Veteran Bitcoiner Willy Woo has done the unthinkable and cashed out most of his stack.
“I’ve sold most of my Bitcoin now,” the legendary onchain analyst cheerfully tells Magazine.
But what on earth possessed the industry’s best-known onchain analyst to give up on the hardest money known to man? Has he gone mad?
It turns out that Woo believes he can make more money selling shovels during the gold rush, than buying gold, with most of the proceeds of his Bitcoin sales reinvested into “Bitcoin infrastructure.”
The co-founder of crypto quant fund Crest explains that Bitcoin’s market capitalization is around $2 trillion, which means it probably has at best “50x growth” to $100 trillion, which he believes will be “near the ceiling.”
Woo’s thesis is that early-stage Bitcoin startups have the potential for even better returns from here on in.
“If you were to look at a Bitcoin venture, you’ve got, you know, a good venture is 100 to 1,000x return,” he says.
And even if they crash and burn, many infrastructure firms still offer indirect exposure to Bitcoin through their Bitcoin holdings.
“If they’re not successful, they’re holding Bitcoin. So it de-risks that investment,” he says.
“It just makes sense that smart money would go into Bitcoin infrastructure. It is now the picks and shovels series.”
Where is Bitcoin at right now, Mr Woo?
That said, Woo still keeps a close eye on Bitcoin’s price and says market participants are “overestimating Bitcoin” because of a misunderstanding of current price action.
Even though Bitcoin recently reached new all-time highs, Woo has a theory about why the price hasn’t been climbing as fast as people expected, despite billions being snapped up every week by treasury companies and Bitcoin ETFs.
“There’s a lot of OGs that are systematically selling into every bull market,” he says.
Woo says when Bitcoin OGs sell Bitcoin they bought for under $1,000 at, say, $100,000, nearly all of that money, $99,000, is coming from new buyers.
That means a lot of new capital is needed just to handle their selling.
“It’ll take time for this capital to come in, and immense amounts of capital to rotate the cheap buyers out,” he says.
The bullish part is that with Bitcoin breaking into price discovery this week, it suggests the money is indeed flowing in, and the OG sellers are drying up.
Who is Willy Woo?
Born in Hong Kong and raised in New Zealand, Woo has developed a reputation as the best onchain analyst in Bitcoin since buying his first Bitcoin in 2013. He’s since built up a following of over 1.1 million on X thanks to his widely respected insights.
This interview had been a long time coming for Magazine. We first reached out to Woo in early 2024 and had an initial conversation, during which Woo respectfully shared his reasons for staying away from interviews.
He had stepped away from being a Bitcoin and crypto X celebrity to start a family and spend time with his kids. There was also an unwelcome increase in real-world recognition.
“Oh, are you really Woo?” he recalls being asked more than once out in public.
“At one point, someone bumped into me, and they said, ‘Oh, how old is your daughter?’ he says, adding that he was even asked one time what school she attended.
“Then suddenly you’ve got toddlers around and everything…I just felt like I wanted privacy for my family,” he adds.
“I thought that the last cycle my profile got probably more reach than I wanted. And I just wanted to cool it down a bit.”
It definitely wasn’t how he imagined things would go when he first immersed himself in the Bitcoin industry after randomly stumbling into a local Bitcoin meetup in Bali back in 2014.
He was quickly orange-pilled and helped to run the local Bitcoin event in Bali, even challenging himself to show up each time with a fresh topic to share.
Over the years, Woo developed several of Bitcoin’s well-known onchain valuation metrics.
One he is best known for, the Network Value to Transactions (NVT) ratio — which compares Bitcoin’s market cap to its transaction volume — was created back in early 2017 after being asked on social media what the closest thing to a price-to-earnings ratio would be for Bitcoin, given that it isn’t a company.
After creating the NVT ratio, Woo started getting noticed in the global Bitcoin industry.
Crypto news outlets began reporting on his posts on X more often, which made his follower count climb even faster
Then in 2021, he introduced the “Supply Shock” valuation model, which he used to correctly predict that year’s Bitcoin rally to $55,000.
His website is loaded with charts and metrics now widely used in the Bitcoin industry, creatively named “Woo Charts.”
Woo’s strategic move may not be for everyone
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cointelegraph.com