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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:
[0:09] The question today, did we just get a regime shift in crypto markets? It is March 18th, 2026. Welcome to the report. We got Saylor back. That is Michael Saylor. He's back with a $3 billion Bitcoin buy. This is a material purchase. It's the first ever in a bear market. What does that mean? Also, Bitcoin is up 17% since the war in Iran started, while the Nasdaq is down 1% and gold is down 4.2%. Crypto seems to be looking stronger than it has in months. Does this mean we're about to switch back to a bullish regime? Has a bullish regime already started? Today, we're going to be looking at a few things, the macro and liquidity conditions, the Bitcoin market structure, and if we have time, maybe Mike and I can discuss the recent price pump of this hype token and what that's telling us. And stick around to the end, of course, where we answer the question for the TDR portfolio, is it time to buy back in? Mike, it's great to chat with you today. I really enjoyed today's report. I want to ask you maybe an intro question here before we get in, which is, Are you surprised at how well Bitcoin has performed since the start of the Iran war? I mean, even the face of gold is down, right? Gold is down like 4%. Bitcoin is up, what did we say, 16%, 17%.
Michael Nadeau:
[1:28] Yeah, the other markets, TradFi markets are starting to sort of catch up a little bit here.
Michael Nadeau:
[1:33] I think gold is down 13% or so from its peak. NASDAQ's down about 6% or so now. Not really. you know, I would say, you know, Bitcoin got pretty oversold in early February. We sort of bounced out of it. Then we came back down. So when the war started, Bitcoin hit another local low. And that's pretty common when there's geopolitical conflict, quick sell-off. And then we rebounded out of that. We've been, you know, up significantly since. And the rest of the markets are sort of stagnating a little bit. And it's interesting. I mean, we went through a period where Bitcoin was behind everything else. Gold was ripping, silver was ripping, NASDAQ ripping, and Bitcoin was basically down only. That has reversed. But I think what's happening is we are just getting deeper into the meat of the bear market. And we kind of go through some market structure here today in today's podcast. But yeah, this is kind of expected and it kind of aligns with what we saw in 2022 as well when the Russia-Ukraine war started. Bitcoin actually had a similar rally for about two months. It ultimately broke down. And yeah, let's dive into some of the data here because I think it's an interesting setup.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[2:54] Yeah, I can't wait to do it because this... The idiosyncrasy, I would say, with the way Bitcoin is performing has been a consistent theme this year. And we're definitely seeing it this month play out. And this parallel to 2022, you make that parallel a lot in the report. That's something to dig into as well. Before we do, we want to thank the sponsor that made this episode possible. This one's for the institutions listening, whether you're looking at the future of finance or the backbone of the industrial revolution, the next industrial revolution, I should say, you should check out Galaxy. That's the name you need to know. They've got a full stack platform for crypto, digital finance, that is institutional trading, custody, tokenization. They're among the biggest in the world in those areas. And also, they have an AI-ready, HPC-ready data center called their Helios site with a staggering 1.6 gigawatts of approved power. That's more than a nuclear power plant. They are a publicly traded company.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[3:55] GLXY is the ticker. Of course, you guys know. And if you want to see how Galaxy helps institutions invest, build, and transform relentlessly, go check them out. There's a link in the show notes. Bankless.cc slash Galaxy. All right, level set going into today's episode. Mike, you have purchased twice in this environment, in the bear market. You've called Bitcoin at various points. It's been in the fair market value
Ryan Sean Adams:
[4:20] zone for you, hence those purchases. You've been waiting for deep value. Your cash position is 55% right now, 45% crypto. And I can't wait to ask you at the end of this episode whether that has changed on the week and whether you have FOMO'd in, my friend. Bitcoin at the time of recording is $71,420.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[4:44] That's where it's trading right now. So definitely up above those fair market value prices. Let's start the story with global liquidity, the way your report does. So this is something I know you've been monitoring for this entire cycle. It's a framework and it's a lens through which you see these cycles playing out. What do the global liquidity numbers tell us?
Michael Nadeau:
[5:08] Yeah, this is something we're always tracking and we're pulling this data from global liquidity index and some of the work that Michael Howell does. And really, what's interesting here is we've been noting that it looks like this is rolling over. And it's been doing so really since, you know, going back to October period. And what's interesting now is we have this geopolitical conflict, potentially rising oil prices. I mean, oil prices have risen significantly and we're sort of monitoring that to see where they go from here.
Michael Nadeau:
[5:41] But really starting to think about what does that mean for liquidity conditions as we move forward. But I think the takeaway here is global liquidity is rolling over. There's sort of some differences in what's happening in different parts of the world. So China is adding more liquidity to the system right now. And what we've seen in the US is sort of rolling over liquidity, but we saw a little bump there. So we're looking at the US liquidity cycle here and you can see it looks like we clearly peaked. We did have a little bounce there. That bounce is the RMP program that the Fed implemented back in December. So they've purchased over $133 billion of treasury bills already with that program, which is kind of like a QE light type of program. However, it's really just kind of providing liquidity for the repo markets and the banking sector and kind of stabilizing things there. It's kind of like a Fed put just in terms of kind of stabilizing liquidity, but it's really not adding sort of broad macro liquidity to these markets.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[6:54] Okay, so it's like a plumbing move and you can tell it's a plumbing move because it's happening at the short end of the market, of the bond market. Correct.
Michael Nadeau:
[7:02] Correct. That's the key thing here. And so what we're seeing on the longer end is that rates have been going up and we've seen real rates starting to rise. What's happening now is breakeven inflation is rising, right, because of this conflict in Iran. And actually the nominal rates have risen faster than the breakeven inflation. And that's why that real rate is rising right now. So, you know, I think this is sort of.
Michael Nadeau:
[7:33] Putting even more headwind on just kind of liquidity in the system right now. And so, yeah, this is really what we're starting to factor in is how is oil prices going to potentially impact sort of this macroeconomic setup? We saw today that PPI inflation came out and it was significantly higher than what was expected. It was 3.4% versus 2.9% was expected. PPI, that's the inflation of the inputs of all the producers. And that's from February. So that data is prior to the start of this conflict and the rise in oil prices. So we're already seeing inflation rising, input costs rising. What's going to happen when the oil price data starts to get baked into those input costs? That tends to lead CPI. And the setup there is just that You know, the Fed has a FOMC meeting today, and this is just putting them in a really difficult spot where I think it's going to be really hard for them to cut rates. It's basically been priced completely out of the market.
Michael Nadeau:
[8:38] So we think it's going to be hard for them to cut rates.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[8:40] And they can't cut rates, to be clear, because of this rising commodity inflation, because of rising oil prices and such.
Michael Nadeau:
[8:48] That's my take on it, and the markets are sort of priced in that outcome. What's interesting here, we just pulled up this chart, and this is showing that rising oil prices actually lead to lower interest rates. Ultimately, there's sort of a delay to how this works, but typically...
Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:09] Historically, they have. And this is a chart we should say from Fred that looks at federal funds to the effective rate in red and crude oil prices from the 1960s up until now. Yeah.
Michael Nadeau:
[9:22] Yeah. So what we're showing here is... When oil prices rise, what tends to happen is inflation picks up and the Fed will always look backwards at data, right? They're not supposed to sort of speculate on what they think is going to happen. They sort of have to wait for the data to tell them. And so what's happening right now is we're baking in higher inflation. This has happened. What that is potentially in higher oil prices are actually deflationary, actually, you know, in the longer run. And that is why the interest rates ultimately come down, because higher oil prices, people are spending money on, you know, higher gas prices, all the various input costs that go into that. It ends up, you know, stifling demand, you know, ultimately in the economy. And that's ultimately what leads to the rates coming down. So I actually think the Fed should be cutting, you know, even though we have this inflationary kind of impulse right now. I sort of think they should just be cutting right now. It's highly unlikely that that's going to happen. it's almost more likely that they would raise rates. And we've seen this happen in the past with oil prices rising. They raise...
Ryan Sean Adams:
[10:29] Okay, so there's two confounding things, I guess. They're rocking a hard place, right? So you're saying historically when oil prices rise, the Fed has to cut. And yet you're also saying that increasing commodity inflation in oil and just increasing inflation generally makes the Fed more resistant to cutting rates. So what are you saying happens? And by the way, what's the market saying about rate cuts right now? Are they predicting rate cuts? I know Trump has even put in continued political pressure. I saw a statement he made this week that something to the effect of the Fed already should have been cutting rates. Even a kindergartner would know this. And his new chair is coming in. So how do you think this all resolves?
Michael Nadeau:
[11:19] The setup, in my view, is that they're not going to be able to cut. I'm going to be watching the press conference this afternoon to see what Powell says. I think it's going to be really hard for them to cut. And what we're going to start to see, especially if oil prices stay high, is that that's going to start to impact growth. We're already observing slowing growth even before. I was pretty bearish on the macro setup even before all this. And so the setup to me is like them sort of waiting too long and us kind of bleeding into a liquidity trap here. We'll see. They're doing a lot of plumbing work to prevent like a liquidity crisis. So it could potentially just be sort of a slower bleed for the markets. And that's kind of what we saw in 2022. And that's why I kind of keep coming back to what we saw in 2022. Markets come down. They can't cut. It was a different setup where they were hiking in 2022. Um but let you know let's see i that's that's sort of my base case is that this is this is a a very like not a great setup uh for markets when we factor in like the ai deflation that we've been talking about as well um it just looks to me like you have rising
Michael Nadeau:
[12:32] prices and slowing growth at the same time that's stagflationary um not not a great setup for not.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[12:38] A great setup for risk on assets in particular is what you're saying. Okay. So just to kind of recap this story. So the story is what you're seeing, global liquidity turned down, particularly in the US, which means a net global liquidity turned down, even while China is increasing liquidity because the US is kind of decreasing liquidity. It's counterbalancing that. And By the way, we've made the point often on TDR episodes that U.S. Liquidity is the main thing to watch with respect to crypto prices. I think you're in the camp of believing that U.S. liquidity equals higher crypto prices. China liquidity, not necessarily so. Maybe China liquidity more like gold prices or other kind of commodity prices. Now, we have seen a brief U.S. Liquidity spike up. You're saying that's plumbing. That's not a structural force. And the reason you know it's plumbing is because it's happening on the short end, while on the long end, interest rates are going up. And then we can see in the 10-year tips, par real yield, we can see that real yield is actually increasing here. Does this mean, by the way, does this mean inflation is increasing or decreasing? What is the tips telling us? I always get confused when I look at tips. Yeah.
Michael Nadeau:
[13:53] What that's showing us right now is that breakeven inflation expectations are rising. because of rising oil prices. And real rates would actually drop as long as if the nominal rates weren't rising faster. So what sort of happened as oil prices started to really ramp up is long bonds actually rose more than the inflation expectation. So it's catching up quick. For real rates to drop, we would need to see the nominal rates come down or just stop rising as breaking of inflation keeps rising.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[14:25] Okay, so you see basically this chart, this kind of yellow, orange line here will continue to go down from a structural perspective. And so global liquidity turned down and bad for risk on assets, bad for crypto is the summary here. Let's take a look at the on-chain data and the market structure. And then we'll get to Saylor's big purchases, which may have changed something. I don't know. Maybe they changed something in your mind or caused you to question something. But let's look at the Bitcoin price right now. I think you're comparing this to 2022. What did you see in this chart?
Michael Nadeau:
[15:00] Yeah, so just coming back to the 2022 analog here, what's interesting is 161 days into the bear market measured from the price peak of each cycle. We're at a very similar spot right now, so down about 41%. Back in 2022, 161 days into the bear market, we were down 39%. So that looks pretty similar. And then the other similarity here is, you know, I think it was in February of 22 that the war between Russia and Ukraine started and that kicked off a counter trend rally for Bitcoin at the time, went up about 34% and it threatened the 50 week moving average at the time, which looked like we might be going back into a bull and then got rejected. And it was about a two-year, you know, two years of bear market before we actually reclaimed, you know, that level.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[15:52] Wow. So there was a relief rally. I just distantly remember this in 2022 that lasted two months. And that was a plus 34% rally. And people at the time, was there the sentiment that, okay, the bear market's over, we're back, baby?
Michael Nadeau:
[16:07] Yes. And also, like, Russia was buying Bitcoin, right? The war is going on. Russia was buying Bitcoin. They got cut out of SWIFT.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[16:13] The U.S. was freezing, you know, their treasuries and all of this, right?
Michael Nadeau:
[16:18] Maybe they're going to accept Bitcoin for oil and trade. And so there was a little bit of a narrative and there was definitely bullish sentiment and that it sort of broke down from there. And it feels like we've got a similar story playing out today. We have a geopolitical conflict. We're about, you know, roughly five months into the bear market. We're getting that counter trend rally. I think the big difference today is that we've already gone to a fair value zone. So I think we're actually farther in this bear market than we were at the same stage in 2022. So I think that's kind of the key difference. And we're seeing that counter trend rally. We got up to like 76K or so. And we're going to monitor this to see kind of where we head from here.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[17:04] Now, you're also looking at the short term holder cost basis, which we don't usually look at. Is this because you're wondering what's going to happen in the near term?
Michael Nadeau:
[17:13] Yes. So this is really kind of thinking about, you know, we've seen some strength in Bitcoin. We've been rallying now for almost six weeks or so. You know, where might resistance come into play here? And the short term holder cost basis tends to serve as resistance in bear markets. That is about 85K.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[17:36] What's a short term holder? Is that like a year, two years?
Michael Nadeau:
[17:39] Under 155 days. So it's roughly six months or so. Six months. Okay. So yeah, so their cost basis is 85K that tends to serve as resistance in bear markets. So that's a number for people to keep in mind. The other interesting thing, and we've talked about this in prior episodes, is the sort of the holder cost basis. We look at this, we want to understand where there are pockets, where people were buying dips, things like that. And this was the buy the dip zone between 83 and 85K. All the people that sort of didn't think we were in a bear market when Bitcoin first started selling off early in this bear market, they were buying this dip here. And we think about 4.4% of the supply was actually scooped up in that zone. So that pairs up with the short-term holder cost basis. And, you know, that kind of gives me some confidence or at least it starts to point the probability, that that might be the zone if we were even to push to those levels or early low 80s would be a tough threshold to push through.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[18:50] So the low 80s into the mid 80s is a really tough threshold to return to in this. And you said 4.4% of the supply was purchased not only in that price range, But you think between November 2025 and early February, just basically investors holding out hope that this was just a, you know, the October event was going to recover and we would resume the bull market. This was a super cycle type of event, which it doesn't look like it on this side of things.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:18] Now, let's talk about another entrant which could change things, which is Mr. Michael Saylor of Strategy. So this is something that you point out that didn't happen in previous bear markets is Michael Saylor, a big buyer, has somehow acquired dry powder to deploy into the bear market. Okay. And I think you said it's like $3 billion. In deployment so far with a total of a potential $3.8 billion, I believe. Talk about this buy. How is he getting the capital? What's the structure of this and how does this affect things?
Michael Nadeau:
[19:56] Yeah, this is interesting, somewhat unexpected. I've been following what they've been doing with some of these new products, but really spent more time this week. And I know last week we were talking about risks related to microstrategy and their holdings and potential liquidation. This week we're talking about, you know, potential risk to the upside because now he's back in the market. So, so I want to acknowledge that, that that's, you know, we were acknowledging that. Um, so yeah, this is interesting. So Saylor, uh, historically has not been able to get his hands on capital in bear markets.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:30] Uh, it's most- And he's only had one of them.
Michael Nadeau:
[20:32] He's only had one. Yeah. He's only had one.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:33] He started this strategy in like 2020 or so. Correct.
Michael Nadeau:
[20:36] Yeah.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:36] So the other time would have been 2022 and no one was willing to give him any capital to deploy in 2022. Right.
Michael Nadeau:
[20:44] And they were, you know, they made a few small purchases, but that was mostly just whatever cash flow is kicking off from their software business. This is different. So what he's doing now is he's been able to raise a significant amount of capital, almost $4 billion with this new STRC product. This is a fixed income, you know, fixed yield product that is within the micro or the strategy, you know, capital stack. Now, these are preferred shares that they're issuing. And, you know, I got to give Michael Saylor credit for pulling this off. Like, this is some crazy financial engineering, I think, that's happening here. But what he's doing is essentially, you know, putting this product out there. He's making the yield. It's 11.5%. So, you know, I don't know where else you're getting 11.5%. And that's guaranteed.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[21:37] That yield is guaranteed to all investors in this preferred stock type instrument. Correct.
Michael Nadeau:
[21:43] And so there's been quite a bit of demand for this, right? People are saying, okay, I'll take that 11.5%. One of the reasons I think that there's been pretty good demand is they actually took about two years worth of the dividend payments and put it on the, you know, they put that as cash on the sidelines to sort of say to the market, hey, we have enough capital to pay these dividends for the next year or two. I think it's given people some confidence and people have come in and purchased up these these STRC shares. And this is basically the capital bridge for Saylor to then go and buy more Bitcoin, which is exactly what he's doing. So last week he bought 1.57 billion worth. He bought about 1.2 billion the week before. And so, you know, the question is like, this is new, right? We haven't seen it. Here's a chart showing just, you know, the big circles that we're seeing now in a bear market on the right side of the chart and almost none back in 2022. So we have to factor this into, you know, market structure. We just talked about market structure and...
Ryan Sean Adams:
[22:47] These circles are all strategy purchases?
Michael Nadeau:
[22:50] Correct. Correct. Wow. Yeah.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[22:53] Okay. Very active.
Michael Nadeau:
[22:54] Extremely active and usually more active in, you know, when the prices are rising. So this is due this cycle. Yeah, I mean, the takeaway here to me is just, I think the question is, Is this going to continue? Is he going to be able to continue to raise more capital, get his hands on capital to go out and buy Bitcoin? And then this product to me feels like it's going to be extremely reflexive. He's only able to raise more capital if it trades at par. So above $100 for the price of that. And what is driving that? So then you have to ask yourself, well, it's really confidence in the price of Bitcoin and also confidence that they're going to be able to pay that yield. So extremely reflexive. And if we do see more volatility come for Bitcoin or potentially to the downside, there's a pretty good chance that that product's going to trade below par and he's not going to be able to raise more capital. So that's kind of my base case. It would be very hard for me to imagine that this type of demand for this product is just going to continue and he's going to be able to continue to raise capital and buy Bitcoin. But this is interesting. And I mean, it's also sort of... It presents like another risk in the market as well, because this could be pretty reflexive on the downside.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[24:17] Does it bring up the case that this could be a, like structurally a more shallow bear market for Bitcoin because you have this type of capital that is willing to deploy and willing and able to deploy during the bear market? So compared to 2022, again, we don't see any of these dots, but in the 2026 bear market we do. So maybe it points in that direction.
Michael Nadeau:
[24:44] Possibly. It's a buyer that we didn't have in 2022. And like, we know this is a buyer that is a large buyer. And also like, they're just, they're taking those coins out of circulation. So, so it is like, it's, it's definitely something to pay attention to. At the same time, you know, it's interesting to me that, you know, this rally that we're seeing, like, you know, he's in the market buying and he's not necessarily moving the price when he's buying, right? They're able to do this, you know, OTC. And they're not moving the price. But the fact that he is there, it's giving the market a little bit more confidence. You know, typically when he's buying, you know, other investors, retail is more like kind of confident in the market. So I can see that being the case. But, you know, if we don't, if we're unable to get up to 80K or so here, then it's almost giving me more confidence that the market's weak, right? If you have that large buyer and you're still not really getting back to some of these other resistance zones, it almost gives you more confidence that the market's very weak.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[25:46] Does this also create more structural risk in MicroStrategy and therefore like Bitcoin in general because MicroStrategy is a large participant? So I guess this trade works very well for MicroStrategy and for Michael Saylor if he's paying 11.5% in yield every year, as long as Bitcoin appreciates more than 11.5%, He's doing well on this, right? It's what I'm assuming. But this is... A type of debt instrument? I'm not sure the particulars of how this works. Anyway, does this increase the risk of some sort of catastrophic unwind in strategy as a company? Are you still not concerned about that?
Michael Nadeau:
[26:29] I'm not really concerned about that, but I just think this is reflexive. And if he does run into a... The fact that he's coming out with this product, and again, I give him credit because this is hard to do and he's found a way to get access to capital in a bear market, which is impressive. But I just think in some ways, it feels a little desperate to me at the same time offering that 11.5%, which he's raised the yield on that. This product came out in July. He's raised the yield seven times to be able to draw in investors. So it feels a little desperate.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[27:08] He's paying a lot for this debt.
Michael Nadeau:
[27:10] He's basically making a bet that Bitcoin's going to go up 30% a year and he can pay that 11.5%. But also you have to ask, well, how is he going to pay that? Because Bitcoin's not- He's going to sell Bitcoin. Bitcoin's not kicking off a yield. He doesn't want to sell Bitcoin. He's going to pay those dividends by issuing, by raising more capital. These products have Ponzi-like you know, features to them that are basically built on the assumption that Bitcoin will continue, you know, to go up. But we know it's extremely volatile. We think it's going to go up in the long term, but it's very volatile. And so that's, you just wonder if it gets caught off guard in some of that volatility. So interesting.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[27:51] Well, before we close this out, I know you have a section on hype here,
Ryan Sean Adams:
[27:55] and I think we have a few minutes to talk about hype. So hype has been an asset. That is the hyperliquid perpetuals exchange that, Mike, you've actually added it to the watch list. And I think in early, in January, at some point, you put out a report on hype. And it was on the watch list, not part of the portfolio. Hype has been outperforming everything. It's another idiosyncratic asset. And while the rest of crypto is down, hype's actually not too bad. You said hype just pierced through its 50-week moving average for the third time in the past few months. That is something in a bear market. It's only 29% from its all-time high. So why is hype outperforming and will it continue to do so? Will it hold.
Michael Nadeau:
[28:38] Yeah. And we, and we probably should have bought some hype when we covered it in January, when it was trading around $20 or so. Um, I think we're going to get some more opportunities here, but you know, I've been following what's going on more recently. There's been quite a buzz, uh, I would say in that ecosystem with everything that's going on with just hyper EBM, they've got some new products hype through where they're, um, basically anybody can spin up, you know, a perps market on hyper liquid now. And so there's been, there's been some excitement. We've also had oil futures trading on Hyperliquid, and that's created a narrative around...
Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:12] It's some of the non-crypto assets, right? Actually, I don't know if you saw this this morning, but the S&P and Dow Jones indices have joined forces with Hype. So an S&P 500 perps contract available exclusively on Hyperliquid, which is pretty impressive business development for a crypto-native platform.
Michael Nadeau:
[29:30] For sure. Yeah, there's a lot going on in this ecosystem. and there's sort of a narrative that like, oh, traditional finance is like on here now because they've got oil futures and you can do it 24 seven and not be stuck in the, you know, nine to four, nine 30 to four for TradFi. So, you know, I've been following this and the price has almost doubled here, you know, over the last few months. The note here is just to kind of say like, I don't think that this is durable right now. And the reason I'm saying that is we just built out a really nice dashboard and we link to it in this report so people can check out the dashboard where we really cover. Yeah, shout out Galaxy for sponsoring us. The dashboard really kind of goes through what's happening with fundamentals, fees, open interests, active users. And all of these things are down, you know, very similar to what you would expect to see from, you know, really any, you know, crypto network in a bear market. And so, you know, I don't necessarily think that this is, you know, really durable. And that was really kind of the note that, you know, we wanted to share on this, where we're monitoring this, we're following it, there's a lot of exciting stuff happening in this ecosystem. But we think it's sort of like overbought right now. So and that's true also on the RSI. It's trading in the overbought range.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[30:53] I get the sense as you're talking though, Mike, that if this goes back to fair market value or into the deep value range on another dip, that you would be a prospective buyer of this asset and there's a fair probability it makes its way from the watch list to the TDR portfolio.
Michael Nadeau:
[31:10] Yes. And we're going to have- That was an enthusiastic yes.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[31:14] Yes.
Michael Nadeau:
[31:16] We've been following this for a while and we were not in the project early last cycle, but we have been following it. And yeah, I am bullish on a few things here. So just the whole Inception story, I really like. It's a very clean Inception story. They don't have VCs. They were able to sort of, you know, use their airdrop and really ignite a really loyal community through that. And the product is really good. And now they're building out sort of the L1 ecosystem. And so definitely bullish. Like one of the things that I like to see too, just from like community, like I had a few tweets about Hyperliquid this week and, you know, people are, all over me, right? Like you kind of want to see that you want to see like as a sign that there's like a real community. Um, so I kind of like when like, you know, the ETH people get mad at me or the soul people get mad at me or that, you know, it shows there's life.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:10] Yeah.
Michael Nadeau:
[32:10] It shows there's some life there. And so there's a, on a number of factors, another re a number of reasons to like this project, the token economics are fantastic with the buybacks and people can check out all that data on the dashboard that we shared. So we'll have a note in Q2, just kind of a quick update on what's been happening in that ecosystem during the first quarter.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:32] Well, if you ever become a buyer, maybe we do a special episode on hype itself, because I want to get your thoughts on it compared to some of the other purpose exchanges as well, and the token economics and the unlocks and all of these things. But let's wrap this out with the bigger picture. So you're right, this. Since the war in Iran started, Bitcoin is up 16.7%. The NASDAQ is down 1%. Saylor is back in the market. As such, it's easy to assume the regime has shifted. That's what we've been talking about. So the question maybe we're left with is, what do you think, Mike? So has the regime shifted or is this going to play out the way 2022 has played out and how are you positioning?
Michael Nadeau:
[33:12] I still think the probabilities point towards the 2022-like outcome. And so that's really how I'm positioning. We're recording this on Wednesday. And this is the first day over the last few weeks that Bitcoin is starting to show a little bit of weakness. I think it's related to the PPI inflation print and lowering expectations of rate cuts and things like that. So I think if you had just woken up from a coma and you didn't know what was going on with stock prices or anything, and you just told someone that, you know, you've got this like deflationary AI setup going on in the economy and we really haven't added any jobs to the economy in over a year. And the S&P, you know, 500 is trading almost at all time highs and lots of people have made a lot of money. Bitcoin had a bull market.
Michael Nadeau:
[33:59] And now you've got rising inflation, you've got all this geopolitical conflict. Like I think if you just kind of laid out that setup, you'd say, well, that's not a great setup for, you know, for risk assets. And so that's kind of, kind of my view right now. I don't see anything that could be like a, bullish catalyst on the horizon, but I'm trying to stay intellectually honest and entertain what that could be. And that's why we have a sailor commentary in here. Maybe you get a sudden end to the war and oil prices come down or something. These are things I'm not expecting to happen, but I'm sort of entertaining this. Fiscal impulse, we do have tax receipts or tax refunds that are you know, coming. And that can, that can certainly help in the short term.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[34:48] Or the possibility of Trump just issuing the stimulus check to all Americans for tariffs. Like you never know, you could wake up one day and that's the news.
Michael Nadeau:
[34:56] You could for tariffs, even for oil, even if oil, you know, I could see, you know, oil prices and we're in a midterm year and say, Hey, we're really sorry. You guys had to, you know, kind of deal with this war that we have going on, oil prices up. Here's a thousand dollar check or something. You could see these things. So trying to keep that, you know, be open-minded to this. That's not the base case. But yeah, for right now, I just think being patient is the name of the game. It's hard to do as an investor to just sit and kind of do nothing. But I think it's because that's so hard, that's part of the reason why it can pay off.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[35:29] Yeah. I love this line where you end the report. Ultimately,
Ryan Sean Adams:
[35:32] patience was rewarded in 2022. We think the probabilities point to a similar setup today. Of course, doing nothing is one of the hardest things for an investor, but if it were easy, everyone would do it. Maybe that's where we should end it, Mike. Thank you so much. I want to thank all the listeners for getting us to 100 stars on Spotify. Remember, we asked for that and you guys delivered. We appreciate that. Thank you so much. Another ask at the end of this episode is, I feel like our YouTube subscribers, this channel is criminally undersubscribed. So we're just closing in on 2,000 subscribers. We'd love to hit that number. If you are listening on another channel, Spotify, RSS, go cross-channel. Go to YouTube and hit subscribe for us so we can hit those numbers. If you're listening on YouTube, go to our X account and subscribe there. Just help us with some of these numbers so we can propagate this to more people, of course, if you are getting value from it and enjoying it. Got to end with this. None of this has been financial advice. We're just on the journey alongside you, publishing the investor journey as we go. Until next time, stay curious.