Clarity Act Progress Boosts Bitcoin | Trading the Markets w/ Kris Bullock

Odds of the Clarity Act's passage through the U. S. Senate briefly shot up above 50% on Polymarket before paring back, both underscoring the fragile nature of the bill’s political discourse and giving Bitcoin a much-needed boost to $67,000 — but is the price sustainable? Kris Bullock and Bijan Maleki get to the bottom of it on the latest Trading the Markets. Today’s sponsor is Plus500 US. Take your trading to the next level with cross-market contracts, from precious metals to key indices, and more. Whether you’re a seasoned trader in the Futures arena or brand new, Plus500’s user-friendly trading platform offers you the advanced tools, market insights, and quick execution you’ve been looking for. Get started with Plus500 for as little as $100 at https://us.plus500.com. Trading in futures involves the risk of loss. Monarch is the personal finance app that tracks everything – accounts, investments, savings, and spending. Use code REALVISION at Monarch.com to get your first year half off at just $50. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:05Speaker 00

  And we are live. Happy Wednesday, everyone, and welcome back to another edition of Trading the Markets. This is the show where we talk trades, we look at and we take your questions. So if you have any questions, just drop them here in the live chat on Discord or on the platform, or even on X, because we're live there as well, and we will try to get to as many as we can. So interesting news going on today in the market. The odds of the Clarity Act passing have increased. And then Bitcoin jumped up a bit on that, but then they both pulled back.

• 0:47Speaker 00

  So I don't know where we really are, but we're going to dive into all of that and and see where we are on that front. And I see the questions coming in. Yep, we're going to get to as many as possible. But Chris, happy Wednesday. What do we got today?

• 1:03Speaker 01

  So yeah, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about, you know, where Bitcoin is at to start with. There's been some good conversation in the Discord and the Hive Chat channel over the last couple of days that I'm going to kind of draw from. And so I want to talk about what Bitcoin is doing and why I'm a little bit skeptical as to how far this rally is going to go. And then I want to get into looking at sort of the financial conditions and and talk about what I need to see, like what exactly I'm looking for to feel confident in a much stronger, longer Bitcoin bull market. And so I want to talk about that. And then, yeah, then we'll get into all kinds of stuff. We'll talk about ETH, we'll talk about GTO and Ondo,

• 1:46Speaker 01

  and some other ones that are looking really good. And we'll talk about Hyperliquid and just get into it. Yeah. So that's what I've got for today.

• 1:55Speaker 00

  I love it. Let's add Canton to that list as well. Definitely want to chart them, what they're doing. I'm just front running the questions because I know we're going to get a Canton one, but Chris, dive into it. Take it away.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So looking at Bitcoin, like here we are, it does look good. Like I admit, we're on it. We have a nice rally going here. It's not too overextended. The D mark count is still low at only a three. Note that we are, let me turn my highlighter on, note that we are kind of right at a resistance level here, based off of this little cluster right here. But I like how we've kind of poked back up into this range, like we have, we had this Bitcoin here, and we lost that range and broke down and came, oops, and and set this new range here. And we've broken back up into it. And so far, we're holding. I mean, it's only one. Well, it's actually technically two days closed back up into this range. So I like that. That's bullish.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  We are seeing some, some good things happening here, like, and even if I go over to kind of my weekly, my weekly chart framework here and look at Bitcoin, it's, you know, it's on the verge of flipping a weekly megatrend signal, like it's above the line. It needs to close two weeks above this line, you know, with some momentum here. This is what I'm looking at right here. So it needs to close a couple above here with momentum. And then if we zoom in on this one here, this one also looks good. And in that it lost its red dot, typically these red dots are momentum signals. And so losing a red dot tells me that the downside momentum is waning, which of course is good. That's what we want to see.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  So like I said, it's, it's looking good. We also had, we had a trades flip green a couple of days ago, which is always a good sign. It generally does a really good job. I like that it it works more on the daily timeframe too. And so again, we're seeing positive things. But my, my sort of contention is that there are other things that I'm seeing that tells me that I don't know how much juice this really has. I don't know how far this is really going to go. I sort of suspect we're going to get another run up to maybe, you know, these moving averages here, either the 20 week or the 200 day and get rejected, kind of like we did here. And let me tell you why, let me, and this came up in the Discord yesterday.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  But the reason I think that is because of a couple of different things. One of them being ETF flows. We know over the last, however, long year-ish, whatever, the biggest marginal buyer of Bitcoin has been institutions. That's what's really kind of kept it going. And we know it's been, it's had multiple terrible weeks in a row. And actually, on the year, you know, year to date, we're, we're negative flows by about five and a half billion. And so over the last three weeks, it's just been barely flat. It's been barely into the positives, coming out of a bunch of several negative weeks in a row. So this is telling us that institutions dumped a bunch of Bitcoin,

• 4:58Speaker 01

  and then they haven't really been buying back. It's been very, very neutral. So if, if institutions are the biggest marginal buyer and they're not buying, well, what else, what else do we need? So we need retail buyers. So let's look at retail buyers. And one of the ways I like to gauge retail buying is by the Coinbase premium index. And what this tells us is the Coinbase premium index means is the price of Bitcoin higher than the, than the global average on Coinbase. And so if it's higher on Coinbase, that tells you that we're getting a strong retail bid from US buyers specifically. I mean, Coinbase is available in other countries too, but it's very US centric.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  And typically, in throughout Bitcoin's history, Bitcoin doesn't really sustain big rallies unless it's getting a strong buy, a strong bid from US retail buyer. You know, kind of like we had earlier in the year here, and then, you know, going back to some of the, the rallies that we had back in 2024. So right now, you can see it's very much in the negatives. This, this is telling us that there's people in the US aren't buying Bitcoin right now on Coinbase. And that's kind of, it's a good proxy gauge. Yes, it's not the, the be all, end all, but it's a good way to gauge just general sentiment of a strong contingent of Bitcoin buyers that helps propel and and fuel large uptrends.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  And so if, if US retail isn't buying, and if US institutions aren't buying, there's nothing really fueling this rally, other than just money coming out of stables, probably from people that had parked money in stables back around here and sold either a, you know, a few weeks back or a few months back, they're just pulling it out of stables and running it up. This is more like kind of short term price action coming from money that's already in crypto. And if we know for a bull market to run for months at a time, it can't just be money that's already parked in crypto. It's got to come from outside. It's got to come from institutions. It's got to come from your, your cousin or your, your sibling that asks you about Bitcoin, you know, and goes and makes a Coinbase account and starts buying Bitcoin.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  And it's not coming from that. We can see that it's not coming from that. So that's why I'm like, yeah, this is cool, but I don't think this is going to be the, the bottom. I don't think that this is going to be what sustains this rally into, into months into the future. And so I got a question on the Discord. Okay, well, if that's, if that's your take, then what will it take for that to be the case? What do we need to see inflows from ETFs? What do we need to see retail coming in? Like what, what conditions need to be in place for that to occur? And so I'll just kind of read my answer. I'll paraphrase it real quick, and then I'll dig into what that actually looks like from a chart standpoint. But quickly, I just said, I think the dollar index, the Dixie, needs to come down a good bit.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  I think global M2 needs to resume its uptrend. I think real yields need to ease a lot. I think I'd love to see an interest rate cut. I don't know that we'll get that, but that would certainly help too. And I, you know, ultimately, we just need the right financial conditions for big money to work its way out the risk curve. And so I'm going to spend a few minutes talking about what that looks like from a charting standpoint, so that you can look at that on your own chart and and sort of know when those conditions are coming into place. And so let's start, let's kind of start with real yields for a second.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  If I can find the right chart here, one of these. Here we go. Okay, so.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Real yields, what are real yields? Real yields are basically the yield you get, like the net yield you get after inflation. So like I say, you put your money in a bank, you make however much, 2%. Or you put your money in a bond, you know, you get 2% to 4%, give or take. But then when you subtract inflation from that, your real yield is actually whatever, around 2% give or take. And if we look at these, they're all hovering around between the one-year bond and the 30-year. They're all anywhere between like 1.83% and 2.9%. So that's the actual real yield. And so what happens is if inflation goes up or bond yields come down, or you know, some of those mechanics change, it makes it so that real yields actually dip into the negative.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  And that means that if you're holding your money in bonds or holding your money in a money market account or something like that, suddenly your yield isn't outpacing inflation. You're actually in the negative. And so when that condition occurs, it forces people to take their money out of these safe havens like money market accounts or bonds, and put them into riskier assets so that they can still get a return on their money. But if real yields are favorable, for people with a lot of money, go out the risk curve. Like, why would they go buy Bitcoin when they can make 4-ish percent on a bond? Or even real yields at around 2, almost 3% on a bond? You know, there's just less incentive for that. And so that's why we're not seeing money go out the risk curve

• 10:04Speaker 01

  into things like Bitcoin and gold or whatever. And that's why we're seeing these, all these assets not doing great. And so if we look, like, let me zoom in on this chart. These are the real yield charts. We can see they spiked up quite a bit over the last, you know, month plus, give or take. They've all run up quite a bit. And so when this happens, this makes the conditions less favorable for risk assets. And we can see, so I have this financial conditions index that I talk about a lot. And these real yields is just one component. There's four components of this financial conditions. There's real yields, there's credit spreads, which I'll get into in a second. There's the dollar, like the dollar index, and then there's equity volatility.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  And so I want to look real quick. Let me kind of shrink this. And let's talk about real yields. I've talked about this in the past and just sort of how it can impact Bitcoin and some interesting observations. If we go back and look, like, so up to round about, let's say, August of 2022. So in this, in this bear market of Bitcoin, this is kind of when everything, so right in here is when everything changed. We can see big bear market here. We can see real rates, real yields, whatever, running way up. But if you go back and look, and let me zoom in here. If you go back and look, in the entirety of Bitcoin's history, this chart only goes back to 2015.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  But in the entirety of Bitcoin's history, they were all like, real yields were favorable almost that entire time. They were all in this green, sort of good, favorable section. Where it's like, this was a lot of incentive for money to go way out the risk curve for all through this entire time, from like 2015 all the way to 2022. And then when we had this big change happen, that, you know, the sort of COVID big bull market peaked and rates started increasing. We can see this green line is interest rates. It kind of coincided with that obvious interest rate shot way up from zero all the way up to, you know, 4, whatever, 4% plus, 5%, 5.5%, and back down to 3.75.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  And so now, if you look, ever since that time, so this entire bear or bull market run that Bitcoin has had since 2023, since the beginning of 2023, real rates have never been back in that green section. They've never been down here. Like, the whole regime changed in that time, and it's never been back there. And so I think, maybe you might ask, well, if we've never been back down in this green section here, then how did we even get a bull market at all? Like, if these, if these conditions weren't favorable this entire time? And it's because there's, there's more to it than just yields. And I've talked about this on a number of shows. We know that like, barring a few very specific catalysts, like the ETFs that happened here

• 12:57Speaker 01

  and the Trump election that happened here, Bitcoin largely has gone sideways over the last three years. And if you were with us in that time, you remember that there were huge swaths of time, the boring zone, we would call it, in the moment, where it would, for months at a time, back in 2023, back in here, very, very boring. But in this whole huge stretch in 2024, from like March or April all the way into like October, we were bored out of our minds. Because again, nothing was favorable. The only thing that was really driving sort of price appreciation for Bitcoin were these unique catalysts that came along, like the ETFs, like the, like the Trump election, that sort of caused these, these independent rallies that caused us to sort of decouple

• 13:41Speaker 01

  from the financial conditions. So

• 13:44Speaker 00

  To note too, that those were narrative driven too, not really fundamentally driven.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Exactly, yes, very good, very good. So another thing, so oops. So what are the other financial conditions? How do they come into play?

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Let's see. Where is it? I've got to minimize here.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  So there's, there's other things. And, and also you can, you can see how, well, here, let me minimize this one.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  You can see how this one kind of measures all the, all those financial, and it gives them equal weighting. So there's, there's real yields, like I said, there's, there's credit spreads, there's dollar, and there's equity volatility. And so you can see where, even though real yields have been tight and restrictive, really for this entire stretch here, for literally this entire stretch, there's been plenty of periods where sort of the net financial conditions were eased and flowing and, and you know, positive for, for investment. And so that's because the other of those three conditions sort of outweighed the real yields. But we can still see that anytime we had a big green or a big red spike here

• 14:57Speaker 01

  in these financial conditions, it coincided with a big spike in, in real yields also. Like, right here, right here, you can see it was a spike, even just some of these little ones. Here and here was spike, a big one here, you know, a big spike here. And then in this, in this latest sort of regime here, we can see it's even, it's not even so much a spike, but it's, it's a proper trend upwards. So that's why when, like, if you look, for example, real quick, let me pivot this over to looking at,

• 15:29Speaker 01

  let's just say like the, the S&P. The S&P peaked kind of back here at the, at the beginning, end of May, beginning of June. And that was right when this flipped really red to the upside. But even in this sort of neutral phase right here, where it just wasn't strong enough to register either a full red bar or a full green bar, which is kind of barely neutral, it can be neutral and that can still be, that can sort of Goldilocks conditions. Because this was a huge rally in the S&P that literally stopped the day this flipped red. You know, that this flipped red. And so, and it coincided with a big spike in these real yields.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  So right now, what we're looking at, if I kind of go back to Bitcoin, what we're looking at is just, we need, we need all of this stuff to ease off. We need these to come down. Now, if there's a rate cut, that automatically changes the mathematical, mathematical equation. There's going to be automatically a dip in these. Because the, the rates, the bond yields and the savings yields automatically drop with a rate cut. So that would be cool, that would be ideal. But it will also drop with inflation dropping, which we can see that it is. So that's another mechanic of that component. So it might be getting there. If we look at the dollar, we can see that the dollar, let's, let's talk about the dollar for a second. Now, for the longest time in, say, the past, you know, well, year to date,

• 16:55Speaker 01

  and going back even more than a year, quite a bit more than a year, we can see that the dollar has really just been hovering in this long sideways range for many, many, many, many months. And just right around, you know, the beginning or the end of June, it broke out of this range that it had been in for all that time. And is now well, well, like entrenched above it. So this is putting pressure on this too. This is part of the problem as to why conditions all of a sudden suck and we're seeing downtrends in stocks and everything. And this is problematic. This is, this was a break from this regime that we had been in for a long period of time. And then if we look at Global M2, we can see too here how, yes, it's in a bit of an upswing now,

• 17:37Speaker 01

  but it too has largely just been trending sideways for, I mean, the, you know, April, I mean, the, since April, basically. And so

• 17:49Speaker 01

  We need this to break out. When I, when I said earlier, when I was reading my, my quote from yesterday, we need the global M2 to resume its uptrend, which it's kind of starting to, uh, but it still needs to set some higher highs. It hasn't really. So we need M2 to break out of its uptrend or break back into its uptrend. We need the, the dollar to come back down a lot, which I said, and we need real yields to, um, to drop back down. Oops. We need real yields to drop back down a lot. That will flip this to green. That create the conditions where it's no longer favorable for big money to be parked in safe haven assets like, like money market accounts and bonds, because suddenly they're not gonna

• 18:31Speaker 01

  be outpacing inflation with those investments and that will force that money out into risk assets. Right now, that's not what's happening. So that's, that's what we need to happen. That's what I'm looking for. So until that changes, there's no incentive for ETF buyers, for big money that buys ETFs to buy Bitcoin ETFs, because they can make adequate enough returns, uh, in completely risk-free assets. So that's what we're looking for. That's what I'm waiting for. All of those things. And so that's kind of, you can put, I've, I've put these, all these indicators are available in TradingView. I've talked about them in the past. Um, yeah, you can find them. Just search for,

• 19:15Speaker 01

  I, I think you can just search for my name, BlastoPlast. Um, and there's all kinds of, you know, the real yields monitor, there's the financial conditions, there's, there's all this stuff. It's all free in TradingView and you can watch these conditions and then you'll know. And so, now, that's not to say that like Bitcoin can't still go up or stocks can't still go up, but the problem is, is they're, they're, they're swimming against the current. So they have to have a much, much stronger narrative. They have to have much, much stronger sort of stimulus for them to outpace that, that undercurrent, you know? And so you want to be investing when financial conditions are loose and when everything is easy. Then it's easy mode, like I keep saying. Right now, we're not in that.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Um, it doesn't have to go full green. It can go just neutral and that still is plenty enough. Even in this, look at this Bitcoin rally here, um, was still in a neutral state. So even a neutral state is better than a red state and that's easy enough to sort of facilitate a rally. So that's why I keep saying, this, this isn't the time to be going all in. This isn't, this clearly isn't, uh, the start of a, of a bull market, because there's just no incentive for that money to be in Bitcoin right now. And so that's, that's what we're looking for. Those are the, those are the conditions that I think need to be in place and, uh, what needs to happen for, for all of that. So, um, that's, that's what I'm watching for.

• 20:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think that was, that was a good, good way to, to come about it, because I think that's kind of confusing a lot of people, right? If ETF flows are basically negative or just, you know, almost not coming in positive, right? Uh, retail is not buying. I think the, the, the general thought would be like, well, shouldn't Bitcoin be at like $30,000 based off of that? But it's like basically old money, for lack of a better term, the money that's already in stable coins is kind of what's propping us up at these levels and preventing us from, I guess, going down into that 40 range. Is that, is that a right way to kind of say it? It's like that old money and what we need to see is new money coming in, new buyers coming in from retail

• 21:25Speaker 00

  to start seeing that. And if we have, theoretically, if we have the new buyers coming in, we have the ETF flows kicking up again, and then we have, you know, global M2 rising, rates being cut down, all of those financial conditions, then it's game on.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Exactly. Exactly.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Okay. Now, you kind of basically answered this, but I want Luca to know that we are addressing his question right on. So this question came from Luca Rossi, um, great World Cup striker name, by the way. Uh, early before the show, Chris, in your last report, you said you had yet. Could you say if and when you are thinking to start? So Luca, that's basically, Chris, was that basically the conditions that you described that would make you start your DCA process? Or is there more to that?

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Yes. And, and that's a good question. I'm glad you asked that, because I, you know, you could argue I could have started it already. Um, but I do keep coming back to this, looking at this here and going, man, I just, I still, in my gut, I feel like there's, there's, you know, still weakness ahead of us. And so, um, I think, uh, you know, I'm gonna be looking for at least the first neutral, the first neutral candle I get on this. And I look at this on a weekly basis. So that's, it's not like a daily thing. I mean, you can look at it on a daily thing, but I, I, I think it's really weekly, weekly is better. But yeah, um, as soon as we start to see this, and that'll really kind of, you know, I'll look at the individual components too. I'd love to see the Dixie get back down

• 22:57Speaker 01

  under this sort of $100 or 100 threshold, rather. Um, that's gonna be a good sign for me too. And yeah, so that, we've, we've seen the VIX come down already. That's kind of leveled off. So that's been nice. Uh, here, the, you know, it was spiking up too and causing, causing problems in that financial conditions. So that's one thing that has eased off. That's, that's been good. Credit spreads have been good. So yeah, I'm really looking at the dollar, the dollar to come back down and, um, just those financial conditions to ease a little bit. And then I will likely, um, buy, buy a chunk. Uh, and so, and, and again, I'm, the reason too, I'm waiting is because I'm being patient and I still think that we're looking at like a September, October timeframe.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  And so I, I still think it's just a little bit too early is, is my thought there as well. So, uh, kind of all of those things together is why I haven't bought yet, but I think we're, we're getting close. Um, it, it's coming around. So we'll see. This, this latest CPI report that came in that, that resulted in this, this downtick here, um, in inflation is helpful. It's a step in the right direction. Um, I think the dollar is remaining high just because of what's going on in Iran. That's caused with, with oil and, you know, the oil prices. Um, that's impacting the dollar as well directly. And so there's a lot of moving parts, but, um, yeah, I'm just gonna kind of wade, wade through the noise a little bit and, uh, look for, look for a, a better entry.

• 24:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, the geopolitical situation's a lot harder one to, to gauge, because it seems like we change every 24 hours and we have a new direction we're looking at. So yeah, very tough to, to gauge that. Um, shall we start looking at some, some other charts? So I want to take, let's take this question first from Fel Froth, because it basically starts us at the top of the alt market. So, uh, interested in opinions on the recent performance of ETH?

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Um, I mean, yeah, from a technical standpoint, ETH looks good, like not, not gonna lie. Um, it's, it's maybe not quite as good as, as Bitcoin looks, but it's, you know, in a nice uptrend too. I think it's benefiting, it, it does have its own narrative. It's benefiting from increased on, on-chain activity. Um, you know, from like the, the Robin Hood, uh, L2 launch and, uh, I mean, uh, hyper liquid. There's a lot of stuff going on, on layer twos for Ethereum. Uh, I do come back to, and I talked about this a number of times, but I do come back to the idea that, um, I, not, none of that really accrues back to the base chain really that much.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  And so I question how much value we're gonna see on the base chain, like what reason is there to hold ETH? Uh, other than to pay for gas, but these, these layer twos are so efficient and so cheap and so fast that, you know, transactions are a fraction of a penny a piece. And so unlike last cycle, for example, when you needed ETH to buy NFTs and meme coins and all this stuff, and transactions were upwards of, well, I mean, right now they're around six cents a piece per a transaction, but there were times in the past where, I'm not gonna lie, I've paid $200 for an ETH transaction in the past, you know?

• 26:13Speaker 00

  Paid a lot more than that.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy. And so back then, it made sense that Ethereum would, would go sky high, because you needed so much ETH to participate in what was going on on the ETH blockchain. But ever since 2023, um, you know, when they switched to proof of stake, when they sort of shifted the incentives back over, or over towards the L2s, um, even more recently, they made another change that was even more favorable to layer twos. Um, and I can show you actually, let me, let me look at it here. It's, it's really, uh, painfully obvious by looking at an ETH BTC chart.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Um, so,

• 26:57Speaker 01

  oh, hold on, daily or weekly here?

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically, well, I even had it noted here. So this was Ethereum prior to proof of stake against Bitcoin. And you can see, I even have the lines drawn here. It was going straight up and it was because there were, NFTs were still huge at this point. Everybody was still trading NFTs even, you know, as late as whatever, September 2022. Literally the week of the shift to proof of stake, it marked the peak against the, on the ETH Bitcoin pair. That was, that was the end and it's never been the same ever since. And so it's just immediate, immediate downtrend, um, starting on the day of the, the proof of stake upgrade. And then they moved to this new, uh, Ethereum improvement, uh, product or proposal, rather.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  4484, which again gave more, uh, favorability, uh, incentive wise to layer twos. And then the, the downtrend accelerated that much more drastically against Bitcoin. And so you can see Ethereum has made a number of mechanical changes to their blockchain that have been tremendous from a technical standpoint, but have ruined it as an investment. And so, yes, it did kind of mean revert after this massive, massive downtrend, but it still has gone right back in line with the main trend, uh, and is, is trending down. So this is why I remain skeptical, uh, of ETH as an investment and, and why I'm skeptical of its current rally, even though it's getting some, some play and some, some narrative and some hype

• 28:29Speaker 01

  because of, because of the Robinhood tie-in and, and things like that. And I think that that will help it, but I'm still not seeing anything, uh, truly fundamental that, that is going to drive value to Ethereum in the way that it did prior to this, this major upgrade. Uh, and, and that hasn't, you know, that's been the case ever since then for years now. And so this was the product of a major fundamental change in how Ethereum is structured. And I think unless there is another major fundamental change in the way Ethereum is structured, this trend is going to continue. And so, um, yes, that's, that's my, that's my thoughts on ETH.

• 29:09Speaker 00

  What's ETH's current price right now?

• 29:11Speaker 01

  So if I go back to the USD pair, ETH's current price is 1935. And it's right at a, it's right at a resistance loss, that channel, just like Bitcoin did, broke back down and it's kind of back up against it as resistance at the moment. And that's not to say, I don't think ETH is dead. I'm not saying that at all. Again, from a technology standpoint, ETH is only going to get bigger, honestly, if you ask me. I think that it's still going to be the beneficiary of a lot of like, uh, real world, uh, tokenization of, you know, tokenization of real world assets. I think that we'll see, you know, equities trading on ETH, but I think it's all going to happen on layer twos. It's going to happen through the likes of Hyperliquid and Robinhood and places like that.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  And so ETH as a, as a blockchain, as a base layer, isn't going to benefit from that directly. And so, um, it'll go up because of speculative buying and for, probably from a fair amount of just ignorance. You know, honestly, people who don't necessarily understand the nuances of what drives this and, and why ETH is good or bad from a, from a technical standpoint, they're going to see, oh, it's the number two crypto. It's got a big ETF. It's got institutional buy-in. Um, so they're just, money's going to come in from that side of things. But once they realize, oh, wait a minute, it's not what I actually thought it was. And there's no value accrual to it in the same way that say there is with something like Hyperliquid, for example.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Then they're going to go, what am I, wait, what am I, why am I holding this? You know, what's, what's actually the deal here?

• 30:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think the proof of stake point you made is, is very like, you see it right on the chart, right? I think another couple of things also, and you touched on this as well with the NFT, um, craze era that we went through. I can't stress enough how much crazy volume was going on, on like the NFT space. OpenSea got a valuation of like $13 billion because of that era. So that just goes to show you like the crazy, uh, like gas wars that were going on. People were paying upwards of like three, four ETH during high gas moments to secure like mints and stuff like that. So just that, that played into it. And then also too, um, the competition for DeFi as well.

• 31:25Speaker 00

  Like during that cycle, ETH was like, I think that pretty much the only place that you could do DeFi in. But now like with the, the rise of Solana, DeFi and so many others, that I can't help but think that has also kind of rained on ETH's parade, if you will. So I think the combination of those three things, uh, doesn't really make me a lover of ETH. And I've, I've been publicly saying that as well. Uh, so yeah, there we go. Comment, I remember paying $1,900 in gas. So yeah, they lost those keys.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  When I did my taxes, I'm in 2021, I think it, I totaled about a little over $10,000 in gas fees, ETH, ETH gas fees.

• 32:04Speaker 00

  Just gas. And that's just one person. And like, would you consider yourself like, at that point, would you have considered yourself like a heavy NFT buyer? Heavy DeFi user or like?

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, totally. It was, I was all in DeFi, all in NFTs and, uh, and yeah, it was, that was just gas. You know, those ETF, I'm sorry, those NFT launches, those mints, you know, for like, um, art blocks and stuff like that. Some of those mints like that would sell out in seconds. You'd have to pay hundreds of dollars for a transaction all the time on stuff like that, just to, just to even get a mint, you know? And sometimes they would fail, you know?

• 32:44Speaker 00

  And you would lose the gas too. Don't even get me started.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Maddening.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. Uh, producer question came in. Would it make your institutions use the base chain rather than the L2s? So that in theory, what do you think about that?

• 33:03Speaker 01

  I think, well, I don't know. I, I pushed back on that a little bit because I think we're already seeing the likes of Hyperliquid and, uh, and Robinhood, for example, using their own L2s. As, you know, as a institutional, you know, to trade tokenized equities and things like that. And so, and the reason for that is because that way they have like a siloed, um, you know, like a siloed mechanism to process their own transactions. And they don't have to worry about like in times of high market volatility, um, you know, NFT mints or, or meme coin trading or stuff getting in the way of their liquidation engines, uh, working properly.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  You know, because it's siloed in their own air, um, you know, on their own L2, they can benefit from that, that way. And also it's much, much faster and much, much cheaper. Like right now, like a transaction on Hyperliquid is a teeny tiny fraction of a penny and it happens instantly. Whereas a transaction on the ETH base chain is, it's, it's six cents. Last I looked a few days ago and it, it's slower. So yeah, that's still cheap. I mean, sure, nobody's going to care if they pay six cents right now. I get that. But like, when we're talking about high frequency transactions on a major platform such as Hyperliquid or such as Robinhood, suddenly six cents a transaction adds up and that speed, uh, makes a big difference

• 34:27Speaker 01

  when you're talking about liquidations in, in volatile market situations and things like that. So I'm, I'm skeptical on them using the base chain in that scenario, especially when it's been proven that it's that much more effective, uh, both from a performance standpoint and a cost standpoint to use a layer two. And you still get the, the security and the, um, you know, the foundational security and decentralization and settlement of the base Ethereum layer. All of that still happens on the base Ethereum layer, but you get the performance and the cost efficiency of the layer two. So yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I see that.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  Fair enough. Thank you for the question. So I mean, I'm going to take this question here because we've been, you've been mentioning Robinhood a little bit and this is fresh. Question comes from Jordan on the water. Would you rather be holding Robinhood stock or Coinbase?

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Gut, well, just gut answer, I would say Robinhood. Now I'm going to look at the chart and we'll see what that looks like. Oh, well, I'll pull them both up. But the reason I say Robinhood is because, um, Coinbase tends to move more as crypto moves. And, um, Robinhood is, is more branched out. They're more of a tradFi thing than a crypto thing. And, and I think that they're going to benefit from having that broader tradFi audience and still having access to both stocks and crypto. But let's, let's look at the charts and see. So let's look at, we'll look at both and then we'll look at both independently and then we'll compare the two, uh, we'll overlay the two. So we'll say Coinbase, we'll see Coinbase here.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  And largely, like I said, Coinbase does as crypto does. And so Coinbase has been in a pretty, it looks a lot like the Bitcoin chart to me. You know, it peaked, it peaked on October 6th, just like Bitcoin did. It, it had a big rally. It's come back down and, um, it looks just like Bitcoin. It's almost neck and neck with Bitcoin. And let's look at, um,

• 36:33Speaker 01

  what is Robin? Oh, it's hood. Oops.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  If I can type here.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  If we look at Robinhood. Yeah, Robinhood just looks much stronger. Um, it's just in a much stronger overall uptrend. And yes, it, it, it also peaked around October, but it's already reclaimed its um major 20 week moving averages. Um, and it's, you know, it's in a much, much stronger uptrend. It's already setting much, much higher highs. It's like well and truly in a solid uptrend and it's been in a much solid, more solid uptrend overall. Um, and I think what they're doing with, uh, you know, starting that layer two and allowing people to trade uh, tokenized assets on chain and crypto on chain within the Robinhood ecosystem, I think is a really, really smart move for them.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Um, I like the fact that they built a layer two on Ethereum too. I think as opposed to doing it somewhere else, I think was a really smart move for them too. So overall, I just think that like Robinhood has a larger total adjustable market and a just kind of kind of going for it. Um, and now if we, let's look at the two compared to each other. So we'll do coin over hood.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  And okay, so this is Coinbase against Robinhood. And you can see Coinbase is just in a straight down only, basically. Um, so this kind of tells you all you need to know. Robinhood is far and away the, the better performer here, uh, the better investment. So that's pretty telling right there too.

• 38:06Speaker 00

  All right. There you have it. Uh, I'm going to take this next question, uh, just because we're on the would you rather portion, I guess. You have 5,000 pounds, not dollars, 5,000 quid to invest today. Aerodrome or hype?

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Um, well, let me just look at the charts and I'll tell you what is the better looking chart. Um,

• 38:33Speaker 01

  and I'll do it through a couple of different lenses. Let's look at aerodrome first. So, um,

• 38:40Speaker 01

  I mean, aerodrome looks good, like it's forming a bottoming pattern. I like what I'm seeing here in the sense that, uh, we've got a solid bottoming pattern. Oops.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  It held this level, it held its support level that it established way back here, which I think was a good sign. It came back, it broke out, you know, we got this breakout, came back, tested this level of support again, and then broke out with a higher high and so far a higher low that's holding on this moving average. So on a weekly standpoint, this is slowly turning back into an uptrend. Like we're back above the, the big 20 week moving average. We flipped it to an uptrend. It's now pointed back to the upside. So this is, this is something that's bankable. This is something that you could, you could trade on. This is like, this is, this is breakout, retest confirmation, higher high, higher low, holding support. Like that's, that's as good of a technical sort of uh setup as you're, as you can get there.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  So that's objectively good. Um, let's look at hyper liquid. We know hyper liquid is obviously in a different ballpark, a whole different conversation because it's been in a screaming uptrend. All, I mean, all the, the beginning of the year, basically, it never

• 40:04Speaker 01

  20 week moving average. Uh, so it's, yeah, it, it kind of got way over, overextended up in this range here. And it's, this overextension has caused it to just chop sideways and sort of consolidate. And I think we're just in this major consolidation period off the back of this breakout and it's going to take a while. And, and I'm not going to be surprised to see this moving average here, this 20 week moving average, the red line, kind of meet up with the price action. And then we'll see a resumption of the uptrend. So that's really what I'm looking for here. And that's kind of, we were talking right before the show started that I was hoping that hyper liquid got down to the $50 ish range because I think that would be solid.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  You can see that that $50 range coincides almost perfectly with this 20 week moving average. In fact, let me look at the number here. That right now, that number is right at $52.53. So that would be more or less spot on. So for it to come back down and touch would, would constitute like a proper mean reversion in this larger uptrend. And we know anytime we can get a touch on a big moving average, like the, the 20 day or even the 20 weeks even better, that that's always, not always, but more often than not, that's a good sort of bouncing level. And so that's kind of what I'm looking for here. Now, do we get it? Of course, nobody knows. We, we could bounce from right here. Um, but I like, I kind of like what I'm seeing here.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  So two very different setups. One is a, a, you know, a breakout, retests, you know, higher high, higher low, retest again, which is constructive. Um, this is still in a bit of a corrective phase. Um, and like I said, there's a decent chance that, you know, we could get a touch back down to, to this uh 20 week moving average. So it's not, it's not quite an apples to apples comparison. We're looking at two different things like this. This is more of a wait and see, kind of hold your breath and hope that it gets back down. Whereas the aerodrome is more like a um, this is a nice bounce off this moving average already. And so let, let's look at this kind of on a daily timeframe. And so

• 42:15Speaker 01

  what I'd be looking for here is, um, you know, to like flip this daily trend and get back above this 20 day moving average here. Like if it can do that and better yet, if it can get above this, um, this dash line here, which is right around like the 56 cents level and show that it can put in an even higher high still. Um, that's sort of, that's the continuation I'd be looking for. So neither of them, I think, is right at a buy trigger. This one, it needs to get a little bit higher. And I think hyper liquid, it needs to get a little bit lower. Um, and, uh, and then they'd be sort of in ideal technical setups for, for, you know, a buy.

• 42:58Speaker 00

  So they're both in those technical setups. Which one would you lean towards?

• 43:05Speaker 00

  I love hype and I've called hype the coin of this year, but part of me for this particular scenario likes aerodrome because of its market cap, its tie into Coinbase. I could see that real room to grow, whereas like I think hype's obviously still going to grow. I think they're going to, I put a crazy price target on them. Um, but I don't know if that, if that room to grow is, has as much room as aerodrome in my opinion of this at this age right now.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Sure, sure. That's a totally fair take. I mean, it's, yeah, it's still down from its all time high, like it's still down from its, its launch price. Um, but certainly you can't argue with this uptrend. I mean, it's, it, it's in a weekly uptrend and that's, that's kind of all you need to know. Uh, I think it looks good. And so, yeah, um, this objectively is a good looking uptrending chart on a weekly timeframe. So I, yeah. So, I mean, kind of simple as that, really.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  I, I can't tell you where you should buy or sell, but like, is this something that would qualify as something that, you know, I would look at? Yeah, sure. Like anything that's in a weekly uptrend right now, because very little is, is something that is worth considering. And so it is definitely that. Obviously there's something a little fishy with this volume candle, volume spike here, but um, and I don't really know anything about this project, so I can't speak to it in terms of fundamentals. But the fact that it's maintaining an uptrend uh on the year while most things are not, uh, you know, tells me that the market, for whatever reason, deems that it's worthy. And so that kind of is in crypto, all you need to know is a lot of times people invest in stuff

• 44:52Speaker 01

  based off of a, a fundamental thesis and the market hates it and they just watch it keep going down. And so a lot of times it doesn't always matter what the fundamental thesis is. If the market likes it, the market's going to keep buying it. And as long as you sort of just watch the technicals and trade the trends, you're going to benefit from it. And so that's what's happening here right now. And, um, just keep watching the weekly trend and trading the weekly trend. And as soon as it loses it, then then get out of it. But otherwise, um, the trend is your friend.

• 45:23Speaker 00

  The trend is your friend. Uh, thank you for the, well, Lance, ask him yourself, because I think he's in, he's in this chat right here.

• 45:38Speaker 00

  Colin, they want to know if you are the Colin from Sheffield. Uh, so please, please respond in the chat kindly.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  Okay, next question comes from Dinko. Can you take a look at SoFi, please?

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:00Speaker 00

  He just asked him in the chat. I love this. This is the great, uh, the benefits of a live show, guys. Live show with a live chat.

• 46:14Speaker 00

  And just speaking, just to tie the knot on derive, Jamie Coutts recently did a, an interview with the derive co-founder. Check that out on the Real Vision platform. And he also did a deep dive report as well on derive. So if you want more like in-depth derive stuff, check out Jamie's recent interview and work. All right.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  So I mean, SoFi looks, looks, it's actually looking pretty good right now. Like looking at it through this framework, it's triggered to buy, it triggered to buy actually back here around the week of June 8th or so. And it's been slowly, you know, ramping back up. It's, it's holding the, the new mega trend in green. It's kind of is, is sort of ticking all the boxes, as I like to say here, like this is, this is positive. This would be a, a kind of a buy signal for me. Looking at this one here, also the fact that it, right around that same time, lost its red dots and is sort of holding, it's, it's more of a neutral state. I will say like this, this track line here is yellow, which means it's, it's neutral.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  It's not showing a ton of like upside momentum, but it's holding its ground, I would say. It's holding its ground. It's starting to, the downward momentum has gone away and it's sort of just holding steady with a, with a bit of a slant to the upside. So it looks good here. It looks, it looks good enough here. And then we're seeing here over on this one, if we look, it has reclaimed the 20-week moving average, which is this, this red line here. So it's reclaimed that. And it's kind of, it's in the process of shifting this to a weekly uptrend. It's, it's doing what it needs to do and then it's trading above these two moving averages and holding them as support, you know,

• 48:02Speaker 01

  on the upside. And I like the fact that the RSI is also putting in higher highs too. So again, showing all of the requisite signs of strength. It's just not enough. Now, when you say you bought, does that mean you like went all in? Or did you just sort of, you know, buy, buy a little chunk? If you went all in, what I would say to that is you, you might, you might be in for a rocky ride. You might be in for a bit of a roller coaster over the next few months.

• 48:35Speaker 00

  But he always goes all in. He said, I love it. So no in-between. It's one or the other. I like it.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Then just expect volatility is what I'll say to that. You know, I think you'll probably come out the other side. Okay. It's not like you bought, you know, something that's number 800 on the, the market cap or what, I'm just picking a number, whatever. But like you bought, you bought known sort of blue chippy reputable crypto assets. You'll probably be fine. You know, are you gonna have to wait a little bit? Probably. But just what I would say is if you did in fact go all in, don't, you know, don't panic, sell the lows if it drops down lower. We've been talking about for weeks or even months now that there's a real viable chance that, that Bitcoin could get down

• 49:23Speaker 01

  into this lower 50s range, potentially even lower than that. So know that that is something that is a plausible scenario that's looming in the coming days and weeks and months. Maybe we don't have that happen. Maybe the bottom is in and you did great. But yeah, just expect volatility is, is what I can say.

• 49:46Speaker 00

  There you have it. Lovely. Um, question about your indicators, Chris. Loopy wants to know, how do we find Chris's indicators? Can't find them under blast o class.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Here, I'll tell you what, what I'll do. Let me just grab one of them here. I'll just pick this one.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  Uh, oh, not that one. Maybe this one.

• 50:12Speaker 00

  And while we're actually, while we're on the indicator question, because I know you have, you have quite a few in your suite of tools that you use, and you've even created a few as well. You can check that out on our AI show if you want to know the ones that Chris created and how he did it. But if you were like, so if somebody like, I guess, I don't want to say new, but like, yeah, let's say new was coming in to get started, right? I think maybe too many indicators can probably be overwhelming for them. Like what would you say, maybe like a couple of indicators that they can start out with to keep things simplified for them? That also gives them good signals.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Ones that I've made or just in general?

• 50:52Speaker 00

  Especially in general, like in your tool, like that you would just, you know, maybe recommend to someone new or, you know?

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Yes. That's a, that's an excellent question. I'll get to that in a second. So what I just

• 51:11Speaker 01

  You'll see my name over here. It'll look like this. Just click my name from here and this should get you to all of the stuff that I've published, like under scripts here. Yeah. So that'll, mind you, some of these are stupid and I don't use them anymore. Like I've, I've vibe coded. Well, you can see quite a few. Some of them are more useful than others. Some of them I vibe code and I'll throw them on and then a week later I'm like, yeah, this was kind of stupid. But then other ones that they've really stuck and they've actually done really well for me. So this is where they're, they're all at. I don't know how to link to this page though, unfortunately. But like I said, you

• 51:53Speaker 01

  can get to it by clicking my name when you click the link that I just shared in the Discord. I'll see if I can find a way to click to get to this page. I should know, but I don't. So.

• 52:05Speaker 00

  If he finds a way, he'll share it in the comments of the, of the, of the video on platforms. You guys can check it out.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  So, but yeah, no, getting back to your, so getting back to your question, honestly, more than anything, the thing that I, I've benefited the most from, and this, this might even sound kind of dumb, but it's just moving averages. Like literally, you can, you can do everything you need to do with just moving averages. Like if I go on, like if I'm on Dex Tools, for example, and I, you know, I'm on this stupid trading view interface on Dex Tools, and I'm just, I'm gonna figure out what's going on here. The first thing I'll do is I'll just put two moving averages on here, a 10 bar and a 20 bar. And, and that kind of tells me, because with a 10 bar and a 20 bar, it works on any timeframe. You can look at it on the weekly, you can look at it on the daily,

• 52:57Speaker 01

  you can look at it on the hourly, and it tells you when trends are gaining steam, losing steam, rolling over, reversing, all of that stuff. And if you're trying to trade any kind of a trend, all you need to do is just throw up, or just, and you can do the 10 and the 20, you can do the 20 and the 50, you can do the 50 and the two. It doesn't really matter. Just pick two that work for you. I kind of prefer the 10 and the 20, but just find some and go with it. And then just look at how they interact with each other. You, like for example, here, this, when, when the 10 crosses over the 20, this tells you that the, the trend has reversed. This, this sort of sideways chop has confirmed a breakout. And now we are in an uptrend and you can see when they sort of get

• 53:41Speaker 01

  further and further. And so when we get a mean reversion back to the 20, that oftentimes, usually more so on the daily than on the weekly, but that tells you that we're, we're getting a retest, a refueling, if you will. And it's, most of the time on the, is at the 10 bar moving average and not the 20, like it did right here, you can see. Or like right here. But, but yeah. So and then like, if we look at on the daily, again, of course, it's going to be more noisy because it's going to tell you when daily trends reverse and, and change. But still, you can see how it's helpful. If prices above both of these moving averages and both of these moving averages are pointed to

• 54:24Speaker 01

  the upside, that's good. And if you buy on the breakout, whenever it breaks out and, and ride that up, that's bad. And then the minute it closes, or rather, I should say, the first sort of daily candle close you get below the 20 is likely going to be a trend reversal more often than not. Don't do it intraday. Wait for a full daily close. So like if you zoom in, you can see it, it was below it here, but it didn't actually close below it on this candle. And then it bumped up again. It wasn't really until this final one here that it actually closed below it. And then sure enough, that marked the reversal of the trend. And so if you, if you sort of buy on breakouts of the 20 and sell on, on, you know, breakdowns below it, you'll, you'll, you'll win

• 55:08Speaker 01

  more often than not. It's very simple. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. And, and literally, I, I mean, of course you see I use all kinds of stuff. But if I just was whatever, on a desert island and I had one indicator to pick, I know that sounds stupid. I would pick two moving averages and I, I feel like I could, I could do what I needed to do with that. Anything else beyond that is just adding a little bit more nuance, is just making it so that you can extract maybe that, that much more out of the highs and buy that much closer.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Kind of what I'm looking for.

• 55:43Speaker 00

  Okay. Last question to wrap up today's show comes from Dennis on the website. Would you consider the Clarity Act sell the news event overall? Do you have scenarios if it passes and if it doesn't?

• 56:00Speaker 01

  Um, well, I don't, I mean, in terms of sell the news, I don't, it's hard for me to say because there's a lot of traders that are going to trade around that. I think how I look at the Clarity Act more is, um, we, we ultimately need the Clarity Act to pass for like long, long-term sustainability of the crypto space. I think if it doesn't pass, it's going to be problematic more from just a larger overall regulatory standpoint, not from like a intraday technical standpoint. So I don't know that I want to trade around it like that, but it's something that we need. But at the same time, you know, right now, we don't have it right now today and everything is working, well,

• 56:46Speaker 01

  relatively fine, whatever that means. Everything is working at the moment. So it's not like crypto is going to break if it doesn't pass. You know, eventually we'll get some regulatory framework in place at some point. Certainly if it doesn't pass this time around, it leaves it vulnerable to future, whatever administrations coming in and drastically changing the rules from what they are or what they're proposed to be right now. But like, if it doesn't pass today, it's not going to mechanically break crypto today. But if it does pass today, it will pave the way for clarity and stability going forward is, is kind of how I look at it, you know? I don't know if that answers your question.

• 57:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, my gut, my gut tells me at least initially, it is going to be a sell the news event because that's typically how the, I mean, look, look at what we just saw with Bitcoin when you were charting at based off of the ETF news and the Trump, the Trump bump that we got when he was elected. I think this will kind of go the same way where if it does get passed, you're probably going to see like money flowing in and like, you know, people like thinking this is it up only as these things typically tend to do. And then you'll probably see a reversion from that initial euphoria. And then a few, and when that dust settles down, that'll probably be like the real good time to actually buy if it passes. Anyway, that's my thoughts on it. But I'm not, like you

• 58:14Speaker 00

  said, like, I'm not trading around it. It's just crazy. There you have it. All right, guys. That'll do it for this week's edition of Trading the Markets. Thank you everyone for your questions. Playback will be live on the platform or on the platform. So check that out. No show, no AI show on Monday, but we'll see you guys again next week. Have a great weekend, everyone. Enjoy the dog days of summer and, you know, carry the conversations here in the Discord and on platform through, through notes and trade ideas. We want to see you guys discussing great things. So until then, everyone, don't fuck this up. Have a great week.