The Bitcoin market is dead quiet.

No price movement.

Cyclically low trade volumes.

Sentiment in the absolute gutter.

Absolutely nothing is happening, and the market is in a state of total and complete apathy.

These are the conditions we historically see as we approach the pointy end of a bear market, where hopelessness peaks, and the maximum number of people start to truly believe the asset is never coming back.

Today’s post will be an assessment of the current market setup, and how I am thinking about what I suspect will end up being the last major chapter of this bear.

Upgrade below to get today’s Video Update (32 mins), Written Article and TL;DR Summary.

Read more

I wake up to see this ugly-ass looking chart of an asset which is supposed to trade at $100, on low volatility.

Strategy’s preferred stock Stretch (STRC) has taken a nose-dive, which rightfully has many questioning whether this is the market sending a more damning signal.

Today’s post will specifically focus on my thoughts around Strategy (MSTR), and this break-down in their preferred stock prices.

I will also share what impacts this has on my current and future allocations to Strategy related assets, as I have made a few decisions in recent weeks, which this event only works towards cementing.

Read more

Very rarely does the absolute value of a metric matter as much as its rate of change.

Both the financial media, and the twitterazzi love quoting some magic metric that has hit some special new level that explains everything that happened that day. In my experience, what actually matters is how quickly it got there, and whether it is in the process of speeding up, or slowing down.

Late stage bear markets feel like they just drag on…and on…and on….

The monthly chart is red, the weekly chart is red, and the daily chart is red.

However, every day that the gears on this pain-factory grind forwards, the capitulation process works its way through more and more of the folks that only destiny knows will ultimately sell the cycle bottom in disgust.

What remains at the end of this gruelling process, is a hardened holder-base of tenured HODLers, who know exactly what they own, and why they own it.lllllll

The headlines continue to say that Bitcoin is in a deep bear market, with many pundits expecting it has much further to go. The absolute values which measure this bear market, are certainly quite bearish.

What really matters, is the rate of change, and to my eye it is starting to tell a different story.

Become a Premium subscriber to access today’s Video Update (49 mins) and TL;DR Summary.

Read more

Today we have a double header for you, with two analysis videos covering both the Bitcoin onchain and macro landscape.

1. Bitcoin onchain update with James, where we explore the record share of Bitcoin supply now held by Long-Term Holders, visualise how the supply structure has changed since the February capitulation event, and assess whether the recent sell-off has the hallmarks of a classic time-pain capitulation event.

2. Macro update with Nik Bhatia & James. In this discussion, we cover both the acceleration in AI CAPEX wave, why strength in the US Dollar is a warning shot for risk assets, and why Nik thinks of Scott Bessent as the ‘Secretary of Volatility’.

We’re in the phase of the bear market where the maximum number people drop off, driven away by severe boredom, frustration, and a lack of the requisite patience.

Markets that reach this apathetic stage tend to also be near their point of maximum opportunity, but only those with the grit to see the end of the movie are around to enjoy it.

Become a Premium subscriber to access both of today’s Video Sessions and the TL;DR Summary.

Read more

It’s a grueling process, surviving a bear market.

It’s especially hard when AI tech stocks are ripping higher, and are sucking all the capital oxygen out of the room. The parabolas envy is real, and has been a major theme in markets over the last 12 to 18-months.

As discussed in Peak Apathy, we’re at the stage of this bear market where nobody…absolutely nobody cares about Bitcoin.

At the same time, we’re starting to see some very interesting divergences in how investors are behaving. Many of these divergences were last seen around the ass-end of the prior bear cycle.

Time-pain has the effect of flushing out all the folks who don’t have the conviction to see the end of the movie.

Today’s note will be an analysis of these divergences, and my updated expectations for both the short, and medium term prospects for the orange coin.

Become a Premium subscriber to access today’s Video Update (39 mins), Written Article and TL;DR Summary.

Read more

Resilience is about how quickly you can rebound from a shock event, and begin thinking and processing your next decisions clearly.

There is a huge swathe of the Bitcoin holder base, who are currently in a state of shock, fear, panic, and totally unable to collect their thoughts.

We have all been there, and the lesson we usually learn is that when we make decisions based on our emotions, it almost always leads to our biggest mistakes.

One of my subscribers asked me a question last weekend, which I believe is the perfect one to answer for today’s post. To paraphrase the question:

I know buying Bitcoin via a dollar-cost-average (DCA) campaign helps with the emotions of investing. However, it is very hard to know how long that DCA campaign should run for.

In the context of a Bitcoin holder with a pile of cash, should I seek to lump sum near the bottom, or is there an ideal DCA strategy that I could employ, and for how long?

This is the perfect topic to address for breaking us out of the shockwave of the sell-off, and put some numbers and context to the execution step.

Today’s note will compare how the lump sum vs DCA strategy has performed through previous Bitcoin bear markets, with a focus on putting the probabilities in our favour.

Read more

I’d like to welcome you all to today’s ceremony, where we will be celebrating the wonderful life that Bitcoin has lived, and the joy it brought to our lives.

We will miss it, but we will never forget it.

It is time for the first eulogy, please be seated.

Today’s post will be my analysis of this sell-off, how investors are responding to it, and what the probabilities say about prices trading at $66k.

Read more

Strategy just announced that the firm sold 32 Bitcoin for $2.5 Million, making for only the second time their Bitcoin balance has nominally declined (the other was a sale of 704 BTC in Dec-2022).

Saylor sold Bitcoin, and is sending a message in doing so.

In today’s note, I will discuss my views on this event, and what I believe it means for the company moving forwards.

I will also expand on a risk I highlighted in my last appearance on the What Bitcoin Did podcast, where I noted that there is in fact a Bitcoin price where the mathematical value of MSTR stock goes to $0.

Given the tremendous 843,706 hoard of Bitcoin Strategy owns, it is prudent to understand and appreciate the risks that come with it.

Become a Premium subscriber to access today’s Video Update (40 mins), Written Article and TL;DR Summary.

Read more

It is so easy to get swept up in the emotions of each and every daily price candle.

Every bear market headline feels like impending doom.

We’re going so much lower, they say.

The latest green candle brings back just enough hope to make it feel like a recovery is on the table…with the next red candle dashing it, and making the bear feel like it will grind on forever.

Today’s post is all about the tools I use to get rid of these emotions, kick them out the door.

Instead, I focus on putting the accumulation odds in my favour, and ignore the rabble of price predictooors, because they don’t have a crystal ball either.

Become a Premium subscriber to access today’s Video Update (35 mins), Written Article and TL;DR Summary.

Read more

We had a great call today, covering key slides from our latest Bitcoin Monthly Report. Big thanks to all the attendees and those who raised their hands to participate in the session, we highly value your input!

Read more

Bitcoin bear markets tend to end on apathy, often with a painful last flush-out that I call the ‘time-pain capitulation’.

Whilst downside momentum tends to crescendo with the price-pain capitulation event, many more are shaken out by the endless barrage of bad headlines, and endlessly leaky prices. The frustration, boredom, and unwind of all remaining long-bias takes it’s toll…and it takes time to do so.

This month’s Orange report is titled The Time-Pain Capitulation, and is an exploration of the market setup through this period, and some of the key drivers (and perhaps future headlines) that may motivate it.

This report covers four main topics:

• My assessment of the market setup related to the time-pain chapter.

• Onchain, volume and sentiment analysis describing investor apathy.

• A deep dive into ETF outflows and their relation to derivatives markets.

• Risk vectors pertaining to Strategy, MSTR, preferred stocks, and debt.

Orange Members will find the report PDF, and details of our upcoming monthly conference call below.

Note: This monthly report & upcoming conference call is exclusive to Checkonchain Orange subscribers - which is our upper-tier plan within Substack.

If you would like to learn more about Orange, or access a single monthly report + conference call recording, please click the button below.

Learn More About Orange Plan

Read more

After publishing Peak Apathy yesterday, we just had to get onto the podcast to discuss the absolutely dire state we see across Bitcoin sentiment metrics right now.

Bitcoiners are currently frustrated, annoyed, and disappointed with Mr Market, and Michael has done a tremendous amount of work to visualise just how bad it is.

For the HODLers out there, bad and boring sentiment is not what you tend to see at bull market tops…

The topics Michael and I cover in this conversation:

• Michael’s process of filtering social media sentiment data.

• The design of cohorts and visualisations of the data.

• How investor sentiment comes through in their language.

• Differences between retail sentiment, and that of large Bitcoin personas like Michael Saylor.

• The way thematic narratives permeate the discourse over time.

• Why Chess is a great analogy to understand Bitcoin.

• Michael’s journey writing his book Blood of the Bourgeoisie

Premium Members will find the full 1hr video podcast below. Consider upgrading to premium today to unlock the the content!

Read more

Today I have a very special treat for readers (and for myself as well).

I have been following the recent work by who has been analysing the mood swings that Bitcoiners are experiencing based on the content and tone of social media posts.

The parallels to the behaviour patterns we see on-chain are striking.

The Bitcoin market is currently in a trough of absolute, and extreme apathy, with people giving up on it in droves.

This is exactly the kind of gutter-grade sentiment I see as a signal we’re within the period of maximum opportunity of this bear market.

I have often said that I love watching the prevailing narratives on Twitter NOT playing out in the underlying market data. In this instance, we can see how sentiment swings with every red and green candle, whilst the underlying market mechanics move in the opposite direction.

This article will leverage the sentiment work Michael has done, and I will then demonstrate how these mood swings compare to what’s actually happening under the market hood.

A huge thanks to Michael for providing a set of charts, and his interpretation of them, which I have then built my analysis ontop of.

Become a Premium subscriber to access today’s Video Update (35 mins), Written Article and TL;DR Summary.

Read more

This morning I had the great pleasure of recording our third conversation with from , and this one was a real eye-opener for me.

We didn’t open a single chart, and dived straight into the action, discussing AI, and largest CAPEX boom the world has ever seen that supports it.

This builds on my most recent write up on The Biggest, Baddest Bear Market, and Nik delivers a tremendous amount of insight into the potential impact this CAPEX cycle is having on soverign debt, and FX markets.

There are a tonne of narratives out there trying to explain why the stock market being at all-time-high is an error in market judgement.

What if…the price is right?

Become a Premium subscriber to access today’s Video Update (59 mins).

Read more

The 2020’s decade often feels like a rolling series of crisis headlines, many of which produce counter-intuitive impacts on markets.

Few could have anticipated gold to sell-off, equities to moon, and oil to still be lower than the 2022 peak given the magnitude of the prevailing energy crisis and conflict.

In particular, the 2022 rate hiking cycle, and the subsequent bear market was a major inflection point for both the geopolitical landscape, and financial markets.

Coming off the back of unprecedented and egregious levels of stimulus and fiscal spending in 2020-21, headline inflation exploded higher, unleashing a genie that had been more or less contained for the preceding decade. Almost every asset took a nasty hit lower in 2022, and many sectors of the real economy have struggled to recover ever since.

The more I reflect on that 2022 period, and what has transpired since, the clearer it becomes that it was a historic inflection point across the biggest, baddest, and most important market sectors out there.

It has been a long while since I have compiled a piece focused on the macro landscape, and today I try to weave a bunch of ideas together.

I discuss gold, energy, commodities, bonds, and how Bitcoin ties into it all. My goal is to try and setup a more cohesive framework for what looks to be a very volatile period ahead.

Become a Premium subscriber to access today’s Video Update (52 mins), Written Article and TL;DR Summary.

Read more

If you are fortunate enough to know an Australian Bitcoiner, and consider them a friend, I’d kindly ask you to sink a few tinnies in our honour, as we’ve all had a bit of a shit week.

The gubermint who runs the show in The Land Down Under just announced sweeping changes to the tax policy, pitched under the guise of giving young Australians a ‘fair go’, and making it easier for them to buy a home.

Ironically, and totally unsurprisingly, the proposed changes look set to make it considerably harder for young people to save for a house, ensuring much higher tax rates are applied anytime, and everytime you make a return on your capital.

To their credit, I can certainly make the case that these changes will go a long way towards the government’s intended result of making the system fairer for everyone…

…by making each and every Australian poorer through higher taxation, we will indeed become more equal…just in the wrong direction.

Today’s post is partially a cathartic exercise for myself, a eulogy for our collective future tax returns, and hopefully an interesting tale that non-Aussies can learn from.

I want to run the numbers, and demonstrate why this latest government rug-pull will only make the situation for young people saving for a home worse, and not better.

Disclaimer: This article is general in nature, and is for informational, and entertainment purposes only, and it shall not be relied upon for any investment or financial decisions.

TL;DR Summary

• Today’s post is a little different, but was something I had to get off my mind, as it was blocking my analytical process. This is a study demonstrating why the new tax policy proposed by the Australian Labor party, hinders, not helps young Australians who want to buy a home.

• By abolishing the 50% capital gains tax discount on shares, ETFs and Bitcoin, and replacing with CPI indexation of the cost basis, they effectively kick out the rungs of the asset-ladder which must be climbed just to get onto the first rung of the housing ladder.

• The higher the growth of the asset someone buys, the more this new system trends towards a doubling of their effective capital gains tax. It adds several years to the savings sentence for a house deposit, and extracts multiple years of expensive school fees from our children.

• The indexation method only benefits investors who buy poor performing assets which don‘t grow at all…like government bonds. In that small sliver of poor performing assets, yes, the new indexation method is better.

• For anyone on the lower to middle end on the income spectrum, the new tax policy has outsized impacts on your balance sheet. It doesn’t tax the rich, nor does it help young Australians, it literally targets them, and keeps them lower on the socioeconomic scale.

• All is not lost however, and the more political backlash we generate, the more likely some portion of these changes will be in retreat. The Australian Bitcoin Industry Body even has a tool to send emails to your policymakers.

I prepared this piece because it feels like the right thing to do, both personally, professionally, and as a proud Australian. I’m young, I’m an Aussie, and I have an infant son and family in hand.

This budget is a disaster for our finances, and even more so for future generations who receive no benefit from the existing 50% CGT discount.

It’s a scam, it’s a betrayal, and its 100% un-fucking-Australian.

Watch The Video Version

Why You Should Care

We live in an age where sovereign nations are bankrupt, and political polarisation is trending higher, not lower.

We also live in an age where the average attention span is shorter than a TikTok video, and far too many people believe the headlines they read, and can’t, won’t or don’t know how to parse reality from the propaganda.

One reason I am writing this piece, is because it has been bugging me all week, and it was becoming a blocker for my analysis process.

The other reason is because Australia is not the first, nor the last place that taxes will be raised in such an environment. As many Bitcoiners know, governments tend to levy taxes in sly and roundabout ways, with inflation being one of their preferred mechanisms as it is difficult for the average person to reason about.

If I was to give the Australian government one piece of deserved credit, at least they had the balls to levy a straight up tax hike, and break more than a few election promises to do so (even if they dressed it in a ‘woe is thee’ narrative).

They hid it amongst a bunch of fluff about housing affordability, but at least they’re running the political gauntlet.

That’s where my praises for them end.

I’ve spent countless hours thinking about this Fourth Turning decade. I have pondered what higher inflation would feel like, considered deeply how I will try and protect myself financially, and puzzled over what it means for the wider world moving forward.

It’s one thing to think about, and another when you get punched in the face by it.

For non-Australians, I certainly hope this saga offers you a light into what could be in the pipe for many of us in the years ahead. Higher taxes, whether directly, or indirectly via inflation are going to be a very regular character throughout this chapter of world history.

OK, So What’s The Problem?

The Government!

No Check…What’s The Tax Problem?

Right, sorry…

The short story is that Australians currently get a 50% tax discount on any capital gains which are held for at least one year. If I was to buy 1 BTC for $50k AUD in 2024, and sell it today for $110k, I would have made a nominal gain of $60k.

Since I held it for more than one year, the taxable portion of that is halved to $30k, which is added to my overall annual income, and taxed at my marginal tax rate.

This system creates incentives for people to save in assets, hold them for longer periods of time (which lowers our time preference), build wealth slowly and steadily, and also provides capital to support the growth of businesses and the economy.

The latest budget handed down by the Labor party on Tuesday night proposes to eliminate this 50% capital gains discount in favour of two components:

• Investors can raise their cost basis by the inflation rate each year such that they are only taxed on the real gains.

• Imposed a minimum capital gains tax rate of 30% to catch folks who may have small incomes, but live off selling down their asset portfolio.

They are also implementing a partial grandfathering system, where your gains up until 1-July-2027 receive the 50% CGT discount, but all gains after that are via the indexation method.

For my analysis, I will consider these three tax setups; the current 50% CGT discount as the baseline, a transitional system that kicks in July 2027, and the full indexation method which will affect any assets bought from now on.

Now, what is most sinister about all of this, is throughout all of the media coverage of these tax changes, the narrative focus was primarily on housing. The stated intention is to make property more affordable for young Aussies.

None of the media coverage I saw made any effort whatsoever to explain that this was sneakily being applied to ALL assets, including shares, ETFs, and Bitcoin.

I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say that this Labor government ran specifically on NOT changing the capital gains and tax treatment for property and assets.

Them breaking that promise barely a year after the election told me that their surveys now show Millenials and Gen Z to be their primary voter base, and outweigh asset rich older generations. They have then decided to use the cover of housing affordability to sneak in a tax hike across the board.

Why Bitcoiners Are Hit Hardest

There are many problems with this cost basis indexation method, but the big ticket ones as I see them are as follows:

• Your unrealised gains on 1-July-2027 are locked in at the 50% CGT discount. If Bitcoin has a bad month leading into that date, it can significantly increase our tax rate on the road ahead.

  • As a call to action, please help us Aussies out by buying as much Bitcoin as humanly possible over the next 12 months to moon the price.

• Given Bitcoin is a high growth asset, the 3% inflation rate they measure via CPI is insignificant relative to the price gains. The same logic is true for any high growth asset. As a result, the new tax system disincentivises investing in innovation and growth, and favours investing in poor performing assets that don’t grow at all (like government bonds).

• They can raise taxes by underestimating CPI. We all know CPI statistics are nonsense, and massaged lower. The nominal gains of your asset are unlikely to be indexed against the actual cost-of-living inflation rate, but some number cooked up by a bureaucrat trying to obfuscate their other hidden tax of currency debasement.

The chart below pretends my first ever Bitcoin buy, which was at the 2017 top, occurred today. I buy 1 BTC at $20k and HODL through all the price history that followed. Assume I have a $100k salary (~20% above national average of $82k). The traces show my net cash in hand, after-tax proceeds from selling the Bitcoin ~8yrs later under the three tax systems:

• ⚫ Spot Value: $79.3k.

• 🔵 Current 50% CGT System: $69.6k (12.2% taxed).

• 🔴 Partial Grandfathering: $61.7k (22.2% taxed).

• 🟠 Full Indexation System: $60.4k (23.8% taxed).

Bitcoin’s growth outstrips the 3% CPI indexation by so much, that your capital gains tax almost doubles under the new system (12.2% —> 23.8% tax).

Note: I will keep using these three tax systems consistently throughout this report, and consider the current 50% CGT (blue) as the baseline. Full indexation (yellow) is the new comparison given that is the system which will affect young Australians from here onwards.

The chart below is a sensitivity study demonstrating how the higher the growth of your asset, the less the CPI indexation method helps you.

Once an asset grows above 20% per year, the new tax system costs you between 87% to 100% more in net capital gains taxes upon sale.

I even watched a 3min clip from the ABC government propaganda arm. In it, they made the extraordinary claim that this might make safe, stable, low growth assets like infinitely printable government bonds more attractive!

I can’t think of anything which would make young Australians better off, than jamming their portfolios full of infinitely printable government debt paper…

Kicking Out The Rungs

When you really cut to the core of the problem, the average Australian property price is now over $1M AUD (~$700k USD), and in order to avoid hefty mortgage insurance, you will need a 20% deposit.

Few folks have a spare two hundred grand lying around, and that means you need to save capital in assets first in order to get a foot onto the housing ladder.

If you save in cash, and stick it in a high interest bank account, you might be lucky to get 4% to 5%. You also take the full brunt of both income tax and inflation. It will take the average young Aussie on a decent salary more than forty years to save just the deposit given historical house price growth rates.

Forty fucking years, to save for the deposit in cash.

The ONLY hope young people have is by saving in assets like shares, ETFs and Bitcoin, and that means you NEED to take risk, and are hopefully rewarded with an outsized return.

You need to climb the smaller ladder of an asset portfolio just to reach the first rung of the housing ladder.

My model below is for someone with a better than average Australian salary (mean is A$82k), who is investing $500/month, and chasing a housing market growing at CPI+1% (which is conservative).

If you’re lucky enough to buy a high growth asset which rips at a totally unsustainable 50% per year non stop…

• It still takes you almost a full decade of saving to get the deposit…

• …and the indexation method adds at least a year to your sentence because of how much the extra tax eats into your proceeds.

For the diligent saver, the new indexation system adds between one and five years to the saving timeline for a young Australian to reach their deposit.

If you lump sum $50k and allow that to appreciate in pursuit of a deposit, the problem is even worse, because capital growth does all of the lifting, not the regular $500 investment.

The new indexation method adds north of five of waiting time for an asset which is growing at 10%/yr, adds at least two years for 20%/yr, and still adds the best part of a year for high growth 50%/yr assets.

The government policy is pitched at improving housing affordability for young Australians.

What it actually does is taxes and kicks the rungs out of the preliminary asset ladder you MUST climb just to reach the first rung of the housing ladder.

Another tangible case, and one which really hits home for me, is saving money to send your kid to a good school.

Personally, I have allocated some of my BTC specifically for putting my little boy through the 6yrs of high school (secondary education). Fees routinely run at around $15k to $25k per year, and grow at 5% to 8% per year (in line with the actual debasement rate of the AUD).

I asked the question: if I bought 1 BTC today for $100k AUD specifically allocated for school fees, what price does it have to reach, such that I can sell a chunk each year and cover all six years?

The second question is, how much does the government’s new tax policy help hinder me in achieving this goal?

Bitcoin has to reach around $270k for me to do this for one child, which is well within reach and reason.

The governments new tax policy reduces my run-way by about 10-months of school fees, so the Bitcoin price will now have to reach $300k to cover it instead.

If I wanted to send two kids to a good school, I now need Bitcoin to 8x and reach $800k under the current 50% CGT discount scheme.

The new government tax policy strips away 2 full years of school fees (one per child) in tax relative to the current system, which I either have to fill the gap with more taxable income, or wait for BTC to reach $1 Million instead.

Thank. You. Very. Much.

Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner!

Young Australians are early in their careers, have low salaries, little savings, and are trying to enter a highly inflated housing AND asset market.

The new tax policy ensures that the ladder to get on the ladder is taxed at ~30% even if you’re earning what is a below median (A$74.7k) or mean (A$83.8k) salary.

You would otherwise see an effective capital gains tax rate below 12% under the current system.

For the folks who support this policy, because they want to ‘tax the rich’, just note that absolute tax applied under the new system (orange) on every dollar invested is considerably higher for lower income brackets, than for higher ones.

I can only assume the government has tried to target wealthy retirees, who are selling down portfolios rather than earning a salary income. What they are actually doing is ensuring the people who have the least savings are taxed at a considerably higher rate, and are thus forced to remain lower on the socioeconomic ladder.

The current 50% CGT discount compounds with the low marginal tax rate to help low income workers the most, delivering the lowest overall tax rate.

The new system successfully makes everyone poorer, and ensures the folks who are barely making ends meet…stay there.

I ran a sensitivity analysis based on the Australian tax brackets, relative to the appreciation rate of the asset purchased. The aim is to see which people and conditions benefit from the new capital gains tax under the indexation system.

The orange part of the heatmap is where the new system is strictly WORSE for an Australian investor.

The blue zones…if they existed…would show instances where we are better off.

To be very fair, if you buy government bonds which get rekt by inflation, you are actually better off under the new system. The scale of that benefit is just so low, it is indistinguishable from the zero line. That is primarily because you made no money on the asset, but perhaps that is the point of the policy.

Nobody actually wins under this new tax system except the government, lawyers, and accountants.

It Cannot Be Incompetence

There are usually two conclusions when it comes to bad government policies:

1. Incompetence.

2. Malice.

Whilst I know there is plenty of room for door number two, I generally give the benefit of the doubt, and ascribe a lot of it to door number one.

In this instance however, I cannot give them that pass.

It took me approximately 5-seconds of thought to intuitively realise something wasn’t right when I started hearing about this budget.

It took me 10-minutes of prompt engineering to get the bones of this analysis in place, and to satisfy myself that the numbers confirmed my suspicions.

It is impossible that the Labor government broke these widely publicised election promises, so blatantly, without being fully aware of what I have just written above.

They know housing affordability is great cover for disguised tax hikes.

They know young Australians are pissed at how expensive housing is.

They know the only hope they have is saving in assets.

They know taxing assets more heavily ensures less upwards mobility.

They’ve proposed these tax changes knowing full well it hits the poorer, harder.

They know this system makes everyone worse off, not better.

In this instance, I cannot give them a pass for being incompetent.

If they cannot get a staffer to spend 10-mins with a spreadsheet and an LLM to think through even this rudimentary analysis, then they have no place being in office.

If they can, and did, and know these results, then I’d argue we should be asking hard questions about who they work for, because they are certainly not working in our best interests.

Concluding Thoughts

I genuinely had to get this piece written and out of my mind. It’s currently 1am, and I am no night owl.

Whilst this event is nowhere near the size and scale of this comparison, I can only imagine what it feels like when an emerging market slashes their currency overnight. This tax change effectively robbed 20% to 30% of the value of every Australian investor’s future wealth, and changes the calculus on long-term goals significantly.

I am a young Australian, who is literally saving for a house, and school fees for my son. This budget has added years to my savings plans, and steals 20-30% of my savings wealth I have accumulated over a decade.

Thanks mate, what a true gift that is.

If you’re an Aussie reader, I have no doubt you probably feel just like I do, and it has been a pretty shit week to process.

It has been eye opening, and one of those events you can think about, and theorise about, but it just hits different when it actually comes to pass. It stings like betrayal, not because I trusted the politicians in the first place, but because a move like this one is just un-fucking-Australian.

So what on earth do we do?

• First things first, don’t panic, and certainly don’t do anything rash. There is still a long, and winding political road ahead before these changes become legislation.

• There will be backlash, and there will be re-negotiation, because it won’t take long for even the most devout ALP shills realise their kids’ futures are impacted.

• I am no tax accountant, but I do believe finding a good one will turn out to be an invaluable investment. A wise man once told me that whenever the politicians change the right side of the tax code, a whole world of unforeseen consequences (read: opportunities) opens up on the left side. Life always finds a way.

• I’m not one who usually cares about political action in any way shape or form. However there’s an army of Bitcoiners hard at work constructing tools to send emails to every politician with an inbox. In this instance, it might be worth spending 10-mins crafting an email to let them know you’re an unhappy camper.

  • One email is noise, but a thousand is a voter-base. Each email is indicative of 100 people who didn’t speak up, so the numbers can compound quickly.

  • Keep it concise, keep it human, tell a story that hits home, and try not to call them a dickhead too many times in the subject line (as true as it may be).

For readers who are not Australian, don’t assume they aren’t cooking up something similar in your neck of the woods. These scheming political thieves know how to hide a tax hike, and they always wrap it in something that pulls the heart-strings of the masses.

This article is my small way of pushing back, and I’ll tell you what, I feel just a little bit better now that I’ve got it out on paper.

Subject Line: Oi Dickhead…Read This Cobba!

Thanks for reading,

James

The truth is, nobody knows when THE ultimate bottom of a bear market is in, until many months down the road.

Investors and analysts are always looking over their shoulder, worried with PTSD that this rally is destined to fail, just like all the others which came before it.

Except at some stage, the rally will eventually stick the landing.

I have received a lot of messages in the last few weeks from folks who wish they had accumulated more aggressively below $70k, and are now wondering what to do. The higher we go, the more the pain of missing out can build.

Simultaneously, the higher we go, the more likely we are to hit a major resistance level, which motivates sellers to put in another high. This fires up the bears, and spooks the bulls who fear they have just bought another local top.

Given we cannot predict the future, my approach is to work backwards, and identify market thresholds where momentum and sentiment are likely to inflect higher.

Each of these thresholds we break and hold, adds more and more weight to the bull case, and puts the bears on the back-foot.

We’ve already taken the first line of defence at $78k, and Bitcoin is currently knocking on the door of the second, and most critical line in the sand for the bear case.

Today’s post will be my assessment of why this second line of defence is so important for the bears, and how likely it is that we take it.

Become a Premium subscriber to access today’s Video Update (35 mins) and TL;DR Summary.

Read more

My thesis about the four-year cycle is that it was unlikely to break in the bull market, but was considerably more likely to break in the bear that followed.

The way smart money investors behave is very different to speculators, and the majority of retail. Institutional allocators, and folks who have been around markets for many years, know what capitulation events look and feel like, and it changes their behaviour.

Smart money starts to take on risk when the market narrative feels the most dire.

• They have been the one panic selling at the lows numerous times in the past, and learned from their mistakes.

• They know what it feels like to be sidelined when an asset they wanted to own starts running away from them.

• They recognise that there’s no prize for buying the bottom wick, and the winning strategy is to stack the odds in your favour over the long-term.

There are a lot of people who are in complete disbelief right now, because they were expecting much lower prices, have bids that were not filled, and currently feel like an under-allocated deer in the headlights.

The bulls are already running victory laps, and the bears are questioning what went wrong. For the folks who missed the lows, many are about to buy far too much at the next local high, and get smoked once again on the pullback. The bears will then add heavily to their shorts…at the exact point when they should be buying.

Today’s post will be an assessment of this Bitcoin rally into the mid $80ks. My aim is to help anyone feeling like a ‘deer in the headlights’ to set sensible thresholds for when the bear thesis is invalidated, and the bear is properly slain.

Become a Premium subscriber to access today’s Video Update (45 mins), Written Article and TL;DR Summary.

Read more

Every man and his dog has been drawing the same lines on charts, sketching the same bear flag, and predicting the same bear market as every other bear.

In my experience, this point in the bear is the hardest.

• The bearish thesis is being tested right now, as price starts to invalidate the upper bound of the most obvious ‘bear flag’ ever drawn with crayons.

• The bulls are getting increasingly hyped, but this is the exact moment when they pour in all their remaining cash…and it turns out to be just another lower high.

• For the more cautious and moderate bulls among us, many are looking at the current $80k price, and wondering if they missed the bottom, but don’t want to get caught buying yet another local top.

This part of the bear market is the hardest, because it is the moment when everyone’s market thesis, and our conviction it gets tested.

In today’s post, I will share my thoughts on whether this bear flag structure is still valid, and how I approach the ‘investors-trilemma’ above. I’ll share my personal strategy, which is based on my experience buying not enough at past bottoms, as well as chasing rallies which I shouldn’t have chased.

Become a Premium subscriber to access today’s Video Update (46 mins) and TL;DR Summary.

Read more

Thank you once again for another amazing batch of questions this month!

In this ~1hr Q&A session, we tackled a wide range of Bitcoin, macro, mining, AI, and market cycle questions, including:

• Does STRC introduce systemic risk to Bitcoin?

• Is MSTY still worth holding after the reverse split?

• Can BTC compete with AI for capital?

• The future of mining as miners pivot to AI

• What signals mark the end of the bear market?

• Diminishing returns and next cycle ATH targets

• How useful is the Bitcoin Power Law?

• What % of net worth should be in BTC?

• Taking profits next cycle with more conviction

• Has Bitcoin lost the digital gold narrative?

• BTC’s role in the AI agent era

• Does Bitcoin need a new narrative?

• Adding ETH to your portfolio - worth it?

We hope you enjoy the session,
James & Alec

Premium Members will find the full Q&A video below in this post (~1hr). Consider upgrading to premium today to unlock the content!

New Release Reminder: The Bitcoin Checkpoint Report #2

The Checkonchain team is proud to launch the 2nd edition of The Bitcoin Checkpoint report, in partnership with our friends over at Unchained.

In this 30+ page report, we breakdown of Bitcoin’s 2025–26 bear market, using a wide range of data-sets across spot, onchain, ETF, and derivatives markets.

Get The Report Here

Know someone who might like the report? Here’s the link to share: https://tinyurl.com/btc-checkpoint-2.

Read more