Why This Cycle Feels Broken, Memecoins & Macro | Ben Cowen

Ben Cowen, founder of Into the Cryptoverse, breaks down why the current crypto cycle feels different from past ones. We explore the Advanced Decline Index and how it reveals why Bitcoin is thriving while most altcoins struggle. Ben also discusses the impact of quantitative tightening, the ETH/BTC ratio, and why meme coin speculation is distorting market dynamics. A must-listen for anyone navigating crypto’s shifting landscape and seeking deeper market insights! ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🪙FRAX | SELF SUFFICIENT DeFi https://bankless.cc/Frax 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain ⚖️ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 🌐CELO | BUILD TOGETHER AND PROSPER https://bankless.cc/Celo 🦋MORPHO | CRYPTO-BACKED LOANS https://bankless.cc/Morpho 🏦ONDO | INSTITUTIONAL GRADE FINANCE https://bankless.cc/Ondo ------ ✨ Mint the episode on Zora ✨ https://zora.co/collect/base:0x4be6cd4d402fed49eb2de95fbc8e737e8ffd3e7f/37?referrer=0x077Fe9e96Aa9b20Bd36F1C6290f54F8717C5674E ------ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Intro 04:37 Advance Decline Index (ADI) 08:45 Crypto Vibes & Economy 10:26 ETH & BTC Dollar Relation 15:04 Has ETH Gone Home? 20:38 FED & Memecoins 23:58 Take on SOL/BTC Ratio 28:51 Rise of Meme & Alt Coins 31:45 Where the Value Lies in the Market? 39:11 Trump’s Plans with Tenures & Dollar 44:00 Crypto's Bullish Setup vs. Market Vibes 47:35 Meme Coins vs. VC Giants 53:36 Did We Just Skip a Cycle? 59:08 Closing & Disclaimers ------ RESOURCES Ben Cowen https://x.com/intocryptoverse Into the Cryptoverse https://intothecryptoverse.com/ ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures ⁠

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I really do feel like this cycle, we've kind of lost our way as an industry. I mean Bitcoin's doing fine. I mean Bitcoin is doing what it always does. But everything other than Bitcoin, I think the industry kind of like lost its way for a little while. Because investors just decided to flock to the get rich quick stuff rather than like, let's actually try to do something.

• 0:24David Hoffman?

  Ladies and gentlemen, Bitcoiners and ETH holders, meme coin or manlets and Celestia mammoths, champagne, VCs and retail trench diggers, this episode is for you. Ben Cowen from Into the Crypto verse is on the episode today discussing what the hell happened to this cycle. Bitcoin dominance is on a monster run, further than anyone expected. The ETH BTC ratio continues to suck eggs. Meme coins are sucking liquidity out of the market and the meme coin meta looks like is on the verge of wrapping up. And what about the sole Bitcoin ratio? Who's got their eyes on the sole Bitcoin ratio? We are talking about broad crypto markets today on the podcast with immeasurably valuable guidance from Ben Cowen, who is known as the guy who years ago started calling for ETH to go home, back to dollar and Bitcoin denominated lows. Did it go home?

• 1:10David Hoffman?

  We had Ben on the show about five months ago, back when the window for ETH going home was just about opening. But now towards the middle of February, did it go home or is there more to go? And while there are hundreds of different questions I could ask Ben about the state of thousands of different crypto assets, maybe none of that matters when everything relies on either quantitative tightening from the Fed or fiscally managed inflation and jobs from the Trump administration. So hmm, what do? Really good episode with Ben. If you liked his stuff that you hear today on the podcast, there is a link in the show notes to get 10% off his Into the Crypto verse program, where you can get premium Ben content, just like when you do when you sign up for bankless premium and get ad free bankless premium content too.

• 1:54David Hoffman?

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• 4:06David Hoffman?

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• 4:43David Hoffman?

  Bankless Nation, I'm here with Ben Cowen. He is the founder of Into the Cryptoverse, where he gives deeply analytical takes about the state of the crypto markets, using long-term planning and pattern matching to create educated guesses about what the future holds for the crypto markets. Ben, welcome back to Bankless.

• 5:00Speaker 00

  Thanks, Tommy. A pleasure to be here as always.

• 5:03David Hoffman?

  Ben, this tweet that I have pulled up here was the impetus for me reaching out to you, because I really, I really just enjoyed what clarity that this tweet provided for me. And I wanted to just get you on the show, just to talk to you about it directly. This tweet talks about something called, that I hadn't seen before, called the Advanced Decline Index. And you tweet out, "The reason the vibe is off despite $100,000 Bitcoin is because the Advanced Decline Index of the top 100 cryptocurrencies has been in a downtrend since 2021. Compare that to 2020 to 2021, when the ADI was going up. That's why this cycle feels different." Really enjoyed this tweet, but maybe just to really set the foundation here, can you define ADI and why the ADI for

• 5:47David Hoffman?

  the top 100 cryptos going down, what that really means for the industry?

• 5:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, the ADI, basically, so in the stock market, a lot of people talk about the breadth of the move, right? You'll hear a lot of analysts say, well, like, the breadth is good, or the breadth is bad, right? Maybe it's only a few stocks going up, like, over the last few years. It's mainly been, like, the Magnificent Seven going up, that's allowed the index to go up. And you could kind of think about that and apply it to cryptocurrency. So we just created the same idea for crypto, and we've seen total market cap go up a lot, and it's primarily because of Bitcoin, right? About it, a lot of other cryptocurrencies are still below their 2021 all time highs. So the ADI, basically, so, so let me describe how we think about it.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  So an asset is said to have advanced over a certain period if the closing price is higher than the opening price. Right? So if, if from daily open to daily close, the price goes up, then that asset has advanced. If on the other hand, it goes down during that period, then that asset has declined. So the ADI specifically is calculated by taking the number of daily advances and then subtracting out the number of daily declines and then adding the prior index value. So that's, that's essentially how it's calculated.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  And as, as that chart shows, what you can see is, you know, really from the, the 2021, or sorry, the, that, the very beginning of 2020, when QE, quantitative easing, had just kind of come back into the markets, September 2019, the ADI bottomed in September, or in Ja- or December of 2019, January 2020, right? And then it started just going up. So a lot of- Which was a great time. The vibes were great when that was happening. Everyone was having a great time. Yeah, I mean, every, because I mean, you could basically like, put a thousand different sticky notes on a dartboard and just throw a dart and then buy that cryptocurrency. There was a good chance it was gonna go up, right?

• 7:52Speaker 00

  It was a good vibe. And I think a lot of people actually, I know you guys were here before 2021 and 2020, but a lot of people got introduced to crypto in 2020 and 2021, right? Everyone was at home and we were just looking at the markets, right? I think a lot of people were like, we're, we're, we're searching for that. And, and I think everyone's wondering, well, why is the vibe so different today than it was back then? And I think the answer is because there's only been a few assets really lifting the space higher. We've seen Bitcoin dominance go up a ton over the last three years. It just, it actually just spiked to like 64%. And we've seen the ADI go down. Now, I was thinking like, well, what, what caused the ADI to-

• 8:32Speaker 00

  Go up last cycle, and I think it was caused by, you know, really loose monetary policy and quantitative easing. And we have not seen a pivot from the Fed away from quantitative tightening yet. So when you think about it, it kind of makes sense, right? I mean, we're, we're still arguably, as crazy as it sounds, right? We're still arguably in that 2019 phase where Bitcoin goes up, it lifts the asset class with it. But because there hasn't really been a great reason for QE to start, a lot of the rest of the asset class isn't really moving. So if you've been, you know, if you've had Bitcoin, you're feeling pretty good. But a lot of cryptocurrencies just haven't really done that well. And I think this chart really, really highlights why the vibe is, is off.

• 9:15David Hoffman?

  And really to drive that point home between the ADI of the top 100 cryptos and the vibe is because everything downstream of Bitcoin is where a lot of crypto natives have their jobs. And so the top 100 cryptocurrencies have foundations, they have, you know, lab teams, they have development teams. This is the response, this is highly related to like the job sector of the crypto industry. And so this relates to like whether or not crypto companies are paying more, whether they're hiring more, whether they're laying people off. And when only Bitcoin is representative of the lion's share of the growth of the total crypto market cap. But nonetheless, everything downstream of Bitcoin, except for a few outliers.

• 9:59David Hoffman?

  Dogecoin going up does not actually create any jobs. Solana going up does create jobs, so that that's an outlier. But everything else is like the, the budget, the economic energy that a lot, that represents a lot of the just like job security and industry investment of everything that we consider like crypto native outside of Bitcoin. So it's, it's directly related to vibes, it's not indirectly related to vibes.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I think too, there's a lot of people that don't actually own any Bitcoin, you know? So like it's gone up 6X, but if you, if you just were, you know, playing in the, in the altcoin casino and buying micro caps that just kind of keep bleeding back to the, to the blue chips, then, you know, the vibe's off, right? Cause I mean, you know, if, if, if your portfolio isn't doing well, then it's, it's easy for the vibe to fill off. And you're right, I mean, a lot of, a lot of investors have a lot of altcoins and there's a lot of jobs, you know, in, in the altcoin market. And if that stuff isn't performing, then yeah, like the vibe, the vibe feels off.

• 10:59David Hoffman?

  I want to connect this, the decline of the top 100 cryptocurrencies, to ETH, the ETH dollar and ETH BTC ratios. What would you say about the connection between these two concepts? Like the relationship between ETH BTC and the valuation of the middle of the market coins?

• 11:18Speaker 00

  I think that in order to get alt season, which is what people want, ETH Bitcoin has to bottom, right? It has to convincingly bottom. And, you know, in 2022, I said it could go as low as 0.03, and here we are at 0.027. You know, and I don't know-

• 11:36David Hoffman?

  We touched lower, too.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  Right, we went to 0.023, and I don't know exactly where the bottom is on it. I do know that last cycle, it bottomed when QT ended, right? When quantitative tightening ended, that's when ETH Bitcoin bottomed. I had speculated previously that we might get some type of capitulation event around the time that the supply of ETH reaches the pre-merge supply. To me, it kind of, what it sort of symbolizes to me is that, you know, some of that liquidity that we had for the last couple of years is starting to dry up some. The demand's just not there like it was. We saw what ETH was doing when the demand was really high around the merge. It was absolutely deflationary, and you can see just how deflationary it was back then, but the demand has been drying up.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  I think people are getting exhausted from, you know, I think people are tired and they want to see other things do well. And obviously, the Bitcoin heavyweight is good, but when does it change? And so, I think that, you know, it's all tied together, right? The ADI doesn't really start going up until quantitative tightening ends, more than likely, and quantitative tightening doesn't end until there's a good reason to end quantitative tightening. And so, it's just been like a brutal market, right? Where like, if Bitcoin goes up, it'll lift the asset class with it, right? I mean, if Bitcoin goes up, you know, it'll take Ethereum with it. It's just that until there's a change in policy- It doesn't mean that ETH Bitcoin can't go lower.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  Now, again, you know me, I mean, I was very bearish on ETH Bitcoin in 2022, 2023, and 2024. But I, it's like my mind tells me like, I know, it's like, I can, I can comprehend that it could go lower because quantitative tightening hasn't ended. But it also feels like 0.023 is just extremely low, right? I mean, it's, it's kind of similar to 2019 when ETH Bitcoin went to 0.017, right? It went to 0.017 back in 2019. And that was when I, I made my first video on my channel. I was like, guys, this is insanely low, you know? And, and, you know, just like the market can be irrational at extremes to the upside, it can also be irrational to extremes to the downside. And I think we've entered into that phase.

• 13:47Speaker 00

  Again, I don't know exactly how much lower it's going to go, but, uh, you know, I actually, one chart, if you could bring it up, since you have that chart right there, could you actually type in ETH divided by BTC? So we're looking at the market cap of ETH divided by the market cap of Bitcoin. And then just hit enter, just hit enter. And if you look at this, you can see that it's getting pretty close to where it was, you know, back in, in, in 2019. So to me, it, it makes sense to, to think it's probably going to turn around sometime.

• 14:17David Hoffman?

  Yeah, there's only been one year of total time in which the ratio of market caps has been lower than it is today. Usually this, this is an anomaly. It's like something like five or six years of Ethereum's time, the market cap of Ethereum, the ratio of market cap to Ethereum to Bitcoin has been higher than it is today. And only one, maybe one and a half years has it been lower.

• 14:37Speaker 00

  Right, if you ignore that one big candle in like early 2018, basically the market cap ratio tops out at around 50%, right? Anytime the market cap of ETH is around 50% of that of Bitcoin, that's where it tops on its Bitcoin pair. And then it, it looks like it might bottom around like 10% to 15% or so. And, or maybe 11%, I don't know. It was like, I think from what I remember was like 10 to 15%. And it's already gone to 14%. Look, I don't know, I don't know how much lower it's going to go. I know that, you know, until quantitative tightening. Tightening ends, it could always theoretically go lower, but you know, I can't with a clear conscience like call for lower, even though like my mind tells me like it could.

• 15:22Speaker 00

  I just think it makes sense mentally to start thinking about it, finding support at some point. And then starting to go back up. And I would, I would look towards quantitative tightening, the end of that. Whenever, whenever that ends, I would be much more confident in saying the low is in.

• 15:35David Hoffman?

  There's been this ancient Ben Cowen meme of ETH going home, which is what you've been talking about. It maybe if you were to zoom back out to the early days of the genesis of the ETH go home meme. At this current price, would you say that ETH has gone home?

• 15:51Speaker 00

  It's only wicked into the regression band. I, I think the issue for me is that. It's one of those things where like, it's absolutely a meme because like I, I wish it would have happened in 2022. I wish it would have because I feel like if it had, maybe ETH Bitcoin could have just bottomed back then, you know? Like if there had been like a reason for changes in monetary policy to occur. So it's kind of like we're stuck in this like place where like, if it doesn't go lower into the regression band. Then is there really a reason for the Fed to end quantitative tightening, right? You, you would think there has to be a scare in the market to end quantitative tightening. And that hasn't, it, it sort of happened. I mean, look, technically speaking, and I always say being technically correct is the best way to be correct. Technically, it did go into the regression band, right?

• 16:35Speaker 00

  It did wick into it just a few weeks ago after the Bank of Japan raised rates. That was the last several times that was when ETH went into the regression band. So technically it has, right? Technically it has. It could go lower into the regression band. I think if it did, it would definitely signal the end of quantitative tightening. So the, the way I think of the market right now is this, I think that if Bitcoin goes up from here. Then ETH probably won't go any lower in the short term, right? It'll probably just bounce again off of another higher low. It could go up again, maybe even go to all time highs. But if there's no change in monetary policy. While ETH Bitcoin could bounce, it could still just be a lower high.

• 17:16Speaker 00

  If ETH struggles for a few months on its USD pair, I mean, it could even just go sideways and the regression band would catch up to it, right? If ETH could struggle for a little bit longer and causing the Fed to... The Fed doesn't care about ETH, but I do think ETH gives us insight into conditions in the market, right? I think that it would cause that pivot and then ETH Bitcoin would really start to go up. So it's been this, it's really been this hard thing because like, you know, I keep saying, well, ETH is going to go home and then it doesn't go home and then ETH Bitcoin keeps going lower. So it's like, in order to get what everyone wants, which is alt season, you have to have ETH Bitcoin bottom. But in order for ETH Bitcoin to bottom, you have to have a reason for the Fed to pivot.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  And we just haven't had that reason yet. So it's almost like to get what we want, we have to go where we don't want to go, you know?

• 18:08David Hoffman?

  You have to force it.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  Right. And as long as we don't go...

• 18:10David Hoffman?

  If you're going through hell, you got to keep going.

• 18:12Speaker 00

  Right. And as long as we don't go there, then, you know, it is fine, right? As long as we don't go there, the market's okay. But it just means that Bitcoin dominance is likely going to go higher. So I think you have to have an event to cause Bitcoin dominance to really macro top out.

• 18:28David Hoffman?

  And maybe you're, you don't really have any crystal ball about the nature of said event. But I think what you're saying is like, we are approaching a period of time in which the likelihood of a possible event that would create the end of QT is getting higher as we go forward.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  Right. But the crazy thing is that it's, you know, we're in February of 2025 at this point, you know? Like, how long, how long is the Bitcoin dominance really going to go on? I mean, it's exceeded my expectations, you know? I mean, I did think it would go until QT ended, but I didn't think QT was going to last this long either. So that, and you know what, you know what I think is more difficult for the markets right now is not the ETH Bitcoin pair. I mean, the ETH Bitcoin pair, as far as I'm concerned, is already extremely low. I think what still needs to make that same move is the rest of the altcoin market on their Bitcoin pairs. So like, if you look at a chart, I don't know if you can pull it up,

• 19:23Speaker 00

  but if you just look at total three, so in parentheses, total three minus USDT. Or sorry, just not, don't spell out three, just the number three, yeah. Minus USDT and then close parentheses and then divided by Bitcoin. And then enter.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, so like in this case, you see, they are still off of their lows. And I wonder if ETH Bitcoin continuing to struggle is sort of signaling that the altcoin market will eventually follow suit. Because if you think about like ETH Bitcoin, market cap ratio is pretty close to where it bottoms, right? It's not like it's that far off. It last likely bottomed at like 10 to 15%. It already went to 14. But alt Bitcoin pairs last cycle bottomed at around 25%, 0.25 of Bitcoin's market cap. And they're still at like, you know, a lot higher than that. Now, I think they did wick down to 33%, but I just wonder if that's sort of the final,

• 20:28Speaker 00

  the missing piece of the puzzle is the devaluation of alt Bitcoin pairs. And I think, look, I think that one of the reasons why ETH has struggled so much is because there's been a lot of malinvestment this cycle, right? People keep throwing their money into a lot of useless meme coins that keep just asymptotically going to zero to Bitcoin. And so it's basically like either people are either buying Bitcoin or they're buying meme coins. And there's not a lot of investment going into things in between. So I think the industry needs to mature. It needs to grow up. It needs to figure out where the value truly is. And then, once that happens, then I think, you know, things like ETH Bitcoin, the ETH Bitcoin pair will start doing better. But how long, you know, I don't know exactly when it's going to be.

• 21:10David Hoffman?

  I think on the crypto Twitter timeline that I'm reading, the people are growing more and more resentful of the current meme coin mania. And people have always been resentful towards meme coins, but that's been buffered by a very willing and interested market cohort of participants that are very into meme coins. But I'm seeing meme coins really grow out of fashion these days, especially with this Dave Portnoy meta, where people are making comments about how like meme coin charts can't sustain a pump more than eight hours, which like just indicates the fact that like even the people who are left to gamble are just really doing it for the most short-term like time preferences. So maybe it's too early to call like a closing of the meme coin casino.

• 21:55David Hoffman?

  But I do notice just like negative sentiment towards the concept and industry of meme coins. And this also goes along with the idea like pump fun is draining the hot ball of money from crypto Twitter. From crypto in general, you tweeted this out. The market sucks because grifters keep shilling meme coins, which leads to malinvestment and the misallocation of capital. The Fed can't pivot away from quantitative tightening until investors learn to stop pouring money into useless shitcoins. The beating will continue until morale improves. I really love these very loose distant connections between Federal Reserve monetary policy and the actions of meme coin. The meme coin casino, like you're not actually the Federal Reserve. You don't think the actual Federal Reserve is looking at the meme coin.

• 22:38David Hoffman?

  But but maybe it's indicative of like the market generally, both inside of crypto and outside of crypto of those like smart capital allocation and maybe in some like distant way, the Federal Reserve is making monetary policy based off of that vibe. Is that kind of what you're doing?

• 22:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, like I'll try to joke sometimes like about, you know, the FOMC briefings and be like Powell quotes. And I'll put in a quote right there and I'll be like, you know, Powell will say that ETH Bitcoin can bottom when people stop paying. You know, all these, all these meme coins and stuff. I think the idea is this, like, you know, if there's so many people that have all this extra money to throw them into all these like newly launched meme coins. It's the same pumps for weeks and weeks and weeks or months and months and months. But it just means there's a lot of liquidity and they don't really have a reason to end quantitative tightening. But as you noted, the meme coin pumps are actually getting smaller and smaller. And they're not lasting nearly as long as what we saw back in like 2023 and even 2024. It seems like they're they're kind of dying over a weekend now, you know, where it kind of goes up for a day or two. And then it just goes right back down.

• 23:37Speaker 00

  I mean, even the president of the United States watched a meme coin and and it didn't really last that long before it it just kind of went back down. So I think that you're right, like Powell doesn't care about, you know, the crypto markets. It's certainly not as far to determine monetary policy about it. I just think that the crypto markets, one of the interesting cases for it is I think that it allows us to. Give some insight, or we can get some insight into liquidity conditions and what the Federal Reserve might do just based on what the valuation of high-risk assets in the crypto verse are doing against lower-risk assets in the crypto verse, right? So like meme coins against Bitcoin. Same idea, right? If you like to get the Russell against the NASDAQ, you can, you can see the same things, even like silver

• 24:21Speaker 00

  against gold, right? In every asset class, you have sort of the, the, the blue chips outperforming the micro caps. And that doesn't change until monetary policy changes.

• 24:31David Hoffman?

  One of the big outperformers this cycle has been Solana. It has been the exception out of the advanced decline index. Other than Bitcoin, if you held your asset, your money in Solana, you've, you're, you're happy. You're not really experiencing the, the negative vibes that the rest of the industry is. Although if you're a Solana holder, you're probably also a meme coin trader. Those things are probably pretty correlated. You put out a tweet that I thought was pretty interesting, comparing the sole Bitcoin market cap ratio to the ETH Bitcoin market cap ratio, and made this comparison that the sole Bitcoin market cap ratio just looks like ETH Bitcoin was just two to three years ago, before it did this like two to three year long decline. What's your general sentiment or take about the sole Bitcoin ratio?

• 25:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it kind of reminds me of like what I remember back in 2021 with ETH Bitcoin. You know, I was super bullish on ETH Bitcoin back in like 2019, 2020, 2021, and even early 2022. But then, you know, after a full year of, of all the craziness and whatnot, it just seemed like it was time for it to go back down. And, you know, I, I think as investors, we lose our way, right? Like we, we focus on what we think matters, right? Like we focus on Bitcoin, you focus on ETH, and then you focus on Solana. And I have nothing against Solana. But what ends up happening is that people that use those chains ends up, they end up putting their capital into other things that are not as valuable, I think. So like, could be, you know, ETH people then sort of changing it and then putting in their money into a lot of meme coins or Solana or NFTs, right? NFTs

• 25:58Speaker 00

  were, were pretty crazy back then. And then today, it's Solana and the meme coin craze, right? And so you can see that when that website launched, by the way, the meme coin website that everyone's using, that's basically when the sole Bitcoin market cap ratio kind of topped out, I think. Like it hasn't really gone higher since then. And you have to wonder if it's just because of this misallocation of capital once again. Where instead of focusing on Solana, people focus on all the meme coins on Solana.

• 26:26David Hoffman?

  And then one of the conversations is that people with Pumped out Fun, which is producing 50,000 meme coins a day that much of the Solana economy is investing into, that Pumped out Fun is generating a ton of Solana in revenue. And then they're being, they're just not really having the best relations with the public meme coin casino traders, because they're sending all that sold to Kraken to, you know, in theory, sell it. And so that's that energy, just like coming straight out of the market. Maybe that's exactly what you're referring to.

• 26:54Speaker 00

  Right. And by the way, the sole Bitcoin market cap ratio, I mean, it could still stay at the highs for a while, especially if QB returns, right? If QB returns, then it's possible that all Bitcoin pairs do well for a little while. So I just think that, you know, when we're looking at the sole Bitcoin chart in 2026, like there's a decent chance it's back down near the lows. I mean, remember ETH Bitcoin back at the merge? It was so hard, like, to think about it going back to the lows. And now here, it's now it's here. And now it feels like the same thing for the sole Bitcoin market cap ratio. Like, it just seems impossible for it to do that. I just wonder if when we look at this and say two years, are we just going to find it having followed the same, the same path? In fact, I mean, if you, I mean, I'm not, you don't need to do this, but if someone just overlays the ETH Bitcoin chart,

• 27:40Speaker 00

  ETH Bitcoin and then sole Bitcoin, they basically did the same thing. They had their major, their first bull market, and then they both dropped 89%. That's what ETH Bitcoin dropped in 2018, sole Bitcoin dropped 89% in 2022. Then they had their sort of their rally back up, and then ETH Bitcoin then slowly bled back down. So you have to wonder, it kind of seems like ETH Bitcoin could be completing that process.

• 28:05David Hoffman?

  Sole Bitcoin.

• 28:07Speaker 00

  So ETH Bitcoin could be completing the bleeding process.

• 28:11David Hoffman?

  Oh, I see.

• 28:11Speaker 00

  Rather than later. But I just wonder if sole Bitcoin still has, still has to go through that process. And again, I mean, I think, you know, there's, there's people that value different chains. And obviously, there's a lot of Ethereum maxies. There's also a lot of sole maxies. I'm not here to really say, you know. I don't really want to like point fingers. I'm just saying that like, you know, it, you know, we, everyone loses their way at some point, right? Every chain loses its way at some point. They focus on what doesn't matter. It doesn't mean the chain is dead, right? I don't, I don't think Ethereum is dying. Just like if Solana Bitcoin goes back down to the range lows, it doesn't mean that it's dying. It, it might just mean they need to focus on what matters again and not, and not just focus on, on meme coins. Cause I think the meme coin market, it's getting to be a fairly tired narrative.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  I, I saw a tweet the other day where it said that, uh, I think like 50,000 meme coins were created in, in a single day. And what, what I, what I find interesting about that is that there's, there were more meme coins created in that one day than had been, than were created from 2009 to 2021, right? So it's just getting harder and harder for even the people in the trenches, as they say, to do well. Because there's just so many different meme coins to choose from. And so how do you, you know, how do you, how do you choose?

• 29:23David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Yeah. Here's that tweet. 52,543 tokens were launched on Pump. Fun yesterday. Now granted, this doesn't mean any of them are capturing any amount of market cap, uh, but it, only a few of them really has to do even just like a smidgen of, of good performance to really actually like accrue a bunch of value, um, on a, on an aggregate basis, day in, day out.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it, the, the whole, that whole thing is just, it's too much, I think, for the market. And I, and you can see that the Solana Bitcoin valuation is kind of reflecting that it, I think it's not happy with, with the state of things. And it, that's probably the reason why it struggled to, to go higher.

• 29:59David Hoffman?

  So Ben, if you think that the ETH Bitcoin ratio is not going to go up until quantitative tightening happens, Solana Bitcoin ratio. QTN, excuse me. Yeah. Um, the Solana Bitcoin ratio, uh, is looking pricey. Bitcoin itself is pricey because it's the one thing that has meaningfully outperformed all of, all of everything else in addition to Solana. Then like what, where do you see value in this market? Or do you just see value in stable coins and stable coin yield? Like how, like it doesn't really seem like anything in this market is really particularly cheap. Maybe, maybe ETH is cheap just because it hasn't done any sort of price appreciation in two years.

• 30:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I think that it depends on what you value your portfolio then, right? If you value it in SATS, if you value it in terms of ETH, right, GUE or whatever? If you value it in terms of US dollars, right? What do you value it in? If you value it in terms of SATS, ETH is looking pretty cheap. If you value it in terms of US dollars, I mean ETH is so relatively low relative to Bitcoin. I mean, if you think about like Bitcoins at 100K and ETH can, is not even above 3K right now. Like that's kind of crazy, right? I mean, um, but there could be, I mean, again, there could be another flush down. I know I came on your channel, what, like late last year?

• 31:13David Hoffman?

  Four months ago, yeah.

• 31:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, four months ago and, and I remember saying that like I thought ETH would get another capitulation. And in, and it could happen as early as Q4 and it didn't, right? And the reason it didn't was because Bitcoin went up and lifted ETH with it. And then the minute Bitcoin started out ETH, you know, it crashed again. So I do think that ETH is relatively cheap with respect to Bitcoin. If you run a, a modern portfolio theory simulation, like a Monte Carlo simulation, for like a portfolio of like Bitcoin, ETH and US dollars. Right now it says the optimal portfolio that maximizes your Sharpe ratio is like 58% Bitcoin, 12% ETH and 30% US dollars. So that basically allows you to like, you have Bitcoin in case dominance keeps going up, right?

• 31:58Speaker 00

  And if ETH Bitcoin just keeps going down because QT hasn't ended. You have ETH in case QT doesn't at any point, or if ETH Bitcoin gets a nice bounce, then you have, you have that as relatively low, it'll probably go back up at some point.

• 32:10Speaker 00

  And then you have US dollars in case, in case ETH goes home. You know, like, and, and I, I mean, I think you could look at it and say that it already has. Like I, I think you could make that case, but it, it's also like, it doesn't always necessarily feel the fairest to say that. Cause it's like, it's still at like 2,500, like it's not, hasn't really gone that much lower. If you think about it, I mean, it's still kind of at the same price.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  So I would kind of think about the market like that. I mean, as far as, like, I don't really find any value in the meme coin market. I'm not saying they can't go up, but if you look at like the others divided by Bitcoin chart, I mean, it just keeps going lower, right? People call this like the meme coin super cycle. But if you ask any meme coin super cycle guru to explain the others divided by Bitcoin chart, what are they gonna say? It just keeps going lower every few months, and that's also reflected by the ADI going lower every few months, what we started this video about. So, I mean, there's other ways you can invest in the market, right? If you're looking beyond Bitcoin and ETH, and you want to look other places, or there's low expense ratio index funds, right? You can hedge with that, like the stock market, right?

• 33:15Speaker 00

  Because, I mean, if the stock market, the stock market generally does better in crashes than crypto, and it does generally go up over time. There's also other things like, you know, like precious metals, but, you know, the downside with precious metals is that they tend to underperform risk assets over a long enough period of time, right? They can outperform during certain times, but they underperform over a long period of times. If you're a pessimist, obviously, you can buy bonds, right? As the saying goes, optimists buy stocks, pessimists buy bonds. So there's definitely ways that you can diversify. I do think ETH is relatively at low valuations against Bitcoin.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  And by the way, I don't want to say definitively that QT has to end for ETH Bitcoin to bottom, because Sol Bitcoin bottomed, and QT never ended, right? So, like, I don't want to say that it has to be that.

• 34:11David Hoffman?

  But Sol Bitcoin bottomed maybe in part because of just the oversold nature post-FTX. So you could count that to be just an anomaly.

• 34:20Speaker 00

  Exactly. I think it pulled forward its Bitcoin losses, and the rest of the crypto market did not. I think the FTX collapse, I think you said it, I couldn't say about it, what you just said. I think that's exactly what happened. And so, but again, I mean, there's other things that have done similar things, right? I mean, even, there's other altcoins that have had really good rallies recently. They had like a Nice bottom on Bitcoin and then they got a really big rally. So I don't want to imply that it it it has to wait until that. I do remember in 2017 ETH Bitcoin bottomed actually December 2016, but ETH Bitcoin was still weak until March of that year, right? ETH did not, the ETH Bitcoin valuation did not get above its 20 week SMA until March of 2017.

• 35:03Speaker 00

  So it's important to remember that like even though 2017 was really bullish for ETH Bitcoin, it didn't even start moving really until March. So again, there's a lot of ways to think about it. I feel like if we're doing this video in, let's say, a year, I feel like there's a good chance ETH Bitcoin will be a lot higher than today. If we're doing it in a month, it's like a toss up, right? I don't, I don't really know. But that's, that's what I, that's what I think about the market. And one, one, one last thing. It, it kind of goes back to the whole Bitcoin dominant stuff, right? Like Bitcoin seems expensive, right? Cause it's been the one going up. But there is a reality that, and I think a lot of people have learned this the hard way. I've learned it the hard way many, many times in the past is that oftentimes assets that are going up

• 35:47Speaker 00

  tend, are more likely to go up than assets that are not, right? So a lot of people will like trade the thing that's going up for something that's going down because they think that the thing's going down is going to catch up. And then it just keeps not catching up. And then you, you keep seeing things like, you know, like how, how many years now have we seen Nvidia outperform the Russell, right? People keep thinking Nvidia looks expensive and it just keeps on going higher and, and the Russell keeps bleeding to Nvidia. So I think that's kind of the dilemma that we've been in. Again, all we have to have, I think, is a, a big pivot in monetary policy to get that change. And one, one more thing, I know I'm rambling. This is great. No, I'm loving it. Last cycle, there, there's more to just monetary policy than just QE and QT, right? There's also rate cuts. We, we did get some rate cuts.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  So last cycle ETH Bitcoin did bottom shortly after like the, the second rate cut. I believe, or no, it was the, it was the first rate cut. I think it was the first rate cut, but then it double bottomed after the second rate cut. But what I think was important back then was the, the, the ratio of rate cuts. So if you look at when it truly started going up ETH Bitcoin. It started going up after 75 basis points of rate cuts, but the terminal rate back then was 250 basis points. So if you apply that same ratio to the terminal rate today, that would imply that you need about 165 basis points of rate cuts. So far, we've had 100. So that could be another thing, like maybe we just need a couple more rate cuts to get there. Look, I don't know exactly where the bottom is. Calling the bottom is a fool's errand because who knows, right?

• 37:15Speaker 00

  But it is, I think ETH Bitcoin is undervalued. And I think it's because that, I think because quantitative tightening has lasted far longer than any of us imagined it would when it began in 2022.

• 37:27David Hoffman?

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• 38:58David Hoffman?

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• 40:44David Hoffman?

  So what do you think about Lynn Alden's concept of fiscal dominance? Where, yes, QT, QE, and QT definitely matter. Interest rates definitely matter. But also, what Donald Trump really wants also matters quite a lot. And since fiscal debt and fiscal spending is such a larger part of the market today than it was historically, then really what Donald Trump does with fiscal spending more than monetary policy really matters here. And so what the there's been I've done a couple of macro shows lately and both macro commentators said that well what Donald Trump wants is lower long-term yields so a low 10-year treasury a low 30-year treasury and also a low dollar and why does he want this well Donald Trump

• 41:29David Hoffman?

  he is a real estate investor what does real estate investors want the most they want low long-term yields because that allows them to get leverage on their real estate and then also he's the president of the United States he wants to bring jobs back home he wants to make America great again and having a low dollar in contrast to other currencies helps exports helps dollar exports because it allows foreign countries to buy more of United States locally manufactured goods so therefore by the and we don't know how he's going to do it but we trust in Donald Trump's incentives that by the end of his term he will figure have figured out how to make the 10-year yields low and he will have figured out how to make the dollar low is this aligned with your macro analysis and how do you think this might impact the crypto markets?

• 42:14Speaker 00

  Yeah you could absolutely argue that fiscal dominance I mean like fiscal dominance even like the money supply right overall but just spending in general you could argue that that that's a better reflection of where valuations go on their USD pairs right I mean ETH Bitcoin has sucked for a while but ETH USD has been trending up since 2022 right so that stuff I think has been tracking that a lot closer it's the QT QE that helps us figure out where all Bitcoin pairs go I almost wonder if what Trump is doing right now I mean he's a smart guy or he's like a business guy he knows how the business cycle work the business cycle work I mean he's been in real estate right forever he knows how the business cycle works you have to wonder if he's if to some degree I mean you know

• 42:56Speaker 00

  he's obviously trying to curtail spending here in the short term we keep seeing headline after headline after headline as to they're cutting something in the government somewhere I do wonder if he if he's just trying to make sure that inflation is not the same narrative for his presidency as it was for the last one and and he even said just like a few days ago that he wants to increase the labor supply and reduce aggregate demand and that will help and that's that's the reality right that's how you do it is you have to reduce demand but

• 43:28Speaker 00

  How do you reduce demand? Asset prices have to go down, right? And that's what, that's what has to happen. So, look, I think, I, I think he, look, the sooner that that kind of stuff happens in his presidency, the easier it would be to just blame it on the prior administration, right? You know, like, they handed him an unemployment rate that's been going up for a while. We just had an un-inverted yield curve, we had an inverted yield curve for two years. It's not like it's out of left field if you have, you know, a, a, a quick downturn in the economy. In fact, when Reagan took office in 1981, the economy went into a downturn for a few months, and then it picked back up and went up for years after that. Nixon, when he took office, the markets went down for a little while, right? So, it's not like it's not unheard of for that stuff to happen.

• 44:11Speaker 00

  Sometimes you have to have a little bit of pain to then set yourself up for the next decade, right? So, I, I think that, yeah, I think the, the, the fiscal dominance has played a very important, important role this cycle. I mean, I'll defer to Lynn Alden on that. I know she's been a lot more vocal about it than, than I have. But I, I do think that, that Trump does want lower 10-year, like you said, lower dollar, all that's really important. And, I mean, who doesn't want that, right? I mean, that would, that would help a lot of people if, if we could, we could get to that. The problem is that the Fed does not control the long end of the yield curve, right? They don't control it. And if they pivot too soon, it can actually send the long end higher, which is exactly what happened after they pivoted in September.

• 44:54Speaker 00

  So I think, I think actually Trump is, is correct. You have to increase the labor supply, reduce wage inflation, and lower aggregate demand. If he can do that, and you could theoretically do that without a recession, right? If you just can slow things down to make it so that things are just screaming higher constantly, or if you just slow things down for a little bit, yeah, I think it could help get things into, into a better balance. And then we could hopefully pick back up where we left off. But I, I think right now, we'll have to see, we'll have to see what it is, because he's also been talking a lot about tariffs and stuff, too. Right. And tariffs unfortunately are, theoretically, they are inflationary, right? If they, if, if all that's just passed off to the consumer.

• 45:34David Hoffman?

  One of the conversations that's going around in the crypto space is despite the bad vibes, there seems to be just an incredible fundamentals setup for the crypto industry at large, one being we have the most pro crypto administration that we've ever been able to even dream of in office. It's more pro crypto than our wildest dreams like two, four, six years ago. So that's happening. The macro environment, while it has not yet, the stars have not yet aligned, there does seem to be stars that are aligning in the future. And then also, there's just some like fundamental real growth technologically wise inside of the crypto industry. And so some investors are noticing this dislocation

• 46:17David Hoffman?

  between the vibes of crypto and the fundamental setup, the bullish setup for the environment that crypto lives inside of. Do you align with this kind of like belief about the dislocation? Or do you have a different take?

• 46:29Speaker 00

  Well, it's kind of, it's kind of like the markets do what you don't expect, right? Like, I mean, in 2023 and 2024, we had nothing but regulation clampdowns, right? You know, the SEC suing everybody and the markets just went up during that time. Now it's almost like the opposite. Now you have, it seems like we have the perfect environment and the markets aren't really reflecting that, right? Bitcoin topped at 109. I'm not saying it's the top, but I mean, it hit that top at 109, literally hours before Trump took office, and it hasn't actually taken out that high yet. And I think that what I think happened is basically like everything good got priced in under the sun before he took office. And

• 47:11Speaker 00

  now the market's waiting and trying to figure out, do we actually get a strategic Bitcoin reserve, right? And if we don't, then I think there was a little bit of de-risking ahead of that because people are like, well, is it going to be a strategic Bitcoin reserve? Or is there going to be other, are there going to be other things? If we do get one, are there going to be other things in the stockpile as well? Obviously later this year, if it turns out they do a reserve and then it turns out there's other cryptocurrencies in the reserve as well, that could be a good narrative for why Bitcoin dominance could go down. But I also think that you have to have monetary policy aligned with it, right? If you get QE, then it's easy to find the narrative, right? It's just that until quantitative tightening ends, like the narrative is kind of stuck. Right, it hasn't really, doesn't really have legs until the monetary policy supports it.

• 47:56Speaker 00

  So yeah, I mean, hopefully, hopefully, we can get out of this slump that we're in as the year goes on and crypto can, especially everything that's been bogged down for the last few years can can start picking back up. But I think in order to get that, you have to have exactly what Trump said, right? You have to have lower demand and higher inflation or higher labor supply. And I mean, honestly, I think that would overall be a really good thing. I think we kind of go really far in the extremes, right? If you have really high inflation and you have really low unemployment rate, really high wage inflation, you know, if people, if people feel like they can just go get rich, I'm not saying they can't, but if they feel like they can get rich by trading meme

• 48:38Speaker 00

  coins in the trenches, then it's harder to find workers for like jobs that provide real utility and not fake utility. So I think sometimes we just got to get rid of the excess, like the extremes. And then it actually is a good thing for the industry because then the useful projects can then grow and not just, you know, the, and not just Bitcoin or occasionally meme coins, but then they still go, they still just bleed back down. So I think that's, yeah.

• 49:07David Hoffman?

  Maybe one last conversation for you, but back on the crypto native side, we talked about the just sheer amount of dispersion due to meme coins, right? 52,000 meme coins printed by Pumped Off Funds one single day. How can there be any sort of just like price go up, number go up for the whole entire industry when so many meme coins, there's just so much supply, so many supply of assets. But also, not many meme coins actually do make it to the top 100 list of coins. And so the total crypto market cap, even if a meme coin is successful and it goes to like a 1, 10, 100 million dollar market cap, it's still not breaking like the top 500 of crypto tokens. And so the actual market cap of the industry. Is really defined by the size of the top 100 coins.

• 49:53David Hoffman?

  And the new introduction of coins into that part of the market are a lot of these very well-funded VC-backed protocol tokens, like BaraChain just launched, Move just launched, Monat is launching soon. Celestia launched a little bit over a year ago, like this category, right? New tokens, which as far as the average crypto investor goes, might just be perceived as like another game at the casino. If you're a financial nihilist and you think crypto is just a currency, you know? But nonetheless, like this is actually where a lot of real new capital is coming in or being created is because of the market cap of these new coins. And there's also a bunch of supply of those, like the whole, like, I'm going to build a chain, the meme of not another layer two.

• 50:37David Hoffman?

  So many like VC-backed startups, right? And so there's different kinds of dispersion. There's 52,000 new coins being minted a day by Pump Fund, but very, very low market caps. And there's like, you know, some very large, multi-billion dollar protocol being launched at least once a month, maybe once every, every two weeks. And that actually is representative of a lot more total market cap coming into the industry, but also a lot of sell pressure, right? Because VCs want to make their exit. How do you think about this part of the barbell of the market? The more of the, the high market cap introduction of new coins? How do you think this impacts market structure?

• 51:15Speaker 00

  I mean, I think there's, correct me if I'm wrong, because I haven't followed it as nearly as close as you have. But I just, I don't, I don't get the sense that there's been nearly as much, nearly as much interest in that part of the market as there was last cycle at this time.

• 51:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I totally agree, which results in sell pressure into the market where there's just not a lot of buyers.

• 51:33Speaker 00

  Right, so like people that are trying to create some type of utility or that, look, I mean, you have Bitcoin maxies that'll just say that it's Bitcoin or nothing and that everything is going to zero, right? And then you have people on the other end of the spectrum that are just kind of in the trenches, trading meme coins. It kind of feels like we moved away from anything in between, you know? And, and there are people out there that are trying to, to actually build value in the crypto space.

• 52:01Speaker 00

  And It's gotta be hard for them, honestly. Like, I don't envy them because it's gotta be hard because you pour your blood, sweat, and tears potentially into developing something. And, you know, some meme coin that launched on Pumped Out Fund just outperforms you on a Tuesday, you know, that your entire lifetime gains. Of course, Pumped Out Fund, I mean, it gives it back, but it's gotta be just demoralizing as a developer to see that kind of stuff. And so frankly, it really discourages innovation in the industry because it's not being rewarded in the way that it was rewarded in prior cycles. And so I really do feel like this cycle, we've kind of lost our way as an industry. I mean, Bitcoin's doing fine. I mean, Bitcoin is doing what it always does.

• 52:44Speaker 00

  But everything other than Bitcoin, I think the industry kind of like lost its way for a little while because investors just decided to flock to the get-rich-quick stuff rather than like, let's actually try to do something. And again, like, there's a lot of projects that say they're actually trying to provide value, but they're not really providing value. It's like they're finding a solution and then first, and then they're creating the problem. Like, they're finding the problem that goes with the solution they found. But I do think that the industry is bigger than Bitcoin. It's definitely easy to be in the Bitcoin maxi movement with Bitcoin dominance just in this macro uptrend for several years.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  But it's important to remember, it did the same thing last cycle during similar types of monetary policy, and that market conditions will change eventually. I think that for the people sort of in the middle of that barbell, I think that they would probably benefit the most, actually, from lower asset prices, honestly. Because that would then allow the froth and the excess stuff to die, and then it would allow us to focus on what truly matters. But it's kind of hard because like, you don't, as long as the asset class just keeps going higher, those things can still underperform. So hopefully...

• 54:09Speaker 00

  I guess the issue is that if the four-year cycle holds and we have another bear market, let's say in 2026, kind of like 2014, 2018, 2022, then it's not leaving us with as much time as we normally would have. So I do hope that, I hope that the cycle can sort of figure itself out before 2025 is over. But also, I have high hopes that maybe next cycle, we'll sort of revert back to more important things. And I can be hopeful that the meme coin market won't be the only narrative. Who knows? Maybe it will be the narrative next cycle too. But I think for the, and I'm sure you would love to see it

• 54:51Speaker 00

  more than I would, honestly. I mean, just the focus on what actually matters and building the industry up. I think you're a lot more well-versed and educated on all these projects that have been popping up than I am. And it's probably, I mean, I'm guessing it pains you to see a lot of these projects pop up and not really gain any traction because everyone just wants to focus on meme coins instead.

• 55:11David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm working on an agenda for a podcast that I may or may not schedule. I haven't figured it out yet. But the first question to the theoretical panel of people that I put together is about how the discourse on crypto Twitter is how crypto has lost its way, which is exactly the verbiage that you just used, like the focus on the meme coin casino. Many people, especially in the Ethereum community, is like, well, the cypherpunk movement is dead. We are no longer building cypherpunk values. We're doing something else. And which is definitely saddening, but also, this is also just what evolution into public mainstream, you know, that's what that looks like. As the revolution grows,

• 55:54David Hoffman?

  it also gets a little bit dampened, it gets moderated. You talk about like, well, maybe this cycle wasn't it, and maybe we can try again next cycle. But when people talk about the cycle, I have mixed feelings about that because, to me, especially as an ETH holder, it feels like this cycle just never really happened. The cycle definitely is ongoing for Bitcoin, but you can really cite it towards the Donald Trump election. Granted, maybe 2020 was all about the fact that we did print a bunch of money. But, so maybe the cycle happened for Bitcoin, but for downstream of Bitcoin, and as the ADI index illustrates, this cycle just didn't really happen. And I don't really have a question here, but maybe the question is really just like,

• 56:38David Hoffman?

  did that one count? Does that count as a cycle? Like, is this a cycle? Are we in a cycle? Or are we just waiting for the next one to start?

• 56:45Speaker 00

  Well, one thing that's important to remember is that like in 2017, the true alt season that people remember from 2017 didn't start until November. Like, alt Bitcoin pairs, that chart we were looking at earlier, like total 3 minus US T divided by Bitcoin, it was at 0.25 in November of 2017. And so you could argue that it could still happen. Like, all that people have dreamed about and everything, you know, for Ethereum, this cycle, it's not like it's impossible for it to happen. There's still, you know, nine months, 10 months left in the year.

• 57:22Speaker 00

  It's just that if it does happen, it could be a lot more compact than what people were thinking it was going to be. You know, I mean, when ETH Bitcoin moves, if you look at the chart, it's just vertical. I mean, it doesn't, you know, I mean, last cycle, it did kind of slowly go up. But like, if you look at like 2017, when it really went up, it just goes up over two to three months and it leaves everyone behind when it goes up. So, and we've seen a lot of altcoins do that recently. I mean, I don't want to go through them, but we've seen some altcoins go through a similar type of a pattern. So, I don't want to say, I get what you're saying, right? Like, it feels like it just never really happened. What I could see happening, one potential outcome, I'm not married to this outcome,

• 58:07Speaker 00

  but one potential outcome I could see is that, you know, Trump gets what he wants. He increases the supply of labor, he reduces demand. It causes lower asset prices sometime later this year. Everyone gives up, then QE starts, then you get your, you know, the rallies in kind of the stuff that's been burdened for so long by QT. And then, I mean, again, it could easily take things, it could easily take, um, ETH could still go to a new all-time high. But then you could still easily have sort of like a bear market in 2026 when we normally get bear markets.

• 58:46Speaker 00

  That's why I was saying, like, I mean, I think when all this stuff started, even if you believed in the QT narrative back in 2022, I don't think a lot of people thought it was gonna last this long, you know?

• 58:56David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 58:56Speaker 00

  I thought Bitcoin dominance could have topped as early or as late as January of 2025, but I also would have assumed that QT would have stopped by then. Because QT hasn't stopped, I'm like, alright, well, it could go higher. So, I get the sentiment. That's been my concern too, is like, the longer that it goes on for, it just doesn't really leave as much time for the rest of the industry to get that move, especially if we're gonna operate deterministically, which maybe we shouldn't do, but if we are gonna operate deterministically and say there's gonna be a bear market in 2026, then it just doesn't leave as much time to do that. So, actually, there was something similar happened, actually, in 1980, 1981. There was sort of like a brief drop, and then, in a recession, actually, it was a recession, a very brief one.

• 59:41Speaker 00

  The market didn't really drop that much, like, it was like 20% or something. And then, there was a big spike up to new high, and then there was another recession, it was like back-to-back recessions. That's what Volcker did, to get inflation under control. But, the low in the second drop was still a higher low compared to the first one, right? So, like, it could be ETH going to its regression band, getting a pop-up to a higher level at some point, hopefully this year. It could even be in 2026, I mean, in 2018, the all-time high for ETH was actually in the bear market year, right? And then, and then maybe it bleeds back down, but it just goes back to the regression band, and then continues to, you know, to put in higher lows, and then builds off of that into the next cycle, right?

• 1:00:26Speaker 00

  Into the 2027, 2028, 2029 cycle. But yeah, it's been a brutal cycle for ETH Bitcoin, and I do think if you look at the chart objectively... It seems like it's getting pretty low. I don't want to call a bottom, but I mean, it seems like it's getting pretty low.

• 1:00:42David Hoffman?

  Ben, this has been incredibly insightful and I feel very well informed post this. You give analysis like this quite frequently with your company, Into the Cryptoverse. So if people thought that this was particularly helpful, if they liked the sound of your voice and they want to hear more of it, where should they go? Tell them where they can find you.

• 1:01:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, into the crypto verse.com. We've got a ton of charts and the cool thing is we got a lot of ETH charts. I think a lot of people look at like the on-chain stuff for Bitcoin. We have all that stuff for ETH and a lot of altcoins as well.

• 1:01:14David Hoffman?

  Ben, really appreciate you spending time with me today. Appreciate it.

• 1:01:17Speaker 00

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:01:18David Hoffman?

  Bankless Station, you guys know the deal. Crypto is risky. ETH BTC is risky. We don't know what happens next. We like to talk about it, but none of this was financial advice. We are glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.