Bitcoin Above $100k, Is Alt Season Here?

Summary

• Both hosts call alt season open, even if short-lived. Avi: revenue-generating “real businesses” like Syrup (+50% since last week, with a “ridiculous” P/E relative to the rest of the market), Pendle, and Hype “could rerate like 3x in the next 3 months — I think I’ve got a tenbagger here.” Avi’s filter for the phase: “anything below a billion that has a good narrative and makes money feels like it’s worth a yolo.”
• Bitcoin printed above $107k while equities languish — two red S&P days against solid green BTC candles — and Avi is “very confident” in $120k reasonably soon. The decoupling itself is the signal: the bid isn’t coming from risk-on beta.
• The structural case: a Cambrian explosion of crypto investor products — Nakamoto (David Bailey), MicroStrategy’s endless raises, Republic’s SPAC, Coinbase strength despite a hack. Avi reads the issuance wave as a tell of latent demand (“the bankers are getting called every day”) and frames it as a demand-driven supercycle, like the 2000s China commodity cycle. Jonah agrees it’s the beginning, not priced in — bullish on 1-, 6-, and 12-month horizons.
• The macro engine is fiscal insanity: hardliners demanding cuts “got steamrolled” on the budget bill, and Jonah’s standing thesis — no politician, “not even Donald Trump, has the mandate or the balls to send the economy into a recession” — means borrow, spend, print resumes and BTC pumps. Institutional BTC has only been investable ~5 months (“a nanosecond in institutional time frames”), so the longer BTC outperforms stocks, the more the debasement-hedge narrative becomes self-fulfilling — even the largest fixed-income funds need the hedge.
• Short-term caution, not conviction selling: funding is expensive (40% on Deribit, 11% on Hyperliquid) and 25,000 BTC ($3B) of open interest was added in three days — “everybody got levered long at 100 to 102.” Avi would trim 15-20% to rebuy a 10% flush toward $97k; Jonah respectfully disagrees: “this is kind of the moment where you don’t sell hoping for 97k” — stay fully invested, just don’t add leverage.
• Jonah’s new favorite: Launchcoin, an “institutional pump.fun” whose token went from $20M to $270M FDV after the platform launched — $15M in fees in a week, #12 on DeFi Llama by revenue, P/E “like four.” Avi’s claim: launch execution “reduced the risk by 99%.” Avi stays skeptical on Grass — mid-eight-figure revenue is founder-cited only, and “when something is going well, you talk about it.”
• Hedges and tells: Jonah is rotating some equities into gold after the 3,500→3,000 washout, on the grave-dancing heuristic — smug obituaries mark bottoms (Tim Waltz called Tesla “225 and going lower”; low was 214, now $344). Avi endorses the diversification with a clean regime split: in a stimulus scenario both rip and Bitcoin rips more; in a macro freakout “gold will outperform everything else by a long shot.”

Deep dive

1. Bitcoin decoupled from equities at $107k — the bid isn’t beta

• The setup as recorded: Bitcoin just peaked above $107,000 with “not that much euphoria in the markets,” while equities sit below highs — two red S&P days against BTC’s “solid green bars.” Avi: “I’m feeling very confident that we see $120,000 per Bitcoin reasonably soon.” Jonah agrees the decoupling is the tell — the outperformance isn’t coming from risk-on equities, so it must be crypto-specific demand.
• The one worry is positioning. Jonah, reading his dashboard: funding on Deribit is 40%, Hyperliquid 11% — “if you want to get levered long Bitcoin, you got to pay up, which means a lot of people are getting levered long on the highs, never a good sign.” Avi adds 25,000 BTC ($3B) of open interest in three days, and not just Bitcoin: “every coin where there’s leverage, people are getting levered up.”
• Their tactical split — worth keeping. Avi hopes for “a nice little flush, maybe a 10% liquidation wick — you touch 97 and go back up,” and would sell 15-20% of a trading stack to rebuy 5-10% lower. Jonah’s rebuttal: “I think this is kind of the moment where you don’t sell hoping for 97K” — if fully invested, hang on, don’t apply leverage, and keep dry powder “in the gun ready to pull the trigger” for the dip.

2. The Cambrian explosion of investor products is a demand tell, not the driver

• Avi’s core bullish input is capital-markets activity: the Nakamoto vehicle David Bailey is doing, MicroStrategy raising “a ton of money,” a Republic-run SPAC hunting crypto assets, Coinbase doing well “even in light of a hack.” Crucially, this issuance is driven by traditional-finance people, not crypto degens: “a bunch of bankers are like, holy crap, all of our clients are asking us about this — let’s come up with as many products as possible.” His analogy: the structured-products boom, where product proliferation and a ripping market went together.
• Avi’s refinement from his Goldman desk days — these are classic “investor products,” and they appear during demand-driven supercycles, like the 2000s commodity cycle when China lifted a billion people out of poverty and needed copper, steel, and asphalt. His rule: “super cycles are always demand driven — people often get this wrong.” A supply shock (2022 Ukraine, wheat and oil) is never a supercycle.
• They converge: the product wave is a manifestation of latent demand the hosts aren’t privy to — “it’s like a tell, a giveaway” — and the trader’s question “is it priced in?” gets answered no: “we’re in the beginning, hence the Cambrian explosion phrasing.” Jonah calls this rare: bullish on one-month, six-month, and twelve-month horizons simultaneously. This is also distinct from 2021/2024, when product expansion meant degens launching shitcoins at a small subset of buyers.

3. Fiscal insanity is the engine — and the BTC-hedge narrative is self-fulfilling

• The second driver: the budget bill. “There’s no longer any semblance of fiscal sanity in our government” — Republican hardliners demanding cuts to pay for it “got steamrolled.” Jonah’s long-standing answer to the smartest bear case (Trump/DOGE austerity kills the M2 trade): “this is all talk… markets are going to puke, then they’re going to flail and capitulate, and we’re going to go back to the world of borrow, spend, print, and BTC will pump.” No politician “has the mandate or the balls to send the economy into a recession” — Trump “wants his face on Mount Rushmore,” hence the V-shaped recovery both bet on publicly.
• The structural kicker: Bitcoin “wasn’t really investable until Trump got elected because of the previous SEC — so it’s only really been investable for 5 months, which is a nanosecond in institutional time frames.” The longer BTC outperforms stocks, the more macro investors and passive money adopt it as the hedge against the “stimulus vortex” where “the printing press goes brr, the dollar gets devalued and fixed income goes to shit” — a hedge even the world’s largest fixed-income funds need. Both call it a virtuous, self-fulfilling cycle; Jonah’s half-joke: someone send Michael Saylor this podcast so he keeps “emptying his clips.”

4. The grave-dancing heuristic — and why Jonah is buying gold

• Avi’s confessed trading heuristic: when someone “smugly proclaims the death or decline of any particular asset… that is normally a phenomenal sign to go buy.” Exhibit A: Tim Waltz gloating that Tesla was “225 and going lower” — the dead low was 214, a $10 further drop; it now trades $344. “Good thing Tim Waltz is not in charge of anyone’s money.”
• Applied live: after gold’s selloff from ~3,500 toward 3,000 drew “gold bull run is done” calls, Jonah has been scaling back in, selling some equities to buy gold. Avi endorses the diversification with a clean regime split: in a stimulus scenario both rip and Bitcoin rips more; in a macro freakout “gold will outperform everything else by a long shot” — on that, “I’m super confident.”

5. Israel-Iran: Avi’s base case is a non-event, but it’s the known unknown

• Jonah’s scenario analysis: a US-government leak says Israel is weighing strikes on Iranian nuclear sites — possibly a mid-air-refueled raid on Fordow, “100 meters underneath a mountain,” plus Natanz. If Iran gets “seriously neutered,” a cornered lash-out that shuts the Strait of Hormuz — choking off 30% of the world’s oil — is “a stocks down 30% kind of event,” the kind of Liberation-Day-style shock that “nukes our crypto and our stocks.”
• Avi’s rebuttal, the episode’s rational take: Iran generates 0% of its power from nuclear energy, so bombing enrichment sites “does negligible damage to Iran — it genuinely does not matter for the Iranian economy or anything other than their pride.” Iran can’t even frame a response without admitting a weapons program it denies having. Avi says war would follow if Israel hits critical infrastructure or tries to incite revolution, which he views as very unlikely: “my main view on this is it’s a non-event.”
• The market agrees, mostly: oil is up ~10%, but on inventory draws and short CTAs — “a nice little snapback to the middle of a very tight boring range.” If Hormuz were a real risk, “it would be pushing towards a hundred in no time.” Jonah’s residual worry is the pride variable: “these guys are real hardliners — I wonder out loud if they could get embarrassed like that and just say, oh whatever, there’s just some craters.”

6. Alt season is on: buy sub-$1B tokens with real revenue

• The through-line of the episode: both hosts are now much more bullish on altcoins, because the public-market product boom shows “clear appetite for real businesses.” Avi: “these things could rerate like 3x in the next three months. I think I’ve got a tenbagger here.” Receipts they claim: Syrup +50% since they flagged its low P/E last week, Pendle strong, XMR running, Trumpcoin trading nicely (“crime is paying”) — and the standing Worldcoin rule worked again: “short it every time it goes up 20 to 30%” (the 125–130 short paid).
• Jonah’s new idea: Launchcoin, a more institutional pump.fun-style launchpad — “kind of like a Kickstarter for crypto” — whose token went from $20M to $270M FDV when the platform actually shipped last week, earning ~$15M in fees and $3.25M in revenue over the week ($4-5M/day in fees just from Hype, Avi thinks, before stabilizing at $0.5-1M/day), ranking #12 on DeFi Llama by revenue behind Tether, Circle, Axiom, Hyperliquid, and Pump. P/E “like four,” and supposedly token holders get the benefits, unlike Pump.fun, where the money goes to the founders; Avi’s claim is that the launch “reduced the risk by 99% in my opinion.” Avi’s screen for the phase: “anything below a billion that has a good narrative and makes money feels like it’s worth a yolo” — which Jonah notes “encapsulates a lot of the crypto market right now.”
• Avi’s counterweight on Grass: the founder cited mid-eight-figure revenue but publishes nothing, and “when something is going well, you talk about it — when something’s going poorly and people have invested at a multi-billion dollar valuation, you don’t.” He owns under $50k (“maybe 45”), likes the weekly breakout from a diagonal downtrend, but wants data: the chart is “one-and-a-half-x levered Bitcoin with 100x the risk.”
• And the deep-value cult position: Monero, “a freaking $6.4 billion private Swiss bank in your pocket… worth at minimum 20 billion. Monero is what Bitcoin was meant to be.” Avi owns “a decent amount”; Jonah’s tease — the believers don’t reply because “they’re criminals, sitting there silently listening.”