# Ben Cowen Says You Have Permission to be Bullish *Author: David Hoffman* *Published: Sep 28, 2026* *Source: https://www.bankless.com/podcast/ben-cowen-says-you-have-permission-to-be-bullish* --- Ben Cowen: [0:00] I got to be honest, like I'm very confused and I, this is the thing though, David, I mean, you've, you've probably gone through this before where like the market just doesn't make sense to sometimes like, you know, like it, it like it's like, why is, you know, last cycle, why was Ethereum trading, you know, so low when Bitcoin was so high, right? Like why? Ben Cowen: [0:19] There's so many different times in, in, you know, markets where it doesn't make sense, but markets don't have to make sense. You know, I mean, maybe maybe crypto is pricing all this stuff in before it happened. David Hoffman: [0:33] Bankless Nation is an interesting time in the market. There appears to be an inflection point with the sentiment, the bullishness around the market. And so we're bringing back on Ben Cowan from the Cryptoverse. Ben, welcome back to Bankless. Ben Cowen: [0:45] Thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here as always. David Hoffman: [0:47] Ben, you recently had to put out a video boldly stating I was wrong. You were calling for a cue for flush. I think that was pretty consensus for a while, a Q4 flush around the time of the midterms, which matched previous cycles. As I understand it, you were basically calling for a repeat of the standard four year cycle, which that's where like the Q4 bottoming happened. You were also pointing to the midterms rather than seemingly a Q2 bottom, which is what we are so far experiencing. What gives you the conviction now that you were wrong then? Like why, what made you actually wave the flag and say like, okay, I was actually wrong. Ben Cowen: [1:24] Well, I mean, the post about me being wrong was not about sort of whatever happens in Q4 because who knows what happens in Q4, right? Like we don't know yet. It was more so, like, I didn't think we would take out the May high, right? Because in all prior bear markets, once we've crossed the 50-week moving average, once we put in a higher high, the bear market was always over. And so, like, I didn't really give the idea of taking out the May high a lot of weight. And so I, you know, the 57k that Bitcoin hit on July 1st, I thought that was a local low because in 2018, we kind of bottomed at 5700 right around the same time. It seemed like that would be the summer low. And then, you know, I expected a rally in July. And that was kind of where I first felt like I was kind of like getting off because we didn't really have a rally in July. We kind of just stayed at 60k. And then so by the time August came around, I was more so in the camp that we would go ahead and start kind of trending down into into a low. But instead, we started, we got the rally I thought we would get in July, we got it in August, right? And so that was kind of how I first got on the wrong side, I think of that. From here, I mean, you know, I don't really know what's going to happen in Q4. A lot of it, I guess, depends on if we get this, you know, if Bitcoin can continue to accept above the range highs. Ben Cowen: [2:52] If it does not, like if we fade back down, we could still see Q4 weakness. But I don't like I wouldn't necessarily be in the camp that it has to be like a lower low, right? Like it could be it could be a higher low for all we know, especially given the fact that we've printed a higher high. So I think that that's kind of where I am right now. And the reason I admitted I was wrong was just because I think it's important to do that when when you are wrong. And, you know, if I spend two months saying I don't think we're going to take out the May high, and then we take it out, right? I mean, like, where am I to hide? So, Yeah, I think that was important and we'll see what we'll see what Q4 has in store. David Hoffman: [3:27] Just to just to emphasize what you're saying, really, it was about the middle of the year, the time frame around now about being bullish. You go on to crypto Twitter, everyone's very, very bullish and excited. There's a lot of momentum. There's a lot of happiness in the market. And that's that's the part where you weren't expecting where, sure, even in bear markets, we can go up 30 percent. But we kind of did it twice. Bitcoin kind of did it twice from 63K up to 77K and then up to 85K again. That second move feels a little soon in the bear market. And if you are in the opinion that actually the low is behind us and we're resuming the next phase of the cycle, and then you look at the length of that bear market that we've had so far. It's short and it's easy and it's not that painful. And that's like the unique odd thing that I think people like you and even people like everyone, David Hoffman: [4:21] I think are really contending with right now. Ben Cowen: [4:22] Yeah, I mean, it's kind of the same length of the 2019 bear market, about nine months, which I think I've made that comparison on your channel before. But the reason why I thought that, you know, and I still honestly have a hard time kind of coming to terms with, the reason I thought it would still last a year was because in 2019, when it only lasted nine months, we also had price-based capitulation, right? Where there was a huge drop and it was also accompanied by a large increase in volume. And a lot of the prior lows in the bear markets have ended when there was a massive spike in volume and we just haven't had that. Ben Cowen: [5:01] I mean, the counterpoint, of course, is if we topped on apathy, right, if we don't top with a lot of volume, maybe we don't have to bottom with a lot of volume. So yeah, I mean, right now, I think that I have to just be a student of the chart and say, it doesn't make sense to me. Like it frankly doesn't. I mean, with the long end going up and, you know, energy prices heading higher, the dollar heading higher. To me, it makes sense to just kind of go and get your typical Q4 drop. But you know the market does not have to conform to my expectations and as it stands right now it's not it's not conforming to my expectations because we're trading at like you know 85,000 at least that's where it was or when I checked earlier so you know I don't, That's kind of where I am. And I'm basically now the opinion that as long as Bitcoin can kind of hold above 83K, then it's hard to be deterministically bearish. It's a lot harder to sort of be in that camp. David Hoffman: [5:57] One thing I want to check with you is something that does make sense to me, and that is comparing last bear market to this bear market and the congruence with the real world events found in each bear market. So last bear market was really bad. Bitcoin fell below the 200 week moving average for the better part of a year, like 270 days. It was 30% below the 200 week moving average. I think that was pretty idiosyncratic in Bitcoin's history to be that far below the 200 week for that long. And then also we had three really bad events. You had Terra Luna, you had Three Years Capital, we had FTX, so much contagion that we had to heal from. And then we had the Gary Gensler era. And so if you just look at the bottom of the Bitcoin chart, it's down bad, it's long, it took a long time to recover. And if you compare it to this era, we touched the 200 week, we were briefly below it by a few single digit percentages, not really for that long. And then we were only there for just like a very short number of days by comparison, in something like 100 days rather than the 270 of like last bear market. And if you look at the sins that we've had to pay for as an industry, it's really just sailor selling Bitcoin below his average buy price. And there's not really a congruence with Terra Luna, 3R's Capital FTX. Instead of Gary Gensler, we have the most favorable regulatory conditions of all time. David Hoffman: [7:14] And our bear market correspondingly is just not that bad. So these things do match. We have fewer cents to pay for, less time at or below the 200-week moving average. To me, that feels pretty explanatory about the differences between those two bear markets. When I say this, what do you think about? How do you react? Ben Cowen: [7:32] Yeah, I mean, historically, buying Bitcoin around the 200-week moving average works out pretty well. And then last cycle, we went pretty far below it, which was somewhat abnormal. We don't really usually do that. But so, I mean, you know, as far as as far as I'm concerned, what I what I what I think the right approach to crypto has been and hopefully will continue to be is just start start buying in the second half of the midterm year and you're often rewarded. You know, I mean, I did it in 2018 and 2022 and I got wrecked in Q4 after buying in the summer. And then this time, my biggest regret was that, you know, in July, basically the I gave myself the what I told myself I would do. I would buy in the second half of the midterm year, as long as Bitcoin was below the 0.3 risk level, which is the risk metric that I use to navigate to buy Bitcoin. And I did do that, but it only lasted for five days. Right. So it wasn't a very long time for me to accumulate. Like it was a it was some time, but not a lot. And so, I mean, I guess that's kind of the important part of it is, you know, when the opportunities arise, like to take more advantage of them. And, you know, sometimes just kind of lump summing, I guess, is more advantageous than DCAing because you can see just how little time we spent down at those levels. So, yeah, I mean, last cycle, we had the collapse of FTX. Ben Cowen: [8:52] And you could argue that it was like a sort of like a dislocation event where it took Bitcoin kind of lower than perhaps it really needed to go. And this cycle you know we did have sailor selling but we haven't really had a sort of like a dislocation event that is, That is kind of comparable, I feel like, to what FTX was. And I mean, now with Bitcoin, I mean, the closest, the main thing I think crypto has to at least consider in Q4 is just if the long end goes up, is that going to put pressure in any way? Because normally you would expect the long end going higher to pressure long duration assets the most. And that would be like, you know, cryptocurrencies is one of those. But it's completely shrugged it off, right? Completely shrugged it off. And so, I mean, that's an example of just having to like respect the chart rather Ben Cowen: [9:43] than to put too much faith in the macro. David Hoffman: [9:45] What do you think about the four-year cycle then these days? Even in the condition that we do get a higher low in Q4 around the midterms, kind of what you're saying. The window, what I'm hearing you say is the window is still somewhat open for that possibility. Maybe the lower low in Q4 is starting to look pretty not likely. But on the conditions of a higher low in around Q4, around the midterms, Still, nonetheless, the four-year cycle would have been something like a three-and-a-half-year cycle. Is that significant at all? Do we care about the cycles? How do you think about the cycles these days? Ben Cowen: [10:18] I mean, with the S&P, you know, I mean, it kind of has a four-year cycle as well, historically. And, you know, through the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, then we had a low in 2014, 2018, 2022. I think that, you know, with stocks, if you go back and look at the 1960s, 1970s, it would often bottom in Q4, but occasionally it would bottom earlier in the year, right? Like occasionally it would bottom like May or June. But I still feel like it's sort of representative of a four-year cycle. I think a lot of people would have a hard time accepting that. They'd be like, well, no, the four-year cycle is dead if you don't find a low in Q4. But like I looked at the stock market throughout those decades and still consider it to be a four-year cycle, even though occasionally the low was in like earlier in the year. That is kind of my interpretation of it. But I think that, you know, if someone wanted to take the other side of that, they could just simply say, well, you know, that's kind of like coping and it's not really true. But, you know, as it relates to the 200 week moving average, if you think about it, we, during the midterm year, we went below the 50 week, below the 100 week, and then to the 200 week, and even below the 200 week, which is what we always do in the midterm year. So it's kind of hard to say like it didn't work out, right? Like the four year cycle failed, when Bitcoin still ended up dropping below the 200 week moving average, which is something that many people thought wouldn't happen this year. So I think it's mixed. And I think there's going to be a reason to continue the debate as to whether, you know, whether that is the four year cycle or not, Like I tend to be more so in the camp that it is still indicative of a four-year cycle, but. Ben Cowen: [11:47] I could understand why some people might not necessarily agree with that. David Hoffman: [11:51] Yeah, I think if somebody wanted to call the four-year cycle dead, we would need a lot more salient evidence and more of it. So like 3.5 is still pretty close. And then also we're going to need that multiple instances in a row to have conviction around that. Ben Cowen: [12:03] And Bitcoin topped when it always tops. I mean, you know, from that perspective, it really didn't change. David Hoffman: [12:09] What do you make of the fact that Bitcoin from top to bottom dropped 53%, which is the smallest that it's ever dropped top to bottom, which is expected. This has always been the way that Bitcoin has behaved over the cycles. But does this make you re-rate Bitcoin's next possible highs in any particular way? Ben Cowen: [12:28] I mean, honestly, I feel like going lower would allow for a more euphoric bull market. But, you know, if that's the low, then we still likely have diminishing returns where you're only going to have like your last cycle, we went up seven or eight X. And so this cycle will probably be, you know, less than that would be my guess. If Bitcoin were to go have gone lower, then maybe you would have a higher multiple just because you really wash people out. But that doesn't really seem to be the case right now. So I would I would just say expect diminishing returns. But then the other part of it, too, is if the low is truly in, which, you know, every day that goes by where we continue to close above May high, I feel like the odds increase. If the low is in, then we have to start measuring the timing of the bull market from July, which will mean at the end of this bull market, it might top sooner, right? Because if you think about it, last cycle, Ethereum bottomed in June, and then it topped in August, right? Like it topped earlier. So it would make me think that if Bitcoin has bottomed in the summer, then it will likely top perhaps a little bit earlier than it normally does, just because the length of the bull market would be kind of reaching that sort Ben Cowen: [13:39] of the maturity point earlier in the cycle. David Hoffman: [13:41] There's already been like quite a bit of froth in the market, like in specific assets. And so there are some specific assets that have done very, very well. Hyperliquid comes to mind, VVV, LiDAR, NIR, a lot of these assets are up bigly. A backpack, for example, is up 50% today. And so some assets are getting a lot of movement in the middle of the market. The blue chips not responding in the same way. So like, yeah, we're talking about maybe some early unexpectedly unexpected bullishness a little bit early on the Bitcoin chart. But ultimately, at the end of the day, it's still kind of just like not moving all that hard. Is there any signal there that some tokens in crypto are up bigly, pushing all time highs? Zcash, I didn't even mention, is putting on $28 billion inside of just like a year. And so there's been some incredible wealth gained, despite Bitcoin only being up like a total of like 12 or 13% so far in the last like three months. What do you make of this? Ben Cowen: [14:40] Yeah, I think all coins are running because monetary policy is not restrictive right now. I think that's kind of what it comes down to. If you think about it, from 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, monetary policy was actually really restrictive because the Fed funds rate was above what I consider to be the neutral rate. So if you approximate the neutral rate as the two-year treasury yield in the United States, monetary policy was, Fed funds rate was basically above that level for the entire duration of the cycle. And therefore because of that altcoins underperformed essentially for the entire duration of that cycle but right now the fed funds rate is at four percent, and the two-year yield is at almost 4.9 so right now you could argue the fed funds rate is still 90 basis points away from actually being restrictive and. Ben Cowen: [15:33] You can see like as you mentioned like altcoins are wasting no time and sort of taking advantage of that. So if they were to get back to a more restrictive stance, then that could certainly affect all coins. But as it stands right now, if the status quo remains unchanged, if the two-year yield remains unchanged, which it won't, like it will change. But let's say it stays constant. And if you look at like expectations for how long it will take the Fed to get there, that's not going to happen until say April as it stands right now, or even June, I believe. So, you know, I think there's the argument that altcoins are kind of feeling, that monetary policy is not as tight, it's not as restrictive. Liquidity is still restrictive, but the central bank balance or the Fed funds rate is not. And so, of course, altcoins are sort of taking advantage of that. I mean, what's really interesting is if you look at like all Bitcoin pairs, I think I think I've shared that on your on your channel before, like the all Bitcoin pair chart. Like it hasn't really even made much of a move. Right. And that's kind of the crazy thing. Like I could share my screen and show that. Ben Cowen: [16:42] Here, if you look at all Bitcoin pairs, I mean, we haven't even taken out the summer high, right? Like it still looks like you would never look at what's happening now. If you look at certain altcoins, you could be like, all right, this is really crazy and whatnot. But if you were to look at this chart, it's not necessarily any different than like every other little rally that we've had by all Bitcoin pairs. At least not at this point, right? And the thing is, is the major rallies by all Bitcoin pairs that you see in 2021 and 2017, they didn't occur until after Bitcoin had a euphoric rally. And Bitcoin hasn't had a euphoric rally, right? Like it's still hanging out at around $85,000. And so you would argue that in order for Bitcoin, in order for it to have sort of like a true durable rotation into altcoins, Bitcoin would need to be a lot higher than it is right now. And people would have to be convinced that Bitcoin has topped. The reason why there was no rotation into altcoins in 2025 was because we topped on apathy. Ben Cowen: [17:48] It was never really obvious the majority of participants that we had actually topped. It was never obvious. So why would people sell their Bitcoin for altcoins if they think Bitcoin is going to keep going up? Whereas if you trigger all those top indicators like the terminal price and, the NBRBD score is going to the roof and all the on-chain metrics are going through the roof and people are convinced that Bitcoin's topped, then they rotate into altcoins and then you get these massive rallies by alt-Bitcoin pairs. But ever since, because we haven't had that, every single rally we've had by alt-Bitcoin pairs has just, I mean, still, the chart is still kind of trending down, right? It hasn't necessarily given the indication that it's going to just completely spike upwards and really take everyone by surprise. Again, I said the same thing last cycle. You can have rallies with altcoins, right? I'm not saying you can't have rallies. It's just that until you have a euphoric rally by Bitcoin, you shouldn't expect Ben Cowen: [18:44] a longer rotation into altcoins to occur. David Hoffman: [18:47] I see. Something you said I want to double tap on. you talked about how we have had more permissive monetary policy as of late, giving oxygen for altcoins to run, but we haven't had a lot of liquidity. There hasn't been a lot of liquidity injection. Does liquidity correlate to Bitcoin returns while permissive monetary policy more correlates to altcoin returns? Or did I just read into something that's not there? Ben Cowen: [19:08] So there's a chart I can show. I think I should probably explain what I mean, because it's kind of, some people don't really understand what I mean when I say like monetary policy is accommodative, but liquidity is still restricted. What does that even mean? Just so people understand where I'm coming from, if you sum up the balance sheets of a lot of different central banks and convert it to dollars, you get this orange line here. And what it shows you is that in 2021 and 2022, global liquidity was around $30 trillion. And right now, it's at around $25 trillion. So, The reason why altcoins have sucked for so long is because there's just not nearly as much liquidity as there was back in 2021. And you were in crypto back in 2018 and 2019. And you saw, do you remember the 2019 bull market where Bitcoin kind of like outperformed most everything else? David Hoffman: [20:05] Oh yeah, like the middle of the year, kind of like it was like the ghost bull market where like Bitcoin went to like 14K, Ether went to like $450 and everyone thought it was on and it was the biggest bull trap of all time. Ben Cowen: [20:17] Right, but the reason why back then there was no rotation into altcoins is because for the same reason today, right? There just wasn't enough for what liquidity was really low. And so if you zoom in here, you can see back then that liquidity topped in March of 2018 and it was still well below those highs for several years after that, right? And throughout that entire period, altcoins underperformed Bitcoin. It wasn't until you had this massive liquidity crisis, you had the pandemic, it wasn't until that forced the money printers to come back on, that in 2020, that's when altcoins really started to durably outperform. And there's a chart that kind of helps explain. If you look at it, it's called the Advanced Decline Index. And we're going to look at the Advanced Decline Index of the top 100 cryptocurrencies. It's been trending down since 2021, meaning that like most cryptocurrencies have been going down rather than up since 2021. The time that everyone wants to get back to is 2020 and 2021, where in early 2021, where this thing was trending up, where everything was going up, right? Like Bitcoin was going up. David Hoffman: [21:25] Ethereum was going up. A true alt season, yeah. Ben Cowen: [21:27] But the problem is we didn't get that until after there was a crisis to then justify the money printing, which then allow global net liquidity to surge to new all-time highs. So we're in this like catch 22 where... As long as there's not a crisis, there's no reason for liquidity to really ramp up. And so because of that, it doesn't mean you can't have bull markets. We had a bull market for three years, not too long ago, despite restrictive liquidity conditions. So it doesn't mean you can't have a bull market. It just means that the returns are probably not going to be as impressive. But eventually, the money printers will come back on, right? Like we know that because that's the only way they seem to be able to solve our problems. And so eventually, like those types of market conditions will come back. But I don't think it's going to happen until there's a reason for that. So in the meantime, you can still have moves in altcoins. You can still have moves in Bitcoin. But I wouldn't expect a full-blown altseason when global net liquidity is much lower than it was in 2021, 2022. David Hoffman: [22:25] Is what you're saying is that the people who are wishing for an alt season, they're by proxy wishing for some sort of crisis to happen too. So maybe they shouldn't do that. Ben Cowen: [22:33] And that was that was what I kind of kept saying last cycle was like in order for people to get what they want, you have to have a crisis. But how but crypto wouldn't hold up well in a crisis. Like think about what crypto did during the pandemic, right? Like it dropped a ton. So in order to get an alt season, in my opinion, I could be wrong, right? I mean, we already established I was wrong about Bitcoin taking out the May high, which it already did. So I don't want to imply that I can't be wrong about this, too. But in order in order to have that, it's kind of like you have to go down. You remember last cycle with Ethereum? I kept sort of screaming that Ethereum had to go home and like everyone thought it was crazy. You know, like, why don't you shut up about this? David Hoffman: [23:11] And you were wrong for a really, really long time. And then you were right. Ben Cowen: [23:14] Right. But the point is, is it finally went home. And I think I even came on your show and said, I was like, in order for Ethereum to go to all time highs, it needs to go home first. Right. And then right after it went home, it actually did go to an all time high. But unfortunately, the four year cycle kind of like stopped it from really continuing beyond that. And we just Ethereum just ran out of time to run because the midterm year kind of arrived and and Q4 of the post halving year arrived. So that's sort of the argument for alt season is you can't have it until there's a crisis and there's not going to be a crisis until there's a re until until stocks drop. Right. And stocks aren't going to durably drop until until there's a reason for them to. And a lot of that is related to the A.I. trade. Right. And so as long as as long as this build out in A.I. continues and there's not really a crisis over there. We look at the stock market, the top seven or the mag seven, I think, make up like some 35 percent of the overall S&P 500 because it's weighted by market cap. Ben Cowen: [24:16] So if the AI trade were to ever struggle and the wind comes out of those most concentrated names first, that could then lead to a reason to turn the printers on. But yeah, it's like, it's how do you, how would crypto escape this? You know, not dropping during that crisis. And that's why it makes it such a hard cycle, a hard market. And that's why it was a hard market last cycle, too, is because everyone kind of knows in order to have that, you have to drop. So then it keeps some people from buying. But that doesn't mean you can't have a bull market, just have kind of have more realistic expectations of what's possible. Yeah. David Hoffman: [24:51] Well, one thing I do notice about this global net liquidity chart that you've got is that the red line, the liquidity line, the one that, you know, goes through the moon right during COVID. Right. The only reason why it is flat now and it's been flat since 2022 is because of the crisis in the first place. But if you, this short goes all the way back to 2007 and up to that point, it's just a pretty solid linear slope up and to the right. Right. And so, you know, what's stopping it from just kind of, you know, being flat for a while as we, the dust settles from like the greatest monetary expansion event ever and like maybe it just takes 5, 10 years, I don't know. But like why doesn't it also just slowly start grinding up into the right as it had from 2007? Ben Cowen: [25:36] It probably will, right? But the point is, is like people should temper their expectations for like a rotation into like alt season if it is just a sort of a slower expansion. Because, you know, in order to get what you saw in 2020, 2021, I would argue you would need true ample liquidity coming in. If it's just a slow grind up and to the right, that's different. But right now, the reasons why it's so low is because a lot of central banks embarked on quantitative tightening for so long, right? And now the reason why it's dropping is not because of quantitative tightening, but it's because the dollar is going up. Because if you think about it, in order to have this chart, we have to convert all foreign currencies into the dollar, right? So that we have a common denominator to add up. Ben Cowen: [26:21] And if the dollar goes up, then that means the relative, the purchasing power of currencies worldwide goes down. Therefore, that's what can kind of keep this from really moving up in the short term is if the dollar continues to show strength, which the dollar likely will continue to show strength, for a while, because we're still trying to figure out how many rate hikes we need in order to actually kind of bring inflation back to, you know, so back down to 2%. So I don't really think that this is going, I don't really think that global net liquidity is going to new all-time highs anytime soon. And even a 20% drop in stocks would likely not move the needle. I mean, we had a 20% drop in stocks in 2025 and net liquidity still stayed really, really low. So, yeah, I think if you don't have a crisis, there's no reason. And you can see with the crisis in 08, this thing moved up a lot, right? Like it really started to increase. And so if you actually take this. Ben Cowen: [27:17] Amongst other things, you can create a liquidity risk metric, okay? And it looks like this. And so what this shows is that liquidity conditions are still really tight, right? And they have been since 2022. And if you think about it, the only other time there was a top on apathy was in 2019, when also conditions were really, really tight. Bitcoin was started in 2009, when liquidity conditions were really, really loose. The only time that we've seen conditions this tight was before Bitcoin even existed. So that's the reason why we're kind of in uncharted territory for Bitcoin. We haven't seen restrictive policy for so long. But this chart, if you think about it, and I know like when Bitcoin's going up right now, like it's hard to be like, oh, well, no, policy's loose. Like just look at everything that's happening. But if we take a step back and we say, what has Bitcoin accomplished relative to the S&P 500 over the last five years, you can see that Bitcoin, is at the same valuation against the S&P that it was at in 2021 and 2022 and 2024, 2025. It hasn't really moved. And so the reason it hasn't really moved is because liquidity conditions are much tighter. David Hoffman: [28:30] Hmm, interesting. Is there any reason to suspect that Bitcoin would be lagging behind the S&P and it has some catch-up to do or is that totopium? Ben Cowen: [28:38] I think eventually it will outperform the S&P again, but I think in order for it to, and that doesn't mean it can't, I mean, look, last cycle, it did outperform the S&P for a few years, but it just didn't, it didn't really go up nearly as much as it normally does is the point. So if you think about like where it is right now, I'm not saying it can't go up, right? I'm just saying that it's unlikely to have that large catch-up trade. Ben Cowen: [29:03] Until liquidity comes back down. And I'm not saying, it doesn't have to go back to zero. Maybe it drops just back to 0.5, 0.6, and that can maybe be enough. Because in 2017, when we had an alt season, liquidity risk was around 0.5, 0.5, 0.6, which was reasonable. That's kind of like an area where liquidity is not nearly as tight. But when it's at 0.8, 0.9, I have to be a little bit skeptical as to the strength of sort of the... And by the way, I mean, you mentioned several altcoins earlier that are rallying, as I've said in 2023, 2024, et cetera, like I'm not talking about your altcoin right to the audience. Like I don't like, yes, a lot of altcoins are going up. And yes, as long as Bitcoin holds above the May highs, they will likely continue to go up. So and I'm not trying to take anything away from that. I don't want to discourage people from taking on risk because the liquidity risk is high. I'm just trying to communicate to people, hey, don't expect 100x return on some of these altcoins at this stage. By the way, David, if liquidity risk were at zero right now and, you know, we were in like a bear market, like a massive drop, like I would be banging the drums. David Hoffman: [30:20] Backing up the truck, right, yeah. Ben Cowen: [30:21] Yeah, and a lot of people think I'm like the Grinch when it comes to altcoins, you know? But if you think about it, ever since my channel has been really popular, right, for like the last five years, liquidity conditions have been really, really tight. People don't remember what I was like in 2019 and 2020 because my channel was so small. But back then, I was all about these riskier assets, right? I was all about them and kind of banging the drum. Hey, you know, go buy Ethereum because when Ethereum was $100, I'm like, this is, I mean, the first video on my channel is when is about Ethereum and talking about how undervalued it was. So it's not that I'm like the Grinch. I just, I'm trying to recognize that in order, for the riskier assets to do well, there's certain types of liquidity conditions and monetary policy conditions that allow them to do well and then certain conditions that allow them to kind of underperform. David Hoffman: [31:14] There's a lot of metrics and a lot of things I've been looking at, charts I'm looking at that are five years old. And what I mean by that is like the precedent of the average crypto investor based off of the charts that we look at, it's really started and at the end of the COVID bubble, like 2021 to 2022, maybe a lot of us got into crypto during the COVID bubble and that imprinted upon us some unrealistic expectation. But ever since 2022, we have been in a restrictive environment. All coins have bled. ETH BTC is almost at a five-year downtrend. Five-year downtrend, a decade, a half a decade of going down. And this is now the new normal for, I think, the average crypto investor. And so when you show the pretty restrictive liquidity environment for five years, I'm actually kind of just like, well, We've been, as investors, we've been living in this restrictive environment for five years. It's like the assets are probably pretty sensitive. If liquidity goes up any more than it has been for the last five years, that would probably be pretty good because we're used to pretty restrictive environments. And so at least maybe that's my, I'm trying to find some silver lining here of just like, hey, like we've been living in this industry for five years of restriction. And I'm not saying that that means that it's going to go down and be in our David Hoffman: [32:33] favor now. But even if it does, imagine the upside there. Ben Cowen: [32:36] Yeah. And I did an interview the other day and they were like, you know, they asked me, they're like, I'm guessing they're like, we don't, you know, people ask about alt season and if it's going to ever happen again. And we're like, we just kind of roll our eyes and, you know, it's never going to happen. And they're like, I'm guessing you think the same. And I'm like, no, I think I think it will happen again. I just think that I think that you just can't have it until until there's a reason for liquidity conditions to be looser. And I, I don't think that's going to happen until, until the AI trade starts to unwind some, you know, and who knows, who knows when that's going to be. I mean, that could be, you know, years from now for all we know, like we have no idea, If there were a drop in stocks, then that would honestly like it would it would hurt crypto in the short term. But if anything happened that allowed policy to become a lot more looser, it would be great for crypto. Right. I mean, and I don't like I don't know at what point we get there. But and I don't think we're going to get there right now. I mean, you can have a drop in stocks, but I don't think you're going to have a reason for the printers to come back on because inflation is getting away from us. And if they turn the if they turn the printers on, that's just going to lead to a massive wave. And honestly, like, do we really want that? Like, I mean, is do we really want our grocery bills to double up just so we can have, you know, a few months where crypto is doing well? I don't really know if it's worth it. David Hoffman: [33:58] That doesn't feel like the right trade. Like everyone wants the upside of 2021 without the downside of 2022. But that's just you can't have that. Ben Cowen: [34:05] And this, by the way, this chart here kind of was, I was trying to communicate or visually communicate what you were already telling the audience about how, you know, like look at 2021, there was so much interest in crypto and then it's just been trending down ever since. And I have a, I think I've shared it with your, with your audience before, like a social risk metric. And what you see is that it's just been trending down since 2021. Like social interest in crypto has only been going down for the last five years. And yeah, you could paint it. You could say it's because of, you know, people's fascination with meme coins last And, you know, you could argue one of the reasons Ethereum underperformed last cycle is because people just got distracted by garbage, right? Like random crap and stuff. But yeah, I mean, social interest has been going down for so long and I keep looking, I keep looking to see if this is ever going to change. And I haven't, I haven't seen it change yet. I would, I would love for it to change because I don't want, like, I don't want the industry to just kind of fade away. Like I want it to come back. I want it to have relevance, but I also haven't seen the evidence yet that retail is coming back. David Hoffman: [35:07] I will say anecdotally, I use the weekly roll-up that I record every Thursday that comes out every Friday with Ryan as kind of a barometer because it's so consistent. Like there's no guests. It's just me and Ryan. It's the same show format. We talk about the news. And it's been consistent as long as we've done it. So five years. And so I'm kind of able to use that as a barometer. The views I'm able to use as a barometer. In the last month or so, views have doubled on the weekly rollup. And that's also indicative of some of the other like more normal content. Like we've had on Johan Kirbat five or six times and the most recent one, double the views as average. And so I definitely agree with you. I've been seeing it for myself, the downtrend in views ever since 2021, 2022 But recently I have actually shown, I have seen a changing of the winds, which makes me, you know, makes me bullish. Makes me pretty bullish. Ben Cowen: [35:59] Is it, I'm curious, is the doubling, is it higher than it was in say like 2024 and 2025 or is it still below the arc bubbles? David Hoffman: [36:07] It's high, definitely higher than 2024, 2025. Like the weekly rollup from last week is at 20,000 views. And on a weekly rollup in 2021, 2022, it would have been like 30,000 views. So we are not far off. Ben Cowen: [36:22] Is that on YouTube? David Hoffman: [36:23] That's on YouTube. Yeah. Ben Cowen: [36:24] So I should say something. And I don't mean to. David Hoffman: [36:29] YouTube metrics are different now. Ben Cowen: [36:31] They are. David Hoffman: [36:31] So I was wondering about that. Ben Cowen: [36:34] Would you like me to explain it? David Hoffman: [36:35] Yes, I would actually. Okay. Ben Cowen: [36:37] So so my views for forever, like I was getting around 100,000 views a video. Now I'm getting like 200,000 views a video. So starting in August of this year, which is probably exactly when you notice the change. Starting in August, YouTube changed the way they count views. So previously, they never published what it was previously, but the general consensus among people who made long-form videos was that it took about, like someone would have to watch your video for about 30 seconds for it to count as a view. David Hoffman: [37:08] And now they lowered it. Ben Cowen: [37:09] And now it's like if they see it for one second, it counts as a view. David Hoffman: [37:13] You know why they did that? Because that's what Elon Musk did with X. Exactly. where a view on x he just he elon musk pumped the hell out of his metrics to make x look good and i guess now youtube has to adapt but for view inflation to compete Ben Cowen: [37:29] Right but every every like a lot of other platforms are already like that i think like instagram and tiktok i think they would always just count the view from the first v from the first second youtube was unique in the sense that it wouldn't count it. And so I got the notification on my YouTube studio a month ago that said starting like I think it was mid August. I don't remember like August sometime like around August 15th, August 20th, maybe like the 18th or something. I can't remember. But around that time, they started changing it. And it was exactly at that point where my views essentially doubled. And so like, I don't have two to three times the amount of people watching my channel that I did before. I see. It's just that they count the views differently now. David Hoffman: [38:14] Okay. Ben Cowen: [38:14] Damn. David Hoffman: [38:15] I was, I was worried that that was the bearish answer. Ben Cowen: [38:17] I don't mean to rain on the parade, but I just, I know, I know that because I just was watching my own views and I'm like, I know this is not, or I know organic. David Hoffman: [38:24] I was like, man, is attention really coming back into crypto this hard? Because it seems, yeah. All right, bummer. Well, so you have this metric where you look at everyone's YouTube views. And so now is that metric kind of just blown up for you because the algorithm changed? Ben Cowen: [38:38] Yeah, I can show it. Yeah. Yeah, I was sort of showing it earlier, but I didn't. I could zoom in on it more. So here it is. So let me go down. It's YouTube. So YouTube views. And it takes a little while to load. I think we actually have your channel. David Hoffman: [38:53] Yeah, he's pulling a bunch of data. Ben Cowen: [38:54] Yeah, so we can actually look at your channel if you want. Where is it? Bankless right here. So yeah, you had a huge surge, but look what it surged right around in August. David Hoffman: [39:05] Yeah, we also had Tom Leon right then, and he always pumps in a ton of views. But yeah, I get your point. Ben Cowen: [39:11] But if you look at mine as well, this big surge here, it started going up a lot in August right around the time that they changed it. The reason why it dropped a lot in September was because I was out of town and I just wasn't making as much videos. And so that's why it's not as elevated. But if you combine everyone back on here and you zoom in. David Hoffman: [39:32] Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty, that's pretty distinct. Ben Cowen: [39:35] There was an issue in September with the way they were kind of like collecting the views, which is why it went down. But the spike, the spike occurred because of an artificial thing. It's kind of like, it's kind of like when you're, you know, how a lot of like the inflation reports or like labor market reports are really, really frustrating because they'll change the way they calculate it. And then they expect you to still monitor the same series in the same way. That's what makes it kind of hard now because for the social interest, I don't know how to factor that in exactly like how do I, I probably should scale prior views like relative to what we're seeing now and then maybe have a better understanding of what views are actually doing relative to the past. David Hoffman: [40:11] Yeah I'd say there's not even a single internet metric that I can really rely on because even twitter followers I'm just like okay sweet I'm getting a growth in twitter followers but that's because of AI like AI bots are just like through the roof now and so that even that metric is all messed up Ben Cowen: [40:25] Well actually we could look I mean we could look at other metrics other social metrics and see if, you know, because we can say, all right, YouTube went up. Did other platforms go up and come and start them out, right? And so if you were to look at, look at like YouTube subscribers, for instance, like that didn't change. You still have to hit subscribe. So let's see what that's doing. You see this? David Hoffman: [40:44] Yeah, that's close to zero. That's close to nothing. Ben Cowen: [40:46] So that hasn't really changed. If you look at followers to analysts on Twitter or X, that hasn't really, all these charts take forever to load, but like that hasn't really changed a whole lot. Like it's still really, really low. it's still well below where it was in 2025 and for a lot of 2024, we could even I don't know who's going to Wikipedia to learn about crypto like I don't know but that's still really really low and then we also have a few other ones I think since I've been on your channel one was, Coinbase, I think. David Hoffman: [41:17] Coinbase signups or Coinbase volume? Ben Cowen: [41:19] Yeah, like the Coinbase app. I think we have a risk metric for us. Let me show you. It's like the app rankings. Yeah, so this is the social risk. But here you have Coinbase app rankings, right? And you can see that that's still pretty low right now. Like it actually did get a nice bounce, but it's still really, really low. Google Trends, like that is still really low. That hasn't changed. And then if you look at like followers to Twitter or followers on X to like exchanges and layer ones and analysts, like they're all still really, really low. So unfortunately, the bump we saw on YouTube hasn't really been, you know, corroborated other places. David Hoffman: [41:58] All right, well, I'm glad I got that mystery out of the way. Hopefully the listeners found that as interesting as I did because I've definitely been looking for some answers around that. So thank you. David Hoffman: [42:06] Let's get back into some macro stuff. I want to get your read on like the macro story and just economic health. One of the things that you correctly predicted was that we were going to get higher energy prices, higher yields, higher raising rates, and then the dollar was strengthened. All of those things happened, except the one difference is that Bitcoin just bulldozed through all of those into a higher high. Exactly. What do you make of that? I think like the market, including the equities market right now, is looking at high rates and getting jittery, but also another part of the market is looking at higher rates and being like, I don't care, I'm going up anyways. How are you reading this situation? Ben Cowen: [42:40] I got to be honest, like, I'm very confused. And I, this is the thing, though, David. I mean, you've probably gone through this before where, like, the market just doesn't make sense to sometimes. Like, you know, like, it's like, why is, you know, last cycle, why was Ethereum trading, you know, so low when Bitcoin was so high, right? Like, why, there's so many different times in, you know, markets where it doesn't make sense. But markets don't have to make sense, you know? I mean. Ben Cowen: [43:07] Maybe crypto is pricing all this stuff in before it happened. I don't really know. All I know for me is that I am confused by what's happening. Because the hard part for me to accept is that the macro trade was right, right? But the things that I said, like all the things that don't matter, we're correct, you know, like the dollar going higher, energy going higher, yields going higher, the things that people aren't really trading. I mean, I trade energy. So like, I like that's done well. But for most for the most part, like a lot of the viewers are not out there, you know, buying XLE, right, or Exxon, because they're trying to, they're just wanting to buy crypto. Those are all right. And so I thought that that would then affect Bitcoin. And it hasn't, right? Like it hasn't. And, and I've, I've just forced myself to say, look, as long as we're above 83k, I, I'm gonna have to take a step back on this, on this bear market idea. If we get back below 83k on like a weekly, if we're back below the a high, then I will still lean into Q4 weakness. But I wouldn't be as deterministic about it being a new low, right? Like it could just be coming back down to print a higher low. In fact, that would probably be my base case at this point is if that weakness were to actually materialize, because crypto has gone up a lot. I mean, think about how far. Ben Cowen: [44:27] Some of these coins would have to drop in order to put a new low at this point. Like it'd be a massive, massive drop. And I don't know, like, I don't know if that is the most likely outcome with where Bitcoin's trading right now. So yeah, I mean, I think that's where I am. And I'm happy to admit that I don't fully understand it. And I hope that people don't, you know, I hope people like look at that and just recognize that I'm human and I'm fallible and that I don't always have the answers to what's going on in the markets. David Hoffman: [44:56] Yeah, yeah. I'm trying to not be too inherently bullish about it, but when I see Bitcoin just, again, bulldozing through some really tough macro conditions, I'm like, sick, awesome. That's so bullish. I don't know. It's like hindsight bullish. I'm trying, I want it to be forward-looking bullish because if it continues David Hoffman: [45:17] to bulldoze and it'll continue to bulldoze, what's up? --- *This article is brought to you by [NEAR](https://www.bankless.com/sponsor/near-1785257427?ref=podcast/ben-cowen-says-you-have-permission-to-be-bullish)*