# Bitcoin Market Structure Shift: Institutional Accumulation and Wealth Share Targets

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-05-08

## Transcript

But again, we are at a point where there's only really one solution to get yourself out of a bit of a mess in an economy.
And that solution historically and likely will be for the foreseeable to print more money.
And we're seeing no signs of that slowing down.
What's up, everybody?
It's LG Doucette here.
And welcome to The Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that isn't buying new underwear until Bitcoin gets back to 100K.
And man, it's looking like Swiss cheese down there.
Today is May 8th, 2026, recording late on May 7th, 2026.
Listen, we love crazy predictions on Milk Road, especially fun crypto ones like ETH to 250K or Bitcoin to a million dollars.
And despite having a few of those lately on the show with other guests, no one...
has more fun predictions, more entertaining ones than my guest today, who spends his entire days tracking the price of Bitcoin and is back to give us a variety of scenarios.
And we've been waiting to have him back on since the end of last year.
Matt Crosby from Bitcoin Magazine Pro is back with us today.
Today's episode is brought to you by Cape, the privacy-first mobile carrier, Pharos, the layer one built for RealFi, and Nexo, earn interest, borrow, and trade crypto.
Matt.
He's back.
He's back at the turn of the tide, man.
You vanished through this terrible winter we had.
And now the fact that you're back on the show makes me more bullish than ever.
Amazing.
Well, happy to be back.
And yeah, I timed that perfectly.
We did the 2026 outlook and then I immediately left for like two months.
The first break I'd had in like four years.
I was like, you know, I think it's deserved.
I think we're going to have a boring few months.
And price was like, what, 90K or something.
Immediately checked my phone a couple of days later, bang, 60K.
So it is what it is, but happy to be back.
And happy to be back now that things are starting to look actually a little bit more.
positive and optimistic and bullish.
I think I've timed this pretty nicely.
I've missed all the terrible price section where your poor guests having to come on and say, you know what, it's not looking great.
I get to go on when it was good before and I get to come on when it's good again now.
So very excited.
We love and appreciate all our guests that we've had to start this year in the last four months, giving us some optimism in the dark days of crypto winter and of actual winter as well.
We got through it, Matt, but now we're back with you.
And you went and touched grass for real.
You literally, that's the way to do it, guys, is like literally just stick to your computer until there's a clear bear market and then just.
disappear for a bit.
That's I don't know why you would spend your days on x or anywhere else.
When when the price action looks like it has.
But Matt, I feel like we should get right into it, man.
I feel like you always give us such great fantastic analysis.
So I'd love to pull up kind of what you're thinking about these days.
So in fact, before we get into this data, we did briefly discuss this first No, no, I just wanted to pull up this little image because I remember the last time I was on your show.
and you know we always have a lot of fun but i remember i think it was the first question you asked matt your latest prediction was way off so you know i'm an analyst in the space sometimes i get things wrong sometimes i get things right but on the last show we had when bitcoin had just broken beneath that one year moving average that 50 week everyone was looking towards and we were at like the mid 90 thousands and i came on and i said you know what i actually think a dip towards mid 50 60k and a summer bear market was my kind of base case so i just wanted to take this screenshot and say i'm not always wrong occasionally you know like a like a broken clock occasionally this analysis actually actually comes to fruition so i just wanted to start off with that but now we'll dive into some real stuff so first and foremost Has Bitcoin's price bottomed out?
I mean, it's the million dollar question.
And of course, I don't have a crystal ball, but today we're going to put some jigsaw pieces together, look for some confluence and try and look more pragmatically to see, you know, what's the probability that Bitcoin has really bottomed out?
Because we can see we've had this bear market so far dropped around 50% from 120 ish K to 60 ish K, high 59 Ks.
And now we've actually recovered fairly quickly.
So, I mean, it makes sense.
to look at Bitcoin now having gone from $60,000 to mid $80,000 or so a few days ago and think, wow, was that the bottom already?
I mean, it felt like a pretty terrible bear market.
But I think if we can look back in hindsight and say the worst is behind us, then it's actually not been too bad.
But I have a few different kind of outlooks on the market.
I think initially where we are right now, we're at some heavy resistance.
So we're at the short-term holder realized price, the 200 daily moving average.
We'll get into that a little bit later.
But ultimately, I think at least in my mind, as much as I really hate to say it, that this time is different.
And I do hate to say it.
I think the base case of we're going to have this four-year cycle and we're going to have this very predictable one-year bear market.
And I'm sure you might have noticed it in the comments on social media, et cetera.
People are saying, yeah, I know it might look positive now, but we're not going to bottom out until October because we always have a one-year long bear market.
Well, it's a pretty small sample size.
We have two or three cycles where that's really happened.
And if we are to just see Bitcoin have a summer low, which it very well may, and not bomb out until October, then that may be the case.
But in the current market conditions, for me, I think the asymmetric opportunity of Bitcoin around these levels is too hard, too big to ignore.
And Bitcoin generally is just changing.
If we look at the circulating supply of Bitcoin, over 95% that will ever exist are already in circulation.
Now, in previous cycles, this four-year cycle that we saw where we had the halving event, big one 18-month-long bull market, and then we had a year-long bear market, and then this kind of chopping and consolidation until the next halving.
That's very influenced by the fact an asset had its inflation rate decreased by 50% instantly.
That's a big fundamental change in the network.
And as well as that, we were pretty speculative retail-driven assets.
So we had these big euphoric bubbles, big, long, drastic bear cycles.
But now we've seen a huge amount, well, a vast majority of the supply actually already in circulation.
And we're already seeing Michael Saylor and strategy and treasury companies scooping up far more Bitcoin than is produced on a daily basis.
So in that regard, I think we probably shouldn't look as the four-year cycle as our immediate base case.
But even if we do want to kind of take that lens that we want to have a one-year bear cycle to truly have this capitulation.
Then again, I think we discussed it last time.
In some senses, we already really have had this capitulation.
So this is rather than measuring Bitcoin versus the US dollar or fiat currencies, which we typically do, which isn't maybe the best benchmark, because if you measure in something with a finite supply that is divisible and is a hard money like Bitcoin, and you're measuring against something that's losing three, four, five plus percent of its purchasing power every single year, then it really should be.
grinding up to the upside.
So if you actually measure Bitcoin versus other comparable assets, like in this instance, silver, then we can actually see the relative or comparable purchasing power of Bitcoin versus these assets.
Now, what we can see is if we measure Bitcoin versus silver, which I think is a good comparison, people like to point towards digital gold, and we'll look at some gold comparisons shortly.
But gold is a $35 trillion market cap commodity, whereas Bitcoin, you know, 1.5 trillion.
Silver is the next logical target.
It trades a lot more like silver than gold.
It's a lot more volatile.
And silver is about a $4 to $5 trillion asset, depending on the current price.
So I think that's the next logical target.
And if you look at this Bitcoin bear market in terms of relative purchasing power versus silver, this has already been the third worst bear market in Bitcoin's entire history, even though we're only down 50% versus the US dollar.
In terms of a comparable commodity, we're down nearly 80%.
And this bear market has been over a year.
We topped out in late 2024.
So this kind of already does play into the four-year cycle and shows that we really have had this capitulation.
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is in the description but is that is that only because silver has seen a huge run up during this time because silver has hit all-time highs in the last six months right like silver's on a historic run that it's never seen before so naturally and it like is that is this the ratio that we're looking at like is this is this that what you're showing me basically Yes.
So this might make it a little clearer.
If we look at this, which is very similar, but we can see the orange line here, which is Bitcoin versus the US dollar.
So throughout 2025, we hit a new all-time high in October, $126,000-ish.
But it certainly didn't feel like we hit a new all-time high because we were seeing assets like silver, like gold, like equities, like realistically everything outside of the cryptocurrency space.
rallying its new all-time highs.
So is it a fair lens to say Bitcoin specifically versus silver or specifically versus gold?
If I was cherry picking one AI stock, maybe, but we were looking at every other market which was going up drastically compared to Bitcoin.
So we were seeing this lagging behavior.
And on this chart, again, we can see even though Bitcoin did make new all-time highs versus gold, it was only about a 52% return following the 2024 halving event.
And then again, this was in late 2024.
before a year-long bear cycle with incredibly negative returns.
So it's not just looking at one asset or another.
In fact, if we measure Bitcoin as a percentage of global wealth, which I don't want to do a shameless shill here, but if you do buy the new Bitcoin magazine, I do have an article covering exactly this, rather than measuring one or two comparable assets, if we take the entire wealth of the entire world and measure Bitcoin as a percentage of that total wealth, we're only about a quarter percent, but it's the same story across the board.
Recently, we have recovered that 2017 bull market peak.
But really, if you look at this chart, you can see how different this cycle was.
I mean, we had just a new all-time high.
And then this bear market has just been brutal.
Compared to the USD chart, it looks fairly familiar up until this cycle, which just saw a lower peak at that all-time high.
Of course, we topped in 2024.
And now it's just been brutal.
But this is...
Kind of one of the reasons why I'm thinking this time might be different, because recently we've seen geopolitical uncertainty.
We've seen macroeconomic conditions in which people a few years ago had overlooked Bitcoin and thought, there's absolutely no way we could be on the verge of a new world war.
We could be seeing oil spiking to the upside and all these recessionary claims.
And Bitcoin is actually regaining ground at incredibly fast rate versus these comparable assets.
It's regaining ground like in the last month, you mean?
Well, so since we bottomed it around $60,000, if you look at Bitcoin versus the S&P 500, for example, Bitcoin's gained, or since the conflict in the Middle East started, Bitcoin's gained around 45% to the upside.
So that's not just in terms of how it's gone up in US dollar terms, but if we look at the ratio between these charts, which is, again, something I'm trying to focus a little bit more on this cycle, because, again, if Bitcoin's going up, but everything else is going up alongside it, then...
it's maybe not the best measuring stick to see if we're actually getting or at least maintaining our level of wealth.
And one thing we also need to consider- I have a question for you.
So hold on.
So I'm just going to recap the last couple of slides and last couple of bits is that basically, you're comparing Bitcoin in terms of its purchasing power to gold and to silver, right?
And showing how- Bitcoin has been at the lowest range of that ratio than it's ever been or has been in one of the worst ranges basically versus either of those assets.
Is this a comparison you have used in the past, Matt, or is this a new comparison?
Would you have used this three or four years ago?
I don't have the chart.
to hand here but it's been something that people have looked towards to a long time so it's not like this is a new right what about you specifically though matt what about you i want to know about you is this yeah you specifically Well, I have liked these charts for a while, but one that's really handy is if you look at, for example, gold versus silver, you kind of get an almost immediate risk on to risk off environment for commodities.
It's just a quick ratio.
And one that's been very popular that I've looked at as well as many other analysts is looking at the S&P 500 versus gold.
And what we can see is this gives a really cyclical, almost multiple decade long look at where we could be going in terms of risk on for equity markets or a little bit more defensive.
So these ratios again.
It's not anything groundbreaking or new.
And I mean, even within the crypto space, up until this cycle, maybe the previous cycle, definitely throughout 2017 and at least what felt like the start of 2021, if you were trading any altcoins, you're almost certainly looking at the ETH-BTC pair or your next favorite altcoin, which is definitely going to make an all-time high this cycle versus Bitcoin chart.
But they've kind of fallen out of favor to just...
be looking at everything purely in USD terms.
So within the crypto space, we should be fairly familiar with these ratio charts, but it doesn't seem like something people are really putting a lot of emphasis on.
And when we actually measure the market in these terms, as I said, it gives us a better insight into not just what's happening in terms of our purchasing power, but in terms of the target we're actually aiming for.
Because again, these aren't fixed targets.
Between 2024 and gold's peak, the market cap of gold increased by around $20 trillion.
So in two years, it increased by the market cap of Bitcoin over 10 times, which is just crazy to imagine that amount of capital swirling around these markets.
But that's a growing pool of capital as well.
So at the minute, we're somewhere around $480, $490 trillion currently circulating throughout markets.
But in the next decade, this is likely to increase by around 75%, somewhere around $860 trillion.
And that's why measuring purely against the US dollar, isn't necessarily the best baseline comparison asset.
Because if in the next decade, everything essentially becomes 75% more expensive as new liquidity enters the system and other comparable markets are increasing through inflation and debasement, then we need to look at Bitcoin as not just the asset that can increase our US dollar terms.
But we want to be able to look at Bitcoin as the asset we can store our wealth into in 5, 10.
20 years time, know that it's actually accrued value.
And rather than buying a small little terraced house, maybe we can buy the nice little villa in the Spanish countryside or something.
We want to be able to look at Bitcoin as the asset that we have confidence is retaining and accumulating additional purchasing power.
So you think in this asset growth, which you're basically telling me between now and 2036, in the next 10 years, we're going to see a 75% rise, growth in just total global liquid assets, essentially, you're telling me that Bitcoin has the highest growth potential in that time.
Exactly.
Yeah, that was a much more to the point way of what I've been babbling on about for the last few minutes.
But Bitcoin, as it currently sits at a quarter of a percentage of this global wealth, I mean, if it retains a quarter of a percentage.
You know, its USD valuation in a decade's time is going to be significantly higher, but it's not actually going to buy us any more.
So what we want to see is Bitcoin not just increasing its USD value, but trying to climb to 1% to 2% of global total wealth, which I know seems like a pretty trivial task.
It seems like we're all Bitcoiners here.
We're all at least invested in the cryptocurrency space.
We're looking towards hyper-Bitcoinization where we're seeing 10%, 20%, 50% of global wealth in Bitcoin.
you know, slow and steady.
I don't want to get ahead of myself.
If we see the global wealth increase by hundreds of trillions of dollars and Bitcoin just get one to 2% of that, then we're talking hundreds of thousands, if not billions of dollars per Bitcoin.
Right.
Yeah.
So, okay.
Yeah.
So if you do that math, that if it's a quarter of a percent now, if it were to rise to 1% of the global liquid market, I guess you call it, what do you call this global wealth share market?
What do you, what do you call this whole thing?
Like just total liquid market?
I don't really have, a nice roll off the tongue name for it global wealth share is somewhere around global wealth yeah i guess wealth whatever maybe someone in the comment can come up with a much nicer more poetic they will definitely give us the comments shout out to the people in the comments they'll definitely give us an idea uh they'll tell us how we're wrong uh so so if so that would be a forex from here if we were able to do that at the current at the current whatever is 500 trillion 550 trillion but then if there's also a 75 rise in the total wealth so it'd be one percent of that of the current current total trillions plus 75 as well so you're looking at at least like an 8x like a six to eight x just on that base idea alone between now and 2036 ish napkin math terrible napkin math exactly and you know that's Probably quite a conservative bet based on the trend that Bitcoin has gone on.
And we've only been around, what, 17 years?
And we've gone from literally zero to a quarter of all of the world's wealth.
Well, a quarter of a percentage point, I should say.
So it is interesting to see where we could go.
But now that we've kind of got on to if Bitcoin could actually surpass expectations and defy the laws of gravity by being this black hole just sucking in liquidity from all around the world.
As I said, we'll get back into why this time maybe could be different and maybe why I think having the four-year cycle is our base case maybe isn't the right play.
Now, I know it's a narrative that's just been played out to hell that the institutions are here and it's not just a retail-driven asset anymore.
But if we look at that narrative but actually try and gain some signal from it, some alpha, we can see that when ETFs are bullish, when we see a 28-day average inflow, coming into Bitcoin.
Historically, it's been an incredibly positive signal.
This is from a few weeks ago, actually.
So this is just as Bitcoin was hovering around the mid $60,000, it turned positive.
But we're seeing millions and billions of dollars pouring into these ETFs.
And what we can see is a really promising indication that even though the Bitcoin price dropped by 50%, and if we look at the amount of capitulation we could see in the derivatives markets and from short-term holders looking at on-chain data, retail holders just seriously have paper hands.
As soon as we see any percentage drawdown, people are selling, people are capitulating, going all out.
If we look at the ETFs, now I know these aren't all institutional holders, somewhere between 13%, 40% likely are.
But during that 50% decline, we only saw the cumulative amount of holdings, BTC holdings, in these ETFs drop by around 12% and a bit, just under 13%.
And if we look to now, we can actually see it's pretty much back towards the all-time high Bitcoin holdings we've had.
So not only did they have this conviction to hold Bitcoin, this new hard money asset with this monumental asymmetric upside opportunity, but they have been so aggressively accumulating during these range lows, which is, again, very dissimilar to what we've seen in the retail market, where during the past few weeks and months, we've seen some of the most aggressive shorting we've ever seen in the past few years.
These are people betting and paying money on more downside price action for Bitcoin.
It rates comparable to the previous bear market lows.
So at one point, we're seeing people saying, you know, I'm going to wait till October.
I'm going to short the market.
We're going to make lower lows.
At the same time, we're seeing institutions, ETF holders, treasury companies aggressively buying when over 95% of the circulating supply is already out there.
And that's not even accounting for the millions of lost coins.
At some point, I don't want to say supply squeeze because, you know, we might still be some time away from that.
But if we do look at the long term holder supply of Bitcoin.
Now, this is those that have been holding Bitcoin for at least 155 days.
Now, people look at that and say, well, that's not a long time.
But beyond that point, there's over a 50% probability you'll hold your Bitcoin indefinitely.
But if we look at this, we can see this is just past 16 million Bitcoins.
That's over 80%.
of all Bitcoin in circulation is being held by long-term holders.
And the general trend of this is very much in one direction.
And I think it's going to continue going in this direction because we can see the new market participants aren't here for a quick buck.
They're not looking at Bitcoin to say, you know, I want to get one or two Bitcoin.
I want to cash out and buy a new orange Lambo and take some screenshots of my portfolio tracking app to show off to my friends.
They're thinking, how can I allocate one to 5% of my multi-billion dollar fund?
into this asset, which I can see historically has grown at a 30% to 40% compounded annual growth rate, clearly has the supply and demand economics that favor upside opportunity in a world of massive debasement and growing monetary irresponsibility.
And I think this is just slowly compounding over time, all of these slow positive things, even though we had this underwhelming bull market, which maybe plays into why the bear market's been underwhelming as well.
But at some point, in my mind, and I might be a little bit biased, but these are all going to come together and just provide this absolute solid foundation for Bitcoin to be the asset that can support an unfathomable amount of liquidity just rotating into and provide these outsized returns for us and everyone else who's willing to take the bet on this fairly new and young digital coin.
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okay okay i mean you're painting a setup that i feel like you've shared with us before but can you go back to that etf chart actually i really like that i i didn't realize that the etf um holdings i guess is this is that like a cumulative so those are all the etfs listed at the bottom so this is a total of all the etfs and and their total and that's one so the cumulative bitcoins is what 1.2 just above like one point three or something like that.
And the chart on the left, that is the total Bitcoins that they hold, correct?
Yeah.
So net holdings are slightly different because we need to account for the grayscale Bitcoin trust, GBTC, which has had hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin actually go out of it.
But if we look at the cumulative holdings over here on the left, we can say, yeah, it's above 1.2 million Bitcoin, approaching 1.3 million Bitcoin.
held within these ETFs.
And that is, so it's going back, it's pretty much back at the same level, which that it was back in, what date is that?
What was the peak?
Like October 6th, roughly?
Yeah.
Okay.
So just the peak was just after 1010.
And now it is, by all accounts, it dipped all the way down early March there.
And then now is basically back to the level it was shortly after 1010 in terms of ETF cumulative flows, basically.
right so you're telling me that these institutions everyone buying the etfs have now have have got out of it from october to march and then now have all have piled back in and basically made back up that deficit that everything had been sold and bought back that same amount back in um that's is that what you're telling me exactly yes and we're seeing this while bitcoin's price is still you know 40 plus thousand dollars hasn't recovered back to that same level right okay so what's the missing bid then matt is it is it the retail bid that's missing because then the etf the etf holdings are back to where they were when we were the price was at 110 but the now the price is at 80 etf holdings are back to what they were so where's what's the missing bid in that equation so retail still makes up a majority of network participation.
As much as we can look to these, we can still say that a majority of those actually involved within the Bitcoin space are everyday participants like you and I and everyone watching today.
Because we can look to this and say, you know, that's a huge amount, over 1.2 million Bitcoin held in these ETFs.
If we look at treasury companies, that's well over a million held within the top 100 Bitcoin treasury companies.
I mean, Add all that up, we're still talking about a fraction of the 16 million total Bitcoin that's held by long term holders alone.
It's still a very much retail driven asset.
And I think the reason that we've kind of stalled at the minute, I mean, we can get into some reasons of some short term price action.
I'm not sure exactly when this is going out.
For example, we can see that we're right at this short term hold of realized price, which has historically been a pretty major resistance level during bear markets.
This is the cost basis for new entrants.
But I think what we've seen in assets like gold and like silver is that strength really attracts strength.
People can look to something and say, you know, it might be slightly overvalued or, you know, there's no chance that it can climb to new all time highs looking at something like gold.
And it'll just continue rallying and rallying and rallying because people like to see strength in an asset.
And Bitcoin hasn't really done that yet.
So we haven't seen this big retail influx of new capital going in.
And I think there's a few reasons for that.
For example, we look at the federal balance sheet.
We can see that this is a good indication of economic irresponsibility throughout the US central bank or the Federal Reserve.
What we can see is when the federal balance sheet is expanding, this is akin to the money printer going brr and people, well, the government essentially buying.
assets to try and prop up its balance sheet.
And we can see throughout the previous bull market, this was in a massive period of contraction.
They were quite conservative, we'll say, when it comes to how freely they were willing to part with their capital.
Whereas now, we've actually seen the first time in a long time, this has actually been turning to the upside.
They've been actively accumulating for their balance sheet.
Now, this is a positive thing to see this fiscal irresponsibility, which does favor risk on and speculative assets like Bitcoin.
But as well as that, I think at least in more short term thing, this is an image that I've been looking at a lot recently.
And I know it's a few years out of date, but I can pull up the most recent data in a second.
If we look at something like the Bitcoin fear and greed index, we can very clearly and obviously see that there's an almost inverse correlation, at least at the extremes.
When there's extreme greed in the market.
it's usually time to do an opposite of the majority.
And when there's extreme fear, when everyone's saying it's going to go substantially lower, usually that's where you can pick up a little bit of a discount.
This isn't just true for Bitcoin.
If we look at the consumer sentiment index, which is looking at the general positivity and optimism throughout the US economy, we can see that following these periods of extreme pessimism and bearishness and negative outlooks in the economy have always been followed.
by some of the biggest bull market returns.
We can see here in 2022 over 17%, 2011-15, 2008, 22%, et cetera.
And when everyone's incredibly bullish, positive, and optimistic, we usually see pretty neutral or even negative returns.
Now, as I said, this chart's a little out of date.
We recently hit the worst consumer sentiment we've ever seen.
People just are bearish.
And I think, again, It's kind of contradicting points here to say, well, Bitcoin is struggling because people are bearish, but we should expect things to go up because people are bearish.
But I think because retail still are the vast majority of Bitcoin participants.
If people are a little hesitant, I think we need to see some strength to allow new capital to go in and allow people to gain that confidence in the asset to feel like they can put more capital into it.
But if we do look at something like this, it does give us some indication that.
people are overly bearish.
I remember a few years ago, the contrarian play was to look at the data and think, what are the vast majority of people doing?
I need to do the opposite of that.
Yeah, over the past few months, the contrarian play has just been incredibly bearish.
Everyone on social media is talking about the next big Great Wall Street recession, the next big Great Depression and lost decade.
And typically, in these periods of extreme fear, you know that's where you get some good opportunities and that's where we currently as i said there's a few uh years outdated very quickly i'll actually try and find the the uh newest data but it's just interesting to see it's not just something that is applicable to bitcoin but but markets in general so what are we at now let's pull it up 49.8 which i don't know if it let me go the full yep this is the lowest we've ever had oh wow So people are incredible.
But has it been this low when the S&P has been at all-time highs?
Like that is, you know, that's the K-shaped economy basically, right?
Sort of.
It's just like that basically the stock market's at all-time high, but sentiment or drops or whatever are way down lower, right?
Like how is that?
I definitely, I don't disagree.
It's a good opportunity.
But I think that there's also an X factor here where it's like traditional equities are doing better than they ever have.
True, that is a valid point.
But again, we are at a point where there's only really one solution to get yourself out of a bit of a mess in an economy.
And that solution historically and likely will be for the foreseeable to print more money.
And we're seeing no signs of that slowing down with Global M2 continuing.
to new all-time highs after it had a little bit of a pause as Bitcoin was having this chopping and consolidating around $60,000.
But if we just look at when they started rallying excessively to new all-time highs, coinciding with the federal balance sheet expansion, this is when we really had the kick up from around $60,000 up towards 80K.
And there's no indication that this is likely to slow down.
We're going to get a new Fed chair in just a few weeks' time.
I'm not sure the exact date on that.
But by all accounts, To bet against Bitcoin here and to bet against markets in general is a bet for financial responsibility through central banks and the Federal Reserve, which, given the current situation, is to me not my base case.
And I know we're in a weird time where one tweet from a certain tanned person in the White House can send markets into turmoil.
markets used to be really quite fun where you know you could do some insight and data and do some technical analysis and put some things together and you know you kind of get a little bit of edge there and now it just seems like one tweet and everything just goes out and we're going to get a 10 candle in either direction so of course things can change and is is crypto still fun to you crypto is still fun to me i think it's a little bit more suits and ties than it used to be which i don't think is as you know cypherpunk it maybe isn't within the ethos of why bitcoin specifically was created to be an electronic pair-to-pair cash now it's like everyone waiting to see how much bitcoin sale is going to buy every week which of course on a short-term basis is probably good for the price but in a long-term thing i mean it's it's an inevitability for an asset to to grow into what we want bitcoin to be but i don't think it's quite as fun as it used to be but oh what i will say just just before we uh kind of Change discussion.
One thing, the ultimate driving force, and I know I probably say this every single time I come on the show.
The thing that drives markets is supply and demand economics.
It isn't news headlines.
It isn't what's happening here, there, or everywhere.
Like I said initially, I think if you'd have told people a few years ago that during the potential brink of a new world war and huge geopolitical uncertainties, that Bitcoin would be rallying and outpacing all of their assets.
People probably wouldn't believe you, but that's probably because we look like we're out of sellers.
If we look at the value days destroyed, which looks at almost the velocity of Bitcoin movement by weighting the transfer of Bitcoin, the amount of Bitcoin transferred by the amount of time it had actually been held in a wallet.
And once we get a 30-day to 365-day or one-year comparison or ratio of that, it basically tells us if long-term, large, experienced Bitcoin holders.
are distributing their coins.
Now, we can see as we're getting these big all-time highs, we're getting these spikes to the upside, maybe not as high as we did last time because we maybe saw a little bit more of a constant outflow in this most recent bull cycle.
But regardless, where we currently are, or at least where we were a few weeks ago, was practically one of the lowest levels we've ever seen.
Very comparable to other bear market lows because we are just down practically to these long timeframe horizon.
My conviction accumulators of Bitcoin who aren't just here for a quick book and are happy to accumulate it, essentially buy one, get one free on Satoshis.
So what's the prediction, Matt?
What's the prediction?
What's the prediction?
This is the slide I wait for every time we do these.
It's like you've got your predictions at the end.
You even brought up the one from last time where I was calling you out.
Now I want to know there's got to be this slide somewhere in the deck.
So here we go.
This isn't a prediction slide.
No, it's not a prediction.
Okay, it's close enough.
But what I will say is, has Bitcoin bottomed out?
In my mind, I think there's probably a 30% probability we revisit around $50,000.
But one of the charts I was looking at as Bitcoin was moving down to be like, where do I think realistically we could bottom?
I think this is a great fundamental chart to try and predict that.
And that is the electrical...
production cost of Bitcoin.
Smoothed out over 14 days or a difficulty adjustment period.
This essentially tells you how much it costs to make Bitcoin.
And what we can see throughout the entire history of Bitcoin, if you can buy Bitcoin for about what it costs or even cheaper than it costs to mine a Bitcoin, that's a pretty good deal.
And this time was no different.
And this is currently moving slightly to the upside and the downside.
There's some miners that may be pivoting to AI data centers and stuff.
It's, of course, a moving target, but that is around $70,000 now, around that $60,000 to $70,000.
We've also seen the 200 weekly moving average also recently surpass $60,000, which, again, in the previous cycle, we did dip beneath this.
But historically, this was one of, if not the most accurate level for telling you what the most optimal price was to accumulate Bitcoin.
And without that big FTX dip, it really would have only been a slight drop below.
This is now at $60,000.
So I would be looking more towards a potential double bottom in a realistic worst case outcome.
Right now, as I mentioned previously, we're at the 200 daily moving average where the short term holder realized price.
We just had a pretty big substantial run up over the past few days from $60,000 or at least that region up to mid $80,000.
So a cool off made sense in my mind.
But I think there's an over 50% probability.
that the low is in for Bitcoin.
Now, there's a couple elements to forming a low in the Bitcoin price action.
There's the time-based capitulation, which I don't think we maybe have met the criteria for that yet, and the price-based capitulation.
So price is obvious.
Have we had sufficient drawdown for people to capitulate and people to say, it's all over, it's dead, write the obituary, I'm never coming back to Bitcoin.
Now, in US dollar terms, we can see it's maybe been underwhelming compared to previous bear markets.
But in terms of pure raw purchasing power, we can see it's been a pretty brutal bear market.
So I think in terms of price capitulation, we can probably tick that box.
Now, time capitulation is just boring people out of the market.
It's chopping and consolidating and these fake outs to the upside to get people to believe there's a bull market and it's resumed and it needs to go all in again, maybe get the bears to change their conviction.
And then we drop a little bit.
Just infuriate people.
Just allow these people who aren't speculating, who aren't over leveraged, who are more willing to just kind of sit and quietly strategically dollar cost average in the market to just get their fair share of discounted Bitcoin.
Have we ticked the box of time-based capitulation?
For me, it wouldn't surprise me to see a fairly unspectacular next few weeks for Bitcoin.
Maybe a bit of a lull, maybe a bit of a sideways and chop to around the mid $70,000 region.
But I think anywhere around 75,000 or below is, again, just an unbelievable opportunity to quite aggressively dollar cost average into the market.
Because the asymmetric opportunity is there.
Now, if we're talking predictions, I think I seem to remember last time as well, I called for $2,000 Ethereum and that was pushed back on quite heavily.
And I think I was pretty conservative on that considering I think Ethereum hit about $1,700.
You can't come in here after 35 minutes of all your Bitcoin charts and then be like, listen, you know what sucks though is Ethereum.
You can't come in here like that.
You can't come and start that and just throw this shot in at the end, man.
You can't do that.
okay fair enough that was a cheap shot that was a cheap shot i don't even hold that much eat i just i just think i'm just defending the eth people that you know who's going to come in the comments for you is the eth people they're going to find they're going to find that sentence our our x team is going to our social team is going to find that find that clip and just throw it out there just no context just matt saying like you know i did say it's going to go down they're going to come for you Yeah, I'm very much aware of that.
For the rational minds within the cryptocurrency communities, I'm ready for the very rational and nice debates I'm sure we'll have following that comment.
But if we go back to this, this is genuinely still my base case.
It was as we dropped beneath that one year moving average previously.
And it is this kind of summer.
mini bear market where the bottom is probably in a little bit earlier than I thought.
But again, probably throughout the month of May, June, potentially even July, we do just kind of have this time-based capitulation where we are just kind of chopping and going sideways and generally just underwhelming people.
For me, I wouldn't go full ball mode until we can reclaim that same 365-day moving average, the one-year moving average, very similar to the 50-week as well, which I know I'd have.
a lot of people look towards.
Wait, wait, wait.
Go back to your predictions.
Go back to the screenshot from last time.
Go back to this.
OK, so which of these three is the one that has happened so far?
The 60% likely, summer 2026, mini bear market.
Not the year-long bear market, which many people are expecting, the traditional four-year.
Hold on.
But Matt, what if you put the chart on top, though?
Because look, the bottom in your red one, the year-long bear, is like somewhere in like February, March, and then going into May, there's a rise back up.
So I would say, I think if you put the chart on this map, we would be at exactly what you, exactly your year-long bear chart.
These are more like, these aren't exact science fractals.
You can't put it on me like that.
We just spent so much time overlaying charts on top of each other, man.
We need the picture of the other one.
I think it was on your tick list.
You needed something to throw me under the bus with.
That's for the ETH people.
That's for the ETH people, all right?
That's where the ETH people get you, man.
No, no.
Okay, so anyway, go back.
So you think we are in your moderate case scenario that you had outlined back in December, which is like a mini bear.
So a pump back through into the summer after like a bottoming sometime.
That has already happened, basically.
Yeah.
So I don't anticipate, at least I think there's a less than 50% probability.
I'm an analyst.
I always need to give myself a get out of jail free card.
I think there's a less than 50% probability we make lower lows.
I think 60K will hold.
And anything beneath or around 75 to $70,000 for me is pretty aggressive scale and territory.
But until we break this one year moving average at $96,000, which I think will take many, many months from here, I do not think.
we're fully back into bull market mode i'm not targeting a new all-time high this year i think that again it was just for kind of visual purposes don't don't take this as an exact science but i think this summer 2026 mini bear where we have the majority of the summer months kind of chopping around being fairly boring and then potentially towards september october time maybe challenging that 365 day moving average and potentially finishing the year at around that psychological six-figure territory number of $100,000.
To me, that would be a fairly successful year.
But of course, given the correlation we have to equity markets, given the correlation that we have to global liquidity, things can change quite quickly.
If anything, I would say I'm being conservative there.
I don't want to be too optimistic and say, you know, we're going to start climbing higher.
But if I had to bet on Bitcoin's price in six months time being above $100,000 or below $70,000, my money would for sure be on significantly higher than $100,000.
Six months from today.
Are you writing this down?
No, November 6th.
isn't that isn't that midterms day isn't that midterms isn't that the exact day for the midterms are we six months away from the midterms wow right so so chop and and run up there and then everyone will get excited at the midterms november 3rd november 3rd november 3rd okay so that's three days three days after the midterms you think we will be you say at 100k or higher than today which one which one was it I said if I had to choose between 70 or below or 100 and above, I'd definitely choose 100 and above.
If I had to put an exact price on it, you know what?
I'll say $103,321.
I'll go that specific.
And 18 cents.
I'll go that specific for you.
18 cents.
At what time do you even capture that?
What time do you capture the price?
At any point on that day, I'm taking it.
If the one in a million chance I actually nail that, it does not matter.
I'm printing that out on the wall.
And every single time I come on the podcast, I'm going to show the printout.
Hey, you know, listen, Polymarket has a five-minute Bitcoin prediction market now that you can play with.
So I feel like that's perfect for that kind of prediction, man.
You could go do that all day.
Please don't make five-minute Polymarket prediction tradespeople.
I don't want to say that is financial advice, but please do not gamble on the five-minute chart on Polymarket.
That is like when you go to Polymarket, that's literally the three.
You know what the three main things are on Polymarket right now when you go to Polymarket is US-Iran permanent peace deal by December 31st or June 30th, and then BTC up or down five-minute, and then Hantavirus pandemic in 2026.
So those are the three most popular things on Polymarket at the current moment.
So clearly there's appetite, Matt.
But listen, man, another fantastic show.
Sorry to razz you there, but I think, honestly, your analysis is awesome, man.
We love having you on.
And I will say it's hard to make predictions.
And I don't mean that just to actually make them, but also to put yourself out there.
So we appreciate you, man.
And not everything is always accurate, but, you know, we love your analysis.
I think our community and our audience love your analysis.
And it's great to have you back, especially when things are looking a little greener than they have for the last few months.
Yeah, well, it's always a pleasure.
And just in case it is three months of bear market, you know, I might go on holiday again.
I might take another vacation.
Just get away from it all.
Just another.
The best way to be wrong is to just not even acknowledge that it even happened, is my view.
Of course not.
What's Bitcoin?
I don't even know.
Never even heard of Bitcoin.
Never heard of it.
Never heard of it.
Yeah, never seen that.
Always, always a pleasure.
Your audience is genuinely so lovely.
So anytime, more than happy to come back.
I have one last question for you.
What was the exact price at the bottom?
Like 60K or something like that, right?
We'll just, it was around.
Some places I've checked, it was like, let's just say it ticked exactly 60K and didn't dip below.
If we went to $60,010, would you consider that, like, would you consider the previous number at the bottom?
You know what I mean?
Like, how does that, like, or was that a double bottom?
Like, how would you view that?
Like, let's say we could tick back up and then we go back down at some point in the fall Q3 or whatever.
We go back and we land like $5 above.
the previous low and then rip back up, is that then the bottom?
Is that where you'd be like, okay, there's a double, do you follow like a double bottom thing like that?
Oh, it always kind of depends on the reaction.
So for example, people look towards like the short-term holder realized price, which is around $80,000.
And we ticked above it and everyone said, oh, we've broken above.
Well, you know, this could just be a fake out.
Really, I'd want to see.
like some strength to the upside and then some wicks coming back beneath it to show that there's buy pressure coming.
If we hit $60,000 and boom, V-shaped recovery, then that's, you know, I can't go much more all in, but that's, you know, going all in on my all in.
If we get back down to 60K and just rock it back up off that level, to me, that is another reassuring factor that that is the bottom.
if we get to that and it's just a peter and a bit of a rollover and we bounce a few hundred dollars and it looks a bit rubbish, then at that point, you know, maybe we start looking towards $50,000 or slightly lower lows.
But to me, it's hard to predict these things without kind of knowing what the reaction is going to be.
I remember when we first hit $100,000 in the previous bull market, and I think a lot of people were, you know, expecting this to be this key psychological crazy number, which once we kind of...
convincingly broke above you know off to the races and then it just kind of ended up being another another price so it's always hard to gauge how the market will react to these things i mean if it was easy everyone would be rich in the market and i would be out of the job but you know it's um it's one of those where As I think of it now, if we go back down to $60,000, I think it would be for a very, very brief moment.
And I think we would recover strong.
And then I think at that point, there'd be no doubts in my mind that the bottom was in.
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I do have one group.
a discord that i've been in for a few years where i remember one specific guy every time we'd get close to 100k he'd be like this is your last chance to buy it below 100k and he would say that every time and then even when we went above 100k and we dip back down to like the mid 90s is like this is it this is your last chance to buy it below 100k and i always thought that was ridiculous even if i was bullish i was like listen man like this this will come back down at some point like that's it's a psychological thing like you're making that up in your head like there's nobody nobody's saying that they're going to stay keep it above that like no one no one is the forces that be are not out there propping it up above a certain price you know like it's just the market so um But definitely, I don't discount, though, that it is a big psychological barrier.
So we'll see where we go.
Matt Crosby, 103K.18 in six months today.
Can't wait for it.
Great to see you again, man.
Always a pleasure.
Like I said, happy to come back anytime.
It's a lot of fun.
And genuinely, the audience of Milk Road are some of the most, you know, loving.
I don't want to say loving.
I don't want to get too cheesy with it.
But they probably have some of the nicest, kindest comments.
I don't get too many Mr.
Beast comparisons in the Milk Road comment sections.
Other podcast appearances I get, it's Ed Sheeran, Mr.
Beast, other terrible ones.
So I hope I haven't given them any firepower by saying that.
Terrible.
Wait, people think you look like Mr.
Beast or Ed Sheeran?
People have stopped me in the street to say I look like Mr.
Beast.
Really?
At the Vegas conference.
I don't really see it that much, but at the Vegas conference.
man it was like multiple people were like had to double chain is it jimmy i was like i'm not mr beast no way oh you could totally you could totally be in one of his videos or something like that with that kind of thing like mr beast gets a 500 mr beast look-alikes together and they all have to compete to be mr beast or something i could tell i could see that happening if he invited me on and it was like a million dollar game show i'm gonna be there i'm gonna be jimmy in front of everyone i don't care at that you'll stay in a in a plastic box for five days if you need to to win that that million bucks or whatever whatever kind of torture he makes people what was the other one ed sheeran yeah that that one is uh yeah this is no way that's just like uh you know are you you have red hair right so it's just this is like any red-haired guy This is blonde.
This is like a nice strawberry.
Dude, it's your lighting.
I've never seen you in real life, man.
I can't tell.
It's just a running joke for ginger people to say it's strawberry.
Oh, okay.
So it is ginger.
So it is.
You are red-haired.
But I feel like that's a racial thing towards red-haired people that's like, oh, you're red-haired?
You know who's a red-haired person I know?
Ed Sheeran.
That's not fair.
All right, Matt Crosby, good to see you, man.
Thank you for everything.
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