Ivan on Tech analyzes Bitcoin's bull market restart, Trump's $5,000 dividend proposal, and crypto market developments
Ivan on Tech delivers a solo market commentary covering Bitcoin's price action, political and macroeconomic developments, and various crypto and AI sector news.
Summary
Ivan on Tech presents a bullish case for Bitcoin, arguing that the bull market has restarted — mirroring the 2023 pattern — and that macroeconomic and political conditions, including potential money printing and Trump's proposed $5,000 dividend for US adults, will ultimately benefit Bitcoin regardless of short-term volatility. He covers the collapse of Hunter Biden's laptop memecoin, which he says he predicted, explaining the mechanics of how snipers and market maker arrangements can obscure who actually sold. He also discusses Robinhood's tokenized stocks — noting that Robinhood first copied Pump.fun's launch model, and Pump.fun is now copying back by enabling memecoins paired with stocks on Solana — and uses this as a lesson that execution matters more than having the idea first. He covers Strategy (MicroStrategy) approaching a 100 NAV ratio, explaining that crossing back above 100 would allow Saylor to raise fresh capital to buy more Bitcoin, making it a meaningful catalyst to watch. He addresses the Fed's potential rate moves, arguing that even a rate hike at this stage of the cycle is unlikely to significantly damage Bitcoin's trajectory because the bear market has already played out. He also covers the growing tension between centralized AI labs and open-source alternatives — arguing that Anthropic's reported monitoring of AI critics and OpenAI's plagiarism controversy make open-source Chinese models like Qwen a more trustworthy alternative for everyday users — and that the correct crypto-AI use case is decentralized hosting of these open-source models, though most current projects including Bittensor have over-complicated their offering and not yet found proper product-market fit.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin's Bull Market Restart
Bitcoin is at $78,000. We're still moving around the flip level — a bit up, a bit down — but Bitcoin is officially bullish. We are restarting the bull market, just like we did back in 2023. Some volatility is expected. We even went down a bit back then, but all in all the plan stays the same.
Trump's $5,000 Dividend Proposal
This is especially relevant as we are seeing the next most important phase in the demise of the US dollar. When you have a president saying that you will get money if you vote for me, guys, it is the final, final, final days. People will need to have Bitcoin as soon as possible.
Donald Trump: "What we're doing is because we've done so well, and because our country is making so much money, that only I can make this promise to you. And here is my promise: if the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate — both of them — because of our tremendous economic success, like nothing in history, we've never had anything like what's happening. But because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000. Very much like a successful company will do a cash distribution to its shareholders, or like last year when I gave our great members of the military..."
Oh yes, guys. Oh yes. If this happens, it's approximately $1.5 trillion that will be sent out to US adults. If you are a US adult, let me know in the comment section, because you may be getting $5,000. Will it be true? Will it not be true? Let's see. But it is quite clear that this guy wants the power, and if he can get the power, fantastic. If we can somehow get the plebs $5,000, that would be very, very nice.
Now, Grok is saying a president cannot unilaterally send $5,000 checks from federal funds. The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse. Any such payments require legislation appropriating the money. Winning the House and Senate control would let Republicans pass a bill for it. And this is the important thing — if you have the Senate and the House, Republicans can pass a bill which the president would sign. Let's see, guys.
I mean, it's a bit maybe conspiracy-theoristic, but if he wants a third term, this is the kind of stuff that will help him, in one way or another. But anyway, we're apolitical. Let's not get too much into politics. Let's just all agree — whether you're left or right, in the middle or up or down, whatever political animal you are — let's just agree that they're going to print. In one way or another, they're going to print bigly, bigly, bigly, bigly.
And if this happens — if in some way he does give $5,000 to all adults — it is approximately $1.5 trillion that will be infused into the economy. And to be fair, it's not too crazy to think it would happen, because during COVID you had the stimulus check, and it was similar. We already had stimulus checks. It's not a new thing.
At the same time, there's an election, and when politicians speak around election time you have to be very, very careful, because they want you to do something and then they don't need you for another four or two years. So all in all, we see it mainly as a data point in a big, big trend — and that trend is that the amount of dollars in circulation is increasing very quickly. If you look at the last ten to twenty years, most dollars in circulation were printed in that window. So you understand it's a path of no return that is just accelerating, and Bitcoin will benefit massively, massively, massively, massively.
Stock Markets and the Midterm Effect
All in all, markets are a bit sideways now. When you look at the S&P, when you look at the NASDAQ, when you look at the Russell, they're just chopping around — likely because there is a bit of uncertainty around the midterms. The market doesn't know what is going to happen after the midterms, who is going to be in control, and markets do want certainty. So NASDAQ, S&P, everything is just chopping around. But as soon as there is some kind of resolution in terms of the midterms, I think stocks are going to have another big fat leg up. That's going to be very, very nice for the Q4 rally. The Santa rally, the Q4 Santa rally, is looking very, very nice.
Hunter Biden's Laptop Memecoin Collapses 99%
Overall, if we look at the last 24 hours, you have the Hunter Biden laptop token going down 99%, just like expected. We've been discussing it yesterday and the day before. We've been saying, guys, it's like an IQ test. It launched, it dumped 99%, and yeah, that's it.
Hunter Biden is saying that he did not scam. He's saying: "As you may have seen, the laptop memecoin saw a sharp swing in price today." If you have a 99% loss, you don't have to say it dumped 99%. You can say it's a sharp swing. "A sharp swing in token price in its first hour of trading. The headlines are all the same — it's a rug pull, Biden crime family, the list goes on. This is far from the truth. The reality is that available liquidity could not sustain the strong level of interest at launch." Guys, there were technical issues. "Coupled with predatory snipers."
Snipers. You remember the snipers? What did I tell you about the snipers? I think it was yesterday or the day before — we had like a five-minute section where I told you about the snipers, that they're going to snipe the crap out of it in the first block before anyone can even buy. "Snipers who seek to beat liquidity providers to market cause a spike in price, which has since stabilized at healthy levels." Very healthy levels. Very, very healthy levels. The healthiest, maybe. "The team's allocation is locked. No one on our side sold. I'm used to legacy news and social media trolls. The full valuation is over one billion."
And if you look at the context added by community notes on X, you have a different story, because on-chain data shows a project multisig receiving 100 million tokens pre-launch and distributing 42 million of them to market makers who sold post-launch. So when he's saying the team did not sell, he is pointing to one particular bucket of the allocation — the team bucket. "We did not sell." But how much went to market makers? And what kind of deals does the team have with market makers? Because in many cases the deal is that the market maker gets coins to sell, they sell and do their own thing, and then you have a revenue share, or the project gets the funds anyway. And then they can still point and say, "Hey guys, actually these coins — they're reserved. Look at these coins, they haven't moved. This is the team coins. They haven't moved." But then the market maker liquidity coins — don't look at them, because they may have been sold by the market maker, and then there's a revenue share, et cetera.
Now, I don't know exactly what happened here, guys. To be fair, I don't have time to look into this deeply. I just want to flag that I don't know the details. You can read yourself. But I knew the result. I told you the result beforehand. That's the most important thing.
Also, it's so out of tune. Some things may pump because they're in tune with the hype. When Trump launched his coin, it was in tune. Here it's so out of tune, man. We're not even properly out of the bear. We're just so early, early, early. And here you do a meme which is not even funny. I mean, laptop. How fun is that? You understand what it takes to do a meme? It has to be culture. Laptop. What is this laptop, man? What? What laptop? Anyway.
He's also saying that the foundation account is suspended. "Okay, the foundation isn't stepping away." Why do you have a foundation for laptop, man? Why a foundation for laptop? It's like the Red Cross Foundation, and then it's laptop, man. "We are working on getting the account fixed. Until then, the foundation is relaying its thoughts via Medium." Oh yeah, the Twitter account got back. "Here is a breakdown of what happened and how we stabilized." Let's see if he can get it back.
Someone on Twitter is saying, "Honestly, big dog, just delete that. Move on. Nothing getting deleted. This isn't the Epstein files." Okay. Guys, man. Hunter, Hunter, Hunter, Hunter. Fantastic. It's so funny, this whole thing. It's amazing. Well, it's funny if you were watching us and you understood it for what it is. If you lost money, obviously it's not funny.
So basically, if I am to strongly steelman his position — he's saying that the initial pump was done before liquidity was added, and the price was not real. That's basically what he's saying. When you see minus 99%, what he's saying is: don't worry too much about it, because the high price that we fell 99% from wasn't real. It was created by snipers who put in bids at a very early time before the liquidity was added, so they pumped up the price, but that price was without liquidity. And let's see, guys — maybe it will recover, who the hell knows.
Actually, now maybe we can use the trends. With our system, with the money line, we can see what's going to happen here with the laptop token. The hourly is bearish. So now if you want to be part of the redemption arc of laptop, use the hourly money line, because maybe it goes bull. Maybe his foundation will bring it back, because the foundation is not stepping down. But at the same time, I mean — how much time does Hunter have to do this? What's his upside? Also, this guy — I think he wants to spend time with some ladies, you know. Now he has a bit of a budget for that. He said on Tucker Carlson that he wants to make some money. He likely has made a bit of money now. You get the point, guys.
Robinhood Tokenized Stocks and Solana's Response
Now, as you know, there are many memes on Robinhood that have been created paired with stocks. And Pump.fun is copying them back, because the Robinhood ecosystem copied Pump.fun with the launches, and now Pump.fun is copying them back. Basically doing the same thing. Now on Pump.fun on Solana, you can also launch a memecoin and pair it with whatever — with a stock. More liquidity, yada yada. So let's see if Solana can bring back the attention, being the number one platform for experimentation and so on and so forth.
And I see this is good. This is how competition should be instead of crying. When Solana became big, ETH was crying — "Oh no, Solana is so bad, it had outages, this and that." Man, just compete. I'm all about competition. Is Solana crying that Robinhood is a corporate chain? They're not crying that Robinhood is centralized. They are just looking at what works and offering products and services on their chain that can compete. Compete, for goodness' sake. Don't cry. Don't cope.
I saw some Solana guys coping slightly — just slightly — where they said that Robinhood has like 100 times higher fees. But it's cope, because it's still just below a dollar fee. If you're making money on coins, you don't care if there's a dollar fee. So no coping. Just go and compete. That's very, very nice.
Also, speaking about Robinhood, there is a new movie that has come out. You may not have seen it about Robin Hood. And there's the evil king Gary. Big shout out to Gary. Yeah, let's see how this Robinhood meme stock stuff continues. But overall, I love that Robinhood has really taken this stock market stuff and more or less made it mainstream on-chain.
And there are many questions that the traditional media has for Robinhood about all of this. They're asking what a tokenized stock is, and it's good — they're learning, they're learning, they're understanding more and more. Let me find this video where Vlad is explaining on CNBC or something.
Basically it was on the Andrew Ross Sorkin show, where he got asked about all the details with Robinhood. Let's listen to this, because as the traditional finance world is learning about the existence of tokenized stocks, they have so many questions — so many basic questions. And I think many guys in the crypto community also have the same questions. So let me just play it so we all learn together.
Andrew Ross Sorkin: "I kind of hear what you're saying, but I understand Adam Aron's frustration with this. He's trying to build something. He's trying to continue to build something, and he wants investors who are interested and believe in his product to come to him, not to go through you."
So what she's asking here is that there is drama now with the AMC stock CEO — the AMC company CEO, you know, the movie theater. They don't like that Vlad took their stock and made a token out of it, and now it is on-chain. You can argue whether he should like it or not. I mean, you can argue he should like it because now their stock is relevant. At the same time, there's a big question about what is possible and what is allowed to do with a stock, and whether it even matters that the company themselves don't like that their stocks are tokenized. So this is what she's asking.
Andrew Ross Sorkin: "He thinks if they go to you instead of going to him, his stock price is not going to do as well. He points out validly that if they're going to you instead of him, they don't get a chance to vote as a shareholder. I can understand why a CEO would be frustrated and upset about that. What makes you think that other CEOs aren't going to think the same thing? Hey, if they're interested in buying shares of my company, they should buy it from me, not buy something that you've modeled to transfer off of it through you. That may in turn hurt my stock price because I'm not getting all the people who are interested in buying my stock actually buying it."
Vlad Tenev: "I think there are two things there. Number one, these are products available outside the US in 120-plus countries. And in a lot of those places, people don't have easy access to US equities. There's no underlying brokerage infrastructure. There's no Robinhood where you can go on your app and buy shares. So we think a lot of this is actually net new business and the opportunity for these companies to access a whole new—"
Andrew Ross Sorkin: "What does Adam Aron get from it?"
Vlad Tenev: "Well, he gets access to a whole new shareholder base, people who have exposure to his stock. And because the tokens are backed one-to-one by underlying shares, there is stock purchase backing these tokens."
So her question was a bit — because he's saying, listen, you're going to get the pump anyway. If someone in sub-Saharan Africa buys AMC from a wallet, Vlad will have to buy the actual stock. So now you have the whole world pumping the stocks on-chain, and you get the buy pressure propagated to the real stock. You understand — to the real stock.
Andrew Ross Sorkin: "Just so I understand — because it's one-to-one, does the token come with all of the voting rights and everything else that's associated — dividends and the like — with owning the actual stock?"
Vlad Tenev: "It comes with dividends. Voting rights — not in this case, because it is a debt security and the shares are held as collateral. But again, that's not dissimilar to how an ADR or an ETF would function. If you have an ETF and you get exposure to an underlying, you're not voting in each underlying."
Andrew Ross Sorkin: "Can Larry Fink vote my stuff? I want to put him in charge, Vlad. I really like his politics. Is that possible?"
Vlad Tenev: "We can look into that."
Andrew Ross Sorkin: "Vlad, can you vote the shares? I'm saying — is Robinhood going to be voting the shares in the same way that Joe's unhappy that Larry's voting shares, though it's his firm? Is Robinhood voting those shares?"
Vlad Tenev: "I think we haven't really announced plans for the voting aspect of that. We'll certainly share more if we have it."
Yeah. I mean, this one is a massive one. Because you know that one of the most influential companies in the world is BlackRock, because when you buy a BlackRock ETF, they take your money, they buy all of the underlying companies, and now they get to vote on what happens to those companies. They are part of the board in some cases, or they're part of just shareholders voting on different matters in the annual general meeting, or in other situations where a shareholder vote is needed.
So what CNBC is asking Vlad here is very important, because should tokenized stocks become massive — and maybe in the future even bigger than ETFs, since this is more global, more inclusive, you don't have to have a brokerage account, you don't need to do any KYC — they could become bigger because people around the world will be buying tokenized stock. And for all of these tokenized stocks, the voting power goes to Vlad, goes to Robinhood. That's a massive question, actually, in terms of corporate influence.
Vlad Tenev: "There is established precedent for creating these types of products, and they give exposure to these assets to people all over the world. I do think this is the future. The entire financial industry is headed in this direction."
Andrew Ross Sorkin: "The US is also working on innovation exemptions to allow for tokenized securities out here, and it'll take time to educate."
Big shout out to Vlad. He's fantastic. What he's saying is fully correct here — people want on-chain stock, and the market gives them on-chain stock. That's it. That's how on-chain stocks work.
Now, they're also on Solana. They've been on Solana for a long time. See, here's where execution matters, because Solana technically had tokenized stocks before Robinhood, but Robinhood was just better at executing. So there's a big lesson in there. Sometimes people say, "Ivan, I have an idea for a startup. I don't want to tell you because it's super secret." Listen, no one cares about your idea. It's all about execution. You've got to execute. Vlad came and executed the crap out of this. And let's see if Solana can catch up. But all in all, it's good for the end user. There are all kinds of different solutions and compositions.
Fed Rate Decisions and Macro Outlook
Look here — the Fed is potentially increasing the rate in September. According to Polymarket and different prediction markets, the number one outcome is the Fed increasing rates. Let's see. That would be quite spicy if they increase. Trump wants them down. Trump said he would more or less do something like a tariff against the Fed. Let me find it. He was saying that if they don't cut interest rates, he's going to do something.
Oh yeah, here it is. "Lower the interest rate, because the US is much stronger in credit than anything else, so they should have the lowest. Lower the rate or I'll stop trading with countries with which we have a deficit." Great. So this was on September 4th. "Great job numbers and you haven't seen anything yet. Employers added this many jobs in August. Lower the rate or I'll stop trading with countries with which we have a deficit — which the US Supreme Court, in its decision, strongly acknowledged the president has an absolute right to do. It's better than tariffs. The Fed board, with its great leader, must get smart, be patriots."
Let's see, guys. We're just going to react to whatever happens. We're going to be okay. But a lot of drama, a lot of drama in financial markets, as you can see. Will they increase? Will they decrease?
Treasury Secretary Bessent on the Clarity Act and Bond Markets
You also have Bessant saying that he needs the Clarity Act. He is saying it's time to get the Clarity Act, yet again for the hundredth time. And also he's saying, "I'm the house now." When it comes to the bond market, he's saying, "I'm the house. Don't trade against me." Listen to this.
Scott Bessent: "Whenever people say, 'Oh, well, the Treasury Secretary is taking a risk' — well, it's my dream. I have asymmetric information. Like, I am the house now. When we intervene with the Japanese yen, I have pretty good insight into what the Bank of Japan is going to do, what Japanese policymakers are going to do. Bet against me if you want."
Exactly. So all in all, guys, the conclusion out of everything here is: printer online as soon as possible. The printer will come online. I don't put too much weight into this rate hike narrative at all, because this is not the time to be bearish. The time to be bearish was last October when we were bearish. It's not the time to be bearish now.
There's always going to be a narrative which sounds bearish. There's always going to be some kind of concern, always about something. There is never a time in the world where you have everything just bullish with no fear and no counterargument. And at the same time, it's vice versa also — there's never a time where everything is just bearish. So you have to take all the information and make a bet. Make a bet which may go against you. You may lose money, but you have a stop-loss. Done. Fantastic.
Strategy (MicroStrategy) Approaching 100 NAV
Strategy repurchased a bunch. Let's see — did they get back to 100 or what's happening? They're getting closer. If it is above 100, it's another pump for Bitcoin. Why? Because then Saylor can raise money from shareholders and buy Bitcoin with it. So that's going to be another catalyst when Strategy returns to 100. So yeah, they're trying to get back to 100 by repurchasing.
Anthropic's AI Monitoring and Open-Source Alternatives
What's happening with Anthropic? Anthropic is reportedly building an extensive monitoring system to keep tabs on activists who oppose the development of AI. There you go, guys. It can become quite dystopian very, very soon. That's why in crypto you also have very important projects. All these AI projects — like Venice, which pumped a lot on this OpenAI situation. You have the other ones which are not really pumping, but you can keep an eye on Fetch and Ocean in case they go bull trend. Something to keep an eye on, because this story with traditional labs being a bit evil is going to get bigger, guys. It's going to get bigger.
And the good thing is we have a solution. And isn't it interesting that in this case, China seems like the good guys? Because what OpenAI has done lately — where they're accused of stealing a mathematical invention, a solution to a Millennium Prize problem, which we discussed yesterday — and Anthropic has so much bad press. Meanwhile, the Chinese guys are like the good guys, because they release open source. And now you can run your own open-source Chinese model. Because it is open source, they don't track you. You run it on your own machine.
Now, is it biased? That's another thing. With China, of course, their model may be biased. You ask about a famous square — a famous square — you ask the model about that famous square, it may not tell you. But you see, it's interesting, because for the westerner, it maybe does make more sense to use open-source Chinese than to use Anthropic or OpenAI. Because if you use Anthropic or OpenAI, they're going to literally steal your stuff — like what happened with the mathematicians. If you use Chinese, okay, you cannot ask it about the famous square, but at the same time, why would you? Are you political? As long as you're not political, you're going to get the answers. And even if you are political, the data is not shared because you run it on your own machine. The model is on your machine. You understand.
So yeah, guys, check out open-source models. I think now there are many ways to run your own model. If you go to HuggingFace, you can see which models are available. You can browse, you can explore a bit, because I think you will be surprised how easy it is to run them. You can go to huggingface.co and explore a bit. A lot of these models are free. Search on YouTube how to use them, how to install them, because you will be surprised — it's not hard. Literally not hard. And you see, the average person — you and I — we don't use AI for anything mega complex anyway. So you don't need the latest, latest one. For you to do your normal work tasks with AI, man, these free ones are more than enough.
Now, some of them require big hardware. They have big hardware requirements. So that's something to think about. But at the same time, okay, buy some — you know, a MacBook Mini. I have a MacBook Studio, for example. It can run quite a lot. So anyway, yeah, something to consider. At least something to consider.
Japan and China Dumping US Treasuries
China and Japan are dumping treasuries. This will mean the US government will deploy money to buy treasuries, because they want to control the yield curve. We discussed this. Let's just go quickly so we don't miss anything.
Oil Prices and Trump's Midterm Timing
Oil is high. Iran — again, back and forth. We all know it's happening every day since March. Oil is high. Some oil tanker. Hormuz here, Hormuz there.
Trump says oil and gas prices won't fall until right after the midterms. Right after me, all prices are going to be tumbling, man. I love it. Trump, man. What a political animal. I love it. I love it. I love this stuff, man. I'm taking notes, guys. If I'm ever president, we're going to be running this playbook fully. You're going to get money after the midterm election. Oil prices, they're going to go down after the midterm election. It's so easy. Fantastic, man. I love it. So oil prices — the global oil market — it's not going to dump before the midterm. If he gets reelected, it's going to dump. Good.
Gold in Bull Trend
Gold is going up. Very nice. But it has been in bull trend for the last few weeks, which we covered very significantly on this channel. It hasn't climbed massively since then — it went bull trend and then it has climbed a bit since the lows at 4.2, but nothing too major. Keep an eye on gold because it is in bull trend, and in bull trends we're bullish. So yeah, it has climbed since those lows, but nothing too major.
Crypto Gaming and Other Market Notes
Crypto gaming — no one cares about it, but you can see there is some activity. World of something. But no one cares.
Reading Ryan and Vlad's Market Analysis
Let me open up quickly here and go through what Ryan and Vlad wrote, because they normally say smart things. I have like a special monitor for what they write, because my IQ gets higher when I read this. When I read Hunter Biden laptop, my IQ gets lower. So I want my IQ to go up. Let's see what they say.
"I think the market is going to bifurcate, and even though a lot of people think Base has lost, I don't think it has. Brian and Vlad are playing to their strengths. Vlad built Robinhood around retail. He understands the retail archetype well. Brian spent years convincing the world why Bitcoin matters and how crypto can unlock financial freedom. He willed crypto to the world when most were against it. He's also spent years in Silicon Valley around founders. So catering to startups via commerce through Shopify, stablecoin payments, and agents."
Yeah, maybe that's what Base is going to do — be for startups. But man, just build on Solana. Payments, stablecoins — it's biggest on Solana. What does it mean that no startups are building on Base? Why would you build on Base? You can build on Solana. It's the same or better. More people have a Phantom wallet than have configured their L2 to be on Base.
So yeah, I mean, just my BS radar. Sometimes these guys say smart things, sometimes. I still respect the opinion. Maybe it's correct. Maybe it's correct. At the same time, why would founders say, "Oh, no, I only accept USDC on Base because I like Jesse, I like Brian"? Why would you do that? You would say, "I accept everything. Here's my Solana address, because most people are there. Here's my ETH. Here's all of the L2s." Like we do in Bullmania — people want to pay, we give them our ERC-20 address. Pay from whatever you want, any L2. We're going to come to your L2. We don't care where you pay. Sometimes someone pays on Base, sometimes on Robinhood — the other day there was even a guy who paid on Robinhood. I was like, man, okay, the first guy. Most people pay on Solana or they pay on native ETH L1. Solana is number one, ETH L1 is number two, and all of the other L2s are later on. But man, I'm happy. Some guys pay on others. I even have an Arbitrum wallet. We haven't set up a Bullmania Arbitrum wallet yet — we're going to be wherever you are, wherever you are, we're going to go and adopt that chain for you. We're going to do it because we're adopters, we are innovators, we're everywhere.
AI Progress: From Counting Letters to Millennium Problems
We went from failing to count the number of Rs in "strawberry" to solving a Millennium Prize problem in under two years. Potentially it was stolen, it was plagiarized. But on a big level, this statement is true.
The biggest difference between Bitcoin and Zcash in my opinion is not privacy or quantum resistance, but the fact that the latter is capable of changes and the former is not. And this is a trade-off rather than a strict superiority. Ossification of Bitcoin does offer stronger guarantees of immutability and fixed supply, whereas Zcash can better adapt to the latest developments. Yeah. True. True.
Bittensor (TAO) and the Crypto-AI Landscape
What do you think about TAO? You are a computer scientist, so I want your technical insight. Don't worry about the technical insight — you need to worry about the outcome. You need to worry about the usage and adoption. Let's actually check Bullmania AI about that, because at the end of the day we can discuss technicals for a very long time, but who is actually running models on TAO? Who is using TAO models? Is inference happening?
So in the past there were some projects who tried to do decentralized networks for training — we share training data, yada yada. That use case is basically dead now, because you have open-source models that are so good. Some of them are from China. For you to have a decentralized network that trains a model and has training data that is better than what's coming out there — forget it. Now the use case is: all of these open-source models are there. How the hell do we run the open-source models so that they're available? Because a lot of them require a lot of hardware. Big GPUs. GPUs are expensive. So let's see what TAO is doing.
Short answer: specialized work is running across the subnets. The honest caveat from the community is that Bittensor is still stronger at internal competition than broader crypto inference. See, Venice — they do inference. Inference means that they run the model and you can use the model. They run open-source models. I actually hate the word "inference" because it's the geek name for something that's very simple — just running the model. "Oh no, we're doing inference." Man, you're hosting an API for the model. Okay. I don't like the word inference. It sounds too complex for what it is. Inference means you just run the model. Nothing more. You don't do anything else. You run the model and you have an API where people can chat with the model. That's it. That's it. That's it.
So Venice is doing that. Venice is just hosting the models. It's this decentralized yada yada. Bittensor — what the hell do they even do? Bittensor is not a giant clone. It's a marketplace of subnets. Miners contribute. So is it used? Because it should be used like there's no tomorrow. There's a subnet for YC — maybe they over-complicate too much. That's why they don't pump. They over-complicate. LM compression in production. Okay. So listen, it is interesting. Maybe they find something. But clearly they haven't really found this perfect product-market fit which everyone understands.
Why so complex, man? Why so complex? Just do like Venice — run the open-source models. There are open-source models for all of this. 3D? There are open-source models that can do it. And you will never compete with everything open-source coming out. How are they going to compete with Chinese models? They cannot compete. So anyway, some thoughts there. But all in all, just look at the price. If it explodes, good. But I think they're just not really in tune with the market here — also not really like Hunter Biden with his laptop. Not really perfectly in tune with what's needed.
What's needed now is inference. I can go to HuggingFace here, and I'm just telling you as an AI user — all of these models, let's have crypto networks that run all of them. Some of them have very high hardware requirements. This Qwen, for example — this Chinese model — I can tell you one thing: this Chinese Qwen can do everything these subnets do in TAO a million times better. I can always make that bet. This Qwen thing will eat all of these specialized market subnets for dinner and will not even notice. But this Qwen thing requires insane hardware to run. And so what crypto should do is just run this in some decentralized way where it's available — some network runs it, coins are used for compensating people that run it, and we can all use this in an easy way. Okay, that's how I see the AI market right now.
Q&A: Fed Rate Hikes and Bitcoin
Ivan, if the Fed increases the rates, is this going to penalize US treasuries — money getting expensive so the yield gets higher?
Yeah, interesting question. I think it could go both ways. It's a bit hard to see. This is why I'm humble enough to say it's too complex to model. And by the way, no one knows. No one knows what's going to happen. We can just guess. But it's a bit too complex to model. So that's why we don't trade based on it.
Here are the scenarios. There is an argument to be made that the financial world is going to reward the US for raising rates, because they are fighting inflation. So the financial world — who buys US treasuries — may see that, huh, they are actually serious. They're actually responsible. They're not just printing money and giving it to everyone and easing and making money cheap. They are actually responsible. They have a stance against Trump, against the politics, against the administration, and they do the responsible thing — which may increase the trust in US bonds. It may increase the trust in US bonds. At the same time, it may hurt growth. It may have negative consequences for business, which is bad for the economy, and that may also not be great for bonds long term.
But if I look at it — if they increase a bit, the story makes perfect sense. Politically, it's very bad for Trump. Trump needs the midterms. For Trump, it's very bad. But to increase and to be responsible — I think the overall bond market probably will like it. That's my guess — that they will probably like that the Fed chair is responsible, that the Fed is responsible. So yeah, it's a balance. But to model it out exactly, who the hell knows?
Overall, I think that if they increase, I don't think it will have a big impact on crypto, guys. I don't think so, because we already dumped for a year. Okay. So they increase — so what? We already had the bear market. If they increase a bit, I don't think it matters for crypto where we are now. We're now in a situation where bad news doesn't dump us, because we've already dumped so much. And good news will pump us.
And it was vice versa in Q4. Let's actually see what happened here. In the money line, we actually have this interest rate data. And you see — when Bitcoin entered bull trend in 2023, they actually increased the rates. They had like one, two, three, four increases. So you see, at the end of the bear, it doesn't really matter what they do. It doesn't really matter. We already had the bear. So when we go bull, it's bullish even if they increase a bit.
Q&A: iPhone Foldable
Will you buy the iPhone foldable phone for $2K? I was actually checking that. I don't know, guys. One of the use cases for the iPhone is taking pictures, and that one has a worse camera. Yeah, I'm still trying to figure out if I want the foldable. Also, to me, the foldable looks a bit off. Maybe it is good. Maybe it is good. But whenever I see someone with this foldable stuff — some Samsung stuff — I don't like it. I don't like it.
It seems to be that the reception is very good, but for me this foldable — I don't know. I'll check it in person. But you know, it's foldable, so it has like a valley in the middle. So yeah, let's see. For now I don't want to buy it. But if it's — I mean, I'm thinking maybe it is nice for, for example, I hate writing on the phone. I hate typing on iPhone. I hate typing on the phone. Maybe if it's bigger and I can use the pen, maybe it's good. I don't know.
Q&A: Injective (INJ)
What are your opinions about Injective? For me, the chart looks pretty bullish. Made more than 10x with the last cycle.
Yeah, let's check Injective. Not bad actually. Quite okay. It's above the bull flip. It looks okay. Especially if you can get above this level — very nice. Looks good. After a massive dump, there's a new bull trend. It has come down a bit, but now coming back above it, it will likely continue higher. Good. So I think it looks bullish. I think it looks bullish.