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Broader Market Thoughts, Opinions, and Positioning
Jake Kennis
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This report reflects the discussions and views of the RA. These are personal opinions of the team members and should not be interpreted as financial or trading advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult with financial advisors before making any investment decisions.

It’s been roughly three months since BTC topped in January. Since then, alts have bled out hard while BTC is down just 22.5% from its ATH. For BTC, this kind of correction is historically normal in a bull market. But for alts—including majors like ETH and SOL—it’s been much worse. ETH is down over 46%, SOL over 56% from their 2025 highs. For many smaller alts, price action is even worse, and I suspect a lot of them have already topped forever.

That said, despite the chop and turmoil, there are some really attractive entries showing up across blue chips that could do well if the market turns back around. A few key catalysts worth keeping in mind:

  • Stablecoin adoption continues to grind up and to the right.
  • Regulatory environment is improving, giving DeFi some breathing room and empowering a new wave of builders and value accrual mechanisms.
  • Institutions seem positioned bullish while crypto Twitter is extremely bearish—classic divergence.

Given this simplified backdrop, I’ve shifted from bearish to neutral in the short term, while cautiously optimistic over a longer timeframe. I am still holding a healthy amount of stables, which I’ve been steadily DCA’ing into specific tokens. Here’s how I’ve bucketed my approach:

DCA Buckets

1. Reflexivity: SOL & HYPE

These are the casinos. If we get another leg up, I expect these ecosystems to drive fees, protocol revenue, speculation— reflexivity plays. Positioned well for volume spikes and risk-on sentiment. Additionally, they each have many catalysts lined up with very strong roadmaps and teams to execute them. I would be happy to hold either for long term holds, despite the more bull market focused view.

2. Crypto Expansion / Rollup Growth: TIA

This is my long-term (1-2 year) bet on rollup adoption and crypto use cases expanding beyond simple memecoin trading—payments, AI chains, real-world assets, etc. I treat this as a barbell to SOL/HYPE, which will thrive if existing trading metas dominate but TIA is a bet on new developments and growth beyond that of token trading.

3. Market Leader: BTC

It’s still a BTC-dominated market. Institutions, even governments, are onboard. BTC has clearly shifted structurally—no point trying to fade a multiyear trend like that.

Portfolio Positioning

I’ve been repositioning out of ETH into a mix of BTC, SOL, and stables. ETH has underperformed not just BTC but even alts like XRP. I'm not exiting entirely, but I’m rotating it out of a core holding and leaning heavier into what’s leading. I am not trying to time bottoms of a multi year downtrend such as the ETH/BTC chart and I am generally simplifying my portfolio a bit.

On dips, I continue adding to SOL, HYPE, TIA, and BTC, while also farming stables across Noble Boosted Yield, Sky Savings Account, and Pendle PTs. Stable farming keeps dry powder productive without overexposing and allowing me to average in.

Market Scenario Thoughts

  • If the market rips again: SOL and HYPE likely outperform things like TIA. Reflexivity and risk cycles likely favor them.
  • If we go flat for a while: Stable farming is a productive use of capital while my long term holds including BTC, SOL, HYPE, and TIA look relatively attractive to potential rollup growth and broader crypto expansion.
  • Regardless of what happens: BTC remains the structural leader. The way it's being used, traded, and adopted globally has fundamentally changed. Fighting that trend feels pointless and is a clear shift in the weighting in my portfolio.

Other Tokens on The Radar: PENDLE, Stablecoin Beta

PENDLE stands out as a index play on speculation—points, airdrops, and other DeFi use cases. With their Boros upgrade live, I think PENDLE can perform well given its current entry price. Basically, we can see it and others as potential beta exposure to crypto's innate speculation. You can checkout a quick overview we did on them covering a few upcoming catalysts here.

Additionally, stablecoin growth is quite promising and established players in this sector can do well. Some that are on the radar incude MKR and ENA, which have had promising stablecoin growth that can fuel further revenue avenues for them.

Quick Historical Reminder

Crypto can tend to lead broader market trends and has historically put in bottoms faster than people expect.

  • 2017 cycle: Paradigm famously nailed their BTC/ETH buys in Feb 2018, months after the peak.
  • 2021 cycle: Markets bottomed months after the Coinbase IPO, climbed to new highs by year-end.
  • 2022/23 cycle: The FTX collapse created a historically great entry just months after.

Could we be in a similar spot? Possibly, though we can surely range and go down from here. At a minimum, now’s the time to at least begin paying attention and think about positioning.

Closing Thoughts

My portfolio’s aimed at positioning for either a sideways grind or a potential upside later this year, with a bias toward the latter.

Bigger picture, we’re looking at:

  • A very pro-crypto U.S. administration.
  • Stablecoin and broader crypto adoption steadily rising.
  • A macro backdrop improving over the long term (as laid out well by people like Aurelie).
  • Institutions entering in large ways

Short term is murky but slowly DCAing now for the eventual tide shift could prove fruitful if you are hopeful for crypto markets.

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Disclosure: The authors of this content and members of Nansen may be participating or invested in some of the protocols or tokens mentioned herein. The foregoing statement acts as a disclosure of potential conflicts of interest and is not a recommendation to purchase or invest in any token or participate in any protocol. Nansen does not recommend any particular course of action in relation to any token or protocol. The content herein is meant purely for educational and informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as financial, investment, legal, tax or any other professional or other advice. None of the content and information herein is presented to induce or to attempt to induce any reader or other person to buy, sell or hold any token or participate in any protocol or enter into, or offer to enter into, any agreement for or with a view to buying or selling any token or participating in any protocol. Statements made herein (including statements of opinion, if any) are wholly generic and not tailored to take into account the personal needs and unique circumstances of any reader or any other person. Readers are strongly urged to exercise caution and have regard to their own personal needs and circumstances before making any decision to buy or sell any token or participate in any protocol. Observations and views expressed herein may be changed by Nansen at any time without notice. Nansen accepts no liability whatsoever for any losses or liabilities arising from the use of or reliance on any of this content.