The Practical Islamic Finance Podcast
The Practical Islamic Finance Podcast
Be Smart. Beware.
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Be Smart. Beware.
In this episode, we will cover:
- Overview of Crypto Markets
- Quick Thoughts on HNT (Helium Network)
- Liquidity and September Rate Cut Predictions
- Bitcoin's Performance Compared to Major Assets
- Crypto Market Cap and Sentiment Update
- MVRV Z-score for Bitcoin
- Stock-to-Income Model for Bitcoin Price Predictions
- Bitcoin Price Predictions and Potential Upside
- RSI and Bitcoin Buying Opportunity
- Bitcoin Miner Revenue Post-Halving
- Importance of Avoiding Leverage in Investing
- Detailed Analysis on HNT (Helium) and Concerns
- Q&A: Is 401(k) Halal?
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salam@practicalislamicfinance.com
ABOUT OUR PODCAST
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. Jamal Mubarak. Today is Friday, August 9th. I hope you are all doing well. And today we're gonna take stock of where the crypto markets are. And I'm gonna tell you my quick thoughts about HMT, considering it has performed rather well. It's a crypto. Helium, I've spoken briefly about it on this channel before, but I just want to give you my quick thoughts about it. And without further ado, let's get started. Obviously, this is not financial advice, so be sure to do your own due diligence before making any investing decisions. So to take stock of where we are, I think it's important to look at the liquidity picture and the forecast for it. And right now, September rate cuts are being priced in as basically an inevitability. The only question is whether it's 25 basis points or 50 basis points. And there's a slight edge now to the 50 basis point scenario. This percentage has gone down now that the jobless claims number came out yesterday and it was less grim than perhaps some investors were expecting. So investors started to think that maybe it would be a 25 basis point, not the 50 basis point after all. We'll see. Now taking stock of the crypto market, I think a good place to start would be to look at how Bitcoin, which is sort of a bellwether for crypto in general, has performed since the start of the year. Bitcoin is up 45%, which matches Meta's performance of 45%. It's really only beaten by one stock, Nvidia, up 113%. That is, I'm talking about the large cap assets, of course. Gold and Ethereum, so perhaps you hear a lot about gold is going up. And I've always mentioned that I thought Bitcoin would outperform gold by a lot. And certainly this has been the case here to date. Bitcoin is up 45%, gold is up 19%, which is not a bad return, but still less than Bitcoin by a lot. Ethereum is up 18%, although it has gotten clobbered lately. Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft up modestly, either in the high single digits or low double digits. And Nasdaq is up 11%. So comparatively speaking, even after the pullback that we saw, Bitcoin has outshined all other large asset classes or large assets in terms of market cap. Now we are in a period of time where there has been a pullback in the crypto market cap. So we're now back at around the $2 trillion mark after having been on pace to crack the $3 trillion mark earlier this year. I think eventually we'll get back to that point. Sentiment has been improving. So we did experience a bout of fear in the market, but that quickly went away and we slingshotted off of that into neutral territory and flirting with greed even. The BTC ETF inflows have resumed and you can see the ETF inflows correspond quite nicely with Bitcoin price. Whenever there is a recovery in Bitcoin price, typically there is a recovery in net inflows into the Bitcoin ETFs. Now this is something that I've spoken about many times on this channel and something that I think is very useful to look at, which is the MBRVZ score for Bitcoin, its price. And basically this is telling us in relation to the profits that people are sitting on, how deviated are we, how much standard deviation do we have. And obviously the more profits that people are sitting on, the more likely that we're going to have a pullback. And typically the market, the price of Bitcoin has peaked around 6 or 7 for the MBRVZ score. Right now we're between 1 and 2. So I do believe that we are in secure territory as it relates to this particular metric. We have a lot of room to go on the upside. Now something that I found quite useful is to look at the stock-to-income model, which is a variation of the stock-to-flow model. Perhaps you've heard of it, but it was initially devised from the stock-to-flow model that was famously used and continues to be used for predicting the price of gold. So they just ported that to use it for Bitcoin and stock-to-income includes the revenue from the fees of the Bitcoin network. So that was the added wrinkle for stock-to-income versus stock-to-flow. And this model has been quite good at, I think, giving a ballpark estimate of where Bitcoin should be and where it will be. And in fact, if you look at recently, so this is as of August 3rd, the projected price as per this model was $60,900. The actual price was $60,600 on that particular day. So quite accurate this model has been. Upper bound is being estimated at $122, lower bound at $30. Now if we look one month into the future, it's predicting around $74K by September with an upper bound of close to $150, lower bound of $37. So if you do think that this model has some merit to it, I think that this is certainly an asymmetric trade at this point. I mean, the difference between the current price, which is around, and the lower bound one month from now is around $20,000. The difference between the current price and the upper bound is around $90,000. So downside seems to be a lot less severe than the upside is positive. Something to think about at least. I do maintain that we will, inshallah, break$100,000 this year, maybe even get closer to $150,000. But we'll see. Obviously, this seems far-fetched considering a recent movement, but if we want to stay on track, we want to stay on schedule for this asset for Bitcoin, I think we will reach that. Now the RSI, or the Relative Strength Index, is after having been slightly in overbought territory for a brief period of time for Bitcoin, we've retraced and fallen back to a neutral territory, which makes now a decent time to buy Bitcoin, certainly a better time than when it was overbought. I maintain that this is a good time to be dollar cost averaging, and perhaps this may be the last shot that we get before the bull run resumes in earnest, inshallah. Now minor revenue has, Bitcoin minor revenue that is, has fallen off a cliff after the halving. We've expected this, but I don't think many people were expecting the type of pullback that we got. I think, I think people may have been expecting, considering how we were ahead of schedule prior to the halving, they were expecting prices higher than what we have today. Eventually, I think we'll get there, have patience, and so long as we don't have leverage, this is an opportunity to load up on more. Where investors get themselves into trouble is when they lever themselves up and then they don't have the, they don't have the convenience of being able to wait. They have to deal with the price changes as if they're, you know, actual losses. Alhamdulillah for Islam, we don't deal with leverage, we don't deal with interest paying loans, we don't deal with derivatives. We deal with, you know, actual trade of actual assets, and this gives us the advantage of having a, as long a time horizon as we need to have in order for our investments to play out. So, you know, if you are a halal conscious investor, you're sticking with our policy of not taking out leverage, not using derivatives, you know, buying the actual asset, then don't get caught up when other people are complaining or panicking about price movements, because your situation is different from their situation. They're in a bind, they need to, you know, make a move because they, they're either going to get margin called or they're paying interest on the loan that they took, they need to add collateral, they need to do things that you don't necessarily need to do. You can just sit back and relax, enjoy your family, enjoy your life, and just wait until the thesis plays out, inshallah. Now, HNT, this is a crypto that I get asked about sometimes in our Discord group, sometimes here in the chat, and I've mentioned before on this channel how I thought that it kind of didn't make sense to me, you know, why this is even needed in the first place, you know, mobile networks. So, HNT basically, and I will admit I haven't really done a deep dive nor experienced the Helium network myself, but basically the idea behind it is that people will, they're building a quote-unquote decentralized 5G network where different, where basically anyone can buy nodes in the network, and the more people that buy nodes in the network, the more, the stronger the network becomes, and the more valuable it becomes, and node operators get a cut of the revenue from the network. This seems to me to be solving a problem that doesn't exist. Mobile networks are already very good, you can get coverage wherever you are, there's very attractive pricing for these mobile networks. It does seem like the only reason anyone would contribute to this network is to, not because of the mobile network itself, but because of the opportunity to earn money. So, whenever you have an arrangement where the focus is not the product itself, and I've gone on to Reddit forums, I've seen on X the way people are talking about Helium, no one is actually talking about the product. Everyone is talking about how much they made either on the crypto or in rewards and converting their rewards to Solana, and how do I convert my rewards, and my node is not working for whatever reason, or it's not connecting, or something like that. But no one's actually talking about, oh hey, I'm using this mobile network, and it's a great network, I'm glad I'm using it. No one is, or ways to improve the network separate from, you know, the money that they are earning. So, this is concerning, this is sort of one aspect that I find to be concerning about this. The other aspect is the fact that it is doing really well at a time when the market hasn't been doing really well. So, you can see here HNT, the biggest bubble, and perhaps that's a good way to describe this. Now, but the biggest bubble here is HNT in terms of its returns, close to 90%, and I am reminded, when I saw this, I am reminded of Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi scheme. And one of the sort of, like, hitting your hand on your head and saying, how did people miss this moment, was when the Ponzi scheme had the same returns, or really good returns, during periods of market downturns. Consistently, the returns were completely agnostic of, you know, what the market was doing. And people, you know, at the time, you know, would make excuses. Madoff, he's this genius, he has this method, he has a certain trading strategy that works in any market condition, which is not true. Such a trading strategy doesn't exist. So, the fact that HNT is doing so well when the market is doing so poorly, I think is, I mean, when you look at this piece of information, and the other mosaic of information related to this project, this seems concerning to me, and a red flag. And perhaps, you know, natural market dynamics are not what is controlling the price of this particular crypto. And so, I would caution against, you know, jumping into this crypto without understanding what you're doing and what you're buying. Again, you know, I've never used a helium network, maybe it's great, maybe there's some actual utility to it, and I'm just not seeing it. But I'm just telling you what I'm seeing, and I'm just not seeing it, right? Something seems very fishy here about this project. Gives me the ick, as the youngsters will say these days. So, with that, if you'd like to follow our portfolio, move for move, whether it's crypto, small cap, growth, or dividend, then become a PIF member and join our community, we'd love to have you. I have a question. I work for a public university, and we have a 401k by default. Is it halal? Should I take my contribution and university contributions at the age of retirement and just give the profit as purification? So, 401k is just like a container, and, you know, using this container is not inherently halal or haram. It depends on what you put in the container. So, the answer to your question depends on what options you have to invest in, in your 401k. So, this brings up, you know, a number of issues. Number one, I would say, when you are considering different positions, ask them, you know, what are the investment options for our 401k. So, make sure that there's an option that you're comfortable with. And I would also say that, you know, even if you're in a situation where the options aren't necessarily perfect, I think it's important to contribute to your 401k for your retirement. And, you know, assuming that they are decent options, even if they aren't your first choice, like assuming investing in, you know, an alcohol ETF or something crazy like that. I mean, most 401ks have some pretty decent options. I would just go with the most decent, the most comfortable option in your 401k. This is at least what I would do. And then, as you mentioned, when time comes, inshallah, to collect when you retire, then I would give whatever estimate I have for the money that, you know, I'm not comfortable with, whatever percentage that is, I would give that to charity as purification. Yeah. So, Helium Network and Helium Mobile both are related. They are on, yeah, I believe they are. So, I think that Helium started as an Internet of Things play and then Internet of Things, and then that turned out to be, yeah, no one's talking about the Internet of Things anymore. So, they left that aside and now they're working on a 5G mobile network. But yeah, I mean, the history of this project is unsettling to me. The current, you know, price action is unsettling to me and I just don't want people to, you know, fall victim to a scam. I'm not saying necessarily that it is a scam, but there are some red flags. There were signs, as they say. So, if you enjoyed this live, found it useful, do leave a like, really appreciate it. And in the meantime, make sure to enjoy your time off. Make sure to shut off and focus on your family and your friends and having fun and don't focus too much on the markets. They will work themselves out, inshallah, and hopefully you have a relaxing weekend. And until next time, make sure to take care of yourself. As-salamu alaykum and peace be upon you all.