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Bitcoin Bears vs Reality: Market Pain, Bottom Signals & What Comes Next | James Check (Checkmate)
01:32:37
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- [00:00]
James Check
Understanding that the world's so they are going to come for everyone who has made it in any way, shape or form. Having it on chain in a cold wallet somewhere doesn't change a single thing because they want their pound of flesh and they are watching it all. That was what I call the price pain. Capitulation. Pain. Fear.
- [00:20]
Walker America
Fear.
- [00:20]
James Check
You've seen this before. You know what capitulation looks and feels like because you've been there before. Generally speaking, the time pain ends with another capitulation. They are paying a 6.5% interest rate for the privilege of getting liquidated right now. And I love it. Where is the sell side coming from? People who bought the top, it's the bottom fifth. What are you doing? Just dca hard because it's a great place to buy. What are you arguing or negotiating or haggling over that last 3%? Put some money in the market and buy it. What are you doing? Hey, bears, if you don't have an exit strategy, probably start formulating one.
- [00:51]
Walker America
You sound extremely bullish. I know you're bullish long term, but that's another question.
- [00:55]
Podcast Host
You sound bullish shortterm.
- [00:57]
Walker America
Is that correct? Checkmate, James. Check. You're a real legal name. Like my real name, legal name is Walker America. You are my first podcast back since my wife almost died. So there's that. What a. What a time. We were just off camera talking about the absurd cost of living, which is also like, that. When you ever notice like that that term, the cost of living thing is like, is a little bit insidious because
- [01:32]
James Check
it's crazy when you actually think about what they're saying. Yeah, yeah. Like, this is the thing to stay alive.
- [01:37]
Walker America
It's just.
- [01:38]
James Check
But it's just, you know, I'm just.
- [01:39]
Walker America
Yeah, that there's that. But then it's also like, well, it's just the cost of living. Like, what can anyone do? And it's like, I don't know, stop printing money.
- [01:46]
James Check
Like, you know, and to be fair, like, I think something. And we were talking the context of this while we started talking about is just fatherhood, right? And. And why the child makes. If you think about, you know, we're living in caves, why the child makes so much noise such that the sabertooth tiger's gonna come and get you. You, like, just. Wouldn't it be better if it's like, quiet as a mouse and, like, you get. No, you get plenty of sleep. But, like, hardship. I mean, I honestly, one of the big life lessons that bitcoin taught me is just proof of work. If you don't work for something, you don't value it. If you're giving anything for free, like there's just no value to it. But when you put the time, the effort, the energy, the struggle, the lack of sleep, like, the only reason I can kind of reason about this whole thing is that nature's like, you need to fight like hell for this thing so that you love it so much, right? And this is like part of that proof of work component to life. So I do think that's like a big element that. I mean, obviously the Ethereums don't understand that like, yeah, free money, socialize everything. But like, you know, from, from that perspective, I think that, that working hard for something is critical to just. And when you go down the path of like cost of living, it is interesting because you do need a cost because nature isn't kind. Go and watch any David Attenborough documentary and like, it's not a fair fight, right? Like it's, it's a brutal thing. You gotta fight literally for your life. So I think having a cost to living makes sense, but at the same. And also to that effect, like purely from a capitalist perspective, I consume something that someone else produced. I have to give something to them in response. It all makes sense. But we're now at the point where the math just doesn't. Math in any way, shape or form. We're so far beyond that. And strangely enough, Mike Green, who, you know, I have my fair critiques of Mike Green. He wrote a piece. There was one night when my son just was not sleeping and I'm sitting there rocking him to sleep and you know, I'm looking through various substacks and I came across his. And he wrote this very interesting piece and I've been honestly thinking about it ever since. The summary is he basically modeled. I don't know how he did it, but he used like a series of entities and like they've got an age profile, they go through their earning years and then they die, right? So and the idea is how do you tax that system? And he ran three different simulations. The first one was the socialist model, where basically all consumption or capital or just, just tax everything, right? And then see what happens to your overall Gini coefficient. He did the capitalist model, which is like tax consumption, but there's no tax on capital gains and things like that. And then he read this third model, which I was like, surely not. And he basically said zero tax through life, but then 50% tax when the entity dies. And that 50% tax, it gets socialized perfectly. Even so it doesn't say like, oh, you're a billionaire, you get this much, You're a poor person, you get this much. It's just like, no, no, no. Divide it amongst all the remaining entities and just pay them bang. Anyway, long story short is when he ran this model, the socialist model basically made everyone significantly poorer and everyone was worse off. And wealth concentration.
- [04:46]
Walker America
I'm totally shocked.
- [04:47]
James Check
I couldn't believe it. It was by far the most confusing outcome. The capitalist model did the same thing, but over a much longer time horizon. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Right, so we've seen this, like, concentration of wealth. It all feels great. Everyone is much better off than the socialist model. So the average is higher, but it still concentrates to the top fairly quickly. Interestingly, he found that the 50% tax model was the only one that kind of resisted. It ultimately went there as well, but it resisted to a much greater extent this like, concentration at the top. Anyway, he then went through the process of plugging in the American demographic. So he started with just like, everyone's the same age, let them age from that point onwards. And then he's done, let's plug in the American demographics where you've got baby boomers and millennials and all the rest of it. And what he basically found is as he tuned, what is the correct percent to tax on death, so zero tax through life and then complete socialized wealth redistribution at death. And he actually found that 77% was the number required to actually rebalance the system and prevent this complete concentration to the top. Now I've been, I've been against inheritance tax for a long time because it's like it would be inheritance tax on top of all the other taxes. Right, Right. But the idea of inheritance with no tax while living kind of made sense. I'm like, I, I know how to spend my money. The government has no idea how to spend my money. And if he just gives it to everybody, then that you kind of everybody gets to spend the money the way that is best for them, but kind of makes sense. Anyway, as he went through this process, he found this 77% number, like to the dot, and he went back and looked at history. This 77% wealth redistribution is actually very common all through human history. Like the Romans did it at point in time, the Greeks did it, like every time. Those are like debt jubilees. The 77% number has actually been worked out from first principles or experience. And I was, I was quite surprised. And he goes, actually the American Tax system. I don't have the full details, but he's written about it. The American tax system in, like, the 50s was pretty much this setup. And I'm like, that's kind of an interesting way to think about the cost of living. That, like, surely you spend all your money during life, and then when you die, all your surplus gets redistributed. Well, sorry, not all of it, but obviously a big chunk of it. But then that just gets redistributed and everybody just ends up better off. Now, the average wasn't as high as the full capitalist model, but you didn't have this, like, tremendous concentration. Basically, it all ends up where we are today. We've got billionaires and then people who used to be right. If you're a millionaire now, it's like, well done. You're a wage earner. You know what I mean? Like, that's kind of where we're at. Which if you go back to when you and I were growing up a millionaire was like, holy shit, you're out. You made it through the stratosphere.
- [07:28]
Walker America
A million dollars. Like, Jesus, you made it.
- [07:32]
James Check
Good job. You have a job well done. How much debt do you have? You know what I mean? So anyway, I don't know how we got on this tangent, but I thought that was an interesting way to think about this, like, cost of living. Gini coefficient, how the world's kind of working is. Yeah, it was an interesting study.
- [07:45]
Walker America
Okay, so that's super. That is really. I'm gonna have to read this. And Mike Green is an interesting character. I just. For many reasons. For those who don't know about him, like, you know, you can look him up. He's not always been the biggest friend of bitcoin. The guy's also obviously not like, a total idiot. Like, he's. He's, you know, he. He has some good points to make, and there are. There are those people that exist. Just because, you know, understand bitcoin does not mean you're a genius. Just because you don't, doesn't necessarily mean you're a complete.
- [08:12]
James Check
I would summarize his views as he looks at the fiat system and goes, look at how much prosperity it's produced.
- [08:18]
Walker America
Yeah.
- [08:19]
James Check
Yes, it's got warts. But we're in the best position we've ever, like, statistically speaking, you know, deaths, medical, all those things. Yeah, there's problems everywhere, but, like, we used to live in caves, so, like, we've come a long way for sure.
- [08:31]
Walker America
You. You can also, of course, like, devil's Advocate, you can say, like, okay, if I want to take the hard money, like, sound money approach, I can say, well, yeah, because the fiat system has been coasting on the coattails of a sound monetary system before it that actually led to the prosperity, that led to the booms. What have we actually done since the 70s in, like, a meaningful way? And yes, we've done a lot, right, We've done quite a lot. But like, you know, there, there, there's arguments to be made there, I think, on, on either side. It, it is interesting, though. I'm curious of your thoughts on this. And let's, let's just, we'll just go down this tangent again. My first podcast back in a while now, you know, so tangents will abound, but like, inequality in general is a natural state. And we were kind of getting at this in terms of the, the animal kingdom, the natural state of things, right? Inequality is natural. No animal is the same. No species of animals the same. No people are the same. And so of course you're going to have, you know, I forget, maybe it's a Thomas Sowell quote, but it's like the, you know, inequality of outcomes does not equal, you know, discrimination. Something to that effect. He's got that great book, Discrimination and Disparities. For those who haven't read it, it's a, it's a pretty good one. But the idea that, like, okay, is that what we should be controlling for? Should we be controlling for, hey, is everyone better off? Or does trying to control for everyone being better off ultimately just create everybody being a little bit worse off? You know what I mean? And still, because you always have the upper echelon, because in order to create a state of control, this is communism 101, right? Everybody thinks communism, everyone's equal. If you've talked to anyone who's actually lived through communism, my wife and her entire family as an example that escaped from it. Thank God. That's why we're all here. Or, well, it's why they're here and I'm here married to her. But they will tell you, it's like, oh, yeah, everyone was equal except the party. Like, except the party loyalists. And they are beyond a cut above. Like, they have this Animal Farm back when a Swiss bank account. They had Swiss bank accounts. You know what I mean? Like, so I'm curious your take on that, because it's like, how much can you control for? How much should you control for? Because at the end of the day, humans just like, are you smarter than the free market? Are you smarter than people making individual subjective value judgments? Probably not.
- [10:47]
James Check
Well, this is actually what I found one of the points of Mike Green studies. He basically goes, you can't have any system where person dies and then some committee gets together and goes, how are we going to redistribute this? Because what happens is you've got to pay them. They introduce their biases, they introduce policies that becomes bloated and the whole thing just, it falls apart. You actually just have to give everyone an equal share of the surplus. And I thought that was a really interesting model because it's effectively a tax. Once you introduce a government middleman and that decision framework, you've introduced some form of attacks which produces friction which reduces the effectiveness and like, you know, and I also fall into the world where having like, I think that the full libertarian, like no government makes, doesn't make sense. Because the truth is we just see this time and time again. People need some kind of authority structure because not everybody is a maverick, right? If everybody was a maverick who was just like a great entrepreneur, the world would be just chaos, right? It'd be total chaos. So there are some folks who just prefer the simple structure of like, here's the rules, I'm going to do it. This is why they have like, this is why the meme like, oh, that's great, man. Did you catch the game last night? That, that's like, that meme is real because that's where a lot of people are and they just very happy to just like live their routine, you know, watch the footy. So I think you do need some kind of a government. But the challenge is, and by the way, show me any part of human society where they've like dethroned the government and haven't installed another one. It just, we just do it.
- [12:17]
Walker America
So it's like, it's like a vacuum, right?
- [12:20]
James Check
It's like, exactly, you know, people aren't going to be greedy. Let's design a model where people aren't greedy. I'm like, well, good luck with that one. So I think you need some form of a government. But then we're in this very interesting world where like you got to contain it, you got to constrain it. Because if it just keeps growing and getting worse and worse and worse, the outcomes get worse and worse and worse. And we're really living through this. I mean, you know, you look at these different models. The west has obviously enjoyed a fantastic century, really, right? Since the wars. I mean it's been fantastic for most people in the west but now we're getting to that point where the tumors are starting to show up. Those long term effects of kicking the can and the fiat inflation side of the equation. I was thinking about this earlier. I mean, sorry, not earlier. I think about this literally all the time. You know, for us as a business, right? There's three of us, me and my two best mates. We need to like accumulate. I mean really, I view the business that we run check on chain. It's, it's almost like our retirement fund, you know, like we, we are accumulating bitcoin, accumulating some gold. Just like we want to have good assets in the business because like for I, I can't do this forever, right? I can't be analyzing bitcoin data right till I'm gray. So at some point the business will be out. Maybe at some point the business is there to like actually support the three of us long term. And I'm like, okay, well what do I buy? Bitcoin makes sense, gold makes sense. And I'm like, it would kind of make sense to buy like good companies. And I think about this, my own personal portfolio as well. Like I'd love to buy some bulletproof businesses, like full Warren Buffett style. And then I go and look at things like ExxonMobil or BHP or like just, just businesses that we need. And I believe my thesis, I mean my thesis for now is the world needs things. We're moving away from the, oh, it's really nice to have this tech company and this software and all this stuff. That's all, you know, it's great margin was like we actually just kind of need coal, we kind of just need oil, we kind of need metals. So that need phase from a national security perspective I think is like the trend. And then you go and look at the dividend yields of these things. You're like 2%, 3% for some of the most bulletproof companies in the world. And you're like, that's, I'm not investing for dividends, am I? Like, and it just comes to bear that you have to be speculating on the price. You really have to speculate on the price because you're certainly not going to earn anything from the dividend yield. So that kind of like passive income story that you and I would have grown up with in the early years, like, that's dead. You know, like that whole fire thing, that's just completely dead. So the whole idea of like living off dividends, not a thing. So now you gotta go speculating on price and you just kind of realize the state of the world that we're in as a millennial, you're trying to. I mean, our housing market is in Australia. Impossible. I've been doing the math for years and you know, my salary has been growing much faster than the average person's Bitcoin. My savings have been growing much faster than the average person's. And I still look at the housing market. I'm. I can't, I can't do it. I actually just can't do it. You know, I need at least a three bedroom place because I need an office. I got a kid, right? If you're gonna have a second kid, suddenly things start to get more complicated. And you look at that equation and you're in the multimillion dollars Aussie, which is, you know, one and a half million US plus for a two bedroom apartment. Three bedroom apartment if you're lucky. So the whole thing just doesn't. In Sydney, by the way, it just doesn't make sense. And then you're like, okay, sure, I could move regional, I could. But then also, you're gonna leave your whole life behind. You know, like I, I feel like there's a component that people say, oh, we'll just move somewhere else. And like, yes, that's great, you move somewhere else. You know, like, you leave your whole family behind. You go and leave all your, your whole life. I've lived overseas, right. I've done that journey. You kind of should be able to buy and live where you want to live. So, you know, I think all those components, in order to buy one of these things, you got to pay yourself more. And then when you pay yourself more or earn more, the government's like, hey, I see you're earning more money. Could you please send some of that out? Oh, by the way, it's 45% for you now that you're earning. Like what? You know, bracket creep. The salary of it's 180, 190. Aussie is our top tax bracket. Marginal, you got a 45%.
- [16:23]
Walker America
That's the top.
- [16:24]
Podcast Host
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- [19:27]
James Check
That's the top. So once you get to 190k, which you know, the exchange rate's 0.7 to the US dollar now, so whatever that is, you know, 130 or something like that. So anyway, once you get to that bracket, you're paying 45 cents on every dollar. You then pay 10% GST, which is a consumption tax. And everything you do, let's not even talk about inflation, right? That's going to take you out in the other, other side. You know, fuel tax, you know 50% of beer is taxed. 50% of fuel is taxed.
- [19:57]
Walker America
Oh yeah, I draw the, I draw the line the beer 50. I know beer's tax at 50%.
- [20:02]
James Check
I don't know what the number is, But I think 50% is an underestimate. So I mean, I don't know what you guys pay for a case of beer. Like 24, it's 50 to 6. I mean, sorry, 50 for the cheapest beer, like a Heineken. It's 50. American, Aussie, 35, 36, something like that. So that's for your like cheap ass Heineken type, you know, Master.
- [20:25]
Walker America
You guys need to rise up, man. You gotta rise the up. I was unacceptable.
- [20:30]
James Check
One of my favorite beers. I went in the other day and I was in the cold room and I looked at, I was like $99. 99 is like get 70 bucks US for a case of beer, like, you know, craft XPA or something. Like get out of here. Like I love this beer, but I'm sorry, I'm not mortgaging my. You know what I have left to buy this thing.
- [20:50]
Walker America
Yeah.
- [20:50]
James Check
So anyway, most of it's taxed and by the way, the tax ratchets up, if you know, the Aussies can correct me in the room. But I'm pretty sure it's true, it ratchets up every like six months. So they actually increase the tax every six months. Same for if you go to a pub. A lot of the pub's expense is literally licens to have beer, so they've got to pay a tax for the amount of beer that they produce. It's just crazy, man. But like you put all these numbers together and you're like, the math don't math and then you just see the housing. I mean I, I'm of the view that when you look at the world right now, I mean it's, it's a shit show. I can't see how. I mean the Australian economy hasn't been in a recession for, I mean basically since I've been alive since the 90s. So we haven't really had a recession. Our housing market is like beyond impossibly unaffordable. I am in like the best financial position I've ever been in my life. And I'm looking at the numbers going like, can't do it, actually just can't do it. You know, to buy somewhere I've got to pay myself the top tax bracket, pay no tax on that and then that will service the interest and you just like, can't do it. And then you think this thing has to come down. It just like it has to come down in real terms, right? Who knows? It comes down in nominal terms, but in real terms it. There's a stratosphere that it just can't go past. You don't have enough energy. There's enough buyers who's going to buy this thing. So yeah, it's just a whole lot of things. You're just like doing the math as someone in their mid-30s, starting in your most expensive years starting a family and you just go, this shit's. It's fucked, it's fucked. And like something has to give. And you wonder why there's this like generational fuck you boomers. You kind of pulled up not only all the ladders, but you shattered all the rungs as well. So now you're throwing down bits of timber and being like, well, why can't you climb? It's like this. Nothing to climb. It's rooted. And then you go down to the younger generations. In fact, highly recommend. There's another podcast called the GWT Show. You may have seen GWT on Twitter. I'm very good at just like, like getting amongst the memes of crypto world. And he did this great interview with this dude thread guy recently and I love who he interviews because like it gives me a lens into what's going on in the crypto world. And he's always in very skeptical gwt. But he. Thread guy who I kind of knew of, um, but he was telling the story what it's like being like a gen. Whatever they are, you know what, what's a 22 year old, 20 year old in terms of generation.
- [23:07]
Walker America
Gen Z. Gen Z, Gen Z. Low, low end of Gen Z. I
- [23:10]
James Check
think basically coming into the world, learning about crypto as this tool for speculation and then just like understanding that the world's so fucked that you kind of just like you can guarantee that the tradfi world's going to get more GameStoppy, more meme stocky, more like I'm going to punt oil. I mean it was a great lens into where the younger gener, which is, they're just going, fuck it, I'm just going to go borrow a bunch of money and never pay it back anyway. Like, what's it matter? And you're like, far out. This, this gap. It's so bad. And it, I mean there's only one way it resolves. It's through social unrest and probably some financial chaos. But you know, we're kind of on the cusp of going into that phase where things start to get redistributed in Australia. Tax policies are now being discussed, changing capital gains on housing and all these kinds of things. And I'm just looking at this and going, they are going to come for everyone who has made it in any way, shape or form. And there's no such thing as a tax that gets taken away. They just get additive. So, like, you really got to start thinking long term and protecting yourself for what looks to be a big wave of socialism coming in hot because people have just had enough and they don't know what else to do.
- [24:20]
Walker America
I think one of the biggest areas that people won't see coming in terms of like a garnishment or a tax is in, I don't know what you guys call them down under, you know, 401. 401k for us, 104k for you guys. I'm sure, you know, just flip it around.
- [24:39]
James Check
K401.
- [24:40]
Walker America
Yeah, yeah. So superannuation. So this to me is just the most obvious vector where people, first of all, it won't happen until the majority of the boomers have aged out and died. Then it will happen because the boomers still control the power levers. They know that's an unpalatable thing to do. They can't possibly do that right now. But it's the most obvious pool of, massive pool of capital that is already locked. And it like, you can't touch. You want to touch it, you're already getting taxed. Okay, maybe we just, you know, you people who have your 401ks or superannuations, we just need to take 1% of it just to even things out, just
- [25:25]
James Check
to smooth things over. Just 1%. Smooth curve.
- [25:27]
Walker America
Maybe just 5%. Yeah, maybe 10%. You know what, you're being a little bit greedy. We should take 50% of it. But like, you can see, this will happen. This will happen in our lifetimes. That's the sad thing. And it's like I have one from my days, you know, working at a, you know, fiat job. I still work at a fiat job. I still have a fiat job, but it's a family fiat job. So it's a little bit, you know, it's a little bit more rewarding. But when I worked at a big company fiat job, you know, I still have my 401k from that, that I haven't contributed to since then. But I'm like, I just don't want to contribute to it because I know that, like, I know what's going to happen to this eventually. Like, I know that this is the most obvious attack vector where, okay, you don't like what's about to happen. You're going to pay the tax to get out of it anyway. If you let it happen, you're going to pay the tax. Either way you're paying the tax.
- [26:15]
Podcast Host
There's no way you're getting your money
- [26:17]
Walker America
out of the system without significant tax. It just depends when you get it out. But like. And maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm being too conspiratorial, but to me that just seems like once the boomers are gone, because they will all die, hopefully peacefully in their beds. Like, my parents are boomers. I hope they're around for a very long time. They're at the tail end of the boomers. Hope they're around for a very long time, but eventually everybody dies. They have the most massive pools of capital right now. What happens when that dries up? Like some of that gets passed down, right? And which will be taxed to oblivion in every country in the world. Most countries in the world. But then it's like, well, we gotta find the new tax cow.
- [26:57]
James Check
And like, this is why they will. That just strikes me as something like. And that's what I mean.
- [27:04]
Walker America
Are you pro inheritance tax now? Have you come around to inheritance tax?
- [27:07]
James Check
Very, very no. With a very important caveat, which I know is why. Which is. So I'm against it outright because of the thing that I know will happen. After reading Mike's piece, I am sympathetic to the idea of an inheritance tax only. But there's the problem. That's the very important caveat. It has to be an inheritance tax and you've got to remove all the other ones. And the probability of that happening, they
- [27:30]
Walker America
will never do big fat zero.
- [27:32]
James Check
So therefore I'm against it because it's just another tax. So I do think that they're going to introduce it. I mean, like, the Australian government's got a very clever way. We don't have an exit tax per se, but what we do have. So, for example, if I, and I experienced this when I was moving to London, because I would be tax domiciled in London, I had a choice. I could either the assets that I held or owned in Australia. The day I get on the plane, the ATO deems it to be sold. So I've realized I haven't sold anything, but I've realized the gains. And now they're a UK asset, right? Or losses. But you basically, they then become a UK asset and then when you come back, it's. It's the reverse. Right. The UK would see the other, other direction.
- [28:12]
Walker America
Are you under the Queen, like Canada or. Sorry.
- [28:16]
James Check
I mean, yeah, I don't Know what you mean. But I think like Canada.
- [28:20]
Walker America
Canada is.
- [28:21]
James Check
Yeah, yeah.
- [28:21]
Walker America
Still like, you know what I mean? Like.
- [28:24]
James Check
No, no, we still have a God. I forget what their term is. There's some person who's like a representative that.
- [28:30]
Walker America
Yeah, but like.
- [28:32]
James Check
So the answer is yes, we're part of the Commonwealth. We are. Yes.
- [28:35]
Walker America
Okay. Okay.
- [28:36]
James Check
Yes. Anyway, so the idea is that the other way you can do is you can leave your assets and say they are still Australian based. You don't realize the gain. So that's kind of the exit tax. If I want to take everything and I want to move somewhere else the day I go on the plane, the ATO deems it is to be realized. And now they're foreign assets. The alternative is you can go and live overseas. But if you did not do that process, then the asset is still Australian and I could be living anywhere else. And if I sell it, the ATO's like, no, that's, that's our capital gains, not wherever else you're living. So it's kind of an exit tax in the sense that your assets are domiciled where you initially acquired them from. An Australian sense. Our 401k superannuation. I totally agree and I have a controversial opinion about this. In my superannuation there's two ways you can do it. You can use as like a, like a call it asset manager who they do it for you, like standard industry type ones or you can do self managed. Now self managed, there's a little bit more paperwork and red tape and all the rest of it, but it's not a hard process to set up. I went for self managed because it gives me the choice to not just buy like yeah, buy our vanilla basket of shit that's got rubbish in there. I'm like, no, I actually kind of know how markets work and I kind of want to buy a bunch of bitcoin in it. And that was the only way to do it through self managed. Now my controversial opinion, there's a lot of folks who are going to disagree with me vehemently here. You can do self custody in self managed. Super. And I'm fully supportive of it. I ended up opting for the ETFs for two reasons. One, I don't plan to be piling a bunch. I'm putting in the. The regulated amount that I have to put into the superannuation because I assume they're going to take it. Right. It's just my base case and people like bro, you should put it in self custody. I'm like bro, Bitcoin's not private. They know exactly how many coins you have when they come looking. The second that you say, oh I don't have it or you do, I'm sorry it's so highly regulated and surveilled. It doesn't matter if it's an ETF or self custody, you personally are on the hook for that in every way, shape or form. You know, yes, there's counterparty risk in terms of the ETF failing, that's fine. There's also counterparty risk of me dying and my loved ones fucking up myself custody as well. So there's a diversification strategy there. But that component of like they're gonna come for it and there ain't nothing you can do for it. Having it on chain in a cold wallet somewhere doesn't change a single thing because they want their pound of flesh and they are watching it all. So it was one of those things where it's, you know, I know they're going to come for it. I know it's just a pool of capital minute that's like $4 trillion in Australia, like just superannuation funds. They already tried to do an unrealized capital gains, didn't pass, but it got shockingly close, right? Got into a vote on the floor and you're just like, oh my God. I mean how do you even do that? How do you even implement an unrealized capital gains tax? The whole thing makes, it makes no sense. And then you think about like what if you own property? A lot of farmers in Australia, their super funds own their land, right? All the farming land. It's like what do you do? Sell off a paddock? The whole thing just doesn't make any sense.
- [31:40]
Walker America
They own that, they own the. So like almost like a trust structure.
- [31:44]
James Check
Very much so. So the right way to think about like a self managed super fund. It is a trust.
- [31:49]
Walker America
Okay, okay, okay. No, they're just learning about again. Everything's backwards down under. That's what I've been told anyway. Have not been still very much want. I've been wanting to go down under to your prison colony, your British prison colony for so long.
- [32:03]
James Check
They got good bitches.
- [32:05]
Walker America
Yeah, that's what I hear. That's what I hear. No, it is fascinating though because like, I mean like I do like a self managed thing for the again the retirement fund that I have carried over from my pure fiat working days and like I did it self managed and I was a genius for a while because I pumped it all into mstr. The Past year I've been less of a genius because, you know, like a little bit and okay, like that's, that's the interesting thing. And perhaps this is our, this is our bridge into the, the, the bitcoin world a little bit. Because like I feel like this past year, and maybe it's not even a year, just, I'm just going to use a year, maybe it's been 18 months. I don't even know. You can probably tell me. But like, we pumped hard from 22k. We pumped really hard. It was actually an incredible run up from 22K.
- [32:56]
James Check
Yes, it was.
- [32:57]
Walker America
If you like it. Like, let's, let's, let's be honest about that. We ripped or not even 22k.
- [33:03]
James Check
Excuse me, 16k in November 2024. Yeah, the Trump election when we first hit 100k, Bitcoin just destroyed every other asset. And like people like, oh, it's a shitty bull run. It's like bro, everything else go and plot anything against bitcoin over that time. Smacked. Absolutely smacked.
- [33:20]
Walker America
Flip it though. Yeah.
- [33:22]
James Check
From December 2024, the sheen of ah, Bitcoin strategic reserve is worth the ink that it was written on. You know, like all these things. That December 2025 period, January 25th, from there on until October, bitcoin was basically chopping sideways, like holding against other stuff. And then obviously October, it's just got smacked. So, you know, in many ways that 20, 24, 23 period, it was a great period. It was a great time in every way, shape or form. There's no way you can measure that period against any other asset and say the bitcoin didn't kick ass, it just did. I think Nvidia was the only asset that was outperforming it and it wasn't by a huge margin either. So it just destroyed everything else. But then that period following is obviously what everyone feels because recency bias is a real thing.
- [34:11]
Walker America
And like I, I even look at like, you know, you look at something like, just as a comparable thing for price Point right now, like Palantir and mstr, you know, you know, very, very different companies, obviously similar stock price right now, give or take a few. I think MSTR has just recently surged past a little bit. Had a nice end of the week last week. Right. And I'm not, I don't, I don't play with stocks too much. Like I'm, I'm not smart enough to. Let's, let's. I'm, I'm a humble engineer, you know, and I, I liked, I like to just stack sats and stay humble. But like, I also like to, to watch these things and like, boy, if you, you know, if you sold all your mst, if you were like a, a gigachad genius and sold all your MSTR at the top, for example, and put it into Palantir at that time, well then MSTR went down below Palantir's prize and Palantir went above MSTR is present. Like, if you measure bitcoin in any other asset, like it hasn't done very well this past, whatever it is, year, year and a half. And I think people feel a little bit jaded by that. But this is also exactly how I felt. I haven't been around that long, like 2020. For me, that was when I stopped ignoring bitcoin. But this is how I felt in 2022 initially when Bitcoin kept literally just kissing 19k for like forever. I don't know if people remember that. If you were around at the time, we, Carla and I literally. Well, she made a song, I, I don't sing. She made a song like, you know, Simon and Garfunkel Sound of Silence. But like started off, you know, hello, 19, my old friend. Because literally 19K just kept, just kept ticking, ticking up and down and up and down. And then finally it was that last wick to 16 and then it was up, up and up and up and basically up until over a hundred K. Right?
- [35:57]
James Check
Yep. And by the way, bitcoin was over for a decade at the time. It was dead for a decade.
- [36:02]
Walker America
Right, right. And so this is this thing where it's like the, those same feelings that I'm seeing and maybe this is just a function of now. It's like, oh, I've been around for a cycle now. So I've. I know what this feels like where it's like everybody's freaking out, everybody seems to be bearish. This feels like a good time for me to accumulate more than I would normally because I'm always going to accumulate. I'm always dcaing. But as my wife, my sweet loving wife reminds me, you should have just, you know, paused your DCA at the, at, you know, when it was lower. And then, you know, just, you should have just, you know, bought the, bought the bottom and sold the top.
- [36:43]
James Check
Buy less at the top, buy more at the bottom.
- [36:45]
Walker America
If only, if only I had that. I, I don't have that kind of self control or foresight. But like, is that where we're at right now? Because I feel like another huge part of this Is quote, there's a lot of this narrative about like, retail never made it or retail made it, but they only made it into the, you know, the BTC paper, you know, paper treasury company plays. Where are you at with this? Like, like, does retail ever come back or is re. Because I've also seen people being like, no retail bitcoin interest is just dead because it just doesn't have the volume that people want.
- [37:17]
James Check
Yeah. So few answers to this. You're dead right? To actually take different parts of your like lived experience. And you know, folks watching this, you can probably think through what you felt if you're around for June 2022 when three arrows blew up. I remember exactly where I was. I was in Mexico sitting at a desk in her Airbnb. I remember when it happened. Yeah, yeah, no, I literally had to make a phone call back to Australia and guide one of my loved ones to use, you know, use a hardware wallet, like unwind a position that I had. Like I was there. I remember it very, very distinctly. So I'm of the view that that February sell off the 6th of February, 5th of 6, when we hit 60k, that was what I call the price pain capitulation. That was the point where all the frustration, the pent up bitcoin sucks energy that we built up through that choppy period in 25 and then through the sell off in November down to 80k and then again down to 60k. All the investors who are price sensitive, there's three things that really hurt in a bear and one of them is very obvious. Two of them, people don't think about the obvious. One is number go down, right? So number go down just watching your buy. I bought the top and now I'm smoked. Those people got absolutely flushed. We had $2 billion a day in November at 80k and then another 2 billion in February. And for me personally, as a professional analyst, I can tell you I literally logged into my X, I checked my chat, it said like 25 messages. There was like 20 people asking me for a podcast interview. I just closed the window. I'm like, I don't have time to do that because my inbox is just flooded with people being like, what the fuck's going on? Help. My clients are scared. Can you get on a call with them? Like just phone calls and emails and messages left, right and center. So I was like, pain, fear, fear. This 60k level is really, really important because we have flushed. This is a turning point for folks who bought the top are flushed out heavily. There's still more to come. And then people who are smart money, you've seen this before. You know what capitulation looks and feels like because you've been there before. The other two things that people don't think about that also hurt. One of them is also number go down. But it's actually unrealized profit getting going from big to small. So for context when we look in the on chain world we can look at everyone's cost basis, right? It's an approximation, but everyone's cost basis when they acquired their coins. And we can measure what is the unrealized profit or loss that every coin has and sum them all together. At the peak at 60k there was 250, $260 billion. Quarter of a trillion of unrealized loss at 60k. Quarter of a trillion. Sounds horrific, right? All time high. But then you think about the fact that unrealized profit, the amount of wealth that bitcoiners were sitting on being like fuck yeah, look how smart I am. We had $1.4 trillion, 1.4 Berkshire Hathaways. How's that for rat poison squared? At the all 1.4 trillion it reduced by 900 billion. So we got 260 billion of losses but we got 900 billion of paper profits that went to nothing. That is the thing that a lot of people don't think about that hurts a lot watching your in the money get much less in the money. And then the last one is time. The boredom and the chop and that 19k thing, that's the thing that shakes out a lot more people. And I believe we're in that phase, that time pain phase after the price pain capitulation. I think most when you have these price pain capitulation events. The smart money now knows it's time to accumulate. It's a shift in mindset the smart and you can see this actually realize people taking profit just off a cliff, it was the number one thing that was stopping this market going higher. People love to blame boogeyman and market manipulators and whatever else. It was like $3 billion a day of hodlers selling through most of 2025. The back half 25. It was just so big. You're like there is no other explanation required. Tons of sell side when we hit 80k. Yep.
- [41:18]
Walker America
Quick note on that because and I apologies for interrupting but this is something I appreciate you for a lot because and maybe it's just for the, for the likes for the engagement, but you see a lot of people who anytime bitcoin goes Down. It's manipulation, right?
- [41:34]
James Check
Yep.
- [41:34]
Walker America
All sideways manipulation, right? Or sideways. Oh, yeah. Chop solidation, as you say, it kills people.
- [41:40]
James Check
They just can't. They can't deal with it.
- [41:42]
Walker America
But it's like, I think that people often, from my. Again, more limited experience than yours, and I don't have the lens that you do, but, like, what I see is, like, there are so many more giant whales for one, than people can comprehend. That one galaxy whale was 80,000 bitcoin.
- [42:00]
James Check
They made fun of him. He sold 9.6 billion at the top, and they made fun of him.
- [42:04]
Walker America
You think that's all of his coins, by the way? Like, it's cute. You know that's cute. You think that's all the coins he has? Like, good for that guy. You know what I mean? Like, what a legend.
- [42:13]
James Check
Like, honestly, like, whenever I write about him semi regularly, just because, like, a great case study.
- [42:18]
Walker America
Yeah.
- [42:18]
James Check
And I often, like, write. Because it was 14 years ago, and I often accidentally write like, it's from memory. I'm like, 24. He's like, I'm 2014 vintage. I'm like, hang on a second. No, he's 2011 vintage. 2011, this dude. Like, wow, what a. What a move.
- [42:33]
Walker America
It's incredible. So I wanted to bring that up because I think that you've been so consistent on this fact that, like, yeah,
- [42:38]
Podcast Host
it's really easy to call, like, to
- [42:40]
Walker America
call foul, basically, to say like, this something is nefarious here. And not to say that there isn't market manipulation. There's manipulation in every market, obviously. However, your point, if I'm understanding correctly, has consistently been, you cannot explain, like, bitcoin doesn't go sideways or go down only because of manipulation. And if you try to claim that it's just being insincere. Is that fair?
- [43:03]
James Check
It basically. Basically, it's, yes, manipulation happens, but it's. When you compare, it's like we're looking at this manipulation thing. It's like five. And I did this a lot as an engineer. In the world of ground engineering, you got tons of parameters and they're all really hard to measure. Like, what's the friction coefficient of soil and cohesion? All this kind of. It's hard to measure this shit. And then you go, well, what actually matters? I know. I'll run a bunch of simulations and just like, adjust this up or down 50%. Oh. It turns out none of those matter. The only thing that really matters is what that material, what that parameter is doing. And from my perspective, that's how you just, like, Govern it. So yes, there's 5, 10, 15% of market manipulation. It moves the price like this. But then it's like, yeah, but you've also got this just massive, massive amount of sell side that like. It's funny that every time the market stops going up in a bull, this particular thing is like really high always. And I'm like, what is that thing? Oh, it's Hodler selling on chain. It's just realized profit. And I'm like, you don't, you don't need a thesis that is rooted in market manipulation to explain why the price stopped going up. Because we have a very measurable and observable metric that literally every single time it does this thing of going up a lot, the market stops going up a lot. And then when it goes up too much, market starts going down. It's kind of funny that. And then, and then you look at another way I view it. Who bought those coins? And this where I use the frame terminology. A top heavy market at the all time high. And I'm writing a report on this now, so all this shit's fresh in my mind. 90k, 70% or 65%. At the time, 65% of all the wealth invested in Bitcoin in dollar terms was above 90k. Top heavy market. As we fall down, all those top buyers realize, oh, I kind of bought the top. And then they sell and then the next guy goes, I'm buying the dip. And it turns out it wasn't the dip. And then he sells and it's like soil rolling down a hill. You've got this avalanche of just like coins falling down to a lower level and, and it releases all that potential energy, all that I'm underwater. And then you get a bunch of guys who bought the top who are like, I don't care, just, I actually just don't care. They become long term holders. So where we were at the all time high, we had 65. By the time we got to 90k was 70% of all the wealth was above 90k. That has now rotated significantly. We've now got 25% approximately of the wealth in this like 60k to or 55k up to 75k zone. The 2018 bottom, that bottom zone, 3k to 5k. 25% of all the wealth was in that bottom. 2022 between that 25k and 15k zone. That was like the bottom formation range. Guess what? About 25% of the wealth was in there by the time the bear stopped going down. Now the other way that I Measure this stuff is, I mean there's a few, I mean there's a ton of angles here at 60k, I do this thing, I've got this metric called the mean reversion index. Markets are mean reverting. The secret is to find the mean. What's the thing that the market oscillates around? And I ran this for a whole bunch of things. Power law that's just like trend doesn't care about price. This is trend model. We've got several on chain cost basis models, short term holders, the whole market, you know, where active investors are. Why is that a good mean? Because it's literally the price people paid on average. So if the price goes down a lot, well guess what happens. People sell on a loss and then the coins come down and if it goes up, they sell on a profit. So it literally tracks the price based on where people bought their coins. I've got on chain volume weighted prices, I've got 200 a day, 200 week moving averages technical. So some of them fast, some of them are slow, some of them mixes, nine of them in total. And the idea is that the market oscillates around all of these. And think about markets like a slingshot. There's like a center of gravity where it wants to be and then there's, you pull the slingshot too far to the downside and it flicks back to the upside. And then it's too far on the upside, flicks back to the downside and you can model like how many days? If we're trading at a million dollars tomorrow, how many days have we been that is it stretched that far to the upside. The answer is there is no date. It would be a one of one event, Q100, 100% of all days or lower. What happens at bear markets, you eventually get to the point where you just have gone too far below these means you've just sold off too heavily, too hard at 60k. That's what is in terms of this model. Q10, 10% of all days have been lower. So yeah, we could go there on a 10% chance below 60K. 54K is Q4, 4% of all days. Now all the previous bears that matter, 20th, 18th, 2020, March 2020, 2022, all of those bottomed on a Q4 event. So you're like, okay, where the hell are those other four days? Because there's a lot of bears out there. Who by the way, I'm, I say this all the time. I could be wrong. I could be very wrong. There's a lot of bears out there who want 40k and 30k and 45k. So I'm like, okay, let me model those. Let me just see what the odds are for that happening. We're talking about. I mean, 40k is a Q1 event, meaning there is less than 1% of all days that have been lower. And if I. Hang on a second. But Q4 was 54K, and that was like 2022 and 2018 and March 2020. Where the. Where in fuck's name is the. Those last four $2 bitcoin in 2011. So you gotta go back to 2011. So if. If you're a bear and you want the price, and that's an important word there. I'll explain the want in a second. If you want the price to go to 40k, you are. And for me, as a Hodler, if it goes, there's. That's a $2 Bitcoin, right? In relative terms, that is today's $2 Bitcoin in 2011. You should probably also recognize that there's like, a 1% chance this happens. Now. 1% is not zero. There's no such thing as zero in any market. But do I form a base case on that? No, I can't. I actually can't. So my rationale has been 70k is Q20. That's the bottom fifth. Do you really care about buying the bottom fifth? At any point in Bitcoin's history, there's an 80% plus chance you're buying the bottom. It may not be the bottom wick, but, like, it's the bottom fifth. What are you doing? Just DCA hard because it's a great place to buy. And now we're trading at 75. Everyone's like, oh, shit, did I miss the bottom? It's like. But the pairs told me it was going to 30k. It's like, just DCA below 70k because it's the bottom fifth. Can it go lower? Yes. Does it matter? No. Do I care that I bought at 20k or 15k or 16k in 2020? No. I don't look back at those coins and be like, God, I could have done really better if I had waited, like, three days. It's like, no, just buy all of it, man. Because, like, you're wasting your time and your emotional energy. Buy the whole bottom. Just stop trying to get cute with it.
- [49:47]
Walker America
I like that. I'm never trying to be cute. I. I also do. Did. Did you manage to cover the point you were about to make before I interrupted you, which one? I'm not sure now, but okay, we'll leave them, we'll come back to it.
- [49:59]
James Check
The commenters will bring it up.
- [50:01]
Walker America
Yeah, okay. Yeah, exactly. But, but no, I think that that's actually such an important point. It's like people like, okay, if you are a trader, I think we have to separate these things, right? You, you always separate. Check the analyst and check the Hodler, right? And I say Hodler, not Hodler. Just, you know, no offense, American Hodl. Hodl. However you identify, it's okay with me, man, like, no judgment here, but you always separate these two. And I think it's important to also separate when we talk. Like, I'm not a trader. There are many traders out there. If you're a trader, you have a totally different time preference than I do. And then I think that, that like most people listening to this show, you're not listening to this show because you are a, a, a savant trader, right? If you are, maybe you're listening to the wrong show. You know?
- [50:45]
James Check
You know, honestly, like people ask me all the time, it's like some people are surprised because I write four Hodlers. I actually have no interest in writing for traders because I like, I can trade, but I hate it. I think it's a horrible sport. It's just so bad for your mental health. So like some folks, and no question, I analyze the market. They can absolutely use that to trade. Right. As part of their input. But I certainly don't write for traders because this was what I noticed as the gap in the market. There's a gap in the market for analysts who are not giving you entry, stop loss and take profit levels. Everyone thinks they want this predictive model. That's right all the time. And my observation was no. People actually just want to understand why the market does what it does. They want to understand the data behind the narrative. They want to be able to visualize what they're seeing and like, take all the narratives they see on Twitter and be like, but that just doesn't line up with what I'm seeing in these facts. So that was like the gap that I tried to plug. You don't need to trade and it's just not. And people fantasize over like the bottom wick. I'm not going to buy until we get to my price. And the funny thing is I see a lot of folks. We got within, and I use some Australian terminology here, we got within a bee's dick of the 200 week moving average, right? When we sold down to 60k, it was trading like 58.5at the time. And everyone's like, no, it has to get to the 200 week moving average. And now they're like, I've still got buy orders at 60K. It's like, bro, it traded at 60K. I released a report literally at the 60K Wick called Welcome to Deep Value. And I was like, guys, it's just a really good time to dca. What are you arguing or negotiating or haggling over that last 3%? Put some money in the market and buy it. What are you doing?
- [52:24]
Walker America
Dude, I'm pretty sure you called in.
- [52:26]
James Check
We.
- [52:26]
Walker America
This is our. I believe this is our third episode that we've done together. I believe in the. I think it was the very first one where you actually called. You were like, maximum bottom 55k. Somebody can go back and check me on this, but I believe you called like, Maximum pain bottom 55k. More likely 58k. For memetic purposes, 58k. Gang will always be proved right, of course. But you were like, but if it gets within, you know, a bee's dick of that boy, that's Deep Value. And you called this. Like, dude, you called this a while ago.
- [53:02]
James Check
So I started thinking about this. I wrote a piece called Rethinking Bears. I think it was like January 2025, we just clicked 100k and I wrote a piece called Rethinking Bears. And this was actually because I lost a bet to my good friend and colleague from Glasnow crypto viz. We had a bet back in 2022 in the bear market, 100 bucks, which is worth a lot more because you bought bitcoin at the bottom with it. And I won't go through all the scary details, but there's an unchained price model called the realized price. It's the average cost basis for every bitcoin in the supply, right? So take all the wealth that's been gen. So take Satoshi's coins. They're worth zero because they moved at zero. Dude who bought yesterday, his coins are worth 75k. And then you divide it by the total supply. Now, we've gone below that in every single bear market in the past. Every single one. It's currently trading at 54k. So the cursory analysts would be like, okay, we have to go down to 54k. Now there's another model. And the reason I lost this bet is Dave Puhle and I, while we're living in Mexico. Well, he was in Mexico. He lives in Mexico. I came up with, well, we came up with this thing called the true market mean. So this was actually, it was great partnership by the way. Dave was like, he's just got so much creative energy. And then I had the engineering brand like he'd come in with an idea, be like, nut throw it out. Nut throw it out. That's fucked. Oh, hang on, that works. And I think he originally came up with the true market mean. And it's basically a way to correct for lost coins. Satoshi never contributed to the wealth in the system because his coins are valued at zero. So there's a 1.1 million Bitcoin. In bitcoin terms they're massive, but in dollar terms they're worth zero. So he's never contributed to the numerator, but he is dividing the denominator which brings down that price mark model. Now the problem is he also doesn't take profit. He doesn't respond to the market signal. So at 60k he alone is holding like a hundred. It's like something or all the lost Peter pay to pub key coins, they hold something like $110 billion of unrealized profit which they don't take. So in order to get to break even, which is hitting the realized price at 54k, you need 110 billion of people to buy the top and not capitulate to offset each other. And the problem is that they do, people who bought the top, they do, they get scared, they sell, they move their coins to a lower level and that reduces the unrealized loss. So as bitcoin gets bigger. Right, and we'd freshly come up with this model in 2022. It was trading at about 30k at the time. This is before I understood that Luna was coming. And three Arrows was a fraud and Genesis was a fraud. Like didn't know all this shit was.
- [55:32]
Walker America
Why didn't you see it, bro?
- [55:33]
James Check
I know, I know. Why weren't you tracking on Chain Man? Well, and sorry, just a quick funny anecdote. At Glass Note at the time we were tracking FTX and the data scientists who were very qualified, they were like, we just, we feel like we don't have all their coins. Like we've got this balance, but it just, it doesn't seem to be large enough to represent. And it's like they actually were tracking the coins correctly. They just FTX didn't have them. So that's, that's a funny anecdote. They did actually check it, but we didn't think that maybe they were actually fucking fraud anyway. So true market meme is trading at 30k and because it discounts all those lost coins, it's a more accurate view of where everyone's pain threshold is. Where's the middle? Where's the statistical middle of the market? And where people's genuine cost basis is not like cost basis including whales who bought at zero and have never spent them. Cost basis of normal people who are active. Long story short, I started rethinking this concept of a bear. Well, what if we don't go below the realized price anyway anymore? What if we actually don't go down there because it's an underestimate because of all these weird like internal factors. 80k which is the true market mean that is actually the pain threshold. And my thesis has been since that January 2025 must be 25 since we got to 100k in that piece. I was like, I think we bottom below the true market mean which is 80k and above the realized price which is 54k. And that's my, that's been my thesis ever since. And the reason is because I lost the money in 2022 because it's it. When I think about what it took for me to lose that hundred bucks. It took luna market selling 80,000 bitcoin into an illiquid market. It took three arrows capital borrowing billions of dollars in unsecured credit. It took Celsius Network which lord knows what they did with the money. Genesis, which was the biggest lender in the industry, was also corrupt in all this whole thing. GBTC had trapped so many investors and traders and then you had FTX fraud on top of it. I'm like, like what's the equivalent? What's the equivalent? Like what's the thing? And even so I see all of these bears calling for 30k and 40k and I'm like. And then I look at my mean reversion index like Q1 and I'm like I just can't. And then we get 25% of the wealth at the bottom already. And that's what put the plug in all the previous bottoms. And I'm just like where's the data that like I can't convince myself. And I formed this thesis a long time ago. The way I write when I do my work it's very much like people just get a tour of my mind as I like iterate challenge my own thesis and try and work it out. I'm trying to always find why I'm wrong. And by the way, I might be dead wrong. And I will gladly wear that because I will learn yet another hundred dollar lesson of what did I do wrong? But as it stands right now, I just struggle to envision, aside from strategy going bankrupt or coinbase getting hacked for 2 million. Bitcoin, like a quantum computer comes in, market manipulates the, whatever, whatever the thing is that's like a unforeseeable maybe, but like bitcoin kind of traded up through this whole Iran thing. It's kind of a set of bad news that markets probably should have gone down on and it didn't. And then I just, I put all these things together, I'm like, hey bears, if you don't have an exit strategy, you should probably start formulating one. I've got my exit strategy, which is I'm going to learn from what I did wrong. But like 54k, it's like a lower pound. It's where all the previous bears have bottomed. We may not even get there. There's a 4% chance we get there. So I'm like, you know, do with that information what you will.
- [59:08]
Walker America
I just, I just double checked. It was February 13, just before Valentine's Day. So actually I guess it was on Valentine's Day for you guys since you're living in the future. Always. Very kind of you to join me. That was when we had our first conversation. 2-14-20 or 2-13-14, 14th, 2025. And you called specifically, you said like, look, I, I think you were talking about the, Again, I'm not the, I'm not, I'm not the analyst here, but I think you were talking about the realized price. You're like 55k is like what would be the bottom? But I don't think we get quite
- [59:40]
Podcast Host
there, but we might get close.
- [59:41]
James Check
That sounds about right.
- [59:42]
Walker America
That's, and that's exactly what happened.
- [59:44]
James Check
I would have just, I would have just, yeah, but, but genuinely like, like
- [59:48]
Walker America
you actually, like, that's what, that is literally what happened. But you called it like, this was the beginning of 2025 when everyone was euphoric, we just hit 100. You were a bit of, you were a bit of a, you know, like a bucket of cold water, you know, like, because, because me, I'm, I'm just, I'm like a permeable check. Like, I, I, I can't help myself. But like you called it, you called it extremely well, you called it actually perfectly. So can I ask you like right now, where you sit, from everything you've just said, you sound extremely bullish, like short Like I know, I know you're bullish. Long term, that's not a question, you sound bullish short term, is that correct?
- [60:30]
James Check
Yeah. So first of all, I don't think I necessarily called it. I think I just literally looked at the data which is you're being very humble. That's calling it.
- [60:39]
Walker America
Fuck off. Come on.
- [60:40]
James Check
It is. But what I actually want to impress upon people is you've probably seen the narratives where like oh, on chain data is just shit. It's like. But it's literally us. It's a story of us making all of our decisions. And what do people do when they're underwater? They panic and they sell and they message their local analysts and say bro, help. What's going on? Like these are human. The reason why on chain data is magic is because it's human. It's so organically human. It's just the story of us doing human things. That's what I love about it. So yes, you know, call in terms of that sense. But like really the story's all there has to read it. What was your question again?
- [61:16]
Walker America
Fuck you for being so humble. Like just take, take the W, man, take the W. Like you know, you're allowed to. Like you, you called it. But okay, we'll allow you.
- [61:25]
James Check
Am I bullish? Am I bullish? Yes. Are you bullish? My general view is price pain, capitulation is in. Which means that the, the bulk of the downside is done. I look at the world around us and I say, look, there are a thousand and one reasons why we will get, I'm going to use Luke Roman's term here, a whoosh down something where the world just realizes, oh shit. My supply chains have got all sorts of problems. Oh now I've actually run out of fuel because the ship, the tankers have finally arrived and now I've got nothing coming after that. There's a thousand private credit explodes like choose your weapon. There's a thousand and one things to cause like a whoosh down type event. I've been very constructive on bitcoin and I would call myself as having documented bottom formation since that February sell off. So from 60k price paying, capitulation is in. Human behavior has changed. Smart money are accumulating. I think the bears are wrong. And by bears, anything below 55k, right, we might get a 50 on some kind of a wick and I'll be like okay, sure, you're not eating anything perfect. But if we're trading below 54k for like a week, two weeks, then yeah, I've probably got to test my thesis. But yes, I'm construct, I'm very constructive. I think we probably don't get through the 80k region. 80, 85 on the first go. Generally we don't. So I would not be surprised. Like chopsolidation remains my base case but the clear invalidation is that 80k zone. There's a ton of reasons why and that's its own topic to itself. But yes, I'm bullish. I'm short term, like very, very near term. Like just, just don't go max long now like leverage because now the funny thing is there's a ton of people going max short. Way too leverage, which I love.
- [63:02]
Walker America
Max long. I'm always max long check. I can't help myself.
- [63:06]
James Check
This is the other side of the equation. What I love about so. Oh yeah. So much data on chain tells a story of bitcoiners. Futures markets tells us about people who are speculators. Now I look at the on chain market and I see a bunch of hodlers who are patiently absorbing a ton of supply in this bottom formation zone. I see probabilities that are very, very favorable, especially below 70K. And then I see in the futures market some of the deepest negative funding rates we've seen ever. And I would argue on a sustained basis. I don't think I've ever seen futures trade is so bearish. They are paying a 6.5% interest rate for the privilege of getting liquidated right now. And I love it. I think it's fantastic. So there's a very good chance that we just squeeze higher. But at 80k 85, there's a ton. There's an absolute ton of people who bought that Bear Flag from November through to January who are going to sell into that rally. They want to get their money back. There's gonna be tons of resistance that comes in there. So it helps me set up a framework. My base case is we chop solidate for a couple more months. My base case is at 60K. There's a very, I would say now it's probably 60% chance at the bottom. That is the bottom. I also think that we're getting down to 54k. Like I keep that as a, like it might happen. We might get an event where it's just like a whoosh down type event totally within, within bounds. But anything below 70k is Q20. As a HODLer, I'm not gonna argue with the statistics to the bottom fifth. When's the bottom fifth? In every previous market's like oh, great time to buy. Do I ever regret whether it was 4k or 5k? No. Do I regret it as 20k or 15? No. It's the same thing, right. Ultimately it's the exact same thing. So yes, I'm constructive, bullish, but as always with markets, it depends. It's nuanced.
- [64:48]
Walker America
Well, you're always check the analyst and check the hodler. Right. And I appreciate that about you.
- [64:53]
James Check
Like well, the only reason check the analyst has a job is because check the huddler wants to know what's going on. He's just a curious dude. Right. And analyst is like all right, let me see if I can solve this problem for you.
- [65:03]
Walker America
Okay, let me, let me ask you another side of things. MicroStrategy's been buying like gangbusters wild. I forget what it is today.
- [65:13]
James Check
27,000, right?
- [65:14]
Walker America
It was yeah, tens of thousands of bitcoins. I have been somewhat tuned out for like the last couple of weeks. Again, quite a great entrance back into the scene with you my friend. But like strategy has been buying. I've been buying not quite in the same volume that Michael is, but I've been buying.
- [65:35]
James Check
Knock off a couple of points, many
- [65:38]
Walker America
orders of magnitude, you know. But who's selling right now? Is it still, is it still whale selling? What, what is on chain telling you about like who is still selling coins right now? Because I feel like again a lot of people are like there's suppression, there's suppression. I, I believe you probably have a different perspective.
- [65:55]
James Check
I do, yes. So the 80k sell off in November. The metric that I talk about and I talk about sell side from these Hodlers is called revive supply. Now revive supply is basically long term holder selling as is true for all bitcoin UTXO data. It's a beautiful power law. Glassnow did a fantastic study on this that just shows there is a power law distribution between how long a coin has been held and how much, how much of the UTXOs that are spent every day and destroyed they represent. So what that basically means is the older a coin is, the less likely it is to be moved. Now the threshold that we use in on Chain world is about five months long term, short term. People love to argue with the terminology. Doesn't matter what you think. The statistics show otherwise. The thing about being at a five month threshold, the coins are older than five months represent like 1 to 2% of the daily moves and most of that is concentrated in bull markets when they take profit. So when we got to the all time high we were seeing two and a half, $3 billion a day of revived supply. A very large chunk of that as is expected was five months, six months, seven month old coins. Why does that matter? Because you still held Bitcoin for six months and you didn't hold Nvidia, you didn't hold gold, you didn't hold any of the other things that were mooning. Right, all the other things that were mooning. And before I forget, you asked me a question much earlier in this conversation which is will we ever see retail come back? Bro, I saw them in the line buying silver. Yes. They're coming back just when the price goes up. So that's a whole nother story. So yeah, so realized, sorry, revive supply very high through the second half of 2025. It peaked at that November sell off at 80k and it has just been off a cliff ever since. And we are now back to levels that we saw at the 2022 bottom and that like boring ass 2023 choppy period where we went nowhere at 30k 25k. So the amount of hold like old long term holders selling off a cliff like back to bear market, previous bear market baseline levels in USD terms which if you think about it in bit where much lower because the price is three times higher, four times higher. So the amount of sell side like there's a story there. The folks who sold the top in size are not selling since 80k. What do you think they were doing at 80k? They're realizing it's probably not the right time anymore. And what do you think they're doing at 60k and 70k? They're buying back. So there is a story in what they're doing and what they're not doing. Now where is the sell side coming from? From people who bought the top. We're seeing something to the tune of $600 million a day of realized loss from top buyers. And we saw 2 billion on the on the sell offs at 80k and 60k. Most of the people who are selling and just for a bit of a sense of scale here I've got another chart that shows like the 30 day accumulation of the ETFs and strategy and compares that to the amount of capital flowing in from an on chain perspective. Strategy in the ETFs. Generally speaking my line is that the ETFs and strategy in the bull have been about 25% of the so 20 to 25 depending on the day of the overall sell side pressure. So they're like a fifth each of the Demand side. So you're talking about, you know, maybe, maybe half at like upper bounds today. Those two alone are accumulating the amount of capital that's being flushed out by top buyers. So what happens if you have other spots? Buyers like you and I who are also buying coins at a cheaper level. So like this. There's just a lot of, lot of reasons to not be a bear. It's just a lot of reasons to not be a bear. And I find it hard to be too bearish. Cautious, but not bearish.
- [69:38]
Walker America
I, I find it hard to be bearish ever. But I also am usually wrong. I should probably be more bearish. Most of the time I forget who it was. Like, it might have been like American Hodl. Hodl again, however he identifies, I respect just, you know, to each their own. I don't want to dead name him by saying Hodl, but he's something to the effect of like it's like 99% of the time in Bitcoin you're fucking and then like 1% you're a genius. Right? Like, like. And you've talked about this before, where the amount of days in the year where bitcoin does what bitcoin does, I. E. To the upside, it's like 6 to 10 or something.
- [70:17]
Podcast Host
Like it's something crazy low.
- [70:18]
Walker America
Can you, can you? Because that's like important to know about.
- [70:22]
James Check
No, I need to run this study again. I've been meaning to actually. So you've reminded me. I ran a study, this would have been somewhere in 24, I think 2024. I ran a study where I basically removed. I took the 2017 cycle, I took the 2021 cycle, I think maybe even 2019, something like that. And I took these different market cycles and I just. It's a very crude study. I removed the 10 best days. You just like turn them to a zero. If you do that most of the market cycle, you're like flat or down. So if you like think about your return profile, you're at break even at the end of the cycle, bull cycle. Or you're actually underwater. So those 10 best days, wherever they are, are the thing that makes the whole cycle and the four years, right? And four year cycle is a whole different thing.
- [71:10]
Walker America
Another episode for that.
- [71:11]
James Check
Yeah, I know that's, that's a whole animal. So if you miss the best 10 best days. And this is what like traders are trying to do, right? They're trying to, to get the 10 best days. And what are they trying to do? They're trying to miss the 10 worst days. So I then said, okay, well let's remove the 10 worst days and let's just say for easy math, in a cycle you had a 10x return from the bottom. That's if you just sit the whole thing through. If you miss the 10 worst days, it goes from like a 10x to like a 20x which is big. It's like a doubling but you're risking the zero, you know what I mean? Like you're risking missing the 10 best days or like two of the 10 best days because you're trying to be cute and trade these things. And like generally speaking, the best days occur after a period of shit down, right? Leaky price and people like, oh man, I should get out, I should de risk here. It's like, and then you get one green candle and then you buy back in. But you've kind of missed the thing that made the cycle happen. So again, and if you look at the stats on a daily basis, this is why traders get minced. 40% of the time the bitcoin price goes up or down less than 1% on any one day it's gone up or down less than 1%. 40% of the time. 30% of the time it goes up more than 1%. 30% of the time it goes down more than 1%. So if you think about that for like a levered trader who's paying a funding rate to be long, there's a 70% chance that it goes down or sideways and you're just going to get wrecked. And then there's like a 30% chance that you're right. This is why people just get wrecked. Now if you wind that out from rather being a daily basis, you do a quarterly basis, suddenly there's a positive skew. If you're buying over any 90 day period, Bitcoin more often than not is positive in terms of returns. And there's sometimes where you just get a quarter that's like a plus, a hundred percent, just like a plus. Casual doubling of your money, right? So, well, sorry, depends how you want to frame up your money, right? Some people will say, oh it's the
- [72:55]
Walker America
same Bitcoin, one bitcoin's one bitcoin, bro,
- [72:57]
James Check
One bitcoin, one bitcoin. But yeah, it's like you skew and it's like over longer time periods bitcoin skews positive. And folks love to compare, you know, oh, it was a shitty cycle because of this top and this top. And look, four year CAGRs. Now here's A funny thing, I wrote a piece recently called Correcting CAGR because people love their 4 year CAGR. If Bitcoin trades at 75k for the rest of the year, the CAGR is going to go from like 15% up to 45%. You know why? Because we always. CAGR is measured from the starting point four years ago to the current price. What was happening four years ago, we were falling down that 2022 cliff. So four year CAGR, if we go sideways, CAGR is going to moon back to 2021 levels simply because the starting point is going from 45k all the way down to 17k right in June. So it's just one of those great examples of like, stop using these shitty metrics. I'm a civil engineer by trade. The amount of times I look at like the tools that Tradfi uses, I'm like, you're telling me that you guys haven't worked out that that's like a bodgie Bodgy brothers metric. Get rid of it. Use something better. This is, it's incredible of them.
- [74:05]
Walker America
Can I tell you what I use? Check. So, so I, I, I look at the monthly chart of bitcoin and I saw that bitcoin went down red five months in a row. And I've got my handy dandy trading view here thing right here. And then I saw that this RSI thing which I don't totally understand because I, I haven't spent the time it went from the dark red to the light red, it started going up and so on the month because I, I don't give a about the five minute or the hourly or the four hour or the eight hour or the one day or the one week. I about the monthly. And I don't even actually care about that that much because I'm literally just going to be buying, I'm not stopping dcaing either way. But I may want to set aside a little extra fiat because I think, oh, maybe there's an opportunity for me to get some extra sats for my, you know, for my infinitely printable Federal Reserve notes. From what I know, and you can call me on this, there was like one other time in bitcoin's history when it went down five months in a row. Red candle.
- [75:07]
James Check
Yes, that's correct.
- [75:08]
Walker America
Right.
- [75:08]
James Check
One other time. There's so there's a little bit of nuance here. So 2018, at the tail end of 2018 where we had that final sell off down to the bottom, that was six consecutive red months. But importantly the last Two were chop solidation. The last two were just digesting the last one. So they were down but like they're within the bottom formation range. You can argue that. 2022 we had three candles, two green and then three. So then there's another six. 2015 there was another period where we had like three gap three. So very often we have like six ish red. Really, really bad monthly.
- [75:44]
Walker America
Five in a row, man. Five, five. Just hammering in a row like this, you know.
- [75:48]
James Check
Six in a row. Five, six in a row. Every time we've seen this, what has been at the end of that? The price pain capitulation. The, the thing that put the bottom in. And it's important to note the bears are always looking for this like lower, low. Generally speaking, the time pain ends with another capitulation. This is why I'm like saying, just be prepared, we might get another flush out. Because time pain, this boredom thing, it's a real thing. And you do generally get a waterfall sell off that just everyone who's like, I just can't do this anymore, I've been sitting here for six months, this thing's gone. Absolutely. No, I'm done, I'm out. So you get a really big flush out at the end usually on a nasty waterfall seller off. Just keep that in mind.
- [76:30]
Walker America
So you're saying double down right now stack even harder. That's what I.
- [76:35]
James Check
If we, if we go back down below 70. Don't, don't, don't, don't this up Anyway when we got. And that price pain capitulation, five, six red candles in a row monthly, the weekly RSI got below 30. Whatever. What, when did we see that before 2018. Bottom March 2020. 2022. 2022 is the only time that FTX was the only time we actually, the price pain was lower. So a lot of folks are like, oh, we have to have another lower, lower second leg lower. It's like, well, only in 2022 did that happen. So you kind of, you know, two, three times it didn't happen. That's the only time it did. Anyway. Weekly RSI below 30. Every time we've seen weekly RSI below 30, price pain capitulation, 5, 6 months in a row. Every single time we see this, the bottom is usually in. With the exception of FTX, which, who cares? Between 17.6 and 15.6. It's the same fucking number. Come on. The difference is time pain. So chopsolidation. And that's why my thesis has been every time we've ever seen this Amount of destruction and bearish downside and mean reversion to the downside and capitulation and realized loss. And like choose your metric. Every time I've ever seen this, expect six or so months of chop solidation. We hammer out some kind of a flaw. We have a bunch of leaky price, we get a bunch of bulls who get excited at the top, bears who get excited at the bottom. The price goes ultimately nowhere. The people who know what they're doing start accumulating and then the market just starts going up. And you know what happens when that happens? The bears are like, nah, it's gotta go lower. And I mentioned this before, there's a transition of want. The bears want it to go lower. They don't expect it to go lower. But their thesis was we're in a bull market and they only worked out the road. A bear at 60k. They've been longing the whole way down on their futures contracts, getting liquidated every time. They finally, at 62k realize, ah, I should have been short this whole time, right? Oh look, my favorite influence is super bearish. And look, he's got this cool indicator that's predicted every single top of every single thing. It must be time to go short. And that's why they're currently paying six and a half percent interest rates to be short. As the market rallies and liquidates them one by one. The bears want the market to go down. They don't really have a good thesis aside from a calendar, it has to go down because it's October. They just want the four year cycle to be the same. They're not looking. And again, I could be very wrong and I'll eat my words comfortably. I'm looking at the way that human beings are behaving. Are we seeing the accumulation pressures you want to see at the bottom? And the answer is yes. It literally looks like every single previous bear market floor. Now, could this one be different? Yeah, it could. Kind of. Dangerous words though.
- [79:10]
Walker America
So you know the old adage like the sell in May and go away thing that apply to Bitcoin?
- [79:17]
James Check
Yeah, it has. I mean historically it has. But like you know, is sell in May and go away, is that 75k back down to 30k? Is it like another 50% decline from here or is that 75k goes up to 80, 85 gets rejected because we just rarely bust through that short term cost basis the first time, which is 80k at the moment. We sell back down, we go back to 70, 65, maybe we go and get 58k gang of Kiss and then it goes up again. The bears get super excited. They go, yes, finally, 30k, here we come. They short the bottom. We go up to 80k again. We try again. Like chop solidation is the most likely outcome. I think the bears are very, very wrong. I think the moon boys probably won't get their answer yet, but I think the bulls are more correct than the bears. And I would love to see the lines on charts for the bear case because I try to construct my own all the time because it's my job to try and be right. And I say that try and be right because that's the best we can do as people try and be right. I can't convince myself yet that there's any credible bear case and certainly not in face of, I mean, just the probabilities, man. Like every single mean reversion at Q4 has been the bottom 40, 55, 54K. The realized price is the that Q4 event. Fundamentally, I'm like, we just shouldn't go to the realized price anymore. I'm just like, everything just lines up top.
- [80:41]
Walker America
And meanwhile, Michael Sailor is just like a Hoover or shop vac, just like just gobbling up it. Carl and I actually, like back in our very early days of making content, made a video about Michael Sailor just vacuum, literally vacuuming up bitcoins. It was quite on the nose, like it was me holding a vacuum wearing an MSTR T shirt that I'd printed out. But it. That's what it feels like right now. It feels like this guy. And we'll close out soon because I've already kept you long and I was late today. So a thousand pardons. But it feels like right now there are certain people or certain institutions who are very much aware of what's happening and they are price insensitive. Yeah, Sailor is buying. He's been buying no matter what this entire time. People have various opinions about Sailor. Personally, I think the guy has probably done more evangelizing than anyone else at this stage of bitcoin in terms of explaining it the way that he has. He's also just quite literally putting his money where his mouth is and is just gobbling up as many coins as he can. I don't under. Like, this seems like one of those things where people are going to look back and be like, oh, well, it was so obvious in retrospect. Where are you at with this? Is. You also mentioned like, okay, you know, FTX was an FTX moment, right? You touched on like, well, if strategy or coinbase Is that something you think is a legitimate threat vector or just like, okay, this would be the hypothetical for where. What could possibly cause that same type of downturn as we had during 2022?
- [82:20]
James Check
Yeah, no, it's more so like, what, what, what needs to happen to be FTX grade.
- [82:24]
Walker America
Okay.
- [82:24]
James Check
And on the strategy thing, like, they've, They've fit with Stretch, clearly.
- [82:29]
Walker America
Yeah.
- [82:30]
James Check
You know, demand to just like get fixed income. I mean, what. I'm very. So first things first. One of my biggest critiques of the company has always been, how do they buy in the Bear? Here we are, guys. They worked it out. So I think that's, I mean, it's, it's. It's kind of breathtaking to watch, honestly. I'll be very curious to see, because the thing with Stretch is it's a variable rate and the business is taking on more obligations because of the interest rate. My expectation is that when the bull markets properly back, they should be lowering that interest rate. Because you just absolutely should. Right. You become more credit worthy, you should be lowering it. So I think a lot of people who are buying Stretch, and there's also a lot of risk. As an Australian, if I had bought Stretch, I would have earned my 11.5% interest while the Australian dollar cut US$100 down significantly. So I would have actually lost a bunch of money on the fact that $100 is not worth $100 anymore to me as an Aussie, which is. Which Lord knows why the Aussie dollar is doing better aside from like commodities, because, like, our economy ain't doing better. Anyway, separate story. So I think he stands on another podcast. Yeah, a whole different thing. He should be lowering that interest rate eventually. And the, like, I'm, I'm kind of trying to work through these, these different frameworks because, like, his other preferreds are fixed. If you were to buy it, whatever your yield is, it's fixed at that rate forever. Whether there's a rotation of people from Stretch into other preferreds or whether during the bull. I'm trying to think about this. Like, if I was a strategy ecosystem dude and I buy the preferreds during the Bear because they just pay me to wait and then I rotate back into Bitcoin. Cause I want the extra returns as he lowers the interest rate. Does that like funnel more buyers into bitcoin? And then maybe as we get towards late stage, they sell the bitcoin back in or they move into mstr and like, I'm trying to think about, like, how does the MSTR dude actually, like, Rotate his capital through this thing, because that's kind of what Saylor's doing. He's kind of building his own little mini defi ecosystem here, right? Which is just as, just as decentralized as all the other defi that we talk about. He's basically got this little ecosystem where you can move between these different instruments and lever up and whatever else. Like, it's, it's, it's a fascinating model, honestly, the strategy. I'm not a huge fan just because, like, you know, I do worry. The one thing I kind of worry about, and it's the free market doing what the free market does. Is there a number that's too big in terms of how many coins he's got? Is there too much of a cornering of the market? Does it matter? Because the price is going to go up anyway.
- [84:59]
Walker America
I do wonder from an economic node perspective.
- [85:02]
James Check
Yeah. So actually, here's a thought. I've been pondering this whole quantum thing, which again, that's a whole. Again. We got episodes coming out of.
- [85:11]
Walker America
Okay, six more podcasts later.
- [85:13]
James Check
I know, hard to handicap the risk of that actually coming, but I stand on the fence where I'm like, like, I think, I think it's all fugazi bullshit, but I'm not smart enough to be able to properly handicap that. So I think we should take it seriously. But I was thinking about why we can't hard fork. There was a paper released in the defi world many years ago basically saying that once usdc, basically USDC has fork, choice and tether. Because if you fork the Ethereum ecosystem and tether and USDC say your dollars on this chain are worth zero, there's no choice, right? It's straight up. You have to go on the fork that they choose. If we now go the other path and say, well, let's say we have a quantum thing, right? And the market doesn't agree on what to do with Satoshi's coins. For example, if you do any hard fork, Bitcoin is actually a proof of stake system because Sailor and Blackrock alone can market sell on the other side and just mince the price, right? Which by the way, they have a whole lot more than Satoshi does. So that's another thing to think about. If Mr. Quantum finally comes around and finally maybe steals the coins, it's like there's a couple of economic nodes out there who can kind of offset all that and just sell as much as they want on one side. So we have to soft fork in that case. And this is part of bitcoin ethos anyway. But if you hard fork we actually become a proof of stake network because the most money kills the other side. If you soft fork, that's where you actually have user activated soft fork resistance where you can say, well we're actually just going to cut off miners revenue so you get no hash rate. You know what I mean? So like there's that whole shaolin fry esque approach. So it's an interesting way to think about it. But like how much is too much? I've often wondered like you know, sailors. Some people love him. A lot of people don't. Very normal for the world of bitcoin. Is there a amount of like tradfi guys who are like, I just don't want to be in the room with that guy, you know what I mean? Like, I don't want to be in the same trade as, as, as someone who has that much control over the market. But again, everyone's gonna have their own opinions on this whole thing. I don't know what the answer is, but I do just like ponder where is like the average marginal person? At the end of the day, bitcoin's gonna do what it does. It's resistant to these things, but it does require us being very careful, particularly when it comes to difficult fork choices. It does require us be very, very conscientious that if we allow any form of hard fork kind of end up with a proof of stake type setup. So it's an interesting framework there, like keeping that soft fork element of like, you know, we really need to have that user activated soft fork where you can do what we did in the block size wars and tell these big entities that's fine, you can have all your coins. There will be no miners on your chain because they will get zero revenue if you do this. So there's that whole element of governance.
- [88:01]
Walker America
This has been part one of 69 episodes with James Check.
- [88:06]
James Check
I think about this shit a lot as you do.
- [88:08]
Walker America
I know. I. Dude, I love it. Well, okay. I. I appreciate you, man. I've kept you longer than I was supposed to and I started late. Thank you for coming in here. Send people to your newsletter, send them to where you want to send them. Like I seriously, I want to. I want to let people know again in our episode, February 13th or 14th for you. Valentine's Day, you shared with me 2025, you called exactly what we've seen happening. If people want to see those calls, where can they go? Not that you call it exactly. You're not a Trader. I know, I know, I know, but.
- [88:43]
James Check
Okay, yeah, don't come for the calls. Come for the. The learning journey of just, like, trying to work this out. You like visualizing what people are doing? I like to think about, like, what, how I analyze them on chain data especially. It's like sitting at the poker table and you can just see what everyone else is holding. Even if you're not even playing. You can just see. You can, like, see through everyone's cards. You don't know what the future holds. You do not know what comes out the other side of the deck. But you can sit tell that when that card turns over, that dude's bluffing. Now let's just watch how he behaves. Is he. Has he been around for a long time? Is he tended? Is he very good at bluffing? Is he selling? Is he, like, bailing out? Does he know that he's got a shit hand? That's how I like to think about it. And it just helps Hodlers navigate. Don't worry about traders. If you're a Hodler and you just want to, like, understand how the market mechanics work and visualize it, that's what I love about visualizing it. That's more or less what I do. So you'll find me. Over@checkonchain.com, we do do two posts a week written in video. The writing is where I do my thinking. That's where, like, you'll actually get my train of thought as I build the. The idea and then I just have fun on the video and just go through the same content. But some people like videos, some people like reading. And according to our recent survey, nine and a half percent people show up, read the tldr, and then out they go. That's enough for them.
- [89:57]
Walker America
I, you know, I think that's a. Honestly, a higher percentage than most people could hope for in terms of people want to see.
- [90:03]
James Check
It's very interesting, actually. We get very organic stats. So like 50% of our audience is from the 2020 cycle. Like 25% is from earlier, and then the other 25 is from later. 10% of people read the TLDR. The other, like 30% only read, 30% only watch, and the other 30% do both. So they've got these, like, very interesting and organic splits between how people actually consume, which is great.
- [90:28]
Walker America
I love it, man. Well, seriously, I, I highly recommend, as always, everybody follow you. Check you out. You've been in my, like, again, limited experience in bitcoin, but you have been one of the most reasoned voices throughout the entire thing. You've been consistent. You've always separated as well, which I love. Check the analyst. Check the Hodler. Hodler. If you're American Hodl and you identify as that, again, there's. I've got no problem with that. However you want to identify, American Hodl. Hodl. I digress. Hodl. Hit me up after this. But no, thank you, my friend. People should go and check you out. I'm bullish. That's what I'll end on. I remain bullish, which means I go
- [91:07]
James Check
to 30k and the bears are right.
- [91:08]
Walker America
Yeah. What a perfect note to end on. Thank you to everybody who joined on the on the live stream on Noster. Appreciate you guys. Check. Appreciate you, brother. We'll do it again soon.
- [91:21]
Podcast Host
Ish.
- [91:22]
Walker America
I hope you know we've got 69 or 68 more episodes to go, so. Yeah, yeah.
- [91:26]
James Check
Good on you, mate. And all the best to the family. Speedy recovery for Carla.
- [91:29]
Walker America
Thank you, brother. Cheers.
- [91:38]
Podcast Host
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of the Bitcoin Podcast. Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're watching or listening and share it with your friends, family and strangers on the Internet. Find me on noster@primal.net Walker and this podcast@primal.net Titcoin on X, YouTube and Rumble. Just search at Walker America and find this podcast on X and Instagram @titcoin podcast. Head to the Show Notes to grab sponsor links. Head to substack.comwalkeramerica to get episodes emailed to you. And head to bitcoin podcast.net for everything else. Bitcoin is scarce, but podcasts are abundant. So thank you for spending your scarce time listening to the Bitcoin podcast. Until next time, stay free.