Is Bitcoin Heading To $150k?

Summary

• Avi thinks $110k Bitcoin is an unstable price that resolves higher, fast. Avi’s “gun to my head, we’re at 120 like reasonably quickly,” and Avi reads one-month implied vol of 46.5 (120 strike) as “kind of cheap” — that’s a 2.4% implied daily move when Avi expects a 5–10% day within a week or two. Avi’s rule: if vol screens below 55, “I buy some straddles” — and now via IBIT options, “I would never ever suggest trading on Deribit ever again.”
• The macro case is the spine: the spending bill “enshrines exactly 0% of the Doge cuts,” so the US is cutting revenue, raising spending, and borrowing at higher rates — “we’re just entering a debt spiral and Bitcoin was literally in the white paper invented to protect your portfolio from this.” Crypto outperforming equities while bonds get “taken to the woodshed” is the tell: “as a macro portfolio hedge, Bitcoin has never looked better.”
• Avi’s “crossed the Rubicon” moment: Bitcoin tried to collapse with equities, didn’t, and reclaimed all-time highs while equities haven’t. Trump is in power four years and “has repeatedly done things that are good for Bitcoin — maybe we should stop fighting that trend.” His fair value: $150–200k, after which volatility dies down rather than a 2021-style blow-off, because today’s holder base includes a Morgan Stanley private wealth adviser recommending 1% to IBIT and dollar-cost averages instead of FOMO-ing.
• The muted mood at the highs is structural, not bearish: past cycles stacks 5–10x’d and some assets 50x’d (Luna was “a 300x from low to highs”); this cycle the pico-low-to-pico-high on basically anything is a 10x — “and that’s like one asset, it’s Hyperliquid” ($3 to $40). Crypto is “not really a get-rich-quick industry in the same way that it was in 2021 — it’s still get-rich-quicker than every other thing that exists on the planet.”
• The actionable altcoin screen: check likely DeFiLlama’s 7-day revenue leaderboard daily, buy sub-$1B-FDV projects consistently earning (Bloom Trading Bot, Photon flagged) — “low delta call options on crypto.” The pattern to front-run: when a vaporware team starts delivering even a little (TAO’s subnets, Maple’s TVL, Virtuals’ Genesis launchpad on Base), “you probably get 3 to 4 weeks of reasonable outperformance.” Sell alts far more aggressively than Bitcoin — if a project triples without fundamentals catching up, trim.
• On ETH both hosts pass despite conceding the chart: ETH/BTC bottomed on the weekly “basically for the first time in three years” and the R/R punt is defensible (stop 20% below, target +100% vs BTC) — “it’s just not a trade that I would take,” because there are “zero signs of ETH being able to deliver on anything.” Avi’s one conviction short: Worldcoin — $14B FDV on a $2B market cap with heavy emissions, “it’s going lower… just don’t get blown out.”
• Post-hack, Jonah won’t touch Coinbase (“they gate your money, they lose your details”); Avi is softer — much of it was social engineering, but the response “doesn’t leave a good taste in my mouth.” Both land on: bullish Robinhood, Kraken, Hyperliquid and self-custody — keep Bitcoin on a cold wallet, since in an era of rogue-AI tail risk “the value of an air gap goes parabolic.”

Deep dive

1. All-time highs with zero euphoria — because the 100x era is over

• Jonah opens with the puzzle: BTC at $110k, mainstream institutional adoption, “the president of the United States personally setting aside a few yards worth of fiat to go and lift Bitcoin,” CME basis at 30% positive — “I would have assumed things would be just like peak froth, but everybody just seems kind of chilled out.”
• Avi’s resolution: returns compress as the industry grows. Basically every other time Bitcoin hit all-time highs, “everyone had five to 10x’d their entire stack” — 2021 had Luna at “a 300x from low to highs.” This cycle, the absolute pico-low-to-pico-high on basically anything is a 10x, “and that’s like one asset” — Hyperliquid, $3 to $40. To capture it you had to be both good and “a little bit stupid” — nobody puts their whole net worth in one asset.
• His verdict, delivered as consolation: “this is not really a get-rich-quick industry in the same way that it was in 2021. It’s still get-rich-quicker than every other thing that exists on the planet.” Going from $10,000 to $5 million is behind us, barring a lucky 200x meme coin.
• Jonah’s frame for what replaces it: crypto is in its post-dot-com-crash moment, “early innings of a 25-year golden bull run super cycle” — a ride-the-megatrend market, not a 1000x-in-two-months market. The play: earn, dollar-cost average into Bitcoin plus select alts “that actually are real businesses” — Hyperliquid and Maple as examples of things valued fairly on a PE basis, plus Syrup, still crushing it at 43 cents.

2. $110k is “a very unstable price” — and vol is too cheap for it

• Avi has no day-to-day directional view (“I don’t know if tomorrow we’re going to be 115,000 or 105,000”) but calls 110k “a very unstable price” — Bitcoin probably makes a move within a week or two. Gun to his head: “we’re at 120 like reasonably quickly.” He guesses “maybe a 5% to 10% day in the next week.”
• Avi does the options math live: one-month vol is 46.5 for the 120 strike. Divide by √365 (not 252 — “crypto trades 365 days a year”) and you get an implied daily move of 2.4%, which Avi thinks is low. His trigger: “if it’s trading anywhere below 55, I buy some straddles” — or maybe sell Bitcoin and buy calls. And a structural aside: “I would never ever suggest trading on likely Deribit ever again now that IBIT has calls.”
• The stability floor under alt speculation: Bitcoin has held $100k for almost a month, and the level is psychologically load-bearing — even a 5% selloff from 109k to 104k “doesn’t damage the confidence people have in the market.” Equities shrugging off the latest tariff delay confirms it. Jonah’s summary of the setup: “the setup is a 10 out of 10, but the hype and froth is like a 3 out of 10 — usually the backdrop you want to see for a big rally.”

3. The debt spiral is the thesis: Bitcoin as macro hedge has never looked better

• Jonah’s macro through-line: no politician has the mandate to crash the economy, and Trump is behaving exactly to script. The spending bill “enshrines exactly 0% of the Doge cuts” — Congress has no incentive, mandate, or political will to implement austerity unless the market forces it. So: cutting government revenue, increasing spending, debasing the currency, “borrowing more money at higher rates. We’re just entering a debt spiral and Bitcoin was literally in the white paper invented to protect your portfolio from this.”
• The confirming price action: bonds “getting taken to the woodshed” while crypto outperforms equities — investors are finally differentiating Bitcoin from risk assets. “As a macro portfolio hedge, Bitcoin has never looked better.” His label: a demand-driven supercycle that leads everything else.
• On who sells here — Jonah’s setup is that holders may not unload: coin days destroyed and likely MVRV-Z show holders up maybe 10–20%, “not a level where participants are going to start unloading to take profits” — even Sailor’s average is “probably what, like 85, 90.” Maybe 150 is where profit-taking starts, “I don’t know.”

4. Crossed the Rubicon: the new holder base doesn’t FOMO

• Avi’s signature framing: “It’s a cross-the-Rubicon moment. We tried to sell off. We tried to collapse with equities. It didn’t happen. Now we’re back above all-time highs. Equities have still not reclaimed their all-time highs.” And: Trump is in power four years and “has repeatedly done things that are good for Bitcoin. Maybe we should stop fighting that trend.”
• His fair value is $150–200k — but the ending he expects isn’t a 2021 blow-off. Old cycles: retail FOMO-buys, Bitcoin doubles in a month, then collapses 50% as everyone FOMO-exits together. Today’s holders are “maybe not smarter, maybe just less emotional” — so once repriced, “we see volatility die down as it becomes more of a stock-market-like asset that people are just allocating to over time.”
• Jonah sketches the new marginal buyer: someone whose “Morgan Stanley private wealth adviser recommends IBIT as 1% of their portfolio — that’s the new retail.” The old dealbreaker is gone: “Bitcoin’s not a 200-vol asset anymore. It’s a 40-vol asset on a bad day, 20 on a good day.” A “more sanguine investor class” that DCAs — visible in the steady ETF inflows.
• Avi says he’ll only “play at the extremes” — buy real collapses, trim if “we’re trading $250,000 in three months” — and Jonah agrees now is not the time to “short Bitcoin trying to pick up an extra 3K a token.” Alts are the exception: “if your project triples and it hasn’t caught up in terms of actual fundamentals, maybe it’s time to sell a little bit” — be far more aggressive selling alts than Bitcoin. Jonah goes further: the four-year cycle rule is broken, this cycle lasts another 10 years, and the right balance of Bitcoin plus cycling cheap revenue-generating alts can still “thousand-x your net worth” by its end.

5. The alt playbook: screen for revenue, front-run delivery

• Jonah’s one concrete daily habit: go to likely DeFiLlama’s 7-day revenue leaderboard, scan the top 20 for anything under $1B FDV consistently earning — currently Bloom Trading Bot, Photon; Launchcoin has dropped off. These are “low delta call options on crypto”: most won’t pan out, but “the ones that do, you could hit it pretty big.” Avi calls it “the only objective framework I can cling to for altcoin investing.”
• Avi’s timing overlay, using TAO as the specimen: these projects “start with vaporware… then suddenly, because they’re comprised of smart people with a vision, they actually manage to deliver.” When even a little delivery shows up — subnets going live, Maple’s TVL going vertical, Pendle — “you probably get 3 to 4 weeks of reasonable outperformance.” TAO itself has since underperformed to “fairish value,” with activity still concentrated in the staking subnet.
• Virtuals is the pivot case study. Jonah’s critique: they marketed a no-code AI agent ecosystem whose agents are “not even 1% as good as they need to be,” when they should have just been “a launchpad that gives trading fees to the creators.” Credit where due — the new Genesis launchpad is their launchpad pivot, and it’s “bringing money to Base right now.” On AI coins broadly Jonah owns the confusion: “I’ve certainly screwed up some AI investing in crypto publicly here… Are you supposed to buy likely Zerebro or Virtuals or likely AI16Z or Fartcoin? I have no idea” — probably some skin in all of them and you hit a 10-bagger somewhere. Likely Berachain, by contrast, “has been a little disappointing to see” — Avi admits he needs to call the team.

6. ETH: a defensible punt neither will take — and one conviction short

• Both hosts “sort of hate” ETH, but Avi concedes the chart: the outperformance was really one week, May 5–12, yet ETH/BTC has “bottomed out basically for the first time in three years” on the weekly, recovering a prior breakdown level. The bull punt is coherent — stop 20% below, target a 100% rally against BTC — “I don’t think that’s necessarily a wrong view. It’s just not a trade that I would take,” because he sees “zero signs of ETH being able to deliver on anything,” even granting that Base and the L2s show promise.
• The exception to his no-shorts stance is Worldcoin, where he got squeezed and doubled down verbally: FDV is $14B against a $2B market cap with emissions grinding out — “you really think there are billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars coming in to buy your Worldcoin bags? Good enough for a squeeze, but it’s going to get sold to you. It’s going lower… just don’t get blown out on it.”
• The meta-point both endorse: in likely Berachain, TAO, ETH, “there may be money to be made, but it’s okay if you aren’t making it.” Avi: “You have to pick your battles… focus on where you have edge.”

7. Pocket-watching and the Coinbase hack: two lessons in self-protection

• The fixation on likely James Wynn’s extreme leverage is Jonah’s one “worrisome sign”; earlier, a trader had put on a billion dollars’ notional at 20x on likely Hyperliquid. When you count other people’s money, “you lose sight of the ball — the ball being where the market is going.” Whoever copy-trades a “hyper-degen, clearly zero-process approach… is going to lose all of their money.” Avi’s addition: pocket-watching “forces your brain to look for quick opportunities to catch up” — “focus on beating yourself.” The carve-out: directed competition à la Ken Griffin poaching Trafigura’s physical gas team works; jealous P&L-scrolling doesn’t — “some people can handle it, but you’re likely not one of them.”
• On the Coinbase hack, Jonah is out: “they gate your money, they lose your details… as a retail investor, is Coinbase worth touching now?” Avi offers two readings — either Coinbase built a genuinely bad product, or “they’re just the first ones to come out and admit this” — and partially excuses the breach as social engineering (“nobody’s hiring 130-IQ customer support people”). What he can’t excuse is the handling: “they sort of knew this was going on… it doesn’t leave a good taste in my mouth.”
• The trade both draw from it: bullish Robinhood (“Robinhood’s probably sitting there going, okay, this is nice”), bullish Kraken, and bullish Hyperliquid and self-custody generally — “at least Hyperliquid won’t gate your funds.” The closing prescription: always keep Bitcoin offline on a Ledger, and Jonah escalates it into the sign-off: as rogue-AI tail risk emerges, “the value of an air gap goes parabolic. Keep your dough offline.”