Transcription
Is this the end of the cycle? Is that it? I'm leaving. Maybe there still is one final thing for Bitcoin before the cycle's over. A lot of the gains have been concentrated in only a few coins, right? Is there a buy level anywhere in sight? I've got a few that I'm holding on to. I'm holding for one last bull market. The overwhelming bull case for dominance starts to become less clear. You know, maybe they trigger in December and we're just being impatient. If Bitcoin goes below 100, I'm out. Has it finally ended? The business cycle will come to an end and then you might start to see the riskier stuff start to outperform the blue chip. I could see you getting one final rally by Ethereum. I will say though, Ran, there's one chart I think everyone should be aware of. I'm not going to beat around the bush. Everyone's asking exactly the same question: Is the crypto cycle over or is this a correction and it's going to be followed by a big leg up? There are not many people that have called this crypto cycle as correctly as Ben Cowen has. Today I've got Ben Cowen for us and he's going to break down for us whether he thinks this crypto cycle's over or whether this is just one last correction before we get a crazy, crazy bull run where all the cycle peak indicators are actually met. It's going to be a fascinating, fascinating, fascinating discussion.
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So, in getting the show on the road, let's talk to Ben. Ben has called the cycle correctly and I think let's not beat around the bush. Let's just get straight to the biggest question of the day. Is the bull market over? Is the crypto cycle over? Or is there another leg up? Or is there an extended cycle? I mean, we are in Q4. The number of days post-halving actually happened. Let's actually get Ben on. Ben, how are you my friend? Pretty good. How about you? I'm not going to beat around the bush today. Is this the end of the cycle? Is that it? Have we arrived and that's the end of the cycle? I mean, I think the end is in the fourth quarter. The question we have to ask ourselves is, is the top already behind us or do we have one more move? I think that there are some optimistic ways to look at the market. I think one of the things I've been on your channel a few times this cycle and one of the charts that we pulled up a lot was this chart, right? The ROI from the low. And if you look at this cycle compared to the last two cycles, this purple line, we are pretty far. It's not like we're early in the cycle by any stretch of the imagination. But there are other ways to look at it that are more optimistic. If you look at the ROI from the peak and you go peak to peak and you compare this cycle to the 2017 cycle, maybe there still is one final thing, potentially one final move for Bitcoin before the cycle's over. What I'm looking at, Ran, is some of these indicators we've talked about forever because look, a lot of the major indicators that people have relied on for years don't really seem to be triggering, right? If you look at the PI cycle top or the terminal price or the MVRV Z-Score, whatever you look at, nothing really is screaming that it's the top. But at the same time, you and I both know, I mean, we've been in crypto for a long time at this point, right? You and I both know, we've seen this rodeo before. We know that normally Bitcoin tops in Q4 of the post-halving year. So what I'm looking for for any type of confirmation, I basically choose to stay optimistic so long as Bitcoin stays above the 50-week Moving Average. Right? So if we get closes below that, two weekly closes, then I'll see you next year. The reason I say that is because historically that did mark the end of prior cycles. Any prior drop below that 50-week Moving Average on weekly closes, the cycle was over at that point and you can see that it's happened every single time, right? This is a few cycles ago and now we're just potentially doing it again. But the good news is that right now we're still above the 50-week Moving Average and I think the 50-week SMA is around like 103K. So, put it this way, if we get multiple closes below 100K, then the cycle is likely over. Until that time happens, I still think there's some reason to be optimistic.
But even you say, even if the cycle's not over, you're saying there could be one last hurrah before the end of the cycle. But you still think that, I mean, you're talking about Q4. There's nine weeks left in Q4. There's nine weeks left in this year. That's where we're at. So you're saying like best-case scenario, there's nine weeks left bull market and that would be like one big move up. Worst-case scenario, you mean that we close under the 100 or 103 or whatever that number is or lands up being and that's the end of the bull market. Correct. Yeah. I mean, look, if you look at 2017, which there's a lot of similarities between this cycle and 2017, one of the ways to look at that is if you look at the number of days since Bitcoin had a 50% drop. You see how last cycle there was a lot of volatility where we had frequent 50% drops and then three cycles ago there was a lot of 50% drops, but this cycle we haven't had 50% drops. It looks a lot like the 2017 cycle, right? Where there was also really low volatility. So, I think there's reason to look at this through the lens of what happened in 2017. And one of the things to note maybe about some other coins, not just Bitcoin, but Ethereum, Ethereum was also kind of doing the exact same thing in 2017 that it's doing now. It was going sideways. It was not moving. It was hanging out just above its bull market support band. And it stayed there until mid-November, right? It stayed there until mid-November and it still got one final rally and then the bear market ensued. So yeah, I still think it's possible that we get one final move, but I, and I that's what I'm hoping for, but I'm just being open and honest with people. I want to be transparent. If we get any weekly closes, two weekly closes in a row below the 50-week Moving Average, I'm probably out.
Is there a view that says that maybe the reason why the cycle indicators didn't trigger is because the cycle was driven by institutions and those cycle indicators, for example, the YouTube views example, like some of the other indicators that they were actually looking at, like retail-centric indicators, which is what's driven both the other cycles and in this cycle it's a completely different cycle driven by completely different capital and that's why the indicators didn't trigger? Well, yeah, I think you're probably right. There's two other things I would say. One is that if the cycle's not over, then maybe there is still time for some of those indicators to trigger. You know, maybe they trigger in December and we're just being impatient, right? That is a potential outcome. The other thing is that this entire cycle, and I know this seems kind of crazy, right? But this entire cycle to me has felt like a bigger version of that 2019 move, okay? And let me just explain it really quickly because I know a lot of people You can base it around the four-year cycle, but the monetary policy of this cycle, of this entire three-year bull market has been the most similar to what we had in 2019. And what you'll see here is if you look at the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve, and by the way, this is very timely because the Federal Reserve is going to meet later today. And we're recording, we're talking about this on the 29th, but they're going to have a meeting on the 29th and there is a chance that they're going to end Quantitative Tightening. Like they're going to announce the end of it. And what's interesting is that the bull market we had in 2019 is similar to this one in the sense that it was happening during Quantitative Tightening. Right? So you can see that purple line, those are very similar to each other. And the other way that they're similar is that Bitcoin dominance was basically going up the entire time. So you can see the red line dominance was going up during that bull market. And while Quantitative Tightening was going on, the same thing has happened this time. So through the lens of monetary policy, you could argue that we're not as frothy because we're still in this high interest rate environment and still under QT. Again, there's a chance that QT is going to come to an end soon, but I just wanted to put that on your radar because I don't think a lot of people say this cycle feels different, right? Because altcoins haven't really been moving with Bitcoin. That's exactly what we saw happen in that 2019 bull market. Bitcoin was going up and everything else just continued to lag it.
So would that mean that if Powell does stop Quantitative Tightening and he starts Quantitative Easing and stuff like that, what do you reckon happens to Bitcoin and altcoins over the period of quantitative neutrality and Quantitative Easing? Assuming that the cycle goes stop Quantitative Tightening, pause for a while, do nothing, and then at some point start Quantitative Easing, right? That's more or less what you expect. What would you expect Bitcoin to do at a time like that? That's a good question. I mean, so let's look at what happened last time, right? Last time it happened, Bitcoin topped out and then it dropped like 50%. And we got Let's just ignore the pandemic because we're not calling for a pandemic repeat, right? Let's just ignore the pandemic. Bitcoin essentially dropped 50%. So, if the top ends up happening without euphoria that you and I have seen before, like in 2017 and 2021, if the top happens without euphoria, then you might just get sort of a slower grind down in 2026. Maybe it won't be as bad and that would actually still be in line with the idea of you have diminishing returns, but you also have diminishing losses. So you could have a situation where Bitcoin just ends up stalling out in 2026 and then starts to slowly go down, but then by mid-2026, Jerome Powell is likely going to be replaced and he's going to be replaced by someone who's likely going to be cutting interest rates and wanting to turn the money printer back on. So the cycle that everyone wanted this cycle with altcoins doing better, that might actually occur next cycle. So what's really fascinating, Ran, about these cycles is they tend to flip-flop. Okay, so let me show you what I mean. If you look at the Advance Decline Index of the top 100 cryptocurrencies, remember how last cycle you could throw money at any cryptocurrency and there's a good chance a month later you were making good money, right? Anything was going up. Look at the Advance Decline Index. Look at the Advance Decline Index in 2020 and 2021. It was going up, right? It was going up. But ever since 2021, it's been dropping. So this cycle has been harder to navigate because a lot of the gains have been concentrated in only a few coins like Bitcoin recently, Ethereum a few years ago, it was Solana late last year, it was XRP. Recently we've seen BNB do well, right? But it's only been concentrated in a few cryptocurrencies, whereas last cycle it was concentrated throughout the entire asset class. But if you go back to the 2017 cycle, you can see the ADI was also going down for a lot of it, right? So back then a lot of the gains were also concentrated in Bitcoin. You had some really great rallies. We had Ethereum going up a lot back then, XRP, Litecoin, other cryptocurrencies were going up back then. But again, Bitcoin was the main reason that the market cap was going up. And so, you could argue that we pivot like one cycle is not like the last cycle, but it's like two cycles ago. So the cycle that people wanted this cycle might happen next cycle.
Now when you say next cycle, give me a timing. Is it next year? Is it in two years? Like when is it starting? Probably starting like mid to late next year. I would say the earliest, the absolute earliest it would start would be mid-2026, but there's a really high chance that it would start late 2026. And the reason for that is just normally whenever Bitcoin let's just assume that Bitcoin tops in Q4. Normally when Bitcoin tops, the low is about one year later, right? So last cycle the top was November, the low was November of the following year. The cycle before that the top was December, the low was December the following year. So you know if the top is October, then the low could be next October. If we can get one more move up into December, then perhaps the low will be next December. But I would argue that sometime starting around mid to late 2026, you could start to see the market dynamics change as they bring in someone who's a lot more dovish than Jerome Powell. And here's the thing, Ran, while what the Fed chair does, the new one, it'll likely be good for risk assets in the short term, but it likely will set us up for probably a secondary, another round of inflation and they're likely going to have to deal with that a little bit later on. It could lead to long-end rates going higher as well. So I mean what you're describing now is you're describing the exact scenario that we had in 2019 and 2020 where we had the top in 2019 and then we had the 2020 money printing. The COVID money printing could be compared to the new Fed chair coming in and one reduces interest rates and does Quantitative Easing, the one did actual stimulus and that's when we get that end of 2020 bull run, like end of 2020, 2021 bull run, right? So I'll take. A lot of people think that this will be like a 5-year cycle. It's just another term for a super cycle, right? But I don't think that's what's going to happen. I think it's all going to play out in a way so that the cyclical view remains intact, right? So that the downturn that happens after that happens after QT ends or when QE begins, the downturn that we got right there might just be the 2026 downturn, right? So I think a lot of it might just shape up to just play out kind of the way it always has. But again, there's a narrative for everything, right? And we can always find a narrative to support our views. I just think that there's a good chance the top is in this quarter and then whatever month it is, look for a low at least 6 months later, if not 12 months later.
Wow. Okay. So, what does that mean for dominance and like I'm going to call it altcoin season, but let's talk about specifically Bitcoin dominance. If the cycle comes to an end soon or soonish, are you expecting Bitcoin dominance to go back up to like the 68-69 level? Because it's at 60 now and I would argue that right now we're still in a bull market. Usually when we go into a bear market the altcoins sell off much quicker than Bitcoin, which makes the Bitcoin dominance go up. So how does the Bitcoin dominance chart play out in a scenario like that? Yeah, it's a good question. What's really fascinating is you know how we were talking about the 2017 cycle. If you look at Total 2 minus USDT divided by Bitcoin, it's October 29th. This valuation of this chart is at the exact same valuation it was at October 29th of 2017. It feels like we're living in a simulation sometimes, you know? Because here we are October 29th, the same exact valuation is today. Back then, what happened is that alt Bitcoin pairs had a small sell-off going into early November and then there was this massive spike by alt Bitcoin pairs. You see that big spike that we had in November that I wonder if the Fed were to end Quantitative Tightening. Let's say they come out today and say that QT ends in November. You have your narrative, right? You have your narrative for it right there. That spike, it could be the QT is ending spike. But the thing is even though that's true, that doesn't necessarily mean that they can't go lower one more time a little bit after that, right? Like into December because we both know that usually going into December that typically favors Bitcoin over altcoins, right? In November, you can get bounces by alt Bitcoin pairs, but as you go into December, Bitcoin tends to take back that liquidity. So the narrative essentially writes itself. And I know one thing that I want to bring up is that a lot of times what I've said for the last several years is that last cycle we did have a major high for Bitcoin dominance when Quantitative Tightening ended. Okay. So if you overlay the balance sheet, you can see that when QT ended, Bitcoin dominance found a local top for a while. But technically speaking, the rally that we got at the end of 2020 technically did take Bitcoin dominance to a higher high than the QT end high, right? So technically dominance did go higher. So I could see a scenario where you get a short-term pullback by dominance in November and it's sort of based around Quantitative Tightening. I still think liquidity might flow back to Bitcoin sort of like as you get into the December time frame which could send Bitcoin dominance up higher one more time. But then after that, especially as you get further out, the bull case for dominance starts to become less clear, right? The bull case for dominance for the last three to four years has been obvious, right? We're in a high interest rate environment and we're in Quantitative Tightening. Just buy Bitcoin and forget about everything else for a few years. But as you get to looser monetary policy and as you get into the end of Quantitative Tightening, while I still think it makes sense that Bitcoin should be the primary hold and honestly, no one lost money being a Bitcoin Maxi long term, I do think that the overwhelming bull case for dominance starts to become less clear as that stuff comes to an end.
Wow. I mean, the way you're describing it, it sounds like we're living in a movie. It does sound like we're living in a simulation because it's pretty much playing out how accurately it's playing out relative to previous cycles. And I don't know when you showed it on that chart, it kind of struck a chord. I'm keen to get your views on Gold. So Gold's had a massive, massive, massive rally. It felt very toppy at like 4,400. It kind of felt really toppy. You saw those charts of people lining up outside trying to get their physical Gold, etc. I'm wondering if you think this is the end of the Gold run or whether this Gold run still has legs. It's a great question. So what I think about Gold, I think the bull market for Gold is not over, but I think that there will be a longer consolidation period. Remember, to the viewers, this is not crypto, right? In metals, the bull markets take place over a decade. It's not like a four-year cycle or anything like that where everything just kind of explodes and gets destroyed every four years. With Gold, what I think is happening, do you remember with Bitcoin when Bitcoin got this correction in August, it corresponded to Ethereum putting in a new all-time high, right? So if you overlay Ethereum onto this chart, you'll see that right when Ethereum put in a new all-time high, that's when Bitcoin got a correction. Okay. Now, look at Gold. So, let's go look at Gold. When did Gold start to get this correction that it's currently in? Right when Silver put in an all-time high. So Silver just put in an all-time high. Let me see if I can pull this up here. It's still loading. Let me see if I can pull it up on this chart actually first. Let me pull up Silver. So, if you look at Silver on this chart, you'll see the same thing, right? You see how Silver just put in an all-time high, right? It swept the high from 2011. So, just like Bitcoin got a correction when Ethereum put in a new all-time high, I think Gold was going to get this correction as Silver puts in an all-time high. Now, the other thing to remember with Gold is that Silver might be repeating what Gold did because when Gold put in its own all-time high, right? You see this time over here in 2020 when Gold put in an all-time high. It went about 8 or 9% above the high and then it consolidated for a while, right? It consolidated below the highs for a while. You still had wicks. I mean, you say a while, but in the commodity cycle, you're talking years. That little circle that you've drawn there is two years, right? Exactly. Right. This isn't the five-minute altcoin chart. This is commodities, right? This is something you buy and you just forget about it until your kids are grown essentially, you know. So, but I mean even in that case, even though it took years, Gold was still kind of trying to go higher, right? Like it would occasionally wick back up to a new all-time high or back near the highs, but it was a long consolidation phase. Now, you see that move above the high for Gold. It was about a 9% move above the high. Yes. Silver just did the same thing. 9% above the high. The exact same thing. So, I do think my base case is that the bull market for Gold is not over. But you have to remember that when we talk about bull markets, we're not talking about what's going to happen tomorrow or next week or next month. I'm talking about if you look at this Gold bull market and look at it in comparison to the last one. You occasionally had drawdowns that would have made you think the bull market was over, but in reality, the bull market lasted from 2001 until 2011, right? It lasted 10 years. So, I think that there's a good chance that the Gold bull market that we're currently in will likely last until the end of the decade, but that doesn't mean that you're not going to have longer consolidation phases like that, right? So, you probably will. And if you look at the last thing I'll say about it is if you look at the monthly RSI of Gold, historically whenever it gets this high, you typically the bull market's not always over, but a lot of times you are pretty close to a 20% correction, right? If you look in the 1970s when the RSI was reaching these levels, you would get a 15-20% correction anytime it got that heated. And as you saw, the picture of the people standing outside, we were near, we're always going to be near a local top. But I would argue that I don't think Gold's going to go down that much. Like you might see it go down 15%.
So I was about to say the last time you came on the show, you said you would be a buyer of Gold at just under 3,000. That was when Gold was trading at just around 3,000. You said anything under 3,000 you'd be a buyer. Now Gold's at 4,000. Is there a buy level anywhere in sight? At what point, if you believe the bull market may go on till the end of the decade? What would be a reasonable buying level for you? Yeah. I mean, so for me, I personally loaded up on most of my Gold below 2500. That was kind of like that was just basically what I said for the last 5 years. Just buy Gold below 2500 because once it, you know, that's just a good price at this point. I feel like you're going to be lucky. I feel like best-case scenario is 3,000 for people that want to buy the dip. I don't think you're going to see Gold heading back down to like 1500 or 2,000 or anything like that. I think if you're waiting for that, you're going to be way too greedy. I would argue that really anything above 3K all the way up to just the high 3000s is going to be fair DCA territory for anyone who wants to potentially load up for hopefully a final leg to the bull market into the latter part of the decade. So, I would say maybe anywhere between 3 and 4K would be reasonable to load up. But again, normally when you get these big month moves in the monthly RSI, you need to see it come back down. And the only way you're going to see it come down is if you get a massive correction, back down to like 3500 or even 3K or the other way to see it come down is for the price to like come back down, pop back up, and just kind of like do this for a while. A repeat of this that would allow the market to kind of digest the move that Gold had and then go up kind of like later on in the decade. So, I mean, I think there's opportunities. So, there's this narrative that's been going around that only when Gold tops and starts to consolidate, Bitcoin actually starts running. And there's been a couple of charts that have been going around that kind of show that the last couple of times that first Gold topped and then there's that Gold with Bitcoin with a Gold with 100-day lag equals Bitcoin. What do you make of that chart? Is there any merit to when Gold peaks, Bitcoin actually starts rallying? Usually what happens is Gold moves and then Bitcoin will move with Gold at first and then if Gold keeps moving then Bitcoin then Bitcoin lags and then what happens a lot of times is then Bitcoin won't move until after the Gold move is over. We actually seen that happen many times actually. If you look at if you overlay Bitcoin with Gold or sorry if you overlay Gold with Bitcoin in 2024, Bitcoin was lagging Gold. Gold was taking off, Bitcoin was lagging and then you see the minute that Gold the minute that Gold kind of got this correction that's when Bitcoin used that opportunity to then go to a new all-time high. So, I mean, you could argue that this drop in commodities as long as it's the current I mean, we're not really getting bad data right now. We can't have bad data because they're not releasing. There's no data, right? There's no solve macroeconomics with this one simple trick. I think that one of the reasons you've seen Bitcoin be a little bit resilient over the last week or two is because there was sort of this rotation away from commodities perhaps back into riskier assets.
So, I will say though, Ran, there's one chart I think everyone should be aware of and it's sort of like a much more macro chart. And it's going to help us I think with risk assets in general. SPX denominated in Gold, S&P versus Gold and I'm sure you're familiar with it. We've had this support level for a long time. We held this level of support in 2016 and 2020. So, yeah, 2016, 2020, and then also we've been trying to hold it here in 2025. But if you go back in history, you can also see this support level was also a big support level back in the 60s and the 70s, right? So we held a support in 1960 and then 1962 and then in 1972. This chart insinuates that either Gold is going to go down relative to the S&P or the S&P is going to go up relative to Gold. So either what will likely happen? Right. So yeah, what will likely happen? Is the S&P going to fire and continue on a bull market or do you think Gold's going to weaken and the S&P is going to stay at same levels or slightly higher? Right. Well, in the short term, the S&P is doing just fine. And and that, I mean, and you can see that it's actually kind of rallied off of this low. So the way I think this is all going to play out is I mean, we're in a melt up for the S&P 500, right? I mean, it's just going up essentially every single every single week, right? The way I think it's going to play out is exactly how it played out kind of the last big drop we had. But again, I think we're still a little ways removed from that in terms of it being sort of the end of the entire business cycle. The way it worked back over here in the 70s is you had a rally by the S&P 500 and then at some point the bad macroeconomic data started to happen and then when that happened you had a correction by Gold and stocks. So Gold and stocks got a correction, but stocks dropped more. After stocks dropped, Gold recovered back to all-time highs very a lot quicker than stocks did. So that's the reason why having some of these metals in your portfolio can be like a nice hedge because if there is a big drop by stocks sometime in the next year or two, there is likely going to be a corresponding drop with Gold, but Gold will rally back to an all-time high a lot quicker than stocks. Ran, just look at what happened in March and April and how resilient Gold was in that drop. Look at this chart and look at March 2025. Do you even see a drop by Gold like in March or April? Not really. Not on the monthly time frame, but if you go to the daily time frame, you can see it, right? On the daily time frame, you can see the drop. But notice how quickly it just recovered to all-time highs. So yeah, at some point there's going to be a risk-off time. Gold will take a hit at first like stocks, but then Gold will recover very quickly.
Okay. So, that brings me to then the S&P. So, you mentioned it. It's been in a bit of a melt up. It's been hitting all-time highs every single day. If Trump gets his way, then it should be good for the S&P, right? At the same time, I don't know if you've been watching, but the job cuts and the job losses, and I think a lot of them are, I don't think a lot of them are because of their business cycle. I think a lot of them have got to do with AI. But there's been all the headlines around job cuts and job losses and stuff like that. How do you balance the S&P? Are we going, is there a recession? Are the job cuts all AI? I'm really trying to get a grip as to how you see it. Yeah. The way I do it with the S&P is don't be a hero and call the top because everyone makes a fool of themselves trying to do it. Just remember that tops are a process and they take place over a long period of time. Okay? Even before the financial crisis, the S&P was in a topping process for like half a year, where it was trying to go higher and it was not able to. In the dot-com era, the S&P was trying to go higher for again about half a year where it was only making marginally higher highs. Tops are processes, whereas bottoms tend to be more events that come and go. So, the way I handle stocks is I just stick with low expense ratio index funds and I just I do that and I've done that blindly honestly ever since I've been an adult because really, I was born in 1990 so I turned 18 in 2008 and really the stock market has just gone up ever since. I mean, ever since that, right? At some point that'll change, but again, what I would be looking for is a topping process and we haven't actually seen that yet, right? We continue to put in new all-time highs. Now, one interesting thing, Ran, and I don't expect this fractal to play out forever. I don't. But this fractal still looks kind of like this one from 1996. And if it does, from a timing perspective, if you take a bar pattern from this 1996 low right here in the stock market, this is the stock market divided by the Money Supply, okay? And you overlay it here, even that 20% drop lines up, right? It's the same thing, you know? And so you could argue that if it is to play out the same way, again, the fractal will break down. We've seen plenty people overlay fractals and eventually they just don't work. But it goes to show you the human emotion, the psychology part of it where you would eventually have some bad macro data point. There would be a correction and it would go back up to a new all-time high and there'd be another correction and then you go back to a new all-time high and then eventually after going through that process for like six to twelve months where you're only making marginally higher highs, then eventually the stock market gave up and then we went into a recession. So again, we could be near a macro top, but again, that top could hold or we could we could continue to put in slightly higher highs for potentially six or twelve months before before things start to break down. So, I would watch that. I would be patient with the stock market, recognize there's going to be corrections, but in order to identify a top, you want to see a process where you have like six to twelve months where it's not really making higher highs or much higher highs. And when you get to that point, then it might be start to worthwhile to think about it being a top.
So, I think we both know that Trump he measures himself based on the S&P, right? If the S&P is high, he says, "I've done a great job. Markets are flying high," etc. I'm kind of interested to see how you see the rest of Trump's term. So Trump's probably like he's almost a year into his second term and that would leave three years three years left, right? So the question is, how do you see the cycle playing out? Would you do you think Trump's leaving on a high or do you think Trump's leaving on a low? So I don't think the business cycle is going to play out regardless what Trump does. Okay. To some degree, political parties like to pass on their problems to the next political party. And the unemployment rate has already been trending up before Trump took office. You know, it was at 34, 35. It was trending up. We're obviously in an environment where hiring is low. I mean, and this is not, I mean, I'm not saying tariffs certainly haven't helped, right? But hiring was already low before Trump took office, right? Quits have already been low before Trump took office. So I mean he's essentially been handed an economy that while it's not like if you just look at the labor market, it's not obviously weak because the unemployment rate is low, but when you look under the hood of things, like if you look at job openings, if you look at hiring, if you look at quits, there's not a lot of wiggle room. All it would take would be for layoffs to pick up and then that's when you get your Federal Reserve that doesn't know what to do because they have inflation going up and unemployment rate also going up. So the labor market under the surface is somewhat weak and that's why the unemployment rate behaves in a nonlinear fashion, right? We've seen the unemployment rate slowly go up for the last several years and it's and it's behaved somewhat predictably, but all ends to all prior business cycles, it ends in a nonlinear fashion where it just skyrockets higher. And the reason it skyrockets higher is because when layoffs start, when the layoffs actually begin, people look around, no one's hiring, right? Like there's no job openings. And that's what causes the unemployment rate to shoot up. And again, that's why the Federal Reserve is going to cut again today because they want to try to mitigate the effects of this potentially happening.
How much of it do you think is AI-driven versus how much of it you think is business cycle driven? I think it's both. I mean, I think the I think manufacturing, like the industrial sectors, they're really hit hard. They're not doing that well. I think tech sectors are going to get hit a lot harder by AI because a lot of the just like in the dot-com era, the people who largely lost their jobs were people in tech. The people that were in education and healthcare their jobs were relatively safe. The unemployment rate for those people did not go up nearly as much as it did for the for the tech industry. So I think at some point during Trump's term, and again, he has no effect on it. It's going to happen in my view no matter what. Regardless. Yeah. Regardless, it's going to happen. The business cycle will come to an end, I think. And I think what's going to happen is this. I think it's going to play out where next year you're going to have the markets are going to start to struggle. Crypto is going to start to struggle next year and then mid-year they're going to replace Powell with someone more dovish. Okay. When that happens, they're going to lower rates even more and then you might start to see the riskier stuff start to outperform the blue chips. Like you might start to see altcoins even outperform Bitcoin as sacrilegious as that is to say. But the problem is that it might lead to another wave of inflation where then the Fed might actually have to do the unthinkable and raise rates as quickly as they went up last time. Right? Do you remember we were just talking about this S&P divided by M2 stuff? Yes. And how similar this whole thing is playing out. Yes. Look, if you overlay if you overlay interest rates, look at what happened. There we go. So, the Fed the Fed lowered rates got down to, you know, three or like below five, then the animal spirits reignited and all the frothy stuff came to the surface up in this distribution phase up here. So, they had to raise rates to deal with the problem and then the animal spirits finally got killed off and that was the start of the dot-com crash. Again, we're still likely, like we're still likely pretty far removed from all that stuff because they have a lot of levers they can pull. They can do QE. They can lower interest rates more. We still have to see that effect happen in inflation. That's going to still take a lot of time. But that's what I just I think that this whole process is going to take place during his term where he replaces Powell with someone who's a lot more dovish. They print money, they lower rates, and then they realize that's not the solution to all the problems, and then we go into the end of the business cycle, and then we have a recession sometime probably later on in its term.
All right, before I let you go, Ben, Ethereum, do you still see Ethereum as a proxy for altcoins or is there like and what do you think Ethereum is going to do? Because there was once I followed some of your tweets. I think you were talking about Ethereum going above 5,000 or something like that. What do you think's the path for Ethereum? Yeah. So, my general thought process was that it was, you know, it would sweep this high, get a 30% drop and then and then basically hold support around 3500 I think is what I said on Twitter like or 3500 or so. It went to 3,400. So I mean it went a little below that but it was still about a 30% drop. I'm still hopeful that the market can hold on around these levels and then by the time you get out to say mid-November, I could see you getting one final rally by Ethereum to potentially another all-time high and hopefully above 5K. What's really interesting is the narratives write themselves and I don't really think you need a narrative, but the highest probability for the end of the government shutdown I think right now is mid-November. That's what the that's what the prediction markets are suggesting is about mid-November for maybe the end of the government shutdown. And so you could imagine a narrative where Ethereum continues to hold at these levels. Then you get the end of the government shutdown sometime in mid to late November. Ethereum rallies to an all-time high. But then by the time you get to 2026, all the bad data starts coming in that we were ignoring for Q4. And then you and then you get your 2026 bear market.
How much of an impact do you think this government shutdown's having? Like I know it's not a great thing that the government is shut down. I know it's not really a good thing, but why do you think that markets could run when the government comes back? Like what would happen when the government came back? To me, it feels like I guess people care. It feels like people are quite apathetic about this government shutdown. It's a narrative, right? It doesn't necessarily mean anything. But if you if you wanted a narrative to support the idea. Got it. A lot of people have not been getting their checks for a month now, right? They haven't been getting paid. So maybe you could argue that once everyone gets paid, they'll just go FOMO into risk assets. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I just I could see there being some optimism around that and then we we continue to ignore our problems and so we just simply cannot ignore them anymore. And then that's probably going to start happening next year. Amazing, Ben. Listen, thank you so so so much for your time. Guys, there is a link below that gets you a really cool discount if you want to join Ben's Into The Cryptoverse. And if you want to join their product, it's an amazing product. We use it very, very much in our research and you also become part of the community. Ben, it's always amazing having you. I hope you're right and I hope that we do get one last big push in November because I've got a few altcoins that I need to sell. And I think I'll just wait for that. I've got a few that I'm holding on to and I'm holding for that one last bull market. I think we all are. Yeah, I will say I'm leaving after if Bitcoin goes below 100, I'm out and I will see you next year. I hope not. I hope it doesn't go below 100. But I guess we always have to pay attention to the fact that we may think that the cycle's different. We may think that the cycle's longer, but every time we've done that, even though n only equals two or n only equals three, we've been caught out. So, I mean, for those of us that have been here for a while, we kind of know that you got to at this stage of the cycle, you got to be cautious and you got to keep an open mind about every scenario. Even though you want the market to go up, the market owes you nothing. And if it's the end of the cycle, it's the end of the cycle. Regardless of whether we've had an alt season, regardless of whether ETH broke its all-time highs, if it's the end of the cycle, it's end of the cycle. And only if you've been here for multi-cycles do you actually know that, right? Exactly. Don't marry a price prediction. Just listen. The way I've said it before is like, don't trade the market you want, trade the market you have. Amazing, guys. So, don't trade the market you want, trade the market you have. If you want to subscribe to Ben's product, there's a link in the description for you guys with a big discount. Ben, thank you so so so much for your time, my friend. It's always good to chat to you and I really hope your predictions right. Thanks for having me. Cool. And to you guys, I'll see you guys again tomorrow. Until then, trade well, my friends.