[00:00:08] Jonathan DeYoung: Welcome to the Decentralize with Cointelegraph podcast. My name is Jonathan DeYoung, and I’m your host for today’s episode. Today, I’ll be bringing you a conversation I recently had with popular trader and investor Michaël van de Poppe. Michaël is the founder of MN Consultancy, MN Capital and MN Academy, and in addition to sharing market updates to his nearly 1 million followers, he’s also known for his popular YouTube channel and video updates. Michaël and I caught up in Amsterdam at the 2024 edition of the Decentralized Knowledge Graph Conference, or DKGcon, where he was featured on a panel about the impact of AI on the startup ecosystem. We covered a plethora of topics related to the markets, including the state of the Bitcoin bull market, whether an altseason is still in the cards, the role of artificial intelligence in trading, and much more. Just a note that we recorded this interview on October 24, so just keep that timing in mind when we talk about the status of the market or current events.
[00:01:13] Jonathan DeYoung: All right. So, I’m here at DKGcon with Michaël van de Poppe. Politely, he told me I’m pronouncing his name wrong. It is quite Dutch. And despite me being one-eighth Dutch, I’m not even going to try because I’m certainly going to mess it up. If you’re not familiar with Michaël, he’s a very popular trader and investor. He’s also the founder of MN Consultancy, MN Capital and MN Academy. So, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with me today.
[00:01:39] Michaël van de Poppe: No worries. Happy to be here. I mean, good to know that I’m actually talking to another fellow Dutchman.
[00:01:47] Jonathan DeYoung: I’ll take it. So, let me just cut straight to what probably most people in the crypto space who might be listening to this want you to talk about, which is when is everyone going to get rich? Would you say we’re in a Bitcoin bull market, or do you add an asterisk and kind of clarify it?
[00:02:04] Michaël van de Poppe: I think we are in a Bitcoin bull market. I’ve been to Bitcoin Amsterdam like two weeks ago. It was kind of weird to be at a conference where everybody is happy while my positions are still underwater.
[00:02:15] Jonathan DeYoung: Yeah, yeah.
[00:02:15] Michaël van de Poppe: I’m like, what’s happening here? But I think we’re in the middle of one. And I think Raoul Pal’s phrasing it the boring zone, and we’re waiting for the banana zone. I think we are literally on edge, but the only issue I have is that everybody expects it, so usually, we get a different outcome. That’s kind of the issue that I have here, but I still believe that currently, we are on the verge of the perfect storm, or we are actually building it already, which means that, yeah, next year is going to be big. But maybe that’s the difference: I think that the next part of the cycle is going to be longer than the previous cycle, so that we’re going to end up in somewhere 2026.
[00:02:53] Jonathan DeYoung: What do you think has been keeping it in this boring phase for so long? Is it the anticipation around the elections coming up in the US? Is it the people waiting for the rate cuts? Or is there something else?
[00:03:06] Michaël van de Poppe: If you look at Bitcoin, I think there’s always that stage at this point in the cycle — in 2020, you’ve got the same, with 2016, you have the same — that price just doesn’t move after the halving for a very long period of time. And that’s the same period where the price of Bitcoin is moving beneath the average mining costs, which currently is also the same. So, it’s just a sort of switching hands between investors. And currently, the ones that are buying are the ETF buyers, and the ones that are selling are probably the miners. So, that’s just a flat period. And then, on top of that, you’ve got regulations in EU with MiCA. You’ve got Trump or Harris, which is going to impact the crypto regulation and Bitcoin regulation in the US. You’ve got a very hawkish policy for the past two years, and it’s still undecided on where the Fed is going to go to. So, it’s just a waiting game until we’re going to be switching. And I think November is going to be the big month when it comes to all these events. That’s basically what we’re waiting for, I think. But the past weeks, we’ve seen an astronomical number coming into the ETF, $2 or $3 billion, but markets are just not moving. So, it’s just waiting, waiting until we slowly crawl towards the all-time high and then probably start to shoot off.
[00:04:20] Jonathan DeYoung: Are you somebody who buys into the idea that Bitcoin could reach the seven-plus figures at some point in the future?
[00:04:28] Michaël van de Poppe: I find it very hard because, yes, in theory, we can reach a million or more. But if you look at the valuation of Bitcoin, it’s being priced into the US dollar. So, as long as the policy is going to be QE and we are constantly printing more money, it is possible to reach those targets. But we are not paying a lot of attention to what’s a very important topic, which is the amount of debt that we create, and that’s going through the roof. So, at some point, the economy is going to be resetting through which the amount of debt needs to be repaid back. Everybody, or like a group of people, are Airbnbing houses or flipping houses or using a lot of debt to invest, et cetera, et cetera. It’s going to be recalled at some point. So, we’re going to have a debt crisis like we’ve seen in 2008, and we’re going to see that again, the question is when. And if that happens, the amount of dollars that we have in circulation is going to drop. And if that happens, the purchasing power is going to drop as well, and the price of Bitcoin will also change. So, yes, at some point in time, I expect it to happen. But if we have the crisis in between, yes, of course, it’s going to be disastrous for the valuation of all assets in the US dollar.
[00:05:36] Jonathan DeYoung: And I guess theoretically, if we reach $1 million Bitcoin, it probably means that the, to your point, the purchasing power of that Bitcoin, it’s not going to be like what $1 million is today. It’s going to be the new, I don’t know, $100,000 or whatever it will be.
[00:05:50] Michaël van de Poppe: If your inflation is going to be like 20% to 30% on a year, and it takes five to six years, and you get to a million, then it’s not like you can do everything you want. No, I mean, steak is going to cost three or four times as much as today. So, technically, you keep your living standard, but you’re not really improving. And that is what people are just not seeing at this stage. By having money in your bank account, you’re devaluing your life over time. So, by putting it into Bitcoin, at least you stick to that level. And maybe if there is some extra liquidity being into the market or you’re trading it well or whatever, you have the ability to improve your living standard. And that’s the key point here.
[00:06:33] Jonathan DeYoung: How important do you think the psychological numbers, like the actual number 100,000 or 60,000 or 69,000... It took a little bit of time for us to break through $69,000, presumably just for the meme factor of the number 69, right? So, I imagine when we get to $100,000, there’s going to be, just the fact that it’s the number 100,000, it’s going to be difficult to break through. $420,000, it’s going to be difficult to break through. So, how important do you think those like psychological levels are when it comes to the future of prices of different cryptocurrencies, or Bitcoin, specifically?
[00:07:10] Michaël van de Poppe: I think there is a large group of people that have a target at 100K that they are looking to sell their position, but it’s going to be in the middle of the range. So, there’s going to be way more people eager to buy into Bitcoin. It’s just going to go blasting through 100K. If Bitcoin reaches 420K this cycle, and it’s going to be the top, I think I’ll quit because then everything is just framed. But I guess it’s depending on where you’re at. Like psychological numbers are super important.
If you go back into 2017 and if you go back into 2021 cycles, in 2017, we broke through $1,000, which was a resistance for a long time, as the previous peak in 2014 was 1.3K. In 2020, 2021, a lot of people were aiming that $6,000 was going to be the big resistance because we were bouncing on it for like a year in 2018. But what happened? Literally, everyone wants to go short on $6,000, and it just blasted through and never retested it. So, it’s just a matter of how we approach it. If, for instance, Bitcoin goes in a bazooka from here to 100K in two weeks, yeah, I bet it’s going to find resistance and stay there for a long time. Just like the current all-time high is being a resistance for eight months, as people are just reflecting and selling it at that point. So, as I said, it’s depending on where you are in the cycle. If it is the banana zone, I think it’s going to blast through, it’s going to accelerate. I think 100K is a number that is going to pop up everywhere in the media, and people are like, boom, it’s back into business and start going into crypto again.
[00:08:44] Jonathan DeYoung: Yeah, I feel like that would be a pretty significant moment for retail investors, especially. Because you’re right, that number, you’re going to see it on CNN. You’re going to see it on BBC. You’re going to see it everywhere, people talking about Bitcoin again. And then that might be where, if there’s not FOMO already leading up to it, you know, that would be when my like grandparents call and be like, oh, what is this Bitcoin thing? I saw it’s $100,000 again.
[00:09:08] Michaël van de Poppe: Yeah. And maybe Trump is going to push it additionally, you don’t know. But if it breaks the all-time high, it starts to pop up already. And they are not going to call you for, hey, should I buy Bitcoin? But they will call you up for hey, which memecoin or which altcoin do I need to buy? Unfortunately, it’s a memecoin, but the memecoins are the altcoins of the previous cycles. The memecoins are there for people who want to be rich very fast, because I think that’s the only topic where someone on the streets is walking around making a 1,000X or 100X tells all the people around it that he made a lot of money with it, so people are chasing their dream. I think altcoins are relatively boring and have different variables that are moving it. So, I think it’s ultimately a combination of the two, but if Bitcoin reaches that number, the overall interest into crypto becomes bigger.
[00:09:57] Jonathan DeYoung: You were saying earlier that a lot of your positions are still underwater. I’m assuming you were referring to altcoins. I’m in the same boat as well, and I’ve made the mistake of looking for projects that offer real-world utility instead of memes, and those ones seem to be very slow burn, and it can sometimes feel a bit disheartening when they kind of stay stagnant and everything else shoots up. So, do you foresee a future where the real-world utility projects, the actual utility coins, will sort of froth up to the top and be the ones that either bring investment or bring money, or that just stick around and make it through this kind of still Wild West period of crypto?
[00:10:45] Michaël van de Poppe: It would be quite strange if I said no, but yeah, memecoins is just something that is just annoying as NFTs were in 2021. And the memecoins like Shiba and, what did we have, Loki back in 2021, I was super annoyed during that period as well. But you should be realizing that if you want to become rich through memecoins, it’s complex. It is super hard. Once it hits the centralized exchange, the upside is already gone, most of it. So, being in a decentralized world, like searching on the internet to find those memes, it’s super hard, and you get burned. So, short term, yes, of course, but do you actually have a skill if you were lucky buying memecoins and trading them? I don’t feel so. If you do proper fundamental research, and you position yourself well, and you have a capacity of navigating which projects are good, and you invest into those, but it’s just taking more time, it’s fine, you have a skill.
Then coming to the point of the utility coins, yes, of course. I think the first layer that’s really going to move is DeFi. I think we’re gonna have a whole new DeFi summer, based on the fact that if the rate cuts are going to happen and the Fed rate is going to be lower, so the yield you get on government bonds is going to be lower, that every tick it makes, the more interesting DeFi becomes, the higher the yields on ETH become, the higher the yields on stablecoins become. So, more family offices, private big investors or institutional investors are pushing themselves towards ETH, and that’s just the pendulum. So, then it starts to twist, and then ETH starts to wake up, and that’s when you get the fire on. Because if ETH starts to move, everything in RWA and DePIN starts to work as well. So, yes, utility will come, but it needs to have a little bit of spark of fire, which comes through DeFi, through ETH.
[00:12:35] Jonathan DeYoung: All right. So, I can stay hopeful.
[00:12:37] Michaël van de Poppe: Yes, you can. Of course, I mean, I’m also in the same... I’ve been investing into altcoins earlier this summer, expecting it to do well at an earlier stage than where we’re at right now. But I’ve been doing it in 2017, and back in 2017, I was just straight-up gambling, as a side note. I’ve been doing it in 2020, and it got to the point in that period that I lost like 70% to 80% of my money. And then I did a 100X in a year, which was mental. I’m not going to expect that to happen right now, but being underwater for like 40% to 50% or whatever number you have, it’s a screenshot of the current data. And if fundamentally your thesis is correct, the gap between your thesis and price can be magnificent. And at some point, it’s going to revert. And then the gap between price and your fundamental thesis is going to be the other way around. And that’s when you need to make the money or choose to take the profits. So, you need to be patient in the thesis, or in the training that you do, because if your thesis is correct, then in one to two years from now, you’ll be fine. That’s it.
[00:13:40] Jonathan DeYoung: Have you played or heard of the game Over/Under, whether something’s overrated or underrated?
[00:13:46] Michaël van de Poppe: Yeah, I do know what it is. Yeah.
[00:13:47] Jonathan DeYoung: So, I want to play a quick game with you. I’m going to hit you with a few different topics here of things that people have either said are bull market catalysts, they are big influences on the market, and I want you to tell me if you think that they are overrated or underrated as for their importance in the market. So, first one: Bitcoin ETFs. How have they played out?
[00:14:11] Michaël van de Poppe: I think that one is actually underrated. I think that the impact of the ETFs is astronomical for the markets because without the ETFs and without the institutional investors, Bitcoin was valued at 20K at this point. So, I think we need them. And that’s contrary of what every crypto native or Web3 native believes. But in terms of growth of the market, we need the ETFs. So, yes, it’s underrated, and I think it’s just at the start of way more capital and liquidity being into the market.
[00:14:42] Jonathan DeYoung: What about retail investors? The big narrative of the last bull cycle.
[00:14:46] Michaël van de Poppe: I think retail investors do not play such a big role anymore because, one, they are not interested due to the fact that they can’t make the actual return that they were looking for in the previous cycles. So, altcoins are not going to do 100x anymore. Then secondly, one, institutional investors is just already bigger than most of the retail investors. So, the influence there is also less, which makes it more efficient, which makes the market a more mature one, but also boring. And that’s what you see reflected into the fact that retail is generally jumping out of memecoins. They want to chase that big gain, and that’s why memecoins come into play. So, the role of retail investors is just slowly graduating downwards over time, which is fine.
[00:15:31] Jonathan DeYoung: What about presidential administrations? So, obviously, there’s a big debate now about are Republicans going to be better, would a Trump presidency be better for crypto than a Harris presidency. Yeah, I’ve heard other people say it doesn’t matter because inflation and debt is baked into our system, regardless of who, or the floodgates have already opened with the ETFs. So, do you think that the influence of whatever political leader is in charge of the biggest economies is overrated or underrated in 2024 or 2025?
[00:16:05] Michaël van de Poppe: I think people overrate the current elections because, in the long term, it doesn’t matter. Bitcoin doesn’t care about governments, and it does care about policies. So, in that sense, if we get Harris, then maybe short term, it’s going to have a negative impact because it’s just putting a hold on regulation and innovation in some way. But in the long term, she will continue with the policy that we have, which is printing more money, which is, for Bitcoin, always technically good, and the rates are going to be lower.
But with Trump, for regulation, it’s going to be great, at least if he does what he says, right? In the long term, probably it’s going to be disastrous. Or in the mid-term, it’s going to be disastrous, as he wants to do the opposite of what Kamala is doing. So, you need to question if he’s going to continue printing or if he’s going to cut the taxes and stuff. That’s going to maybe blow off the entire economy. So, I think in the short term, people overrate, or actually people overrate the elections and that the impact is just, it doesn’t really make sense. It’s going to be the same outcome at the end of the day.
[00:17:11] Jonathan DeYoung: And the last one I’ll ask you: the four-year cycle, right, that everybody tends to be obsessed with. Every four years, you get a bull, we get a bear, you get a bull, we get a bear. And it follows this extremely predictable cycle, and if we just hold on, then we’ll get another massive bull market at some point. Do you buy into that?
[00:17:27] Michaël van de Poppe: I think that is also overrated because if that is true, then everybody can become a millionaire, if that continues to happen over the next decades. I think this is the last cycle where the correlation still exists, but technically, it has all to do with liquidity. I think that if, for instance, China and the US and Europe are continuing to have rate cuts or continue to print and M1, M2 supply, the money supply is going to grow, it’s gonna continue to expand. So, likely, we have a longer cycle and have a more disastrous bear market. So, the correlation is going to be substantially bigger with liquidity and macroeconomic factors. Also, due to the fact that we have the institutionals into the ETFs right now, they rebalance based on that, and it’s going to be less impactful through the whole thing. So, then the four-year cycle will go away as well.
[00:18:18] Jonathan DeYoung: So, obviously there’s a lot of, I have a list of like 13 things where I picked like five of them for the sake of brevity. But is there anything that you’re thinking about in this sort of market cycle that is perhaps underrated that I didn’t mention that is kind of in the back of your mind right now?
[00:18:37] Michaël van de Poppe: I think, at this point, Ethereum and DeFi is super underrated. And the reason for it is that without DeFi, you can’t have Bitcoin. So, if you want to have a financial system where Bitcoin is the central point, I think we need to have ETH and DeFi as well. We need to bridge Bitcoin with ETH to make it work. Then we can create DeFi on Bitcoin as well, which, in some ways, is also happening at this point. But the amount of liquidity that’s being pushed into DeFi is going to quickly accelerate. And if you look at it from that perspective and the amount of money being locked into a lot of these DeFi protocols, it is 10 or 15 times higher than the current market cap. And that’s where you can see that something is substantially undervalued. So, I think that if you go onto social media, you will see that people are pissed off and angry about ETH at this point, but fundamentally, and in terms of regulation and adoption, it is compliant. It’s secure. It is also scalable at this point with layer 2s, and it’s getting fast too. So, fundamentally, the adoption is growing extensively there, the price is just not following. So, I think... I also always try to look at those sort of edges where nobody is looking at it right now, and I think that’s where it is. The sweet spot is of the next bull market.
[00:19:53] Jonathan DeYoung: So, bullish on Bitcoin DeFi then, or DeFi on Bitcoin?
[00:19:57] Michaël van de Poppe: I’m bullish on ETH DeFi at this point because it exists. Yeah, I mean, Bitcoin DeFi has been tried for a long time, and it’s still relatively hard to build something on top of Bitcoin. I think it will be there, and once it is there, it’s going to be big. With our venture capital, we share the thesis that Bitcoin DeFi is something that we will be having, but the technology is just not getting through So, we don’t bet on layer 2s. We rather want to wait until something gets traction, and then we start to put our money into it. So, for now, we focus on ETH DeFi. SOL, a little, [inaudible] SUI DeFi and some of those things because DeFi in itself, as I said, that’s like the next sort of circle in the ecosystem that needs to be completed.
[00:20:40] Jonathan DeYoung: So, to pivot topics here just a little bit, we are at a conference, DKGcon, right now that is focused on intersection of AI, blockchain and knowledge graphs. So, on the topic of AI, do you think that AI has a positive potential impact on markets and trading and investing, a negative potential impact, or do you think it’s somewhere in the middle?
[00:21:05] Michaël van de Poppe: I think it’s fluid. It goes both ways, right? So, AI is nothing new when it comes to trading. It has been around for a long time already. And what has it done? Technically, the markets became more efficient because through algorithms and through machine learning or through bots, you were actually able to trade the markets in a more efficient way. That’s a great next step. However, if you look at it from the perspective of where can we go from here? There’s no AI at this point that is outperforming the S&P, but there is also only a small group of people or funds that are outperforming the S&P in the same way. So, it’s super hard to do that. And the reason for that is that the markets are super complex, and they’re getting more complex as well. And there is a lot of insider info which is not able for either US or AI to be tracked. If I have a position into an altcoin and all of a sudden, some whale decides to say, hey, I’m selling, yeah, I mean, nobody can know. So, I think it is going to have a positive and a negative impact. It’s going to increase efficiency in the markets. It’s going to be able to provide more people the ability to invest and trade into the markets through maybe funds and stuff, but it’s also going to increase the volatility. So, it has a positive and negative impact.
[00:22:24] Jonathan DeYoung: Do you think there’s a risk of AI being used to manipulate markets? There’s all this insider trading and things like that and whales that can sort of dictate where price goes based on putting massive buy and sell orders and things like that. Would a sufficiently advanced AI be able to learn how to manipulate markets more effectively than a person could?
[00:22:46] Michaël van de Poppe: If you look at the markets from the past 30 years, I think the best example of manipulation is silver, which has been suppressed for like 10 years or so. So, I mean, the question is, if you have such amount of manipulation with AI, I think it’s going to be easier to do so. But then you’re competing against other AIs, so then the same battlefield happens. It’s just like, who’s going to win? The question is, what is manipulation? What’s the definition of that? If you go into that rabbit hole, then maybe regulation is the solution for it. But maybe open markets and just keeping it like it is, is the other solution for it, because then bad actors are going to lose it at some point as well, because markets become more efficient. So, it’s just a way of which path are we going to. At this point, it’s all about regulation, but I think that being open source or having open markets is actually the better way for moving forward.
[00:23:39] Jonathan DeYoung: What about in terms of the crypto market and like AI coins and tokens? It seems like... Obviously, there are plenty of projects that are legitimately working on AI solutions. DePIN is another big one that people talk about now. There’s a lot of legitimate DePIN projects that were DePIN before it was a thing to call yourself DePIN. But it also sort of feels like projects are and tokens are just, if there’s any sort of way that they can be remotely connected to using the word AI, they’ll label themselves as an AI coin and try to get on that CoinMarketCap list of AI coins. So, do you think the current AI, quote-unquote, crypto market is sustainable? Is it in sort of a mini bubble?
[00:24:24] Michaël van de Poppe: I think it is. And the reason for it is that we’ve got our own venture capital, and quite often, we see AI projects, and we just simply ask, why do you need a token? And that’s not specifically for AI, but it’s also for DePIN and others. Like why a token? There are a lot of bad actors grabbing the phrase to make more money out of a lounge. I think that is getting better at this point as projects are launching lower valuations and people are not buying into it anymore. And I think I said it on the stage as well: AI is a vertical, and there are some good projects that are doing stuff with AI. Like Bittensor is a good one out there, but... The group with Fetch and Ocean is a good project as well.
But the real impact of AI is horizontal. So, the integration of AI into DeFi protocols. The integration of AI into DePIN. The integration of AI in RWA and connecting them through oracles. That’s where the actual impact is going to be at, and I think you can better just remove AI from the entire project and just focus on what you do, because everyone is going to include AI anyways, so there is no added value anymore. So, that’s my thesis when it comes to this. But it’s the same with DePIN. I mean, we’ve seen dozens of GPU projects coming out in the past few months that are just white paper copying someone else and have a hardware that’s been built up in three months. And we were like, yeah, that’s not really true.
[00:25:46] Jonathan DeYoung: Yeah, that’s an interesting point you made that like at a certain point, like every project is going to be an AI project, quote-unquote, in some way, because it’s just going to become so integrated, so that even the label of being an AI project could lose some of its meaning or become meaningless at a certain point.
[00:26:01] Michaël van de Poppe: I always refer to the Visa partnerships that we had like four years ago. Like a lot of projects were saying, we are partnered by Visa, and that shot up the price. But what they were doing, they were just like... Or had a credit card or had like something simple. For instance, saying your partnered with Google because you use Google Cloud. That’s kind of the same way. Like if you use ChatGPT or OpenAI, you’re also using AI, right? So, then you put it on top of it. So, it’s just the importance lies into the impact of AI into the project itself. But mostly, you don’t need a token. But it will be integrated alongside a blockchain and a lot of DeFi and DePIN projects because that’s where things becomes more productive and efficient.
[00:26:43] Jonathan DeYoung: So, lastly, I want to ask you a little bit about your investment expertise and experience and perspective. So, I’m not going to ask you like what you’re invested in. I know you talk about that a lot on your social media, the price of things and doing the analysis and whatever. But I am curious what like some of the rookie mistakes that people make are when they get into investing, or we can talk about trading as well. And then, on the flip side, what are some mistakes that you see even like veteran investors and traders make?
[00:27:15] Michaël van de Poppe: I think when it comes to trading, rookie traders make the mistake of doing too much. Especially at the beginning, the best you could do is to learn and to learn as much as you can of the things that you do. So, I’d rather have five trades and just analyze it for hours than having 50 trades and nowhere to go. That’s a rookie mistake. I’ve been making the mistake of having like 10 leveraged positions at the same time, and they just get cut off at the same time as well, which you learn. Rookies, in my, well... Starters are making the mistake of making it too complex for themselves in general, like diving into DePIN, diving into DeFi, diving into RWA, but how do you know what you’re looking for? Just take it step by step. Begin with Bitcoin. Begin with Ethereum. Start to understand how a trade works. Start to understand how the dynamics work, what is liquidity, and just start improving from there instead of diving into everything. So, your portfolio should be very simple as well, because if you can avoid most mistakes in the beginning, your return will be higher over time. The more mistakes you make at the start, the heavier the impact will be gradually over time. So, in that aspect, I think your investment portfolio as a starter should just have a max of like eight coins or so, and just focus on them, just try to do them as best as you can.
And when it comes to like veterans, I’m not going to call myself one, but I’m trying to learn from people that are longer in the market and more experienced. And what I think is that you need to be open to the contrary view. What I usually see is that someone that has been doing something really well is staying into the echo chamber, and just continues to walk in the same path. That at some point, that thesis that you have, it needs to be improved. You need to continue improving it, and if you don’t, you lose. So, just being open for different opinions, different views, different pieces, and continue to improve, that’s where I think that you can stay in the market instead of becoming a maxi of anything.
[00:29:17] Jonathan DeYoung: No one likes a maxi.
[00:29:18] Michaël van de Poppe: No, no. Me neither. Me neither.
[00:29:20] Jonathan DeYoung: And then finally, and you said you’re trying to learn from people that are more experienced than you who’ve been investing or trading. What is like an excellent piece of advice that you’ve gotten from somebody, if you could think of one? And then also, just doesn’t have to be from these people you’re talking to, but what’s like an absolutely terrible piece of advice that you’ve gotten in your trading and investing career?
[00:29:42] Michaël van de Poppe: Oh, that’s a hard one. I don’t have a specific one that sticks to me, but I’m a trader, and I’m an entrepreneur. And when it comes to being an entrepreneur and being on social media, I got like fed up with the comments that I sometimes had of like people doing something. So, then I listened to a podcast of Modern Wisdom with Alex Hormozi. By the way, if you have a business, and if you want to be efficient, Alex Hormozi is the way to go. And he said people want the view, not the climb. And that opened up my perspective on how things should evolve. Like people surrounding you always debating or discussing that you need to do stuff in a better way, but maybe it doesn’t fit you, and you need to do it yourself.
And when it comes to trading, I think Charlie Munger is by far the best one to follow. Unfortunately, he passed away, but the quotes that he had is just amazing, and the things that he learned, or that I learned from him, is to be patient on your thesis. That’s, in general, the fact, and that’s what we inherently do within our companies. We’ve got our thesis, we stick to it, and we’re not moving until some argument comes in that might be twisting it a little bit. So, that is how you go through periods that you feel like you’re doing something wrong, but you might, in essence, be doing something right. And that’s the conflicting part of being underwater with positions as well. So, that’s how we navigate. And that’s what I’ve learned from the guys that I feel are more experienced.
[00:31:08] Jonathan DeYoung: So, you never just rage quit?
[00:31:10] Michaël van de Poppe: No, I’ve done that before. Drunk trading, as well. But no, I never rage quit for me to change my positions. It requires a lot of checks from the team and from myself before I do that. And that’s, I think, the right way of investing into the market.
[00:31:25] Jonathan DeYoung: Sure, and the benefit of having a team around you.
[00:31:27] Michaël van de Poppe: It helps a lot, yeah.
[00:31:28] Jonathan DeYoung: Sobriety perhaps might help then, it sounds like.
[00:31:31] Michaël van de Poppe: Yeah. And it’s also good like to avoid becoming into your own echo chamber.
[00:31:35] Jonathan DeYoung: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:31:36] Michaël van de Poppe: It’s just giving you the data that you need, and then, they are also open for different opinions, and you can have a natural debate, and you can improve. And that’s the benefit of having a team. But people that are on their own, get into online communities. That helps a lot, too.
[00:31:51] Jonathan DeYoung: Well, Michaël?
[00:31:52] Michaël van de Poppe: Michaël it is, yeah.
[00:31:53] Jonathan DeYoung: Michaël. All right. I appreciate your time.
[00:31:56] Michaël van de Poppe: Thank you very much as well.
[00:31:57] Jonathan DeYoung: One last-ditch attempt at getting your name right there.
[00:31:59] Michaël van de Poppe: You did well.
[00:32:00] Jonathan DeYoung: Thank you.
[00:32:01] Michaël van de Poppe: I thank you for being here as well.
[00:32:02] Jonathan DeYoung: It’s the one-eighth Dutch...
[00:32:03] Michaël van de Poppe: Yeah, that’s why.
[00:32:04] Jonathan DeYoung: ...that’s coming out, yeah.
[00:32:05] Michaël van de Poppe: Oh, you need to enjoy Amsterdam as well.
[00:32:07] Jonathan DeYoung: Of course.
[00:32:08] Michaël van de Poppe: All right, thank you.
[00:32:08] Jonathan DeYoung: Thank you.
[00:32:09] Jonathan DeYoung: You’ve been listening to Decentralize with Cointelegraph, and I’ve been your host for today’s episode, Jonathan DeYoung. If you enjoyed this conversation, we’d love it if you give us a five-star rating and leave us a review. Follow Cointelegraph on X at @cointelegraph to stay up to date and make sure you never miss a new podcast release. And you can also follow me at @maddopemadic. That’s M-A-D-D-O-P-E-M-A-D-I-C. And if you liked my voice, you can hear more of me by following The Agenda podcast on your favorite streaming platforms or at cointelegraph.com/podcasts, where you can also check out the entire line of Cointelegraph’s exciting podcast productions.
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