Save the Date!
Certainly I am getting ahead of myself with this prediction because we still have to slog through September before we get to the good stuff (aka Q4 of 2025) but this potentially is a very exciting time for crypto. Of course in the moment we'd never know because alts have been stagnant for almost the entire year; a hugely demoralizing happenstance.
Maybe those toxic maximalists where actually right!
Maybe Bitcoin really will reign supreme and everything will crash to zero against it! Certainly I don't believe this to be true but considering how it's all played out it becomes harder and harder to deny.
They said that alts would get a lot less love this cycle because all that value is being permalocked into ETFs and corporate treasuries, and thus far that theory seems to be holding weight. Personally I subscribe to "displacement theory" in which it doesn't matter if there are a few big rocks of liquidity that sunk to the bottom of the money lake; those boulders will raise the water level for everyone nonetheless. Unfortunately this theory has yet to materialize.
Soon™
https://x.com/TheBitcoinConf/status/1961054429257318849
And what's the response to stuff like this?
TOP SIGNALS! TOP SIGNALS EVERYWHERE!
The boy cries wolf
I don't know about you guys but I've been hearing the rabble babble about top signals for the last year straight, and there has been a confirmed top zero times since then. This is also not a valid way to trade profitably. Getting lucky and selling the top is not a viable strategy. We have to find trends, bet on the trends, and lookout for trend reversals.
So what is the trend telling us today?
We are just getting further confirmation that the uptrend has been shattered and we should prepare for further correction as we head onto the worst performing month of the year. Luckily any price point higher than $100k is pretty bullish, despite all the undisciplined degens on social media crying about how it's so over and they have no dry powder left because they've already "bought the dip" 5 times during the 10% from the top to where we are now. It seems that the longer this bull market drags on the more irrational and dumb sounding these people get. No surprises there I guess; business as usual. If we define a dip as 15% we haven't even dipped once yet. Get ahold of yourself people.
However...
One thing I just noticed is the Bitcoin dominance chart, which is a metric that I haven't looked at in months. We finally seem to have fully broken down out of the ascending channel. Will we take the elevator down after climbing the stairs up like is so often the case for charts like this one? That's the plan, Stan!
I will be a little surprised if dominance continues to decline in September but if it does it could be a good signal of the altmarket to come. I more expect a little bit of a recovery here and then another psych-out to the downside during the traditionally key months of October and November. IMO BTC dominance needs to get down to like 35%-40% before the "it's so over" vibes can commence. Of course by the time that happens everyone will be so hyped to the moon the FOMO and GREED will be drowning out all other signals.
Another metric I haven't looked at in months is the liquidation heatmap, which gives us a little insight into potential overleverage and key positions to bust. I would have guessed there was a ton of long leverage to annihilate around the $100k area, but this map would seem to suggest that the area around $100k is the one place where there isn't relative leverage. Interesting.
For the most part this chart shows the bears giving the bulls a bit of a thrashing, especially over the last few weeks. There isn't a lot of short to squeeze but there are still plenty of longs to bust down to $100k. After that... not so much.
Back to the main chart
Even though our first death-cross got locked in a week ago... and the MA(25) will be heading below the trendline soon... it is still impressive that all moving averages are above $100k and thwarting the unit bias narrative. In my opinion this market is going to establish a very stable base next month even if we are trading back at $100k.
I think the best possible outcome here would be a V-shaped poop/scoop down to $99k sometime in September. What I don't want to see is a dip to $100k and then grinding near $100k while cutting into the perceived support there. Slingshot action is much better and implies strength in the face of irrational dumpage.
Tunnel Vision
You can't see the forest from the trees.
The plebs in the trenches can't see anything but the day to day price action in front of them. Today I saw claims of Binance corruption with a deceiving chart that makes it looks like Bitcoin crashed into the dirt when it really only dropped less than 1% during a time in which we should have been expecting a drop anyway. Funny how easy it is to turn someone into a conspiracy theorist when number goes down. It's not nearly as easy on the way up. Entitlement reigns supreme in the Greed Trench.
Conclusion
September is probably going to be pretty not great... and the really annoying thing is that it's going to be hard to justify selling here to buy back in cheaper in a few weeks... even if that ends up being a good play. We are at the point in the cycle where the upside is explosive and can blast anyone to the sidelines. When it happens that person can miss an entire 4-year cycle of upside within a couple of days. It's basically too hard to justify doing anything right now but hold till November and see where we land.
If November does end up being a dud I won't sugarcoat the fact that I'll be pretty disappointed and worried about future price action. Luckily this is not a today-me problem, but as we come closer and closer to the timeframe I've been waiting for... for years... it feels more and more likely that it doesn't happen. Don't think about it just yet; just hodl on and buy the September dip if possible.