When Shift Happens · Oct 15, 2026 · 1h 50m · 98m saved
With Raoul Pal, Co-Founder & CEO of Real Vision
Raoul Pal, co-founder and CEO of Real Vision, told Kevin Follonier on the When Shift Happens podcast that he made two trades in crypto all year: one in January and February, and one in July when prices fell.
Most crypto investors trade the swings. Raoul held, and added only when an asset fell about two standard deviations below its long-run trend. His case is that a cash reserve for deep sell-offs does more for compounding than any top-calling.
"If you've got cash to add when it's super oversold, your entry level never gets tested again... because you've added more to the market at cheap prices, you're at all-time highs well before the market. And that's the superpower." — Raoul Pal
Raoul reviewed 21 years of his own recorded positions at Global Macro Investor and found a 65% win rate, with winning trades averaging about 50%. This was his sixth interview with Kevin.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 110 minutes of audio, 12 minutes of reading.
Here are the 15 calls that matter.
Key Takeaways
Raoul's whole strategy is to buy only when crypto is deeply oversold, then hold
Two trades all year, plus some Zcash
Ethereum's market value ignores how much would be lost if it were switched off, in his view
"It would remove 70-odd percent of all stablecoins in existence"
The integration of AI and crypto is the biggest mispricing in markets, Raoul argues, because agents turn a finite user base into an "infinite TAM"
An "economic singularity" around 2030 will break the models economists use, sooner than his earlier 2030–2032 estimate
Raoul is starting a digital art fund, Epoch1, and keeps most of his Ethereum in art
"Almost 90% of my ETH is in art"
His 21-year record at Global Macro Investor shows a 65% hit rate, which he credits to pattern recognition rather than intelligence
Money is for security first and lifestyle second, which is why Raoul now refuses to share position sizes
1. Two Trades in a Whole Year
Raoul's only additions came when an asset hit about two standard deviations below its log trend, the long-run growth line on a logarithmic chart.
Raoul Pal says buying deep sell-offs and then doing nothing is his entire crypto strategy
"I've done nothing except buy when I got two standard deviations oversold versus a log trend and I added more and I bought some Zcash. That's all I've done." — Raoul Pal
The point of the cash reserve is that a well-timed entry is rarely revisited. A portfolio built on those entries reaches new highs before the broad market does.
He contrasted this with traders such as Chris Burniske, who call tops well. In Raoul's account, they find it psychologically hard to put the same size back in at the bottom, so they trail simple buy-and-hold.
