Welcome. I'm going to talk about efficient perfectly secure computation with optimal resilience. I'm Gilad Asharon from Baryland University and this is a joint work with Itaia Braham and Avishaya Nai. So in the setting of secure multi-party computation we have some set of mutually distrustful parties each has some private input and the parties wish to compute some joint function of their inputs are preserving some security properties such as privacy correctness and so on. One of the seminal results in secure computation is that of Beno Goldwasser and Wittgerstern in 1988. It says that secure computation is possible in the semi-honest settings with perfect security assuming that the adversary corrupted most one half of the parties. In the malicious settings the adversely incorrupted most one-third of the parties. Both results are tagged. Perfect security means that the adversary can be computationally unbounded and protocols in these settings are usually also adaptively secure and secure under concoct composition once they satisfy some natural requirements. What is the communication complexity of the protocol? For computing a function f we first represent it as an arithmetic circuit c. Then the communication complexity of the protocol is n square times the sides of the circuit in the semi-honest setting and in the malicious settings we have that the adversary can slow down the protocol but it cannot break security. Those we have both optimistic case and pessimistic case where the adversary in the optimistic case where the adversary does not slow down the protocol the communication complexity is n to the four times the size of the circuit and a pessimistic case what the adversary does successfully slow down the protocol we have n to the six times the size of the circuit. Our result we're going to show a protocol where we improve both the optimistic and pessimistic cases and we show a protocol where the optimistic case is n cubed times the size of the circuit and in the pessimistic case it's n to the four times the size of the circuit. Another way to view our improvement is as follows so in BGW and the semi-honest settings the total communication complexity per each multiplication in the circuit is the communication complexity of secret sharing times the number of parties n. In a malicious case we have to use verifiable secret sharing instead of just secret sharing but now we need much more secrets to share. In the BGW protocol this requires sharing of n squared elements per multiplication. Our result we show how to match the same amount of secrets as in the semi-honest case and have only linear number of V assesses. In addition we have some bones consider a circuit G that has L inputs and M outputs of multiplication depth 1. In other words this is a polynomial of degree 2. Think that G is large while L and M are relatively small. To compute such a circuit BGW requires the amount of V assesses that are proportional to the size of the inputs and outputs of G plus also something that depends on the size of the circuit. In our protocol we can securely compute such a circuit with the number of V assesses that is proportional only to the input and output size of the circuit and it is completely independent of the number of multiplications in G. This can also be generalized to multiplication to circuits with multiplication depth greater than 1 while we only need to pay the amount of wires that exist between the layers and we are independent of the number of multiplications in each one of the layers. Note that this means that the communication complexity is sublinear in the circuit size. This is similar to R1 CS in zero knowledge and for the best of our knowledge this is the first time that this appears in the perfect setting. As an example consider the task of matrix multiplication. This is a circuit in which the number of inputs and outputs is relatively small. Something like M squared while the number of multiplications at least when we implement this circuit naively is M cubed. This means that BGW will require this amount of V assesses. It's N squared times M cubed. Well our protocol we improve first of all N squared to N for any circuit and for this particular circuit we can also compute it from in M squared instead of M cubed. Some related works. So our setting is the case of constant around permultiplication with perfect security, malicious security and optimal resilience. This means that at most one third of the parties are corrupted. In that case we achieve the following communication complexity. We have N to the cube in the optimistic case, N to the four in the pessimistic and the round complexity is proportional to the depth to the multiplicative depth of C. There are more efficient protocols in terms of communication complexity in the perfect setting that are based on player elimination technique, which the best protocol here even achieves linear dependency on N, the number of parties. In that technique, players that are detected cheating during the protocol are removed from the protocol and then we need to repeat some part of the computation. This increases the round complexity of the protocol for shallow circuits. Moreover, for circuits with multiplication depth one, our protocol can also obtain communication complexity that depends only on the input and output size of the circuit and is independent of the size of the circuit. And it is unclear if a similar technique can be implement in the other line of works that are based on player elimination. As such, those kinds of protocols are formally incomparable where it seems that for shallow, wide circuits, our protocol is more preferable, while for large depth circuits it is kind of clear that this approach is better. Before proceeding to the technical part of the talk, I am going to assume some familiarity with the semi-honest version of BGW with simplification of Gerana or Rabin and Rabin. I will also assume some familiarity with the verifiable secret sharing or protocol of BGW or that of Feldman. Those who want to review these protocols are welcome to follow those two links that appear now on the screen. So, our starting point is the protocol for computing multiplication gates in BGW. Just take a step back. The BGW protocol follows the paradigm of secure computation based on secret sharing, in which the parties evaluate or emulate the execution of a circuit that implements the functions that they wish to compute while hiding each value, the value on each wire in the circuit using a secret sharing scheme. The parties emulate the computation of the protocol gate by gate, while the parties run a secure protocol for computing value of an output wire of each one of the gates using their shares on the input wires. So, now we are looking at the protocol for multiplication gate. The parties hold shares on the two input wires. So, this is what we have over here. Each party PI holds A alpha I, B alpha I for some degree T polynomial, AX and BX, respectively. And the goal is that each party needs to hold a share on the output wire, some C alpha I, for some degree T polynomial, satisfying that the constant term is the multiplication of the two constant terms over here. The BGW protocol shows how to do it, or essentially shows how to do it, and how to reduce this multiplication with no dealer, where no party knows A, B and C, to end executions and building blocks of execution of the same building block of multiplication with a dealer, where there is a party that knows A, B and C. So, multiplication with a dealer is the following functionality. Each party PI holds some share on some polynomial where there is a dealer, PK, that also knows the two polynomials, AKX and BKX. And the goal is that PI will hold a share, CK on alpha I, for some degree T polynomial in which the constant term is the multiplication of those two polynomials. And again, there is a dealer that knows now CK of X. If the dealer fails, then the party simply recovers the constant term of the two polynomials that were shared. Now, let's remove... I'm removing the subscript AK for gravity. And let's take a look how BGW implemented this functionality. So, the protocol, in that protocol, the dealer holds two polynomials, A and B. And the goal is to actually share a polynomial, C, satisfying that the constant term is the multiplication of those two polynomials, of the constant term of those two polynomials. Now, what is going to do is going to choose such polynomial, C of X, and share it using a verifiable secret sharing. So now at this point, each other party, which is not a dealer, holds one share on the polynomial A, one share on the polynomial B, and one share on the polynomial C. The dealer wants to prove that this relationship holds. And to do that, it's going to define the additional polynomials, D1 to DT, such that this equation holds. Okay? Now, let's take a look what we have over here. So, we have A times B. This is going to bring... to give us a polynomial of degree 2T. And then we're going to have D... T polynomials where our goal is essentially to reduce or to remove all the T-leading coefficients of the polynomial A times B. This requires NVSSs in total to prove this. Now, the way the protocols work is that each party gets all the shares, so after the dealer shares those polynomials, each party holds A alpha I, B alpha I, and also has D1 alpha I to do T... to DT alpha I. And it can verify that this relationship actually works. Now, if this works for all the oldest parties where we have 2T plus 1 oldest parties, this is going to define a unique polynomial. And this guarantees that actually C on 0 actually is A times 0, B times 0 minus something that all of those, because we multiply by X to L, does do not affect the constant term. So, this guarantees that actually C on 0 equals A on 0, B on 0. Now, the dealer shares those polynomials, each party verifies that this relationship holds, and if not, it's going to broadcast a complaint, and then the parties can reconstruct its share, because all the polynomials out of degree T, we can reconstruct and check publicly that this relationship's hold. Now, this requires a linear amount of VSSs in the number of parties, and this seems even essential, because to remove one... once we share a polynomial of degree T, because the adversary controls T corrupted parties, this doesn't give us a lot of degree of freedom. So, we only write one coefficient in that polynomial. In secret sharing, usually we put the secret as a constant term, here we're going to put the secret in the leading coefficient, and essentially, we only hide one coefficient. Now, to remove T coefficients, it seems necessary to share T polynomials. What we're going to do in this work, we're going to show how to do this exact functionality, how to implement this protocol with just one single VSS, instead of having a linear amount of VSSs. And the key idea is that maybe we can do secret sharing of a polynomial of degree 2T, instead of a polynomial of degree T. How can we do that? So, before we actually proceed, let's just take one step back. So, essentially, we're going to follow a different invariant than that of BGW. We assume that each wire is even using a bivariate polynomial of degree T in both variables, and not just a univariate polynomial, as in BGW. This makes the following changes that we see over here in the functionality. And the goal is to get two univariate polynomial shares on the output wires, like we have over here. We know that this invariant removes another building block from BGW, and without it, our current improvement is not going to actually reduce the communication complexity. So, we need to take also this technique in order to actually get the improvement over BGW. Okay. So, how do we share a polynomial of degree 2T? Or what happens if we take the verifiable secret sharing protocol of BGW and try to use it for sharing a degree 2T polynomial? So, again, I'm going to assume you're some familiarity with the protocol for verifiable secret sharing. There is a link over here that you can scan and see the protocol in detail. So, in our case, the dealer is going to distribute a bivariate polynomial in degree 2T in X and degree T in Y. In the first one, the dealer is going to send, is going to define the share of party PI as the evaluation of the polynomial where we fix the Y with a Y part, and also going to define a GIY where we're going to fix the X part in the polynomial, in the bivariate polynomial. In the first one of the protocol, the dealer sends to each party its two univariate shares, its two univariate polynomials. Know that F is of polynomial, is a univariate polynomial of degree 2T, while G is a univariate polynomial of degree T. Then, exactly as in BGW, we're going to extend subshares. I'm going to evaluate IMPI. I'm going to evaluate FINGI on the point J. I'm going to send that to party PJ. Each party checks that whatever it receives, that's the third round, or the end of the second round, each party is going to see all the values that it received, and then it's going to check that it's the same as the one that expected as was sent by the dealer. If not, it's going to complain. The dealer will have to open those that have false complaints, and at the end, we're going to have a complete resolution phase where each party checks that whatever was broadcasted fit to the view, fit to the shares that they have, and if so, they're going to broadcast good. We're going to accept the dealer, the shares of the dealer once we have 2T plus 1 good votes. Now, to have a recall that we have 3T plus 1 parties in total, so we want that 2T plus 1 parties are going to be happy with their shares and whatever they saw. What happened when 2T plus 1 parties voted good? It means that only T plus 1 honest parties are actually happy, with what they see, because we might have T corrupted parties that vote on something which is incorrect, or the dealer is malicious and T parties just vote good even though nothing is actually good. What does it mean that we have only T plus 1 honest parties? It means that when the dealer broadcasts and make public reveal a share of some party, it needs to reveal both the f-share and the g-share. However, the f-share is of degree 2T plus 2, it's of degree 2T. So we need 2T plus 1 points to actually fix that polynomial. However, we have only T plus 1 honest parties that see that polynomial. So this is, so if we have only T plus 1 honest parties that broadcast good and say, okay, I'm happy with this public reveal polynomial, it doesn't mean that this f-pollinomial is actually correct, because it is a polynomial of degree 2T and we just know that T plus 1 points are actually consistent with something that the core of the honest parties that define the bivariate polynomial is actually correct. So in other words, at the end of the protocol we might have the case that some honest parties, that some honest party that his share was publicly revealed doesn't hold the correct f-pollinomial because it doesn't really agree with all the other honest parties or it agrees with T plus 1 honest parties but it doesn't uniquely define the polynomial. So to avoid this problem, we simply give up and we ask the dealer to reveal only the g's polynomials whenever it is to publicly reveal a polynomial because the g's are of degree T. What does it mean? It means that at the end of the protocol of this sharing phase of polynomial of degree 2T, there are going to be parties, honest parties that don't have an f-pollinomial, that don't really have a share on the polynomial. We are going in the reconstruction, we are going to ignore those parties and only those that voted good are going to contribute to contribute in the reconstruction. So what do we have so far? So if the dealer is honest, then we know that the parties will going to extend sub-shares, everything is going to be correct and the dealer will never have to reveal a polynomial of an honest party. This means that at the end of the protocol there are going to be 2T plus 1 honest parties that have both the f-pollinomial and the g-pollinomial. When the dealer is corrupted, if the part is actually accepted in the shares, it means that we have only T plus 1 honest parties that have both f and g. It means that during the reconstruction, we will need the help of the adversary in order to reconstruct. Let's see the reconstruction. So the reconstruction is going to be as follows. The dealer is going to broadcast this polynomial. This is a polynomial of degree T. And each party that has an f-share is going to check the point, the intersection of the two polynomials. And if it's actually okay, and this is the correct value, then it's going to say good or okay. And if 2T plus 1 parties are going to say good, then we're going to accept this polynomial that was broadcasted and reconstruct the constant term. So however, we have only T plus 1 honest parties that have correct f-pollinomial. This means that in actually to reconstruct, we must have the help, we must need the help in the case of a corrupted dealer of the corrupted parties in order to reconstruct the secret. However, we do have binding. What do you mean by that? Is that the dealer cannot now, if the party's accepted the shares in the sharing phase, the dealer cannot give a polynomial that is different than the polynomial that is defined by the shares of the T plus 1 honest parties. So during the reconstruction, either we are going to reconstruct the right, the correct constant term, or we're going to reconstruct bottom. Namely, we know that something failed. This is in other words what we so-called weak secretary. There is binding, but reconstruction is not guaranteed. So our multiplication with the dealer looks like the following. So the dealer holds polynomials A and B, and the dealer shares a bivariate polynomial satisfying this relationship. So its constant term is the multiplication of these two polynomials. Each party is going to have a share on A and B, and a share on the bivariate polynomial C. The dealer is going to define a single one polynomial, dxy, which has degree 2t and x, and degree t and y, such that the following relationship holds. So this is dx0 equals ax times px minus cx0. Note that on 0, if indeed a c00 equals a0 times b0, then the constant term of d is supposed to be 0. Each party is going to verify that this relationship actually holds. So we look at this polynomial, and this polynomial, and we try to find if those two polynomials are actually the same. If they are not the same broadcast complaint, we are going to reconstruct, see that if something, we can publicly reveal the shares of a party that broadcasted a complaint, and we can publicly reveal if the complaint is true or not. And then after we did all of that, and we actually see that those two polynomials are the same, the dealer is going to publicly reveal this polynomial, t, 0, and y, and all the parties can publicly verify that the constant term is 0. Now, recall, this is just a weak secret chain. So it might be that this reconstruction is not going to work, but if it doesn't work, we don't care, because this means that the dealer is corrupted, and we can reconstruct a and b and learn the constant term. So essentially, we just need to share here one secret chain. We need to do only one VSS of a degree 2t polynomial, but instead of having verifiable secret chain, we just have weak secret chain. Let's just see it in a picture. So the dealer is going to define a univariate polynomial, this one that's going to satisfy dx of 0 equals ax times bx minus cx0. Okay, so it's going to share the polynomial c, that its constant term is supposed to be a times b. And then it's going to choose a polynomial d that satisfies this equation. So it's going to choose just this univariate polynomial in degree 2t, and build a bivariate polynomial on top of it. It's going to do a secret chain of that, a weak secret chain of that degree 2t polynomial. And during the reconstructions, the parties are going to reveal, the dealer is going to reveal this polynomial, but this polynomial reveals nothing because the dealer, the corrupted part is already, this is a polynomial of degree t. The corrupted part is already hold t shares on this polynomial, and they already know, are supposed to know that dx of 0 is equal to 0. I mean, otherwise, we have a problem and we need to reject the sharing of the dealer anyway. What about the bonus? So far, we looked at how to do one single multiplication. We can also look at more complicated gadgets. In fact, any sub-circuit with multiplication depth 1, or any layer in our entire circuit. Each party can compute this sub-circuit on all the shares of the inputs that it has. And this, and then prove using one single VSS per output wire that this was actually computed correctly. So for conclusion, we show improvement of a classical protocol for secure computation, which also significantly simplifies the protocol. The protocol also beats the state of the art protocols for some applications, as we say it for shell or wide circuits. And for some applications, our protocol also achieves sub-linear communication complexity. This is the first time that, from the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that happens in the perfect setting. So thank you so much for listening.


Ba-ba-ba. And let's just make sure that we are live and the audio is good before we start talking. Nothing worse than talking to yourself. And yeah, we yeah, here we are. Let's see make Okay, there we go.  So first of all Welcome to the DCA over here at digital asset news where we try to take the breakdown and the ups and downs of the market Try to make sense of it all so the gentleman to my immediate left You will know him as Benjamin Cohen and he is the star Over here at into the cryptoverse you can find a link to his channel in the description below and also Underneath which you're gonna. I'm gonna change over. There's James. Hey James and James is the host of invest answers and of course you can find his show and the link to his show below and today gentlemen We've got some pretty interesting things to talk about. I think it's the same question that We've been getting the same thing on each one of our channels, which is the very first question which we're gonna go over which is Is the bull market over and how far will we drop or have a reversal? Second one is what parameters would you use that to call a definitive bear market or even a god forbid a crypto winner And then next question is would you short the market right now? This will be James's alley Last one is our next last the Fed is raising rates and tapering bond buying. How does this affect equities? and also for crypto and lastly Whale versus whale it seems like some are accumulating and some are dumping So who wins this one in what time frame and so on and so forth? I'll let you guys just answer that as you will. So let's start off with number one And i'll start off with ben Because he's our ta guy, you know, is it better than than most will say Ben, what do you think is the bull market over? How far will we drop or is there any reversal on the on the front? Hey, thanks for having having us on again. Um, I don't know that I'm better than most But uh, I I think that we also need to be careful about how we define bull markets and bear markets and Like as I was discussing with you before the show, you know Like in the stock market if you have a 20 drawdown everyone basically just agrees that it's a bear market and You know, they're not necessarily ridiculed for calling it a bear market if there's 20 drawdown It just like it is by definition bearish when the stock market is down 20 percent and and for crypto The way I normally think about it is if we're below the 20 week s and a or the 21 week EMA if you prefer then the market is just bearish like it doesn't And I would also say too. There are different types of bear markets, right? Like there's the the 2018 type bear market where it's just down for a year and then there's also like the Second half of 2019 type bear market or the summer 2021 type bear market I mean like the second half of 2019 we went from 14k and we just bled And then ultimately we capitulated in early 2020 to to 3,800 dollars and you know by by anyone's standards That you know that drop 70 percent or whatever would be a bear market, but no one really calls 2019 a bear market So I would say that in the same way that you could have called the summer a mini bear market or some type of a bear market We are in a similar phase Today, right? I mean, it's just is what it is. It's not what we want necessarily, but That's just what that's what we're working with right now So look, I mean, I you know my thoughts on the matter are You know, whenever we go below the the 20 week estimate of the 21 week EMA It normally takes us three to six months To get back above it and at least try to try to resume an uptrend And so it's been about a a month and a half so far So I think earliest we're looking at potentially getting back above it would be um I mean like mid to late february. It's probably the earliest So, uh, I think we still have quite a ways to go before we're before we're looking at at rosy skies That way And and right now we're just fighting we're just finding fighting a pretty brutal downtrend And and I think a lot of it too is it these types of markets can can easily spook investors because it just doesn't make sense Like, you know, it's just dropping day in and day out. We look at the eliquid supply the eliquid supply is going up You know, bitcoin's being drawn off exchanges um On chain data always looks bullish though um So a lot of things just don't really make a whole lot of sense in in that in that sense But I would also argue like one one sense of like making it look a little bit better is that typically Major capitulations are are usually what lead to the next uptrend, right? We saw that happen in december 2018 We capitulated then we went to 14k. We saw that in march 2020. We capitulated then we went up. We saw that in Uh in may or this summer 2021 and then we were able to go back up So look fair markets suck Some of them last longer some of them last shorter But I would argue the real money is made in bear markets when people stick around and then wait for the for the boulder zoom Yeah, that's true. And then uh, james same thing to you and you know before you before you take it away I will just say this Uh, this is one of the few channels of Our three where you're going to hear someone say the word bearish Because we have to look at reality not what we want it to be But we have to really look at it subjectively and go this is where we are at However, just like ben said does this mean that we're going to be in crypto winner for years? No, there is bear market There is bearish tendencies. There is a bull market and bullish tendencies. James. What do you got for us? Yeah, there's a lot to touch on here and I like your outline agenda But I will talk about where I think we are first of all Uh As ben mentioned equity markets are considered a bear market of this 20% correction But we live in much more volatile times with disruptive stocks of 20% is very easy to achieve But historically I've always considered crypto being 2x equity volatility. So my head 40% correction is a bear market and we are exactly 40% down from the highs in bitcoin right now as we speak So that's kind of coincidental But I think there's a couple of things for us to look at one is this run everything is different Um, we have to take into account some of the things some of the surprises Unrest in Kazakhstan macro headwinds like tapering and rate hike and a whole bunch of other stuff The world is very very different. Um a couple of things that are interesting to notice. Some of the whales are still buying hard Like buying on sport. I think 43 000 bitcoin at 45 000 dollars A whole bunch of whales are layering in at 49 47 45 probably now also some whales are selling So it's kind of a mixed bag But what I would like to share is just a quick visual view because I think it explains kind of where we are better than anybody If I may for a one second Absolutely, let's do some Let me see If I can do this Streamyard on its bottom my entire screen. Boom. There we go. Okay. All right come to Let me see if this works Yeah Um, can you see what I am looking at here? That's the messy one. Sorry This is the cleaner version And hold on a second. I don't want to be sharing that Let me share again Because that's that's all my chicken scratch all over it and I've got a number of th arts Let me go back to where was I mad scientist james mad scientist play hold on a second share screen Gotta get better at this chrome tab There All right, so let me see if this is fully visible Notice that just to give you guys an idea So I was always talking about kind of the the three step of where we are now in the summer We are at step one the 30k we hovered around there for a long time step two was the 42k Which we hovered around in september for four weeks And step three was the 47k where we played with for like 32 34 days. I can't remember exactly. Well, unfortunately we fell off our step three and we broke through step two Which is a 42k floor now coincidentally step three is the 0.618 fail level And the question is where could we go from here now? I would be And first of all, I'm quite surprised that we broke through 42k But we're hovering around there and sometimes you can have a wick that wicks down hard like a thousand two thousand three thousand dollars But it's where it stabilizes of what matters And we're sort of stabilizing out of the 42k floor and these are approximations Now the interesting level next and they'll be interesting here from ben is the 0.786 support level at 39k and coincidentally That is the uh mike novogratz level that he believes we could bounce to as well as we go forward So that is kind of my view of the world now. How do I stop sharing? He just did it. We're already done. Yeah, nice All right, I'm wondering ben. Do you see any of those levels? Do you see us going to 30 like mike novogratz said 38 to 40? He originally said 42k a lot of people are coalescing around this 42k level, which tends to be the herd mentality I revised what took that back and said 38 to 40 could be the new floor if we break through And who knows if all hell breaks loose, you know grace one event 30k could be on the cards again That would take us back to six months ago And that's just the nature of the beast. So what do you guys reckon? um Yeah, I mean, I think when you guys asked me a while back what I thought My best guess was 40k was um Yeah, and the reason I I think I said that there's three reasons the first reason is that's where we held the line at the At the 20 week estimate 21 we gave me back in september Historically, we don't go below that doesn't mean we can't right. There's always a first time for everything I can't imagine the next hundred years of bitcoins You know history. We're always going to hold that rule um Well, there is that there's also the fact that You know, there has been a lot of support and resistance at 40k like during that first run up in january of 2021 We kind of went to 42k got rejected back down Uh during the summer drop We had a rally that took us to 40k got rejected back down If you overlay the fractal from say like the summer drop to today and and assume we're doing some type of like Wycoff accumulation at 40k as opposed to 30k you can make the same type of argument There is a decent chance that 40k holds um, but If it doesn't if it doesn't Then we could I mean there there was something I was looking at recently because I was trying to learn from the way Investors before me have felt in markets and kind of what they dealt with and you know One of the charts I've looked at is it looking at like the stock market chart from like 2000 to 2010? And and and it was actually like a double top Uh, we you know, it went up. It came back down Went up again to a slightly higher price And then it came back down to a slightly lower price than it went during the uh, you know during the middle time frame But then on the third attempt Which was closer in time between the first two peaks on the third attempt it went up and ever since then it's actually just been in an Uptrend Since that time, um So I I think that yeah, like if I would like to see 40k hold that's like my Best case scenario at this point, right? It's easy to say that of course. We're already treating it right around that level um If we break below it though, I Certainly 30k is in the cards for sure And if we go to if we go down to if we go down to those levels I I have to imagine that most people are going to think the party's over For a long time, but I don't think it necessarily would be I think we could easily bounce back and We're just sideways between 30 and 60k for a while Exactly Ben. There's a good chart. You should check out. It's the s and p 500 divided by the growth of money supply over the last 10 years Changes the perspective on everything Yeah so Yeah Yeah, like I all to say this if we dropped down to 30k there's gonna be so much It would be major capitulation With what I mean as far as the sell-off goes it would just be I think it'd be astronomical Which I think would lead me to my next point The next question So we already talked about the bear market you guys clearly that out that you believe and I believe too That we are in a bear market if we if he uses if we use james answer 40% As far as the volatility even drop down makes complete sense and then but the next question then is Because there has to be a definition and that is like what ben was talking about. Are we talking about like a crypto winter? So I want to make this very crystal clear Are we talking about a crypto winter that goes on for months and years like 2018 2019? Or are we talking about bearish activity for this small time frame? And what would you consider a crypto winter? And I'll ask I'll ask James on this one first Okay That's an interesting one crypto winter. So I have to look back to history But before I do that, we can't look at history anymore because everything is different this run but typically I defined A crypto winter is when something like bitcoin stays under the 200 day moving average for an extended period of time This bull run we've been through it three times and that makes it very unusual So you could assume we've actually breached this crypto winter So I don't like the idea of the term crypto winter. I don't think it makes any sense anymore I see it more as crypto seasons, so I'm very optimistic for spring 2022. I think we could consolidate here for 30 60 maybe 90 days But from there, we should go up now another thing to consider as well is we have to realize You know, despite all of this nervousness typically the people who are feeling bad or people who got to the party late I know people are bored in October or November pick the top nail the top and they are suffering right now. So Deep sympathy for you guys out there But anybody else who got in any of the time during the year Did well now the big factors Why I don't believe there is a crypto winter coming is money is coming Q1 money is coming look at all the big banks in Germany and Italy and all around the world that are Enabling retail investors to jump in the narrative digital gold is working gold is bleeding Bitcoin is going up adoption is going up adoption of all crypto You know, some people say we're at 250 million users right now I believe that could go to a billion crypto users Before the end of this year end of 2022 and that's kind of it's just I hate to sound like a very overly optimistic person But just the the supply is so scarce And the demand is coming And therefore I think the only way is up. We're not going to be flat for three years It's physically impossible by by all the macro stuff that I see even with maybe the potential fed Rate hike little tapering etc That's what I see. Yeah, we're going to talk about that in a second So ben anything to add because that was a nice. It was a great response. We you defined it We talked about it people and people when they hear that they get anxious But you said hey, you know what it's not a winter for a very long time Look at what's on the horizon I think that's a big thing we have to keep track of as far as look out when in doubt zoom out Take a look at the big picture Then what do you got the same type of of thoughts or anything different on that one? Yeah, um, I did just share my screen so if you can enable that Got it Yeah, I guess the first thing I'd like to to say is you know, I mean for anyone who lived through the last You know through 2018. I remember 2018 and 2014 as well and you know, you never really go into it thinking Like you know, that's what it's gonna. You know, that's what it's gonna do But but in in 2018, you know, I remember people I remember people saying in 2017 Like wait until the wall street executives get their bonuses wait till the Chinese New Year's over all that stuff Um, and so I would say this like I would certainly say that I I think James is right in the short term Like it's we still have a little we we got some work to do it at these lower levels Like I don't I don't think we're gonna be putting in you all-time highs in like 30 days I think we we have some work to do with some of these lower levels But later in the year, I do think there's a High like I would say it's more likely that we trend up later in the year Then we keep trending down um One of the charts I've I've looked at before is this one and basically the idea and I Like this way of modeling bitcoin Oh a lot more over say like the stock to flow model The the reason is is because I think that bitcoin is better modeled with longer like logarithmic growth The idea that most of the gains occurred earlier on in bitcoins, you know life cycle Um, but that doesn't mean that gains can't keep coming. It's just they're going to be diminished as a function of time But in terms of in terms of it to answer the question explicitly The idea of like a crypto winter and a bear market One of the things you can note is anytime we go below the fair value That's when we kind of get that long phase where we have to spend below it going sideways for a year Unfortunately, this is not a great indicator for Calling a bear market. It's basically once we go below it. We've already gone down and now we have to go sideways for a year Before going back up. Um You'll notice in 2013 we went down to the fair value and we held it and then we continue moving higher Uh, and and there was nothing wrong with that right even though back then by the way That was an 80 percent correction in the short term But it stopped bitcoin for putting a new all-time highs later that year. Okay, so technically that was a bear market Right, it's 80 percent. It was two times what james that is is the threshold You know, so anyone would have called that a bear market, but we still put a new all-time has later that year Uh in you know 2018 we saw the law it said we had that long accumulation So i'm looking at this and saying well as long as we're as long as we're sort of staying up up in this level I still have hopes that the cycle will will continue on if we if we were to do something like this and and you know Drop and and coincidentally the lower bound on this is is corresponding to the upper 20s Like and just in a few weeks or months A month or two, it'll be about 30k. It will be where that level is So I have hopes that the the cycle will will continue to to go on I would say a potential invalidation of that is if we come back down to this level Then I I just think it's it's going to be Bleak for you know probably until the next having at that point if we go if we go back down And and we're going back to like 20k or something It's hard to make a bullish case. I think in the short term if that if that happens like just seems like it'd be hard to Yeah, I can see that as for sure, you know, I I would just say this The one thing that that concerns me is just because of the feds notes that came on a wednesday that caused the traditional markets the tank and Coincidentally our market the tank. I mean pretty precipitously. Let's be honest So if we go into that I know James you have the idea You have the thought and it makes sense that big money is coming But it seems like the traditional finance players are more skittish Than we are because just that mention dropped there I mean it wasn't by as much a percentage as what we have But it seems like it dropped a lot on their end and it really came and bled over to this one I know there's a lot of money coming out there, but it's it's interesting to think can they keep that up Yeah, well, it's very bizarre about that is anybody who could read the tea leaves We knew about that in december. We knew that was coming So I thought it was so strange the way the market was so startled But I think was a confluence of items too. I don't think was just the fed notes Because they signaled very clearly. That's what Jerome Powell does like smoke signals are coming out in december What he was going to do no surprise. There may be a tiny bit of acceleration But I think was a confluence of the omie stuff that's going on and some geopolitical unrest That's the issue well Maybe it was just like the the real real smart money knew it was coming and they already done those plays before that day Wednesday even came about and then it just led up to this part and then everybody knows and all of a sudden like You know what? I gotta sell and that's when we see that type of thing. All right So that takes care of that part Next question before we get into it. I'll say this. Well, the question is would you short the market right now? I know this is uh This this goes against the diamond hands type of mentality, right? We know that however These are the questions that we have to ask and again. We have to live in reality, correct So if we take a look at this We already defined the bear market and it makes a lot of sense, right? And then one of the things that talks about here Just like ben had said it's cyclical or long term could last for several weeks or months Short selling put options and inverse ETFs are some of the ways in which investors make money during a bear market, right? Well, if we're talking about this the sentiment the fear and greed index is 18 today If we're taking a look at the shorts. Yeah Yeah That's a win we'll take that We'll take it and then total liquidations just 48 hours ago. It was almost a billion. I think it was 850 million And now we see total liquidations if you were uh, you know liquidations if you were playing the shorts You probably do pretty well and actually yesterday. I even put out a uh a tweet I said, hey, you know if you're uh, if you're on leverage I feel sorry for you and then a couple people said rob. You know what you're talking about I just made a boatload of money by shorting everything. I was like, oh, that's right. You probably did So the question is would you short the market and this would be right for james? uh, well, I short a lot of stuff all the time and In full disclosure, I'm currently short some what some people call bitcoin crypto proxies like coinbase And I've been in that short for a while since it was like 320 Um, so I'll cover it at 225. I haven't I don't know where it is right now I should be close to there, but um one of the things that i'm always afraid of is because I I just look at again on chain stuff forgive me for that ben And I look at the dwindling supply draining by 100 000 a month All it takes is another tesla like one and a half billion dollar investment and we are going parabolic So I learned a long time ago never jump in front of a freight train And that's what I believe bitcoin is So in addition to answer your question in more detail the time to short it was at 68 k And I thought about it with some of the big toe stuff But then I just I just I just felt really confident for q1 But I didn't anticipate some of the other stuff that actually went on behind the scenes So I would not short at this level, but I would feel pretty confident selling some puts at this level Which is the opposite a little bit out of the money like yeah The 38 000 put I I'd feel a little more confident selling something like that I got you ben. What do you think I and we talked about this before me and you are kind of like the same But uh, what do you think about shorting any part of crypto? I mean I I wouldn't I mean it it seems like shorting it after a 40 drop into a major support area would probably Be a good way to get rekt. I would assume because I mean even if even if the direction is ultimately down Further than 40k Still seems like there's a good chance we could bounce, you know before that happens Um, I would say like I don't I don't ever short bitcoin. I I do sell it sometimes like back in Uh, you know earlier this year like in january february March and april I was selling bitcoin So that's probably about as close to shorting it as I actually get like I just sold most of my bitcoin back then I think that was a little bit more clear back then because we had just gone up 20x in a relatively short period of time And most indicators that I use were just flashing. It's like a huge sell. So I did Uh, I yeah, I mean in hindsight shorting it at 69k. I guess is the is the right answer, but Um, if I didn't short it then I'm not I'm not gonna short it at 40k Uh, so no, I mean I I wouldn't short. I wouldn't short bitcoin, but that's just Something I I've never I would never do so And it moves too fast a aka can spring up and jump out of nowhere when you're least expecting it to I mean you are the volatility of crypto already basically gives you like, you know, the That kind of those kinds of returns anyways, I guess, but I don't know. It's just my opinion Yeah, well, well here is a quick follow-up.  Oh, yeah leverage but on leverage I actually nibbled a little bit on bitcoin uh A few hours ago Under 42k.  That's for sure. All right I consider it parking like if you don't need the money for three months It's one of the safest places you can put it. So I look at it as a money market account I like that. Yeah, and I can't shorting the market is not in my is not in my dna I've got a pretty long term. I just see things pretty long term I know like right now if you Have come into the market like james talked about just recently. It's a Sucky day. It's a sucky week and it's probably been a sucky month. Let's be honest if it's just bitcoin and especially ethereum But uh, just remember like we all got into this a while ago. I was 2017 I think ben and james were 2019 2020 somewhere around there. I remember or even before then I was watching a bitcoin heavily in 2017 Yeah, watching it going up and then said, you know, I have the discipline of never chasing And I remember my brother law was buying close to 20k and I was like Oh, I want to but I didn't and then I started gathering in 2017 or sorry 2018 after the dip Okay, and then that was it I started following the market in 2011, but I was a student. I didn't have actually any money. Um I I I I bought a little bit Uh during two cycles ago, and then I I lot like I I saw it go up Back in 2013 and then I I didn't sell any I saw it come all the way back down. Um, and then in in 2017 I actually I for the first time I I actually took profits I mean 2017 was like the first time I feel like I actually like came out and and Made something of it before before I went back down No, shoot.  I know it sucks right now because you're like, hey I'm down 20 30 percent But if you wait over time time in the market is more important than timing the market Okay, yeah, and just to illustrate as well for the audience Bitcoin is up about 760 percent over the last 660 days So it's up about 1.15 percent a day and how many assets can do that? So When you zoom out, they are the numbers You know what and listen go ahead there I was gonna say one thing I wanted to point out too is Is going just quickly because I had this thought of going back to the whole like traditional bear market versus bull market When people think of 2019 no one thinks about it being a bull market for bitcoin, right? Like it's not like hey, we think of 2019 as parabolic year or anything Bitcoin went up 4x that year from from bottom to top right 4x And because this has not really been the same type of traditional bull market that we've seen in the past It certainly stands to reason that you know either later in 2022 or maybe in 2023 we could see What happens if we get a repeat of 2019? I mean a three or 4x move gets us well over 100k, right? So just remember you don't actually have to have A a year where bitcoin goes up 20x or something just to get us to 100k I we're actually a lot closer to 100k than I think a lot of people think in terms I mean percent gain it's only two and a half x from here Which I know right now in a downtrend seems like a lot whenever we're moving down No one can ever imagine it going up again, but whenever we're going up no one ever imagines it going down again Uh, I do think we'll we'll go up again, and I just remember it doesn't have to be sorry if you hear my kids crying It doesn't have to be the the you know the the typical bull market that you think of where it just goes up only for two years straight yeah, no no and To see this is the thing that like what you guys just said about you know the percentages like I know james again You said there's money coming in when I when I think about hedge funds And we take a look at I mean their whole job is to be you know index funds and only three or four beat the s and p 500 So I always think to myself if they were if they are as smart as they say they are And bitcoin has gone up this much and just ethereum and these are like the uh the blue chips Why don't they just do more of that and makes no it makes absolutely no sense to me Why the big money wouldn't come in in that way? I don't know grandmothers at the age of 80 who dca into bitcoin are beating 99 percent of all hedge funds Riddle me that I don't know it makes me it makes me crazy. All right. So next the last question the fed Is raising rates and tapering bonds buying? how does this affect Equities and in the in the grand scheme of thing also crypto because again like we talked about it seems like they're very skittish It's not like we don't see a lot of traditional finance players being a lot of like Seems like they're not a buy-and-hold type of crowd Anymore seem like they just uh get rich and get out and any any kind of sign of trouble. They're out of there It's weird. So Ben, what do you think about it? How are we going to go on this one? I mean, I think historically if you look at every time like the feds tapered I I don't think the stock market has put in Yeah, I thought they're put in losses or not huge gains like that year It doesn't mean it has to go down like it could just be like single-digit gains or something like a lot more tempered than like 25 Percent, which is what we saw in 2021 Um, and again, as you said hedge funds only three of them beat the s and p which by the way most hedge funds Closed down because you know, it's like two and twenty and there's the carry So if they do bad one year, they basically just shut down because they're never going to catch back up Actually start turning a crazy profit. So a lot of hedge funds are actually dumb money and in disguise as a smart money hedge fund but uh 2013 right, I mean we taper I think we tapered in 2013 the market went up, right, so um Look, I I I do think the the stocks are extended, but they're always extended and and I My my my thinking on the on the stock market for for this year is that um We probably won't see like a 25 percent gain again Like we saw in 2021, but I think it's more likely that we have single-digit gains than single-digit losses I think I I think it would be fair to say it's more likely. That's at least my own opinion on it Um, I also think it's interesting too because we saw we saw the dollar shoot up after the fed minutes Like it shot up while the while the stock market shot down and crypto shot down Now since then the dollar has gone back down to a lower level than where it was when the minutes were released And but but crypto hasn't actually you know, hasn't actually done anything in response to that yet And the stock market hasn't done anything in response to that yet So I don't really fully understand the why the market reacted the way it did as james said it It seemed like it was fairly standard back in december with what was going to happen. Um But I skimmed it and I was like, all right. This is basically what they said but yeah market participants freaked out Are we're going to have 20 percent corrections this year in the stock market? Probably but I actually think we'll still likely end the year in green Sounds good. In fact, I made a video right after the last fed meeting Telly in december exactly what's going to happen and that's what was going to happen. So there's Video evidence of it out there, but my take on this whole situation is yes, they will taper but remember people don't really understand what tape means that means they're Slowing down the amount of bond purchasing and yes, they may stop by march But they're going to find an excuse to start printing again And remember as well They will do maybe three 25 basis point increases, which is not that much But the more they increase interest rates the more they have to increase the deficit because the financing costs increase And that will also in turn slow GDP and could trigger some unemployment. That means I've got to print again So we are way beyond the point of any return right now mathematically They can't stop printing money. I've had many conversations with macro experts about this. I've analyzed the numbers myself We're good. It's going to happen This is just like saber rattling to calm the market down to try to get a handle on inflation Inflation is not going below 10 percent. Therefore the stock market 2022 has to go up by at least 10 percent Or else the zero returns That's the other thing and my take finally regarding bitcoin and how crypto ties into all of this Bitcoin isn't exactly fueled by quantitative reasoning It's a narrative that will be driven by chasing alpha So you look at the sidelines as four trillion dollars of money and there's 20 trillion of negative yielding bonds All need a home. Where are they going to put it? They got choices real estate. It's also black rock board at all S&P 500 very extended. It's above its 60 month moving average over the last two decades So it's time for that to kind of slow down a bit to just 10 percent gains And historically if you look back at what is the best performing forming asset of last 13 years 12 years? It's bitcoin. So I do believe it will be further allocations as per people like ray dalio now saying 1 to 2 percent is a no-brainer And and we'll see where it goes down. So that's what I see There's just so much money that needs a home. Where are you going to put it? People will allocate and it doesn't take a lot It doesn't take a lot of allocation of that say 4 plus 24 trillion like you need a tiny sliver For that to jack the price of bitcoin through the roof Yeah, I yeah, it's it all makes sense and then just like what uh, what ben had talked about. I don't think when we See all this this money just just floating around I don't understand why it actually can't find its way into where we're at right now Into the crypto and digital assets. It just doesn't The but that's the majority the world isn't ready the world still doesn't understand it The world is still afraid of the volatility the afraid of the risk. They're afraid of satoshi reappearing You know that type of stuff, but they're getting over that hump slowly with charlie I don't know etf later this year could potentially help with that I think too like if if if grayscale, I mean, I I think what is the timeline on a summer 2022 or something I say june june 22. Yeah, I mean like, you know people have asked me well, and you said it too Like what's the narrative right? There's got to be some narrative to get the ball rolling again Maybe it's a spot etf and and people people kind of buying an institution and that would give people a lot of people acts or Um, a lot more people exposure to the asset class and they can just go buy the etf I mean, obviously you we're going to just go buy spot bitcoin. They're not going to go buy buy Um, or we'll just go to the exchange and buy it, but there are a lot of people out there They don't want to you know, they don't want to be responsible for You know having their crypto or even trying to figure out something new like an exchange that holds just cryptocurrency Yeah, I know I know that you guys You know the etf. I just do not see it. I just I mean as long as genzel's in there I just don't see him actually doing it june Maybe but I've been here in etf since I got into it. So all name we have is futures and that's garbage The futures etf was a precursor For the hedge funds to be able to play his brothers if I could goman and other places So but it has to come and if it doesn't the u.s Will just drain money and you know people like kathy wood is already pumping money into the canadian etfs right now Right, that's the thing like if if they don't do it They're severely hurting the united states because it's going to stifle innovation here people are just going to go elsewhere You know like if they're not going to companies aren't going to stick around in the united states forever if we keep having these You know lack of clarity on on the markets and or if if they just keep not allowing for a spot etf So I think they again, I'm with you rob like we've been hearing it forever, right? I I do hope that this is the year that I I hope that this is the year Yeah, well last thing I will say is that I know we want money to come in but look at how skittish the markets are just by A a whiff of the fed doing something crazy like you know raising rates by you know a quarter three quarters Dropped it, but again It's uh, it recovers or it goes sideways with my powers last question And this I think is one of the most telling ones And uh, I think james you did a video in this yesterday about whale accumulation It seems like there's a side of whales that are massively accumulating There's another side that's just selling off. So the question is which one's going to win Which one in the grand scheme of things is going to be the big winner? So because you did that video james Take it away I didn't even know I was about that sometimes I can't remember what I did yesterday everything every day bleeds together But uh, yeah, it was kind of pointing out Hey everybody was freaking out. I was like, well, look what the the smart money is doing Look what the big players are doing You know, you've got sailor accumulating as always that doesn't necessarily mean anything You got by an ants that 43 000 chunk of bitcoin is a massive chunk You look at the on-chain 100 000 is going illiquid every month So 12 13 months from now at this rate, there'll be nothing left Now, I think who will win they'll always be a little bit of manipulation, but that level of manipulation Will get harder and harder because every time the whales drop their 8 000 10 000 12 000 bitcoin on the market to cascaded during a low volume tide The snipers are there and they're grabbing it and they're not able to buy it back quick enough And I think that's kind of the funny funny play we have so Long term if you have like anybody out there the big message is if you've got a three-year time frame You're good. Just dca in if you are a speculator and you need a return in two months to put a down payment on a house Don't play that game And that's just the way I see so short term traders Will continue to dump on stuff There will be a little bit of sideways chop for the next 60 90 days and then it should be back up by everything that I see So which whales will win I think gathering I think some of the smart whales even the ones that have been around for a long time They're still layering in they're buying 500 or 1000 bitcoin Every every thousand two thousand dollar dip and you can see that on whale alert. I've looked at some of those numbers this morning So I think it's all good. I think the whales that continue to accumulate Up because they're waiting for the hundred thousand then they'll play games and start dumping more perhaps But they know we're going to that level the question is when is it is it nine months from now? Is it two years from now? It's gonna happen. We just don't know when I'm okay with that. I'm okay with 100k. Then what do you got? I'm okay with 100k too, but I would say like by the time we get to 100k My guess is a lot of retail aren't going to be there to experience that because they will have capitulated long before As we're seeing today right like as we're seeing today like a lot of a lot of the A lot of I mean, yes, well, there are some whales selling There's also a lot of retail selling for a loss right now. Okay, like that's a fact We know a lot of people are selling for a loss and I've always sort of wondered Because I never really fully agreed with the stock to flow like the idea of going up that quickly or the idea of non diminishing returns, right? So I always wonder like how are we going to get to 100k if everyone's thinking we're going to 100k by december 2021 And so I think the answer is well, it's not it wasn't ever going to happen and the answer is it's going to happen It's just not going to happen when people are thinking it's going to happen because what we do know Is whenever bitcoin breaks this prior all-time high It goes it typically goes parabolic and the the all-time high is at 69k now. So For us to get to a new high we have to go to 70k. That's not that far removed from 100k. So by the time we get to 100k There's I feel like a lot of retail investors are going to be kind of late late to the ship In terms of going back to the the question about the whales Yeah, in the short term I I think it's anyone's guess because the the whales that are selling today could be buyers at 30k if they dump at that low Right and so they they could win both ways Although 40 if 40k holds then then obviously they're it's not looking good. I've also noticed there are a lot of whales who accumulated in the summer They have not yet sold any but they're not buying any either Um, so I thought that was interesting because they they bought they they bought the summer drop But I haven't seen them yet by this drop. So I'm kind of waiting to see like, okay Are they gonna start buying this drop when's that going to happen because remember every time we drop another a few thousand dollars We unlock more potential buyers, right? Um, so in the short term I'd say like like James said if you need the money in a few months It's not a game you want to play If you have a if you have a long-term outlook on it It's completely irrelevant because bitcoin will very likely trend up with time and Uh, it's only a matter of time before we get those to those levels that we're looking for Yeah, I gotta agree for most of what for most of what you guys said I I agree something Where do you disagree? That etf. I don't I'm sorry. I don't think it's happening man But um, I gotta tell you I gotta tell you to be honest with you What a difference time makes because I remember sitting here where people are probably sitting watching this video Getting so ticked off at at watching youtubers watch and listening to uh, or reading the tweets and going How can these people be so calm? God damn, I can't believe they're so calm because if we just went down 30 40 percent And now I and now it's it's a total roll over so I totally understand now. It's just because When you're in the when you're in the market for so long you kind of see things and you kind of know, okay It's not so bad We've I've got my positions I've done the job that I was supposed to do when it was hard boring and dollar-crossed average in And played the long game and that's the easiest and the best way that I can see it go forth. So Yeah, that's that that triggers a question for both of you in my mind because You know, you can nearly gauge what the crypto market is doing by looking at the sentiment and comments on twitter and youtube It's kind of funny like the negativity just overflows and people are like Really upset but one of the issues that gets me. I did a detailed deep dive on luna with very detailed price prediction models My price prediction for luna is to go to like 135 138 by the end of the year, which is a 2x.  Who would ever invest in something that just gets a 2x But one one of the problems that I think the new people to the space don't understand We had the most incredible year last year, you know, if you got into anything in crypto in 2020 You made a killing in 2021 that you could have thrown a dart, but now it's it's it's a different world People are going to get their 10x 100x gains anymore But what do you what do you say to them to set realistic expectations? Because if you look at the average hedge fund return you look at the average mutual fund return Like very few mutual funds even beat the s and b 500 So we look at arc invest when the best investors of our time kathy wood and her team They got crushed their average fund was down 49 in a year when the stock market's up 28% or whatever it was So what do you guys say to people to set realistic expectations for? Not looking for these 100x's anymore and not gambling on crazy cryptos money grabs as ben calls them Well like for me personally when when people are first of all I can I can feel the the despair sometimes and the tweets and the comments and I and believe me I feel it because I've been there when I talk to people I always just ask them well first of all I have to know like what are your goals here Like are your goals to to ride this out all the way kingdom come and diamond hands forever or is your goal here to Stop working your nine to five your soul sucking job if you have that maybe you love your job I don't know or is it just to make a little bit of extra money the big thing to me is When I'm talking to to everybody and we're just we're discussing these things and I know like some people are down I just say that it's the it's the same type of advice. I give everybody else.  I always talk about the utt Look at the utility you look at the team and look at the tokenomics And if you can do that and kind of find a good project you want to write out write that project out And then but there's sometimes you actually do have to get out and uh, that's just kind of what I write tell them Ben I think that was a great response. I mean I the only thing I would say would be um You know, first of all, whenever we're in a bearish trend, no one can ever imagine Crazy games again, right back in 2018 2019 I remember tons of people saying don't buy bitcoin. Don't buy ethereum because their market caps are already so high They can't go up another 10x. Okay, ethereum was at 80 bucks. And now it's I mean even even with the drop it's still at 3200 dollars so We need time, right? This is what we need. We just need time We need lots of it and we will trend higher again if you look at the Like a lot of the richest people in the world They don't like warren buffet, right? They don't he doesn't care what the market does tomorrow, right? He doesn't care. It's completely irrelevant And the reason is because you just assume that the market will trend up with time And I think that's the the general idea. So to manage expectations. I think that what people should do um in general is Make sure you're invested in projects first of all that you actually believe in and weren't just chill to you Somewhere that you have no idea what they are So I've I've said for a few weeks now like consolidate those positions Into into actually useful coins now. It's up to your own judgment to figure out what what those useful coins are But I think that would be the first thing but then also I think another thing to do to manage expectations is to Not assume that there's always going to be a parabolic rally next week Okay, and that's what that's what I think is causing a lot of the pain today Is I just feel like there were so many people calling for a parabolic q4 of 2021 and it was hyped beyond belief for three years I mean a parabolic rallying q4 2021 just because it was parabolic in q4 2017 so I think the best way to to manage expectations is to invest right Just dca and then eventually we'll go back up right but until then it's It's somewhat silly to to say that it has to happen by tomorrow or the next day or the next day because No one really knows. I mean is is actually the the complete and honest truth No one really knows exactly when it'll go up But I do have high conviction in that it will go up Yeah, and I will say before we get this question. I will say this I was For me, I thought it was uh, we're gonna see some like I always said the fireworks and I was wrong on that one I thought that we were gonna gonna hit that just didn't happen But what does that mean along in the long run? I I I I sit back. I take account of what happens and just take a look and go Okay, and when I happen this month or next month, but it will happen. I know where things are going I just can't tell you exactly when it's happened. All right The question for this is for james Would you hold all your salon at this point if you still hold a 5x or hold don't necessarily need to do right now Or 10x we disparate so what would you do james? So I check myself every single day And I check the top 20 smart contract platforms and I analyze them great detail And I check out the team I check out the money flows both in and out I check out the technology the adoption the tvl the dApps that are being built the integration The scalability tps and I still come back to the same thesis nothing nothing Beats salana two things come close nothing beats it.  Oh It's up 7x. It should be up 10x or whatever. It's going to 400 500 bucks. We just don't know when Like everything else is delayed, but take your initial 20 bucks off the table So if you have a 7x take a seventh off the table let the rest ride Or if you find a faster horse stick it there. That's what I would advise. That's what I do myself Um, and you know, I've been debating with myself what should I do with my ethereum? That's my biggest struggle right now Should I Take the tax hit because of course base is very low and just move it somewhere else Or do I have faith in the deflationary ethereum going forward? Do I have faith and Vitalik and his team to solve all the problems that they have? I'm still holding still waiting But again, I check myself every day But make a man if you're concerned take your initial investment off the table Settle that keep the rest let it ride or if you've identified a find a horse and I like that thing from rava's all the utt utility team and tokenomics I look at 10 things and and just keep checking those things as well and watch for the tide to turn Yeah, makes sense ben. Do you got any salana? um I have a very small position Uh that I only got I got it actually fairly late I only got it because everyone always asked me about it But because I never owned any like I never had an opinion on it So like well, maybe if I buy some I'll I'll just be naturally inclined to follow it a little bit more Unfortunately, I haven't really followed it anymore. Um I I mean I to be completely honest like I I missed the boat on salana Like I I thought about buying it at one point and then I I didn't um So now I don't I can't really give you any any good advice on salana. I will say though that I mean salana like a lot of layer ones um I I still think they will continue to ultimately trend up But I mean we're we're currently obviously in a correction And so I mean we could all we could certainly go much lower if bitcoin If 40k doesn't hold a lot I mean all the layer ones will we'll go down for a little bit if 40k doesn't hold And I think what what james said makes a lot of sense like Yeah, it's not it's not a word the worst site in the world to take some off the table like get your money back Um, and then you can use that money to go do something else right like make another investment And I hope that goes up five acts or something, right? Uh, so it's not the worst idea in the world to do that but at the same time Fundamentally all of these projects They haven't changed from where they were two months ago. It's just that market sentiment has and so Um, yeah, I would I would mostly agree with what what james said And I and as way the way I've done well in life is to have very high conviction and very few names The more names you hold Unless your overall returns will be because there'll only be a few winners But that being said I do hedge my hedges and what I mean by that is for example Uh, I had a big position in ethereum. I got concerned about ethereum. Is there neath killer? Searched high and low for a long time Found it what I believe to be it and got into that as my hedge against ethereum And that's worked out pretty well now. I have a hedge against salon and that's phantom So buy that too As a side investment is luna as well. So there are my kind of three big ones right now Yeah, like I mean like when slanta came in like just like I missed the boat at a buck 25 or whatever else it is But I know james was talking about it. Mike the investor talked about I'm like, yeah I should look and do it. I got some and I was going pretty heavy for a while And then, you know, you had that shut down and there was another that that d dos attack and things like that so Like if it wasn't for like and let me just explain this every every project has an issue Nobody is perfect if everybody was if there was one project that was perfect It would already have taken over bitcoin and it hasn't hit that part yet So there's there's things that that concern can they You know get their way out of it. Sure. They got like rock stars as far as like, uh, you know the developers And that's what you know fall developers, but it does Like that concerns me on that a theory concerns me because 2.0 wasn't coming out until it ain't coming out next year I'm pretty sure about that and then you've got problems with with cardano. Believe me. I hear about people behind the scenes You got problems. I mean you've got problems with avalanche. You got I I'm not going to go on But you see why I say here and just to check one point you said as well They had one outage for 17 and a half hours, okay The rest was congestion. No ddos attack. That's congestion That's basically the system being hit so hard by too many transactions at the same time Because the transaction fees are so low and by the way the same thing happened to maddock a few days ago as well And the same thing's been happening to ethereum for years. So it's called congestion everybody. So Be careful. You say four outages because you rattle a lot of people. Um, I just I I just wanted to hear you say something about that So It's completely true that like literally every layer one has has some like, you know, you can you can poke holes at anything By the way, we talked about this coin a few weeks ago and I just had to had to mention it What do you what do you guys think about shame link because it's actually It's actually doing something, you know, like and I this was one of the reasons why I always liked having it in My portfolios because I remember, you know back in 2019 2020 the market wasn't doing a whole lot in terms of all coins Link was just going straight up. So I'm like, man, if there's any confirmation that you need that the market is least short term bearish It's the fact that link Is actually It's resilient. It's one of the most resilient coins when the market is bearish that I've I've ever seen for sure Absolutely, I think it was December 30th or New Year's Eve and I was looking around to deploy a little bit of capital I was looking at all my top 20 names. Where am I going to stick at stock market miners, whatever else I put it in chain link because the The ta on it looked incredible and I knew it had no downside and I wanted an asset with no downside And it's done very very well since then so it's funny if we're looking for uh, you mentioned What is a bear market indicator or a crypto winter indicator that is chain link going up? So it's a classic one Yeah, this was from well, first of all, there's a question about uh, what about investment into mara like uh, bitcoin by proxy I think uh, james he might get into riots mara those type of stocks. Yeah, I've analyzed all the miners. I don't like marathon or Riot or any of those names. I sold my hut eight right before year end. I cleaned out my closet got rid of everything and But I do own clean spark still which took a little bit of a hit got in a 10. It's now under 10 I do believe of all the names and I'm doing a reviewed minor analysis that is still one of the best But I look at 20 different factors to value them So I don't like the one that they mentioned Which one you like riot? No, clean spark clean spark. Interesting. And I like hut eight as well But hut eight got a little bit frothy. So uh time it takes most of the day Remember when when bitcoin rebounds these miners will explode That's what happens But when the hash rate goes through the roof The miners suffer because their cost of goods sold Which they're not selling they're huddling goes through the roof too Yeah, it's all related.  I say that right kazakhstan kazakhstan.  I'm happy for that and and uh, we covered this yesterday about uh, clean Clean energy or green energy where they're they're thinking about uh, classifying natural gas and nuclear As clean energy and I was like great, you know, what uh, what texas has it's got a lot of natural gas You know what else it also has a bunch of miners So everybody in kazakhstan can come over here and start working fine And uh, that's what I got and then I was when I answered this one He says uh, it's it's easy for you guys and me now Because you have taken your initial investment out and that's a pretty good pretty good play We people talk about diamond hands But in all honesty if you're not taking out profits along the way You're setting yourself for a very big fall And I remember when I I had an exit strategy and it was tough because I was bad at it But there was one or a couple actually hit when bitcoin hit 60k actually took my 20 out And I was called a moron which probably true But it doesn't matter because when I took that 60k out It pays for things like this and I can actually put them in other assets So yeah, if you have a have you know, if you're thinking about it Take your initial investment out what and let the uh, the The house money go, okay I can't say that If you sell yeah I think that's it. Look and listen, this has been a very long one. We're all we're open almost in an hour right now So there is one more here Two quick questions What would you three invest for teams in Roth IRA and for cold storage? Do you recommend multi-sig or have multiple cold wallets? Ben take the one about the cold storage one Or both of them if you want I mean with a Roth, I mean, I guess if it Are they talking about like crypto? Would you would you three invest for teams like put would you put your your crypto into a Roth IRA for your team for your kids later? I think so I mean, I'm crypto. I have crypto in a Roth so I mean, it's it's nice because you can you can actually You can actually take profits on it without taking the tax hit, you know So yeah, I mean I would For cold storage, I mean for for storage my my crypto. I actually basically do everything like I I have some on You know multiple cold wallets some on on other wallets some on I mean there's I have a little bit on exchange I mean sometimes you just have to have a little bit on exchanges so that you can actually have like limit orders and that kind of stuff set Um, yeah, so I actually I actually use all of them I I just I like to spread my risk around in case any any I don't have single-point failure or something if if one thing goes wrong Cool James, what do you got? Do you I don't think I don't think you do Roth IRAs. Do you? No, I don't yeah I like to have my Long story of that. I like that flexibility Um, but regarding storage and self custody. It's a very persona specific It really depends on who you are how sophisticated you are etc And be very careful. I actually did a video on which storage system is best for which personality And check that out on my channel too Awesome, and I will just say this uh, if you're Thinking about a Roth IRA Uh, you can do one of these things which is uh What peter teal did peter teal You put two thousand bucks Into his roth array and turned into five billion dollars and I talked about that There's a link in description talks about itrust our IRA and how he did that because it was mostly just his shares with paypal Which were nothing and turned into uh, you know five billion you can pay one iota of taxes So that is it for today gentlemen. I want to say thanks It was a long one, but it was I think it's good to kind of ease some fears It's good to to finally hear the word bear Bearish market and not everybody, you know, totally fall apart for Pete's sakes. Don't laugh too hard james. It's okay Somebody took it A little bear that I have and a bull Yeah, because there's there's nothing just like ben said there's really nothing to to be worried about it takes a little bit more Time we're not talking about winter here where it's going to last for two three five ten years Uh, it's just a it's just a bearish sentiment And like james talks about there's a lot of money coming in in q1 2022 and I I hope he's right Crypto seasons we are now in what do you call crypto seasons every three months. It'll be something different I'll take it. All right guys. Thanks so much for coming by appreciate it. Thank you audience Thank you as well ben and rob and great to see you both again And in next week we'll be on ben's channel Thanks. Oh