Ivan on Tech's emergency livestream covering the Binance hack, Poly Market breach, AI stock selloff, and Hyperliquid news
Ivan on Tech hosts an emergency livestream covering a chaotic 24-hour period in crypto and markets.
Summary
Ivan on Tech hosts a solo emergency livestream triggered by a cluster of major events hitting simultaneously: a roughly $6 billion hack of Binance, a separate $2.7 million hack of Poly Market, sharp earnings-driven selloffs in Amazon, Intel, and Alphabet, and a significant rally in Hyperliquid following Stan Druckenmiller's tweet about it and a partnership announcement between Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and trade.xyz — a platform built on Hyperliquid's rails — to bring perpetual futures to US regulated markets. Ivan also flags the sudden departure of MicroStrategy's CFO Andrew Kang, effective November 5th (per community speculation he read aloud), raising questions about the circumstances. Throughout, he applies his core framework — only hold assets in a confirmed bull trend, exit immediately when a bear trend is confirmed — to assess which positions to maintain and which to abandon if conditions deteriorate further. Ivan also devotes time to a lighthearted but pointed discussion of the 'Pentagon Pizza Index' — elevated late-night pizza orders to the Pentagon as a possible signal of imminent military action — and plays a satirical video ('Grandma') to illustrate his philosophy of selling into retail-driven bear markets.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Opening: The 24-hour chaos summary
Ivan: Oh yes. Oh yes. Guys, welcome to another episode. And holy crap, today is crazy. Bitcoin went all the way to 76K yesterday. We're back to 78K. And the amount of news is quite insane. Let me try to summarize what has happened.
Number one, of course, Binance hacked. The biggest hack in history. $5.6 billion gone. Fully gone. Some of it was recovered, some of it not. We will be discussing that. Number two, Poly Market hacked. Absolutely hacked. All within 24 hours. Binance hacked. Poly Market hacked. Also during the same 24 hours, you did see very, very bad reports from Intel. Intel collapsed 20%. And Amazon also dropped like 7–10%. We're going to be discussing that. I will show you the exact numbers. But all in all, this whole ecosystem of AI during the last few days — bad Google report, you see how much Google dumped yesterday and it will continue lower — and a bad Amazon report. Let me bring up Amazon. The Amazon report is really creating a bit of an issue for NASDAQ. You can see Amazon is going to open way, way lower, and NASDAQ as an index is on the brink of a bear trend, which of course for us is very important to keep an eye on. Let's see if we close bearish this Friday or not. But if NASDAQ goes bear, we will have to adapt — for example, by switching into S&P, which is more bullish. Just like we did, by the way — you remember when Lighter went bear trend, we switched to Hyperliquid, and that was a very good decision. Because Hyperliquid is now pushing new highs while Lighter — I mean, who the hell knows what Lighter is doing.
Remember, just a few weeks ago at the beginning of October, we said it's time to move from Lighter to Hyperliquid. Why? Because bear trend. It's the same thing. What's the point of having Lighter in a bear trend when Hyperliquid does the same kind of app, the same kind of use case, but in a big fat bull trend? So the same thing is going to apply to NASDAQ and S&P. We're not going to be in a bear trend. We're going to readjust. But Amazon wrecked, Intel wrecked, Google wrecked, potentially bear trend in NASDAQ, Binance hacked, Poly Market hacked — all within 24 hours.
The Pentagon Pizza Index
And the Trump administration is ordering a bunch of Papa John's and Domino's Pizza to the Pentagon. The Pentagon is going heavy on Domino's Pizza and Papa John's. What does that mean? When do you have elevated demand for Papa John's and Domino's Pizza in the middle of the night at the Pentagon, right before they attack some country? People saw an increase in demand for Papa John's and Domino's Pizza around 7:00 p.m. You did see the Pentagon pizza report flashing the alert. Isn't it crazy? You're there in Iran — you're the Ayatollah, or whoever they have now — and the Americans are eating pizza. They're attacking Papa John's and Domino's Pizza. You don't mess with that. You don't mess with that.
So yeah, there is some concern now that the pizza index is flashing. Several pizzerias nearby the Pentagon are reporting above-average traffic. But why pizza, guys? I don't understand. You eat pizza, you become sluggish. How are you going to do the war with pepperoni pizza in your mouth? You're sluggish. You're half sleeping. They should do healthy food. They should do a Poké bowl. Why don't they do a Poké bowl? Man, if I were Pentagon boss, I would tell everyone: no more pizza. How are we going to do the war when you don't even fit in the chair? Because you eat Papa John's and Domino's. Instead, open up the Poké bowls. Poké bowls with good vegetables, fresh produce. Way better. Way better.
But yeah, as soon as I eat pizza — when you're younger, you can eat pizza, it's nice, it tastes good, there's no effect. Now, guys, I eat pizza and — oh, we're going to go sleeping. No way, man. Anyway, so: long night warning. Are we going to be in for a long night? The Pentagon pizza report is reporting highly abnormal traffic. Keep an eye on it, guys.
Welcome and ETF inflows
We have a lot to cover. Welcome everyone who's watching live. Big shout out to Guzman for timestamping us today. We're going to be updating you on everything. There's this amount of news — I haven't seen this much in a very long time. I remember last week we were complaining that there's no news. We said crypto is slow, the new cycle is slow. You know what they say: be careful what you wish for. It's too much now.
Looking at the inflow — yesterday, amid all of the craziness, still positive ETF inflow. Okay, still positive ETF inflow.
Hyperliquid and ICE partnership
You have Hyperliquid pumping like there's no tomorrow because Stan Druckenmiller is collaborating with Hyperliquid and basically bringing perps to DeFi. ICE — Intercontinental Exchange, the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange — is now also launching trade.xyz, which is based on Hyperliquid, and will bring perps and Hyperliquid tech to all of the retail, all of the TradFi retail. So obviously that's massive. Druckenmiller is tweeting about it, and it's a big thing because Hype is up like 20–22%. It was a very, very nice pump. We're going to come back to that.
The Binance hack: what we know
In the meanwhile, let's speak about the Binance hack. Approximately $6 billion was hacked. They say North Korea — as always, whenever a hack happens, they say North Korea. Maybe it is North Korea. It's always hard to say, but I personally don't like that as soon as something happens, instantly it's North Korea. Because when you say it's North Korea, it means there's no need to investigate. There's no need to look into who else it could have been. I don't like this knee-jerk reaction. If it's North Korea, then it's — ah, okay, nothing to do, nothing to investigate. It was Kim Jong-un again. I don't like when they say it's North Korea so fast. Let's see. Maybe it is not North Korea. Maybe it's some insider. Maybe it is the team. Maybe it is someone else. Don't say it's North Korea. Look into it properly. Who is there in Binance? Who has access to a laptop? Don't be so quick. Because as soon as someone says North Korea — okay, that's it. That's it.
So $6.3 billion is gone. Some of the money has been frozen and is going to be returned. But it's not that simple, because the hacker was able to move through DeFi and convert a lot of the stablecoins into ETH. That's very important.
The biggest assets that got hacked include USDT, RLUSD, and various other assets — about $2.5 billion at the explorer's prices in the beginning, but then it grew to $6 billion altogether.
Microsoft Metanet says: "We stand with Binance and everyone working around the clock. As one member of this industry, we know moments like this are when we need to come together." Bitcoin itself is unaffected. It has survived war with Iran, the CLARITY Act being blocked, the first Fed rate hike in three years, Treasury yields at multi-decade highs, the MicroStrategy selling, the Coinbase exploit, the Binance exploit, the Ledger exploit. People moved from self-custody into Binance. The only thing standing now is the ETF. It's the only thing that hasn't been hacked up until now.
And you know what we say — we say very clearly that we're bullish in a bull trend, in a bull market. Bitcoin is still in the bull trend. It is what it is. We're still in the bull trend. We're bullish in the bull trend.
By the way, a reminder that FTX was the bottom last time. So if Binance is wrecked — FTX was also wrecked around Q4, four years ago. Time flies, guys. It was already four years ago that FTX got completely destroyed in Q4. So Binance wrecked Q4 now, FTX wrecked Q4 four years ago. Let's see what's going to happen.
Jessica Walker's statement on the Binance hack
Jessica Walker — this lady works at Binance; she actually had her own podcast before but recently she's with Binance — is saying: "Regarding the security incident, there are many questions about the technical details. Based on information currently available, we will clarify a few points. This is not a case of hacking into one computer and transferring money. This is not an incident that could be carried out through a single device. The hacking of an employee's computer was the starting point of this attack. Attacks targeting crypto institutions are usually highly targeted, and attackers often try to use complex methods."
So basically she's saying this is more complex than someone forgetting to log out. Regarding whether engineers have excessive permissions — this is not an instance where the attacker directly used those permissions. She's saying everything is way more complex than you guys think.
Facts that can be confirmed at present: no evidence of wallet private key leakage has been found. Regarding user fund security — all losses caused by this incident will be fully recovered by the SAFU fund and company funds, and users will not bear any losses. About $3 billion in affected assets have been frozen on-chain, cooperating with law enforcement agencies and blockchain intelligence. Binance has frozen withdrawals and deposits. So if you have funds on Binance, you cannot withdraw.
The DeFi angle: Aave and the frozen collateral
Something very important here — I'm still studying it myself. Apparently some of this money was moved in an interesting way. Let me read what this guy says, and then we'll see some corrections to his post.
He said: first, Tether froze $1.5 billion in USDT. Then Circle froze another $800 million in USDC. At that point it looked like the hacker's money was trapped. But apparently he had already planned for it. Instead of holding the stolen USDT in a wallet, he allegedly deposited it into Aave and used it as collateral to borrow ETH. So this is interesting — as a hacker, you put your money in DeFi, you borrow against it. Even if they freeze your stablecoins, you still have ETH, which is uncensorable. Then he walked away.
That's where the story gets crazy. Tether can freeze USDT sitting in a wallet, but it cannot freeze ETH he already borrowed. So now Aave is left holding the frozen collateral. There's a bit of concern around Aave. But it's not fully correct according to the community note — they describe a deposit using only $60 million USD as collateral to borrow around 20,000 ETH before the freeze hit the main wallet. So it's a smaller exposure for Aave.
DeFi Dad was saying Aave is not holding frozen collateral — they hold aUSDT, a separate contract from USDT. USDT cannot freeze aUSDT. But USDT must be backed by USDT that is frozen. Also, if ETH moves just 4% or so, the position will be liquidated. But the guy has ETH. He will not return it. He will not pay back the loan. Obviously.
Anyway, something to keep an eye on. We don't know all of the details or the full impact for Aave. But listen — if I were in Aave, I would just withdraw to be safe. I don't know what's happening here. Do they have the toxic USDT from the hack that was used to borrow? Who the hell knows? I'm not going to research before being safe. Safety first. Have ETH that is uncensorable. Then we research what's happening. Maybe Aave is okay. Who the hell knows at the end of the day? We first secure, then we check what's happening.
Poly Market hack: supply chain attack
At the same time, Poly Market also got hacked yesterday. One of their third-party providers was compromised. They use a script on their website — DebugBear — some kind of third-party script for ensuring that the site works and there are no front-end issues. That script got hijacked and malicious code got inserted into it. So malicious code was running on the Poly Market website that drained $2.7 million.
The cyber apocalypse is not just about critical vulnerabilities. The main risk is chaining vulnerabilities across the supply chain. In this case, the issue was that they used this analytics script and that one got compromised. And of course, if you run a script on your website and it is compromised, it can go from just analytics to having some permissions — and let's say replace what the user is doing. Instead of the trade button trading, the trade button becomes a drainer. An analytics script could potentially reprogram what the buttons do on a website because it's JavaScript that is executed on your website. So instead of the button saying "connect wallet" and connecting your wallet, it says "connect wallet" but now it drains your wallet. It became a drainer.
So yeah, we do have a bit of a spooky Halloween today, guys.
AI hacking the German legal system
AI is coming and wrecking everything — it even wrecks German law. A bit random, guys, but this guy used LLMs to find inconsistencies and vulnerabilities in the German legal system. As you know, politicians invent new law after law after law. A lot of them contradict each other. According to this guy, he ran the German law book through LLMs and found that these vulnerabilities may enable: access to confidential documents, travel without an otherwise required visa, enforceable leave for soldiers at NATO JC, and similar issues. The written law can contain vulnerabilities and invite exploitation.
In testing this hypothesis, they identified a substantial number of vulnerabilities in the German legal system using LLMs. For example: a rule that makes certain documents confidential may be void because the government failed to cite the legal basis it needed to make that rule.
It makes sense to me that in the law book, the boomers forgot that some of their laws contradict each other, and there are endless ways to act on it. Maybe someone is going to find a way where you have a big gain in your portfolio and you don't have to pay tax. Is there a loophole? If you are in Germany, ask an LLM: is there some loophole where you can get lower tax? Maybe there is something that we don't know. Only the rich knew because they had a lawyer who knows the loophole. Now with LLMs, anyone can know the loophole.
House Democrats: no AI bailouts
Another important thing: House Democrats have introduced a resolution that Congress should not bail out AI firms in the event of a financial crisis, and that they should be subjected to the ordinary bankruptcy process. They're saying no bailouts are coming. So if you look at the stock market and there's an issue with AI, Democrats will not bail AI companies out. That's probably also one of the reasons why NASDAQ is dumping toward the flip level.
Intel: bear trend confirmed, don't touch
Some guy from China is saying he's bullish on Intel and he's going to increase his ratio to buy back even if it means selling Google. He says from his perspective the current price is worth buying. I mean, you can read his Intel bull take. For me, guys — Intel, we don't touch it.
We'll wait for a bull trend. It's going to go super bear here. You see here, it's already bear, but it's going to go super bear. It's already been in a bear trend since the 19th. Now it's going to go super bear. That's why we respect the bear trend. Someone maybe knew something here already. You see here, it went bear trend on the 19th. Did they know the report was going to be bad? Maybe. That's why we act on trends — because trends show what the insiders are doing. If an insider wants to exit, they need to sell. And when they sell, we go down, we go bear trend. And then the big news hits. And now all of the players want out also.
Now you should read the disclaimer. Pause and read the disclaimer. Crypto and trading are high risk. Results shown are not typical. I hold assets I discuss. Do not copy me. Use your brain. This is entertainment and education, not financial advice. Full disclaimer in description.
The way I see it is that in a bear trend, we don't touch. If you really love Intel, maybe get it when it gets to the 200-week Moving Average. But it can be so weak also. I don't love Intel. It's not a company I'm sure is relevant in 10 years. Maybe they are super relevant. But that's why we just wait for a bull trend. When a bull trend happens — like here, for example — you just wait for it. Bull trend happened here. Fantastic. It went up 300%. We're happy. We don't need to be super convinced. I don't want to hold Intel through a bear trend and be there in the boat with them, worried. No. We're here to ride the big trend and that's it.
And sometimes you have a fake out — like here, for example. But that's also why we have the stop loss. Fake out happens, you have a stop loss, you're out. Good. You can try another bull trend somewhere else. Fantastic. You have all of the upside and very capped downside because of the stop loss.
The "Grandma" video and trend riding philosophy
We have Small PP back with yet another banger. Let me play it. It's from the 80s. Let's listen.
"Bull Mania. A lot of people are saying it. Very smart guys. Laser-eyed guys."
"So I looked into it. I needed a new partner. This is Brian. Tough guy. Look at that head. Brian, you're my muscle guy. These are the leverage guys. You borrow, buy coins, put the coins up, borrow more. Same asset gets counted four times. And if they can't pay us back, we lend them more. What pays the loans?"
"Number go up."
"Still didn't get it. So we went to see Michael. Michael the rapper. He wraps it all up and sells it off. Who buys this stuff?"
"Grandma. She'll buy anything if you wrap it nice. Make it big enough, it can't fail."
"That's the most beautiful thing I ever heard. I want in."
"What's happening?"
"Wait, wait. Nothing can't fail."
"Borrowed all of it."
"And when the bill comes due, who pays?"
"You."
"Me? I follow the mechanical rules. When grandma's buying, I'm selling."
Is this a — well, listen. If grandma is buying in a bear trend, then yes. If grandma is buying in a bear trend, then I'm selling. But grandma should not buy in a bear trend. That's how it is.
Here is a bear take on Intel. Look here — if your life is as a fundamental guy, you have to read all of this. Meanwhile, we the trend riders — we're already out. You see here, it went bear trend here. And now all of the smart asses are reading all of this. Good luck. What's going to happen with earnings? CPU down 30%, 80%, $7.3 billion — what the hell are they doing? Is anyone reading all of this and making decisions? All problems are happening right now. The PC business — who cares about the PC business? Grandma should not care about the PC business. Grandma should care that it's a bear trend. That's it.
Hyperliquid: Stan Druckenmiller, Elon Musk, and ICE
Let me go deeper into Hyperliquid. This is the real answer: greatest investor of all time, Stan Druckenmiller. Greatest businessman of all time, Elon. Elon commented something about Hyperliquid. Largest exchange in the world — New York Stock Exchange, ICE — they tweet about Hype. All emphatically bull posting Hyperliquid on the same day. The future is bright for crypto. Yeah, true, true, true.
Stan Druckenmiller — it's his first ever tweet, and he tweets about Hyperliquid. And Elon Musk said: "Interesting." There you go.
Intercontinental Exchange joins forces with trade.xyz to bring perps into US regulated markets. ICE and trade.xyz are planning a new market for trading perpetual futures contracts with their own clearing, KYC, and AML. The market will be built on Hyperliquid's rails and use trade.xyz products tied to the price of equities, equity indexes, commodities, cryptocurrencies, and currencies. ICE, parent of the New York Stock Exchange, is taking a stake in trade.xyz.
Hyperliquid — once a niche exchange favored by crypto-native traders — has grown into one of the largest markets for perps, also known as perpetual futures contracts. Perpetual futures have no expiration date, trade around the clock, and are often used for leverage. That's what we like in crypto. We're more for leveraging than hedging some bet. We're more to go all in.
So that's bullish. Then there was a bear article from two days ago: "Unusual oil trades detected on buzzy offshore crypto exchange." So "buzzy offshore crypto exchange" — according to Bloomberg, that's Hyperliquid. Just two days ago, Bloomberg was a bit concerned about this buzzy offshore dirt crap exchange. And today, look where we are. We're in the fine dining room with Stan Druckenmiller and ICE. Two days ago, we were a buzzy offshore dirt crap exchange. Now look at us now, man. Look at us now.
A trader placed over $170 million worth of unusual orders on Hyperliquid, which a market surveillance firm says seemed to be an attempt to manipulate prices through a tactic known as spoofing — where traders place large orders in one direction then cancel them while simultaneously executing trades on the other side of the bet. The activity suggests that Hyperliquid and the perpetual futures contracts it facilitates are not just competing with TradFi but also opening a new route for misbehavior.
There you go. That was two days ago, and look at us now two days later — we're with Stan Druckenmiller. From dirt to Stan Druckenmiller. You see it yourselves, guys. That's it.
Following the plan: Bitcoin, NASDAQ, Solana
Crazy day. Crazy day. We follow the plan. The plan stays the same for us in terms of Bitcoin. In terms of NASDAQ, we obviously have to be careful if NASDAQ goes bear trend. And also in terms of Solana — Solana is messing with the bear flip. If Solana goes bear, then we'll have to move away from Solana. Where are we moving? Well, Hype is bullish. Let's see other ones. Is BNB still bullish? BNB still bullish. If Solana itself goes bear — no way — again, maybe it's a fake out, maybe they just go bear and then bull again. But for us, we don't take the risk. It's better to be in bull assets.
Just like people asked when Lighter went bear trend here — people said, "Ivan, you're really concerned about Lighter? Look at how bullish it was. The chart looks like this. It opened bearer." People said, "Ivan, what if it's a fake out? What if it just goes up again?" It could. Sometimes there are fake outs. Then we just enter when it's bull again, because we don't want to take the risk. And what happened with Lighter? You see it yourself.
We never mess with the bear, guys. If it's bear, it's bear. We don't become romantically involved with assets. We trade them. We don't date them. It is simple. Trade them. Don't date them.
If Solana goes bear, we love Solana. But Solana needs to deliver for us. It needs to pump and work for us. If it goes bear, we go somewhere else. Maybe then it goes bull again — okay, good, we're going to consider Solana again. But we need to have the discipline.
Live incident: coffee spill
Oh, yo, guys. Spilled coffee. Spilled coffee. One second. Let me get a towel. Let me get a towel.
Look at this chart for now. I mean, it happens sometimes. Holy crap. Oh, the good thing is it was not on the keyboard. That's the good thing. This happens a lot, man. I spill coffee quite often — probably three, maybe four times per week. Not in this big way. I mean, this is a massive leak actually. All dripping. But in smaller ways, three or four times per week. Easy.
That's why I have two keyboards as backup — in case they are too wrecked. I need a backup. And the good thing is I switched it away from the keyboard. You've got to be thankful for the small things. Pen still working. Okay, good.
So actually the damage is quite contained — just like the Binance hack. They seem to be getting the money frozen and returned. The spill here is kind of contained also. It's kind of contained, guys.
I think we're back. We recovered fast. But also, you know, I'm experienced. I have a towel. With the coffee spilling, I'm the world's best. I have the towel ready. Why do I have a towel in the office here? Because we have an emergency routine. We have an SOP — standard operating procedure. All of you guys who work in corporate, you know you need to have a standard operating procedure. So my SOP for a coffee leak is well defined and tested. I have a quite good incident response plan here.
Binance statement and Solana transaction milestone
Binance published a post saying they had a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop which allowed an attacker to gain access. According to this post, the attack was simple — they hacked one guy, one laptop, the guy got access to some infrastructure deployments. And then Jessica came out and said, "Oh no, it's way more complex. It's not that simple."
Solana's weekly transaction count passed 1 billion, crossing a new all-time high record. Yeah, hopefully it's going to hold above the bear flip. Very important. Whatever transactions they do, it better hold above the bear flip. For now, it's above though. It's above now.
And listen — when you have such an event like now, everything dumps. There's panic. There's panic. Then it calms itself. The damage is assessed. Here's the good thing: many coins are holding up quite okay. I mean, yes, some dumps have happened, but not too bad. You look at the top 100 — what has really happened here? Binance is down 5%. Pancake is down a bit, but it's not too much. For an altcoin to be down 8%, there's nothing. So all in all, the industry is holding up quite okay, I would say. Given the circumstances — Binance hacked, Poly Market hacked, everything hacked — given the circumstances, not too bad.
MicroStrategy CFO departure
Micro Strategy. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Another news is MicroStrategy. I did ask Bulmania AI for it because I needed some help — it was too much when I woke up, so much happening.
MicroStrategy's CFO is leaving and running for the hills. Some people say he's running for the hills. Matthew Crater says there is a classic warning: "A sudden departure like that is almost always a huge red flag. Think Enron, WorldCom, Lehman Brothers." Okay. I mean, that's one way to see it. Another way to see it is he needs more time with the kids or something. How you want to see it, guys? We don't know.
Andrew Kang is out of MicroStrategy as CFO, effective November 5th. Why so quick? So fast — like a week. Why would a CFO be running so fast? The company framed it as personal reasons with no disagreement. But why so fast? I mean, if you are CFO, I think you want to leave fast if you don't want to be associated. Let's say I'm CFO and I see the company is doing something really problematic. And I'm like, "Guys, it's going to end bad. I don't want to be responsible. I don't want to be part of the company when it happens. So let me exit very fast. Let me exit so my name is not part of your dirt. I don't want to have any issues. You guys want to do this, I don't want to do it. Let me get out."
I mean, that's a reason to exit very fast. As a CFO, you have a lot of responsibility. You are the one that is going to get a lot of heat if something bad happens. Let's say accounting is not fully correct, or something is misrepresented, or whatever — CFO is the one responsible. If something in the books is not correct — obviously the management is responsible, but you know, CFO is the chief financial officer. If something in the books is not correct. So anyway, that could be one reason. I'm not saying that's what happened, but that's one reason where a CFO would leave quickly — where he's like, "Holy crap, you guys are going to do this? Oh no, no. I don't want to be part of it. Leave me out of this. I'm leaving fast."
Otherwise, if there's no disagreement and there's no problems, why not be more accommodating? Normally there's like three months' notice, especially for a big role like CFO. One week's notice for a big role like CFO? I don't know.
He stays on as a non-executive advisor. Yeah, but maybe that's what they're working on — that he's going to be a non-executive advisor. Maybe CEO Fong Lee runs financials himself until December 31st. On January 1st, a longtime ops exec becomes CFO, but only for the software side. He doesn't want to touch this Ponzi dynamic with MicroStrategy and Bitcoin. Like: "I'm not CFO for that. I'm just for the software side. We sell some SaaS subscriptions. I can be CFO for SaaS. This Ponzi dynamic you guys do with MicroStrategy and Bitcoin — I'm not going to be CFO for that." Fong Lee keeps the Bitcoin capital markets and treasury keys.
The news dropped. Guys, I mean, probably it's nothing bad, probably. But you never know. I don't hold MicroStrategy for many reasons, but one of the reasons is that you need to trust the guys running it. Having Bitcoin is fun enough. It's volatile enough. Bitcoin can get quantum hacked. I have enough excitement just holding Bitcoin and crypto. There's enough excitement to also have another layer of excitement with how these dudes are running it. I don't want that.
MicroStrategy is the biggest risk to Bitcoin. It is a risk to Bitcoin. Yeah, it's concentration risk for sure.
AI capex selloff: Amazon, Intel, Alphabet
Let's speak a bit about the AI capex selloff. All of the companies that have big AI spend without business paying for it — they're getting punished a lot.
Earnings per share for Amazon was expected to be higher. This was the expected earnings per share. This was the actual earnings per share. And they are spending so much — 2026 capex reaffirmed at $220 billion. So they're spending $220 billion mainly on AI and their earnings are not good. They got sold off. Amazon's trailing free cash flow swung to a $40 billion outflow on investment. Something to keep in mind: when you have free cash flow not good, the market dumps very, very fast.
Intel — a big problem. Q4 guidance of $15 billion to $16 billion revenue and $0.25 earnings per share, which was way lower than expected. The market expected $0.43 in earnings per share. Big problem.
Alphabet — this was already covered yesterday. The market isn't questioning demand because demand is growing. Google Cloud is growing. But it's the negative free cash flow that is the problem. If you have negative free cash flow, you're borrowing or you're selling stock to pay for it. The market does not like it.
Microsoft was up 3.5–5% on Azure. So Microsoft has very good earnings. They also spend a lot on AI, but they have positive free cash flow.
Asia is dumping, dumping, dumping. Asia, guys, is super volatile. Super volatile. You guys who are in Asia — your stock market is like a giant altcoin or something. There are so many days I wake up and see: oh man, Asia collapsed again.
Closing summary
So all in all, that's it for now. Guys, we're bullish. Bitcoin — we're bullish still. Stock market, S&P, NASDAQ — we're going to be bearish if it flips bearish. What you do is up to you. Not financial advice. Anything can go to zero. Anything we say here can collapse or go against us. We manage risk. You have to manage risk. You have to use your brain.
Have a good day, guys. Enjoy Friday. Enjoy the weekend. It's a crazy, crazy time. AI is coming for us. It's coming for us bigly. Bigly, bigly, bigly. Hopefully we're going to be okay. Hopefully our magic internet coins are not going to be stolen by AI. But we're still bullish because the trend is bullish, and we just follow the rules. Follow the strategy. Follow the rules. That's it, guys.