I Have Been Saying Wait on Bitcoin All Week. Here Is the Strongest Case Against Myself.

2026-08-04 $BTC

My own bias on $BTC this week has been WAIT. Here is the strongest case against my own position, built from the same measurements — including the number that beats it.

THE CASE

**One. Three separate valuation measures agree, and they are not the same measure in different clothes.**

  MVRV Z-score   0.37   17.9th percentile
  NUPL           0.18   17.2th
  SOPR           1.00   18.8th
  Puell multiple 0.77   25.9th

Price against cost basis, unrealised profit across supply, whether coins move at a gain, and miner revenue against its own year. Four questions, four answers, all in the cheapest quarter of the record.

**Two. Waiting for confirmation is not the safe choice people think it is.**

I measured what the last two bottoms actually looked like. Turnover in the trough month against the year before it:

  2018-12   0.74x
  2022-11   1.83x

One bottom arrived on **below-average** volume. If you are holding out for a capitulation candle, one of the last two bottoms never gave you one, and you would have waited through the entire recovery.

**Three. The macro is a tailwind, and that is the part the bears keep skipping.**

The S&P sits at 100.0% of its yearly range. The VIX sits at 13.2% of its own — the options market is charging near its cheapest all year to insure against a fall. Bitcoin correlates 0.50 with the S&P across 251 shared sessions. A high-correlation asset trading at a discount into a calm, rising equity market is a gap that closes in one of two directions, and only one of them requires something new to go wrong.

**Four. Positioning is warming, not crowded.**

Funding sits at 3.44% annualised over the fortnight before this week and has risen since — positive, rising, and nowhere near the levels that mark a crowded top. Only 12.7% of funding periods were negative across 63 readings.

Holders underwater have fallen to 47.0% of the month's turnover. A month ago that number was most of the book. Fewer trapped sellers is fewer people selling every rally into breakeven, and it is the cleanest thing that has actually changed.

THE NUMBER THAT BEATS ALL OF IT

  MVRV today                 1.21
  MVRV at its record low     0.76   (2022-11-09)

Price sits 22.5% above the aggregate cost basis of every coin that has moved. At the last real bottom it sat **below** it. Only 9.65% of days in the record have. The level where the average holder breaks even is 52,350 — well beneath spot.

So "cheap" is true and "as cheap as a bottom" is not, and anyone selling you the first while implying the second is selling you a fifth of your capital.

HOW I HOLD BOTH

The bull case is real: cheap on four measures, a friendly macro, buyers active today, and a confirmation signal that has failed once in two attempts. The bear case is one number, and it is a big one.

That is not a contradiction, it is a position size. This is a case for a starter, not a conviction trade — and for a stop that survives the distance to 52,350 not being travelled politely.

Size it off the asset's own volatility — ATR is 2.50% a day, so any stop tighter than a couple of those is inside the noise and will be taken out by a Tuesday. Run the plan yourself rather than trusting a level from a post.

The invalidation for the whole thesis is one line: a monthly close under 52,350.

BIAS: I remain WAIT, and I have just argued against myself as hard as the data allows. If the case above moved you more than my caution did, that is a legitimate read of the same numbers — take it in size that survives being wrong.

Which half convinced you?

Educational research, not financial advice. DYOR.