Why We’ve Bottomed, Oil Hits $100 & The Stablecoin Trade

Summary

• Avi thinks the bottom is in. Avi’s tape read: Bitcoin spent four weeks trying and failing to make new lows, then ran 66→73 and now sits above 74 after Avi said it had effectively cleared “that 70k sell wall.” He has been saying below 70k is accumulation; sellers are exhausted and a new narrative is in play. The trade plan comes with levels: buy here, cut under 69 — “that is the classic failed breakout pattern” that leads to new lows — and gun for 85; if it tags 85 and slips back to 79, he’s selling, “and you can’t yell at me because we didn’t get to 90.”
• The Iran war is a wall of worry, not regional contagion: oil rocketed to almost $100, but Russia may supply a few drones and China has explicitly said it won’t get involved. When a large crowd is “operating on information that you can see through and realize is incorrect… that is when you’re supposed to back up the truck.” Jonah adds the oil kill-switch: Iran can’t shut the straits for long, and if oil trades above 120 “even Vanuatu will send a fishing boat to the Strait of Hormuz to help de-mine it.”
• Hyperliquid’s moat is weekend access. Roughly 95% of hedge funds — Citadel, Millennium — can’t touch it for regulatory reasons and must wait for Sunday 6 p.m. futures open, while retail trades weekend oil on it today. Avi calls it “easily a $150 $200 asset” after it traded at ~$40; Jonah, who worked at Goldman, Vitol, and DRW: “Hyperliquid is going to eat finance.”
• The stablecoin trade is on but Circle is the wrong vehicle: it has doubled since mid-February on a forward PE of ~108–119 with revenue inversely correlated to yields both hosts expect to fall. Avi’s expression is Sky (the Maker DAO rebrand): 21B protocol TVL, $200–420M annualized revenue, ~$200k daily buybacks on a 1.7B FDV — “the picks and shovels of the stablecoin bet.” The steelman for Circle: if USDC goes from 100B to 5 trillion in 5 years, “that is not priced at all.”
• Most altcoins are structurally cooked — pump.fun de-bottlenecked token creation, so “supply will inevitably overwhelm demand forever.” Jonah says investors are really stuck with businesses that have tremendous buybacks (“that’s basically Hyperliquid”); Near is “a money vacuum” and Tao redux. Avi’s book: BTC, ETH, SOL, Hyperliquid, HOOD, Coinbase, Sky — these “might genuinely” be two to three xers over the next 6 to 8 months of low-effort money.
• Q2 2026 is “an American quarter”: post-war flows return to US tech, software (IGV), Google, and HOOD ($77 now, back to 120 once crypto rips), while gold, silver, and EM roll over. Avi reads Druckenmiller’s EM/copper/gold interview rounds as classic seventh-inning distribution — talk the book for “a final little push” and sell into it.
• The long arc: reserve currencies are a dynamic mix, and Bitcoin is “just waiting on deck for its at bat” — if it captures the Swiss franc’s 0.2% of global trade, Jonah’s math says “a million dollars a token,” with stablecoin rails as the on-ramp. If stablecoin float reaches 5 trillion, Tether’s treasury could buy Bitcoin.

Deep dive

1. Avi thinks the bottom is in — buy the breakout, cut under 69

• Avi’s tape read: the market “tried very hard to make new lows for 1 2 3 4 weeks,” failed, then ran from 66 to 73 last week and now hovers above 74 after Avi said it had effectively cleared “that 70k sell wall.” He has been saying below 70k is accumulation; sellers are exhausted and a new narrative is in play.
• The plan comes with explicit risk management: buying here is “a very good risk-adjusted trade” because “if we trade back down to 69 from here I’m probably out — that is the classic breakout failed breakout pattern and that tends to lead to new lows,” at which point it’s “actually probably a good short.” Target 85; if it hits 85 then slips to 79, he sells: “you can’t yell at me because we didn’t get to 90.”
• Jonah’s confirmation is sentiment, not chart: the space feels “about as dead as it did in December post FTX… the EKG is just a big sideways green line” — and when crypto flatlines while everything else tanks, “that’s when you kind of know it’s time to get back in.” His call: Bitcoin is “the shocker outperformer of the second half of this year because everybody’s written it off.”

2. Iran is a panic to fade — and oil enforces its own ceiling

• Avi’s frame: oil rocketed to almost $100, “we’re full on in a war,” everyone panicked — then markets decided America can handle Iran. The war might last 4, 6, or 8 weeks, but no regional knock-on: Russia may supply “a few drones,” and China has explicitly said it won’t get involved. When a crowd operates “on information that you can see through and realize is incorrect… that is when you’re supposed to back up the truck and really take swings.”
• Jonah on the straits: a nation of 80 million is “getting absolutely annihilated” — Iran can’t shut Hormuz for a sustained period, and if he’s wrong, oil above 120 twists every arm on earth: “even Vanuatu will send a fishing boat to the Strait of Hormuz to help de-mine it.” So don’t sell oil futures (it can “spike to a crazy level for 10 seconds”), buy good assets on dips.
• Owned L, on air: Jonah said fade oil, Avi “outsourced all of my oil thinking” to him — “we both got liquidated.” The rotation frame that follows: AI fears gave way to Iran fears, and post-Iran there’s a gap with no fear where beaten-down assets go “up only” — until “a new model is going to be released that’s going to blow everyone’s mind and then AI fears come back and you can short it again.”

3. Hyperliquid’s moat: weekend access

• The retail edge, per Avi: if you’re bullish oil on a Saturday night, Hyperliquid is the only venue — “95% of hedge funds in existence are stuck waiting for futures open,” and Citadel and Millennium can’t trade it for regulatory reasons. “For the first time ever, we’re seeing opportunity afforded to retail that is not afforded to the big boys.”
• Jonah’s insider check — he worked at Goldman, Vitol, and DRW: yes, insiders can technically trade weekend futures through brokers, but the bid-ask “is not podcast appropriate.” Once whitelisted at big firms, institutions “will be all over it,” and CME and ICE are stuck because “it’s legitimately a better product.”
• The number: it traded $40 and is back to ~20% off the highs; Avi thinks “it can easily be a $150 $200 asset.” Jonah: “Hyperliquid is going to eat finance. Go Jeff. What a Chad.”

4. The stablecoin trade — Sky over Circle

• The signal: Circle has more than doubled since mid-February and COIN (likely Coinbase) bottomed February 9th — proof the market is voicing the stablecoin trade, which Avi thinks is “still somewhat early.” But Circle itself is “total and complete nonsense”: forward PE around 108–119, revenue “literally inversely correlated with yield,” and both hosts think yields go down. It’s crowded because it’s a more pure-play option.
• The steelman he won’t buy: Druckenmiller “thinks it’s a scam, but he said stablecoins are basically going to replace banking” — and if adoption goes the way believers think, USDC could go “literally from 100 billion to 5 trillion in 5 years. And that is not priced at all.”
• Avi’s expression instead: Sky, the Maker DAO rebrand, one of the few tokens up this year — 21B protocol TVL, $200–420M annualized revenue depending on the calculation, ~$200k daily buybacks against a 1.7B FDV. “This is the picks and shovels of the stablecoins bet.”
• The incumbency logic: USDT and USDC stay at a dollar, and you’re not going to get into their equity rounds. New stablecoins will find it very difficult to reach critical mass — echoing Thiel’s Facebook error, where going from 100 billion to a trillion was easier “because of the aggregation effects.” USDC, USDT, and USDS “are already too big to compete with.” Curve, by contrast, is “totally cooked” — decentralized stablecoin swapping is a solved, unneeded problem.

5. Infinite token supply crowds out even the good altcoins

• Jonah’s chart of the week — number of coins in existence: pump.fun removed every barrier to token creation (“you just click and enter whatever ticker you want”), so “supply will inevitably overwhelm demand forever when you can create supply ad infinitum.” That crowds out even projects with plausible merit; he’s taken a bath on Arrow and is “not adding bathwater to the bath.”
• The Near discussion is the episode’s best disagreement. Avi’s mild case: at least there’s an AI narrative, Ilya is shipping. Jonah’s demolition: “Near is a money vacuum. Any money you put into Near disappears” — it’s Tao redux, “the perfect shitcoin,” and the only exogenous factor that matters for AI is “whether or not it generates a return on capital” for token users. “Show me the money and show me the token burn. Until then, do not touch it with a 10-ft pole.” Sharding-era Near went to $20 and crashed below a dollar.
• Jonah says investors are really stuck with businesses that have “tremendous buybacks. And that’s basically Hyperliquid.” Avi’s full book: BTC, ETH, SOL, Hyperliquid, HOOD, Coinbase, Sky — these “might genuinely be two to three xers over the next 6 to 8 months… low effort money” — while memecoins are in-and-out trades that revert. He still owns Syrup despite getting walloped: “in 3 years, it’s going to be a 10 xer.”

6. Q2 2026 is “an American quarter” — and fade Druckenmiller’s victory lap

• Avi’s macro call: once the war is cleaned up and “American hegemony is reasserted,” flows return to the US “like we’ve never seen before” — gold, silver, and emerging markets down in the second quarter of 2026, maybe all year. Buy what led in late 2025 and paused in Q1 2026: large-cap tech, Google, the IGV software index, and HOOD, which at $77 “can easily go back to 120” once Bitcoin and ETH rip.
• The hedge-fund mechanics lesson: Druckenmiller’s interview rounds on EM, copper, and gold are seventh-or-eighth-inning distribution — you talk your book publicly “to get a final little push to juice as much as you possibly can and sell into that,” never in the ninth, so no one can say you called the top. “Somebody that’s managing $30 [billion] probably doesn’t have your best interest at heart.”
• One laggard they debate: Galaxy at $23 versus $40+ — Jonah calls it “an IPO’d version of Mike Novogratz’s PA” that Wall Street mistakes for recurring income. Avi: the real thesis is Helios, the ex-Bitcoin-mining data center being repurposed for AI, and the street is currently voicing doubt on monetization timing even as data-center analysts stay “extremely bullish.”

7. The endgame: stablecoin rails put Bitcoin on deck

• Jonah’s reserve-currency montage: the global mix is dynamic — Deutschmark once 15% of trade, French franc 20%, the yen rising and dying with Japan. His four-year thesis: Bitcoin “isn’t even a dark horse candidate… it is just waiting on deck for its at bat.” It doesn’t need to displace the dollar — the Swiss franc is 0.2% of global trade, and Bitcoin at 0.2% “is a million dollars a token.”
• The chain: banking’s back end gets “hot swapped” with stablecoins (Druckenmiller’s call — “and he’s always right”), global trade migrates on-chain, Tether’s treasury could buy Bitcoin, and BTC is the one asset “seamlessly interoperable and purchasable with a stablecoin.” Both agree this is “extremely bullish for USD” too — and those who held through the rocky times “will be the new plutocrats of the future.”