Ivan on Tech analyzes Bitcoin's double bottom pattern, bearish signals, and crypto news in a live Q&A session
Ivan on Tech hosts a solo live stream covering Bitcoin technical analysis, market sentiment indicators, and crypto industry news.
Summary
Ivan on Tech presents a balanced but cautiously bearish analysis of Bitcoin's current market position, examining whether the apparent double bottom formation signals the end of the bear market. He argues that double bottom patterns are not practically tradeable in isolation and that confirmation would require additional signals such as a break above the bull market support band. He reviews several bearish indicators including declining Coinbase premium, rising perpetual futures demand alongside contracting spot demand, and historical patterns around new Fed chairs. On the bullish side, he notes Visa's expansion of stablecoin rails and Bitcoin's above-average year-to-date performance. He also covers Chainalysis's contested use in court proceedings, the Polymarket chain migration, Elon Musk's admission that Grok was trained using OpenAI distillation, and the record number of DeFi exploits in April. Ivan demonstrates the 'Bitcoin Beyond 66' FUD-fighting website live on screen, querying it about Lightning Network and other topics. The episode concludes with a Q&A segment in which viewers ask about three consecutive green monthly candles as a bear market anomaly and the Bitcoin conference featuring Kash Patel of the FBI on stage.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin's Double Bottom — Is It Tradeable?
Ivan on Tech: Bitcoin is currently at $77,400, and many people are asking about the double bottom — the W formation right here. Is this a double bottom marking the end of the bear market? The end of this horrible bear market, which we called in October and have been risk-off since? In this video we'll be discussing that. We'll be looking at the bull and bear arguments, the overall market, the stock market, the news, commodities, and of course we're going to go to your Q&A. Whatever you want to talk about, we can do it. But also, we have a new month — it's May 1st. Big shout out to all of the comrades in the comment section and in the chat. Fantastic Labor Day. Fantastic solidarity day. Let's get straight into the show.
So comrades, let's check what's happening on the chart. First and foremost — there is a double bottom. Yes. The question is, can you trade it? That's always the question. Can you actually trade it? There are many things that are in the chart, in the news, that in hindsight look great but are not practical. One example is macro and ISM. You cannot trade based on it, because all of the macro arguments that people make today were valid back in October, and yet altcoins collapsed 80–90% and Bitcoin collapsed 60%. So it's all about what's practical.
Now, is a double bottom practical for us right now? Personally, I'm not using the double bottom on the longer time frame to really decide whether the bear market is over or not. I don't really use double bottoms. The reason is that there are a million fake-outs. You have one arguably right here in 2022 that resulted in us going lower. So instead, you need to use other ways to identify whether some kind of trend reversion has happened.
For example, should we go above the bull market support band — the money line — and let's say we pump here and create a higher high, then you can actually say, okay, this double bottom now confirms that the trend has been broken. Like this would be a confirmation where you can say, yeah, we have a higher high, and also we have a double bottom, and also we are above the money line, and also we have this and this and this. That's what would make it a bit more practical. But to call a double bottom the end of the bear while we're still bearish on the main line, still below the bull market support band — it's just not practical.
A lot of these formations, as you know, are only in hindsight that you can really see that they were there and that you feel they were somehow solid. But while you are living through them, they're not solid. It's not something you can base your trades on. What you can base your trades on is the trends — whether it is the bull market support band, whether it is the main line. That's practical. But a double bottom where we're still below the previous high? I don't use it.
And again, maybe one way for me to communicate here is to just state what I do, because sometimes there's always someone in the chat who's like, "Oh, he was trying to talk down the price. He's trying to be better, so he talks down." Listen, I'm telling you what I do. I'm telling you how I use the chart, how I read the chart. If you do something else, you can talk about different things. I'm just telling you what I do. I'm not telling you what you should do. You do what you want.
To summarize: there is utility to something like a double bottom, but only in combination with other things. Let's say we go bullish on the trends and we have a higher high — then you can say, yeah, by the way, it was also a double bottom, so now you can be even more convinced in your positioning as a bull should we reverse.
You can also use it more quickly if you are a short-term trader. Let's say you draw a target somewhere here and you just want to see a short-term trade — how big it can be. You can take a short-term long towards that target. But it's not really the same thing as saying the bear market is done.
So guys, that's it with the double bottom. Let me know what you think. I don't know if it's the mega bottom of the century, but that's how I see it.
Institutional Demand and Market Sentiment Indicators
Now, looking at what institutions are doing — we can see what they're doing by looking at the Coinbase premium. They are currently dumping, because the Coinbase premium is at a four-week low. Meaning that users of Coinbase are not really buying. Normally when you have a Coinbase premium, it means there is more demand on Coinbase versus other exchanges. Other exchanges are retail buying — you know, all of this offshore retail buying. But Coinbase has been the institutional exchange. So when Coinbase has a premium, it means institutions are buying. Now there is no premium. The Coinbase Bitcoin premium has dropped to a four-week low, and it actually seems to be a bit negative.
Now, Cryptoquant is coming out saying that perpetual futures demand is rising — people are mainly trading perps now — while spot demand is still contracting. That exact setup appeared in 2022 and preceded the next leg down. So these guys at Cryptoquant are a bit bearish. I'll say these guys are not always super correct — their founder called for bear or bull way too early at some point, I remember him being quite wrong — but this is his company and they are analyzing that, yeah, all in all we will have a leg down based on perp demand rising and spot not rising. Let's see.
I mean, at the end of the day they are doing on-chain stuff, and I'm not a big believer in on-chain stuff, guys. I'm not a big believer in looking at what's happening on-chain because you have so many assumptions. But this particular report has not too much to do with on-chain — it's more looking at perps versus spot. So it's not really about on-chain, but normally they do mostly on-chain stuff.
So Bitcoin gained around 20% in April. Futures-driven demand drove up Bitcoin's price in April. Meanwhile, spot demand for Bitcoin contracted throughout the rally, indicating that the market's marginal buyer was speculative, not fundamental. Yeah — this is also why normally if you get below the 200-week moving average, that's where Bitcoin is so cheap that buyers are just staying in line. That's why our buy zone is here below the 200-week, because here is where, if you know about Bitcoin and you know what the hell it is, you buy fundamentally. You just buy because it's so cheap — it's below the 200-week moving average.
Currently we're not seeing that demand step in yet. But it's for a reason that we have the buy zone here below the 200-week, because you need that effect to step in where buyers are lining up, and they line up when they feel that it's cheap and it's not a falling knife. Normally, if you're below the 200-week, then it's a long-term fair price, so to speak — it's the four-year average of an asset — and that's where you have a lot of demand. So it's not random that the buy zone is here. It's all around the long-term moving average. Let's see when the spot demand comes back.
Bearish Signals — New Fed Chair History and the "Sell in May" Thesis
Now guys, I promised you we'd be a bit bullish soon. I just need to give you a bit of bear first and then we'll go a bit bull.
Another bear signal: when there is a new Fed chair, we dump like crazy. You can say it's because normally it is in a midterm year, and midterm year is not good for Bitcoin in general. But Janet Yellen — dear Janet — she stepped in, she sat down in the Fed chair, and when she touched the chair, we dropped 83% in Bitcoin. Powell came in 2018 — Trump, Putin, Powell — before Powell rebelled against Trump, and what happened? We dropped 79%. Then Powell came again in 2022 and we dropped 74%. So yeah, all in all, you see: new Fed chair, new face, new policy, new everything, same result. Will this guy be different? Let me know in the comment section. I'm just telling you the history here.
Also, here is one guy who's been running some numbers. As you know, as a computer scientist — did you guys know that yours truly is a computer scientist? Highly educated computer scientist. I love numbers. I love science. I love when decisions and analysis are anchored in numbers. So this guy — he calls himself Sherlock, a DeFi researcher — he tested whether the "sell in May" thesis on Bitcoin holds.
By the way, we also tested it. Go and check the previous videos on this channel from earlier this week — we had a video about selling in May. He says the basic version actually makes no sense because May has only closed red four out of eight times since 2018. Now, here's the thing: you need to look at midterm years. You need to look at the bear market. This is what we said in our video. Bear markets are always mega, mega bad in May. Bull markets, they pump anyway. So you've got to look at the bears — and if you look at the bears, then it's like 100% bad.
But there is one version that is much more interesting. Since 2020, every time Bitcoin failed to break April's high in the first five days of May, the rest of May traded at least 5% lower. Average drawdown: 20%. But if you look at bear markets and midterm years, this is way higher — average drawdown would be like 60–70%.
So in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024, and 2025, Bitcoin broke above April's high on May 1st. So basically, according to this guy — and he has done research, though he's not fully correct here because he's not looking at bear markets specifically, he looks at all years — but even in his analysis, if we don't pump above April's high very quickly, it's not going to be good in May. So it's another bear signal.
That's very important. Basically, if we go to the monthly chart, the high is right here at $79,000. So if May can pump above this April high of $79K, then we escape this situation he speaks about — where if we don't go above April's high quickly, we dump. Let's see if we can escape that or not.
Bullish Fundamentals — Visa Expands Stablecoin Rails
Okay, let's go to some bullish. You guys ready? Now, in terms of the chart, there's not too much bullish. So that's why we have to do a bit of mental gymnastics and look at fundamentals. It's the last straw of hope you can hold on to when you are wrecked — at least you can look at some fundamentals.
So looking at fundamentals: Visa expands stablecoin rails as demand grows 50%. They added Base, Canton, Polygon, and Tempo — which is Stripe's chain. They added all of these chains. Now they will process stablecoins on all of these chains. Will it help Polygon? I don't know, man. It seems that no matter what happens on the chain, it still dumps. Poly Market is like the biggest app in the world for crypto, and Polygon is down a lot — the valuation of Poly Market is higher than the whole chain of Polygon. So this is quite bad for infrastructure L1s. We're also in a bear market, so it's bleeding heavily, heavily, heavily. I remember the good old times of the 2020–2021 bull market. It was crazy. It was crazy, great times. Now it's totally different.
So you have massive adoption, massive adoption of the apps built on top of Polygon. The problem is Polygon cannot capture any of that value. And what happens is that Poly Market is now moving away from Polygon. Poly Market is saying that the infrastructure is too bad — and by the way, it's not an attack on Polygon per se, because all infrastructure is bad if you have an app and it's not perfectly custom-built. That's normally what happens at the end of the day. All of these apps become big, so they do their own chain where it's all fully customized — whatever block time, whatever parameters. If you can fit the infrastructure to the app and custom-build it, that's the best-case scenario.
It's like Apple custom-building their hardware for their software — that's the best. And all the others have their Windows with all of the custom crap hardware from everywhere. It doesn't work as well. The same thing is here. You have Solana or Polygon or any other L1 — it is a general-purpose infrastructure at the end of the day that needs to cater to NFTs, to DEXes, to stablecoins, to prediction markets. It cannot be as good as a chain built specifically for a prediction market.
So let's see how they will move ahead. But one thing is for sure: Poly Market's new VP of Engineering has said that the platform is planning a chain migration. Will it be its own chain? Will it be Solana? Let's see. There is an argument to be made that if you do your own chain, now you have to spend so much effort and time building it and maintaining it. It will take away focus from your actual app. So instead of developing the prediction market, now you have to figure out how to run the chain, the validators, ensure that it's decentralized — you know, they need to do a bit of decentralization theater so it's not really attacked as just a server. Although it is just a server, they need to do a bit of dancing so the regulator gets a bit confused and thinks it's decentralized.
Anyway, it will take away focus from the app. So there is an argument to be made that in the future there will be general-purpose chains good enough that you don't have to do all of that as an app developer. But for now, there's no such thing. So I think there's a high chance they do their own chain now. Stripe has their own — Tempo — they just do stablecoin payments, but they have their own chain now also. And it's also a good business decision to do your own chain. You can have a new asset worth billions of dollars, and it's relatively well understood technically. It's not like trying to build a new product and get product-market fit. It's more a tech solution. It's still going to take your attention, but it can still be a good business decision if you can have a new asset that you control worth billions and billions, with a token, with airdrops.
Bitcoin FUD-Fighting Tool and Chainalysis Legal Scrutiny
So guys, moving on, there is a new website that has been created for fighting Bitcoin FUD. It's called Bitcoin Beyond 66. They built this app where you can ask it things. For example, I asked it "Bitcoin is bad for the environment" and it gives me an answer about why Bitcoin is good for the environment based on peer-reviewed scientific studies — peer-reviewed published papers. And as you know, yours truly is a computer scientist. I'm very academic myself personally, and I love that. I love that you have the peer reviewing.
I asked it "Bitcoin is created by the CIA or the guy with an island." It says it falls into conspiracy theory. Guys, what should we ask? Let's ask "Bitcoin is not Satoshi's vision." What does it say? It says, "This is actually an interesting point that deserves a thoughtful response." Okay, you can read there.
Let's ask about Lightning Network. Let's ask it something like "Lightning Network is not a good solution and most people using the Lightning Network use it via centralized wallets and channels." Let's see what it says, because this is actually true. How will it defend this? You cannot defend it, man, because it's the truth. Many Lightning users do start with custodial — yes, okay. The key difference is choice. Yeah. Choice. But still, it's all centralized, man. It's all centralized. I mean, choice — the key difference is choice. But don't compare to traditional finance. Compare to Solana. Compare to other fast chains. Let's see what it says, because how can you defend Lightning Network against fast chains?
It says Lightning Network and other crypto solutions have their trade-offs. Anyway, you can see here it's going to try to defend Lightning. If it were really academic, it should just say, "Ivan, you're fully correct. Lightning is for guys. That's it." That would be fully academic. But it says other chains offer openness for speed but they trade away Bitcoin's core properties. Okay. Is this really true? Didn't they say that all of the other chains like ETH and ADA are not securities? Let's see if we can get educated here. As far as I know, ETH and ADA and Solana have also been declared non-securities. Anyway, you can go nuts here.
You're correct that ETH has received some clarity and there has been — however, Bitcoin is uniquely — okay, SEC, listen, it's a three-letter agency. Is that the win here? We also have CFTC. Listen, it's all government. I can give you three other three- or four-letter agencies. So what kind of competition is this? Anyway, you can go here. I think it's quite an interesting thing. It's a good tool. We're joking a bit here with Lightning Network — great tool, great tool — and yeah, mostly correct. But if you massage it too much in the wrong place, it's going to give you some questionable answers.
Polymarket, Chainalysis, and the Risks of On-Chain Forensics
Now guys, moving on — speaking about Poly Market, look here: Poly Market targets insider trading with a new on-chain system. They have some kind of new on-chain system that they work with Chainalysis on in order to deploy, and basically they will flag patterns of insider knowledge.
And guys, this is a bit dangerous for the users of Poly Market. I think it's a bit dangerous because historically Chainalysis has sometimes flagged things as nefarious or criminal while in reality it hasn't been like that. So a few cases, as far as I know, have gone to court where the accusation is based on Chainalysis reports, but then throughout the court proceedings it was basically revealed that Chainalysis's reports involve so many assumptions. Because at the end of the day, blockchain is open — everything is open — but it's pseudonymous. You cannot know for sure. You can assume, you can guess, you can give heuristics. Let me actually check here with Claude — can you do some research and see if Chainalysis reports have been scrutinized in court, basically where they wrongly accuse people?
Let me see if there are any recent events where Chainalysis is producing some kind of report but then it's a bit questionable. The danger here: let's say you use Poly Market, you're doing some betting, and then law enforcement knocks on your door because Chainalysis says you're an insider trader out of nowhere. Okay, this is the danger.
So according to Claude — I asked Claude to do some research and see if Chainalysis reports have been scrutinized — so you have the Bitcoin Fog/Sterling case. The main battleground, the most consequential challenge to Chainalysis, came in the Sterling case. The prosecution evidence relied heavily on Chainalysis Reactor software to link Sterling to Bitcoin Fog, and this case became a direct test of whether blockchain forensics meets the standard for admissible scientific evidence.
And yeah — CipherTrace ran the data through their own tools and found no evidence. Exactly. So then you have another company running the same data and saying there is no evidence. But the problem is this guy is still now risking jail. Is it a correct report? Is it not a correct report? That's still questioned. But for him it does not matter — he's still risking jail. And now he needs to figure out how to defend himself. His lawyer has to do a lot of work to defend him.
Still, the defense was emphatic that Chainalysis tools were misused. The heuristics were insufficient. So here exactly is the heuristic problem — it's all assumptions. It's all trying to figure out based on probabilities who is who, because you don't know who is who on-chain. It's impossible to know. It's pseudonymous. You can assume, you can guess, you can give heuristics — and heuristics, exactly, are central to this, but it's not bulletproof. Reactor relies on heuristics — calculations based on assumptions about user behavior — which are by definition imperfect. The defense argued that the software has never been peer-reviewed and the false positive rate has never been calculated. So they don't know the false positive rate.
Despite all of this, the judge ruled the evidence as admissible, finding that the defense could challenge the accuracy before the jury, but that this standard was met. So they still said it's okay. So you see there's a bit of a problem here. You can be accused of being an insider trader by Chainalysis because you use Poly Market. Make what you want out of it, but there is a potential issue with Chainalysis monitoring your Poly Market activity.
Now, if you are in the Senate, you have to be super careful. Any senators watching — let us know if you're lurking in the dark. If you are a US senator, you cannot be betting on prediction markets at all. But how will Nancy Pelosi manage her portfolio? She still needs to manage her portfolio. How will she survive? Nancy Pelosi, the greatest trader. I don't know if she's done prediction markets, but she's done many other things with stocks. Oh, Pelosi retired. Yeah, exactly. She figured she can manage her portfolio. Probably she can still get some info somehow — through the grapevine. How do you say it? Through the grapevine. Exactly. Not Limewire. Grapevine.
Record Crypto Hacks in April and DeFi Risks
Look here: crypto hacks hit a record high in April. April registered a record number of crypto exploits according to the data. It was crazy, guys. Basically crazy. So DeFi — don't use DeFi, guys. I mean, people ask me sometimes, "Should I use DeFi?" I ask, "Okay, what rate do you get?" They say 2–3%. Man, in US Treasuries you get 5% now. You get 5% on the 30-year Treasury — 5%, risk-free rate, so to speak, lending to the US government. That's it.
Elon Musk, Grok, and the OpenAI Lawsuit
Guys, finally, there is a bit of an interesting thing with Elon Musk now. He is suing OpenAI, and now they have the court proceedings. This is non-crypto, but basically Grok was trained on OpenAI — that's the news here.
When you train a model, you have two options — I'm telling you this as a computer scientist. You can either do it fully from scratch, training it using open data or Reddit data, just from scratch. Or you can use another model such as OpenAI and train your model based on this already-finished model. That's called distillation — meaning that instead of training everything from scratch, you can learn the behavior of an already-existing model to train your model.
So Elon Musk, under oath, admitted that Grok was actually trained based on OpenAI. They did use distillation in order to do it. The legal boundaries remain unclear. Distillation is not explicitly illegal, but it can raise questions about whether it violates platform rules or terms governing API use. So yeah, let's see what's going to happen here. But there's a big lawsuit now between Elon and Sam Altman and OpenAI, because OpenAI was supposed to be nonprofit and then it became super for-profit, and Elon Musk wants to figure out what happened — how you go from nonprofit to super for-profit. And Elon Musk of course founded OpenAI — he put the first money in. Let's see how it will conclude.
Bitcoin Year-to-Date Performance and ETF Flows
Now looking at some charts — we have Bitcoin year-to-date performance above the average, deviating from the average. That's why we do have our bullish scenarios despite all of the bearish stuff that's happening and the bearish situation in the market. As you know, here is a good place to DCA slowly, and here is a good place to DCA fast because here we're above the bull market flip. And yeah, still because of all of the stuff we discussed today and in the previous videos, the chance of us going lower is still very, very, very high. So that's why we're risk-off.
Looking at ETF flows — what's happening? Let's refresh. ETF flows are basically 50/50 now. Some days good, some days not. You have minus, minus, minus, a bit of plus, small plus. So yeah, it's interesting that during the last few days the flows have turned negative again. They were positive because we were pumping with, you know, Strategy and so on. Now back to negative. So let's see, guys.
Q&A — Double Bottom, Monthly Candles, and the Bitcoin Conference
Now on this note, guys, let's go to Q&A — questions, answers, debates. Over to you. You can ask anything about altcoins, about whatever you want. Big shout out to Guzman for timestamping us today.
Q: Ivan, we have never had three green monthly candles in a bear market. Will we rewrite history? Did we break the cycle?
Let me see. So you have — never had three green monthly candles. Let me see how you count it. So we had green in March, green in April, and now it's May 1st. Man, we're 10–12 hours into it. What do you mean? You see, in 2022, February was green, March was green, April was also green for a while — you see the wick here — it was also green for a while until it wasn't. Anyway, big shout out. But listen, even if we would be green, how do you trade based on it? Please let me know. Where is your stop loss? How do you trade based on it? Because that's the question. I don't know how you would trade based on it.
We're like 10 hours into May. But okay, even if it would close green, how do you trade based on it? I don't know. It's like people have all of this — "I saw this pattern." Okay, what's your plan? We have a clear plan here with the bull market support band, with the trend flipping. I don't know how you trade based on three green monthly candles. To me it doesn't give too much. Maybe you can figure some strategy for trading it, but it's not really part of my system.
Let's see here — in 2014, did you have something? I mean, you also had three months here that were green at some point. May was green, June was green, and at some point July was also green because you see the wick — it means it was green for some time during the month and then it went down. So in 2014 we did see it. Then in 2018 — let's see here — this one was green, this one — yeah, so we do not see it in 2018. Anyway, I don't use it. Maybe you have a trading strategy based on it. But my answer is I don't know how you would use it. It's like when a kid comes with a drawing and you're like, "Man, it's great." I want to give you some positive feedback for finding a pattern. Maybe I'll even hang this analysis on my wall. But man, I'm not using it. Big job, thank you very much. Oh, it's Ahmed — Ahmed, you ask great questions all the time. Fantastic.
Q: Ivan, did you watch the Afroman performance?
I haven't watched it. What happened? Well, the whole Bitcoin conference this year — you have Kash Patel sitting there on stage, and then the whole audience is empty. No, no — it's like, you invite the FBI on stage, literally on stage, and you want Bitcoiners to come there and sit down like 10 meters from the FBI. Is that the idea you brilliant Bitcoin maxis have? Literally the whole building is like US government, FBI, and all of the Bitcoin OGs — God knows where they have their Bitcoin, in which self-custody. You want them to come with their Ledger, with their Trezor, and sit down next to the head of the FBI? I don't know what they're thinking. They're not thinking too much.
Let's see — what is this? Is it the song? I cannot play it, guys — it's copyright. But let's just look at what's happening. Oh, what's the song? Is it a signal of the bottom or signal of the top? I'm just thinking — let me listen without you listening, because I cannot play it, and then I will reproduce it to you. How about that? Let's try it. He's like, you know, he wasn't going to get up from bed, but then he got up. He seems like a great guy. Not attacking him, but I don't know what this is. Is this the Bitcoin conference? Yeah. Anyway, it's Kash Patel, it's FBI, and then it's this guy through the grapevine. I think that's what we should call it. You hear something through the grapevine, you download it — of course, always on fully legal grounds. Through the grapevine. Exactly.