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Our weekly show is hosted by Michael Nadeau (The DeFi Report) and Ryan Sean Adams (Bankless). Each week, we discuss how we approach managing our own portfolio and the data, research, and analytical frameworks that inform those decisions — for educational and informational purposes.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:10] Do we have an early bull reset on our hands? That is the question. Welcome to The Report. It is October 14, 2026. The question today, what does an early bull market actually feel like? We're going to compare early 2023 to late 2026, where we are now, and kind of assess how we should be tracking and how we should be feeling. And spoiler alert, it might feel a little bit worse than you think.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:39] When we say the words early bull, it makes you feel, I don't know, exuberant, bullish. But early bulls don't always play out like that. We'll talk about why. And also the key price signal of the era, why it's the 50-week moving average. Bitcoin's 50-week moving average is the number to watch. There's also some early bull reset opportunities at hand. We have altcoins down on the month and down further into October. So there's some alpha in today's report, an emerging possibility on what could be the Solana of this cycle. Mike gives a probabilistic take there. Also, altcoin cooldown, what are the best altcoins in this cooldown opportunity bracket? Stick around to the end. We'll discuss the quality names in Mike's portfolio. The things he's thinking are now sitting at oversell levels, these reset opportunities. Okay, Mike, in today's report, I think here's the line that got me. I think we've been bulled up since early September. And then you compared, you went back and you looked at 2023 at the same time, the early bull period of last cycle, and you wrote this. In 2023, from the exact spot we're in now, Bitcoin chopped sideways for nearly seven months, including two negative 17% corrections that played out over roughly two months each. Chopped sideways, down twice, 17% corrections.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[2:08] I got to say, sometimes I feel sideways markets are just harder than when the assets are going up or down, because at least you get some movement. You feel like something's happening. But what you're saying is 2023 was kind of an apathy type market. So let's talk to the investor listening from an emotional standpoint, I guess. Take us back to 2023. I know you were there. What did the early bull market feel like then? And how are you parlaying that into now?
Michael Nadeau:
[2:38] Great question. And yeah, we're in an interesting spot here right now. I think if you go back to the early bull period back, this is really kind of February, March period, 2023, emerging out of FTX. At least the feeling to me, and I'm curious what you think, like it feels a little bit more euphoric going into this early bull fear. It felt a little bit more euphoric to me than what we saw back in 2023. And what I've been doing is just kind of, now that we've got this little reset, just kind of looking at a bunch of different metrics out there and trying to forecast what this could look like. You mentioned like a lot of chop back in 2023. So, you know, we kind of had the initial move similar to what we saw in August. We had like a 40% move off the lows. This occurred in January of 2023. And then we kind of like held the 50-week moving average, but there was a lot of stuff going on in macro back then as well. People might recall the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. The Fed was hiking rates. A lot of banks were coming under pressure. And we actually had policy intervention at that time as well. A new program was set up to help the banks through that period.
Michael Nadeau:
[3:54] So and inflation was above target at that time as well. So the kind of macro setup was somewhat similar to what we have today. We just had a high CPI print come in today as well, 3.7% above expected.
Michael Nadeau:
[4:09] So to me, like kind of going back and looking at that period, looking at the performance of altcoins, looking at the performance of Bitcoin, and trying to forecast this through, What we can say is that during that period, Bitcoin was able to hold its 50-week moving average, kind of a similar setup to what we have today, where you've got the macro noise out there, but you also have Bitcoin in a spot where we've just kind of reset the leverage from the past cycle. We've reset the holder base. We're in a better sort of position in terms of just the foundation of holders. So kind of have that same setup but then also have the macro uncertainty swirling out there as well so The takeaway for me is like, yes, we're in the early bull and I still firmly, you know, believe that's the case still 90% on that. But I think the euphoria needs to sort of kind of come into like, maybe a little bit more, you know, more tamed view of sort of what's going to play out here. And I think there's a chance that we could be in a period of chop here. I'm sort of thinking that we could be in a period where we will see Bitcoin move between 80 and 95K or so and kind of bounce around there and kind of chop people up before we see the next move. And I think the macro uncertainty and just kind of where we're at in the cycle would support that, you know, right now.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[5:29] And I think those who are here in 2023 would also validate what you just said, which is the early bull market in 2023 didn't feel particularly bullish. There was always some macro FUD in the air out there. We were worried about these bank runs back in March 2023. We didn't know where that would go. CPI was printing hot, no signs of slowing. The Fed was raising rates. And in the backdrop, you had kind of like Gary Gensler, FUD from that perspective. You were just trading sideways. It felt apathetic. It didn't feel bullish. That's the thing. It is normal for an early bull market to not feel particularly bullish at the time. And that's how this might come apace as well. Let's check in on Bitcoin. At the time of recording, we are down about 2%, about 82K.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[6:18] The portfolio, of course, the TDR portfolio is still up 2.5X on non-Bitcoin positions, but still down 33% from some of the September highs. I want to start where you start today's report, which is this chart right here. Comparing the early bull in 2023 to the current setup. And you have the Bitcoin price, and this is the pink line here. And then you have a blue line that shows the 50-week moving average for Bitcoin. And then there's a little arrow sometime in, is that the beginning of 2023, end of 2022, that says, we are here today. Explain this chart for us.
Michael Nadeau:
[6:59] So, you know, we've moved off the low. So we established the low in the last cycle at the end of November. So November 21, I believe, was the cycle low. And it took about three months for Bitcoin to actually break out and move above the 50-week moving average, which is the blue line there. What we've seen in this cycle is we saw the low on 630, and we've actually broken out in a little bit of a faster, a little bit faster, about a month faster. We've moved above that 50-week moving average. And we've kind of had the move above it. We've had a little bit of a correction. And you can kind of see a similar dynamic that was playing out back in early 2023. So to me, this is kind of the big picture setup here. I think early bull, if you look at that chart, you can see there was a couple of years of expansion ahead of us for Bitcoin. I believe that is the same sort of setup that we see today. But as you can see where that kind of red arrow is there, if you look at the pink line, the Bitcoin price there, and you just kind of look out, we kind of chopped through the end of the year. It was up a little bit. It was down a little bit. We had two 17% corrections that lasted about two months each. And then really what sort of cleared it, and I think the kind of clearing moment for Bitcoin was inflation actually started to come down again into the middle of 2023.
Michael Nadeau:
[8:29] And the Fed went on sort of a long sort of pause in terms of rate hikes. They weren't cutting rates. They didn't cut until September of 2024. Yeah. But I think the wall of worry in terms of where the market was at was that, okay, inflation is starting to roll over now. There was some volatility in that as well through the summer months in 2023. But once we had that clearing event, that's what kicked off sort of the wealth creation phase, which started in like October of 2023. So we had this, we sort of moved off the lows, reclaimed the 50-week moving average, and then had this period of uncertainty, this period of chop for about seven months, macro sort of cleared, and then we sort of inflected into the wealth creation phase. That was when, like a lot of altcoins, that was kind of the strongest moment, I would say, in the last cycle, probably from like October 23 through October 2024 into like Q4 24, probably the strongest period for altcoins. We'll talk about Bitcoin dominance and kind of what I'm looking at there. But that was kind of the setup. And, you know, it just feels like we're kind of in a similar market structure and macro setup today.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:44] Yeah, it does. Well, it does. I mean, the parallels are kind of a little uncanny. So we want to, you know, you probably want to look at this and you're not saying that history is going to repeat exactly. But let's go under the thesis for today's report that it rhymes. We have a lot of similarities. We have the Fed raising in 2023. They raised by 1%. So there are four different raises. CPI started 2023 at 6.4%. It fell to 3%. And then by September, it re-spiked up to 3.7%. So there's persistent inflation in the air. The Fed was hiking. Where was that going to go?
Ryan Sean Adams:
[10:22] Let's say history does rhyme and it plays out similarly. So something like seven months of CHOP, something like some big dip sell-offs followed by some recoveries, but still this kind of like sideways chop, the barting type of effect that you see on the charts. What does that actually look like in terms of the range that Bitcoin is in through this time? Because what you notice on this chart, of course, in 2023, is once we pass the 50-week moving average, we stayed above the 50-week moving average for the entirety of the early bull kind of bounced close to it, but bounced off it. And that is, of course, even while the 50-week moving average from a numerical perspective is kind of like going down because the last 50 weeks have been lower priced than things are now. So anyway, extrapolate this forward. What would it look like? What would the prices look like? And how long could this last?
Michael Nadeau:
[11:23] Yeah. So nobody can predict the markets, but, you know, if we kind of follow this similar path that we did in 23 with the macro uncertainty in the air, inflation, you know, we didn't have a war back then. So that is that is the next factor. But we also had Ukraine,
Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:38] Though. We did have Ukraine.
Michael Nadeau:
[11:39] That's true. That's true. That's true. We did have Ukraine. And that was what was driving a lot of inflation at the time. Um so what happened back then you know we kind of you know we came off the lows the low low was 16k or so we bounced up to 25 and then we kind of just like bounced in this range between 23 and 30k or so all the way until october so i think uh what i what i could see here is uh we've sort of seen a mean reversion i would say um in terms of in terms of bitcoin momentum so since you know we moved off since we had that movement in august bitcoin if you look at the momentum you look at the rsi it's been trading kind of in an overbought zone we've now sort of mean reverted off that we're kind of neutral right now so um we could still see potentially more weakness we're seeing some of that today um but it looks like we're holding 80k or so right now so we'll see i'm looking to see 80k um hold as support and and then potentially a move uh up past 90k and i think that's going to,
Michael Nadeau:
[12:43] You know, get people very excited again. I think people will be looking at 100k and reclaiming that. And you can imagine just sort of the wave of these waves of fear and greed sort of reversing into greed if we go up to 90k. And I could see that happening in the coming months. Once we get up there, I think that'll be the interesting setup where if this macro situation still hasn't cleared
Michael Nadeau:
[13:08] And the Fed still hasn't given the all clear in terms of pausing or what's going to happen with rate hikes, I could see potentially then another, then a drawdown back down to kind of where we are today, back closer to the 50-week moving average. This was kind of the pattern that played out in 23. So, That's kind of, you know, we're mean reverting. We'll see, you know, if this continues, if this weakness continues. And then, you know, that's the point where we'll probably see peak fear. That's probably then when you get the move up to 90. And then we'll see if what's going on in macro and if the market, if the wall of worry continues to be climbed at that level, or if we end up with some negative news and we come down and shop around. So that's kind of what I think is playing out here. Bitcoin, ETH, SOL, like the majors, those charts and the market structure to me looks very healthy. Right now, we have seen a very large reset in terms of Robinhood chain and some of these areas where there was quite a bit of speculation over the summer and into September. We talked about how that sort of moved into like what I'm calling quality altcoins. We saw sort of an alt season in September as well. Um,
Michael Nadeau:
[14:23] And so, you know, there's been a little bit of a reset there, but I think that that's also healthy. And it's just kind of like establishing a stronger base of holders for some of these coins at elevated levels off the lows, but still, you know, well below prior cycle highs and that type of thing. So to me, this is like a pretty healthy setup, but there is these risks out there with inflation, the war, multiple wars going on.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:48] It's a healthy setup, and it's also, there's some reset opportunities here, which you talk about later in the report, which we'll get to. I want to make sure we, what is the 50-week moving average, by the way, right now? And it's dropping, of course.
Michael Nadeau:
[15:02] It's, I believe, 77.2K.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[15:05] Okay. And you're right, we expect the 50-week moving average to ultimately bottom around 75K. That would sort of match when it bottomed in the previous cycle. It bottomed almost 200 days from the cycle low. And that sort of puts us in a band, you're hoping, above 80K. But you also write this, we believe the equivalent zone above the 50-week moving average for this early bull phase is between 78K and 92K. Would it be fair to say if an investor has dry powder, say, for Bitcoin buys on the sidelines and the 50-week moving average doesn't go below 75K or so? That you want to look for limit orders above 75K. Again, it may not play out the same way it played out last time, but if you're assuming it does, then you're going to want those buys to be above 75K.
Michael Nadeau:
[16:01] I think that's fair. I think that's like a fair strategy. Not the type of thing that I do, but I think going below 75K seems like a pretty bearish case and that would sort of break, I would think, a lot of this sort of bullish market structure that we have right now. So I think that's fair to sort of eye that zone and assume that we probably trade above that. So yeah, I think that's a fair way to play this setup right now.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[16:25] Well, then let's talk about where the opportunities to outperform Bitcoin actually are, because I know that's what you're all about. Of course, you have some Bitcoin in the portfolio, but the whole aim of the TDR portfolio and what you do is to actually outperform Bitcoin. For that, maybe we need to bring in the story of Bitcoin dominance and what happened last cycle and what we're seeing now and the surprising strength of altcoins this early in the cycle. Give us the highlights here. What do you think Bitcoin dominance and the strength of altcoins is showing us so far?
Michael Nadeau:
[16:57] Yeah, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about this. In the last cycle, you can see in that chart there, the first chart, Bitcoin dominance is basically in a bull market, like the entire cycle, last cycle. And we've talked a little bit about this in the past. In some ways, this was confirming sort of the Bitcoin maxi view that Bitcoin was going to like swallow the altcoin space, and that you're better off just holding Bitcoin because it's growing in share over time. And that was true in the last cycle. I'm not sure that's going to be true this cycle. I think last cycle was sort of interesting from the perspective that we didn't have like as many quality projects, quality all coin projects. We didn't have these newer token economic structures in which value is actually accruing back to tokens instead of just like pure dilution for like these governance tokens that were swirling at the time in the last cycle. So I think it kind of makes sense to me that Bitcoin dominance was stronger. We also started from a much lower point in the last cycle. And so that's one thing that I'm thinking a lot about is like, does this, does Bitcoin dominance have to lead?
Michael Nadeau:
[18:13] And is it possible that we see altcoins actually re-rate relative to Bitcoin? Something I'm still forming my views on this, but that's something that I've been thinking a little bit about. But just to get to this chart and kind of like how this played out in the past, typically what we see is Bitcoin dominance will lead us, you know, out of the early bull phase. And that's what played out in 23. We haven't seen that so far in this early bull phase. And I think it's because of this outperformance from quality altcoins in the space, you know, Zcash, Hyperliquid, LIT, NIR, all of these tokens that have done quite well
Michael Nadeau:
[18:55] Over even going back to sort of, you know, over the summer months. And so I think that's what's going on. We've had a stronger alt season to kick off this early bull. Bitcoin is strong, right? Bitcoin is holding its ground. It's above the 50-week moving average. And so basically Bitcoin dominance has been flat. You can see on the right side of the chart there, we really haven't seen a move. We're right around 60% right now. So I sort of think because of the move we saw from alts, we're already seeing sort of that mean reversion take place. Bitcoin dominance looks like it wants to inflect up a little bit here. So I'm kind of thinking we're in a part of the cycle here where Bitcoin dominance should start to rise a little bit over the coming months.
Michael Nadeau:
[19:39] And then that creates the setup for potentially another move from all coins. And so that's kind of how I'm thinking about this. But I think the big X factor for this cycle is this idea of like, is that chart, is that Bitcoin dominance chart going to look like that for this cycle? And I kind of question whether that's going to be the case. But the other thing as a cycle investor that I'm always thinking about is just these rotations, how capital rotates within the crypto markets during cycles. And what we've typically seen in the past is Bitcoin, capital flows to Bitcoin first, and then you see a big move from all coins. And then Bitcoin dominance starts to kind of level off during that period. And then you have another move. So there's these sort of waves of the way that capital moves within the markets. This cycle could be a little different. There's a lot of products out there that allow investors to get access to other crypto assets outside of just Bitcoin. You know, Bitcoin was kind of like one of the only ones last cycle with the ETF. Then we had Ethereum and others. So kind of the X factor. But I think right now we're in a stage where Bitcoin dominance should start to move up a little bit.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:52] Okay, I think you're setting up the tantalizing idea that while Bitcoin, you're bullish Bitcoin this cycle, you think that previous cycle, Bitcoin dominance was sort of an aberration at some level versus this cycle. That Bitcoin dominance grew. And by the way, in previous cycles, I mean, you look at the 2017 cycle, for instance, Bitcoin dominance fell. And other altcoins really captured the bull side and the alpha of the crypto market beyond Bitcoin, right? In the last cycle, we saw a very strong Bitcoin and a very weak alt section of assets. This cycle, you're saying it could be the reverse. And definitely Bitcoin would be a good asset. But if you really want to outperform Bitcoin, you need to have a hand in these high quality alts. And you mentioned kind of like five reasons why you think that could be the case.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[21:51] And let's see you said bitcoin dominance bottomed at 56, percent in 2026 versus 37 percent 2022 you're saying that this cycle has more quality projects with product market fit this cycle has stronger token economic structures with value actually accruing back to token holders investors imagine that we didn't do that in previous cycles, and then you have many alts re-rated back in September and August from deeply oversold levels as the sentiment shifted out of bear market lows. Okay, so is that the case for why altcoins might overperform in a crypto investor like you? And the TDR portfolio would want to be tilted, the high quality altcoins. Is that starting to become your base case here?
Michael Nadeau:
[22:39] It is. It is kind of starting to become the base case. I'm not saying that Bitcoin's not going to have a good cycle. I'm just kind of saying, and I think sometimes my view gets misinterpreted here, especially related to like Ethereum or Solana, Ethan Sol as well. And I'm not saying like these things aren't going to do well. It's more that just these other projects that are maybe less discovered. I don't think this is a known thing. What you just read through there in terms of projects with product market fit, the amount of revenues, the fundamentals that are producing these new token economic structures. I don't think this is known in crypto native circles. I don't think this is known more broadly. We saw kind of an interesting thing last week where Citrini came out. Citrini is a pretty large newsletter that reaches like a pretty big retail and institutional audience. I don't think they've ever done any crypto stuff in the past, but they put out, you know, a portfolio. And I don't, I'd have to pull that up. I don't know. I'm not sure. Is Bitcoin even in that portfolio?
Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:43] Here it is. I've got the portfolio up right here. Yeah. What do you think of this portfolio?
Michael Nadeau:
[23:47] This is fascinating to me, right? Right. Because now you're right. So this is like the first layer of somebody introducing this now to an audience that didn't know about, didn't know about derived, didn't know about lighter, didn't know about.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:59] So Satrini being sort of like a trad investor who has been early to a lot of the trends, particularly in the AI, you know, trade trend. And now if you folks read the report, they were sort of pitching crypto as sort of a almost like AI money, you know, a way of that AI systems would actually approach finance, kind of like new finance. And these are the assets that they purchased. And you're right, Bitcoin is not on the list. But a lot of these are part of the TDR portfolio as well. And also revenue producing projects, aren't they? Right, right.
Michael Nadeau:
[24:29] Exactly. So... This is new in this cycle, and it's something that I'm kind of, I'm trying to just sort of think about, you know, we put our price targets out, and this is something we'll probably be, you know, revisiting those and updating those as the cycle plays out. But for now, you know, my view is that like these tokens, and we have some of them in our portfolio. I don't think they're fully understood by the broader market. And this is happening during a period where you're going to have, it's kind of an interesting setup because you're going to have all this AI, IPOs. They're actually in their like sort of unlock period, right? This is similar.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[25:07] A lot of issuance out there. A lot of issuance. A lot of issuance supply.
Michael Nadeau:
[25:10] So when you think of capital flows, buybacks versus issuance in TradFi and in the AI markets, you have kind of a capital flow there that's like working against you as an investor. Whereas maybe in some of these crypto assets, you have capital flow that's actually working in your favor. There's less issuance relative to buybacks. So kind of interesting setup. And I think this is something that investors will be able to wrap their head around this pretty easily to see how this works. And then we've talked a lot about fast DeFi and why we like fast DeFi. When you start to combine that with the token economic structure, you can see why somebody could build an investment thesis there.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[25:49] So base case emerging as alt could be a winner over perform in a big way, particularly versus last cycle over perform versus Bitcoin. But the question still remains, okay, like which tokens, which alts are we talking about? There was a big win last cycle, of course, in the Solana ecosystem. And I know you were early and contrarian to that and certainly benefited. It wasn't just Solana, it was the entire Solana ecosystem. So there was the bonk chain, of course. Do you see hints that there could be something similar playing out? Maybe it's too early to call it the potential Solana of this cycle, but that's a bit of the vibe I got when I was going through this section. What is it and what are the parallels that you see here?
Michael Nadeau:
[26:39] Yeah, so just been thinking a little bit more about this as well and trying to form a view on whether what's going on in Robinhood chain. So, you know, that chart of Robinhood REV is, you know, we've seen a lot of charts like this in crypto that just spike up and then they roll over and, you know, you go from, you know, greed to fear very quickly. And we've seen a lot of these in crypto where they don't come back, right? Like that was it.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[27:08] Can I just say, there's one that played out in 2023 that was news on the week, which is the Blur and Blast ecosystems. So this was a pocket of speculation, Blur, Blast, these change, these tokens went up almost like the Robinhood chain chart. And now they're down like 99%, something like this. Both projects now shutting down.
Michael Nadeau:
[27:28] Never came back.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[27:29] Not durable never came back.
Michael Nadeau:
[27:31] Right so that's the big question here and i think this is my my view here is that this is different i'm not saying that robin and chain is is going to be solana this cycle but i but i think just understanding these waves of uh speculation and just kind of like instead of like i think it makes sense rather than to assume something is just a quick bubble and it's over, I think it's always better to be curious and kind of like look into that, look into it a little bit deeper. And so, you know, Robinhood chain is, you know, the fundamentals have completely deteriorated. The sentiment is way down. The sort of social trading space that took off back in July through September has completely rolled over. I think Ponds is down 70% or so. It's oversold on the RSI right now. So kind of a full cleansing, a full reset has now played out on Robinhood chain. And I'm kind of just looking at the setup there and I'm saying, well,
Michael Nadeau:
[28:35] You know, it's got all the infrastructure, everything's in place here for like the perfect setup, in my opinion, in terms of the Robinhood distribution, right, the Robinhood wallet, the, you know, I recommend people use some of these products as well. It's pretty interesting on board when you can combine your Robinhood brokerage with Robinhood wallet and easily, you know, use the wallet with, you know, buy assets on the brokerage, send them to your wallet, trade on chain through the wallet. That's very unique. Like that doesn't exist anywhere else in crypto. So that's there. You have like the sort of like center of sort of the, you know, maybe speculative area, which is pawns. And that's kind of the token launch pad where a lot of the trading activity comes from a lot of the economics that are playing out. You have Uniswap, which is a 95% market share real world assets trading on there. You have a lend borrow market already with Morpho. You have Uniswap.
Michael Nadeau:
[29:37] A strong stablecoin supply, already over a billion dollars of stablecoins. Interestingly, Athena, USDE is about 37% of that supply.
Michael Nadeau:
[29:47] And as we know, you have Leiter and you have perps trading that's integrated on that wallet. Leiter's doing about 60% of the perps trading through Robinhood wallet. So you have kind of like a really, really strong like infrastructure, I would say, combined with distribution and what Robinhood is doing. I think there was something leaked yesterday. There might be some sort of fund coming out, like a sort of developer funding ecosystem grant, something like that, that could be coming in there. It was just a rumor, I think. I don't think it's been confirmed. Confirmed but I could see something like that happening maybe it's air maybe it's an airdrop or sort of a wealth effect we really haven't seen these things come in this early bull just yet but it's an interesting setup when you look at the sentiment and you look at uh everything else and you look at the fundamentals and the charts I think you can make the case that uh this is probably going to come back and and we'll see does that look like Solana last cycle what does that actually look like and then you know how do you get exposure to this I just listed off a few ways is that you could get some exposure to this ecosystem But yeah, that's kind of the views here. So, you know, if Bitcoin can hold these levels that it's trading in, it does trade in the 80 to 95k range. I expect this to just kind of keep, you know, nobody stopped building on Robinhood chain, right? People are still building that just because of the speculative froth has left. There's a lot of people building, getting ready for the next wave. So I think it's a pretty interesting, interesting setup.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[31:15] So it sounds like, Mike, what you just laid out is almost like a Robinhood exposure basket of assets, which is pretty interesting, of course. And I think the pattern match you're doing is the early speculation, run-ups that we saw in previous early bull phases of the market after a lull, after maybe six, seven months, it's over period of time. Those became those were hints as to the big movers when the you know full-on bull market comes later after that and so that's what you're seeing in the solana ecosystem for instance and bonk did something similar you're not saying bonk is the same as ponds, but you can see some of the matching patterns here in the robin hood ecosystem versus solana let's touch on macro briefly and And maybe the focus should be really.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:10] The 10-year and also inflation numbers that just came out. So I think breaking this morning, as we started recording this, September CPI printed 3.7%. So 3.6% was expected. That's up from 3.4% in August. Core was still 2.6%. Of course, Core takes out things like energy. Which is the big mover, energy is really driving up the standard CPI print numbers, higher than people expected. There's some sell-off happening. Yields on the 10-year, they had been actually falling this week, and now they're back up above 5.3%. I think I saw 5.31% yields on the 10-year at the time of recording. What does this all mean to you? Is this relevant to the crypto case that you're making?
Michael Nadeau:
[33:05] It's kind of expected. So I think we had a little period there where oil prices had come off and inflation came down as a result of that. And over the last few months, we did see oil go back up to, I think it touched 105 and now it's been trading kind of above 90 or so, since then. And so most of that 3.7% is coming from energy, rising energy costs. You mentioned there that core inflation uh rose as well 2.6 percent so not a good not a good print i would say kind of what i what i was anticipating might happen um and to me like we can analyze macro you know as long as we want we can just go on and on and on and you'll you'll find ways to get yourself really nervous and you'll probably spook yourself if you just keep staring at uh all of the risks in macro. And I'm trying to avoid that. I'm trying to acknowledge these risks. I'm trying to acknowledge that, you know, this is ongoing. This war is uncertain. I think most, I think if this inflation issue cleared, that's probably the clearing event for markets. And I don't know when that's going to come.
Michael Nadeau:
[34:21] And I don't think you can predict it. It's uncertain. I don't want to get myself caught up trying to predict things that I can't predict. So what I'm trying to do is say, what is the question I can ask myself that's more like, this is just the state of the world that I can say this is actually more certain
Michael Nadeau:
[34:39] And just kind of have a longer term view, acknowledging that these risks are out there and that there's probably going to be volatility. But I think the thing that I just keep anchoring myself to is just that we're in this period of fiscal dominance and that there's just no way out of it. Like if you just look at what's playing out, it's very clear that we have to do what we're doing and we're doing it. So, you know, debt to GDP is at 123%. The only way out of that is to grow your way out of it. We've talked about this. That means you actually have to run inflation, you know, above interest rates. You need negative real yields.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[35:15] When you say grow, you mean grow nominal, grow the money supply.
Michael Nadeau:
[35:18] Grow nominally, exactly. And if you do that, you can actually get your debt to GDP to come down. You're not actually reducing your debt. You're just basically growing faster than the debt. And we've seen this playbook after World War II. What is the playbook to do that? Well, you stimulate the economy. You have your fiscal spend, you're running 6% deficits on your fiscal spend. You start a war, right? That kicks off all kinds of spending and also stimulates the economy. And then you have a re-industrialization period with AI and all the CapEx spending. So we are in, that's just the world that we're in. And we should expect, I think, higher inflation during this period. It's just a matter of how that ultimately kind of manifests, you know, in the bond market, in the stock market. To me, the sort of incentives that are in play and what the policymakers are showing us with all of the actions is like very clear. And so it's really, for me, it's kind of like, okay, I know the setup. I know what the policymakers are doing. I know what the answer ultimately is. I don't know what the path is going there. But I think I need to just sort of anchor to that understanding that, yes, there are black swans out there. There are things that can happen, but I can't predict them. And I'd rather sort of just be in the market, acknowledge it and try to look through it.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[36:46] On that debasement setup, the things that, you know, we can predict, we know are happening. There was a fantastic article put out by Ray Dalio, who's kind of like the godfather of this, where he goes through kind of the bond numbers. And he's just like, look, there's so much debt that is going up for sale in terms of supply. Corporate debt coming in 2023, rollover debt from the U.S. Government. I mean, there's more, you know, government debt, bonds issuance and, you know, kind of equity issuance that there's not going to be enough demand to cover all this net new supply that's going in the market. And that's something we've seen play out in crypto so many times that the market starts to get exhausted when you have too many tokens chasing not enough demand.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[37:33] And you can kind of see that in the Dalio setup here. And it's really a debasement setup. But when I was thinking of like what we're actually buying in crypto, I sort of feel like it's sort of maybe three macro trends at some level or three kind of trends. One is debasement quite clearly. The other is what I might call like degen debasement. It's kind of the social trading type phenomenon, which is just like assets don't matter. I'm just going to buy meme coins. And the third is like a future of finance type play. That's kind of what you're, getting exposed to in this market.
Michael Nadeau:
[38:06] I think that's right. I think, you know, what concerns me a little bit here is like through this, what we just laid out there, this kind of situation where you have to run the economy at a high nominal rate and have inflation in that environment. It's a concerning setup from the perspective like you also have AI. We haven't seen AI before. Really impact the labor market, I would say, just yet. And so as this plays out over the next few years, what becomes more concerning to me is like the wages may not. So I think the way to escape what the incentives of the policymakers are going to be is to own assets, right? And that's kind of the whole thesis here. And I think assets are going to be the escape valve, right? That being in the right assets is going to be the escape valve for them solving this problem. The challenge is on the wage side. I'm not sure if wages are going to grow as fast as asset prices. And then at a period when you have potentially unemployment rising. We'll see how this ultimately shakes out. But that could create a really tricky political environment. This is probably a couple of years out, but it's probably going into the next presidential election cycle where you have some of these pressures really starting to push up. So just kind of a tangent thought there.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[39:29] I agree completely. I think political is kind of the X factor, the black swan. I mean, it was Jim Bianco just made the point recently that since 2020 inflation, like dollar value has gone up 32% and wages have gone up like 26%, something like that. So people are already underwater from a wage perspective. That is all having political implications even now as we speak. Let's talk about the move right now. In particular, maybe I want you to talk about this is an early bull reset. If we're in an altcoin cooldown, and yet you made the case today, which is becoming your base case, you think alts might overperform, then there are some fantastic reset opportunities, outside of Bitcoin, out on the spectrum here in altcoin land. Can you talk about, I know you have a list of what those might be in, of course, the TDR portfolio and also in today's report that folks can go unlock, but maybe name a couple of them that kind of, you know, catch your eye right now. And I know your position is more holding these assets, but for somebody who still has some cash to deploy and is looking for alt reset opportunities, what types of assets, you know, would you say, hey, go take a look at this?
Michael Nadeau:
[40:51] Yeah, we have some of them in the portfolio and the report that I put out, I've been actually looking at all of the sort of themes and sectors that we're holding and kind of where everything sits right now. And I'd say that in our portfolio, the stuff that hasn't like repriced as much off the lows is kind of our meme coin basket. It's where we're up, I think, over 80 percent or so on our meme coin basket right now. But I would say there's there's some opportunities in there. Those are like approaching oversold levels on the RSI. So that's one thing. I think lighter has repriced significantly here over the last few weeks. I think it got up to about $5.50. I think the last time I looked, it was trading around $3.30 or so. So a significant sort of reset on lighter.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[41:39] And lighter is in sort of that Robin Hood basket that you named earlier.
Michael Nadeau:
[41:43] That's in the Robin Hood basket as well, yeah. So, and also approaching oversold levels on the R side, usually like that's kind of tends to be an indicator for me on just momentum, especially in a bull market when momentum deteriorates like that can be an interesting, interesting opportunity. You know, we've seen stable coins circle hasn't done much, you know, it's right around, I think our, our entry price. Athena, we have a, you know, very bullish on, on Athena for this cycle. All of these, basically everything in our portfolio has undergone somewhat of a reset. The stuff that's maybe not as oversold would be like the derive options because of the Citrini report that went out last week. It did well after that.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[42:29] Citrini named them as a top holding, right? Derive as a 10% holding.
Michael Nadeau:
[42:33] 10% holding. So, you know, I kind of went through the portfolio. We're down about 33% off the highs from September. We are still up over 106%. So still happy with kind of the performance in our non-Bitcoin positions are still outperforming. And I think, you know, we've talked a lot about
Michael Nadeau:
[42:51] Just, you know, allocating during the bear market, knowing that we were not going to time the bottom perfectly. And we didn't, you know, there were certain certain positions that we fell 20, 30% underwater at times. But I think those entries looking back still look pretty good because you can get that move and then have a correction and still be in a good spot. And I think that's kind of where we're at. I think people that are maybe missed the first move are now coming in and looking at this basket of quality coins that they can allocate to. And they're probably going into these types of assets at this early bull stage. So we're still very early. So happy kind of with some of those positions that were established. But I think it's a good time. I would recommend people check out. We put out our price targets for the for the watch list. We also have our fair value targets that we left in there that were our bear market targets. So you can kind of analyze both sort of how we viewed things in the bear market and where things are trading relative to their prior cycle highs. And then you can look at how we think things might go for the next cycle and some of our bull targets could be a good resource for people. We also have all the watch list research reports, data dashboards that we pair with that stuff as well.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[44:05] Yeah, great take. And as we end this, I'll remind all of our listeners, this is definitely an opportunity. It's an early bull market reset opportunity. Again, if Mike is right and the analysis is correct and we're in early crypto bull market, the altcoin speculation that we saw could be a murmur of things to come. And this is an opportunity to go evaluate key tokens and projects and maybe enter into some positions if you still have some cash remaining. And if you want some further insights, also an opportunity to lock into TDR Pro. You can unlock today's report with the Robinhood basket that we just discussed and why Mike thinks that that could be a fantastic opportunity moving forward and some of the other assets that we mentioned. And I should also say this. As with all early bull market opportunities, there is an opportunity to kind of lock in early and get deep value. As deep value on the TDR right now, TDR Pro is only $1,667 per month. Okay.
Michael Nadeau:
[45:07] Criminally cheap. Criminally cheap.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[45:08] Criminally cheap. And also, Mike is going to keep it at that rate for, I guess, a few more months. Not for very much longer because next year could be even earlier than next year. Prices will increase in the TDR Pro. So if you're listing now to TDR, you are early on the podcast. And also there's an opportunity to lock in your pricing early for life effectively. Because once prices rise, they won't go down. It's like inflation targets. All right, so right now you can get TDR at a discount. And if you lock in now and have an uninterrupted subscription, you'll carry that price permanently. I don't know, maybe you can pass it down to your kids and your grandkids. If you want, the $16.67 in $2026, it sounds like a steal. Guys, we will see you next week. Of course, we always publish this on a weekly basis. So subscribe on all channels to hear this. And we'll let you know, none of this has been financial advice. This is an investor journal. We're on the journey alongside you. So until next time, stay curious.