交易加密货币牛市｜Alex Kruger
现货 Bitcoin ETF 的采用，是 Alex Krüger 即便市场已进入狂热阶段仍保持看多的理由。 机构销售体系目前只启用了约20%，据他听到的估算，年底前可能达到80%。Jonah 补充称，长期持有者正在把币转给反应更迟钝的退休账户买家，而矿工奖励即将减半：“这是多年酝酿而成的一年。”
同一套市场结构也已为剧烈去杠杆做好准备：BTC 接近7.3万美元，ETH 接近4000美元，3个月年化期货基差约25%毛收益，扣除5%的无风险利率后仍有20%–21%。 Avi 提到 Binance 未平仓合约规模为60亿美元，Bybit 为40亿美元；Alex 预计最终至少下跌20%，一旦 ETF 流入放缓，35%的跌幅也完全可能。“市场已经疯狂，但还可以更疯狂。”
Alex 在不使用杠杆的情况下表达牛市观点，并通过部分对冲来应对回调。 他通常对冲组合的20%–30%，关注基差而不是重置更慢的资金费率，并在下跌时重新部署资金；当挂单或回调判断落空时，他接受以更高价格重新入场的成本。“有时我会买在顶部。”
2022年的教训是，活过黑天鹅比预测黑天鹅更重要。 Alex 比 Luna 崩盘后的底部早判断了3周，错过了即将爆发的 3AC 失败，也曾听 Alameda 和 FTX 员工说一切正常——但当 ETH 恐慌性跌破1500美元上方区域时，交易员仍有时间对冲或做空。目标是建立一套能够“像网球运动员应对难接的球一样”反应的系统。
Bitcoin 应继续引领本轮周期，财富会流向山寨币和 memecoin，而不是取代 BTC 的领导地位。 Alex 指出，警告信号可能持续一年，就像2021年那样，因此仅凭红旗信号并不是可靠的离场依据。他的基准情景是采用率继续提升、投机浪潮反复出现：“不管你喜不喜欢，市场就是这么运行的。”
市场进入狂热并不意味着晚到的买家可以不加选择地追涨。 Alex 从底部开始一直满仓吃完整段行情，如今只是把既有风险在不同币种之间重新配置，而不是投入新资金；错过行情的人应等待回调。他预计 memecoin 会降温，而在更广泛的采用率提升和超级周期逻辑下，下一轮 AI 周期将在此后出现。
不存在可靠的终点价格目标，因此 Alex 把周期交易成一只手风琴。 他曾考虑在7.5万美元卖出40%，后来又考虑8.5万美元，并随着每次下杀都被买回而上调目标；Avi 则计划在9万–10万美元之间大幅分批减仓。Alex 的答案是始终给仓位留一些“空气”，不断减仓、再充气，而不是假装知道某个高点究竟只是局部顶部还是全局顶部。
1. 活下来比预测崩盘更重要
Alex 的组合包含100个持仓项目，略多于2021年的约70个——但这并不意味着市场不是熊市；覆盖面不等于持久性。当狂热开始转为威胁时，他会集中到流动性高、可对冲、能够快速管理的资产上。“当市场开始变得狂热、我开始感到担忧时，我就开始收缩持仓。”
他最难忘的错误发生在2022年5月 Luna 崩盘之后。Alex 认为，损害规模通常已经足以标志底部，于是提前3周判断见底，并在 CPI 公布日以“ETH 满仓到极致”的状态入场，结果此前未被识别的 3AC 连锁崩溃，让最初的判断错误代价惨重。
Jonah 的对应教训是，即便广泛搜集信息，也可能仍然失败。Alex 曾与 Alameda 和 FTX 的员工交谈，对方真心相信一切正常；Jonah 同样认为，即使 Alameda 倒闭，也绝不会被允许危及 FTX。至于 3AC，更尖锐的警告是它反常地激进筹资，准备再做一笔 GBTC 交易：所谓的强手，实际表现得非常弱。
Alex 最终留下的教训偏向反应，而非预测。FTX 陷入恐慌时，ETH 仍在1500美元上方区域，市场参与者在全面下跌前仍有充足时间退出、对冲或做空。只要交易系统能够本能地响应，黑天鹅不必提前预测，“就像网球运动员应对难接的球一样”。
2. ETF 需求支撑加速上涨，但杠杆预示着急跌
在 BTC 约7.3万美元、ETH 约4000美元时，Alex 认为市场极度泡沫化：3个月年化期货基差约25%，扣除5%的无风险利率后仍有20%–21%。ETF 资金流正是“维持并推动这种绝对疯狂的投机状态”的力量，他倾向于至少持有风险敞口直到减半。
Avi 的谨慎来自 Binance 60亿美元加 Bybit 40亿美元的未平仓合约——这些短期资金会在动能断裂时离场。他认为市场已经拖得太久，应该回调10%–15%，甚至更多，因此持有现货而非明确使用杠杆。Alex 说得更直接：只需一次小幅推动，市场就可能至少下挫20%；35%的跌幅“完全说得通”。
Alex 只对冲20%–30%，因为行情重新加速时，彻底离场的代价太高。他曾在一次下跌中于5.8万美元附近挂单，错过后手动重新部署资金；另一次则先对冲25%，随后在接近顶部的位置买回。触发器是快速变化的基差，而不是资金费率：“资金费率太慢。”
3. 财富销售机器几乎还没真正启动
Jonah 的供给侧论据始于 Coin Days Destroyed 和 ETF 资金流数据：老持有者正在历史高点附近获利了结，但他们的币正转入 BlackRock ETF 账户，而以退休配置为主的买家可能不会因为再涨1万美元或2万美元就卖出。约110亿美元 ETF 买入伴随 BTC 上涨3万美元；随着这部分供给被消化、矿工奖励减半，下一笔110亿美元资金的影响可能更大。
Alex 澄清，20%这一数字衡量的是分销机器的启用程度，而不是已经配置的资产规模。Wirehouse 和 RIA 需要先完成技术接入、销售材料、业绩记录和风险审批，顾问才能向客户推广 ETF。Merrill Lynch 和 UBS 刚刚表示将开始向客户提供该 ETF，而 ETF 发行机构预计到年底约80%的销售队伍能够完成启用；讨论中提到财富平台资产约30万亿美元。
这支撑了 Alex 关于 BTC 主导“超级周期”的判断：采用需求先进入 Bitcoin，再溢出到山寨币和 memecoin。早在1月，市场已经出现警告信号，但如果据此离场，就会错过后续上涨；2021年同样在大部分时间里都带有警示迹象，最后才迎来人们记忆中的高潮。Jonah 指出，历史上突破历史高点后，投机往往会变得更加疯狂，而不是在接近历史高点时。
Jonah 提出的市场结构难题是：买入 ETF、同时做空 CME 期货，约20%的收益为何还没有被套利抹平。Alex 坦承：“我没有答案。”但基金需要资本、法律结构和审批。此前很少有人为基差不会崩溃做准备；如今这笔交易持续存在，机构最终应会建立足够的能力，把它大规模做起来。
4. Memecoin 把错过上涨转化为全市场狂欢
Jonah 讲述了自己如何用 ETH 和部分 Stellar 为 Phantom 充值，清理这些持仓后，在 Jeo Boden 市值约1500万美元时买入；此前 Trump 代币市值一度达到约4亿美元。他把 Jeo Boden 视为政治阵营对应的 memecoin，并表示自己正在有意变得极度投机。
Avi 说，自己买入 Jeo Boden 后收到空投，获得了15,000枚 Jensen Huang 代币；一周后，他发现这笔持仓已经上涨100倍。他还提到一笔1000美元的 Zin 仓位已经暴涨，以及有人向他发送 Monkey Getting a Haircut 等 Solana 代币。他称这是自己见过最疯狂的市场。
Jonah 说，这与过去几个周期不同：当时投机会按生态集中，Avalanche 基金会推高 Avalanche 代币，注意力随后转向 Solana 或其他链。如今更像一场无差别混战，只要名字有趣，一枚币就可能上涨。他把这段黄金时代称为 memecoin 的“寒武纪大爆发”，同时警告，所有这些代币最终都可能归零。
Alex 预计 memecoin 会降温，随后另一轮 AI 周期将出现。他更愿意接受超级周期的判断，即市场还会继续走高，因为 Bitcoin 终于具备了被大规模采用的条件，积压需求庞大，财富会流向山寨币和 memecoin。“不管你喜不喜欢，市场就是这么运行的”，尤其是在发行山寨币如此容易的情况下。
5. 仓位管理像手风琴，而不是猜顶部
Alex 严格区分管理已有盈利仓位和追涨：“我不是在买新的垃圾币——我是在把一堆垃圾币的资金重新部署到另一堆垃圾币上。”他从底部起一直满仓，因此能够在市场狂热阶段进行轮动；没有仓位、现在才入场的人应耐心等待回调，否则可能被“狠狠干掉”。
他的价位判断会不断修正。Alex 曾计划在7.5万美元卖出40%，随后因为每次下杀都立即被买回而重新考虑，并把目标改到8.5万美元。Avi 用价位来约束纪律，预计9万–10万美元之间会出现大规模卖出，但也承认不断上调目标本身就是“危险区”。
Jonah 更偏好 BTC 价格之外的外部信号：例如 MVRV Z-Score 等链上指标，或 Matt Damon“Fortune Favors the Brave”广告重新出现这类定性过热信号。这与他交易原油的流程相似，炼厂利润率或 OPEC 行为决定离场时点。Alex 的反驳是，原油在区间内波动，而加密货币的指数级右尾行情可能让基于基本面的离场者错过400%的上涨。
Alex 的解决方案是一只始终留有空气的手风琴：定期小幅卖出或对冲，然后在回调时重新充气。这样可以保留心理空间，在不判断全球顶部的情况下决定是买入、去杠杆还是退出。真正重大的制度变化——例如美联储剧烈转向、俄乌式重大战争，或 FTX 式失败——才足以让他放弃区分局部顶部与全球顶部，直接离场。
6. FOMO 正轮向主流币，而 ETH 仍在等待催化剂
据称交易所成交量仅为2021年水平的约25%，说明大量散户尚未回归。Avi 预计这些买家会优先选择 WIF、BONK 或 DOGE，而错过 Bitcoin 和 memecoin 两轮行情的加密原生用户，可能转向熟悉的滞涨资产。Avi 看好 MATIC 的这一结构；Alex 则希望等 NEAR 回调后再买入，因为其 AI 链叙事已经推动价格完成一轮上涨。
SOL 是 Alex 的催化剂交易逻辑：据他理解，FTX 锁定的 SOL 出售约3周前开始，目前已完成约50%——“我可能错了”——一旦这部分抛压消失，SOL 可能直接冲向前高。Avi 承认自己虽然喜欢 SOL 的用户体验，却没有建立足够仓位；他同时表示，若按传统 P/E 估值，SOL 的倍数会达到“数千倍”。
ETH 仍是最明显的落后者。Alex 不认为 ETH ETF 会在明年之前出现，但相信一旦 ETF 存在，ETH 可能“大幅跑赢”；他不知道市场何时会提前交易这一预期。市场隐含概率已从年初约60%或略高，降至约40%，甚至可能只有30%；但他不信任 Polymarket 上规模很小的定价，认为期权或许能给出更可信的隐含概率。对此分析，他自己尚未完成。
We're in the adoption phase, and we finally enabled Bitcoin to be adopted. It's just getting started. This is a year many years in the making, with so much pent-up demand, which also means so much of that wealth spills over into altcoins and memecoins. So, like it or not, this is the way of the market. This is euphoria levels.
This episode is brought to you by Perennial Finance, the on-chain DeFi primitive redesigning derivatives for the DeFi-native. You'll hear more about Perennial later in the show.
All right guys, welcome to another episode of THX. Today we have a special guest that a lot of you probably already know, but we're super excited to chat with because he's always got spicy, interesting takes. For those of you who aren't watching us on YouTube and are just listening, Alex Kruger is literally joining us from inside the Matrix.
You've got one hell of a setup back there. That's a lot of screens.
To be honest, I have 10 screens. The whole thing is plastered, and I'm feeling that I need more screens because, to trade something, or if I have something on my book that isn't dust, I need to see the chart. I'm just that kind of person. I need to see the chart all the time, and there isn't much room anymore.
How many things do you have in your book at any moment that you're trading and need that many charts for?
I have 100 right now.
A lot. You had 70 line items during the bear market, and now you have 100?
No, in 2021—not the bear market. The bear market had almost entirely played out.
How do you think about expanding risk in bull markets and consolidating it, cleaning things up, or getting out in bear markets? Just give us the broad framework, and then we can drill into this particular moment.
When things start getting frenzied and I start getting concerned, I start consolidating. It's simple: I start consolidating into things that are liquid and hedgeable, that I can manage more quickly without having to scramble around. I don't think the time is here yet.
In the 2022 bear market, were you trading other macro assets as well? Were you hedging crypto long with oil long? Did you think cross-asset, or was it all crypto?
I haven't traded oil since 2020. It's been mostly crypto since then. It was mostly Bitcoin and ETH, basically trading, trading, trading. That was more short-term trading in 2021 and 2022.
To be honest, I called the bottom a little bit too early, basically at the end of May. I was off by 3 weeks. That was a very memorable trading experience because I did manage to turn around and trade the dump, but it was very hectic and difficult, and at the beginning it cost me a lot of money.
I remember going into the big dump that started on a Friday, on CPI Friday, long to the tits on ETH. I spent the rest of the year trying to get the bottom and, when failing, getting out. I was literally saying, “This is it. This is it. We're here.” Eventually it worked and paid off, but it was very, very difficult.
What were your metrics for determining that? Why did you think that was the bottom? We're talking, I assume, about May 2022, post-Luna crash?
Exactly, post-Luna crash. People died. Usually, when people die at such a large magnitude, that's the bottom. It's almost always the way it happens.
What we didn't know, or what I didn't know, was that 3AC was about to blow up. Some people predicted it, and I think it was a big mistake on my side not to be well informed, because you could have known that it was likely to happen. It was the same thing when people were talking about Alameda and FTX. People were talking about it.
I remember those rumors, but thinking back to then, it was so hard to verify them. You'd have some people saying, “There are rumors that they're bust,” but there was no way that could happen. There was no way.
It was like being in the fog of war at the time. It was very hard to see, understand, and get the information you wanted. What were you doing at that time to try to assess the market when you were in that type of situation?
What I was doing was talking to people. What I always do is talk to as many people as possible.
The Alameda and FTX insiders I talked to—insiders in the good sense, people who worked for them—didn't know. They didn't think it was going to happen. They thought everything was fine. Clearly, my sources were not right. I failed to get to the right sources, which would have been worth quite a few millions if I had gotten that right.
But we know how it went. What about you guys?
For me, it was very similar. You try to talk to people, but nobody will ever give you information straight up unless they really, really like you and you have a very good relationship with them.
When I talk to as many people as possible, I try to cross-reference as many stories as possible. Are the people I think are going to say the same thing saying similar things, or are they saying different things? Normally, in crypto, where there's smoke, there's fire. If there are too many occurrences where the stories don't match up, or people are saying slightly different things, or there seems to be some nervousness in the air, then you start to step away.
I remember that I did not, in any way, shape, or form, predict or get the FTX blowup. My thought process at the time was, “Even if Alameda blows up, there's no way that Sam would have put FTX at risk. It just wouldn't have happened.” I was completely caught blind-sided by that.
The 3AC issue was different. The moment they started going around trying to raise money for the GBTC trade again, that was a huge red flag. Why are you doing this? Who are you raising it from? What the hell is going on? Do you just need capital? Why are you being so pushy? That was a weird one for sure.
Alex, after the Luna crash, I thought I navigated it quite well. I sold Luna near the highs. It looked Ponzi-like, so I got out and reduced risk. I didn't really get hurt on that dump, or only got hurt a little bit.
I thought, “Okay, there's so much blood on the street now. It's over. It's time to buy.” Like you, I had to get out of the way of yet another freight train in order to stay alive. That sell-off was crazy.
Normally, in these things, when the dominoes start to fall, they fall pretty quickly, one after another. In this case, Luna blew up, then 3AC, and everything puked. Funding went insane. Then everything calmed down—we flatlined—and bizarrely, out of nowhere, 3AC blew up. After that, there was another month or two of nothingness and calm, when you could have said, “All right, this is it. This is the bottom.” Then FTX immolated itself. That was tough.
So, if I could paraphrase what you're saying, your process is to consolidate risk from many line items into a few or zero when things get shaky and volatile. That's when you start picking up the phone. That's probably good for our listeners to know.
When things get bad, I just get the fuck out. I started scribbling about this on the podcast a little bit: it's just a toxic risk framework. When you look at your book and think, “I'm not going to try to wait for 10% higher levels. I'm just going to get out of this bad risk,” it's toxic right now.
A good example is FTX. We didn't need to predict it. Predicting it would have been worth a lot of money, but once it started, we had so much time to react. It started getting panicky with ETH at $1,500. That's when it started—actually, I think it started with ETH in the upper $1,500s—but it got bad with panic at $1,500 and just kept going down.
There was so much time to react, short, or hedge. That's the thing with black swans: we don't need to actually predict them. As traders, our system has to be wired in a way that we're instinctive and can react very, very fast in a good way, just like a tennis player reacts to a tough ball in a certain place.
That objective comes with a lot of time and practice. It's hard to predict what will happen a month, 2 months, or 3 months in advance. But once you see the direction something is heading, understanding that switch in the market is important.
Speaking of switches in the markets, we've got Bitcoin at $73,000, ETH at $4,000, and memecoins ripping all over the place. You have 100 positions in your book, and I probably have more positions than I've had in a year.
How are you thinking about this in terms of froth? Because, honestly, it seems like we're getting to the point where I probably want to start thinking about taking off risk.
We are at the same levels, I think. There's a caveat that makes it a little bit less insane. If we're looking at funding rates, the 3-month annualized futures basis is at 25%. That's flashing red levels, but risk-free rates are at 5%, so it's actually 20%, or 21%. It's not as frothy as we might think, but it's still really crazy.
Memes are going insane. The thing is, the ETF flows are so large, and in my opinion they're just beginning. That sustains and enables this level of absolute, insane degeneracy.
If you're concerned, this is actually a good place to hedge your spot holdings using futures or perps. Unhedge once it flashes, but hedge only a small percentage—not the entire book. That being said, I think it makes a lot of sense to keep running into the halving, at least.
Things are crazy, but things can get crazier. We make the most money in the part where it gets really, really crazy. If we're just getting out to protect profits, that works, but you leave most of the money on the table.
What do you guys think?
I normally run a very clean crypto book. I don't like to have a lot of line items. Like you, I like to keep it super concentrated and tidy. I have started diversifying, though.
Just talking about Bitcoin for a second, I am so bullish I can't see straight. I think these ETF flows have just begun. If you look at metrics on Glassnode, like Coin Days Destroyed, or the Farside Investors ETF dashboard, what you're seeing right now is long-term holders taking some profit at all-time highs and effectively passing their tokens to the BlackRock ETF.
Those are new long-term holders—people in their retirement accounts who aren't going to turn around and sell if we rally another $10,000 or $20,000 in Bitcoin. Ultimately, I think that once you work your way through that holder selling on the offer—which, from the Coin Days Destroyed metric I described, is already happening—the only seller left is miners, and their block rewards are about to get cut in half next month.
We've had $11 billion worth of ETF buying so far. We rallied $30,000 per token on that inflow. The next $11 billion worth of ETF buying could send us up much more than $30,000 per token.
Specifically to your point about how, when markets get crazy and parabolic, you make most of your money toward the end of that quadratic-looking move, I've decided that while the music is playing—before it stops—and while these ETF inflows continue, I'm going to be a degenerate.
I lit up my Phantom wallet, which I hadn't touched in a while, and funded it with some random things. I had some ETH flying around from Friend.tech and some Stellar. I cleaned all that shit up and put it into Jeo Boden a couple of days ago because I thought that was the political counterpoint meme to the Trump token, which had gone up to a market cap of whatever, $400 million. Jeo Boden was trading at a $15 million market cap, and I thought, “All right, I'm just going to go as big as I can on this little shitcoin.”
I'm just playing around with those things. This is the first time I've actively traded crypto in over a year. I'm getting degenerate, which is a sign of how ripe the opportunity set is. I'm a terrible crypto trader compared to you guys, and even I see opportunity at this point.
I tend to agree with you, but the 2 simple numbers are that there's $6 billion of open interest on Binance and $4 billion of open interest on Bybit. That's short-term capital, and it will leave at some point.
Once we stop seeing momentum, you'll get some level of closing, and you'll get this to reverse. While I do agree with you that I'm very bullish, I think we're overdue for a 10% to 15% pullback at this point—maybe more. You get these pretty frequently in bull markets.
I think it's important not to get too overlevered. At this point, I'm just playing in spot bags. I wouldn't have any leverage on my book other than what I think of as synthetic leverage through coins, because I am nervous. We have a tremendous amount of buildup.
That being said, I'm conflicted because normally, when you break through all-time highs, it's a rip fest. After the halving, though, it normally takes 1 to 2 months.
How do you trade peak bull markets, where everything is hitting the fan and we're getting crazy volatility, with 30% pullbacks followed by 100% rallies?
I have no leverage at the moment. Leverage is gone. It's too expensive to keep leverage on the book, and I'm very worried that a little push could drive a very large crash.
I'm surprised we didn't push further yesterday. We had Bitcoin down 13.3% intraday and ETH down 18%, exactly as it was 8 days ago. It was insane.
I fully agree that we're going to see a major pullback at some point. The thing is, it's impossible to predict when it's going to happen. At some point, inflows are going to slow down. They may reverse a little bit, and with this buildup we could get a very large flush—at least 20%. I think 35% makes sense because things are really insane.
My way of playing that is like you guys: I'm not levered right now, so I'm just going to sit there and take it and hopefully buy a little bit more on a crash. I'm not going to sell and try to rebuy and dance between the raindrops.
How are you going to play it?
I've done it on 2 occasions in the last month. I hedge a percentage of my book—basically 20% to 30%, not more—because if I'm wrong, it's too costly to get completely out. Then I rebuy on the dip.
It happened twice in the last month. One was right before the 18% flash crash 8 days ago. I was waiting specifically to reload at $58,000, or the equivalent on other coins, and it didn't hit my bids. I manually redeployed everything. I actually levered up and then got the leverage out over the next couple of days.
What's your signal to rebuy? Is it just when funding collapses back to something flat?
I'm looking at quite a few funding metrics. Funding is too slow. I'm not looking at funding because it resets every hour or every 8 hours. I'm looking at basis, which reacts faster.
I'm looking at the CME basis. That's the main one because there's more liquidity there. I'm also looking at spot, but the main one is basis.
Another example was Monday night, when I took off 25%. I hedged 25% and reloaded at the top because it didn't get to where I wanted. I was expecting continuation, but it didn't happen. I reloaded at the top. Sometimes I buy the top. I bought the top of Solana as well.
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What's your view on the cycle now? We've had Bitcoin lead everything for a while, but on a day like today, when Bitcoin is up 2%, we're seeing Solana up 6%, and MATIC is finally doing something. Do you have a view on whether this stops being a Bitcoin-led rally at some point in the future?
No, I don't think that's going to happen. I think it's going to continue being Bitcoin-led and spill over into the other shit.
I also think that if we're looking for red flags, we would have already been out of the market by the end of January or early February, because the red flags started long ago. If you want an analogy, look at 2021. The red flags also started in January, so we had a full year of red flags.
All people remember is Matt Damon saying, “Fortune favors the brave,” and that crap at the end of the cycle. They remember the insane Dogecoin run in May 2021, but that wasn't the first one. There was a Dogecoin run before that.
It's tough going in and out based on metrics and flags. I think it's better to spread it out.
One thing I wanted to talk about, because it's very related, is the ETF side and why we're early. The reason we're early is that the institutional sales machine is not yet fully deployed. According to some estimates, it's deployed only up to 20%, and they're looking to ramp it up big time into year-end.
What does that mean? Let's think about how the plumbing works on the ETF side. You have ETF buyers, basically retail and discount platforms; you have institutional guys; and you have wealth advisors.
The wealth advisors are divided into 2 or 3 tranches, depending on how you look at it. You have what are called the wirehouses—Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and those guys—and then you have the RIAs, which are split into independent and non-independent firms. The non-independent ones include Edward Jones and Wells Fargo Advisors.
These firms are very slow to start promoting an ETF to their clients. They need to see a track record. They need time. The product needs to get approved.
We've seen headlines in the last 2 weeks that Merrill Lynch and UBS will start offering the ETF to their clients. This is just starting. We're very far from having the entire institutional sales machine in place and pushing ETFs to the people who actually want them.
They're not shoving it down people's throats. People actually want it. People are calling Merrill and saying, “Do you have the Bitcoin ETF? I want Bitcoin. What do you think about Bitcoin? Is it a good investment?” That's the kind of thing that's happening.
You said there are $30 trillion of client assets under management across all the different wealth-manager verticals you mentioned—the wirehouses, the semi-independent shops, and the smaller boutique places. Do you think we're 20% of the way through that?
No, that's not on an assets-under-management basis. It's on the machinery. What percentage of the sales force that pushes ETFs is already enabled? Who has the technology and materials, and approval from risk, to actually push it?
It's not my estimate. It's an estimate I recently heard, and I had it from a couple of sources. We're 20% there, and the ETF guys think we'll be at 80% by year-end.
If that's true—and I believe it to be true—that means when we get the leverage flush that's going to happen at some point, perhaps a 20% to 35% decline, you go balls in. Hopefully, if you're a trader, you manage to hedge some of it so you can deploy additional risk.
The risk for those of us who are already in the market is that it happens too fast and we can't hedge. If you're really bullish beyond the immediate term, you could wake up to a Bitcoin candle that's down 15%. You're not going to say, “Let me sell now and rebuy 10% lower.”
As markets melt up, like the Nasdaq in 1999 or Bitcoin in 2024, things get very volatile. It becomes both easier and harder to spot trading opportunities.
How are you positioning in the memecoins right now? I think that's the summer we're going to have. It's going to be a meme summer. There's going to be a hat on the Sphere in Las Vegas. Maybe that's a red flag for you, or maybe it's a bullish signal. I'm curious to hear what you think about that.
I have a large Dogecoin position, which I wish were WIF, to be honest, but it's Dogecoin. I also have a few shitcoins. I'm on Puff [?], MEW, and Jensen Huang. I just tweeted about replying to one of your tweets. I'm thinking of Jensen as a Boden play, right?
You mean Jensen Huang?
Yes, Jensen Huang.
This happened to me. I bought a slug of Jeo Boden a day after it came out, and as a result of me buying it, the creator of the Jensen Huang coin airdropped some Jensen Huang to me. He gave me 15,000 units. It was worth maybe $0.10 or $0.15 per coin.
I thought, “Wow, this is funny. It's Jensen Huang's face on that giant well-hung COVID meme.” I forgot about it, and I checked my Phantom wallet a couple of days ago. It was worth $15, so it literally went up 100x in a week.
This is just happening left and right. This is the craziest market I've ever seen. It's wild.
The Zin position that I bought 2 months ago on the recommendation of a friend—I put in $1,000, checked my wallet, and it had just ripped. Now people are sending me things like Monkey Getting a Haircut on Solana.
Honestly, it's kind of funny. This is called the 1000x podcast, and Bitcoin isn't going to do 1000x. Some of these things are going to do 1000x, so we're in that kind of market.
I just put Monkey Getting a Haircut in the chat. Do you guys want to take a look at it? It has potential.
We're all dumbing ourselves down, but that's where the money is. It's also reacting to the coin. It just reacted since we started recording, and it's not live. Otherwise, I would think the listeners were pumping it.
Not financial advice. All this shit is probably going to zero. But I honestly can't remember a time when memecoins have done this across the board.
Normally, you have specific concentrations. The memecoins pop off for each ecosystem, then the DEXs pop off for each ecosystem. For example, when Avalanche said it was going to raise an ecosystem fund, its coins would pop off, and then it would be the Solana coins or the Avalanche coins.
Now it's more of a free-for-all. You just launch a coin with a funny name, and it goes up. The concept of Jeo Boden wasn't really there in 2020 or 2021 as much as it is today.
In the grand scheme of the golden era of memecoins, we're going to look back on this time as the Cambrian explosion. Historically, things tend to get crazier after the all-time-high break, not into the all-time-high break. In theory, we have a lot more to go.
Will this cycle be a meme summer, or will we be over memecoins soon and move on to something like a narrative summer—AI coins, for example?
I think we already had an AI summer, winter, whatever you want to call it. I think we're going to have another one. Memecoins will cool down, and then we'll have another AI cycle.
I'm more in on the supercycle idea—that this just keeps going. We're in the adoption phase, and we finally enabled Bitcoin to be adopted. It's just getting started. This is a year many years in the making, with so much pent-up demand.
That also means so much of that wealth spills over into altcoins and memecoins. Like it or not, this is the way of the market. Launching altcoins is so easy.
Do you consider alternative Layer 1s like NEAR, Solana, or ETH to be the next things that perform best from a risk-reward perspective?
For me, it's not NEAR. I missed NEAR. NEAR has already run. It kind of relabeled itself as the AI chain, so it has already run. I want to buy a pullback, not here.
I'm not buying new shit. I'm redeploying from some shit to other shit. The market is too hot to be putting new money in. I got here all the way from the bottom to the top, fully long. If you didn't, if that's not you, you don't put money here. I think here you wait for that pullback and eat it up. Be patient, otherwise you're going to get fucked.
It's a matter of having a framework. This is euphoria levels.
I would agree with that pretty wholeheartedly. The interesting thing, though, is that for a lot of coins, we're not at euphoria levels yet. It's sort of just Bitcoin.
I think there's a reasonable scenario where Bitcoin can sail up to $65,000 and Dogecoin can double in that time as people rotate. The risk-reward for Bitcoin is tough, but the risk-reward for everything else is okay. Dogecoin is up less than ETH since October, which is pretty nuts. I wouldn't have expected that.
It makes sense when retail comes back. I just read that volume on crypto exchanges is 25% of 2021 levels.
There's a lot of leverage coming in. A lot of people in crypto are levered to the tits, but there are still so many people who haven't come back. When they come back, they're not going to buy Bitcoin. They're going to buy WIF, BONK, and Dogecoin on Coinbase.
Alex, is there a price level where you look at it and say, “After this, I'm out. I'm selling half”?
I was thinking of selling 40% at $75,000. We got pretty close, but the price action made me change my mind because every time we flash, we just buy back up. That tells me that we continue.
Right now, I'm thinking possibly $85,000.
I don't operate with levels like that. Generally, I do, for the simple reason that it helps enforce discipline, but I always have the right to change my mind.
What I try to do is check my bias from when I set the level. If I've revised it upward 2 or 3 times, that's generally a danger zone. Right now, basically anywhere from $90,000 to $100,000, I'm scaling out substantial amounts. Other than that, I'm just going to ride it for the fucking ride.
In crude oil, when I'm super bullish or super bearish, I usually don't set price levels to get in or out. I set levels associated with fundamental data that drives crude oil. I'll say, “I'm going to exit my crude oil long when refinery margins drop below a certain level,” or, “I'm going to buy as much oil as I can when I see X, Y, or Z happening at OPEC.”
I'm attempting to monitor that in crypto. This is my first crazy bull swing in crypto, and I'm trying to apply the commodities framework. I'm not going to look at Bitcoin's price as a signal for when to get out. I'm going to look at metrics, on-chain metrics like the MVRV Z-Score, or perhaps something more qualitative, like the Matt Damon “Fortune Favors the Brave” commercial. When that shit starts coming back, maybe it's time to get out.
I'm not going to try to set price levels because that feels arbitrary.
Two things. First, crude oil doesn't have that right tail because it doesn't move enough for returns to become truly exponential. It makes more sense to use fundamentals.
Second, under normal circumstances, crude oil just ranges. It's a wide range, but it's been ranging for 15 or 20 years. If we leave aside the 2014 dump and 2020, it's a ranging asset. Getting out when fundamental metrics tell you to get out is okay because you're not going to miss a 400% move.
Another way to tackle the uncertainty around where to get out is to use funding rates and feel the market. Regularly, you take a little bit off the table, either by selling or hedging. When that correction comes, you're psychologically in a very good place to manage risk and decide whether to sell more, buy back, or buy back and put leverage on.
That takes away the need to pick the top. We don't know if it's going to be a local top or a global top. We have no fucking idea.
There can be exceptions when extraordinary things happen, such as the Fed dramatically changing its view on the market or a major war, like Russia and Ukraine. Those things are extreme, and you say, “Fuck it, I'm out of this.” With FTX, when you start hearing about it, you don't care whether it's a local top or a global top. You're out.
Given that uncertainty, the way I think about it is like playing an accordion. The accordion always has air inside. You're just inflating and deflating, inflating and deflating. In a bull market, you always keep a certain amount of air in there. You take it out, put it back in, and keep playing.
So you're trading around your positions?
Yes, very constantly.
That requires a lot of energy and focus, which we know you have.
From a market-structure perspective, why are basis and funding so extreme right now? You would think that, now that the ETF exists, any pool of capital in the world would view 20% annualized as an amazing return. If you're a fund manager, why wouldn't you buy the BlackRock ETF, sell the CME future in infinite size, and collect that basis?
Why does that opportunity exist now that there are no barriers to entry and the ETFs have unbottlenecked access to the long Bitcoin leg of the basis trade?
We have to be getting levered, except none of us are running leverage. It must not be us, but people like us—people in our circles, the crypto natives, people who've been around for a long time.
Most of them missed the bottom. They missed the beginning and the middle, and they're getting in now. There's a lot of people getting in with size, levered up, starting in the $50,000s, out of FOMO.
As to why, I don't have the definitive answer. I think it's a matter of the time it takes to put those trades on in infinite size. You need to raise funds, set up the legal structure, get the approvals, and eventually start putting it on.
If everybody thought the basis was going to compress to zero, what would you do? You wouldn't set up a legal structure or prepare to put the trade on because you don't expect the trade to be available. Now that the trade is available, there are people working behind the scenes to put it on in infinite size. It's going to happen eventually.
That makes sense. I agree with your point. A lot of people missed this run-up, and a lot of people weren't allocated as fully as they should have been.
That stems from the fear during the bear market. In 2021, people would be 100% to 150% exposed and feel normal. After the bear market, I think a lot of crypto natives, given the wealth they had, wanted to preserve it. They were 30% to 50% allocated to the market, maybe 60%, and only recently has that shift in their mindset happened again: “I need to be 150% exposed. I need to go back in.”
That is why I get a little worried.
And why is all this meme activity happening? It's not only because it's easy now—Solana makes it so easy. At the same time, you missed most of the move but still have significant wealth sitting in crypto. Sadly, you feel rich and have FOMO at the same time. You're thinking, “Fuck, I missed both of them. What the fuck do I do?” So you long Avalanche.
I think we're seeing that now. This is when the majors catch up. When people really have that FOMO, they think, “Why didn't I buy that?” Then they start rotating into the things they know they missed.
They missed the memes, they missed Bitcoin, and now it's time for the majors. That's why MATIC actually looks pretty nice from a trade and structure perspective. It's barely up off the bottom, and everybody is going to pile in. Then they'll start rotating to the next thing.
Solana is also interesting. As soon as the FTX locked-SOL deal gets closer to being done, SOL could fly all the way up to its all-time highs in a straight line.
When do you think that selling is finished?
My understanding is that it started about 3 weeks ago and that they're 50% done. I may be wrong, but that's my understanding.
So a few more weeks?
If you take away the selling pressure on Solana right now, there's some explosive upside potential there. That's something I've been underpositioned in for this entire rally, and it's where I feel FOMO. I feel stupid, especially now that I'm using it and realizing how good the experience is.
What I still can't wrap my head around is how zero or near-zero gas fees translate economically into market cap and value. I think I'm mid-curve on that mental pathway because, if we're valuing Solana on a P/E basis, it's insanely overvalued. I stopped checking, but it must be trading at a P/E in the thousands right now.
Meanwhile, Jeo Boden has solid fundamentals and a solid P/E.
I'm joking.
Do you think there's been one notable underperformer during this entire rally? It's Ethereum—the Ethereum ecosystem, the high gas fees, the absence of memecoin activity there, and the NFTs happening inside Ethereum.
Do you think an ETH ETF will be a big catapult event for that ecosystem and its token price, or do you think it's going to lag throughout this rally?
I don't expect that ETF until next year.
When that happens, do you think the market will front-run it?
I don't know when that will happen. Once it does, though, ETH should outperform massively.
The market has changed its odds from roughly 60%—or a little higher—of an ETF by the end of the year at the beginning of the year, to more like 40% right now, maybe even 30%. It's tough to look at those metrics because the implied odds come from Polymarket, which is a tiny market.
Determining the odds of a massive, multibillion-dollar market based on the odds of a tiny market is questionable. It may be better to use options to determine the true implied odds of the ETF. I haven't done that, but if somebody is doing it, I would love to see the analysis.