Ivan on Tech analyzes Michael Saylor's decision to sell Bitcoin and reviews broader crypto market conditions
Ivan on Tech, a solo crypto analyst, discusses MicroStrategy's shift from Bitcoin buyer to potential seller, assesses market conditions across multiple assets, and takes viewer questions.
Ivan on Tech analyzes Michael Saylor's decision to sell Bitcoin and reviews broader crypto market conditions
Ivan on Tech, a solo crypto analyst, discusses MicroStrategy's shift from Bitcoin buyer to potential seller, assesses market conditions across multiple assets, and takes viewer questions.
Summary
Ivan on Tech opens with the observation that Bitcoin has fallen below the 200-day exponential moving average to around $59,300, placing it in what he calls the "buy zone," while still expecting further downside to $50K–$40K. The central news item is Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy changing its corporate governance to permit selling up to $1.25 billion in Bitcoin — a structural reversal that Ivan reads as a potential bottom signal rather than a catastrophe, drawing a parallel to Saylor's previous selling near the 2022–2023 lows. Ivan also covers MicroStrategy's STRIFE preferred stock, arguing that raising the dividend to 12% to attract buyers is a sign of financial weakness, and that Saylor is now trapped paying fiat obligations with the very Bitcoin he bought to escape fiat. The episode includes a clip of Binance founder CZ admitting he does not fully understand the STRIFE product, which Ivan uses to reinforce his long-standing warning to avoid it. Additional topics include Solana ecosystem developments, XRP's market cap surpassing Solana, Cardano's decline, Robinhood's corporate chain launch, cross-chain protocol rankings, a discussion of BNB and Tron's relative strength versus Western crypto assets, and a discussion of the four-year cycle and risk-off signals from October 2024.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin Falls Below 200 EMA — Saylor Shifts from Buyer to Seller
Ivan on Tech: Bitcoin is heading lower. We're now at $59,300. We're going down and down. We're below the 200 EMA — the 200 exponential moving average. We are in the buy zone, meaning that Bitcoin is cheap, but we are expecting, as you know, lower prices. $50K and $40K can happen as well.
What's interesting now is that the whole market has changed. We now have Saylor declaring that he will sell up to $1.25 billion of Bitcoin. Instead of only buying, Saylor is now officially a seller. He will be allowed to sell — they changed their corporate governance so that they are actually now allowed to sell Bitcoin. This is basically transforming MicroStrategy from a Bitcoin treasury company into some kind of hedge fund — a hedge fund where they are taking on debt, buying Bitcoin at very high prices at $100K and $120K, and now they will sell. I mean, let's see if they sell at $60K.
I think, guys, if they sell here, this is going to be the bottom. Saylor is the one selling at the lows. I believe — let me find this tweet — Saylor sold here back in 2023, at the beginning of 2023, end of 2022. Should he now also sell like $1 billion, it would be perfect. It would be perfect.
And for MicroStrategy holders — this guy, sadly, he's not the best at managing capital. He's not the best. He's very good at raising money. He's very good at telling a story. He's very good at promoting his securities. He's very strong in that. Saylor is amazing. Everyone has pros and cons, everyone has strengths and weaknesses. So Saylor, when it comes to managing capital, when it comes to being an investor, he's not great. You see him buying at very, very high prices and now having to sell at $60K. He's not the best. But when it comes to promotion — creating a new stock, preferred stock, promoted to the pleb, promoted to the retiree, "put your pension in" — he's the best. He's the best. So it's fine. We all have strengths and weaknesses. His strength is not being some kind of hedge fund manager. He's not that great at that.
So basically the conclusion here is mainly for the stockholders. If you are holding the stock, if your portfolio is connected to MicroStrategy stock, just know that their core business now is managing capital, and Saylor is probably not the best person to do that.
But all in all, for the market itself, I think what has happened now with Saylor is very good. I'm actually bullish. I know the title says "emergency," but I think actually it's bullish. People see it as an emergency. I think at the end of the day, it's the kind of stuff that needs to happen around the bottom for us to bottom out. Doesn't mean price-wise that it's the bottom, but time-wise, I think we're very close to the bottom. I think here, if we go to the low $50s, it could very well be the bottom. We're close, guys. We're close. I can smell the bottom. It's somewhere here, not far away from us. And just like Saylor sold at the last bottom, I believe he's going to be selling here at very, very low prices close to the bottom as well.
STRIFE Dividend Increase — A Sign of Weakness
Ivan on Tech: Now, guys, look here. He's also increasing the dividend in order to try to get the STRIFE price back to $100. This is something we predicted way, way back — beginning of June. We said that he will have to increase the dividend in order to try to get the price back to $100. At that time the price was $96. Then it went down to somewhere around $70, and now we're back to $83 because they just increased the dividend to 12%.
In my mind, it's a bit of a desperate move, because when he increases the dividend, he now has to pay a higher dividend to everyone — to all STRIFE holders. It's not only the new STRIFE holders that get the higher dividend. All STRIFE holders get the higher dividend. So this is why he needs to sell Bitcoin — because he needs to raise the money, because now his monthly obligations are going to be even higher. They're going to be 5% higher.
At the end of the day, it's not a sign of strength when you have to increase the yield in order to attract buyers. When you have a high yield, that's why there's this notion of high-yield stocks or high-yield securities. High yield means it's super risky. It's very, very bad traditionally in the financial markets. It's close to bankruptcy — in traditional markets, that's what high yield means. If you invest in high yield, you are taking a big risk, but you also get a big reward because it is high yield. So when you increase the yield to attract the buyer, it's a sign of weakness.
That being said, MicroStrategy itself will not go bankrupt in the coming years. They're very strong financially. It's just that for STRIFE holders, it doesn't really matter. They lose money if it's not pegged to $100. They lose money. A seller can survive and STRIFE holders can get wrecked, basically. So that's the current situation.
I think for the market, guys, it's very, very good. For STRIFE holders, not too great. Also for MicroStrategy stockholders, it's also not too great, because they are being used as the pleb that gets dumped on. For him to raise money, he can either sell Bitcoin or create new MicroStrategy stock. When he creates new MicroStrategy stock, of course he dumps it to raise money — that's the whole idea.
And I don't understand why you just don't buy Bitcoin. You can buy Bitcoin in the buy zone. Why do people make it so complicated? Just buy Bitcoin here in the green box. You're going to be okay, man. You don't have to participate in some kind of STRIFE. Just buy Bitcoin. Keep it simple. Keep it vanilla. Just buy the Bitcoin. That's it.
But guys, that's the situation with MicroStrategy. Last week they dumped a lot — they were like $120, then they dumped to $80. Holy crap. Now they're up a bit, $92 potentially. There's big support here. Maybe here's where the bottom for MicroStrategy is going to be. It's a big support here. But the bear trend is super strong. Many problems here. And if they go bull trend, we're going to be taking a look. For now, it's super bearish, but there's some strong support. It'll probably bounce here a bit. Let's see.
The "Infinite Money Glitch" Narrative Is Breaking Down
Ivan on Tech: To summarize — now is the time to be bullish. Now is the time to be excited. Saylor potentially selling — that's good. Everyone understanding that there's no infinite money glitch — that's also good. One of the things with the bear market is that it needs to shatter the fugazi from the bull. And one of the biggest fugazis this cycle has been the infinite money glitch, and we need to remove it from the market.
There is no infinite money glitch. You can raise money. You can basically create leverage to buy Bitcoin — that's what Saylor has done. There is nothing magic about that. There is no black hole that's going to suck in all the fiat and basically collapse the fiat system from within by sucking it into Bitcoin. There's no hyperbitcoinization that's going to happen when you take out fiat debt and buy Bitcoin. It's not going to happen, guys. This magic needs to get out of people's brains.
Instead, it just proves that when you have debt, you are becoming a slave to fiat. Saylor is a slave to fiat. He is a slave to fiat because he needs to pay fiat payouts every month. So he is in big demand of fiat. Maybe someone else can do another fiat black hole and hyperbitcoinize the world. The way that it has been done here with STRIFE is not the way.
USDC Minting on Solana and On-Chain Activity Returning
Ivan on Tech: We have USDC minting more stablecoins, and they're minting on Solana. That's good — 750 million minted on Solana. More dry powder to be deployed into altcoins and into Bitcoin when the time is right. The time is currently not fully right because we're still bearish, but yeah, once the time comes, it's going to be deployed.
They burned a few hundred million on ETH — partially this is migration, migrating stablecoins from ETH into Solana — but they also minted more than they burned on ETH. So it's also an increase in supply. That's number one.
Number two — transactions coming back, guys. That's good to see. On-chain transactions coming back. When you look at altcoins, when you look at speculation, Solana is where it happens. So that's why in terms of market pulse we monitor Solana. Whenever you have Trenches getting back, whenever you have degens getting back, people making money in the altcoin space and the meme space — it's going to be reflected on this chart. And as you can see, more and more excitement is now coming back into the Trenches.
Anom did some coin the other day where he airdropped a bunch of it. He's giving what people call a stimulus check to the Trenches. He said he sent out another round of airdrops, has airdropped about $7 million so far, will do more as market cap goes higher, and the goal is to get Anom to one million holders. So it's quite interesting — people coming back to speculation, trying to make money, succeeding partially. I find this is a bit too early for this kind of meme stuff, but it's good that something is happening. We have the return of the meme in one way or another. The industry is reviving slowly but surely. But in my mind, it's still a bit too early to really focus on it. There will be better times — way better times — to be involved.
Solana Monthly Chart — Wishful Thinking vs. Reality
Ivan on Tech: Solana has the first green monthly candle in nine months, if we close the month now green. Fantastic. Still bear trend, still looking weak. But you've got to look at the wins. You've got to see whatever win you have.
Actually, the chart still looks very bad, guys. Very bad. I will not sugarcoat it. The weekly chart looks very bad. Let's check the monthly. The monthly — it's not green. It's wishful thinking. It's red as hell, guys. It needs to go to $83 to be green. Let's see if it's possible. June has 30 days. Forget the news — it's not going to be green. It was a bit of wishful thinking. Actually, we're breaking down. This monthly candle, if anything, is very, very bearish — it literally just broke down support. Maybe the wishful thinking is about July being green. Let's see.
We just look at the facts, and the facts are very, very bearish for SOL. Super bearish for SOL. And still, SOL is heading to $30 more likely than any kind of recovery. I will change my tune — I will remove the bear tune and put on the bull tune in case we go into a bull trend. For now, we're bearish. We follow the mechanical rules. We don't mess with anything else.
Clarity Act, Robinhood Chain, and Cross-Chain Protocols
Ivan on Tech: Next, you have the Clarity Act. JP Morgan apparently is backing it. The promise is that clear, programmable money can reduce friction in payments and shorten settlement cycles. So that's good. Banks want to move forward with clarity. But to be fair, at this point, I'm not even sure exactly what the latest is, or which version of the Clarity Act is good. I remember Brian Armstrong was against the Clarity Act in the way it was constructed. JP Morgan loves it.
The Clarity Act, to me, is not a big deal. I know many people follow it, and that's why we keep it on the radar. But it will not pump crypto. It will not dump crypto. When it passes, you're going to see crickets. Forget it as some kind of catalyst. Long-term, it's going to bring stuff to this industry. Short-term, it's not a catalyst.
Look at Robinhood chain coming this week. Some people are already bridging and trading on it potentially. We're now going to have another corporate chain. There will be all kinds of tokenized stocks there, and they're going to compete with Solana, I guess, when it comes to tokenized stocks. I'm not a big fan of the corporate chains.
If there's any way to make money on it, maybe it's the Robinhood stock. But this corporate chain is not my cup of tea, guys. We need the community-driven chain. We need the trench chain. Corporate chain — get out of here. But we're going to be following it.
Look here — we have tokenized stocks on SOL. I would rather have tokenized stocks on SOL. I mean, they even call it Robinhood, which is their trademark. So when you trade on Robinhood, you help the boomer holding the stock. If you want to somehow benefit from the Robinhood chain, you have to buy the Robinhood stock. I would rather Solana gets the tokenized stock win. And so far it seems they're doing it. Solana is winning the distribution game for tokenized stocks — 262K unique addresses hold tokenized equities on SOL. Very, very good.
I think Robinhood — I'm happy to be proven wrong — but where are you going with your corporate chain? It's even branded with your name. Let me know what you think in the comment section. Personally, I'm not a fan. I like decentralized chains, community chains, chains where people go nuts. When they call the chain Robinhood, it's a big problem, because imagine things start to get weird on that chain. Sometimes people do weird things on-chain. It's part of being a blockchain. Whatever the chain parameters allow, it can happen on-chain.
Imagine the news: "Oh no, look at what happened on Robinhood chain. Look at all this weird stuff. Look at this Ponzi smart contract on the Robinhood chain." It's a big attack vector for Robinhood, which means they will likely have to monitor it, censor it, and make it compliant. And then why do you even have a chain? You can use the app if you want full KYC compliance and no going nuts. Imagine Kim Jong-un using Robinhood chain — what's going to happen? Because Kim Jong-un is using ETH and Bitcoin and all the other chains. But imagine the news: "Oh no, Robinhood chain is aiding Kim Jong-un." It's a big problem, especially when they call it that. It would be different if they made it like a foundation, open-sourced it, not connected to the brand so much. That would make more sense. But now it's all connected. Corporate chain.
When you look at cross-chain protocols, you have some new stuff coming in. Layer Zero is dominating, then Wormhole, then Hyperlane, then Chainlink. It's just interesting to follow all these different protocols that are in the gutter. Layer Zero — holy crap, it's in the gutter. Everything is in the gutter. Don't touch them. But when the bull market comes back, you do have stats on who's doing well, who's not doing well. You have Layer Zero, Wormhole, Hyperlane, and Chainlink. Axelar is not even on this list. Maybe they don't track Axelar, but all of these cross-chain projects — they're still there, they're still working. If you've been bridging assets, you're using them daily. You're using all of the tech under the hood all the time. But as you can see, coins are bearish. They cannot really monetize the success of the protocols. When the bull market comes, potentially that's going to change. For now, bear trend. But tech-wise, we see great tech. Tech is great, man. But price doesn't matter — that's why we don't look at tech. We look at price.
BNB and Tron — Underrated in Western Crypto Media
Ivan on Tech: Some updates about Binance Chain. One article called it the best-kept secret in crypto — 34 million monthly active users, 32% of P2P stablecoin transactions. It's another one of these Chinese coins that is just dominating, both in terms of network activity and price. When you look at the BNB price, it's way better than all of these westernized fugazis. Let me pull up a long-term chart. BNB — on the weekly chart, it's still above the 200-week moving average. So sometimes, you know, in Western crypto media, Chinese coins get a bad rep. "Oh no, Binance is a scam. Oh no, Tron is a scam." But then you look at the chart compared to Bitcoin in terms of being above the 200 moving average.
And Tron — TRX — it's even better. Tron here is consolidating close to all-time high. It's bear trend though, so be careful. Don't mess with it. It's bear trend, but still consolidating around the all-time high. It wouldn't surprise me if BNB and Tron, when the bull market starts, show a lot of strength. In the bear market they show a lot of strength — they dump the least. And also with the network activity.
Now, how much of this is real activity? How much of this is wash trading? Who the hell knows? It's hard to know. The only way to know is revenue that the apps are making. So in this situation, you have big users, but how much revenue are apps making?
Also, if you look at the bear side — the other side of the argument — there is not too much innovation. The only thing they're doing is copying other things, in true China fashion. They copy Hyperliquid, they copy everything. And probably some wash trading going on as well. It would be a lie to say that there is nothing of that going on. But washing — it's the connection between East and West. Depending on which jurisdiction you look at, some stuff is maybe just transacting, taking money out of China, which is totally fine according to Western law, maybe not fine according to capital control law in China. So washing depends on which jurisdiction. It would not be correct to say it's only fully audited transactions. But that's with any chain. Look at your own wallets — are they fully audited? It's a big question also if your ETH wallet is fully audited.
Phantom, Prediction Markets, and the World Project on Solana
Ivan on Tech: Some news on Phantom. If you use Phantom, they just added something for prediction markets. Prediction markets on SOL are growing big via Phantom. For many crypto-native users, it's going to be the easiest way to use prediction markets.
Also, there is this World project which is a bit under the radar. In terms of new projects, keep an eye on World, because there are some leaks. This is the prediction market that is currently not announced — people are just guessing what it's going to be on SOL. It's very hyped. Many people follow it. And very likely it is the prediction market that will be the main prediction market in Phantom. The reason we can be quite sure about that is because the terms and conditions have been changed in Phantom, and people found that World is mentioned in the new terms and conditions of Phantom. So keep an eye here. Will they have a coin? Will they not have a coin? Who the hell knows?
But you now have a nice ecosystem forming on SOL for different things, including tokenized stocks and prediction markets. It's very important for SOL to be relevant in the next cycle. They have to get this right. They need to compete with basically Polymarket and Hyperliquid — those are the two main use cases which are very big, that SOL has so far lost. The industry is still early, so you can still get it back, but you need to put in the work and deliver.
Market Cap Rankings — XRP vs. Solana, Cardano's Decline
Ivan on Tech: Let's look at the current market caps. You have ETH now at $191 billion. SOL is just $42 billion. Where's Cardano? Oh my god. Here — $20 billion. Cardano taking the elevator down. Yeah, it's the IOTA situation, guys. You remember when IOTA was like top 10? The problem is you cannot survive — the ghost chain status will catch up with you. It will catch up. So just like IOTA was top 10 and then fell off, Cardano is now falling off very fast. Let's see if they can come back. I'm rooting for all coins. But it doesn't look good. It looks horrible. Even below Chainlink. L1s normally have a premium, but now it's below Chainlink. Still above Bitcoin Cash. Let's see if they can keep themselves above Bitcoin Cash.
Now they are retreating to Discord. All of the Cardano guys — are you still here, or are you only in Discord? Because Charles did like a five-hour multi-series on why he's moving to Discord. For Cardano, it meant a dump of another 6%. Unfortunately.
And if SOL is to capture all of these use cases — by the way, how is XRP bigger? I respect the hustle in XRP. How is XRP bigger than SOL? It's crazy, man. I don't know anyone using XRP. Do you guys know anyone actually using XRP? It's amazing. XRP is bigger than Solana. SOL needs to go up another 50% in market cap. Wow.
You see with Cardano, reality has caught up. With XRP, man, it refuses to catch up. The reality is taking a vacation. Not only a vacation — a ten-year vacation. I'm not hating, guys. I'm literally impressed. I'm very impressed. The market makers of XRP — they must hold the world record. The banker coin. Exactly. But the bankers are not using the coin. That's the problem. No one is. The bankers are not using it. Wow.
I'm not hating. I'm actually respecting the pump. I mean, I wish that more projects knew how to manage their price chart. I wish more projects were like XRP. More projects that do proper tech should do chart like XRP. But they focus too much on tech. That's the problem. XRP focuses on the price. Maybe Cardano — they do all of the peer-reviewed papers, all of this research. They don't even do tech that is used, and they don't have time to focus on the price chart. So they do neither. Cardano does neither tech nor price chart. They do science. It's a science project. So you don't get this or that — you have a ghost chain and a bad price. XRP — tech, who knows — they have some stablecoin in Japan that is approved, USD is approved in Japan, but they have a good price. Wow. Anyway, that's that.
World Cup, Viewer Q&A, and Market Sentiment
Ivan on Tech: Are you guys following the World Cup? What's happening? France is going to win, according to the prediction market. Then Argentina, Spain, England, Morocco, Switzerland, Ecuador, Sweden, Australia. I don't follow it really, but it's good.
We're still in extreme fear. Everything is red, guys. Everything is red. But we're in the buy zone. Bad times coming to an end. Good times coming to fruition very soon.
I watched one World Cup game so far. I think I'm just going to watch the final. I don't like football. That's the problem. I don't like it, man. You sit there — he passed, okay, he passes, he runs, he runs, ah, he lost the ball, he runs, he runs, ah, he lost the ball, he passed, okay. What is this? It's like masochism. Is it fun? I really don't get it. He shoots — ah, he missed. It can be like that for 90 minutes with zero goals. At least hockey — I don't watch hockey either, but at least hockey is fast. Things happen fast. Boom, goal. But football — he runs, the field is so big, he runs and runs and then he lost the ball. The other guy runs. Ah, he also lost. Okay. Finally he shoots. Ah, he missed. Okay.
But it's the biggest sport in the world. It's like XRP. It blows my mind. How can it be the biggest? How? I don't understand how it's the biggest. If I looked at sport just from first principles — say I'm an alien, I don't know which is the biggest sport in the world, you show me football, you show me hockey, you show me some other stuff — I would not say that football, or soccer in the US, would be the biggest. So you just got to follow the trend. The normie likes football. Okay, good. Buy it. Like the coin — the normie likes this coin. Okay, good. Trend is bull. We're in. That's it.
Playing football is fun — you have to run a lot, it's quite tough. But to watch? At least play it. Don't watch. Why do you watch? Play it. Don't watch, play it. Yeah, it's fascinating. Human psychology. Fascinating.
Hyperliquid vs. Solana — Not Competing, Different Use Cases
Ivan on Tech: The thesis for holding both SOL and HYPE is non-competing, right? SOL dominates spot. HYPE does futures. Exactly. They are not competing now. It's just that SOL doesn't even have the tech now to compete with Hyperliquid. And Hyperliquid has made a centralized solution, so they are very big. While Trump is in power, I think they're okay. But potentially, if Trump loses and we have Democrats coming into power, I think they're going to go hard after Hyperliquid. So just be wary of that — it's a bit of a political risk. But they don't compete. Hyperliquid is leverage. For SOL, they have perps, but they cannot make it super nice yet with the existing tech stack. They need to upgrade the tech stack a bit, because to do it decentralized is very tough. Hyperliquid is quite a centralized solution, so they can do it easily.
That's why for the next bull market, I think we have to worry about the regulatory risk for Hyperliquid. And that's why I'm super bullish HYPE. We've been bullish all along — super bullish HYPE. And for SOL, let's see. When they go either to $30 or into a bullish trend, we're also going to be bullish. Now we're bearish SOL. To be clear — we're bearish SOL. Although they have many good news, we cover and follow the news. Price-wise, we're bearish. And we're going to be bullish either if they go to $30 or they go to bullish on $93.
Someone asked when SOL is going to go to $30. We've been speaking about this for months. We said somewhere in December or January that it's going to go to $30 — that there's a high likelihood. To be clear, if you are a noob, you may be thinking that there's certainty in the market. There's no such thing. We don't know what's going to happen. We just look at the probabilities. But we said here that it's very, very high likelihood it goes to $30. And it has taken — yeah, now like six months. And as you can see, we've progressed a lot. But if you're new to the market, it takes time. Things consolidate for many weeks, many many weeks. They go down for a few weeks, then they consolidate for many many many weeks, and they go down for a few weeks. So for you to make money in the market, you need to have patience. Most days, prices don't do anything. For example, from February until May, nothing happened. It's very common. And by the way, the same thing is going to be on the way up. In the bull market, it's going to be the same — consolidation, then a move to the upside. Consolidation, move to the upside.
And again, there's no certainty. We have a trade idea here. If it goes here, it will be fantastic. And by the way, if it goes to $39, it is $30. Okay? $39 counts as the buy zone because it starts with 3. We say it's going to go to $30 — $39 is still $30. The buy zone is going to be basically below $40.
Now, if this idea does not play out — a noob wants certainty. A noob wants me to tell them exactly what's going to happen. A noob is disappointed when I tell them no one knows what's going to happen. We only have probabilities. For example, in Q4, on October 8th, we said it's time to be risk-off, time to start selling. There's no way to have 100% certainty, but we said with the highest certainty — it's finito. And as you can see, it's been very, very correct.
The same thing is here. It is an idea which is very high likelihood, but it has an invalidation. Should it go to $93, I'm going to be very bullish. I'm going to be the biggest bull. We're going to be speaking about how SOL is going to go to $200, $300. Let's see.
The October 2024 Risk-Off Signal — How It Was Identified
Ivan on Tech: Can you talk briefly about which indicators and data you used to determine going risk-off since October? Yeah. The number one thing was the fake all-time high. Actually, if you go to bullmania.com — I haven't been updating it for a while — but here, you can go back and read the tweets from October 8th. The main thing was the fake all-time high. That's number one.
Then on the daily, what happened on the daily money line? We went bearish super fast. We dropped like — so fast we dropped here. So that was another signal. It was also Q4 2025. And all of this — the fake all-time high, the quick collapse, the daily going bearish — it is Q4. That made me signal that hey, time to stop being complacent, time to be risk-off.
Then we got real confirmation later, because it's probabilistic. Is it really a bear market here when the chart looks like this? It's impossible to know. But based on probability — fake all-time high, boom, down very very fast. Fake all-time high is textbook. You had one here — fake all-time high, big drop. To know whether it's 100% a bear market here is impossible, but you can say with highest likelihood it looks very bad. That is a fake all-time high — we went just up and then instant collapse. Very bad. Daily went bearish. Bear trend.
And then the final confirmation came later, in November — so it was a month later. That was the final confirmation. But you start de-risking here, and then the more it drops, the more conviction you get. So it was really a process. We said time to de-risk, but it's not — you know, sell everything with one button. It's all probabilistic. So you scale into the bear more and more and more, and you get confirmations as the charts reveal themselves.
But the fake all-time high, guys — it's the classic. It's the classic. You can find many such examples. And of course, Q4 — I don't care what anyone says — together with the money line going bearish on the daily, together with the fake all-time high, it was a high-likelihood scenario. You can read the tweets from October 8th. And people say, "Oh no, but the four-year cycle doesn't work." Listen, it's a model. No model is accurate. No model is fully accurate. It's all about whether it's useful. Can you use it for something? By using the four-year cycle together with the money line, together with just street knowledge — being in crypto for a long time, knowing that a fake all-time high is very bad — we were able to exit fantastically well. And now we have a big war chest just to redeploy in the next bull.
And by the way, many of you guys have been writing that it has helped you a lot. Dino wrote here the other day — he shared a lot about his journey in the Friday live stream. He saved like $500K in total by following the risk-off signal.
Here, let me play you this clip.
Dino: To be accurate — overall, saved over $500K by selling my alts. I did not sell my Bitcoin, otherwise you will send me — okay.
Ivan on Tech: Well, we gave the information. We gave the information. But yeah, $500K by selling. Fantastic. Fantastic. Fantastic. And by the way, if you are in Bullmania, share more of this news, because it really helps our team when we get the testimonials. It really helps our team to stay motivated. We actually collect the success stories because we deeply care about the success. When Dino says he saved $500K — holy crap. $500K you can redeploy now in this new bull. Holy crap.
CZ Admits He Doesn't Understand STRIFE — Final Thoughts on Saylor
Ivan on Tech: To conclude, guys — with Saylor, what can I say? I think overall, what's happening now is good. The fugazi is breaking down. MicroStrategy will survive. STRIFE — maybe it will survive. I don't know. He needs to retire it. I think he needs to somehow find a way to retire STRIFE. He's increasing the dividend, so he needs to pay more every single month now to all of the STRIFE holders. It's just a continuation. The fact that he sells Bitcoin now to pay STRIFE is like a continuation of the house of cards. And he needs to hope that Bitcoin pumps soon so he can monetize — as he says, "monetize" — his Bitcoin stack. He's not saying that he's going to sell. He says that he's going to monetize. So guys, when you dump a coin, you're not selling it. You're monetizing. That's how Saylor sells. He's going to monetize the Bitcoin stack.
I think he needs to retire STRIFE. Why did he do STRIFE? To get money to buy Bitcoin. But now he sells Bitcoin to pay STRIFE. I don't get it, guys. I don't get it.
And you remember that for the past like six months we said to stay away from STRIFE, MicroStrategy, et cetera. I said clearly that I don't get it and you should not buy it, because if I don't get it, you definitely don't get it. I'm not being arrogant here — it's true. If I don't get it, you definitely don't get it. But even CZ doesn't get it. If I don't get it and CZ doesn't get it, man — you don't get it. You may think you get it. You may think you got it. You don't get it. And that kind of shows to many people now — they thought it was one thing, it's something else.
Listen to this CZ clip.
CZ: I'll be very honest. I don't think I understand it fully. I took multiple attempts trying to understand STRIFE. I just don't think I understand it fully. So I might not be authoritative — I might not be qualified to comment on it in a deep way. I think many of these financial products are generally too complex. They're overengineered. They typically rely on multiple levels of leverage, et cetera. And when this type of product becomes too complex, it becomes very hard to understand. Parts of it become black boxes, et cetera.
I think MicroStrategy — Saylor — is obviously extremely smart, and he understands quite a lot of how financial public companies work, senior notes, and all of this stuff, which I actually don't really understand. I've always been an entrepreneur type of guy dealing with technology. So I can't comment on the product that much. But there's always a few other things I think are at play. The product may be a bit over-complex. To the point where if I can't understand it — I'm not a very smart guy, but I'm not super dumb. So it does worry me that if you're sitting here saying this is over-complicated, there may be a few other guys who don't understand it either.
But there's also the market perception where the market either makes him a hero or makes him a villain. He's probably somewhere in between. Probably close to the hero side, to be honest. I don't think he has any bad intentions. And also the market overreacted when his company sold 32 Bitcoins. Look, they've got to pay dividends. At some point he's going to have to sell some Bitcoin. The guy holds close to a million Bitcoins. He sold 32. And the market reacts and people blame him. It might be a coincidence. It might be a trigger. Either way, people overly harshly criticize him. We've got to give him a little bit of tolerance. But from the STRIFE product perspective, I actually don't really fully understand how it's leveraged, et cetera. So I actually can't comment too much about it.
Ivan on Tech: I agree with CZ overall. With Saylor — if he did not promote STRIFE as a safe, money-market-like fund, we would not be as harsh on him either. But I know people took out loans, mortgages, et cetera, to be in STRIFE. So I don't want to sit here and say that he's a fluffy bunny either.
But there is an element of human nature — we as humans love creating a hero, and then we love tearing down the hero. So Saylor maybe even gets too much hate. But it is deserved when it comes to STRIFE. When it comes to STRIFE, it's fully deserved. When it comes to MicroStrategy stock — if people complain about MicroStrategy stock, I have no pity for them. That is a stock, man. You understand stock. You speculate. You want to get rich with stock. So it can go up, it can go down. You take the risk. Fine. With stock going down, I have no problem. But with STRIFE decoupling, it's a big problem, because it was promoted as a money market fund. A money market fund — you don't lose 25% in a money market. It doesn't happen.
But let's see if Saylor can come back. I don't know how he's going to repeg STRIFE without running out of money. He needs to sell a lot of Bitcoin. If he sells a lot of Bitcoin, he could repeg it. He needs to sell a lot of Bitcoin. If he sells — which he has said he will — it is probably the bottom signal we're looking for. Probably going to take us somewhere here. $50K, $40K. Let's see, guys. What's your opinion? Let me know in the comment section.