#597: Bitcoin Whales Are Selling To Retail Investors w/ Will Clemente and Checkmate

Will Clemente is a Finance Major at East Carolina University. He has quickly become one of my favorite writers on all things bitcoin, including deep dives on various onchain analytics. We are joined this week by Checkmate, an analyst from Glassnode, who focuses full-time on onchain metrics. Subscribe to Will’s new email newsletter here: https://btcbywc3.substack.com/ In this conversation, we discuss whales selling to retail, mining ban in China, and the other market movements from this week. Checkmate's website: https://checkonchain.com/ Glassnode Academy: https://academy.glassnode.com/ Glassnode newsletter: https://insights.glassnode.com/tag/newsletter/ ======================= Revolut is a finance app in the US and UK, that say they're the simplest way to access crypto. Sign up today at Revolut.com/pomp and make 3 card transactions to get $15, which you can exchange for any tokens Revolut supports. As usual, when you move your money from fiat to crypto your capital is at risk. See T&C's for details. Revolut is a financial technology company. Banking services provided by Metropolitan Commercial Bank, Member FDIC. Cryptocurrency services provided directly by Paxos Trust Company, LLC. ======================= With over $1B AUM, Amber Group is a world-leading crypto finance platform helping institutions and individual investors to buy and sell cryptocurrency, earn yield, manage risk and access liquidity. Amber App new users only - earn 16% APR on BTC, ETH and USD stablecoins! Click on the link to sign up now: https://www.ambergroup.io/?utm_source=10508 ======================= LMAX Digital - the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading & custodial services - offers clients a regulated, transparent and secure trading environment, together with the deepest pool of crypto liquidity. LMAX Digital is also a primary price discovery venue, streaming real-time market data to the industry’s leading analytics platforms. LMAX Digital - secure, liquid, trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Will Clemente is a finance major at East Carolina University. He has quickly become one of my favorite writers on all things Bitcoin, including deep dives on various on-chain metrics. We are joined this week by Checkmate, an analyst from Glassnode who focuses full-time on on-chain metrics. You can subscribe to Will's new email by clicking on the link in the description. In this conversation, we discuss whales selling to retail, the mining van in China, and the various other market movements from this week. I really enjoyed the conversation with both Will and Checkmate, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Revolut.

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Revolut is a finance app in the US and the UK that say they're the simplest way to access crypto. You can sign up today at revolut.com/pomp and make three card transactions to get $15 for free. And then you can take that $15 and do whatever you want with it on the platform, including exchange it for Bitcoin or any other tokens Revolut supports. As usual, when you move your money from fiat to crypto, your capital's at risk. But go check them out today. Revolut has all different types of features, and I recently featured their CEO, Nick, on the podcast and found him fascinating and the philosophy behind what they're trying to do. So go to revolut.com/pomp today and let me know what you think. Revolut.com/pomp. Next up is Amber Group. They've got over $1 billion of assets under management. Amber

• 1:29Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:13Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Again, LMAXdigital.com/pomp. All right, let's get this episode with Will and Checkmate. I hope that you enjoy this one.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:31Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys, bang, bang. Got a very special treat. Will is here as always to cover on-chain metrics, but we also have Checkmate who works at Glassnode. So we've got a whole bunch of great stuff for you. Will, maybe let's start with you real quick. Give us a summary of what you've seen in the on-chain metrics for this past week.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, so hey, Pomp and Checkmate, I'm super excited to do this. You know, from my newsletter, just kind of from a very high-level overview, some of the things I saw this week were, you know, first of all, obviously, we're still trading in this, you know, 32 to 40K range. A little over, you know, 15% of Bitcoin's money supply is now moved in this range. So we're kind of building up this pretty large base of capital here. Hash rate has continued to trend down. And, you know, at one point it dipped down to the lowest point it's been since late 2019. So of course, block intervals are, you know, a little larger than than the traditional 10 minute timeframe. At one point, they got over 23 minutes, which of course, it means that issuance has slowed.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  But on the bright side, the difficulty adjustment should be coming in the next few days. I think on Sunday, people are projecting it to be. And miners are slightly selling, but you know, in the Glassnode data, it doesn't appear that it's anything substantial, right? There's been a big narrative that miners have been dumping, and that's what's been really driving the price. But in the data that at least I'm looking at, it doesn't appear that way. Younger coins continue to sell generally, but this week, we had the largest day of net realized losses in Bitcoin's history in dollar terms, which I think is important because we've had other very large pitulation events. But you know, obviously, the larger Bitcoin grows,

• 5:20Speaker 02

  you know, in dollar terms, these events are going to be larger. So still no major uptick in whales. This is something we've kind of been tracking, you know, watching for new whales coming on the network. At the same time, retail has been adding aggressively, you know, over the last two, three weeks especially. It seems like the smaller cohorts, you know, the shrimp, as Glassnode likes to label them, under one BTC, they continue to add aggressively to their holdings. And just in general, you know, the kind of reaccumulation continues and exchange flows are kind of sideways to bullish. So, you know, nothing crazy in terms of those things, just kind of continuation of what we've been following over the last two weeks.

• 6:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. And Checkmate, maybe you can introduce yourself a little bit and talk about kind of what you do on a day to day basis before we get into more of the on-chain metrics.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  Absolutely. So thanks for having me on here. So my pseudonym is Checkmate, and I've started working with Glassnode as non-chain analyst. And really, what my role has been there and what continues to be is really the education side. So everything from writing our weekly newsletter, The Week on Chain, we're also pushing out various other, you know, content lines, just really trying to explain and get more people to Understand what the value of on-chain is. So it's one of these, I mean, it's a brand new discipline. It's really only existed since 2018, but ultimately that was the, you know, the original metrics. And it's taken time for people to really digest the information that we can pull from on-chain. And it's, it's really about getting more people to understand how valuable the data really is.

• 6:53Speaker 03

  And, you know, like anything, it's a tool and it can be used rightly and wrongly. But it's really about trying to build that, the education base. So, you know, on-chain is one of these tools that retail has access to at the same time as hedge funds, right? Very much in the open source ethos, this whole market where, you know, everybody has equal access and people who are willing to study and take the time to learn about it can, can get outsized advantage.

• 7:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so when you wake up every morning and you look at the on-chain metrics, what are the two or three metrics that you really look at that you say, hey, this gives me a quick overview of kind of what's going on? Or the things that you find kind of the highest signal?

• 7:33Speaker 03

  So there's probably three key areas that I'll look at. The first one is just based upon almost the immediate term on-chain activity, right? Are we seeing a whole lot of value being settled? Are we seeing upticks in active addresses? The really simple stuff that, you know, it's quite intuitive. Are you seeing more people using the network? When more people are using it, it generally suggests that there's some value being settled and people are finding, finding use in it. And, you know, as you would expect during bearish markets, that really starts to taper off. During bullish markets, it picks up. So it gives you a more immediate signal. What I'll also look at is the split between spending behavior of old and young coins. So really this is what we classify lifespan metrics.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  So what I really care about is are the old, people who have held their coins for two years, three years, people who bought in last cycle, are they essentially offloading? And conversely, if they're not offloading, then, you know, I'm going to hazard a guess that they're more likely to be accumulating than selling. So looking at the overall spent age, how old the coins are that are on the move, that's, that's a big element. And there's a lot of different layers to that. So there's, there's nuance in the different metrics you can look at. And then the last one I'll look at is supply-based metrics. So, you know, at Glassnode, we've got everything from long-term, short-term holders, miners, different addresses. I'll really look at the, the overall supply dynamics. Are we in a space where, you know, more coins are accumulating? Are we in a space where coins are coming into exchange?

• 8:57Speaker 03

  So really looking at that on-chain supply and demand and how those coins are flowing around the system.

• 9:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so when you look at kind of where we've been over the last few weeks, Will and I have been covering on a week to week basis, you know, kind of this sideways accumulation. Are you seeing anything specific in the on-chain metrics that you think people should should understand or anything that kind of sticks out to you as surprising or rather insightful compared to maybe what people would see on the surface?

• 9:27Speaker 03

  Sure. So yeah, I mean, what we really saw over this, it's been, it's been quite interesting because there's a number of dynamics at play. We had our initial capitulation back there at start of May, which, you know, by all intents, I think it was the largest dollar value as Will mentioned, in terms of total realized losses. It really was a feeling, you know, it's a capitulation for the ages, right? It sits back and compares to March 2020 and, you know, the end of the 2018 bear in pretty much all metrics. So there was, there was an extraordinary amount of supply that sold a little loss in that first capitulation phase. We've then essentially absorbed, I mean, we've been chopping around down here in the 35 to 29 K range for, you know, almost two months now. And we had a second capitulation last week as it tried to sell off

• 10:11Speaker 03

  down to 28. And what was really interesting about that is that the market absorbed, right? So we had, there is an enormous floor down here at 30,000 because it absorbed that second capitulation, which I don't believe I've seen elsewhere. The, you know, two back-to-back capitulation events, both over 3 billion in total net volume. And simultaneously, we've got this giant, the great migration of hash power coming out of China. And as we, as Will mentioned, you know, there are going to be miners who have to liquidate parts of their treasury. And, you know, they're just dealing with immense logistical costs at the moment. So there is going to be a layer of that. But simultaneously, when you compare these two elements, is that supply being absorbed? And well, we held the 29 floor multiple times so

• 10:54Speaker 03

  far. So, you know, to be honest, I'm surprised we haven't gone lower. And that's a sign of strength as far as I'm concerned. And, you know, meanwhile, once this difficulty adjusts down tomorrow. We're going to see all of the miners who are still on the network become immensely more profitable. They're mining at the same hash per dollar. And so their expenses are more or less the same as what they were prior. But most of their competition, you know, 50% of their competition is now turned off their machines. So those coins are going to get shared almost two times to all of the miners that remain on the network. So for every miner that's selling their treasury, there's going to be another miner who's essentially selling an extraordinary amount less coins because their expenses are the same, but their inflows are much higher. So we're going to have some really interesting supply dynamics in play.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  But you know, the market's absorbed a lot so far, which is quite impressive.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  So, so check, you know, do you kind of look at this as, you know, a lot of supply got puked out. You know, when you look at, you know, liquid supply change and you just see this huge drawdown, right? Um, a lot of supply became liquid and during that big capitulation event. And now it's just kind of this process of we're kind of chopping sideways, bearish. Um, as those coins are kind of reaccumulated by and absorbed by, you know, strong hands. So I, you know, I, I think one way to kind of analogize this is like a bunch of liquid, like no pun intended, got spilled out on the counter, right? And so slowly you're kind of like adding more paper towels to absorb the spill. And it's a matter of like, as long as we don't have any more liquid coins, you know, uh, spilling out onto the counter.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  And as long as that doesn't happen, you know, over time, um, the paper towels are going to absorb, absorb the spill. But it, it's just a matter of, you know, how, how long is it going to take, I guess? And, um, you know, can, can that kind of outpace the, the reabsorption? Can that outpace, um, the rate that, you know, if we have any kind of second kind of liquid supply change where, where, you know, coins get puked out and, and you see a bunch more liquid supply come on.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  Exactly. And you know, what I'm really seeing at the moment is pretty much the, there's, there's two sides. So the old hands, people have held their coins for a long period of time. We have this very interesting dynamic at the moment. So at Glassno, we've got a long-term holder, short-term holder. And, um, for, for ease of access, there is a, a curve over which they, they actually mature. But we look at about five months, roughly 155 days. Kind of the median time, you know, plus or minus a few days either side to smooth out the data. But really what we look at there is if you look back five months, we were roughly at the same price. And prior to that five months, we were rallying up into, you know, forty two thousand. So we have this very interesting dichotomy where pretty much all long term holders are profitable.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  And pretty much all short term holders, aside from the people who bought the twenty nine thousand dip, are essentially at a loss. So when we're seeing losses get realized on chain, it's disproportionately the day to day traffic. Cause there are people who essentially bought their coins in in recent history. Um, they may not have dealt with that kind of volatility. So there's a number of things that I'm watching. Um, one is the coins that were purchased in January, February, because that was obviously a fairly heated time in the market. And very, very shortly, we're going to be moving so that five month barrier is going to be underwater. All right. So we're going to start seeing coins that were bought just after Tesla invested. You know, that whole hype phase, we're going to see them start moving underwater. And the question is, are they going to become liquid supply, right? Are they going to start distributing back into the market?

• 14:17Speaker 03

  Um, what we've seen so far is that that hasn't happened. Um, as I mentioned, almost all of our lifespan metrics are just, I mean, quite honestly, they've collapsed. So we've seen very, very little spending going on by by the old hands. Um, now the question is, do we get a relief rally? And and they basically take that exit liquidity. That would be something that I'd be paying attention to. So lifespan metrics, particularly on any kind of strong relief rally is something I'm going to be watching. Um, but one thing that does give me a bit of confidence is we saw that, you know, that capitulation the other day, uh, that sold off down to twenty nine. And we saw almost no long term holders spending at that point in time. It was very, I mean, there was a couple in there, obviously. But really is a disproportionate number of short term holders. And then we bounced. So what that told me is that the market absorbed that supply.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  And if the long term holders are, you know, if they're not accumulating at this point in time, then I'll be watching for that relief rally and see what the behavior is at that point.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I I looked at um short term holder so far and I mean it just dropped like a rock is is pretty wild if it then to see you know it bounce um you know in the next day or two was was pretty incredible. I'd never seen it really bounce off of such a such such a large, you know, kind of sudden drop. Um, you know, I want to ask you, so you kind of touched on this. How would you distinguish this between um, you know, kind of a mid-cycle reaccumulation? Um, you know, granted, we only have two sample sizes, but maybe something like, you know, uh, mid 2017, mid 2013 ish, um, or, you know, uh, heading into a bear market where like, one of the things you kind of touched on was the whole short-term holder, uh, long-term holder dynamic,

• 15:53Speaker 02

  where, you know, you kind of have this divergence right now that the the long-term holders are adding like you touched on and and short-term holders are selling. You know, this has happened four times and and in terms of what I've seen, maybe maybe I'm me, correct me here, but um, you know, two times in in during the middle of a cycle in mid 2013 between the two double pumps, kind of in late 2016 and then um, obviously heading into the, you know, the two bear markets following 2013 uh bull run and and also following the the 2017. So like, what what would you be looking at to um, you know, kind of distinguish between maybe this kind of uh mid-cycle consolidation, reaccumulation, which is kind of where I I kind of stand in that pool, but um, you know, just for just for listeners, what what kind of things would you be looking at and say, okay, yeah,

• 16:38Speaker 02

  uh, this is this is resembling, uh, you know, bear market. We're probably heading into kind of this multi-year bear.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  So I'm I'm actually potentially a bit left afield here. I've um, I've more or less in my models dropped the concept of the cycle. Um, I I I almost don't consider the cycle anymore because uh, when you actually start looking at the supply dynamics uh on-chain, I mean, ultimately what you're seeing is the truth, right? It's the objective truth. Sure, there's a lot of volume and stuff going on on uh exchanges and off-chain, but if you then factor in just what we're seeing on-chain, um, I mean, ultimately a cycle is going to be driven by a supply squeeze and demand um, or lack thereof. And what I'm seeing at the moment is is two things. So we essentially put in a top uh very similar. If you look at the long-term holder supply, they started distributing. So we get to this point that I have I call peak hodl,

• 17:25Speaker 03

  which is basically the zone where long-term holders own the maximum amount of supply. And in prior cycles, that's pretty much aligned with when price comes up to the old, the uh previous all-time high. So back where at 20,000, we broke through that. If you look at any long-term holder supply chart, they essentially started distributing from that point onwards. Now, there's two things that stand out. The higher the price goes and the larger, you know, at a trillion dollar market cap, you just need more dollars to come in and absorb that supply. And we moved very, very quickly from 20,000 to 60,000, really. And you just need an enormous amount of volume to come in. So where does that volume come in? Well, you need, at that kind of scale, you need ETFs, you need sustained buying pressure from institutions.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  You know, we saw the grayscale premium basically drop off a cliff and move into the discount. So there was a lot of warning signs telling us that institutions had not followed through on the swing. And really where we are at the moment is kind of in this middle ground where we're waiting for that volume to step in. Now, maybe they are the ones accumulating. That's why we're seeing a fairly strong floor at 30,000. Maybe there's a lot of buyers down below, but really we need to see that supply kick in. So we've very much seen a distribution by long-term holders, which is now actually reversing. So, you know, arguably the same as previous cycles. But what you really want to see is if you actually look at the amount of supply held by these, you know, basically, let's call them hodlers.

• 18:47Speaker 03

  The supply held by them in 2017, if I'm not mistaken, was around 60% or 58% of the total supply. They currently hold something on the order of about 75 or 76%. So the total floor, and there's more coins circulating since the 2017 top. So by and large, long-term holders still hold a lot more. So the way I'm looking at this is at some point in the future, there's going to be a supply squeeze because the trend is pointing in that direction. Now, when that comes, that's up for the technical analysis and the very short-term swing trades, right? Are we in the consolidation? Do we dip lower? But right now, what I'm seeing is hallmarks of what you would otherwise call a bear market, which is long-term holders accumulating and not spending. But ultimately, they're doing that from a much higher base.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  They're not doing it from 58 and then accumulating up to 70%. They're accumulating from 70% and if we get at the same supply squeeze, which occurs at like 80%, it's not going to take that long for that supply squeeze to kick in. So I'm very much looking for, are they spending and are they liquidating? And at the moment, the trend is looking like they are currently accumulating and holding on to their coins. So that's really the signal that I'm looking at.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  That's really fascinating. I never thought about it in terms of kind of like percentage. So yeah, I think that's a that's really insightful, something I've never mentioned before. I wanted to ask you, like, what do you think, you know, the whole the futures market plays in all this? I think, you know, that kind of accelerated the moves that we that we saw to the downside. But also, I think, you know, people like to talk about like, oh, leverage is so bad. But, you know, if it wasn't for the leverage, there wouldn't have been those big spreads for, you know, funds overseas to kind of capture in that, you know, kind of market neutral sense where they were longing spot, shorting the futures. I think a lot of capital came in on the way up, A, you know, through great through the grayscale art, but also through that, you know, kind of cash and carry trade arbitrage as well.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  But, you know, now that a lot of that leverage has gotten wiped out, do you think the market is now a lot more driven by by spot? And, you know, how does that kind of change market dynamics?

• 20:49Speaker 03

  I do. I think we have returned to that spot driven driven trade. I think we had about 60% of the total leverage that we were tracking get wiped out. You know, basically through all of May, there was two kind of legs down on the sell off. We saw almost all of that leverage get wiped out. And what was left, that remaining 40% in my, you know, gut feel, because that was fairly constant. It was like a stable floor and we more or less haven't moved from that point. That tells me that's likely to be that risk neutral cash and carry trade, a good chunk of that 40%, which didn't care about a 60% drawdown or a 50% drawdown, depending on what asset you're looking at. More or less what I'm seeing there is that's that's the cash and carry trade. So they're risk neutral. They don't particularly care what's going on.

• 21:31Speaker 03

  One thing I will say about, so we do get these cascading liquidations. But, you know, I think Arthur Hayes put out an excellent piece recently on the on the Bitmex blog, where he was talking about how the crypto markets clear their leverage. And it is just so much more efficient than what we have in traditional markets, right? You can have systemic risk where these things flow out. And I think this is something that, you know, a lot of critics of Bitcoin and this whole market, yes, we have 100x leverage floating around out there, but it settles within an hour, right? That gets completely cleared and flushed and it's all collateralized and the liquidation. ...fundation engines are just so good at clearing all of the all of the margin that all of that gets redistributed and the market then carries on. So, once the event has occurred,

• 22:15Speaker 03

  it then moves into a much more stable range. And yes, I do think that we've moved into a spot driven driven phase. Um, because we're just not seeing an increase in in leverage. Uh, we're still seeing relatively neutral, slightly negative funding rates, but uh, by and large, it's pretty flat. So, uh, you know, derivatives are not, you know, you need a good flush out of all the speculators. They've all lost their money and now we need to wait for that next round of people to come in and uh, and find interest again.

• 22:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so, checkmate. When you start to think about um, kind of where we're going from here, uh, are there specific milestones or uh, or kind of um, you know, specific metrics or or anything that you're looking for that you're like, hey, if we see X happen, uh, that's really going to tell me something that uh, in either direction, really, as we've been going sideways here?

• 23:05Speaker 03

  Um, so from this consolidation range, I mean, I I've kind of mentioned that we we've held that floor despite multiple capitulation. So, that is telling me that there is someone down there, you know, um, people are accumulating at that range. Um, we are just seeing the supply. I mean, um, otherwise after a fifty percent uh, drawdown and pretty much every piece of FUD you could possibly come up with in the market, right? We saw um, Nick Carter's FUD dice get rolled twice on the on every side. It really, it's going to take something else, uh, fairly dramatic in my view to to really take out that floor. So, um, it to me, it's impressive that we've seen that floor hold. Uh, I'm definitely looking for if those long-term holders start to find exit liquidity, right? If we do get a relief rally and they they start distributing into that,

• 23:49Speaker 03

  probably not a great sign. I suspect we'll see some of it. Uh, I I don't think that we're going to, you know, at some point, just rally out of this consolidation range. I think time and patience is is a big part of this. Um, but really what I'm looking for is I look for trends. And, you know, if if we see long-term holder supply really start distributing, if we see a whole bunch of lifespan metrics start picking up, um, you know, if we see exchange balances really resume this uptrend, we're just seeing people losing interest. And getting out, you know, you can even look at other signs. Are we seeing just a general downtrend in, you know, the super speculative Doge coins and projects that really have driven on hype and little else? Are we seeing them essentially bleeding out value and people losing interest?

• 24:31Speaker 03

  Which, you know, realistically has bear market dynamics and, you know, you need to have this speculative capital flush out before we can start moving higher. So this is just a typical trend that we see play out in these markets.

• 24:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And then talk a little bit just about in terms of the the trading versus maybe just using this as like, you know, education or insights, but not necessarily trading on it. Before we wrap up, I just want to kind of have you kind of frame the way you think about on-chain metrics and kind of where that fits into the overall market and kind of how you use that in your pursuit of just better understanding Bitcoin and what's happening. Is it something that you're trading with or is it something else?

• 25:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I think this is the interesting dynamic with on-chain analysis. So because it is so new, there's a number of layers to this. First of all, there's a lot of people still learning how this stuff works, right? So and to be honest, this is the first, let's call it a market cycle. This is the first period of time where we have full suites of on-chain tools. And we've got numerous analysts, you know, Glassnode's got a full suite of products now. And there's various analysts who are all looking at this from different perspectives. And what we're really doing is essentially learning as we go, right? So what I've definitely found with on-chain is you want to start big picture. And what a lot of people tend to do is they'll look at individual metrics and they'll say that's bullish, that's bearish. Whereas the way that I look at it is I on-chain is psychology on-chain.

• 26:01Speaker 03

  The same way that a price chart is just human emotion, fear and greed plotted against time. The way I look at on-chain is that same effect. It's the plotting of fundamentals, it's technical analysis of fundamentals. So, you know, even on this call, and when I'm writing the newsletter, people who are reading Glassnode's newsletter on the regular, you'll see that I break it down into sections. I'll focus on miners, right? I'll take a particular topic of interest. Looking at profit and loss realized on chain. Am I looking, looking at miners making and selling, are they, you know, are they accumulating? Um. How is their overall performance going? I'll break it down into what is the psychology of different participants? So when you actually look at it from the human perspective and you, you kind of think a little bit before you start looking at the chart, you think about who are you actually looking at? And why do you care?

• 26:47Speaker 03

  Um. In particular, if you're looking at long-term holders in the current instance, miners are obviously a big picture. That's the way I tend to look at things. So, um, whilst on chain, sure, there's some metrics you can look at the next, the next red and green candle. There's some that are much more high resolution and you can use in more trading perspective. Um. What on chain, at least from my perspective, it, it really benefits those with the long, it's, it's a macro framework. Um. There's certainly tools you can dive down into the weeds and use for, for more, um. You know, day trading type behavior. But really on chain is absolutely designed and, and works immensely well for the long-term investor, for the, the, the people who are looking for that long-term trend. And once you start diving in, I mean, you may have seen that I, I kind of break down.

• 27:31Speaker 03

  Um. You know what individual cohorts are doing and that gives me insight, right? What am I looking for? I'm looking for the old hands getting their illiquid coins and distributing, distributing them on a, on a relief rally. That would be bearish. So it's not so much about, uh, you know, the immediate, it's, it's really about what's the trend? And what would it take for that trend to reverse? And change your thesis on, are we getting a supply squeeze? Or are we not? That's really the way that I look at things.

• 27:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Makes, it makes a ton of sense. It's a very fascinating way to kind of look at this. Um. Will, any last thoughts from you before we wrap up in terms of, uh, what we're seeing in the on-chain metrics, checkmate or anything else?

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I just wanted to say, um, you know, first of all, what, what check was kind of saying, uh, I think, you know, on-chain is so early. Um, you know, you've had early guys like, obviously like Willie, David, well, uh, you know, checkmate, these, these kind of people who kind of pioneered the space. But now you're starting to see, um, you know, new people, uh, younger people, uh, you know, not just myself, but you know, like my buddy Dylan, he's 20 and he, he's digging into the on-chain metrics a lot. Right? So I think this, this is just getting. Started, we're just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what's going to come out of this space. Um, and I think, you know, as Bitcoin becomes, um, you know, a larger role in, in the broader financial system, then the importance of it is just going to grow more so and, you know, check, uh, I don't, I don't know how you feel about this, but I think,

• 28:51Speaker 02

  you know, as Bitcoin kind of becomes a, a larger share, takes a larger share of kind of the monetary premium of the world. On-chain will not only, you know, be used for kind of driving maybe, may, maybe trading signals, but also kind of making, um, you know, assumptions and analyzations about the economy itself, right? Like, um, cause at that point, you know, when, when we get to kind of hyper Bitcoinization or whatever you want to call it, um, you know, you're not only just going to be looking at this kind of beach market like we are now, but you're actually going to be analyzing the, the behaviors of, you know, people across the economy. Um, but other than that, I, I just wanted to say, you know, thank you to, to Checkmate for anybody listening. You know, uh, Checkmate's been one of the people that has been like very instrumental and kind of my, you know, uh, understanding of a lot of this on-chain stuff.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Um, he, he was somebody I was messaging like very early on, asking a bunch of questions. Um, I, you know, I can't even, I, I feel bad for how many questions I've asked this guy, but he, he's very, um, very useful. And if you reach out, he'll, you know, he's happy to help. A real, real genuine guy. Um, I, I wanted to give him a chance to kind of plug in, um, some of the stuff he's working on. Checkmate, uh, does, you know, a lot of stuff with Glassnode, obviously. He does the newsletter every week. Um, and then also he has this website, Check on Chain. So I'll, I'll stop talking. I want you to kind of plug yourself in there.

• 30:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I think, uh, at Glassnode, we've got a lot of, a lot of really good initiatives coming out. So obviously we've got a newsletter, which is kind of our flagship Bitcoin, uh, product primarily. Um, we're starting to roll out, uh, two sides of, of, of video content. So the first one is basically after each week on chain newsletter. Uh, the following day we'll have basically a video read through and the, the purpose of that is people to basically see me live on our week on chain dashboard, which everyone can get access to. Uh, and essentially see how I plug together multiple metrics and you kind of get the story behind the text, right? So the, the newsletter, we keep it fairly brief and concise. Um, but you get a little bit more of my, my thoughts and how I put these things together. And really the intention there is for more people to understand how these metrics get put together.

• 30:45Speaker 03

  Um, and, and really looked at as a cohesive, um, toolkit rather than individual metrics. Right? There's, there is a story to be told there and that's a really what those, those are there to do. We've also got video content coming out for our Glassnode Academy. So that's really trying to bolster the actual, there's descriptions for people who are just interested in a high level view. So you get a few paragraphs, just understand how the metrics work, a video explain of, you know, three, five minutes. And then there's sections below that for the real deep dive analysts who want to understand, what does this look like in a bull market, in a bear market? What does a reversal look like? If you're looking for these real in deep interpretation, that's really what we're rolling out there. So there's a, there's a number of educational products. That's really been what, you know, what I'm trying

• 31:30Speaker 03

  to push forward. There's a number of exciting ventures we've got coming out as well, you know, things like a Glassnode forum, where we're going to have basically chat, a zone where people can actually connect and basically the, the inside club where people can connect with various analysts, share ideas, share analysis, ask questions, you know, get a bit more one-on-one access to myself and, and all the other on-chain analysts at, at Glassnode. So there's a lot in the pipeline. It's an exciting time. I mean, I, I think we're on the cutting edge of, of really pushing this space forward in both on-chain and just really getting the, the pulse of what Bitcoin is doing. And to be honest, with the amount that's gone on since 2020, just in the macro landscape and the Bitcoin landscape, what a great time to be studying the chain in, in depth and, you know, really understanding the pulse of this animal.

• 32:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Well, listen to both of you. Thank you guys so much for, for taking the time to, to come on here. I think that people are really enjoying this. They're learning a ton. And hopefully we'll continue to do it. And Checkmate, thanks so much. We'll go ahead, we'll link to your stuff in the description. And, and hopefully we can, we can send some folks over to you. And Will, I will see you again next week, my friend.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  Thanks so much, Paul, man. Thanks again, Check. You know, this, this is super fun. You know, I've been following you for a long time. So great to finally have, you know, kind of a voice to voice conversation.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  Thanks, Chance. It's a pleasure.