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Foreign.
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Welcome to the report. I'm here with Michael Nadeau from the Defi Report. I'm stepping in for Ryan Sean Adams, who is on vacation this week. He will be back next week. But Mike, I am glad that I'm here for this one this week because there is some action in the markets to talk about and, and you're the guy that I want to talk to.
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A
There is definitely some action in the markets. You picked a good week to, to step in here, David. And you know, before we just hopped on, I said, you know, this is like the most fascinating time in the markets I, I've ever seen in terms of just the dispersion in the market. I think, you know, that was really the second capitulation we've seen from bitcoin in this bear market yesterday. And there's other assets that are rising in this environment. We had three assets in our portfolio that were up significantly yesterday. This is something I've never seen. It's making this bear market really, really challenging for investors. I think in some ways less painful for some investors, but also potentially more painful for others that maybe aren't catching some of these other assets that are rising in this, in this environment. So a lot to get through. I know everyone's wondering if, if we've bottomed and kind of where what the outlook look looks like here. So we've got a lot of data to get through. Excited.
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B
That is exactly what I am wondering. We're going to slow roll our way there. Let's talk about the cycle. The typical way that this plays out for the last two or three cycles, however long I've been in crypto, is that everything in crypto pukes. Bitcoin pukes the least, ether pukes a little bit more and everything is just down so bad. And then people leave and then like you wait a little bit more and then you start to see some tokens go up and make some moves in the bear market, secretly, silently, under everyone's noses because 95% of people left before bitcoin recovers, before ether recovers. Some tokens move.
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Yeah.
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What is happening now is bitcoin is on its way down. The cycle appears to be cycling. We are seemingly, maybe we're kind of like, if you look at the bitcoin chart, we're at 66,000. We've been there somewhat recently. We were there in April, we were there in February. So maybe we're still at the bottoms. Maybe we go down more, I don't know. But like it's so early in the bear process to see other tokens down market breaking all time highs like aggressively. And I think that's what you're talking about is like this is, this is different.
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Yes. Like clearly things, things like breaking out like, like just looking at like what's lighter has been doing over the, over the last few weeks, obviously what hyper Liquid has been doing, what zcash has been doing, what near and some other AI adjacent coins like bvv. So it is, this is different. I've never seen this.
- [02:44]
B
Here's the lighter chart. The bitcoin chart is nowhere near anywhere expressed here. Like you would never tell that bitcoin is going down by looking at the hype chart. And you could do the same thing with near. Right. As you just said, looks like bitcoin going down is not showing up in this chart.
- [02:57]
A
Right. And I think, you know, there's, there's like two ways to interpret this. I think one is that you know, this is the crypto markets are maturing and things that have clear fundamentals, that have the right narratives, that are in the right sectors are just outperforming and investors are just becoming a little more sophisticated that there's other stuff and it's not just a kind of rising tide, you know, rises all boats. So that's one way to think of it. The other way is like these are these, these areas that are outperforming, like these areas of the market are sort of just still drunk or something and they haven't gotten the memo that the tide is going out and it's good, it's going to pull everything down. And that's kind of like how I'm trying to think about this. There are also other sectors of the crypto markets that we've been writing about that we've actually been making some investments in that have actually been in a deep bear market for 12 to 18 months or so. So there's like all kinds of stuff going on out there. And I think the challenge if you're an investor and I think it's almost been too easy in past bear markets where you could sort of anchor to this idea that most, most of the space is going to bottom after bitcoin, you know, hits its macro low. And that was kind of our view coming into this bear market and I certainly evolved the thinking on this. I think there are assets that have actually already bottomed even if bitcoin actually goes to a lower low. And of course we're seeing like just stuff like hype and zcash. We will see if you know, if that ultimately kind of recedes and the type comes out on these assets, I don't have a really, really strong view on this. Just. Yeah, we can kind of get to kind of portfolio management later. But yeah, just really, really fascinating markets right now.
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B
So let's just go back and set some, set some context here. Mike. I remember the last time we did this is like four weeks ago. I think you had just sold bitcoin right into the Iran war. Something around like 74, $73,000.
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Less than that. Little less.
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B
Okay, 72, call it. And you know, Bitcoin then ripped up to 82,000. And like, I was kind of bullish. I was like, man, like, despite the war, things are going up for like, what, Mike, what's going on?
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What did you do?
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Yeah. And then here we are at 66,000. So you went from a little wrong to a little right. I'm not going to give you say that you are super right. I think in order for you to be super right, we actually need bitcoin to like have another leg down. It kind of has just capitulated all of its progress that it's made since February, but it hasn't gotten any lower than February. And it's starting to run up against the 200. 200 day. Day. 200 week. 200 week moving average.
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Yeah.
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So the, the 200 week moving average is coming in 61,800 today. It'll be a little bit higher tomorrow. And bitcoin is at 66,000. What do you think bitcoin does with regards to the 200 week moving average? You think it bounces off it? You think it goes below it? What are your thoughts there?
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Yeah, yeah. And just to come back to that sell, I think I'm, I'm chalking that up as a mistake, to be honest.
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Oh, really?
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When I made that, that. So I didn't lose money on it and I actually kind of basically repurchased that yesterday. But I do think, you know, I sort of was offsides on the market for a brief period there. But, but fortunately we kind of stuck to what, what the data was saying. Things, things did roll over. And for me to be really right, like you said, we need to kind of go into like potentially these deep value zones. And I think, I think deep value is basically below this 200 week moving average, which I think it's at what, 61.7 or 61 8. Yeah, 61 8. So. So that is rising right. As, as time goes, it's a, it's A moving average. And in, in the last cycle we dropped 30% below the 200. Yeah week moving average. So, so this can certainly happen. And the fact that we're there, you know, we're getting close to it right now. What I'm trying to think through here is just like how much, you know, we can get into market structure. We got some market structure data in the report today. We can get into that. And then we also need to start to think about what's going on with strategy and just potential for like confidence starting to erode further. And that to me is the key thing here. This is a confidence game. Bitcoin is a memetic asset. When confidence leaves, it can be reflexive and microstrategy has played a role in creating reflexivity to the upside for the most part for this asset. But we have a chance of seeing it go in the wrong direction here. So we're going to get into some of that. But I think, yeah, I think anytime. You know, historically, if you're buying near the 200 week moving average, that has historically been a fantastic entry zone.
- [07:49]
B
If you have the time to wait. And as you said, we're not in, it seems like we're in value territory. Yes, but we're looking for deep value. And I think as it stands for this week, deep value is. Whether or not we get to deep value is determined by whoever can answer the question, is micro strategy going to mimetically unwind as much as it's memetically wound up? Like is Sailor going to reestablish confidence or is there weakness here? I want to, I want to pull open this stretch chart, but first we've got to talk to our friends and sponsors over at Galaxy. This one is for the institutions. Whether you're looking at the future of finance or also just a backbone for the next industrial revolution. Galaxy is a name that you need to know. They've established themselves as a global leader not just in digital assets, but also in critical data center infrastructure powering AI. What's unique about Galaxy is how they bridge these two worlds. They are both a full stack platform for digital finance, including institutional trading, custody, tokenization, but they're also building the next generation Industrial Revolution. So we've got a AI and HPC ready data centers, including their Helios site with 1.6 gigawatts of approved power on the AI side. And as a publicly traded company, they are bringing leadership to a next level with transparency and durability that is rare in the crypto space. So if you want to see how Galaxy helps institutions invest, build and transform, go check them out. There is a link in the show Notes Bankless, CC slash Galaxy. All right, Michael, I'm bringing up the STRC chart now just for some context. STRC is MicroStrategy Strategies. Dividend paying equity yield instrument pays 11.5%. Crazy good yield. It's supposed to trade at 100. If it trades above 100. Strategy is allowed to issue more Stretch if it trades below. In theory, the market's supposed to bid it up or strategy itself will bid it up. But any time it trades too far away from $100 is a dislocation that we need to look at. It has been dislocated in the past a few times. Back in November it traded all the way down to $90. Back in February, it traded down to $93. Both times it resumed trading at 100. With the weakness in bitcoin and also the weakness in MSTR and also the loss of confidence from the fact that strategy just sold 32 bitcoin. A small amount of bitcoin, but a symbolically large statement, Stretch is Now trading at $95. So 5% off of all time highs. I will say that even though this number 5% off is lesser than the instances of when Stretch has traded off a hundred dollars in the past, Stretch is bigger now. There are more. There's a larger market cap. They have issued plenty of Stretch, so the liability is larger. So Michael, tell me what you're watching here for just signal in terms of alpha with bitcoin price.
- [10:41]
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Yeah. So you know that the red line going down there, the way I sort of think about that is like that is basically Stretch holders saying we need more yields. We don't think the 11.5% is compensating for the rest. We're get, we're, we're feeling nervous about this situation with your, with your cash position, with the price of bitcoin, the confidence in the market, and we're starting to worry that we're not going to get paid. And so for him to draw in more investors, that yield needs to come up. I think if that thing comes down to like 80 or so, that's when it starts to look more like a credit event. But I think, you know, this, this whole sort of, you know, loop, that, that strategy, we've talked about this before on the show. It's, it's kind of like an impressive thing and it's almost too good to be true. When there is confidence in bitcoin, the asset that he's able to just go into the market and raise capital, go out and buy bitcoin and then bitcoin just goes up in price and then he's able to pay dividend again and raise more equity and pay dividends. And people in the dividend holders are like, oh my God, I'm getting 11.5% on cash. Like it's like too good to be true. And, and there's a lot of reflexivity baked into that. It's really based on confidence in that whole, in bitcoin. And for the first time we're seeing this, you know, come under, come under fire here. And the, you know, I think the way that I'm thinking about it is he's in a pickle. I think he, this is an example of like just probably just going a little too far with, with this ability to raise capital. This, you know, if we, if we go back a few months, this was the bull case for bitcoin at the time. And people were saying we had already bought on because Saylor was in the market and buying. And so that is, that is completely reversed. Back in 2022 he was not, we didn't have these preferred equity, you know, parts of the capital stack. It was just, you know, really the MSTR holders and then the debt that they have on their books. What's happening now is he's, he's in a spot where he actually has to take from his MSCR holders one part of the capital stack. That's what when he sells bitcoin, I know it's only 32 Bitcoin that he sold. When we, when he sells that he's reducing bitcoin per share for MSTR holders and then he's giving it to, you know, holders as, as dividend payments. So the, the question for me here is, and I'm sure that the war room over at Strategy is, is going right now and they're, they're trying to figure out because this is a lot of this is about signaling to the market and how things are going to shake out. I think the reason they did the 32 bitcoin was kind of to just put it out to, to so that it's out there and the market, the
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market needs to digest it.
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Yeah, yeah. Because if they came right out and did a billion or whatever, then that could just kick off like a bank run type of dynamics. And so I think that's sort of what they're doing. What is unclear is, you know, how much bitcoin could they have to sell and that I think really a lot of that depends on what that chart does. Like if that chart just comes back up to par with a hundred, it's telling you people are not as nervous as maybe we think. And people still like that yield and there's maybe demand for that and then he can go in and issue more of it and then maybe bitcoin recovers and like people forget about this pretty quickly. The, the bear case I think is that that does not come back as, as quickly as we hope and it just starts to force him to, you know, that then he has to come out and say, hey, I have to sell some more bitcoin. And then what happens? Does that red line start going down more when, when that happens and like, what is this potential doom loop look like?
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Yeah, and the problem with this is like Saylor's moves are so telegraphed because he has reduced optionality here. So if stretch goes down even more, if it gets to a scary number like below 90, it's signaling to the market and everyone else who's holding bitcoin, it's like, yo, like Saylor, the largest holder of bitcoin, has to sell bitcoin and he's going to move slower than you. And so you can hit the sell button right now and get in front of sailors selling because he has to finance his stretch position, which again is just like a memetic downward spiral that you don't really know where that ends.
- [15:04]
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Yeah, yeah, that is, that is the issue. And that's a similar. It's the same process on the way up. Right. People are running them on the way up. So this is the, this is the challenge. I mean, I think when I think about just the capital stack, it's not like they have, they're. They're borrowing on margin, right? So it's not like there is like a liquidation level for like their, their holdings or anything like that. It's more just this confidence game. And this is really just being introduced by this STRC product. So that is, you know, this thing is. It sort of can help you at, at times, but it's, it's looking like it's going to potentially hurt the markets. And I don't think anybody can predict how this is going to go. I mean, it really just depends on the conditions out there. I think the worst case scenario is. So they reported 2.1 billion in cash, in cash equivalents at the end of Q1, but then Saylor came out and paid down some of their convertible. So their cash position is like 871 million right now. And that's about six months of like, kind of Runway on these dividend payments. So I think he's trying to get ahead of it, sell some bitcoin, shore up two years worth of dividend payments, something like that. And maybe this. This can start to go away. If he's unable to do this and he has to just keep selling to kind of calm the markets and get that str chart back to a hundred, it could, I think it could look like potentially 2 to 3% of his holdings, which is significant, and it's probably enough to really spook the markets. And I think, you know, we talked at the intro, like, where. Where are we going? Have we bought them? To me, this is the scenario where you go to these deep value.
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Yeah, like the difference of buying a little bit of value while there's a potential precipice of a memetic unwind. I don't know. There's like a very clear case for deep value here.
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Yeah. Yeah, it feels that way. If it does feel that way. And like, the, the other thing I should mention that I was just thinking a little bit about last night is like, you know, we're watching things like zcash. I think zcash is, like, interesting in this, this, this market right now because I. It seems to me, and I don't have data on it or anything, but it does seem to me that there's, you know, pockets of crypto natives. Maybe they're ETH holders, maybe they're bitcoin holders, maybe they're sole holders that are allocating to zcash. And so this gets interesting. If bitcoin's having some sort of existential crisis and like, like OG bitcoiners are, like, getting out and going to zcash, That's. That's interesting. That's interesting too. It's something we've never seen. Bitcoin has historically been the. The alpha, the king asset. It always has been. I'm not suggesting that that's going to change, but something to, you know, kind of entertain that, like, if it gets really bad, then that's kind of the type of setup here where there's competition in the market as well. So.
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Yeah, and that's not even to talk about anything about quantum, which is just like another valid other variable. And it's one thing when there's one variable, but two variables. You know, one plus one equals three in kind of the. In this sense. And like, again, if you look at zcash like it's. It's kind of got this wonky chart, but it aligns with like, let's just look at VVV for example. Like incredible momentum. Let's look at near, for example. Like there are so many tokens that we can talk about in crypto that have momentum for all of 2026.
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Yeah.
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What's another one? Hype is like the biggest example so far. Just like the momentum of hype is insane. It is up 150% since February. And like we were saying earlier, the fact that bitcoin, the majors are down is just not showing up. And so you have majors with momentum downwards and you have other tokens with momentum upwards. And it seems like this momentum has longevity to me.
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It feels like it right now. It feels like it right now.
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It feels like it right now. Maybe that's the top. Who knows? You can never know.
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Yeah, and I tend to, you know, I'm kind of a contrarian and I always like I'm typically more comfortable going against the crowd. And like there is be there has become this sort of narrative or I would say just general view out there coming from a lot of like bigger accounts on. On X and stuff that this is like a four asset market and everything's consolidating around basically the charts that you just showed there. That looks frothy. I've been, I've been looking hard at zcash and trying to figure out is it, is it a speculative thing right now? Is this just like certain.
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It is a speculative thing right now.
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Well, I think it's both. I think, I think you have like, if you look at open interest and you just look at kind of what you would see from like a really kind of like hot ball of money type situation. Like you're seeing that there. But I also think you're seeing like the shielded zcash supply rising and you're seeing like there's definitely some like just spot buying and if people are coming over from other assets, that's probably long term capital. I would think so I think it's a little bit of both. And this is something I'm kind of watching pretty closely because there is a world like in the world that you're bringing forth here where bitcoin just stays weak. These other things actually just kind of don't Roll over. Where ZCast actually breaks out. Right. It's kind of made multiple attempts to get up to all time highs. If it breaks out, that's a big, that's a breakout from like a decade long sort of level there. So something to something to keep an eye on and something I'm watching pretty closely.
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Certainly, certainly. Let's talk about bitcoin outflows because this is just another thing that's kind of just adding onto the pile. It's just like a bitcoin. It's getting dogpiled by things left and right there. If you just look at the Bitcoin outflows since the 15th of May, every single day there is somewhere between like 100 and I think the highest one on this page is $700 million million dollars of outflows daily. And so like over the course of the last like 15 days it looks like something like three, maybe $4 billion of outflows. Not a single green day. What's going on here?
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Yeah, it's, it's not looking good. This is again, this is if you go, if you just fast, you know, go back two months or so, it was sailors buying and the ETF holders are diamond handed. There's no sellers. Bitcoin's already bottomed for the cycle. This is, you know, fully reversed. And yeah, the flows are now net negative for 2026 and still, I would say still, you know, holding up fairly well. The, the total AUM in Bitcoin is down about, you know, 5.6% from the peak in last October. So it's still, you know, still holding up well. It's really just the momentum that we're seeing right now and I think there's probably a couple things that, that are driving this. You know, we do still have a situation on the macro side where you have rising inflation. We know inflation's really bad for bitcoin. If you go back to 2022, that was a really rough year, that was a high inflation environment. The war in Iran is not settled yet. And there's a chance that I think most people have forgot about this a little bit. But most of the strategic petroleum reserves that were released, some of that's coming to a head. The oil experts would tell you there's a decent chance that oil spikes up here.
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Oil keeps on ranging between its highs and its lows and it's made some ground back up. It was, it was lows about a week ago and now we're trading back up again. So like that is very clearly not
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settled, hasn't settled yet. And so I think there's a chance that if you are an institutional investor and you know, bitcoin might be the riskiest thing, the farthest out on the risk curve in your portfolio. And if you think that we're entering an era where the inflation's rising, potentially rates are rising. You're probably going to sell that Bitcoin. So I think some of that's happening and then I think the other piece of this is the basis trade. So a lot of hedge funds will buy the ETF products. They will then short the futures. If there's a spread on the futures, they can short that and it's a delta neutral move and they'll, they'll take that spread that could be driving some of it. That's like kind of price neutral though. So it wouldn't really like impact the price. But I think that's, that's what's driving the ETFs and we'll see. I think again, coming back to that, that STRC chart, I think that is the key thing to get people to kind of calm down and maybe start, you know, coming back into the market.
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B
So yeah, the SCRC is the canary. It is not the coal mine. Wow. It's even, it's even deeper than.
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More.
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Yeah, it's going down even more right now. Yikes. It's, it's not, it's not the coal mine itself. It is the canary. And so it'll be kind of reflexive to what Bitcoin does. You know, bitcoin is, can only be the bitcoin price can only be controlled. Controlled by Sailor so much. But ye is definitely like a very important thing to watch. There are some other assets that you talked about in the report. I don't know if we're allowed to talk about them here, but you mentioned Hood. I'd love to get your thoughts on Hood as a hood holder had incredible highs a while ago, like a quarter ago and it has just like not held momentum. What do you think about HUD right now?
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A
Yeah, I'm a big fan of Robinhood. I'm a customer of Robinhood and I'm a big fan of the leadership team of Robinhood. I really like founder led led companies and I think what Robinhood has historically done really well is like deeply understand their users and build like really good products. And they're primarily catering to millennial Gen Z audiences and they've really leaned into crypto, which I really, really like as a sort of company vision. And if you kind of go through some of their. We did a report which people can check out a few weeks ago on Hood. There's just a lot of good things happening here in terms of usage of the platform. They're actually a very lean company as well. I think this is one of the reasons that Hood has historically outperformed Coinbase. And then they're really leaning into the crypto strategy and crypto has become a larger percentage of their revenues over the last five years or so. And this is something that I have kind of a long term view on this and it's something I want to allocate to. We don't hold it in the portfolio right now, but it's something that I think later in, especially if this bear market continues on, I think it's going to impact Hood's share price, which will be a sort of head fake because the company as a whole is incredibly strong and has a ton of tailwinds behind it. But I think there's a chance that they report their Q2 earnings that are going to be a miss because of crypto volumes, things like that. We'll see. And, and it's just, it's just something I can, I can envision a future where Robinhood is like the, the sort of mega financial services platform like once the baby boomers kind of like move off and like the, the younger generation of the wealth. So I really like what they're doing. I just like the company. I like, I like the growth story and I like the, there's like a big, there's a big story to be told just with kind of, you know, transfer of wealth coming from, you know, older generations as they roll off. And I think a lot of that's going to find the Robinhood platform over time. So.
- [26:17]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean this is music. 20 years I've been a long Robin Hood believer. The other thing that I'll add to that is the execution speed, should, the shipping speed. They ship stuff and they ship stuff quickly. And it's also with incredible ux which I think also kind of meaningfully differentiates it from, from Coinbase for sure. Mike, what are your moves this week or do people need to subscribe to the TDR Pro in order to get those?
- [26:43]
A
Definitely subscribe because that's where, you know, we share all of the history, the, you know, full transparency. Since we, since product launch, you can go back and see everything, everything we've done, we've been active. So, you know, for the first six months or so of this bear market, we were not doing, not doing a whole lot. We, we did buy it back in February. We bought back in February. Now the, the sort of shift that I've been dealing with internally is kind of what we were talking about at the top here where the crypto markets, this is a Stock pickers market now, it's not a rising tide. Lift all boats. There's way more skill needed.
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B
This is an alpha market, not a beta market.
- [27:26]
A
Yes. Where you know, you've got a lot of dispersion in the market. There's a lot more skill coming into play here in terms of portfolio, portfolio management, a lot more artwork. You can't just be lazy and sort of assume that everything's going to bottom when bitcoin does. And so I'm kind of like segregating the markets a little bit. So there's, there are large swaths of the crypto markets that I believe have been in a bear market for 12 to 18 months. And I think there's a chance that some of those, those tokens have actually already bottomed. And what's interesting is even with the capitulation of bitcoin yesterday, most of those are off. They're, they're, they're at higher lows than they were, you know, back in April or so. So that looks interesting and it kind of looks similar to what we saw back in June of 2022. So we had a big capitulation in June 2020, I believe this was like after block by Celsius Terra Luna. It was kind of a cascade there and we had. Bitcoin basically came back to fair value at that time. Eth bottomed right at that time. Things like dogecoin bottomed at that time. And the bear market still went on for another six months. And bitcoin actually hit a lower low but in February, sorry, November after FTX went down. But a lot of other coins actually had already bought them because the air had already been pulled out of the market. So I'm kind of like looking at that and saying is it, you know, that's a, that's an area that I feel comfortable allocating to for that, for that sector. There's some interesting stuff happening in Defi right. When you look at lighter. For example, we established a position lighter a couple months ago. Probably should have bought more now after, after seeing the recent price action. One of the reasons that, you know, I got excited about lighter is that I view Hyper Liquid as like a difficult platform to onboard. I don't think it's super easy. If you're crypto native you can do it. But I don't think it's like normie kind of like aligned. And when I went to use lighter for the first time just to test it out, I'm not a, not a perps trader or anything, but just testing it testing out the onboard process. What I realized was I had a moment that reminded me of when the first time that I used Phantom wallet on solana back in 2022 and it was very similar to like, I was used to this clunky Ethereum L2 experience with wallets. And then you get on Phantom and like everything's like quick and snappy. There's no bridging, there's no. And I was like, wow, this is like a, this feels like a real like kind of like mainstream consumer product that I had a similar vibe when I went on to lighter and I was like, this is just easier to onboard. It feels more like just easier to navigate. So, you know, that's why I like lighter. I think it's also an extremely important project for the Ethereum community. And I, I, I. Something that I'm really watching for here is to see if the Ethereum community rallies is going to rally around this. Yeah. Foundation.
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B
The best proof of why ZK Proofs as a layer 2 on Ethereum is, is important is the, the best use case we could ever imagine.
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Security. They have an escape hatch. Like they're, you know, there's, there's some of this, some of these technicalities or people can check out L2B, but they're designing this in a way that the accounting trail of everything that happens on Lighter will be stamped onto Ethereum. So when we have a situation like October 10th where if you're on Binance and you're getting liquidated, there's no trail of what happened, you're just trusting whatever the ledger of Binance says and you basically have no recourse. What Lightr is putting forth here is something where actually Ethereum's the accounting system for this. It's decentralized. And also you don't have to trust the lighter team, you don't have to trust the lighter smart contracts. And there's a, there's an escape hatch that's being built into that people should check L2 beat again on that for the technical technicalities. But I just think it's kind of interesting and it'll be interesting to see if, like, if you're an investor like, and you're, you're in hype, it's kind of like BTC versus zcash or something. Like are you in Europe a lot on Hype? Are you kind of maybe putting some in lit just in case? Like I think that, that some of that could play out so something to keep an eye on. And, and like I said, I, I'm really looking for the Ethereum community and the Ethereum foundation to support this project and show the world that you could build these things on, on Ethereum. So totally. Yeah.
- [31:57]
B
Mike, as the week progresses, what signals are you looking for? You're clearly looking at Stretch as a canary for Bitcoin. What other signals are you looking at?
- [32:07]
A
So that, that's kind of the thing I'm watching right now. So I actually added a little bit of cash to our portfolio to be able to buy on. We guess I'm very bullish generally on crypto right now, which I think is maybe a little surprising for people to hear. But I, I tend to get more bullish when we get everyone in our markets. Yeah. When everyone else isn't. And why am I so bullish? It's really just because like the, the infrastructure of this whole ecosystem is now in a place where you have projects like lighter that can build on Ethereum. That's really interesting. And I think it's built bringing in higher quality founders to crypto. So I think the infrastructure is ready. We're seeing like stronger apps coming out. Right. We've seen hype and we've seen things like Pump and just, we're just seeing higher quality like apps being built. There's something called Derive that we've been watching. This is on chain options also built in the Ethereum ecosystem. So there's just higher quality stuff happening. The infrastructure is ready, the builders are ready, Regulation hopefully is coming. And then the other thing is I love seeing this dispersion. Yes it's harder as an investor but we're seeing like the market clearly starting to understand token economics and the projects that have a value accrual mechanism back to the token. Like those projects are clearly starting to separate themselves. So we're focused on a lot of that. I think that's like an area I want exposure to. There's also like store value assets like zcash and Bitcoin and eth. I would put in that category as like another category. And then I have a view that the crypto markets are completely misunderstanding meme Coins. And this is like a controversial meme Coins. What it gets into people's feelings when I bring up meme coins. But my sort of and I think this is like, I try to be as just objective and level headed on on things and I always try to say you, you just observe the market, don't be the market, don't have like, like what I find when I talk to other investors about meme coins is they just, they have a view on Meme coins? They don't have a view on the market for Meme coins. They have a view on Meme coins themselves, which prevents them from seeing that. Lots of people like Meme Coins. And as a product, I just view it as one of the most successful things that the industry has shipped. And. And. But, like, you're la.
- [34:38]
B
You know, I'm doing it. I'm doing what you're saying.
- [34:41]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And this is. This is why people are off sides on this. Yeah. How could that be if people didn't like using them?
- [34:48]
B
Right.
- [34:48]
A
If you just think about a pro, think about it just as a product. It doesn't have to add value to the world. Does eating an ice cream add value to the world like people? Does eating a bag of chips add value to the world? There are plenty of successful things.
- [35:01]
B
Ice cream probably does the same thing as meme coins when they go up in price.
- [35:05]
A
Yeah, maybe, maybe. But this is kind of the approach that I take. I'm trying to just observe that market and say, why is Pump still doing a million dollars of revenue today? I don't have to judge these people. I can just say that's a sticky product. And so that's kind of my approach with kind of that segment of the market. So I'm sort of allocating to these three buckets and we'll see how things shake out as this STRC thing plays out. I think this is a little overblown. And bitcoin probably was going to have some Revisit these, potentially 60k. Anyway, we'll see. But, yeah, exciting times, man. Really exciting times for the markets.
- [35:49]
B
Yeah.
- [35:49]
A
Yeah.
- [35:50]
B
That's actually funny that you say that. I was actually kind of thinking, man, that the timing of Saylor's sell of 32 bitcoin, it might be just completely coincidental that it was rolling over with bitcoin.
- [36:03]
A
Yeah.
- [36:03]
B
Also, maybe you believe that there's no such thing as coincidences, but you could see the bitcoin chart and it has nothing to do with strategy. It is just a complete coincidence. I'll just leave that as food for thought for the listener. Mike, it's been great this week. Stretch is down a one and a quarter percent from when we started this episode. So we are going to continue to watch that and see what happens. You'll be back with Ryan next week, but then you've got me back the week after that because he's going on vacation again. So I'll see you, my dude.
- [36:32]
A
Sounds great, man.
- [36:33]
B
All right. That has been the report. You can lose what you put in. This is not financial advice. All that good stuff. But we'll be back in a week to talk markets. Bitcoin. And see what. How deep of a Taylor's in then. Mike, it's been great.
- [36:47]
A
Thanks, David.