Ivan on Tech analyzes Bitcoin's potential bull market return and covers crypto market developments
Ivan on Tech solo livestream discussing Bitcoin's market position, altcoin trends, and broader crypto ecosystem news.
Summary
Ivan on Tech presents a solo livestream analyzing whether Bitcoin and the broader crypto market are entering a new bull phase. He argues that while sentiment is turning more optimistic — particularly around Ethereum's proximity to flipping bullish on the weekly money line — the market has not yet confirmed a true bull trend, and significant downside risk remains. He frames the current moment as roughly 50/50 between continued bear and a bull reversal, recommending a DCA strategy with small allocations now and heavier deployment only upon a confirmed bull flip. He also covers macro factors including falling inflation and the Fed's likely rate-cutting path, and discusses developments around Robinhood's chain, MetaMask's 10th anniversary, the Clarity Act, and the Azuki/Claynosaurus Amazon Prime cartoon.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin's Current Position and Bull Market Signals
Ivan on Tech: Welcome to another episode. As you can see right now, Bitcoin is pumping to the upside. We're now above the 200-week moving average. People are saying that the golden bull is back, also because ETH is pumping. ETH has pumped quite a lot from these lows — you have a bit of a pump. But what is important to understand is that on the big picture, we still have to be patient.
People called the low so fast. We did pump — we did pump 20% from the low for ETH. You look on Twitter, people are super convinced it is the golden bull. And listen, we're going to have the golden bull eventually. As you know, we're very bullish on crypto towards the end of the year. But for us to have some kind of signal of a real bull, you either have to create a higher high. So instead of going like this — like ETH has done, and Bitcoin has also done — where you have a high, you have a lower high, you have a lower high — one way to confirm the golden bull is that you actually do another higher high. You go above this previous one, or you go bullish on the money line, which is by the way not that far away.
This is probably the biggest signal for the overall market: for many coins, ETH included, the flip on the money line is very close. You see here it's very close, and soon enough ETH is going to be bullish on the weekly money line for the first time since Q4 2025. That of course would be historic, because ETH is one of these core coins everyone follows. Should it go bull here within a few percent, that would be fantastic. How much do we have to pump? We have to pump another 17%. Could we have this next week? It's possible. So I'm telling you that the possibility of the bull is quite high. We're not there yet.
But each and every week you could have it. For example, Solana is in a very similar situation where it needs to go to $93 to flip bull. If it does that, it will have to pump 20%. But it is quite close. So yes, indeed, the probability between bear and bull are becoming quite equal. For Solana, for example, currently I would put it at 50/50 — be prepared for a flash to $30 or going to bull trend. It's becoming quite equalized. We're very far into the bear market. Being super bearish now does not make sense. Being super bearish in Q4 made perfect sense. But now you see it's close to the flip — it could also be a rejection here and down. So for us, we are way more pragmatic here. DCA in this green, beautiful buy zone in case it is already the bottom. It could be — but the risk is still high that we have another flash down.
Macro Factors: Inflation and the Fed
Ivan on Tech: Now what's interesting is that you have inflation going lower. The Fed will likely be able to cut rates later this year now that inflation is falling. You did have Kevin Warsh come out and speak yesterday. His speech was not too dovish — but also indirectly it is dovish. You understand: when he is saying that we need to be careful about inflation, we need to bring inflation down, inflation is still not at 2% — it is good because the financial markets are seeing him as serious. Not just someone that Trump put in to lower rates and print to hyperinflation. Which means that actually they may give him a nice market rate for the bonds.
The Fed decides the Fed funds rate, but still the market decides the market rate for US Treasuries. So if the market overall believes in the Fed, if they feel that Kevin Warsh is serious — that he's not just there to do whatever Trump says — it means that these rates are going to be kept low and going to go down by the market. Because when the rates are low, it means that the market trusts the asset. The market is willing to lend to the US for a low interest rate. So here in this case, we're not seeing it yet — we just see an uptick actually since the last few months in all of these different yields for the different durations. But the strategy at least is that the Fed is serious. Kevin is so serious. He's not saying we need to cut. He's saying we need to bring inflation down.
So all in all, quite expected. But then watch what he does, not what he says. He has a lot of excuse to cut rates now. A lot. Inflation down. You have a problem with unemployment — unemployment up. He needs to bring back employment. All of that is very interesting to follow.
Bitcoin, as soon as this inflation news broke, we pumped to $65,000. Now we're a bit below, but that's a big catalyst. This inflation stuff is a big catalyst. And by the way, that's another reason why the golden bull is coming back. It is coming back slowly. It's not coming back fast. It's likely going to even go lower in Bitcoin price.
Do you see that we start to develop the response to good news in a bear market? You can have the best news ever and the price still goes down. But now you have a bit of good news — inflation down — and the price instantly pumps. So we're not in bull market levels yet, because yeah, we pumped and then we collapsed and nothing really happened. But that's going to be happening more and more as we get into the bull, when good news will start to matter more and more. And it's not down only.
Tom Lee, ETH, and Market Sentiment
Ivan on Tech: Look here — Tom Lee coming out saying it's notable that ETH is the best performing macro asset on the day. I mean, Tom Lee, relax, man. Look at this. It's up a bit. It's a massive bear trend here. And again, we have the bull opportunities open, but it's crazy — as soon as we have the smallest pump, Tom Lee is back again saying something big.
Yes, indeed, against Bitcoin, ETH is pumping nicely. Not super nicely, but something is happening there. But yeah, way too early to say anything big based on this pump from around $1,600 to $1,800.
The big moves will happen in a bull trend on the main line, or especially when we do a higher high — that would be quite insane. And then actually Tom Lee and I, we would be on the same page. I mean, we've been on different pages since October because Tom Lee said we're going to go to $60,000 ETH and we said it's going to be bear market. But in the bull market, we're going to be the same. We're going to be bull ETH, bull Bitcoin, bull everything — together with Raoul Pal, even the DJ guy who thinks that Wintermute is manipulating us and we're still in the bull market. We're going to be all on the same page. Kumbaya, up only, up and up and up and up.
Twitter Algorithm Change and Crypto Community
Ivan on Tech: Look here — we have a bit of an algorithm change on Twitter. You may have noticed that Twitter changed the algorithm such that now you finally see crypto again, and it's a big boost to the trenches. Finally, instead of seeing all of this normie content — I mean, sometimes you saw even violent content, you saw all kinds of stuff that I really don't want to see on Twitter. But still, because we all have a monkey brain — we just came from the jungle, basically, if you look at it evolutionarily — when you have all of this X algo feeding your brain, it's easy to keep scrolling and then you realize, wait, what am I doing? Why am I here? I'm here for crypto, but why do I watch normie content for 20 minutes?
But now Twitter is pushing more content from creators, from profiles that you follow and follow you back. Which means that if you have a community on Twitter, you follow people, you get more of that content. Basically how it was before — before they started messing with the algorithm. So that's very good. I think for the trenches, it's very good, because otherwise it's hard to communicate what's happening, who is where, what's going on, new updates, new releases. Very important.
Claynosaurus on Amazon Prime and NFT Strategy
Ivan on Tech: Now guys, if you like the Claynosaurus NFT on Solana — you're a 40-year-old dude — you can now watch the cartoon also on Prime Video. It's kind of a big thing for the Claynosaurus and also Solana NFT community. They have a season one premiere.
But yeah, for me personally, I have a problem with this — a collectible that becomes a kids' cartoon. I love collectibles in themselves, but when they make plushies, when they make cartoons, I don't want it to retard into the kids' stuff. And by the way, retarding is a technical term — it's a scientific term. You have acceleration, you have retardation. If you've done physics, you know it. So you need to accelerate NFTs, not retard them into cartoons.
How can you accelerate? I mean, okay, let's say you have Claynosaurus — maybe it's a bit hard when your NFT literally looks like this to make it more premium — but maybe you can. And as soon as you do some kind of game or some kind of cartoon, normally what happens is that it cheapens it. It's very hard to do a good game. For example, when Bored Ape did a 3D Bored Ape thing — man, it's so bad. It cheapens it. And now I'm wondering why did I pay so much for this thing?
The only thing that would make sense is if they make it kind of like Habbo Hotel, or kind of like Runescape — where the whole game is about collecting and showing off. Maybe that makes sense, but it's so hard. When they make it 3D, it looks like a cartoon. You need to have taste. You need to make it like Habbo Hotel. Imagine Habbo Hotel for crypto where you can show off your furniture and stuff like that. Okay, that's different.
So that's my take on it. Let me know if you're going to watch the Claynosaurus on Amazon Prime. But yeah, that's good, I guess. I mean, it's very good. Big hats off that they made it happen — a Claynosaurus on Amazon Prime with Jeff Bezos. Fantastic. Very, very nice. Big shout out.
But you see, this is where it's going to be interesting to see the next generation of NFTs. I think we need to do more stuff which is less kids. It can still be collectible. Look at Runescape party hats — legendary. It's still cartoonish, a party hat, but make it more premium. Make it more like an MMO RPG kind of thing where it tingles the sense of us MMO addicts. I can understand if you have some very valuable thing in an MMO. I don't understand if you have like a super colorful cartoon. It's fugazi.
MetaMask's 10th Anniversary
Ivan on Tech: Look — MetaMask just turned 10 years old. To celebrate, they made you a little something. You can connect your wallet and see your decade on chain. Be careful connecting your wallet anywhere, but it's MetaMask.
Ten years ago, one developer pushed 598 lines of code the day after Ethereum came alive, on the bet that people would be able to hold and use their money directly. 100 million downloads later, the bet is the same. And what comes next?
I think MetaMask fumbled many things — with Solana, for example, not adopting Solana, not being very early to Solana, and with L2s it's basically unusable. But at the same time, it is legendary. In 2015, nobody was asking for a browser wallet. There was no category. I really remember first time installing MetaMask, playing with ETH. It was fantastic. That decision defined the category. Every wallet that came after walked through a portal MetaMask constructed. It quietly established the idea we've been building on ever since: you can hold and use your money directly without asking anyone's permission.
MetaMask was the doorway to the ICO era, DeFi summer, to NFTs. We've been through all of it. So it's really a legendary journey. MetaMask has been through two brutal winters and back. It started as a transaction signer, became the default wallet for the entire ecosystem, and grew into a platform with more than 100 million downloads.
Next 10 years, guys — how are they going to beat Phantom? It's a big problem. Phantom is now bigger than MetaMask probably. People ask me what the next decade looks like. It's like Netscape, man. Maybe they can make a comeback. But no new joiner in crypto is downloading MetaMask. They download Phantom. And if you want your friend to succeed in crypto and not get confused, you just recommend Phantom. And I'm not even sponsored — Phantom should be sponsoring me for saying that. I receive zero dollars from Phantom. Zero. But I'm just telling you what's true.
Let's say I want a guy or a girl that I know to succeed in crypto, to really like crypto, to be activated as soon as possible. I have a choice: do I give them MetaMask where they have a million networks to choose from, a million L2s, where they have ETH on Arbitrum, on Optimism, 500 different ETHs — or do I tell them, hey, just download Phantom, you have Solana trading here, you can trade Bitcoin there as well? You see the problem. But anyway, big shout out to MetaMask — 10 years, fantastic journey. They were the pioneer, the trailblazer. Totally correct. And yeah, let's see. The war is not over. They can come back.
Robinhood Chain and the Memecoin Debate
Ivan on Tech: This guy is saying something I don't agree with. He's saying, "Dear Robinhood, please don't make a memecoin chain." Okay, that's interesting. Robinhood chain is off to a fast start, but what will they do?
I think we use his website to check some on-chain stats, so big shout out to this guy, but this is some fugazi here. Because okay, you don't do a memecoin chain — which is what everyone wants. What do you do then? You do a ghost chain for institutions like Avalanche? They have announcements every day — this fund, that fund, $11 billion, BlackRock — and what do they do? Price down to the toilet. No one cares about Avalanche.
In business, normally when you have revenue concentrated from like two clients, if they leave, game over. You need to look at what kind of clients, how many clients. If revenue is impressive but it's from one client, it's very bad. The client leaves, the client changes their mind, the client has all the power. The same thing is with all of these chains that rely so much on BlackRock doing something. Okay, BlackRock — bankers, they decide to do their own chain, they're gone. They don't really care about Avalanche or any other crypto network. So that's why you need native, crypto-native users.
So I actually think it's good that they do a meme chain, because that's where most people trade. That's how most people activate a wallet on Robinhood chain. How else are you going to have people bridge? Why would they bridge to Robinhood to do what? To look at some RWA thing that they cannot even participate in because it requires KYC? So I think meme is the way to get users onboarded, get the money in, bridge.
I mean, they decided to do an L2, which is very bad, but okay — now that they have an L2, they need to figure out how to bridge. They need to let people bridge. For that, a good strategy is that you have meme. So yeah, good. Robinhood is off to a fast start. They have meme, they have a cash card, and TVL driven by more for ETH. They have TVL for lending and stuff like that. They've executed very well.
Now, the guy says, "Please don't make a memecoin chain." Well, that's what Base tried to do, and no one gives a damn about Base. Base said we are too institutional, too serious to endorse meme. Okay, what happens? No one cares. And Base actually tried to invent use cases which were totally fugazi. It was the worst ever. I've been calling it out in real time when Jesse from Base said that you tokenize your picture — like tokenize content. But what is content? Just a freaking AI-autogenerated picture. They did this with Zora, by the way. Big shout out to the guys building Zora. But the use case is not there. No one wants to tokenize a freaking picture or tweet. It's not a thing. Don't try to make it a thing. Don't try to tell trenchers what to do.
So Base actually tried this — we should not make a meme chain, we should do something else. No one cares about Base. What other real and enduring use case is there? Okay, stablecoins. But everyone has stablecoins — except Cardano. I mean, Charles couldn't even get a stablecoin. Getting a stablecoin is like a phone call away from Circle. Obviously, Circle needs to like you. If no one likes you, you're not going to get a stablecoin, because a stablecoin is a centralized thing that a person needs to deploy on your chain.
Tokenized stocks — it's easy. It's not hard, especially as Robinhood. They have all of the stocks in the app. For them to tokenize them is easy. Like, a monkey can do tokenized stock. The tech is there. You can share liquidity, market maker, all of the infrastructure for tokenized stock is there. It's not hard. But to win the love of the user — that's hard. To win the user over, to have them bridge — that's hard.
Getting users is very uncertain. You have to try things, you have to figure stuff out. It may or may not work. You may have to reinvent yourself as you go. That's an uncertain project, and that's very hard. Marketing is way harder than building. A monkey can build nowadays. You open Claude, bam bam bam, you have something working. Building is the easy part. The hard part is how the hell you sell it, how you get people to pay money for your product, which no one cares about in most cases.
I'm telling you that as a computer scientist and engineer who worked in programming full-time before crypto — engineering in many cases, if it's not bleeding-edge research, is more or less a low-risk thing that the company knows is going to get done. So please, actually focus on RWA — okay, the tech is the easy part. Tokenized stuff is easy. It's a sales process. You need to get Larry to do things. You need centralized entities to decide. It takes a lot of time. But it's not either/or. If it's an open chain, you do everything.
I highly disagree with the "please don't make a memecoin chain" take. Big shout out to John Ma — we love John Ma — but we highly, highly, highly disagree.
The Clarity Act Update
Ivan on Tech: Cythia Lumis — what else is she doing with the Clarity Act? Let's listen.
Cythia Lumis: "Well, it's taken us virtually every day for the last 10 months to get this bill in the condition it's in today, and we're ready. So we will be introducing it in the next few days. We're going to be in session now for four straight weeks. It's very important that we get this bill across the finish line before the August recess begins, so we can make the markets aware of the stability that will be provided to them if they remain onshore in the United States to do business. This is a pivotal time for the industry and we want to meet their needs. We also want to meet the needs of law enforcement with regard to preventing illicit finance and provide consumer protections. We think we've accomplished that goal with this bill. It's been arduous, but we're ready for prime time."
Interviewer: "So is it fair to say this bill will be on the Senate floor the week of July 20th?"
Cythia Lumis: "Well, I expect it'll be that week, but considering the important things that we have to deal with in these four weeks, Senator Thune will make the final decision about which week to bring Clarity."
Ivan on Tech: We're going to speak more about this bill, and maybe it's going to be guys — just a reminder so you don't get confused — this bill does not matter for the bull market. The bull market will start because Bitcoin bottomed and went to bull trend, whether this bill is here or not. Obviously it's good if it happens. Obviously it's good if it happens. But if it doesn't happen, it doesn't matter either. Don't worry too much about this. I know many people love the Clarity Act, that's why we cover it, but yeah, don't worry too much.
Meanwhile, one of the lead negotiators — Tillis's comments, bank lobby — yeah, banks don't like it. Law enforcement groups are also making their views known. Many bills, guys. They're going to be manufacturing bills. We don't even know what the language is going to be. Let's see.
Robinhood Wallet, Retail Users, and Product Strategy
Ivan on Tech: Bitcoin can't go down with a war and Sailor selling. Zcash can't go down with a P0 privacy bug discovered. Robinhood after Vitalik — this allows gambling as a valid use case. The night is darkest before dawn. Okay, I agree fully. The dawn is coming.
Speaking about Robinhood — it's the Robinhood wallet, the non-custodial wallet. It's not where they have all the users. They don't push these ponzies to the boomers that just installed Robinhood and just learned how to trade stocks. Sadly, no. I mean, that's what we need — we need them to see the meme coins. But yeah, they need to balance here, guys. They need to find a nice balance, because if they promote ponzies too much, people are going to lose money. So they need to be tasteful in how they do it. It's very hard to do.
I just think that betting on Robinhood promoting all of the ponzies to all their clients is a bad bull thesis. People are bullish Robinhood because they say, oh, it's going to be promoted to all the users. They cannot do that. They literally cannot do that. If they start promoting all of the crypto to all of the users that use Robinhood — like your mom that just installed it as an easy way to start trading stocks — many people in middle age, 30, 50, they also use Robinhood. Imagine the issues they're going to have if they start pushing the ponzies to them.
So that's not a reason to be bullish Robinhood. Bullish Robinhood is not the reason that they're going to be pushing retail to it. They literally cannot do it. The best they can do is in this wallet, and they also have to be super careful here. Imagine the regular retail user installs Robinhood wallet for the first time. They use the Robinhood app. They love their Tesla stock or whatever. They go install the wallet to check crypto. They buy something, it goes to zero, they lose the user. You understand? They lose the user. So it's a very hard product question.
Instead, it's better that the degens figure it out themselves. You have a degen app. Maybe the Robinhood wallet is the degen app. It depends how they position the wallet inside the Robinhood ecosystem. Is it for degens? Is it for buying big caps and just testing out crypto? If they have trending tokens super visible with like 800K market cap, I guess the wallet is for degens — if that's their product direction.
But anyway, my conclusion here is: don't bet on Robinhood promoting the crap to all their users. Just like Coinbase never promoted all the crap from Base chain to all their users — for a reason. Robinhood is not going to do that either. But they have a bit of an advantage here where everyone in crypto thinks they're going to do it. So they have a lot of attention, a lot of inflow. Whether they actually do it — very big question.
Ethereum Sentiment and L2 Criticism
Ivan on Tech: ETH — people are bullish ETH during the last 12 hours or so. There's a lot of tweets about ETH. But we know something that most players don't know, and that's that it's still a bear trend, still just lower highs. But we're going to be bullish ETH when it goes bull.
"All major innovation — tokenization, stablecoins, perps." Okay, relax, man. Which perps? There are no perps on it. Some people say that Hyperliquid is it. Relax, guys. What do you mean? L2s, by the way — it's not a major innovation. It's a major retardation. Just like you know — acceleration, retardation, physical terms, scientific terms. L2s are not a major invention. They're a major retardation that they now try to spin as something good.
"DeFi all happens on ETH. Blockchain Visa moment is here." I mean, man, if you say so. By the way, I'm bearish Solana also now until the bull trend — just so we're clear, I'm not singling out ETH here. I don't remember the last time I actually used ETH, guys. Maybe he means that Hyperliquid is ETH, but it's definitely not ETH.
Looks Maxing and Geo Maxing Tangent
Ivan on Tech: Look here — this guy is announcing geo maxing. Okay, so he's no longer looks maxing. He's now going to be doing geo maxing, arguing the US market is too competitive. So even he, with his altered face, is not successful. But if you go to poorer countries — I'm sorry, but this kind of looks-focused approach, it's a bit gay, you know. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that. But I'm not sure in other countries it's seen as something good that you're a dude and you focus so much on your appearance.
I don't know if it's going to play out for him. You go to Eastern Europe, you go to Latin America — everyone cares about taking care of yourself, but dedicating your whole life to your looks? Get out of here, guys. Am I a boomer to think like that? I think this geo maxing thing is going to backfire for him.
And by the way, the jaw is more about body fat percentage than anything else. If you have a low body fat, it's going to be okay. You're going to have more jaw. So if you want more jaw, lose fat. It's simple, but it's not easy.
Anyway, let's move back to crypto.
Q&A: Portfolio Allocation, Solana, and Market Positioning
Ivan on Tech: Let's go to Q&A — questions, answers, debates, discussions.
Someone asked about current market allocation. The best allocation now is to invest up to 15% of your intended Bitcoin position in the buy zone via DCA, and then go heavier as we go to the bull flip. If you are part of Bull Mania, I will be releasing model portfolios later this week — they're coming. It depends on your risk, of course, which portfolio you choose, because nothing is certain in the market.
For free viewers, I can tell you that here it's good to DCA but with a minor, minor allocation. The big allocation is going to happen when we go bull flip. Because still, we can go down here to the 40s or 50s. The bull flip is going to catch up with the price, just like here you see it caught up a lot — just like ETH now, where the bull flip is not that far away. Bitcoin is going to be in a similar position soon, where this bull flip is going to come down, maybe price comes down to $50,000 or so. But again, everything is probabilistic. That's why this here still makes sense with smaller amounts, because it could be the bottom. Who knows? Could be the bottom. We're so late in the bear market that anything is possible.
The key here is to cover both scenarios. Don't worry about buying the absolute bottom. You need to cover both scenarios — meaning that if this is the bottom, you're good. If this is not the bottom, you're also good.
We can easily go to the 40s. Everything to the downside is still on the table. Why? Because if you look at Bitcoin, what has happened here is kind of like Solana — it broke down support, it tested it, got rejected, testing again. Everything bearish is still on the table. Just that the probability of it is a bit less than, let's say, back in late May or early June. It's a bit less. Why? Because Q4 is closer. But it's still a very large probability at this point. I would say it's 50/50. We're late in the bear market. I don't want to be super bearish. I don't want to be super greedy waiting for lower prices. We're quite far. But at the same time, the probability is still very big — like 50% — that it can still happen.
So ensure that you're good in both scenarios. This is not the time to be greedy and expect lower. It was in October. I told you to be risk-off in October. Now it's July. Now it's time to be more bull. So yeah, at the end of the bear market, which we are getting close to, the probabilities are equalizing.
Should we go into the bull trend, then it's 80-plus percent probability that we have Valhalla. That's why I'm telling you from a risk-reward perspective, most capital should be deployed only when we go bull trend. And this bull trend is going to come down lower and lower. Let's say we go sideways here for a few months — which is not uncommon at the bottom — this bull flip is going to be here at maybe $70,000 or high $60,000s. Let's see.
Q&A: Tokenized Stocks and Platform Recommendations
Ivan on Tech: Ivan, which is the best platform for tokenized stocks? On Solana you have all kinds of stocks trading even on DEXes. Go to xStocks inside Phantom wallet — you can trade tokenized stocks there. There are quite a lot. Inside Hyperliquid, you can trade stocks. If you want to speculate on price, you can go to Hyperliquid. If you want to own something that is redeemable for actual stock, then it is Backpack. For example, on Solana you have xStocks, and you have also Backpack — what they're doing on Solana is redeemable stock. So if you have a token, you are entitled to redeem it for actual stock. You understand? So this is more ownership. If you just want to speculate on the asset, you go to Hyperliquid — when you trade there, everything is a perpetual contract. So it's not ownership, it's speculating on the price. Both are possible depending on what you want.
Q&A: Lightning Network vs. Liquid
Ivan on Tech: Can you please explain Lightning Network versus Liquid for Bitcoin specifically? Man, I think you are maybe eight years late. This kind of stuff we had hopes for and discussed in 2018.
Liquid — Blockstream is doing Liquid. I was always skeptical because it felt like Blockstream is doing some corporate solution. And I never liked it. Lightning I liked for the first few years, then I saw — man, what is this? No one's going to use this. So to summarize: if you can compare, both of them are garbage. Liquid is garbage. It's a corporate solution by Blockstream where — if I want to be a bit conspiracy-minded — I could even make the argument that they didn't scale Bitcoin so that their corporate solution has a use case with the Liquid stuff. Liquid never got big adoption. I don't even know why you're asking about it. It's not really a thing. It's also not part of Bitcoin core tech — Blockstream did this corporate solution. It's not decentralized.
Lightning Network is actually — you know, this decentralized thing was supposed to be part of Bitcoin. It resulted in the fact that in order to use it, you need to use a centralized solution. They push all these wallets where it's fully centralized — they run the channels, they open the channels, you use established channels. That's what it has come down to. I haven't used Lightning since maybe 2022 when I was still believing in it. But now, for the past maybe three years, I'm actually anti-Lightning, man.
I remember doing a livestream at Christmas 2017 or 2018 where I said that 2018 is the year Lightning is going to make a big difference. Almost 10 years later — so yeah, ignore all of this. Don't worry, it's not going to change anything. No one is using it either.
Q&A: Ben Cowan, Four-Year Cycle, and Market Positioning
Ivan on Tech: Ben thinks a drop in Q4 is expected, like the past three times in midterm years. Very possible. Very possible. But I mean, I also have it as a real possibility. But the issue is that at the end of the bear, everything is possible.
I love Ben, but as far as I know, he did not really nail the reversal of the market in 2023, end of 2022 and beginning of 2023. Now, Ben Cowan and I are probably the only channels that have been playing this bear market more or less flawlessly. I don't know too many others. But the thing is, you need to be more humble towards the end of it, because it's hard. At the end of the bear, anything can happen. So I don't just want to look at the previous cycles and go off that. I'm more open to bullish now. That's why we do DCA here — we have a strategy of DCA with a small amount and then go heavy when we go bull flip.
This bull flip told us to be bullish in the beginning of 2023. As far as I know, I don't know when Ben Cowan went bullish last cycle. And by the way, he's great. I love Ben. The amount of hate he got — which I also got — but Ben was next level. How much hate he got for being right. For being right this whole bear. But I think he did not get this one right in the last bear. And it's because it's the hardest. I don't blame him for that either. The only reason we got it right is the money line. It's the hardest flip. So that's why I'm telling you it's now more 50/50 — anything can happen.
Imagine a bear with a bull head, 50/50, kind of like that. The market is kind of like that. It's a bear, but it grew the horns. So it has a bull head.
And you know, the market can do anything. Look here — what happened here? Out of nowhere, we had this mega pump in 2019 and then it still went down afterwards. So that's why you never know what's going to happen. A year into a downward move, you just have to be more open-minded. After a year, anything can happen. It wouldn't surprise me if this is the bottom. Wouldn't at all surprise me. Also would not surprise me if we go to $50,000 or $40,000.
I know, guys, you want certainty. But markets give no certainty. It's all about positioning. It's all about ensuring that no matter what happens, you're good. And the positioning depends on the probabilities. Up here, probability was mainly bearish — we were quite confident it's going down. Here, I'm telling you: position so you're good no matter what. And that's the hard truth of the market.
People want the secret signal — exactly this is going to happen. If someone tells you exactly this is going to happen, you're going to get wrecked. They're either lying to you or they are ignorant themselves. It's the blind leading the blind.
Ben has been one of the few channels who got it right, together with us, this bear. And sometimes I see people attacking his character. It's ridiculous. The guy that says it's a bull market and Wintermute is manipulating us down — he is attacking Ben's character. It's crazy. The guy who has been wrong all the time, who said it's bull market, bull bull bull bull, then we went down 90% on all coins, who said it's Wintermute that is manipulating — he is attacking Ben. If you watch Ben's channel, Ben is always telling you, "I could be wrong." He's always telling you it's probability. He always tells it in the correct way. He's not a Nostradamus. He doesn't know the future. He's open with that. Like I also don't know the future. It's all about positioning.
Someone asked: Ben was wrong about ETH. When he finally saw the new all-time high coming, it didn't happen. I mean, technically it did go to all-time high — it just went like 1% above all-time. But it's true. That's the issue with Ben, if we are to give some fair feedback — it's just no system. You watch what NASDAQ did in the '90s. Okay, good. But what do you actually do? You need a system. You need to know what trend it is. Is it bull? Is it bear? No matter what you think happened in the NASDAQ in the '90s, no matter what you think happened in the last four cycles, you need to have clear bull or bear. You need to have clear entry and exit. Because whatever happened in the last cycles is not a guarantee it's going to happen again.
The only reason we believe in the four-year cycle is because Bitcoin went bearish on the daily in October and we saw it's also corresponding to the four-year cycle. So it's perfect. But should we just keep pumping, we would say the four-year cycle is fugazi. Because we went bear on the daily first, then on the weekly, we said the four-year cycle still works. So we are actually not following the four-year cycle — we're following the trend. If the trend agrees, then we also follow the four-year cycle. But if the trend disagrees — let's say in October we just see a new all-time high and we just kept pumping — it doesn't matter for the four-year cycle or not.
Q&A: Hyperliquid and Trade Mechanics
Ivan on Tech: Do you think Hyperliquid's bull trend will end soon? Don't worry about that. Don't ask me a question like that. Maybe you're new. But in Bull Mania, we teach a lot — don't worry about when something's going to begin or end. Just react to it. Do I look like Baba Vanga? I don't know, man. Don't try to know. You try to guess stuff. Why try to guess stuff?
It's bullish now. So treat it as bullish. If you're interested in Hyperliquid and you're worried that you enter too high — the noob will be thinking, oh, will it end soon? Will it not end soon? If you know a bit about the market and you really like Hyperliquid, you could enter now. You put a stop-loss. Is the bull trend still there? Good, good, good. If it goes down — let's say the trend is over — your stop-loss hits you. You're out. As long as it's bull trend, you have good risk-reward to enter. Nothing is guaranteed. You have good risk-reward to enter.
Hyperliquid looks very strong. Now is not the time to discuss whether it's going to end or when it's going to end. The whole point with trends is that no one knows when they end or when they begin. We know on average sometimes you can see some stats on how many weeks it's on average. But the whole point is you don't have to know. With mechanical rules, you know how to set a stop-loss, you know how to set profit take, etc. So anything can happen. It could go to bear trend tomorrow. It could have a big fat red candle here. It's more about risk-reward. It's still bull trend. It's still strong. It's still green. And you have a stop-loss that ensures that whatever happens, you're good.
But what if it hits stop-loss and then it keeps mooning? Okay, then you can reassess. You don't have to be so needy. We discussed it yesterday — people are sometimes so needy. Okay, stop-loss hit. If it pumps again, you can reevaluate. Does this trade now make sense? Maybe you enter here, it goes down a lot, you set a stop-loss, say here at $58 or $59 or something — your stop-loss hits, you're out. Good. It's not bad. Don't see it as a failure. It's just the system working. Your stop-loss hit. Let's say in the future it rebounds again — you can reconsider. Maybe you want to enter again, for example when it goes above this yellow line. That would be a good entry because then it goes above the highest weekly close — quite a strong signal. Then you can re-enter, then you set stop-loss.
See it more like that. Don't see it as, "Oh man, I missed it. I had one chance to buy Hyperliquid." You have this mindset of scarcity — that you need to buy this thing, and if you don't buy it and it goes without you, there is nothing else to buy. Don't think like that. There's always so much flipping bullish every day. There is money being made in all kinds of stuff. Every day you have Chinese stocks, Turkish stocks — well, there you have hyperinflation, so be careful. Let's look only at US stocks. Since the bull flip — Real Mada Therapeutics one year ago, SanDisk six months ago, one year ago, 11 months ago, six months, five months. You see the gains from the bull flip. Two months. There's always something flipping bull.
Q&A: Should I Buy Solana Now?
Ivan on Tech: Ivan, should I buy Solana now? What is the probability of it going to $30?
I would not buy Solana now. I would buy it either when it goes to the bull flip here at $93, or at $30. I wouldn't buy it now because from a risk-reward perspective it's not clear. It could break below support. So it's tilting a bit more bearish. I would probably put it at 65% bearish, 35% bullish. But 35% is still a big chance that it's bullish.
But when I buy, I want it to be more or less up only. I don't want to waste six months in some no man's land. So the best chance of that is that it goes to $93 and goes bull — that's one scenario for me. And another scenario is it goes so cheap it's such a no-brainer that I buy anyway. So then it's below $40 — like $39, $30, whatever starts with 30. $39 is still 30s. So yeah, those are how I see it, guys.