Record Global Uncertainty: How to Invest in Crypto During Maximum Fear

Global uncertainty is at record highs.

Higher than 2008, higher than COVID, higher than 9.11.

Gold's down, stock's down, crypto's down.

This is what maximum fear literally looks

and feels like.

In moments like this, so many investors panic

or have already panicked.

So today, Bernie's not gonna break down exactly

how we are positioning and how to think

about investing in crypto during these peak uncertain times

because it has occurred so many times before in crypto,

these big sell-offs and sentiment in and as low as it is now.

So we're gonna talk about the frameworks, the positioning

and the mindset that protects capital

and prepares you for what is going to come next.

Let's get into what birds.

Let's talk about what's actually happening right now.

This is not a crypto-specific sell-off Fed is globally.

We are seeing the highest level of global uncertainty.

There's actually an index for this.

The first time I've ever seen this index,

the world uncertainty index is at historical highs.

It's like twice nearly the uncertainty that we had of COVID,

more than the Iraq war, more than 9-11.

There's a lot of uncertainty in the world right now.

There's a lot of crazy things going on.

You've got like Trump's a big one.

What's he gonna do tomorrow?

All the people underneath him.

You've got wars going on.

Got a lot of inflation.

You've got tariffs.

It's all kind of interconnected

and a lot of things are down.

Apart from our real estate,

that's pumping in Australia and everything else

is really taking a hit and is quite volatile.

Yes.

And why is that?

Well, there's a number of different reasons.

One, we've seen huge uncertainty

caused by the disruptive power of AI.

Like I think the tech stock unwinding

has been kind of wild to witness,

especially SaaS companies.

And even some of the top 10 companies like Amazon and Microsoft,

Microsoft's down 24% from all time highs,

huge amounts of volatility on the stock market,

which you don't see very often at all, bro.

People are shook about AI.

I'm not an AI doomer, okay?

I reckon things are gonna work out pretty well.

But for what's happening right now is a buddy of mine,

he works at Amazon,

and they are just living in perpetual fear.

So big tech company and their whole mandate

is to replace everyone with AI.

There's layoffs every single quarter,

your team gets reduced,

the entire slack because the global slack is just,

what's happening?

Are you okay?

Are you safe?

And you can't even think about doing your job.

It is just absolutely, absolutely crazy.

That also affects the Amazon shares,

which is a big part of the majority of people's portfolios.

The people that work there,

they'll have crazy investing schedules,

and that'll be a lot of their wealth as well.

And it's kind of this big tech thing

where big tech was the darling

that took us out of the GFC, right?

We had all these brilliant companies that came out of it.

They went up in huge amounts of value,

and they are renowned for over hiring,

and overfiring, and big investments.

That's what we're seeing now,

and this is really affecting the stock market.

Yeah.

Yeah, and that is kind of, you know,

creating ripple effects across so many different markets,

but you know, on top of that,

what you also mentioned at the start there,

but you know, with the US policy,

being a political uncertainty,

with the Trump administration,

you know, Australia home property prices are doing well.

The US, though, is not looking good at all.

The US home sales data came out extremely,

extremely poor about a week ago.

You know, new monetary policy

and uncertainty around a new Fed share.

It's just like everywhere you look,

people are, you know, just uncertain and unsure,

and when you get that, you know, peak fear and uncertainty,

you get people that, you know,

want to move assets and cash away from, you know,

risk share assets into more risk off, you know, areas,

and that basically means, you know,

you see these big sell-offs,

and that is correlated to crypto.

And it's not just crypto, as we just mentioned,

but crypto is currently, you know,

as far as recording fear and green index indexes at,

just tick down a five.

So it's the worst crypto sentiment,

the lowest ever recorded for crypto.

Sentiment has never felt this bad.

That's so crazy.

And we've had quite a few big events in crypto.

If we look back through them, they're just like, you know,

even like FTX, everything like that,

like where you just go, oh my gosh, this is just the end.

And this is actually worse than that.

And when we think about what's happening here,

think about how globally connected we are.

If you jump on, you know, a new site or Reddit,

or whatever, what's happening in the world today

and how is it going to affect me?

And we have these changes happening in other countries,

but we're so interconnected that it affects us as well.

And that is where people are actually quite frightened.

They're quite fearful.

A lot of things are happening even in the background

over the last month.

The US dollar has gone from $1.65 Australian to $1.40.

We're raising interest rates in Australia.

We're bucking the trend.

There's so many different levers that you have to try to understand

that it is just, it's quite overwhelming at times.

Yes, and it's played out continually from 2025,

which turned out to be really, really tough year,

like our outlook earlier in 2025.

I think for similar to most people

was looking really good and really positive,

but then sort of coming into the second half of 2025

and then into the last quarter of 2025,

we really changed our outlook and had to reduce our expectations

quite significantly on what we thought was going to play out.

And we started to position less exposure into old coins,

sitting a little bit more in the stable coins

and kind of watch the play out.

And then since that point,

there's been continuous sell-offs really right now

in terms of the market.

It's about capital protection for us

and has been for a little while now,

not as trying to be aggressive on old coins.

That period will come,

we're not going to be V-shape here

out of the bottom straight back up,

but having a proper amount of Bitcoin

and your portfolio has always been the recommendation for us

and how we've always invested into crypto.

So we're quite protected when we have these big downwards periods.

But yeah, if you've got lots and lots of lots of money

into old coins and you haven't reposition or rebalanced,

it's certainly a super tough time to see how things are played

out and a lot of these old coins

have downed 7,8,9% books of all-time height.

It's full on.

An example is like,

Cardano needs to go up a thousand percent

from where it is today to get to all-time highs.

So it's a 10X, it is crazy.

Bitcoin is down 45% from all-time highs.

And when we talk about this point around capital protection,

a lot of people say the first rule of investing

is never lose money.

The second rule is don't forget the first rule.

When you're investing in riskier assets

that have high volatility because the volatility,

make no mistake, is what you want.

But you need to remember volatility swings both ways.

And this is the thing, protect your capital

and let's say you started in crypto three months ago

and you'll buy in the top at 120,000

and you only bought Bitcoin,

let's just keep this argument simple.

You would be down 45%,

you're thinking what the hell is going on.

Like I'm supposed to protect my capital,

it's up only, it's only supposed to grow.

And you have to adjust your mindset to,

nothing is fundamentally changed in Bitcoin.

It's actually an accumulation time

and you haven't lost that capital.

If you've locked in a sale or something like that,

then yes, but again, you can rebuy those kind of things.

But it is hard to see your net wealth go down

and it's counterintuitive to invest in,

which is supposed to make you money,

but you have to, and we'll get to this later in the pot,

but really update your psychology

to be able to handle that and take advantage of it.

Yes, it's good point, folks.

So, you know, we've talked about risk management.

You know, I look back and I did a post

for our members a couple of days ago, just around.

I took a loss on Sui last year,

like I thought that, you know,

Sui being a quality layer one gaming project,

fundamentally strong project,

but the market was not going the way, you know,

structurally that it needed to for all coins to do well.

I took a 30% haircut on Sui, you know,

at about $1.64 I sold and, you know,

copped a lot of flack for the fact that I took a loss on Sui.

Since then, Sui is down another 42%

since that point of selling.

And I look back even further to February of 2025

when I sold some old coins that, you know,

from the 2024 that weren't going that great,

you know, things like PopCat, Ronan, you know,

with, took the loss, took the haircut.

Since that point, since I sold those old coins,

those are down 80 to 95% since I sold

and rotated that money into hype, which is outperformed.

Hypes actually up 22% since then.

So, the point being is that, yes, you know,

a few of the plays, you're going to get wrong.

I got wrong.

You know, we're always going to get some wrong

every investor will.

But in crypto, you have to take those losses sometimes

because what is even worse than not doing that thing,

it's just holding and hoping and watching your capital

continue to evaporate even more.

And that's the hard part about crypto

that you have to have proper risk management.

You have to have a good allocation

and you have to update when things change.

So I caught up with a buddy of mine.

And he was telling me he's like,

oh, I'm down like 100 and something thousand in crypto.

And I was like, oh, yeah, okay, no worries.

So I started talking and then he's like,

oh, what are you investing in?

And he was just holding all of these ults

and he didn't do risk and he just took on way too much risk.

I was like, bro, what are you doing?

Like, and I was telling him, like in my portfolio,

I'm probably down, I don't know, 35%, 40% something like that.

And he was like, what you're down?

I'm like, oh, yeah, from all time highs,

but you know, I've been in this game a while,

up overall, like considerably.

And he's like, oh, no, no, like I started buying like two years ago,

bought all this stuff, bought all these ults.

And I'm like, mate, you're like 90% ults in your portfolio.

And he was kind of like, oh, yeah,

I haven't told my wife about it or anything like that.

And yeah, if you're going into the really risky categories,

you need to stay on top of it.

And you need to understand the level of risk

that you're taking.

And just to highlight your point with Sui,

Sui's down 81% from all time highs.

You need a 451% increase to get back to all time highs.

This is what happens to ults.

And it can even go down a further 90% from here,

which people don't realize.

So just realize the risk that you're taking on on,

why are you taking it on?

What's your time horizon?

And what do you want to get out of it?

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point, Bergs.

And I think, we talk about this a lot in crypto.

And when we're looking at altcoins

and how preparing for the next run up,

and what altcoins that we're looking in,

well, some of the altcoins that we might buy back into

may not even exist yet.

And that's where really the biggest opportunities

likely come from.

Cycle on cycle, a new tech, new use cases,

new products that don't even exist.

So you can't keep holding those prior cycle altcoins

because technology evolves so rapidly.

It's about preserving capital and getting ready

for that next point.

And we're looking at a lot of different stuff at the moment

in crypto, whether it be AI agents,

whether it be prediction markets,

what is going to be that next thing

that comes out of this bear market?

That's the most important part.

I'll give you an analogy on this as well.

This is what my business mentor told me.

He said, OK, you're going to hire a new person to roll.

You're paying them 120,000 per year, 10 grand a month.

If after three months, you need to decide,

like you put three months of investment into them,

are they going to be further investment?

Are they going to be a cost?

Or they're going to be a profit center?

What are they going to be in this business?

And if after three months, you're still investing

and they're not shaping up to be very good,

you've got a decision to make.

And that decision is, do I continue with this employee?

Do they become permanent?

Or do I say, sorry, it's just not working out.

It's not a good fit.

We'll help you to find another role.

And then of that 120K I had, I've got three more chances

through month lots to get it right.

And this is like altcoin investing.

If after that three months, it's not working out,

the fundamentals have changed.

The market has changed.

You've eaten up some of your capital,

but you've still got some left.

You have multiple opportunities to get it right

in investments that have better opportunity for growth.

Yes.

And that's where this next part of this accumulation phase

and really where we are right now,

like we expect things to be structurally heading sideways

down a little bit up a little bit.

You have these sort of relief rallies,

but this is not about deploying

or you drive out all at once.

It's about not trying to catch the exact bottom

and time it absolutely perfectly.

You want to deploy gradually.

For us, we're not adding any risk into altcoins just yet.

But when we do, I expect usually that we see

when getting into the right assets,

a huge out performance on those altcoins against Bitcoin.

And we've seen this in previous cycles.

Back in 2018, 2020, it was a three-year sideways period

from when from all-time high back to all-time high,

again, when we crossed past that,

Bitcoin was like 17,000 back in 2017 dropped down.

It's sideways for three years

before coming back to 17,000.

In 2023, the last sort of correction

and went to two years.

We would think that this cycle as well and this downwards period

will be shortened again.

So like the cycles are getting,

especially on the downwards period, the corrections,

they are starting to reduce in time.

But the altcoins that come out of these periods

for us, it's about fundamentals.

And it's like what projects are actually delivering quality,

revenue, delivering some sort of value to the world,

high-pilates obviously don't really well.

Even syrup continues to do well.

But we've got really low entry prices on those assets.

Structurally, when the market is the way it is,

it doesn't matter what altcoins you're in,

they're going to tend to, well, outside of those couple,

continue to perform really poorly against Bitcoin.

So it's about making sure you're timing it correctly,

because on the way back up, when Bitcoin starts to go

back structurally back in a bull market,

it's where a lot of money gets to find the altcoins you,

they'll be out of performance.

Absolutely, so now is the time when people are fearful

to look at research, look at those coins.

What are the ones that have a good future

that you can scoop up cheaply,

that you can tuck away the back pocket

for when you've got a lot of tailwinds,

things are very favorable,

so you can offload them and make significant profit.

Oh yeah.

This is the way you need to be thinking

about what's happening right now.

If you're down in your portfolio,

it'd be weird if you weren't down in your portfolio,

you need to put that behind you

and start thinking about the future.

It's not super sad.

This has happened and I'm a terrible person,

I'm a bad investor, fuck all that.

Like you don't need that negativity.

Do not waste your time.

You're like, all right, I'm here.

I'm still going, I've still got capital

which direction am I going?

How am I going to make this right or make this better?

And that is the kind of mindset

you need to bring to investing to succeed.

Yes.

And especially in crypto,

when we get these prices right now,

for us really like we saw back into the 23 Bitcoin,

tends to trade in the deepest of corrections

around the 200 week movie average,

which is around 58,000 dollars for Bitcoin,

anywhere below 70,000 for us as an outlook

is really good long-term value.

I mean, it was only a month ago Bitcoin,

value to 97,000, all right?

So it is a period here where we usually

will get accumulation period.

But sometimes 12 months, sometimes 24 months

will get to be seen, maybe less than that.

But it's about starting to accumulate

and thinking about these lower prices of Bitcoin,

not going heavy into oil.

It's not even worrying about,

oh, it's really until the structure changes

because just because you're old coins to down 80%,

it doesn't mean it can't go down another 90%,

or 80% it just really requires patience

and discipline during these periods.

It's tough.

Yeah.

Tough.

And I've said on the part I've been quite cash heavy

for a while, and that's not due to any market things

or anything like that.

It's been personal preference.

But now I do have that cash,

and I'm just salivating.

I'm literally looking at this.

Another thing I'm doing is self-managed super fun.

So because Bitcoin is just so attractive

and it'll be 20 plus years before I can access that,

and I'll be putting the majority of that into Bitcoin.

And when I deploy,

personally, what I'll be doing,

let's say I have $100 to deploy,

I like to make sure I don't miss out.

So I'll be putting in $20 of that $100,

let's say next week,

and then from there, I'll be averaging in.

And I'm doing the same in other markets as well,

because I see this opportunity,

and when you have cash to deploy or you've got cash flow,

this is where you start to scoop up the cheap assets

and over the long term,

you do make a significant amount of money.

Yep.

And when it comes to old coins,

it's about timing, but when the timing does come,

for us, it's about, again, fundamentals, as I mentioned,

and just to put it in perspective,

over the last 12 months,

basically February to February 2025 to 2026,

syrup is up 140%, hyperliquid's up 25%,

and Bitcoin is down 30% and others are down 35%,

meaning like the average old coin return.

So there are some assets that do well

when you find the mix of fundamentals and revenue,

but everything else is severely underperformed.

So make sure you are being very selective

when it comes to your olds on the way back out,

and that should do you well.

Absolutely.

And just like, you know, 25 was hard for a lot of people.

I think even just outside of it,

I think 25 was quite challenging for a lot of people.

And if you look at the charts,

everything you would have made in 2025 in crypto,

you would have given back.

So it was relatively flat year.

That's hard for a lot of people

we think in a linear way,

we think I make 15%, 30% every single year.

That's not really the way it works.

The way it works is one year, I make 200%,

then I make 50%, then I'm like down 30%,

down 60%, up 18% the next year,

and it averages out to that.

If it's just Bitcoin, like, you know,

around the 30 to 50% mark,

and old coins are significantly more.

But that is a hard pill to swallow.

And especially if your first experience is down bad,

which is everyone's experience.

Let's be honest, right?

That's how you really cut your teeth

and you earn your stripes,

and you're like, right, understand what this is now.

And the whole thing is to just keep going through the storm

because you want to get through those negative or down

or only slightly up years

because you know those good years are coming.

And you want to be able to capitalize on those.

Yeah, great point.

And you know, if it's your first cycle,

you haven't been through these corrections before.

I should have mentioned this as star.

But you know, this is not the first time Bitcoin's down,

you know, 55%, you know,

Bitcoin has gone down to 75% to 80%

and a number of times in its, you know, life.

And it's the most liquid asset people can get access to.

So when there's uncertainty,

people will go to crypto to get liquidity

and that's where you see these sharp sell-offs.

Yeah, so I don't give myself too much grief

about all the nonsense I do with ICOs, right?

Like all that ETH, the $80 ETH I put into ICOs

would be worth like over five mil today, right?

I don't even give myself too much grief.

I was very, very green.

The one I do give myself grief about was in 2022.

I think I was catching up with you in Melbourne

and overnight Bitcoin went from like 30k to like 20 something

and it stayed there for a while.

And I was like, oh, I'll buy some,

I'm gonna buy some, I'm gonna buy some, didn't buy some.

And I was like, you dickhead.

Like, you know better now.

This is a similar thing to what's happening now.

And it was just a little bit of your money.

There's 1% of the deployable capital you have.

Consider making a move.

Just build that buy muscle

and it's the most difficult thing to do

because you don't want that regretty in the years to come.

Yeah, great point, folks.

So to reiterate there folks, you know,

anything below 70,000 in our view is, you know,

good long-term value.

We don't think Bitcoin is bottom yet.

And also trying to time the absolute bottom

is far too risky.

Buying into all coins at the wrong time,

you know, especially here we believe is very risky.

So we're personally not doing that.

You know, it's all about your entry price

and there is potentially a lot more downside

and pain to come.

So you don't want to be jumping the gun too soon.

Exactly right.

So a lot of my mates message me

because it's 68,000 today and they're like,

what's the bottom?

No bullshit, just tell me.

I'm like, well, first of all, no, no, it's that.

And second of all, if I say the bottom is 50k,

let's say I look at a chart and that's the bottom.

If it gets to 52,000, you're still not buying.

Yeah, correct.

And that's the thing, you should be averaging in

and sell, you should be averaging out.

What does that mean?

If you've got $100 to deploy,

fucking buy $10 worth of it today.

And then as things go day by day, week by week,

start to buy a little bit more, a little bit more,

and you will get a really nice average buy price.

And in a year or two, that buy price

won't even matter anyway.

What will matter is that you actually bought.

Yes.

Yes.

And that is the point I'll end on books.

It's like, pick uncertainty,

especially in crypto, it doesn't mean peak danger.

It's just peak emotion.

And this is where people make mistakes.

They're trying to time them so bottom

and do all this crazy stuff.

No, don't do that.

Just be disciplined, protect your capital,

allocate in, and don't try and be a hero

and be pilot and all that, like, 57.5,000

or whatever point you have,

because no one knows the exact bottom.

It's just about accumulating and timing in the market.

Yeah, and that's the thing.

Like, time in the market fixes a market timing problem.

Yes.

So if you got in late last year and you bought Bitcoin 120k,

it's now down to 68.

That's a timing problem.

The longer you are in this market,

the more opportunity you have to buy at lower prices,

the more opportunity you have for growth.

That is the mentality you need to bring.

And please, I used to have this, everyone has this.

I'm down 30%.

I need to take on riskier stuff

because I have to make that 30% back

by next month or the month after.

That is the way you lose your capital.

You take on too much risk.

You don't need it.

Time is on your side.

Use your time.

Because that reduces your risk,

because you can buy less risky assets.

Practice your craft.

Do whatever else you need to do.

Sit on your hands.

Get those really high quality assets.

Don't go further out on the risk curve

and try to make it all back.

It'll fix itself with time.

It's pain at the moment.

It will not be pain forever.

Great call, Bergs.

We might leave it there, folks.

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and to see how we work with our clients

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especially with Bitcoin at the moment.

So check them out.

And yeah, it's nice if you're brand new,

getting 50% discount.

Oh, this is the perfect time to come in.

Like a lot of people are going to be rich.

Like if you start to put these things into practice now,

you're buying at a price much lower

than everyone else that has been in the market

and you're going to have a good time.

I don't care.

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