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A
This is not like just a simple mid cycle correction anymore. This is a bear market that's going to take slightly longer. I still think a million could be potentially two bull markets away. Like I think in the next bull market we could get into the multiple hundreds of thousands. If you look at the four year cycle which bitcoin has been moving in, you know we're moving into the bearish period. If you're wanting to get into Bitcoin, minus 50% currently is already undervalued, but we could still get slightly lower. So there's definitely the potential for bitcoin to move up many multiples once we consolidate long enough. Some people say the four year cycle is dead. I don't think that's the proper way to phrase it. I think one should say the halving impact is dead, but not the four year cycle. Bitcoin is severely undervalued at these levels. That's why in the next couple of months we will form a bottom. I don't know exactly how low we will go, but I think our realistic outlook that maybe is good to assume that that will happen. I think we're already at fairly cheap sats here. We're not going to reach the minus 70, 80% drop from an all time high. Why not? Because we actually, we didn't have that parabolic move up. But there's nothing wrong with bitcoin. Bitcoin is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. Bitcoin is the Trojan horse, infiltrating the fiat,
B
The rational root. The rational root. Rational root. Just root maybe. Welcome. I'm stoked to have you on, man.
A
Thank you so much for inviting me on. Happy to be here.
B
I have a lot I want to cover with you. I want to start out maybe well first perhaps it's worthwhile just walking through this chart but maybe before we do that because I know you've. And thank you for doing this, you've prepared a number of charts specifically for this which I very much appreciate. What is your just current vibe check on where we're at right now? There's. We were talking about this just off camera for a second. There's a lot of different opinions about what bitcoin is going to do next. Always right now there seems the vibes seem to have been weird. We had a, I think for most people pretty disappointing last year and then these first couple months of 2026, up until, you know, a little war in Iran seemed to spike or spark off a little bit of a rally. It seems like things have just Been weird. People have been super bearish. Where are you at with this? What is your kind of personal vibe check on the situation?
A
Yeah, I would say that bitcoin is in a bear market. So we had like a bullish trend. And actually that's why I put this chart first to kind of explain, okay, where are we currently at or how do I see the situation? I mean we had. So the line that you see in this chart is the bullish trend. So when you have a bull market there's this, it's an exponential trend, right? Like the price chart is shown here in log scale. And so that's why that bull trend looks like a strain, like a linear line, but it's actually, it's a curved line if you would look at it in linear time. And so when you have a bull market, so we came out of a three year bull market, you have this three year exponential trend. And an exponential trend is always unsustainable, right? At some point an exponential trend will end. And so the bullish trend that you see here is actually based on a regression from that price data of the bull market. And then I drew like a channel and I drew the bottom of the channel that is that bullish trend that you see in the chart. And so I, after, soon after making the all time high, we fell below that channel, the bottom of that channel, below that bullish trend line that you see in the chart. And so that was for me a warning signal like okay. And this doesn't necessarily mean that it's the end of the bull market in 2021 we had like a mid cycle dip. We also were in an unsustainable Trend in the 2021 bull market and we still managed to make a new all time high after in November. So for me it was also a bit like, okay, is this going to be like a mid cycle dip or are we going to move in a bear market? But at least what was clear is like okay, we're not going to rise at the same trend that we were before we fell down that bullish trend. And so that was what's going to go on. But as soon as then we fell below the 2 trillion dollar market cap or instead of like a multi trillion dollar bitcoin, we became like again in the single digits a trillion dollar market cap. And that actually coincides with the 100 psychological level, which has been a very psychological level for bitcoiners to take profit as well. And so of course those are all confirmations like okay, this is going to take a Bit longer this correction and then we fell below the short term, all the cost basis obviously. And once we had that rebounds to the short term all the cost base that was actually around 97k and we nearly touched 100k there. Actually told my followers, okay, this may be a good time to take profit because this correction take long, might going to take longer. You know, it could take a couple months. Because time wise if you look at the four year cycle which bitcoin has been moving in, you know we're moving into the bearish period. And so even though we didn't have that parabolic move up and we can get a bit to that later, why, maybe you know what the reasons are why we didn't. But, but we didn't have that parabolic move like which we usually tend to see at the end of a cycle. But then we like time wise we were actually ready to move into the bear phase. And so then of course we had this February 5th drop and that was like clearly, okay, this bear market is going to take a little longer. And this is not like just a simple mid cycle correction anymore. This is a bear market that's going to take slightly longer. And so we currently had that 50% drop off the all time high. And so now I don't like there are some differences between this cycle and the previous cycle. I think we're not going to reach, you know, the minus 70, minus 80% drop from an all time high. Why not? Because we actually we didn't have that parabolic move up and so we had a much more distributed top. And so also it's, it's much less likely to get these really high percentage term drawdowns. I think 50% is already like a severe drawdown. So we're already at pre undervalued levels. But I still think there's also room to, to especially time wise but also price wise to, to maybe potentially have another leg down before we really start moving up.
B
Well, let me ask you too, I mean what does another leg down look like? Because I was listening to your conversation. You, you were on Danny Null's show, formerly Peter McCormack show of what bitcoin did. And I think it was November of 25 and Bitcoin was hovering like right around 100k at that point. And you called out, you were like look, we may go lower, we may go 50% lower. I don't think we go much lower than that. Now we've basically done almost exactly what you just said there could happen. We, we got down. I think what the low was like. I don't know if, I don't know if we fully broke 60, but we were, you know, right around the, the lowest 60s there. I mean. So do you think is this like the 58k gang prophecy that is going to be coming back? Is that what we're going to hit? I've seen also people, I mean, every, every analyst loves drawing, you know, lines on charts. And a lot of them are like, see, this is why bitcoin's going to 40k, 30k, 20k, 10k, 0 negative, whatever. You know, you see so much noise out there. So what's kind of like the signal for you here?
A
So first in the, in the November, November 10, we had like this huge, actually the biggest liquidations happening in the industry. It was mainly crypto, but also bitcoin was the fact that that was that, that first drop actually, which, which brought us below, below that bullish trend and below the 100k level. So that was in, in my opinion, the first leg down. And then we had like a rejection of the short and bolt cost basis and the February 5 drop was really like that second leg down. Now we now have some consolidation. We're now in that we're actually in the low 70 range. I think we can stay between 70, 80 for some time, but potentially indeed we might go to those upper 50s. The 58 gang, I think, is a level that's actually highly likely to reach within the next couple of months. But there are also some reasons why we don't have to get there. And it's mainly because, you know, and I think I speak for you as well here, most of us bitcoin, bitcoiners that have been a long time in this market and understand the value proposition of bitcoin already think bitcoin is severely undervalued at these levels. And I think pretty much like the majority of us would agree on that. And so that that also means that we are less tempted to sell at these levels. And so we've had a lot of sell pressure around that 100k level, but I think moving forward we're going to see less sell pressure, you know, at these, the lower we go. And so, and the same, at the same time, you know, passive flows or actually like institutional gradual adoption will continue now, not at the same level as during the bull market, but I do think that's why in the next couple of months we will form a bottom. And so I don't know exactly how low we will go, but I think the upper 50s are a realistic outlook that maybe is good to assume that that will happen. And then if we don't get there, you know, that is fine. So also I would recommend like, I think we're already at fairly cheap sats here. And so, you know, it's very hard to time the bottom. I mean we can do this with the four year cycle, but there are some divergences from the four year cycle and we can get into some of those details in a bit. But it's very hard to time the exact bottom and the exact price. Right. And so it's much more practical to just average in during these next couple of months and buy, you know, if we get another leg down, that is actually a tremendous opportunity for the time to come. Because what is happening on the other side, we really have a measurable institutional adoption and that continues. I mean news comes out every week. We saw now again Kraken became a bank. And so even these, the industry is kind of converging with the fiat system. Right. Kraken is becoming a bank. On the other side, I think Morgan Stanley is starting an etf. That was news of just like the last two days or so. And so we see that institutions are entering the space. I actually measure that by observing 13F filings and we can get. I have actually a chart on that. Maybe I'll open that one. So this is the chart on the total ETF holdings. And what I try to do here is see the share of institutional holdings from the total ETF holdings. And this is a very conservative estimate because this is actually only institutions that are required to report. And those institutions need to have like, they need to be 100, have portfolios of 100 million plus. And so there's probably a lot more smaller institutions that are not required to report that are not reflected in this data. So this is a very conservative estimate of institutional holdings. But we see clear uptrend over the past years and obviously the price has been a little disappointing and we're kind of flat, we're down 1 percentage point of total holdings. But I would. It's actually even less than a percentage point. So but what we can see is actually institutions are here, they're getting their feet wet in this cycle. I mean we literally had this cycle was actually the gateway like ETFs which opened for institutions to come into the space. And we have seen that happening and we will continue to see that happening. And especially once we move through this bottom formation and once we get like into new bull market, you know, also some of those institutions are starting to feel more of those gains and they're going to be happier to allocate a bigger percentage of their portfolio to bitcoin.
B
One of the interesting things for me and river put out a great chart on this showing basically the change in holding patterns between different entities, essentially showing, look, individuals in 2025 decreased their holdings. And who did that get sopped up by? Well, it got sopped up by the institutions. And I'm curious, just as you look at, as you look at the current price action, obviously from my, like, I haven't, obviously don't look into this as deeply as you do. That's why I have you here to educate me. But I look at a lot of the OG selling that we know has happened. You had that single galaxy whale who got rid of what, 80,000 Bitcoin? Like that's one guy, one guy getting rid of 80,000. You know, there's a bunch of other whales that have been selling. I had Lynn Alden on recently. She pointed out, like, look, Walker, whales sell every cycle, right? But for, I think for a lot of whales, this cycle, it's like 100k was very much like a magic number. They've been holding since it was a few dollars or maybe a few cents or a few hundred dollars or even a couple thousand they've got sitting on massive, massive gains. Okay. They're rotating out a little bit. But is that what you think has been the primary driver behind the current kind of just let's say chop solidation, lower the crab market lower, or is this something more cyclical like this is just what's bound to happen every cycle, if cycles exist. We can kind of get into that later a little bit too. What's, what's your read on that in terms of kind of the primary driver for what we're seeing now?
C
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A
Yeah, so I think the primary reason why we had this such a distributed cycle in general. So I do believe cycles are happening by the way and I do think we're in a bearish phase currently and I think the 100k was a very psychological level and we see actually that we can actually confirm that by unchained data there was an equal amount of selling of coins even though we only reached like much lower prices like barely above 100k but we still had equal distribution to previous cycle in terms of actual btc. And so why is that the case? I mean a factor actually to diminishing returns in general each cycle have been the fact that we have compounded cell pressure from each class of Bitcoin. Right. So I don't know when you got exactly in but we have the class of 13, the class of 17, the class of 21 and so all these class 20 for me. Okay, yeah, see so we have all These classes, they came in at different price levels, but even for the class of 20 or class 21, you're looking at a 10x gain, you know, for the 100k price level. And so but for a class earlier that was like 100x gain. And for a class earlier, before that was a thousand x gain. And we're also getting to liquidity level. Bitcoin is liquid enough to actually sell some of those early coins. Like before, previously in previous cycles that wasn't really possible. And so I think this 100k psychological level, much like the 10k psychological level, it also took a long time. We have hovered a long time around the 10k level, you know, had a bearish phase below it and then got back above it again, hoovered around it for a long time before we were actually able to move out of that. And I think that is also happening with the 100k psychological level. And so yeah, I've, I've been referring a lot of times to this IPO moment. I think that is exactly what has happened this cycle. So in a way there are actually some, some, some really shifts this cycle in which the cycle differs to previous cycle. First of all, this was actually the cycle with the least amount of retail inflow so far. But we've moved to institutional inflow, which is exactly what we want to see if we want Bitcoin to succeed, by the way. And so I also think it's inevitable. I mean some people view like, okay, Bitcoin is being absorbed by the fiat system. I think that's not happening at all. Bitcoin is Detroit horse infiltrating the fiat system. And how were we supposed to get to full adoption of Bitcoin without institutions getting involved? I mean, that is impossible. I think that happened basically is that most of retail that wanted to get into Bitcoin had 10 years to do so. And we are here and we're believing it and to the level now that we convinced institutions that it's here to stay and they're investing in it. So I also think moving into the next cycles, I mean there's still going to be some new people that you know, we're missing here and there. But in general, I think, you know, you know, probably some of the gen zers that are coming of age like to actually think about, start thinking maybe potentially about retirement or pension or something like they might get involved, they suddenly get it. But that is like a relatively small amount, I think, you know, like, so I think what we're going to see is indeed like we're going to see a continuation of stronger institutional adoption. And at the same time we're currently at this IPO moment where long term holders are still distributing some of their coins and making their lives better. But at some point we're going to reach that level where most of us sold like the majority of coins we would want to sell. You know, like I think there's a limit for every holder. Like we want to improve our lives and possibly, you know, you know, distribute some of our coins to, to have this improvement to our lives. But at some point it stops. You know, like the lives are improved, you know, we're going to sit on the rest. And so I think we're moving through that phase and I think what we're going to see over the next months is that we're going to form this bottom. There's going to be less selling from long term holders because especially it's not going to be as interesting to sell at these lower prices like long term holders are going to sell the least possible, but possibly some are obliged to sell for whatever reason. So there will be still some selling, but I don't think it will as much as the levels that we've seen around that 100k price level. But once we get again back above that 100k price level, there might be some more distribution and that will still take some time, but we will get out of that and then we're up for like really a proper next bull market.
B
Want to get into a couple points there, but first I do want to ask, you know, you mentioned, and I think this is something that a lot of folks have sensed is that the retail demand, you know, retail demand was really not here this last cycle. There just wasn't the same level of hype just generally. That being said, you also had the ETFs during this cycle. So I mean just I'm curious your thoughts. Was a lot of the quote retail demand that you'd usually see and just spot bitcoin actually just funneled through the ETFs but wouldn't that or was it still, even with the ETFs, still less retail demand than you would expect?
A
Yeah, so Even with the ETFs, I think it was less retail than we would expect. I still think there was a significant amount of retail, but there was definitely more institutional interest in bitcoin this cycle. And one important thing to understand is that retail in general and previous cycles, indeed they would buy through exchanges and that would set the spot price. It would influence, it would more heavily impact the spot price. But the retail that came in into the space through ETFs and I mean this week there was actually some talk about manipulation, price suppression of Bitcoin. And because we cannot believe we're at these -50% from all time high levels, we all think as maximalists, like okay, Bitcoin is severely undervalued at these levels. Bitcoin should not be like, it should be way above 100 in our minds. Bitcoin is worth 200k or above, you know. And so but that is not the general mindset of people like coming that invest in stocks, you know, who now maybe for the first time allocated some of their money through these ETFs to Bitcoin as well. And so I think those are definitely people with less conviction than we are. But because they came in through this gateway, there is in a way a suppression of price because ETFs they sometimes do an in kind creation which is gold. And so they buy Bitcoin otc and so that less impacts the spot price of Bitcoin. And So we have ETFs like some of these authorized partners for ETFs, they try to get their Bitcoin obviously the cheapest or most the best way possible for them to have the most profit as well. And so they look at OTC markets and try to get these coins and influence the price the least possible. And so in that sense the rumors about price repression are not entirely incorrect. I think one, and it's not that OTC doesn't have an effect on Bitcoin because there's only so much OTC and some OTC that desk will hatch well at exchanges with spot Bitcoin. And so there are some of these dynamics going on. But what I do think that like, you know, if you buy otc, you're actually taking sell pressure or buy pressure away from the spot market. And it's more indirect. And so in a way it's a bit of suppressing price. And that's why also I think we've had such more distributed market in general. And because you know, ETFs were one of the primary inflows of demand for Bitcoin this cycle. And so less retail, you know, less retail purchases through spot exchanges and even some of the retail that now came in came through ETFs and institutional adoption came in through ETFs or treasury companies which many times works with these OTC desks. And so there was like less impact on the actual price of Bitcoin. So I think if all of that would have gotten into the spot market, you would probably have like a much more volatile bitcoin price. Now in the long term, I think, you know, bitcoin still will go where it goes. You know, also otc, I mean if someone buys OTC and someone sells otc, you know, that doesn't directly affect the bitcoin price. But still, you know, if that OTC purchase wouldn't be there or that transfer, I should say there's always a buyer and a seller. It would have gone through, you know, the spot market. It would have had a more direct impact, but there still would have been an equal amount of sell pressure and buy pressure. So. So I think, so I think it's like a temporary suppression of price a bit. And so in a way, like some of those, like Jane street like algorithms that, I mean there's some suppression going on with ETFs, but those are the general like mechanics behind ETFs. They have these structures and OTC markets were there long before ETFs even were involved in the space. There's many OGs that try, buy and sell Bitcoin through OTC. And so you could blame the same on those OGs for not affecting the spot price as much. I think that is what a free market does.
B
Fair enough. Let me ask you too, just on the cycle side of things, you said you still think that the four year cycles are there. How much of this though in terms of the four year cycles ends up just lining up with the business cycle, with the overall liquidity cycle from a monetary sense? How much? I mean it also lines up with elections to a certain extent too. How much of it do you think in terms of the four year cycles is actually having driven from a bitcoin perspective versus. Yeah, it's like, does the having have a diminishing effect obviously as the, you know, as it halves, the block, reward halves and how much of it is or always was influenced by more of the like external business cycle side of things. I'd love your take on that.
A
Yeah, so I actually have a chart on mid thermal actions.
B
Amazing.
A
The effect on that and where we actually look at the business cycle and how that moves in tandem with the four year cycle of bitcoin. And so there is the. Some people say the four year cycle is dead, but what I actually think, I don't think that's the proper way to phrase it. I think one should say the halving impact is dead, but not the four year cycle. I mean we're still well within the bounds of the four year cycle currently. Now that doesn't mean that we couldn't move out of it in the next couple of years. I think there's actually fair reason to assume we possibly could, but currently we're not. For some mystical reason, Satoshi chose the four year period for the halving, which reduces the subsidy basically for Bitcoin to have bitcoin properly flourish. I mean that's what the subsidy actually is, having a subsidy for miners to start mining. And so bitcoin eventually will have to do without subsidy. It should be able to work on its own without any subsidy from the network. And so instead of a gradual decrease in that subsidy, Satoshi chose this four year period and halved it with this shock. Now in the beginning that shock was of course very severe and we had a lot of early investors in there. But coincidentally the, the business cycle was always also in a four year period. And so I think liquidity has always affected bitcoin much. And of course over time we've gone from the early OG or cyberfunk movement. We've moved to now people with a stock portfolio investing in bitcoin, which is a whole different cohort that is now currently investing, but all are driven by actually liquidity. Also the early cypherpunks probably were more incentivized to spend some of their money and put it in bitcoin in the early phases when the market was doing well, when they had a bit of extra money to do these things. So the business cycle always had a huge effect in my opinion on bitcoin. And that has moved in tandem with the halving impact. And previously the halving impact had a much bigger impact on Bitcoin than it currently has. And so we also saw a lot of higher gains in those early cycles. And currently not as much. The halving didn't have as much impact. ETF approval actually had more impact. We made an all time high before the halving because of ETFs, not because of the halving. And so that shows how we've kind of moved from before. We had much more having impact to now like very little having impact to now like a gateway, like ETFs having more impact. But we still have moved within that four year business cycle. But the business cycle wasn't always four years. So of course like why do business cycles move in four years? And that has to again probably do with presidential elections that move on a four year basis. And so they stimulate the economy and then, and in the midterms usually it's like a bit of a bearish phase for stocks in general. Risk on assets. And that's what we currently. Well, currently there's a bit of divergence going on and I think that has to do with kind of an after effect of COVID So we came out of COVID with a lot of money printing and then we had a bit of a difficult market and so people were struggling and businesses were struggling to deal with all this inflation. And and so we kind of like, you know, so in this chart I actually showed so the midterm cycle. So you see all the midterms and we see how bitcoin generally made like a low around that midterm. And this is in orange, we actually look at the yearly RSI for bitcoin. In light blue, we look at the yearly RSI for the S&P 500 which are risk on asset, which bitcoin has high correlation with. And then in dark blue we look at the ISM at the, at the pmi, the business cycle and the business cycle index now moved above 50, which is actually means that we're getting out of like a bearish phase, but where bitcoin actually just printed the low in the RSI comparable to like previous bear markets. And so, and we're getting close to that midterm that's this year. But we also see that the S and P is kind of rolling over and so it's very hard to know how the market is going to move forward. Is the S and P going to crash before the midterms? Still? Trump obviously doesn't want to. He's doing everything he can to influence to keep this from happening. I think possibly Iran is one of those plays on that as well. If he can fix that war and have Iran cooperate before the midterms, it could boost the economy. Many people of Iran are actually getting into stablecoins and bitcoin for that matter. But stablecoins, which is very important for the US because that's actually they purchase like tether and so forth, they purchase the government bonds. And so that is good for him. So we still get a change of course of the Federal Reserve Chair which there's going to be money printing coming before the midterm election. But nonetheless, historically the midterm election were a fairly bearish phase for risk on markets. But as I said, that was not always the case before bitcoin, actually before the 2008 financial crash we had an eight year cycle and so that is also possible. And so I'm not ruling out that potentially we could move into an eight year cycle this time or at least an extended cycle. It's possible. But with Bitcoin that currently seems not happening. And I don't know if bitcoin is the early indicator, if it's the canary in the coal mine or if because we have this really low RSI print now which looks like a bottom, but we could hang around this low area for a couple of months and possibly for the next six months before we start moving out of that bearish phase. And so it will be definitely interesting to see, but those are some of the dynamics behind it. And so I think like the business cycle definitely had an impact on bitcoin always like in terms of liquidity, like optimal liquidity conditions obviously incentivizes investors to invest in risk assets. But at the same time we had more halving impact in the early days and that is gone on. So I think bitcoin will become possibly more business cycle dependent moving forward as the having kind of fades away.
B
I appreciate the rundown on that. And it kind of blows your mind a little bit that some of the things with Satoshi you wonder was this planned or was this just coincidence? And he just released it when it was ready and it just so happened that it lined up with these. There's so many different things like that. But, but I'm curious too because you know, you mentioned, okay, maybe we're getting sort of near to forming a bottom here. Okay, could we go lower? Will 58k gang be vindicated? Will it go just to 59 and not 58 just to leave them blue balled? Who knows. But what I'm curious of is just comparing this to prior cycles, comparing where we are now, the indicators that you're looking at because I know you look at a lot. If we compare what we're seeing right now with what we've seen in prior cycles, does this look like a bottom from that perspective or does the data say something different?
A
Yeah, so. So we had like a fairly heavy capitulation event with this February 5th drop, but it wasn't of the same size as we typically see in real bottom in the real bottom of the actual previous cycles. And so for me what this mostly looked like was for example, compare an event comparable to the June 2022 low crash that we had also time wise. And so here we can, in this chart actually I looked at the realized price, which is the average purchase price of all bitcoin and I look at the short term holder floor, which is actually a level based on the short term holder cost basis, it's basically like how much loss, like what is the maximum loss short term holders can sustain? Practically speaking, that is the short term holder floor level. And so if we look at those levels, we look at them in the chart, we actually see that we had a cross of the short term molar floor moving below the realized price. And that happened in June of 2022 and that also happened now on the 2-5-5th crash. And so for me it looks like we're very much in this position now. I don't know how low. As I said, I think there's room for another lag lower. And in a way time wise is probably more important than price wise. I think like on a price based level we are fairly undervalued levels. I mean we could have this another leg down. You said high 50s. It might also be low 50s. Who knows what the spike will be? You know, it's usually pretty bad. But time wise we actually still have a couple of months. And so time wise I think there's still room to have this sideways chop potentially demotivating the holders in the market because bitcoin is basically not moving anywhere. And so people get a bit depressed about the price action. And before we really sat in the low. I think the bottom usually bot information takes time as well. There's always this time factor to it and you know, it's not for the same reason we had a three year bull market. Why has it always been like more or less a three year bull market? For the same reason, it's like the amount of time people can sustain before, you know, this exponential rise in price becomes unsustainable. And so now we're moving into this bearish phase and that that historically tends to take slightly less than a year, but more or less a year and we're a couple of months into it, we still have probably six more months to go to form a proper bottom.
B
Are you of the opinion that we won't be seeing a new all time high this year? I'm not going to hold you to it, but just broadly, I'm curious you're saying if this plays out as it has in the past, if this time is not different, History is rhyming, you know, with itself. We won't see a new all time high this year.
A
That is indeed very likely, I think and I hope to be proven wrong by the way. Like of course we could be in a situation of the 2019 for example, where we actually, you know, hit 10k and then we had like this mini bear, you know, like before the 2020, before the COVID crash, we had this mini bear. And you know, this time might also be slower, but I have to assume like the probability is higher that we still have a couple more months of price action because I do think that the bull market, the rush that we had in the bull market is kind of gone. Like hype is elsewhere. Basically hype is an AI and is in gold, but it's not in bitcoin. And so I think, yeah, bitcoin needs some time to recover form a bottom, you know, slowly start to move up and we still have some so. So the way to be proven wrong by the way. So I'm not saying it's impossible to have a new all time high this year. I think it's just unlikely to assume that it will. And before we do, we actually have to like we have some real resistance levels to recover, which is that psychological level of 100k. Like we first have to move back above the shortholder cost basis again to move into bearish stories. So if that happens, I mean I'm all for it, but I still think there's a lot of resistance at that 100k level. So I think like time wise it's unlikely for that to happen. But not impossible.
B
Well, the interesting thing is too that, and you called this out, okay, maybe we're not as deep as prior bears have gone, right? But our, the bull didn't go as high as prior bulls have gone either. Like I think for a lot of people it felt perhaps, you know, disappointing. Then again, we did go from 16k to 126k in a couple of years. So like there were still moves. It just, it just felt kind of weird. And maybe Covid threw a strange wrench in all of these gears. But I'm curious too, like on the subject of diminishing returns for bitcoin, I think one of the big arguments that's been made of late, given the price action in gold and silver and gold, which is obviously a much larger market cap, I think what it's a 33,000,034, something like that. Excuse me, but you saw these massive moves in gold, you saw massive moves in silver too, which had a comparable market cap to bitcoin, blew through that and now, you know, has come back down quite a bit. Do you, do you abide by the diminishing returns side of bitcoin? Like in terms of the price action in Fiat or you know, I mean, is it like, is it a relative thing where it's like, yeah, okay, returns aren't going to be as high as they were in front, you know, 20, you know, like just after, you know, the first few years of its launch. Of course they're not going to be as high as that. But that doesn't mean bitcoin can't still do like many multiples in a year. Where do you sit on that?
A
Yeah, so I think what we have seen is that like bitcoin is still a teenager basically 90% of the supply has been mined in these past 17 years. And so they're mostly in the hands of OGs and like really early holders of bitcoin. And so we're now in this distribution phase. So there's not much new supply coming into the market, but a lot of all supply is being sold. And so there's still a lot of sell pressure. And so I think that's why again, that IPO analogy is such a great way to look at it. I think we're in this phase where we need to move through this distribution, where that supply gets into stronger hands again in institutional hands this time. And then there's room because I mean bitcoin's invention is digital scarcity. Right now there is some, some paper bitcoin expansion because we have the fiat system involved. That is true. There's futures and you can actually have a dollar based contract without touching bitcoin. That takes again a bit of pressure from the spot price away. But I still think in the longer run that because bitcoin has an instant settlement, I think there's always someone naked in that position. And so when things get tight, you want to have real bitcoin. And so I think it's not as much as a problem that people perhaps think that it is currently because there are some people out there that really think like, okay, bitcoin is being absorbed by the same plays in the fiat system, but I think that is natural. I still think bitcoin is working as the Trojan horse because I think what we're going to see is that all these technological capabilities that bitcoin has, like multi sig setups and they're all also going to be installed in institutional players at some point. It's just early on institutions are just getting their feet wet. Just as a newbie bought their first bitcoin on an exchange and leaves it on an exchange. We now have institutions getting into the game, buying an ETF and leaving it in an ETF like with a custodian, just because it's the easy first step. But once bitcoin gets more mature and also these multi signature setups get more mature. And also when it becomes a bigger part of a portfolio, when does a newbie change to a hardware wallet? When the value suddenly becomes of a sufficient size for it to do so. And I think with the ETFs and with institutions, that's going to be a similar thing. Once bitcoin becomes a substantial part of the portfolio, they're probably going to think about better setups to protect their Bitcoin or spread the risk. So I think that's the natural process. So I think diminishing returns have happened because we had a lot of supply in the early days of bitcoin. That is all in the hands of basically retail and OGs that are currently selling some of that because they were right, they made the right bet. Bitcoin is succeeding. And so now we have a bit of that sell pressure. We have gradual institutional adoption at this point, but that will continue to increase. And so I think we will, at some point there's definitely going to be room for Bitcoin to move in multiples again. And we saw actually that happening now in gold. And gold it took 50 years, it took since like gold was suppressed since the beginning of the fiat system and now is actually moving out of that to a more natural price level, I would argue. And so I think market size, it does have an impact because at this point, as I said, there is less retail involved in Bitcoin or less new retail flowing into bitcoin. And so there is. And also retail at these price levels has even less impact and institutions are actually just gradually adopting it. And so it's no surprise that we have like this, this very distributed price action going on. But I think at some point bitcoin is again in strong enough hands. We'll form a new bottom and there's definitely going to be room for upside again. And it can go fast, it's slowly, then suddenly like we saw with gold. That's a great example actually.
B
Well, and let me just dig into that a little bit deeper here. Okay. We've established a gold move to many, many multiples of bitcoin's market cap. Right. Like very, very quickly. Bitcoin hasn't seen a real like parabolic move in terms of just the violence that it used to have. It hasn't had that like face melting, just, you know, ripping off your face and leaving on the ground. Hasn't had what feels like it hasn't had one of those moments in a while.
C
Does that mean that when it does.
B
And if that coincides with strong retail demand coming back and it coincides with, I don't know, more wars and everything else and people looking like actually taking that flight to safety, which bitcoin truly does represent for those who grok it, does that mean that it still has the potential for some of those really kind of violent, mind bending, face melting moves? And I mean, what do you think it takes to bring the retail back in? Because like this has been kind of seems like the cycle of institutions, right, that that's where the coins have been flowing to from. If they've been flowing from OGs primarily to institutions, do you think we see that shift a little bit and we start to at least see, okay, maybe institutions are still accumulating but now retail is as well, maybe the OGs start accumulating again because they, that's the thing. They, you know, they, they sell, they sell high and they buy low. Right. Because they can move markets. When you have tens of thousands or more coins, like you can actually make a dent in that. What's your read on it?
A
Yeah, so institutions often obviously also represent retail, right. Like we see that in treasury companies. Like a lot of retailers are also investing into treasury companies because they think there's more upside potential than just buying bitcoin. And so, and then, and then that bitcoin actually get purchased on a more gradual pace by the treasury companies. So institutions often represent retail. And so I think moving forward, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't claim to know what's going to happen, but I think there's definitely the potential for Bitcoin to move up many multiples once we consolidate long enough. And I think hype, hype needs time to build up and I think a lot of mind share has been like taken away by AI and, and by actually gold by surprise. And so a lot of people that were chasing hype were not in bitcoin this time or were have left bitcoin this time. But at some point bitcoin is the perfect, the perfect product in a way to attract hype again at some point in the future. Even if all just because it's global, it's Internet native, it actually has all the traits you would want for something to hype up. And so even if the underlying fundamentals of bitcoin would be bad, it would still attract hype in my opinion. But because it actually has real fundamentals, it's even more so. So I think that it, that is just, it needs time. So I think we need at least a couple of months now to have a proper bottom formation. Then we'll start kind of like gradually moving up that 100k level and at some point like okay, all the OGs that wanted to sell around that 100k level are going to be gone and then. And bitcoin can move up very fast. It's slowly and suddenly. We've seen that example with gold and gold it took 50 years. An IPO phase often takes a couple of years. So I wouldn't be surprised if we get a bit of this choppy price action for quite some time. I think that wouldn't be that strange at all. But I think bitcoin can move fast. So it's slowly, then suddenly it will happen for bitcoin.
B
I like it. You know, somebody asked on social media when I put out that I was going to be talking with you, they asked a good question, which is what would a broken spiral look like in observable terms? They said is it peaks and troughs happening at totally different angles than prior cycles, amplitude drawdowns and returns collapsing or cycle becoming multi peak and stretched out? And which those failure modes do you, which those failure modes do you think is the most likely in the next kind of the next regime is what they said, but I think they mean like in this next cycle. Is that something you can address a little bit like what would cause these beautiful cycles that you have to potentially break down?
A
Yeah, so I mean the spiral chart is actually probably the most beautiful way to illustrate the four year cycle within bitcoin. Right. So when would that break that the lines crossing would kind of like screw up the beauty of that illustration. So I agree there, but I think that's actually bound to happen at some point. So I don't think that's necessarily a fail, that bitcoin is a failure because the illustration of the four year cycle starts to break. What actually shows is that we're moving away from the four year cycle and we saw that already with some precursors to that. For example, we had an all time high before the halving. That never happened, you know, and that was due to ETFs. It was like really a specific event within bitcoin that made that happen. But at some point, you know, if the business cycle would start to expand like perhaps to a five or to six year cycle which is in the cards, then obviously also the dynamics of the spiral chart are going to change and you know, maybe a bearish phase, but currently we're still within well within the bounds of that four year cycle. And so I also don't think within the next one and a half year or so, I see very little reason for the spiral to break after that. We'll have to see depends on what the business cycle is going to do, what liquidity conditions are going to be, how that is moving forward. But I think eventually we'll get to some point that potentially, you know, price could move below a previous price four year prior, which is actually what the chart illustrates. But I still think generally, you know, the spiral will keep expanding even if it becomes an eight year cycle instead of a four year cycle at some point for whatever macro reasons or geopolitical reasons or I don't know what will influence the business cycle in that manner and will have probably an indirect impact on bitcoin. I still think overall the lines will start expanding, but maybe not as beautifully in that four year pattern, which is fine for me, you know, like I'm okay with that.
B
You're not married to it. It would make the chart look a little bit less cool. But it's, it's not the end of the world.
A
Basically I have a 3 year 3D spiral that I could share. Wait, let me. Otherwise, let's pop that up.
B
Oh, let's do it. That sounds great. No, I mean I think it's fascinating too because we, we try so hard to try and figure out like what is going on. And I think so much of bitcoin analysis tends to be very retrospective and looking back and then trying to attribute here this event happened at this time and thus that is why bitcoin's price did whatever it did at this time. Oh wow, this is, this is sweet. Okay, okay, yeah, talk to me about this.
A
So this is the spiral chart but in 3D form with like over and undervalued levels. And let me turn it a bit. So these blue dots are the halving events. So this was the last halving, the fourth halving. We can see that we had these dark green dots. There's actually the autumn highs before the halving. And then we had like this whole bullish phase, you know, very similar to prior cycles. We were at like, like above the surface level. So if you have the surface levels above the surface level, we are actually at like surface is actually fair value for bitcoin based on, on chain data. And then if you're above that surface level, you're actually like, you get to like overvalued levels at some point usually when the all time highs happen. And then at some point we move below the Surface which is currently what actually just happened. We now move below that 100k level and then we got like this whole bearish phase of bitcoin before we make a bottom which is the last one was November of last year. And we see in time wise that those tend to happen slightly earlier. So it could be October this year or potentially even earlier because we also moved into a bear market since the last autumn high a bit sooner. But we're now below that, that slightly below that surface level now. And so this illustrates the four year cycle, the spiral. But so yeah, if price would start to move back like in a 2D view, perhaps it could cross the line. But in the 3D view it's still not crossing. So we, we can always look at the 3D version if the two years starts failing. I'm just kidding.
B
Can I ask you too in terms of you mentioned. Okay, the, the baseline is the like the fair value based on, on chain data. Can you just explain which what on chain data you're looking at for that? Is it realized price? Is it short term holder cost basis? What, what, what is it that you use as that kind of demarcation?
A
Yeah, I use some metric like I use a top indicator and a bottom indicator that has been fairly reliable. The top indicator is actually more based on available supply for trade. So the amount of supply that's actually actively being traded. And I use the realized cap there as well. For the bottoms I use a custom version of CVDD which is coin value days destroyed which actually talks about like how many, you know, each coin when it doesn't move, it actually builds up days. And so once you spend the coin with a certain age like that value gets destroyed. And so historically that has been a very good bottom indicator for Bitcoin because it talks actually about the value that gets destroyed by long term holders which set like a baseline for how low Bitcoin can go in a way. And so that is what this spiral chart is based on. I have also a 2D version of this or like a normal chart which is called the on chain value map. I've shared that on my Twitter and Nostro account many times. So you can scroll through my feed and probably find the onchain value map. Those are actually the same levels that are shown as in this 3D spiral version chart.
B
Let me ask you too. Okay. Sometimes I feel dirty measuring Bitcoin and fiat because it's like Bitcoin is the measuring stick, right? Like it's. Fiat's a terrible measuring stick. It's like like we use the US Dollar because it's the prettiest horse at the glue factory. It's the skinniest kid at fat camp. Right. You know, it's better than measuring bitcoin in the Iranian real, for example, or the Bolivar or insert or the Turkish lira insert, any other fiat. Like the dollar sucks, but it's still better than all the rest. Right. But if I'm to speak in dollar terms, looking ahead, what are your thoughts on just generally like what does, what does it take for bitcoin? How long does it take for bitcoin to actually hit that? Like in my mind the next big psychological price level, like after 100k it feels like it's a million. I don't know if there's another psychological, maybe four, you know, 426, $420,696, you know, something like that, just for memetic purposes. But like, do you, what do you think is the next psychological price level? Is it a million? And what do you think it actually takes for us to get there in terms of cycles, in terms of time?
A
Yeah, so a million is still slightly far away. I mean, so let's first recover above the short term holder cost basis and then we have to first like get through this 100k psychological level like to form like a proper base there. So I still think a million could be potentially two bull markets away. Like I think in the next bull market we could get into the multiple hundreds of thousands. I still think there's like, yeah, that is still a level that would probably cause a bear market at some point for whatever reason, maybe quantum FUD or like, you know, I don't know, probably there will be something between 100,000 and a million still that causes a bear market. So I would still think a million dollars, which by the way, I definitely think we will reach that at some point. But given what I, yeah, I already slightly mentioned it before. Maybe not as clear. Like, you know, I mentioned like there has been less inflow of retail. And also I said like, okay, the last 10 years, possibly like most of people that were interested from retail have been involved with bitcoin or have been, have heard about bitcoin through some shape or form. And so of course there's still a slow influx of retail every year with as I said like Gen Z coming of age and thinking about pensions and then starting figuring out suddenly about bitcoin. So there will always be some influx of course, but what I start to realize is that maybe bitcoin could potentially also be more of like a generational shift. It's like a lot of the millenniums, let's say, are heavily involved in bitcoin because they were simply of the age that they felt screwed enough by the fiat system. I mean, the invention came at the right time and they started thinking about pensions. That's why there's so many, so many millennials in the space, I guess. And Gen Z was just still slightly too young to actually start thinking about pension. And so they haven't really gotten involved as much. But so I also think like, the older, basically the millennial generation gets, you know, the more successful bitcoin starts to become and kind of bitcoin starts to move in tandem with that generation, like to adopt it as a, as, as a base layer for society. And so, so I think, you know, where previously, like in previous cycles I was still thinking, okay, we have diminishing returns, but we'll get this new influx of retail every cycle. Now I start to think like, okay, maybe it could also be like a more of a generational shift. And so which, which pushes actually that, potentially that, that million dollar goal perhaps further out on the curve. And so I wouldn't rule it out. I mean, that's all I'm saying. I'm not saying it has to happen in that way, but I think it's definitely worth thinking about it that, that in that way as well.
B
What's the old saying? It's like humanity advances one funeral at a time. Basically. Basically what you're saying, we need the boomers to die off. We need millennials to.
A
I don't want to put it that bad, but yeah, practice, it's okay.
B
That's why I'm here.
C
That's why I'm here. No, I mean, it's fair.
B
And you do have to applaud the boomers a little bit. Like Eric Balconis and some of the other kind of Bitcoin ETF analysts have pointed out that the amount of draw or the amount of outflows that you saw in the Bitcoin ETFs during this drawdown was actually way, like, was very small. Like, for the most part, the boomers were holding on. They weren't disposing of their bitcoin just because it was a drawdown like that I found to be fairly interesting. I guess that's just because there's like a different, there's a different calculus happening there.
A
Right?
B
Like this is they're taking a small portion of a very large portfolio.
A
Institutions move at a slower space. Yeah, base Also like they, you know, they take a longer time to actually get involved in the market, but once they're in there, they'll probably stick around longer and more carefully. I mean there needs to be a decision made like by a board and that takes time. And so they move kind of slower than retail would move basically on whatever the news is saying at the moment and sell or buy at the wrong times. So institutions avoid a bit of that hype chasing. But also hypes get chased with institutions and we actually see with gold now how hype can be changed, chased not only by retail but by a whole country. And so I think that's definitely also in the cards for bitcoin. So I think that will actually happen to bitcoin. It will just take time. I think what we see now, like all basically the OGs that are in bitcoin, we've convinced institutions that bitcoin is worth holding and it's going to become a bigger part of the portfolio. And at some point, you know, yeah, boomers indeed start dying off and millennials are starting to take over. And you know, it just makes sense for bitcoin to be used as the base layer of society rather than like some, some, I don't know, fiat, like political dependent currency.
B
So yeah, amen to that. Let me ask you from a practical standpoint, do you, do you advise people to like, if they come to you, they say root, I want to get into bitcoin. Do I smash buy or do I start dcaing right now? What do you tell people?
A
I'm going to show you another chart.
B
Amazing. A chart for everything. I love this man.
A
Here's a chart with days until the halving. So as I said, okay, the halving is becoming less relevant, but the halving is more aligned moves in tandem with the four year cycle, which is the exact pattern we've been in. And so here I use also the on chain data. So, so we actually, we use the realized price, which is the average purchase price of bitcoin. And what we tend to see is that, you know, during a bottom formation we tend to move slightly below the realized price. Realized price currently sitting at, you know, 45k, it's still, you know, it's kind of moving sideways for now. So depending on what bitcoin does, like if we stick around maybe in the 78s, it might still move up bit to the, to the 50s. What also is true is that bitcoin tends to move less dramatically below the realized price each cycle. So we might barely touch it this time. Or perhaps this might be the first cycle that we don't drop below it because we also, as I said, the suppression to the upside also means suppression to the downside. We have gradual institutional adoption that continues. We have probably a bit less of that long term holder selling around these price levels. And so we could also potentially have a more limited bottom than we made in previous cycles. But time wise as we see, I think, and that's still something I say, I think more so time wise than price wise. There's still, you know, it's not really in favor like I think there's still a couple of months ahead that we could have this sideways chop, potentially have another leg towards that realized price before we really start like building up again and starting this upward movement. So my recommendation for anyone because I think bitcoin is already severely undervalued at minus 50%. And also if we look at what bitcoin represents, what it can do for the world, in my opinion Bitcoin is more important than AI. AI has a lot of cool things and it's going to add a lot of efficiency, but it's also going to allow governments to get away with tons of money printing, which is exactly what Bitcoin solved. And so, you know, fundamentally I think Bitcoin is more important for society than for humanity in general than AI is. AI will perhaps make some lives better, but also worse in some situations. Bitcoin will make people's lives better in my opinion and it's much needed especially in the world moving into with AI. So but, so I think yeah, if you're wanting to get into Bitcoin, minus 50% currently is already undervalued but we could still get slightly lower. So my, like, I think the practical approach here is for the next couple of months to just average in like and don't try to exactly time that bottom. You know, it might be a wick at certain moment in time, maybe it has already been in, you know, because institutions keep gradually buying and the sell pressure from long term holders starts like diminishing now. And this is it like you know, would be really cool. But I think the more likely outcome here is that we still have some time of that. You know, forming a bottom takes time and especially given that mindshare is taken away by AI and gold. I think yeah, there's going to be a bit of a drag on Bitcoin's price now. That's cool that we're on in the 70 range now, but we see that every cycle. You know, we have like These blue dots that represent the all time highs, basically the bull markets. And then we start to move in a bear. We have a drop towards that like realized price, then we move a bit up and you know, and then we turn over again. We actually make a low and then we start moving up. And so I think that is the pattern we've seen historically. I think it's also the most practical to assume that that will happen now. That doesn't mean that it has to happen. I mean I'm willing to change my mind at any moment in time. If Bitcoin moves back above the short term holder cost basis and we move into bullish territory, I become a bull. But currently I'm, I mean I'm a bull long term. But I do think we have to get through this bearish phase in the next couple of months.
B
Fuck, dude, are you telling me we're about to go into the 40s? Is that, is that what I'm hearing right now?
A
I actually, I mean the higher 40s would be kind of my, my lowest estimate. So I, but, but as I said, I don't think we have to get there because we have this, you know, I think treasury companies like strategy will probably keep on buying this whole bottom down. They are prepared, they're there, have the long term mindset. And I think like if we compare this to the previous bear market, like 2022, we had a lot of these crypto companies falling over and so there's a bit of that fear like oh, are the treasury companies fall over as well? But I don't think any of the treasury companies got into this game with, without expecting that we could have a year bear market which is literally what the four year cycle has represented like you know, from the start. And so, and definitely strategy isn't, you know, they're, they're, you know, liquidation prices. There's no real liquidation price, but I think it's like around 20k or something like they would get in real troubles. But yeah, I think there's like no chance that we'll get there and get that low. So I think Saylor's play on the long term is totally like the correct mindset and I think he's able to survive this bear market and he's the biggest one that has the most market share in terms of treasury companies. Maybe some small ones will still fall over if we drop a little lower because of bad risk management. But I think this phase will pass and I actually expect it to be less severe than the 22 bear market. But time Wise, I do think we can get like choppy price action. So we could stay maybe perhaps in three months we'll talk and we're still at the same price that we are today. You know, in a way that would be good. You know, that would be like this continuation and of the four year cycle and then maybe have like one more drawdown slightly and then, you know, but, but yeah, I see it also as a tremendous opportunity for someone like, someone of the people I talk to are actually waiting like they, they are, they are understanding this concept as well and they're, they're waiting to become full, full coiners. And so, so that, that is really cool to see. And so, so I think this, this also allows for a tremendous opportunity.
B
What I'm hearing is 58k is a magnet. That that's just, you know, the prophecy will be fulfilled, 58K gang will celebrate. Uh, and then we can, once we've had that then we can go parabolic. I'm putting words in your mouth, but this is just what I'm saying, I'm intuiting out of this.
A
Yeah, yeah, I think it's a likely outcome but I mean it's all probabilities. And so I cannot say this is what Bitcoin is going to do. Bitcoin actually tends to do the opposite of some what most people think. But looking at history and looking at the data and actually looking at the current on chain data because on chain data is not perfect in predicting what Bitcoin is going to do, but it's fairly good at estimating like in what kind of position are we currently compared to previous cycles? And like, you know, and actually it shows we're very much in line with previous cycles. And so like as much as I want to say four year cycle is that, you know, the four year cycle is not that like not, not at this point. It's actually we're exactly in the same pattern yet did we not have a parabolic move up like yes, that was a difference. But yeah, there's actually good, good reasons for that. I tried to explain them this time. You know, gradual institutional adoption, a bit of suppression because of a lot of OTC purchases instead of spot. And so we have like a much more distributed top which we already saw a bit in 2021 and we saw it even more so in this cycle. So there doesn't have to be, there's no rule that there has to be that the cycle has to end with a parabolic top. You know, that is something unsustainable to Begin with. And this time there was less hype in the market than previous cycles. And so we had a bit more distributed price action.
B
Right, Let me ask you too, are there any charts that you have here that we have not gone over yet?
A
There are a couple, but they're not like of major importance. This is maybe the last interesting one to talk about the near term. So this is the supply distribution. So it actually puts basically from zero to all time high. Where like the 21 million coins, at which price levels are they all sitting? You know like, so where have they been all purchased? And, and so we actually see like very interesting here. This is the November 2022 bottom, like the 16K. It's still like fairly high bar like that. And that stems all the way from 2022. So you see how this is. This was like really a capitulation bar. Now in February we had the crash, we had a bar which is not as high as the 2022 bottom. And that's like this one is much more recent. Right. So usually when a bar is recent there's still like a significant chance that it will move lower over time because bitcoin got sold that was like purchased at this price level. And so that also again is like one of those reasons why I think this looks more like a June bottom than like a real bear market bottom. Yet like currently we're sitting right in this gap, you know, so we had the 67k price level, 85k level. And so we're sitting in this gap where there's very little supply sitting here. So this is also a bit of like resistance moving into this zone because there's like supply that might be sold. And here there's a bit of support. You know, there's already supply bought at this and so it's very likely in the near term to like kind of stay within this range. I mean bitcoin can of course do whatever it want. It might move like suddenly like much higher, whatever. Like depends on many events. But I'm talking about probabilities. Like a likely outcome in my opinion is to get like sideways chop within the 70, 80k range for the near term. We see that by this on chain distribution.
B
Okay, now it's a, it's an interesting chart. Was there, was there another one you wanted to put up too? I just want to make sure we, we get through, through all the charts in case.
A
Yeah, we covered, we covered most of it actually. There's, there's still one on profit levels. So this is maybe the last one that we haven't really shared, which is this is profit, like short molar profit. And we see now that we're like profit levels are very near zero, which typically indicates this bear market phase. So these red bars represent the bear market basically. And so what we see is that in previous bear markets we still have, we had actually quite a lot of red bars. Like before we had that real bottom formation. So and currently we're like, in short, so we can. So as I said, it could be 2019, like, okay, maybe this time is different. We could move out of the fast. But my assumption, like the main probability is that it will still take some time and that we need the time to form this bottom and that profit levels will stay low for the near term and for the next couple of months. So I expect these red bars actually to continue and be more similar to previous bear markets rather than like the 2019 situation, basically. Because, like why? Because hype is a bit gone in the market. Like, it's, it's within, it's with AI, it's with gold, it's not with bitcoin. Now there is the bitcoiners that are with bitcoin, but, but yeah, those will make sure that the bottom gets formed eventually before we start moving into like a new bull. I don't know. If you have any other questions about this chart, let me know.
B
It's, it's, it's, it's fascinating stuff. I mean, you know, I remain extremely bullish and I guess the reason that I remain extremely bullish, like, even though you're telling me like, look, we could probably go. And we could go into the 40s, maybe we're probably going to go into the 50s, maybe we're going to crab around for a while. I just wasn't expecting, and this is like an expectation setting thing. I wasn't expecting to be able to buy bitcoin under a hundred K for such another extended period of time. And that was me being too bullish on the front end of that. Right.
A
But now I think there's many people in your situation, especially from like people from our white one cycle in, they feel that they don't have enough bitcoin yet. I think there's tremendous opportunity for them to get more bitcoin. Yeah, so. So I also think it's like really an opportunity that should like, you know, take advantage of this situation, guys. Like if you're in that situation, you don't have enough bit and actually no one has enough bitcoin. But if I think of like, I mean, I Have I have some OG France, like, even from 2013, 2011 era, they're sitting on a lot of bitcoin. And so of course, they're not really necessarily looking to add more. They are fine. And they actually are the ones causing some of this distribution because they made the right bet. And I think that's natural. I mean, we have this adoption, but there's nothing wrong with bitcoin. Bitcoin is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. We're following even this parallel model of adoption, which I think, think, yeah, it's this natural phenomenon. I think that that's very realistic to continue that. And bitcoin has all the fundamentals there. You know, it keeps on improving. Yes, there is some quantum resistance fear, as I said, you know, that needs to be taken care of. But there's already people working on that. We have bitcoin improvement proposal 360 working on that. Exactly that. To protect our coins. Now, I'm not saying some of the quantum stuff could definitely still cause another bear market because it means, like, a decentralized, you know, consensus to get consensus for, like, having another improvement to bitcoin, which historically was never an easy thing to do. But I do think we get it figured out. If the fear becomes too high, the stakes become too high, and so people need to move and we'll need to go through with some update at some point. And so I'm not afraid that that will not happen. But. But yeah, bitcoin for me represents so much opportunity, as I said. For me, it's more important than AI And I'm working with AI. I'm actually using Codex, Claude. I'm trying out these things, and I see it's going to have so much impact on society. We're still only at the beginning of the impact that AI is going to have. And AI will also provide tremendous opportunity, but it will also provide our government with. With tremendous amount of money printing or getting away with it again. And our lives will not really get significantly improved because the living standard will just increase. Yes, we'll have a robot in our house, but we still cannot afford to go to the supermarket. And so, yeah, that will continue. And that is what AI actually represents in a way. And so I'm so happy that there is bitcoin as a solution. And I think think the whole millennial generation will. Well, there's enough of us within bitcoin. We've convinced the institutions they're not going away. We actually have evidence that they're only increasing their positions. Regulation is Getting better in the US especially. Was it bought? Yes, but doesn't matter. It's going to get there and it's going to get adopted and we will continue and. And bitcoin will continue to infiltrate the fiat system till it's big enough to really take over.
B
And I say amen to that. I think that's a perfect note to wrap up on too. Where can people go to find you to check out your newsletter? Anywhere else you want to send people?
A
Yeah. So I'm on Nostr and I'm on Twitter as Rationalroot. And then I have the bitcoinstrategyplatform.com and bitcoinstrategy.substack.com where I have my newsletter. So if you subscribe, you get like access to these charts to my insight. I actually send out a weekly newsletter with these updates and paid subscriber get actually access to all the live charts and to extra information, you know, to keep them prepared for what's coming and feel comfortable.
B
I love it. Well, I appreciate you breaking all this stuff down for us today. This was fascinating. I think even though you say we may be going lower, I think I'm still more bullish after this conversation. So I don't know, mission accomplished. Somehow there I remain bullish. I'm going to keep stacking as hard as I possibly can. I encourage my fellow plebs to do the same. But yeah. Anything else you want to leave folks with before we close out?
A
No. Thank you so much for having me, Walker. And keep doing what you're doing. Keep spreading the good information on bitcoin and you know, we. It's in, you know, it's in our hands to make the world a better place and. And to do whatever we can to. To have bitcoin prosper also.
B
So amen to that. And thank you to everybody who joined on the live stream on Noster. This show live streams only on Noster,
C
so if you want to see it
B
live, go check out Noster if you haven't already. Rational Root Root. Thank you so much for joining. This was a pleasure, man. Glad we got the chance to do this. And yeah, again, I'm. I remain bullish.
C
And that's a wrap on this bitcoin talk episode of the bitcoin podcast.
B
Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever
C
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 Walker America and find this
B
podcast on X and Instagram. Itcoin Podcast Head to the Show Notes
C
to grab sponsor links, head to substack.com walkeramerica to get episodes emailed to you. And head to bitcoinpodcast.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.
Host: Walker America
Guest: Rational Root
Date: March 6, 2026
In this rich, data-driven episode, Walker America welcomes on-chain analyst and chart specialist Rational Root ("Root") for a deep dive into why Bitcoin's most recent cycle failed to go parabolic, what distinguishes this bear market from those prior, the evolving role of institutions, diminishing halving effects, and what Root thinks comes next. The discussion is lively, honest, and peppered with data, practical advice for stackers, and a recognition that Bitcoin's cycles are shifting—but not in ways perma-bulls or doomers might expect.
[00:00–02:33, 17:17, 39:32]
[02:33–12:42, 17:17, 22:49]
[12:42–22:49, 48:25]
[27:26–35:30]
[36:24–46:54, 50:40–53:45]
"Bitcoin is the Trojan horse, infiltrating the fiat... How were we supposed to get to full adoption of Bitcoin without institutions getting involved? That is impossible." — Rational Root [17:17]
“If you’re wanting to get into Bitcoin, minus 50% currently is already undervalued. But we could still get slightly lower.” — Rational Root [64:30]
“Some people say the four year cycle is dead. I don’t think that’s the proper way to phrase it. I think one should say the halving impact is dead, but not the four year cycle.” — Rational Root [00:00], [28:18]
"I still think a million [$1,000,000] could be potentially two bull markets away... I definitely think we will reach that at some point." — Rational Root [59:01]
"Bitcoin’s invention is digital scarcity... there's nothing wrong with bitcoin. Bitcoin is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. We're following this natural phenomenon." — Rational Root [42:33], [76:52]
“We need the boomers to die off. We need millennials to…”
— Walker, with Root laughingly conceding: "I don't want to put it that bad, but yeah." [62:02]
For New Bitcoiners and Stackers:
For Macro Observers:
For Old Hands and Skeptics:
Walker and Root close on a bullish yet pragmatic note: patience, discipline, and sticking to core principles will pay off. The current bear market is "different, but not fatally so": institutions are here, OGs are winding down big sales, retail will eventually be back, and Bitcoin is "doing exactly what it's supposed to do."
Root: “Bitcoin will continue to infiltrate the fiat system till it’s big enough to really take over.” [76:52]