远山洞见

U.S. stocks: A peak in 0 to 9 months

The Big Short is sounding the crash alarm again. Could he be right this time? Who still believes him?

Let’s take a look back

In 2019, Burry said “index funds are the new CDOs.” The S&P 500 went on to rise 281%.

In 2021, he called for “the biggest crash in history.” Even though the market really did fall in 2022, it first rose 84% from the level where he made the call.

In January 2023, he posted one word: “Sell.” In March, he took it back.

He was even long Microsoft this April.

A foreign outlet came up with this headline just for him: “Burry has predicted 12 of the last 3 crashes” 🤣

This time, he’s consolidated his individual-stock shorts into put options on the Nasdaq 100 and SMH.

The options expire in April and June 2027, with strike prices 20% below the prices at the time.

He’s calling for a market peak in 0 to 9 months.

Will he really be right?

The Ledger situation is no longer a black swan—it’s a whole flock of black swans.

In addition to the incidents we mentioned earlier, here’s what has emerged so far:

- Two tampered devices at MediaMarkt in Europe; all Ledger products pulled from shelves across Europe

- A Ledger Flex at Metapod, Changi Airport, Singapore, confirmed to have been tampered with

One distributor having an incident could be a fluke. When multiple channels around the world are affected at the same time, it’s no longer just a distributor issue.

The heads of two major exchanges are tearing into each other on Twitter. Which side should VIPs caught in the middle take?

I’m a VIP at both Binance and OKX. I pay tens of thousands of U in fees across the two
I’ve watched the drama all day. Honestly, I can’t take a side—and I don’t want to

It all started with CZ saying “$800 million in voluntary compensation”
Star posted “Who’s the Yue Buqun of crypto?”—230,000 views in 10 hours
He Yi jumped in, escalating from “picking a fight for followers” to the other person’s family, “eunuchs in the harem,” and “the Northern Jiangsu customer service center”
CZ never named anyone directly, just tossed out: “Being overly focused on your competitors is the fastest way to make a mediocre version of them”
1.02 million views—the highest of this round

Honestly, I came away with just two thoughts
1/ When the leaders of the industry’s biggest exchanges are trading insults on X like this, what will people outside the crypto world think of our industry?
2/ Top KOL Dayu’s line, “Every time he attacks her, it shows he still loves her”
was the most spot-on take on this whole affair

There’s only one group that’s really getting hurt:
retail investors who use both platforms and have money in both

Any teachers following the drama? Which side are you on?

On the first anniversary of 10/10, the thing most worth reviewing has become the leaders’ public feud

One year ago today,
BTC plunged from 122,000 to 101,000. The market saw $19 billion in liquidations, and USDe briefly depegged.
Countless retail traders were wiped out overnight—including me.
I lost 50,000 U holding a losing position that day. I still remember that night.

What should we be talking about today, a year later?
- Have liquidation mechanisms changed?
- Can high-yield stablecoins like USDe really be used as collateral?
- Have oracle price-feed systems become more robust?
- How can retail traders protect themselves next time a black swan hits?

But then I opened X.
Star posted, “Who’s the Yue Buqun of crypto?”
CZ reposted, “Spending money to FUD your rival is the best way to destroy trust in your own company.”
He Yi fired off 20 posts in a day, going from “picking a fight” to “harem” to “Northern Jiangsu customer service center.”

Both sides accused the other of acting irresponsibly, but all day long, nobody talked about “how to help retail traders lose less next time.”

That’s the most absurd part.
The tens of billions retail traders lost in liquidations were real.
The leaders arguing on Twitter over “who has the moral high ground” is all an act.

As someone who lived through that night, I just hope that before the next 10/10,
both companies put their energy into risk management—not Twitter.

$PONS Is another wave coming?

Just now, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev replied on X to a community question about the RH Chain.

The gist of what he said:
“Robinhood Chain is a top priority for us. We never left.”
“Builders who showed up early are important to us.”
“We want the best builders on the chain, and we’re investing to make that happen.”
“More details are coming soon.”

Those lines may not seem like much on their own, but the timing changes things.

Launchpad revenue over the past 30 days (data from Blockworks):
- Pump.fun: $41.77 million
- StonkFun: $23.2 million
- Pons: $9.86 million
- BONK.fun: $5.04 million

As the flagship of RH Chain, PONS brought in just 24% of Pump.fun’s 30-day revenue.
Overall activity on on-chain launchpads has fallen by an order of magnitude from its September peak.

At a moment like this, the CEO is speaking up personally, with hooks like “increased investment” and “more details.”

This probably isn’t just casual chatter.

You bought a hardware wallet. If your funds are stolen, how much can you actually get back?

- This is sure to change how beginners think
- Compiled after talking with friends in the industry

Here’s roughly how compensation caps work in the user agreements of major wallets:

- Coinbase Wallet / Trust Wallet / Phantom / Uniswap Wallet: capped at $100
- Ledger / Trezor: generally capped at the price of the device
- SafePal / Tangem: compensation is generally excluded
- OneKey’s new agreement: device price / 12 months of fees / $100, whichever is highest

Put simply:
Whether you’re storing $10 or $10m,
if something goes wrong, getting the cost of the hardware back from the manufacturer is already generous.
In most cases, they won’t even reimburse you for the hardware.

The manufacturers’ reasoning isn’t hard to understand.
Self-custody means the private keys aren’t in the manufacturer’s hands. They can neither freeze your assets nor reverse on-chain transactions.
So they can’t offer insurance in the true sense of the word, and low compensation caps are standard in the industry.

This logic is mathematically consistent.
But it’s completely at odds with what most retail investors expect when they buy a hardware wallet.

Have signs of an NFT bottom appeared? $PENGU

Pudgy Penguins surged 16.7% overnight

Just now, billionaire Adam Weitsman confirmed in a post

He scooped up 117 Pudgys on-chain, adding: “The Huddle will stay strong”

Pudgy’s floor price is now 2.74 ETH, or around $6,900

Looking back at this NFT cycle

After every crash, “whales saving the market” is a classic bottom-of-the-cycle script

But this could also just be a nostalgic all-in

Huh, I haven’t touched NFTs in a long time

This XRP vulnerability has made me see altcoins in a whole new light.

A leading mainstream coin with a market cap of nearly $100 billion and more than a decade of history, whose core narrative is that its total supply is fixed at 100 billion,

was hanging by a thread because of a bug that had remained hidden for nearly 11 years.

A single transaction could have created roughly 18 trillion XRP out of thin air—184 times the total supply.

If a security firm hadn’t uncovered it using AI and reported it early through a bug bounty program, allowing RippleX to quietly rush out a fix more than two weeks ago, one malicious exploit could have completely shattered the foundations of trust in XRP.

Thankfully, the company says there’s no evidence the bug was ever exploited. Still, reading this news sent a chill down my spine.

Remember, this is one of the most heavily audited codebases in the entire industry. If even a well-established heavyweight like XRP can have a flaw like this, what about smaller altcoins with rougher code and less transparent teams?

From now on, when looking at an altcoin’s tokenomics, maybe the first question should be: “Is this token’s supply cap really hard-coded?”

Trump’s betting the midterms on the candlestick chart this time… right?

Just now, Trump announced a Russia-Ukraine “energy ceasefire,” and Treasury Secretary Bessent immediately added, “We don’t expect any military conflicts before the midterms.”

There are 23 days left until Election Day on November 3.

The thing is, Bitcoin is still hovering around $80K, U.S. stocks are choppy, and the “election rally” the Republicans and their friends want most still hasn’t shown up.

Is the old geezer making one last push to save the market, or laying the groundwork for a post-election U-turn?

What do you all think?

Today is 10/10. It's been a year.
Anyone still in this market has been through a lot.

Around this time last year, at about 11 p.m. Friday, Beijing time, Trump first posted that he was going to impose hefty new tariffs. At 4:50 a.m. Saturday, the 100% tariffs officially took effect.

And then came those forty minutes. From 4:50 to 5:30, $6.9 billion worth of positions were liquidated. In the single minute at 5:15, $3.2 billion was wiped out. Most people back home were asleep at that hour. Many only saw what had happened when they woke up.

In just over a day, more than $19 billion was liquidated across the market, affecting over 1.6 million accounts. It was the biggest liquidation event in crypto history.

Looking back, Bitcoin itself only fell a little over 10% that night, while some altcoins briefly plunged 70% or 80%. A lot of people were liquidated not because they got the direction wrong.

A year later, Bitcoin is now above $82,000. The low that day was just over $100,000, so it's still around 20% below that level.

Which means that even people who didn't get liquidated that day, held on through it, or even bought the dip just above $100,000 are still at a loss today.

People used to say, “You can get the direction right and still die from leverage.” This past year has taught me something more: the most dangerous thing about leverage is that it gives you no time. If you're unleveraged, losing 20% hurts, but you're still in the game. If you're leveraged, you're out by that morning, and whatever happens after that is no longer relevant to you.

There are a few things from that night that have stuck with me.

First, don't use cross margin. Quite a few people that day weren't using much leverage, but they were on cross margin. When altcoins suddenly dropped 70% or 80%, their other positions in the account got dragged down too.

Second, the stablecoins you use as collateral aren't necessarily stable. USDe briefly fell to $0.65 on Binance that night. Binance priced it based on its own order book, and people using it as collateral were liquidated in a cascade.

Third, go easy on leverage over the weekend. It was Friday night, and there usually aren't many buyers around on the weekend. One big sell-off was enough to break through the floor.

Fourth, don't count on the exchange to save you. When the moment comes, systems can freeze. dYdX was down for eight hours, and you couldn't even click the button to add margin.

Fifth, when funding rates are absurdly high, it means everyone is crowded onto the same side. In early October that year, funding rates stayed high, and longs were packed in like sardines.

These lessons were bought with real money. They're nothing new, but when the moment comes, not many people remember them.

Anyone still in this market has been through a lot.

At 70, it’s too late to build a lean physique.
At 30, is it too late to go all in on Bitcoin?

Sun Yuchen’s exact words from his latest podcast:
After 2012, he converted all his assets into cryptocurrency.
Not to make money, but for a “system upgrade.”
Houses and cars are assets of the old era—they don’t translate into machines.
“Buy early, get saved early.”

I understand the logic.
The question is, how many people had access to Bitcoin back in 2012, like he did?
And in 2026, how many people actually hold Bitcoin? 🫡

The essence of a big shot’s motivational talk
is turning a head start into an edge in understanding.

Imagine buying the dip in June at 65k and picking up 80 BTC
You’re sitting on $1.38M in unrealized gains, so you decide to move it all into a Ledger cold wallet
A week later, you’re wiped out to zero 🫡

It wasn’t a leaked private key or a contract you signed by mistake
The Ledger was bought from Southeast Asian reseller CryptoBillis, and an LTE eSIM had been soldered under the screen’s cushioning pad
It transmitted the recovery phrase in real time as it was displayed, and the attacker struck at just the right moment

MistTrack has traced nearly $90M in losses so far. Mark Karpelès, former CEO of Mt. Gox, personally took one apart to verify this attack method

The core premise of a hardware wallet is “physical isolation”
One SIM card with an internet connection completely shatters that premise

Anyone knowledgeable care to explain how to guard against supply-chain attacks like this, other than buying directly from the official website? 🙏

Honestly, might as well just buy the dip on an exchange: $BTC

There are three red lines in China that must not be crossed.

- The cognition of people at the bottom
- The face of people in the middle
- The interests of people at the top

But you can trample on these three red lines with one sentence:

- Huawei's products are trash

Hot take: the oracle track has started getting “real buybacks” underway

$PYTH DAO has just passed OP-PIP-136

Pyth Pro offers four product lines: Subscription, LaaS, Data Marketplace, and Indices

100% of revenue is used to market-buy PYTH and custody it

Previously, each month you could only use one-third of the DAO’s non-PYTH balance, and you also had to separately go through proposal voting

Now it’s changed to a one-time long-term authorization, which also includes any non-PYTH assets that were already held

The first batch executed on September 30. The reserve currently holds about 42 million PYTH; even while the overall market is down, the short-term move is up 10%+

Compare it with leaders like $BNB and $HYPE that support their valuations with buybacks backed by real cash flows

Oracles have finally reached the step of “true revenue for true chips”

The next project to successfully follow this path will most likely choose between Chainlink and Band

Teachers, which one do you think is more promising?

Buy the bonds first, then sign the policy—Trump wins again

Just today, according to the latest financial filings disclosed
Trump alone in August carried out 517 securities transactions
Total transaction amount ranging from $74.3 million to $273 million

Key operations
⬇️

- Bought Meta for up to $25 million
- Bought $1 million to $5 million worth of unsecured SpaceX notes
- Sold $1 million to $5 million of AMD
- Sold $0.5 million to $1 million of Nvidia

What’s most intriguing is the SpaceX deal
On August 18, a purchase order was placed for bonds
Two days later, on August 20, Trump himself signed a national policy expanding U.S. commercial space transportation
So far, neither the White House nor SpaceX has responded for comment

Retail investors watch the market for alpha, staying up late to read research reports. While they’re signing executive orders, he’s placing orders at the same time—does this count as insider trading by a U.S. president?