Final Tally: Bitcoin Gets Denied a Bailout… AMD Leaves on a Stretcher (-17%)

“You can’t do this to me… do you know how much I’ve sacrificed?” -Bitcoiners after Scott Bessent made it clear the world’s #1 financial cult is not getting the 2008 “too big to fail” treatment.

And yes, before you yell at your screen: “AMD just got absolutely vaporized and you’re talking about crypto?” Hang tight. We’re walking into that fire shortly.

Bitcoin slid another 2% on this blessed hump day (now hovering around $73K) after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent essentially told Congress (and every overleveraged HODLer watching C-SPAN) “No, the U.S. government is not bailing out your bags, king.” This came during a House Financial Services Committee hearing where the idea of a crypto backstop was floated and immediately set on fire.

If you’re wondering why that question even came up… blame Michael Burry.

Everyone’s favorite new substack writer took a break from staring at Jensen and turned his doomer binoculars toward the asset Cathie Wood insists is going to $1 million by 2030 (any day now). According to Dr. Cassandra himself, Bitcoin has been “exposed as a purely speculative asset” and about as effective an inflation hedge as a Roblox gift card.

Crypto traders, after seeing Burry’s Substack post:

Oh and he didn’t stop there.

Burry warned that a drop to $50K could start popping miners like cheap balloons and leave tokenized metals markets wandering around with no buyers and a lot of regret. Translation: the foundation is cracking, and anyone who has more than 10-20% of their life savings in crypto might get cooked… and soon.

This is easily the most existential stress Bitcoin has felt since 2022… you know, back when it smashed straight through $16K and everyone pretended they were “in it for the tech.” Of course, if you’ve been around for awhile, this is nothing. So silver lining.

As for the stonk market… AMD made sure that today, nobody made money except dividend dads and guys who still think McDonald’s is a growth stock.

The company (lovingly known as Intel’s cooler, and now broke little brother) got punted straight into the shadow realm, down about 17%, after guidance that managed to offend analysts on a personal level. 

CEO Lisa Su tried to calm the room by saying demand has actually improved over the last 2-3 months and things are “moving in the right direction,” which is exactly what you say right before the market throws your stock into traffic.

In response, the S&P dropped about 1% and the Nasdaq got sliced up nearly 2%. Meanwhile, the Dow ticked 0.7% higher as investors rediscovered that companies with real balance sheets and boring names suddenly look like the nerdy librarian after she takes off her glasses. 

As if the day needed one more kick, the labor market showed up late and underdressed. ADP printed 22,000 jobs for January. Expectations were 45,000. With the real report delayed until next Wednesday, this is the number everyone’s now forced to stare at.

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.

Market Gossip

>Washington Post Begins Laying Off More Than 300 Journalists (New York Times): Jeffrey Bezos… the man who figured out how to deliver gym equipment the same day… sent Katy Perry to the moon… but can’t figure out how to make money with a newspaper.

>Tempers flare between Dem Rep. Maxine Waters and Scott Bessent over inflation: ‘Can you shut up?’ (New York Post): Someone might want to tell Maxine she’s talking at a Senate hearing and not having an argument with her husband over who forgot to turn the dishwasher on.

>Amazon makes Alexa+ AI assistant available to everyone in the U.S. nearly a year after launch (CNBC): Everybody stay calm, it’s finally happening…

>Chinese Solar Shares Rally on Report of Musk’s Team Visits (Bloomberg): Every Solar Bagholder right now: “Don’t… don’t give me hope.”

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Bitcoin, McDonald’s, and Intel as mentioned in the article.