Hey, what's going on, everybody? This is the blockchain backer bringing you the latest cryptocurrency news and analysis. Today, we're going to be talking about the state of the crypto market and mixing in a lot of the macro picture along with it. While Bitcoin sits at $60,900, as the altcoin market continues its waddle after sweeping the lows over the last two weeks, as macro markets still continue to be stuck in this range for the Dow.
and the Russell. But of course, the million dollar question on everybody's mind is whether or not Bitcoin is going to continue its march into higher highs and get into an actual expansion, taking the altcoin market along with it, which of course would likely mean that we need to see that also occur over here in the United States stock market, where we have an opening up of breadth. which of course means we'd want to see an opening of breadth here in the crypto market after the altcoin market got rejected from the 702 Fibonacci retracement level. So in this video, I will show you an example of something similar to this that did go off into new all-time highs for Bitcoin.
But at the same time, I'm going to show a lot of different things on what make the picture so complicated right now compared to the past. We would all love to sit here and just say four-year cycles, we're doing exactly what we've always done, and that we're just going to do what we've always done. We get back to the all-time high, we shoot off into the moon, just as we did over here in 2020 and 2021, and just as we did over here in 2016 and 2017. Here we are waddling up here near the top. Everybody's anticipating the same thing, that we get it and we go off and away into the sunset we all ride.
If the picture was that easy, I'd be more than happy to sit here and say, you know what? Everything looks exactly the same. But there are a lot of stark differences that are showing up in the market that you obviously have seen if you've been tuning into the channel. And I'll try to do a good job painting the picture as well as I can in the limited amount of time that I have for a YouTube video. But I'll show you the examples and the scenarios.
on how you can shoot yourself off into the moon. Is it an appropriate time for something like that to be happening in the market? But then also painting that picture of why it's so difficult right now. So I think we'll go ahead and start right now. But what we're going to start with is we're actually going to start with the difficulties rather than like the hopium and optimism and everything like that.
And the first thing we can do is simply just look at Bitcoin for the last several years. Now, the first thing we have to all come into agreement with on this video before even moving forward. is that this is actually the top of Bitcoin and the top of the cryptocurrency market in 2021, which is back there in March, April, and May of 2021, when Elon Musk goes on to Saturday Night Live.
If this is the first time you're hearing this, this is actually how we were able to get through the bear market in 2022 and 2023, recognizing that that was the peak. We've actually gone back and compared. 2013, 2014, 2015, and 16 to what has actually happened to Bitcoin here from 2021 all the way to 2024. And the similarities are absolutely remarkable from where our peak of euphoria occurs at, our retracement rally, the rally prior to capitulation, and then accumulation, and then we break out of the accumulations together, and then the march-up continues to happen, and the next breakout happens together as well.
this all reflects that the peak of the market took place back in April when Coinbase IPO'd. We've talked about this for a very long time. We spent a tremendous amount of time in 2023 showing how this behavior was the same as here and here from 2018 and from 2014. Those who were calling for 12K, it did not make any sense to go to 12K. We had done the completed crash. the big complication that threw everybody off, including me at the time, even though I thought it was the peak of the market, I did not think we were that deep into a bear at the time for the rest of the market, like the altcoins.
But the thing that threw everybody off is that we could actually already be in a bear market and Bitcoin set this brand new all time high. And we could even see that with the price behavior of how we were acting like we were already super deep into a bear market, even though we were coming off of a new high. we've all seen this many times as well.
I'll zoom in, get that off of there. But to realize that we were acting like a bear market way up here because we were already in one. And we know that because 90% of our altcoins peaked right here in this 702 Fibonacci retracement, which we can add different coins like Dogecoin to show that's where the peak of Doge came in, whether it's Litecoin.
peaks there into that rally never to set new highs for either of these already deep in a bear we can add a whole lot more assets and see that that peak right here for all these altcoins happens back here in april and in may not here in november as 90 of the market was unable to set new all-time highs giving confluence to the fact that the peak of the market occurs during the euphoria of elon musk saturday night live April and May of 2021. And that the rally for Bitcoin that happens over here resembles that of being actually very deep into a bear already, which is why we had that behavior happen here in the altcoin market then. Again, throwing the whole market for a loop, including me for the altcoins. How could we set a new all-time high and yet still be in a bear? But we were.
and we can really see that behavior reflected when we actually go back to 2017. We just talked about how we saw all the altcoins rally and 90% of them come in for their peak here in this 702 retracement, indicating that this is the peak of the market. That's the same thing that happened back in 2017, is that right off the peak, we have that 702 Fibonacci retracement in here. And if I again add something like Dogecoin, you can see it in here the peak of doge happens into that retracement that's the peak of the market then it goes off into the long bear right there from that rally as the peak happens and that that's exactly what happened for doge over here into that retracement rally there comes the top of doge and off into the long bear it goes the exact same thing but we can also see that for a lot of the other coins too that here is the peak of 2017. We can scroll in a little bit closer.
So Bitcoin becomes a little bit more visible, which is the candlesticks in here. Here's the peak of Bitcoin back on December 17th, 2017, just a little bit under $20,000. It falls and then it goes back into its 702 Fibonacci retracement. And that's where all the coins peak at. And then we enter into the bear that what we see happening for Bitcoin here in 2021 is really the same story happening.
Bitcoin goes back and into the 702 retracement the altcoins come up and peak into that retracement and then that's really it for most of the market bitcoin touches the new high altcoins don't bitcoin acts like it's already super deep into a bear market it goes on and hits its low We recognize this, that this had already completely played out. So we spent really all of 2022 and 2023 kind of mocking the idea that 12K could end up coming because we had actually already completed all phases of what needed to occur to get the depths that we needed to get. Because we realized we're not starting a bear for Bitcoin here in November. The bear actually started way back in April, which is also why when people were calling for 12K back then in September and October of just last year.
that it just didn't make any logical sense for us to go do it at that point with how far into this we were. That really, your chance for that to occur was really back here in 2022 if you were going to get that. But we can even look at the indicators on Bitcoin to show that this is actually the peak as well back in April and May of 2021. And the easiest way is just to put us on the monthly timeframe.
We can see it here when we turn all of these on to see that this was the peak of the market back here in April. If we just go ahead and put some lines here at the peak of the market in December of 2017 and right here in April of 2021, we could see how our relative strength index begins to fall off of a cliff from these levels right here in April, not over here in November. We could see our stochastic RSI has gone into a free fall into bear here in 2018, just as we have over here in 2021 after we set the peak there in April. You can even see the MACD peaks out right here in April, just as it peaks out over here in December of 2017. And so we just spent a lot of time talking about this, but this was one of the hardest things for people to grasp onto throughout 2022 and 2023, and was why we still continue to hear calls for 12K, even as we got into October, right before the market rallied. But what's so fascinating about this has been the time at which it is operated.
For that these things actually have happened on ridiculously close time frames for them to occur in here. From the peak, to the rally, to the rally prior to capitulation. to capitulating, to breaking out of the ranges at the exact same time. It's been a very fascinating phenomenon to watch this happen here for Bitcoin, in which when I made one of these posts back in October of 2023, saying, hey, we've kind of reached that point where we should be escaping the range with how amazing this timing has been. Even CZ Binance commented on that one saying history rhymes.
And lo and behold, from right there on October 11th, we started marching up and up and up. getting the escape as did the altcoins from right there on october 11th still continuing to follow along but that was a very long way of saying that's the peak of the market Not that. And I have to go through that whole explanation in there because our brains tell us, uh, no, I can clearly see that's the peak of the market. But the cold hard reality is that's actually the peak of the market back in April and in May, not in November, as even our altcoins show us.
Eight minutes ago, I told you that we were going to start by talking about the complications and then I go off and talking all about that. But even that alone is one of the complications that we saw happen in the crypto market just last cycle. That Bitcoin could set a new all-time high and us already being a bear market.
That hasn't happened before. In 2017 and in 2013, the altcoins rallied all up into the final peak of Bitcoin, both here and in here. These were the peaks for the altcoins, but that wasn't necessarily the case for the altcoin market here in 2021. Most altcoins did not set all-time highs here.
Some did, but most did not. Not only did they not set new all-time highs, they didn't even set highs higher than what they had set back in April and May. That's different.
But if we're going to look at this market from that aspect of being like, hey, we've been in a bear long enough, just like we were in a bear back in 2018, 19, and 20, well, that's the peak of the market. The altcoins tell us that's the peak of the market. The indicators tell us that's the peak of the market. So let's take a look at it and see how long we've been in here right now. And what you can clearly see is that by the time we were here in 2020, we were already breaking off into a new all-time high.
We had gotten back here like this, as we could see, but we had already broken off and gone. Matter of fact, we'd already making two stabs to the upside. We had gone here from $20,000 all the way up to $42,000, pulled back, and then shot our way up to $58,000 already by the time we had gotten here right now.
You could see pretty remarkable to even move on that same time frame right there from the peak of the market. But then something changes. This was the level in which we were able to expand this market from.
This is where expansion happens, which is this leg right here. And we don't get into expansion. I've seen this one posted up there on Twitter a whole lot that, hey, we're just going to do what we did back in 2020. And we're going to go off and do one of these things and go. But you can clearly see that didn't happen. We should have broken right there.
And instead, we went the opposite way. To reflect back on that, here's the peak. Here's the rally. Here's the fall. You get over here.
The moment that we should have actually continued that. reflect back on april 12th and 13th that's where we have the back-to-back liquidations that take the market in the opposite direction this whole thing that happens right here where combined with these two days together we crush the market and liquidate the market at a level exceeding any liquidation event before when following this idea should have gone and continued out again you This was the moment that the market expanded in 2020, and we did not. And so you say to yourself, was this nothing more than a retrace?
And is that all we're going to get for now? Because one thing that is very interesting about the price behavior that happened for Bitcoin is that it's really like the same sized rally that took place off the lows. And I've talked a lot about this in the past.
with like an emotional log talking about what it was like coming off the lows and that once we would escape from $32,000 that's where it would feel like the weight of the world would come off of your chest because that's what it was like in 2019 and then we do all the phases in here and then we finish this thing off with a nice little five wave structure as we did over here on this ending phase right in here as we retraced back in 2019 you and then just kind of waddled around in there, right? That what happened in 2019 was a retracement and that we didn't go into expansion when we did that rally off those lows. And well, we know we didn't go into expansion and we saw a retracement really just like that for the altcoin market so far. and it's one thing to just look at it and say, hey, price behavior is very similar, but right, do we have other elements in there that are very similar as well?
And that's where we've talked a lot about things like restrictive credit environments and the federal funds rate that every Bitcoin bull run comes off of zero bound interest rates or near zero during QE, money printing, all kinds of good stuff, right? And that when we had that refracement rally happen in here, when did that occur? that occurred during a what? A Fed pause cycle.
And what have we been in here right now? We've been in a Fed pause cycle with a restrictive credit environment during QT, not QE. So of course, everybody says, well, hey, you know what, we're going to cut rates and it's going to be super bullish.
But it's like, okay, well, what happened when we started cutting rates last time? We went all the way back down. It wasn't until we were actually zero bound that we were able to get ourselves into some expansion. And so if we just kind of take a look at that particular moment in time, we can see all the similarities happening in there when it comes to price action, where we find ourselves stuck here in a range until we're finally able to escape.
Then another range right in here. And then how does it conclude? It concludes with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. ending, and then stuck, which as we've shown, both happening during pause periods after a hiking cycle. And like we've shown in here, all real bull runs for Bitcoin start when we're coming off of zero bound, no matter where we look.
And the only example we have in Bitcoin's life cycle of what happens when we're paused after a hiking cycle is that we did that. And now here we are, same environment. You say to yourself, well, hey, it's set a new all-time high. This time must be different. Maybe, but like we just showed, they're nearly the same.
And again, the complications of this market is that we even saw this retrace somehow get higher than where the true peak of the market actually happened. And we did technically only see the altcoin market do a retrace. Even Ethereum and the one that everybody lost their mind over, Solana, was just a retrace.
not getting into expansion. Also, if we go back to this idea of where, hey, this should have been expansion happening right here if people are following this model. and instead it goes a polar opposite way, well, zoom out on a bigger time frame and we can kind of look at what the indicators look like in here. Which one are we resembling? Are we resembling this where it goes into expansion as Bitcoin tries to clear through its all-time high?
Notice what's happening here with the relative strength index? Or are we more so resembling what's going on in there after a retrace where we're trending down with the relative strength? And what you could see from here from this moment is the direction we're going here. Which one are we more resembling?
Going into expansion or retracement? Look down here at the MACD. Are we resembling expansion as we were up here?
Expansion or crossing over like a retrace? And this is on the weekly timeframes. We're not looking at small timeframes. We're looking at the weekly stuff here.
And so the reason we talk about this being a complication is because the E. Culture of crypto is that Bitcoin gets back to the all-time high, and if it gets back to the all-time high, it symbolizes that we go in for breakout. And that's fine, but you would think we'd be showing some resemblances of that.
And so far up until this point, we have not reached the point of expansion. And if you were going to compare this to the last cycle, it failed. So you have to say to yourself, well, why did it fail? And that gets to the point of the United States stock market and risk on versus risk off or breadth opening up in markets and participants willing to take risk or consolidation in markets and participants not willing to take risk. And what we constantly see is NASDAQ new all-time highs, S&P new all-time highs.
But for some reason, the Russell 2000 is not following along. I've done videos on this. I've made tweets about this.
I've traveled the world and given presentations on this. I just posted this over here on Twitter last week, that every Bitcoin expansion into new all-time highs occurs when there's expansion in the United States stock market. 2013, 2017, and 2021 bull runs all had this in common. Expansion in stocks happens and Bitcoin expands, and that doesn't exist right now. which we can go back in time and see that when the expansion for Bitcoin did occur back in 2020, where it gets back to that high and breaks out right here, it occurs as breadth and expansion is opening up in the United States stock market.
And the Russell 2000 is breaking out into new all-time highs. That also occurs here in 2017. The Russell 2000 breaks out into new all-time highs with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and off goes Bitcoin into its bull run. The same thing occurs here in 2013. The Russell breaks into the new all-time highs.
The Dow Jones breaks into the new all-time highs. Guess what? Bitcoin, after being in a bear market for a year and a half, boom, breaks out with it and ends up going into expansion at the same time. This is the first time since the great financial crisis that the Russell has not broken out with the major indexes.
So what is happening with the major indexes? Well, while Friday may have been a red day in the market, we know this is the NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta, and Netflix show. The market has massively consolidated into these few assets. And so what's happening is in times of economic uncertainty and risk aversion, investors will go into the large cap companies. However, when there's optimism about the economy and people want to take on risk, we see the whole market expand together.
And so whenever there's risk aversion, the things that are typically on people's minds are going to be things like. economic growth, inflation, unemployment, interest rates, geopolitical tensions. And so we think to ourselves, hey, we see those new all-time highs over there.
Everything must be great. But the context of what's happening underneath the hood is incredibly important, that it's actually a moment of extreme uncertainty. And it's actually a moment of extreme consolidation into large caps, rather than expanding out and broadening out to the whole market. And so this environment that has happened here, where it's just super consolidated in the stock market, our eyes tell us, hey, new all-time high for the NASDAQ.
It must mean everybody is super optimistic. However, it's actually the opposite. It's everybody pouring into very consolidated large caps, reducing their risk exposure and not wanting to take shots on smaller caps and growth.
It's them just getting into the established names. And that's the polar opposite of what happens. when we go into actual expansions, because this is the moment for all of the breakouts and all the optimism to return to markets.
And I've shown this as well with retirement funds as well, that this is not the same context as 2012, 2016, or 2020, that what we saw happening back there was that we saw true expansion happening here for retirement funds. As we go into 2013, we have expansion happening here. As we go into 2017, we have expansion happening in here.
As we finish off 2020 and head into 2021 for retirement accounts. But you can see here, the retirement accounts are not doing that. The retirement accounts are acting a lot like the Russell.
Because this is not a wide open, broad rally in markets. It's incredibly consolidated into a few assets. And so this context of what is actually happening right here is something we have not experienced here in the cryptocurrency market during an expansion. We always get it.
We always get that Russell to get going. the whole market goes, breadth open up, everybody's chasing everything, extreme optimism about the whole economy and the whole stock market and everything gets going. And we had that in 2020 when Bitcoin got back to its all-time highs, that the breadth was opening up and that the Russell was running, but we obviously don't have that now. And there's only one other time where we kind of did something like this, where the Russell did not follow along.
And that actually happens to be right here. This was a moment where the Dow Jones Industrial Average did break out into a new all-time high. However, the Russell, as you can see, did not follow along.
It did not go into expansion as the Dow did go off into that new all-time high. It's the only other time that has happened since the great financial crisis. Otherwise, they've always moved in unison with each other to break into new all-time highs.
And so what's unique about this one time period where it didn't happen? Well, it happened. What happened after a Fed pause cycle?
The Fed is paused. The Dow even sets a new high here. The Russell still way below its previous high in here.
Dow Jones just marches its way up. The Russell never gets into the new high. And then what happens?
We go into C19 and everything collapses as the Fed starts cutting rates. What is this time period right in here? It's all of this for Bitcoin.
It's this whole moment right in here. you have the dow setting new highs you have the russell not following along you have an elevated fed funds rate you got a bitcoin retracement and then we all know the story right so this is the the only time we have that in any way resembles something remotely like what we have right now and they're obviously not identical because bitcoin's touched a new all-time high right so with bitcoin's 15-year life cycle There's only one time where we've done something remotely like what we see right now. And it was this time period right in here. Dow new high.
Russell not following along. Fed funds elevated rate. Bitcoin retracement.
And obviously, we have this on standard scale for Bitcoin. But the way we've obviously been looking at it today has been more of in this format. But it was all this moment, right throughout all of this, right. And that's where we saw the Russell not following along. Another thing that has made it so complicated as well has been that the Dow Jones Industrial Average has obviously gotten to a 4.236 extension based on the great financial crisis.
One thing that we saw that happened prior to the great financial crisis was again, a time period very similar to this, where we we had an elevated Fed funds rate, and the Dow goes off into a new all-time high shortly before we go into the great financial crisis. Well, what has happened in here? It's the exact same story.
We go off into the new high during the paused Fed funds rate. And so when we look at the price behavior of how that happened, how it's range bound, we get into a pause, it breaks into a new high, and we do the same thing here. what did that price action look like for the Dow when it did that?
It really looked just like this. I'll take some of this stuff off. But you can see with where we've gotten in here, it's like we've done a lot of these phases and as if you would be like, right. there.
So that's not good. And the fact that the Russell only got to its 618 retracement and didn't expand isn't exactly great either, based on everything that we've seen before. So it's no wonder Bitcoin didn't expand, because we haven't expanded in all markets. And the true measure of risk on and broadening out of markets is the Russell, and it's not going just like retirement funds aren't going. And so on Twitter, I posed this question.
I said, were you an adult during the great financial crisis? Yes or no. In which over half of respondents said they were not an adult during the great financial crisis. I didn't really have any intention behind this tweet that I did outside of just kind of wanting to get a gauge of what it's like to be a participant in this market based on the life experiences that you have. And for those who are not an adult during the great financial crisis.
it means they didn't experience what it was like to be a new homeowner or to be in an office and watch half the staff get laid off and go into work every single day and wonder if it's going to be you who gets laid off today or finally getting laid off and it taking months to be able to find a job and you end up taking a job that just is trash and you're miserable because it's not a job that you really want but you were desperate for it and you needed a job just to be able to survive and provide for your family And so it lets me know that half the people who watch, half the people who participate out there in the crypto market on crypto Twitter, it's all they've ever known in their adult lifetime is that every four years we go up. So essentially, anybody under the age of 35, and that's a rough number, maybe 36, 37, they don't have any life experience whatsoever of being in a recession. Their only reference points are up, up, up, up, up, up, up.
And that makes sense because this has been a massive bubble that just hasn't stopped. And where it is right now is the same size of how big it was during the roaring 20s before the Great Depression happened. You look back on it and you think, what was it like when the Great Depression happened? And it's that there was an insane bubble that happened and popped before the Great Depression happened.
You have a really crazy bubble that gets popped. that is the exact same size of what we have right now. And for anybody under 35, 36, 37, the expectation is that's the only thing that can happen, is that it just keeps going. So discussions like this are met with a lot of pushback, especially when you say, hey, it's probably pretty unlikely that Bitcoin's going to do very much if this is what ends up happening, because there's so much training.
there's only so much life experience that's taken place in this market to think it must just keep going up because of four-year cycles and black reward halvings rather than being like, hey, maybe it just happened because we're in one of the biggest asset bubbles of our lives. And what we have seen is that every time expansion happens in this market, that's also when Bitcoin goes into expansion. And what happens if we don't go into expansion? What happens if that's the future? or God forbid, that.
A broadening wedge in both circumstances with bubbles of the same magnitude. What happens to Bitcoin in that circumstance? We don't know. All we know is that in expansions, Bitcoin goes up and expands as well. But if we're not expanding, Bitcoin doesn't either.
And we can see right here with the Russell and with the Dow on the screen, along with Bitcoin, where does Bitcoin rally? It rallies here with the Russell, with the Dow, all the way up. And what happens? They all stop at the same time and range, unable to expand. And what phenomenon do we see happening in the stock market?
Like we saw in crypto in 2021, and it's that large caps get into the highs, and small and medium caps are unable to do more than just get back to a retracement, which is exactly what we saw in crypto in 2021. That the peak of the market takes place back in April and May, and most of the market cannot set new highs outside of what? A few large caps. Because most of the market looks like this.
Retirement funds look like this. ARK, a perfect example of it, filled with small and medium caps. Not doing anything. Coinbase only doing a retracement. Tesla, nowhere close to its 2021 highs.
Down over 50%. And so this is a complication of the market right now, is that we don't have expansion happening in broader markets. and for that we can see bitcoin did not go into expansion either and this rally that took place here for bitcoin back near the highs failed just like it did over here for expansion in broader markets as well and so that's where we sit right now we've got everybody drawing lines on charts and saying this and that and not wondering why did we fail and the reason we failed is because we don't have risk on in markets it's The crazy phenomenon of extreme consolidation.
It's actually risk aversion rather than broadening out expansion and risk on. And so I've mentioned this term before to say we are navigating uncharted waters right now. While everybody is pointing to past models and not recognizing the problems with them or even these indicator behaviors that are different happening in here.
The uncharted waters here are that. everybody's looking at the stock market thinking it's doing great not recognizing that it's extreme consolidation and that all of bitcoin's bull runs come in these moments where these breakouts are taking place at and breadth is opening up throughout the whole market and that it's not the block reward happening happening it's expansion in broader markets that happens that eventually sends bitcoin on its way and that has happened in all three of the past major bull runs for Bitcoin, that that's when it occurs. And we don't have that.
And so I think it's pretty blatantly obvious of what we need to happen in here. This thing has to expand. And if it doesn't, then it's hard to know what the future of Bitcoin or crypto is. People always look to me, you know, what's my opinion?
What are my thoughts? And this is really just the major challenge we have right now. It doesn't matter what my thoughts are.
It doesn't matter what my opinions are. Everything I do, I try to back it with data. and I try to present it to you so you can see it and have the information for yourself and come up with your own opinions and your own thoughts. We're all trying to predict the future. We're all speculating on what the next thing that's going to happen is going to be.
And we try to find the data points that ended up mattering. I don't think there's an argument here. You go into expansion, Bitcoin goes into expansion, and the block reward havings have not been this consistent, right?
I've shown this many times, the amount of time that elapses before it's able to set a new all-time high for Bitcoin, that the dates are just inconsistent in here. That it takes 84 days after the halving for Bitcoin to set the new all-time high back in 2012 and 2013. It's 180 days after for 2016 and 2017 for Bitcoin to hit the all-time high. And then over here in 2020, it's 224 days after the halving before it hits the all-time high.
but we can clearly see to get the expansion, it's all right in line with this stuff. Everybody can argue it until they're blue in the face, but these are just data points. You can't rewrite the history on the data points.
They're there. So I think it's pretty obvious we have to get that. We have to have the market completely open itself up. anybody is going to depend on four-year cycles, block reward halvings, or that Bitcoin gets back to the all-time high, so it must break out into the new all-time high because that's what it always does. Well, you can look into other markets and see what actually is occurring there, and that when Bitcoin gets back to those all-time highs and does expand into the all-time highs, the timing of it is when it's expanding everywhere.
And so we need that. And so again, the point is all about this is with complications, right? anybody making those reference points to being back at the all-time high like in 2020, you could see it failed when it should have gotten out. It's not rising in relative strength like it should have been back in 2020. Instead, it's declining like it was back in 2019. And as we can see with the MACD and a solid uptrend, you can see it's already turned over and heading down on the weekly timeframe without expansion happening in the market.
And that is a complication. because that makes it totally different than any time we've ever seen before. Because every time Bitcoin has gotten back to the all-time high, what has happened? It breaks out and it goes every single time.
But what you see is the technical weakness mixed with the macro of a different picture. And that makes us navigating in uncharted waters. And I don't have all the answers for what that means. I pray to God that is not what is coming up next. Because if it is, over 50% of these people have never been through a recession.
They have no idea what to think of it. And in real recessions, it's years of crud. And we're not just talking about the stock market. We're talking about your everyday financial life.
So, now that I've terrified you and probably ruined your day and shown the failed breakout, where's the hope? And that's what we'll talk about for the rest of the video to finish it all off. How can we right the ship? First of all, I think the most obvious thing that we have to have happen here is we have to see that the stock market is going to recover and that broadening is going to open up here.
Based on all historical data, it indicates that that is mandatory. People love to argue that Bitcoin is its own thing. It's its own sound money, all that stuff. I mean, come on.
We see it, right? We see it. This is our deciding factor that we have to get into expansion.
but if you are going to operate on a timeframe such as four years or based on past bull markets and recoveries and bear markets for Bitcoin, I think you can clearly see it did not do what it was supposed to do for 2020. I think so. However, this thing has still not failed itself. The price of Bitcoin is actually exactly where it's supposed to be to the dollar.
based on 2014 through 2016, that it is literally exactly where it's supposed to be right now. That is right here. If the powers that be, who somehow, someway make this market operate exactly on time as it should, still have their finger on the pulse of the market, well, guess what?
They've placed the price exactly where it should be today. And at this point in time for Bitcoin. It had not gone into expansion yet. As a matter of fact, you still had plenty of altcoins sitting down here at the lows, like XRP back in 2017 at this particular moment. You can see that on Litecoin here as well.
Nothing going on. But eventually, they started taking off right here before Bitcoin went into expansion. However, right here. dead.
And so if we look at it through that lens of where XRP was when Bitcoin was behaving like this back in 2014 through 2016, XRP's price was still sitting way down here at this moment. Well, what's it look like right now? Well, there you go. I'll lighten this one up. And you can see it's not behaving really out of line at all compared to what was actually happening in 2014 through 2016. With Bitcoin being at the current price level that it's at right now.
And what's also real interesting about that dynamic is that we've shown this before too. When we look at the total market cap of all of crypto in relation to the price of XRP, it has only gotten back to this level one time in all of history. And it was at that particular moment when that happened. Back in 2017, when Bitcoin was sitting right there in February, like we just showed right here.
In February, we have all the same dynamics showing up in here. You have this massive bearish diversion showing up for the total market cap versus the price of XRP. Weekly stochastic falling off of a cliff.
And this one's really interesting right here. We could see that the MACD has reached those historical extremes of that time, and it has already crossed down to the downside on this weekly time frame. That has only happened two times before. before that massive rally for XRP, where it goes from like a quarter of a penny to 33 cents. And then when it rallies from like 50 cents to $2 at the peak of the market in 2021, when the MACD does that.
And so when we think of it in this manner, essentially kind of thinking of it like the dominance of XRP versus the entire market of crypto, you can look at it from the opposite way, reaching these historical extremes. when we look at xrp.de. But if we're going to look at it from that manner and think, all right, there's supposed to be a time here where something like this could happen, you'd probably want to be looking over there at the Bitcoin dominance, right?
And so this is Bitcoin dominance over the course of the last decade, last 10 years. As we all know, it's just been doing this creep, creep, creep, creep, creep. For the last year, we've had a bearish divergence over here on the weekly.
We put ourselves on the two-week chart. We just see Stochastic just gradually grinding down. MACD just slowly trailing off. Bearish Divergence over here. But the question is, when is this thing going to break down?
And I've often discussed about it a lot that, you know, the dominance of Bitcoin can be measured in the light of being like a safety trade. But that the difference between the safety trade of 2018, 2019, and 2020 was very different than the safety trade that we had here in crypto. in 2022, 23, and 24, in that the stablecoin market was incredibly small in the crypto market. The only stablecoin we had was Tether, and it represented $1 billion market cap. So if you wanted to seek safety from the altcoin market during a bear market, you had the choice of going to Bitcoin.
or leaving the market. There were no stable coins over there on Coinbase, unlike now where you have the options. But Bitcoin's dominance merely represents what's the market cap of Bitcoin compared to the market cap of the whole crypto market. And as we can see right now, the market cap of Bitcoin is 54.6% of the entire crypto market.
We can calculate that ourselves simply by doing the market cap of Bitcoin over the total market cap of the cryptocurrency market. And what do you know, we come up with the exact same number 0.54 or 54%. As we can see, we've gotten back to resistance here for Bitcoin's dominance.
But what happens if we actually remove the stable coins from the market? Because right now the stable coins are still included in the total market cap of crypto and in the Bitcoin dominance. So excluding the stable coins, and if we're just looking at actual cryptos out there, Bitcoin's dominance is actually 58% of the cryptocurrency market.
We're not really seeing that big of a jump in Bitcoin dominance like we did back over here in 2018, 19, and 20. And one of those reasons is because Ethereum has held its dominance during all of 2021, 22, 23, and 24 and still sits here at 18% dominance. In the 2018 bear market, the dominance of Ethereum went all the way from 22% down. to 7%.
That means that Bitcoin took 15% of the dominance of the market back just from Ethereum alone. However, we can see Ethereum just waddling in a range of its dominance the whole time, never falling like it did back in 2018. So I've talked about this a lot, that the safety trade has not only been Bitcoin, but it's actually also been Ethereum. and it's been the stable coins like USDT and USDC, as we didn't really have a market for those back in 2018 through 2020. And so one thing that was very fascinating about the Bitcoin dominance back in 2019 through 2021 is that by the time we had rallied all the way back up here for the Bitcoin dominance, it really gets stalled out here at where the 702 Fibonacci retracement of its previous fall Then it just waddles on and on and on and on and on until finally stabbing back at it for a second time. And then finally going, well, if we account for Bitcoin dominance and remove the other safety trade aspects of this, such as USDT, USDC, our stable coins and Ethereum, we can actually see that Bitcoin has already done the exact same thing. Rallying back to the 702, pulling back and stabbing at it for a second time, leaving us where we are right now.
And so you say to yourself, you know, why doesn't this look so much like that? If we're just watching the typical transitions and flows of Bitcoin dominance back and forth, why is it so different than what's going on in here? Down here in 2018 through 2020, it comes back, takes back, doubling its dominance. Down here, 2021 through 2024, it comes back, only getting about half that.
And then looking so starkly different in here between the two. Well, when we take into account those things like stable coins and how... Ethereum is now part of the safety trade. It actually has been behaving incredibly similar.
And what we can see that has happened in here is just the amount of time that has elapsed since this started. In 2018 through 2020, it was 1,085 days between the bottom to the peak before it rolled over all over again. And right now, we're at 1,136 days.
So has enough time elapsed? It certainly seems like it. And it's very similar to what happened back then to where we just spend a whole year just trending and then hitting it again, but not getting out. And really, that's it, right?
This peak is from June of last year. So we're now at over a year of just sitting right here talking about this thing. But that's really very similar to what we did do last time. And if you were to have a moment of something like this end up coming in here, what does that actually mean? that means that the altcoins do well because there is expansion happening throughout the market, which would mean like with XRP being something like this.
And like we're talking about with XRP versus 2016 and 17, that it's something like this right now, which it just so happens to be. And well, if we go back to that time period of 2016, can we look at these indicators and see anything like that going on in there before getting into an all time high? And well, as you can see, as we were up here.
There was a lot of chop in here and that weekly RSI did get down to that level, which it hasn't exceeded at this point. There were several times where the weekly stochastic RSI fell off a cliff in there before getting into escape. There were times in here.
where the MACD did roll over and cross itself, as we see in here. And so we can look at all these different things and say, not looking good, or, oh, no, it's all okay. Things we can clearly see in both of these in that retracement rally of Bitcoin back in 2019 is the RSI breaks this level right in here, right?
Clearly, we could see when the bear market starts hitting in over here, like we talked about, the top of the market being this rally here. You can see the RSI breaks that level in there. And well, for those who have been around long enough to hear of double tap on top of the all-time high, bull flag, breakout, violent backtest V bottom, it's not too crazy to think you could just be doing that right here back at the all-time high, holding that retracement level that happens right there. An example of that.
It is like Ethereum from back in 2017. We had ranged all the way from June all the way over here until November. We escaped finally, do a couple of bounces on top of the top, and then finally we shoot our way off, violent backtest, and boom, we go on and mark the top. So it's not insane to do something like that up here.
It's even dubbed a double tap, bull flag, breakout, short squeeze, violent backtest, V bottom for those who have watched the channel for years. that that's a phenomenon that can occur at the all-time high. So it's not insane. Even structurally looking at it, it has a lot of the same similarities that happen in here to what happens on those as they pull back down to the lows again. But no matter how many technical things we look at, how many structures we look at, how much relative strength index we look at, stochastic RSI, MACDs, fractals of retraces versus fractals of breakouts, fractals of past bear markets and past cycles massage our hopium about block reward havings and four-year cycles hop into twitter spaces and talk about sound money and the death of the dollar absolutely none of it matters without that.
And if you want alpha, and if you want to know if this market is going higher, and if you want to be the first one on Twitter to unequivocally, unwaveringly, cocky, and confidently say Bitcoin is going higher, see this thing break out, the Russell 2000, because it is unequivocal, which means there is no doubt. There is no room for debate. There is no argument to be had.
There is no opinion to entertain. To think that we will have a crypto bull run without that occurring. Because a little known secret is that every Bitcoin bull run, every alt season, every four-year cycle, every everything depends on it. Because have there been times where the S&P breaks out ahead of the Russell? Yes, it happened in 2020. Have there been times where the NASDAQ breaks out ahead of the Russell 2000?
Yes. It happened in 2020. It happened in June of 2020. But it took all the way until November of 2020 for actual expansion to hit the market. And that is when Bitcoin was able to break out into the new all-time high, just like every past bull run in the history of Bitcoin. And from a technical perspective, this seems like an incredibly reasonable place to see balances start forming in this market. the million dollar question is going to be getting back up into retracements again.
And if we get back there and this thing is doing that, then I'll have no doubt in my mind, we are going to too. But as I've stated, the data is unequivocal. We have to have any argument otherwise that breadth doesn't have to open in the United States stock market. And it'd be a broad based rally throughout all markets.
If they have that opinion, they haven't done the research. I've done the research. I put my name on it.
I don't care. I'll come out here and have darts and arrows thrown at me for saying it. It doesn't matter because it's the truth.
But can we bounce from here? You better believe it. Not only is it a good technical place, but even that 50 week moving average to come in and scoop it up.
But if we really want it, we really want to get out of that retracement. This is what we need. And so if we bounce from here and if we work our way back up, that's going to be the thing I'm watching for. The last thing anybody wants is to say, hey, we're just going to range here for a while. I've been doing this long enough to know there is team up, there is team down, but absolutely nobody resides on team sideways.
That's the thing that nobody ever wants to hear is team sideways. And that gets dictated by this. So I wanted to show you the complications in the market that we have going on right now in regards to all the things that are happening in there, whether it's Bitcoin looking like a retracement or the absolute failure of the 2020 model or the similarities to 2016. or the technical indicators looking like a retrace falling down or the technical indicators looking like what it looked like back near the all-time high of 2016 but i've done enough research i've done enough of it for you because i put a lot of pressure on myself to come on to this youtube channel because at least 30 000 people are going to watch this video and that's a lot of people and i don't want to sound like a dummy and pull things out of my backside when i come on here to tell you This is what matters. Nothing else.
Saying it's the black reward having is a grift. It's a lie. It's not backed by any type of data.
And it's a fantasy narrative. And that's how we'll conclude this thing. All right, I'm going to go hide now.
All right, that's it. If you'd like to learn more about that, we put out a new newsletter here. We go into depth more about it, about breadth broadening. It was just published.
Obviously, this has been a topic on our brains for quite some time. So I've been neck deep in data on this. And that's why I'm just kind of trying to drive home that point so importantly right now. that I'm very ingrained in crypto culture.
I've gone to lots of conferences. I've traveled the world. I'm on crypto Twitter all the time. I totally know the narratives. I totally know what the belief system is.
And I know there's a lot of loud voices that perpetuate a lot of these belief systems on things like block reward halvings and four-year cycles. And the cold, hard reality is there is data that shows us what's going on. We can look at it.
It's there. We don't have to like rely on it. Hey, are you sure about that four year cycle thing and the block reward having thing? No, there's total data that tells it to us. So, oh boy.
It's been a long weekend. This video took three days to put together. And of course, at the same time, getting a 28 minute audio recording out there for the newsletter that was just published in there.
We got custom built indicators in there looking at breadth. We have absolute evidence to prove that breadth in the stock market even translates into breadth in the altcoin market. It is so correlated. It's truly remarkable. If you're subscribed to the newsletter, go check it out on blockchainbacker.substack.com.
If you're not subscribed, of course, go check it out. You get access to all the past ones as well. And of course, I read all of these to you too. If videos are more of your thing, I'd like to learn how to set up your own charts and your own indicators in TradingView and Cointrader Pro. Do a lot of the things that you see me do here on the YouTube channel.
I teach how to do all of these different things here. on my website at bcbacker.com. There are links in the description of this video to bcbacker.com and to the newsletter at blockchainbacker.substack.com.
And otherwise, if you've made it this far, you made it over 50 minutes into a video. And this is probably the longest video I've put out in a very, very, very long time. And I think I hope that kind of drives home the importance of the complications of this market of where it's gotten to, that it's gotten back to these retracements. It's gotten back to the stallout.
Everybody is screaming for higher and block rewards and everything. And all the data tells us we have to see expansion. We have to see breadth open in the markets. Are we at a place where something like that could happen?
Definitely. If you look to 2016 and 17, this is where it all kind of happened at. XRP, this is where it all kind of happened at. Bitcoin dominance, this is where it happens at. but there's that stuff there too with those elevated fed funds rates the dow at the 4.236 and acting like that it's a total mixed package and it certainly seems like based on how things have happened in the past that there's going to have to be a triggering event there's going to have to be a spark that gets set off and i think that's really what we're all kind of waiting for so All right, that's going to be it.
Holy cow. Three days. All right, I'm done.
Thank you guys so much for watching. If you could, please like the video and give it a thumbs up. If you're new to the channel, please subscribe and hit the notification bell so you can be notified of when I create new content and when I go live.
As always, this is not investment advice and I am not a financial advisor, but if you ever need a pick me up or a little bit of reassurance, just remember that the blockchain backers got your back. Have a good one.