I published this longer post below on X, and given the responses already coming in, it felt worth turning into a proper newsletter piece.
The short version: I haven't felt this much conviction to buy cryptoassets in years. Not because I'm numb to the drawdown, but because I've seen this movie twice before and I know exactly what scene we're in. The people asking me if I've "finally learned my lesson" are the same ones who were asking whether they should buy BTC at $100K.
Here's what I tweeted, with the full draft in newsletter format below.
| CONTINUE BELOW TO READ FULL POST |
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Before you read my full post, more on the tweet I quoted.
Tom McClellan, a famous technical analyst, flagged something worth paying attention to just days ago: the non-commercial traders in Bitcoin futures (historically the "smart money" side of that market) are moving net long with notable urgency. The last two times positioning looked like this, the chart tells the story pretty clearly (going back to September 2023 at $25k BTC before a move to $100k in December 2024, as well as May 2025 at ~$80k BTC before moving back to new highs at $126k in October 2025).
He points out: this is a condition, not a signal. It doesn't tell us when. But combined with the sentiment environment I described above, friends asking if I’ve "learned my lesson," schadenfreude at a peak, mainstream media back on the crypto-is-dead beat, it's another data point pointing in the same direction.
Smart money is accumulating quietly while retail capitulates loudly. Not a new story. But it's the story right now.
So where does that leave us?
Let me expand on a few things the tweet format couldn't fully capture.
The script hasn't changed, but the underlying story has.
In 2018 and 2022, the bear market cynics had a reasonable point lurking beneath the schadenfreude: the infrastructure wasn't there yet, institutional adoption was largely theoretical, and regulatory clarity was essentially nonexistent. You could make a credible case that crypto was still in the "maybe" column.
That case is genuinely harder to make now. Robinhood, BlackRock, Fidelity, JPMorgan, Franklin Templeton, Apollo, these aren't firms dabbling. They're building and deploying serious capital into DeFi, largely on Ethereum, with multi-chain expansion following. The CLARITY Act still shows a 45% chance of being signed into law in 2026, which would deliver more regulatory certainty to the cryptoassets industry than AI currently has from regulators. The watershed moment for DeFi going to trillions has already started — most people just can't see it yet because the memecoin mania of last year did real, lasting damage to the perception of the entire space.
That's worth acknowledging directly. The value extraction games led by Pump memecoins, 99.99% pure garbage tokens flooding the market, confusing tickers, serial bad actors, created immeasurable noise that obscured what was actually being built underneath. The cynics aren't wrong that a lot of what happened in 2024-2025 was a circus. They're just wrong about what it means for what comes next.
The 4-year cycle is still undefeated.
I think it could finally break. But a top in 2025 and a low in 2026 is cementing the self-fulfilling prophecy once again, just with less volatility and more dispersion across the market than previous cycles. The people who are calling for new lows right now, with BTC down 47% and ETH down 61% from ATHs, and countless majors down 80-90%, are doing the same thing the perma-bulls were doing at the top: extrapolating the current trend indefinitely.
The risk/reward on shorting here looks worse than buying the top did in the aftermath of the October 2024 highs. That's not a hot take, that's just math.
What I'm actually doing.
Same thing I always do: buying periodically, averaging in, looking to buy blood and worst sentiment in spot only, and keeping a patient long-term perspective even in the face of some real headwinds including the AI doomer narrative that isn't going away.
For anyone buying stores of value like ETH and BTC, or revenue-generating, value-accruing DeFi tokens like HYPE, LIT, ETHFI, PENDLE, SKY, AAVE, SPK, UNI, JUP, MORPHO, and FLUID, my advice is simply no leverage, spot only, and a year from now you're going to feel like a king. Remember, if you choose to buy and make your own investing decisions because this is NOT advice for when to buy or if you should buy… but if you do buy, spot and avoiding leverage is key.
None of us retail participants are really in charge of timing the bottom. The crypto whales and the institutional size coming from Wall Street will decide when the market has found its floor. But the signs are accumulating (see Tom’s tweet on the COT Report). And the wave into the next uptrend in digital assets is there to ride for anyone focused on serious, value-accruing assets, particularly those that stand to benefit from finance moving 24/7 onchain and from AI agents becoming the dominant demographic of DeFi.
The bottom line.
It's easy to call for new highs in a bull run. Everyone loves being a bull when things are going up. Now it's become equally fashionable to call for new lows, claim pure cynicism, and perform skepticism while the same people who were asking about $1M BTC and $20K ETH at the top quietly wait to ask again at the next one.
I didn't come nearly 10 years into this to get shaken out at the exact moment Wall Street is literally buying our DeFi tokens, ETH, and BTC, with more on the way.
Do with this what you will.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing written in The Edge Newsletter or said on The Edge Podcast is a recommendation to buy or sell tokens or securities. This content is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing shared here is financial advice. Any views expressed in our content are solely the opinion of that writer, host, or guest. Always do your own research. DeFi Dad, Nomatic, and guests may have positions in the assets or other matters discussed in this content. DeFi Dad holds ETH, BTC, ETHFI, and FLUID mentioned in this post.
