Ivan on Tech gives a live market update on Bitcoin, altcoins, ETF flows, and the EU's MiCA regulation
Ivan on Tech hosts a solo live stream covering Bitcoin's current price range, early altcoin signals, ETF outflow data, MiCA regulatory changes in Europe, and a discussion of AI investment stages.
Summary
Ivan on Tech presents a solo live stream in which he argues that Bitcoin is currently in a "buy zone" around $59,000–$60,000, while cautioning that further downside to $50,000 or even $40,000 remains possible. He highlights seven consecutive weeks of Bitcoin ETF net outflows — including a single week shedding nearly $1.8 billion — as a key bearish signal, while also noting that a handful of altcoins are beginning to show early bullish reversals from prolonged downtrends. He discusses concerns around Michael Saylor's Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) and its leveraged Bitcoin exposure, arguing that if Saylor stops buying, a final flush lower becomes likely. He also covers the EU's MiCA regulation taking effect, which will restrict access to unlicensed exchanges for European users, and outlines a three-stage framework for AI investment that he plans to teach inside his Bulmania community.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin Price Overview and Current Market Positioning
Ivan: Welcome to another stream. As you can see right now, Bitcoin is still at around $59,000–$60,000. We're going up and down slightly, but overall the situation has not changed. We're still cheap for Bitcoin. We are in the buy zone.
What's interesting is that we are seeing some altcoin bets finally starting to flip. For example, JTO — we discussed JTO here last week and the week before — it did turn bullish, and for now at least it wants to continue. For now at least it seems that it is still bullish. For now at least it seems that it wants to go up and up and up. So let's see what's going to happen here, because Bitcoin is still bearish. It could pull altcoins down with it. But it's nice to see that something is going on with altcoins as well. This is one of the early, early signs that the altcoins are not dead and they're coming back.
The same thing is actually with DEN. After a massive bear trend — massive, massive bear trend — DEN is coming back. What else DEN does, I have no clue. Is it some chain or what is it? It sounds odd, but it is bullish for the first time in a long time. It is still very early on in this industry because Bitcoin is still bearish. We still have a massive downside here, probably to $50,000 and $40,000. So there's a big risk that these altcoins will not hold up too well. But if you have a nice stop-loss and you see that they are going bullish, you have a nice stop-loss in case Bitcoin pulls them back into the basement together with it — you're out. It could still be a nice trade.
What I really want you to train here is your eye. Your eye needs to be trained. Because when you see a big fat bear trend and then the altcoin is coming out from a big fat bear trend — like for example here in JTO — it is a good sign. Currently there may be, you know, one, two, three, four, five — a few of them — that are in this position, coming out of a big fat bear trend. Soon enough in this industry we're going to have tens and hundreds of coins coming back out from the bear trend, but we will have to wait a bit, probably until Q4. Because we still have massive, massive problems with ETF outflow.
ETF Outflows and the Saylor Risk
ETFs are outflowing left and right. Big outflow every day. For example, on the 26th we had $400 million. On the 25th, last week, $691 million. On the 24th, $469 million. Then a tiny inflow on the 16th — tiny, tiny inflow. So all in all we are seeing slaughter in the ETF space. That's number one.
Number two, there are concerns with Saylor — as you know, with Strategy. We've been speaking about it all the time. What's key to understand is that Saylor is the buyer of last resort, and if he stops buying, it's going to be bad. Probably the last flash towards the $50,000s is going to happen.
So all in all, the current situation is that we have cheap prices in this industry. It's very, very cheap, and DCAing Bitcoin here makes perfect sense — just like last week, just like the week before that. It is still fantastic prices for Bitcoin, but you should expect lower. You should be prepared for it, and you should see it as a positive. Fear and greed is super fearful. People are fearful. They are not in a happy place right now. This is not the happy place for our industry right now. The industry currently is in a very, very bad situation. But it is darkest before the dawn. We are now starting to become bullish after eight months of bearishness. We've been bearish since October. Now we start to become bullish. Why? Because we do see that the industry is struggling and we are coming in when it's struggling.
We're not struggling ourselves because we went risk-off since October 8th. In case someone missed it — we're not struggling ourselves, but we are coming in here as knights in shining armor, buying up all of the cheap, cheap, cheap Bitcoin.
Good morning, guys. How are you doing? It's a new week, new opportunity. What do you think about this lemon cup? I have my coffee in the lemon cup. At what age do you start to appreciate these kinds of cups and stuff? If you told me something about a cup maybe ten years ago, I would have told you I don't care about a cup. But after a certain age, you're like, man, that's a nice cup. Maybe it's after 30 or something, but you start to appreciate the beauty in simple stuff, in a simple coffee mug. Let me know if you have similar experiences.
Strategy Losses and the End of the Ponzinomic
So we have a situation now where we are stepping into the market — not in a big way, in a small way. But if you compare to just three months ago when we were super bearish, we are nibbling a bit. The buy zone is very, very nice and the average player is super fearful. He is in a very bad situation, and that's exactly how we want it. We don't want to be stepping into euphoria. We sold euphoria in October. We want to be stepping in when it's dead. No one cares. It's very bad.
Now imagine something happens to Strategy. Maybe more losses. People are not happy that it should have been pegged at 100. It should have been like a money market. Saylor promoted Strategy as a money market. And what happened? It is at 74, 76, 70. People have lost 25% of their net worth here. Because many of them — what did they do? They mortgaged the house. They took out loans, because that's what Saylor said: take out a loan, mortgage your house. There are people who put their pension and everything in. So many have actually lost approximately 25% of their net worth. And it's okay if that was like your plan and you're trading altcoins — you can easily lose 25%. But in this case it was more of a safe cash flow kind of thing. You buy a bond like a US government bond, or you put it in Strategy — it's like the same. That's how the marketing was, at least. So let's see how it figures itself out. I think it's bullish overall that we have the end of the ponzinomic. It's very nice for the next bull market to have an end to it.
US–Iran Negotiations and Market Reactions
Now look here — we have more peace. Another piece: US and Iran. They agreed to hold strikes and meet this week. I think both of them are insider trading the crap out of the market. Both the Trump family — allegedly, people allege online — and also the Iranians. Persians. I love Persia as a name, better as a brand. They must be trading the hell out of this on Polymarket. No KYC, connect wallet, start going long, going short on DEXes, on Hyperliquid. This is now ridiculous. Now they're going to meet this week. But last week they should have met and the Iranians stormed out of the negotiation. Now they say they're going to meet again. The announcement comes just one hour before US stock market futures open. Let's see if they were able to pump here or they failed with the pump. The futures for S&P open higher. The futures for NASDAQ open higher. Probably something to do with this announcement of peace. Let's see — it's ridiculous at this point, but good to know that maybe we're going to have a bit of a pump in the traditional market.
ETF Outflow Data — Second Worst Week on Record
Look here — ETFs having the second worst week on record, shedding almost $1.8 billion in the week ending June 26th. This brings the streak of net weekly outflows to seven weeks. Seven consecutive weeks — just out and out and out and out. And that's also something we want to see for us to step into this market and start nibbling a bit. We want to see something like this, and that's actually very, very nice.
Solana Trenches and the Ansem Coin Situation
Looking at the trenches, there are interesting things happening. If you've been following Twitter, you have this Ansem coin. I don't know if it's bullish or bearish overall. I think it is an attempt to restore the trench. Some guy created it — maybe it was Ansem himself that created it. But then he airdropped a bunch of these coins to Ansem. Could it be that Ansem himself created it and just airdropped to himself? You can say you're not the creator. Who knows? But if you follow on Twitter, this has been a bit of a discussion point — that trenches are back. Some people are saying trenches are back. Some people are saying it reminds them of 2024. Let's see. I like that there's an attempt to bring something back. That's good. There's some attempt to bring trenches back. At the same time, it's an influencer coin, and Ansem himself is trying to pump Solana and the whole market now. He's saying time to bull. He's bulling and trying to get it up. Let's see. It's a bit too early overall for me.
So Ansem saved the trenches by sacking the little liquidity we had on chain from the few things that were working. For example, you had the Solana gaming season with Kintara and the other stuff we were following, which had a bit of liquidity. Currently everything is being drained into Ansem coin. But at the same time, you know, it's the market. Today you're hot, tomorrow no one cares. That's the problem with trenches overall. As an investor in the trench, as a trencher investing in small-cap structures, you should know not to get too attached. Because today your coin is big, tomorrow it's not big. Tomorrow there is some new coin.
So the new meta is sending free coins to notorious on-chain extractors, making them even more prominent. I don't know if he got airdropped or if he just created it himself. Could have been both. But overall there is a bit of an uptick in Solana activity. Solana overall is coming back quite nicely in terms of on-chain volume. Also, Solana foreign token volume — when you look at the different assets on Solana, for example people putting Bitcoin on Solana, ETH — memecoin volume is now just 18% from flipping. So Solana being the hub for trading is becoming more and more of a reality, not just for memecoin trading, because now all kinds of assets are being bridged and minted and so on and so forth. So that's good.
Solana and Hyperliquid App Revenue as the Key Signal
Also, when you look at the revenue — this is the most important signal that things are being used by people and this is not just bots doing some kind of wash trading — Solana on-chain revenue is $19 million in the last week. This is on-chain revenue that apps have captured, not just the fees. Because fees on Solana are very cheap and very low, and there's of course a lot of fees captured. But the big question is how much do apps capture? Because that is a signal of people using the chain, using the apps, speculating, doing stuff — not just that the team themselves have set up some kind of wash trading, which happens a lot in many chains. Most chains are ghost chains. So you have to look at the app revenue, not the chain transactions per second or how many transactions or what volume — that is actually quite fakeable. But app revenue, where it goes to the teams, when someone gets rich from it who is not part of the creator of the chain — it's a third-party team building on the chain. Fantastic.
So this is one of the biggest signals. And as you can see, the only rival it has really is Hyperliquid. So Solana and Hyperliquid — that's why we're bullish on Solana. We're bullish on Hyperliquid because you see clear usage. Clear usage. Where is Cardano? No one knows. No founder that made an app on Cardano is becoming rich from fees. And that's a signal that there's no demand. No one is using it. And it's not only Cardano — like StarkNet. What's happening? Where is StarkNet? There's no StarkNet. Who made an app on StarkNet and became rich from the activity and fees they generated? That's the signal: is there demand for what you're building or not? And the answer is — do you become rich when you do an app and people use it? You don't become rich. Okay. No one is using it. Bots.
Now look — Raydium crossed three billion in cumulative tokenized equities. Good. Not only meme, not only Ansem doing some kind of coin about himself.
MiCA Regulation and European Exchange Access
Before we move further with the news, I want to remind you about something. In a few days — literally maybe even tomorrow — many exchanges will stop working in the EU. And already now, if you use Binance for example and you are in the EU, or maybe even EU-related countries like the European Economic Area including Norway and Switzerland, you may lose access to a bunch of exchanges. Binance already sent out an email to everyone saying that you will not be able to trade or deposit. And the same thing is going to happen to most of the exchanges that don't have a MiCA license. The fines are very, very big. So that's why if you go to exchanges that are MiCA-compliant, you need to act now.
MiCA is a double-edged sword. It is of course not great to lose access to many features. For example, when it comes to leverage, they will have to figure out from scratch how to do it. But at the same time, you do get more protection. They are all EU-headquartered. So it's pros and cons.
For decentralized leverage, go to Hyperliquid DEX. You have to go to Hyperliquid DEX for that. Hyperliquid DEX is, in many ways, like the same as a central exchange. It works very much the same.
MiCA basically removes the degenerate crap from the industry, which is good and bad. It's bad if you're a professional speculator and you actually know how to use leverage. It's good because now people are forced to buy spot. So from that perspective you can even argue that MiCA is a bit bullish, because instead of buying contracts — trading paper assets — now you have to go and blast the order book. You can argue that's bullish. More money can now enter the exchanges knowing it's fully compliant. So there are pros and cons.
Now, Binance themselves cannot currently get a MiCA license. The question is still: will they get it? I think Binance is for sure going to get it. But even without Binance there is Bybit. There are many other venues. And if demand is there, people are going to figure it out. There's going to be less shadiness. Way less shadiness. In the wild west, when Binance lists all of these micro-cap pumps and dumps — there are many, many such stories. So for me, I'm not overly negative. I think overall it is creating a nice ecosystem where if you have the skills you can still go to Hyperliquid and go nuts there. You have a DEX still. But now the whole of Europe is as compliant as it can get, which means that the freaking bankers should have a lot of pressure on them to stop discriminating against crypto platforms. And I think we're going to see a lot of that.
Chart Rundown — Solana, Hyperliquid, Zcash, Near, Monad, Backpack, TON
Ivan: Solana is still going to go lower the way it looks now. This kind of weak recovery normally doesn't hit anywhere. I will flip bullish at $93, and I'm going to start saying that Solana is going to go to $200, $300, $400 if it goes above $93. So I will be flipping fully to bull if it goes above $93. For now it's going to start again. This doesn't look bullish. We're going to buy a lot here, or at $93 we're going to say, "Hey, it's going to go to $200, $300."
So just as a reminder to everyone — when it's bullish, we're bullish. Don't get surprised. Just like when it rains, we have an umbrella. When it's time, you wear sunglasses. Don't come here asking me, "Ivan, why are you bullish at $95 when you were bearish at $72?" Because now it's a bull trend. It's easy. It's a bull trend. We're bullish. In a bear trend, we're bearish. Don't over-complicate.
Now it's very bearish. It looks like it wants to go lower and into our sweet, sweet buy zone here at $30. It's going to be so nice.
Hyperliquid — bull. Strong bull.
Zcash — be careful. It's bearish. Let's see if it revises here in the $200s, but yeah, it's bearish. Be careful.
Near — bear trend. Be careful. Near is in a bear trend now. Whatever great tech they have — and they do have great tech, crosschain, I love Near — be careful. It's a bear trend. No matter the tech, it's bearish.
Monad — let's check. So here you have a bull trend but it collapsed instantly, so it looks very weak. Be careful. Don't touch it. Here's why stop-loss is important — because you could theoretically have a bit of a fakeout. So when it goes bull you just put a stop-loss, and you're out if it goes against you. With Monad — it's a fast ETH, they remade the database to make it super fast. I don't know too much news on them. We will revisit when they pump. For now, don't worry too much. The chart is not looking good. It's not time for altcoins.
TON — it's bull, but when it collapses below the flip level, it's dead for now. We're going to see if it comes back. The thing to look out for is back to the flip level here at around $3.10. Then it would be a nice level.
Backpack — we're monitoring Backpack a bit because the chart is very beautiful. I love this kind of chart. Let's go to daily. Backpack is still okay.
Q&A Session
Ivan: Chief Ivan, you're overly bearish on Solana. I'm bullish on Solana, but the chart is bad. I'm just looking at the chart. I'm also bullish on Solana, but chart-wise it looks very bad. So I'm teaching you the charts.
Please educate us on Monad — what is there to educate about? I mean, Monad is a fast ETH. What happened to it since the launch? Chart-wise, don't touch it. Don't touch it.
Yo, Azad Ivan — there cannot be a bull run without Binance being active in Europe. They are simply the big guys in the market. Don't worry too much about that. I don't worry too much about whether Binance is in Europe or not. You have on-chain, you have DEX, you have all kinds of different ways. You can also argue that with MiCA it will bring more capital to crypto because now all of the boomers feel more at ease using the exchanges. They don't have to use Binance offshore. There is more regulation. And for the buy pressure, you don't actually need 100x leverage, because what MiCA has hurt is 100x leverage. For example, if you go to Bybit EU, you will not have the same leverage capacity. MiCA basically removes the degenerate stuff from the industry, which is good and bad. It's bad if you're a professional speculator. It's good because now people are forced to buy spot. From that perspective you can even argue that MiCA is a bit bullish — instead of buying contracts and trading paper assets, now you have to blast the order book. More money can now enter the exchanges knowing it's fully compliant. So there are pros and cons.
AI Investment Stages — A Three-Stage Framework
Ivan: Now, one thing I want to tell you is that I will be releasing an AI masterclass. Why is it so important? Let me tell you why it's important to look at the AI space and see what has happened and what has not happened. Because currently we're still in Stage One.
AI is currently in Stage One. You have, for example, SanDisk mooning a lot — we've been riding it very nicely. Intel mooning a lot. Micron mooning. All of them are in bull trends. All of them are big, big bull trends and they keep being bullish. Marvell, AMD. But you see there is one common thing with them, and that's that it's infrastructure. It's infrastructure. It's not really delivering on AI — they're doing picks and shovels. That's Stage One.
Stage One of AI adoption — when you hear analysts speak about AI, they speak about AI in stages, because we have now a big transformation in tech. There needs to be infrastructure, there needs to be supply chain, there needs to be implementation and monetization of AI. So now we're still not really monetizing AI. We're still just building out the infrastructure. And the infrastructure pricing-in has already happened. All these stocks already mooned a lot. Now they're still bullish, they will probably keep going up, but the big moves have happened in the infrastructure. So Stage One of the AI revolution is more or less priced in.
Now Stage Two and Three. Stage Two is more about the other components that are needed — for example, the power grid, the manufacturers of different adjacent things that are needed to build the data centers, to supply the data centers, to have the power. Everything adjacent that is not fully priced in. That's a whole different set of companies.
But then finally, the big reward should be in Stage Three. Those are the companies that are building the use cases that the end consumer is going to use. The timeline: Stage One is this year and next year. Stage Two is the coming three to five years. Stage Three is the coming five to ten years.
So in the masterclass, I will be releasing a course on this and we're going to be looking at all of the different parts of the AI stack and how they are going to play together — also what is priced in, what is not priced in, which stocks are still going to be important that are currently not. And of course, we only trade them if they are in a bull trend. We use the understanding of the AI buildout as a way to see which assets to look at, but we only touch them if they're bullish.
Eli Lilly is one of the companies which are in Stage Three. Already now some of them are starting to move. Eli Lilly has been moving quite nicely. It's not fully fair to say it's not priced in, but it's one of them which is more towards Stage Three. Recently it hasn't been moving as much as SanDisk and the others. I mean, last two years it went up about 50%, when you look at SanDisk doing like 33x. But yes, this one is Stage Three. The way to think about it is Stage Three through time — maybe three years out. But this price increase here — it's not because of AI. It's pre-AI. It's only now kind of starting the AI journey. It's only now kind of starting the AI journey. But this is an example of Stage Three, because they're going to be the end monetizer. Here's where the end consumer is going to benefit.
Eli Lilly pumped previously — probably the pumps in 2021–2022 were because of Ozempic and peptides and all that. But they're also part of the AI story. And this is the opportunity: a lot of companies are not looking like AI companies, but they are AI companies. It's going to take a while for the market to understand. And if you understand it, it's a big, big advantage.
AC, Europe, and Brain Performance
Ivan: Now, speaking about Europe — if you are from Europe, let me know. Make some noise in the chat and let me know if you have AC or not. It's a big discussion now. Should you have AC or not? My friends in the UK tell me that they are sweating inside. I'm asking them, why don't you have AC? What do you mean you sweat inside? Because I've lived in hot countries and I can tell you that heat is not a problem. It's a solved problem. You have AC, you turn on a button. It's in many cases even more comfortable to live in a hot country than in Europe for this reason — because in a hot country you set your AC to any degree you want. How much you want? 18°C? No problem. It's a button click.
I remember living in Sweden and discussing, "Oh, it's so hot. Oh, I'm sweating inside." Man, you realize it's not alien technology. It's solved technology. But there are a lot of political reasons why they don't allow you to have AC. Many reasons. But it's interesting because it's old tech. It's not new tech.
For your portfolio, for your brain to work, you need AC. Don't care what the news tells you. Sleep is the root of health. You don't need all the workout and diet — that comes on top. But sleep is number one. If it's hot, it's not possible. So if you don't have AC, you don't sleep, your brain does not function. I prescribe, as an unlicensed professional, I prescribe AC. Very, very heavily. It's a must.
Read about the history of Singapore if you want to learn about the importance of AC. Lee Kuan Yew — he said all government workers should have maximum AC. He said max AC. It's so hot, their brains don't work otherwise. Max AC. He got AC everywhere. Without AC, Singapore would be zero. Would be like a suburb to Paris. There's a big difference between Singapore and a suburb to Paris. One has AC, one has a big problem with AC.
So for your portfolio, for your brain to work — get AC. Don't care what the news tells you. News in Germany, I hear they have anti-AC propaganda. You should ignore all of that and ensure that your brain works properly. Also, you need to sleep at least eight hours per night. If it's hot, it's not possible. Sleep is the root of health. If you don't have AC, you don't sleep, your brain does not function. I prescribe AC very, very heavily.
Abnormal Solana Transfer Flagged
Ivan: A bunch of SOL just left Binance — destination unknown wallet. 445 million in a single transfer. My engine flagged this eight minutes ago. Let's see. Some abnormal transfer. But all in all, guys, I think that's it. There's not too much other news. Let's quickly check on the open prices because nothing really happened since Friday.
IB and Academic Hacks
Ivan: Backpack — we're monitoring it a bit because the chart is very beautiful. I love this kind of chart.
By the way, guys — do you know in high school, I went to International Baccalaureate in Sweden. It was very interesting. The best hack to get a high grade in IB is to take psychology higher level. It was easy. You learn a bit of Bandura et al. — I had maybe five of them or something. Psychology higher level. And this is for all you guys who know IB. If you don't know IB, it's okay.
If you are sizing up IB, take psychology higher level. Don't take English higher level. My friend Patrick — he was not too smart when it came to choosing subjects. He picked English higher level. So many books. You need to read so many books. Angela's Ashes — so many books. It's crazy. I was just breezing through psychology higher level, reasoning a bit about some experiment. Very nice.
Some guy took math higher level. My wife took math higher level. You're going to shoot yourself in the foot. You can still learn math higher level at university. In high school, you just need good grades to get to university. If you want, I can teach you how to get the highest grade in IB. I almost got the highest grade. I got some points from the highest. It's because I was smart not necessarily only in the subject but in how to structure it. Why take math? Okay, you love math — don't take higher level. You're going to get a bad grade. You can still learn higher level at university. I said no, I love math, I'm going to take higher level. Bad grade. I know less math but I have a higher grade than my friend who didn't use his brain properly when he picked it.
I actually had higher level in IB English, but it was English B. So it was super easy. My friend Patrick had English A higher level — reading 500-page books and discussing them. I have no time for that. So I have a better English grade than him. I also have higher level, but it's B.
New Microphone and Equipment
Ivan: How's the mic, by the way? Do you like the mic? I have a new mic. I was shopping around during the weekend. I have new buttons. This mic should be, you know, for the dumb sound engineer — for dummies in sound, which I am. I'm doing content now almost ten years, but I never have time to learn. I need something that just works. I told AI, "Give me something that just works. I don't want it clipping. I want to speak close. I don't want the mic to be somewhere far away." Psychologically, I get nervous when it's far away. I'm not sure — do you hear me or do you not hear me? I like the closeness of the mic. Psychological closeness. I know it's here. I know it definitely can hear me. It needs to be close. It needs to be a no-brainer. It needs to work and have no problems.
We appreciate the content — mic is second. Thank you very much. I actually see that sometimes I think, "Holy crap, this mic was so bad," and then I see the views and engagement and watch time are the same. You guys must really like the content. I see it in the numbers. But thank you very much for saying it out loud.
Fine China and Appreciating Simple Things
Ivan: The teacup is better than — exactly. At what age do you start to appreciate cutlery? Or how do you say — fine China. Do you call it China? Porcelain China. At which age do you become an appreciator of fine China? Porcelain is China. Interesting. Like the country China — or it's called China but it's not connected? It must be connected, right? Named after the country. There you go. Fine China. That's very nice.
At what age do you appreciate fine China? The end of late stage. The end of life stage. 45. Man, I'm a bit early. I'm a bit early. In Kazakhstan, we call it "service." The CIS countries. Exactly.