Bitcoin’s Back, Venezuela Regime Change, Memecoins, 2026 Mega Trends

Summary

• Avi’s core call: Bitcoin is on “the new all-time-high run.” The 85–90k consolidation looks like previous bottoms, his end-of-January 100k calls have already doubled, and he sees no fresh supply activation “until you get above at least 100K” — “hold on to your seat [and] you’re probably going to be able to sell 125k at some point in the next six weeks.” Market structure backs him: open interest restrained, funding muted, and Bitcoin finally rising alongside gold and equities — “the sellers that we were so scared of… seem to have run out.”
• Both hosts are bearish memecoins in aggregate for 2026 despite the year-opening rip (Pepe +70%, SHIB +30%, Fartcoin +33%, WIF +38% — which Avi calls “just ALGO on ALGO violence,” a correlation bot running ~4.5x beta to BTC). The discipline: never short alts while bullish Bitcoin at the lows — wait for an impulse move 60–70% off the bottom that activates trapped sellers, then short high-FDV, low-float, VC-unlock coins versus Bitcoin on the all-time-high rally.
• The bigger bubble is currency debasement, not AI. Avi, channeling a Ray Dalio piece: the dollar “is getting destroyed from every angle,” gold was up 60% last year versus equities’ 20%, and devaluation probably continues through 2026 — bullish BTC, gold, silver, platinum, and uranium (he’s re-entering). Jonah’s pushback: the S&P-vs-gold comparison is “a red herring” since both are USD-denominated and AI gains concentrate in Nvidia and Google — and gold is the one thing you’re now late to.
• Regime change is a Bitcoin supply story. Venezuela was likely mining BTC on near-free energy and selling it to fund the state — removing a narco-state removes a motivated seller, and seized coins could become “the foundation of the SPR,” probably never to be sold. Iran is “an even bigger player”: on regime change there, Jonah would probably “start buying a ton of Bitcoin calls,” even short-dated 1–2 week stuff, betting the market reacts with a delayed 5–6% pop.
• Avi on Venezuelan oil — reserves are not supply. He called Monday’s oil rally against mockery: Venezuela pumps ~1M of the world’s 105M bbl/day, and even the maximal “51st state” scenario adds only ~1M bbl/day of exports after 2–5 years — “worth a couple bucks lower in flat price.” Gulf Coast refiners reconfigured for light sweet shale and can’t run Venezuela’s heavy sour: “think of this like a bunch of oil getting discovered on the moon.” Iran is the opposite — toothpick-in-the-ground geology plus a floating NITC tanker armada — regime change there is “crazy bearish oil and probably pretty bullish Bitcoin.”
• Positioning meta: stay liquid and ride the mega trends. Jonah’s book is concentrated solely in “very very very liquid assets” because the world is changing too fast — real estate is tough and “PE is in for a bloodbath” (Jonah: “Me too”). For the first time since COVID, unfightable trends make big bets safer: NATO’s 5%-of-GDP defense pledge by 2035 (US at 3.4%), AI, debasement, a G-zero world — “there is a generational wealth opportunity for those brave enough.”

Deep dive

1. Bitcoin: the new all-time-high run — trim at 100–105, sell 125k

• Avi isn’t calling the end of the move: the long 85–90k consolidation “looks very similar to the previous bottoms that Bitcoin held,” his end-of-January 100k calls from last week have already doubled, and he’d only reduce “a little bit” at 100–105. “My take is that this is the new all-time-high run — if you just hold on to your seat… you’re probably going to be able to sell 125k at some point in the next six weeks.” He doesn’t expect supply activation “until you get above at least 100K.”
• The structure is what convinces him: open interest shows leveraged traders “not getting over their skis,” funding rates are muted, and BTC is rising together with gold and equities for the first time — “the sellers that we were so scared of… seem to have run out.” If you’re sidelined, “move faster rather than slower.”
• Jonah is fully invested, BTC-dominant, with a small trading sleeve (down last year despite winning on Hyperliquid). His frame: “a grand slam in a month and a generational wealth-creation event over a 10-year time frame… I really believe Bitcoin’s going to a million dollars.” “I do not understand why this would go down.”

2. Memecoins: dead in aggregate — short the pop, not the low

• Avi’s standing call — memes don’t stage a real 2026 recovery — took immediate damage from the January rip, which is exactly the rally he warned about: “you can never short [alts] if you’re bullish the market… a rising tide lifts all boats.” Jonah conceded the timing point and “didn’t short any because I was too lazy” — but “I still want to sell this pop. I just don’t know how or when.”
• The tape: Pepe +70%, SHIB +30%, Fartcoin +33% year-to-date — after being long meme vs BTC lost 80–90% “from the Trump coin moment until the end of the year.” WIF up 38% on BTC’s 8% is, per Avi, “just ALGO on ALGO violence” — a correlation bot bidding ~4.5x beta, “only sustainable for very short illiquid periods… bag holders will try to get their liquidity when it goes up.”
• The shorting technique from the desk: wait for an impulse-driven move off a level — something up 60–70% off the lows is what finally draws in old sellers wanting an exit. Worldcoin is the template: it’s rallied 200% and 160% off lows before and sits only 30% off them now — wait for “like 125, and then that’s the greatest short of a lifetime” against Bitcoin, “no matter how much Sam Altman tries to pump that thing.”
• Jonah’s structural obituary: he generated a hipster-Williamsburg Maduro image mid-show — “it takes less than one second to create this slop now.” In 2024 he could have sent that meme to 10–20M people with a podcast; today the best Maduro coin is “a couple million… that’s the state of the trenches, man.” The DexScreener/Peanut-the-Squirrel reflex era is over; on a BTC breakout cascading to ETH and some alts, short the “high FDV, low-float, VC unlock coins versus Bitcoin.”

3. The bigger bubble is debasement, not AI

• Avi’s macro spine, via a Ray Dalio piece “everyone should read”: the dollar “is just getting destroyed… from every angle.” Gold up 60% last year versus 20% for equities regardless of AI — “the real driving force is devaluation of currencies,” and it probably continues through 2026, bullish Bitcoin, gold, silver, platinum, and uranium: “maybe I sold out too early, but I’m ready to get back in.”
• Jonah’s pushback, worth keeping: the S&P-underperforming-gold argument is “a red herring” — dedollarization hits both since both are USD-denominated, and AI gains don’t accrue to “maybe 450” of the S&P but aggregate to Nvidia and Google, “companies that rallied even more than gold.” You’d need a pure play for apples-to-apples. Still: “I don’t think you’re too late on anything except gold.”
• Palladium as the risk-appetite tell: down 25% off the highs, back up 14% in three days — “an altcoin-like move” in a metal.

4. Venezuela regime change removes a Bitcoin seller

• Jonah’s rumor, flagged as rumor: Venezuela had stockpiled “quite a stack of BTC,” with Trafigura allegedly moving sanctioned cargos for payment in Tether or Bitcoin. Now “the US probably has access to that reserve or is torturing people to get the seed phrase” — and he’d “be shocked if they didn’t create the foundation of the SPR with seized Bitcoin.”
• Avi’s supply mechanics: a sanctioned state with near-zero-cost energy mines Bitcoin to fund operations — “probably a net seller, not a net buyer.” Folding that into a country that never sells “is probably net beneficial for BTC,” and perhaps part of why Bitcoin rallied.
• The forward trade: Iran is even bigger — “half the reason Hamas had billions of dollars [at] Binance is Iran’s love for Bitcoin.” On Iranian regime change, Jonah expects a delayed reaction giving listeners time to “buy a ton of Bitcoin calls, possibly even short-dated stuff — a week, two weeks out, maybe you get a 5–6% pop.”

5. Venezuelan oil: the world’s biggest reserves are not supply

• Avi called oil higher on Monday while “people were like, you’re crazy” — “I may be a crypto larper, but I really know my stuff when it comes to oil.” Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven reserves, tens of trillions of dollars underground — and it barely matters near-term, because “oil under the ground is worthless” until it passes through extraction, dilution, refining, and combustion.
• The math: the world consumes ~105M bbl/day; Venezuela produces ~1M and exports slightly under that. Even the boundary-condition bear case — “imagine Trump makes Venezuela the 51st state” — takes production back to the 3–4M historical max only after 2–5 years (Exxon needed 5–10 on Guyana next door), with ~2M consumed domestically: exports rise ~1M/day, “worth a couple bucks lower in flat price… not that big a deal.”
• The infrastructure trap: Venezuelan crude is heavy sour, some of it solid at room temperature, while Gulf Coast refiners spent 15–20 years reconfiguring for Permian light sweet — feed them Venezuelan barrels and “it would blow up every refinery.” “People should more think of this like a bunch of oil getting discovered on the moon.”

6. The real chess move is China — and Iran is next

• Avi’s geopolitical read: Trump moved on Venezuela “to exact leverage over China” — the world’s biggest oil importer was getting guaranteed cheap sanctioned supply; barrels on the open market are one more lifeline the US can cut “if they do something the United States doesn’t like,” i.e., Taiwan. It also breaks the Russia–Venezuela refining arbitrage and keeps adversary weapons out of the Western Hemisphere.
• The precedent is the point: if Delta Force can snatch a sitting head of state, “that can happen to the likely Ayatollah Khamenei too.” Iran is Saudi-like geology — regime change could bring on, by his guess, another 1–2M bbl/day “pretty quickly” — plus the NITC’s armada of full tankers “that would all just get dumped on the market.” Regime change there is “crazy bearish oil and probably pretty bullish Bitcoin.”
• Avi on why protests now: “the take is very simple — it’s a coordinated effort right now [by] the CIA and Mossad,” timed with the Venezuela operation. But the 86-year-old Ayatollah is a figurehead atop an entrenched apparatus with a succession plan; a fall requires “a true rising up of the people.” “Definitely not 100%” — but there are signs of operations “that have not happened in the last 10 to 15 years.” On any inkling: “you’re buying a ton of gold, you’re buying a ton of BTC.”
• The color survives: Avi on likely Reza Pahlavi, the presumed transition figure — “if [he] was three inches taller and better looking… Iran would have fallen yesterday. He’s got no rizz.” And the China-endgame worry, with Germany-2018 as the analogy: once the West controls the oil, “they’re getting that spigot turned off immediately” — Jonah’s asterisk being that China keeps access, just not exclusive access, unless it starts a war.

7. Stay liquid — PE is in for a bloodbath

• Jonah’s book is concentrated “solely around very very very liquid assets” because the world is changing too fast to sit in what you can’t offload: real estate is tough, VC and PE tougher — “I think PE is in for a bloodbath personally.” Jonah: “Me too.” Liquid markets are making people money and pulling flows back; emerging markets outperformed the S&P this year.
• The mega-trends thesis: for the first time since COVID (“we’re going to print as much money as it takes”), the macro is legible enough to size up — NATO’s 5%-of-GDP defense pledge by 2035 (US at 3.4%, every European below) isn’t in prices yet, and defense-tech upstarts are why likely Palmer Luckey started the bank “Arabore” (likely Erebor) to lend to them; add AI, debasement, and a G-zero world (“I hate Ian Bremmer, but he has one thing he’s right about”). Read The Fourth Turning. Most people “are not going to bet on the trends” — hence the tweet: “a generational wealth opportunity for those brave enough.”

8. The King of Oil playbook for collapsing regimes

• Avi’s tongue-in-cheek-but-serious tweet decoded: study the Soviet and Yugoslavia collapses; if you’re 22 with no ties, “channel your inner 19th-century British explorer” — learn Farsi if Iran falls, learn Russian for when the war ends, scope Venezuelan real estate (a friend is literally booking flights). Figure out how to get embedded: “Call up Jonah.”
• Jonah’s specimen: young Vitol Moscow-office and “stans” guys who left after the Ukraine war to run bucket-shop brokerages getting Russian oil “laundered into the western hemispheric refining system” — buying likely Urals at “Brent minus $38” versus its normal Brent plus a dollar. Now billionaires in their late 20s and early 30s; he visited one’s compound in what he called Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. The mechanics: capture both “armpits” — supply and demand — because cheap supply is the edge and exit is just access to liquidity.
• The template is Marc Rich, “the best trader of all time, the father of modern oil trading”: “the law is the only objective standard” — if it’s legal in your jurisdiction and Vitol and JP Morgan can’t touch it, “the market needed that.” Sign-off: “Own Bitcoin, be creative, and stay liquid.”