Ivan on Tech analyzes Bitcoin's position at the 200-week Moving Averages amid Middle East escalation and broader crypto market developments
Ivan on Tech's solo market analysis stream covering Bitcoin price action, geopolitical developments, and various crypto and stock market topics.
Summary
Ivan on Tech presents a solo live stream analyzing Bitcoin's position at the 200-week Moving Average, arguing that a close below this level would likely trigger a flush to the $50,000s — which he frames as a buying opportunity rather than a cause for concern. He discusses the Trump administration's notification to Congress of renewed military action against Iran, noting that the oil price chart confirms the escalation is real, as oil has moved back above its 200-week Moving Average. He covers Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) pausing Bitcoin purchases to fund dividend obligations, the US government moving $8.8 million in Bitcoin to Coinbase Prime (which Ivan reads as either a sale or the establishment of a National Bitcoin Reserve custody arrangement with Coinbase), and a range of altcoin developments including Lighter (LIT), Hyperliquid (HYPE), Solana, SpaceX stock, and Zcash. A significant portion of the stream is devoted to Ethereum's UX fragmentation problem, illustrated by Ivan referencing a live exchange with Uniswap founder Hayden Adams whose wallet displayed multiple confusingly-labelled ETH representations across L2s — which Ivan uses to argue Solana is already 10x better on user experience. Ivan also engages at length with a viewer claim that the Zcash Ironwood audit could 'make Zcash go to zero,' rebutting it by drawing on his own audit experience and arguing that audit comments are routine fixes, not existential failures. A recurring theme throughout is the importance of stop-losses, mechanical trading rules, and avoiding emotionally-driven 'needy' trading behavior.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin at the 200-Week Moving Averages
Ivan on Tech: Welcome to another episode. As you can see right now, Bitcoin is still at around the 200-week Moving Averages. We are holding the line for now — a bit below, a bit above. We're here around the 200-week Moving Averages. As long as we don't close too far below it, the support still holds. Ideally, we should close above it, but at some point we may just see this elevator all the way down to the $50,000s and $40,000s, which will be the final hurrah of the bears. The final dump, and then it's up only. It is Valhalla. It is the next bull market.
Middle East Escalation and Oil Price Confirmation
We do have some new developments in the Middle East, which is very important for us to highlight. Trump has notified Congress of a new war against Iran. This is very important because things are now escalating very quickly. The US is out from the World Cup, so according to Trump the World Cup is over, which means the escalation has started. You have all kinds of articles coming out — you can read them yourself. I'm showing you a few of them. The war is restarting. It is restarting.
It could be that it's just a technical thing — that he needs to end it for a week or so and then restart it so he can continue having this war without the approval of Congress. Because if you stop the war and then restart it, apparently according to US law you get 60 days without congressional approval. So in case you become some kind of person in power, some kind of dictatorial person, you can start, stop, start, stop, start, stop and you don't have to get any approval. Fantastic.
So yeah, it continues. What's interesting — the most interesting thing is not the articles. As you know, we don't really care about the articles. The interesting thing here is of course the oil price. And the oil price is going up a lot. As you know, we always look at the charts. Whatever news, whatever events, whether it's crypto or outside of crypto, the chart is showing you the truth. Is the news real? Is the news not real? In this case, oil is pumping so much. It is above the 200-week Moving Averages yet again. This means that the markets are pricing in an escalation. They are pricing in some kind of problem in the Hormuz and that this is real. This is real.
So yes, we do see that oil is going up. It is now the same price as in March when it was skyrocketing above the 200-week Moving Averages. Hopefully it ends somewhere here and then goes down, because for us to have low rates — for the Fed to be able to bring us closer to the bull market — we need oil low. Oil needs to be low.
So let's see. Could be like this: Monday, war. Tuesday, hot CPI. Wednesday, warish apocalypse — we're going to have a speech by Kevin Warsh. Wednesday, Thursday, war is over. Friday, AI bull market. Fantastic. So on Thursday he will deliver a speech to the nation. What's it going to be? Is the war over or not over? Could it be a Bitcoin reserve? Probably not. Will it be something connected to the conflict? Probably, because they just announced there's a new war and the same day he also plans a speech to the nation. Let's see. It could also be like this: buy stocks, Biden cheated, I got cheated, buy Dell stock, up is down, left is right. Let's see.
Bitcoin's Pre-Programmed Path and Why Geopolitics Is Secondary
One thing I know is that for Bitcoin, what's happening with the war and so forth is a bit on the periphery. We are just continuing our descent here with a lower high, lower high, lower high. We're now in the very cheap buy zone. And whether war happens or not, Bitcoin is pre-programmed. It's autopilot. It has a pre-programmed destination. Very likely it continues to the $50,000s and $40,000s.
Whatever happens with the war — if you think back to 2018 when there was a massive bull market at the end of 2017 and it ended in early 2018, or if you look back at 2022 and 2023, we don't even remember what the hell was happening in geopolitics. It's actually very secondary. It's very secondary. The only exception is probably COVID when they printed like there's no tomorrow. But otherwise, everything that's happening day-to-day is very secondary — just like the tariff stuff. You remember the tariff stuff? It came, it went. Now tariffs are fully reversed. They need to issue all kinds of refunds — $81 billion in refunds are being issued. So all this news actually matters way less than most people think.
The bull market will happen regardless. Why? Because the bull market is more about the psychology of the investor — the psychology of the bull and bear. The fact that after a year of just bear market, most people give up. When we said to be risk-off in October last year, what did people say? "Oh Ivan, you're wrong. We should just go up. There's no way it's a bear market. You are fully wrong." And now, almost a year later, almost everyone is also saying it's time to be bearish — and that's why we become more bullish. This is the main reason for bull and bear. This is the driver. What is the position of most people? Are they still hopeful? Do they still beg for a bull market? Or are they giving up? If they sold and no one else is left to sell, we go up.
So guys, bull market is coming. It's coming in a big way. Likely the biggest bull market in history. Why? Because look at all the money that went into AI. That money is not going to disappear. It's going to go straight into Bitcoin.
Strategy Pauses Bitcoin Purchases
Let's see what's going on with Strategy. What are they doing? They are selling all kinds of stock in order to pump up their treasury — to pay the dividend. The market though does not really care too much. I mean, they're signaling: "Guys, we have money. We have money. You buy Strategy. It's safe." But the market is looking at it and it's still below $90 — like $87, $88 here and there. The problem is that you cannot restore market confidence even if you temporarily have a bit of money. The market sees it's a house of cards. It's a house of cards. If you have a house of cards, it's very hard. What are you going to do with a house of cards?
So this is why it's not a surprise to me that it's not really helping out. He will have to really convince the market that it's sustainable — that it's working, that you have some kind of life cycle where money gets invested, it gets used, and then securities get retired. So it's not all the time just more and more obligations being acquired. But anyway, no buying of Bitcoin. So if we can get another leg down now that the final buyer — the buyer of last resort — is out, it would be fantastic.
US Government Moves Bitcoin to Coinbase Prime
Next, looking here. The US government is moving something — they are moving $8.8 million of Bitcoin to Coinbase Prime. There could be different explanations. One is of course that they're selling. Another one is that they are actually establishing a reserve with Coinbase as a partner and onboarding themselves into Coinbase Prime as the custody solution. Could be either one. If it is the sell part, it's very small — $8.8 million is not going to move the price in any way. If it is the National Bitcoin Reserve, fantastic.
Tokenization, Avalanche, and Robinhood Chain
Moving on to more news. We have all these bankers doing tokenization programs. They're going to be tokenizing something. What are they going to be tokenizing? Hopefully it is on the public chain. Is it going to be on Avalanche? Potentially, because Avalanche is getting a lot of tokenization. It doesn't really help Avalanche as a coin, as a price. You have, for example, Bridge Tower tokenizing $11 billion-plus of real-world assets on Avalanche. Avalanche moves to number one blockchain by net inflows on RWA. We did discuss it yesterday — at the end of the day it's potentially good for the price, but not for the Avalanche price. Maybe someone is making money from it, but Avalanche holders are not making any money from it. Zero money being made, zero profit being made for Avalanche holders.
Also, people are saying that so far Robinhood chain is everything they thought Mega ETH would be — going straight after the Solana user base that Ethereum previously ignored, with memes and DeFi stuff, maxing Ethereum patriotism. I agree here that it's very smart that Robinhood goes after the DeFi user. You've got to capture the DeFi user. It's so key.
But is it ETH maxing? I think they don't really care about ETH. I mean, all these L2s don't care about ETH. They're not even going to pay money to ETH. They're going to pay money to Arbitrum, and Arbitrum is another L2 cartel. So this ETH maxing — take it easy. No one is really pumping up ETH here. Take it easy. The only good thing is that it is EVM. So ETH development tools and ETH devs can build on it. It's just another chain that needs ETH devs. ETH devs can dev on ETH. So that's good — you have talent retention. There's always someone in need of ETH development skills. But otherwise, take it easy with the buy pressure. Take it easy.
SpaceX Stock Analysis
Now looking at SpaceX. SpaceX is going lower, currently at $138. Yet again the power of the mechanical rules is showing us very nicely — have patience, do not FOMO. When the plebs were buying SpaceX at the target line up here, we said take it easy, take it easy. Look at the supply and demand. Now we see supply and demand going down and down and down.
The question is: when is it a good price to buy SpaceX? Is it at $140? I think there's a good chance it goes under $100. There's a good chance it goes under $100. Either let's say it goes to $100 — that's basically a 50% loss from the highs, which is normally a good ballpark. Normally stocks retrace 50% after IPO. Now it did IPO at $150, so if we take that it could go even lower to $75. It's very standard, especially at these high valuations where all the price discovery already happened in private markets. Public market gets this super high price, which kind of makes sense, kind of doesn't make sense. Once the attention fades — which it does right now — it is smart for us to pay attention.
So yeah, two levels: either $100 or even $75 can easily be hit. But otherwise, the bull trend on the hourly chart is at $152. Should it go to bull trend, that's another signal to go bull. So you have basically three levels — go bull here, go bull here, and then in case it decides to go bull and go up, the flip level. Or you can just wait for the flip level wherever it happens. Could happen here, could happen down here. Who the hell knows? But if you're a believer in Elon, you could deploy a bit at $100 and then the rest if it goes to $75, and then you have a very good risk-reward. You're 50% from the listing. And then Elon needs to do his orbital data center and whatever else he's doing there.
Meme Coins, Ansem, and Solana's Textbook Chart
Next, looking at the trenches. Still the number one news is Ansem and what he's trying to do with his coin. Still the biggest meme of this cycle. There is cash on Robinhood as well, but other than that it's just more discussions about how to pump it more. He's saying he will support projects in the ecosystem building cool things around Ansem. And of course he's bull-posting every day, saying he really thinks we are being given a generational spot.
Is it a generational spot right now? Not yet. Not yet. It's an okay spot. Like it's not generational. It's okay. We're in the buy zone. It's good. Generational would be when we flash. Should we flash one more time — one more beautiful time — then it's generational. Solana going to $30. That would be generational.
And by the way, Solana — I love how it's following the textbook. It had the support, it broke down through the support, it retested the support, and then it gets rejected from the support, which is now resistance. Love it. So far it's textbook. It did not try to go to a new high. Did not go above this high right here and do a higher high. It just did another lower high below the support which is now resistance. Very very nice. So yeah, the analysis of going to $30 still stands. Or if we go to $93, we're bull at $93.
Lighter (LIT) vs. Hyperliquid (HYPE)
Looking at Hype — bullish, doing a good job. One thing to keep an eye on also is Lighter. If you've been in Bull Mania and following the money scanner, Lighter has been on a rampage. It is used more and more as this exchange that you plug and play into different chains — kind of like Hyperliquid but white label. I see many different chains are using it. It's up 87% since the end of May, since it went into bull trend.
Kind of like with the SpaceX IPO — it listed, collapsed about 50%, quite exactly. So 50% drawdown after listing is common, common, common. And then from here, up only, bull trend. Amazing. So the same thing with SpaceX actually — you don't have to FOMO, just wait for the bull trend on the hourly.
Now you can look at the daily also. Daily is bear, bear, bear, bear, bear. We love the bear. We love the bear because bear gives us cheap. Many people hate the bear, but I personally love the bear. Imagine buying into Elon Musk at a cheaper price while the plebs bought at like $250, $260. It's amazing. That's really why you only have to learn trading once and then you see through all of the BS for the rest of your life.
Whether we're going to Mars or not going to Mars, a chart is a chart. Human psychology is human psychology. The monkey brain is still clicking buy and sell no matter which chart. As long as you know the basics, you know the mechanical rules, you see through all of the BS.
Palantir Job Listing and Career Commentary
Look here. If you are DeFi and you want a job, Palantir is hiring a growth marketer lead. Salary is only $400,000 to $1 million and you have to live in New York City. Requirements include experience in scaling consumer products and so on. Unironically, a huge opportunity for someone that has a decent track record in consumer products plus crypto. If this is for you, you have to live in New York City — some people like it, some people don't. Many pros and cons. I would say more cons than pros.
You have this salary, but in comparison to the value you create, it's very small. You're a lead, not some pleb. You're a lead. I would say it's quite small compensation. For the average person it seems big, but this is very bad compensation. You're compensated like a pleb in the bull market. What it means is that as a growth marketing lead you have to give it all — you have to be fully into their business, try to pump them, try to make them more billions. So you cannot focus on yourself, you cannot learn trading, you cannot be part of Bull Mania, you cannot secure yourself a long-term skill or long-term bag that will feed you for life.
Yes, it may look big for the average pleb — $400,000 to $1 million, wow. But what happens if you get fired? What happens then? You don't know anything. You need a new job. It's not too good. And if you're in New York City, you're going to rent a shoebox. Either you rent a shoebox or you waste a lot of money renting something nice. Anyway, that's my review of the listing. But probably good for someone.
Pokemon Cards on Jupiter
Look here. If you like Pokémon, One Piece, and other stuff — let me know if you're into it — it's like Pokémon cards, and you use Jupiter. Now you can trade Pokémon on Jupiter. I guess every pool is an authenticated slab. The same cards you chased as a kid are now tradeable on Jupiter. You can pull cards with multiples of what you paid and earn up to $100,000 in rewards. Every Charizard, every grail. Anyway, check it out. This is not for me. I didn't really get into Pokémon cards. It wasn't really a thing — maybe because I was born in Belarus. We didn't have this kind of stuff. It was too expensive for the post-Soviet space. And then I lived in the ghetto in Sweden. People didn't have Pokémon stuff there either.
So for me this is some geek stuff. But yeah, if you're a grown man and you like this, congrats — you can do it here on Jupiter. Okay, Jupiter Gacha. And it's okay, guys. I mean, I have my own thing. I have my own RuneScape thing. Sometimes I can just log into RuneScape just to walk around. So I have my own stuff — things you shouldn't be doing as a grown man. You shouldn't be doing that. So if you like opening this kind of package, but it's digital so you don't even get to open it physically. Apparently there's 2 million in volume on this. Can we make money on this?
Open Pokémon Gold Pack. They try to make it so your dopamine goes off the chart. Do you get dopamine from this, guys? I don't, because I didn't do it as a kid. So it's not like, "Oh, I'm going to open this Pokémon." Okay, so what do you do with it? You store it. I mean, guys, it's big. It's big. I'm not disrespecting, but it's a bit weird. You're going to go there with Pikachu and you're 40 years old. "Oh no, I'm collecting Pikachu." Okay. Good for you. "Oh look at my Charizard. I got a Charizard." Okay, man. Fantastic. Big shout out.
SBI Partners with Solana for Japanese Financial Markets
Now look here. Japanese financial giant SBI partners with Solana to build an onchain financial market in Japan. There you go. Very very nice. Let's see if we can get Solana to Japan. Again, with Solana I'm actually bearish on the price. I'm not trying to pump SOL. It would be nice if SOL went to $30. I want SOL to go to $30 so we can buy there.
But just for the future of crypto and for us having real impact in the world, we need to be building on one chain. We cannot have L2s, all of these silos. Build on freaking Solana instead of doing your own corporate chain L2. This is just my wish for the industry — that we don't take five steps forward and then ten steps back and just have your car stuck in the mud spinning the wheel. Whatever Robinhood wants to do on their own corporate chain, they can do it on Solana. There is literally nothing they cannot do on Solana that they can do on their own corporate chain. But no — you do your own, you copy-paste everything, your own, you split liquidity, etc., etc., etc.
Monad and the New Chains Landscape
Monad — another chain which is separate. It's like a fast EVM, but you see now they have $265 million on deposit. Good for a DEX, but again it's another island, not super interconnected.
Lighter vs. Hype Discussion and Stop-Loss Discipline
Lighter or Hype — this is a good discussion. We just mentioned Lighter. I added it here to this list of new coins that are doing well. I call it not only new coins — Near is also here — but these are interesting coins that are actually doing stuff and have adoption of the tech. Basically this is pumpamentals and fundamentals together. You've got to have 50% pumpamentals, 50% fundamentals. When you have them together, it's very nice.
So here it's kind of like that. You have Venice with AI — very relevant, but be careful, it's Brendan. So yeah, stay out. Near with their cross-chain privacy stuff — stay out also now because it's bear now. Zcash also is bear now. Hype — it's bull, so it's good. Backpack — bull, new trend, bull. And Lighter also, 87%. Fantastic.
One commenter says: "I would buy more LIT here. I think it could very well outperform Hype from here. The reason is quite simple — Lighter is already doing a meaningful share of Hyperliquid's actual business, but LIT is still valued at only a tiny fraction of Hype." And the chart of LIT looks very good. So when you have pumpamentals aligning with fundamentals — fundamentals good, chart bullish, going to all-time high, price discovery — very very good.
As always, people ask: "But Ivan, what if I buy here and it goes down?" It can always happen. That's why you have a stop-loss. Have you heard about stop-loss? Most people don't consider it. They're like, "Man, Ivan, what happens if I buy it and it goes down? How do I protect?" Stop-loss. Ah, didn't think about that. The number one feature of any exchange — stop-loss. "Oh okay, wow, I didn't know — that's an interesting proposition." If you buy and it goes down, you have stop-loss. That's it.
You could be unlucky with the entry. Maybe now it decides to go down. It can happen. We're not Nostradamus. We don't know the future. Anything can happen. That's why you have stop-loss. You have stop-loss, you have risk calculation, you have position sizing. We explain it step by step in Bull Mania. But the simple gist of it is: you have stop-loss. You have no stop-loss? Okay.
At the time of writing, LIT is trading at around $2.42 with a market cap of roughly $62 million and FDV of $2.4 billion. And you see that Hype is way bigger — more than 30 times bigger. Based on circulating market cap, Hyperliquid is valued around 24x higher than Lighter. Lighter is 24x lighter than Hyperliquid — you can say that if you want a bit of a pun. But when you compare the actual protocol numbers, basically the post is saying that LIT is cheap. And you have now a bit of a pullback from the highs — like 20%. So you're not buying the very top. Could make sense. Very very good overall. But stop-loss always, stop-loss guys.
What happens if it goes down? It can happen. Anything can happen. What do you think — you buy it and it's up only? It can happen. Your stop-loss hits, you're out. You're out. You can try to re-enter it again. Maybe it goes to some support that is holding nicely, or you do another chart. That's the thing — people are so needy. The problem is you lose money when you're so needy. You enter a trade and it has to work. You enter a trade and this thing has to work because if you mess it up, your life is over. So that's why they don't want stop-loss. You understand? They don't want it because stop-loss would basically mean that the trade is over — which is by design. That's how it should be. But the average player is so needy he enters it, it needs to work, it needs to work. So he doesn't have stop-losses. It can collapse 90%. He still holds. He needs it to work.
Instead you need to have the Bull Mania mindset, as I call it, which means: okay, you're in, you have stop-loss, it went to stop-loss, good, you move on. You could re-enter later on the same chart if you want. If it looks good, if there is a reason, you could go to another chart. There's always something flipping bullish all the time. There's always something going in a bull trend. One week ago, Kinetics Pharmaceuticals on the US stock exchange went bull — 99% pump. Tall Financial Group, four weeks ago. There's always something pumping. You don't have to be needy. You understand? But if you have this idea that you have to buy this exact asset and this exact asset has to make you money, you put so many constraints on yourself. It's crazy.
Q&A Session
Anyway guys, let's go to Q&A — questions, answers, debate, discussion. Big shout out to DAB for timestamping us. Very very very nice.
Let me just summarize. If we summarize: it is still the make-it-or-break-it level at the 200-week Moving Averages. Should we start closing here, around $62,000, $61,000, I expect a flush to the $50,000s. If we start closing the week really below, I expect a big fat beautiful flush to the $50,000s and it's going to be nice. For us, as you know, it's only good. It means it's cheap. It means we get a nice discount. And the bull market is going to happen no matter the Iran situation, no matter the new war, old war. There is actually, if you think about it, no new war. It's just that he stopped it so he could restart it and get 60 days from Congress again.
Harsh Hash Cash: Is there an "I'm a pleb" option in the quiz?
Ivan on Tech: Well, there are options like that if you answer honestly. For example, you say that you're a long-term investor and then you honestly answer that you started to become a long-term investor only after your asset went red. Then indirectly you're saying that you are a pleb. But it's good because we're here to diagnose. The first part of fixing a problem is diagnosing it. So you need to tell me that you're a pleb for me to fix it. You understand? So that's very important.
Harsh: Is Robinhood going to overtake Solana?
Ivan on Tech: I think it's very unlikely because it's a corporate chain. It can still have a lot of momentum and a lot of attention, but you're just trying to compare a corporate chain to the real thing. Did Base replace Solana? No. I think Robinhood will not replace Solana. Can it take away some attention with the memes? Yes. So for a meme on Solana, a meme on Robinhood chain is a threat because it's just attention — you die if you don't have attention for a week or so. And that attention could be taken by another meme on Robinhood chain which has a lot of attention now. But you can never compare a corporate chain to a real open chain.
And to be fair, I don't even think that it's Robinhood's goal to compete, but maybe it is. Let's see. What's happened to Cypherpunk? That's the problem. Both Solana currently — and again, I'm bearish Solana price, I think likely it's going to go to $30, I will change my mind if it goes above $93 — but just think about the Cypherpunk ideal. That's why I also think it's very nice if we just build on one chain, because that's true Cypherpunk ideal.
You have ETH Maxis who've been so Cypherpunk, full decentralization, and then they kiss the feet of Vlad who is doing a corporate chain. There's something wrong in the brain. Bitcoin Maxis say decentralization and then they kiss the feet of Saylor who is doing a corporation with shareholders and stock market, and now he has to sell Bitcoin and they still kiss his feet. There's something wrong in their brain — some kind of personality split, some kind of schizophrenia, some kind of bipolar disorder in a lot of these people.
If you look at it, Solana currently is like the most Cypherpunk because all the changes are voted on. It's decentralized governance on chain. That's number one. Number two, they have the possibility to do all of the use cases. They're fast enough. ETH Layer 1 is also like that, yes. But actually not, because Vitalik decides the roadmap himself without any holders voting. Vitalik just said, "Oh, we changed the roadmap. Now we have a new roadmap." What happened? You had the L2 roadmap and then just randomly on a Sunday he comes out with a new roadmap. Forget the L2 stuff. Now we have a new one — it's going to be quantum and it's going to be private, because that's what Twitter spoke about during the last months. It's not bad. Quantum and private are my two favorite things. I love it. But you see there is decision-making which is not super Cypherpunk.
So yeah, that's why I'm bearish on SOL price now. But in terms of what's good for crypto, I do honestly believe building on Solana is the right move. One chain, don't have all of this split — this is the best user experience. It's also the best for Cypherpunk ideals. So can you compare Robinhood chain to Solana? You see yourself — you cannot compare.
Also, what kind of asset do you buy to be in Robinhood chain? You buy Robinhood stock or what?
Caspa guy: It's not Cypherpunk if it's proof of stake. It needs to be proof of work.
Ivan on Tech: You cannot compare Caspa. What do you do? Where's your Caspa markets, DEX, etc., etc.? Don't compare. It's not the same. And proof of work or proof of stake — it matters not that much. Because look here: Bitcoiners kiss Saylor's feet and it's proof of work. So how did proof of work protect them from the corporate overtaking by Saylor? It did not protect them. They still kiss his feet. So it's more of the social layer. It's more about how you do devs — technically, do devs need approval of all token holders to change the protocol? Not necessarily. Just like in ETH, no one cares about token holders. Vitalik decides. On Solana you do have a vote before it happens, even though technically it's not needed — just like on Bitcoin, no one asks the holders what they want.
So how does proof of work protect you? You see yourself — it's a bit of a thing people say not because they understand but because someone else said it. "Proof of work is better than proof of stake for Cypherpunk." Do you understand why? No. Practically, how does it help Bitcoin? It doesn't help. It's a consensus mechanism. You can have different consensus mechanisms. Go try to hack proof of stake if you think it's bad. For some reason people cannot hack proof of stake. We've waited so many years now. Ethereum is proof of stake. No one hacks it. Okay, moving on.
Viewer: Do you think Vlad's corporate chain and exchange could compete with Coinbase?
Ivan on Tech: Yeah, for sure. Coinbase is in a very dangerous spot now. They are losing their centralized exchange business to Vlad and their DEX corporate chain to Vlad. So for Coinbase, Vlad is a real threat. For Solana, no. So that's actually a good comparison — Coinbase is the game that Vlad is hunting. Vlad is going to come after Coinbase bigly. That's probably what he's optimizing for. He is coming after Coinbase 100%.
Azad: Is the hype around Hype dying out? You see Solana overtaking all-time highs.
Ivan on Tech: Is it dying out? I don't see it dying out. It's bullish. Everyone's using Hyperliquid. It's not a hype because everyone is using it. How can you have a hype if everyone is using it? There's no alternative. There's no onchain perp DEX as nice as Hyperliquid. There's nothing. So Hype is not dying down. Price could still go down, but don't worry about the hype.
You can have a situation where a project is well known, everyone talks about it, and the price still goes down. It can happen. Hype did not go down — price went down. It can happen. You think that hype follows price somehow? Hype creates price, but you can have a hyped project and it still goes down. Bitcoin is the most hyped asset right at the peak of every bull market. And then it collapses. In October when we said to be risk-off on October 8th, Bitcoin was the most hyped asset in the world. People said, "Ivan, you're wrong for saying to get out." So hype and price disconnect. You've got to look at the price.
Viewer: Long term, which one do you think will have bigger value — Hype or Solana?
Ivan on Tech: Long term I do believe Solana is going to have a bigger market and bigger potential, because Hyperliquid now is facing competition as Solana is shipping the roadmap that will allow them to compete. Solana is also much more decentralized than Hype. For Hype to compete they need to ship all kinds of stuff. I did a video a year ago on the Solana roadmap — I explained all of that. They need to ship things that will allow them to have features that are the same as in Hyperliquid. Hyperliquid is more or less a centralized chain. They have a bit of regulatory arbitrage where regulators don't understand that it's centralized, but it's super centralized — hyper centralized, I would even say. So long term, Solana should be the winner. But who the hell knows? Could be five years, could be ten years.
Hype has been such a strong force of nature that we don't really care that it's centralized. We just enjoy the pump. For making money, it doesn't matter if it's centralized or decentralized. But now that you ask this theoretical question — which is long long term — Solana should have the bigger market long term. Yes. But it won't stop it going to $30.
Viewer: Do you think Zcash is a great investment?
Ivan on Tech: Yeah, I think Zcash as a private solution is very good. You can have private money — it's very nice. So 100% on the utility. But great investment or not — currently we are in the bear trend. Let's see if it's just going to be a fakeout of a bear trend, which can happen. For that we can go to the daily. The 4-hour trend is bullish. So if you really like Zcash and you want to get in here at around $500 or so, you could enter here. Just be careful in case the 4-hour goes bear, because the daily is bear and the weekly is bear. If you want to bet on us coming back into those bull trends, you could enter on the 4-hour chart and just monitor it. In case the 4-hour goes bear, then you're out. Then it is really bear.
For now it is bear on the weekly. Could either be a fakeout where we just go to bull — it can happen — or it's really bear. And if Bitcoin goes to $50,000, I think we may very well revisit like $200 for Zcash. But for the next cycle, 100%.
Digital Euro Discussion
Stripe, Revolut, and others are among firms chosen to test the digital euro. Don't worry about the digital euro — it doesn't matter for crypto. For EU citizens it does matter, but maybe a bit less than people think. I'm actually not too worried about the digital euro, because if you use the bank now it is already super controlled. Mega controlled. So what's going to be the difference? Maybe they can program a bit more, but you are already mega controlled. Your euro in your bank is already digital euro, right? It's already digital. You barely have access to it. They can freeze it. They can take it. You understand? So what's going to happen?
The only difference is that now you don't need a bank to have euros. You can theoretically have it just in your wallet that you get from the government. But actually, banks are also going to be supplying it. I don't know how it's going to be. It's not relevant for crypto at all.
If anything, if you are to look at the bright side of things — if there is a digital euro, maybe you don't need to beg your bank to open an account. You just have a right to get the digital euro without the bank, just from the government. Because now, to open a bank account is like a whole process, especially if you're in crypto. And to do business, you need a bank account. So maybe for businesses it's even going to be a bit better because you don't need to beg the bank to open. At the same time, digital euro — they don't want to remove the bank. So it's going to have a bunch of limits on it. Can you use this for more than $10,000? I don't know. I don't even try to understand it. Let's see what they do. For crypto, it doesn't matter.
Whether it's going to be more or less control — you're already fully controlled in your fiat. It's fully controlled. If they want to remove money from your account, they can do it now already. So that's the worst that can happen — you have digital euro and it gets removed from you. It can happen now in the bank also.
People say, "Oh, but they can program it — they can program how your money works. If you buy too much meat, they can freeze it." They can do it now already in the bank. They can do it now. Your bank already does these categories for you — entertainment, rent. Your bank can easily add: if you buy too much meat, they ban. So technically, everything is possible now already. They have you by the balls already. 100%.
Actually, I will do a bit of research now to catch up with the digital euro developments, because they are in a weird spot. Number one, they want the banks to survive. But if you have digital euro, theoretically you don't need the bank because you can hold digital euro just in a government wallet or whatever. But they make some kind of weird mix where you have digital euro but you still need the bank. So what's the point? Because I have euros in the bank already. You understand? What's the point?
Knowing how incompetent bureaucrats are, digital euro will be a flop. Likely. Normally when the government does something, it's not too good. But in this case, when it's slightly good, it's when the private sector gives them the solution. So if the banks are going to be building this — I don't know. It's so weird. Just use crypto. That's it.
Ethereum's UX Problem and Solana's Advantage
Viewer: You said years ago something would have to be 10 times better to beat ETH if sold.
Ivan on Tech: 100%. You see yourself. Solana has the feature where you can have many different apps having a lot of activity without spiking the fee for everyone — local fee markets. ETH should adopt it very very soon. That has been the case for many many years now already with ETH.
Think about it yourself — you have one ETH on Arbitrum, one ETH on Base. I actually spoke to Hayden Adams — let me see if I can find this exchange I had with the founder of Uniswap where he showed his wallet and I said that it looks horrible. I mean, friendly, but it did look so horrible. Because it basically showed that you have ETH on L1, you have five other ETHs — you have to bridge, you have to do all of this. When you ask is it 10 times better, it's like a million times better probably to not have to do all of that.
Let me see if I can find it. Advanced search. Okay. At Hayden Z Adams. Here it is. It's kind of here where it was so clear. You know, it's phenito. How do you work with this? You have ETH. Imagine being new. You're like, "Man, I just want ETH and I want to trade shitcoins." But which ETH? Is it ETH with this logo? Is it ETH with this picture? ETH with another picture. WETH, which is ETH. WETH with another picture is ETH. ETH with another picture. But here it says ETH and here it says Base ETH. So what's the difference? Ah, it's the same. It's the same. How do you understand that?
I get it because I've been here a long time. You guys probably get it because you've been here a long time. But it's so easy to build something that's 10 times better than this. And yes, Solana is 10 times better than this. Base ETH. ETH. But here it's not Base. Yeah, because it's thicker. Oh my god, I don't want to do any bridging. You understand. Ironically, ETH made all of these problems for themselves. They made these decisions.
Zcash Ironwood Audit Discussion
Viewer: Ironwood can make Zcash go to zero.
Ivan on Tech: Why? Let's ask Grok what you're speaking about here. Let me see if Grok agrees with you. Basically, when there was this concern that potentially new tokens were minted inside their previous private pool, they created a new private pool. And now to migrate from old to new, all coins are going to be verified. So no fake coins, no counterfeit coins are going to be able to migrate. Testnet, mainnet, propagation, audits are advancing in parallel. Results are expected around after activation.
I think you're too dramatic. If formal verification and audit — let's say there is some comment in the audit — it can happen. They fix it. Results are expected around July, described as nearly complete. Have you ever done an audit yourself on anything? I have done many financial audits — we do them every year. I've done audits on our companies with the SOC 2 audit, which is like a technical operational audit. I've done all kinds of audits.
When you have an audit, it's very common to get a comment. The auditor says, "Hey, fix this," and you fix it, and then the auditor says, "Okay, I give you the audit." So if there's any problem, the auditor is going to say fix this and they're going to fix it. Because they're not auditing the idea — the concept works, it should be possible. You understand? It's not that they have to invent something out of nowhere. They're implementing a solution which exists and is valid. The question is: did they implement it correctly?
When you buy an IKEA table, you know it's for sure going to work. And if you put the screw wrong, the audit will see that — man, you put the screw wrong, remove the screw, put it in another place. It's not that you buy it and you're not even sure if it's going to be put together. With IKEA, maybe bad example, but you understand.
Viewer: Why is there so much value in privacy? For 99.99% of use cases, it doesn't matter.
Ivan on Tech: What do you mean financial privacy doesn't matter? It depends. If you have $100, it does not matter. If you have a lot of money, it matters a lot. For a billion different reasons, this matters a lot. If you have a lot of money, you want privacy. Go look at the top richest people in your country and see if you can find out about their finances. For some reason, they keep it private. I wonder why.
But yeah, of course, if you buy something with $100, no one cares. Well, maybe your tax man's going to care if you make a lot of money. But you should pay your tax. If you don't want tax, go to a zero-tax or low-tax jurisdiction. There are many such places. But yeah, guys, thank you very much for being here.