Written & Hosted by Mr. Z (@168MrZ)
Embracing the long bull market: BTC/gold correlation hits historic extreme, BTC's main upward phase has not yet triggered, altcoins only trade the already emerged mainlines ZEC, HYPE, UNI, NEAR
September 29, 2026, Tuesday, 2 PM. After months of silence, Benson returns to 168X. Over the past few months, he devoted a lot of time to family, and in trading focused mainly on lending and arbitrage, until recently when signs of an "early bull" reappeared in the market, he began to increase directional trading again.
This episode of 168X welcomes back Benson (@BensonTWN), Founder of CoinKarma (@coinkarma_). This is his 4th Crypto bull market, but this time his judgment is completely different from the past: Bitcoin is gradually shifting from a "high-volatility tech stock Beta" to a true Digital Gold; this bull market may not be a single skyrocket, but a longer major cycle with nested smaller cycles. In an ideal scenario, BTC could see around $200,000, but the real main upward phase has not yet appeared; altcoins are no longer suitable for digging "hidden Alpha" everywhere, but should directly buy the mainlines already confirmed by price.
I. Bitcoin is becoming gold: BTC/gold correlation reaches historic extreme
Mr. Z: This is your 4th Crypto bull market. If now is the early bull market, what is your most core Thesis for this cycle?
Benson: I wrote an article in early September (related reading: Bitcoin's golden bloodline awakens: this may be the starting point of the largest bull market in BTC history), the core being that this may be the beginning of Bitcoin's goldification. In every past cycle from the end of the bear market to the early bull market, there is a very interesting Pattern: the correlation coefficient between BTC and gold quickly rises from a low level.
Benson: Historically, Bitcoin is actually not as correlated with gold as everyone imagines; the median 60-day rolling correlation coefficient is only about 0.2 to 0.3. Most of the time, Bitcoin is more like a high-volatility version of Nasdaq, following tech stocks and dollar liquidity. But at the end of each bear market and the beginning of a bull market, its gold attribute suddenly strengthens.
Benson: What is most special this cycle is the magnitude. The 60-day rolling correlation coefficient between BTC and gold once reached around 0.64, 0.65. In Bitcoin's entire history, there are only 21 days when the 60-day correlation coefficient was above 0.6, of which 17 days occurred in the last one and a half months.Every early bull market in the past had goldification, but this time it lasts the longest and has the highest absolute value.
II. BTC is no longer just an enhanced version of Nasdaq: it is switching between gold and Equity
Mr. Z: So you don't mean that BTC will completely become gold from now on, but that its originally Equity-leaning attribute is starting to clearly lean toward safe-haven assets?
Benson: Yes. In the past, if the market was Risk-off, Bitcoin basically fell harder than tech stocks, because many people bought it as a high-volatility Beta. But there is another group of people in the market who treat it as a long-term Store of Value, and these two groups trade completely differently.
Benson: When the price falls from a high level, the group speculating on liquidity will run first. After the floating chips slowly settle, the people who truly treat BTC as a Store of Value begin to enter, so at the end of each bear market, Bitcoin suddenly becomes more and more like gold.
Benson: Now I often open Nasdaq, BTC, and gold charts at the same time to look. Currently, BTC of course still retains the Equity attribute, but it is no longer almost completely linked to Nasdaq as before.It now stands more between gold and Nasdaq, and is increasingly leaning toward gold.
Benson: More interestingly, when gold recently fell, BTC also fell, but relatively resisted the decline; when gold rose, BTC often rose more. This kind of price behavior was not so obvious in the past.
III. 82,000 to 83,000 is key support: a big truck has just started, it is not easy to turn around immediately
Mr. Z: If it has already risen about 30% from the 60,000-plus level to now, many people haven't gotten on board at all. Now at 82,000, 83,000, should we still buy? Or wait for 75,000?
Benson: I think the market truly begins to confirm the bull market when BTC breaks through around 82,000 to 82,500. After the weekly structure breaks through, it will stimulate some longer-cycle CTA funds to enter.
Benson: Imagine BTC as a big truck. It has just started and begun to accelerate; for it to immediately brake and turn back to the originally bearish area, I think unless a very big Macro Event occurs, it is very difficult.
Benson: Technically, after an important resistance level breaks, it usually comes back to test, and the original resistance becomes support. So the support I am looking at now is roughly $82,000 to $83,000.
Benson: Crypto has a very annoying aspect: it may only have 10% of the time as the true main upward phase, and the other 90% is oscillating, making you doubt life.If you already believe this is the early bull market, then a pullback is originally for you to buy, not for you to doubt whether the bull market has returned.
IV. How to value BTC: the answer given by gold is $150,000 to $250,000
Mr. Z: Previously, several guests generally saw BTC at $150,000 to $180,000 this cycle. What is your own target?
Benson: If my core Thesis is BTC goldification, then I think the most reasonable coordinate is not simply drawing K-lines, but looking at the BTC/Gold Ratio.
Benson: Currently, 1 BTC can buy about 18 to 20 ounces of gold. This ratio continuously breaks through a level at the highs of past bull markets. The more obvious high in the last cycle was around 40.
Benson: If this cycle's narrative of resisting fiat depreciation and Debasement is truly stronger, and we assume the BTC/Gold Ratio can reach 45 to 50, while gold is around $5,000, then BTC would fall in the $200,000 to $250,000 range.
Benson: If it cannot break through the level of the last cycle, for example, it can only reach 35 to 40 in the end, then it might be $150,000 to $180,000. So I would take $150,000 to $180,000 as a more normal scenario, and $200,000 to $250,000 as a more ideal scenario.
V. ETF changed the game: for the first time, institutions can truly operate BTC as a financial asset
Mr. Z: Why do you think BTC goldification this cycle will be more obvious than in the past?
Benson: I think a very important reason is ETF. Previously, Pension Funds or more formal institutions wanting BTC spot exposure was actually very troublesome. They might only buy proxies like Coinbase or MicroStrategy, and could not directly participate in BTC.
Benson: Moreover, for institutions, there are requirements for liquidity, risk control, custody, and regulations. We can throw BTC onto an exchange and sell it for USD, but a Pension Fund cannot manage assets in this way.
Benson: After ETF securitizes BTC, the whole thing becomes completely different. Institutions can directly buy IBIT or other BTC ETFs, and can also do LTV, financing, and asset allocation around these securitized products.
Benson: There used to be a group of people who wanted to buy BTC as gold, but they actually couldn't get in. After ETFs appeared, this group of funds finally has an entry point that fits the traditional financial system, which will make the Digital Gold path much smoother.
6. This round is not a skyrocket: the Bitcoin bull market is changing from a single cycle to a long cycle
Mr. Z: So will this round not be like before, where it explodes for a few months, but instead have less exaggerated explosive power yet last longer?
Benson: I think this change has actually been happening for many years. The 2017 bull market was very simple: it rose from the beginning of the year to the end, then ended directly, basically a single skyrocket.
Benson: 2020 to 2021 was not like that. It already began to show two obvious tops. In the next round, it turned into several stages: a period of rise, half a year of consolidation, then another leg up, with events like tariffs and liquidity constantly appearing in between, and then new highs again.
Benson: So BTC's bull market structure has gradually changed from "one big market move" into one big cycle with many small cycles nested inside. I think this characteristic will be even more obvious in this round.
Benson: So the 150k, 180k, 200k, or even 250k I just mentioned—I don't necessarily think those are the final endpoint of the entire big cycle. How long Bitcoin's goldification and the repricing of US debt credit will ultimately evolve, nobody knows.
Benson: You can even think about it in reverse: everyone originally thought the four-year cycle should end at a certain time, and also thought a bear market should drop 70% or 80%, but this time it ended after dropping just over 50%. Is it possible that we have actually been in the same larger cycle all along, just experiencing several small bull and bear markets in between?
7. Stop fantasizing that you are a genius: the simplest strategy in a bull market is to buy the main lines that have already emerged
Mr. Z: Then how should altcoins be played? Is it still necessary in this round to spend a lot of time researching coins the market has not yet discovered?
Benson: I am now already in my 4th cycle. Every cycle people say some altcoin will change the world, but in the end, most of them are still just air.
So my strategy in this round is very simple. In the early bull market, whichever Narrative has already been confirmed by price, whichever coin truly has funds taking care of it and can truly run an independent trend, I just buy it directly.
Benson: I would rather be a person with an IQ of 100 now. Because since I subjectively believe this is the early stage of a bull market, then I buy the main lines the market has already produced, and no longer spend a lot of effort fantasizing that I can dig up something in advance that nobody else has seen.
Benson: Now everyone has AI and can do research. If something is truly super obvious and its fundamentals are super good, but the price has not reacted at all, you should first ask yourself one thing: Why is it that you are the only one in the entire market who understands it? Is it possible that you are actually the one who is wrong?
You cannot always be the only smartest person in the market. So for ordinary people, rather than constantly switching cars, it is better to find the main lines that have already been confirmed, add a little on pullbacks, and then sit back and let the wave push you.
8. 100x is getting harder and harder: if your capital is very small, the problem may not be the market, but your capital
Mr. Z: But younger people with smaller capital will feel this is not exciting enough. ZEC, UNI, and HYPE are already so big that even another 2x or 3x is not easy, so where exactly do you find high multiples?
Benson: It must be admitted that the opportunity structure in Crypto now is completely different from 2021. In the past, you really could buy SOL for a few dollars on an exchange and hold it all the way to tens or hundreds of dollars. Opportunities for ordinary people to easily encounter 20x, 50x, or even 100x on exchanges are now very few.
Benson: If your capital is truly very small, and you must make 100x or 1000x to reach your life goals, then many times it is actually not a problem with the market, but a problem with your capital.
Benson: If you really want to chase returns of that magnitude, I think the opportunity is with high probability on-chain, not in altcoins that have already matured on exchanges. But this also means your playstyle is completely different: you must be very good at swing trading, very good at risk control, and the failure rate will be much higher.
Benson: With a large principal, even small profits are not small; with a small principal, even large profits are not large. After the market matures, this is a reality that is very hard to avoid.
9. On-chain or exchange: first figure out your home turf; not all Alpha is worth grabbing
Mr. Z: Then why have you yourself not invested too much on-chain? Right now on Robinhood and Solana there are actually still constantly high-multiple opportunities.
Benson: Because I think you need to know what your home turf is. On-chain requires extremely high focus. You may have to sit for a long time waiting for those few real opportunities, and in between you will encounter countless failed projects.
Benson: At least among the people I know who have truly made very big results on-chain, their returns are usually concentrated in extremely few opportunities. You can imagine it as a card-dealing machine: out of 10,000 decks, maybe only two or three hundred are truly good hands.
Benson: But for myself, doing secondary market trading on exchanges, maybe out of 10,000 decks there are two or three thousand that I can play. For me, in terms of mental energy, time, and the stability of the return curve, I prefer exchange secondary markets.
Benson: This does not mean on-chain is bad. If you are young, have time, have a very fresh liver, and are willing to wait for that extremely rare opportunity, then of course you can do it. It is just that I now have a family and children, and I will no longer treat this kind of market as my main battlefield.
Benson: Not all Alpha should be grabbed. The most important thing is that you know what kind of opportunity best fits your own capital size, time, and circle of competence.
10. Altcoins: only look at 4 main lines: ZEC, HYPE, UNI, NEAR
Mr. Z: So the altcoins you would actually hold recently are really just those few?
Benson: Yes, right now I mainly hold ZEC, HYPE, UNI, NEAR. These 4 are the main lines for me.
Benson: In between, I will still rotate positions. For example, when HYPE reaches a round-number level like 100 dollars, if I see relatively obvious selling pressure starting above, I may briefly jump off and switch to SOL or another coin showing relatively strong performance. But this is tactical and does not mean the long-term main line has changed.
Benson: I am relatively familiar with this market, so sometimes I can briefly switch cars based on price performance. But if you are not watching every day and do not have several cycles of experience, then I actually think there is no need to do so.
Benson: The mistake ordinary people are most likely to make is not buying the wrong main line, but constantly thinking they are clever and switching cars within the main line. Holding on may actually be better.
11. One set of indicators for the entire market: buy low, sell high, and do not reinvent a strategy for every coin
Mr. Z: Since you mainly look at price now, how exactly do you decide when to add positions and when to reduce positions?
Benson: Our CoinKarma has a 0 to 100 indicator specifically for looking at the overall market position, called Market Pulse Index. The closer it is to 0, the closer the overall market is to a relative low; the higher the value, the hotter it is getting.
Benson: Like from May to August this year, for a long period it was in the teens or twenties, and that kind of level for me was just buy at will. On September 16, when BTC returned to around 75,000, I directly made a very simple quantitative rule: when the indicator is below 25, invest $10,000 per hour into the few main lines I just mentioned.
Benson: I won't invent one strategy for ZEC, another for HYPE, and another for UNI. Because most of the time these altcoins still have very high correlation with the BTC broader market.
Benson: So my approach is very simple: treat the broader market indicator as a water level. Buy below a certain water level, sell above a certain water level, and then capture the big swings.
Benson: I think the more mature a trading system is, the more often it should actually be simpler. You are not trying to prove every day that you are smarter than the market, but rather to have a Framework and then execute it repeatedly.
Twelve, Why I swapped all ETH for UNI: US stocks on-chain may be the big main line of this cycle
Mr. Z: In the last cycle you mainly held BTC, ETH, and SOL, but you seem to have said that in this cycle you have already swapped all ETH for UNI?
Benson: Yes, in this cycle I swapped my entire ETH position into Uniswap. Because I think a very big main line for altcoins in this cycle is US stocks on-chain.
Benson: If Tokenized Stock truly enters DeFi in the future, then DEX and AMM will be very core infrastructure. Uniswap itself already has the largest decentralized trading network effect, so for me, rather than holding ETH, I would rather directly hold the more direct Beta in this direction.
Benson: Another change is regulation. In the past, many Crypto narratives were essentially doing Regulatory Arbitrage, because regulation had not yet reached them, so the product could survive. But if regulation begins to formally put AMM, Liquidity Pool, and Tokenized Securities into an operable Framework, the meaning is completely different.
Benson: In the past it was "because regulation cannot reach it, I can do it"; in the future it may become "regulation clearly tells you how to do it, so traditional capital can finally come in." These are two completely different markets.
Supplement: On September 17, 2026, the SEC officially issued a temporary, conditional Innovation Exemption, allowing qualifying Tokenized Securities Venues under a specific framework to trade certain Tokenized NMS Stocks through permissioned AMM and Liquidity Pool.
Thirteen, Old indicators cannot see the top: what you should really watch is whether institutional liquidity keeps up
Mr. Z: CoinKarma recently launched the Institutional Liquidity Index. Why did you make this thing?
Benson: Because the top indicators everyone used to watch are becoming less and less useful.
Benson: The top in 2017 was easy to recognize. Retail was extremely frenzied, Funding Rate exploded, and all on-chain indicators were overheated. At a glance you knew the market had gone crazy. But at later highs like 69,000 and 126,000, the market instead did not show that kind of all-around frenzy.
Benson: The reason is that the marginal buying changed. In the past, at highs retail was buying crazily and large holders were starting to sell; now when BTC is at a high, what really determines whether it can continue to rise is whether institutional funds continue to flow in.
Benson: So our Institutional Liquidity Index mainly looks at three things: first, overall dollar liquidity, including some fiscal-side data; second, MicroStrategy's mNAV; third, the net flow of BTC ETF over the past 30 days.
Benson: When the BTC price keeps making new highs, but institutional liquidity does not keep up, we mark a Divergence. The lighter one is yellow, and the severe one is red.
Benson: We backtested several cases that appeared in the past. The red Divergence exactly marked around 123,000 in the last cycle, and around 67,000 in the cycle before that. Yellow Divergences also mostly corresponded to important Local Tops.
Benson: In the future, the bull market top may no longer look like "everyone has gone crazy," but rather like "prices are still making new highs, but the money behind can no longer keep up." This change is very important.
Fourteen, CoinKarma wants to build a Crypto Trading OS: from viewing data directly to automatic execution
Mr. Z: So what does CoinKarma really want to become next? Is it still a data Dashboard?
Benson: No, what we want to build is an Operating System for Cryptocurrency Trading.
Benson: Most data products today still stop at "showing you." After you see an indicator, you still have to connect the Data API, exchange API, run backtests, write strategies, and deploy. This whole process is very lengthy.
Benson: Our direction is that you can directly use CoinKarma's Data and write conditions with an expression very close to human language, such as enter when a certain indicator is greater than 3 and exit when it is less than 1, and then directly throw it into the backtesting engine.
Benson: If you think this strategy Makes Sense, we can directly Host it for you. You put the funds in, it executes automatically according to the rules, and you can also adjust the parameters at any time afterward.
Benson: Currently there are about 700+ Bots in live trading, about 1,000 users, and total AUM of about 14 million USD. Each Bot is like an independent position, separated from the user's other exchange assets.
Mr. Z: This sounds easier to implement than "letting an AI Agent decide how to trade by itself."
Benson: I think the biggest problem with AI Agent is not whether the model is strong enough, but what Data you actually give it. If you only give it candlesticks, volume and price, and other things everyone can see, then even a stronger model will find it hard to generate Alpha out of thin air.
Benson: Facts themselves may be cheap, but the interpretation of facts is expensive. Either you see data others cannot see, or everyone can see the same data but your interpretation is better than others'.
Benson: Without unique data and insight, no matter how smart an AI Agent is, it is just using ordinary ingredients to cook.
Fifteen, How to confirm the main upward phase: ETF 30-day inflow of 60,000 BTC is when the market is truly about to explode
Mr. Z: Let's be direct at the end. Everyone says this is the early bull market, so when exactly does the real "main upward phase" come?
Benson: I myself have a very simple way to judge: look at BTC ETF rolling 30-day net inflow.
Benson: If the total net inflow over the past 30 days exceeds 60,000 BTC, I would think the market is beginning to have the conditions for a main upward phase. In several obvious main upward phases in the past, similar situations appeared, and at truly extreme times, the 30-day net inflow could even reach 100,000 BTC.
Benson: The logic is simple. Given the size of BTC today, if it were to rise 20% or 30% in a month, it would be almost impossible for institutional funds like ETFs to not participate at all. So 60,000 coins is a very good critical point.
Benson: At the time of the interview, this number was only about 30,000 to 40,000 coins, so my judgment was: the real main upward phase has not yet arrived.
Benson: I would instead use this signal as an indicator to reduce altcoin positions. For example, if my altcoins originally accounted for 25% of my portfolio, after the first real main upward phase appears, I might reduce it to 12.5%; if it happens again, I might hold almost no altcoins.
Benson: Because the most dangerous thing in a bull market is that people usually do the exact opposite. At the beginning of a bull market, they don't dare to buy, only putting in 10% or 20%; after making money through several consecutive pullbacks, they start to develop inertia, and at the final top, they instead maximize their positions and leverage.
Benson: When the music just starts, you have to dare to go in and dance; when everyone is drunk, you should instead go to the bar and ask for a glass of ice water to sober yourself up.
Mr. Z: So in this cycle, you need to be prepared for a long bull market, and also always know when it's time to leave. Drink while you can, and when drunk, retreat.
Benson: Yes, these two things are not contradictory at all. When it's time to make a dignified exit, leave; don't wait until the security guards carry you out in the end.
Mr. Z: So this episode can actually be condensed into a few very simple judgments: First, BTC is moving from high-volatility tech stock Beta toward Digital Gold; second, this round may not be a few months of skyrocketing, but a longer major cycle; third, altcoins should not fantasize everywhere about digging up Alpha that no one has discovered, and should directly follow the main lines already confirmed by price; fourth, the real main upward phase depends on ETF funds, and the real top depends on whether institutional liquidity keeps up. The most important thing in a bull market is not always predicting correctly, but daring to bet at the beginning of the bull market, daring to sit tight during the main upward phase, and still remembering that you ultimately need to get off when everyone is most excited. Thank you Benson for coming to 168X again!
