Is the Crypto Bull Market Back? with Up Only's Ledger

Bankless Nation special episode for you today. Is the crypto bull market back? That is the question on my mind, on David's mind, probably on your mind, Bankless Listener. And we have the person uh who I think is best at answering this question Up Only's Ledger. Ledger is back on the podcast, one of our favorite market commentators, and that is the question we are going to ask. David, are we back, baby? I don't know yet. What do you think?

Yeah, that that is certainly the question. And I'm pretty well convinced that Ledger's gonna come on in a quick second and tell us unequivocally that we are 100% back. It's totally on. The bull market's 100% confirmed. It's time to allocate. I'm just absolutely positive that that's gonna be the answer. But without putting words in his mouth, I'll wait for him to to actually be asked the question here in a second.

Okay. Well, we're going to get right to that in just a minute, but we want to give a shout out to our friends and sponsors over at Doppel. Doppel Doppel Doppel is who you call when you want to fish the fishers, when you want to squash all the fishers out there that are coming for your community. So David, what do you think Doppel do? Yeah.

Who you're gonna call? You gotta call Doppel. Doppel, yeah. So uh I mean, me, Ryan, many other people definitely have some fake accounts that have been spun up attempting to fish you. Uh, there have been people who have been on the receiving end. So

Clear, they're impersonating us. They're not

Actually, us on the other side. They're not us. They they they spell their names like us. They use our profile pictures like us. They attempt to copy our tweets, but they're not us. Uh Doppel helps protect you. Uh and really this entire industry uh against all of the phishing scams and surface area for risk of you losing your assets that exist out there. Uh so if you have impersonators or you need other additional like layers of protection as you navigate the crypto space, Doppel is for you. There is a link in the show notes to get started with Doppel. Who are you gonna call?

Am I allowed to rip off of that copyright? I don't know, but I'll call Doppel.

Yeah. What they do is they they play whack-a-mole with all the fishers and do takedowns, get their websites taken down. It is really the most effective method. Bankless is a user of Doppel. So go sign up at doppel.comslash sign up. All right, David. A few questions I think we're gonna ask uh Ledger today when we come back after the break. But why are the markets pumping?

Was there a cause for this? That's top of mind for me.

Um, are we ready for up only bull market? Or is this just a kind of uh, you know,

Are we getting much ado about nothing?

yeah. I I also want to ask Ledger what charts he's paying attention to now. What are some of the key signals he's taking a look at? And also, um, maybe we should bring up macro. I mean, does that factor in? There's wars going on. The macro is very uncertain at this point of time, but does any of that even matter? And then we've got 2024, which is the year of the Bitcoin happening. It's also an election year for the US. Does that factor into this? These are some of my questions uh for Ledger after the after the break. Uh, what else we got?

Yeah, there's just been some sentiment shifts out of some uh smaller cap coins, smaller cap compared to Bitcoin and Ether. Uh both Seoul and Link have broken out of their like 18 month long bear market ranges. Um, there's a lot of arguments to be made that sentiment has shifted. Um

I am someone who definitely feels that. I am kind of personally a weather vein when it comes to sentiment. So I need somebody like uh Brian to Ledger to give me permission to be uncategorically bullish, which I'm sure, like I said, is he's totally about to give me.

David, I don't know about that. He might not. He might be putting the brakes, easing on the brakes on all of this.

I don't believe it. Well, I will have to ask him.

We'll find out more when we come back with Ledger. But before we w do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

Bankless Nation, I'm so excited to reintroduce you to Up Only's Ledger.

Uh I've been listening to Ledger and his market commentary for years now. Uh at least, at least three, uh, ever since uh uh my POV crypto days, way back when uh Ledger has seen a thing or two when it comes to market cycles. It's been uh not his first rodeo, maybe not his second. Uh Ledger, welcome back to Bankless.

Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, I guess um

should we be starting a new cycle? Now this will be my

third go round on uh a crypto cycle.

Are you feeling old man?

Third go round for a while.

Wow, I don't know if I'm ready for another one. I I guess that's the main question for today is is that what we've just entered into? Is this like uh a new bull cycle that's been on

Is the bull market back? Right? It's it's back, right? Right, right, Brian?

Uh yeah, some some things are back. I don't know about your bags. Um

but there's there's reason for optimism in the market right now for sure. Um I think that

there's it's complicated. It's more this is more complicated than it's ever been in terms of like what role does crypto play in broader markets.

So it's not binary, it's not yes or no.

We actually

No.

know about this.

But there are, you know, some things that have been part of what we we discuss every time that we talk would tell you we are in a bull market. So when you look at the technicals for Bitcoin in particular,

we are in a bull market, like by definition.

Um

that said,

you know, we haven't

obviously breached all time highs. And I'm not saying like wait until there is a new all time high to buy, but you know, the we haven't hit the easy mode yet.

There's a lot of uh

a lot of stuff to churn through in order to get to that kind of price exploration territory.

Um, we don't know what price exploration would look like in today's market. What kind of baggage does that draw with it? If Bitcoin makes an all time high, do we have,

you know, a thousand shit coins that try to follow on? And what does that do

in terms of spreading out liquidity? Obviously, we had a lot of

re hypothecation of Bitcoin in the last cycle through.

Um, what looks to be pretty clear fraud now. Um, and and so like you start taking some of that out, you increase passive flows through the ETF. Like,

there's some real interesting stuff that could happen. And so far, we're seeing serious strength in Bitcoin. Um,

a pretty serious breakdown on the ETHBTC pair. Um, some alts are following along with Bitcoin and outperforming. Solana's been doing really well, and some others

as well, but on the whole, they're not. The meme coins aren't really following along. So, like this makes for

Really interesting, uh fairly convincing early market cycle stuff.

Um, but that doesn't mean you just like buy every JPEG, buy every altcoin, like go all in across the spectrum, and you're just,

you know,

gonna make it. Like, I I think you can still make pretty bad decisions right now.

And

but if you're if you're in solid stuff, if you're letting Bitcoin do Bitcoin things, then

Um, you have an opportunity for a solid reward.

But you know, Bitcoin's not, I don't, I don't if Bitcoin 100x is we got bigger problems in the world. Um, so like if you're looking for 100x returns, like I don't think that's what this moment is about, you know.

We're trying to establish a baseline for what is recovery and strength look like. So

happy to walk through some charts for that. And

uh yeah, we're we're back in a way. Just don't get out over your skis too much, you know. Like I wouldn't be going 100x long anywhere um at any time, but