Digital Asset News host Rob covers the Strait of Hormuz closure, crypto market conditions, and AI pivot stocks
A solo live stream from the Digital Asset News channel, hosted by Rob, covering geopolitical developments affecting crypto markets, liquidation dynamics, historical Bitcoin cycle patterns, and AI-driven stock pivots.
Summary
Rob opens with breaking news that Iran has re-closed the Strait of Hormuz after briefly declaring it open to commercial shipping, and plays clips of a news report, a distressed Indian tanker captain, and President Trump commenting on the situation. He argues this geopolitical volatility has only modestly affected crypto prices — Bitcoin is down just 2.5% — and attributes most of the price action to leveraged liquidations rather than retail panic. He draws parallels between the current 2026 midterm-year market cycle and the 2022 cycle, arguing that historical patterns suggest a significant recovery is ahead. He closes with a note on companies pivoting to AI — specifically Allbirds, a shoe company that announced a conversion of its warehouses into AI compute facilities and saw its stock rise roughly 10x in 24 hours — and conducts a live Q&A covering the GENIUS Act, the Clarity Act, stablecoins, and dollar-cost averaging strategy.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Strait of Hormuz Re-Closes After Brief Opening
Rob: Hello everybody. Welcome to the Saturday live stream. It looks like the Strait of Hormuz is closed again, which isn't too surprising, especially going into the weekend. It looks like there was going to be an openness for the strait, oil dropped precipitously, we saw a bunch of big price action for crypto, and then of course that just all goes away — like we talked about yesterday. So that is what we're actually facing. We'll go over all that, but I want to remind everybody that's not a big deal. It's just par for the course, and I think volatility is going to be the winner. It's all about how you handle it.
I think that's the most important thing. For me, this is actually great news for this dog right here — she doesn't care. This is your spirit animal. Just relax. It's going to be just fine. Let's get into today's stories.
So today, breaking news — what is going on? Well, this is it. Take a listen.
News Anchor: "Let's bring you that breaking news out of Iran this hour. Tehran has closed the Strait of Hormuz again. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps says the strait has reverted to its previous state, meaning the waterway is again closed and under the control of Tehran. They say that is because of US 'piracy,' as they put it, as Washington has continued to enforce its blockade of Iranian ships and ports. The strait had been declared open to commercial shipping on Friday by Iran, and some ships had already begun to transit."
Rob: Great. So, closed again. Not surprising. That's just pretty much how it goes. And even though it's closed, Iran is still letting different tankers through. This is a quick snippet — looks like this is an Indian tanker going through and actually getting fired on. This tanker from India had already paid and actually talked to Iran, but it looks like they're still firing on them. Take a listen.
Indian Tanker Captain: "Navy. Sea Navy. This is Motoran. You gave me clearance to go. My name is second on your list. You gave me clearance to go. You are firing now. Let me turn back."
Rob: Crazy times. And then lastly, this is what President Trump had to say about this.
President Trump: "Talking about Iran later — we have very good conversations going on. It's working out very well. They got a little cute, as they have been doing for 47 years. Nobody ever took them on. We took them on. They have no navy. They have no air force. They have no leaders. Their leaders — it is regime change. You call that enforced regime change. But we were talking to them. They wanted to close up the strait again — they've been doing it for years. They get back a lot of the ships coming up to Texas."
Rob: So that is essentially just a little catchup about what's happening in the region. And of course people will say, "Well, who is it going through?" I have to reiterate — this is not a geopolitical channel, it's a crypto channel. We'll get to that in a second. But unfortunately, politics and what is going on is affecting all the markets, so we have to cover it to know exactly what is going on.
The question then is: who are we negotiating with, and are we talking to the right people? Because it sounds like nobody really knows what's going on. However, this is Abbas Araghchi — who the heck is this guy? He is serving as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iran since August 2024. He is a politician, apparently involved in these talks. He stated this yesterday, April 17th: "In line with the ceasefire in Lebanon, passage for all commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire on the coordinated route already announced by the Ports and Maritime Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran." So again, we had confirmation on all sides that this was actually going through, but they closed it off again. That's what's happening.
Crypto Market Impact and Risk Levels
Rob: So that is the geopolitical part. What does this mean for us? Well, for me it doesn't mean really much of anything. We've talked about this quite a long time. I take a look at the risk levels — looking at Ben's website, Into the Cryptoverse — risk levels are roughly the same. It went up a little bit because of the price action, but we're at 0.3 now.
I dollar-cost average every single Monday. I dump a good amount in and I buy Bitcoin. I know there are some experts that will say, "Rob, you've got to wait till the 200-week moving average, or maybe the 250, or maybe the 300-week moving average — that's the best time." I'm like, I don't know if that's going to work out. I'm just going to keep buying, because my thesis is that the government will keep printing and the government continues to debase the currency. Why wouldn't I put money into something that is the antithesis of that? So that's pretty much where we're at.
This doesn't affect me at all. I don't know how this affects you, but prices are going down. I expect them to go down over the weekend, and I don't expect any kind of turnaround. So that's good for me for Monday. We'll see how it works out.
And then across the board, the crypto markets have taken a little bit of a slashing, but not as bad as you would think. Bitcoin's only down 2.5%. The market cap itself — I remember it being at $2.5 trillion, and now we're at $2.6 trillion. I think we hit $2.7, $2.75 trillion. So again, 24 hours after all this talk and the strait closing — not awful. Ethereum down 3.7%, XRP 4.3%, BNB 1.9%. Tron down 1.3%. I'll take it.
Liquidations Are Driving Price Action, Not Retail Panic
Rob: So what is actually happening here? Is it because people are panicking? I don't think that's what it is. I think people like ourselves who have been around for quite some time — retail left us not too long ago. The rookie retail, the ones that just really got into the meme coin nonsense and really just got into the whole blissfulness of price-go-up and didn't really do their homework — those people are gone.
What's happening right now is that it's more about people who are playing the leverage side and who are getting liquidated. There was a great article: "Crypto saving expert talks about the liquidation engine problem." Crypto liquidations exceeded $154 billion in 2025, with even more in 2026, revealing a system where exchanges, market makers, and infrastructure failures drive price action more than spot markets.
So I don't think it is people who are panicking — and definitely not you guys. If you're watching this channel right here right now, you've been here for probably your second, third, or like me, your fourth time around. I don't think this really affects you as much because you're like, "Two and a half percent — boring." And that's pretty much what it is.
But looking at the liquidation heat maps over here in Coinlass over the last four hours — Raydium, which was the darling of the last week or so, actually had a big jump as far as liquidation. Here's over 12 hours. And here's 24 hours. In 24 hours, you've roughly got about a quarter of a billion dollars liquidated in longs and shorts. Is this a big deal? Not really. But this, I think, is where the price numbers — what is going down, what is going up — all comes from people essentially gambling on longs and shorts.
I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm not your dad. But one of my rules is: I don't use leverage. You can use leverage as much as you want to, but it kind of screws up a lot of things. For me, I'm just curious as to why people keep gambling this way when they can just save it for the long haul. Anyhow, it's whatever you want to do.
ETF Flows Remain Strong
Rob: As a reminder, as far as the cool heads — the ones who are here for a little bit of the longer piece — ETF flows are still doing great. As of yesterday, this was the Bitcoin ETF flow. It was the highest it has been in roughly a month at $663 million on April 17th, led by BlackRock — you know, that small organization with trillions of assets under management — Fidelity, Bitwise, Ark, Grayscale, Morgan Stanley, everything across the board. People are buying because they know where things are going, especially as these new ETFs are opening up.
Even the Ethereum ETF did pretty well yesterday — $127 million, and again that is the highest it has been in roughly a month. So people in it for the long haul are here, and this is pretty much where we're at.
Historical Bitcoin Cycle Patterns and the 2026 Midterm Year
Rob: If we take a look at things historically speaking, it's uncanny how things just kind of play out again and again. Midterm years — which this is, here in the United States — this is our midterm in between the four-year presidential cycle. We're going to get into Congress and who's going to retain or get new seats. Because of that, there's ambiguity. Markets don't like that. And because of that, it's kind of a rough year.
This happened four years ago in 2022. We can see here from the Bitcoin market cycle peak — from the last market cycle peak to the bottom. The peak was October 6th. We haven't hit the bottom yet, I don't think so. But you can see how much we've gone down. Looking at this from 2021 to 2022 — just look at that. It was a month in difference because we peaked out in October. In 2021, we peaked out in November. And if you just shift over a month or so, it's pretty much the same chart, the same line. And then it happened again — bottom four. That was in 2017. Then you go to 2013, it's the same thing, but it always goes to the same point: lower for longer. And that's pretty much how it is.
And then, as also a reminder, this is why I think retail will come back. It's because of this midterm year. In 2022, look when the S&P 500 bottomed out — October of 2022. Nice little bottom right there. But look what happened after October 2022. We went from around 3,570 to 7,126. That's pretty good. You essentially doubled in four years. I guess it's great.
But what's going to bring people back is stuff like this. Here's the Bitcoin market cycle bottom to the top. It went from roughly $15,776 — correct me in the comment section — and the ROI from November 9th, 2022, going to the top, was almost 8x. So again, 2x is fine. I like 8x as well. I'd probably take the 8x.
Now, is this going to keep happening? No, because there's a thing called diminishing returns. We've seen that across the board. But let's just say we do 4x from the bottom. And what if the bottom was $60,000? I think it's going to go lower, but maybe let's just say $60,000. Let's just do a 4x. Quick math: $240,000. Now, that's just a price prediction and they're all worthless. Let's just do a 3x — $180,000. I think people will get into Bitcoin because of that, and then hopefully they do some research and figure it all out, and then next cycle they'll be here with us going, "Yeah, I'm just going to accumulate in the bear market because that's where all the money is made." Let me know what you think about that in the comments section.
AI Pivot Stocks: The Allbirds Example
Rob: Lastly, I want everybody to be aware of what's going on with AI and how big this play can be. This is Allbirds. If you don't know what Allbirds is, don't worry — I didn't either. Apparently it's a shoe company. Went public in 2021 and lost 99% of its valuation. I think it was like a $30 billion valuation at one point. It was just a shoe company, but people loved it. Over time, people stopped loving it because it was a little bit too expensive and maybe the quality wasn't as good — I'm not sure, don't sue me.
You can see today it's $10. You're like, "Why is Rob showing me this? Who cares about a shoe company?" It's because they just pivoted — 24 to 36 hours ago — to AI. All of their warehouses, they are converting into compute palaces, factories for artificial intelligence and electrical storage. And because of that, just them saying it, they went from a price of $2.49, which had been flat forever — that was on Tuesday — and by the next day it went to $22. So I'm not a gambler, but I would just say: watch out for these companies, because it's happening all the time.
It's happening in Bitcoin mining. Marathon just did it. A couple of the other big names also did it — Genesis and others — switching to say, "We'll provide AI compute and electrical output." Allbirds did this and it has nothing to do whatsoever with their original business, and they did essentially a 10x in 24 hours. So just be aware that's what's going on. I know it seems a little bit degenerate, and it is, but I thought it was interesting.
Live Q&A
Rob: All right. Good afternoon, Kevin. I'm having a little bit of a slowdown on my computer. If I start to get a little glitchy, let me know.
Tiff said, "This is being done because multiple US cities are starting to ban new data centers." Oh, that's right. I've heard about this — I believe New York is doing this as well. So if you have warehouse space, hey, go for it. This is why we should pay attention to this. If you've got another company saying, "Hey, we're going to pivot to AI," it wouldn't be a bad idea to throw $10 in. Maybe you get to $100 or something.
Vision Pulse says, "Trump is the biggest liar ever." Well, he was a politician, so go figure.
Rabble Rouseer says, "I finally got a Tangem wallet only to find out my phone doesn't have NFC capability." Holy smokes. Well, Rabble, I'm sorry about that. NFC is, of course — if you don't know — it's when you tap your phone and it can relay information. That might actually be a feature given all the different thievery and scams going on. Have you heard about this one where scammers will get close to you and they'll have this device which can, because of the NFC signal, steal some of your data or different cards attached to it? It's pretty crazy. Some of these older phones — they're a luxury. I'm thinking personally of getting a flip phone because I am on my phone way too much.
Jim says, "Actually, Jeffrey Epstein is the biggest liar ever." That could be true. I mean, we can ask him. I know he's alive somewhere.
Albero said, "That's why you use an RFID-proof wallet." Very nice.
Gas Fee says, "He is exit liquidity." Well, not this cycle. This cycle is different, baby. I'm not going to double or round-trip my bags. Repeat after me. I did okay — I just didn't sell as much as I should have.
Vision says, "Clarity has a zero chance of getting approved." I don't know if it's a 0% chance. I think it's a lower chance, but I'm not sure.
Jimmy says, "Allegedly, Jeffrey Epstein is alive." Allegedly. That's funny. Maybe it's him and Tupac on the island. I don't know.
"What part of the Clarity Act is beneficial to us plebs? If you custody your own Bitcoin, understand everything bleeds to Bitcoin. The Clarity Act means nothing, but Wall Street and banks will screw us." Not necessarily. Let me find something here.
The Clarity Act Explained
Rob: There are certain things that help us in the Clarity Act. One of those is we need to know who's in charge, who's overseeing these different assets. Is it the CFTC? Is it the SEC? That's a big thing, because when you're under the jurisdiction of the SEC it's more stringent — which is fine — but it kind of stifles innovation. If you want to look for stifling of innovation, go no further than the EU. Sound off in the comment section, but as I understand it from people who are from Europe, it's very difficult to get things moving as far as opening new businesses and being able to do things.
Here in America, you just throw up a sign and you've got a business. You can register it as an LLC, S Corp, or C Corp for tax reasons and things like that, but just getting things going is very easy. The SEC will kind of hinder that because it's bogged down. The CFTC — the Commodities Futures Trading Commission — if they handle things with crypto, then it's a commodity and things will be easier. So that part is great.
The next one is institutional on-ramps and integration. This is what some people are talking about when they say Wall Street will screw us. Well, there are some pension funds that can't go into this market. There are some that can, some that cannot. There are some money markets that can't go into it. That's just not enough liquidity. So if we can just get more liquidity, so much the better.
And then the next two: pathway for decentralization and commodity transition. This is a big thing about tokenization of assets. Think about this — if you're doing some kind of trading or money market activity and you're moving funds around, and you're stifled on the weekends and can't take advantage of certain yields on Saturday and Sunday, how much money do you lose over a month, over six months, over a year, over 10 years? It's a lot of money. So if you can just start moving it around and eliminate the middleman and reduce costs, that's so much the better.
And then asset segregation and consumer protection. I think this is a bigger one than people want to let on, because with this one, if we had had consumer protection, maybe we wouldn't have had an FTX, Celsius, Voyager, BlockFi — insert nonsense here — Luna. Because of that, a lot of the bigger names don't want to put in all types of funding. BlackRock has their own ETF, that's great. But as far as other things like pensions, it's not so much about making money for your clients — it's about not losing all the money and then getting sued because you went into some crazy crypto scheme. So with the Clarity Act addressing that, that's a big thing.
And then the last one, of course, is stablecoins and the yield that they bring forth. The banks are freaking out because they know they're going to get Blockbustered. People are going to want to actually get some reasonable yield instead of 0.002%. If we're going to give them funds and we want to keep up with inflation, well, pay us for putting our money in your bank. But the banks are like, "No, we don't want you to do that because we want to do loans and we have low margins." So I don't think it's a bad thing to have some regulation. I know some people would say, "Well, that's not what decentralization is." I get it, but if we want to move forward, that's the thing.
Kazi says, "Rob told me to get out. I did all right in 2025." Well, I just said that Q4 was historically speaking a good time to get out, but I did not call the top whatsoever. So just remember, it's very difficult to do that. Take profits along the way — that's my rule number five. I should have sold more. I didn't, but I did enough to not freak out. And yeah, here we are.
Jimmy says, "I wonder if there's going to be a whole new set of crypto top indicators next cycle because the ones we had suck." CTO Larsson did a great job, and Ivan on Tech did a really good job. I would just take a look at those for tops. Bottoms are a little bit easier, but calling tops — that's pretty difficult.
Rabble Rouseer says, "Stack stables until the bottom of the market, then buy Bitcoin at the bottom." When you've been stacking all bear market, you can do that. Me personally, I just dollar-cost average.