In an asset class where 80% drawdowns are a regular occurrence, it goes without saying you need to manage your damn risk.

By simply identifying a level where you get out of the trade, you are at a substantial competitive advantage, in this asset class more than any other.

There should be no shame in flipping your approach as new data comes in. At our shop, we pride ourselves on it.

But to the crypto junkies and laser eyes crowd, that'll get you called a "FUD'ster" or "paper hands".

Don't listen to these people.

They're truly worse than the gold bugs and permabears. They don't deserve your attention.

With any market, not just crypto, our primary goal is to make money. And to do that, in more cases than not, we have to play defense. It's what we're doing in stocks right now - it's just a regular part of putting money to work.

As for us, we've been bullish Bitcoin, and have been riding many coins higher.

Money flows to where it's treated best.

In the case of crypto, it's recently been the Altcoins.

Yesterday, we published a bullish note on the DeFi space, and throughout the last few weeks, we've been bullish on smaller coins down the cap scale.

When you dive under the surface and look beyond Bitcoin, there's some serious strength.

The market will always have the final say.

This is the beauty of technical analysis: there's no problem in flipping our approach as new data comes in.

While the wheels were coming off in May, DeFi was the definitive laggard.

But that's changing.

The sector looks to be gaining traction on both absolute and relative terms.

The message continues to be: Stick to the plan.

Bitcoin is holding above 30k, and many coins still look great under the surface.

Unless Bitcoin moves back below 30,000, the bias is still higher.

We're incorporating more of this on-chain analysis into our work every week, simply because there's a slew of insightful data points.

Just last week, we discussed how exchange balances of Bitcoin continue to trickle lower, signaling that buying pressure could be returning.

It takes time to learn the intricacies of a topic.

For those who've spent a good deal of their career working with other asset classes, the lingo that youngsters throw around while discussing their favorite crypto projects can be daunting.

There are dozens of indicators you've likely never seen.

People are sharing charts where you may not even know what's going on.

And there's arguably more noise to deal with in this space, more so than any other group of assets.

But I think we can all take solace in the fact that no one is a complete expert in this stuff.

You guys see that massive spike in inflows of Tether into exchanges?

Exchanges just saw their 3rd largest inflow of Tether of all time (and by all time, we mean a few years - this is Crypto we're talking about).

The thought process here is that if people are transferring their Tether into exchanges, they're getting ready to load up on these crypto-assets, driving prices higher.

The last time an inflow of this magnitude took place, Bitcoin nearly doubled in a matter of weeks.

Take a look for yourself:

There's more noise in the crypto space than arguably any other major asset class on Earth.

The sheer amount of people throwing around chart crimes, shilling bags, and stirring the proverbial pot is unheard of.

Human instincts have really been put on a pedestal throughout this entire cryptocurrency experiment. As Ian McMillan eloquently summarized on the podcast earlier this week, this entire space is the perfect microcosm of human behavior in public markets.

With all this chaos, we need a map that guides us to where to go, and what to avoid.

It's shakeout city in the world of Cryptocurrencies right now.

Failed breakdowns. Bull hooks. Bear traps. Call them what you will, as it's not the nomenclature that matters, but instead the mechanics of these formations which often result in swift moves in the opposite direction...

We've already discussed a handful of these patterns since last week, but this is such a prevalent theme right now that we want to get downright obnoxious about it.

And these failed breakdowns aren't just taking place denominated in US Dollars, but we're also seeing this exact behavior in coins relative to Bitcoin.

So today, let's build on what we discussed yesterday.

Another messy weekend of price action for these Cryptos...

We sound like a broken record at this point, but 30,000 for Bitcoin is the level to watch right now.

This weekend's low was now the 5th time buyers defended this critical level of support:

Following Bitcoin's bounce back these last few days after some sustained selling, there's plenty of failed breakdowns out there in the Crypto space right now.

Frequent readers of ours know just how much we love these setups:

In essence, when price undercuts its former lows, stop losses get hit, and longs throw in the towel. At the same time, bears heavily jump in and enter short.

Then as the market begins to rally back above those former lows, shorts are now underwater, and they're forced to cover. While they're buying back their positions to unwind the trade, longs see price on a tear higher and fold into buying back their old position. Momentum traders see these gains and jump on the bandwagon too, forcing even more shorts to cover.

In every major asset class, there are typically a handful of indices to help drive our decisions from the top-down.

Whether we're looking at the US Dollar Index, the CRB, the Nasdaq, or any other variety of ETFs, these help form the basis for identifying leaders, laggards, and assessing the overall market.

The same applies to Crypto.

The only problem is, there's a painful lack of diversified indices to look at in the first place; S&P Dow Jones indices launched a Mega-Cap Crypto index in May, which only tracks Ethereum and Bitcoin, and MSCI is currently eyeing launching indexes of their own.

There is a special purity in the crypto markets that is absolutely fascinating to technicians like us.

It's a supply and demand game to the ultimate extreme. There are no fundamentals. There are no earnings. It's just fear and greed, no government intervention, just humans being humans.

It's pretty awesome.

I've noticed sentiment is getting pretty extreme down here and the risk vs reward opportunity here is to the upside.

30,000 has been an important level in Bitcoin going back to the prior up cycle. This was our first target after completing that multi-year base: