Speaker 1: In flowed into all of the ETFs. That's massive, and
Speaker 1: you can see how much correlation these inflows have with
Speaker 1: pushing up prices because they're largely being fueled by institutionals
Speaker 1: with huge capital.
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast. Joining me
Speaker 2: today is Brian from Sentiment, and as you all know,
Speaker 2: we're going to go into the metrics and the data
Speaker 2: to see what bitcoin and all coins are doing and
Speaker 2: what may come next. Brian, great to see you.
Speaker 1: Great to be here with you, Tony. Last time we
Speaker 1: chatted it was kind of a more worrisome time, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, we're in celebration mode here as
Speaker 1: Bitcoin just went above one hundred k for the first
Speaker 1: time since February third. So yeah, a lot of rejoicing happening. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In fact, Bitcoin cross one hundred and one thousand dollars
Speaker 2: as well, and then eth is back over two thousand.
Speaker 2: Seeing some momentum here, But of course we want to
Speaker 2: validate this move with the data. Yeah, let's kick it
Speaker 2: off with Bitcoin if you can share your screen and
Speaker 2: some of the metrics and we can start diving into it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll jump right in here. One thing I want
Speaker 1: to look at right away is seeing if there's a
Speaker 1: divergence forming between the ten to ten k BTC holders,
Speaker 1: which are essentially the key stakeholders that through our studies
Speaker 1: have the most correlation with where prices tend to go next.
Speaker 1: Not a perfect one, but a good one. So seeing
Speaker 1: how they're doing versus what prices are doing, and it
Speaker 1: kind of looks so. So we've seen, you know, a
Speaker 1: fair bit of accumulation going back to mid March, and
Speaker 1: of course, you know the early April tariff announcement by
Speaker 1: Trump caused a little bit of a divot right here.
Speaker 1: That's for those unfamiliar with this chart. We're just looking
Speaker 1: at the total amount of BTC held by all wallets
Speaker 1: that have between ten to ten k BTC. They make
Speaker 1: up about two thirds of the supply of this group,
Speaker 1: so massive amount. So they dump a little bit, but
Speaker 1: by the next day they're already accumulating again. A little
Speaker 1: bit of flatness during the uncertainty if that first week
Speaker 1: of tariff policy announcements and you know, reel versus fake
Speaker 1: news all that stuff, but they really began accumulating rapidly
Speaker 1: right around the bottom around April tenth, April eleventh, actually
Speaker 1: technically April ninth was the bottom, and you can see
Speaker 1: they're already accumulating here. They get all the way up
Speaker 1: to about thirteen and a half million BTC combined before
Speaker 1: a little bit of dumping started, and they're actually down
Speaker 1: just slightly despite prices being up. So you know, if
Speaker 1: we draw just a ligne here for the amount held
Speaker 1: versus the price, you can see they're going in two
Speaker 1: different directions. So ideally we need the accumulation for the
Speaker 1: key stakeholders to keep up and start looking a little
Speaker 1: more like that or even you know higher. You get
Speaker 1: the idea that would justify for prices to go even higher,
Speaker 1: and potentially we see that new you know, one ten
Speaker 1: k bitcoin all time high. That's somebody you're waiting for
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that definitely makes sense. And as I look at
Speaker 2: this chart, I see the peaks and valleys and ebbs
Speaker 2: and flows you know on the micro overall, like it
Speaker 2: doesn't go in a straight line. So to your point,
Speaker 2: hopefully we see that uptick even though overall this is
Speaker 2: still holding well, it's not like it's in a downtrend
Speaker 2: or anything like that exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're certainly not dumping by any means. But we
Speaker 1: do want to see the key stakeholders continuing to get
Speaker 1: richer in bitcoin over time as a justification for prices
Speaker 1: to move up, because they've got the capital to push
Speaker 1: up prices, and that gets retail to kind of help
Speaker 1: with the domino effect and add fuel to the you know,
Speaker 1: the rocket ship, if you will. So we need they
Speaker 1: they tend to take the lead, and if they're not
Speaker 1: pushing prices up or accumulating more as prices are moving up,
Speaker 1: that can be a little worrisome. So you know, based
Speaker 1: on this chart alone, it could be a signal that
Speaker 1: we might be in a bit of a stagnant period
Speaker 1: now that we've reached you know, the summit of one
Speaker 1: hundred K plus again.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure. And then I can only imagine that
Speaker 2: some of these wills, not all obviously, but if they
Speaker 2: bought at seventy six K or eighty k, right and
Speaker 2: it just hit ninety something or one hundred, they take
Speaker 2: some profits off the table, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we got to that level what here on
Speaker 1: April seventh, and during that time, you know, they're still
Speaker 1: up quite a bit. They've accumulated a total of about
Speaker 1: a little over forty five k bitcoin during that stretch,
Speaker 1: which is if I'm doing the math, but like about
Speaker 1: forty five million dollars worth of BTC, so they're moving
Speaker 1: in the right direction. Or no, it might be four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million, whatever it is. It's it's a
Speaker 1: ton of money, more than any anyone of us watching
Speaker 1: or speaking, we'll ever see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about sentiment. How are retail feeling? You know,
Speaker 2: they's starting to get a bit euphoric, are they is
Speaker 2: a tariff worry kind of dissipating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I plotted the top three non stable coins
Speaker 1: here in terms of market cap, just so we can
Speaker 1: see how sentiments kind of fluctuating between all three. This
Speaker 1: red line here is bitcoin. We do see that as
Speaker 1: of today it is up. Not surprising, but it isn't extreme.
Speaker 1: So this this is essentially measuring all the positive comments
Speaker 1: versus the negative comments and dividing them by one another
Speaker 1: based on our I'll go that looks at whether a
Speaker 1: comment is bullish or bearish. So when we get up here,
Speaker 1: you know, a high amount that tends to lead to
Speaker 1: a top. When it gets very low, I'll just hide
Speaker 1: the other two so it's easier to see when we
Speaker 1: get very low. These are the kinds of indications that
Speaker 1: we might be in a bottom. We saw one here,
Speaker 1: and we saw prices rise shortly after, and then this
Speaker 1: was a really ideal time to buy the morning of
Speaker 1: May seventh morning for the US folks at least, and
Speaker 1: that's when prices really started to churn and we suddenly
Speaker 1: went from ninety three to one hundred in about what
Speaker 1: thirty six hours or so. So where we're at now
Speaker 1: with bitcoin, it looks like there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: greed going on in terms of just overall sentiment, but
Speaker 1: it isn't to the level that I would be worried.
Speaker 1: You know, Fomo's about to burn this rally to the ground.
Speaker 2: Right, and it seems like we're setting up for you know,
Speaker 2: I know seasonality is not always perfect, but in the
Speaker 2: bullmarket years, the final years, you do have that Q
Speaker 2: two run up. We saw it in twenty twenty one
Speaker 2: and where things cool down and potentially a continuation into
Speaker 2: the end of the year of Q three Q four.
Speaker 2: But you know, we don't have a crystal ball, but
Speaker 2: maybe it blows off. There's a bloff top of the
Speaker 2: end of Q two in June. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's impossible to predict because we can
Speaker 1: have so many macroeconomic factors, tear iff policies just throwing
Speaker 1: a huge cog into the wheel. Jerome Powell just decided
Speaker 1: to keep interest rates the same yesterday, and that was
Speaker 1: a very mild letdown. I think most people overwhelmingly expected
Speaker 1: that outcome. But yeah, in terms of timing, if we
Speaker 1: look ahead to the summer, there can be sentiment changes
Speaker 1: that can shift things. For sure.
Speaker 2: I saw that bitcoin ETF inflows were spiking like black rocks.
Speaker 2: IBID has been given anything you can share there, So
Speaker 2: you can see very clearly there have been tons of
Speaker 2: inflow days.
Speaker 1: A little over three billion dollars or not, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: five billion since April sixteenth inflowed into all the ETFs.
Speaker 1: That's massive, and you can see how much correlation these
Speaker 1: inflows have with pushing up prices because they're largely being
Speaker 1: fueled by institutionals with huge capital So like you can
Speaker 1: see even right, you know, a month before Trump was elected,
Speaker 1: massive inflows. This one had one point three five billion
Speaker 1: dollars the day after Trump was elected. Here and we've
Speaker 1: just had a collective you know, day after day, half
Speaker 1: a something like half a million, I'm sorry, half a
Speaker 1: billion dollars per day since April sixteenth, roughly if you
Speaker 1: take the averages. So that's been a huge contributor. There
Speaker 1: was a bit of a drop right before Jerome Powell
Speaker 1: made his decision in the FOMC yesterday because people were fearful.
Speaker 1: But now they're are going to do business as usual
Speaker 1: and push money back into it, and that helped push
Speaker 1: a bitcoin up higher to where we are now. So
Speaker 1: I'm yeah, I didn't mean.
Speaker 2: To get job. I was just looking at November and
Speaker 2: that huge spike and how that correlated with the price
Speaker 2: running up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it was massive. These are more elongated
Speaker 1: data points, but here this is daily. But the point
Speaker 1: is you can just see how much the inflows had
Speaker 1: an effect as people got excited about, you know, the
Speaker 1: pro crypto presidential candidate being likely voted in and then
Speaker 1: officially being voted in right after. And it really didn't
Speaker 1: stop until we got a few inflows in late November here.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty impressive. How you know, if there's an
Speaker 1: inflow day, prices generally go up. If there's an outflow,
Speaker 1: dad prices generally go down. It's kind of a good
Speaker 1: reflection of whales are doing on chain, just in a
Speaker 1: more detailed way through ETFs, because ETFs give much more
Speaker 1: transparent data and give us an idea of how these
Speaker 1: institutionals are choosing to put in money versus pull out
Speaker 1: money on any given day, so it's like there's a
Speaker 1: big spotlight on them.
Speaker 2: Very interesting. This is why I love looking at the data,
Speaker 2: because you have these different data points and you can
Speaker 2: really use it to form a thesis and get a
Speaker 2: clear picture of what's happening in the market. Very very interesting.
Speaker 2: Let's talk all coins and maybe we can start with Etheroreum.
Speaker 2: Etherum crack in two k today, start starting to show
Speaker 2: some life, and then you had the Petra update that
Speaker 2: took place this week as well.
Speaker 1: M h. Yeah, the Petra update definitely was underwhelming because
Speaker 1: of course Ethereum did not magically start to outperform the
Speaker 1: markets instantly like people were hoping back in the merge
Speaker 1: and steptnumber of twenty twenty two, and people's especially retails,
Speaker 1: moods and emotions related to any upgrade in crypto largely
Speaker 1: depends on whether there's a positive price reaction. That's just
Speaker 1: the reality because most are using these coins as investment vehicles,
Speaker 1: and they're not just tech enthusiasts that are excited about innovation.
Speaker 1: Many say they are, but it's all dependent on price
Speaker 1: for a lot of people and their sentiment. So it
Speaker 1: started a little bit down. You can see when it
Speaker 1: happened a couple days ago, actually had one of the
Speaker 1: most negative sentiment days for Ethereum of the year. But
Speaker 1: as prices started to rise after that upgrade completed, suddenly
Speaker 1: you know, sentiment has become a little more lukewarm here.
Speaker 1: It's not euphoric at all yet, so there's plenty of
Speaker 1: room to run from what I'm seeing. The point is,
Speaker 1: I meantherem's up something like eleven twelve percent today, effect
Speaker 1: that rally can continue until the greed starts to reach
Speaker 1: something like this or up here where there's like three
Speaker 1: to one or four to one bullish versus bearish comments.
Speaker 1: So it looks pretty nice in that respect.
Speaker 2: Good to see some life after it's been a tough
Speaker 2: bull market for eth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really has. It's interesting. I'm looking at XRP,
Speaker 1: by the way, and it's having a big U for
Speaker 1: it day, even though I don't believe it's doing quite
Speaker 1: as amazing as you know Ethereum. So I'm not quite
Speaker 1: sure what's going on there. We didn't look at prices yet,
Speaker 1: but let's see if we can quickly pull that up.
Speaker 2: I know there was some news around Ripple. It could
Speaker 2: be around you know, some news announcement that's driving the sentiment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw something related to it. Let's see if
Speaker 1: it's showing up on our social trends. Actually, we go
Speaker 1: to trending coins. XRP isn't even in the top ten
Speaker 1: at the moment. It's all about bitcoin Ethereum. Light coin
Speaker 1: had a rally a few days back, so that's been
Speaker 1: in the news. But yeah, I'm not seeing anything too
Speaker 1: related to XRP. If I just plot that plot the asset. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the social volume isn't showing anything special. So for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: there is some bullishness toward XRP do a pretty extreme
Speaker 1: degree right now. So that's a bit of a warning
Speaker 1: sign actually for XRP enthusiasts. Just a short term fomo spike,
Speaker 1: but it could be enough to kind of halt any
Speaker 1: rallies going on. Sure, another thing on ethereum. By the way,
Speaker 1: I wanted to show check this out. So this is
Speaker 1: the mentions of lower prices. We're obviously a little above
Speaker 1: two thousand right now, but it's the mentions of lower
Speaker 1: prices between one thousand to fifteen hundred versus higher prices
Speaker 1: twenty five hundred to three, So a little bit below
Speaker 1: versus a little bit above where we're at now. When
Speaker 1: you see very low spikes like this, it tends to
Speaker 1: be a bottom signal. I'll zoom out a little bit more,
Speaker 1: and when you see really high spikes, it tends to
Speaker 1: be a bit of a top signal. So for example,
Speaker 1: even right here this at least halted some of the bleeding.
Speaker 1: This was a great bottom signal. You see how these
Speaker 1: blue spikes here are just jolting way above red. So
Speaker 1: people are commenting on lower and then right here we're
Speaker 1: suddenly seeing a little bit of greed again and people
Speaker 1: speculating and daydreaming about just how high this ethereum rally
Speaker 1: can go.
Speaker 2: Interesting. It's so funny that we have this data and
Speaker 2: you could narrow it down to the price calls below
Speaker 2: or above.
Speaker 1: That's really cool. It's fun Yeah, we do it for
Speaker 1: Bitcoin a lot too, and it kind of looks pretty
Speaker 1: similar right now. It's just you know, people calling for
Speaker 1: two one hundred and fifty K. Anytime we go on
Speaker 1: like a five percent bitcoin rally, and anytime that really spikes,
Speaker 1: you tend to see a top because the fomo is
Speaker 1: just getting a little too intense.
Speaker 2: What about Solana? Anything that anything interesting happening there.
Speaker 1: In terms of Solana? If I change up the price,
Speaker 1: the social volume is pretty down. So we saw a
Speaker 1: big spike make this a little bigger. We saw a
Speaker 1: big spike here between April fifteenth and twentieth, and this
Speaker 1: was a pretty huge rally. You can see when it's
Speaker 1: going way down or way up, that's when people want
Speaker 1: to talk about it. But it's been kind of unassuming
Speaker 1: and in the middle. Even though it's rallying today. Everything
Speaker 1: is rallying today, so it's kind of under the radar still.
Speaker 1: But social dominance is actually way down. It's being talked
Speaker 1: about at some of the lowest levels we've seen since
Speaker 1: early April, if not the entire year, So it's it's
Speaker 1: not getting as much hype as you would think. I'm
Speaker 1: seeing that on Telegram read it especially X, very little discussion.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised if this was a bit of
Speaker 1: bot activity, because X has been having a lot of
Speaker 1: trouble controlling the amount of you know bots that just
Speaker 1: spam and chill various coins. You can see the outage
Speaker 1: here for a week on four Chan, but they've resumed. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: little minor spike on Parcaster, but yeah, it's just been
Speaker 1: pretty silent and not a lot of discussion related to
Speaker 1: Solana lately. M M. Yeah. It's funny.
Speaker 2: And you know there's like rotational liquidity that happens in
Speaker 2: the market, right some al quinns start leading and then
Speaker 2: you have your laggards catch up and like every dog
Speaker 2: has his day, so to speak, like Eth right now,
Speaker 2: maybe stealing a show. Then all of a sudden you'll
Speaker 2: see Eth cool down. Then Solon will pop off and write,
Speaker 2: you know, so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: They take turns. That's the name of the game if
Speaker 1: you can be ahead of the cycle and understand where
Speaker 1: the profit redistributions are going, especially between like the top caps, Bitcoin,
Speaker 1: ethereum Xrps, Solana, chain Link, a lot of these, even
Speaker 1: binance Coin, a lot of these assets. They're just taking turns,
Speaker 1: going on little mini pumps. And you know, the higher
Speaker 1: up on these pump and dump group chains, you are
Speaker 1: the more in the know, you'll be on which one
Speaker 1: is gonna jump up next, So you know, today it's
Speaker 1: been Ethereum, tomorrow it could be Solana, and sentiment can
Speaker 1: can really help you shortcut your way to understanding. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I pulled up meme coins here too, Tony, just
Speaker 1: to see what's going on. And obviously many of these
Speaker 1: are related to Solana. They've been on a huge tair.
Speaker 1: Obviously many many, many of them are on a big
Speaker 1: run as we speak. Mod Coin, especially purple Pepe is
Speaker 1: the first I've even heard of it, but there's always
Speaker 1: different variations.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, the stuff they come up with. Man,
Speaker 2: I was hoping these meme coins we wouldn't see except
Speaker 2: for maybe Doche, we wouldn't see much from you know,
Speaker 2: somebody Salona based mean coins. But I guess it's a
Speaker 2: sign of euphoria returning.
Speaker 1: A bit right. Yeah, it's it's party time right now
Speaker 1: for a lot of traders, because they take their one
Speaker 1: oh one k bitcoin value and they say, wow, look
Speaker 1: at all these meme coins I can now buy that
Speaker 1: are pumping way more than bitcoin. I'm going to jump
Speaker 1: in on that. And generally if that gets too intense,
Speaker 1: we see a bit of a collapse in the markets. So,
Speaker 1: you know, even though prices are pumping right now, we
Speaker 1: don't want it to get out of hand because that's
Speaker 1: usually the last stage of a bullish cycle. Just like
Speaker 1: we saw in mid January, right before Trump was inaugurated,
Speaker 1: we saw similar signs where meme coins were going nuts.
Speaker 2: I hope they don't steal the liquidity there to show
Speaker 2: like we saw, you know, in the last bullish rally,
Speaker 2: and hopefully some of these you know, major l ones
Speaker 2: like eight and Salona, XRP and so forth can really
Speaker 2: be the ones that are leading the market and not
Speaker 2: so much the meme coins.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally agree, I'm checking. I would assume that most
Speaker 1: of the volume is going into bitcoin right now. But
Speaker 1: this is a fun way to look at the top
Speaker 1: six market caps of meme coins in pink, Top six
Speaker 1: AI and Big Data in yellow, Top six Layer ones,
Speaker 1: which obviously is led by Bitcoin in green, and top
Speaker 1: six Layer twos in purple. I'll just take layer twos
Speaker 1: off to make it simpler, and we'll just look at
Speaker 1: layer ones versus meme coins for a minute. If we
Speaker 1: look at the last couple weeks or so, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: saw some crazy volume here for layer ones, which were
Speaker 1: likely related to bitcoin on the seventh, and that was
Speaker 1: right before we took off. Yeah right here, this was
Speaker 1: like the blast authentication. But look at me. Meme coins.
Speaker 1: Now they're at their highest point in a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks by a large margin. Their volume just blasted off
Speaker 1: in the last day and a half. So a little
Speaker 1: bit of a worry because you talked about how it
Speaker 1: might be stealing some of the spotlight, and that's kind
Speaker 1: of exactly what's happening. At least we can say, you know,
Speaker 1: layer ones are also going up a little, just not
Speaker 1: to the extreme of mean coins.
Speaker 2: Ah, Brian, I don't like to see this, even though
Speaker 2: I you know, I believe in the free market. I
Speaker 2: don't want I don't want to ban meme coins.
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: They need to be regulated a bit, right, but I
Speaker 2: hate that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's a double edged sword. These meme
Speaker 1: coins bring in more people for the fun and the
Speaker 1: gamble aspect of their existence, and they can eventually get into,
Speaker 1: you know, projects that are actually innovating and developing. True,
Speaker 1: but crypto just has so many weird entry points for people.
Speaker 1: Some come in for NFTs, for meme coins for the tech,
Speaker 1: even though I think those are the minority. But whatever
Speaker 1: the case is, you know, that's the whole point of crypto.
Speaker 1: It's a decentralized area, it's anti establishment and lets people
Speaker 1: invest however they wish to invest. And this is just
Speaker 1: kind of a reflection of traders' emotions. Really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, meme coins feel like last cycles NFTs, right, that
Speaker 2: was the big thing that brought in people across the board,
Speaker 2: I mean, thirteen year olds and whoever, right, and kept
Speaker 2: getting in and it it feels like meme coins are
Speaker 2: doing the same thing to cycle.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. And we had a DeFi and staking period in
Speaker 1: the early twenty twenties, kind of when covid was hitting.
Speaker 1: Before that, I remember dose coin back in like t
Speaker 1: seventeen and eighteen really starting to make a name for itself.
Speaker 1: So we kind of are seeing history repeat itself now.
Speaker 1: Anytime we get on a bull cycle like this, it's
Speaker 1: like the jokes and the fun elements of crypto really
Speaker 1: start to break out until something stops the fun from happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Brian, great stuff man. And you know we last
Speaker 2: time we said, look hopefully next time we meet. You know,
Speaker 2: big one is coming out of a hole and we're there.
Speaker 2: But maybe the next time we meet, bigcoin is approaching
Speaker 2: a new all time high. I don't know, one d
Speaker 2: your fifteen hundred and twenty k.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it could very well happen. We just have to see,
Speaker 1: you know, let's see if there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: stagnant period. I'm actually kind of hoping that happens, because
Speaker 1: that would lead a lot of the retail traders to
Speaker 1: profit take and just be happy with one hundred k.
Speaker 1: And if they start to sell their coins to these
Speaker 1: big whales, the whales will be the ones that will
Speaker 1: pump us up to uh you know that that COVID
Speaker 1: one ten k and above.
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely good stuff, man, Thank you so much, Brian,
Speaker 2: Thanks Tony, Talk soon.
Speaker 1: H