Ivan on Tech gives a bullish Bitcoin market update covering chart analysis, AI security risks, hardware wallet vulnerabilities, and altcoin commentary
Ivan on Tech presents a Monday market update, arguing Bitcoin's price action is following the most optimal bull market path.
Summary
Bitcoin's close above the previous May high — used as support — is framed as the most bullish possible scenario for a sustained bull market, with — used as support — represents the most bullish possible scenario for a sustained bull market. He contrasts this with the 2019 blow-off top pattern, warning that uncontrolled vertical moves lead to crashes rather than sustained gains. Beyond Bitcoin, Ivan covers two significant security stories: an AI-discovered vulnerability in the XRP ledger that would have allowed an attacker to mint 18 trillion XRP from a fixed supply of 100 billion, and a supply chain attack on hardware wallet retailer CryptoBillis in Southeast Asia where hackers purchased the store and physically tampered with Ledger devices. He also discusses France's sovereign debt crisis as a macro-bullish case for Bitcoin, reviews Tom Lee's price targets of $100K Bitcoin and $7,500 ETH (conditional on Bitcoin exceeding $100K), and comments on altcoins including Zcash, Pudgy Penguins, Cardano, and Midnight.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin Price Action and the Optimal Bull Market Path
Ivan on Tech: Oh yes. Oh yes. Oh yes. Guys, welcome to another episode. And as you can see right now, Bitcoin did something monumental. Absolutely monumental during the last 24 hours. We did close above the previous May high. It was used as support. And this is the most bullish scenario that is unfolding, at least this far.
You remember last week we discussed what is the most bullish scenario? Is it that we just keep mooning and going higher and higher? No, because if you moon without any kind of small pullback, you don't build a base, and the moon normally stops very quickly. If you want a sustained moon, you want a nice bull market — you want to occasionally come back and just confirm the previous breakout. You break it, and then to confirm this breakout, you just touch the previous resistance which is now support, and then bam — explode to the upside. This is the most optimal path for any kind of asset that wants a sustained, fantastic, long bull market: you take a small pause, you go further. You take a small pause, you go further.
Should we have just had an explosion to 100K? You understand, we may have a situation like in 2019, and this is the problem. You remember here — this was already so long ago, holy crap, guys, we're getting old — but you remember here, we had a crazy explosion. It was just green, green, green, green, green. Very few pullbacks, and then it collapsed. We actually went to $3K, $3.8K. We went very fast to $14K and then back to $3K with COVID and everything. So we don't want that. Instead, we want a very nice, very controlled ascent so that we don't have a flash-in-the-pan kind of situation.
So this far is good. We've had three green weeks, one red. Now if we have another green, it will be fantastic. And of course the target now — the target for us that we need to break — is just go above the previous highs here at $87K, the previous cycle highs at $87K, and then go towards $100K, which is very likely in my humble opinion to happen in the coming weeks. Obviously everything is probability. Obviously everything is possible. Obviously here's a big fat disclaimer for all of you who think that there is any certainty. Nothing is financial advice. There is always risk. For all I know, you may lose all your money — very quickly. Disclaimer, very important.
AI-Discovered XRP Vulnerability
And yeah, all in all, welcome everyone. It's Monday, Monday, Monday. Let's go as soon as possible into the market.
XRP — what's happening? XRP. Oh, XRP. Look here. XRP is bullish, but there was a critical hack. Let me find it. The biggest hack in crypto that never happened. Last month, an AI discovered a vulnerability that let anyone mint infinite tokens on XRP — indefinitely. XRP is the fifth largest cryptocurrency, bigger than Solana and USDC, and you basically had the entire market cap at risk should this bug have been exploited.
XRP launched with a fixed supply of 100 billion tokens. You can't mine or stake on the network, and each transaction burns a small fee. The bug that was found allowed any unauthenticated attacker to create 18 trillion XRP with a single transaction. Guys, this is the problem. 184 times the supply. This puts the full 94 billion at risk — more than 60 times the largest crypto hack on record. And this is a decade-old bug.
This is the problem with AI, guys. XRP is one example, but there are many examples now where AI is going absolutely bonkers. The AI is now copying Photoshop. You guys have probably seen it — during the last few days, especially if you've been on Twitter, you've seen all of these AI vibe-coded versions of, for example, Photoshop, After Effects, and many others that are very good. Literally, there are guys in the basement copying entire products for billion-dollar companies. And especially if you are not a SaaS — if you're just an app — you're in big, big danger. For example, Photoshop. SaaS companies like HubSpot and more CRM business stuff, it's a bit different. They have a bit of a moat, but not for long. Not for long.
If you search for Artcraft, you're going to see this guy basically creating all of the copies — PhotoCraft, VectorCraft, this is Premiere Pro — and all of the Microsoft stuff he's copying, and all of the Adobe stuff as well. It's crazy. So we have the notion of IP in software disappearing — that's number one. Number two, this is how it looks: PhotoCraft, VectorCraft. I haven't tried it myself. Guys, please try it. Can all of you creatives in the comment section tell us if this is good? Because I saw a few YouTube videos on this and it seemed very good. I saw a guy comparing PhotoCraft to Photoshop — it was very good.
The way it works is that the AI sees the app and goes into a loop implementing it. You just give the AI the app — "Hey, here's Photoshop, copy it." It doesn't even have to reverse engineer it. It just looks at the features and takes one step at a time, then goes into this loop where it can run for days. All of you who have been vibe coding seriously know about loops. Within five days it has something that is very similar, if not exact.
So that's when it comes to IP. But also, on the other hand, the same loops can obviously be used to find vulnerabilities. XRP is one example, and many different chains are at big, big risk of AI hacking. You have to be extremely careful. Of course, the crypto projects can use AI now to defend themselves and look for vulnerabilities faster, but I think we're going to see a lot of these hacks, guys. In DeFi especially, we're going to see a lot of hacks. Centralised exchanges have to be super careful.
But at the same time, there are no industries that are risk-free. We are in an industry where hacks are a problem. They may become an even bigger problem now with AI. We may even lose encryption, as we've been speaking about during the last week. At the same time, there are no industries with zero risk. So it's all about where you put your risk, where you decide to engage, what kind of industries you decide to be part of.
Just as one small example — looking at DeFi personally, I'm not using DeFi for getting some yield, some small yield, because you never know with the smart contracts. You just never know if it's good, if it's stable, if it's going to be hacked. It's one small example where I choose not to chase a few percent here and there by using DeFi. What do I get back? I get a few percent. What do I risk? AI taking the money. Even XRP, which has been around for so long, has issues. So yeah, that's very important to keep an eye on.
Ledger Supply Chain Attack — CryptoBillis
Now guys, another problem. We have many problems, guys. Another problem is with Ledger. Ledger basically discovered that many people in Southeast Asia got hacked and they didn't understand what was happening. How come all of these people in Asia were getting hacked? Only in Asia. Europe not hacked. So they do an investigation. Turns out the hackers bought a store that sold Ledgers. They didn't even hack Ledger to begin with. They first bought the store that sold a bunch of Ledgers.
This store is called CryptoBillis, guys. If you bought from CryptoBillis, be careful. So first the hackers buy the store CryptoBillis. Many people in Asia buy their Ledger from CryptoBillis. So the hackers have a big customer base. Next, they start very carefully to tamper with the devices. They just open them up, see how they can get some chip in there, and they start selling these Ledgers. And the Ledger software cannot recognise that it has been tampered with. Normally these hardware wallets have anti-tamper software and hardware that basically checks that everything is okay, that it hasn't been compromised. Ledger's software did not figure it out. They did not see that it had been tampered. So big problem. If you are in Asia and you've been buying from CryptoBillis, file for a refund.
Isn't that crazy that the supply chain attack is now quite complex? It's not enough to just hack Ledger or find something. It's actually easier for the hackers to spend a few million — or I don't know how much, probably not even that much — just buy the store. Probably a few hundred thousand. Maybe not even that. I've never heard about CryptoBillis. I doubt that it's a big brand.
So what is the solution here, guys? Never buy your device from a store. You buy from the website. Now the problem when you buy from the website is you leave your address. Then Ledger gets hacked anyway. You understand? So it's a big problem.
If you want to be super risk-off, just buy the Bitcoin ETF. You buy the ETF, something happens — if BlackRock gets hacked, you're a creditor. You're likely going to get something back. Here, you buy from CryptoBillis, you get nothing back. No one cares about you. You're not a creditor. So it's a big problem.
For the average person who just wants security, the ETF is not a bad thing. Again, it's not cypherpunk. But at the same time, you see the problem. Imagine your uncle — imagine someone who is not mega tech-savvy, but still someone who has serious money and wants to put it into crypto. Would you tell them to buy a Ledger? Man, I don't know. Either he gets scammed by a store or his data gets leaked. Meanwhile, TradFi has caught up where he can call his private banker and say, "Hey, listen, put the money in a Bitcoin ETF." It's also getting better from a tax perspective. So from a pragmatic standpoint, if you're not dealing with small coins that don't have an ETF, you need to consider carefully — should something happen in TradFi, you are a creditor, you're a respected person in the eyes of the law. Should something happen to your Ledger, man, no one cares about you.
And that's it. Should BlackRock get hacked, man, you're going to be a creditor. Like I was a creditor in the FTX case. I got all my money back — probably more if you look at the exchange rate, because ETH actually dumped. And of course there is a bit of a story here with how Bankman-Fried came about and how it all started.
This is AI slop from a community member, but it really tells you the story. Listen to this.
Community member (AI-generated video): "My name is Ivan Ivanovich on Tech. In our village, we sell our turnips for Bitcoin and keep our wealth in Bitcoin. I trust only the mechanical rules — the plow, the seasons, the mill wheel. This is my neighbour, Bey. The Tsar released him from prison but forgot to give him new clothes. He eats nine times a day and gives investment advice to the goats. On the hill lives a very wicked scoundrel — Simeon Bankmanovich Fredov. He wears shorts in winter and sleeps on a bean bag in the barn. He runs the village exchange. You give him your Bitcoin. He gives you a piece of paper that says you have Bitcoin. Bey gave him all of his Bitcoin."
Ivan on Tech: Is the perfect name. Simeon Bankmanovich. Perfect. Perfect. The best possible name.
Community member (AI-generated video): "Fredov. He wears shorts in winter and sleeps on a bean bag in the barn. He runs the village exchange. You give him your Bitcoin. He gives you a piece of paper that says you have Bitcoin."
Ivan on Tech: He gives you a piece of paper that says you have Bitcoin. That's amazing.
Community member (AI-generated video): "Bey gave him all of his Bitcoin."
Ivan on Tech: Mhm.
Community member (AI-generated video): "You know what I say to that? Not your keys, not your coins. When I grow old, Bey will take over my Bitcoin. But I have my worries."
Ivan on Tech: Oh yeah. Holy crap. Big shout out to that community member. But it's a big problem. Not your keys, not your coins — yes. But if you are in the CryptoBillis store, CryptoBillis takes your coin. So Simeon Bankmanovich can take your coin, but the CryptoBillis store can also take your coin. So guys, be careful with your coin. Be very, very careful with your coin.
Bitcoin Chart Update and Newsletter
So in terms of Bitcoin, we are bullish. I like how the chart looks, guys. I gave my personal, non-financial opinion on Twitter and also in the newsletter. Guys, in the newsletter — actually, if you go to the description, you should go to the Bulmania newsletter. This newsletter, man, we nailed it. Just the last few days — let me actually pull it up. What happened when prices dumped? What did we do in the newsletter?
Look here, guys. Look at the panic that was on October 9th. On October 9th, what did I say? "I am bullish. I think that dips are for buying in early bull. I don't over-complicate it." This was October 9th. Go back, see what happened on October 9th. Go back, see the drama on October 9th.
Not only with love, but also look at the date. I'm bullish. Dips are for buying in early bull. The time to be bearish was last October. And with love. So guys, newsletter very important.
Michael Saylor — always room for more orange. Yes. Likely going to be buying. The monthly candle — we're looking at the monthly candle. Bullish engulfing, meaning that we close above whatever the previous month was. Very important. Actually, it's three months, guys — it's quarterly. We just closed a quarter as well. Fantastic.
France's Sovereign Debt Crisis and the Macro Case for Bitcoin
What else? The US Treasury is going to be buying four billion of its own debt. And guys, there are many countries that will have to buy a lot of debt. France has many issues. There are big, big issues for many different reasons. But also, outside of what's happening on the streets, there is something that is very problematic, and that's the government debt. The interest rate on the debt is very high, meaning that no one wants to lend France money. They have big problems with pensions, with social spending, with high taxes already. They cannot raise more tax. Basically: high debt, high expense, low income — taxes don't cover all of the things the government wants to do. And then you have this guy, a mega mega lefty, basically saying, "I don't care about the bond market."
It is very true that France has to reassure the market. Otherwise it cannot raise money. It cannot sell bonds. If you cannot sell bonds, if you cannot have government debt — you can chat with AI about what that means. It's finished. Absolutely finished.
So when you are in such a situation where bond yields are very high, you need to explain to the market — for example, by cutting spending. You have to figure some stuff out. It's like with a normal person. You bought a bunch of plasma TVs, Xbox, PlayStation on credit, and now you want to buy a house. You need to figure out your income, your expenses. It's exactly the same for a country. Now if you are in France, let us know how much power this guy has. Because he's saying forget the bond market. Oh, you don't want to say that. You don't want to say that.
What will this lead to? They will likely have to buy their own bonds again. Print money, buy their own bonds. France is very critical to the EU. Germany is not doing that well either. So you may have a big issue in the EU in the coming years when it comes to the sovereign debt crisis. It's going to lead to printing. If you cannot raise money from the market by selling bonds, you will have to print money. That's the only way. They can print money and buy their own bonds — basically just printing money. They can increase tax. No one's going to do that.
So basically, guys, you want to own assets. You want to be an asset owner because this will not end well. You need Bitcoin, you need other assets as soon as possible. The US is going to be buying its own debt sooner or later. And the biggest story in my view is what's going to happen to stuff like France, which is a bit under-discussed but it's not doing well. Anyway, for us it's bullish. That's the main thing. We're bullish.
Tom Lee's Price Targets
Let's listen to Tom Lee.
Interviewer: Where do you think ETH will be at the end of the year?
Tom Lee: I think Ethereum should exceed its all-time high. So I think it's above $5,000. I think Bitcoin is going to be over $100,000. And if that's the case, then I think Ethereum is around $7,500.
Interviewer: And are there indicators you look at in the market? Like, what do you typically look at to inform usage of the infrastructure and have a bit of those forward views?
Tom Lee: I think crypto is a thematic story. What I mean by that is that in 2016–2017, that bull market was really an ICO story — principally retail investors, but it was huge. It didn't take a lot of people to cause Bitcoin to hit $18,000. And then in the 2019 to 2021 bull market, that was a lot about NFTs, which was a novel innovation, but that was again pretty much a retail boom, and you saw massive moves in crypto prices. But this bull cycle is coming at a time when institutions are building a lot of products, and I think we're seeing some real innovations. Ando announcing private markets today — that's bigger players, bigger dollars. I think this is going to be a much, much bigger cycle than what we've seen in the past.
Ivan on Tech: Much, much bigger. Now there is one thing I want to tell Tom, and that's — sit up straight. Sit up straight, because you've got to sit up straight, Tom, because what is this? You guys also, if you're watching this, sit up straight. So yes, we're bullish. I think everyone is kind of bullish at this point. But not everyone sits up straight. You've got to be sitting up straight.
Altcoin Roundup — Wormhole, Injective, Zcash
What else, guys? Let's check what's been happening in the altcoin space. You have Layer Zero pump, Filecoin pump, Render, Near — Near has been a machine with Venice pumping, but still at a discount in the last seven days. A few pumps here during the last 24 hours.
Wormhole — oh yeah. Up 40% since the flip last week. Actually, it flipped like today during midnight. And it's up already since that midnight flip. This chart looks good. There's a bit of resistance here, but all charts have some kind of resistance. Just to get to this area is 100%. From a risk perspective, I like how it looks. It's kind of like with Starknet — we discussed Starknet last stream. We said it looks good because just to recover to some previous resistances is so much, and to go to all-time high is like 30x. The chart looks like it has fallen for so long and now it's bullish for the first time in a long time. Just to get back to that resistance is 150%. So this chart I like. There are many such charts now in the crypto space, and that's why you really have to pay attention now.
Let's see Injective. Injective — it's a bit worse because there's a big resistance cluster here and it's just a 50% pump to it. But also bullish in many regards. If we compare — just to get to this resistance cluster it's 50%, and that one had 150%. So if you love Injective, that's good. It is a bull trend. But at the same time, if you can get those that have a violent pump but are even further from the resistance, in my experience and personal opinion those are slightly more preferred. But obviously bull trend is bull trend.
Any insight on Zcash? I get concerned when you cannot even spell the coin. It's spelled just Z — not "Z-E." And then I almost don't want to answer because you're going to get phished. Some scammer is going to give you something and you're going to think it's Zcash. So spelling lesson: it's Zcash. Just Z. Okay. Next.
Chart-wise, Zcash is bullish. It's up 52% since the last bull flip right here. It looks very good. This thing can go very, very high. As long as it's bull trend, we're very bullish on Zcash. It is the story of this cycle with privacy. Bitcoin is HTTP. Zcash is HTTPS for HTTP. You understand? So yeah.
Is post-quantum coins the next big narrative? Yeah, it kind of already is. You see Near going up a lot. It's already is, and for sure quantum is a big problem. It's a big danger. Another big danger is getting hacked just by AI.
Cardano, Charles Hoskinson, and the Midnight Project
All of the Cardano and Charles fans — let me know if you love Charles, if you love Cardano. There is something here. I think Charles is doing something very smart because he understands that the best time to be bullish is before you ship too much. You remember we discussed that when Cardano shipped smart contracts, that was like the mega mega top, and since then it's been down. By the way, Cardano now looks okay — it's also bullish for the first time in a long time.
But you understand: most people got rich in Cardano before they had tech, because when tech is there, tech is never as good in reality as in fantasy. So you want to be in the fantasy land as long as possible. That's where the money is made. When there is real tech, then you actually have to compete, and it becomes very, very difficult. So many coins — not only Cardano — once they actually ship tech, it's down only.
The most bullish time for Cardano — you remember what it was? It was when Charles did whiteboard sessions and just spoke about the vision. He looked like a 60-year-old professor although he was like 30. That image was very bullish. Now, with Midnight, this also makes me bullish because he's here doing something similar.
By the way, I think he has really kind of moved on from Cardano, at least in how he speaks. He said that Bitcoin is version one of blockchain, ETH is version two, Cardano is version three, and Midnight is version four. Let's see if I can find it here.
Charles Hoskinson: "Now, what can you do? You just send your Bitcoin around. And for some people, all these years later since 2009, that's just enough. We call them maxis. And it's great to have them there, and they certainly are very vocal people. But shortly after constructing Bitcoin, a lot of the people in the cryptocurrency ecosystem said, 'Well, we need a little bit more.' And they said, 'Well, what do we need?' Well, we need programmability. We need the ability to write transactions. We need the ability to basically make things — like issue our own assets, exchanges, DEXes, prediction markets, all kinds of things."
Ivan on Tech: This is Charles at his best — when he's speaking like a professor. It's at his most bullish. So yeah, he speaks about ETH being generation two, and look — Cardano generation three, but then he has a bigger thing now.
Charles Hoskinson: "We wanted to actually have something special there. And of course there were many good things we learned from the Ethereum world as well. You'll notice that the generations don't go away. They're there. They're nested inside, but we keep getting bigger and bigger. So eight years ago, we asked — well, as an R&D project, which has now turned into a real life thing — what's the next generation? Well, you have a triangle. And before we had the triangle, what did we have? We had a line. Before that, we had a dot. So maybe, just maybe, if you read the book Flatland, you have a square. How about that? You know, it's hip to be square. Fourth generation."
Ivan on Tech: So yeah, that is the bull case for Midnight. That is like Cardano before Charles shipped anything — speaking like a professor, although he's in his thirties. That's basically it. Think about that. But guys, we keep it simple. And Cardano was at the peak right when they launched smart contracts. So that's that.
But Cardano as a chart doesn't look bad. I mean, it's actually a bull trend. I tweeted the other day that it's the first time it's been a bull trend in ages. It's minus 80% from the last cycle highs, minus 91% from the 2021 high. So chart-wise, it's not bad. It's bullish right now. It's bull trend. At the same time, Charles is on the fourth generation. You guys are stuck in the third generation. He's on the fourth generation.
We joke about Charles, but he just creates multi-billion dollar assets kind of in an afternoon. Midnight is 815 million market cap. Of course there's some R&D, but mainly it's because he does whiteboard sessions and people love the whiteboard. The best thing ever. I love the whiteboard.
So yeah, Midnight — we're keeping an eye. As long as he doesn't ship tech, as long as he speaks whiteboard, he's the best. Whenever I watch Charles, he gets so aggressive and always gives his haters screen time. But people want drama, man. People want drama. He understands it. It's showbiz.
Pudgy Penguins and the Abstract Chain Situation
Guys, we need to speak a bit about Pudgy Penguins because the situation with Luca is becoming not too good. It's bull trend, but it actually had a massive dump here, and that's normally not good. You want bull trend to happen and then it pumps. Pudgy Penguins becomes bullish only if they come above this line. But with the situation with Abstract, it is bigger than just some farmers being mad. At first I thought it would just be some farmers that are mad and that's it. But it kind of became a massive thing.
Luca here has to step up and speak to the community — basically do stuff. I don't think he can be quiet too long. There's this guy, some kind of billionaire, who bought 117 Pudgies. But the community is clearly mad as hell at Luca — mad in ways where it's no longer just some farmer. Apparently many people have been farming, and here on this channel we don't farm, guys. But if they farmed so long and now they're mad, Luca has to step in and do stuff. Bring the community together. Being quiet is not a good solution here.
All in all, shutting down a product you don't want to focus on — shut it down. I have no problem with shutting down. Focus on stuff that you want to focus on. If you tried something and it did not work, shut it down. But then you have to manage whoever farmed all of this. Probably should have been more careful with hyping it up, also with the airdrop. But I can understand that because as a founder, you have to be all in until you're not. There's no way to be a founder and be 50/50. But yeah, managing expectations a bit better — probably good.
So with Pudgy Penguins, guys, we need to get above that line to be bullish here. Within the coming weeks, Luca will have to bring the community together in one way or another. People wanted the airdrop on Abstract. They're super angry — way more than I thought. But also, I don't farm, so for me it's like, okay, they shut it down. To me it's actually better because no one cares about Abstract anyway. You cannot compete with the Robinhood chain. If I have my Pudgy Penguins coin, I would rather have the founder focus on stuff that's going to pump that, and not waste time trying to do stuff which will not work anyway. Because let's be honest, Abstract would not have been able to beat Robinhood or Solana anyway. It's worth was worth a try, but clearly after so long a time.
So yeah, interesting. You have the community, you have what makes business sense, you have the NFT, and you have everything else. But it's clear that some good faith has been used here. Luca has been accumulating good faith — everyone loves Luca. And here he spent a portion of that. Hopefully it can be regained if he brings the community together. But yeah, that's the current state of affairs.