"It's either shorter-term bear markets, or it's just going to zero. And I really don't believe it's going to go to zero."
This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io and Bitstamp.
The idea of a multiyear supercycle is fading as shorter cycles take their place. In this episode, NLW and guest Larry Cermak, director of research at The Block, discuss the transformation of the supercycle timeline as the crypto space evolves. The discussion includes:
- An analysis of the macro-narrative and the current “wait-and-see” mode
- Shorter cycles taking hold as the crypto space matures
The larger institutional narrative promised a bevy of substantial allocators to contribute to the market. That narrative, however, has weakened over time as the promise falls short. Add on the uncertainty from China’s partial ban on mining and Tesla’s environmental concerns, and the narrative continues to lose momentum. What narrative will take over next? When will this “wait-and-see” mode end?
Historically, crypto was perceived to fall into semi-stable cycles. For a couple of years, prices would rise, and for the next two or three years after, prices crash. However, with longer-term investors and a broader focus on usability over speculation, is there now a foundation for a more stable market with shorter cycles?
See also: The Supercycle: How Crypto Could Shape the Decade Ahead
Image credit: metamorworks/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Transcript
NLW
What's going on guys, it is Friday, June 18, and today I am super excited to share a conversation with Larry Cermak. Larry is the Director of Research at The Block and is just one of the most thoughtful observers of this space out there. One of the things that has been on everyone's mind is, is this bull market actually done? And part of why it's been on people's minds is that they had some idea that we were in a supercycle. Now, I've talked about the supercycle before and what I think is a misperception or mis-characterization of it as leaning up only. Today's show talks about what I actually think the supercycle theory is, which is really about shorter cycles. The idea is that there has been a break from the long, multi-year bear market, followed by a bull market, prompted by the halving sort of cycle that we've observed the last couple of times. Instead, we may be moving into something where there are multiple different types of catalysts, where bear and bull markets rotate on a matter of months, rather than a matter of years. Larry and I get into why that might be, and in general, where he thinks the market is right now, what makes it different than the last cycle. It's a really fun little conversation for your Friday. So I hope you enjoy it.
NLW
Larry, welcome to The Breakdown. I'm super excited to have you here.
Larry Cermak
I'm really excited to be here as well. Hopefully, it's gonna be fun.
NLW
Nah, it's gonna be fun for sure. What we're here today to talk about is, is cycle theory, supercycle, shorter cycles, I don't know, whatever type of cycles we want to name and give a catchy name to. But let's start, I guess, with just you know, you've been tweeting a little bit about people asking you where we are in the markets, and you basically throwing up your hands and saying, "I don't really know, but here are some observations." So let's start there. I mean, where are we in the market cycle? What have you observed? What is your mental model of what's happening right now?
Larry Cermak
Yeah, so I mean, you kind of nailed it, I really, I have no idea. And I think this is like, the first time in a really long time where I really admit that I have no idea. Sometimes I think I know, then I'm totally wrong. But now I actually think I don't know, what you think is like, somewhat unusual. But basically, the way I see markets right now is that there's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of things that haven't been figured out. And, because of that, I can see markets going both ways. In, you know, or you're just staying the same, you know, same kind of thing that they've been doing for the last couple of weeks. And the reason is, you know, basically, that there started to be some sort of weakness, right, like the entire run last year started on the institutional narrative, you had MicroStrategy, start allocate some money, initially people didn't think that was such a big deal. And now, you know, then that evolved into Square as well, and then Tesla. When Tesla finally allocated, the markets just exploded, and it made sense, you know, it was a significant company. Didn't really dabble in crypto and bitcoin before. And ever since then, we've been kind of like, waiting on the sidelines. And we've been talking to, you know, Coinbase, NYDIG, the largest allocators, and they've been telling us, you know, there are companies on the sidelines, they're gonna come, it's a lot of them, it just takes a long time. And everyone has kind of been waiting for the last six months, and nothing has really come out of it. And so that narrative has gotten, you know, slightly weaker. And then on top of that, like, basically all the retail indicators that we've been watching, ever since the Tesla news, every retail indicator in the world has gone up. And it has continued to go up until about, you know, three or four weeks ago, and then now it's starting to go down again, and it's decreasing. And, you know, just showing that people are obviously leaving, the regular retail people. And so now we're in this weird market where there's a lot of uncertainty about, you know, more companies allocating, retail people are leaving. And just because there's less, you know, less demand to buy, it seems like, you know, the market is kind of going up and down. And then on top of that, you add, you know, this uncertainty from China, then you add this mystery of what will happen with El Salvador. And it's just a market where, you know, Elon can tweet something, and it will go up by 5%, and that a country in Central America can, you know, do something similar to El Salvador, and we go up 15%. Then China can, you know, announce that they're completely cracking down on mining, which they've kind of been doing, and then they're cracking down on leverage and trading, and we can go down again. So, I just don't know. I think there can be a lot of things that could happen and you know, I think everyone who's right now, like using a lot of leverage and betting on either side, it's kind of silly, because I really, really believe that no one really knows.
NLW
I feel like the sort of inarguable thing is that we have a total momentum stall out, and no one is willing to step into the void with like, even if it's just some sort of attempt at a narrative, you know what I mean? Like, there's no one who's saying, "This is the reason that new people are going to come in right now." I mean, El Salvador sort of creates the beginnings of a possible narrative, but there isn't, there isn't I mean, you know, companies like NYDIG, to like to your previous reference, like Coinbase, they're not out there screaming, "just wait another three weeks, and we've got more crazy things happening," right? It's kind of just like, there's not a reason for people to jump in right now. And so everyone's kind of in wait-and-see mode.
Larry Cermak
Exactly. I think that's totally right. And I think it was kind of similar with MicroStrategy, early on last year, when people were like, you know, maybe this is just one crazy guy, you know, and then it evolved into something more, and I think that symbol can happen with El Salvador. But for now, you're totally right. I mean, there really isn't anything that's pushing the market up as it was before. And the strongest narratives are, right now, I think, at the weakest, especially when Elon is kind of going around and screaming about, you know, the environmental issues, and then a bunch of other things. So I think that's totally right. And I think we're probably not going to find out for some time and that's why a lot of traders are just taking breaks now, because they're just expecting this to take some time. But yeah, we'll see.
NLW
So, you are obviously one of the best out there at watching the signals inside the crypto markets. But, how much do you think this has to do with larger macro unknowingness, too? Right, it feels like there's also kind of simultaneously this wait-and-see mode as it relates to Fed policy, to monetary policy, and, you know, questions of how long they can sustain zero interest rates and asset buys and things like that. I mean, do you think that's factoring into it at all?
Larry Cermak
Oh, absolutely, and we've seen that with gold, like, basically breaking down over the last couple of days, slightly on silver has gone down, a lot of commodities are crashing over the last couple of weeks. It's not, you know, it's not just Bitcoin, it's in this weird state of things. And then, you know, I really believe that over the last two months, it was a lot of retail pushing the prices up, which wasn't the case before, you know, last year, and then early this year. And now because retail has started to kind of, leave and then you know, macro is in a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of volatility in equity markets as well. Yeah, I think you're totally right, we're probably going to find out something in the next few months, but for now, everything is kind of in uncertainty. And then it's no different for Bitcoin and the crypto markets.
NLW
Yeah, I mean, there's also the like, much more basic, it's summer, and everyone just wants to be outside again, thing going on, too. One of the things that I wanted to do, you know, I saw a bunch of your tweets, and this is something that you and I kind of chatted about. But I want to talk about what this cycle is, how this cycle is challenging our perception, or our thinking about the cyclical nature of these crypto markets. So I guess, just for a little bit of setup, you know, how would you describe for someone who hasn't been here long, maybe who got in over the last, you know, six months, nine months or something like that? How would you describe the previous perception of what the larger crypto market cycle was? And then from there, we can talk a little bit about how this cycle has challenged that.
Larry Cermak
Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, previously, even before this year, you know, crypto has been kind of performing in a cyclical nature. And what that means is that, you know, for a period of time, usually like a year and a half, prices tend to go up. And then there's a correction that usually crashes prices by you know, 70-80% for the next two, three years. And then we go again, and there is this notion that, you know, as more people join, and as more people find out about cryptocurrency and bitcoin, especially, you know, some of them stay, but some of them kind of get discouraged by the volatility. And then we just keep going in these cycles, where for a couple of years, we go up, and then for two, three years, we go down. And my theory for this market, for what we're seeing right now, is that the cycles are not going to be as long as they have been, you know, basically the drawdown that we've had from early 2018. Until basically, you know, last year, it was basically three years and that seems quite unlikely right now for multiple reasons for me. The main one being that the infrastructure and the space has just gone much more mainstream than it has before, now you have these markets, they're incredibly liquid. You have a lot of institutional buy-in. And these are not people, at least from as far as I can tell, these are not investors that are investing with short term mindsets, these are investors investing with long-term macro mindsets. And you know, so you have buy-in from them. Now you have a country that has made this a legal tender. And, you know, everything has gone so much forward since the last two years. And it seems like you know, now bitcoin and crypto overall, it's just much more focused on actual usability, versus just speculation. And it just seems very unlikely to me that all of a sudden, you know, we're gonna forget everything that has been done over the last two, three years, all the new derivative markets, all the new liquidity that's come in, all the new infrastructure, and we're gonna take another three years to hibernate and, you know, build new stuff and attract new people. And another thing that I think is worth mentioning, is that when we look back to 2017, the notion that Bitcoin basically was a scam, or it was a Ponzi scheme was so strong, and a lot of people thought it was a massive bubble. And, you know, it becomes harder to argue that it is a Ponzi scheme and the massive bubble, when time and time again, it has gone up and gone up more. And the people that keep holding long term, are the ones that are, you know, better off than before. So, I just find it very unlikely that it's going to take another two, three years for people to be convinced to jump in again. And mainly because a lot of these macro investors and long-term investors, they're holding long-term, they're not really interested that much in just flipping. And so I think that's the main reason. I'm curious, what do you think as well?
NLW
Well, so I think that you're right to actually go back and look at comparison points, to 2017, 2018 in terms of where the last bull run ended. A couple things that stand out to me, and broadly speaking, I completely agree with you. It's why I wanted to have you on the show. So first, I think that because bitcoin had such a major run up before, I think that we perhaps misremember why, there were obviously lots of people who were coming to Bitcoin specifically and getting excited about Bitcoin specifically, But there were also a sh*tload of people who were just buying bitcoin so they could get in on crappy ICOs. You know what I mean, like a big part of the bid up of the price of bitcoin was that there wasn't $100 billion of stablecoins out there that you could use to enter these sh*tcoins, you know what I mean? You had to buy bitcoin, more or less, to, I mean, you could buy ether too, but bitcoin was the trading pair. And so that was a huge force. And so a lot of those hands who held bitcoin, they weren't convicted about it, right? They didn't have the same sort of theories, or whatever. It's certainly not exclusively, I mean, tons of people came in during that cycle and got really into Bitcoin. But I think one, to your point, there is a much stronger raison d'être, right, for Bitcoin and the people who have come in have a stronger conviction about it. So that's one part. Part two is just, capital left in the system, right when ICOs crashed, it was a total wipeout of absolute vapor, you know what I mean? And there is certainly some of that, I mean, a lot of that in, you know, the dog coins and things like that, I think will be similar dynamics, but you really can't look at the crypto landscape in terms of where capital has been allocated, and see it the same way. So many meaningful projects have raised a ton of money to build teams, they're longer term. Also, a lot of those teams have the experience of having lived through that. And they're doing treasury management differently, right. Like that first time, I remember being around in 2017, 2018. And like, everyone felt like the most brilliant Warren Buffett investor ever for how, you know, how rich they had gotten so fast. And they didn't think about moving to less volatile assets for their treasury. I remember treasury management conversations, just barely starting in like May of 2018, when it was already way over, you know, so the thing is, I think that how that contributes to this sort of idea of shorter cycles is, if you have more, more kind of intention, like the the money that has moved into the space, the people who've been around a long time have higher long term conviction, one, that's going to buffer things because it sets price floors and all that sort of good stuff, but two, you know, if you have teams who are building things, particularly in like the DeFi space, you know, around layer 2 and Bitcoin, whatever it is that they're building on, that have capital to weather storms, they create the next round of reasons to be excited to bring new people in, you know what I mean? If they don't get wiped out, which I don't think that they are, you just have, you know, so much more actual capital to kind of drive into the next thing. I mean, there was really a very long term dearth of capital, you know, watching hedge funds fall. I think those two things are really different this time.
Larry Cermak
Yeah, I agree, and I really agree on the capital point that you made. I mean, we talked to a lot of institutional investors at The Block, right, like our main product is to block research. And we talked to a lot of traditional companies, you know, traditional VC firms, traditional private equity firms, hedge funds. And, I mean, everyone would be quite surprised by how much capital there is on the sidelines, still waiting to be allocated, like right now. And that includes even the crypto VC firms right now. Like I remember 2018, early on, the crypto VC firms almost went out of business, they ran out of money really quickly, and they had to do raises. Right now, everyone still has a lot of capital, all the VC firms and all the raises that I've seen recently over the last like month or something, they're not having trouble raising at all. So I mean, that's, I think, also a massive difference. And I'm glad you brought it up, that there's just so much capital, and so many teams building. And those teams, well, like you said, started these new waves of interest. And I think, you know, one of them will be Ethereum, I think that that is going to be an important development. And then you know, now it seems like there's also some wind blowing for the Lightning network, as well, with El Salvador. So I'm curious what will happen there as well. But there's clearly a lot of development, and a lot more focus on actual usability versus in you know, 2017. You know, it was all vapor, like you said, and now, of course, there's the dog coins and the meme points, but no one really took that seriously, no one really thought that that was going to lead anywhere. Whereas now, you actually have legit projects like building and a lot of talent coming in as well. That's another thing I've noticed over the last like, six months, you know, the talent that we're just getting just ourselves, to apply for positions is absolutely ridiculous. And I did not see that in 2017, and 2018, everyone was still skeptical. But now all of a sudden, everyone's like, "Well, this might as well be the new paradigm. Like, I don't want to miss it." A lot of really smart people are drawn to it. And I don't remember that to be the case last time.
NLW
This is hilarious. I'm sure you had the same feeling of, you know, as things started to heat up this time, it's like, oh, look, people that I haven't heard from in three years, who like, magically decided that legal cannabis was their actual focus. And that's their passion in 2018, who are now back because it's crypto finance, it's their true focus. These are all reasons why, you know, why a bear market now is unlikely to last the same duration, right? There's all these sorts of things, things waiting, right, on the wings on the other side that are potential sources for renewed momentum. I think in general, you know, so obviously, there's been a lot of talk of a supercycle, which I think has been kind of misunderstood as a concept to mean up only forever. And I think actually, maybe this is like, you know, I jokingly called it a shorter cycle theory on Twitter or whatever. But like, I think that this is actually kind of the same theory. It's just a different definition, right? What is your sense? So this cycle, obviously, you've kind of articulated why it's unlikely to be kind of a multi year bear market. But in general, I think you obviously have or sounds like you have conviction that we're unlikely to see that type of long duration bear market just in general, do you think that that's just, when markets mature, they're not likely to have three year bear periods? And, you know, what is it about the market that makes you think that over the long term, we're likely to see shorter cycles as well?
Larry Cermak
Yeah, that's exactly right. I think as markets mature, and as you kind of spread your bets a little bit more, it becomes just so much more unlikely that we're going to be you know, here for three year periods, and 80% of all the people will leave, and then we'll have the same thing again, I think what's just much more likely, or is that there's going to be a period of pain, there's going to be a period of, you know, let's figure out where the new money will be coming from. And as that kind of gets fixed, and as the macro environment gets a little bit clearer, I'm just very convinced that, yeah, we might be able to see something like six or seven months of true pain, and we can even go much lower than we are right now. But, I mean, if we're here again, in two or three years talking about how we're just starting a new bull market, I would be very disappointed. I think I tweeted that as well saying something like, you know, it's either shorter term, bear markets, or it's just like, it's just going to go to zero, and I really don't believe it's gonna go to zero. There's just so much going on. So yeah, I mean, my guess would be that we have a period of like, less than a year, of kind of like, uncertainty and not knowing where anything will go, but I would be quite surprised if, if we're here another two or three years, and just kind of chopping.
NLW
Well, I think maybe the flip side too, you know, obviously because we are now watching, you know, red lines and the number go down, we're talking a lot about the implications on the bear side for shorter cycles. But, I think that you could probably argue, and I'm interested in your take on this too, that like, we've already started to see the difference in the top of the kind of shorter cycles, right? In the sense that I think everyone had a perception that if this cycle followed past cycles as it related to the top, we would have to see some crazy parabolic move up over the course of a couple of weeks. And we would only be at the highs for, you know, a matter of a couple of days. I saw someone who went back and looked and it was like, the average time in previous cycle highs for bitcoin is like, three days, it's something and then it was 10% down. And obviously, we were at pretty sustained levels around, you know, 55 to 65 for a very long time. And so everyone's like, Oh, well, it can't be done. Right? Because it's like, it hasn't had that pattern. Do you think that like, on the reverse side, on the bull side that we're also likely to see, you know, less of the crazy run ups and more kind of, mature? I mean, it's still a big rise, but you know, it wasn't 2017's December, right?
Larry Cermak
Yeah. I think I think that's totally right. I remember, like 2017 when the top was hit. I mean, you couldn't even find a consensus number for what the top was, because the differences were like 300, 400, 500 bucks. And that in that, you know, even back then, it was a few percent. So, you know, back then it was just really crazy. And I think you nailed it. It's like, right now everyone's trying to still compare it to the last cycle, which was basically only retail driven. And it was driven by a complete mania over getting rich from ICOs and, you know, from everything, and now, we're not in this market. I think you're totally right, like, we are probably going to see slower rises going up. Even what we saw over the last, you know, six or eight months, that was basically a parabolic rise. Eventually, it's just going to be slower, and it's going to be kind of like, pricing and things coming in, versus just one massive repricing that we have once every three years. I think that's unlikely. And I think it doesn't make too much sense to compare everything to what it was before. Like, yeah, there are definitely parallels. But the dynamic is so different, the investors are so different. You know, the banks are invested now, before they were saying it's a scam, pretty much, you know, unanimously. So yeah, I would just take everyone who does that with a grain of salt.
NLW
One of the questions I wanted to ask is around DeFi. I think one of the things that people felt almost robbed by is like, you know, bitcoin hit its top, eth hit its top for like, a minute. But DeFi never had a chance to, like, really hit its top, at least that was the kind of broad public perception. But I wonder if actually, if we like, when we have some distance from it, we'll actually start the clock on this bull market more around, you know, April 2020, right, like, post-COVID, and see the full run up, you know, DeFi summer 1.0 into kind of Bitcoin's institutional narrative arise as that was the bull market versus kind of, pinning it around the entrance of MicroStrategy in December when we actually hit that 20,000 number. I mean, what's your take on that? Were you surprised that DeFi didn't have, you know, kind of a chance to shine? You know, from a market pricing perspective, post bitcoin all time high? Or, you know, I just, I'm interested in how you see that.
Larry Cermak
Yeah. I wasn't actually that surprised. I think, you know, that the thing that drove a lot of the prices other than bitcoin, even Etherium, in my opinion, was just retail participation and retail kind of anticipation. And it was, it's relatively hard to sell DeFi to someone who doesn't really, who isn't interested in finance, and like, who's just a normal person, like trying to invest in something like, I think there are a few things that people like to invest in. One is memes. And DeFi really didn't have good memes at all. Second one thing is like, actually, you have to have some sort of narrative, right? Like, if the narrative for DeFi is that it's a productive asset, and you can use it to like lend money. That didn't work for retail, because, you know, transaction costs, like $150, for one at the top, you know, I couldn't tell my friend who invested a couple $1,000 to go use Uniswap because he would burn 10% of the entire amount that he invested in one transaction. And I think that was really the biggest problem is that it was you know, it was not communicated clearly. And also it was just not ready for retail participation. And also the means were just really bad. So you just saw a lot of people, you know, go and read her bio, she bought a token because it has a nice dog there, versus buying something that actually could produce, you know, some sort of productive thing. Like what whether there'll be dividends, or you know, what, whatever it is, like burns based on how much activity there is. So I think that was the biggest reason. And I think that could change in the future where, you know, a lot of DeFi protocols that have become, you know, valuable last summer, they will learn from this. For example, one thing I don't understand is like, retail is clearly attracted to really low units, right. And in DeFi, like everything, like you have something like wifey and you know, at the top, it costs 60, $70,000. Like, obviously, people are not going to invest. And then obviously, you're seeing all these meme tokens with, you know, basically trillions in tokens and supply just to trick people into investing. I'm not saying DeFi protocol should trick people, but they should communicate, and they should kind of get the narratives a little bit better than just saying, "Oh, it's productive. It's a productive asset. It acts like equity, you should invest." You know, 20 year olds don't care. They care about what's gonna, you know, make them some money, they care about the narrative, about the meme. So I think that was the biggest reason. But I mean, you're totally right, like, last summer, it was basically the DeFi bull market. It was absolutely crazy how many people got rich just by buying early and, you know, holding for some time. But yeah, a lot of people are wrong. A lot of people thought that after bitcoin runs up, you know, there's going to be basically the capital will move from there to DeFi. That hasn't happened.
NLW
Do you think actually, this something I've thought about a lot like, DeFi has weirdly, through its inaccessibility, through its barriers to entry, kind of allowed itself to grow in this crazy sandbox without a lot of pain to people. Retail hasn't gotten burned on DeFi, largely because they haven't come in, but it means that it's pretty much only people who understand the risks. And I think, you know, to the extent that you see regulatory risk and around DeFi or anything like that, one of the strongest arguments probably, I think against that is like, look at you know, there's there's nothing approximate to ICOs where, you know, Korean pensioners are getting burned on crappy tokens that we're showing them like, it feels like it's probably, you know, like net net much better for DeFi in the long run, that it has had this long incubation period with, you know, sophisticated investors.
Larry Cermak
Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, I think this is going to be like a little bit similar to infrastructure for bitcoin, for other cryptocurrencies where it's quite likely to me that some fintechs, and some, some financial businesses will actually implement DeFi passively for users, for example, you know, let them collect the yield that they normally wouldn't be able to get in a traditional financial system. I think that's more likely or where you will have some sort of, you know, garden system, where you have passive and active strategies and DeFi is kind of done for you, without you having to understand what's going on in the background. But there's clearly a problem and kind of communication problem in just letting more people to try this thing. And I think we'll get there with layer 2, and with more ones kind of trying to compete with Ethereum.
NLW
Super interesting. I mean, I feel like we need to, like come back to this in a few months and see how it goes. But I guess one last question for you is kind of, you know, as you survey the risks out there, right things that could make bear markets, more prolonged, things that could drive the markets lower, you know, all the different types of FUD, is there anything that actually concerns you, versus is just another FUD to get through?
Larry Cermak
I think the environmental, kind of, whatever you want to call it, environmental concerns. I think it's more serious than people think, and not necessarily because I agree with it, but because it's just very simple to understand. It's like a super simple thing to sell to people. Bitcoin is destroying the environment, bitcoin’s, helping, you know, contribute to global warming, and we start seeing politicians and people that normally are against Bitcoin, just start using that argument more strongly. And I think like someone like Elon Musk, like allocating more than a billion dollars and then questioning this himself, that hasn't helped a lot. And so, I think that could be a strong thing that could potentially start more regulation and start more things that wouldn't necessarily reflect favorably on the prices. So, I think that that would still be my biggest concern, is that this is something that's still relatively misunderstood and that people don't really actually spend time on understanding this in more depth. And I think it's kind of silly and that they're actually really isn't any kind of serious research that has looked into this exactly, like how many renewables right now are being used? Like, what's the minor makeup? Everything is outdated and you know, all the numbers that I see cited constantly, like the 40% number, that 40% is coming out from renewable energy, I would guess it's much lower than that. And, and so I think that that would be my biggest concern is that this is going to be something that politicians kind of really grab on and try to regulate mining and regulate Bitcoin in a way, just because they kind of misunderstand the issues.
NLW
I mean, testament to that argument is, how aggressive the rejection of NFTs from some circles were because of proof-of-work. I did not have on my bingo card. You know, activists sh*tting on the first thing to actually pay artists in about ever, because of environmental concerns, that was crazy to me.
Larry Cermak
Exactly. I had the same exact reaction. And then people like misquoting on the numbers, like saying that one NFT transaction costs this much, and whatever, it destroys the environment this much. It's just crazy how easy it is to spread information that is not based on facts, and people clearly get emotional around environmental concerns. And so, I think I would still be worried the most about that and, and just about someone overreacting to an issue that really would be hard to recollect honestly.
NLW
All right, Larry, awesome to chat about shorter cycle theory. We're going to come back in a couple months and see where we are. Hopefully, we're all getting rich again and we can triumphantly say we were right, it was a shorter cycle. But I guess that necessarily means that the top will also be shorter. But either way, I appreciate you hanging out. Always great to chat to you, man.
Larry Cermak
Yeah, thanks a lot. Yeah, I'll definitely be happy to revisit this.
NLW
The four most dangerous words in investing are: "This time, it's different." Still, I think when it comes to crypto markets in this bull cycle, this time, it's different. There are new sets of actors, new catalysts for people joining, higher conviction around the assets that exist, more reasons, in other words, for bearish downturns to be less pronounced, less long-lived. The flip side, as we discussed in the show, is that the tops might also not look the same way that they used to. Ultimately, only time will tell, but I hope this show gave you a different way to look at what's been happening and where we are. And like I said in the conversation with Larry, we'll check back in in a couple months to see if shorter cycle theory is really a thing. For now guys, I hope you have a great weekend. Until tomorrow, be safe and take care of each other. Peace!