The last forced sellers are exiting.

The Roundup is Rhino’s weekly read for people who'd rather build a process than predict a price.

First of all, from everyone at Rhino, we want to send our warmest and most heartfelt condolences to anybody caught up in the ColdCard fiasco. 

The team has been glued to their screens like most of you, calling our friends and family to move their funds if they have them on a ColdCard. It’s really been a terrible ordeal. 

Of all the pills we’ve swallowed over the years as Bitcoiners, this has to be one of the toughest.

But there’s a silver lining. The teamwork and the effort put in by entire teams of developers (many of which aren’t even connected to Coldcard) to figure out what happened and how to get funds to safety has been quite inspiring. People rallying, working around-the-clock to help out others in times of dire need is nearly impossible to find elsewhere.

Bitcoiners truly are a unique breed of believers.  

So despite being one of our darkest hours, we remain convinced that we’ll come back stronger and better than ever. These are really horrible growing pains. Hang in there, everyone. Things will get better soon. 

One piece of good news: the selling is drying up. 

Last week we wrote about how Bitcoin treasuries have dumped Bitcoin to the tune of $1.4 billion this year. 

Here’s the follow-up that’s worth your attention: that selling is coming to an end. 

The tape has gone quiet, volume has thinned to multi-year lows, and long-term holders — Strategy aside — haven’t flinched. The forced hands are nearly empty, and when the last one finishes, the weight that’s been sitting on this market will finally lift. 

That raises the only question that matters when you’re staring down a chart that’s down around 45% over the past year: how would you even know if this is the bottom?

Most people will answer that price feels low while fear feels high. But that’s not very helpful because there’s no real data. Look at this instead. 

You’re looking at dozens of Bitcoin gauges stacked into one picture. Red is when the market is euphoric and expensive, blue flashes when it’s fearful and cheap. 

Right now it’s the bluest it’s been since the FTX collapse. We’re talking deep value, on nearly every measure at once. 

But, and this is the whole point, it is not entirely blue. There’s still a handful of gauges that still aren’t cold. 

And like Rafael Schulze-Kraft, co-founder of Glassnode, wrote on Twitter, every real bottom in Bitcoin’s history was called by a confluence of many signals agreeing. 

“The Bitcoin Cycle Position Heatmap Red sits in its coldest stretch since FTX: late in the bear, but not yet the unanimous deep blue that previously marked a floor,” said Schulze-Kraft. 

“Always look for confluence when aiming to call a bottom.”

So I pulled another chart from Glassnode that says the same thing from another perspective. This is the shallowest bear on record by depth, and by the clock of past cycles, it still hasn’t served out its full term.

My take (not financial advice, but just an opinion) is that we’re still not at the bottom. 

Now that’s certainly not a reason for you to sit on the sidelines. Quite the opposite, in fact. Because the lesson that Bitcoin treasuries have taught us in reverse is that the ones who got destroyed tried to time the exact bottom, with size and leverage.

The ones who win accept that they can’t call it, and let a process do their bidding. 

Down 45% and everyone’s panicking. The ones who get wrecked try to time it. The ones who win know how to wait. Don’t be exit liquidity:

So what are we watching from here?

The gauges turning a deeper, more unanimous blue, Bitcoin reaching the $69,000 mark — the average price short-term buyers paid, and the line that flips them from underwater to in-profit — on rising volume, and the ETF buyers returning in droves rather than dripping back in. 

That’s the confluence. Until it lines up, the smart move isn’t to guess, but rather to let the last forced sellers finish emptying out while you keep stacking.

Chat next week,

Hector