Trading the Markets: October 15, 2025 | Kris Bullock and Bijan Maleki

0:00Hey everyone, as you know on this podcast I bring the best guests in the world that nexus of understanding of macro crypto in the exponential age of technology. If you're enjoying the show, a quick five star rating goes a long way. It helps us grow and keep these conversations coming with the best guests in the world. Thanks a lot.

0:46Happy Wednesday, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Trading the Markets. Of course, we're joined by Chris Bullock, aka BlastoPlass. And if you just saw that nice, beautiful little intro, there's something coming to Real Vision. So you can join right now on the waitlist, sign up. I hear there's prizes. I hear there's an intern going rogue and giving away even more prizes. So you'll want to join the waitlist and see what's coming. So just head over right now. You can scan the QR code and get ready for what's coming. Chris, happy Wednesday. Happy hump day. What's going on today? Well, I want to start off with an ex-post that basically sums everything up perfectly right now.

1:34We're, in fact, we're basically the ball in a ping pong match, you know, being batted back and forth. And this tweet here sums it up perfectly. Basically, it just says, China hopes market pressure will push the U.S. to negotiate. China expects recent trade tensions to hit U.S. markets, hoping losses will prompt President Trump to offer concessions. after pausing mutual tariffs earlier this year, both sides remain cautious amid renewed trade frictions. So basically, that's what's happening. The catalyst from Friday that caused everything to kind of melt down is still happening effectively. They're still going back and forth.

2:10And I think we're going to continue to see volatile price action, very choppy price action until there's some sort of resolution, whatever that may be in this case. And so in the meantime, it's kind of just wait it out. Don't do anything. I don't really think either. Well, I don't think Trump is going to let the markets fully nuke outside of just some wonky wicks to the downside here and there. And I think we'll see some kind of resolution sooner rather than later. So with that said, to sort of preface everything and kind of set the tone, let's look at what that translates to in terms of charts.

2:47And so right now we're seeing, and And I'm going to kind of focus on lower timeframes this week. I want to kind of stick to the four-hour timeframe. I was using that on the Monday show too. And the reason for that is because there's just a lot going on right now. And again, things are very choppy. And I think it's a little bit more useful to zoom in and see things slightly more granular right now to kind of get a sense of just what things are doing structurally. So we know we had a decent bounce Sunday that came into a nice Monday recovery. And then since then, we've rolled back over again. And we're sort of retesting the range lows, I guess, if you will.

3:23But we're starting to see some bullish signs. And actually, some of the other big altcoins like ETH and Solana, which I'll get into in a minute, look quite a bit better structurally than Bitcoin does in this moment. But we had a bounce back down to these range lows. Currently, it's holding as support. And we've got a nice bullish divergence flag here that is forming, that is signaling that momentum could be starting to shift back to the upside so that it's sort of, again, giving weight to this idea that this range low is going to hold as support. However, I have talked about, I do think that we've got this other low here and then this ultimate low here, you know, back on, what is it, the beginning of September.

4:04and I do think that this is kind of ultimate final support and what I mean by that is we might occasionally see a wick or two lower but as long as it doesn't really start having meaningful closes below say this level here I'm not really going to worry about it I you know we might see some some people freak out we might see some ugly wicks to the downside but as long as they're just kind of intraday wicks again don't worry just kind of again write it out and and it'll be fine I think also outside of that, we're seeing some decent macro stuff starting to form. I wanted to touch on, like the dollar index had a nice reversal and it's funny, like, yeah, it's shown some strength here.

4:45It kind of reversed its trend on the daily timeframe. But if you look, we've got a structure here of, let me grab this tool here. You know, we've got basically a series of lower highs and lower lows. And this was actually even lower still, and this was a lower high, and it's rolling over. So despite it being in a temporary uptrend, and you can see it's even been going longer than that, the larger trend still remains slightly to the downside. And I do still think, my base case still is that we will see this dollar index continue to go down. Meanwhile, we've got a nice little uptick in liquidity here.

5:23And then also in terms of liquidity. We've got the three-month rate of change. Like this had barely started to tick up on Monday. And now on Wednesday, it's ticked up even further. So kind of a promising sign there in terms of the rate of change. That's what I've been looking for was a bottoming in this and, and, you know, a reversal. And this is, this is showing us that basically the foot is, you know, the accelerator is starting to get pressed in terms of the liquidity environment. And we're starting to see more, more come into the space. And then not only on the three-month, but also on the year-on-year, it has also ticked back up too, and it has a nice reversal as well.

5:59So I'm optimistic. I'm optimistic that the conditions are being further laid for continued upside. And yeah, I like what I'm seeing there. Also, we touched on the ETF inflows on Monday, and I wanted to kind of revisit that as well. We had an ugly kind of down week last week, obviously, as we know, that were sort of net outflows. But since this new week has started, we've got actually a net inflow on both Bitcoin and Ethereum. We've got 102 million net inflow on Bitcoin and, you know, 236 million net inflow on Ethereum. So we're starting to kind of reverse that ugliness we're seeing. We're starting to see TradFi dip its toes back into the crypto space a little bit in terms of the ETFs.

6:42So this was a promising sign. I did say, I remember on that show too, that, you know, there was a decent chance we would see some outflows, you know, for a day or two, but that likely we, you know, let's wait until the, let's see how the week finishes out and see what that looks like, you know, come Friday or even next week. And so, we're still net down on the week, but, you know, a net up day at least is a step in the right direction. So, I like what I'm seeing both in terms of Bitcoin and Ethereum on that front. And then finally, one of the other things I wanted to touch on is AI stocks continue to rally and continue to surge against Bitcoin.

7:18So this chart here is sort of an aggregate of about 25 AI stocks weighted and measured against Bitcoin. And we can see that it's been in a solid uptrend since May. And after a slight dip here at the beginning of the month, it's just been killing it. It's been cooking. So AI stocks, man, I keep coming back to AI stocks are the new alts. They're kind of the place to be in a way. And, you know, don't fade that. I think that it warrants paying some attention to what's going on in that sector because clearly it's doing better than Bitcoin. and it's probably going to continue to, you know, until Bitcoin really catches a bit and goes on a serious run.

7:58And we see that it's sort of done this in the past where it'll run for some months, six months plus, and then Bitcoin will, you know, Bitcoin will do that. It'll do its thing and it'll rip and just blow AI stocks out of the water for then another six or eight months. And so it's sort of going in these cycles, but, and maybe that'll come to an end soon because we can see that they're about this long, you know, in each of these stretches before Bitcoin just rips. So maybe this is foreshadowing, you know, a reversal in Bitcoin and another leg up, which I think we all think is coming. So, yeah. Anyway, that's where things are.

8:35Fantastic intro. No, fantastic intro. Love that Walter Bloomberg tweet that you shared to kind of break down where we are and just remind us that we're all pawns in this game, right? Right, right. That's the game that we are in. Just a reminder, guys, you can post your questions for Chris on Twitter or X or also on the live platform. We'll take as many as we can. And also this show is free every Wednesday. But if you want to get our longer TA show, you want to get access to Chris's entry-level crypto portfolio and Joe Blant's entry-level equity portfolio and direct AMA, just head over to realvision.com and sign up for RV Connect.

9:15Connect here is how you get access to all of these contents. So let's dive into a question. You kind of addressed this already, but I want to address this more directly because Fernando is asking a question I think is on everyone's mind. Hi, guys, where do we go from here after the Friday wipeout? Obviously, Friday, we had the largest liquidation event in crypto history. I've been hearing conflicting theories that this is the start of a bear market, while others say it's just noise. We'll appreciate your non-financial advice. Chris, what do you have to say to Fernando about where we go from here after that wipeout?

9:54I remain firmly in the this is just noise camp. I don't think that this is the start of a bear market. It doesn't make sense from just a larger macro standpoint and a longer term. I can still make lots of arguments for why all financial markets are going to continue well into the upside, well into next year even. And so it just wouldn't make sense for crypto or Bitcoin or anything to be starting into a year-long bear market phase while there's all this macro information pointing to continued upside for everything going for some time now. And I think it's important, too, to compare it to the previous four-year cycles and note that in sort of the timing bands for when the crypto market in, say, late 2021 and in late 2017, the macro picture was much, much different.

10:44Everything was very overheated. Everything had been running for some time already. And, you know, there were, you know, hawkish pivots. There were, you know, rate hikes starting, basically, and things like that. And we're still like in a rate cutting phase and are going to be in a rate cutting phase for some time. where, you know, Jerome Powell just earlier this week was talking about ending QT. Now, that doesn't mean he's going to immediately engage in QE right away necessarily, but ending QT is not something that they do in an overheated market where everything is about to peak, you know. And so nothing from what I'm hearing from Powell, from the Fed, from the liquidity environment, you know, from like the PMI, none of that is saying that like everything is cooked.

11:26It's more the opposite. It's all saying that we're kind of just getting ramped up. We're still in sort of even this sort of macro spring-summer season type regime, as opposed to fall-winter, like we were, again, in late 21 and 2017. So there's just no... Outside of a few ugly technical indicators, like bearish divergences on weekly timeframes and stuff, and of course, the fact that the previous two cycles did sort of peak around the same time is the only thing that's sort of lending itself to that argument. But again, remember that the reason those cycles peaked at around this same time, those last two times, was driven by the larger macro environment, not anything specific to do with Bitcoin or like the halvings or the four-year cycle or anything like that.

12:13Those cycles were dictated by the macro, not the other way around. And so the macro has changed for this cycle. Hence, so has crypto, so has stocks and everything else. So that's why I'm firmly in the camp of this is just noise in the moment. And like we started off with the show, like that announcement, we're being batted back and forth between the US and China right now. And the markets are just kind of flapping in the wind until there's some kind of agreement that can come into place. And then I feel like things will rip again. So that's where I'm at. Very nice. So you actually also answered another question within that answer that you gave.

12:48So Ruth, he definitely touched on your question on Q4. So it seems like, so the other part of her question was, do you agree with Julian and Rao that the bull market extends into early 2026? It seems like you're kind of leaning towards that way based on what you said, but I wanted to ask you that a little more directly. Yes, definitely. And I can, I mean, it's premature, but I can make arguments for why it might go even later into 26, potentially into late 26. And it's funny, like my current sort of base case, if you will, that's floating around in the back of my mind is I think we have a strong run that goes maybe into Q1, possibly into the early stages of Q2.

13:33I won't be surprised to see potentially a reasonable size dip through the summer months like we've typically had the last two years in a row where it's just kind of chopped sideways from say April to like September and then Q4 just rip again. I could easily make a case for that. And part of the reason I come back to that, I keep coming back to that, is because we know that, one, there's a lot of regulatory legislation that's working its way through Congress that won't come into play until next year. We also know that Jerome Powell's term ends in May of next year. There's a potential scenario where he doesn't even stay for his full term.

14:11Now, that's up to him more so than not. But whether he stays until May or leaves early, we know that the next Fed chair is very highly likely going to be very pro-crypto and very pro-Trump in terms of like continuing to run the economy hot. And so once that sort of formally comes into place, then that's going to continue to provide momentum to the crypto space and to just equities and risk assets in general. And again, none of that happens until like Q2 of next year. So that's why potentially we could see things continue to run, especially if some of those regulatory legislations come into play and we get like a market structure bill and things like that that actually sort of start to stabilize the markets and cause things to keep running.

14:59So I don't know how that's ultimately going to play out, but a lot of this is, again, floating around in the back of my mind. And it's a logical argument for why things could play longer than they typically would or that we would think they would. Yeah. And you'll definitely want to keep an eye on our content because I'm sure Raoul and Julian will be looking at this and will be letting us know when that time is approaching, especially with the macro investing tool. So keep an eye on those. So Chris, I actually wanted to take also this question from Mohis. Apologize if I'm mispronouncing that, but he has a question about alt season and he wants to know, does alt season mean the end of the cycle?

15:40Like, Is that the final leg up? Been thinking about that. This is my first cycle. 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. Have you ever wanted to trade Bitcoin but haven't dared try? With Plus500 Futures, you can trade crypto without the hassle of opening a wallet. With just a few clicks, you can register and start practicing with their free and unlimited demo.

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17:04So, I don't know. I feel like the term alt-season sort of means something different to everybody that you ask. And some people say, oh, we've had little mini alt-seasons that last a week or two or three here and there. And then other people say, oh, alt-season lasts six months and it's sort of what this is all about and what it all kind of culminates in. I feel like it's funny. I almost feel like people need to get that word out of their mind. Like, I don't think about alt-season. Just like everything is generally like if you kind of go back and look at how this four year cycle has played out thus far, it's just kind of gone in little cycles where Bitcoin will run for a little while, also run for a little while, Bitcoin run for, you know, and so on.

17:45And it just kind of keeps repeating. And sometimes alts run together with Bitcoin. Other times they don't. And so I think but in general, if you've been in the right alts, you've either been generally going up most of this time or if you've been in the wrong alts, it's generally been going down most of this time. And I think this four-year cycle is different than previous four-year cycles for two very big reasons. One, there's like 10 times more alts this cycle than there was even last cycle, if not even more. I mean, I'm just pulling this number out, but there's a lot more. So that means the pie is that much bigger, which means there's that much more money that has to come into the alt sector in order to move the needle, really.

18:24And so you have this big dilution happening with alts. And then on top of that, you know, it's been very, very focused. It's been very kind of sector-driven. Like we've had meme coins run because we're going on this meme coin rally with, you know, Solana blowing up and things like that earlier. We've had, you know, DeFi blowing up here and there on occasion. We've had some DEX tokens and stuff blow up here on occasion. But really, I feel like you need to kind of just get the idea out of your head that we're going to have this broad-based alt season where like literally everything is just going to blow up like it did last four-year cycle.

18:59I don't know that that's really going to happen. I think that this time around, you need to be a lot more selective and you need to just kind of do your homework. You need to be on top of the, there's really been only about 50 or so assets on an ongoing basis that I think have outperformed Bitcoin for the better part of this year. And, you know, you need to kind of just be active and be looking at those and be focusing on things like the, uh, like the altcoin season index on coin market cap and like, and on our shows, you know, the Monday show that we do where we literally break down all the good stuff that's been, that's been running for, for months now and, and really just kind of be focused on it and narrowed on that.

19:36And don't, don't try to sort of front run an alt season by betting on something that's been going down for months and months on end, assuming that we're going to get this big mega rally and it's going to make back up all those losses and go on and do another 10 X from Like, I feel like if you are approaching alts in that fashion, you're playing with fire, honestly. Like, you know, I think it's better to just be focused on the stuff that has been doing well for the last six to eight months, that has been outperforming Bitcoin for the last six to eight months. And know that those are likely the ones that are going to continue to outperform and just kind of focus your attention on those.

20:12well said well speaking of alts that are doing very well and you know kind of alluding to your ai uh talk at the beginning of this show here adam spear has a question about just that so most alts are still struggling following the crash but tau has recovered and accelerated do you think this could be a breakout all over the coming weeks i think ral interviewed barry Silbert. Yes, he did, Adam, and about Tau a while ago and highlighted great potential back then. What are your thoughts, Chris? Let's take a look at that chart. Yeah, so let's look at, so I got the Tau chart here. Again, this is on the four hour, just because we're sort of focused on the immediate right now.

20:52It obviously blew up or melted down rather like everything else did. It has had a nice recovery. I fully acknowledge that. From the research that I've done, from the insiders that I've asked, I kind of know some people in that ecosystem. This is largely off of the back of DCG, of Barry Silbert's company, announcing that they filed for a BitTensor ETF. And so this is, I think, largely speculative price action based on that. And that outside of that, there hasn't really been any fundamental change with the way the BitTensor blockchain runs. We know there's still some kind of issues with sort of the internal incentive mechanisms and things like that, you know, that has resulted in a lot of validator selling, basically validator selling their tokens, which is, again, resulting in sort of downward price action just to kind of pay for their operations and things like that.

21:47So I'm still waiting for some kind of underlying fundamentals to change in the BitTensor blockchain before I think it's really going to rip. But obviously this is a good sign. I think, too, of course, if the ETF gets approved, that's an even better sign and that will juice this asset. But that's probably months away still. And so it's not going to surprise me if some of this, you know, rolls back over and kind of round trips a little bit. I don't know that it's going to fully round trip everything. I think it will sort of trend with the rest of the market. But in the immediate, I don't know that this announcement is going to be enough to sustain Tau, you know, over the coming weeks.

22:26And in fact, since it's rolled over here on the four hour already, I would kind of wait. Like if you're not in it, I don't know that I would jump in right now. I would sort of wait to see if this is going to reverse and see where this settles before buying because it might fade based on the hype, you know? So we'll see. All right, let's head over to Gary Hollins's question. What's your current view on micro strategy? I've traded it over the past couple of years, but what about your thoughts on a hold longer term? Would you rather hold Bitcoin over MicroStrategy? Personally, yes. I would rather hold Bitcoin over MicroStrategy.

23:04I'm not a super expert on MicroStrategy, but I've been following Jamie Kutz's work a lot on it and talking about MNAV and everything. And his take, I'm going to kind of defer to him on this, but he actually removed it from his pro-crypto portfolio fairly recently. And his take is that it's not going to outperform Bitcoin for the duration of this cycle. Maybe over the longer term, it will, because it kind of will make up some of those losses in the bear market phase and in the sort of accumulation phase of, say, the next four-year cycle. It might gain some of that ground back. But say, between now and, you know, whatever, whenever Bitcoin sort of peaks, quote-unquote, whether that's three months or six months or nine months from now, you know, his take is that Bitcoin will outperform it during that span.

23:52So, again, he's the expert on this more so than I, and I'm going to defer to him, but that was his take. So, yeah. All right. Great. Thank you for the question there, Adam. And everyone, thank you for the questions. They're great questions. Keep them coming. So, this next question comes from Benedict Mitchell. Bitcoin, ETH, and SOUL, and others seem to be lagging significantly when compared with the NASDAQ, especially since the weekend. Oh, yeah, definitely since the weekend. What do you think will get confidence back into the crypto market? How long will crypto continue to underperform?

24:30Well, I think crypto will continue to underperform until there's some kind of a trade agreement in place. I think that the underlying fundamentals, the framework for crypto to run are in place, you know, based on some of the macro stuff that I talked about at the top of the show. But I do think that because crypto is the furthest out the risk curve in terms of, I guess, risk assets these days, they're going to continue to be the most volatile sector until we get some sort of stability in the market. And even with the stock market, I know it's I think it will continue to be volatile as well. Yes, it's up now.

25:06Yes, it's done well, although it was down yesterday, if I'm not mistaken. I know I have a couple of stocks that were down yesterday. And so anyway, I do think that we'll continue to see volatility in general across the board, even though we have a nice green day in stocks today. I'm not expecting that to just be up only from here either. So yeah, again, it's all really down to the trade agreement, honestly. Yeah, and I feel like a lot of AI, you know, the AI stocks especially are kind of taking a lot of that thunder from crypto. Because like you were saying, they move like altcoins. Some of them move like meme coins.

25:43and it's pretty crazy to watch. And also just a reminder, we did share, if you watch our weekly TA show on Mondays and if you are watching it on the platform, you can head over to that show and in the comment section, I shared Chris's AI stocks watch list. So you can check out all the AI stocks that are on his watch list by just checking out that link in the comment section of the last video. Okay, this question comes from Leandro. McEnroe, D-Bridge is looking like a quality pick and shovel in the Solana ecosystem. Do you have any thoughts on that? That's pretty new to me. I don't think I've heard of D-Bridge.