Ivan on Tech analyzes Bitcoin's post-midterm bounce and the crypto outlook heading into the Santa rally season
Ivan on Tech's solo morning briefing covers Bitcoin's recovery from the $75K level, the implications of a Democratic sweep of Congress for crypto and AI, and a range of market and news topics.
Summary
Ivan on Tech delivers his daily market briefing, opening with Bitcoin bouncing from $75K to $78K following US midterm elections in which Democrats swept both the House and Senate. He argues this outcome is net neutral-to-positive for crypto because Trump retains veto power, creating gridlock that prevents any anti-crypto legislation from passing. He cites Tom Lee's analysis supporting this view and predicts the next major catalyst is the seasonal Santa rally. He also covers the Binance hack — caused by one DevOps engineer downloading a malicious fake Homebrew app via a fraudulent Google ad, and a second DevOps engineer being tricked through a fake job interview into downloading a virus disguised as a coding assignment — Elon Musk's exposure to political risk in Texas following the Democratic sweep there, and the Iran nuclear deal probability. Throughout, he expresses strong bullishness on crypto while noting that popular sentiment has rotated toward AI — which he reads as a contrarian buy signal for crypto. The Texas political risk discussion is framed in part as an AI-assisted Bullmania analysis of a hypothetical scenario rather than confirmed real-world election outcomes.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin bounces post-midterm — market overview
Ivan on Tech: Guys, welcome to another episode. As you can see right now, Bitcoin does have a bit of a pump here. We have a bounce from the $75K level and now we're all the way to $78K. Just like we've been saying — as soon as the midterms are over, we're going to see a nice big fat recovery. Of course, day-to-day volatility may still go down a bit here and there, but when you look 12 months ahead, you have fantastic results for the stock market number one, and also for crypto number two, after midterms. So we keep our attention on the big picture. We keep our attention on what's going to happen not today, not tomorrow, but over the coming months, over the coming quarters. And historically we have a fantastic, fantastic, fantastic outlook for crypto.
Now of course people are concerned that Democrats are going to be anti-crypto. As you know, Democrats won heavily — kind of like we've been discussing, and like prediction markets have been predicting — a heavy win for the Democrats. Democrats running the whole show. Now what's interesting, of course, is that although Democrats are probably a bit anti-crypto, probably a bit anti this whole industry because Trump has been so pro-crypto, the thing is they cannot do too much either. You have gridlock. You still have Trump, who can veto anything. So we have basically the best possible outcome, which is gridlock. Nothing happens. We're likely not going to have any kind of anti-crypto action. We're also likely not going to have any kind of craziness on the international stage from Trump. And maybe they can just focus on impeaching, doing investigations, being busy with themselves, and letting the market do its thing.
That would be the best outcome — just gridlock, internal fighting, subpoena here, subpoena there. I think we're going to see a lot of subpoenas, guys. Everyone's going to get subpoenaed. Trump, Jay-D, everyone's going to get subpoenaed. They will check what happened to Trumpcoin. They will check everything. But at the end of the day, they have no real power to do something new. They can gridlock the existing administration, but they cannot pass new law themselves. Trump can still veto everything.
So Democrats did sweep the House and the Senate. NASDAQ fell a bit but then recovered. When it comes to the stock market, the biggest worry is of course that the Democrats are anti-AI, which is true. They are very skeptical of AI. So the AI buildout is the risk here. But now it has recovered also. The stock market has recovered. And historically the stock market does fantastically well no matter the result of the midterm. The midterm just needs to happen — it happened — and then normally you get fantastic results 12 months after, no matter who won.
So in this situation, we're seeing a fantastic outlook despite this short-term fear of potential issues with new data centers, potential issues with funding of this whole buildout. And then Elon Musk in particular has a bit of an issue now. His companies are dropping. Tesla dropping. SpaceX in pre-market — let's see — down 4 to 6%. SpaceX has a lot of government contracts, and of course Democrats don't like Elon. It's going to open down from $141 to around $136. Maybe it recovered a bit. Still down around 4%. Not too bad. Not too bad. At the end of the day, it's not like Democrats can go and affect too much very quickly. So it's a bit of volatility, a bit of overreaction on both sides.
But it is true that the Dems don't like Elon. Sometimes they do say crazy things. This was recent — about eight hours ago, Scott Galloway said:
Scott Galloway: "We have begun believing, through this ridiculous, unhealthy, and dangerous idolatry of innovators, that they get to live by an entirely different standard. Elon Musk is a traitor to the West. We lined up the Rosenbergs against a wall. This is a traitor to the West and he should be held to the same standards as every other traitor in the West."
Ivan on Tech: Wow. Okay. When people say things like this, maybe SpaceX is going to drop a bit more. What happened to Scott Galloway? I remember he was speaking about startups and business. What happened? I mean, basically what he's saying here is that he's calling for the execution of Elon Musk. If we remove the fluff — "put against the wall" — what does that mean? He basically means we have to execute Elon Musk. What happened? It's like that picture where Elon had "me and my lefty friend" and then the lefty friend disappeared so far to the left and is now super radical militia politburo militia, and you're like, man, what is this? You're in the same place as before, but the difference is so big.
So guys, let's see what's going to happen here. We're apolitical. Just want to highlight — we're apolitical here. We're just observing from a distance. But I can understand that when people say stuff like this and get political support, and there is no pushback from anyone when the guy literally says maybe we should execute — I mean, that's basically what he said, or my English is bad. Given the circumstance, 4% down for SpaceX — no problem. Tesla is also down a bit. Not too bad. Could have been way worse.
But guys, we have a lot to discuss — the stocks, the cryptos. We're going to see the news. Welcome everyone who is watching live. Let me know how you're doing. It's Wednesday. We're here yet again, collected around the digital fireside chat, so to speak. We're here every single morning. Isn't that crazy? In April there's going to be a 10-year anniversary of the Ivan on Tech channel. 2027 April is going to be the 10-year freaking anniversary that we're here every single day.
Overall crypto market — trends and positioning
Ivan on Tech: So let's see the overall market. Looking at the bubbles — the bubbles are doing okay, guys. We have quite a nice situation here with Zcash pumping, Venice pumping, ENA pumping. Quite good on the daily. On the weekly, most things are still down, but on the daily quite a nice recovery.
Looking at the current trends — Hyperliquid is still bullish, fantastic. So we stay away from the bearish twins. For example, Lighter versus Hyperliquid — the twins — we stay away from Lighter, we are in Hyperliquid. Monero, for example, here you see it pushing higher. Had a fantastic, fantastic week. We are more towards Monero because it's bullish. Zcash — okay, it has a good day, but it still needs to go bull. Once it's bull, we're going to be in Zcash also. Right now we're more bullish Monero.
So within the same bull market, we are betting on the fastest horse — the one with the strongest trend. When a coin, whether it's a shitcoin or a legit coin, goes bear trend, but you're still bullish crypto overall, what has been working best for me in my experience is to instead put into the bull asset. For example, now with Solana — it is bear trend. Solana is bear trend. It continued falling here. Maybe it recovers fast, who the hell knows. But is it better to be in Solana or in a bull asset? Historically, statistically, according to my experience, what has worked for me is it's better to be in bull trend — whether it's Hyperliquid or Monero or whatever — bull trend always. So let's see how this will evolve.
But good recovery currently in many assets. This day is quite good — post-midterm, post-midterm relief. So there's nothing to be worried about. The next thing to look forward to is the Santa rally. The Santa rally is the next big chapter for crypto, especially after a tough October. Now we get into the Christmas jingle bell time. It's going to be great.
Tom Lee on why the Democratic sweep is not bearish for crypto or AI
Ivan on Tech: Now looking at the crypto market — we have the discussion of what's going to happen with regulations. The industry poured serious money into this cycle trying to get different regulation. The flagship bill is the Clarity Act, and currently it is still not fully in place. It passed the House but failed a Senate cloture vote in September. With Democrats now controlling both chambers, that bill faces a much steeper climb.
It's going to be interesting how the Democrats are going to flip. Tom Lee, bullish as ever, is saying there's a good chance they become bullish — bullish crypto, bullish AI — because now that this conflict with Trump is going to come to a logical end at some point, and also with 2028 presidential election coming up, do you really want to be against crypto just because Trump did his scammy coin? You can investigate Trump, you can go after Trump, you can figure out what went wrong there, you can do subpoenas — but why be against crypto when so many Americans have crypto? If you're smart, you won't vote long term against it. So Tom Lee has been predicting there's a good chance Democrats actually become bullish on crypto. Listen to this:
Tom Lee: "The reason I think this is not actually bearish for tech and AI, and it's not bearish for crypto, is the following. First, even if the Democrats take the Senate and the House, it doesn't mean they can actually pass anti-crypto and anti-AI legislation, because the president has veto power. So unless the Senate gets two-thirds of them, and two-thirds of the House, to vote in favor of the vetoed bill, they can't overturn a presidential veto. So basically there isn't going to be any chance to get legislation done. If anything, Congress's focus is going to just be trying to impeach President Trump.
Now, the second thing to keep in mind is that if the Democrats take the House — and let's see if they even take the Senate — they're very likely to flip pro-data center and pro-crypto, because now that they control Congress, the money that these data centers bring into the community and the lobbying money that the crypto industry would be spending would just go to the Democrats. So they're very likely to support legislation because one, it brings jobs and money, and plus they're getting political support. There isn't really political spending associated with anti-data center. There's a lot more pro-data center money because it's basically the entire technology industry.
And the third reason that I think tech and AI and crypto trade well after midterms is it's just seasonal. These stocks have priced in a lot of bad news, and historically markets really rally after midterm elections."
Ivan on Tech: Let's go, guys. Let's go. But listen — it could actually be all in all easier for you to deal with a few pronouns than to have, you know, five wars, 500 tariffs, Greenland inside outside, Gulf of — I mean, just thinking back to the madness, man. Let's give a pronoun. We can give a pronoun. It takes 10 seconds. The amount of nerves up and down with all of the craziness during the last two years, man. So hopefully, it is like Tom Lee says — gridlock, nobody does anything, and that's great. Just keep it as is. Don't mess with anything. Dear Mr. Politician, please stay out. Let the market work. Let the business work. Stay out.
Compute names, ETF flows, and upcoming macro data
Ivan on Tech: So, compute names are down 60% from peak. Okay. CFTC approves perpetuals — a US stock crypto-native product has gone live. Yep. Gold takes the safe-haven bid. So let's see — is gold finally pumping? Is gold finally understanding that it's a safe haven? Well, this week is strong for gold. Let's see if it can hold it. But currently it is reclaiming a bit of that category. Okay.
Bitcoin and ETFs bleed and bleed and bleed. Let me refresh. Another bleed. Another bleed. Yeah, so hopefully now it's Valhalla now that the midterms are over. The common thread is a political repricing of the AI trade. I wouldn't say it's really repricing of everything — it's just nervousness. Will Democrats come and wreck our AI data center? No, they won't. And now it's stabilized. If we look at NASDAQ — is NASDAQ really dumping? It's a bit of jittery nervousness here and there. NASDAQ is going to open up. S&P is going to open up. Everything is going to open up. So right after the results there was a bit of nervousness, but now people understand — what I just told you, what Tom Lee told you — people understand in markets.
So midterm history, record deal-making, and fresh regulated crypto progress are the backdrop. Deregulation, Texas data centers, and crypto probes are new risks. Let's see what's going to happen.
Today, Wednesday, we have US trade balance data coming out, and the Brazil central bank decision. Okay, no one really cares. But if you are in Brazil, big shout out. Bank of England — this one is a bit heavier, but overall also not too impactful. They're likely going to hike, but England is in a corner. If they hike, how will they pay their interest? How will they finance government? It's a big problem in England with the finances. Not as big as in France — France is literally cooked when it comes to their debt, when it comes to how much they have to pay just for interest. England is trying to hike so that financial markets see them as having everything under control. Let's see what's going to happen.
Big tech and AI could face major investigations. Let's see how major though. If there are insider connections with Trump — sometimes people have said there are meetings, and then a few weeks after some big news is announced, there are discussions that maybe someone could make trades on non-public information because they were part of White House discussions. There have been talks like this. But as always, nothing is as dramatic as people are afraid. It's going to be a few weeks here and there, it's going to calm down. Maybe some subpoenas are going to be issued, but it's going to take a long time. Subpoenas are not instant coffee. They're going to figure it out. Maybe until they start figuring it out, it's already the next presidential election. So there's new news to worry about in terms of the market. I'm just bullish, guys.
NFTs, Pokemon cards, and the case for digital collectibles
Ivan on Tech: Can NFTs come back? Listen to this. This is a guy speaking about a fake Pokémon card. What are people doing? They're buying a fake Pokémon card for $600,000. That's what it is. But it kind of shows you that this idea of collecting is very nice, and NFTs will come back in one way or another.
Video clip subject: "I have just been scammed out of $660,000 USD because I bought one of my dream cards — the Call of Legends Shiny Rayquaza PSA 10. I've been trying to complete the PSA 10 Call of Legends Shiny Legend sets. This is one of the biggest ones in that set. I saw the scans, it looked like a very clean card, and the label looked very, very real..."
Ivan on Tech: Anyway, the guy bought some Pokémon cards. What's going on? See, there's another reason why they cannot go nuclear — the West is cooked. Okay, go nuclear. There is a war now. Who are you going to send to the war? You're going to send this guy with his Pokémon? "I bought my Pokémon card. It's been my dream." He's almost crying because his Pokémon card was fake. What? What's happening?
But is this true that in NFTs it cannot happen? You know exactly which NFTs you have. You know exactly that they're real. Now, you can still get drained — there are a million other ways you can get wrecked in NFTs. You connect your wallet, they steal your NFT. Quantum. We have a bunch of other stuff. You put it in a hardware wallet — hardware wallet was not safe. We have many other issues. But this thing of "is it real or not real" is not an issue. I can tell you it is not an issue.
Contrarian signal: investors selling Bitcoin to chase AI
Ivan on Tech: Okay, another thing which I love. I love this. There's a famous guy in Tesla investing who basically said that he doesn't like Bitcoin because it's boring. The things going on with AI are infinitely more interesting than Bitcoin.
Guys, guys — such a big mistake. The time to be excited about AI was January 2026. That was when we rotated out of crypto because it went bear in Q4 2025. AI was the new bull trend. That was the time. Now it's November 2026. Look at what's happening. "I'm so excited about AI." Okay. I mean, if you said it a year ago — okay. But now? Do you think you have some alpha here buying the no-brainer thing? What is the alpha in buying what everyone is excited about? Everyone is excited about AI, man. Your grandma is excited about AI. Your dog is excited. Everyone's excited about AI. So it already pumped a lot. Price discovery already happened. You're excited — great. Everyone's excited. Your giant is excited. Everyone's excited, man.
Crypto? No one is excited. They're literally spitting on crypto, which is very good. I think it's fantastic. There is never a situation where everyone is bullish and it goes up forever. Just like in October 2025 when we became risk-off on crypto, people said, "Ivan, you're crazy. How can you be bearish?" The same thing is now — we're bullish crypto and most people are saying "Bitcoin is just boring, AI is infinitely more interesting than Bitcoin."
This is another guy — Tesla Newsbreaker — who wrote: "I have sold my remaining Bitcoin. I bought it all in 2018. Over the past few years I sold small amounts. I had a modest investment in Doge and Ethereum over the years, but have long been out of those. The reason? All my friends who were enthusiastic about crypto have refocused on AI."
Guys, if you invest like this — "my friends don't like it anymore" — okay, so if your friends jump off a roof, you also jump off a roof? Is it only in Eastern Europe that parents say that? Kids always say something dumb like "oh but my friends are doing that," and the standard response is: if your friend jumps off a roof, are you also going to jump off the roof? Use your own brain. Do you have a brain?
What is the accolade of your friend? Is he a great investor? There's no accolade. "All my friends who were enthusiastic about crypto have refocused on AI." Maybe they refocused slightly towards the high valuations. Maybe you should have new friends that focus on early valuations. Why didn't they tell you in Q1? Why did they tell you in Q4?
Because yours truly — not to toot my own horn — we went risk-off on crypto in October 2025. And the next trade, the money scanner, the money line AI — now here, reconsider your friends. Who is this friend you have?
"I don't personally know anyone building exciting crypto projects. When Chamath and Jason shared similar thoughts to me..." Okay, so he says when Chamath said it was bearish, he also invested in all of Chamath's SPACs. You know Chamath's SPAC history. You know his history with most of those investments. This guy needs to reconsider his friend group and the people he listens to. Early Facebook — congrats, great. When it comes to joining a unicorn before it's a unicorn, great guy, great accolade. Everything market-related? Chamath, my guy. I mean, sadly, what I've heard — the SPAC new great opportunity, another SPAC, all to zero.
"And Jason" — okay, Jason bought Uber early on. He's said it a million times since then. What else did he buy? No one knows. "So I decided it was time to move on." Okay, guys. Big shout out to Chamath, Matthew, Dave, Lee, Jason. I love you all. We're a bit showbiz here, we have to make it a bit dramatic. But it's true. It's fully true. 100% true.
So yeah — I become very bullish when I read stuff like this. It's very, very nice, guys.
Binance hack: social engineering via fake job interview and fake Homebrew app
Ivan on Tech: Binance, as you remember, got hacked for six billion. The reasons are quite crazy. Basically, one DevOps guy downloaded a fake Homebrew app, and another DevOps guy thought he was being interviewed for a new job by another company and downloaded a fake file that was supposed to be a coding assignment but was actually a virus. Let's see what happened.
The attack preparation — our current investigation indicates this was a sophisticated multi-stage attack. Guys, if I have an employee who wrecks my infrastructure so that we lose six billion, and the reason is that he wanted to switch jobs — not only did he want to switch jobs, he did an interview. He did a bit of interviewing. He wanted a job, he went on an interview, and by doing that interview he wrecked six billion. Oh bro. That's — you want to do a bit of interview, man? Do the interview on your other computer. Don't use the work computer for your interviewing, man.
Let's say a guy goes to an interview and wrecks everything. How can it even be possible? It needs to be many guys that went to interview at the same time, because then we would have a big talk with the CTO about how he made the system such that a guy wanting to change jobs downloads a file that tracks everything.
So the first step — Engineer A from the DevOps team downloaded a fake Homebrew. For all of you non-tech guys, Homebrew is like an app you use to download other apps and tools. It's a package manager for macOS. It's very famous. As a dev, you need Homebrew — you can pull down all kinds of dependencies, libraries, files. It's a very important thing. So everyone needs Homebrew. What you should not do is Google "Homebrew" and download a fake Homebrew from a fake Google ad.
And by the way — when is Google going to get legally wrecked for these scams? Because the amount of money being lost due to Google promoting scams on the first page is crazy. But anyway, the first step was that the guy downloaded a fake Homebrew, which all devs need. Our security team detected the anomaly, replaced the device, and rotated all related credentials. However, Engineer A's role and his related colleagues on the wallet infrastructure team were exposed to the hacker.
Throughout 2026, Binance's security team detected and prevented 57 suspected North Korea-linked cyber threats. Okay. Then in September — social engineering of Software Engineer B. So another guy was contacted through a legitimate job-hunting platform. The guy wanted a job, wanted a salary raise. The scammer says, "Hey, you want a salary raise? Come here." Engineer B had a profile on the platform and used Binance as a reference to get this other job. And then after everything was done for him — after everything was easy, job you want, you got it, laptop from them, you got it — after all of this, the guy still goes and looks for a job. Not only looking for a job, but also using Binance as a promotion.
So they reported: the project director arranged a first-round interview with HR, followed by a second round with an individual claiming to be the CEO of a fictitious company. In the first round, the purported HR representative conducted a live video interview. The interviewer shared social media accounts including personal photos, videos, posts on platforms in order to build trust. So Kim Jong-un basically showed, "Hey, here's my dog, here's my children." This was more advanced and deceptive than previously seen.
The second interview was conducted in a popular social chat app. Near the end of the interview, Engineer B was instructed to download an assignment containing a virus. The repository contained malicious code. So basically the second guy got wrecked this way. And then I guess somehow they connected that one guy got wrecked by fake Homebrew, the second guy got wrecked by fake social engineering by promising a pot of gold if you go to this engineering interview.
Then what happened — all of this was used, and they all got wrecked. I'm actually less angry at the guy who downloaded Homebrew. If I'm CZ, man, and this guy works at Binance and he does a fake interview basically trying to leave the company, and this way also wrecks the company — man, there is something there. This guy is happy that Ivan on Tech is not his boss, I'll tell you that.
I can just imagine in my head how the guy was like on LinkedIn posting, "Oh, my first day at Binance. I'm so thankful to join Binance." But in reality, what does he want? He wants a self-promo, he wants someone to give him a raise. What happens? He gets an interview, he gets — okay.
The good thing is CZ got things under control. Or I mean, CZ pretends to not work at Binance. Maybe he doesn't work there officially, but he's still communicating on Binance's behalf. In any case, CZ has the money recovered. Everyone is good. Everything's perfect.
Big shout out to the guy seeking the job. Probably a great guy. But yeah, be careful guys — when you interview, just know that if you download something, you could wreck the company. It's very bad. Especially if you breach policies that the company has. For example, why did he use the company computer for it? If you want an interview, do it on your personal computer.
And also, when you do a job interview, just ask them to say that Kim Jong-un is retardo. Before I would do a job interview, I would say, "Hey guys, hello. Before we start, can you say Kim Jong-un is retardo?" Because you work in crypto, I work in crypto. We just need to establish who is who. If there is an Asian-looking dude and they say they're from South Korea, I'd say, "Really? You're from South Korea? Why are you working in HR? I don't see many South Koreans in HR." And then I tell them to repeat what I just said. Very important.
Gold, safe havens, and the dollar
Ivan on Tech: Why is gold falling? Because it is in a bear trend. Assets in bear trends tend to go down. But gold actually bounced a bit. It bounced a bit, but it's still in a bear trend.
The story with gold ended in Q1 with all of this speculation and people saying the dollar is going to hyperinflate. We said it's not going to hyperinflate. You remember here — silver was mooning so hard, people said the dollar is going to hyperinflate. We said it's not going to hyperinflate. And actually silver is in a bear trend, so we're out. This was back in like January-February, and silver wrecked, gold wrecked.
So gold and silver are just like any other asset. Theoretically, gold should be a safe haven. But you see — it's not a safe haven, at least when you want it to be. Long term, of course, gold is fantastic. But month to month, quarter to quarter, conflict or no conflict, it doesn't work as a safe haven. It pumps for other reasons — when there is supply-demand dynamics, when there is some kind of mania worldwide.
Gold is fantastic if you don't treat it as protection for day-to-day events or even month-to-month events. Like we had this year with Iran — in this kind of month-to-month protection, normally it's the dollar. We discussed it the other day — the dollar becomes strong when there are international issues, when there is some conflict. Everyone dumps their national currency for dollars. And that has also been seen in the dollar chart since the beginning of the year — it's up and up and up and up. Why? Because conflict, uncertainty. People flock to the dollar. They don't flock to gold. They flock to the dollar.
But gold long-term is superior. Short-term the issue is that you don't know when gold is going to pump. It can pump for its own reason, like it did here during the last few years — it had its own reason, it had fantastic bull trends that took it from around $1,800 to $5,000. Was it connected to some major uncertainty? Not really. And now it has a correction. So gold is great, but don't try to lean on it in times of uncertainty because it doesn't work like that. It pumps in its own way. Let it do its thing. Let it cook on its own.
Elon Musk's Texas operations at risk after Democratic sweep
Ivan on Tech: Elon takes a hit on Texas operations. Let's check with Bullmania AI. What is the risk for Elon and his Texas operations now that Texas voted Democrat?
So Texas delivered a historic Democratic sweep. Democrat Gina Hinojosa beat Greg Abbott. James Talico beat Kevin Paxton. Elon Musk spent heavily — hundreds of millions overall, with a large share in Texas backing the losing Republican ticket. And Elon himself said on Twitter that his "laser eye election interference" did not work, because everyone was saying, "Ha, he's interfering in the election."
See what happened — he lost. His companies: Tesla Gigafactory Texas near Austin, SpaceX in South Texas, xAI, Neuralink, the Boring Company, Starlink — they're all in Texas. The new leadership campaigned directly against the model that attracted them.
Guys, is it because people moved from California to Texas and now they've made Texas Democratic? Is that what happened? Anyway, we're apolitical. Again, just want to help — we discussed why it's nice that Democrats have a bit of a gridlock. So I'm with you guys. If you're Democratic, I'm with you. If you love Gina Hinojosa — big shout out. We love Gina. Fantastic.
So the new leadership campaigned to basically go against whatever attracted Elon. With Elon, I'm a bit concerned. His stuff is physical. His biggest risk is that he builds physical stuff. In the worst case — which is low risk, but the worst case — you have a politburo, you have a communist revolution, which may happen with AI. Literally, it may happen. The good thing with a crypto business or an online business is that you take it and you leave. So I think Elon should diversify his holdings into crypto, into international stuff, because he has everything there — big data center, big launchpad — it could all be taken very fast.
Just like the Russian nobility back in the early 1900s lived it up, and then everything changed in a few years very quickly. Once the plebs don't like new tech, they go very fast. Once the plebs think it's not fair — for good or bad reason — it goes very fast. With AI, guys, the plebs will not like it. I understand why, because they need to find new jobs. Some people think it's exciting; for some people it's a big challenge. So big political changes may happen quite fast at some point.
That's why — you have the Gigafactory, SpaceX, but also you have a lot of time now to diversify. I would tell Elon: go crypto, my guy. Diversify. You have all of this stuff. What if Gina Hinojosa wants to take it? And also Scott Galloway said he wants to execute you. And Gina Hinojosa — maybe she's kind of on the same wave, you know.
So the new leadership does not like all this stuff that attracted him to Texas. Hinojosa made opposition to unchecked data center growth a centerpiece of her campaign. She called for a moratorium on new approvals until the legislature passes certain rules. Exactly. Let's go to space, Elon. Let's make a launchpad in space. You need to go outside of this jurisdiction. Space is probably the next frontier. You can put a data center in space.
Elon wrote: "Greed can be satisfied. Envy cannot." And: "Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn't work this time." And: "Data center in space looking pretty appealing right now."
Hinojosa targeted sales tax exemptions. Well, I'm all for removing subsidies, but remove or decrease the sales tax overall. She wants companies to cover their own extra costs rather than — maybe I can even agree a bit with Hinojosa here. This is the market way to see it. We should not subsidize too much. Existing deals may face audits or pressure to meet job commitments more strictly.
Talico ran hard against Elon Musk personally in the closing weeks. "Elon Musk wants our land. Texas is not for sale." Anyway guys, let's see. We're apolitical. Let's go back to apolitical.
I think overall this Democratic sweep is bullish for the market for the reasons we discussed in the beginning. If I were Elon Musk, I would be slightly concerned. Maybe I would buy more Bitcoin. Maybe I would buy a lot of Bitcoin. Maybe I would buy quite a lot of Bitcoin. Man, at least — okay, you have how much, 1.6 trillion or something net worth? Maybe convert at least like 500 billion into Bitcoin. Just so you're safe. Otherwise, Talico is coming. Hinojosa is coming. Very fast. Very fast.
Iran nuclear deal probability and managing fear
Ivan on Tech: Looking at the Iran deal — there is now a higher likelihood of some kind of deal in the coming months. Basically, until March 1st, there is a 26% odds of some kind of Iran nuclear deal, rising slowly albeit. This is very important because the amount of fear, the amount of panic during the last week with Iran has been quite insane. Tucker Carlson was speaking about nuclear — and in most cases that never plays out. You have the maximum fear and then, "Ah, we made a deal." It has happened many times. Many, many times. Maximum, maximum, maximum fear, and then, "Okay, great guys, we made a deal." So it wouldn't actually surprise me if they make some kind of deal quite fast, or they do a deal with just a delay.
So there's always a chance that it goes nuclear, but we need to keep the probabilities in perspective. The chance of something nuclear — while it could happen — is very low. Very, very low. The higher chance is that there is some kind of extension or deal. And at the end of the day, if you go nuclear, you lose this nice asset which is your US-Iran conflict. It's a big asset for the correct people. You can basically control the market however you want. Today: "We're almost nuclear!" Ah, no nuclear. It's a gift for the correct people — the whole world can become mega bear like this, and then mega bull like this. Who would want to waste such an asset? I think the asset is great, man. Why do you want to waste it?
So obviously there's always a risk. Maybe they go nuclear. But we need to base our decisions and feelings on probability. The probability of something crazy going on, some nuclear attack — not high. Not zero, but not high. So that's how we can then control emotion. We can then control what we do in the market. We can then control everything else.
Because many people — what they do is they become so worried, so scared, they put this crazy low-probability scenario as their number one scenario, and then they dump everything, or they buy something they think is going to do well in that scenario. And yeah, it is a scenario, but it's very low probability. So you basically bet in a very bad way. Kind of like the market wanted you to. Kind of like these dudes wanted you to. And then it's just one Truth Social tweet away from, "Ah guys, never mind. Great guys. Bullish. Bullish."