Bitcoin Is Stuck... What’s Next?

29 Jun 2026 · 59 min · 17 chapters

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In short

Macro liquidity-driven risk-off is pressuring Bitcoin and crypto; Bitcoin may be bottoming but lacks a marginal buyer, so expect choppy sideways trading for 2–4 months. Also covers MicroStrategy/STRC stress and several AI-stock/crypto technical setups.

Guests

None listed in the transcript. Host is Chris (Trading the Markets). Mentions Real Vision contributors: Joe Bland (macro portfolio), Jamie Kutz (dashboard), Steno (alpha/pro dashboards). No guest bios provided.

Key claims

  • Global M2/liquidity contraction raises volatility (correlated with VIX spike) and drives “flight to safety” into USD and bonds.
  • Credit spreads are at historic lows, so this is liquidity stress, not credit crisis.
  • Bitcoin down due to USD strength plus MicroStrategy/STRC issues; bullish RSI divergence suggests a 3–4 month bottoming pattern.
  • STRC (yield-bearing preferred stock) fell below par (par 100 to ~80), pausing a major Bitcoin buyer (~96k BTC in 2026 acquisitions); not “FTX/Luna,” but sentiment/uncertainty worsens.

Notable examples

  • Dollar index breakout; VIX hovering ~19; target VIX ~15–16 and liquidity pivot.
  • Bitcoin range discussion: ~59.5k now; possible retest toward ~52k.
  • MicroStrategy sold ~$330M of MSTR shares, bought ~520 BTC to backstop STRC yield.
  • AI-stock binary risk: Micron earnings; Marvell entry ideas around ~220/10-week MA.
  • Crypto relative strength: Tron resilient; Hyperliquid (HYPE) needs support ~53.3; Venice weaker; Monero least-bad (~-2.5%).

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

Market Overview and Current State of Bitcoin

1:56 to 3:10

A discussion on the current state of Bitcoin and the macroeconomic factors affecting it.

“Not a happy Wednesday for the crypto markets.”

Understanding Liquidity and Its Effects

3:10 to 5:23

Exploring the implications of reduced liquidity on market volatility and asset prices.

“So the big story right now is liquidity or sort of lack thereof.”

The Broader Macro Environment

5:23 to 11:12

An analysis of the macroeconomic situation, including the dollar index and credit spreads.

“So that's why, you know, the dollar is going up.”

Implications of Current Market Trends

12:06 to 14:00

Discussion on the potential future market trends and investment strategies.

“And I want to see, you know, make sure credit spread stay stable.”

Understanding the Current Market Environment

14:00 to 18:25

Learn about the current macroeconomic factors affecting the crypto and equity markets.

“And so that's that's more what I'm getting at by buy the dip per se.”

Bitcoin's Price Trends and Indicators

18:26 to 20:56

Explore Bitcoin's price movements and key market indicators, including RSI trends.

“Hold on, let me go to daily time frame here.”

The Impact of MicroStrategy on Bitcoin

20:57 to 26:04

Discover how MicroStrategy's actions are influencing Bitcoin's market dynamics.

“we could break down below here and come back down into this range into the 50s.”

Addressing Concerns About Bitcoin's Stability

26:05 to 28:00

Understand the psychological impacts and market perceptions surrounding Bitcoin's current state.

“They've sort of created this cushion that's going to pay this yield.”

Current Bitcoin Market Situation

28:00 to 28:48

Discussion on Bitcoin's current low levels and market psychology.

“They have, like I said, they have a strategy in place to cushion this situation and pay the yield on this right now for the short term, for the foreseeable future.”

Lack of Catalysts for Bitcoin

29:46 to 31:36

Analysis of the current lack of buying pressure for Bitcoin and its impacts.

“I think it's important to note that this is not like a shock.”
Show all 17 chapters

Trading Strategies in a Volatile Market

31:37 to 33:38

Advice against trading in the current illiquid market environment dominated by market makers.

“It's honestly, it seems like a playbook at this point, like we just experienced the major drawdown, which probably shook a lot of people out.”

Analyzing Marvell's Entry Point

33:39 to 38:22

Discussion on potential entry points for Marvell stock amid market conditions.

“I want to take this question here from Loopy.”

Analyzing Hype's Market Performance

38:23 to 41:21

Evaluation of Hype's price movement and its position relative to moving averages.

“It dropped below, I believe it dropped below$60 during this show.”

Identifying Strength in a Down Market

41:22 to 42:00

Exploration of which cryptocurrencies are showing relative strength despite market downturns.

“We want to see it either bounce off of this 10-week moving average here or at the worst, not lose this sort of 53 level here and set a new lower low on this daily time frame here.”

Analyzing Market Resilience and Strength

42:00 to 45:30

Learn about which cryptocurrencies are showing relative strength amid market declines.

“Instead of looking at sort of how bad everything is, let's look and see at what is the least bad or is sort of showing the most relative strength, I guess, is maybe a better way to say that.”

Market Strategies and Cash Positions

45:30 to 49:52

Discover strategies for navigating current market conditions and advice on cash positions.

“This isn't even technically a mean reversion, let alone a trend reversal.”

Understanding Market Volatility

49:52 to 52:49

Gain insights into the volatility of the current market and the importance of liquidity.

“And guys, and I'm going to, I'm going to just touch on that.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:06Kris Bullock:Oh my god, I wasn't even ready to start. Happy Wednesday everyone and welcome back to another edition of Trading the Markets. If you are joining us on Yahoo or on X, please know that if you want to ask your questions live, you have to be an RV Connect member and above to ask Chris any questions you have by your portfolio, any charts you want to look at, or just any questions in general. You'll be RV Connect, and you can ask on Discord or on the platform. And right now is a great time to join because you can join RV Connect right now for$14 a month or$150 a year. So right now we have our best ever offer going on at Real Vision.

0:51Kris Bullock:Obviously, the markets are going crazy. A generational setup is forming, which is why we're offering the best get-in price right now. So head on over to realvision.com forward slash pricing for more information. That's deals on Connect, Alpha, and Pro. where we've been releasing a lot of new dashboards. Chris's new AI dashboard just went live yesterday. In addition to his crypto dashboard, you'll have Joe Bland's macro portfolio. You have Jamie Kutz's dashboard, which just went live today. Steno's alpha dashboard, the pro GMI dashboard, and Steno's pro dashboard as well. So there's a lot of live portfolios going on.

1:33Kris Bullock:In addition to a lot of tools that'll help you like take emotions out of this market and like navigate it well, which is like the GMI risk monitor tool and the GMI compounding tool. So a lot of new stuff hitting the website and a lot more coming too. So stay tuned for that. Again, realvision.com forward slash pricing for more information. Chris, happy Wednesday. Not a happy Wednesday for the crypto markets. Bitcoin is what teetering at the 60 ,000 mark, give or take last I checked. But what's going on with you?

2:10Bijan Maleki:Yeah, no, you're right. I think in order to kind of just paint a broader picture here, I want to spend a little bit of time starting out by breaking down what's going on in a more macro sense, talking about liquidity and M2 and sort of credit spreads and risk framework and all of that. Some of that stuff I touched on, those indicators on the AI show on Monday. And then later in the show, of course, we're going to get into Bitcoin and break that down. And I also want to talk about MicroStrategy and the STRC sort of saga that's going on and how all of that is contributing to Bitcoin as well. So, yeah, lots to break down for sure.

2:50Kris Bullock:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Before we came on air, you were saying, obviously, we're talking about the crypto markets being down, but the stocks are holding pretty steady, which is kind of anchoring everything. So, I mean, I know you wanted to talk about the macro before we kind of get into Bitcoin. So, yeah, let's get into it again. Guys, if you have any questions, just throw them in the chat and we'll get to them, of course.

3:14Bijan Maleki:Yeah. So the big story right now is liquidity or sort of lack thereof. We're in a contraction. And this yellow line here is the global M2, the big liquidity measurement that we all use. Several of us have slightly different variations of this, but they all kind of generally say the same thing. And right now, it's saying that liquidity has rolled over and is in a contraction phase right now. And so kind of to explain what this means or why this matters, I kind of want to zoom out and just talk about what's happening here. So when you have less liquidity, that means there's less money in the financial system.

3:51Bijan Maleki:And so when there's less money in the financial system, that increases volatility because you're, you know, think about it, like your order books, like you go on an exchange, there's just less people active on the exchange. There's less money in the order book. And so when there's less money in the order book, that means it takes less money to move the needle more. And so you get a buy, a big buy come along or a big sell come along, and that will cause a huge spike to the upside or to the downside because there's less depth in that book, meaning there's less liquidity in that book. And so less liquidity equates to higher volatility.

4:24Bijan Maleki:So you see liquidity going down. If you go over here and look at the VIX, this is why we got this big VIX spike over the last week plus up into the 20s. That's directly correlated. So again, less liquidity means higher volatility. And when you have higher volatility, big money doesn't like volatility. Institutions don't like volatility. And so when things are volatile, they take their money and they go and they flight to safety. They put it in things like the dollar and things like bonds that don't move very much because that way they can just sit on the sidelines and wait for this volatility to go away.

5:00Bijan Maleki:So that's why you have this dynamic here where, you know, again, liquidity down, volatility up. Then you get a spike in the dollar index because, again, people are flight to safety, you know, de-risking into the dollar. And then you also get bond yields going down because, again, people are de-risking into bonds. So this is the whole dynamic playing out here before our eyes. We're seeing all of this. So that's why, you know, the dollar is going up. When the dollar goes up, that's generally bad for risk assets like crypto. You know, so that's why crypto is being impacted by the also gold and silver and things like that also being impacted by the dollar going up.

5:37Bijan Maleki:But there's a separate dynamic going on here that's also kind of reflected in this in this Dixie chart here. And that is the basically the the differential, the real rate differential between the U.S. and the eurozone. Like the Fed got more restrictive than the ECB, which already hiked. So this is like an inflation rate differential between the US and Europe. And so that's also reflected. Like here's the actual, like this is the actual rate differential itself. The two-year US versus like the German two-year, which is kind of a good proxy. And it shows the same thing that the dollar is doing. It bounced, it's running up.

6:15Bijan Maleki:So we're seeing that. So that's reflected in here too. But nevertheless, if we look, the dollar has been in this range for over, well, well over almost two years now, basically. And it finally has broken out and broken out pretty significantly. And so that's causing a pretty big impact on things across the board. It's definitely impacting the foreign markets, the foreign exchange markets, things like that. So this is kind of the overarching macro situation. But there is some more nuance here that I want to point out because it doesn't necessarily mean there's like when when you see like risk off because of dollar spiking and you see, you know, volatility spiking and people getting out of markets and, you know, flight to safety in that scenario.

6:59Bijan Maleki:It's a different thing than, say, if it's a credit squeeze, basically. And so I want to I talked about a lot of these. I'm going to go back to this dashboard here that we talked about on Monday and kind of look at what's going on here. So within each of these risk indicators, we're seeing a pattern here. Basically, real yields are tightening. The dollar is tightening, which we know. And that's reflected in here in this real, what's going on with me trading here? We'll see restrictive real rates, restrictive dollar. But credit spreads are like totally fine. They're at historic lows. I don't know.

7:40Bijan Maleki:Can you guys see that? Is my screen acting funny here or is that just me? Anyway.

7:45Kris Bullock:Oh, yeah. It's your looks like it's your screen. There's like a little. Hold on.

7:49Bijan Maleki:Let me see if I can.

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8:53Bijan Maleki:Is it just my trading view tripping out or move this back? Yeah. Well, whatever. Okay. I'll see if I can work around that. Anyway, my point being, Credit spreads are at historic lows. So that's actually a good thing. CapEx continues to flow. AI stocks are largely stable. The de-risking is generally contained within a few sectors. And the fact that this is more of like a liquidity drain and not a credit stress situation, I think, is the big, important takeaway here. Like what we don't want to see is this number spike up because that's going to tell us that there's a lot more cracks and things are starting to crumble as opposed to when it's generally just like a liquidity squeeze.

9:34Bijan Maleki:Those are often more short term. They're more easily contained. The only thing we really have to worry about is like if the dollar continues to spike, you know, and continue to run, we might potentially see some like carry trade on wines in some of these foreign markets. But right now it is relatively contained. So So things are OK. I think you can also sort of view this through the lens of the fact that the small cap Russell 2000 index is still continuing to set higher highs, all-time highs. We're getting a correction in some of the larger indices, but it's limited to a few sectors. And I think we're seeing a rotation.

10:17Bijan Maleki:We're seeing a rotation out of some sectors and into other sectors. So things like financials are running well. Things like industrials are running well. And so it's not so much just like a broader correction across the board. It's more of a rotation and it's more dictated by a liquidity squeeze. So that's kind of the general environment that we're in. I don't think that this is necessarily anything catastrophic. I think it's just like it's just some perspective on what we're dealing with right now. So, yeah, like don't I think it's more of a I don't want to say it's a buy the dip opportunity necessarily.

10:54Bijan Maleki:I mean, things are going to continue to rotate. And I think you need to be careful about where you allocate your money. But I do think that this is something that, you know, could be fixed by just more liquidity in the system easily. And so, yeah, but otherwise, there's not really any like major cracks in the system that we need to worry about too much yet.

11:14Kris Bullock:So now, Chris, you said you didn't you didn't you don't want to say this is a buy the dip opportunity, but you got pretty close to it. So like, how are you thinking about it? And like, I know you went through that, but like, how close are you to like that verge of like, yeah, this is a buy the dip opportunity.

11:36Bijan Maleki:So, well, really what I'm going to look for is I want to make sure that the dollar slows down. I really, I want to see the liquidity pick back up. I want to see the VIX come back down a little bit off the ledge. It's hovering right around 19. You don't want it to be up in the 19, 20 range or higher. You want it to come back down into this 15, 16 range. So I want to see the dollar, I'm sorry, the VIX cool off a bit. The dollar cool off a bit. I'm sorry, not volatility, liquidity kind of pivot here and reverse a bit. And I want to see, you know, make sure credit spread stay stable. Also, I want to see just like real rates kind of become a little bit more favorable too, because they've really tightened a lot in the last few weeks.

12:22Bijan Maleki:And that's causing just like a macro kind of risk off impulse right now. And that's really what we're seeing is more of like a risk off impulse. And so that's contributing to, again, to the stuff like Bitcoin and gold and things like that. However, that's CapEx stuff is less impacted. That's why AI stocks largely are flat on the day. I'm going to just I'm going to close my trading view and reopen it here in hopes that it fixes this issue. But I can look at a couple other charts in a browser real quick. Like here's another U.S.-based liquidity chart here that's showing just U.S. liquidity specific to the U.S.

13:05Bijan Maleki:So we want to see this obviously pivot. A lot of this is kind of off the back of the Warsh speech and the things that he talked about, too. Even though he didn't actually implement any policy changes, he didn't actually come out and say we're raising rates. It was kind of like he put a lot of things in place, a lot of things in motion rather, without actually pulling any levers, so to speak. Just by his words, he created a lot of what's going on here that we're seeing. And I think this is on purpose, you know. And so I'm not surprised to see this. I do think that it's, again, relatively short-lived.

13:40Bijan Maleki:So maybe that's why I think of it more as a buy the dip opportunity. Again, obviously, again, do your own research. I'm not saying just go out and blanket buy whatever is down. But just the point, the larger point being, I think this is a temporary situation. It's not like a structural breakdown in markets that has it that's going to be like long lasting. And so that's that's more what I'm getting at by buy the dip per se. also I'm going to use this macro risk indicator you know that I made that I shared last week I want to see this pivot down and show that sort of the impulse is switching back to a more risk on environment I use this a lot for that and right now we're kind of at peak risk off you know so we want to see this and again don't really worry about the numbers necessarily that this is showing but more just look at the direction that we're seeing of this of this yellow line here, we want to see this reverse, like it's kind of at levels that it typically does.

14:41Bijan Maleki:We want to see this reverse and start pivoting back down, get back down below this moving average and show that sort of real rates are in a more risk on favorable type environment. Right now, it just, it makes way more financial sense to have your money in things like the dollar and more stable, sort of less volatile asset classes. And so that's why, that's precisely why we're seeing what we're seeing. That's why the dollar is going up. That's why bond yields are coming down. All of that stuff I just said. So and it's also reflected here in the real rates. They've also all just pivoted back up.

15:16Bijan Maleki:Everything is very tight, very restrictive. It's just a restrictive macro environment right now. That doesn't mean it's going to be that forever, but it's definitely a catalyst that's causing this larger rotation we're seeing in various equity markets and in crypto and things like that. So if you're sitting here wondering, why is crypto down? Why are my stocks down? What's going on? It's like, this is what's going on. So you can just sort of know that from a broader macro perspective, just conditions aren't great right now in this short term. They can change quickly, but that's where they're at right now today.

15:51Bijan Maleki:So hopefully that gives you some perspective on kind of why we're looking at the ugly last couple of days that we've had, maybe why we're seeing a bit of a correction in the larger S &P and NASDAQ and things like that because, you know, things flipped ugly over the last like few days to few weeks. So that's what's up.

16:12Kris Bullock:And I think a lot of this also has to do with just like, it's just the overall uncertainty going on with the geopolitical stuff and the Clarity Act. Like people are, I'm not even sure where we are with Clarity at this point. And I was watching Matt Hogan the other day on, I don't know, I forget who he was on with the other day, but he basically said it too, like markets hate uncertainty more than they hate negative news. And that's kind of what that's also adding into all of this.

16:39Bijan Maleki:Right, right. Yeah. And I think we're still seeing the larger, I think, whatever, investment community, if you will, kind of digesting what Worf said. And I think a lot of people are still trying to apply his future actions on the old Jerome Powell regime and approach to managing the Fed, the Federal Reserve and monetary policy, where, you know, I think it's important to understand that Warsh is a completely different way of going about this. And even if he does raise rates, you know, a quarter or a half a percent here and there and lower them, he's not doing it because of the approach that Powell used to take.

17:21Bijan Maleki:He's doing it because he has a complete, again, a completely different strategy. And it's going to be specific to what he sees and how he's trying to tweak things and massage things going forward. So he's fine with generally inflation running a little bit hotter. He's not necessarily looking to get things to 2%. He's fine with it running hot. He's fine with like focusing more on growth and having it sort of attack inflation from that standpoint. And so you have to understand that because even if he does raise rates, that doesn't mean the same thing that it once did. And so it's like people need to just chill out and kind of understand what's going on and not make such a big deal over it.

18:00Bijan Maleki:I think they're just making too big of a deal over everything that was said.

18:04Kris Bullock:You know they're not going to chill out and not make anything.

18:07Bijan Maleki:I mean, whatever. I know. Yeah. I mean, eventually they'll get it. They'll be like, okay, wait. He raised rates. It didn't actually do anything. They'll overreact in the moment or whatever. But again, it's just, yeah. Anyway. We digress. We digress.

18:23Kris Bullock:What's going on with Bitcoin?

18:25Bijan Maleki:Yeah, let's talk about Bitcoin. I mean, we know Bitcoin. Hold on, let me go to daily time frame here. So yeah, we're down right back. Oops, right back down at the top of the range or at bottom of the range, excuse me. Right back down at the bottom of the range. Bitcoin is being impacted doubly because we'll get into this in a minute. It's being impacted by this dollar index that I just talked about and this macro environment. In addition, all of the stuff going on with MicroStrategy certainly is not helping. So one observation that I'm making here, though, is despite price being right back down here at this range, a pretty decent bullish divergence here on the RSI, which is a, if you want to look for a sign of hope, I'll take it.

19:11Bijan Maleki:So even though we're right back down here, the downward momentum is quite a bit less than it was in this initial flush out. So, sure. And then again, same thing. If we zoom out to the weekly, we've got actually the same dynamic at play, although it's dwindling by the moment. But same deal going back to this previous low range here back in February, and then this current one here, we've still got a bit of a bullish divergence on this. Oops, come on. Yeah.

19:49Bijan Maleki:There we go. I don't know what's going on. You know, a bit of a bullish divergence here. So same thing. Even though it's ugly, we're back down here at the bottom of this range. Less downward momentum on this current flush out here. Like, let me get my highlighter on. So this flush out here, right here, is less momentum to the downside than this flush out here was. So again, we're seeing this all just kind of contributes to my thesis that this is a larger bottoming pattern that is going to carry out over the course of the next probably three to four months. and we want to see these bullish divergences, especially on the weekly timeframe, these bullish RSI divergences.

20:35Bijan Maleki:And as long as we continue to see the RSI just continue to kind of trickle upwards and have sort of lower, higher lows rather, and even higher highs on each sort of subsequent trip down to the bottom of the range, I'm okay with that. That's telling me that we're establishing a base and that this is just going to take some time. And we already know that there's a decent chance we could break down below here and come back down into this range into the 50s. We're actually in the 50s now as I speak. We're at 59 ,500 basically. So we are officially in the 50s in this moment. And we could come down into this lower range, like I said.

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21:15Bijan Maleki:So be mentally prepared for that. This should not be a shock to you if this happens. I've been saying this for months now. So as long as we kind of maintain some gently upward momentum from an RSI standpoint, I think we're okay. So yeah, I want to get to MicroStrategy because that's the other sort of big thumb on Bitcoin at the moment. And so I'll look at the MSTR chart briefly. That's not really the story, though. The MSTR chart has broken down even more than Bitcoin. It's actually set even a lower low. It's well down into its lower range already. I don't have lines drawn on here, but it's looking ugly.

22:02Bijan Maleki:And if you haven't been living under a rock, you've kind of heard what's going on with MicroStrategy and with the STRC saga, which let me pull up the STRC chart. Frankly, it's bad. So, and it's, it's getting worse by the moment as I'm, as I'm researching this, um, this morning. So, and it's just literally in a free fall at the moment. Uh, so par value is a hundred, it's down to 80. Um, so, uh, and STRC, one of the things with STRC that's, I think important in terms of how it relates to Bitcoin is STRC specifically was a massive marginal buyer for Bitcoin in, in 2026. They bought roughly 96 ,000 Bitcoin, about 55 % of strategy's total 2026 acquisitions was financed through this STRC issuance.

22:56Bijan Maleki:So this is major buyer of Bitcoin kind of disappearing. This is on pause now, basically. And so for those of you who don't know, what even is, I'm imagining a lot of you are like, what the hell even is this and why should I care? Does this mean everything is broken and it's going to go to zero? Or what do I need to know about this? What's the important thing?

23:19Kris Bullock:Yeah, because we're getting questions right now. Is this Cycles FTX, Luna 2.0? I think you should talk about that a little bit, yeah.

23:28Bijan Maleki:Yeah, so what kind of STRC was? It's a product that was, it's like a yield-bearing preferred stock for MicroStrat, for MSTR, basically. And so people could buy this and it would essentially pay a yield, like a decent yield, 11.5%, 12%, somewhere up in that range, I think was what they proposed. And also the idea behind it was it would sort of make for lower volatility as a holder of this compared to the actual volatility of Bitcoin itself. And so it was like a lower volatility way to get Bitcoin exposure. And it had a yield. And so it was basically that's what it was. but um so like what what happened and why um kind of a bunch of things happened all at once that that caused this this sort of peg to break if you will so it's for it to lose its par value um part of it was the fed stance you know the hawkish stance from the federal reserve um part of it was just um you know competitive i guess competition from other areas that were more stable and uh Maybe that didn't generate as much yield, but we're just more stable.

24:40Bijan Maleki:And so it's causing people to kind of want to get out of this. And then Bitcoin itself, the price of Bitcoin going down so much is putting strain on this. And Michael Saylor actually had to sell some Bitcoin to pay the yield on this. And even though it was a very small amount, I think it was 32 Bitcoin, something like that. They're a fraction of, you know, not even it was like a thousandth of one percent of their actual Bitcoin holdings. But the signal from him selling this broke the sort of, quote, never sell narrative that Saylor had sort of preached all along ever since he started MicroStrategy way back in the beginning.

25:17Bijan Maleki:He was, I'm never going to sell Bitcoin. We'll never do that. And so even though he only sold a teeny tiny amount, again, it was the more symbolic nature of it that kind of broke the whole narrative of all of it. Even though it's funny, MicroStrategy, I keep saying MicroStrategy, they're technically called strategy now, not MicroStrategy, even though the symbol is still MSDR. Anyway, they actually sold about$330 million worth of MSTR shares and put about$300 or so million into cash and turned around and bought another 520 Bitcoin recently just to kind of create a backstop to pay these interest payments instead of just selling Bitcoin constantly throughout.

25:59Bijan Maleki:And so they've stopped that strategy, but I think the damage is done in terms of, again, the symbolic nature of it. So they're not, at least for now, they're not going to sell more Bitcoin in the short term. They've sort of created this cushion that's going to pay this yield. But the problem is, as long as this number remains below par, remains 100 here, it's going to put an additional layer on Bitcoin directly. It's, you know, it's going to cause, it's just going to create a lot of negative sentiment. And it's going to create a lot of uncertainty, which, again, we were just talking about how market participants don't like that.

26:40Bijan Maleki:And what needs to happen is it's sort of unfortunately, it's kind of a chicken versus egg scenario. Like really what's going to fix this is Bitcoin needs to get back up to around the kind of 75 ,000, 80 ,000 range, which is the cost basis for strategy. you know and in doing that that will help stabilize this this get it back to par value but in order to get this back to par value or I'm sorry this has to get back to par value sort of in order for Bitcoin to get back so it's like one of these has to happen they're both sort of reflexive off of the other you know this has to get to 100 Bitcoin needs to get to 75 or 80 You need one to do the other and you need both to happen.

27:28Bijan Maleki:In other words, so I think what's ultimately going to happen is Bitcoin needs kind of an independent catalyst to come along and rocket it out of its stretch that it's in right now. It needs a catalyst to bump it back up around the 75, 80 mark that will help stabilize this, which will in turn help stabilize Bitcoin and make it sort of, again, more stable going forward. So in the moment, it's not, like I said, it's not existential. This isn't FTX. This isn't Luna. This isn't Bitcoin is going to zero. They have, like I said, they have a strategy in place to cushion this situation and pay the yield on this right now for the short term, for the foreseeable future.

28:11Bijan Maleki:It's only if, really, it's only if Bitcoin stays at these low, low levels for a long time and maybe never recovers or doesn't recover for several more months, that this will ultimately become more problematic. But right now, I think people are kind of making too much of a big deal out of it. And it's just like a psychological impact that's exacerbating itself. So people need to just calm down. This isn't going to break Bitcoin. It hasn't broken Bitcoin. And there are relatively easy ways for this to kind of get back into a safe condition um it's just not at the moment so everybody just calm down basically is the message here with this so yeah all right fair

28:57Kris Bullock:enough so it seems like strategy is getting stress tested right now kind of by i guess the complexity that is inherent in their whole strategy and how they operate. And one bad week in that strategy, or especially with STRC, can cause them to not keep up with those buys, right? So I guess that's when everything is fine, just not right now.

29:25Bijan Maleki:Yeah, exactly. Yeah, totally, totally.

29:29Kris Bullock:So a quick break in your regular programming. If you're serious about your future, grab my free report called Prepare for 2030. I think you've got five years to make as much money as possible. And this guide will help you navigate what's coming. The link is in the description. Download it now.

29:46Bijan Maleki:I think it's important to note that this is not like a shock. This is like a supply shock or some kind of structural problem with Bitcoin. What we're seeing is the bid is a pause. There's no catalyst for Bitcoin right now. There's no bid for Bitcoin. Not from strategy, not from institutions. Like if we look at ETFs, if we go over here and look at ETFs, we can see that they've been just unloading Bitcoin. So there's no sort of marginal buyer for Bitcoin right now. These are the ETFs specifically, though they've kind of leveled out. Like if I can kind of zoom in here. Oops. It's leveled out at least.

30:30Bijan Maleki:It's not sort of trending down as much. but we're not seeing a marginal buyer come from ETFs right now. So there's no marginal buyer in ETFs. There's not really any in DATS. We know there's not retail. So there's just no catalyst. That's Bitcoin's bigger issue is there's no reason to buy it right now. There's less of a reason to sell it, but there's no reason to buy it. And so that's the problem. And so as long as that's the issue. It's just going to plod sideways here. And it's going to be because there's no marginal buyer, it's going to be volatile. Like we talked about at the top of the show, less liquidity, thinner order books means higher volatility because less people are buying and less people are selling.

31:16Bijan Maleki:So you're going to have fewer people in the system on the exchanges, which means it takes less money to move the needle. So we're going to see big spikes to the upside and we're We're going to see a lot of just chop for the next, like I said, probably two to three to four months. So that's Bitcoin. That's the situation that we're in.

31:40Kris Bullock:Yeah, it seems. It's honestly, it seems like a playbook at this point, like we just experienced the major drawdown, which probably shook a lot of people out. and now at this point it's just like now it's going to be the plotting of the sideways and it's a patience game and some people are going to lose that patience and be shaken out a little bit more just until those few months end and we're right back to game on. That's what it seems like to me.

32:13Bijan Maleki:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. This is a good, like, I definitely want to discourage people from trying to trade this environment. These are exactly the types of environments that market makers thrive in because they're the only things going right now. They're the ones that are moving the price up and down into pockets of liquidity to execute their orders. And so, like, you're just trading against market makers and you're going to lose because they've got a lot more money than you do. And they can see everything mapped out and they know where to move the price, you know, even marginally. Market makers aren't going to dictate any trends.

32:52Bijan Maleki:They're just going to move the price a little bit here and there, up and down, chop sideways, just to kind of, again, execute their orders because that's how they make their money through these spreads. And so to be clear, they don't make money by liquidating you. They don't make money by taking your money. They make money from the spreads. So don't think that market makers are out there to destroy you. They're just creating a market. They're providing the market for it to exist while there's no other sort of buyers and sellers in place. And so we need them. But also, don't don't give your money to that.

33:27Bijan Maleki:Well, you're not giving your money to them, but just don't don't flush your money down the toilet, I should say, by trading against market makers right now in such sort of illiquid, thin, thin order book times right now. So, yeah.

33:41Kris Bullock:All right. I want to take this question here from Loopy. A little bit of an AI question, but, I mean, we can still do some TA on it, of course. Chris, can you see an entry point for Marvell? Yeah, let's take a look.

34:05Bijan Maleki:Well, this is actually pretty good what I'm seeing here. the fact that it's below its 20-day moving average. So that's already like a decent level. But let me kind of look at a few other things here first before I say that. So it's at a decent level on the daily. But if we switch out to the weekly here, clearly we're still very, very overextended, way, way above its 10-week moving average for that matter. So there could be still some more room to come down here. and given that, well, it's, I mean, with anything that we kind of talked about this yesterday on the show we did yesterday, right now, everything's going to be predicated by the Micron earnings call that comes out at the end of, at the close of markets today.

34:47Bijan Maleki:That's going to be the big binary event for all of AI stocks going forward. Like, so we need to figure, I would say don't do anything until we know how it stands with Micron. But yeah, so I would wait and see if we can get a touchdown to this 10-week moving average right around 220, give or take. See if we can get some more, particularly if the Micron call comes out negative or even neutral, you know, then that'll that'll cause all of this to kind of lay down a little bit. That said, a lot of the experts are saying that it's probably going to come in hot and probably even be bullish. Now it's going to have to come in extremely hot and way over expectations.

35:34Bijan Maleki:So even just like a little bit above expectations is probably going to result in a bit of a sell-off. So, because all of this stuff is, you know, quote, price for perfection, meaning they have to deliver and then some above and beyond everything that everybody is estimating and predicting in order for this rally to continue. And as soon as there's any kind of hint that either CapEx is waning or earnings are waning or margins are waning or demand is waning at all, even a little bit. You know how the I mean, the market over just like we looked at with the STRC thing, everybody panics. And so we'll get a big re-rating of all of this stuff.

36:14Bijan Maleki:And that's going to mean that likely we're going to see some pretty big mean reversions back to these bigger moving averages across the board here. And so I don't know what's going to happen. It's anybody's guess. I'm not even going to attempt to predict how that's going to play out. But that's what I would be wary of. So looking at this, yeah, maybe you get lucky. Maybe you get kind of a cheeky buy at around 220. but if we go back to the daily, well, we're sort of at the, yeah, we're at the daily 20-day moving average. So I'm like, if this doesn't hold, like right here, if this doesn't hold and it doesn't bounce off of this, then there's a decent chance it's gonna come back down to the 10-week here.

36:58So yeah, and it's a pretty mixed bag.

37:03Bijan Maleki:Like looking at all of kind of the AI market, although it's sort of gotten progressively worse since this show started. It was a little bit more even I think even like an hour ago. Like most of the power names probably more than half of the power names were in the green. You know more than half of the opticals were in the green. Semis were already ugly. They're continuing to be ugly. They're almost all entirely red. Whole Rack was doing okay. Chemicals were actually a little better too but even one more of those has flipped red. ENTG was green earlier today. So it's leaning more red today than green.

37:39Bijan Maleki:But yeah, again, it's all predicated on what happens with Micron at the end of the day. So everybody just be watching that. Like everybody be glued to the Micron call and the report that comes out of that. And you can look at the after hours trading after that, although that's a very illiquid market, but it'll give you at least a hint on what the money's leaning towards. And go from that. But right now, I wouldn't be buying or selling anything today, even though I probably shouldn't have said that. But there's a big event coming up that's going to create some volatility, particularly in AI stocks.

38:16Bijan Maleki:And I think that you should be focused on the outcome of that before you make any decisions. I'll leave it at that.

38:25Kris Bullock:All right. How about let's go on over to hype. It dropped below, I believe it dropped below$60 during this show. Let's see if we're on track to my road to$300 hype.

38:41Bijan Maleki:Yeah, we're seeing a pretty big sell-off kind of across the board that's literally happening as we're doing this show. It's getting uglier by the minute. Hype is, you know, hype did, okay, so hype peaked back, was it here or here? Or maybe it actually set a higher high here. So it actually peaked last week, which is pretty good. I like looking at this on the weekly timeframe. This is bullish to me because it had a correction here, came back down, mean reverted, touched its 10-week moving average, came back, set a higher high, and now it's correcting again, but it's still well above its 10-week moving average.

39:16Bijan Maleki:So now let's look at this on the daily. It's definitely rolled over on the daily. Not a great look. It's funny more this more looks like a double top now, but technically it did poke a higher high As long as it doesn't lose this level here that it came down to this 53 Well, hold on. We'll call it We'll call it Oops We'll call it 53 30 that's kind of the big line in the sand for me That's the support level if it loses this this will become a a rollover structure like this will have lost its uptrend It's already sort of technically lost its uptrend on the daily time frame, but it will have gone from uptrend to chop to having rolled over.

40:02Bijan Maleki:And so we don't want to see it lose that. I'm fine with it chopping for a little bit and consolidating off the back of a pretty big rally. Like, that's OK. We don't want to see it lose this level and start setting lower lows because then we're no longer in a larger uptrend. And if you can kind of look at this on the weekly. So, yeah, I mean, that would look like it would lose its 10 week moving average. it would kind of probably be on its way back down to its 20-week moving average. Well, this is still not the end of the world. I mean, technically, it's still in a weekly uptrend. As long as it bounces off this 20-week moving average, that's all the way down here at$45.

40:35Bijan Maleki:And that's a long way to go from$60 that it's sitting at right now. So yes, technically, it's okay. It's still not a good look. It would still be bad, in my opinion. So I think we're just seeing a broader consolidation here. This is certainly like consistent with what we're seeing across the board with other asset classes. So this is by no means specific to Hyperliquid. If anything, it's obviously holding up much better than most because it's still so far above its major moving averages and is still in an uptrend technically. So like if you compare this to Bitcoin or even most stocks right now, it still looks better than a lot.

41:15Bijan Maleki:So I'm not worried. It's still healthy, but, you know, we do want to see sort of a constructive resolution here. We want to see it either bounce off of this 10-week moving average here or at the worst, not lose this sort of 53 level here and set a new lower low on this daily time frame here. So, yeah.

41:42Kris Bullock:all right um is there anything else in the crypto world that i mean because i just looked as well just looked again to see uh from when we started the shit literally everything's in the red maybe like ave was you know in the green by like a percentage and two percent but is there anything else like here that is i know hype has been like obviously the story for crypto of 2026 basically but is there like anything here beyond that that we can, you know, take and maybe put to a watch list or keep an eye on you think?

42:19Bijan Maleki:Well, let's, yeah, let's see. Instead of looking at sort of how bad everything is, let's look and see at what is the least bad or is sort of showing the most relative strength, I guess, is maybe a better way to say that. And I mean, it's funny. I keep hammering. I come back to Tron. Tron is still, it corrected, it bounced off of its big weekly moving averages. It's kind of broken out. It's doing a retest. And I think if it can bounce here and continue to grind upwards, it still looks good to me. And also while everything is down 5, 6, 7, 12, 15 plus percent, it's only down 1 % on the day. So there's Tron for you.

43:05Bijan Maleki:It's just like, yep, cruising right along, no big deal. Canton is another one that has shown -

43:13Kris Bullock:It's like Corning in a sense, because I remember yesterday we were talking about Corning, and you're like, this is not going to blow you away, but it's going to be a steady grind. It's a good anchor. It's going to steadily go up. It's not going to go up as much as the others, but it won't go down as much as the others. It seems like Tron has just been doing exactly that ever since we've talked about it.

43:32Bijan Maleki:as a quick aside, Corning is up 7 % today while everything else is bleeding. So there's Corning for you, you know, just like you said. Um, so Canton is another one, um, that is just, again, showing some decent relative strength. It's only down about 1.8%. Um, it's, it's holding its major moving average as well. Now, now granted it's not doing much of anything either. So you could argue, yeah, it's only down, but it's not really going up either. It's just kind of literally going sideways. And that's true. But it's showing resilience. People aren't ditching it. They're not looking to panic sell it.

44:11Bijan Maleki:So I guess I want to look at Venice just to sort of see how it's doing. Venice is not faring as well as Hyperliquid in terms of structurally, because unlike Hyperliquid, it's already broken down out of its daily sort of pivot points that it had, you know, over the last month or so. It had a bottom here, had another bottom, it kind of double bottomed right here. And at this moment, it's actually broken down below both of those levels. Now on the weekly, it still looks okay, just like Hype did, but also it's below its 10-week moving average, whereas hyperliquid, I believe, is above it still. So yeah.

44:49Bijan Maleki:So Venice officially looks uglier than hype. And it's probably kind of coming back to earth a little bit. So we're going to see how strong Venice really is. We're going to see if it can hold this 20-week moving average and just maintain a proper technical mean reversion, kind of like it did back here, and keep this train going or not. So it still looks good. It's not a bearish divergence. I mean, this peak did, you know, show a higher high on the RSI. It kind of peaked right at a DMARC9 on the weekly. So it was due for a correction. Also, it was very, very overextended. There's a huge gap here.

45:26Bijan Maleki:So this is not like, again, the end of the world. This isn't even remotely close to a trend reversal. This isn't even technically a mean reversion, let alone a trend reversal. So like, it's still fine, but also it's a bit ugly. So again, it'll come down to does it hold here, does it bounce here, or does it lose this level? That's going to be the key. Obviously, this is something that if you're not in it, you would want to wait until there's some resolution here and some clarity in terms of which way the market wants to go with this. So this is much more of a wait and see. but yeah outside of that I don't know what do we got here boy everything else just looks terrible it's all down multiple percent the only other thing that's even down only a little bit is Monero but it's down it's only down two and a half percent on the day let's see and has been kind of holding relatively steady I mean it's below its moving averages but it's not necessarily breaking down like a lot of this other stuff is.

46:33So yeah, that stands to reason though,

46:38Bijan Maleki:because Monero has largely been pretty stable, not super volatile sort of throughout its history. Like if you kind of zoom way out or even just let me look on the monthly here, it just kind of sticks in a big, long sideways range. Like it doesn't really have big, crazy swings. It's just sort of plod sideways for a lot of its existence, really. So that's typical.

47:07Kris Bullock:Yeah, I don't know. I do want to take just a real quick comment because Jamie released a note today on the platform. Jamie's portfolio, his crypto one, his cash position is now the highest it's ever been since inception and he expects opportunities to emerge in H2.

47:30Bijan Maleki:Yeah, a hundred percent. I wish I was sitting in a market.

47:35Kris Bullock:You think cash is where you want to be right now.

47:36Bijan Maleki:Yeah, exactly.

47:37Kris Bullock:Right?

47:38Bijan Maleki:I wish like in my model portfolio, my crypto portfolio, I was in more cash than I am. I do have a cash position there, but it's only about a quarter and I wish it was more like half. um but yeah i i totally agree and and i agree with the timing too i think that h2 yes that lines up with my sort of october general time frame just based on the moving average trajectories and the price trajectory and things like that um yep also the four-year cycle but i'm not gonna i'm not gonna use that as a as a catalyst or an excuse necessarily but just yeah looking at the and just looking at the macro and everything too, I still think that everything is going to kind of more coalesce in Q3 and Q4 for sure.

48:25Bijan Maleki:So I agree with that.

48:27Kris Bullock:Could be a fun Christmas.

48:31Bijan Maleki:Yeah. Again, I think the main takeaway is be patient. Don't rush to buy the dip right now in Bitcoin or in crypto and think that, oh, you're going to miss the low and you better get in while it's good. You know, like I think it's going to be choppy and it's going to be bumping around these levels and maybe bumping around even lower levels for some time now. Um, yeah, it's even, it's going even lower. It's now down to almost 50, 50 ,000. So yeah, we're, we're officially bumping down into this lower range. We'll see where we close the day out. I mean, it's only a, it might end up only being a wick, so we'll see.

49:09Bijan Maleki:But, um, yeah, we're, it's not a, not a good look right now. Um, and we'll just see how it goes. So I think, look at this, if we do get down into this lower range and, and kind of cement into this lower range, that's a decent, you know, think of that as a decent opportunity. That's not like a panic capitulate panic sell type thing. Please don't do that. Um, it's more of a, you know, this is what, this is what Chris has been talking about all this time, you know? Um, and I think that this is where you would, um, you know, like a good DCA strategy would probably serve you well in a, in a, in a sort of structural regime like this.

49:52Yeah.

49:52Kris Bullock:And guys, and I'm going to, I'm going to just touch on that. Stick to your DCA strategy too. Don't be like me following your strategy to a T. And then the minute you saw a$73 Solana, you full ported the rest of your cash. Yeah. Don't, don't do that. Just stick to your strategy. Okay guys. That's the best advice I can give you because I wish I had more cash right now for that to DCA. It's a bit small on my phone. Is that 55K level the one to DCA in at? The question comes from Kinos Theory.

50:32Bijan Maleki:Yeah. So the range I have, like right now in this moment, it's sitting at 59 to 50. I have the bottom of the range all the way down at about 52, 289. Obviously, that's kind of an arbitrary number. What I'm basing that number on, though, is the bottom of this range from this structure back here, this big sideways structure that we had back in 2024. This was like a huge, a very significant amount of trading activity. And this gives you clear sort of structural support and resistance levels based off of this. So the bottom of that range got all the way down to around 52 ,289. Call it 52 ,000. Call it 50 ,000 if you want.

51:13Bijan Maleki:I mean, give or take. We're not, we're not, I'm not saying that the actual bottom is 52 ,289. Like, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that that's the general kind of ballpark range that, you know, we might find a low in. So yeah, or not. I mean, again, for all I know, this, what we're looking at right now in this moment turns out to be a wick and this is the lowest it ever gets. And I'm wrong. And next thing you know, we're back up at 75 ,000 in a week from now. But that also doesn't mean go full port in. It just means that be ready for volatility, be ready for chop. Because again, the whole thing is the market is very liquid right now.

51:57Bijan Maleki:The order books are very thin. You're going to see the volatility because of that. So don't assume that because suddenly we're back up at the top of this range, that that means we're off to the races. You have to dig deeper. You have to understand why that is that way. And it's because of the volatility and the lack of liquidity, not the opposite. But once we see liquidity coming in, once we see new highs in liquidity, once we see money coming in through the federal banking system and all the liquidity levers where money can come from, and you see a bid from institutions, from ETFs, and you see retail coming in, that's when you know that we're starting to, the bottom is in and we're starting to rally.

52:41Bijan Maleki:So don't just look at price alone and think that it's good. There's a lot more that goes into it and you have to make sure that you are factoring all of that into the equation. So, yeah.

52:52Kris Bullock:All right. All right, everyone. We'll be back on Monday. for our world according to AI to talk more, do more TA in the world of AI. And of course, we'll be back again on Wednesday for our Trading the Market show. Until then, guys, don't fuck this up. Head on over to realvision.com forward slash pricing and get yourself a Connect membership. Join us starting at$14 a month or$149 or I don't know how the math works out. I think it's like$149 for the year. Come on in, join us and connect. You'll get access to three portfolios and they're dynamic portfolios. So I just want to say they're not set in stone.

53:37Kris Bullock:So if you're like just coming in now, don't think like you missed it because you see like Marvell up like 200 plus percent and things like that. These are our contributors. They're in the markets every day. Chris, Andreas, Julian, Jamie. these guys are looking at charts like honestly probably like every hour um so they're like they're they're always thinking of trades to take they're having things on their watch list that they're always talking about in their reports or in chris's case in the reports and in discord or on on shows as well so keep that in mind when you're coming in uh because while you may have missed marvel you'll be right in time for the next marvel uh or the next you know rocket lab or all of that.

54:26Kris Bullock:So just keep that in mind about these portfolios. And if you have any questions, Chris is very active in the discourse. You can always ask him a direct question about his thoughts or, and he's more than happy to be transparent about that guy. So don't fuck this up. We'll see you guys again on Monday. Have a great weekend, everyone. You obviously enjoyed the episode because you're here with me at the end, but listen, don't forget to go to realvision.com forward slash join and grab a free membership. It's an incredible community packed with alpha, great investment ideas, and the research that you need to help you unfuck your future.

55:01Kris Bullock:So get started now. Go to realvision.com forward slash join.

From the publisher

Kris Bullock and Bijan Maleki break down the latest action in crypto as bitcoin struggles to hold the low-$60Ks, bears stay in control, and traders look for what could finally spark the next move. They’ll cover the key charts, the altcoins showing relative strength, and the headlines driving sentiment across crypto. Now is the best time to extend your Pro membership: The biggest sale in Real Vision's history is on. For a limited time only, we're dropping membership prices to their lowest levels ever. For more details, visit realvision.com/pricing.

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