The crypto market is bleeding again, but former hedge fund manager Raoul Pal doesn’t view chaos as a reason to retreat.
Key Takeaways:
Pal buys through crashes instead of waiting for a bottom.
He sees the current sell-off as similar to past shakeouts that later reversed.
Volatility doesn’t change his long-term bullish outlook.
He believes it’s exactly inside moments like this — when conviction evaporates and uncertainty dominates — that the foundation of the next rally is quietly built.
Crash Conditions Aren’t a Signal to Exit — They’re Data
Pal argues that extreme sell-offs reveal more about market behavior than bullish phases ever do. When liquidity disappears, risk assets are abandoned and prices swing violently, the natural instinct is to step back. For Pal, that instinct is the enemy.
Instead of searching for a perfect bottom, he steadily increases exposure through the decline, fully aware that his portfolio can experience brutal temporary losses. To him, the objective is not timing the turn — it’s staying exposed long enough to benefit from it when it arrives.
Today’s Panic Looks Familiar to Him
According to Pal, there is nothing unique about the current downturn. He sees the same hallmarks that defined previous phases of deep fear: rapid de-risking, forced selling and liquidity drying up so quickly that price discovery becomes distorted.
What changes between cycles is the crowd – not the pattern.
The Market Has Done This Before – Then Reversed With Force
Pal didn’t reference numbers to justify optimism — he referenced history.
He pointed to multiple crashes that looked catastrophic before the dust settled:
The 2021 sell-off that halved Bitcoin and crushed Ethereum and Solana before all three rallied to record highs
The COVID crash that wiped out more than 70% of Bitcoin in 2019–2020
The relentless shakeouts across 2016–2017 that did nothing to derail the bull trend
Each time, the narrative was the same: “This time is different.” And each time, the reversal proved the opposite.
Altcoins Are Supposed to Hurt More
For Pal, the deeper losses in altcoins aren’t a shock — they’re exactly what history shows. Whenever the market purges leverage, Bitcoin falls first, and alternative cryptocurrencies collapse harder. He doesn’t consider that failure — he considers it typical for every acceleration phase that follows.
Pal also noted that in environments where rumors move price more than fundamentals, being glued to the charts can make decisions worse. Temporary detachment, he says, helps investors avoid misreading emotional noise as structural damage.
Volatility Doesn’t Invalidate the Macro Trend
The heart of Pal’s message isn’t “ignore losses” — it’s that losses in the middle of a bull cycle don’t rewrite the long-term trajectory. To him, the current phase reflects panic mechanics, not broken fundamentals.
His approach is simple: endure discomfort now to benefit from the asymmetry later.
In his own words: the market won’t reward the person who feels safest — it rewards the person who survives the part of the cycle that feels the worst.
