Is the Bitcoin bottom in? Michael Terpin on the cycle and supercycle

Transcript

Bottoms have never had a V-shaped recovery. That's not what a bottom looks like. It's called capitulation for a reason. People give up. >> Bitcoin has been consolidating around 78K, but has a bull market started or are we just heading for another pullback and new lows? Hello and welcome to the Milkro Show, the podcast that knows that calling a Bitcoin bottom is basically astrology with extra steps, but that's never stopped anyone from trying. I'm your host, John Gillan. Today is Tuesday, September 1st, and today we are joined by Michael Turpin. Michael is the CEO of Transform Ventures and founder of Bit Angels, the first angel investor network built for crypto. CNBC calls him the godfather of crypto and he is full of alpha. Today he's going to share a lot of wisdom and insight with all of us. So if that sounds good to you, make

sure you like and subscribe. Share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it. And as a reminder, our podcast today is free and that would not be possible without our wonderful partners at saber.money, the stablecoin payments platform built for Asia. So keep an eye out for more information about them later in the episode. But for right now, I want to bring on Michael Turpin. Hello and welcome to the Milro Show. Michael, how are you? >> I'm doing great. Uh glad to be here with you. >> I'm glad to talk to you. We've been trying to get together for a little bit, but I think this is a great time in the markets to talk. Bitcoin is up over 20% this month. It's around 79K, I think, at the time of recording. Previously, I think you were expecting a bottom in October. Uh does this move from Bitcoin

change that outlook for you? And what's your updated thoughts on the market here? >> Sure. So, I said in June that I thought that that might be the bottom. It was about a 40% chance and I thought there was still a 60% chance that it would be around October just based on what's happened the prior cycles. Um, we've always had about a year. The first uh having was a year and 5 weeks. The second having it was a year minus 3 days. And the the the most recent having um it was prior to this one was um one year to the day. Um, top was November 10th of 21 and then the bottom with FTX was exactly one year later, November 10th of 22. When Sailor, Michael Sailor said the bottom was in in February, just

did not look right to me for a couple reasons. Number one, a few other people said that as well. Some people are actually calling the bottom in November. And I was like, you're not going to you're not going to get away with a, you know, six week bare market. No. Um and in both November when it you know dumped hard and then uh and then after it did the you know death cross and then bounced back hard the next day. Um and then also in February when it bounced back 10% the next day. Bottoms have never had a V-shaped recovery. That's not what a bottom looks like. It's called capitulation for a reason. People give up. And June was really the first time that looked like it might be capitulation. Um it did not move anywhere for a couple of days. um there was a decent amount of volume. I mean

it's a really um good thing in terms of the crypto ecosystem that the worst macro news that we had to cause the bottom if indeed June or technically the bottom price was July 1st. Uh the bottom closing price was in June but I always count the actual bottom even if it's a wick as being the low for that cycle. What was the worst news that we had four years ago? It was FTX, right? diagnosed after Celsius and BlockFi, all these bankruptcies that were around uh overlever and uh getting caught with collateral damage. Four years earlier, it was breaking Bitcoin apart, right?

When we when we had Bitcoin Cash then broke into uh Bitcoin SV and Craig Wright came out and said, "I'm going to destroy Bitcoin, you know, the the ungodly ones who are not obeying my laws." And then four years before that, you had Mount Gaus, which was 90% or so of the entire trading just, you know, blow up completely. Um, still being sorted out. And so, what's the worst that happened this time? Some people got uh, you know, leveraged at the wrong time on Stretch and got got caught with the short squeeze and uh, and had to uh, sell when they didn't want to sell. And and you know, the FUDers came out and it's like, oh, Stretch is D Peggy. It's going to zero. It's just like Terra Luna and of course that wasn't true but you

know it it helped people who were shorting it. I was telling everybody in the in the world because I already had a fair amount of stretch uh that like guys you're getting 12% dividends and you're now getting them at $100 and you can buy them at 75. That means you're now getting 16%. This is good news. This is not bad news. There's no way. I think the projections with uh stretch going under were that Sailor couldn't pay back out of his 850,000 Bitcoin. That'd be Yeah. Bitcoin went down to 10,000 stayed for 5 years. That wasn't happening. So, um I thought we were still in a fragile enough space that one more piece of bad news in September, October, which is when a lot of bad news happens. Stock market crashes historically of the centered around September and October of

many of them you going all the way back to the great financial crisis and way back before that to to the great uh depression. The stock market crash of 29, stock market crash 89. You know, September, October is weak. And I also thought that there was a good chance, and I guess there still is, that, you know, some AI hack would go in and like rip apart some leading wallet. You know, if North Koreans can do it with social engineering, maybe a maybe Fable can do it powered by North Koreans and uh, you know, rip out a billion dollars or so. That still could happen, but that's really, I think, the only thing that's going to derail this rally is some unexpected bad news right while we're still in the bottom. And otherwise, I'd say we're 80% that the uh the bare market's over. We're out of fall and

into what I call Bitcoin winter. >> Hi everyone, this is John. Listen, our Milk Road Pro analysts nailed this AI bull market. They we had dozens of calls pay off in a big way for our community. If you want to see how our entire team of analysts are positioning for the crypto bull market that's going to come after this bare market finally ends, you can join us now at Milkroad Pro. It's just a dollar. Link is in the description. and you'll get access to all of our analyst trades, their watch list, and see how they're navigating this in their portfolios and get access to ask us questions in Discord anytime, day or night. It's just a dollar links in the description. Milk Road Pro, join now. I'll see you there. Okay. Well, we can talk more about that. I thought a good way to get into this part of the

conversation. And by the way, thank you for that comprehensive history lesson. This is why I was excited to talk to you because you're an expert on Bitcoin and its history. But you wrote a book uh in 2024, I believe, called uh Super Cycle. Yeah, there he is. Bitcoin Supercycle. super. >> So, I I thought this would be a good time to to check in with you about that and the framework that's in there, but you know, people use this word super cycle. It means different things to different people. Let's start with that. What is a Bitcoin super cycle? What does that mean? Explain me that idea. >> So, I use the definition that the CME gives for super cycle. I mean, the phrase super cycle and sort of entire cycle theories goes back, you know, not quite a hundred years, but close to it.

uh Elliot wave and uh you know some of the you know theories of like the great the grand super cycle of like 400 years where societies change and uh Ray Dalia now is talking a lot about that. Um and uh within that then you have different cycles going all the way down to cycles that can be you know um measured in minutes or hours. You know, obviously uh the fundamental thing that has moved Bitcoin price so far and I believe is still uh going to continue for at least 20 years um is going is is the uh the having cycle which is they call it a four year cycle. It's actually been 47 months all but one of the cycles that was 43. So it's every 210,000 blocks. If it was exactly four years all theings

would be exactly on you know January 3rd and they aren't. So um but the CME basically talked about commodity super cycles and they defined a super cycle as a period of time lasting at least 5 years. You can't have a one-year super cycle that uh changes the uh perception of the value of the asset such that it it goes up typically um over that period of time. And the CME had said that that happened in the 1970s. in the 19 with gold the 1970s gold was pretty flat and uh you know Nixon took us off of the uh the gold standard. So all of a sudden uh there's more um you know kind of a

definition of uh of uh scarcity and demand for gold because it's not something that's being used as global commerce anymore. And at the same time, you added a new class of buyers when uh just a couple years later, um they relegalized the ability to uh have Americans own gold, which they weren't allowed to legally do since the 1930s when FDR uh you know kind of stole it from people. And um and so that that you know quadrupled the price of gold in in less than a decade. The next one that they talked about was a broader based commodity super cycle in the '9s.

copper, nickel that was based on uh excessive demand from China. China was industrializing at a rapid pace. Just can't get enough of uh commodities. And it said actually when I went to press that too early to tell, but we may be approaching a new super cycle based on, you know, money printing, monetary debasement. If I had read my own book, I would have probably invested hard into gold shortly thereafter and it did pretty well. Uh but uh I'd say now it's pretty concrete that uh um you know gold and silver are probably in that super cycle that started in 23 and who knows how long it's going to pop. There's a lot of theories now um everybody from

Porter Stanbury to others uh that are basically saying that you know the fourth turning is going to be you know sort of reaching its frenzy in 2029. um you know end of the decades you know I talk about Bitcoin cycles but I've been a student of cycles in the stock market not writing books about it but just my own personal investments I've always been very religious about selling May and go away and that kept me all in cash during the 200809 crash I sold in May and when uh you know the time to rebalance in November before the Santa Claus rally came I was like whoops the world's still on fire and so I was able to buy a lot lower when uh you know when all of a sudden uh April came around and everything sort of bottom And so the other thing that's interesting about the

stock market is it pretty reliably moves in 10ear cycles and they usually have the bubble pop at the end of the decade. Bubble popped at the end of the 20s. Bubble popped at the end of the 80s. Bubble popped at the end of the '9s. Took a couple months until it actually, you know, showed up on the charts. And the bubble um popped at the end of the teens. Um money printing kept it going a little while and you know co put a exclamation point on it. We are looking by many people's uh you know reckoning uh to have an everything bubble and uh you know it's uncharted territory and so if you've got the money printing of three or four trillion dollars uh per year a trillion of which is apparently going to be used to buy back longdated

bonds uh per bessent. Um and then you've got um you know the stock market if it follows uh course will probably have a parabolic rally and and uh you know peak at unforeseen levels in 29 right around the same time that Bitcoin is probably going to peak and so we'll see whether you know how that affects all asset classes and whether you know it accelerates Bitcoin's crash or whether um it just has a standard you know oneish year retracement. and maybe gold goes crazy. We'll see. People typically rush for cash first until they realize that that's what they should be running away for and then and then they make up their decisions. So, it's going to be

very interesting next two cycles. So, basically, we haven't had a by the definition of the CME, we have not had a Bitcoin super cycle yet. So, we've not had a 5-year period where basically the fundamentals change. We've we've had typically parabolic rallies in what I call um Bitcoin summer. So just to give the cliff notes on on my thesis and what I really wanted to call the book was the four seasons of Bitcoin which I came up with in 2015. I've been in Bitcoin since 2012 and very heavily since 2013. But my publisher like Bitcoin super cycle better and that's part of the narrative.

So the four seasons of Bitcoin, simply put, Satoshi said in his early writings that as long as the amount of new money moving into the ecosystem every four years and between havingss exceeds the amount of inflation from the having, the price have to has to go up. It's supply and demand pure and simple over a four-year period. And so far it has $12 at the first havinging, more demand. 670 at the second havinging, more demand, 8,700 at the third having, more demand. 63,900 at the fourth having. And I can pretty much guarantee you it's going to be higher than 63,900 at the next having.

I'm guessing somewhere around, you know, doubleish, maybe a little bit higher. And so you've had this this always up uh among you know um sorry from having to having but people particularly traditional investors which who I wrote the book for um the ones that I told about Bitcoin when it was $100 and they laughed at me or they went and asked their broker and they said look at what Warren Bee says it's a scam. It's a Ponzi scheme um because they didn't understand it. They understood their own asset class. They understood real estate cycles. They understood stock market cycles um and values. And so this book really first and foremost is for them.

It talks about why Bitcoin is worth anything and why it has been the best performing asset class for the last decade and longer. And uh we'll continue to beat the traditional ones over the next decade or two. And so um what scares off investors has been volatility although as I like to say volatility if you understand it could be your friend. So the volatility is not caused by math. It's not caused by supply and demand. I researched it in 2015 and decided and I think I've been proven so far uh today it's it's caused by fear and greed. And so I map those quadrants that every cycle has done in the exact same order into four quadrants. They're not the exact same time but they do happen in the same order and I call them the four

seasons of Bitcoin. Bitcoin spring is not what people call crypto spring or crypto winter. My definition of Bitcoin spring is the day of the having or as happened the last time, you can have an early spring if the new all-time high happens before the having, but believe it or not, it doesn't affect Bitcoin summer. And I'll get to that in a second. Um, so the the the seed of the new cycle is planted on the having date. Um, in one 10-minute block, you go from the miners making, let's say, 10% profit to having a 40% loss at the same cost. All of a sudden, the rewards cut in half. You would think the price would plummet. It doesn't because most people aren't minors anymore. There are enough people that sort of realize that the price over time goes up and when they see the price drop because of miners

selling, they buy. But they don't buy in great enough quantity to push the price to a new all-time high quite yet. So really, the last four out of four, the last Bitcoin springs have been flat and including this last one, it was 64,000 roughly on the day of the having. 6 months later was still 64,000. It pushed down a little bit uh to around 49. It pushed up a little bit to 70, but until it hit the all-time high of the prior cycle, which happened only a month before the having, that was 73850. It didn't go parabolic. It did go parabolic when it hit that number, which to me shows that the high after the having is the important thing to create Bitcoin summer, not the high before the having.

It just raises the bar of what that number is. So, Bitcoin summer. So, again, spring last four to seven uh months so far. And it's interesting. It's been a little bit longer each time was four months, then five months, then six months, then seven months. We'll see if that continues because there were some other trends that were elongated that um including um uh the time from having to top that did not um expand. So, there's about 40 things I track and so far like 30 of them usually repeat. The the the agonizing part is figuring out which 10 aren't going to repeat, right? So that's why there's that's that's why everybody can't rely on you know my predictions 100% hopefully I'm 80% right and um so or anybody's predictions. So basically um and Bitcoin

summer has lasted 9 to 11 months and has also been expanding but I thought it might hit 12 this time and it didn't. and Bitcoin summer um the price goes up like a rocket ship usually in two stages right like a rocket does you know stage one it gets up to a certain level and then usually in the summer months it'll kind of retreat a little bit this time it retreated from uh the macro event of uh the tariffs uh you remember liberation day everybody remember liberation day it went all the way back down almost to to where it started I I actually tweeted the time it's not going below 75 and it didn't and uh and then it went up to uh 126 and this been a frustrating cycle because you know the the diminishing returns that I talk about in the book and diminishing losses

have been affected by macro that the last two cycles. So the first um cycle you ended up going having to high. The first cycle before the having, right? Um from 2009 to 2012, your first sale of Bitcoin, it was only a single sale. I talk about this in the book. Um was $5 for 5,50 Bitcoin on PayPal. Someone paid for this thing called Bitcoin on PayPal for $5. I don't know if we've ever tracked that person down. Hopefully he still has it. But, uh, he bought it from Marty Malmi, who I call Satoshi's interns. That was the college kid from Finland that read the white paper, said, "Hey, I like what you're doing. Can I help you? I know how to build websites." And he did help him. He

ended up with over 50,000 Bitcoin. And according to him, he has none left because he spent 5,000 for $5. And then a few years later, he uh he was able to buy a an apartment in Helsinki for 50,000 Bitcoin. Obviously, he'd be extremely wealthy, be held on to the 50,000 Bitcoin. But that's the story of a lot of the early people, including the pizzas guys, right? Buyer and seller each claim they have no Bitcoin left. So, um anyway, so that's that's Bitcoin summer. And when the bubble pops, that is what I call Bitcoin fall. And so, Bitcoin fall is where you make all of your money if you're not going to be a hodler. by projecting or by properly um analyzing and predicting the first day and the last day of Bitcoin fall. That's

where you make all your money. Because if you just held on to uh Bitcoin since the first having $12, let's say you bought a,000 of them, $12,000 investment today is worth $79 million. Pretty good return. I don't know of anything in the stock market that would beat that, even Nvidia. But if you sold within 20% of the of the bubble top, so you were able to guess the first day of uh Bitcoin fall within 20% or dollar cost average and then bought within 20% of the bottom, you would have 60,000 Bitcoin, not 1,000 Bitcoin because you would have sold at $1,000, bought back at 250, sold at around $16,000, bought back at around 4,000. So literally the first couple of

uh the last few cycles you would have almost quadrupled each cycle your amount of Bitcoin and going forward I don't think it's going to be quadruple but I think it could be close to double the next two three cycles particularly if the super cycle effect kicks in. So we haven't had a 5year period of sustained uh growth but I think that um a super cycle can do it. I I'll finish with the season. So Bitcoin fall bitcoin spring and summer anyone can tell does not take a genius. You can tell Bitcoin spring with a calendar. It's 210,000 blocks. We know right now it's going to be either late March or early April of 2028. As it gets closer, you'll be able to pinpoint it almost at the hour. And you can tell Bitcoin summer with a calculator. Is it

$1 more than the old all-time high? That's a good time to buy, by the way, on the shortterm IRR. That's your best time to buy. It always explodes once it's the new alltime high. Four times out of four. And um actually five times out of five you include prior to the uh having. So basically you know that's that's the first uh three seasons. Winter is not what people call crypto winter which I think most people define as you're you're depressed because the price is lingering down there. But uh to me Bitcoin winter is the last day of Bitcoin fall. You've hit the bottom. You hit capitulation. You often don't know it is until it's proven that it's not.

And then that's actually the longest season. So if it ended up being July 1st, you know, we've got historically it's been about three years from the bottom to the top. In fact, the last three times have been almost exactly 35 months. Three out of three. So um we'll see if it's four and four. And uh if it is having the earliest the shortest um fall ever means that if it's it's 35 months we would pop the bubble in May of 2029 which would be the first time that it did not pop in the fourth quarter of the year after the having. And so there's your four seasons. You know one thing we've talked about a lot on this show is that crypto is quickly becoming a huge part of the global payments

infrastructure. And nowhere is that more obvious than in Asia. But if you're actually running a remittance company or a payment business, you know that the hard part isn't moving the stable coins. It's dealing with local banking partners, compliance, liquidity, and all of the operational headaches that come with sending money into places like India and Southeast Asia. That's why today's partner is Saber. They give payment companies stable coinpowered infrastructure to collect and make payouts across Asia without having to build all of that complexity themselves. They've already processed more than $3 billion in transactions across 40 different countries. So, this isn't just a concept. These guys are actually doing this for real. If you're building payment infrastructure or expanding into Asia, make sure you check out saber.Money. Michael, this may be the easiest interview I've ever done. I I think I asked one question. You just gave me the complete history lesson on

the the cycle thesis on Bitcoin. There's a lot in there. Um, a question that I did have about this. This is I guess what we're talking about for this episode. Um, but a lot of people have been saying that if the low for this four-year cycle does get confirmed as being in, as you said, end of June, beginning of July, then that would mean that the the four-ear cycle thesis on Bitcoin has shifted and that if the low doesn't come in October, that something has changed. How do you think about that idea? Where does that fit into how you interpret these things? >> I don't think it breaks the four-year cycle because there never was a four-year cycle. I mean, you can say it was broken in 2016 when um you know, we ended up having uh a 43month cycle because of mining disruption in China

and it took a while for them to get reestablished in Texas. So, it's historically been about 47 months um for from like having to having and it looks like this next time it was April 20th and now they're talking late March, early uh April. So, the having cycle itself is what you're talking about. And then the behaviors, you know, there's a little flexibility around them. For me, it's not broken as long as my four seasons still interact within that. In other words, um I would say it would be broken if you had a screaming all-time high the day of the having, right? And then then then it would have accelerated and started decoupling from the behavior of the scarcity, which that's what drives this is, you know, I get frustrated when I'm and I've been

constantly on panels. I was talking about this and debating people in Hong Kong and Miami and every you know major conference Bitcoin conferences consensus everything the opposite side says well no it's all institutions now these things are meaningless or the the the argument they give another argument they give is that um you know it's so low inflation that it's meaningless well I'll answer the second question first it's not meaningless because you don't go and say the 0.8% 8% annual inflation is meaningless next to the 0.4% after the next having. You don't compare them to each other. You compare them to demand. Right? And if the demand keeps going up and the supply gets cut, new

supply gets cut in half. You know that that that is um that is what causes supply shock. And so to me, supply shock is what kicks off a super cycle. And um we've had supply shock a couple of times in Bitcoin, but never enough to go and disrupt the um diminishing returns. So my definition of super cycle, but Bitcoin super cycle is it's triggered by supply shock and it lasts at least two cycles. Doesn't mean that you don't have a a crash in between the two cycle highs, but it's lower than it would have been without it. So if you look right now at uh you know kind of the way that I read um diminishing returns and

diminishing losses which is obvious that there have been some but if you look at the numbers let's include the first cycle first sale of Bitcoin you know single sale for a tenth of a penny. Somebody tried to do a quarter of a penny later and and got rejected. So it was considered a fair market price at the time. It's like what do you use this thing for? What can you buy it from? you can just, you know, go and gamble on uh Satoshi dice. That's about it. What's it worth? Well, someday you'll be able to buy a cheeseburger with it. Not now. Not in 29, 2009. Barely in 2010. And so, um, from the bottom to the top was 3,000x onetenth of a cent to $30 when you had that magnificent pump from about $2 up to

$30. And it rapidly corrected. Did not take a year. It took like a couple weeks because we didn't have a havinging involved. We just simply had excessive frenzy over a Gizmodo article um that basically said, "Hey, there's this new thing you can buy drugs with on Silk Road. Might be big." And then it got um on, you know, slash dot and a lot of techies were it. It got forwarded around and people like go, I better go and buy some of this if you can buy drugs on it and it's secretive. And um you know the supply was so small and the only exchange in the world was Mount Gaus at that point that it did explode the value and then it crashed when Mount Gaus couldn't handle the volume and it was taking people a while. Mount Gox did not crash in 2010. It crashed a few years

later but people thought it did and um so that was some of the early pains of of Bitcoin. So that was 3,000x and then a 97% drop. After the first havinging, you then had a 100x $12 to,200 and then an 85% drop to 171. One having later, you had a 30x uh runup. 30x in any other asset class would be coming would be considered insane, right? Imagine if gold went up 30x in the next year. Goes from $4,000 to what that be 120,000. I mean that's a global what Bitcoin did in 2017 in plain sight of everybody who I mean that had pretty much heard of Bitcoin because you know they got very famous in 2013 then I got famous again

in 2017 and in 2021 and you know it frustrates me that the mainstream media doesn't put these things together and really recognize the cycle behavior. Every four years you have a bull market and uh you know and then and then a year later you have a bare market. The bull market has always been the year after the presidential elections and the bare market's always been during the midterms. And I think that Satoshi planned it that way. Um, you know, I mean, it's not an accident, I believe, that, you know, he picked, you know, sort of the havingings to occur logically, you know, presuming the the the mining accuracy in, you know, 2012, 16, 20, 24, 28. I think that when you have mining get out of the presidential

election years then you might have a change at that point you might have a change and institutional where that's come in to answer the first question is that I think that you ended up having a dampening it's not like you know uh you know Matt Hogen from Bitwise said oh it's all institutions here the the the the whales are out they're irrelevant they're not they still own the majority of the coins but uh I think institutional is like maybe 15% if you include corporations it's only I think about 7% for ETFs last I checked and about you know maybe 6% for dance most of that micro strategy so you know with uh less than 20% being institutions and 80% still being gez um

you know we're certainly not at the uh place where institutions control everything however um I would say that the way that the um ETFs work where it's not trading on chain and you're not buying Bitcoin, you're buying a claim on Bitcoin, which you know, if there's a great uh you know, kind of reset, you're not going to get your Bitcoin back. I mean, Obama said in 2008 during that crisis that or 09 that um you know, we're never going to do a bailout again. We're going to do a bail in. It's banks problem like take their assets and uh deal with it. And so there's a very good chance that the ETFs would under that kind of directive.

Governments do funny things during big crisis, you know, like seize gold and uh decouple the dollar that from gold has been forever. Um so next time they might allow uh ETFs and banks to uh sort of just um um you know, nationalize or corporate corporatize or make part of their own assets during a bankruptcy your Bitcoin that they're holding and you just have a claim on it. And so that's that's the risk on the ETS. >> Yeah. >> But anyway, what I was going to say is that >> Yeah, I was just trying to get to the the point of of like if if we've made a low >> Yeah, go ahead.

>> Yeah, but the point that was an aside. I agree. So the point of it was that um because a lot of the tra uh the trading is not on chain. that I think is a fundamental reason why we had an earlier bottom is because one of the things that is has one of the things that was every single cycle and did not happen this time was the the CVDD the coin value days destroyed which is an onchain index that was supposed to be around 43 44,000 um to to to mark the end and I think that because a lot of the trading was not on chain that kind of masked it.

>> Okay, I see. Okay, so uh what does that mean? If we've if we've made a low in summer and everyone was expecting a low in fall, how does that change how you think about these four-year cycles or does it not change it? >> I think that it's likely to go and shift them. And the question is how long will it will it repeat or is it a onetime phenomenon? In 2016, mining disruption moved us up um from a 47mon cycle to 43 and it never repeated or at least it hasn't since. So um you know, we will probably keep the mining let's presume.

In fact, if anything, the mining is slowing down. So, it might actually be a 48-month cycle between 2028 and 2032. And who knows, maybe it'll be a 49month cycle at some point. So, um if you look at it staying in the presidential year for the next 3 four cycles, um you would basically but you look at institutions having a bigger influence and that if and it's not a it's not a complete 100%. If that means that you end up having uh a bottom happen earlier because of it, then yes, that would end up uh meaning that you had a shorter um period to have Bitcoin summer.

>> Does that mean that you think we're going to see Bitcoin back over 100K by by the end of this year and sort of like pull forward the bull run that we've traditionally had or or how do you think about that going into the end of 2026? >> I don't think we're going to see 100k by the end of this year. Uh if you're a firm believer, you should go to Poly Market because I think it's currently at 1%. Um which is probably a good bet just for a yolo bet. Um but no, I I really see us going sideways for the next couple months and uh having a risk of a of retracing at least part of this rally. I don't think we're going to retrace it all the way to a lower low again unless there's a a big macro shock and particularly a crypto macro shock.

So 20% chance we do get a new low. Um but 80% chance, you know, we don't. But that doesn't mean we're not going to retrace. I think that we're going to probably most likely kind of go back and flirt with the 70K, maybe go down to the 60s. That of course will put fear back into the market. And uh it depends what happens uh macro- wise during that. If if you know when uh you know clarity gets rejected, that might uh you know be a bad thing. if it got accepted that would be a good thing. So there are a couple of things that uh you know bad news tends to as I mentioned in my book I call my news paradigm um news relativity paradigm

uh is that bad bad news gets accentuated during a bad market and good news is ignored and the reverse happens in a bull market and so we're still so tender and fresh coming out of the bare market. Chartwise we're not out of it yet. we still need to close, you know, sort of a week above about, you know, 795, I think it is. Um, and we haven't, you know, so that's when we sort of are confirmed to be in the bull market. We're awful close. >> What do you expect to happen in the altcoin market towards the end of 2026 here? Because obviously, you've talked a lot about and done a lot of research and and study on Bitcoin cycles, but altcoins behave much differently and they don't quite follow these kind of

clear patterns like this. Um but they have been outperforming in this recent short squeeze here. What do you expect to see in the altcoin space through the rest of 2026? >> Well, of course, all altcoins are not created equally. Otherwise, uh my bags from 2018 would be mooning and they're not, you know. Now, altcoins um have their own cycles. They are, you know, at least fundamentally related to the Bitcoin cycles, but sometimes they they they kind of uh represent a um sort of a um a movement, right? So somebody makes money in a Bitcoin pump where it stays flat and you see certain category altcoins move like privacy coins this year. And so typically if you're going to go and play a percentage of your portfolio and I usually encourage people even if they're experts not to not to

spend more than like you know 30 30% of their crypto portfolio on alts. Um unless I mean unless they're like you know full-time and like running a fund or whatever. But uh I mean look, I've been in the industry a long time and I still like you know don't get altcoins right. I mean I try I still you know have a small part of an altcoin portfolio. I'm in a couple of funds that that are altcoin uh related. Um, you know, I've got a fund of funds uh called Puma Capital that uh that I'm a chairman of that uh that you know looks for the new things and and uh I'm a I'm with a Sigma Capital that's a general partner there that's looking for the next Sooie.

Um but um you know it's it's something where you know it's it's every cycle has had different. If you went and basically sold at the top and bought back at the bottom in Bitcoin, you'd be up every time because there's always a brand new alltime high. The only altcoin that is really sort of a major one has had a new alltime high every time is Binance BNB. That's the only one of the the top coins. Uh even ethereum of course famously was 4,800 you know two cycles ago and only got up to 4,000 this past cycle and if you judge it in Bitcoin instead of dollars it's way underperforming. So um you know I think that it's all about narrative you know

so if you were to make money by selling at the top and buying back at the bottom you have to switch coins. So if you were you know and I I I know at least one investor who's been amazing at this. It's pretty much this full-time job is just analyzing altcoins with a with a team. And so if you were able to go in the way you would have made like even better money in Bitcoin for this part of your portfolio would be you go in and like okay you sold all your ICO coins and you came back a year later with the cash and you basically said what's going to pump this next time and you would have said DeFi, NFTts, metaverse, who knew, right? It wouldn't have been just random ICO coins. Um, and then when that bubble popped, you'd have to go sell

that and you would have gotten clobbered. If you put it back into uh you NFT related things uh at the bottom of the next market, it would have been, you know, the next narrative which was like AI, RWA, and Dexus. Okay, we're now at the bottom uh in the start of the next altcoin cycle. And memes of course are just every cycle they tend to pump and then be pronounced dead. I thought, you know, that by and large they were gonna have a long time to recover from uh what happened with uh you know, the liquidity being pulled out with the Trump coin and Melaniacoin and you know what happened with um the Malay coin, etc. And yet here we go. I mean, the number one gainer today is um um uh is is a memecoin uh like useless coin. It's

called useless. >> Oh yeah. >> Yeah. >> It's a top 100 coin now. It's like up exponentially since it launched. And uh you know, go figure. I mean, the I guess there's Sparkcoin maximalists out there. >> All right, I have a very specific ask for you guys. Somebody listening to this knows the person running marketing at a crypto or AI company that should be advertising with Milk Road. We reach more than half a million investors across everything we do, and Q4 is filling up. So, don't be the brand that waited too long. And the cool part about sponsoring the show is this episode is still going to be getting plays months from now. So send this to them, look like a genius, and tell them to go to milkroad.com/sponsor.

>> Yeah. Well, hot air rises. Um, Michael, I I think we we've used up our time here, but I think this has been a really great episode just as a refresher on a lot of the the history of Bitcoin, the cycles, the seasons, um, and just how to think about this because it's, you know, a good time to be checking in as we turn cycles and as we see these major market events, um, happening and hopefully the bottom getting confirmed here. Um, Michael, where can we send people to find more of you and your work online? >> Sure. So, I'm at Michael Turpin on uh X and other platforms, LinkedIn, um Instagram. Uh but X is a really good place and LinkedIn. Um Transform Ventures is my website. It shows all the various things that I'm doing. I've been incubating some things. I've actually got a new Aentic AI platform I'm getting

ready to launch uh in a couple of weeks. And uh also um my fund is Bitcoin Super Cycle Fund. And there's some information that's for credit investors only. and uh some information uh on the uh the site there about that and um yeah so um um and just you know Michael transform ventures.io is an email. >> Michael, thank you so much for being on the Milk Road Show. I hope we can catch up again soon. >> Me too. >> And thank you all for joining us. I hope you all learned something today. There's a lot in this one. So if you need a history lesson on Bitcoin, this is a good place to start. But until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish, and we will see you all on the next episode of the Milkro Show. Thanks for being here, everyone. Bye. Thanks

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