[BidClub_]
1000x · · 46 分钟

如何分析 ETH:BTC 交易|1000x

Jonah Van BourgAvi Felman

YouTube
TL;DR
  • 最高确信度的交易机会取决于条件:Jonah认为GBTC是抢跑BlackRock潜在ETF获批的“最佳交易”,而Avi则认为应在获批狂热中卖出,而不是追涨。 Jonah认为,加密市场缺乏足够可进入的资金、渠道和风险偏好,无法为潜在资金流提前完成充分布局。他认为获批概率为75%,估计资金流入可能达到30亿-40亿美元,同时提醒自己不知道BTC会怎么走,并补充说:“我不认为现在该买入。”Avi预计GBTC赎回和抢跑交易会抵消部分资金流,认为短期净效应不确定,但长期为正。

  • Jonah在ETH情绪于6月28日至30日恶化、但价格停止下跌后,于约0.0662买入ETH/BTC;本期对BTC的时间点只说成“.064”。 Avi的事件交易框架是:获批时预期BTC狂热、ETH恐慌;约一个月后在获批后的回调中买入ETH,再在约一周后转向并卖出。

  • 战术性卖出不等于结构性牛市逻辑失效,但两位主持人的表述并不相同。 Avi称BTC和ETH是处于数十年上行趋势中的超级趋势资产。Jonah认为Bitcoin正在走向机构化,未来几个月可能为2024年和2025年的“疯狂上涨”夯实底部。Avi预计ETF事件后市场将横盘,直到2024年Q1减半临近。

  • DeFi反弹更像持仓稀缺引发的挤压,而不是基本面复兴。 Avi认为这些资产此前“严重缺乏持有者”,几乎已经没有投机持仓;Jonah的另一种解释是,这是经历一年多抛售潮、且受到FTX拖累后的熊市反弹。在具有反身性的加密市场中,Avi更偏好领涨者而非落后者,因为“买落后者几乎永远赚不到同样多的钱”。

  • NFT可能正在走出作为艺术品、身份商品和所有权基础设施的幻灭谷底。 Jonah将头像类项目比作时装品牌,并把Fidenzas、Squiggles、Punks和Rocks划分为另一类。Avi预计加密财富效应将出现,传统艺术界的关注度会上升,Nike、Starbucks、艺术家、DJ和运动员也会推出更广泛的应用。Jonah认为更有力的用途是链上真品证书,以及对画廊友好的NFT托管服务。

  • 两人最糟糕的交易沉淀出本期最持久的风险法则:投资逻辑成立,并不能为忽视信息变化或优势消失开脱。 Bitcoin在2019年从$3,000涨到$14,000后,Avi因为早期盈利让自己觉得“我真的很擅长这个”,继续买入看涨期权;Jonah则在2018年伊朗制裁逻辑发生变化后,仍然重仓做多原油。修正原则很直接:“所有人都在恐慌时买入;所有人都在狂热时卖出。”

摘要 · 为研究而整理的核心内容

1. 当原有优势消失,盈利交易就会变得危险

  • Avi最具代表性的错误,发生在一轮惊人的2019年行情之后:Bitcoin从$3,000涨到$14,000后,他反复买入定价错误的看涨期权,账户迅速膨胀。但涨到顶部时,这种低效定价已经消失——“在我看来,波动率已经高了100点”——而近期偏差却让他认定“我真的很擅长这个”,于是继续重仓看涨期权,最终遭受重创。

  • 错过退出时机尤其具有启发性。在价格从约$14,000快速跌至$12,000期间,波动率急剧飙升;尽管现货下跌了10%-15%,他的期权只损失了5%-6%。他把这种抗跌解读为继续做多的许可;如今,Avi把加密市场短期波动率的暴涨视为“99%命中率的卖出信号”,而月末附近的信号更强。Jonah建议,将波动率在1天内出现2或3个标准差变动建模为卖出信号。

  • Jonah的伤疤来自将相反的教训执行得过于僵化。他曾在Facebook、Bitcoin以及一定程度上的原油交易中反复止盈10%-50%,随后眼看这些仓位继续大涨,于是下定决心要吃完整段趋势。2018年,供应收紧时他满仓做多原油;但当特朗普放松对伊朗的制裁、市场担心高汽油价格会在大选年损害总统政治前景时,他没能及时调整。

  • 这笔亏损花了约18个月才收回。Jonah由此形成的检验标准是:价格反映的究竟是真正的技术或市场突破——例如通过ETF实现大幅扩大的可及性——还是一轮炒作周期的顶点,即现有参与者已经觉得这个资产不再有吸引力。价格在$30,000时,矿工可能通过卖出资产为业务融资;但如果ETF带来的资金即将大量涌入,就构成不应卖出的理由。

2. 历史为泡沫和技术型商品提供模式库

  • Avi认为,研究历史让他赚到了最多的钱。伟大的交易员之所以看起来凭直觉行动,是因为他们已经吸收了多年图表、资产负债表和历史事件的经验——这相当于市场版的摔跤肌肉记忆:“在某些情况下做某些事,你就是知道该这么做。”

  • 他的书单从John Steele Gordon的《伟大的博弈》开始,书中讲到的华尔街轶事包括:一名交易员故意把买入清单掉在地上,让俱乐部成员买入他想卖出的股票。George Soros的《金融炼金术》是Avi眼中“世界上最好的书”,适合用来交易泡沫并理解反身性。他还推荐Bernard Baruch的自传,这本书记录了这位交易员转入政界,以及后来担任FDR顾问的经历。

  • Jonah补充推荐Daniel Yergin的《石油风云》:一部1,000页、跨150年的原油史。他的类比是,商品就是“可交易的技术”:早期石油曾被争论究竟是替代鲸油的神奇产品,还是毫无用处的黑色焦油;与此同时,Yale的科学家正在研究如何将其提炼成煤油。加密行业的建设者也在围绕一个看似简单的问题尝试类似的转型:“全世界是否需要一张由公众共同拥有的电子表格?”

3. DeFi反弹是持仓过低引发的挤压,尚非新逻辑

  • Avi看不到DeFi 1.0上涨背后的明确基本面变化。这些资产几乎没有投机持仓;剩下的卖方主要是获得通胀增发后卖出的既有持有者。当交易员意识到自己完全没有DeFi敞口时,结果实际上成了“一次巨大的逼空”。

  • Jonah的反驳值得保留:BCH上涨150%,仍可能只是更大下行趋势中的短暂波动,毕竟整个资产类别已经经历了一年多的抛售潮,FTX也没有起到帮助作用。Avi还提到一种猜测,即拜登政府要求SEC对加密货币放松监管,但他说:“我对此没有任何了解。”

  • 在Avi看来,BCH是“一个被高度控制的资产”,因此更容易制造剧烈波动,但他避免直接指控任何一方。LTC随后往往跟涨,因为交易员在寻找次级表达。他反复强调,加密市场会集中涌向赢家:落后者可能提供1-3天、10%-20%的收敛交易,但领涨者通常会继续跑赢。

  • 当时的市场快照包括GRT、BitDAO更名后的Mantle DAO、FRAX、Maker和Blur;在Binance陷入问题之际,Avi也把Bybit视为赢家。Jonah后来猜测,DeFi可能是在SEC对Coinbase下手后上涨的:交易员原本预计DeFi会“被彻底炸毁”,但事情没有发生,价格于是再次上升。他明确表示,这只是一个可能的解释。

4. NFT正从头像时尚转向持久的所有权基础设施

  • Jonah将社区驱动的头像类项目与Fidenzas、Squiggles、Punks和Rocks区分开来。前者更像Gucci、Prada、Versace或American Eagle:其价值取决于团队和社区,而两者的影响力都会“盛衰起伏”;它们并不像Picasso或Damien Hirst那样运行。

  • Avi看好的第一个机制是财富效应。如果加密资产上涨,持有者会想通过“数字世界里的浮夸物件”展示收益——Rocks、Fidenzas、Squiggles以及其他昂贵NFT——而随着文化接受度扩大,这种展示也会越来越容易被理解。

  • 第二个信号是传统艺术界开始关注NFT:Avi在纽约艺术圈的联系人如今会跟踪NFT,伦敦Mayfair办公室附近的一家Pace画廊也在展出NFT。第三个信号是NFT从艺术向外扩展,包括Nike.Swoosh、Starbucks,以及Fan3——两位主持人投资的平台,正在帮助艺术家以更大规模发行NFT。Avi说,DJ已经在排队发行NFT,为持有者提供参加会议和音乐活动的权限,运动员也在排队。

  • Jonah认为更深层的用途在于认证。实体艺术品的纸质证书可能被伪造或遗失,即使登记过的契约也仍然麻烦重重。他提出一套配对业务:为传统艺术品提供链上真品证书,同时提供对画廊友好的服务,让收藏者通过熟悉的签名流程和DocuSign买入并托管NFT,而不是使用MetaMask。在托管机构上,他说自己宁愿选择Chase,而不是初创公司或Microsoft。

5. ETF交易拆分为提前布局、事件狂热与ETH补涨

  • 本期给出的BTC时间点只有“.064”这一说法。Jonah表示,过去两周他已经改变看法,增加了ETH/BTC多头,买入ETH和其他山寨币,之后进一步明确说买入价约为0.0662。6月28日至30日,ETH情绪持续恶化,但价格保持横盘——这是他偏好的背离,因为“所有人都讨厌它,但价格就是横着走”。

  • Jonah对GBTC的判断建立在市场结构之上:传统资金可以为广泛预期的事件提前对冲,但加密市场缺乏足够可进入的资金、渠道和风险偏好,无法完全抢跑BlackRock获批。因此,任何能买入现货BTC或GBTC的人,都可以在他认为存在基本面错价的情况下提前布局。他列出的偏好交易包括做多GBTC、ETH、Stacks以及BTC上涨方向,同时也指出自己不知道BTC会怎么走,并表示:“我不认为现在该买入。”

  • Jonah估计,ETF可能带来数十亿美元资金流入,可能达到30亿-40亿美元,但他认为GBTC的现有持有者可能直接赎回,抽走信托中的Bitcoin,并在能够退出后卖出。Avi预计获批与赎回之间会存在一段时间,认为资金流会被部分抵消、也会被提前交易,并表示自己不知道净流入规模;从更长周期看,他预计这对BTC是利好。

  • Avi的事件模型类似期货ETF获批:BTC实际上在获批时就见顶,ETH随后上涨并强劲补涨,二者最终都见顶,市场横盘,直到2024年Q1减半临近。

  • 这最终形成一套灵活切换的交易顺序,而不是被动追涨:Avi把ETF视为卖出机会,预计获批时BTC狂热、ETH恐慌;约一个月后在回调中买入ETH,再在约一周后转向并全部卖出,然后等待减半。另一方面,Avi仍称BTC和ETH是处于数十年上行趋势中的超级趋势资产;Jonah早年在Facebook和Bitcoin上的止盈经历,则提醒人们不要过早卖出真正的长期趋势。

Jonah Van Bourg

I’m broadcasting to you live from London, England. Hello, Avi. How are you, mate?

Avi Felman

I’m doing all right. Jonah, is the price of Bitcoin the same in London as it is here?

Jonah Van Bourg

Importantly, it is, but it’s counted in pounds. The pound is a little bit lower—below $30,000—so it still looks low relative to the past.

Avi Felman

Do you remember when the pound almost hit parity with the dollar?

Jonah Van Bourg

Yeah, there was a massive sell-off because of the gilts. That was earlier this year.

Avi Felman

No, that was 2022. The government did something stupid with pensions. I forget exactly why the pound tanked.

Jonah Van Bourg

I had this rah-rah-America—I’m American living in London—mentality that the pound was just going to keep dropping, and then it ripped right back.

Avi Felman

Yeah, I remember when it hit parity. It’s funny how these things tend to work. It’s peak hysteria, peak panic, peak “oh my God, new paradigm,” or “this time is different, it’s all over.” That’s always the bottom.

Jonah Van Bourg

It’s true in every single market. I remember at a dollar I was browsing real estate in Dubai and London, along with everybody else. That’s why it bounced back.

Avi Felman

London is an amazing fiscal quasi-haven for a lot of people around the globe—not to talk about London real estate.

Jonah Van Bourg

Oh yeah, that was September 30, 2022. My timing is way off, but I remember that back then, as we were browsing real estate, everything ripped back and it never ended up pulling back.

Avi Felman

I was hearing—and maybe when I come join you in London next week, we’ll go do some sniffing around—that a lot of people in the UK have 10-year mortgages as opposed to 30-year mortgages. The rate is fixed for 10 years, not 30 years, so as rates go up, it’s going to put a lot more pressure on the UK housing market than it does on the U.S. housing market. They’re already talking to some dealers about a lot of supply coming on, so maybe we should go house-shopping together.

Jonah Van Bourg

We could be roommates. Atlanta Life would be super happy about that.

Avi Felman

Moving in with Avi.

Jonah Van Bourg

Last week, we spent a lot of time feeling pretty good. The price of Bitcoin hit $30,000 in the middle of our podcast for the first time in months. We’re both long, and it felt good. This time, why don’t we take a moment to explore and learn from some of the worst trades we’ve ever done?

Avi, where can you start? What’s one of the stupidest, worst, or most costly trades you’ve ever done in your career, and how has it helped you become a better trader since then?

Avi Felman

Every bad trade that you take is a tremendous learning opportunity. In my opinion, you learn the most from the trades that you messed up. I learned almost nothing from the trades that I won big on. Sometimes a little bit, but realistically, I just feel good.

The biggest learning opportunity for me was back in 2019, when Bitcoin ripped from $3,000 to $14,000. I had done a very good job riding that wave. I was one of the larger participants on Deribit at the time. There wasn’t a lot of options volume going through, and volatility was tremendously mispriced.

After Bitcoin ripped from $3,000 to $4,000, I just started buying upside, buying upside, buying upside. I ran up my account very quickly. Then, at $13,000–$14,000, there was a little bit of recency bias. I thought, “I’ve made so much money buying these options, and I’ve made so much money exploiting this inefficiency. Even though the inefficiency has completely gone at this point—volatility was trading 100 points higher in my mind—I’m really good at this. This has been a really good instrument, and I think I can make a lot of money if I keep going.”

Jonah Van Bourg

So you just took an absolute beating at the top, at $14,000, because you were so exposed to upside calls.

Avi Felman

I remember one moment where I probably could have gotten out, but I thought about it in the wrong way. On the sell-off from $14,000 to $12,000—it was a pretty rapid sell-off—volatility in options went up so much that despite Bitcoin going down 10%–15% in price, the value of my options only went down 5%–6%. It was insane. My calls were going the wrong way with price, but they stayed almost the same price.

I looked at that and thought, “That’s a great opportunity to stay long because I haven’t lost any money, so there’s no reason to sell.” The lesson I learned from that trade, which has actually been a phenomenal trade over the last few years, is that any time you get a massive short-term spike in volatility in the crypto markets, that is a 99% hit-rate sell.

Jonah Van Bourg

You can build a model on that. If you get a one-day, two- or three-standard-deviation move in volatility, you should probably sell.

Avi Felman

It makes it even better when it’s close to the end of the month.

Jonah Van Bourg

That trade taught you a good lesson. Thank you for sharing.

For me, earlier in my career, I was fresh out of the gates and scared to lose money. Somebody finally gave me the advice: “Jonah, if you trade not to lose money, you’ll just lose money. Trade to make money. It involves taking some risk and putting yourself out there.”

I was still nervous, and I spent a lot of time trying to think things through before I dipped my toes in, because once you dip your toes in, you have to be prepared to get wet. I ended up getting a couple of things pretty right, namely Facebook stock and Bitcoin, and to some extent crude oil.

I was a little bit too quick to take profits. I would make 10%, 20%, 30%, or 50% on a little bit of money in my PA, and I would just take profit. I thought, “Wow, this is great.” Then those things went up another 100x—or 10x in the case of Facebook—and I missed all of it. I thought, “I need to learn to ride a trend.”

That led to 2018, the worst trade of my career: a conviction long in crude oil. I was dead right. The market was tightening, supply was dropping off a cliff, and everything was going right. I was max long at my company, with a lot of capital and a lot of risk tolerance, and I was having the best year of my career. Very quickly, things just got better and better.

Then Trump came in and basically got nervous about the price of oil, because high gasoline prices nuke presidencies in election years. He went soft on Iran and waived the sanctions for a bit. I didn’t adapt to that information. I stayed drum-beating long on crude oil because of everything I had learned about missing out on big trends. I thought this was going to be a big trend, and I lost so much money that it took me a year and a half to get back to my high-water mark.

What I’ve learned from that—and what Bitcoin and crypto traders all over the world should hopefully take notice of—is that you can kick yourself when you miss a big trend, and you can kick yourself when you think there’s going to be a big trend and it snaps back in your face.

The critical piece of analysis is to ask yourself whether you’re on the break of some new technological or market-based unlock, or whether you’re at the peak of a hype cycle that’s going to revert because participants now perceive the asset you’ve ridden to this point to be unattractive from a price perspective.

Bitcoin miners might be saying, “At $30,000, this looks like a level where we should really try to finance our business for years after what we’ve just been through. Let’s sell everything.” Crypto could go straight back down. Equally, if we’re at $30,000 because a BlackRock ETF is about to get approved and 20 times more capital is about to enter this market, don’t sell, whatever you do.

Avi Felman

I think you can learn a lot from studying previous bubbles, and you can learn a lot from studying previous trends. One of the most important things you can do—and probably the thing that’s made me the single most money in my entire career—is to be a student of history.

Every time I talk to an older trader, or have conversations with people in this business who have been very successful, there are really 2 things that stand out to me. One is that they’ve built themselves tremendous intuition through many hours of studying chart information, balance sheets, and data. They’ve built themselves tremendous intuition to the point where people will look at Druckenmiller or Soros and say, “How did they make that decision? How did they make it so quickly? How did they make the right decision?”

The reality is that a lot of it is just prior study. It’s like wrestling: you build muscle memory for yourself. You do certain things in certain situations, and you just know to do those things. That comes from practice and studying.

The second thing they study the most is often history. It’s understanding what has happened in the past and how to apply that to the future.

I’ll mention some of my favorite books. I would probably read 3. I would read The Great Game: The Emergence of Wall Street as a World Power by John Steele Gordon, which is a history of Wall Street. It takes you through every scam that anybody on Wall Street has ever pulled.

There are anecdotes about how, during the railroad boom, people would rename their companies the Long Island Railroad Company and watch the stock go up. There are stories about Jay Gould and his cornering of markets. There’s also a famous story where a guy known to have a hot hand on the Street in the 1920s goes to a club. He writes down a list of stocks to buy, hands it to his broker, and tells the broker to accidentally drop it on the way out of the club.

The broker accidentally drops it, a bunch of people pick it up, and they think, “This guy has a really hot hand. Let me go buy these stocks.” Then he proceeds to sell the stocks to them. There are all these different anecdotes and funny things that happen.

I’d also read The Alchemy of Finance by George Soros, which I think is the best book in the world at teaching somebody how to play a bubble. If you’re in crypto, you need to read this book. It’s a seminal text of crypto despite being written many years before crypto was invented. It deals with the concept of reflexivity.

Finally, I’d read the autobiography of Bernard Baruch, which is a phenomenal book. It follows Bernard Baruch, one of the greatest traders of all time, who successfully pivoted into politics from trading and ended up as an adviser to FDR. He lived a fascinating life.

Those books built a strong foundation for me in terms of developing my personal trading style, which is generally waiting for big opportunities and then, when I find those big opportunities, pressing them hard and riding the trend. Patience and discipline are the 2 most important characteristics of any good trader. They’re related, but they’re different.

Jonah Van Bourg

I’d add The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power by Daniel Yergin. Since you mentioned history, and these are history books, this is a 1,000-page, 150-year history of crude oil.

The reason it’s so important for crypto and traders in most markets is that a commodity is tradable technology, and crypto is also tradable technology. That’s why I think crypto is a commodity.

There are many similarities between ETH and crude oil. Oil is deflationary: you can occasionally mine more, but every time you put a little bit of it in your airplane to fly somewhere, or in a bus to travel somewhere, the global supply decreases. Gas is burned. There are scaling solutions—that’s the equivalent of finding more—but ultimately, it’s a deflationary asset that you use to unlock value in some product or service, just like oil.

Avi Felman

Oil in its early days—you learn this in The Prize—was subject to the same barbell debate that we have in crypto today: is it useful, or is it a scam? Is it garbage?

The same thing happened with crude oil back in the day, when a bunch of Yale scientists were messing around with it. People were asking, “Is this the future? Are we going to be able to replace whale oil with kerosene, create kerosene, and make light out of it? Or is it just a bunch of tar bubbling out of the ground because there’s literally that much of it—a useless waste product?”

You can look at the inflation-adjusted price chart of crude oil in this book. One of the highest prices it reached—if not the highest, the second- or third-highest—on an inflation-adjusted basis was in the late 1800s, and then it went down 99% from there.

Jonah Van Bourg

That’s because they didn’t hard-cap it. They should have hard-capped it.

Avi Felman

It’s fascinating that there were people who wrote it off as, “Maybe it’s just black tar bubbling out of the ground. It might not actually be useful. It’s not technology.” You never really think about things like that.

Jonah Van Bourg

I like comparing the builders in the crypto space to the Yale scientists who were slaving away in the chemistry lab trying to refine it. It’s not that hard: you boil it, take the steam, cool the steam back off, and you have kerosene, which flies jets and creates light.

In crypto, it’s like asking, “Does the world need a publicly owned spreadsheet?” Yes, it probably does. To me, this seems obvious, but to all the naysayers out there, it’s a question of, “Why?” You could have Amazon Web Services do the same thing.

Avi Felman

We should get a naysayer on the podcast sometime. At this point, the people who hate this stuff just don’t understand it. It would be like debating a flat-earther. Why even debate the thing?

The valid points they bring up are things I agree with, but that’s circular reasoning because then obviously I’m doing the opposite. For example, a lot of the points brought up around whether utility tokens are useful are, “The majority of them aren’t.” But that’s well understood by every professional participant in the asset class.

What gives Bitcoin value? Nothing, except the belief that it has value, and the fact that it’s better money on a variety of different metrics. But people say that crypto has no backing. Fine.

Is crypto, or is DeFi, better or worse than the traditional financial system? The people who say that the underlying technology of the traditional financial system is better than the underlying technology of DeFi are delusional. There’s no argument. It’s just not true.

The arguments they might bring up are, “You can’t do KYC, you can’t do AML, and you can’t have privacy.” You can build those things on top of DeFi. It just won’t be the DeFi that we see today. It’ll be a very different version of it, but you can still build it, and it’ll still be better built on the crypto stack.

Jonah Van Bourg

Speaking of DeFi, have you been paying attention to these DeFi 1.0 pumps? I’m scratching my head a little bit. Even BCH ripped 150% in the last few days. What is going on?

Avi Felman

I genuinely think that a lot of these things were just horrifically under-owned. There’s no speculative money in them. The only people who held them were the people holding them for the long term. The only sellers were the people who were already holding them, receiving inflation, and selling.

I think this is less of a fundamental move. I don’t think anything has changed fundamentally for DeFi. I just think it was a massive, effective short squeeze. People woke up and realized they had zero DeFi exposure, and that it was possible to get exposure.

One downstream effect of the ETF getting approved is that some people are speculating this is happening because the SEC is being told by the Biden administration to loosen up on crypto. I have no insight into that.

Jonah Van Bourg

That’s a similar thesis to yours, which I assumed was just me being lazy and not doing the research. I thought that something that had been fire-sold for over a year—the DeFi asset class, with FTX not helping—had simply gone down-only for a while.

Then it goes up a little bit, and you have a bear-market rally from the low point. You can say, “Wow, this is a big rally,” but in reality, when another year goes by, we’ll zoom out and look at this price action as a blip in a downtrend. I assumed it was just that kind of fractal volatility in the middle of a bear market for a particular asset class.

I didn’t think there was anything more to it, but it’s worth talking about in case we’re missing something obvious.

Avi Felman

I don’t think we’re missing anything obvious. In terms of BCH and LTC, BCH is a very tightly controlled asset. I don’t want to necessarily make any accusations, but it’s very tightly controlled, which means that it’s very easy to move the price and manufacture these types of moves.

I think LTC tends to follow because what happens in these situations is that you see a leader, and then everybody piles into the secondary asset. One thing I’ve learned time and time again trading crypto is that it’s highly reflexive, so you almost never make as much money buying the laggard as you do the leader.

If you buy the laggard, it’s a 1- to 3-day trade, and you’re looking for some level of convergence—10%, 15%, or 20%, especially in this environment. You’re not looking for the same returns as with the leader. More likely than not, the leader is going to outperform the laggard.

People tend to crowd into the winner. They don’t tend to buy the loser in hopes of catching up, unless you’re talking about a bull market—full-on, crazy, everything pumping 100% left and right. Even then, the same principle applies.

Looking at DeFi, the top performers today on my DeFi list include GRT, which I don’t know why is up 14%; BitDAO, which is going through a rebranding to Mantle DAO; and Blur, which I’m actually quite bullish on as well because I’m bullish on NFTs.

Bybit has just been such a winner out of all these Binance issues. You’ve also got Frax and Maker. A lot of these things were just super tightly held assets.

Jonah Van Bourg

You brought up something interesting that I want to double-click on.

Avi Felman

Double-click? What are we, consultants? We’re going to boil the ocean next, from 30,000 feet.

Jonah Van Bourg

I’m so sorry. I tried the corporate life. It’s killed you, man. Let’s try that again.

Something I wanted to think through with you is NFTs. You mentioned Blur, the intersection of DeFi and NFTs, and you also mentioned how buying the laggard is a terrible strategy that earns you a tiny fraction of the return with an explosive multiple of the risk.

Avi Felman

It’s funny you mentioned those 2 things, because the closest market to crypto when it comes to leaders and laggards is the art market.

When you buy art, all the people who are good at it—and there are very few—say, “Buy the best artists, and buy the best pieces by the best artists. Do not mess with anything other than the best of the best. Everything else is garbage.”

That’s obviously difficult. It’s hard to pick the best artists before they become too expensive, and it’s hard to pick their best pieces until their styles become known. But that is indeed the best way to invest in art.

With NFTs being art, is there any other trade besides Zombie Punks, Apes, Ape Punks, Aliens, and Punks? I know Azuki just did something crazy, but is all of this totally to be ignored? Is the Bored Ape Yacht Club dead? Does the leader-laggard relationship that you mentioned in crypto apply to NFTs?

Jonah Van Bourg

I don’t think it applies as much to something like a Bored Ape, an Azuki, or things that were hot at a given time in the cryptosphere.

A lot of the profile-picture NFT projects are effectively brands that come in and out of style. You can think of them as Gucci, Prada, or Versace. Whoever has the best designer at any given moment is producing the best stuff. American Eagle comes into fashion and goes out of fashion.

It’s about reputation. It’s not like Picasso or Damien Hirst. These projects are where they are because of the community and because the team behind them is constantly doing things with the project, and the community can wax and wane in potency and effectiveness.

Jonah Van Bourg

Now, though, there’s a different story. You read my mind. Fidenzas, Squiggles, Punks, and Rocks are a different story.

Who’s your favorite traditional artist, if you had to pick one? Mine’s Franz Kline.

Avi Felman

I don’t know that much about the traditional art world. I’ve gotten some exposure to it recently, and I think it’s a fascinating space.

I know a lot more about the gem and jewelry market than I do about the art market. As a half-Indian, half-Jewish person, I guess I had to. I find it really fascinating.

Jonah Van Bourg

Why are you bullish on NFTs? Teach me.

Avi Felman

My thinking isn’t that differentiated. There are really 2 things.

One is that as the crypto market goes up, the wealth effect will make people want to display their wealth. They’re not going to display it in the form of gaudy purchases in the real world. They’re going to buy gaudy things in the digital world, and those things are going to be NFTs.

People are going to take the money they make and go flex their Rocks, Fidenzas, Squiggles, and all sorts of other expensive things. It will become more accepted.

The other thing—and this stays in our little circle of you and me, everybody listening to this podcast, and everybody on my Twitter—is that I’ve made a few friends in the traditional art world, in the New York space. They’ve mentioned to me that NFTs are something they pay attention to now. They’re not going away in the way I thought they might.

There’s actually a gallery down the street from our London office called Pace, in Mayfair. I bought my first piece there.

Jonah Van Bourg

Really?

Avi Felman

They were showing NFTs at that gallery. I do think there’s some semblance of acceptance from the traditional art world—way more than there was a year and a half ago. Because these things have stuck around, people are saying, “Okay, they’re not going anywhere. Got it. Understood.”

It’s more of an immersion into culture. There’s actually a third point here: NFTs are rapidly expanding outside of just art.

You have Nike introducing the Nike.Swoosh, Starbucks introducing its NFTs, and artists—we invested in a platform called Fan3 that’s helping artists issue NFTs at greater scale. I can’t give away too much, but they have a lot of great DJs lined up to issue NFTs that give exclusive access to conferences and music. They also have athletes lined up.

People are thinking about NFTs in a much broader context than they were previously. There’s pretty negative sentiment with respect to NFTs right now, in that almost everyone is ignoring them. The percentage of people in crypto who pay attention to NFTs has dropped off a cliff, but activity and acceptance are picking up.

Jonah Van Bourg

I’m bullish, too. In the technology hype cycle, you have the technology being innovated, then the peak of euphoria, then the trough of disillusionment, and then it slopes into the enlightenment phase.

I think we’re past the trough of disillusionment with NFTs. Maybe not with crypto more broadly, but with NFTs for sure.

I agree with you that they’re percolating into the traditional art world. My big art guru and adviser is Nathan Clements-Gillespie, and he runs the Frieze Festival. I was having a conversation with him in Venice last year about what NFTs could be in terms of traditional art.

Frankly, the most interesting thing to me is that anybody who owns art has to own a certificate of authenticity to authenticate the piece. That document is printed on a piece of paper and could be forged. It’s effectively a piece of garbage.

Wouldn’t it be better if all art were effectively an NFT with a physical print? By the way, that’s how I feel about so many things.

Avi Felman

Why the heck would I have a deed—a piece of paper that says I own this thing?

Jonah Van Bourg

Yes, it’s in a registry as well, but if I lose the deed, it’s still a headache.

Avi Felman

Exactly. Why is it still in a safety-deposit box somewhere? These deeds still say things like, “This is actually a da Vinci.” Is it really a da Vinci? Take Salvator Mundi, which Prince Mohammed bin Salman bought for $500 million. What if there had been an NFT associated with that certificate of authenticity, rather than it being registered with a bank in Northern Italy five or six hundred years ago when it was created? It could simply have been put on a blockchain and lasted forever.

That’s how art ownership—and ownership of anything—should be stored.

Jonah Van Bourg

Is there a company you would trust with the certificate of authenticity for your art, or with the deed to your house? I wouldn’t want to trust some startup, or even Microsoft, with that. I’d prefer to have it on Chase, frankly.

So here’s a business idea for any entrepreneurial crypto people out there. There are 2 sides to it: on-chain certificates of authenticity for traditional art, and the opposite—a service for wealthy traditional-art collectors who buy from galleries and don’t want to go into MetaMask and deal with anything. They just want to sign something through DocuSign and then own their art.

Secure storage for NFTs bought at traditional art galleries—that dual service is a real crypto business that needs to exist. If anyone’s creating it, hit us up.

Avi Felman

I agree wholeheartedly. I don’t know how we got stuck on the topic of talking about art, but it hit big. I think if it goes up, it’s because it’s a use case for the chain.

Speaking of BTC, where’s it going right now? Let’s timestamp it. It’s at .064.

Jonah Van Bourg

Let me preface this by saying that on the last podcast we talked about being bearish on BTC up until the ETF launch. We talked about being bearish on alts up until the ETF launch. Since then, alts have actually done okay. BTC dominance is up since the podcast, but there are some select alts that have done all right.

Personally, over the last 2 weeks, I’ve changed my opinion and gotten longer ETH/BTC. I’ve bought ETH, and I’ve bought other alts. My favorite trades in the world are still long GBTC, ETH, Stacks, and BTC upside, but we did buy other alts over the last 2 weeks.

I think that especially if BTC gets stuck in this range, we’re going to see some outperformance.

Avi Felman

Can ETH keep up?

Jonah Van Bourg

If BTC keeps going up, I think ETH absolutely can’t. The best trade in crypto is long GBTC.

Unlike traditional markets, where there’s more than enough capital to pre-hedge pretty much any type of announcement or widely anticipated information, there isn’t enough money that can get into crypto to pre-position for what a BlackRock ETF approval would bring in.

Because of that, there’s a fundamental mispricing in the crypto market. Anybody who can buy Bitcoin spot right now, or buy GBTC, has the ability to get ahead of a potential BlackRock ETF approval. I think that would set the price up.

The reason the price isn’t already up in a probabilistically weighted way is that it’s hard for capital to get into crypto right now. The pathways and gateways, or the will and risk appetite, are lacking.

I think GBTC is the best trade. To respond to your question about where BTC goes from here, I don’t know where it goes. What I’m confident in is that if you wait for an ETF approval and the BlackRock ETF gets approved, that’s when you buy. I don’t think it’s a buy right now.

Here’s my cynical take: I don’t think the ETF drives truly meaningful flows. I think it drives semi-meaningful flows—maybe a few billion, perhaps $3 billion or $4 billion. I think a significant amount of that is unfortunately offset by people who own GBTC and would redeem and get out of the trade.

There are funds right now that own GBTC outright. When the ETF is approved, they’ll drain GBTC of its Bitcoin and get out of the trade. There are a lot that own GBTC in a market-neutral fashion, but there are also a lot that own it outright and are willing to take the price risk of Bitcoin. When that gap closes, they’re simply out.

Avi Felman

I do think there will be some time between a potential BlackRock ETF approval and when you can redeem your GBTC.

Jonah Van Bourg

Probably, but probably not long. I don’t think it would be very long.

Avi Felman

I don’t think there will be many dominoes. I do think those flows somewhat offset, and I think a lot of the flows are front-run, too. Net, I don’t know how many flows come in. I think it’s a net positive for BTC over a long period of time.

My take is that if an ETF is approved, it looks very similar to the futures ETF approval. BTC tops effectively on the day of the ETF approval. ETH runs afterward and catches up very hard, then both top together for a foreseeable period. We go sideways, and then in Q1 2024, having started to approach the halving, we start going up again.

That’s my view of the market: the ETF is a sale, ETH goes up, then you sell ETH and pivot. You buy a little bit of ETH now, but then you pivot really hard, sell everything about a week later, and wait for the halving to get closer. Then you walk away a much wealthier man or woman.

Jonah Van Bourg

I like that view because it’s one of those times when your style works better than mine. You really have to trade actively. You can’t just sit on your hands. You have to be nimble, willing to commit size, and willing to act when everybody is either fearful or euphoric.

Avi Felman

It’s really as simple as this: when everybody’s panicking, you buy; when everybody’s euphoric, you sell. I can guarantee you with 100% certainty that on ETF approval, everybody is going to be absolutely euphoric.

BTC will be euphoric and ETH will be panicking, and then you buy ETH about a month in. That’s when you buy it—you dip-buy it after an approval, and then you pivot.

Jonah Van Bourg

That’s also why I bought ETH/BTC around 0.0662. I noticed that the price of ETH wasn’t correlating with sentiment. I trade somewhat lower time frames, and one of my favorite trades is to take a sentiment divergence.

There are a couple of good services you can use to quantify it. I like The Tie a lot.

Avi Felman

Me too. Shout-out to Josh Frank. Great product, great guy.

Jonah Van Bourg

I have to disclose that we’re investors, but I genuinely do like the product.

What I noticed was a divergence. From Wednesday, June 28, through Friday, June 30, ETH sentiment kept getting worse and worse. Everybody hated it, but the price was flat. It wasn’t going down anymore.

When I see that, I like to start nibbling and buying. It’s the same reason I bought a little bit of Blur post-nuke. I see Blur capturing a larger portion of NFT volume every day. A lot of volume is running through it, it’s doing well, and NFT volumes are doing great. New projects are coming out, but the sentiment around NFTs is that nobody cares about them anymore.

I see a sentiment divergence there. DeFi was probably similar. After the SEC came after Coinbase, everybody thought DeFi would get absolutely nuked. Since nothing has happened, it’s going up again. Now that I’m thinking about it, that might be one of the reasons for the move up.

I want to wrap up the podcast with some general views and thoughts around the market. At a high level, where do you think we’re going over the next 6 months and over the next 12 months?

Avi Felman

Parts of the crypto market are looking more like rational traditional markets, to your point. It’s best to be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy. They’re mean-reverting markets: buy dips, sell pops, and sensible markets.

The 2 megatrend assets that I think it would be dangerous to sell—the Jonah circa-10-years-ago mistake of selling Bitcoin or Facebook stock—are Bitcoin and ETH right now. I think we’re in the midst of a multidecade uptrend in both assets.

If you invest in a way that allows you to remain on the mechanical bull and not get thrown off, I think that’s the trade. Other things, like NFTs and DeFi, have been fire-sold. It’s probably time to buy them. Other things that are looking a little frothy, a little hot—maybe memecoins—might light up.

Jonah Van Bourg

I think that’s a good line. I do think we’re at an inflection point for Bitcoin. We’re talking as if the ETF is definitely going to get approved, but I’d put it at a 75% chance.

I think we’re at an inflection point where Bitcoin becomes an institutionalized asset class and something that’s simply not going away. That solidifies, in my mind, the incoming bubble.

There are still a lot of people who don’t have exposure. There are still a lot of people who have written it off, but it hasn’t gone away, and it’s not going away. ETH continues to pick up traction.

I view the next few months as solidifying the base for crypto and allowing for a crazy run in 2024 and 2025.

Avi Felman

I agree with you. Of course, a lot of this is investment advice. Tokens are risky; do your own research. We really appreciate you listening in to our views, but they are just our opinions, not advice. Again, not advice—never financial advice, because I would never do that.

I appreciate talking with you, as always. I’m super excited to see you in London. Maybe we’ll even do a podcast in person—an impromptu episode sitting across the table. You can get your kids involved. I actually think that would be great. We’ll ask the listeners if they want it and get some Sony Watts [?] takes there.

Yep—one-syllable, two-syllable takes. All right, Jonah. Catch up soon.

如何分析 ETH:BTC 交易|1000x — 文字稿与摘要 | BidClub