Metals Alt Season, Catchup Trades, Bitcoin vs Gold, Crypto Is Dead

Summary

• Alt season has arrived in precious metals, and both hosts think it ends the way it always does in crypto. Avi’s diagnosis of the gold move: “a mix of CTA buying, sovereign manipulation, and retail panic” — central banks buy gold, retail panics into silver, palladium, and platinum, and his friends now text him “gold is the new Bitcoin, silver is the new Ethereum.” Avi’s tell is that silver, the metal without clear geopolitical tailwinds, is up almost 300% since breakout — proof “metals have successfully penetrated into retail trading,” which is “scary for the short term.”
• Both expect a violent short-term top. Avi wouldn’t be surprised by a -15-20% day in silver and won’t touch it; Avi is fully sidelined because “high prices are the solution for high prices” and without a thesis tether you get “mulched on the reversal” in the eighth or ninth inning. Silver actually collapsed live during recording — “this podcast caused the top in metals.”
• The buy list is the strategic stuff, on a pullback, not the shiny stuff here: rare earth miners (REMX, USR — likely USA Rare Earth), uranium, copper. Avi’s 10-15-year multipolar-fracturing thesis says these deserve 15-20% of a portfolio “if not more,” with the US likely upping investment in rare earth companies within 6-12 months. Gold “probably higher than 5,000” if you buy and wait two years — “but you were supposed to be buying before.”
• Bitcoin over gold, gun to head. Jonah: buy Bitcoin at 88 over gold at 5,000 — a potential 10-bagger versus a 2-bagger on the same horizon — and gold profits will NOT rotate into crypto; that rotation is a three-decade bleed “as boomer gold bugs die.” Avi calls Bitcoin’s chart “the ugliest chart I’ve ever seen in my entire life” but says anything below 80 is “an amazing buy,” with a gold down-candle plus firming Bitcoin as his re-entry signal.
• Silver is a memecoin: no central bank accumulation, tiny national-security use versus uranium or palladium, “really just a trading asset.” The short setup both endorse: never short strength — wait for the collapse, then short the one-third-to-half bounce retrace with moving-average confluence (below the 50- and 100-day, above the 200), “waiting for the utter collapse of the house of cards.”
• “Crypto is dead” as a category, per Avi: “saying you work in crypto in about a year is going to be equivalent to saying you work in internet in the year 2010.” Surviving tokens “will just become equities on a different tech stack.” The interim playbook: fresh viral memes on Dex Screener (Penguin went 500K to 100M market cap) or revenue producers on dips — Avi thinks Hyperliquid is bottom now and Syrup was +11% on a flat Bitcoin day.

Deep dive

1. Alt season has hit precious metals — and retail is the last buyer

• Avi’s diagnosis, straight from crypto’s playbook: “What’s going on in gold has triggered a cascade. It’s like alt season in precious metals right now” — “a mix of CTA buying, sovereign manipulation, and retail panic.” The same friends who asked him about Bitcoin after the Trump election now text “gold is the new Bitcoin, silver is the new Ethereum.” His verdict: “retail FOMO. Again, very large model.”
• The propagation mechanism mirrors what crypto traders have “seen hundreds of times”: central banks buy gold — Europe divesting Treasuries so its reserves don’t spiral in the same doom loop as its currency — then retail panics into silver, palladium, and platinum, then auto producers who actually use platinum and palladium get caught short and chase.
• Avi’s tell for the top: silver, “something that doesn’t necessarily have the geopolitical tailwinds that everything else does,” is up almost 300% since the breakout, faster than gold. “The fact that this is running and everyone is focused on this tells me that metals have successfully penetrated into retail trading… that’s a little bit scary for the short term.” Candles getting bigger “even on a percentage basis” — “I don’t want to buy that. Who wants to buy that?”
• Both put the top close in time, if not price: Avi “wouldn’t be surprised to see silver pull a negative 15-20% day.” Silver actually dumped mid-recording — “this podcast caused the top in metals. Good game, guys.”

2. Avi’s sideline: no tether, no trade

• The commodities-lifer rule: “in commodities, with the possible exception of gold, high prices are the solution for high prices.” We’re in “the eighth or the ninth inning” — the price can still double or triple there, but you can’t top-tick your exit without “a thesis tether,” and Avi doesn’t have one: “I just don’t care.”
• Timing the pop is professionals’ work. Entire consulting firms sell “CTA predictive telemetry” — a grandma’s LLC invests in Winton, models the futures reports, re-sells the positions. “If you’re not doing that kind of stuff… it’s pretty hard to tell when this bubble’s going to pop.”
• His anti-FOMO thought experiment: natural gas just ripped ~150% in less than a week on a northeast ice blast, and nobody feels regret because “you’re not a weather modeler” — natgas traders “are real cowboys.” Same standard applies: “no one should FOMO over gold just like you wouldn’t FOMO over natural gas.”
• The trader’s discipline, verbatim: “you have to sociopathically disassociate yourself from the money that could have been made if only you’d hung on for reasons that you can’t understand or articulate right now.”

3. The multidecade strategic trade

• The core thesis — the same one that put Jonah in Bitcoin: non-sovereign currencies get more valuable in a multipolar world. Gold rallied post-2001 as post-9/11 fear set in, again with China’s rise, then “after Russia invades Ukraine you start to really see the thesis.” Over the next 10-15 years “the world will continue to fracture… there will be no hegemonic power,” making the fight for rare earths, energy independence, and gold reserves structural.
• Sizing, stated flat: these assets “deserve a place in your portfolio… at least 15-20% for an extended period of time, if not more.”
• The catch-up trades with real theses: REMX and USR (likely USA Rare Earth) — still nowhere near where REMX opened over a decade ago, with the US “at some point in the next six to 12 months” probably upping investment in these strategic miners — plus uranium (“still very long”) and copper.
• On gold itself: “if you buy this and you wait two years, gold’s probably higher than 5,000… but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re supposed to be buying right here. You were supposed to be buying before.”

4. Silver is a memecoin

• Avi’s valuation logic, “sort of indisputable”: gold is actively bought by central banks and owned as a store of value by a huge population; silver has neither bid. The percent of silver supply used in national-security cases is “very tiny” versus uranium or palladium, so its valuation “is solely due to speculation… it’s really just a trading asset. It comes down at some point.”
• Jonah accepts the frame and drops the pretense: “toss out value. This is just a momentum asset.” His CTA explainer — Winton, Lynx, Aspect run three moving-average speeds across a hundred assets, “CTAs move the [expletive] out of commodities” — means everyone is max long now, and when price dips below the averages “they’ll turn around and sell the vast pile… look out below when that happens.”
• The short playbook both endorse: never short strength (“retail loves to short these extensions and then just get blown out”). Wait for the collapse, then short the one-third-to-half bounce retrace with moving-average confluence — below the 50- and 100-day while still above the 200 — “waiting for the utter collapse of the house of cards.”

5. Bitcoin vs gold: the ugliest chart wins gun-to-head

• Avi on Bitcoin’s monthly: “the ugliest chart I’ve ever seen in my entire life” — rejected at 98, back below 90, “sitting right on trendline support” with consistent OG selling while “metals have really sucked everything out of the room.” His trigger to re-enter: a massive gold down-candle while Bitcoin firms. And “anything below 80, that’s an amazing buy.”
• Jonah’s gun-to-head: “if you buy gold at 5,000 or Bitcoin at 88, you buy Bitcoin at 88” — he can’t stomach “buying gold here hoping for a two-bagger when I could buy Bitcoin and hope for a 10-bagger over a similar time horizon.” Push gold much higher and “people will be pawning all of their gold” — there’s supply, including gold OGs.
• On rotation, both agree the answer is no: gold profits won’t flow into Bitcoin because the investor bases differ — “the type of person to roll profits into Bitcoin probably buys silver at 97 and then sells it at 80 on the way back down.” The real rotation is a slow bleed over three decades “as boomer gold bugs die” and millennials hoard Bitcoin instead.
• Avi’s pass on missing gold: it was a risk-off asset until Russia — the paradigm shift showed up in 2023 and gold didn’t moon until mid-2024 — so owning it meant betting against stocks during “one of the most bullish possible backdrops for equities I’ve ever seen.”

6. The yellow rock beat tech — and still isn’t investable

• The chart that boggles both: gold has 20x’d since the turn of the century, dramatically outperforming the S&P, versus the Nasdaq’s 5.86x — “investing in tech has underperformed that silly little yellow rock. How insane is that?”
• Why gold still isn’t investable: unlike Bitcoin’s alternative-reserve-currency megatrend, “there really is no mega trend in gold… since the Iron Age, people have been hacking each other to pieces with metals. The vision for $100,000 gold just isn’t there.” No price target attaches to any outcome — “countries will never be doing global trade denominated in gold.”
• And the sovereign bid has an expiration: there’s “a multi-millennium history of oscillation” in central-bank hoarding, and shoring up a currency literally means selling gold to buy it. “This isn’t a forever trade. You just have to be careful.”
• His filter for any non-revenue hard asset: it needs a supercycle thesis. He sees one in Bitcoin, copper, and rare earths; maybe gold; “I do not see a supercycle thesis in platinum, palladium, or silver. So avoid.”

7. “Crypto is dead” — long live fintech

• Avi’s frame, delivered as a bit but meant seriously: “saying you work in crypto in about a year is going to be equivalent to saying you work in internet in the year 2010… crypto is fintech and fintech is crypto.” The same fate awaits AI within five years — nobody will say they run “an AI company.”
• The endgame for tokens: everything on Binance and Coinbase either dies or integrates — tradeable next to stocks at Interactive Brokers — and survivors “will have to look like equity”: legal binding with the purchaser, revenue dedicated to the token. “These tokens will just become equities on a different tech stack.”
• The interim playbook, exactly two trades: catch a genuinely fresh meme on Dex Screener early (Penguin went from 500K to 100M market cap), or buy revenue producers when the market gives an entry — “Hyperliquid is, I think, bottom now… makes a ton of money… we’ve worked through most of the supply.” Evidence for the revenue-asset bid: Syrup up 11% on a day Bitcoin was flat.
• Jonah’s one caveat to the tokens-become-equities thesis: privacy coins. “We’re going to still have a tremendous amount of crime over the next 800 million years of human history” — the way you get long crime is long XMR or Zcash.

8. Programmatic equity is the actual mega trend

• Jonah’s lived example: incorporating a Delaware C Corp for a side hustle costs “mid five figures” in legal fees, plus five figures for every distribution or change. His wish, via Chris Dixon’s Read Write Own — “the token subsuming the LLC”: a launchpad that issues tokenized share classes through a checklist, disintermediating the legal machinery. “Programmatic equity is what a token is. I think that’ll be a mega trend in small and medium-sized businesses.”
• Avi’s diagnosis of what’s missing — worth keeping: the tech is ready but “we haven’t built a social technology to manage what happens when you have a highly liquid asset immediately available to founders… there’s no obligation to make them valuable.” Fix the legal layer and “it’s the best way of issuing equity ever.”
• The kicker that closes the loop on crypto-is-dead: whoever builds it won’t say they work in Web3 or crypto — “they’re going to be just tech entrepreneurs like everybody.”