Transcription
Hey everyone, and thanks for jumping back into the cryptoverse. Today, we're going to talk about Bitcoin's dubious speculation. If you guys like the content, make sure you subscribe to the channel, give the video a thumbs up, and also check out the new website at benjamancow.com.
I mentioned to you guys a week or two ago that I was going to launch a report for Q1 for those that want to, um, sit down and just read through a report, a memo. And if you haven't signed up, I mean, you still can. It's free. It's not, I, I'm not charging anything for it. It's a free memo for anyone to read. Uh, but if you just go over to Benjamin.com, go to reports, if you really want to have a, a stroll down memory lane, uh, you can go read the reports that I wrote in 2020. Um, they might give you a nice laugh. Uh, but for the new one, there's one that I just published and it's called the Crypto Macro Risk Memo Q1 2026. And so if you want to read it, you can just click on get report. Um, and there is, uh, sort of the, the summary of it, and then you can just scroll down and if you want to get the PDF, uh, you can do that, uh, or if you just want to read it, you can also do that. So make sure you guys check that out. Uh, we published this, uh, this article earlier today, January 15th, and I just wanted you guys to know that it's there in case any of you are interested in reading it.
Okay. So, um, right now, Bitcoin is in that counter-trend rally we've discussed. Normally, there is a counter-trend rally. Now, listen, guys, as I've said before, no one knows exactly what's going to happen. It's not like I know for a fact that it is simply a counter-trend rally and not a rally to a new all-time high. But, I am basing my assessment on a lot of different things. And one of the hallmarks of, sort of, a late-cycle move, like a, a distribution type of process, one of the hallmarks is when you top out on apathy, like a, a lack of demand, rather than topping out on euphoria. And as I've said before, this is not the first time that we have seen this. It might feel like it, but we got a sense of what this was like last cycle. It's just that last cycle, it took place over a shorter period of time, right? The entire, um, Bitcoin rally that we had in 2019 and then subsequent slow drawdown afterwards, that all happened while QT was going on, and then QT ended, and then Bitcoin fell down, and then we continued to slowly drop because while the Fed was expanding their balance sheet, they were mostly doing it for stabilization purposes. They weren't printing a ton of money and and leading us into a more risk-on regime for digital assets. Okay, similar thing has happened the last few years. There's been no shortage of good news in the crypto space the last few years, just like there was no shortage of good news in 2019. But Bitcoin is closer and more tied to liquidity and really excess liquidity than it is to, I think, most anything else. And because it sits, you know, at a different spot on the risk curve than stocks and and metals, it is exposed to certain conditions where even though we're seeing Bitcoin dominance kind of go back up, it's not necessarily enough to sustain a bull market. And and again, this is exactly how it played out in 2019, right? Like we saw altcoins bleeding to Bitcoin back over, you know, back over here in 2019. And we saw Bitcoin top out a couple of months before quantitative tightening ended, just like it did here in 2025 as well. Like we've seen that, and that's played out in a very similar manner. I think that we're in this post-top phase where we're, we're trying to digest the move we had. Right? So 2019, we had the move up. Bitcoin dominance went up. There was no rotation into altcoins after it. Back then, what we saw? But we saw the advanced decline index of the top 100 cryptocurrencies falling. It was falling back then, just like it has been for the last several years now. I am a believer in the four-year cycle, but I'm also a believer in other macro forces that are at work here as well. And what I am saying is that the 2019 move that we had was a Bitcoin-led rally. There was no rotation into altcoins after it. At least not immediately. Monetary policy was loosening up. Rates were being cut. QT ended and QE began. But it wasn't enough until we had a larger shock. And that shock did not happen until the pandemic, right? When the Fed really had to come to the rescue. And what happened back then is Bitcoin stalled out and it started bleeding against the S&P 500, even though the S&P 500 continued to go up. That's the, the interesting thing. If you overlay Bitcoin divided by the S&P 500, what you'll notice, and I want to actually want to switch this over to the stock market, right? Which, what you'll notice is that Bitcoin was bleeding against the stock market. It was bleeding against the stock market in 2019. You can see it pretty clearly, right? It was bleeding against the stock market. But stocks were still going up. Same thing's happening now. Bitcoin's bleeding against the stock market. Stocks are still going up. What are some other similarities? Quantitative tightening ended back then. Bitcoin topped out a little bit sooner or a little bit before that. Same thing here today. So, it's very similar, right? It is very similar. It just happens to line up with a four-year cycle top. So what that means is that we're still in the drawdown, like, sort of that digestion phase of this macro bull market that we just had. And now the only thing to figure out is, well, how long is it going to last for? Now, of course, there are people in one camp that say that we're already in a rally to a new all-time high, but to me, this does not look like that. It does not look like that because it, it, it, it feels eerily similar to the last bull market end in in 2019 during quantitative tightening. It does not feel like 2021. It does not feel like 2017. But just because it doesn't feel like those because there was no euphoria, doesn't mean it doesn't feel like another time when there was a top, and that's 2019. And the good news about that is if you look at the drawdown back then after the cycle peak, and you compare it to say 2021, if you look at the current one, you compare it to 2021, 2017, and 2013, we're holding up a lot better than we were back then. If you compare it to the drawdown in 2019, it looks a lot more similar. Now, that doesn't mean you can't have rallies. In fact, you will have rallies, right? But they're more tactical than long-term strategic. Right. Right. Right now, is what I mean. Like, not forever. Long-term, I, I am very bullish on Bitcoin. It's just right now, we are in a phase where Bitcoin's doing what it usually does at the end of a four-year cycle, right? Where it rallies back up to some of these key levels and then ultimately gets rejected. I do think Bitcoin will get back through the bull market support band at some point. I just think that in order to durably get above it, we need a longer digestion period of the move that we already had. 2019 had the move, and then we digested it for a while, and then we went up when the money printers came back on. Same thing, right? We've had the move, and now the digestion period of that move is underway. And because we're kind of going into the midterm, we're in the midterm year now, um, there was no rotation to altcoins. There's a lot of retail investors that have decided to leave, and this has more been more so an institutional-driven cycle than anything else because retail, to a large extent, is nowhere to be found. I mean, frankly, there are dozens of us left. Okay, you can look at YouTube subscribers, various crypto YouTube channels, including my own, and see that on average, they're bleeding about one and a half thousand subscribers a day. That's a lot. Even mine, right? Even mine, I'm no different. Even mine, you can see that. Well, I guess it's not negative, but it is, it's only barely positive. Only barely positive. And if you go look at at YouTube views, it looks even worse for retail investors, for retail sentiment, right? YouTube views are very low right now. Extremely low. We're averaging, these channels are averaging maybe like 500, 600,000 views a day. That might sound like a lot, but it's a lot of channels. And when you compare it to 2021, you see they were averaging 3 to 4 million views a day. So, the reason that there's no rotation into altcoins is because there's no one new here to buy the altcoins that you want to rally. They're just, they're not here. And so, because of that, it reminds me of 2019, where we also saw interest surge into the top, and then it just kind of slowly died off for a while, and then eventually things changed. So that's kind of where I think we are right now. That's where I think Bitcoin is right now. Um, and what I see happening is the same thing that always happens. Uh, even if you do believe in the four, if if you think this is not like 2019, but instead like a normal midterm year bare market, then you also have your narrative because after we break the 50, we go to the 100, then we go to the 200 week moving average. That's 2014. And then you got 2018, 50, 100, 200. 2022, 50, 100, 200, even below the 200. Same thing, 50. We're currently at the 100. Eventually, we'll likely fall to the 200. If you look at 2014, you'll see that when we got to the 100, Bitcoin stayed above it, and then it fell below it, week 10. Okay, last cycle, when we found that low near the 100-week moving average, we fell below it, week 14. We're currently week eight, right? So, like, these moves are moves that we've seen before. And and actually, the move looks kind of similar, right? You you drop and then you get sort of a, a bounce, a higher low, a larger bounce to the 50-week, and then you go down. You can see that pattern, right? Down, up, higher low, higher high, drop. Now look at 2014. Same thing, right? Very similar. You drop, uh, versus the 50, you bounce, low, higher low, bounce, and then drop. Same thing again. You drop down here, you bounce, higher low, higher high, drop. We've seen it, right? We've seen it happen many, many times. Now, it also happened over here, but arguably not as much at the 100-week, but when you got to the 50, right, you drop, bounce, higher low, not even a higher high, and then you drop down. So, this pattern is something we've seen where you drop and you get a bounce, higher low, another bounce. Ultimately, I think it will break back to the downside, notwithstanding any potential short-term rallies, right? Like, it's not like it can't go up. In fact, in some ways, when you look at at these midterm year rallies, you know, some of the time they'll actually rally all the way up to the 200-day moving average, right? You can see in 2022, Bitcoin rallied up to the 200, 200-day moving average before getting rejected and then going into the summer, the dog days of the summer. If you look at, um, 2018, you'll see Bitcoin rally to the 200-day moving average before then dropping into the dog days of the summer. And so right now, the 200-day moving average is little, a little bit of a 100K. It's dropping though. Um, normally by the time we hit the 200-day moving average, it also roughly corresponds to the 50-week moving average and roughly corresponds to the bull market support band. Right now, they don't, they, they're not the same price, but remember, the 200-day moving average is going to react a lot quicker than the 50-week moving average, right? So like, the 50-week moving average is currently just over 100. It's like 101K. The 200-day moving average is a few thousand dollars higher than that. But both of them are dropping. It's just the 200-day moving average is probably going to start dropping quicker because it's reacting to prices that happened, uh, more recently. Price, price, um, price moves. It doesn't take as long to to react. So that's where I am now. You can call me, um, a bear, right? You can say that that I'm too bearish. We can go through that. But listen, guys, I'm just presenting the evidence. It's not like this is what I want to happen. It'd be a lot better for my channel if Bitcoin were just going up, right? I mean, if we're being honest, right? Like, if, I mean, prices have gone so sideways for the last year, which is what essentially has led to the ghost town that we're in, right? I mean, like, if you could, if I could, if I could tell the market what to do, which I obviously can't, but if I could, you know, it'd be a lot better for the industry as a whole, and including my channel, for the prices to go up. So, believe me, I would love to be able to with a clear conscience say that, but I, I, I think the evidence right now more so suggests that this is a counter-trend rally.
Okay. Now, what would have to happen to say that I'm wrong? If we get multiple weekly closes back above the 50-week, then I would have to consider it. Now, last cycle, we got two, but remember, there was no follow-through on that first week. So, when you when you get above the 50-week from being below it, in order to really give confidence that that things are back, you would really want to have a move above it and then to hold it for a couple of weeks. You don't just want one of these fake-outs where you just go slightly above it for a week or two and then drop back down. So, for me, this is a bare market, right? Like, and it's been a bare market for months now. And if it is a bare market, we're already several months into it, which is a good thing. If it's not a bare market, um, then, uh, you know, then I will have have been wrong about about October being the high, right? So, I'm of under the impression that October 2025 is the high for this market cycle. Just like last cycle, it was November of 2021, and the cycle before that, it was December of 2017. And note, in December 2017, the low ended up being after the December 7, 2017 top, the low was a year later. In December 2018, after the November 2021 top, the low was a year later in November 2022. So it was December '17 to December '18, November '21 to November '22, October '25 to October '26. Maybe we have to consider it. If Bitcoin is rejected at the 50-week and/or the 200-day and/or the bull market support band, then I think where you look is you look at this support level down here, that's where it's likely going to go, if I had to guess. Now, I want to remind you of another chart that we talked about, and I just want to put it back on your radar to provide some more evidence that, uh, of this view, and that's this pattern right here. And we've talked about this pattern a lot. We mentioned it for Bitcoin dominance, mentioned it for Palladium, for, for HSI, uh, for Alibaba, for a lot of different, a lot of different, for Bitcoin dominance, right? And and basically, it goes something like this, right? Where you have a high, uh, you eventually, you eventually break through, and then when you do, you get a pullback, and then you more durably break through, right? You saw it with Bitcoin dominance. We've seen it with a lot of other charts. And I'm just saying it looks like the same thing is playing out for stablecoin dominance. Now, obviously, you could say that if they just keep minting stablecoins, I keep printing, I keep typing the wrong thing. Obviously, you could say if they just keep printing stablecoins, dominance could go higher and crypto prices don't have to crash. But unfortunately, in the midterm years, typically stablecoin dominance goes higher because for, for also because crypto is is dropping. And so you have these highs by stablecoin dominance, and then it looks like we more recently sort of broke through, and then now we're in that brief pullback before it likely bounces higher. So I would look for stablecoin dominance to hold support above its bull market support band, and for Bitcoin to mostly get rejected by its own bull market support band. That doesn't mean it can't go above it at all. It went above it in 2022. But in general, that is where I would look for it to get some form of a rejection. That is how I ultimately think this is going to play out.
So, I'm going to leave it there. If you guys like the content, we do have into the cryptoverse.com where I am a lot more active on there than on the public YouTube. We do three more videos there each week, and I'm also active, um, in, in some of the alerts channels. But what I'd really like you to do if you're interested is go to the new website, benjaminc.com. Go to the reports and check out this most recent report. And if you, if you don't want to read it on the website, you can always, uh, provide your email and you can get it emailed to you. And that way it might be a little bit more easy, might be easier, uh, to read it that way than to to read it here. But do check it out. Uh, bingjamincowan.com. Thank you guys for tuning in. Subscribe if you're not subscribed, and I'll see you guys next time. Bye.