LIVE: Trading Trump Headlines, USA vs IRAN War Gets WORSE... + Is Crypto Back!?
Speakers
Thread Guy -- Host / Trader
— crypto podcast host (aka Red / The Red Guy)
Summary
- The market is in a holding pattern, with the speaker feeling nothing is real until the close on Friday, awaiting a potential major resolution to the geopolitical situation.
- Crypto (BTC, TAO, altcoins) is showing strong signs of life, with ETF inflows digging out of their hole and a "biddable" basket of alts emerging, indicating a potential rotation.
- The oil market is viewed as fundamentally untradable due to extreme headline manipulation; every major move is attributed to fake news (e.g., false ceasefire reports), making it impossible to trade on underlying fundamentals like supply disruption.
- The US-Iran conflict is at a critical stalemate. The speaker perceives a high likelihood of further escalation, including potential US ground action, which would be a major market-changing event requiring close monitoring.
- Hyperliquid (PER) is presented as a paradigm-shifting product in crypto, offering a unified perpetual futures platform. The speaker is convinced it will be the primary onboarding vehicle for the next wave of users and traders.
- A massive speculative bubble is forming around VCX, a publicly traded fund with exposure to private AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. It's trading at a ~25x premium to its net asset value, signaling extreme, late-cycle meme behavior in public markets.
- The shutdown of OpenAI's Sora video product is seen as a sign that the US is ceding the AI video generation race to China (specifically SenseTime), as the compute costs were unsustainable and product engagement was low.
- The speaker expresses significant frustration with a 54% tax bracket in New York, framing it as a major hurdle for full-time traders and prompting a planned dedicated tax strategy stream.
- Trading skill is elevated as the ultimate "fuck you" skill, providing independence and value in any economic era, analogous to skilled trades like plumbing.
Trade Ideas
Speaker observes "crypto looks insane" and notes Bitcoin ETFs are seeing strong inflows, nearly erasing their year-to-date flow deficit, which is abnormal compared to other asset classes like gold. He identifies a "biddable basket" of alts (including TAO, Zcash, Monero, Layer Zero) showing strength. This, combined with resilient ETF flows despite a prior price drop, suggests underlying strength and a potential narrative shift. The sector is showing concrete signs of accumulation and rotation, warranting close attention for a potential sustained move. The positive price action could be fleeting and tied to broader, unresolved macro and geopolitical uncertainty.
Speaker explicitly states, "You will lose on oil," and describes it as "the worst trade ever," despite acknowledging the bullish fundamental setup (war, supply disruption). The market only moves on headlines, and every headline is demonstrably fake or manipulated (e.g., the false Israeli ceasefire report). This creates an environment where price action is completely detached from fundamentals and is dictated by opaque manipulation. The market structure is broken for traders. The extreme opacity and manipulation mean that even a correct fundamental view cannot be profitably traded, leading to guaranteed frustration and losses. A genuine, unambiguous escalation (e.g., US troops entering Iran) could force the market to reflect fundamentals, but until then, the manipulation dominates.
Speaker highlights VCX is trading at a ~25x premium to its Net Asset Value (NAV), meaning investors are paying for exposure to Anthropic at an implied $5 trillion valuation. This is late-cycle, low-liquidity speculative behavior where money chases the only available "proxy" for hot private AI companies, ignoring cheaper alternatives (e.g., Amazon for Anthropic exposure, Microsoft for OpenAI exposure). The trade is purely multiple expansion on a narrative with no fundamental backing at current prices. It represents a dangerous, euphoric bubble reminiscent of past meme stock frenzies like HKD. If Anthropic or OpenAI IPO at valuations even higher than current secondary rounds, the narrative could sustain the bubble briefly longer.
Speaker states he is "fully convinced" that if there is another mass on-chain onboarding event, it will be through perpetual futures on Hyperliquid, calling it "the number one venue to trade all assets with one unified balance." He compares it to every major past crypto onboarding product (e.g., MetaMask, OpenSea, Phantom, Pump.fun) and argues Hyperliquid's unified experience for trading everything from crypto to traditional assets like Tesla or oil is superior and removes previous bottlenecks. The platform's user experience and product-market fit are so strong that he believes "everyone's going to trade per" eventually, especially the next generation of volatility-seeking traders. Regulatory hurdles, specifically US legalization and the need for VPNs, could slow mainstream adoption.
Up Next
This Thread Guy video, published March 25, 2026, features Thread Guy discussing BTC, WTI, VCX, PER. 4 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.
Speakers: Thread Guy · Tickers: BTC, WTI, VCX, PER