What's Next For BTC, Crypto's Biggest Innovation & Picking Winners In 2025

Summary

• The 112→104 pullback is a leverage flush, not a trend break. Avi’s read: “the rally up to 112 was noise because it was just people buying on leverage,” the unwind back to 104 is that leverage coming off, and 104 is “probably a decent equilibrium level.” Jonah still sees a push to 120 or 150. Avi won’t sell to buy back below 100k — “I’d be afraid of missing the train” — though he is more nervous than a week ago: lower daily highs since May 23 “generally signals the end of a run,” no levered longs, and a probable floor at 97.
• Avi’s open-interest masterclass is the tradeable framework of the episode. From the 74k bottom, a 40% rally added only ~15,000 coins of aggregated OI; the May 18 move from 102k to 111k — just 9% — added ~40,000 coins. Divide coins added by price move: “if that ratio is like two or three, then you’re in a danger zone.” His rule: don’t buy until the excess OI unwinds — another ~10,000-13,000 coins off, maybe at 97 — “and then I’m buying a f*ing ton of alts.”
• Funding rates are nearly obsolete as a leverage gauge because big balance sheets arb spikes back to neutral “for free money” — Jonah owns the mistake: “I was too focused on funding rates and not looking at open interest enough.” Funding’s only remaining use is confirming that rising OI is aggressive longs. Bybit funding hit 42% at the election; the recent top saw only 8.4% on Bybit and 3.5% on OKX/Binance — deceptively tame.
• Perps are “probably the most important financial innovation since the Black-Scholes formula” (Avi), and US legalization “feels at this point inevitable” — Coinbase is already working with the CFTC. Once legal, perps “spread like wildfire” into equities and interest rates, where the roll and expiry mechanics are pure friction for speculators — and crypto platforms, not CME (“they suck at that stuff”), capture it. “What would Hyperliquid be valued at if TradFi starts trading equity and interest-rate perps on Hyperliquid? That would be insane.”
• Now is the altcoin entry window: Jonah says one of the discussed coins could be a potential 10x over the next 7-10 months as long as TVL keeps growing, with TradFi integrations as the catalyst for Syrup; Hyperliquid’s unlocks are US legality plus more chains — Solana or Base, since “Arbitrum is just a flaming pile of elephant st.” Post-crowding pullbacks like this one are the entry: “this is still a phenomenal time to get into the coins that you think are going to do well over the next three to six months.”
• Gold up 2.5% on the Ukrainian drone strike while the S&P sits flat is the macro tell. Jonah reads equities’ non-reaction as binary risk (either nothing or -30%), with the more likely message as multipolar-world gold stockpiling; Avi is still “gigabullish” on gold, whose long-term chart has been “up only” since October 2023. Trump’s apparent green-lighting of the attack — with the Russian delegation literally in the air to peace talks — “signals escalation” and reflects Trump’s fatigue with Putin.
• Bitcoin isn’t a geopolitical hedge — “it’s a hedge to what governments do to mitigate the financial impact of geopolitical risk,” i.e., easing, “and then Bitcoin sends.” Weekend geopolitical dips are macro PMs using BTC as the only open proxy for equities, then buying back at futures open — a flow to fade, like taking the other side of airlines overpaying for deferred jet-fuel hedges. Avi’s closing stance: “I’m starting to get greedy… volatility is short-term, it will fade and the long-term fundamentals will continue to improve.”

Deep dive

1. Leverage flush, not breakdown — but respect the lower highs

• Avi’s caution is technical: Bitcoin has been making lower highs on the daily since May 23, and “this type of move here generally signals the end of a run.” The hosts got bullish at 83k (“put all your chips on the table”), trimmed at 95-97, and now: “I’m definitely not taking any levered longs right now.” He’d get nervous about a real breakdown only below 100k, with a probable floor at 97.
• Avi’s further read: “maybe the rally up to 112 was noise because it was just people buying on leverage, and the unwind back down to 104 was the unwind of that leverage — this is probably a decent equilibrium level.” Jonah still targets 120 or 150, while Avi refuses to sell spot hoping to rebuy under 100k: “I’d be afraid of missing the train.”
• The cautionary tale Avi cites: a “very prominent leverage trader got levered long on the highs and blew up” — the likely James Wynn character’s liquidation sits about $1,000 below current price. Jonah: “we specifically said it’s a terrible idea to borrow money to get longer than you’ve ever been when prices are higher than they’ve ever been.”

2. Bitcoin’s fundamentals are marching — but Trump has poisoned the adoption game theory abroad

• Avi’s definition of Bitcoin fundamentals, worth keeping whole: the macro backdrop, legislative accommodation globally, miner stock-and-flow — “Bitcoin competes with AI now, it’s much more expensive to mine, so miners will shut off at theoretically higher price levels” — and the degree to which BTC is accepted as a portfolio allocation by RIAs and private wealth. “All of those are on the march towards steady improvement.”
• Avi’s change of mind is the sharper point: he bought partly on the game theory that US adoption forces other countries to follow. “What I didn’t quite grasp is how much the rest of the world absolutely abhors everything that Trump does” — Europe now associates crypto with Trump and won’t touch it. He’s watching for movement in Asia and “south of the Rio Grande” instead — Panama just fast-tracked Bitcoin integration into its payment systems.

3. The altcoin window: Syrup 10x, Hyperliquid’s two unlocks

• Avi’s pattern: hype coins “go up three, four days in a row, 10-15%,” get crowded, then give back — and the post-crowding dip is the entry. Hyperliquid touched ~40 and came off; “kind of like where we are right now is actually a reasonable time to scale into altcoins” for the next three to six months, unless Bitcoin collapses “back to the 80s.”
• The call: Jonah says one of the discussed coins could be “a nice 10x over the course of the next seven, ten months” — “I think it will be” — conditional on TVL continuing to grow (“these guys are raking it in”). The catalyst Avi identifies for Syrup is TradFi integrations.
• For Hyperliquid, two unlocks: perps becoming legal in the US — onboarding American users, fees, and volume “feed into the price flywheel because of the buyback mechanism” — and more chains: “a Solana integration, because Arbitrum is just a flaming pile of elephant st,” or Base. “It’s all coming.” Avi wouldn’t be surprised to see perpetual WTI futures on Hyperliquid with oil companies trading them within six months.

4. Perps are the biggest financial innovation since Black-Scholes — and TradFi is next

• Avi, categorical: the perpetual future is “probably the most important financial innovation since maybe the Black-Scholes formula for valuing options. I really mean that.” The history, per Avi: Robert Schiller proposed perpetual swaps in 1992 but without a funding rate; a developer likely named Alexi Bragan invented the funding-rate solution in 2011 for unlicensed crypto exchanges; BitMEX gets credit for the proliferation and the coin-margined inverse perp.
• The mechanism for TradFi disruption: perps aren’t inherently illegal, just outside the CFTC framework — Coinbase is working with the regulator now, and legalization “feels at this point inevitable.” For speculators, expiring futures carry two “distinct nightmares”: the monthly roll and fragmented price history. Jonah’s rule: “everything that doesn’t require physical delivery, the perpetual future is a better product” — first equities (“why have expiring S&P exposure?”), then interest rates, where a perp on a two-year tenor beats “the nightmare of dealing with Treasury bonds.”
• The kicker exchange: TradFi rate and equity perps would launch at negative funding (dividend arbitrage gets priced in), creating a new real-time positioning indicator — and Avi doesn’t expect CME to lead: “they suck at that stuff. It’s going to be things like Hyperliquid, like Coinbase if they get their act together.” “What would Hyperliquid be valued at if TradFi starts trading equity and interest-rate perps on Hyperliquid? That would be freaking crazy.”

5. Crypto is “the golden asset class for retail”

• The under-appreciated edge is data: Avi says anyone can stream order books and see leverage added in the last 15 minutes, while TradFi exchanges “charge you an arm and a leg — especially if you tell them you’re a professional trader.” Jonah: “if a service costs X, you shouldn’t pay more because you have more money. That’s charity, not business.”
• Avi’s confession carries the argument: “one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made in my career was thinking that I needed to work for a company to trade crypto.” In gasoline, he says you need a firm like Vitol; in crypto, institutional risk controls are “kind of a constraint.” Retail gets leverage, perps, and a virtual trading floor on Discord and Twitter — “it’s not baseball cards, it’s not online poker — it’s becoming geopolitically relevant.”

6. Gold at +2.5% with the S&P flat: the multipolar tell

• Context as told: Ukrainian special forces smuggled AI-enabled drones deep into Russia in truck containers and destroyed clustered nuclear-enabled bombers, foiling a planned Russian escalation gambit ahead of peace talks. Gold jumped 2.5% — “that is not a small move in a day” — and oil rose despite Saudi threatening production increases to punish Kazakhstan for cheating.
• Avi’s key detail: Ukraine checked with the US before launching, and Trump apparently said yes while the Russian delegation was “in the air toward the summit” — that’s Trump’s “fatigue with Putin” and a signal of escalation. Jonah says the S&P shrugging while gold screams means either markets can’t price a binary (-30% or nothing), or — his preferred read — the multipolar world is coming faster and countries will stockpile gold. Avi is “still gigabullish on gold”; the chart has been “up only since October 2023.”
• Avi’s reframe of Bitcoin’s role: “Bitcoin isn’t a geopolitical risk hedge. It’s a hedge to what governments do to mitigate the financial impact of geopolitical risk — governments ease financial conditions, and then Bitcoin sends.” Jonah thinks these V-shaped dips may not keep happening forever.
• Why the dip exists at all, per Avi: Bitcoin is the only thing macro PMs can sell on a Saturday to proxy-short equities, and momentum sellers pile on. Avi’s analogy: airlines buy deferred jet-fuel futures far above realized prices — anyone with risk capacity to fade flows that put “short-term hedging needs ahead of long-term mathematical realities is a winner… unless Russia’s actually sending the missiles west of Kiev, in which case don’t buy the dip.”

7. The OI masterclass: coins-added-per-percent-move is the danger gauge

• The screen-share walkthrough (likely Velo Data): Bitcoin bottomed at 74k with ~170,000 BTC of aggregated open interest. The 40% rally into May added only ~15,000 coins (36,000 at the very peak, quickly sold back). Then May 18: a 9% move from 102k to 111k added ~40,000 coins. Avi’s ratio: coins added divided by the price move — “if that ratio is like two or three, you’re in a danger zone.”
• The confirming signal: when price went sideways and OI stayed flat, “nobody is now willing to add… funding is just eating their money. The guys that add all this leverage are generally the last buyers of a rally.” His discipline: don’t buy until the excess unwinds — another 10,000-13,000 coins off, maybe down at 97 — “and then I’m buying a f*ing ton of alts.” Not a short signal, a don’t-buy signal: “maybe lighten up.”
• Jonah’s owned error and the fix: election-era funding hit 42% on Bybit; this top printed just 8.4% Bybit, 3.5% OKX and Binance, so he dismissed it. The reason funding stays tame: arbitrageurs with a $1.5B balance sheet flatten spikes “for free money,” so Avi now uses funding only to confirm OI is aggressive longs, nothing more.
• The deeper structure, from Jonah’s Cumberland days: basis desks run an internal hurdle — an illustrative “it costs us 10%, so we don’t go for opportunities less than 10%” — blending the risk-free rate and opportunity cost. At 4.1% T-bills, he wouldn’t do a 3.5% Binance basis trade, but would pursue a 20% post-election opportunity — which is exactly why funding spikes die fast.