Transcription
All right. Right now, we have Bitcoin in freefall. We've broken down below this bare flag. And now we've even broken below the 68,000 level. 69,000, 67,913. Bitcoin is not the only thing that's broken down. You've got ETH broken down below the bare flag, below $2,000. Soul below $80. We are in freefall at the moment, ladies and gentlemen. We're in freefall at the moment. But the stock markets are up, all the way up. In fact, they don't care about what's going on in crypto, and they are in a full-blown bull market. This is very, very, very confusing. We're at a point where crypto is collapsing. Stock markets at all-time highs. And I think we're all sitting here and going, what is actually going to happen on the day where the stock markets collapse? Because I don't see there's any way that Bitcoin can actually stay up while the stock markets go into some kind of meltdown or some kind of collapse. We're going to be talking about that. We're going to be talking about the NASDAQ. We're going to be talking about gold. We're going to be talking about software. I've got Gareth Soloway here with us today. We're going to make it a jam-packed show full of charts and, uh, and macro talk. So, lots to do today. Uh, if you're new to the channel, welcome. This is, uh, Crypto Insider. I think you guys mainly know this channel. We've transformed this channel into much more of an institutional content channel. So if you're looking for much more serious institutional stuff, a lot more interviews, um, a lot more macro analysis, this is the place to be. So if you're not already subscribed, subscribe to the channel. Uh, if you are already subscribed, then smash a like button. It really helps us get distribution here. Anyway, guys, I don't want to spend too much time on the intros because I want to get straight into the alpha here.
I'm going to bring Gareth in. Gareth, how are you, my friend? I'm wonderful. Thank you so much for having me, Ran. Great to see you.
>> What a confusing market if you're a crypto holder, right? I mean, you're torn between this four-year cycle bare market and on the other hand, you've got like the biggest bull market that we've ever seen in, in every other market, right? Like every other index is, is pretty much exploding. I want to, I want to work with you to decode all of those things. But I think probably the best place to start is let's start with Bitcoin. How much more pain is left, sir? How much make the pain go away? Make the pain go away.
>> I would love to. I would love to. It's, listen, it's, it's the chart. We, you, you pointed it out. You had the bare flag, the trend line break here. Um, look at how big of a drop we're seeing today alone as money is just running from Bitcoin. We had this great longer-term kind of consolidation move up where we went from 60 to about 83,000. So, I mean, percentage-wise, that's a decent move, but it was all inside of this previous drop. And what we can see here is that the last time we had that, we had the same sort of pattern formation and then we took another dump, right? So, we have to think that we're kind of in store for that same sort of thing. First major support is going to be the low at 60,000. But I would think that we're probably going down to that 50,000, pierce 50,000 marker at minimum. Then we got to look and see. Like you said, so confusing. NASDAQ makes new all-time highs every single day. Bitcoin used to move with the NASDAQ. Now it's not. And, uh, the question is, what is it? I mean, we have Michael Sailor saying he sold a little bit. He said he never was going to sell. Um, there's really, I think, this, this trust level within crypto. And we thought President Trump was going to come out and do so many good things. Honestly, it seemed like a lot more rug pulls than anything else. And I just think crypto has kind of gotten a backseat now to semiconductors and AI. Right.
>> So let's talk about semiconductors and AI. So when you look at the semiconductor and AI markets, how heated are they? Like, are we in bubble territory? Are we in blow-off top territory? Would you be deploying money in, in, in, in anything like that?
>> No. No. Oh my gosh. So, to give you guys some of the stats, the top 15 AI-related stocks now account for 40% of the total market cap of the entire stock market. Uh, that is beyond the dot-com bubble highs of percentage of, of total market cap. Um, you have a stock like MRVL, which yesterday or last night, our time here, um, Jensen Huang basically came out and said, "Oh, this could be the next trillion-dollar company." It was a $200 billion company and it goes up 25% just on him saying that. These are characteristics of a bubble of epic proportion. And I even think this is hurting crypto in that many investors that are in crypto for the quick buck, which used to be, I mean, there was a lot of people that were like, "Hey, I can make the next 100x, the next thousandx." Now they've just pulled out and said, "Hey, I'll just go to semiconductors because that's where the big moves are coming literally every day." I mean, you have stocks like Micron that, um, back in March 31st were $300. I mean, today we just hit a high of $1,070. I mean, you're getting the crypto returns in these AI stocks right now, but just like with crypto, it will not last forever. And when it ends, it's going to be nasty.
>> So, when you say just like with crypto, it won't last forever. And when it ends, it's going to be nasty. I understand. But I also remember that these crypto bull runs can go for six months, 12 months. Like, this doesn't have to pop anytime soon. This can carry on running for like a long time. So, the question is,
>> It can, it can. Should you try and catch some of the last upside, or are you basically getting into like a very overheated trade?
>> So, so the kicker is the kicker is this. This is like, this is like it's at this point, as a disciplined investor and trader, I can't chase this. I wish I, listen, I wish I was long for the last couple months and just had held and run this thing. But for me, no. I mean, I was long when we were at the lows. I took like a 20, 30% gain. Thought I was an amazing investor for that. And then these things ran another 100% after that. But the kicker is this is that as an investor, you don't want to chase up here because again, look at the history of dot-com bubble, crypto bull market 2021. We know that eventually these end. The better play is to wait for a pullback at least so that you're getting it at a discounted level from where it is. So, for instance, on Micron here, you know, if Micron were to pull back to 800 or 700, okay, now you're talking about it's down 30% off of its recent highs. If you really are a believer that this is going to go on for longer, at least that's an opportunity. Now, do you run the risk of potentially missing the upside of another 10, 20, 30%? Absolutely. But again, we just, as investors, we have to understand we're not going to catch every move. And chasing is an ultimate endgame to losing all your money if you do it enough times. Like, listen, sometimes it works. Other times you pick the top, like I do so many times, and then we watch our money go down.
>> Yeah. You, you know, uh, what I've learned with these things, and I, I learned, I've learned this over primarily, I've been in markets for, for very long, but over three crypto cycles, I've learned one thing, and that is when the market is going up into this parabolic stage, that's the time when you take profits. That's not the time that you deploy and try and catch the last 10%, the last 5% of the move. That's when you start taking your money off the table and maybe start putting it into a trade that's not so crowded. Right. So, right now, to me, the AI trade seems crowded by virtue of the fact that the top 10 stocks make up 40% of the market at the moment. That tells me that the entire market is, is maybe crowded because of the AI trade. And I'm trying to look for the trades that are the, not the, the not so heated trades. Now, one of those trades may be Bitcoin. I may be wrong, but it just feels like money's left Bitcoin, money's left, uh, a lot of other assets to actually get into the, uh, in, into the AI run. And generally, when that happens, you want to be going into the asset where people are leaving, to the, to the, um, to the asset that, and and avoid the asset that, that's the crowded trade. On that note, I'm keen to get your view on gold because gold's also bled quite a bit, uh, uh, since the, since the AI run started. So you can see that I think that top in gold was somewhere around March, or the first, the second top was somewhere around March, and that's when, when the AI bubble, when the AI really started to accelerate.
>> Yep. Yeah, you're 100% right. I mean, gold is, ne definitely down from 5600. I'm. So, a couple things I'm watching on gold right now is that we have this bigger parallel, which is connecting perfectly these two lows with these two highs. And so, what this does is it gives us an upside resistance level, which is around 4,800. And then if this were to dump out, there's downside to like 36, 3500. Now, if we throw on our 50-day moving average and our 200-day moving average, look at how price is getting sandwiched in between those two. And so, as a trader, what I'm looking for is which way does it break. And that's the way that I think you're going to get a big move in that direction. So, if we can break the 50 MA around 4635, I think you run up to 48, maybe even back to all-time highs. If we break the 200 though and break down, and you can see we kissed it right here and here, then you're in a scenario where you could see a much bigger flush out in gold. And so, listen, I still hold my long-term gold holdings. I'm going to, you know, again, being a doubter of governments and fiat and all that other stuff, just like Bitcoin, um, I always have to have some gold and some Bitcoin stashed away. But for me, if I'm going to buy more, I need it to come lower and flush down. I'm, believe it or not, where I'm looking is more in like this, the, it's the boring stuff. It's the, the dividend-paying stocks. It's, you know, you look at a Kraft Heinz who makes basically like TV dinners, and you look at something like this, and it's paying a 10% dividend and it's down at literally lows it hasn't seen since, you know, 2009, the financial crisis. And so if something's going to pay me 10% a year and it's down significantly, to me, that's that's where I would allocate capital. Now, it's not flashy. I'm not going to make 500% on this trade, but at least I can save myself from being in an overheated trade, um, where I think money will rotate if it comes in. And by the way, I actually think there's a few altcoins that are showing some signs of life as well.
>> Yeah. Well, you've got Zcash, you've got Hyperliquid, you've got NEAR, you've got VVV. Maybe just take us to the, the altcoins that you're watching. I know you're also watching XRP, funny enough. I saw one of your other streams and I saw that you're actually watching the XRP chart as well.
>> Yeah. And so, I mean, this has been an incredible move on, on Hyperliquid. Um, it shows us that, listen, everywhere, even in a market that's in a bare market, there's still opportunities. But what I'm more intrigued by is that the altcoins have been hated on more than Bitcoin even, right? To the point where they are starting to see these relief rallies where you're gaining 50 to 100%. We just saw it on HAR just the other day for three days. This thing surged from 8 cents to 11 cents. It's come in, obviously, but I mean, there are other opportunities. You mentioned NEAR Protocol here. I mean, this has had a great run. If you go back to where this was in February, it was 85 cents. It got to about $3. And so the thesis I would have is that when we do see a pullback in the AI stocks, a even a small percentage of that money, if it goes into altcoins, there is a 50 to 100% upside potential here. And listen, it doesn't mean every altcoin is going to participate. Some may not, but you have to say, am I, do I, if if I have to choose right now where to feel comfortable in, I'd much rather buy something at 52-week lows or all-time lows. I mean, we look at like ICP here. Um, this one again is starting to show signs of life. I mean, look at this price action is interesting. I mean, you're starting to see something going on here in the altcoins. Now, I'm not going to call it an altcoin bull market or an altcoin, you know, you know, bull season because I think there's something different going on. It's a rotation of capital, but I certainly am looking. I mean, if I go to my crypto charts, I mean, Polkadot, I mean, this thing is getting beaten down. You mentioned XRP. XRP, if it can break, look at this beautiful trend line on the daily XRP. You get a breakout above that and you got a making for a bigger short squeeze or a run of liquidity into it that's going to see some significant moves. So, believe it or not, you, if you said where do you invest, altcoins or AI stocks right now, I'd actually choose altcoins.
>> I mean, I, I hear you. And if you look at the Bitcoin dominance chart, if you call up that Bitcoin dominance chart, what you'll realize is that there's actually been a death cross in the Bitcoin dominance chart, which means that I mean, if if history were to repeat, we could get, let me try and get, get us the chart of the actual death cross that that's playing out there. Um, if you give me a second, I will try and find it for us. But there is a death cross that has been playing out in, in the Bitcoin dominance chart. Generally, when that happens, you get a big, big, big move down in, uh, in the, um, uh, hold on, let me just try and find this. I should have it somewhere here. I've got so many, so many, uh, show documents open and so many research documents open. Uh, here we go. Here we go. Uh, let me try and find the death cross chart for us. It's in. Yeah, but generally when you get, when you get the breakout in the, when you get the breakdown in dominance, it can be quite violent. But usually you get that at the end of a bull market. Now, here you're getting it in the middle of a bare market. And that, that's that's the part that baffles me. Um, you're getting these altcoins running. Um, it's not like it's not like any other bare market that we've seen. You've been around for bare markets. I've been around for bare markets before. I haven't seen a bare market where Here we go. I've got, I've got the chart for us. I haven't seen a bare market where Bitcoin goes down and other altcoins actually run. That's completely uncharacteristic of a, um, of a bare market. That's the, there is your death cross over there. So that's the Bitcoin dominance chart, and then here is your, your death cross again. Um, so, you know, you had a death cross over there and dominance fell off a cliff. If you had a death cross over there, dominance fell off a cliff. You've now got the death cross over here, which is very, very, very weird at this stage of the game.
>> I agree. I agree. There's something. This is very unusual, uh, like you're saying, and it's very unusual to see Bitcoin rolling over while we're seeing. I mean, usually Bitcoin is the leader, right? And then eventually the altcoins go with it. And here we're seeing those altcoins starting to perk up. Now, again, I think it's important to say, like you said, it's not like a normal bare market where everything is going up together. It seems like specific coins are catching bids, but there is opportunities there. And I think that's what people have to recognize. Look at those trend lines for breakouts. Once these things break out, they tend to run 50 to 100%. Which in the olden days is nothing in crypto, but in this day and age, that's a nice gain.
>> Do you think the market's maturing? Do you think that we're actually at a point now where the market's looking at this and going, "Hold on a second. Maybe Bitcoin's having a tough run because that's now part of institutional capital." But actually, there are good companies, there are good protocols in crypto, and we shouldn't miss out on those opportunities. So maybe the market's saying, "Hold on a second." Yes, Bitcoin may be a $2 trillion asset and maybe in for a correction, but like Zcash, private money trading at a very small market cap relative to Bitcoin, or Hyperliquid, this protocol that makes a million dollars in fees every single day, burns about $30 million of tokens every single month that it takes off the open market. That's a good company. You don't want to miss out on that. There are also some other smaller companies, uh, which most people don't follow, but like there's, for example, there's one that, uh, deals in collector cards. It's called Cards Collector Crypto, and what it does is it stores the cards in a Fort Knox style, uh, place, and it issues you a digital token that you can trade around those cards while preserving the sanctity of the actual cards. Right. And that's also at all-time highs. It looks to me like there's the old crypto, which is Bitcoin, ETH, Solana, that's taking a big hit. And then you've got the new crypto, which is which is Hyperliquid, NEAR, because it, it's, it's very closely linked to Hyperliquid, Zcash, because it's the flavor of the day. All these other ones which are basically saying, "Look, great, we're still good protocols, we're still generating cash." And investors are looking at this and going, "Well, if there is cash to be made, we want to be holding these tokens."
>> Right. And I think that's where it's at right now is that there's, there's this kind of existential realization that not everything in crypto is going to survive. You have to find the ones that are actually generating. It's almost like, you know, a lot of these coins are treated as coins, but there is this, like you're saying, this underlying, they're generating a million a day or 2 million a day of fees. That's actual, that's like a company making earnings. Agree. And so that's where I think the money is rotating or will rotate into those names where the valuation is intriguing. And you can see here, Solana has broken as well. It's likely headed back to the 68,000 level. But again, you know, these, this is now. I mean, this is an incredible rollover in Solana. The question is, where does it get the bounce? And I think it will eventually.
>> Talk to me about the NASDAQ. Um, yeah, I, I really want to see what, what you think of the stock market. To me, it broke up above the channel that, I mean, if you look at that long-term channel, the one from 2018, both the NASDAQ and the S&P have broken up above that channel. Uh, and now I kind of want to know what happens next. Are we, are we in a new channel now? Are we, are we in price discovery? Like, what is this? What is this called?
>> Yeah, there's, there's no doubt about it. You're, you're definitely in price discovery. Here's the channel you were just talking about here, um, on the QQQ NASDAQ 100. And I mean, this has just been one of the runs for the ages. What's scary is if you put this up next to the dot-com bubble, it's almost identical. This blow-off top. And I think that's where people say, "Well, the parallel got broken. It's in uncharted territory." 100% right. But also keep an eye on when you move up 35% in two months on the NASDAQ. When you get this overweighing, and I think also one other mentioning point here is that if you look at the entire market, like yesterday, we hit new all-time highs. More stocks were down than up. Literally, it is one sector powering the whole trade higher here, the whole markets to new all-time highs while the underbelly of every other sector is struggling immensely. But you're right, you broke out above this parallel here. Incredible move. Um, the question is, is this a real breakout that's going to have sustainable energy and how high will it go? At some point, this is coming back in.
>> What about the S&P 500? Same, same pattern.
>> Same pattern. Same pattern. And I'll show you something I'm watching just in the near term. You have this trend line going back to that March 30th low. And again, notice how we're just hopping along this line. If this line gets a daily close below, I think that's where we get some sort of pullback in the S&P. I'm very reluctant to say it's going to be 5% or 10% or whatever because honestly, we're still in an uptrend and we got to respect that. I mean, this is an incredible bull run. But at some point, again, things will collapse. And I would just say this is that, you know, the trigger for a 1987 type decline like crash. You ever get one of these AI companies to come out and say, "Hey, instead of instead of spending, we announced we were going to spend 300 billion on capex, but we're going to actually tone it down to 200 billion." There is so much weight built on these these companies spending more and more that would literally crush and cause a crash in the market. And I say crash on purpose because the market is up on the AI trade. That's everything about this market.
>> What do you think Kevin Wash is going to do? The first time we hear him speak is in 15 days. It's on the 17th of June. That's the first FOMC meeting. I guess it's the first time we hear a policy speech from him. It's the first time he addresses real reporter questions. He's walking into an environment where there's a 6% PPI, there's a 3.8% consumer inflation, there's a 3% uh, uh, CPI, PCE. What do you think his next move is or what do you think his tone is?
>> So, I, I think his tone, tone is very measured. Um, you know, again, there's a lot of pressure to raise rates as inflation here in the US has just skyrocketed and really all around the world due to oil and, and the cost of gasoline and all these other things, but there's no way Trump is going to be okay with him raising rates. That's just not going to happen. As much as he claims independence, he's not. You're not going to get a Fed appointed by Trump who said basically, "I will never appoint someone who's not going to cut rates," and then let them raise rates. So, at this point, even though the markets are saying we are likely to see a rate hike at some point in the future, I have a hard time believing we will. Um, I do think he should probably hike rates to bring in inflation, but I don't think it'll happen. And I think he's going to say he's going to try to just tow the line, make sure he doesn't upset the president, but also tries to keep that independence of the Fed in, in check.
>> So, you say that maybe he should raise rates. I'm going to argue with you that, you know, you usually raise rates to slow down a heated economy. Um, usually you raise rates to slow down a heated economy. The reason why inflation is running this time is because of a supply shock. It's because of the oil supply shock. And I think that if you look at the consumer stocks, if you look at Nike, if you look at McDonald's, if you look at the consumer economy, the consumer economy is suffering, right? I think it would be suicide to raise rates when the consumer economy is suffering. Especially because we know that 80% of Americans don't own any assets. 20% of the Americans own the entire stock market. 89% of the stock market is owned by 20%, uh, um, of, of, of people. And so if he does raise rates, I think he's destroying the middle class while whilst building a much bigger gap between the halves and the have-nots. And I think that walking into the Fed chair position and doing that at the beginning of your tenure is political suicide. And I, I would actually agree with you. I do think that, and, and you're right, 80% of Americans are in a recession. There's no doubt about it. Um, and they're hurting. And you have this upper top tier that are spending like drunken sailors and pushing up prices of goods in general. And obviously the input of, you know, everything requires oil. The farmers have to, you know, use combines and trucks to get the grain to the, to the graineries and all that. So there's all these input costs that are rising rates or raising the prices of goods. And so I agree with you. It's, it's one of those scenarios where, okay, well, how do you get the stock market to come down? Because really, if you could get the stock market to come down, inflation, I think, would come down with oil eventually. But as long as the stock market keeps going up, then the people in the top tier are going to keep spending massive amounts of money. And then you're right, the division between the rich and poor is just getting worse and worse. Let's talk about oil because oil is the chart that, I mean, I look at the oil chart and to me, it tells me exactly what's happening in the war. What's your analysis on the oil chart? So we had the breakdown there. Where to from here?
>> Yeah. So, um, at some point, I still think oil is going lower. The, the, the old adage on Wall Street is that the best cure for high oil is high oil. Meaning it destroys demand the higher it is because it slows the economy. Um, I also think you have to factor in midterms. And I know, you know, so far this has gone on a lot longer than the president has wanted it to, but there's no doubt Iran is probably holding out because they know the midterms are coming and they think they can get a better deal at some point. We can look at the futures on oil out to December. It's pricing in a much lower price. We saw the, the wedge pattern here on the chart broke down. Yeah, we could trade back up. I do not think we're going back to 120 on oil. I think we'll see $70 a barrel before $120 on oil. Um, and again, part of that is that the economy is suffering more and more. Part of it's the midterms and, and again, globally, how much pain can most people take?
>> Gareth, at one point, Bitcoin was very correlated to the IGV, which is the the software producers. Now, this, the interesting thing about the software producers is when AI came out, everyone said, "Okay, well, what do we need software for?" And so they started to dump all the software producers, uh, stocks like Microsoft, Adobe, even Oracle, uh, got absolutely destroyed. But if you look at the IGV now, the IGV has had an amazing, amazing, amazing bounce back. I know you were speaking about the IGV the other day. Where do you see the, I mean, this is one of the most incredible charts I've actually ever seen. Like, it tells the story of AI. I guess that if you put your cursor over there, we're probably around March, and that, or, yeah. And then, and then we dipped all the way down to when we touched rock bottom over there. And now we've, we're recovering at the speed of light.
>> Yeah. Yeah. This is incredible. I mean, and again, this shows you how, and, and I'd like to point to this as being an example of what can happen in reverse to the AI trade. So, everyone hated software. AI is going to eat its lunch. It's going to, it's going to destroy it. There's going to be no need for it. And sentiment got so poor, much like we're seeing in Bitcoin getting to that point, and the altcoins, that you then have this reflex surge to the upside. That's absolutely incredible. And then you look at something like the inverse of that, which is the SOX ETF, the ETF that tracks the semiconductors, and you basically have the inverse of that where instead of collapsing, this has gone parabolic to the upside. And so I would just say again, vice versa, it can work both ways. The second we see some sort of crack in that AI narrative, this will dump 20, 30% off of its highs very, very quickly.
>> Wow. Okay. Lots to digest. Lots to digest. Anything else that you're watching at the moment that we may have been missing here? I mean, I know that you've always got some nuggets up your sleeve here. Anything else that that we may be missing here?
>> I think the big one is just to continue to watch, uh, interest rates. The 10-year yield above 4.5%. That's a danger zone. The US is trying to refinance 7 to 10 trillion dollars over the next year or so. Uh, they need rates down, and oil is obviously pressuring rates to the upside, as well as the US debt to some extent. Uh, right now we're back below, which has helped the markets kind of continue to make new all-time highs, but this is kind of my break point. We get back above 4.5%. I think that's very problematic. And then just going back to what we talked about on crypto is that I think that while I may not think that a big bull market in altcoins are coming, I think that again, there's this kind of reflex, you know, softwareish type bounce that is possible in some of these beaten-down altcoins that are, some of them at near all-time lows. Um, and that could be the hidden trade if we see a pullback in the semis. Maybe even just even 1% of that money going into altcoins, literally just 1% would cause most of the altcoins to go up 100%.
Gareth, thank you, my friend. Always refreshing to hear your your takes. It, it's the perfect mix between what's going on in TradFi, what's going on in crypto, what's going on in some of the cryptos we don't look at. So, thank you very much, my friend. I think we should do this more often right here on our new channel, our institutional channel, which is Crypto Insider. Thank you very much, my friend.
>> Hey, thank you, Ran, for having me. Great to see you and thank you. Take care.
>> Guys, if you want to get hold of Gareth, his socials are below in, in the, in the link. He's a great guy. I mean, love, love having Gareth on. All his socials, links to everything, uh, for him is there. Also, if you want, um, I did tell you we've got an institutional style newsletter that's, that, that we're starting to publish. The first, uh, newsletter has come out. It's about the, the Fort Knox audit that Trump's potentially ordering. He said it maybe in jest, but maybe he's being serious. Um, what happens if they audit Fort Knox? I mean, it's got so much gold in there. Was supposed to have so much gold in there. And there's outcomes which are very, very, very pertinent to Bitcoin. You must read this. There's a link below. Subscribe. It's an absolutely free newsletter, um, that you can subscribe to. Otherwise, I'll see you again probably tomorrow. If not tomorrow, uh, in two days' time, I'm going to publish an amazing video on this channel. Something that I've been researching for quite a while, and it basically shows which trade to get into, AI, Bitcoin, or what the next trade is. All right, my friends. I will see you again soon. Until then, trade well, my friends.