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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] What is Bitcoin's next move? That's the question today. Welcome to The Report. It is October 7th, 2026.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[0:20] I feel like as we get into this episode, we just need to all collectively pause, and catch a breath because a whole lot has happened in the last 30 days, even the last 90 days. Just in the last three episodes that Mike and I did, we confirmed the early bull market, the first segment of the fifth crypto bull market. That's a big deal. Last week, Mike and I took a look at new bull market price targets. We also took a second look at macro that was showing maybe some yellow signals on the week. Today, we're going to take a step back and do something that, Mike, you felt the need to do, which is process. Just take a step back and process what has happened over the last 90 days in order to prepare for what is next, for what is to come. And I think that leaves us with the question, going into today's report, what is Bitcoin's next move going to be? As Mike wrote in the report today, all eyes on Bitcoin right now. And more broadly, what are we doing since this summer? Are we climbing that wall of worry in macro environment or do we still have some more to go? Of course, guys, you got to stick around to the end because we're going to get into some specifics. Is Mike predicting October? Yes, I said it. October.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[1:46] What are the key price levels, both on the bearish side of Bitcoin? If we go bearish, how low could we go? And on the bullish side, what's the price and key indicator that could kick off a run to over 100K Bitcoin? We'll answer that toward the end. And I'm hopeful we also have some time to talk a bit about Mike's report that he, put up last Friday, which answers a question that's in the back of my mind in this early bull market, which is, when do you hold an asset that?
Ryan Sean Adams:
[2:18] Versus when you take gains on a pump, okay? Mike's got seven questions he asks himself when evaluating his current portfolio. I think this is very applicable during the bull. All that is set up. I wanna start with a question, and maybe, Mike, just to frame this out a little bit. So it was a year ago now, almost to the day that Bitcoin hit a bull market high of 126K. That was up about 8x from the lows set by the previous bear market. Everyone at that time last year was calling for an uptober. Two days later, you actually sent an alert to TDR Pro members saying that in that environment, you flipped from risk on to risk off. This was a day or two before the 10-10 2025 Bitcoin crash, where Bitcoin lost almost 15% in just a matter of hours. There was $20 billion liquidated. This was the largest liquidation event in crypto history. It turned out that broke the back of the bull market. It's October again, a year later. You believe the cycle has kind of played out that we are now in the early, bull market and you're taking a step back to pause and process and look at the last 90 days to what's happened. And why do that? Why zoom out at all?
Ryan Sean Adams:
[3:43] What does zooming out tell you that the week to week Bitcoin price or market indicators don't? What's the value in just as an investor in your journal kind of pausing and processing?
Michael Nadeau:
[3:56] It really just helps me level set. I think, you know, there's so much going on. And I think crypto is such a, you know, online experience. You know, you're on social media, you're watching podcasts, you're doing whatever research you're doing. You know, I kind of have my head in the weeds a lot of the times, right, with a lot of the fundamental research that we're doing, the data that we're constantly looking at. And so I always want to be like doing both. So going down into the weeds and then kind of zooming out and sort of observing things. And I think that the combination of doing both of those things is kind of what kind of helps me navigate these markets through volatility. You know, I think having like almost this kind of investor journal really helps me just see the market, observe the market. Don't become the market. Don't get caught up in the market, but be able to see, observe it. And it's something that we constantly come back to in our research and also in these Wednesday reports that we publish.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[4:56] Well, that's what we're going to do today. And let's just set the context before we kind of zoom out and look at the last 90 days. So the portfolio right now is fully risk-on. So you are almost 95% deployed. We are almost 100 days removed from the June 30th cycle low, hopefully the cycle low of 58K Bitcoin. The portfolio is up 124% in total. Non-Bitcoin positions up almost 3x. Now, over the last 48 hours or so, Bitcoin has had a bit of a pullback. So some people coming into today's episode are like, whoa, what's happening, Mike? We're at 84K or so at the time of recording. And I don't know if that's down 3% or 4% just on the 24 hour. It's actually flat on the week. Maybe let's just address that quickly. Is there any reason you can see why we'd be down 3% to 4% right now? It seems like the market has the jitters this morning, and I'm wondering why.
Michael Nadeau:
[5:57] Seems like it. There was a little bit of a quick sell-off, I think, last night that spooked people a little bit. I always have kind of low conviction on really short-term moves like this. I think what's happening is there's a little bit of a battle playing out in the order books. You know, people that want to be long the asset, people that think, you know, maybe we need to come down and revisit the 50 week moving average, which is right around 78K. And so I think you have like traders trying to push price down in some cases, and then you have other traders trying to push it up. So you get these sort of like little wicks up and down. But ultimately, I think it's going to come down to, you know, some other catalysts in the marketplace or spot buyers coming in and putting that support in there for Bitcoin to make that that next move. It wouldn't surprise me if we did come down and revisit 50-week moving average, you know, dip below 80K, upper 70s or so. And I think that would sort of pull some of the air. You know, we've kind of had, we can talk about these sort of what's been playing out here. But we've had sort of like a lot of speculation in the market, a lot of open interest, especially on some of these quality altcoins, also with kind of the on-chain space. A lot of that is coming off. And I think if Bitcoin does make that move to revisit the 50 week, we could have sort of that cleansing throughout the ecosystem that then would probably be healthy for kind of the next the next move here.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[7:26] Well, maybe let's ignore the daily gyrations then for the rest of this episode and let's zoom out a little bit and give us what you're seeing in the market. So a quick recap of the last 90 days or so. When you think to the last 90 days from June until about now, what are the key events that have happened or the key things that have happened in crypto markets?
Michael Nadeau:
[7:48] Yeah, I think, you know, even if we go back, you know, on this show, you know, 90 days or so ago or 97 days back to the end of June, at that time, we were not, you know, ready for the low to be in. We were thinking that there was still a chance we would go into deeper, deep value territory.
Michael Nadeau:
[8:05] And so as it turns out, when you look back, you know, does increasingly look like that was probably the cycle low. We talk about this on a weekly basis, all of the kind of indicators that we're looking at. A lot of that has lined up. We did have that catalyst that sort of pushed us off those lows. And we've been in this sort of elevated zone here above 80K for roughly a month or so. And yeah, for me, it's really kind of just seeing liquidity come back into the market, seeing the technical confirmation as well. And really what's played out is we had that bottom and then the next day, Robinhood chain launched. And that kind of kicked off, really, I would say, almost like the bull market. I mean, we're waiting for the technical confirmation on Bitcoin, which comes later. But we had kind of the on-chain space really kick things off in July. That then kind of led to a sort of mini alt season, I would say, in the September period.
Michael Nadeau:
[9:04] And now we're processing that. And it's time to decide if Bitcoin is going to come back and revisit the 50 week, or we're just going to consolidate kind of in this mid 80s zone here. And potentially there's some other catalyst that comes in that then pushes us, you know, up into that 90k zone. If we do get to that level, I think that gets interesting because then you have, you know, probably the media attention and the attention and narrative starts to shift towards Bitcoin reclaiming 100k or so. And that probably brings in more attention to the space. So, you know, when we look at all the data and stuff, I would say, you know, I'm probably like at 90% that the low is in. When we look at the flows, we look at all the data that we look at, the cycle KPIs, the market structure. And now we're kind of processing, you know, what the next move is going to be here.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[9:51] For those keeping track at home, I should say that's up from 85% last week, I think, when you were asking that question. It's up. It's up. It keeps going up. We're moving up. So 75 to 85 to now 90%. Okay, so the theme of today's report is all eyes on Bitcoin. I want to pause and ask for a second, like, why does that have to be the case? Why all eyes on Bitcoin? I know that has been the case in previous cycles. Are you just kind of anchoring to that? Or is it about the size of Bitcoin? You know, Bitcoin market dominance is about 60% of crypto. So definitionally, it almost has to make a first move. Are you sure Bitcoin has to make the first move? Why does Bitcoin have to attract all the attention here?
Michael Nadeau:
[10:34] It's a good question. I consider Bitcoin the alpha asset of the entire ecosystem. I sort of separate it from everything else in crypto. And what's interesting is Bitcoin dominance has been pretty much flat, like kind of at an elevated level. So 57, 58% in terms of Bitcoin's market cap of the entire crypto market cap. So it's been in that zone, which is somewhat elevated from what you would typically see. So if anything, I think you would argue that more capital over time, like this sort of like marginal dollar that's coming into the crypto space over time, we're seeing more of that go to Bitcoin, not less. So I think it's sort of fair to continue to look to Bitcoin as the bellwether asset, the thing that's going to move the rest of the crypto space and typically coming into early bull and going into a bull market. Bitcoin leads. Bitcoin makes the move first, and then that's what sort of changes liquidity conditions, brings speculation back in. So, you know, that was not the case back in July, right? It was really the on-chain space that kind of kicked things off. I still think Bitcoin is the asset that's going to lead us into, you know, the kind of like more speculation and really kind of what I would
Michael Nadeau:
[11:56] expect to see in a bull market conditions.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[11:59] Now, when you look at the market structure behind Bitcoin and the different cohorts, you point out during today's report that even though it is the early bull and you feel like you have sufficient indicators for that, there's still something happening in the background. And that's this idea of time-based capitulation. I mean, 90 days ago, we were talking about time-based capitulation as well. You're still talking about it now. You think this is still happening in the background. Can you describe what exactly is happening with the coin rotation? Who is capitulating over what time period? How do you expect the time-based capitulation to kind of play out during the next 90 days?
Michael Nadeau:
[12:41] Yeah, really more of the same. As I look at the market structure data, coins continue to consolidate into this 77 to 92k zone, which has 16.3% of the supply right now. Really what's played out over the last 90 days or so is we're seeing coins rotate up from the cohort, the 56 to 66k cohort that became the largest in mid-August. We're seeing coins rotate up now into the 77 to 92k band. At the same time, what you mentioned there, time-based capitulation, this is still playing out. So what we call the like top buyer cohorts, the people that came into the market at the peak of the market back in 2025, those cohorts above 92K have continued to sell into sort of rising Bitcoin price action over the last 30 days, all the way back to the last 90 days or so.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:39] Why is that? Can you like get into their psychology? So this would be people that bought probably sometime in 2025, right? Because they'd be over 92K.
Michael Nadeau:
[13:49] Correct. Yep.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[13:50] Okay. So they bought last year and they may have purchased as high as 120K Bitcoin or so. And they're looking at this price recovery in Bitcoin and they're just saying, okay, finally I can unload these bags and go buy some AI stock or something like that. And I'm willing need to take a loss. It was too hard to stomach a 50% loss, but okay, I'll take a 20% loss or a 30% loss. Is that the psychology at play here? And does that just suppress our ability to kind of rise into the 90s right now?
Michael Nadeau:
[14:24] I think that's exactly what's going on. So you tend to get a new sort of investor, a new entrance into the market in each bull cycle. And those tend to be, that's the least sophisticated investor probably coming in is coming in at the top of the market and probably didn't have a real fundamental reason why they were buying it other than the price was going up. You get into the asset, it starts to go down on you.
Michael Nadeau:
[14:51] I think a lot of people we're seeing in the data kind of have held through this bear market, maybe not developing a longer term thesis, just feeling anxious about being down the whole time, probably not watching our weekly episodes as well. Definitely not. Definitely not. And so, yeah, so then, you know, price comes up, you feel a little bit better about your position. Maybe you're not down as much and you're exiting that. And that's kind of what we're seeing uh show up in the data it's consistent with what we saw also you know during this same period if we go back to like early 2023 that the cost basis cohorts were different um but it was kind of the same thing where you had coins that were being pushed up from the lower cost basis zones into what at that time was like 24 to 30k or so and so those cohorts were growing rapidly similar to what we're seeing with around $77,000 and $92,000. But the cost basis courts above $30,000 were actually continuing to sell into that. That would have been the people that came in sort of at the top of the 2021 cycle. So it's all kind of investor psychology and the sort of journey of a crypto investor, I think, when they first come in to these markets.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[16:07] You were looking at some of the short-term holder supply data in today's report too. And you said this, the supply held in loss by short-term holders is nearly zero right now. You said that suggests a correction could be on the horizon. So I hear the words, a correction. You're seeing some on-chain data that signifies there could be a correction. Connect some dots for us. What are you seeing here in the short-term holder data that points towards correction or the bearish side of the argument?
Michael Nadeau:
[16:42] Yeah, this is something, you know, I will look at and come back to, especially when we've had these kind of like inflection periods. So if we go back to June, we've been in really kind of an up-only trend here for roughly 90 days. And basically all of the new money that has come in, these new shorter term holders, they are mostly all in profit. And when you see that flashing, like that typically doesn't last forever. And so, you know, this also happened, you know, early in the last cycle. And then we did have that moment where it came down and touched the 50-week moving average again, a brief scare, and it kind of resets things. So this definitely gives me some pause that like basically all the new money that's come in over the last 90 days or so, most of that is in profit right now. So if we see prices come down, I would expect some people looking to take some of those profits. But when you look at that chart there, we do end up typically in more of a sustained period as you get into a bull market where you're just seeing that line grow more because new money is coming in. When those first purchases are made, those are short-term holders.
Michael Nadeau:
[17:57] And then over time, a lot of these short-term holders often become longer-term holders if they don't move their assets from those wallets. Those show up in longer-term holders and we're tracking that as well. On the longer-term holder side, we've recently been noting in the reports and on the show that the longer-term holders are actually, the supply is actually falling off still, which again, I think that's just consistent with what we mentioned earlier, that sort of top buyer cohorts from 2025 are still selling. They aged into the longer term older cohort over the last year. So we're seeing some of that come off and then some newer money come in. But yeah, definitely paying attention to the fact that,
Michael Nadeau:
[18:39] you know, most of these people are in profit and that typically doesn't last forever.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[18:44] So when we blend some of these indicators with some of the more anemic volume data that you've pointed to, you know, ETFs, they're still growing, but they've slowed down. And then this signal, which I think is important and newish in the report, which is stablecoin supply. So you said this, we've yet to see an inflection in stablecoin supply amongst the four largest issuers, the big stablecoin issuers, a key indicator for truly risk-on conditions. You can see in the chart here, this is aggregate stablecoin supply, and it's kind of flat. It's been flat since the beginning of 2025. And what's interesting about this is this is sort of in a post-genius era. So you'd expect now that we have the tailwinds of stablecoin legislation in the US and our side, you'd expect that to grow, but it's not yet. And you said that that would be a key indicator for truly risk-on conditions. So when I see these things and blend it with some of the mixed signs.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[19:42] And if we are under the lens that this is the early bull period still, is this what we'd expect to see? Is this the interpretation of this? This is just the boring part of the early bull market where, you know, that spring has to coil up a little bit. And so stable coin supply is still flat. The spring is coiling. Volume still flattish. It's coiling. It's coiling. It's coiling. And we're storing up kinetic energy for a future phase in the early bull. That's how I want to interpret it. Yeah.
Michael Nadeau:
[20:14] I love that interpretation. I think that is largely what's happening. I also sort of try to think about it in terms of just the number of people that want to buy, you know, crypto assets right now versus the number of people that want to sell. And I think we've sort of exhausted the sellers and we're kind of in that process of exhausting the sellers and then sort of bringing new capital into the ecosystem. Stablecoin supply is a big, big part of this. It is one of the things that I'm pretty bullish on. You mentioned genius, sort of the incentives of the U.S. Treasury to utilize stablecoin issuers.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[20:53] It's all short-end stuff, right? I mean, all stablecoins are just short-end treasuries, aren't they?
Michael Nadeau:
[20:57] Right, right. So this is what they want to sell. This is what the Treasury wants more buyers for those assets when they're issuing their debt. So there's an incentive here to use the stablecoin issuers, use the stablecoin market as a buyer of U.S. treasuries. So that's a very bullish thing to me because that's going to push more liquidity into the crypto ecosystem. And it's actually going to incentivize a lot of speculation, in my opinion, in the government. People might think that the government doesn't want to see that stuff happening. But if they're pushing the stable coins and they're actually incentivizing it with their actions, that there's going to be these knock-on effects. So that's one of the reasons I sort of like the setup for this cycle. But we haven't seen this play out just yet. I mean, I'm kind of watching, you know, Tether has become much more aligned with the U.S. government and setting up U.S. operations, things like this. So we'll be following. We'll probably have, you know, more coverage of this area and kind of what we're expecting moving forward here. But definitely something I'm watching. And, you know, it is sort of consistent with the last cycle, too. We didn't see Steba coin supply really start to inflect until later in 2023. Yeah.
Michael Nadeau:
[22:15] And, you know, from a timeline perspective, we're only a year removed from the high, you know, last year. So end of 2023, that was, you know, that was a ways out. So this, you know, kind of year that we're going into here, the second year of a cycle, it might not be the bullish, the big bull market year in the last cycle was 2024. four. And so that was another year out. For us, that's 2028 in this cycle. So markets are not going to go up in a straight line. People should sort of get used to these sort of impulses. We kind of reset, got to shake some people out. We'll see some of these indicators. We're looking at active loans as well as like a liquidity indicator. And loans are up, up about 30, 40% off the lows. And even over the last 30 days, we're seeing more demand in DeFi for credit. So moving in the right direction, but I would expect this to be somewhat slow, kind of out of the gate here.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[23:20] Let's move to macro. So last week we took a second look. You said CPI numbers actually came in good. You were wondering, you were thinking that that was a sort of a bullish indicator in that it might dampen the Fed's need to raise rates. You said also you were waiting on labor market data. That labor market data came out last Friday. 29,000 jobs versus 90,000 expected. So 60,000 under expectations. July and August labor numbers were also revised lower. So they lost 60,000 jobs versus what was earlier reported. So labor data looking a little shaky. I don't want to put that interpretation in your mouth, but what's the signal that you're taking away from labor and the overall interpretation here?
Michael Nadeau:
[24:14] I think the main takeaway here is it's, yeah, I would say it's maybe looking a little bit shaky, but basically what's played out, I think, in the labor market since Trump has come in is like there's just, we're not seeing tons of layoffs. So the unemployment rate is still low, but we're just also not seeing tons of job creation. I think a lot of this has to do with immigration, has to do with what AI is potentially introducing into the workforce.
Michael Nadeau:
[24:40] You know, I think generally speaking, the economy is healthy and lots of people are getting up and going to work every day. And so that all looks good. The trends that I'm following are kind of on the quits data. Like, I think that gives you a lot of insight into like the confidence of the workforce and what the quits data is measuring is just the amount of people that are leaving jobs to go elsewhere. That has been, you know, trending down and not looking so great for over a year or so. So it's just telling you that the workforce in general is like less optimistic. There's less like green pastures for the workforce right now. And I think it's important, this is getting folded into the feds, you know, what they're looking at, their mandate is, you know, full employment and also getting inflation down. And if we think inflation may have peaked, if we think that there's a resolution coming in Iran, if oil is not going to go make a new, you know, a new high, then that kind of gets interesting. If you're starting to see some weakness on the labor market, maybe they have to put their more attention on the labor market. And then, you know, we don't see these rate hikes that are still priced in the market. There's still, you know, three rate hikes through next June. I mean, we did see like the expectations for in October, I come off significantly when this labor market data came out. Um,
Michael Nadeau:
[26:09] There's still a lot of hawkishness, I would say, priced into the yield curve right now. And if this trend continues, to me, it's a bullish thing because it probably prices out some of those expected rate hikes.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[26:21] Let's turn to stocks for a minute because I think there's some paradoxes at play here and it fits into the overarching macro story that you're telling in today's report. You have this section called, is the damage already done? And you're talking about damage to the stock market, and some people will be like, whoa, what damage, Mike? Well, actually, you say in September, some of the market internals deteriorated. 78% of stocks declined during that month. 54% were at least 15% below their 52-week high.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[26:54] So there was some damage done over the summer, the last 90 days, and into September. And yet here we are. The S&P and NASDAQ are now back at all-time highs. So when you look at the mechanics of this, it seems like what's happened is we have gains in the stock market, And also we have increasing concentration towards tech, towards MAG7, towards big AI trade. And so we have gotten the gains, but we've traded off those gains in exchange for concentration. Anyone who manages a portfolio might say something about, well, concentration risk is risk that you should also price in. At the same time, we have valuations that are looking actually cheap from a price to earnings perspective. And why are they cheap? It's because corporate earnings continue to go up. So profits continue to reign. It's very strange. I've not seen this in the stock market before. And I'm wondering how you make sense of these signals.
Michael Nadeau:
[28:05] This is very strange. And this was a lot of the work that I was doing, just zooming out on kind of the crypto markets, but also the stock market and kind of what has actually transpired here. It's kind of an interesting setup. You have S&P 500, NASDAQ hitting all-time highs. At the same time, there was like this deterioration sort of under the hood within the index. So 78% of stocks declined during September. That's a pretty big number. 54% are at least 15% below their 52-week highs. And what's a really interesting chart, the three-month correlation between the S&P 500 and the S&P 500 equal weight is 0.49. So like moderately correlated. So like this correlation between Equal weight, if you just put equal weight on all the companies on the S&P 500 and on the index itself, that correlation is breaking down, which tells you there's all kinds of dispersions.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:06] Wait, what's equal weight versus just like S&P index?
Michael Nadeau:
[29:09] What's the difference between the two? Equal weight would just be, so right now you have like 10 companies and the S&P 500 index that are making up like 40% of the index. So equal weight just gets rid of, just basically applies an equal weight on each company. Just normalizes that? It normalizes that.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[29:24] By market cap, of course, right?
Michael Nadeau:
[29:25] Yes, yes. Okay. So what's interesting is like when you, when you have this concentration, it's basically pulling up all of these stocks that are not, you know, doing most of the index is not reflecting like what's actually happening in the stock market right now, in my opinion. And, you know, this is kind of interesting when you kind of, you know, sort of zoom out a little bit, like what is actually played out here? We've had the 10-year as, you know, I think it went up to 5.34% on Monday. So almost, you know, 100, almost a full percentage point increase, you know, within the last year. You've had oil prices go back up to 105. They didn't make a new high from what we saw back in April. And we've seen sort of what you would expect to see. I think people are probably more bearish on the current setup right now because they're looking at the index and saying, well, the index hasn't fallen. It has to fall. And maybe it does have to fall. But we are seeing sort of like these corrections that are playing out within the stock market. And then when you look at the growth projections in terms of earnings and what analysts are putting out there, that is making stocks look like historically cheap, which is very bizarre when the index is at an all-time high. So definitely an interesting setup. It kind of has me thinking that,
Michael Nadeau:
[30:54] A lot of this has played out. If you think about the bond market has been getting killed, right? So people are losing money in the bond market, like most of the stock market is getting killed unless you're just owning the index. We've seen gold go through a bear market, we saw crypto go through a bear market. So, you know, when you think about just cycles and asset allocation and, and everything, there's been a lot of damage, you know, just because the index hasn't come down to me, there's been more damage. So as I went through this, I was kind of becoming more bullish on the setup. And when you look at sentiment in stocks, when you look at retail trading volumes, when you look at a lot of these things, they've come off. I think there's been a lot of hedging. There's been a lot of sort of risk management because of these rising yields.
Michael Nadeau:
[31:38] And usually when credit spreads start to tick up like they were, that can often be the sort of the bottom, right? Just when everyone's getting as really nervous, that can be the bottom. So that's kind of what I'm looking at here. We're obviously going into midterms. And I don't think the Trump administration wants to see a sell-off in the stock market weeks before the elections. So I'm kind of thinking like this sort of like maybe it's contrarian view right now that we could see a rally in the stock market, you know, heading into midterms. What's kind of interesting from there is that the year after midterms in the stock market is historically the best year for markets. So if we do kind of have a clearing event, the midterms are often that clearing event and markets tend to go up after that. Kind of an interesting setup when everyone's kind of getting peak bearish. So anyways, that's my views. I've been my sort of NASDAQ calls, TradFi calls haven't been great. But if you pair that up with them. What we're seeing in crypto, potentially early bull period, it's having me, I can sort of paint a more bullish picture right now than maybe kind of like the popular narrative in the market.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[32:55] This is what I was concluding after reading that you are like pushing into a more bullish perspective on macro. You think the wall of worry is getting climbed, like we're climbing it. And what that would mean is stocks go up. Also, gold goes up. Also, Bitcoin goes up too. And so that's my takeaway from today's report. Let's talk about how that boils down into portfolio management for you. And maybe it all comes back to where we started today's episode, which is where does Bitcoin go next? You say the near-term question for crypto is more about which direction Bitcoin decides to go and what that means for overall liquidity conditions. So let's ask Mr. Bitcoin what direction he's deciding to go. There's two directions.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[33:50] There's up and there's down. Okay. Let's talk down first. The bearish direction. What are the key numbers to watch on the bearish side to you? If we do get a dip in the coming weeks in October, what could that dip look like? And then we'll get to the bullish side.
Michael Nadeau:
[34:10] Yeah, I would sort of expect before we make that move to 90 that we do have some sort of correction here. I think it could be like a 7% correction to take us down to 80K or so. So 78 is the 50-week moving average. It wouldn't surprise me that we come back and touch that, maybe dip below it briefly. So 78 to 80K is kind of like if we see Bitcoin come down to that range, I'll be watching very closely. To see that it holds that 50-week moving hours, that to me would be bullish. If it broke that, that would be bearish on the downside. And I think the next level there would be the short-term holder cost basis, which is now a rising level. That's at 74K. I think there's quite a bit of support at 75K. That was where we broke down to in kind of mid-2025 during that correction. I think there's quite a bit of support in that zone. So that would probably be like, almost like deep value at this territory of kind of where I think we're at in the cycle. So those are probably the two key levels that I'm keeping an eye on. And then, you know, there's kind of like, we've yet to break 87K on the upside, you know, since we've bottomed.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[35:26] Oh, you want to go upside. But what about below 74K? It's like, are there basement levels here? And like, what's the level that starts to make you worried about the overall thesis here and structure that we're in the early bull?
Michael Nadeau:
[35:40] So below, yeah, if we go, so 74K short-term holder cost basis, a lot of support that's in that zone. And then you have 200-day moving averages of that 71.6K. So you drop below that, then you're potentially looking at the 200-week moving average, which is rising 66.2K. Yeah. Yeah, this would break sort of the technical early bull confirmation that we've had over the last few weeks. I would say if we start breaking down below the 50-week moving average and having closes there, then your structure has been broken. I think there probably would have to be something happening in the markets that would do that. But this, you know, there is precedent for this. So this happened in 2020 during COVID. We were sort of coming out and we had come over the 50-week moving average. And then you had sort of a black swan event in COVID and that reset things. So, you know, it's possible just because we had a technical confirmation and all these other things that we look at have sort of given us this confidence that it's like 90% that the low is in. Um, anything, anything is possible.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[36:52] So you don't see us going below 66K, which would be the 200 week moving average right now.
Michael Nadeau:
[36:57] I don't, I don't. Um, and I, I really don't see us, you know, going below like 75K either. And I think probably the 50 week is going to serve as support, but, um, the catalysts, the narratives, what happens with Iran, what happens, you know, what's going to start to play out in macro. All of this is going to play into sort of where we go. But I think, you know, zooming out again, I can't sort of like get off of this perspective of like the whole ecosystem has mostly been reset. We've reset market structure. We reset leverage. We now have capital flows coming back into the space. I'm noticing that there's more interest in crypto. There's more. I think our show is getting more views. Like I'm noticing others as well. So I think there's more interest. I think we've sort of, we're past sort of peak fear and kind of the low, but we're not.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[37:52] How about on the bull side then? So what's the path to 100K and above?
Ryan Sean Adams:
[37:57] What are the key price points from here to there?
Michael Nadeau:
[38:00] Yeah. So we haven't moved above 87K since June 30, since we've been in this uptrend. And when I look in the order books, it does look like there's a lot of shorts that want to sort of defend that zone or the upper 80s zone. And I think the view in sort of the trading community and a lot of people that are putting those shorts on is that, yeah, Bitcoin needs to go back and visit that 50 week moving average and like prove to the market that there's plenty of support in that zone. So I think that's kind of what's happening in the order books. And that's keeping us from getting up to 90k and potentially pushing through that. So I think that's the next wall to break down is those shorts. And if you can, you know, get another short squeeze or something through there.
Michael Nadeau:
[38:48] You probably get to 90 pretty quickly. And now, you know, you're back off to the races. I would expect, you know, we talked about this a lot in the report we published a few weeks ago and kind of what to expect in a bull market. But I would expect as we get closer to 100K, media attention comes back. Every crypto company wants to do marketing, right? Immediately. And like the whole space starts to ignite again. And you can kind of see that playing out. It's just, you know, what's the path going to be to getting there? And I don't have strong conviction either way, but I think it would make sense to me to see Bitcoin come back and retest that 50-week moving average.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[39:32] Thank you so much, Mike. That is very clarifying. I want to touch on one more thing before we close out today's episode. And this comes from maybe one of the important skills that you as an investor want to maintain during this phase of the market, which is the early bull phase, which is. How to be patient, how to have conviction, how to hold assets versus when to take gains on the pump. Because we've seen with some of your positions, even the ponds position, for example, what that did like an 8X or something like that and is now down 58%. So what do you do? Should you have sold that top or should you have waited? You put out a risk report on Friday to all TDR Pro members that I thought was incredibly valuable. And because we don't have much time to go over it, it should probably be its
Ryan Sean Adams:
[40:23] own episode, honestly, at some point in time, maybe just the TLDR. My read of your algorithm, the way Michael Nadeau deploys in the early.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[40:35] Bull market is you seem biased against taking profits and taking gains, a bit more biased, because you know that we are in the early bull phase of the market. So you're not going to be quick to take profits as you might be in future phases of the market. And then also, you ask yourself seven questions and you put these questions on the Friday's report. In addition, I should say six, in addition to what stage of the cycle are we in, that's the first. But for every asset in the portfolio, in the portfolio, you have to sort of consider whether you would buy that asset today at today's prices. In order to do that, you have these questions.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[41:17] Is user activity improving or has the narrative played out for every asset? Valuation. Does the current market value, fit fair value? Have the targets been hit? The thesis. Has the market caught up to the thesis of this particular holding, this asset? Any signals that invalidate it? Catalysts. If an asset has already re-rated higher, why has it re-rated higher? What could entail a further re-rating? That's the recognition that the market values this asset more. Would you buy this asset today? That's the opportunity cost. And lastly, is the current risk and reward tilted to the upside or downside? So those questions for every asset in the portfolio, and I think that's postured you towards a, hey, I mean, when going through this question list, I kind of like the portfolio that I have right now. And that involves stomaching a loss from recent highs of some of these assets.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[42:17] To, you know, closer to what you bought it for. But you're planning to hold through all of that. I know you get a lot of questions from the TDR community. And I just gave the TLDR basically Friday's report where you go asset by asset. But is there anything you would say about that skill? Like, is that description of your algorithm correct?
Michael Nadeau:
[42:38] I think it is. I think that's this is art, not science. I always try to kind of come back to that.
Michael Nadeau:
[42:48] But the way that I'm doing it is, yeah, like, I think the stage of the cycle has me in a posture where I'm not looking to be taking profits at this stage. We had a position in ponds that went up, I think, I'm not even sure at the peak, it might have been up 13x, 12x, something like that. Oh my God. And it's come off. We're holding this. And people that have been subscribed to CDR Pro for a while will recall when we were buying assets back in April, May, we went underwater on a lot of those assets. We held those assets. That didn't shake us out of the position. So there's patience for me in managing the bear market in terms of waiting for bear value price targets and identifying the entry points. I think now that the patience has shifted, we're in a risk on stance now and we're holding positions. For me, the patience is more letting the market play out, right? We talked about Robinhood chain and a lot of speculation that came in there in July and August period. We've sort of like come off of that over the last month or so. You know, that doesn't make me think that Robinhood chain was a flash in the pan and that that's it, right? For this cycle.
Michael Nadeau:
[44:06] I sort of acknowledge that crypto investors can have that sort of mentality because there are things that get lots of attention and prices re-rate fast and then they never come back I don't think that's the setup that we have with Robinhood Chain so you know you have to if you want to see like the the best performance in your portfolio you need to be patient you actually be able to hold things
Michael Nadeau:
[44:28] So the stuff that's in my yeah the stuff that's in my portfolio is stuff You know, I want to hold it. I'm not like, you know, just like hovering my hand on the sell button when I see things moving up. I'm looking at I've got a thesis. I'm waiting for that to play out. And I think it's just a lot of work. We've got about 15 assets. That's about as many as we can manage, you know, in a portfolio. And we have data dashboards. And I have a lot of resources that I can just kind of come back to on a daily, weekly basis and just like basically line up what was my thesis then? What has played out? you know, do we still see the same upside in this asset And that's kind of how I do it. And the other thing is, there will be points where things do go up and we're at a different part of the cycle. And it's time to take those profits because you can't see, you can't rewrite, re-underwrite that and have the same upside. So now your risk has shifted to the downside. So to me, I'm always thinking about where's the risk? If I sell now, is it possible that the risk was to the upside and I sold too early?
Michael Nadeau:
[45:31] Or if I sell now, do I feel confident that there's actually more risk in going to the downside? Side. So I think it's always balancing those two things, having a fundamental view on the asset and doing the work, right? It's a lot of work to actually keep up with everything that's going on with all these projects, everything that's going on in the market and having a view of like my view versus what the market thinks. So constantly doing this. I think the report that went on Friday, hopefully shined a light on some of that.
Michael Nadeau:
[46:01] A lot of people, you know, have been asking about taking profits, things like that.
Michael Nadeau:
[46:07] You know, don't do what I do. I would say don't do, you know, I'm managing this to my own personal investment style, the way I like to do it, to my lifestyle. So what I'm doing, you know, might not fit what someone else is doing, but we share everything that I'm doing, all the research that goes into it. And I think hopefully that's been a good, you know, helpful for pro members out there.
Ryan Sean Adams:
[46:28] That's great. And let's emphasize that as we close, as we always do, this is an investor journal, okay? This is Mike's journal. This is not telling anyone else what to do. It's telling you in an open source way what Mike is doing so that you can become a better investor and build your own conviction. Of course, we do these episodes every single Wednesday if you're not subscribed. Actually, here's the thing you should do today is engage with the content. If TDR has helped you through the bear market and into this early bull phase, then here's what you could do. Three ways to engage. One, send this episode to a friend. Tell them you love the TDR. If they're ever interested in crypto, they should go subscribe. Two, if you haven't engaged with the content, wherever you are, if you're more passive listening, that's me on most of the content. Do us a favor, like, leave a comment. Subscribe to another channel. If you're listening to this on Spotify, go to YouTube, subscribe there. Go follow us on X, on Apple, Yeah, that's the last thing, subscribe across multiple channels. So those three things, send it to a friend, leave a comment, subscribe if you find this valuable on a channel that you're not already subscribed to. So let's end with this. None of this has been financial advice. This is an Investor Journal, and we're on the journey right alongside you. So until next time, please stay curious.