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1000x · · 54 分钟

美国战略储备对加密资产意味着什么?

Avi FelmanJonah Van Bourg

YouTube
TL;DR
  • 周五白宫加密资产峰会的门槛已经明确:除非美国宣布向 Bitcoin 配置数百亿美元,否则 Avi 不认为加密资产会继续上涨——Jonah 也认同:“如果加密战略储备最后只有5亿美元,我们很快就会回到8万美元区间。” 在没有这条消息的基准情形下,Bitcoin 至少一个月内会在8.5万-9.5万美元之间来回震荡。
  • 两位主持人都认为这份储备的构成是一场 fiasco。 Jonah 为其辩护的方式是“头部币种,剔除中国币 BNB”,但 Avi 的回应更直接:政府应该买有用的资产,而 Jonah 的前五大逻辑等于承认“它们全是垃圾、全是骗局……没有任何差异化”。Jonah 称 Cardano 是“所有会让我们两个人都想离开加密行业的东西”。两人都赞同 Brian Armstrong 只纳入 Bitcoin 的观点;现在的宣传口径看起来像“某个 C- 级别的裙带关系富二代在操盘”。
  • Avi 说,不要做空 Trump。 Jonah 提到 Trump 1.0 的创伤记忆:Trump 曾因威胁 OPEC 减产,在一天内把油价推高30%-40%;而且“Trump 发推会把市场推向它最终要去的方向……记住我的话,他会把这件事做砸”。Avi 仍认为年底前涨到15万美元很容易,甚至可能到20万美元——不过如果只看短线交易,他会在这里卖出,等回落到约8.7万美元再买回。
  • ETH 已经没救了:2,430 美元“令人作呕”,ETH/BTC 是“随机数生成器”,ETH Foundation 和2021年入场的那批人持续卖出,Jonah “一段时间内……如果还有下一次的话”都不会回来。 Jonah 的替代交易是做多 AI 山寨币(Arc、Virtuals、ai16z、aixbt)和 SOL,同时做空 BTC;在这轮崩跌中,相对 Bitcoin 的涨幅达到8%-20%。
  • 7.8万美元的瀑布式下跌是建设性的:它清洗了那些“仍然想持有 Bitcoin”的弱手,而这轮反弹看起来由现货资金驱动,未平仓合约“完全没有增加”——“不只是一群猴子在加杠杆买入”,这是更健康的反转信号之一。
  • 抢跑已经清晰可见——“很可能是 Cobie Letter”的账号指出,在 Trump 公布消息前不久,有人以50倍杠杆建立了2亿美元的 BTC/ETH 多头;Jonah 认为这很可信,因为“大宗商品市场一直这样”,OPEC 提前放风时也一样:“不违法……但仍然是可疑行为。” 这正是周五不应公布具体储备规模的原因;如果措辞变成“推动这份储备法案通过国会”,Jonah 的解读就是“你多少得卖掉一些”。
  • 华盛顿的政治潮向正在转向跨党派支持加密资产:至少两名民主党政治系统的联系人找过 Avi,希望他写一篇解释民主党如何搞砸加密行业的评论文章;而选举算术——“至少5000万名美国加密资产套牢者”对比高尔夫球场上可能只有几名退休人士——意味着在华盛顿采取反加密立场并不理性。
摘要 · 为研究而整理的核心内容

1. 一轮直线下跌20%至7.8万美元,重新洗牌

  • 盘面先是连续4天下跌,第5天再重挫10%,随后从低点反弹18%-19%至9.3万美元——仍低于大选后的交易区间,简直“就是 Madness”。Avi 一直反复强调,Bitcoin 在高位不会横盘,最终必然伴随一轮抛售;真正让他意外的是下跌形态:不是震荡走弱,而是直线下跌20%。
  • Avi 在8万-8.5万美元区间转为看多,并称最终跌到7.8万美元“对 Bitcoin 非常有利”:大量资金等着在8万美元以下买入,但反转速度太快,只有被动挂单成交;那些恐慌卖家“仍然想持有 Bitcoin,只是不想拿到6万美元区间”。从技术面看,“我们已经为后续行情搭好了很好的架子”。
  • Jonah 全程没有调整仓位——“这些都不在我的 bingo card 里”——此前已经满仓,如今手里有了现金,但他不喜欢接飞刀:储备消息“可能会先被卖出一段时间,然后筑底,接着我认为我们会继续上涨”。

2. 周五的门槛:给 Bitcoin 数百亿美元,否则回到8万美元区间

  • 对 Avi 来说,3月7日峰会的底线是:“除非周五宣布美国向 Bitcoin 配置数百亿美元,否则我不认为我们会继续上涨。”Jonah 也认同,而且给出了下行空间:“如果加密战略储备最后只有5亿美元,我们很快就会回到8万美元区间。”
  • 但公布规模本身会适得其反——“他们只会把自己的成交价格推得更差”,因为所有大型资金池都会抢先布局,最终让纳税人多付数亿美元。因此 Jonah 预计周五不会公布真正的数字,价格会“泄漏回当前水平下方”,而这次行情“可能只是一个反弹,适合卖掉一些特别差的山寨币”。
  • 真正值得观察的是:自周日 Truth Social 帖子以来,他们重新考虑了多少。若方案是“主要配置 Bitcoin,再加几个美国制造的前十名代币”,可以接受,但不足以带来大涨;如果 David Sacks 说“我们非常期待开始推进这份储备法案,并推动它通过国会……那你多少得卖掉一些”——这是 Jonah 的判断——卖掉手里相当一部分仓位。

3. 把 Cardano 纳入储备:最强辩护与“无用的空气币”

  • Jonah 对这份名单的最强辩护是:沿着 CoinGecko 的非稳定币市值排名往下看——BTC、ETH、XRP(“不管是不是空气币,市值接近3000亿美元”)、SOL,以及市值500亿美元的 ADA;跳过 BNB,因为“Trump 不喜欢中国”。“我还漏了什么?”
  • Avi 的反驳更有力:政府应该买“真正有用的东西……为什么政府要买没有真实用户、也没有真实未来的无用空气资产——他们是不是完全没做功课?”Jonah 的前五大逻辑只有在“它们全是垃圾、全是骗局……没有任何差异化”时才成立。Jonah 最终完全认同:Cardano 是“所有会让我们两个人都想离开加密行业的东西”。
  • 对传播口径的批评是:Brian Armstrong 说只纳入 Bitcoin 会更好,这一点是对的;而且你不可能在同一周削减 USAID 和 NIH 的资金,又用纳税人的钱去买 Cardano。Sacks“还没有蠢到会亲自负责这种宣传”——“感觉像是某个 C- 级别的裙带关系富二代在操盘”。
  • 一个让问题更复杂的反例是:Avi 当天遇到一个普通人,对方已经同时持有 Bitcoin 和 Cardano 4年——“今天正是卖掉 Cardano 的好日子”。所以,这份储备也可能只是在粗略复制普通美国持有者实际拥有的资产。

4. Trump 推动市场——但最终是为了 Trump

  • Jonah 的核心判断是:“Trump 并不是想通过这次加密行动让美国政府赚钱。Trump 想让 Trump 自己和他的支持者赚钱。”政府只是一个“存钱罐……一个他可以用来推动加密价格的工具”,至于政府最后盈利还是亏损,对他并不重要。
  • 抢跑证据来自“很可能是 Cobie Letter”的推文:有人在公告前不久,以50倍杠杆建立了2亿美元的 ETH 和 BTC 多头,价格只要下跌2%就会被清算。Jonah 相信这件事,因为大宗商品市场的运作方式完全一样:“OPEC 会提前给一些人打招呼……在大宗商品领域这不违法”,毕竟 BTC 和 ETH 都不是证券——“但仍然是可疑行为”。
  • Avi 的衰减模型是:Trump 的影响正在沿着 Elon 做 Doge 的路径走——每次提及带来的价格波动都更小,所以“他差不多该要么做、要么别做了”。他也反思称,峰会早已排进日程,却恰好撞上市场崩跌,因此白宫出面救场本来就可预期——“每次做交易,都要看看白宫日程”。
  • Jonah 则从 Trump 1.0 的创伤记忆出发反驳:Trump 和 Elon 在推动市场方面有很大区别。Avi 警告说:“你不能做空 Trump。”他回忆称,Trump 曾通过威胁强制 OPEC 减产,在一天内把油价推高30%-40%,随后又通过推文把油价打入一个区间——“Trump 发推会把市场推向它最终要去的方向……记住我的话,他会把这件事做砸。”

5. 价值与动量:为什么9.5万美元站不住,以及8.5万-9.5万美元区间

  • Avi 的框架是:9.5万-9.8万美元既没有价值,也没有动量,因此卖方占据优势;8万美元以下属于“极端价值”,所以价格根本不会在那里停留太久。眼下除非有消息,否则“没有人有兴趣在9.5万美元上方买 Bitcoin”;但如果靠动量涨到12.5万美元,“买家会从四面八方涌出来”。
  • 价值是由时间制造出来的:如果在9万美元上方交易1-2个月,8.5万美元突然就会显得“打折”。在没有直接消息的情况下,预计至少一个月内“在8.5万和9.5万美元之间来回震荡”;如果跌破8万美元,“你想买多少都行,一年后你会很高兴——这也意味着你大概率根本买不到”。
  • Jonah 的反驳值得保留:Avi 所说“Bitcoin 从不会在高位企稳”,几乎是定义层面的真理——平台最终只有向上或向下突破。Avi 的辩护是,这是一种仓位下注工具,而不是同义反复:在11月21日至2月23日横盘3个月后,他判断大幅下跌的概率为80%,上涨为20%;而横盘已久的区间适合做空,不适合买入。Jonah 部分认同,称这个锚定点“非常有说服力”,但也指出,2023年的几次喘息期没有催化剂,最终照样向上突破。

6. ETH 已经没救了:做多山寨币、做空 BTC

  • ETH 在2,430美元的价格“令人作呕”,而且“无时无刻不在被抛售”——ETH Foundation 加上所有2021年入场的人,构成了结构性卖盘。Jonah 也许说对了卖方已经耗尽,但“我完全错在:这个资产现在已经没有任何买家了”。Jonah 表示:“我一段时间内不会回到 ETH……如果还有下一次的话。”
  • Jonah 的交易是配对交易:从约8.5万-8.6万美元开始,做多 AI 代币(Arc、Virtuals、ai16z、aixbt)和 SOL,同时做空 BTC,目前相对 Bitcoin 上涨8%-20%。关键在于组合结构——如果是单边交易,“打死我也不会持有那种仓位”;正是对冲让他扛过了 BTC 的10%回撤。
  • 他砍掉的一条腿是 ETH/BTC,进场24小时后就止损——“就是一个随机数生成器”。
  • WIF 的往返交易更复杂:Avi 提议削减名义仓位——“不会有什么战略性空气币储备,做空它”——但他也观察到,即使 BTC 下跌,WIF 仍然每天上涨,可能触发逼空。Jonah 已经回补了大部分空头,此前在另一期播客中听从 Avi 的建议完成操作;Avi 建议在0.9-1美元重新做空。

7. 华盛顿的算术正在转向支持加密资产

  • Avi 透露的内部信号是:至少有2名民主党政治系统的人找过他,希望他写一篇评论文章解释民主党如何搞砸了加密行业——他们都意识到,加密行业源自 Occupy Wall Street,而当年痛恨大银行“是一个坚定的民主党理念”;Ethereum 的主要参与者仍然偏民主党,Bitcoin 则更偏自由意志主义。
  • Jonah 讲了一段以自己为反面的 Lehman 往事:Lehman 倒闭时他刚失业,经过 Zuccotti Park 的抗议者时心想:“我恨你们……我刚丢了工作,你们却在对我发火。”此后,他再也没有因非理性政策制定感到同样愤怒,“直到 Biden 和 Gary Gensler 毫无理由地对加密行业发起猛烈攻击”。
  • 选举算术很简单:反加密阵营“可能就是高尔夫球场上的几个退休人士”,支持阵营则是“至少5000万名美国加密资产套牢者”——反加密没有任何收益,却可能失去一切;而 Trump“在上次大选中已经把这一点明明白白写在墙上”。因此 Jonah 比多数人更不担心国会,除非提交的方案是“向 Cardano 投入1亿美元”,那样的话“从出生起就死了”。

8. 读懂资金流:现货驱动的反弹、周末优势与混沌市场

  • Avi 认为最干净的看多信号是:反弹过程中未平仓合约“基本没有增加”——反转行情中命中率最高的信号,即杠杆多头蜂拥入场,并未出现。因此这轮上涨“看起来像是有人在部署现金”,不过资金费率显示周六确实进来了一批空头。
  • Jonah 诚实的另一种解读是:这可能只是“做市商之间互相厮杀”,并没有真实建仓——高频交易者在剧烈波动中套利不同交易所,以及股票与加密市场之间的价差,成交量很大,“但没有多少风险真正发生转移。我确实不知道”。
  • Jonah 将其总结为一条人生法则:“人生最大的捷径之一,就是在周末保持关注。”散户在工作日下注,到了周六就下班,因此持续关注周末行情,最终会积累成真正的优势。
  • Avi 的收尾判断是:现在是混沌市场,“不适合交易周期只有2-7天的点击交易者”;短期来看,他的判断可以“尽可能不下结论”,长期来看则“尽可能坚定”,并以6-8/10的信心认为,6个月后加密资产价格会更高。
Avi Felman

There are 2 different paths that we need to take in order to go higher. Unless on Friday, at the Crypto Summit, it's announced that the U.S. is allocating tens of billions of dollars to Bitcoin, I don't think we go higher.

Jonah Van Bourg

I agree. That's kind of the bar. Are we getting more details over the next 7 days that the U.S. is going to be allocating tens of billions of dollars? If the crypto strategic reserve turns out to be $500 million, we're back in the $80,000s pretty quickly.

1. The Strategic Reserve Impact

Avi Felman

All right, guys, welcome back to another 1000x. This has been a freaking whirlwind. My God, Jonah, the Bitcoin chart is just—like, the weekly chart is insanity right now. Whipsaw—the total whipsaw. Basically, 4 straight days of down, then a pause, and then a 5th day where it nukes 10% in a day. Now we're up 15%—I guess from the low to where we are here, 18% or 19% from the low to where we are.

This is just nuts, and we're still at $93,000. We haven't even gotten back into the previous range, so nobody can say, "Oh, man, the chart looks really amazing right now." This is just madness. What is going on here, our fearless leader?

I was saying on the pod last week that it's very rare to see Bitcoin go sideways and not break down at the highs. I think I've said that 150 times in 150 different ways: Bitcoin doesn't go sideways at the highs and then not have a sell-off. What I wasn't necessarily expecting was a sell-off that was 20% straight down for 4 days. I was expecting it to be a little bit choppier, so that was interesting.

I got bullish in the mid-to-low $80,000s, and then we got that 1 final flush down to $78,000, which I think was actually very good for Bitcoin. It got a lot of the weak hands out. There were a ton of people waiting for that sub-$80,000 level to step in and buy, and you got a tremendous amount of volume into that level. Then it reversed so quickly that basically, sellers there were selling to passive bids, but nobody who was actively waiting for that level had time to get in.

All of these sellers are very likely guys who just panicked and still want to own Bitcoin. They're saying, "I don't want to hold this thing if it goes down to the $60,000s. I don't want to lose any more money. I've lost so much money." I actually think we've set ourselves up really nicely, even just from a technical perspective. That's not even talking about the news that just came out, this crypto strategic reserve that our president has announced. What's going on there, our fearless leader?

Jonah Van Bourg

A couple of points on what you just said. I haven't touched my book throughout the entirety of this sell-off. I'm just sitting on the sidelines, tweeting less, panicking a little bit, but not really, because I don't expect this thing to break down.

None of this was in my bingo card, Avi. I was expecting the market to keep steadily grinding higher as you get more and more passive buying, because the regulatory picture looks better. This wasn't really something that I wanted to trade into. At one point, I was fully allocated to crypto, but now I have dry powder. I'm not going to sell this, obviously. I'm more just sitting and waiting for when I should buy, and I don't like catching falling knives.

I don't think this crypto news is really going to herald the beginning of a new bull market where we just go up-only for another 6 months. I think this is probably going to get sold into for a bit, then it'll probably bottom out, and then I think we keep rallying.

There is a Crypto Summit coming on March 7. What day is that? March 7 is going to be—I'm of the opinion that this Crypto Summit is similar to all of the other catalysts around Trump. When he went on to talk at the Bitcoin conference, we had a big rally into that and then a sell-off after.

A lot of people are very excited about the idea of this strategic reserve, and it's really big news for Solana, XRP, and Cardano, because those were directly mentioned by Trump. Cardano being mentioned is insane.

Well, it's not that insane. Here's my hot take: Crypto Twitter has its hair on fire over this Cardano thing, but if you just go to CoinGecko and look at the top non-stablecoins, you've got Bitcoin, check; Ethereum, check; XRP, love it or hate it, vaporware or not, a coin worth almost $300 billion, so check. Then you've got stablecoin Tether, and you have BNB, which you can't include because it's the China coin and Trump doesn't like China.

Then you've got Solana, check; USDC; and Cardano at $50 billion, check. After that, it's Dogecoin, Lido Staked Ether, Tron, and a bunch of other garbage. Honestly, what am I missing? I don't think you're necessarily missing anything.

Avi Felman

If the government is going to be buying crypto, it should probably concentrate on the things that are actually useful and have actual potential. This is a weird argument for me to be having, because just take a step back for a second: Why would the government want to buy useless vaporware assets that don't have any real users, real future, or real value behind them? Did they do zero homework?

Jonah Van Bourg

I obviously agree with you, Avi. I think I was trying to steelman the other side. Cardano is everything that would make both of us want to leave crypto if that's what crypto becomes.

The logic effectively is: If you buy the top 5 cryptos, all of these things are basically the same. They're all shit, they're all scams, and there's zero differentiation between them. There's no way to pick what's good and what's bad, so let's just go for the top 5.

Avi Felman

I mean, look, if Trump wanted to message this properly, he could say, "We're going to create a strategic crypto reserve. It's going to be mostly Bitcoin. We'll put a bit of ETH and Solana in there because they have traction, and then we'll include XRP and Cardano because their market caps are high and they've survived a couple of cycles."

If he wanted to message it to Crypto Twitter or to the American public, he could just leave the names out and say, "We're going to create a strategic crypto reserve because this asset class is around to stay. Rather than pretending we can make it go away, or pretending it's going to go away by itself, we may as well have some skin in the game and participate if it continues to proliferate."

Whoever's running Trump's crypto PR campaign feels like it's David Sacks. I listen to the All-In Podcast from time to time, and David Sacks is a smart guy. It feels like he's not nearly stupid enough to be messaging this. It feels like it's Barron Trump in charge. Somebody who is a C-minus nepo baby is doing this shit.

This is not smart, the way that they're talking about it, and it's obviously pissing off crypto people. Brian Armstrong tweeted that it would be better just to have Bitcoin in the strategic crypto reserve. What's the point of having any of this other stuff in there?

Jonah Van Bourg

I agree with him. If you're trying to save taxpayer dollars by cutting USAID, cutting NIH funding, and all this other stuff because we're supposedly going bankrupt—which, generally, I agree with the DOGE efficiency thing—then it's hard to come out in the same week and say we're going to use taxpayer dollars to buy Cardano.

Obviously, that argument has been beaten to death on Twitter. Everybody knows this is stupid. But going back to what it means for crypto, we're basically back at the bottom of the range we've been in since the election. Since the election, price action has basically been $90,000 bid at $105,000, and we're trading at $92,500 on Bitcoin.

I'm really watching closely to see if we just drift back up to the center of the range. I don't think that's going to happen. I think we probably leak back below, because this is almost bearish for crypto in a way. You know what's really leaked back below, by the way? ETH is just cooked. ETH at $2,430 is disgusting.

2. ETH Is Cooked

I think I'm not going to be back in ETH for a while, Avi. At this point, maybe ever. I took a few stabs. One of my theses was to get long altcoins and short BTC, and that actually worked reasonably well. A lot of these alts bottomed out against Bitcoin, especially some of the AI coins. I was heavy on ARC, Virtuals, ai16z, and AIXBT. These things actually bottomed out really nicely against Bitcoin over the last week.

I took a decent-sized position in SOL as well against BTC, and then part of the book was ETH/BTC, which I had to cut. Basically, ETH/BTC is a random-number generator. What is going on? I kept every other position, but I cut that one 24 hours after I put the trade on, because even on the bounce it just could not do anything.

It's amazing how few people there are left to go buy this thing. I really thought sellers had run out, and I might have been right, but what I was completely wrong about is that there are zero buyers for this asset anymore.

There are sellers, and major sellers in ETH. The Ethereum Foundation is one. Everybody who got into crypto in 2021 and hasn't really checked their portfolio until now is selling ETH. It's offered all the time. It trades so heavily.

One point I'll make on Cardano is that it's actually held by the most random people. Maybe what they're trying to approximate is your average person. They want to make the average person who owns crypto rich. A lot of Americans own Cardano.

3. BTC: Value vs Momentum

Today, I was talking to somebody who said, "You're into this crypto thing, right? I have some Bitcoin and Cardano that I've held for 4 years now. What do you think I should do with it?" I told him he should definitely sell the Cardano and move it somewhere else, because today is a great day to sell your Cardano. But the guy did own Cardano. He's just a random guy, basically.

Avi Felman

To me, this is just so—well, okay, let's talk about 2 things. First, let's talk about stabilizing Bitcoin at the top of the range and then selling off—your technical call—and then let's talk about what this means for crypto.

I've said many times on the podcast that Bitcoin rarely stabilizes at the highs and then sells off. I'd go so far as to say it never does. The framework that I always work off of is the value-and-momentum framework. I've mentioned this a lot, so I don't want to bore people with the details, but basically, we needed people to find value in Bitcoin again.

I think we found it. People view sub-$80,000 as extreme value on Bitcoin, which is why we didn't spend any time really below $80,000. That small, tiny range we were trading in—$95,000 to $98,000—is not value for people, and there was zero momentum. There was no reason to buy it, which allowed sellers to gain the advantage.

There isn't a lot of new money that's going to come in and bid it in that particular area, because it's not sexy from a value perspective. When you're going sideways, there's definitionally no momentum. Once Bitcoin goes into wait-and-see mode, what matters more is whether people are overinvested or underinvested.

For a long time, we traded sideways, but people were radically underinvested in the asset, so it went higher. Now people were in wait-and-see mode, but they were radically overinvested in the asset. We're at the highs. That's where I want to humbly push back on you.

Jonah Van Bourg

People like us were overinvested, but new money wasn't coming in. That's why we sold off. I definitely thought that while people like us were overallocated, a new trillion-dollar—or $10 trillion—wallet was underinvested.

Avi Felman

In hindsight, it seems so, but at the time you wouldn't have known that. I was making this argument at the time. Think of the framework: There was no momentum and there was no value. Therefore, no momentum.

You deserve credit where credit is due. Maybe we're just talking about different time frames here, because I've been pretty bullish since late 2022. But I definitely thought that while people like us were overallocated, a new trillion-dollar or $10 trillion wallet was underinvested.

If they were interested in buying before the announcement of an official U.S. strategic crypto reserve, they're going to be even more interested after. If Uncle Sam is doing it, they aren't going to get sued for doing it.

What I'm trying to say is that, currently, there is nobody interested in buying Bitcoin above $95,000. People just aren't interested in buying it at that price outside of news. I bet that if Bitcoin traded up to $125,000 on momentum, there would be buyers coming out of the woodwork because of the momentum.

Jonah Van Bourg

Sure, but that's not really an argument. If it goes to $125,000, then by definition there have already been a ton of buyers buying it in the market. What we're trying to talk about is where this is going to go.

What you're saying is that we need a catalyst to push us through to the next momentum level that brings out the momentum buyers. Is that accurate?

Avi Felman

There are 2 things I'm trying to articulate here, and there are 2 different paths that we need to take in order to go higher, ceteris paribus. Unless on Friday, at the Crypto Summit, it's announced that the U.S. is allocating tens of billions of dollars to Bitcoin, I don't think we go higher.

Jonah Van Bourg

I agree. That's kind of the bar. Are we announcing on Friday, or are we getting more details over the next 7 days, that the U.S. is going to be allocating tens of billions of dollars? If the crypto strategic reserve turns out to be $500 million, we're back in the $80,000s pretty quickly.

They'd be so dumb to announce that, because then they'd worsen their fill price by a lot. "We're going to buy a ton of stuff tomorrow. Go out there and buy all you want tonight." It would be so crazy. I wonder if they're that stupid.

Avi Felman

The messaging has been so bad that the answer could be yes. Indeed, they are that dumb. Or worse, they're so corrupt that they're not trying to make money.

Are you sure? They're not trying to make the U.S. government money with this crypto move. Trump is trying to make Trump money and make his supporters money. That's my personal take.

Whether the U.S. government makes money or loses money on crypto is probably irrelevant to him. It's kind of like he has this piggy bank, this tool called the U.S. government, that he can use to move crypto prices. He's going to benefit a lot from it, and his constituents are going to benefit a lot from it. They're going to love him if he manages to send crypto higher.

Whether the U.S. government ends up making or losing money is probably irrelevant.

I want to finish my thought here on the paths that we need to take. I've said this before: Momentum and value. Momentum is generated through news. Right now, it's going to be generated through Trump coming out and saying, "We're buying a ton," or whatever.

The other path is that we have to find value. How do you generate value? You don't trade at a level for a significant period of time. Right now, $85,000 doesn't feel like tremendous value because we just traded there.

If we trade above $90,000 for 1 or 2 months and then trade down to $85,000, suddenly it's on sale. That's a lot more attractive. You need people to normalize to prices before you can start assigning value.

Right now, what's clear value is below $80,000. Buy below $80,000 all you want, and I think you'll be happy in a year. That also means you're probably not going to get it.

I think that, outside of news that directly sends us higher, we end up ping-ponging between $85,000 and $95,000 for at least a month. That's my take.

Jonah Van Bourg

I like that take. There are a couple of other parts of your take in the past that I disagree with, so let me try to articulate it very cleanly and concisely.

I agree that participants anchor themselves to the prices that any asset, particularly crypto, establishes when it trades sideways for a while. If we trade roughly at $100,000 for 3 months, that's where participants anchor themselves. Then if you're trading at $80,000, that looks cheap, and if you're trading at $120,000, you see some profit-taking. I agree that participants anchor to ranges that are well established.

The part that I disagreed with is that you said it's rare for crypto to range or trade sideways at the highs and then not have a sell-off. To me, while I agree with that statement and think it's true, it's a bit misleading. Basically, what you're saying is crypto goes up, crypto stops going up, and it's either going to go up or down. If it doesn't go up, then it's going to go down.

4. Trading BTC Ranges

If you trade up and then plateau, of course it's going to go down unless it keeps going up. That's sort of what it means to me, but maybe I'm just not understanding it.

Avi Felman

No, because it helps you try to understand what's going to happen next. Before the sell-off, when we were trading at $95,000, the big question everyone had was where it was going next. Was it more likely that we went to $105,000 from $95,000, or was it more likely that we went to $85,000? How do I make my bets? That was a very debated question.

My answer, using that framework, was that we'd basically gone sideways in a range from November 21 to February 23. That's 3 months of sideways action, so it probably goes down. I was betting that there was an 80% chance we were going down and a 20% chance we were going up, and that we'd get a pretty substantial sell-off from the highs.

5. Buy The Dip Or Sell The Rip?

It's more of a statement that if you do have a range for a substantial period of time, you probably should not be buying that range. In fact, you can probably make money shorting in that range.

Jonah Van Bourg

You've proven right this last time, but I'm looking at the course of this Bitcoin bull market. Bitcoin took a few breathers and then kept rallying—not on the election with a clear catalyst, but in 2023, for example. I don't want to belabor the point. It's something where I'm not fully on board necessarily, but I do agree that there's a lot of anchoring that goes on.

Your point about how people anchor to recent ranges is super salient. I guess that leads us nicely into the next topic: Where does crypto go from here, and what does this stupid Cardano reserve mean for our space?

Avi Felman

I'm with you on the selling. What I will say is that I remember when we talked about the Trump effect on Bitcoin. It was going to be like the Elon effect on Dogecoin. In the beginning, everyone bought Dogecoin because Elon might say something about Dogecoin on Twitter and it might go up.

After Trump adopted Bitcoin as his pet project, it became, "There are all these amazing things Trump can say about Bitcoin. Maybe he'll send it up." That has played out really nicely. Now that brings me to the next stage of the decay: Every time he mentions crypto, there will be some level of decay to it. He needs to shit or get off the pot at this point.

I'm pissed at myself that I didn't think about this, but you can kind of predict the future with these things. We knew on February 28 that there was a 1st-ever White House Crypto Summit coming up the next week, and we also knew that crypto was in the middle of a shit meltdown.

At $80,000 or $85,000, I wish I had thought, "There's a pretty high chance that Trump does something to make this summit not look like a total failure," and gotten even more bullish. It's probably worthwhile to look at the White House calendar.

Every time you take out a trade on anything now, look at the White House calendar and ask yourself whether there's any incentive for Trump to help out that trade or not.

6. Trading Trump 2.0

Jonah Van Bourg

You bring up a good point. Elon did move Dogecoin for a little while, but there's a big difference between Trump and Elon when it comes to moving markets. I have PTSD from trading through Trump's first term.

Avi Felman

I know his first presidency. You do not fade Trump's tweets or Trump's statements about things. Maybe if it looks like he's getting off the pot, people start to fade it, but Trump will shit. Mark my words: He will take the dump.

Jonah Van Bourg

So why are you so bearish for the first time ever?

Avi Felman

No, I'm not bearish for the first time ever. I'm saying I'm not going to sell a dime's worth of crypto. Let me make that clear. What I'm saying is, let's start with what Trump did to markets last time, and then we'll talk about what he's going to do this time.

During COVID, when oil was low, he caused the price of oil to spike literally 40% or 30% in 1 day. It was around $10 a barrel when it was trading at $20 a barrel, by saying that he was going to force OPEC to cut supply. That was the most face-ripping move that commodity will get, period. That was a crazy move for a non-shitcoin, for the world's global energy supply.

When prices were high, he was shitting on OPEC every day, telling them that they had to stop the cuts and that he was going to put pressure on them. Then he did. He tweeted like he wanted oil in a range, so he would tweet bearish at the top of the range and giga-bullish at the bottom of the range.

On the stock market, he would tweet it up every single chance he got: record high, it's going higher, we're going to do more Trump tax cuts, Trump bump. Trump tweets markets in the direction that they end up going. He's always done that, right?

You saw this face-ripping crypto rally after he tweeted the Strategic Crypto Reserve. All I'm saying is that move has happened. I don't see him tweeting some brand-new giga-bullish catalyst on Friday that takes us another $10,000 higher. I think the tweet was the tweet, and it came out today.

I do think crypto is going higher. I do think we trade $150,000 easily before the end of the year, maybe $200,000. I'm still very bullish. If I were a short-term trader, I would probably be selling Bitcoin here to buy it back at around $87,000, but that's just not how I behave. I don't like to do that because I think it's too tempting over time to chop myself up. I'm better at doing longer-term trades.

I do think that if you're looking to reduce exposure now, my least favorite coin of the moment is WIF. WIF ripped on this. There's not going to be a Strategic WIF Reserve, right? Short that one if you're looking to cut notional. That's my point. Does that make sense to you, my general thesis on this?

Jonah Van Bourg

Yeah, I get you. It remains to be seen what happens on Friday. I wish I had read the tea leaves better on that particular point, but it remains to be seen what happens at the summit. Maybe he has another trick up his sleeve, but I'm fairly certain it's going to require congressional approval to start buying a ton of Bitcoin, so we all have to wait for that.

One of the worst things that could happen—and this is why every single person in crypto, if you're actively trading or you own Bitcoin and you want to be proactive about this, has to pay very close attention to what happens on Friday—is if there's language that says, "We're really excited to start working on this reserve bill," and David Sacks gets up there and says, "We're really excited to start working on this reserve bill and push it through Congress." You kind of have to sell a reasonable amount of what you have.

This is more of a bipartisan issue than it was, though, to be completely fair. That Stand With Crypto lobby—whatever Brian Armstrong's crypto lobby is called—there are Democrats that are into this as well.

Avi Felman

There are, and I do think Democrats have started to have a come-to-Jesus moment with respect to crypto. At least 2 of the people I know in the Democratic apparatus have approached me about potentially writing an op-ed about how Democrats messed up crypto, because both of them realize that crypto came out of the Occupy Wall Street movement in a big way. That was a movement that was solidly Democrat.

The idea of hating the big banks, if you go back 15 years, was a solidly Democrat ideal. It was purely in the realm of Democrats to have that mentality around things: You can't trust the financial institutions. That was all Democrat back then.

They have a real opportunity. If you look back at the origin of Ethereum, a lot of the major players in the Ethereum network, even today, are still Democrats. I think Bitcoin always had a little bit more of a libertarian lean, but the Democrats could have done well on crypto if they had just played ball instead of trying to kill it.

I think they've started to realize that now. I do think they will soften their stance because it's just not a winning issue for them. It's really not.

Jonah Van Bourg

I love that you brought this up. I'm going to do a very short tangent and then come back to your point, which I agree with.

In 2008, when the Democrats were all against the banksters, and Barney Frank and the Volcker Rule and all this stuff was cooking in Washington to rein in the banks' reckless risk-taking, I had just lost my job on Wall Street at one of the big banks, Lehman Brothers—the only one these guys allowed to fail. I remember being unemployed, wandering around downtown one day. I passed Zuccotti Park and saw these people protesting bankers, and I was thinking, "I hate you. I just lost my job, and you're mad at me. My company went bankrupt. Screw you, and screw everybody else who wants to demonize me."

It's funny. I actually haven't felt that annoyed at irrational policymaking until Biden and Gary Gensler went ham on crypto for no reason. When it's something as partisan as abortion or gun control, you do get these big party-line votes. But with crypto, I think a lot of people are looking at Operation Choke Point 2.0 and Elizabeth Warren's Anti-Crypto Army, and it's like, who's going to die on that hill? Who wants to be part of the Anti-Crypto Army?

Maybe there are a couple of retirees who are pissed off that they missed the Bitcoin trade, sitting on the golf course, shitting on Bitcoin—just no-coiners. But not enough people on the anti-crypto side care. To them, it's just a total nothingburger, whatever. On the pro-crypto side, it's 50 million American bagholders or more.

It seems so irrational to think of being a Washington elected representative or policymaker against crypto. You've got nothing to gain and everything to lose. Trump literally just painted that on the wall during the last election and proved it to everybody.

To me, I'm a little less worried about things that need to go through Congress than perhaps most people. However, I do think that if what they submit to Congress is, "We need to spend $100 million on Cardano," I think it's going to be stillborn.

Maybe what we should be looking for on Friday is how much they've rethought the plan since the Sunday Truth Social post. Are they really going to lean into this and double down, or not? If they're saying, "It's mostly Bitcoin. Don't worry, we're going to have a couple of these tokens because they're top 10 and they're made in America, and we want to incentivize people to make great blockchains in America, so we'll put them in there," maybe that's okay. I don't think we get a big up.

7. Funding & OI

Avi Felman

Well, yeah, one thing's for sure: We're going to have to pay attention. One point that's actually kind of nice is that there's been basically 0 uptick in OI on this move. If you look at futures, one of the highest-hit-rate reversal signs is that you just get a ton of people slamming in on leverage.

This move looks like it was spot-driven, actually. It looks like people were deploying cash into this move, and it's not just a bunch of monkeys buying it on leverage, which is a very good sign for Bitcoin.

I'm torn between thinking, hey, this is definitely a fade because I don't think we're getting more good news after this, versus, all right, now we're just back in the range and maybe we'll just go trade $100,000.

Jonah Van Bourg

There's another interpretation: Yes, it could be cash, and that could explain the lack of an OI increase. Another possibility is that shorts closed. Or it could just be tons and tons of market-maker-on-market-maker violence with no real position-taking—just HFT washing back and forth because of volatility.

That's what they do. They trade big volumes when things get volatile because there are all these little games you can play: arbitraging exchanges against each other, arbitraging equities versus crypto, and using mid-frequency signals telling you what's going to happen in 5 to 60 seconds, trading that, then getting out.

Big volumes will go through when markets get volatile without a lot of risk getting exchanged sometimes. Maybe. I honestly don't know, Avi. I think it could be a lot of really healthy spot buying. It could be liquidations.

It also could be—actually, looking at funding, it does look like a decent amount of shorts came in on Saturday. One of the biggest hacks in life is just paying attention during the weekends. I think it's very easy to clock out, especially if you're looking at this stuff during the week, and then just not pay attention over the weekends.

But there are so many things that, if you look at them over the weekend and do that consistently, you gain a huge edge. So many things in this market over the last year have happened on the weekend.

I think a lot of people are gambling at their day jobs. They're on a Zoom call, or they're supposed to be doing something professional, and they're just logged in somewhere—Binance, Coinbase, or Kraken—and messing around all week. The weekend is their break. It's not like this is a nights-and-weekends game for most retail degens.

Avi Felman

Yeah, I wonder how many federal workers were selling crypto during their workdays.

Jonah Van Bourg

Oh, my God. Responding to Musk's email, "What did you get done this week?" "Well, I punted on XRP. Bought some, too."

Avi Felman

Got it. If I had to write an email saying, "What did I get done this week?"—oh, my God, I changed a lot of diapers. That's what I got done. I raised children.

8. Alt/BTC Relative Strength

Can I tell you something horrible, Jonah? Honestly, WIF actually looks really good. I think a lot of people started using it as a short leg, and I think you could actually see a short squeeze from WIF. It's kind of interesting. Do you have your OI dashboard up?

Jonah Van Bourg

I don't.

Avi Felman

Yeah, I got my OI and funding dashboard up, and it started to outperform BTC. Are you still using Velo Data?

Jonah Van Bourg

Yeah, I do. I do love Velo, but I just love charting alts against Bitcoin because it really gives you an idea of the relative strength of the asset. There are so many alts that look really good against Bitcoin, even now after today's move.

That's what I'm looking for. I do like those types of trades because they're so much easier to manage. Getting long those AI assets and shorting Bitcoin against them, I did that when Bitcoin was at something like $85,000 or $86,000. Then it went down, and they were all actually outperforming or slightly underperforming BTC, but BTC went down 10% in that time span.

I can guarantee you I wouldn't have stayed in those trades if I had done them outright. Even though after Bitcoin bounced they were all up anywhere from 8% to 20% versus Bitcoin, I would have made more money if I had obviously punted them outright, but I would never in a million years have held that position. It really helps you manage the volatility.

Yeah, I agree. I'm out of my WIF short now. I actually covered most of it during a podcast where you convinced me to do so. It was that one in early February when the market nuked in the middle while we were recording. That was a fun one. I was thinking of putting it back on, but not yet.

Avi Felman

Do it at around $1. If you can get it at $0.90 to $1, that would be a great short. I think shorting it here, after it's bounced and looks pretty strong—and actually, it's up in the last 5 days, basically up every day—you probably want to avoid shorting it.

Jonah Van Bourg

Yeah, which tells you that if it's doing that when Bitcoin's going down, you probably want to avoid shorting it. The thing is, it's flat with BTC over the last, call it, 18 hours. Over the last 7 days, it's up pretty solidly. I don't know. You're right. You probably don't want to short into a rally like this.

Avi Felman

I think, honestly, this market is just going to be chaos for a while. I do not think that this is a good trading market for click traders with a 2-to-7-day horizon.

I'm feeling as unconvicted in the short term as I could possibly be, as convicted in the long term as I could possibly be, and in the medium term—let's call it a 6-to-8-out-of-10 conviction—that we're probably higher 6 months from here.

Aside from some tactical opportunities, like when news comes out and coins just haven't moved yet, or slower, less relevant on-chain assets, I don't think this is a market where you want to start really churning a lot of volume. I think it's bad for that.

I think we'll be in a much healthier environment for that once we get a bit more clarity on what these guys have planned for crypto. But the implications haven't really been priced into some of the long-tail assets.

Jonah Van Bourg

Maybe we need to do another emergency pod. We'll do another pod on Friday to talk about this. Maybe we can figure out a livestream.

Avi Felman

You know what? How about this: Let's just make a rule that if it's an emergency pod, we can do a livestream. If something crazy happens, we could do a livestream during the crypto conference. Maybe we'll do that.

Jonah Van Bourg

Maybe we need to apply for a White House press pass. I know they're letting in all sorts of scammy news organizations and kicking out ABC and CBS. We could say, "We're the 1000x podcast. We're crypto news."

I think probably all we have to do is spend the next 4 episodes saying really nice things about Donald Trump. He's awesome. We could probably get a press pass. I love Donald Trump.

Are your parents' house near the White House? Could I crash there if we do a D.C. trip?

Avi Felman

It actually is. It's a 15-minute walk from the White House.

Jonah Van Bourg

Great. Sure. I would have suggested staying at a nice hotel, but with Bitcoin down here, no, no, no—just crash in my parents' basement. We'll walk over to the White House and sleep in the laundry room. Who cares?

All right, Avi. Good. This was good. I'll see you on Friday.

Avi Felman

See you on Friday. This is a fun one.

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