Episode 98: BTC Breaks 70k Triggering Extreme Put Skew And Liquidations

Crypto finally broke lower last week, smashing through long-term supports triggering cascading liquidations, massive unwinds, and multi-year extreme put skew/vol explosion (front-end puts hit -30 vol skew, implieds ~100).

Panic pricing peaked, and spot had sharp retrace (BTC back ~67K range) suggests worst may be over — potential retest of 74K as resistance before real bottom forms (without vol blowout). Guest Praneeth Srikanti (Ethereal Ventures partner) joins David for an indepth interview covering : VC crypto still active (pre-seed/seed focus), thesis shifting to risk/trust infrastructure (neutral, non-aligned layers for AI-era compute/power/settlements), tokenomics converging equity/token views, AI as crypto accelerator (provenance, deterministic agents, yield sources).

The following topics is covered:

00:00 – Introduction
00:43 – What Just Happened in Markets
01:21 – The Debasement Trade, Gold & Fed Expectations
05:48 – What Triggered the Liquidation Cascade?
06:22 – Options Market: Extreme Put Skew & Vol Surge
10:34 – Liquidity Tailwinds vs. Breakdown Risk
12:02 – Tech Correlation, AI CapEx & Rotation Into Value
18:57 – Tactical Positioning & Call Spreads
20:54 – Hedging, Puts & Risk Management at Key Levels
26:30 – Introducing Today’s Guest: Praneeth Srikanti from Ethereal Ventures
27:45 – Praneeth’s Background & Path Into Crypto
30:10 – From Microsoft to Crypto Infrastructure
32:28 – Praneeth on Building Ethereal Ventures
38:47 – The State of Crypto VC’s & Product-Market Fit
39:55 – Tokenization & Bringing Traditional Assets On-Chain
43:52 – Crypto vs AI
48:50 – Stablecoins: Adoption, Infrastructure & What Comes Next
1:02:03 – Big Picture: Ethereum & The Future of Crypto
1:05:41 – Closing Thoughts