Intro

Hey Degens,

BTC is in that annoying zone where nothing seems to be happening… and also everything is happening.

On the surface, price is just hovering around $88K, bouncing between liquidity bands while traders argue about whether we tag $90K or nuke toward $80K first.

Under the surface, we’ve got something much bigger forming: a decades-long arms race between AI (as a centralizing force) and crypto (as a decentralizing one).

So yeah, today’s issue is about two timelines:

• The next $2K move in BTC.

• The next 20+ years of AI vs crypto.

Let’s start with the range, then zoom out to the war.

TL;DR

• BTC is chopping around ~$87K, with major liquidity bands at ~$84.5K below and ~$88.5–89K above — prime short-squeeze territory if we reclaim higher levels.

• Order-book + liquidation maps show shorts clustered around ~$88.2K–89K, while downside liquidity sits around $84–85K — classic “who gets hunted first” setup.

• Macro backdrop is not exactly apocalyptic: the S&P 500 is ~2% off all-time highs and Fed cut odds for December are ~83%, yet BTC refuses to follow risk higher.

• Murad Mahmudov lays out a bigger thesis: AI will centralize power, crypto will decentralize it, and we’re at the very beginning of a multi-decade struggle between the two.

• In that world, AI agents use blockchains as rails, while humans use crypto as a way to “vote with their money” and protest machine-driven inequality and unemployment.

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Main Event: Part 1
BTC’s $89K Squeeze Coil

Let’s start with the shorter time frame: the market that can liquidate you today.

Right now BTC is doing the world’s most boring dance around $87K, but the liquidity map is anything but boring:

• Order-book + liquidation data show thick short liquidations sitting around ~$88.2K on Binance — price has a bad habit of gravitating toward those buckets.

• Analysts are eyeing $89K as the key “reclaim” level where upside liquidity gets swept and shorts feel pain.

• On the other side, you’ve got sizeable liquidity pockets around ~$84.5K and below, where late longs and overleveraged dip-buyers get punished first.

In English:

We’re sitting in the middle of a trap where
— reclaim $89K, shorts get roasted;
— lose $85K, longs get smoked before any real bounce.

Traders like Ted Pillows and others are basically running two simple branches:

• Scenario A: Claim $89K → sweep upside liquidity first.

• Scenario B: Lose $85K → flush to lower liquidity (even $80.6K) → then bounce.

Meanwhile, the long/short ratio is roughly 50/50, which is exactly what you don’t want if you enjoy clean trends. It’s what you get when the market’s coiling for a move and both sides are overconfident.

The macro backdrop makes this even more hilarious:

• S&P 500 is just ~2% below fresh all-time highs.

• Fed cut odds for the next meeting are sitting around 80%+, making risk assets in general more attractive.

So:

• Stocks: vibing, printing near highs, asset owners winning.

• BTC: sitting in the corner, arms crossed, refusing to join the rally.

That divergence is either:

• A warning (crypto sniffing out something nasty first), or

• A lag (BTC is the one that squeezes once people are positioned too aggressively short).

Either way, from a trading standpoint, the playbook is simple:

• Don’t confuse a range liquidity game with some new grand macro regime.

• If you’re going to gamble in the middle, at least know exactly which side of the map you’re fading — $89K above, $84–85K below, $80.6K as “flush me deeper” zone.

Main Event: Part 2
AI vs Crypto — The War That Actually Matters

Now zoom out.

While everyone is sweating $2K ranges, Murad Mahmudov is over there laying out a multi-decade thesis:

AI: The Ultimate Centralizer

AI, by design, tends to:

• Concentrate compute (data centers, mega-models, entrenched providers).

• Concentrate data (whoever owns the training sets owns the moat).

• Concentrate power (fewer decision-makers with more leverage).

Left unchecked, you end up with:

• A handful of entities running the most important models.

• Automated systems making economic decisions faster than humans can react.

• Massive sections of the workforce getting automated out before safety nets are ready.

Murad expects youth unemployment to spike and younger generations to carry the bill for decades of leverage and policy that heavily benefited boomers and older cohorts.

In other words: we’re heading for a world where machines do more of the earning, and humans get stuck with the volatility.

Crypto: The Rail + the Riot

Crypto sits in the middle of this in two ways:

1. Rail for the machines.
   Murad’s first route: AI agents, bots and robots using blockchains as rails to trade with each other and send value autonomously. Smart contracts, on-chain settlement, machine-to-machine payments — all the boring “infrastructure” stuff we meme about now.

2. Riot for the humans.
   The second route: humans using crypto as a protest layer — voting with their money, routing around banks, building parallel economies when they feel shut out of the “official” one. Blockchains become a place to express dissatisfaction, not just speculate.

Overlay that with what he calls “hyperfinancialization” — everything becoming an investable asset, not just stocks and bonds, but:

• Culture

• Community

• Belief

• Ideology

• Even attempts to reduce psychological suffering becoming “markets” in their own right.

We’re already seeing early versions of that:

• Memecoins as tokenized culture.

• Governance tokens as tokenized ideology.

• Creator tokens, fan tokens, “social coins” as financialized identity.

Murad’s point is: we’re early in this. The AI x crypto conflict isn’t a 2025 story — it’s a 2050+ story.

So why should a trader care now?

Because it tells you where the real optionality is:

• Short term, yes, we’re fighting over $88K vs $84K.

• Long term, we’re fighting over who runs the economy: centralized AI stacks or decentralized crypto rails (or both).

That’s where the asymmetric bets live:

• Infra that AI agents can use on-chain.

• Rails for machine-to-machine payments and data.

• Protocols that let humans coordinate capital when they feel locked out of legacy systems.

• Anything that deals with “tokenizing the intangible” — belief, community, mental health, meaning.

You don’t have to solve that today.

You just have to not get so wrecked playing the $89K squeeze game that you can’t stick around for the bigger story.

Degen Toolbox: How to Think in Two Timelines

Today’s tool is mental, not on-chain:

Run a two-timeline stack: “Next 30 days” and “Next 10 years.”

When you look at any move, ask:

1. 30-day lens:

   • Where is liquidity?

   • Who gets squeezed if we move +5% or –5%?

   • What’s my max pain in this range?

2. 10-year lens:

   • Does this fit a world where AI centralizes power?

   • Does this fit a world where crypto is the counter-move?

   • Am I building / holding / learning things that make sense in that world?

That way:

• You can scalp the $89K sweep without forgetting the AI x crypto war.

• You can stack long-term bets without pretending short-term volatility doesn’t exist.

Both timelines matter. Most people only ever trade one.