# Bitcoin Capitulation Signals and Contrarian Accumulation Strategy

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-06-16

## Transcript

The fact that we are seeing such incredible bearishness points to me that the most painful scenario is more upside.
guest back on the show, Matt Crosby from Bitcoin Magazine Pro.
Today's episode is brought to you by BitGet, stocks 2.0 with real liquidity, real dividends, Nexo, earn interest, borrow and trade crypto, and Calci, where your takes finally pay out.
Matt, what's going on, man?
Happy summer, despite still being in the crypto winter.
Well, I was just about to say, actually, first thing, you've called it summer, but I know in Canada, I doubt it's that warm.
In Northern England, we've definitely not hit summer yet.
It's gray and cold and miserable and rainy.
So that's summer.
That's summer there.
That's that's that's it's the same weather the whole time.
We're not a million miles away, but yeah, it's depressing.
I look at the charts.
Everything's down.
I look outside.
It's gray and miserable.
It's I can't escape it.
But as always, it's a pleasure to be here.
It's World Cup and that's summertime, unless it's the last World Cup, which was in the winter.
But usually World Cup means summertime and you can sit outdoors at the pub and and.
you know, watch, watch your team, watch your country play for glory at a strange time of day, which I'm sure for you right now is probably six in the morning or something.
Yeah, certainly half a non-alcoholic Shandy or two with, with the England football match tomorrow.
It's not too bad.
It's like nine, 10 PM kickoff, but yeah, very into World Cup.
What's a Shandy?
What's a non-alcoholic shandy?
So a shandy is half lemonade and half beer.
So half of a non-alcoholic half beer lemonade is like my joke go-to drink.
That's all I drink if anyone from work asks.
Okay, so half alcoholic lemonade.
I think we have names for that in Canada.
I think they're called like coolers or something a little softer or maybe Mike's Hard Lemonade.
if I'm dating myself.
Anyways, let's talk about Bitcoin, not relevant to our alcoholic habits, which, you know, for...
For the Bitcoin winter, we've needed a lot of alcohol to get through it.
But I want to get to all the great charts that you have for us today.
We always love looking at all the great data that you bring and all this stuff.
And maybe we can even lead with what I put in the intro, man, which is that you feel like we may be looking at a double bottom.
But I also don't want to steal your thunder because I know you've always got such a great buildup to the real nugget of what you're trying to say.
Yeah.
As per usual, I was prepping for this call and just thinking, what can I ramble about for the absolute most amount of time?
So I've got a plethora of charts we can run through.
But I just thought I'd open up with a little bit more casual look.
Every time we look at a Bitcoin chart recently, it's not looking amazing.
And we just continue to...
I think, underwhelm a lot of investors and traders, which I know is difficult during a bear market, seeing SpaceX, AI stocks, whatever chip manufacturer storage stock, whatever it may be, absolutely skyrocketing.
And we're still down here in the lower $60,000 region.
But I do think there are some reasons to be optimistic because during this capitulation, there are times to be optimistic.
This is a chat that's been going around a fair amount on...
Twitter and YouTube.
And I just think it's too good to not show once again, this is the supply in loss for Bitcoin holders.
And what we can see in percentile terms, once we see the 50% boundary of supply and loss cross the 50% threshold, a majority investors are actively losing money, which in this most recent dip back down to $60,000, we crossed.
Historically, this has always been the bottom marking territory.
In every single bear market, pretty much the exact low is when we actually surpass this 50% threshold.
And we've just done it once again.
So this really is true capitulation.
This is a majority of holders experiencing losses on their positions.
And the famous saying goes by when there's blood in the streets.
And I know it's difficult.
I know it feels awful.
I know everyone's calling for 50k, 40k, even lower, saying, you know, we need to wait until October.
We need to wait until X, Y, or Z happens.
But realistically, I think there's a lot of value down here.
I know we opened with, is this the double bottom?
Have we seen the lowest for this cycle?
Realistically, nobody knows.
I've not polished my crystal ball too recently, but the one thing I've been trying to reiterate is there's a lot of value down here.
And I think the biggest risk is not acknowledging the fact that we are seeing a lot of value for money down here.
I personally look at buy one, get one free Satoshis when we see dates like this, when we see other on-chain metrics, traditional finance kind of pointing towards some potential more expansion in those markets.
And for me, I don't want the stress of trying to time a buy all in at the bottom, which is practically impossible to do.
I've been aggressively, strategically dollar cost averaging into the market.
And as I said, just taking advantage of what I see is some very asymmetric upside opportunities in the market.
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What I'm curious about this chart, Matt, and I have seen this in the last couple of days, and I feel like maybe, is this your tweet?
Did you share this?
Did I see it from you?
This was not my tweet, but I have shared it.
But I definitely, I feel like I saw it from you.
What I'm trying to understand is you've got these, because this is the green and the red are basically the convergence, and this is for people listening to audio only.
We're looking at a chart where basically there's a big green kind of top line and then a big red.
bottom line and that's basically showing you the balance of how much Bitcoin is currently in profit versus how much is in loss.
And what Matt's pointing out is that in, I guess, go way back to like 2011, 2013, 20, whatever it is, 2018, 2022, basically the more obvious bear markets when these two lines meet is usually around the bottom because then you've also got the white line basically showing the actual price of Bitcoin.
And what my question is, is that in the last two bear markets on this chart, both 2018 and then maybe I guess that that one that's closer to 2019 is probably the COVID dip.
So that one kind of is excluded because that was a very brief, brief dip.
But even in the 2022, these lines converge for several months.
Right.
And so now they're only just kind of.
touching now.
So do you see them continuing to touch for a while?
Like, or would this just be like they touch once and then we go right back?
Or is that just is that is it impossible to tell?
So it is a very good point.
And I think it kind of points towards two different aspects of Bear market capitulation.
And I think we mentioned this briefly on the previous show, but as well as a price-based capitulation, which is the raw percentage drawdowns, you know, the typically 70, 80% drawdowns that we see in Bitcoin bear markets.
Once we kind of hit that final wick to the downside and everyone loses hope.
it's very rare that we kind of get this immediate V-shaped recovery.
I mean, the COVID 2020 dump is the one exception to that, where we dump down to around $3,000, I think, and then 50% of the supply hit loss, and then we immediately bounce back.
But if you actually look at traditional bear market lows, it's usually a forming process that takes a few weeks, if not a few months, to really hammer out.
So the fact that we have crossed above this 50% threshold, of course, doesn't mean we can't go lower.
It doesn't mean we're going to bounce back immediately.
But it does mean that we're probably closer to the bottom than many maybe are realizing.
Because if we look at the previous two instances where it really formed market lows in 2018 and in 2022, these were both after the fact we'd had these like big final dumps after we'd gone from around 6k to 3k.
That was the final crossing into this boundary.
And we didn't set a lower low.
We did chop and consolidate for many months, but there wasn't a lower low.
And it was the exact same story in 2022.
We had this final week down, this capitulation event driven by the FTX collapse.
And again, that was the low.
It didn't mean that we immediately rebounded.
We chopped and consolidated in that $15,000, $16,000 region for a few months.
But ultimately, we didn't set a low at low.
So for me, at least, this is my base case.
I mean, give or take a few thousand dollars.
I mean, we're calling it a double bottom.
critics will say, technically we went slightly lower, but to me, within a percent or two is a double bottom.
And if we revisit 58K, to me, that's still kind of within the ballpark.
But ultimately, I think around here, as we can see historically looking at the data, there's probably not that much downside left to go because traditionally we don't see a huge amount of experienced, large, long-term holders.
get into a loss and then capitulate further.
I mean, of course, if we see a black swan or something, but I think having a black swan incident as your base case isn't the most viable long term investing thesis.
So yeah, as I said, I sound like a broken record here.
I think there's some value here and I don't think the bottom, if it's not in, is a million miles away regardless.
No, and you're not, you know, and I don't disagree with you and, you know, I've spent a lot of time in the last while also.
looking at my own data, doing my own research as, you know, flat earthers like to say.
And even even last time, I mean, even if you look at last time, like there was one we I think we're in the like 18 to 22 range for what we're like, like 18 to 24 range for like six months or something like that or like five months.
And then there was one final dip to like the.
16, 15K range that lasted like a month or two and then that was it.
I think even what you're saying, it's like, yeah, we've seen a dip.
Maybe there'll be a little bit more dip, but even then it may not last that long.
Especially looking at that data, that proves that it's like once you get to this territory of these two metrics touching, that's usually when you know you're in the range because the one thing that's sure from that last chart, Matt, is that it doesn't last that long.
Yeah.
The thing is that I've been trying to say as well is, If you look at the previous Bitcoin bear market lows, like you said, maybe we could have seen some signals from certain indicators occurring as we were in this kind of 18 to 20K once we had this big initial dip before the big FTX collapse.
But I mean, for me personally, I don't look back at someone in the previous bear market that was buying at 19, 20, $21,000 and laugh them off because they didn't buy the exact low.
I mean, for me, we're in a region now where if someone said, yeah, but I'm going to buy it 55K, it's like, are you really going to wait for an additional 5% to 10% from the lows we've already set?
That might not even come.
To me, that's a risky game to play, especially considering if we look at other data points.
You know, it is also pointing towards capitulation.
Again, this is something that I've been seeing a lot circulating on social media, looking at the RSI, the relative strength index, because with this double bottom, that initial dip to 60,000 and the secondary dip we had, the rate of downside price action we saw meant that it was some of the lowest, most bearish price action we've seen when looking at momentum indicators like the RSI.
And again, if we look at all of the previous instances of this occurring, They weren't bad accumulation opportunities.
And again, this time could be different.
We could see much lower.
But just looking from a technical perspective, from an on-chain holder supply and demand economics perspective, at least some short-term relief and mean reversion is likely.
And I mean, these charts were made when we were dipping towards 60,000.
Since then, we have actually had about a 10% pump.
I know today's a little bit down.
But I think, again, there's a lot of data pointing towards the fact that we are kind of in this capitulation phase.
This is a metric which isn't readily available.
It's something that we share a lot at Bitcoin Magazine Pro.
But this is what I like to call the retail capital momentum indicator.
Now, what this is doing very simply, it's easy to recreate it yourself.
It's looking at the dominance of stable coins relative to the rest of the cryptocurrency industry.
And what we can see is if we apply just a very simple 14-day relative strength index, the same that we have here, but again, rather than using price action, if we look at the dominance of stablecoins, it gives us some insight into whether people are rotating into safe haven assets like USDT, USDC, etc., or if they're rotating into speculative risk on assets.
Now, when this is incredibly down, like we've just seen the seventh biggest rotation out of risk on assets we've ever seen, again, it indicates that people aren't convinced in their investments.
This is dictionary definition capitulation.
We're seeing realized losses.
We're seeing people rotate out of risk on assets.
We're seeing a majority of the supply in loss.
Again, to me, all of these are pointing towards the fact that we've seen a monumental exhaustion in sell side.
And the sentiment that you're seeing on social media platforms, it's not even just like sadness.
Like the first tip to 60,000, people were upset, distraught, I've lost money.
And it's understandable.
This secondary dip to $60,000, I don't know if you've experienced it on your channel.
It's like pure hatred towards Bitcoin.
There isn't, oh, I hope we get a bounce.
I've lost so much money.
It's, man, I can't wait for this to go to $50,000 because I hate Bitcoin.
It's failed.
That's furious.
This isn't something that you see before, you know, an additional 50% to the downside.
I just think there's a lot of indicators pointing towards the fact that that again this is capitulation territory and very briefly because i feel like i've been rambling again just to point back towards something we brought up in the previous show if we look at bitcoin through the lens of relative purchasing power as opposed to measuring against a debasing fiat currency like the us dollar if we measure it as the percentage of total global capital then this secondary dip took us down to about 0.23 percent of all global capital And that means the relative purchasing power is around $56,000 into that 55k territory where I'm seeing a lot of people say they're going to buy.
There's the realized price, technical confluence, etc.
But looking at a chart like this, we can see this has been a key turning point for Bitcoin.
It's where we had the bounce we had just a few weeks ago.
But then it was where we had that bounce in 2024 before this massive rally up to new all-time highs above $100,000.
Clearly, this is a level of interest.
And again, when we do this type of analysis, I'm not...
working in yes or no, black and white, ones and zeros, it's all probabilistic and we need to look for confluence.
So if we can get some insights from the derivatives markets, billions of dollars of liquidations and funding rates going extremely negative.
If we can look at on-chain data, if we can look at macroeconomic data and kind of put all of these together as pieces of a jigsaw, again, it's painting to me at least a picture of a bull rather than a bear at these levels.
Is this...
I mean, my concern of this chart, Matt, is that you also circled this right before the 2022 bear market.
True.
That's when we were testing its resistance.
It's a key turning point level.
Stop nitpicking the intricacies of my data analysis.
I'm looking at the chart.
What we can see in the three previous tests is we immediately bounced.
This is what we hit before we went over 100K.
But then you go further down.
It's like, this is also what we hit before we went down to 16, man.
You know how support and resistance works.
If we looked significantly beneath this and retested it from below, I would change my tune a little bit.
But from now, I'm following what the last three data points have shown, and they all showed immediate upside bounces.
You are one of my favorite guests because you put up with my bullshit the most.
Thank you, Matt.
Continue on.
This is a great data.
This is a fantastic data point, Matt.
Okay, the story continues.
This isn't just unique to Bitcoin.
If we look at consumer sentiment in the US, recently, it was literally the lowest it had ever been.
Now, this only goes 10 years in a sec.
I'll show the old time chart.
But it hit 44.8.
We have been through genuine global recessions, dot-com bubbles, wars, and all of these instances did not lead to consumers being more pessimistic about the future.
Now, if we look at the S&P 500, and given the fact that Bitcoin and the S&P are incredibly strongly correlated, as one moves up, typically the other is not far behind.
I mean, the past few months have been a little bit of an exception to that.
Bitcoin's been struggling while equities have been rallying.
But still, if equities are in a very favorable macroeconomic environment in that people are incredibly bearish, they're shorting the market, and it's not really founded by anything apart from...
feelings of overvaluation.
If we look at this chart, and now this is going back as far as the data exists for this consumer sentiment index, which is about 73 years back to the 50s.
Every single time this bottoms out, it was a great accumulation opportunity.
And I mean, amazing, the absolute bottom of the dot-com bubble, the absolute bottom of the global financial crisis, the bottom of that 2022 pullback we had.
And again, if we just go back 70 years of data, all of these were generational accumulation opportunities, if you like.
And we've just seen it set the lowest value ever.
It's crazy to me that people right now, not just within Bitcoin, I mean, this is almost like the fear and greed index for traditional markets.
It's so incredibly rare to see this divergence between expectations and reality.
And I mean, maybe this is just the society we live in today, people generally becoming less optimistic and a little bit more bearish.
But traditionally, it's been common knowledge that you need to almost be a contrarian with your investments.
If your taxi driver's giving you stock picks, you know, maybe we're getting towards a top of a bubble or whatever the saying goes.
This is the opposite.
This is your taxi driver saying we're about to head into the biggest recession, global financial crisis, everything catastrophe ever.
And it's the same.
It's inverted.
This extreme sentiment that we see amongst not just analysts, but everyone.
Being a contrarian at these points in time.
means being bullish.
If we look at every time, and I didn't actually label it on this chart, but every time sentiment got exceedingly high, like at the peak of the dot-com bubble, like just prior to the 2008 global financial crisis, like just prior to the COVID 2020 dump, all of those were market peaks when people thought this wouldn't end, when people thought the music wouldn't stop and we were going much, much higher.
Now this is the exact opposite.
Maybe we are overvalued.
Maybe there is an AI bubble that's going to pop at some point.
But the fact that we are seeing such incredible bearishness points to me that the most painful scenario is more upside.
And I think a vast majority are wrong the majority of the time.
Unchain data really shows that it is just the mass psychology of investors.
And it's not just sentiment amongst those that aren't investing in the market.
If we look, now this is from a couple of days ago, at the put volume.
So this is the options market.
Calls are generally bought if you're bullish on an asset.
Now there are some.
you know, if you're hedging your bets, etc.
But if we look at put volume, which is if you buy a put contract is essentially betting on downside, it's wanting to short the asset and profit from downside movement.
If we look at say the S&P 500 or the SPY, every time we've seen exceedingly high records of put volume, it has been a market low without exception.
We've just set a new record in the QQQ and SPY.
People aren't just saying they're bearish, they're putting their money where their mouth is.
And again, the data points towards the fact that when a majority of people are bearish, it's time to be a contrarian.
When a majority of people are exceedingly bullish, it's time to be a contrarian.
I think it's just at the minute, because Bitcoin is kind of lagging behind, that people are getting angry and frustrated, which is understandable.
But again, if we take a step back and look at the market, it's not just through sentiment and positioning.
If we look at manufacturing, this is the ISM PMI, what a lot of people would refer to as the business cycle.
Once this crosses this 50 threshold, convincingly crosses above kind of this boundary of are we in a period of economic expansion or contraction?
Again, not quite as clean a signal as sentiment, but when it crosses above, they were pretty good times to buy.
We've just crossed above again.
There's a huge divergence between expectations and reality.
And again, I sound like a broken record, but for me, I'm focusing on the data, taking the emotion out of it, because realistically, I look at SpaceX and think, man, that was an overvalued IPO.
Clearly, I was wrong.
It went up a trillion dollars more.
I look at the AI bubble and think, there's no way this can be sustained.
I don't think I'm right on that.
When we look at the data and take personal opinion and ego out of it, to me, there is value here.
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What about the contrarian take?
So because you just said that you said the contrarian take is the right one.
So then it was SpaceX.
The contrarian take would have been what's happening now, which is that.
which is that it was not the AI top, although it's only been a couple of days of trading, but that it would continue to go up instead of cratering.
Right.
So exactly.
This is the thing.
This is why I don't trust myself because personally I was thinking, you know, there's no way, but that was the general consensus of everyone.
If you look at the data, maybe it was pointing towards the fact that it wasn't the most overvalued IPO of all time.
Now, is that going to change?
Is it just an initial launch hype potentially?
There's some.
little intricacies regarding how much actual flow of the company shares went to public market and how much were offered to retail.
We won't go too much into that.
But again, that was my personal opinion.
It's overvalued.
It's going to plummet on launch day.
Man, was I wrong about that?
It just shows you that as much as things can seem out of control and crazy and there's a huge divergence between reality and expectations and fair valuations, things can get a lot crazier.
a lot faster than many people really anticipate.
Everything's a meme coin these days, man.
That's my lesson about the economy and doing this for the last 10 months.
And even you're talking like a lot of macro factors now too.
And like to me.
That's that's just what the modern economy is, that anything can move like a meme coin.
And even what you're describing about SpaceX's low float, which has definitely been the story, you know, that's been surfaced the last day or so, is that, you know, there's only so much supply out there.
So naturally, it's going to it could bubble up really quick.
It's like I'm like, that just sounds like an airdrop.
It just sounds like some airdrop where there's only there's only 5% of it that's out there.
So as there's very little liquidity, so it's going to balloon, you know, until the investor unlocks happen.
And I'm like, that's exactly what SpaceX is anyways.
I think the lesson here that I'm learning from you, Matt, is that anything is possible and that the contrarian take, especially these days, has often been the right one.
A lot of that points back to Bitcoin being dead and a lot of investors outside of our circles calling for digital assets to be pretty done for in that these levels.
Just summarize everything you said is that very rarely when we get to these on-chain levels do we stay there.
100% and just from a personal philosophical perspective it seems like people are just bearish and pessimistic in general.
If we look at the S&P 500 I think there's only been seven or eight instances where we've had kind of you know 40 to 50% recessions lasting a few months or even a few years but if you look back 50 to 70 years.
We've gone up 40,000%.
Bitcoin has gone from a fraction of a penny to over $100,000, from nothing to a multi-trillion dollar market cap in just over a decade.
I think it pays to be optimistic and bullish on things that have genuine value.
And just from a quick maths point of view, if you shorted the exact peak of the Bitcoin bull market to pretty much the exact low at $60,000, let's just round that to about a 50% retracement.
If you shorted that, congrats, you made 50%.
If you long that same move, you make 100%.
Maths favors being bullish.
Now, am I saying we can't go down any lower?
No, of course not.
I have to hedge my bets.
I'm an analyst.
I have to play both sides so I always come out on top.
But I did this analysis a few weeks ago looking at how bad things could really get because a lot of people are saying, well, traditionally we've had a 70% to 80% drawdown in Bitcoin, which is true.
We've also traditionally seen multiple thousand percent moves to the upside.
So I thought, is there a relationship between the bull market and the subsequent bear market?
I think it's James Cech that says the bull authors the bear.
And I looked into this and it's true, but not just, you know, partially true with exceeding accuracy.
So what this is looking at is the logarithmic returns of the Bitcoin bull market and the logarithmic drawdowns of the bear market.
Now, this kind of plays into the maths that I was saying before.
If we have a 50% pullback, we need 100% gains to actually get back to break even.
So bear markets are significantly more impactful than bull market returns.
But if you look at those logarithmic returns as a ratio compared to those logarithmic drawdowns, the previous three Bitcoin markets have been in an incredibly tight range.
Now, what we can do is if we assume that this Bitcoin bull market, which only provided around 715% returns, if we experienced any one of those previous bear market kind of ratio pullbacks.
I might not be explaining this quite right but hopefully I kind of get the message across in the end.
If we look at the ratios that we experienced in previous Bitcoin bulk to bear markets and apply the same to this market then we can kind of work out averages and what would maybe be expected if we were to play out as we previously have done and in a worst case scenario.
What we can see here is if we kind of take an average of the ratio from bull to bear markets, logarithmic returns from 2013, 2017 and 2022, then we can see that would lead to kind of a base case of $55,000.
Now, if you want to exclude 2013, which was quite an extortionate rally to the upside, that double peak cycle providing, what was it, 62,000% returns, then again, we still only get to around $50,000.
Now, if we look at the 2017, then 56,000.
If we look at the standard deviation above this all-time average, then it's about 59,000, which is pretty much bang on where we actually bottomed out so far.
And if we were to look at just the 2013, then it'd be 65K, which we've already broken.
But the thing is, the worst bear market ever would come to fruition at around $45,800.
If we were to go a full standard deviation lower than that, then it'd be about $44,000.
But again, you have to take into consideration the previous bear markets was FTX collapse.
We had a COVID 2020 dump caused by a big global recession.
In 2018, we didn't necessarily have a big bearish catalyst.
But alongside that, that was the first time we'd had this big retail speculative bubble where there was genuine obituaries written.
There was lots of coins still lost.
And the previous cycle, we're talking, you know, Mt.
Gox and other exchange blowups.
to get to these really low low these bear market capitulation levels it requires a big bearish catalyst now i'm not saying that's not going to happen again i'm just saying that having a bearish black swan event is your main investing thesis i don't think is is necessarily the right play and even if it did occur i think thirty thousand dollars which i'm seeing calls for or even lower i've seen people calling for twenty thousand dollars that would have to be literally the worst by far bear market of all time in a genuine worst case scenario somewhere in the mid $40,000 level which of course would put me underwater in my accumulation that's the risk I'm willing to take but again I think even like the average mid $50,000 level would be a gift at these these prices following the bull market that we had and that would only be a 56% retracement which would be significantly less than previous bear markets but again Like we said, the bull market paints the following bear market.
And if we look at the prices on this chart, we've already just bounced off that secondary level, this kind of bull case point around $59,000.
So again, alongside everything else we've discussed previously, anywhere we can get in around these kind of 60 to 55 levels, if that opportunity arises once again, is aggressive accumulation territory for myself.
Matt, I've got a question.
For you, and this is something maybe I want to ask other people who have come on our show, why is the logarithmic scale so important when we're looking at Bitcoin?
I think just because it is an asset which is maturing so much.
I mean, if you look at the capital inflows required to go from a billion to two billion, it's significantly less than the capital inflows required to go from a trillion to two trillion.
So if you look at raw percentile gains and pullbacks, it's not really comparable because You know, we've just grown so much as an asset and we've matured so much as an asset.
If you look at the chart on a linear basis, you know, it's impossible to really tell what's going on for the first 10 to 15 years of Bitcoin's history.
And then again, I think it paints a more relevant picture of Bitcoin bear cycles, because like I said, the mathematics favor going long on an asset.
Just given the percentile returns to get back to break even, you know, go exponential.
I mentioned if we have a 50 percent retracement, it requires 100 percent get back to break even.
at a 90% retracement, I think it's a 1000% returns, it gets an exponential curve to get back to break even.
This is why bear markets are so brutal to live through, but why accumulating anywhere even remotely close to Bitcoin bear market lows is such an amazing asymmetric opportunity to the upside.
So I think it gives a better kind of perspective on the ratio between bull and bear markets and better accounts for the kind of changing market cap and evolving.
supply and demand economics that we're kind of experiencing.
And I imagine the next cycle is likely again going to have diminishing returns.
I don't think we'll have 715%.
Maybe it's a bit less.
Maybe we do have a super cycle and it's a bit more.
But if we kind of look at it through this lens of relative returns as opposed to raw percentages, it gives us a bit of a, at least in my opinion, a clear insight into the genuine potential of both bull and bear markets for Bitcoin.
Got it.
Okay.
That's a good explanation.
Thank you.
No worries.
And as I said, I've been putting my money where my mouth is in a sailor-esque format with some terrible AI pictures alongside it.
I've been accumulating at these levels.
I've been getting a lot of hate online.
I've been buying every single day.
And I've been trying to increase my stack.
And alongside that, I've been trying to embarrass myself along the way.
But I just wanted to reiterate that this isn't something that I just do online and try and get some clicks and views and site subscribers, et cetera.
I'm in Bitcoin because I want to accumulate as much Bitcoin as I possibly can.
And throughout my dollar cost averaging in 2026, been able to achieve a 54% year to date stack increase in an average price of under $65,000 per Bitcoin.
So I'm actually up on my 2026 accumulation, which is nice.
But again, if we go up, it's a win.
I start to make more money.
If we go down, it's a win.
I can accumulate more cheap Satoshis.
But I just wanted to reiterate and do it in a kind of public fashion because I think that's...
an issue that we have.
I know you guys do an amazing job with this, with your Milk Road Pro, I believe it's called, kind of disclosure of positions and stuff.
So I've actually been following that very closely.
I'm sure your audience have as well.
But I think, you know, we're in a space where open source and honesty and verification is kind of the biggest emphasis of what Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are.
So I wanted to live by that thesis and philosophy.
in my own right by being very public with this.
And I'll continue to be very public when it comes time to accumulate more or even try and sell some Bitcoin, which I know people really hate that I say I sell some Bitcoin, but, you know, I've got bills to pay now.
I've got a house.
And in general, it's just nice to have things that don't go down 50 plus percent every now and again.
The hardest part of owning Bitcoin is growing up and having to sell it.
It's the unfortunate reality.
What we are seeing is less and less people are selling Bitcoin.
And again, I feel like I've been rambling here.
So if you want to jump in, do let me know.
That's great.
If we look at the Bitcoin hotter waves, this is looking at the percentage of different age bands.
So for example, if we look at the 10 plus years, we can see it's currently around 17.7%, which means nearly 20% of all Bitcoin that exists, which is well over a million coins, haven't been moved in over a decade.
But if we look at three plus months, what we can see is, again, Big, obvious retracements when we're seeing exponential rallies to the upside.
This is people who have been holding for many, many years who are realizing some profits, which, you know, makes sense.
But again, we see this rally significantly to the upside during bear markets.
Lots of long-term holders say, I'm not going to sell here.
And lots of people that bought at the top say, well, I'm going to wait until we get back to that all-time high.
Right now, we're at just a smidge below the all-time high.
That was set just before we ran up $50,000.
the mid $20,000 region into the mid $70,000 region.
Now, again, on its own, this doesn't really tell us a lot because again, we can bottom out and this can continue rising after the bear market lows are in.
Maybe we'll get some capitulation as people move their coins off exchanges, et cetera.
But this is why we need to kind of look at many different data points, look for confluence.
And this is just reiterating this.
If we look at it in raw numbers terms, it has a new all time high at over 16 and a half million in long-term holders.
But if we kind of look at the inverse of that, if we look at new capital coming in, this is the influence on the realized capital, the average accumulation price, the cost basis of all Bitcoin on the network.
Now, when we see these warm colors spike to the upside, this is FOMO visualized.
This is new capital entering the market and praying disproportionately high prices for the privilege of doing so.
Now, when this dips significantly, basically indicates that those who have been in Bitcoin for a long time are close to parity on their positions.
They're potentially at a loss on their positions, like we saw earlier with the supply in loss, and they're potentially looking at the opportunity of maybe lowering their cost basis.
So once we see very, very low interest from new capital coming in and paying disproportionately high prices, we're getting close towards a bear market fair valuation or whatever you'd like to call it.
But the valuation we're currently at is lower.
than what we set in the 2012 bear market low.
It's about the exact same as we set in the 2018-2019 bear market low, and it's just a smidge above what we set in the 2022 bear market low and the exact 2015 bear market low.
So again, this isn't saying that we can't go lower.
It's just saying we're in the ballpark of very, very good value for money.
Bitcoin opportunity.
Now, I'm not going to say the bear market's over.
I know I've said it's a double bottom, but we do have resistance above us.
We recently ran up to this short-term holder realized price and immediately had a retracement back down to 60k.
we can see this historically been a pretty good defining factor of where we may be in a cycle.
Is the average new market participant a gain or a loss on their position?
And then it typically acts almost as a moving level of support and resistance through bull and bear cycles.
And again, we've just seen it act as major resistance.
So this is currently at $70,000.
Now, if we can start reclaiming that, the 200 daily moving average, not far above that, I really think it starts to paint a picture of renewed strength in BTC, especially alongside everything else we've seen.
If we can set a higher high than we set at this $80,000-ish region, then to me, you know, I'm getting a little bit more optimistic.
I'm thinking, is $100,000 on the cards?
Is a new all-time high on the cards?
But just to reiterate, as bullish as I have been with everything here, the trend is still to the downside.
I don't think we should be recklessly.
I don't think we should be going all in.
Like I said, I've been strategically dollar cost averaging in.
every single day, just trying to lower that cost basis and accumulate while at a discount.
But by no means am I saying, you know, the worst is behind us.
There's not going to be a few more weeks or a few moments of chopping and consolidating and potentially, you know, even a triple bottom or something.
It's been positive to see this reaction from around $60,000 to the mid 60K range.
But realistically, we need to acknowledge that it's not going to be plain sailing from here and we are going to have resistance along the way.
But again, from a mean reversion from a long-term macro discount perspective this is this is the area where i am buying and i am putting all my chips on the table and money where my mouth is and maybe in six months i come back and everyone laughs at me i've got egg all over my face for me you know i'm willing to take that risk and do it in a public fashion if i'm right or wrong Well, saying that, if I'm right, you guys are going to be hearing about this a lot.
I'm going to be boasting about this for years to come.
But if I'm wrong, then, you know, I'll say I'm an analyst and I'm just buying more for cheap.
Yeah, you might be wrong in six months, but I think you'll be right in six years.
And that's the game you're playing anyways.
Again, this is the thing.
I'm sure if you're watching this, I mean, I just got back from BTC Prague.
Amazing conference, by the way.
And it really reiterated kind of my view on Bitcoin.
I mean, I've always been a long-term BTC bull, but...
to meet so many other Bitcoiners in the space, to see what they're building, to see it's not just all about short-term price action.
It really reiterates the fact that, you know, I'm in Bitcoin not for the next six to 12 months.
I'm here for the next one to two plus decades.
I'm not looking at Bitcoin and thinking this is an asset that once it surpasses $100,000, I need to start scaling out everything that I own.
I think Bitcoin is going to hit a million dollars.
I think we're going to start climbing to, you know, exceptionally high prices.
Are we going to flip gold in the next couple of decades is a genuine question that I asked myself and I don't know the answer.
Now, that's a 30x and that's with gold's current market cap.
In the next 20 years, that could be $50 trillion.
You know, we could be talking about a 50x.
There's so much upside potential and asymmetric opportunity that for me, as I've said, trying to kind of...
you know, hold off for an extra percent here or an extra few Satoshis there is just not worth the risk.
I see where we are now.
I see where we're going in the future.
I see we're already at a 50% discount.
And again, all the signs to me are pointing towards accumulation from an on-chain derivative, macro, technical, psychological nature.
I'm buying and I'm very comfortable with that.
Matt, you always end these podcasts with a...
price projection for end of year or something like that?
Are you going to bless us with one of those today?
I can't remember the exact number I gave last time, but it was very specific.
I think it was around.
And if I do get it, I'm going to be quite surprised because it's about six weeks ago.
I'll pull it up.
Go ahead.
$103,482.74.
I don't think it was a million miles away from that.
And I'm going to stand by that.
The thesis hasn't changed.
When did we last do this?
By end of year?
By end of year, that's what you said last time maybe?
Yeah, I think that's what I said last time.
I'll stand by that.
Nothing changes.
So sure, why not?
Where do I think I'm going to be in six weeks?
I have no idea.
But in six months, I'm pretty sure we're going to look back at today and think, man, why didn't we buy more?
You're listening to The Milk Road Show, which means you've got takes.
Strong ones, I bet.
But where do those takes actually go?
Do you tweet them into the void, argue them in the group chat, or do you try to express them by buying a stock?
The thing is, stocks move on like 50 other things at once.
And that's where CalShe comes in.
It's a CFTC regulated prediction market where you bet directly on outcomes like Bitcoin hitting 100K, Fed rate cuts, GameStop buying eBay with a clean yes or no.
We did a full deep dive on why prediction markets might be crypto's third product market fit moment.
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Okay, you said that we would finish the year.
around the psychological $100,000 territory.
That is what you said.
That's the best thing I can, that's what I can find from the last show.
Okay, I stand by that.
I do still think that is the base case for where I think we go.
Will I be a few thousand dollars off?
Yeah, of course I will.
But that's what I'm going to stand by.
Okay, you said 103,321 in six months time.
And that was, I think, May 8th.
which then would have dated us to November 8th because we were talking about the midterms too, which were on November 3rd.
So you were saying, so 103,321 by end of year.
You stand by that now.
Stand by, I'll double down.
We're a double bot and I'm going to double down.
I think we're just going to put that one in the books right now for November 8th with you right back here.
I'm sure we'll see it before then, but we have to have it back on that specific day to revisit that and then get another six month projection from there onwards.
But Matt, a pleasure as always, man.
Thank you for all the excellent research.
Always a pleasure to see you, man.
And I like the accumulation strategy.
I don't think you're alone on that one.
Thank you very much.
It certainly feels like I'm alone on this one, but yeah, it's always fun.
Love to come back any time.
The only thing that makes me a little bit nervous about that November 8 one is anytime I make a prediction and it's like, oh, cool.
We'll revisit that on this day.
It's like, oh, damn, I should have thought a little bit more about this.
That's just the first number that came to mind.
I should know that now you're going to ask every episode.
Maybe we need to think less in this bear market, man.
Maybe that's the key to surviving it is just think less, a little bit more instinct, a little bit more contrary in thinking, and we'll make it through.
Easy in theory, but yeah, as always, it's been a pleasure and I look forward to coming back in the future.