链研社lianyanshe

Don't go against the cycles; this is the most important lesson I learned from the last cycle. There is no super cycle, and don't blindly trust the big players; several of them get sacrificed each round.

In the past few days, I reviewed the current bear market, which is basically following the same pattern as the last bear market.

Last cycle (May 2022): $30,000 was considered the iron bottom of the super cycle at that time because it was the starting point after the disaster on May 19, 2021, and also the support of the weekly 120. I particularly remember that when it broke below $30,000, the fear index was already below 10, and a lot of bottom-fishing funds believed it couldn't drop further or that it was time to rebound.

Current cycle (February 2026): $80,000, which used to be a strong support level, has now become a strong resistance level at the weekly MA120. $80,000 is also the cost price for Bitcoin mining companies. The current $76,000 feels like the brief struggle after breaking below $30,000 in the last cycle; the market may very well have one more action that thoroughly shatters confidence, such as touching the peak of the last cycle at $69,000.

If it falls below $70,000, it will trigger a larger-scale stop-loss and liquidation, which could potentially exceed the massive trading volume from November 2025. Without extreme panic, rebounds often just serve to entice buyers.

During the cycle, never let emotions lead you astray; in extreme trend markets, emotional indicators can be misleading. A fear index of 10 indicates that retail investors are already hopeless, but the main players may still be using this despair for one last deep squat. Trend lines are more direct than any indicator; as long as the price remains below MA120, all upward movements are merely rebounds rather than reversals.

In the past few days, Bitcoin has also been constantly hitting new lows, recalling the trend of the last cycle. The expectation for a rebound after breaking down with volume in place is 20%, back then from $26,700 to $32,399. Based on the current situation, it can only be inferred that only after breaking $70,000 will there be significant volume released, with rebound expectations reaching slightly above $80,000 at the weekly MA120, anticipating a 15% increase.

Additionally, if viewed from the cycle perspective, Bitcoin should bottom out in November to December. What could the price be then? $70,000? $60,000? Or even lower?

Mega7 from 30 years ago is still holding strong today, but unfortunately, only Microsoft has managed to hold this position. Can anyone tell me which of these companies has outperformed the index?

This old dude shorted 32 BTC and then scooped up 1550 BTC back. If he plays it right, he might just cash in big on that short, all to liquidate your long position.

I increasingly feel that ETH is becoming more like Baidu. If it weren't for the crash to Tom Lee, this old man would probably be buried halfway by now.

Next round, it shouldn't be difficult to see projects surpassing ETH's market cap. Company culture can determine a lot; just look at what the Ethereum Foundation is doing compared to the Baidu management—it's incredibly disappointing.

1. Both were once kings of their infrastructure
- Baidu's search was once the hegemon of the classical internet, the absolute traffic entry point during the PC era, the leader of BAT, holding the power of information retrieval distribution.

- ETH pioneered the era of smart contracts, being the absolute source of ICOs (2017), DeFi Summer (2020), and the NFT craze (2021), but what about now?

2. Value bleeding
- Baidu was completely defeated in the mobile internet era, with super apps like WeChat, Douyin, and Taobao building high walls, rendering Baidu's search engine incapable of capturing core data, severely weakening the value of searches.

- The liquidity fragmentation and division of ETH's L2s, while solving the mainnet congestion, has led to liquidity being scattered across multiple L2 networks. The Ethereum mainnet is gradually becoming just a base settlement layer, losing the value capture of transaction fees.

3. Big company disease, sycophancy culture, elitist arrogance
- Baidu missed the chance to transform in the mobile internet era, with its medical bidding ranking becoming infamous. Internal management is rigid, reporting to Li Yanhong without being accountable to the market and users; it's too shortsighted.

- The Ethereum Foundation's academic elitism is detached from market demands, only being proactive when it comes to selling coins. However, if they don't do a good job, those coins still need to be sold—it's pure ivory tower elitism. The projects on ETH are still aimed at Vitalik's entrepreneurship, completely detached from real market needs in the long run.

$ETH

In the next two weeks, there are a lot of major events coming up, and the market is likely to accelerate towards the bottom. I hedged the day before the big drop (on 6.4) because I saw triple risks: SpaceX is draining liquidity, South Korea is deleveraging, and China is tightening investments. But the real trigger was actually last night's non-farm payroll data; the drop was indeed beyond expectations. My overall position still has some pullback, but I consider myself lucky, as many might have lost all their profits due to FOMO.

Key events in the next two weeks:
May CPI report on the 10th, Wednesday
SpaceX potentially going public on the 12th
FOMC meeting on the 17th, Wednesday
Options quadruple witching day on the 18th, Thursday

For this bottom-fishing, keep an eye on BTC and the VIX index. Last night, BTC broke 60k and is currently testing support, with a high probability of a second bottom risk being released all at once within a few days. BTC is also the most sensitive to liquidity and market sentiment.

If we see a bottom rebound in these two weeks, focus on long positions in US stocks rather than cryptos. Cryptos might still consolidate due to liquidity issues after hitting the bottom, and the magnitude of the rebound is likely to be less than that of stocks. Only when liquidity spills over can we expect a catch-up rally. The previously hot sectors like storage and chips have the strongest elasticity and the highest certainty after deleveraging, so they should be prioritized.

BMNR is highly unlikely to go bust, but the stock price is basically signaling it's done for. Even if ETH pumps, there's going to be dilution, making buying BMNR shares a total trap for suckers. There's a reason V God isn't putting in the effort; this old dude crashing is just too easy – he's set for life now. The project practically handed over to BMNR, and this round even saw the Ethereum Foundation offload about $500 million worth of coins, which is just bliss for them, but only the ETH holders are feeling the pain.

1. Currently, Bitmine (BMNR) holds 5.41 million ETH, which is 4.49% of the total supply. At an ETH price of $1,670, they're sitting on a paper loss of nearly $10 billion.

2. For every $100 drop in ETH, their paper loss increases by $540 million.

3. They've got $446 million in cash (as of May 31), total assets estimated at ~ $9.78 billion, with a market cap of $9.7 billion and total liabilities of $300 million. Their market cap is just a tad higher than the value of their ETH holdings.

4. Staking income: 4.71 million ETH is staked, yielding an annualized ~$219 million at current prices, while other business revenues are nearly non-existent.

5. Preferred stock annual interest is $28.5 million + operational losses of ~$65 million/year. The staking income covers their rigid total expenses by about 2.5x, but the safety margin isn’t very wide. If ETH drops again by more than half, the staking returns won't cover the interest and operational costs.

6. The risk of a stock price collapse is real, as the company has almost no profit and relies heavily on ATM stock issuance to fund ETH purchases, meaning large-scale dilution could happen at any moment.

7. Debt matures in March 2027, with no repayment pressure for now.

8. The chances of a meltdown are low, as Ethereum staking returns can cover interest expenses.

BMNR's model essentially boils down to: issue shares to buy ETH → stake for yield → prove the strategy works → continue issuing shares. This is a cycle that requires ETH to keep rising to sustain. The most likely form of meltdown isn’t a sudden death, but through repeated dilutions that gradually cook the existing shareholders' equity.

$ETH

Cloudflare's acquisition of VoidZero (the parent company of Vite) has strategically positioned itself within the edge computing platform for frontend toolchain ecosystems. After the acquisition, the VoidZero team will integrate into Cloudflare. $NET

So, what impact does this have on existing business? Which capabilities are being enhanced? How will this empower current operations?

➤ Specific Empowerment for Existing Business
1. Cloudflare Pages, with build speeds boosted by 10-30x, natively supports major frameworks, ready to go right out of the box.
2. Workers development platform allows local development to run directly using the workerd runtime, supporting Durable Objects, D1, KV, and all bindings, seamlessly integrated through Vite plugins.
3. Developer toolchain, with a unified CLI covering Workers, R2, D1, Agents, and more; integrated with the Vitest testing framework; internally using Oxlint to save code-checking time.
4. AI and proxy applications, becoming the go-to deployment platform for AI-generated applications, supporting proxy frameworks like Flue, providing a complete AI application lifecycle from development to deployment.

➤ Key Capabilities Completed Through Acquisition
1. Frontend performance leap, with Vite providing millisecond-level start and hot updates, Rolldown (Rust packager) is 10-30x faster than traditional tools.
2. Unified development experience, the new unified CLI tool cf will be built on Vite, ensuring complete consistency between local and production environments.
3. Full-stack and edge capabilities, Vite evolves to full-stack, supporting server-side rendering, API routing, background tasks, and deeply integrating with Cloudflare's edge services.
4. Optimization for the AI era, enabling rapid build, test, and iteration cycles to adapt to the frequent operations of AI agents, with clear error messages and a consistent CLI reducing confusion for AI agents.

➤ Strategic Significance
This acquisition upgrades Cloudflare from an infrastructure provider to a full-stack development platform provider. Previously focused on computing and storage resources, it now directly controls the entry point of the development toolchain, attracting Vite users who were previously deployed on competitors' platforms.

Overall, this is a strategic acquisition for toolchain control. In an era where AI is reshaping software development, Cloudflare has not only enhanced the competitiveness of its existing services but also opened new growth avenues for AI application deployment. Cloudflare played it smart with this move.

#在币安广场聊传统金融

Circle's Telling a Bigger Story $CRCL

Yesterday, Circle's CEO Jeremy Allaire held an AMA that was packed with info. Let me break down the key points for you.

1. Narrative Upgrade

Previously, Circle was tagged as the issuer of USDC, but now it’s shifting to become an internet financial operating system (real crypto vibes 😂). The key vehicles for this transformation are three things: the USDC network, the Arc economic operating system, and the on-chain payment network.

Arc is the main event. It's defined as an economic operating system that not only manages the flow of money but also includes asset tokenization, machine execution of economic contracts, and collaborative settlement between AI agents. The token presale completely diluted the valuation to $3 billion, which shows the market is buying into Circle’s platform story.

2. The Real Reason for Slowing Growth

USDC's growth does indeed slow down in 2026. It's not that Circle is failing; it’s that money is relocating.

Speculative capital is moving from crypto assets to AI infrastructure. Just look at the data; Bitcoin chips are flowing towards Nvidia. This macro rotation impacts the entire stablecoin market, not just USDC.

3. What is the Moat?

The market is most concerned about giants like Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe getting into the stablecoin game themselves. Allaire's core response was simple: stablecoins are a network effect business, and history has repeatedly shown that coalition-based stablecoins have never succeeded.

Circle's moat has four layers:

- Liquidity: Nearly $150 billion minted and redeemed in Q1
- Distribution: Coverage in 185 countries
- Interoperability: CCTP cross-chain protocol
- Regulatory Compliance: Recognized by major global central banks

4. AI Agents as the Next Growth Point

Allaire positioned AI agent payments as a core scenario for Arc. He introduced a concept: Agent as a Service (AaaS), marking a shift from the SaaS paradigm.

Each agent is a specialized economic participant that can sell services based on consumption. He believes the transaction volume executed by agents will far exceed that of traditional applications.

Circle's strategic direction is clear, and execution is underway. If you believe that stablecoins will become the infrastructure of the digital economy, then Circle's story has only just begun.

$CRCL

Let AI analyze the history of the last mining disaster in 2022; this round's bottom is likely to settle around 50k. For long-term accumulation data, I highly recommend checking out the monitoring site for Bitcoin's long-term indicators at fuckbtc.com, created by the legendary trader @bitfish.

Key data from the 2022 bear market analysis:
1. During the last bear market (end of 2022), Bitcoin dropped to $15,500, and some high-end mining rigs indeed fell below their shutdown price (above $16,000). However, the top-tier models still had shutdown prices below $16,000.
2. The top mining rigs of 2022 were Antminer S19 XP (shutdown price $11,900), Whatsminer M50S (shutdown price $14,400), and Antminer S19 Pro (shutdown price $16,400). The S19 Pro was the dominant rig, holding a significant share of the total network hash rate at that time.
3. At the beginning of November 2022 (before the FTX collapse), the total network hash rate had just hit a phase peak of 273 EH/s. As BTC dropped to $15,500, the hash rate plummeted to around 220 EH/s by the end of December. In just over a month, the network lost about 15% to 20% of its hash rate.

Looking at this bear market, if we break below 50k, that would be the miners' capitulation price, with 75% of machines going offline. If the hash rate drops quickly at that point, it would undoubtedly indicate the bottom.

Many may think that every cycle sees big institutions and exchanges going down. Will this round be MicroStrategy? Yesterday's analysis showed that even in the worst-case scenario, if Bitcoin falls to the latest mining rigs' cost price of $30,000, MicroStrategy wouldn't go bankrupt. So, this round is unlikely to have significant liquidation risks; a reasonable entry point would be around $55,000, or when the hash rate experiences a sudden drop of over 15%.

A few key points for MicroStrategy
1. They need $1 billion in interest every year, and if there's a shortfall, they gotta sell some coins.
2. Their main software revenue is only $500 million, not enough to cover the interest.
3. Right now, they can cover STRC interest for about 7 months until 2027, no worries there.
4. Without additional financing, they probably won't be buying more coins; cash flow is tight.
5. Starting in 2027, they’ll need to pay back principal, with the first chunk being $1 billion. They can roll over debt, but the new loans will come with higher interest.
6. Total debts are massive, hitting $22.2 billion; even if Bitcoin gets chopped in half to $30,000, they can barely hold on without going bankrupt, with their Bitcoin holdings valued at $26.5 billion.

A few positives that are better than expected:
1. Currently, their loans aren’t collateralized by BTC, so there's no liquidation risk.
2. The largest debt, STRC, is perpetual preferred stock; they just need to pay interest, no principal repayment pressure, but they need $100 million monthly.
3. The convertible bonds maturing in 2027 can be settled in cash or rolled into new bonds, plus they have options to convert at the current price, so they have multiple exit strategies and low technical default risk.
4. Based on the current BTC price of $63,409, in a worst-case sell-off, they could offload up to 27,000 BTC.
5. Even if Bitcoin tanks to $30,000, MicroStrategy isn't at risk of bankruptcy; last time they managed to keep risk under control at just above $8,000 before it dropped to $16,000.
6. Their final card, using Bitcoin for collateral loans, hasn't been tapped yet.

In summary, even considering extreme scenarios, MicroStrategy doesn't appear to face imminent collapse, but if they keep leveraging up to buy more coins, the risks will spike. They're not allowed to increase leverage anymore, especially with cash flow down to just 7 months.

Based on today's liquidation intensity, we've hit the max pain point for the bulls. At this level, the bears are starting to close their positions. There's strong support at the previous low of 60,000, so it might be a good idea to buy a 10-20% position here. If 60,000 breaks, we can liquidate the position in the next couple of days. Bitcoin's biggest drops usually happen in a very short timeframe.

This time, BTC and ETH accounted for 75% of the total liquidations. The major coins got hammered the hardest, while the altcoins held up relatively better. In the last cycle, altcoins bottomed before BTC, but this time around, they lack value; they're just not dropping anymore because there's buying interest.

Long-term buying indicators suggest checking the data from fuckbtc; below the 200-week moving average (200 WMA) is suitable for dollar-cost averaging, and below the P50 miner shutdown price is good for going all in.

This is getting interesting; they're really going to compete with Robinhood. Zero commissions aren't out of the question, and an outright acquisition of Alpaca isn't off the table either.

Crypto traders are really struggling, the stock market is up but we missed out. Was thinking of rotating into crypto after the rise, but it just keeps dumping instead of gaining.

Storage is on the rise; it appears to be a supply-demand gap on the surface, but fundamentally, it's about the capital expenditures of cloud providers spilling over. As long as Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Oracle keep leveraging to buy equipment, the storage chain will have orders, price, and profit elasticity. Once the cash flow of these tech giants starts tightening, or the bond market reevaluates AI investment returns, the pricing logic of this chain will become fragile.

Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle are the core engines of AI capital expenditures. They're buying GPUs, servers, building data centers, expanding networks, ramping up power, and purchasing storage. The visibility of orders corresponds to the capital expenditure budgets of these companies.

The key observation for the storage industry moving forward isn’t whether storage is a core asset for AI; the market has already answered that question.

What truly needs to be monitored are three changes:

- Whether cloud providers continue to revise their capital expenditure guidance upwards
- If storage companies can successfully pass on price increases to gross margins
- Whether the bond market is still willing to support AI infrastructure with low-cost funds

As soon as any one of these starts to deteriorate on the margin, the storage industry will shift from asset revaluation back to cyclical commodities.

I saw a U.S. stock blogger write something similar to my previous viewpoints, but he provided clearer judgments. Last night, Google continued to secure significant financing despite having ample free cash flow, indicating that their investment hasn’t hit its ceiling yet.

Once cloud providers reduce spending and the bond market pulls back, the valuation logic will switch. The current capital expenditures not only reinvest all of the profits earned over previous years but also include financing because they can see cash flows. They need to act before the demand index surges; whoever has the most cloud infrastructure will have stronger cash flows and must also address the risk of potential contraction in their existing businesses. Only by fully financing during the market's peak can they secure a seat at the table.

$BABA $GOOGL $AMZN

Last week, I saw Dell and Lenovo pump hard, so I jumped in and bought HP. But what the heck, you've got two companies! I bought HPQ and it did see a 20% pump, but if I had snagged HPE at the same time last week, I would be sitting on nearly double right now... 😭
$HPQ $HPE