Dan

Blockchain x AI | All views my own

[Ben Werkman @Werkman]

It was a busy week at @Strive last week! In the 4 days from our prior reporting we captured ~61.6% of the daily natural supply of Bitcoin. With these purchases, we have now passed RIOT and Coinbase to become the 7th largest pubco holder of Bitcoin.

[Dan @dan_web3]

Great post. Imo I see a volatility spike ahead and recently hedged with June $VIX $25 calls for the reasons below:

- Double compression on VIX and VVIX is still extreme that’s preceded a lot of big vol spikes
- Term structure still in solid contango with June futures around 20.0-20.4 while spot is 17.4ish
- Good call buying showing up in the June chain, especially around the $25 strike
- May expiration pinning is finally behind us
- 80-day Hurst cycle low looks due late May, which could set up expansion right into June
- The weird “spot up / vol up” regime feels fragile
- Other stuff like elevated SKEW, rising VXN, and rising MOVE on yields

But bleeding theta until the thesis proves true. I could be wrong or early though

[BitcoinTreasuries.NET @BTCtreasuries]

JUST IN: Tether just announced they acquired SoftBank's entire ($780 million) stake in Jack Mallers' #Bitcoin treasury company Twenty One Capital $XXI.

[Dan @dan_web3]

@Mr_Derivatives VIX expiration is Tuesday, watch for the vol pop on Weds. The VIX tends to drift towards spot as dealers unwind or exercise closer to expiration. Once expiration rolls off, we should see fireworks

[Dan @dan_web3]

@A_Najumi VIX $25 June calls

[Alphatica @alphaticaio]

🚨🚨SPY PRE-MARKET ALERT | Friday May 15 | Monthly OpEx | Warsh Day 1

$748.17 close. Futures down 1.2%. Nasdaq futures down 1.6%. The gamma cliff is here.

THE INVERSION:

GEX: -$1.18B. Yesterday at 2 PM it was +$1.18B. A $2.4 billion swing. The largest overnight GEX inversion of the entire cycle. The gamma blanket didn't thin. It flipped negative. Dealers are now amplifying moves, not absorbing them.

$740 accelerator: -$469M. The largest single accelerator we have ever recorded. Larger than the $318M at $710 that dominated FOMC week. Larger than anything during the April selloffs. And it's 1.1% below yesterday's close.

Seven accelerators below price:
$740: -$469M (1.1% below)
$739: -$170M (1.2% below)
$738: -$233M (1.4% below)
$737: -$73M (1.5% below)
$736: -$73M (1.6% below)
$735: -$155M (1.8% below)
$730: -$144M (2.4% below)

$1.32B of negative gamma within 2.4% below price. If futures hold at -1.2%, the open lands directly in the accelerator zone. Every tick lower from there gets amplified.

Charm: +1.6M. Yesterday it was +123K. Thirteen times higher. This is the monthly OpEx forcing dealers to sell at the fastest rate we've ever measured. 4.39M contracts expire today. 3.42M puts. The gamma drain we mapped for three weeks is happening in real-time.

Dealers short 169.8M shares. Down from yesterday's record 217.4M. Dealers sold 47.6M shares overnight. The engine lost 22% of its capacity before the market even opened.

Put OI surged to 15.06M. Up from 14.05M. A million new puts appeared overnight. Same pattern as the April 23 crisis: massive put building in the after-hours before the accelerators fire.

THE CATALYSTS:

Trump-Xi summit ended without a breakthrough on Hormuz. Both agreed the Strait must remain open but no framework for reopening. Oil back above $104 WTI, $108 Brent. The sell-the-news scenario we mapped played out.

Tech profit-taking across the board. Intel -4%, AMD -3%, Micron -3%, Nvidia -2%. The AI trade that powered the rally is giving back gains.

Warsh takes over as Fed Chair today. His first statement arrives into the most volatile structural session since the ceasefire.

WHAT THIS MEANS:

This is the May 15 gamma cliff we've published about since the first week of May. The rolloff post said surviving gamma drops to +2.54M after today. The thinnest blanket since mid-April. That was the projection. The reality is worse: GEX is already -$1.18B before the rolloff even happens.

The only magnets: $750 (+$134M) at 0.2% above yesterday's close, $745 (+$101M), $755 (+$113M). They exist but they're overwhelmed by the accelerators below.

GEX flip: $667. Cushion: 9.8%. The deep floor is far. This is not a structural crisis. It's the calendar doing exactly what we said it would do.

RISING WEDGE:

Day 9 of 20.8. The adverse move pushed to $748.17 (+2.2% from $732.28 detection). If the selloff takes us back through $732, the pattern confirms on the gamma cliff day. That's the convergence scenario we mapped.

The bottom line:

The gamma cliff arrived. GEX inverted $2.4B overnight. The largest accelerator we've ever recorded loaded at $740. Dealers sold 47.6M shares before the open. Charm at 13x normal. Tech selling off. Summit disappointed. Warsh's first day.

We told our readers: enjoy the target, respect the cliff. The target was hit. The cliff is here.

The next few sessions determine whether this is a healthy reset or the rising wedge resolving. The structure says wider ranges. The calendar says the suppression is gone. The data says buckle up.

$750 is the magnet above. $740 is the accelerator below. $730 is the chain reaction. $667 is the floor. Day 9 of 20.8.

$SPY $QQQ $VIX

[Michael Saylor @saylor]

Strategy to repurchase $1.5 billion principal amount of 2029 convertible notes. $MSTR $STRC https://t.co/enRuc7PBkY

[SightBringer @_The_Prophet__]

⚡️The real phenomenon is absorption without repricing.

That is the phase before violent moves.

When a massive buyer says they can buy $100M, $200M, $300M and price does not move, the naive read is: “Bitcoin demand is not strong enough.” The better read is: there is still a large supply wall being transferred into stronger hands.

Price does not move when big buying is matched by equally large selling, OTC inventory, market-maker liquidity, ETF creation/redemption plumbing, arbitrage desks, miners, treasury sellers, old holders taking profit, or leveraged traders fading the move. The screen only shows the final print. It does not show the silent migration of ownership underneath.

A big buyer like Strategy is usually not market-buying like a retail ape. They are not smashing the ask and announcing “number go up.” They are likely using execution desks, algorithms, OTC channels, VWAP/TWAP style programs, liquidity windows, and negotiated blocks. The goal is to acquire size without moving the market against themselves.

So the buyer itself can suppress the visible move.

That sounds counterintuitive, but it is basic execution logic. A disciplined whale does not want price to explode during accumulation. They want to sit there and absorb. They let sellers come to them. They avoid chasing. They break the order into pieces. They use liquidity when it appears. They create as little visible footprint as possible.

That means price can look dead while the float is being eaten.

This is the part most people miss: price is set by the marginal coin, not total buying. If a large buyer absorbs a giant seller at $X, price may not rise. But the seller is now gone. The supply that would have capped the next move has been removed. Later, when a smaller buyer comes in, the market moves faster because the earlier absorption already cleared the wall.

That is why Saylor’s line about price rising after they stopped buying is believable structurally. During the program, the desk absorbs available supply carefully. After the program, the market has less sell-side depth left. Then normal buying can lift price because the heavy seller is no longer sitting there.

The deeper mechanism is hidden float compression.

Bitcoin’s displayed liquidity is fake in the sense that total supply is not tradable supply. A huge amount of BTC is lost, cold-stored, tax-locked, ETF-held, treasury-held, whale-held, or psychologically unavailable. What actually trades is the marginal float. If Strategy, ETFs, and long-duration holders keep pulling coins out of that float, the market can appear liquid until the exact moment it becomes violently illiquid.

That is the ignition setup.

A market can absorb billions quietly when sellers are present. Then one day the sellers are exhausted, liquidity thins, and price gaps higher on demand that would not have mattered before.

The move looks sudden to outsiders.

Underneath, the move was prepared by months of quiet absorption.

[Adam Livingston @AdamBLiv]

Michael Saylor is TAKING OVER the WORLD right now and everyone is ASLEEP.

$STRC just did almost HALF A BILLION DOLLARS of trading volume in one day.

If Strategy captured 80% of that volume like they did last month, that is $397.28M of capital.

At $80,000 per Bitcoin, that is 4,966 BTC potentially added to the balance sheet in ONE trading day.

To understand how insane this is:

Hundreds of S&P 500 companies do not make $397M in profit in an entire quarter.

They need 90 days of sales, payroll, inventory, debt, HR, conference calls, and corporate hostage videos to produce less profit than Strategy can potentially raise through one preferred security in one 6.5 hour market session.

Starbucks does an average of $342 million of profit per QUARTER.

Dollar Tree does $321 million of profit per QUARTER.

So if Strategy can plausibly raise or deploy around $300M to $400M in a single trading day through STRC, you are comparing one preferred-security capital-raising day to the average quarterly profit engine of dozens of S&P 500 companies.

That is OBSCENE scale.

And Strategy can convert that capital into Bitcoin.

The hardest asset on Earth.

The bears are still talking about mNAV while Saylor is building a capital machine that can inhale quarterly-profit-sized chunks of the S&P 500 before dinner.

Probably nothing.

[Dan @dan_web3]

@A_Najumi @A_Najumi Can you grant me access? I signed up through the wait list.

[Dan @dan_web3]

@MichaelPBento Same

[Dan @dan_web3]

Andrew Thrasher's Volatility Tsunami indicator is flashing red today $VIX

https://t.co/9qIelpDgKd

[Dan @dan_web3]

@XanderCryptoETH @TradingThomas3 https://t.co/1mEaftcBG8

[Dan @dan_web3]

@XanderCryptoETH @TradingThomas3 It’s flashing orange now. Today’s big $VIX move shifted from both conditions being true to just one, indicating a large VIX move is already underway

[Andrew Thrasher, CMT @AndrewThrasher]

Reminder about that paper I wrote back in 2017 about the VIX.

[Dan @dan_web3]

@KISSscalper @Mannittee @vixologist @AndrewThrasher https://t.co/1mEaftcBG8

[Dan @dan_web3]

@MichaelPBento bought May 19 VIX calls today just in case

[Mason @MasonFoard]

https://t.co/rThBMPM0z3

[Adam Livingston @AdamBLiv]

Strategy selling 1,500 Bitcoin to pay a month's dividends and then buying 50,000 Bitcoin the next week would have the bears so absolutely flabbergasted 🤣🤣🤣

[Dan Hillery @hillery_dan]

@JoshMandell6 4x MNAV on the table at 444K?