Ran Neuner: The ‘Mysterious’ Bank Game That Crushed Bitcoin & The Exact Trade For 2026
Summary
Bitcoin Outlook: Guest is buying the dip and expects a strong 2026 bull market as institutional dynamics shape the cycle, with improving liquidity conditions likely to support upside.
Crypto Treasuries: Actively buying crypto treasury companies at deep discounts to NAV, highlighting low operating costs, income generation, and liquid underlying assets as attractive risk-reward.
Ethereum & Solana: Positioning slightly more into ETH and SOL, arguing altcoins typically outperform in real BTC bull runs and that on-chain yields and activity will drive rotation.
AI Crypto: Big 2026 trade on AI agents transacting via crypto using the X42 payments protocol, enabling autonomous, bankless machine-to-machine payments.
Privacy coins: Bullish on compliant private transactions with Zcash cited as a leader, noting institutional demand for privacy and a friendlier regulatory backdrop.
Silver: Overweight silver versus gold, citing a major technical breakout and a move down the “riskier reserve asset” curve, while viewing some gold/silver miners as heated.
Key Companies/Tickers Mentioned: Discussion of index and product risks/opportunities includes MicroStrategy (MSTR), MSCI (MSCI), JPMorgan (JPM), Morgan Stanley (MS), Nasdaq (NDAQ), and iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) options expansion.
Risks & Catalysts: MSCI’s consultation could force passive outflows from crypto-heavy equities (affecting MSTR equity, not necessarily BTC holdings), while improving macro liquidity and ending QT are cited as tailwinds.
Transcript
In Focus with Jeremy Saffron is brought to you by Swan, the real Bitcoin company. All right, welcome back and happy Thanksgiving everybody. Let's be honest. If you're checking your portfolio between courses today, it's not just crypto traders feeling uneasy. Now, equities did stall coming into the holiday. Yields refused to come down and gold is still holding its bid here above $4,100. And overall risk appetite has been fading all week long. And what's happening in Bitcoin today tells us a lot about who's really driving markets into 2026. Now, Bitcoin is sitting around $91,500 as we record this, which means that the entire October and November rally has been erased. Now, let's take a look here at this year-to- date chart. We started the year at $93,000. We hit a record 126,000 in early October. Now, we're right back to where we started. It's about 11 months of volatility for zero net progress. But here's the unusual part. Now, retail panicked. There was some whales dumping and institutional volatility barely moved. Something shifted under the surface. And for our gold viewers, this pattern is very familiar. When big institutions start steering a market, the narrative changes. Now, back in July, Ren Neer warned us that the synthetic leverage, as he called it, that trade, public companies issuing stock to buy Bitcoin, was a ticking time bomb. Now, it feels like that bomb just went off. What's emerging looks like a rotation of power away from corporate treasuries and straight into Wall Street's hands. So, let's break it down. The timeline, the filings, the margin changes in the January decision that could move billions of dollars. Welcome back, Ran Nuner from CryptoBanter, of course, joining us now from Cape Town. Good to see you, my friend. >> Good to see you, my friend. Happy Thanksgiving. And happy Thanksgiving to all your viewers. >> Yeah, I appreciate that. Happy Thanksgiving. A lot of people looking today, you know, sitting around the table thinking, "What just happened? They're waking up a bit groggy." I mean, let's start with what you called back in July. You said that the corporate treasury trade was running on quote reflex, not conviction. And that's exactly what we just kind of watched unfold here, Ran. I mean, the premium on these Bitcoin heavy stocks collapsed from 2 and a half times now to almost 1 one a complete unwind exactly as you predicted. Is this the breakdown you were kind of warning about? And in, you know, with how fast it snapped, do do you think that the leverage is almost flushed out here or is there, you know, still weak hands hiding in the system? So great question and a great recollection of what I called last time. Last time I did say to you that I was concerned about the corporate treasury companies that were trading at above their net asset values. And what I said to you was that if the trend continues for a long period of time, then we could get into a situation where they actually destroyed the cycle. Luckily though, it happened quite quickly and it didn't have they didn't have enough runway to basically take off and and and and get enough height to destroy the entire cycle. So, we're seeing a little bit of an unwind trade from the treasury companies. By that, I mean that they're not selling their tokens yet or or their crypto assets yet, but they're not trading at at premiums to net asset value anymore. >> And to be honest, most of them are trading at under net asset value, and some of them are trading at as much as 50% under net asset value. So, now the pendulum swung the other way. Now, I'm actually saying it's actually probably a pretty good idea to pick up some of the treasury companies because if you think about what their operations are, they're very low operating cost businesses if they have any operating costs at all. They income generative because a lot of them have income generating activities and they hold an asset which is a crypto asset which is a pretty in most cases a pretty liquid asset. And if you can pick up something like that at 50 or 30 or 40% of net asset value and and you're a long-term value investor and you believe in the underlying asset, that's actually a very good entry into the asset. So what I've been doing now is I've been cashing in some of my Ethereum and I've been buying Ethereum listed treasury companies at about 6.7 or8 their net asset value. And because I've got a long-term conviction in the Ethereum asset, all I have to count on is the fact that these companies don't get mismanaged and the rest will probably take care of itself. And that's I think right now probably the new trade. The pendulum swung completely the other way. >> Yeah. Interesting. Okay. I uh you know when we when we think about it, I mean think about what just happened. We saw that retail kind of panic. I mean everyone was on X thinking what happened here? We're watching Bitcoin dip below 90,000. We saw those whales kind of selling. The institution volatility barely moved. D I mean in every cycle a 30% drop sends fear gauges usually into orbit. Not this time. So before we get into this treasury thing I mean what does that tell you about Wall Street desks? Were they quietly absorbing the selloff while retail sold the bottom? I mean does this look more managed than natural? >> So very interesting question and I think let's look at this question against the parallel of what crypto cycles have been like for the last couple of crypto cycles. In the last couple of crypto cycles, you get the posth harving year. And for those of you who don't know what the hinging is, the h havinging is the event where the number of bitcoin emitted by the algorithm gets cut in half. And in previous cycles, the bitcoin hing has corresponded with the the year after the bitcoin hing has been a bull market year. I think I have a chart that kind of shows uh the hing cycle. If you give me a a second here, I'll try I'll try and find it for us. So that's the hing cycle. If you caught up my screen, that's the hing cycle. And what you can see is Bitcoin halves and then for the next 525 days or 546 days, there's usually a bull market. Now, this time it didn't happen. And the reason why it didn't happen, we can talk about later, but there was a backdrop that there was supposed to be a hing a a posth havinging bull market this year. We started the year, as you correctly said, at 93,000 and we're trading at 92,000 now. So I think you I think safe to say that this year wasn't a bull market year for crypto. This was also a year where the institutions where Bitcoin became an institutional asset. Trump came into power, the ETFs were approved, you get a pro crypto administration and the asset became much more institutional. Now I want to take your I want to cast your attention back to a massive event that happened to Bitcoin and that was what we in the industry called the October 10th liquidation event which is this big red nasty candle over here. it on the chart. I think the chart doesn't do it enough justice. And the reason why I say that is that event liquidated 1.6 or 1.7 million uh million traders and liquidated $20 billion worth of leverage traders in the crypto market. It was probably the most the single most catastrophic event that crypto has ever seen. Tokens went to as low as zero. Centralized exchanges collapsed. Market makers collapsed. And it was mayhem on the crypto markets. I've been in the market for the last 10 years. I've never seen anything like it. >> And for a while, we kind of wondered why it happened. It was a It was a Friday afternoon. Europe was closed. Asia was closed. The US was in the last couple of minutes or hour of trading and the market started to sell off and it sold off worse than the Trump tariff uh correction weekend which happened in February this year. And for a while we were all confused as to why this happened. But since then this has emerged. This is a document from MSEI and I believe that your viewers know who Msei is. Msei is the big indexing company. They create indices that passive funds land up investing in. Uh they're an 18 they have $18 trillion invested in their indices. So they're not a small company. And if you look at the time stamp here, it's the 10th of October. And if you look at the time, it's 8:34 GMT. And what this announcement says is it says MSsei is consulting on how to treat companies whose primary business model involves Bitcoin or other digital asset activities. MSEI proposes to exclude them from the global investable market index companies whose digital holdings are over 50% of their total assets. So what they're saying is they're saying is if your if you're a digital asset treasury company and your assets are bigger the the underlying asset is 50% of your balance sheet then you're considered a fund or a trust or a passive investment holding company at face value that doesn't sound too critical but if you dig into who the biggest buyers of the cycle are it's a digital asset treasury companies Michael Sailor has bought $50 billion or $60 billion worth of Bitcoin this cycle He's been the single biggest buyer in the cycle and that's just one digital asset treasury company. Now what is this notice actually saying? This notice is basically saying look there's a risk that Micro Strategy won't be included in passive indices which is a massive risk. And the reason why it's a massive risk is because the way that these digital asset treasuries treasury companies work is it's a winner takes all scenario like a micro strategy takes all scenario. Why? Because that share, that equity has the most energy around it. And you know that in the markets when you talk about energy, the the equity with the most energy has the most options, derivatives, instruments all built around it. And that creates the volatility and that creates the the um the uh uh attractiveness of the asset. Now, here's a threat that says, "Look, if this comes through on the 30 on the 31st, there's a consultation period that ends on the 31st of December, and on the 15th of January, they'll announce their decision. And this could mean that in February 2026, all digital asset companies are excluded from MSCI indices. And if that happens, that could spark a catalyst. That could mean that that um that the other index providers could follow suit." And so now you kind of go, "Hold on a second. On the 10th of October, something very weird happened in the Bitcoin market. We were at all-time highs. I mean, here on the 6th of October, Bitcoin was at an all-time high. On the 10th of October, we had the biggest liquidation cascade. And since then, we haven't been able to get a meaningful recovery. And now, what you're reading is that this happened on the on the uh uh uh 31st of December. >> Mhm. Yeah. >> About a week ago about a week on the 10th of October for the 31st of December. About a week ago, JP Morgan publishes an article that says that if uh pushing this story and saying that if this happens up to $9 billion could flow out of Micro Strategy that panics the whole market and Bitcoin takes another another hit down. And then mysteriously a couple of days later what we hear is that JP Morgan issues a structured note with potentially massive returns if Bitcoin surges by 2028. >> Mhm. >> So there is a game going on here. I'm not sure who the players are and exactly what the game is, but I think you'll agree with me that there's maybe a bigger uh undercurrent that's happening in the markets right now. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well said. I mean, there is that, you know, that secret of events that's circulating on all of our desks that you just brought up and and we do have a graphic that we kind of prep just to kind of show the audience as to what these dates look like because it stopped looking like an organic correction. It started looking like a very strategic rotation. I mean July 7th, right? JP Morgan hikes those margins on strategy to 95%. October 17th, Morgan Stanley files for that structured note that you were talking about. And then of course on the 20th of November, this whole JP Morgan file I bet and and then they revived this warning that you're talking about, Ron. Uh R, I mean when when you put the margins hike, the product filings and the index threat together, I mean it looks less like coincidence and more like institutions clearing the lane so that their products could capture the Bitcoin trade. And I'm not saying this was coordinated, but the timing is extremely convenient. Is it fair to say that the banks didn't just benefit from the collapse, but maybe that they helped accelerate it to pull the Bitcoin yield inside their own products? I mean, fair to look the the the data speaks for itself. Now, you know, I I struggle to believe or I struggle to think that this is how how uh manipulative people are, but I guess that's the industry. And I guess that when you're dealing with Bitcoin, which is a manageable asset because the entire market cap of Bitcoin is like $2 trillion. It's a man, you know, in their books, it's a manageable asset. They know where the liquidity is. they know when the liquidity can be tampered with like on a Friday afternoon on a on a Friday afternoon on a high leverage weekend when Asia's closed when Europe's closed. I mean look you know I I guess that you can only draw the conclusion that it's highly probable that this is what's happening. The good news is that if it was happening right now what they need is they need Bitcoin to go up. So they needed Bitcoin to go down to capture the trade. Now they're in the trade and the right side of the trade now is the up trade, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I get a lot of people emailing me obviously, right? We got a lot of gold watchers, some people, you know, in the Bitcoin side. I mean, if if Wall Street is is shaping the Bitcoin cycle, does that mean that Bitcoin has already lost the independence it was once built on? I mean, has this market effectively kind of been captured? And where does that leave retail investors who thought that the corporate treasury model was the purest way to own Bitcoin exposure or the ones that bought the top? >> The purest way to get Bitcoin exposure is to actually own Bitcoin. And the reason why we own Bitcoin is because Bitcoin is a government is a is a digital asset that is not controllable or seizable by any kind of uh government, etc. Now, if these banks want to buy Bitcoin, that's great. that just creates more demand. Ultimately, if you want to own real Bitcoin, you don't buy it through a Bitcoin treasury. You buy it and you hold the asset itself. And that's what the asset was created for. The good thing is that no matter how many Bitcoin you own, you cannot sway the network. The network keeps ticking the way that it is. It's not like if you own more Bitcoin, you get more voting power. It doesn't work like that. the miners, which are all the computers all around the world that are actually confirming the transactions, they are the only people that can sway the direction of the network. So, so it's like if the corporate treasuries want to buy it and if Wall Street want all in it and you own it before they you own it or owned it before they got in, well then that's the best, you know, you're in the best case scenario now because you're watching this adoption happen. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, >> you know, ultimately ultimately I think the one thing that that that's quite important to note is that yes, we are complaining about 2025 and and you know, it's been a tough year for crypto in 2025, but number one, we're measuring it at the bottom of a correction. Like this has been one of the most brutal corrections that have been here's a chart of Bitcoin corrections over here. And you can see that this 36% correction has been the most brutal correction that we've had since 2021, mid2021. So this is like one of the biggest corrections that we've had since the the the bull market corrections we had since 2021. This it's easy to look at an asset at the bottom of a correction and say, "Oh, well, it hasn't performed." But if you just zoom out a bit and you say, "Look, you know, like this is the Bitcoin chart. This is the upward channel that it's been on. you know, if you look at where we were, uh, you know, and I'm just going to give draw a random line here, 2023, which is, you know, two two years ago. I mean, we're still 250% up in the last two years. >> Yeah. >> So, you know, like I guess it it's all about perspective and it's about when you read the data. You're reading the data at the bottom of a correction when Bitcoin is at the bottom of a channel that it's been on since 20 2017 2018. So, it's easy to say, "Oh, well, we've had such a tough ride." But I think you just need to zoom out and say it's probably a great buying opportunity right now. In fact, I think if you take the fact that we're on an upward trend, we haven't had a bull market yet in Bitcoin. We've separated from the the if you look at at at at how Bitcoin separated. Bitcoin separated from the um I'm trying to find you a better chart here. Here we go. So that's how Bitcoin separated from the MAG7. You can kind of see there's quite a big disconnection here from the MAG7. If you look at how Bitcoin has disconnected from uh let me try to get you a better chart here around gold. Um so if you look at how Bitcoin is disconnected from global liquidity, there's a massive disconnect between uh Bitcoin and and and global liquidity. Um and so it kind of feels like we're reading the data at a certain point in time and maybe at the wrong point in time. Like it's almost like >> you're looking at the bottom of a correction hopefully and you're going, "Oh wow, you haven't performed." Great. But we know that every time Bitcoin gets to the bottom of a correction, it hasn't performed from the period before. But when it does recover, then it recovers pretty strong. So look at this. Look at this correction over here. If you would have looked at it on the 9th of March 2024, you would have said, "Wow, Bitcoin hasn't performed really well." But then you look at how it did straight after that and it went up another 100%. And then, you know, we dipped back down and it went up another 100%. And so it's like it's almost a case of it looks like we're reading the data at the bottom of one of these corrections based on this pattern. And you know if if if this follows the same trajectory, we go back up above here. We break the all-time high. And then people are going, "Wow, you could have made 50% in Bitcoin if you had just held it for two months or three months." That's that's the history of Bitcoin the asset. >> Yeah. So buy in the dip. Let me ask you then about you know the the big date circled on everyone's calendar as we talked about right January 15th. That's when the MCI decides whether to exclude strategy from its indexes. And if they do, billions of passive capital could or has to really sell immediately. So here's the question here. I mean, you're buying the dip. Does the smart investor kind of step aside until January 15th or is it already priced in? >> Number one, I think max fear is priced in the market and I think we saw that last week. The fear and greed index dropped to the lowest that it's been. The sentiment dropped the lowest that it's been. The second thing, so so the first thing is let's make the assumption that most of that fear is priced into the market. The second thing is the the biggest company that's affected by it is Micro Strategy. >> Micro Strategy um if it is excluded from those indices probably and and we're talking only MSCI, you're talking about probably $2 billion worth of sell pressure. >> But the sell pressure is not on Bitcoin. The sell pressure is on Micro Strategy. And regardless of how low the price of Micro Strategy goes, it doesn't mean that Micro Strategy has to has to liquidate their Bitcoin. It may make it harder for them to raise capital using convertible instruments. I I I take that and therefore it may slow down them as a potential buyer in the markets and similar companies as potential buyers in the markets. But at the same time, there's another thing going on. And I mean if you look at like for example something that I that that I that I read and that I saw today is that the news that IBIT basically that the that the the um the um NASDAQ increased the IBIT options to 1 million contracts from 25k contracts and basically that creates a much much much bigger demand because now you can use this instrument for much bigger transactions. So it's almost like DATs or digital asset treasury companies were great while they were here. Uh Micro Strategy was a great buyer while they were here. Micro Strategy owns about 3.5% of the total Bitcoin supply in circulation. In my feeling, if they keep increasing, that creates concentration risk. You I don't think you want to be in a market where one company with one board owns four, five, 6% of the world's digital global asset reserve. Because that means that if one vote take a decision, you've always got this four or 5% overhang. And to me, that's unhealthy, right? I've always cited it as one of the big risks to Bitcoin adoption is that if one party or one board of directors gets too too many assets, then it almost sits like this overhang always that they may sell at some point in time. >> Yeah. >> And so I think that to be honest, there's a silver lining here. And the silver lining is I'm okay with Micro Strategy stopping stopping or or slowing down on their buying cuz it just it creates a much healthier distribution uh dispersion uh uh uh curve for Bitcoin. >> Yeah. Let me ask you this. I mean, you know, you were just talking about uh Tom Lee obviously and before that you were talking about buying Ethereum Treasury companies because they're at a cheaper nav. Um how are you distinguishing between healthy balance sheets and zombie companies that will never refinance their debt? What's your filter? So look you the the digital asset treasury model is that they found these zombie companies generally the zombie companies had not much debt but also not much uh existing business activity and they used that those companies which I call them cash cows um they use those sorry cash shells they use those companies uh to reverse list these digital asset treasury companies and in most cases the existing business has very little impact fact very little uh uh expense base, very little uh revenue and the majority of the income is being made by holding these digital assets and what we call staking the digital assets. Now staking sounds like it's complicated but it's actually really very simple. You lock up your Ethereum in a certain address or in a certain place and every now and then you need to vote on something and that's what you call staking. So it's not like you need big infrastructure. So how do I measure the health of these things? I look at their operating expenses. If they have very low operating expenses and they have income, then it's a slam dunk because you know that they're holding an asset that's valued at a certain uh uh um at a certain value relative to a very liquid market. I want to move on to this breaking news. You and I were chatting about it just quickly here, Ren, just about um obviously this this move when it comes to Tether as well because it's more about the the kind of market plumbing. Yesterday, S&P Global downgraded Tether to its lowest stability score, uh, which is called weak, and they're pointing to rising high-risisk assets inside of reserves, including Bitcoin now about 5.6%. Now, crypto hates when rating agencies apply a bank lens to blockchain assets. But when reserve risk is is reserve risk when you know when Bitcoin Bitcoin drops 30%. So, I mean, is this a genuine systemic concern or is the S&P kind of misapplying a traditional framework to a non-traditional asset? Again, I'm I'm very very very surprised by this S&P thing. And the reason is if you think about what Tether's holding, Tether's the biggest holder of government uh Tether holds uh uh US uh treasury bonds. I think it's one of the biggest holders in the world. It's the biggest buyer of gold, bigger than most central banks out there in in the last period. And they also own about 5% of their balance sheet in Bitcoin. What S&P didn't see is that Tether is about 104%. It's It's 4% overcolateralized. And so you're talking about you're talking about a company that that that has 5% in Bitcoin. You're talking about Bitcoin, the asset, not being as volatile as it was in the past, and you're talking about the their asset base being collateralized to over to 104%. It's weird that they dropped it to such a low level. Like, it's it just doesn't make sense. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean to your point, Tether holds more physical gold than any private entity on the planet and and they have no government style deficit. I mean, it sounds more like a AAA credit than weak. Are are the rating agencies just misreading this? >> Yeah, I think they're maybe applying old frameworks or something like that, but again, you have, you know, Tether doesn't lend against its assets. It's basically holding like the safest assets in the world. It's holding majority of their thing, T-balls, and I'll try and get us what the actual number is. I was actually looking at it a bit earlier today, but I mean the majority of what they've got is is is T- bills gold and uh and and 5% of their balance sheet in Bitcoin, which and they over they collateralize now to between 103 and 104%. So I mean it feels like to me this is a blue chip if if anything it feels like it's a blue chip. >> Yeah. Yeah. Hey, you've been keeping an eye on that Ethereum Bitcoin ratio at all? I mean we we we saw a move. I mean a pop, not not a massive move, but meaningful. Is this an early signal that capital is kind of rotating towards assets like you just talked about with real onchain yielding, you know, staking, activity, fees, and away from a Bitcoin market kind of uh increasingly shaped by by Wall Street flows. >> So, I don't know if you remember, but the last time we spoke, this is where the chart was and I drew this trend line for us last time and I said, "Look, this is at the top of the channel now, and I think it's probably going to start correcting a little bit." And it did correct a little bit. We are back to as you can see like slight slightly lower levels. You got to understand how this market works. This market works when Bitcoin starts running and as soon as Bitcoin starts running and the confidence comes in, the alts outperform Bitcoin usually. In this cycle, it hasn't happened or it hasn't happened as convincingly as it hap as it's happened in many other cycles. But I have no doubt that when we get a real Bitcoin bull run, which we didn't have in 2025, the altcoins starting with Ethereum and then moving on to Salana will outperform uh Bitcoin. It's happened every single cycle. And I think that this cycle is just delayed. I think the reason why this cycle's just delayed is if you look at global liquidity and I've got this chart over here which basically shows the price of Bitcoin on the bottom you've got global liquidity and with global liquidity you've got the PMI which is the the PMI which represents the economic expansion index and what you can see is that in both of the bull runs that we had yes they tied up exactly with the h havinging but it was much bigger than that the global liquidity increased and and that's when Bitcoin and the old coins actually started to increase. Now, if you look at glo at global liquidity and you look at the PMI in this cycle, it's been flat and maybe even slightly down. Those aren't the conditions where Bitcoin actually starts running. That's the that's what's going on about you. Now, you want to know why that's happening is though is because even though global M2 money supply is currently at its all-time high, if you look at a different money and so people are saying, "Wow, well, the global M2 money supply is at an all-time high. Therefore, liquidity is at an all-time high. That's actually not the case because if you look at global net liquidity, which subtracts all the it takes the M2 money supply, but it subtracts things that are sitting in the reverse repo facility or in the government TGA account or stuff like that, then actually global net equities went on a decrease. And when global net liquidity is on the decrease, those aren't good conditions for Bitcoin to be running in, as I showed you in in this chart over here. And so what I'm counting on is on the is the fact that in 3 or 4 days QT ends. Now that's not quantitative easing, but it it's certainly a whole lot better than money being removed out of the economy. The Treasury General account has now been refilled as you can see here. Remember that this got depleted during the government shutdown and then they had to refill it and they had to refill it with about $600 billion. That's almost a trillion dollars taken out of the economy over here, right? You add that plus quantitative tightening plus the reverse repo facility plus plus plus+ and then you say okay what what what what are we going into? We're going into a period of interest rates that should be declining. We're going into a period of uh uh quantit quantitative tightening ending and hopefully we're going into a period where the global liquidity will start increasing and the PMI will start increasing and that's the conditions where Bitcoin that Bitcoin likes. And so that's the bet that I'm currently taking. I'm taking a bet that says look we've just had a correction. We're at the bottom of of the channel over here. the fear and greed has completely completely completely reset. We're hopefully going into a more expansionary economic e economic cycle and those are the activities or the conditions that Bitcoin actually loves. And so I'm getting a little bit I'm getting much much much more confident that we're getting into a Bitcoin type environment at the moment. And that's why to be honest I'm I'm kind of pressing much harder and I'm putting a lot more into into Bitcoin and I've rotated from a couple of other assets. uh back into the stock market. The AI trade on the stock markets for me is getting slightly heated. I'm I don't think it's a bubble, but I do think it's getting slightly heated. I got to be honest, even some of the gold and silver miners for me have started to get slightly heated. I don't think it's the end of the gold run or the end of the silver run. But if I look at the comparison between silver and Bitcoin or gold and Bitcoin, then I think it's like you look at what's happening with silver and I'm thinking to myself, you know what? probably it's probably time to start looking at the riskier uh gold basers which is silver, bitcoin uh and stuff like that. >> Interesting. Okay. Uh I know the audience wants to know about the silver silver and gold call. So I mean you know obviously we saw a little bit of a haircut some some seems like there's a nice base around $4,100. Um any outlook on on that trade going into next year with all of these fundamentals? Look, I think uh if you look at the the year or the period that gold has had, gold's had, I think, the best period that it's had in in in years. >> Um, and we know how gold runs. You know, gold runs for a while, then it stops, and then, you know, silver starts running. And silver, I think, has now broken the 50-year cup and handle. I mean, I quickly just caught up the chart and just have a look at it. But that cup and handle is a is a very, very long cup and handle. And, you know, silver is always the riskier beta to gold. And here it is. It's breaking that 50-year cup and handle over here. And to me, that's a sign that we're moving into slightly more risky reserve assets. And that's why I think it's going to be silver. I'm I'm I'm more overweight silver than I am than I am gold. Okay. >> Um and I'm more overweight Bitcoin than I am silver. And that's basically my trade. I'm basically moving down the the commodity risk curve. >> You talked you brought up Salena there quickly and I mean our time always goes too fast, man. But just quickly because for for all of 2024 and 2025, you know, the narrative was Salena's the Ethereum killer. I mean, the flows were there, the meme coins were there, but in November, the data shifted. I mean, we just saw that first ever net outflow from Salena ETS, 8.1 million after weeks of inflows. And more concerning is the onchain usage. We had that data showing active addresses on Salena plummeted 63% this month. But is what you're saying what I'm hearing is maybe this is the next opportunity here. So Salana is very reflexive to uh crypto market movements. Why? Because when the when the crypto prices are going up, the traders want to trade. And where do they trade? They trade on Salana. Why? Because it's fast and it's cheap. >> When the market is quiet and there's nothing to trade, then the traders don't do anything, right? So like right now, I got to be honest, this has been one of the most boring, dull periods in crypto that I've been in for a long, long, long time. And so on in those markets, remember what is crypto? Crypto is the ability to hold and send digital assets. That's what it is. And when you have digital assets, what do you do with them? You trade them. >> But in a market where there's no volatility or where you're going down and and sideways, down and sideways, that's when traders get chopped out of the market. When traders get chopped out of the market, the active addresses on Salana will go down. But wait until there's one green candle. And that's what we always say in crypto. And crypto always say it's just the the difference between uh euphoria and depression is just one green candle because when crypto runs and the dopamine starts going and people start trading they start trading anything and everything. You've seen it before. Dog coins, cat coins, AI agents, you know, staking coins, etc., etc. And where does it all happen? It all happens on Salana. >> Uh okay. Well, last one, Ren. I mean, because a lot of people need clarity today. I mean, if you look at Bitcoin, all year rode the rally, rode the crash, and and ended the year flat. But what's the 30-day playbook here, my friend? >> So, I think 2026 is going to be a a bull market. >> So, I'm I'm I'm positioning my chips as if it's going to be a bull market. I think it's going to be a quite an aggressive bull market. So, I'm going slightly more risk on even in crypto. So, slightly less in Bitcoin because I think Bitcoin's had a run. Slightly more into Ethereum, slightly more into Salana. And then there's a very big play in crypto which I don't believe that your audience is ready for, but I'm going to bring it up anyway because I say not ready for is because it's quite a niche trade. But what it is, it's AI and crypto. It's the it's the mix between AI and crypto. Now, let me explain to you why I think that's such a big trade. So, I think we all know now or we all realizing now that most of our transactions are going to be done by AI agents. I think the future and the notsodistant future is going to be a future where you you go you tell an AI agent, hey, book me a vacation for Thanksgiving with my family of four people and pay for it online. Now, up until now, the whole process um was not really autonomous. Why? Because at some point, you had to enter your credit card details and at some point the transaction had to go via a bank or a third party merchant. There was no way, there was no standard for companies to transact with each other over the internet unless they went through a bank, which technically isn't transacting with each other over the internet. However, not so long ago, Coinbase and and Cloudflare and Google and a couple of other companies got together and they started a thing called X42. Now, what X42 is is it's a payment. It's not owned by anyone. a payment protocol which basically allows AI agents to transact with each other without any human intervention without having to go through a bank using crypto assets. So that means that you can book a full vacation between two uh AI agents and they can pay for the vacation without the human ever having to touch this and without the transaction ever going through a bank. And so now you've got the perfect setup between AI and crypto. Like let's think about what crypto actually is. Crypto is trustless money. It's money that that two parties that it's it's digital programmable trustless money. Which means that two parties who don't know each other can trans can transact in a trustless manner using what they call a smart contract. And now because they've got this internet payments protocol called X42, it allows AI agents to start transacting with each other. In the future, every transaction is going to be done via AI or most transactions are going to be done via AI. AI agents are not going to use credit cards. They're not going to use a Visa or Mastercard. They're going to use crypto assets to transact with each other. And you know, we're seeing it. We're very close to the fire and we're seeing it. And so that's a big trade for me. The second big trade which I'm taking for 2026 is the privacy trade. So this is a very very very interesting trade. Let me explain it to you. Bitcoin is an amazing amazing amazing asset. Why? Because the cipher punk movement fought for years to create a currency that is decentralized and not controlled by any government and they got it. But there's a there's a negative to this currency. And the negative to this currency is that every transaction that every account and every wallet makes as well as the balance of that wallet is seen is available for everyone to see at any point in time. So the flaw of that is the following. You go and buy a coffee or you go and buy a vacation and you pay for it using Bitcoin. the person who who you did the transaction with and actually everybody else can see exactly every single other transaction that you've ever made and how many Bitcoin you own and it links back to every other wallet that you've ever used. Okay? So, imagine going into a store, buying a pair of shoes, swiping your credit card, and the merchant being able to see every single transaction that you've ever made and how much money you've got in the bank. Doesn't make sense, right? >> No. But the way the Bitcoin algorithm is structured because we can see all the trans all the wallets and we can see the balance of all the wallets at any point in time. We can verify that there 21 million coins on the network and that there no more being coins ever being created. But there's no privacy in Bitcoin. However, now there's a government that appreciates that if institutions are going to adopt crypto assets, they need privacy and they appreciate the the the the the individual's right to privacy. And so there's a whole narrative in crypto called privacy coins. It's being headed by a privacy coin called Zcash. This is the chart of Zcash and you'll see I mean I don't know if you've ever seen a chart like that but that's the Zcash chart. Um and this is when people realize that the next movement is around private money. And so this narrative or this coin has basically since August given us a return of about 1,250%. But it's not the coin that I'm excited about. Zcash is like Bitcoin. It's faster, it's cheaper, and it's private. It's the narrative of of being to do private being able to do private transactions compliantly on the blockchain. >> Yeah. >> So, those are my bets. Bull market in 2026, big AI bet and privacy. >> Okay. I'll get people to look at I mean, you know, how does it get through regulations? Do do autonomous agents become money transmitters? Who's accountable, you know, for payments that are automated? Because if if regulators decide that these agents need oversight, the whole model changes and and suddenly the autonomous part isn't so autonomous. What are your thoughts? >> So from a regulatory point of view, it's it's clean. Why why is it clean? Because as long as the on-ramps and off-ramp are KYC, in other words, you have to in order to load up the agent with money, there's an on-ramp and an off-ramp. Um uh uh that that are KYCed. From that point on, there's no real regulation that needs to take place between the AI agents. the AI agents can transact on the on the rails quite freely with each other and then as long as when you're taking putting the money on or getting the money off there's some kind of mail trail or some kind of KYC trail as to where the money is going then I think you're pretty safe and so I'm not too worried about that and again it's not whether you want it or don't want it. It's the only way that AI agents can transact trustlessly today. There is no other technology that exists that achieves the same thing. And so it's not it's not like we have a choice. If you want AI agents to do autonomous transactions and you don't want every transaction to have to be cleared by a bank, there's only one way to do it and that's using crypto. >> Yeah. And a lot of viewers will be excited to hear that uh the government's finally for privacy. That's that must have changed. >> Um >> well during the Biden administration, if you even mention the word privacy or even if you were working on a privacy protocol, some developers actually landed up in jail. That's a true story, right? The tornado cash developers actually landed up in jail. But in this administration, that's not the case. This administration has a sane and rational SEC. They've got a pro- crypto stance, and they appreciate the individual's right to privacy. And I think that that's I mean, I think that I think we've come a long way. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> In fact, let me show you something. >> Let me just show you something before we go. Just if you look here, this is the end of the this is the Carla era. So, uh this is the the the election candle over here. If you look at 18th of March 2024 when we were in the Carla era and the Biden era and crypto and was very very hostile, the the administration was very very hostile to crypto. We were trading at $74,000. That means that if you think that Bitcoin right now is fairly valued, you're saying all the process that we've made, the potential Bitcoin strategic reserve, the pro crypto SEC, the IBITS, the the the the structured notes, is that only worth a 20% premium doesn't sound right. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well said. And lots to think about. All right. Uh great insight as always, Ren Nuner. Of course, appreciate you coming on, giving us this. We got to get you on a Q1, my friend, just to kind of see where this whole thing plays out. But I was surprised to to see that. I mean, what was your original call? 165 didn't quite hit that. So, we still have some room to go on this next bull cycle. >> So, yeah, I'll admit my my prediction I I said to you last time when I made the prediction, I said I don't I don't like making predictions because in most the chances are that you're going to get the prediction wrong. >> Um because I you can't really time markets. Look, you do know that Bitcoin can have violent moves up. I wouldn't be surprised if we end the year closer to the 100 $120 $20,000 level. I have no doubt that 2026 is going to be a much much much stronger year. Unless I mean, you know, unless something crazy happens and we get another black swan, I think I think this is a great time to be buying. >> Yeah, beauty. Buy the dip. All right, Ran. Appreciate it. And uh happy Thanksgiving, mate. Appreciate your time. >> Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you very much, my friend. >> Thank you. And for our viewers, we'll stay on this story so that you don't have to. Remember, markets don't move in isolation. And what we saw in Bitcoin today is a a window into how institutions are positioning across equities, bonds, and commodities heading into 2026. Now, be sure to hit subscribe. I'm Jeremy Saffron. Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks for watching Kiko News. >> Swan is the premier Bitcoin wealth platform serving leaders of families and businesses. 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Ran Neuner: The ‘Mysterious’ Bank Game That Crushed Bitcoin & The Exact Trade For 2026
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In Focus with Jeremy Saffron is brought to you by Swan, the real Bitcoin company. All right, welcome back and happy Thanksgiving everybody. Let's be honest. If you're checking your portfolio between courses today, it's not just crypto traders feeling uneasy. Now, equities did stall coming into the holiday. Yields refused to come down and gold is still holding its bid here above $4,100. And overall risk appetite has been fading all week long. And what's happening in Bitcoin today tells us a lot about who's really driving markets into 2026. Now, Bitcoin is sitting around $91,500 as we record this, which means that the entire October and November rally has been erased. Now, let's take a look here at this year-to- date chart. We started the year at $93,000. We hit a record 126,000 in early October. Now, we're right back to where we started. It's about 11 months of volatility for zero net progress. But here's the unusual part. Now, retail panicked. There was some whales dumping and institutional volatility barely moved. Something shifted under the surface. And for our gold viewers, this pattern is very familiar. When big institutions start steering a market, the narrative changes. Now, back in July, Ren Neer warned us that the synthetic leverage, as he called it, that trade, public companies issuing stock to buy Bitcoin, was a ticking time bomb. Now, it feels like that bomb just went off. What's emerging looks like a rotation of power away from corporate treasuries and straight into Wall Street's hands. So, let's break it down. The timeline, the filings, the margin changes in the January decision that could move billions of dollars. Welcome back, Ran Nuner from CryptoBanter, of course, joining us now from Cape Town. Good to see you, my friend. >> Good to see you, my friend. Happy Thanksgiving. And happy Thanksgiving to all your viewers. >> Yeah, I appreciate that. Happy Thanksgiving. A lot of people looking today, you know, sitting around the table thinking, "What just happened? They're waking up a bit groggy." I mean, let's start with what you called back in July. You said that the corporate treasury trade was running on quote reflex, not conviction. And that's exactly what we just kind of watched unfold here, Ran. I mean, the premium on these Bitcoin heavy stocks collapsed from 2 and a half times now to almost 1 one a complete unwind exactly as you predicted. Is this the breakdown you were kind of warning about? And in, you know, with how fast it snapped, do do you think that the leverage is almost flushed out here or is there, you know, still weak hands hiding in the system? So great question and a great recollection of what I called last time. Last time I did say to you that I was concerned about the corporate treasury companies that were trading at above their net asset values. And what I said to you was that if the trend continues for a long period of time, then we could get into a situation where they actually destroyed the cycle. Luckily though, it happened quite quickly and it didn't have they didn't have enough runway to basically take off and and and and get enough height to destroy the entire cycle. So, we're seeing a little bit of an unwind trade from the treasury companies. By that, I mean that they're not selling their tokens yet or or their crypto assets yet, but they're not trading at at premiums to net asset value anymore. >> And to be honest, most of them are trading at under net asset value, and some of them are trading at as much as 50% under net asset value. So, now the pendulum swung the other way. Now, I'm actually saying it's actually probably a pretty good idea to pick up some of the treasury companies because if you think about what their operations are, they're very low operating cost businesses if they have any operating costs at all. They income generative because a lot of them have income generating activities and they hold an asset which is a crypto asset which is a pretty in most cases a pretty liquid asset. And if you can pick up something like that at 50 or 30 or 40% of net asset value and and you're a long-term value investor and you believe in the underlying asset, that's actually a very good entry into the asset. So what I've been doing now is I've been cashing in some of my Ethereum and I've been buying Ethereum listed treasury companies at about 6.7 or8 their net asset value. And because I've got a long-term conviction in the Ethereum asset, all I have to count on is the fact that these companies don't get mismanaged and the rest will probably take care of itself. And that's I think right now probably the new trade. The pendulum swung completely the other way. >> Yeah. Interesting. Okay. I uh you know when we when we think about it, I mean think about what just happened. We saw that retail kind of panic. I mean everyone was on X thinking what happened here? We're watching Bitcoin dip below 90,000. We saw those whales kind of selling. The institution volatility barely moved. D I mean in every cycle a 30% drop sends fear gauges usually into orbit. Not this time. So before we get into this treasury thing I mean what does that tell you about Wall Street desks? Were they quietly absorbing the selloff while retail sold the bottom? I mean does this look more managed than natural? >> So very interesting question and I think let's look at this question against the parallel of what crypto cycles have been like for the last couple of crypto cycles. In the last couple of crypto cycles, you get the posth harving year. And for those of you who don't know what the hinging is, the h havinging is the event where the number of bitcoin emitted by the algorithm gets cut in half. And in previous cycles, the bitcoin hing has corresponded with the the year after the bitcoin hing has been a bull market year. I think I have a chart that kind of shows uh the hing cycle. If you give me a a second here, I'll try I'll try and find it for us. So that's the hing cycle. If you caught up my screen, that's the hing cycle. And what you can see is Bitcoin halves and then for the next 525 days or 546 days, there's usually a bull market. Now, this time it didn't happen. And the reason why it didn't happen, we can talk about later, but there was a backdrop that there was supposed to be a hing a a posth havinging bull market this year. We started the year, as you correctly said, at 93,000 and we're trading at 92,000 now. So I think you I think safe to say that this year wasn't a bull market year for crypto. This was also a year where the institutions where Bitcoin became an institutional asset. Trump came into power, the ETFs were approved, you get a pro crypto administration and the asset became much more institutional. Now I want to take your I want to cast your attention back to a massive event that happened to Bitcoin and that was what we in the industry called the October 10th liquidation event which is this big red nasty candle over here. it on the chart. I think the chart doesn't do it enough justice. And the reason why I say that is that event liquidated 1.6 or 1.7 million uh million traders and liquidated $20 billion worth of leverage traders in the crypto market. It was probably the most the single most catastrophic event that crypto has ever seen. Tokens went to as low as zero. Centralized exchanges collapsed. Market makers collapsed. And it was mayhem on the crypto markets. I've been in the market for the last 10 years. I've never seen anything like it. >> And for a while, we kind of wondered why it happened. It was a It was a Friday afternoon. Europe was closed. Asia was closed. The US was in the last couple of minutes or hour of trading and the market started to sell off and it sold off worse than the Trump tariff uh correction weekend which happened in February this year. And for a while we were all confused as to why this happened. But since then this has emerged. This is a document from MSEI and I believe that your viewers know who Msei is. Msei is the big indexing company. They create indices that passive funds land up investing in. Uh they're an 18 they have $18 trillion invested in their indices. So they're not a small company. And if you look at the time stamp here, it's the 10th of October. And if you look at the time, it's 8:34 GMT. And what this announcement says is it says MSsei is consulting on how to treat companies whose primary business model involves Bitcoin or other digital asset activities. MSEI proposes to exclude them from the global investable market index companies whose digital holdings are over 50% of their total assets. So what they're saying is they're saying is if your if you're a digital asset treasury company and your assets are bigger the the underlying asset is 50% of your balance sheet then you're considered a fund or a trust or a passive investment holding company at face value that doesn't sound too critical but if you dig into who the biggest buyers of the cycle are it's a digital asset treasury companies Michael Sailor has bought $50 billion or $60 billion worth of Bitcoin this cycle He's been the single biggest buyer in the cycle and that's just one digital asset treasury company. Now what is this notice actually saying? This notice is basically saying look there's a risk that Micro Strategy won't be included in passive indices which is a massive risk. And the reason why it's a massive risk is because the way that these digital asset treasuries treasury companies work is it's a winner takes all scenario like a micro strategy takes all scenario. Why? Because that share, that equity has the most energy around it. And you know that in the markets when you talk about energy, the the equity with the most energy has the most options, derivatives, instruments all built around it. And that creates the volatility and that creates the the um the uh uh attractiveness of the asset. Now, here's a threat that says, "Look, if this comes through on the 30 on the 31st, there's a consultation period that ends on the 31st of December, and on the 15th of January, they'll announce their decision. And this could mean that in February 2026, all digital asset companies are excluded from MSCI indices. And if that happens, that could spark a catalyst. That could mean that that um that the other index providers could follow suit." And so now you kind of go, "Hold on a second. On the 10th of October, something very weird happened in the Bitcoin market. We were at all-time highs. I mean, here on the 6th of October, Bitcoin was at an all-time high. On the 10th of October, we had the biggest liquidation cascade. And since then, we haven't been able to get a meaningful recovery. And now, what you're reading is that this happened on the on the uh uh uh 31st of December. >> Mhm. Yeah. >> About a week ago about a week on the 10th of October for the 31st of December. About a week ago, JP Morgan publishes an article that says that if uh pushing this story and saying that if this happens up to $9 billion could flow out of Micro Strategy that panics the whole market and Bitcoin takes another another hit down. And then mysteriously a couple of days later what we hear is that JP Morgan issues a structured note with potentially massive returns if Bitcoin surges by 2028. >> Mhm. >> So there is a game going on here. I'm not sure who the players are and exactly what the game is, but I think you'll agree with me that there's maybe a bigger uh undercurrent that's happening in the markets right now. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well said. I mean, there is that, you know, that secret of events that's circulating on all of our desks that you just brought up and and we do have a graphic that we kind of prep just to kind of show the audience as to what these dates look like because it stopped looking like an organic correction. It started looking like a very strategic rotation. I mean July 7th, right? JP Morgan hikes those margins on strategy to 95%. October 17th, Morgan Stanley files for that structured note that you were talking about. And then of course on the 20th of November, this whole JP Morgan file I bet and and then they revived this warning that you're talking about, Ron. Uh R, I mean when when you put the margins hike, the product filings and the index threat together, I mean it looks less like coincidence and more like institutions clearing the lane so that their products could capture the Bitcoin trade. And I'm not saying this was coordinated, but the timing is extremely convenient. Is it fair to say that the banks didn't just benefit from the collapse, but maybe that they helped accelerate it to pull the Bitcoin yield inside their own products? I mean, fair to look the the the data speaks for itself. Now, you know, I I struggle to believe or I struggle to think that this is how how uh manipulative people are, but I guess that's the industry. And I guess that when you're dealing with Bitcoin, which is a manageable asset because the entire market cap of Bitcoin is like $2 trillion. It's a man, you know, in their books, it's a manageable asset. They know where the liquidity is. they know when the liquidity can be tampered with like on a Friday afternoon on a on a Friday afternoon on a high leverage weekend when Asia's closed when Europe's closed. I mean look you know I I guess that you can only draw the conclusion that it's highly probable that this is what's happening. The good news is that if it was happening right now what they need is they need Bitcoin to go up. So they needed Bitcoin to go down to capture the trade. Now they're in the trade and the right side of the trade now is the up trade, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I get a lot of people emailing me obviously, right? We got a lot of gold watchers, some people, you know, in the Bitcoin side. I mean, if if Wall Street is is shaping the Bitcoin cycle, does that mean that Bitcoin has already lost the independence it was once built on? I mean, has this market effectively kind of been captured? And where does that leave retail investors who thought that the corporate treasury model was the purest way to own Bitcoin exposure or the ones that bought the top? >> The purest way to get Bitcoin exposure is to actually own Bitcoin. And the reason why we own Bitcoin is because Bitcoin is a government is a is a digital asset that is not controllable or seizable by any kind of uh government, etc. Now, if these banks want to buy Bitcoin, that's great. that just creates more demand. Ultimately, if you want to own real Bitcoin, you don't buy it through a Bitcoin treasury. You buy it and you hold the asset itself. And that's what the asset was created for. The good thing is that no matter how many Bitcoin you own, you cannot sway the network. The network keeps ticking the way that it is. It's not like if you own more Bitcoin, you get more voting power. It doesn't work like that. the miners, which are all the computers all around the world that are actually confirming the transactions, they are the only people that can sway the direction of the network. So, so it's like if the corporate treasuries want to buy it and if Wall Street want all in it and you own it before they you own it or owned it before they got in, well then that's the best, you know, you're in the best case scenario now because you're watching this adoption happen. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, >> you know, ultimately ultimately I think the one thing that that that's quite important to note is that yes, we are complaining about 2025 and and you know, it's been a tough year for crypto in 2025, but number one, we're measuring it at the bottom of a correction. Like this has been one of the most brutal corrections that have been here's a chart of Bitcoin corrections over here. And you can see that this 36% correction has been the most brutal correction that we've had since 2021, mid2021. So this is like one of the biggest corrections that we've had since the the the bull market corrections we had since 2021. This it's easy to look at an asset at the bottom of a correction and say, "Oh, well, it hasn't performed." But if you just zoom out a bit and you say, "Look, you know, like this is the Bitcoin chart. This is the upward channel that it's been on. you know, if you look at where we were, uh, you know, and I'm just going to give draw a random line here, 2023, which is, you know, two two years ago. I mean, we're still 250% up in the last two years. >> Yeah. >> So, you know, like I guess it it's all about perspective and it's about when you read the data. You're reading the data at the bottom of a correction when Bitcoin is at the bottom of a channel that it's been on since 20 2017 2018. So, it's easy to say, "Oh, well, we've had such a tough ride." But I think you just need to zoom out and say it's probably a great buying opportunity right now. In fact, I think if you take the fact that we're on an upward trend, we haven't had a bull market yet in Bitcoin. We've separated from the the if you look at at at at how Bitcoin separated. Bitcoin separated from the um I'm trying to find you a better chart here. Here we go. So that's how Bitcoin separated from the MAG7. You can kind of see there's quite a big disconnection here from the MAG7. If you look at how Bitcoin has disconnected from uh let me try to get you a better chart here around gold. Um so if you look at how Bitcoin is disconnected from global liquidity, there's a massive disconnect between uh Bitcoin and and and global liquidity. Um and so it kind of feels like we're reading the data at a certain point in time and maybe at the wrong point in time. Like it's almost like >> you're looking at the bottom of a correction hopefully and you're going, "Oh wow, you haven't performed." Great. But we know that every time Bitcoin gets to the bottom of a correction, it hasn't performed from the period before. But when it does recover, then it recovers pretty strong. So look at this. Look at this correction over here. If you would have looked at it on the 9th of March 2024, you would have said, "Wow, Bitcoin hasn't performed really well." But then you look at how it did straight after that and it went up another 100%. And then, you know, we dipped back down and it went up another 100%. And so it's like it's almost a case of it looks like we're reading the data at the bottom of one of these corrections based on this pattern. And you know if if if this follows the same trajectory, we go back up above here. We break the all-time high. And then people are going, "Wow, you could have made 50% in Bitcoin if you had just held it for two months or three months." That's that's the history of Bitcoin the asset. >> Yeah. So buy in the dip. Let me ask you then about you know the the big date circled on everyone's calendar as we talked about right January 15th. That's when the MCI decides whether to exclude strategy from its indexes. And if they do, billions of passive capital could or has to really sell immediately. So here's the question here. I mean, you're buying the dip. Does the smart investor kind of step aside until January 15th or is it already priced in? >> Number one, I think max fear is priced in the market and I think we saw that last week. The fear and greed index dropped to the lowest that it's been. The sentiment dropped the lowest that it's been. The second thing, so so the first thing is let's make the assumption that most of that fear is priced into the market. The second thing is the the biggest company that's affected by it is Micro Strategy. >> Micro Strategy um if it is excluded from those indices probably and and we're talking only MSCI, you're talking about probably $2 billion worth of sell pressure. >> But the sell pressure is not on Bitcoin. The sell pressure is on Micro Strategy. And regardless of how low the price of Micro Strategy goes, it doesn't mean that Micro Strategy has to has to liquidate their Bitcoin. It may make it harder for them to raise capital using convertible instruments. I I I take that and therefore it may slow down them as a potential buyer in the markets and similar companies as potential buyers in the markets. But at the same time, there's another thing going on. And I mean if you look at like for example something that I that that I that I read and that I saw today is that the news that IBIT basically that the that the the um the um NASDAQ increased the IBIT options to 1 million contracts from 25k contracts and basically that creates a much much much bigger demand because now you can use this instrument for much bigger transactions. So it's almost like DATs or digital asset treasury companies were great while they were here. Uh Micro Strategy was a great buyer while they were here. Micro Strategy owns about 3.5% of the total Bitcoin supply in circulation. In my feeling, if they keep increasing, that creates concentration risk. You I don't think you want to be in a market where one company with one board owns four, five, 6% of the world's digital global asset reserve. Because that means that if one vote take a decision, you've always got this four or 5% overhang. And to me, that's unhealthy, right? I've always cited it as one of the big risks to Bitcoin adoption is that if one party or one board of directors gets too too many assets, then it almost sits like this overhang always that they may sell at some point in time. >> Yeah. >> And so I think that to be honest, there's a silver lining here. And the silver lining is I'm okay with Micro Strategy stopping stopping or or slowing down on their buying cuz it just it creates a much healthier distribution uh dispersion uh uh uh curve for Bitcoin. >> Yeah. Let me ask you this. I mean, you know, you were just talking about uh Tom Lee obviously and before that you were talking about buying Ethereum Treasury companies because they're at a cheaper nav. Um how are you distinguishing between healthy balance sheets and zombie companies that will never refinance their debt? What's your filter? So look you the the digital asset treasury model is that they found these zombie companies generally the zombie companies had not much debt but also not much uh existing business activity and they used that those companies which I call them cash cows um they use those sorry cash shells they use those companies uh to reverse list these digital asset treasury companies and in most cases the existing business has very little impact fact very little uh uh expense base, very little uh revenue and the majority of the income is being made by holding these digital assets and what we call staking the digital assets. Now staking sounds like it's complicated but it's actually really very simple. You lock up your Ethereum in a certain address or in a certain place and every now and then you need to vote on something and that's what you call staking. So it's not like you need big infrastructure. So how do I measure the health of these things? I look at their operating expenses. If they have very low operating expenses and they have income, then it's a slam dunk because you know that they're holding an asset that's valued at a certain uh uh um at a certain value relative to a very liquid market. I want to move on to this breaking news. You and I were chatting about it just quickly here, Ren, just about um obviously this this move when it comes to Tether as well because it's more about the the kind of market plumbing. Yesterday, S&P Global downgraded Tether to its lowest stability score, uh, which is called weak, and they're pointing to rising high-risisk assets inside of reserves, including Bitcoin now about 5.6%. Now, crypto hates when rating agencies apply a bank lens to blockchain assets. But when reserve risk is is reserve risk when you know when Bitcoin Bitcoin drops 30%. So, I mean, is this a genuine systemic concern or is the S&P kind of misapplying a traditional framework to a non-traditional asset? Again, I'm I'm very very very surprised by this S&P thing. And the reason is if you think about what Tether's holding, Tether's the biggest holder of government uh Tether holds uh uh US uh treasury bonds. I think it's one of the biggest holders in the world. It's the biggest buyer of gold, bigger than most central banks out there in in the last period. And they also own about 5% of their balance sheet in Bitcoin. What S&P didn't see is that Tether is about 104%. It's It's 4% overcolateralized. And so you're talking about you're talking about a company that that that has 5% in Bitcoin. You're talking about Bitcoin, the asset, not being as volatile as it was in the past, and you're talking about the their asset base being collateralized to over to 104%. It's weird that they dropped it to such a low level. Like, it's it just doesn't make sense. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean to your point, Tether holds more physical gold than any private entity on the planet and and they have no government style deficit. I mean, it sounds more like a AAA credit than weak. Are are the rating agencies just misreading this? >> Yeah, I think they're maybe applying old frameworks or something like that, but again, you have, you know, Tether doesn't lend against its assets. It's basically holding like the safest assets in the world. It's holding majority of their thing, T-balls, and I'll try and get us what the actual number is. I was actually looking at it a bit earlier today, but I mean the majority of what they've got is is is T- bills gold and uh and and 5% of their balance sheet in Bitcoin, which and they over they collateralize now to between 103 and 104%. So I mean it feels like to me this is a blue chip if if anything it feels like it's a blue chip. >> Yeah. Yeah. Hey, you've been keeping an eye on that Ethereum Bitcoin ratio at all? I mean we we we saw a move. I mean a pop, not not a massive move, but meaningful. Is this an early signal that capital is kind of rotating towards assets like you just talked about with real onchain yielding, you know, staking, activity, fees, and away from a Bitcoin market kind of uh increasingly shaped by by Wall Street flows. >> So, I don't know if you remember, but the last time we spoke, this is where the chart was and I drew this trend line for us last time and I said, "Look, this is at the top of the channel now, and I think it's probably going to start correcting a little bit." And it did correct a little bit. We are back to as you can see like slight slightly lower levels. You got to understand how this market works. This market works when Bitcoin starts running and as soon as Bitcoin starts running and the confidence comes in, the alts outperform Bitcoin usually. In this cycle, it hasn't happened or it hasn't happened as convincingly as it hap as it's happened in many other cycles. But I have no doubt that when we get a real Bitcoin bull run, which we didn't have in 2025, the altcoins starting with Ethereum and then moving on to Salana will outperform uh Bitcoin. It's happened every single cycle. And I think that this cycle is just delayed. I think the reason why this cycle's just delayed is if you look at global liquidity and I've got this chart over here which basically shows the price of Bitcoin on the bottom you've got global liquidity and with global liquidity you've got the PMI which is the the PMI which represents the economic expansion index and what you can see is that in both of the bull runs that we had yes they tied up exactly with the h havinging but it was much bigger than that the global liquidity increased and and that's when Bitcoin and the old coins actually started to increase. Now, if you look at glo at global liquidity and you look at the PMI in this cycle, it's been flat and maybe even slightly down. Those aren't the conditions where Bitcoin actually starts running. That's the that's what's going on about you. Now, you want to know why that's happening is though is because even though global M2 money supply is currently at its all-time high, if you look at a different money and so people are saying, "Wow, well, the global M2 money supply is at an all-time high. Therefore, liquidity is at an all-time high. That's actually not the case because if you look at global net liquidity, which subtracts all the it takes the M2 money supply, but it subtracts things that are sitting in the reverse repo facility or in the government TGA account or stuff like that, then actually global net equities went on a decrease. And when global net liquidity is on the decrease, those aren't good conditions for Bitcoin to be running in, as I showed you in in this chart over here. And so what I'm counting on is on the is the fact that in 3 or 4 days QT ends. Now that's not quantitative easing, but it it's certainly a whole lot better than money being removed out of the economy. The Treasury General account has now been refilled as you can see here. Remember that this got depleted during the government shutdown and then they had to refill it and they had to refill it with about $600 billion. That's almost a trillion dollars taken out of the economy over here, right? You add that plus quantitative tightening plus the reverse repo facility plus plus plus+ and then you say okay what what what what are we going into? We're going into a period of interest rates that should be declining. We're going into a period of uh uh quantit quantitative tightening ending and hopefully we're going into a period where the global liquidity will start increasing and the PMI will start increasing and that's the conditions where Bitcoin that Bitcoin likes. And so that's the bet that I'm currently taking. I'm taking a bet that says look we've just had a correction. We're at the bottom of of the channel over here. the fear and greed has completely completely completely reset. We're hopefully going into a more expansionary economic e economic cycle and those are the activities or the conditions that Bitcoin actually loves. And so I'm getting a little bit I'm getting much much much more confident that we're getting into a Bitcoin type environment at the moment. And that's why to be honest I'm I'm kind of pressing much harder and I'm putting a lot more into into Bitcoin and I've rotated from a couple of other assets. uh back into the stock market. The AI trade on the stock markets for me is getting slightly heated. I'm I don't think it's a bubble, but I do think it's getting slightly heated. I got to be honest, even some of the gold and silver miners for me have started to get slightly heated. I don't think it's the end of the gold run or the end of the silver run. But if I look at the comparison between silver and Bitcoin or gold and Bitcoin, then I think it's like you look at what's happening with silver and I'm thinking to myself, you know what? probably it's probably time to start looking at the riskier uh gold basers which is silver, bitcoin uh and stuff like that. >> Interesting. Okay. Uh I know the audience wants to know about the silver silver and gold call. So I mean you know obviously we saw a little bit of a haircut some some seems like there's a nice base around $4,100. Um any outlook on on that trade going into next year with all of these fundamentals? Look, I think uh if you look at the the year or the period that gold has had, gold's had, I think, the best period that it's had in in in years. >> Um, and we know how gold runs. You know, gold runs for a while, then it stops, and then, you know, silver starts running. And silver, I think, has now broken the 50-year cup and handle. I mean, I quickly just caught up the chart and just have a look at it. But that cup and handle is a is a very, very long cup and handle. And, you know, silver is always the riskier beta to gold. And here it is. It's breaking that 50-year cup and handle over here. And to me, that's a sign that we're moving into slightly more risky reserve assets. And that's why I think it's going to be silver. I'm I'm I'm more overweight silver than I am than I am gold. Okay. >> Um and I'm more overweight Bitcoin than I am silver. And that's basically my trade. I'm basically moving down the the commodity risk curve. >> You talked you brought up Salena there quickly and I mean our time always goes too fast, man. But just quickly because for for all of 2024 and 2025, you know, the narrative was Salena's the Ethereum killer. I mean, the flows were there, the meme coins were there, but in November, the data shifted. I mean, we just saw that first ever net outflow from Salena ETS, 8.1 million after weeks of inflows. And more concerning is the onchain usage. We had that data showing active addresses on Salena plummeted 63% this month. But is what you're saying what I'm hearing is maybe this is the next opportunity here. So Salana is very reflexive to uh crypto market movements. Why? Because when the when the crypto prices are going up, the traders want to trade. And where do they trade? They trade on Salana. Why? Because it's fast and it's cheap. >> When the market is quiet and there's nothing to trade, then the traders don't do anything, right? So like right now, I got to be honest, this has been one of the most boring, dull periods in crypto that I've been in for a long, long, long time. And so on in those markets, remember what is crypto? Crypto is the ability to hold and send digital assets. That's what it is. And when you have digital assets, what do you do with them? You trade them. >> But in a market where there's no volatility or where you're going down and and sideways, down and sideways, that's when traders get chopped out of the market. When traders get chopped out of the market, the active addresses on Salana will go down. But wait until there's one green candle. And that's what we always say in crypto. And crypto always say it's just the the difference between uh euphoria and depression is just one green candle because when crypto runs and the dopamine starts going and people start trading they start trading anything and everything. You've seen it before. Dog coins, cat coins, AI agents, you know, staking coins, etc., etc. And where does it all happen? It all happens on Salana. >> Uh okay. Well, last one, Ren. I mean, because a lot of people need clarity today. I mean, if you look at Bitcoin, all year rode the rally, rode the crash, and and ended the year flat. But what's the 30-day playbook here, my friend? >> So, I think 2026 is going to be a a bull market. >> So, I'm I'm I'm positioning my chips as if it's going to be a bull market. I think it's going to be a quite an aggressive bull market. So, I'm going slightly more risk on even in crypto. So, slightly less in Bitcoin because I think Bitcoin's had a run. Slightly more into Ethereum, slightly more into Salana. And then there's a very big play in crypto which I don't believe that your audience is ready for, but I'm going to bring it up anyway because I say not ready for is because it's quite a niche trade. But what it is, it's AI and crypto. It's the it's the mix between AI and crypto. Now, let me explain to you why I think that's such a big trade. So, I think we all know now or we all realizing now that most of our transactions are going to be done by AI agents. I think the future and the notsodistant future is going to be a future where you you go you tell an AI agent, hey, book me a vacation for Thanksgiving with my family of four people and pay for it online. Now, up until now, the whole process um was not really autonomous. Why? Because at some point, you had to enter your credit card details and at some point the transaction had to go via a bank or a third party merchant. There was no way, there was no standard for companies to transact with each other over the internet unless they went through a bank, which technically isn't transacting with each other over the internet. However, not so long ago, Coinbase and and Cloudflare and Google and a couple of other companies got together and they started a thing called X42. Now, what X42 is is it's a payment. It's not owned by anyone. a payment protocol which basically allows AI agents to transact with each other without any human intervention without having to go through a bank using crypto assets. So that means that you can book a full vacation between two uh AI agents and they can pay for the vacation without the human ever having to touch this and without the transaction ever going through a bank. And so now you've got the perfect setup between AI and crypto. Like let's think about what crypto actually is. Crypto is trustless money. It's money that that two parties that it's it's digital programmable trustless money. Which means that two parties who don't know each other can trans can transact in a trustless manner using what they call a smart contract. And now because they've got this internet payments protocol called X42, it allows AI agents to start transacting with each other. In the future, every transaction is going to be done via AI or most transactions are going to be done via AI. AI agents are not going to use credit cards. They're not going to use a Visa or Mastercard. They're going to use crypto assets to transact with each other. And you know, we're seeing it. We're very close to the fire and we're seeing it. And so that's a big trade for me. The second big trade which I'm taking for 2026 is the privacy trade. So this is a very very very interesting trade. Let me explain it to you. Bitcoin is an amazing amazing amazing asset. Why? Because the cipher punk movement fought for years to create a currency that is decentralized and not controlled by any government and they got it. But there's a there's a negative to this currency. And the negative to this currency is that every transaction that every account and every wallet makes as well as the balance of that wallet is seen is available for everyone to see at any point in time. So the flaw of that is the following. You go and buy a coffee or you go and buy a vacation and you pay for it using Bitcoin. the person who who you did the transaction with and actually everybody else can see exactly every single other transaction that you've ever made and how many Bitcoin you own and it links back to every other wallet that you've ever used. Okay? So, imagine going into a store, buying a pair of shoes, swiping your credit card, and the merchant being able to see every single transaction that you've ever made and how much money you've got in the bank. Doesn't make sense, right? >> No. But the way the Bitcoin algorithm is structured because we can see all the trans all the wallets and we can see the balance of all the wallets at any point in time. We can verify that there 21 million coins on the network and that there no more being coins ever being created. But there's no privacy in Bitcoin. However, now there's a government that appreciates that if institutions are going to adopt crypto assets, they need privacy and they appreciate the the the the the individual's right to privacy. And so there's a whole narrative in crypto called privacy coins. It's being headed by a privacy coin called Zcash. This is the chart of Zcash and you'll see I mean I don't know if you've ever seen a chart like that but that's the Zcash chart. Um and this is when people realize that the next movement is around private money. And so this narrative or this coin has basically since August given us a return of about 1,250%. But it's not the coin that I'm excited about. Zcash is like Bitcoin. It's faster, it's cheaper, and it's private. It's the narrative of of being to do private being able to do private transactions compliantly on the blockchain. >> Yeah. >> So, those are my bets. Bull market in 2026, big AI bet and privacy. >> Okay. I'll get people to look at I mean, you know, how does it get through regulations? Do do autonomous agents become money transmitters? Who's accountable, you know, for payments that are automated? Because if if regulators decide that these agents need oversight, the whole model changes and and suddenly the autonomous part isn't so autonomous. What are your thoughts? >> So from a regulatory point of view, it's it's clean. Why why is it clean? Because as long as the on-ramps and off-ramp are KYC, in other words, you have to in order to load up the agent with money, there's an on-ramp and an off-ramp. Um uh uh that that are KYCed. From that point on, there's no real regulation that needs to take place between the AI agents. the AI agents can transact on the on the rails quite freely with each other and then as long as when you're taking putting the money on or getting the money off there's some kind of mail trail or some kind of KYC trail as to where the money is going then I think you're pretty safe and so I'm not too worried about that and again it's not whether you want it or don't want it. It's the only way that AI agents can transact trustlessly today. There is no other technology that exists that achieves the same thing. And so it's not it's not like we have a choice. If you want AI agents to do autonomous transactions and you don't want every transaction to have to be cleared by a bank, there's only one way to do it and that's using crypto. >> Yeah. And a lot of viewers will be excited to hear that uh the government's finally for privacy. That's that must have changed. >> Um >> well during the Biden administration, if you even mention the word privacy or even if you were working on a privacy protocol, some developers actually landed up in jail. That's a true story, right? The tornado cash developers actually landed up in jail. But in this administration, that's not the case. This administration has a sane and rational SEC. They've got a pro- crypto stance, and they appreciate the individual's right to privacy. And I think that that's I mean, I think that I think we've come a long way. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> In fact, let me show you something. >> Let me just show you something before we go. Just if you look here, this is the end of the this is the Carla era. So, uh this is the the the election candle over here. If you look at 18th of March 2024 when we were in the Carla era and the Biden era and crypto and was very very hostile, the the administration was very very hostile to crypto. We were trading at $74,000. That means that if you think that Bitcoin right now is fairly valued, you're saying all the process that we've made, the potential Bitcoin strategic reserve, the pro crypto SEC, the IBITS, the the the the structured notes, is that only worth a 20% premium doesn't sound right. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well said. And lots to think about. All right. Uh great insight as always, Ren Nuner. Of course, appreciate you coming on, giving us this. We got to get you on a Q1, my friend, just to kind of see where this whole thing plays out. But I was surprised to to see that. I mean, what was your original call? 165 didn't quite hit that. So, we still have some room to go on this next bull cycle. >> So, yeah, I'll admit my my prediction I I said to you last time when I made the prediction, I said I don't I don't like making predictions because in most the chances are that you're going to get the prediction wrong. >> Um because I you can't really time markets. Look, you do know that Bitcoin can have violent moves up. I wouldn't be surprised if we end the year closer to the 100 $120 $20,000 level. I have no doubt that 2026 is going to be a much much much stronger year. Unless I mean, you know, unless something crazy happens and we get another black swan, I think I think this is a great time to be buying. >> Yeah, beauty. Buy the dip. All right, Ran. Appreciate it. And uh happy Thanksgiving, mate. Appreciate your time. >> Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you very much, my friend. >> Thank you. And for our viewers, we'll stay on this story so that you don't have to. Remember, markets don't move in isolation. And what we saw in Bitcoin today is a a window into how institutions are positioning across equities, bonds, and commodities heading into 2026. Now, be sure to hit subscribe. I'm Jeremy Saffron. Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks for watching Kiko News. >> Swan is the premier Bitcoin wealth platform serving leaders of families and businesses. 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