Ivan on Tech analyzes Bitcoin's recovery, altcoin weakness, and macro risks in a live Q&A stream
Ivan on Tech hosts a live crypto market analysis session covering Bitcoin's price action, altcoin performance, macro conditions, and viewer Q&A.
Summary
Ivan on Tech presents a live market analysis session as Bitcoin pushes from $80K to $81K, with bulls growing more confident. He argues that while the short-term daily trend has turned bullish since mid-April, the higher timeframe still shows bears in control — Bitcoin needs to recapture $91K and set a higher high to confirm a genuine bull trend. He walks through a two-tier DCA strategy tied to the bull market support band, warns against permabull thinking by citing the historical pattern of 40% average pumps following 50% dumps (which then reversed sharply), and cautions that most altcoins remain deeply weak. He also covers macro developments including rising 30-year Treasury yields, the DTCC's move toward tokenizing stocks, Telegram/TON's leadership change under Pavel Durov, and the emergence of on-chain DeFi strategies built around MicroStrategy's STRF (Stretch) instrument.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin Price Action and Market Overview
Ivan on Tech: Welcome to another episode. As you can see right now, Bitcoin is pushing higher. We went to $80K, we went now to $81K. The bulls are becoming more and more confident, and people are calling for the golden bull — the golden bull that will take us to Valhalla, that will take us to all-time high, to $120K, $130K, $150K, and so on. So today we'll be discussing what is actually going on, what is the likelihood of the bears being fully cooked, fully grilled, and also what is the likelihood of us going into the buy zone. Is this a pipe dream? Is this the promised land which never happened? Bye-bye to our buy zone, or are we about to see the biggest return home that the world has ever seen into the buy zone? Let's discuss all of that.
Welcome everyone who is watching live. Big shout-out to Goodyear. On altcoins, you have something very interesting happening right now on the altcoins chart, which is that Zcash is breaking out. You also have a good situation now with some others like Hype. You also had Venice. Overall, there are a small handful of them now breaking out on the weekly, or that have been bullish on the weekly. Also, when you look at oil, we still have a very high oil price, so that's something to keep an eye on from the risk perspective. And when you look at silver and gold, they are stalling out slightly. We'll be discussing all of that — commodities, stocks, whatever you want — and then we're going to go into the Q&A and discuss everything in depth.
Higher Timeframe Analysis — Bears Still in Control
Let's start from the beginning, looking at Bitcoin. What do we see? The bears rule the high timeframe still. As you can see, we are bearish on the money line. We still have a situation where even if we go to $86K, it would still just be a lower high. For us to go into a clear bull trend on the high timeframe, we need to recapture $91K and we need to set a higher high.
Also, on the big timeframe, what you have is the bull market support band — we're now above it. So that's why we are DCAing slowly here, and we're going to DCA fast above here. As you know, we are risk-off since October, since around $120K. So it's not like we have a mega rush to redeploy everything back, but slowly here, fast here. Should we go below the bull market support band, then the likelihood of us going into the buy zone increases a lot. We would just pause the DCAing there, and that would be the course of action for us in this environment.
Because at the end of the day, as you know — especially if you watch Twitter — we discussed yesterday that the average pump after a 50% dump is 40%. Currently we're still well within that. We're at 35%. Last bear market, we went up 40%. So being all-in, like fully redeployed, it's too early. It's way too early. Can you still scale in now? It does make sense, like I showed you. But here, for example, we went up 40%, and then after we went up 40%, we went down 66%. So when you look at this, you understand that being a permabull is still no time for that — especially when you look at the overall market, where there are just a few altcoins doing okay, like Zcash and a few others.
When you look at the market cap of altcoins and you exclude Bitcoin, ETH, and stablecoins, there is no fight, not even close to the bull market support band. So overall, on the high timeframe, bears are still in control.
Daily Timeframe — A Different Picture
When we look at the lower timeframe, say the daily, here you have a bit of a different picture. We are in a bull trend on Bitcoin since the 18th — basically since April 18th. So since April 18th, we have a bull trend here, and it's still continuing. You can say we have a nice bull trend since mid-April, going up and up and up. And as you can see, the bulls have achieved a few things on the lower timeframe. We did create a structure here with a high, and now we have a series of higher highs. This is on the lower timeframe. On the higher timeframe, this is the last high that we need to break.
So short-term trading on the lower timeframe makes sense. If you feel that you have zero Bitcoin or you don't have anything, then again, DCAing slowly here, DCAing fast above here is my strategy. And currently, the way I'm seeing it, the risk of us going into the buy zone is still very, very real. I know that when you look at social media it doesn't seem like that, but we have a system here. We have a system and we don't actually follow too much what people are saying on social media. The system is simple, and most people cannot follow a simple system.
If you zoom out and you see how nice the system is with bullish and bearish — it's like the simplest thing with this bull-bear, bull-bear, bull-bear. But if you zoom in, here it went bull, then it went down 20%, then it pumped up, went down maybe. So there's a lot of volatility here that you only know about if you experience it. Just like now, we are in a bear, there's a bit of volatility — up and down, up and down — we're still within the bear. But for most people, to go through this time period, man, it's a lot of emotion. But as you know, trends come and go. Should the trend change on the higher timeframe? Okay, fantastic.
Altcoin Weakness — Solana, ETH, and the Patience Advantage
Now on the lower timeframe you do have a bull trend. Looking at alts — let's look at alts. Solana, for example, has not changed at all. This is where you see the overall weakness in alts. And to be fair, when the last bull market started in 2023, it took a month or so, some weeks and months, for altcoins to start to catch up to Bitcoin. But this is also where you don't have to have super FOMO urgency, because altcoins haven't moved at all. And altcoins are where most of the gains are going to be anyway. So personally, I don't have too much urgency in this environment, even though on Twitter there are a lot of emotions. Look here — Solana has not done anything. Most altcoins have not done anything. So this is where you have the advantage of being patient. I think patience is what's really going to pay off here.
ETH is also derping around here, around the lows. But if you look at the performance — guys, if you play RuneScape, you know coal. You can mine coal. It's one of the first things you can mine. You can go to different coal mines and mine coal. Apparently, if you bought coal on RuneScape, you outperformed ETH since a year ago. Now, this is very interesting. RuneScape was my first real market. I remember playing it, I remember trading stuff, I remember the pumps and dumps that happened within the RuneScape items. But you also see that coal has been quite volatile. If you've been mining, you've been collecting it.
So anyway, if you bought coal, you actually outperformed ETH. And also, these RuneScape items are tradable in the real world — there is a connection to real-world money, because Venezuelans and North Koreans actually move money through RuneScape, through in-game items. So anyway, that's with ETH.
Zcash Bull Flip on the Weekly
Looking at Zcash — let's look at the actual bull flip that is happening. This is what you want to see on the higher timeframe. In this case, Zcash is capturing the high timeframe. We are now bullish. And if this continues like this, since the bull flip until all-time high, you have 60–70%. And as always, it's 60% if you just have spot; if you use leverage, it's way bigger. Anyway, Zcash in this case actually has a trade here on the higher timeframe. And the higher the timeframe, the more certain the signal. The more certain the signal.
Pengu — Daily Bull Trend, Weekly Still Bearish
People are saying Pengu — let's check what Pengu is doing. Pengu is on the high timeframe, still bearish, guys. Still bearish. I love Pengu, but it's bearish on the high timeframe. On the lower timeframe, on the daily, it recently turned bullish — on May 1st, on Labor Day.
By the way, this was interesting to learn: Americans don't know Labor Day. They think Labor Day is in September or something. They don't know May 1st. Isn't that crazy? Big shout-out to all Americans. But I was surprised that Americans think Labor Day is in September. The international, socialistic, solidaric day of labor is May 1st. Let me know if you knew that. If you are from the US, do you know that? Or do you think the US is like the middle of the world on your map and everything else doesn't matter?
But anyway, look here — Pengu is bullish on the daily. So you have short-term trading here. Don't drink the Kool-Aid too much on the chart, because the weekly is still bearish, the high timeframe is still bearish. But here you have, for example, a good trade towards this high here as potential resistance, and also here you can have potential resistance at these lows around 30. So yeah, that's with Pengu.
Tom Lee, ETH, and the Stretch Strategy
Crypto Spring has officially begun, says Tom Lee. Well, listen, he's a permabull. He's always bullish. He's always saying everything is around the corner. What's important here is not what he says, but whether he can create something like Stretch.
Why is Tom Lee always bullish? Because he has a direct financial interest in being always bullish. For us, it's not in our interest to be always permabull. Why? Because in a bear market, your altcoins lose 80–90%. Most of them don't come back. So being permabull is not good. You have to be smart, you have to look at the trends. But his financial incentive is only to be permabull. If he's permabull enough, he will attract capital into his treasury — that's number one. But also, and here is where it would be bullish for ETH price, if he can do something like Stretch, where he can perpetually raise money each and every month and maybe offer some kind of yield, that would translate into the ETH chart and basically give us the Stretchification of ETH.
Because as you know, Stretch is the driver behind MicroStrategy nowadays. When you look at Stretch, they have successfully pushed it back up almost to $100, meaning that if it goes to $100, they can start selling Stretch. And by doing that, they raise money. So this month, we're almost at $100. Let's see if we can get there in the coming days. Based on Stretch, Sailor should be deploying next week. Let's see how much money he can raise, because when it goes to $100 he can start printing new stock and then it depends on the market depth — how much can he dump into it.
The goal of Stretch, as you know, is to be at around $100, and then if it's above, they print, so it dumps. If it's below, they hope it's going to come back because people want the dividend each and every month. You have to hold on the 15th of each month approximately. So as you can see, on the 15th each month it dumps, and after the dividend date has passed it dumps and then recovers into the next month. Let's see if it repeats the same this time around. If it gets to $100, then it dumps and then recovers. But for them, as time passes, the challenge is going to be to bring it back to $100, because the risks increase each and every time — you have more and more Stretch outstanding, more and more dividends to be paid, and so on.
Tom Lee could do something similar. He could do his own Stretch. From an ETH perspective, the bullish engine could be to do some kind of mirror of Stretch. Because at the end of the day, it's not easy to raise money with normal stock. MicroStrategy's MNAV is not that great — it's around 1, a bit higher, but historically quite low. So Sailor has invented a new thing, Stretch. Let's see for how long that works.
Tom Lee is in the same boat. He cannot really issue common stock and try to raise money because the MNAV is so low. But he could maybe do this thing with yield, where he offers yield. And Tom Lee could actually do it in a more sustainable way where Wall Street might potentially trust it more, because ETH has yield and Bitcoin has no yield. So Tom Lee could actually say, "Hey, you get yield — ETH has yield." Let's see if Tom Lee does that. I think that would be quite a smart move to offer yield to Wall Street where you actually have an asset that has yield.
IGV, BNB, and TRX
Now let's check the IGV. Bitcoin follows IGV quite exactly, so we're also checking it. It seems to be opening higher now, getting into the bull market support band for IGV. And IGV, as you know, is the stock index that Bitcoin is tracking — it's basically the same chart. So we're checking it now and then.
Now looking at Chinese coins — BNB, Tron. BNB not doing too much. TRX, TRX — pushing higher, man. I love TRX. Since the bull flip, up and up and up and up. So you want to be in bull trends. And now it's so close to this high. Let me see how much it has to pump to the high — just 6%. 6% is going to be an all-time high weekly close. That's quite insane. For this kind of market to have Tron basically ignoring most of the bear — I mean, I don't want to... Justin, you know what, but the chart is the chart. I cannot do anything else than lift up the hat and say, what the hell is this? Because they basically skipped the whole bear, you can say.
You see the performance in the last bull? Last bull, just up and up and up and up, then a bit down and then a bit up with actually higher closes. Weekly close was higher. And then a bit down, like a slide down, not even that much down. Fantastic. This is the chart you want. And then there are other charts you don't want — very, very weak. You don't want those charts.
Hyperliquid — The On-Chain Nasdaq
Let's check Hype — Hyperliquid. New bull trend since the end of March on the weekly, now pushing higher. Let's see how far it is to all-time high — it is 25%. What's interesting with Hyperliquid is that it is the Nasdaq of crypto right now. It is the on-chain Nasdaq right now. What Solana tried to do, Hyperliquid actually did it. And it is a relatively new bull trend. Since the start of the bull trend, it went up only about 10%. So if this sustains — let's say we do see Bitcoin gold candles — if this sustains, Hype is going to be very juicy. Very, very juicy.
The overall open space currently is not good risk-reward. That's why we only look at a few that have good charts. Being in small coins, being in new ones — the risk-reward is simply not good right now. Because you see yourself, the overall market cap of altcoins is struggling. It's not even touching the bull market support band. Of course people say, "But you can buy here cheap." Yeah, I mean, just like you could buy here cheap before it dropped further. For us, we need trend. Without trend, we're not interested. There's no hurry. We need trend because we need the monies. We need the monies to compound. We don't need religion, we don't need blind faith, we need the monies.
Compounding Across Cycles — Profit, Compound, Protect
There was a good question from yesterday. As you know, I'm all about profit, compound, protect. That's our slogan in Bullmania. Someone asked yesterday a very good question in the comments: "How can you compound if Bitcoin has no yield? What do you mean compound?" But compounding in this case means that you have a bull market, you have nice profit, you capture that profit, and that profit is now your base for the next bull market. You don't reset, you don't round-trip. Meaning that each and every cycle works for you. You don't hold coins like DOT or whatever coin you have through the bear.
By the way, let me know in the comment section which coin you held that dropped more than 80%. No shame, no shame. I have written a whole book about losing millions and millions. So no shame — just write how much you lost, like if it's 80-plus percent in this bear market because you weren't exiting in Q4. Write that in the comment section.
And by the way, the secret timestamp is 21:30. So write 21:30 in the comment section — like the timestamp — and then write where you lost 80-plus percent. Then I know that you're watching, you're here, you heard the secret timestamp. No shame. Listen, the market is going to come back, but you just need to ensure you don't make the same mistake. When it's risk-off, when altcoins are in a bear trend — I don't care which altcoin, which fundamental — we're out, we're out, we're out.
And on Twitter, I'm spreading positive vibes. I started dirt poor in the ghetto. I explain it in my book also. Crypto changed my life. I don't know who needs to hear this, but if you're struggling, keep going. If you're here cycle after cycle and you learn the lessons, it's going to work out. See losses as a lesson. The market does not care where you come from or what mistakes you do. It only cares about what you do from now on. That's very important. This is what we mean with compound — to ensure that you have profit each bull market. You have to capture most of the trend, and very importantly, that money needs to continue into the next cycle. If it does not continue, you waste five years.
The Macro Trap
ISM and liquidity — these are things people bring up. And yes, ISM, liquidity, it is going to pump crypto eventually. The problem is it did not stop altcoins dropping 80–90% since October. The same argument was valid in October. So it's not a trading strategy. You cannot trade based on liquidity and ISM. You cannot trade based on that.
We actually have it in the book also. We have this macro trap. I shared the traps people make, and there are many traps — like the charlatan trap, and many others. But one of the traps is actually the macro trap. Let me see if I can find it. But it's basically about not trying to use macro to trade crypto. It doesn't really work, because we have a case study literally in front of us with all of the altcoin losses. Why did people hold them? Because they thought that macro was going to save them.
It's trap number two — the macro trap. Another way people get wrecked is through macro analysis. They follow metrics like the ISM, the business cycle, track rates. They build elaborate theories about how the economy works and what it means for asset prices. It sounds sophisticated. It makes you feel like you're doing real analysis. You listen to macro. Just yesterday you were a regular person without any knowledge of macro. Now you're analyzing macro. You look at Fed charts, you track unemployment, you track rates. It feels like you're a sophisticated gentleman, which is great for general knowledge. To place trades, it is very bad. Very, very bad.
In many cases it simply does not work. And then I give the example of the dump that happened in altcoins from October to when the book was written back in March — many altcoins were down 80–90%, even though macro, shmacro, listen, macro is great, it's going to work out eventually.
Here's how you can use macro: you can use macro and say, "I'm interested in crypto." That's kind of how far you can take macro. Overall, I'm interested in the space of crypto because liquidity and everything is going to drive crypto up. Macro leads me to be interested. Okay, that's good. You're interested. Then how you place trades, how you take positions — macro should not have anything to do with that. Very important.
DTCC Tokenization and the Future of On-Chain DeFi
Now, speaking about Nasdaq on-chain — we discussed PolyMarket, as you remember. There is an interesting development now happening with DTCC. DTCC is the company, or institution, that basically is the custodian that holds everyone's stocks in the US. So if you buy a stock in your brokerage, the stock is actually stored in DTCC. That's the custodian that your bank uses to store stock, and there it says that you own it. DTCC is where the stock is located, you can say. That's the custody of the stock. You can speak with your favorite AI about how it works in depth, but for now just know that DTCC holds all the stocks.
If you are in the EU, there is a similar system called Euroclear. So when you trade on different brokers and so on, at the end of the day the actual stock is in Euroclear. When a company goes public in Europe, their stock has to be imported into Euroclear, and then it works with all of the brokers and everything.
Why is this important? Because the DTCC — this company or institution where all the stocks are located — is now working to tokenize everything, basically. They work with 50-plus firms: Nasdaq, Morgan Stanley, this and that. They are moving towards on-chain to make it happen. Which chain it's going to be is not clear. Whether it's going to be Ethereum or something else — there's no clarity exactly how it's going to be done. But this is a very important move overall for trading on-chain.
I think this is going to be great for companies like Hyperliquid and other on-chain companies that trade stocks. If you can now have tokenized versions of each and every stock, it's going to be great for DeFi. Because if you can actually have dividends paid on-chain via these tokens, it's next level. Because now we can do our ponzionomics in new ways. This can literally drive the whole new bull market, where you have the dividends coming in and then people do the leverage loop — where they take out a loan from Aave to buy the stock, then they take a new loan with the stock as security to buy more of it, and so on and so forth. As soon as you give us some kind of new financial primitive, man, we're going to go nuts.
And that has actually happened now with Strategy. Ondo Finance has now taken Stretch on-chain, and you can basically go and buy Stretch on-chain from your wallet. You will not get the full yield — I think they're going to take like 8% or something, you get less yield. But it's now available in DeFi, meaning that this ponzionomic can become quite massive.
Listen, Strategy itself is questionable, but we don't worry about questionable or not questionable too much. If it's a bull trend, it's bull. We look at the chart. But now imagine all of the DeFi degeneracy that may happen on top of it, where it yields 11%, a bit less because Ondo is going to take a cut. And then you can take a loan. You can put it as collateral in Aave. You can take a loan. You can then buy more Stretch. You can do the leverage loop. You can have the staking reward. This is going to be interesting to see — the rebirth of DeFi, if this can actually give new life into DeFi. Because people have been risking so much to get like 2–3% yield in DeFi, and instead you can have this kind of return.
The only problem is there is obviously no decentralization here. But listen, for profit, people in DeFi don't care too much about decentralization. They care about the leverage loop and whether there is yield and how much yield they can get. And if you have 10% yield, you can leverage-loop it maybe to 40% yield. Because you take this Stretch coin, you take a loan from Aave, you have it as collateral, you take more stablecoins from Aave as a loan, you buy more of this Stretch thing, then you put it as collateral, you get even more stablecoins, you buy more Stretch. So you can lever it up quite a lot — maybe instead of 10%, you have 30%. I don't know exactly, but multiples more. In DeFi we're the best at that kind of stuff. And that fueled the 2020–2021 bull market — that bull market was fueled by DeFi looping and ponzionomics. So let's see if we can now merge Wall Street with us. We're Wall Street and us, we're in the same boat now.
Ondo Chart Analysis
Look here, on the chart, as they are working with it — on the weekly, bears are still in control. On the daily, oh, look here — on the daily, it's coming to the flip level. So keep an eye on this one. Could be an interesting trade here. On the daily, what's good is that if we can get above here, you can argue it's a new trend where you have this kind of lower high-ish, and then if we can get above it, fantastic. So yeah, Ondo is taking the lead now when it comes to tokenizing Stretch. That's currently probably the most popular crypto financial product now — Stretch. So yeah, that's with Ondo.
Telegram and TON — Pavel Durov Takes Control
Now guys, let's speak about what's happening with Telegram. They also have news now, and they also have a crazy chart. Daily chart — Telegram, now entering bull trend. Still needs to confirm in a few days, but if you want to front-run the confirmation, you already see that it's breaking out on the daily. New bull trend. If it can close the confirmation candles here, and on the weekly it's also a bull trend — very, very interesting here. Because basically we need to close the week somewhere above this flip, then it's confirmed on the weekly. So yeah, keep an eye here, because it's the first weekly bull trend since January 2025. Since January 2025. Quite significant.
I would say this is quite significant because when you have a long bear trend, a new bull trend is very powerful. After a long bear trend, the longer the bear trend, the better the bull trend is going to be. So yeah, since January 2025, more than a year ago, TON is now entering a new bull trend. Let's see. Chart is looking quite good.
And the reason is Pavel Durov basically said, "Listen, I'm taking control now. I'm taking control. We are replacing the TON Foundation. We don't know what the hell these lazy ducks have been doing on the TON Foundation. It's time for Telegram to replace them and be the driving force behind TON." And I like that. It's a more direct connection to Pavel Durov, the founder of TON. They're going to become the largest validator. The focus shifts to take superiority. Newton.org, new dev tools, new performance upgrades — timeline: two to three weeks.
This is the timeline I want. You ask someone in Europe, the timeline — some EU dev — he's going to tell you, "Oh, I need a long timeline. I need a long vacation, I need paid time off, I need a bonus, this and that. Maybe in five, six months we're going to have something." No, listen. This is the speed of crypto. Two, three weeks. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Done. Fantastic. I love when the founder takes direct ownership instead of putting a foundation and some other entity in between. That's good. I love that.
Macro — Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, and 30-Year Yields
Now, guys, in Iran, we have Operation Freedom — they're trying to open the Strait of Hormuz. Let's see if they succeed or not. By the way, it is interesting that it was basically said that the war is over, like the conflict is over. I've heard an interesting take on that — basically that it's like a formal way to extend the war without needing the Senate, because you say it's over, okay, then it's over. If you have a new conflict, the days start from zero. That's an interesting thing. Please confirm that in the comment section if you are a bit of a geopolitical lawyer here.
But Operation Freedom is basically ensuring the Strait of Hormuz is open. Let's see how it goes. But the 30-year yield is the highest in two decades as the Iran war reignites inflation fears. So Trump cannot do too much without tackling this, because the yield is high. When the yield is high, it means that the financial markets are dumping Treasuries. When Treasuries are getting dumped, it means that it's more expensive for the government to raise money and their interest expense goes up.
Let me see where the yields are. Let's see — 30-year, it went up, all the way here, basically to this high from 2025. But "two decades" — that headline is a bit exaggerated. It is high, it is pushing. If we go above this — in two decades, man, that's a bit of fake news headline. We're definitely high, very, very high. We need to go to 5.2% to be the highest since 2007. So it's not the highest in two decades. We need to go to the ultimate high here. But anyway, it's very high. The conclusion is the same.
Trump will have to tack off sooner or later, or deal with the consequences of higher interest rates where your mortgage is going to be affected and the government is going to have a tougher time raising money, which probably will lead to higher taxes, yada yada yada. So either tack off, or this thing will continue to go up. If it goes up, it's very bad for the government. They need it down. They need it down.
Q&A
So guys, that's it. Let's go to Q&A — names, questions, answers, debates, discussions.
Ahmed: Ivan, micro not looking good, but Bitcoin doesn't buy. Do you sense this is a bottoming sign?
Ivan on Tech: I mean, listen, no one is Baba Vanga or Nostradamus. This would be an unusual bottom, so that's why we just keep it simple with the trends. Is it a bottoming sign or not? We just have to see if it goes above significant levels. For example, now it is going above the bull market support band, so it is firing the slow DCA. And then should we go above here, it's going to fire fast DCA. Everything else is anecdotes. We need to pass significant levels. That's it. And as long as we're doing that, we are positioning ourselves more towards the bull. Should we stop doing that, should we collapse back below the bull market support band, then the picture is different.
I don't really reason in those ways — that micro is up and this and that — because you're not respecting your money when you do that. Money needs to be respected rationally, mathematically. Significant levels are passed, trend is shifting. That's more how I think. It's not something you can trade on. It's not something you can place trades on.
But yes, the stock market is the same — it's pumping even though oil and macro is shaky. If you look at the stock market now, QQQ wants to open higher, wants to go to another high. SPX also wants to open higher because futures are higher than the close. So it's not only Bitcoin, it's stocks also. But you could argue crypto is lagging behind stocks. Stocks are at all-time high, crypto is not at all-time high. So if anything, it's definitely possible to also see it as a weakness. Nasdaq and S&P went to all-time high quite quickly. Bitcoin is not at all-time high. It's a bear trend. It still has the series of lower highs.
So the same news, you can spin it bullish, you can spin it bearish. You can spin it bullish and say, okay, we're not dumping. You can spin it bearish and say, okay, actually versus S&P versus Nasdaq, we're not doing good at all now. That's why it's best not to worry too much about these headlines and spins. Just look at significant levels, are they passed or not, base decisions on that. That's it.
Pavel Durov, Telegram, and Small Teams
Ivan on Tech: Did Pavel Durov discover Claude and is now vibe-coding TON? No, listen. Pavel Durov is probably the best in the world at creating tech tips. Probably the best in the world. I mean, Telegram is one of the biggest social medias ever. He has like 30 employees. It's quite insane. So he's the best at finding the guy for the job.
With TON, I hope it's going to be the same. He finds the best in the world, just a few. You don't want a big team. Big team — always chaotic, politics, stuff. You want a small team, a small team of autistic brainiacs that don't talk too much, they code, and they do it very well. No drama, no talking, just coding. Very nice. Once your company gets bloated, you have office drama, people sleep with each other — none of that. None of that. Remove that. You only need devs that click buttons and produce fantastic tech. Pavel Durov is the best at getting those guys. Zero bloat in the organization. That's it.
RuneScape, Gaming, and Market Lessons
Ivan on Tech: Let me know if you follow me on Twitter. But the best thing with RuneScape is also that you can play the music, man. It's royalty-free music. They said you can use any music, so that's the best.
So anyway, if you bought coal, you actually outperformed ETH. And also, you know, these RuneScape items — they are tradable in the real world. There is a connection to real-world money because Venezuelans and North Koreans actually move money through RuneScape, through in-game items.
RuneScape was so good for me. It taught me the market — Grand Exchange, supply-demand, charts. Coal has a chart. Pump and dump, people pump and dump. And also to get hacked. So it was the perfect training for crypto.
Actually, my RuneScape account got hacked, and that's how I started programming. I thought, let me create my own RuneScape. I want to be in game development. That was the start. Big shout-out to the hacker. He hacked me, and that's why RuneScape was so good for me.
My cousin led me into the Wilderness, robbed my things, and my dad had to call his dad to get my stuff back. Yeah, so I was actually playing RuneScape when they removed the Wilderness for a while. And it was this Bounty Hunter thing — it was crazy. Actually, you see, when I got hacked, they laundered my Saradomin Sword via that Bounty Hunter fake wilderness. Because you know they made these rules that you could not really trade with each other because of the actual money laundering that was happening via RuneScape, where Venezuelans and North Koreans were pushing money through in-game items. So they made it so that you cannot actually trade if you don't offer similar value.
So when my account got hacked, they had the Saradomin Sword, but they didn't know how to steal it. Finally, they stole it via that Bounty Hunter cave fighting arena, or whatever it was called. Because when I finally got access back, I was there in Bounty Hunter, but my Saradomin Sword was not there. So it was during that time that I stopped playing. When I got hacked, they killed the game.
Now RuneScape, as far as I understand, is bigger than ever. Because they brought back the old school, they have a new era of it. But now it's all the old dudes playing. It's like, as we were 10, now we're like 30. It's the same age group. I don't think they attract any new guys. It's just nostalgia farming. Which is great. It's nice.
I would rather watch RuneScape than two Chechens fighting or Dagestanis. I would rather watch RuneScape. That's my brain.
I played Cossacks — Kozaks is like Age of Empires but in my opinion better. Check out Kozaks, like Kozaks Napoleonic Wars. It's amazing. I played Age of Empires obviously, where it was very, very good, but I found Kozaks better. I don't know, I just liked it more. But Age of Empires was also good. I played Heroes of Might and Magic 3. It was very, very nice. That game, by the way, also has a big community still. Heroes of Might and Magic. Fantastic.
Diablo? No, I don't play Diablo. I tried playing it later, when I was maybe 20. Diablo 4 came out. I tried it. I didn't like it.
Oh, Tibia, man! I played Tibia for a bit. Oh, Tibia! It was so nice. Man, I still have some weird feelings from it. It was like too scary or something, but I was still playing it. I was like 10 years old, playing Tibia, but it has like a hardcore feeling about it. Because you can get backstabbed in Tibia.
I remember in all of the MMORPGs, I was 10, so I was a noob in most of them. But I remember Tibia — I was trying to get out of this tutorial island. You can go into Toriel Island, you can fight Minotaur. You go down in some cave and there's Minotaur. I think it's the strongest monster on Toriel Island in Tibia. But in Tibia, the thing is your ally can backstab you. Because if your guy, your ally, blocks the exit, you cannot run. If you're running out of health in Tibia, the other players can literally sacrifice you to the Minotaur. And I don't remember if it happened to me. I know that maybe we did it to other guys, but that felt like hard freaking core. You can get backstabbed. The whole graphics was a bit, yeah. I did play Tibia for a while. Not as much as RuneScape, but I did play it. The problem I think was that you die and then you lose everything or something like that. It was more hardcore.
That's also why I liked RuneScape — because the combat in RuneScape is so easy. You know, there's no moving fast, you will not win if you click faster. You need better stats, you need better food. Of course there's some skill, there's some... but in comparison to other games it's like super minimal. That's why RuneScape is like the best. It really is the best.
And also English, man — I didn't know any English. And then you learn English in RuneScape. Cabbage — what is cabbage? I don't know, but I learned later on in school, like, ah, this is cabbage. And in Tibia, I learned "withdraw." You had to go to the bank and you had to write "withdraw." I mean, I didn't know any English, but I know from Tibia: withdraw — what the hell is it? It is you get money out from your bank. And deposit. But you know, when I was 10, I knew no English. But in Tibia, withdraw, deposit — it was the first. And in RuneScape, the guys, it's like a British game, it says "greetings." What the hell is greetings? Then in school I learned "hello" — ah, I know it from RuneScape already.
Final Market Questions — Perp-Driven Rally and DCA Strategy
Ivan on Tech: What do you think about this being perp-driven? Yeah, I mean, it's also one of the more anecdotal things, but it is not spot-driven — that's correct. That's why... But it's also seen on the chart. The chart is showing that also. You don't have like a big fat thrust like Nasdaq had. It's a bit slow. But at the same time, we have the two-tier approach here with slow DCA here and fast DCA here.
Basically what you say with the fact that it's perps-driven — the risk is still high that we go into the buy zone. It is still high. You can rewatch the start of the show, but it just plays into that. It plays into that package of risk. So for us, we've been risk-off since October 8th, and we were not in a super hurry to get back in. And there are many reasons to be cautious here. Number one is just this — lower highs. Number two, like you say, potentially perp-driven, no real spot demand. MicroStrategy is like the only real big buyer now. And now you could argue that this is front-running MicroStrategy buying with Stretch. But at the same time, it can be an ignition that turns into a real pump. So that's why I don't really discuss that too much.
Is it spot? Is it not spot? We mentioned that it is perp-driven, but the chart is what matters here. The only chart — are we above the bull market support band or not? If yes, slow DCA. Are we above the money line flip? If yes, fast DCA. Here is the time to be very bullish. Are we below the bull market support band? I would stop DCA. Another question was, should you sell? No. The DCA would stop here. I will not sell below here. It's just that I would stop it, because the risk of going into the buy zone is then very real — actually quite high — and then we would deploy below the 200-week moving average. So it's more about positioning. And then whether it's perp or not, it just adds to the risk picture to not be too impatient. I think patience is key here.