There's Hope for Bitcoin with James Van Straten | SLP731

**James Van Straten** (0:00)
It's mad to think how fearful the market is. And we could just be fearful, and it's that theory of just climbing the wall of worry. And that's why Bitcoin could just keep going higher, as more and more people are sidelined.

**Stephan Livera** (0:14)
Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Stephan Livera Podcast. Joining me on the show today is James Van Straten. James is a senior analyst at CoinDesk. I've known James around the space for a couple of years. James is well known for writing and speaking about Bitcoin. And yeah, I wanted to get him on the show to chat about his views about this bear market. Is it over? Is it still ongoing? Where are we at? So yeah, first of all, welcome to the show, James. And yeah, give us a bit of an overall flavor of your view. How are you seeing things in Bitcoin and Macroworld?

**James Van Straten** (0:43)
Cheers. Thank you for having me on, Stephan. Yeah, this bear market is... Well, this is my third bear market. And I think each bear market is very different. When I got in 2017 or I got in December of 2017, that 2018, 2019 for me was just so wild west. It was like, my money's kind of gone. But because that was the foundation of learning about everything, it was just more of a... That was actually, you know, with the phrase like bear markets are for building, that kind of mentality. Like my head was so in the weeds then. It was like the price was so irrelevant. It was just understanding everything. The 2022 bear market was... It was actually really bad.
It was bad because all the assets were going down. So it was TradFi that was getting hit, Bitcoin, everything was getting hit, and there was just no let up anywhere. You also had the fraud and the contagion within crypto as well. And that for me as well was like, I've worked so hard to get into this industry and like be in it. And then it was like, there's so much bad actors in this space. It's like, I don't even know if I want to be in this space anymore, that it was just, it was repulsive. And now I think we're in this bear market now, where it's like, we had the October 10th crash. We can have speculation on what happened there, but mainly most of it wasn't, there was nothing to do with the contagion really. It was just market makers and liquidity that was kind of getting pulled. And if you look at TradFi now, it's held up extremely well. So every bear market has been different, but again, this bear market has had really like positive sentiment towards it. And yeah, it's fascinating to see how every four years these bear markets change, even though the price is down, sentiment's different or there's just so many nuances with each bear market. So each one is its own really.

**Stephan Livera** (2:43)
Well, let's get your take on the four year cycle because there are still debates raging about this. Do you believe in the four year cycle? Yes or no? And where are you at there?

**James Van Straten** (2:53)
No, I've never believed in it. Again, coming in 2017, I never, I don't believe I ever heard the phrase four year cycle. That's the first thing. The first time I ever came across the four year cycle was kind of like, I think it was like 2021 when it kind of just then happened in November. I never really heard of it in 2017 It was definitely not a thing in 2013 But then if you look at the mathematics behind the actual issuance rate into Bitcoin and its market cap, I would imagine that even 2020 halving had very little impact. Maybe the 2016 from a mathematical standpoint did have some nuances of effect, but it's more psychological than anything. And if we really want to be pedantic about the four year cycle, last year was the parabolic blow-off top we were meant to have, and we never got that expansion phase. So and the year actually finished like 20% down, which was even better. The only thing that the four year cyclers can now hold on to is, we topped in October 6th, and that was pretty much on however many days from the cycle bottom. It happened to be that, but it kind of coincided with 50 billion dollars worth, sorry, 500 billion dollars worth of spot sell side pressure from OG and long term holders for two years consecutively.
As soon as ETF launched, Bitcoin at 100k, there was just absolute vast amounts of spot sell side. So when people refer to Mike Stracci are buying, or the ETFs are buying, or anything like that, it's the spot selling dwarfs, anything that any other narrative came in for the last few years. So looking at the data, what's really interesting was in December 2025, over a 30 day period, one million Bitcoin was sold from long term holders. One million Bitcoin.