What I Got Right (Publicly) About Markets
Thirteen calls from The Professional Investor Report that held up, from FTX and the 2022 bottom to Grayscale's win over the SEC, and what they had in common.
For over a year from 2022 to mid 2023, I wrote a monthly newsletter called, "The Professional Investor Report." The report mainly covered bitcoin markets (mostly bitcoin credit facilities), regulation as it pertains to bitcoin, and the occasional politics involved. The audience of the Professional Investor Report was Registered Investment Advisors, fund managers, a few family offices, and individuals with a sizable portion of their net worth in bitcoin. The Report covered the bear market as it happened: Celsius, Three Arrows, FTX, Genesis, and a lot of on-chain charts.
I recently republished August 2022, October 2022, November 2022, December 2022, and January 2023.
I recently reread the issues from August 2022 through January 2023. Some of what I wrote aged well. Some of it didn't. This article covers 13 calls that held up. The stuff I got wrong is linked here.
For context, bitcoin was trading around $20,000 when the first of these issues went out. As I write this, it's around $82,700, after peaking near $126,000 in October 2025.
1. "Are we at the bottom of the cycle? I would bet, no."
I'm proud of this one. On-chain models were showing strength, exchange balances were falling, and a lot of people were calling the bottom. I didn't buy it, mostly because bitcoin was still trading on a leash held by the S&P 500 and the Fed.
"To answer it bluntly, are we at the bottom of the cycle? I would bet, no."
Bitcoin was around $21,000 that day. Four days later, FTX started to unravel. Within three weeks, bitcoin had fallen to about $15,500.
In the same paragraph, I said this was a good time to add "what I believe will end up being, incredibly low-cost basis coin." Bitcoin peaked near $126,000 in October 2025.
2. The bottom models could break on "another situation like Terra Luna"
That August, the market crossed below its realized price, about $20,200. That's the average price paid for every coin, based on when each one last moved. Three popular on-chain models all pointed to a floor, and plenty of people treated that as settled. I wrote that I didn't have much faith in anything claiming to predict a cycle bottom, and I named the way the models could fail:
"It is not unreasonable to believe that a black swan event or even another situation like Terra Luna could invalidate these models. You could call that temporary, but the model still broke."
About ten weeks later, FTX was that black swan. Bitcoin fell to roughly $15,500, more than 20% below the realized price the models said was the floor.
3. Incentive tokens are "ripe for fraud and manipulation"
My fund's risk model heavily penalized any counterparty that ran its own platform token. It's one of the reasons we never worked with Celsius. After FTX, I explained why:
"Native token/incentive tokens/exchange tokens, they all create misaligned incentives for everyone involved. They are also ripe for fraud and manipulation."
A month later, I added Midas to the list. Every major blowup of that cycle had a native token at its center: FTX, Celsius, Terra Luna, BlockFi, and Midas.
The courts reached the same conclusion. Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in March 2024. In May 2025, Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky got 12 years. According to the Justice Department, part of his scheme was propping up the CEL token's price with open-market purchases, sometimes paid for with customer deposits.
4. The SEC was "stretching" in Grayscale v. SEC
Grayscale sued the SEC after it rejected the conversion of GBTC into an ETF. I read the briefs. The SEC's case rested on CME surveillance protecting the futures market, which it had already approved, while it argued that spot markets were too exposed to manipulation.
"After reading all of the briefs, I think the SEC is stretching to make this one stick."
"It's hard to logically draw a line from CME surveillance to safe markets while also acknowledging that the market can be affected by outside forces and CME surveillance does nothing."
On August 29, 2023, the D.C. Circuit unanimously ruled that the SEC acted "arbitrarily and capriciously." The court's main point was the inconsistency I had flagged. Spot and futures bitcoin products were similar on the factors that mattered, and the SEC never explained why it treated them differently. Spot bitcoin ETFs were approved on January 10, 2024. In his statement announcing the approval, SEC Chair Gary Gensler cited that ruling.
5. DCG couldn't touch GBTC's bitcoin
In December 2022, GBTC traded at a record 49% discount to the value of the bitcoin it held. Part of the reason was fear that DCG, Grayscale's parent company, was going under and would take the trust's coins with it. I thought that fear misread how the product was built.
"If DCG is near bankruptcy, they can not seize the bitcoin held by GBTC and sell it to fix their problems."
Genesis, DCG's lending arm, filed for bankruptcy nine days later. The bitcoin inside GBTC stayed where it was, with Coinbase as custodian. When GBTC converted to a spot ETF in January 2024, the discount disappeared. Anyone who bought at a 49% discount was paid for trusting the structure.
6. Crypto regulation becomes a presidential election issue
In early 2023, bitcoin (and crypto) still looked like a fringe topic in Washington. I thought that was about to change:
"The regulation of this industry is going to be a topic of conversation in the next presidential election. It won't have the same attention and passion as social issues or international policy, but we are moving out of the 'bitcoin = weird libertarian people' phase of adoption."
On July 27, 2024, Donald Trump gave the keynote at a bitcoin conference in Nashville. He promised to make the U.S. "the crypto capital of the planet." By that summer, crypto-funded super PACs had more than $127 million in cash on hand. A year later, on July 18, 2025, the GENIUS Act became the first federal stablecoin law.
The second half of the call held up too. Bitcoin (and crypto) never rivaled the economy or immigration as a campaign issue, but it was clearly a topic of mainstream politics.
7. FASB will fix bitcoin accounting
Under the old rules, a company holding bitcoin had to book it as an intangible asset, the same category as a patent or a trademark. It sat at cost, could only be written down, and couldn't be marked back up when the price recovered. No CFO wants to explain that to a board. When FASB took a tentative vote that fall, I thought it would stick:
"The accounting for bitcoin on a balance sheet, in accordance with GAAP standards set by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), has been difficult for everyone involved. This is likely to change."
FASB issued ASU 2023-08 on December 13, 2023. Qualifying crypto assets are now measured at fair value, with changes running through net income each period. The rule took effect for fiscal years starting after December 15, 2024.
How quickly companies piled in once the rule took effect is a different story. I got that part wrong, and it's in my article about what I got wrong.
8. BlackRock and institutions "lock away large amounts of bitcoin"
August 2022 issue, published September 1, 2022
In August 2022, BlackRock launched a private bitcoin trust for institutional clients, with Coinbase handling custody. It was a small product, but I didn't think the size was the point:
"The greater market effect will be a continued decline in available coins as institutions lock away large amounts of bitcoin relative to an individual. This is a big deal for adoption at the highest levels of finance."
Two months later, I read a Bloomberg survey in which most sell-side traders planned to buy digital assets. I took that as a sign that "new offerings are hitting the market next year."
BlackRock filed for a spot bitcoin ETF in June 2023, again with Coinbase as custodian. As of October 7, 2026, the iShares Bitcoin Trust holds 806,037 bitcoin. That's close to 4% of all the bitcoin that will ever exist, held by one fund.
9. Tokenized Treasuries have real value
Ondo Finance had just launched a product that let crypto-native firms hold short-term U.S. Treasuries on-chain. It required a $100,000 minimum and charged a 30 basis point fee. From the start, it looked promising. I thought it solved a real problem for firms sitting on idle stablecoin balances:
"The ability to put idle cash (in the form of USDC/T) to work inside an existing ecosystem is well worth the 30bp fee."
"I can't say I will be using Ondo anything soon, but I absolutely see the value."
Tokenized Treasuries passed $1.5 billion in June 2024. In March 2025, Ondo's own products crossed $1 billion. By February 2026, the market was above $10.8 billion.
10. The Fed wasn't going to let Custodia in
I was right, but sadly I was right. Custodia was a Wyoming-chartered bank that held 100% of customer deposits in reserve and asked to be federally regulated. It waited 18 months for a Fed master account and was denied. I was one of more than 2,500 people who had asked to open an account there, so I wanted it to win. Although I was on the waitlist, I was honest about my assessment:
"Unfortunately, I don't see the Fed shifting its tune anytime soon and welcoming another Custodia application."
The Fed held that line for three years. In October 2025, the 10th Circuit upheld the Fed's denial. In March 2026, the full court refused to rehear the case, 7 to 3.
In fairness, the Fed has moved a little since. In March 2026, it gave Kraken limited access to its payment rails through a "skinny" master account. Custodia never got its account.
11. Regulation is coming, the wild west is ending, and the SEC is on a spree
August 2022, October 2022, and January 2023 issues
I made this point several times as the bear market went on. In August 2022:
"No administration or government will sit by while a trillion-dollar market operates without what they believe is sufficient regulation."
In October 2022:
"I think the times of wild west crypto offerings and operations are coming to an end. It's going to take a few years to fully settle in, but we are on the downhill."
In January 2023, after the SEC charged Gemini and Genesis over Gemini's Earn program, which New York regulators had already been overseeing:
"The SEC is a hammer looking for a nail. The SEC is going on an enforcement spree cracking down on anyone offering products to retail investors."
The SEC sued Binance on June 5, 2023, and Coinbase the next day. In November 2023, Binance agreed to pay $4.3 billion and its founder pleaded guilty to money laundering violations. Then the SEC changed leadership, and on February 27, 2025, it dropped the Coinbase case, saying the dismissal was not based on the merits. For an agency that had been swinging a hammer, it was quite an admission.
In fairness, the wild west didn't fully close. We still see a memecoin wave hit every few months as someone with a large following tries to cash in. But the large, custodial, retail-facing businesses that failed in 2022 now operate under far more scrutiny.
12. ETH would go up in dollars, but proof of stake was the wrong design for money
Ethereum was about to switch to proof of stake. My position had two parts, and I published both:
"Ethereum has a more than moderate probability of appreciating in value (USD terms). That being said..."
The "that being said" was my view of proof of stake:
"I believe this model is flawed and will be detrimental to any digital payments network with an underlying currency intended to hold its value."
Both parts held up. ETH was around $1,500 that week and reached $4,953 on August 24, 2025. Against bitcoin, it lost ground. The ETH/BTC ratio hit a 2022 high of 0.084 just before the switch. By May 2026, it had fallen to about 0.028, down about two-thirds.
13. Two percent
This one was an observation, not a forecast. In the BlackRock section of the August issue, I shared what I was seeing among the advisors we worked with:
"Of the wealth managers we work with, we see an allocation of 2% on average to bitcoin."
On December 12, 2024, BlackRock published research calling 1% to 2% a "reasonable range" for bitcoin in a multi-asset portfolio. Advisors had arrived at that number on their own, through client conversations, more than two years before the largest asset manager in the world put it in writing.
What these all have in common
Very few of these were price calls. Most came from reading structure: how a product was built, who held the incentives, what a court would do with an inconsistent argument, and where institutional money was getting ready to go. The one price call that landed, "I would bet, no," came from noticing that bitcoin was still tied to equities and the Fed. The chart patterns didn't drive it.
That's the lesson I'm taking forward. Structure and incentives are more knowable than price, and they tend to win in the end.
I got plenty wrong too, including a call on Genesis that missed by six weeks. Those are in the next article.