Friday's Crypto Banter Panel

• Elliot - @elliotrades
• Winston - @wolfcryptogroup
• Casey - @cryptocasey
• Mr. Biz - @Adouble212
• George - @CryptosR_Us

Everything Feels Bearish. Should We Be Nervous?

Winston thinks that crypto investors should be nervous. Although most are long-term bullish, the sentiment is short-term bearish. Winston thinks we're cautiously nervous right now, but if we get one more dump then the market enters the fear stage. 

Elliot was expecting a similar grind lower and is still expecting more people to get shaken out. He doesn't think we've seen enough of a reset and expects a couple more sweeps lower before we head back up.

Elliot's thesis about reaching max pain:
One of Elliot's core fundamental analysis tools is the emotional sentiment of the market. Once there's widespread max pain and max hatred towards the market, that's when you reach a bottom. It sounds perverse but dreams getting crushed is actually bullish for the market.

George is still bullish and is looking at these latest corrections as a buying opportunity. But he's worried about that many people are stuck waiting for the next dip, a bearish sentiment. George and Elliot both see a likely scenario that BTC and the overall crypto market consolidates for a couple months before making its move up.

How Much Should We Be Worried About US Government Dollar Printing?

Mr. Biz notes the sobering fact that 30% of all US dollars were printed in the last year.
Elliot says that in addition to the $6 Trillion US budget bill, there's a trillions more in planned government spending in sum totaling $12 trillion.

Casey expects the repo market will implode, causing a crash for all assets. Banks have too much money that they can't use. So either the Fed starts giving more money directly to people, or the whole system crashes. Casey's wary of a treasury short squeeze that rekts the financial system. This will include crypto in the short-term, but long-term the sentiment is that BTC will eventually rise in value out of the ashes. 

Casey reminds us that BTC was born out of the 2008 financial crisis .. it was born out of a financial crisis, but it hasn't had a chance to be tested by one. It has to show its resiliency in the face of a much larger financial system shock before more believers enter crypto as a store of value.

Winston says that you still have to trade whatever market you're in rather than waiting to buy in after the crash. He also wants people to remember the lesson of March 2020, that when the market crashes it takes crypto with it. Winston believes in hedging with cash, investments & stores of value outside of crypto if you think the economy is long-term bearish.

Ran Pushes Polygon (MATIC) as a Proxy for ETH

Ran thinks Polygon (MATIC) is the best coin to buy If you're bullish on ETH.

Elliot doesn't quite think that MATIC can replace ETH from an investor's perspective but is still bullish on MATIC and thinks it's a solid top 10 coin.

Elliot says Ethereum is doing what it promised (creating an application layer) even though it's a bit clunky right now. He thinks Polygon is much closer to Ethereum than Binance Smart Chain and sees Polygon gaining importance as more transactions are settled on layer 1 sometime in an ETH 2.0 future.

MATIC Skepticism, and Warnings About Market Manipulation

Winston wonders what's the point of MATIC once ETH fixes its issues. Elliot says that ETH will still need layer 2s to help it scale.

Winston says that there's even more risk being in MATIC which was only .03 at the beginning of the year. Elliot concurs and worries about a mean reversion correction. Ran does worry that Mark Cuban recently buying MATIC has pumped it, setting the stage for a dump.

George notes that Kevin O'leary's recent about face about crypto was manufactured, and Elliot reminds everyone that his most popular video is about Kevin O'leary and Mark Cuban lying about their crypto holdings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnx513JS5Vg 

To add to the point about big players rigging the crypto markets, Mr. Biz thinks that the market is being manipulated to get cheap ETH and is skeptical of all the latest positive news: Ray Dallio, Carl Icahn and Goldman Sachs all saying they prefer ETH over BTC, and Kevin O'leary being bullish on Defi.

Ran Asks For Alt Coin Picks, Gets Something Else Entirely

Ran wants the guests' picks, but they respond with more bearish sentiment ..

Elliot is waiting for a BTC bullish confirmation above $42K before he jumps back into his favorite alts. He's especially looking to be an alt buyer if BTC starts running towards $50K. Elliot thinks that when BTC dips into the low $30Ks / high $20Ks is when the institutional investors step in to buy the dip.

Ran notes that large wallets have been buying even more BTC since the Tesla announcement:

Mr. Biz thinks people are still really scared right now. If BTC goes below $30K, Mr. Biz thinks retail investors won't be buying any dips. It'll be the 3rd significant drop in a short time frame and that would be a max pain & despair moment for many investors.

Winston thinks institutions haven't dumped yet but they might be forced to sell if BTC dips into the $20Ks. He sees us grinding lower right now and many people are waiting for more liquidity to enter before going into alts.

Ran Rephrases His Question: If The Market Improves, What's Your Shopping List Look Like?

Elliot expects something like Oiler, an Ethereum foundation initiative that provides network functional architecture that Vitalik requested himself. He expects promising low cap core projects like Oiler that were leveled by the downturn will do well when the market comes back.

Winston is not a buyer right now, but when the market comes back he's buying strong majors like DOT LINK LUNA & ADA. These large caps have good fundamentals that are more resilient to market corrections (the older projects have a history of surviving big market drops).

George is also sticking with the big caps, also noting that they hold their value sometimes even better than BTC in market dips. ETH, BNB, ADA, SOL, LINK, THETA and VET are some of his picks.

Ran is still big on LUNA, AR and RUNE. He is especially keen on the cross chain liquidity that RUNE provides.

Mr. Biz is also favoring large caps: ETH LINK DOT & KSM. He also thinks that Defi is down 80-90% and could bounce back up big when the market recovers.

Casey is big on Defi and expects it to bounce on the next wave up - AAVE MKR COMP & SNX are some of her Defi picks. She expects that after Defi, the narrative of gaming on the blockchain will gain momentum.

George says that the big guys care about Defi more than Ethereum. Ethereum has had most of the Defi projects up to this point, but institutional money will go to whatever chain the best Defi projects are on.

What Happened to Web3 Projects?

Speaking of fundamental core architecture projects, Ran is wondering why Web3 projects in the distributed computing space like GRT, Siacoin, Arweave and API3 aren't getting any love?

• Winston: They don't work.
• Casey: They're not sexy enough.
• Elliot: It's too early for them. To elaborate on Winston's sentiment, Elliot says they might work for early-adopter geeks but they're way too inaccessible for normal users. Web3 is potentially huge, but it's just too early for them right now.

References:

Link for today's show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CldgVdPNRaY