you make of all the insanity with GME and the rest of the market? Have you been paying attention to this at all?

Avi Felman

I've been watching it, but I feel no FOMO. I don't give a shit, because it's not an area where I consider myself to have an edge. I don't have a lot of information about Roaring Kitty or Reddit. I didn't watch the movie, and I don't care.

I'm trying to avoid feeling FOMO. In the absence of benchmark crypto price action, people are looking at that, feeling FOMO, and starting to fiddle around with it. I think that's a bad idea, and I'm trying to avoid the temptation.

Jonah Van Bourg

I think what it shows is 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 given direction.

That's probably why memecoins are doing well. There's a lot of money that can pile into things like GME and AMC, but people need a leader. They need somebody to shepherd them into the wilderness and tell them exactly what to buy, how to buy it, and when to buy it.

That's you, Jonah. That could be you.

Avi Felman

No way. That's you, man.

Jonah Van Bourg

It's anomalous, but yeah, Ansem is the leader. What's interesting to me is that I wasn't clear on how much appetite there was for this type of price action. How much money was waiting on the sidelines to buy GME, create a short squeeze, and pile into AMC to send these things up 100% or 150%?

The answer was: Holy crap, a lot.

Maybe one thing we're not taking into account is that despite all of the headlines, people still feel like they have enough money to gamble. That in itself is very good for crypto.

Avi Felman

That's a good meta point. That's not the mid-curve take; that's the right-curve take.

Jonah Van Bourg

It might also be the left-curve take. GME went up last time and was followed by BTC going up. GME is up this time, so maybe BTC will go up too. Simple 1-to-1 correlation with 1 data point.

You mentioned Ansem. He's like the Roaring Kitty of crypto. Having your finger on the pulse of sentiment in your space is important. One thing you and I luckily have is a small platform to gauge that sentiment that some random person with 2 followers wouldn't have.

I have a few thousand followers, so I can put things out there and see what happens. I did this with Solana as well. I would tweet bearish stuff and learn from the experience that the community cares. It wasn't just crickets.

With Boden, I tweeted some bearish stuff, and Ansem came in 10 minutes later and said, “You're smoking crack. It's not going there; it's going up-only.” Then 100,000 people were saying, “Ansem, Ansem. Ansem has spoken.”

Even I get a little star-struck. I'm like one of those War Boys in Mad Max: “Oh my God, he replied to me. He looked at me. I'm going to Valhalla.”

I get it. The community has spoken. There's money to be gambled right now. There's a leader. People are engaged and willing to YOLO into random things.

That degeneracy means the space is still sitting on some gains. We're not totally in December 2022 mode, which in and of itself is bullish. But it isn't going to take us into a new price band. It isn't going to take us to $100K. For that, you need fresh capital and greater fools.

Avi Felman

It has definitely been a very fun market. I do think you can probably start to walk away for a bit at this point. There was definitely a lot of money to be made in the last 2 or 3 months. People can probably take a bit of a break right now.

I hope that doesn't come back to bite me, but let's see whether this GME rally leads to anything with Bitcoin.

Jonah Van Bourg

Inflation has bitten people hard. If it costs $7 for a burger and a cocktail in Manhattan, maybe it's more fun to spend that $70 on GameStop gambling at home than on something that used to cost $10.

I think you're right: Take a break, consolidate line items, figure out your favorite bets, and be ready to add new line items at great prices. Don't buy the highs on something that's rallying 100%.

See if you can go buy some ETH on May 23rd.

Avi Felman

Good stuff, Jonah.

Jonah Van Bourg

Good stuff, Avi. Maybe we wrap it there. As always, this isn't financial advice, but it's great talking to you.

Avi Felman

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

Jonah Van Bourg

Till next time.

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