Why this is the worst crypto winter ever: AI crowds out BTC for mindshare and power grid access, crypto is mainstream, gold beats BTC as a safe haven, and more
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Bloomberg
Context & Ripple Effects
The immediately preceding coverage already identified AI as a rival for crypto attention and electricity access; this follow-up sharpens the point that the downturn is being shaped by competition outside the digital-asset market, not solely by crypto-specific stress.
That differs from the 2022 winter’s lesson about ecosystem interconnection. With crypto now described as mainstream, Bitcoin’s comparison with gold and its contest with AI for constrained infrastructure become central tests of its market role.
First-order effects
Bitcoin’s safe-haven case is weakened in the article’s framing as gold outperforms it, putting immediate pressure on BTC’s defensive-asset narrative.
Crypto activity must compete more directly with AI for investor attention and access to power grids, two inputs the article identifies as newly contested.
Second-order effects
The competition for grid access can push crypto participants to justify power use against AI workloads, especially where electricity capacity is constrained.
A weaker safe-haven comparison with gold may shift attention toward whether BTC is valued principally as a risk asset or as a durable store of value, rather than treating those roles as interchangeable.
Third-order effects
If this allocation battle persists, crypto’s economics will be increasingly tied to broader infrastructure priorities: AI’s demand for power can shape where and when energy-intensive crypto activity is viable.
The trend: AI’s rise is turning power capacity and investor attention into shared strategic constraints for crypto, challenging Bitcoin’s claim to a distinct safe-haven role.
karma doesn't drive markets, but bitcoiners surely deserve it for - embracing DATs - idolizing a guy that sells $1 of Bitcoin for $1.50 to retail - believing in fantasies like “the four year cycle” and “stock to flow” or an ever growing MSTR premium - embracing apocalyptic
@TheStalwart Crypto's main legacy : it accidentally gave the U.S. an edge in AI deployment. An entire “web3” industry quietly pivoted to AI—and delivered. A few who stayed to push “adoption” got rich.The Plebs got smoked In the meantime China caught up with AI. The rest is just s…
My gut feeling is that we'll get out of this bear market sideways There will be a bunch of bigger bounce plays but you'll probably have a while to buy around the bottom this time round Get comfortable with the pain bros, it'll last a while IMO
A few days ago I told myself $55k would be a generational entry and I would back up the truck there. I expect my limit orders will be filled in an hour or two
The technical solution to Bitcoin's quantum woes is actually straightforward: 1/ support an opcode to verify SPHINCS+, it's not the most efficient but it's the most conservative choice and you won't have to debate forever about whether it's safe enough. Soft fork or hard fork it
Crypto has had bigger drawdowns before. But this is definitely the worst crypto winter ever. Writing about it for today's newsletter, which you can sub to here. https://www.bloomberg.com/...
TL;DR Why this might be the worst crypto winter, even worse than FTX or 10/10? Author's thesis: This may not be the biggest drawdown ever, but it's the most structurally negative environment crypto has faced because multiple support narratives are breaking at once. Main
A lot of older coin charts look done forever eg. dogecoin, ltc, ada Bitcoin failed its use case by underperforming gold so severely. Most other projects are not meeting their growth expectations. So institutions are now coming to collect their liquidity
i don't think it was necessarily a “last gasp” for the entire industry, but it definitely seems to have marked the ending of a chapter. i'd argue crypto's now in an institutional era and that means there's a lot of uncomfortable change taking place
@TheStalwart @Crypto_McKenna I think this is worse than FTX because crypto was saying back then that FTX wasn't a crypto specific scam. But now feels more like a real identity crisis for crypto
We're lucky this crypto winter is happening before it got too entangled with real finance. Remember in December when @cftc announced that BTC was eligible to be margin in derivatives trades? Thankfully that hasn't had time to take off.
@TheStalwart definitely agree with most of these esp the ai risk for tech talent & hardware, but there's definitely still a ton of ppl online on crypto twitter, bitcoin & ethereum are pretty fragmented but hyperliquid & solana are likely the most close knit communities atm
This is the most brutal crypto winter ever. Nobody's even joking about it in a self effacing way. And if there were anyone doing the meme, you wouldn't see it because there's no crypto twitter anymore.
It's hard not to think that the explosion of DAT companies last year, where various crypto holders exchanged their tokens for inflated equity, was a big last gasp for this industry
I'm telling you guys the next 3 months are about to get wild All the smart people will either try to go to one of the few crypto projects with sustainable revenue & growth or will leave crypto completely We saw 3 of the smartest ppl outright leave crypto in the last 48 hours
I have never been more bullish on crypto. Because the rules-based order is collapsing and the code-based order is rising. So the short term price doesn't matter. As international law breaks down, we will need not just onchain currencies, but onchain companies. As the post-war
10 REASONS WHY THIS IS THE WORST CRYPTO WINTER EVER In today's newsletter, I wrote about how there are just numerous dynamics all happening at once — from Epstein to quantum to AI to the death of crypto twitter — clobbering the coins [image]
The fact that crypto and silver are getting clobbered at the same time as the SaaS stocks makes me think that the “AI disruption” story is a little too pat of an explanation for what's going on.