Today’s newsletter was originally sent to paying subscribers back in November 2025. Since then, there’s been a wave of new readers coming in from TikTok and Instagram, so I wanted to reshare this piece to reinforce my stance on the asset I cover in this blog.

Volatility is the price you pay for exponential upside. Too many people at times like this decide to be tourists and step away, only to return when prices are climbing. The crazy upside is only possible in moments like this.

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As famous investor Peter Lynch once said:

“Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections or trying to anticipate corrections than has been lost in corrections themselves.”

I’m reading a ton of theories about where this market is headed, and most of them drift further from reality than a drunk pigeon.

Last August, I got very vocal about a new blockchain called SUI, which was showing early signs of gaining mindshare on the timeline and outperforming most of the top 20 coins in price, and at the time, going toe to toe with Solana’s resurrection from $8 lows.

Adeniyi Abiodun, former Head of Research and Development for Facebook’s Libra project and now one of the five Co-Founders of SUI, explained the project's vision.

Adeniyi Abiodun:

“Our Vision for Sui is to build a global coordination layer for intelligent assets, going beyond traditional blockchains. We’re creating a decentralised web stack that supports everything from smart contracts to decentralised storage with Warus, a global storage layer that is more distributed and cost-effective than AWS (cloud storage). This infrastructure will underpin a wide range of applications, offering unprecedented security and decentralisation.”

So it’s an infrastructure play designed to onboard the entire Web2 world onto Web3 seamlessly.

This matters because companies like Netflix, Apple, and Disney each burn through about $500 million a year on cloud-storage fees, the kind of money that makes you wonder why the whole Web2 internet wouldn’t jump to SUI’s high-speed, cost-efficient blockchain.

Franklin Templeton and BlackRock are actively leveraging SUI for tokenisation, and SUI has also partnered with the parent company of TikTok, ByteDance, for Web3 gaming and SocialFi apps.

This is no Mickey Mouse operation.

The ex-Facebook team is extraordinary. The technology is mind-blowing, and when I heard that macro and finance expert Raoul Pal was on their advisory board, it sealed the deal for me as a final, but significant, safety signal.

There’s one fundamental truth about SUI that very few notice.

It’s newer and smaller, which means it can rise faster than larger assets. If one person is in the network and one joins, that’s a 100% increase. But if one joins a network of 50, it’s only 2%. You get the idea.

The same logic applies in reverse, too, because it’s newer and more speculative, it also tends to bleed the most during drawdowns.

The drawdowns have been a stomach punch that, if I’m brutally honest, I didn’t expect at this stage in the cycle, not just in crypto but across financial markets.

It may come down to a simple explanation everyone knows but barely anyone’s clocking: crypto folks still glued to the old four-year cycle, convinced it’s time to sell because they think a bear market’s around the corner.

Rekt co-founder Mando pointed out that sentiment is scraping the floor. You only need ten minutes on X to feel it.

The Fear and Greed Index is at its weakest since the FTX collapse and March’s “tariff tantrum.” It measures Bitcoin sentiment across six signals: volatility, trading volume, social activity, surveys, Bitcoin dominance, and Google Trends. It’s about as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel when it comes to sentiment.

Folks may be selling purely because they think the four-year cycle is running out of road.

Mando says he doesn’t expect a deep drop, though the sideways chop could drag on longer than most people want to admit.

I think he’s right.

Mando:

“I am bullish on Risk Assets. At the same time, I am slightly data-driven, and I am cognizant—and have been for a while—that this was the four-year cycle time, and my bet was that it was going to extend. That being said, I think 50% of the market thinks on a four-year cycle because a lot of the OG Bitcoiners think like that. And if they all believe it, then maybe the market does go through a bit of an extended dip here, and you have to respect that that’s what the market believes. I don’t think it will be deep, and I think it will be a buying period. I do think that the correlation to M2 will return pretty aggressively. In 2026, M2’s only going higher, so I’m a buyer.”

Macro Indicators

Liquidity has been the puppet master of the financial markets.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen that M2 chart Mando references lined up next to Bitcoin with its tidy 12-week lead. Bitcoin basically shadowed the money supply until recently.

Now sentiment has flipped bearish, even though global M2 is sitting at an all-time high.

Some people (including me) blamed the government shutdown and reduced spending. Others (not including me) insisted it was the end of the cycle.

The mistake is assuming rough economic conditions automatically mean falling asset prices. They don’t. Central bankers don’t wait for the house to burn down, so they pump liquidity the moment smoke appears.

As Mike Howell, the global liquidity maestro since the 1980s, has shown, asset prices move in lockstep with central bank balance sheets.

When those expand, asset prices follow.

Mike Howell:

“If you have an expanding Fed balance sheet and an expanding injection of capital, that’s a recipe for very strong global liquidity. The best time for asset prices is when economies are slow and sluggish, but policymakers are trying to stimulate them, and that’s what we’ve got.”

Right now, the Fed is cutting rates.

Once those rates drop to a more sensible level, they’ll have to refinance roughly $7.4 trillion in debt that’s coming due, the same can they kicked down the road during the 2020 refinancing wave.

The key point is simple: this debt has to be rolled over.

But when rates were near zero, most of it was refinanced with an average maturity of about 5.5 years, not the 3–5 years most people assume. There’s a growing view online that the liquidity story still holds, people are just getting the debt maturities wrong.

According to the Joint Economic Committee’s September update, as of Q3 2025, roughly 31% of U.S. publicly held marketable Treasury debt, about $9.39 trillion out of $30.3 trillion, will mature within the next 12 months.

So that takes us to September 2026.

That’s a massive cluster of near-term maturities. It ramps up the chances of a rollover because the Treasury has to refinance that wall of debt, and when they do, asset prices tend to float higher, and our magic internet money gets its ticket to the gates of Valhalla.

What this says to me is we need to extend our time horizon, not that the cycle is over.

As business cycle expert Julien Bittel says:

“Nothing new here. The Fed won’t start QE until they can roll over debts at more sustainable levels – meaning rates have to come down first. Also, when we talk about “moar cowbell,” we’re talking about global liquidity, which can come from the PBoC (for example), private credit creation, rate cuts, a weaker dollar, or lower bond yields. All of these ease financial conditions and support growth. Phase One: Rate cuts.Phase Two: Debts get monetized.”

It looks like there are some early signs of the Fed moving into panic mode.

The SRF, or Standing Repo Facility, is like the Fed’s emergency cash tap for banks.

When money gets tight, banks can borrow short-term cash using Treasuries as collateral. The issue is, they’re not using it, which worries the Fed. If banks avoid the SRF even when they need cash, it means there’s a deeper problem in the system, and that’s why nerves are rising.

Macro expert RP thinks something structurally will happen imminently.

Raoul Pal:

“I think this week the Feds hand will be forced to tweak the plumbing to avoid a month-end and year-end funding crisis. Crypto is currently trading like a stressed funding vehicle reflecting the broken plumbing, while stocks are cushioned by buybacks and performance chasing for now, but risk a repeat of 2018/19 if not solved immediately. It’s clear the Fed are concerned, hence the meeting with the banks and NY Fed to understand why the SRF isn’t being tapped enough to resolve this. The fear from markets and the Fed is rising.”

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To loop back to Julien Bittell’s point about interest rates, we need to note that rates are dropping worldwide.

There are other factors besides the Fed.

Just look at the G-20, which comprises the world’s strongest economies: all but two are lowering rates. One is Japan, which has had record and returning inflation, and the other is Switzerland, which is already at a 0% interest rate.

The entire world is reducing rates, and people on the timeline are shitting their pants. Just think about it logically, if people have more money in their pocket, will they buy more or less crypto? Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this stuff out.

The current movement, driven by basically the entire world, does not signal an overheated market or end-of-cycle behaviour, but rather the opposite.

The macro outlook is very positive.

Take the steady decline in oil prices, which is essentially a tax on the entire system.

When oil is high, it costs more to move goods, produce goods, and live day to day. That drains money from businesses and consumers, leaving less to invest, so assets like crypto and stocks stagnate or fall faster than a broken elevator.

When oil prices drop, it’s like giving the world a giant fucking pay rise.

We know our magical internet money is just a product of financial conditions and people having more money in their skyrocket for discretionary spending.

Costs ease, spending picks up, and central banks face less pressure to keep rates high, freeing up liquidity that flows back into markets and lifts risk assets.

The dollar’s been quietly losing strength, and that’s a good thing.

Most of the world owes money in dollars. So when the dollar pumps, those debts get harder to repay. Countries need more of their own currency to buy the same number of dollars. That drains liquidity and tightens conditions, as we saw around Jan/Feb, right after Trump took office.

It appeared he was using a strong dollar as a stick to beat foreign leaders with during negotiations around the tariffs.

When the dollar softens, the pressure eases like letting a bit of air out of an overinflated tyre because there’s less crowding out of spending. But it also meant that China could print a shit ton of money without destabilising their local currency. And they did.

In short, a weaker dollar means stronger markets, and that’s exactly what we’re getting.

The ISM (Institute for Supply Management)

I share this data point often because I think it’s the bellwether for everything.

It’s the only thing I can think of that isn’t mid-curve nonsense or a misleading signal.

The ISM, specifically the PMI (Purchasing Managers’ Index) headline figure, is basically the economy’s pulse check.

It tracks the health of US manufacturing and services, and it’s one of the clearest signals of what’s coming next for liquidity and markets.

When the PMI runs hot, business activity surges, inflationary pressure builds, and central banks tighten the screws with higher rates. Liquidity dries up, and risk assets like crypto usually take the hit.

When the PMI cools, the opposite happens. Growth slows, central banks ease off, and liquidity flows back in, giving crypto, stocks, and other risk assets a fresh breath of oxygen.

In short:

• High PMI = overheated economy

• Low PMI = cooler economy

Right now, PMI has bottomed.

A score below 50 means cooling conditions, and anything around 60 signals overheating.

We’re far from the mania phase. We’re nowhere near the chaos of paying $500 in ETH gas fees like it’s confetti.

At 48.7, the reading shows we’ve bottomed, but it oscillates like a heart-rate monitor, and the next move looks to be up.

Again, you don’t need to be a brain surgeon to guess where the next move might be, considering the entire world is easing financial conditions.

Final Thoughts.

That’s why I’ve moved most of my crypto into SUI (my PNKSTR and NFTS haven’t moved).

I’m playing the multi-cycle game because these chances only show up every four years.

Last cycle, it was Solana. Four years prior, it was Ethereum as the anointed one. Both took 90% drawdowns on the chin. So SUI’s current correction isn’t fun, but it’s tame in comparison, and it says nothing about the quality of the asset.

Funnily enough, when I was speaking to Bren, an expert in technical analysis, he said if you saw those drawdowns in a stock, you’d assume the company was dead. He’s right. It really comes down to not applying old frameworks to a new set of rules.

Bitcoin has always experienced at least 5 brutal 30%+ drawdowns each cycle, and solid altcoins often drop by 60%+ in the process. As crazy as it sounds, it is actually completely normal.

I’ve seen this movie before. I held through ETH crashing to $80 after the ICO boom, Solana dropping from $247 to $8, and my NFT portfolio swinging from $1.4 million to $25k lows.

Now it’s SUI’s turn.

Nothing has fundamentally changed. There’s still a low float with only 37% of tokens on the market, so significant supply friction, and the market cap sits around $6 billion, with little buy pressure required for price gains.

The punchline is that the debt needs to be rolled over, but the Biden administration extended the maturity of the debts presumably to lock in the 0% rates for a longer period.

The bigger picture is extremely bullish.

The structural issues in the market might actually accelerate the Fed stepping in and tweaking the plumbing, as Raoul mentioned.

We’ve got $7.4 trillion in debt rolling over in the next 10 months, interest rates set to fall across 95% of central banks globally, oil prices retreating, the dollar index sliding (which adds liquidity), and the ISM already bottoming out and waiting for a rebound.

And for those saying, “But Jay, what about the AI bubble?”, people, including me, have been calling tech stocks a bubble since 2008.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway just dropped $4.9 billion into Google’s AI promise. He’s a value investor to the core, so either it’s a bubble or it’s undervalued. It can’t be both.

My take? We go much higher after some short-term pain.

Batten down the hatches, add where you can. Touch some grass. Kiss your dog on the fucking head.

Whatever keeps you sane, because in the end, we win.

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Me, Simon, and Burge met up this weekend to map out how we grow the lives and check out a few venues for the in-person meet-ups. Things are starting to take shape.

No April fools nonsense either. Just a straight conversation. We got into Bitcoin, crypto, NFTs, and PNKSTR properly.

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Simon jumped back on, fresh from his “European travels”, and we got into it. Bit on the manosphere documentary, insider trading in government, some NFT projects, and where we think crypto’s heading.

Proper conversation.

We’re also meeting up this weekend, me, Simon and Burge, to map out the next phase of the live streams and sort a spot for the next meet-up.

If you want to be a bit closer to all of this, not just watching but actually involved, the Carrot Lane inner circle is where it happens. That’s where the better conversations are and where things tend to get shared before they’re obvious.

You can join as a Founding member or go for the annual and book a 1-2-1 with me.

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Kevin Warsh isn’t cut from the usual economist cloth.

The highly measured, articulate, and slightly self-deprecating soon-to-be Fed chair once put it like this:

“If we learned anything in economics, it’s that productivity gains come before wage gains. And if you can’t be part of that productivity revolution, then the story of the US being the shining city on the hill starts to look more like a myth.”

He sounds dovish on US growth.

He’s also adamant the country needs to lead the charge on AI. And yet at the same time, he’s famously hawkish on inflation. Or at least, that’s how it looks on the surface.

Not long after Trump announced Warsh as Jerome Powell’s successor, gold, silver, and Bitcoin assets began to nuke, which the market read as “he’ll keep rates higher for longer”.

It’s the mistake every Tom, Dick and Sally is making.

Warsh grew up in upstate New York, and as a teenager, he was selling race programmes at Saratoga Race Course. Didn’t take him long to figure out a little trick to juice his tips.

He’d give eight different customers eight different horses, telling each one his “lucky pencil” had picked a winner. By the end of the day, one of them would come back convinced he was a genius and tip him accordingly.

Warsh later joked it was a foolproof way to pocket a nice bonus on big race days. Early lesson in finance, too. Always hedge your bets.

He’s not exactly short on connections either. Warsh is married to Jane Lauder, the billionaire heiress and granddaughter of Estée Lauder, as well as the daughter of billionaire businessman Ronald Lauder.

Trump once described him as “central casting,” while the media were a bit less generous, slapping him with the “nepo baby” label.

Where things start to get a bit murky is with those ties. Ronald Lauder has long been a major Republican donor, dropping $5 million into MAGA Inc in 2025.

He’s also an old college friend of Trump and is widely credited with first floating the idea of the US buying Greenland, partly for its mineral wealth to support AI expansion, and partly for its strategic value.

In interivew Lauder was quoted:

“Trump’s Greenland concept was never absurd, it was strategic. Beneath its ice and rock lies a treasure trove of rare-earth elements essential for AI, advanced weaponry and modern technology. As ice recedes, new maritime routes are emerging, reshaping global trade and security.”

These ties have naturally sent the spotlight burning a hole through Warsh and his potential appointment as Fed Chair, especially given the role is supposed to be strictly impartial and politically independent.

That independence exists for a reason. It’s there to stop things collapsing like a Jenga tower once rate decisions get heated, and to keep policy grounded in data, not political pressure or short-term election cycles.

And we’re already seeing how messy that can get. Jerome Powell, the current Fed chair, has come under fire, being called “mentally troubled” and “grossly incompetent” by Trump for not cutting rates.

Kevin Warsh is human, and these ties give you a rough idea of where he might lean and how he could shape monetary policy.

He served as a Federal Reserve governor during the 2008 financial crisis, one of the youngest ever to do it. Even as the economy was dragging itself out of the Great Recession, he stayed firmly hawkish on inflation. That didn’t go down well with everyone, especially with Democrats under Obama in power, and earned him the “political weathervane” label.

Now it looks like his next bet could flip the script. Lower rates, push productivity, and lean on AI to keep inflation in check.

Kevin Warsh:

“We can’t make any perfect predictions, but my guess is this is the most productivity-enhancing wave of our lifetimes, past, present and future. The way I think about it is the cost of curiosity is now zero.

When I was in public school, even the cost of curiosity had friction. When I showed up in California for the first time during orientation, you still had to go to the library and dig through a card system, even if it was on a computer, just to find a book. So it’s a very big deal that the cost of curiosity is now zero. The fruits of knowledge from that curiosity are now larger than ever before.

For most of the last 20 years, what we would say in economics is that the best of everything accrued the most significant gains. The best basketball player, the best violinist, the best programmer, the best mathematician, the best of everything.

At this moment that’s probably still true, because the world is changing so quickly. Market structures are changing and businesses are being redefined. So the question becomes: what country is most likely to benefit the most from the cost of curiosity being zero and the fruits of knowledge being as large as ever?

I think it’s the United States. That might sound like a very parochial view from a has-been government economist, but I believe it. I think the best companies in the world are here and the most talented engineers are either here or want to come here. That’s an amazing development.

So this productivity wave should happen in the United States first. It won’t happen evenly, but those that strike first and drive productivity first will differentiate themselves from their peers in their industry. They’ll have higher margins, bigger market share and a larger opportunity.

That’s why I think it’s such an exciting moment for the United States.”

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The anecdotes are showing up before the data.

Official economic data is always late to the party.

Warsh’s view is that during big tech waves like AI, the data understates what’s actually happening. On paper, it looks muted, while the ground under people’s feet is already shifting. He says you can see the anecdotal evidence, but the numbers just haven’t caught up yet.

That leaves policymakers with a tough call.

Productivity could be quietly improving, but the official stats won’t reflect it for a while. So do you trust the data, or what’s happening right in front of you?

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis dug into this, and the numbers are pretty telling.

In the first three quarters of 2025, AI-related spending added 0.97 percentage points to real GDP growth, or 0.90 without data centres. At the peak of the dot-com boom in 2000, that number was 0.81.

It’s not just the contribution either. AI made up 39% of total GDP growth in 2025, or 36% excluding data centres, compared to 28% in 2000.

So while people are still debating whether AI is overhyped, it’s already doing more heavy lifting than the internet did at its early peak.

Warsh’s view is pretty blunt.

Central banks and governments will have to choose between trusting lagging data and trusting what’s actually happening on the ground.

Because if you wait for the spreadsheets to catch up, you’re already behind.

And history tends to play out the same way every time. When technology spreads, it drives costs down.

Kevin Warsh:

“For has-been government economists like me, we’re going to look at the data. And I don’t think the data will show these productivity gains for many years after the anecdotes reveal them.

What’s that Bezos quote? “At moments of huge consequence, at turning points, if you have a set of data telling you one thing and a set of anecdotes telling you the other, listen to the anecdotes.” One hundred percent. I think Jeff is exactly right.

The anecdotes have already started to turn.

The difficulty for policymakers, whether that’s central bankers or fiscal authorities, is that the economy is going to be growing but it won’t show up in the productivity statistics for a while. So they’re going to have to make a bet. Is the economy actually becoming much more productive? Is the technology spreading into more sectors? And what should they do about it?

My simple version of this is that everything technology touches gets cheaper.”

Warsh looks set to run the Greenspan playbook

Alan Greenspan saw something everyone else missed.

In the mid 90s, while most economists were panicking about an overheating economy and calling for aggressive rate hikes, he took the opposite view. He bet that technology would do the heavy lifting.

His thinking was that the rise of computers, software, and the early internet was making businesses more efficient. More output, less cost pressure meant growth without the usual inflation spike.

Many of his contemporaries wanted to slam the brakes on the economy, but Greenspan held off on raising rates. He kept rates relatively stable and let the economy run hotter than normal.

The approach earned him a reputation as a masterful technocrat, capable of steering markets with precision.

He trusted the tech wave more than the traditional playbook.

Kevin Warsh:

“If you’re looking at the data, my view is you’re backward looking. You’re going to be late. You’re not going to realize the country is able to have non-inflationary growth faster.

So you’re going to have to make a bet.

The closest analogy that I have in central banking is Alan Greenspan in 1993 and 1994. The internet revolution was with us. He believed, based on anecdotes and rather esoteric data, that we weren’t in a position where we needed to raise rates because this technology wave was going to be structurally disinflationary.

A lot of his peers at the Federal Reserve, and certainly in the academic profession in economics, said the economy was overheating and that rates needed to go up because it would be inflationary.

But he sat on his hands and persuaded his colleagues to be patient.

As a result, we had a stronger economy, more stable prices and greater U.S. competitiveness.

I suspect that over the next couple of years, that decision will become central to the Federal Reserve and other big central banks.”

Bitcoin is the new American dream.

The current Fed chair, Jerome Powell, hasn’t exactly been a fan of Bitcoin.

Or the wider crypto space.

He once said “relatively unsophisticated investors” chase price when it’s going up, and warned there’s no promise it continues.

He’s also been clear that cryptocurrencies aren’t real currencies in his eyes. No intrinsic value. Not backed by the government.

It’s night and day compared to Kevin Warsh. He’s described Bitcoin as “just software”, but meant it as a compliment. A well-designed system that competes with traditional finance.

Kevin Warsh:

“For all of our fellow Americans, that lets them get a piece of the American dream without going through some labyrinth that costs them five percentage points right off the top. That’s the market opportunity.

I think it’s good for the United States, and I’ll make a final point. I think it’s good for competition in financial services.

If I were being really honest about my time in government, I served during the ‘08 financial crisis. What I would have hoped after the crisis is that we’d have a more competitive banking system.

Instead, we have a less competitive banking system.

That’s the market opportunity, and technology has a way of driving a set of products and services now that was probably impossible 5 or 6 years ago.”

Final Thoughts.

This whole thing has a bit of a family affair feel to it, mixed with some insider baseball.

Warsh’s family connections aren’t nothing. And the idea that his decisions could tilt toward keeping voters happy as midterms approach is far from far-fetched.

Trump posted to his Truth Social:

“I have known Kevin for a long period of time, and have no doubt that he will go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, maybe the best. On top of everything else, he is “central casting,” and he will never let you down.”

And in a completely opposite tone, Senator Elizabeth Warren came back with:

“Kevin Warsh spins fairy tales about the president, he’ll say anything President Trump wants him to, doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. That blind loyalty to the president is nothing short of dangerous. He’s a sock puppet.”

Stepping back from the politics and philosophical whataboutsm for a sec, the real question is simple. What does this actually mean for us?

From where I’m sitting, it looks pretty bullish, particularly for risk assets like Bitcoin and Crypto, given that he’s pro-Crypto and technology.

It’s plausible that AI is already boosting business productivity in ways we can’t fully see yet. And if that’s the case, the play becomes obvious. Lower rates, backed by the belief that AI-driven efficiency will keep inflation in check.

These are favourable conditions for risk assets.

Trump’s been going after Uncle Jerome for not cutting rates for what feels like forever, while also shining a spotlight on Warsh, a Republican who fits the mould.

And if you want a hint of how this might play out, look back at Warsh’s time during 2008 under Obama. His tone on inflation was very different to what we’re seeing now.

He only seems aggressively hawkish when Democrats are in charge and prepared to print when Republicans are at the helm.

America needs to be first to the productivity-inducing technological shift to enjoy the outsized results it has had.

Warsh believes policymakers should act on common-sense, anecdotal evidence that A.I. will create a deflationary shock faster than people think, because it’s here now, but not showing in the data, because everything we use to measure performance lags.

I agree, maybe from a self-interest point of view, that we need to lower rates, which will lead to the US rolling over its debt, of which about 24% of the $38 trillion is due in 2026.

Whether people in crypto like it or not, rate cuts are the silver bullet. You can argue narratives all day, but when rates come down, liquidity picks up, and risk assets move. It’s that simple.

The last six rate cuts tell the story. Bitcoin went from around $60k to over $110k during that easing cycle.

Lower rates don’t guarantee instant pumps, but over time, they stack the odds heavily in favour of assets like crypto.

My view is simple. A well-connected economist, acting on signals most people can’t see yet, is going to cut rates.

As soon as he steps into office.

If that happens, we go much higher.

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This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial, tax, or legal advice. You should consult a financial professional before making any significant financial decisions.

Tay joined us. Founding member, regular on the streams, and a proper NFT collector. He shared his experience in the space, what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what he’s seeing right now.

This episode was a banger. Genuinely packed with value.

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The video content & article are for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial, tax, or legal advice. You should consult a financial professional before making any significant financial decisions.

And not just any backup.

Jacob, the co-founder of Chimpers, stepped in and delivered one of the most insightful conversations we’ve had on the podcast so far.

We went deep on the NFT ecosystem, what’s actually happening under the surface of the market, and where things could be heading next.

This episode was a banger. Packed with value.

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As a spear-chucking South African-born Brit, I know better than a celeb in the Epstein files to lecture anyone, especially on American politics.

I have no skin in the game.

But between me and a handful of mates at the bar, we armchair quarterback the US political landscape. I’m sure our friends across the pond do exactly the same when they hear about an 80-year-old grandmother being taken away in cuffs for a social media post.

The punch line here simple.

Trump was voted in by roughly 52% of middle-class Americans. Around 55% of US Bitcoin holders voted for him. For many people, Bitcoin and crypto are a lifeline. They represent hope. So when a candidate says he’ll support that cause, it brings the future expectations of yourself much closer.

As Oliver Anthony eloquently put it, “I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day, overtime hours for bullshit pay.” He was singing about America, but he could easily have included the UK. It’s why plenty of Americans, and plenty of people here in Britain too, have turned to Bitcoin as a financial parachute.

Trump has the midterms in November.

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If Republicans lose and Democrats take control of the House, the Senate, or both, Trump becomes a lame duck for the final two years. Congress controls major laws, budgets, and appointments, so if the other party holds it, they can stall his agenda and ramp up investigations.

So, whether you like him or not, the political incentive is obvious.

It’s also worth noting that Trump’s family crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, run by his sons, holds Bitcoin-linked assets on its balance sheet. On-chain data shows the firm holds roughly 267 wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) worth around $18 million

Famous investor Cathie Wood believes that Donald Trump’s appointment of Kevin Warsh as the next Fed Chair will lead to a scenario where Warsh gets out of Trump’s way, cuts rates, and rolls over the debt, easing financial conditions. It would likely create an optical boost in asset prices, including Bitcoin.

She also thinks there’s a real possibility that Trump will move toward buying Bitcoin instead of promising not to sell seizers.

Cathy Woods:

“2026 is the U.S. The midterm elections. And President Trump does not want to be a lame duck. So I have a feeling that he is going to work with his crypto and AI czar to do a few things. One, make sure we get that de minimis ruling through, make sure grassroots is where a lot of what we’ve been talking about is going to happen.

It seems as though there’s been reticence about actually buying Bitcoin for the strategic reserve. So far, it’s confiscated. The original intent was to own 1,000,000 Bitcoin. So I actually think they will start buying because I think this will help Trump in a couple of ways.

Part of the reason he won the presidency, was the crypto community. And another reason is his family is all in on Bitcoin and other crypto assets. So I think he’s got all kinds of reasons to do this, but the most important one is he does not want to be a lame duck.

He wants to have another productive year or two, and I think he sees crypto as a path to the future.”

Mixed Bitcoin signals are making everyone docile.

As soon as I started writing this piece, I intended it to cover the Jane Street saga, but bombs dropping in Iran threw me off like someone in my passenger seat yanking the steering wheel.

I’m not a war correspondent, so I won’t pretend to cover all of that. Instead, it’s worth touching on the latest villain on the Bitcoin timeline: Jane Street price suppression.

They’re a market maker and trading firm now being sued over alleged market manipulation and their role in the Luna collapse, allegedly using filthy insider info. And at the same time, they’re now being accused of manipulating Bitcoin too, because why the hell not.

The accusation goes something like this. JS buys some Bitcoin on the open market. Then they open a much larger short position against it. On the surface, it looks bullish because they’re buying. But the short is several times larger, suggesting the spot purchase isn’t the real bet. It’s the setup.

In other words, the buying is optics, and the short is the actual trade. A short simply means betting that the asset’s price will go down.

They buy spot Bitcoin at $70k, for example, then open very large short positions using options or other derivatives. Once that positioning is in place, large amounts of Bitcoin are sold in minutes through algorithms, often during periods of thin liquidity or alongside negative headlines, which can trigger panic selling and liquidations.

Prices drop, say from $70k to $65k. They close the short positions for large profits while only taking a small loss on the spot holdings.

Then they accumulate again at the lower level, let the market squeeze higher, create a bit of FOMO on the way up, reopen shorts, and repeat the cycle. Rinse and repeat, at least according to the theory doing the rounds.

For months, people have pointed to repeated sell pressure around 10 a.m. just after US markets open. The pattern people highlight is a consistent, sharp downward move, leveraged longs get liquidated, forced selling cascades, and then the price stabilises.

Right after the announcement that Jane Street was being sued, there was NO 10 a.m. dump. Instead, a relief rally. Lol.

Simon, my Carrot Lane Live Co-host, chimmed in with his thoughts:

“I always think: follow the evidence. So if it is factual and true that this is happening consistently over a longer period of time, whether anyone would deem it legal or not becomes the question. And interestingly, would it fall under the Crypto Clarity Act if that were passed? That would be another interesting thing to see. If the facts are the facts, they can’t really be disputed. But I know things are often much more nuanced than that. Still, it’s a good starting point, isn’t it?”

Details below.

The Goldilocks zone for risk assets.

Multiple research firms have concluded that we are in a Goldilocks zone for risk assets.

Meaning it won’t be too hot or too cold.

Philip Saunders, director of the Ninteyone, said:

“After a disorienting period for markets, investors may find that 2026 feels unexpectedly balanced. We expect a Goldilocks environment. Not too hot, not too cold, characterised by firm real growth, falling inflation and improved earnings visibility across regions. But this outcome still requires thoughtful positioning. This is not a year to rely on a single narrative; it’s a year to be selective and diversified.”

A Goldilocks Economy is the sweet spot for markets.

Growth is strong enough that companies are making money and people have jobs, but it’s not so strong that inflation gets out of control. If inflation stays manageable, central banks won’t feel the need to aggressively raise interest rates.

For investors, that combination is almost perfect.

• Businesses keep growing
• Consumers keep spending
• Interest rates stay relatively stable
• Liquidity stays in the system

Felix-Antoine Vezina-Poirier, Chief strategist at BCA Research, said his findings were that:

“Overall, our survey delivered a Goldilocks signal of decent growth and disinflation. Historically, such positive momentum has coincided with equity outperformance versus bonds”.

The economy is stronger than most people think

If the economic outlook is good and people have more money in their pockets, that money eventually finds its way into risk assets.

One of the earliest clues for that is the ISM.

The Institute for Supply Management runs a simple monthly survey that basically takes the pulse of the economy. It asks big-boy purchasing managers at big-wig companies one straightforward question: Are things getting busier or slowing down?

These are the people who order raw materials, deal with suppliers, and manage production lines. Because they sit right at the centre of supply chains, they often see economic changes before everyone else. If companies start ordering more materials or hiring more workers, it usually means demand is picking up. If orders get cut, it’s often an early signal the economy is cooling.

All those responses get rolled into one number called the ISM index.

• Above 50 means the economy is expanding
• Below 50 means the economy is contracting

Think of it as a speedometer for economic activity.

This matters for asset prices because markets don’t just react to what’s happening now. They move on expectations. If businesses are getting busier, productivity rises, companies make more money, and that eventually feeds into higher stock prices and stronger risk assets.

Macro investors watch the ISM like a hawk-eyed bookie because it helps them gauge where we are, so they can squeeze the lemon juice out of the economic cycle. Once they get that read, the game becomes pretty simple: put their chips on the assets most likely to benefit from that environment.

The ISM helps answer three questions.

• Is the economy speeding up or slowing down?
• Are interest rates more likely to rise or fall?
• Is liquidity about to tighten or expand?

They are the dominant forces in asset prices.

You can see below the two skyscrapers poking their noses out, currently showing a score of 52.4 and finally breaking away from that sideways chop. That’s despite Armageddon all over the timeline.

Final Thoughts.

24.9% of the $38.5 trillion US national debt matures in 2026.

Kevin Warsh, the man in charge of dropping rates, which would result in that debt being rolled over and asset prices essentially going to valhalla said in December 2025 on a podcast:

“This is the most productivity-enhancing wave of our lifetimes—past, present, and future. [...] The technology could prove to be structurally disinflationary [similar to the internet era]. [...] My sense is that the anecdotes will be there before the data,” forcing central bankers to “make a bet” on leaning toward cheaper borrowing costs (i.e., lower interest rates) in anticipation of this effect.”

He’s a Republican.

And he’ll drop rates faster than my diet after walking past the Krispy Kreme aisle. Warsh’s justification really comes down to AI making up for the productivity gap.

It’s my personal opinion that Trump hired him for one very good reason. After publicly chucking Uncle Jerome through the wood chipper for not lowering rates, the reason is to lower rates. Both Trump and his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, are acutely aware of how rolling debt raises asset prices.

Printing casholla is a cheat code for making us all feel like a bunch of Rich Men North of Richmond.

Trump has the midterms in November, and I imagine he’ll do everything in his power to influence voters with a strong economy. It’s already showing signs in the ISM that productivity is picking up, and there's a sweet spot for investors because Bitcoin and Crypto are clearly not overheated, while the economy's backdrop looks much healthier.

If you just keep it completely simple, if the economy is better and people have more money in their pockets for discretionary spending, they’ll likely buy more magical internet money because of how sensitive it is to financial conditions.

If it doesn’t play, this fiasco will have been political suicide for the Republicans.

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This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial, tax, or legal advice. You should consult a financial professional before making any significant financial decisions.

We covered what’s happening in Iran and how it’s impacting crypto pricing, took a deep dive into NFTs, and discussed more of what’s going on in the TokenWorks ecosystem.

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In any normal world, if an asset drops 60%, it’s buried six feet under, pushing up daisies through the cracks in the headstone.

Crypto volatility is a rollercoaster on steroids, making your weird uncle look stable.

Unlike traditional productivity-based assets, those drawdowns can recover. In stocks, a crash usually reflects company performance. In crypto, it’s much more closely tied to financial conditions.

Most altcoins are highly correlated to Bitcoin. That means when Bitcoin drops, all alts usually underperform. But when Bitcoin recovers, the right altcoins with strength tend to outperform because they are smaller and less liquid.

It really is that simple.

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I know a lot of my readers got into SUI because of the early price performance, the strong tech promises, or just from reading my research.

Nothing has changed. The technology is still the most profound of the new layer ones. The former Facebook team is still one of the most capable in the space. And among the top-performing chains, it still has one of the lowest token floats on the market, which, in an uptrend, creates supply friction and sharp price moves.

The only thing that has changed is Bitcoin’s price.

Bitcoin plummeted because traders played the four-year cycle narrative, a wave of liquidations hit in October, and then more selling followed in December.

What is interesting is that financial conditions are actually improving. Inflation is down, job growth is up, the dollar, which acts like a tax on the entire system, is down, and oil prices, which are passed through to goods and services, are at pre-pandemic lows.

While the backdrop of financial conditions looks like it’s improving, the memetics of people still playing the four-year cycle is clearly the stronger force right now. As Chris Burniske famously says, “human nature is very hard to change.”

Global money supply is near all time highs. Just from first principles, thinking more money in the system means more capital that can flow into assets.

As you can see below, the global M2 money supply is just under $100 trillion, and the S&P 500 practically mirrors it (with a 3-month lag).

The S&P 500 has averaged about 10.56% a year.

While the global M2 money supply has grown roughly 8%. That 8% is basically your hurdle rate.

At first glance, the S&P looks like a solid bet, but once you factor in another 2.4% for inflation, your real return is close to break-even.

If your investments aren’t beating that benchmark, you’re treading water like Leo while the Titanic sinks, watching your purchasing power slowly slip away even though there’s clearly enough room on the floating door.

Everyone knows now that Crypto is the fastest horse in the race.

Raoul Pal often points out how closely liquidity conditions and asset performance are linked. He believes Scott Bessent, now the Secretary of the Treasury, built his career on understanding and using financial conditions to make investments.

As Raoul Pal put it recently

“It’s not about the politics. Unfortunately, they politicized technology right now. That will change over time and will morph into something different. But the Republicans driven by Scott Bessent will throw absolutely everything at it, which goes back to the beginning of our conversation. They will not allow the ISM to be below 50, because their voter base is middle America, and they have to see prosperity from the Trump administration. They have to appease the crypto overlords who paid them to win the election.
They have to appease the tech overlords who paid to win the election. Because the big game is, you can’t lose to China, and if you stop, pause, do anything, they will win. I think what we are going to see this year is something people aren’t quite prepared for.
It is going to feel like the pandemic in terms of the amount of stimulus coming.”

What most people buying SUI still haven’t realised

Unlike most blockchains that process one transaction at a time (sequential), SUI handles independent ones simultaneously.

It’s like a friggin low-cost, frictionless Flash Gordon of blockchains.

Think of it like a smart highway where transactions (cars) can drive in parallel across multiple lanes without waiting in line or causing traffic jams, enabling near-instant speeds, super-low fees, and massive scale for things like gaming, DeFi, NFTs, and the apps we use daily.

Its design improves speed and keeps costs low when the network is busy.

Web3 and Crypto expert Kyle Chasse said recently:

“SUI is quietly positioning where the next cycle of users actually lives. Fast finality, object-based architecture, and low fees make it easier to build apps that feel like normal consumer software, not crypto experiments. The chains that win the next phase won’t be the loudest. They’ll be the ones users notice because everything just works.”

SUI’s goal is to make blockchain infrastructure feel more like regular internet apps without you noticing it’s on blockchain rails.

Fast responses, low fees, a very easy user interface, and easy login features. System developers can also build on SUI without heavy friction.

One area the team is pushing into is decentralised storage through its Walrus protocol. The decentralised storage will reduce costs compared to traditional cloud providers. Large companies today spend billions annually on cloud infrastructure, so any credible lower-cost alternative naturally attracts attention.

Adeniyi Abiodun, who previously worked on Meta’s Libra project and is now a Sui co-founder, describes the vision like this:

“Our Vision for Sui is to build a global coordination layer for intelligent assets, going beyond traditional blockchains. We’re creating a decentralised web stack that supports everything from smart contracts to decentralised storage with Walrus, a global storage layer that is more distributed and cost-effective than AWS (cloud storage). This infrastructure will underpin a wide range of applications, offering unprecedented security and decentralisation.”

In plain terms, SUI aims to become an infrastructure that enables digital assets and applications to run at scale on the chain.

Supply and performance dynamics.

I’ll be straight as an arrow. I, like plenty of others, got the timing of this cycle wrong.

The goal was never perfect timing, but getting close to probabilistic outcomes, because no one can predict short-term markets.

Right now, the backdrop is messy.

Political noise, especially around tariffs, can hit risk assets out of nowhere. At the same time, this is one of the most crypto-friendly policy environments we’ve seen, which could lock the U.S. in as a leader before the G20 catches up.

So it’s a bag of mixed signals.

As Raoul Pal says, governments want strong economies heading into elections. That usually means liquidity eventually rolls back in through refinancing debt. The delay has been due to rates staying higher for longer than expected, with Fed Chair Powell commenting:

“The economy has once again surprised us with its strength. We still have some tension between employment and inflation, but it’s less than it was. The outlook for economic activity has clearly improved since the last meeting.”

This is the weight holding down the coiled spring.

When rates fall to a level where the debt is rolled over, asset prices rise optically, maybe even to Valhalla.

I get why people struggle to see value. But nothing that actually matters has changed. My approach stays the same. Back the strongest tech, strongest teams, and assets with the most potential upside relative to size.

SUI has something most people gloss over. Its circulating supply is still relatively low. In crypto terms, that’s called a low float. Translation. A smaller percentage of their total token supply is actually trading right now than compared to more mature chains like XRP, ETH, or Solana.

When supply is tighter, prices tend to move more when demand shows up. That cuts both ways. You can get a sharper upside if adoption grows, but you also carry the risk of more volatile downside moves. And that risk increases as the unlocks add more supply.

Important to note that unlocks don’t mean selling will occur. It just means the token can now be traded, transferred or sold.

Here’s the most recent data:

SUI

• Circulating supply: ~3.85 billion tokens

• Max supply: 10 billion (capped)

• Percentage circulating: ~38-39%

• Over 60% remains locked/vested, releasing gradually at a rate of 0.40% to 1.1% over the coming years via scheduled unlocks.

XRP

• Circulating supply: ~61 billion tokens

• Max supply: 100 billion (capped, with monthly escrow releases)

• Percentage circulating: ~61%

• More than 15x SUI’s circulating supply, which makes XRP more liquid and less sensitive to small buying/selling pressure.

ETH (Ethereum)

• Circulating supply: ~120.69 million tokens

• No hard cap, but 37 million ETH (30%) is staked

• Percentage circulating: ~70%

• The raw circulating supply is small in absolute terms, but Ethereum behaves like a mature, high-liquidity asset due to broad distribution, institutional holdings, and massive on-chain activity.

SOL (Solana)

• Circulating supply: ~568 million tokens

• Total supply: ~620 million (no hard cap; inflationary but rate declining to low levels)

• Percentage circulating: ~91-92%

• High float relative to newer chains like Sui—nearly fully circulating, though staking removes a significant portion from the immediate liquid supply.

SUI stands out with only 38% of its float unlocked, which gives it tighter supply dynamics in the short to medium term than mature, heavily circulated assets like XRP or SOL, and even ETH, given the significant supply tied up in staking.

If the best assets rise in line with Bitcoin, as the ones mentioned above do, the outperformance you get from picking the smaller, less liquid assets can go vertical. But that only works if Bitcoin's price increases.

And for Bitcoin to run up, financial conditions need to ease, rates need to fall, and debt needs room to roll.

You can see ETH, XRP, SOL, and SUI mirror each other on the chart below, but aggressive moves, up or down, are exaggerated, largely based on their size.

Macro experts say this is the final hurdle.

24.9% of the $38.5 trillion national Debt Matures in 2026.

This is what Crypto folks are hanging their hat on, and why I won’t be selling my SUI until this debt rollover is factored into the price of Crypto.

With rates higher, the US has not been able to roll over its debt, which usually has an optical rising effect on assets. Higher interest rates also crowd out spending, which squeezes risk assets.

It’s simple. If people have more money, they’ll invest more in risk assets like Crypto.

Kevin Warsh was announced as the future successor to Jerome Powell as Fed chair, someone who has been openly critical of Powell. Right after the announcement, it triggered a sharp sell-off in gold and silver. It also hit our beloved internet money because of the easier access to capital while traders waited for the market to reopen.

Warsh is known as an inflation “hawk”. In central banking terms, a hawk prioritises fighting inflation, while a dove prioritises growth and jobs. Which, if you think about it, kinda goes against the current adminsttraitons stance on the economy.

Not everyone is convinced.

Some see Warsh as someone whose political stance shifts with the wind depending on who’s in power. Paul Krugman, a professor, former NYT columnist, and someone Trump once called a “deranged bum”, said:

“As I noted, many news reports have characterized Warsh as a monetary hawk, but I argued that he’s more of a political weathervane: He’s for tight money when Democrats are in power, but all for running the printing presses hot when a Republican is in the White House.”

Neil Dutta, another sceptic and investing expert, used AI to map every single one of Kevin Warsh’s speeches and public comments.

He went all the way back to 2006 and scored each of them on a hawkish-to-dovish scale.

On a chart, there is nowhere for it to hide. You see the data, the political lean, and a pretty loud signal that Warsh would likely cut rates quickly once he steps into the Fed Chair seat.

Warsh will likely get out of Trump’s way and drop rates faster than a broken elevator.

When that happens, there’ll be a metric ton of cash freed up.

A huge chunk of U.S. debt matures between now and December 2026, with the midterms in November, so a lot needs to happen before then.

This list shows all maturity dates in one place. Since thousands of individual Treasury securities mature daily, weekly, and monthly, they all hit at different times. What the Treasury does instead is publish a full breakdown of the Public Debt in its Monthly Statement.

Inside that report, there’s a section called “Detail of Marketable Treasury Securities Outstanding,” which lists every security, its maturity date, and the amount.

Approximate monthly maturity amounts (in trillions) and % of total public debt (~$38.5T) are estimated as follows:

• February 2026: $1.5 – 2.0T (heavy bill rollovers + major quarterly notes/bonds on Feb 15)
  → 4 – 5% of total debt

• March 2026: $1.0 – 1.5T (mostly short-term bills)
  → 3 – 4%

• April 2026: $0.5 – 0.8T (lighter month, mainly bills)
  → 1 – 2%

• May 2026: $1.2 – 1.5T (quarterly refunding: notes/bonds on May 15)
  → 3 – 4%

• June 2026: $0.6 – 0.9T (bills + some notes)
  → 1.5 – 2.5%

• July 2026: $0.6 – 0.8T (mostly bills)
  → 1.5 – 2%

• August 2026: $1.0 – 1.3T (quarterly refunding + bonds/notes on Aug 15)
  → 2.5 – 3.5%

• September 2026: $0.4 – 0.7T (lighter, bills dominant)
  → 1 – 2%

• October 2026: $0.5 – 0.8T (bills + minor notes)
  → 1 – 2%

• November 2026: $1.0 – 1.3T (quarterly refunding on Nov 15)
  → 2.5 – 3.5%

• December 2026: $0.5 – 0.8T (end-of-year bills + notes)
  → 1 – 2%

The latest version as of Jan 31, 2026, is here, and most maturities are between now and December 2026.

Final Thoughts.

Legendary investor Stanley Druckenmiller once said:

“Earnings don’t move the overall market; it’s the Federal Reserve Board...focus on the central banks, and focus on the movement of liquidity...most people in the market are looking for earnings and conventional measures. It’s liquidity that moves markets.”

It has already flowed into Gold, Silver, and Tech stocks, but liquidity never sits still.

It has to go somewhere. And in a world that’s getting more digitised by the day, the place with the most explosive upside gravity is crypto.

That’s why we’re here.

Michael Howell, the liquidity maestro, summed up exactly how I see this period in the economy.

“People need to understand that liquidity is the key thing going forward. Liquidity is likely, from a global perspective, to be the main driver of asset markets in the future. One of the reasons I say that is what we’re seeing in the U.S. right now. The Federal Reserve is bailing out the banks. What the Federal Reserve is going to have to do in the next ten years is bail out the government. The U.S. happens to be the cleanest shirt in the global laundry. Other countries are far worse. Ultimately there’s a huge amount of liquidity coming. If you believe QE is dead, forget it. It’s not. It’s coming back, and it’s coming back big time. Investors have got to start adjusting their asset allocation methodologies to take this into account.”

That’s what everyone sitting in risk assets is really waiting for.

That one fast, powerful event where financial conditions loosen over a few months and suddenly prices catapult. The numbers stack up: 2026 is the year.

If Kevin Warsh steps in as Fed Chair around May, that gives roughly six months before the midterms. That window could be extremely strong for asset prices, as we’ll likely start seeing clear signals on interest rates. Warsh has already said, “We can lower interest rates a lot, and in so doing get 30-year fixed-rate mortgages so they're affordable, so we can get the housing market to get going again.”

So there is a lot to play for this year.

SUI still stands out to me for its technology, team, and the fact it’s one of the newest and smallest layer ones. It gets hit harder in downturns, but that same dynamic is why it can outperform in an uptrend. And that uptrend is coming. It’s just taking longer than people expected. Including yours truly.

I usually avoid politics, but the reality is the backdrop right now is tied to it, whether we like it or not.

The next phase, once this SUI trade plays out, will be deciding when to sell. Right now, we’re not there yet.

We also have the CLARITY Act discussion, where the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets at the White House, Patrick Witt, said:

“There are trillions of dollars in institutional capital on the sidelines waiting to get into this (crypto) space.”

This is the last stretch now, folks.

Hang on tight.

We’re nearly there.

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This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial, tax, or legal advice. You should consult a financial professional before making any significant financial decisions.

Honestly, it turned into a great call. We got into the current market dynamics across collectables, NFTs, and crypto, and the conversation was fun.

If you want in on our inner circle where we share trade ideas and spot opportunities early, you can upgrade below. We’d love to have you inside the Founders chat.

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I remember seeing Coldie all over the timeline after his Snoop Dogg collaboration in 2021, where his art sold for $790,000.

He’s done collaborations with Matt Kane and iconic glitch artist XCOPY, and has been featured on some of the best podcasts like Proof and received public praise from Raoul Pal.

And now, of course, Carrot Lane.

It’s one heck of a discussion and will bring huge value to artists and NFT art collectors.

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In all, another great episode of the livestream.

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The last 24 hours have been carnage, and while many can sit back and see the humorous side of crypto and the wider market crashing so spectacularly, I want to make it clear that people should look after their own well-being.

It can knock the wind out of you.

A product of these assets going up by astronomical amounts is that they can crash by the same amount. In any normal world, a 50% to 70% crash would mean your asset is dead and buried. These are not productivity models like stocks, where the price is an indication of the company’s performance. They are network adoption models, or put more simply, community tokens.

These sellers are people selling out of their communities, either through being liquidated, overleveraged, trading around the cycle, or a combination of all three.

I am seeing so much BS on the timeline, from folks in my comments section blaming the release of the Epstein files, as a rumour circulates that Jeffrey Epstein is the creator of Bitcoin, or that somehow the Bitcoin community had reached a psychological $100k level, and, almost out of celebration for reaching the summit, people were selling.

People are going to be people and find all sorts of creative, alluring reasons for why there’s sell pressure, or why they think the cycle is over for another four years, but the harsh reality is no one knows.

People looking at RSI charts of Bitcoin (relative strength index), which basically tracks a 14-day moving average, may be a great indicator of short-term price movement, but they serve absolutely no purpose beyond making crypto influencers look insightful.

Anything that overrides a macro investing framework is bullshit.

When you invest based on a political view, philosophy, short-term chart patterns, a narrative or mere guesswork, you will be in all sorts of bother.

Let’s dive in.

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It’s much easier to pick a bottom than it is a top.

This is the part many people miss.

You can take this to the bank: you have far more chance of spotting the bottom of the market because of the consolidation phase it goes through before it recovers than you do of spotting the top.

That’s why you need to size in small enough during drawdowns so you can run the marathon and go the distance with the trade, while still adding to your position during the pain.

I know it feels counterintuitive, but if you have capital and high conviction, it lowers your cost basis of what you paid for the asset, which compounds on the back end when the market recovers.

Raoul Pal:

“I’ve lived all of this. Every horrific, gut-wrenching moment all within a secular bull market. My first entry was at $200. The price is now $65,000. I even missed a 3.5x in the middle by timing the market (badly). The first key lesson (for me) in a secular rising asset is just to do nothing. HODL is a meme for a very good reason. It is much more powerful than the 4yr cycle meme.

My second lesson was to add aggressively in the sell offs. Even if I didn’t time them right, averaging into weakness to add to the overall position massively compounds returns over time, even more so than DCA’ing. I didn’t always have cash to buy meaningfully into a sell off but I’d always buy something as its good to train your psyche.

It always feels like you’ve missed your chance, it’s never coming back, it’s all going to blow up forever. It is not the case. BTFD (buy the f*cking dip) and let time in the market beat timing the markets, because it always does. Adding into big sell offs lowers your high water mark. It makes a BIG difference.”

Stop day trading, it doesn’t work.

Every Tom, Dick, and Sally thinks they’re Paul Tudor Jones when the price goes up and they suddenly start trading around the asset.

Some crypto influencers are scoffing on the timeline, feeling pretty smug, saying they sold in October before the liquidation event and conveniently sold a large percentage of their position in December because they thought the cycle was ending.

Let’s say for a second they’re right, that the cycle is over, which given the current market position looks accurate. Even if someone played that perfectly, which I can tell you almost no one did, I am yet to see receipts of it, they would still incur a tax event on the sale. In my jurisdiction here in the UK, that works out to about 26%. So you sell out, you now have to outtrade the shrinkage from your tax event, and then you have to time the bottom perfectly to trade back in.

The reality is that the psychology of the buyer on the way down is more driven by fear, so you do not put the same amount back in. Out of fear, it becomes much harder to add into pain.

It’s much easier just to hold what you have during the pain or slam the laptop shut.

Let’s say you sold the Bitcoin top at $126k. Now it’s $70k. You won’t put in the same amount at $70k. You think it’s going lower you’re waiting for it to go below $50k because you feel better about buying there, for no other reason apart from price anchoring.

There is a higher likelihood of less left-tail risk and a quicker recovery, simply because the backdrop of oil, interest rates, and financial conditions is much better. So price is likely to go up sooner.

You end up buying back in at $80k to $100k, chasing the train back out of the station, putting less money back in, and having less exposure to the apex asset.

And you probably bring yourself to about breakeven after your tax event, or even underwater.

It doesn’t work.

Nothing beats the good old-fashioned buy-and-hold.

Always use a macro investing framework before anything else.

Every time I have come unstuck, it’s been when I’ve moved away from using a macro investing framework and got caught up in a narrative, or an echo chamber.

The reality is simple. If the economy is better, that is better for crypto. Full stop. There are no other arguments.

If people have more money in their pockets, businesses are doing better, interest rates are lower, oil prices come down like they are, mortgage rates are lower, people get pay rises, it incentivises people to spend more.

So the question then becomes, what can we use to measure the health of the economy?

The lead signal is the ISM as per AronGroup:

“If you want to feel the pulse of the US economy before anyone else, you need to look at the ISM PMI index. This monthly indicator surveys purchasing managers with a simple question: are conditions improving or worsening. The responses provide an early signal of whether economic growth is on the horizon or if a slowdown or recession is looming.”

Each month, the ISM PMI surveys purchasing managers and asks whether conditions have improved, worsened, or stayed the same compared with the previous month.

Those responses are then turned into a number between 0 and 100.

• A reading above 50 indicates expansion compared with the previous month.

• A reading below 50 signals contraction or a slowdown.

Because the ISM PMI uses equal weights across key components such as new orders, production, employment, supplier deliveries, and inventories, it often signals where the economy is heading before lagging official data like GDP.

If the ISM PMI stays below 50 for several months, it points to weak growth momentum. Sustained readings above 50 signal expanding economic activity.

Here’s what the most recent ISM reading is telling us. We are in expansion mode despite market capitulation. ⬇️

Final Thoughts.

Author note: As I write this, the crypto market is starting to recover.

Make no bones about it, this is the reason many people do not make money in crypto: volatility.

They apply the old productivity framework, in which stock prices are associated with a company’s financial performance, versus network adoption models, in which price declines are more a product of financial conditions.

They are not the same thing.

It’s a square peg in a round hole, and it’s screwing many people up. Don’t get me wrong, it sucks when the price goes down because what it’s telling you is that your hopes and dreams have just gotten further away.

But you must realise this is not easy. If it were, everyone would be doing it and succeeding.

The only thing you can do to be successful is avoid trading core assets. Have a bag of assets that minimise regret. In other words, a core of majors like the top six cryptos and high-end NFT art.

But use the economy as your gauge. When economic conditions improve, more cash and attention will naturally flow into these assets.

Anything in the middle is just noise and a mid-curve.

It’s why most people won’t make it.

If you’re looking to make it through this cycle while minimising errors, please consider joining my Founding members group for the member benefits that come with the access. We will win together.

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We dug into the current market pullback, NFTs, PNKSTR, and a bunch of things playing out on the timeline right now. Solid chat and plenty to think about.

If you want to get closer to our community and you’re brand new to crypto or buying your first NFT, the Crypto & NFT Novices Club is free and built exactly for that.

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This cycle is starting to feel like being slapped by a wet fish.

The gold and silver maxis, who spent years sniggering at our “magical internet money”, are now feeling the irony like needles going into a voodoo doll.

Gold is down roughly 9% from its highs. Silver closer to 28%. That marks one of the largest drawdowns in the history of modern precious metal investing.

Nobody’s laughing now.

Someone said on the timeline recently that “this cycle has been exhausting”. Well, fucking woe is me. I get it. You priced in buying that sports car or promised your partner the holiday, and now it feels like the cans been kicked further down the road. The real poison here is expectation. Too many people are glued to the 2021 rear-view mirror, feeling like they’re owed a repeat of that gates-to-Valhalla period in time.

That expectation is creating anxiety.

The old four-year crypto cycle is dead and buried. The reason is simple. Debt. We’re now further into a global debt refinancing period because rates have been higher for longer, and this changes the entire structure of the cycle.

With rates higher, the US has not been able to roll over its debt, which usually has an optical rising effect on assets. Higher interest rates also crowd out spending, which squeezes risk assets.

Kevin Warsh was announced as the future successor to Jerome Powell as Fed chair, someone who has been openly critical of Powell. Right after the announcement, it triggered a sharp sell-off in gold and silver. It also hit our beloved internet money because of the easier access to capital while traders waited for the week to reopen.

Warsh is known as an inflation “hawk”. In central banking terms, a hawk prioritises fighting inflation, while a dove prioritises growth and jobs. Which, if you think about it, kinda goes against the current adminsttraitons stance on the economy.

Not everyone is convinced. Some see Warsh as someone whose political stance shifts with the wind depending on who’s in power. Paul Krugman, a professor, former NYT columnist, and someone Trump once called a “deranged bum”, said:

“As I noted, many news reports have characterized Warsh as a monetary hawk, but I argued that he’s more of a political weathervane: He’s for tight money when Democrats are in power, but all for running the printing presses hot when a Republican is in the White House.”

Neil Dutta of Renaissance Macro, another Warsh sceptic, used AI to map every single one of Kevin Warsh’s speeches and public comments over the years and score them for hawkishness versus dovishness. Lol.

When you see it on a chart, there really is no hiding place for data and the potential political bias.

I couldn’t care less about anyone’s political views. I’m in risk assets. I want prices to go up. Warsh was aggressively hawkish in the years after the 2008 financial crisis, then abruptly flipped dovish after Donald Trump won in 2024, which ties into Krugman's “weathervane” comment.

Call it self-interest, even downright greed, but I’m pretty happy we’ve got a guy to make the money printer go brrrr.

For context, here’s one of Warsh’s speeches from mid-2025 that’s now going viral on the timeline.

It signals his bullishness on Bitcoin, alongside his views on reducing the Fed’s balance sheet and his stance on inflation.

Kevin Warsh:

“The elephant in the room is that we know it when we go to the grocery store. But we also own financial assets. Maybe we own some Bitcoin. 52% of our fellow Americans own no financial assets. They don’t have equity in their house. They don’t have an account at Schwab. They don’t have an account at Coinbase. They are living off their W2 income. And this surge in prices have destroyed them. It’s the most regressive tax any government could ever come up with. Imagine if we had a central bank that had been deadly focused on that. I think we wouldn’t have taken a divided country, made it more divided. When we have a big balance sheet, we’re asking for the inflation that came, and as a final point, my own judgement is the story that I hear from many of my peers. Well, the inflation, well, that’s not really the central bank’s fault. That’s because of Putin and the pandemic. Nonsense.”

During Warsh’s previous time at the Fed, even in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, he was more concerned about inflation than about employment.

On the surface, that makes him an odd choice given Trump’s long-running frustration with Jerome Powell over rates.

Trump hasn’t exactly been subtle. He’s called Powell “crooked”, a “clown”, “incompetent”, “too late”, with “some real mental problems” and added, “I’d love to fire his ass”.

The message has been unambiguous. Rates need to come down.

The current administration is acutely aware that rolling over debt lifts asset prices. In fact, former fund manager and founder of Key Square Capital Management, and now Secretary of the Treasury and Trump’s right-hand man, Scott Bessent, once pointed out that administrations on both sides, Democrat and Republican, have used this as a kind of political ace up their sleeve to make the economy look good and win votes

The midterms are this year. Trump's administration will have a strong incentive to roll the debt.

Check this excerpt from Bessant’s letter to investors in January 2024:

“As Trump’s lead persists, the Biden administration, led by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, would be expected to continue to follow, and perhaps accelerate policies, to keep the economy buoyant, provide ample liquidity, contain interest rates and avoid any more blowups like Silicon Valley Bank. All are extremely equity market positive.”

More recently, Warsh has softened his tone, echoing Trump’s criticism of the Fed and leaning toward lower rates.

Whether that moderation sticks or his hawkish instincts resurface remains to be seen. But the market reaction suggests that the sell-off in precious metals indicates investors are pricing in lower inflation expectations and greater financial stability.

The dollar is in recovery mode, which supports that.

Macro experts say this is the final hurdle.

Everyone in crypto drinks from the Raoul Pal Kool-Aid.

He hates being called a guru, but when the shit hits the fan, people usually turn to him for answers. His thesis on these assets has always been clear. They’re driven by liquidity. Even if they’ve somewhat decoupled recently.

People search for alluring explanations. Whales selling. The cycle being over. When the answer is usually far more obvious, like that wet fish slapping us earlier.

It’s the refinancing of the debt.

The U.S. can’t do that while rates are this high. And he believes that once Warsh takes over, we’re likely to see rate cuts. Maybe not immediately.

"Raoul Pal: The big narrative is that BTC and crypto are broken. The cycle is over. It's all fucked and we cant have nice things. It has dislocated from other assets, its CZ's fault, its Blackrock, its whatever. It is an alluring narrative trap for sure... especially when we see prices puking each and every fucking day...”

Pal says Warsh’s job will be to cut interest rates, stop over-managing the economy, and let it run hot.

Back in the late 1990s, renowned economist Alan Greenspan, who served as Fed chair, allowed strong growth even when things looked a bit overheated, because productivity gains from new technology kept inflation under control.

Pal says Warsh will likely run the same playbook. AI is expected to boost productivity, which should help keep prices in check even if growth accelerates.

Raoul Pal: “Warsh’s job and his mandate is to run the Greenspan era playbook. Trump has said this, as has Bessent. It means cut rates and let the economy run hot and assume that the AI productivity rise will subdue Core CPI. Just like the 1995 to 2000 era.

He is no fan of the balance sheet but the system hit reserve constraints so likelihood is he wont change its current course. He cant or he blows up the lending markets.

Warsh will cut rates and do nothing else. He will get out of the way of Trump and Bessent who will run liquidity via the banks.”

Final Thoughts.

According to Polymarket, the government shutdown is expected to last around five days. That’s much shorter than the first debacle, which dragged on for 43 days and saw crypto assets get absolutely nuked.

I say this often. It’s moments like these when people don’t make money. They panic sell strong assets because of short-term price reactions. It fucking sucks, but that’s the price you pay for extreme upside in volatile assets.

In any other world, 50%+ drawdowns mean your assets are dead. Not this one.

Any time you override a macro investing framework with emotion-driven buying or selling, you come unstuck. Stick to strong, proven assets that have been battle-tested, and your future self will thank you for sitting through this period.

This may well be the final hurdle for Bitcoin and crypto more broadly. We’re creeping closer to rates coming down to levels where debt can actually be rolled.

You now have Trump, Bessent, and, somewhat precariously, Warsh aligned to goose the economy by letting it finally run hot once rates come down. When that happens, people will refinance debt at lower rates, businesses will free up capital for spending, employment should improve, and most importantly, people will have more money in their pockets for discretionary spending. That money always finds its way into risk assets.

So the takeaway is simple. There’s a lot of potential ahead of us in the not-so-distant future. Warsh, while not officially sworn in yet, is expected to assume office shortly after Powell steps down on May 15th.

Midterms are in November 2026. Trump has a vested interest in getting the economy firing on all cylinders, even amid tariff chaos and immigration friction that’s already causing tension within his own party.

Hang in there. We’re close.

Once the dust settles, these signals will be obvious in hindsight.

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This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial, tax, or legal advice. You should consult a financial professional before making any significant financial decisions.

We missed our wingman Simon, but dropped in a voice note so he was still part of it. We covered Moonbirds, crypto pricing during a government shutdown, some of the FUD around the timeline, and much more.

For regular readers here, please consider joining the Founding group. It’s where we navigate the space together in a private chat and on monthly group calls, most of which won’t hit the timeline.

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The gut punch of a 60 per cent drawdown is a sobering feeling many just cannot handle, and I say it often, but it’s the reason why folks don’t make money in the space.

In any other world, whether that is a trad-fi investment in the stock market, your investment is dead and buried. But this is no normal world. These are network adoption models, and while there are people still in the network who have been battle-tested over time, this creates a Lindy effect that keeps it surviving into the future.

The price you pay for crazy upside is the volatility, which means you need to stomach it on the downside too.

Another way to contextualise it yourself is to bring up a chart and compare it with a few base assets. What you start to see almost immediately is that the best-performing assets are just correlated with Bitcoin.

Below, I have added the best performers over 2024 and 2025, XRP and SUI. As you can see from the chart, whenever Bitcoin goes up, both XRP and SUI are very sensitive to those upswings and experience parabolic rises.

But by the same token, when Bitcoin draws down, you get huge downswings, and recently, after Bitcoin’s recovery, we've seen the two top movers back in action again: SUI and XRP.

So the punchline here is simple.

When those tokens go down, there is no fundamental floor for the token, the team, or anything else. It’s just that Bitcoin, which serves as an index of the entire space, has gone down, so alts crash faster.

And if you understand that, you stop panicking at the wrong time and start positioning at the right time.

The only question everyone is asking that actually matters.

Will Bitcoin go up or go down?

It’s because Bitcoin has this rotation effect. As it rises, capital rotates further down the risk curve into smaller, less liquid alts and eventually into NFTs (the last to gain liquidity). Yes, NFTs. And everything has this optical rising effect.

So the question then becomes what makes Bitcoin go up in price.

What people are realising is that it’s the most sensitive asset to financial conditions. It almost acts like an index itself. You can literally eyeball the price of BTC and get a read for how the economy is doing, probably better than most signals you’ll see.

When you consider the string of liquidity provisions in the system, which I have often shared here, like oil prices, which are a tax on the entire system because the cost of oil is passed on through goods and services. Interest rates, because every country in the G20 is reducing rates. And the dollar has been dropping, so all of a sudden, the world, which has dollar-denominated debt, now becomes easier to service. All these things have stimulative effects.

Think about it simply:

You have a mortgage that drops by a few hundred dollars a month because borrowing costs are lower. This has the same impact on businesses whose goods and services are also cheaper because of lower oil prices and on increased productivity because people are spending more, so new employment rises and so do pay increases (full-time workers swear they’ve never seen this in the wild).

These effects all result in people having more money in their pockets for discretionary spending, not less.

So the question then becomes, with the extra casholla people have, will it find its way into the assets I am holding? For me, it's simple: they will buy Bitcoin, and we have clearly seen from the chart that when they do, the SUI price goes parabolic.

Now, it is an early-stage asset with a lower float, and in the same way Solana popped off last cycle, there needs to be a use case. But for a first-cycle wonder child, it looks good.

But before you get high on my dopamine-fuelled buzzwords, please read the disclaimer at the footer of the email.

Price performance rules all.

Most here now know that finding value comes from using price as the ultimate indicator, as it reflects the average cost basis, network adoption, and underlying demand, and it tells you the clearest story about the network’s performance.

Particularly when you pair the assets up with any of the base assets.

The reason you do this is simple. Let’s say you want to invest in anything other than Bitcoin. Those assets need to outpace Bitcoin’s price performance, or you may as well just invest in Bitcoin as a safe play.

So I use this pair, or the cross method. Steal this for yourself. It’s beyond simple. It divides one token's price by another, so it gives you a ratio, and what you want to see is which coin outperforms which.

As this blog is themed around SUI, which is my biggest holding asset, I will pair SUI up against the top performers, starting with ground zero, the granddaddy, Bitcoin.

I’ll add commentary below on each.

As you can see on the six-month chart, when Bitcoin goes down in price, SUI underperforms because there are fewer spot positions and more leverage against these assets. My timeline was utter carnage. It’s smaller and less liquid, so the drawdowns are more aggressive.

This becomes a benefit and a feature when Bitcoin rises. We then observe crack-induced upswings that are much higher than those of other tokens.

It comes back to my point that this is just a game of stomaching volatility.

We have the same situation with Ethereum.

Because the market cap is so much larger than SUI's, it takes far more buying pressure to move its price. And when Bitcoin goes down, it drags Ethereum and the rest of the alts with it. No asset here is immune.

But as we headed into Q1 this year, Bitcoin’s price recovery to $90k lifted everything with it. Ethereum increased, and SUI increased as well. When you pair SUI with Ethereum, you can see the outperformance clearly. That’s simply because SUI is smaller. Ethereum sits at around $390 billion. SUI is around $7.5 billion (as of publishing).

I love Ethereum.

Ethereum NFTs are a huge function of how ETH performs, so I already have more exposure than a nudist. But as a coin, SUI looks set to outperform. Simply because it’s smaller (yes, I will repeat that point many times). For you to double your money, SUI only needs to reach $15 billion. Ethereum needs to go close to $800 billion. That is a completely different level of buy pressure.

Remember, this isn’t a religion, a cult, or something you over-philosophise about. It's just a numbers game.

And if you step away from tribalism for one second and just remember that everything is correlated with Bitcoin, and all these assets rise in tandem, it becomes obvious why SUI will outpace.

The next on the purge list is Solana.

Sol was the darling of the last cycle, and just to put gut punches into context, I held my Solana from $247 all the way down to $8. So these recent drawdowns are complete rookie numbers.

But I always remember to bank these 90%+ drawdown experiences, and the pebble in the shoe is the possibility that SUI could face the same in a bear market. (More on this at the end.)

Again, it’s the same story. SUI in a drawdown, because everything is correlated with Bitcoin, bleeds the most. And in the upswing, it beats the most. Solana has a $77 billion market cap, which is ten times that of SUI.

When money comes into Bitcoin, the smaller caps outpace by a higher percentage.

Put another way, if both assets receive the same rate of inflows, Solana would need roughly 10 times as much buy pressure as SUI just to break even, given the size difference in their market caps.

Finally, the best performer over the last twelve months has been XRP.

It initially went toe-to-toe with SUI but held much greater strength against SUI in the drawdown simply because it is a larger network.

I’ll give the XRP cult their props, they’re a strong community.

They have infiltrated the minds of every human I know who is now dabbling in crypto, and the actual mind share backs it up. XRP consistently ranks among the most-discussed altcoins online and has been one of the top assets in terms of social and community mindshare according to CryptoRank.io

The attention the asset gets is insane, which, again, you don’t need to overthink because the results just end up reflected in the price.

And if that “Swift banking” meme pops up on my timeline again, I’m taking legal action against the algorithm.

The market cap is $134 billion, much larger than SUI, and it requires far more buy pressure. Which is why, in an upswing, SUI is now outperforming.

Final Thoughts.

This SUI trade will shake you, but pairing the charts gives you a signal that’s impossible to ignore.

I once heard someone say if you can’t explain why you’re putting money into something in one sentence, your investing thesis is already too complicated.

Mine for SUI is this: It’s smaller, less liquid, and it outperforms on price when Bitcoin rises.

You don’t need to overcomplicate this. You don’t need to buy into a narrative or decide that because the price is down, the team is a bag of shit.

Everything is just correlated with Bitcoin.

Now, conversely, if your asset doesn’t go up when Bitcoin rises, you may well be in the wrong asset.

If SUI had decoupled or failed to recover in price during Bitcoin's recent rally, that would have been cause for concern. However, you can count almost hundreds of instances where even a small Bitcoin rally or decline leads to SUI outperforming or underperforming.

These are network adoption models, and this is just a race to the top for the best-performing ones. And it’s looking more and more like it’s SUI. However, there will be others. HYPE and BNB have had solid performance, too, and a handful of memes are performing well.

This comes down to your appetite for volatility, not di-worsefying and chasing every winner, because remember you can only have your bum on one toilet seat and because everything moves up in tandem, diversification doesn't give you any outperformance.

But the most important element of this cycle is knowing when to sell out of your position, because it will draw down in a bear market, and it will be ugly.

I’ll be sharing the best risk-adjusted strategies for squeezing the juice out of this, including selling strategies, inside my Founders Group only.

Come and join us.

Chat soon, Jay

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We covered everything. Tariffs, crypto, NFTs, and PNKSTR.

We’re now running Spaces calls every Sunday morning on X at 10 am EST, then locking in the main live session at 8.30 pm EST. The last one pulled around 600 people, so make sure your notification bells are on if you want to catch the next on.

Many are saying that they’re learning and enjoying the lives, which is amazing.

I want to ask you to seriously consider the Founding group. This is where we go deeper on these topics and where I share the plays I feel most confident about, especially the NFT ones, which people still have an allergic reaction to.

My Founding members, my inner circle, will benefit the most. I’ll make sure of that.

The next phase of this cycle is the hardest part. Not buying. Selling. That’s where people get shaken out and make the wrong moves. What happens next decides who actually makes money this cycle and who watches someone else do it.

That’s where separation happens.

And the Founders group is where I’ll be guiding people through it.

If you want that support, please consider joining.

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