"Bitcoin Will Bottom When This Happens" | Ben Cowen

According to Ben Cowan, there's only a 25% chance that the Bitcoin bottom is in for this cycle. And that alone should get your attention. Ben has been one of the most consistent data-driven voices in the space. And in this conversation, we dig into what that really means for Bitcoin. Bitcoin could go theoretically back up to 80K, but that doesn't necessarily mean the low is in. I would say the likelihood that the low is in is probably only like 25%. bare markets, they spend a lot more time actually trending up than trending down. >> Altcoins, the broader macro picture, >> the altcoin market, in my opinion, it's more of a casino >> and where opportunity could still be hiding in this market. >> Every business cycle previously over the last like three or four decades, they always ended after the price of oil would spike in the late business cycle environment. So, I started to seek out stocks that would benefit from the price of oil going up that there will continue to be a lot of opportunities in in metals as well. Watch all the way through because Ben lays out a framework here that can help you stop reacting emotionally and start seeing the bigger picture. That's dope. >> Let's do >> So, Ben, we're doing our uh I guess monthly bimonthly, I don't know, at this point, check-in to see where the market stands. It still stands in the same place, man. It feels like we're forever 70ish, you I don't know what it'll be by the time we put this out, but feels forever 70ish. >> Yeah. I mean, it's kind of uh we've been at the same price basically since early February, just between like 60 75K or so. But I mean, look, this is not your first midterm year with crypto either. I mean, it's pretty common to see a sell off into the early part of the midterm year and then just kind of get this period where there's really low volatility for really long a really long period of time. In fact, in 2018, Bitcoin dropped to $6,000 and then basically held $6,000 as support from February until November and then it all changed at the end of the year. So, it's not that different from what we've previously seen. My guess is we'll we'll continue to see more of the same. >> So, it did change at the end of the year that time, but it very quickly went down below and very quickly bounced back to 6,000. Right. I remember that night I had put in stink bids uh hoping maybe Bitcoin one day would go to 4,000 if ever it happened to break down. I woke up in the morning and price was still 6,000 and it took me like five hours until I knew that I had filled and was up 50%. >> Nice. Yeah. I mean 2020 was crazy too. >> Yeah. I mean that was one of the craziest days. But I mean that begs the question now if we chop sideways in this range for many more months is that accumulation and then we head back up like some of the markets or is that the desperation 6,000 breaks down and it feels like the world is over? I mean, I think if I think if we were to go below 60K, like let's say we were to go to like the 30 to 50k range or something, that would be I think as far as a lot of the indicators go, that would be a fairly convincing bottom, right? Like in terms of what historically has signaled major market lows for Bitcoin. And by the way, like Bitcoin could go theoretically back up to 80K, but that doesn't necessarily mean the low is in. You know, that's the hard part about bare markets and and maybe I can share my screen is is they they they spend a lot more time actually trending up than trending down. Um and and that is what makes them incredibly incredibly difficult. So here's here's my screen. And one of the things you'll notice about uh the theoretical bare market that we're still in, I know some people sort of uh disagree with that, but in a in a in the bull market, Bitcoin would generally trend sort of it would kind of trend down and then break up, right? It would trend down, break up, trend down, break up a bull flag. I mean, you put in a high and then volume drops and price drops alongside it. It's not very convincing. Then you head back up, right? and it convinces enough people that the bull market's over, you know, and and and people give up. I feel like the the reverse is happening now, right? Like we we trend we we we basically get our first self and then we kind of trend up and then quickly break down, right? Trend up. And that's why in bare markets, bare markets make fools of both bulls and bears. Because in bare markets, you often will spend more time trending higher than trending lower. It's just that when you do trend lower, it happens over a really short period of time. like look how long Bitcoin trended up in November through January and then it broke down just in like a couple of weeks and then again you could argue the same thing's happening now. So for me this is more or less the same uh and some of the indicators that I would be looking for later this year to potentially sort of trigger one simple one. This is a really aesthetically pleasing one to look at the Bitcoin percentage of supply and profit or loss. You know, historically, we see these things connect, converge to each other at the end of at the full sort of at the end of a market cycle. That'll probably happen at some point in the next say six to eight months. Um, and then there's other there's other things like the balance price, the realized price. Bitcoin is always bottomed below those levels at the end of bare markets. Here's 2011. You have uh 2015, 2018, even 2020, 2022. And like we're we're getting pretty close to the realized price. Um but effectively you're you're still looking at at eventual lower prices than than where we are right now. The only counterpoint, right? And and and people have asked me like what's the probability, right? I think that's important because no one fully knows. Um I would say the likelihood that the low is in is probably only like 25%. Okay? It's not like it's impossible, but I would say it's much more likely that we do eventually go lower. And I I guess the main bull case is that if this is like the 2019 sort of post digestion phase after a non a non-uporic top. If you look at at that and say all right well let's just compare this bare market to that bare market it kind of looks similar. But even in that case what happened is you had a rally and then you had a recession induced by the pandemic. Perhaps we have a recession just induced by something else. Maybe it's induced by, you know, uh, something that maybe it's induced by the fact that inflation is going higher because oil prices are spiking and the Fed can't cut as aggressively as they need to because >> it's nukes. Maybe it's nukes. >> I mean, I don't The thing is what's crazy to me is the fact that people like that's where we are, you know, like I I I I hate that that's where it it has become, but just the fact that that's the rhetoric now is is a little scary. >> Yeah. beyond a little scary. So interesting something that you said before like 30 to 50,000 would be in line with previous bare markets. It would give us a very convincing bottom that sort of implies that we get one of those like just absolutely horrid you know 80 85 75 whatever it is 90% you know depending on where we land in there retracements from the top. Now, those made a lot more sense in previous markets to me where we had that euphoric top or a higher upside to the bull market. It doesn't seem like it would be as likely since we didn't get the euphoric top that you talked talked about. And interestingly, you know, if you kind of draw lines on the chart, each bare market sort of ended at the previous bull market high, give or take, right? I mean, FTX we went to 1517. We can call that previous high 1920. And here we kind of, you know, dipped down just below it was 69. We got down to 59. So from that perspective, it kind of does look like you could be bottoming. >> I I'll provide a couple of counterpoints. Um to go to 50K or 40K would not be a 90 or 80% drop, right? Like so from the high about the 30ish kind of number, you know, if it ultimately lands there to range from 30 to 50. Still not that far. I get it. >> Even 30 is only a 75% drop. Yeah. >> Um, and what's crazy is like every bare market has been not as bad. So like the first one was 94, the second was 87. Uh, the third one was 84 and then the the one in 2022 was about 77. So you could drop, you know, in this range. I've often said about 70% makes a lot of sense. >> Um, and it still be not as bad as the prior bare markets, right? In fact, the the drop after the 2019 top, which is what I've made the comparison to many times, is and and by the way, one of the reasons I make that comparison is just looking at like the uh the business cycles, right? There's this business cycle chart we can look at and kind of see that maybe what we're going through now is just more of like a a larger version of what we saw happen in 2019. Back then, we had a non-uporic top in 2019. And even if you include the pandemic, even if you include the recession, it was a 70% drop, right? So, it's not like Bitcoin can't drop 70% off of a non-uporic top. It could. I think a 50% drop makes a lot of sense. Like, that's what it dropped before the pandemic, which is exactly what it's dropped now, right? About 52 53%. So, that makes um a lot of sense. I think in order to go lower later this year, I don't know. I don't know what the narrative will be, but my guess is whatever it ends up being, you know, it's going to be something that a lot of us aren't even necessarily thinking of at the at the current time. Cuz usually it it's not the thing that everyone's worried about that ends up being the issue. Like think about 2022. I don't I mean I think there were a few people uh that were calling FTX out, but that wasn't the prevailing narrative, right? Like FTX was not the prevailing bear case back then. And it it was because it came out of left field that then kind of spooked people. So I don't know what the narrative will be, but I I have a feeling there will be uh there there will be something. And by the way, remember 60K is an important level because even in in the 2018 bare market, um we held 6K for a long time. And by the way, 6K is also where we held in the 2019 bare market until we ended up breaking below it. So, my guess is that we will likely break below 60K later this year, but it could be it could be relatively short-lived, right? Like it could happen and then maybe we get right back above it. And and one of the ways it normally works out is there's a there's a drop kind of in the early part of the late part of the post having year, early part of the midterm year, and then volatility kind of dries up for a while, and then once we get into Q4, that's when volatility picks back up again. So you could see something like that where um a couple of different paths like I don't know exactly which way this is going to go but a couple paths maybe it goes up a little bit more stalls out and then drops kind of like later into the year or it could it could go down go back up and then it could you know there's a lot of ways it could get there but I I I think it probably will get there. I I will say this it is I think it's very unlikely that Bitcoin puts in a new all-time high this year. I think Bitcoin could put a new all-time high in the next cycle. But I think even if the low is in, if 60k is the low, I don't think we're going to be going above 126 until sometime in in the next market cycle, which would be sometime, you know, 2027, 2028, 2020, 2029. >> It's interesting you said earlier, well, you know, you've been here for a midterm year with Bitcoin before, and I think it's interesting that you highlight the midterm year, which I think is very valid. And that kind of dismisses all the maybe uh idiosyncratic things this time like the war in Iran and Donald Trump rhetoric and all the other things that are happening in this cycle that might be different from before. Can we really still I mean in your mind distill it down to >> pretty much just the cycle. This is what happens in midterm years. Every one of those midterm years there's something insane that becomes you know kind of noise in the future. You look back and >> don't think about it. I feel like the the intellectual side of everyone wants it to be more complicated, you know, because it doesn't seem like it should be that easy. But if you think about it, even in 2022, we had the in sort of the same time period, we had the Russia Ukraine conflict kicking off where Bitcoin sort of trended up for a couple of months and then eventually broke down into into the summer. Um the other reason I mean you're absolutely right in a lot of ways this cycle was completely different than other cycles and one of the ways we can see that is if you look at um social interest right like if you look at at the social metrics uh you can see that basically um social interest has been trending down since 2021 right like people retail has been leaving the crypto space not sort of coming to it and this metric's created by we we added to it. It used to just be, you know, Twitter follower or ex followers on for crypto accounts on YouTube. Now, it also includes things like Coinbase app ranking uh and Google trends for Bitcoin. And by the way, I mean, it's just been generally, uh, decreasing since, you know, since 2021. And so, when you look at this, when you color code Bitcoin's price um, with the social interest, you can see that we kind of topped on apathy, not euphoria. So in a lot of ways it's the it's it's different from prior market cycle tops. There was also no rotation from Bitcoin to altcoins after Bitcoin topped. And this is more symbolic of what happened in 2019 where altcoins topped then Bitcoin topped and then you kind of rolled down the risk curve where then stocks and then gold ended up topping as well. But there was no rotation like once the higher risk things topped there was not a rotation or sorry once the lower risk things topped there was not a rotation to higher risk things. But again, like if you look at the ROI of Bitcoin uh from the low, you know, I know we want to make it seem more complicated, but this cycle topped on day 1,62 as measured from the bottom. And the cycle before that topped on day 1,59 and the cycle before that topped on day 168. So despite all the differences that we can that both of both of us can point to, it still topped when it always does. And you know, and then if you extend the cycle out to see the next bare market low, like right there, you can see Bitcoin topped every cycle when it always does. It entered into a bare market just as always has. And if you if you look at the year-to- date ROI, if you exclude the draw down from late last year and just look at the year-to- date ROI of Bitcoin in 2026, and if you compare it to the average of prior midterm years and throw on a standard deviation to that average, we're still generally tracking the average of prior midterm years. Despite all the narratives, despite, you know, the conflict going on in Iran, despite oil spiking, it's still playing out more or less just like it always has. Your data conflicts with my emotions, sir. >> I mean, look, if look, if Bitcoin is still trading at 60K and above it in like six months, then I probably would be willing to concede that the low is in. Um, but I I think there's this kind of this time based capitulation that we have to go through. And by the way, the low for Bitcoin could be in. That doesn't mean the low for like stocks are necessarily in. Like you could still have stocks do well, >> right? I mean, you could, right? I mean the until I guess the war we've been largely we get all the correlation to the downside but none of the correlation to the upside sadly right moving down when everything moves down but it never moves up and >> the same thing >> the same thing happened in 2019 and you know what changed it was it was the crisis it was the pandemic the crisis reset the business cycle and so when you reset the business cycle the the riskier stuff starts to do better like if you look at the the the business cycle chart like you can see that this reset at in early 2020. And if you look at Bitcoin and what it was doing against the stock market, like look at Bitcoin USD divided by the stock market divided by the S&P. And what you'll see here is that it Bitcoin was dropping against stocks from June of 2019 and then it bottomed out in March when the business cycle came to an end because of the because of the crisis. You can also look at the liquidity risk and this is made up of things like policy rates, yields, dollar strength, central bank liquidity and funding stress proxies. And this would also suggest more of a late business cycle environment. And we also saw something similar in 2019 where altcoins bled to Bitcoin, Bitcoin bled to stocks, and then stocks bled to gold. And we're we're basically just seeing the same thing uh happen once again. And and the same thing happened in uh 2006, 2007 going into 2008. And it was after the crisis that all the higher risk stuff started to do better. But before the crisis, people didn't want to buy the higher stuff because they were, you know, they they they could see the the the their the macro uncertainties that were developing. They could see the unemployment rate kind of rising and all that stuff. But until the crisis happened, the status quo remained remained unchanged. >> What blows my mind here is that we obviously had the events of 1010, the 19.2 billion liquidated in a single day and you know, everything falling off a cliff. some altcoins seemingly literally going to zero even though that wasn't tradable, >> right? >> And that aligned almost perfectly here within a few days to that, you know, 1,000 the exact number. I don't remember that you said days of how long cycle would normally be. And listen, in the past, we had, you know, like I think the Bitcoin futures ETFs launched literally the day of the previous top. You know, we've had these things before. >> Yeah. If you look at alt Bitcoin pairs, like when all Bitcoin pairs came to the range like down here to the lows in 2019 after Bitcoin topped, a lot of people would like look at this chart and be like, "Oh, this means alt season has to happen because they've completely bled out." But after altcoins went down to the lows, they then went sideways for a very long time against Bitcoin. And the reason they went sideways was because Bitcoin then entered into a bare market, right? So the the what happened on on 1010 I know a lot of people say it was like you know it was this crazy event but the weakness in altcoins was always there like altcoins have been bleeding to bitcoin for like four or five years before that event happened just like they had been bleeding to bitcoin for many many years before we had the big capitulations we had in 2019 with altcoins basically completely roundtpping all of their you know tight monetary policy bull market gains. So, I think that, you know, we're kind of in a similar zone now with higher risk assets as we were back over there. And the only way in my opinion to to sort of get back to the times that people want is to just go through this timebased capitulation where, you know, people just kind of give up. And unfortunately, I don't like it. I mean, it would be way better for my own channel and everything if if the bull market could come back and I would have a reason to be bullish on this stuff. Um, but by the way, I mean, just because Bitcoin and crypto have been in a bare market, that doesn't mean you can't make money, right? I mean, energy stocks, manufacturing stocks, they've been doing incredibly well. And metals were doing pretty well earlier this year. So, I think, you know, people can still make money in in bare markets for crypto. You just have to be willing to branch out a little bit. >> Yeah. They have to go to hyper liquid and yolo into 100x per on oil prices. >> Yeah. >> I mean, I guess that's that's was one potential option. The other option is Yeah, >> if you look every year, every midterm year, Bitcoin always bleeds to gold. It always bleeds to the stock market and it always bleeds to energy stocks. If you look at yearly candles of of bit, like if you look at Bitcoin USD divided by say XLE, uh you know, and just look at yearly candles, you can see that every every midterm year, Bitcoin bleeds to energy, right? Like in um 2014, Bitcoin dropped 51% against energy stocks. in 2018 down 66% 2022 down 77% so far this year down 36%. So midterm years uh if we just accept that they are generally bare markets for crypto it doesn't mean you have to sit around and twiddle your thumbs and complain about it for a year you can just go make money somewhere else. >> Yeah. I heard you talking about altcoins and showing that they bottomed and kind of went sideways and all I could think about was Lloyd Christmas and Dumb and Dumber saying so you're saying there's a chance, >> right? Yeah. Just because they've just because they've kind of like sort of found at least a local low against Bitcoin doesn't mean they're going up on their USD pairs because they bottomed against Bitcoin locally at around the same time that Bitcoin then entered into a bare market. And if you think about it logically and I think altcoins are still going to keep bleeding to Bitcoin actually um in the short term. If you think about it, it makes sense because altcoins already got annihilated in the bull market. Like think about how many altcoins are at their 2022 lows rather than close to their 2025 high or their 2021 highs. So, and by the way, if you think about this too, if you look at the Russell 2000 against say the NASDAQ, the only time in history where the Russell was like durably outperforming the NASDAQ started in the uh um in the dot era. like when the dot bubble popped that's >> really had to die for them to lose to the Russell. Right. >> Right. Basically what h and so if you think about it it makes sense because in the bull market all the blue chips did really really well back then. Right. You had the the the tech boom you had Cisco. You had a lot of different tech stocks that were doing really well. The the micro caps they got annihilated in the bull market because no one wanted to buy them because they were just they wanted to chase the gains in the blue chips. But then once the blue chips entered into a bare market, the the micro caps had already gotten annihilated. They were already down 90%. So with the blue chips falling, it allowed the Russell to go up against the NASDAQ, but the Russell didn't go anywhere on its USD valuation, right? Like it it still, you know, like during this when the.com bubble popped, the Russell still went down. It's just that they had like if you look at the Russell's performance before do they had just gone sideways for years like they hadn't done anything. So that so that's kind of the thing that I would tell people like be careful what you wish for because if we ever truly get to a point where altcoins are starting to durably outperform Bitcoin and we're not in a bull market. You might you might go into a period where altcoins are outperforming Bitcoin, but it could be for all the wrong reasons. It could just be because Bitcoin was then now in a bare market and your altcoin was still going down. It just wasn't going down as quickly as Bitcoin. We haven't entered into that period yet because altcoins are still bleeding to Bitcoin. But it is something that could happen at some point. >> It's coming, man. >> We all coin number 473 on Coin Market Cap is going to overperform for at least a week somewhere in there. >> Yeah. I mean, I think the important thing for people to realize with crypto is that like the main asset that deserves attention is Bitcoin. Yep. And that doesn't mean you can't play around with other stuff, but they're not like Bitcoin can be construed as a good long-term investment, especially depending on what your time horizon is. But the altcoin market, in my opinion, cannot be like I you can make good short-term trades where maybe you hold like an altcoin for a year or two, but it's more of a casino than anything else. And one of the best examples for the majority of the altcoin market being a casino is think about how a lot of uh exchanges pivoted to prediction markets after altcoin interest died up. So that's kind of evidence right there that it's essentially a a a casino. But there's also not really a great point in trying to convince people not to trade the casino. It's like you're if if I went to Las Vegas and sit outside of a of a casino and tell people not to go in, is anyone going to listen to me? No. They're there to they're there to gamble. So now crypto is like downtown some 300year-old beatd down ratty casino and you've got you know like the the encore and the wind down the road which is prediction markets and just head down there to a much nicer casino. It makes sense. I told you this in our past conversation. I'd written a whole article on how prediction markets were going to eat all coins lunch >> right and >> it's happened. It's sad, but uh I just Yeah. So I even if we get alt season per se, right, it's not gonna look like the ones of the past most likely. >> Yeah. And I I don't think you would have a period like this year where um you have a durable out performance. Like I'm not saying it can't happen in like a future cycle. Uh but here's the thing. If you do have an alt season in a future cycle, >> it could be of altcoins that don't even exist now because a lot of the ones that exist now will just completely they'll just dry up and and no one will care about them anymore. There'll be way too many bag holders for them to ever, you know, have that same type of and and people will sort of just attach themselves to a a new narrative, whatever that whatever that narrative may be. And then those altcoins will then will then benefit from that from that narrative. But I mean, I think right now, you know, the market is just kind of punishing us for not focusing on the right things because look, you could argue that, yeah, monetary policy was restrictive and the macro wasn't favorable, but guess what? That didn't stop AI stocks from doing incredibly well. And so perhaps this is a more of an intro spec type thing where in the crypto industry, you have to look inside and be like, you know, why why did the industry focus more on meme coins this past cycle? Why were we so focused on ETFs and um and a strategic reserve? Like we should be I'm not saying that stuff is not like I'm not saying that like ETFs are bad like longterm it it allows money to come into the space. But that's the thing is as an industry it felt like the entire cycle we were just trying to get figure out ways for more money to come into the space rather than figuring out ways to improve the space. And I think that that that's only a short-term solution. It doesn't fix the long-term problems that we have. Well, maybe we're learning a lesson because we have seen regardless of prices going up or down certainly much stronger narratives around utility now that is cope. But I do think that >> generally as Wall Street investors and institutions come in, they're going to actually care what these things do and they're not going to buy Trump token, >> right? We we I think we've definitely sort of entered into a period where people value they sort of put more faith in sort of value things that they can see like what is what actually value does this provide. There's only so long an industry can exist on just future speculation, right? Before you actually have to develop something that people use. And unfortunately, other than for like some niche use cases, there's not a solution that exists where like your average person on the street would find themselves needing to use crypto, right? And one of the best use cases for crypto is stable coins, but that doesn't help the price of people's altcoins go up. There's such a strong irony in that that you know Bitcoin was created as a hedge against fiat and monetary policy and the killer use case of the technology has been digital fiat, right? And and the other side to kind of address what you said before about people not being able to use it. Nothing superior there. Another irony is that maybe the institutions use it as their plumbing and it actually is better and faster and cheaper, but that's completely uninvestable by us as retail because it's just plumbing for JP Morgan. >> Yeah. I mean, look, I do still long-term believe in the bull case for Bitcoin. Like, absolutely. I just think we're in a I think it's a bare market. Is there a chance the low is in? Yeah, I'd put it at like maybe 25% chance. Um, but later this year I'll probably, you know, I probably would we'd be willing to turn more bullish, especially going into into the next year. Um, but we'll see. You know, we'll see how things shape up between now and then. >> Okay. So, before I let you go, for markets in general, I know we only got two or three minutes. Like, do you have anything that you are excited to trade that you're extremely bullish on in this environment? >> I mean, the the main things I've been trading are are some of the stocks like Exxon. I, you know, I was pretty I I was pretty sure that we were going to have this spike in oil. Uh, not because I was able to predict the geopolitical conflict. Like I have no clue about what's going to go on over there, but it was more so just looking at all the prior late business cycle environments and seeing that every business cycle previously over the last like three or four decades, they always ended after the price of oil would spike in the late business cycle environment. And so I was like, "All right, well, if if the way the business cycle ends is for oil to spike, then before oil spikes, there will likely be some stocks that do really well in anticipation of that happening." So I started to seek out stocks that would benefit from the price of oil going up, and Exxon was the one I chose. You could also get XLE. Um, and then I was also looking at the manufacturing sector. A lot of people were looking at like the ISM as a reason to be bullish on all coins. I'm like, "No, why don't you use the ISM as a reason to be bullish on the manufacturing sector?" And so, one of the one of I know that's crazy. Uh, but one of the one of the stocks that I I bought um I probably about five or six months ago was Dow, not like not the Dow Jones, but the company Dow and that one is up a like 100% this like basically 2x in just the last four to five months. And it also it had swept the pandemic low. So that's what I think another thing to look at if you look at a lot of the the companies that actually make stuff and provide provide stuff to society rather than just like speculation about future stuff when they sweep the pandemic low that tends to be a really good uh entry. We saw it with DAO. We saw it with um I think even Target like when it swept the low it it got a nice rally. So that's something to to be that's what I'm looking for right now is is that and then also um uh international indices. I think there's a lot of opportunity there like in Latin America um and uh and South America. And then the the last one I would say would be um I think there's going to be continue there will continue to be a lot of opportunities in in metals as well. I I think silver has topped out for the year and and gold probably, you know, I think a lot of these things have topped out for a while. Uh but I could see them kind of surging back especially in like a couple years as I do think uncertainty will likely increase unfortunately over the next couple of years. >> Totally agree, Ben. Thank you so much as always for your time. Appreciate your insight and uh the fact that you've just been so right. >> Thanks for having me. I'm sure I'll be right. I get things wrong all the time, but I am strong opinions loosely held. >> I love it. Thank you, Ben. Thanks.