Digital Asset News host Rob discusses Bitcoin market noise, midterm election cycles, and crypto developments
Rob from Digital Asset News covers market reactions to US-Iran deal collapse, India's crypto ban proposal, Bitcoin price cycles, and several crypto industry updates.
Summary
Rob, the host of Digital Asset News, opens with breaking news that the US-Iran memorandum of understanding has collapsed, playing a clip of President Trump declaring the deal dead and calling Iranian leadership "scum." He connects this geopolitical development to immediate market declines across equities and crypto, with Bitcoin down roughly 3.5% and altcoins falling 6–9%. He also flags a new call from India's Reserve Bank for a complete ban on crypto assets as a secondary driver of the selloff. Despite these short-term pressures, Rob argues both developments are "noise" rather than signal, and spends the bulk of the episode making the case that Bitcoin's current position in the midterm election cycle — combined with key weekly moving average levels — represents a significant buying opportunity.
Rob also presents a segment on the historical price correlation between Bitcoin and Nvidia, noting the two assets have moved in close lockstep since roughly 2017, with a brief decoupling around October before re-aligning in early 2025. He also covers Michael Saylor's Strategy holdings, a Cardano ecosystem hack via the SecondFi wallet, an alleged rugpull in the LAB token, and Tom Lee's purchase of 40,000 ETH.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
US-Iran Deal Collapse and Market Reaction
Rob: Well, everybody, it's the art of the deal and another peace treaty has come and gone. I think it's all just noise. If you're just waking up to this, it looks like the Iran-US peace treaty memorandum of understanding is in the toilet. This is what Donald Trump has to say. Take a listen.
Donald Trump: Ceasefire over? Is the ceasefire done? Is the MOU dead? It's a very interesting question to me. I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum. You know what scum is? They're scum. They're sick people. They're led by sick people and they're vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they'd use it. As far as I'm concerned, it's over. I'll speak to our negotiators. They want to negotiate. They're good people — Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner — but they have to come back to me. As far as I'm concerned, it's just a waste of time dealing with them. They're liars. We make a deal, and if I make a deal with him, we have a deal. And he goes out, he talks. We make a deal. Everyone's agreed — no nuclear weapon. We make a deal. They go outside, talk to the press, they say, "We never even talked about it." There's something wrong with them. They're cuckoo.
Rob: So anyhow, that's what President Donald Trump just said, and the market responds accordingly. We can see the S&P 500 down almost a percentage — about 0.63% — and a little bit of a recovery going on right now. We'll see how it goes. Dow Jones, NASDAQ, Russell, New York Stock Exchange — everything's down across the board. And also oil surges as the price starts to increase based on that information.
Of course, our market is not immune. When the traditional market goes down half a percentage or a percentage or whatever, we go down even much further. Bitcoin is down roughly — wow — three and a half percent. Ethereum, BNB, and of course altcoins take the biggest hit. Hyperliquid, Dogecoin — wow, RAIN is not doing too bad — and so on and so forth. Six, eight, nine percent across the board. That's pretty much what we have.
India's Reserve Bank Calls for Crypto Ban
And it's not just that that affected us. Apparently another country wants to ban crypto assets, and that would be India. This was from Bull Theory, just broke a couple hours ago — India's central bank just called for a complete ban on cryptocurrency. Well, that's never good. Of course, if you've been around since I have, since 2017, you remember the good old days of China banning Bitcoin every single month. But when India gets into it, that's roughly 1.4 billion people — correct me in the comments section. It looks like the Reserve Bank of India wants policies leaning towards prohibition and is calling for all banks and financial institutions to be completely barred from holding, trading, or gaining any exposure to crypto assets.
So that's never good. With that type of news, that is the shift in the percentage lost for crypto and digital assets across the board, even Bitcoin. But again, there is a big difference between signal and noise, and I think this is quite a bit of noise. The noise is still going off in your portfolio, I'm sure, but the long term — I think we're going to be just fine.
Midterm Election Year Cycles and Bitcoin Opportunity
So yesterday we actually talked about midterm elections and there were actually a couple of different things that I wish I would have gotten into because I think they were kind of important. We talked about how the four-year cycles go — not just for Bitcoin and crypto and digital assets, but also for the traditional stock market as we go into the midterm age. We talked about how the S&P 500 in the midterm year does do okay, but not as good as post-midterm years. Right now we're in a midterm year. Post-midterm will be 2027. Presidential election year, 2028. And then one year post-presidential will be 2029, whoever that actually is. Midterm years are the lowest because there is so much uncertainty. Markets don't like that. They don't like ambiguity.
There was one more piece I forgot to show. This is since 1931 — the average midterm election year. Doesn't it kind of match what we usually go through in our post-all-time highs? Look at that nice blue line right there. Average midterm election year. It goes kind of chop sideways, but there's always a downward trajectory. I think we're in that right now. Even though people would say four-year cycles are ridiculous — why do you believe in that? — it's not just me. It's also the S&P 500 going forward.
There was this one piece I wish I would have talked about yesterday. Since 1942, buying the S&P 500 on midterm election day — which we're coming up on, our midterm election day is November 3rd, 2026 — it generated a median return of plus 15% all the way through June 30th, almost July 1st of the following year. Seven months forward. And we can see right here it's got 17%, 6% positive. You take a look at Joe Biden and Donald Trump beforehand. But if you do it just like that and follow the S&P 500, that's what makes us unique in our markets. If we follow along with them lockstep, you're not going to get the price appreciation that I think you should.
Here's what I'm talking about. This is taking a look at the S&P 500 price, which is in white right here — you can see that nice little white line — and the Bitcoin price, which is in this darkish orangey color. We're looking at 2018 going into 2019, the midterm election year, and buying on November 6th because that was the first Tuesday of the month back in 2018. If we take a look here, October, November 6th, the price was $6,440 and the S&P was 2.76. If you would have bought right there and gone to June, you've been just fine. You would have actually had a Bitcoin price of $13,000 and up to almost 3,000 for the S&P.
But look at all this missed opportunity down here. Watch the Bitcoin price. It went from $6,500 in November 2018 all the way down to $3,000. I can't give financial advice, but this is why I like to, as things start to go downward in a downward trajectory, look at some risk levels, look at moving averages and things like that. Even if we didn't have that — because I can tell you right now in 2018, the moving averages didn't hit back then, I'll show you in a bit — if you just followed this along and said, "Okay, S&P 500, Bitcoin," you've been just fine. But I'm just saying you can optimize coming down here.
Of course, past price action doesn't equate to future endeavors. But look at all this opportunity missed. You're down here for Bitcoin price at $3,000 flat — $3,200, $3,500, $3,400, not even $4,000. You could have been dollar-cost averaging this whole way to March, April, and then up you go. And the same thing with the S&P 500 — look how it just kind of rides and goes down. But there's a lot of missed opportunity.
That was 2018. What about 2022? There wasn't as much opportunity back then. On November 8th, 2022, the Bitcoin price was $18,000. Again, diminishing returns on investments — that's pretty much how it goes. S&P 500 at 3.8. But look at this. If you would have bought down here, you would have been okay. But look at this opportunity you missed — $16,000, $16,200, $17,000, $16,000 — and you were chopping sideways for a little bit of time before it gets right back here. If you would have just gone all in right there at — what is this — $18,500, by March you're at $28,000. Not too bad. Then coming forward May, end of June, $30,000. Not too bad. And then going all the way forward to the end of 2023, you've been at $44,000.
Again, it's all about what you want to do, but I just don't think that everybody should go in all the way on a specific date. I am going to probably buy a lot more as we start to go down, which I think we still will, but I think I'll still continue with dollar-cost averaging. Anyhow, let me know what you think about that in the comments section.
Bitcoin Weekly Moving Averages as Buy Signals
And then just to finish up — to talk about those moving averages, because people are like, "It's the moving average, Rob. It's the moving average." In 2018, it didn't even hit. Well, of course things would move, but 2018 — maybe right there, the 200-week moving average. I guess it actually did. I take that back. $3,200. But the 250 and the 300 — it didn't hit $2,650, didn't hit $2,026. Just didn't happen.
However, you may be more familiar with this. When we went below the 200-week moving average, it was a good time to buy too. Look at this. You had $21,000, $23,000. What is the price? Oh yeah — $21,000, $20,000. And then when it went to the 250-week moving average, you're looking at $19,000. And then down here into the 300-week moving average — this was the beauty — $16,000, $18,000, $16,900, $17,000. Those have been great times. I was buying at that point. I just didn't buy as much as I should have. I messed that up. That was on me.
And now where are we? We have gone below the 200, almost touched the 250, but nowhere close to the 300. The 200-week moving average right now is below $62,000. The 250-week is $58,000 — almost touched it. The 300-week is $54,000. And the 350-week is $48,000. I still think that we'll go down into the $50,000s. I could be wrong, but in those levels, I think you can't go wrong. And right now, this is the signal you should be looking at. Anyhow, let me know what you think about that in the comments.
Bitcoin and Nvidia Price Correlation
And then also — maybe we should just do away with that. Just follow Nvidia. Check this out. This was actually brought to me by a friend of the show. What we see here is Nvidia — in this blue-green color — overlaid with Bitcoin. Now it doesn't really line up in 2013 and 2014, but around 2017 it's amazing how close it gets. It rallies and has a drop-off, and Bitcoin continues to rally, then it has its drop-off. Crazy, right? Then we come over here — a little bit of a rally and then a drop-off, and then a little more rally. And then right around 2020 — well, I think that was coronavirus — everything dropped off the face of the planet.
But then look at this. Nvidia and Bitcoin — Bitcoin's orange, Nvidia is in this greenish color — and then a little pullback, and then a nice little rally into 2021 like everybody else did. And then look how it just kind of faltered. Same pace, same everything. And then for AI and everything to come together for Nvidia, that was roughly around 2022-23 when things started to leak out. 2024 — look at these prices right in lockstep. Goes down, goes up, goes down. Then right in 2025, March went down, and even during the tops they were there, and then going sideways.
And this is why I think something was wrong about October. I don't know what it was about that. I don't know what kind of manipulation was going on, but since October 6th we kind of broke apart for a little bit. It's like we decoupled for a bit until we came back over here to February and started to line up again — and then here we go, drop, peak, rally, drop off again, and so on and so forth. Anyhow, it's just interesting how technology kind of keeps together and Nvidia seems like we were coupled, correlated, and then we lost out.
Michael Saylor and Strategy's Bitcoin Holdings
And then to finish up before we get to the Q&A, some good news. Michael Saylor and his big roundabouts of selling Bitcoin. We give him some guff about it, but it's only because he said, "Never sell your Bitcoin." I know we can argue the semantics, but come on. Never sell your Bitcoin. I mean, I can do it, but you can't do it. And of course people say, "Well, Rob, it's Strategy." I get the argument. But what I'm trying to say here is that this is good news.
Michael Saylor — Bitcoin has appreciation above 3.3% would allow Strategy to support STRK dividends indefinitely. Even if Bitcoin rises 0% annually, Strategy would still have 31 years of dividend funding. This is all they had to do — just not rehypothecate like the Voyagers and the Celsius. Well, it was more Celsius rehypothecation. Voyager was more of a stupid uncollateralized loan. And then FTX — if they just would have done their job, they could have gotten through the bear market like I think Strategy and Michael Saylor are going to get through it. You can see here — 31 years, and that's if everything stays at zero.
So how has STRK been doing? Getting paid a dividend, which is nice — 11.5, 12%, whatever it is right now. It was stuck pegged around $100. Then of course all the different problems that came out in May, then it dropped all the way to $75 and it rallied to $87. Now we're in the $80s, $85. Not too bad.
And how is the stock price for Strategy? Not too good. However, over the last year or so, it's been down 76%, almost 80%. But as a reminder, that's not the worst. If I max out here to 2021 — isn't this weird to look at? This was the rally in 2021, $103, and then it collapsed. Had a little run in October, November, but then it collapsed all the way down to like $13. That was roughly an 85% drop. So Strategy, in my personal opinion, is doing the exact same thing as it did last cycle. It's dropping off. It was 85%, now it's only 75%, maybe 80%. Maybe it's a good time to buy. I'm not personally going to buy it, but maybe for you.
Emurgo Steps Down from Cardano Pentad Following SecondFi Hack
Anyhow, that is all the good news I can muster for today. So because of that, I will give you bad news. DeFi — I call it DeFi. So Emurgo just announced today they formally notified the entities that they'll be stepping down from their duties as a member of the Pentad. The Pentad was a co-founding entity of the Cardano blockchain that drives the commercialization of the blockchain and so on. So they're going to step down from the Pentad — which is them, the Cardano Foundation, Midnight, and a couple of other ones, five of them.
And the reason, I believe, was what used to be called Yoroi wallet — never liked them — and they rebranded to SecondFi and they made a huge mistake and left some kind of vulnerability open and they got hacked. That's what happens. So Emurgo was like, "Our immediate priority is the SecondFi app recovery process and we are concentrating our resources where they are needed most. Our intention is that next week the secure wallet export will be deployed to help affected users safely move assets to a new wallet."
So not the greatest of news, at least they're working on it. And if you've been affected, just as a reminder, from SecondFi — what they're doing is SecondFi and Emurgo took a final balance snapshot on June 26th. They set up a dedicated recovery fund and secured 129 million ADA via emergency measures. Let me tell you, 129 million ADA was worth a heck of a lot more five years ago. Just saying. Support.secondfi.io for verification — the payout process takes time with audits. So if you've been affected, I linked this in the description. You're going to put in your email, they're going to send you a verification code, and if you've been affected you can put in your information and hopefully get recovered for whatever Cardano you were hacked. Sorry about that. These things happen.
LAB Token Collapse Flagged as Possible Rugpull
And then also LAB — I was pretty impressed with this because of the price action. I don't know what the heck it does, but it was like number 18 and now today it's number 114. I'm looking at it like, hey, this is a good chart until July 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and then — oh, what the heck happened? And it looks like a rugpull. Community alleges LAB rugpull. This is just what the community says. I didn't do a ton of research on this because I don't really care about LAB. Raises concerns over tier-one exchange listings — I believe this is on Binance, I believe this is part of the Binance ecosystem, I could be wrong. Multiple independent X accounts flagged a sharp LAB collapse and explicitly called the move a rug or cited suspected team-driven centralized exchange pressure for LAB. So if you invested into that, sorry — you probably just got rugpulled. But not surprising. That's investing. Things are risky.
Tom Lee's Bit Mine Accumulates 40,000 ETH
And then lastly, to keep you on a little bit of a positive — don't want to be too negative. Here's a great picture of Tom Lee. Look at that. What a handsome guy. He got his hair combed for once. Looks good. Solid. And he's from Look On Chain. Tom Lee's Bit Mine bought another 40,000 ETH — or $71.6 million — from Falcon X and Kraken, 11 hours ago. I got to tip my hat to Tom. I make fun of his price predictions because they're mostly ridiculous and wrong. But the people that buy in the bear are going to crush it in the bull, and Tom is doing it. So Tom, great job.
Q&A with the Chat
Rob: All right, let's get into a little Q&A. Mary's here. Meme is here. YouTube ad just popped up. Bad news — the IRS is coming for my crypto gains. Yeah, aren't they all? The IRS — they're very determined, that's for sure.
Someone says that's when Rob gave financial advice to wait until midterm election day to start buying. Exactly. It's exactly what I said — just wait everybody, November 3rd, just buy as much as you possibly can and then just diamond hands. That was my exact phrase. That was sarcasm.
Someone called him Michael Sailor instead of Michael Saylor. I thought it was pretty funny. Look, let's be honest — Strategy did a great job of buying Bitcoin and holding on to it for quite a long time. They did. And how much do they have? Does anybody know? I can look it up. I believe this is the correct financial term — a boatload. Wow, almost a million — 843,775. And out of six years, they sold like three times, maybe four. I think there was some tax-loss harvesting at some point a year or two ago. But I mean, that's pretty damn good for somebody who just buys roughly a million, locks it up, doesn't move it.
Maybe that's the reason why we're only down 51% from our all-time high as opposed to being 67% down four years ago. Again, diminishing returns, but also diminishing volatility. And I think Strategy helped out with that. Now, I wasn't happy with his "never sell your Bitcoin." I think that really messed with people's heads for quite some time. But now you know that is kind of ridiculous. You want to sell some. Bitcoin cannot keep you warm. Bitcoin cannot do everything. You need to sell it so you can buy the thing that you want to do. That's it.
Wolf is here. Puerto Rican Rogue. "A day equals on a dead altcoin." That was pretty good. "Michael sailing off with people's denari." That's pretty good. I'm sure Saylor's watching the five-minute chart.
Golfer reminds us that there is no wash trade rule for Bitcoin. True. They would have been smart to sell the $115K-plus cost basis they bought. I know that Strategy buys OTC, but there has to be some kind of SEC rules about moving the market for them buying and or selling and then purchasing right back. I wonder what that time frame is. That'd be a good episode — like, how long before Strategy sells their Bitcoin, announces that they sold their Bitcoin, watches the price go down — because that's what it does, although it didn't go down last time even though they sold like 3,000-plus Bitcoin, which is kind of crazy, and it actually went up. Wonder what the protocol is. That'd be a good one.
L says, "10% of our generation puts 10% of our savings into Bitcoin, takes it to $10 million per Tom Lee. Seems pretty possible." It does, if people really believe in it. But you know what people are going to believe in it is — we got to wipe out all the rest of the bad projects. I know they seem lucrative and fantastic, but if we want to move forward, we got to really grow up and get rid of these memecoin stuff and DeFi because that's not working. Maybe a more vetted process. But of course people say, "Well, what about free open trade society and what about decentralization?" Look, I still agree with all those things. Bitcoin is the most decentralized digital asset that we have. So let's just build on that, just like we talked about yesterday — the PGB, Pretty Good Bitcoin, as they move everything — or stablecoins, as far as USDT and Tether — with smart contracts. Why not?
Someone says, "I'm not sure the SEC regulates Bitcoin." Yeah, they don't. But since Strategy is a publicly traded company, I guess they'd just have to deal with their stock, not Bitcoin per se. You're right.
"Do you think some money left crypto because of people like Musk, CZ, Binance, Steve Ehrlich from Voyager, and SBF and so on?" Yeah, I think they do. And I think it gave a lot of politicians a lot of ammo to attack us, because that's what they see as crypto and digital assets. They see it as that. And they're not wrong on some aspects of it. So I think people left and didn't want to come back because they got screwed. And of course, the majority of people aren't really — they don't want to invest. They want to be passive buyers and just kind of let everything go to the moon and then sell when everything does a 10x, 20x, or 50x. They don't want to take the time, especially in the low part.
"Talking about building on Bitcoin — Lightning really didn't take off as much as I thought it would." Exactly. And the probable reason for that is — let me just ask you a question and then we'll get out of here. How many of you have used Bitcoin to pay for anything in the last year besides buying and selling it and using it as a store of value? Has it been a lot of you? Because I got to tell you, I just paid somebody in Bitcoin yesterday — my researcher — but that's the only thing I've ever done with it. I think people don't see Bitcoin as a medium of exchange like it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be for peer-to-peer transactions. That's what the white paper stated. Didn't really talk about store of value or anything like that. So yeah, I don't see people using it as that. They've gone away from it.
"Are we still investing into BEST?" Yeah, I buy every so often. BEST stands for Binance, Ethereum, Solana, and Tron. Binance not as much, but I just buy BEST, which is the condensation of all those tokens in Kraken. Me and Kraken made a deal to put that out. It hasn't been paying off lately.
Green says, "How many times have I paid for something in gold bullion?" It's the same thing, right? At some point gold was used as a medium of exchange and then it just became a store of value, and then coincidentally it really just became a speculating asset. I know the gold bugs say, "No, no, that's not true. We're using it for transistors, we're using it for space rockets." No, you're not. Let me show you.
So this is what gold does. There's 216,000 tons above the ground. Now they'll keep finding it — they might find an asteroid, I don't know. But out of all this stuff, jewelry is the biggest thing — jewelry is 45%. You got central banks and private investments at 22%, meaning speculation. And industrial and other is roughly 15%. Mostly it's just nice rings, watches, stuff around your neck. And if you're talking about 216,000 tons above ground, that is only 72 feet by 72 feet — for comparison, that's like a five-story building.
And then the annual gold demand every single year goes to this — it's moving more towards investments, 40 to 45%. Well, jewelry fabrication, central banks, and technology industry is leveling off. So central banks and investment — that's the majority, that's speculation, that's all that is. And the ones that produce the most — this is the top gold-producing countries — China, Russia, Australia, Canada, and the US down here. Even though we have the most, we don't produce the most. Annual gold production: 3,600 tons. Global annual gold mining fatalities — wow, that's pretty bad. Gold and Bitcoin — positives and negatives for both.