TraderMayne: Bullish or Bearish, Bitcoin's Future, 4-Year Cycle and More | TG Podcast

What's good?

Wow. How we living?

Wow. What? You look different.

It's the mustache.

Fresh cut, bro. Fresh.

Is that a RØDE mic that you're hooked up to?

Yeah. Dude, I moved out of my house, right? So this is my improvised streaming setup.

Wow. And you still found a way to come on our stream?

Come on now. I got a little plant in here, just trying to balance things out, you know?

Yeah, that—

Doing what I can. Doing what I can.

That mustache is what we're doing? We all poor or what?

I know. That mustache is speaking old money to me, I'll tell you what. But no, dude, I think you, me, and DJT are some of the last bulls standing, if I'm being completely honest. It's slim pickings out here, dude. There are a lot of people who I respect highly who are just like, “It looks bad,” and they aren't wrong.

This is one of those really tricky places where people are so up or down, bro. This could very easily go either way, and I think the decision point is very soon. Last time I was on, I think we talked about the potential to revisit sub-$100K. I would like that as an opportunity. Obviously, it's a lot more exciting to talk about revisiting $100K when we're at $110K or $115K. When we're there, everyone's kind of shitting bricks, so I get it.

But yeah, dude, it's a little spicy right now. It's a little spicy right now.

Who, if you don't want to say names, you don't have to, but who do you really respect that is bearish right now?

Publicly, maybe.

DonAlt. DonAlt is bearish. I like DonAlt a lot. Bearish as shit. He's super bearish, and rightfully so. A lot of these charts look super busted, more so on the altcoin side, like Solana and ETH and things like that. But Bitcoin's kind of hanging on by a thread here.

So yeah, him, Benjamin Cowen, a very smart guy. He's quite bearish. Bob Loukas, super smart guy. He's 50/50.

Nice shout on Benjamin Cowen, by the way. That's a nice pull.

Oh yeah. He's super solid, man. He knows what he's talking about. We're at the last area that really should constitute a bounce, which is this 50-week moving average that everyone talks about. Listen, every bottom forms here until it doesn't. That's the problem with those things. One time it's not going to bounce there, and then that was it.

Does it scare you that Scottie Pippen is looking at the 50-week moving average and posting it? Does that scare you a bit? Are you serious?

I'm pretty convinced Scottie Pippen's not actually the one posting tweets on his account. But listen, it's not great. Maybe I'm just biased to the fact that it doesn't feel right that that was the top, just timing-wise, the way it happened. But everything's there in terms of fitting in the Q4 window, which is something I've talked about for a year-plus.

We topped in Q4, in my opinion. We went over $100K. The stock market blew up. Gold blew up. All the things that you would want to happen in a bull run have happened. To complain and be like, “We didn't get Solana from $8 to $300”—Bitcoin went up 600% or 700%. We had multiple memecoins go to billions. A lot of stuff happened.

It just kind of feels a little anticlimactic, I guess, because since the April bottom, everything ripped, and then that second leg we just didn't participate in. We had the Trump tariff bottom. Bitcoin went from $74K to $120K, and then we basically went sideways since then, while stocks have ripped. Gold has ripped. Some crypto mining companies have ripped.

Maybe we're lagging, and at some point, are we lagging or are we just weak? It's tough, but I'm going to be the biggest bull for my bags until I'm proven wrong based on the invalidations I have. At that point, there's nothing else you can do. Then it was, “Hey, we'll see you next time. We'll buy lower, hopefully.”

I want to do some self-reflecting with you, man. I was at dinner the other day with Malcolm and Tiki, which was fun. I don't think I've ever met a human in my life who was more bearish on the market than Ty. It was honestly insane.

Smoked it.

It's almost disrespectful how bearish he was toward the space. No, I'm kidding. Tiki is a great guy. But I was self-reflecting, and my rationale for being a bull over the last year—basically six months—has been, “It was anticlimactic. There wasn't a blow-off top. The market gods would never allow that to happen.”

Then I really sat back and thought about it, TraderMayne, and I thought to myself, “Man, WIF went to $5 billion this cycle. SOL was $8 this cycle. GOAT went to $1.5 billion this cycle. ai16z went to $3 billion this cycle. Donald J. Trump launched an official memecoin that went to $70 billion in 48 hours this cycle.”

It was pretty climactic, all things considered. There wasn't the final beautiful spectacle blow-up at the top, but it was relatively climactic, all things considered.

I compared my “There wasn't a blow-off, this couldn't be the top” thought process to “Elon has to pump this meme,” or “A lot has to make this coin go up,” or “CZ has to make Aster go up.” Usually, when you get into the “has to happen,” it doesn't have to happen. And it's actually a spot I don't like to play. So it's ironic that I hate that thesis, but then I've been using that thesis as a sort of balls tingle to stay bullish on where I think the cycle is.

No, you're not wrong, bro. When the bull market's long in the tooth, the things that should make the market pump sometimes don't. We had the rate cuts. We had the semi-good news on the Trump-China tariff battle, and in an earlier time in this market, that would have ripped it.

It is unfortunate, and there are a lot of similarities to how 2021 topped. It was kind of just this distributive structure at the highs that we're seeing now. It's very similar—the same bear divs.

When there are things where it seems like, even with good news, we haven't been able to pump, and then as soon as there's a sniff of bad news—downside price action in stocks—we eat shit.

So it's not fun. But to me, from a pure technical point of view, this kind of area from $100K down to the yearly open, basically, which is $94K, and that 50-week moving average—to me, this is the last stand for the bulls, also timing-wise.

I'm willing to throw the dart here, and if I'm wrong, okay, I'm getting out of Bitcoin around the mid-$90Ks to $100K, and hopefully I rebuy at $70K or $60K. Maybe you miss. You've got to remember, this went from $15K to $120K. If you get out at $95K or $100K, that's not that bad. You're missing the last 20% of a 700% move. That's not that bad.

It's just if you bought yesterday—or not even yesterday, four days ago—you're shitting bricks right now. But objectively, Bitcoin's up a lot in the last few years, so it's hard to complain. I think it also just goes back to the fact that most people are in alts, and Bitcoin's down 20% from its all-time high. Altcoins are down 20% in the last seven days.

What percent risk-on are you?

I have a three-pronged portfolio. I have cold-storage crypto that's, you know—

Like Bitcoin?

Shit-getaway-bag kind of stuff. Then I have active spot, right? So this is stuff that I am buying dips in and trying to sell higher. Then I have my leverage-trading portfolio.

My leverage-trading portfolio is denominated in stablecoins, right? So I'm just trading that for money. My spot portfolio—I still have pretty heavy amounts of Bitcoin. I'm 90% Bitcoin and maybe 10% ETH, SOL, and some other dog shit.

And of that 100%, I still hold more than 50% of the spot that I had from here. I've made a lot of money. I've realized a lot of money. But I'm still willing to take the bet that there's another leg. I'm also willing to cut this if I'm wrong, and it's not the end of the world.

I've been buying this spot Bitcoin since $20K, $25K, $50K, and $75K. I sold a bunch at $100K. So it's not like my entry is $100K. If I sell there, it's like, okay, I went up and then I end up selling there. It's not the end of the world.

Could you give me a verdict on this four-year cycle thing? Are there really billions and billions of dollars trading, buying, or selling based on the four-year cycle? Is this a real thing that's happening?

There are a lot of different interpretations of the four-year cycle. There are people who quite literally look at it and say we went four years from bottom to bottom, top to top—linear process, right?

There's the halving idea where, okay, we have this X number of days after the halving. That's where the cycle tops. You can look at the presidential elections—the last three or four tops. One year after a new president was elected, which happens every four years, there is a top.

You can look at a variety of different metrics and be like, “Okay, every four years it tops in Q4.” There are all these different interpretations, but to me, there are two schools of it. People also talk about the liquidity cycle and the business cycle. I learned this from Bob Loukas, but there's this market-cycle theory.

Think of it like Elliott Wave or TA. It’s another form of analysis that breaks up the market into these 16-, 8-, and 4-year cycles, down to weekly and daily cycles. What it’s good for is timing when highs and lows should be forming in the market based on a given amount of time. If I’m doing TA, I might think that the higher low will form here; market cycle theory helps determine when that might actually happen. Using the chart, you can predict with relatively good accuracy when the highs and lows should be.

That’s the four-year cycle that I use. When people say, “Well, October 6 was four years already. It’s over,” that’s not the four-year cycle I’m referring to. The four-year cycle I’m referring to, which is market cycle theory, still has a window over the next few months for the market to top out. But if we don’t make a new high here and actually break below these old lows, it’s a failed cycle, as they call it. That likely means we’re going to enter a bearish trend.

So that’s part of my thesis for why I think we have one more leg, because we’re due for a weekly low at the very least. Whether or not that weekly low sends us to new all-time highs—God willing, W’s in the chat for all-time highs, please—I think at the very least we’re due for a significant bounce up to maybe as high as 117 or 118. Then we’ll see: is it a lower high and we’re cooked, or is there one more leg up? Maybe it’s 130 or 140. Who knows?

I’m just a little annoyed that stocks are now expressing some bearishness. We did see Elon’s $1 trillion compensation package get approved, so he’s got a trillion dollars now.

Right? To do what with?

To pump Tesla. I don’t know, but we had some very ripe conditions over the last few weeks with stocks for Bitcoin to go up, and it just fucking didn’t. That makes my argument a little weaker.

What if we front-ran the dump like April?

Well, you know, that’d have to be the game. We’re kind of just pulling at little bits of information, and again, at some point, we’re either lagging or front-running. We’re not actually lockstep with equities anymore. We’re no longer correlated, or it’s just weak, and we’ve been getting distributed on and it’s over already. I mean, it’s a possibility.

We’ve been getting distributed on?

Let’s hope that we’re fucking wrong, bro.

Who?

Let’s hope we’re fucking wrong.

Who is Bob Loukas?

Bob Loukas is like an OG.

Trader. Is he your call, Unc?

Yes, he’s my—he’s my—

New York OG. I can intro you. He would be a good guy to have on the show, actually.

Really? I’ve noticed him on Twitter, but I don’t even know who he is. I just like his tweets.

Yeah, no, he’s a good guy. He’s a good guy to follow. If you go on his YouTube, he’ll release a video every three months tracking his four-year cycle. He’s been doing it for Bitcoin for a handful of years now, and it’s been good. People like to clown him because he sold some at 75K. It’s like, dude, he bought it at around 5,000. Only on Twitter will you get clowned on for selling something at a 15x multiple.

I mean, you know all about this. You take profit on something and people are like, “I can’t believe he sold.” It’s like, “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I not allowed to make money? Is that not what we’re here for?” It’s the Sisyphus tweet. I didn’t come to this website for charitable purposes.

Bro, are you friends?

I’m here to make money. I don’t know his face. We haven’t met. We almost met one time at some event, but I think I faded or something like that. I’ve heard mixed things. I don’t know.

He has you blocked, bro.

He has you blocked. Oh, no. Did you blame him for the Anubis DAO rugging or something?

That seems to be the lore, where he stole 60 million dollars or something like that. I’m like, dude, I don’t know.

He’s got more money than me.

Bro, I mean, where’s Hayden Davis? Whatever happened to that guy?

That whole thing, to me, is one of the biggest unknowns: how it just disappeared and no one talks about it anymore.

See, if we go off the metric, you can do whatever you want.

If we go off the metric of crime, it feels relatively exhausted as well. I’m just bearish for the sake of the conversation today. I woke up today kind of bearish.

They’re clowning.

Listen, I’m bullish crypto. As you know, you’re working with Polymarket, you’re working with Phantom and Kraken. I’m working with Breakout. Coinbase just bought Echo. What I see now that I’m involved with Kraken at a deeper level is what they’re doing long term for the financial markets, and crypto being this backbone for all of these different avenues for people to come in and interact with the markets in a variety of different ways. It’s unbelievably bullish long term. That’s why I want to own Bitcoin long term.

Sometimes we get stuck in the weeds where we’re focused on the number on the screen. You, I think, have graduated from this a little bit now because you have something you’re doing in crypto where it doesn’t matter about the price.

Like, it doesn’t matter about the price.

That’s one of the cool things about building. It’s no longer just, “What’s the price of the coin today? Am I having a good or bad day?” You should be waking up every day—as I know you do—thinking, “My life’s awesome. I’m building something dope in an industry that’s on the cutting edge of tech, at the intersection of technology and financial markets.” It’s fucking sick.

As much as we’re bullish—or bearish, excuse me—this is very much micro. Macro is still big bullish.

What about Zcash? You traded it, bro.

Yeah. My boy Satrage, who we’re going to have on stream—I’ve got to talk to you about this off stream—but we’ll have him on maybe in a month when he’s back from traveling.

He’s the guy I told you about, the Strato[?], who was just like, “He just bought another one in another color.” He just bought a second one. This guy’s just—

He’s the real deal. He’s the whale trader guy. He’s one of the traders who was on the leaderboards at FTX. He took his fund here in Canada from 20 million to 100 million, just trading the entire portfolio himself. He’s a god-tier trader, a super-smart guy, and he started an exchange. He’d be a good guy to talk to because he sent me so many of these layups.

He messaged me about Zcash at around 90. He was like, “Buy this,” and by the time I saw the message, it was at 130. I was like, “Ah, I missed it. Fuck it.” Now I’ve just coped and seethed through this entire rally. I own zero. I’m Zcash-less. I’m sidelined.

Sidelined.

I’m fucking sidelined, bro, and I’m fucking Zcash-furious about it. I’m living.

Someone said he’s bullish. Your homie Satrage.

Yeah, Satrage.

So he thinks we have one more leg. He’s in the same camp as me. He thinks there’s one more leg, and if we get down into the low 90s, he’s like, “I’ll shove,” even if it’s for a bounce back to 110. He thinks it’s a good trade.

He’s an interesting guy to talk to. He’s told me he’s getting bored with crypto. He doesn’t think the opportunities are the same, at least from a trading perspective, as they were in prior cycles. I agree. I feel sorry for some of you who are having your first experience in the markets, because I feel like it’s been a lot harder from a trading perspective.

I’m not saying there haven’t been amazing trading opportunities. I mean, Zcash, HYPE, SOL, WIF—there have been lots. But there were a lot more duds, so if you picked the wrong thing, you got the wrong derivative of the coin. That one vamped and the other one went up. The rotations were just so much faster.

I legitimately think it’s been harder for a lot of people this cycle. I’m not saying it hasn’t been a good cycle, but if you tried to do what you did last cycle this cycle, you did not do well.

Yeah. It definitely hasn’t been “turn your brain off and just hammer a basket.” That was not the case. You know, the one thing I hate, Maine, is that with this one-leg-up thing, I feel like in order to make one leg up, everyone has to believe there are three. If everyone agrees there’s one fucking last leg and we’re done, it’s pretty doom and gloom, isn’t it?

It’s hard to determine what everyone thinks. My feed’s quite bearish.

True. True. True.

I have other people who are like, “Dude, everyone on my feed is calling for another leg.” I’m like, “Bro, I feel like I’m—” But then I make a post about it and it gets a thousand likes. I’m like, “Okay, maybe I’m not fucking alone.”

More generally, last cycle’s high had everyone calling for 100K, and we never got there. This time, especially if we do have one more leg up—or even if we get close—I want people calling for a quarter-million-dollar Bitcoin. I want the thousand-dollar SOL-type calls.

Yeah. But something that’s really sad over the last 2 cycles—not as much the last one, but definitely this one—is that all-time highs have been so anticlimactic.

Every time we’ve made an all-time high, we basically pulled back immediately. We make an all-time high on Bitcoin and it nukes because everyone’s selling into it. Back in the day, an all-time high would happen, and we’d all get on Twitter and be like, “Let’s fucking go.” Everyone would be smashing buy, and it would reprice higher instantly.

Whereas almost every all-time high this cycle has had a pullback almost immediately after. It’s kind of like what happened to us.

So I remember—I wasn’t conscious, but in 2021, ATH floods in the chat. What’s going to flood? I remember the first ATH, like 69 or whatever, and then we pulled back. Then we basically went to make a new ATH, and it just topped the previous ATH by like $100 and topped out.

What was going on then? The second double top—what was going on there?

Is this back in 2021 you’re saying?

2021. Yeah. I remember thinking, “If we get back to ATH, I’m going to be rich on my Verasity coin,” which never happened.

Yeah. But what was happening then?

These seem to be profit-taking opportunities now, where it used to be that an all-time high was kind of this easy trade. In stocks, buying the all-time-high break generally is a pretty easy strategy. Now, it seems like an all-time high lately on Bitcoin has just led to failure of that high and a pullback.

If I remember correctly, the second high in 2021 was kind of fake and gay. Can I say that?

Yeah, you could say “fake and gay” again.

I do think it was kind of fugazi. But, yeah, man, I don’t know. Maybe I’m looking through the past with rose-colored glasses, and it’s just like, dude, we’ve got to take stock of what you said earlier. All this amazing shit has happened, and we’re just kind of annoyed that it might be over temporarily.

How much attention do you spend on macro news, particularly what’s going on in the AI world?

I think it’s important. One of the things that’s scary for crypto is that a lot of these AI companies look like we’re due for a cooldown in tech stocks. Nvidia, Palantir, and a lot of these companies look a little sketchy just from the charts alone. If we see this big rotation down in tech, it doesn’t look so good for our coins.

I pay attention to it enough—as much as I need to. I follow a lot of people who are super bullish on China. They’re big China bulls for EVs, AI, and tech out of China.

I think it’s important. I do think the US and China are going to be in some sort of cold trade war, if they aren’t already.

Because the US is kind of on the decline. I think most people will admit that. The US is not what it was.

I think what’s a lot scarier on the macro side in the US is that none of the stuff coming out of the government is real—about CPI, the inflation numbers, and the jobs reports. They’re editing them.

I think it’s a lot worse than they want to let on. Trump has made it very clear that he looks at the stock market as a reflection of his success as president, and he’s got midterms next year. If the stock market looks like shit, I think he’s going to do everything in his power. They’re not even releasing the CPI data, or the inflation data, anymore, and they’re releasing the jobs numbers and then reducing them by millions after the fact.

I think the macro side is kind of scary and kind of sketchy.

Yeah. It’s kind of ironic that a Canadian has a take on the country that I live in, but I think—

Well, aren’t you moving to communist New York?

Should I not go? What is this, a big deal? What do you think?

The thread that you wrote on your taxes being high was hilarious.

Can I ask you a question?

Can I ask you a question?

It’s going to be even worse.

Can I ask you a question?

I have all these baddies on my Instagram—mutual baddies who live in New York—and they’re on their Instagram stories victory-lapping the Zohran thing. I’m trying to figure out what you do in that spot.

Yeah. I think I saw a stat where it said 81% of women under 35—

83%.

Yeah, 83% voted for Zohran. I won’t say anything that’ll get me canceled about that, but I think a lot of these people who are voting for a guy like Zohran are young people who are on their parents’ dime. They’re living in a very nice apartment that they could never afford on their own, tweeting from their fucking iPhone about how they love Zohran.

It’s like, your dad, who’s paying for you to be there, is the person getting screwed over by these types of policies. What I’ll say is this: you’re young, dude. Have fun. Have a fucking blast.

When you’re looking to be in a serious relationship with someone, looks and chemistry are super important, but you have to agree on morals, your view of the world, how you eventually want to raise your children, and what you’re going to imprint upon them as your view of the world. That’s not something you need to worry about for years.

I’m saying, go to New York City, let it hang, and hang out with all the baddies on Instagram you want. But once you’re ready to settle down and get married, you want your partner to have the same opinions and views as you. I think that’s super important.

So you really had to screen for that and make sure you were aligned?

Yeah. My wife’s dad’s a Fox News dad, right? So I had no issues there. He’s been indoctrinating her from the beginning on my behalf, and then I came in and indoctrinated her even more. But we were already aligned on that when we met.

I couldn’t imagine being with someone whose parents are CNN parents and being like, “Oh my God.” We view the world so differently. That’s what’s so crazy to me about America. I feel like we live in a different reality than these people. How do you view this as a good idea?

“Free buses.” How do you think that’s going to get paid for? “We’re just going to raise the top tax bracket on the top earners by 2%. Just a little 2%. It’s no big deal.” It’s like, bro, the price of real estate in Florida is about to go up.

Well, dude, they’re going to get it from the same place that Sam Altman is going to get his $1.4 trillion in commitments that he doesn’t have. Does that scare you? Are you scared of that?

Sam Altman—four days ago, they—

Four days ago they—by the way, I am terrified. Can I—

There was that clip—

There was that clip from five days ago, whatever. The guy asks him, “You guys only have like $14 billion annually in revenue. How are you going to pay for these $1.4 trillion in commitments?”

He responds by saying, “If you want to sell your OpenAI shares, I’m sure there are some buyers on the market that will buy your shares.” Then five days later, he’s in the news talking about, “Oh, the government’s just going to backstop us. They’re going to pay it.”

How does that not scare you? Did I lose him? I was on a W rant. Are you still here?

Did my internet just go out?

No, you’re here. You’re here. You’re here.

Worse.

No, no, you’re here.

No, my internet just cut out.

No, no, you’re here. You’re here. Let me text you.

No. What’s happening right now, bro? Why is the timing?

You’re good.

Yo, we good?

Yeah, yeah, you’re good. You’re good.

Bro, you hear me?

I’m so glad you said this about physiognomy. I literally have been driving my wife nuts with this word because I’ve been using it nonstop. I’m like, “I’m telling you, look at this person.”

I didn’t use this, bro, when I used FTX. You look at Sam Bankman-Fried. This guy looks like he’s going to steal my money, and he’s sitting there eating a fucking carrot, telling me it’s effective altruism. It’s like, oh my God, how did I let this guy bamboozle me?

I did this video on TikTok that got a bunch of views about a kid named—I think his name might also have been Sam. Yes, Sam Milsap. He’s 21 years old, and he’s one of those Miami coaches. But his job isn’t coaching you on e-commerce, Amazon, or trading. He coaches coaches. He coaches you on how to be a coach.

Then it came out that he missed payments on his leased Lamborghini, and it got repossessed or whatever. A bunch of his vendors were like, “This guy owes me $60K.” He’s walking around like he’s some coach’s coach with the Rolex on.

I’m like, “First of all, bro, at 22, you’re not coaching anyone about anything. You don’t know anything. You’re 22.” Then I look at him and say, “Good-looking guy, in shape.” If this guy were a personal trainer, I’d be like, “Okay, bet. This guy’s in good shape. He was probably an athlete in high school.” I get it.

But this guy was giving me life advice, and I was trusting him with $10,000 to tell me about life. It’s like, bro, you’re 22. I did an entire video, dude. I love the word. I totally agree with it. I look at Sam Altman, and there’s nothing behind the eyes.

Bro, there’s nothing behind those eyes.

Yeah. It’s like looking at a deer. There’s nothing going on in there, and it’s very scary. I don’t know. It’s like Peter Thiel, bro. Why is he so sweaty all the time? Why is he looking so sweaty and so greasy?

When they asked Sam Altman about the guy who got murdered, the whistleblower—

And he was like, “I think it was Tucker.”

It was Tucker.

His response to that is not a human response.

His response was, “I’ve never been accused of murder on a podcast before.” I’m like, who says that?

Tucker goes—

Tucker goes, “Do you think it was a suicide?” He says, “I’ve never been accused of murder on a podcast.” Well, I’m not accusing him of murder.

You know who low-key clears the test? Maybe this is a hot take, but I think Zuck clears.

Dude, Zuck, bro. He’s doing jiu-jitsu and kickboxing with Alex Pereira.

Zuck clears.

Zuck clears. He has his moments where he’s a little robotic, but I think he’s come into a bit of his white-boy era. He’s letting the fro go a little bit.

Yeah. He’s in his white-boy summer era.

Yeah. Bro, he found Chad Hanks on Instagram. He was like, “Okay, let’s go.”

Yeah. Yeah. I fuck with Zuckerberg. I like Zuckerberg. I like the Google guys. I love the guy who did Oculus Rift and now he’s with Anduril.

Oh, yeah. Palmer Luckey. He clears.

Yes. Like, bro, showing up in cargo shorts, I’m like, this guy definitely clears.

He’s doing some weird shit with the defense industry. I don’t know what’s going on. They’re playing Call of Duty too much and shit, but he clears for sure.

Yes, bro. Exactly. No, but Sam Altman—I’m with Eli on this. AI is the future. It’s this massive revolution. It’s just, is this the guy we want leading it? I don’t know. I’m personally not a big fan. But I do love using ChatGPT.

That video of Sam Altman and the whiteboard coding or whatever it was—did you see that?

Yeah, of course. The nonprofit, bro.

Dude, I mean, they’ve got some weird, weird, weird stuff going on. You know who clears that? Ilya, like ex-OpenAI Ilya, clears.

But yeah, the Sam thing is rough. It’s scary to see him go out and make all these promises, and then be like, “Oh, yeah, the government has to backstop us.” Like, that has to happen. No, it doesn’t. David Sacks came out today and basically was like, “Yo, shut the fuck up. Let’s do this in private,” is what he meant by what he said.

But he publicly was like, “No, it’s not. No, we’re not.”

No, I agree. It’s funny. We’re taught as kids not to judge a book by its cover, right? That’s what physiognomy is. But humans have evolved from day one to judge things based on their appearance. The first thing I do when I look at a book is look at its cover and decide, “Is this—”

You judge it, bro?

Like, back in the caveman days, you would see your friend eat a red berry and die. Okay, that red berry is bad. It’s poison. The girl with the septum piercing, blue hair, and tattoos on her hands is probably nuts. This is just pattern recognition that we’ve evolved over millennia to have, and not using it now doesn’t make sense. I think people should judge more books by their covers and take first impressions more seriously. I think this is a really good take.

100%.

David Sacks clears. Chamath does not clear. I could see that.

Cham scares me, bro. He scares me a little bit. He scares me.

Weasel. He’s got weasel physiognomy.

He scares me, bro.

I don’t trust it.

We’ve got to do a physiognomy tier list in crypto.

I don’t know how that’s going to end, bro. I’m like—

That’s not going to end well, but I think it’d be fucking hilarious.

That would be a good stream. But okay, so the thing I was going to bring this to is Plur Daddy.

Do I know who that is?

Yeah, he’s a good account. I like him. He has this tweet that says, “Let me get this straight. You see OpenAI calling for a federal backstop on AI capex, which they will almost certainly receive given the importance of the AI race to national security, and you get the conclusion that this is bearish for the AI trade?”

I kind of feel like—I don’t know. Also, I think you’re glitching. Your Wi-Fi kind of sucks. I don’t know if you can hear me or not. I’ll wait for a second to see if you can.

Dude, I can hear you.

Okay, you can. I feel like I got really bearish this morning. I went down a bunch of bearish rabbit holes, and I sort of accepted that, yeah, the U.S. kind of has no choice but to turn the printer on, fund this shit for national security in the Cold War with China, and they’re just going to print money. So you should just be long until you’re forced not to be long anymore, and then we figure out what to do after that. I’m interested in the AI thing. I think that’s a horrible take for—

I don’t think that’s a horrible take for the AI stuff. The U.S., over the past several decades, has outsourced everything that made the U.S. what it was. It was this manufacturing superpower coming out of the world wars, where everything got built in America, and then they outsourced everything. Now it’s like, okay, what does the U.S. do? It’s got to go all in on this next thing and hope that it can dominate it and lead it.

It is the future, so I don’t disagree with that. I think being bullish on AI is probably pretty smart. I do think there’s a chance that we’re in a bit of a bubble right now because none of this is real yet with OpenAI. But it’s going to be a very crazy next 5 to 10 years, and I’m super excited to be switched on and paying attention.

How old were you in 2008?

Bro, 18.

Were you trading?

No. I was playing Halo and smoking weed in my buddy’s basement. What are you talking about trading?

You were a senior then.

My life was so simple. It was amazing.

Being a senior in 2008 is insane. I don’t know. This is uncharted territory for me. I feel like everyone universally knows this shit is air. We’re floating on air.

When I think about the Zohran thing in New York, being a young person—being 23 in 2025—kind of sucks, bro. I have all these friends. No one can get a job. No one can afford anything. No one can buy groceries. You’re never getting a house. It’s a brutal spot.

Then you look and you’re like, “Yeah, the stock market’s at an ATH.” And you’re like, “How the fuck is the stock market at an ATH?” It’s propped up on 10 things. It’s uncharted territory knowing everything is air right now. How do you play a market where everything is on air? It’s weird.

Listen, man, I grew up in an era where—I’m still part of that era. My generation, most of my friends who have regular jobs and stuff—I post about this on my personal Instagram all the time, and I lose a hell of a lot of followers.

Your Instagram’s lit, by the way. I love your—

I talk about it. I’m like, aren’t you more mad at the government and the generation before us for basically selling us out? The things our parents and grandparents had—we’re the first generation, and I’m part of it, at the opposite end of the spectrum from you, where owning a home is no longer a guarantee.

The average age of home ownership is around 35 to 40 years old in some instances. I don’t know the U.S. stats as well as Canada, but Canada has basically been in decline since 2015. Year-over-year GDP per capita is down. We’ve had no growth in production. Taxes have gone up. The deficit is insane. They’re robbing you in all these different ways: your freedoms, your rights, and your money through taxation.

I’m like, when are people going to stand up and get pissed? I really thought Canada would have voted Conservative in this last election based on the Liberals fucking the dog for the last 10 years. But no, America voted for Trump. I think he’s done some things that are great, but at the end of the day, a lot of these problems are so much bigger than something that can be fixed by one politician.

I do think it’s sad. Bro, we’re very lucky, you and I. We’re in an industry where we can make good money and stuff like that. I’ve done well. I’ll be able to have more than one house if I want. I have a ski cabin. I don’t give a fuck. I’m mad for my friends—my brother, who’s a teacher, and who I’m buying a house for because he’ll never be able to afford it on his own. To me, that’s fucked up.

And where we went wrong, I think there are a lot of things you can point at. The problem in society now, especially with people like Zohran and stuff, is that if you point these things out, they call you a piece of shit for noticing patterns. Again, pattern recognition: as soon as we start doing this, this happened. You can't point that out—that's racist, homophobic, bigoted, sexist, or whatever they want to pick to call you.

I feel bad for young people, for sure.

I have no doubts that your generation and people younger than you are going to find a way, like smart people always do. I think it's the middle class that's going to suffer the most.

If you're switched on, you're smart, you're a grinder.

Look at all these young guys. You had TJR on, guys like Brett Saylor. These guys are your age, crushing it. I wasn't doing that at that age—not even close.

There are going to be ways to make money with AI on the internet that never existed before. That's awesome. I think it's the more regular people who are like, “I just want to go get this basic job.” They're middle class. They want to be able to go on vacation every year. They're the ones who are getting screwed the hardest.

The white picket fence is dead, bro. It's either a fucking RM and a Patek in Miami or nothing, bro. Patek or nothing. I also think this is why—okay, go ahead. What were you about to say?

You know, the Miami car-culture guys, right? Inflation has affected everyone. These Miami car guys used to be able to buy a Huracán. The baseline Lambo Huracán is a sick fucking car. I don't care what anyone says. But because of car-culture inflation, if you only have a Huracán, you're not even fucking in Miami and Dubai anymore. Now you need an Aventador. You need a fucking Koenigsegg. The inflation has affected everyone, and at some point, I think some of this stuff has to unwind.

Yeah, I think you're right. Also, dude, your Wi-Fi is so bad.

It's so bad.

If I do this—VPN on. Is that better?

Yeah, it's better.

Is that better?

Yeah, it's good now. We'll see what happens. I just switched to my phone. Yeah, car-culture inflation is a real thing. I think this is why more people will just flock to alternative places to play the game. They're coming to fucking trade internet assets. They're going to come to crypto, they're going to come to stocks, whatever it is. I guess we'll see what happens. It's a weird time, but I'm optimistic. I'm optimistic. You know what's funny? I think—

You should be. This is a cycle where crypto tech has been validated as superior financial rails across every vertical in the world. Basically, it's been validated as a real, tangible place that's going to infiltrate everything, but it didn't really reflect in price the way people thought it was going to.

Yeah. I mean, I think there's just been validation. Hyperliquid, to me, is the perfect success story of something, and Polymarket and some of these massive companies that have been born and are now doing crazy big things—I completely agree.

I think people get annoyed when the number doesn't go up because they feel like that's their way to participate in the good. Crypto's doing all this cool shit, but why aren't my tokens going up? I think that's going to become a much more common theme because the Pump.fun-ification of alts has made that rising tide that raises all ships. There are too many boats now, so not everyone's going to get brought up at the same time.

Why would you buy some random bundled scam coin when the average hold time for the dev wallet is 30 seconds, when you can use Polymarket and express your fucking optimism on something a thousand different ways? That's way safer, way more legitimate, and not as sketchy. I think the market for retail alts is going to be a lot different going forward than it has been in the past, because there are so many different ways that you can be bullish on crypto without holding random fucking coins.

Okay, I have one more question for you, because I just got a Mando tweet notification. I have his notifications on. Shout-out to you, Mando. It's this clip of him talking about how everyone knows how to enter a trade, but no one knows how to exit. Can you give me some alpha on how you exit trades?

I'll tell you my trade. I bought an unknown amount of Zcash at a $230 average, and I've basically just been clipping 5% every leg. I sold at $395, $415, $450, $500, and $500 again. I sold around $520 last night before I went to bed. I'm just selling 5–10% every leg.

Oh my God, it's at $500. I'm going to kill you.

No, no. It's at $530, actually.

What do you do with a bag like this? Do you just clip every leg? How do you approach selling?

Yeah. There are a few things you can do. You can have a price target in mind, whatever. But if you're up a lot, realize some of the bag and start free-rolling. Get your initial out, get your 2× out, and clip as you go.

I completely agree. This thing is parabolic at this point. If you look at it on the daily chart, it's basically a straight line. The weekly is basically a straight line. It will roll over at some point, but it might go to $1,000 first.

You don't need to fully exit the bag. I'd be clipping out as you are, and then I would use something like the daily chart. As long as it's making higher lows, you can just hang in. You can use moving averages for this as well, but the daily chart is a pretty good barometer for the trend.

If you want to be even more aggressive, go to the 4-hour chart. The 4-hour chart is still in a very clear uptrend: higher high, higher low, higher high, higher low. If it gets to a point where that 4-hour trend shifts, maybe you say, “Okay, the trend might be changing,” and clip a little more. If it continues up, great—you’re still in.

But if the daily trend shifts, there's probably a good chance that this thing is due for a larger correction. When you're in a runner like this, the best thing, in my opinion, is to take profits as you go and trail that stop up. Looking at the chart right now, I think a very loose stop is below $400. A much more aggressive stop would be below $450, because this thing could come all the way back down to the mid-to-low $400s and still make another leg higher.

I just sold some as you were talking.

5%?

I mean, dude, the chart's nuts. If your entry is in the hundreds, it's a five-bagger, and the rest of the market looks like shit. Make your money, bro.

Okay, what do you take away from something like this? The rest of the market looks like shit. Every coin is down only. Bitcoin looks like dookie. FIDA is down 10% today, and then there's just one coin with insane outperformance. Do you take that as an anomaly and think, “Oh my God, it's going to millions,” or are you getting bailed out and thinking, “Take the fucking bailout package”? Is what’s happening right now unprecedented?

Not necessarily. There's always been stuff that pumps against the rest of the market. I think this is just a very interesting situation because you have this crazy chart, but you also have this amazing narrative at the same time. Did you have Mert on recently?

Yeah, a couple of times.

Yeah. I get it. It does make sense. Bitcoin, especially now, isn't even remotely close to what the promise was when the white paper was put out—the peer-to-peer vision. That's not what Bitcoin—

I saw you quote-tweet that Scott Bessent tweet, I think.

Yeah. Bitcoin is 100% becoming digital gold in my mind. It's going to be something that I don't think is replicable. We're not going to have another Bitcoin.

If other altcoins falter and don't keep up price-wise, I do think Bitcoin will continue to appreciate because you can't dead-founder it. Locked coins, lost coins—the story is one of one. I think it's always going to have that value and built-in scarcity.

But in terms of valuing privacy and where crypto and the world are headed, if you want to go tinfoil-hat, bro, digital IDs and central-bank-backed digital currencies—this stuff is coming. Governments are already talking about it. The UK is talking about it, Canada, the US.

“Oh, we're just going to make your life easy, and you'll have a digital ID.” You don't even have to show ID to vote sometimes, but you're telling me my life is going to be easier if you make my ID digital? “Oh, you didn't get the COVID vaccine? Well, fuck it. We're going to turn your ability to travel off.”

That, to me, was the precursor for a lot of this. A lot of stores don't even accept cash anymore.

And it's like, I wonder why, because cash is largely untraceable, right? I can buy something from you with cash, and you don't know. You're a waitress; you get tips in cash. The government doesn't need to know.

So, I think that narrative for Zcash is very powerful. The timing of it is compelling: sometimes it’s easy to jump on a snowball that’s already rolling downhill. It had the narrative, it had the huge breakout, and everyone was talking about it.

But I find it hard to believe that the trade’s still early, right? A lot of people who are very bullish on Zcash also probably own a bunch of Zcash and probably want to exit it at a higher price. I imagine at least some of them. Who knows? I don’t know if this is a $1,000 coin in the future. Maybe. But I think this is just one of those unicorn scenarios where all of these things coalesced at the same time.

So, perps are new to me, TraderMayne. I’m like a new perp trader, and I’ve made some profitable perp trades. This is the first really profitable perp trade. Only 2x, not much.

But the concept of funding is new to me. Shorts pay longs, and longs pay shorts, depending on what there’s more of. I got paid $5,000 to be long the greatest coin in the market. How ridiculous is that?

Yeah. I mean, that to me is a sign that the rally still might have more legs, because people are rage-shorting. They’re like, “Well, it’s got to top.”

It’s got to top, right? It’s got to top.

So, the basics of funding, for those who don’t know, are perp price versus spot, right? If the perp price is greater than the spot price, that’s positive funding. If the perp price is less than the spot price, that’s negative funding. With positive funding, longs pay shorts. Right now, we’re seeing negative funding on Zcash.

How’s that possible?

This goes both ways, however, right? You have instances like what happened to Unipcs, where he paid 7 figures in funding to hold these perps for multiple months, only to get liquidated on October 10. He would brag, being like, “Ah, yeah, I’ve paid 7 figures in funding, but I don’t care. BONK’s going to trillions.”

And it’s like, maybe it is, but if you’re so confident—no different than with Zcash, bro—if you’re a giga-bull on Zcash and you’re texting me, like, “Man, I think Zcash is going to $10K. I’m in this crazy perp trade,” I would tell you to take profit and buy spot. Exactly.

Perp trading’s awesome, but funding can go the other way as well. It can be a tool. A lot of people use it to analyze the market: is funding positive or negative? But, yeah, if you really believe in something long-term, I think holding spot is a lot better.

But, bro, that’s a banger of a trade. Good for you. I feel like, for all the flack you get, you caught a lot of the good rotations. You had the pump trade. You’re on Zcash. You ripped GOAT. You ripped HYPE. I don’t know, bro. I think there are a lot of haters out there. It’s like, bro, he’s not just podcasting here. He’s not just streaming. Bro’s trading a little bit.

Trading a little bit. I got to glaze the King Glazer.

Yeah, I’ve learned. I’ve learned from the best, man. I’m not going to hold you, TraderMayne. I’m in here talking to you all day. At a certain point, you’ve got to hit something, right?

Bro?

But you’ve got to get in the arena. That’s what you’re doing. You’re actually not just talking shit about stuff. You’re like, “Let me—” I think that’s one of the biggest disconnects people have on Twitter: they’ll chat all day. It’s like, “Dude, buy it.”

I posted my BONK thesis, and someone was like, “Bro, you’ve got to be an idiot to long BONK.” I’m like, “Short then.” Get in the game. I don’t want to hear you from the sideline, bro.

The biggest thing is that too many people are using Twitter as social hour. My life changed when I stopped using this as social hour. I was like, “Let’s put on some risk.”

And I, you know, for the longest time—

We hear you.

For the longest time, man, I could never understand why traders didn’t respect content creators. And I’m like, because the content creators are Stephen A. Smith, and you are LeBron James putting a squad on your back. You just scored 40. You don’t give a shit about Stephen A. Smith.

Right now, I’ve got sciatica, so I’m taking some time off, but I’ll be back. I’ll be back. We’ve got Austin Reaves and Luka, the white boys, holding it up till the GOAT is back.

Hey, Luka might be the MVP this year.

I don’t even watch.

Oh, please.

You’ve been watching?

Please. I can’t have another year where it’s like— I mean, I like Shai. Shai earned it last year, even though Jokic’s season was insane.

Fatigue.

Jokic has the same problem LeBron has, which is fatigue. They’re just like, “How many times can this guy win?” LeBron should have like 8 MVP trophies. My GOAT.

Yeah.

My glorious king.

My glorious king. Okay, give us levels, invalidations, and targets before you go.

Very simply, I think we’re in this window where I want to see Bitcoin bottom. That doesn’t necessarily mean new all-time highs, but I want to see a significant rally by Monday or Tuesday of next week.

If you want to do a fun exercise, go look at every bullish month Bitcoin has had over the last 24 months and count how many times the low of the month in that bullish month occurred within the first 10 days. It’s a lot.

So, if we believe that November is going to be bullish, like I do—that’s part of my premise—we want to see two things. I want to see the bottom form ideally in and around November 10 at the latest, which is 4 days from now. Then I want to see us reclaim the monthly open, which is at $110,000.

If we’re able to bounce within the next few days and get back above $110K, I think that really strengthens the argument for the bulls. If that also happens, I think your bull-market support is $98,000.

If we get back above $110K or $112K, push up a little bit, and put some time and space between that low, then if we get back below $98K, I would cut my positioning. I would be out, and I would assume we’re going back to around $75,000, because that’s the next level on the monthly.

Now, is the low in as of 2 days ago, or do we have one more final flush down to around the yearly open, which is like $93K or $94K? TBD. But I think by early to mid-next week, I’m going to have a pretty good read on whether or not I think this thing’s got legs.

I want to see this bottom form within the next literally 4 or 5 days. I want to see us hold that moving average everyone’s talking about. I want to see a big, fat downside wick, and then I want to see us get above $110K.

If that fails to happen, if we hold below $100K for a weekly close or something like that, I’m probably wrong. I’ll lose some money, cry about it, and move on.

Dingaling tweet, like, “11/13, buy.”

Someone tweeted that TraderMayne is the next Dingaling. I’m like, “Is this a dunk, or is this a good thing?” Because Dingaling will just say 3 esoteric words, and then everyone’s jerking off over it. I’m like, bro, I wrote an essay and made 4 YouTube videos. What are we talking about here?

He’ll just be like, “Buy,” with a picture of tea, and everyone’s like—

Yeah, he’s like, “The monk drinks the tea on a Saturday. Very fortuitous,” and then everyone’s like, “He called it again, bro.” I’m like, “Called what?”

I don’t know, man. Maybe I’m not trying to dunk on Ping. I think he’s hilarious, and he’s had some incredible calls. I just think people are obsessed with the God complex on Crypto Twitter. They want, “Oh my God, this is the guy. GCR could never miss.”

It’s like, bro, you can’t put anyone up next to God. No one is perfect. Everyone gets shit wrong.

You think GCR is the best trader to ever come through here, or no?

I think he’s one of them.

He’s still waiting for that $8K to $10K, bro. He’s still [inaudible]. Have Brandon Hong on.

Yeah, bro. Brandon Hong is god-tier.

Really?

Multi, multi, multi. Oh, yeah. This guy’s—

Might be 9 figures at this point.

Really? Or very close.

Okay. People are so divided on him, by the way. People in my chat freak out. Half the people are like, “Fuck this guy.” Then half the people are like, “I love him. He’s the GOAT.”

No, he’s legit. He’s legit. You can tell when you listen to someone talk whether or not they’re legit. You can kind of just tell. He’s got it.

GCR is up there. Satrage is, to me, one of the greatest I’ve ever seen. And I think a lot of people who people think are really good traders would actually be surprised that these people barely trade at all. You can make a lot of money in crypto without ever actually having to trade.

As you know, you’ve got a following now, bro. People will throw money at you. It’s like, “Man, why is this guy so bullish on this coin?” It’s like, “He’s got a bag. That’s why.”

By the way, if you want to collab in the future on the physiography tier list, I have 4 categories: good guy, questionable, probably a scammer, and then dead animals in the basement.

Yes, bro. I’m so down to do this with you. That would be so funny. Do we do it only with crypto founders, or do we extend it to—

Well, I think general—

I think we go with the best crypto founders, then we do random polls, like Justin Bieber.

So, like, rapid-fire, pass or nah.

Dead animal in the basement, bro. That shouldn't have taken you so long.

I believe you've been stealing from everybody. I believe that [__] Evelyn's getting another Birkin, bro.

I believe your coin is [__] stupid.

Okay, Nick White.

What was the second-lowest one?

Probably scammer. Probably scammer. This would be fun. I think we should do this for sure. Dude, putting me on the spot is brutal.

Yeah, that's brutal.

We should actually do it. By the way, I'm dying. I'll hit you up. We'll talk offline. You're the GOAT, man.