norok

Always early, never in doubt I have already exited my Bitcoin related ( IBIT Puts) shorts and MSTR Puts. I felt confident I would be early as that that is my habit. There will undoubtably be a relief rally at some point that I may re-enter. My long term forecast is that the bull phase of the Halvening price cycle has ended and the bear phase has begun. Let's break down each price action component I am watching... First let's take a step back to learn why we got here. The false breakout or "Spike" as I call them are one of the most trustworthy signals that I trade. If you study one single element of price action it should be this. When price fails to close above a prior ATH (or below a major low) this is the highest probability of a reversal. Market psychology is on display that traders refused to continue the rally and now many are "trapped". This was the reason for the mass liquidations in October that started this bear trend. Many thought a breakout was in order but the confirmation failed. One day after the "Trump tweet" the Daily Ichimoku Cloud trend confirmed bearish. This is another indicator of Bitcoin's trend that has been useful for all of Bitcoin's history. It is also what we will evaluate later on the Weekly. At this point the most important level to watch is the 50% Retracement for the entire bull phase going back to November 2022 low. There are Volume Profile levels to watch but we assume that price will retest the 50% and evaluate what will happen in the Ichimoku Cloud trend context there. Back in April 2025, when price on the Weekly made a move to the Weekly Ichimoku Cloud, price never hit or got inside the cloud nor did Momentum have a reasonable chance of crossing into bearish. "This time it's different" because if price does test the 50% Retracement it will signal full bearish trend confirmation on the Weekly timeframe. During the last cycle, the bearish trend ended when the timing element of the Monthly Ichomoku cloud turned upwards. There is a similar timing element on the Monthly now in November 2026. My fundamental, market psychology based speculation is that the ETF buyers from January 2023 must have their patience tested. That price is around 43k. TL:DR; Price will trend bearish down to 43k with the bear phase ending around November 2026.

I started my MSTR short last November during the retail yeet. I really took a dislike to Saylor telling people to mortgage all they could to buy Bitcoin and then later to buy stock in his company. The history of finance is littered with con men saying and doing such things. History doesn't repeat but it rhymes. Now the stock sits on a key Support; the March 2024 high and the prime Volume Profile level of the run up. Its time to unwind the position in profit and see what happens next. MSTR hitting a Support coincides with BTCUSD also hitting a major Volume Profile Support. The Weekly Ichimoku chart remains bullish. A recovery pullback up could happen from here. Over the last year I've had to go through the cycle of being "right" and being "wrong" all the while being public in my position among Bitcoin Maxi friends. They enjoyed poking fun at me the whole way. Their arrogance and jabs did not change my mind, rather they gave me some confidence that I was properly contrarian. Hubris never pays off in investing. Every great trade I have made has begun (and lasted) in deep uncertainty. That is what it means to take risk. I still believe that the narrative of MSTR has yet to completely dissolve among the faithful but I have a habit of always taking profit "too early." Trade wisely. Stay convicted.

There was a price spike on the 1 Hour BTCUSD that stalled the recovery off 100,300 Support. That sets up the bullish breakout and then on to test the ATH, again. Otherwise, price coming down to retest Support, again. The big Support is the 50% Retracement of the April low to recent All Time High.

"Your winners are never big enough." I don’t recall who said it first, but I credit legendary trader Peter Brandt for popularizing this maxim — the one that comforts every risk-conscious trader whose conviction proves right but whose position size was too small. A little over two years ago, I realized that Monero embodies the ethos Bitcoin once had: private, decentralized, uncensorable money free from government and corporate control. Bitcoin has since drifted from that ideal. It may function as a store of value today, but it has surrendered most of its role as a medium of exchange on the internet. Monero has quietly taken that mantle. Watching major Bitcoin thefts be traced and seized — because Bitcoin is, in fact, traceable — only reinforced my view: Monero’s value as true private money would keep growing as the market caught on. Since forming that conviction, I’ve seen two events that seemed to threaten Monero’s survival — yet ultimately proved its resilience. The first was Monero’s delisting from Binance, forced by European regulations banning privacy coins. The market panicked; XMR dropped 30% overnight. At first, I feared its code had been compromised. But the truth was simpler — and far more bullish. Monero was being recognized as working exactly as intended: too private for governments to track. The second came this year with an attempted 51% hashrate takeover. Confusion reigned, and even I questioned whether this was an existential threat. Yet I decided that if the world could no longer sustain private money, little else would matter. I held my conviction — and Monero endured. Through all of it, Monero has proven to be the pluckiest cryptocurrency alive — rising now amid one of the most skeptical phases of the current bull cycle. From a price-action standpoint, the weekly close above the prior $420 high (yes, that number) would confirm a breakout. But I don’t think it matters. As a trader, I’ve found Monero almost un-tradable — my usual methods simply don’t apply to XMR/USD. Its chart behaves unlike any other asset. That doesn’t frustrate me anymore. It fascinates me. The best move with Monero isn’t to trade it — it’s to own it. Monero remains the best asymmetric bet in crypto.

I have been doing this cryptocurrency trading and investing thing for a long time. Any wise trader is constantly learning and I that is what I try to do. But like any human subject vulnerable to mass emotion and hysteria sometimes we need a sharp reminder of how to properly digest or ignore what "everyone" is feeling. Because "everyone is the market and "everyone" (including myself) is the market. I have long been a proponent of Monero XMRUSD because it represents the true ethos of cryptocurrency; truly decentralized, untraceable by default, uncensorable, private money. Its actual usage online as a medium of exchange has remained strong and continues to expand unabated by exchange delistings and government sanctions. Its adoption has been slow, organic, and relentless since its inception over a decade ago. I believe it represents an asymmetric bet with limited downside and large potential upside. I will never bullpost claiming someone is going to make HUGE returns, but history has shown a compounding appreciation of value that is poised to continue. April 2025: Earlier in the year, there was a persistent rumor that a massive price surge was due to a hacker dumping a large quantity of Bitcoin who then proceeded to convert it without regard to exchange rate into Monero. Whether true or not, that was the "reason" framing the narrative as price rocketed from Monero's normal, relatively stable range to a significant breakout. Once this price action peaked, a new "news" cycle began to hit social media... August 2025: In August 2025, another project named Qubic sparked crypto market panic by claiming a 51% attack on Monero via its "Useful Proof of Work" mining pool, alleging temporary control of over 50% of the network’s hashrate, causing minor chain reorgs and drawing miners with triple-profit promises. Outlets like CoinDesk and Cointelegraph amplified the narrative with unverified reports, including CoinDesk’s August 18 tweet falsely stating Qubic had successfully "attacked" Monero. During this time, being the long term advocate for Monero that I am... I became concerned. I voraciously consumed all the information I could online via social media and blogs. I wanted to understand the threat so that I, as an investor, could act appropriately. I let the fear seep into me. I became scared. I was worried, as the market was, that Monero might actually be doomed to fail. By mid-August, independent analyses from RIAT and experts like Luke Parker debunked the claims as statistical impossibilities and marketing hype, with no double-spends or sustained control proven. One thing I did at the time was try to send a transaction on Monero for testing. It worked. The network was functional. Once the attack was exposed as a failure price resumed its normal albeit volatile and steady price appreciation. The best opportunity for an investor is when there is "blood in the streets." "Be greedy when others are fearful." But I spent my time trying to imbibe what I believed was useful information to inform my decision. So that when price hit $250, a support level and even a number cited by the leader of Qubic I added to my holdings but did not go full port YOLO long. Now in hindsight, my "error" was clear. It wasn't entirely wrong to be risk conscious as one should in any investment. But this event in an asset for which I had exceptional confidence taught me to take social media FUD with a massive grain of salt. I wonder if I had been better off NOT knowing and just following price action alone. One of the core enigmas of investing is that we have to stay informed, but we cannot be drawn into the emotion of the moment; that emotion is already reflected in price. "If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."

BTCUSD has pulled back to the 50% Retracement of the April 2025 low to the October 2025 high at 100,300. This could be a Support to hold up the recent down move. Bitcoiners have requested the best FUD to affirm that this could be "the local bottom". Bottoms are made in fear so it seems they are trying to manifest as much as possible on social media to confirm this will be as low as it will go for now. The obvious narrative FUD would be something about how the bull phase of the Halvening price cycle ended precisesly when it was predicted to (at 36 months from the November 2022 bottom) and the bear cycle has begun. However, here I think are some even more scary FUDs for post-Halloween: The Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of Bitcoin for the last decade has been in decline. Bitcoin has been going higher and likely will continue to make higher highs and higher lows into the future BUT at a decreasing rate. Bitcoin's price is following a negative exponential curve. Bitcoin will probably make a higher high at some point in the future, this cycle or the next, but the returns to investors will be far less than have been seen in the past and continue to be even less over time. A more neutral look at future possibilities is to model historic volatility and project the most probable outcome. The 1 Standard Deviation range from today's price for the next 365 days is between 159,600 and 64,800. That means that there is a 68% probability that Bitcoin will trade within this range over the next year. The FUD is that the lower band matches the Volume Profile node from 2024's consolidation creating support in that zone. Trade wisely.One more element of FUD I forgot... Perhaps the narrative is not exchange liquidations nor old whales selling but that Bitcoin has become intrinsically correlated with risk assets and equities as it moves in lockstep with US markets at an increased volatility.Test #2 of the level... we'll see

With the close of last week's candlestick ETHUSD failed to sustain its new All Time High (ATH). Last week's price action was interesting because the prior major high at 4070 was solidly broken, retested, and price moved on to make a new ATH. This price action follows Bitcoin BTCUSD last week which also had the same phenomenon; a new ATH that was quickly rejected. There is no more reliable sign of a bearish pullback about to occur than a false breakout. In order for new ATH to be sustained traders and investors must keep buying. If they do not... WATCH OUT! Prior history of the event can be consulted to see just how reliable it can be: January 2025 Bitcoin March 2024 Bitcoin And of course November 2021... the start of the last bear cycle in Bitcoin. Trade wisely!

With the big God Candles ended be reminded the Monero XMRUSD has pulled back to the 50% Retracement of the move at 292. Monero is still up 53% YTD and in the past has shown signs of great resiliency and a "safe haven asset" within crypto itself. Monero outperforms all others crypto during bear market cycles as it holds its value better. XMRBTC Monero versus Bitcoin is still up +44% YTD

Bitcoin's Volume Profile Support at 103,900 is holding. Hold here (again) and likely another test for new ATH. Breaking it means retrace down to the 94k-93k 50% Retracement + Volume Profile region. Then, time comes into play with the tried and tested Bitcoin Daily Ichimoku Cloud Strategy. If Chikou (used as momentum) does not clear the cloud at the same time as price the bull trend is neutral but still intact. If the move happens quickly the Support region is likely to hold and retest the highs once more in weeks to come... 2 situations reverse the trend to bearish: 1. Price moves quickly to sub-90k 2. Price moves more slowly to the 50%-VP region. Both situations get Chikou out at the same time as price. Timing and price come together to flip the trend to bearish. Trade Wisely

Just a meme I made this morning. The Weekly All Time High Breakout has failed, twice, just like 2021...