Ivan on Tech gives his Bitcoin market outlook amid the failed Clarity Act vote and Fed rate decision
Ivan on Tech's solo Bitcoin and crypto market analysis stream, covering the Clarity Act failure, Fed interest rate decision, Arc chain activity, AI misuse reports, and viewer Q&A.
Summary
Ivan on Tech presents a solo stream covering several developments affecting the crypto market. The central argument is that Bitcoin remains in a confirmed bull trend despite two negative catalysts hitting simultaneously: the Senate's failure to advance the Clarity Act (with Elizabeth Warren warning it would cause an economic crash) and an anticipated Federal Reserve interest rate hike. Ivan argues that neither event should concern long-term Bitcoin holders, pointing to historical precedent showing that rate movements have been largely disconnected from Bitcoin's four-year market cycle. He also covers Arc chain (Circle's L1) as a short-term trading opportunity being pushed by prominent traders, Robinhood employees being charged with insider trading on Hyperliquid, and Anthropic's report revealing that the Houthis used Claude AI to help develop guided missile software. The stream closes with an extended Q&A covering Solana price targets, ICO performance, staking yield logic, and portfolio sizing.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin market overview and the Clarity Act failure
Ivan: Bitcoin is still at around $75,000–$76,000. We're bouncing around here. But most importantly, people are freaking out because there's no Clarity Act. The Clarity Act yesterday got denied — got fully denied. Elizabeth Warren came out and said that the Clarity Act will start a recession, that it's going to start an economic collapse. And it got denied. Listen to this:
Elizabeth Warren: "This bill would put us all at risk of a crypto-fueled economic crash."
Ivan: So they are already today blaming crypto for the next economic crash, economic collapse. And of course, Bitcoin did fall like $1,000 yesterday. It's very important to talk about it because people are freaking out. There is no Clarity Act. Only Ivan gives you clarity in these very uncertain times of volatility.
Now, as you know, we are in a bull trend. We officially turned bullish here last week and we're still bullish, and it's fantastic. We just follow the plan — just like back when we flipped bullish in 2023. You remember that we did see a bit of sideways. It went down a bit. We didn't really go above the high right here fast. We tried going above the high at approximately $24,000, got a bit rejected, got down a bit. But at the end of the day, once you are in the bull trend, the likelihood of an upside resolution is the biggest. So we keep it simple, we keep it clear. We give you clarity.
No one else gives you clarity. No one else in the world gives you clarity except here on Ivan on Tech. Everyone else will give you a new target every day. Today they have this target, now they have another one. I'm telling you we're bullish. It's bull trend. Even if you have a dip lower, just buy, because it is a bullish trend. It's time to be bullish. The time to be bearish was right here back in October.
Fed interest rate decision and its impact on Bitcoin
Now, another important thing we have to discuss is what's happening right now with the Fed, because the interest rates will be announced today. The highest likelihood is that they will increase. But people are freaking out. They're saying, "Ivan, what's going to happen?" Ivan gives you full clarity on the situation, and that is: a higher interest rate will likely not affect Bitcoin too much.
Just like, by the way, when they lowered the interest rate — you see, when they lowered the interest rate, we had the bear market start. Higher interest rates here at the beginning of the bull market did not stop the bull market. So you understand: higher rates here, you see they went up and up and up and up and up — they did not stop this bull market. And lower rates right here did not stop the bear market. So in my mind, the rates are disconnected from the cycle.
Why? Because it's more about supply and demand. It's more about how much Bitcoin is for sale. Here at the peak, a lot of Bitcoin is for sale — people made so much money. Here at the bottom, not many Bitcoins are for sale. That's why around the 200-week moving average, we said it's time to buy. Buy, buy. It's time to be bullish. It's not time to be bearish. It's not time to be afraid. It's not time to be scared.
You should have been wetting your pants back in October when we told you to be bearish. That was the time. But no — only now people are saying, "Maybe it's going to go down." Listen, all in all, we're bullish. We're bullish and we're bullish. Why? Because it's bull trend. We're a year into this. The four-year cycle is doing its thing. They're going to be cycling back in October because according to the four-year cycle, October is the bottom. So you're going to have that buy pressure. A lot of buy pressure. A lot, a lot of buy pressure.
So while emotional dudes in crypto — and in crypto we are emotional dudes, we can rebrand crypto to "emotional dudes" — while the emotions are running high, while the emotional dudes are writing "what's going to happen, what's going to happen?" — Ivan is here giving you clarity, calmness, the correct perspective. Just like I'm not always bullish. In October I gave you the bearish perspective. We're here to give you the correct perspective. Not always the most popular, but the most correct perspective, the best risk-reward, the best path forward for the average pleb.
The Clarity Act failure in detail — what it means for crypto
Zero Democrats voted to advance the Clarity Act. Democrats don't like it because Elizabeth Warren told them it will start a recession. So they did not vote.
All in all, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter in the short term. In the long term, of course, it would be nice if there were clearer rules. But the thing is, even though there's no Clarity Act, the SEC and CFTC are going to make the rules anyway that are good for crypto. The only problem is that the rules they make now could be reversed if a new administration comes in, whereas the Clarity Act would cement the rules in law in a more stable way. That's very, very important.
So when you look at the Clarity Act failure, you need to look on the bright side. The bright side is that the SEC and CFTC are still going to make fantastic, nice rules for crypto anyway. And of course, the Clarity Act is coming to crypto regardless. And of course, the GENIUS Act is already the law of the land for stablecoins, which is even more permissive on rewards. There were some concessions made on the Clarity Act that were tough to swallow. So perhaps it's for the best. Let's see what's going to happen. Crypto cannot be uninvented. That's for sure.
Arc chain — Circle's L1 and the short-term meme opportunity
Speaking about stablecoins, you do have the Arc chain now getting a lot of support. Arc is Circle's chain. Normally we would say it's a corporate chain, this and that, but in the bull market we're way more bullish and way more diligent, because even the corporate chains — as Robinhood has shown — are doing very well. So we just look at the facts.
What's going on on Arc: you now have pump.fun integration, you have GMGN integration. Pump.fun app will support Arc chain. If you look at what Arc chain is, it is Circle's L1. What people are trying to find is the next Robinhood. So people are now trying to find the next Robinhood, and in a way it feels a bit forced — they're trying to force Arc to be the next Robinhood. Let's see. We're here to give you the information, give you the opportunity, and then you execute and do risk management.
Is it a corporate chain? Okay. Is it supposed to be an economic OS for stablecoin finance? Yes. But you see the degens — they see the most boring chain in the world, stablecoin finance, tokenized assets, and they try to make it degen. What has happened lately is that there are now bridges, people are doing memes — all of these things are going to go to zero also, so be very careful. But if you want to trade short-term, you have some opportunities here.
There's a prominent trader speaking about Arc — this guy is quite famous lately with Robinhood and so on — and he's saying that Arc is worth checking out for short-term opportunity because GMGN is integrating Arc. Arc is actively trying to attract trenchers. Most people building around Arc have reached out to top trenchers. That suggests they understand how important early meme connectivity is for a new chain, especially if you're a corporate chain that no one cares about. You need the memes.
They appear to be trying the Robinhood playbook. He also says he's had a source tell him that Arc understands how important it is to have trenchers on the chain early and is actively focused on making that happen. And he wants to be super clear: this is a degen rabbit hole, a short-term adventure. He's not rotating his core thesis away from Robinhood, BNB, and Solana. He generally believes that Robinhood, BNB, and Solana is where you want to concentrate your energy this cycle.
All in all, it is important for us to pay attention just in case it explodes. Just in case. So bridging a bit, having a bit there, derping around, larping around — why not? It's bull market. If anything is in the bull market, you want to be derping around and larping around.
New chain, new launchpad — the bet is mechanical. Fresh chain, live launchpad surface, trenchers arriving, GMGN going live. That combination can create short-term money-making opportunities. Also, USDC is used as gas on Arc, which is easy — you don't need another token. You're sending payment, you have USDC. Very, very nice. Also fully centralized, meaning that if they ban your address, you're banned.
Arc chain has 11 validators: BlackRock, Mastercard, Visa, Moneygram. Obviously it's super centralized. The gas token on the chain is USDC, which is fully centralized. So literally they can ban you from using the chain because you cannot use USDC. They can decide that you cannot use USDC. Obviously it's super centralized, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the fact that degens are still forcing some kind of meme season there, and Arc chain seems to be willing to do that as well, and you can participate. That's it.
If for ideological reasons you don't want to participate, that's fine. No one is forcing you. But it's important to keep ideology away from the gains here. In the bull market, we keep ideology away and we're here to make money. Whether it's a corporate chain or not — of course it's a corporate chain. Robin Hood is also corporate. They're all corporate chains. I like Solana the most. Anyway, they're all corporate chains. Still, you can make money. Still you can profit. Still you can squeeze the bull. So we're going to be squeezing the bull. Ideology is for the bear market. In bull, we're here to profit.
Here are some of the projects that are relevant on Arc. You have Tobi Labs — lock USDC pools, real volume — which seems to be a launchpad for Arc. Then you have Circle Warp, also a launchpad on Arc. Then you have Tower, an exchange aggregator, kind of like 1inch. A native stablecoin DEX aggregator. Then stable swap — DeFi for stablecoin swapping, yield, etc. And a DeFi layer bridge.
You can check this out. This is for all of you who have extra time. If you are working 9-to-5, you have kids, you have a job, this is not for you. If you have no life, you can check it out. If you have big responsibilities, big job, big family — focus on the core stuff, focus on the big stuff. This is more for those of you whose brain is fried and you have a lot of time and you want to take risk.
Robinhood employees charged with insider trading on Hyperliquid
Robinhood employees are getting charged. They're getting prosecuted. Why? Because allegedly they did insider trading on Robinhood. They knew some confidential information and then they traded on Hyperliquid to adapt their position before the market knew about this news.
Haifeng Chai and Huang Xiang, aka Jerry — charged with commodities fraud and wire fraud arising from a scheme to misappropriate confidential business information and use that information to trade perpetual futures on Hyperliquid. So yeah, if you use Hyperliquid, they're after you. They can see everything.
Be careful if you work anywhere where you have inside information. You have to be very, very careful. You have to follow the law, otherwise you're going to get absolutely wrecked by federal prosecution.
Anthropic's Claude misuse report — Houthis, cyberattacks, and biological risks
Anthropic reveals that the Houthis — the guys in Yemen that are attacking Saudi Arabia, which may lead to a bit of an issue with oil in Europe because Saudi Arabia has paused shipments to Europe — Anthropic reveals that the Houthis used Claude to vibe-code guided missile software. That's crazy. That's crazy.
Anthropic did release a report on AI misuse — the different things people tried doing with Claude and what they found. The report is titled "Detecting and Countering Misuse of AI."
For example, you have surveillance operations. Some people tried using Claude for surveillance. These cases include threat actors from China, Iran, and West Africa. There was also illicit distillation — this is another issue where Chinese actors are trying to steal the way Claude works by chatting to Claude and then training their own models on the way Claude works. Basically, instead of teaching the model from scratch, you can ask an existing model questions, and this is going to teach your model faster. That's called distillation — you're trying to replicate a finished model by chatting with it and training your own model on those conversations.
On an ethical level, I have no problem with Chinese actors scraping and distilling Claude. OpenAI and Claude took everyone's data from the internet. So what's the issue now if Chinese actors take their data from their model? I know I don't feel bad for them. It's not like a poor artist made a movie and now Chinese actors stole the movie — that I can understand. Or you have luxury brands building a brand for a long time and then China just copies everything and makes fakes — that I can understand on an ethical level. But these AI guys, I mean, they took everyone's data. Now Chinese actors take their data. Okay, good.
I almost feel bad for Stack Overflow. All of these AI companies just scraped the whole of Stack Overflow. Now no one goes to Stack Overflow. If you want to develop, you remember before — you had an error, you Googled it, you had Stack Overflow, someone already gave you the answer. Now no one is doing that. So AI took the intelligence from all of us, from the internet, they made their models, and now Chinese actors take theirs. Yeah, okay.
There are all kinds of use cases in the report — conventional weapons, Russian espionage, spying. The most commonly recurring targets were members of the Ukrainian government, military, and diplomatic staff.
There was also one thing about cyber crime — they used Claude to monitor the fixes of viruses. So when there's a new news release or announcement online that some virus has been fixed, Claude in real time would then alter the virus, improve the virus, and release it live. So it's like real-time monitoring of the news, then fixing the virus in real time. Anthropic saw it, shut it down, and included it in the report.
Then there's biological misuse, which is one of the most serious risks of frontier AI models. The results from evaluations of older models clearly showed that these models were well below the threshold for enabling serious biological harm. But it's still a concern that's being tracked.
AI stocks versus Bitcoin — why crypto is the better trade right now
Why are we covering AI? Because AI is a big market. Should AI have some kind of binding restriction on it? It's going to affect AI stocks directly. A lot of AI stocks are already in bear trend — whether it's Intel, whether it's Marvell, whether it's AMD. Actually, AMD is still in bull trend, but once they enter bear trend, it's hard to exit. The only exception I think is Nvidia, which actually exited bear trend and went into bull. But let's see how long it holds. It's just chopping now.
So AI has a lot of pressure on it. Many charts are super heavy and entered bear trend. They tried going bull but got rejected, rejected, rejected. Also, political uncertainty — with these reports coming out that AI is used for all kinds of stuff, there's big political uncertainty around AI, whether it's going to be banned or not banned, how it's going to be regulated.
Bitcoin, in the meanwhile, is still just in the beginning of a new bull trend. It even went below the bull flip — it's such a cheap, nice price here. It was at the 200-week moving average, even cheaper. So all in all, crypto is the next big macro trade. It is the biggest, most important macro trade. Don't over-complicate it.
Q&A — Solana price target, ICO performance, staking yield, and portfolio sizing
Q: Solana prediction?
Solana is in a very nice bull trend. It did retrace here a bit, still a bit above the flip. In terms of what it can do — I think it's going to go to all-time high here at $300. So that's a 3x from here in the coming time horizon, probably the coming 12 months. Then whether it's going to go to $500 or $1,000 — let's just see when the cycle ends. As long as it's bullish, it could go to $1,000. If it goes bear trend before that, I will be bearish. That's it. Now, it's time to be bullish. In bull trend, you're bullish. You're not bearish in bull trend.
Q: Could a real bull start today after the Fed decision?
It could. If the Fed increases rates and Bitcoin holds where it is now — at $75,000–$76,000 — that in itself is very bullish. The market sees that nothing can dump Bitcoin. You increase rates, we still hold. You have no Clarity Act, we still hold. What more can you throw at us? What more? Rate hike — we don't dump. No Clarity Act — we don't dump. What more? So yeah, a rate hike in itself could be bullish.
Q: What are your thoughts on the Dangote oil refinery IPO — the biggest IPO in African history?
When it comes to a business like an African oil refinery, it sounds super government-connected. With any IPO, we don't trade the beginning of it. We need to see the trend forming. If you have the money line, you can see on the hourly what trend it is. You can enter if you want. But on the business itself — who the hell knows? I think you need connections to government to know the business, to be part of the business. Probably a big connection to government. When you say oil refinery opening in Nigeria, I'm just thinking about that famous clip:
Clip: "Corruption is not bad. Corruption is only bad if I'm not involved. But if I'm part of that corruption, I'll defend it."
Ivan: Sorry if I'm being stereotypical. You can check the hourly chart. Maybe it's good. I don't know.
Q: What about the Useless token?
Let's see the chart. Bullish on the weekly. Yeah, this thing — that prominent meme trader is shilling it all the time. It's bullish on the weekly. It has recovered most losses. Had a double bottom, you can say. So overall the chart is very good. They had a double bottom, it recovered fast, super bull trend. So when it comes to the memes, it's not bad from many different perspectives. But at the same time with memes you always have to be a bit careful. I don't know if the top holders can dump it with one button click. Maybe they can. With memes it's always a bit of a risk because it's not only about the trend and the market dynamic — it's also whether they can dump it with one button. But that prominent meme trader is shilling it, so I guess it's good. It checks many boxes for a good chart — bull trend, double bottom.
Q: Do you have a maximum number of project coins you will invest in?
For big allocations, you don't want more than ten. How else are you going to track it? It's very hard. For small, you know, just gambling — yeah, why not, it can be more for smaller allocations. But if you are to follow the mechanical rules, it's good if you have up to ten so you can follow along.
Q: Never borrow against your crypto to buy more. I did it once and lost everything.
Yeah, that's smart. That's a good saying. I don't like any kind of borrowing or yield-chasing in that way. For example, with yield, you have to be super careful. Many people got wrecked in Celsius. Why? Because they chased yield.
There are only a few yields I'm okay with. For example, I'm quite okay with US government debt yield. You buy treasury — the yield there is like 5% right now. And even though the situation is difficult in the US economy, it's still the US government paying you 5% per year. If you look at all governments in the world, they are one of the least likely to collapse or have any kind of problem. Even though there's debt, this and that — compared to everything else, man. Germany has no energy. Literally no energy. Saudi Arabia now said they're not going to be shipping anything to Europe. Russia — they don't want Russian oil. So I don't know what they're going to do. They're going to pray for sun, but there's no sun in the wind. Look at France — that fiasco. Where are you going to go? So all in all, yes, the US has many issues, but you have to compare to everything else. So US government debt — I'm okay with it. Short-term debt, if there's any issue, you can withdraw at any point anyway. That's money market.
I'm also okay with crypto staking yield. For example, you stake Solana, you get yield in Solana. You need to remember — it's in Solana. Don't count in dollars, count in Solana. In Solana, you get yield. ETH, you stake ETH, you get yield in ETH. So it's a no-brainer. For you to not get yield in Solana, the Solana network has to break and go to zero. And whether you stake Solana or not does not matter in that scenario, because if you hold Solana and the Solana network goes to zero, you're going to lose everything anyway. So staking does not increase your risk materially. This is my point — holding versus staking does not increase your risk materially. Because if you don't get your staking reward, it means that Solana is finished, which means it's going to go to zero anyway whether you hold it or not. It's the same with ETH. For ETH to not give yield, everything has to go to zero — and it's the same risk if you just hold it.
It's like US dollar. You have US dollars, you can just buy the treasury, put it in money market. Because US dollar — what's going to happen? It can go to zero. Okay, so if you hold US dollar and it goes to zero, it's bad. You lost everything. And if US treasuries stop paying, it means it's either hyperinflated and they just pay you paper that isn't worth anything — but that's the same risk if you just hold US dollars. So you can see it's the same risk to buy treasury or money market. Holding the token versus staking it — I have no problem with that, as long as you're fine with getting yield in that currency.
ICO performance review and the last cycle
The ICOs in this last cycle were so bad. I think net-net I'm not sure I made money in any of the early projects in the last cycle. Because I think these things go good, bad, good, bad in cycles. In the cycle before that — 2020, that cycle that ended in 2021 — those ones were good. New projects pumped so much. It was craziness. But then in 2022–2023, all of them — I think it's just that they knew there was a lot of interest for new projects, so they didn't do too much effort. They could raise anyway, they had attention anyway, and then yeah, most of them did not do too much.
Now maybe it's going to be good again, because now no one expects new projects to do well. So let's see. Let's see what's going to happen.
Project Bonji — the spaceman statue
Ivan, always been curious — what is the statue on your shelf? It's the project — what's it called? Bonji. Bonji. It's a guy that gave it to me long time ago in 2021. He's an artist. He has these spaceman statues everywhere. I forgot what his project is called. Project Bonji — like spaceman. So it's a spaceman like this, but mine is just blue. I think he sells each one of these for like $10,000. At least in the past he did. So yeah, they're cool. I believe he handcrafts them. He has like a factory somewhere. He's from Miami — he shipped me this Bonji. Big shout out to him. He's amazing.
Final Bitcoin summary — scenarios and outlook
Here are the scenarios for Bitcoin. Let me summarize. It goes up — bullish. It derps around here — also bullish, because it's the end of the bear. Let's say it goes into the buy zone — you buy more. It's also bullish. Everything is bullish. We're bullish since the 200-week moving average — this white line, it's the buy zone. We're bullish since the buy zone, especially since it was below the 200-week moving average. And we're even more bullish now that it's bull trend.
So don't over-complicate it. Don't cry. Please stop crying. Change the diaper. You should have been scared back in October. October 8th — it was time to be risk-off. Bear risk was increased. That was last October, not this October.
So that's that in terms of Bitcoin. In terms of the new degen opportunity with Arc — you have the Clarity Act failure, don't worry. You have a potential rate hike, also don't worry. There's nothing to worry about. The only clarity you need is Ivan, because only Ivan is giving you clarity. Bitcoin makes everyone emotionally nervous. You cannot have anyone here having any kind of calm view of the market without us every day giving you the correct guidance. And that's very important.