Clarity Act Progress Lifts Bitcoin | Trading the Markets w/ Kris Bullock and Bijan Maleki

[00:04:45]Yes, Belfro. Absolutely.

[00:04:50]We will cover that.

[00:04:52]And we are live. Happy Wednesday everyone and welcome back to another edition of Trading the Markets. This is the show where we talk trades, we look at and we take your questions. So if you have any questions, just drop them here in the live chat on Discord or on the platform or even on X because we're live there as well and we will try to get to as many as we can. So interesting uh news going on today in the market. the odds of the Clarity Act passing have increased and then Bitcoin jumped up a bit on that, but then they both pulled back. So, I don't know where we really are, but we're going to dive into all of that and and see where we are on that front and I see the questions coming in.

[00:05:43]Yep, we're going to get to as many as possible. But Chris, happy Wednesday.

[00:05:48]What do we got today? So yeah, um I want to spend a little bit of time talking about, you know, where Bitcoin is at to start with. Uh there's been some good conversation in the Discord and the Hive chat channel over the last couple of days that I'm going to kind of draw from. And so I want to talk about what Bitcoin is doing. Um and why I'm a little bit skeptical uh as to how far this rally is going to go. Um, and then I want to get into looking at uh sort of the financial conditions and and talk about what I need to see like what exactly I'm looking for to feel confident in a much stronger longer Bitcoin bull market. And so I want to talk about that. Um, and then yeah, then uh we'll get into all kinds of stuff.

[00:06:30]We'll talk about ETH. We'll talk about uh Jetto and Ono and and some other ones that are looking really good. We'll talk about Hyperlid and um just get into it.

[00:06:39]Yeah. So, that's what I've got for today.

[00:06:42]>> I love it. Uh, let's add Canton to that list as well. Definitely want to chat what they're doing.

[00:06:48]>> Um, I'm just front running the questions because I know we're going to get a Canton one, but [laughter] Chris dive into it. Take it away.

[00:06:55]>> Yeah. Yeah. So, um, looking at Bitcoin like here we are. It It does look good.

[00:06:59]Like I I admit we're we're on a we have a nice rally going here. Um, it's not too overextended. The Demart count is still low at only a three. Note that we are, let me turn my highlighter on. Note that we are kind of right at a resistance level here based off of this little cluster right here. But I like how we've kind of poked back up into this range. Like we had we had this big here and we lost that range and broke down and and came Oops. and and and set this new range here and we've broken back up into it and and so far we're holding. I mean it's it's only one well it's actually technically two days closed back up into this range. So I like that. That's bullish. We we are seeing some some good things happening here. Like and even if I go over to kind of my weekly my weekly chart framework here and look at Bitcoin, it's you know it's on the verge of flipping a weekly mega trend signal. Like it's it's above the line. It needs to close two weeks above this line, you know, with some momentum here. Um this is what I'm looking at right here. So it needs to close a couple above here with momentum.

[00:08:01]Um and then if we zoom in on this one here, this one also looks good. and in that it lost its red dot. Uh typically these red dots are momentum signals and so losing a red dot tells me that the downside momentum is waning which of course is good. That's what we want to see. So like I said it's it's looking good. We also had um we had uh a trades flip green a couple days ago which is always a good sign. Um it it generally does a really good job. I like that it it works more on the daily time frame too. And so again, we're seeing positive things, but uh my my sort of contention is that there are other things that I'm seeing that tells me that I don't know how much juice this really has. I don't know how far this is really going to go.

[00:08:46]I sort of suspect we're going to get another run up to maybe, you know, these moving averages here, either the the 20we or the 200 day, and get rejected kind of like we did here. Um and let me tell you why. Let me and this came up in the discord yesterday, but um the reason I think that is because of a couple different things. One of them being ETF flows. We know over the last however long yearish, whatever, the the the biggest marginal buyer of Bitcoin has been institutions. That's what's really kind of kept it going. And we know it's been uh it's had multiple terrible weeks in a row. And actually on the year, you know, year to date, we're we're negative flows by about five and a half billion.

[00:09:30]And so over the last three weeks, it's just been barely flat. It's been barely into the positives uh coming out of a bunch of several negative weeks in a row. So this is telling us that uh institutions dumped a bunch of Bitcoin and then they haven't really been buying back. It's been very very neutral. So if if institutions are the biggest marginal buyer and they're not buying um well what else what else do we need? So we need retail buyers. So let's look at retail buyers. And one of the ways I like to gauge retail buying um is by the Coinbase premium index. And what this tells us is the Coinbase premium index means is the price of Bitcoin higher uh than the than the global average on Coinbase? And so if it's higher on Coinbase, that tells you that we're getting a strong retail bid from US buyers specifically. I mean, Coinbase is available in other countries, too, but it's very US- ccentric. And typically in throughout Bitcoin's history, Bitcoin doesn't really sustain big rallyies unless it's getting a strong buy, a strong bid from US retail buyers. Uh, you know, kind of like we had earlier in the year here. And then, you know, going back to some of the the the rallies that we had back in 2024.

[00:10:46]So, right now, you can see it's very much in the negatives. Uh, this this is telling us that there's people in the US aren't buying Bitcoin right now on Coinbase. And that's kind of it's a good proxy gauge. Yes, it's not the the beall endall, but it's a good way to gauge just general sentiment of a strong contingent of Bitcoin buyers that helps propel and and uh fuel large uptrends.

[00:11:06]And so if if US retail isn't buying and if US institutions aren't buying, there's nothing really fueling this rally um other than just money coming out of stables, probably from people that had parked money in stables back around here and sold either, you know, a few weeks back or a few months back.

[00:11:25]They're just pulling it out of stables and running it up. This is more like kind of short-term price action coming from money that's already in crypto. And we know for a bull market to run for months at a time, it can't just be money that's already parked in crypto. It's got to come from outside. It's got to come from institutions. It's got to come from your your cousin or your your sibling that asks you about Bitcoin, you know, and goes and makes a Coinbase account and starts buying Bitcoin. And it's not coming from that. We can see that it's not coming from that. So that's why I'm like, yeah, this is cool, but I don't think this is going to be the the bottom. I don't think that this is going to be what sustains this rally into into months into the future. And so I got a question on the Discord. Okay.

[00:12:07]Well, if that's if that's your take, then what will it take for that to be the case? What do we need to see inflows from ETFs? What do we need to see retail coming in? Like what what conditions need to be in place for that to occur?

[00:12:22]And so, um, I'll just kind of read my answer. I'll paraphrase it real quick and then I'll dig into what that actually looks like from a chart standpoint. But quickly, I just said I think the dollar index, the Dixie needs to come down a good bit. I think global M2 needs to resume its uptrend. I think real yields need to ease a lot. Um I think I I'd love to see an interest rate cut. I don't know that we'll get that, but that would certainly help too. Um and uh I you know, ultimately we just need the right financial conditions for uh big money to work its way out the risk curve. And so I'm going to spend a few minutes talking about what that looks like from a charting standpoint so that you can look at that on your own chart and and sort of know when those conditions are coming into place. And so let's start um let's kind of start with real yields for a second if I can find the right chart here. It's one of these.

[00:13:18]Here we go. Okay. So um real yields what what kind of what are real yields? Real yields are basically um the yield you get uh like the net yield you get after inflation. So like say you put your money in a bank you make however much 2% or you put your money in in a bond you know you get 2 to 4% give or take. But then when you subtract inflation from that your real yield is actually whatever around 2% give or take. And if we look at these, they're all hovering around between the one-year uh bond and the the 30-year, they're all anywhere between like 1.83% and 2.9%. So that's the actual real yield. And so what happens is um if inflation goes up or bond yields come down or, you know, some of those mechanics change, it makes it so that real yields actually dip into the negative. And that means that if you're holding your money in bonds or holding your money in a in a a mark money market account or something like that, suddenly your yield isn't outpacing inflation.

[00:14:16]You're actually in the negative. And so when that condition occurs, it forces people to take their money out of these safe havens like money market accounts or bonds and put them into riskier assets so that they can still get a return on their money. But if real yields are favorable then for people with a lot of money go out the risk curve. Like why would they go buy Bitcoin when they can make fourish percent on a bond or even real yields at around two almost 3% on a on a bond? It you know there's just less incentive for that. And so that's why we're not seeing money go out the risk curve into things like Bitcoin and gold or whatever. And that's why we're seeing these all these assets not doing great. And so if we look like let me zoom in on this chart.

[00:15:01]These are the real yield stars. We can see they spiked up quite a bit over the last um you know month plus give or take. They've they've all run up quite a bit. And so when this happens this makes the conditions less favorable for risk assets and we can see so I have this financial conditions index that I talk about a lot. And and these real yields is just one component. There's four components of this financial conditions.

[00:15:24]There's real yields, there's there's credit spreads, um, which I'll get into in a second. There's the dollar, like the dollar index, and then there's equity volatility. And so, um, I want to look real quick. Let me kind of shrink this and let's talk about reals. I've talked about this in the past and just sort of how it can impact Bitcoin and some interesting observations. If we go back and look like so up to round about let's say August of 20 2022.

[00:15:55]So in this in this bare market of Bitcoin this is kind of when everything so right in here is when everything changed. We can see big bare market here. We can see real y uh real rates real yields whatever running way up. But if you go back and look and let me zoom in here.

[00:16:12]If you go back and look in the entirety of Bitcoin's history, this chart only goes back to 2015, but in the entirety of Bitcoin's history, they were all like real yields were favorable almost that entire time. They were all in this green sort of good favorable section where it's like this was a lot of incentive for money to go way out the risker for all through this entire time from like 2015 all the way to 2022. And then when um we had this big change happen that you know the the the sort of COVID big bull market peaked and and rates started increasing we can see this green light as interest rates uh it kind of coincided with that obvious interest rates shot way up from zero all the way up to you know four whatever four plus percent uh 5% 5 and a half and back down to 3.75 and so now if you look ever since that time so this entire bare or bull market run that Bitcoin has had since 2023, since the beginning of 2023, real real rates have never been back in that green section. They've never been down here. Like the whole regime changed in that time and it's never been back there. And so I I think maybe you might ask, well, if we've never been back down in this green section here, then how did we even get a bull market at all? Like if these if these conditions weren't favorable this entire time? And it's because there's there's more to it than just uh yields. And I've talked about this on a number of shows. We know that like barring a few very specific catalysts like the ETFs that happened here and the the Trump election that happened here, Bitcoin largely has gone sideways over the last three years. And and if you were with us in that time, you remember that there were huge swaths of time, the the boring zone we would call it, in the moment where it would for months at a time back in 2023, back in here, very very boring in this whole huge stretch in in 2024 from like March or April all the way into like October, we were bored out of our minds because again, nothing was favorable. The only thing that was really driving sort of price appreciation for Bitcoin were these unique catalysts that came along like the ETFs, like the like the Trump election that sort of caused these these independent rallies that caused it to sort of decouple from the financial conditions. So, >> and to note too that those were narrative driven too, not really fundamentally driven.

[00:18:35]>> Yeah, >> exactly. Yes. Very good. Very good. So um another thing so oops um so what are the other financial conditions? How do they come into play? Um let's see where is got it minimized here.

[00:18:54]So there's there's other things and and also you can you can see how um well here let me minimize this one.

[00:19:02]You can see how uh this one kind of measures all the all those financial and it gives them equal waiting. So there's there's real yields, like I said, there's there's credit spreads, there's dollar, and there's um equity volatility. And so you can see where um even though real yields have been tight and restrictive really for this entire stretch here, for literally this entire stretch, there's been plenty of periods where sort of the net financial conditions were were were eased and and flowing and and you know, positive for for investment. And so that's because the other of those three conditions sort of outweighed the real yields. But we can still see that anytime we had a big green or a big red spike here in these financial conditions, it coincided with a big spike in in real yields. Also like right here, right here, you can see it was a spike. Um even just some of these little ones here and here was spike. Uh a big one here, you know, a big spike here. And then in this in this latest sort of regime here, we can see it's even it's not even so much a spike, but it's it's a proper trend upwards. So, um that's why when like if you look, for example, real quick, let me pivot this over to looking at um let's just say like the the S&P um the S&P peaked kind of back here at the at the beginning end of May, beginning of June, and that was right when this flipped really red to the upside. But even in this uh sort of neutral phase right here where it just wasn't strong enough to register either a full red bar or a full green bar. It was just kind of barely neutral. It can be neutral and that could still be that sort of goldilocks uh conditions because this was a huge rally in the S&P that literally stopped the day this flipped red, you know, that this flipped red and so um and it coincided with a big spike in these real yields. So, right now, what we're looking at, um, if I kind of go back to Bitcoin, what we're looking at is just we need we need all of this stuff to ease off. We need these to come down. Now, if there's a rate cut, that automatically changes the mathemat mathematical equation. There's going to be automatically a dip in these because the the the rates, the bond yields and the the savings yields automatically drop with a rate cut. So, that would be cool. That would be ideal. But, it will also drop with inflation dropping, which we can see that it is. So that's another mechanic of that component. So it might be getting there. Um if we look at the dollar, we can see that the dollar, let's let's talk about the dollar for a second. Now for the longest time in say the past, you know, well, year to date, the do and and going back even more than a year, quite a bit more than a year, we can see that the dollar has really just been hovering in this long sideways range for many, many, many, many months.

[00:21:52]And just um right around you know the beginning of or the end of June it broke out of this range that it had been in for all that time and is now well well like entrenched above it. So this is putting pressure on this too. Um this is part of the problem as to why conditions all of a sudden suck and we're seeing downtrends in in stocks and everything and this is problematic. This is this was a break from this regime that we had been in for a long period of time. And then if we look at global M2, we can see too here how yes, it's in a bit of an upswing now, but it too has largely just been trending sideways for I mean the you know April I mean the since April basically. Um and so we need this to break out. When I when I said earlier when I was reading my my quote from yesterday, we need the global M2 to resume its uptrend, which it's kind of starting to uh but it still needs to set some higher highs. It hasn't really. So, we need M2 to break out of its uptrend or break back into its uptrend. We need the the dollar to come back down a lot, which I said, and we need real yields to um to drop back down. Oops. We need real yields to drop back down a lot. That will flip this to green. that create the conditions where it's no longer favorable for big money to be parked in safe haven assets like like money market accounts and bonds because suddenly they're not going to be outpacing inflation with those investments and that will force that money out into risk asset and right now that's not what's happening. So that's that's what we need to happen that's what I'm looking for.

[00:23:30]So until that changes, there's no incentive for ETF buyers, for big money that buys ETFs to buy Bitcoin ETFs because they can make adequate enough returns uh in completely risk-free assets. So that's what we're looking for. That's what I'm waiting for, all of those things. And so that's kind of you can put the I've I've put these all these indicators are available in Trading View. I've talked about them in the past. Um, yeah, you can find them. Just search for I I think you can just search for my name, Blastolast. Um, and there's all kinds of, you know, the real yields monitor, there's the financial conditions, there's there's all this stuff. It's all free in Trading View and you can watch these conditions and then you'll know. And so now, that's not to say that like Bitcoin st can't still go up or stocks can't still go up, but the problem is is they're they're they're swimming against the current. So, they have to have a much much stronger narrative. they have to have much much stronger sort of stimulus for them to outpace that that undercurrent, you know, and so you want to be investing when financial conditions are loose and when everything is easy. Then it's easy mode like I keep saying right now we're not in that. Um it doesn't have to go full green. It can go just neutral and that still is plenty enough even in this look at this Bitcoin rally here. Um was still in a neutral state. So even a neutral state is better than a red state and that's easy enough to sort of facilitate a rally. So that's why I keep saying this this isn't the time to be going all in. This isn't the this clearly isn't uh the start of a of a bull market because there's just no incentive for that money to be in Bitcoin right now. And so that's that's what we're looking for.

[00:25:19]that those are the those are the conditions that I think need to be in place and uh what needs to happen for for all of that. So, um that's that's what I'm watching for. Um >> yeah, I think that was a that was a a good good way to to come about it because I think that's kind of confusing a lot of people, right? If ETF flows are basically negative or just, you know, almost not coming in positive, right? uh retail is not buying. I think the cons the the general thought would be like, well, shouldn't Bitcoin be at like $30,000 based off of that, but it's like basically old money, for lack of a better term, the money that's already in stable coins is kind of what's propping us up at these levels and preventing us from I guess going down into that 40 range. Is that is that a right way to kind of say it? is like that old money and what we need to see is new money coming in, new buyers coming in from retail to start seeing that. And if we have theoretically if we have the new buyers coming in, we have the ETF flows kicking up again and then we have you know global M2 rising, rates being cut down, all of those financial condition, then it's game on.

[00:26:27]>> Exactly. Exactly.

[00:26:28]>> Okay. Now, you kind of basically answered this, but I want Luca to know that we're addressing his question.

[00:26:35]Right on. So, this question came from Luca Rossi. Um, great World Cup striker name by the way. Uh, early before the show, Chris, in your last report, you said you had yet. Could you say if and when you are thinking to start? So, Luca, that's basically Chris. Was that basically the conditions that you described that would make you start your DCA process or or is there more to that?

[00:27:02]>> Yes. And and that's a good question. I'm glad you asked that because, you know, you could argue I could have started it already. Um, but I do keep coming back to this, looking at this here and going, man, I just I still in my gut I feel like there's there's, you know, still weakness ahead of us. And so, um, I think, uh, you know, I'm gonna be looking for at least the first neutral the first neutral candle I get on this.

[00:27:28]And I look at this on a weekly basis, so that's it's not like a daily thing. I mean, you can look at it on a daily thing, but I I I think it's really a week weekly is better, but yeah. Um, as soon as we start to see this and that'll really kind of, you know, I'll look at the individual components, too. I'd love to see the Dixie get back down under this sort of $100 or 100 threshold rather. Um that's going to be a good sign for me too.

[00:27:52]And yeah, so that we've we've seen the VIX come down already. That's kind of leveled off. So that's been nice. Uh here the you know, it was spiking up too and causing causing problems in that financial conditions. So that's one thing that has eased off. That's that's been good. Credit spreads have been good. So yeah, I'm really looking at the dollar the dollar to come back down and um just those financial conditions to ease a little bit and then I will likely um buy buy a chunk. Uh and so and and again I'm the reason too I'm waiting is because I'm being patient and I still think that we're looking at like a September October time frame and so I I still think it's just a little bit too early is is my thought there as well.

[00:28:33]So, uh, kind of all of those things together is why I haven't bought yet, but I think we're we're getting close.

[00:28:39]Um, it it's coming around. So, we'll see. This this, uh, latest CPI report that came in that that resulted in this this downtake here, um, in inflation is helpful. It's a step in the right direction. Um, I think the dollar is remaining high just because of what's going on in Iran that's causing with with oil and, you know, the oil prices.

[00:29:00]um that's impacting the dollar as well directly. And so there's a lot of moving parts, but um yeah, I'm just going to kind of wade through the noise a little bit and uh look for look for a better entry.

[00:29:14]>> Yeah, the geopolitical situation is a lot harder one to to gauge because it seems like we change every 24 hours and we have a new direction we're looking at. So yeah, it's very tough to to gauge that. Um, shall we start looking at some some other charts? So, I want to take let's take this question first from Felro because it basically starts us at the top of the alt market. So, uh, interested in opinions on the recent performance of ETH.

[00:29:42]>> Um, I mean, yeah, from a technical standpoint, ETH looks good. Like, not not going to lie. Um, it's it's maybe not quite as good as as Bitcoin looks, but it's, you know, in a nice uptrend, too. I think it's benefiting. it it does have its own narrative. It's benefiting from increased on onchain activity um you know from like the the Robin Hood uh L2 launch and I mean uh Hyperlid there's a lot of stuff going on on layer twos for Ethereum. Uh I do come back to and I've talked about this a number of times, but I do come back to the idea that um I not none of that really acrru back to the base chain really that much. And so I question how much value we're going to see on the base chain. Like what reason is there to hold ETH uh other than to pay for gas? But these these layer 2s are so efficient and so cheap and so fast that you know transactions are a fraction of a penny a piece. And so unlike last cycle for example when you needed ETH to buy NFTTS and meme coins and all this stuff and transactions were upwards of well I mean right now they're around six cents a piece per a transaction but there were times in the past where I'm not going to lie I've paid $200 for an ETH transaction in the past you know >> paid a lot more than that. [laughter] >> Yeah. No I mean it's crazy. It's crazy.

[00:31:04]And so back then it made sense that Ethereum would would go skyhigh because you needed so much ETH to participate in what was going on on the ETH blockchain.

[00:31:14]But ever since 2023 um you know when they switched to proof of stake when they sort of shifted the incentives back over or over towards the L2s um even more recently they made another change that was even more favorable to layer 2s. Um and I can show you actually let me let me look at it here. It's it's really uh painfully obvious by looking at an ETH BTC chart.

[00:31:39]>> Um so, oh hold on, daily or weekly here.

[00:31:49]>> Yeah, basically well I even had it noted here. So this was Ethereum prior to proof of stake against Bitcoin. Um and you can see I even have the the lines drawn here. uh it was just it was going straight up and it was because there were NFTTS were still huge at this point. Everybody was still trading NFTs even you know late as late as whatever September 2022 literally the week of the shift to proof of stake it marked the peak against the on the ETH Bitcoin pair. That was that was the end and it's never been the same ever since. And so it's just immediate immediate downtrend um starting on the day of the the proof ofstake upgrade and then they moved to this new uh uh Ethereum improvement uh proto or proposal rather 4484 which again gave more uh favorability uh incentive wise to layer 2s and then the the downtrend accelerated that much more drastically against Bitcoin. And so you can see Ethereum has made a number of mechanical changes to their blockchain that have been tremendous from a technical standpoint, but have ruined it as an investment. And so yes, it did kind of mean revert after this massive massive downtrend, but it still has gone right back in line with the main trend uh and is is is trending down. So, this is why I remain skeptical uh of ETH as an investment and and why I'm skeptical of its current rally, even though it's getting some some play and some some narrative and some hype because of because of the Robin Hood tiein and and things like that. And I think that that will help it, but I'm still not seeing anything uh truly fundamental that that is going to drive value to Ethereum in the way that it did prior to this this major upgrade. And and that hasn't, you know, that's been the case ever since then for years now.

[00:33:37]And so this was the product of a major fundamental change in how Ethereum is structured. And I think unless there is another major fundamental change in the way Ethereum is structured, this trend is going to continue. And so um yes, that's that's my that's my my thoughts on ETH.

[00:33:55]>> What's ETH's current price right now?

[00:33:58]>> So if I go back to the USD pair, ETH's current price is 1935 and it's right at a it's right at a resistance level. Lost that channel just like Bitcoin did, broke back down and it's kind of back up against it as resistance at the moment. Um, and that's not to say I don't think ETH is dead.

[00:34:16]I'm not saying that at all. Again, from a technology standpoint, ETH is only going to get bigger, honestly, if you ask me. I think that it's still going to be the beneficiary of a lot of like uh real world uh tokenization of, you know, tokenization of real world assets. I think that we'll see, you know, equities trading on ETH, but I think it's all going to happen on layer twos. It's going to happen through the likes of Hyperlid and Robin Hood and places like that. And so ETH as a as a blockchain as a base layer isn't going to benefit from that directly. And so um it'll go up because of speculative buying and for probably from a a fair amount of just ignorance, you know, honestly people who don't necessarily understand the nuances of what drives this and and why ETH is good or bad from a from a technical standpoint, they're going to see, oh, it's the number two crypto. It's got a big ETF. It's got institutional buyin.

[00:35:08]Um, so they're just money is going to come in from that side of things, but once they realize, oh, wait a minute, it's not what I actually thought it was and there's no value acrruel to it in the same way that say there is with something like Hyperlquid, for example, um, then they're going to go, what am I wait what am I why am I holding this?

[00:35:25]You know, what's >> what's actually the deal here?

[00:35:29]>> Yeah.

[00:35:29]>> Um, >> I think the proof ofstake point you made is is very like you see it right on the chart, right? I think another couple of things also and we you touched on this as well with the NFT um craze era that we went through. I can't stress enough how much crazy volume was going on on like the NFT space. OpenC got a valuation of like 13 billion dollars because of that era. So that just goes show you like the crazy uh like gas wars that were going on. people were paying upwards of like three four ETH during high gas moments to secure like mints and stuff like that. So just that that played into it and then also too um the competition for DeFi as well like during that cycle ETH was like I think the pretty much the only place that you could do DeFi in. But now like with the the rise of Salana DeFi and so many others that I can't help but think that has also kind of rained on Eat's parade if you will. So, I think the combination of those three things uh doesn't really make me a lover of ETH. I' I've been publicly saying that as well. Uh so, yeah, there we go. Comment. I remember paying $1,900 in gas. So, yeah, >> they lost those fees.

[00:36:42]>> When I did my taxes, I in 2021, I think it I totaled about a little over $10,000 in gas fees, ETH ETH gas fees, >> just gas. And that's just one person.

[00:36:53]Would you consider yourself like at that point would you have considered yourself like a heavy NFT buyer, heavy DeFi user or like >> Oh yeah, totally. That's all. It was I was all in DeFi, all in NFTs and uh and yeah, it was that was just gas. you know, those ETF, I'm sorry, those NFT launches, those mints, you know, for like um art blocks and stuff like that.

[00:37:17]Some of those mints like that would sell out in seconds, you'd have to pay hundreds of dollars for a transaction all the time on stuff like that just to just to even get them in, you know, >> um and sometimes they would fail, you know, pay hundreds of dollars >> and you lose the gas, too. Don't even get started.

[00:37:36]>> It was maddening.

[00:37:37]>> Yeah. uh producer question came in.

[00:37:40]Wouldn't major institutions use the base chain rather than the L2s? So that in theory, ETH, what do you think about that?

[00:37:49]>> I think we're Well, I don't know. I I I push back on that a little bit because I think we're already seeing the likes of Hyperlid and uh and Robin Hood for example using their own L2s um as you know as uh institutional you know to trade tokenized equities and things like that. And so and the reason for that is because that way they have like a siloed um you know uh like a siloed mechanism to process their own transactions and they don't have to worry about like in times of high market volatility um you know NFT mints or or memecoin trading or stuff getting in the way of their liquidation engines uh working properly. you know they because it's siloed on their own um you know on their own L2 they can benefit from that that way and also it's much much faster and much much cheaper like right now like a transaction on Hyperlid is a teeny tiny fraction of a penny and it happens instantly whereas a transaction on the ETH base chain is it's it's 6 cents uh last I looked a few days ago and it it it's slower so yeah that's still cheap I mean sure nobody's going to care if they pay six cents right now I get But like when we're talking about highfrequency transactions on a major platform such as Hyperlquid or such as Robin Hood, suddenly six cents a transaction adds up and that speed uh makes a big difference when you're talking about liquidations in in volatile market situations and things like that. So, I'm I'm skeptical on them using the base chain in that scenario, especially when it's been proven that it's that much more effective both from a a performance standpoint and a cost standpoint to use a layer 2. And you still get the the security and the um you know, the the foundational security and decentralization and settlement of the base Ethereum layer. All of that still happens on the base Ethereum layer, but you get the performance and the cost efficiency of the layer 2. So yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I see that.

[00:39:51]>> Fair enough. Thank you for the question.

[00:39:55]So I mean, I'm going to take this question here because we've been you've been mentioning Robin Hood a little bit and this is fresh. Question comes from Jordan on the water. Would you rather be holding Robin Hood stock or Coinbase?

[00:40:09]>> Um Gut. Well, just gut answer. I would say Robin Hood. Now, I'm going to look at the chart and we'll see what that looks like. I'll pull them both up. But the reason I say Robin Hood is because um Coinbase tends to move more as crypto moves. And um Robin Hood is is more branched out. They're more of a Tradfi thing than a crypto thing. and and I think that they're going to benefit from having that broader Trady audience and still having access to both stocks and crypto. Um, but let's let's look at the charts and see. So, let's look at we'll look at both and then we'll look at both independently and then we'll compare the two. Uh, we'll overlay the two.

[00:40:54]>> So, we'll say Coinbase we'll see Coinbase here. Um, and and largely, like I said, Coinbase does as crypto does.

[00:41:02]And so, um, Coinbase has been in a pretty, it looks a lot like the Bitcoin chart to me. You know, it peaked, it peaked on October 6th, just like Bitcoin did. It it had a big rally. Uh, it's come back down and, um, it looks just like Bitcoin. It's almost neck andneck with Bitcoin. And let's look at um, what is Robin? Oh, it's Hood. Um, oops.

[00:41:25]If I can type here.

[00:41:28]If we look at Robin Hood, yeah, Robin Hood just looks much stronger. Um, it's just in a much stronger overall uptrend.

[00:41:35]Uh, yes, it it it also peaked around October, but it's already reclaimed its um major 20week moving averages. Um, and it's, you know, it's in a much much stronger uptrend. It's already setting much much higher highs. It's like well and truly in a solid uptrend and it's been in a much solid much more solid uptrend overall. Um, and I think what they're doing with uh, you know, starting that layer 2 and allowing people to trade uh, tokenized assets on chain and crypto onchain within the Robin Hood ecosystem, I think is a really really smart move for them. Um, I like the fact that they built a layer 2 on Ethereum too. I think as opposed to doing it somewhere else, I think was a really smart move for them too. So overall, I just think that like Robin Hood has a larger total addressable market and a just kind of kind of going for it. Um, and now if we let's look at the two compared to each other. So we'll do Coin over Hood. Um, and okay, so this is Coinbase against Robin Hood and you can see Coinbase is just in a straight down only basically. Um, so this kind of tells you all you need to know. Robin Hood is far and away the the better performer here, uh, the better investment. So that's pretty telling right there too.

[00:42:53]All right, there you have it. Uh, I'm going to take this next question, uh, just because we're on the would you rather portion, I guess. You have 5,000 uh, pounds, not dollars. 5,000 quid to invest today, aerodyome or hype.

[00:43:14]>> Um, well, let me just look at the charts and I'll tell you what is the better looking chart. Um, and I'll do it through through a couple different lenses. Let's look at aerodyome first. So, um I mean Aerodrome looks good. Like it look it's forming a bottoming pattern. I like what I'm seeing here in the sense that uh we've got a a solid bottoming pattern. Oops.

[00:43:38]It held this level. It held its support level that it established way back here, which I think was a good sign. It came back. It It broke out. you know, we got this breakout, came back, tested this level of support again, and then broke out with a higher high and so far a higher low that's holding on this moving average. So, on a weekly standpoint, this is slowly turning back into an uptrend. Like, we're back above the the big 20week moving average. We've flipped it to an uptrend. It's now pointed back to the upside. So, this is this is something that's bankable. This is something that you could you could trade on. This is like this is this is breakout, retest, confirmation, higher high, higher low, holding support. Like that's that's as good of a technical sort of uh setup as you're as you can get there. So that's objectively good.

[00:44:25]Um let's look at Hyperlid.

[00:44:27]>> We know Hyperlquid is obviously in a different ballpark, a whole different conversation because it's been in a kind of meet up with the price action and then we'll see a resumption of the uptrend. So that's really what I'm looking for here. And that's kind of we were talking right before the show started that I was hoping that Hyperlid got down to the $50ish range because I think that would be solid. You can see that that $50 range coincides almost perfectly with this 20we moving average.

[00:44:53]In fact, let me look at the number here that right now that number is right at $5253.

[00:45:00]So that would be more or less spoton. So for it to come back down and touch would would constitute like a proper mean reversion in this larger uptrend. And we know anytime we can get a touch on a big moving average like the the 20-day or even the 20 weeks even better that that's always not always but more often than not that's a good sort of bouncing level. And so that's kind of what I'm looking for here. Now do we get it? Of course nobody knows. We we could bounce from right here. Um, but I like I kind of like what I'm seeing here. So, two very different setups. One is a a you know, a a breakout retest, you know, higher high, higher low, retest again, which is constructive. Um, this is still in a bit of a corrective phase. Um, and like I said, there's a decent chance that, you know, we could get a touch back down to to this uh 20week moving average. So, it's not it's not quite an apples to apples comparison. We're looking at two different things. Like this, this is more of a wait and see, kind of hold your breath and hope that it gets back down. Whereas the aerodyome is more like a um this is a nice bounce off this moving average already. And so let let's look at this kind of on a daily time frame. And so what I'd be looking for here is um you know to like flip this daily trend and get back above this 20-day moving average here. like if it can do that and better yet if it can get above this um this dot dash line here which is right around like the 56 cents level and show that it can put in an even higher high still um that's sort of that's the continuation I'd be looking for. So neither of them I think is right at a buy trigger. this one it needs to get a little bit higher and I think hyperlquid it needs to get a little bit lower. Um and uh and then they'd be sort of in ideal technical setups for for you know a buy.

[00:47:00]>> So if they're both in those technical setups, which one would you lean towards?

[00:47:07]I love hype and I've called hype the coin of this year, >> but part of me for this particular scenario likes a drone because of its market cap, its tie into Coinbase. I could see that real room to grow, whereas like I think Hype's obviously still going to grow. I think they're going to I put a crazy price target on them. Um, but I don't know if that if that room to grow is has as much room as a drone in my opinion at this age right now.

[00:47:40]>> Sure. Sure. That's a totally fair take.

[00:47:42]Um, even you know there Yeah, Mr. Beef. Cut it in half. Go 5050. There's your There we go.

[00:48:05]There we go. Um [sighs and gasps] Um >> Well, it's definitely down from its alltime high.

[00:48:20]>> I mean, it's Yeah, it's still down from its all-time high. Like, it's still down from its its launch price. Um but certainly, you can't argue with this uptrend. I mean, it's it it's in a weekly uptrend, and that's that's kind of all you need to know. Uh, I think it looks good. And so, yeah. Um, this objectively is a good looking uptrending chart on a weekly time frame.

[00:48:42]So, I Yeah, I mean, kind of simple as that really. [laughter] I I I can't tell you where you should buy or sell, but like, is this something that would qualify as something that, you know, I would look at? Yeah, sure.

[00:48:57]like anything that's in a weekly uptrend right now because very little is is something that is worth considering. And so it is definitely that obviously there's something a little fishy with this volume candle volume spike here but um and I don't really know anything about this project so I can't speak to it in terms of fundamentals but the fact that it's maintaining an uptrend uh on the year while most things are not uh you know tells me that the market for whatever reason deems that it's worthy and so that kind of is in crypto all you need to know. A lot of times people invest in stuff based off of a a fundamental thesis and the market hates it and they just watch it keep going down. And so a lot of times it doesn't always matter what the fundamental thesis is. If the market likes it, the market's going to keep buying it. And as long as you sort of just watch the technicals and trade the trends, you're going to benefit from it. And so that's what's happening here right now. And um just keep watching the weekly trend and trading the weekly trend. And as soon as it loses it, then then get out of it.

[00:49:59]But otherwise, um, the trend is your friend.

[00:50:03]>> The trend is your friend. Uh, thank you for the Well, Lance, ask him yourself because I think he's in he's in this chat right here.

[00:50:14][laughter] Colin, they want to know if you are the Colin from Sheffield. Uh so please [laughter] please respond in the chat kindly.

[00:50:27]Okay. Next question comes from Dinko.

[00:50:30]Can you take a look at SoFi please?

[00:50:33]>> Yes.

[00:50:39]>> He just asked him in the chat. I love this.

[00:50:42]>> This is the great uh the benefits of a live show, guys. Live show with a live chat.

[00:50:53]Um and uh just speaking just to tie the the knot on derive Jamie Coots recently did a uh an interview with the derive co co-founder uh check that out on the real vision platform and he also did a deep dive uh report as well on derive. So if you want more like indepth derived stuff, check out Jaime's uh recent interview and work. All right, >> SoFi, >> I mean, SoFi looks looks it's actually looking pretty good right now. Like looking at it through this framework, it's triggered a buy. It triggered a buy actually back here around the week of June 8th or so. And it's been slowly, you know, ramping back up. It's it's holding the the the new mega trend in green. Um it's kind of is is sort of ticking all the boxes as I like to say here like this is this is positive. This would be a a kind of a buy signal for me. Uh looking at this one here also the fact that it right around that same time lost its red dots and is sort of holding it's it's more of a neutral state I will say like this this track line here is yellow which means it's it's neutral.

[00:52:02]It's not showing a ton of like upside momentum but it's holding its ground. I would say it's holding its ground. It's starting to the the downward momentum has gone away and it's sort of just holding steady with a with a bit of a slant to the upside. So, it looks good here. It looks it looks good enough here. And then we're seeing here over on this one, if we look, it has reclaimed the 20week moving average, which is this this red line here. So, it's reclaimed that um and it's kind of it's in the process of shifting this to a weekly uptrend. it's it's doing what it needs to do and that it's trading above these two moving averages and holding them as support, you know, on the upside. And I like the fact that the RSI is also putting in higher highs, too. So, again, it's showing all of the requisite signs of strength would argue that. I think that, you know, um now when you say you bought would argue that. I think that, you know, um, now when you say you bought, does that mean you like went all in or did you just sort of, you know, buy buy a little chunk? Um, if you went all in, uh, what I would say to that is you you might you might be in for a a rocky ride. You might be in for a bit of a roller coaster over the next few months. Um, but >> he always goes all in. He said, [laughter] I love it.

[00:53:23]>> So, >> no in between. It's one or the other. I like it.

[00:53:27]>> Then just expect volatility is what I'll say to that. You know, uh I think you'll probably come out the other side. Okay.

[00:53:33]Uh it's not like you bought, you know, something that's number 800 on the the market cap or or what. I'm just picking a number, whatever. But like you bought you bought known sort of blue chippy reputable crypto assets, you'll probably be fine. You know, are you going to have to wait a little bit? Probably. But just what I would say is if you did in fact go all in um don't you know don't panic sell the lows uh if it drops down lower.

[00:54:01]We've been talking about for weeks or even months now that there's a real viable chance that that Bitcoin could get down into this lower 50s range potentially even lower than that. So know that that is something that is a plausible scenario that's looming in the coming days and weeks and months. Um, maybe we don't have that happen. Maybe the bottom is in. Uh, and you did great.

[00:54:24]But, um, yeah, just expect volatility is is what I can say.

[00:54:30]>> There you have it. Uh, lovely.

[00:54:33]Um, question about your indicators, Chris.

[00:54:36]Uh, Lupy wants to know, "How do we find Chris's indicators? Can't find them under Blasto Pl."

[00:54:42]>> Um, here, I'll tell you what what I'll do. Let me just grab one of them here.

[00:54:47]Uh, I'll just pick this one.

[00:54:51]Uh, oh, not that one. Maybe this one.

[00:54:56]>> And while we're actually while we're on the indicator uh question, because I know you have you have a quite a few in your suite of tools that you use and you've even created uh a few as well.

[00:55:07]Uh, you can check that out on our AI show if you want to know uh the ones that Chris created and how he did it.

[00:55:13]But if you were like so if somebody like I guess I don't want to say new but like yeah let's say new was coming in to get started right I think maybe too many indicators can probably be overwhelming for them like what would you say maybe like a couple of indicators that they can start out with to keep things simplified for them that also gives them good signals >> ones that I've made or just in in general >> just in general like in your tool like that you would just you know maybe recommend to someone new or you know Yes, that's a that's an excellent question. Um, I'll get to that in a second. So, what what I just you'll see my name over here. Um, it'll look like this. Just click my name from here and this should get you to all of the stuff that I've published.

[00:56:06]Um, like under scripts here.

[00:56:10]Yeah. So, that'll Mind you, some of these are stupid and I don't use them anymore. Like I've I've vibecoded. Well, you can see quite a few. Some of them are more useful than others. Some of them I vibe code and I'll throw them on and then a week later I'm like, "Yeah, this was kind of stupid." But then other ones that they've really stuck and they've actually done really well for me. So, this is where they're they're all at. I don't know how to link to this page though, unfortunately. But like I said, you can get to it by clicking my name when you click the link uh that I just shared in the Discord. Uh I'll see if I can find a way to click to get to this page. I I should know, but I I don't.

[00:56:48]So, [laughter] >> yeah, if he finds a way, he'll share it in the comments uh of the of the of the video on platforms. You guys can check it out.

[00:56:55]>> [clears throat] >> So, but yeah, no, getting back to your So, getting back to your question, honestly, more than anything, the thing that I I've benefited the most from, and this this might even sound kind of dumb, but um it's just moving averages. Like, literally, uh you can you can do everything you need to do with just moving averages.

[00:57:17]Like if I go on like if I'm on Dex Tools for example and I you know I'm on this stupid Trading View interface on Dex Tools and I'm just like trying to figure out what's going on here. The first thing I'll do is I'll just put two moving averages on here. A 10 bar and a 20 bar and and that kind of tells me because with a 10 bar and a 20 bar it works on any time frame. You can look at it on the weekly, you can look at it on the daily, you can look at it on the hourly, and it tells you when trends are gaining steam, losing steam, rolling over, reversing, all of that stuff. And if you're trying to trade any kind of a trend, all you need to do is just throw up a and you can do the 10 and the 20, you can do the 20 and the 50, you can do the 50 and the two, it doesn't really matter. Just pick two that work for you.

[00:58:03]I kind of prefer the 10 and the 20, but just find some and go with it. Um and then just look at how they interact with each other. Um you like for example here this when when the 10 crosses over the 20 this tells you that the the trend has reversed. This this sort of sideways chop has confirmed a breakout and now we are in an uptrend. And you can see when they sort of get um or like right here.

[00:58:28]But but yeah, so and then like if we look at on the daily um again of of course it's going to be more noisy because it's going to tell you when daily trends uh reverse and and change. But still you can see how it's helpful. If price is above both of these moving averages and both of these moving averages are pointed to the upside, that's good. You and if you buy on the breakout whenever it breaks out and and ride that up, that's bad. And then the minute it closes, or rather I should say the first sort of daily candle close you get below the 20 is likely going to be a trend reversal more often than not.

[00:59:04]Don't do it intraday. Wait for a full daily close. So like if you zoom in, you can see it it was below it here, but it didn't actually close below it on this candle. And then it bumped up again. It wasn't really until this final one here that it actually closed below it. And then sure enough, that marked the reversal of the trend. And so if you if you sort of buy on breakouts of the 20 and sell on on, you know, breakdowns below it, you'll you'll you'll win more often than not. Uh it's very simple. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. And and literally I I mean, of course, you see I use all kinds of stuff, but if I just was whatever on a desert island and I had one indicator to pick, [laughter] I know that sounds stupid. I would pick two moving averages and I I feel like I could I could do what I needed to do with that. Anything else beyond that is just adding a little bit more nuance is just making it so that you can extract maybe that that much more just making it so that you can extract maybe that that much more out of the highs. And it's hard for me to say because there's a lot of traders that are going to trade around that. I think how I look at the Clarity Act more is um we ultimately need the Clarity Act to pass for like long st long-term sustainability of the crypto space. I think if it doesn't pass um it's going to be problematic more from just a larger overall regulatory standpoint, not from like a intraday technical standpoint. So I don't know that I want to trade around it like that but um it's something that we need but at the same time uh you know right now we we don't have it right now today and everything is working well relatively fine whatever that means everything is working at the moment so it's not like crypto is going to break if it doesn't pass. You know eventually we'll get some regulatory framework in place at some point. Um certainly if it doesn't pass this time around, it leaves it vulnerable to future whatever administrations coming in and and drastically changing the rules from what they are or what they're proposed to be right now. But like um if it doesn't pass today, it's not going to mechanically break crypto today. Um but if it does pass today, it will pave the way for clarity uh and and stability going forward is is kind of how I look at it. you know, I don't know if that answers your question.

[01:01:29]>> Um, >> yeah, my gut my gut tells me it at least initially it is going to be a sell the news event because that's typically how the I mean, look look at what we just saw with Bitcoin when you were charting at based off of the ETF news and the Trump uh the Trump bump that we got when he was elected. Uh I think this will kind of go the same way where if it does get passed, you're probably going to see like money flowing in and like you know people like thinking this is it up only as these things typically uh tend to do and then you'll probably see a reversion from that initial euphoria and then a few and when that dust settles down that'll probably be like the real good time to actually buy if it passes.

[01:02:10]Anyway, that's my thoughts on it. Um, but I'm not, like you said, like I'm not trading around it. It's just crazy.

[01:02:32]>> Yeah, there you have it. All right, guys. That'll do it for this week's edition of Trading the Markets. Thank you everyone for your questions.

[01:02:40]playback will be live on the platform or on the platform. So check that out. Um no show no AI show on Monday but um we'll see you guys again next week. Have a great weekend everyone. Enjoy the dog days of summer and uh you know carry the conversations here in the Discord and on platform through uh through notes and trade ideas. We want to see uh you guys discussing great things. So until then everyone, don't [ __ ] this up. Have a great week.