Digital Asset News host celebrates crypto market recovery to $3 trillion total market cap
Solo presenter Rob from Digital Asset News reflects on bear market dollar-cost averaging paying off as the total crypto market cap approaches $3 trillion.
Summary
Viewers who continued buying cryptocurrency during the bear market are congratulated as the total crypto market cap reaches approximately $3 trillion — noting the total crypto market cap has reached approximately $3 trillion. He shares his personal dollar-cost averaging strategy using Cash App recurring buys every Monday, and explains the risk-level framework he uses — drawing on analysts Ben, Ivan, and Wes — to scale his purchases. He discusses the importance of admitting when you are wrong, praising analyst Ben for publicly acknowledging a mistaken Q4 bearish call and drawing a parallel to a lesson learned in the army about accountability.
He discusses Avalanche (AVAX) as a notable altcoin with growing institutional adoption, including New York Life Investment Management, Janus Henderson, and the New York Stock Exchange. He also plays a compilation of Jason Calacanis clips from 2011 onward, in which the All-In Podcast host repeatedly dismisses or expresses skepticism about Bitcoin, contrasting those predictions with current prices to illustrate the cost of long-term crypto skepticism. Rob closes with a Q&A session addressing viewer questions about entry points, exchange selection, and geopolitical risks.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Congratulating Bear Market Buyers as Total Crypto Market Cap Hits $3 Trillion
Rob: Well, everybody, we did it. And I have to tell you, these bear markets can sometimes be brutal. Even though we didn't go down like we did in 2022, just throwing that sand in the ocean as we dollar-cost average every week, wondering to ourselves, "When will this actually pay off?" — well, that day is today.
Now, anything can happen in the future. We can say that this is a pretty good time to have been a bear market buyer, as we've gone through that whole rigmarole of people saying, "Why are you buying right now? This is nothing you should be getting into." And of course, there are going to be different things happening, so maybe you just need to wait. And of course, the ones that were dollar-cost averaging worked out pretty well. It feels pretty good. But again, anything can happen in the next couple of weeks, months, and years ahead of us. I have to tell you, things feel pretty good today. We've almost got three trillion as far as a total market cap. So I just want to say congratulations to everybody who went through this cycle with us and are reaping the rewards. You deserve it, because you made the hard decision to keep moving forward even though there was a lot of negativity all around.
Now, we could have a pullback. As we've talked about on this show, I personally dollar-cost average every single Monday. I use the Cash App with recurring payments, because with Cash App — I don't know if Jack Dorsey set it up this way — but when you do recurring payments, the spread is minimal if anything at all, and there are no fees. I've done this every Monday now for six months, and I was thinking to myself, "Man, I hope this actually plays out." And of course, here we are right now. Feeling pretty good.
Market Overview and Four-Year Cycle Analysis
Let's take a look at the markets. The total market cap is at $2.994 trillion. Let me refresh — $2.999 trillion. Looking pretty good. We'll probably hopefully hit $3 trillion. In the last 24 hours, Bitcoin is up six and a half percent, Ethereum up six percent, and everything is up across the board. Things are looking pretty good.
Taking a look at this across the continuum — things weren't really adding up in certain sectors. I still believe we could have a massive pullback in Q4. I know people are like, "Rob, that's ridiculous." Hey, it could happen. Anything can happen. When that happens, I'll just buy more. We continue to buy. That's the hedge against what's going on. Dollar-cost average. When the price starts to go really low, you start to really buy. But if we take a look at four-year cycles across the continuum — this is on our website, DAN Crypto. It's free, it's 100% free, and it'll always be free — you can see that from 2019, when we hit our low from our all-time high, we went down 82%. And exactly four years beforehand was the low in 2015, which was down 81%. Things lined up pretty well.
Moving forward, you can see that in 2022 we were down 75% from an all-time high. Take four years before to 2018 — down 80%. Only a 5% difference. Things were lining up back then too. Now of course we have the four-year cycles. We did hit our high in Q4 of 2025, but we're looking at lows to lows. We can see that we haven't hit that point yet. But as of the 20th, we're down not even close to 71% — only down 35%. Does that mean things can't go horribly wrong and we get into some craziness? I'm not saying that, because I don't have a crystal ball. But things were a little bit different, and this would have been the time when we actually should have gone down if we were going to follow the pattern — but it didn't work out that way. That's why we hedge against that and buy during the bear.
The Three Analysts Rob Is Leaning On for Profit-Taking
For me, I am leaning on three heavyweights as we get into this next phase. We got through the bear. We did a great job. We bought. Everybody's happy. Now the next thing becomes even harder than that — which is knowing when to take those profits.
I have a theory that a lot of you, like myself, are pretty good at dollar-cost averaging, buying dips, and diamond-handing it. I have a feeling that a lot of you are not really great at taking profits — like myself. I didn't do as good a job as I should have, and I want to correct that. So we're going to lean on these three guys: Ben, Ivan, and Wes.
For Ben, we're leaning on him for the risk levels. As of this morning, the risk level was 0.4999 — essentially the same as last week. Here's how my system works: when we're in the 0.4 to 0.5 risk range, I'm buying my same base amount. When the risk level goes down — meaning the price goes down — I double up. When it goes down even further, I quadruple up. Further still, I 8x up. So I'm putting in a lot more as the price goes down. And again, I've been rewarded. Things are good.
I also want to give a shout-out to Ben today, because he said it straight: "I was wrong. I'm not going to make excuses. I deserve to be dunked on." First of all — how many people say they're wrong, especially in the crypto space? Not very many. Now, I've talked about how wrong I was too. If you want to bring up Voyager and Celsius, I've been saying the same thing for four years like a broken record — Voyager and Celsius was a mistake. I had those guys on. The CEOs came on. Alex Mashinsky came on and lied right to my face. But you have to come out and say when you think you're wrong.
I learned this lesson a long time ago when I was in basic training in the army. I had a drill sergeant, Sergeant Berientes, and he told me very poignantly, "Soldier, if you're wrong, you need to admit that you're wrong, or people will die." It's a pretty good lesson. When you're a 19-year-old kid, you're like, "Shoot, I probably should do that." And it stuck with me the whole time. So when I'm wrong, I'll stand up and say I'm wrong. When people are not totally correct and they say, "You know what, I messed it up, that was a big mistake" — I like those people. Those are the ones you want to surround yourself with, because those are the honest ones.
So Ben thought Q4 was going to be a disaster, and it still might. But he talks about how the market took out the May high, so we'll go from there. Regardless, if you just hedge your bet like we talked about, things are looking pretty good.
The other two heavyweights I'm leaning on are Ivan and Wes. Ivan's program, the Bull Mania — always entertaining the way he says it — is saying bullish. It flipped bullish on the weekly roughly on the 7th of September, when the price of Bitcoin was around $75K. Did it hit $58–60K? No. But nobody's perfect. He also did a good job back in 2023 when the price of Bitcoin was around $20K, saying, "We went from bearish to bullish — time to start buying." He did that all the way up. He didn't perfectly call the low, but not too bad. And Wes also did a really good job — we talked about this yesterday — and his indicators are also saying to buy. So I'm leaning on those things, and hopefully it works out. Things are looking like a buy. I'm personally hoping we still go down in Q4 because I believe the ROI will be higher from lower prices, but we'll see.
Jason Calacanis and the Long History of Bitcoin Skepticism
This leads me to my last point, which is: some people get it and some people just don't get it, and they'll never get it, and you're just wasting your breath.
This is Jason Calacanis. He is the host of the All-In Podcast — smart guy, great investor, got in early on a lot of big Silicon Valley projects like Uber and Facebook. And this is him just last week talking about how Bitcoin is losing and it's just old tech — essentially like AOL. But he's been saying this since 2011. I want you to take a look at this and just remember — sometimes I forget that people are critics now and they're going to be critics forever. That's just who you have to deal with in this space. This is Jason throughout the years, about a minute or so, starting from 2011. All you had to do was buy a hundred bucks back then.
Jason Calacanis (archival clips):
"And I went to my settings and I said 'generate coins.'"
"Yeah, that's a really bad idea."
"Oh, is it? I'm assuming you're running on a laptop there."
"Yeah."
"You'll spend more on electricity than the value you get in bitcoins."
"And if developers like something, they tend to use it. If they use it, it tends to become the default. And I think this as open source — you're already seeing people start to accept it for coffee and stuff like that at some of the cafes in Silicon Valley. So it's going to be very interesting if, for example, Square builds Bitcoin support into it. And if that happens, we're going to $1,000 a bitcoin. So this is very dangerous territory. I would advise people to be very careful. It's certainly a bubble. The question is, are we halfway to the bubble popping or 90% of the way to the bubble popping? The people in the industry are very concerned. The most intelligent people I know who have been here since the start of the industry are saying it's a bubble. And there's a very significant — I would say maybe a one-in-three — chance that Bitcoin goes to zero."
"I haven't bought more. I've actually thought about just putting 1% of my net worth into Bitcoin. Bitcoin is so played out. I think everybody who would have wanted exposure to it has some exposure by now — there are no incremental buyers of Bitcoin. I think people have essentially ended the game of Bitcoin."
Rob: That is who you dunk on. Jason is a smart guy, highly entertaining — I love him on the All-In Podcast — but he is 100% incorrect. So, we have that.
Avalanche (AVAX) and Institutional Adoption
We know Bitcoin is going to do well. It's as close to a safe bet as there is, though there will be volatility. But now that we're getting into a more bullish market, I've been dollar-cost averaging some altcoins along the way — not much, but I think it's time to turn things on.
As a reminder, I still believe that roughly three parts speculation to one part utility will send an altcoin skyrocketing. We talked this weekend about Avalanche, and how Kevin O'Leary was part of their conference. During that conference he talked about how great Avalanche is. He also said that for some reason he's certain Ethereum won't be the standard across industry sectors. Of course, he's talking up Avalanche. Now, Kevin O'Leary was pretty anti-Bitcoin, then became okay with Bitcoin, then it was Bitcoin and Ethereum, and now it's this other thing. That could just be him changing his view as the data changes — which is actually how it should work. You can't just have one view and refuse to learn anything else. You have to make corrections along the way.
Avalanche is looking pretty good. I was kind of skeptical — it's been around since 2020 — but let's look at what's happening. One of the developers from the AVAX team lays it out simply. Here's the institutional activity:
$87 billion New York Life Investment Management is bringing its first tokenized fund to Avalanche, expanding institutional asset management. That's a big deal. Half-a-trillion-dollar global asset manager Janus Henderson is now an Avalanche validator, bringing another major financial institution into the ecosystem. The United Arab Emirates is integrating AVAX into its national digital identity system. Avalanche is now live across Paxos. Korea's first stablecoin, the KRW1, is going global through Rain Cards on Avalanche. And the New York Stock Exchange is developing an Avalanche platform designed to bring 24/7 trading on-chain, signaling a major move toward capital markets.
Now, how has that worked out for the price action? Not too bad — up roughly 50% in the last month or so, and the chart looks good. But let's take a look at three months — actually pretty good. One year? A little bit different story. We were over $30. Now we're at $11. Bear markets are bear markets. This is why it's important to take profits.
And as a reminder, Avalanche used to be $130 per token. So when I say speculation versus utility — do you think Avalanche has more utility now at $11, or did it have more utility back in late 2021 when it launched for less than a year and was at $130 per token? Which one was it?
To be fair, we also have to look at the tokenomics. Right now, there are 557 million Avalanche tokens in circulation. Back in November 2021, it was roughly 262 million — about half the current circulating supply. That is called inflation. Go take a look at the US government — we're masters at it. So you can say it might hit an all-time high again. It might. It might be something to get into. Utilities looking pretty good, and now that speculation is there because Kevin O'Leary is talking about it, that could be the biggest factor.
The Altcoin Season Index and When to Watch for Signals
I want to take a look at the altcoin season index. I know people are rolling their eyes — another indicator, Rob — but just wait. This is one we talked about yesterday that looked pretty good.
Once things go above 75, look at this: on the 18th of September 2025, this indicator said it was pretty much time to sell. And people were like, "No, that doesn't make any sense because Bitcoin hasn't hit its all-time high." We know from 2021 and 2018 that first Bitcoin runs, then it moves to the large-cap alts, then to the small caps. That's how it's always been. But that's not how it worked this time.
If you had listened to this signal on the 14th of September 2025, look at these prices: Ethereum was at $4,600 — I don't even know what it is today, but I know it's not $4,600. I think it's around $2,700. XRP was at $3. Solana was at $240. BNB was roughly $1,000. Dogecoin was 27 cents. Cardano was almost a dollar. Hyperliquid was big. So if you're looking at this indicator, it's one to watch. That's why as we go through this journey together, I'll be talking about the big three and the altcoin season index. It looks pretty good.
Apple and Google Hiring for Stablecoin and Tokenization Roles
As a reminder, it's not just Avalanche and a few altcoins. Here's something to keep in the back of your head as you're thinking about whether to get into altcoins:
Apple and Google are both hiring for stablecoin-related roles as they explore payments, financial business, and tokenization of real-world assets. You're going to hear that term a lot. Apple is hiring a Financial Product Strategy Lead with knowledge of stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and blockchain required. Google is hiring an Industry Principal Architect for Web3 in Hong Kong, seeking experience in real-world asset tokenization, stablecoin payments, tokenized deposits, and digital asset custody. The same themes keep coming up over and over.
Q&A
Rob: All right, let's get into Q&A. I answer all your questions to the best of my abilities.
Yousef asks whether Cash App gives bad pricing. If you do one-off buys on Cash App, you are right — it gets pretty awful. That's why you have to set it up as a recurring buy. The spreads are almost non-existent and there are no fees. I compared it to all the exchanges in a video I did about eight or nine months ago, and it was the best one I found. That said, Yousef is correct on the one-time buys — they really do get you on those prices.
Scoan asks: "For the people that have zero Bitcoin, what's your advice? I missed the bottom. I kept missing it." I said the same thing when I got into Bitcoin in 2017. I bought at $8,500 and I was like, "Damn it." My son told me about it when it was much cheaper. He came home from school and said, "Hey, I've got a deal for you — 500 Bitcoin for 500 bucks. You want to go for it?" And I said, "What is a Bitcoin?" He said, "It's decentralized, future of finance, mumble mumble." I said, "That's dumb, it's not going to work." And I never got into it. Then when I saw it was $8,500 for one, I thought I'd totally missed the boat. Wouldn't you like to buy Bitcoin at $8,500 now? And I think later on, in four, eight, ten years, people will be saying, "What? It was below $100,000? That's crazy." So start stacking sats. Today everybody's excited and wants to stack sats. But then if we get a major pullback — because who knows what's going on with Iran, who knows what's happening between Russia and China, who knows what's happening in the Middle East, and how AI plays out — things could change. When those things change and prices drop, people hesitate. But to me, when the price drops, I'm very happy, because I know in the long run it'll work out.
November the Hacker says: "I notice everyone is flipping bullish now. Reminds me of December 2024 and early October 2025. I wonder what usually happens after everyone's bullish." You know how it is — it all goes down on the sentiment of the price action. Thankfully, we're all here for the tech, right? Right. The tech.
Solo says somehow $80,000 feels high — like this bull run won't go that high. Price predictions are all worthless, because everything can change in a heartbeat. A government could come out of nowhere and say, "This is going to be our legal tender." America could say, "Okay, we're actually going to go ahead with the Bitcoin reserve strategy we've been talking about." I don't know. But $80K feels high because we've been shopping so long at $60K. There was a statistic that even if you bought at $125,000–$126,000 at the top, if you had just dollar-cost averaged down and then continued during the $60K chop, you would be up — and right now you'd be up massively.
Dong Sheng says the Iranian public sentiment is that a vast majority are angry with the current ceasefire, and many Iranians believe the regime is a cancer that needs to be removed entirely. I don't want to get too into it — this isn't a political channel — but you saw what happened with the protests in Iran and how they were handled. I'll leave it there.
All right, I think that's it for today, everybody. Thanks so much for stopping by. Congratulations for doing the hard thing. It's not easy — if it were easy, everyone would do it. If you were buying during the bear, congratulations. Pat yourself on the back. You did a great thing. Now we see where it takes us. Anything can happen in the future. We could have a major pullback. But take the green days, take the wins for what they are.