Ivan on Tech analyses Bitcoin's position near the 200-week Moving Averages amid a wave of bullish signals
Ivan on Tech delivers a solo market update covering Tether printing, Strategy's Bitcoin holdings, Ethereum's new roadmap, the GENIUS Act timeline, and tokenized stocks on Hyperliquid.
Summary
Several converging signals — most notably the resumption of Tether printing — are pointing toward an approaching bull market, according to this solo market update, which argues — most notably the resumption of Tether printing — indicate that a bull market is approaching, even as Bitcoin remains near its 200-week Moving Averages around $64,000–$65,000. He is sharply critical of Michael Saylor's company Strategy describing itself as the "central bank of Bitcoin," calling it a corruption of Bitcoin's founding ethos of self-sovereignty. The update also discusses the GENIUS Act (crypto clarity legislation), now targeting a September 15th Senate procedural vote, and raises doubts about whether it will pass given President Trump's personal financial exposure to crypto. Additional topics include Trump Media's disclosure of approximately $95 million in Bitcoin holdings (around 14,319 BTC), Ethereum's new quantum-focused roadmap from Vitalik Buterin, Near Protocol's cross-chain quantum safety approach from founder Illia Polosukhin, tokenized stocks launching on Hyperliquid, Nvidia's financing partnerships with major banks, and the risks of holding tokenized assets long-term versus their underlying equivalents.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin Near the 200-Week Moving Averages — Tether Printing Returns
Ivan: Bitcoin is still at around the 200-week Moving Averages. We're at $64,000–$65,000. We're still in the same position. But big things are happening — the Tether printer is back on.
If you've been watching this channel throughout the 2017 bull market, throughout the 2020–2021 period, throughout everything that happened in 2024 and 2025, you know that whenever you have a bull market, you need Tether printing. Without Tether printing, no bull market. Tether printing is one of the biggest signs that we are becoming massively bullish. This is very important because as you see bullishness return to crypto, there will be signs. There will not be a big announcement where someone says, "Hey guys, now it's bull." There will be signs. And one of the signs is the fact that we have Tether printing like there is no tomorrow.
One billion new Tether was printed yesterday, and they printed it on the Tron chain. This is very important because we've also discussed a lot that Tron has been performing very well in terms of price. Look at the Tron chart, then look at all of the so-called blue chip projects. Look at Tron, then look at Arbitrum. Look at Tron, then look at Optimism. All of the ETH maxis have been basically assaulting Tron on social media saying it's a shitcoin, yada yada yada. Look at the Tron chart and then look at their favourite L2s — Optimism, Arbitrum. It's crazy. I never get tired of mentioning it because it really narrows in on the hypocrisy in this industry, where people say things not because they use their brain but because they parrot whatever the ETH podcasters say.
Tron versus Arbitrum — look at Arbitrum. It's another one of these "blue chip, blue chip, blue chip" projects, just straight down. Tron versus all of these approved projects by the high priests. You see that it strikes at the core of the hypocrisy, at the core of this parroting where people say, "Oh, I love Optimism. I love Arbitrum." Why do you love it? "Oh, because an ETH podcaster said so." And then, "Tron is a scam." Why? "Because an ETH podcaster said so." You need to use your brain. You need to be an independent thinker.
So — Tether back printing. That's very, very nice.
Trump Media's Bitcoin Holdings and Strategy's Selling
Also, Trump Media discloses that they hold around $95 million in Bitcoin. Basically a billion Bitcoin — okay, $95 million to be exact, but essentially a billion in value terms. So at some point before Trump's term is over, there is a good chance we see a big fat national reserve with BTC. Maybe they're preparing us for the next bull. Maybe they want to buy Bitcoin now at $60,000 rather than at $120,000. That would be very, very nice.
Now, Saylor sold $108 million in Bitcoin yesterday, and many people are saying it's bearish. It's actually very bullish. Why? Because Saylor sells bottoms. Look at what he did during the last cycle — he sold the bottom. He buys high and he sells low. This is typical Saylor behaviour. And it's not because Saylor doesn't know when to buy. It's just that when Bitcoin price is high, when the whole world is more excited about Bitcoin, the financial markets give him money. When he does a stock offering and other capital raises, the world gives Saylor money when crypto is hyped, and then they expect him to allocate it fairly fast. So it's not that Saylor himself is making a wrong decision. It's more that currently the financial market is not giving him any money, so he's forced to sell. But for us, seeing that he has to sell near the bottom — fantastic.
The GENIUS Act and Trump's Crypto Conflicts
Trump not only holds around a billion dollars in one of his companies — he's also continuing to buy more Bitcoin. So I totally understand why Democrats don't want the GENIUS Act. The president has a billion dollars in just one of his companies. He has many companies. He has memecoins. He has Bitcoin. And I understand why you may not see the Clarity Act passed in the coming weeks. Now they're talking about September. The new thing is that it's going to be in September — there's going to be some kind of vote. Maybe in September, maybe not. They're trying to push for September. No one knows basically when it's going to be. Maybe it's never going to be, with the president having a billion in Bitcoin. We'll just have to see.
Vitalik's New Ethereum Roadmap — Quantum Safety Prioritised
Our genius boy Vitalik came out of his bedroom with a new roadmap. This guy prints roadmaps like the Fed prints dollars. Every few months he has a new roadmap. So now it's a new roadmap — it's at strawmap.org, published by EF Protocol, which is like a new Ethereum Foundation. He has this picture with everything that's going to happen.
And by the way, I like it. I like it. But it's just funny that he comes up with new roadmaps all the time. When people accuse other coins of being centralised, Vitalik literally wakes up, scratches his head, and says, "Let me change the roadmap." Before it was all about L2s. Then he changed. Now he's changed again.
Quantum safety is now prioritised. If you like quantum, Vitalik is going to bring it faster. Some other items were deprioritised — for example, VDFs, which is basically randomness, and many other EVM improvements. I actually think that's good, because we need quantum number one, then we need to make L1 fast number two, and all of the other stuff is okay as is. Everything works now. Just make it fast so you don't need L2, and make it quantum-safe so there are no quantum worries and more money can flow into ETH.
Others were replaced by stronger designs. Before they had Verkle trees, now they have PBT. Before they had state expiry, now they have a new state approach. Basically, Vitalik scratched his head and we have new stuff. First-class strong privacy, post-quantum scaling, Linfin signatures — that's interesting — ZK frames, lenification of the entire spec. I love it. Already by looking at this chart it's a bit simpler. I know it may look complex, but in comparison to what they had in the past — the Surge, the Splurge, the Scourge, the Purge — it was crazy. Now it's a bit simpler. Blob and gas futures, native rollup — why do you need rollup? Remove it. The first thing I would do is ban all the old L2s. More open future for execution. ZK frames. There you go.
Vitalik is saying Ethereum will be quantum safe. A common theme in scaling found in both state types and ZK frames is that instead of trying to maximally scale all Ethereum activities, they try to create specialised mechanisms that have more restrictive properties. Privacy protocols — that's good. Everything here, I actually like it. The new roadmap seems to be in tune with the market. We need quantum 100%, the thing needs to be fast, and privacy, etc. Good for ETH. Good for ETH price.
ETH price currently — don't touch it. It's in a bear trend. We don't touch things in a bear trend. It's just creating another lower high. High, lower high, lower high, lower high. The only exception to not buying in a bear trend is Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is at the 200-week Moving Averages. It's one of the key assets. It's not going to go anywhere and it's cheap. Historically, around the 200-week Moving Averages, Bitcoin is very cheap. It doesn't spend too much time below it. So if you buy at or below, you're buying within the 10% window of time when Bitcoin is at these low levels, because 90% of the time Bitcoin is above the 200-week Moving Averages. Bitcoin is the only exception. Everything else — no touching.
AI Infrastructure, Bitcoin Miners, and the Macro Picture
Anthropic is now buying cloud data infrastructure from Bitcoin miners. Bitcoin miners are increasingly moving toward AI, which is also bullish, because that's basically what happens at the end of the bear. At the bottom of the bear, everyone throws in the towel and says goodbye — right when it's time to get in.
Now, Strategy is trying to make a bullish narrative in the media. Listen to this. They're saying they're a central bank. They said: "We have 4% of all the Bitcoin in the world — 840,000 or so Bitcoin. We're the largest institutional holder of Bitcoin in the world. We're the largest holder really beyond Satoshi Nakamoto at this point. So we sort of recognise we are now the bellwether. We are now the central bank of Bitcoin."
And all of the Maxis are seal-clapping. They're like seals. "Yeah! Yeah! Let's go, Strategy!" The guy literally said, "We're a central bank. We're the central bank of crypto." And all of the Maxis parrot it without using their brain. "Yeah, yeah, that's good, that's good."
What do you mean? You know how Bitcoin started? You know what was written in the first block? "Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for banks." The whole movement is to remove central banks, to have a sovereign money that you don't connect to the state. But now everyone's going, "Yeah, yeah, Saylor central bank, that's good." What is this? It's crazy.
And not only that — the stock is down anyway. Now we're becoming more bullish, so we'll be speaking less cynically about all of this stuff because it's going to pump anyway. Strategy is going to pump as we enter the bull. Everything is going to pump. But yeah, I'm still enjoying the last few months here of bearishness where we can address the elephant in the room. In the bull market, we just go bull. We don't discuss this cynical stuff as much because in a bull market, you know, it's bull. But now we have a few months left of the bear where we can address things head on. We can remove the BS. I can tell you the central bank thing is a fugazi. It's not what Bitcoin was made for. But listen, the bull market is going to come anyway. Don't worry.
Solana, Experiment Culture, and Altcoin Timing
Iman came out saying: "What I think Solana leadership has done really well versus all other chains is to support all founders and ideas. No matter how cringe the experiment may be, it enables founders to be weird and more expressive, similar to what ETH felt in the early early days. This leads to more experiments on chain and brings in net new ideas, because eventually one of those is going to work."
At the end of the day, you don't want to support some experiments and not others — it's just alienating. Exactly. Just like Vitalik supported Farcaster or Base's Jesse — he said that Zora and other projects where you mint your own tweet, they supported them fully and not everyone else. It alienated many many builders. You want the maximum number of experiments happening because that creates a hotbed for new on-chain ideas. Very, very true.
In terms of the price chart, Solana is no exception. Bear trend — stay out. High, lower high, lower high, lower high. Stay out. It's not the time for altcoins. There will be a time for altcoins. Not yet.
The "Going to 12K" Scenario and the Teachable Moment
There's wide consensus on crypto Twitter that the Bitcoin bottom is somewhere between $45K and $60K. Imagine if crypto Twitter is wrong again and the actual bottom is $12K. Imagine the smell.
For us, it's okay. We just deploy 10 to 15% in the buy zone right here. Should we go to $12K? Fantastic — just deploy more. Imagine the average price. $12K is very unlikely, but is it 0%? It's not 0%. Maybe it's a few percent. But imagine the average price if you deploy 10 to 15% here. In case this is the bottom, which it could be, you're good. And you can buy more once we go bull trend. So the bull scenario is fully accounted for. But if it goes to $12K, you can deploy the remaining 90% of your money there — fantastic.
This kind of leads me back to a song — the song about going down to $1K. There is a teachable moment in it. This was in 2018–2019. Bitcoin was at around $3K and people said it was going to go to $1K. So people said, "What if it goes to $1K?" You're at $3K, now it goes to $1K, you lose another 70% of your money. And there's always going to be a lower bottom call, a lower bottom target that someone has. Even when the price was $3K, Tone Vays said the bearish target is $1K. To be fair to Tone, I don't think he said it's definitely going to go to $1K — it was his bearish target in case it broke down. It did not break down. But there's always a bear target in all situations.
For us as traders, we just need to know it and be mentally prepared. In whatever situation you're in, there's always going to be a bear target that is way worse than the current price. It's impossible to bottom without a bear target that is crazy much lower. I haven't seen a single bottom where people didn't say it's going to go down 70% more. Now, it could always go down 70% more — it can happen. We just need to be prepared.
How do you prepare? Practically, we deploy a bit here. We deploy more if it goes lower. And if it goes to $12K — we're ready for that also. Let's go. At the end of the day, the bottom is going to be somewhere. We're ready for both. It's a very low chance we go that low. I think there's a good chance we go to the $50s, maybe the $40s. But the important mental lesson is: if you think something is cheap and bottoming out, you should expect that many people will say it's going to go 70% lower. It's always like that. You never have a nice cheap opportunity without people saying it's going to go way lower. It never happens. You never buy cheap without it. So just know it. It's totally fine.
Intel, Stock Market Trends, and Nvidia's AI Financing Play
Intel has been a bit volatile because they issued a lot of shares to raise money. Their stock is in a bear trend already since mid-July. As soon as you go bear trend, it's very hard. You are a bird with the wing clipped. Bear trend — yeah.
Now, hedge funds are buying US stocks at record levels. There's a lot of greed in the S&P, but it's bullish. Many people say, "Ivan, it's an AI bubble." I know there's a bubble. I am probably the person that told you about the AI bubble. But we're still bullish even though it's a bubble, because I don't know when it's going to stop. The S&P maybe goes to 10K before it stops. Maybe it does a 3x before it bursts. Who the hell knows? We just follow the damn trend and it's bullish. NASDAQ — the same thing. We just follow the damn trend.
There is obviously greed now in the stock market. It just does all-time high after all-time high after all-time high with all of the AI bubble concerns. To act on those fears in a bull trend is very bad. It's amateur. We don't act on all of these fears you may be feeling. That's the power of having a system. The trend is bullish. It can be in greed. It can still double and still be in greed.
Jensen Huang is now collaborating with banks in order to make Nvidia's GPUs investable assets. This is important to pause on. Currently, if you want to build a data centre, you may have issues getting a loan because banks are worried that the assets — the GPUs — are depreciating assets. So you may have issues getting a loan against your inventory. Jensen has basically said, "Listen, I will be part of the financing. I will ensure that if it is depreciating, we can step in. So if you're a bank, don't worry." It's a big thing because if we can have banks fuel the AI bubble more, the stock market will rise more. Nvidia will have more revenue because the banks are going to finance it.
He announced details of partnerships with BlackRock, Blackstone, Apollo, KKR, Brookfield, and Goldman Sachs to create a financing platform targeting over $500 billion in third-party capital for AI infrastructure. Very important. With Nvidia's size, they could make it work in a very nice way.
The GENIUS Act Debate — Coinbase, Community Banks, and the Opposition
There's a lot of news trying to make a narrative in Congress for the Clarity Act, pushing back on claims that stablecoins are hurting community banks. That's a big part of the debate — bankers are coming out saying that the Clarity Act is hurting community banks, because the fact that you don't need a bank to use a stablecoin, to go out and get yield without the bank — they don't like it. So Senator Lummis is all the time trying to set the record straight, saying it's not true, that banks can participate, and so on.
Coinbase came out saying basically similar stuff. Let's hear from them:
Coinbase representative: "Yeah, I agree with what Ryan said. We were very much hoping to start the process before the Senate broke for the August recess. But what we've gotten — which is something really special — is a date certain and a time certain when we'll have our first procedural vote, and that's on September 15th. Time on the floor is the coin of the realm in the Senate, and so the fact that we've got a date certain and a lot of senators who've worked a long time to get a bipartisan bill together, I think sets us up really well for when Congress comes back."
Ivan: So they're going to go to recess, have a bit of summer vacation, and then apparently they'll be back. In September there's going to be the Clarity Act vote. Apparently. Let's see if that's going to happen. There's going to be a big problem with the Clarity Act, guys — the president has a billion dollars. But let's see. We don't need the Clarity Act for the bull market anyway. The bull market is going to come no matter what.
Now, the biggest banks on Wall Street want Congress to pass a bill that would let them put your retirement savings in crypto. Even the bankers are kind of pro-crypto. But here's an opposition voice — let's hear it:
Opposition commentator: "The crypto economy — BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and a few of the worst other people you know — are pushing to connect cryptocurrency into the real economy. And even if you're not invested in crypto, you should still be worried. I just went to a Senate hearing about cryptocurrency to try and understand this story. The hearing was all about a new bill that the crypto industry really wants to pass. Here's what the CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, claims the bill will do."
Brian Armstrong: "This bill would strengthen power for law enforcement. It would bring new consumer protections. And you have to remember, the status quo is that we don't have any federal laws protecting consumers or helping this industry get built in the United States."
Opposition commentator: "There's just one problem. This and all their other arguments are a smoke screen. The bill doesn't really do any of this. It doesn't protect crypto investors and consumers — it just pretends to. Think about the crypto economy as a casino over here. If you want to go gamble on speculative dog-themed crypto coins, you can. But there's a firewall between the casino and the real economy. This bill tears down the wall. It allows traditional banks and Wall Street to hold and invest in cryptocurrency. So we're connecting the crypto economy to the real economy directly."
Ivan: This is very interesting how he frames it. He basically says crypto is not a real economy. But what is the real economy? It is what people are doing. It's what you and I, what consumers are choosing to do — that's the real economy. If people want to have crypto, let them. He wants to be the nanny that says you're not allowed to go into memecoins. And it's a very big problem overall that we've seen during the last ten years — the banks telling you what to do. Now you have the bill coming out basically saying, "Listen, everything is one single economy. If the users want to do this, they can do this." Obviously many people don't like it, but it seems to be mainly the smaller banks. The big banks — they all love crypto. BlackRock loves crypto. Everyone who is doing any kind of trading loves crypto.
Opposition commentator: "Have your bank account, your savings, your 401K invest in crypto. Since we're connecting the two economies in this significant way, you might be wondering: does the bill increase regulation and create a bunch of new protections for average Americans? And the answer, of course, is no. It still allows people to create fake tokenised versions of stock of American companies without their permission and without any investor protections — a shadow stock market, if you will."
Ivan: By the way, here's a good point. We just discussed it in our private stream on Friday — if you have a tokenised stock, it's not the same as a real stock. That one is very, very true. If you do have a tokenised stock and something happens to the protocol or the exchange where you have the tokenised stock, you may or may not get the actual stock back. So if you're able and if you have ways to get actual stocks, it's better to have actual stocks than tokenised stocks — 100%.
Self-custody makes little difference with tokenised stocks, because okay, you have self-custody, but what do you own? You own a tokenised stock, which means that if something happens to the issuer of the coin, your coin is worthless. So when it comes to tokenised stocks, the only use case that makes sense to me is short-term trading — you're in and out, you use leverage, that's it. You see them for what they are. Don't accumulate tokenised stock for your retirement or your stock portfolio. It's a very bad decision.
At the end of the day, as long as there is clarity to people about what it is, I see no problem in tokenised stocks. It's just another thing that users may or may not want to buy, as long as they understand what they're doing.
Opposition commentator: "The president and his family continue making billions of dollars in crypto from unwitting investors and foreign actors. And now they even get to choose their own regulator. Normally, cryptocurrency enforcement has fallen to the Securities and Exchange Commission — they're big, detail-oriented, and strict. But now the crypto industry wants to shift most of that power to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, a tiny agency with a few hundred employees and shrinking."
Ivan: I love it. I love it. Regulators should be small. They should have few employees. They should have limited resources. You don't need a big fat regulator. You need a small one. A small one that uses its brain and prioritises the correct things instead of just doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff. That's the problem when you have a big organisation — they start doing stuff just for the sake of keeping their big organisation going. A regulator needs to be tiny, very tiny, and then they focus on the big cases that actually make sense to focus on.
Opposition commentator: "Now, what happens when an industry is allowed to write its own rules, to dictate which federal agencies investigate and enforce those rules, to run wild creating speculative bubbles that are connected to the economy we all rely on? Is there any history of this that we can point to?"
Ivan: Yeah. He's alluding to the GFC. Okay. I mean, this is material for the plebs — material to get political support against the crypto bill. And you know what? It may be successful. That's why I'm not too bullish on the Clarity Act passing. But also, we don't need it for the bull market. The plebe industrial complex is big. They need to say, "Look at Trump." From a public standpoint, it doesn't look too good with all of these billions made. I understand. So the plebe industrial complex may stop the Clarity Act. Let's see what's going to happen.
Near Protocol's Quantum Cross-Chain Approach
Near is doing some quantum stuff. Illia from Near, the founder, let's hear him:
Illia Polosukhin: "The interesting thing is that Near has been enabling the ability to hold assets from other chains through our chain signatures and through Near and DANCE. This means that now in your Near account you can have Bitcoin, you can have Solana, you can have Ethereum, you can have other assets — real-world assets, stablecoins, etc. And with this addition, you can secure your Near account with a post-quantum cryptographic key. You can store that seed phrase somewhere in the ground and not touch it again, and not worry about other assets, because effectively the transitions as they happen on other chains will be happening by the Near protocol upgrades themselves, instead of you needing to manually move assets on other chains. So effectively they'll be moved for you as protocol upgrades. And so that's kind of an important and noble way — especially paired with confidentiality — you actually can store your Bitcoin, your Ethereum, your Solana, your stablecoins all in a confidential shard and be safe."
Ivan: What he means here is that in Near you can basically have a Near account and store all kinds of assets there. He says that when Bitcoin upgrades to quantum proof, you will have to move your Bitcoin to a quantum-proof address — in order to be part of the upgrade, the same with ETH, Solana, and all other chains. When they upgrade, you will have to do some actions to move your coins to the upgraded version. But if your coins are inside the Near infrastructure — their cross-chain infrastructure where you can swap different assets between each other — he says you will not have to move them. They're just going to support everything out of the box with the new upgrades. They're going to take care of that.
Listen, Illia is a great guy. I'm sure it works. I wouldn't use it though. The reason I wouldn't use it is because it's another third-party dependency — you're relying on Near, and you need to understand whether it's good or not. We just had the cold wallet situation. It's another one where for the average person to understand what is happening in Near and how to use it — it's complex. I would use Near for the purpose of doing the cross-chain swap. It's very nice — you can go from Bitcoin to Monero using Near. Very nice. And then you can withdraw it to your own wallet and just be done with it. But holding long-term in Near — I'm sure it's good, I'm sure it's nice tech, but in my opinion I would not use it for long-term hodling. The risk-reward and the peace of mind — if I don't understand the full stack, which I don't, you really have to study it a lot to fully get how all this cross-chain works. Even for me as a computer scientist, it makes little sense without deep study. Could I learn? I could. But it's easier to just have peace of mind and have it in the L1 of your choice.
Just like we said with stocks — if you are storing for the long term, no need to have it in tokenised stocks. Have real stocks in your brokerage, in your traditional finance brokerage. It's better for you. Tokenised stocks are the same but worse. There is a use case for tokenised stocks — to trade without KYC on Hyperliquid, to go long or short. There is a use case. Use it for that use case.
Strategy's "Central Bank" Claim — A Deeper Critique
Saylor comes out with new AI content. His company just said, "We're the institution. We're the central bank of crypto," trying to build a credible narrative, trying to be a credible voice. Then Saylor comes out with new AI-generated content. What the hell, man?
Coming out of the bear market, we're seeing new VCs actively deploying into crypto and fintech. When VCs leave crypto or refactor towards AI and robotics, people often view it as negative, but it creates room for new investors to come in. That's very true.
Macro Week — CPI and PPI Ahead
This is a real macro week, not a quiet one, but social heat is building. You have Wednesday CPI — very important — and PPI on Thursday. The lineup matters because markets are using this sprint as a Fed rate clue — what's going to happen to the Fed and the rates. We have a huge inflation week. If the inflation is low, it's very good. Then the printer is coming. Hopefully it's going to be low. Hopefully it's below expectation, below the target. This week can make a nice green fat candle for the market — a big fat candle for the stock market and the crypto market. If inflation is low, Valhalla. The Fed can then print like there's no tomorrow.
Open AI is buying back $7 billion worth of shares in a secondary employee tender, basically preparing themselves for the IPO — clearing the cap table, removing some employees, buying back. It's going to be a bit tough for them to go to IPO because their economics are not that good. They lose a lot of money. But if they go to IPO, it's going to be very, very interesting.
Trump saying the Strait of Hormuz is open again. It's closed, it's open — every day something new. But today it's open. Gold is pumping a bit, but gold is still in a bear trend. As long as it doesn't go bull trend, it's just another lower high. High, lower high, lower high. Classic. We don't over-complicate. We don't try to predict. We're very humble. We just react to the chart. Silver — the same. High, lower high, lower high, lower high, until proven otherwise. It is what it is.
Tokenized Stocks Launch on Hyperliquid — Xtocks Goes Live
Xtocks went live on Hyperliquid today. The first batch of tokenised equities and ETFs on Hyper Core — starts with a total of five tokenised equities. They bridge in via Chainlink. Chainlink CCIP makes $600 per day — we learned that last week — but it is powering Hyper Core now. That's good. With market maker support for round-the-clock spot liquidity. Very good.
Before, I guess it was only perpetuals. Now you have spot equities on Hyperliquid. So Xtocks is now on Hyperliquid. Good. Very good.
Q&A — Strategy, Saylor, and the Maxi Degradation
With all respect, someone says they think I'm wrong on the Strategy central bank criticism. I'm not wrong. I'm the most humble and I can tell you I'm not wrong. Saylor's centralisation is a big net negative for crypto. We can still live with it, but it's a big net negative.
As you know, they are here to do financial engineering. Which means if they can, they're going to do fractional reserve. If they can achieve it in the future, they probably will — it would need regulatory adjusting. Financial engineering always ends up in the same place, because that's how banks' trajectory worked from the start. Instead of having your own gold, you give it to the banker. He gives you a piece of paper that represents it. Next step — okay, let's do some lending. All of these steps resulted in where? Fractional reserve. Saylor is very similar. Instead of holding your own crypto, give it to Saylor. You get the stock. It's like back in the day you had the paper for your gold. The road map is the same. It's financial engineering.
So for crypto, with the size that Strategy is at now, it's a net negative. At the same time — will it affect us in the coming bull? He's a net seller now. When you look at the last few weeks, he's only selling. If you zoom out, okay, he's buying also. I think for price pump in the bull, he's still going to be good. At the end of the day, for the bull market, for making money, he's not an issue. But for the core of crypto's ethos, it's a net negative.
But you can also argue — if Bitcoin is like gold, can you have any other outcome than someone creating something like Strategy and trying to do financial engineering on the asset? Is there any other outcome? That's a good question.
Also — is it the same as a central bank? It's not. But the corruption of the community is the bigger problem. They're out here saying, "Oh yeah, let's do central bank." What is this? They should be saying self-custody. I want my Bitcoin Maxis to say, "F corporation, F all of the central banks." Talk self-custody. They are the guardians of the ethos of the community, of the DNA. They should speak about banking the unbanked, not freaking banking Saylor.
Make Bitcoin Maxis great again. Make them push self-custody. Make them say F company, F central bank, F corporation. You understand? So the biggest problem is probably not even Strategy — it's the corruption of the Maxi, the degradation of the Maxi. You have this meme comparing the Maxi from 2013 — self-custody, strong, F everyone, F establishment, only self-custody, sovereign — to now: "Oh please, Saylor, buy. Please buy. Saylor says we're going to be central bank. Oh yes, yes, yes." That's the real problem.
Final Thoughts — Altcoin Strategy and Volume Analysis
Someone asks: pretend you're an average player with around $10,000–$20,000 to play with and you want to take some risk. How would you play it?
You need to take risk, but you don't need to take stupid risk. I would wait for Bitcoin to go bull trend and then I would ape into altcoins — coins that have bull trend and also have support with Twitter discussions. I can ride the top winners. Using an AI tool to see what's happening, what is being discussed, who is discussing what, what is getting the most traction — that's going to be so key. But you don't want to do it before there is a bull trend on Bitcoin, because then the risk-reward is too bad. You want Bitcoin to be bull, and then as soon as altcoins go, it's Valhalla Express. That's how I would play it.
On volume — when there is a disagreement between volume and price, that may be a signal. For example, when volume is high but price does not move, it may be a signal, because it means the insiders, the market makers, are accumulating heavily without pushing the price up. When you have a disagreement between volume and price, it may be a signal. But the problem is it's a bit hard to execute on. How are you going to repeat it? It's interesting to check sometimes, but it's too unrepeatable to trade mechanically.
The way to see it: you have high volume but price is sideways. Someone is buying like crazy but they don't want to push up the price. So they buy maximum without pushing the price. Then they wait till the next candle, next day they buy again without pushing up the price too much. That means accumulation — insiders accumulating. The same thing in reverse: the price does not dump but you see high volume. Why so high volume but it doesn't dump? It could be that there's distribution going on — the insiders are selling without dumping the price.
If volume corresponds to the move — big candles, big move, and volume is big — the market is functioning perfectly, nothing crazy to see. If you have a disagreement between price chart and volume, there are some interesting things to see there, potentially insiders making moves. But the problem is it's very hard to trade on. How do you set the stop loss? How do you set your take profit? That's why we focus on the chart primarily — chart is number one, because that's possible to repeat and automate.