Hi guys…

This is The Crypto Fire.

We are the crypto signal that burns brighter than your portfolio after a leverage flush.

Here is the spicy menu for today. We are looking at why your calendar is lying to you about the bear market, why your banker is sweating over stablecoins, and why your favorite Layer 1 token might just be hot air.

Let's dive in.

We need to shatter a popular myth right now. You probably feel like we have been stuck in the mud for twelve months. It feels like the market has been beating us up for a year.

However, Julio Moreno from CryptoQuant is calling bluff on that narrative.

He looked at the on chain data and the results are surprising. Bitcoin $BTC ( ▼ 1.03% ) actually smashed all time highs and kept printing green candles for the vast majority of 2025.

Technically speaking, that was a bull year. The chart only really turned ugly at the very end.

Moreno argues that the actual regime flip did not happen until early November 2025. That is the moment the music stopped.

This is frightening because it means we are not at the end of the tunnel. We are just walking into the cave. If you thought the last few weeks were rough, you need to prepare yourself because this down cycle is fresh out of the oven.

Speaking of scary stories, let us talk about the suits in Washington. There is a massive fight happening over the CLARITY Act, and our resident analyst John Gillen thinks he knows why.

The banking lobby is framing "Big Crypto" leaders like Brian Armstrong and Coinbase $COIN ( ▲ 1.29% ) as the bad guys. They are trying to paint the industry as a danger to society.

But the reality is much simpler. The banks are terrified of competition.

Stablecoins are offering yields around 4 percent. Your traditional bank account pays you peanuts.

The banks know they cannot compete with those numbers, so they are trying to regulate the competition out of existence to protect their monopoly. It is an ideological battle.

They want to keep your money in traditional financial handcuffs, while crypto is fighting for your financial sovereignty.

If you are trading based on yield curves or energy prices, you might want to stop. Those indicators worked great ten years ago, but today they are broken.

Andreas Steno Larsen from Real Vision dropped a bombshell recently. He admitted that the macro models he has used for fifteen years have stopped working since 2020.

The reason is simple. The economy is no longer driven by math. It is driven by politics.

We are living in an era of "geopolitical sport." Political whims and government decisions move the markets more than supply and demand. Larsen suggests we stop trying to forecast six months into the future because it is impossible.

The only smart move is "nowcasting," which means looking just two or three weeks ahead. Anything beyond that is just guessing.

We also need to have a serious conversation about your portfolio. Yuval Rooz, the CEO of Digital Asset Holdings, threw some shade at Layer 1 blockchains this week.

He pointed out a massive flaw in the industry. For many tokens, there is no mechanical link between the price of the coin and the usage of the network.

A blockchain could be empty, yet the token price goes up on pure speculation.

This is a dangerous game. Rooz argues that tokens are just speculative vehicles unless they have a programmatic way to capture value.

We need models where network fees actually burn supply or lock value. If the only reason your token goes up is vibes, you are holding a bag of hot air.

Finally, let us address the elephant in the room. The market took a massive nose dive on Thursday. It was ugly. One of our community members asked the question everyone is thinking: when does the pain stop?

Right now, Wall Street is treating crypto like a high risk software stock. They are not trading it like digital gold $XAU ( ▼ 0.34% ). When tech stocks tank, crypto tanks with them.

However, there is a silver lining. We are sitting on top of a massive pile of historical cash. The price range between $60,000 and $69,000 for Bitcoin ($BTC) is a fortress of support.

We saw this play out perfectly. As soon as Bitcoin touched $60k, buyers stepped in and pushed it back toward $70k.

While 2026 is going to be a volatile year full of swings, that $60k level is the major defense line. As long as that holds, the bulls still have a pulse.

We need to take a break from the charts to talk about the other big narrative driving this market.

Everyone is waiting for a massive "God in the machine" moment for Artificial Intelligence. We are all expecting a sci fi breakthrough that changes everything overnight.

However, Dr. Alexander Wissner Gross dropped a bombshell that challenges this entire worldview. He argues that General Intelligence actually arrived way back in the summer of 2020 with GPT-3 $OPENAI ( 0.0% ).

While the retail market is still waiting for a magical unlock, the smart money realizes the door was already kicked open years ago.

He claims that everything we have seen since then is just "window dressing." The real revolution was simply realizing we could generate intelligence by predicting the next token.

If this is true, the market might be pricing in a future miracle that has technically already happened. This means the alpha isn't in waiting for the next model, but in utilizing what is already here.

There is a deeper structural problem happening right now that explains the volatility. Bitcoin is suffering from a severe identity crisis.

The market simply cannot decide what this asset class actually is.

Our analyst John Gillen pointed out a terrifying correlation. Wall Street is currently treating all of crypto exactly like software equities.

They are not trading it as "digital gold" or a hedge against currency debasement. They are trading it like a risky tech stock.

This is shocking because it goes against the core thesis of crypto. We are supposed to be the safe haven when the dollar collapses. Instead, when software stocks tank, crypto tanks with them.

Until Bitcoin breaks this correlation and decouples from the S&P 500 $SPX ( ▲ 0.47% ), we remain at the mercy of traditional stock market algorithms.

The real price surge only begins when we stop acting like a tech company and start acting like a national asset.

⚠️ Disclaimer: This newsletter is for informational purposes only, just for fun and knowledge. This is not investment advice. Your money, your responsibility!