Michael Van de Pop, X Flame Hall – Cointelegraph Magazine

The recent collapse of the crypto market, followed by the rapid volatility of some tokens, helped MN Trading founder Michael van de Pop to see a clear new trend.

“If the markets didn't have a narrative, it presented a new narrative, which is DeFi, I think from an investment point of view,” van de Pop tells Hall of Flames.

“A net positive strategy to allocate to ETH and DeFi – I think both will increase in the coming months,” he said.

Van de Pop mentioned Aave (AAVE), Maker (MKR), Ethereum Name Service (ENS), Bittensor (TAO), Celestia (TIA), and Rocket Pool (RPL) as tokens to watch. These projects have recovered quickly and some have not even been hit by the dip, he explains.

“If property is pulling back this strongly, it shows investors' confidence in it,” he says.

Spotting trends and devising strategies Van de Pop is the founder of Day-In and Day-Out MN Trading and advises high net worth individuals on trading in the crypto market.

Michael van de Pop is not your standard crypto bro.

It certainly doesn't look like your typical crypto bro. The popular crypto analyst has 722,200 X followers but still seems like a really down to earth guy.

When we first start the video call, he spends a few minutes scrolling through his webcam to show off the new office and the company's MN trading location in Amsterdam, where he's based.

He's already passed the crypto bro test, not a Lamborghini in sight.

Van de Pop got back into crypto in February 2017 when Bitcoin was trading around $1,500.

“I was studying economics at the University of Amsterdam, and two important events happened in the same week,” he said.

At first, a person with a “serious hangover” started talking about Bitcoin and crypto, but Van de Pop quickly forgot about him. But two days later, another friend picked it up again.

“I went to the pub, my friend said you should check out these altcoins, and we called that altcoin season back in the day. That triggered me. I went home and bought my db, and the price tripled and dropped a week later,” he explains.

“I was busy – I started a business, read the Bitcoin white paper and set up my Twitter account,” he says. Just 11 months later, Van de Pop went all in on crypto, making it his full-time career.

How did Michael Van de Pop become famous on Twitter?

Van de Pop launched his X account in October 2017 and is more than three quarters of the way to his goal of reaching one million followers. He thinks it could happen when the crypto market “activates sometime in 2025”.

“If we hit a million it would definitely be a real party,” he laughs.

Ever since hitting 100,000 followers on X, Van D Pop has been celebrating followers by throwing low-key house parties.

In his first four months on X, he had a bit of a Justin Bieber moment, amassing 50,000 followers. The way he walks you through how he built the account makes it look like anyone can pull it off.

“I was part of a few communities back in the day, which pushed my following to a few thousand followers. Being active in the community made me an admin there, which helped me grow my X account,” he said, noting that it was the height of the 2017 bull market when everyone was hunting for crypto tips online.

But one 2017 prediction remembers that he nailed it right, and made his followers come in faster and faster.

“I remember saying Bitcoin would fall to 11k, then fall to 16k, then fall to 6k. It was one of my real calls that pushed the bill higher,” he explains.

Van de Pop said he wasn't motivated by the number of followers, but admitted that even his other employees at MN Trading were drawn to the big million-follower goal.

What kind of content does Michael Van de Pop create?

Van de Pop likes to give his followers a big view of the economy with crypto technical analysis, but he's moved away from throwing around price predictions, even though they're great for engagement.

“It's macroeconomic data and news. Macroeconomic analysis, technical analysis of the markets. Those are usually the two parts, and I'm often sharp when it comes to my speech,” he said.

“I used to make a lot of price predictions, and I started moving away from the predictions because they didn't make sense,” Van de Pop said.

He explains that predictions are very risky because the crypto market is heavily influenced by macroeconomic events.

“If the Fed can't print more cash, Bitcoin won't hit 500K or a million, but if they do, that's an achievable target,” he said.

He added: “You simply don't know where the market will go if another black swan event occurs.”

Sure, but what are Michael van de Pop's predictions?

But this is the Hall of Flames.And we won't let him go without some insights into the direction of the market.. Van de Popp, like many others, thinks that “Uptober” could be the month when Bitcoin surpasses its current all-time high of $73,679.

“I wouldn't be surprised if we hit a new Bitcoin all-time high in September or October,” Van de Pop says.

He also predicted that global liquidity will increase by the end of this year, which is “a big sign for altcoins.”

He points to Omni Network (OMNI), an altcoin that he thinks has a real use case, and thinks it has the potential to “100X” meaning its small market cap is just over $50 million.

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Ciaran Lyon

Ciaran Lyons is an Australian crypto journalist. He is also a freelance comedian and has been a radio and TV presenter on Triple J, SBS and The Project.