Our journey
How we got here.
Doc and Oz have been at this since 2018. This is the whole run, in order: what happened, what we built along the way, and what we stopped doing when it no longer held up. It is updated as we ship.
2018 to 2020
Before there was anything to sell
In 2018 this was Doc and Oz talking about markets in person. No feed, no audience, no product. The aim was already the one we work to now: cut the noise, focus on risk, and teach timing and levels rather than conviction.
In 2019 it went public on X, where the analysis had to hold up with people who could argue back. That is still where most people find us. By 2020 the questions coming back were bigger than a post could answer, so Crypto Unplugged was founded to answer them properly, with no pay to play.
2018
Doc and Oz talking markets in person. Nothing published.
2019
The analysis goes public on X.
2020
Crypto Unplugged founded.
2021 to 2022
The show, and the year our members changed it
The podcast launched in March 2021. Weekly, charts explained in plain English, and a first website and YouTube channel alongside it. It found an audience quickly.
Then 2022 arrived and two things happened that shaped everything after. The publishing cadence held through the bear market, which sounds small and was not. And members told us they preferred our own reads to guest interviews, so we cut the guest spots back. That was the first time the audience redirected the product, and we have taken that kind of feedback seriously ever since.
It also exposed the ceiling of a show. A podcast informs. It does not hand anyone a tool they can act on with structure.
March 2021
The podcast launches, with a first website and a YouTube channel.
2022
Publishing holds through the bear market. Guest spots are cut back after member feedback.
2023 to 2024
From a show to a platform, and the first real diagnosis
The Markets Unplugged launched as a platform in March 2023, with Crypto Unplugged becoming its media arm. Alt coverage began as a table of picks, a format we would later retire entirely.
Through 2024 a pattern in member outcomes became impossible to ignore, and diagnosing it properly is what turned this from a publication into a toolmaker.
2024
Members were winning, then giving it back
What we saw
Round-tripping. Positions went well, then unwound, and the gains went with them.
Why
No exit ladder defined in advance. Entries made on green candles. Attempts to call the top by feel.
What we did
Built a framework with two sides, in and out, and shipped it as a levels table in August 2024. The design rule we set then still holds: the invalidation is written before the entry, not after the trade goes wrong. It runs today as
DCA Targets.
March 2023
The Markets Unplugged launches as a platform. Crypto Unplugged becomes its media arm.
August 2024
The first staged levels table ships, in and out.
September 2024
Paid memberships open. The launch bundle includes DCA Targets, a DCA calculator, an altcoin database, an alt picks table and personalised analysis on request.
Late 2024
The member Telegram grows into a set of channels, including one for putting questions directly to Oz.
Four separate problems got their own answer inside eight months. Weekly conditions produced too many indicators and no decision, so a weekly read shipped in February and was rebuilt through the spring. Macro was being guessed at, so a macro read shipped in March. Cycle position got its first honest answer in April. And timing, the thing most analysis avoids entirely, became KAIROS in August.
Member videos started early that year, and the levels table was rebuilt in July around risk profiles instead of one fixed ladder. None of these were finished products. Every one of them was rebuilt or replaced within eighteen months.
April 2025
Nobody could say where we actually were in the cycle
What we saw
Endless views on where price went today. Almost none on where the cycle stood. Members were making decisions with a horizon of years using information with a horizon of hours, and the two do not meet.
Why
The on-chain data that answers the question is public, and almost nobody reads it as a whole. Individual metrics get quoted in isolation, which is how the same chart ends up supporting two opposite conclusions.
What we did
Shipped an on-chain read of cycle position in April 2025, built on a fixed set of indicators, and put a single answer on the dashboard for the first time. It worked well enough to reveal the flaw in its own design, which is what we spent the following year fixing.
February to June 2025
The weekly read, rebuilt until most of it was gone
What we saw
Members had plenty of indicators and no way to resolve them into a single answer for the week ahead.
What we did
Shipped a deliberately plain weekly read in February, then rebuilt it repeatedly through the spring and summer. Most of what changed was removal: signal types that looked useful and did not survive testing were taken out, not softened. It runs today as the
Delta Engine.
Early 2025
Weekly member videos begin, with live Q&A. They were not part of the launch offer.
February 2025
The first weekly Bitcoin conditions read ships.
March 2025
The macro read launches.
April 2025
On-chain cycle position launches on a fixed set of indicators.
May 2025
The weekly read gains weekly and monthly layers.
June 2025
Traded flow and sentiment context added to the weekly read.
July 2025
The levels table is rebuilt around risk profiles, with staged entries and staged exits.
August 2025
KAIROS releases. The first thing we shipped that put a range on anything, so we fixed the rule before launch: no price, no instruction, and the high-side version switched off because it never earned its place.
2026
The year we tore most of it up
May 2026 was the biggest rebuild we have done. Four tools launched or relaunched in a single month, and in two cases the thing being replaced was our own work from a year earlier. Three of those changes were not upgrades at all. They were admissions.
May and July 2026
Our flagship was measuring against the wrong yardstick
What we saw
The 2025 cycle read used fixed levels. But each Bitcoin cycle prints shallower extremes than the last, so a threshold that meant expensive in one cycle quietly stops meaning anything in the next. The tool was answering confidently against numbers that had aged out.
What we did
Scrapped the approach and rebuilt it as the
Bitcoin Barometer in May 2026. Every measure is now ranked against its own history rather than against a fixed line, the training window is frozen, and recent years are held back so the tool is applied to data it was never fitted on.
Then
Ethereum needed the same answer, and pointing the Bitcoin engine at Ethereum data would have taken a week. We built a
second engine instead, shipped in July 2026. Different chain, different evidence, different families of measure, and a different set of zones. The shortcut would have produced a number that looked right and meant nothing.
Still true today: both Barometers read the level, not the turn. They can sit cheap or heated for long stretches, and the top end of each rests on less history than the rest of the range.
May 2026
Our alt research was a list of picks
What we saw
Alt coverage started as a table of names we liked in 2023, and stayed that way for years. A picks list is a set of calls. It cannot tell you why a name is on it, how it stands against its peers, or when it should come off.
What we did
Retired the format and built
Alt Sector Radar. Coverage moved from one flat list to sector groups, so a name is measured against its own comparison set, and every board now carries a review date. A name nobody has looked at in a month is visible as exactly that.
May 2026
The first version failed, so it never shipped
What we saw
Ether outperforms Bitcoin in bursts, and most of those bursts fail. Mistaking a false start for a real rotation is the expensive error, and it happens every cycle.
What we did
Built a rotation tool, tested it against history, and found it ranked false starts
higher than the real rotations. We scrapped it before a single member saw it and started again. What shipped is the
ETH Rotation Index, and one of its four states exists for no reason other than to name the pattern the first attempt had failed to catch.
June 2026
Is this a crypto problem or a macro problem?
What we saw
When the market falls, the answer changes what you should do. A liquidity event and a crypto-native unwind get read the same way by most analysis.
What we did
Added two signals instead of one.
BCI reads the wider economy,
CCI reads crypto from the inside. A single market-health score would have been easier to build and would have collapsed the exact distinction we needed.
The trade-off: we shipped them knowing the macro read is blind to a crypto-native top while the economy looks fine. That is the cost of splitting them, and it is the reason there are two.
June 2026
BCI and CCI join the dashboard.
July 2026
The
Ethereum Barometer launches. Alpha Pro adds monthly billing and a short free trial on 13 July.
Where that leaves it
A membership, then and now
At launch
September 2024
DCA Targets, accumulation and take-profit zones
A DCA calculator
An altcoin database, and a table of alt picks
Personalised analysis reports on request
Written analysis and a member Telegram
Now
July 2026
Ten documented tools and every one publishes its limits
Cycle position for Bitcoin and Ethereum, on two separate on-chain engines
Cycle timing, plus a weekly Bitcoin conditions read
Macro regime and crypto-internal risk signals
Sector-based alt research and an ETH against BTC read
DCA Targets across 42 coins, entries, staged exits and invalidation
Weekly written analysis, member videos and live Q&A
Member Telegram, and a full course for Cycle Intelligence members
The core point: what a member receives today is materially more than the launch offer. Every addition on the right started as a problem somebody reported.
Keep this straight: not everything on the left survived. The alt picks table was retired outright, and personalised reports on request went with it, because they only ever scaled with our own hours.
Looking back
Four things we stopped doing
Launches are the easy half of a record. These are the ones that went the other way.
Named alt picks
Published from 2023, retired in 2026. A list of picks is a set of calls, and it carries no way of telling you when a name should come off it.
Personalised reports on request
Part of the 2024 launch offer. Retired because it scaled only with our hours, which meant the members who asked loudest got the most.
Guest-led episodes
The podcast started guest-heavy. Members said they preferred our own reads, so we cut guest spots back. Guest interviews are easier to produce, and we cut them anyway.
Claims that failed testing
Validation showed some of our own published performance figures did not hold against a fair comparison. We removed them. Some tools now carry no performance claim at all. Our
editorial policy sets out the standard.
The aim from that first conversation in 2018 is still the aim: cut the noise, focus on risk, and teach timing and levels rather than conviction. The form has changed several times since. The aim has not.
If you want to know what this platform is and who it is for, that is the about page. If you want to know who does the work, that is the analysts page. If you want to know how the tools work, including where they are weak, that is the methodology.
Read it before you decide.
The library, the podcast and the methodology are free. The membership is where the tools live.
Last updated: 27 July 2026. This page is updated as we ship.
Everything on this page reflects The Markets Unplugged's own history and research. Nothing here is financial or investment advice, a solicitation to buy or sell, or a guaranteed outcome. Crypto assets are volatile. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.
