基本面终于转向看多了吗？
- 这轮抛售看起来是资金再配置，而不只是去杠杆：股市下跌3%，黄金却猛涨3%，Bitcoin同步上行；Avi认为，对股票持有者来说，这比所有资产齐跌的清洗“可怕得多”。 TINA正在受到挑战：配置者急于寻找现金停泊处，追逐一切脱钩上行的资产；等黄金仓位打满后，Jonah认为，剩下唯一不相关的资产就是Bitcoin——黄金正在“预演Bitcoin即将发生的行情”。
- Bitcoin相对股票（IBIT/SPY）的表现已创历史新高；两者都在4月7日周一触底，但NASDAQ重新下跌时，Bitcoin守住了。 这不是通常的先触底模式，而是相对强势——“这是更有力的指标……因为Bitcoin随后就成了对冲工具”。Jonah说：“一旦Bitcoin证明自己是对冲工具……行情就会变得荒谬”，黄金的体量远大于Bitcoin，而Bitcoin的供给不足以承接这笔资金流。
- 这笔交易的关键是：上行波动率定价失真。 Avi认为，8.8万美元“只是一个不稳定的价格”——要么只有Saylor和另一个买家在托盘，买方结束后价格崩塌；要么是真正的仓位再配置推动价格“在很短时间内大幅上行”。他看好6月27日到期、行权价10万美元的看涨期权，价格约3500美元（若到期时价格在10万—12万美元，约为6倍；若波动率飙升，兑现会更快）；12月31日到期、行权价17万美元的看涨期权，在50%出头的波动率下只要3000美元。Jonah的窗口是：“最多3到6个月。”
- 市场对Saylor的担忧是共同的：他所有Bitcoin持仓的平均买入价如今已接近7万美元——“这个人真的该停手了”——而且他今天早上宣布已经结束买入。 但复制Saylor模式的浪潮确实构成资金流顺风：Metaplanet是全球第10大企业Bitcoin持有者，目标是在2026年前持有21,000 BTC，其配售买家收益已上涨约70倍；巴西版可能是Méliuz，Solana也有一家类似公司——这说明市场对“Bitcoin无追索权杠杆”的需求极其旺盛。
- 山寨季已经结束——“加密世界的互联网泡沫繁荣时代结束了”，而ETH就是例子：如果ETH能经历一场长达7年的拉高出货……我真的无法再买入任何不赚钱的东西。 Jonah的修正是，未来仍会有一轮精选行情，但规模可能“少于24个代币”，前提是代币与真实收入之间存在真正的联系。Jonah点名Pendle、Hype、Tao；Avi的建议是“做空ETH，做多这些标的，等6个月赚100%”。
- 应当像给股票做估值一样，在DeFi Llama上给代币做基本面分析：Hyperliquid的手续费在约每天100万美元时等于收入（全球协议收入排名第6，排在Axiom、Tron、Pump、Circle、Tether之后），其中95%以上回流用于回购，市盈率“与NASDAQ相当，而不是狂热行情”。 Curve在13亿美元FDV、约167倍市盈率的水平上，“未必是最好的入场点”。Avi说：“也许我们该开始招聘股票分析师来给加密公司估值。”
1. 这是资金再配置，不是去杠杆——黄金正在预演Bitcoin的行情
- Avi开场先做分类：股票抛售有两种，一种是所有资产同时下跌的去杠杆清洗；另一种是一些资产猛涨、股票却缓慢下行，“这至少对股票持有者来说可怕得多”，因为这意味着资本正在主动离开。今天NASDAQ和标普下跌3%，黄金上涨3%，Bitcoin上涨——他上一集对黄金“笑着看多”的转向正在兑现。
- Jonah解释TINA的运行机制：机构资本必须找地方停泊，而标普一直扮演这个蓄水池的角色——但这不是V形复苏，“也许这根本就是一场该死的熊市”。当配置者感到恐慌时，“任何向上脱钩的资产都会成为替代选项”，而且“买黄金不会让你被炒鱿鱼”。Avi的结论是，一轮上涨催生了下一轮上涨，如今黄金的定价方式更像是某个正在进入山寨季、突然暴涨的小盘股，而不是一项25万亿美元资产。
- 上一集重申的宏观主线仍然成立：在多极世界里，不与任何国家绑定的跨境资产更有价值。美元贬值——EUR/USD已从几个月前接近平价升至1.15——正是Trump想要的结果；更弱的货币可以缩小他一直执着的贸易逆差。而黄金市场的大买家是正在减持美国证券的PBOC：中国知道自己在大宗商品上的定价权，未来5到10年“他们只会不断给自己的资产抬轿”。
2. Bitcoin在NASDAQ下跌时守住了——这是对冲行为，不是反弹
- Jonah更喜欢用收盘时间匹配的IBIT/SPY来观察BTC/股票比率，目前该比率已创历史新高；唯一超过这一水平的是1月20日周一，当时可能对应Trump当选或就职相关事件，Avi也不确定具体是哪一个。Avi强调，通常加密资产会先脱钩、先触底再反弹；这次两者都在4月7日周一触底，随后NASDAQ继续下跌，Bitcoin却守住了。“这是Bitcoin展现相对强势，而不是先触底……这是更有力的指标，因为Bitcoin随后就成了对冲工具。”他认为有两个原因：一是Saylor这类特定买家，二是卖方已经耗尽——所有因关税担忧和流动性冲击而卖出的人，都在那次跌至74的猛烈清洗中离场；除非股票再跌10%—15%，否则很难触发更多卖盘。
- Jonah的结论是，没有人真的会把美国这场实验做空到归零——“它只是一直以来最糟糕的赌注”。世界真正需要的是一个能对冲数十万亿美元股票资本的资产。“一旦Bitcoin证明自己是对冲工具，天啊……行情就会变得荒谬。黄金的体量比Bitcoin大得多。”
3. Saylor的不适感——以及企业财库复制潮
- Saylor所有Bitcoin持仓的平均买入价如今已接近70,000美元，Avi认为“这让我害怕。这个人真的该停手了”。Jonah过去一直公开支持这种金融工程，但现在承认，只要MicroStrategy的底层业务能用现有现金流偿还债务，他就不会被迫平仓；“但不知怎么的，这类事情总是以糟糕收场。”值得注意的是，Saylor“今天早上宣布已经结束买入”。
- Avi认为，大多数听众都错过了机构正在做的交易：向MSTR竞争者进行私募配售。日本的Metaplanet如今是全球第10大企业Bitcoin持有者，目标是在2026年前持有21,000 BTC；那些以接近NAV平价参与配售的买家，收益已经“上涨了约70倍”。巴西有一家“Meluse”（可能是Méliuz），Solana也有一个版本正在启动，GME也在参与；多数融资规模为5亿—40亿美元，达到10亿美元的融资也并非不可能。核心洞察是：“市场对Bitcoin无追索权杠杆的需求极其旺盛……为什么要让Saylor一个人赚走所有钱？”这是一个真实的资金流动逻辑，“非常、非常看多”。
- Jonah提醒，分析这些配售，本质上只是“高评级、或者说高收益信用分析”：发行人能否用现有现金流偿还债务，契约是否依法要求其履约，还是“他们可以直接拿走你的钱然后把你卷走”，以及估值到底聪明还是愚蠢。“这感觉有点像庞氏骗局，但黄金也是如此”——去看看大英博物馆的货币展览就知道了。真正的毕业时刻，是美国或欧盟开始在公开市场买入BTC作为战略储备；他原本以为这需要20年，但关税正在让这一进程突然加速。
4. 交易逻辑：8.8万美元不稳定，上行尾部定价过低
- Avi的框架是：“88K……只是一个不稳定的价格。”要么Bitcoin由Saylor和另一个买家托住，等他们买完就崩；要么像他这一派认为的那样，真正的仓位再配置资金流会让价格“在很短时间内大幅上行”。因此，年末波动率在50%出头，一直覆盖到17万美元行权价；12月31日到期、行权价17万美元的看涨期权只要3000美元，“听起来很便宜”。他更偏好的表达方式是6月27日到期、行权价10万美元的看涨期权，价格约3500美元——若到期时价格达到10万—12万美元，约可获得6倍回报；如果一个月内触及10万美元，“波动率会高到让你已经赚到6倍”。“这是我的期权交易员直觉。”
- Jonah引用一位伟大交易员的原则：除非预期市场会快速移动，否则永远不要买期权。市场很少快速上行，所以看跌偏斜总是高于看涨偏斜，买入看跌期权“有点像一场输家的游戏”。但眼下是少数适合选择性买入看涨期权的时点：机构和主权资金可能把Bitcoin当作股票对冲工具；“如果这件事会发生，就会发生在接下来3到6个月内，最多如此”。50%的波动率大致介于石油和天然气之间，而VIX为34时，定价对应的是每日2.6%的波动。
- 对不同风险偏好的结构都有对应方案：胆小、容易害怕，可以买入7.4万看跌期权，同时买10万看涨期权；“如果你强得像头牛，就直接买看涨期权”；也可以做空ETH看跌期权、买入BTC看涨期权。Jonah会动态对冲看跌期权，把看涨期权“裸放在抽屉底部”。他承认：“我对买期权过敏……Theta是沉默的杀手。”真正便宜的Bitcoin波动率是30%或更低——“但我确实认为市场现在错误定价了它，错在上行方向。”4月12日—20日BTC只在2000美元区间内波动，也让Jonah措手不及；如今这个区间已经被突破，“很快就会看到波动率上升”。
5. 山寨季已死——接下来属于精选且与收入挂钩的代币
- Avi为山寨季写下悼词：“加密世界的互联网泡沫繁荣时代结束了……现在是Amazon取得领先、并且永远不再让出领先位置的阶段。”ETH揭开了所有人的幻想：“如果ETH能经历一场长达7年的拉高出货……我真的无法再买入任何不赚钱的东西。”它曾经通缩了“大约3.5秒”，随后停止产生收入，“然后基本上直接归零”。赌场只有在全世界重新感到富有时才会回归——要么出现类似COVID时期的投机狂潮和5%的GDP增长，要么Bitcoin涨到15万美元，让所有incel都觉得自己有钱了，重新开始疯狂赌博。
- Jonah的反驳值得保留：他是在做预测，而不是描述历史。SOL/BTC比率可能已经较历史高点下跌70%，而Solana是“和任何项目一样正经的项目”，所以“麦子还没有开始上涨”。下一轮行情会带来一场非常精选的山寨季，规模“限制在24个代币以内”，并跑赢Bitcoin；散户终于在类似meme的投资上彻底耗尽，幸存者必须具备“真实项目收入与底层代币经济之间的金融连接”。
- Jonah点名Pendle、Hype和Tao；Avi提出的表达方式是：“做空ETH，做多这些东西，等6个月赚100%。”Avi没有反驳：“又是ETH，我不想再鞭尸了，它已经废了。”最后一句是：“BTC涨，ETH跌。我就说这么多。”
6. 像给股票做估值一样给代币做基本面分析：DeFi Llama上的手续费与收入
- Hyperliquid是最典型的案例。Jonah在Felix那期节目后抄底买入，之后一直“在办公室里踱步，试图挑出这个逻辑的漏洞”：一个把手续费利润的95%以上用于代币回购的项目，难道真的不如一家优秀公司的股票？“我还没能找到漏洞。”加密行业最好的生意是交易所：具备反脆弱性，喜欢波动；如果BTC剧烈波动、手续费收入暴涨，就会形成反身性的回购循环。
- 筛选时最关键的细节是：手续费不等于收入。对Hyperliquid而言，两者相等——7天约700万美元，即“每天赚100万美元，简直疯了”——按协议收入计，它在全球排名第6，仅次于Axiom、Tron、Pump、Circle、Tether。对Jupiter这类AMM，手续费主要由LP拿走，手续费接近10亿美元，但年化收入只有2.4亿美元。Tether的7天手续费达到1.3亿美元，“根本没法投资”。Hyperliquid的市盈率“仍然大致与NASDAQ上的公司相当，不是狂热行情的水平，所以这里大概还可以”。
- 这套方法会自我纠偏：Jonah在“自己对某个协议了解不足时”曾发帖看空Curve，后来有人把白皮书发给他——“所以我错了”，错在代币经济学判断；但数学仍然不容乐观：每天15.9万美元收入，对应13亿美元FDV，约167倍市盈率，“未必是最好的入场点”。他的结论是：“也许我们该开始招聘股票分析师来给加密公司估值……这就是行业正在走向的方向。”
- 仓位管理也在实时进行。Jonah提出在20美元附近减持Hyperliquid；Avi说：“想都别想……25到30美元时可以分批卖出一点。”Jonah回应：“我们离20美元太近了。”
7. 现在的优势来自研究苦功，以及生态中的生态
- 游戏已经变难了：“如果你没有从靠谱来源拿到高质量信息，也没有和正确的人交流，现在基本不可能赚钱。”他们建议订阅研究服务，包括Blockworks、Messari——“即使我们敬爱的领袖离开了，仍然不错”——以及Delphi，并每天盯着DeFi Llama。Jonah的安慰是，加密仍然比美股容易得多；在美股里，你每一笔交易都在“和Ken Griffin正面交锋”，而主动交易山寨币的机构化基础设施还没有建好。
- Jonah举的下一层案例是TAO子网：Barry Silbert在推文里拉升其中一个子网，几小时后价格就上涨；但你必须先拥有TAO才能参与，这是一个生态内部套着另一个更低效生态的市场。在那里获胜后，你会获得更多TAO，像“DeFi summer”时期不断堆叠ETH一样形成复利。他目前还没有参与——“上周本来有点想进场，后来犯懒了，现在价格已经涨了20%。”
- 一些行政信息也带着信号：他们的AI终端将在“接下来几周内”上线，定位是一个实时响应、双栏布局的Bloomberg替代品，模型基于这档播客训练，用户可以“和文章对话”。Avi称其为“全球最好的加密分析师”，由几个人“在AI编程时代”打造。Jonah则开始复盘：除了没能精准卖在108的顶部，“我们从低点以来的判断一直是对的”。
I think this time, what emerges from this cloud of crap is going to be Bitcoin and a very small handful of solid projects that will probably perform for the next few years. I think retail is finally tapped out of meme-like investing.
Hey, nice to see you. I'm pretty happy today because the market's down 3%—both the Nasdaq and S&P—but gold is up 3%. That means my portfolio is doing pretty well, and Bitcoin's up, which means my portfolio is doing even better. Things are kind of heating up.
This is one of those scary moments for people who hold equities, where equities are just slowly grinding down. They're melting lower, but the market is acting kind of how you would expect it to, right? There are 2 types of equity selloffs. There's the everything selloff, where people are just deleveraging their book, and in that world, you open up TradingView and you're like, “Holy shit, why is literally everything red?”
Then there's this kind of selloff where there are things that are up and equities are down, which just means reallocation is happening. That's much scarier than just an everything selloff, for equity holders at least. In the last podcast, I said that I shifted my portfolio to gold and that I was giga-bullish on gold. That seems to be playing out.
The market seems to be terrified right now of holding equities, which I think is reasonable given the environment. But there are pockets of opportunity. I don't know, Avi, what are you seeing?
Yeah, I mean, gold is just ripping like a real alternative crypto asset, let's say. It doesn't look like a $25 trillion asset. It's not pricing like that; it's pricing like a microcap that's ripping in some sort of altseason, which is bizarre to see, because gold will put in decades where it does absolutely nothing or underperforms everything else. Then you get one of these, and, like you said, it makes you think twice about the stability of global markets.
There's this acronym called TINA. It stands for “There Is No Alternative,” and that acronym has historically applied to the S&P 500 because institutional capital is just starving for places to park cash. It's their job, and frankly, there aren't really a lot of options. So, the S&P 500 has been this fantastic place to park capital for a very long time.
When it sells off briefly and then does a quick V-shaped bounce, allocators can feel okay about leaving their money in stocks. But this isn't a V-shaped recovery that's happening. It's starting to bottom out. I don't know. We could talk about letters like L-shaped or U-shaped, or maybe it's just a freaking bear market, like you said. Maybe the bottom's about to fall out.
So, allocators are spooked. Since there is no alternative to equities, really, they're searching for anything right now. Anything that disconnects to the upside becomes an alternative in an environment like this. Gold started decoupling to the upside. You're not going to get fired for buying gold, right? So, the fact that it decoupled to the upside created momentum: a rally begat another rally, and so on and so forth. Gold has just started pushing higher.
I think gold is previewing what's about to happen to Bitcoin because, ultimately, allocators are scared. Bitcoin is the only other option. Maybe you, Avi, can be 100% in gold, but most institutions can't. Once you're maxed out on gold, what else do you diversify into that's sort of decorrelated from equities and gold?
1. Bitcoin & Currencies
Historically, Bitcoin's been correlated with equities, but now it's starting not to be. That's been really amazing to see Bitcoin outperforming. So, if you go to our favorite trusty chart of Bitcoin over the Nasdaq, I prefer IBIT/SPY because they have the same close.
Oh, I could do IBIT. Do whatever you want. I like the Bitcoin chart just because I can see the history, but I do agree that now it's cleaner to use IBIT.
Bitcoin over equities is at the highs.
Yeah, I mean, that ratio is literally at an all-time high. The only time it was higher than it is today was for 1 day—Monday, January 20—which was when Trump got elected and Bitcoin put in that crazy candle, or when Trump got sworn in, whatever. Then we started trending down for a bit, and now we're back at the highs.
The level of relative strength that Bitcoin is showing tells you a lot about what's going on. It tells you that Bitcoin is decoupling from equities because people are viewing this as digital gold right now. In my mind, there are really only 2 reasons why Bitcoin is trading the way it is. The first is that you still have idiosyncratic buyers like Saylor in the market, and that's keeping it up.
But the second is that people are done selling because of equities. Whatever happens to equities at this point, unless there's a complete and total collapse, I think it would probably take another 10% to 15% down in equities to trigger this. Bitcoin's doing just fine because the people who are selling on equity weakness, tariff worries, short-term liquidity hits, and repositioning all got out when we had that massive flush down to $74,000.
Now, the people who are holding Bitcoin are kind of just in it. There's no real reason to sell, and there's allocation happening because of this new global dynamic that we've discussed at length on the last podcast. In a multipolar world, cross-border assets not tied to a state become a lot more valuable.
Yeah, right. The U.S. dollar is devaluing right now against the rest of the world, which is kind of what Trump actually wants. EUR/USD is 1.15. That's crazy; it was trading basically at par a couple of months ago.
Well, you understand that's really good for Trump because if the dollar weakens and Americans have to buy more goods from America, that's a good thing.
Yeah. Trump and his tariffs make American goods more competitive. He's all about that trade deficit, right?
Yeah. Trade deficits will go down if the currency goes down. So, if that's his metric, he's getting what he wants.
People are saying that the United States is trading like an emerging market right now. I don't know if I buy that, but is there anywhere that's not trading like an emerging market by that metric?
It's a great point, honestly. Yeah, it kind of is, but the whole world is. Maybe Switzerland is trading like a flight-to-safety market, but I just think we're entering uncharted waters. I still think that the beast that Trump created is one that he can control.
Before we get to that, you brought up a really interesting feature, which is that Saylor has been buying all the way down. What was his average print, like $84,000 or $85,000?
His average buy of all Bitcoin is now almost $70,000, which in my opinion is scary. I mean, this guy really needs to stop.
2. Saylor & Copycats
Yeah, I think he really needs to just stop. Somebody should give Saylor a call and say, “Hey, man, there's actually something called being too much of the market.”
Yeah, I mean, he's gone a little bonkers. You've been a vocal fan of his financial engineering.
I guess technically, if the underlying business that he's got at MicroStrategy is enough to service his debt, then he's not going to get stopped out. But somehow, these sorts of things always end badly. My gut feel, like yours right now, is a little bit uncomfortable.
Yeah, I don't like it either.
With that being said, one trade that, if you're not on the institutional side, you're probably missing—or you're just not paying attention to—is that there are a lot of private placements going on right now for MicroStrategy competitors, and competitors not just in the U.S. market but in other markets.
I don't know if you've heard of Metaplanet. Metaplanet is in Japan, and it is buying Bitcoin like a madman, kind of like MSTR. It is now the world's 10th-largest corporate Bitcoin holder. They've stated they want to acquire 21,000 BTC by 2026.
The trade's been going nuts. These guys have done very well; their stock price has done very well. There was a private placement, and people are up like 70x on that because they basically launched at a low, at basically a flat premium, and now they're trading at a massive premium to NAV.
I think everyone has looked at the MSTR model and they're starting to say, “Wait a second. There is a tremendous amount of appetite in the market for non-recourse leverage on Bitcoin.” That's really what I think MSTR is at the end of the day: you buy it, it accumulates more Bitcoin over time, and hopefully the premium blows out because people think it's going to keep accumulating Bitcoin and there's going to be even more demand for that non-recourse leverage.
People are like, “Wait, why are we letting Saylor take all the money? Why don't we go launch our own versions of this?” There's another one called likely Méliuz in Brazil.
There’s a Solana one that just announced that they’re launching. I personally wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot more of these projects go live, potentially even at a much larger scale. Most of these are between $50 million and $400 million. There could be a couple-billion-dollar ones launching because there’s really no reason to let MicroStrategy play this game alone. Why not? I think that’s starting to happen, which is very bullish for Bitcoin—very, very bullish.
3. Ads (Kraken OTC, WalletConnect)
I have no take on the trades themselves, especially if you’re buying them on the open market. I have no idea if you’re going to make money. But a lot of these private placements, I think, are probably reasonably good trades. You just have to poke around to try to find them. You have to put a big check—$1 million to $5 million—into them. But that’s what’s happening, because people realize, like we’ve talked about, that this financial engineering from Saylor is pretty damn good. Maybe we should get a slice of the pie. And I think that’s going to continue. I mean, you saw GME doing it now. Basically, I’m bullish on Bitcoin not just because—oh, decoupling from gold, blah, blah, blah, global macro. There’s a genuine flow dynamic here that’s helping Bitcoin out.
4. Crypto’s Decoupling Moment
Yeah, and it’s good you brought it up. I mean, there are whales in gold, too, right? Who’s the big whale in gold right now? And who started this whole rally? It’s the PBOC, the People’s Bank of China. They’re divesting U.S.-issued securities for obvious reasons. And to the whole point about TINA, there aren’t many places you can go. Gold is one extremely viable place.
When China participates in commodities markets, including gold, it understands that it has a lot of pricing power. When they stop buying, prices go down, and when they continue buying, prices go up. So they probably know full well that they’re just going to be pumping their own bags for the next 5 to 10 years as they divest from U.S. securities and roll it into gold. I’d say I feel a little more comfortable betting on the PBOC as a whale in a precious-metals market than I do betting on Michael Saylor in the Bitcoin market.
However, Bitcoin is just at an earlier stage of where gold is now, right? Gold probably started on a lot of corporate balance sheets for thousands, or maybe hundreds, of years when it was basically the global reserve currency and companies needed to stack it in order to transact and manage it in their treasuries. That’s kind of what’s happening with Bitcoin. A few forward-thinking companies are saying, “Hey, this is the non-sovereign money of the future. Let me have some on my balance sheet.”
5. 1000x Terminal
I think if you’re going to invest in one of these private placements, it’s really just high-grade, or maybe high-yield, credit analysis. You have to be able to go into the credit of the issuer of these debt securities and understand what their cash flows are. If you’re a seasoned financial analyst and you’re good at this stuff—maybe you work in equity research or investment banking, you have some background as a consultant, or you went to business school—you should be able to tell, A, whether or not these companies are going to be able to service their debt obligations for the debt they raised to buy Bitcoin, and B, whether they’re required to do so by covenants or not. You also need to know whether they can just take your money and rug you, or whether they’re legally required to service their debt with cash flows from the existing businesses.
If boxes A and B are checked, then you basically just have to—it just comes down to the valuation. Are you buying at a smart or a stupid valuation? Honestly, it feels a little bit Ponzi-ish, but then again, so is gold, right? Ultimately, we talked about this maybe 50 episodes ago, but look no further than the Money exhibit at the British Museum to see the nonsensical things that people have ascribed value to and means of exchange to over the centuries, right? Why not Bitcoin?
I think, ultimately, the real bull moment will come for Bitcoin when the asset class graduates beyond the likely Nayib Bukele and the Michael Saylor and these other debt-fueled buying instruments out there, and graduates into the world of the U.S. starting to accumulate Bitcoin on the open market for a strategic reserve, and the European Union starting to buy Bitcoin on the open market for a strategic Bitcoin reserve. That happens because it becomes clear that, in a multipolar world, sovereigns are overallocated to the U.S. dollar for global trade. And it feels like we’re getting—and I would have thought that point would have come extremely gradually over 20 years, but it’s starting to happen quite suddenly because of these tariffs. In macro investing, you really have to watch for decouplings like this. This may be the first time that crypto has decoupled from stocks in a bear market—has it ever?
You know what’s interesting is that normally the way that crypto decouples is that it bottoms first and then it sort of rallies out harder than the equity markets. The equity markets will go down a little bit more, maybe for a few days to a week, and then they’ll rebound, but Bitcoin’s already rebounded at this point. That seems kind of—actually, that’s not really what’s happening right now.
Yeah. Bitcoin bottomed on Monday, April 7. That’s the same day that the Nasdaq bottomed. Then you had that massive move up in the Nasdaq when the tariffs were reversed. The Nasdaq started bleeding out again, but Bitcoin didn’t; it kind of held, right?
Right. And that’s a little bit of a different dynamic than what I was describing before, where you still have the straight line down in the Nasdaq, but Bitcoin started to go up. This is Bitcoin showing relative strength, not bottoming first, if that makes sense. I think there’s actually a distinction there, which is a much more powerful indicator.
Yeah, because then it’s a hedge. For the trillion or tens of trillions of dollars’ worth of equity capital out there, Bitcoin, instead of just being a correlated thing that moves first, becomes something that protects your equities. Nobody wants to sell their equities. We all believe in human innovation. We all believe in the American market, right? Nobody actually wants to say, “All right, this is it. End of the empire. It’s over. It was a great experiment, but let’s get bearish on stocks until they go to zero.” Nobody’s going to make that bet because it’s just been the worst bet ever and probably will be proven terrible again. We just don’t know when it’s going to bottom out.
What the world is looking for is a hedge. If Bitcoin—the second it proves it’s a hedge—oh my goodness, Avi, this is going to get silly. It is going to get silly. There’s just not enough BTC. Gold is so much bigger than Bitcoin. Bitcoin could get silly if it becomes an institutional equities hedge.
6. Bitcoin Tails Are Mispriced
I 100% agree with that. The takeaway, because I want you guys to always think about trading and how to make money, and not just pontificating about macro, is that I think the tails on Bitcoin are really underpriced right now. If you want to—I don’t trade options a ton because I only do it when I really have an edge—but Bitcoin IVs for the end of the year are sitting in the mid-50s basically all the way up to $170,000.
What’s the December 31 $170,000-strike call cost?
It’s $3,000. Oh, that sounds cheap, right? That’s kind of what I’m saying. It’s not—I mean, maybe. I personally think that this happens sooner rather than later. So it’s kind of a now-it-happens-now-or-it-doesn’t-really-happen situation: We get, at least from this particular decoupling moment, a really big boost in the next 2 to 3 months.
So really, I’d be looking at $100K. I’d be looking at June 27th $100K, and you’re looking at $3.5K. If it goes to $100K–$120K, I mean, that’s a solid 6x for you.
Well, it’s more that the vol would rip.
Well, yeah. I mean, I’m talking at expiry, right? If, at expiry, it reaches that terminal value, you would 6x.
I think you could probably make more if it obviously happens very quickly. I think you would 6x your money if it hit $100K. Let’s say that in a month it’s trading at $100K. I think the vol would be so high that you would have 6x’d your initial investment.
That’s my options trader intuition, and that makes it a very attractive play in my mind. That vol is like 50 vol, which is pretty damn low.
Yeah, 50 vol is—I mean, that’s somewhere between oil and natural gas, just to compare it to real-world assets. Equity vol tends to be—I guess the VIX is trading at—what is it? That’s pricing in a 2.6% move a day. I just did the quick math.
Yeah, which is pretty low. I mean, if today we’re up 2.5%.
Yeah, but VIX is at 34, man.
Bitcoin options are a really nice trade right now. If you want to express bullishness on BTC, I really love BTC options.
7. Selective Alt Season
I agree with you. I’m not disagreeing with you, Avi. And I think that if BTC options are a little bit tough for you to access, or you feel uncomfortable trading on—
That was what I was about to say. Yeah, go and trade some IBIT calls. I think those are super liquid.
Honestly, the way that I’ve been looking for my optionality is in alt beta. I think that some of these altcoins are—I think we may have a selective alt season if Bitcoin starts to rip. I think certain assets will drastically outperform Bitcoin. Most alts won’t, but I’m looking for a couple that will.
My heuristic—basically, you and I talked about Hyperliquid on that awesome podcast we did with Felix on the lows. I bought some, and ever since I bought it, I’ve been kind of pacing around my office trying to defend or trying to poke holes in the idea that a project like Hyperliquid, which takes 95-plus percent of its fee profits and divvies them back to users in the form of token buybacks—
I’m trying to understand why that’s any worse than owning equity in a great company, and I haven’t been able to. It’s almost better than owning equity in a great company. It’s like owning equity in a company that gives you a profit share, that basically takes its net income every year and just divvies it out pro rata to the equity holders in a profit-share-style fashion.
I think fantastic businesses that are antifragile and benefit from volatility—like, the best business in crypto is an exchange, and this exchange’s token is linked to the project via buybacks. If we get a crazy Bitcoin move—let’s say you’re right, let’s say we get a volatile move up past $100K—people will be trading their balls off on Hyperliquid and fees will go through the roof.
I think there’s sort of a reflexive buyback mechanism in there that will help pump your bags, in addition to just the general rising tide lifting all ships in crypto. So I think one way to play a rally is to buy IBIT calls or call spreads, probably just calls because the vol is low.
Another way to play it is to take projects that are showing relative strength to Bitcoin right now for good reason, like HYPE. I hung out with the Chief last week. He shilled me again. TAO’s TA is looking good. It looks like some good trading potential, so I think that one might be a good one.
Solana, maybe. I mean, really, I’m looking at Pendle, HYPE, and TAO.
8. Ads (Kraken OTC, WalletConnect)
Yeah, those are—I think you might get an options-like move in those. Short ETH, long these things, and just wait 6 months and be up 100%. I think it’s the right trade. I mean, ETH—again, I won’t beat a dead horse. It’s [__].
9. Options Strategies
Back to options for a second. A great trader once told me, “I spent most of my career trading options. That was my bread and butter. You’re never supposed to buy options unless you expect the market to move fast,” right?
It’s very rare for markets to move fast, and usually they move fast to the downside because everybody’s long and then there’s a panic. Those panics are very difficult to predict, and so buying puts—puts are expensive. Put skew always trades at a premium to call skew. It’s kind of a loser’s game. I don’t like buying puts.
I really like selectively buying calls in scenarios like this, where, for once in a blue moon, both of us do expect the market to have a reasonable probability of moving fast to the upside. That would be because of institutional investors piling into Bitcoin and sovereigns piling into Bitcoin as a hedge against their U.S. equities. I think if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen in the next 3 to 6 months max.
Yeah. Basically, I agree with you. I personally think that $88K, which is where we are right now, is just an unstable price. It doesn’t make sense for Bitcoin to hang out here.
Either we’re both completely off base—it’s possible—and Bitcoin is just being supported by Saylor and one other player. Once they’re done—I mean, Saylor announced that he was done this morning—but once the other guy’s done, or whoever is buying is done, then it just collapses.
Or there’s a genuine repositioning happening here, which is more of the camp that I lie in, and there are genuine flows coming in. Bitcoin is much higher very quickly.
One way to play this is maybe you buy some $74K puts and buy some $100K calls. If you were weak and a scaredy-cat, you could do that. If you’re strong like an ox, you could just buy the calls, but it’s up to you.
I prefer not. I’m so allergic to buying options. I spent most of my life selling them. I think theta is the silent killer. You shouldn’t bet on too many things happening at the same time. Vol’s not that cheap. Cheap vol in Bitcoin is like 30% or below.
But I do think that the market’s mispricing it right now—to the upside, for sure. The upside is mispriced. You could also buy some puts on ETH and some calls on BTC. That’s another fun trade.
If I bought a strangle, I would be looking to actively, dynamically hedge the puts and leave the calls naked in the bottom drawer. If the market shanked to the downside, I would be either buying delta or selling out of my puts and leaving the calls on.
Yeah, that’s smart. I think that’s right. Maybe the market will gift us with another run at $80K, $85K, or something like that, or $83K, and we’ll be able to scoop that.
I was reasonably caught off guard by how little we moved while the equity markets were tanking and going all over the place. From Saturday, April 12th, to Sunday, April 20th, we moved in something like a $2,000 range on BTC. I can’t say that was expected. If you’d asked me on that Saturday, “Hey, is Bitcoin going to move in a $2,000 range for a week?” I would have said, “No, you’re nuts.”
But now we’ve broken out of that tiny little mini-range, and I think we’re going to see some vol pretty soon.
10. Alt Seasons Are Over
Yeah, a 5% day. I was going to say, I think we’re both wanting to talk in the same direction, which is about alts. I think if we do get a rally, this next rally will finally separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to altcoins.
Last summer, we had people investing billions of dollars in different memecoins. Pump.fun was the only long-term beneficiary. Most other people probably lost money on it. I think this time, what emerges from this cloud of crap is going to be Bitcoin and a very small handful of solid projects that will probably perform for the next few years.
I think retail is finally tapped out of meme-like investing, and we'll finally buy into our thesis that you have to have some financial linkage between genuine project revenue, business revenues, and underlying tokenomics. What do you think about that?
I don't know, man. I think you're just stating what's already happened. I actually had a conversation earlier today where it struck me: we're done. The dot-com boom era of crypto is over.
This is the part where Amazon takes its lead and never gives it up in crypto. I'm sorry to say it, but I think alt seasons are over. They're just not coming back, because everyone—let's put it like this—ETH kind of took the wool out of everyone's eyes and took the shade off. People realized, holy crap, if ETH can be a 7-year-long pump and dump, I really can't buy anything unless it makes money, unless it's an actually useful product.
Even if it makes money, I have to stay on top of it, because ETH made money for a bit and was deflationary for about 3.5 seconds. Then it stopped being deflationary, stopped making a good amount of money, and promptly basically went to zero.
I think this is shocking to a lot of people. I think crypto is going to stop being that casino, in a sense. The only thing that brings it back is the world having to start feeling really wealthy again. You kind of need a COVID-like dynamic where people just want to punt on things left and right, or you need GDP growth to be 5% for some reason, everyone feeling flush with cash, and the stock market up 30%.
Basically, until you see that already happening—and even then, I don't know—or you need a $150,000 Bitcoin and all the incels feel rich and start hyper-gambling again.
Yes, I take your point. I just have 1 issue with how you framed it. I'm not describing what already happened. The likely SOL/BTC ratio is 70% off the all-time highs, right? Solana is as legitimate a project as any in crypto.
I think there will be a very selective altcoin season, limited to, let's say, 2 dozen tokens or fewer, during the next rally, where those tokens actually outperform Bitcoin. Both of us have been saying alt seasons are over, and yes, the dot-com boom is over, but I still don't think I'm describing a boom that's already occurred.
Yeah, the boom part hasn't occurred yet, but I guess what I was trying to articulate is that we're in the process of the wheat being separated from the chaff right now. The chaff is going to zero and the wheat isn't. The wheat isn't rallying yet, but it will rally.
Hyperliquid did well since I told you to get in on it.
Good trade, man. Thank you for cluing me into that. Going long Hyperliquid. I should just retire now. I haven't sold any Hyperliquid. I think I'm probably going to take some profits around $20.
Think about it, Jonah. Don't even think about it. Last episode, you were saying to think about it at $30.
$30?
$30. Okay, $30. $20 to $25 to $30—you can scale out of a little bit.
We're too close to $20. We've spent 5 days in this $17–$18 range.
I think that we punch through $20.
I can neither confirm nor deny if I've used Hyperliquid.
Yeah, I can't confirm or deny either, but I've heard from folks who have that it's pretty freaking amazing.
The UX is—
11. Ads (Ledger)
No, it's great. It's great. Honestly, it's a top-tier product all around, and I'm hoping that we find more.
12. Researching Profitable Projects
One thing I've grown to appreciate is that if you're in crypto and trying to figure out this space, it's very difficult to do all of your own work. Basically, my entire day is spent reading research reports. Blockworks Research, Messari, and Delphi Digital are also very good. Messari is still good even after the departure of our beloved leader, our dear leader.
Oh, wow.
You kind of need to be reading a lot and actually diving in. You have to go on DeFiLlama basically every single day, and you have to talk to people who are in all the different ecosystems. The dTAO thing is a great example of this. If I didn't know dTAO and you didn't know dTAO, there's no way in hell I would know that dTAO was popping off, that people are actually using it, and that even though there's a ton of friction, it's growing and there's TVL coming to the chain. How would I know?
What's your favorite metric on DeFiLlama, by the way? I'll tell you mine. You tell me yours.
It depends on what I'm looking at, but I don't really look at TVL. I just look at fees and unique users.
Fees is my favorite. 7-day fees is my favorite metric on DeFiLlama because, like I said before—and feel free, this is your chance to disagree with my thesis, by the way—I think we're past the dot-com moment too. I think only real businesses will survive. Because it's all on-chain, you literally have a dashboard telling you, in as granular a format as you like, how much money these businesses are making. Even Amazon stock didn't have that back in the day. They reported quarterly.
So I just look at fees to see, okay, Tether 7-day fees: $130 million. There's no way to invest in that. Damn. Circle is next; can't invest. Pump.fun is next; can't invest. Jupiter is next: questionable tokenomics, but that's cool.
I don't know, man. If Jupiter starts passing back revenue—
The thing about fees that's kind of difficult is that revenue and fees are different, right? Let's look at revenue, then. Revenue for Jupiter is $240 million annualized, and fees are almost $1 billion, because they have to pass back—when you're looking at a DEX—
You've got to remember fees are also paid out to liquidity providers.
Yeah. Fees can give you the full picture, but for DEXs they don't.
Well, for Hyperliquid, fees equal revenue because it's a—
For Hyperliquid, fees equal revenue.
Yeah, for Hyperliquid, fees equal revenue. For Jupiter, they don't, because liquidity providers get—
Because it's an AMM.
Yeah, correct.
Now, revenue is still pretty good. Hyperliquid's 7-day revenue is $7 million, so they're making $1 million a day. Freaking crazy. Obviously, Tron is up there too. But Hyperliquid is the 6th-highest protocol in the world when it comes to 7-day revenue. The ones above it are Axiom, Tron, Pump.fun, Circle, and Tether. So basically, Hyperliquid is the most investable, and I think the price-to-earnings ratio is still kind of in line with what you'd see in the Nasdaq, not what you'd see in a mania-style environment for tech. So it's probably okay here.
I love that metric. That ratio is pretty solid. But, I mean, go on DeFiLlama, read research reports, and try to find the things that are actually making money and performing well. Curve, I think, is going to be a winner as well, generally.
I bear-posted Curve, which is sometimes what I do when I'm undereducated on a protocol. I was like, "They're not really doing enough to compensate their users." Then somebody replied to me, "What are you talking about? Look into their tokenomics." They sent me all the white papers, and I did my research. It does indeed seem like Curve is passing a lot back.
The problem with Curve—so I was wrong—the problem with Curve is, I'm just looking at this dashboard, they make $159,000. Fees are $300,000 a day, and revenue is $159,000 a day. Not too shabby if you're just a couple of guys who created a protocol, but if you're trying to invest in the token, what's the FDV right now? Let's see here.
I just think that as stablecoins heat up, people move to Curve as a play.
Yeah, it was really useful during the last sort of 2022–23 crisis. FDV of Curve—sorry, not TVL—is $1.3 billion. So $150,000 for 7 days times 52 weeks gets you to $7.8 million a year. So $1,300 divided by $7.8—that's a—hold on, my cell in Excel can't show me that many digits. That's 167 P/E. I'm not sure that's necessarily the greatest entry point, but who knows? I'm not an equity investor.
13. Ecosystem Opportunities
Maybe we need to pivot. Maybe we need to start hiring equity analysts to value crypto companies the way equities work, because that is a direction we're headed.
Yeah, the game has become a lot harder. If you're not getting good information from good sources and talking to the right people, it's basically impossible to make money now.
I wouldn’t say impossible, but it’s very hard. In the alt world, it’s pretty freaking hard, especially if you don’t have a finance background. I guess the thing is, markets never get easier. But crypto is still, relatively speaking, a lot easier than, say, the US equity markets, where you’re just going head-to-head with Ken Griffin on every trade. That’s an uncomfortable place to be.
We’re still kind of pre-rails. The rails aren’t really there yet for institutions to actively trade altcoins. And if you want to get even deeper into the weeds, since we were talking about TAO and dTAO, let’s just use TAO as an example. One layer removed from altcoin trading on liquid crypto exchanges, one level of sophistication below that is trading subnets on TAO, right?
A tweet will come out about some subnet. Barry Silbert will pump one of the subnets in a tweet or an interview, and then it’ll rally a couple of hours later. It’ll rally a lot, and you have to have TAO to play that game. So obviously, you can’t really trade these versus dollars, but if you’re inside of that ecosystem, it’s even more inefficient.
I can’t say that I’m invested in TAO right now. I’m not. I kind of wanted to enter last week, got lazy, and now the price has pumped by 20%, so I feel a little bit worse about it. I’m still just mulling it. But if you want to actively click-trade something that’s quote-unquote easy, you have to search for these ecosystems within ecosystems that are going to perform.
If you end up doing well there, you stack more TAO. And if TAO performs, then, to quote the chief, it’s kind of like DeFi summer: stacking ETH using DeFi, just good trading on-chain. You stack more ETH, and then ETH would rally and your returns would compound. So maybe there are some opportunities a few layers below the surface of the onion there. I’m just spitballing here. Any other ecosystems you’re looking at, Avi?
No, I need to start deep-diving into a few. I need to do a refresh of the Solana ecosystem to see if anything is out there.
I think that could be kind of fun. This podcast—we always offer ways to think about the market and trades, and right now the way to trade and make money is to go deep and then express it through pairs. We can talk all day about directionally trading macro and BTC, but there are other ways to make money.
With the exception of not having top-ticked Bitcoin at 108—I’m just speaking for myself here; maybe you did—I’m pretty proud of our general macro, long-term analysis. We’ve had the call right since the lows, and we haven’t really suggested that people stop out of their long-term core long, even on these pullbacks. This asset class is showing all the signs of performing versus the dollar over the long haul, and it already has performed versus equities.
It’s at the highs versus equities. So if you’ve been in Bitcoin, you’ve performed admirably versus your peers in the equity markets. To give us a little bit of credit, I am quite proud of the way that we’ve foreseen Bitcoin’s performance. Going forward, I haven’t lost any conviction in that macro thesis.
But aside from just giving up on most memecoins and most altcoins, I do feel underprepared for the microanalysis that allows you to replicate compounding returns in a DeFi summer—or maybe this next one is TAO. I don’t know.
Good stuff, man.
Likewise. I’ll catch you in another week.
Yeah, see you next week. Who knows what’s in store for us? This market’s crazy. I can tell you: BTC up, ETH down. That’s all I’m saying.