Bitcoin breaks bear structure as bond yields spike to levels unseen since 2002

Bitcoin's bearish structure breaks

Ryan and David open by noting that Bitcoin's weekly and monthly candles both closed above the previous May high, which they say marks the highest price since early January and erases the prior lower-high pattern. Ryan says this gives "potentially a green light, a runway for more bullishness" for the rest of October. David adds that his quant, Michael Nadeau, called this the confirmation of an "early bull" phase after a second weekly close above the 50-week moving average (said to be around 76.8K, with the week's close near 84.5K).

Both caveat that a breakdown is still possible, with David saying "we are in the early bull phase" only if the structure holds. They also flag weakness in several altcoins — Zcash down roughly 20%, Morpho down about 17%, and Uniswap down around 17% — after those tokens posted gains the hosts describe as between 50% and 300% over the prior two to three months. Ryan notes that 96% of the top 50 crypto assets outperformed Bitcoin over the last 30 days, framing the pullback as mean reversion after an altcoin-season spike on Glassnode's index rather than a bearish signal for Bitcoin itself.

Bond yields spike despite cooler inflation

The hosts describe a "paradox": CPI came in at 3% annualized versus roughly 3.3% expected, with July's figure revised down, yet yields rose instead of falling. The 30-year yield reached 5.64%, its highest level the hosts date to 2022, and the 10-year reached 5.3%. Ryan cites a tweet from Ben Hunt warning "something in the financial world is going to break," attributing the move not to oil or Iran but to the speed of the yield rise.

David pushes back on the alarm, citing Jim Bianco's view that 5.6% is "a totally normal number" historically and that sub-2% rates were the anomaly. Ryan references Michael Howell's MOVE index — a bond-market volatility gauge — noting its spikiness could signal shrinking global liquidity, which Howell reportedly ties to the next global liquidity cycle beginning only after some crisis. David counters that Bitcoin has held up well despite the spiky bond backdrop, calling that a bullish sign. Ryan also mentions a Kobeissi Letter claim that a methodology change in inflation categorization could have shaved roughly 20 basis points off the CPI print, suggesting markets may not be "buying" the official number.

David lists other pressure points — oil back near $93 a barrel after falling from wartime highs of $90–110, the upcoming midterms, and the unresolved Strait of Hormuz situation — arguing each represents a catalyst that could resolve bullishly over "the next quarter to a year."

Robinhood's Hood Summit push

David attended Robinhood's Hood Summit in Houston and reports the firm unveiled 24/7 stock trading (including weekends), earnings-report prediction markets, crypto perpetuals for eligible US users across eight assets (Bitcoin, ETH, Sol, XRP, Doge, Cardano, Link and Hype), AI agentic trading, and a social trading feature resembling the crypto app Fomo. He says Robinhood framed itself explicitly for "day traders, the speculators, the people on margin and leverage," not passive investors.

The perpetuals route through Bitstamp, which Robinhood owns and which holds a CFTC exchange license; David notes Lighter's token fell 20–30% on disappointment that Lighter wasn't chosen as the backend provider, since it lacks a US CFTC license. He speculates Robinhood could eventually route to Lighter if it secures that license, which he thinks "we will know...inside of two months."

"I would like to give an agent like you know couple hundred bucks and just see what happens." — Ryan

On agentic trading, David recounts meeting an attendee who had given a Robinhood AI agent $2,000 to trade on his behalf. Neither host has personally used the feature.

The Bitget hack and the NEAR Intents debate

David details a hack of Bitget's hot and warm wallets, with attackers spoofing internal transfer data; private keys were not compromised. Losses totaled about $387 million, which he calls the largest crypto exploit loss so far in 2026. A $464 billion (as stated) protection fund means no users lost funds, and withdrawals resumed after being paused. David says the likely culprit is the Lazarus Group, though unconfirmed.

Stolen funds moved through ThorChain and the Wasabi Bitcoin mixer, and roughly $500,000 attempted to pass through NEAR Intents, which blocked about $53,000 via its "Shield" risk filter. This sparked debate over whether NEAR Intents is truly "permissionless." David notes a separate $3.8 million NEAR Intents exploit that occurred the same week, with Shield limiting further losses and users being made whole. He quotes a NEAR team member's defense:

"Crypto space really has a choice. grow the f up or get sidelined with random regulation." — a NEAR team member (Ilia)

David argues NEAR the blockchain remains permissionless and censorship-resistant, while NEAR Intents, an application layer, carries more discretion — a distinction he says critics are conflating. He also notes Base's B20 token standard added a "seize function" for stolen assets, which he frames as appropriate for tokenized-equity use cases rather than a retreat from crypto-native "cypherpunk" systems like Tornado Cash.

NEAR ETF launch and prediction market lawsuits

The hosts note Bitwise launched a NEAR ETF (ticker NRR) this week, with over half a percent of total NEAR supply flowing in on day one. Ryan says Bitwise is marketing NEAR at the "intersection of crypto and AI," highlighting NEAR Intents, quantum resistance, and revenue-funded buybacks.

On prediction markets, New York filed a lawsuit against Polymarket alleging it runs an unlicensed gambling business, seeking to halt its New York operations and financial penalties, including payments to users who participated. Separately, a US appeals court ruled that Ohio and Tennessee can regulate Kalshi's event contracts under state gambling laws, while Kalshi previously won in the Third Circuit covering New Jersey, whose attorney general has already asked the Supreme Court for review. Ryan says the split across circuits makes Supreme Court review "pretty inevitable." Coinbase, meanwhile, received CFTC approval for Coinbase Clearing LLC, giving it exchange, broker and clearing-house licenses to offer fully collateralized derivatives including prediction markets, mirroring Robinhood's earlier move away from Kalshi.

Vitalik's "cryptographic world computer" and AI agents vs. banks

David summarizes a post from Vitalik Buterin arguing Ethereum is becoming less a blockchain to be reprocessed and more a "cryptographic world computer" for verification, enabled by ZK proof technology. The vision includes guaranteed inclusion/censorship resistance, base-layer privacy, quantum safety, 4-to-8-second latency, and light nodes that verify rather than trust. Ryan says he found the post "simultaneously incredibly bullish and also bearish," criticizing its lack of concrete use cases:

"World computer for what? For what? What are we building it for?" — Ryan

Ryan argues the clearest use case remains Bitcoin-style store of value and associated DeFi, which the post doesn't emphasize. David notes a response from Barnaby at ETH Labs agreeing the vision is bullish but insisting valuable state must remain on Ethereum's L1 rather than settle elsewhere.

Closing out, the hosts discuss a Financial Times-sourced claim, relayed by an Apollo chief economist, that AI assistants (such as Muse, Instinct, or OpenAI's newly released "Dot") could trigger bank run dynamics by advising users to move savings into higher-yielding stablecoins or apps. Ryan calls this "bad for rent extractors" but good for consumers, predicting banks will likely lobby Congress against such agents.