The Bitcoin Layer

In this episode, Nik welcomes CoinDesk analyst James Van Straten to discuss why he believes bitcoin's bear market may be nearing its end. James walks through ETF flows that have held firm despite months of outflows, the rotation of capital out of AI and semiconductor names like NVIDIA, and where that money could head next. The conversation turns to Michael Saylor's decision to sell bitcoin near the lows, the role hedge funds played in pressuring Strategy through STRC, and on-chain data showing roughly 330,000 bitcoin accumulated between the high fifties and low sixties since February. James and Nik also examine this cycle's unusually shallow 54% drawdown and the case for a bottom ahead of October.
The Bitcoin Layer and its guests do not provide investment advice.

In this global macro update, Nik asks whether bitcoin has finally bottomed after tagging 58k and reclaiming 60,000. He walks through the bullish divergences forming on bitcoin's daily and weekly charts, why a grinding-higher dollar has been weighing on liquidity and bitcoin all year, and why he now sees Asia, particularly yen and Korean won weakness, as the most likely spot for trouble. Nik also covers new Fed chair Kevin Warsh and his read that Warsh is playing junior to Scott Bessent on taming volatility, the state of Michael Saylor's STRC dividend and MSTR, and what TBL liquidity is signaling now
The Bitcoin Layer and its guests do not provide investment advice.

In this episode, Nik welcomes Peter McCormack, host of the Peter McCormack Show, for a conversation on how he is using AI in his own business. Peter, who has no coding background, walks through the full podcast-management system he built with Claude in 11 days, work he says would once have taken a 14-person team over a year and cost around a million pounds. He covers how he got started, how he learned to prompt, and why he now thinks of himself as a software engineer. Peter and Nik also discuss why this is the printing-press moment for software, how AI threatens aggregators like hotels.com, and why he believes there is a short window to stake your claim in this new world.
The Bitcoin Layer and its guests do not provide investment advice.

In this episode, Nik welcomes Charlie Hu, founder of Coco AI and a bitcoiner since 2012, for a wide-ranging conversation on where AI is heading. Charlie shares takeaways from the Super AI conference in Singapore, walks through SpaceX's $60 billion acquisition of Cursor and what it signals about AI capital and exits, and gives his read on the US government's suspension of Anthropic's Fable and Mythos models. He then lays out his core thesis: that AI is ultimately a process of converting energy into intelligence, which reframes data centers, the US-China race, and even SpaceX's valuation as an energy story. Drawing on his background as a bitcoiner and former Web3 builder, Charlie explains why he sees this as the most important paradigm shift of our era.
The Bitcoin Layer and its guests do not provide investment advice.

In this episode, Nik welcomes Michael Sullivan, a bitcoin researcher who analyzes market sentiment through language. Michael explains how he runs natural language models across thousands of tweets, cohorting bitcoiners into newer retail accounts versus longer-term holders, to measure moods like anger, conviction, optimism, and apathy over time. He covers why bitcoin is in one of the most prolonged anger regimes on record, why Michael Saylor has become the main target of that disapproval, and how the current mix of low engagement, fading excitement, and apathy resembles the conditions you tend to see near a market bottom. Nik and Michael also discuss the AI trade pulling mindshare from bitcoin.
The Bitcoin Layer and its guests do not provide investment advice.