Esclop

[Jukov @JukovCrypto]

https://t.co/SBnivAebv5

[Plata @platacrypto]

GM frens ☀️

Some Sunday thoughts:

I have been starting on a market update but tbh there is really not much to report. In the end everything depends on the global geopolitical and US monetary policies. I think even the most proponent "TA is all you need" folks are starting to admit this.

Been dabbling a lot in stocks, a lot of opportunities there right now. Low cap stocks feel a lot like crypto (when it still was fun).

Generally i think it is still a good time to sit in cash and not deploy to early. The energy crisis could hit hard still and folks prepared for that might have a massive edge for the next run (whenever this will be).

Also, if the energy crisis hits as hard as many experts predicting now, it will be very likely that we have a financial crisis like our generation hasn't seen before.

And then we will find out if BTC's true original use case to be a safe haven when the financial system is struggling (as in 2008) will be tested for the first time.

TLDR: Have cash, don't rush in any positions, keep your eyes open for interesting stocks, long term BTC stacking makes sense at these levels. Wait for clearer signs 🫡

[Jukov @JukovCrypto]

https://t.co/o3XqWJHY9h

[Esclop @Esclop5]

@platacrypto Very interesting, thank you! If it's not too much of hustle keep doing it. 🙏

[Jukov @JukovCrypto]

https://t.co/OSuKcUWrjM

[Jukov @JukovCrypto]

💭 Market thoughts

$BTC still looks solid.

PA has become pretty straightforward to read:
when we see strong net ETF inflows and long-term holders reduce meaningful selling, we get upside.
If either of those breaks, we get chop or downside.

Over the past week, large OG sellers have clearly dialed back sell pressure, and since yesterday we’re seeing renewed, sizable ETF inflows. At the same time, price has reclaimed the lower edge of the cloud, with technicals looking as constructive as they have since October:

I’m getting a lot of questions about which alts I’m long besides $XMR and honestly, so far I’ve only taken small positions to get back into the groove. For me, it’s crucial to focus on asymmetric alt setups; trades with at least 2× upside potential. If that’s not on the table, I’d rather stick with BTC, or BTC with leverage, because otherwise the RR simply isn’t there.

For my taste, most alt setups still looking a little bit premature as they did not manage to make the same strength-signaling move as $BTC did. A look at $BTC.D makes it even more clear & I guess we need to see a meaningful rejection on that front for Alts to get their outsized RR back:

e.g. $SOL; $ICP & $IP all look pretty close to ready, but their technical structures still signal lower conviction to me compared to going long $BTC at current levels. A little bit more patience is needed imho to get a confirmation before entering a long:

[Kαnτ @0xKant_]

https://t.co/8fsTtqe6FD

[Esclop @Esclop5]

@JukovCrypto And to you 🎄❤️

[Jukov @JukovCrypto]

GM and happy Sunday!

Hope you are all well. Still enjoying my vacations and not really following any coins. But I slowly started to buy back my Spot holdings in preparation of a massive sentiment pivot in 2026.

Why?

Bitcoin showed in the last months it’s not (yet) traded as a safe haven but still purely a liquidity/(high) risk-on play. This was painful for anyone being overinvested in crypto with little exposure to commodities and stocks. But when liquidity rises, Bitcoin (and crypto) will inevitably rise along with it.

The Fed might be closer to a liquidity pivot than markets realize.
Cabana from the BofA argues reserve scarcity and surging repo rates are severe enough for J.Pow to signal (de-facto) QE as soon as next week - even if they avoid calling it that.

The proposal: $45B/month in T-bill purchases starting 2026 to rebuild reserves. If balance-sheet expansion returns (no matter which name they use) liquidity is inevitably coming back. The single most important factor for crypto to thrive.

For $BTC, this would be one of the strongest structural tailwinds possible, which wouldn’t lead to an immediate vertical move, but the beginning of a multi-month liquidity uptrend.

[Plata @platacrypto]

Nock Nock

Mission fill the wick still looming

> massive catalysts upcoming
> is the only promising contender to be the Ethereum of the ZK / privacy world
> good distro, no investors or miners are up insane numbers, barely pumped yet
> OGs in the space, like Cobie and path are accumulating
> perfect fit for the looming OG cypherpunk narrative
> the technical possibilities for building on NOCK are endless, with things like a truly private atomic swap DEX, which can still be regulatory-compliant, and many other potential game-changing dapps that can be build

$NOCK is probably THE most promising project in the space right now and is bringing cypherpunk values back to crypto.

[Plata @platacrypto]

Has been a while, fellas, so a little market update 🫡

What to say about this market?

Weekly still looks pretty good tbh, but all other time frames look absolutely cooked, clearly under my invalidation.

I was mostly AFK the last few weeks; otherwise, I would have cut more of my not-so-high-conviction bags. I still cut a lot of positions this weekend, which I don't fully believe in.

If you want my advice on whether to cut or not, it really depends on how much you are allocated. As mentioned the other day, if you are balls deep, play it safe and cut non-conviction plays.

Otherwise, I think it is already too late to sell now. Yes, there is a chance that this is the start of a year-long bear market or something similar.

But overall, this all feels heavily manipulated. Binance massively dumped this weekend into low liquidity and sentiment at ATL.

Still have massively bullish news every week that would have sent us much higher in any of the last years. Luxemburg sovereign wealth fund buying, institutional players around the world buying, govs building on blockchains and regulating, and tons of other headlines.

Institutions are here now in crypto; we were always rooting for it, and this seems like the old shakeout, everybody and destroy all the remaining sentiment before reverse play.

This is, for me personally, not enough to enter any setups, though. I am starting to buy long-term spot BTC holdings, but aside from that, I just keep my eyes open for narrative and momentum plays.

In the end, to become bullish again, we need to reclaim 100k. Privacy projects like ZEC and XMR are actually doing pretty well, and also a couple of smaller caps.

So there is still money to be made, but TBF I would suggest you take the time to do more dopamine holidays until we have a clearer trend again.

If you are in a shitty situation right now, think thoroughly about what you did wrong and why you didn't listen to my constant reminders to TP and follow a take profit strategy on the way up.

Survive frens, we will be back 🙏

[Plata @platacrypto]

https://t.co/nnmPTP6JK2

[Kαnτ @0xKant_]

NOCK: Proofs as the New Collateral of Money

This long-form post dives into $BTC, $ZEC, and $NOCK

How they compare, and where each improves on the other. Please share and follow for more.
Let’s deep dive

#Bitcoin proved scarcity.
#Zcash proved privacy.
#Nockchain now proves correctness. And the market is starting to notice.

It completes the arc of digital sovereignty:
from sound money, to private money, to verifiable money.

1. The Limits Of Earlier Designs

$BTC ties value to energy. Every joule spent mining reinforces scarcity but secures nothing beyond a guessed hash.
$ZEC added zero-knowledge proofs to conceal transactions, but its privacy stops at the wallet.

Neither can verify complex computation without trust or replication.

The result is predictable: secure ledgers that scale slowly and compute nothing.

@nockchain starts over.

It redefines work itself. From brute energy expenditure to verifiable computation.

2. From Hashpower To Proofpower

Nockchain miners do not guess. They prove.
Each block is mined by producing a succinct zero-knowledge proof showing that all transactions and logic within it were executed correctly.

This replaces hashpower with proofpower: the network’s total rate of valid proofs per second.

Proofpower scales security with usefulness.

- Miners optimize the #NockVM prover to improve block-winning odds.
- Those optimizations make proofs cheaper for everyone.
- Cheaper proofs expand what developers can build.
- Expanded utility drives $NOCK demand.
- The loop repeats.

Security becomes productive. Computation becomes monetary collateral.

3. Hard Money That Funds Work Worth Doing

$NOCK maintains the monetary purity of Bitcoin:

-Fixed supply of 2³² coins.
- No pre-mine or insider allocation.
- Issuance only through mining proofs.
- Halvings that occur faster and cut deeper than Bitcoin��s.

Right now, block times have averaged about four minutes, temporarily raising daily issuance to ~12–14 million $NOCK.

Within days, difficulty adjusts upward, and the next halving lands a week later.

Daily flow compresses toward 2.4 million. A five-fold supply reduction inside ten days.

Scarcity enforced by rule, not belief.

Hard money that computes.

4. Privacy By Structure

Zcash hides a single transaction.
Nockchain hides computation.

Every block already contains a zero-knowledge proof.
Validation requires no visibility into the underlying logic, only mathematical confirmation of correctness.

That means privacy is not a feature to opt into; it’s a property of consensus.

You don’t request privacy on Nockchain.
You inherit it.

5. Programmability Begins

The Transaction Engine v1 upgrade turned design into substrate:

- Shorter P2PKH addresses cut data size and improve UX.
- Segregated Witness separates signatures for smaller, more private transactions.
- Lock scripts and note-attached data enable on-chain logic.
- HTLCs and atomic swaps establish native interoperability.

Computation runs off-chain in #NockApps and posts proofs on chain.
Developers get full programmability without fragmenting liquidity across layers.
Execution scales. Settlement remains unified.

6. Real Engineering, Not Marketing

Over the past quarter the team delivered tangible speedups:

- Schema-first gRPC clients.
- Parallel signature checks.
- Verification time down to ~150 ms.
- A light wallet that verifies balances and sends transactions without running a node.

These are small lines of code that change who can participate.
They make $NOCK easier to mine, build on, and use. These are the only metrics that matter longterm.

7. Why The Market Still Underestimates It

At around $0.135 (~$155M market cap), $NOCK has already repriced from obscurity.

But even now, the market values it like another proof-of-work token, not as a proof-of-computation network.
Liquidity is still limited.
Access for funds and retail is only beginning with the Base bridge, Aerodrome pool, and upcoming listings.

The price moved first. Understanding hasn’t.
$NOCK is still being traded as a coin.
It should be valued as an engine.

8. The Deeper Comparison

Zcash → wallet-level privacy.
Nockchain → system-level privacy and programmability.

In Zcash, a wallet proves one transaction valid.
In Nockchain, miners prove an entire execution environment valid:
millions of transfers, exchanges, lending markets, stablecoins, even non-financial proofs → AI verification, digital provenance, secure infrastructure.

The distinction traces to consensus design:
classical #PoW vs #zkPoW.

In zkPoW, part of mining power secures the chain; part generates useful proofs that make $NOCK itself more valuable.
Energy once bought trust.
Now computation buys truth.

9. What To Watch

Nockchain has entered its validation phase.

The next signal isn’t price. It’s throughput.
Watch proofpower and miner distribution as difficulty adjusts post-halving.
Watch the first real NockApps post proofs to mainnet.
Watch liquidity mature beyond Base and into broader capital pools.

If these move in tandem, Nockchain matures from experiment to credible programmable money system.

10. The Big Closer

Proofpower converts computational progress into monetary strength.
When every block is a proof, money, privacy, and computation no longer compete.
They compound.

$NOCK doesn’t aim to replace Bitcoin or Zcash.

It stands beside them. The third pillar in a system built on scarcity, privacy, and verifiable computation.

This isn’t a call to sell your $BTC or $ZEC and buy $NOCK.

It’s a call to recognize that @nockchain adds a missing dimension to the crypto experiment:
a base layer where proof itself becomes the economic unit.

If Bitcoin secured truth through energy and Zcash protected it through privacy,
Nockchain extends that legacy by proving correctness.

And that deserves serious attention from anyone investing in the future of decentralized systems.

Nock nock.

[Jukov @JukovCrypto]

⚪️Nock, nock... Supply shock?

Right now, we're so early on $NOCK, that in this phase blocks are coming in every ~4 minutes instead of 10 - meaning emissions temporarily have spiked to around 12–14M $NOCK per day (vs the usual 4.8M).

But in not even ~2.5 days, mining difficulty will jump 2.5x, slowing block production back to normal levels; right before the Halving hits 7 days later...

So within the next 10 days, daily emissions will drop so sharply that we'll effectively see a 5x supply reduction (12-14m => 2.4m).

Historically, every $BTC halving (2012 → 2016 → 2020) triggered multi-month price expansions, as new supply dried up while demand stayed steady. And I know it seems over-the-top for most, to compare $BTC with $NOCK in this early stage. But unlike $BTC, NOCK’s emission curve is way steeper: halvings happen faster, with higher initial flow which leads to a far more aggressive early-phase scarcity.

Let's see how this plays out. Chart looks ready to reprice, while tons of catalysts are lined up.

[Esclop @Esclop5]

@JukovCrypto Thank you for taking the time and your vast knowledge to help us through these choppy times!

[Jukov @JukovCrypto]

🧠 Market Update: Tired Charts, Doomer Chats – ...But not over yet?

As I'm writing this, the Bitcoin chart looks exhausted - quite honestly: it's looking like it’s holding on for dear life. And that same energy is reflected across most of the chats and timelines I’m in: bearishness, fear, pessimism.

And to be fair - it's understandable.
While gold prints new ATHs almost daily and stocks and metals keep performing, altcoins are dead, and Bitcoin looks like it might want to follow them.

Still, in my opinion, it's good to be cautious and protect to the downside but it’s a bit too early for full‑blown pessimism.

📉 Weak Price Action – But…
...yes, the PA is objectively weak - especially relative to TradFi markets.
And yes, we’ve already lost the important 110k BTC/USD level intraday.
And yet, according to my system, we’re still HTF bullish as we're holding above key support levels, as narrowly as we have in a long time. That doesn’t mean I’m blindly bullish - but it also doesn’t mean I’m buying into the “it’s over” narrative.

I simply refuse to flip bearish as long as my technical system doesn't give me the signal. No matter how I feel.

This being said, I want to be transparent here:
In a phase like this, it’s dangerous to stay stubbornly biased just because it fits your investment stance.

As an investor, your goal should always be to make or protect money — not to be “right.”. I can imagine a few of you guys reading this derive hopium from it, as it feels like I am one of the last bulls standing. It's fine, we're in this together. But each portfolio and investment strategy looks different, so be honest with yourself and manage risk accordingly - that’s more important now than ever:
Anyone shorting too early can get trapped in the next short squeeze - just like anyone trying to long every dip. That’s the perfect recipe for losing streaks.
And it’s no coincidence that the last quarter of a bull run is when most money is both made and lost.
That’s why I remain open to all scenarios —
because right now, both sides have valid arguments.

In hindsight, the outcome will look obvious, as it always does...Either they’ll say:

> “Crypto topped out in September, months before the S&P 500 — clear as day that crypto front‑runs TradFi. Should’ve been a warning signal.”

Or they’ll say:

> “That final dip in October was the most obvious buying opportunity ever. Gold stole the show, but of course, once gold consolidated, Bitcoin made its final leg up.”

At the moment, I still lean toward the second scenario (see my post from September 23: https://t.co/V4HtbAo8qs).

📊 Focus on Bitcoin – Alts on the Sidelines
From a technical standpoint, I’m deliberately focusing this update exclusively on $BTC.

Because right now, the altcoin landscape is as fragmented & weak as it’s ever been.
Most setups look terrible — and even the few that look good technically carry heavy downside risk if Bitcoin rolls over. With all the opportunities available in legacy markets, there’s no reason to take unnecessary exposure here imho.

Alt season will come again - but only after Bitcoin restores confidence to the market.

If you truly believe this is just a dip, or are ready to shop altcoins for the longer term perspective... you might be looking at generational entries here though. No doubt about that.

For this analysis, though, I’ll stick strictly to BTC.

🔍 Three Levels that matter (Daily / Weekly Close Levels)

1️⃣ The 110k Level
A reclaim of this level on the daily chart would be the first sign that the bulls are fighting back — and that a short‑term recovery might be in play.
We’ve fought hard for this level over the past few days,
but at least intraday, it now looks lost and will probably also close on the daily below it. It's my first sign to get some exposure of the Table. All my Perps positions have been closed and I sold some of my majors with low mindshare and fucked up charts for a loss. To me it's not a major break in Bitcoins market structure though, but it was my signal to derisk lots of alts.

2️⃣ The 200 Daily MA
Losing the 200DMA would be a major warning signal. It would basically mean: We're back at March/April PA & Sentiment, but this time it's at the empirical end of the cycle.That would put us clearly back into bearish territory & the probability of a continued move lower would be the highest it’s been since March.

However, if we temporarily dip below it but manage to hold price above ~100k, it could still turn out to be just a deviation - history has shown that before.

3️⃣ The 50 Weekly MA
This one’s my ultimate gauge. Currently around ~101.5k. - It has acted as perfect support throughout the entire bull run on the weekly chart. Notice how a potential deviation from the 200DMA (like the one we had in march) wouldn't neccerarily violate the 50WMA.

A break below it would be my confirmation though: the bull run is over.

🧘 Why I’m (Still) HTF Bullish
Despite the exhausting PA, the sentiment & the strength of legacy markets while Bitcoin struggles to survive — I’m sticking strictly to my technical parameters & the underlying bias that Gold's strength will once again lead to BTC strength after it finds a level to consolidate.

Another interesting pattern can be seen if you watch Gold Miners vs. Gold:
> While Gold was chopping around before the rally started, Gold Miners were rallying like crazy.
> Now $BTC Miners rallying like crazy while $BTC chops... I wonder...?

So...IF we can hold my technical levels until Gold finds a consolidation range, I think it will be a major tailwind for us, just like the last few times. Could take a week or a month though, so for now, my Eyes are mainly glued on the technical levels I pointed out.

Not emotions. Not group panic. No interest in Intraday moves. Just systemic trading like a robot and being ready for all eventualities.

[Plata @platacrypto]

Bulls are back 🐂

While most of CT was dooming again at 108-109k, calling for the bull market to be over and for sub 100k, we stayed calm and analyzed the market level by level.

People are still looking for a top signal in every Cramer tweet, App Store ranking, meme coin dilution, or whatever else they can find. Until this bearishness continues on every tiny red candle, we are far from euphoria.

On the TA side, we broke out of the daily cloud, got a bullish TK cross and smashed ATH. All bullish signs for ichimoku cloud are hit.

BTC ETF inflows also on a record high. Institutional money is flowing back.

If this move continues in this pace, I expect it to be BTC time for a while again and we might get the edge to edge move on the daily BTC.D chart, which would be our old well known pattern.

Alts will follow as usual and might be that the next move on alts will be the final inning move and the one we all have been waiting for.

For BTC I am targeting 140-160k but as always will just play it level by level. I am highly bullish right now and there is no reason to be bearish at this time.

[Esclop @Esclop5]

@JohnLemonNFT All the best to you and your family ❤️

[Jukov @JukovCrypto]

💭Market thoughts

Bitcoin only dropped about 2–3% overnight, but that small move hit a pivotal level & triggered the largest liquidation wave of the year: over $1.7B wiped out from late-longers and overleveraged degens:

No surprise the sentiment turned sour and a bit doomerish over night - nobody seems happy, the market structure on lower time frames looks shitty and more and more big accounts are convinced August already marked the cycle top and this is the final sell-off. The End of the cycle. Others argue this is just the last shakeout before the final leg up - (I am others).

What almost everyone agrees on is that we’re in the last inning - and probably also that this cycle has never seen a true parabolic $BTC mania phase or a widespread altseason. History has taught us that we’re at a now-or-never moment for it to happen:

To me it feels like the market needs just a spark. Some kind of ignition. Idk really what it will be, maybe just a boring capital rotation. But as long as we haven't lost meaningful market structure, I am relaxed, bullish and keep betting on the familiar gold -> BTC rotation (+ M2 Expansion correlation) we’ve seen in past cycles to push us into new highs.

The gold-tailwind pattern has been fairly consistent: gold rallies first while BTC chops, then when gold consolidates or corrects, BTC catches up - often violently:

At the same time it's important to also accept that we’re facing a headwind from stocks (BTC dumps when they dump but doesn’t pump when they pump).
So for staying bullish, it most likely requires stocks to remain bid (or at least don't correct sharply) & gold to find a plateau for re-accumulation.

My bullish bias would also be broken if major market structure fails & it becomes likely from a technical PoV that the cycle top is actually in. For me, this would mean a break of the Ichimoku Cloud bottom / 30WMA (blue line - around $100k), which has served with 100% accuracy as cycle support since February 2023:

My base case is straightforward:
– If gold consolidates and BTC starts gaining momentum, we get the last leg higher.
– If BTC fails to move when gold consolidates, or if we close a daily candle below 100k, it's time to de-risk. A weekly close below 100k would be the final confirmation that the cycle top is in.

Same logic for alts: many behave like $BTC on leverage. Even a setback to 108k or 104k BTC (which I would consider "wiggleroom") would be devastating for weaker alts that are (a) fighting to hold daily support (e.g. $XRP) or even worse (b) already have lost that fight (e.g. $APT). Cutting exposure there can make sense if one is overexposed.
Still, some names like $SOL or recent parabolics (e.g. $ASTER) have progressed enough that they carry the same wiggle room as BTC. If you can stomach the possible haircut - and if, like me, you don’t believe this is the cycle top - you can hold or even add as long as you can define for yourself a clear invalidation.

For me, it’s still BTFD season. The cycle isn’t done, the final leg hasn’t played out, and the bear market will only start once it’s confirmed. We’re not there yet.

[Jukov @JukovCrypto]

📊Bonds are Breaking the System?

Something strange is happening right now:
The entire playbook of modern economics is starting to malfunction & the bond market is in open rebellion.

For decades, the rule was simple:
When growth slows => central banks cut rates => bond yields follow lower => credit flows again (=> Risk on).

But this time the machine seems to be broken. The Fed hints at rate cuts and finally cuts... but yields rise.
(Image: 30Y Bond Yields vs. Gold = No more inversed correlation)

And this is not only a US-centered problem based on their insane debt. Nope. It's a world wide phenomenom:
> Japan loses its yield-curve control
> The UK’s 30-year bonds hit levels not seen since 1998
> Germany and France see their long-dated debt trade like it’s 2009 all over again
Everywhere you look, long-term borrowing costs are climbing even as economies weaken. That’s not how the script was written.

➡️Why it matters?
Bonds aren’t just some boring Boomer asset, they are the very foundation of the global finance system. They set the price of everything: mortgages, corporate debt, equity valuations, currencies.

When bond yields explode higher, two things happen at once:
1) The cost of money rises.
2) Confidence in governments collapses.

We’re living through a bear steepener: short-term rates remain high while long-term rates spike even higher.
It is basically the markets way of saying: "We don’t trust you to manage inflation or debt. Pay us more for the risk."

➡️The expected outcome of all this per Asset class:
> Stocks: higher yields = heavier discounting of future cashflows. Growth names get hit hardest. I think altcoins will fall in this category rather than into the $BTC category btw.
> Real estate: mortgages stay elevated, affordability crushed, prices either stall or drift lower.
> Gold: should be falling with higher real yields. Instead, it’s climbing. That’s not a trade – that’s a vote of no confidence in the system.
> Bitcoin: liquidity sensitive in the short run, but in the long run it’s the escape hedge. Unlike bonds, $BTC doesn’t rely on government promises. Digital Gold in its pure form.

The bigger picture / whats next?
We just came out of the longest yield-curve inversion in US history... Now it’s steepening again – but for the wrong reasons.
That pattern has preceded almost every recession of the last half-century.
At the same time, the jobs data is rolling over, household debt is stretched, and geopolitics are fracturing.

Inflate it away or reset it through crisis – those are the historical exits. Neither is clean.

➡️My takeaway?
It feels extremely hard to position yourself in this environment but I don’t think the risk is "missing a recession." but the bigger risk is sitting on the sidelines while money gets re-priced around you. This phase can go on for a long time; much longer than the wannabe michael burrys of our generation might think.

I stay invested with a relatively comfortable cash pillow. I play altcoins and growth stocks on lower timeframes and continue to take out profits once the meat of the trade is over. At the same time I move part of the profits into Bitcoin and gold because they’re not tethered to a government balance sheet and not really reliant on laissez-faire money policies (in contrast to growth stocks or altcoins imho).

If central banks are no longer in control, the world will eventually find a new anchor. The question is whether you’re positioned before that shift – or after.