Ivan on Tech analyzes Bitcoin's battle with the 200-day moving average and discusses altcoin opportunities, MicroStrategy's financial structure, and market positioning
Ivan on Tech hosts a live stream covering Bitcoin's technical position, altcoin setups, MicroStrategy's evolving capital structure, and a live portfolio trade in TON.
Summary
Ivan on Tech presents a solo live stream analyzing Bitcoin's current battle with the 200-day moving average, arguing that low volume makes any breakout signal low-confidence and that Bitcoin remains in a macro bearish trend until a higher high is established. He opens a live public portfolio position in TON, citing Pavel Durov's personal takeover of the project and increased integration with Telegram as a fundamental catalyst. He examines MicroStrategy's increasingly complex capital structure, describing it as a "three-body problem" between MSTR holders, STRK preferred stock holders, and Bitcoin holders — arguing that the monthly dividend obligation on STRK creates a structural pressure that did not exist before. He also warns viewers about pre-IPO tokenized stock platforms, explaining that private company shareholder agreements render most such transfers legally void, leaving buyers with no protection in the company's official books.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin at the 200-Day Moving Average
Ivan on Tech: Welcome to another episode. Today we'll be speaking about Bitcoin, altcoins, and everything. Look at the chart — Bitcoin is now at 80.9. If we look at the daily and click here, Bitcoin is currently fighting the 200-day moving average. This is the most important chart for Bitcoin right now. The white line is the 200-day moving average, and Bitcoin is currently fighting, fighting, fighting with it. The question is: can we kill the four-year cycle? Can we finally go above it and smash to the upside, or will we be rejected? We'll be discussing exactly that.
Also in this episode, we will be opening our public portfolio. As you can see, currently it's only stablecoins. We'll be pushing one million towards riding this big fat bull market that is going to come. The question is whether it's going to come now or later this year. We have to be patient. We have a nice community here and we will be sharing the portfolio and how it's going. Can we take it to 10 million? Can we take it to 100 million? That would be crazy. Everything is possible in altcoins, especially as we get into the juice of the bull market. There are going to be many, many opportunities.
For now, though, overall we are in the bear trend on the weekly. So we have to be super careful and super selective, currently with tight stops. There are opportunities, and towards the middle of the stream I will tell you some opportunities where we will be deploying, but we have to be super careful still because it's a bear trend. We have a system, the system works very, very nicely, and the real party is going to start once we go into bull trend. Once Bitcoin is in bull trend, that's when the real party is going to start. Right now there is still way too much risk to the downside, and I keep repeating this every day. I keep drawing this definition of bear trend — lower high, lower high, lower high. Until we go to a higher high and we start building structure like this, we still need to see the market for what it is. Not what we want it to be, but exactly for what it is. And currently it's a bear trend and it's going lower.
Altcoin Signals and the Money Line System
Of course there are also many opportunities in stocks. The stock market for the last six months has been crazy. We keep it simple here — if it's bullish on the money line, we're bullish. Especially when you look at what's happening with smaller stocks, individual stocks, whether it is Micron, whether it is Intel, whether it is AMD — it has been an absolute life changer for many, many people.
We now also added the hourly time frame so you can see everything that's flipping bullish or bearish on the hourly. For example, BNB flipped bullish on the hourly 12 hours ago. Doge bullish on the hourly 12 hours ago. This is for all the scalpers that want to come in and scalp. But listen, hourly trends can be quite long as well. If you look at BNB on the hourly, the trend already had a bit of a pump. It can continue for a few days still. The last one went down about 1% from the start — with the hourly you also have to use a bit of leverage normally. But overall you have quite good odds of reaching one ATR, two ATR, and even three ATR on the hourly. Here was another one that started on May 4th and continued until May 6th. So hourly can still be a few days.
We also added the 12-hour because the 12-hour is super powerful. You have Uniswap flipping bullish on the 12-hour, Billions Network flipping bullish on the 12-hour. Even Ronin — is gaming alive? Ronin is now bullish on the 12-hour for the first time since September 2025. For the first time since September 2025, Ronin is now bullish on the 12-hour time frame. It is also above the 200-hour moving average. Let's check on the daily — still below, still bearish on the daily. But for short-term trading you could front-run it, though it's getting a bit rejected on the daily. The 12-hour is a different beast. You need to see them separately.
So all in all, big updates to everyone who is trading in this market with the tools and the system. You can see what flipped one day ago, two days ago, however long back you want. You can see only bullish flips or also the bearish and bullish flips. Now you have way more opportunities to snipe those moves as they happen, both to the upside when they go bull and also to the downside when they go bear. Because guys, you don't want to hold anything bearish now that Bitcoin is in a bear trend.
All coins are pumping a lot and we have to be careful because it's a bit of a shrouding situation. Of course it's good that altcoins go bullish on their money line — obviously that's good. But you see now different trends flipping bullish at the same time while Bitcoin volume is quite low. Normally you have big volume if you have a breakout. In that situation, a way to see it is that altcoins pumping could be the last part of the relief rally — the final hurrah, with the altcoins pumping before destruction to the downside. That's why currently we have to be on our toes. We have to be fully alert, not complacent, because we are where we are in the bear trend on Bitcoin. It hasn't gone anywhere.
TON and Pavel Durov's Takeover
Now a few good news for specific altcoins that we have to discuss. Number one: TON. On the daily it's bullish since this nice pump and break of the structure. On the 4-hour it went a bit bear. On the 12-hour and on the daily it's bull. It all depends which waves you ride. If you ride small waves like the 4-hour, it's going to be more back and forth. If you want a more steady wave, go to the higher time frame.
You see, Telegram — from the beginning everyone thought it was going to be so great when Telegram adds crypto, it's going to be adopted everywhere, it's going to be fantastic. But what happened in reality was that because of the SEC and regulations, they basically had to do a kind of detached coin — kind of connected to Telegram, kind of not connected to Telegram. Instead of calling the coin Telegram, like Telegram Open Network, they had to call it The Open Network. TON is officially not called Telegram, it's called The Open Network. Why? Because with Gary Gensler they could not really do a proper coin with proper use case and proper function that gets the benefit of the Telegram adoption — the hundreds of millions of users.
Now, with new rules, Telegram can be proud of their coin and not be ashamed. The coin is in the app and it's going to be used everywhere. During the last weeks, as you know, Pavel has said that they are taking over the coin. There's no more this TON Foundation. Whatever they did — it was not really efficient. Get it out, throw it in the garbage bin. Now Telegram and Pavel as the CEO of Telegram will be pushing this project himself, basically saying that it is their coin and it's going to be super integrated everywhere in Telegram in ways that we haven't seen before.
He's now personally tweeting about the price of Telegram. He's now really pushing it. And this guy, in business, he's a machine. Don't underestimate him. He's developing at 10x faster. He's tweeting for developers. The only risk is that the French government takes him and puts him in jail — they don't like freedom of speech. He needs to stay in Dubai. Look here: TON is number one in annual staking rewards among the 50 largest blockchains. TON leads L1 blockchain finality time. He's now basically tweeting about TON only — TON becomes world's largest validator, TON fees have dropped by 6x to nearly zero. He's all in, just tweeting and tweeting and tweeting about it. And yeah, maybe for the first time you're going to have crypto finally being super deeply integrated into TON in ways that they simply couldn't do before.
That's why, based on their bull trend on the daily, we will be adding them to the public portfolio. I will execute the trades. If they go bear, we cut it. We are only interested in bull. Should Bitcoin break down, should Bitcoin get rejected by the 200-day, it's going to be very bad for TON as well. But overall, in this situation, I need the chart to be green, and it's also nice to see that something is happening there.
SUI and Other Altcoin Setups
Then of course you also have stuff like Ondo — stocks hit one billion in TVL. You also have SUI. By the way, look here — they are now just coming into bull trend on the daily. They are struggling with the 200-day moving average, just like Bitcoin. Massive resistance here for SUI at the 200-day moving average. They still have to close this candle and two more candles above the flip. They could easily fall back below here. So let's monitor, but it will also be significant because for the first time since October they've turned bull. They lost like 80–90% of their value and now for the first time they turn bull. From that perspective it is interesting, but they need to close. They can easily still fall here. Still a few candles to go. 200-day moving average — massive, massive resistance. We're going to be monitoring that.
To summarize: we have to be super disciplined. Bitcoin is bear. You don't have volume. Volume is very low in Bitcoin. Whatever happens, if you don't have volume, it's a low-confidence signal. Whatever the breakout, you need volume. You need volume always.
MicroStrategy's Capital Structure and the Three-Body Problem
Something that happened yesterday was that Strategy — for the first time since last month, basically since the ex-dividend date in April — could buy Bitcoin again. So how much did they buy? Let's see. They didn't buy Bitcoin yet, but we can estimate how much money they raised to buy Bitcoin. With STRK yesterday they raised around $23 million, and they still have three days. They have today, Wednesday, and Thursday. They will not buy Bitcoin yet but they're raising money by selling STRK when the price of STRK is above $100.
STRK was above $100 yesterday and they were able to raise $21 million on Monday and $2 million on Tuesday. If we remove after-hours, it's zero. So with after-hours altogether they now raised $23 million. If we look at how much they raised back in April — on the 6th of April it was $56 million and $33 million, then $83 million on the 8th of April — as you can see, in April they raised way quicker. In May now they raise slower. It's already the 12th. In April they were already at almost a billion at around this time.
This basically means that it's harder for them to pump the stock back to $100. It takes longer time. It's the record time in how slow it is. Meaning that they will likely have to increase the dividend soon for it to snap back quicker. Increasing the dividend will attract more buyers, so it's going to be at $100 faster in the future, but it also increases their liabilities quite fast.
If we look at the previous week, they had one on Monday the 13th of April — they sold $755 million worth of STRK, and then the final day, one billion, and then it dropped below $100 and they raised zero again. This time around they have five days to raise and now they've raised $63 million. Last month they raised $1.8 billion that week, then $800 million, so $2.6 billion. Currently he is underperforming by quite a lot compared to the previous month, which leads me to believe that likely they will have to increase the dividend. Last week was zero because it never came to $100, and this week is $23 million. I believe he actually has three more days — today, Wednesday, and Thursday. The ex-dividend date is May 15th, just like last month it was April 15th.
So last month he raised like two to three billion altogether. Let's see if he can catch up. But he will likely have to increase the dividend to attract more capital in future months. With each month, as he raises, his liabilities go up a lot. The dividend he has to pay — now technically it's not a liability, he can cancel the dividend. Practically he cannot cancel it. If he cancels the dividend, STRK is going to dive very, very fast. If you bought your $100 worth of STRK, it's going to go down very fast if it has no dividend — the whole point is to have the dividend. So practically he cannot remove it. Theoretically he can. So each time he raises, the liabilities go up and then it just becomes more risky. That's why it's harder to push it back to $100 every month.
Now, speaking about the Saylor situation, let's get back to it because there was an interesting framing where he basically has three girlfriends. Saylor currently has three girlfriends. He started first with the relationship with MSTR. That was his first girlfriend. He said to MSTR holders: if you trade at a premium to NAV — basically if the value of the stock is higher than the Bitcoin backing the stock — when it happens, we're going to issue more stock, we're going to buy Bitcoin. So basically going to use the premium to fund Bitcoin purchases, and then we repeat the loop.
The problem is that now for a long time there is a discount to NAV already — either no premium or sometimes even a discount to NAV. So he cannot even do this anymore with this girlfriend. MSTR does not fund the Bitcoin purchases anymore. It's a big problem.
So he got the second girlfriend: STRK. This one is a bit more exciting — at least it's new. Here you offer a yield and money keeps coming in, and there are many people that just want to get some yield that is more or less safe. But the recurring dividend obligation adds a third variable to the system, and the levers available for servicing that cash drain are mutually entangled — pulling one immediately stresses the other. For example, should he sell a bit of Bitcoin in order to fund the STRK dividend payouts, it's going to be bad for MSTR holders because now there's less Bitcoin backing their stock. So you see two girlfriends have different incentives. This new lady doesn't care about the MSTR holders. STRK is going to tell Saylor: just print new stock, pay me dividend, and be quiet.
So Saylor needs to deal with the complexity of delivering a dividend to STRK holders while MSTR holders need to believe that the dividend won't be paid entirely out of their dilution, while at the same time signaling to the BTC base that any selling is off the table. And the third OG girlfriend is the Bitcoin holders who are just cheering on Saylor. He has basically three of them. He is now optimizing across three audiences: Bitcoin holders, STRK holders, and MicroStrategy holders. A delicate balance. Like the three-body problem, the system has no closed-form solution — only trajectories that hold together for as long as the inputs cooperate.
So guys, let's see what's going to happen. Saylor is in a delicate situation. Bitcoin needs to pump for him to get out of it. Before STRK, with just MSTR, you could chill. Market is down — we chill. Now with STRK, every month you've got to pay. I think now he needs to pay $55 million per month, something like that. Every month there is no chilling. You need to get money fast. This new girlfriend is expensive — every month there's $55 million, and growing. Each tranche you issue, the girlfriend grows in size and the dividend also needs to grow. It's fascinating. The upside for us is that he keeps buying Bitcoin. So that's good.
Pre-IPO Tokenized Stock Warning
Everyone has to be super careful trading pre-IPO stocks on blockchain. Look here — for example, Anthropic. Some companies offer tokenized pre-IPO Anthropic stock. The problem is that most people don't understand that in private companies, the rules for how shares can change hands are super regulated by the shareholder agreement.
In a public company, when it's on the stock market, you just buy and sell on the stock exchange. In a private company, you have a shareholder agreement basically saying that you cannot sell your stock without, for example, offering it to all the existing shareholders first. It's very standard. Imagine yourself — you start a company, you have a friend, and then he's like, "I just sold it to my neighbor." And the neighbor's like, "Hello guys, I'm a major shareholder." No. The first corporate thing they're going to set up for you if you use your brain is a shareholder agreement. That's the first thing. If you want to sell, you first need to offer to existing shareholders. In a private company, it's super standard.
Also, let's say that you actually did sell without getting approval from the existing shareholders or offering to the other shareholders. That transaction is not valid. In the company books, it's not valid. So what Anthropic did — people make a big drama out of this, but Anthropic just clarified what their shareholder agreement says. This is nothing spectacular. In any company where I've had other shareholders, this was super standard.
What has happened was that different tokenization platforms or other companies tried to circumvent the shareholder agreement. For example: I have shares in Anthropic, I tell you, "Listen, you can buy them from me — technically I am still the owner, but we have an agreement here between us that in the future when they go public, I will somehow give it to you. We'll figure it out later on." That's normally how they try to circumvent it. Officially I'm not allowed to transfer to you, but we have another agreement here in case they go public.
So Anthropic said: "Both our preferred stock and common stock are subject to transfer restrictions contained in our bylaws. Any sale or transfer of Anthropic stock or any interest in Anthropic stock that has not been approved by our board is void and will not be recognized on our books and records. Be especially cautious if someone contacts you unsolicited via email."
The point here is that you have no protection. Let's say that you buy something that you think is a stock — you have no protection. You're not actually in the shareholder book of Anthropic. You have an agreement with someone who maybe has an agreement with someone who maybe is going to honor it when Anthropic goes public. But then one of these middlemen goes bankrupt. They liquidate. And you have your deal with them, and then who the hell knows who you are? That company you made a deal with is already liquidated. The chain to the actual Anthropic shareholder book is infinite, and you are standing outside with no pants. Don't do that. With all this pre-IPO stuff, be careful.
Cathy Wood and Fund Manager Incentives
Look here — Cathy Wood is not really doing that great since five years ago. Her fund is down 23%. It's horrible performance. It's very bad. Innovation — which innovation? You look at Intel, AMD, all these stocks. What innovation do you mean? The whole ChatGPT moment happened. How can you be down on innovation? That was literally the innovation since 2022.
Anyway, this is the problem. A lot of these fund managers you have to take with a grain of salt. Their job is to get your money in and be bullish at the top, because that's when most attention is. It is actually a bit sinister. Both when it comes to Tom Lee, Cathy Wood — they never tell you when the trend is shifting. We told you in October: risk off, be careful, be careful. For them, here's the sinister part. At the top, they have to be super bullish because they have the most attention at the top. The industry has the most attention at the top. So they can raise the most money at the top. They need attention.
When they get the most attention possible at the top, for them to say, "Hey guys, be a bit careful" — that's very bad for them. They need to tell you it's going to go even higher, even though they themselves maybe don't believe it. They are paid based on AUM — assets under management. So when we are at the top, they have to say it's going to keep going higher no matter what they believe, because that's going to get them the most AUM. Whether you make money or not, whether ARK is up 20 or down 50 — the compensation does not change. The compensation is a base percentage of AUM. That's why you have to be super careful when you listen to people doing analysis on TV. If they have a fund, you have to be very careful. They want AUM. You are maybe their AUM, or a wrecked player who's just going to listen to what Cathy Wood says, go all in at the top, and yeah. Mechanical rules, money line trends — it's a lifesaver.
SUI Gold Integration and Ethereum Foundation Selling
Sui physical gold — on-chain DeFi infrastructure just went live on Sui with Matrix X. So you can now do DeFi on SUI with gold. If we look at the SUI price — struggling with the 200-day but potentially breaking out. Keep an eye there.
Next: the Ethereum Foundation is dumping again. Maybe they feel that this is a local top, that this is a lower high before we go into the buy zone. But these guys — Ethereum Foundation unstaking $50 million of ETH. Why are they doing that? What are they going to pay? Who are they paying? What are they dumping? So yeah, Vitalik pressing the sell button — I'm joking, it's the Ethereum Foundation, but it's more fun to say it's Vitalik. Well, Vitalik is involved in the Ethereum Foundation. So they are going to dump. Maybe they saw that a potato outperformed ETH during the last five years and they're diversifying into potato.
Vitalik Beer says ZK payments could become the next standard for crypto payments in the AI-driven agentic era. Possibly. Why not?
Also, zero fee stablecoin transfers from SUI — SUI is on fire today.
Live Portfolio Trade: Buying TON
Let's go to Q&A — questions, answers, debates. Let's go. Also, I want to buy TON. Let me put a limit order so we're not too greedy with the execution. Let's buy 50k. Let's see what's going to happen. If it goes bear, we're out. Let's see if we get filled or not. We have our spot order here for TON. Let's see what's going to happen. It is bull trend on the weekly. It's good to set limits — otherwise you have a bit of FOMO and you're not in control. I call the shots here. This is the price — get down here or GTFO. Let's see what's going to happen.
Okay, it got filled. We got filled. Let's see what's going to happen. Overall from the overall position, it's like 5% of the public portfolio that we're going to be running. If we break the four-year cycle, it's going to moon like hell. If we go to bear trend, we're out. But all in all, this does not take away from us being macro bear on Bitcoin. It is within that context — just so you understand, otherwise you're going to go all in. It's a minor percentage of the public portfolio.
I gave some free money here to the market maker by chasing the price. But everything for you guys. Everything for entertainment. Big congratulations to Mr. Market Maker. We did chase — the market maker probably saw my limit order, increased the price, and we clicked chase. But we caught it. That's it. Now Pavel needs to go and heavily pump that with more tweets, more announcements. Let's see what's going to happen.
AI, Corporate Jobs, and Financial Markets
Ivan, did you know that authenticity is the highest vibration level, higher than love? It's probably true. You've got to be authentic. That's why I had to quit my corporate job. I told you yesterday — for three years I worked as a developer at Ericsson, and I just saw that I had to do something else. My friend who is a great guy was just so smooth — smooth with all the bosses, all the decision-making. I was like, man, I'm too autistic to be so smooth. So I said, I cannot compete in this corporate stuff. It's too much beyond my control. That's why financial markets — you work online, you're in finance. You don't have to smooth anyone if you are in financial markets. Either you have good positioning, good risk-reward, good risk management, or you are wrecked. That's it.
If you work corporate, it's a question of time before they want to fire you. Management wants to fire you so they have more profitability. Ideally if you're a manager, you just need like a few guys responsible for each department — the best guy running the legal department, and then he uses agents, double-checks for hallucinations. That's the ideal nowadays. Maybe a few top, top engineers, and then all these agents code. If you're some junior or middle somewhere, get out of here. You need to be either super senior — responsible, because someone still needs to be responsible — or you're going to get fired. Fired very quickly, and your boss is not even going to blink. You think he's going to care about your mortgage? No. Bam. Fire. Profitability up, cost down, runway up.
CEOs need to keep the tempo. You either have high tempo or AI will have higher tempo. Which one do you want? You running fast or AI running faster? You've got to run fast. That's it. Even if you run fast — vacation? Your CEO is going to say, "What do you mean vacation?" Let me ask Claude if he has vacation. Claude has no vacation. What do you mean sick? Let me ask Claude. Are you ever sick? No. So guys, you cannot win. It's impossible to win. Go learn financial markets.
Q&A: Altcoin Setups and Market Signals
Let's check the bubbles. What's happening here? There is this B thing that is pumping a lot. If you go to the money scanner, you see what flipped in the last day on the hourly. This thing is up 35% since the flip — Biddy. Be careful, but it is pumping. That's good. Humanity up 15%. Yolo. These are the recent hourly flips. Let's check the 4-hour — you have Yolo, Alchemy, Home, Home DeFi. Let's check the 12-hour — Samply bullish but down a bit. Could be an opportunity because they're bullish but also down a bit. You could speculate here. The downside is of course a potential fakeout. But it's always risk-reward. It's always speculation.
Is ICP still bullish? Let's check ICP on the daily — still bullish, yes indeed. On the weekly — still bearish.
Ivan, your comments on only Giga Chads. Let's check that. We have a bit of change when it comes to the Hyperliquid wallet positions. More and more of these cohorts are now bullish. Let's see the historic data. Since the beginning of May you have the Big Brains consistently being slightly bullish or bullish, while the Giga Chads are still calling the bluff on this relief rally. Let's see if the Giga Chads also switch to bullish as well. Since the start of May, the Big Brains are bullish. Sooner or later the others are also going to flip, but not yet. They are currently bearish. Should we go to $91,000 and go to bull trend on the money line, probably they'll also switch, but for now they're calling the bluff.
If we would go up from here, would it not rather be a bull correction instead of a bear market? Yeah, it's all about definitions. You can call it a bull correction or a bear market — at the end of the day, what's your action? Because many people lost 80–90% in altcoins, and whether you call it a bull market correction, man, for them it doesn't help too much. If you zoom out far enough, Bitcoin never had a bear market since 2010. Bitcoin is up only. From this point, these guys lost 60%. From the bear trend that started here, they lost like 80%. So you can call it what you want. If it makes you feel better, you can call it that you lost 90% in a bull market correction.
Look here — do you think the DOT guys care too much whether you call it a bull market correction? DOT is down 60% just from June, and before that it dropped even more. You tell me. On a long enough time frame, you look at a yearly candle since the beginning of Bitcoin — it's up only, with small corrections. So you can say we never had a bear market in Bitcoin. At the end of the day, it's all about how you position yourself. Based on this naming, you will not profit, you will not protect your capital. But you can have different namings — we can still discuss these differences.
Should we go to bull trend here, it would be a koala bear — a very small bear. Still, altcoins went down 80–90%, Bitcoin went down 50%. But it's a smaller one. Normally the bear trend is a year. This would be maybe half a year. So we can say that still, it does not change the actions. The actions are the same: it's still to de-risk and then to not miss the next bull. How much time is in between — whether it's six months or twelve months — is a variable that from the action perspective does not really matter honestly.
Closing Thoughts on Capital Preservation
Thanks a lot for being here, thanks a lot for the contribution to the stream. As someone said: "I really care about capital preservation. I got slaughtered last bull so I don't care about catching the exact bottom."
Exactly. Because at the end of the day, there are always things pumping as long as you ride the trend, and then you can redeploy into new trends. You don't actually care that you capture the last 10% or even 20% of the pump here and there, because you just put it in another bull trend. For example, now Bitcoin has been bearish, we risk off, but look at Intel, look at AMD, look at SanDisk — that capital has been put to work in other bull trends. It doesn't matter that you don't buy the exact bottom or sell the exact top. It's all about riding the bull trends, not riding the bear trends.
Riding the bull trends, not riding the bear trends.