Bits + Bips: Are Crypto Markets Bottoming, or Is There More Pain Ahead?

Bullish:

• $INFRA - Infrastructure plays (metals, waste management, oilfield services) are unsexy but have free cash flow and are positioned to benefit from rotation out of crowded thematic trades.

  • “the right move is rotate into things that are not thematic, things that sound very boring, unsexy, maybe metals, maybe waste management, maybe oilfield services, things that have free cash flow”

    Ram·3:25
• $STABLES - Stablecoins are gaining regulatory clarity with SEC's 2% haircut guidance and are essential for countries with capital controls and failing banking systems.

  • “The SEC updated guidance to allow a 2% haircut on certain proprietary stablecoin positions, putting them essentially on par with money market funds. This creates clarity and makes it more feasible for brokers to engage in crypto activities”

    Austin·29:35

  • “I would estimate right now there's already hundreds of millions of dollars of USD stablecoins in the hands of the Iranian people”

    Austin·41:19

  • “this ultimately shows why the world needs a independent digital financial system that's not affiliated with any government”

    Omid·0:03
• $CRYPTOAI - Crypto infrastructure will be essential for AI agent activity and solving AI-induced problems like document verification.

  • “I'm talking about agent activity because the hot ball of, I don't know, it's not even a hot ball of money. A lot of focus now is on agents, agentic activity. And I think one thing that could be the the the next leg up here is to to start seeing some of this, I guess, these predictions that the that the agents are now gonna use these blockchain rails”

    Chris·20:09

  • “I think the underrated crypto bullish thesis is the simple solutions that we're going to need to solve all the AI induced problems that we're about to have”

    Omid·28:29

Bearish:

• $DATS - Digital Asset Trusts are in a death spiral due to fragmented liquidity, poor structure, and buying of locked tokens that shouldn't have been available.

  • “DATs are in a death spiral. They're still in a death spiral. They're still in a death spiral. No view change”

    Ram·2:56

  • “They fragmented liquidity. You used to have a decentralized market or a small number of venues, whether it was Coinbase or maybe Uniswap where the trading happened. They took their asset and they put it into a public vehicle with thin market liquidity. Now it's all orphaned, and that liquidity can't find itself”

    Ram·7:02

  • “when, they started buying locked tokens from, foundations and labs and whatnot, which proved a couple of things. One, clearly, tokens were not locked”

    Omid·0:26
• $AILABS - AI model companies are overvalued with unrealistic revenue projections and unclear path to profitability, while value will accrue to distribution partners like Apple.

  • “Dario from Anthropic expecting a trillion dollars in revenue in 2030. It's insane. And you can't get a customer segment breakdown”

    Ram·32:00

  • “the smartest play in AI so far has been Apple, where Tim Cook just sat on his hands, did nothing, didn't change his CapEx at all, waited to see who was doing the best job, and then was like, well, I can go partner with you and get a really good deal out of it because I have all the distribution of customers”

    Austin·31:17
• $ORCL - Oracle and other software companies lending to data centers are down significantly as market questions AI infrastructure buildout and capital dependency.

  • “you see the stock prices of Oracle down 60%, Microsoft down 18%, Max seven a correction. Anyone lending private credit to data centers in a correction. Market's saying, Hey, I call bullshit on AI”

    Ram·29:48
• $VC - Venture capital valuations remain insanely high with companies like Stripe at unrealistic valuations while public comparables trade at massive discounts.

  • “you still see a lot of nonsense in venture capital, like insane valuations that are hiding out, avoiding mark to market land. Stripe at 130,000,000,000 valuation while IDN is down 60% or PayPal is at fifty two week lows of the 17% free cash flow yield. It's insanity”

    Ram·22:58