Juan M. Villaverde

Derivatives Trader. Senior Crypto Analyst at @WeissRatings
Discord: juanvilla2657
Market Cycle Secrets Course:

[Mohamed A. El-Erian @elerianm]

Just heard during a financial television interview on equity investing: “ANY pullback is an opportunity to buy.”
This echoes quite a broad market belief -- conditioned by years of policy puts and outcomes-- that has increasingly ensured market corrections are remarkably limited in both magnitude and duration.
Yet the deeper this belief is embedded in the system, the greater the risk of unsettling volatility in the event of a serious challenge, whether from fundamentals, technicals, valuations, or all three.
#markets #investing #investors

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This is so insanely corrupt, I can’t even believe it.

More than half the donors to Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom just won over $50 billion in new federal contracts in six months.

And here’s the part that should make your blood boil.

Sixteen of these 27 donors were facing federal enforcement actions, antitrust reviews, labor cases, securities charges. Many of those cases have been quietly dropped or scaled back since Trump took office. You write a check, your legal problems disappear. That’s not a coincidence.

The White House won’t even release the full donor list. They’re hiding it on purpose, because daylight is the one thing pay-to-play can’t survive. A federal judge already ruled ballroom construction has to stop until Congress authorizes it.

Government is supposed to serve the people, not auction itself off to the highest bidder. When access goes to whoever pays the most, working families always end up paying the price.

We either end the corruption, or the corruption will end us.

https://t.co/4MGFzSseFl

[Alex Krüger @krugermacro]

I largely think of "crypto" as a failed asset class at this point.

I've written about the causes multiple times. Mainly, most crypto assets are worthless, or have dreadful value accrual, and most founders have abused the lack of guardrails and dumped on people indiscriminately, or are outright scammers.

On top of that we had the Memecoins SuperBullshitCycle, a trend that brought the worst out of people, and sucked everyone's souls & pockets dry. And then came the never-ending wave of DeFi hacks, which has dramatically increased since last April.

This can seem contradictory, as adoption of "crypto" is surging:

> Stablecoin adoption continues growing fast
> Politicians in the US are openly pro crypto
> Tradfi is looking at tokenizing everything
> Usage of equities & commodities perps is exploding in offshore and DeFi exchanges
> The US is in the early stages of adopting perps
> Prediction markets are becoming part of everyone's daily lives

These are more "blockchain" than "crypto", although there are some exceptions with a token in those fields, most of which have been performing very well in recent months. A few among those exceptions even distribute most revenue to holders via buybacks (Hyperliquid in particular), which is what every investor actually wants to see to be invested in a good business rather than a fleeting narrative.

We also have the privacy category. The one old school crypto category that is not liquid diarrhea. The world needs private non-custodial stores of value.

Crime in particular needs privacy, as proven by the DoJ confiscation of $15 billion in Bitcoin from Cambodia's pig butchering farms, legal filing for which was submitted on October 8, 2025 (coincidentally right before 10/10). Of course, everyone needs privacy, not just criminals, but crime flows are real, and large.

The asset attracting the most flows in this niche is Zcash. Zcash's recent performance has been fascinating, as it has been trending higher with bitcoin trending lower, a sign of real reallocation among bitcoiners.

Another crypto category that is not dead is the "AI" category, full of high flying, fundamentally lacking, narrative driven tokens. The standout exception is Venice, a private AI platform with growing users and revenue, whose tokens are directly backed by the business rather than a narrative.

So one could say old "crypto" is a failed asset class, but from the ashes come new beginnings, and the new face of crypto is one heavily dominated by the needs of Tradfi, prediction markets, AI, and privacy.

Crypto sucks. Long live crypto.

[Lyn Alden @LynAldenContact]

It really is artful to see the extent that content creators who were once supposedly anti-establishment themselves became so captured by audience sensationalism or awkward sponsors that they went on to embody the same issues, if not more-so.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

It’s all talk. Just withhold foreign aid to Israel for a month and they’ll stop bombing their neighbors - instant peace, the Strait of Hormuz can be opened, and gas drops $2 a gallon. Israel has been, and continues to be, the biggest welfare recipient from American tax payers.

[Noodles @criptopaul]

Let's decode what actually happened here.

Axios reported that Trump exploded at Netanyahu. Called him "fucking crazy." Said "you'd be in prison if it weren't for me." Said "everybody hates you now."

The journalist is Barak Ravid again, we talked about it. Israeli. Based in Washington. Covers the Netanyahu-US relationship for Axios, and every latest deals to calm the markets.

This is the same journalist who wrote the exact same type of story about Biden. There is literally a book chapter about this pattern. It is called "Fuming Biden." The same reporter. The same format. The same function. Different president.

Now watch the response.

Mark Levin, a close ally of both Trump and Netanyahu, did not deny the story. He demanded an FBI investigation into who leaked it. When your defense is "this should never have leaked" instead of "this never happened," you have confirmed the call happened.

But here is the part that matters.

Why would Levin, a friend to BOTH men, confirm the most explosive account of their relationship ever published?

Because it serves both.

Trump gets to look tough. Not Netanyahu's puppet. Willing to put Israel in its place. His base loves it.

Netanyahu gets cover. He "paused" the Beirut strike, but not because Iran threatened him. Because his "friend" asked him to. His base loves it too.

And look at what actually changed on the ground. Nothing.

Israel cancelled the Beirut strike. But the ground invasion of Lebanon continues. The IDF is still miles deep. A soldier died today from a Hezbollah drone. Netanyahu's office said: "position unchanged."

The performance was perfect. Trump gets the headline. Netanyahu gets the cover. The deal gets another 48 hours of "progress." Markets get a reason to breathe.

And the war continues exactly as planned.

This is the same playbook. Every time public opinion turns against the war, a story appears showing the US president is "furious" with Israel. It creates the illusion of restraint while changing nothing.

Biden was "furious" for 14 months. The war never stopped.

Trump is "furious" now. The ground invasion is expanding.

The visible game is: Trump controls Netanyahu.
The real game is: both men are performing for their audiences while the machine moves forward.

Nothing has been signed. Nothing has stopped. The war is not winding down. It is being managed.

Neither one controls the other. They walk arm in arm. Know that.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

@sunnyright Nothing left but a wonderful family, 30 patents, 2 engineering degrees from MIT, a farm with a peach orchard, a herd of Wagyu cattle, a dozen inventions in my head, a clucks capacitor roaming my fields, and investors lined up to back whatever I invent next.

[Juan M. Villaverde @JMVTrader]

@Balboa_365 @margo_amala Absolutely! It's a very powerful tool!

[Juan M. Villaverde @JMVTrader]

@Balboa_365 @margo_amala I meant it cannot forecast the same for BTC. Zoom out to 2021-2025 and you'll see 10yr making lower highs and lows while BTC did the opposite. It's a bit nuanced: the 10yr is great at predicting the timing of BTC turns. Its ability to predict price moves is a bit iffy.

[Juan M. Villaverde @JMVTrader]

@Balboa_365 @margo_amala Bonus track: Japan M2 forward looking 3 months is the single best predictor of BTC prices. Maybe Satoshi WAS Japanese! 🤭

[Juan M. Villaverde @JMVTrader]

@Balboa_365 @margo_amala Also use in conjunction with GLI - global liquidity index - for maximum effect. The 10yr Treasury leads BTC by 3 months. Both of these need to line up. If they don't, red flag. Just turn off all the M2 nonsense from GLI and leave only Central Bank balance sheets

[Ana Kasparian @AnaKasparian]

You’d have to be high out of your mind to think the IRGC would give up the Strait to end the war.

What would the incentive be when they’re dealing with a country that bombed them TWICE during diplomatic talks?

Iran doesn’t trust the U.S. and they aren’t going to give up their strongest leverage. Stop getting played by Trump’s wishful thinking.

[The Hormuz Letter @HormuzLetter]

BREAKING: Iran directly rejects Trump's claim that Hormuz "will be opened" as part of a "largely negotiated" agreement he just posted on Truth Social, saying Trump's claim is "far from the truth" and that Hormuz "will remain under Iranian management" with Iran retaining exclusive permanent authority over route, timing, method, and permits, per Fars.

Iran also confirms the nuclear file has not been discussed and that American officials themselves have told Iran in multiple messages that "Trump's tweets are primarily for domestic American propaganda and media consumption" and "should be disregarded." The "largely negotiated" deal claim therefore has no basis.

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

BREAKING: Several Gulf country officials from nations President Trump claimed urged him not to strike Iran said they were unaware of the imminent attack plan he described, per WSJ.

Yesterday, Trump said he called off an attack on Iran after leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE asked him to "hold off."

[Jim Bianco @biancoresearch]

The fear over AI is palpable.

So, it's time for my optimistic take ....

Why the AI doom-and-gloom story is missing the bigger picture

A lot of people hear “AI” and immediately think one of two things: it’s just Google search on steroids, or it’s a magic machine coming for everyone’s job. Both miss the bigger picture.

A job is not one single task; it’s a bundle of tasks supported by a massive, fragmented software stack. Email, spreadsheets, presentations, Slack, CRM platforms, and, in finance, a Bloomberg Terminal, FactSet, and market data feeds. For millions of jobs, the cost of software to provide basic tools for these tasks can run to $1,000 a month, and more for complicated roles.

Much of the modern workday is consumed by the friction of this stack: moving data between systems, cleaning spreadsheets, searching for files, and summarizing meetings.

AI is emerging as the new interface for enterprise software. Think about the iPhone. It collapsed cameras, GPS devices, and music players into one simple, powerful device. AI is doing something similar for workplace software, turning 10 clunky programs that don't talk to each other into a single conversational prompt.

Just as we stopped buying standalone cameras and tape recorders once the smartphone came around, companies will happily pay for an AI layer. It will be far cheaper and eliminate the bloated costs of that fragmented software stack that requires you to perform endless, mundane tasks because these programs do not talk to each other.

The immediate fear is that if AI lets three people do the work of five, companies will fire two people. But that ignores economic history.

When the electronic spreadsheet was invented, the cost of calculations plummeted. But accounting jobs didn't vanish; demand for complex financial modeling exploded. Accounting clerks became financial analysts, a more in-demand role.

Jevons Paradox suggests that making a resource more efficient actually increases total demand for it. By absorbing the drudgery, AI allows the employee to focus on judgment and strategy—making the human element more valuable, not less. In this framework, demand for high-output workers doesn't shrink; it explodes.

Does this justify the mind-numbing capital expenditure currently pouring into AI infrastructure? If AI fulfills this promise of enterprise-wide productivity, the investment isn't just justified—it’s a bargain. That said, we are clearly near the peak of a hype cycle, just like the internet was in 1999.

But remember: the dot-com crash did not mean the internet was a bust. It simply meant the hype outpaced the infrastructure. After the wreckage cleared, the optimistic predictions about connectivity and productivity were not only fulfilled—they were exceeded.

The same path can lie ahead for AI. And instead of the fear that AI will replace workers, it's the joy of replacing soulless busywork, making jobs more fulfilling... and more profitable for employers.

[Dylan Ratigan @DylanRatigan]

The Question Is Not Whether Billionaires Should Exist

One of the laziest debates in modern politics is the endless argument over whether billionaires should exist.

That is not the real question.

The real question is whether we still have a functioning capitalist system that enforces the actual rules of capitalism.

Because there is a profound difference between becoming wealthy by creating genuine value and becoming wealthy by rigging the terrain upon which everyone else must compete.

Those are not the same thing.

And our failure to distinguish between them has produced enormous economic, political, and social distortion.

A healthy capitalist system should absolutely produce successful people.

If someone creates:

transformative technology
revolutionary medicine
valuable infrastructure
products or services people voluntarily choose because they improve life

then substantial wealth creation makes sense.

That is the reward structure capitalism is supposed to create.

The promise of capitalism is not equality of outcome.

The promise is that value creation, innovation, discipline, and intelligent risk-taking are rewarded through open competition.

But that only works if the competition remains open.

The problem begins when wealth is no longer generated primarily through value creation but through control.

Control of markets.
Control of governments.
Control of regulation.
Control of infrastructure.
Control of monopoly platforms.

At that point, capitalism stops functioning as a competitive system and begins functioning as a leverage extraction system.

And those are radically different things.

A billionaire who becomes wealthy because millions of customers freely choose a superior product inside a genuinely competitive market is participating in capitalism.

A billionaire who becomes wealthy because they control a monopoly that eliminates meaningful competition is doing something else entirely.

That is not free-market competition.

That is market domination.

Similarly, a billionaire who uses financial influence, lobbying power, regulatory capture, or political access to shape government policy in ways that uniquely advantage their businesses is not simply “winning capitalism.”

They are altering the rules of the game itself.

Again:

That is not capitalism.

That is power consolidation.

This distinction matters because modern society increasingly treats all extreme wealth as morally equivalent.

It is not.

There is an enormous difference between:

building value and extracting leverage

There is an enormous difference between:

innovation and gatekeeping

There is an enormous difference between:

competition and monopoly

But our political discourse often collapses these categories into one simplistic narrative:
“Successful people earned it.”

Sometimes they did.

Sometimes they engineered systems where nobody else had a realistic chance to compete.

Ironically, many of the loudest defenders of “free markets” are often defending systems that are no longer genuinely free.

Because real capitalism requires enforcement.

It requires:

anti-monopoly laws
transparency
competitive access
regulatory neutrality
prevention of market manipulation
limits on political capture

Without those safeguards, markets naturally centralize.

Power compounds.
Leverage compounds.
Capital compounds.

Eventually, a small number of actors stop competing within markets and begin controlling markets.

That is where we are increasingly headed.

The deeper danger is not simply economic inequality.

The deeper danger is that concentrated economic leverage eventually converts into political leverage.

Always.

Once corporations or individuals become sufficiently large relative to governments, they begin influencing:

legislation
regulation
tax policy
labor structures
information flow
technological infrastructure

At that point, democracy itself begins bending around concentrations of private power.

And the public intuitively feels this.

[Martin A. Armstrong @ArmstrongEcon]

The closest point between the island of Taiwan and mainland China is approximately 80 miles (130 kilometers) across the Taiwan Strait, from the coast of Fujian Province to Taiwan’s northwestern shore. The closest point between Cuba and the United States is about 90 miles (145 kilometers) from Key West, Florida, to the northern coast of Cuba.

There was no way the US would allow Russia to set up nukes in Cuba.

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

China is reducing its reliance on foreign AI chips:

China's AI chip self-sufficiency ratio is up to a record 41%.

This measures the proportion of domestic AI chip demand met by locally produced chips, rather than imported ones.

This ratio has QUADRUPLED over the last 5 years.

The AI chip self-sufficiency ratio is now projected to more than DOUBLE to ~85% by 2030, according to Morgan Stanley.

In other words, China could meet nearly all of its own AI chip demand domestically within 5 years.

China's AI chip independence is accelerating.

[Juan M. Villaverde @JMVTrader]

@margo_amala Thanks for another great talk!