Peak Apathy with Checkmate & Walker
When onchain data and market mood tell the same story.
This was a fantastic rip with James and Walker on how onchain and sentiment data relate to one another.
A couple weeks back, I collaborated with Checkmate on Peak Apathy, a piece that has only continued to look more accurate as the vibes deteriorate and people lose interest in Bitcoin (bullish).
James and I are ultimately measuring the same underlying thing:
Human action.
Onchain data is beautifully transparent. Every transaction can be followed, measured, and analyzed. The social media data I look at is much muddier, but it holds equally interesting insights.
A UTXO moving between owners displays economic action. An individual choosing to post something publicly also reveals something about their underlying beliefs, emotions, and attention.
I’m not going to pretend a single post on X holds even a fraction as much embedded value as someone moving 100 Bitcoin onchain. But when someone shifts from bull-posting the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve to blaming Saylor for “selling 32 Bitcoin” and tanking the market, there is a distinctive and measurable change taking place.
Different data sets.
Different kinds of actions.
But both are measures of human emotion and sentiment telling different versions of the same story.
That’s why it’s such a powerful combination to compare Checkmate’s onchain analysis with the mood data. Very often, the same patterns show up from completely different angles.
We discuss this and much more during the podcast.
The full episode is linked below, but I wanted to take a minute to share a few of the charts we alluded to briefly during the pod, updated with more recent sentiment data.
Bitcoin Plebs Conviction is Decreasing
This can happen for a handful of reasons, but often conviction declines as the stories and narratives people use to conceptualize the market begin to fall away.
That makes this an interesting contrast to longer-term Bitcoin HODLers, who appear to be growing more convicted.
Bitcoin OGs Conviction is Increasing
I wrote about this extensively in Sentiment is Splitting, as I think this is one of the highest-signal trends happening right now.
The people who have been in the market for a longer duration appear to have more confidence in the present state of the market.
The Plebs are Still Pissed
I’ve written about this consistently, but I still believe it is one of the defining characteristics of the current market.
We are in one of the longest periods of anger the pleb/retail Bitcoin cohort has ever experienced. In this environment, people are predictably lashing out at each other and searching for villains to blame for Bitcoin’s negative price action.
Average Bitcoiner’s Excitement Levels
On top of being angry… people are bored.
We are far from the euphoric excitement and volatility Bitcoin has experienced so frequently in the past.
This is why Peak Apathy is so relevant right now.
It’s not just that Bitcoiners are experiencing negative emotions.
It’s that Bitcoiners are angry, fearful, and bored all at the same time.
That can sound incredibly pessimistic, but I actually believe the opposite.
This is exactly the kind of emotional state one would expect to see when Bitcoin is near, or nearing, a bottom.
Link to the full video:
If you enjoyed podcast with Checkmate and want to follow the work more closely, I’m also building out a paid side.
Paid subscribers get:
Paid subscriber chat with early sentiment chart reads and private market mood notes.
Subscriber-requested analysis on Bitcoin cohorts, narratives, tickers, and phrases.
Narrative smoke alarms when specific stories, cohorts, or emotions start heating up.
The paid side is still early, and the current rate reflects that. Early subscribers can lock in this introductory rate while the private sentiment analysis continues to develop.
P.S. Hope you have a beautiful weekend ✌️