 fair value for bitcoins around 55k so i think we drift upwards toward that level but then the punters are gonna come and we're already up 100% so that leaves a 5x from here when i talked to mark yusko back in february he told me that the end of the crypto bear market was just around the corner i was skeptical but he was actually right a new crypto rally has finally kicked off with blackrock filing an application for a spot bitcoin ETF yusko thinks this is just the beginning of a parabolic move that will bring bitcoin to new world's time highs in anticipation of the halving set to take place in april 2024 in this interview i talked with mark about his crypto price outlook for the next months and the main catalyst we should look for i'm jovanni on this show we challenge the ideas that shape the world of crypto in each episode we assess a crypto narrative a macroeconomic or a potential disruptive technology only the most solid ideas will make it to the other side so mark last time we talked i think back in february you were saying that this year we were gonna see the start of the crypto summer so this renewed bitcoin crypto bull market what do you think has the crypto summer started and do you think that the application by blackrock for a bitcoin for a spot bitcoin ETF triggered that the start of the crypto summer well we ended crypto spring uh in june i think i think it was kind of you know last june 15th where we had the the the bottom then we had another interim bottom after the ftx debacle and then you know this year uh june 15th i think to me was was the trigger now people look at it and say oh but we had this big rally from december of last year into into june so isn't that isn't that the rally to me that's just the beginning kind of that that got us back to even over the previous year and now i i you know i look at at where we're headed in a in a crypto summer now what does crypto summer mean well it's it's where the attention of the markets kind of shifts toward this having event in this period between now and the having i think we drift upward towards fair value what's fair value i will argue based on a metcastle model fair value for bitcoins around 55k so i think we drift upwards toward that that level but then the punters are going to come right if we go from 30 to 55 everybody's gonna say oh we're going to the moon again people are going to throw out the multi hundred thousand dollar targets and we probably will have a speculative blow off top sometime in 2024 that leads to the next downturn and the next crypto winner so it's a long answer okay that's interesting so you expect the next downturn to be already next year well 2025 so the downturn so the way i think about it and it's just my way of thinking about the four year cycle tends to run june to june ish so you know we saw crypto spring june 22 to june 23 june 23 to kind of april may 24 will be crypto summer then we'll get the blow off top kind of from may of next year to to kind of may april may of the following year and then then we start the next downturn sometime leverage will come back my my my one thought though on that jivani is that the leverage in this cycle probably won't be as bad as the previous two meaning there won't be as much leverage available and therefore the highs probably won't be as high you know if you think about the two cycles ago we went up 40 fold a big move then last cycle we went up 20 fold this cycle for i think probably more like 10 fold and we're already up 100 so that leaves a 5x from here so could i see a price in the 150 range yeah yeah i can see okay yeah that's pretty realistic perspective on the future outlook on the bitcoin price i would just want to talk about the latest big news of crypto which is the application by blackrock to for a bitcoin for a spot bitcoin etf which apparently triggered the beginning of this crypto summer i've said for for a long time actually for over a year that no one else was going to get approved for the etf but you know the wink of us twins and arca and and and dcg all these guys were making the application like they're going to get stamp rejected i said the only person i thought that had a shot was was blackrock there's a lot like well because they're part of the group i mean they're part of the incumbents and so shockingly uh they released their application now it coincidentally with the beginning of what i'd deem crypto summer blackrock shows up and says hey we want to do an etf i think it will be approved i don't know when right but but my guess is you know sometime in q3 or early q4 i think that is going to change some of the dynamics of this crypto bull market and the reason is um just supply and demand right there's there's a whole bunch of people who aren't going to sell at any price and demand is going to rise if a bit if a spot etf is approved and it's to me the antithesis of what happened in november of 21 when they approved the futures etf and from that point prices just went down well why is that if there was a futures etf approved why didn't that increase the price for a bitcoin well because futures etfs do the opposite they actually allow banks and other large speculators to short the price of the asset because you can create a paper asset out of thin air and you've seen it in the gold markets you've seen it in the oil markets you've seen it in the in the commodities markets now we've got the onset of what could be not just tens of billions but potentially hundreds of billions of demand from people who trust black rock right there are a lot of institutions they just trust larry and and black rock and and they will buy this asset and so i just want to follow up on that because um i was talking not long ago with an etf analyst at bloomberg his name is eric balchunas he said that the yes lover yeah he said that basically according to his estimates this uh this spot etf has around 51 he puts the odds that 51 percent getting approved 49 not getting approved so he he is like tilting more towards a positive outcome what is your estimate of the odds look i i mean i love eric i think he's a great guy i think he's being way conservative black rock is uh applied for 576 ETFs they've gotten 575 approved they've only lost once i would say the odds are way higher than 51 49 look i i think it's a done deal i i think it's been a done deal for years they just been waiting for the right time um i i actually think it's gonna be approved but you know i never say 100% because you know things can happen but i'd say 51 is very conservative but that's not a bad position to take as you said black rock is one of the incumbents uh there is this narrative that say that basically uh the incumbents are trying to take over crypto take taking take over bitcoin through this regulated exchange traded fund and that simultaneously they're cracking down uh through the scc on buy those coin base so it's all some sort of a scheme made by the incumbents to take over crypto the question is should we welcome the filing of black rock for our spot bitcoin ETF or should we be afraid of it what blockchain technology does is it it basically disrupts financial services the way the internet disrupted media and commerce now we have a third ledger an immutable trustless truth ledger that says 100 100 100 everybody agrees it was 100 there's no fraud there's no uh malfeasance and and you don't have to trust me anymore in fact we don't even have to know each other we can just transact peer to peer globally instantaneously no more gold in a vault no more money being printed it's a pretty glorious future but the incumbents are like whoa whoa we'll wait a second i don't like that i like my seven trillion dollars a year my six to eight percent of global GDP that's good for me so it's not surprising at all that the regulators would rig the system such that they don't approve the disruptors coming into the party to take some of that seven trillion well now black rock which is part of the group says hey we want to take the one percent fees every year not you know dcg and the other disruptors and now i think what happens is the same okay and so should we welcome them not really right but should we be happy that we get a better functioning system and ultimately we strip some of the costs out and so we win a little bit sure and will people look the hardcore maxis they'll hold their bitcoin in self storage self custody put on a ledger which we love because we own a piece of ledger um and everything's happy but for the average person who has never like my dad never gonna hold his own keys just not going to do it he's perfectly happy at coinbase he'd be perfectly happy to buy an etf we need these cfi these centralized finance structures as a bridge to the beautiful decentralized future so that's a long-winded way of saying we shouldn't like celebrate them but we should welcome them and we should be happy that more participants will now enter the digital age thanks a lot mark for this great conversation as usual it's a pleasure to have you on our show and i look forward to talk to you again in a few months and see how your predictions will have played out that sounds great enjoy the rest of your summer and we'll see you in the fall