Does JAMES CHECK think that bitcoin only goes up from here?

Does James Czech think that Bitcoin only goes up from here? As you know, if you're a regular listener, I love James Czech, who goes by Checkmate. Um, he is a Bitcoin onchain analyst, which means he spends all day long staring at charts and graphs on the movement of Bitcoin and what we can learn about human psychology and human behavior based on what is happening on the Bitcoin blockchain. Now, we don't know anything about what the actual humans uh which humans are who because the Bitcoin blockchain does not have names on it. But you can tell when someone who has held Bitcoin for 5 years or 7 years or 12 months or two months decides to move their Bitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain. Now, sometimes they move their Bitcoin because they're moving it from River or Coinbase over to Bitkey for long-term storage. That's great. Sometimes they're moving it because they're moving it back to an exchange uh to spend it because they are going to improve the lives of themselves and their family somehow. You don't know. You don't know who the people are and what they're doing. But the flows of human behavior follow certain patterns because humans, you know, for all eternity have sort of exhibited the same behaviors and they they make the same smart moves and they make the same dumb moves and they tend to do it at about the same times. So, does James Czech think that $60,000 back on February 5th was the bottom? The short take is he doesn't know. He gives it about 60/40 odds that it was the bottom. Meaning 60% chance we never see a price cheaper than 60,000, which we've already experienced. 40% chance the price slightly goes below it. All right. So, what does he say about the likelihood of those things? First of all, he talks about uh price pain and time pain. Price pain is when the price rapidly drops creating the terror and fear in the hearts and minds of investors which is a common experience for anybody who's invested in anything. And then there's time pain when the price just grinds sideways. Maybe it's a little up, maybe it's a little down, maybe it's just chopping. He calls it chopolidation. It's the combination of the word consolidation and the word chop. Chop solidation. So on one hand, the route down to $60,000 was so fast and so abrupt that it basically wiped out all the leverage of the system. It triggered everybody's stop losses. It basically, you know, separated the wheat from the chaff really fast. So there's a strong argument to be said to be made that 60,000 was the bottom. But on the flip side, it happens so quickly that typically these things take time to play out. Just the way humans are, when the price of something drops, it takes a while for the market to digest it. We've used the example below or before of a pig and a python. No matter how fast a python swallows a pig, it is going to take that python a long time to digest it. It just is. You can't short circuit that process. Well, when the price of something goes way high really fast, like gold did last year or like Bitcoin has done numerous times in history, it takes time to digest that move. The marketplace just takes time. Same on the way down. The price drops, it takes a while for the marketplace to absorb and get accustomed to and get used to being at that new lower or higher price. And James Czech's concern is that we have not had the time pain yet. He would say, "Look, you know, maybe maybe the all-time high was October 6th of last year, which it was, and maybe the all-time low is only four months later, which is October 6th to November, December, January, February 5th, so technically one day short." He's like, "Look, maybe maybe 4 months is long enough of the price dropping, but historically it's been longer than that." And you know, so sure, maybe this Bitcoin bare market is like the shortest one ever. And from the peak to the trough is only four months and then we spend, you know, more than three years climbing higher. But also maybe not. Maybe we have some time pain ahead of us. And if we have some time pain ahead of us, we might have some price pain ahead of us. Meaning in addition to just grinding sideways, there could be some big drops along the way. And one of those drops could be big enough to undercut 60,000. In fact, his preference would be that it actually would undercut 60,000 one last time. And the reason for that is that the way markets work is oftent times you'll get an initial price capitulation which is a big price drop. Then the the price will grind down and around for a long time and then it will come back and it will do one last price capitulation before everybody just gives up and moves on at which point the price just goes way high for a really long time. So we haven't had the second price capitulation uh yet. uh we went down to 60,000 but really we have not gone back and revisited that. Now that doesn't mean we have to. Bitcoin's price doesn't always do that. Other assets prices don't always do that but they do it enough that James check tends to like to see that behavior before he's absolutely comfortable that we've experienced sufficient time pain and price pain to officially have a bare market behind us. And in this case again he's just not 100% confident that that is behind us. Again nobody nobody knows. we just don't absolutely positively uh know. So anyway, uh it's good chance that the price t pain and the time pain is behind us, but again just not there's just not a good way to absolutely know. Uh one thing that is points to the fact that we probably have uh bottomed is a bunch of people are flipping negative. It's called the um the funding rate on futures. I don't know if it's futures or perpetual swaps or whatever it is anyway, but it's whether more people are going short versus long, meaning betting the price will go up versus down. Long being the price goes up and short being the price goes down. And we've seen uh funding rates flip negative, meaning more people are trying to short Bitcoin, betting that it'll go down, than to long Bitcoin, betting that it'll go up. And typically, humans do that at exactly the wrong time. meaning they all conclude that there's going to be one more big downward capitulation and therefore they all bet on that and they typically all bet on that right before it doesn't happen or right after it's already happened and they bet it's going to happen again and then it never does. I mean, humans are just the worst when it comes to investing. Their instincts, your instincts as a human will almost always tell you to do the opposite in investing of what you should be doing. when it feels safe to invest is when the price is the highest and it's been going up the longest which paradoxically is when there's probably going to be a price correction and conversely when the price is the lowest and it's the scariest and it seems the most dangerous to invest is actually the best time because the asset is the most on sale. So anyway, James Czech doesn't know. Uh I think he would still put it at 60% odds that 60,000 was the bottom, 40% odds that we go revisit it. He would like to see one last price capitulation below 60,000 because it would line up a little bit better with the historical patterns of how humans behave. They tend to have an initial price capitulation on the on a big sort of price correction. Then you get chop solidation where the price grinds sideways and wears it wears everyone out, scares everyone out. As Jack Mard says, scare them out, wear them out, wear them out, scare them out. That's what markets do to people. And then when all of that's done and everybody's been worn out and scared out, then there's one last flush to just eliminate the last of the riff raff. Every last person using leverage, every last person doing something stupid with their portfolio, they just get one last flush and then the market goes up for three years in a row. So anyway, um I don't know if we'll get that one last flush or if the $60,000 was a big enough flush that it cleared out all the riff raff and the people doing stupid stuff and using too much leverage and you know, whatever. But we don't know. But anyway, uh the thing I love about James Check is it's just it just gives you so much insight into the behavior patterns of what people are doing. It's like, as I've said before, it's like a weatherman. The weatherman cannot predict the weather, but the weatherman can tell you what's happening, how long it's likely to last based on past history, and what you're likely to experience ahead. And that is just very helpful. If I were sitting here with 100% of my net uh worth in Bitcoin, and literally I had no, you know, I did not have James Czech to give me a twice a week update on what things look like on the ground, it'd be a lot harder to hold Bitcoin. But because James Czech is there, I'm getting twice a week, sometimes three times a week, regular updates of exactly what's happening in the world of Bitcoin, how people are behaving, what they're doing. Uh, I mean, everything you could possibly want to know about what's happening in the world of Bitcoin. I'm getting those updates. I'm getting them twice a week. It's just gives you a ton of confidence when you have that weather man by your side saying, "Hey, you're in a cold snap. Let me tell you exactly how that came about. We had a cold cold front come in from the the west or the north. It's blowing across us. It'll probably clear out in two days. You know, it might take three, might take four, but probably two. I mean, it's just a lot easier to live through a cold snap or a, you know, a snowstorm if you know what's going on and if you know how how long on average these things have lasted in the past, how cold on average temperatures have gotten in February or March. Like if you got somebody there saying, "Hey, that doesn't mean we can't set a new all-time record low for temperatures, but on average in the month of February, the price doesn't or the uh you know, temperature doesn't go below 17°." Again, it doesn't mean it can't go lower. It just means if it's 17° outside, you think, "Yeah, if we're already at a record low, it's probably not going to go much lower because we're already at a record low." It's just super helpful. So anyway, uh it doesn't change the bottom line, which is buy as much Bitcoin as you can, hold on to it for as long as conceivably possible. Same advice as always. Never it's not going to change. It's just that simple. And over the long haul, any price you buy Bitcoin at over a long enough time frame is going to look cheap. And you just got to be patient. Patient. Hang in there. Don't sell your Bitcoin. You know, try to ignore the price if it stresses you out. And if you're considering buying more, buy more. Buy as much as you can. Same advice as always.