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Foreign.
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Welcome to the report. The question this week, Bitcoin is nearing an inflection point. What is Mike thinking? It is May 6, 2026. The market is up 36% from some of the lows. This is the longest bear market rally on record. You've looked at the previous two, Mike, you're still heavy cash, not fully deployed in crypto, but we got 80k Bitcoin looking like a magnet in that 80 to 85k range. We're also going to look at the, the 2022 charts, what we see in funding cohorts, how this compares to 2022, because I think you are broadly and have been talking about on the TDR, this looks a lot like 22. I want to check in with you today and see if that is still true. We're going to look at NASDAQ correlation, all sorts of things. Stick around to the end, listeners. We're going to actually talk about the scenarios that Mike is watching and the trap for both the bulls and the bears that he foresees and the price points that he is looking at next. Mike, I feel like listeners who've been following your work and the TDR podcast are dialing in this week and they are seeing Bitcoin above 80k and they're wondering, what is Mike thinking right now? Like, is he getting a little bit nervous? Do you feel like you've got some explaining to do in today's episode?
A
Yeah, a little bit. So I would say, you know, where, where's my head at right now? I would say that we've been on the right side of the market here for a long period of time. And I'm starting to feel like I'm on the wrong side of the market. And the reason for that is this bear market rally. Kind of how we hinted at the intro of today's report. This is the longest, really, over the last month or so, we've extended into a period that is longer than you would typically see a bear market rally. And really what I'm doing is going through the process and just kind of like looking under the hood of everything that's happening in the market to try to get a better grip, to say, okay, is this actually like a new regime? Did we, did we bottom in February, which would be like the earliest period that we've ever hit a low in a cycle? Is there something that's like showing me in the data that this is durable and it's not a bear market rally? And I think that's really what we're going to Kind of go through today because yes, I think it's fair to say like, you know, a typical bear market, bear market rally would last around, you know, two months or so and you'd probably get a 30 plus percent move out of that. We are starting to stretch to higher on the, the actual move and, and in terms of length now and so we're, we're now just like coming right into some really interesting price points and interesting inflection points. I think the next few weeks are going to be very, very telling here.
B
I can't wait to dive into it with you. But before we do, we gotta shout out our friends and sponsors over at Galaxy. This one's for the institutions listening. You probably know Galaxy, it's. If you don't, it's a name you need to know. They've established themselves as a global leader not just in digital assets that we talk about every week on the tdr, but also in AI data center infrastructure for the AI era. They bridge both of these worlds. They have an AI and HPC ready data center including their Helios site. This is a staggering 1.6 gigawatts of approved power. That's like a nuclear power plant and then some. And they also have full stack platform for digital finance. This is institutional grade custody trading and tokenization. You guys know them, the ticker is glxy. If you want to check them out, find out a bit more about how they help institutions invest, transform and build relentlessly. Go check them out. There's a link in the show notes. Okay, so this was the key point here. You said that this is the longest bear market rally in terms of days recorded over the last two market cycles. So you're talking about this is longer than from February, I suppose, February 5th to now. We've been in bull market territory, let's say mini bull market territory inside of a, of a bear market. And this has lasted longer than it did in what, 2021, 2022 and also longer than what, 2017, 2018.
A
Correct, yeah. So it's pretty typical to see these moves down. We came from 126 down to around 84k or so and then rallied up to 97. So that was, you know, roughly two, two month period, very standard bear market rally. Then we, you know, came down off of that and what you would typically see is, you know, okay, another bear market rally, roughly two months or so. And then, you know, that's kind of when you start to see the, the cycle start to play out from there. This is different. We've extended an extra month here. What's not different is we, we've had periods in past bear markets where it took longer to hit to go to a low and then go to a lower low. Right. So that, that, that can still play out. We've seen periods where it took six months in bear markets for that to play out. But I would say is, what is different is to see, you know, things sell off and then to have more of a, what looks like a more durable, starting to look like a more durable rally over a longer period of time. So I think that is like the main thing that's, that's different and I think what we can go through today is really like is what's happening under the hood here? Has the cycle, has a new regime started or is it still really just a bear market rally is kind of, kind of where we're at, I think.
B
So let's talk about all these things then. So to get a sense of how strong this price move is to the upside, you've taken a look at the perps open interest, you've taken a look at the funding rates and we did some of that last week as well. And you indicated that the traders were still shorting this market. We got to check in on that, see if that's still true. And there was the question of whether that's smart money. And then you're also looking at liquidations and you're also looking at the spot volumes. So put some of these metrics together for us and tell the story of what you think the market's doing.
A
Yeah, so leverage is increasing in the markets. Right. So this is the chart we're looking at here. This is perpetual futures open interest. And we can see we kind of had a brief flush kind of after the October highs and we've been in an uptrend since that time and starting to get closer to all time highs in terms of open interest and leverage
B
can either be short or long. Right? It's just leverage.
A
Correct? Correct. Yeah. So this is, you know, a similar move to what we saw last, last bear market back in 2022. And yes, exactly what you're saying, like this is just telling us there's more units of risk that are now, you know, entering the market and that that sort of looks similar to what we saw in the last bear market. So that's one, one thing to look at now we need to really understand like what, you know, how is that, how are those units of risk positioned in the market? That's what this funding rate data is Giving us, we talked about this last week. We've seen traders, you know, consistently positioning for weakness, right? Paying, paying to be short the market, paying premium to do that at the highest rates that we've seen so far in this bear market. And that hasn't really changed. We kind of came, we saw like a little brief spike into until funding rates going long over the weekend and they're now back short, significantly short again at these kind of higher elevated levels in the early 80s. So to me like, you know, we kind of zoomed out on the, the funding rate data just to sort of get a higher level view. And what, what's interesting is, you know, traders are actually have been positioned more negatively so far in 2026 than in any other bear market. That of this data set that is only going back to 2021, but 30, almost 39% of the trading days this year have had negative funding rates attached to them. So you know, it's, it's telling us that the trading trading community, people that are, you know, in the persp markets are positioned, you know, for weakness. And you know, the question there is like, is that the smart money, you know, what's really going on? We're not making a claim that it's a smart money. We're just that positioning looks very similar to 2022. And I want to understand, okay, how severe is that positioning? And then what is that, you know, what is that doing to the market? Is there actual, is there actually a durable bid in the spot markets underneath this that's you know, creating these short liquidations and then that's just like feeding reflexive move on the price, you know, how much of this move should we be attributing to kind of like this just positioning in the market versus like a real organic, durable kind of new regime?
B
Okay, so the traders are still thinking that this is like 2022. In fact, they're even more convicted on this being like 2022 sort of, you know, short than they were in 2022. And the question that you, you have in this report is the price rise of Bitcoin above 80K. What explains that? Is that explained better by some sort of a short squeeze of some of these highly convicted traders getting liquidated? And do we see that in the perps and you know, funding rate activity or is this actually some new buyers, some secular bullishness kind of driving the price upward? I think that was the, the first core question of the report. So what did you find?
A
So you know, it looks to me like there's Definitely, you know, plenty of short liquidations, right? When you have that, that much positioning short and the price goes up, obviously those shorts are getting liquidated. The exchange has to buy back the, the bitcoin. And so this is like reflexively pushing, pushing the price up. So my conclusion is like, yes, this is definitely playing a role. And again, pretty typical for what we would, we would look for in bear market periods. And I think the next level of that analysis is to say, okay, let's look at the spot market. This is where, you know, price discovery tends to be a little bit more durable. And let's look at what's going on there. And what, what I see there is just weak spot spot volumes that doesn't have to be, you know, necessarily bearish. But as you can see in the chart, like when you come out of a bear market, you do get like a pretty big spike typically in actual on chain volumes, trading volumes on centralized exchanges and on chain. And we, we are not seeing that right now. So, so to me, like, the way I think about this is there's, there's not a ton of sellers, right? So when we were back, back in the early part of the, the, the bear market, there were not a lot of buyers. It was clear there weren't a ton of ton of buyers in the market. But, and we started to see the sellers just kind of take over the market. And now what we're seeing is like there are more buyers in the market. Is it the type of buying that we would expect to see in like a true, like, you know, regime shift, you know, going into a bull market? I'm not, I'm not sure about it because I'm just not seeing like that kind of onchain trading volume that I would, I would like to see. This, this chart that you just pulled up here is giving us a little bit of a deeper view into this. This is a spot volume delta and it's just measuring the difference between buying and selling activity. And it's really highlighting periods where either sellers or buyers were more aggressive. And we're looking at a 14 day moving average of this. And we can see on the far right side there we have, you know, we've gone into the green zone, which is telling me that there's more, you know, buyers are more aggressive than sellers at this stage. And the question is like, is this a new regime? Because it's not uncommon to see this flip green during, during a bear market. And really the question is again, is this a new regime? If it is a new regime, it would be kind of like, you know, the earliest period that we've seen that type of, that type of move happen. And, and that's kind of, that's kind of my view on what's happening. I guess in the spot markets. There were like, as you can see in this chart, there were some major flushes in 2022. There were six of them that, that reached like down to 3,000 or so Bitcoin of a flush. We've only had about 3 of those so far in this, this current bear market. So, so again, like, to me, what I'm seeing here is not a lot. The what's happening at the margin to me is that there's just not a ton of sellers at these price points that we've been, we've been hitting over the last few weeks. Do we start to see sellers as we push into, you know, get closer to the 200 day moving average, which Bitcoin, you know, does typically retrace to during bare markets? That's, that's kind of the next question to, to be asking. That's, that's a 85K, the 200 day moving average. We'll get to some of these numbers later. But this is to me the setup. You have a lot of, you know, speculative positioning shorts think we're going down. And on the margin, it just looks to me like there's more buyers and sellers. But it's not like a, it's not a ton of activity in the market just yet. We can also look at the ETF flows to kind of get a little bit.
B
Well before you get there. Okay, so just to summarize where we are. So we've seen these flushes in 2022, the same flushes that we're seeing now. Now this one does appear to be longer than the 2022 ones to your point. But you are still not seeing the, the new regime change bull market energy that you expect to see in spot markets if this indeed was a new regime. But let me ask you the question. This gets into the other charts that you pull up with respect to ETF flows and Michael Saylor. What if the bull market energy is actually coming from ETF flows on the institutional side and also the Michael Saylor stretch perpetual buy. And so that's not, that's why we're not seeing that same energy on the spot volume. It could be that it's, it really is the story of the institutions that are bolstering that demand. And that's where the, the beginnings of a bull market actually are. So when you look at ETF flows and when you look at what microstrategy is doing, does that change your opinion at all? Could it be, could it be that this is institutional driven demand, that that's the undercurrent of these bull market forces?
A
Yeah. So the, the ETFs definitely have been strong. I, I would say strong in the sense that we're not seeing a ton of outflows. And, and I think this chart kind of, kind of shows what's going on here. This is just showing, you know, the, the net flows over each 30 day period, each 30 day trading period since the ETFs have been trading. And we kind of segmented it by year as well. So you can see 2024 was like by far the strongest. You first, the first year the ETFs came out, there were no 30 day periods where there were actually net outflows. 2025 was a little bit weaker, but we had some, you know, strong periods in there, especially coming out of, coming into, out of the tariff sell off last year. And when you move to the right side of the chart and you start to see 2026, yes, there's been some returning flows into the ETFs and we're not seeing a ton of outflows, but it still just looks kind of, it's still pretty, pretty like subdued in my opinion. So, so from the ETF perspective, like, I don't necessarily think that's, you know, that's not like the, the burst of kind of like flows that I'd be looking for. It's also not, not weak. Right. It's not super negative. We know that, you know, Saylor's been in the, the market with that, with the stretch product and that's, that's also a new thing. So like these are all the, I think the new things. This, this bear market is. Okay. Now we have a longer, you know, bear market rally, three months versus typically around two months. And we know, we've known that there's a new buyer in the market. Sailor, and you have the etf. So those are, these are kind of the three, the three things. We did have something with Saylor yesterday where during their earnings call he, you know, hinted at selling bitcoin to fund some of this. So like that'll be interesting.
B
First time ever, right? There was like some crack in the I will never sell bitcoin narrative that he's been talking about for so long.
A
Yeah. And you know, it's kind of an interesting thing because the, I think the narrative. And the perception is, is he's, he's able to raise cash with, by, by issuing shares of Stretch. Well, he also has to, if he's able to rise, raise cash to buy bitcoin. Well now he has to actually sell bitcoin to pay the dividends on those. That can still work. It doesn't mean, you know, you know, it does have this like sort of Ponzi like structure to it which can work if bitcoin just keeps going up and you don't get caught up in that. So, so we'll see. I think it'll be interesting to see how the market starts to receive. I think it sold off a little bit when that kind of like hit the, hit the news wire and we'll see kind of going forward and also like it's just hard to project what the demand for that product will be and to try to model forward. He has been buying a lot but it's difficult to kind of model that, that forward.
B
So you summarize it this way. You're finding, you're struggling to find clear signs of durable strength in the bull market energy right now because you got perp interest. It looks like it's 2022, the same sort of thing happening. Spot market, subdued Bitcoin ETF putting in some decent numbers, but still not strong numbers. They're just 2.8, they're 2.8% off their, their peak AUM in Bitcoin. But they're lacking the burst here. And it does seem like maybe strategy, I mean it can't sustain the bid forever on these stretch type products. And with Mike, with Michael Saylor hinting that maybe they have to sell some bitcoin actually in order to give funding back to dividend payments, maybe that's kind of cracking, that's eroding. So that's, you're seeing weakness there. You're not seeing a sustained bull market here. I mean pair that with some of the market structure data that we've been talking about in previous weeks.
A
Yeah, we've just been updating this, you know, really on a weekly basis and trying to monitor how coins are rotating out there. It's been my view that like this is playing out, but it hasn't really played out the way you would expect it to play out to kind of hit that, you know, durable macro low for a cycle. My view has been that this, this cohort we highlighted the, you know, the 10% decline in the 92 to, to 108K holder cohort and that's about it's. Down about 10% right now in terms of the. The coins held by that, the people that bought at those levels from where it was when bitcoin peaked. And I still think that cohort needs to. The coins need to be recycled a little bit more there. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't have to play out this way, but the catalyst for that would be for. For bitcoin just to, you know, kind of continue to chop up or come down from these current levels and really just kind of chop up both bears and bulls, you know, and this process is typically what you see during. During bear markets. And, and people get kind of caught in. In these moves. So that's the question for me is like, is this just really a bear market rally and somewhat of a trap for these bulls? You know, when we come. If we come back down again, you know, are the people that, that didn't want to sell, is that sort of the thing that gets them to. To kind of release the coins and start to kind of create that churning process again? That's, that's really what I. What I'm focused on. What we've seen play out so far is similar to 2022, again, in that the. The holdings are concentrating in the 66K to 78K cohort. That looks similar to, like, what happened about six, seven months into the last bear market. Holdings were concentrating in the 29k to 34k cohort, but the cohort that actually picked up the most coins was like 18 to 21k. So, you know, the catalyst for that move is a drop. You know, it doesn't mean you have to have it, but to me, that's what would really help to set, like, a more, you know, solid foundation for us to then, you know, really kind of move into a new regime.
B
So let's talk about this chart, because this one actually surprised me. Bitcoin is the most correlated to the NASDAQ that it's ever been. And you go all the way to 2017, and we show 2026 as 0.48% correlated, which is. Well, that's the coefficient, the correlation coefficient, I should say, which is the most correlated it's ever been. Bitcoin gets more correlated to NASDAQ during bear markets, doesn't it? It's almost like it performs as a worse NASDAQ, a worse Q. Q. Q. During bear markets, but it still is correlated to them. So if stocks go up, bitcoin also goes up, just in a more muted fashion.
A
Yes, that's historically what's played out. The Exception is maybe 2020, which was a bull market year for Bitcoin. It was moderately correlated to Nasdaq in those years. But the years it's been most correlated has been 2022 and 2025. So far this year we've been even more correlated in this year. And you know, Nasdaq just made a massive move like a 25% move or so here since early April. That is, you know, you kind of got to step back a little bit from that. Bitcoin has gone up 36% or so over the same period. We'll see. You know, if you look at like that, that big of a move for Nasdaq has only happened previously during, you know, coming out of like a major correction recession. So coming out of 2008 and also coming out of the, the dot com bubble, we had that type of a move over, you know, this short of a period. But every other time that, that it's happened historically has been during a you know, late cycle bear market rally there. It's, it's been very interesting because a lot of this is positioning as well. I think in the, the tradfi markets you had hedges unwind. It's been a lot of like systematic buying and things like this. So it's, it's, it's, it's also very much a moment of truth I think for you know, the, the tradfi markets and where we're going to go here. What I've been kind of focusing on there is the, the Mag 7 and you know, for the bull market to really stay intact, I really think this is an AI story. And so the Mag 7 is something to watch for because it's been actually underperforming. There's only, I think two or three mag7 companies have actually reached all time highs as NASDAQ rallied back to all time highs. That's kind of interesting to me because that's like 40% of the, the, the S&P 500, right is, is so basically every 40 passive flow that's going into markets is going into those companies. So you would expect there to be a little bit more behind that. And I think for the bull market to continue, it's an AI story and those, those companies really need to, need to kick into gear here and we'll see, you know, we'll see if bitcoin ultimately starts to, to lead things down from here. But it's just interesting to me that that's correlation typically is stronger in bear markets. It's been the strongest we've seen so far in, in 2026?
B
Yeah, I guess. To what extent do you think bitcoin right now is just being pulled up by the strength of the NASDAQ and just QQQ rocketing? And so at some level, you know, if you think that's true, if you think it's just the reason bitcoin is moving up is just because NASDAQ is moving up, then you're kind of, to buy bitcoin at these levels, you're kind of making a bet on NASDAQ continuing because if it doesn't, I mean, the correlation still stays intact except you're going in the, in the down direction.
A
Yeah, yeah. You know, you have to kind of ask yourself, is kind of zoom out and ask yourself, okay, what is, what has gotten baked into price discovery, you know, over the last month or so? And you know, what, what is the future outlook of all of this? Look, have we front loaded too much and has the positioning unwind created a setup now where there's really no hedges in the market? Retail flows have been really strong. And are we kind of like set up here in a, in a, in a more of like a, you know, house of cards type of setup where everything good has been priced in all of the war fears, people have sort of chased the move now where's the next, you know, marginal buyer coming, you know, from, from this level? And I think you can apply that same framework to bitcoin at these levels. We made a pretty big move. Fear and greed index is now into like a neutral territory. A lot of positioning on, you know, with, with short liquidation. So it looks like somewhat, there's somewhat of, some of this is like a technical, you know, positioning, you know, rally. And so I think this is kind of the, the moment of truth and we'll see. I think these next few weeks are going to be really interesting just to kind of monitor what's happening.
B
Let's talk about the, the short run and the critical price zones for bitcoin to keep an eye on. So you write this from a momentum perspective. Bitcoin is currently overbought on the 14 day RSI. The last time it was at this level was 97k. Folks probably remember that that was on a brief bull market rally. And then the time before that was 126k, which was the top. So the RSI is saying, hey, like a lot of energy, we're not sure if it's totally justified. And then you've got some critical zones to keep an eye on. And I want to talk about those and then maybe we'll get into the, the overall trend like the Bitcoin 50 week moving average here. But what are the critical zones in your mind?
A
Yeah, so we are, we're now above the short term holder cost basis roughly, we think roughly the ETF holder cost basis. We're, we're just above those levels. So that's a, that's a key level and we've, we've moved above that. The next one is 85K. This, this is probably like the major kind of line moving forward here. That's the 200 day moving average and it's also where the largest cohort of dip buyers entered the market kind of early in this, this bear market. This was like during that period when we went up to, you know, from 84 to 97k or so. So there's like a lot of supplies, a lot of bitcoin supply there. It's also 200 day moving average. And then the third and final one, which I would say is like, you know, how you would get to like a confirmation that we've entered a new bull, bull market would be the 95K. That's the, the 50 week moving average. And so 85K 200 day moving average week historically will touch that, you know, in, in bear markets. And we haven't touched it yet. So, so that's certainly possible. And then we'll see, we'll see from there. The next, the next big one would be getting back to that 50 week moving average which you know, we can see in the chart there. This usually takes much longer, you know, to play out. It plays out when we get that cross later in cycles. Obviously the cross happens, you know, after you've already bottomed. Right. So, so that's the, that's the hard part. But if you buy, if you buy at those levels, you're still buying, you know, typically at a early stage of a bull market. So that would be 95, 95K. And yeah, we'll see. I mean like I said this, the next few weeks are going to be really interesting. It feels very similar to me like to the period where we went up to 97k and the sentiment shifts and there's a little bit of a reflexive move to that. There's, there's, you know, I'm keeping an eye on stablecoin, you know, supply as well. That tends to like bring liquidity into markets and that can be a bit of an indicator. Stablecoin supply has been kind of roughly flat since, since we peaked in October we kind of came down a little bit and then we did come up a little bit and we're now leveling off again. So keeping, keeping an eye on that as well and we'll see. You know, like this is the, the, the battle of bulls and bears. We're, we're right at the edge of it here.
B
So 85k would cause you to pause if that was sustained for a while. And, and you'd have to say okay, this is maybe more bull energy than I thought. 95k, that would be above the 50 week moving average and that would be full out bull market confirmation right on the chart. That's how it's previously happened. So you're expecting it not to reach those levels and certainly not to sustain those levels. Let's talk about how you are playing it and a possible scenario that maybe is your base case for what comes next. I think in order to like it would be inaccurate to paint you as bearish right now because like looking at the portfolio, we won't get into all the assets. That's for TDR Pro members. But you're basically 50% cash, right. Which means you're 50% deployed and that's not exactly bearish, is it? Yet you do have that dry powder waiting for a, a larger dip. You're not expecting that the cycle that we've, that we've reached bottoms yet for Bitcoin. So can you talk about how you're playing it and the scenario that you end with, which is the scenario where Bitcoin does trade for a while in this zone and then take a dip into some correction territory where it gets back to its fair value. How are you playing this?
A
Yes, the way I'm playing it is, you know, we always want to be in the market. I don't think you ever want to just be out of the market completely. I just think that's really hard and messes with psychology. The way I'm playing it is, you know, we came down, we bought some when we first came down and my view at the time was that this is too early and like it looks like, you know, we're probably going to re actually go into more deep value territory. This was, you know, back in February is what we were saying now that we have extended to a three month rally. I think the way that the thinking is shifting here is that we may not see the deep value zone, you know, because we're consolidating and chopping in such a, you know, for a longer period of time. That is helping to create A stronger base for, for, for bitcoin. And you know, it would be very rare for me for, to just like take off from here. What I think where my sort of, where the probabilities are starting to point to me is that, you know, 85k or so looks like it's going to be really hard to clear that zone. And you mentioned, you know, bitcoin on the RSI. It's already over, it's already overbought at 70 levels. You know, it's pretty rare to just like stay in that zone for like a really long period of time. There's usually a mean reversion. So where does that mean reversion take us? Does it take us, you know, back into like our fair value zones down below 65k or so? I think that, you know, we're going to test those levels again. It would be very rare to me to like just go to 60 immediately v bounce out of that and then just take off. So I, I feel like the market will always go back and test certain, certain zones. So that's kind of like my base case is like, you know, 85k or so. Let's keep an eye on that. Let's see, you know, what happens there after. We may not even get there. We'll, we'll see. And then, you know, how do we start to trade if we start to kind of mean revert? Is that like a vicious sell off or is it just a grindy type thing? If it's a grindy type thing and I think you can start to build the case that we did bottom at 60 and we may kind of like get down to those. You get back into the 60s or get close. But I think that's kind of how my thinking is shifting now that this is like going, you know, dragging on for a little bit longer.
B
I'm just curious if we get there to the fair market value zone, which you have said from the beginning of this is, is a 65k and below and you've made some purchases there. If we get there, is Michael NATO a buyer in the fair value zone or once we get there, if we do get there, are you going to wait for deep value territory?
A
Yep, yep. We will see. We will see. We have, we have to. I, I don't, I wish I knew. I wish I knew and I'll get killed.
B
Depends on the structure, right? It depends on what you're seeing at the time. Is that how you assess?
A
That's, that's kind of how I'm assessing it. I, I think you know, something I've been thinking a lot about is, I don't know if you're familiar with the. The marshmallow test. Yeah, this is like a psychology experiment with children. And for people that are not familiar with this, it's a psychological test with children, and what they're trying to do is, like, determine your ability to defer gratification. And it's an interesting test. They put a kid in a room, they give him a marshmallow, and they say, if you can sit for 10 minutes without touching the marshmallow, we'll give you a second marshmallow, and they leave the room, and then the kid will sit there, and most of these kids will just eat the marshmallow. I feel like we're in, like, the part of the market where people want to eat the marshmallow right now.
B
Yes.
A
And, you know, typically, patience does play out and kind of, you know, waiting for a fat pitch.
B
So you want to be that second kid. You want to get two marshmallows rather than just one.
A
You want to defer the gratification. I think we're still in a market where you want to defer the gratification. You know, we'll see. I think we're at an inflection point here, and we'll see how things shake out.
B
All right, well, hopefully, listener, you can pass the marshmallow test with Michael. And I gotta say, maybe, maybe, maybe. Let's do this. As a call to action this week, we've been enjoying the comments. Of course, if you're not subscribed across all platforms, where TDR streams, go do that. So if you're on Spotify, go subscribe to YouTube. If you're on YouTube, do Spotify, Vice versa. Also, leave us a comment with how you're playing this. I think we'd be interested to hear how the audience is absorbing this analysis and how you guys are playing it. So let's do that on the week. Of course. Gotta end with this. None of this has been financial advice. This is an investor journal. We're on the journey alongside you. Until next time, stay curious.
Podcast: The DeFi Report
Hosts: Michael Nadeau & Ryan Sean Adams
Date: May 6, 2026
This episode unpacks whether Bitcoin’s current surge above $80,000 marks the start of a new bull market or merely extends the longest bear market rally in recent memory. Michael Nadeau and Ryan Sean Adams analyze on-chain data, funding rates, leverage, ETF flows, and market correlations to assess the durability of the rally. They also discuss critical price levels, institutional activity, and portfolio strategy — offering listeners a transparent view of their own thinking in these pivotal market moments.
A. Leverage in Perpetuals:
B. Funding Rates and Positioning:
C. Short Liquidations & Reflexivity:
D. Spot Market Volumes:
A. ETF Flows:
B. Michael Saylor/MicroStrategy Activity:
A. RSI Overbought:
B. Critical Price Levels:
C. Stablecoin Supply:
Listener Call to Action:
Hosts encourage listeners to comment on how they are managing their own positions in this uncertain juncture.
This summary captures all major themes and actionable insights from the episode while preserving the analytical depth and tone of Michael Nadeau and Ryan Sean Adams. Use this as a reference guide for tracking current market cycles and strategic portfolio thinking in DeFi and crypto markets.