Ivan on Tech analyzes Bitcoin's position at the 200-week moving average and surveys the broader crypto and AI markets
Ivan on Tech solo market commentary covering Bitcoin's current price zone, altcoin conditions, AI stocks, and viewer Q&A.
Summary
Ivan on Tech presents a solo live stream covering Bitcoin's current position at or near the 200-week moving average, which he identifies as a historically significant buy zone. He argues that while Bitcoin is cheap on a long-term basis, the four-year cycle and midterm year historical patterns suggest further downside into the 40s remains possible, making dollar-cost averaging the appropriate strategy rather than aggressive lump-sum buying. He surveys the broader crypto landscape, finding most altcoins still in bear trends, with Solana requiring either a drop to the 30s or a bull trend confirmation above 93 before he would buy. He also covers AI stocks, noting that many smaller names like SanDisk and Intel remain in strong bull trends, while larger names such as Amazon and Meta are weakening or entering bear trends — he cautions that all parabolas eventually break. He discusses the geopolitical situation involving Iran withdrawing from US negotiations, and covers SpaceX stock, which is in a bear trend on the hourly chart and could fall to 100 or further into the 50s before a trend reversal, with Ivan noting he never shorts anything Elon-related due to the die-hard community.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin's Current Position and Market Overview
Ivan on Tech: Bitcoin is currently at around 64K. We're going up a bit, going down a bit, derping around here below the resistance. Remember, we're still just testing this old support which is now resistance. So nothing materially has changed here. We are still in a very weak position overall for Bitcoin. But we've been weak since October — we went risk-off in October. We've been risk-off now for about eight months, and we've been so weak that we've actually come into the buy zone. So Bitcoin is cheap.
Now here is where DCA makes perfect sense. And overall in the world you are seeing a bit of a shaky environment. You have Iran leaving the negotiations with the US because Trump had some threats. They left Switzerland — no more peace deal. Let's see what's going to happen. Iran calls the threat a violation of the ceasefire memorandum of understanding that the US signed with Iran.
One thing I can tell you is that the stock market likely will not care too much, because when I look at all of the AI stocks, they're still pumping. Look at all of the big AI stocks that have been in a bull trend for quite some time. Whether it is Micron, opening up higher. Whether it is Astera, opening up higher. Whether it is Broadcom, a bit lower, but overall still within a big fat bull trend. AMD still holding very, very strong. Nvidia still in a bull trend, holding very, very strong. SanDisk — we've been speaking about SanDisk here for quite some time. Massive bull trend since January and it wants to continue even higher. This thing wants to go even higher. Nothing is stopping it. It's been quite insane.
So overall, you are seeing crypto still struggle quite a lot. Crypto hasn't really found any kind of interesting bull trends. Most cryptos are still in bear trend, but most cryptos are also quite cheap, and quality cryptos like Bitcoin are now in the buy zone. Actually, only Bitcoin. I wouldn't buy anything else right now except Bitcoin while we are in the bear trend and we are in the buy zone.
Solana — Vibe Shift or Local Top?
Looking at something like Solana. There is a lot of talk about Solana on Twitter — both fundamentally and pumpamentally. People are getting excited pumpamentally because we got this bounce, a 25% bounce. Fundamentally because of many things that I will share with you today.
Overall, for me this is still not a buy. Why? Because we're still in the bear trend. For us to buy, we would have to go to 93 — that's going to be the best signal ever to get into Solana and then ride it to 300. Let's see where the bull market takes us. But there is also a real chance that it still goes into this buy zone at around 30, which is the old support from 2023 right here. This is old resistance from 2023 that we then broke, and it's going to be a massive support for us now. So let's see which way Solana goes. We're fine with both.
When you look at the announcements and the news, it is quite a lot. There is a bit of a fundamental improvement with Toss Bank using Solana for global remittance. That's good. It's a question of time before more banks use Solana for stablecoins, for smart contracts, etc. If you want a custom smart contract, some kind of custom logic, there is no better chain. It is what it is. You're not going to do your own L2 — L2s are for the guys. You're not going to use ETH. The base layer is too slow, too expensive. So it is basically Solana. It's a question of time before we get more news like this.
Then there's the vibe shift. The vibe shift has mainly to do with gaming and pump.fun coins that are now gaming coins. Basically most pump.fun coins that are getting traction are gaming. We were speaking about Kintaro last week, and I also see Kagayan — the gaming influencer — sometimes he tunes into the streams. He is playing all of this stuff on his YouTube. I see he's posting more now: 20 hours ago, one day ago. Before that it was two weeks, three weeks, one month. So he's ramping up his streaming, probably seeing that some things are happening.
Overall you have Kintaro, you have Pump Wheel, you have Plots. Again, all of these are super, super low cap. You could lose 100% of your money if you buy any of them. For example, Kintaro has been doing pretty well. They put a lot of effort into the game, which is a sign that potentially they have a proper team. When you go to Kintaro's Twitter, it's a lot — they have the trailers, they have updates. It seems to be a serious team working and pushing every day.
At the same time, if you check the actual token, liquidity is like 400K or something, which means that only one of the original OG buyers — the insiders that bought early on — if he decides to sell 50% or 100% of his coins, this thing is going to go down super fast to zero. But it is like that with all new coins. All new coins that have low liquidity and are up and coming are super, super risky. You just have to trust that the team is going to be here at least for the bull market.
Let's be honest — they're not going to be here for a decade. They're not going to be like Rockstar Games. It's crypto. Everything is quick here. You come, you go. Money made, community made, game made, and goodbye. That's likely what's going to happen. So we need to see it for what it is.
By the way, the same is true for your favorite L1 that you've been trying to pump your net worth with for the past five years. They just have more peer-reviewed papers, more Fugazi, more BS around it. Will they be here for 10 years? Absolutely not. Will they be here for one year? Okay, that's the bet — until the bull market. And if gaming comes back, holy crap, a lot of the small ones are going to be flying.
If I look at what Kagayan is playing, he plays mainly pump.fun. He also plays Plots. These are like kids' games, but there is something cozy with all of these MMO RPGs. I played Runescape a lot when I was a kid. I get a nice tingling feeling from seeing all of this. It's very cozy. It takes me back to the last bull market where we had Pixels and the others.
All in all, it is what it is. It's a new bull market. You have high risk in all of these pump.fun coins that are gaming-related. If they go to zero, don't blame me. You wanted big profits, so you took a risk on these shitcoins. They may go up a lot. If they go to zero, you have your big boy pants on. You only blame yourself. That's the only rule I can have here. If I don't have this rule, we only speak about Bitcoin. But I know you want shitcoins. You long for the shitcoin. You dream about the shitcoin. You have the passion for the shitcoin. So I'm here to bring it to you, but the only way I can do it is if you have your big boy pants on and you never come here crying about it going to zero. Big boy pants — we go to zero or we go to Valhalla. No crying in the casino. Absolutely not.
Now look at Solana. They're going to be cutting inflation. Another pumpamental reason. People are bullish. But again, I'm not buying now. I'm buying either when it's bull or when it goes to 30.
There's going to be probably important news in the next bull, and that's that they cut inflation. Inflation in Solana goes to the stakers. The stakers got the inflation before and now they're going to get less. But my point is that inflation in Solana is a bit of a bad fad. You can get the inflation — I mean, that's it. For the token chart, it would be better that inflation was smaller so the token pumps more. But overall, if you have Solana, anyone that has Solana can get the inflation from Solana. That's it.
They also have some update with Amazon — you can pay for Amazon stuff with a Solana stablecoin. They recently added Solana. So you can do that.
There is definitely a vibe shift happening with Solana. Someone is saying, for example, there's a lot of shilling of Solana right now — it's a big spot, deep in discount, potentially a monthly SFP. But the vibe shift could mean either a return or a local top. Sometimes the vibe shift is the local top. People get excited — just like people got excited for Bitcoin when Bitcoin had a fake pump to 80K. There was a big vibe shift there. I told everyone the pump was fake. People got so aggressive, so crazy, so defensive. They said, "Ivan, you don't know anything." And what happened? Ivan was correct again and again.
I was saying it's going to dump the whole of May. People said it's not going to dump. What happened? Dump. So the vibe shift in Solana now and Bitcoin then — it could be that it is real, but it could also just be a big fat local top where we have a bit of positivity and then we flash down. Normally you have a bottom when people are very depressed and no one wants to hear about it. Maybe it's a bit too positive about Solana right now.
The best thing for us is that we don't really have to decide too much with mechanical rules. We know it's a bear trend, so we don't have to guess whether this vibe shift is really going to take back Solana. I actually have no clue. And I don't really care, because we're going to get in quite cheap here at 93 in case it is correct and we just keep pumping. Otherwise, we're going to have a nice buying opportunity around the 30s, and it's a perfect risk-reward. We're in the best possible position because of our strategies with the mechanical rules.
AI Stocks and the Parabola Risk
Ivan on Tech: Big welcome to everyone in the chat. Now we have to discuss the overall industry with AI even more, because we've been speaking about it for the past probably seven months. For example, we're mentioning SanDisk quite often here. I remember being about 10 years old trying to go on vacation with an old camera where you need an SD card. I buy a SanDisk SD card. Now look at SanDisk — from SD card to AI big fat monster.
At some point, these parabolas will break big time. Just like we said that the boomers are going to find out the meaning of parabola in gold — because we know a thing or two about parabolas in crypto — those gold boomers did not know back in January and February this year, and then the parabola broke. Gold fell a lot. Silver lost 50% since the parabola broke.
At some point these things are also going to break parabola. SanDisk is up 668% since about five and a half months ago. And this is stock. It's not crypto. It's not a shitcoin. It's not pump.fun. It's just stock. It's crazy. Intel is a very similar situation — 425% since August 2025. So the importance yet again is to have the money line, know when things are flipping in real time, and then just ride it. Don't overthink. Should we go bear trend? We're out. Simple.
Now look at Meta — Meta is lagging a bit, has a super weak bull trend. Amazon is also weak. We're actually entering bear trend for Amazon. So it could be that first the big ones go to bear — Amazon, Meta — and then the other smaller ones. Google is a bit weaker, still bull trend but you see it weakening.
All in all, you cannot have a vertical line like this forever. At some point it's going to be a bad trend, a cooldown, a bearish period. Just keep it in mind. Ride the bull trend, but don't get too disillusioned by AI, because people get disillusioned. Bitcoin 2017 — people thought all central banks are going to die. Then Bitcoin goes down from 20K to 3K. It came back later on, but still — from 20 to 3K, then to 60, then from 60 to 15, from 15 to 126, then to 59 which was the low. Volatility is going to be crazy in all of these new technologies even though the analysis is correct. AI is going to be amazing, it's great, but you're going to have such volatility up and down.
So ride the trend. It's important to know which trend you're in so you don't waste time in crypto during the last six or seven months when instead you could be in AI. But if it shifts, we're out. We're checking out faster than you check out from a hotel when your stay is over. But for now, we're still in a fantastic, comfortable spot.
Iran, Oil, and Geopolitical Risks
Ivan on Tech: This one is going to be interesting with oil in case Iran pulls out from the negotiations. Let's see what's going to happen. We have oil quite cheap right now — WTI at around 77-80. Cheap in comparison to the last few months. Historically it's at an okay price, not too cheap. But this is something to monitor as we are seeing Iran back down from the negotiation, saying they don't like what Trump said.
And Trump says all kinds of stuff. They have a bit of an issue with Italy because he said that Prime Minister Meloni wanted to take a picture with him and she begged for a picture with him. Fighting on these simple grounds is amazing. It's like back to kindergarten. She begged me to take a picture with her, and she says no, I did not beg. And now there's like a political crisis between the US and Italy. Interesting world.
Bitcoin Four-Year Cycle and the Buy Zone
Ivan on Tech: I think we're living in a simulation. In simulations, they tend to repeat in one way or another. Look at what's happening now with Bitcoin and the four-year cycle — it is repeating quite exactly. Everyone was crying, "No, Ivan, no, it's not going to repeat." But it's repeating exactly.
Just a clarification: we follow the trend. The trend agreed with the four-year cycle, which basically said we're likely going to go down. Should the trend not agree with the four-year cycle, then we follow the trend anyway. But here in this case, if you look at 2026 and compare it to all of the other midterm years, the green year is 2026 and the other midterm years are the same. So potentially a bit more downside for Bitcoin this year. We're still only minus 25%, and normally they end down 60% or something like that. So we can easily fall into the 40s.
While Bitcoin is cheap and in the buy zone, you should know that we could easily fall lower — but it just means a bigger discount. We're now at the top of the buy zone. We can go lower into the buy zone. Don't get sad if it goes lower because it's part of the plan. I've had this buy zone since October. It follows the 200-week moving average. Should the 200-week keep rising, the buy zone will slightly go up as well. But this is the best — it's the best to buy at or below the 200-week. We've been touching it now, gone below it a few times, and there's a big chance we go even further.
You look at the average — the white one — it's almost exactly where we are normally at average midterm year performance. You don't joke with midterm years. Very, very simple.
Solana Ecosystem News and Other Crypto Updates
Ivan on Tech: Moody's rating expands token integration bringing intelligence to Solana. Another fundamental news item — someone is deploying something on Solana. It's good. It's good that every day people ask me, "Ivan, why would you buy Solana when it's in bear trend at 30?" Because Solana at 30 is so cheap. Every day someone is deploying something. New gaming is on Solana. New DeFi stuff is on Solana.
What else is happening in crypto? It is Hyperliquid — we're bullish Hyperliquid. It is Polymarket. It is Solana. Those three things are happening in crypto. Nothing else is happening. Nothing.
What else? Maybe this — though it's not someone building, it's just that I'm still amazed by the paperwork around XRP and how well they print the bullishness. My twice XRP ETF has posted net inflows on 149 out of 151 trading days since launch. Only two alpha days in seven months. I love it. At this point I just respect the hustle with XRP. I remember 2017 when I started doing content on YouTube, we were skeptical. But now I just respect the grind. All these years — who is using XRP, no one knows — but it's still top five. Still big inflows. The boomers still love it. It's "Bitcoin for the banks." You hear it at every Thanksgiving, every Christmas dinner. Some uncle just found out about XRP and he absolutely loves it.
Another ecosystem is of course all of the decentralized AI, like Venice, which we've also been tracking. It's up 361% since the beginning of the year. Pretty comparable to Intel and SanDisk — actually SanDisk outperformed Venice anyway. Other AI coins are not doing too much. Bittensor not doing too much. It needs to go to bull trend. Yeah, it's only Venice that is doing something.
New AI Models and Export Controls
Ivan on Tech: Speaking about AI, there is a bit of an update from a new lab from Japan. I haven't heard about them before, but they have released Sakana Fugu, which is a new model that works by orchestrating other models behind the scenes. They're saying their Fugu Ultra model matches the performance of Grok and Claude — these are the two models that the US has restricted, delivering frontier capability without the risk of export controls.
The way it works, it seems they're combining different models. I just saw it before the stream. You can check it out yourself. It's just interesting how this political game is going to be played. If the US export-restricts Claude but then you can still build something similar around existing models and match the performance, then what's the point of export restrictions? You just restrict your own domestic companies from exporting, and the world still uses this stuff anyway.
With Claude and Grok, the latest news is still a bit of fuel for the AI parabola. We still have new news coming out. People are still excited. People still believe it's going to change the future in the short term. That's very important, because even a donkey understands that AI is going to be great — but it's all about the valuations of the companies and how fast they deliver the revenue, the results, and the use cases.
This is where most of the issue is. In the dot-com bubble, everyone who was bullish on the internet in 1999 was fully correct. They were fully correct — it just took 10, 15, 20 years extra before all of this came true. The big valuations of all of those Fugazi stocks could not hold for that long. They needed revenue now, income now, everything now. And then boom — they collapse. They have no clients. Game over. And then from that bubble, from the ashes, you had Google, Facebook, Amazon — the real ones that stayed and actually built the industry. They are now the biggest companies in the world.
So it's not enough to be right. Unfortunately, you have to be right and all of these things need to be timed perfectly, which is impossible for any regular person to do on their own. That's why we follow the trend. As long as the trend is bull, we're bull. AMD bull trend, we're bull. Broadcom bull trend, we're bull. Simple. Otherwise, even the private bankers in big banks have no clue either. No one can really play the market. No one really knows how fast everything is going to happen.
SpaceX Stock Analysis
Ivan on Tech: Before we go to Q&A, let's just touch on SpaceX because SpaceX is now getting into quite cheap territory. We said to take it easy. It's at 177 now. You see clear supply and demand — people are trading it, the stock is changing hands. Likely going to go a bit lower because it's still in a bear trend — still trending with a lower high. We're on the hourly chart because we don't have any other trend. It's a new asset, so until this changes, it's likely going to go even lower. Could easily continue lower into the 50s, maybe even go to 100 at some point. It's a bear trend. Respect the bear trend.
We still need more days likely — this whole next week and maybe another week before we see the trend on the daily. So we have to go on the hourly, and the hourly is bear.
SpaceX we also have in our AI watchlist because most of the business of SpaceX is XAI. It's heavily tilted towards AI. Yes, they do rockets, but if you compare revenue and the impact of the different arms within SpaceX, AI is bigger. So it's definitely within the AI space, and also with the space data centers they're going to do at some point.
Elon Musk always has such a nice narrative. He now says they're going to do a data center in space. It's going to be way cheaper. Instead of buying from Amazon, you buy from Elon. His data center is in space, so it doesn't need cooling — at least I guess it cools up there. It has solar energy from the sun. It just spins around the globe. Amazing.
He's such a great narrative salesman. And what's good with him is that he actually delivers — it can be very late. I remember watching Tesla announcements in like 2017. He said self-driving is going to be done by end of year. Robo taxis — you can rent out your Tesla to a robo taxi fleet — end of year 2017. Obviously, we still don't really have the robo taxi on a big scale. I've seen a few in the US, but you cannot rent out your car to a robot taxi pool. Ten years later, it's not here. But it's getting there. We have self-driving technology now for sure.
The same thing with SpaceX stock. Yes, big narrative — but how long it's going to take with Elon could easily be 10 years. But the community of Elon, they don't care. They're bullish anyway. So we're never shorting anything Elon. Even in a bear trend, we never short anything Elon, because his community is die-hard. They don't care too much about the numbers, and they're correct at the end because he delivers at the end. That's why we never short. We just wait for this thing to turn bullish. It can go way lower before it turns. So let's keep an eye there.
Q&A — Kaspa, Elon Musk's Wealth, and Mindset
Ivan on Tech: Let's go to Q&A — questions, answers, debates, discussions.
Is Kaspa in a bull trend? Let's check. Kaspa USDT. Let me go to the daily. It's bearish. Why do you ask if it's bull trend? It just went down recently. It hasn't gone up a lot. It's the same as it was down here. So yeah, it's bear. Bear, bear, bear, bear.
Elon deserves to be worth one trillion — no one is as innovative as him. Yeah, fully correct. The thing is, you know, they say, "Oh, he's a trillionaire. Imagine what you could do with a trillion dollars. Imagine you could cure world hunger." Then SpaceX has dumped like 500 billion in valuation. So Elon has lost now — if you look at the valuation drop, it's like 500, maybe 600 billion. So by that logic, it means that world hunger is solved? Elon gave back to the world?
He can lose 500 billion and still be a trillionaire. The most interesting thing is that he can lose the whole trillion and still be the richest man in the world. He was worth like 1.4 trillion or something, and the second place — whoever it is, the Google guy or whoever — is at like 300 billion. So Elon can lose the full trillion and still be the richest man. Wow. I love it.
This trillion dollars — it's not that he's bathing in money, you know, with a bathtub full of a trillion bucks. It's not like that. If he loses 600 billion, you don't get richer. World hunger is not saved. It's not cured. So why do you want to take his money? They need to understand it's all about future bullishness on his work. He's worth so much because people think he's going to work a lot and make it happen. This is all Fugazi valuation. It's not real. Any valuation is not real.
They tax unrealized gains. In Norway, for example, if you move from Norway and you have a startup that happens to be worth a lot, you're going to be taxed to death if you want to leave. The wealth tax, the exit tax. If you ever had a startup or worked in stock, you know that the valuation is Fugazi. You can have 100 million, 500 million — it's whatever you raised at the last round. It's fully illiquid. It's not like you can sell all of it. The same thing with Elon. How does he sell one trillion? If you start selling, this thing is going to go to zero very quickly. It's all belief and trust in him delivering — going to Mars, having a data center in space. Without it, it's going to go to zero.
Congratulations to all those who are happy because Elon just lost 600 billion. According to your logic, it went to world hunger. So congratulations. He's still a trillionaire. He can lose a full trillion and still be the richest man in the world. Think about the kind of moves this guy makes.
Now, the good thing is that if you do something productive — you start a company, you do business — the valuations are so high now. We're in the trillions. Which means that you do a business, it's successful, it does something with tech, with AI, you can get a valuation easily. You want a billion, 10 billion? As long as it's a functioning business within AI, you have a few brain cells to make it work, to put together a team — sky is the limit. The fact that we're now speaking in financial markets in trillions means that it's never been easier to get to a billion. It's all relative.
Just like your house — you're in a good neighborhood, your neighbor sold his house for 50 million. If you have a winning brain, you think, "Holy crap, that's amazing. Now my house, which was maybe 10, is now maybe 20. If he's at 50, it's all relative." It's all relative. You really need to fix your loser brain if you recognize yourself in the other reaction — which is fine, by the way, because it is a bit of human nature. We see someone doing well and part of us doesn't feel happy. That's why, if you do well, most people around you don't want you to do well. It's the primal loser brain.
But if you have a winning brain, it's quite easy to switch, because whatever success happens to others actually makes your success more likely. Whether it is that their stock is high, their house is expensive — it actually makes your success more likely because financial markets are all relative.
In crypto, the same thing. You have a shitcoin you don't own, it moons a lot. The loser brain is going to be like, "Oh no, the freaking scam pumped. The scam pumped. But my glorious, very moral coin doesn't pump." That's why we say respect the pump — in all facets of life. Respect the pump came from people seeing XRP pumping and hating it. Don't think that the scam coins are pumping and your coin is not pumping. Respect the pump, because them pumping is a higher chance that you pump. Very important.
Imagine also the jobs that he produces that allow all his companies. Exactly. There's a very interesting case in Sweden. You can Google it. There has been an attack against Elon Musk for maybe five years now. The union is attacking Tesla. They have strikes, they attack him for not having a collective agreement — basically you promise your staff some vacation, or you promise not to fire the old employees first, like socialist stuff. Elon Musk said no. It's not required by law. It's not a law. You don't need it. They had strikes, they tried to attack Elon from all directions. But then imagine the cafeteria worker in the US, or the janitor, that had a non-union agreement and is now a freaking millionaire. Without any union agreement. I love it. Fantastic.
All in all, let's leave this topic. I think everyone understands my stance. Your stance may be different. But if it's different, you have a loser mentality — I'm telling you as a friend. If Elon is bugging you, you have a loser mentality. You look at your portfolio, your house, your situation — likely you know I'm right. Don't fight me in the comment section. You will not convince me. Just smash the like or dislike.
Whatever side you're on — Kumbaya. I'm just here to offer some perspective that your loser uncle will not tell you, or your neighbor, or whoever you normally talk to. Your liberal media will not tell you. But it's okay if you take it or don't. I'm fine. Let's go to other topics that unite us, not divide us. I'm here to unite all the plebs from both parties. Bipartisan effort here, only about combining.
Q&A — Solana SIMDs, Altcoins, and NFTs
Ivan on Tech: Question: what's your take on SIMDs being introduced into Solana?
Yeah, it's good. We just discussed the inflation cut on the stream. Overall it's going to be good for Solana. I mean, all of it is fantastic. I'm bullish Solana but not now. Not now. I'm bullish Solana as a concept, but practically we need it to either go to 30 — which, by the way, with all these improvements it can still go to 30. I'm telling you how the chart works. It can easily go to 30. Or it may not, and then we buy it at 93.
If we have another leg down, maybe to 50, then this 93 level is also going to flip lower, maybe to the 80s. The bear trend is also going down. But we're all about risk-reward. Right now the risk-reward is not good. It still looks very weak. The fundamentals will not pump it alone. All these improvements will not pump it alone.
Either we buy around here — let me actually draw some kind of buy zone. Even if it goes to 39, I will take credit that it went to the 30s. If it's 39, it went to 30. 31 is also 30. It's part of the family of the 30s. I would be starting to buy quite aggressively there in the 30s. Technically the support is at 30, even below — like 27 or something. But it can get front-run. Solana is so cheap that I expect many people to go crazy and buy very fast. That's why we're going to be buying before the support. 39 or at bull — keep it simple. I love Solana, but I need a good risk-reward.
Yo, Harsh — you managed to get yourself a sport bike and many things with your Solana in the previous bull cycle. Very possible. Very, very possible.
Rusty Bot wants to bring back the Elon question — "Elon just kept in check and is being prevented from tricking workers into slave contracts." I mean, what do you mean slave contract? You decide yourself. You accept or you don't accept. There's a lot of other work also. And by the way, in the situation in Sweden with Tesla, they were actually super well paid, above average. That's why all of the union strikes haven't succeeded — people just kept working. They got new ones that kept working.
When I was a developer, I tried to get into Tesla. I couldn't. I was like, man, give me any slave contract. Give me any slave contract. I want the opportunity. I'm a computer scientist. I'm very smart, but to be in Tesla, I was not smart enough. You understand? So which slave contract? You need to have a big brain to be in these companies.
Listen, let's not get too political. If you want to make money, if you want to get rich, you need to switch that mindset very fast. If your brain cries about rich people, you are removing wealth from your life. It works like that 100%. Let's leave it. I love you anyway. If you're here, you think something, I love you anyway. Big boy pants, Kumbaya.
Bitcoin — someone says we will go soon much lower, there is no point in buying now. Well, when Bitcoin is cheap at around the 200-week moving average, you know that you're buying a long-term cheap price. Now, if you want capital efficiency — meaning you don't want to be sideways too long or even risk going down — then just wait for the bull flip. Different types of people: if you buy around the 200-week, you buy a cheap price. You can start accumulating, you can start respecting the pump and bullishness earlier. You have Bitcoin very cheap, which is good long term, but you may be sideways or even go down like in the last bear. If you buy the bull flip, it's Valhalla pretty much instantly. But you get a bit more expensive. You cannot have the cake and eat it too. It's risk-reward.
Let me give a concrete example. Let's say you're still riding SanDisk in bull mania. Many people got into AI super early. Let's say you're still riding AMD. If you are in AI, I wouldn't actually sell the winners to get into Bitcoin at the 200-week moving average. That's a concrete example. But if you are just crypto — many of you guys, I know you're just crypto, you don't do too much stock, which is fine — if you are just here preparing for the next bull, okay, start to DCA anyway. It depends who you are.
Pudgy Penguins in Target. Exactly. If Pudgy is in real-world stores, then Pudgy is a real-world asset. Pudgy is deeply bearish. Too early. Sorry for it. Too early.
Cardano — you know yourself. Super bearish. Don't touch. Too early. Way too early. It's now at this support. It can still go way lower. Even if it goes up, it's still a bad risk-reward here. Buy when it's bull. Start thinking in terms of risk-reward. People say, "But Ivan, if you don't buy here and it goes up, here is more expensive than here." That doesn't matter. What matters is risk-reward over time. Can you have a repeatable system where you buy things and they go up? Can you do it over and over again so you don't have to be lucky? Can you do it repeatedly or not? Because okay, some people say it's so cheap — yeah, it can also go down more. What's your system? A clear system is: it goes bull, great, you can repeat it. That's the essence of risk-reward and risk management.
Crypto Punks, Apes — do you think NFTs will ever come back? Bigly, bigly. They could. I think Pudgy Penguin, and likely Bored Ape and Punks, are likely going to be forever part of the crypto culture. I don't think they're going to go to zero. They're just not going to disappear. But will they have a generational run? It's hard to say. There's always some new thing for them to recapture attention. It is quite tough.
At the same time, it's very possible. For example, with Penguins — I don't sell my penguin. I don't even see it as a financial asset. I just have it for my identity because I'm early in NFTs. We were super early in NFTs. I have it. I bought it in the last bear. I just have it. How can I sell my penguin? It's my identity. It's like a club. Some people who are new to NFTs, for them it sounds ridiculous — I fully get that. Having a penguin, you have a penguin, man. But if I see you have a penguin, I know you're not just a tourist. For that reason, there are good pumpamentals for it in the bull that they actually do well.
Let's see what's happened here. Can we see some nice chart? What's happening with Pudgy? They were here at like four ETH, five ETH. Let me go back further. As you can see, ETH-wise they're still holding quite okay. Went up here, peaked out in 2023, then went down. Still trying to find the bottom. If you look at it, it kind of looks like your average altcoin. It went to 27 and now it is at eight. To be fair, many altcoins lost more than Pudgy from the peak. It's down about 70% or something from 27 to eight. Your shitcoin — Dot or Avalanche — is down more. So they have a good chance, but I don't know if it's going to come back in a big way. Likely yes. Likely yes.
Would you say you are a momentum trader? Trend and momentum — yes, exactly. You cannot have trend without momentum. Trend trading is what it is.
Q&A — Avalanche and Ethereum
Ivan on Tech: What do you think about Avalanche? It's very bearish. Very bearish. Fundamentally, you know the subnets — I don't see too much happening there. The games that launched haven't really been a success in terms of trading volume or anything like that. We've just had a bear market, so it's not like I want to see some success now after a bear market because everything is down. All activity on-chain has been down. But if I look at the last year, I don't remember Avalanche having any kind of big volume event. Pump.fun is an example where it was so crazy — people made so much money, people also lost a lot of money, but there was a true on-chain event that everyone was doing something on pump.fun. With Avalanche and the subnets, I don't have that feeling that they ever achieved that. So fundamentally I'm not super bullish either.
But pumpamentals don't matter as you know. It's mainly about the chart for us. The chart is very bad also. So yeah, that's the basics.
At this point, fundamentals with the subnets, the consensus, transactions per second, all of that — it doesn't matter. You need use case, trading, users, players, whatever. You need that. You cannot be bullish because your project says they have good consensus. You're 10 years too late. You cannot be bullish because your project says they have low fees. All chains are low fee except ETH. Everything is low fee, man. It's not an advantage. You cannot be bullish because they say you can do subnets, because ETH has L2s and they just failed. Cosmos also had all of this subchain stuff. They all failed. The subchain stuff — it failed. So what else can you be bullish on that Avalanche has said? Consensus doesn't matter. Everything is cheap. Innovative consensus — no one cares. What else do you have? Red color logo analysis? How desperate do you want to be? Tell me what's bullish. I will react to it. But there is basically nothing. And it's bear.
When did you last use ETH? It's cheap as hell. Yeah, as soon as a few people start using it, it's clogged up, which means that no one is really building or expanding or betting on it. That's the problem.
For example, the local fee market on Solana — there is a good solution that in case you have a lot of use on one app, only fees for that app go up. It's brilliant. Simple. Should have had it a long time ago. That if you have a spam contract — you remember CryptoKitties, they were so big back in the day, they clogged the entire freaking chain — a solution-oriented team would fix it with a local fee market. Okay, we change it so if you have an app which is big and successful, you will have high fees because you take a lot of bandwidth. Everything else will have low fees. Because if you send a stablecoin, you cannot pay 50 bucks to send a $1 stablecoin. So you understand.
And yeah, it never happened with ETH. Instead, they went with L2. They had the same idea that if you have something big, you can put it on L2, but it's not good because the liquidity is not shared. You have MetaMask and you need to pick out of 100 L2s. The L2 industrial complex became big. So yeah.
Also, just the desire to scale — ETH historically said we don't want to scale. ETH is ossified, meaning it's fossilized. We don't change it too much. It's great as is, and it's an advantage that it doesn't change. Okay, I see some of that. But at the same time, you haven't won the industry. It's occupied. It doesn't change, so they don't improve it, which means that if you build something really big and great, they're not going to help you scale. You know they're not even thinking about how the hell we're going to scale it.
With Solana, it's all about increase bandwidth, decrease latency, increase bandwidth, decrease latency. That's what all the team thinks about. How to make it faster, faster, faster, faster. So if your bank or whatever builds something on chain, they're going to do it to make it faster. Whatever is physically possible to do, they're going to do it. So it's another factor. It's not only about what the fees are right now.
Yes, no one is using ETH. No one is using MySpace either. As soon as you start using ETH, fees go up a lot. That's why it's a tough situation. I hope Vitalik can fix it. I'm bullish Vitalik. He seems like a smart guy. The alien wonder child. He can probably figure something out. I'm bullish that he will.
Guys, on this note, we're right below one hour. Thanks a lot for a fun stream. Was great hanging out with you. Great discussions.