What I Got Wrong (Publicly) About Markets
Six calls from The Professional Investor Report that didn't hold up, from Genesis and Silvergate to BlackRock and corporate treasuries, and what each one taught me about weighing signals.
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.
I recently republished August 2022, October 2022, November 2022, December 2022, and January 2023.
I revisited these reports and found it valuable to find some of my statements, opinions on the market, or shared ideas that didn't pan out the way I thought. I shared these ideas with over 2,000 subscribers for almost a year and throughout that time, there are bound to be some bad takes.
I believe a track record that only shows the wins is marketing at best and dishonest at worst. Here are 6 things I got wrong and my thoughts on them today.
1. Genesis was "less likely" to go bankrupt
Genesis had just frozen redemptions after FTX collapsed, and a lot of people were calling it next. I disagreed:
"Many have speculated that Genesis is close to bankruptcy. I think it's less likely."
My case rested on the parent company. DCG owed Genesis $575 million due in May 2023. It was on track for $800 million in revenue that year. Genesis itself was a profitable trading business. I concluded that DCG had "a long enough time horizon to restructure Genesis' loan book and keep the business running."
In January 2023, about eight weeks later, Genesis filed for Chapter 11.
This is the one that I got very wrong. I was a Genesis customer, I disclosed that, I still think I was objective about the situation. I was measuring how much money Genesis was making, how integrated into the OTC bitcoin market they were, and how valuable the asset was to the parent company.
2. BlackRock was "effectively priced into the market"
In the hits article, I give myself credit for calling BlackRock's private bitcoin trust "a big deal for adoption." In the same section, though, I also wrote this:
"This makes total sense to use if you are an institutional BlackRock client with access to the Aladdin platform and only want spot-long exposure. If not, this doesn't affect you."
"BlackRock getting involved was eventually going to happen, and in our opinion, it was effectively priced into the market."
It wasn't priced in. When BlackRock filed for a spot bitcoin ETF on June 15, 2023, bitcoin rose about 20% in 11 days, to $30,182. The ETF went on to become the largest bitcoin fund in the world.
I was looking at the product instead of the signal that BlackRock created. The private trust was small, but BlackRock told every advisor, and their compliance, that bitcoin was now an acceptable thing to own.
3. Corporate treasury adoption would be slow
I correctly called that FASB would move bitcoin to fair-value accounting. I was wrong about what companies would do once it did:
"The adoption of bitcoin as a treasury asset is going to be slow relative to its adoption as a speculative investment. Volatility isn't attractive to a CFO managing hundreds of millions in assets."
When I wrote that, public and private companies held about 574,000 bitcoin, and MicroStrategy held 130,000 of it. Public companies passed 1 million bitcoin in September 2025. Today, 199 public companies hold about 1.28 million bitcoin, and private companies hold another 285,000. Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, alone holds 848,000.
I assumed the typical buyer would be a cautious CFO adding a small allocation. The actual buyers were companies that built holding bitcoin into the business and saw volatility as the reason to do it. I assumed too many Boards and CFOs would be afraid of the volatility, but cash rich businesses saw it differently.
4. Record derivatives volume in 2023
In January 2023, $800 million in bitcoin shorts were liquidated, and futures volume climbed back above $30 billion a day. I had some expectations:
"I would expect this volume to be the new norm."
"I would not be surprised if we saw record high derivatives volume this year."
It wasn't the new norm. Volume faded through the spring and summer. Q3 2023 was the lowest quarter for trading volume on centralized exchanges since Q4 2020. Even after volume picked up in December, the month's combined spot and derivatives total was only the highest since June 2022. Nowhere near a record.
I tied the rebound to "increased institutional interest," and that part was real. In November 2023, the CME passed Binance as the largest venue for bitcoin futures open interest. In December, CME derivatives volume hit its highest level since November 2021. The institutions showed up. I called it too soon, another 60 days of waiting and seeing volume and open interest dry up would have been the signal; not one month of data.
5. Regulators would issue real guidance in 2023
December 2022 and January 2023 issues
I closed out 2022 with a list of what 2023 would bring. One item was this:
"We will see regulators make strides in the institutional adoption of digital assets."
The next month, after the Fed, FDIC, and OCC issued a joint statement on crypto risks, I went further:
"Given the amount of time they have had to see the market cycles, see all the bad, and see all the innovation, they are likely to exit that phase this year and issue official rulings and guidance."
2023 was actually "guidance" through enforcement. The SEC filed 46 crypto-related enforcement actions that year, up 53% from 2022 and the most it had ever brought. The guidance I expected came two years late, and only after a change in the White House. In January 2025, the SEC rescinded SAB 121, which had made custody of crypto expensive for banks. The GENIUS Act followed in July 2025.
In this same January report I predicted an SEC "enforcement spree."
"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."
I saw the enforcement wave coming and still expected rule making to be a stronger signal.
6. Silvergate was in the report, and I didn't connect the dots
This one is a failure at an obvious call. In a section on banks taking losses from crypto, I wrote:
"Silvergate saw a 68% decline in deposits, an $8 billion liquidity run, and they announced they will be cutting staff by 40%."
Then I mentioned Metropolitan Bank exiting its crypto-related business. I then go on to talk about the difficulty of finding a banking partner. I brushed over some big numbers and didn't dig into what those actually mean.
On March 8, 2023, 20 days after that issue went out, Silvergate announced it would wind down and liquidate the bank. It cited "recent industry and regulatory developments."
This one is obvious. It doesn't take a CFA to know that a bank seeing an $8 billion liquidity run is well on its way to bankruptcy. This report had a lot of regulatory sections and updates on existing news, like the Celsius bankruptcy proceedings. I didn't give enough attention to other topics that were of consequence.
What the misses have in common
The two biggest misses, Genesis and Silvergate. Both liquidity runs. In both cases, I overweighted what the business was worth: how much it earned, how embedded it was in the market, and how much its parent needed it, in the case of Genesis. A "small" (relatively) market like bitcoin, these have a massive impact even if not felt immediately.
BlackRock and corporate treasuries were the opposite mistake. I judged the product over the name behind it and assumed CFOs would stay cautious. Once BlackRock went first and the accounting was fixed, the companies who put bitcoin on their balance sheet weren't cautious at all.
Derivatives volume and regulatory guidance were about timing and weighting. I called a full year of high volume from one month of data. I also expected regulators to take charge but at the same time I was watching an enforcement wave from the SEC.
Across all six, the information was usually already in my reports. Silvergate's $8 billion run was in the January issue. BlackRock, FASB, and the SEC's enforcement push were all covered too. What I got wrong was which signals I gave the most weight.
If I were writing the report today, I would spend less time on news everyone was already covering and more on the numbers that looked like background and their impact on the next 6 months.