Receipt Thursday
June 1-4, 2026
Most people show you the winning trade. I’ll show you the whole year, including the position that dragged, because the point was never any single call. It’s the method, and I wrote it down before any of this happened.
On December 31 I published the playbook. Everything below ran straight off that page.
The framework, dated before the year began
I split capital into three buckets and treat each as a different job.
Liquid beta is the big, liquid core. BTC, ETH, infrastructure. No leverage, and I never sell it to cover expenses. The cash reserve is stables that yield, enough for a year of living costs, the bucket that stops me ever being a forced seller. Optionality is the high-convexity bets, treated as zero in planning, pure upside, like HYPE off the bottom.
The whole point is survival first. If you can’t get liquidated and you never have to sell at the lows, drawdowns stop being existential and turn into math problems. That is what lets you hold the winners long enough for the asymmetry to pay.
The October exit and the January hedge were the cash reserve and the survival rule doing their job. Going delta-neutral instead of dumping the bags is the same idea, structure the position so a 50% drawdown is a number, not a threat. HYPE was the optionality bucket paying off. The February rebalance into the lows is the line I keep coming back to in the deck: rebalancing beats perfect timing.
Here’s the tape.
October 10, 2025. Called the top.
I told everyone to sell or hedge that Friday, hours before Trump’s 100% China tariffs set off the largest liquidation event in crypto history. Over $19 billion wiped in a day, BTC down 14% to around $105k from $122k. I reinforced it the following Monday. Stay out.
November 23, 2025. Bought back lower.
BTC at $82k, roughly a third below where we sold. A market-cap weighted spot book, BTC-led.
December 24, 2025. Called the HYPE bottom, publicly.
Christmas Eve, a possible epic bottom at $25.24. The thesis wasn’t a vibe. Validators voted to burn the HYPE in the Assistance Fund, no insiders unstaked into the unlock that was due, and portfolio margin and HIP-3 were landing and pulling volume. Arthur Hayes was loudly refusing to buy, saying he’d wait for $20. He came within a dollar and never got the fill.
Proof: Hyperliquid bottom call, Dec 24 2025
January 21, 2026. Hedged to neutral.
BTC broke structure around $86k. Instead of selling the bags, I hedged them flat. An IBIT bear put spread for June and $75k Deribit puts for June expiry. The book went delta-neutral. The crash that followed wasn’t a threat, it was a math problem.
Proof: The hedge, Jan 21 2026
February 5-6, 2026. Closed the hedge, bought the flush.
BTC capitulated from $73k to $60k in two days. Because I was neutral, I didn’t ride it down, I sidestepped it. I closed the hedge into the lows, went net long, and switched the book to equal weight right at the bottom, while the leverage crowd got liquidated.
The scorecard, equal weight from the February bottom to the June exit
· HYPE: about $25 to $73, +190%. The standout.
· MON: about +25%.
· BTC: roughly flat, and it cost nothing on the way down because it was hedged.
· ETH: roughly flat.
· SOL: down about 35%. The one laggard.
Call it +35% on the basket since the bottom, carried by HYPE, with SOL the only drag, and the entire crash before it neutralized for free. I won’t pretend SOL worked. But over a stretch where BTC fell close to 50% from its October high, I was hedged through the worst of it and long the right name off the low. That’s the framework doing its job.
June 3, 2026. Closed the book.
HYPE at $73, right near its all-time high from the day before. Gains banked, back to cash, defensive.
Called the top in October. Bought lower in November. Called the bottom in December. Hedged to neutral in January. Bought the flush in February. Out in June. Not by predicting every tick, but by structuring capital to survive and stay long enough for the asymmetry to pay.
Where I stand now
Defensive. I cut risk early and I’m mostly in cash, holding a core BTC and ETH position I write calls against and nothing I’m chasing. The view is bearish, and I’d rather wait it out in cash than fight it.
The 67-69k support band just broke. Price closed under 67k on the daily, the follow-through has been violent, and the doom calls are out in force. That break is what opens the path lower.
Two signals run it, on two clocks. The weekly downtrend already triggered this week, and it fired from higher up, so that clock is running now. Ten weeks to tag 50k first, then 36k. The weekly stop is 71,383. The monthly is the heavier one, fired when price crossed 63,130. I give it five months to see 46k to 28k worst case. The monthly stop is 76,013.
One near-term warning so you don’t get faked out. On the way down we can expect short term counter-trend bounces. Treat that kind of rip as a trap, not the turn.
This week, the book running
The defensive pivot wasn’t a theory this week. Here’s the tape that put it on.
BTC and ETH, flipped to manual shorts Wednesday evening
Monday’s Brief had framed BTC as chop near-term, with the 67-69k weekly mode as the structural downside target, a level to fade into rather than chase, and a daily-close loss of that band putting the downtrend in continuation mode. The reclaim never came. By Wednesday evening price was through the band, and I flipped to a manual short at the break (Discord @everyone, chart https://www.tradingview.com/x/FAmcimdH/). ETH went the same way the same evening, a short at the downtrend speed-line failure (Discord @everyone 18:36 “ETH is a clear short now”, chart https://www.tradingview.com/x/8Gc9UIgs/). The constructive-grind read is off both names. The continuation case is the active one.
Quarter-end equity de-risk: raising cash
AVGO, +30.4% banked Tuesday ahead of the after-close print, $369.50 cost basis into $481.68 (Discord @everyone 12:38 “Take profits in CRM and AVGO” https://www.tradingview.com/x/DOmbkP2l/). LSCC, +42.3%, carried since March, banked Wednesday into the chip-tape bid, $107.50 into $153.00 (https://www.tradingview.com/x/bGi6gwi3/). CRM, +5.4% in 4 days off the 5/29 weekly-uptrend entry, $187.16 into $197.22. NVDA trimmed +6.9%, the position cut back. Same defensive read as the crypto book, partly raising cash in equities into quarter-end.
HYPE, banked and out
Trimmed the active sleeve +11.9% on Monday’s pop into the daily target (6/1 08:18 at $72.652, chart https://www.tradingview.com/x/fnHOngXY/). Closed the spot position outright Wednesday at $73, the +190% optionality winner from the December bottom, fully realized. Out of the name.
The bot book, both sides into the chop
Signals fired both ways through the week, the manual calls managed the size.
· Daily long winners: JTO +12.8% in under a day (~7,800% APR pace), PURR +21.7% in 2.5 days (~3,190% APR pace), WLD two consecutive trips at +19.4% and +19.1% (chart https://www.tradingview.com/x/0bweeZWT/).
· Tuesday’s morning cover banked the bounce: ten of eleven legs green, LTC +4.6%, IOTA +4.3%, UNI weekly +4.0% and AERO +3.8% the standouts, one scratch.
· The three conviction weekly shorts, IP, UNI and BONK, covered into that same Tuesday bounce, exactly the June 1 weekly-expiration mean-reversion the Monday Brief flagged.
· Wednesday’s flatten went out small-positive across the basket, ONDO +8.0% the standout, before the BTC and ETH shorts went on.
· Wednesday’s morning short cover ran a batch of small losses into the bounce, banked rather than left to stack.
What’s still live
· BTC: core spot held as covered-call collateral, the rest in cash. Manual short on from Wednesday’s band break.
· ETH: same shape, core plus the manual short from Wednesday. ETH 2300C covered call open on Deribit, 6/12 expiry.
· BTC covered call: 80000C open on Deribit, 6/12 expiry.
· ZEC: monthly sliver from 5/26 still riding.
· PMCSP: spreads open on JNJ, CTAS, XOM, ADM, BEN, GD, MCD, LOW, ABBV, EXPD, SJM, ED.
What I’m watching into June
This is a macro tape, and the calendar is stacked.
· Jobs week into a Fed blackout. ADP and ISM Services landed Wednesday, jobless claims Thursday, Nonfarm Payrolls Friday the 5th. The blackout starts Saturday the 6th, so a payrolls surprise gets no Fed relief valve until after the meeting.
· Warsh’s last open window. June 1 to 5 is the final stretch for any pre-blackout remarks from the new Fed chair on the rate path or the balance sheet. Whatever he says lands straight into risk.
· FOMC June 16 to 17, Warsh’s first as chair. Everything between now and then is uncertainty with no crypto-specific catalyst to lean on.
· The Clarity Act. It cleared Senate Banking in May and sits on the Senate calendar, with the market pricing better-than-even odds of passage. That’s the real demand source, and the runway is August at the earliest. Until then crypto trades on macro, not its own story.
· Saylor and the treasury bid. This was the structural tell I was watching, and it just fired. BTC has lost Strategy’s average cost, and the reporting now has them preparing to sell bitcoin to stay solvent, the opposite of the never-sell thesis the whole trade was built on. A forced seller of size below its own cost is exactly the reflexivity I don’t want to be long into.
None of that is bullish into the back half of June. It’s why the book is defensive and mostly cash.
The line that changes my mind
A weekly close back over 71,383. That’s it. Reclaim it and I flip fast and put spot back to work. Until then I think this resolves a lot lower before it’s done, so I’m protecting capital and staying ready.
Notes members got the exact levels mid-week. Next Monday the cycle starts again.
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Educational. Not financial advice.