November 24, 2025 • 31 mins
Bitcoin just erased an entire year’s worth of gains—and took a chunk of the Trump family’s fortune with it. In this episode, recorded Monday, November 24th, 2025, we walk straight into one of the most violent phases of the current crypto cycle and unpack what real capitulation looks like when leverage, politics, and AI hype all collide.We start with Bitcoin’s historic rout. After spending 2025 grinding higher on institutional optimism and spot ETF euphoria, BTC has crashed from an October peak near $126,000 to a terrifying low around $80,548. That breakdown doesn’t just sting; it retroactively wipes out the entire 2025 bull thesis and pushes year-to-date returns negative. We explain why the break of the “new floor” at $97,000 mattered so much, how the $80,000 support level became the final line of defense, and why a deeply oversold RSI reading of 26 is both a potential bounce signal and a warning that a structural bear market could still be ahead. You’ll hear how a failure to hold $80,000 could, in some of the more extreme technical models, open the door to 60% more downside toward the $32,000 zone.From there, we lift the hood on the mechanics of the crash. This isn’t just “people selling”; it’s a leverage-driven cascade. We break down more than a billion dollars in liquidations, with over half a billion in Bitcoin alone, and explain in plain language how margin calls, forced selling, and derivatives positioning can create a self-feeding downward spiral. You’ll learn how negative funding rates, collapsing futures open interest, and a heavily skewed options market—with traders paying rich premiums for puts—signal an extreme risk-off environment. We also walk through how delta hedging by options dealers turns fear into actual spot selling, effectively turning protective puts into gasoline poured on the fire around the key $90,000 and $93,000 levels.Then we follow the money into the ETF arena and institutional flows. The same U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs that powered the 2025 bull run are now bleeding. We look at sustained multi-billion-dollar outflows, including BlackRock’s transfers of thousands of BTC and tens of thousands of ETH to Coinbase Prime and roughly $2.5 billion in redemptions from their products alone. Combined with other issuers, spot ETFs have seen about $3.5 billion pulled in November, making it one of the worst months since launch. We frame this not as simple profit-taking but as institutional capitulation and mandated de-risking in a macro environment where the Federal Reserve may delay rate cuts and global liquidity is thinning.That brutal macro meets a very specific story: the Trump family’s crypto-linked wealth. We outline how a highly concentrated ecosystem—Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT), Trump-branded meme coins, World Liberty Financial, and mining stakes—has seen more than a billion dollars in paper wealth evaporate since early September. You’ll hear how DJT stock cratered from post-merger highs above $43 to around $10, erasing roughly $800 million from Donald Trump’s stake, and why a company with under a million dollars in quarterly revenue was ever valued in the billions. We look at the crashes in Trumpy and WLFI tokens, the drawdown in American Bitcoin Corporation, and how this all showcases the dangers of tying political brand, speculative tokens, and leveraged mining to a single “crypto always goes up” narrative—even as Eric Trump publicly insists this is a “great buying opportunity.”
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It is Monday, November twenty four, twenty twenty five, and
if you have been anywhere near the screens lately, you
know that the last few weeks have been well a
shockwave across the digital asset space. This isn't just volatility. Yeah,
this feels like capitulation.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
That's absolutely right. I mean we're navigating what you can
only describe as extreme market conditions. Bitcoin has suffered a
well a historic route. It's wiped out all of its
hard won gains from twenty twenty five. What started the
year with all this institutional hope, all this bullish momentum,
It's now become profoundly defensive.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Any sentiment is just god.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Sentiment is defined by one key characteristic right now, unadulterated fear.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
So we have a massive amount of material to unpack
today in this rundown. Our mission really is to connect
three enormous, interconnected themes that are dominating everything right.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
First, we're going to do a forensic breakdown of Vicoin's
shirt plunge. We need to go beyond just the price
on the screen and look deep into the driver's market.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
That's what signaling the intense pain exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
It reveals the real mechanics of this downward spiral.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Okay. And second, we're going to move from those macro
mechanics to a very specific, very high profile story of financial.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Contraction, the Trump families crypto linked to wealth.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah, we're going to detail how billions in paper wells
built on these really concentrated bets have basically evaporated in
a matter of weeks.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
And then finally we'll shift focus to the alt coin ecosystem.
And it's a story of contrasts. Really. You have this
institutional panic and massive d risking on one side, and
on the other strategic contrarian accumulation, specifically in ethereum, and
the emergence of these powerful new AI driven projects that
(01:42):
seem to you know, completely defy the current fear index.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Let's start with Bitcoin then, because the price action isn't
just a data point. It feels like the shockwave driving
every other decision in the market. Right now.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
When we talk about a shockwave, we are talking about magnitude.
The market had established this, this psychological stronghold forcoin. You're
the ninety seven thousand dollar mark.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Right that was the consolidation range e and was watching the.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
New floor, the new floor exactly, and we watched that
level break with frightening speed. Bitcoin briefly touched eighty nine
thousand dollars, which confirmed the structural breakdown, and then recently
hit an extremely worrying low of eighty thousand, five hundred
and forty eight dollars.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
That five hundred and forty eight dollars number is so
critical not just because it's a low, but because it
retroactively just invalidates the entire twenty twenty five bull run
thesis for so many traders. It pulls the coin's year
to date performance into negative territory, which.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Means anyone who bought bitcoin at any point this year
is now sitting on an unrealized loss, assuming they haven't
averaged down aggressively.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
And the psychological impact of erasing an entire year's worth
of games, Yeah, you can't overstate.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
That, you really can't. And when we zoom out and
look at the total market route, the figures are just staggering.
Since bitcoin's peak of one hundred and twenty six thousand,
two hundred dollars back in October, we've seen over a
trillion dollars in value just limited across the entire digital
asset space This isn't the gentle correction of a healthy
bull market. This is a systemic leverage driven cascade, and.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Leverage really is the engine of this crash. We've got
data from coin Glass showing that total market liquidations just
bleue past the billion dollar marks.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
A billion, and Bitcoin contributed a massive chunk of that, right.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Five hundred and sixty nine point three seven million dollars
at that total. For those who aren't steeped in the
market mechanics, liquidations are a forced sell off of these
leverage positions.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
And they're often triggered automatically when margin requirements aren't met.
It creates this this self feeding downward pressure that just
accelerates the whole collapse. So domino effect is Nigel Green,
the CEO of de Vere Group, explain this perfectly. He
emphasized that when people borrow heavily use leverage to magnify
their gains, any unexpected reversal forces the exchanges to just
(03:55):
close those positions right to prevent further losses, and this
forced selling floods the market with supply at the absolute
worst possible time, which pushes prices down faster than any
organic selling pressure ever could.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
That process of forced selling is what defines capitulation. Yeah,
and you can see it reflected perfectly in the mood
of the market, the fearing greed index. I mean, we
use it as a thermometer for market psychology.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
It plunged, It plunged dramatically to a reading of eleven.
A reading of eleven is not just fear. It's deep,
bone chilling, extreme fear territory.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Historically, though, are reading that low can sometimes signal a bottom,
can it? It can?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
It often indicates a momentary bottoming process because it suggests
that almost everyone who wanted to sell in a panic
has now done so. It implies emotional exhaustion.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
But that's just sentiment.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
That's just sentiment. Yeah, the technical structure suggests we are
in very serious strouble.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Okay, let's talk about the charts, because despite that deep
over sold signal, the outlook is well. He called it defensive.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
The word defensive is key. We completely lack the characteristics
of a healthy bulltrend, you know, higher highs and higher lows,
sustained volume on rallies. That's all gone.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
And bitcoin is now testing that critical eighty thousand dollars support.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Level aggressively testing it and that level has immense psychological
and structural importance. It was major resistance earlier this year,
and now it's basically the final line of defense for
the entire twenty twenty five narrative.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
So failing to hold eighty thousand dollars is the difference
between a painful correction and what an outright structural bear market?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Potentially, yes, But let's look at the momentum data, because
you mentioned that exhaustion might be near right the RSI,
we look at the Relative Strength Index the RSI, which
measures the speed and change of price moves. It hit
twenty six, twenty six. To put that in context, that
is one of the deepest over sold readings we have
seen all year. Anything below thirty signals oversold condition.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
So the selling pressure could be reaching exhaustion.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
It suggests the price movement near eighty thousand, five hundred
dollars might be unsustainable in the media short term.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
So we have two conflicting signals here. We have extreme
oversold conditions suggesting it bounce is statistically likely. But then
we have this critical structural support at eighty thousand dollars
that if it breaks, signals.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Disaster precisely, and that's where the dire warnings are coming from.
The most traumatic technical forecast we've seen circulating suggests that
if the eighty thousand dollars support level fails decisively.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
And we're talking a weekly close below it, yes.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
A weekly close. If that happens, the current technical structure
implies sixty percent more downside as.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Possible, sixty percent sixty percent more downside from eighty thousand
dollars that would take us down near what thirty two
thousand dollars. That's the number that is a cataclysmic forecast.
What structural failure supports that.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
It's based on analyzing the sheer magnitude of the breakdown
from one hundred and twenty six thousand dollars peak. If
the eighty thousand dollars level doesn't hold key long term
moving averages like the two hundred week, they all come
back into play.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
It's a complete repricing.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
It suggests the market would need to reprice based on
a complete liquidation of the entire twenty twenty four to
twenty twenty five growth story. It's not a prediction, it's
a model of maximum possible pain if the structure fails.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
It paints a picture of extreme anxiety. But this is crypto,
isn't it. Even in the middle of all this chaos,
you still have the massive bulls taking in absolutely contrarian stance.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Oh absolutely, the billionaire class remains undeterred. Cameron Winklevoss of Gemini.
He took to social media to offer this wildly bullish counterview.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
What did he say?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
He claimed, perhaps defiantly, that this was the last time
you'll ever be able to buy bitcoin below ninety dollars.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
I find that fascinating. That level of conviction is essential
to the crypto culture, but it stands in such sharp
contrast to the financial reality facing the biggest players, the institutions.
The question isn't just who is buying, but who is
aggressively not buying right now? And that brings us directly
to the institutional flight.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
The absence of institutional demand is arguably the most nificant
factor driving this plunge. We know the narrative that propelled
us earlier this year was the launch of the US
spot Bitcoin ets.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Right the flood of traditional finance capital, that thesis seems
to be failing dramatically right now.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
City analyst Alex Sanders put a really fine point on it.
Saying that ETF flows, which he called the main driver
of prices this year, are now drying up completely.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
It's more than just drying up, though, and it's reversing.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
It is reversing. The seven day average for US spot
ETF flows remains firmly negative. This is sustained net selling
from TRADFI allocators.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
So they're not buying the dip.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
They are not only reluctant to add exposure into this
straw down, they are actively withdrawing capital. The lack of
that incremental institutional buying just reinforces the whole problem.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Okay, let's put some numbers on this, specifically looking at
black Rock, which is kind of the bell weather for
the entire institutional world.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Blackrock made two major transfers to coinbase Prime. They deposited
twenty eight hundred and twenty two BTC valued at about
two hundred and forty three million dollars and thirty six
two hundred and eighty three eighth valued at over one
hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Which are just massive, strategic movement.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Huge, And while it's not immediately confirmed as selling large
transfers to custody platforms like that often precede distribution or active.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Liquidation, and the redemption figures seem to support that idea absolutely.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Black Rock alone has recorded two point five billion dollars
in redemptions this month. When you combine their figure with
other issuers, US Spot ETFs have seen about three point
five billion dollars in total withdrawals just this.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Month, three and a half billion dollars in November alone.
How does that compare historically?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
It's significant. It makes this the second largest monthly outflow
figure since February, which was right after that initial post
launch excitement wore off.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
So the institutional conviction that was built up all year
is just evaporated.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
It's not just profit taking. It feels like capitulation driven
by de risking mandates.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Okay, so institutional money is fleeing through the ETFs. What
about the leveraged trader in the derivatives market? Are they
trying to buy this dip or are they equally fearful?
Speaker 2 (10:05):
The derivatives market is screaming risk off. We're seeing futures
open interest or OI just drifting systematically lower.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Which means persistent risk reduction.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Traders are not attempting to catch the falling knives. They're
not adding exposure into weakness. They're systematically unwinding risk closing positions.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
And we can see that reflected in the funding rates too.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Right correct, funding rates across the top five hundred assets
have shifted decisively into neutral to negative territory.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
And when those rates are negative, it means people are
basically getting paid to short the.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Market, or at least there's no cost to hold a short.
It confirms a broad cooling in leveraged long demand and
a massive defensive shift. There is zero conviction to buy
here with leverage.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Now let's talk about the options market. This gives us
insight into how the pros are hedging and it reflects
an extreme bearish outlook right through the twenty five delta scue.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
The twenty five delta scue, yeah, it's a way to
measure the difference in implied vaut latility between calls and puts,
and when the skew remains negative across all maturities, it
means traders are paying a much higher premium for downside
protection for puts than they are for upside participation. It's
a hallmark of extreme bearissed positioning.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
We saw specific data on the one week tenor being
particularly aggressive.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
The one week tenor should a premium of roughly fourteen
percent for puts. Think of it like buying fire insurance. Right.
Traders are willing to pay significantly more for immediate downside
protection because they anticipate a further collapse and soon.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And this demand for downside protection creates a really dangerous
mechanical feedback loop that actually amplifies the selling pressure in
the spot market. Can you walk us through that mechanism.
It's technically crucial.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
It's a textbook example of delta hedging, and it's basically
a self fulfilling prophecy. Okay, here's how it works. When
a sophisticated trader buys an aggressive put option, a contract
giving them the right to sell at a lower price,
transferring risk to the option dealer.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
So the dealer's now short. They've taken on a lot
of short.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Exposure precisely, and to remain delta neutral, they don't want
to take a massive directional bet. The dealer has to
hedge that risk.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
So what do they do?
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Since the price is falling and the putz are gaming value.
The dealer must sell an equivalent amount of futures contracts
or perpetuals in the spot market to offset their risk.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
So the very act of hedging against the price drop
causes more selling in the underlying asset.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Exactly, the more the price falls, the more puts are bought,
and the more futures the dealers have to sell to
stay neutral. It's a massive mechanical source of selling pressure
that is entirely independent of fundamentals.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
It's a vicious, self reinforcing downward spiral.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
That's exactly what it is. And we saw this play
out precisely around that psychological ninety thousand dollars level.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
It data confirms it absolutely.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Once Bitcoin failed to hold the ninety three thousand dollars level,
demand for put premium at the ninety thousand dollars strike
just shot up. This tells you exactly where the pros
had concentrated their pain point.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
So they used the options market to bet on ninety dollars.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
K failing, and their hedging action helped ensure that failure
happened faster.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
That's a devastating insight into how professional positioning can just
amplify market weakness and that volatility. That rapid destruction of
value leads us directly to our next major theme the
highly visible financial pain being felt by specific high profile holdings,
namely those linked to the Trump family, and.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
This is where the story shifts from these macro market
mechanics to the individual consequences of speculative concentration. The recent
crypto route has has levied a significant financial hit, reducing
the Trump families overall net worth by well over a
billion dollars since early September.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Over a billion dollars wiped out in just a matter
of weeks. That's a staggering rate of wealth destruction, especially
when you think about the gains they'd made just before this.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
It is a massive reversal, and while reports vary a
bit depending on how you value private assets, the consensus
is clear. Bloomberg's says the family's net worth dropped from
around seven point seven billion dollars to six point seven
billion dollars. Other reports put it from seven point three
billion dollars down to six point two billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Either way, the loss is undeniable.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
The loss of capital, liquidity and paper games is huge,
and this completely reverses the narrative we saw earlier this year.
Their fortune reportedly tripled in a single year, jumping from
two point one billion dollars in twenty twenty four to
nearly six billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Driven almost entirely by their stake in Trump Media and
Technology Group TMTG and their other crypto assets.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
And the source of the reversal is the same as
the source of the rise concentration risk. The family built
what you could call an ecosystem where all their financial plays.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
The media stock that tokens, the mining right, all of.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
It was implicitly connected and depended on the same fundamental
assumption crypto valuations must always go up, So.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Instead of hedging or diversifying, they essentially just doubled down
on the hypergrowth narrative across a bunch of interconnected asset classes.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Exactly, they create wed a single point of failure scenario.
So when the macro environment reversed and the risk off
mandate hit crypto, everything in that concentrated ecosystem reversed with it.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Let's break down the impact on specific holdings, starting with
the highest profile one, Trump Media and Technology Group, which
trades as DJT.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
And its performance has been brutal. The stock plunged to
new fifty two week lows, trading around ten dollars and
eighty five cents share, and.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
If you remember, the post merger peak was what forty
three dollars and forty six cents it was.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
We are now talking about a decline of nearly seventy
percent this year and a staggering eighty percent drop from
that post merger high.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
The scale of that collapse is just immense. How does
that translate into personal loss for the former president's stake?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
The decline in DJT stock alone has wiped out about
eight hundred million dollars from his stake since the September high.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
So that's the vast majority of the reported billion dollar
loss right there.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
It is, and it just reflects the extreme volatility that
comes when a stock's evaluation is driven by speculative fervor
and media narrative rather than fundamental business performance.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
And the fundamentals of TMTG only make it worse. We
saw the Q three earnings.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yes, and this is the devastating part. TMTG reported extremely
low Q three sales, just nine hundred and seventy two,
nine hundred dollars against a massive net loss of fifty
four point eight one million dollars.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
So a company with less than a million in quarterly
revenue was valued in the billions.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
It's a classic sign of market irrationality. And then the
company's decision to hold crypto on its balance sheet just
compounded the risk right.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Because as bigcoin collapsed, tmtg's balance sheet got hit with
unrealized losses, deepening the perception of instability.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Exactly now Beyond the stock the more speculative ventures linked
to the family have also seen dramatic.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Implosions, like the meme coins.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
The Trump branded meme coin trump Pee has seen a
massive twenty five percent decline since August. It's trading near
its lowest value since launch. These tokens are pure sentiment
thermometers and.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
The World Liberty Financial Token WLFI that had an ambitious
valuation at one point.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
WLFI saw its value plummet from around twenty six cents
in September down to roughly fifteen cents. At its peak,
this project was valued around six billion dollars based almost
entirely on speculation.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
And Eric Trump's investment in mining.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Also hit hard. His investment in the mining operation American
Bitcoin Corporation has dropped by approximately fifty percent from its peak.
Public investors in that venture are down around forty five percent.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Mining companies are acutely sensitive to the price of BTC,
so that.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Makes sense their margins just vanish when the price drops.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
This sharply so we've seen this multi billion dollar contraction
in the family's net worth tied directly to the DJT
decline and the systemic collapse across their crypto assets. Yet
Eric Trump maintains a surprisingly bullish public.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Stance he has He's maintained a classic contrarian viewpoint, describing
the downturn not as a crisis but as a great
buying opportunity.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Which underscores the deeply speculative nature of their approach. For
most people, seeing an eighty percent loss in a stock
is a signal to d risk, not double down.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
And it's important to contextualize this financial volatility against the
current political environment too.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Right there's heightened scrutiny of the family's financial activities.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
We've seen ongoing controversy, for example, around the pardoning of
a top crypto executive who previously played a key role
in bolstering the family's net worth. That link adds a
layer of uncertainty, and the broader.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Political landscape is fragile, with reports of low approval ratings
and internal party divisions over things like the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
It all creates a confluence of stress factors that amplify
the negative financial sentiment. The core lesson here for every
investor is just the fragility of highly concentrated wealth based
on speculative assets.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
That concentration risk is a crucial theme. But while institutions
are dumping and this high profile speculative wealth collapses, we
need to shift gears to the contrarians who are making
massive strategic bets, specifically on Ethereum.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
This segment, it really shows the divergence between market sentiment
and institutional conviction. While fear is rampant, some major players
are viewing this as a generational buying opportunity.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
And the biggest example is bitmin, a company linked to
Funstrats Tom Lee.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Bitmine is aggressively accumulating Ethereum. They recently acquired an additional
twenty one thousand, five hundred and thirty seven eth valued
at roughly fifty nine million dollars.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
And this is happening despite the fact that Ethereum's price
is struggling and bitmine itself is likely sitting on billions
in unrealized paper losses.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
It's a classic contrarian move, and this latest purchase pushes
their total holdings past three point five million eth.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Three and a half million.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
It cements their status as one of the single largest
corporate ETH holders. To put that in perspective, they now
control roughly three percent of Ethereum's entire circulating supply.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
So if they're facing these huge paper losses, what gives
the management team, especially Thomas Lee, such confidence to keep
buying into weakness.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
The management team is completely undert because they attribute the
downturn not to fundamental weakness in crypto, but to broader
external liquidity shocks.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
So they see this as a temporary event.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Lee views this through the lens of history. He's wildly optimistic,
predicting a V shaped recovery, a sharp bounce back once
the market stabilizes, and.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
They're backing that conviction with concrete utility plans.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
That's a strategic angle. They plan to launch the Maid
in America Validator Network or MEVIN in early twenty twenty six.
This isn't just about holding, it's about monetizing, so.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
They'll be staking their massive ETH reserve.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Exactly, generating recurring yield rewards. This strategically positions them as
the premier US staking destination. It's a move to capitalize
on the shift toward institutional yield generation.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
But as US firms are accumulating eth another significant player
is quietly making a massive comeback, and this has geopolitical implications.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
China's crypto mining industry.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
It's one of the most surprising developments given the twenty
twenty one band.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
New data suggests that China Ya's banned crypto mining industry
is expanding again, quietly, reclaiming fourteen percent of the global bitcoin.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Hash rate, which places them third worldwide, behind the US
in Russia. How is this happening when the ban is
still officially in place.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
The primary driver is economic opportunism in remote regions like Shinjung.
These areas have abundant excess power that can't be efficiently exported.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
So private operators are just leveraging cheap, under utilized.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Energy precisely, and we're seeing market confirmation of this through
hardware sales figures. Right In and Inc, a major global
producer of mining machines, reported that more than half of
its Q two sales revenue was from China miners. Don't
buy hardware if they aren't confident they can operate it profitably.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
It certainly shows that bitcoin mining is fundamentally resilient to
localized bands if the economics are compelling enough. Now, let's
pivot away from bitcoin and Ethereum's infrastructure and look at
the broader alt coin market, where we see unique catalysts
and chaos playing out at the same time.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
The old coin market is a fascinating mix right now.
While they are suffering, some assets have extremely powerful, unique
catalysts that are kind of insulating them. And we have
to start with XRP.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Which just had a massive institutional access moment today November
twenty fourth, the dual spot etf launch for Franklin, Templeton
and Greyscale on the NYC.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
It is the ultimate stamp of institutional approval. Analysts are
projecting a massive inplus of liquidity, with combined daily volume
estimated to reach between one hundred and fifty and two
hundred million dollars by November twenty six.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
That's a serious counterweight to the bitcoin driven fear, and
the anticipation around Greyscale's GXRP is particularly high, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
It is existing institutional holders in the older grayscale trust
can now convert into this new, highly liquid ETF. It's
a game changer for accessibility for traditional wealth managers.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
And beyond the ETFs, the XRP community is looking at
internal value capture.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
They're actively discussing STAKING proposals, which bit ycio Matt Hougan
noted would significantly strengthen xrp's economic model. Staking incentivizes long
term holding.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
And Ripple's internal strategy seems designed to stabilize the price too.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Their CTO, David Schwartz, has been vocal about diversifying revenue streams,
like with their proposed ROLUSD stable coin. If they can
generate revenue elsewhere, it reduces their historical need to sell
XRP to fund operations.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
And looking at the charts, XRP seems to be holding
up much better than bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Technical analysts observed it's holding firmly above two dollars and
six cents, and while the short term trend is bearish,
the long term trend, the two hunder day moving average
is still rising.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
So they see this as a consolidation phase, not a
structural bear market setup for XRP.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yes now, while XRP gets that boost. Let's look at Ethereum,
which has a major internal catalyst coming up that a
lot of people seem to be overlooking the Fusaka upgrade
expected around December third. Matt Hugen at bitwise believes this
upgrade is absolutely critical for Ethereum's future economic model.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Okay, I need to spend time on this because the
potential impact downs huge. How does Susaka actually work?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Fusaka introduces a minimum base fee for Layer two data,
so the data that solutions like Arbitrum and optimism post
back to the main Ethereum chain, so.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
It guarantees a baseline revenue stream from that booming Layer
two ecosystem.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Precisely as L two usage continues to scale, this new
fee mechanism captures a significant portion of that activity and
locks it into the core network. And since eath's base
fee is.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Burned, it makes ETH more deflationary far more.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Hugen's estimates suggests this could increase eth's overall network revenue
capture by five to ten times. It could position ETH
for a major rebound.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
It shifts the narrative from pure speculation to quantifiable economic
value capture.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Absolutely It makes the ultrasound money thesis far more compelling.
Hugan also points to uniswap's uniitoken as another example of
improving token economics.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
What's the plan there?
Speaker 2 (24:58):
The community is discussing activating U, U and i's fee switch.
If approved, it would redirect about sixteen percent of trading
fees toward burning you and I tokens. This dramatic supply
reduction could fundamentally change its scarcity profile.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Okay. Turning to Cardano, we saw a recent network test that,
while it seemed concerning at first, actually proved its resilience.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
It demonstrated remarkable stability. The network had a temporary partition
from a bug, but it successfully converged back to a
single healthy chain within fourteen point five hours.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
That rapid convergence is a massive demonstration of maturity it is.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
It proves the internal consensus mechanisms function under maximum stress
and the ecosystem has major dates coming up, especially for
derivatives trading access.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Coinbased Derivatives is launching twenty four to seven trading for
alt coin futures.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
With new perpetuals, specifically for Cardano, launching on December twelfth,
that significantly expands regulated.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Access Now for the great paradox of this crash. Despite
all the fear, the AI presale narrative is absolutely exploding.
It seems like the wave hitting traditional tech like in
Vidia's fifty seven billion in Q three revenue, is directly
fueling new crypto projects.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
The crypto market always finds a new growth engine, and
AI is it. Let's start with deep Snitch AI. It's
leading the pack by blending AI directly with retail training tools.
It tracks whale wallets and flags risky smart contracts. It's
raised over half a million and is seen as a
potential one hundred x because it targets a core retail
need safety.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
And what about Bitcoin Hyper. It's trying to solve Bitcoin's
biggest flaw, right speed.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
This is a technically significant project. Bitcoin does seven transactions
per second. Bitcoin Hyper is solving this by using the
Salana Virtual Machine or SVM.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
So it's bringing Solana's speed to Bitcoin's security layer.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
That's the key innovation, bringing fast, low cost DAPs to
Bitcoin's proof of work layer. They've already raised over twenty
eight million dollars.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
We've also got block deag, which is transitioning from hype
to focusing on infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
They've raised a huge four hundred and thirty six million
dollars and now we're seeing institutional deals for two point
six billion tokens. This suggests institutions see it as a
serious Layer one project.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
And finally, best Wallet.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Positioning itself as a rival to Meta Mask and trust Wallet.
They're already live and are offering aggressive high yields staking
up to seventy six percent apy to attract users quickly.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
The AI presale boom clearly illustrates that innovation doesn't stop
just because institutions are selling. But we have to connect
all this crypto chaos to the wider macroeconomic forces at play.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
We can't view this in a vacuum. Deutsche Bank's recent
analysis links the bitcoin decline to four main macro pressures.
Pervasive risk off sentiment, hawkish FED signals, stalled regulation, and
dangerously thinning liquidity.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
The Federal reserve factor is arguably the most critical. Uncertainty
over whether the Fed will go ahead with a December
rate cut has strengthened bets that they might halt their easing.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
And higher interest rates, or the expectation of them immediately
weekends investor confidence in risk assets like crypto capital flows
away from speculation and into safer yielding assets, and.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
The thin liquidity factor is crucial. Even minor selling can
have an outsized impact on price, which is exactly what
we've been seeing.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
We saw an almost absurd example of this recently. President
Trump's decision to lift food import tariffs, a move to
combat inflation, was unexpectedly linked to the crypto turmoil.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
How did that impact bitcoin?
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Bitcoin fell below ninety four thousand dollars shortly after. The
theory was that the policy signaled a potential acceleration of
anti inflationary measures, reinforcing the idea that the FED would
delay rate cuts.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So a minor policy signal can trigger massive selling in
a thin crypto market.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
It highlights the fragility. And this crash is also tightly
intertwined with broader tech stark anxiety. We're seeing high profile
warnings about an AI bubble contagion.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Right from the very top. Cinder Pritchei at Google Alphabet
said there's irrationality in the AI boom and warned that
no company is going to be immune if that bubble bursts.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
JP Morgan's vice chairman Daniel Pinto echoed that. He said
booming AI valuations are due for a severe reassessment, and
that correction will inevitably impact the S and P five
hundred and other industries, including crypto.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
And the danger isn't just for wealthy tech investors.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Clarna's CEO highlighted a systemic risk index. Funds are automatically
allocating huge amounts of pension money into this speculative trend,
So the risk of a bubble bursting impacts the retirement
security of millions.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
And even traditional safe havens are feeling the pinch. Gold
is falling.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Gold's decline is specifically tied to fading expectations of a
FED rate cut. Higher interest rates make non yielding assets
like gold less appealing. It shows how comprehensive this risk
off environment is.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
That structural pressure is undeniable. We've covered everything from the
technical mechanisms of liquidation to the concentration of political wealth
and crypto and these looming macro threats.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
So to synthesize the core tension here, we've seen massive
concentrated losses, most visibly hitting the high light leverage, crypto sectors,
and the Trump family's ecosystem. It illustrates the extreme danger
of these speculative bets.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
But this destruction is set against a strong counter narrative
of strategic deep conviction buying in core assets like Ethereum
by firms like Bitmine, and this rapid pace of innovation
continuing in the AI presale sector.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Right, the market structure is undeniably fragile, tested by severe
macro conditions, regulatory uncertainty, and institutional capitulation.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
As evidenced by that multi billion dollar ETF outflow figure.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
So for you, the investor navigating this, the strategic advice
is clear. Avoid the temptation to just buy every dip indiscriminately.
The outlook is profoundly defensive.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
So investors should wait for confluence, a calming of the
macro environment, and a reduction in derivative fear before scaling in.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Exactly, the goal is positioning near high probability recovery areas,
not trying to hit the exact bottom.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
We've seen that over a billion dollars in paper losses
can be wiped out in weeks from these highly visible holdings.
Yet one prominent billionaire, Eric Trump, still calls this downturn
a great buying opportunity.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
It creates a fascinating philosophical divide, doesn't it if the
macro environment truly stabilizes, if the FED reverses its stance,
and if rate cut bets rebound. Which of the two
primary narratives will ultimately define the end of twenty twenty
five and the start of twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Will it be the aggressive V shaped recovery predicted by
high conviction players like Bitmin's leadership, suggesting fundamentals will eventually
overwhelm the liquidity shocks, or.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Will that sixty percent more downside technical signal prove correct
initiating a multi year bear market driven by a structural
failure below eighty thousand dollars. That is the billion dollar
question that will drive the market moving forward.
It is Monday, November twenty four, twenty twenty five, and
if you have been anywhere near the screens lately, you
know that the last few weeks have been well a
shockwave across the digital asset space. This isn't just volatility. Yeah,
this feels like capitulation.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
That's absolutely right. I mean we're navigating what you can
only describe as extreme market conditions. Bitcoin has suffered a
well a historic route. It's wiped out all of its
hard won gains from twenty twenty five. What started the
year with all this institutional hope, all this bullish momentum,
It's now become profoundly defensive.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Any sentiment is just god.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Sentiment is defined by one key characteristic right now, unadulterated fear.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
So we have a massive amount of material to unpack
today in this rundown. Our mission really is to connect
three enormous, interconnected themes that are dominating everything right.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
First, we're going to do a forensic breakdown of Vicoin's
shirt plunge. We need to go beyond just the price
on the screen and look deep into the driver's market.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
That's what signaling the intense pain exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
It reveals the real mechanics of this downward spiral.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Okay. And second, we're going to move from those macro
mechanics to a very specific, very high profile story of financial.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Contraction, the Trump families crypto linked to wealth.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah, we're going to detail how billions in paper wells
built on these really concentrated bets have basically evaporated in
a matter of weeks.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
And then finally we'll shift focus to the alt coin ecosystem.
And it's a story of contrasts. Really. You have this
institutional panic and massive d risking on one side, and
on the other strategic contrarian accumulation, specifically in ethereum, and
the emergence of these powerful new AI driven projects that
(01:42):
seem to you know, completely defy the current fear index.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Let's start with Bitcoin then, because the price action isn't
just a data point. It feels like the shockwave driving
every other decision in the market. Right now.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
When we talk about a shockwave, we are talking about magnitude.
The market had established this, this psychological stronghold forcoin. You're
the ninety seven thousand dollar mark.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Right that was the consolidation range e and was watching the.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
New floor, the new floor exactly, and we watched that
level break with frightening speed. Bitcoin briefly touched eighty nine
thousand dollars, which confirmed the structural breakdown, and then recently
hit an extremely worrying low of eighty thousand, five hundred
and forty eight dollars.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
That five hundred and forty eight dollars number is so
critical not just because it's a low, but because it
retroactively just invalidates the entire twenty twenty five bull run
thesis for so many traders. It pulls the coin's year
to date performance into negative territory, which.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Means anyone who bought bitcoin at any point this year
is now sitting on an unrealized loss, assuming they haven't
averaged down aggressively.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
And the psychological impact of erasing an entire year's worth
of games, Yeah, you can't overstate.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
That, you really can't. And when we zoom out and
look at the total market route, the figures are just staggering.
Since bitcoin's peak of one hundred and twenty six thousand,
two hundred dollars back in October, we've seen over a
trillion dollars in value just limited across the entire digital
asset space This isn't the gentle correction of a healthy
bull market. This is a systemic leverage driven cascade, and.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Leverage really is the engine of this crash. We've got
data from coin Glass showing that total market liquidations just
bleue past the billion dollar marks.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
A billion, and Bitcoin contributed a massive chunk of that, right.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Five hundred and sixty nine point three seven million dollars
at that total. For those who aren't steeped in the
market mechanics, liquidations are a forced sell off of these
leverage positions.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
And they're often triggered automatically when margin requirements aren't met.
It creates this this self feeding downward pressure that just
accelerates the whole collapse. So domino effect is Nigel Green,
the CEO of de Vere Group, explain this perfectly. He
emphasized that when people borrow heavily use leverage to magnify
their gains, any unexpected reversal forces the exchanges to just
(03:55):
close those positions right to prevent further losses, and this
forced selling floods the market with supply at the absolute
worst possible time, which pushes prices down faster than any
organic selling pressure ever could.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
That process of forced selling is what defines capitulation. Yeah,
and you can see it reflected perfectly in the mood
of the market, the fearing greed index. I mean, we
use it as a thermometer for market psychology.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
It plunged, It plunged dramatically to a reading of eleven.
A reading of eleven is not just fear. It's deep,
bone chilling, extreme fear territory.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Historically, though, are reading that low can sometimes signal a bottom,
can it? It can?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
It often indicates a momentary bottoming process because it suggests
that almost everyone who wanted to sell in a panic
has now done so. It implies emotional exhaustion.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
But that's just sentiment.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
That's just sentiment. Yeah, the technical structure suggests we are
in very serious strouble.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Okay, let's talk about the charts, because despite that deep
over sold signal, the outlook is well. He called it defensive.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
The word defensive is key. We completely lack the characteristics
of a healthy bulltrend, you know, higher highs and higher lows,
sustained volume on rallies. That's all gone.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
And bitcoin is now testing that critical eighty thousand dollars support.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Level aggressively testing it and that level has immense psychological
and structural importance. It was major resistance earlier this year,
and now it's basically the final line of defense for
the entire twenty twenty five narrative.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
So failing to hold eighty thousand dollars is the difference
between a painful correction and what an outright structural bear market?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Potentially, yes, But let's look at the momentum data, because
you mentioned that exhaustion might be near right the RSI,
we look at the Relative Strength Index the RSI, which
measures the speed and change of price moves. It hit
twenty six, twenty six. To put that in context, that
is one of the deepest over sold readings we have
seen all year. Anything below thirty signals oversold condition.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
So the selling pressure could be reaching exhaustion.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
It suggests the price movement near eighty thousand, five hundred
dollars might be unsustainable in the media short term.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
So we have two conflicting signals here. We have extreme
oversold conditions suggesting it bounce is statistically likely. But then
we have this critical structural support at eighty thousand dollars
that if it breaks, signals.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Disaster precisely, and that's where the dire warnings are coming from.
The most traumatic technical forecast we've seen circulating suggests that
if the eighty thousand dollars support level fails decisively.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
And we're talking a weekly close below it, yes.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
A weekly close. If that happens, the current technical structure
implies sixty percent more downside as.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Possible, sixty percent sixty percent more downside from eighty thousand
dollars that would take us down near what thirty two
thousand dollars. That's the number that is a cataclysmic forecast.
What structural failure supports that.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
It's based on analyzing the sheer magnitude of the breakdown
from one hundred and twenty six thousand dollars peak. If
the eighty thousand dollars level doesn't hold key long term
moving averages like the two hundred week, they all come
back into play.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
It's a complete repricing.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
It suggests the market would need to reprice based on
a complete liquidation of the entire twenty twenty four to
twenty twenty five growth story. It's not a prediction, it's
a model of maximum possible pain if the structure fails.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
It paints a picture of extreme anxiety. But this is crypto,
isn't it. Even in the middle of all this chaos,
you still have the massive bulls taking in absolutely contrarian stance.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Oh absolutely, the billionaire class remains undeterred. Cameron Winklevoss of Gemini.
He took to social media to offer this wildly bullish counterview.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
What did he say?
Speaker 2 (07:29):
He claimed, perhaps defiantly, that this was the last time
you'll ever be able to buy bitcoin below ninety dollars.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
I find that fascinating. That level of conviction is essential
to the crypto culture, but it stands in such sharp
contrast to the financial reality facing the biggest players, the institutions.
The question isn't just who is buying, but who is
aggressively not buying right now? And that brings us directly
to the institutional flight.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
The absence of institutional demand is arguably the most nificant
factor driving this plunge. We know the narrative that propelled
us earlier this year was the launch of the US
spot Bitcoin ets.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Right the flood of traditional finance capital, that thesis seems
to be failing dramatically right now.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
City analyst Alex Sanders put a really fine point on it.
Saying that ETF flows, which he called the main driver
of prices this year, are now drying up completely.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
It's more than just drying up, though, and it's reversing.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
It is reversing. The seven day average for US spot
ETF flows remains firmly negative. This is sustained net selling
from TRADFI allocators.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
So they're not buying the dip.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
They are not only reluctant to add exposure into this
straw down, they are actively withdrawing capital. The lack of
that incremental institutional buying just reinforces the whole problem.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Okay, let's put some numbers on this, specifically looking at
black Rock, which is kind of the bell weather for
the entire institutional world.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Blackrock made two major transfers to coinbase Prime. They deposited
twenty eight hundred and twenty two BTC valued at about
two hundred and forty three million dollars and thirty six
two hundred and eighty three eighth valued at over one
hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Which are just massive, strategic movement.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Huge, And while it's not immediately confirmed as selling large
transfers to custody platforms like that often precede distribution or active.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Liquidation, and the redemption figures seem to support that idea absolutely.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Black Rock alone has recorded two point five billion dollars
in redemptions this month. When you combine their figure with
other issuers, US Spot ETFs have seen about three point
five billion dollars in total withdrawals just this.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Month, three and a half billion dollars in November alone.
How does that compare historically?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
It's significant. It makes this the second largest monthly outflow
figure since February, which was right after that initial post
launch excitement wore off.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
So the institutional conviction that was built up all year
is just evaporated.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
It's not just profit taking. It feels like capitulation driven
by de risking mandates.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Okay, so institutional money is fleeing through the ETFs. What
about the leveraged trader in the derivatives market? Are they
trying to buy this dip or are they equally fearful?
Speaker 2 (10:05):
The derivatives market is screaming risk off. We're seeing futures
open interest or OI just drifting systematically lower.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Which means persistent risk reduction.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Traders are not attempting to catch the falling knives. They're
not adding exposure into weakness. They're systematically unwinding risk closing positions.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
And we can see that reflected in the funding rates too.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Right correct, funding rates across the top five hundred assets
have shifted decisively into neutral to negative territory.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
And when those rates are negative, it means people are
basically getting paid to short the.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Market, or at least there's no cost to hold a short.
It confirms a broad cooling in leveraged long demand and
a massive defensive shift. There is zero conviction to buy
here with leverage.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Now let's talk about the options market. This gives us
insight into how the pros are hedging and it reflects
an extreme bearish outlook right through the twenty five delta scue.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
The twenty five delta scue, yeah, it's a way to
measure the difference in implied vaut latility between calls and puts,
and when the skew remains negative across all maturities, it
means traders are paying a much higher premium for downside
protection for puts than they are for upside participation. It's
a hallmark of extreme bearissed positioning.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
We saw specific data on the one week tenor being
particularly aggressive.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
The one week tenor should a premium of roughly fourteen
percent for puts. Think of it like buying fire insurance. Right.
Traders are willing to pay significantly more for immediate downside
protection because they anticipate a further collapse and soon.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
And this demand for downside protection creates a really dangerous
mechanical feedback loop that actually amplifies the selling pressure in
the spot market. Can you walk us through that mechanism.
It's technically crucial.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
It's a textbook example of delta hedging, and it's basically
a self fulfilling prophecy. Okay, here's how it works. When
a sophisticated trader buys an aggressive put option, a contract
giving them the right to sell at a lower price,
transferring risk to the option dealer.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
So the dealer's now short. They've taken on a lot
of short.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Exposure precisely, and to remain delta neutral, they don't want
to take a massive directional bet. The dealer has to
hedge that risk.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
So what do they do?
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Since the price is falling and the putz are gaming value.
The dealer must sell an equivalent amount of futures contracts
or perpetuals in the spot market to offset their risk.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
So the very act of hedging against the price drop
causes more selling in the underlying asset.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Exactly, the more the price falls, the more puts are bought,
and the more futures the dealers have to sell to
stay neutral. It's a massive mechanical source of selling pressure
that is entirely independent of fundamentals.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
It's a vicious, self reinforcing downward spiral.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
That's exactly what it is. And we saw this play
out precisely around that psychological ninety thousand dollars level.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
It data confirms it absolutely.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Once Bitcoin failed to hold the ninety three thousand dollars level,
demand for put premium at the ninety thousand dollars strike
just shot up. This tells you exactly where the pros
had concentrated their pain point.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
So they used the options market to bet on ninety dollars.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
K failing, and their hedging action helped ensure that failure
happened faster.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
That's a devastating insight into how professional positioning can just
amplify market weakness and that volatility. That rapid destruction of
value leads us directly to our next major theme the
highly visible financial pain being felt by specific high profile holdings,
namely those linked to the Trump family, and.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
This is where the story shifts from these macro market
mechanics to the individual consequences of speculative concentration. The recent
crypto route has has levied a significant financial hit, reducing
the Trump families overall net worth by well over a
billion dollars since early September.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Over a billion dollars wiped out in just a matter
of weeks. That's a staggering rate of wealth destruction, especially
when you think about the gains they'd made just before this.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
It is a massive reversal, and while reports vary a
bit depending on how you value private assets, the consensus
is clear. Bloomberg's says the family's net worth dropped from
around seven point seven billion dollars to six point seven
billion dollars. Other reports put it from seven point three
billion dollars down to six point two billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Either way, the loss is undeniable.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
The loss of capital, liquidity and paper games is huge,
and this completely reverses the narrative we saw earlier this year.
Their fortune reportedly tripled in a single year, jumping from
two point one billion dollars in twenty twenty four to
nearly six billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Driven almost entirely by their stake in Trump Media and
Technology Group TMTG and their other crypto assets.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
And the source of the reversal is the same as
the source of the rise concentration risk. The family built
what you could call an ecosystem where all their financial plays.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
The media stock that tokens, the mining right, all of.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
It was implicitly connected and depended on the same fundamental
assumption crypto valuations must always go up, So.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Instead of hedging or diversifying, they essentially just doubled down
on the hypergrowth narrative across a bunch of interconnected asset classes.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Exactly, they create wed a single point of failure scenario.
So when the macro environment reversed and the risk off
mandate hit crypto, everything in that concentrated ecosystem reversed with it.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Let's break down the impact on specific holdings, starting with
the highest profile one, Trump Media and Technology Group, which
trades as DJT.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
And its performance has been brutal. The stock plunged to
new fifty two week lows, trading around ten dollars and
eighty five cents share, and.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
If you remember, the post merger peak was what forty
three dollars and forty six cents it was.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
We are now talking about a decline of nearly seventy
percent this year and a staggering eighty percent drop from
that post merger high.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
The scale of that collapse is just immense. How does
that translate into personal loss for the former president's stake?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
The decline in DJT stock alone has wiped out about
eight hundred million dollars from his stake since the September high.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
So that's the vast majority of the reported billion dollar
loss right there.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
It is, and it just reflects the extreme volatility that
comes when a stock's evaluation is driven by speculative fervor
and media narrative rather than fundamental business performance.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
And the fundamentals of TMTG only make it worse. We
saw the Q three earnings.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yes, and this is the devastating part. TMTG reported extremely
low Q three sales, just nine hundred and seventy two,
nine hundred dollars against a massive net loss of fifty
four point eight one million dollars.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
So a company with less than a million in quarterly
revenue was valued in the billions.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
It's a classic sign of market irrationality. And then the
company's decision to hold crypto on its balance sheet just
compounded the risk right.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Because as bigcoin collapsed, tmtg's balance sheet got hit with
unrealized losses, deepening the perception of instability.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Exactly now Beyond the stock the more speculative ventures linked
to the family have also seen dramatic.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Implosions, like the meme coins.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
The Trump branded meme coin trump Pee has seen a
massive twenty five percent decline since August. It's trading near
its lowest value since launch. These tokens are pure sentiment
thermometers and.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
The World Liberty Financial Token WLFI that had an ambitious
valuation at one point.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
WLFI saw its value plummet from around twenty six cents
in September down to roughly fifteen cents. At its peak,
this project was valued around six billion dollars based almost
entirely on speculation.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
And Eric Trump's investment in mining.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Also hit hard. His investment in the mining operation American
Bitcoin Corporation has dropped by approximately fifty percent from its peak.
Public investors in that venture are down around forty five percent.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Mining companies are acutely sensitive to the price of BTC,
so that.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Makes sense their margins just vanish when the price drops.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
This sharply so we've seen this multi billion dollar contraction
in the family's net worth tied directly to the DJT
decline and the systemic collapse across their crypto assets. Yet
Eric Trump maintains a surprisingly bullish public.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Stance he has He's maintained a classic contrarian viewpoint, describing
the downturn not as a crisis but as a great
buying opportunity.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Which underscores the deeply speculative nature of their approach. For
most people, seeing an eighty percent loss in a stock
is a signal to d risk, not double down.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
And it's important to contextualize this financial volatility against the
current political environment too.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Right there's heightened scrutiny of the family's financial activities.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
We've seen ongoing controversy, for example, around the pardoning of
a top crypto executive who previously played a key role
in bolstering the family's net worth. That link adds a
layer of uncertainty, and the broader.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Political landscape is fragile, with reports of low approval ratings
and internal party divisions over things like the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
It all creates a confluence of stress factors that amplify
the negative financial sentiment. The core lesson here for every
investor is just the fragility of highly concentrated wealth based
on speculative assets.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
That concentration risk is a crucial theme. But while institutions
are dumping and this high profile speculative wealth collapses, we
need to shift gears to the contrarians who are making
massive strategic bets, specifically on Ethereum.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
This segment, it really shows the divergence between market sentiment
and institutional conviction. While fear is rampant, some major players
are viewing this as a generational buying opportunity.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
And the biggest example is bitmin, a company linked to
Funstrats Tom Lee.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Bitmine is aggressively accumulating Ethereum. They recently acquired an additional
twenty one thousand, five hundred and thirty seven eth valued
at roughly fifty nine million dollars.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
And this is happening despite the fact that Ethereum's price
is struggling and bitmine itself is likely sitting on billions
in unrealized paper losses.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
It's a classic contrarian move, and this latest purchase pushes
their total holdings past three point five million eth.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Three and a half million.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
It cements their status as one of the single largest
corporate ETH holders. To put that in perspective, they now
control roughly three percent of Ethereum's entire circulating supply.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
So if they're facing these huge paper losses, what gives
the management team, especially Thomas Lee, such confidence to keep
buying into weakness.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
The management team is completely undert because they attribute the
downturn not to fundamental weakness in crypto, but to broader
external liquidity shocks.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
So they see this as a temporary event.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Lee views this through the lens of history. He's wildly optimistic,
predicting a V shaped recovery, a sharp bounce back once
the market stabilizes, and.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
They're backing that conviction with concrete utility plans.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
That's a strategic angle. They plan to launch the Maid
in America Validator Network or MEVIN in early twenty twenty six.
This isn't just about holding, it's about monetizing, so.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
They'll be staking their massive ETH reserve.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Exactly, generating recurring yield rewards. This strategically positions them as
the premier US staking destination. It's a move to capitalize
on the shift toward institutional yield generation.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
But as US firms are accumulating eth another significant player
is quietly making a massive comeback, and this has geopolitical implications.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
China's crypto mining industry.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
It's one of the most surprising developments given the twenty
twenty one band.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
New data suggests that China Ya's banned crypto mining industry
is expanding again, quietly, reclaiming fourteen percent of the global bitcoin.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Hash rate, which places them third worldwide, behind the US
in Russia. How is this happening when the ban is
still officially in place.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
The primary driver is economic opportunism in remote regions like Shinjung.
These areas have abundant excess power that can't be efficiently exported.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
So private operators are just leveraging cheap, under utilized.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Energy precisely, and we're seeing market confirmation of this through
hardware sales figures. Right In and Inc, a major global
producer of mining machines, reported that more than half of
its Q two sales revenue was from China miners. Don't
buy hardware if they aren't confident they can operate it profitably.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
It certainly shows that bitcoin mining is fundamentally resilient to
localized bands if the economics are compelling enough. Now, let's
pivot away from bitcoin and Ethereum's infrastructure and look at
the broader alt coin market, where we see unique catalysts
and chaos playing out at the same time.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
The old coin market is a fascinating mix right now.
While they are suffering, some assets have extremely powerful, unique
catalysts that are kind of insulating them. And we have
to start with XRP.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Which just had a massive institutional access moment today November
twenty fourth, the dual spot etf launch for Franklin, Templeton
and Greyscale on the NYC.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
It is the ultimate stamp of institutional approval. Analysts are
projecting a massive inplus of liquidity, with combined daily volume
estimated to reach between one hundred and fifty and two
hundred million dollars by November twenty six.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
That's a serious counterweight to the bitcoin driven fear, and
the anticipation around Greyscale's GXRP is particularly high, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
It is existing institutional holders in the older grayscale trust
can now convert into this new, highly liquid ETF. It's
a game changer for accessibility for traditional wealth managers.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
And beyond the ETFs, the XRP community is looking at
internal value capture.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
They're actively discussing STAKING proposals, which bit ycio Matt Hougan
noted would significantly strengthen xrp's economic model. Staking incentivizes long
term holding.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
And Ripple's internal strategy seems designed to stabilize the price too.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Their CTO, David Schwartz, has been vocal about diversifying revenue streams,
like with their proposed ROLUSD stable coin. If they can
generate revenue elsewhere, it reduces their historical need to sell
XRP to fund operations.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
And looking at the charts, XRP seems to be holding
up much better than bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Technical analysts observed it's holding firmly above two dollars and
six cents, and while the short term trend is bearish,
the long term trend, the two hunder day moving average
is still rising.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
So they see this as a consolidation phase, not a
structural bear market setup for XRP.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yes now, while XRP gets that boost. Let's look at Ethereum,
which has a major internal catalyst coming up that a
lot of people seem to be overlooking the Fusaka upgrade
expected around December third. Matt Hugen at bitwise believes this
upgrade is absolutely critical for Ethereum's future economic model.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Okay, I need to spend time on this because the
potential impact downs huge. How does Susaka actually work?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Fusaka introduces a minimum base fee for Layer two data,
so the data that solutions like Arbitrum and optimism post
back to the main Ethereum chain, so.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
It guarantees a baseline revenue stream from that booming Layer
two ecosystem.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Precisely as L two usage continues to scale, this new
fee mechanism captures a significant portion of that activity and
locks it into the core network. And since eath's base
fee is.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Burned, it makes ETH more deflationary far more.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Hugen's estimates suggests this could increase eth's overall network revenue
capture by five to ten times. It could position ETH
for a major rebound.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
It shifts the narrative from pure speculation to quantifiable economic
value capture.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Absolutely It makes the ultrasound money thesis far more compelling.
Hugan also points to uniswap's uniitoken as another example of
improving token economics.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
What's the plan there?
Speaker 2 (24:58):
The community is discussing activating U, U and i's fee switch.
If approved, it would redirect about sixteen percent of trading
fees toward burning you and I tokens. This dramatic supply
reduction could fundamentally change its scarcity profile.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Okay. Turning to Cardano, we saw a recent network test that,
while it seemed concerning at first, actually proved its resilience.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
It demonstrated remarkable stability. The network had a temporary partition
from a bug, but it successfully converged back to a
single healthy chain within fourteen point five hours.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
That rapid convergence is a massive demonstration of maturity it is.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
It proves the internal consensus mechanisms function under maximum stress
and the ecosystem has major dates coming up, especially for
derivatives trading access.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Coinbased Derivatives is launching twenty four to seven trading for
alt coin futures.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
With new perpetuals, specifically for Cardano, launching on December twelfth,
that significantly expands regulated.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Access Now for the great paradox of this crash. Despite
all the fear, the AI presale narrative is absolutely exploding.
It seems like the wave hitting traditional tech like in
Vidia's fifty seven billion in Q three revenue, is directly
fueling new crypto projects.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
The crypto market always finds a new growth engine, and
AI is it. Let's start with deep Snitch AI. It's
leading the pack by blending AI directly with retail training tools.
It tracks whale wallets and flags risky smart contracts. It's
raised over half a million and is seen as a
potential one hundred x because it targets a core retail
need safety.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
And what about Bitcoin Hyper. It's trying to solve Bitcoin's
biggest flaw, right speed.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
This is a technically significant project. Bitcoin does seven transactions
per second. Bitcoin Hyper is solving this by using the
Salana Virtual Machine or SVM.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
So it's bringing Solana's speed to Bitcoin's security layer.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
That's the key innovation, bringing fast, low cost DAPs to
Bitcoin's proof of work layer. They've already raised over twenty
eight million dollars.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
We've also got block deag, which is transitioning from hype
to focusing on infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
They've raised a huge four hundred and thirty six million
dollars and now we're seeing institutional deals for two point
six billion tokens. This suggests institutions see it as a
serious Layer one project.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
And finally, best Wallet.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Positioning itself as a rival to Meta Mask and trust Wallet.
They're already live and are offering aggressive high yields staking
up to seventy six percent apy to attract users quickly.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
The AI presale boom clearly illustrates that innovation doesn't stop
just because institutions are selling. But we have to connect
all this crypto chaos to the wider macroeconomic forces at play.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
We can't view this in a vacuum. Deutsche Bank's recent
analysis links the bitcoin decline to four main macro pressures.
Pervasive risk off sentiment, hawkish FED signals, stalled regulation, and
dangerously thinning liquidity.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
The Federal reserve factor is arguably the most critical. Uncertainty
over whether the Fed will go ahead with a December
rate cut has strengthened bets that they might halt their easing.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
And higher interest rates, or the expectation of them immediately
weekends investor confidence in risk assets like crypto capital flows
away from speculation and into safer yielding assets, and.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
The thin liquidity factor is crucial. Even minor selling can
have an outsized impact on price, which is exactly what
we've been seeing.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
We saw an almost absurd example of this recently. President
Trump's decision to lift food import tariffs, a move to
combat inflation, was unexpectedly linked to the crypto turmoil.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
How did that impact bitcoin?
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Bitcoin fell below ninety four thousand dollars shortly after. The
theory was that the policy signaled a potential acceleration of
anti inflationary measures, reinforcing the idea that the FED would
delay rate cuts.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So a minor policy signal can trigger massive selling in
a thin crypto market.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
It highlights the fragility. And this crash is also tightly
intertwined with broader tech stark anxiety. We're seeing high profile
warnings about an AI bubble contagion.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Right from the very top. Cinder Pritchei at Google Alphabet
said there's irrationality in the AI boom and warned that
no company is going to be immune if that bubble bursts.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
JP Morgan's vice chairman Daniel Pinto echoed that. He said
booming AI valuations are due for a severe reassessment, and
that correction will inevitably impact the S and P five
hundred and other industries, including crypto.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
And the danger isn't just for wealthy tech investors.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Clarna's CEO highlighted a systemic risk index. Funds are automatically
allocating huge amounts of pension money into this speculative trend,
So the risk of a bubble bursting impacts the retirement
security of millions.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
And even traditional safe havens are feeling the pinch. Gold
is falling.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Gold's decline is specifically tied to fading expectations of a
FED rate cut. Higher interest rates make non yielding assets
like gold less appealing. It shows how comprehensive this risk
off environment is.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
That structural pressure is undeniable. We've covered everything from the
technical mechanisms of liquidation to the concentration of political wealth
and crypto and these looming macro threats.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
So to synthesize the core tension here, we've seen massive
concentrated losses, most visibly hitting the high light leverage, crypto sectors,
and the Trump family's ecosystem. It illustrates the extreme danger
of these speculative bets.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
But this destruction is set against a strong counter narrative
of strategic deep conviction buying in core assets like Ethereum
by firms like Bitmine, and this rapid pace of innovation
continuing in the AI presale sector.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Right, the market structure is undeniably fragile, tested by severe
macro conditions, regulatory uncertainty, and institutional capitulation.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
As evidenced by that multi billion dollar ETF outflow figure.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
So for you, the investor navigating this, the strategic advice
is clear. Avoid the temptation to just buy every dip indiscriminately.
The outlook is profoundly defensive.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
So investors should wait for confluence, a calming of the
macro environment, and a reduction in derivative fear before scaling in.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Exactly, the goal is positioning near high probability recovery areas,
not trying to hit the exact bottom.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
We've seen that over a billion dollars in paper losses
can be wiped out in weeks from these highly visible holdings.
Yet one prominent billionaire, Eric Trump, still calls this downturn
a great buying opportunity.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
It creates a fascinating philosophical divide, doesn't it if the
macro environment truly stabilizes, if the FED reverses its stance,
and if rate cut bets rebound. Which of the two
primary narratives will ultimately define the end of twenty twenty
five and the start of twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Will it be the aggressive V shaped recovery predicted by
high conviction players like Bitmin's leadership, suggesting fundamentals will eventually
overwhelm the liquidity shocks, or.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Will that sixty percent more downside technical signal prove correct
initiating a multi year bear market driven by a structural
failure below eighty thousand dollars. That is the billion dollar
question that will drive the market moving forward.
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