Transcription
Hey everyone, and thanks for jumping back into the cryptoverse. Today, we're going to talk about reflections from 2025. We're going to be discussing Bitcoin, Ethereum. We'll discuss the altcoin market a little bit. We'll also elaborate some on precious metals, where there has been an incredible bull market for most of this year, as well as the stock market.
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One of the things that I think it makes sense to talk about here is to go through and say, look, 2025 played out in a way that a lot of people didn't necessarily expect, right? But when you look at crypto through the lens of something besides just the four-year cycle, it makes a lot of sense. But also, it makes still a lot of sense viewing it through the lens of the four-year cycle as well. So, I want to talk about 2025 and really, you know, parts of 2023 and 2024 as well, and just try to go into 2026 with a better understanding of the market, and hopefully everyone can go into future years with more humility and a better plan as to how they want to grow their portfolio over time.
One of the things arguably that this cycle has taught everyone, and that we tried to communicate early on, is that there is never a guarantee of an alt season. There's never a guarantee of a rotation from Bitcoin to altcoins when you expect it. Yes, at some point in the future, there will likely be something like that again, but we know decisively now that there is not always a rotation at the end of the post-halving year. This was something that was up for debate for most of this year. And one of the reasons is that at the end of 2013, and at the end of 2017, at the end of 2021, there were rotations into the altcoin market. So then it raised the question, would there be a rotation into the altcoin market if Bitcoin tops again in the fourth quarter of the post-halving year?
One of the biggest things I've been criticized for, especially in the last few months, is I keep saying that the four-year cycle is intact, which it seems like is a reasonable assertion as of this point. Right now, if Bitcoin goes and puts in an all-time high in 2026, then I will stand corrected. But it seems reasonable to say that the four-year cycle has remained intact at this point because at this point, we can say, look, we've had a top in the fourth quarter of every post-halving year: Q4 of 2013, Q4 of 2017, Q4 of 2021, and Q4 of 2025. Therefore, we suggested that this would likely be another, there would likely be a top for the market cycle in the fourth quarter of 2025, in line with the prior bear markets.
And so, if you look at how all those prior bear markets started, they have something in common. They started around the same time. But what is interesting is when you look at how this one is starting, it doesn't look exactly the same as the last three. And what I mean by that is if you overlay the ROI from the peak and you compare this cycle to say, the last one, in the last one, Bitcoin had already experienced a 50% drawdown by this point. In the one before that, it had already experienced like a 65% drawdown. And the one before that, it had already experienced about a 65% drawdown. So why this time has it not experienced a sharper drop compared to the other several cycles?
One of the reasons that I've said before is that retail never came back. And so, one lesson that I think that everyone can take from 2025 is that there's not always a rotation into altcoins just because you're at the fourth quarter of the post-halving year. Other things have to align as well. When we had the rotation in 2017 and 2021, social interest was putting in higher lows and higher highs. But this time, it's basically been putting in lower highs and lower lows for years, meaning social interest has been trending, has been trending way away from crypto. Retail interest has been trending down while institutional interest has been trending up. So what's happened is we've had a Bitcoin maxi cycle, right? Where this cycle was mostly just a cycle where Bitcoin went up. Now, yes, some altcoins did well at certain phases. Like, we can reflect on that as well. And how every year there was some altcoin doing well, and it was sort of a distraction from the fact that it was mainly a Bitcoin cycle. Like, if you overlay the SOL/BTC pair, Solana, yes, it did really well in late 2023 and 2024 for a little while, right? Like from, you know, June 2023 until March 2024. So, Bitcoin went up, but it's been bleeding ever since. And right now, the valuation of Solana against Bitcoin is at the same level it was at in October of 2022.
If you look at XRP against Bitcoin, what you'll see is that, okay, it did really well from June of 2023 until March 2024. Or sorry, that's still, or yeah, no, this is still Solana Bitcoin valuation. It did really well from November 2024 until January 2025. But then it's just been kind of slowly bleeding out ever since then. So the problem is that every year there's been a different crypto that does really well, and then it kind of distracts people from the reality. And the reality was that like we were in a Bitcoin dominance bull market. But every year there was something doing better than everything else. So then people were like, well, you know, it is alt season or whatever, because of some altcoin that was doing well. But while that was going on, Bitcoin dominance was just generally trending up.
So when I reflect on 2025, what I think makes the most amount of sense, what I think is that the four-year cycle is intact in the sense that we had a top in the fourth quarter of the post-halving year. But the nature of the bear market is tracking the 2019 bear market more than the 2014, 2018, and 2022 bear markets. Right? It's tracking this bear market, right, where it was just a slow bleed off the top. And what's interesting, as I've said before, is that that top also occurred just before quantitative tightening ended, right? So the June 2024 top was two months before QT ended in August, and the October 2025 top was two months before QT ended in December. It all seems eerily familiar. And so because we were in this phase rather than this one in 2021 or this one in 2017, there was not the rotation into altcoins that people thought.
In 2026, it is likely that some alts will put in new all-time highs, just like some alts always do, but you're likely not going to experience a massive rotation. You could even look at Total 3 minus USDT divided by Bitcoin and recognize that when all Bitcoin pairs went to the range lows in 2019, right around the time that QT ended, they went up against Bitcoin for a while, but they were only going up because Bitcoin was going down more than alts. And the reason why that was happening was because alts had already been annihilated. So for a little while, they were actually going up against Bitcoin just because they weren't bleeding as much on their USD pairs. Bitcoin was going down more, but Bitcoin also went up a lot more than them in that Bitcoin-only bull market in 2019.
The other sobering reality that I think might be difficult for some people to accept going into sort of future years, and I don't really want to get too far into predictions about future years, but one thing to recognize is that Bitcoin dominance actually swept the highs during the QE phase of the cycle. So, I think there's a good chance the dominance will go back up there before you get an alt season eventually. What that means is that you're still better off holding Bitcoin than basically almost every other individual altcoin. There's always going to be a few that outperform, but you could argue that even if I'm wrong and and and you know, we continue to drift lower for a little while, it still will likely come back up to the highs eventually. And you could argue that in order to get an alt season, you have to have euphoria. But euphoria is not going to happen until the price of Bitcoin goes a lot higher. So then you're still better off with Bitcoin if you're going to hold anything within the cryptoverse.
So reflecting back, I think it makes sense to assume that this bull market is more similar to this bull market than anything else. And that the current downturn that we find ourselves in is more similar to the one that we had in 2019. You can tell me about the institutions and and the ETFs and whatever you want to say, but the reality is the price of Bitcoin is lower than it was a year ago. Okay? Even despite all that, narratives are easy. They're fun. They don't mean anything.
One thing I want to talk to you guys about as we reflect on 2025 is I want to suggest something that I don't necessarily know that I have a strong conviction in. One of the things I told you guys a while back was that as long as Bitcoin held the 2024 high during the 2025 pullback, then we would get a right-translated cycle with a top in Q4. And we did, right? Bitcoin held the high, and we got a top in Q4 of the post-halving year. So we can say, all right, that was right. But there's something that bothers me about that. And what bothers me about it is that the denominator, the denominator is the US dollar. We already know the US dollar is going to zero, the purchasing power. And so if you actually compare Bitcoin against something like gold, which has been doing pretty well, what you'll notice is that Bitcoin actually topped in December of 2024. So you could argue that Bitcoin has already been in a bear market for a year. Like, you could make that argument. And against some assets, it has, right? Like it really has. And now I know some people are going to say, "Well, does that mean that, does that mean that next year is a bull market if we've already had a one-year bear market?" I will say anything is possible, but I I I wouldn't say like it's my base case. Like I think you'll have some nice rallies by Bitcoin against gold, like you had in 2019, but I'm not sure, you know, I'm not really sure that it it means it has to lead to a sustained run for a while, if that makes sense. Like I I think that again, like you could ignore the pandemic, but I I think that we're kind of in this phase where, you know, we have to figure out where the low is going to be, and then we can build off that, and then hopefully go into the next phase of the cycle. But the hard part is that in order to get into the next phase, the stock market would have to show some weakness in order for rate cuts and QE to really ramp up. So until that happens, it's hard to justify.
You could argue that Bitcoin, Bitcoin's risk-adjusted returns are pretty good near the end of midterm years. Like if you just always imagine this, imagine if you just always bought Bitcoin at the end of the midterm year. You would have bought in late 2014, late 2018, and then late 2022. And then imagine you just sold in Q4, the post-halving year. You would have just sold the tops, basically. It's not the worst way to go. So you could argue that at the end of the midterm year, the risk-adjusted returns on Bitcoin are fairly attractive. But as you get to the post-halving year, they become less attractive.
And one of the things that this cycle has taught us as well is that it is playing out like 2019 in the sense that Bitcoin has bled not only against gold, but also against the stock market for a while now, right? Like you can see that Bitcoin actually found a high against stocks in July and has been bleeding. And it looks a lot like 2019, where the stock market continued to go up despite the fact that Bitcoin was bleeding. And until the stock market dropped, rates didn't go sufficiently lower, and therefore Bitcoin didn't really get that next impulsive move higher when they really turn the money printers back on. So, I think you could argue that we're in this phase, and that when when you reflect back on 2025, you have to know that look, there was no guarantee of an alt season, there was no guarantee that you would have that rotation.
And the diversification is important. You know, I saw the comments on some of the videos I did on metals, and not everyone was excited about them. But the reality is, if you had some of these metals in your portfolio, you're actually doing relatively okay, right? If you look at the valuation of Bitcoin against silver, it actually looks somewhat terrible right now. It's not the first time it's looked like this, right? Like, I mean, it's certainly not the first time, and I'm sure it won't be the last time. You've had these really awful periods where Bitcoin's just bleeding out against silver. And this is probably no different. But it does go to show you, like, having some diversification can help mute the, you know, how it feels when Bitcoin's dropping 30 or 40%. Because if silver is going up 100%, 200% while Bitcoin's dropping 30%, you can look at your portfolio and and still feel a lot better.
So when you reflect on 2025, I think it makes sense to say, look, there is a reason for diversification. Just because you don't see it in 20, just because you didn't see the reason at the beginning of 2025, didn't mean it didn't exist. Sometimes we feel very confident about things, but then the market ends up doing something completely different, right? That's happened to me many times. And so when I reflect on on this year, I'd like to think that I did a pretty good job all things considered, right? Fading alt season, calling for Ethereum to go home, and for Ethereum's Bitcoin valuation to go up after Ethereum went home. I think that is what made the most amount of sense, and we rode that narrative for a long time, and then it worked out, and then a lot of money was made.
The hard part is now because, you know, Ethereum did drop below the bull market support band, which I was kind of expecting it to get one more move up and then to get a massive crash. That's what I was expecting, right? I was expecting like a move like that and then a massive crash. It kind of left something to be desired. And and one of the, because we're talking about a lot of things, Tesla felt like that too, once upon a time, like where it it went up and swept the all-time high and then it dropped 56% and then it rallied to a new all-time high. And I was expecting it to go higher, you know, recently, and then it finally did. Like it finally did go above this prior high, and I hope hopefully it goes even higher. Um, but it did drop 56% first.
We're not going to get into, you know, what 2026 is going to look like in this video. I'm just reflecting and saying, look, you know, with Ethereum, what I thought was going to happen, and I said this pretty clearly, when it goes home, it'll then go to the all-time high. It'll sweep the high, get a 30% pullback, and then go to another all-time high. I got this part right. I got this part right, which I thought was pretty good, but it did go lower than 30%. And then, well, it when it fell below the bull market, I had to adjust and be like, well, maybe it's following what Tesla did, where if it does, you know, there still could be further downside ahead into early 2026. Maybe we do end up sweeping the low at 2100 or something and and spending more time consolidating in the lower logarithmic regression trend line. If it plays out like Tesla as a function of time, then it would find support here. I'm just not sure if that's the most likely outcome considering kind of the structure that we're in with this with this Bitcoin bleed that we've we've been having.
The one thing that I I want to leave room for is that some things can go to all-time highs even if Bitcoin doesn't, right? So, if we are setting up for some type of like butterfly harmonic for Ethereum, you could have an all-time high for it on a macro lower high by Bitcoin, right? Like if Bitcoin were to rally back up to its 50-week moving average like it normally does in the midterm year, and if Ethereum's Bitcoin valuation goes to a higher high, like it's not impossible for Ethereum to put in a higher price. It could be just another cryptocurrency that's putting in higher highs and making it look like it's an alt season when in fact it's not. So watch out for that. But we'll talk more about that later.
So I I think for for for Bitcoin, we did a a fairly decent job of trying to call this cycle. It was really difficult in terms of overlaying monetary policy and to say, look, there's no rotation of altcoins just because it's the end post-halving year because we're not seeing an influx of new retail investors like we did at the end of prior post-halving years. Therefore, it made sense to fade alt season. The alt season callers just continued to kick the can down the road on their alt season calls. But the reality is that you would have to have a 60% rally by altcoins on their Bitcoin pairs just for many of them to reach break even, because that's where the lows of 2022 were. So I I think that's kind of the sobering reality is that this year, like, and really, if you look at like Total 3, if you look at altcoins against silver, I'm sure it looks a lot worse, right? Alts against silver are at lower lows than they were in 2022. So think about that for a second. They're at lower lows than where they were in 2022. That's how bad altcoins have been recently. So, when we talk about, you know, diversification and like why it makes sense to have things like gold and silver in a portfolio, it's this is why, right? Like you're if you bought altcoins this cycle, you're actually, if you value them against silver, they're actually lower now than they have been since 2021. The last time alts were this low against silver was literally February of 2021, more than four years ago, almost five years ago. This is why diversification is important.
You could argue that at the end of midterm years, the risk-adjusted returns on Bitcoin are a lot more attractive. And as you as you get into the post-halving year, they become less attractive as you start to see that that further further downside where some of the macro headwinds come into play. So yes, I think the four-year cycle remains intact, but I think the nature of the bear market more so resembles what happened in 2019 rather than 2018 and 2022, where we had steeper declines earlier on.
Reflecting on alts, you know, I I I don't really think I could have done a uh, I think I did as good of a job as I could remaining steadfast that they were just bleeding against Bitcoin all these years. Um, I don't think I could have communicated that any more clearly, you know, like I I've really never changed my tune on that. And hopefully some of you guys can look back and see that I was only trying to to tell you the truth so that you wouldn't lose money buying altcoins and just watching them bleed out to other things.
For things like gold and silver, my main regret is just not making more videos on them because I made a few. I you know, I probably made, I don't know, 15 or 20 videos this year on metals, but that's where the bull market is, you know, that's where it is, and that's where most of the gains in my portfolio have come from metals. I mean, look at these. They've all been doing. Uranium's been struggling a little bit, but I mean, they've all just been doing incredibly well. And that's my only regret really with metals is is just not talking about them more and and making more people aware of of the the sort of the bull market that they were in.
You know, one of the things we've talked about is the S&P divided by gold and and, you know, some of the similarities to where things are now and where they were in the uh, the 1970s. But if you look at the S&P divided by silver, they've already, it's already broken down, right? Like it's already broken down well below those levels. Um, so just something to think about. I think I accidentally clicked off of it, but and just show it for completeness. So you can see it's already broken down below that level. And maybe in the '70s, it wasn't as clear, right? Sometimes you broke down and then you got a rally back up and then it and then it broke down again more officially later on, right? From '68 and then till '73. So who knows, right? Leave leave room for for for um, being open-minded about what could ultimately happen.
So, I think for me, when I look back on it, I look at the stock market and I'm like, you know what, it's still at all-time highs. Essentially, looks a lot like 2019. It shows you why just investing in low expense premium index funds over the long haul works out really, really well. No one can predict the top. Um, whenever you do four tops, like if if this does end up being kind of a local top like 2022, um, so be it, right? But you can't, it's impossible to to really time these things and and just being in low expense ratio index funds as I've said since 2019 has been the way to go, right? And and they just continue to to do well. And and ever since I started my channel and I've been kind of preaching that message, the stock market's up like 200%. Which is a pretty good return um over over the last five to six years. It's pretty good return. Obviously not as good as Bitcoin, and that's why we focus more on Bitcoin because just this cycle alone, Bitcoin went up 700%. That's why we focus on it is because at the right time, it gives you oversized returns, and it will again in the future.
But I'm looking at 2025 as a continuation of the 2023, 2024 bull market where Bitcoin was the main player in the bull market. So I view this whole thing as this phase right here. That's what I think is the most likely outcome. I look at altcoins and say, it's true, monetary policy really does affect them as we thought it did. Now we have proof. Uh, we did not get that rotation. Eventually, we will. But if you require a rotation to break even, remember, timing is everything. Gold and silver, wish I had allocated more, right? That's a good problem to have than realizing you allocated too much. So gold and silver have done well. Platinum, uranium have done well. You know, platinum and uranium are in some deeper corrections right now, but you got to expect those, right? You got to expect those in these in these bull markets. And then the stock market, um, you know, if you only if you only had stocks and metals recently, you're actually doing really well. You know, like there's nothing really to complain about. Um, it's mostly the cryptoverse that is stuck in traffic on Struggle Street.
So hopefully, as we go into 2026, um, let's say, let's try to have more humility when it comes to the markets. I'll try to be less deterministic. Obviously, I I got some things wrong in 2025, as I mentioned. Um, and I will get some things wrong in 2026 as well. Uh, so let's try to have more humility. Try to figure out what the data is telling us. And if we are if we are proven wrong on an idea, pivot quickly rather than marry the idea. It's better to pivot quickly and just admit you're wrong, as I have found out many times, than to hold on and be stubborn to a narrative. So that's what I'll try to do going into 2026 is if I feel like I'm wrong on something, I want to admit it as soon as possible, right? Like if I, like I think the top for Bitcoin is in. But you know, if it plays out like Nvidia or Google, where we sweep the low and then go to an all-time high. You can see for Nvidia and Google, we swept the low and went to an all-time high. If Bitcoin is going to do that, I want to pivot quickly. But I also want to leave room for a rally to the 50-week or 100K, just like in 2019, we rallied to 10K and it was a lower high. Like I want to leave room for that while also being open-minded to an all-time high. But I don't want to lie to you. I mean, like I think the most likely outcome is a lower high whenever the rally happens. But if I if I'm proven wrong, I want to pivot quickly, not hold on to it. And that might just mean getting, you know, a couple weekly closes above the 20-week moving average. But until that happens, I think it makes sense to just to to treat like the status quo remains unchanged.
So, I think I can go into 2026 saying, you know, I've learned a lot this year. I've learned more about how the crypto markets worked with respect to monetary policy. I always thought that, you know, social interest played a role into this pivot into alts and or lack thereof, but I wanted to see proof of it, and I feel like we have it now. So, I feel like I've learned a lot. I will take with that me, I will take that with me in the future. Um, and I will take, you know, many other lessons as well, right? Do not be deterministic. Look at these outcomes. Weigh the probabilities. Figure out what you think is the most likely outcome. And you don't have to be right about everything, right? I mean, like I got, I told you guys when Ethereum went home was a great time, not financial advice, right? That was a good time generally to get in and to ride the ETH/BTC valuation up. I think a lot of money was made on that rally, just like I think a lot of people have made a lot of money on the gold rally, and the palladium rally, and the silver rally, and the uranium rally, and the and the and the Bitcoin rally over the last few years. No one can time the tops and bottoms perfectly, but you don't have to, right? Like I mean, you just have to get the meat of the move, and you're doing well. I mean, even if you bought Bitcoin at like 20K and you sold it at like 90K, like you still made a decent amount of money. If you bought Ethereum at 1400 and and skimmed some off the top at 4,900, you can at least feel good about that, that you made money on the trade. That's the goal, right? The goal here, as I've said before, this is not a crypto channel. The goal is to figure out where the bull market is and make money there, and to anticipate these moves before they happen. That is what I will try to do in 2026. Um, and and going forward, I want you guys to know that, you know, I know it's Into the Cryptoverse, but there's other universes as well, and plenty of money can be made in those as well.
So again, if you do guys, if you like the content, make sure you subscribe to the channel, give the video a thumbs up, and again, check out the sale on Into the Cryptoverse Premium at into the cryptoverse.com. You can actually check out this QR code on the screen uh if you want. I believe that'll take you to the Into the Cryptoverse website, and you'll actually get a discount on your first month if you scan that QR code. Uh, or you can just go uh to the to the website via the pinned comment um or in the description below if you would prefer. But make sure you guys check it out. Lock in a lower rate. The sale does end in just a few days, so do that before it ends. Thank you guys for tuning in. Subscribe, and I'll see you next time. Bye.