0:00
Bankless Nation, today we're going to check in on Ether, the asset.
0:07
Where is ETH in the cycle?
0:09
My favorite cycle investor, Michael NATO, from the DeFi reports on the podcast
0:14
today.
0:14
We do these episodes on the Bankless feed every month, and this one, I asked
0:19
Mike to
0:19
prepare little information for the ETH holders among us.
0:24
Mike and I have talked a lot about fair market value metrics for Bitcoin, the
0:28
weekly moving
0:29
averages and VR, the all of the metrics, we've looked at many charts about
0:33
Bitcoin.
0:34
But ETH has its own cycle that is related to the broader crypto cycle, yet also
0:40
independent
0:41
of Bitcoin.
0:43
So what do Mike's numbers say about ETH price in the months to come?
0:47
I want to know if he thinks it's bottomed.
0:50
If not, when is it going to bottom?
0:53
ETH is one of three assets that Mike has held from the last cycle.
0:56
So I know he owns some, is he planning to buy more?
1:00
If so, when?
1:02
Now, I should qualify, unlike many guests on Bankless, Mike is not an ETH perm
1:07
able.
1:07
His bullish ETH has been bullish ETH various times, but he's looking at this
1:11
from a fairly
1:12
neutral perspective, that is, what do the on-chain fundamentals actually say
1:18
for this
1:18
asset?
1:19
Mike, it's great to have you.
1:21
I know Bitcoin is your favorite asset.
1:24
Historically, ETH has been a second, maybe not a close second, but definitely a
1:29
second.
1:29
Is ETH still your second favorite asset in crypto?
1:32
Or does this cycle, does it have to prove itself once again in this cycle?
1:36
Hey, Ryan.
1:37
Yeah, great, great to be here.
1:38
And that's a great question, I think, to lead in here.
1:43
I would say that the way I think of this is I think of Bitcoin as sort of a
1:47
thing that
1:47
we want to anchor our portfolio in, we've had periods where we were more
1:51
bullish on ETH,
1:52
less bullish on ETH, we still own some ETH currently in our portfolio.
1:57
And one of the things that I like about the cyclicality of the crypto markets
2:03
and just
2:03
kind of like the sort of four-year nature of these markets is that we get a
2:07
chance to
2:07
kind of like underwrite our thesis for Bitcoin, for ETH, for other assets that
2:13
we may want
2:14
to invest in.
2:15
I think this episode today is kind of an opportunity to kind of go back and
2:19
sort of analyze like
2:20
just high level, like what has happened with ETH over these last few years, you
2:24
know,
2:25
where are we going and kind of get into some of the kind of like where are we
2:28
at in the
2:29
cycle?
2:30
Are we bottoming right now?
2:31
So yeah, excited to get into it.
2:32
But I would say to answer the question, ETH has to prove itself to me, like we
2:37
can kind
2:37
of get into what I'm looking for in this episode.
2:40
All right, so ETH has an opportunity to prove itself to Mike this cycle in
2:44
order for him
2:45
to re-underwrite whether it should be included in the DeFi report portfolio.
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All right, Mike, as we enter this episode, ETH price is just hovering above 2K.
3:47
So it's hanging in there in this bear market.
3:51
I actually want to go back and talk about the history of ETH across the three
3:56
cycles
3:57
that it's been around.
3:58
So it hasn't been around as long as Bitcoin, but it's been around for a while.
4:02
You've got 10 years or so clocking in.
4:04
So there's been three cycles that ETH has, you know, boomed and then busted so
4:10
far.
4:11
The first was 2017.
4:13
And the bottom of that cycle, you know, sometime in late 2016, ETH was $8.
4:20
So just imagine that not 2K, but $8 in 2017 at the peak.
4:26
This lasted into January of 2018, ETH went from $8 to $1,400.
4:34
So this was incredible growth.
4:35
This was 175X in the first cycle.
4:39
So remember that cycle one, 175X from trough to peak cycle two.
4:46
This was 2021.
4:47
We saw a 61X gain, so that's 6,000%.
4:53
The trough there, we hit this in December 2018, $80.
4:57
By November 2021, that turned out to be the top, we were at 4,878.
5:03
So 61X in cycle two, 175X cycle one, 61X cycle two.
5:10
Let's talk about the most recent cycle that ended in 2025.
5:15
So there, we trough down to in June 2022, $881, and then our peak for this
5:23
cycle was 4,953.
5:26
So barely an all-time high eking in from the previous cycle.
5:30
So the gain this cycle wasn't 175X, wasn't 61X, it was 5.6X, all right?
5:39
A much smaller number.
5:42
And so I think a lot of investors for in crypto and for ETH right now are
5:46
asking this question.
5:48
Was this just a skipped cycle for ETH, or is this now the new normal?
5:53
Like that level of performance is kind of anemic compared to previous cycles.
5:58
Is that just where we are now, or do you think for whatever reason this cycle
6:03
just was not
6:03
favorable to ETH and it'll come back stronger next time around?
6:07
Yeah, and I think this is the big question, and that's a very interesting kind
6:11
of just
6:11
framing of just kind of those diminishing returns of the last, that's three
6:16
cycles.
6:17
Maybe if you just zoom out to like the max on that chart, right, and we kind of
6:21
look
6:21
at this a little bit from a broader perspective, and what you can see here is a
6:27
rising sort
6:28
of base, which is a good sign, and I think a healthy chart, you can see these
6:34
massive
6:34
moves that we made in the first two cycles.
6:38
And then, in this last cycle, we've mostly just actually sort of traded within
6:43
the range
6:43
that was established back in 2021, 2022, which is interesting.
6:50
This is unique for ETH, and if you look at a lot of crypto charts out there,
6:56
this one's
6:57
unique, right?
6:58
It used to look like most of the other ones where you had the first sort of
7:02
Bitcoin big
7:03
move back in 2017, and then you had 21, but most of the assets out there, like
7:10
you see
7:11
like either they just never come back, or they have another big third peak with
7:16
ETH.
7:16
We didn't get either of those.
7:17
We sort of stayed in the middle zone, so I think this can be bullish from the
7:22
perspective
7:23
that it's essentially just been kind of like sort of turning over the holder
7:29
base for about
7:30
five years or so now, and you can kind of look at this.
7:34
You can go back and say it may be a bit barely sort of got to a new all-time
7:39
high this year,
7:41
and it's trading at a level right now that it was similarly trading at four or
7:46
five years
7:47
ago.
7:48
And you could ask yourself, is that bullish or bearish, and I think the way I
7:53
think about
7:54
it is I kind of go back to 2021-2022 and think about just where Ethereum was on
8:02
its roadmap
8:03
and where it was in terms of fundamentals and users and all the network effects
8:09
, all
8:09
the tooling, all the developers, all of the stable coins, and just kind of like
8:13
everything
8:13
that's kind of playing out on Ethereum.
8:16
And we've seen all of those metrics improve, but we haven't seen it reflected
8:20
in the price
8:21
action, and I think the thing that this really comes back to and why ETH may be
8:26
underperformed
8:27
a little bit in this past cycle is just the nature of the L2 roadmap.
8:34
And this was something that we had something called, you may recall, Ryan, the
8:39
Ethereum
8:40
investment framework that we used to put out on a quarterly basis.
8:45
And we were sort of essentially trying to lay out the roadmap for ETH and then
8:48
how that
8:49
would impact the sort of economics of the chain over time.
8:53
And we accurately forecasted that the L2 roadmap would create this sort of
8:59
diminishing value
9:01
capture at the L1 level.
9:04
But what we did not sort of forecast correctly was that the market perception
9:10
of that and
9:11
it's just the fact that basically what I think happened was Ethereum has sort
9:18
of disrupted
9:19
itself so that it could grow and so that we could scale via these L2s.
9:24
And in doing so, they sort of like made the product better for the L2 customer,
9:30
but sort
9:31
of hurt themselves in the near term.
9:35
And the big question is like, is this whole vision of the L2 roadmap, we can
9:40
kind of get
9:40
into how that's sort of evolving a little bit, is this ultimately going to play
9:45
out?
9:46
And is Robinhood and Coinbase and traditional finance, are they going to come
9:50
in, build
9:51
L2s that actually have real apps and tons of users on these things that
9:56
ultimately there's
9:57
actually a little bit more of a value share.
10:00
It's more of a win-win with some value accrual going down to the L1, which then
10:05
impacts
10:06
staking yields, some of those sort of ways that people think about valuing the
10:09
network
10:10
and just like the overall economic health of the network, that didn't play out.
10:15
I think that played a major role in sort of the, I would say, period of
10:19
somewhat disillusionment
10:20
that Ethereum went through during this past bull market.
10:25
So then is your explanation basically that the roadmap decisions that Ethereum
10:30
made essentially
10:31
caused ETH price to skip a cycle?
10:36
Now, whether the next cycle will be back to being more bullish again or not,
10:42
whether
10:42
it will continue to underperform and be anemic relative to previous cycles,
10:47
maybe you have
10:48
to underwrite that on your own.
10:50
But this cycle, the 2025 cycle, was it a case of just L2s not scaling in the
10:59
way that Ethereum
11:00
thought the fees not occurring back to ETH or the asset, the market looking at
11:07
the L2
11:08
roadmap and saying, okay, this might be okay for individual L2 chains, but it's
11:14
not necessarily
11:16
good for ETH or the asset.
11:18
I mean, because that strategy has more recently pivoted and it started pivoting
11:24
in 2025 and
11:25
it has accelerated into 2026.
11:28
And it does seem like the direction of the Ethereum roadmap is much more about
11:34
renewed
11:34
focus on scaling the L1 and looking at the L2 roadmap and saying, okay, that
11:41
was okay.
11:42
It was a little bit of a side quest.
11:45
Mistakes were made, lessons are learned, were learned.
11:48
What Ethereum really needs to focus on is DeFi on the L1 and scaling up the L1
11:54
as the
11:54
L2 scale in parallel.
11:56
I mean, I guess you could make the case that those lessons have been learned,
12:01
that the
12:02
L2 roadmap was the reason that ETH did not perform this cycle.
12:08
But now they haven't, ETH has an opportunity to overperform if it actually gets
12:13
back on
12:14
track and implements the L1 scaling roadmap.
12:18
Is that the story here?
12:19
If you kind of squint, can you see that?
12:21
I can see that, yes, I absolutely can.
12:26
I was bullish on this L2 roadmap when this was really starting to come out.
12:30
So if you go back to 2022, 2023 period, this is when optimism was coming out,
12:36
rolling out,
12:38
that was an exciting project at the time.
12:40
I know bankless had a lot of coverage on that at the time.
12:43
Arbitrum came out thereafter, both of these launched tokens that actually
12:47
performed decently
12:49
well actually in a bear market.
12:51
So there was excitement around the L2s.
12:54
And I think the vision that we all had was that most of the apps would actually
13:00
deploy
13:01
on these L2s, which we saw most of the most popular DeFi apps deploy on the L2s
13:07
.
13:07
But we haven't really seen any new app.
13:11
We've just kind of seen Uniswap deploy on L2 and other popular DeFi stuff just
13:17
deploy
13:18
on L2s.
13:19
We haven't seen a breakout app that comes via this new product, essentially
13:24
that Ethereum
13:26
has built.
13:27
And I think that's been an issue.
13:28
And then the other issue is, for this to really work from a user experience,
13:34
these L2s need
13:35
to be fused together and you need this bridging experience.
13:38
I think there's a UX issue that still we've been promised that this would all
13:43
fuse together
13:44
and it would be seamless.
13:45
That hasn't really happened yet.
13:47
And I think these are the things that have, while this is playing out, then you
13:53
have Solana
13:54
sort of making a comeback that sort of captures the sort of more speculative
13:58
nature of the crypto
13:59
markets that Ethereum did have, I would say in the 2021 cycle.
14:03
Some of that had gone to Solana just because of the fees on Ethereum.
14:06
But I think it's just really a combination of all these things.
14:10
And so I think when you kind of zoom out, you could look at that chart and say,
14:13
well,
14:14
wait a minute, this is like a really rough period for Ethereum.
14:18
I mean, we've gone through, learned all these lessons and, you know, this is a
14:21
big, this
14:21
is a big, you know, global asset.
14:24
And it's, you know, that chart looks pretty good to me, to be honest, given all
14:30
of this.
14:31
And so it has the, because that chart still held up like that, it looks like we
14:35
're establishing
14:36
another lower high.
14:38
Like to me, it does have the potential to potentially outperform Bitcoin, you
14:43
know, next cycle,
14:44
it underperformed Bitcoin, right?
14:46
This, this cycle.
14:47
And if you're a crypto investor, like that's your benchmark.
14:50
And so every dollar that you're putting into anything other than Bitcoin, like
14:55
we spend
14:55
a lot of time, you know, thinking about that and which assets, you know, have
14:59
the highest
14:59
probability of outperforming, you know, we're still sort of kind of like coming
15:03
to our conclusions
15:04
about whether that, whether ETH has that potential here.
15:08
But what one of the big learnings from last cycle was that it's getting harder
15:12
and harder
15:12
to outperform Bitcoin, especially for things that are not newer assets that are
15:17
coming out
15:17
and launching during, during these bull market cycles.
15:20
So yeah, a bit of a ramble, but I think, you know, this is, this is, this is an
15:25
interesting
15:26
story.
15:27
We're going to get into some of the data.
15:28
We'll get into some of the fair value metrics.
15:29
But I think it's an interesting setup, you do have, you know, like I said, you
15:34
have Coinbase,
15:34
you have Robin and you have major builders here and it comes down to, are we
15:38
going to
15:38
see traditional finance or we're going to see just this kind of feed, this
15:43
merger of
15:44
tradified crypto here in this, in this maybe in this bear market as we get, you
15:49
know, regulatory
15:50
clarity.
15:51
So let's talk about another point of confusion, I think, for the market
15:55
investors, at least
15:56
I'm, I'm somewhat confused going into this, which is ironic given, I think that
16:01
's been
16:01
it almost a Genesis question for bankless is, how do we value these crypto
16:06
assets like
16:07
Bitcoin and, and Ether and on down?
16:10
There are many different ways you can use to, to value Ether the asset.
16:15
This is a website I have pulled up called ethval.com.
16:18
It's pretty good.
16:19
It's a composite of all of the different ways that have been popular and have
16:23
some data
16:23
behind them.
16:24
But if you were to group these different valuation mechanisms for Ether the
16:28
asset, and this is
16:29
independent of how successful Ethereum is as a network or the roadmap, like
16:34
what we're
16:35
talking about here concretely is, all right, based on the success of the
16:39
Ethereum network,
16:40
how should investors think about Ether the asset in terms of what its fair
16:44
market value
16:45
prices, what, what the fundamentals are.
16:48
And there's roughly as far as I can tell like three different categories of
16:52
metrics.
16:52
One is you just think of Ether as a monetary asset like Bitcoin or like gold.
17:00
It's a sovereign, a non sovereign doesn't have an issuer store of value has a
17:04
scarcity
17:05
story, a little bit different than Bitcoin in terms of its scarcity story, but
17:09
still
17:09
a scarcity story and kind of number goes up because people believe it's a store
17:15
of value
17:16
asset independent of fiat based systems.
17:20
And so it's an alternative to that.
17:21
It's one set of metrics that you can use to value this thing.
17:25
Another set on the other end of the spectrum is the Ethereum network does
17:30
generate some
17:31
fees.
17:32
And you can almost think of this as like tax revenue of the network.
17:36
And it is able to collect some of these fees as say taxes and pass them on to
17:42
those that
17:43
are staking ETH the asset.
17:45
And so there's cash flows actually attached to that.
17:47
And so you get price to sales ratios and you get fee yield type ratios on that
17:54
or you can
17:55
look at kind of how much cash flows back to stakers and value it based on
17:59
almost like
18:00
a tech stock inequity, some sort of discounted cash flow table.
18:05
There's a third class too, which is you just think of this as a network, an
18:09
economy and
18:10
a network, and you think about the value on top of that network, all of the
18:16
assets and
18:16
stablecoins and tokens, and you create some sort of total value locked multiple
18:22
and you
18:23
look at historically, you know, how the price is reacted to a certain amount of
18:28
value on
18:28
the platform, then you just say, well, if that value goes up, then ETH price
18:32
should
18:32
increase.
18:33
There's all of these Metcalf Law type network mechanisms where you're
18:37
essentially saying
18:38
that ETH, the asset should be some sort of portion of the Ethereum economy and
18:43
all of
18:44
the assets on top of Ethereum.
18:46
Those are like three different categories of how you value ETH.
18:50
What's fascinating here, Mike, is when you look at the variance of these
18:55
categories,
18:56
if you took something like price to sales ratio based on the last 365 days of L
19:01
1 fee
19:02
revenue and Blob fee revenue, either the asset would be worth about $2 right
19:08
now, okay?
19:10
On the other end of the spectrum, if you look at kind of ecosystem settlement,
19:15
use some
19:15
of these network metrics and use some of the store value type metrics.
19:19
This is one MV equals PQ.
19:22
This was a valuation metric kind of popular in the 2017 era.
19:26
ETH would be worth on that side $24,000.
19:28
All right, look at this disparity in two different metrics.
19:32
You have $2 versus $24,000.
19:36
Now we have an ETH price point right now.
19:39
The market has deemed that ETH is worth $2K right now.
19:43
What that tells me is the market is just trying to figure out how the hell to
19:48
actually value
19:49
this asset.
19:51
Is it a tech stock?
19:53
Is it some sort of network valuation economy that you're plugging for ETH price
20:00
?
20:00
Is it a store of value?
20:02
Maybe the price just reflects that the market is uncertain in terms of which
20:06
metrics actually
20:07
apply to this thing.
20:09
How do you see ETH or the asset and which metrics in your mind should apply to
20:14
its valuation?
20:15
Yeah, this is great, Ryan.
20:18
What's interesting here as well is when you look at that price of sale ratio,
20:22
if you go
20:22
back to 2021, when Ethereum was printing cash, this was when the L1, there were
20:29
no L2s.
20:30
Every user was on the L1 and you had massive congestion.
20:33
We all knew that that wasn't really sustainable, but the actual story at that
20:37
time was cash
20:38
flow.
20:39
You could do a DCF and the numbers actually sort of checked out.
20:43
It was a totally different story.
20:45
This has evolved quite a bit over the years and it's due to the technical
20:50
upgrades and
20:51
just the way that Ethereum has laid out its scaling roadmap.
20:56
My view on this, and we've tried to cover this topic a few different times, we
21:00
wrote
21:01
a piece last year called How to Value an L1 and people can check that out.
21:06
We focus more on, we think the way to think about L1s is as nation-states and
21:12
the token
21:13
is the currency.
21:15
Basically, the nation-state provides the infrastructure, how a country provides
21:21
a set
21:22
of rules and property rights and things like this and the blockchain handles
21:25
that and then
21:26
it charges attacks to all of the users and the users have to use that currency
21:30
to access
21:31
services.
21:32
I think it functions very similar to that.
21:34
I like that model.
21:35
Now, what is the most important valuation metric?
21:40
I think that it comes back to a few different things.
21:45
I look at token economics as one thing that I think is very important.
21:49
Ethereum has very strong token economics even with its REV and its cash flow
21:55
being down.
21:56
It's still less inflationary actually right now than Bitcoin is.
22:00
It has strong token economics.
22:02
The other thing you can look at is the TVL, GDP, what's the value of the
22:07
economy on top
22:08
of this thing?
22:10
When you think about East valuation right now in terms of market value, let me
22:15
just pull
22:16
it up real quick, about $250 billion, ETH has about $180 billion of stablecoins
22:23
on it.
22:24
If you factor in the rest of the TVL, it's certainly much higher than the
22:30
market cap.
22:31
That's another way.
22:32
Typically, we've seen fair value when the market cap converges to the
22:37
combination of
22:39
stablecoins and other TBL assets.
22:42
To me, it's a combination of the cash flow story.
22:45
There is cash flow here that is different from Bitcoin, the token economics
22:49
story, and
22:49
then the fundamental story.
22:51
I try to roll all of that up and then focus on what I think is the most
22:55
important thing
22:56
in the context of this idea of a nation-state and why do certain currencies
23:01
have more strength
23:02
than others in a nation-state model is because of capital flows, the rule of
23:07
law and monetary
23:09
policy, all of these things.
23:10
That's a holistic way to think about this.
23:13
Traditionally, ETH has just been valued relative to Bitcoin, I think, for the
23:18
most part and
23:19
the market hasn't really landed on what is the key valuation criteria just yet.
23:26
It's a reacting to a world that feels anything but stable.
23:28
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23:31
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23:32
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I do think you're onto something with this nation-state metaphor, really, and
25:27
if you
25:27
kind of take that throughout history, there have been different nation-states
25:31
that have
25:32
been blessed with the exorbitant privilege of having other nation-states
25:37
actually wanting
25:38
to use their currency as a store of value and also as a medium of exchange.
25:44
I mean, the US, most notably right now, has that exorbitant privilege.
25:48
And so one wonders which blockchains might be blessed with that and which ones
25:54
aren't.
25:54
Certainly, it seems like Bitcoin has been blessed with that in the past.
25:58
Will it be the only one?
25:59
Will there be more?
26:01
These are kind of the outstanding questions, but still, the nation-state
26:05
metaphor, analog
26:06
valuation framework does fit the mold for that case too, even in the store of
26:14
value case.
26:15
Yeah, I think so.
26:18
I've had the view that as a crypto analyst and as somebody who's constantly
26:23
looking at
26:24
data and trying to figure out what's driving the prices of these things, what
26:27
should drive
26:28
the prices of these things, I've had the view that we're eventually going to
26:31
sort of land
26:32
on some new standards in terms of how this is all going to work.
26:37
We are still pre-regulation.
26:39
I think the crypto markets have been around for a little while, but we are
26:42
still pre-regulation.
26:43
So I think once we get the Clarity Act through, hopefully that is the
26:48
legislation that we
26:50
want, once that gets through, and this just becomes much more open to
26:55
traditional finance
26:56
and how they're going to start to integrate, I think we will start to land on
27:00
some frameworks.
27:01
And I expect them to come from crypto-native analysts and not traditional
27:06
finance analysts.
27:08
And so I think they're going to adopt some of the thinking that we've already
27:12
established.
27:13
And we'll see it's, be patient.
27:15
I've been saying this for years now, and it has a really plant played out.
27:20
But if these networks continue to be adopted and continue to produce
27:24
interesting data and
27:25
interesting fundamentals, we will absolutely find a way and the market will
27:30
absolutely,
27:30
I think, converge on a sort of standard way to think about them.
27:34
Well, let's take a look at some of those fundamentals and those numbers that at
27:38
least you look at.
27:39
So one of them is Ethereum revenue right now.
27:43
So what is that showing us?
27:46
Yeah, I mean, this is the story.
27:48
This is the L2 roadmap.
27:49
It's just sort of visualizing the sort of impact on the economics of the L2
27:53
roadmap.
27:54
And where the chart really kind of drops off is like early 2024.
27:59
That was right after we introduced like blobs, right?
28:02
And so it made it really cheap for L2s to anchor data onto Ethereum.
28:09
Really Ethereum's revenue declined significantly because of that and also just
28:14
because there
28:15
is a decent subset of Ethereum L1 users that now use the L2.
28:19
And so you're not getting those kind of L1 base fees.
28:22
And this is really kind of, I think, you know, visualizing it.
28:25
This is the L2 rent paid down to L1.
28:28
And that chart shows like it's really just the upgrade of Ethereum improving
28:33
itself, which
28:34
to me is Ethereum disrupting itself is really what happened here.
28:37
And so that's not like, you know, uncommon.
28:41
Like this is something that like software, you see this.
28:44
And the question is, and we saw we saw for years Amazon essentially, you know,
28:49
operate
28:50
at losses because they wanted to keep their costs really low and they want to
28:54
just scale
28:55
their network effects.
28:56
And that worked out very well for Amazon.
28:58
And so what we're seeing right now in Ethereum is they've sort of like
29:01
disrupted themselves.
29:03
They've improved their product for their end customer.
29:05
But it's not really a great trade off in terms of like the value accrual that
29:10
Ethereum
29:11
is capturing.
29:12
I do think there are ways that they can, you know, potentially capture more of
29:15
that value
29:15
in the future.
29:17
But I think this is a story that the charts kind of just like visualize what is
29:20
played
29:21
out.
29:22
What's interesting about this at some level is yes, fees have collapsed, right?
29:28
I guess the sunny side of that or the optimistic take on that is even the spite
29:33
of fees collapsing
29:35
ETH is still valued over to 2K, you know what I mean?
29:39
So there's something else that the market sees in here in the price of Ether
29:45
that is
29:45
not being reflected in fees.
29:48
And it just is the case that like it could come to pass that fees never, ever
29:55
recover
29:56
to the 2022 highs.
29:59
And the reason for that is if Ethereum continues to scale block space, both L2
30:05
block space and
30:06
also L1 block space, as it intends to as part of its roadmap, then you get less
30:12
scarcity
30:13
because you have more supply and unless demand outstrips the new supply that
30:19
you're creating,
30:21
fees will stay low in perpetuity.
30:23
But at some level, isn't that the success scenario?
30:26
Isn't that what the Ethereum roadmap is supposed to do?
30:28
It's supposed to scale cheap transactions, so you get in a case where if you're
30:32
looking
30:33
just at the fee revenue, it's not telling the full story for this asset.
30:39
And I mean, that's similar for other chains too, like Bitcoin barely generates
30:43
any fees
30:43
and look at its valuation.
30:46
So that's why it's complicated to just like, I don't know, look at the fees
30:51
story and make
30:51
any judgments here.
30:53
Yeah, I would agree with all that and I think this is where, you know, we
30:57
talked about Ethereum
30:58
having 180 billion of stable coins and the network is worth about 250 or 230 or
31:04
so billion
31:05
right now.
31:06
So there are other ways to think about fundamentals separate from just the fees
31:11
.
31:11
The way that sort of that decline in fees is impacting like the staking yields
31:17
is we're
31:18
just seeing that blue where we've got a chart here of the staking yield of ETH
31:21
over time
31:22
going back to late 2022 and we had a pretty healthy sort of combination of new
31:29
issuance,
31:30
which is network inflation that's compensating the validators in combination
31:37
with some MEV
31:38
that's adding to the staking yield.
31:40
And then you had priority fees that were all combining to produce a nice yield
31:45
that was
31:46
over 5% or so back in 2022 and as these network upgrades have come through, we
31:52
're just seeing
31:53
less of the sort of like, you know, fees that are adding to the e-staking yield
32:00
.
32:00
It's just issuance now?
32:01
It's like 90 percent.
32:02
Yeah.
32:03
We didn't see the far right of that chart.
32:04
It's mostly just pink.
32:05
So it's like almost all issue.
32:06
It's about 90 over 90 percent is just coming from the, you know, Ethereum
32:10
essentially minting
32:12
new ETH paying out the validators with that.
32:14
The key point on this, and I think this is a very important thing for Ethereum,
32:19
is even
32:19
with these low fees, and this is really important, but the inflation, they're
32:24
still able, even
32:25
though, yes, that is inflation, it's still like less than 1 percent.
32:29
So you're able to compensate the entire supply side of your network, you know,
32:35
do they want
32:36
their yields to be over 3 percent?
32:38
Yes, I think so.
32:39
But I don't see, you know, the validators like leaving the network because of
32:43
this.
32:43
And so you're able...
32:44
You're saying the numbers here, isn't it?
32:45
And I recall you throwing some numbers out, but annualized issuance for
32:49
Ethereum in terms
32:50
of new ETH that is minted every year, isn't that something like 0.6 or
32:54
something percent?
32:56
Yeah.
32:57
0.6 percent.
32:58
Right now, it's about 0.83 percent annualized with around the same inflation
33:03
rate as Bitcoin.
33:05
And the reason that that's really important is you still have a, you know, you
33:08
're basically
33:08
not diluting, you know, there's a small amount of dilution coming to ETH
33:12
holders that are
33:13
not staking, but you're able to do that even when the network isn't producing a
33:18
ton of,
33:19
you know, it's just sort of pure organic economics.
33:23
Most other networks that have very low fee capture that are, you know, paying
33:27
the supply
33:28
side primarily with inflation have high inflation rates, right?
33:32
This is the unique thing about Ethereum.
33:34
And so ETH can be viewed as a store of value and have strong token economics,
33:38
even when
33:39
the fee capture is at these depressed levels.
33:42
I think that's really important.
33:43
What do the dex volumes teach you about Ethereum?
33:47
So, you know, this is something that in terms of valuation, it doesn't really
33:52
come in too
33:53
much on Ethereum.
33:54
So what the way I think about this is velocity, like, absolutely matters and
33:59
just like the
34:00
speed that assets are moving on chain and that can drive a lot of the, you know
34:06
, network
34:06
economics.
34:07
And that's what that's really the most important KPI on Solana.
34:11
I think what is interesting here is that dex volumes are down about 56% or so
34:18
Solana was
34:18
doing significantly higher dex volumes than Ethereum during the bull market.
34:24
Ethereum is actually doing more now.
34:26
So almost twice as many, this is just the Ethereum L1, but it's doing almost
34:30
twice as
34:31
much dex volume now in the bear market.
34:34
So it's kind of like the tide has come out a little bit.
34:37
We're sort of starting to see, you know, kind of what's left.
34:40
And Ethereum has a strong foundation, I think, I think is the kind of the key
34:43
takeaway.
34:44
But this metric is more important on Solana in terms of how it generates, you
34:49
know, velocity
34:50
on chain, which leads to MEV, which leads to, you know, base fees and staking
34:55
yields on
34:56
Solana.
34:57
I think we've made the point before that Ethereum is a bit more of a slow DeFi
35:01
chain.
35:02
And that comes with a high, higher quality base of assets for certain that tend
35:07
to perform
35:07
better in the bear market, but whereas Solana is kind of high velocity types of
35:14
DeFi and
35:15
use cases.
35:16
So, there's some separation in the design of these networks as well.
35:20
This is a metric that has been pretty much up and to the right and looks like
35:24
it continues
35:25
to grow, which is Ethereum's stablecoin supply.
35:28
And you just mentioned we hit over 180 billion.
35:33
And that's all on Ethereum.
35:34
Ethereum has kind of the bulk of stablecoin supply in crypto.
35:38
Is this bullish?
35:39
I mean, this has not yet been reflected in price.
35:43
You know, maybe you could argue it is when the genius bill went through.
35:47
If you've got close to kind of all-time highs, I believe, but do you think this
35:52
has an impact
35:53
on the price?
35:54
It's, you know, it's been the big narrative.
35:56
I think when Tom Lee got involved with Ethereum last summer, so this is one of
36:00
the big things
36:01
that he was sort of pointing to.
36:03
Ethereum has roughly 60% of the total stablecoin supply, stablecoins look like
36:08
they're sort
36:09
of the-
36:10
But Chad GPT using Chad GPT, yeah, I tell you that's the killer use case for
36:15
crypto, which
36:16
I think is all, you know, fair.
36:19
And yeah, Ethereum is the home for this.
36:22
USDT is the most popular stablecoin on Ethereum.
36:25
It's about 53.6% of the supply.
36:28
You know, what I'm interested in seeing how this sort of evolves is after we
36:33
get the Clarity
36:34
Act, you know, are we going to see more trad-fi stablecoins start to come out?
36:39
Are we aware of those going to be deployed?
36:42
My guess is they probably will be deployed on Ethereum, and this is really
36:45
going to boost
36:46
out of-
36:47
I think of like the-
36:48
If you think of like sort of the-
36:49
Just the foundation, almost like when you think about a traditional company,
36:53
you think
36:54
about the book value of the company, like what are just like the actual hard
36:59
value of
36:59
all the assets of the company, and when you remove the premium.
37:02
Like, I sort of think of stablecoins apply as like the hard value and maybe a
37:07
few other
37:08
things involving TBL as sort of like the base of like what the economy is on
37:14
top of Ethereum.
37:15
And so yeah, I think this is a strong sign that it's only down, you know, 2.7%
37:20
even though
37:20
the price is down, you know, closer to 60% or so.
37:23
So I think this is bullish and it'll be interesting to see how it expands from
37:28
here.
37:28
It's also interesting to see during the bear market, right?
37:31
So you said the fair market value of ETH, the total, you know, market cap of
37:38
ETH is
37:39
something like $250 billion as we're recording.
37:42
This number is $180 billion.
37:45
So what happens if the value of ETH drops below the value of all stablecoins on
37:51
top
37:51
of it?
37:52
Does that signify under valuation or does that not matter at all?
37:56
I guess the market's still trying to figure that out.
38:00
Let's talk about the fair value metrics that you use, which are a little bit
38:04
different
38:05
than the valuation metrics that we talked about earlier.
38:09
And this is I think your favorite way of assessing the fair market value of
38:14
Bitcoin, the asset,
38:16
which is to use things like realized value, MVRV, percent supply and profit.
38:22
What are the whales doing?
38:24
Are they buying?
38:26
Are they selling?
38:27
At what stage in the cycle are we?
38:29
These are kind of the cycle metrics that you've become famous for on the DeFi
38:34
report.
38:35
So what are ETH's cycle metrics right now?
38:39
And what are they telling us about where ETH actually is in this bear cycle?
38:45
Yeah.
38:46
So pretty interesting here.
38:47
We've got the last two bear markets.
38:50
These are, like you said, these are kind of the cycle metrics.
38:53
This is more market value to realize values, e-scores, supply and profit,
38:57
things like this.
38:59
I probably should have added in here a few of the other metrics related to TVL,
39:03
stable
39:04
coins, things like that.
39:05
Maybe we'll tweet that out after the show.
39:08
But what I see here is we're very close to where we bought them.
39:15
A lot of these KPIs are very close to where we bought them in the last bear
39:18
market.
39:19
So market value to realize value, that measures the realized value as a proxy
39:25
or sort of the
39:25
cost basis of the network.
39:29
This is something we pay a little more attention to with Bitcoin just because
39:32
Bitcoin is more
39:33
of a store of value network.
39:35
It's less utility.
39:36
And so these numbers are not as precise, I think, because of the way that
39:40
Ethereum moves
39:41
on chain, because the way that these metrics are calculated is it's just
39:48
basically the
39:49
price of the token.
39:50
So if somebody sent you some ETH and they did that at $3,000 and you never made
39:54
another
39:55
transaction after that, then that wallet's cost basis would be at that $3,000
40:00
price
40:00
pay.
40:01
It does this for every transfer in and out of these wallets.
40:05
So right now it looks like, I say that, but these metrics have been actually
40:09
very, very
40:10
accurate and provided a lot of signal for crypto analysts.
40:15
So we bought them in terms of MVR at 0.7.
40:18
So actually below one, Bitcoin is at about 1.26 right now on this metric.
40:24
We're at 0.84 right now.
40:25
So you're clearly in what I would say is like the, you know, what looks like a
40:29
cycle
40:30
low zone.
40:31
You know, we don't know if it's going to go lower and I'm mostly, you know,
40:34
paying attention
40:35
to that 2022 column here because ETH was a very, you know, immature asset back
40:40
in 2018.
40:41
When we look at the Z score, again, close, you know, we're not below where we
40:45
went to
40:46
in 2022, but we're pretty close.
40:49
When we look at the supply and percentage of supply and profit, you know, this
40:53
is pretty
40:53
interesting.
40:54
We're actually below only about 39.4%.
40:57
This is the entire network that we're factoring in here, you know, only about
41:03
39% of ETH holders
41:04
looks like they're in profit right now.
41:06
And that got, you know, that's actually lower than we went to in 2022.
41:10
ETH BTC ratio is just, you know, a way to, you know, relative to where Bitcoin
41:15
is trading.
41:17
What's interesting about this one is ETH established, it's like cycle low for
41:23
its ETH
41:24
BTC ratio in April of 2025, which is really so this isn't a 2022 KPI load.
41:31
This one specifically happened in April 2025.
41:34
Yeah, very, you know, kind of odd to see that happen.
41:39
And we have got a chart here.
41:41
We can go to after after we finish on this one, but that, you know, it looked
41:46
like ETH
41:46
was probably at its most oversold level ever, actually, in April of 2025, we
41:51
can get there.
41:52
But then we look at the, you know, 200-week moving averages as a metric that's
41:56
worked
41:56
quite well for Bitcoin, ETH has also traded below its 200-week moving average
42:03
in the
42:03
last cycle.
42:04
And it's actually currently there right now.
42:06
It's actually at a lower level than it was at the 2022 low.
42:11
So why don't we flip over to that next chart to give a little bit of a view of
42:16
that.
42:16
Yeah, here it is.
42:18
So this is just showing the, you know, the 200-week moving average.
42:22
And the distance that that pink line gets below the blue is giving you a pretty
42:28
good
42:28
indicator of historically, you know, kind of where we could be at here in terms
42:33
of like
42:33
the big cycle.
42:35
And we can see that, you know, we actually went to the lowest point ever below
42:40
that blue
42:41
line in April 2025.
42:44
And then that's basically what kicked off the rod that right after that was
42:47
when I think
42:48
Tom Lee came on and everything kind of changed for a brief moment there, but we
42:53
never really,
42:54
you know, pushed to like durable new all-time highs.
42:57
So we're right now back at what I would say is pretty clearly fair value.
43:02
And the way I think of these things is like, you know, it's possible for
43:05
something like
43:06
ETH that it could actually just bottom before Bitcoin bottoms that happened in
43:12
June of 2022.
43:15
That's kind of rare.
43:16
Most crypto assets actually bottom, like after Bitcoin or around the same time.
43:21
So it's possible that Bitcoin that ETH has actually bottomed, like that's
43:24
actually possible.
43:25
It's also possible that we're going to see more weakness or Bitcoin here at
43:30
some point
43:30
in 2026, potential weakness in the traditional markets.
43:36
And you know, that could bleed into to ETH as well.
43:40
But I would say from like a very high level, like it's it's in like a fair,
43:42
certainly in
43:43
a fair value territory when we look at these types of metrics.
43:47
And also if we look at sort of like the GDP type metrics and the TVL and, you
43:53
know, just
43:54
kind of the base of assets on the chain from that perspective, I would say it's
43:58
also in
43:59
a fair value zone.
44:00
So I know your base case is that Bitcoin will have further weakness this year
44:04
and it could
44:04
take some some months to play out.
44:06
But if we just go back to kind of the fair value KPIs for ETH or the asset,
44:12
could you
44:13
translate this into like a price for Ether or like a, you know, a time range,
44:18
if maybe
44:19
this plays out as you're expecting.
44:22
So it seems like we are in actually the fair market value zone for Ether, what
44:27
you would
44:28
call the fair market value, not necessarily deep value yet.
44:32
And we have this conversation on the TDR podcast last week, the difference for
44:36
Bitcoin between
44:38
fair value, which is kind of it's in that early stage right now versus deep
44:43
value.
44:44
And the returns can be much more drastic to the positive if you're buying in
44:50
the deep
44:51
value territory.
44:52
So what's kind of from a price range perspective and a timeline perspective,
44:57
your rough estimate
44:58
of how long will be in fair value and then what does deep value look like for
45:03
Ether?
45:03
Yeah, I think what's, what was interesting last in the last cycle is that ETH
45:09
actually
45:10
went all the way down, I believe to about 900 or so in the early in that that
45:14
fair market.
45:15
So May, June period.
45:18
And that was the low, that was the low that established for the entire cycle.
45:22
And then, you know, when we had the FTX, you know, capitulation actually never
45:27
went, went
45:27
back down to those, those lows, that's something I'm, you know, keeping in mind
45:31
that that's
45:32
possible, that that could happen in terms of like, just, you know, how this can
45:37
go and
45:37
the timelines and things like that.
45:40
You know, I think bear markets have historically taken about a year to play out
45:44
and that's kind
45:44
of my base case for this cycle.
45:49
And you know, I've kind of, you know, if you zoom out and just think about, you
45:52
know, things
45:52
that are happening on like the macro side of things and, you know, it's hard to
45:57
see like
45:57
just get impulse of liquidity coming from either fiscal monetary policy.
46:03
We now have oil rates that are, that are, you know, rising and potentially like
46:08
kind
46:08
of a, you know, stagflationary setup here where it looks like inflation,
46:13
expectations
46:14
are rising, growth, expectations are slowing, like this is not, you know,
46:20
really sort of
46:21
bullish setup, I would say for for crypto.
46:25
It could lead to a situation where the Fed has to actually do some, you know,
46:29
emergency
46:30
rate cuts.
46:31
And that would, that would to me would be a good setup for, for ETH, for
46:35
Bitcoin, for
46:36
crypto largely.
46:37
But that's kind of where I'm at.
46:39
I'm, you know, we were risk off back in September, October period.
46:44
We are now risk on, but I would say not like full on risk on we've sort of
46:48
tried to allocate
46:51
in these fair value zones in line with what I think the probabilities are for
46:55
potential,
46:55
you know, deeper value opportunities.
46:57
Yeah.
46:58
And I know you've primarily in the risk on mode, you've just allocated to
47:01
Bitcoin so far and
47:03
are looking to move kind of down the stack a little bit later in the cycle as
47:06
you expect
47:07
this to play out.
47:08
But roughly in my head, if I'm looking at these numbers, I'm kind of swagging
47:11
it, right?
47:11
We're at right now at 2K, we're in sort of the fair market value zone, maybe
47:16
the top
47:16
end of that for, for Ether.
47:19
Deep value, I don't know, knock another 25% off or something like that, 1500
47:23
and below,
47:24
is that starting to look more like deep value for Michael NATO and the TDR for
47:30
Ether?
47:31
I think so.
47:32
I think we went down to like 1700 or so in April.
47:36
Like if we get there, that probably is a, you know, deep value zone, you know,
47:43
we'll
47:44
see.
47:45
I mean, we've, we've, we've come down quite a bit.
47:46
But I think we came down to 1850 or so and now we're sort of bouncing.
47:49
It feels like we're in the part of the cycle where we've come into the fair
47:53
value.
47:53
We, we got there fairly quickly, we're about five months into this fair market
47:57
and it feels
47:58
to me like we're kind of at the part of the cycle where we're just going to
48:00
kind of like
48:01
shop around, you know, we're seeing some turmoil with, you know, traditional
48:06
markets with geopolitics
48:07
and like we'll see how this kind of gets resolved, but it feels like we're in
48:11
the zone
48:11
where we chop around, you know, try to find a bottom.
48:16
And most of the work that we're doing right now is just try to assess that.
48:19
And then we're, you know, essentially doing a lot of fundamental research to
48:23
try to decide
48:24
which assets that we want to pair up in our crypto portfolio, which ones do we
48:29
have the
48:29
highest conviction that they will outperform Bitcoin in, in the next sort of
48:35
expansion
48:35
phase.
48:36
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48:50
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49:08
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49:12
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49:49
Some exciting news.
49:50
We are launching a new podcast to help people figure out the crypto cycle, how
49:54
to navigate
49:55
it.
49:56
The best crypto cycle investor I know, his name is Michael NATO, he runs the De
49:58
Fi report.
49:59
This is the guy that sent me a sell alert before the 10/10 price drop happened.
50:04
This cycle analysis has been absolutely on point, I've been following him for
50:07
years,
50:08
and this year we started recording weekly podcast episodes.
50:11
Each one we get into his portfolio, what he's holding, the market structure,
50:15
entry targets,
50:16
fair market value of Bitcoin and Ether, and where we are in the cycle, there's
50:19
new episodes
50:20
that are released every Wednesday, they're 30 minutes, they're short, they're
50:23
punchy.
50:24
I think this crypto cycle is harder to navigate than most, so let's do it
50:27
together.
50:28
Go subscribe to this podcast, search the DeFi report, wherever you get your
50:31
podcast, YouTube,
50:32
Apple, Spotify, we'll find a link in the show notes.
50:35
There's a new episode waiting for you now.
50:37
Okay, so let's talk about that maybe as we start to bring this to a close mic.
50:41
So, of course, an asset being in the fair market value zone is necessary, but
50:47
not the
50:48
only requirement for getting inside of the TDR portfolio and your portfolio
50:53
because what
50:54
you're really looking for is assets that will outperform Bitcoin.
50:59
And I guess the question is if Ether is in the fair market value zone, I know
51:03
you already
51:04
have some, but this is carry forward from last cycle on the TDR portfolio.
51:09
You know, what does Ether have to prove to you in order to get in the portfolio
51:15
this
51:15
cycle?
51:16
Obviously, it has to be in the fair market value or deep value zone for you to
51:20
be a buyer,
51:21
but there's all sorts of other crypto assets that you could buy or other assets
51:25
in general.
51:26
What are you looking to see specifically for ETH to re-underwrite it as a asset
51:32
that you
51:33
want to include into the early bull side of the cycle that starts to play out
51:39
in 2027?
51:41
Yeah, I think, well, I think ETH looks healthy to me.
51:45
It was, I was growing more concerned, I would say, last year and just seeing
51:50
the reaction
51:51
and a lot changed.
51:53
I think Ethereum addressed a lot of these concerns that were going on.
51:57
So I think it's in a healthy place.
51:59
There's a little bit more of a renewed focus on the L1 and scaling the L1.
52:03
So I think that's, it's in a good spot.
52:06
For me as an investor, what I have to look at is, okay, what are the other
52:11
options here?
52:12
What are the other things that I could buy?
52:15
And to me, it just comes down to like, do I have more confidence in those
52:20
things from
52:21
a fundamental perspective, from a valuation perspective, from a token economic
52:26
perspective
52:27
and buybacks and things that lead on trying to sort of analyze each asset
52:31
separately and
52:32
then decide which ones do I have the highest conviction are going to outperform
52:38
.
52:38
And so there are lots of assets that you can put into a portfolio on confidence
52:43
that ETH
52:43
is going to do well and have an expansion in the next cycle.
52:49
And I would hope that it'll definitely get past those 5K all-time high.
52:56
But the question is, do you have more conviction in that and ETH potentially
53:01
outperforming
53:02
Bitcoin in this cycle versus there's probably five to 10 other assets that we
53:08
're looking
53:09
at that we haven't made any decisions on, but we cover these in the watch list
53:12
on a
53:12
weekly basis.
53:14
And that's kind of where we're at.
53:16
Look and subscribe if they want to find out what we ultimately add to the
53:20
portfolio.
53:21
I can't wait to see where you end up with at this cycle.
53:25
So let's wrap it here.
53:27
And for Banklist listeners, Mike and I do this every month.
53:30
We put this on the Banklist podcast actually on a weekly basis.
53:34
Every Wednesday, we publish a new podcast on the TDR feed.
53:39
And so if you're not subscribed to that, go take a moment to go subscribe to
53:42
that.
53:42
You'd find it in Spotify.
53:43
You can find it in YouTube.
53:45
Do a search.
53:46
There's a link in the show notes and you'll get access to that.
53:48
Actually, we're going to be recording an episode here shortly.
53:51
So there might be something live for you on that feed right now.
53:55
What's the episode that's coming out tomorrow, Mike?
53:57
Yeah.
53:58
So one of the nice things, I think I kind of hinted at it a little bit at the
54:01
beginning
54:01
of this show is I view the volatility of the crypto asset class as like a
54:07
feature.
54:08
Not just because you can sort of trade and get in and out of things.
54:12
We're more of a long-term investor, so we trade these cycles.
54:16
And what that allows us to do is kind of re-underwrite these thesis every four
54:20
years
54:20
or so.
54:21
So we're actually doing like a health check on the Bitcoin network this week.
54:25
We're just going to go through all the things that we think are most important,
54:28
just like
54:29
the health of the Bitcoin network to help re-underwrite our sort of like, you
54:33
know, five to 10-year
54:35
outlook for Bitcoin.
54:36
So that's drops tomorrow and we'll talk about it on the DeFi report podcast as
54:40
well.
54:40
I can't wait to have that conversation.
54:42
I don't know if you're going to be covering like quantum or security budget and
54:45
some of
54:45
those longer-term concerns, but we'll talk about it there.
54:49
Also, I believe that the TDR Pro, you're offering one month free to bank list
54:54
listeners right
54:55
now.
54:56
I am a proud, happy TDR Pro member, really inexpensive, the cost of a Netflix
55:00
subscription.
55:01
If you want to try that for a month, you can do that, but it gives you access
55:04
to Mike's
55:04
portfolio in the TDR.
55:06
He is right now, I believe, 40% crypto, 60% cash.
55:11
So starting to move into that risk-on territory, you get research reports every
55:16
week, you get
55:17
data dashboards, you get the watch list.
55:20
Mike, what else do subscribers get when they get the TDR Pro?
55:23
Yeah, they get...
55:25
So we do these cycle awareness reports.
55:27
We actually just released one of those last week that goes through a lot of the
55:31
...
55:31
Some of the data that we went through for ETH, we went through that a lot of it
55:34
for Bitcoin
55:34
last week.
55:35
So cycle awareness reports, market structure reports, on-chain data, and I
55:39
think that
55:39
really helps anchor people to just like where are we at in the cycle, and then
55:43
we do the
55:44
watch list reports every Friday.
55:46
Those are specific asset level reports where we go through the fundamentals and
55:50
we're just
55:51
like...
55:52
We've initiated coverage on those assets because we may include them in our TDR
55:55
Pro
55:56
active portfolio when we think it's time to be more risk-on.
56:00
So it's kind of like following investors' journal, to some degree, I would say
56:05
to TDR
56:06
Pro.
56:07
Yeah, one of my favorite things is when I get the fat pitch email alerts from
56:10
Mike indicating
56:10
that he's just bought back in because that's always a bullish sign for me.
56:14
So you guys can access that in a link in the show notes.
56:18
We'll leave you with this.
56:19
Of course, none of this has been financial advice.
56:21
You know, crypto is risky.
56:22
You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west.
56:24
This is the frontier.
56:25
It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey.
56:29
Thanks a lot.
56:30
[Music]
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