My baseball analogy is causing some confusion since there's no consensus on how to categorize phases of a bull market or even where it starts. So let me throw out the analogy and walk through my thoughts on the market cycle and where we are today. https://twitter.com/AriDavidPaul/status/1357439797011308546

2/ The BTC low of the last cycle occurred December 2018. 2019 is hard to characterize since we had the crazy mid-year pump (and dump), messing up any simple TA. The way I'm thinking about it, this purple line is the bull trend off the lows.

3/ we also had weirdness in early 2020 since equities crashed with covid19, dragging BTC far lower than it would otherwise have gone. IMO - without covid19, BTC wouldn't have seen <6.5k in 2020, it was already in firm uptrend.

5/ 2019 to mid 2020 was the first 40% of the bull cycle (measured off the lows.) We climbed a "wall of worry" (admittedly, not the normal slow grind higher of an early bull run). There wasn't much new money entering crypto.
Both retail and institutional interest was pretty dead.

6/ Q3 2020 through early January 2021 was the next 25% of the bull run, call it innings 4-6 roughly. Growing institutional interest, more buying from insiders, and gradually growing interest. Sentiment was optimistic but far from euphoric.

7/ Towards the end of this period, we got hints of extreme positive sentiment, but from billionaires and institutional buyers and only in BTC. Even on January 1st 2020, ethereum was still about 50% down from its previous cycle highs. Much of the crypto world still underwater.

8/ BTC decisively setting new ATHs created a surge in new interest (both institutional and retail). We saw a major Kimchi premium (south korean BTC trading at a premium to the rest of the world) for the first time since 2017.

9/ When BTC finally took a breather, we got the first "alt season." This first season is largely driven by crypto insiders rotating wealth from BTC (and then ETH) into riskier assets, so "quality" alts mostly outperformed. Defi largecaps being the clearest winners.

10/ that brings us to today. As long as BTC is consolidating, I expect alts to continue doing reasonably well. At some point, BTC will start another parabolic move higher and it'll likely outperform alts on the move. That move will trigger the next surge in new money.

11/ That next surge is likely to be the real retail wave, and the alt season that results is likely to be far more "manic" and less focused on quality. That pattern will likely continue until the bull market ends. Maybe we'll have 2, 3, or 4 distinct oscillations.

12/ at some point, we may see the oscillations get so fast that they just blend together and everything is flying with day to day (or even intraday) rotations in strength. And of course...there will be pullbacks. Every mini-parabola will likely retrace to bottom of the parabola.

13/ Everything I've written above may be true in very general form, but reality will undoubtedly be far messier. This tweetstorm is meant to be like an impressionist painting, not a photograph of the future. And...I may be wrong about everything.

14/ if I'm even close to right, it will be difficult to beat a buy and hold strategy through the end of this bull run. For active traders, it's certainly possible to add lots of alpha with timing and rotation, but the opportunity cost of mistakes is high.

15/ okay, so when does this bull run end? Wish I knew. Things I'll be watching for are: rallies being driven by retail traders with high leverage, total leverage in the ecosystem at exorbitant levels. As rough guesses, I think we have 9-22 months, and I'm targeting $100k-$400k.

16/ Timing market tops is exceptionally hard. Hardly anyone is really good at it. I do think it's very possible to identify the "9th inning", the general last phase. The challenge is that this phase could last a year (although that's unlikely), and BTC might rally 300% during it

17/ so what's a smart strategy for reducing exposure? Once I think we're in the late 8th or early 9th inning, I'll start gradually cutting down risk exposure. I'll look for cheap hedges, and will try to make money more with repeatable short-term bets than general beta exposure.