Ivan on Tech analyzes Bitcoin's next cycle, AI capital rotation, and quantum computing risks
Ivan on Tech presents a live stream covering Bitcoin's market position, the rotation of capital from AI stocks into crypto, and the quantum computing threat to Bitcoin's long-term viability.
Summary
Ivan on Tech (Ivan) presents a live analysis arguing that Bitcoin is currently retesting its 200-week moving average after a breakdown, and that the next major four-year cycle will run from 2026 to 2030. He makes the case that capital is beginning to rotate out of AI stocks — many of which are flipping to bearish trends — and into crypto, with Bitcoin positioned as the primary beneficiary. Ivan plays clips from a Channel 4 interview with Michael Saylor and from tech commentators arguing that the AI industry is a "10-to-30 billion dollar TAM pretending to be a trillion dollar one." He also raises what he considers the most underappreciated risk in the Bitcoin space: the failure of Bitcoin's core developers to prioritize quantum computing resistance, which he argues makes Bitcoin currently non-competitive with gold as a long-term store of value.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin's Current Position and the 2026–2030 Cycle
Ivan: Welcome to another episode. As you can see right now, we do have Bitcoin up slightly at 61.6. However, this is a classic retest of the breakdown. We broke down and now we're just retesting the breakdown level of the 200-week moving average. The white line is the 200-week moving average. But this is the time where we need to start speaking about the next big fat cycle, which is starting this year. The next cycle is going to be between 2026 and 2030. We're starting the new four-year cycle later this year when the bottom is hit.
As you know, we don't know the exact bottom — whether it's going to be 50 or 40, we don't know. Somewhere here the bottom is, that's why we have the buy zone here in the green. DCA here in the green. You're not going to make a mistake.
AI Stocks Flipping Bearish — Capital Rotation Incoming
The reason why there are more and more signs that yes, indeed the bottom should be close and that the capital rotation is happening, is just looking at what's happening to AI. A lot of companies, including the big ones, are starting to go into bear trend. Meta is now bear trend. Nvidia is now bear trend. You have Amazon, who also invests a lot in AI, now in bear trend. Yes, the infrastructure companies that are doing the chips and memory — they're all still okay, but even they are starting to show weakness and starting to be quite close to the bear flip.
Look at SanDisk. SanDisk has had a fantastic parabola. We've been riding the AI parabolas in real time because using the money scanner, everyone who is in Bulmania was able to see in real time when flips happen — was able to see in real time when AI stocks started to moon. We did see a fantastic run in the AI space. Whether you look at the US market, the China market, all markets have been quite insane, and most of these gains are from AI companies. But all bull trends will end at some point, and we are not acting on bearishness until they do. So in this case, if you still have positions, just wait for the flip. It's very, very soon before going bear.
ALAB — still bull. No problems here yet. Looking at Intel — still bull, still okay. Looking at Micron — guessing closer to the bear flip. But what's interesting is also that you have the situation on the chart, which is the number one source of truth for you if you are a serious investor, if you are trading, if you're here to make money. You're not here to live in la-la land and just follow news.
But the thing is, sometimes you have the trifecta, so to speak. You both have your portfolio in a bull trend or bear trend, and then also at the same time you have the reality confirming what is happening on the chart. So what's important here is to not do the reverse. Don't look at news and then trade based on news. That's not how you do it. You trade based on the chart. But sometimes the chart tells you something — like a company starting to go bear a bit — and then the reality, the news, is confirming it.
So in this case, for example, you do have news coming out of Tesla: Tesla is cutting AI spend starting from July 6. You did have during the last few months news about Microsoft cancelling Claude. Anthropic wants to go public, which means that there's a big problem for Anthropic. Also, you had Uber coming out saying that they tried using AI but they blew the budget so fast that they cannot use AI anymore. The COOs, the CFOs, the C-level executives in the companies are asking whether it's worth it, because you pay for tokens to use all of these AI models. You don't pay for outcome. And maybe it was too optimistic — probably was too optimistic.
Coinbase CEO outlined five stages to keep AI spend low without limiting tokens. And what he's doing basically is using Chinese models. This is what everyone is doing now. Instead of using these expensive Western models, everyone — including Western companies — are switching to Chinese AI, Chinese chips even. So this is where the story becomes quite clear that there will be a mass rotation of capital from these parabolas in Western AI, which has been insane. This parabola during the last few months has been absolutely crazy.
Let's look at Marvel. Marvel just went bearish. If it closes the week like this, guys, it's bear trend. Marvel is bear trend. Be careful. AMD is still okay, still looks okay. Broadcom — bearish. Broadcom is bearish. Be careful.
So you see that the reality is actually confirming it — there is a bit of a problem with the China competition, and there's a bit of a problem also with the use cases and exactly how the costs relate to the benefit of the existing AI models.
The Limits of LLMs and the AI Valuation Problem
At the end of the day, AI is not intelligence — it's predicting the next token. We've been speaking about it on the channel for a long time. It is very useful for many things: working with documents, analyzing, maybe even doing some ideation. Coding is very, very big. But there's of course a limit, because at the core, if you've actually been studying what AI is — whether it's intelligence or not — it is very questionable, because it is predicting the next token. You give it input and then probabilistically it outputs the next token. They have gotten pretty good at it. There are many use cases. But one of the things that non-technical people get wrong when they get married to the AI space and AI investments is that they think there is something deeper here. They expect some crazy improvement from where we are right now.
Where we are right now in AI is very impressive. It has many use cases. But the cost and benefit currently does not really make sense. With Chinese models, which are ten times cheaper, it does make sense — that's why everyone is switching. So there's definitely a use case. But I think the boomers who are not really technical expect this to be like we're going to Skynet or something. We go from where we are to some new level that is just around the corner. We just need to tinker a bit more with the models and everything is going to change. Well, in reality, if you've been following it, you see that the improvements are quite small. There are incremental small improvements, but the costs are scaling exponentially. So to say that the LLM model is going to unlock some crazy new kind of intelligence — I mean, really intelligence — it's a bit far-fetched. Maybe it's going to happen, but we just need to be super careful when the charts go bear.
But guys, this leads me to the big rotation of capital into crypto. Because the next logical step — when the normie cannot make money from AI — they will be looking for a new solution. And of course, Bitcoin being so cheap, Bitcoin being at the 200-week moving average, the whole crypto industry being wiped out — at the same time as we've delivered a lot of tech updates — this is going to be an irresistible deal for capital markets. Bitcoin being so crazily cheap below the 200-week, with the fundamentals still the best they've ever been. Everything about Bitcoin is the best it's ever been. The same thing with the blockchain industry as a whole. This is the next attraction for capital, and this always goes in cycles.
Never get too married. In 2025, we said get out of crypto in October. Sell, sell, sell. Get out. Don't get too married. It goes in cycles. Now people are married to AI. I'm telling you, AI — it's good, but the price-benefit comparison does not make sense. And there is no big exponential improvement that's going to take place anytime soon. Because LLMs are a next-token predictor. It's still very useful. It's fantastic. I use AI every day. But then you compare how much is invested there — the industry is pretending to be a trillion dollar industry while it is maximum like 30 billion.
I heard this — let me see if I can find this clip. It basically captures my thoughts, but the guy said my thoughts better. Let me find it. Okay, I found it, guys. I found this guy. He really put the nail on the head. It is a legit industry, but it is pretending to be way bigger than it is, especially with the Chinese competition that is cutting cost by 10x — 90% cost reduction. Listen to this.
Commentator: "LLMs overall is a dead end. You see no business model here. You see no utility from AI whatsoever. I see this in the future as a boring hardware-based business — the kind of Oracle licensing hardware model. I think this is a 10-to-30 billion TAM industry pretending to be a trillion dollar one, and because everyone's propping it up because they have no hypergrowth ideas, everyone's just kind of pretending. It's the kayfabe of the tech industry that really has run out of ideas.
It's funny you mentioned Oracle, because people were quoting the annual report yesterday — quote: 'Some of our customers, OpenAI, may be highly leveraged. We may experience risks of non-payment in our dealings with such parties.' Are we going to see this from a market standpoint first in shares of hyperscalers?"
Second commentator: "I think we might, but Oracle is a particularly scary one because they are building 7.1 gigawatts of capacity just for one customer, and they even said in their annual report that the risk was they might not get paid. OpenAI only loses money, and I estimate it's like $75 billion of revenue annually that they will have to pay for the full Stargate data center project in annual compute revenue. OpenAI can't afford that, and if they can't, Larry Ellison can't afford to pay back those bills, and Oracle stock will be in jeopardy along with the margin loans that Mr. Ellison holds. It's genuinely dangerous, and it's dangerous across the board for NeoClouds, for hyperscalers, for every associated party of the LLM industry."
First commentator: "Is Oracle the tip of the spear on that, or is it something else?"
Second commentator: "I think it could be the NeoClouds, because with this rumor of Meta selling their AI capacity, I think companies like CoreWeave especially—"
Ivan: I mean, this basically puts the finger on the thing I had in my brain for the longest time — that AI is great, but it's trying to pretend to be a trillion dollar industry when it is actually quite small. There are good use cases, don't get me wrong, but the amounts of investment simply don't really match the revenue that is likely going to come.
So guys, we are bullish AI until they go bear. The charts go bear, then it's time to get out. And many of them do go bear. Marvel — if they close the week like this, it's starting to be bear trend. And if you have the money scanner, you know yourself — this is the superpower, to know when things are flipping bullish or bearish in real time.
Samsung up 1,300% since a year ago when it flipped bullish. SK Hynix — 941. And by the way, one other thing guys — if you have the money scanner, you now also have for each stock a link to Yahoo Finance, so you can read about the companies you are researching. You click the Yahoo Finance link, you see all kinds of news. But here in the profile, you can do studies. You can read the description, because many people want to be investing in AI stage one, stage two — which is the next stage of AI in case the investments continue — and then stage three, which is when AI will get mass adoption. These are the companies that are going to be benefiting from it.
Now, all of these companies that have pumped a lot — they are in stage one. So if you want to prepare for the next capital rotation, which will happen probably around 2027 — at some point the next capital rotation is going to happen back into AI, but now stage two, because AI progress is happening. It's going to take more time than people think. People are going to get disappointed. In the meanwhile, a lot of stage one companies may have to go into bear trend and into heavy bear trend. Then AI develops a bit more, it becomes more mature, the costs are better, the thing is better — now maybe it makes sense again. Then stage two starts. These are other companies. Then stage three starts, which is the final adoption of AI — the big picture, with even better use cases.
Alex Karp on AI Overselling and Enterprise Frustration
Getting back to crypto. AI is fantastic, but it's our turn. I love when the plebe does not understand what happened. They believed in AI so much and then AI disappears. But the same thing by the way is for the crypto plebe — the crypto player believes in crypto so much and goes down 90%. This is the power of knowing the trend. You know the trend, you understand. You don't know the trend — you're like, "Oh man, I thought Bitcoin was going to go to a million. What happened? It went to 50." Or, "I thought AI was going to go to 5 trillion market cap. It went to zero."
We do see a bit of bullishness. Bitcoin spot ETF sees $221 million net inflow. So we do get a bit of inflow back after all of the days of outflow. Let's see if it's sustained. Sometimes you do have inflow days also after massive outflow. But let's celebrate. We have to celebrate the small things.
Also, just as a reminder, we watched this clip yesterday where Alex Karp said that the US models don't make sense because they steal the data and they don't actually deliver results and they're super expensive. Just as a final thing on AI, I want to play this. We played it yesterday already, but some people maybe have not seen it.
Alex Karp: "Every single enterprise in this country — in private, a lot of them don't want to speak in public — they are livid. They're like, 'I am paying for tokens that create no value. These people are stealing the weights and alpha of my business, and they're creating a wealth tax that does not help the poor. It just punishes — starts with the billionaires.' Every single person at this table is going to be paying a wealth tax only to punish us. And the reason for it is because these models have been completely, irresponsibly oversold. And the sell is it's dangerous for everyone — which is why I can give it to all your adversaries, but I can't safely give it to an enterprise in this country without—"
Ivan: Wow. I mean, this is interesting. Now that I'm re-watching this — yesterday we focused mainly on what he said about IP, that if you use AI, Claude is going to steal your IP eventually. I mean, if you're big enough. For you and I, we do small things. We're not Microsoft. We're not doing billion-dollar company stuff. So for us, yeah, no one's going to steal what you're writing there. No one's going to steal your idea. Sometimes people say, "Oh no, I don't want to share my startup idea." Listen — it's probably not a great idea anyway. In most cases, ideas are crap. Most things you think of, someone already thought about. The sooner you understand that, the better. An idea is also about execution. Your idea is worthless if you don't execute anyway.
But for big companies, they have to worry. Because Claude — Anthropic worked with Figma, they had some kind of integration, and then they did Claude Design, which is like a killer to Figma. So it's a big, big problem.
But additionally, it's interesting that he says the billionaire class is turning on the AI bros — on Sam Altman, on Dario from Anthropic. Why? Because they are selling their tech in a fugazi way, saying that AI is going to replace everyone, everyone is going to go broke, everything is going to change. This leads to politicians overreacting — not to reality, but to fake sales material from AI labs. And this affects other tech billionaires like Alex Karp, who is the CEO of Palantir, and others who are seeing that hey, this AI stuff — it's useful, but the way they sell it — everyone's going to be jobless, everything is going to be replaced — they sell it in such a way that it actually affects them. Because now it's going to be a wealth tax. If everyone is jobless, then they need to pay wealth tax. And you look at California — there is soon going to be all kinds of billionaire tax. You look at across the US — the young generation hates AI, so they hate all of the billionaires also. It's quite an interesting angle that all of the billionaires may be starting to speak out about it from the political standpoint.
Alex Karp: "The alpha that business could transfer to this model tomorrow — I have no business, no job."
Interviewer: "You sound pretty angry."
Alex Karp: "No, this is the voice of American business that is being channeled through me. And I'm telling you, it is absolutely a problem for this country, because we are on the cutting edge of every single AI technology. But if you're going to triply oversell something — and by the way, the enterprises are just tired of it."
Ivan: Very interesting. So AI, guys, is going to pop at some point. Some trends are starting to shift. Basically, if you're in AI, pivot to crypto. Now is the time to pivot to crypto — bigly, bigly, bigly — especially as we are seeing the trends shift big time into bear trend in AI.
Solana Price Target Discussion for the Next Cycle
That's very important. Also, guys, people are asking: Ivan, how high can Solana go in the next cycle? Potentially, guys, we're going to have 1K Solana. Maybe it's going to happen. But now it's still bear trend. So just as a reminder, we're still bearish Solana. We're still bearish Solana. We're very bearish Solana until it's bullish or until it goes to 30. But let's dream a bit. How high can we go?
Is Harsh here? Harsh, who is wrecked on Solana in our chat, who did not exit in Q4 — I told him to exit in Q4. He wanted to buy a car. I was telling Harsh, it's time to sell. It's time to sell. But he did not sell. He's very angry now. Sometimes very angry, sometimes not. Let's listen to some hope right here.
Guest: "What's your price target for SOL? So this cycle I said 600, but my real price target is ETH's all-time high market cap, which I think was around 600 billion, which would be close to like 990 on SOL, I think, is the actual number.
I said 600 because I think what's mispriced on Solana right now is people don't realize how much the infrastructure upgrades compound with SOL, because so many other L1s don't do a good job of consistently improving cycle to cycle. And Solana is one of those coins that does a great job of improving cycle to cycle, and that compounds so aggressively with the builders on the chain. Last cycle there were a lot of new billion-dollar startups, but Solana is relatively new as a chain. Now if it is a lot more performant than it was then, what are the new startups that are going to be the next billion-dollar startups that we didn't see last cycle? What if it's not just Pump.fun and those — what if it's billion-dollar startups in other industries that are diversified, and it's an L1 that actually has a ton of really successful startups on chain? That's when I think it would make a new all-time high."
Ivan: Big shout out to Anson, but none of what he says is really actionable. "What if more startups" — I mean, listen, you can say that for all chains. "What if many startups build on Avalanche?" No one builds on Avalanche. "What if billion-dollar startups go to IOTA?" IOTA still went down. "What if all the billion-dollar startups go to Cosmos?" They didn't go to Cosmos.
So guys, listen. Let's see. I love the hopium. Thank you very much for the hopium. I love it. But bull trend — and then don't worry about how high. Don't worry about how high. Let's just go to all-time high. Just going to all-time high is going to be a crazy return. For Solana to go to all-time high, which is like 300, the bull trend starting at 93 is like a 3x. But guys, if we go to 30 first — holy crap — just going to all-time high then is going to be enough.
Also, Solana has high inflation. So you need to understand that for Solana, you need to stake it — then you get the inflation. If you don't stake it, you miss out on inflation. So there's always that thing where the nominal price of the coin is always hurt a bit by the staking. But you can get the staking, so it's not really bad, because as a SOL holder you can get the inflation. But on the chart it will look a bit less impressive for the token price.
Anyway, let's see. Can we get to 600 or 900? Potentially, very possible. In the last 24 hours, Solana has generated more DEX volume than ETH, Tron, BNB, and Hyperliquid combined. Very, very nice.
Michael Saylor's Channel 4 Interview
Oh guys, guys, guys, guys, guys. This is some Channel 4 content, guys. Do you live in the US? Any Americans here? Because apparently they interviewed Saylor and he seemed a bit annoyed. Let's watch what the hell they did. Big shout out to Channel 4.
Channel 4 interviewer: "They don't trust a company."
Michael Saylor: "You're a company. You're a company. You represent—"
Interviewer: "Are you going to keep interrupting me or are you going to listen to the answer?"
Ivan: Michael Saylor is arguably the closest the community has to a celebrity. His real claim to fame came during COVID when he went all-in on Bitcoin.
Saylor: "The idea of economic immortality or economic sovereignty so that your family—"
Ivan: At this point — I'm not sure "economic immortality" and "economic sovereignty" works anymore as a sales pitch. It's like when he tried selling MicroStrategy in the '90s — he was saying, "We are like a data information refinery." Now he's selling economic immortality. He's great at the selling. He's amazing at the selling. I don't know if it works that well now, but last cycle it really was amazing.
Saylor: "—is economically secure. That's a very compelling idea. Social immortality is very compelling for every — spiritual immortality is the basis of religion. Economic immortality is the basis of Bitcoin."
Interviewer: "What happened last year? What happened with the price?"
Saylor: "It goes up and it goes down, but it's irrelevant because the point is it's going up at double to triple the rate of the S&P over the long term because it's economically superior."
Interviewer: "People shouldn't panic if it loses 50% of its value? Is that the crypto winter?"
Saylor: "The right way to think of it is: people shouldn't invest in a volatile capital asset if you need the money in the next four months. You're a credit investor."
Interviewer: "But all the risk, all the risk—"
Saylor: "No—"
Ivan: To be fair, she's annoying as hell also. She's annoying as hell. She also is a noob, which is fine. But Saylor — I see he's under pressure. And as our dear leader, commander-in-chief, PR person selling the economic immortality, selling cyber hornets, digital cyber hornets — he needs patience here. He needs patience. He has no patience. She's focusing on the small peanuts — that Bitcoin prices go down — that's not the problem. The big problem is the ponzinomic structure of MicroStrategy. She's not smart enough to understand that. But okay, let's watch.
Saylor: "The point really is Bitcoin is the world's most secure digital property network. It's 21 million blocks. It's a cyber Manhattan. So all of the people in the world that would like to put their money in a bank in cyberspace — they don't trust the government. They don't trust a company. They don't trust—"
Interviewer: "You're a company. You're a company. You represent—"
Ivan: I love it. Okay, sorry — I take it back. She is smart. She's very smart. The way to approach this is to start from first principles. Ignore the cyber hornets. Put the cyber hornets to the side. Put the immortality aside. You say: Bitcoin dudes don't like trusting a company. You're a company. EXACTLY.
Sometimes you know, you have to — it's like children. If you've ever spoken to some kid in your family, you see sometimes they do have very smart questions. You're like, "Man, that's true. How the hell did you think about that?" It's true. You ask questions about things we take for granted. I remember myself — my grandma was preaching to me about Adam and Eve. I was like, "Okay, so Adam and Eve — they started humankind. But wait, how did they have all the other kids? They had three sons, or did they have a girl also?" I was trying to understand the family tree of humanity. I was maybe seven. And understandably, the Bible — you shouldn't read it maybe that literally. But it's like — she's like, "But wait, you're a company."
Saylor: "—even though 10 million companies will come and go and 10 billion people will come and go in 500 years, and Bitcoin still holds its economic value."
Interviewer: "Unless quantum destroys that idea."
Saylor: "The entire quantum thesis is: maybe someone will invent a better computer."
Interviewer: "So before—"
Saylor: "If you're going to ask me these questions, you cannot interrupt."
Ivan: Yeah, but she's asking good questions, Saylor. She's asking very good questions from first principles. She's not buying the marketing material. That's good. Sometimes you need to have a stubborn woman, because guys — if you tell a dude something, sometimes dudes are too proud to say, "Hey, I don't get it. It sounds dumb as hell." I remember thinking the same thing with Hyperledger back in the day. Everyone was doing Hyperledger. I was like, "Man, to me it sounds dumb as hell. I'm a computer scientist. I have all the accolades. I'm an engineer. I don't get Hyperledger. Why do you want to build a centralized blockchain?" But I never really said it out loud properly because I thought maybe I don't get it. But sometimes this woman — they're like, "Why? But why? But how? But why?" You need that sometimes.
Saylor: "—right, because it's like — I'm not going to do this with you. You're being offensive right now to do this."
Ivan: She's not offensive. She's not offensive. How is she offensive? I don't get it.
Saylor: "It's literally a fantasy. You fantasize like the tooth fairy might actually come out of the clouds in 37 years with magical wands and wave them at you."
Ivan: What the hell is he speaking about?
Interviewer: "I hope she's coming after my teeth."
Saylor: "—and destroy your house. It's like, okay, yeah, well, maybe the tooth fairy will come and dematerialize my house, but I'm still going to have the house because I don't really think it's that likely. Is it the proletariat that benefit from Bitcoin's expense, or is it people who have very big shares?"
Interviewer: "People like you."
Saylor: "Did I not just point out that I have 55 million beneficiaries? It's a technology, and right now it's touching 500 million people, but there's no reason why it shouldn't touch five billion."
Ivan: Okay. It was a good interview. It was a very good interview. And she is not buying his sales material. She's like, "Man, you are a company." That was the best thing she said. But yeah, let's see — what kind of conclusion do we draw? I think Saylor did not explain this for the correct audience. The way he speaks, he needs to be speaking to Maxis. They buy that spiel instantly. The Maxis are going to be all in when he says all of this. But this woman who is on TV — she's more wanting to understand for real. That doesn't work. He's explaining, talking to her on a vibration that she doesn't vibrate on. It doesn't match. She needs simpler stuff. And she didn't even get to the MicroStrategy leverage thing, which is the main problem. And when she brought up volatility, it's not actually the biggest problem. So yeah, guys, let me know what you think about this conversation. Not the best for Bitcoin. He was mainly annoyed.
SEC Modernization, Securitize, and Trump's Crypto Profits
Moving on. Chairman Paul Atkins from the SEC saying that the SEC is modernizing rules to bring financial markets on chain. More modern. Very nice. We love modern. That's good.
Next, guys — this company Securitize is now officially a public company. I added Securitize to our crypto watch list. Let me see — I think I added it wrong. Let me remove it from AI and add it to crypto. What was the ticker? SECZ. Okay, let's add it here. Let's see what's going to happen. It's also now tokenized — instant tokenization. That's good. As soon as they listed, already tokenized. Fantastic.
Next, let's go to Trump. So Trump said he did not know he made 1.4 billion from crypto. Trump — he's giving the playbook. He's so nice. He's giving the playbook on how to structure things where you are kind of in la-la land. You didn't know anything. You just gave your money to a family office and they did all this crazy stuff and you didn't know. Listen to this.
Interviewer: "An AI in the disclosure this week — the amount of money that you and the family made in crypto — it was an outsized number. I was just asking: did you know about the crypto ventures?"
Trump: "By the way, I could know about it. I mean, there's nothing illegal. There's nothing wrong with it. I could know."
Interviewer: "There's a specific — I memorize Title 18, Section 208 from Congress. You, the vice president — you would have to recuse yourself on every decision running the country that could have anything to do with you. So it just isn't feasible to do it."
Trump: "Well, I feel fine in AI."
Ivan: So basically he said — if you watch the long intro — he said, "Listen, I didn't do anything. This is my investment guys, which is like a third party. They invest my capital, they license my name, and then boop, 1.4 billion arrived out of nowhere. I didn't know about it. I saw it in the tax return. Wow, amazing. I have great investors, great capital allocators."
Trump mocks Bitcoin holders who didn't make money in crypto, because then he was also saying, "Everyone makes money in crypto. What do you mean everyone makes? I made money in crypto. Everyone — stock market is going up, everyone made money." I love it, man. I love it. He's giving the playbook, guys. If you are ever in a position where you may have a conflict of interest, just put it in an external entity — like some kind of family office — and then say, "I didn't know about it."
We have midterms later this year. There is going to be a lot of corruption investigation if Democrats get power, because now the Democrats — I haven't seen any Democrat trying to do anything. And for the average Joe, I'm just telling you, when they see this kind of stuff, they don't like it. So it's actually working against us in crypto that we have a president who is max extracting. If Democrats come in, it's going to be a big problem for this industry. Hopefully it's more for the future cycle — maybe the bear market in 2030.
The election is end of 2028. A new president gets in power, let's say 2029. And then probably until 2030, maybe they can start digging something and going against the industry. So it lines up with our cycle — 2026 to 2030 is our cycle. I think we're going to have a bit of a backlash in the 30s for this kind of stuff.
Roman Storm and the Open-Source Code Prosecution Risk
Moving on, we have Roman Storm. He's now struggling in the US with his case. Trump is not really pardoning him, which — if anything, he should pardon Roman. Roman did Tornado Cash — one of these privacy tools. He's now saying that currently, if the US government wins the case, it means that you don't need to have control of the funds to be a money transmitter. Every maintainer of open-source privacy messaging or crypto tools that any bad actor ever touches is responsible. It's very, very bad.
Every operator of a financial service who learns some percent of users are illicit and keeps operating is a money transmitter — straight to jail. Knowledge alone becomes the crime. Exactly. If Robin Hood chain knows that some sanctioned actor is doing some transaction on their chain, they are in big, big trouble. Every dev of immutable self-custodial software held to a duty to stop what is technically unstoppable. Yeah, there you go.
Let's see what's going to happen here. Hopefully he's going to be okay. Michael Levelin finished lawful crowdfunding software and can't publish it. He asked the DOJ if he would be prosecuted. Their answer in federal court: "We cannot disclaim an intent to prosecute." There you go. Finished code is sitting on a shelf.
So yeah — Trump, please just do something like this to set a precedent that the US is not going after self-custodial code. You got two billion you did not know about from crypto profits. At least do this. The Southern District of New York isn't done with Roman Storm — prosecutors want to retry him regardless of the hung counts, regardless of Van Loon, regardless of FinCEN's own guidance. He's been fighting this for three-plus years. Legal defense at this level costs millions and he can't do it alone. If you write code, use private tools, or believe publishing isn't a crime, this is your fight too. Donate at freeromanstorm.com. Every retweet helps.
Yeah — Trump, if anything, should do this. Should do this. If Baron Trump is watching this, let's change this stuff. Let's build non-custodial software.
Monad, Hyperliquid, and Ethereum's Direction
Moving on, guys. We have now Aave version three live on Monad. People ask, what about the Monad chart? Very bad, but at least something is happening. Aave brings battle-tested lending. Good, guys. I'm not a fan of Aave on many chains. Just build one copy of the protocol. Have it on one chain, like Solana. Don't have it everywhere — Aave here, Aave there, Aave everywhere. Splitting liquidity, splitting users. It's inefficient. Just build it on Solana or another fast chain. Because they are EVM, they are on ETH, they are on all of the L2s. It's inefficient when you split up liquidity like that, when you split up the protocol like that. But good that Monad gets some adoption of a protocol.
Hyperliquid — Valr, Africa's largest crypto exchange by trading, guys. If you are from Africa, let us know. They're now using Hyperliquid as the on-chain infrastructure to build perpetuals. This marks the first time a centralized exchange has integrated Hyperliquid directly by building on Hyperliquid. Valr can focus on the experience. Do we have Isak drinking rock water from Nigeria? Let me know if you use this exchange.
Okay, guys. ETH, ETH, ETH — what are they doing? They do a new NGO, nonprofit. They call it bird watching. Man, the last thing Ethereum needs is to watch birds. They need to build. They need to scale. But hey, they want to do bird watching. An independent nonprofit dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Ethereum. It's L2s. What do you mean L2, man? I thought it was clear that Ethereum doesn't do L2 anymore. They're scaling L1. But apparently, in this structure, they don't know themselves what they're doing. Some are saying L2, some saying not L2. Applications and overall ecosystem across worldwide bird watch. What do you mean bird watch? What is this?
There is no Ethereum summer there. There is zero Ethereum summer. There is barely Solana summer. And you want Ethereum summer? There's no Ethereum summer. Let's see what they have. Ah, they want to get added to this list and then maybe they get money from donations or something. Yeah. No further comment on that.
Bitcoin, Ordinals, and the Quantum Computing Threat
Ordinals are now BIP 110 ready. That's good. This guy — is he an ordinals dev? Let me follow Wizard of Ord. Many people don't like this BIP 110. You can put more data, more NFT stuff, and there's a bit of a debate in Bitcoin. I'm not hardcore in any direction. I want Bitcoin to be quantum resistant. So if they can stop discussing this, it would be better. Just stop. Don't speak about data. I had a whole rant about it yesterday because they discussed topics which don't matter.
Less data, more data — it's okay, man. It's not going to change anything for capital allocators who are allocating money to Bitcoin. More data, less data — it's not going to help. The problem is quantum. Many, many capital allocators are asking themselves: if I buy Bitcoin, what happens in 10 years? Can I really have it as a long-term investment?
It's a big problem we have, and I hate that the Maxis, the core developers, are not taking quantum seriously. It's not the number one priority. Yes, maybe someone is doing some BIP, but I haven't seen anything real. I haven't seen any timeline for when it's upgraded. Because the truth is, guys — Bitcoin now, in the eyes of many capital allocators, is not good as a long-term investment. It's not competitive with gold at all if it's not quantum safe.
Yes, we can be on a high horse. We can say, "Oh, but they don't understand that quantum is going to take time." But they don't listen. Doesn't matter. Geeks need to be quiet and do the quantum. Don't preach that quantum is not a threat. Everyone knows technology comes very fast. When quantum is here, you're not going to have time to prepare. Prepare now. Make it quantum safe now.
Because honestly, the problem now for Bitcoin — and this may be the most bearish aspect of the industry now — is that as it stands right now, I don't think it's competitive with gold when it's not quantum safe. Gold — it's a rock. It's going to be a rock in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. Bitcoin — it's not competitive if it's not quantum safe. If it is quantum safe, it's competitive. Then we can go for our big visions. But until it's quantum safe, it's not going to reach its full potential.
I think still we're going to bottom out later this year. Still we're going to have a bull market. But to go to the levels — to go to $1 million for one Bitcoin — I don't think it's possible without quantum safety, especially the way technology moves fast now. It's very fast. That should be the number one priority.
But anyway, if you have NFTs on Bitcoin now, you can have even more NFTs on Bitcoin with BIP 110. So ordinals are going to have even more NFTs on Bitcoin.
Q&A — On-Chain Analytics, Quantum, and Saylor's Channel 4 Interview
Guys, that's it. Let's go to Q&A — questions, answers, debates, discussions. Let's go.
Dub is saying: AI is here. Quantum is going to take years. When quantum is here, there's no time to prepare. That's the big problem. To upgrade Bitcoin to quantum — we're speaking at least five to seven years just to, once we have a technical solution, get it adopted. It's not going to be fast. Bitcoin moves slowly, for a good reason. So we need to start now.
Let's say tomorrow we have some kind of breakthrough in quantum tech — and there are many news items in quantum tech. You can read what Google has done with quantum. It is getting there. It's getting there. Once we get close enough that it is a real threat, we're not going to have many years. Imagine for Bitcoin: first we need to develop the actual tech. There is no tech now in Bitcoin to do quantum. We don't even know how to do it. Once we know how to do it and we've tested all the bugs — it's quite a long process, because it's blazing-edge tech, meaning there are no best practices. You're going to have many bugs, many problems. You need time to just develop it. That's number one.
Once you have something that works, good luck now getting people to adopt it in a smooth way. How to roll it out, how to do all of the base layer changes — it's going to take years and years. That's why we need to move now. BIP 110 is the least important thing to discuss now. It's quantum, quantum, quantum. That's the only thing that matters. Think yourself — you want a good investment for the next 30 years. Without quantum, Bitcoin doesn't work like that. With quantum, okay, fine. For the next 30 years, fine.
Okay, wait — I need to watch this. Michael Saylor clips will be shown to future generations to explain the level of stuff people were willing to believe at the height of the bubble.
Saylor clip: "The point really is Bitcoin is the world's most secure digital property network. It's 21 million blocks. It's a cyber Manhattan. So all of the people in the world that would like to put their money in a bank in cyberspace — they don't trust the government. They don't trust a company. They don't trust—"
Interviewer: "You're a company. You're a company. You represent—"
Saylor: "Are you going to keep interrupting me or are you going to listen to the answer? Even though 10 million companies will come and go and 10 billion people will come and go in 500 years, and Bitcoin still holds its economic value."
Interviewer: "Unless quantum destroys that idea."
Ivan: Yeah. She actually also brought up quantum. So yeah, exactly — unless quantum does destroy that idea. Exactly. See, just focus on quantum so we don't have to even think about it. You see the problem? I'm telling you, they're not taking it seriously. The Maxis, the devs — they're not taking it seriously. The average Joe and the average capital allocator, the funds, the capital managers — they see quantum as a big risk and a big problem. It doesn't matter that Adam Back is saying it's not a problem, or some other orange-background guy on Twitter telling you it's not a problem. If the money doesn't flow in, it's a problem. Because Bitcoin is a store of value, which means the KPI is how much money is being stored in it. That's the KPI, man.
Saylor: "The entire quantum thesis is: maybe someone will invent a better computer."
Ivan: Yeah. But except that if you read the developments in quantum, it's very real. It's literally what's happening now.
Saylor: "It's literally a fantasy. You fantasize like the tooth fairy might actually come out of the clouds in 37 years with magical wands and wave them at you."
Ivan: I mean, that's his response to quantum? Come on, Saylor. Come on. Read up on quantum. Read up on what's happening with quantum.
Saylor: "—and destroy your house. It's like, okay, yeah, well, maybe the tooth fairy will—"
Ivan: I mean, is that crypto's response to quantum? Holy crap, guys. It's not good. It's not good. If this is what the television is broadcasting about crypto, and our response is that hey, it's a magical tooth fairy — meanwhile, let's go to Grok. Let me ask Grok: what are the latest developments in quantum computing?
All right, let's see. Then you look — while Grok is thinking — Cloudflare, the company that is securing most websites, they're quantum proof. They're quantum proof. Look here.
Grok response: "As of mid-2026, quantum computing is transitioning from noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices to early error-corrected systems, with major progress in hardware scaling, error correction, and hybrid quantum-classical applications. The field is moving towards practical utilities in areas like optimization, materials science, and cryptography threats."
Ivan: Yeah. Cryptography threats. Yeah. But it's fair, man. If crypto does not focus on this, very bad. I don't want to say "finito," but very bad.
Grok response continued: "Key breakthroughs in error correction and scaling — error correction remains the biggest hurdle, but 2025–26 saw significant milestones proving that logical error rates can decrease as the system scales. You have the Willow chip — a 105-qubit superconducting processor demonstrating scalable error correction."
Ivan: By the way, guys, someone here in the chat probably knows quantum way better. So please enlighten us in the comments. But the biggest thing people say when they're not worrying about quantum is that it's so low qubit — you need like 100 times more. But the thing is, it grows pretty fast. You remember in like the 2000s you had like some new computer — everyone's like, "Oh man, new computer. You have a Pentium. How fast is your CPU? How many cycles?" Wow, the new Pentium, man. Next year this Pentium is garbage. Now there's a new one. The 2005 model is twice as fast. Then the 2007 model is even bigger. Okay, it goes fast. That's the problem. We monkey-brain — we're so bad at thinking exponentially, and tech progress is exponential. That's also why most people don't understand compound interest.
Grok response continued: "Logical error rates dropped by a factor of 24. Neutral atom platforms — companies like QuEra and Atom Computing delivering systems ready for error correction. IBM's roadmap. Microsoft Majorana — uses a new architecture for inherently error-resistant qubits, with ambitions for a million qubits on a small chip. Progress on Majorana zero modes."
Ivan: Yeah, there you go. Other players. We should actually do — what I will do after the stream is, in the stocks category, we will create a quantum category. Because now we have AI stage one, two, three. We added biotech yesterday because biotech is getting a lot of attention, a lot of good gains — it's one of these adjacent hypes next to AI, which is mostly normie-driven. And we're going to add quantum just as a hedge. In case quantum hacks our industry — because Saylor says it's a tooth fairy — at least we're diversified a bit.
Grok response continued: "Market forecast expects to grow significantly. Real-world use cases. Overall, 2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year."
Ivan: There we go. So guys, that's that.
On-Chain Analytics vs. Price Chart Analysis
Ivan, does the money line consider realized losses, which currently align with previous bottoms?
The money line looks at the chart. It doesn't look at all of these religious things like previous cycles and on-chain data. It's not looking at on-chain, because mainly — all of the on-chain firms, for example tracking how many wallets are in profit or not — they kind of don't work. And I'm telling you that as someone who's been trying to trade based on on-chain stuff. It doesn't work. It doesn't work for trading. It's very bad.
You know yourself how much money you made from tracking on-chain data. It doesn't work, man. Last cycle we tracked NuPL. Nothing happened, man. It didn't tell anything in a good way. Another big problem with on-chain is that it's all approximation. When Bitcoin goes from one wallet to another, on-chain companies say that it's a sale. How the hell do you know it's a sale? It's just a transfer. You really sure it's a sale? So you have a big uncertainty just in the labeling of transactions. They say, "Okay, these wallets, they are in profit because these transactions mean they bought." How the hell do you know? How do you also track what happened on the centralized exchange? You don't know. How do you track what happened in the ETFs? You don't know.
So on-chain, guys — it's very, very, very, very not useful. Don't use it. If you use on-chain, it's very bad. Also, this on-chain guy from CryptoQuant — Ki Young Ju — he tried using his CryptoQuant stuff to predict the top, to predict the bottom. He said it's the bottom like many months ago. And by the way, I love the guy. He's good. He said sorry publicly. But I just see that he's trying to use this on-chain stuff. It doesn't work.
Big shout out to Ki Young Ju. He's been predicting all kinds of stuff using on-chain. Yeah, it's like 50/50. It's like a monkey trying to guess a number. Monkey picks banana. You have two boxes and you ask the monkey to find the banana. The monkey sometimes picks the correct box. Just 50/50 monkey choice. That's how it is with on-chain. Sometimes, holy crap, it worked out — and oh yeah, it's working. Then it doesn't work. So you need back-tested. You need to see the returns.
And by the way, the money line is fully back-tested. If you're in Bulmania, we show you how it's back-tested — whenever it flips, what are the success rates, etc. It's super back-tested. And that we can work with. With on-chain, they just change the definition. They say, "Okay, now we count in a different way." So how do you trade based on it? I don't know.
What you need to look at is the price chart. Price chart. Price chart. Price chart. That's it. Price chart tells you the truth. If something is happening on-chain, it should translate into the price chart. If it does not translate into the price chart, it's very, very bad. So you need back-tested. You need high success rate. You need highly back-tested. And without it, it's a tooth fairy. Exactly. That's a tooth fairy.