Time To Be Bullish?

Avi Felman

The world changes if bitcoin gets above 70k. Very simple, because then you get animal spirits coming back in. But the world changes if we're below 55k too. Then animal spirits start, people start liquidating. I mean, you have Nasdaq at the highs, you have s and p at the highs.

And BTC is not, like you said. There'S dispersion going on. There's chop. This is a time to consolidate the portfolio, right? This is the time to reduce line items.

That's what I'm 100% on board with, is just reducing complexity in the book right now, there are going to be things that are going to do, that are going to do very well. And you can trade those. I think in aggregate, you just want a more concentrated portfolio. This episode is brought to you by perennial finance, the on chain Defi Primitive, redesigning derivatives for the Defi native. You'll hear more about perennial later in the show.

Alright, guys, welcome back to another episode of 1000 X. We have been chomping around for a while, but today, this morning and very nice move from the, from the crypto markets is the biggest candle we've seen in a while. And we finally gotten over that 65k hump and everything is up a lot today. It's looking good. How are you feeling, jonah?

Jonah Vaughn

Feeling good. I'm long. Don't really know. Don't really know if I'm going to get my chance to buy a dip or not, but I don't care. I mean, if this is the last time we.

It's like if we're never going to hit 60k again in bitcoin, it's party time. I'm not going to be complaining. I kind of lack conviction on a lot of the space right now. If everything nukes, I want to go shopping. As we talked about on the last podcast, if everything rips, I'm not going to do anything.

And frankly, I just feel like we're going to keep chopping for a while. I don't have outside of the barbell portfolio that we talked about. I don't have a lot of conviction right now. Yeah, I think so. The one thing that was clear to me is that after we failed to break 60K again, I mean, we had a few shots there.

Avi Felman

So last Friday we had that ridiculous sell off on pretty low liquidity, low volume, where we went straight from 63 to 61 in half a second. And then we reversed that entire move. We bled out. We bled out again and then we started moving up. I mean, we've attacked 60 a bunch of times at this point, and we haven't.

We haven't been able to, we haven't been able to get through, but with the, you know, on the same side, we've attacked 65 a lot and we haven't really been able to get through. So let's see what this, let's see how we sustain this move here. My view is that we're still in that we're still in for chopping. I mean, alts during this time have bled out a reasonable amount. ETH BTC has bled out a reasonable amount.

Memes haven't actually done particularly well, except for you inciting the entirety of the Internet to buy Bowdoin. Yeah, we got to talk about that. But I do think that while BTC is still, is still a good buy and there's some select alts that I like. Like, I was talking about it, you know, I've been talking about ARV for a long time. There are definitely some select alts that I still very like.

I think as a general complex, the alt complex doesn't really interest me other than for bounces right now, until we get a sustained rally from BTC, I'm sort of on the side of the duck that tweeted that memes are over for now. I mean, I don't think that they're over for the full cycle, but I do think that on every move higher, people get really excited, and on every move lower, people get very bearish. And what that tells me is that we're probably just in for a little bit more chop through the summer. I'm not chasing every move higher and chasing every move lower at this point. I think what I said is I was happy to buy around 55, 56 on the last podcast and that we were due for a bounce.

I still believe that. You know, I think some of my, some of my, some of my takes were. Some of my takes were taken on Twitter out of context. You know, when I was saying, really. Really, people on Twitter didn't give you the benefit of the doubt, and they, they took things that you said and molded them in ways that would make you seem stupid.

Jonah Vaughn

That's crazy. Yeah, I know. It's, it's. Honestly, it's insane. I can.

Avi Felman

I can't believe that they did this to me. But to articulate it, what I was trying to say was buying 55, 56, 57. That area that I was saying on the last pod, when I said this is a good place to buy it doesn't mean that we're never going to reach that level again. It just means that I think if you buy there and you wait for an extended period of time, like six months, you're probably going to be very happy. Yeah, I completely agree.

I'm saying this even though we're at 66. I'm not saying this because, oh, we're back at my target. Like, we're, you know, we've done very well since then. But I think the, that got taken out of context because we traded back to 60 and everyone was freaking out. They're like, well, what about you said buying at 56 was such a great idea.

And, you know, now you're like, now we're back at 60 and you're actually a little bit, you know, you're a bit nervous. I think we were at 63 times a year, a bit bearish at 63, even though, blah, blah, blah. And look, it's up now. You must be. You must be wrecked.

Jonah Vaughn

Avi, I remember seeing a chart on Twitter of a few different. For the record, Avi is just fine. I remember seeing a chart of all the different Twitter personalities in crypto on these axes. One axis was like degen versus Normie and the other axis was like permable versus Doomer. And Avi, you got put.

You're the most doomer dgen. Basically, you are the lower right quadrant. And according to some, nobody on Twitter. And I guess what I have to say about all this, people are doing the same thing to me. I'm getting teabagged on Twitter today because of something I said about bowdoin, which is interesting.

We'll get into that later, but here are a couple observations. Observation number one. The market is chopping up and down. The chart is red green, red green. That is undeniable.

Observation number two. Last Friday when we nuked, it wasn't just us in crypto land that nuked oil, nuked the s and p, nuked everything. Nuked. Today, everything's ripping. Why?

Because CPI came in slightly less hot than expected. This is super important because it determines hike cycles or cut cycles. It determines fed action. And inflation is basically the most important economic issue in America right now. Like, everything gapped higher on a CPI print today, including bitcoin.

Bitcoin isn't like, there's no fundamental narrative here, nor was there a fundamental narrative to the sell off last Friday. Observation number three.

If one thing that I noticed junior traders doing when they first join, right, is they chop themselves up, they buy high, they sell low. That doesn't mean that, like, selling something that's going down is a bad idea or buying something that's going up is a bad idea. It just means that if that's all you ever do, you. You're gonna. You're gonna bleed out, right?

And there's a lot of that type of junior trader sentiment on Twitter and in the crypto world right now because people aren't making money. They're, they're like, when you're, when the thing is chopping sideways, money's not really getting made. Like, sure, somebody caught the Pepe thing or maybe some crypto person had some GameStop in a, like a brokerage account somewhere and is bragging about it, but, like, for the most part, the space isn't really making money. If anything, I would guess they're like buying highs and selling lows and chopping themselves up and losing money. Everybody's a little pissed off.

Everybody's over interpreting everything, basically. So let's break this down into timeframes. Avi, you convinced me of something on the last podcast. You were like, this thing is going to probably dip below sixty k at some point, at which point I'd like to start shopping pretty, pretty heavily. I hadn't really thought about that.

I was kind of in like blinders on bullish mode. I agree with you. And so I'm prepared to blow the rest of my wad if that happens because I'm medium to long term, quite bullish. But when we talk about, like a potential pullback, we're not, we're not, you know, if it goes up without pulling back, neither you nor I is going to be crying, upset, unable to. It's not like we're out of crypto.

Right? Right. So, yeah, I think those are the sort of things that we need to observe going into this period of time and the sentiment in the space. Just to finish my thought, like, would you agree, avi, that it's. People are losing a bit of money right now and kind of pissed off?

That's how it feels. Yeah, I think. I think everyone's gotten chopped up like crazy right now. And I think the other, the other thing that's pissing people off is that there's a ton of dispersion in the market. And so there are, there are some people that are making money, but the majority of people are not making money.

Avi Felman

And that's actually what tends to lead to these ranges is because people have probably stepped out of the market some amount, and whenever we trade lower, everybody goes, okay, well, now's my chance. Now it's going to break. Let me pile in. Let me actually finally make some money and cast this next move when everyone shorts the lows, and then those shorts get taken out, and then it's the opposite to the top side. Whenever we have a rally to the top side of the range.

Okay, it's finally time to make some money. I haven't made money in a while. Let me buy. Let me buy here. We're going to go, and then we don't go anywhere.

And this is just classic range trading behavior right now. I think the range will resolve itself once people have detached themselves from the market. I think we're probably going to lose more people throughout the summer. And then that's when you know that this thing is finally going to start, to start to pick a direction. I mean, the issue is that the two things that stand out to me are still that stablecoin balances are not going up and ETF flows are not really doing anything.

Still.

Jonah Vaughn

ETF flows did too much. There's an amazing chart out there that I saw, basically in terms of, like, aum accumulation on the, like, aum on the y axis and time on the x axis. Basically, these bitcoin ETF's the fidelity one, and blackrock accumulated assets faster by, like, literally orders of magnitude, ten orders of magnitude than the second, third, and fourth fastest ETF's in history. Right? Like, yeah, it slowed down, but if it had continued at this pace, it would have been pretty unprecedented.

Crazy shit. So we're taking a breather. Jury's still out. But yes, I agree with you. Like, in the short term, in the short term, that's not going to be driving a big bull run.

In the medium to long term, who knows? I have the chart here. So ibit, in 49 days, has accumulated 18 billion. FBTC in 77 days, has accumulated 10 billion. Then, like, GLD in 817 days from when it was first issued, accumulated 10 billion.

So same as, like, the fidelity ETF accumulated in literally 10% as much time. So basically, that goes to show. I'm going to post this. We're going to. We're going to post this on the YouTube page so that everybody can see it.

Like, it's. It's pretty crazy. It took ten times as long for GLD, the gold ETF, to accumulate this much Aum accumulate as much Aum as the second biggest crypto ETF, bitcoin ETF. Gold is harder to buy for the average person than bitcoin is, in my. In my, you know, personal opinion.

Avi Felman

So, basically, the only way to hold gold is through an ETF. If you're an investor, the only way to hold gold is through an ETF. You can't really hold gold any other way. You can go to Costco and buy a gold bar, but it's a pain in the ass. So I would wager that the percentage of people that are in, the percentage of people that are going to hold gold ETF's as a proportion of gold market cap is actually going to be higher in the long run than the proportion of people that hold BTC relative to the BTC market cap.

Because you can hold BTC outside of the investor class. Yes, but like the human race, there are people in India holding gold that. You know, and also their central banks and whatnot and blah, blah, blah. But all that being said, what I'm trying to articulate is that we're probably close to the end on BTC ETF inflows. Like, I would wager that there's probably 50 billion to 75 billion left aggregate to come into BTC ETF's until BTC is priced reasonably fairly.

So if you think about how, like, how big should BTC be relative to gold? Is it par? Is it half? Is it a third? I mean, to me, half would be like insane party time, right?

Yeah, like, that would be ridiculous. And I think another 50 billion in ETF flows probably gets us close to there. If you get another 50 billion, 75 billion of demand, you're probably looking at half the market cap of gold. I mean, the market cap of gold is $16 trillion. Okay.

Jonah Vaughn

And the market cap of bitcoin right now is 1.3 trillion. So you think $75 billion worth of inflows drives bitcoin market cap from 1.3. To maybe it would drive it up three x. I think another 50 billion to 75 would drive it up three x. Oh, man.

I mean, what you said when you said that you think we're sort of nearing the end of the ETF inflows for now. That's kind of a spicy take. I would take the other side of it. But then you said another 50 to 75 billion. Yeah, yeah.

Avi Felman

I say it like the ETF is not going to drive bitcoin to infinity.

What? I'm not trying to say that we're actually close in terms of price appreciation. What I'm saying is that we're not in any one of bitcoin ETF for not ending two or probably inning five, inning six, bitcoin ETF inflows. I don't know. I think the jury's out.

Jonah Vaughn

Did you see that the Wisconsin. I think it's like the state Wisconsin pension fund for like, government employees bought $160 million worth of bitcoin ETF's. Like, they just disclosed it. If that sort of. If, like, that pool of capital is what we're talking about here, if that's the type of person or institution that's interested in these ETF's, we could just be getting started.

Those pension funds manage tens of trillions of dollars, and if they're putting even a few basis points into ibit, it's like, crazy. Is that that allocation is, are they going to put more than a few basis points in? Not them. But there's, you know, 49 other states that have pension funds, and then there's, you know, fire departments and fire teachers systems. And, you know, these pension funds are just everywhere.

They're enormous. Yeah. And that'll account. That'll account for the next 50 billion that's going to come in. Yeah, maybe it's all that.

Avi Felman

We're probably. I think we're probably peaking at 100 billion of Aum. That's my guess, which is that at 100 billion of Aum, you're probably. You're probably not getting much more. That's probably.

That's probably stable in terms of what's coming in and what's coming out of so, and I think, and so I think what happens is that's the main driver of BTC price action. And I don't think that happens over the summer. I think that happens in Q four. And so that's why I think that you probably get a summer of chop, and then in Q three, you probably get the people that are front running those q four allocations. Q four.

Q one allocations into next year, and then that's when you get a crazy rally. That's my mid take. I think, actually, a reasonable amount of people agreed that, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's wrong. No, I agree with it. I don't think it's a mid curve.

Take in that interim period. Before we get that, I think that you get some dispersion in the altcoin space, but because there's not a ton of new net capital coming in, you probably just get a bleed out from a lot of different assets, especially because there's a lot of supply coming online. And so I actually don't think it's the worst time in the world to just take a break from trying to trade ridiculously actively and just wait for. Wait for the extremes. And you can, you can obviously take trades out.

Like, for example, I think yesterday was a. Was a good example of a good trade that you had a macro event that was reasonably priced in and watched, but you had a lot of people still shorting the lows, like shorting that 60k level. And so obviously they're going to get blown out. But will this draw enough new capital in to get to new all time highs? I guess probably no.

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Go check out perennial. You're going to love them. All right, let's get back to the show. New capital is what's key so I posted this framework for investing in tokens on Twitter. Basically, first thing is every token is a meme coin.

Jonah Vaughn

Just accept it. Even bitcoin is a meme coin, right? And so whenever you're holding something that doesn't fundamentally pass through earnings to you or isn't like a commodity that will be bought incessantly by some consumer to produce buildings or transportation fuels or wires or semiconductors, if you're just holding something, waiting for somebody else to buy it from you, which is kind of the state of crypto. Since the regulatory picture is not so clear, you sort of have to ask yourself, who's the greater fool that's going to come take this off my hands? Well, you said it, new capital.

What I'm doing is I'm just going through my portfolio right now and asking myself, is there more money going to come in to buy this asset that I'm holding? Right? For bitcoin, the answer is unequivocally yes. Like so yes. For all of the geopolitical and macro reasons that we've discussed ad nauseam on this podcast, that it's not even worth, like, doing any further analysis for now, especially with the having and less selling and the prospect of ETF's t bottlenecking like pension fund flows, like we just talked about for meme coins, I also deeply believe in meme coins.

But when I see meme coins doing down, only instead of chopping with the rest of the space, especially ones that I hold, I'm going to de risk ratably as they go down. I'm going to VWAP sell as this thing is trending down because there's no earnings report that's going to come out that's going to lift this token back up. I'm just waiting for another pool of capital to come in. And especially if it's like a cartoon coin, psychology can become pretty significant and trends can accelerate. So in the case of bowdoin, for example, I've been all in on Bowdoin for a while.

I reduced about 75% of my position on the way down because I was just like, this is not a chopping asset. This is people just getting out every single day now.

It's rallied about. It's rallied about 100% from the lows of like a day and a half ago. So, like, my final fills of that VWAP sell are way out of the money. But I still think it's the right thing to do because as you lose conviction on something, like, I'm sitting in, that money's in Solana now, not in bowdoin. And if bowdoin goes to the moon, I still have a little bit.

So I'm not going to like, kick myself. But it just doesn't. I think that for bowdoin, at least, and you should ask this self, ask this of yourself for any meme coin. Like, what are the catalysts to bring in entirely new participant bases? That's question number one.

And question number two is how either lettuce handed or diamond handed is the current participant base. So with bowdoin, there are two kind of catalysts, right? One is people just buy it whenever Joe Biden says something stupid that hasn't really played out in the past. The other potential catalyst is, like, you start getting a major cultural influencer like Joe Rogan or Donald Trump pounding the table on it to harm Joe Biden because he's an old man, and that's an easy, like, dead horse to kick, right? Those are the two big catalysts.

I'm getting, like, less optimistic that a Rogan or a Trump will start, will start parading this around. But if so, I still have a little bit of risk on. And then in terms of the second question, lettuce hands or diamond hands, if you look at whiff, for example, like, it kind of chopped around, it went sideways. It didn't. Like, people are really hanging on to that one.

Same with doge bowdoin. The community is, like, a little bit shaken and scared because it's kind of unclear how this coin is supposed to trade after the election, you know, and or even before. Don't you think. Don't you think people will be diamond handed into the election because of that? I mean, that's my take, is that there's.

Avi Felman

There's kind of no reason to sell this thing pre election. And there's another potential ten x. Yeah. Definitely another potential ten x into the. Election, especially at least from, like, 150k market cap or 150 mil market cap after the 100% move.

Maybe, maybe. I mean, five x. But I do think that it's kind of crossed over. I was at the Mar a Lago event when somebody asked Trump what he thought of bowdoin, and he said, $240 million for a coin doesn't seem like a great investment. And Bowdoin actually did quite well off of that.

I think that you're just going to. Went up and then people just sold straight into it, and then it went down a straight line. Because I think the reaction there was a little bit mid curve, which is, oh, Trump doesn't like it, but the reality is Trump knows about it now. And that's, that's, that's the thing. But I do think a lot of these, a lot of these secondary memes are just gonna, they're gonna find it hard to hold on.

Hold on to their audience in a, in a world of chop. But with that look, with, with all. With all that being said, the world, the world changes. If bitcoin gets above 70k, it's very, you know, very, very simple, because then, then you get, then you get animal spirits. Animal spirits coming back in.

Yeah, but the world changes. If we're below 55k too, then animal spirits start, people start liquidating. But my answer to the question where are the new buyers of BTC going to come from? Is, I'm not 100% sure right now at this stage. I mean, you have Nasdaq at the highs, you have s and P at the highs, and BTC is not.

And what that tells me is that there's. Whenever there's a divergence in equities and BTC, I view that as quite bearish for BTC. BTC doesn't normally catch up. In that case, it actually normally goes down more. I agree with that.

Jonah Vaughn

Divergence is super important in crypto. When memes are down only and bitcoin is unch, or certain memes are down only, that's a reason to be cautious of those memes and rotate into something a little bit more benchmarky. I think, like you said, there's dispersion going on. There's chop. This is a time to consolidate the portfolio.

Right. This is the time to reduce line items. That's what I'm 100% on board with, is just reducing complexity in the book right now, there are going to be things that are going to do very well, and you can trade those, but I think in aggregate, you know, you just, you just want to con. You just want a more concentrated portfolio. I mean, things and things that have a narrative behind them.

Avi Felman

I mean, all the, all the AI coins are doing extremely well. Like the nearest of the world, ars of the world, live peers of the world. They're all, they're all doing, they're all doing very well. Whereas you look at something like a blur or like a link or any of the filecoin flow, all, you know, all of these other coins. Matic hasn't done anything, and it's just because you're just not going to get.

You're not going to get flows to these coins. I actually think a great way to trade this market is to just. If you're worried about the downside, because we're in a choppy market, you just short the things that don't really have a narrative or that have a lot of supply unlock. You can probably get a good short on, on Sui and then long the AR and just carry that trade for a few months and call it a day. I do think, though, that general market fears are a little bit overwhelmed.

And you can see that there was a nervousness permeating the market about a month ago, about high data prints about high inflation and that today has been flipped on its head a bit, which is why we're, which is why we're trading at the highs. So general worry about the market is probably a bit overblown, which is why I'm not, you know, I was at some point in the past when we were at 70k last time, I was saying, well, I could see fifty two k. I don't really see 52k in this particular environment anymore. I mean, that's also why we were buying last podcast because I think that those fears are a little bit solved for at this point. But with that said, the way that I see this going higher and something that you can probably watch for is just if we're trading sixty seven k, sixty eight k, and funding is flat and people are, the general consensus on the timeline is that we're still ranging or people are now trying to short range highs.

That's a good indicator that we're probably on our way up. Also, just zooming way out. And the RVZ is two right now it's 2.0 dead ball. FTX lows are below one and euphoric highs are above seven. So we're toward the low end of the range of basically the best macro cycle indicator out there.

Jonah Vaughn

So, yeah, like stablecoin balances. Some of these shorter ETF flows, some of these shorter term things aren't looking that great yet being the key term. But broadly speaking, the space is still underpriced and there's still a lot of capital that can flow into bitcoin in ways that it couldn't pre ETF approval. So, yeah, I'm not too optimistic about people like buying altcoin bags. I'm very bullish on the idea that certain memes will perform, including bowdoin.

Avi Felman

But here's a trade idea. Jonah. Yeah, we have the ETH ETF decision on May 23. That's when the SEC has to come out and either delay or deny or whatnot. Nobody, no one thinks that this thing is getting approved.

There's not a single person in the world. Yeah. And I think that a negative decision is already priced in. And there are probably a lot of people short ETH because of that already, and there are a lot of people under allocated ETH because of that. But post that decision.

So there's sort of two things that you have to, you have to look for in this decision if it's denied. So the first, you have to look why the SEC denied the application. Why did the SEC deny the BTC application? For so long because they thought the bitcoin spot market was manipulated and this was their take. Why do they have to acquiesce on it is because the futures market is highly correlated to the spot market in the bitcoin world.

And so it doesn't really make sense to have a bitcoin futures ETF and to allow bitcoin futures, but not to allow a spot ETF. Now, if they come out and make the same argument for ETH, then what that means is that as the ETH futures market churns and this futures market becomes more correlated to the spot market, that argument will go away eventually. That argument leaves at some point in the future. That argument leaves because you can't have ETH futures, you know, you can't have an ETH futures ETF, you can't have an ethnic ETH futures product and not allow a spot ETF if the futures product is perfectly correlated to the spot market. So they only make that argument.

That's actually very bullish for Ethereum, because at some point you're going to get an Ethereum ETF will be very bearish for Ethereum is if they come out and they say, well, we're still litigating that it might be security. We think that it's a security. We have to solve this issue. And that's actually the biggest reason why we're not allowing this, allowing the CTF, that would be very bad for you. So on, on the 23rd, if you can get a sense for why they're denying it, if they don't mention anything about ETH being a security or investigations into ETH or anything like that, and it's just about the market, then I think you probably can get a pretty nice move from ETH.

I think people, I think people should start buying it because that means at some point you get an ETH ETF, even if Trump doesn't get elected. That's really interesting nuance like, oh, what if it's just the same argument as bitcoin? I bet a denial would probably result in a small sell off. And maybe the ethy discount widens a little bit on that headline. But that's a dip you buy.

I don't even know. I don't even know if you get the news that they're making the exact same argument that they did to deny the BTC ETF and no new arguments. You think it would just immediately rally? I think. I think people would see denied and they would go down a little bit.

Jonah Vaughn

Then you have like an hour or two that's my. Yes, exactly. That. That's my bet is that you probably get a small sell off on that headline, and then you just buy as much youth as you possibly can. If the argument is the exact same as why they denied.

You bought, you buy ethy, right? Because the discount would widen. Like, you. You rip. You rip ethy like crazy.

You don't buy ETH, you buy ethnic, you buy ETH. Because I think the discount is 24, 25%, and that thing is going to close massively. Well, first it. First it probably sells off as Ethi holders are, like, ah, shucks, selling. And then, yeah, you scoop that dip.

I think that's how you're supposed to trade that. I agree with you. I think that if. Yeah, if they go the. It's a security route, and they try to prove that, like, there are millions of securities ETF's out there, it doesn't mean that you can't have a.

Have an ETF that references the security. It's just, will there be regulatory clarity under another four years of democratic president in the White House? And the answer is probably no. Right? So, yeah, I think it's pretty.

I think it's less clear if they try to go after the security argument. That's kind of an interesting nuance you point out there. The other thing that I'm wondering is, like, baked into that decision, will there be anything relevant to adjacent tokens like Solana? Let's say that they do go. Let's say that they mentioned staking, and they say, okay, well, part of the reason why we don't like this is because it's a yield bearing security, blah, blah, blah.

Does that hurt? Do you get a mini sell off and other staking related ecosystems? I think you don't. I think that's mid curving, but it's just something to be aware of. Like, if you're about to load up on yield bearing coins or altcoins that rely on staking, like, if you're interested in buying Lido or Eigen or any of this shit, like, maybe you want to wait until after that announcement before you go and lift.

Avi Felman

I would agree with that. I think that there could be some good information in that decision as to how other assets might be treated in the future. Yes, if there. Look, what if there's absolutely nothing about staking? Right?

What if there's absolutely nothing about it being a security that sort of opens the road for Solani ETF in the future? Very bullish. That would be great. Maybe Solana trades 200 and we all get to retire again.

These are, these are, these are, these are important things to look out for. I mean, if I'm you and you're sitting there and you're thinking, man, I wish there was a good trade. Like, I wish there was something I could do to make money. Well, the 23rd is going to be a great day for you to make money. You just got to pay attention.

Jonah Vaughn

Yeah. And sometimes the way that you make money isn't like going into a big uncertain event like that, with a position and then trading being right. It's more like you go in kind of nimble and then buy stuff at good prices when it briefly trades there. Good prices is a great way to articulate how to make money. Yeah.

Like if your entry price on a meme coin is a penny, and then at 100 xs, and then you sell it up, you know, 50 x or 20 x or 70 x, you're still happy. Meanwhile, if you're buying it for a dollar and it's this valueless thing, and you're exit liquidity to the people who bought it, you know, for a penny, then suddenly your life is so much more stressful. And so, yeah, entry price in crypto really is king. And a buddy of mine, a buddy of mine, this dude John Wu, he says, his saying about crypto is, you have to be dumb. The reason why most people don't make it in crypto is because you have to be dumb enough to buy the coin and smart enough to sell it.

And it's like, it's so true. The mentality that you have to employ in order to hang on to one of these valueless shitcoins and 500% something is exactly the opposite of the mentality that you need to take profit on it. So realistically, the only solution for any of this is to be early to stuff. Then that helps you avoid some of the problems of overthinking things and knowing when to sell these parabolic rallies or nuclear sell offs. You just have to have a decent entry price.

Maybe the best thing to do is to a volume catalyst like the ETF event. You can identify a list of tickers going into that and just be sort of, instead of positioned in all of them, and then managing your shitty risk when you're wrong for reasons you didn't expect, just have a relatively clean slate and then just be the super silent native warrior crouching on a branch of a tree with the blow dart, you know, as soon as the, as soon as the bomb goes off and you get some cheap tokens to buy on big sell offs. I think that's the way to do it. Yeah, I'm 100% with you. So let's just, let's just wait.

Avi Felman

That's what we're doing now. We're waiting our time. We're biding our time because there just doesn't seem like, especially on a day like today where everything's up 20% in a market where you see chop, that's just almost always going to be a bad time to buy. Just generally, if you're not in position now for this bounce, chasing it here is almost always the wrong thing to do. Yeah.

Jonah Vaughn

If you're chasing it, it's because everybody else is chasing it. It's funny. The founder of AQR, this guy, Clifford Asnes, has this legendary systematic trader, hedge fund manager, he has this quote, you know, which is that if I'm right 52% of the time, then I'm consistently winning and everything's great. I'm paraphrasing here, like, basically, you're doing very well in systematic trading. If you write 52% of the time, you're just placing tons of little bets.

But what he says is that means you're wrong 48% of the time. And that doesn't make, you know, 48% of your year fun to endure. So I think we're just going through one of those times where you have to be a mature trader. Can't chop around this. This isn't fun right now.

This isn't like when we were just up, only, you know, 100%. What do you, what do you make of all of the insanity that's been going on with GME and the rest of the rest of the market there? Have you been paying attention to this at all? So I've been watching it, but I feel no foMo. I do not give a fuck because it is not an area that I, I consider myself to have an edge in.

And I don't have a lot. My edge tends to be long term views and staying power. Like, I can weather stuff. So I don't know anything about roaring Kitty or Reddit. I didn't watch the movie.

I don't care. So I don't feel, I'm trying to avoid feeling fomo. I think that in the absence of crypto, like, benchmark price action, people are looking at that feeling FOMO and starting to diddle around with it. But I think that's a bad idea, and I'm trying to avoid temptation. What are you, what are you doing?

Avi Felman

I think what it shows is it shows that there's still a tremendous amount of demand from retail investors. They just don't know exactly what to do. And they need to be get. They need to be given direction. I think that's probably why meme coins are doing so well.

These people, they. There's a lot of money to pile into things like GME, AMC, but they need a leader. They need somebody to shepherd them into the wilderness and tell them exactly what to buy and how to buy it and when to buy it. And that's you, Jonah. That could be.

That could be you. I mean, no way. That's you, man. No, it's. That's really.

It's Ansem. But, yeah, Ansem. Ansem is the leader.

What's sort of interesting to me is that I wasn't actually clear on how much appetite there was for this type of, you know, for this type of price action. I mean, how much money was there waiting on the sidelines to go buy GME to go? Create a short squeeze to go pilot to AMC, send these things up 150%. The answer was, holy crap, a lot. So maybe one thing that we're not taking into account is that despite all of the headlines, people still feel like they have enough money to gamble.

And that in itself is very good for crypto. Yeah, that is a good sort of meta point. That's not the mid curve take. That's the right curve take. It's funny.

It also might be the left curve GME up last time was followed by BTC up. Gme up this time might also be followed by BTC up. Simple one to one correlation with one data point. It's funny you mentioned ansem. He's like the roaring kitty of crypto.

Jonah Vaughn

Right?

One of the ways that it just, like, having your finger on the pulse of sentiment in your space is important. One thing that you and I have, luckily, is a bit of a. Like, a small platform to gauge that sentiment that some random person with two followers wouldn't have. You know, I have a few thousand followers, so I can, like, put stuff out there and see what happens. Like, I did this with Solana as well, where I would tweet bearish stuff, and I learned from that experience, like, oh, wow.

Like, the community cares. It wasn't just crickets. And with bowdoin, I tweeted some bearish stuff, and Ansem comes in ten minutes later, and he's like, you're smoking crack. It's not. It's not going there.

It's going up. Only then, like, 100,000 people are like, ansem Ansem has spoken. And even me, I've got a little bit of. I'm a little starstruck. I'm like one of those war boys in Mad Max.

I'm like, oh, my God. He replied to me. He looked at me, you know, I'm kind of. He. Yes, I'm going to Valhalla, right?

And so I'm kind of like. I get it. Right. Like, all right, the community has spoken. There is money to be gambled right now.

There is a leader. Like, people are engaged, and they're willing to. They're willing to yolo into random things. So that degeneracy means that the space is still sitting on some fucking gains. And we're not totally, like, in December 2022 mode, which in and of itself is bullish, but it's not going to take us into a new price band.

It's not going to take us to, like, it's not going to take us to $100,000. You need, like, fresh. You need. You need greater fools. You need fresh capital for that.

Avi Felman

Yeah, well, I can. I can say this. It's definitely been. It's been a very fun market. I do think that you can probably start to.

Probably start to walk away for a bit at this point. You know, I think there was definitely a lot of money to be made in the last two, three months. I think that people can probably take a bit of a break right now. I hope that doesn't come back to bite me in the ass. But let's see if this GME rally leads to anything with bitcoin.

Jonah Vaughn

I think inflation has bitten people hard. I think that if it costs dollar 70 for a burger and a cocktail in Manhattan, you know, maybe it's more fun to spend that $70 on GameStop gambling at home than doing something that used to cost $10. So, yeah, I think you're right. Take a break. Consolidate line items.

Figure out your favorite bets, and be ready to add new line items at great prices, not buy the highs on. Stuff that's rallying 100%. And see if you can go buy some ETH ethy. Yeah. On May 23, take a look.

Avi Felman

If we all make. If we all make good money on this trade, we'll do a little celebration. Next thousand x get together. Yeah. We'll buy you all the burgers.

It's good stuff, Jonah. Good stuff, Avi. Maybe we wrap it there. As always, not financial advice, but great talking to you. It's good speaking to you, too.

Always learn a lot. Till next time.

Jonah Vaughn

Till next time.

Time To Be Bullish? | 1000x

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2: Investment Strategies

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