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The Wolf Of All Streets
Bitcoin & Crypto Bear Market Confirmed? Wintermute Issues Dire Warning
00:30:58
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- [00:01]
A
Crypto quant says that bitcoin and crypto are flirting with a bear market. If a very specific line on a very specific chart is broken. And Wintermute issues a dire warning that there's no new money and liquidity in the crypto space, that it's simply player versus player in the good old fashioned washing machine, moving from token to token and then out of the market. Seems like there is massive bearish sentiment from bitcoin to simply be sitting at $13,000. Yago and I are going to break down all of this now. Let's do. Let's do. Good morning bare market enthusiasts and welcome to the pain. Because bitcoin unimaginably is trading checks chart $103,000. I really remember being really excited when we were here on the way up the first time.
- [01:08]
B
How you doing, Scott?
- [01:10]
A
I'm good. I mean, 103,000 seems like a really good price for bitcoin. I don't know, I guess the altcoin pain has been pretty, pretty brutal.
- [01:20]
B
Yeah, yeah, I think it has. I think also if you came in more, look, I think for the first time maybe ever, bitcoiners are feeling FOMO outside of the crypto space. Right? Gold's going up well, except for yesterday. Stocks are going up well, except for yesterday. But you know, the overall sense is all of the assets are moving except for this one asset which is supposed to be the best performing asset in the world. What's going on? Have I missed the boat? And you know, over the last two years we've seen $180 billion of BTC held for five years or more sold into the market. 180 billion. And so despite the fact that we've seen over that two year period, really more like 18 months, if you actually look at when it was occurring, close to $200 billion sold from long term holders. And that's in addition to the vast majority of selling which was, you know, much more than $200 billion, which was from newer holders. The price is still overall up and maintaining a steady position. So we're in a very, very complicated and interesting place. How we should be thinking about bitcoin I think does need to change somewhat.
- [02:49]
A
But.
- [02:52]
B
For reasons that we've, you know, I think, I think, I think the, the one asset which we can be sure of is btc. As for other assets, I think we are seeing some assets do quite well in the crypto space, but they need to be generating revenue or be doing something remarkably important and different and highly differentiated. And that is not 99% of the assets in the crypto space.
- [03:19]
A
We're going to get to that in a minute. First, I want to talk about this report by Wintermute. Here we go. Wintermute issues dire warning. That may be a bit hyperbolic, but if you read into the report, actually they think that we have a problem, which is that stablecoins, ETFs and digital asset Treasuries have all peaked where not seeing new inflows into any of those ETFs follow price. I'm not surprised by that, even though if you look at it over any longer timeframe than the last few weeks, they're doing exceptionally well. Digital asset treasury companies, a lot of them, are actually selling tokens to buy back stock now. So I think that that's fair and may actually be causing selling pressure rather than demand that we saw before. And stablecoins. I'm a bit surprised I haven't dug into it, but I would imagine we're still seeing more stablecoins minted and not a ton of redemptions, but bringing us back to what we're all familiar with in crypto, when coins just recycle from place to place and the money just kind of goes through the washing machine and everybody takes each other's money until they get liquidated on leverage and the exchange ends up keeping it and taking all the liquidity out of the market. So, I mean, what do you make of this? Do you think that this is the reason that we're seeing sort of a flat or stale market at the moment?
- [04:36]
B
Yeah, I. I don't think it's necessarily true that we're not seeing additional inflows into the market. I think that that is incorrect. I think we have been seeing inflows into stable coins. Stable coins continue to grow. We have been seeing like, sorry, I'll bring up the numbers soon, but we've seen an overall growth in stablecoins. We're also seeing substantial amount of capital entering into the ETFs, but at the same time, we have seen a massive increase in the number of traded assets. And we've seen the primary engine of crypto. People don't always like to admit this, but ultimately you have one asset class here, which is Bitcoin, and then you have a whole bunch of assets which are a beta on Bitcoin. In other words, they're kind of like a leveraged play on Bitcoin. They're deeply, deeply correlated to Bitcoin. And so what really matters is where does Bitcoin move to? And if Bitcoin moves then the other assets can move with it in its gravity. Well, so the fact that bitcoin has been flat has, has meant that everything else has been flat or down because the overall pie hasn't grown, but the number of assets has grown and stable coins, even though there has been an influx of stable coins, have been sitting on the sidelines. They're being used for trading but they're not being used for investing.
- [06:13]
A
Yeah, I think that that's probably true. And maybe people are earning yield much like in the other markets where people are putting their money into money markets and not actually putting work. And then of course the next bearish signal here, Bitcoin breaks key support level. That confirmed the 2022 bear market. They say it's the 365 day moving average. I'm assuming they're talking about this weekly 50. I don't know. But you can see that in this area is this kind of key blue line. If we're talking about technicals and yes, you don't want to be below it. Right. Bull markets are always above the 50 week moving average. But I remind people, you can't know if something is support until you test it as support support. So it's a long week and we will see what happens. But either way, even the technical analyst now saying we've got our bear market signals coming.
- [06:57]
B
I mean, look, go back, go back to that chart for a second because technical people can say whatever they want, but I mean even a person that, who just sort of just looks at this, if you look at those arrows, if you look at the places where it's touched that line, it tends to portend a significant up market, not a significant down.
- [07:17]
A
You bounce big. That's what I'm looking for.
- [07:19]
B
Exactly. So, so you know, people can say all kinds of things. I think there's a big story here which I haven't heard basically anyone else talk about. We've spoken quite a lot about the rotation from sort of OG holders to institutional holders in bitcoin and that that has been balancing out. But I think there's another really big story here and we're, we're seeing sort of in the things that you're talking about that narrative of this is it, this is 126 was the Bitcoin peak we are now heading into a bear market is based on a fundamental idea, fundamental narrative that we've had for well over a decade in crypto which is we've got this four year cycle and if you look at the four year cycle, the four Year cycle ends in the year after the halving. We're in the year after the halving and it ends between October and December. So right now everyone who has been in this market for a while or is aware of that narrative is deeply concerned that time has run out. This was the cycle. And maybe they're right. I think they're probably not, but maybe they're right. But the psychological impact of that is that no one wants to go risk on right now in the crypto space. No one wants to go risk on right now in bitcoin because they're very worried about being caught offsides, basically becoming exit liquidity in what is now going to be a two year drawdown. My sense is that this is having a massive psychological effect. We're not even talking about it because we're like fish in water. We just live in this four year cycle as an assumption. And what could happen, what is likely to happen is that come December we will discover that the price is still more or less holding up. We will then need to see in January and February some kind of rise. And what that will do is it will confirm for people that the four year cycle is dead. We will get the first. We can't get confirmation that the four year cycle is dead before January or February, but in January or February, if the four year cycle is dead, that's when we're going to get our confirmation and then immediately we're going to see sort of every single KOL influencer shill, you know, talking head on Twitter, talking about this is the death of the four year cycle and that in and of itself is going to become a narrative driver.
- [09:57]
A
Yeah. And I mean pull up this chart, we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 corrections. I would say since the bottom in 2022, at the end, since FTX, this one right now is 21.7%. If you go from the top to the bottom, I mean we had 32%, 33.5%, 21, 21, 2021, basically 22. I mean we do this five to 10 times in every bull market unquestionably and still complete fear and panic.
- [10:36]
B
Yes, but I mean we're not really in a bull market, we're in a sideways market and we have been for a year now. Bitcoin started rising in early 2024 and had completed most of its gains by the middle of 2024. It then had a second period where it recovered some gains that it lost and then slightly tipped over just after Trump was elected. And basically we've Been going sideways since then. And I think there's two parts to that story. One part is the rotation, right? We got our etf, we got our ico. I think Scott, on this show, you and I were among the first people to do talk about that. Right. Since then it's become a common talking point. And then, you know, the second thing is what I just mentioned, which is that people are worried about the four year cycle. Now I'm going to add one other thing here. Bitcoin has been the best performing asset for the last. Well, Bitcoin for 14 years was the best performing asset in the world. But now over the last five years it has done, on average it's doubled, but that comes down to an 18 annualized compound annual growth rate. So that's amazing. That's amazing, right? The stock market on an average basis does 9%. So you're, you're doubling what you would do if you were doing the stock market. But it has left a lot of people wondering, wait, is this still the best performing asset in the world? Like full stop, end of story. And especially the last year where we've seen tech stocks, we've seen gold rip and bitcoin, not. That has created a, it's part of the reason for the rotation, right? So if you're sitting on a lot of bitcoin, you now want to be able to live off that wealth. You're now asking yourself, well, maybe I should diversify into some other assets. So I, I think we've still got some selling ahead of us. I think we may see an additional dip. But the reality is that we're not in a bull market. Bull market either ended a year ago or hasn't begun yet.
- [12:58]
A
Yeah, I agree. It's a sideways market. When you look back. I mean, we were in above 100,000 in 2024, right. And we're just above 100,000 in 2025. So we've seen highs, we've seen lows, but it's been ranging generally. I love this comment, by the way. I got to bring it up. I'm 70 years old and I bought first bitcoin investment at 118k. Give it to me straight, youngsters. Am I cooked? I love that you said, am I cooked? You obviously have grandkids or something. No, you're not cooked. And I would like to explain exactly why. And this is something I was even thinking about yesterday. Unless you are you right, which happens every single market, there's really never been a bad time to buy bitcoin. If you at least are willing to hold a couple of years. I remember exceptionally well in the last bull market price hit 69,000. It was on the way down and I was very, very publicly buying sadly on Voyager. So I don't hold these amazing trades anymore but 58,000, 53,000, 52,000. I wasn't sure if I was buying the bottom before we went to 100,000 or if I was just buying dips but I was happily buying bitcoin went to 17,000.
- [14:07]
B
Right.
- [14:07]
A
And so people constantly reminding me in my comments how stupid I was, how dumb I was. You could have bought at 17,000 and you bought at 50. Well I also bought at 17 but didn't take very long for us to be back above 58 making to all time highs up in the 70s, pushing to 100 and now every single one of those buys by simply waiting a little while is well into profit and it happens that way with every single market. So did you time it perfectly? No, but that's not the expectation. Will you eventually be up? I have extreme confidence that you'll eventually be way up.
- [14:48]
B
Let me give what I think see as the bullish playbook here. So here are the three primary drivers that I think are going to send bitcoin careening much, much higher when this happens. My I think we're going to see the first trigger in December. We're going to see the second trigger in February or March. Basically I think there is a confluence of three factors. One, I think there's a very high probability that micro, that microstrategy Steve, you know, so, so today just called strategy is going to get listed on the S&P 500 index. It's going to join the major indexes that is going to see a massive inflow of funds into that company, all of which is going to be deployed to buying bitcoin. So that I think is going to happen in December. That will also be bullish for all of the other BTC treasury companies and they too will be buying more. The second thing that's going to happen is that the selling pressure is going to lift. We've been in this sideways ranging environment since basically the etf. The ETF was over a year and a half ago.
- [16:02]
A
Now.
- [16:05]
B
I think we're coming to the end and I think the data is also starting to demonstrate that we're coming to the end of this rotation or redistribution from OGs to institutions. And then the third thing is I think the four year narrative dies in January or February. The confluence of those three things is going to mean massive institutional buying. It's going to mean reduced selling and it's going to mean a massive new narrative. Basically, I expect very strongly that we're going to see a narrative emerged that bitcoin has gone past the four year cycle and we are now into a super cycle.
- [16:45]
A
Yeah, I mean we're also going to get a lot more government stuff. We're in a government shutdown right now. There's no real liquidity coming into markets from that side. This is just a very, very weird phase and important reminder that the having in its four year cycle is not a magic bullet for specific things to happen on specific dates. Right. I mean we're trading in an environment liquidity will come back in global markets. I can tell you a couple reasons that liquidity is probably going to come back even though it shouldn't. As a result of this, U.S. employers announced 153,000 job cuts in October. 175% surge and the highest for any October since 2003. Extreme labor market weakness link up estimates show the U.S. economy lost 5,000 jobs in October. The second negative monthly reading since January 2021 says the job market needs help. The the conclusion here though, we need more rate cuts and if you dig into it, employees psych, cost cutting and AI is the primary drivers of these cuts. You don't fix AI with monetary manipulation like AI jobs aren't coming back because you cut rates.
- [17:54]
B
I I'm very skeptical that any of these jobs have been lost because of AI. I think we've been seeing the job losses due to other factors. The high cost of borrowing, the additional cost of tariffs and the bigger piece being just general economic uncertainty right now nobody wants to hire and so I don't think AI is the story, but I think it's a convenient narrative.
- [18:28]
A
Yeah, that's true. But the point being liquidity is probably going to come back. And whether that actually matters or is just the narrative that liquidity is coming back, markets should go up. Those are the type of things that help at least narratives with bitcoin obviously. Interesting take here from Matt Hogan who we obviously have on all the time. Bitcoin retail investor at Max Desperation says bit y CEO but crypto Winter not coming. He points out that he's out in meetings every single day and institutions are like chomping at the bits of buy. $103,000 bitcoin. They're just getting in. They didn't want to buy the high anyways. They're just actually being allowed to even start allocating to this Class. And then the crypto natives and the retail investors are just getting rinsed by mass liquidation events and beat downs and buying treasury stocks and. Yeah, just absolutely exhausted while the big money is still ready to come in. I think this actually just speaks to the point you kind of mentioned before. Like all of us are just tiny little goldfish in a massive sea of much bigger whales. And when you have institutions looking to buy in size and you have. I think it said. There was a tweet last week. We've talked about it here. James Lavish brought it up. 400,000 tokens sold by long term whales in one month. 400,000. Bitcoin, another 45 billion, I think two days ago. And the market dropped $45 billion worth. Dude, we're just like, we don't matter. Like what, what your friend is doing like in Defi is not moving this market in any way, shape or form.
- [20:03]
B
Yeah, look, bitcoin is part of a much, much larger market and it is the primary part of also the crypto market. It's more than, you know, it's 60 plus of the, of the crypto market. And you know, people spend a lot of time talking about defi, but all Of DeFi is $100 billion market, whereas Bitcoin is a $2 trillion plus market. So it's very much at the margins.
- [20:35]
A
Yeah, we just don't matter. I would love for us to matter, but hey, there are things that are happening massively in the market for some companies. I would love your take on this. Ripple says Fortress Citadel securities invests 500 million. I think they announced this at swell. So this is a 500 million investment at $40 billion valuation. They made announcements with MasterCard. Obviously these conferences are the place that you get big announcements. The bitcoin conference, we get El Salvador making bitcoin legal tender and things like that. But this also from Pantera and their early investors. So this is really interesting and I would love your take. I've. I go to battle with the Ripple army on accident all the time. This seems exceptionally good for Ripple as the company and it maybe won't accrue. I can't say to, to the token itself, but what's most interesting is that they have a $40 billion valuation here. They've bought Hidden Road and Rain, all these platforms. They're building something incredible. We can speak to whether it will be used or not. But these are very real companies that they're buying in their attempts to do stuff. But they have $80 billion in tokens still on their Balance sheet. So they have a $40 billion valuation. The tokens they hold, which they've used obviously selling to fund all of these ventures. And people can speak to whether they're excited about that or not. They have 80 billion worth of tokens. So isn't this just like Citadel securities and all these companies getting an incredible 50% discount on XRP by buying the best treasury company, which is Ripple itself. And that, like I said, this is not like against what they're building or whether there will be adoption. But you're. If. If they have 80 billion in tokens and they're getting a 40 valuation, even if they never built anything, you're getting a 50% discount on the token value.
- [22:24]
B
This, to me actually is an extremely bearish headline because think what, what it's saying. It's saying that Ripple, the company who just in terms of their balance sheet, are worth a hundred billion dollars. Right. So they've bought companies, right.
- [22:46]
A
Eighty billion plus all of their acquisitions.
- [22:48]
B
Right, Right, right. So they're just. Their balance sheet is worth $100 billion. And so raising money at a $40 billion valuation means that Fortress are valuing the value of the ripple business at minus $60 billion and that the owners, the founders of Ripple, agree. So why do things like this happen? Frequently you will see deals like this where there is a significant headline number under the asset where if it's either illiquid, cannot be sold, if it were to be sold, would, you know.
- [23:34]
A
Right. They don't. Be clear. They don't have $80 billion. And this is not them. This is every company with massive tokens on their balance sheet. They couldn't get $80 billion for it in the market. So they're saying that if we sold it all right now, you know, we could get 50 of that. You know, obviously selling $80 billion would send the price so low that they wouldn't get it. That's just.
- [23:54]
B
And then what? And then what? And you don't know what warrants they've got. Right, right. So they could potentially have this $500 million secured in addition to just the pure valuation with $500 million in XRP, no matter what the price of XRP. So these types of deals are typically the result of a company wishing to make headlines with a big investment and big marquee investors. And the marquee investors basically leveraging their marquee name to get an extremely sweet deal.
- [24:24]
A
Deal, Right.
- [24:25]
B
The sweetheart deal. So everyone ends up a winner. When I see things like that, that's bearish because it Means that the fundamentals of the business are not making sense and that's why you had to go and do sort of this kind of deal at lower valuations with sweetheart marquee, you know, sweetheart bring in marquee players in order to, to make it work. Now Ripple are trying to build a business and they're putting together a lot of different components and I think that that will enrich them. But remember, that has nothing to do with XRP Ripple. The company is effectively turning itself into a holding company of a large number of fintechs funded via acquisition through funds they've achieved through xrp. Some of these companies are using the Ripple network at all.
- [25:19]
A
And so I think, I think factually the bulk of RL USD, their stable coin is on Ethereum for now. It's not on. Yeah, their ledger, I think 80 or something is on Ethereum. I don't want to misquote it. They'll be like it was 73%, you, you know. Yeah, yeah.
- [25:36]
B
To me these things make me uncomfortable and they, they feel to me like an extremely bearish, a bearish signal for, for the company, for the market.
- [25:47]
A
I mean, but how brilliant those early days of crypto for fundraising and building business, I mean really think of it. And once again non exclusive to Ripple. But like you were basically able to print money, sell those tokens to other people and use the sale of that token that you created to become a billionaire and then eventually, which most have not been able to do. So this is to Ripple's credit because most just disappeared, have been able to use that to potentially build a massive business by billion dollar acquisitions.
- [26:21]
B
And nobody's done it better than Ripple with the possible exception of EOs. And EOs basically did the same thing.
- [26:27]
A
They just noticed a ton of bitcoin now. Yeah.
- [26:30]
B
So yes, took a 500 million dollar. I think it was also $500 million investment from Peter Thiel and a few others backed by the bitcoin that they held, effectively valuing the company at a minus number. Both EOS and Ripple have done a phenomenal job of taking the moment that crypto presented before people understood what it means and converting that into a multi generational fortune.
- [27:05]
A
Yes, man, it's over 100,000 Bitcoin. They still have sitting block, what's it called, Block one or something just sitting on the balance sheet. They're the greatest undiscussed digital asset treasury company out there. Not as big as strategy. I've seen reports it was four or six, somewhere in the four to seven billion dollar range. And that money was also used for Bullish, the exchange, which had this massive, successful ipo. And everyone was like, this is the first time I've ever heard of bullish. It wasn't like Kraken or Coinbase. Right. This is crazy. There's so many ways to make money in crypto. There were so many ways to make money in crypto, I should say. But it's an interesting take here. Regardless. I think it'll be interesting to see how everything shapes out with ripple vs XRP and what they build and how much adoption there will be. But Hidden Road is a serious prime broker. There's a real business there. So they're going to earn money with these acquisitions. The question will just always remain how that accrues to the holders of the token or whether it does or not. Right. Whether they switch that switch on. They always say it will. So there's people who take them at their word and then there's obviously the massive skeptics. Anything else on your radar today before I let you go? You're obviously deep in the weeds on Boss.
- [28:29]
B
Yeah. Working hard here and off site. No, I, I, I, I, I.
- [28:41]
A
I.
- [28:41]
B
Actually think that we're probably going to see a continued sideways movement for at least.
- [28:49]
A
Yeah, my total base case is like, here we are. Everybody's gonna be looking for this big move and it's just gonna be super boring. Who knows? Yeah, everything's aligned for it. If you take all these, even macro factors and the dust settling from the liquidate. I mean, even the dust, the dust settling from what happened a month ago when we had the 19 plus billion dollar liquidation event. That, that stuff takes time for people to figure out for them to get money back in the market. These things are not like an overnight, you know, band Aid.
- [29:18]
B
Look, Scott, I mean, you know, December's coming up, Christmas is coming up. You're just gonna have more time this year to go do your Christmas shopping. So if your gifts don't kick ass, especially this year, you have no excuses.
- [29:33]
A
Yeah, absolutely agree. Iago, as always, thank you. Enjoy your off site and building. I won't ask where you are because then we would dox your location, get in trouble. That's all we got for you guys today. Of course. I'll be back tomorrow for the Friday 5 and Yago and I will be back next Thursday for yet another edition. I still loosely call it Bitcoin and Loosely, it's a working title. All these years in, I think, well.
- [30:00]
B
We need to take that and use it as fertilizer for the next leg up.
- [30:03]
A
There you go. Couldn't think of a better way to end. Thank you everybody. Thank you Iago. Bye.
- [30:08]
B
Thank you very much.
- [30:10]
A
What's up Wolfpack? Scott Melker here and today's show is powered by easybitcoin app, the app that rewards you for buying and holding Bitcoin. Set up a recurring buy and earn 1% extra in Bitcoin automatically. Then let that stack sit tight and start earning a 2% annual Bitcoin reward dropped into your wallet monthly after a three month recurring buy streak. On top of all that, earn up to 4.25% on dollars you keep in your USD interest account. You can even opt in to have the interest auto converted to Bitcoin. It's friction free. Set it and forget it. The best way to let you grow both your Bitcoin and your bucks Easy. Bitcoin is live right now on iOS and Android. Hit pause, click the link below, download the app and start stacking sats the smart way. Your capital is at risk. Crypto markets are highly volatile. This content is informational and not financial advice.