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CRYPTO 101
Crypto Rundown: A Bitcoin Short Squeeze is Loading...The Crypto Trade We are Watching
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- [00:00]
A
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- [04:16]
B
Happy freaking Friday. Lots of volatility here in the crypto market this week. Going down to like what, 62k? Almost 64k back up to almost 70k. Lots of stuff happening. But you're right, there's all this talk about the idea of a short squeeze and let me tell you, I actually quite agree with it. I think that we are starting to see a squeeze happen and the, I guess, implications or the repercussions of a squeeze like this could be pretty big. TiVo, a lot of people are looking at the crypto market saying, hey, you know, we're probably getting ready to do something big right now. Is that going to be to the upside or downside? We'll talk about that and some of the theories and thoughts that we have. But yeah, you know, all sorts of big catalysts. I mean, whether you're talking about Banks or the short squeeze or Jane street or different theories that are out there, there's some big stuff happening behind the scenes. And our favorite thing over here is to go through all the news, all the technicals, all the fundamentals and review it all and then package it in under an hour for all of you to view and listen to completely for free. So as TiVo said, you know, if you like it and you like what we do here, all we ask is that you hit the like and subscribe button. You know, if you are listening on one of the podcast channels like Spotify or Apple Podcasts or Audible or something like that, give us a check out on YouTube, you know, maybe leave us a review on there, but check us out on YouTube. It's where you're going to be able to see all of the visuals, all the charts and articles that we're going to be putting on the screen for you. So check us out over there because we do all sorts of other market updates and podcasts and tutorials and things of that nature. So, TiVo, I mean, let's kick it right off here.
- [05:56]
A
Yeah, it's. It's Friday, and sometimes on Fridays we like to have a little fun. I think I see Fitz in the chat. Grant is here, Deb's here, CJE's here. Rumor is CJ is actually in Florida on the east coast this time. Love that. You also know that CJ likes to pull out the tinfoil hat every once in a while. That's what I'm feeling. Like this Jane street thing has gotten a literal, a, you know, mind of its own. It's kind of spread through crypto Twitter in a toxic tinfoil Hattie way. But there is some truth to it. It's one of those things where, hey, where there's smoke, maybe there's some fire. Just to kind of. Before we dive into the crypto specific rumors that we saw, I. I pulled this clip. It's three minutes long. We're not going to listen to the whole thing, but just to show like, hey, Bloomberg television is even talking about this. Whether it was the crypto fud, the, the terror, the Luna fud, or the, it was around the India markets. I believe there was a lawsuit out of India towards Jane Street. So let's just tune in and hear what, you know, other people are talking about this to give us a tee up and then we'll dive into the more crypto specific stuff.
- [06:56]
C
This company. How has the reputation been changing on Wall Street? So that's what we're starting to see unfold. This is a firm that has been in the background. They're growing in prominence. They're making billions of dollars of revenue in the year, they doubled that revenue from 2023 to 2024. But now the way that they're doing that has been thrust into the open. So you have this probe out in India from the regulators that is releasing documents that minute by minute, hour by hour, they're showing not just the trades that this firm is inputting, but the amount of money that, that they're making doing it, the profit. And so you've seen across Wall street, their competitors, and just folks that are curious and want to kind of analyze how this firm is doing what they do, they're pouring through these documents and it's such an unusual time because this is a firm that otherwise can just be again, behind the scenes, behind a curtain and operate in the way that they have been. They've been founded in 2000, so it's not as if this has happened overnight. They've evolved over time. What is different here is as you
- [08:02]
A
bring up the reputation, Jane Street's reputation's under fire. Brennan, as I pull up the second thing again, we'll dive into the crypto specific stuff in a second, but they seem to be doing something in the India markets that the India regulators do not like. Looks like they're maybe banning Jane street from local markets. And just a fun fact here, I believe Sam Bankman Freed used to work at Jane Street. So, you know, not, not independently, not aware of some, some sketchy people of their past. But let's, let's pull up the big long tweet. I found this from Bull Theory, kind of breaking down the Jane Street 40 billion dollar Luna collapse and then just want to get your thoughts on it. Brendan, what have you heard? What have you seen? I think specifically, you know, the, the, the narrative got to the point where it was, oh, this is why Bitcoin's down. I, I don't, I don't think we, we believe in that, but there's a lot of smoke here and there's probably some fire somewhere.
- [08:59]
B
Yeah. You know, right now this is mostly allegations. And I hope that the truth does come to the spotlight because I think people deserve an answer. And if this was happening, we need to make sure that it doesn't happen again. But when it comes to the whole Jane street incident, what people are concerned and a little bit upset about here is the allegation that they had a role in the Terra Luna crash. And so the idea behind it is that they were purposely manipulating the markets to orchestrate this crash. And then knowing that they would cause this crash, they were also short and benefiting off of the crash itself and profiting from it. So not only were they doing market manipulation and caused one of the biggest crashes and blow ups in crypto history, not only did they orchestrate it, but they also profited off of it as well. And so that seems to be the idea here, is that's one side. The second side is, hey, not only did they do this one big blow up event, but there's also the idea that they have been continually manipulating bitcoin and manipulating price action again for their benefit. And so that's really where it comes to the spotlight and I think that's where people are upset is, hey, not only did they cause this extremely large, massive blow up event, you know, tons of people lost money in this kind of collapse and they were the ones orchestrating and benefiting off of what seems to be manipulation. But then they've continued to do this with bitcoin and, you know, who knows, maybe even other cryptocurrencies. And so the allegations here, or you know, allegedly they were ordered to stop all manipulation on, you know, what was it two days ago? And then we saw that big pump up in bitcoin's price as it recovered from 62, I think I said 72 at the top of the episode, but from 62 all the way back up to 70 and everyone's like, oh my goodness, they were ordered to stop the manipulation. It started pumping and now we're starting to see it just come right back down as it's floating around 65 here. And you know, that's the high level overview of what's going on. The thing to note here is there at least seems to be a little bit of potential truth to this. Again, we don't have all the information, but when you have India doing this and kind of getting on them, it seems to be like something's happening behind the scenes now is it exactly what bull theory was saying? I'm not sure. Again, we just don't have all of the data yet. And what we don't want to come on here and do is blast them and say all these things and just none of it turns out to be true. My hope here is that, you know, this lawsuit, like it says it's supposed to go to u. S. District court, you know, I want to see the results of this. And the big question I have is, you know, a, you know, what if this is all false? Right. Well, what happens then? And then the other side is what happens if it's, if it's all true? Because I'm not sure there's a way to make it right to all the people who had lost money or had their gains suppressed, you know, who knows how many times at the benefit of Jane Street. There's, there's, it's really hard to say, oh, this person was impacted by this much, so they're going to get repaid x amount of money. I would say it's near impossible that that is, is going to happen. And it's almost impossible to kind of calculate that in the first place, let alone repay the people. So I think the biggest thing that we can do here is create a way where this doesn't happen again. And I think that's what most people want to see. And I think that's also why we look at the clarity act in the market, the market structure bill as a whole. It's part of the reason why everybody wants this to get passed is because there's no longer going to be gray lines of how these financial institutions and asset managers and banks, there's no longer going to be a gray line of how they can operate and what they can and can't do. It's going to say, hey, here are the defined parameters of what is allowed and what you can do. And that should, in theory, actually prevent a lot of manipulation, depending on how clearly it's defined. And so I think that's what we should really be paying attention to here is saying, hey, we want to see what's going to happen as a result of this. But moving forward, we really do want and need the market structure bill and the clarity act and all these things in place, because that should give us very clear regulation on how these assets are supposed to be treated and traded. And if this does happen and there's groups that are openly breaking this, then they're going to have to go face the courts and, you know, fines and other issues. My only Fear is that, you know, we've seen market manipulations from big asset managers and banks in the past and there's been a lot of them that have done this. You know, I know JP Morgan has gotten sued for it, you know, who knows how many times. And you know, a lot of them have the issue, TiVo, is that a lot of the time they make more than they're being fined. And so what I mean by that is imagine they go, and I'm just making up these numbers, but imagine they go and they make $500 million from manipulating, you know, whatever it is market and then they get fined $300 million. Well, at the end of the day they might look at that and say, oh well, we did this and we got away with it and we had $200 million to run with even after 300 million in fines. So then they say, okay, well that's really just a slap in the wrist and we end up profiting. At the end of the day, that's kind of the issue that I have with these, is that there needs to be more protection because at the end of the day, the people who really pay the price are not the institutions. It's really again, the retail traders, the retail investors. So that's where I stand on it. That's the whole situation. And we truthfully, we just need more data and we need to see this go a little bit further. But I almost hope it's not the case because of what that would mean.
- [14:53]
A
Yeah, if you're the purchasing manager at a manufacturing plant, you know, having a trusted partner makes all the difference. That's why hands down, you count on Grainger for auto reordering with on time restocks, your team will have the cut resistant gloves they need at the start of their shift and you can end your day knowing they've got safety well in hand. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. Yeah, sadly, it's a tale as old as time. Right. Whether it was, you know, traditional markets versus crypto markets and so on and so forth, there's always, there's always this type of, you know, bad behavior and, and you could even, you know, on a, on a very simple, dumber level, you know, there's so many different rug pulls and all the different, you know, low cap meme coins that, you know, we try to steer people clear from as well. But if there's any, if there's any indictment on how Jane Street's feeling, they, they Completely wiped their Twitter. So I thought that was really interesting.
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B
You know, it's not a good look.
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A
Not at all.
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B
You know, there's these allegations and people like, are they true? And their first reaction is wipe all of the evidence. Like it's, it's not a good look for them.
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A
No, no, it's not. And I'm sure, you know, if this does go to the courts, the first thing they'll be doing is getting the logs of all the old tweets and posts and all that stuff and trying to, you know, see where they're communicating out, you know, out to the public versus where and what they're trading. But one thing that we do know for certain when it comes to short squeezes, Brendan, is it's the TiVo Friday. Same side of the boat trade is going to be on mstr. Same side of the boat here. MSTR becomes the world's most shorted stock. The number one position here. You can see the list here. And it looks like strategy has reclaimed its spot. It's been there before. Any, any thoughts on that? Obviously, this is how short squeezes start. There's certain companies, if you go all the way back to like, you know, the GameStop days of, you know, being short versus the float of available shares, there's certain, you know, I don't know if it's funds, but there's certain managers out there that like this game and they don't necessarily care whether it's Bitcoin or games like GameStop for example. Right. The company was in disarray on the, on the balance sheet, but it just. The short to float and available shares, there's formulas and there's traders out there that look for this stuff. So this is something that came across my feed and desk and I did a little research into that. Gets me kind of excited in a way because again, it brings in people that aren't necessarily specific to the crypto markets. And I wonder if, you know, the MSTR bulls can rally behind it along with maybe some of these people that start hunting for some people that go naked short and just get too aggressive with it.
- [17:56]
B
Yeah, no, you're right. The way that MicroStrategy trades, or MSTR now strategy trades, is that it typically trades at a more volatile pairing to Bitcoin. Right. That's usually what it does, is it tracks Bitcoin's price action, but in a more volatile way. And so with us seeing, you know, this 50% retracement on Bitcoin, you've seen a much more hefty retracement on mstr. And so you could argue, hey, this thing should have even more shorts built up. And people have leaned into that idea. You know, something that I like to talk about is when I like to go short, I like to short the underperforming assets. I'm not going to go to a sector, you know, let's just say, hey, I want to short crypto. I'm not going to go to the lead performer and say, oh, I'm going to short the best performer. You're going to go, no, I'm going to short the worst performer of this niche, of this group. And people look at MSTR as that option for bitcoin specifically. And so what they do is they say home, well, I want to short crypto stocks or I want to short bitcoin. Are they going to go and short Bitcoin or are they going to go short mstr or are they going to go short Galaxy or are they, are they going to go short something like this, which they know has more volatility to the downside because it's been underperforming and that's where you get this. So I think that you're right. You know, I think that a lot of crypto is sitting in the spot where it is probably oversold if not getting really close to that point. And you can see from technical indicators, right, the RSI oversold macd, most oversold it's ever been, the Fear and Greed Index, most sold it's ever been. For the rsi, it was the second lowest it's ever been. So all these indicators would say that according to them it is oversold. The hard thing about oversold though is it's kind of just a made up term, right? There's no like, oh, this is oversold, so it has to go up. It's just a way that we label things that are extremely, potentially overextended to the downside or maybe they've seen too much downside without any kind of a relief rally. And I think that's what people are looking at here and saying, hey, it's probably been sold off more than it should have without any kind of a significant bounce happening. And I think the really interesting thing will be is once we probably do get the short squeeze and we do get the bounce, then what happens, right? That will be. I think the more important thing to watch out for is to say, hey, we can have a short squeeze and we can rally, but what happens after that? Are we going to be able to go Back to the highs or do we just form a significantly lower high and then just resume back to the downside after something like that. So I think this is good to bring up. You also see a lot of variety on this, right? You see strategy and then you see Charter Communications and then Core Weave, which is tech, and then you see Coinbase, which is crypto, and then you see Western Digital and then you see Bloom Energy, which is an energy stock. You see Paula Palo Alto, which is, you know, cybersecurity. You have just a huge variety up here, but you do see a lot of crypto names towards the top, which would lead me towards believing that again, you know, crypto's probably reaching some sort of, of oversold point. So, you know, we'll find out, I'm sure. But I'm, I am leaning into this idea of saying, hey, we could still go lower and we'll look at this on the charts. But I think it's a good look to say, hey, a short squeeze could definitely be happening here. From what you view on just the equity side.
- [21:36]
A
Yeah, and just the percent. This highlighted column I think is interesting is the short interest as percentage of market cap. And you can see the majority of this sheet, 90% of it is between 4 and the high end, 8. And then the outlier starts at 10, 11, 12 and MicroStrategy is at 4, 14.
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B
That's crazy.
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A
Of the market cap. So something, something to keep an eye on, obviously something we've highlighted, we'll keep tracking, but we're gonna move on to Brendan doing a little technical analysis for us. So I'll share the, give the screen share away to you, my friend. And if we got a couple people in the chat, it's awesome. New names, Habish, Cooper, plus everybody I mentioned earlier, you know, we'll give us, if anybody wants some tickers, toss them in the, toss them in the chat and we'll see if we can get to them at the end. And then if you're enjoying this, give it a thumbs up like subscribe. Obviously if you're new, hit the, the logo in the bottom left. And it's, it's that time of the cycle where Brendan's technical analysis class is open. So if this is something that you enjoy, if you're going through this, you've been a part of our lives and you see some of Brendan's technical analysis, you know, if, if you want that six week course where you get to do it with him two times a week live with Brendan and the six week course to Learn all about the technicals and the charts and, you know, everything that he is an expert in. I threw the link down there. The cohort is open just this weekend, so check it out if you're interested. But Brendan, take it away. And again, if anybody has any tickers, we can get to those at the end. So toss them in.
- [23:07]
B
Yeah, you know the, the name of the game for bitcoin is can we go lower and what is happening next? And you know, this is the all time high that we put in and we've kind of just moved down, consolidate, move down, consolidate, move. Big consolidation, big move down. And now we're just consolidating again. Now there's a little bit of a difference with a lot of these prior consolidations. You can kind of see move down, consolidate up, move down, consolidate up, move down, consolidate up, move down. And now we're consolidating downwards here. Now, historically when you see a move down followed by upwards consolidation, it's called a bear flag, which typically means that there's continuation to the downside. This is a little bit different where you're getting bitcoin bouncing from this area or bouncing from this area and then seeing a little bit of downwards consolidation. So little bit of a change in shift in what's happening. And I think because of that we have to start looking at this slightly different than we have before because it doesn't look like your average bear flag so far. In fact, falling channels are usually associated with bull flags. The only difference here is that you don't have quite a big pull, as we would call like a bull poll followed by a bull flag. This still looks pretty funky now. I was actually really excited to go long crypto here as it was trying to break out through the top of this channel. You saw it trying to get through the top of this channel above that 20 day moving average. I was waiting for the candle close to happen and we didn't get it. It was a big letdown moment for me just a little bit earlier this week because if we could have closed above this 20 day moving average, then I would have actually been really open to longs and I would have been open towards the idea of bitcoin pushing back to 80 to $85,000. The difference here is that we came all the way back down and closed right at, if not beneath the 20 day moving average, then the next day we rejected and then again today we're rejecting again. So multiple days of rejecting this. And we've seen that for a while now on bitcoin. Right, we've kind of come up to this rejected and then come up and rejected and come up and rejected again and again and again. And we're doing it, you know, again once again over in here. So I'm looking at this and saying, hey, it's still not a good sign that we continue to reject the 20 day moving average which is the smallest and weakest of the ones that I like to use between the 20, the 50 and the 200 day moving averages. And I'm looking at this, seeing the rejection and you know, as it's coming back down in here, just acknowledging that, you know, you would have really liked to see a breakout here, but you have the failed breakout as it's bleeding back down. So I think we're in limbo until we really do break out from this resistance line, start trading back above this two or excuse me, the 20 day moving average. And I'd really like to see us Conquer 70,000 and close up there. And I think it puts us in a good spot. Until that happens, you know, we are in a bit of a downtrend. As I did say, we are seeing a bit of structural differences where we're seeing kind of a channel down of consolidation as opposed to a spike up in consolidation followed by more downside. So again, things are changing here. It looks like something is certainly happening, but it's too early to probably say, you know, oh, is this the bottom? Is it, you know, a full on reversal moment? Again, I think it's too early to say, again something's different, something is changing, but you still have the failed breakout and you still have an overall downtrend as we can see. So you know, somewhat hesitant. I would still say the idea of new lows is a real possibility. You're seeing a lot of signs and we've talked about this quite a bit that is saying, hey, historically speaking, you know, we're getting to the point where we historically start seeing the reversal take place. But that doesn't mean that it has to be in right at this moment, just that we could be entering into that stage where it's saying, hey, you know, we need to really be on the eye or the lookout for a reversal. And I actually do believe in that. I think that we're entering into the stage where I think people can start looking and saying, hey, it's probably time to start looking for the reversal. Maybe that happens in a few weeks, maybe it's a few months away, but I think we now need to start really be looking at it and seeing Bitcoin prepare the early stages of that. So again, that could mean lower price action still. But I am very much in that camp of saying, hey, I want to actually be looking at some long term opportunity here and really just evaluating the market from a long perspective. Even if we do have a deeper move lower, which is again something on the table across the board though, you know, everything kind of moving lower here again. Ethereum failed the breakout of the 20. Solana failed the breakout of the 20. You know, XRP, same story. BNB, same story. A lot of the large caps here, something that we saw a little bit earlier in the week on this big move to the upside is that altcoins were rallying quite well. You saw a lot of altcoins rally, you know, 10, 20, 30% to the upside off of some of these moves and it's giving back a lot of those gains. I still think a standout is one that we've had on the pod here recently. Again, you know, we bring this up, I'm not just trying to shill it. I actually have no exposure to it. So I feel like I'm allowed to kind of show it a little bit because I have zero exposure myself. But it's Canton. I mean TiVo, you did a great job. You got Canton on the pod and you got their, the one of the big backers of them big treasury company called their immune, who's a big supporter of Canton. You got both of them on the pod like what, like a month or two ago at least. And this thing's been crushing it, crushing it. I mean it hit all time highs not too long ago, been contesting them. But that's while everything else continues to fall. And this is one of the few ones that kind of bounced off the 50. Oops, it bounced off the 50, got back above the 200 and it's holding value decently well. So shout out to producer Thibault. And T. I think you're muted for
- [29:16]
A
us, but the credit goes back to the team as well because that's stuff that, you know, has been in the newsletter, it's been in the community, you know, you know, you, Bryce and the team are always kind of asking me like, hey, can you find somebody from this? Can you find somebody from that? And that was, you know, if you're in the inside the community, you got kind of tipped off on Canton Network through the newsletter. So if people are interested in that, you know, there's a dollar trial down below as well. And then obviously if you listen to just the pod, you Had a chance to, to get, to get it a couple weeks ago as well. Probably one of the best performing cryptos over that time. That and Punch the Monkey, which we also called on this podcast as well. We're on fire. Honestly, I was gonna say one more thing. Oh, and a little sneak preview of just some heavy hitters on the podcast coming up too. Canton Network is officially available on Robin Hood, I believe as of yesterday. And then we have a little Robin Hood news at the end of the show to tee up us, me and you interviewing Johan Kerbat next week. So hopefully that doesn't get canceled. Obviously plans can change, but as of now, we have Robin Hood on the schedule for next week as well. So, you know, it's. You see this. If, if you're a true crypto native to true crypto person, you want to build and the best projects are building no matter what the price. Action. I think it's a one on one podcast and Crypt Nation team follow that better than anybody where we just, you know, hey, we're continuing to build. We continue to bring on the best guests. We continue to find winners. Can't on our Punch the Monkey. We're continuing to interview top people in the space. This is what we do. So worth a thumbs up and worth a subscription to support the pod. If, if, if I was a listener. We appreciate everybody doing it. Could you pull up? I just want to show some love to the people that are in the chat. Pull up the charts. Fitz, he's here all the time when he can be. He wants to take a look. Avax specifically. And then our friend. I don't want to pronounce the name wrong. I think it was Habish asked for bmnr, which obviously is related to eth, but we do, we do mention it on the pot a lot. So let's, let's do those two and then we'll move on.
- [31:22]
B
Yeah, you know, I think Avax is in a tough spot, man. You know, they're not one that I'm currently looking at personally. I just think that there's some other altcoins there that have just been performing and doing better. So I'm really not looking at Avax at the moment. They were one that I was looking at probably about a year, two years ago. But here I even have an old Risk version war chart where I had a nice hard stop with this. And I've, I used to trade it, you know, I used to own it, but I've exited out of my entire position. You can kind of just look at the past several years of performance of just consistent lower highs since the last cycle, right? We kind of peaked. And ever since then it's come down lower high, come down lower high, come down lower high. Now, is this thing probably preparing for some sort of short squeeze? I think it'll probably have one. My only thought is that you'll probably just see another kind of move up lower high, move up lower high, move up lower high. You can probably have a move up here. But my only fear is that it could very well just be another lower high into more downside. So again, I'm not saying that this has no upside, but it has a pretty clear trend over the last four years, four or five years of just every rally being lower than the prior one. And you see a lot of this since 2021 and 2022. So I would be looking at that from Avax and again, you know, even from its current price, that could still mean, you know, hey, maybe this thing rallies 100, 200%. Again, I would still be just cautious that we know that it has this history of lower highs. So my fear would be you just see more of the same with this. So, you know, again, not like a dead project by any means, not like a horrible one, but just in terms of price performance. That is something I would want to watch out for because the trend is, is very clear there. So I would want to temper expectations, you know, for someone coming out to you and saying, hey, you know, this thing could 10x or 20x, I'd be much more hesitant of that and say, you know, the trend has been down for about four to five years. And on a conservative side, I think you'd have to look at, you know, a lower high is a real possibility. What else we got?
- [33:38]
A
Yeah, let's do bit mine, last one and then we'll move on.
- [33:42]
B
Yeah, so I actually, you know, I'm torn on bit mine. I like Tom Lee, I like Ethereum.
- [33:49]
A
Do you like Mr. Beast?
- [33:51]
B
Yeah, you know, some of the stuff they do confuses me a little bit and I do wish that they would be more aggressive about buying Ethereum and getting their hands on more Ethereum at these prices. So part of me is kind of concerned with that. You know, they could have put. They. What was that? They did 500 million in the Mr. Beast or something?
- [34:13]
A
Yeah, yeah, they got a piece of the Beast Industries.
- [34:16]
B
Yeah, they got a piece of Beast Industries, which I think is a super great idea for return on investment. But it's a strange look to see Ethereum down So much and then having $500 million of capital to spend. And as an Ethereum treasury, they're going to say, hey, we're actually not going to put this money in Ethereum. So I think it's a little bit of a bad look to see it fall so much and then willingly put their money into other places. It's a little bit of a bad look. And I like BMR being are, I like Tom Lee. I actually own some shares of this myself. I don't have crazy exposure, but I have some to it. And I think that the way that you can look at this is I view it as almost like a leveraged version of Ethereum. If Ethereum's coming down, this is going to see more volatility to the downside. If Ethereum is rallying up, you're going to see more volatility to the upside. So as long as the market is heading to the downside, I think this thing is going to get peppered. The moment that the market reverses and starts heading back to the upside, you're probably going to see this thing absolutely take off. And you saw that just the other day when Ethereum rallied with, you know, Bitcoin on that. Jane Street News BMNR rallied almost 20 to the upside in two days. Whereas Ethereum during the same time frame, you know, rallied from top to bottom, you know, actually almost the same. So maybe that's not a great analogy. Ethereum rallied about 18 as well off of that same two day rally.
- [35:47]
A
So I think I agree with you, Brendan. I think that's a, that's a one I want to put a pin in and save for the next rally. I, I totally agree with you. Just so people understand because they do come here for information. So bit mine. I just looked it up. The bit mine, Moonshots, like you said, it's like, hey, it's, it's not necessarily a true treasury because they're doing some different things with the money. It's 200 million in Beast Industries. It was, I see A8CO/ Octo/ Worldcoin. They did $20 million in World Coin and then Orbs. Orbs and Dan Ives for those who like to watch the, you know, business news. Dan Ives always runs around with all the fun, different colored jackets. Huge tech investor for man, the firm he works for, slipping me off the top of my head. But he is the chairman of Orbs. And So they did 25 million into orbs. So they're sprinkling some moonsh, going for, you know, stuff that they believe are 10x or probably bust. So they're sprinkling some money there. They're aiming for 5% of Ethereum and I totally agree with you. Again not personal financial advice for anybody but it's going to get peppered on the downside worse and then there's going to be a time when, if the bull market turns, when it comes back that I would, I would say bit mine is going to have a moment of. And the reason is I don't think it has anything to do with, with the treasury part of it or the investing part of it. I think it's kind of what we talked about for some of these, you know, stocks that, that were flying so high like the, you know, the stablecoin IPOs and the Robin Hoods of the world that we called. It's, it's, there's going to be people that just don't have the ability to go buy Ethereum and like it's not in their mandate and they can go buy these stocks for whatever their mandate holds and then you just have that kind of rush to get into some of these. And so I think it's worth watching. Same thing that strategy used to do, you know the cycle before with bitcoin, right. It was, you know, we can't get any exposure to Bitcoin itself so we'll buy strategy and then you know that nav 12 to 1 for their Bitcoin on the balance sheet now that's come back in so something to watch and I think it's going to be fun. I think it'll be fun. Tom Lee's definitely took his medicine. We had an episode where he went on TV and you know, he had to do the rounds and you know, take it, take it on the chin. It would be fun to see him have a victory lap once again when the market turns around.
- [38:16]
B
I think I just saw, I think it's habish says Tom Lee knows what Tom Lee knows.
- [38:24]
A
Well let's, let's transition out of the charts with let's go to big banks. I mean again it's the narrative driven, you know crypto market where it's hey, the fundamentals of all the adoption is just non stop. What we would think is bullish and the price action hasn't followed and that continues. I got two clips here. They are a little long. The first one I'll do is Citi. So Citibank wants to make quote. Their quote was they want to make Bitcoin bankable. So let's listen to City for a minute and then we'll transition to the next one.
- [38:56]
C
So yes, as we move into the world of 247 assets like Bitcoin, you definitely need 24.7US$24.7 issue of money. And all our systems and processes are also being uplifted into 24. 7 support. Like we absolutely need that. In some sense we are back to the world of Citi, never sweets. So this is the one big idea to make Bitcoin bankable. Later this year, Citi will be launching our infrastructure that integrates Bitcoin into traditional finance. We're going to start with core custody and safekeeping capabilities, institutional grade key management and wallet infrastructure. So what does it actually mean to make Bitcoin bankable?
- [39:46]
A
So the big, the big quote, there's cities working to make Bitcoin bankable. And then I can scroll over to this one. We have Morgan Stanley on stage talking about confirms how Morgan Stanley is offering to, you know, plan to offer Bitcoin trading, lending, yield and custody. So let's listen to Morgan Stanley partnership and I think later on, at some point in time in the next year, you're actually going to build out a native custody and exchange solution, which I'm pretty excited about. You'll potentially be the first major bank to offer that. Why did, why is that piece important and what are you thinking about?
- [40:19]
C
Like how does that strategically fit? Yeah, I think it's a natural. We really need to build this out internally. We can't just primarily rent the technology to do this. People expect Morgan Stanley, they trust our brand to be no fail. And when you sit in that position, you have a significant responsibility to your clients to make sure that you're delivering that in any level of technology. So I think that's one of the things that we want to do. It's a totally different environment to know that you are custodying your assets, you have legal custody with Morgan Stanley and Morgan Stanley is overseeing those assets for you. There's always those that are going to want to self custody. That's a natural part of the space, especially in the Bitcoin space. I think for some of you in the room that may not know my background prior to being in the digital asset strategy space, I ran our emerging market investing business for the last 13 years and I've been so I'm pausing
- [41:06]
A
it there because I think it's interesting that she compares her experience to going into digital assets from the emerging markets. Emerging markets are up and coming. You know, what's new, where's the, where's the puck going type of action. And so that's, I, I think it's when you have city microstrategy and then, I'm sorry, Morgan Stanley. And then this last slide before I hand it off to you, Brendan, is just like the summary of this is, what we've talked about over the last, you know, couple months on the podcast is, is these people are building. And I think it's always important to note like, hey, we're not saying you need to go open up a Goldman Sachs, you know, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo account and move your crypto there. You know, you always have the right to self custody and that's the beauty of this thing. But these are the people, these are the, the companies that have all the capital that truly like, you know, kind of run the world and they're building infrastructure for this stuff. And she said, the Morgan Stanley lady said the most important thing. It's like, we can't continue to rent this. We have to build our own. And why? Well, if you didn't, if you thought it was going away and this was just a fad, you would rent until it's over and then you get rid of it. Right? They want to build, they want to build the infrastructure, they want to build it in house. And so it's hard not to sit here and be like, all right, all these companies that have, you know, basically run the modern world for the last 50 plus years is, is building in this space. I feel like I'm in the right spot, even though maybe the price action recently hasn't gone my way.
- [42:31]
B
Yeah, I do think it's telling of their long term stance. The idea is if you want to do anything for short term, you run. If you want to do anything for long term, you buy. And that just backs it up. And this is a good graphic TiVo. I mean, it shows Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citi bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan. Obviously there's more than just these, but it's like the big six. And if you scroll down, it actually gives you a little bit of a breakdown of what each one of these is doing at a very high level, at a very basic level. But you can scroll down and you can see, oh, this is what Citi is doing and this is what Morgan Stanley is doing and this is what all the different ones are, are working on over there. So again, I think you got to be excited. When in doubt, zoom out. Right? That's the saying that we haven't said in a while over here. But I think it's an Appropriate time to go back and say, hey, you know, where are we? You know, we're at a big dip. All this stuff's happening. I've been a routine sayer of. I think that the technicals are somewhat disconnected from the fundamentals. I think due to some of the stuff that we've seen, I think crypto should have a retracement. Should it have had as large of a one that we've seen? Probably not. And I think that that's where the disconnection comes, is saying, I think it was right to sell off some, but I don't think it's been right to see the. This kind of extent to the downside, especially outside of bitcoin. Right? You get outside of bitcoin in the alts, and that's what's really been hit. And we'll have to see. Right, we'll have to see. But I think that overall, cryptode as an entire industry has probably been hit harder than it should have been, which creates opportunity.
- [44:15]
A
Yep. Couldn't agree more. Let's see. Moving on to the. Read the room of the day. Vitalik. Read the room, bro. Vitalik selling 4325 ETH for about 8 million doll. So that, that's, that's basically just under 2% of his holdings. I did the math for everybody, so you don't have to. It comes out to he sold 2% of his Ethereum bags for 8 million. I. I just, I think this, this show is all about bringing the news. And I think this is something that, you know, I think the people should know about. You don't love to see it, but also when it's that little like the 2% mark, you know, raising a little capital to go probably buy this, maybe there's always that funny meme that Vitalik has a new girlfriend or is dating somebody, so he's going out on dates. You know, there's. There's nothing wrong with, with getting a little cash, especially when it's that low of percentage of your holdings. But, man, read the room, huh?
- [45:11]
B
Yeah, this tweet had me cracking. I love this tweet. Tiva, this is goaded. I saw this and I was cracking up. But you're right. I mean, read the room. I'll never understand why these different people or groups do this. We were talking about one just a few weeks ago, and it was like, read the room, you know, oh, all this bad stuff's happening. Oh, I'm gonna sell shares. Oh, all this bad stuff's happening. I'm gonna Sell eth. It's not a good look to kind of see this stuff. It would be like, oh, there's a lot of bad news about the company that you're invested, that you work for and you're invested in and you're the executive and you're selling massive amounts of shares. It'd be like, not a good look. Read the room, bro. It's the same thing, right? He's the founder of Ethereum and Ethereum's not doing great. And he's like, all right, I'm gonna start cashing out. For whatever reason, it just goes back. And that's the frustrating thing here, is that you look at a lot of the builders and most of them aren't doing this, but it gives everyone a bad look because of the platform that he's on. And it's always the people that are on, like the biggest platforms. Not always, but you know what I mean? It's just. I get a little frustrated. But you have people who do have a massive platform and then everyone looks up at them and says, well, you know, they're doing this. Even though probably 99% of other crypto founders aren't selling off millions of dollars worth of Ethereum or their native tokens, you have, you know, Vitalik, which is. Which again, goes back to the pointivo. Read the room. There's a time and place.
- [46:44]
A
Well, I don't know what in the counterpoint. The counterpoint is this is it's fun to read the room. And again, it's not a high percentage. The counterpoint is if we're ripping and we're at all time highs, and then Vitalik starts unloading, everybody's gonna run to the exits with them too. So, you know, if you're in a price discovery mode, you could snuff out that fire real quick with, you know, Vitalik, or your top holder starts liquidating funds. You know, you see that all the time in stocks. We were, you know who we were going on the other day was Coinbase. Brian Armstrong files to sell, sell a bunch of shares, and we're just like, dude, you're running around dc, it's the future. And you're doing all these press hits and, you know, Coinbase is the future, crypto's the future. And you're selling your shares. It's. It's like, you know, obviously he still has a ton, but it's the same concept. And then. But it would go the other way too. Like, I think, let's pull Robin Hood, for example. I think, like, Vlad filed I think he timed it pretty well. I think it was like over summer, Vlad filed to sell some shares, you know, in the hundreds. And you know, again, it was a small, it's always a small percentage because you can't, you know, dump your whole shares on everybody. There's, especially in the stock market, there's rules of filing that type of stuff and usually you have to file it, I think months, like a quarter or so in advance. Right.
- [48:02]
B
And I think that makes sense though, like to me that's fair. You know, what did their stock rally from 30 to 130 bucks or something crazy. And it's like up there shattering records. And he's like, okay, I'm going to take some profits for the fruits of my labor. This just feels like the opposite where, you know, hey, the asset just appreciated a couple hundred percent. I'm going to pay myself back. I think everyone would agree and say, hey, by all means, dude, pay yourself some great work. We're all profiting. The difference here is that with like Brian Armstrong and Vidalic, it's a little bit more frustrating, right? It's a little bit more frustrating for the retail holder looking from the outside in saying, oh, you're talking all this big game, you're doing all these other things and then you're selling off a bunch of shares and especially when it's low and it just gets a little bit more frustrating.
- [48:55]
A
Let's not pile on too much. Vitalik, friend of the show. Of course he's welcome on any time and he's still building. This is what's exciting, I think about the Ethereum community is you don't want to see him sell, but you do love when he's involved. You do love when he's talking about the roadmap and kind of in a way leading the charge, at least from the high profile projects of Quantum Resistance. Right. It's been a lot of talk in their roadmap with a lot of other things too. I mean this is a, this is a thought out tweet along with a link to, you know, if you want to go to the website. But was there anything that the quantum resistance was the number one thing for me? Because again, as the social media guy, it's all I've seen in this downturn along with the software trade that we've talked about as well. It's all been around AI Quantum and ETH is starting to build into the roadmap. Is there anything else that stuck out to you?
- [49:44]
B
Yeah, yeah, I would double down and just say you're right. You're like, obviously I'm not happy with like the whole selling at this time part, but I agree with him on a lot. His whole talk about the state of Ethereum, Mainnet and Layer Twos. I agree with almost all of that. This as well. I think it's great. I think he's, he knows what he's doing and he knows what he's talking about. I'm a huge supporter of this as well. The quantum stuff needs to be done for peace of mind, right? People want to see this and he's doing exactly what needs to be done. He's also saying, hey, let's look at some privacy features and data availability and other things. Again, this is, I think, what people really want, right? That's what Canton's kind of been up to, working with different forms of privacy and it's been pretty effective. So again, I think right move at the right time here from him and that's largely what the whole direction of the roadmap is. I think I support the idea of looking at how Ethereum could be maybe slightly restructured between the L1s and L2s. I agree with the Quantum stuff. I agree with some of the privacy stuff. I think I literally don't think I would disagree with almost anything that he's kind of put forth lately. So this is another step of what I would view to be the right direction because people want peace of mind when it comes to Quantum, right? Everyone's thought right now is, oh, AI is gonna accelerate us towards Quantum faster. And I think the faster that you can give people peace of mind about that, the better.
- [51:15]
A
Couldn't agree more. And, and you love to have him kind of in the mix and, and you know, as a leader, as a thought leader, number one, but just kind of give me the roadmap to know where the team and the foundation looks to go. I thought this was big news. I. This came out and people talked about it for about a minute, like one cup of coffee, they had a cup of coffee, they talked about, talked about how Mark Zuckerberg and Meta are planning a stablecoin comeback and then it just kind of fell away. I mean, we're talking about payments across Facebook, Instagram, and people don't realize how many people use WhatsApp around the world. For us living in the States, obviously there's some people, especially in business, that use WhatsApp, Telegram, etc, but around the world, WhatsApp is like, I think, one of the number one apps in the world, especially for communication. And the Meta Team looks like they're coming back. Stablecoins building the Rails. So it's one of those things that I guess, what am I trying to say? It's one of those things that if implemented automatically adopts a large number of people. It's what we've talked about for years on this, on this channel of, you know, the true crypto adoption is going to be when people don't even realize that they're using it. Crypto rails without understanding. And I think this is the perfect example of that. And this is this, this popped up and it was talked about for literally a cup of coffee and then faded away. Any, any thoughts on. On meta little stable coin roadmap?
- [52:40]
B
I think that they have a better shot of getting this approved after the market structure bill passes, after the Clarity act too then they did before, before the whole Libra thing was shot down, you know, fairly fast. I think now they have a much better chance at it. And this just goes back to the idea of like everyone wants to be in on stable coins. You know, banks, tech companies, social media, everybody wants to get into the stablecoin game. And to me, TiVo, what this does is this backs the idea of the floodgates are holding back an astronomical amount of liquidity. And the moment that we start getting that, that legislation passed and all those regulations sorted out, that's when the floodgates begin to open up a little bit here. And I think that you can start seeing again just unfathomable amounts of capital start pouring into this. And it probably starts small as the gates open and then as they get bigger and bigger and time goes on, it just unlocks so much potential liquidity which ultimately I think benefits the very platforms that are either running these stable coins, that kind of infrastructure, or the underlying infrastructure that is probably Ethereum or Solana or wherever these stablecoins are built on top of as well. So again, just backs the idea that there's a lot of capital and liquidity that's trying to get into these. They're just waiting, they're waiting for approval.
- [54:14]
A
Yep, yep. And it's, it's just a grab for liquidity across the board in any industry. And that's what our next two quick hitters are about. Coinbase rolling out 24 5. That's 247 five days a week stock trading, zero commission, one unified portfolio for stocks and crypto. Cool news. I, I mean it's, it's kind of what Robinhood's been doing for a while. Right. And others. So it's, it's I don't think it says like breaking news and, and definitely not, you know, leading the frontier of the space, but was definitely something that they needed to put on, you know, their, their program and their platform to kind of compete with others. So it'll be interesting to see the numbers there like their, their next when this launches or I guess it is open now available to US traders. So it'll be interesting to see the volume on this. I think it will have a lot to do with how the stock price moves in the next couple quarters for sure. And not to be outdone, but Kraken rolling out 24, 7, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, perpetual trading for tokenized U.S. stocks. So a little bit different with perps and tokenize and all that, but Kraken moving, obviously our sponsor Gemini is moving the ball as well, doing some fun things. So any thoughts on this? I don't, I think it's, you know, for me, I think it's worth mentioning as we are on the show. I don't think it's really as meaningful in any which way because we're the crypto industry, we want people to come to us and this is opening up the gates to the stocks, you know, stocks and all that stuff, which is good because we believe in diversified portfolios, but we already have our accounts set up and are diversified in our own different ways. So doesn't really move, move the needle for me.
- [55:59]
B
Yeah, I think it's just showing, hey, tokenization, it's being used right now. It's mainly crypto native companies that are saying, hey, let's tokenize stocks and other things. I think that's the first step in the direction as you have the crypto native companies do it first, then you start having other financial players do it and then you have everyone do it afterwards. That's probably how the direction will go. Right. How, how the overall flow will look. But again, it's a step in the right direction. I think Robin Hood, who, you know, again, we're going to have him on the pod next week here and it'll probably get published a little bit after that. But you know, they were kind of the ones to say, hey, you should be able to trade everything from one spot. And I think it's setting the standard for other places to say, hey, in order to keep up, we have to start allowing everything to be traded from one spot as well. And that's really made possible through tokenization.
- [56:53]
A
Yeah. And then you put this in to transition as smoothly. We'll Just jump to this. Of financial markets are moving on chain. This is from Bitwise. I mean you could just see the hockey stick of RWA assets coming on chain and it's, it's not slowing down anytime soon.
- [57:09]
B
Yeah, and it's a lot. I mean you have U S, Treasuries, commodities, institutional alternative funds, private credit, non US government debt. You have other things. And then there's the little like breakdown at the very top which just says, hey, here's a, a couple of the ways that it's happening. From blackrock, Apollo, JP Morgan, Fidelity, the list goes on. And again, you know, the trend is clear, right? Going back, the trend is your friend. This trend is the most clear, I think we could ever possibly make a chart. It's just absolutely parabolic. And up and to the right.
- [57:43]
A
Yeah, the adoptions here and just a little teaser from friend of the show, Johan Kurbat from Robinhood is coming on next week. Something that we're going to talk about. A little teaser is their own test net. I mean this is the on Robinhood, you know, chain building on the L2, building on Ethereum, Arbitrum, tokenization on Robinhood. It's something that's going to spread throughout the industry super, super fast. So we mentioned a bunch of different companies that you all know doing this and there's a ton that you aren't aware of doing it. And this is where all the assets are going. So we're trying to find the best projects to try to get the best exposure we can. And that's why you tune into this show because that's what we try and do and bring to you every week.
- [58:29]
B
Yeah, spot on, man.
- [58:31]
A
Any final thoughts, Brendan, on this Friday before we wrap up?
- [58:34]
B
You know, I would just say I think everyone should be paying a bit of extra attention to the crypto market given where it's at right now. I think that we're approaching a pretty important point. And you kind of have the tear you out phase, which is the big move down. And then you have the wear you out phase which typically happens around the bottom. And it's enough to kind of exhaust you, probably make you frustrated that it's not going up. And then you have, you know, the, as you go back into the, to the move to the upside, you know, there's always the disbelief of like, oh, this isn't actually going to happen. And so I do think crypto is entering into a super important time where we got to start paying attention to this again. We got to start analyzing what it's doing. And clearly there's a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes. We're just waiting for the technicals to kind of reflect some of the fundamentals that we are seeing across the board here. And the big catalysts seem to be, hey, let's wait for some sort of structure through these different structure bills, or maybe let's wait for the new Fed chairman or let's wait for some of this FUD and geopolitical macroeconomic. Let's let that stuff settle down. But I think once you start seeing some of those big things that I just mentioned get answered and we start seeing resolutions to those, I think you can probably start to see crypto, you know, get a bit of resolution back to the upside some. And, you know, again, maybe that's not gonna happen immediately. Maybe we do need to go a little bit lower. But crypto's at an interesting point where it feels like price is a little bit disassociated with what's actually happening, which again, I always go back to saying, I think that that creates true opportunity. But time will tell. TiVo.
- [60:13]
A
Yup, time will tell. And through that time, we'll be here with you with multiple episodes a week, multiple interviews a week, and we just always appreciate you guys being here. One last call. You know the, the cohort for Brendan's trading course. Check the link below if you're interested in that. Now's the time. It's the, the, the, you know, the drawdowns happened. It's the bore you out, where you out phase. And those technical indicators are going to be the first ones leading us out of this drawdown down because we know the fundamentals are there. So the technicals are what you're going to need. So check out that link if you're interested. Check out all the other links below to get more involved in the community. We really appreciate everybody tuning in. Hope everybody has an awesome weekend. And I'll be back next week with Brian to keep continuing breaking down the news and we'll have some fresh new episodes for you. But that's all for today. Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you soon. Bye, everybody. Foreign. Finding a hoodie that lasts through the season can be tough. The American Giant Classic full zip hoodie is made to last a lifetime. So you can count on it year after year. Every American Giant piece is made in America and designed to last, no exceptions. The result is durable clothing that become part of your life. Snag the hoodie that will bring you comfort for life. The American giant classic full zip save 20% off your first order at american-giant.com when you use code staple20 at checkout. If you're the purchasing manager at a manufacturing plant, you know having a trusted partner makes all the difference. That's why, hands down, you count on Grainger for auto reordering. With on time restocks, your team will have the cut resistant gloves they need at the start of their shift and you can end your day knowing they've got safety well in hand. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.