#798 Bitcoin Sells Off But Fundamentals Still Strong w/ Dylan LeClair

Dylan LeClair is the Senior Market Analyst at UTXO Management, a digital asset fund investing in the analog to digital transformation of money and the emergent financial system. In this conversation, we discuss bitcoin, on-chain metrics, market structure, and what to expect from the rest of the bitcoin bull market. Dylan joins us every Tuesday on "The Best Business Show." To see the video with the corresponding charts that Dylan references throughout the interview, go to "The Best Business Show: LIVE" YouTube Channel ======================= Bitcoin 2022 is the LARGEST Bitcoin event in the world that takes place April 6th - 9th in Miami Beach, Florida. All four days will be jammed-packed with exclusive content, exciting announcements and an incredible lineup of bitcoin speakers, artists and leaders. Day 1 is INDUSTRY DAY for enterprising bitcoiners who are looking to build a business or career within the ecosystem. Days 2 and 3 are general conference days featuring speakers like El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, CEOs like Michael Saylor, Elizabeth Stark, Jack Mallers, Adam Back and hundreds more. The conference caps off on the fourth day with the world's first and largest Bitcoin Music Festival - Sound Money Fest headlined by rapper and fellow bitcoiner Logic, featuring artists K. Flay, MØ, Royal & the Serpent, Apashe, Asadi and more. Stay tuned for the upcoming lineup announcement! Last year’s conference SOLD OUT and this year’s is on pace to be 3x larger so make sure you grab your tickets before it's too late. Visit b.tc/conference to learn more. Ticket prices increase on JAN 14th, use promo code POMP for 10% off and I will see you in Miami!ire ecosystem bringing utility to #NFTs. ======================= Brave Wallet is the first secure crypto wallet built natively in a web3 crypto browser. No extension required. Store, manage, and grow your portfolio, get NFT & multi-chain support, and more. Download the Brave privacy browser at brave.com/Pomp, and click the wallet icon to get started. =======================

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

• 0:02Anthony 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. Dylan Leclerc is the Senior Market Analyst at UTXO Management. He also writes a newsletter with Bitcoin Magazine. In this conversation, we talk about Bitcoin, on-chain metrics, we talk about Bitcoin's price, the market structure, and what to expect in the coming weeks. I really enjoyed this conversation with Dylan, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. Today's episode is sponsored by the Bitcoin 2022 Conference. Bitcoin 2022 is the largest Bitcoin event in the world that takes place April 6th through the 9th

• 0:43Anthony Pompliano?

  in Miami Beach, Florida. All four days will be jam-packed with exclusive content, exciting announcements, and an incredible lineup of Bitcoin speakers, artists, and leaders. Day one is Industry Day for enterprising Bitcoiners who are looking to build a business or career within the ecosystem. Days two and three are general conference days featuring speakers like El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, CEOs like Michael Saylor, Elizabeth Stark, Jack Mahlers, Adam Back, and hundreds more. The conference caps off on the fourth day with the world's first and largest Bitcoin music festival, Sound Money Fest, headlined by rapper and fellow Bitcoiner Logic, featuring artists K. Flay, Mo, Royal, and The Serpent, Apache, Asadi, and more. Stay tuned for the upcoming lineup announcement. Last year's

• 1:25Anthony Pompliano?

  conference sold out, and this year's is on pace to be three times larger, so make sure you grab your tickets before it's too late. Visit b.tc/conference to learn more. Again, that's b.tc/conference to learn more. Ticket prices increase on January 14th. Use promo code POMP for 10% off, and I will see you in Miami. Today's episode is brought to you by Fundrise. You all know I believe that the best investors both understand and seek out extreme asymmetry. Fundrise is here to help you do just that. It's the largest direct-to-investor real estate investment platform out there, giving you the opportunity to achieve upside of an asset class previously reserved for institutions and high net worth individuals. That's right, Fundrise is making high-end, private-market real estate investing accessible to everyone via an easy

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:55Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:36Anthony Pompliano?

  brave.com/pomp and click the wallet icon to get started. Again, go download Brave at brave.com/pomp and click the wallet icon to get started.

• 3:47Speaker 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.

• 4:10Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, Dylan, let's, uh, we're gonna go through this thread that you recently had. Before we do that, though, give us kind of a quick gut check sentiment wise. Like, how are you feeling going into this, uh, this Fed meeting and, uh, Given all the recent price action with Bitcoin.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Feeling good. Yeah, I mean 50% from the highs, a little less than that, I guess. But when you're at 33,000, a little more than 50%. I mean, for me, like, I love it. The volatility, like I kind of said at the end of the thread is my opportunity. People that are buying Bitcoin, it's your opportunity. Bitcoin wasn't volatile, then the returns wouldn't be so good. And so, yeah, I mean, at 20 years old, I'm loving it, continuing to allocate and just at a steady pace. So nothing but a thing for me.

• 4:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Nothing but a Jade thing, baby. All right, well, let's talk about Bitcoin correlation to NASDAQ. We've got the chart here. These things are married to each other right now. They just seem to be moving up and down. Wherever one goes, the other one goes. How do you think about these assets, the correlation, and then who's leading who?

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so put this put this thread out on on Sunday. So chart's a little bit outdated, but yeah, I mean, they've been trading tick for tick with each other, especially during the US cash session. So you know, it's for now, right? Everything is about the Fed and really markets are front running the Fed, right? They're giving the Fed a gut check and saying, oh, you're going to raise rates. All right, well, the VIX will blow out to 38 and markets are going to tank. And you actually saw the funny thing was you saw like the prediction market for the Fed's fund rate as everything was tanking. It started to to cut back on some of those rate hikes that had priced in so that that expected Fed's fund rate at the end of the year.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  As markets were tanking, it actually was tanking with it. So it was almost like the Fed put was being priced in as markets were tanking. And so I think the correlation stays steady for the time being, right? Everything is just kind of a reflection of this everything bubble liquidity and Bitcoin is like the most pure form of that. It's just a check on central bank irresponsibility. And so if central banks get marginally more responsible with their monetary policy, the Fed mainly, then Bitcoin is going to get hit as a result. And that's fine, because, you know, there's there's multiple types of allocators of this asset class. You know, there's the Bitcoiners, right, that just stack hodl, got that. Mindset and embrace the volatility and then there's, you know, the macro fund managers that are

• 6:36Speaker 02

  running correlations and and flipping NASDAQ and Bitcoin and ARC and and all of these things as kind of a risk on type of asset. And so, um, you know, there's multiple different allocators, but I think 2020 and 2021, we saw a lot more of these kind of macro correlation uh type funds come in. Uh, and that's who's been the marginal seller as of late.

• 6:56Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you start to think about uh kind of the Fed, the interest rate decision, uh, there's a couple of other things that we can look at, right? So the first one, let's say, uh, on the re- on the Fed rate hikes, uh, the Euro dollar futures uh continues to price in for rate hikes. Uh, when we look at this, how much like weight, I guess, do you put on to things like Euro dollar futures?

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I mean, essentially I just like to look at it as as a gauge for what the market expects. And so since about November, you've seen, you've seen that really spike up. Uh, when the Fed first came out and said, yeah. Uh, okay, guys, you were right. Inflation's not transitory. Uh, this is our mandate to keep it contained. We might have to do something. Uh, that's when you kind of saw Bitcoin first really react to it, uh, from the highs and started to started to sell off. Um, and then the NASDAQ followed. And so, you know, I don't put too much weight into Euro dollar futures. Uh, like if if the Fed raised rates to to 1% uh and and the financial system is so fragile that I can't handle it. Well, that's just, uh, I think that's just saying, uh, how much we need Bitcoin, right?

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Because ultimately, if there's a deflationary collapse because the Fed raises rates to 1% and real yields are still very deep, deeply negative, uh, you know, there's a, there's a bigger problem on our hands. But, uh, on the shorter timeframe, like we saw in, say, 2020, uh, Bitcoin is is risk off. And if the dollar is is pumping, uh, then Bitcoin will will see that kind of liquidity hit.

• 8:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so when you start to look at the actual reasons why Bitcoin's price had exploded, uh, you rightly call out the grayscale Bitcoin, uh, trust and the arbitrage that was happening there. Describe to people what that actual arbitrage was and why so many Wall Street funds were going and allocating capital to grayscale in, you know, kind of Q3, Q4 of, uh, 2020.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  And into the beginning of 2021. Yeah, so grayscale was a huge driver early in the bull run. I mean, obviously, there was a lot of people and investors that were allocating to Bitcoin, the, you know, the spot asset itself and taking custody throughout the last decade. But, you know, in 2020, after the COVID kind of meltdown and then all of that stimulus that followed. But grayscale is an interesting story. They've been around since 2016, I think a little before that, actually. And they were for the longest time, like the only kind of OTC product, over the counter product that that traditional accredited investors could could gain access to. So if you were an institution or an accredited investor, you could bring a hundred dollars to grayscale and they would give you a hundred dollars worth of GBTC,

• 9:30Speaker 02

  or you could bring Bitcoin to them and they would give you a hundred dollars worth of GBTC. But those GBTC shares, they don't trade like an ETF. They trade on these OTC markets and they have a six month lockup. And so oftentimes, because this was the only game in town for gaining Bitcoin exposure in, say, a retirement account or on Wall Street, these shares traded at a pretty big premium, right? So that there was, say, a hundred twenty, a hundred dollars of Bitcoin in this, you know, share, this share of a trust. But on the OTC markets, it would trade for, say, a hundred and twenty. So there was an interesting arbitrage opportunity that arose where if you were a fund, if you were an accredited investor, you could bring a hundred dollars to grayscale

• 10:10Speaker 02

  and then receive a hundred twenty dollars of GBTC trust because it was trading at a 20% premium. But there was a six month lockup. So essentially, like everyone on Wall Street increasingly was like, oh, my God, this is just a money printer. We could just, we can just get this 20% harbor. It often blew out to even like high 30s. And it was just basically a way for for Wall Street firms, especially at the end of 2020, to just mark up their books with a with a profit. And so this throughout 2020 and early 2021, grayscale added about 400,000 Bitcoin and often days they were, I remember they bought 10,000, 12,000 Bitcoin at a time on certain days they they announced it. So there was just huge inflows.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, here's that that premium and discount and at the bottom. Bottom there is the daily inflows into this product. And so as more and more funds did this, and oftentimes some would hedge. So some would short Bitcoin or Bitcoin like products, say like MicroStrategy. That's very correlated and then buy these GBTC shares and they would that premium, whatever that GBTC premium was to net asset value. That was their art, that was their, essentially their, their profit. But the trade unwound because of the six month lockup and so many funds doing it. Shares actually on the OTC market started to trade to a discount. And so that's when things got, got kind of hairy for a lot of these funds was the art that they thought they had, that's quote unquote, risk free art wasn't risk free.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  And so a lot of, a lot of those funds implementing that trade kind of unwound on them. And so there was, there's, you know, 650,000 Bitcoin now or a little bit less than that that are trading basically as a derivative in, in terms of GBTC shares that are trading to a discount to net asset value on secondary markets. And so throughout the last couple of months, you've seen as the NASDAQ is sold off, as Bitcoin is sold off, as kind of there's been a risk off sentiment in markets. GBTC discount has reached record lows. It actually hit 30% discount to net asset value. So what that's saying is that basically all these macro funds that allocated to this in 2020 and 2021 are just, you know, basically relentlessly market dumped these products under the secondary market.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  And so that actually had a, an effect on the Bitcoin market because if you're a fund and you want to allocate to Bitcoin, do you buy Bitcoin or do you buy GBTC at a 30% discount to net asset value? So on the margin, it's actually siphoned away, for the time being, siphoned away some spot demand. So an interesting kind of opportunity as it went both ways. It almost like artificially boosted the price of Bitcoin early in the bull market. And now it's siphoning a little bit of demand, but interesting arbitrage opportunities on both sides.

• 12:45Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you look at the GBTC, for those to, to make sure they really hammer this home is you had all these Wall Street folks who were going and they were arbing it. They're investing in the private market. They were then flipping it for an additional profit in the public market. It was like the greatest secret Bitcoin trade on Wall Street history, right? And then all of a sudden, when the market started to cool off, people started to get worried. You got a premium that switched to a discount, then they all started to sell because now they're going risk off. And so there's still a bunch of Wall Street folks or kind of large institutional investors. They want exposure to Bitcoin. They don't need to go buy spot Bitcoin because they can just simply go buy GBTC. And if they've got the appetite to hold it until you get a closing back to NAV, it actually is not only giving you Bitcoin exposure, it's giving you Bitcoin exposure plus the discount that you're getting,

• 13:29Anthony Pompliano?

  which now has reached, you know, levels of 30, 35% on some days. So it's pretty attractive in terms of if you're a long-term holder on Wall Street, just go buy this public market fund and it takes away that spot demand, which obviously has an impact on the price because there's not people buying spot Bitcoin. They're simply buying this kind of synthetic or indirect exposure. Is that a fair way to kind of summarize it?

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Yep, you nailed it. I mean, you know, depending on when that spot ETF is approved. And I think grayscale, the consensus is that they're one of the leaders for when, when to get approved. I mean, 650,000 Bitcoin, that's, that's quite a substantial amount. And so they'd definitely be one of the most liquid products in the world. I think in terms of ETFs, if they were an ETF, they'd be in terms of assets under management, top 50 in the world. And so, you know, they're definitely a market leader in the spot ETF race. It's up to Gensler for when it comes, but you know, if, if GBTC is trading to a 30% discount in that asset value and say, you know, base case, it takes three years for a spot ETF to be approved, which I think it'll be a lot sooner than that, then you're basically, I guess, if you factor in the 2% annual fee,

• 14:32Speaker 02

  but more or less like a, you're performing, outperforming Bitcoin by 10% annually, if it takes three years. And these are, you know, back of the napkin type, type math here, but it's basically just a way, almost a guaranteed way if a spot ETF conversion happens to outperform Bitcoin. And so obviously there's not the self custody kind of characteristics like Bitcoin, the native asset gives you. But in terms of, you know, secondary exposure or retirement accounts or, you know, for fund managers, it's definitely a pretty good opportunity.

• 15:00Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, let's talk about Bitcoins and its current valuation compared to the realized value. So obviously realized value takes a look at the last time that a Bitcoin traded hands. What was the price? You had that all up. You get kind of that realized value or realized price, if you will. Talk to us about how you compare the actual market value to the realized value in this. Ratio and like why this is important.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, so a lot of people were asking as Bitcoin basically was trading down with no bounces for the last two months. They're like, how low can this thing go? Are we going to 20K? Are we going to 30K? Like, what's happening and how are you thinking about it? And I oftentimes would refer to this chart, this market value to realize value ratio. Realized price is a metric. It's essentially the cost basis, the average cost basis of Bitcoin on the network. Currently 24,000. And really, I kind of thought about it and I still, still to this day, think about it, even though we've bounced a little bit. As, as almost like the floor, right? This cost basis 24,000 currently around there. Not, I'm not sure exactly what it is trading at today.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  That's, that's essentially generational bottoms or buying opportunities historically over, over Bitcoins history. And so 24,000 is kind of that line in the sand for, you know, this is, this is when to go more than all in. And, you know, no one knows if we get it. And honestly, I'm, I'm pretty confident that we don't see those numbers. But just in terms of how far, how far Bitcoin could go throughout, you know, compared to historically, relative to, to what it's done in the past. That 24, $25,000 level looks extremely attractive. And, you know, this market value to realize value ratio is a good way to see the relative boom and bust cycles throughout history.

• 16:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so when you start to kind of continue on this analysis and you look at something like MVRV ratio, explain to us why this is important.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I mean, it just gives you like, if you look at bull markets and you look at bear markets, you can kind of see with this ratio, the boom and busts. And so I actually charted out a percentile of this market value to realize value ratio to see like when it's relatively extremely expensive. Even though like I'm a buyer at, at tops and bottoms. And I think that Bitcoin, you know, there is no top as, as CS is programmed to debase and as Bitcoin is programmed to become relatively more scarce. But if you just think of the MVRV ratio as kind of this relative valuation, you can get a pretty good feel of where we are in the Bitcoin market. And so right now, or at the time when I wrote the thread and Bitcoin is trading about 35,000, so pretty close to today.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  It was we're at a 38th percentile reading for the MBRV. So historically, it's actually relatively cheap. And so if we got to that, say, $24,000 level, a little bit below that realized price, basically that that percentile reading would be first, second, third percentile would be, you know, generational bottom type levels. And so this ratio and the kind of percentile readings I threw in the in that thread is just kind of a way to think about relative valuation compared to the cost basis of the network.

• 17:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so then if we go ahead and we look at something like the Bitcoin price weighted by the long term holder supply, when you start thinking about long term holders for short term holders and understanding kind of how that plays out here, obviously, the long term holders are very important. But what is this telling us in terms of what what their activity has and the impact on Bitcoin price?

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so for for anyone listening on the podcast, highly recommend you go over to the POMS YouTube channel and look at the visuals. I think it'll definitely help out. But you basically see here, we have this Bitcoin price since 2016. And then we have blue is accumulation relative to the last 30 days and and red is distribution. And that kind of it's almost like a heat map per se. And you can see when Bitcoin pumps, when Bitcoin's going parabolic, you can see a distribution taking place. Long term holders, you can think of these guys as the smart money. They're accumulating Bitcoin when no one else wants the asset after it's down 50%, 70%, 80% from the highs. This is the smart money. And they accumulate during bulls during bears and consolidation periods. And, you know, when

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Bitcoin pumps, they distribute a little bit. And so this is just in aggregate, right? But you can kind of see this this pattern, this pattern play out. And so after the last two months, we actually saw some distribution, which historically doesn't really happen in a downtrend, but we can kind of attribute that to the macro fears and macro sell offs. And, you know, just over the last couple of weeks here, we saw that accumulation pick back up again. And so this was like a steady trend throughout 2020 and into 2021, when we were at the bottom there, we saw really, really strong accumulation by these long term holders that you could see in the supply. Like, that's the beauty of Bitcoin is you can see in the UTXO set, these coins aren't moving and are actually more and more coins are being taken off the market every single day. And so it's just kind of a cool way to see, you know, who

• 19:45Speaker 02

  Moving what on the Bitcoin network?

• 19:47Anthony Pompliano?

  And then if we go out to 90 days with all of kind of the Bitcoin weighting, it's basically telling us very similar type thing on the coin days destroyed.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's just a little bit of a different metric. Long-term holder quantification is a little bit different. Don't need to go in the wheat there, but coin days destroyed is a pretty cool way to look at it. It's just when there's a Bitcoin transaction, how many coins are in that transaction? And how many days has it been since they last moved? Multiply those two together and you get a coin days destroyed. If you look at the network in like a network activity in aggregate, and you can kind of throw a moving average or a rolling sum onto that. So here I just tweeted the 90 day rolling sum of coin days destroyed. And you can see relative periods of accumulation and relative periods of of distribution or spending. Right. And so when Bitcoin, when Bitcoin pumps, you see a lot of coin days destroyed. You see a lot of coins that have been hodled for a long time. Hit the open market, be spent, be moved.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  And so obviously, not all of those are economic sells. But when you kind of look at this in aggregate over the network, you can see some really interesting patterns. And right now, despite despite Bitcoin actually breaking all time highs a couple of months ago, and the recent downtrend, the accumulation is actually really, really, really strong. We haven't really seen distribution. And so on chain actually looks fantastic. And a lot, it's led a lot of people to question the legitimacy of on-chain analytics. And I think you have to have a multifaceted approach to analyzing Bitcoin. Because the latest, I guess, sell-off really isn't on-chain driven. It's not Bitcoin hodler driven. It's more of a macroeconomic based sell-off, which, you know, we've been talking about.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  And so on-chain is just another way to to kind of analyze everything in aggregate. It's just a tool, but it looks really, really healthy. And that has me pretty optimistic going forward.

• 21:32Anthony Pompliano?

  So talk to me about the Bitcoin derivatives space and what you're seeing there.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, you know, Bitcoin derivatives, it's a little bit complex. And it's another kind of layer of analysis that you get to throw on top of macro, on top of on-chain, on top of just what's what's happening with development of and adoption of Bitcoin in general. But you usually see it at tops of the Bitcoin market derivatives get Really, really overheated bullish sentiment is everywhere. Everybody's longing their longs, taking Bitcoin as collateral and longing Bitcoin to try to accumulate more of it. And usually this leads to cascading liquidations and a lot of people feeling some pain. And at bottoms, you actually see the opposite. It's kind of, it's kind of funny how sentiment works, but like say at the bottom of the 2018, 2019 bear market,

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Bitcoin's down 85% from the highs and everybody on Bitmex, which was like the dominant derivative exchange, they were all shorting Bitcoin, trying to short it into the ground. And that's so that's why like the pop from 3,000 was so aggressive, right? It went from like 3,000 to 12,000 in a few months. And I think it was like 25,000 or 25% in a day when it broke out from 3,000. And so we saw the summer at 30K. The reason that bounces so hard was because we saw that same kind of dynamic play out. Shorts got really over aggressive and they all got liquidated, they all got blown out. And so right now derivatives are kind of muted. Sentiments really not one way or another, it's not too strong. So we'll see, we'll see what happens there. But if, if shorts or longs get off sides, then you know, expect some more volatility.

• 23:04Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. And so when you start to see these charts around that, that kind of leverage, I know that a lot of people are looking to see that kind of get flushed out, right? And really know that, hey, the less leverage there is in the system, the more likely it is that we're kind of bottoming out. Have you seen that yet with the recent price drawdown? Or is it still pretty concerning in terms of how much leverage is in the system?

• 23:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you know, the important thing to understand about open interest or about futures contracts is that there's, there's not more longs than shorts. There's always one long for one short, whether it's perpetual futures or quarterlies. And so when someone says, you know, are there, are longs entering right now? Well, the reality is, you know, it's one to one, but it's about how those longs or shorts are positioned relative to the price. And so if you're looking at say perps funding rate, which gets a lot of attention in the kind of crypto Twitter trading community, this is basically showing how far this perpetual swap contract, this derivative contract is trading relative to the spot market. And so if you look at the top of 2021, whether it's, you know, in April or November.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  You can see that perps funding rate in my chart, it's showing blue, but it's very positive. Right. So the derivatives market was above the spot market and say the summer it was the opposite. Derivatives were below the spot and they were they were actually trying to drive the price below 30,000. And so right now it's actually pretty calm, pretty muted. Would love to see it get off sides to the downside and see derivatives try to bring Bitcoin below 30,000 because that's when we get some fireworks to the upside. But as of now, things are kind of eerily calm. So we'll see what happens.

• 24:38Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. And then lastly, I know we're running out of time, but I want to jump to to this idea of dollar cost averaging. Right. One of the things that is kind of a meme in the Bitcoin community or something that has really kind of taken over is this timeless investing principle of dollar cost averaging into an asset. And you've got a kind of historical analysis of all of the price drawdowns and kind of how dollar cost averaging works. When we look at this, what is this really telling you and kind of how do you think about this in terms of your own strategy for continuing to acquire the asset?

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I mean, everybody loves to look at the historical Bitcoin log chart and just be like, you know, if you bought Bitcoin in 2012 or 2011 and you held it today, you'd be up a billion percent or whatever it is. But the reality is a lot of times in the moment, it's a lot more scary. And looking at the chart in linear terms, buying at 60,000, watching it go to 30,000 in just a few months. You know, the psychological effect on especially new investors is quite scary. And so I think the important thing that I always try to slam home is that just not putting in what you can't afford to lose over a short time span and just continuing to allocate to the asset regardless of price

• 25:53Speaker 02

  will will actually bring you really optimal results. And like throughout the course of history, over Bitcoin's history, when was the best time to sell? Well, really never. I mean, if you could sell every top and buy every bottom, great. But the reality is not really anybody can do that with with efficiency over the long term time horizon. So just passively allocating to it over Bitcoin's history, you've done quite well. But even say since 2017 or 2018, buying highs, buying the lows and everywhere in between has treated you really, really well. And it helps you sleep at night knowing you're acquiring the only absolutely scarce asset. Asset a little bit more of it every single day.

• 26:29Speaker 03

  Joe, John, what questions you guys got? Dylan, so in markets past, we've seen kind of bull and bear markets more associated with halvings or other things, but it feels like Bitcoin specifically is now trading more as a risk asset, right? With everything going on with the Fed and stocks and equities and Bitcoin specifically going down now. Is this something that you think is going to continue to happen going forward? Like, have we moved out of the transition where Bitcoin kind of acts in its own way? Or is this now a risk asset that is going to continue to trade in maybe a similar direction as equities or other markets?

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I definitely think it's more dependent now on kind of the macro environment, the liquidity spigot of central banks than ever before. And some people might think that's a bad thing. And the reality is, the financialization of Bitcoin is actually really positive, and it's just a natural step in its adoption. So, under the surface, say, looking at, say, the realized price, that's going to continue to tick up and climb up, and it's sometimes going to increase a lot, regardless of what equities or bonds or any other asset does, just because people are adopting it, Bitcoin is being transacted, and there's more and more people using the asset. And so I think that is kind of how you can look at like the adoption

• 27:38Speaker 02

  curve. But yeah, when stocks tank 5% in a day, or the VIX, the volatility index of the S&P, is going in a straight line vertical, Bitcoin's going to take a hit on that day. And that's fine. That was always kind of the natural progression of it. I think at this point, it's almost just like a check on central bank irresponsibility. And so, if history has any precedent, that's a pretty good bet to make, that central banks and governments will continue to kind of irresponsibly manage their monetary policy.

• 28:08Speaker 03

  John, what you got?

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Dylan, and then off the back of that, we've obviously seen massive drawdowns in Bitcoin over the last four years. I believe four drawdowns of over 50%. Do you believe that the market is kind of maturing a little bit and will eventually become price stable? Or do you think volatility's here to stay? Yeah, I think, you know, 10, 15 years out, maybe not with a dollar exchange rate, the purchasing power of Bitcoin is going to be quite steady. But in this monetization process, with the instability of the fiat monetization- Monetary system, which doesn't get enough talk, in my opinion, just with how much leverage there is. Everybody likes to talk about the leverage and speculation and volatility in crypto markets. But the reality is the legacy system, especially without any intervention, is extremely volatile.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  And there's, and there's circuit breakers and, you know, if you're just looking at, say, March of 2020, what happened then, if no one stepped in, volatility exploded. And so Bitcoin obviously took a hit as well, went down 50% in a day. So I think the larger it gets right now, it's, it's under a trillion dollars. But as Bitcoin kind of gets to multiples higher than it is today in terms of market cap, in terms of liquidity profile, I think it's, it's almost a pure expression of, of the fiat monetary system unwinding and, and kind of re-inflating again, because this, this process of the boom and bust in the fiat system is going to continue, I believe, as, as there's more and more debt in the system. And as interest rates, you know, the, the market's trying to price in 1% interest rate hikes

• 29:36Speaker 02

  and everything goes to hell before they get one hike in. And so Bitcoin is responding to that as well as it's having its own kind of adoption curve and derivatives on top of it and speculation. And so for all those reasons, I think over the next decade, volatility, volatility is here to stay. And that's actually a really good thing, because once again, you know, that's your opportunity.

• 29:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Some great points. Dylan, when you think about the current market, when you think about the Fed, et cetera, walk me through, Fed doesn't raise rates tomorrow, what happens to Bitcoin in your opinion? Fed goes ahead and raises rates, what happens to Bitcoin? What do those two scenarios look like?

• 30:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, trading Bitcoin intraday, you know, predicting the price movements is tough. So you give me a tough question, but I think, you know, if you're looking at, say, those $100 futures, they've, they've started to price in somewhat of a probability that Powell walks back a little bit. I think they'll go forward with that 25 basis point hike. Maybe they push it back another month or two, but, you know, that's, that even then, that's still fine. Real yields are extremely negative for the time being, and I think they have to stay negative. And so in terms of intraday moves, I'm not sure exactly how Bitcoin responds. And I'm going to be a buy regardless, but it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out. And, you know, for the next couple of months here, we'll see if Bitcoin stays correlated or starts to decouple a little bit. And I think

• 30:58Speaker 02

  I think we'll start to see somewhat of a decoupling.

• 31:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome, man. Uh, how are we doing on followers, by the way?

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Got a nice bump from that thread, got some good, uh, got some good interaction and, uh, engagement on that. So people, people responded well.

• 31:11Anthony Pompliano?

  118. Shoot. All right, let's go. Let's keep it going. If you're not following Dylan, make sure you go to on Twitter, type in his name. It's real easy. Twitter search, they just break, boop, right there, bring you right to the doorstep. All you gotta do is press the follow button. Go, you can click on the link, subscribe to the newsletter as well. We appreciate you as always, my friend. Keep up the good work. Couple more threads. People may drop out of college and say, hey, this is better than a college education.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  Appreciate you guys. Let's, let's get after it and stack some stats.

• 31:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's go. That's, that's a great way to end the interview right there. All right. See you, buddy.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  Peace.