Bitcoin is stalling below the May high and the 80k area while midterm-seasonality, rising oil, and Fed timing keep the tape unstable; the setup is for a final drawdown around the midterms, then a rebound into early 2027 if the usual playbook repeats. The near-term macro watch is PCE, oil-lagged inflation, and the long end of rates, with a view that the Fed still hikes in December and markets may misread that into a spike before the midterms. The biggest forward-looking equity/crypto themes are an Anthropic IPO, a likely OpenAI IPO in the first half of next year, and a selective AI/crypto market where capital rotates away from meme buying and into liquid names. Political risk is framed through the midterms, where a Senate/House shift could make legislation harder while still preserving room for market-moving policy episodes.
Bitcoin closed the week below the May high and has been repeatedly testing 80k, dipping below it and bouncing as buyers step in.
Midterm seasonality is treated as the reason Bitcoin momentum is on pause, with a rebound expected around December and January.
PCE released this morning printed month over month at its highest since March, with more upside expected over the next 1-2 months from rising oil prices and lagged effects into PCE and CPI.
The long end reportedly topped in October, bottomed Oct. 27-29, then started back up; yesterday's move is taken as a setup for another spike into the midterms before dropping after them.
The Fed is expected to raise rates in December because lagged oil inflation should keep hitting headline CPI.
2018 and 2022 are the template: a September hike, no hike at the midterm-adjacent November meeting, then another hike in December while stocks were falling.
Fed officials were described as penciling in two hikes for 2019 in the December SEP, even though none happened; markets now price two hikes in 2027.
The bull case is that one more December hike is the last one, and the 2027 hikes get pushed out if growth fears rise after inflation fears ease.
The S&P is expected to hold near current levels until the midterms, then see a final drop before rebounding into early 2027.
The Dow Jones, Russell, and NASDAQ are already down about 8% in the current correction.
Brazil, Serbia, and Israel were cited as examples of prediction markets being wrong this week; Brazil was flagged as an 80% Lula-loss trade that flipped the other way.
Rob said Democrats have a 68% chance to take the Senate on Polymarket, and that Republicans may lose both House and Senate.
Rob said the Clarity Act needs a 60/40 supermajority and would not pass in a midterm year; he said Cook and Ham were the two dissenters.
Anthropic filed for its IPO, with a filing about 900 pages long and roughly 100 pages of risks, including the end of human civilization.
Anthropic's board reportedly voids any stock sale or transfer not approved by the board.
Rob put Anthropic's valuation target at $2 trillion, up from $965 billion in May, and said Q1-Q3 revenue rose from $4 billion to almost $17 billion.
A Nick-at-Coinbase point said Anthropic has $131.7 billion in cash and cash equivalents, behind only Alphabet and Berkshire Hathaway, and that this is only 22% of future commitments that are well over half a trillion dollars.
The IPO playbook is to expect Anthropic to open high, then crash back down like SpaceX, with a better entry a month or two later; the same approach was extended to a possible OpenAI IPO next year.
Ben guessed the Anthropic IPO lands the week of Nov. 16-20, likely Nov. 19, and linked Bitcoin's stall to capital preparing for that IPO.
AI spend for some large businesses was described as only about 0.1% of total spend, leaving room for AI pricing power if companies can charge 5x more for embedded usage.
AI-accelerated hacking was framed as a growing risk, with examples from Latin America, Italy, and Japan, including a reported 36 million euros missing and turned into crypto and a 50 million crypto demand.
OpenAI said one of its models disproved the exponential time hypothesis, which was tied to the P vs NP debate and to a crypto downside scenario if AI pushes people to believe P = NP.
A 23-person room has a 50% chance of two people sharing a birthday, used as the probability analogy for how often prediction-market upsets should be expected.
The next key macro/political uncertainty-resolution point is the midterms in a couple of months, with the Iran war also named as a short-term risk that had calmed from the summer and then re-escalated.