Is the Crypto Bull Market Back? with Up Only's Ledger

Transcript

Bank list Nation special episode for you today is the crypto bull market back that is the question on my mind on David's mind probably on your mind Bank list listener and we have the person uh who I think is best at answering this question up only's Ledger Ledger is back on the podcast one of our favorite Market commentators and that is the question we are going to ask David are we back baby I don't know yet what do you think yeah that that is certainly the question and I'm pretty well convinced that Ledger's gonna come on in a quick second and tell us unequivocally that we are 100% back it's totally on the bull Market's 100% confirmed it's time to allocate I'm just absolutely positive that that's going to be the

answer but without putting wood in his m M I'll wait for him to to actually be asked the question here in a second okay well we're going to get right to that in just a minute but we want to give a shout out to our friends and sponsors over at Doppel okay Doppel is who you call when you want to fish the Fishers when you want to squash all the Fishers out there that are coming for your community so David do Who you gonna call call DPP Doppel yeah so I mean me Ryan many other people definitely have some fake accounts that have been spun up attempting to fish you uh there have been people who have been on the receiving ends to be clear they're impersonating us they're not actually us on the other side they're not they spell their names like us they use our profile

pictures like us they attempt to copy our tweets but they're not us uh Doppel helps protect you uh and really this entire industry uh against all of the fishing scams and surface area for risk of you losing your assets that exist out there uh so if you have impersonators or you need other additional like layers of protection as you navigate the crypto space Doppel is for you there is a link in the show notes to get started with Doppel who are you going to call am I allowed to rip off of that copyright I don't know but call Doppel yeah what they do is they they play wacka with all the Fishers and do take Downs get their websites taken down is really the most effective method bankless is a user of Doppel so go sign up dopp.kit pumping was there a cause for

this that's top of mind for me um are we ready for up only bull market or is this just a kind of a you know are we getting much a do about nothing yeah I I also want to ask Ledger what charts he's paying attention to now what are some of the key signals he's taking a look at and also um maybe we should bring up macro I mean does that factor in there's Wars going on the macro is very uncertain at this point of time but does any of that even matter and then we've got 2024 which is the year of the Bitcoin happening it's also an election year for the US does that factor into into this these are some of my questions uh for Ledger after after the break uh what else we got yeah there's just been some sentiment shifts out of some uh

smaller cap coins smaller cap compared to bitcoin and ether uh both soul and Link have broken out of their like 18month long bare Market ranges um there's a lot of arguments to be made that sentiment has shifted um I am someone who definitely feels that uh I am kind of personally a Weather Vein when it comes to sentiment so I need somebody like uh Brian to ledger to give me permission to be uncategorically bullish which I'm sure like I said is he's totally about to give me David I don't know about that he might not he might be putting the breakes easing on the breakes on all this I don't believe it well we'll have to ask him we'll find out more when we come back with Ledger

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just starting out join thousands of traders who trust Kraken Pro for their crypto trading needs visit pro. kraken.com to get started today cell is the mobile first evm compatible carbon negative blockchain built for the real world and now something big is happening introducing the cell layer 2 it's a game-changing proposal that's going to bring cell's rapidly growing ecosystem home to ethereum vitalic has shared its excitement for the cell layer 2 on the cell Forum so has Ben Jones from optimism but why the cell layer 2 will bring huge advantages like a decentralized sequencer offchain data availability and one block finality what does all that mean Rock Solid security a trustless bridge to ethereum and more real world use cases for ethereum without compromise and Real World

Adoption is happening active addresses on cell have grown over 500% in the last 6 months with the cello layer 2 gas fees will stay low and you can even pay for gas using erc20 tokens but cell is a community government protocol this means that c needs you to weigh in and make your voice heard join the conversation in the cell Forum follow sorg on Twitter and visit c.org to shape the future of ethereum bankless nation I'm so excited to reintroduce you to up only's Ledger uh I've been listening to Ledger and his Market commentary for years now uh at least at least three uh ever since my POV crypto days way back when uh Ledger has seen a thing or two when it comes to

Market Cycles been not his first rodeo maybe not his second uh Ledger welcome back to Bist hey thanks for having me yeah I guess um should we be starting a new cycle now this will be my third go round on a crypto cycle dude are you feeling old man third old for a while wow I don't know if I'm ready for another one I I guess that's the main question for today is is that what we've just entered into is this like a a new bull cycle that's been on is the bull market back right it's back right right right Brian uh yeah some some things are back I don't know about your bags um but there's there's reason for optimism in the market right now for

sure um I think that there's it's complicated it's more this is more complicated than it's ever been in terms of like what role does crypto play in broader markets oh so it's not Bing Harry it's not yes or no we actually have to talk about this but there you know some things that have been part of what we we discuss every time that we talk um would tell you we are in a bull market so when you look at the technicals for Bitcoin in particular um we are in a bull market like by definition um that said you know we haven't obviously breached all-time highs and I'm not saying like wait until there is a new alltime high to buy but you know we haven't hit easy mode yet

you there's a lot of uh a lot of stuff to churn through in order to to get to that kind of price exploration territory um we don't know what price exploration would look like in today's market what kind of baggage does that draw with it if Bitcoin makes an all-time high do we have you know a thousand shitcoins that try to follow on and what does that do in terms of spreading out liquidity obviously we had a lot of rehypothecation of Bitcoin in the last cycle through um what looks to be pretty clear fraud now um and and so like you start taking some of that out you increase passive flows through the ETF like there's some real interesting stuff that could happen and so far we're seeing serious strength in Bitcoin um a pretty

serious breakdown on the eth BTC pair um some alts are following along with Bitcoin and outperforming salana has been doing really well and some others as well but on the whole they're not the meme coins aren't really following along so like this makes for really interesting uh fairly convincing early Market cycle stuff um but doesn't mean you just like buy every jpeg buy every altcoin like go all in across the Spectrum and you're just you know gonna make it like I I think you can still make pretty bad decisions right now and but if you're if you're in solid stuff if you're letting Bitcoin do Bitcoin things then um you have an

opportunity for a solid reward but you know bitcoin's not I don't I don't if Bitcoin 100x is we got bigger problems in the world um so like if you're looking for 100x returns like I don't think that's what this moment is about you know we're trying to establish a baseline for what is recovery and strength look like so happy to walk through some charts for that and uh yeah we're we're back in a way just don't get out over your skis too much you know like I wouldn't be going 100x long anywhere um at any time but you know that's not I don't think that's the market that we're in right now yeah putting on a more serious hat um the what I've noticed uh is as bull

market posting on Twitter went from having no engagement to having like a hundred times more engagement and this is just one signal of amount that of many of what it would take to incur some sort of just like change in the vibe change in the sentiment uh now like change in sentiment is just dubious because the prices could nuke 10% like tomorrow and all of a sudden that sentiment change would be out the window and then this show would be for nothing um but like I am trying to navigate like at some point markets are just exhausted being bearish when you're bearish for two years in a row at some point be people's bare Market fuel runs out and all of a sudden that is itself a

catalyst and amongst many other actual fundamental cat fundamental uh Catalyst like a a Bitcoin ETF uh or you know any of the other like Catalyst that are moving the lower coins um bullishness doeses beget bullishness and I think we'll really only be able to kind of CH judge this week in hindsight uh but I do think that there is a case to be made an argument to be made that like that errant coin Telegraph tweet of the approval of the spot Bitcoin ETF showed that a lot of people were actually off sides on that trade and now they are getting on sides and all of a sudden Bitcoin is breaking above $30,000 and then the short squeeze happens to $34,000 that's enough that's like a lot of ammo to trigger bullishness which

itself is another Catalyst uh and so again like I said a negative 10% candle could just nuke all of that and change the sentiment but to me there seems to be like a lot of aligning of the Stars whether that's enough to kick off an entire bull market TBD but I think we would be able to look back on this week specifically in history potentially and say like oh yeah that's that is when it would start how do you feel about that David really wants to be bullish right now I really want to be bullish I'm really done being can you give him permission to bullish yeah I'll show you a little bit about um you know your your evidence for for bullishness um so I just pulled up a a Bitcoin weekly chart and we've talked about this a good bit but just using the 200 week moving

average as a barometer of bullishness or bearishness or potential support now this is the first time um in bitcoin's history where the 200 week um was not not basically just end of bare Market support you know it's it's been such a young asset that previous Market cycle bare Market bottoms were above that 200 week back in 2015 again in 2018 even CO's 202020 or I'm sorry 2020 bottom um the 200 week was support and we spent a significant amount of time under it and then hovering basically at it kind of walking that 200 week uh once we um you

know got back to it from the bottom um and you're talking about is the bull market back but the bottom was no a year ago like that's hard to believe but the the bottom we're coming up on November and um so we we've we've been off the bottom for a year and the question is you know is this a breakout a break up and we're going to go into kind of that prior range uh that Bitcoin spent a significant portion of the last bull market like it really that that bull market was hottest when Bitcoin was not really making new all-time highs if y'all remember that you know local bottom in June July

2021 and then topped in November 2021 it was a it was an underperformer in that period even though it went from you know 30k to back to 69 I think um but other stuff did way way better it had the meat of its move after defi Summer and the fall of 2020 uh time period and then starting in January 2021 when Bitcoin went to 30k for the first time it kind of you know sputtered relative to the rest of the market the rest of the market did very very well and we had a very strange cycle where alts outperformed for a very long time

and that's what I don't know is going to happen again here like could we have could we be starting something like what we saw in the fall of 2020 where you did have this flight to Quality Larry thinkink called Bitcoin that recently in in reference to Global markets and in that scenario we had this crazy microcosm you know of defi summer stuff and then a bunch of money flowed into Bitcoin and as the seasonality kicked in I'm I've become a pretty big believer seasonality with Bitcoin whether it's the havingsex cut off time frames like end ofe stuff um so could we have a run over the course of November and December

that's like the ETF run for Bitcoin uh I absolutely think that could happen and then you might see flows in the New Year where they kind of trickle down into other things maybe that's when ebtc bottoms maybe that's when Ethan salana and you know some of the some of the survivors of the bare Market really start to pop pop off should we continue to see you know Bitcoin progress here um and that you brought up Ryan the role of crypto in macro like it's kind of hard to operate completely in a vacuum if the world blows up you know we go to World War III like alts aren't going to run you know I don't really know what Bitcoin does I've I've talked about in the past how I think Bitcoin is a bit of a chaos asset so it's kind of hard to

Peg like or is it going to do the same thing as gold is it going to do the same thing as risk on stocks it's it's it's been weird um over over history um so Bitcoin May perform well in the in a world chaos environment or maybe Bitcoin and some other things are starting to do well not just because of ETF news but also what if rates are topping you know um who it was Bill Amman that talked about closing their uh short on bonds and um if if rates are peaking then you may see see Bitcoin and gold do very well together um because you know rates rates at high levels are going to have a

hard create challenges for unyielding assets um and so as as you don't have as much uh conviction and and yield continuing to improve through um you know treasuries and whatnot then you start looking at hard money or if you think we're going to start printing money or we're going to have deflation or whatever um there's there's a chance that that's going to have a big impact and we could see this kind of magic sauce for for Bitcoin to do a thing at the same time ETF markets are coming online and I could imagine a world where we get significantly higher moves from here but don't ignore the fact if I put some

drawings on here like we're we're churning through what in my mind was pretty serious resistance you know it was resistance twice it was support in the bull market um and so this is a pretty clean breakout that that 32 33k range um but where does this exactly fizzle out I don't know I think a pretty aggressive uh spot would be like high 40s that kind of 47k where we broke down from um back in March of 2022 and that was when it was so over right like it's just red it's like back to the back to that because we had just week after week after week of punishment at that time and FTX

didn't technically all the way fail until November of 2020 and that marked the bottom you know that that FTX failure in November 2022 was literally the bottom um and so you start to put some of these in context and that that gets interesting you know you can do some other stuff I don't I'm not intending to just draw endlessly here but like if you're saying let's do FIB retracements you know that kind of thing from uh the all-time high to the to the bare Market low um your 50% retracement would be around 41k your 618 though is right at that same red line I'm going to zoom into this a little bit so that people can see and I apologize this is there's a lot going on here right now wor but a 618

retracement of that move puts you at the same place as that Weekly level at 47 um I think if we get there in the 40K something like 40K range I I do think we'll see some um some resistance there I think it's a little premature to say like okay well you know ETFs here we had two green weeks and we're just gonna Moon and like never stop 100K here we come let's go I'm buying calls you know and I'm and it's G to go ballistic I think that's it's premature for that like you can it's okay to to take your time build a base um climb a wall of worry if you

will like if you look back at you know crypto's bull market um from the 2015 bottom 2016 was a great year but it wasn't like insta Moon you know we really made the biggest push in 2017 that was when you have your price exploration we haven't done any of that stuff here um so we might just you know take our time it might take a year from now to reach all-time highs like if you're just saying all-time Highs are imminent I think you're stupid to be honest um but to say hey yet again the having cycle in you know April or May or whatever and that that creates this um Supply constraint on bitcoin you you

know you're we've continued to see um a lot of mining capacity come on to the network you know these things have happened before and they've tended to be uh fundamentally bullish things for Bitcoin um and and we could see that again where over the course of the next year you like climb that wall of worry and a year from now we might be making new like starting to make new alltime Highs but to expect them immediately I think is a bit premature okay a few a few things I want to you know say number one if you are listening on the podcast okay um you're getting some benefit to get maximum benefit we are looking at a whole bunch of charts and so what you need to do is go click the YouTube link and actually view this so you can see

what David Ledger and I are witnessing on this episode where all the charts are happening that's the first thing I'll say um the the second thing I'll say and I'll just make this very obvious is you said the bottom was about a year ago so November of last year I don't I I think some people are not aware that um like of that emphatic call that there has been a bottom like the if you say there's a bottom that means the bare Market is over like we're not going to bottom again and so it is up from here at least up from the bottom now however long that takes whether it takes you know the climbing the wall of worry in all of 2024 we're not are are you saying that you don't think we'll go back to

November uh 2022 bottoms Ledger are you pretty like conclusive about that at least sure I mean you can't say it wasn't a bottom when you're up 127% from that bottom you know like that's a pretty big bounce um if we go like full full recession in the US um which is definitely possible like that's part of what Bill amman's point was was he just sees deflationary pressure in the US like that could take this whole this that could make this take longer yet um in response to that though the US will do what it does best and print money and I think that'll I I I just think that you have a lot of demand for

Bitcoin in the 20K world and so like making a yeah going sub 15 sub 16k I think is highly unlikely I think you'll have a lot of buyers of Bitcoin um well before you get there I think what I'd be watching for is what does it look like if we do retest that 200 week retest the the range lows you know like in the sub 25 27k that kind of stuff um could you do 42 to 47 and then back to 27 you know like that's pretty painful too and that's what I think if you're a trying to be a Savvy investor like what you

might want to be prepared for is what do you do in those scenarios and it's less important what route does it take versus what do you do like are you seeking to take profit like are you hitting maybe long-term capital gains because you did buy over the course of the last year and if we get into the 40ks 40K something like that you feel like you have an acceptable return or are you ride or ride or die and you know you just plan to uh add to your position if we if we run back sub 30k after that and having a plan for yourself I think is important and then when you might you know go pedal the metal a little bit it would be

all right well what do I do in the case of new price exploration like we make new all-time highs we go above 70k what does that look like for me and where do I where do I where do I make these like bigger bull market targets barring that we have a lot of prices where Bitcoin has existed over the past couple of years below where we are and a lot of prices where Bitcoin has existed over the past couple years above where we are and honestly you're people that thrive in that kind of environment or your what you call your like levelto level Traders you know you think of the way like some friends of mine like Don and cred an analyze markets they're just going to look at where is weekly resistance where is weekly support and they may make some intermediate trades and then also have

this kind of like underlying bullish thesis of I want to have core exposure to crypto but specifically to bitcoin like I mean I like jpegs as much as David who's got one sitting there in the background of his of his um office there but like it may not be the best time to go buy jpegs you know like I don't think we're in that froth level of Market where you know you buy buy some new Mint or even like blue chips punks or whatever and you know I think a punk is like 45 eth still it's kind of been in that sub 50 eth range for a while and it might stay there for a while like I think expecting you know uh nfts to Triple or quadruple in eth relative

terms is probably asking a little too much of this Market I think asking eth itself like what is it going to do there eth has gotten punished lately and that's why when you're asking if we're back I'm like uh you know eth BTC looks pretty bad you know all three of us like eth but that that looks pretty bad that same 200 week moving average that I was talking about with Bitcoin um eth relative to bitcoin is losing that same moving average right now and so you have to acknowledge what might my what might the lows look like and saying 0.04 to you know 0.43 it's not out of the realm of possibility the ratio you're talking about eth Bitcoin ratio you're talking

about right now yeah eth relative to bitcoin um now I actually don't mind the eth chart in USD terms but it's just a No Man's Land I'm sitting here looking at it with the 20we moving average 200 we moving average in the same range that it's been in for two years no real sign of of a positive breakout at the same time that Bitcoin is having that positive breakout so maybe it'll have a short-term follow and and we'll it'll try to bounce off this eth BTC ratio of 05 0525 whatever it's at right now um but it kind of it needs to save this level without basically going to jail like 0 sub 0.05 on the on the ratio so

you know if you're allocating some percentage to e some percentage to BTC might again want to know what do you want to do in that scenario because what's a bummer is you know if you're not allocated at all to to bitcoin and it goes to 40 K 47k and eth is at 1700 or 18800 still in that scenario like that's pretty painful that's a painful trade so what are you going to capitulate um once once it h you know Bitcoin gets to 50K or something 45k and you're like oh crap I'm so screwed I'm selling my eth for Bitcoin and that's the eth BTC bottom you know like you can still lose in a bull market we've seen it a lot so

knowing what you're going to do and how you're going to respond and how you're going to allocate is just as important important is are we are we done going down two data points around this that I want to bring up is um the spot Bitcoin ETF approval which everyone is anticipating this recent price action in Bitcoin might just be the front running of that I think that's the left curve take to that's pretty simple uh so that's data point number one data point number two is that if this is a bull market a return of the bull market um a return of bullish sentiment Bitcoin has always front ran e and has always front ran the market uh I I think that's true uh I mean you've you've been around the Cycles a few more times than me and been looking at the charts uh that is the way

that historically bull markets have started it's the way this is supposed to happen yeah this is the way that it goes yeah but you have to you have to understand where you are in that and what like how how you're positioned um and you know as an eth enjoyer we're going to look at ultrasound money and find out like are we are is eth deflationary are we burning eth are people using that's that's that's narrative fuel like narrative fuel but and compare it to bitcoin like we're comparing that we're comparing that to the Bitcoin having is my point like you know it's what's happening to the supply and what are what are we facing I think that's a reasonable thing to to look at do do you think the actual momentary inflation of eth on it's like 30-day

time frame even though that it is still significantly less inflationary than Bitcoin that the narrative is is part the negative narrative that ether is inflating is actually showing up in the charts no I don't think it's real I think that in most markets um a good a good bit of ethereum gets burned and you know it continues to be a pretty severe deflationary shock and I'm still a believer that L2 transaction volume will end up accruing a lot of value to the L1 and I don't think layer 2 activity is bearish for eth um and I agree I think like you Bitcoin needs a little room to shine like it's

been a while you know yeah I mean I I guess I would just say as an eth bull like this is what I expected this is exactly what I expected right this is how this is how the bull market always begins you you talked about 2016 right first Bitcoin had its run and then kind of the alts followed Then ethereum followed among some others right I will say I did not expect the eth BTC ratio to fall back down to the levels in which the three ARS capital was getting liquidated and they were dumping their Stak Market that it is wow I did not expect to naturally return there that's why I don't ever trade or rarely look at the ratio but like I I King Bitcoin has to have its run to make a bull market actually official and you know um that's

the way it happened in 2020 as well so Bitcoin had its run do you remember do you remember that 2020 run where there was like um some doubt as to whether ether was even a necessary asset you just Bitcoin and you've got the entire Market ether is not even valuable in this and then of course eth followed up with a with a Monster Run of its own before other alternative layer ones kind of had their run is that just the base case of how this plays out is a flat circle yeah like this is not hard right we just do this same thing every four years and now it's beginning and so you know maybe this is 20 uh 15 going into 2016 maybe or maybe this is 2019 going into 2020 this is always what happens right so is

this just the I had that same worry in 2020 I was like surely it can't be this easy that on a four year on a foure cycle we just do the thing again and now here we are like four years later and I'm like surely it can't be this easy that on a four year still say that anymore or now that you're doing the is this the third time are you just like oh that's how it's going to play out and you're just no I think that's extremely dangerous thinking like just to yeah I think the the history I think it's dangerous to bet against that like sanly am willing to I'm I simultaneously am willing to bet on it and think surely this is too easy like that's exactly what I thought last bull market my first bull Mark uh first bare Market I got

into crypto like halfway through the bull market of 2017 and then throughout 2018 through 2020 everyone was like foure Cycles it's going to do it all over again uh there's going to be another cycle and I'm like if everyone's saying there's going to be another cycle then that means there's not going to be another cycle that's just not how markets work and then the same exact thing played out to a T and now this time I'm like until proven otherwise foure Cycles until the pattern breaks four year cycles and maybe that does there there is like a seasonality component that's very important there and I wonder if and this is me just speculating I don't know I'm going to bet on it too like I'm actively betting on it but I I wonder if the magnitude of

this cycle is where you end up getting tripped up right like what if we go to 70k and then we struggle and we go all the way through the having there you know what I mean and like we and the the the cycle that was promised it's like we were we were supposed to be at 250 this time sailor is supposed to be like the richest guy on the planet and it everything you know wag me and instead we're like we we 2X and and then we lost money because we were expecting this massive you know price exploration period that we didn't get and then you know oops like alts didn't follow or you know whatever like there's ways to lose and maybe that's what happens is we just

it's a little more lackluster um if you want to go way back and this is going to be super Boomer material but like if you look at the um the the run in the NASDAQ the the NASDAQ the the the tech bubble of 01 popped the popped the NASDAQ the' 08 cycle where the S&P made new highs and looked great and whatever well the NASDAQ didn't it never got back to its prior all-time highs the NASDAQ didn't break the prior all-time high for 16 years wow it took from two the you know the tech bubble in 2000 which I I

mean honestly I think you can compare I think 2021 was bigger than 2020 2017 in terms of like just dollars in and you I think you can compare it and it it might take longer than we think it took 16 years for the tech bubble to be breached and then we saw what happened is you know I'm looking at a log chart right now but in linear this was a huge move from 2016 to 20121 um for the NASDAQ 100 and the largest tech companies in the world they were all left for dead and underperformers for a very long time we went through the Great Recession it had not gone back to its all-time highs and then it basically went back and retested the lows and then it was you know two

April 2009 was The Best Time Ever to invest in Tech but it took a long time that was a big that was a talk about a wall of worry like it took a really long time for that trade to play out so the magnitude of the recovery could have easily been underestimated in that process because there were many trades that were better than Tech I actually kind of wonder if maybe some subset of crypto assets might play out similar to kind of NASDAQ chart like if you just take defi tokens right M Ian there's nothing nothing saying that's on a four-year cycle and that kind of follows um Bitcoin or even follows ether right it could take a long time for defi tokens as an asset class to uh to recover I don't disagree yeah yeah we're gonna are you pulling us some defi

tokens because link link is link is an exception I think there are some worse defi tokens you could look at I know oh there's definitely way worse but this is something to be excited about I'm looking at a monthly chart I'm going to switch it to weekly but like this is a multi-year the link chart Now link USD yeah link link and I don't own any link but I will acknowledge I own some other stuff that's doing similar but I'm not I'm trying to not be biased here and show my bags but may may 2022 um is when it kind of started this range and it just broke out of that and that's really interesting now that's a that is a a pain trade right there like that that range that link was in and some of this other coins were doing very well but

link didn't do like it just kind of stayed right where it was it basically looks like a volatile stable coin um but last week last week it it broke out of that um and it not a little bit like that is big old candle yeah it's a big candle and I don't know what that means but I'm interested in it like I'm really interested in if this and some other stuff can break long two year ranges and then what do they do because weal I just showed you some charts about how long it took for some stuff to be able to to break out and do something Link's not to all-time highs and you know same if you look at some others and there there's a

lot of variation like uni has not done very well but link has done well a has done well and you know like it's even what's when you look at like link a and some of the ones that have done well versus some of the ones that have not done well what do you think the difference is I literally have no idea like I can't I'm this is where like I'm not as smart as I think a lot of your audience in regards open up a and then because you said a is doing well and then uni is not doing well so okay so this is like a hasn't had the breakout that link has had but it has had a breakout and accept it looks really good like it it does look strong like a potential pre- breakout potentially token yeah but then you go look at um

and synthetics is another one that's like not still in no man's land but it's not it's not dying um my left curve take on is dying yeah uni looks really bad it's at the bottom of the range while those others are at the top of the range you know I isn't the easiest fundamentals explanation of this that like bearish like governance tokens bullish tokens that have actual like value acrel cash flow token which does have which a does have and Link does have in the form of kind of you know you you have to stake your link maybe so I don't know I don't I really don't know I just I know that I'm I've SE I've started to see some of these patterns develop over the course of years right like and when you then see stuff

breaking those patterns I'm not going to ignore that um and I'm pretty interested in it and I don't I don't know you know which all are the the right defi coins to look at I'm mostly I'm mostly showing some you know Boomer defi right like um makers another one that's uh maker actually is the first one to go right like wow yeah it looks I mean I haven't looked at maker those other ones if maker was at the same place as say a it would be worth $900 right now right but it's worth 1480 1500 it went to 1600 this week um again I'll point out a cash flowing kind of token you knows mkr tokens based on fees that occurs at the protocol level it's it's not just a

valueless governance token and I wonder maybe there's an impact here like Arthur 0x is a good example of like one of the people talking about this but there are people out there talking about the value of kind of liquid funds right like they're just going to buy stuff that's working well on the market and maybe you're seeing that in these charts is the people who are willing to bid some of these tokens and they're obviously being selective it's not a it's not this like umbrella of everything going up and I think that's good that's healthy that's like fundamentally driven you're seeing some stuff do better than other stuff and we want to see more of that and so let let I'm I'm translating this

because we want to see what's next you know like let's say Bitcoin continues to run like what follows who's winning you know who's standing out amongst defi who's standing out amongst the layer one trade like I think sentiment wise it seems like salana has been similarly it's at the top of its range um Des Solana is back to pre FX implosion levels yes despite like there's still a tremendous amount of uncertainty with what's going to happen with some you know some coins that who knows whose control they're in you know I don't know is it like Mount gaw style where they

just end up like looming for years yeah the mount ga's overhang yeah but I mean salana went to eight bucks and it's at 30 that's a great trade if you just I mean I don't know who could have Diamond handed that through all the craziness but shoot it's it's almost back into I used to call that because it had this floor of you know $25 to $30 that it eventually broke um at the during that FTX breakdown November 2022 but now it's kind of threatened to get back in that range its prior range was like 30 to 50 bucks that it it basically if uh Alama wasn't pumping it like crazy above 50 bucks then that's

where its life was 25 to 50 and it's trying to get back in that range and that's super interesting to me so I I think what you what you can do is selectively say like hey what what is the trade but and also when um and I don't I don't really think like Bitcoin is done with Bitcoin dominance over time though I think that there's a a good argument for some selective bets for where can I find out performance Beyond this trade and what does my allocation need to look like so I think that's what we need like that's what we're paying attention to right as we enter the new year and I think all of that should Bitcoin continue to like beat the drum for the ETF and all that

the spot etf's going to have a real impact on flows it's just gonna happen right people are still putting money in their 401ks and when their 401ks have better optionality for they can invest in I think that we'll see real spot driven not Futures not not you know paper trading but spot driven flows that goes into Bitcoin and that's that could have a strong impact um the pink cared Punk that does all the good YouTube videos I don't remember their Punk number but y'all know who I'm talking about the punk yeah yeah the proof Punk yeah yeah they work for proof what you whatever the pink-haired Punk right um they um

they did put a chart on Twitter for what gold did after the first gold ETFs came out and gold went like five x or something um and you know Gold's inherent value did not change it's just access to Gold improved and even though a lot of people do have access through you know their coinbase app or whatever most people don't have near the buying power when they're using something the same way they'd use vinmo and they're like sure I'll buy 100 bucks worth of bitcoin but a lot of people who are in the workforce and who save into their 401ks and have matches from their employers and that's a lot of people even though all of us are you know jobless in addition to bankless um like

we we we can understand putting a lot of our like liquid taxable net worth into this stuff but most people don't when they are making investing decisions they're doing it through their 401ks and their Roth IR rays and things like that and I think that'll have a real imp impact on access to bitcoin this is I just snatched the screen from you Ledger this is the uh what you're talking about um that's a heck of a move in it 400 bucks to average annual gold gold prices and the first uh US Gold ETF in November uh 2004 and uh you just look at um price of gold kind of Skyrocket after that through 2008 yeah got a lot more to cover though David uh you want to tease us yeah I think uh there's two there's

two possible paths and then an infinite Shades in between these two things uh one is we get the spot Bitcoin ETF approval followed by the Bitcoin havening followed by the FED easing and we just have the super cycle yeah the eing uh followed by the super cycle which suzu watches from jail which is just uh hilariously ironic that's like the most bullish version of events and then there's like a bearish version of events which is you know maybe maybe the SEC has to approve these about Bitcoin so we get that one uh The Happening does happen but no one really cares about Bitcoin there's another Black Swan event like there's a trade war going on with China there's actual war going on the FED doesn't have to ease uh and maybe

people just don't have the demand for Bitcoin that we thought plus like one more Black Swan like we got last time with coid there's are like two possible versions in the future and I kind of just want to sus these things out so we will do that in the second half of the show but first a moment to talk about the SEC the sponsors that make their show possible especially metamask portfolio if you are getting bullish because of this conversation uh click metamask portfolio because you have if you have a metamask you have a metamask portfolio so check it out there's a link in the show notes let's go hear from them right now metamask portfolio is your One-Stop shop to navigate the world of dii and now bridging seamlessly across networks doesn't have to be so daunting anymore with competitive rates and convenient routes metamask

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arbitrum experience web 3 development the way it was always meant to be secure fast cheap and friction free B na we're back with Ledger uh and like I was teeing up right before the break there's there's this big span of potential out comes here there's the most bullish possible version of events in which we just get bullish Domino knocked down after bullish Domino that's the happening the spot Bitcoin ETF uh the easing uh but then there's also some potential bearish Catalyst as well and overall just inside of the macro conversation Ledger what what events possible events uh expected or uh otherwise are like the most significant to you like what's looming On Your Horizon yeah I think one of the things

that you might might try to anticipate in advance is essentially if you're not allocated and you're getting more foma like you're not Adam Cochran was actually just talking about this he's taken a lot of crap recently on on Twitter but he he made a a post where he said it was only 20% allocated and kind of missed some of some of this push and I thought that was actually pretty cool because most people won't admit when they're under allocated um off sides yeah or when they're off sides and I'm not sure that like right now we're still kind of in the in the meat of this move I think so it's probably not the worst thing in the world to just kind of ape

in but let's say you're like clenching your fists and waiting and scared scared for lack of exposure you're having fomo and we're at like 42k or 50k or something like that and like it really is we've turned turned around I think the likelihood of what causes this macro impetus like a significant change in rates for examp example is probably because we did have a Black Swan right so like you you might have your March 2020 if y'all remember when bitmex had no bid and it was simultaneously the start of an enormous bull market and we had already been in recovery for a long time and yet you could have bought Bitcoin at like 3,300 bucks or something

that day and then it was at like 9,000 you know in less than a month or something insane but we had gone to 14K before that we went from 3100 at the bottom in 2019 to 14K back to like 3500 or something whenever it was brutal Arthur turned off bit that was pain it was bad it was but it was also a Black Swan right it was it was the start of coid and then you know we start putting money in the rest is history but like you can just act like that didn't happen and it was so easy but that was not easy and right what might create this impetus for people to say like I need to I want to own hard assets and I believe that you know Bitcoin ethereum are hard assets and it

might be because hey we start printing money because something went wrong you know like yeah but so so let me ask you that though like philosophically as as kind of a a Trader investor because I know you're an investor you also trade like but you do both but you're very long-term oriented so you you can't like I I guess my strategy in uh for for Black Swan types of events is you always have some dry powder for for the Black Swan events cuz you know over time something like that is going to happen so you want to have some Fiat cash type Reserve to buy when when the Market's fearful and those kind of like Panic dumps although I I will tell you in March uh 2020 that was a very difficult time to buy it you really did where R learned the lessons right right well

it's like that's how we all learn lessons right but also um you can't really plan for black swans can you Ledger like you have to basically invest in Alit you you keep this dry powder type reserve for those Black Swan events but with the rest of your stack and the rest of your stash you have to allocate as if like a black Swan's not going to happen because Black Swan by its nature you you can't predict it it it comes out of nowhere you know you don't know what like when it's going to happen or or how or what markets it's going to affect so you can't really plan around that right um You can you can always have dry powder like you said um that doesn't mean you have like 100% dry powder so like obviously you're going to if if you

have this black spawn event let's say Bitcoin goes down 50% at some point in a week or a day or something crazy and yeah you can you can you know man up and deploy that dry powder for one um the number two thing is just don't capitulate on something that you believe in strongly and like you end up capitulating the bottom of it just staying in the market staying exposed to your core beliefs is a is an accomplishment in itself uh but number three is what I've at least done and I'm I'm I have to say like am long-term focused as in I stay paying attention to the market but sometimes I get paper hands man like I'm I tend to be pretty active like I If it wasn't like a u a Strategic investment like a you know a

angel investment type of thing like my number of long-term capital gains even on eth and BTC and stuff are not that severe like I I tend to trade but what I've the way that it's worked for me and for better or worse like sometimes maybe I could have just held for two years and done great but like because I was more responsive to the like temperature of the market it gave me some peace of mind but I always was like okay I'm biasing bullish or I'm biasing barish but I'm also going to trade and I'm going to be willing to trade so if you do feel like Hey we're frothy you know you can put a little more dry powder aside if you want to be active now you have to live with

the tax consequences of those types of decisions but if that allows you to sleep at night then go for it and for me um it's not the case anymore but for a long time like yeah I would say 2020 and and 20 through 2022 like there 95% of my net worth was in this stuff you know so it's like yeah I'm gonna pay pretty close attention at times especially as it's feeling profy um and what I did for instance in March 2020 I was down bad just like everybody else but I was like I am not stepping away and sitting on my hands right now and I got active I traded like a crazy person and that's not for everybody for some people that just means I'm going to buy

another clip and I'm going to buy that clip more rapidly while I know this price is cheap that could be your version of me just overtrading but I just traded more and another realtime example is I felt fairly underexposed to bitcoin recently now I was very closely watching how is how are the things that I own performing relative to bitcoin and I was confident in that but I also knew like ETF goes live and bitcoin's going to go nuts and I won't have enough of it right like so I could still be performing well relative on like Bitcoin relative pairs of things that I own um but should a a big news event come along I'm not going to have enough exposure so I bought calls to the

Bitcoin Futures thing and so yes I can afford for those calls to go to zero it's not like you know a significant percentage of my portfolio but that's they're for that's what an out-of-the money call is when it's on this kind of 30-day time frame and I kind of screwed up honestly because they expire this the the ones I bought expire on Friday and I would have made $50,000 more if I held them one more day and instead I rolled them to to November to kind of maintain that exposure um so I still woke I had it was great you know but but like I would have made a lot more money had I like just held on to them deeper into their expiry

but you don't know when that news is going to show up and what it's going to look like and it you might spend money on that because it's like Insurance the way options are supposed to be used when you're long long and like premium whether you're buying puts or buying calls but you're buying options is it's insurance on the unexpected happen happening or this like outsized event so for me it was a way to gain Bitcoin exposure iFit coin did something bigger than the things that I owned more of um so there's lots of things like that that you can do to try to account for it Ledger a lot of uh Bank list listeners I think about half we we're in the middle of doing a user survey I think about half maybe more started listening to

bank list 2021 or later as in in the last like two years or so or a new entrance into crypto uh which means that like that that was me when I got into crypto in the middle of the 2017 run not before 2017 run in the middle of it it means they hadn't made money yet basically yeah exactly you went down and you're still around about half of bankless listeners are like at a wash at Best in terms of whether they've made crypto money in crypto or not what advice would you have for them understanding where they are in their journey through crypto and this is they are actually at the very beginning of seeing a full cycle play out if this does play out in a four-year cycle that

they are the very beginning of a four-year long cycle where they will actually be able to make all their money as as the crypto meme goes what what would you say to them know why you're here and know what you believe in because at the end of the day when it hits the fan and you're it's time to like okay you know I'm down bad right now and I'm am I going to deploy the dry powder or am I going to capitulate you're much more likely to make the right decision if you know why you're here and you know what you believe um and that's the biggest thing no matter what because it'll also prevent you from digging into something that you don't believe in as things get frothier it'll

keep you more grounded of like I'm here I may trade you know what was the one like Obama Sonic enu Harry Potter coin I might trade that but like I'm doing it because I want to stack eth or I want to Stack BTC or I believe in you know this bankless Mantra or something else like I'm I how do I maintain my core beliefs and along the way you know you might gamble a little bit on some of the craziness that pops up and to be very honest you might make more money doing that than you do on your like core positions um but know while you're here and like be able to get keep reality in check um you can be you can ride a wave and this is all assuming we get this

which would be great like we'd all be thankful for for that but acknowledge reality at the same time I mean I I am thankful that I took some off the table when it became for me at least life-changing money and yet I didn't sell enough like and I was one of the more grounded like trying to stay realistic people and some people are like what are you talking about like you want you want to take stuff out of the market what are you going to do like put it in a bank and earn interest or go invest it in something else I'm like yeah like yeah that's exactly what I'm going to do and I got mocked for it and yet I didn't do enough if I had just like when I was having those inclinations just wiped my account clean

accounts clean and been all out I would have done even better but that's hard to do too like you're never going to time that perfectly but like taking Clips out the same way as putting Clips in like if you say you got $110,000 to deploy because you save money for a year or two years from your job if you just put it all in at once I you're going to stress about it all the time and if it's preventing you from sleeping then you're misallocated um so make it to where you can sleep at night and then if you turn that $10,000 into $100,000 or a million dollars or whatever like if you can't sleep at night then you need to be able to consider what can I do what changes can I make to where I can maintain

exposure and this thing that I still believe in and I don't think is done and yet like feel comfortable with the outcome even if it all goes to zero you know and a lot of people we we lost many because they did not take that that like mild amount of conservatism into account and um don't be one of those don't be one of those that was right on the big General themes and yet gained nothing out of it you have to have a self plan going into this that that is I think Timeless advice and while we're on the the subject of advice I I um really appreciate your perspective on this because you're a bit more a Trader than probably myself and and maybe David as

well and you know we're zero out of 100 points allocated to the trader skill set yes uh very little but but you do so in a very U patient way but you know maybe I'll make a comment uh for those I guess second cyclers those who came in you know 2021 2022 on on where I often see mistakes being made at this point in the cycle and I'm wondering if you guys have any Reflections on this and and uh this is what I call kind of the Chasers so the type of person who look at the pumps and then readjust and reallocate their position to just jump and ape into the to the to the closest pump and so one week they'll be bullish ether but then Bitcoin pumps right and they'll look on

crypto Twitter and they'll see the narrative switch and you know ether was always a shitcoin and now it's a net inflationary and like these are all of the reasons why Bitcoin is King and still King and wins and E sucks and then they'll take their ether position and they'll sell uh that and they'll buy right into the the Bitcoin pump right and then Bitcoin will run a little bit and then next thing you know ether is pumping and so what they what they do is they they chase all of the pumps that happen they kind of they crop rotate into all of the like narrative pump wrong positions rather than having that that conviction that uh you were just talking about and I'm wondering if you could speak to them Ledger because I bet that's a a failure mode that that you

often see under kind of the the trader lens how does that go wrong and how do you prevent that yeah and that's not that's not easy for me to manage either I mean I've had to work on that myself like the thing that I have not mastered that I would love to figure out this cycle is what I would call like tax efficient portfolio management so you know you may have this conviction in different ways that you want to take some more of these trades and yet it's like okay here's one I believe in I think going to 10K right like hey look at that guys we got a 5x Plus on our hands and so like why would I not want tax efficient portfolio management if I'm going to make you know an eight

$88,500 profit per ethereum that I own um if my cost basis is500 or 2,000 or whatever you can get it one eth for like and you think it's going to 10K why in the world would you want to get rid of the entirety of that core position other than you're chasing something or playing the ratios or some of these things so you have to figure out how can you like satiate that desire and figure and also maintain your core position there's risky ways to do that at like using leverage right like you can deposit that eth on something like a borrow 5% against it like a relatively small amount something that you can repay and use that 5% to do what like more short-term trades that's one route

that's not that risky just don't go and do like I'm gonna borrow 80% you know like now you're quite levered and you might not be able to pay that back but that that's one potential thing that you could do um another would just have a portion of your portfolio that is active trades to chase things to let small ideas become big Ideas there's huge advantages for that like defi summer was that way for me where I had a tiny amount in defi early on but I was convinced I need to go explore this and then it turned into a bigger amount and you allow these like smaller amounts to become bigger and then you start building back to the core position with that or maybe you're committed to Shorter term capital gains for those I don't know whichever way you look at it

and yeah I think you just you have to know what your plan is in that regard too because people don't talk about taxes I talk about taxes all the time I get made fun of a lot for it but I also talk about taxes yeah you and Ryan just love talking about taxes well it it is you know it is it is the interest rates of crypto as in you got to beat that amount go talk to Zach at token tax sometime and like he's probably a good example of like somebody that he he hears your like heart's fears and stuff like going into tax season and yet like it's the same people like spouting off never talking about it in real life and then they're

facing they're facing it and they're like holy cow I got to figure this out that's another way people go bro because they can't pay their taxes and like that's the worst right you don't want to do that um and just don't get taken out of the game and that's one of the things that can take you out of the game and if you're creating like needless um tax impacts versus if you go into your strategy with a with that plan then you you might you might have some stuff that you're just committed to this it is this is what it is you know I've I'm gonna have I believe in salana so I'm going to have a this core position over here and 20% of it going to be salana and 30% of it's going to be eth

and 50% of it's going to be Bitcoin and I'm not going to touch that you know like that's going to just sit there for the macro cycle now if I want to go chase Obama Sonic euu Harry Potter coin I'm gonna go do it over here with this smaller separate stack separate stack smaller slice I do that in my real life where I have literally different bank accounts trading accounts exchanges wallets and some of them are just I'm not supposed to touch them and if I go to I need to make it hard like I need to go unlock a door then unlock a safe and then like dig through this thing and restore a wallet because if I don't have to do that like I will I'm going to touch it so so Ledger Let's uh close this out for us so we started with this this big

meta question of is the crypto bull market back so Gund your head wa what do you think is the crypto bull market back he said yes I do all right it could take some time you might caveat with that but it's back and and I really and I really hope it's not everything goes up if everything goes up I have very little faith in the long-term sustainability of it you want the low and slow I want low and low and slow let the Dan matusi calls it the hot ball of money like let it let it build up before it starts rotating around and that basically means let Bitcoin let Bitcoin be Bitcoin we're back we're back baby I feel like it's official now that ledger came and called it um okay so last question for you to close this all this out so how you

playing this market right now just put back on your Trader hat how how are you personally investing in this market right now I uh like I said I've um the most active stuff I've been in is actually in an IRA which is weird um tax efficiency it's not weird yeah so I'm like uh goofing around with very fast term trading with that and then honestly maintaining a core position there's some stuff where I do have long-term capital gains uh from invest Investments That become liquid where I'm trying to consider my long-term planning options right so I can take profit with long-term gains on something and then transition it into like a larger core e

position is the type of thing I'm considering right now I think this is a pretty good time to make like if I'm if I feel like I need more eth for example and I have a lot of Bitcoin it you know below 0.05 is probably pretty good you know for for for eth um even though it looks bad just short little Clips so that you keep earning from upside in Bitcoin but you might you know start reallocating your position in that way um and then for for Bitcoin itself like I'm really hard at holding Bitcoin for a long time I can hold eth for a long time but like for Bitcoin I tend to be a little more Trader is and it's mostly because I think the path for

Bitcoin is so mainstream the path for Bitcoin to go from 33 to 99 right like a 3X everybody in the world will be talking about it but the path for me to find like some trade out there where I think I might be able to make a 3X I feel like is more accessible so I'm a degenerate in that way and I go chase that trade let me ask you this ledger so um bitcoin's had a bit of a run it might be in the early phases of that uh we talked about soul and it's had a bit of a run it might continue in the future um how about ether right now it's I know you're a big ether bullet it feels like it's been left behind do you think no I think it can I think it it's likely to follow whenever whenever Bitcoin calms down the

the greatest thing about a Bitcoin ETF is as soon as that spot Bitcoin ETF comes out the next thing you speculate on is when is the ethereum spot ETF coming out because I I think eth BTC could bottom the day that the Bitcoin ETF goes live like that would be a very typical type of crypto thing and um and and I think that's also more accomodating if rates have topped and you know that's OB try trying to extrapolate what's ethereum going to do based on what's J Powell doing um but if long-term if long-term yield comes down um then I think that could be good for risk Assets in general and and ethereum

kind of leading the bunch there and I will say the spot eth ETF is going to mean more for ether than this bot Bitcoin ETF will mean for Bitcoin simply because of the uh the size the relative sizes of these two assets like I like I said if I I have strong conviction BTC is going 100K and eth is going to 10K one's a 3X and one's 5x we're talking about we're talking about comeback sledger when is up only coming back when's When's Kobe coming back online here uh if I knew I probably still wouldn't tell you I'll have to have you guys back on when when that Joyce event happens uh Ledger thanks so much for joining us

it's been a lot of fun and uh Ledger called it we are officially back we are back early stages of the bull market the bull market is back we're glad to have you on Bank list all the settlers who stayed with us through these dark times uh I think uh it's it's going to be well worth the wa ledgers thank you so much for coming on Bist and chatting with us about this it's always a pleasure to be with you both thanks for having me and keep doing good work awesome risten disclaimers bankless nation of course the bull market might not be backed yeah we should mention that crypto is risky uh so is trading you can definitely lose what you put in but we are headed west this is the frontier it's not for everyone but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey bull market or

not thanks a lot