Bitcoin's at Support but Saylor Is the Sword of Damocles

[00:00:00]Hello and welcome to an episode of Casual Friday. I'm here with the duck.

[00:00:04]As always, the show is brought to you by Kraken Pro. The thing we're shilling today is the Kraken CLI. I'm sure many, if not all of you, have been oneshot by AI to some extent. uh and Kraken is one of the foremost exchanges in terms of setting up actually useful infrastructure for those of you who have complete AI psychosis and do all sorts of rebalancing, trading, paper trading, analysis uh with your agents. So there's this is the GitHub repo they've put together. It's under MIT license. You can do whatever you want with it. Um, and it's a very easy install and you can manage your portfolio, you can trade, you can use earn type products, you can paper trade as well. Um, all of their instruments and pretty much everything on Kraken Pro is available there. And as an org, they take AI pretty seriously.

[00:00:54]So, this is definitely one of the better buildouts I've seen. So, if you want to give that a go and try the new paradigm, Don, because obviously, you know, humans in the loop are just going to go away forever. we're all going to be turned into paper clips or whatever the conventional wisdom is. Uh you can do so via the link in the description. Uh check out Kraken Pro. And this is actually an interesting sort of segue. I don't know how you feel about this, Dom, but for most people when whenever they like like when AI came around, especially these large language models, uh and they got better at code. I actually think most discretionary discretionary retail traders took the worst possible path of using these tools which is they initi they immediately went for like okay let me try to set up like a winter mute sniper 3000 market maker bot grid trading algorithmic strategy and then obviously it's just and it and it doesn't work whatsoever. Um I I think if it were me and where I've had some success and uplift using these tools for trading uh is as a discretionary non-smart click trader. Um using it to sort of interrogate your trading system is actually very helpful. Uh using it for dashboard type views and the metrics you actually care about and pulling them in yourself has been pretty helpful. And then obviously trade review/analysis and creating visualizations from that from those ugly CSVs is also helpful. Um like and obviously for research as well it can get bit get a bit dicey depending on how your web search or whatever other tools are set up. But in general like it's taking what you do now and making it slightly better. And I think that's where a lot of the good use cases emerge when it comes to discretionary gooey click traders, whatever you want to call us, using AI. But like I barely see any discussion of that. It immediately jumped to bro set up your open claw Hermes agent to like trade for you and do all this stuff. I'm like this is this is a bad idea. Like production grade trading bots that you actually want to be competitive, especially from like a market making perspective on purp etc. They're just like not in the trading data. And you also like don't know what you training data rather and you also don't know what you don't know about those types of operations in order to run them efficiently. Like in general the most of the uplift will come from the lowerhanging fruit of doing what you already do slightly better especially because you have the judgment to be able to tell the model where it's drifting or where it's making dumb assumptions. Um, but maybe I'm just missing something cuz that just doesn't seem to be popular and it's all you remember when there was like poly market slop threads every single refresh on the 4 page where it's like, "Oh, bro, Citadel just revealed the playbook." And it's like, I don't think that means what you think it means. Anyway, very long tangent to say check out the Kraken CLI via Kraken Pro.

[00:03:47]And also when it comes to AI trading and stuff, if you're going to use it, um, use it to make yourself slightly smarter, better, interrogate your trading system, help you research, help you visualize stuff as opposed to, oh well, everyone is a quant now, so I'm just going to go grid trade on Binance against every market maker in the world and expect to beat them. Terrible intro, but that's that's where we're at. What do you think? Yeah, I mean when you I think if you go at it like oh this is blackbox and I'm just going to feed it some some money some like some yeah some money and some prompts and then it's going to make me money. That seems quite stupid just from like a like an an edge perspective, right? Like if that is your edge, do you really think that is going to maintain for a long time? Probably not. Like I I just kind of like something that is freely available to everyone. You just you're telling telling it like, "Hey, you trade for me and that's it." Probably not the best idea. But I'm I'm generally like a little bit slow on the AI stuff. You're much much more in tune with it than I am. So, permanent underclass status for you. I'm just making here.

[00:04:54]>> Yeah, I'm just That's why I off into the middle of nowhere because I'm like, I'm I'm too old for the >> The robots can't climb the hill that my house is on. It's like, well, I don't know. So, did you see that robot that kung fu kicked a Chinese kid?

[00:05:06]>> Yeah, I did.

[00:05:07]>> That was that seemed very appropriate.

[00:05:10]>> Um, >> yeah. No, robots cannot swim, bro. How are they going to come here? They cannot swim.

[00:05:14]>> Hey, I'm technically on an island as well, so >> true. you're safe as well. But your island, I mean, that's that's not that far to swim. Maybe they can get the technology.

[00:05:24]>> They'll get a boat.

[00:05:27]>> Um, it's obviously, you know, the quality of this conversation is at least in part guided by the fact that it's 1:40 a.m. local time here through no fault of don'ts. This is dons. This is completely self-imposed. Um, but we are going to cover the big boys and we can start with BTC. It's hanging around the lows. I'm on the monthly time frame. 12 days left until the close. Um >> I I mean it just looks kind of >> Yeah, >> I don't really know what else to add since the last show. Like it I think we spent a lot of time talking about the weekly time frame and since we have we tal you know the 70ish breakout failed.

[00:06:03]It's back inside that sort of 70 to 55 pre-breakout MAGA consolidation. It's roughly hanging around the midpoint of that range at the moment, depending on how you draw it, where you anchor it.

[00:06:16]Um, and in terms of the most recent price action, we had the nuke candle.

[00:06:21]Uh, we had a green week and then this current week, just eyeballing it more or less looks like um an underside retest of the former range or at the very least it hasn't been accepted through that. Uh the usual TA if up then up if down goes it goes down applies here I think which is to say if it climbs through 65k plus you can start to make an argument that well yeah traded back inside the big range it's sort of consolidated and was stabilized around the midpoint uh and then the first level of resistance has still been flipped. I believe that even if that were to happen, this kind of 71 73 is still a trouble area. So, it's not like one of those clear sky levels where you break resistance and have a shitload of room to go. Um, but if you're looking at lower time frames or even shorter rotations, I think you're the immediate in-your-face obstacle is 66K and that is, you know, being a slight pain in the ass for the market. But specific levels aside, I I don't know how many more weeks we can do this for. The the lethargy, lethargy, I don't know how to speak English, of the crypto market is still here. Um, it is, you know, all these exogenous shocks with, you know, every every week there's a new sailor headline. And even when there isn't, this is a market that's like underperforming. It's underperforming relative to equities, relative to indices. is the AI trade still running hot and you know Bitcoin certainly let alone ETH and altcoins um they're just not the flavor of anything at the moment um >> yeah do you have a TA based view you have a have your view views on the kind of market structure and sentiment changed what's your what's your read when you look and think about BTC at the moment >> yeah I mean we kind of like have that damoclas sword of Michael the sailor hanging think above our headset the entire time, right? Um like every time we have a little bit of a move up um something like the like one of his products basically dumps a bunch and then like we're back to dumping again.

[00:08:33]Um notably this week S Strc like his his um I mean to me it just seems like a Ponzi scheme >> his free money yield machine.

[00:08:44]>> Yeah, exactly. As in Yeah. I don't want to get I want to get sued, but to me that just looks very questionable. Um, generally I I don't really see how that makes any sense. And that's been dumping a bunch, which has, I think, shaken confidence even more in the market. Um, so that's a little bit of a bummer because that's not going to go away quickly. I think that's going to be with us for a while. Um, but in in terms of TA on the monthly, um, we're kind of like hanging around that support block that I have between 56 and 61K.

[00:09:25]Um, the highest candle uh, in 2021, like the the entire body boxed out. That's the kind of support I have.

[00:09:36]>> And I kind of think there's a good chance. This is something that I've been saying for like a couple months now actually is that I I could see us close at that boundary at some point. Um and this month seems to be the one that is at least trying for it. Um so could see a 61k close um this month. So in two weeks if nothing changes and then if we get a stab lower next month I think that would probably be like a buy unless the the sailor situation gets any worse which is like I hate that that we're now in the situation where we have to watch Michael Sailor. We have to watch like his gazillion pro like products that he has. Um we also have to kind of look at the the S&P and at what Trump is doing.

[00:10:27]Give me back the days of of old where nothing of that mattered and we're just trading uh like either bullish or bearishly. Now it's kind of like oh yeah we're at support but sailor sailor's going to like have a potency that is is going to collapse. Uh so maybe we're going to go to the support below. It's like what is this?

[00:10:46]>> Do you give any weight from a purely TA perspective to the fact that we've taken a stab below the February wick at the moment? Like I've drawn your monthly cluster between sort of 50 761.

[00:10:58]Uh, and there's obviously February's low which was around 60K round number. We've sort of poked at it again and we're currently above it. Is is that anything?

[00:11:07]Is that confluence?

[00:11:09]>> Do you have TA psychosis where you're like, "This is a sweep. Every single dollar of liquidity has been taken, whatever that means, and now everyone in their grandmother is trapped and we go up."

[00:11:20]>> Yeah. I mean, that's going to be the case. like I'll call it a sweep if we close at 61 or anywhere above. Um and then I'll be happy to kind of >> Yeah. on the monthly. Um >> so if we if in in two weeks we're still hanging around the current price levels, then I'll happily add it to the basket of confluence that I think like higher time frames don't look so bad. Um but I'm I'm it's not something where I'm like, oh, I have to necessarily all in right now. Um it's more so like, oh yeah, nice. That's a nice added bonus to it. Um if we if we do close somewhat bullishly this month.

[00:12:01]Um but yeah, generally it's just been garbage, honestly. Like price action's just been garbage. Um and you can look at that on all time frames. Doesn't really matter. Funnily enough, the monthly probably looks the best out of all of them. I would say like the further down you go, the worst looks.

[00:12:20]>> The best of a bad bunch. Um, >> yeah.

[00:12:22]>> Do you think like like one level we sort of gave a lot of air time to and there's been some understandable skepticism around its utility is the 71k weekly range high. Um, it doesn't exactly have to be 71K, but it's, you know, the the MAGA range high, the preTrump presidential range high, etc. Uh, it did a decent job of resistance around all the war headlines. We had a failed breakout there. We then actually broke above it and at the time we were arguing hey you know the big level is uh closer towards like 86 and usually when BTC approaches those types of levels uh it tends to accelerate. It didn't actually make it there. It got there on the weekly interestingly enough it wicked it on the week oh sorry on the monthly. It wicked it on the monthly but didn't get there on the weekly and stuff and and then it this 71k former range higher provided zero support on the way down and we puked through it. So if you think about kind of the lifespan of this level, uh you know, we broke below it with no support in February. It gave a nice little trap retest to its credit in March. Um but then the breakout in April and the subsequent loss of the level in June kind of just looks like it's getting ass blasted from both directions, which is a classic technical construction. Do do you think this level still earns its keep? Like would you still pay attention to this? like we start pushing up into 71K, 72K, etc. Um, are you of the camp of hey, this is still significant even though the last couple of attempts have been noisy or is this has it lived past its expiry date in terms of a useful level?

[00:13:56]>> I like it. Um I I kind of look at it and I think if we retrace a lot of the recent dump um it looks immediately more bullish and like we have done that monthly retest now right like the level that you talked about the 80 82 83k uh monthly level um that's the one that I was worried about uh and we've done that so if we get anywhere close to that again I think we are actually going to break it um so I like 71 as kind of like like a a level where you could um kind of start betting on momentum to the upside right now. I think that's like you cannot really make a good argument for oh yeah the market is bullish um and I'm betting on on more upside because it's just been down only and I think that is the first place where you can just be like oh yeah we've gone up a little bit and I think we're going to go up a lot more and I think that's the best level that we have um from anywhere really like 71 um we break that we establish back above there I think there's a good chance we break the next ones too and then we're going to trade back in the '9s. Um, so yeah, I still like it.

[00:15:14]>> And then everyone >> I like it more now than before. Um, actually, >> yeah, I I also still like it. Sort of the last show that was one of the, hey, this is interesting type of sort of market formations. You know, there was the hey, we're new king to zero. That's interesting. There's volatility falling off a cliff and the market going sideways. That's interesting. And then, you know, there were four in total, but one of them was 71K plus. I'm als I also still uh I'm fully wearing my Copium CPAP uh and think that it's the level isn't completely washed. Maybe I see something of myself in that level, Don. But just just one more test, bro. Please. Um, in terms of what's below us, you know, this strategy, micro strategy, stretch, sailor stuff in general, um, has people looking at levels that they haven't contemplated in a while as far as, hey, if this goes really bad, where does it go? I've seen 45k floated, um, 50k round number floated, all sorts of things. Uh, those 30k floated, you've seen 30k. Okay. Well, I mean those levels exist on the chart. Now, this is the usual thing where you draw a level, people like, "Oh, look at this targeting that he's 100% sure. It's it's over. Squeeze him." Um, but if you're wrong in so far as this is the rough area where you know, monthly buyers, if if there are any monthly buyers whose name isn't Michael Sailor, uh, you know, if they were to step in, it would be around the 60k round number. Um, that that sort of monthly cluster that I've just redrawn. If that fails and you know the sweep is far cool all and you know the monthly close is like share and all this other stuff. Um are you still of the opinion that this kind of 50k round number is the next port of call?

[00:17:06]>> I actually really like 4546 as well.

[00:17:09]>> 4546.

[00:17:11]>> Yeah. Just monthly the the candle of uh September of 2021.

[00:17:15]>> Yeah. It's a classic little cluster boy, isn't it?

[00:17:18]>> Yeah. I've had that on my chart for 50 years now. Um, and I like I I really like that as like let's say this sailor panic, right? And this like that's what what at the end of the day, that's kind of like how I think about this. This is a kind of perfect recipe for the market to just itself um in panic. The moment like any of the Sailor stuff goes any any wrong, people are like, "Oh yeah, Sailor's going to sell everything." Um, which he will not, I think. Um, but people are on edge. The market's been underperforming and that's like a nice way to make the market capitulate, right? We've seen that before. Like whenever you get like the market is kind of anyway and then everyone's just kind of like like waiting for an excuse to panic and and that seems like a pretty good one. Um, so if if the market continues to be weak and um the sailor situation gets any worse, um, I could see us wipe out.

[00:18:20]And if we do that, I think 45 is like a really really good level. Like I'm I'm going to be buying 45 um on on a monthly wipeout if that comes next month. This month I probably wouldn't want to necessarily. Um, next month I'd be down.

[00:18:38]Um, yeah.

[00:18:41]>> I mean, there are 12 days left. Give us a break.

[00:18:43]>> Yeah. Yeah. And if uh if if it doesn't happen, that's fine by me as well. I I really like 7071 like we talked about earlier as kind of like a okay, I I want to get more upside um in this level.

[00:18:58]>> So, it's still more or less 70 6050 as the big boys >> um which is helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think the weekly confers any benefits that the monthly fails to do? At most, I think it's >> the 70K level. Yeah.

[00:19:16]>> Yeah. Well, the 7 Yeah. 70 71K is like the same range high, but do you think the weekly has anything that the other time frames don't? If if there were a gun to my head, which is kind of an extreme case of given we're talking about candlestick charts, but you know, some people get very passionate about this stuff. um 66k that we started off the show with is kind of I think the immediate um this is worth paying attention to type of thing because it's the sort of right in your face range low. Um but absent that I mean I could also just see this getting chopped and not be super useful as is as is often the case when you have such strong um monthly structures. But that's kind of the only thing that comes to mind. I looked at the daily time frame before this as well, and that one I just have no respect for whatsoever. Um, at the moment, I I really think this is a tale of the market is as is.

[00:20:07]You should have a really good reason to get involved if you're going to get involved and the monthly covers like 95% probably if not 100% to be honest of the worthwhile technical structures. And so other time frames they can still be helpful for getting a sense of how the monthly is forming or how it might close and giving you a slightly faster read.

[00:20:28]Um but I think I would be hardressed to venture to other time frames with the same level of um conviction or confidence. Are you in the same boat?

[00:20:39]Are you are you monthly maxing at the moment and everything else is a bit shitty?

[00:20:43]>> Yes. I I I I mean I I I open the chart and it's it's on the monthly and I look at it I'm like, "Ah, okay, fair enough.

[00:20:50]It's still exactly where it was."

[00:20:52]>> Um and then sometimes I scroll down and then go like towards like the lower time frames like, "Ah, that's disgusting. Get it out of my sight."

[00:20:59]>> Yeah. From your watch list, all the classics.

[00:21:02]>> So, I think that's kind of more or less it. We know that the 71k still has a chance of being a useful level and proving itself. uh the immediate monthly cluster support range low what are we doing here is like a 56 to 61k basically and I think the monthly close is going to be instructive there uh on the high end so like the range is basically 70 to 60 right just very very simple 60k to 70k is the range the resistance above the range is 82k and it's already been tested and the support below the range is when things get rather sad but it's probably below 50k and that's that's kind That's kind of all she wrote. Um, ETH, E, E, E. Also, ETH's mind share, you know, it's just like no one talks about ETH anymore.

[00:21:49]>> Oh, the the what what are they called?

[00:21:52]The podcaster guys.

[00:21:54]>> Oh, yeah. Bankless.

[00:21:56]>> Bankless. Yes.

[00:21:58]>> Yeah. Bankless broke up and David, I think it was, dumped all of his ETH. Um, >> yeah, that's that's something, huh? like you hold it through its worst period of price action and then you publicly disavow it basically uh after all of this. I find that quite wild. Um makes me want to buy like that that post alone I was like I want to buy Eve. Um and I looked at the chart and I was like maybe I maybe back.

[00:22:28]Yeah, I mean ETH puked through its support on the weekly as well and hit the sort of range lowish. That was the last update, right? Like, "Hey, Don, is there technically something at 1500?"

[00:22:40]It's like, "Yes, there technically is."

[00:22:41]And then we closed it cuz um because it's ETH and E BTC still looks pretty grim. Uh there is still a monthly structure there at what 1.6K the kind of cluster top on the monthly. But again, I I I just can't get out of this frame of mind at this point, Don. and I know it's going to cost me money and blow up in my face sooner rather than later. But even if I have like technical levels and supports and whatever else, my my mind just goes to, okay, but if you're going to buy stuff, why are you buying crypto and not insert basically anything else in any other asset class?

[00:23:16]Um, you need you need a kind of unique set of conditions, I think, given how the last I mean I mean dude, realistically, what it's been since October of last year. Is that fair? Is that too extreme that the market's just been a completely disconnected piece of >> Um, >> I think that's a defensible point of view, but like >> you can even make it worse and you can be like, besides Bitcoin, like how has the market been doing? And then you look at ETH that hasn't made a new alltime high since 2021.

[00:23:46]>> Yeah, true. You can do that. You can definitely do that. And that's the leader of the altcoins, which paints quite the disgusting picture for everything that isn't Bitcoin. And now Bitcoin has Sailor sitting there like >> talking to Chat GBC about how to set up this instrument.

[00:24:04]>> Did you see that clip where people were asking about like how did you come up with stretch? And he was like, "Oh yeah, I was talking to the AI and we're going back and forth." And I was like, "Oh my god." thing is at the time if you were doing this with like Fable 5 or GPT Pro um 5.5 I could kind of be like ah well maybe there's like some directionally useful good idea there but dude at the time he was doing it it was like GPT 40 or 4.1 40 was the one where people had like all these online relationships with it and the most sickopantic bunch ever so when they switched it off people were like protesting in every anthropic and Sam Alton comment section being like you're killing my boyfriend and they killed it because it was so misaligned and sickopantic. And if that's the class of model that came up with stretch, uh that would that would certainly be interesting. Um but yeah, like I can't like I'm still struggling to break that frame of crypto has been a piece of It's been completely disconnected since at least October of last year. Um if not before that, depending on which asset you look at. And then in order to become attractive, not on its own terms, but relative to everything else, it's either some like outsized momentum thing, but also just like realistically, it's it's the rugpull scenario where it's like, okay, this ship actually looks dead and it's so cheap and so far off its highs and so, you know, like cycle explosion, uh, full doubt over the history of the asset class type of price, um, that you kind of have to nibble.

[00:25:41]um the the implosion trade essentially and and that I don't think that means like 12K or you know the CMB gap at 3K or whatever else but I think in very simple terms it's this range breaking down um I think this range breaks down it starts hitting other monthly levels uh you end up being what like 60% 70% off the highs at that point um and and then it becomes interesting as a kind of cyclical trade uh as opposed to Hey, it's at a, you know, it's at monthly support and it's been weak for the last, I don't know, 10 months or whatever the whatever the time frame is. I think that would be attractive. I think in second place is that whole momentum 71k plus we're so back type of thing. But if I had to choose, I'd feel a little bit more confident buying, as weird as it sounds, and this is very counterintuitive, like buying the blowup. you always feel a bit more comfy um when you're super scared rather than a so-called value area in a market that's just not been able to catch a bid for the last however long it's been.

[00:26:48]>> Yeah, I kind of agree. I think it like I mean if it if it went to 45, I'd be very comfortable buying it. Um anything here in the 60s like I kind of like but I'm not as comfortable. Um, and then yeah, above 71 is like a nice that's a nice trade for me. Like that's I I like to given there's not really been any trades available in crypto. Like that'd be a nice trade idea for me where I'd be willing to stick my neck out. Um, and then yeah, there's not really that much else. There's not that much to do in crypto right now. A bit of a shame.

[00:27:26]>> I think that's kind of the starting point, right? like a sort of intellectually honest assessment will be like okay this asset class is like suffering. It does well when you have outsized my classic phrase like trend and momentum effects that last at least weeks if not months and most of the time if the market isn't doing that then it's not that that's not the point. Like it it becomes much more competitive. It becomes much more difficult. uh the trades require much more active management and it's just very unlikely that that type of regime is going to be the responsible for a large amount of your P&L and I just think the reality of crypto is given you know the number of tokens and just in general the amount the number of useful opportunities like that of that that number has been super low um and then even when it has come up there's I think at this point a very reasonable opportunity cost type type of argument which is hey instead of catching this 6% rotation on BTC I could have just been like a peak normie and put money into the S&P and you would have outperformed right like you look at ETH against the S&P and you're you're at this like digital world supercomput frontier volatility speculation and you're underperforming a dude who whose employer just dumped some money in his 401k you know like there's something very deeply wrong with that and I don't know what you think about this bit. But in the past that was easier to sort of handwave away because crypto people would not and I put myself in this category too. We kind of just couldn't be bothered to trade these things cuz like oh god I need like a trady account and setting it all up and it's not per and it's instruments that I'm not familiar with and it's boring and you know all these other things. But now most venues including dexes like hyperlquid you can basically trade pers on these things or own them or you know the barrier to entry for trading other markets in a cryptonnative way has basically gone to zero uh or at least has materially um you know it's become a lot easier as opposed to in the past where even if you saw that there were good opportunities in other markets you could just kind of wave the friction flag and say oh no it's too difficult please uh like I don't want to spend 2 hours or whatever it is depositing my money. Even that has disappeared both on a centralized exchange level and a decentralized exchange level. It's almost never been easier to access other markets via the same sort of instruments and products and interfaces that you're that you're used to.

[00:30:04]>> True.

[00:30:05]>> It's like what do you do with that? Just cope.

[00:30:08]>> Yeah, just cope. Crypto is just still very cool.

[00:30:12]>> Do you think so? Do you think crypto is cool like culturally?

[00:30:15]>> Oh, crypto itself. Yeah, just the people in crypto suck. Um, as in like most of the people just scam. Um, which has just been like a major major um, stifler of what crypto could be. I think like just generally when you think about the world in 10, 15, 20 years, it to me it makes a lot of sense to have crypto in it. Um, and I would think that some of the coins that we have, um, Bitcoin, ETH, maybe a couple others would probably be around and would probably be valuable, um, just because it's to me, it's quite quite the it just kind of makes sense. Like, in my head, I I I I'd be surprised that in 101 15 years we wouldn't have Bitcoin anymore. Like, that just doesn't doesn't really make much sense to me. Um, if anything, like it seems like a futuristic technology rather than one from the past. Um, so like I I still kind of like it, but I am cognizant of the fact that what it's been used for has just been negative for the vast majority of its if lifetime.

[00:31:28]>> Yes. Um, and I think that's kind of like the reason why why everything's been so is kind of that it's >> but even that can only go so far, right?

[00:31:39]Because you know what it reminds me of?

[00:31:40]It reminds me of the old um Stalinist Troskyist type of debate where no, we just need the we need the right system and the right person in charge and true communism has never been tried. Uh the underlying idea is good. it's just the people we've put in charge um have have made mistakes and it sort of it sort of feels a similar type of way where it's like no no trust me bro the vision and the underlying tech is actually really cool we just need the right we just need to get rid of our political enemies and and put put the right people in charge and everything will be fine and >> a lot of the cool stuff like it obviously exists right like Hyperlquid is actually cool and it's broken outside of the crypto niche as we've covered on the show. Stable coins are really cool and I think the long tail of crypto being useful, you know, if this like AI agent slop, the internet is changing stuff really is sticky. Um, then I think the the future like stable coins are the future of like digital transactions, commerce, etc., etc. And that's crypto. uh and you know hyperlquid 247 price discovery and the perpication of these instruments etc. that's also crypto but dude that that's really not that much for a what well over a decade of industry and like how much money has been poured in by allocators and VCs etc. We're here like clutching at straws effectively to to justify like giga trillions in spend extraction participation and we can roughly point to a couple of things and close one eye and bend your head slightly and say yeah this is this is crypto it's working well and like it's that that's not an asset class. If you can find two, three exceptions to the rule and the rule is made up of just like exit liquidity, scams, fraud after hundreds of billions invested. It it just it's just it's a bit rough, you know.

[00:33:39]>> Yeah. But I mean like if you compare this to like the dot bubble, right, where you had like a bunch of garbage, right? Like a bunch a bunch of garbage and a few good things. Now, I'm not saying that necessarily any of the things that exist yet are those good things, but I'm just generally like I feel like there's something there's going to be something good that comes out of it. Um, but maybe that's just me entirely coping that I've spent like a good part of my life just trading this and thinking about this and now I'm sitting here um an old man and I'm just like, "Yeah, I know. This is going to this going to change the world >> cycle, bro. Please, bro.

[00:34:21]>> Yeah, but I I kind of feel like like the like this cycle has been the cycle of the scammers, right? There's a reason why I've kind of like why I did the XRP trade, for example. Um because I was like, this is going to be max extraction cycle, right? Um, Trump came in power, started it all off with just launching his own own coin, drifting to Helen back with crypto. I don't know if you saw the whole UC 250 anniversary of of UN of of the USA um event, but like that was like sponsored by Trump coin, whatever the Um, that's like that's insane, right? Like that's that's >> and then they pay some fighter bonuses with like the world liberty fi stable coin and all that stuff like that where you like okay this is clearly extractive clearly like just like just drifting.

[00:35:20]>> I mean it's Banana Republic behavior.

[00:35:23]>> Yeah. Yeah. I'm >> It makes me feel at home to be honest.

[00:35:27]I'm like, "Yeah, >> ignoring the the the how ridiculous it all is." But um just generally like just looking at the crypto side of it, it's clearly been that that kind of cycle.

[00:35:39]Like the meme coins went completely ballistic. Everyone was kind of like trading the meme coins, telling people everything in crypto is useless, so might as well gamble on the meme coins.

[00:35:49]Like all of that stuff. And that has been this cycle. And I think um if we get and that's a big if I mean we have a little bit better regulation now on crypto at least in the US than we had before right where but now it's it's gone kind of the opposite way where it's like too much like the the the president's been drifting on the blockchain right that's that's too much we don't want that but we do want like some legislation that kind of makes sense and then I think you can make if you have that in place you can make some cool stuff out of crypto Um, and I feel like this cycle everyone's just kind of been skipping over that because it was so much easier to just grift everyone out of their money scam, do the shady just because that's apparently the thing that you do now. Um, but once that is done, to me it kind of would make sense to return to kind of like something valuable >> unless the Democrats sweep everything and then beat us head. I would hope one I would hope that the Democrats wouldn't be so stupid to just kind of like do like just kill the crypto industry just because um I don't necessarily honestly I don't necessarily think they would be they they probably would do some retribution but I don't think it would be Trump style where it's just like okay you've been my en enemy I'm going to kill you forever. Don't necessarily think that's how how that side works. Um but yeah we'll we'll see.

[00:37:20]But I generally think like if if the regulation stays somewhat positive and people have enough time and the whole grifting mindset kind of leaves crypto for a little bit, um we can come up with cool And there's a few cool things that come came up like you said with with with Hyperlid, but also just generally like the the stable coins taking over. Um and all sorts of stuff that could be really cool in the future.

[00:37:47]Um, and I think that it's if we have another cycle, um, that's probably going to be next cycle where we're actually going to get to something.

[00:37:56]>> Yeah. Just one more, bro. It's not like we had this discussion, you know, 2022, 2023, and >> 2018.

[00:38:03]>> Back to back then, we didn't have that whole cynic cycle. Like, it was so bad.

[00:38:10]It was so so bad. I mean, I like crypto better now than I liked it back then.

[00:38:14]Like, that was so disgusting. We just needed to on board the right celebrities. That's really where it all fell apart, right? Like the choice of celebrities to on board was was not perfect. We we need >> No, no, it wasn't even the choice. We just didn't get enough.

[00:38:28]>> That's true. It's a volume it's it's a volume question. Um let's let's talk about Hyperlid. Um up at 67 bucks at the moment. Uh clout roundup. We had a whole segment on finding relative strength. uh identifying dislocations that that are caused by the market as a whole selling off and when you get this sort of correlated drag effect um that give you entries on assets that are otherwise strong and I think we talked about the daily cluster at sort of 54 to $58.

[00:39:02]Yeah. Uh, and that was nice. That worked. You know, it hit the add an extreme. It closed through and then fully like engulfed the lower part of that at around 54 and then traded through 70s and kind of spiked spiked the high. We also know that res all-time high levels are like the strongest resistance levels in crypto. Um, that's the that's the state of the union. So that there was a bit of a response there, but the, you know, I I I still think there's some self- congratulatory sentiment that's warranted in this case of um drawing a big box and the market roughly vaguely doing something around it. That's that's about as good as it gets.

[00:39:46]>> Old men still got it.

[00:39:47]>> Still got it. Still got it. Um, so but yeah, I mean hype is kind of the crypto market at the moment.

[00:39:55]I think all the good sentiment is around hype. All the innovation is around hype and then all the um consistently positive price action is as well. Um >> yeah, I mean that's good to see I think just generally now obviously I don't think that's necessarily going to last forever, right? Um, nothing. And then you're gonna >> Yeah. But then I think maybe the market finds something else that is really cool. And there's there's there's probably a bunch of projects out there that are quite cool that are just not in the in the limelight right now. Um, and I would like to see some sort of rotation at some point and that just be the meta for a while. I think that do a whole lot of good for the space. um you want to see good things go up in price and the more we see that and the more we see less good things go down in price the better I think like on relative terms because you want to get people to to buy good things um that's how you get optimism back because people are just going to be like wow like this this is cool like you people that are that find hyperlid cool um and have a bunch and then the the price goes up like that's the best advertising that you can get, right? Like you you have a product that you like and you also making money. Like that's quite cool and I I'd like to see a little bit more of that and I think that's probably going to come around eventually um further further along in the cycle. It's just I generally like crypto-wise I generally like it in in this area. It's just like I said, the sailor thing that is kind of like just freaking me out a little bit because I know that people are >> people are very skittish in in the face of something like that for good reason, right? We've seen what happens with the Luna collapse and I don't think that comparison is necessarily a good one, but that doesn't really matter, right?

[00:41:49]like people's feelings, they're gonna look at it and they're like, "I've seen this one before." And um if it starts selling off, it might just accelerate because people are like, "Ah, yeah, this is it again." Um and I want to sit through it twice.

[00:42:05]But that's kind of like the situation we're stuck in right now. And I don't think you need to like I've read so many threads on the sort of empire and financial alchemy that Sailor is attempting and it's like here's eight things he can do and here's how all these instruments interact with each other etc etc. I I think that a simpler read is that these yieldbearing type of products and products which are contingent on sort of an annualized growth rate or the underlying asset just kind of going up, they get stress tested in bearish conditions. Um especially when people sort of le leather up and rehypothecate and create, you know, a daisy chain of borrowers to use that famous term. Uh but that that that's the simplest interpretation that yield stuff plus stuff that relies on a flywheel of upperly it gets stress tested in these types of market conditions and that's what we're seeing at the moment and sailor is just so big that it's causing what I think you've correctly identified is disproportionate skittishness uh i.e. this is the biggest most aggressive buyer of Bitcoin and people are now wondering not only is he just you know is he gonna what do his future buys look like but is he going to become a net seller and how does he you know what will he be forced to do essentially um and then you see all these you know NASDAQ and S&P and all the AI trade stuff just kind of passively drifts upwards and then you look at BTC and you're like ah maybe there are easier tables to play in these conditions Yeah. And in in my experience, usually in these situations, it's like whenever people like, "Oh, yeah, but what if?"

[00:43:49]And then the market goes to zero. That's usually historically been really good places to buy, right? Um just in this case, it's like, is he going to get hunted down by someone sharp? Or is he not? And he's I mean, it's a big big target and they have quite a bit of money um to survive this for a while.

[00:44:08]So, it's kind of like a big gamble.

[00:44:11]um on whether the market is going to stay for the next year or so. Like if the market stays this for another 6 months, I think Sailor might get in like might have to think of a new way to scam people. Um or it's going to just get in in in trouble. And I I think a bunch of people are going to position for that in the near future depending on how price goes, right? So, if we're if we're having like a little bit of a shitty shitty time, um maybe people try to to hunt him down in a way or like stress test him at least. Um maybe not. Uh just depends on like if if if price goes up to 70k tomorrow like all of the sailor talk will just disappear immediately. Um, and I mean it makes sense too because and this is how this entire thing is structured so stupidly because if price goes ups he's totally fine, right? It's just when when price goes down and goes down for a while, h he's he he starts being not fine. And I kind of think like even if price goes up from here and 60k is just the bottom um and then the cycle just goes back up and whatever in my head like sailor will find a way to blow up just by the way he's acting. Right? And I've seen this with traders a lot where like do you notice when you like talk with a trader and you're like a yeah this guy is going to 100% blow up and they're like running it up and making a bunch of money but the way they talk about it you're like this is never going to work out because >> personalitywise that is just the person that just bets it all like continuously and at some point you're going to get like you're going to get hit by something improbable.

[00:45:55]>> Yeah. They just lose flip.

[00:45:58]>> Yeah. And then it's just over. And to me, Sailor seems kind kind of like that guy where he's like just keeps on betting it all and he won a bunch of times and now he thinks like he's a genius because he's won a bunch of times and he's just going to like let's say Bitcoin goes from 60 to 100K. Now, I would bet that he just makes a new one, like a new like a new system, whatever, a new product, um, where he can take on a bunch more debt. And then like even if we go through the next bull market, the next bare market, his situation is going to be even worse. And that's like such a stupid thing that we now have to sit here and he has like a significant percentage of the supply. Um, and we're kind of at the mercy of of his stupidity in a way, like just because he's gambling with with something that he says is is very important for humanity, which is Bitcoin, right? And he's just gambling a bunch on it. And I think that's just net negative. I I think the price would be higher if that was not the case. I think generally people would be much more inclined to buy at the moment if not for him. And that is definitely the case for me. So, like if if it wasn't for Sailor, I'd be buying the 60K range aggressively. With Sailor, I'm kind of like maybe I'll buy 45K aggressively like because that's going to be where people completely get wiped and maybe he starts being being properly stress tested. Um, and I it just pisses me off a little bit, but yeah.

[00:47:34]>> Yeah. No, I I think the sort of Damocles type of analogy is is correct. Um, and it's, yeah, it's annoying. Just purely purely colloquially, as a matter of fact, it's it's definitely annoying. Um, and this is kind of normal, right? Like when you get bare markets that there's always something looming that you think, oh, this is how much worse is this going to get? How long does the daisy chain of borrowers go, etc. But this is one that you're that I think has like outsized market impact and everyone is staring at it at the moment. Um, and I agree this is one of those weird ones where there is like a wall of worry you can climb via price going up. But then Sailor doesn't use that to, you know, build up buffers or do whatever else. He generally kind of just takes more risk.

[00:48:27]>> Um, which which doesn't help because normally you'd be like, "Okay, he's out of the woods. We've climbed the wall of worry. just ramp it, but then he he will find a way to just always be teetering on the edge. And as dumb as it sounds in his personal situation, forget fiduciary duty shareholder stuff. It kind of makes sense that he's doing it that way, right? Cuz if he wins, then again, as we said on this show before, he's like financial giga alchemist, centiionaire, whatever. uh but if he loses he's only a billionaire just through his own through his own sort of holdings and compensation etc. So so it's almost economically rational for someone in that position to take big swings. It's just we have to we have to suffer as a result. Um one thing we should absolutely talk about is SpaceX.

[00:49:15]>> Uh we talked about uh robots uh jerking me off on UBI in in last week's episode.

[00:49:21]I'm still waiting for that. week.

[00:49:23]>> Well, the last episode, forget the word weak.

[00:49:28]>> Now, the robots have not been delivered yet, Don. You know, Musk is a trillionaire on on paper anyway. And there's been some really good volatility on SpaceX in general. I I think this is one of those and we've we've covered these types of assets before where if you're short-term trading and you're looking for where volatility and efficiency and these kind of momentum effects are and just really just a shitload of flow and liquidity. I think it's absolutely SpaceX at the moment.

[00:49:56]Yeah.

[00:49:56]>> Uh I checked on Hyperlid a couple days ago and it was like BTC was number one and SpaceX was number two which is crazy. Um, it's come down from, you know, it it IPOed, it popped pretty hard. Uh, it's come down a little bit, bounced off of a, and, you know, if you're going to make up levels, at least on the NASDAQ chart, there's there's a decent little preop 4hour consolidation there. Uh, I wouldn't start chart reading tea leaves too much on something this new or something that looks like this, but to be honest, it works better than it would in a lot of other markets.

[00:50:31]Um because there are a lot of >> there's a lot of retail participation in this. The valuation methods are not particularly well established because the float is so low, right? It's like 4% or something.

[00:50:47]>> Yeah, it's it's a high FTV, low float kind of thing.

[00:50:51]>> This it's exactly that. It's a classic SBF coin at the moment. Yeah. I mean, straight up, it's just like he's looked at the crypto playbook and he's just been like, "Okay, let's let's see how how much can we squeeze out of this."

[00:51:05]Insane. Insane. Like, yeah, like you said, I think it's 5% 45 to 5% something there. Um, first unlock is in August, I believe.

[00:51:17]>> Something like that. Yes.

[00:51:18]>> Yeah. So, yeah. I don't like my opinion of this is like kind of everyone knows that this seems like overvalued by quite a bit but also like everyone knows that it's a low low float high FTV coin that can go up infinite and that's kind of the situation we're in where people are like the people that don't know that this is just like just very very little supply um that is on the market um they they've been shorting the IPO because they're like this is obviously overvalued and they've been blown out and then it went up a bunch and now it's gone back down and I think a bunch of people correctly have identified that the valuation is quite quite bonkers. Um but yeah, until until more unlocks, this is probably going to trade like a major shitcoin basically. Um >> we should make it good for trading. I was about to say like it's it should make it make it feel right at home. Like I was looking at it and I chatted with a bunch of friends about it and they were like, "Oh yeah, should I be buying or should I not?" And I was like shortterm this probably like like when it was IPOing I was like shortterm is probably a good buy because like we've seen this playbook but longer term I would like personally I would stay away like this is a shortterm trade. I don't necessarily think this is a good long-term hold. um valuation seem bonker bonkers and you you have like unlocks coming uh quite substantially >> bullish unlocks. Have you forgotten those, Don?

[00:52:55]>> Yeah. I don't I don't know if the market is that bullish um that it can can absorb all of that, but possibly.

[00:53:01]>> Yeah.

[00:53:01]>> Um >> well then it also has to absorb all these AI companies IPOing, right? Anthropic seemingly soonish unless the US just keeps taking away their models. Uh which I much more interesting, right? Like to me at least.

[00:53:17]Like obviously SpaceX is the retail magnet number one, but like if you if you actually think about it, I think like the AI portion, which is supposedly quite a large chunk of SpaceX, right? um like XAI is a large part of it because they sort of got bundled together and they also I mean Musk is doing exactly what you should be doing or at least sort of minmaxing um from a valuation perspective like he acquired cursor which is this sort of agentic coding platform and they're building their own models as well and you know his stock is super high and he did like an all stock deal to acquire cursor uh and so he's taking his low his his SBFcoin setup and using it to buy real businesses with revenue and cash flow, etc. is super smart, you know? Um like that is what you do.

[00:54:13]>> He's really good at this.

[00:54:14]>> He's really good at this. Like he is what genius >> Yeah, I think that's where his genius is is playing the stock market in a way. Um by setting these things up in a way where he's just winning. Um, >> it's super impressive. Um, >> yeah.

[00:54:29]>> And I also think like >> so many views of Elon just are entirely based on like your politics.

[00:54:36]>> Like some people just immediately assume that everything is smart and based because he will like post and say things about Anthony Fouchy and do whatever else and align himself politically. But then the same on the left, you're like, "Hey, um, SpaceX is pretty cool. Just sending stuff to space and rockets and that whole vision, uh, on its own is quite nice.

[00:55:00]Starlink is some of the best tech I think of the 21st century. Um, especially like on planes and in, you know, when there's whenever there's like a natural disaster, he'll send a bunch of those over and just in general as a piece of tech, it's pretty cool.

[00:55:14]But then if you disagree with, you know, Elon's politics, often people just throw away throw the baby out with the bath water. Um, which >> it's always fun to treat. You You're playing the c the radical.

[00:55:26]>> I'm playing the radical I'm playing the radical centrist. No, I legit think I mean I'm not one of those who's like, "Oh, billionaires and trillionaires shouldn't exist, etc." I think that's dumb. Um, but I think objectively speaking, Elon is a very streaky mixed bag. But you should take the good as the good and take the as the Especially given how widely he spreads himself across all these different products and businesses. You can't expect all of them to be amazing at once. Um, so it's kind of a casebyase type of basis. I think you touched on like to a more relevant point the dynamic that you touched on I think is the right way to think about it like people will look at this and say is it overvalued or is it not overvalued and I think that's a useful assessment to make if you're sort of planning across higher time frames like the whole question of value is an investor question the there there is a separate category of question for people who want to speculate which is flows and those two things can disagree with each other massively like you can argue quite quite consistently that hey at this valuation I don't want to have this you know have SpaceX as a core part of my portfolio. Um but from a flow perspective you know given where the markets are at given risk appetite uh given the FDV and float that's available I think the flow is just going to like pump this thing higher. Uh or you can hold the opposite view and say, "Oh, well the flows are going to be bearish because of unlocks and all this other stuff and it's going to get repriced, but you know, I think data centers and Mars are amazing and I want to own this thing cuz rockets and futurism." I think that's consistent, too. But the I I think the way to view it is you need to split up the as almost the stock from the flow, right? or the valuation >> or the valuation from the flow and then sort of put on the hat that's appropriate for the time horizon of either your trade or your investment.

[00:57:22]The biggest risks happen when you just start bouncing between those two boundaries. And as a trader deciding, you know, on long to short-term value, even though you're trading um sorry, deciding on long-term value and making short-term bets and vice versa. I think when you blur those lines, that's when that's when gets really murky. And we know that from altcoins. you're like, "Oh, this thing is going up. Therefore, its fundamentals are good." And then by the end of the day, it's down 80%. And you have a nice little uh Telegram moderator star. Um, and you're helping the community answer questions.

[00:57:54]>> Yep. Seen that too many times. But I think like straight up, if you're a crypto trader and you're trading this thing, trade it like shitcoin and you'll probably be fine. Um, right now the and and you can even like the cool thing is it trades like a shitcoin. Um it probably is kind of like like at these current valuations like you should probably like treat it the exact same way. Um and you you have like this this uh bullish environment at least, right? So for a cocoin traders that like to to get their um their gambling needs met, this seems like a pretty decent bet just because it trades like our homegrown garbage. Um which has been good, right?

[00:58:37]like that's like during bullish bullish times, old coin trading is really nice and this is kind of like the old coin in the trady world and Trafy has been has been hot.

[00:58:48]>> Um, so but just as an an investor, me personally, like you couldn't like no way at these valuations like if I want like a proper return on that, Elon would have to have like all the money in the world um for that to make sense.

[00:59:05]>> Okay. Well, you're just going to stay sidelined on Earth then and I'll be getting jerked off by robots on Mars.

[00:59:11]>> Yeah, you can.

[00:59:12]>> I'll see you on FaceTime, buddy.

[00:59:14]>> You can do whatever you want with your robots. I'll stay. I'll stay, >> bro. Imagine not having an interplanetary portfolio. You're such a It's disgusting.

[00:59:23]>> Yeah. Um, >> that's actually >> Speaking of you being disgusting, you fudded me out of a generational Zcash long if you remember. Um, >> did I?

[00:59:31]>> I mean, that's my cope. We we discussed it around the time of the uh the exploit not exploit uh and we're sort of talking about hey like it's you know super volatile it's up so much already um do you think it's got more juice in it or has the bounce trade happened from low to high at least on the on the Kraken feed of a low of 250 it traded up 100 you know basically went up to 545ish up 100% and has has pulled back since. So up until that point, Zcash was the, you know, one of the two and a half horsemen of the the crypto bear market, which is that, you know, these are the strong coins that have a asynchronous bid and all this other stuff. Uh, obviously the exploit didn't really help. It's recovered pretty decently, but, you know, not back to the highs where it was trading, although honestly, it did retrace a pretty impressive portion of that whole thing um before pulling back of the last 3 4 days. Do you think this trade is broken in the simplest terms?

[01:00:30]Like, you know, there was a bucket of two, three coins where it's like crypto is a piece of but there's outlier strength here. You know, hype, Zcash, I mean, that's kind of it. But hype and Zcash, do you think the Zcash portion is dead or what's the kind of impact of this type of move on a coin like that? I think this this kind of this kind of news with the price impact that it had kind of made this into an altcoin again.

[01:00:57]Like people were like, "Oh yeah, this is like on the same level as Bitcoin." Um, now it's kind of trading like an altcoin. So I think the the fundamental trade is kind of deadish to me. Um, but it's trading like an altcoin that's that has a lot of eyes on it, right? And there's a big difference between like an altcoin that has no eyes on it. Just look at Litecoin for example and and or has a lot of eyes on it which is Zcash which basically means that the moves are usually like oversized by quite a bit as in like you get the big dumps you get the big big moves up and I think that's kind of the category that Zcash is in now. Um but I mean it can come back as the darling of the of the cycle. I don't necessarily think like for me that would be the one uh bet that I would make. If anything, I'd make short-term bets. Same story as as that I said on on on SpaceX.

[01:01:52]Like you have good good eyes on it, which means like if it moves up, you're going to get nice explosive moves. But just generally um for me that's that's um that's all like that that OCash is really cool. Um fundamentally that makes a lot of sense because it's private money kind of trade that a lot of people talked about. I think that's largely dead. It's more like an altcoin that's trading aggressively now, which makes makes it interesting for trading um less so for investing in my in my head at least.

[01:02:25]>> Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that's I think that's very fair. Um it definitely took a lot of wind out of the sales. E um >> yeah, I mean that was a huge dump. like that it went down 60% in that one like >> market cycled the weekly chart for this thing is just >> hilarious. I mean when you go to the high time frames on the monthly it looks totally fine and maybe it is like maybe I'm mitwitting this.

[01:02:52]>> Um >> it was just a wash out.

[01:02:55]>> Yeah, but I'm just personally like that's not necessarily stuff that I I deal with.

[01:03:00]>> But I mean we're left with like one and a half assets, right? It's like hyperlquid and sort of Zcash with an asterisk. What else is there? Are we missing anything? Just >> I mean, you have Bitcoin still, but that's tainted.

[01:03:16]>> Yes. I mean, you look at the monthly and the weekly on BTC and it's like, >> yeah. Yep. That's >> And you have ETH. Um, but that's also like has similar situation. Like >> it's it's not similar as Bitcoin. Like I don't think the it's necessarily the same situation. Um it's a little better, but it's still like a bunch bunch of stupid buying and >> I mean it's got Tom Lee and it's Eve BTC looks like a piece of Um >> yeah.

[01:03:42]>> Yeah. But but Tom Lee is not as bad as Sailor Structure is not as bad. Um, but he is trying, right? Like he tried to do like >> he tried to do like a yield bearing whatever the Yeah. Like if I if I remember correctly like whenever people make yield things in crypto, >> dude.

[01:03:59]>> And it's based on price going up, I'm like, ah here we go again. Like what are you doing?

[01:04:05]>> Seen this movie. Um, hey, at least there are good instruments um which behave like they should for the time being.

[01:04:12]Like you look at the NASDAQ, it had one red week and then just got, you know, immediately back at the highs. Um, no, no bears allowed essentially. Uh, S&P as well, right, had a red week and is pretty much back back at the back at the high now. Uh, we should we could probably start adding some AI type stocks to this like Nvidia, Sandis, MU, etc. >> They're all trading like old coins.

[01:04:39]>> Add some semiconductors. Yeah, that might be fun. Let us know in the comments if you want some absolutely pedestrian draw line on charts, too dumb to know anything else uh type of content on uh stocks cuz >> dude, we got to get ticks in the chat in the in the chat.

[01:04:57]>> Tick us in the chat. Yeah, tick us in the comments. We're We're ready. Um why not? I mean, that is the absolute state of things at the moment. And also, if you remember, there was a time where this show was actually pretty good at S&P charting. I won't say trading because you would chart it perfectly and then go trade Bitcoin and underperform.

[01:05:14]Uh >> good times. Yeah, great times. Uh but you know, we we know a thing or two about drawing boxes and then making it look like they were in some form useful or predictive.

[01:05:26]>> I do. You remember when I showed Facebook at the Pico B?

[01:05:30]>> I do. Didn't one of your followers just like mega retire from that?

[01:05:34]>> Yeah. One one of the the show's followers was like, I'm retired from this. Thank you very much. So, I was like, I mean, okay, cool for you.

[01:05:42]>> Yeah, happy. I'm happy.

[01:05:43]>> And I bought crypto because of it.

[01:05:45]>> Yeah, that's one of those where you were too lazy to transfer money over, right?

[01:05:49]>> Yeah. I was like I I tried and like a bunch of it got stuck and then I was >> whatever. I'm just going to keep it in crypto and it's going to be fine.

[01:05:59]>> Yes.

[01:06:00]>> And it's it's not fine. What's the meme?

[01:06:02]I was not fine.

[01:06:04]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The risk I took was calculated, but boy am I bad at maths or something.

[01:06:08]>> Yep. Is what it is. But yeah, that that was that's that was really good. It's obviously I think it's going down now, but doesn't doesn't really matter.

[01:06:18]>> Meta is taking like all their engineers and making them like basically do RL.

[01:06:25]They're doing homework and feedback for data sets for models to train on. It's a very depressing place. Uh >> yeah, I've heard that people are like very depressed and want to leave and like a bunch of them got fired and the rest that didn't get fired. Yeah.

[01:06:40]>> But hey, they they're bringing back snacks now to boost the morale. I mean that would work on me 100%.

[01:06:47]>> I mean it helps.

[01:06:50]>> Helps.

[01:06:51]>> I'll take some snacks. No, it's it the world we are in now is a completely like it's crazy. um like that whole AI stuff is going to going to like it's either going to us over colossally or just change the world. And I'm not entirely sure which camp I'm in yet. Um >> I kind of I'm in both camps.

[01:07:14]>> Now who's the radical centrist?

[01:07:16]>> Yeah, I'm like shortterm I could see this like go really wrong, but long term I think this is probably going to go really right. Um, but like I don't know enough about it and I'm like like shortterm in the sense of okay in the next year or two.

[01:07:33]>> Yeah.

[01:07:33]>> And long term in the next 10 years I think like in the next 10 years this is going to be like a huge thing and it's just the norm. In the next one or two years I could see like the whole thing kind of like like people like oh this is overvalued whatever. We've gone through that before. Um and then short short term like in in the next couple of months or something like it's just trading like old coins. So it's just like >> it's old season 100%.

[01:07:58]>> It's old season over there. Yeah.

[01:08:00]>> Yeah. Except the companies make things that people actually use as opposed to white papers which I've heard is >> Dude, I used my old coins.

[01:08:10]>> Yeah. To sell them on exchange. I I bought real estate with my real estate coin and did my teeth with my >> I was going to say the reason my teeth are so up aren't just because of my British passport. It's it's cuz my Dentcoin transaction failed.

[01:08:27]>> Uh I think the scary Well, it's kind of scary kind of not. It's the rate of progress and improvement on the AI side that's the particularly sort of interesting dynamic like just how much more competent and capable the models get every few months and the seeming >> validation of scaling laws that hey we just throw more compute and more training uh and more data at these models and they will just like continue to get better. Um, that's I think one of the most interesting parts as a whole. It's just a super interesting thing like you know chain of thought and reasoning being like an emergent function as opposed to something that's programmed that to me is like basically an alien story. Um, and there's all sorts of cool there. But from like yeah from a purely trading and speculative point of view I actually this is I think one of the big contradictions is that out of everyone participating in the market right now crypto multicycle crypto traders are like extremely well equipped compared to the average population to like they've seen these movies before.

[01:09:38]Uh you know the playbook, you know how you know how these assets tend to behave. um you can sort of proxy sentiment better than the average person just kind of logging on to Robin Hood for the first time and punting and so so on and so forth. But then also crypto people are some of the most reluctant to actually apply their knowledge uh outside of crypto or they'll apply it in weird ways like hey it's alt season in Stockland. They're like okay I'm going to go trade zero DT spy options. It's like no don't do that. That's kind of what I was getting at. I made this post earlier today which was like if you're a TA maxi in some ways it's one of the worst ways you can learn trading and I say that as someone who learned trading as a TA maxi to start because if you don't understand the sort of or don't spend any time interrogating the underlying principles and plumbing of markets then you can't really generalize anything that you've learned into other domains other asset classes etc. uh whereas if you have a slightly more nuanced understanding of both the products and market plumbing as a whole like you know market orders and different order types and their impacts and market micro structure um different instruments like all that type of stuff your your system can actually generalize pretty decently um to other asset classes like it's one thing if you say oh well I know this thing is volatile because it's about to break out of a triangle but it's another thing if you're like oh I measure volatility with, you know, these set of factors or indicators and then you can in most cases get a directional um you can sort of transplant those to other markets and be in the right neighborhood. Like it's not super complicated. You could do this with LLMs and be like this is how I trade crypto. These are the indicators that I use. These are the types of setups that I trade. um how do I find you know how like I want to build a similar type of scanner for equities and also I I trade per what differences should I be aware of if I you know if I'm going to trade single name stocks stuff like that like I think if you can decompose your system into those underlying principles of like oh I basically trade intraday trend or you know multi-week momentum type of stuff or certain liquidity coins or volatility cluster you know whatever the you're the engine of your system is if if you actually know what that is and you can decompose it instead of oh I trade triangles then you you can move around a lot more flexibly than if you're just a just a chart pattern guy and it's like well this triangle was supposed to resolve but it's Saturday so the market's closed you know like at a certain point you you start hitting your head against reality if you just have like a super rigid price and pattern matching mindset to things. So, that's my pseudo um weekly wisdom to to wrap up this week. What have you what have you got for us, Don? Someone who's you've got alt in your name, so you clearly love altcoins and you've seen some cycles. If your argument is that it's happening in stocks at the moment, and someone's like, you know what, it.

[01:12:39]I've listened to enough episodes of Casual Friday, uh, and I like the video, subscribed to the channel, and I signed up to Kraken Pro via the ref link. I'm ready to capitulate in general and take some of this stuff. um and I want to participate in alt season even if even if it is not in crypto. Uh what advice not financial advice obviously but what wisdom would you share with those people?

[01:13:03]>> I mean just the general old season stuff probably like it has an end. Um like so you you play it while it's hot but then you don't get stubborn about it. I think that's like one thing um where like most people get get things wrong. Like they're like, "Oh yeah, I'm winning. I'm winning. I'm winning. I'm winning." And then suddenly they start losing and they don't take it as a sign. Like when the market is really good, um you should be winning, right? Um and you should be winning for a while. And if you start taking continuous losses on setups that you've previously been winning on, that is usually a signal that things have changed. So until that happens, you're probably good to go. And then when once that happens and like, okay, I'll I'll take the message and maybe I'll sit out for a little bit. I think that's just general like how you trade these things.

[01:13:58]Like you trade them while you're hot, like while you're running hot, and then you stop trading them the moment you start losing. and people get that second part wrong and just give back everything. Now obviously the stuff doesn't have to give back everything but um I think when the market changes there it's going to be quite significant but can also run much longer right especially given there's real stuff behind it not just made up or coins. Um, but as you've seen in the Trafy world with silver for example, right, that doesn't mean just because there's something real behind it doesn't mean it cannot go down a bunch. Silver's down what, like 50% almost. Um, like this stuff runs hot and you keep winning, winning, winning and then the moment you start losing is where you where you need to be like, okay, maybe I need to pivot to another area. And the interesting part that we've been having in Trafi World is that it's kind of been cycling out of like first like there there was the gold season, you had silver season, you had like you have all these kind of different um different areas of the market that just run at different times. Um and then it's just I mean it's this hot ball of money analogy that we used to use in in crypto when crypto was a thing. um like when when we were running hot uh that just goes from one sector to the other. So just kind of follow that um and then go with that. That's kind of like how I think about it. Um, now I'm mainly a crypto guy, so my advice is like any any comments that I make are like better suited for crypto, but like just given that it's trading so similar, I feel like the the lessons we've learned should probably apply quite well to to Trafi and have applied quite well just generally.

[01:15:55]>> Yeah, it's definitely that type of market. Um, there's a video on this channel somewhere which is like a guide to trading trending altcoins or something. I think it's like a one-off Monday video that I made many moons ago.

[01:16:09]Um, and I think that might be helpful for these types of conditions. It basically means like you have to the the super TLDDR of that video is you're going to have to pay up and eat on your entries because it's never going to pull back to the perfect high time frame levels that you want it to pull back to.

[01:16:25]You need to give it enough room to breathe because volatility is higher. So you can't go full ICT, you know, tick perfect trade management. And then as you mentioned, the most useful signal is when you when it stops working and you start getting punched in the face, you need to step the away. Uh and you need to kind of mentally account for the fact and also in your sizing and rebalancing account for the fact that most of these aggressive trend following strategies they have two big downfalls which is uh false starts. So especially if you're if you're trying to get in early on the trend a lot of trend following systems will just cost you money when they fire and no trend comes.

[01:17:06]And the second failure state is when you're trading like you know your entry is like a form of mean reversion you know like oh it's pulled back 3% or 1% that's an appropriate pullback and at some point that 1% is going to turn into 10% and you get carried out and and and that's actually just the cost of doing business. I don't think that's avoidable at all. As long as you can survive that and you know what the failure cases are um you're probably in a better position than most. And again, I'm I'm going to sound like I have AI psychosis, and I I most certainly do, but this is something where you can legit pick a, you know, pay the hundred bucks or 20 bucks in some cases, depending on your usage. Pick the smart model like a GPT 5.5 or an OBU 4.8 or, you know, a Kimmy 2.6 if you're an openw weight type of guy. And you can just literally have this conversation and say, you know, the these are the types of setups I like to trade. Uh what is, you know, what are the failure states of these types of systems? what does it look like when it goes wrong? And it's useful just, you know, you're not getting the thing to execute it for you.

[01:18:08]You know, build a trend bot, make no mistakes. That that's the type of like, you know, AI use that I think people fall into. But that there is a very useful kind of trade system interrogation function that they can serve where you're like, hey, if I trade if I trade these types of setups, what bucket does do do those setups fall into between mean reversion and trend and momentum and volatility clustering and flow effects, etc. And then once I'm actually taking these trades or executing that system, what do the failure states look like and what should I be ready for? You know, momentum, you're going to be buying the top and selling the bottom.

[01:18:45]Trend, you're going to have full starts.

[01:18:47]Mean reversion, at some point when you're picking up pennies in front of the steamroller, it's going to hit you. Uh, but it's really, really useful to actually know what those failure states are so that when they come up or ideally even before they come up, you're sized appropriately for them and you know that they're real as opposed to, you know, you win 10 trade.

[01:19:03]You know, the trading classic, right?

[01:19:04]You win 10 trades and then the 11th one you lose so much that it wipes out your uh 10 previous wins. that that's the kind of that is uh worth explicitly planning for and avoiding in my view.

[01:19:17]>> Well said.

[01:19:18]it. All right, that's that's all from us before you click off. Requests as always. Number one, please like the video if you haven't already. Number two, subscribe to the channel if you haven't already for some reason. If you listen to this every single week, which is the cadence of this show without failure, cough, nudge, nudge, and you still haven't subscribed, what are you doing? Please help us out and support the channel in doing so. And also, thank you to Kraken Pro for supporting the show. We talked about their CLI today.

[01:19:42]Um, Kraken Pro in general has basically everything from per to spot to futures to earn products to prop uh and a bunch of other stuff. I will also give you a teaser that uh trader main tomorrow is going to be putting out a tweet which basically says if you like Kraken, what do you hate about it? And if you don't like Kraken, why not? And what do you hate about it? And we're going to compile those and basically take those to leadership and you know use that to give a bit of a shake up and break out of um it's not an echo chamber but you know if you're on the inside of something it's sometimes difficult to see or understand what people outside of the ecosystem think about your product because you spend so much time talking to your actual users but there's a selection effect there where you may not be you may be just blind to feedback that doesn't surface. So, if you guys have anything, no matter how harsh, um, keep an eye out for that tweet, throw it in there, and I I will also make sure that that feedback gets escalated through our channel. So, that'll be a fun We'd really appreciate your input there. That's all from us. It is 3:00 a.m. Is it 3:00 a.m.? Yes, it's 2:54. My life is over. Uh, Don is just getting started. That's all from us.

[01:20:56]Hope you'll have a wonderful weekend and we will see you next I I will say next I would say next week but maybe next episode.

[01:21:06]Bye-bye.