Trading the Markets: December 10, 2025

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1:20Thanks a lot.

1:27welcome back to trading the markets i'm nico bruga filling in for bijon and as always we are joined by chris bullock chris it's uh one of those days in the market where it feels like everybody's just waiting on the fed decision so um why don't we start there yeah yeah no poly market So, of course, yeah, like you said, FOMC today, markets are always very flat on these days. There's very little going on. And even it's kind of funny this time around, the decision is really all but a foregone conclusion. I mean, it's a 97 % odds that it's going to be a 25 basis point cut, which everybody is expecting.

2:07So obviously that's priced in. I don't really think we're going to see too much of a market move right now off the back of that, obviously unless there is no cut or it's a higher cut than what we're all expecting. But when it's a 97 % odds like this, like in this case, everybody knows what's going to happen. And so the markets aren't really going to react very strongly outside of that. But yeah, like we said, 97%. Looking at charts, we can see the dollar's down a little bit today, which is nice. Liquidity is up a little bit today. But stocks and everything else are generally flat on the day. or if slightly up, slightly down, not really doing much at all.

2:46Same thing with crypto. Crypto is also very flat on the day. Some of it's in the red, some of it's in the green. But really, again, a boring day, unfortunately. So there's not a ton to talk about, but there are a few things that have jumped out. And I wanted to touch on, well, there's a few majors, one being Ethereum. Ethereum actually looks really good off the back of its major upgrade that it had last week. It's really the first one of the big bunch here of kind of the top five or 10 to break back above its 50-day moving average after coming out of the lows back in November. So it's showing a ton of strength right now as far as the majors go.

3:22Yes, there's other smaller caps that are doing this as well, but Ethereum definitely has the momentum. BNB, I think, is another one that is also doing well. Also, it's down on the day and it's not up at its 50-day, but if we go back and look at the weekly timeframe, both BNB and Tron are also well above its weekly 50-week moving averages too. So they have a ton of strength right now. But again, Ethereum is the name of the game. And I think that really, to me, is bullish. That bodes well because it's nice to see stuff outside of Bitcoin doing well. It's nice to see participants still active in the space.

3:59We're actually seeing ETF inflows coming in for Ethereum as well. Like if we look at the ETF inflows, it's having a decent up week after having been relatively flat over the past few weeks and having some down weeks as well. It's got a nice bump this week. And so, again, it's not just institutions. And if we look at Bitcoin, conversely, it's hardly anything going on. It's very flat in terms of its ETF flows, whereas at least Ethereum has a nice bump. So it's more than just the crypto people that are paying attention to what's going on with Ethereum. And I think that's noteworthy. So, yeah, I like what I'm seeing.

4:38But outside of that, it's pretty boring. Well, I got a question from the audience already. This comes from Bob1337. Hi, both. What do you both think of Zcash? Now, I know privacy coins are one of the things you're paying attention to. So I guess let's start with Zcash. Yeah, great question. and I have been paying attention to it and it is a strong narrative. I actually did a fair bit of research. It's funny, that's a very perfect question because I was looking at this just prior to the show. And so all the privacy coins are a little bit overbought right now. Like let's look at Zcash just quickly on its USD pair, but I want to look at it on its Bitcoin pairs too.

5:18So looking at Zcash, it had a huge run that we know of and it's way overbought. It's had a nice recovery, though. I mean, a nice correction, rather. And it has started a new uptrend. It reset its DMARC count after peaking here. It hit a 12 on the sequential, not quite a 13, but then it retraced and fully started over its setup count. So it's back down to one and two now on the weekly time frame. So the bottom could be in for Zcash in the moment. But I want to look at these against their Bitcoin pairs because there's a bit of a story here. So hold on. see cash. Kind of the same thing. Really, the privacy market is crushing it right now.

6:00And I think it's going to continue to be a strong narrative. I think going forward, you know, with some of the legal issues that are going on in the EU right now, with tracking wallets and tracking activity and things like that, we're seeing a pretty mad rush into this sector. And I think that's only going to continue to gain strength. However, it's like, yes, the bottom is in here, I think, but I'm still, it, this is a huge rally. Like if we compare this to say Monero, for example, Monero, not quite as well, not quite as funny on the daily, it looks a little more healthy, not quite as big. Monero is actually at a nine setup count.

6:37So it's, it's sort of in its, it's, uh, I guess bearish count, you know, finale right now, if you will. And so according to the DMARC indicator, it looks like it could potentially roll back over. I don't know. It's going to depend, obviously, all this is going to depend on what Bitcoin does ultimately, but also what Zcash does too. But one thing I wanted to touch on was one that's kind of flying under the radar right now, and I'll get back to Zcash in a second, but one that's kind of flying under the radar is basic attention token. And this came to our attention last week. It actually is benefiting from this privacy narrative too.

7:11We know the Brave browser is a favorite of privacy-focused individuals. And while it's been in a long, long-term downtrend against Bitcoin, we can see for, well, quite some time. I mean, going way, way back, really, I mean, till the previous peak, you know, in 2021, it's been in a very, very long downtrend. But for the first time, it's reversing this pattern. You know, it's broken above all of its major moving averages on a weekly timeframe, mind you, like 10, 20 and 50 week moving averages. So this is a big move off of the back of big volume. And so, you know, and I read too that the user base, the active daily users kind of on Brave Browser, eclipsed 100 million, and it pretty much caused their token price to double.

7:57And if we kind of look at this on the daily timeframe, we can see too that it also, unlike most crypto assets, are way above their 50-day moving averages. We know Bitcoin is not even close to it. ETH barely popped above it, where if you look at that, you know, So it's, I mean, it's above all of them. And all of them are in the right order. All of them are, you know, basically pointed up. And it just looks really healthy. And I think that this is probably going to continue too. And one thing that's interesting with basic attention token is its market cap is so much lower than the likes of say Monero or Zcash.

8:31Like Zcash and Monero are top, you know, top 20, top 30 token in market cap. Basic attention token isn't even in the top 100. I think its cap is sitting around 400 million or something right now. So there's a ton of upside potential. I feel like with this asset, I feel like, yes, it's had a big rally, but in terms of like its upside, it's not even close to over, you know, overbought or you're late to the trade necessarily or anything like that. Yes, it does have a DMARC9 sell signal right here on the previous week. And yes, it is down from there. But it's got a bounce too. And so, you know, kind of similar to how Zcash and Monero both were kind of right on the back of DMARC9s.

9:09We're seeing a bounce across the board on all three of them. I don't know. It remains to be seen if the ultimate correction is in or if there's more downside to come. That'll again be dictated by Bitcoin. But I think that the privacy sector is a place to, you know, focus some attention on right now. I think there's interesting things happening here. I think it's got a lot of strength. And BAT actually, like I said, has my attention the most because of how far lower it is in terms of market cap than the other two. And so this could be a decent play. I'm going to keep a close eye on it and be following it as we go forward too.

9:45So I'd like to see this whole big, long trend finally reverse and get the 50-week moving average flipped back up too against Bitcoin. And I think it could potentially be off to the races after that. 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. Really, really interesting. I mean, I haven't even thought about that token since 2020, I think, or 2021. You know, I just...

10:21Right, yeah. And people just, for what it's worth, people should know. You get this for just using the Brave browser and allowing certain ads. It's not like you have to go out there and buy it. You can just inherently get it, which is quite interesting. Have I ever downloaded it? No. So I am an idiot, obviously, but I will be changing that shortly. it's not my default browser but I do have it, I do use it it's funny, I use all the browsers honestly, I'm kind of a DJ Edge, Chrome, Firefox is my go-to, but Brave's in the mix too and I use all of them and they're all good for various things but yeah, it's a good product and I think, again, it's something to keep an eye on because this is a pretty significant long-term trend reversal.

11:08And I'd like to see how it continues for sure. Absolutely. Especially since there's real, you know, utilitarian purpose to all of it. It's not just another meme coin or whatever. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Outside of that, we can talk about Bitcoin for a minute. We know kind of based on the Monday show that we're up against a bunch of technical hurdles and on our slow grind back up to 100K, I feel like is really what we're looking at right now. on the daily and the weekly things look good. We're, you know, pushing, plugging along in the right direction, I guess. The moving averages are doing what they need to do.

11:46We're bouncing them off support. The next big resistance level is this diagonal trend line here. I know I've got a bunch of stuff going on. Let me kind of clean this up. We've got this big diagonal trend line that basically started from the peak back at the beginning of October. It's touched it here in the end of October and then here about halfway through November. So we've got a nice solid trend line. And we've worked our way almost back up to it. We didn't quite get to it, but we were rejected yesterday and we're down on the day to day. So, of course, this is the next hurdle that I'm looking at for us to clear.

12:17Once we can flip this to support, then, you know, there's a few more moving averages. We still have the 50-day moving average up here right around the 98 ,000 level. And, of course, the big psychological 100K level that we're all looking for. And I still believe that, you know, we're going to make it back up there. over the course of, this could be kind of the Santa rally I'm looking at, you know, that everybody talks about between now and Christmas or towards the end of the year. I think it's going to work its way back up to 100K. Likely top out around there is my base case, maybe 102, 103. And then I think we're still in for some choppy waters through the end of the year and into January before things ultimately kick off.

12:59I mean, really, we're waiting for the Fed to make some changes in earnest. And of course, this rate cut, which we're expecting today, is obviously a step in that direction that is welcome. And we need that. But we really need to see liquidity coming in. We need to see liquidity coming into the banks and banks extending more credit. And that's kind of what we're waiting for. And that really hasn't materially changed yet. And I think until that does, it's just going to be a bit of slow grinding price action. And again, the rate cut helps. But really, a quarter percent isn't anything. We need two or three or four more of those at least, you know, before we really start to get some momentum built, I think.

13:38And that's going to go for all markets, really. But that's where we're at right now. So it's just kind of a slog at the moment. But I suppose it could be worse. Yeah, and we have the holidays coming up to distract us all. So hopefully everybody remembers to go and touch grass and stop looking at charts for at least like a week. it does your mind and body good um let's think about some of the uh fan favorites like solana and sweet um yes so uh solana and sweet are both lagging a little bit like they're still a ways away from their 50-day moving average and we can see they're basically just trending sideways i mean yeah just chopping really not really doing much not really establishing any much any semblance of a trend reversal even.

14:27Like they started to for a minute. It was nice to see, but then it gave it all back, double bottomed, kind of set a little bit of a higher high, a little bit of a higher low, but again, nothing special really. And the moving averages say it all. They're basically converged and they're just both completely sideways. And the same thing with SWE, if I'm not mistaken. SWE is a little bit better. It's managed to kind of put a little bit of separation with the moving averages, but still, again, it's a ways away from its 50-day moving average, where if you go back and look at Ethereum as the benchmark, this is really what you want to see.

14:56I mean, this is the true representative of a strength, you know, in a chart right now. And this is kind of the benchmark and this is what I'm looking for. And we're not really getting that out of much else. I mean, even going back to Bitcoin, it too looks really just like SWE does. I mean, honestly, if you look at here's Bitcoin, here's SWE, they're damn near identical, really, you know, in a way. And so ETH is leading the charge again off the back of that really good upgrade. and so that's nice to see but there's not a lot of new money coming in. The reason ETH is doing well is because it has ETF exposure.

15:32Of course, Solana does to some degree too to a lesser extent and SWE even does to a lesser extent but yeah, I think that's why that's happening and in terms of the money within the crypto space it's all just kind of, you know, like we talked about on Monday the hot ball of money just sort of bouncing around from one project to the next and it's like one week, it's one thing. The next week, it's something else. RECT is actually doing well today. RECT actually looks good as far as like a small cap. It's actually above its 50-day moving average and is well and truly in an uptrend. You know, all of its, well, these two major moving averages are in uptrend.

16:09So I like what I'm seeing with RECT. Hyperliquid is another one that's kind of catching a bit of a bounce today and a much needed bounce because it's been ugly, honestly. it's suffering from it's not the token unlocks I want people to understand that the token unlocks really are not the big player here the fact is it just has competition from new players in the space and that's what it's dealing with right now and so I think we're in the process of you know the players going and just checking out the new platforms and seeing what's what and right now Hyperliquid is suffering from that. Now the open interest is still by far the highest on hyper liquid, even though the market share has evened out pretty much between, between the top sort of three or four, but the open interest still is very much, uh, the highest on hyper liquid.

16:59So it's got the biggest player still active on hyper liquid. Um, but yeah, otherwise it's just suffering from competition and it remains to be seen how that's going to play out. We could see, um, another favorite emerge, but, uh, you know, in the form of lighter possibly. But right now, it's just going to be a bit wonky for Hyperliquid while everybody decides which one they like. And then once they sort of figure it out, they're going to either go back to Hyperliquid or they're going to stay away. So we'll see. Watching the open interest, I think, is going to be the key. The market share is one thing because that's the sort of aggregate users, daily users.

17:36But the open interest is going to tell you where the big money is going. And once we see the big money shifting from, say, Hyperliquid over to Lighter or Aster or one of these other ones, that's going to really tell you the whole story. And so that's what I'm waiting to see. And in the meantime, the price itself is a little bit less relevant. So yeah, I'm, again, focusing on the open interest, but we'll see where that goes. I was just thinking, it's so funny that ETH is sort of the powerhouse right now, considering three months ago, four months ago, definitely six months ago, everyone was like, ETH is dead.

18:10It's all about Solana. Maybe it's all about SWE. And now Solana and SWE and Bitcoin are all playing catch up in their own way to ETH at the moment. Right. Just another reminder that the markets are never predictable like you want. No, I know. I know. I do feel good about the ETH upgrade, though. I like the fact that some of the technology that they've introduced allows better security functionality in the Web3 wallet apps. It's going to allow people to use pass keys, which will make it so that they can... It makes it so that if they're not using a hardware wallet, for example, they can still sort of lock down their funds and prevent their funds from being stolen via a hack of the app itself or their computer, for example, or something like that.

19:00And it's just going to increase the security on the apps, which is a huge benefit. And it's going to prevent people from losing money. And that's always a good thing. And so it'll be cool to see the apps start to implement this going forward, hopefully sooner rather than later. And people will be able to just like authenticate their transactions through MetaMask or Phantom via their face, you know, or their fingerprint through their phone and things like that. So that's a good thing. That's what we want to see. And that's a really, really solid development. And so I'm not totally surprised to see ETH doing well.

19:35And of course, some of the other benefits are, you know, the L2s are even cheaper and faster still off the back of some of these upgrades. So that's, of course, going to benefit it too, though less directly. But yeah, it's all good. It's a good thing. Yeah, and the other thing, too, to keep in mind is tomorrow, Solana's breakpoint kicks off. So we might be getting news out of the Solana ecosystem that maybe we see a similar sort of bounce with Solana, depending on what the news is over the next three days. That would be good. We could use it. Oh, yes, absolutely. I still think we're not going to see any real fireworks, though, until we get some macro changes, you know, some Fed changes, some liquidity changes, things like that.

20:18Absolutely. Every little bit helps. Yeah, and I think that's a perfect place to end it for today, considering the fact that in a couple hours we get the decision. And then tonight at 7.30 Eastern for Alpha members and above, Ash will be interviewing Jamie Coots to get his live reaction to it. So I think that will be very needed for us all. And then also for the crypto heads out here, Tomorrow at 4 p.m. Eastern, Jamie Coots will be interviewing Santiago Velez about XRP. This is where everybody throws monkey poo at us because we've said XRP out loud, but really excited for that deep dive. Always an interesting one to discuss.

21:02With that said, Chris, thank you so much for making what is otherwise a boring day of anticipation waiting for the meeting later today. a little bit more enjoyable than it otherwise would have been. And we'll be back Monday with the normal Discord show. And Dijon will be back next Wednesday for the next Trading the Markets. Thank you for watching, everybody. 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.

21:43So get started now. Go to realvision.com forward slash join.

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