How To Trade This Cycle | 1000x

Summary

• Using Jaguar’s botched rebrand as a sunk-cost and groupthink analogy, Avi’s base case is a tradable BTC range with $89k–$91k support and $97k–$99k resistance, not a place to load directional risk around $95k. Buy or short only near the extremes, then hunt relative performance inside the range. His playbook: identify what has not run, follow the sector leading for “2 to 3 days of outperformance,” and enter “right as it’s breaking.” He also prefers buying after liquidation runs and, ideally, a breakout retest; weekends have recently traded well.

• The altcoin rally is being powered by returning retail buying assets it remembers from 2 to 3 years earlier. HBAR, IOTA, Algorand, XRP, Chainlink, and Litecoin gained roughly 50%–150% in a week, while IOTA rose 5x from its bottom. Avi says meme coins have eroded the idea that reality drives price action; his operative explanation is simply: “Why not?”

• A framework is Jonah’s defense against FOMO, revenge trading, and meaningless P&L anchoring. Avi calls P&L “one of the most harmful things in the entire world” because losses pull traders back toward the same asset to recover money. Jonah’s refinement: revisit profitable niches where an edge exists, but after repeated losses, put up a note saying, “Don’t trade XYZ ever again.”

• The alt rally needs either continuing retail inflows or fresh BTC wealth rotating outward, and that support can eventually run out. A short BTC range is excellent for alts; a prolonged range lets the rotation weaken, while a BTC sell-off is worse. Avi expects alts to lure traders into believing BTC will break higher before a deleveraging event instead produces the sell-off.

• A U.S. strategic Bitcoin reserve is the episode’s largest upside catalyst and sharpest disagreement. Jonah assigns 50%–70% odds within the first 100 days and nearly 100% within the first 400 days; Avi initially says 8%, versus Polymarket’s 24%, because authorizing new purchases is politically harder than retaining seized BTC. Jonah argues that even transferring Silk Road BTC into a formal reserve could establish Bitcoin as the alternative global reserve asset and lead other countries to follow, potentially producing “dozens” of central-bank holders. Jonah says Bitcoin will be his largest allocation, with SPY and U.S. equities second.

• Cleaner tactical expressions include SOL/ETH, prospective Coinbase listings, and the NFT wealth effect. Avi sees roughly 13% upside if SOL/ETH merely retraces halfway toward its highs; likely listing candidates include PNUT, GOAT, NEIRO, and POPCAT after Coinbase listed Moo Deng. In seven days, NFT floors rose sharply in ETH terms, including CryptoPunks +20%, Bored Ape Yacht Club +62%, Pudgy Penguins +30%, and Fidenza +102%.

• MicroStrategy amplifies BTC’s upside but is not yet a systemic liquidation threat. Jonah describes the structure as “negative gamma to the upside”: higher BTC enables more purchases, while falling BTC removes Saylor’s marginal bid. The genuine risk arrives around 2026–2027 if debt comes due when the stock is impaired, although Avi regards forced BTC sales as very unlikely. Jonah says the obligations may be covered by traditional software revenue; if not, “there’s a lot of Bitcoin to be sold.”

Deep dive

1. A losing trade is not entitled to a comeback

• The opening Jaguar example is an iconic brand’s accumulated identity discarded in a top-down project that nobody stopped. The broader trading lesson comes through the Turkish saying, “No matter how far you’ve walked down the wrong road, turn back.” Every investor is “the Warren Buffett, CEO of our own little portfolio,” and sunk cost can preserve a terrible position just as easily as a terrible corporate project.

• Avi’s rule is to suppress the green or red number because “the trade’s the trade.” His sole exception is genuinely life-changing profit: if closing the position changes your life, looking at P&L and taking it off is rational.

• Losing money on Tezos—or any asset—creates an irrational urge to recover it through Tezos. Jonah distinguishes that revenge loop from revisiting a profitable niche where the trader may possess an edge; Avi accepts the amendment and warns that revenge trading will likely proliferate over the coming weeks.

2. Bitcoin’s $89k–$99k range rewards rules, not conviction

• Avi maps the range at $89k–$91k on the bottom and $97k–$99k on top, with BTC near $95k during the discussion. “Your job is to not take too much directional risk” mid-range; anyone determined to short should wait for the upper extreme, while aggressive longs belong near the lower one.

• His three-part scanner ranks assets by distance from moving averages, identifies the current “flavor”—dino coins, AI coins, or another sector—and buys either the leader or its follow-ons. The final discipline is timing: “Not before, not after, like right as it’s breaking.” He prefers entries after a liquidation run and, ideally, a retest of a breakout; he also says the market has recently traded well over weekends.

• The specimens are LTC clearing $100 and moving directly to $130, and Chainlink breaking $20 before reaching $24. These are selective, short-duration trades that “add up over time,” not investments requiring a fundamental reinvention.

• Jonah’s pushback explains why crypto Twitter finds the same tape miserable: without an objective process for entries and exits, 200% moves look like random invitations to chase. Because he lacked time to “lock in,” he kept longer-horizon convictions and refused to FOMO rather than improvising a short-term system.

3. Retail is buying the last cycle it remembers

• Avi’s causal chain starts with a repeated refrain from the show: retail was absent. Once those participants returned—over the last 2 months, in his account—they naturally bought what they already knew from 2 to 3 years earlier; “These people don’t do research” before the first wave of recognition buying.

• Jonah defines dino coins as assets predating the major 2020–2021 cycle. HBAR, IOTA, Algorand, XRP, Chainlink, and Litecoin were up roughly 50%–150% over 7 days—“mania,” but also evidence that familiar names had become the retail on-ramp.

• The hosts had liked XRP before the election because a favorable SEC would benefit sued tokens, yet neither expected the magnitude. Avi imagined “buy it on the headline, you wait 2 weeks, you sell up”; instead, XRP became “the most hated rally,” drawing on its 2013 and 2017 recognition.

• Avi argues that meme coins eroded the idea that reality drove price action. IOTA could therefore rise 5x from its bottom despite his calling it “a complete and utter scam”: it was heavily shorted, had a good chart, and answered the market’s governing question—“Why not?”

4. Listings and meme-native fundamentals define the next rotation

• Asked whether to chase already “roofed” dino coins or buy laggards, Avi initially dismisses DOT because it had doubled. After checking the chart, he reverses himself: “Actually a pretty good trade.” The exchange captures the priority of current setup over inherited dislike.

• Coinbase’s Moo Deng listing suggests a second event trade in high-volume memes such as PNUT, GOAT, NEIRO, and POPCAT. Avi says a nervous trader might pair them against already-listed WIF or BONK—without recommending it outright—because a listing could generate a 50% run.

• Jonah rejects the 2021-style thesis that XRP’s rally requires investing throughout XRP DeFi; he wants valueless memes treated as pump-and-dumps. Avi counters that the XRP Army is itself a meme and expects a brief wealth effect in which AVAX holders rotate gains into AVAX memes and on-chain assets.

• “Trading the trenches” means buying memes around $1 million–$5 million market caps and repeatedly flipping them “at 50.” The fundamentals have changed from TVL, developer wallets, wallet counts, and SDK downloads to influencers, followers, and KOLs; TRON is the exception where Tether usage in emerging markets supplies an external flow into the ecosystem.

5. Bitcoin must eventually renew the altcoin liquidity

• Jonah’s tail-risk scenario is an unlikely South Korean civil war. He thinks leveraged liquidation might send BTC only to $80k–$85k, but the “borrow money from mom and dad to buy fucking HBAR trade” could end with those coins falling 90%.

• Avi’s base mechanism is less dramatic: crypto natives entered the election unusually BTC-heavy, then diversified gains into alts as retail returned. Alts stay elevated only while retail keeps arriving or BTC keeps rising and exporting wealth; a short BTC range helps, but a long range exhausts that supply.

• Historical analogues from March and February 2021 suggest fresh highs rarely become calm platforms for immediate continuation. Avi expects a range, strong alts, and then a BTC sell-off; Jonah remains a structural buyer and would buy “with both hands” near $90k, while refusing to short $100k.

6. A strategic Bitcoin reserve is the cycle’s largest disputed catalyst

• Jonah believes a U.S. reserve would formally establish Bitcoin as the global alternative reserve currency, a status he says could justify $1 million per token. Even if that framing is wrong, U.S. action could turn his asserted current count of zero central-bank holders into “dozens.” His broader rationale is that dollar weaponization and possible BRICS de-dollarization increase the value of an alternative reserve; he views the incoming administration as increasingly willing to acknowledge crypto and expects a dollar-debasement environment.

• The probability dispute is stark: Avi guesses 8% for the first 100 days, below Polymarket’s 24%; Jonah says 50%–70% and nearly 100% over the first 400 days. Avi expects hope to support BTC until delay causes traders to “chip out,” but Jonah argues crypto capital cannot fully front-run sovereign-sized demand.

• Avi’s crucial distinction is between retaining the government’s existing BTC and authorizing purchases. Jonah outlines budget reconciliation, ordinary legislation, or—“I think by executive order”—moving Silk Road BTC from the U.S. Marshals to Treasury or the Fed, which could create the reserve before any new buying begins.

• Political resistance could frame purchases as self-enrichment, yet crypto’s political wins make Avi concede, “Maybe the probability is a lot higher.” Tracking may itself be an insider game: RSR rose 100% roughly 16 hours before public news that Paul Atkins was being considered for SEC chair, which Avi reads as obvious information leakage.

7. SOL/ETH and NFTs express the wealth effect while MicroStrategy amplifies it

• Avi prefers SOL/ETH to outright market direction: a move halfway back toward its highs offers roughly 13% and, in his view, a sufficiently high hit rate to size materially. Jonah agrees, calling ETH overvalued relative to SOL.

• NFT floors confirm wealth spreading beyond fungible tokens. Over 7 days in ETH terms: CryptoPunks +20%, Bored Ape Yacht Club +62%, Pudgy Penguins +30%, Autoglyphs +33%, Milady +12%, Chromie Squiggle +35%, Fidenza +102%, and Azuki +21%. Avi’s sentiment rule: “Anytime you’re close to rage quitting, that’s basically the lows.”

• Jonah does not view MicroStrategy as systemic today: rising BTC improves its financing and induces more buying, while falling BTC mainly removes future purchases. Avi agrees MicroStrategy could implode without mechanically moving BTC much beyond pricing out Saylor’s next bid.

• The hard risk sits in 2026 or 2027, when a payment comes due and a sufficiently low or trashed stock price could force BTC sales—an outcome Avi calls “very, very, very unlikely.” Jonah’s caveat is secondhand: if traditional software revenue or profits cover the obligations, Saylor never needs to sell; if not, “there’s a lot of Bitcoin to be sold.”