Bitcoin market timing discussion with altcoin DCA comparison on Digital Asset News
A solo presenter on the Digital Asset News channel discusses Bitcoin's current market position, historical price accumulation windows, and compares dollar-cost averaging returns across Bitcoin and major altcoins.
Summary
Responding to pushback from a previous video, Rob argues that the current market is not a brutal bear market but rather a boring, range-bound accumulation window — and that history shows these periods can last far longer than most investors expect. He walks through historical Bitcoin lows year by year to illustrate that low prices can persist for extended periods, and that recency bias causes investors to consistently feel prices are too high. He then runs DCA and dynamic DCA simulations across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Binance Coin, and Tron, finding that Bitcoin outperforms most altcoins on a risk-adjusted basis over the measured period, with Solana being the notable exception. The episode closes with a live Q&A session covering topics including altcoin viability, institutional chain adoption, custody safety, and the likelihood of a black swan event in the next two to three years.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Current Market Context and the Case for Patience
Host (Rob): Today, instead of going over the news, I want to talk about what's going to happen in the next two or three years and take a look at what the plan actually is. I have to tell you, from yesterday's video when we talked about the timing of Bitcoin, people were not too happy.
As we get into this, we have to take a quick look at what's going on in the traditional markets. The S&P 500 has done quite well — fantastic. I think yesterday it had an all-time high and there's a little bit of a pullback, but that is to be expected as time moves on. There is much talk about how long will this continue and what's going to happen. Nobody really knows, but there are different people who think this is a bubble. Some people say it's an AI bubble, some people say it's not.
Berkshire Hathaway — Warren Buffett's company — says it is not a bubble, as they have deployed a big chunk of their capital. As of Q2 of 2026, they deployed $32 billion out of $397 billion, saying that yes, this is actually a good time to invest. I find that quite interesting because they actually reduced in 2022 and didn't deploy much capital as they built up their stockpile until Q2 of 2026.
The counterbalance to that is Michael Burry, who said this is a bubble. He did a pretty good job — he was one of the guys in The Big Short — and he is saying this is all a bubble and he's shorting everything. So who's right and who's wrong? Nobody knows.
What I can tell you is that the crypto and digital asset market is pricing it in as we go down. Market cap right now is around $2.2 trillion. Over seven days there's quite a bit of loss, except for a little bit of Binance Coin, maybe a little Solana and Tron. Over 24 hours, seven days, and thirty days, it's pretty much a mixed bag.
As I take a look at this, I think to myself: people say this is a brutal bear market. I don't really think it is. Quite honestly, it's boring — I'll give you that. But if we look four years back, we're actually only — and this sounds kind of strange, I know — we're only 50% down from our all-time high. Usually you're looking at 86%, 85%. In 2022 it was actually 77%. We are down 50% from our all-time high.
If we go back four years to August 14th, Bitcoin was down 63% at that point. If we just move forward, I'll remind you that things got a little choppy and dicey going into November at 75%. If that happened to us, we would be at a Bitcoin price of $31,505. I do not see that actually happening, but anything is possible.
Historical Low Prices and the Accumulation Window
So today I was going to talk about the news and what's going on, but there's not really much happening. ETF flows are a little bit negative. The SEC and the CFTC cancelled their Friday meeting — they were going to try to help with the Clarity Act and get some kind of momentum going, but they cancelled it because of some type of calendar error. Who knows what that is.
So I said, you know what, there's only so much we can talk about with the news. Let's talk about the plan.
I posted this this morning. I took a look at the all-time lows for every single year. Wouldn't it have been great to get into Bitcoin at $4? I'm sure some of you actually did — congratulations, you have no worries whatsoever. 2013, 2014. I didn't get in until 2017, so I really don't care about the stuff before that. I mean, it would have been nice. I just blew it and didn't make generational wealth buying Bitcoin at $780.
But I took a look at the low price for each year: 2018, 2019, and 2020. Look at those prices — $3,200, $3,400, and $3,800. Now, 2021 was a great year. Bitcoin went to around $67K. Correct me in the comments, but the low for that all-time high year was $28,700. Still not too bad to do a 3x. And then of course 2022, the floor dropped out. And in 2023, it was roughly the same thing at $16,600.
So I wrote: if you are waiting for October 6, 2026 to buy Bitcoin because that's the bottom — let me remind you that you will probably have years to accumulate at low prices, especially if this AI bubble pops. And I will just warn everybody: the traditional market sneezes, the crypto market gets pneumonia and is on a ventilator.
So what does this mean? Does this mean you have years — two or three years — to accumulate at $3,200 and it's just stagnant and doesn't move, and then next year it goes to $3,400 and you get to accumulate that for twelve months, and then in 2020 it goes to $3,800 and you get to accumulate that for twelve months? Obviously not. That makes absolutely no sense. What I'm saying is that people forget just how volatile things can be and how long they can stay in those areas.
DCA Simulation Tool Walkthrough
I'm going to use Ben's website and pull from his information. What I want to look at is 2018 and around that time frame. Let me zoom in. 2020 — so like I talked about, you've got 2018 at $3,200 as the low, 2019 at $3,400, 2020 at $3,800. If we take a look at those time frames, look how long you had to buy Bitcoin.
The problem with Bitcoin when we're talking about price action is that people always think it's expensive. I remember the Bitcoin price being $4,310 and thinking to myself, that is so pricey — because I was buying it at $7,500 and now it's not even 50% off. And the people that got in in 2016 where they paid $600, $500, $400 — I just kept thinking that's when I should have bought. And I guarantee you that people in 2016 were probably thinking, man, Bitcoin at $400, I wish I would have bought in 2012 when it was like $20, or 2010, 2011. That's when it should have been.
So when you go back to these time frames, you're like — this is the recency bias we have. We're thinking to ourselves, man, this is so expensive. Looking back, I'm like, what an idiot I was.
Anyhow, we can see here that $4,500 — I'm sure no one would complain if they could buy at that price right now. And then of course this was the bottom: December 16th, 2018, Bitcoin price $3,200, and then it went up to a whopping $4,000. So you're probably thinking to yourself, that's super expensive. Why would I accumulate at those blowoff top prices? Do you see what I'm getting at? You could have accumulated through this whole channel all the way to 2019 in March. And then of course we had this thing called a pandemic. It was awful. I don't know if you were there, but everybody was going to die, it was going to wipe out half the planet.
These were good prices to get into. And it wasn't just here — you could have gotten in at $5,000, $6,000, then back to $5,000, and so on and so forth. So these times where people are like, I'm just going to wait till October and that's it — you can do that. I'm just saying I think we've got a lot of time to do these things.
Let's take a look at 2022. How long were we in this channel? Quite a long time. And I think we're going to be in this channel for quite a long time as of August 2026. But look at this Bitcoin price. Oh, so expensive. Look at this over-inflated nonsense. $19,300, $20,200, $21,000. No one's buying that. Oh, $20,000, $19,000, $18,000. Then it dropped off — $17,000. And look how long it was. Then over here in 2023, $25,000. $20,000. That's ridiculous.
So as we go into this new channel — and of course we are over here, we are below the 200-week moving average, we have not hit the 250 or the 300 week. I don't know if we will or not, but if we do, that's a Bitcoin price of $585. I'm just saying I think there's a lot of time to accumulate.
Now, that was the first post where I said, hey, you've got time. And I wanted to clarify what I meant. People say "years" — obviously not, you don't have Bitcoin at $3,200. I know it's crazy that I have to explain that, but there are people on X who for some reason can't read. Anyhow.
Make Altcoins Great Again — Timing the Pivot
So that was the first post. The second post was MAGA — I know this will trigger some of you, that's okay because some of you hate altcoins — but I said: MAGA, make altcoins great again.
We've been talking quite a bit about altcoins. I think some of the winners are being chosen. Those are Binance, Ethereum, Solana, Tron, maybe a little Bittensor thrown in, and Hyperliquid — I don't know — and Tao. But we take a look at payments, tokenization of bonds, tokenization of real estate, tokenization of equities, tokenization of real-world assets. And it wasn't just one piece and how that would actually work. I look at this and I think, this looks pretty good.
But the question I had was: okay, when do we start to pivot and get into altcoins a little heavier? Because remember that whole thing where first everybody flows into Bitcoin, then large-cap altcoins, then small-cap altcoins, and then everybody dumps everything and goes back into Bitcoin? That didn't happen in 2025. It pretty much went Bitcoin, some of the top alts, and then they dumped and here we are.
So I want to take a look at the more recent channel time frame, which was roughly 2022 to 2025. I don't want to go back in time like here — August 14th, 2016. Look at these prices. Bitcoin $570, Ethereum was $11, XRP was a fraction of a penny, Litecoin was $3. And then the rest of them — Steam, ETH Classic, Dash, NEM, Safecoin, Next, Hyperspace, Monero, Factom, Emercoin, Waves, Bitshares, Stellar — that one's still here. Bytecoin, Siacoin, Peercoin, and so on. You can read. All this stuff is gone. Gold Coin. All this stuff doesn't exist anymore.
Altcoin vs Bitcoin DCA Simulation Results
So what I wanted to take a look at was how would just dollar-cost averaging — dynamic versus standard DCA — for Bitcoin versus the top alts, which I'll just say is Binance and Ethereum. We'll go that route.
Now you can use this DCA simulation tool for free if you sign up for the site. The other features you have to pay for, but this looks pretty good.
Let's just start with the ground rules. DCAing is not as powerful as dynamically DCAing. What is that? Well, there's a link in the description for a video that goes over it in detail. But as far as dynamic DCAing goes, it's when the price goes down and you take a look at these risk levels. As the risk levels go down, you increase what you buy. So instead of going, okay, at a risk level of 0.6 and below I'm going to pay $100 per week — if it goes below 0.5, I'm going to buy $200 per week. And when it goes to 0.4, I'm going to buy $400 per week. And when it goes below 0.3, I'm going to buy $800 per week. And so on and so forth. Pretty simple. So when this happens, that's dynamically DCAing.
Let's go back four years, roughly August 14th. If we take a look at it, let's just put $30 a day and go for one year. That's it. Just one year putting in $30 a day. You would have spent $10,000. You would have accumulated half a Bitcoin, which today at these depressed prices you'd still be up 3x and you'd have made pretty good gains. You're up 179%. And at the top, it was actually worth $60,000. That's a nice 6x. Congratulations, you're the best investor of all time.
So what if we dynamically DCA? Again, we wouldn't touch it for anything above 0.49 in this example. If we did that — well, well, well — you'd actually be paying a little more, $26,000, but at the peak you'd have $172,000. Congratulations, you're the best investor of all time. And the current level would be $86,000. Not too bad.
So I took a look at that. That's pretty good. But how would we have done with altcoins? Because I want to get back into altcoins — that'd be pretty fun. However, maybe it's not a good idea, especially right now and especially back then.
Check this out. Let's take Ethereum. $30 daily, just one year. I'm only up 185%. And at the tippy top, which was August — not even October — I'm only up 252%. Not too bad, but that's dynamically DCAing. If we DCA an equal amount, it did even worse — only up 189%. So in this situation, Bitcoin beat you.
What about Solana? Well, this one is a little different. Dynamic DCA — we're buying $30 every time that risk level is below 0.49. Now we're talking. At the tippy top, January 18th, you're up 1,437%. The $65,000 that you put in — granted, that's a lot of money — you have a valuation of a million dollars. Congratulations, you are now the best investor of all time. But as of today, you're up 342%. So hopefully you sold the top, because you did beat Bitcoin, but not by much.
How about Tron? If I'd done Tron, I've got to tell you, it looks pretty good. Just gradually going up, doing its thing. Really good for payments so far. At the tippy top of the cycle, May of 2026, not too bad — 529%. But you're taking a lot of risk going into Tron. It could work out pretty well. And as of today, you're up 457% if you would have held everything. You spent $58,000 and you're at $300,000. That is pretty good.
Let me refresh my memory. 222% versus 37% for Ethereum — not that great. Versus 342% with Solana — that's pretty good. And then Tron.
And then lastly, Binance Coin. If we did Binance, as of today you're only up 123%. At the tippy top, you're at 379%. So Bitcoin did beat you.
So out of these altcoins that were pretty well established — as far as ROI goes — you did great on Solana, you did pretty good on Tron, okay on Binance, and you sucked it with Ethereum. Sorry. And that's where we're at.
Moving Forward — Strategy and Altcoin Outlook
So moving forward, I think like this. I'm going to at some point get into more altcoins. I just don't know if this is the right time. I'm going to derisk a little bit and just keep going with Bitcoin until things really hopefully collapse.
Live Q&A
Rob: Let's get into the Q&A. Brandon Clark says: "Good advice. We are in a classic bear market. Everybody hang in there. Hopefully things turn around early 2027." Hopefully. It just depends. Midterm years are usually pretty brutal for traditional markets and obviously for the digital asset market, but this one's been different. When people say "this time is different" — so far, we'll see what happens. But the S&P 500 is up massively, the Mag 7 is up massively, and this is all buoyed by AI and construction and infrastructure. We'll see if it lasts.
RZ says: "Where is NFA Live?" NFA Live is every Thursday. We just skipped this week because Guy specifically had some things going on. Maybe next Thursday.
Matt says: "Alts seem so risky compared to Bitcoin, which is already viewed as risky. Better performance just seems super stressful." And Matt's got a good point. There's so much research that has to go into altcoins — making sure you do this and do that. If you want to trade altcoins like Wes over at Smart Money Tracking or Ivan on Tech do, go for it. But a lot of these altcoins are not long-term holds. They're just not. I fell into the trap too — like, well, this is the future, this is what's going to go on. But as time has passed — here's an example. Do you remember what AI videos looked like two or three years ago? Pretty awful, right? You could tell from a mile away. The most famous one would be the Will Smith one where he's eating food and it just looks like a disaster. Now fast forward to today. What do AI videos look like? Fantastic. And most of us use AI every single day, some more in depth than others, but it is a real function. It has real utility.
Now take your favorite altcoin and be honest. What the hell does it do? And how much has it been adopted? And how many people are actually using it every single day for what it was actually designed to do, instead of just speculating? I've got to tell you — altcoins, not so great.
And then people will make the argument: well Rob, the white paper for Bitcoin says it is a peer-to-peer transaction. When's the last time you used it for that? And to that I say — I do not use it for payments. Some people do. Some people use the Lightning Network. But it's like every technology — they figure out what's the best use for it. It's like when man discovered iron ore tens of thousands of years ago. Nobody ever would have thought we'd be making steel beams and high-rises back then. They were like, oh, we'll make a flint and a shield, whatever. So I think Bitcoin is gold 2.0. It's a good store of value. It's a good hedge against inflation long-term — not short-term. I see it like that. But yeah, Matt's right. Altcoins are super risky, but they have big payoffs, and I can't resist investing into some of them sometimes.
Does Tron win? Let me go through this real quick. Let's go from dynamic DCA from the bottom to the very tippy top. For Binance Coin, you're up 363%. For Bitcoin, you're up 533%. Bitcoin is the winner. Ethereum tippy top: 252%. So right now Binance and Ethereum are falling behind. For Solana at the tippy top of the cycle — wow — 1,437%. So that's the winner. And even now, still 1,300%. So yeah, Solana is the winner here for dynamic DCAing. And then Tron is not the winner because the top was — well, this is 2024 — 68%. However, it is the most steady. Look at that beautiful chart, up and to the right, except for this anomaly. So yeah, Solana, which is one of my best picks.
Phil says: "I'll start the DCA when I see Bitcoin in the 40s this fall, but not a day sooner." Sounds good. See how it works out.
Rebecca says: "Rob, where does iTrust Capital put their money? How do we know we are safe and sovereign? I have Voyager PTSD." So the cash part is actually FDIC insured and it is held at a specific bank. I need to get the name of that. But as far as your crypto — which is the bigger thing — I think that is the same institutional custody storage that BlackRock and Strategy use, which is Coinbase Prime.
Let me make sure. So this is what it says: iTrust Capital isn't a bank, we know that. So it's not directly FDIC insured. But cash balances held in your iTrust Capital accounts with partner banks such as Wells Fargo or Fortress Bank — where they make — well, they qualify for pass-through FDIC insurance. So cash is all there for that. And then the crypto — let me show you Coinbase Prime. US dollar cash at partner banks is eligible for insurance to standard limits of $250,000, unless that's been changed. Anybody in the comments can correct me — is it still $250,000 or do they go up to $500,000 these days? Some funds may be placed in short-term money market accounts covered by SIPC insurance instead of FDIC protection. That's fine. Digital assets and crypto holdings are never backed by US government FDIC insurance and they carry a risk of financial loss. Good question. Definitely something to take a look at.
Yeah, the man's right — Binance Coin was the only top altcoin that hit a new all-time high. ETH and other stuff didn't even hit all-time highs. Yeah, it was pretty depressing. I thought Cardano would hit an all-time high. It only hit like a dollar. Sad.
Siacoin was the boss. That was a long time ago. I do remember people talking about Siacoin. The ICO era — oh, you could have made so much money back then. But you had to dump on everybody. So that's that.
We need a nice black swan so we can get some lower prices. Look, in the next two or three years, the chances of another war not starting, or another pandemic not starting, or another financial collapse of some sector not happening — is pretty low. Take all three together, there's a black swan around the corner.
Cardano was dead, man. Not according to Charles Hoskinson. It's right around the corner. Just trust him, bro.
Yeah, Geek Dice says: "Stable coins already winning, but I'm not sure crypto will. Institutional chains most likely." Yeah, institutional chains will do just fine. There's JPMorgan's chain, whatever they call it, and a couple of others, but they're permissioned, centralized chains. But you have to remember — for their three trillion that they're doing, there's also a couple trillion sloshing around that they want to be a part of. So they'll integrate those and want to capture as much of that as possible.
Big boys ain't buying alts. Alts equal zero. Bitcoin equals alive. Yeah, I've got to tell you — nowadays I don't even check my crypto portfolio because I'm like, that's boring, because all I'm doing is buying essentially every Monday. But nowadays I wake up and take a look at Robinhood and say, wow, look at that, it's pretty good. That's sad. I'm more excited about traditional equities accounts.
Eric says: "Do you think alts will go back up to last year's highs?" No, not all of them, that's for sure. We've got to get rid of a lot of these alts. They are worthless. And I know people say, "But Rob, the community doesn't care about you, they don't watch." When everything starts to collapse, then it's every man for himself. All of a sudden it's like, oh, I've got to sell because of my kids and the family. I like the community, bro, but I've got to look out for number one. And that's pretty much what happens with pretty much every investment that's out there.
The Invincible says: "Good time to keep adding to your stack, though." Could be. And it really just comes down to which one's going to be the winner. And all I can tell you is what Geek Guy said — stable coins are winning. So take a look at the rails that Visa, Mastercard, and the banks are using for stable coins, because those are the ones they're going to use to tokenize all the other stuff that's out there. There was an interview with CZ from Binance and he talked about how there are either ten or eleven sovereign nations that have reached out to him to tokenize real-world assets so they can be a part of that whole sector, and he's like, yeah, we can do this.
Again, I think those are the winners, because I think traditional finance is looking at all these hacks — and not a day goes by when there's not some kind of hack, some kind of bridge discrepancy, some type of thing that happens where people are losing hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions of dollars — and traditional finance is like, you want me to build that on top of that and use these oracles or these DAOs or these whatever, so I can lose all my customers' money and then they can sue me and I can go out of business? Yeah, I'm going to do something else. So just look at the ones that don't get hacked. And again, it's not so much the chains — like Ethereum doesn't get hacked. It's the stuff that goes on within Ethereum and the layer twos and the oracles and the things going on in between that make all the transactions possible. I just don't see a lot of winners anymore.
The Invincible says: "If history repeats itself, early to mid 2027 will be boring." Hopefully we get a big crash in October, because that's what happened in November — remember when FTX collapsed? Went from like $20,000, lost like 25% in a couple of days. It was awesome. Or in 2018, same thing happened but in December. So maybe October we start to see a big collapse and everybody will freak out and start selling like crazy. And I hate to admit this, but it's true — I do like to see little collapses as the price starts to go down. I'm like, thank God, I can lower my cost basis.
Did Paul Atkins say anything useful today? No, they had to move things forward. That Friday meeting with the SEC — so they could get some type of clarity, since Congress can't do anything — the SEC and CFTC were supposed to sit down today, but there was a scheduling conflict, so they pushed it to later, whatever that is. And I think we're all just counting down to October 7th. We'll see.