大规模抛售、Mamdani胜选，以及Jonah卖掉他的CryptoPunk
- Guest Max Bronstein（前Coinbase Ventures，如今正在创办Mainframe Capital）完全基于自己的系统转为短期看多：系统在Bitcoin约10.1万美元、ETH约3200美元、Plasma 27美分时于抛售中翻多——“系统发出信号时，感觉还不错”。 但他警告，ETH和Solana的更高周期结构“其实已经相当破坏”，而且“我上个周期犯的最大错误，就是Bitcoin开始下跌时没有尊重它的下行趋势”。
- 顶部的结构很清楚：12万美元上方出现派发，OG巨鲸（包括Galaxy的8万 BTC）透明地向机构入场渠道卖出。 “Bitcoin静默IPO”的说法确实成立，但Max将其解读为短期逆风，而不是看多理由——IBIT的持有者主要是散户和401(k)资金，这意味着财富从稳定持有者转移给“晴雨表朋友”。
- 本轮周期的边际买家——一笔重要的DAT买盘——已经消失。 Saylor很可能从大选后每周买入1万至2万 BTC，降至如今不足1000枚；DATs目前交易在1倍mNAV以下，MetaPlanet甚至举债只是为了回到1倍。Max的判断是：“我们有数十亿美元债务资金在买入，但年初至今几乎没变化——这就是症状。” 如果MicroStrategy被纳入标普500，或优先股融资窗口重新打开，他会转为看多。
- Jonah的山寨币打法是：先等第一家altcoin DAT爆掉，再做空接下来的10家。 这次重定价不会瞬间完成。Max认为，alt DATs缺乏系统性规模（只有ETH和SOL载体有实质规模，TAO相关载体融资约2000万美元），但他指出，Forward Industries以完全可见的方式在Solana约190至250美元区间买入约15亿美元（均价约220–230美元），这是“我见过最容易做的交易之一”——此后SOL已经一路跌到150美元。
- 下行本身并不可怕：7万美元只是一个跌幅-30%的“还好”熊市目标。 按Jonah的期权Greeks逻辑，心理关口10万美元下方，OG卖盘会逐渐“枯竭”。他拒绝在BTC遭遇OG投降时卖出——“无政府主义者的钱比机构少大约50个数量级”——转而清理仓位，以19.5万美元卖掉买入价70万美元的CryptoPunk，税损可带来约20万美元回报：“把一张punk当头像，让我损失了40万美元。”
- Hyperliquid是两人的共同多头。 基金会用手续费收入回购并销毁代币，形成非散户买盘；就像“Meta股票或Nvidia股票被持有过多”，它仍然可以在成为共识资产的同时靠手续费增长。Max认为市场忽视了一个催化剂：空投的长期资本利得税日期大约1个月后到来，而分配结构正好鼓励持有满这么久。他更大的担忧是，中心化交易所正推动对其强制实施KYC，而项目几乎没有游说动作。
- Max认为，10年内大致存在4个万亿美元级应用场景：价值储存、隐私、链上金融和分布式资源（很可能是Bittensor）。 散户“不愿意买任何带有资本表的东西”，这正是全空投分配的HYPE脱颖而出的原因。宏观多头则是互联网资本市场：稳定币是“2.0版欧洲美元”，DeFi会把美股和美债出口出去，接替正在卖出的外国投资者——“这是政府强制推动的倡议，你绝不会想做空它。”
- Mamdani可能带来的规律是：“再分配在历史上100次有100次先于资产价格下跌。” 需要盯住民主党的净支持率——如果Mamdani成为旗手、民主党在全国的支持率转正，就“基本该清算资产持仓”；Newsom反弹则无害。Jonah仍认为，在那个时刻到来前Bitcoin还有“另一个5倍”空间，但隐私资产的买盘已经出现：“你肯定应该囤一些Zcash，或者干脆藏点Monero。”
1. Max的系统买入了它此前警告过的下跌
- Max Bronstein曾做Bitcoin Magazine newsletters、Coinbase Ventures、DeFi summer交易员，如今正在Mainframe Capital将这套方法机构化。他以“quantmental”方式交易：用覆盖数周至1个月信号的系统叠加对标的受厌恶程度的主观判断。系统在这轮抛售中翻多——Bitcoin约10.1万美元、ETH约3200美元，以及“相当一部分”Plasma，价格为27美分。
- Plasma的逻辑是这套方法的缩影：XPL在市场普遍厌恶的情况下仍交易于正基差（收益农民持续卖出，反而令基差保持为正），持仓量与流通市值之比在放量时约为0.45–0.5，市场仓位普遍处于不利一侧；定性验证则来自Twitter：“每天都是‘我讨厌Plasma，我在Plasma上亏钱’。” 越是被憎恨的标的，趋势反转时回报越高。
- 他的对冲仍然保持原有力度：目前看多，系统一旦发出信号就转为中性，因为更高周期结构“其实已经相当破坏”——ETH和Solana都出现了大幅破位；而且“我上个周期犯的最大错误，就是Bitcoin开始下跌时没有尊重它的下行趋势”。
2. 顶部：12万美元上方派发，以及并不看多的“静默IPO”
- Max的系统在反弹至12.5万美元时发出警告，盘面随后确认：12万美元上方出现清晰派发，卖方压过买方，价格却没有后续跟随。OG卖盘毫不掩饰——Galaxy卖出8万 Bitcoin，另一位OG抛售“数十亿美元”——而且逻辑合理：这些持有者在2011–2013年买入，如今机构入场渠道已经成熟；“美国总统把全部净资产放在加密资产里，还在围绕它搞些牟利操作——现在落袋一部分筹码，并不是最糟糕的时点。”
- 对于广泛流传的“Bitcoin静默IPO”文章，Max同意事情确实如此，但给出了相反解读：这是短期逆风，而不是看多理由。IBIT的持有者并不精明——“里面有大量散户交易员”，再加上行动迟缓的401(k)资金——所以用Jonah的话说，这是财富从稳定持有者转移给“晴雨表朋友”。
- 他对10月10日的看法来回摇摆：那是一次清算事件，但“这里没有大的信用事件”——不像FTX，可能只有一些小规模的个案；不过余波仍在，派发之后，“人们往往会变得懒散、粗心，并在其他地方继续持有风险”。这个周期的市场形态进一步放大了问题：Bitcoin已经被训练成逢跌必买，因此“如果它真的要下跌，很可能会发生得相当快”。
3. 重要边际买家消失：DATs已经无法融资
- Max对整轮上涨的归因很直接：DATs。大选后，Saylor很可能每周买入1万–2万 BTC；如今降至不足1000枚。MetaPlanet吃到了关税资金流，最近还举债把mNAV推回1倍；Nakamoto则买在高位。“我们有数十亿美元债务资金在买入，但年初至今几乎没变化——这就是症状。”
- 结构甚至比资金流更糟：巨鲸“实际上是在把DATs当作自己的退出流动性”，而PIPE融资并非来自精明资本，而是来自那些在山寨币上赚不到钱的加密VC——“非常典型的顶部行为”。能够推翻这一判断的事件很明确：MicroStrategy被纳入标普500，或成功完成优先股融资，“显然会让我改变看法，市场可以继续上涨”。
- Forward Industries买入Solana的交易“是我见过最容易做的交易之一”：资金从Galaxy转入托管方的路径清晰可见，公告规模约15亿美元，起始价约190美元，最终完成于250美元，均价约220–230美元；此后SOL从250美元“直线”跌到150美元。Jonah补充说，OTC市场本来就是为了隐蔽交易而存在，因此“如果你的交易被整个市场提前看到，那就完全违背了它的目的”。
- Jonah的衍生品交易思路是：等第一家altcoin DAT爆掉，研究该alt的价格走势，然后做空接下来的10家——“你大概率会有机会”，因为它们不会在纳秒内完成重定价。Max从规模角度校验这一策略：alt DATs并不具备系统性，只有ETH和SOL载体有实质规模，AVAX的DAT已经崩溃，TAO相关载体融资可能只有2000万美元。
4. 下行目标并不可怕，OG卖盘也不是
- Max认为熊市目标相当温和：7万美元意味着下跌30%，如果不是满仓持有，“并没有那么糟”，而且“你大概不会在那里待上超过几个月”。Jonah用期权Greeks做压力测试后也同意：12.5万美元存在大量OG卖盘，30万美元则不会有，因此这不是持续存在的变量；卖盘会在心理关口10万美元下方“逐渐枯竭”。
- Jonah拒绝因此卖出。那段一年前流出的、疑似Peter Thiel的视频并不能改变他的看法：Thiel在6.5万美元时看空，因为Bitcoin“没有实现他的理想”。Jonah说：“无政府主义者的钱比机构少大约50个数量级。” 你仍然可以把币放进冷钱包，“在不被发现的情况下逃离这个国家”。所谓OG投降意味着死亡，只是“人们在自我安慰”。
- 两人都不信图表。Jonah讲起2007年的经历：一位导师让他对一摞图表逐一做买入或卖出判断，随后承认这些图表“全是用Excel里的随机数生成器做出来的”。图表只能告诉你趋势，以及某个价位在历史上是高、低，还是“历史上没什么特别”。Max则给出符合本周期的补充：“现在图表看起来越糟，越接近底部。” ETH在31美元时“已经不可能更难看”，随后反弹10%。只看日线和周线；“它并不能预测任何东西。”
- Max对Bitcoin的结论同样不迎合多头：应该持有，但要预期相对整个市场的回报递减。Bitcoin是“你不会真正动用的那部分组合”，而在波动更大的山寨币上运行良好的系统，能让你在市场其他部分赚得多得多。
5. ETH和Solana：“谁会接我手里的仓位？”
- Jonah认为，ETH眼下“不可投资”。他引用一位可能是Kyle Samani的朋友所说的“ETH的未来”，答案是Base；但他看不出在Base上建设如何为ETH累积价值。Max从结构上解释说，ETH“体量太大了——推动它需要很多资金”，边际买家正在离场；Tom Lee曾希望持有全部ETH的5%，如今更接近3%。市场只问一个问题：“谁会在我之后接走我的仓位？”
- 对于价值捕获，Max说得很直接：ETH的价值储存属性“有点不如Bitcoin”。机构更可能把流动性留在ETH上，但活动可以发生在Base，或企业自有的L2上；随着rollup成本持续下降，“如果你是任何一家大型公司，你都会想拥有排序器手续费。你会想把那头奶牛榨干。”
- 两人对Solana的看法出现分歧。Max认为，超低费率公链缺乏经济逻辑，并称其生态“极其擅长榨取价值”；但他承认，年轻用户正是在这里完成入场。Jonah的标签是：“Solana有点像加密世界的Nickelodeon。” Jonah不愿将其彻底否定——“Solana总有办法比以往更强地回来”——但他无法解释为什么每家机构都在Base上建设。
6. 卖掉punk：一张头像花掉了40万美元
- 对于网上嘲讽他的人，Jonah算了一笔账：买入70万美元，卖出19.5万美元，实现亏损约50万美元；在他所在的高税率司法辖区，税务抵扣带回约20万美元（前提是有收益可以抵扣）。净下来，“把一张punk当头像，让我损失了40万美元”；卖出则释放了流动性，可以配置到他真正想要的资产上。更深层的坦白是，持有3年后，“我已经完全不在乎了……戴着punk头像也不觉得自己很酷”。
- Max也挂出过自己的punk。他的框架是：punks以ETH计价，却以美元估值；普通款不应交易在100万美元以上。他的黄金法则同样适用——“最后的2倍永远留给别人。你不需要最后那一倍翻倍。”
- Jonah将其概括为：punks回归普通艺术品价格，是加密市场某个板块的压缩交易；既然如此，为什么其他地方不会发生同样的事？可投资资产稀少的推论，就是好做空标的很多。不过Max认为做空“是一场艰难的游戏”；Jonah则说，增加回报的唯一办法是加杠杆，而在管理抵押品时，“数学上根本算不过来”。
- 但空头组合最终确实奏效：Flood在Kingmaker组合上大获全胜，做多HYPE、做多BTC，同时做空Aptos和Worldcoin等垃圾资产。关于Aptos，他说：“Mo拿到解锁额度，卖掉，然后直接退出。你到底为什么要做多Aptos？” Jonah自己的案例是，在Sphere与那顶帽子划清界限后做空WIF；消息公布当天跌5%，随后“几乎一夜之间”跌了50%。
7. Hyperliquid：共识资产，仍然可投——以及一个被忽视的日期
- Jonah在回调时买入HYPE，因为边际买家不是散户——基金会用手续费收入回购并销毁代币。共识持仓也不会令它失去上涨空间：“就像Meta股票或Nvidia股票被持有过多。所有人都拥有它，但它仍然上涨，因为基本面在表现。”
- Max同时评估它的机会和风险：Hyperliquid创造了一个新品类——完全链上的金融服务；“链上Binance一直是圣杯”，这有可能成为“万亿美元级别的品类”。但团队几乎不做游说，政府层面的影响力只能通过Paradigm等投资者间接获得；“很难想象中心化交易所不会试图把某些KYC要求强加给它”。他也对自己的判断保留疑问：“这可能是一个中间曲线的观点。”
- 市场“最容易忽视的事情”，是空投的长期资本利得税日期大约在1个月后到来。分配结构的设计就是让领取者持有满1年、适用长期税率——“我相信很多人确实这么做了”。因此真正的供应事件是税务时钟，而不是解锁；解锁“并不是太大的担忧”。
- HYPE之所以脱颖而出，是因为Max认为10年内大致有4个万亿美元级应用场景：价值储存（已经得到验证）、隐私、链上金融、分布式资源（Bittensor可能是最佳例子）。“到了这个阶段，散户不愿意买任何带有资本表的东西。” HYPE完全由空投分配，没有VC。加密创投“处于不佳状态”，唯一的补救是以“低得多、低得多的估值”做ICO，否则“根本无法恢复”。
8. 互联网资本市场是“一项政府强制推动的倡议”
- Max的论点可以追溯到2019年的一篇博客文章，当时他把稳定币称为“2.0版欧洲美元”——让美国出口美元的技术。如今的延伸是：过去40–50年流入美国的资金，在民粹主义和贸易政策影响下正缓慢逆转，因此华盛顿会利用DeFi出口股票、债券和房地产；“我们确实需要更多接盘者，来替代那些将要卖出的外国人”。他的原话结论是：“这是政府强制推动的倡议，你绝不会想做空它。”
- Jonah的基础设施论点是，资金转移其实还没有解决：前端操作是即时的，但“所有东西最终仍然是T+2结算”；按4%的利率计算，大约有50万亿美元资金被占用。把结算压缩到几秒，“会释放巨量资本”。转移1美元很简单，但转移一份标普ETF，“要花大约3周，还要打2小时电话”。终局可能是标普500——“甚至可能是Bitcoin”——成为比美元更好的交易计价单位；美元买一份35美元的金枪鱼三明治，只在刷卡时完成兑换。
9. Mamdani可能是金丝雀：盯住支持率走势
- Jonah判断这件事并非凭空而来：他的父亲Victor Van Bourg曾是“美国大约25年来排名第一的工会劳工律师”，出庭辩论过4起最高法院案件；Jonah则在“基本上是共产主义家庭”的Berkeley长大。他的结论是，Mamdani很可能是再分配主义者，而不是集体谈判派——“你不能靠再分配解决收入不平等。你要通过赋予工人议价权，并让他们分享自己创造的价值来解决。”
- 可交易的规则是：“再分配在历史上100次有100次先于资产价格下跌。” 信号是民主党的净支持率：如果Mamdani继续担任旗手，且民主党在全国转为净支持，“基本上就到了清算资产持仓的时候”；如果Gavin Newsom接过旗帜、支持率反弹，则属于良性情形。眼下，Jonah认为在再分配走向全国之前，Bitcoin还有“另一个5倍”空间——“但你确实得把手指放在扳机上。”
- Max希望这件事能被限制在纽约，成为一场无效的实验，最终使社会主义失去公信力；[Speaker?]则引用Antonio Garcia Martinez对旧金山的类比（Jonah说：“去买他的书，《Chaos Monkeys》”）：资本可以自我隔离并迁移，代价最终会落在Mamdani试图帮助的人身上。但隐私资产的买盘已经真实存在：“你肯定应该囤一些Zcash，或者干脆藏点Monero”——尽管Max两者都没有。Jonah反问，交易所难道不是“和任何混币器一样好的混币器”？Max回答，交易所的混淆程度更高，但也是一个中心化失效点。Jonah认为尾部风险高于多数人的判断：“‘不应该有亿万富翁’很容易变成‘不应该有人拥有超过500万美元’。”
- 两人都认同的力量是：AI正在自动化那些本可以拉平差距的工作；而既然AI如今已经成为“国家安全运动”，政府最终必须支持被剥夺权利的人群——短期看多，因为标普500企业的人均EBITDA会提高。但Jonah最后把Mamdani信号与Zcash放在同一个警告里：“你正在看到两端的引线同时被点燃。”
核验说明
- 原始字幕没有确认Antonio Garcia Martinez与《Chaos Monkeys》这段内容由谁说出；digest中将其归因为[Speaker?]。
So all of these megatrends are intact, and if you look at all of them, it's kind of hard to be bearish. But short-term, my gut—I don't have a system like you do right now—has been kind of confirming what you've been saying over the last few weeks, which is that, short-term, we're in for some serious problems in this market.
Very exciting—we've wanted to have you on the podcast for a very long time. Welcome, Max Bronstein: Gigachad, turbo crypto trader, extremely successful guy.
We get our listeners attacking us every time we try to go too much into biographies and lore, but basically, Max started his run writing newsletters for Bitcoin Magazine. Then he was at Coinbase Ventures. Then he crushed it during DeFi Summer, and the rest is history.
He's currently launching Mainframe Capital to sort of institutionalize his crypto trading mojo, and he's one of the, let's call it, top 3 people that I talk to about crypto when I'm trying to figure out what I want to do. So it's super exciting to have you on the podcast, and we can just shoot the shit and talk markets today. Appreciate you, Max. Thanks for coming on.
Yeah, of course. Appreciate it, Jonah. It feels like I'm calling into my favorite radio show. Long-time caller here. Big fan of the podcast. Big fan.
Long-time listener. First-time caller.
Long-time listener. Yeah, yeah.
1. Crypto Meltdown
Welcome to the show, Max. Thanks for calling in. Lots going on.
Happy to be on.
Lots to talk about in crypto markets. I don't even know where we should start. What are you thinking? What the hell just happened, and what are you thinking? What are you doing here? Everybody's panicking.
Yeah. I mean, a bit of context on how I view the market and how we at the firm make decisions. Obviously, I have my own fundamental beliefs on where things are and what the bigger picture is, but we do things with a bit of a systematic overlay, more or less, which you obviously appreciate when you can outsource some conviction to numbers and an algorithm instead of your own discretion or emotion.
So, I don't know, there is a lot going on. I was kind of buying the dip yesterday purely on the basis that our systems said, “Hey, on a fairly high-time-frame basis, that was an extreme.”
High time frame meaning what—long-term or short-term?
Usually weeks to a month or so.
Long-term.
Yeah, that was obviously quite a big dislocation. You kind of saw it yesterday: ETH and Solana—those were big breakdowns. A part of me is thinking that some of these higher-time-frame structures are actually pretty broken, which is cause for concern because I think the biggest mistake I made last cycle was not respecting Bitcoin's downtrend when it started.
A lot of us fucked that up.
Yeah, obviously market structure is a lot different this time. Not that humans are any different, but our systems kind of said to get long, essentially, last night around—I think, let me see—Bitcoin around $101,000, and then ETH around $3,200.
So we picked up majors exposure and then actually a good bit of Plasma yesterday. I was able to get some at $0.27.
2. Plasma Long?
I think that thing is just absolutely hated. And again, when the systems say go, it's sort of nice. One thing I remember, I was watching actually about Plasma: does your system ingest funding rates? Are you getting long Plasma when basis is negative? Or does basis feature into your systematic model?
Basis does, but it's actually more for Bitcoin and ETH basis. Plasma, funny enough, trades generally with a positive basis just because you have a lot of farmers who are farming the yield and selling it off.
The interesting thing about Plasma, though, is if you look on a circulating basis, the OI-to-market-cap ratio is actually quite high. I think it's around 0.45 to 0.5. But it's doing a lot of volume, so it's turning over a lot.
Usually, the coins where you see a high OI-to-market-cap ratio are super-low-volume coins where nothing really happens. But on this one, there is a lot of open interest, and this thing is doing a lot of volume. So my guess is there's definitely a lot of offside positioning, and you can even see it qualitatively. You look—you hop on Twitter or X—and every day it's just, “I hate Plasma. I'm losing money on Plasma.”
So it's kind of fitting when we do get these trend reversals, and that's really what our systems look for.
But when you scooped up Plasma and when your system said to buy, I guess we could—I mean, you don't want to divulge your secret sauce—but I love systematic trading. I haven't been deploying it recently, but it was sort of how I made most of my career, as a systematic trader, because I lack conviction as a short-term trader.
What you were saying is that your system kind of tracks breakouts or trend-channel breaks, whatever. At $0.27 on Plasma, if that's the first time your signal fired, that $0.27 was still in the midst of a violent downward trend channel. You bottom-ticked it there, almost. I guess it did trade down to $0.24 or $0.23, or whatever, but that's not a trend break. That's just amazing timing.
So it actually fired on the way out, after it had already bottomed. You can use the signals on a relative basis. Let's say Plasma over ETH, or over whatever majors, and similar signals, right? So we're able to find—or at least make picks on—what we think will be the best performers.
But obviously, there's discretion in all of this, right? You have to be tapped in. You have to know how hated it is. You have to go—
Semi-systematic.
Yeah, exactly. It's quantamental, you know.
3. Bull Trend Still Intact?
Yeah, we'll get into that in a second, I guess. Okay, so I'm just looking at charts here. That's why I'm not staring at the camera. Looking at the market, just talking to you over lunch or talking to you, as we do, on Telegram or over the phone, you've been kind of bearish for a few weeks at least.
My approach to the market has just been: I am not going to trade this thing short-term. I do not know what's going on right now. Every single medium- and long-term feature of this market flashes bullish for me.
Let's start with rates, right? Fine, the interest-rate geeks are saying that Powell is doing something that's less dovish or more hawkish than they expected, so they're all running around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off. I don't know whether the hell that's real or not, but just generally, zoom way out: the direction of travel is from higher rates to lower rates, not the opposite. So I'm comfortable there over the medium to long run. I don't care. We're not going back into a hike cycle.
Geopolitically, we're probably closer to the 8th inning rather than the 2nd inning of Ukraine-Russia. When that ends, lots of deflation, asset prices rip.
AI, I think we're probably closer to the 2nd inning than the 8th inning of this insane bubble. And so that's both bullish for asset prices, bullish for crypto, and also deflationary because Fortune 500 companies can eke out more return on equity with fewer employees by just having ChatGPT answer basic questions instead of an army of super-expensive middle managers—and maybe even white-collar work at the lower levels, too. We'll see.
What else? Bitcoin—or crypto—is legal now. How about that? It's been legal for not that long, and, as we know, maybe you could talk more about this because I know this is a core part of your thesis, but if you look at parallels in the airline industry, the oil and gas industry, and other industries that have been blessed with deregulation, it's not like it just sends 700% overnight after laws get passed. It takes a couple of years for the money to filter into the ecosystem.
And so, aside from the Bitcoin-as-an-alternative-reserve-asset megatrend, you also have the blockchain-disrupting-financial-plumbing megatrend that just kicked off. So all of these megatrends are intact. And if you look at all of them, it’s kind of hard to be bearish.
But in the short term, my gut—I don’t have a system like you do right now—has been confirming what you’ve been saying over the last few weeks, which is that we’re in for some serious problems in this market. I don’t know why. You seem to know why.
The only thing that I did was clean up my book, which is what I do when I start to get uncertain over the short term. I sold my CryptoPunk. I cleaned up a bunch of line items and rolled them into BTC. I sold some shitcoins and put them into cash.
Pretty much the only positions I have now are in crypto. I have lots of positions outside of crypto, but in crypto I have Bitcoin, Aerodrome, Hyperliquid, and you and I both have a bunch of locked-up XPL that we can’t sell. You seem to be trading it actively, and I’m not.
So that’s the end of my rant-question. Put it back in your court. Whatever my gut was telling me, your mind was telling you too, and you clearly are able to articulate it. What made you bearish? What made you freak out? What can our listeners take away? And are you bullish now, short term?
Yeah. So, bullish short term, but again, that’s more based on the system. If that were to tell me otherwise, then I would, I guess, flip to more neutral.
In terms of what got me worried, again, the system actually flashed some pretty big warning signs when we went back up to 125. The backdrop is just interesting because I agree with you, actually: the setup is there in terms of these institutional rails. I agree. I think money is going to get easier.
I don’t really agree with the debasement narrative because I think debasement is a slow process, and people obviously get ahead of their skis. But with Bitcoin, there’s just not really that many floating around. So supply is tight, and there are so many ways now for big money to buy it.
But again, in the 125 area, above 120K, my thesis was that it was going to be short-term distribution. And again, I agree with you on the long-term prospects. But for probably a lot of your listeners and anyone managing, say, a fund in the space, you’re more allocated to crypto as a part of your net worth. So taking on that volatility is a lot harder.
If you’re diversified and a normal adult, like you are, I actually think you don’t even really need to worry too much. If anything, if it goes lower, it’s great; you get to boost your stack.
But I guess the few things that I’ve been worrying about are, from a chart perspective, you’ve got kind of clear distribution above 120K.
Distribution just means selling.
Just selling and no follow-through from buyers. Sellers are clearly overpowering buyers in those areas. And these OG whales have been quite transparent in their sales. It’s been in your face. They haven’t been hiding it.
You have Galaxy—
Tweeting about it.
Yeah. 80,000 Bitcoin. You have this guy Garrett Bullish or whatever, who offloaded, I don’t know, a few billion. And you see all these on-chain trackers.
To me, there is just this clear situation where, if you’ve been holding from 2013 or 2011 onward, you got to 100K, 120K, you have all these institutional on-ramps, you have the president of the United States having his entire net worth in crypto and kind of grifting around it—it’s not the worst time to take some chips off the table. It’s a natural spot.
I saw this article, which a lot of people saw, on “Bitcoin’s Silent IPO.” I agree that’s sort of what’s happening, but I don’t really interpret it as bullish in the short term. To me, it’s actually a short-term headwind, if anything. You have clear selling pressure.
And yes, IBIT is absorbing a lot of this, but I wouldn’t say IBIT has an extremely sophisticated investor base. There are a ton of retail traders in there, obviously, along with a lot of 401(k)s and pensions—slower, long-term money. So I think Bitcoin at these prices is interesting for slow money.
The October 10 event—I was a bit back and forth on this, actually. In the beginning, I thought this was a big clearing event where a lot of people essentially just lost their coins, and it would actually be much tougher for them if prices ran back. But clearly, there have been residual effects. I don’t think this is anything like FTX or anything like that. There’s no big credit event here. Maybe there are these small one-offs, but that’s it.
So it was a mix of the system saying, “Hey, above 120, there’s just clear distribution,” and a bit of PTSD, I think, from the last cycle too. When that happens, people just tend to get lazy and sloppy and hold risk elsewhere.
And I think we actually talked about this last weekend, or last week at lunch, right? Bitcoin is in such a buy-the-dip mode because it’s been so strong that, if it is going to go down, it’s probably going to happen quite quickly. You’re seeing that more this cycle too, right? The drops just kind of happen, momentum accelerates to the downside, and then it stops and we sort of chop around.
So I don’t know—it was a long-winded way of saying I’m bullish at the moment. But I’m not that focused on Bitcoin. I think from here you’re seeing somewhat diminishing returns relative to what you can get in the rest of the market.
On a buy-and-hold basis, maybe not, because you’ve talked at length about a lot of the problems with alts. But just because of how volatile they are, I think if you have good systems in place and good discipline, you can make way more money in other parts of the market.
Bitcoin to me is almost like just this part of your portfolio that you don’t really touch. But I don’t see a lot of relative upside personally.
4. Bitcoin vs Alts
Okay, so let’s talk about just Bitcoin as a buy-and-hold asset. The way that I made money as a commodities trader was to wait until crude oil would get undervalued relative to where I thought it should be on a 1- to 3-year time frame, and then I would buy as much of it as I could and just try to survive. That was my strategy.
That involves overcoming psychological hurdles that, for some reason, 99% of people just can’t do, right? Most people need to short-term trade and get in and out. I would just try to hold a core position from historically undervalued levels and then weather the volatility.
I try to do the same thing with Bitcoin, except Bitcoin is not a mean-reverting asset. I think we’re sort of in a megatrend to $1,000,000 a token for reasons previously discussed.
Again, the elevator pitch is that the fiat experiment started in the early ’70s, when Nixon took us off the gold standard. It went well for a few decades, and now it’s going poorly and will continue to get worse. So that’s my general belief in Bitcoin, and it probably applies to gold too, but gold is a little different, certainly from Bitcoin.
If I believe that, I want it in my portfolio. For short-term trading, I like to outsource to a system because I don’t believe in watching the screens all day anymore. I’m just too freaking old for that.
So I guess in the short run we should probably discuss what assets are good to buy and what risks there are in the short term for Bitcoin.
I think we’re in the clear. To be fair, I thought we were in the clear after October 10. I thought, after all those liquidations, come on—nobody who’s left is short here.
Everybody's been blown out or taken profit. The market is clean. We can continue rallying, and I was just so wrong this time, though. The selling you're referring to—these OG whales getting out—they're not going to be unloading, you know, like, 10 yards of crypto on everybody's face. If we're trading $90K, $80K, or $70K—
Yeah.
Again, as a young options trader, the way that you learn to understand how the Greeks work—your risk metrics like delta, gamma, vega, theta, and so on—is that you mentally stress-test things by taking them to the extremes. You're like, “Okay, dollar-yen is trading at 100. Will I have more theta on my option for a 100-strike call or for a 105-strike call?” Well, I can't visualize that intuitively, so let me ask myself: would I have more theta on the 100-strike call or the trillion-strike call? Oh, the trillion-strike call is worth zero. It'll be worth zero tomorrow, so there's zero theta on that. There's lots of theta on the 100-strike call.
Okay, so I guess the closer the strike is to at-the-money, the greater the theta. You know, that's how you learn options trading, and I do the same thing to try to understand crypto dynamics. Okay, there's a lot of OG selling at $125K. Would there be a lot of OG selling at $300 per Bitcoin? No. So where do I—I guess it's not a constant phenomenon that we should just accept going forward. It'll definitely peter out below, I think, $100K. I think that's a psychological level.
So Bitcoin, I'm not too worried about. It's the altcoins—the ones that have been lifted by DATs—that I'm starting to freak out about. I think the trade for altcoins is to wait for the first altcoin DAT to blow up, watch what happens to the price action on that alt, and then identify the next 10 altcoin DATs that will follow suit. It's not like those coins will be down 10% in a few nanoseconds on the news; you'll probably have a chance to short them after the first altcoin DAT blows up. So I'm scared of DATs for alts. If you're looking to get long alts, to summarize—
Aren't you worried about that too? Which ones would you be looking at, basically?
5. DAT Concerns
Yeah, you bring up a good point. I was actually just thinking of it in terms of what had me a bit cautious, and we've talked about it: it's these DATs. There are actually more of them for Bitcoin, obviously, by notional, and when I just took a pass at it—I'm looking at it now—even with the big dip to $75K, I think a lot of the up move in Bitcoin was obviously driven by likely Saylor. If you look at his purchases after the election and at the beginning of the year, they were quite sizable. We were talking about 10,000 to 20,000 Bitcoin every week or so, and now it's all sub-1,000.
Then, obviously, you had Metaplanet and a bunch of others that really started kicking off around the tariff lows. In my opinion, a lot of the buying pressure that got us up here was from the DATs, and you're seeing that their ability to raise cash is now gone. A lot of them are trading under 1 mNAV. I think Nakamoto bought the highs, and Metaplanet recently raised debt to get its mNAV back up to 1.
But when I was thinking about putting it into context, I'm like, “Okay, so we had billions of dollars of debt buying, and we're kind of unchanged on the year.” To me, that is a symptom of something. I could see it as being bullish, obviously, right? The supply is being absorbed. But you have—
If it were OGs selling to new Gs, I'd bid; it would be fine. But it's a wealth transfer from steady hands—
To DAT holders—
Fair-weather friends, right?
Exactly. Exactly. And a lot of the DAT fundraising—the people investing in a lot of these PIPEs—wasn't coming from a sophisticated capital base. It's just crypto VCs that were obviously like, “Okay, we can't make money on altcoins, so now let's buy these DATs,” because their performance was good.
So, to me, again, these whales are essentially selling into DATs as their exit liquidity, which is not great. It's very typical toppy behavior. In terms of altcoin DATs, honestly, you only really have ETH and SOL, I think, with meaningful size. Other ones—AVAX has kind of already collapsed. I'm just taking a look. Even the TAO ones raised, I don't know, maybe $20 million.
So, I think the altcoin ones are actually quite small in size and not that systemic. The size is really in Bitcoin and ETH. SOL a little bit too, but those are quite small. And, yeah, that is part of the cautious side: these DATs can't raise any more money. There's no demand, and to me, they were a big driver of price.
So when that one's gone, you need to find a new marginal buyer, which obviously can happen. I think, in terms of trading, you've got to be open to changing your mind. So, if MicroStrategy gets included in the S&P 500, or if his STRC offering is able to raise more money and grow demand in the preferred, that would obviously flip my view and mean we can go higher.
But that was a big part of it, right? It was just clear that they weren't really able to raise more cash. And even the Solana raise—the likely Forward Industries buy at up to $250—was one of the easiest trades I've really ever seen. You could see everything. They started buying around $190, finished at $250, and they told you how much they were going to buy—I think $1.5 billion.
Wait, sorry, they bought Solana on-chain?
Sorry, not on-chain. You could see the transfers going from the broker—or, I think, from Galaxy—to their custodian. You could just see it all happen. It was like, “Hey, they just bought $200 million,” and it was just the easiest trade. I mean, that's dumb, but it would have been unfathomably dumb to buy it on-chain instead of on—
Yeah, that would have been dumb.
Binance or whatever. Yeah, I still don't understand why people trade OTC, but I guess—
Yeah, you're supposed to trade OTC if you want to keep your flow relatively off the market, in stealth mode.
Yeah, or if you have an issue with KYC on an exchange.
Sometimes it's nice to just trade by text, you know. You don't want to do anything.
Just trade by text, but it defeats the entire purpose if your trades are then telegraphed to the entire market. That's ridiculous.
6. Trading Charts
And Solana's had a move, hasn't it? It's gone from $250 to $150 in a straight line. I think their average buys were around—I want to say—$220 or $230. So, yeah, pretty staggering drop, and it's kind of like a sign of—
It's a sign of where things are. I don't know. I—
Chris Burniske put out his thoughts, and I kind of agree with him.
He's been bearish.
Yeah, he's been bearish. I kind of agree, but I'm looking for reasons to go against him again. Right now, it's just like, hey, the system said buy, so buy. But I do think the charts are kind of broken. I don't love just going off charts because it can be a fool's game sometimes, but, big picture, I think they help you understand when to press and when to play a bit more defense.
Yeah.
It's funny, when you talk about trading charts. When I was in my first year in the game, in 2007, one of my mentors showed me a bunch of charts, and he said, “Would you buy or sell these charts?” I had a good answer for each one because, in college, I was kind of a chart—
Jonah the chartist—
Chart aficionado, as many first-time traders are. Then he admitted that he had just created them all with a random-number generator in Excel, and I felt stupid.
That doesn't necessarily mean that charts don't offer value. They do, but they don't offer that much value. Basically, the value that a chart offers you is that it reveals whether an asset is trending up, down, or sideways. It also tells you whether the levels you're buying are historically high, historically low, or historically meh.
And that's kind of, I think, pretty much the end of it for me in terms of how useful that is. You do need to know if there's directionality or not in the market. But—
These charts now, they look like they're not trending, and that's the problem, right? That's what makes—
I agree with you. I agree with you, too, on charts. You should not weigh them the most, because I think this time around, if we don't break out or break down like we did before, when the chart looks really bad, it's more likely to be close to a bottom at this point. That's how it trades.
I was looking at ETH yesterday, and it was just going down in a straight line at $3,100. It couldn't look any worse, but then obviously we're 10% higher. I think it's been a feature this cycle where, if you are looking at charts, it should really be dailies and weeklies. You just want the big picture.
You don't. It's not predictive of anything.
7. Crypto Big Picture
Exactly. Yeah, I think, big picture, right? Bitcoin—I refuse to sell my Bitcoin here. I don't care if the OGs are selling. I think they're wrong. I don't give a crap if they're posting that. Dillweed guy Mert from Helius posted a video from a year ago of Peter Thiel getting bearish on Bitcoin at $65K last June, and that's making the rounds on Crypto Twitter right now.
Oh, was it at $65K?
Yeah. It was because it wasn't fulfilling his ideals. Obviously, I don't agree with that sort of thinking, because just because Peter Thiel sold his Bitcoin, is out, and is now bear-posting it doesn't mean that it can't go higher.
And so what if the libertarian ideals of the OG Bitcoiners have been, let's say, betrayed by the new entrants, like Larry Fink and Donald Trump and the institutions? That's not bearish. The anarchists have less money than the institutions by 5 orders of magnitude, so who cares if the institutions come in? Our bags are all going to get pumped higher.
And peer-to-peer, you can still put money on a cold wallet, stick it up your ass, and flee the country without it getting discovered just as easily as before. You can still transfer value outside of traditional financial and institutional rails just as easily as before. The ideals of Bitcoin are still there; there's just more money coming in from institutions.
So I don't believe the whole narrative that because OGs are selling, Bitcoin has to die. The opposite is true, and people are just coping. The older crypto natives are coping with regard to ETH and Solana.
I'm worried about ETH. I don't think it's investable right now because the future of ETH, to quote our friend Kyle Samani, is Base, right? And I don't know how building on Base accrues value to ETH. And then Solana—
Solana always has a way of coming back stronger than ever before, so I certainly wouldn't write it off. But what's confusing is that all of the institutions seem to be building on Base, not Solana. So I just can't help but wonder where Solana fits into the—
Basically, the picture of institutional adoption that's theoretically going to drive the next wave higher, right?
Yeah. I don't know.
One thing I actually do think is more bullish for Bitcoin: I think Avi likes to talk about this. I actually find the bear targets are pretty low—or pretty high.
Yeah.
Like, $70K—look, again, if you're all in, a 30% drop is going to hurt. You obviously should not be all in. You should be smart about risk management, but a 30% drop in Bitcoin is not that bad. And you're likely getting, depending on where market conditions are, either a V-bottom or a long, just-grinded-out bottom. The grinded-out one would hurt.
But at $70K, you probably wouldn't be sitting there for longer than a couple of months. So, for long-term investors, I actually agree. I don't think the downside targets are that scary from here.
On the alt side, I don't know. I don't have any, I guess, convicted thesis on where this goes, because, for ETH—I mean, look, ETH—everyone wrote it off, and then it went up 3 times just based on how it trades. Though, it's a tough one. It's just huge. It takes a lot of money to move it, and I'm not really sure where that next big marginal buyer is.
Tom Lee essentially said they want to get to 5% of ETH. I think they're closer to 3%, so that's a huge buyer that's just stepping up. Obviously, he can evangelize the network and they can do things, but it's going to be tough. Markets obviously just want to know: who's going to buy this? Who's going to buy my bag after me?
And the value accrual for ETH at the moment—nothing has really changed in terms of its store-of-value properties, but it's kind of inferior to Bitcoin. I actually haven't been keeping too much track of on-chain fees. The whole narrative he's going after, right, is the home of stablecoins.
I do agree institutions are much more likely to have liquidity on ETH. But I agree with you: it could be Base. It actually could be their own L2s. The cost of rolling up your own chain just keeps getting lower, and it keeps getting—
Plasma. Yeah. And if you're a big corporation, you want to own the sequencer fees. You want to milk that cow. You don't want to send it back to ETH. And I think L2 fees are super, super low.
Solana is also an interesting one because, yeah, I mean, that, too, is a super-low-fee chain. On just an economic level, I don't really see where a lot of the value is. But to be fair, Solana has kind of been the home, in my opinion, for new, younger entrants; that's where they onboard into crypto, and there's obviously a lot of value there.
I do think that the ecosystem has been super extractive, though. And so I don't know. I guess one of my core theses, though—and we're rambling a little bit—is that I am very bullish on this internet capital markets idea.
I don't know where it's going to live, but Avi and I actually wrote a blog post in 2019. We said stablecoins are eurodollars 2.0. We said this is technology for the U.S. to export the dollar to the rest of the world. And obviously, that bolsters demand.
I think the U.S. government, at least under Trump, is definitely going to use DeFi to export our capital markets, because I'm a very big believer in the big repatriation trade. Over the last 40 or 50 years, money has just flowed into the U.S., and I think it's slowly going out for a lot of reasons, mainly populism, trade policies, and a lot of uncertainty.
8. Ads (Kraken, Peaq, Katana)
DeFi is a way to export our stocks, bonds, and real estate to the rest of the world because we do need more bagholders to replace the foreigners who are going to sell. So, to me, internet capital markets is a government-mandated initiative, and you'd never want to fade that.
9. Creating Internet Capital Markets
All right. Yeah. Internet capital markets. You know, it's funny: I guess in most countries, it's easy to send a stablecoin or fiat payment on Zelle or whatever the U.K. or Australian equivalent is. People kind of take for granted that money movement has been solved. It really hasn't, right? Because on the back end, everything still settles T+2.
And in a world of 0% interest rates, who cares? But in a world of 4% interest rates, if you have $50 trillion tied up in that T+2, getting the T+2 down to T+10 seconds or 5 seconds makes a big difference. A lot of capital gets unlocked.
And even more so, we talk about this on the pod from time to time. If I want to send you $1, that's trivial and easy and instant. If I want to send you 1 share of an S&P 500 ETF—one share of my S&P 500 ETF—that'll take 3 weeks and 2 hours of phone calls from people asking why and scratching their heads.
Being able to move non-stable value—I can see why boomers would say that's not important. Why would you ever need to transfer a share of your ETFs or your IBM stock to somebody else?
But as the dollar goes to hell, because they just keep making more of it and spending more than they take in—they being the governments of the world—eventually, I think the S&P 500 is probably a better denominator for global trade, or maybe even Bitcoin, than the USD.
So why would you want to have your money held in dollars in a checking account earning 2 basis points? That's a waste for you. You should have all of your money in the S&P 500, and then only when you swipe to buy your coffee should the S&P 500 get converted to dollars, or the S&P 500 get transferred directly to the coffee shop if that's how they want to preserve value in their treasury instead of having it all inflate away to zero. Money just feels like—the freaking tuna sandwich we ate last week costs, what, $35? It's a joke.
10. Jeeting Out of CryptoPunks
Since COVID, money has just become something ridiculous and hard to understand. It's not me being elitist about it. Everybody's new best friend, Zohran Mamdani, just got elected on that kind of freebie platform because inflation has been so painful for people across every category.
So I guess we have a few things to talk about. We have to talk about Mamdani because this is a political shift that may impact crypto. I cashed out my Punk, which got some engagement online.
I don't know. You're a Punk holder. What do you think? Where should we start?
I think I have mine offered. I love my Punk, but I don't know. My almost-thesis on Punks is that I don't think the average ones should ever trade above $1 million. We actually talked about this: I think Punks are much more tethered to dollar prices than to ETH. They're just priced in ETH, but I think people think of them as dollars.
I think people buy them with fresh dollars. So if I can get half a million for that, to me, I'm like, my golden rule is that you always leave the last 2x for someone else. You don't need the last double.
Before we go to him, can I just explain why I sold my Punk?
You said something. You said, “I love my Punk.”
And I loved my Punk, but after 3 years of rocking it, I just didn't care anymore at all. It didn't mean anything to me. It wasn't special.
I have plenty of artwork that's worth a lot less than what I paid for it. That's how cars work.
Yeah, you have a nice art collection. I love my vehicle. I love my art, but it's all worth less than what I paid for it, and I don't care. I'm keeping it forever. With the Punk, I'm like, I don't even like this anymore. I don't even feel cool rocking a Punk as a profile picture.
My entry price was $700,000, and my exit price was $195,000. So technically, I lost about half a million on that trade. But I did still sell it for roughly $200,000. Just so people understand the math: if I hold a Punk, I don't have that $200,000. If I sell the Punk, I get $200,000 right away that I can use to do other things with, like buy assets I like.
A $500,000 loss in a high-tax jurisdiction where I live gets me $200,000 of that straight back into my pocket via the tax loss. I can write it off against other gains. Now, if I didn't have gains, I wouldn't be able to do that. But luckily for me, this incredibly disastrous CryptoPunk trade is not the only trade I've ever done.
For all you people out there making fun of me on the internet, it's worth thinking about tax losses because that's actual dollars in your pocket. So basically, having a profile picture as a Punk was costing me $400,000. By selling it, I now have $400,000 worth of liquidity that I didn't have before.
Totally.
That's a nice chunk that I could put into Bitcoin on a dip and maybe double it somehow, or triple it if I put it into the right altcoin. The alts I'm looking at—I like HYPE on dips because there's a buyer of HYPE that isn't retail. The buyer is the Hyperliquid Foundation when it uses its fees to buy and burn HYPE.
Hyperliquid is a super interesting one for me because it more or less spawned a new category within crypto. I do think that could become a $1 trillion category: essentially, doing financial services fully on-chain. The on-chain Binance was always the holy grail.
What's interesting, though, is I feel like it's so owned, which isn't a bad thing. It's kind of the same thing for Bitcoin. The biggest risk I see is that Jeff and the Hyperliquid team aren't really doing any lobbying whatsoever. Their only real pull with the government is probably through Paradigm or—I think a16z bought a bunch, right?—so they have those venture capitalists that can lobby.
11. Hyperliquid Debate
It's hard to imagine that the centralized exchanges aren't trying to force some KYC stuff on it. I don't know. It could be a mid-curve take, right? It is super strong, and I think bringing equities on-chain is great. But to me, there's this moment, and I actually think the long-term capital gains on the airdrop are probably the thing people will overlook the most. The unlocks, I think, are not that big of a concern.
Basically, don't buy in March or February.
No, no, no—from the airdrop. It's actually coming up, I think, in about a month.
Oh, you think people are going to sell it right away?
Well, because the way they did the airdrop was actually pretty genius. They structured it like it was a trade, more or less. So you didn't have to pay short-term taxes if you didn't want to; you could just hold it for a year, which I'm sure a lot of people did. It was actually great for recipients—way more tax-efficient.
It's one of these interesting ones. We talked about this: I do like going for things that are more overlooked and less consensus, but honestly, in this market, that's probably not the way to go. The thing about HYPE is that you can still win even if it's consensus, because as long as it's still used as a product, the fees get passed back to you.
It's like Meta stock or Nvidia stock being overowned. Everybody owns it, but it still goes up because they perform. That's something about Hyperliquid that I like.
12. Long-Term Theses in Crypto
But I guess I'd be worried that, to your point about regulation and lobbying, it's unlikely. Yeah, it's unlikely, honestly, I think, now. I don't know if you saw Trump's comment about CZ, where he was like, “I don't know.” So it's less likely?
So I guess one of the things we talked about in one of my theses going forward is that there aren't that many long-term investable things in crypto at the moment. There are 4 primary use cases, I think, that are $1 trillion markets in 10 years. You have store of value, which has been proven out; privacy, I think, will be a big one; this on-chain finance; and then, more or less, distributed resources. I think Bittensor is the best example of that.
The thing that HYPE benefits from is that it is one of the only investable assets. One of the biggest things I've noticed is that retail, at this point, is not willing to buy anything with a cap table for an extended period of time. One of the best things about Hyperliquid is that it was all airdrop. There were no VCs. That makes it stand out so much more from the pack.
Crypto venture is not in a good spot. I think it's actually much better for liquid investors because the only real remedy for this is for projects to start ICOs at much lower valuations. Otherwise, there's just no recovering. The market will adapt.
Well, that's what's happening with CryptoPunks, right? Lower valuations—CryptoPunks are rapidly converging to the price of normal art. So we're seeing the compression trade happen in one sector of crypto called NFTs. Why shouldn't the compression trade happen in others? The corollary to your theory about there being very few investable assets is that there are many good shorts, right?
It's a tough game, though.
And it's like you just make no money. I do it, obviously, but it's always— the only way to get more returns is if you add leverage, and that's just such a dangerous game. The math just doesn't work out in terms of managing the collateral.
I had a good one on WIF. I had a good short on that because basically, the Sphere came out and they were like, “We never talked to these guys. We don't know what WIF is. Sorry. There's never going to be a hat on the Sphere.” And then WIF went down like 5%—I'm short—and then it went down 50%, almost overnight.
I haven't really done a lot of shorting because I think you need to monitor it more actively than I'm willing to in my old age. What I think is interesting about shorting is that your boy Flood was victory-lapping his—whatever it was called—the Kingmaker portfolio, where it's long HYPE, long BTC, short garbage like Aptos, Worldcoin, all this random, obviously never-going-to-happen type stuff.
Aptos is the funniest. Mo gets his unlock, sells it, and just quits. Why on earth would you ever be long Aptos? No matter how good Aptos is looking here, you want to be short that. So, it's tempting to short. It's just, you kind of can't.
Yeah.
You know, even Solana is tempting to short because it's obviously not going to fulfill its internet capital markets promise. But to your point about it onboarding young users, Solana is kind of the Nickelodeon of crypto, or the tween people of crypto. You're really dating yourself here, Jonah.
13. Clippers Game
Well, Nickelodeon still exists. It's funny. Speaking of dating myself, I went to a Clippers game last night with my son just to take him out, and I wanted to cover his eyes during the section where the cheerleaders dance in the middle at half court.
What do they do that's crazy these days?
They spent $2 billion on this mega arena, the most modern, nicest arena I've ever seen in my life, in the middle of Inglewood, which is, you know, Long Beach, Inglewood, right? That's what Inglewood was when I was growing up. And I go, there's this $2 billion arena surrounded by Inglewood.
I go in there, and they definitely preserve the local culture with the way that these Clippers dancers dance. It was a mixture between TikTok break dancing and straight-up Inglewood street life. I wanted to cover his eyes. It was hilarious. Anyway, that made me feel old.
The best part in the dome is you just see Steve Ballmer going crazy.
That's the best part. I didn't see Steve Ballmer going crazy, but I wish I had. Speaking of people, the mayor of New York is 7 years younger than me. What the hell is going on there? This is your town, Avi.
14. Mamdani Mayoral Win
I just bought the top. I feel like I just bought the top on New York. I moved here, I guess, more recently.
I was there with him in the Bloomberg years.
Yeah, I watched his speech. We'll see.
I don't know. I'm kind of hoping that—I think he'll be ineffective in a lot of his policies, and it will kind of serve as an example of a socialist regime not working. But the more sober side of me thinks it's a sign of the times. You can hear in his speech the kind of examples he uses are the people he's appealing to. That is who's hurting the most.
And, not to get too political, obviously a lot of the immigration policies in these liberal cities are not what I would choose. That's kind of where we are, so it's definitely a bad mix. I'm hoping he'll be ineffective, but there's obviously a lot of subtle things he can do to make life, I guess, a little less safe.
Yeah. And I think in terms of just how that matters to the listeners of our podcast, probably most of whom don't live in New York City, what does it mean for asset prices that Mamdani is now the de facto leader of the Democratic Party in the United States of America and the global epicenter of capitalism, the beating heart of America's economy, right?
Obviously, we're sitting here glibly talking about flipping JPEGs for 6-figure losses and art collections. I recognize that I'm pretty thankful to be in this situation, and it's mostly luck, to be honest. Just luck of the draw.
I will say, from my personal perspective, I wouldn't want to live in New York City if Mamdani is the mayor. But I listened to his acceptance speech about how now this is politics and power for the people whose knuckles are burned from working in kitchens, whose fingers are calloused from stacking Amazon packages.
The way that I relate to that community is that my father was the number-one union labor lawyer in the United States of America for about 25 years. He argued 4 cases in front of the Supreme Court. I grew up in basically a communist household in Berkeley, believing in a lot of Mamdani's policies because my parents indoctrinated me with them.
We had the swag at home to prove it: picket signs from the USX-Posco steel picket, with bullet holes in them. Real, real battles of American labor. At my dad's funeral, there were thousands and thousands of people at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. César Chávez, whom he represented, and farm workers were crying, “Thank you, Victor Van Bourg. You gave me a life. You gave me dignity.”
This was the working community, my people. I said my last name on a bus once, and some guy who was covered in paint said, “Excuse me, do you know Victor Van Bourg?” I said, “Yeah, he's my father.” He said, “Oh my God, please tell him thank you. I have a pension because of your father.” Real working men and women were helped by my dad.
I grew up in this world that Mamdani is talking about. Obviously, I rebelled, and I'm a crude oil and cryptocurrency trader now, so I don't think he'd be too proud. But at the same time, tying this back into the broader theme, these people need help. The economy has just left hundreds of millions of people behind.
That's part of the appeal of crypto: you can escape via this asset class in a way you couldn't just via the old-school way of getting a job, getting a government job, and living the American dream off of that. The problem is that I don't think any of Mamdani's policies are going to work. You don't solve income inequality by redistribution. You solve it by giving bargaining power to the workers and giving them equity in the value that they create.
That's kind of the way Vitol gave me equity in the value I created for them, and the way that trading companies are sort of socialist economic microcosms within a broader capitalist system. Workers probably should have more equity in the value that they produce. So, I think basically Mamdani is a redistributionist. He's not a collective-bargaining guy. I think they're two very distinct ideologies.
As far as tying this back into your bags, our bags, redistribution historically precedes asset-price depreciation 100 times out of 100. So, if Mamdani is the leader of the party and this is the way Democratic politics are going, this isn't a labor movement that's going to solve workers' problems via legal action the way my dad did.
This is a redistributionist movement, like what Pol Pot was probably after in Cambodia, or any of the other people that led their economies straight to hell—the Kim family in Korea, or whatever. Basically, my take is to watch the Democratic net favorability rating of the party. If Mamdani remains the standard-bearer and that starts to become nationally favorable, then it's time to pretty much liquidate your asset holdings and sell.
Meanwhile, if Gavin Newsom becomes the standard-bearer and the Democratic favorability rating rebounds, that's okay because Newsom is more of a mainstream politician. What do you think?
I don't know. I tend to be optimistic, or try to be optimistic, about these things and think it'll be kind of confined to New York. I do think it makes sense to just—and I think this is why Zcash has been going up—you definitely want some Zcash or just Monero stashed away. I don't have any of it, for context.
Wait, why Zcash? Why?
Privacy coins.
But couldn't you just use an exchange? An exchange is as good a mixer as any. Couldn't you just put some Bitcoin through a centralized exchange, then offboard it to a cold wallet and hold that?
You could.
Why do you—what problem does Zcash solve that you couldn't accomplish just with Bitcoin? You can, I mean, just obfuscate, obviously.
Where's the fun?
Greater obfuscation, fine.
And the movement of them—and the exchange is a central point of failure, obviously. I don't know, but actually she could. If AOC's president in 2028, she hits up Binance. I think it's a super-low probability.
I think it's higher than people think. “There should be no billionaires” could easily turn into “There should be no people with more than $5 million,” and they could track your assets pretty easily.
Look, we've obviously seen this. It kind of does obviously feel like history's repeating itself.
My bet is that humanity just keeps progressing at such a fast rate that it's never going to be as bad as it was before. And I think general intelligence is—
General intelligence keeps going up and up. So do our standards of humanity.
15. Where Does This All Go?
I don't think it'll get there. I do think the bigger point, though, that you mentioned is that a lot of these people who are left behind—the jobs they would want, or the jobs that would essentially get them a more equal playing field—AI is taking those jobs away. A lot of this information work is going to be automated away, and so that's the bigger issue.
I actually think it's better for, I guess, our bags or our asset prices, right? Because I don't really see a situation in which the government is going to have to support this in one way or another. AI is only going to grow.
It’s like a national security moment at this point, and I think for the government to justify its investments in AI and bolstering our level of intelligence, it’s obviously going to have to support the people that it’s kind of disenfranchising. So, on the big picture, I agree: asset prices up. Short term, AI makes every company in the S&P 500 more efficient—more EBITDA per employee—so asset prices go up.
But eventually, I think Mamdani is the canary in the coal mine, and Zcash too, for: Hey, people aren’t just going to tolerate this. People at both ends of the wealth spectrum—the top and the bottom—are going to have some issues when the poorest people, the neediest in society, are being asked to tolerate higher bills and higher unemployment, and the people at the highest echelons of wealth in society are being asked to tolerate more of what feels to them like unfair redistribution. You’re sort of seeing the fuse get lit at both ends.
So, to your point about leaving the last 2x for somebody else, I think there’s another 5x in Bitcoin right now, frankly, in the period of time before we get redistribution on the national political agenda, at the earliest. So I think we’re safe for now, but you really do have to have your finger on the trigger at some point in the future.
I’m pulling up a tweet that a friend sent me yesterday. It’s from this guy. I didn’t realize he was at Base. It was Antonio García Martínez. He essentially just draws parallels to Chesa Boudin and San Francisco.
He just makes the argument: Look, the lower class is actually going to feel the pain of this, right? Because the upper class has the means to essentially insulate themselves from all these issues, right? They can afford housing wherever. They can get private security. They can move. Capital obviously is more able to move than people. And so, a lot of these issues will actually be burdened by the people he’s trying to help.
[Speaker?]
I really like him. I would recommend everybody go and buy his book, Chaos Monkeys. He used to work for my boss at Goldman, so he describes that trading-floor zeitgeist very well. We follow each other on Twitter. I think he’s a really brilliant commentator of modern times, and I couldn’t agree more with what he said.
16. Final Thoughts
A user just put in the chat here: “Cryptoorm: Max, how much do you bench?” So, this is another important question we have to cover before the end of the pod.
Do you mean a one-rep max or a 5x5? I need—
Let’s hear about your 8-rep set and your single-rep max.
It’s honestly not that impressive. I feel like I used to be in way better shape in college. For 8 reps, like 195, and then for 1 rep—
Like 225, 235. I peaked out in high school. I could bench 250 for 1 rep, and now I probably can’t even. I was like a 180-type set guy, and now I probably can’t even do a third of that. I’m like a Zohran Mamdani-level bench bencher, but I get that—
My peak was definitely sophomore year of college. You need a gym buddy. That’s what keeps you accountable. If you have a friend that you go with, you’ll push it way harder.
I would be gym buddies with you. We’re crypto buddies. We push each other harder to make money in this market. We even kind of look similar in a vague kind of way on this pod.
The juxtaposition is shocking here.
Yeah, you’re obviously younger and better-looking.
The folks at Blockworks are saying, “We want to—we’re looking for new podcasters. We want to start more crypto podcasts, and it can’t just be another crypto news podcast. Come with fresh ideas.” I obviously proposed the idea of Telemundo-style, D-list anchorwomen from Bogotá, Colombia, doing crypto news topless in Spanish. That got shot down, unfortunately.
So, let’s put the ball in your court. Max, what is missing in the world of crypto podcasts? What kind of content do you think the audience needs at this point that isn’t out there?
I think you guys are actually kind of touching on it, but I think it needs more—I don’t know. I’m trying to think. We have, I think, obviously, really good news roundups. There are a lot of actually good technical deep dives. I don’t know. I’m biased. I think probably just more investment-related content.
Maybe we’ve got to get you on the show more often. Maybe just do some Max time every week. I really enjoyed this.
Yeah, likewise. We can definitely pencil in some time. It’s good to get our Telegram and phone conversations out to the public.
Yeah, for sure. Man, these are crazy times. Good luck, everybody, navigating this. This is wild. Anything else before we jump? I’ve got to go in a minute or 2. Sorry.
No. All good. Be smart. Stay safe and go get ’em. It’s good times.
All right. Let’s end it there, Max. Great talking to you. Thank you so much for joining.
Yeah, appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.