Will Clemente - Buying Bitcoin Into Total Capitulation
- Will Clemente bought a “fairly significant” spot Bitcoin position after widespread capitulation because the bear case looked exhausted, not because a fresh catalyst had appeared. Bitcoin had lagged gold and small caps while long-time holders questioned the thesis, creating an asymmetric setup where “everyone had already given up on Bitcoin.”
- The main overhangs—quantum computing and Michael Saylor’s debt structure—looked increasingly priced in. Clemente still considers quantum a real 5–10-year risk, but Bitcoin was down roughly 70% from its peak in gold terms; meanwhile, selling BTC to support STRC’s peg addressed his warning that Saylor had to choose among “preferred stock, bitcoin, or MSTR.”
- The host’s key pushback was that seller exhaustion can establish a floor without producing the next buyer. Clemente’s answer is that bear markets often end when “sellers run out,” while price moves precede their explanatory narratives; institutional allocations of 1%, 3%, or 5% could eventually add slow, price-insensitive ETF demand.
- Rising 10- and 30-year yields could force policymakers toward financial repression, strengthening Bitcoin’s monetary-hedge case. Clemente cites the 1930s and 1940s, when the U.S. fixed bond yields while inflation rose; the host separately points to the more aggressive 1945–51 period.
- Bitcoin remains Clemente’s core long-term hard asset, while Zcash is a smaller privacy hedge against growing centralization. Big tech, AI, surveillance cameras, data centers, post-2008 moral hazard, and wealth inequality all push society toward greater control; Clemente says he would “never swap” his real spot Bitcoin for Zcash. The host suggests his Zcash position may be roughly one-tenth of his Bitcoin supply, but Clemente only confirms it is sizable.
- Near-term volatility can still punish Bitcoin, which is why Clemente favors spot over leveraged calls. Yen stress, Treasury selling, or another carry-trade unwind could hit every asset, but individuals can tolerate concentration and drawdowns that funds cannot; his tentative approach is to accumulate dips through year-end and hold, without offering a firm price target.
1. Capitulation, not a catalyst, created the entry
The host dates Clemente’s August 8 note to Bitcoin near $63,500 and says Bitcoin has risen roughly 20% since then. Clemente avoided call options despite cheap volatility, instead buying a “fairly significant” spot position to hold.
His backdrop has reversed: last year crypto faced abundant new supply, almost no buybacks except in highly liquid markets, and little innovation; now more projects earn revenue, repurchase or distribute it, while few new offerings are emerging.
Bitcoin missed a window when small caps and gold were strong, leaving even five-year holders questioning the thesis. That broad negativity made the setup asymmetric: “everyone had already given up on Bitcoin.”
2. Quantum and STRC looked more priced than dangerous
Clemente treats quantum computing as a real 5–10-year problem, but argues Bitcoin’s roughly 70% decline from its peak in gold terms already reflects much of that fear. If informed holders have not sold, what new fact forces them now?
On Saylor, his earlier framing was: “choose one of three: preferred stock, bitcoin, or MSTR. You can’t keep everything.” Saylor then sold some BTC to buy back STRC and try to restore its peg, which Clemente says appeared to be the right choice so far.
Clemente also cites Flood CFO Carl Sasko’s analysis that the STRC situation could work if the peg were restored by selling the Bitcoin backing it several times over—described as 4–5 times over, and even more plausible after Bitcoin’s increase.
His cycle logic is deliberately catalyst-light: Bitcoin bear markets often end because “sellers run out,” not because buyers suddenly receive a new story. Price can move first; narratives arrive afterward.
3. Debt and institutions could supply the next bid
The host’s pushback—worth keeping—is that exhausted selling explains a floor, not demand. Clemente points to fiscal strain: 10- and 30-year yields reaching multi-year highs could force policy action.
He cites Bitcoin reacting to Scott Bessant’s Treasury-bond-buyback news and to yen intervention, where the Bank of Japan might otherwise have had to sell U.S. Treasuries to protect its currency. Bitcoin, in that framing, hedges the political refusal to cut spending.
Clemente also sees potential demand from wealthy people using multisignature custody across jurisdictions, though he is unsure whether a massive institutional inflow is already occurring.
ETF flows had an initial surge that may partly have reflected people transferring existing Bitcoin into ETFs; afterward, flows were relatively stable. Allocators considering 1%, 3%, or 5% positions could eventually create slow, price-insensitive demand.
4. Financial repression strengthens the hard-asset case
Clemente expects some form of financial repression: cap borrowing costs or tolerate inflation above them, letting a reserve-currency issuer reduce debt in real terms.
His historical examples are the U.S. in the 1930s and 1940s, including Executive Order 6102 and the restriction of private gold ownership while the government monetized gold at a higher price. He also describes the U.K. as restricting investment in foreign financial markets. The host separately points to 1945–51 as another period of aggressive financial repression.
The host says future controls might focus on exchange transition points rather than literal seizure, while also saying he would not be surprised by movement toward potential confiscation of hard assets. That is the host’s framing, not a categorical forecast from Clemente.
The host connects the broader centralization thesis to Flock cameras, which he says are becoming popular and could offer politicians an easy “win-win” target. He also cites big tech, AI, surveillance cameras, data centers, post-2008 money printing, moral hazard, and wealth inequality. Clemente calls this a cultural zeitgeist that is pushing capital toward Bitcoin and crypto; he additionally mentions what he calls Dalio’s attempts to ban OpenAI in the U.S. as another centralizing threat.
Clemente’s Zcash position is a hedge against that cultural direction. The host suggests it may be roughly one-tenth of his Bitcoin supply; Clemente confirms it is sizable but does not confirm that ratio. He says he would never swap his long-term spot Bitcoin for Zcash.
5. Volatility argues for spot and patience
Asked about yen 160 and the 30-year bond, Clemente declines precise triggers: “markets are essentially one big volatility game.” A yen-driven Treasury sale or carry-trade unwind could hurt Bitcoin alongside every other asset.
He says policymakers are trying to patch instability and suppress volatility not only to contain interest expense, but also to support economic “warming up,” AI development, and capital expenditure that unstable borrowing costs could derail.
His retail edge is tolerance for concentration during volatility: much of his year’s profit came from large energy positions established before Trump became involved in Venezuela, initially because “the schedule looked good.” A fund could not put 30–40% into that trade overnight.
His practical stance is spot, not leverage: perhaps accumulate through year-end on dips, hold through volatility, and view sharp declines as buying opportunities. “This is not financial advice.” He says the long-term picture looks clearer than ever, while nothing fundamental has changed; the market is waiting for a stimulus factor that pushes profitability high enough to force authorities to act. The $127,000 BTC figure comes from the host, not Clemente.
Full transcript
Yo, yo. How are you, dude?
Yo. How is it? How are you, friend?
Welcome again. It's been—damn it, man. It seems like it's been a year since you were last here.
Yes. Yes, it seems to me that the last broadcast was quite pessimistic about crypto.
That's right. Hopefully this one will be a little more optimistic. I hope we can change the mood.
I don't want to start with this, but could you be very brief? I know you don't have much time. Briefly tell us who you are and what you have been doing in the last year.
Yes, of course. First of all, thank you for inviting me. I don't think I've been on podcasts for about 9 months.
Dude. It's about time. It was so quiet.
Yes, I feel like I'm not quite qualified to start chatting about stocks and commodities, which is what I've been focused on for the last year. But I'm glad to be here.
I started getting interested in markets probably in late 2019 or early 2020. I worked as a night porter while in college. I would arrive around 3:00 in the morning and leave at 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning. It was a very mechanical job.
I started listening to podcasts, joined Twitter, and learned the basics of investing, starting with the Warren Buffett style and calculating discounted cash flows at the table. COVID happened, and I realized that Bitcoin is the fastest horse here. It makes a lot of sense compared to other assets, and I just became obsessed with it.
I started writing about it on Twitter, got great feedback from the community, and my account unexpectedly became very popular. After 6–9 months of running the account, I decided to drop out of college.
I helped Blockware, actually ran their research department, ran a newsletter and a podcast, and interviewed all the big players in the crypto world at the time. After about a year, I decided to leave and start my own business.
I founded a crypto research firm called Reflexivity Research with Anthony Pompliano. Everyone knows him as Pompa. We ran it for about 2½ years. At some point, we were acquired, which was a pretty good result, and the buyers were good.
After working for a year after the acquisition, I left because I wanted to focus more on markets. So I moved to an over-the-counter firm called Keyrock for a while. Then I moved to Sticks, an OTC platform for secondary tokens.
I came there, actually, as an investment analyst to help with investment evaluation. I stayed there for a little less than a year, and then I decided to leave again and do some of my own business.
So now I just manage my own investment portfolio. I write a lot on Twitter, trying to share the thoughts that have been going through my head all day.
Well, actually, here we are. This is incredible. One of those thoughts that was running through your head was an article published on August 8 that analyzed the prospects for Bitcoin.
I just put this on our chart in TradingView, and it looks like the price was around 63,500. You released this article, and the main idea was that the outlook for Bitcoin is pretty good. They say the pressure from sellers has been exhausted. The worst is, to a large extent, behind us.
I don't know if you accurately predicted that this was the bottom, but our chart looks pretty damn good. That was August 8, and since then we've obviously grown about 20% or so.
So, what brought you to this, and how did you arrive at this thesis regarding BTC?
Yes, of course. Going back to last year, it seems like the last time we talked, we were talking about how the supply-and-demand imbalance for crypto assets wasn't looking too favorable, right?
A huge number of new offerings had appeared, and at that time there were almost no buybacks, except in highly liquid markets. Purely from a supply-and-demand perspective, it didn't look too good for crypto.
I would also say there was a certain lack of general innovation. If we fast-forward a year, I would say that this is starting to change for crypto itself in a broader sense.
Right now, there are many revenue-generating projects making profits, repurchasing tokens or somehow distributing those profits among token holders, while there are few new offerings emerging because we're not seeing a mass launch of new projects.
So I think the general view of crypto from a supply-and-demand perspective is interesting. But for Bitcoin in particular, I think everyone has been disappointed with its performance over the past year, myself included.
I thought there was a window of opportunity in the second half of last year when it could have performed really well. Small caps were growing, gold was performing great, and Bitcoin just missed the mark when everyone thought it might be its prime.
But about a month ago, I looked back and asked myself, “At this point, what are the risks, and why has Bitcoin underperformed other assets?”
I think the 2 biggest issues are fears about quantum computers and concerns about debt, particularly with Saylor, especially after he launched STRC.
But there came a point when volatility completely disappeared. This reminded me of how I survived one bear market in 2022, when volatility just completely disappeared.
You assess the risks that are on the table and ask yourself: Where are we in terms of the factors that have brought us to where we are today? In 2022, it was credit contagion, and later FTX. I think in this case it's concerns about debt and quantum threats.
Quantum computing, in my opinion, is a real problem for the next 5–10 years. But I think the significant drop from the peaks—say 70% in gold equivalent—suggests that many of these fears are already priced into the price.
The people who were concerned about this—well, that's a well-known fact. If they haven't sold yet, what would make them sell now if they were really worried about it?
Regarding the debt, I think the concerns surrounding STRC subsided once Saylor showed that he was willing to sell some of his Bitcoin to buy back STRC and try to restore the peg.
There was a point when I tweeted that you just have to choose 1 of 3: preferred stock, Bitcoin or MSTR. You can't keep everything; you'll have to sell something. He decided to sell some of his Bitcoin, which seems to have been the right choice so far.
But people still—especially when I listen to some old-school traders who don't really know much about Bitcoin—say that they're still worried about the debt ceiling and specifically Saylor.
Although, if you're really into this topic, a special thanks to people like Flood, whose CFO Carl Sasko, published a great analysis on STRC when few were talking about how things could be fine if they could just restore the peg by selling the Bitcoin they're backed by 4–5 times over, and even more so now that the price of Bitcoin has increased.
So I felt there was a certain dissonance here, because it was probably already factored into the price. People who aren't deeply immersed in Bitcoin are still concerned about this matter, although it seems like those concerns should fade given the steps Saylor is taking to rectify the situation.
So, yes, I certainly didn't open long positions through call options. Of course, it's a shame because volatility was so cheap. I didn't expect such a movement a week after I published that material, but everyone had already given up on Bitcoin.
Everyone in all the trading chats I'm in, everyone I talk to, is very negative. Everyone who has been in Bitcoin for over 5 years is starting to question the thesis itself.
And I thought, “Okay, maybe this is an interesting, asymmetric opportunity to buy some assets.” In the end, I managed to personally acquire a fairly significant stake. While I don't have any overly confident short-term predictions, I intend to hold onto these purchases for a while.
But I think it's a great point, and you put it very clearly. It becomes quite clear at the end of your article why the selling should have stopped or is almost over—why much of the worst is already, one might say, behind us.
I guess my main question for the short term, or maybe the next year or 2 or more, is: Where will the demand for buying come from? What is needed for this?
On-chain seems to be coming to life. Robinhood's blockchain has appeared. There is Flat. There are things that inspire optimism. Hyperliquid shows incredible results. Maybe it will become legal in the U.S. Trump is talking about it.
But with regard to Bitcoin itself, it seems that we're constantly struggling with its ability to attract liquidity. Even if it is no longer as important as in previous cycles, which is debatable, the price must increase so that we can move forward.
What does it take to get money flowing into BTC again?
Yes, I think that's a great question. Part of the thinking about how bear markets usually end, at least for Bitcoin, is that they end when sellers run out, not necessarily because of a catalyst for new buyers.
My train of thought on buying the spot position was this: We've probably exhausted the sellers on the underlying risks that have been worrying the market over the last year.
But moving forward, you often ask yourself: The market ultimately just assigns certain narratives to price movements, putting labels on them and saying, “Oh, this is why the price is behaving this way.”
Sometimes it's just supply and demand—there are more buyers than sellers, or the sellers just run out.
Looking forward, what exactly is attracting new flows into Bitcoin? I think it's great to discuss what happened in the past, but we're moving forward.
I think there are a few things that make Bitcoin attractive. First, I mean the broader debt situation in the U.S., right? We seem to be approaching a tipping point, and the market is becoming the very factor that forces the government to act, namely long-term bond yields.
You have 10- and 30-year bonds breaking out to multi-year highs. For the U.S., as well as the U.K. and the rest of the world, the returns seem even worse. But in the U.S., there’s this corrosive factor of rising yields for a number of reasons: an overheating economy, inflationary expectations, and the fact that politicians don’t want to cut spending. So I think Bitcoin acts as a kind of hedge against these things.
For the first time in a long time, we saw Bitcoin jump on the news of the Treasury bond buyback from Scott Bessant. Even before that, there was the intervention in the yen a few weeks earlier. The reason they did this is that if the U.S. hadn’t lent them a helping hand, the Bank of Japan might have had to sell U.S. Treasuries to protect the currency.
I think the overall debt situation in the United States is one factor. Another point that some people are starting to talk about more, especially the Zcash community, is the growth of socialist sentiment in the United States. I think it’s because of a lot of different forces, many of which I described in an article earlier this year that’s pinned to my profile.
There are a lot of pressures that are likely to continue increasing wealth inequality and therefore contribute to the growth of socialist sentiment in the United States. I don’t necessarily agree that this is objective, but it seems like things are heading in that direction and will likely only accelerate. It seems that Mom Daddy is not a one-time thing, at least not on a 5- to 10-year horizon.
If that’s true, I think Bitcoin—especially multisignature custody across jurisdictions—is becoming an interesting tool for the portfolios of wealthy people, and you may have already seen capital inflows from such structures. But I’m not sure we’re seeing a massive inflow of assets from those institutions.
Also, if there is mandatory institutional buying, this is visible in the flows into ETFs. There was a huge initial jump, perhaps because people were transferring their Bitcoin into ETFs, but over the past year the flows have been quite stable.
And you could assume that institutions are just saying, “Hey, this is a fairly uncorrelated asset. Do we need 1%, 3%, or 5%?” If large institutions decide to buy, they’re quite indifferent to the price. They need a lot of time to make a decision: “We’ll add it to our portfolio, pension fund, or somewhere else.”
These are the stable, price-insensitive flows that stocks have, which Bitcoin has not had so far. So that would be another factor. Going back to the topic of government, before I pause, I think we can add more than just the debt situation.
It looks like, to be frank, we’re entering a period of financial repression in the U.S., where they’ll have to somehow fix rates or allow inflation to be higher than the country’s cost of borrowing. When you have a reserve currency, you can essentially inflate your way out of debt.
This is not the first time this has happened. The U.S. did it in the 1930s and 1940s, and the U.K. did it too. In 1933, of course, I don’t aim to be a macroeconomic expert, but I’m just looking at the parallels in recent times to understand where we are in history in the context of modern financial history.
The U.S. actually fixed bond yields, right? Then inflation increased. Even in 1933, part of the financial repression was restricting people’s ability to take assets out of the country.
The U.S. had Executive Order 6102, where they confiscated gold from all citizens, then monetized it and raised the price, which helped ease the debt situation for the federal government. They essentially took all the gold from private individuals and inflated its value for the benefit of the federal government.
In the U.K., as I understand it, they largely restricted people’s ability to invest in financial markets outside the country. So the parallels are very similar. Beyond that, if you think about whether politicians are willing to cut spending, I posted a tweet two days ago about how we put one of the smartest people in the country in this position, and they started hounding him and accusing him of killing people.
So I don’t think that’s going to happen. The alternative is some kind of financial repression.
And Bassam punched him in the face. That’s it. He hit him in the face terribly.
That was it. I saw your tweet: study the period from 1945 to 1951.
Yes, this is the same period after World War II, when we implemented financial repression quite aggressively. I think we could see a lot of what I just talked about.
I also took a small personal position in Zcash because I think it could be an interesting beta version of Bitcoin, but I view Bitcoin as a pure hedge against money depreciation that I want to hold long term along with gold.
That would be my approach if I were someone who was really interested in this particular asset. I think there’s a high probability that you could see, maybe not something as extreme as, “You have to hand over all your gold and bitcoins and we’re going to confiscate them,” but at least an attempt to have more control over the transition points on the exchanges and so on.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we continued moving in the direction of potential confiscation of hard assets. It’s something that has happened before in history. But before you get to that point, you’ll likely see a pretty significant increase in the value of these hard assets.
I was going to mention Zcash and add to your conversation about communism or socialism brewing in the U.S. the story of Flock cameras, which are becoming very popular. I don’t know how closely you follow this, but it comes up on the air pretty often.
It would be one of those things, like data centers, where it would be so easy for a political candidate—it’s such a win-win option—to come forward and take a tough stance, to declare war on some topic like this.
I also bought some Zcash. I think you said you bought one-tenth of your Bitcoin supply.
Quite a bit. It was actually a hedge for me, so it wouldn’t be a shame if it continued to perform well. I think the chart looks pretty good against Bitcoin.
I would never swap my real spot Bitcoin assets, which I want to hold long term, for Zcash. But it’s an interesting asset given what you describe as the cultural zeitgeist.
We have all these forces that continue to push us toward greater centralization. That’s what it all comes down to.
Yes. Big tech, AI, surveillance cameras, and data centers—all of this, given the moral hazard and other consequences of post-2008 money printing and wealth inequality, means that almost every major force in society today is leading to greater centralization.
I honestly think it’s a matter of the cultural zeitgeist, but at a certain point it affects how people think about allocating their capital. So it’s good for Bitcoin and crypto.
Another threat is Dalio's attempts to ban open AI in the U.S. Every threat pushes this centralization to some extent.
I know you’re leaving soon, so I’ll ask you one last question. I’ve been trying to pretend to be a macro strategist for the last 6 months, and it’s not easy. I’m doing everything I can.
Regarding Bitcoin trading, I saw your tweets about the yen. We’re back at 160, and we’re watching the 30-year bond very closely. Are there any red lines or levels for these assets that are worth paying attention to in the context of trading, or perhaps panic zones where things could get crazy?
In general, there can be short-term fluctuations, as is often the case in the markets. I’m a big fan and listener of Forward Guidance. Congratulations, Figo.
If anyone doesn’t know, Figo was one of our first analysts at Reflexivity. It was a pleasure to spend time with him. He’s truly one of our longtime analysts.
Figo had a great discussion thread, it seems, about the energy crisis in Europe in 2022. I think it was his first post, and it instantly got about 10,000 likes. I said, “Hey, dude, do you want to work for us writing articles?”
Then he came and became one of our pillars, and quickly outgrew us. Fijow is on a crazy trajectory right now. I’m really proud of that, and proud that I was able to work with him a little bit and at least help him out in some way, if I’ve done anything for him at all.
I’m a huge fan of his podcast now, along with Quinn and Tyler Neville, who’s no longer with us. One of the things Tyler always said is that the markets are essentially one big volatility game.
Now we are, for policymakers, at third-year levels, approaching levels in the yen that could become problematic, where perhaps the Bank of Japan would have to sell Treasuries to protect itself. In the end, I think it all comes down to volatility.
Those in power are trying to patch up all these little holes of instability and quell volatility. Part of it is about price levels that can trigger people to sell aggressively, which can lead to volatility.
In general, if there are big spikes in volatility, it will negatively impact Bitcoin, just like any other asset. That’s why I just hold spot. I think we’re playing this huge game of suppressing volatility across all asset classes right now.
It’s also because of building artificial intelligence and protecting long-term instruments. It’s not just for the U.S. government to cover interest costs. It’s also, I think, in order to support this "warming up" of the economy that they’re trying to implement, along with the accelerated development of capital expenditures.
The instability of the cost of borrowing and its growth can slow down this development and cause problems there as well.
So, yeah, I'll just say: be careful. If we have these volatile events—something like the collapse of the yen carry trade at the end of 2 years ago comes to mind—these kinds of things can happen. That's why I personally advocate for maybe holding spot assets.
It's hard to say whether it's worth fully distributing funds after this movement, but that's how I personally approach it. I am willing, as a private individual, to simply hold positions despite the volatility.
It seems to me that, as an individual, you have a certain advantage over some of the traditional funds or institutions with limited partners because you can hold very concentrated positions during times of volatility. For example, this year, I actually made a little bit of money personally trading AI, but a lot of my profit this year came from the fact that I had big longs in energy at the beginning of the year—big energy assets even before Trump got involved in Venezuela. Mostly because the schedule looked good, to be honest.
But a fund can't smartly say, "Okay, I'm going to invest 30–40% of the fund overnight in energy." As a retail trader, you can do it. You can hold positions during volatility while institutions are forced to maneuver somehow.
So, I think for a retail investor, it's unlikely that you'd be able to predict these moves. I myself would hardly be able to guess these short-term movements. If you haven't entered the spot yet, I would advise you to try to accumulate assets until the end of the year, perhaps on dips. This is not financial advice.
But yes, I think you should just hold your positions during these volatile spikes and perhaps view them as buying opportunities. For me, the long-term picture seems clearer than ever, yet nothing has fundamentally changed. We are simply waiting for that market stimulus factor to push profitability to a level where the authorities are forced to act.
So, yeah, very, very interesting times, man. That's right. Welcome. Now you have to go. Incredible thesis you put forward. So far, it has worked well. Hopefully, we can do a third part for 127k BTC.
I like that prediction. I always appreciate you coming to us. Thank you, sir.
Thank you for your time, and I hope we—as you said, I hope we talk again soon. Part 3, brother.
Okay, dude. Good luck to you. Thank you for your time. Goodbye.
You know, he's a very smart guy. As we're doing these streams, I realize that, yes, we're pretty accurate. I don't know what to say. We're on topic, dammit. I agree with him. I think I mostly agree with him. I think we look good. I think we're just, damn it, on topic. I don't know what to say.