Phyrex.Ni

In the field of prediction market startups, Chess should be one of the few entrepreneurs who can achieve results.

If you invest with a mindset of a hundredfold return over ten years, it's probably very difficult to actually achieve a hundredfold gain after ten years. Thanks to @chessxyz for the introduction, I had the privilege to meet the SIG team. Many might not know who SIG is. In March 2012, Toutiao received angel round financing of several million RMB, and SIG was the sole institutional investor. At that time, did SIG know that the Toutiao they invested in would become today's ByteDance? The SIG team told us during the review that they never thought about it; they just believed that an aggregated news engine had growth potential. That time, SIG invested $80,000. Later, at the end of 2012, SIG invested another $1 million in the A+ round and provided a $1 million bridge loan. In total, about $2.08 million. How much is that money worth now? According to FT in 2024, SIG holds about 15% of ByteDance shares, and that stake was valued at around $40 billion at that time. In other words, $2.08 million turned into $40 billion, a return close to 20,000 times. If we roughly estimate based on the $550 billion valuation rumored in the 2026 secondary market, 15% corresponds to a book value of $82.5 billion. If they had looked at it with a ten-year hundredfold mindset back then, they might not have invested at all. It's the same now. I always feel that hundredfold returns are for those who are prepared, but more importantly, it depends on luck. For a person, having one chance in life to earn tenfold on a heavy asset is already quite good. I'm not trying to be discouraging. If SIG hadn’t had $1 million back then, even if they were optimistic about Toutiao, it wouldn’t have helped. If we want to gamble on a hundredfold or even higher return, it’s either luck or sufficient knowledge and capital reserves. I always remember what my former boss told me: investing in 100 products, hitting one that succeeds can recover the losses of the other 99. But unfortunately, not only did none of those 100 succeed, the next 100 didn’t either. Luck, capital reserves, and knowledge reserves complement each other. First, work hard to earn tenfold, then consider earning another tenfold on top of that.

I don't know whether Bitcoin will reach $100,000 first or drop back to $60,000 first, nor do I believe I have the ability to accurately predict short-term prices. But I do believe that in most people's lifetimes, $BTC breaking through $100,000 is not an issue. So what I'm considering now is not whether to buy BTC, but at what price to buy BTC so that the future ROI is worthwhile.

Bitcoin price exceeds $80,000, is investor selling increasing? We have looked at a lot of data around the $80,000 mark, including purchases by native crypto investors and traditional investors, examined capital inflows, and also reviewed miner data. So, after $BTC’s price surpassed $80,000, have holders started selling? From the daily Bitcoin transfers to exchanges data, the amount of BTC moved to exchanges in the past month remains at a relatively low level. This indicates that even though BTC has risen 30% from a phase bottom, profit-taking investors have not shown signs of mass selling, which also suggests that more holders currently have no intention to sell. If investors were preparing to exit, the first step would be to transfer BTC to exchanges and then find a suitable price. However, there is no such indication at present, and since March it has been quite clear that investors show little interest in preparing to sell. This further demonstrates that low prices hardly make holders surrender. Many people have been saying that if most holders don’t give up, there’s no way to push the price up, but in reality, every time BTC surges significantly, it happens when the market is heavily weighted.

Bitcoin is fluctuating around $80,000, what are the miners' choices? A tweet posted early this morning mentioned that miners are not currently selling off large amounts of their $BTC, but the overall hash rate is indeed declining. From the peak on November 11, 2025, the overall Bitcoin mining difficulty has dropped by 17.75%. The decrease in difficulty indicates that high-cost miners have started to exit or at least temporarily shut down. This time, the pressure on miners is not only from BTC price fluctuations but also from the scarcity of power resources. In the past, miners competed for cheap, wasted, or marginal electricity, with core competition focusing on mining machine efficiency and electricity costs. But now AI data centers are also competing for power, and the buyers behind AI computing power are companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta, which have stronger credit, longer contracts, and higher payment capabilities. For the same unit of electricity, AI data centers can offer higher prices and more easily secure long-term stable power. This directly compresses the survival space for Bitcoin miners. The current difficulty drop superficially reflects a decline in hash rate, but fundamentally it shows that power resources are being reallocated from low value-added computing power to high value-added computing power. Miners not selling large amounts of BTC indicates they have not surrendered yet. But the decline in hash rate shows that some mining farms have already been forced to exit. In the future, the moat for mining companies will not be simply the scale of hash rate, but power resources, data center resources, grid connection capabilities, and the ability to switch between BTC mining and AI/HPC.

Just saw Skipping Class @TJ_Research say that Bitcoin's price weakness compared to US stocks is mainly due to miner sell-offs. From the data I compiled the day before yesterday, actually, $BTC's price has been quite decent from the bottom during the US-Iran conflict until now. Although it lags behind the Nasdaq, its increase has outperformed the S&P 500, of course, referring only to the past two months or so. Additionally, looking at miners' Bitcoin holdings data, there have indeed been signs of miner sell-offs in the past two weeks, but the amount sold is not significant. Especially compared to the large holdings miners had the previous month, the current sell-off is just a very small fraction, so miners' holdings are not in bad shape. If we really want to say Bitcoin's growth potential is weaker than US stocks, I personally think the main reason in the past two days is the repeated tensions between Iran and the US, which have led to weakened trading activity among spot ETF and spot Bitcoin investors, resulting in decreased purchasing power.

Bitcoin price is fluctuating around 80,000, has selling increased? Yesterday I was chatting with friends about the exchange reserves data, and today when I checked again, I found that the Bitcoin reserves on exchanges have dropped below 15% of the current circulating supply. Moreover, after $BTC price broke through 80,000 USD and then pulled back, there was no increase in BTC reserves on exchanges. This indicates that whether Bitcoin’s price is above or below 80,000 USD, many holders are still holding BTC rather than trying to transfer it to exchanges to sell. As is well known, native BTC cannot be directly traded on-chain, and even cross-chain Bitcoin on-chain trading volume is very low. The vast majority of transactions happen on exchanges. So when exchange reserves decline, although it doesn’t necessarily mean Bitcoin’s price will rise, it does indicate that more investors are not very interested in selling BTC. Currently, we are in such a phase, and it has lasted quite a while. More $BTC is moving towards long-term and high-net-worth investors.

At today's close, WTI prices are expected to return to around $96. The entanglement between the US and Iran is really hard to say when it will end. Today, Iran itself said that as long as the war and blockade end, oil prices will definitely come down. This was originally Trump's line, but this statement is clearly used as a means of threat with the Strait of Hormuz. Iran is very clear: if you don't agree, I'll just block Hormuz, dragging each other down. Although I have already made money shorting WTI, the funding rate has already deducted 14% of my principal. Even though you know there is still a large profit margin in continuing to short, you have to wait, but the funding rate deduction hurts. I estimate that if Binance does not change the weekend funding rate by this weekend, I will probably exit first and see the situation next Monday. I think shorting WTI is definitely the right choice. Besides that, it depends on the spread between WTI and Brent. Normally, the spread should be around $5. If the spread widens, I will consider shorting Brent. But in any case, shorting oil at this price is no problem. High oil prices are unbearable not only for the US but also for more and more countries, and port blockades are also unacceptable for Iran. The biggest problem now is tough endurance. Both sides are stubborn, waiting to see who will give in first. But the domestic economic situation will definitely make both sides retreat at least half a step when taking a step forward. Back to Bitcoin data, as the US and Iran continue to tug, US stocks have seen a slight pullback, so $BTC price fluctuating downward a bit is normal. It is currently holding around $80,000. As I've been saying these past few days, today's BTC is no different from three months ago; only the international situation has changed. Although it's quite sad, this is the current reality. #Bitget comes with VIP! Crypto, US stocks, CFDs, global opportunities all in one place