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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] We are 10 months into crypto winter and entering the final zone now. Welcome to the DeFi report. The topic today in the report today, did the treasury just launch QE Lite? We'll explain what that means. Also, the setup here. Bitcoin has been range bound lately in this fair value territory. We also have the NASDAQ trying to break all time highs, having a little trouble doing that. And this is big. Treasury yields just broke a 20-year high. That's on the 30-year yield. That means something. We also have gold up 15% in the last few weeks. What are all these signals pointing to? What is QE light? And what are the three things in macro that Mike is watching right now that might signal we are going to lower lows in the remaining two months of the bear market on Bitcoin price? Stick around to the end. We're going to talk about the prices to watch, the 200-week moving average, and why a monthly close above or below that 200-week moving average could give us some signal as to where we go next. Mike, great to be with you today. If today's report is correct, you think we could be entering the final two months of the bear market. We'll give it a plus or minus a month here, okay? But the final two months of the bear market, What do you think we can expect in these next two months?
Michael Nadeau:
[1:37] Things are starting to get interesting. We've been trading in this kind of tight channel here since end of June or so. It's gotten kind of slow. It's very quiet on chain out there. And people can probably see that my attention is starting to turn a little bit more towards the macro side of things to try to forecast how this bear market might end. And yeah, there's kind of pockets of speculation, I would say, really contained within the crypto markets. We're seeing a little bit of speculation on Robinhood chain within the pump ecosystem, within FOMO. So some kind of interesting signals there. When I look at Bitcoin, we see really kind of not a lot going on with Bitcoin and some of the majors. And yeah, the attention is really turning to macro. There's some interesting developments happening in FX right now, which we'll get to today. You mentioned gold there in the intro. Gold is up 15%, might be a little bit of a signal for what's to come here with Bitcoin. So we're getting close. It's feeling like we're getting close. We're kind of getting to that point where there's going to be a move in one direction or the other, and it could be the signal as to how this bear market's going to end. So excited to get into it this week.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[2:48] A few weeks ago, you said we were 80% of the way through the bear market. What are we today?
Michael Nadeau:
[2:55] 85% or so, I think. And we're ticking up a little bit and we'll get to sort of what the market structure looks like here. But I think most of the on-chain data in terms of the kind of the time of this bear market is pointing towards the end of this cycle being near. And I think the question on whether we get into deep value territory is really going to come down to kind of the liquidity conditions out there right now and what's going to play out in macro. And if any of these risks that are swirling in macro actually end up coming to fruition here.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[3:30] Well, let's get into it. The end is near. Let's hope the end of the bear market is near. So at the time of recording, Bitcoin is just a hair above the 200 week moving average. I think the 200 week is 63.8 and we are at 63.5K right now. Let's start with the current conditions. In order to do that, I think your signature move is to look at the cost basis cohort. That is the on-chain data that you find so valuable in your analysis. So here's a table, cost-based cohorts. These are different Bitcoin purchase ranges, Bitcoin price purchase ranges, starting from about 17K, ending to a high of about 127K. Each row on this table is another cohort range. You have one range that is highlighted in red. This is the 56K to 66K range cohort. These are individuals, investors, institutions that bought between 65K and 66K Bitcoin, you have a percent of supply that they owned on 10-10-2025, which for this cohort, 7%. And then a percent that they own today, which is 8-11-2026, that has moved from 7% to 12%. So it's about 70% up. And of all the rows in the table. This is the one you highlight. Why is this important?
Michael Nadeau:
[4:56] Yeah, this is the cohort that is, I'm calling them sort of the prior cycle top cohort. And what we've been doing here is really segregating these cost basis cohorts, and sort of marking what those cohorts looked like in terms of their Bitcoin supply as a percentage of the total circulating supply. We've kind of marked that as a kind of a cycle peak. And then we're monitoring these cohorts to see how coins or reshuffling hands and where they're ultimately going as the bear market plays out. And I've had the view that this sort of prior cycle top zone, would be the cohort that ends up picking up the most coins during this bear market. As you mentioned, we're up about 70% in this cohort. It's now the number two, largest cohort amongst these cost-based cohorts. So something I'm monitoring, the reason I think there's sort of a magnet in this area is this is sort of how it played out back in 2022.
Michael Nadeau:
[5:55] That the equivalent cohort at the time was about 17k to 21k, that was the sort of prior cycle top cohort and it kind of looked similar you know roughly nine ten months into the 2022 bear market to what we're showing here where, that cohort was was rising but actually the cohorts above it were rising faster and it kind of gives you an idea of sort of how the bear market plays out in terms of dip buying behavior and how investors are kind of getting into positions. And the main thing that I keep coming back to is like the final two months of the bear market where we're like when the most coins kind of changed hands and ultimately ended up in that sort of prior cycle top zone. So that's kind of what I'm watching for here. And how do we get there? How do we get to this place where that cohort picks up another 2% or 3% of the supply and finishes the cycle with the most coins? We probably need some more volatility to come back into the markets, potentially another 10% to 15% correction or so. And so this is kind of where I'm saying roughly 80%, 85% on the on-chain data. And the macro is probably going to be the thing that takes us, we'll see if some of these risks actually come to fruition in the macro that take us down to these levels, possible that we've actually bottomed for the cycle as well and we can play out that scenario as well.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:23] So in other words, this on-chain cohort analysis that you're doing, this is playing out exactly as you might suspect and exactly as it played out in previous cycles where the coins rotate from the top cohorts into this 56 to 66K cohort like a magnet. And I have to notice this is also, you know, along the same price range as your fair market value price for Bitcoin has been for, I don't know, since October at least. And so I guess that's been part of the analysis all along. One question here, though, is, is it normal for all of these cohorts under 56K? Right. Under that magnet to actually decrease to because this sort of as I look at this table, it almost alarms me a little bit that these even lower cost basis cohorts aren't buying more. They seem to be decreasing. Is that is that typical?
Michael Nadeau:
[8:20] I think so. You know, we saw a similar pattern in 22. And I think, you know, part of the signal there is that some of these holders that, you know, acquired coins in, you know, the 2018 cycle or the 21 cycle at these lower cost basis bands, they're, you know, willing to sell, you know, maybe they didn't time the cycle top back in October properly. And they're the ones, you know, kind of selling to some of these dip buyers who are picking up the coins, you know, as the cycle goes. So you can have like these lower cohorts, you know, 34 to 40K, 40 to 47K, sell some of their coins to investors that are buying in the 66 to 78K range or the 78, to 92K range. So I think there's been some of that.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:06] Well, and I guess, Mike, they might be some of those same investors. So maybe if they're really timing this well, they know about the cycles, they follow your work, they're selling a little bit higher and then they're trying to buy back at this 56 to 66k range.
Michael Nadeau:
[9:19] Right, right. I think that's possibly what's playing out there.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:23] Okay. So you said this section ends like this. For reference, Bitcoin spent 105 days trading in the prior cycle top zone in 2028 and 98% of those trading days were spent in this zone over the final two months of the bear market. According to your timeline, We are in the final two months of the bear market. So far in 2026, in this cycle, Bitcoin has only spent 66 days in the prior cycle top zone, which implies if we're going to match the 105 days, we got a month or so to spend in this 56 to 66K range.
Michael Nadeau:
[10:02] And if that happens, then I would expect that 56 to 66K range to become the largest cohort of coins at some point.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[10:10] All right. It's all falling into place. Other current conditions, ETF flows, they're positive, they're still weak. This was crazy to me. Spot and perps volumes continue to weaken and they're at their lowest level since late 2019. And I know you've mentioned volumes is a key indicator for you in kind of marking the low. You'd expect to see high volumes at kind of the final capitulation. Minor selling accelerating. Of course, we got strategy in play. They seem to be continuing their unwind. The odds of clarity passing in this year are down to 22%. Any other factors that you want to highlight in these current conditions?
Michael Nadeau:
[10:52] I think that's kind of mostly what I'm looking at here. the spot and purse volumes, being so low is just an indication of, you know, kind of we're in this time-based capitulation zone of the cycle here.
Michael Nadeau:
[11:05] One thing that is starting to stand out a little bit to me, we've talked on a few recent episodes about the miners. There has been some accelerated selling coming from the miner cohort. So that's something I'm watching for, potentially related to some of these deals that are happening with AI companies where the miners are starting to exit portions of their business, selling some of their energy capacity to AI companies. That's something I'm definitely watching for. And then, yeah, Odds of Clarity Act passing. This is sort of a toss-up right now. It doesn't feel great currently just because Congress just went on recess without getting anything done. I think the main date that we're watching there is September 15th. That's when there's sort of a procedural cloture vote that's going to take place, and it needs 60 votes just to get to the point where they could try to push this through. It looks like we're going to need at least seven Democrats as if all Republicans, support this bill, which I think there could be one or two Republicans that are now potentially opposed to it. So maybe you need a few more Democrats. So something to watch for. Like if we start to get like, the macro starts to not get so good and then you have bad news with clarity, I could see this potentially leading us into a deep value territory potentially here.
Michael Nadeau:
[12:32] The other thing is your social interest is very, very low across crypto right now. It's kind of interesting because there have been some pockets of speculation, animal spirits, we'll call it, that are happening within the Robina chain ecosystem. system. We've seen an uptick in activity within kind of the creator social trading space, which we have a pretty big thesis for this cycle activity around PumpFawn. There's a new social trading app called FOMO that's been doing well. So there's like some, we'll call it like sort of a small hot ball of money that's moving around really largely just within crypto natives right now. So a little bit of speculation, possibly an indication that, you know, the cycle is starting to, you know, the bear market's starting to wind down. So something I'm keeping an eye on. But for the most part, you know, time-based capitulation stage of the cycle and attention turning to macro.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:30] Your take in this report is that in the remaining 15% of this bear cycle, whether we go into that deep value territory depends a lot on macro conditions. So let's talk about the three things that you are keeping an eye on right now. And just like watching like a hawk, I would say. One is inflation. The other is the yen-dollar kind of ratio and what's going on there. And the third is gold. Let's start with inflation and just kind of knock that out because we are waiting on some August data, I believe. What's the inflation story? We'll get CPI data, I think, later today. PPI comes out tomorrow. Some more data coming in at the end of the month. And what are you expecting to see in inflation? What could it mean?
Michael Nadeau:
[14:21] Yeah, so CPI dropped today. So that has come out. It came out at 3.4%, which was what the market was expecting. So no bad news on the inflation front, I think largely because oil prices kind of stayed in range in the kind of low 80s, upper 70s during the month of July. So no sort of like negative scare on inflation. I think NASDAQ took that news positively this morning. On the crypto side, kind of interesting that Bitcoin is not up on the sort of positive. I don't know if it's positive inflation print because it wasn't lower than expected, but it came in in line. With inflation expectations. What I'm sort of watching more closely, I would say, is the 30 year and how that is responding to what's happening on the inflation front, what's happening in terms of, the Fed and sort of the policy that they're.
Michael Nadeau:
[15:18] Maybe not putting out so much forward guidance, but letting the market sort of guide itself to higher yields. And the 30 year broke out, above 5.2%. Just recently, that's like a, you know, breaking out of a 20-year range or so. And it looks like it wants to go, it wants to keep going up. We've talked about how the Fed is doing much less, you know, forward guidance and sort of guiding the market to what it's going to do in terms of monetary policy, hiking rates, holding or potentially cutting here at some point. And it just looks like the bond market wants to reprice higher. I think a lot of this has to do with when you just look out at the geopolitical situation with wars, with oil prices, with funding these wars and concerns around that. We still have excessive fiscal spending broadly, just even if you strip out military spending. We've got this big, big move with deglobalization and new trade alliances and what that means potentially for structurally higher inflation, you know, shifting demographics. And then kind of the thing that's, you know, kind of I'm starting to look a little more into here is just kind of instability abroad with some of our major, you know, trading partners.
Michael Nadeau:
[16:38] And what that could mean in terms of domino effects that can impact the treasury market. And this really comes back to Japan and what's happening over there in terms of FX and really a coordinated effort between the U.S. Treasury and the Ministry of Finance in Japan to strengthen the yet. So we can kind of get into this because I think there's some signal here. In terms of how the Treasury is thinking, how the Fed is thinking, and what I would call almost like a new liquidity facility to support, the Treasury market at a time when things are starting to get a little bit more volatile out there.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[17:17] Now, before we talk about the yen and the Fed and Treasury's support of the yen, what they're doing, what you're calling almost like a QE light, that's the title of today's report, let's just go back to the Treasury yield chart for a second. So, again, I want to emphasize this. The 30-year yield just broke a 20-year range. So it hasn't been this high since before 2008, right? So that's pretty regime shifting, I think, for investors. A lot of investors listening to this will not have lived in a regime with yields going this high.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[17:53] What happens if they continue? Like, I'm not actually clear on like, I think last week we talked about maybe the NASDAQ possibly breaking down a little bit as capital is sucked into treasury markets. Maybe that could be an outcome of this. But if we start going towards six, seven percent, even higher, what happens to everything else? Yeah.
Michael Nadeau:
[18:21] It certainly impacts the real estate market probably most immediately. Mortgage rates are rising, and that makes it harder to get loans. It impacts the demand for loans, potentially banks and lending standards as well. So there's liquidity concerns. The other piece of it is that this would certainly impact investor allocations. If you can get 6% in bonds, do you want to be in AI, you know, tech companies at these sort of elevated valuation levels? So it impacts valuation as well. And so, you know, if we do have a move here that takes us towards 6%, and I sort of think that's the policy. I sort of think that's what they want to happen. They just don't want that to happen in sort of a fast, you know, chaotic way. They want it to slowly get there.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:14] They want to unwind it the way Saylor is unwinding strategy leverage a little bit.
Michael Nadeau:
[19:18] I think that's a great, great analogy. And so, you know, how do you sort of guide the market there? I think it's sort of what we're seeing with some of this policy with the Fed, trying to sort of step away from forward guidance, let the market sort of just look at the economy and guide markets to where they need to go. At the same time, we've got some situations coming up abroad. We can talk about Japan maybe and what's happening over there. Japan has been undergoing structurally higher inflation. They import 99% of their crude oil. You know, that's powering about a third of their economy. And they've had, you know, lower, you know, negative real yields, lower interest rates, higher inflation. And domestically, this is a problem for Japan with this setup with rising oil prices. And so they need to strengthen the yen. And so how do you strengthen the yen? Typically, Japan is the largest holder of U.S. treasuries. And so you need to sell an asset to then buy yen, to strengthen the yen. And so it looks like, you know, we had the first coordination since 1998 with the Ministry of Finance over in Japan to basically help them strengthen the yen. And so how did we do that?
Michael Nadeau:
[20:44] We essentially, the U.S. has reserves in euros. We sold euros and bought yen. So we didn't use dollars to do that because we didn't want a weaker dollar policy with inflation domestically. That would not be a good thing. So we sold euros instead. And they also set up a facility called a FEMA facility, which essentially, this is kind of the QE light that I'm referring to. This is essentially a policy to let some of our larger trading partners abroad.
Michael Nadeau:
[21:17] Access liquidity, access dollars without selling their U.S. Treasuries. So they can essentially use their U.S. treasuries as collateral with the Fed. So they'll give the Fed treasuries, the Fed that's increasing the Fed's balance sheet temporarily, and the Fed is then printing money and then giving them a loan so that they can buy their local currency and strengthen their local currency without selling treasuries and creating more volatility in the bond market. So that's this new policy. They've rolled this out, not just for Japan, but for other, you know, foreign trading partners as well. And I think, you know, the takeaway for me is just that it signals... Concern. I think they're trying to guide rates up, but they don't want that to happen in a fast, chaotic way. This is a way to prevent some selling of treasuries on the margin that could potentially feed more volatility, which would be liquidity negative and potentially, influence risk assets and the NASDAQ. So definitely an interesting development. First time we've seen this since 1998. And in some ways, it's kind of like this, this QE light type policy, I think.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[22:36] 1998 was the Asian financial crisis, so that's why there was intervention 40 years ago. It's almost surprising we haven't heard more about this, at least I haven't, because it does seem pretty big. You actually compared this FEMA repo, that's F-I-M-A, to the BTFP program that was rolled out for U.S. Banks during the Silicon Valley Bank run fiasco to prevent them from selling U.S. Treasuries at the time. And it was a temporary measure in order to prevent some sort of catastrophic unwind and to slowly let the air out of the tire, which is sort of what you think, right? If Besant and Warsh are trying to manage treasury yields the way Saylor's trying to manage all of his stakeholders and kind of unwind some of this leverage slowly, this is how they are unwinding some of this slowly. And the last thing they want is the Bank of Japan, just like market selling a whole bunch of treasuries and shooting up yield. So they need to put in this facility in order to make that unwind happen much more gracefully and slowly and over time. That's what's happening?
Michael Nadeau:
[23:55] That's exactly what's happening. It's not the same as QE. So if this was QE, what it would look like is the Fed going out and essentially buying, buying bonds at any, you know, part of the yield curve, putting them on their balance sheet, that's removing duration from the market and essentially sort of like artificially suppressing, you know, the yield curve. So it's not as pure as just like QE, but it's sort of like trying to get ahead of like this point where they would have to actually suppress the yield curve. In some ways you could say they're sort of suppressing it by just not letting these treasuries come to the free market, right? Yeah, they don't want them sold. Don't bring them to us. Yeah, we don't want to see those on the market. Let's do it behind the scenes in a backdoor way. We'll give you some dollars. Yes, the Fed is printing money and putting these assets temporarily on their balance sheet as a loan to these other countries. But just don't sell your treasuries. We'll give you some liquidity. It just signals that this war in Iran, these other wars that are happening around the world. You know, this is starting to impact, you know, the Asian markets, you know, first, there's a chance that this can also impact Europe, which is another area where they import a lot of their energy. So there's other potential concerns. And it's kind of like this, you know, you know.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[25:16] I don't want to... It's a daisy chain. It's all connected. So here's the thing, like, people think of the US, oh, the US doesn't, like, is a net exporter of oil, has a ton of natural resources. You know, Iran doesn't affect them. Oh, OK, it doesn't. But it does affect Japan, who imports 98 percent of their oil. And whoa, Japan, it turns out, holds more treasuries than any other country in the world. And they have about, you know, almost four percent of all treasuries. And that does affect the U.S. So it's all very interconnected, isn't it?
Michael Nadeau:
[25:46] All connected. It's all connected. And it's it's very interesting. There's a little bit of a game of like whack-a-mole, you know, that the Trump administration has to play here to kind of keep things orderly and sort of let the yield curve kind of reprice in a more orderly fashion. So yeah, definitely something we're keeping an eye on.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[26:05] There is this relationship between the yen and the NASDAQ. It's kind of like an inverse relationship. What are you seeing in this chart?
Michael Nadeau:
[26:12] Yeah, so this is a yen dollar versus the NASDAQ. NASDAQ is blue, yen dollar is red. And the relationship tends to work where if yen dollar weakens, typically NASDAQ strengthens. That's kind of the inverse relationship here. And that is partly due to carry trades. So when the yen weakens, people want to borrow in yen and then take that capital and put it somewhere else where they can get a higher yield, where are they putting that oftentimes into the NASDAQ, into the AI trade? And so when yen weakens, that can be good for the NASDAQ AI trade. And that's historically what we've been seeing. What's kind of interesting is.
Michael Nadeau:
[26:59] Because of this coordination, you can see on that chart, the red line is coming up pretty significantly on the far right side of the chart. That's the intervention that just played out, the coordinated intervention between the U.S. Treasury and the Ministry of Finance. So they strengthened the yen, but actually the NASDAQ rallied during that period, which is kind of interesting. It's kind of the Nasdaq rallying out of a 10% or so sell-off. So the thing I'm trying to figure out is, is that sort of an idiosyncratic thing? It's kind of a bounce, a V-shaped bounce out of a sharp sell-off.
Michael Nadeau:
[27:36] Is it related to just sort of corporate earnings and margins and productivity in the AI trade? Is it a durable thing? Or is this inverse correlation going to like snap back potentially? And either the yen stays strong and NASDAQ sells off or NASDAQ stays strong and we see the yen dollar actually weaken again and sort of that trade just kind of keeps coming back. So something definitely to keep an eye on. One thing I'll mention too is part of the reason, you know, this inverse correlation was even stronger back in 2023 is the spread between the sort of 10-year in Japan and the 10-year in the U.S. Was about 3.4%. So that's a really healthy spread to feed that carry trade. We did have like an unwind of that carry trade sort of, I think it was August of 2023. And sort of a little bit of a reset there. But that spread has been dropping. It's down to about 1.9% now. So that makes, you know, I don't think, I think the carry trade is still pretty attractive. But, you know, just in terms of how attractive it is, it is coming down a little bit as yields in Japan rise.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[28:53] We talked about inflation. We talked about the yen and the dollar and the QE light sort of relationship that's happening. The third thing you're watching in macro is gold so gold has been up roughly 15 since all of this and the yen intervention that's happening while yields rise which is kind of interesting like is that supposed to happen you know treasuries are supposed to be the safe asset but why is why is gold going up 15 what do you think that means what is gold telling us right now
Michael Nadeau:
[29:26] There's a, it's kind of an interesting setup here. So because of this kind of QE light policy, you could kind of see that maybe this is kind of a awakening the gold market and people are looking at this policy and saying, well, you're just not going to be able to, to kind of like keep all of this in order and there's going to be structurally higher inflation. And so, you know, gold sees, sees a move here off the lows. It did trade down, I think around to 3,800 or so. So it's had a pretty good cooling off period since that big rally last year.
Michael Nadeau:
[29:57] And, you know, that's one take on this. The other take is that China has actually started to add liquidity back to the system over there. And we talked about this, I think, on the show last year when the gold trade was really ripping. Is this the debasement trade or is this almost like Chinese liquidity and desire within the Chinese kind of investment community to hold gold? They previously used real estate as kind of like the sort of speculative asset where a lot of like excess liquidity flows. It seems like that's really now moved to gold. And so I think that there's probably a little bit of both playing out here where people are starting to sniff out this kind of QE light policy and what that potentially means going forward. And then you've had a bit of a regime shift in China in terms of liquidity injections, and probably some buying of gold from the PBOC as well. So I think a little bit of a combination of both. But I think gold BTC, we talked about BTC NASDAQ last week, and that we thought that that chart had bottom for the cycle.
Michael Nadeau:
[31:06] Kind of had the same view here on BTC gold, you can see we've, we got to a pretty, we dropped about 68.7% from the, from the peak last cycle. And that's very kind of consistent with the decline in 2022 relative to the 2018 decline. It's like kind of like a 90% drop each bear market, which was actually the same as NASDAQ as well, which is really interesting. So I think this chart has probably bottom. It doesn't mean it can't come back to those levels. But the big takeaway for me is like if gold is starting to sniff this out if we see or starting to see this qe light policy you know ultimately i think when liquidity conditions improve here the same sort of, um investment sentiment that's driving gold right now should come to bitcoin as well and i think bitcoin will outperform gold at some point here.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:03] Yeah, so I guess that would mean gold is maybe front running some of the future price appreciation of Bitcoin if we have bottomed on this ratio.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:12] So let's start to close this out. You still think we are in this time based capitulation, I guess, I guess moment for the next two months at least. And I guess if we're dealing with time-based capitulation, an investor does not want to be a casualty of that type of capitulation. The boring but accurate message to them is the thing we've been saying at the end of these episodes for the last number of weeks, which is be patient. You can't be time-based capitulated casualty if you are time-based patient. And that is the name of the game right now.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:51] I want you to maybe give a scenario here that you give at the end of this, which is like how we might actually see that deep value territory for Bitcoin. I'm wondering if this is your best guess on how this plays out. So let's say we get rising yields, bond market volatility that corresponds with that. Let's say we do see a Fed hike maybe in September. That's a 50% odds right now. Maybe later in the year. maybe there's two, and we see tighter liquidity, you think that that leads to a risk-off moment for NASDAQ, for all risk-on assets. That could cascade in the final price capitulation for Bitcoin and get us that deep value territory of 55K and below. Is that how it happens?
Michael Nadeau:
[33:44] That's kind of the setup I think we have right now. And I think the key thing, we talked about inflation. The key thing for me to watch is inflation and bond yields and how things are starting to shake out. Bit of a signal today in terms of the fact that inflation did not go up. It wasn't a negative inflation print, but Bitcoin looks like it's not really moving too much, too much on that. So I think there's a little bit of a signal there. And yeah if we get this move I think these next two weeks are going to be pretty interesting here heading into the end of September, the 200 week moving average is at 63.8k we're trading right around that range right now and I'm kind of, Looking to see if we have a monthly close above that level, I think that would be bullish. If we have a monthly close into the upper 60s, this would be probably the really bullish scenario where we actually reclaim the, short-term holder cost basis, the 21-week moving average, the 200-day moving average. They're all in a tight band between 68.7K and 69.8K. So if we get a monthly close above those levels, I would start to entertain the idea that maybe we've actually, you know, bottomed for the cycle. The one thing that is still a little concerning, even with a strong monthly close, would be.
Michael Nadeau:
[35:12] September is historically like the worst month for Bitcoin, particularly in, midterm years and kind of the bear market year. So that's something to pay attention to. I sort of feel like the setup here, is potentially that we actually do try to push up to those levels in the near term. Maybe we don't actually reclaim it with those strong closes, similar to what we saw when we got up to like 82K or so earlier in the spare market. Maybe we get rejected and we then start to drop down maybe into deep value territory. And that marks the bottom. Hard to say, you know, near term is really, really hard to predict. The other thing I'm paying attention to that we didn't talk about this week is Saylor. You know, it's possible that what he's doing is kind of like this. I think you compared it to what the treasury is trying to do right now is kind of.
Michael Nadeau:
[36:10] Kind of get it shore up his balance sheet, do it in a, you know, in a non-chaotic way and somewhat of an orderly way. I think that is starting to play out. And we've seen that STRC product, you know, trying to get back up to par to that hundred level. And what could get interesting is if we do get, you know, a close, you know, at these higher levels, higher upper 60s, market starts to turn somewhat bullish.
Michael Nadeau:
[36:37] STRC trades back to a hundred potentially. That could get interesting because if, if sailor is then able to then come to market and actually issue more of that product, now he may turn into a buyer again around those levels. That could be the catalyst for then, you know, more sort of copy on trading and people, you know, getting back into the market. Because that's one scenario, I think, on the bullish side. I think the bearish side is that we kind of remain weak here, or maybe we try to get up there to those levels, get rejected. And then, you know, we're probably going to find the low sometime, you know, over the next few months. But September's tends to be kind of weak. We do have these kind of swirling macro risks out there. And so I think, you know, those sort of risks support a stance of just being still being patient, even, you know, 10 months, you know, into the bear market, I would love to flip, you know, 100% bullish. But I'm still kind of keeping some cash on the sidelines, and kind of waiting to see how these these scenarios might play out here.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[37:43] Cash on the sidelines, 20% to 25% is what the TDR holds. Speaking of TDR holdings, I know a lot of TDR Pro members are asking a question. Is it too late to get into pump? I don't know if you want to answer that on today's episode, but I will say that's been in the watch list for a while. It's been in the portfolio for a while. It's an overweight position for TDR Pro, and it's up 60% in this bear market from when you started purchasing it and talking about it. So what do you think? Do you want to answer that now or leave that for TDR Pro?
Michael Nadeau:
[38:20] We can answer that now. So, you know, I think this is kind of interesting. This is an example we've been talking about, like, I consider a successful sort of bear market entry is when you're able to get into a solid position, high conviction position in a bear market. And you do that in a way where you kind of buy into it, even when crypto natives, because in bear markets, it's only, you know, the crypto natives, it's only the ones that are really, you know, focused on crypto full time that are here. So we have a smaller sort of investor cohort in the market right now. And if you're able to get in a position before that crowd sees something, then you're in a really great spot where you can be up 100, 200% potentially before the narrative hits even within, you know, the crypto native ecosystem. And I think that's kind of what we got right on pump. I didn't get my entries perfect, but, you know, it's, it's up here and, you, I think a lot of people maybe didn't allocate or thought they had some more time and now people are wondering if they should chase it. I think my feedback on this is, you know, first of all, everyone's decision is their own. Everyone's situation is unique.
Michael Nadeau:
[39:30] But the way I think about Pump for this cycle is like I have a pretty big thesis for where this content creator token social trading is moving. And I think we're seeing the early signs of that. And that's why Pump has been doing well. We've seen increased trading activity on Pump, increased token issuance, some interesting things happening with larger influencers and kind of wealth effects potentially creation through some of these tokens. So that narrative is starting to play out. There's also a competitor coming into the market that's driving even more attention to that narrative. So I think we're early in this process.
Michael Nadeau:
[40:09] In the near term, it's trading. It's in an overbought territory, right? So it's traded up, I think, over 100% from the actual cycle low for pump. So it's made a pretty big move here. It's overbought on the 14-day RSI. And so typically you get a mean reversion, you know, around those levels. I think there's potentially some resistance if we do get as high as 0.003 on pump. That's probably a liquidity sort of resistance zone, especially for some of these traders who've got some unrealized profits that they're sitting on. So I'm expecting a pullback here at some point. But I think big picture... Um is that this is one of the most interesting sort of themes i think for the for the next expansion for the next bull market, you know i think there's a chance here that pump could become a top 10 coin uh in this next expansion if everything goes as planned, and we're still very early in that process so i don't think you've missed this this whole thing, but in the near term where you know we're we're overbought and so there could be a little bit of a pullback at some point I can't predict if that's going to happen or not, but maybe a little, you know, a little guidance out there for people that are trying to figure out if they should if they should get some some exposure.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[41:24] That's great. And Mike, up 60 percent. That's why TDR Pro members are happy campers. And I guess you can't copy trade conviction, but you can look at the TDR portfolio and copy trade some of those ideas because there's some fantastic ideas there. Got to end it here. Of course, none of this has been financial advice. This is an Investor Journal. We're along the journey, right alongside you. Until next time, stay curious.