Around the turn of the century, the president and Congress talked about investing the US’s public retirement fund, Social Security, in the stock market.

I was too young to understand what was happening, but the idea seemed strange. 

Why give my tax money to Wall Street corporations so that old people could have money when they retire? Why not just give it to old people directly?

If the government can’t afford to do that, it should replace Social Security with something else that the government can afford. Right?

In the end, it was moot. Shortly after they floated the idea, the stock market crashed. Public sentiment sank with it.

Ironically, that crash would’ve been the best time to invest Social Security into the stock market, but once the opportunity came, nobody wanted to do it anymore. 

Sounds familiar

Today, they want to do a strategic crypto reserve. 

I’m sure there’s a college kid out there wondering the same thing I did about Social Security in 2000. 

If they’re so concerned about the government’s solvency, how about they fix that? Do we need new gimmicks? 

Maybe that college kid will have the same experience I did in 2000: bewildered by the hype, only to watch the market go up a little higher and then decline for years.

You get excited because you think the government will pump your bags. 

The whole point of cryptocurrency is to build your own wealth so you don’t have to risk your financial welfare on the whims of a bureaucrat or political party.

When you can own a source of wealth and security that does not depend on your government, you have a layer of protection. You have an element of control. 

You will still suffer market volatility but can do so on your own terms. You're not beholden to Wall Street, politicians, or central banks. 

Not so fast

You may not care because you only want to make a ton of money in 2025, then cash out. Read on. I will have more on that later in this post.

First, make sure you know what you’ll do if the US government can’t make all your dreams come true.

It would seem odd if the first pro-crypto US government did not pump Bitcoin to $288,000 by October 2025 and deliver a massive altseason, but the “macro” makes it hard for many reasons.

The US stock market looks and acts like 1999-2000. Stocks remain well above historical benchmarks like P/E ratio and historical trendlines. Some examples:

In 2024, single stocks trailed the SPX by the most since 1999.

NVIDIA’s price chart looks like CISCO in 2000, at the height of the dot-com bubble.

Valuations remain exceptionally high even when you remove the biggest companies that make up a disproportionate amount of the major stock market indices.

In past years, this didn't matter as much. Crypto did not, by and large, show any correlation to legacy asset prices.

Today, crypto is more correlated to the US stock market than ever. Pay attention.

Practical realities. _checkonchain estimates the market needs at least $300 billion of net inflows to move Bitcoin’s price to $150,000. That's much more than I thought, and it's hard to do until long-time HODLers stop selling. We see no signs that long-term HODLers have stopped selling.

Metrics and such. The market is closer to its peak than its bottom on every meaningful, objective metric, including my Danger Zone.

Perfect Elliott Wave structure. Bitcoin’s long-term trading chart matches this classic charting technique in nearly perfect, textbook form.

Massive selling from OGs. So-called diamond hands, those who held Bitcoin for 2-7 years, sold hundreds of billions of dollars as Strategy, ETF buyers, and Trump pumpers poured capital into the market at the end of 2024.

They’re still selling.

They may turn into buyers again, but they won't bring back as much as they took out. They've already sent some of it to their governments (taxes), spent some on Lambos (not literally), and held some back as profits. 

Waning ETF flows. Inflows into Wall Street ETFs have trended down since November.

Liquidity. The Fed’s reverse repo facility is almost drained and the US credit impulse is rolling over, which is a headwind for financial liquidity. China’s economy remains deflated—no help there—and Japan can’t loosen monetary policy.

Who will buy my sweet red roses?

Strategy₿ has allocated $20 billion to the market since the start of November. They said they’d spread $42 billion over three years, but almost half the money’s already gone.

Could the same thing have happened in the real economy? Everybody front-loaded, big purchases?

At the end of 2024, a friend bought six extra months of products for his store to “get in before the tariffs.” Another front-loaded some of his manufacturing inputs for the same reason. Other businesses likely did the same.

This shows up as positive economic activity in 2024 data, but it takes away economic activity in 2025 (they already bought last year what they would have otherwise bought this year).

Auto sales and home furnishings jumped after Trump’s election. These are things you buy once every few years or decades. Now that people bought these things, when will they buy them again?

My agent typically does 20+ deals a year, which is considered a lot for a realtor. She hasn’t had a single client yet in 2025.

How much latent demand was already filled or pushed forward. Where will the demand come from next?

The damsel in this dress, not in distress

Trump’s economic and financial plan marks a huge departure from the status quo and should harm the US economy and stock market, with downside impact on many of the world's economies.

Proposed government spending cuts will kill the biggest source of US job growth last year, threaten the jobs of 6 million private contract workers, and eliminate up to $800 billion in payments to private companies, including some huge employers.

Tariffs will raise prices and drag down economic productivity. Mass deportations will remove a source of consumer demand, tax revenue, and productive workers.

If you believe rumors and public comments, Trump’s inner circle understands the consequences of implementing an agenda that imposes short-term economic pain, but they believe strongly that the benefits are worth the costs and that the timing can’t get any better than right now.

For more on that, read last month’s post, Crypto 2025: Aliens, Trump, and the Road Ahead.

They want an outcome like Reagan in 1981. You can see for yourself how that worked for the US.

Fishy fishy

In a recent post, Arthur Hayes lays out a different scenario along a more sinister but related theme—the idea of creating an economic crisis to justify an aggressive political agenda.

I'm not as jaded and cynical as Arthur. The president says he wants to rescue the US economy. I believe him.

Surely, he realizes that's a very lofty ambition.

It's hard to rescue an economy that has 4% unemployment, 3.5% GDP growth, 3% inflation, a record-high stock market, the strongest US dollar in history, low household debt servicing costs, record-low household debt-to-GDP ratio, household net worth approaching a record $160 trillion with $9t in cash, and high corporate cash reserves.

There's not much to rescue!

Is that why your favorite guru says this year is the year you will make all your money? Bitcoin will hit $150k to $288k and send altcoins to the moon? 

Bitcoin’s price went up 600% from November 2022 to January 2025. They say you’ll do better in the final 50-180% upswing than the first 600% upswing. 

The math seems fishy to me.

Altcoins might fit the bill, but most have lagged behind Bitcoin for years. Others are overhyped and overpriced. 

We have thousands more tokens than last year. Last year, we had thousands more tokens than in 2021. With so many more tokens competing for inflows, each token should pump less on average than it would have in 2021.

It's going to take exponentially more money to push your portfolio up 10x from here, though one or two tokens might reach that total if you're lucky.

As a result, altseason may not look like you remember.

If you’re trading the market, none of that matters. Identify your entries, exits, take profit levels, and stop losses, and hope for the best.

Otherwise, take your altcoin clues from Bitcoin. Altcoins always move in whatever direction Bitcoin goes.

A plan for all contingencies

How do you play that approach? What do you do when the world’s bellwether economy, the US, and crypto’s bellwether asset, Bitcoin, have less room to go up than down?

Follow my plan.

Three lines on a chart tell you when to buy. Two metrics tell you when to sell, unless market circumstances dictate I buy or sell outside my plan. I send you alerts when it’s time to act. 

If you follow my plan, you have a strong allocation to the market with cash to spare. You're up 50% at worst, up 1,700% at best, and most likely up 190% on average.

Where you fall depends on when you started, how much you sold at $105,000, and whether you bought last summer’s drop with new money or money you recycled from selling Bitcoin in March and altcoins at the beginning of April last year.

Most traders can’t beat the person who puts money into the market blindly, in a fixed amount, on a fixed schedule. My plan does. On average, you get up to 30% more Bitcoin for each dollar you put into the market.

The plan doesn't apply to altcoins, but generally, when Bitcoin's price is in the buying zone, you can buy altcoins, too. 

You don’t believe it

Do you want to hear something crazy?

Almost nobody follows my plan.

Some follow the buy, sell, and HODL alerts, but don't set aside fresh cash.

Others wait for the sell alerts but otherwise do whenever they want.

Many follow the HODL and sell instructions but don't buy when the plan says to buy.

All good. You do you! You may even do better than me.

Just remember, the lines, metrics, and decisions are all part of one unified approach to the market. Like love and marriage, you can't have one without the other.

With my plan, you’ll get a simple, comprehensive way to take advantage of every situation, beat dollar cost averaging, and navigate the twists and turns along the way.

If I aimed to get the perfect price or timing, I would have named this newsletter Crypto is Hard.

You can't relax and enjoy the ride if you're trying to chase every new memecoin or stress about a run-of-the-mill 10% pump or dump on any given day.

Think out of both sides of your head

Are you disappointed with your portfolio results? 

I can understand that. This is supposed to be the year you make all your money and retire your bloodline!

It still might be.

All of the factors I mentioned above will take time to play out. The “macro” may hold up a while longer. In 2000, the stock market went up for months before rolling over.

Let’s not assume an outcome that hasn’t, er, come.

For example, Trump delayed some of his proposed tariffs. Retaliatory actions will take months to work through US and foreign economies.

The current pace of deportations is the same as it was under Biden, with the same catch-and-release policy that lets detainees live outside of custody while they await deportation. It could take months to get enough agents and facilities to ramp up these efforts, assuming campaign contributors and business interests can’t get the White House to slow down.

US courts blocked some of the president’s actions.

(If you've been in crypto long enough, that should not surprise you. Gensler tried a similarly arbitrary and capricious approach, although with crypto, not the entire US government. The courts were similarly unimpressed.)

Of the spending cuts DOGE proposed, many apply to expenses the government never made or already paid. DOGE members don’t know how the US government works and can’t tally their numbers correctly. Until that changes (it will), DOGE will have no impact on the real economy.

Trump fired over 100,000 government workers, but they get paid for unused leave and should collect unemployment for at least a few months. They may also get backpay and other benefits. US taxpayers will pay another +75,000 government workers to not work for eight months and, in some cases, collect early retirement benefits.

That's billions of dollars in handouts from taxpayers to civil servants with no strings attached. 

On top of that, thanks to return-to-work requirements, Federal agencies will spend billions more on new leases, equipment, travel reimbursements, security, parking and facility maintenance contracts, and other expenses necessary to bring the remaining Federal employees back into the office—all paid for with freshly-printed US dollars, created out of thin air. 

If history is our guide, the government will print additional billions to subsidize corporations and conglomerates hurt by tariffs. The White House will replace some cut workers with contractors that charge more for the same work. Congress will likely authorize the payment of $4 trillion to creditors next month, pulled out of thin air.

If it doesn’t, the US treasury will spend hundreds of billions of dollars from its general account while Congress and the president work out an alternative.

And who knows?

China’s latest round of stimulus may work. Japan may fix its currency troubles. Europe may do something big. Africa’s coming along.

We know 2025 will end worse than it started, but it’s foolish to think you can time that or predict how bad it will get.

Zero fear

Mark, what should we do?

The “right” decision is never that clear, even in hindsight. 

Think about all the people who round-tripped Bitcoin’s move from $96,171 to $99,112 and back to $96,171 on my birthday. They could have cashed out with a 3% profit and bought back at 3% lower. They screwed it up. 

Anonymous Twitter accounts hit the move perfectly. You didn't. I didn’t even try!

Since you will never get your timing right, consider your situation. 

What do you stand again? What do you stand to lose? How much money do you need? How high or low do you need your crypto portfolio to go to make you happy or sad?

Don't assume an outcome that hasn't happened yet. Plan, prepare, and consider your options. 

The moment disaster strikes, your government will wave its magic wand and try to make everything better. Stimmy checks, bailouts, market interventions, rate cuts, and who knows what else. 

We’ve had plenty of recessions, corrections, and bear markets without economic crisis or collapse. Things get bad, then they get better.

I’m sure plenty of people sold Bitcoin at $10,000 at the beginning of 2020 when they got a whiff of what COVID would bring. 

After the markets crashed, they probably felt like geniuses. They may have rubbed it in your face. “Look at those idiots thinking that they’re so smart. Now there’s gonna be a great depression, and they’ll all be REKT!”

Next thing you know?

Stimmy checks. Helicopter money. Infinite money printing. Rates slashed to zero. Central bank injections all over the place.

A lot of those so-called smart people who sold Bitcoin for $10,000? The ones who thought they were laughing all the way to the bank because it would be a great depression and they needed to sit in cash?

They didn’t put any more money into the market. They didn’t follow my plan. They didn’t buy crypto in March and April 2020. 

They missed out.

Markets change all the time. Circumstances change all the time.

Use my analysis and commentary to frame your decisions. I will also pass along trades as they come across my desk. Look for those in my weekly rundowns and market updates.

You also have my exit plan, checklist for taking profits, and everything else you get with Crypto is Easy.

Hopefully, you're still hyped up and excited about 2025.

Bottle up those emotions and save them for when the market is down, you feel like you will never get ahead, you’re mad at the gurus who let you down, you think Tony on the TV is a snake oil salesman for hyping a recovery in prices, and the economy seems on the verge of collapse.

You'll need those happy feelings if 2025 isn't the year “easy mode” and “pro-crypto politicians” pump your bags and retire your bloodline. 

Whatever happens, I'm with you all the way.

Relax and enjoy the ride!