Ivan on Tech analyses Bitcoin's reaction to the Fed rate hike and broader market conditions
Ivan on Tech delivers a solo Bitcoin and crypto market update following the Federal Reserve's unanimous decision to raise interest rates.
Summary
Ivan on Tech presents a bullish case for Bitcoin despite two major bearish events occurring simultaneously: the failure of the Clarity Act and the Federal Reserve's unanimous decision to raise interest rates, defying President Trump. Ivan argues that Bitcoin's muted reaction — dropping only around 1% — confirms that the market is in a bull cycle, drawing parallels to the early stages of the previous bull market in 2023 when Bitcoin also rose through multiple rate hikes. He highlights several supporting signals including a US House committee advancing a Bitcoin strategic reserve bill, Michael Saylor's commentary on regulatory paths forward, and strong performance from assets like Zcash (up 62%), Hyperliquid (up 109%), and Lighter (up 285%) since their respective bull trend flips. Ivan also discusses concerns about the bond market, the fiscal origins of long-term yield pressure, and the possibility that the Fed's rate hike may have been a policy error. Additionally, Ivan covers a notable community controversy surrounding ARC by Circle, whose live stream featured developers that differed from market expectations, prompting a vibe shift on Twitter despite Ivan emphasising he is simply reporting what occurred and supports equal opportunity regardless of background.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin holds firm despite rate hike and Clarity Act failure
Ivan: Bitcoin is currently at $76,400, and we just had a massive bearish event with the interest rate hikes. The Fed unanimously voted to raise rates, defying Trump. Trump is not happy. Trump is coming out saying that interest rates in the US should be 1% or less because, in his words, we are the best credit in the world by far, our country is booming with new investment, and if we stop trading with every country that we have a deficit with — which would be most of them — we would make at least $1.5 trillion a year. Many people are coming out saying that this is not going to end well. It's all happening too close to the election. Expect worse Trump tension. Only an AI mega bull trend can overshadow it, but it's unclear that it will.
But for Bitcoin, we don't care. This is the best thing about Bitcoin — all of this actually does not matter. I have so many questions, people asking: "Ivan, what's going to happen? Are we going to go down?" Literally the two bad things that people were afraid of already happened, and Bitcoin did not dump a lot. We did go down like $1,000, like 1%. Clarity failed. Rate hike happened. Bitcoin doesn't give a damn. And now let's pump it back up.
All in all, Bitcoin is repeating quite exactly what it did at the early stages of the previous bull market, where we had the bull chunk confirmed — just like we have it confirmed now. Then we go down a bit. We went down all the way to $19K from $22K, and then interest rates went actually up and Bitcoin continued to the upside. Now is not the time to be bearish. Now is not the time to be concerned with interest rates — especially at the early stages of a bull market. At the end of a bull market it may have impact, but at the same time you see that they decreased rates and Bitcoin dumped. Bitcoin dumped when they decreased rates. Why? Because this is more about whether everyone has bought already or not, whether everyone is all in or not. Because when everyone is all in, no one else can buy, no one else is bidding, and then we dump. Now it's vice versa — everyone who wanted to sell has sold, and now it is an up-only trajectory. That is most likely for Bitcoin.
Should we go down lower? Just buy more. In this situation, where we are a year from the previous peak, should we go down? Just buy more. Simple, simple, simple. We're likely to have the best, most important bull market in front of us, and we're ready for it.
Bond market breakdown as an argument for Bitcoin
In terms of the bond market, it's more or less broken — again, another argument for Bitcoin. They did increase the rate, but the reaction in the bond market is not really going along. The bond market should have come down. The rates should have calmed down for the market rate in the bond market, because when the Fed increases the rate, it means that inflation is more under control. So a lot of these long-term rates should also come down. When the Fed increases rates, long-term yields should come down, because it means that the US has more control of inflation and investors can be more confident that their bond yield will not be hyperinflated away. But instead, it's not really working. Let's see how it will end. Bitcoin is the solution. Very important — Bitcoin is the solution.
US House committee advances Bitcoin strategic reserve bill
You also have a US House committee advancing a bill to establish a Bitcoin strategic reserve. This is very important. This is under-reported. The fact that the US government is actively now taking steps in order to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve — we dreamed about it already years ago when Trump got elected. Could it happen? I don't want to get my hopes up, but at the end of the day, it may happen. It's inevitable. Bitcoin is Bitcoin. At some point, it's going to happen that countries have a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
Michael Saylor on regulatory paths forward
Also, Michael Saylor is coming out saying that with clarity stalled, he expects the SEC, CFTC, and Treasury to advance rules under existing law, banks to expand Bitcoin custody and loans against it, and more capital to favour Bitcoin and digital credit. Now this is very important from the perspective of having better rules in the US. It's not going to be as good as having the Clarity Act. Why? Because whatever rules they do now could be reversed by a new administration. Let's see what kind of path the US will take with the new House, new Senate, whatever is getting changed now in the midterms. It's likely going to be a big change, and let's see if the crypto industry will be able to move ahead like it's been doing or not. But at the end of the day, you're still going to have at least two more years of a pro-crypto administration, which is very good for us.
Then what happens after that? Who the hell knows? Maybe we're going to pay for all of the Trump coins and everything that has happened here with worldly finance. Maybe this industry is going to be blamed for things that it was potentially not responsible for — like the next recession. Elizabeth Warren is already blaming us for the next recession, which is non-existent.
Jeff Bezos and Michael Saylor spotted at jury duty together
Speaking of Saylor, he was spotted with Jeff Bezos yesterday in Miami doing jury duty. Grok confirmed that Jeff Bezos reported for jury duty at Miami-Dade courthouse on September 14th — confirmed by the Miami Herald, NBC Miami, and others. And for some reason he also brought Michael Saylor with him, who is also now a Florida resident. So maybe they just decided to go together to jury duty. How does it work in the US? You really have to do jury duty — even if you're Jeff Bezos, you have to do it. That's crazy.
Actually, I have a bit of a story with jury duty. I had a developer we paid a lot — a very good developer, this was years and years ago. He had jury duty all the time. Like three times he had jury duty. We're thinking, man, what happened? Then his grandma passed away, and his cousin overdosed. We're like, man, what's happening? This guy is amazing but he's away all the time. Then we discovered — he worked two full-time jobs at the same time. That's why he had five jury duties. That's why five of his grandmas all passed away within five weeks. That's why he had tragedy after tragedy. I'm like, what's happening, man? Let me be the good boss. Let me be understanding. Let me be sympathetic. Then I see you work full-time somewhere else. That's fraud, man. So you have five jury duties and five grandmas all pass away and you cannot work? You should be clocking in and clocking out according to the agreed contract. If someone tells me they have jury duty, I need pictures — like here, see, even Jeff Bezos has proof that he was at jury duty. That guy did not have it.
Market analysis: Tom Lee on the Fed's potential policy error
Look here — Tom Lee coming out saying that this result would show that it was a policy error for the Fed to announce a rate hike today. Basically what he's meaning is that the Fed has limited powers. They're not all-powerful. The market decides the rates. The Fed can try to affect the short-term rates with this rate hike or cut, but long-term rates the market decides.
So this analyst is saying: tomorrow, one possible outcome after the Fed hiked is that we may discover that tightening doesn't lower long-term yields. This is important. When you increase the short-term rate — because that's the only thing the Fed can control, the short term — the long-term should go down on the market. It should go down because when the Fed is increasing the short term, it means they're taking inflation seriously, they're fixing inflation. So if you lend them money for 30 years, you're more at ease that it's not going to be hyperinflated away.
So they hiked rates, and currently at least the long-term yield has not come down. The market is still worried about inflation. If that happens, it would confirm that fiscal policy is the culprit in the "who done it" saga. Basically, people are still worried about inflation because the government is spending so much. It doesn't matter what kind of rate adjustment here and there — government spending so much is a fiscal problem, and the trust in long-term bonds is low. That's why yields are high. By raising the government's marginal funding cost, a rate hike enlarges future deficits. The market is worried that the US cannot get its budget together, and increasing the short-term rate makes it worse because now they have to pay higher interest rates.
If investors doubt that fiscal policy will offset those costs, the term premium could rise, pushing long yields higher and reinforcing the deterioration in debt service. Conclusion: this rate hike may have been a mistake if long-term yields don't come down. We'll just have to see the coming days. For now, at least they haven't come down.
And by the way, everything is green. You look at the markets — everything is green. Bitcoin green, stocks up, Bitcoin up, everything is up. Yields also up, everything is up. The market wasn't afraid of the Fed today. It wanted uncertainty gone. Just like we've been saying — look back at the last streams. We all said that the rate hike does not matter. I don't care about the rate hike. While everyone is trying to FUD you, trying to fear you up, I've been saying it does not matter. It is a bull market, and the bull market is very large. It's very, very big.
Just like Anam is saying: we're entering the greatest bull market crypto has ever seen. Your only job is to remain steadfast in your conviction and appropriately size your portfolio into a diversified set of bets.
Altcoin highlights: Hyperliquid, Lighter, Zcash, and more
Kraken's parent company Payward is set to offer Hyperliquid perps to US clients. So when you log into Kraken, you will be able to trade Hyperliquid perps — basically Hyperliquid will be powering their trading product. And Hyperliquid is doing very, very well in a bull trend. Fantastic.
Lighter is also doing so well. This thing is in bull trend. They're doing so, so well. Another thing that's in bull trend is Zcash — it's up 62% since August 24th, since the recent flip. You see here it flipped and then bam, bam, bam, bam, higher. 62%. With the bull trend mechanical rules, we have all of the upside and no downside. As soon as it goes bare, we're out. And then bull again — we're in. 62%. Easy, easy, easy. Hyperliquid up 109%. Easy, easy, easy. Lighter up 285%. Easy, easy, easy. This is the power of the mechanical rules. Very important.
BNB is in bull trend but only up 3%, still sideways. And Zcash, by the way, is at an all-time high. Did you see that? Zcash is at an all-time high. And then people are saying, "Oh, bear market, I'm always going to go lower, be careful, be careful." I'm telling you — you should have been bearish in October. Should have been bearish in October.
And also, the four-year cycle believers — the cyclists — they're now going to be wrapping back around into bullish in October, because according to their framework, in October the four-year cycle is over and then it's bull, bull, bull. Fantastic. That's also bullish. Rate hike happened, Clarity Act failed, four-year cyclists are back. What else is bearish? I mean, what do you want? Prices are low, near bear market lows. What else are you worried about? Like, literally there's no other reason for the market to be bearish, and you just see how cheap everything is in crypto. It's pennies on the dollar. You're picking up things here at pennies on the dollar.
ARC by Circle — community reaction and vibe shift
The FDIC-insured bank behind Breez has built stablecoins directly into its banking core — USDC and USDT on Solana, convertible to and from dollars 24/7. Good — more institutions building on Solana, just how we like it.
Next, ARC mainnet. Now there is a bit of controversy with ARC lately. ARC is supposed to be by Circle, and it is by Circle, but then they had a stream where everyone was apparently from Pakistan. A lot of people are saying, is it going to be okay? There's a lot of prejudice in the market — I'm just reporting to you what has been happening. I'm not supporting those statements, but this is what happened. The vibe shift has changed a bit during the last 24 hours because ARC had a live stream and the devs were, you know, clearly not who the market expected.
Now again, I'm not telling you anything, but the vibes have shifted. I'm all about equal opportunity for anyone, no matter where you're from. But I'm just telling you what has happened on Twitter. People thought that Jeremy Allaire from Circle — the CEO of Circle — would show up and talk about ARC. Instead, it was a different kind of situation. You can check yourself. We're apolitical. People expected Jeremy Allaire. They got guys from Maharashtra, which is fine. Again, I'm just telling you what happened. The world is a bit unfair here, because being Jeremy Allaire is more appealing to the market than the guys in ARC. It shouldn't be like that, but it is what it is. Let's go on before I say too much.
Solana and Sui technical updates
Sui is now coming along with confidential transfers. Confidential transfers need heavy math to prove a hidden amount is valid, and Sui streamlines this by cutting down the repetitive work. More code for confidential transactions in Sui.
Solana just tripled its transaction size on mainnet. Solana was the laggard of the 30-day rotation — up 30% — and it pumped. The connection between transaction size and price isn't direct, but there you go.
Q&A and viewer questions
On DeFi and regulation:
From Stani: "Clarity failed. Now DeFi needs to win through adoption. Build products millions of people want, become too important to ignore. Regulation will have to catch up — the Uber path." Exactly. Just like Uber became big and basically became bigger than regulation. In many countries, Uber got accepted only after massive success among consumers. The same thing is with DeFi. The bigger we are, the harder we are to destroy.
On the midterms:
I'm sorry, but what an absolutely devastating oral loss for Trump ahead of the midterm. His literal lab worried and set expectations for two more hikes, all because of a total failure that no one wanted. It's going to be hard, man. This midterm is in November. It's going to be tough. Very, very tough.
In October, they are expected to hold — currently no change — but you see the probability of an increase is going up a lot. Another Fed rate hike in 2026 is going up a lot. But for us, as a reminder in case people don't watch the beginning properly, it doesn't matter. I don't think it matters for the Bitcoin cycle. Just like in the early days of the last cycle, they hiked, then they hiked again — they hiked five times in the last bull market. And Bitcoin continued higher.
On being bullish since July:
We're bullish since July when we hit the 200 Moving Average. That was literally at the bottom, and we're very bullish now because we are in bull trend. We just follow the system. Humbly, humbly, humbly follow the system. That's it.
On other technology sectors:
Is there anything out there like crypto? Is there some new technology coming up besides AI? There is AI, there is robotics — it's quite a lot. AI is massive. Everything is around AI. Then you have robotics, which is still underdeveloped. Cybersecurity — very, very big as well. With AI, a lot of issues with cybersecurity, a lot. CrowdStrike, for example — this bull trend we've been riding the crap out of it. It's up 100% since the bull flip. We also follow different cybersecurity ETFs. Cybersecurity is a big one. Robotics, big one. AI, big one.
But you see, crypto is very special because there you can just click a button and you can buy. With something like robotics, it's not as easy because a lot of it is private companies. There is one thing you can buy — Robo Strategy, which is buying a bunch of robotics companies that are private, investing in them. But no one cares about it now. Other than that, it's crypto. There's nothing like crypto. Nothing like crypto. At the end of the day, what's like crypto? There's nothing.
On seasonality:
Rarely has a September been so good in crypto. People worry about September seasonality — don't worry, man. It's bull trend. September is bullish. Don't worry. It's now 13 days left, then it's October, then the four-year cycle is done. I don't know anyone who made money from looking at monthly seasonality charts — you know, "January is normally good or bad." This is just infotainment. On average, September is minus 4%. Okay, how do you make money from this? What's your entry? What's your exit? What's your stop loss? How do you do it?
If you want to trade week to week, then go to the money line on the daily chart. There you can trade seasonality. You see bullish, bearish on the daily — that's how you do seasonality. We've adapted the money line a lot to be good on the daily. It has very few fakeouts. As soon as it goes bare, it's likely going to go bare for at least a week or so. That's how you can trade this month, that month.
On Chainlink:
Let's check Chainlink. It's in bull trend, a bit of a pullback, and good. It can probably go to these highs in the coming 12 to 15 months if we have a bull market. At least to $25 would be reasonable. But at the same time, if it goes bare, we're out. So whatever I say in terms of upward potential, if it goes bare, none of that counts.
On NEAR Protocol:
NEAR entered a new bull trend, up 13% since the new bull trend. Wants to go higher. Looks good.
On Polkadot:
Right now it is death. Anything can change, but it's a bare trend. It cannot even — I mean, you see heavy rejection. Currently the way I see it, it's not really worth it. There are other things — Zcash going to all-time high every day, up 60% since August 24th. This is what I mean with "strength begets strength." You see Zcash from August 24th up 60%, and this is after all the previous pumps. Hyperliquid just up and up and up. Lighter up and up. And then you find, out of all these different opportunities, this one just because it's down a lot. It's one of the biggest sins in mechanical rules — you find something cheap, but it's cheap for a reason. The way to enter a cheap coin is if it goes bull trend, then you have the blessing. Otherwise, stay out.
On Aerodrome (AERO):
Right on the border. Right on the bull flip. They have to close above $0.58 to be bull on the weekly. For the short term it's bullish since way back, but on the weekly it's just now going to go bull for the first time since October.
On GPU prices and AI:
It's a bit outside of my wheelhouse. But buying Nvidia is one way of doing that. Is there a way to speculate on GPU prices? All of the chip manufacturers, of course, is a way to speculate, but it's not like buying the spot commodity. It's not like buying oil. So it's interesting — you could actually buy rented GPU time in a cloud, but as a financial product it's still developing. Otherwise it's the chip manufacturers — whether it's Nvidia or the others that have been doing well. There's also Coreweave, Iron, Super Micro. Nebius just announced increased demand and price increases. Big demand. This destroys one of the biggest bear theses on the AI trade. And on platforms like Lighter, you can always long or short Nvidia. Actually, you can long or short Nvidia H100 compute. So it is possible to speculate not on the stock but on the actual GPU — it's still tiny, but the idea of trading spreads between GPUs is interesting. But basically, keep to equities. Don't over-complicate your life.
On ENA (Ethena):
ENA is in bull trend, a bit sideways — kind of like Bitcoin. The same chart as Bitcoin, bullish. But both Bitcoin and ENA — the next step for them is to have a big fat leg to the upside to confirm the bull trend continues. I would like to avoid sideways. We need to ignite the FOMO. And imagine Bitcoin snapping to $90K. Bitcoin just needs to go up 17%. It can do it literally in a week if it wants to go to $90K. And then it's $100K. Very, very close.
On the 2017 master node era:
There are many coins, but most of them don't come back. Look at 2017 altcoins — most of them don't come back. If you hold something that's not in bull trend, you're in a very, very bad position because your coin may not come back. In 2017, IOTA was like top 10 — now it's like top 500 or something. No one cares about IOTA. Things in one bull market are big, and then in the next bull market they may be zero.
I remember there was an Asian guy living in a tent in the 2017 bull market. He was streaming every day about some coin. It was master node time — you remember the master node craze of 2017? Everyone was shilling master nodes. You could take your coins, spin up a master node. And there was a guy in a tent, living in a tent, streaming every day about some coin. He said it's the power of the community. And yeah, it went to zero. Obviously never came back. Just as an example of things that were temporarily big and then no one heard about them again. So yeah — you only want to be in bull trend. If your favourite asset is not in bull trend, you have to be very careful.
On round-tripping and emotional trading:
The strategy is buy and then round-trip it. Well, not if you have mechanical rules. If you don't have them, then you're going to round trip. Especially those guys that tell me, "Oh no, I'm not going to round trip this time because I know better." No, you don't know better. I tell you in October to sell — how many of you sold? Some people sold, some people sold. But even when I give you the correct information, because you're uneducated, you still don't listen. I tell you math, but if you don't know math, it doesn't matter what I tell you. People are like, "Oh no, this time for sure." Really? Because I'm telling you stuff all the time, and it's just the inherent volatility in crypto that makes everyone so emotional. It's very hard — even if you know the correct answer, it's very hard. You doubt yourself, you watch another influencer that tells you something else, and you wreck yourself in so many different ways. It's unbelievable how you can do it. But that's also why we love crypto. It's a very, very interesting, complex game. Emotions and this game — emotional game of trading. I love it.
Closing thoughts: Bitcoin path to $90K and $100K
Anyway, guys, that's it. Thank you very much for being here. We're at 45 minutes. Now it's time to be bullish, not bearish. Should we dip down? Just buy more. Don't overthink it. Just buy more. Don't think too much here. I'm telling you — don't be thinking too much. Just buy more if it goes down. Very important. Very, very important.
Bitcoin just needs to go up 17% to hit $90K. It can do it literally in a week if it wants to. And then it's $100K. Very, very close.