Crypto trader and YouTube creator Taiki Maeda said in a July 15 podcast episode that he has been selling Bitcoin and buying Zcash over the past two months, while staying bullish on perpetual DEX tokens HYPE and LIT. In his view, the next wave of demand for perpetual futures DEXs will come less from crypto-native traders and more from traditional finance users and retail participants, particularly through real-world asset, or RWA, perpetual markets.
The episode, summarized and translated by TechFlow, carried the original title “Crypto is Bottoming. We're About to Go Much Higher.” Maeda disclosed in the video that he holds long positions in ZEC, HYPE and LIT, uses a Variational referral code, and runs a paid Discord community. The article also noted that the content reflects his personal views and is not investment advice.
Why he thinks the market already entered a bottoming phase
Maeda said many traders treat Bitcoin’s $126,000 high in October 2025 as the cycle peak, but he does not. He argued that the move technically made a new high, yet looked weak in character: the market rose, then quickly gave the gains back, and no broad altcoin season followed.
For him, the real euphoric phase came earlier, in July and August 2025. That was when BTC first touched $125,000 and ETH climbed to $5,000. He described that stretch as the point when speculative fever was far more obvious, with names such as Bitmine and DAT drawing heavy attention.
Viewed from that angle, he said, the market may already have gone through roughly a year of bear-market conditions if July was the true top. In his telling, most participants who wanted to leave have already left, and there is less obvious fraud left in the market than before. Even for investors who disagree and think fresh lows could still come in the fourth quarter, he said this may still be a reasonable time to begin building positions slowly.
Maeda added that he no longer wants to fight the four-year cycle framework, nor does he think short-term price prediction is where he has an edge. What he trusts more is a longer time horizon and his ability to build conviction around specific sectors, narratives and project fundamentals. That is the basis for his current positioning.
He also pointed to a reflexive setup around market timing. If everyone is waiting for a Q4 bottom and plans to buy there, but the market actually bottoms in Q3, then sidelined buyers may end up paying higher prices. Even if Q3 does not bring an immediate rally, he questioned how much downside is left if a large pool of capital is already waiting for Q4 entries.
Perpetual DEX growth, in his view, will come from outside crypto
Maeda has talked about Hyperliquid for more than two years. In this episode, he framed the case for perpetual DEX tokens in broader terms. He said Hyperliquid and Lighter are among the few tokens that have made new highs while the broader crypto market has looked weak, moving independently of BTC and ETH.
On the surface, he said, that performance can be tied to token buybacks. In the figures he cited, Hyperliquid has bought back about 3.4% of its circulating supply so far this year, while Lighter has bought back about 6.3%. He also noted Hyperliquid’s rising market share versus centralized exchanges and pointed to Robinhood’s partnership with Lighter as another positive factor.
Still, Maeda argued those are only the surface-level explanations. He sees a deeper structural problem in crypto: most altcoins lack real fundamentals and depend on BTC and ETH leading a risk rally. Perpetual DEXs, by contrast, have actual fee generation and buyback mechanisms.
His bigger point is that the long-term growth engine for perpetual DEX tokens comes from two areas: adoption by traditional finance users and retail traders, and the rise of RWA perpetual products. He said a DEX focused only on crypto perpetuals is competing inside a shrinking pool if most altcoins eventually go to zero. What interests him more are perpetual products tied to gold, oil and stock indexes, which he thinks could become larger than crypto perpetuals within six to 12 months.
Maeda said the next growth wave for perpetual DEXs would not come from people inside crypto buying more tokens, but from traditional finance users and retail traders using perpetuals as a way to speculate instead of options. He also cited Jez’s theory around perpetuals, saying he increasingly agrees that perpetuals are simpler and easier to use than options as a delta-levered instrument.
How he is positioned in HYPE, LIT and Variational
Maeda described three distinct exposures tied to the perpetual DEX theme: Hyperliquid, Lighter and Variational.
He called Hyperliquid’s HYPE his core position. He said he entered the trade several months ago, at one point waited for a better pullback to add, did not get it, and eventually bought back in. The metric he is watching most closely is continued growth in open interest for HIP-3 RWA perpetuals. As long as that number keeps rising, he said, he sees no reason to stop being bullish.
Lighter’s LIT is a newer position. Maeda said he spent part of his honeymoon thinking about LIT and eventually bought it at market. The core of the thesis, he said, is the distribution advantage that comes from its Robinhood partnership, which he thinks could matter a great deal once traditional finance users begin to adopt perpetual products.
The third leg is Variational, which he described as his primary farming venue. Over the past year, he said, he has done nearly all of his trading there. According to the numbers he cited, Variational has roughly $120 million to $130 million in open interest, with about 25% coming from TradFi markets. That mix is one reason he is constructive on it. He also said the platform’s points program is expected to end in Q3, leaving a few more months of farming time.
He gave one valuation example as well. If Variational were to airdrop 25% of its token supply and list at a $1 billion valuation, he estimated that would imply around $27 per point. He said he would not be surprised by a launch in the $2 billion to $3 billion FDV range, though he added that much depends on how HYPE and LIT trade from here.
In terms of strategy, Maeda described what he called a “Texas hedge.” Instead of only going long HYPE, he also wants exposure to future perpetual DEX tokens through farming on Variational. For example, when he wants to short ETH, he prefers to do it on Variational rather than on Hyperliquid or Lighter. His reasoning is straightforward: if the trade loses money, the points may still offset part of the cost; if the trade works, he earns both trading gains and more points.
He also mentioned SUI. Because he does not like the token on a standalone basis, he uses short SUI positions on Variational to hedge his spot exposure. If SUI rises, he said, his spot book is likely doing well. If the market falls, SUI may drop and the hedge can help.
Maeda pushed back on what he called tribal behavior in crypto, where people assume owning HYPE means trading only on Hyperliquid. He said investors can hold multiple tokens across the theme and get broader exposure that way.
On the competitive side, he mentioned Ostium as another incentives-driven platform, but said its scale remains far below Variational’s for now and does not pose a near-term threat.
Why he sold ZEC near the low and then bought it back
Zcash was the most emotionally difficult position in the portfolio, according to Maeda. He said he had already spoken in a previous video about how painful that trade was, and in this episode he acknowledged that he has bought back in.
The trigger was the scare around Zcash’s Orchard shielded pool in early June, when reports surfaced that it might contain a possible infinite-mint vulnerability. Maeda said ZEC fell 60% in a straight line, and he sold his entire position near the lows. He said the decision was tied to a very practical reason: he was about to leave for his honeymoon and did not want to carry a high-risk position through that period.
He said he even harvested the tax loss, joking that it was the ultimate form of self-consolation. At the time, what worried him most was not just the bug itself but the possibility that market confidence in Zcash could be permanently broken. In his framing, Zcash, like Bitcoin, does not generate cash flow. Its value rests in whether people are willing to treat it as a store of value.
After stepping away, he gave himself time to watch the recovery and came to a different conclusion. If Zcash can survive this kind of collapse and regain lost ground, he said, that makes it an anti-fragile asset. Every time it looks like it should die and does not, the probability of it dying later gets smaller. He compared that logic to Bitcoin’s earlier history, when the asset repeatedly survived moments that many thought would kill it.
Maeda revisited his own timeline in blunt terms: he rushed in during April, added again in May, sold everything near the low, and then watched the asset rebound without him. To deal with that, he said a trader needs what he called a “goldfish memory” — not forgetting the lesson, but refusing to let the emotional sting of the exit dominate the next decision. The new question becomes whether the asset can recover and how far that recovery could go.
Ironwood is the key catalyst in his Zcash thesis
A major reason he re-entered Zcash is the Ironwood shielded pool upgrade scheduled for July 28.
Maeda said Ironwood brings two main improvements. The first is quantum safety. The second is formal verification designed to rule out future undetectable counterfeit-coin vulnerabilities. He also said Zcash founder Zooko used Anthropic’s model to audit the protocol.
He summarized the current state of the Orchard issue through an AI-generated outline: is there a vulnerability in Orchard? Yes. Has it been exploited? Unknown. Is there public evidence that it was exploited? No. Is Ironwood expected to fix the problem? Yes. Can anyone guarantee that Ironwood itself contains no undiscovered issues? No. He said that tradeoff is inherent to privacy-preserving protocols because outside observers cannot fully verify whether exploitation has happened.
Even so, he argued that the Ironwood upgrade would, in substance, prove Orchard had not been exploited in practice. He also referred to writing by Vitalik on formal verification and said he expects this to become standard across crypto projects over time.
From a market perspective, Maeda said a full price recovery could kick off a broader narrative revival and a reflexive loop around Zcash, which is why he wants exposure before that possibility is fully priced in.
Why Bitcoin has become harder for him to support
Part of Maeda’s rotation into ZEC also comes from a shift in how he views Bitcoin.
He said Michael Saylor has been selling Bitcoin to help fund dividends for STRK, Strategy’s preferred stock known as Strife, and to build cash reserves. In Maeda’s view, Saylor may remain a net seller of BTC for the foreseeable future.
He framed this as a meaningful change. For six years, Saylor had been a steady net buyer of Bitcoin. Now, Maeda said, he appears to be selling on a monthly or every-other-month basis. Maeda added that he does not know whether those sales will weigh on BTC, but he no longer wants to bet that they will not.
He put the point sharply: Saylor makes Bitcoin harder to support than it was two years ago, four years ago or six years ago. Maeda was careful to say this is not a problem with Bitcoin itself, but he argued that Saylor has become too large a part of the narrative. He also noted that STRK has recovered into the $70-plus range, though he described the holding experience as poor.
The other issue is quantum-computing risk. Maeda said his friend Evan recently argued that Bitcoin faces a quantum threat and that Bitcoin developers are not treating the matter with enough urgency. Maeda agreed. He said that two or four years ago he would have been comfortable putting his entire portfolio into BTC, and had done so before, but no longer has the same confidence in the community’s ability to respond.
Even so, he does not frame the choice as BTC versus ZEC in a zero-sum way. His more modest assumption is that an investor who once would have put $100,000 entirely into Bitcoin might now decide on a 90% BTC and 10% ZEC allocation instead. He argued that if Zcash rises on a quantum-safety narrative, it could also push Bitcoin developers to take the issue more seriously.
His bottom line was that Zcash and Bitcoin can coexist as the gold and silver of crypto: each has tradeoffs, and both can be worth owning.
The ZEC/BTC ratio is the signal he cares about most
More than the dollar price of ZEC, Maeda said he is focused on the ZEC/BTC ratio.
He noted that Zcash and Bitcoin share the same issuance schedule: both halve every four years and both have a maximum supply of 21 million. The current ZEC/BTC ratio, he said, is about 0.8%. The previous resistance zone sits around $650 to $700 for ZEC, which corresponds to roughly a 1% ratio.
If ZEC/BTC breaks above 1%, he said, two things would happen at once. First, ZEC would clear a multi-year technical level. Second, the narrative that Zcash’s market capitalization has exceeded 1% of Bitcoin’s would become a talking point in its own right. He sees that combination of technical and narrative momentum as the setup for larger capital inflows.
Maeda said he has been selling BTC to buy ZEC for the last two months, did so last month, and did some more this month. He added that he is not continuing to reduce BTC at this point because his current positioning already feels comfortable. The bet, as he described it, is not that Zcash must be a better asset than Bitcoin, but that the market will increasingly care about privacy, quantum risk and the Saylor question.
He tied that to George Soros’s theory of reflexivity. Fundamentals help push prices higher, higher prices change how people think about an asset, and that shift in perception can improve the fundamentals by attracting more developers, users and liquidity. In his view, Zcash’s reflexive cycle begins only if the price starts moving first.
He also made a point about market psychology. People may mock him for selling near the bottom, he said, but if ZEC keeps recovering and then continues higher, it becomes harder to dismiss what is taking shape. He listed the blows Zcash has already taken: it started rising before Bitcoin topped, climbed again in the first and second quarters, then crashed on the vulnerability scare and is now recovering. If all of that still failed to kill the asset, he asked, what exactly would?
Portfolio ranking and cash management
Maeda said his portfolio is currently ranked with Zcash as the largest overweight position, HYPE second, LIT third, plus cash and whatever upside may come from Variational farming.
He gave two reasons for keeping cash. One is psychological hedging. His ZEC exposure had become too large last month, especially before the honeymoon, and he said that contributed to emotional decision-making. Reducing the position and holding cash is his way of trying to lower the cost of future mistakes. The second reason is optionality: if the market pulls back again or a new narrative appears, he wants capital available.
He also laid out the timing of his entries. He added some more Zcash last week. HYPE was built several months ago. LIT was bought at market during the honeymoon. His BTC position is currently underwater, he said, but that is simply where it stands. The newer ZEC purchases are in profit, though on a combined basis he is still below water once the earlier losses are included. He said he believes that if the Zcash thesis proves right, future gains should eventually offset the earlier damage.
Maeda closed with a clear statement of view: he remains long perpetual DEX tokens HYPE and LIT, is still farming for more perpetual DEX token exposure through Variational, and is long Zcash because of what he sees as its distinct role across privacy, quantum safety and the broader Bitcoin narrative. In his reading, the better altcoins have already bottomed, and the market moves ahead of consensus.