Picking Winners:是时候看多了吗?| 1000x
Bitcoin 的关键位置是 $70,000——对应风险偏好重燃——以及 $55,000——对应被动清算;两者之间仍是惩罚性区间。 在当前宏观环境下,Avi 不再认为 $52,000 大概率会出现,但他指出了一个看多信号:BTC 稳住 $67,000-$68,000,资金费率持平,交易员却继续做空区间上沿。「Bitcoin 站上70k,世界就变了。」
最新一轮上涨看起来由宏观因素驱动,而非加密市场自身驱动,追涨的理由因此减弱。 CPI 略低于预期,带动 Bitcoin 与股票同步上涨;但稳定币余额和短期 ETF 资金流仍然低迷。买入 $55,000-$57,000 是一个为期6个月的判断,并不意味着 BTC 永远不会回到这些价格。
ETF 需求规模创下历史纪录,但 Jonah 的周期中段判断是,Bitcoin ETF 资金流入可能已经进入「第5或第6局」,而非第1局。 IBIT 用49天吸收了 $18B,FBTC 用77天吸收了 $10B,而 GLD 花了817天才达到 $10B。Jonah 估计还会有 $50-$75B 增量资金流入,并猜测 AUM 可能在约 $100B 见顶;Avi 认为这一接近尾声的判断过于大胆,选择站在对立面。Jonah 的反例是 Wisconsin 披露的 $160M 仓位:如果养老金体系只需配置几个基点,机构采用可能才刚刚开始。
首选组合应更小、更由叙事驱动,并愿意做多赢家、做空缺乏叙事或面临大额供应解锁的代币。 Avi 看好 NEAR、AR 和 Livepeer,同时认为 Blur、Chainlink、Filecoin、FLOW 和 MATIC 没有可比的资金流;他给出的清晰表达是做空 SUI、做多 AR,持有数月。「现在是收缩组合的时候」,因为市场分化和供应解锁可能让广泛的山寨币敞口持续失血。
Jonah 减持了约75%的 BODEN 仓位,因为没有新买家的 meme coin 没有财报可以挽救。 他保留了一部分上行敞口,以防选举驱动行情,但认为 Donald Trump 或 Joe Rogan 为其站台的概率正在下降。Avi 问,持有者是否可能一直坚定持仓到选举;Jonah 认为仍可能再涨10倍,按这轮上涨后的约 $150M 市值计算,或许还有5倍空间。投资者要同时检验催化剂和持有者质量:「当前参与者是多容易动摇,还是多能坚定持有?」
5月23日 ETH ETF 的决定提供的是有条件的事件交易,而不是盲目提前建仓。 如果 SEC 以 Bitcoin 案中的市场操纵和现货/期货相关性理由否决、但不认定 ETH 属于证券,Avi 预计最终仍会走向批准,并倾向于买入消息冲击后的下跌,尤其是折价被报为24%-25%的 ETHE。如果以证券属性或质押为由否决,利空程度会大得多,也可能影响市场对 Solana、Lido 和 Eigen 相关资产的定价。
GME 和 AMC 证明散户仍有相当强的赌博能力,但这并不自动意味着有新资金推动 Bitcoin 突破。 Jonah 认为100%-150%的涨幅说明,沉寂的散户资金在出现领头资产时仍会集结;Avi 则因不了解 Roaring Kitty 或 Reddit、没有交易优势而拒绝参与。Ansem 逆转 BODEN 情绪的能力说明加密市场内部也存在同样的反射机制,但要涨到 $100,000 BTC,仍然「需要更大的傻瓜,需要新资金」。
1. Bitcoin 在 $55,000 或 $70,000 被突破前仍是区间交易
Jonah 开场看多但刻意不下注:如果市场暴跌,他想逢低买入;如果市场猛涨,他什么也不做。「如果 Bitcoin 再也回不到6万美元,那就该开派对了」,但他的基准情景仍是继续震荡。
Avi 的依据是上下两侧都反复受阻。BTC 曾多次冲击 $60,000 和 $65,000,包括一次流动性极低的下跌:价格在「半秒钟内」从 $63,000 跌至 $61,000,随后完全收复失地。
区间本身正在困住缺乏耐心的交易员:有人在每个低点做空,试图捕捉破位;又在每个高点买入,试图捕捉突破。「这就是典型的区间交易行为」,可能持续到夏季,直到足够多的参与者失去耐心、离开市场。
Avi 的地图非常明确:站上 $70,000,风险偏好重燃;跌破 $55,000,则触发清算。更隐蔽的看多信号是,BTC 位于 $67,000-$68,000,资金费率持平,而市场共识仍认为区间上沿应该继续做空。
2. ETF 的历史性增长支撑周期,但未必推动夏季行情
Avi 的短期谨慎基于两个缺失变量:稳定币余额没有增加,ETF 资金流「基本没什么动静」。在 Nasdaq 和标普500指数都处于高位、BTC 却落后的情况下,他把这种背离视为利空,而不是默认 Bitcoin 会补涨。
Jonah 的反驳着眼于规模:IBIT 用49天积累了 $18B,FBTC 用77天积累了 $10B,而 GLD 花了817天才达到 $10B。如果继续保持初始速度,将会「相当前所未有」。
Jonah 估计,在 BTC 达到相对合理的公允价格前,还会有 $50-$75B 资金流入,足以推动其 $1.3T 市值大致增长3倍,接近黄金所称的 $16T 市值的一半。他后来猜测 ETF AUM 可能在约 $100B 见顶,但同时认为养老金的采用意味着进程可能才刚刚开始:「我们大概已经进入第5或第6局(We’re probably in inning 5 or 6)。」Avi 认为这一接近尾声的判断过于大胆,选择站在对立面。
Jonah 认为 Wisconsin 披露的 $160M 配置可能成为州级养老金和职业养老金体系的模板,而这些体系管理着数万亿美元。两人对时点的共同判断是:夏季震荡,Q3 资金提前布局,随后 Q4 或 Q1 的配置可能带来「疯狂上涨」。
3. 新买家,而不是名义叙事,决定代币是资产还是包袱
Jonah 的框架开门见山:「每个代币都是 meme coin。」如果收益不会传导给持有者,或代币不存在类似商品的消耗场景,实际问题就是下一池资金来自哪里——谁会作为「更大的傻瓜」接走你手里的资产。
这一逻辑促使 Jonah 减持了约75%的 BODEN。该币不是横盘,而是在持续下跌;没有任何财报能扭转这种市场心理。他按 VWAP 卖出,将资金转入 Solana,同时保留足够仓位,以免错过突发的选举驱动行情。
Jonah 认为有两个催化剂:Joe Biden 出现口误后有人买入,或 Joe Rogan、Donald Trump 等重要文化人物为这个玩笑站台。在 Mar-a-Lago 的一次活动上,Trump 说一枚市值约 $240M 的 coin「看起来不像一笔好投资」;Jonah 表示,BODEN 最初正是因为这番认知而上涨,随后遭遇卖出。
持有者行为与催化剂同样重要。Jonah 将考验概括为当前参与者究竟有多「纸手」或多「钻石手」。Avi 问持有者是否可能因为潜在的另一轮10倍行情而坚持到选举;Jonah 认为确实可能再涨10倍,按这轮上涨后的约 $150M 市值计算,或许还有5倍空间。
4. 集中持仓和相对价值胜过无差别配置山寨币
两位主持人都希望减少持仓数量,因为市场分化已经取代普遍 beta。Jonah 也认同,「现在是收缩组合的时候」:降低复杂度,集中仓位,不要再假设每个落后的山寨币都值得补涨。
Avi 发现 NEAR、AR 和 Livepeer 存在活跃的叙事资金流,而 Blur、Chainlink、Filecoin、FLOW 和 MATIC 表现平淡。考虑到解锁带来的供应压力,他给出的简单相对价值交易是做空 SUI、做多 AR,持有数月。
但他的宏观担忧已经有所缓和。此前 BTC 在约 $70,000 交易时,Avi 还能设想跌到 $52,000;随着通胀担忧缓解、早先的恐惧逐渐过时,「在当前这种环境下,我确实不太能看到52k了」。
Jonah 补充了更长期的周期指标:MVRV Z-score 为2.0,FTX 低点时低于1,狂热高点时高于7。短期资金流看起来疲弱,但这一指标仍显示,加密市场处于其宽泛周期区间的低端。
5. 5月23日把 ETH 否决理由变成交易机会
Jonah 预计几乎没人相信 ETH ETF 会在5月23日获批,因此负面消息已经被大幅计价。关键不只是「否决」,而是 SEC 给出的具体理由。
如果仅以现货市场操纵和现货/期货相关性不足为由否决,那就是重复此前对 Bitcoin 使用过的逻辑。随着 ETH 期货市场成熟、相关性增强,这一障碍最终可能消失;因此 Avi 认为,即使首条消息引发抛售,这个否决理由本身仍然偏多。
Avi 偏好 ETHE,理由是其折价为24%-25%;Jonah 预计价格会小幅下跌,失望的持有者卖出后,折价会暂时扩大。建议的交易是逢低买入;如果这次决定保留未来走向 ETF 的路径,折价可能大幅收窄。
如果理由涉及证券属性或质押,情况会明显更糟,因为监管明确性可能仍遥遥无期。Jonah 建议先不要急着买入 Lido 或 Eigen 等与质押相关的资产;反过来,如果决定中不提证券或质押,就可能「为未来的 Solana ETF 打开道路」。
6. 入场价格和耐心是仅有的优势
他们从事件交易中总结的经验是:灵活入场,建立 ticker 清单,在决定落地后买入短暂的错位行情。当天所有资产都上涨约20%时追涨,「几乎总不是买入的好时机」。
Jonah 最喜欢引用 John Wu 的说法:加密交易要求你「足够愚蠢,敢于买入这枚 coin;又足够聪明,知道卖出」。这两者代表相反的心态,因此提前入场、拥有足够宽容的成本价,往往是唯一可行的解法。
他把交易员想象成一名「蜷伏在树枝上的无声本土战士」,手持吹箭,等待事件制造便宜筹码。即使是胜率52%的系统化交易员,也必须承受令人难受的48%失败率;成熟意味着不要把自己反复割伤。
7. Meme 股票狂潮证明风险偏好,而非 Bitcoin 突破
Avi 并不担心错过 GME,因为他在 Roaring Kitty、Reddit 或 meme 股票这套交易中没有优势。他想避免在加密市场缺乏基准价格走势时,贸然进入自己不熟悉的风险领域。
Jonah 从 GME 和 AMC 上涨100%-150%中看到了更广泛的信号:散户仍有「多得离谱」的资金可以赌博,只是需要一个领头者来协调。这种风险偏好对加密市场构成支持,但并没有提供 Bitcoin 的即时价格目标。
Ansem 在加密市场内部扮演了这个角色。Jonah 发帖看空 BODEN 后,Ansem 回应称他「在抽大麻」,并表示这枚 coin 只会上涨;人群的反应显示出参与度和赌博意愿,但还没有足够新资金把 BTC 推向 $100,000。最后的建议是休息一下,简化组合,耐心等待。
The world changes if Bitcoin gets above $70K—very simple—because then you get animal spirits coming back in. But the world changes if we're below $55K too; then animal spirits start, people start liquidating. You have Nasdaq at the highs, you have the S&P at the highs, and BTC is not. Like you said, there's dispersion going on; there's chop. This is a time to consolidate the portfolio, a time to reduce line items.
That's what I'm 100% on board with: reducing complexity in the book right now. There are going to be things that do very well, and you can trade those, but in aggregate you just want a more concentrated portfolio.
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All right guys, welcome back to another episode of 1000x. We've been chopping around for a while, but this morning we had a very nice move in the crypto markets. It's the biggest candle we've seen in a while, and we've finally gotten over that $65K hump. Everything is up a lot today. It's looking good. How are you feeling, Jonah?
Going good. I'm long. I don't really know if I'm going to get my chance to buy a dip or not, but I don't care. If this is the last time we ever hit $60K again in Bitcoin, it's party time. I'm not going to be complaining.
I kind of lack conviction on a lot of the space right now. If everything nukes, I want to go shopping, as we talked about on the last podcast. If everything rips, I'm not going to do anything. Frankly, I feel like we're going to keep chopping for a while. Outside of the barbell portfolio that we talked about, I don't have a lot of conviction right now.
I think so. The one thing that was clear to me is that after we failed to break $60K again—we had a few shots there—last Friday we had that ridiculous sell-off on pretty low liquidity and low volume, where we went straight from $63K to $61K in half a second. Then we reversed that entire move, bled out again, and started moving up.
We've attacked $60K a bunch of times at this point, and we haven't been able to get through. On the same side, we've attacked $65K a lot and haven't really been able to get through either. Let's see how we sustain this move here. My view is that we're still in for chop.
Alts during this time have bled out a reasonable amount. ETH/BTC has bled out a reasonable amount. Memes haven't actually done particularly well, except for you inciting the entirety of the internet to buy Boden.
I do think that while BTC is still a good buy, and there are some alts that I like—I’ve been talking about AR for a long time—there are definitely some select alts that I still like. But as a general complex, the alt complex doesn't really interest me other than for bounces right now, until we get a sustained rally from BTC.
I'm sort of on the side of the duck who tweeted that memes are over for now. I don't think they're over for the full cycle, but I do think that on every move higher, people get really excited, and on every move lower, people get very bearish. That tells me we're probably in for a little bit more chop through the summer. I'm not chasing every move higher or every move lower at this point.
Yeah, we have to talk about that. I do think that some of my takes were taken out of context on Twitter. When I said buying $55K, $56K, $57K—that area I was talking about on the last podcast—was a good place to buy, it doesn't mean that we're never going to reach that level again. It means that if you buy there and wait for an extended period of time, like 6 months, you're probably going to be very happy.
I completely agree with that, even though we're at $66K. I'm not saying this because we're back at my target. We've done very well since then, but I think that got taken out of context because we traded back to $60K and everyone was freaking out. They were saying, “What about when you said buying at $56K was such a great idea? Now we're back at $60K, and you're actually a bit nervous. We were at $63K, and you're a bit bearish at $63K. You must be wrecked.”
For the record, Avi's just fine. I remember seeing a chart on Twitter of a few different Twitter personalities in crypto. One axis was degen versus normie, and the other axis was something like perma-bull versus doomer. Avi got put in the lower-right quadrant. According to some nobody on Twitter, you are basically the most doomer degen.
People are doing the same thing to me. I'm getting criticized about Boden, which is interesting, and we'll get into that later. But here are a couple of observations. Observation number 1: The market is chopping up and down. The chart is red, green, red, green. That is undeniable.
Observation number 2: Last Friday, when we nuked, it wasn't just us in crypto that nuked. Oil nuked, the S&P nuked—everything nuked. Today, everything is ripping. Why? Because CPI came in slightly less hot than expected. This is super important because it determines Fed action, and inflation is basically the most important economic issue in America right now. Everything gapped higher on the CPI print today, including Bitcoin. There was no fundamental narrative for Bitcoin, nor was there a fundamental narrative for the sell-off last Friday.
Observation number 3: One thing I notice junior traders doing when they first join is chopping themselves up. They buy high and sell low. That doesn't mean selling something that's going down is a bad idea, or buying something that's going up is a bad idea. It means that if that's all you ever do, you're going to bleed out.
There's a lot of that type of junior-trader sentiment on Twitter and in the crypto world right now because people aren't making money. When something is chopping sideways, money isn't really being made. Sure, somebody caught the Pepe thing, or maybe some crypto person had some GameStop in a brokerage account somewhere and is bragging about it. But for the most part, the space isn't really making money. If anything, I would guess people are buying highs, selling lows, chopping themselves up, and losing money. Everybody's a little pissed off, and everybody's overinterpreting everything.
Let's break this down into time frames. Avi, you convinced me of something on the last podcast. You said this thing was probably going to dip below $60K at some point, at which point you'd like to start shopping pretty heavily. I hadn't really thought about that. I was in blinders-on bullish mode. I agree with you, and I'm prepared to blow the rest of my wad if that happens, because I'm medium- to long-term quite bullish.
If it goes up without pulling back, neither you nor I are going to be crying or upset, unable to participate. It's not like we're out of crypto. Those are the sorts of things we need to observe going into this period of time. Would you agree, Avi, that people are losing a bit of money right now and are kind of pissed off? That's how it feels.
Yeah, I think everyone's gotten chopped up like crazy right now. The other thing that's pissing people off is that there's a ton of dispersion in the market. There are some people who are making money, but the majority of people are not.
That actually tends to lead to these ranges, because people have probably stepped out of the market to some degree. Whenever we trade lower, everybody says, “Now's my chance. Now it's going to break. Let me pile in. Let me finally make some money and catch this next move.” Everyone shorts the lows, and then those shorts get taken out.
Then it's the opposite on the top side. Whenever we rally to the top side of the range, people say, “It's finally time to make some money. I haven't made money in a while. Let me buy here. We're going to go.” Then we don't go anywhere. This is just classic range-trading behavior.
I think the range will resolve itself once people have detached themselves from the market. We're probably going to lose more people throughout the summer, and then that's when this thing is finally going to start picking a direction.
The 2 things that stand out to me are still that stablecoin balances are not going up, and ETF flows aren't really doing anything.
ETF flows did too much. There's an amazing chart out there that I saw. It shows assets under management on the y-axis and time on the x-axis. These Bitcoin ETFs—the Fidelity one and BlackRock's—accumulated assets faster, by literally orders of magnitude, than the 2nd-, 3rd-, and 4th-fastest ETFs in history. It's literally 10 orders of magnitude.
It has slowed down, but if it had continued at that pace, it would have been pretty unprecedented. We're taking a breather, and the jury is still out. But I agree that in the short term, this isn't going to drive a big bull run. In the medium to long term, who knows?
I have the chart here. IBIT, in 49 days, accumulated $18 billion. FBTC, in 77 days, accumulated $10 billion. GLD, in 817 days from when it was first issued, accumulated $10 billion. The Fidelity ETF accumulated the same amount in literally 10% as much time.
I'll post this on the YouTube page so everybody can see it. It's pretty crazy. It took 10 times as long for GLD, the gold ETF, to accumulate as much AUM as the 2nd-biggest crypto ETF.
Gold is even harder for the average person to buy than Bitcoin, in my personal opinion. If you're an investor, the only way to hold gold is through an ETF. You can't really hold gold any other way. You can go to Costco and buy a gold bar, but it's a pain in the ass.
I would wager that the percentage of people who are going to hold gold ETFs as a proportion of gold's market cap will actually be higher in the long run than the proportion of people who hold BTC relative to the BTC market cap. You can hold BTC outside of the investor class. There are people in India holding gold, and there are central banks and so on, but all that being said, we're probably close to the end of BTC ETF inflows for now.
I would wager that there's probably $50 billion to $75 billion left in aggregate to come into BTC ETFs until BTC is priced reasonably fairly. If you think about how big BTC should be relative to gold—is it at parity, half, or a 3rd?—to me, half would be insane parity time.
Gold's market cap is $16 trillion, and Bitcoin's market cap right now is $1.3 trillion. You think $75 billion worth of inflows drives Bitcoin's market cap from $1.3 trillion to maybe 3x? Maybe it would drive it up 3x. I think another $50 billion to $75 billion would drive it up 3x.
What you said about nearing the end of the ETF inflows for now is a spicy take. I would take the other side of it. Then you said another $50 billion to $75 billion.
I'm not saying that the ETF is going to drive Bitcoin to infinity. I'm not saying we're close in terms of price appreciation. I'm saying that we're not in inning 1 of the Bitcoin ETF. We're not in inning 2. We're probably in inning 5 or 6 of Bitcoin ETF inflows.
I don't know—the jury is out. Did you see that the Wisconsin state pension fund, for government employees, bought $160 million worth of Bitcoin ETFs? They just disclosed it.
If that sort of pool of capital is what we're talking about—if that's the type of person or institution that's interested in these ETFs—we could just be getting started. Those pension funds manage tens of trillions of dollars. If they're putting even a few basis points into IBIT, that's a huge allocation. Not them, but there are 49 other states that have pension funds, and then there are fire departments and teachers' systems. These pension funds are just everywhere; they're enormous.
That'll account for the next $50 billion that's going to come in.
Maybe. I think we're probably peaking at $100 billion of AUM. At $100 billion of AUM, you're probably not getting much more. That's probably stable in terms of what's coming in and what's coming out.
I think what happens is that Bitcoin ETF flows are the main driver of BTC price action, and I don't think that happens over the summer. I think that happens in Q4. Then in Q3, you probably get people front-running those Q4 allocations and Q4-to-Q1 allocations into next year. That's when you get a crazy rally. That's my mid-curve take. I think a reasonable number of people agree with that, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's wrong.
I agree with it. In that interim period before we get that, I think you get some dispersion in the altcoin space. Because there's not a ton of new net capital coming in, you probably just get a bleed-out from a lot of different assets, especially because there's a lot of supply coming online.
I don't think it's the worst time in the world to take a break from trying to trade ridiculously actively and just wait for the extremes. You can obviously take trades. Yesterday was a good example of a good trade: You had a macro event that was reasonably priced in and watched, but you had a lot of people still shorting the lows—shorting that $60K level—so obviously they were going to get blown out.
But will this draw enough new capital in to get to new all-time highs? Probably not, though I can always be wrong.
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All right, let's get back to the show. New capital is what's key. I posted this framework for investing in tokens on Twitter. The first thing is that every token is a memecoin. Just accept it. Even Bitcoin is a memecoin.
Whenever you're holding something that doesn't fundamentally pass earnings through to you, or isn't a commodity that will be bought incessantly by some consumer to produce buildings, transportation fuels, wires, semiconductors, or something like that—if you're just holding something and waiting for somebody else to buy it from you, which is the state of crypto given that the regulatory picture isn't clear—you have to ask yourself who the greater fool is who's going to take this off your hands.
Like you said, it comes down to new capital. I'm going through my portfolio right now and asking myself, “Is more money going to come in to buy this asset that I'm holding?”
For Bitcoin, the answer is unequivocally yes. That's true for all the geopolitical and macro reasons we've discussed ad nauseam on this podcast. It's not even worth doing further analysis for now, especially with the halving, less selling, and the prospect of ETF-bottlenecked pension-fund flows that we just talked about.
For memecoins, I also deeply believe in them. But when I see memecoins doing down-only instead of chopping with the rest of the space, especially ones that I hold, I'm going to derisk ratably as they go down. I'm going to VWAP-sell as the thing is trending down.
There's no earnings report that's going to come out and lift that token back up. I'm just waiting for another pool of capital to come in. If it's especially a cartoon coin, psychology can become pretty significant and trends can accelerate.
In the case of Boden, I've been all-in on it for a while. I reduced about 75% of my position on the way down because I was thinking, “This is not a chopping asset. This is people just getting out every single day.”
Now it's rallied about 100% from the lows of a day and a half ago, so my final fills from that VWAP sell are way out of the money. But I still think it was the right thing to do, because as you lose conviction in something, you should act on it. That money is in Solana now; it's not in Boden.
If Boden goes to the moon, I still have a little bit, so I'm not going to kick myself. But for Boden, at least—and you should ask this of yourself for any memecoin—what are the catalysts to bring in entirely new participant bases? That's question number 1. Question number 2 is: How paper-handed or diamond-handed is the current participant base?
With Boden, there are 2 kinds of catalysts. One is that people buy it whenever Joe Biden says something stupid. That hasn't really played out in the past. The other potential catalyst is that a major cultural influencer like Joe Rogan or Donald Trump starts pounding the table on it to harm Joe Biden, because he's an old man and that's an easy dead horse to kick.
Those are the 2 big catalysts. I'm getting less optimistic that Rogan or Trump will start parading this around. But if they do, I still have a little bit of risk on.
Don't you think people will be diamond-handed into the election because of that? There's kind of no reason to sell this thing before the election, and there's another potential 10x.
Definitely another potential 10x into the election, especially from a $150 million market cap after the 100% move. Maybe it's a 5x.
I was at the Mar-a-Lago event, and somebody asked Trump what he thought of Boden. He said, “$240 million for a coin doesn't seem like a great investment.” Boden actually did quite well off of that.
I think it went up, and then people just sold straight into it. Then it went down in a straight line. The reaction was a little bit mid-curve: “Trump doesn't like it.” But the reality is that Trump knows about it now, and that's a good thing.
A lot of these secondary memes are going to find it hard to hold on to their audience in a world of chop.
With all that being said, the world changes if Bitcoin gets above $70K. It's very simple, because then you get animal spirits coming back in. But the world changes if we're below $55K too. Then animal spirits start and people start liquidating.
My answer to the question of where the new buyers of BTC are going to come from is that I'm not 100% sure right now. You have Nasdaq at the highs, you have the S&P at the highs, and BTC is not. What that tells me is that whenever there's a divergence between equities and BTC, I view that as quite bearish for BTC.
Bitcoin doesn't normally catch up in that case. It normally goes down more.
I agree that divergence is super important in crypto. When memes are down-only and Bitcoin is unchanged, or certain memes are down-only, that's a reason to be cautious of those memes and rotate into something a little bit more benchmark.
Like you said, there's dispersion going on and there's chop. This is a time to consolidate the portfolio. It's a time to reduce line items. That's what I'm 100% on board with: reducing complexity in the book right now.
There are going to be things that do very well, and you can trade those. But in aggregate, you just want a more concentrated portfolio.
Things that have a narrative behind them are doing well. All the AI coins are doing extremely well. The NEARs of the world, ARs of the world, and Livepeers of the world are all doing very well.
Whereas something like Blur, Chainlink, Filecoin, Flow, and all of these other coins—MATIC hasn't done anything. It's just because you're not going to get flows to these coins.
I actually think a great way to trade this market is that if you're worried about the downside because we're in a choppy market, you short the things that don't really have a narrative or that have a lot of supply unlocks. You can probably get a good short on SUI, then long AR, carry that trade for a few months, and call it a day.
I do think that general market fears are a little bit overblown. There was nervousness permeating the market about a month ago over high data prints and high inflation, and today that has been flipped on its head, which is why we're trading at the highs.
General worry about the market is probably a bit overblown. That's why I'm not as concerned as I was in the past. When we were at $70K last time, I was saying I could see $52K. I don't really see $52K in this particular environment anymore.
That's also why we were buying LDO on the last podcast. I think those fears are a little bit stale at this point.
The way to see this going higher—and something you can probably watch for—is that if we're trading at $67K or $68K, funding is flat, the general consensus on the timeline is that we're still ranging, and people are trying to short the range high, that's a good indicator that we're probably on our way up.
MVRV Z-score is 2 right now—2.0. FTX lows are below 1, and euphoric highs are above 7, so we're toward the low end of the range for basically the best macro cycle indicator out there.
Stablecoin balances and some of these shorter-term ETF flows aren't looking that great yet—“yet” being the key term. Broadly speaking, the space is still underpriced, and there's still a lot of capital that can flow into Bitcoin in ways that it couldn't before the ETF approval.
I'm not too optimistic about people buying altcoin bags. I am very bullish on the idea that certain memes will perform, including Boden.
Here's a trade idea, Avi. We have the ETH ETF decision on May 23rd. That's when the SEC has to come out and either delay, deny, or do something else. Nobody thinks this thing is getting approved. There's not a single person in the world who thinks that.
I think a negative decision is already priced in. A lot of people are probably short ETH because of that, and there are a lot of people underallocated to ETH because of it.
After that decision, there are 2 things you have to look for. If it's denied, you have to look at why the SEC denied the application.
Why did the SEC deny the Bitcoin spot ETF application for so long? They thought the Bitcoin spot market was manipulated. That was their argument. Why did they have to acquiesce? Because the futures market is highly correlated to the spot market in the Bitcoin world.
It doesn't make sense to have a Bitcoin futures ETF and allow Bitcoin futures, but not allow a spot ETF if the futures market is highly correlated to the spot market.
If they make the same argument for ETH, that means that as the ETH futures market evolves and becomes more correlated to the spot market, that argument will eventually go away. You can't have an ETH futures ETF or an ETH futures product and not allow a spot ETF if the futures product is perfectly correlated to the spot market.
If they only make that argument, it's actually very bullish for Ethereum, because at some point you're going to get an Ethereum ETF.
What would be very bearish for Ethereum is if they come out and say, “We're still litigating this. It might be a security. We think it's a security, and we have to solve that issue.” That would be the biggest reason why we're not allowing the ETF. That would be very bad for ETH.
On May 23rd, if you can get a sense of why they're denying it—if they don't mention anything about ETH being a security, investigations into ETH, or anything like that, and it's just about the market—then I think you can probably get a pretty nice move from ETH. I think people should start buying it, because that means you get an ETH ETF at some point, even if Trump doesn't get elected.
That's really interesting nuance. What if it's just the same argument as Bitcoin? I bet a denial would probably result in a small sell-off, and maybe the ETH discount widens a little bit on that headline. But that's a dip you buy.
I don't even know. If you get the news that they're making the exact same argument they made to deny the BTC ETF, with no new arguments, do you think it would just immediately rally?
I think people would see “denied,” and it would go down a little bit. Then you have an hour or 2.
Exactly. That's my bet. You probably get a small sell-off on that headline, and then you buy as much ETH as you possibly can.
You buy ETHE. You don't buy ETH; you buy ETHE, because I think the discount is 24% or 25%, and that thing is going to close massively.
First it probably sells off as ETH holders say, “Ah, shucks,” and start selling. Then you scoop that dip.
I agree with you. If they go the security route and try to prove that ETH is a security, there are millions of securities ETFs out there. It doesn't mean that you can't have an ETF that references a security. The question is whether there will be regulatory clarity under another 4 years of a Democratic president in the White House, and the answer is probably no.
I think it's less clear if they try to go after the security argument. That's an interesting nuance you point out.
The other thing I'm wondering is what will be baked into that decision that's relevant to adjacent tokens like Solana. Let's say they mention staking and say, “Part of the reason we don't like this is because it's a yield-bearing security.” Do you get a mini sell-off in other staking-related ecosystems?
I think that might be mid-curve, but it's something to be aware of. If you're about to load up on yield-bearing coins or altcoins that rely on staking—if you're interested in buying LDO or EIGEN, or any of this—you might want to wait until after that announcement before you go and lift.
I would agree with that. There could be some good information in that decision about how other assets might be treated in the future.
What if there's absolutely nothing about staking? What if there's absolutely nothing about it being a security? That sort of opens the road for a Solana ETF in the future. That would be very bullish.
That would be great. Maybe Solana trades at $200 and we all get to retire again. These are important things to look out for.
If you're sitting there thinking, “I wish there were a good trade. I wish there were something I could do to make money,” May 23rd is going to be a great day for you to make money. You just have to pay attention.
Sometimes the way you make money isn't by going into a big uncertain event like that with a position and then trading based on whether you were right. It's more that you go in nimble and buy things at good prices when they briefly trade there.
“Buy things at good prices” is a great way to articulate how to make money. If your entry price on a memecoin is $1 and it goes to $100, then you sell it at $50, $20, or $70, you're still happy.
Meanwhile, if you're buying it for $1 when it's a valueless thing and you're exit liquidity for the people who bought it for a penny, suddenly your life is much more stressful. Entry price in crypto really is king.
A buddy of mine, John Wu, has this saying about crypto: You have to be dumb enough to buy the coin and smart enough to sell it. It's so true. The mentality you have to employ to hang on to one of these valueless coins as it goes up 500% is exactly the opposite of the mentality you need to take profit on it.
Realistically, the only solution is to be early to things. That helps you avoid some of the problems of overthinking when to sell these parabolic rallies or nuclear sell-offs. You just have to have a decent entry price.
Maybe the best thing to do is identify a list of tickers going into a catalyst like the ETF event. Instead of being positioned in all of them and managing your bad risk when you're wrong for reasons you didn't expect, just have a relatively clean slate.
Be the silent native warrior crouching on a tree branch with the blow dart. As soon as the bomb goes off and you get some cheap tokens to buy on big sell-offs, that's the way to do it.
I'm 100% with you. Let's just wait. That's what we're doing now. We're waiting and biding our time.
There doesn't seem to be a lot to do, especially on a day like today when everything is up 20% in a market where you see chop. That's almost always going to be a bad time to buy, generally speaking. If you're not in position now for this bounce, chasing it here is almost always the wrong thing to do.
If you're chasing it, it's because everybody else is chasing it. The founder of AQR, Cliff Asness, has this legendary systematic-trader and hedge-fund-manager quote: If I'm right 52% of the time, then I'm consistently winning and everything is great. I'm paraphrasing, but you're doing very well in systematic trading if you're right 52% of the time. You're just placing tons of little bets.
What he says is that this means you're wrong 48% of the time, and that doesn't make 48% of your fund easy to endure. I think we're just going through one of those periods where you have to be a mature trader. You can't chop yourself up. This isn't fun right now. It's not like when we were up-only, when we were up 100%.
What do you make of all the insanity with GME and the rest of the market? Have you been paying attention to this at all?
I've been watching it, but I feel no FOMO. I don't give a shit, because it's not an area where I consider myself to have an edge. I don't have a lot of information about Roaring Kitty or Reddit. I didn't watch the movie, and I don't care.
I'm trying to avoid feeling FOMO. In the absence of benchmark crypto price action, people are looking at that, feeling FOMO, and starting to fiddle around with it. I think that's a bad idea, and I'm trying to avoid the temptation.
I think what it shows is that there's still a tremendous amount of demand from retail investors. They just don't know exactly what to do, and they need to be given direction.
That's probably why memecoins are doing well. There's a lot of money that can pile into things like GME and AMC, but people need a leader. They need somebody to shepherd them into the wilderness and tell them exactly what to buy, how to buy it, and when to buy it.
That's you, Jonah. That could be you.
No way. That's you, man.
It's anomalous, but yeah, Ansem is the leader. What's interesting to me is that I wasn't clear on how much appetite there was for this type of price action. How much money was waiting on the sidelines to buy GME, create a short squeeze, and pile into AMC to send these things up 100% or 150%?
The answer was: Holy crap, a lot.
Maybe one thing we're not taking into account is that despite all of the headlines, people still feel like they have enough money to gamble. That in itself is very good for crypto.
That's a good meta point. That's not the mid-curve take; that's the right-curve take.
It might also be the left-curve take. GME went up last time and was followed by BTC going up. GME is up this time, so maybe BTC will go up too. Simple 1-to-1 correlation with 1 data point.
You mentioned Ansem. He's like the Roaring Kitty of crypto. Having your finger on the pulse of sentiment in your space is important. One thing you and I luckily have is a small platform to gauge that sentiment that some random person with 2 followers wouldn't have.
I have a few thousand followers, so I can put things out there and see what happens. I did this with Solana as well. I would tweet bearish stuff and learn from the experience that the community cares. It wasn't just crickets.
With Boden, I tweeted some bearish stuff, and Ansem came in 10 minutes later and said, “You're smoking crack. It's not going there; it's going up-only.” Then 100,000 people were saying, “Ansem, Ansem. Ansem has spoken.”
Even I get a little star-struck. I'm like one of those War Boys in Mad Max: “Oh my God, he replied to me. He looked at me. I'm going to Valhalla.”
I get it. The community has spoken. There's money to be gambled right now. There's a leader. People are engaged and willing to YOLO into random things.
That degeneracy means the space is still sitting on some gains. We're not totally in December 2022 mode, which in and of itself is bullish. But it isn't going to take us into a new price band. It isn't going to take us to $100K. For that, you need fresh capital and greater fools.
It has definitely been a very fun market. I do think you can probably start to walk away for a bit at this point. There was definitely a lot of money to be made in the last 2 or 3 months. People can probably take a bit of a break right now.
I hope that doesn't come back to bite me, but let's see whether this GME rally leads to anything with Bitcoin.
Inflation has bitten people hard. If it costs $7 for a burger and a cocktail in Manhattan, maybe it's more fun to spend that $70 on GameStop gambling at home than on something that used to cost $10.
I think you're right: Take a break, consolidate line items, figure out your favorite bets, and be ready to add new line items at great prices. Don't buy the highs on something that's rallying 100%.
See if you can go buy some ETH on May 23rd.
Good stuff, Jonah.
Good stuff, Avi. Maybe we wrap it there. As always, this isn't financial advice, but it's great talking to you.
It's good speaking to you too. I always learn a lot.
Till next time.