Compiled & Edited: Deep Tide TechFlow

Featured: Taiki Maeda, crypto trader, YouTube content creator

Podcast Source: YouTube channel Taiki Maeda

Original Title: Crypto is Bottoming. We're About to Go Much Higher.

Broadcast Date: July 15, 2026

Disclosure: The author publicly discloses holding long positions in ZEC, HYPE, LIT in the video, uses the Variational referral code, and operates a paid Discord community. This article faithfully presents his personal views and does not constitute investment advice.

Key Takeaways

Taiki Maeda is a trader who continuously produces crypto research content on YouTube, repeatedly promoting the Hyperliquid ecosystem over the past two years. In this video, he did something many people dare not: openly admitting he got burned by Zcash last month, selling all his holdings near the bottom during the Orchard pool vulnerability panic in early June to go on a honeymoon in Japan, then bought back upon returning. More counterintuitively, he is continuously selling Bitcoin to increase his Zcash position.

His core logic can be summarized in three key points. First, the market has entered a bottoming process, with the real frenzy peak in July to August 2025 (BTC $125K, ETH $5K); the October high of $126K was "weak," not triggering an altcoin season, and therefore does not count as a true cycle top. Second, the next growth engine for perpetual contract DEX tokens (HYPE, LIT) will come from the adoption of RWA perpetual contracts and traditional finance users, rather than crypto-native players taking losses among themselves. Third, Saylor's continuous selling of BTC to fill STRK preferred stock dividends, combined with quantum computing threats and Bitcoin developers' inaction, makes Bitcoin "increasingly difficult to wholeheartedly support." The Zcash Ironwood upgrade (set for July 28) will achieve quantum safety and eliminate vulnerabilities through formal verification; if the ZEC/BTC exchange rate breaks from the current 0.8% to above 1%, it will trigger a narrative-level reflexivity cycle.

Highlighted Opinions

On Market Cycles

"That October $126K new high doesn't count; it shot up then immediately fell; it did not trigger an altcoin season at all. The real frenzy is in July and August."

"If the real top was in July, then we've already experienced a whole year of bear market. Those who needed to leave have already left."

"I'm done competing with four-year cycles. My advantage is not in short-term price predictions but in building belief in specific tracks over a longer timeframe."

On Perpetual Contract DEXs

"The next wave of growth for perpetual contract DEXs won’t come from people within the crypto circle buying tokens, but from traditional finance and retail investors using perpetual contracts instead of options to place bets."

"Most altcoins will go to zero. Only focusing on crypto perpetual DEXs is just scrambling for leftovers. I want to bet on projects competing for a share in RWA perpetuals."

"You don’t need to bet on just one. You can hold both HYPE and LIT simultaneously and earn convexity by mining through Variational for future airdrops."

On Zcash

"If Zcash can recover from this drop, it becomes an antifragile asset. Every time it should have died but didn't, the probability of it dying in the future decreases."

"I rushed in in April, pushed in more in May, then sold everything at the bottom. Then it started to rise without me. Honestly, it was quite painful."

"Zcash is currently worth less than 1% of Bitcoin’s market cap. If this ratio breaks above 1%, ZEC's price will exceed $700, a dual resonance of technology and narrative."

On Saylor and Bitcoin

"Saylor makes it harder to support Bitcoin now than it was two years ago, four years ago, or six years ago. This isn’t a problem with Bitcoin itself, but Saylor is too big a part of the narrative."

"Quantum threats are real. Bitcoin developers show a lack of urgency about this, which makes me unable to put my entire fortune into Bitcoin anymore."

"Zcash and Bitcoin can be the gold and silver of the crypto world: there are trade-offs, but it's worth holding both."

Main Text

1. Market Cycles: The Top Was Last July, Not October

Many people focus on the moment last October when BTC reached a new high of $126K, believing that signified the cycle top. But Taiki does not see it that way. Technically it did hit a new high, but that high was not exuberant at all. It shot up and immediately fell, not triggering an altcoin season; besides some individual coins moving, there were no signs of frenzy in the overall market. He describes that as a "weak" new high.

The real frenzy actually occurred in July and August. At that time, BTC first hit $125K, and ETH surged to $5,000. People rushed to buy Bitmine, believing Bitmine was the future of finance. Tom Lee was calling for it, and the DAT frenzy (whether SDR or Bitmine) marked the peak of sentiment. It would later prove that the future of finance wasn’t as simple as that.

From this perspective, if the real frenzy top was in July, then we have experienced an entire year of bear market. The people who needed to leave have mostly left, and the amount of fraud left in the market is also reduced. Even if you disagree with his judgment that Q4 will hit new lows, he feels it's at least time to start accumulating slowly. The underlying bottom of last year's cycle began in June when BTC dropped to $20K (after the 3AC crash); although there would be lower prices after that, those who positioned well during that window earned significantly over the next 12 to 18 months.

He frankly admits that he no longer competes with four-year cycles and does not feel he has an advantage in short-term price predictions. He believes his "advantage" lies in having a longer time horizon and the ability to build conviction in specific tracks, narratives, and project fundamentals. From this perspective, starting to allocate slowly now makes sense.

Moreover, there is a self-fulfilling factor: everyone is waiting for the Q4 bottom, preparing to buy in Q4. If the market bottoms in Q3, those waiting will only end up buying at a higher price. Even if Q3 doesn't see a rise, with so much capital waiting for Q4, how much downside can there be? Positioning in advance may be wiser than waiting until Q4 to take action.

2. Perpetual Contract DEXs: The Real Growth Engine Lies in RWA Perpetuals

He has been talking about Hyperliquid for over two years, consistently calling people to mine. Lighter is a newer position. These two are among the few tokens that have reached new highs during a downturn in the crypto market, completely decoupling from BTC and ETH movements.

On the surface, you could say this is due to substantial buybacks. Since the beginning of the year, Hyperliquid has bought back about 3.4% of its circulating supply, and Lighter has bought back about 6.3%. Hyperliquid's market share relative to centralized exchanges is increasing, and Robinhood's partnership with Lighter is also a positive factor. But Taiki feels these are merely surface-level stories.

If one were to be more pessimistic, one might say that Hyperliquid's market is saturated, and Lighter's partnership with Robinhood is just a catalyst-level pulse. But to truly establish a bullish logic for a perpetual contract DEX, a broader view is required.

A structural issue with the current crypto market is that most altcoins lack fundamentals, relying solely on BTC and ETH's rise to follow suit. However, perpetual contract DEXs are different. They have real fee revenues and buyback mechanisms. More critically, Taiki believes the true growth of perpetual contract DEX tokens comes from two directions: adoption in traditional finance and retail investors, and the growth of RWA perpetual contracts.

He has a hard judgment: most crypto altcoins will go to zero. Therefore, DEXs focused solely on crypto perpetuals are merely competing for leftovers in a decreasing pool. He is more optimistic about RWA perpetuals, such as perpetual contracts for gold, crude oil, and stock indices. These products are still small in scale now, but in 6 to 12 months, they should far exceed the volume of crypto perpetuals.

"The next wave of growth for perpetual contract DEXs will not come from people within the crypto circle buying tokens, but from traditional finance and retail investors using perpetual contracts instead of options to place bets." In the crypto circle, this logic seems obvious; tokens have already risen significantly, and it feels late. But the next wave of buyers is fundamentally not from crypto circles.

Jez's theory on perpetual contracts has also influenced his judgment: perpetual contracts, as a delta-leveraged tool, are simpler and more user-friendly than options. He anticipates that perpetual contracts will continue to capture market share from options. This isn't a complicated judgment, more like "what needs to happen will eventually happen," and the people in the crypto circle have a cognitive edge on this.

3. Hyperliquid, Lighter, and Variational: Positioning Strategy

Taiki holds three positions related to perpetual contract DEXs, each with different strategies.

Hyperliquid (HYPE) is his core position. He established this position months ago, and at one point awaited a correction to add more, but didn’t get one and ultimately bought back directly. The core metric he is optimistic about is the continuous growth in HIP-3 RWA perpetual contract volumes. As long as this number continues to rise, he remains bullish on HYPE and sees no reason to stop.

Lighter (LIT) is a more recent position. He was consumed with thoughts of LIT during his honeymoon, leading him to feel that his subconscious was signaling him, and he directly bought in at market price. The logic behind LIT is the distribution channel advantage brought by the Robinhood partnership, which will be a huge leverage when traditional finance users adopt perpetual contracts.

Variational is his main mining ground. Over the past year, nearly all his trades have been done on Variational. This platform currently has about $120 to $130 million in open interest, with approximately 25% coming from the TradFi market, a proportion that makes him very optimistic. The staking project is expected to end in Q3, so there are still a few months of mining window left.

He made an interesting estimate: if Variational airdrops 25% of its tokens and goes live at a $1 billion valuation, that roughly corresponds to $27 per token. He wouldn’t be surprised by a FDV of $20 to $30 billion at launch, depending on the movements of HYPE and LIT.

He also mentions a "Texas hedge" strategy: not only long HYPE, but also gaining exposure to future perpetual contract DEX tokens through mining on Variational. For example, while shorting ETH, he opts to operate on Variational rather than Hyperliquid or Lighter. Losing doesn't matter, as airdropped points will compensate; if he profits, even better, he gets even more points. This is the beauty of airdrop mining: setting up convexity for your future self.

Regarding SUI, he is not optimistic about the token itself, so he is shorting SUI on Variational to hedge his spot position. If SUI rises, chances are his spot position is also rising; if the market drops, SUI will drop too. This is a form of aggregate hedging.

He opposes the common "tribalism" mentality in the crypto circle: owning HYPE just means trading on Hyperliquid. He believes one can hold several tokens simultaneously and achieve more robust exposure through a combination.

On the competitive front for Variational, he mentions Ostium also has incentive projects but operates on a far smaller scale than Variational. Ostium is still in the expansion phase but does not pose a threat in the short term.

4. Zcash's Painful Reassessment: From Crash to Rebuy

Zcash is Taiki’s most conflicted position. In the last video, he spoke about being painfully burned by Zcash, and in this episode, he admits he bought back in.

What happened: In early June, news broke that the Orchard pool (Zcash's shielded pool) might have an infinite minting vulnerability. ZEC's price plunged in a direct line by 60%. Taiki sold all his holdings near the bottom. His reasoning was straightforward: he needed to go abroad for his honeymoon and didn’t want to hold high-risk positions in that state; first, eliminate the pain. He even executed a tax loss harvesting, jokingly calling it "the ultimate self-comfort."

What concerned him at the time was that this FUD would completely destroy the market's confidence in Zcash. Like BTC, Zcash does not have cash flow; its value comes from whether people see it as a store of value. If confidence collapses, it may never recover. The vulnerability itself was secondary.

But he gave himself time to watch and then made a pivotal judgment: if Zcash can recover from this drop, it becomes an antifragile asset. Every time it should have died but didn’t decreases the probability of its death in the future, which mirrors Bitcoin's historical logic. Bitcoin's strength lies in the countless reasons in the past that should have made it fail, yet it didn’t.

Applying Munger's contrarian thinking: this drop could very well be a massive shakeout, clearing the stage for subsequent rises. If the price can recover, it proves this asset has resilience and is worth rebuying.

He admits he rushed in during April, pushed more in May, then sold everything at the bottom. Now it has risen back without him. He likens the mindset needed in trading to a "goldfish memory": let the past be the past, and focus on the question, "Will this asset recover? If it does, how far can it go?"

He acknowledges that he is not psychologically mature, but feels he has made progress compared to three or four years ago. Back then, he may not have been able to buy back the same asset after selling at a loss.

5. Ironwood Upgrade: Quantum Safety and Formal Verification

The next key catalyst for Zcash is the Ironwood shielded pool upgrade set for July 28.

Ironwood brings two core improvements. First, quantum safety. Second, formal verification for excluding all undetectable counterfeit vulnerabilities in the future. Zcash's founder, Zooko, also audited the protocol using Anthropic's model.

He summarized the current situation with AI: Is there a vulnerability in the Orchard pool? Yes. Was it exploited? Unknown. Is there public evidence of exploitation? No. Will Ironwood be able to fix the vulnerabilities? Expected to be able to. Can it ensure that Ironwood has no undiscovered vulnerabilities? It cannot. This is the inherent trade-off of privacy protocols: you can never fully confirm whether they have been exploited.

But the Ironwood upgrade will essentially prove that the Orchard pool has not been actually exploited. Vitalik has also written articles on formal verification, and Taiki believes this will become standard for every crypto project in the future.

From a trading and narrative perspective, a complete price recovery could likely kick off a narrative resurgence and a reflexivity loop. This is what he wants to position for in advance.

6. Saylor's Plight: Why Bitcoin is "Increasingly Difficult to Support"

Saylor (Michael Saylor) has been selling Bitcoin to fill STRK (Strategy preferred stock Strife) dividends and increase cash reserves. Taiki believes Saylor may continue to be a net seller of BTC for the foreseeable future.

For the past six years, Saylor has been a continuous net buyer of BTC. Now he has started to gradually sell every month or two; how would BTC respond? No one knows. Taiki is unsure whether BTC will be affected by Saylor’s selling, but he is also unwilling to bet that it won't.

"Saylor makes it harder to support Bitcoin now than it was two years ago, four years ago, or six years ago. This isn’t a problem with Bitcoin itself, but Saylor is too big a part of the narrative." If Bitcoin wins, Saylor will become the richest man on Earth, and Taiki says he is uncertain about how he feels about that.

The price of STRK has somewhat recovered (over $70), but the holding experience is very poor. He even认为 Saylor should directly get rid of that stock, although he is not sure what Saylor is thinking.

Regarding the quantum threat, his friend Evan recently pointed out in a post: Bitcoin faces quantum computing threats, and Bitcoin developers show a lack of urgency on this, which makes him seriously concerned about putting all his wealth back into Bitcoin. Taiki agrees. Two years ago, four years ago he would have unhesitatingly put all in BTC, and he indeed did.

But the quantum threat is an unknown variable, and he lacks confidence in the Bitcoin community's ability to address this issue.

From Zcash's perspective, you don't need to bet that people will sell BTC to buy ZEC. A more reasonable assumption is that a person wanting to allocate $100,000 to the crypto market may have previously invested 100% in BTC, but now might allocate 90% to BTC + 10% to ZEC. If Zcash rises significantly due to quantum safety, it could force Bitcoin developers to take the quantum issue more seriously. The two can coexist beneficially.

"Zcash and Bitcoin can be the gold and silver of the crypto world: there are trade-offs, but it's worth holding both."

7. ZEC/BTC Exchange Rate: Key Threshold for Reflexivity Cycle

The Zcash metric Taiki values most is the ZEC/BTC exchange rate, while the ZEC/USD price is secondary.

Zcash and Bitcoin share the exact same supply schedule: halving every four years, total supply of 21 million. The current ZEC/BTC exchange rate is about 0.8%. The previous resistance was in the ZEC $650 to $700 range, corresponding to an exchange rate of approximately 1%.

If the ZEC/BTC exchange rate breaks above 1%, it will simultaneously trigger two things: ZEC breaking through multi-year highs (technical signal) and the narrative of "Zcash's market cap exceeding 1% of BTC" itself becoming a topic (narrative signal). The two resonances may lead to a larger influx of funds.

He mentioned that for the past two months, he has been selling BTC to buy ZEC; he did some last month and some again this month. He is no longer continuing to sell, and his positions are comfortable. His bet is clear: the market will increasingly care about privacy, quantum, and Saylor’s three narratives, unrelated to whether Zcash is better than Bitcoin.

Soros's reflexivity theory applies here: fundamentals drive prices up, rising prices alter people's perceptions of assets, and changed perceptions further enhance fundamentals (more developers, more users, more liquidity), pushing prices higher. The reflexivity cycle of Zcash needs the price to start moving to initiate.

He added a viewpoint: if you are someone who mocked him in the comments for "selling at the bottom," watching ZEC rise back from the bottom and continue to rise, at some point it will be difficult for you to deny what is happening. Zcash has had many reasons to go to zero: it started rising before BTC peaked, surged again in Q1 and Q2, then plummeted due to a vulnerability, and now is recovering again. If all these negative shocks could not kill this asset, then what could?

8. Position Management and Final Reflection

Taiki's current position order is: overweight Zcash, HYPE second, LIT third, plus cash and Variational mining earnings.

He retains a cash position for two reasons. First is psychological hedging: last month his ZEC position was too heavy, especially before his honeymoon, leading to emotional decision-making. Reducing his ZEC position while holding cash is an attempt to hedge against future errors. Second is opportunity reserve: if there is a new correction or new narrative emerges, he has ammunition to deploy.

Regarding buying timing: he increased his Zcash position last week. HYPE was established a few months ago. LIT was bought at market price during the honeymoon. His BTC position currently has unrealized losses, but "it is what it is." His new ZEC position has become profitable, but together with previous losses, he is still underwater overall. He believes that if Zcash's thesis is correct, the previous losses will be compensated through future gains.

He admits making mistakes is as unavoidable as "seeing oneself as a Japanese person in the mirror." But the only thing to do is to move forward and take the best step forward.

His final stance: to be long on perpetual contract DEX tokens (HYPE, LIT), continue mining more perpetual contract DEX tokens (Variational), and be long on Zcash considering its unique positioning and narrative premium over Bitcoin. Good altcoins have already bottomed. The market is forward-looking. You have to believe in something.