The Practical Islamic Finance Podcast

This bull run you have to make a choice

Rakaan Kayali

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This bull run you have to make a choice

In this episode, we will discuss:

  • Bitcoin Halving: Discussion on the recent Bitcoin halving and its potential impact on the market.
  • Negative Net Inflows: Analysis of the recent trend of negative net inflows into Bitcoin ETFs and its reflection on the price of Bitcoin.
  • GBTC Drainage: Examination of the drain on Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) holdings, highlighting mismanagement and potential impact on asset value.
  • Historical Performance: Exploration of the historical performance of Bitcoin post-halving events.
  • Investment Strategy: Emphasis on the importance of having a clear investment strategy, including holding Bitcoin and potentially investing in select Bitcoin miners.
  • Altcoins and Crypto Trends: Discussion on the popularity of altcoins, cautioning against high-risk investments like meme coins and recommending diligence in research.
  • Zakat and Crypto Assets: Advising on paying zakat on crypto assets, especially those not staked, and discussing the importance of understanding investment fundamentals.
  • Long-Term Investment Approach: Advocacy for a long-term investment approach, focusing on patience, knowledge, and informed decision-making.
  • Q&A Interaction: Conclusion with a Q&A session addressing various topics related to cryptocurrency investments.

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Our podcast is about helping people ethically build wealth. We cover a broad range of topics including stock and crypto investing, product reviews, and general financial well-being.

DISCLAIMER

Anything you hear in this video is an opinion. It is not personalized financial advice. Make sure you do your due diligence before making any investment decisions.

As-salamu alaykum everyone, we are one day removed from the Bitcoin halving. Wow, it's finally upon us and things are about to get very exciting. They have been exciting but they're about to be very very exciting and in this live I'd like to go over some things that we have to know about not only Bitcoin but crypto generally so that we understand what our choices are going into this bull run or into the thick of this bull run and we have a strategy that helps us get through it and come out of it at the time that we need to and inshallah better off than how we started. So without further ado let's get started. Not financial advice so make sure to do your own due diligence before making any investing decisions and if you enjoy these lives then do leave a like, I'd really appreciate that. So looking at where we are right now we've had three days consecutively of negative net inflows into the Bitcoin ETFs, something that really hasn't happened that much. Typically we have positive inflows into Bitcoin ETFs since their inception in January and this negative inflows has reflected itself in the price of Bitcoin which has briefly approached 60,000 but has since rebounded a bit. Now the reason for this negative net inflow can be traced to GBTC which is halfway drained. So they started off when the Bitcoin ETFs launched they started off with more than 600,000 bitcoins and now they're at 300,000 bitcoins and so you know at maximum if the rate of the drainage continues at the same rate then in a few months there won't be something called GBTC anymore. That being said I do think that management will eventually have to give in to what the market is telling it and it will have to reduce its management fees. I really think that pretty much everyone on GBTC's management should be fired. They've done a terrible job. They had this gem of an asset that they absolutely destroyed with their greed, insisting on a outrageously high management fee and they really haven't really fully appreciated how badly they screwed this up because guess what if right now the assets under management after they've drained half of their Bitcoin holdings it's at 20 billion right around 20 billion so they've lost 20 billion in assets under management well when Bitcoin 10x's from here in the next few years as is you know forecasted by many including myself when Bitcoin 10x's then the 20 billion that they lost in assets under management is essentially 200 billion that they could have been collecting a management fee on but they insisted on having this outrageously high management fee and they're paying the price eventually someone has to knock some sense into management and say hey we're gonna end up with no fun if we keep our management fees where they are and they'll end up having to reduce them it's only a question of when and how much damage they want to take until then the Bitcoin halving is upon us as I mentioned in around one day a few hours we will have the halving and that's when the reward for each block mined gets cut in half so this has typically corresponded when the supply is cut in half basic economics when the supply is cut in half assuming the same amount of demand the price will go up and that is in fact what has happened in 2012 2016 2020 this is what we've experienced and this time around we have the Bitcoin ETFs as I mentioned so we've actually got to a high before the halving or we set a new all-time high before the halving and typically all-time highs for Bitcoin are set after the halving new ones and not only that we have a more dedicated hodler base for Bitcoin so right now the the supply of last active more than three years ago the supply of Bitcoin that is last active more than two years ago is now at an all-time high at around 45 percent Bitcoin exchanges is at a five-year low so you have Bitcoin on exchanges and typically Bitcoin is moved to exchanges when people want to sell them so Bitcoin on exchanges is at an all-time low supply is going to be a cut in half people are huddling for longer their Bitcoin this can only mean one thing and that is the price of Bitcoin is going to go up inshallah of course now the Bitcoin halving here as I mentioned in the previous three halvings there was a clear appreciation in the days and weeks and months following the halving so you can see the halving is the is represented by the vertical line on this chart the last three halvings are and you can see how much it is appreciated since or after the halvings each time and if you like raw numbers instead of graphs you can see that in November 2012 that on the day of the halving the price was twelve dollars 500 days later it was 135 dollars so did a cool 11x there and on July of 9th of 2016 the halving day price was 658 dollars 500 days later it was 1500 dollars in 2020 the halving day price was 8600 500 days later it was 50 900 so really the first choice you have here is to whether or not you you're going to own Bitcoin and I think this is a clear choice based on the historical data based on the fundamentals that we've covered it's really not I don't think a complicated question to answer at least this is for me so I really think that everyone should have in their portfolios and now it's easier than ever to hold Bitcoin through the exchange traded funds so you don't have to self-custody Bitcoin you don't have to hold it on exchanges you can have it in your brokerage account which I think is is a is a massive feature for the asset and makes it even more attractive so don't complicate things don't complicate things on yourself don't try to time the market don't try to figure out oh is it going to fall after the halving is it going to fall before the halving is it going to rally before the halving I showed you the charts I showed you the numbers the choice is clear the history is clear and not only that but the argument for Bitcoin the sort of philosophical argument for Bitcoin has never been stronger the supply of fiat on the market in the economy has grown to levels that are unprecedented and by the way these are United States numbers that I'm showing you the rest of the world is a lot worse so you have credit card debt student debt auto debt mortgage debt in the trillions of dollars each one of them everyone is leveraged to the gills including the federal government which is adding one trillion dollars in additional debt every 100 days and we're now at close to 35 trillion dollars in federal government debt so you want to hold cash do you want to earn five percent on a loan that you may make to the government this is the this is what investors today have to answer do you want to own five percent on a loan that you're giving the government knowing that it has to print all of this money in order to pay off its debt and service its debt or do you want to hold your purchasing power in an asset that has a capped supply and in a supply that is not determined by the self-interest of people that control it rather it is determined by a predetermined algorithm that is not subject to the whims of self-interested people which do you want to do these are clear choices and I think the answer is clear as well don't listen to any of these people who are trying to say don't know what they're talking about saying bitcoin is haram they these people haven't done their research they don't know what they're talking about they shouldn't be talking in halal and haram given how little they know about the subject do not be deceived these people are just people who think satoshi nakamoto is pulling a ponzi scheme on everyone don't know the first thing about bitcoin make sure you're listening to people who understand what they're talking about again here this is not something that is you know there's a lot of gray in this matter no it's very black and white it's very clear for someone who actually understands what they're talking about this is a way for people to preserve their savings preserve their purchasing power over time and get out of the reba we based fiat system people who are saying that is preferable over bitcoin don't know what they're talking about i'm sorry and you shouldn't be listening to them and so so that's one choice with a clear answer the another choice on investing in this bull run relates to bitcoin miners i've spoken about bitcoin miners a lot they're a lot higher risk than bitcoin itself is but i do think that there is potential in the best miners and and and they they have a potential of appreciating even more than bitcoin the best miners do most bitcoin miners will lag bitcoin in their performance most of them will the top two or three or four will outperform bitcoin by a lot so again here you have a clear you have a clear choice in terms of once you understand that in terms of okay i don't want to invest in bitcoin miners if i don't know which ones to pick i don't know i haven't done uh my research on these bitcoin miners i don't know anything about their operating profits their cash flows their debt just throwing money at you know the next trending bitcoin miner or the one that is up the most on a particular day is not a good investment strategy like i said most bitcoin miners will lag bitcoin the asset in terms of their total return so only dabble in bitcoin miners if you know how to pick the right ones and for crypto generally so coin gecko came out with a report that talked about the the most popular narratives for crypto in q1 of this year and the most popular narrative was artificial intelligence followed by meme coins followed by real world assets and followed by the solana ecosystem so i think that if you're dabbling in you know altcoins again here i'd like to say most of these altcoins will get you burned only a few of them will outperform bitcoin but most of them will not so again here do not dabble unless you know what you're doing you know what to look for q1 the most popular themes are not necessarily the same most popular themes in q2 although i think for the most part the top four will remain at the top of this list so artificial intelligence meme coins real world assets and solana ecosystem seem to be seem to be sticky trends this bull run if i if i had to guess meme coins i think you know financial nihilism is setting in for a lot of people wherein they feel like nothing they do is going to help them catch up and you know if they if they get you know five percent return or ten percent return or fifteen or even twenty percent return annually that's not going to move the needle for them they're so behind financially so they're looking for something that's going to give them a hundred x or a thousand x and you know meme coins provides them with that hope i would encourage people not to get sucked into that line of thinking it's a very dangerous line of thinking that causes a lot of people a lot of grief i remember the idea of the tortoise and the hare right the the famous story that we all were that we all were taught when we were younger the tortoise slow and steady wins the race the hare that you know tries to tries to beat the tortoise or tries to get huge gains but is not really steady is not really consistent ends up losing with these meme coins you make a lot you lose a lot very quickly there are no you know there's no steady gains nothing that you most people can't really build on because the same way they want it is the same way they lose it so i would caution against that sort of line of thinking wherein you're trying to hit a home run and encourage investors to try and look for things that have fundamental value and for things that they can build on they understand why they go up they understand why they go down and slowly reach their financial goals that way so as i mentioned solana meme coins were the hottest lottery ticket in q1 now you saw things like dog with hat and bomb gain you know substantially but this says nothing about the you know 5 000 tokens a day that are created and all the money that is lost in those so don't just look at the ones that end up being winners there's a lot of money lost here so i would encourage people to be very careful we dabble pif dabbles and some alt coins we like to think that we're very diligent in researching the fundamentals for each project before we deploy any cash to it and we were diligent in taking profits whenever the opportunity presents itself and even with all of that even with all of that digital diligence and all of that study there are extended periods of time where your underwater doesn't look like your portfolio is doing well and so you know this is not something that you should just you know throw something at the wall and see what sticks you know even if you do your effort you have to have patience and know what you're investing in because otherwise you're going to get burned i would highly encourage people to consider becoming a pif member so that they can join a community of people who are actually doing the diligence that they need and supporting one another in terms of you know holding on to the truth and holding on to patience spot trading volume has reached the highest level since q4 of 2021 which if you recall was the peak of the last cycle so we're kind of you know breaking last cycle's numbers really relatively early in this cycle so you know this just goes to show the amount of potential that there is in this cycle and i think that you know with all the caution that i've said about investing there's a lot of opportunity here as well so i think it's the the payoff per unit of effort exerted right now is perhaps higher than it's been in years with that being said as i mentioned become a pif member if you'd like to join a community of halal conscious investors and with that being said let's go to questions do i pay zakat on crypto yes you do pay zakat on crypto treat it like you treat cash yeah it doesn't really matter whether you switched from one crypto to the other these are all cash like instruments it's like saying oh well you know i have dollars but i converted them to canadian do i need to add us dollars i can and converted them to canadian dollars is the is the how still applicable yeah it's applicable it's just cash what is your price prediction for iron and bouquet so i think probably between 10 and 15 dollars it's not pre-recorded it is live some thoughts about both short-term and long-term outlook for soul the recent pullback has hurt my portfolio value big time but i continue to hold in stake yeah i think soul is still a solid choice we had the congestion in the soul network recently that brought down soul and brought down soul related altcoins basically got wiped out but i think there'll eventually be a recovery here i think it's the better option between it and ethereum i think soul is the better platform follow-up thoughts on soul and off topic m phase so m phase so i just talked about soul and phase still a solid choice still bullish on i've never been bullish on marathon so but iron is part of our portfolio our meme coins halal i talked about that in previous live please check that out someone i know only owns ethereum and btc they're very comfortable held since 2020 yeah that's sort of one strategy to have you know lower number of cryptos in your portfolio but know more about them so one way to decrease your risk is to just diversify into a bunch of different things another way to decrease your risk is just to know a lot about the things that you're invested in diversification reduces your expected return but reducing your risk through knowing more about what you're investing in does not decrease your expected return so something to think about wayacom wayacom it's my pleasure watching from the uk oh salam to everyone in the uk salam to everyone who watches from the uk near and dear to my heart my sister lives in the uk thank you wayacom salam what is your opinion on albert marley i i think that so i talked briefly about it i think it's a good company of um i think it has if my memory serves me i think it's it's too high in debt and it also has operations in china that i wasn't comfortable with also for our lithium pick i think we have greater upside thanks i may appreciate that so thanks for your transparency and high appreciable analysis great thank you i really appreciate that young and have limited cash to invest don't mind losing does it make sense to invest into altcoins to make more profit and buy bitcoin at the bear market later so like i said slow and steady wins the race i would highly advise putting a portion of your investing into something more reliable like bitcoin and just dollar cost averaging and maybe have a percentage of your investing just for the long shots but with crypto i mean basically at this point in the cycle it's basically about attention what cryptos are getting the most attention at that specific time and it's less about fundamentals now what will determine which cryptos survive are the fundamentals of the crypto but in the short term what determines you know what is pumping is which crypto has the most attention on it at that time so this is very unreliable it's very unpredictable very high risk so rather than having this boron pass you by without getting any gains from it have i think a portion of your investing go into something like bitcoin which i think is you know on the low end will 2x from here on the high end may 3 or 4x from here by the end of the this boron have something like that and then maybe you have some different percentage of your investing go to these sort of high risk long shots that may be an approach you consider do you have to pay as a cat on crypto assets too or only on cryptocurrencies so so the only distinction i would make would be crypto that is staked and is actually being used and it's like it's providing a service versus crypto that's not staked so crypto that is staked it seems to me that that's analogous to a property that you have that you're renting out it's being used people are benefiting from it but it does depend on you know what does staking that particular crypto actually imply what is is there any benefit to the staking or is it just like most crypto not providing any real world benefit any service to anyone it's just you know aiming to enrich the stakers without any service being provided if there is a service being provided you're confident in that the answer to that question is yes then the crypto that is staked i think you can make an argument that is exempt from the cap but the crypto that is not staked it's not providing any service to anyone that's just cash you have to pay the cap on it haven't really done a deep dive into aerodrome or velodrome if one becomes a member do you share with members what to buy and sell well i i mean what i do is i share exactly what i buy and what i sell and when i do it exactly at the time i make the trade and even if i make a limit order i'll share that too and then people can either you know decide to follow and most members follow you know a subset of whatever trades i make perhaps they're not into crypto so they just follow my growth or dividend buys and sell or they they follow everything or they follow you know perhaps they disagree with a certain move that i make and they'll so decide accordingly but what i make sure i do is i share everything in terms of the trades that i make with members and then people can make up their own minds and i share why i did it obviously there's and we do deep dives obviously into the different assets that we hold what is our rationale behind holding a certain asset and i try to be active every day on discord explaining my take on the markets and different assets and answering questions are you an xrp holder and how do you feel about it so i've been asked about xrp before i think that so in order for a crypto to actually appreciate in price you have to have demand yes but you have to have a limited supply or you have to have an inflation rate that isn't too high and the inflation rate has to be steady predictable and preferably declining with time with xrp you don't have that second part of the equation you have inflation until kingdom come that's at least how i understand it you're welcome to so even if the use case picks up and even if you know people start actually using xrp you know to transfer money doing bank transfers or whatever the use case is if there's no limit to the issuance the price is going to stay where it is and in fact you've seen if you look at the chart of xrp there's been no appreciation for a long time so i wouldn't touch it for the membership how often do you update on changes because in a volatile market such as crypto it is important to be able to copy you so we're not day traders we don't day trade we we take a we take a long-term view but sometimes we'll have you know sort of opportunities will present themselves so most recently i'll say last saturday when you have the iranian attack on israel then things crashed well i made a trade i made a buy at that point so sometimes we have these these we have these cases but this is not you know so we'll we'll do the occasional swing trade well you know even much less common as a day trade but our our general outlook is longer term for i previously invested in nft then i started questioning validity of my investment i thought it was not permissible i pulled my investment and i'm at a loss is it okay for me to use this capital again to reinvest well yeah you lost money and you pulled it out so it's your money now do do what you want with it any ai crypto in mind we're looking honestly i'll tell you like we've the assets that we share with members is probably one fourth the assets that we actually do a deep dive into or one fifth so yeah we're looking at different ai cryptos to see if we like any salesforce not really a fan i just used their product and i wasn't really a fan okay but sam hassan says salesforce supports israel perhaps not invested in it either way all right guys thank you that's all the questions i'm going to take for today inshallah we will be back soon and until then if you enjoyed this live do leave a like and become a pif member to join our community salam alaikum and peace be upon you all