2020 promises to bring just as much, and likely more excitement than last year. The 2020’s promise to bring just as much, and likely more excitement than the last decade. Today we find ourselves deeply involved in something that barely existed a decade ago, and something that I didn’t know existed at all a decade ago. We strongly believe that thing, Distributed Ledger Technology and crypto assets, is an important piece of an even bigger, more important thing we call The Trust Revolution. We strongly believe The Trust Revolution will advance significantly in the coming decade and in the decades that follow. We feel obligated to do whatever we can to help that cause because we believe it will make the world a better place. It’s our honor to participate.

While the last five months of price action has been disappointing, we believe it is transitory and explainable. The macro backdrop for BTC has unequivocally strengthened, despite lackluster price action. The whole world is racing to see who can devalue their currency the fastest by cutting interest rates and juicing QE. Governments are spending more than they bring in at an increasing rate – the US budget deficit will be a trillion dollars this year and another trillion next year.

As a career investor in traditional asset classes prior to jumping into crypto and founding Ikigai, I have plenty of experience with catalysts and market movements. Nothing moves like crypto. I can’t imagine a technology or asset class that could so quickly become so firmly entrenched in the global macro landscape while remaining still in a state of relative infancy. Said differently, we have SO much further to go and crypto/DLT are ALREADY front and center of global stage. This. Thing. Is. Never. Going. Away.

Make no mistake, Bitcoin is deeply antifragile – perhaps its single most attractive characteristic. I liken Bitcoin to an X-Man toddler. Yeah you can push on it right now and it will tump over. And you can even kick it in the head while its tumped over. But it will be fine. It will get back up, no worse for wear. And when it grows up, it is going to kick your ass.

We believe a higher likelihood outcome could be a short-term, further correction down to the $7.5-$8.5k range. This would still be within the range of historical pullbacks in an overall cyclical uptrend for BTC when looking at past cycles.

July was nothing short of historic for Bitcoin and crypto as a whole. In a single seven day stretch, 1) The Chairman of the Fed testified to Congress about it; 2) The President tweeted about it; 3) The Treasury Secretary gave a formal press conference about it; and 4) Congress questioned a Facebook executive and other crypto ecosystem participants for two days about it…

To that end, we are well on our way to new ATHs for BTC after a truly spectacular Q2-19 - the fourth best quarterly performance since 2012. In our Monthly Update letter that went out June 1st we said, “last month we stated that new all-time highs were well within reach for 2020. We now believe that may have proven too conservative, and there is a meaningful chance new ATHs are possible in 2019, and likely in 2020”.

The meme “the herd is coming” is actually beginning to play out. The meme of “get off zero” is gaining real traction. Many new projects are set to launch through year-end. Human and financial capital are pouring into the space to provide the necessary products and services to scale crypto to a multi-trillion-dollar asset class. It’s happening, and it’s happening quickly. 

BTC volumes on reputable exchanges, likely the most accurate measurement of volumes in the space as whole, increased M/M. The trailing 7-day avg volume at the end of February was ~23% higher than the end of January. This is encouraging, and a continuation of these increased volumes with flat-to-up prices would be a sign we may have seen the bottom.