bets

Younger brother came into town for the holidays, we were talking about crypto yesterday. Trying to figure out why it's been so weak, even with strong equity markets. He threw me a curveball. "Crypto isn't that cool anymore." Blew my mind. The kid is 22. "Prediction markets are better, and stocks too because they don't get rugged 24/7". I looked much deeper last night...and what I'm observing under the surface is not technical or fundamental. It's cultural. A social shift. Attention has relocated. Starts on youtube. Views are down across anything related to crypto. A crypto youtuber with 139K subscribers said that his viewership had dropped more in the last 2 weeks than anything he's seen in 5 years. Second point. Attention is shifting from the top. The biggest crypto influencers are publicly "losing interest" in crypto, and switching to stocks (sources attached). Third point. Crypto has long been a free-spirited, lawless, young man's game. But with legacy brokerages like Schwab/JPMorgan getting involved + gov't interest, is crypto losing the demographic that made it popular in the first place? Potentially...as the perception's changed. Fourth point. Optionality. Every vehicle is becoming more accessible. From $COIN adding stock trading, to $HOOD adding 0DTE options, to prediction markets as a whole... Everything's right there...without the perceived risk of a rug-pull via the “lawless” crypto landscape that defined crypto’s appeal in the first place. Question is...does real-world crypto utility generate enough demand to offset a sustained decline in retail participation? All I'm saying is the divergence of the once highly correlated $BTC - $QQQ pair is highly suspect. And it's only getting wider. Yes, you can argue some of these things happen in every crypto bear market, but there's new variables & moving parts now (optionality + legacy brokerages participation + gov't interest) that change the game. Crypto seems to be in a transition phase...from a momentum asset to an infrastructure asset. Fundamental transitions like this are usually not kind to price in the medium term. Long term, I'm bullish on the crypto's utility and think it will be everywhere, but the real world utility/adoption (and subsequent growing pains...) is something I'm watching in 2026.

Investors are waking up to some major news from China: The entire tariff crash on October 10th may have just been one big misunderstanding between Trump and Xi. The news about China’s rare earth export controls came out on October 9th at ~8:30 am ET, 26 hours BEFORE Trump posted about it. This was a non-news event UNTIL President Trump posted about it over one day later. Last night, China released a statement clarifying their "export controls" on rare earths. In their response, China said the new controls are NOT a full export ban and applications that “meet regulations” will be approved. Amid the market's downturn on Friday, our view was that the 100% tariff announcement by Trump was a bargaining chip. After China's statement last night, we believe the odds of Trump's 100% tariff on China going into effect are extremely low. The largest crypto liquidation in history and a -$2.5 trillion loss of S&P 500 market cap appears to have been driven by one big misunderstanding. We expect another "trade deal" soon.