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CRYPTO 101
Crypto Rundown: Crypto Bull Run Confirmed & Bitcoin and Altcoin Trading Trends You Need to Know!
01:08:16
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- [00:00]
Dan Cecilia
Foreign.
- [00:08]
TiVo
Everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Crypto Rundown, a very special one. As we mentioned last week, Brendan was not going to be available this week, so TiVo here and trying to not. Not leave you hanging. Yesterday you had the Franklin Templeton interview. That one was really good. Today we're bringing you a special guest for the rundown. Never done before, really. This is something we might look into doing more, but a special guest for the crypto rundown. And then later this week, we're going to bring back on Brian and Joe, our momentum money makers diving into all the altcoins, the meme coins, and all that fun stuff. So even though summer is on the back half here and there's more vacations being taken and people taking some time off, even though the markets are red hot, we're giving you all the crypto information you can handle. And we're back again, and we have a special guest, a friend of mine over at Tastytrade, Dan Cecilia is joining us.
- [00:56]
Dan Cecilia
He.
- [00:56]
TiVo
He works over in the Chicago office at Tasty Trade. You guys heard the JJ Kinahan podcast from Tasty Trade a couple weeks ago. They're doing a lot of awesome stuff in crypto and have kind of caught our eyes. You know, that new kind of tradfi. A lot of our episodes recently, honestly, Dan, have been that tradfi defi kind of relationship that's building Again, like I said, Franklin Templeton this week. We had Tasty Trade JJ a couple weeks ago. It's. It's definitely a hot topic, and I think it's fun to kind of dive into those traditional finance businesses to see how they're doing it and how they're working in crypto and how they're building. And you guys, you guys are no different of building that. So, Dan, welcome to the show. I just wanted to give you the platform for a minute. Just introduce yourself, you know, what's your background? How'd you get into crypto? And welcome to crypto101.
- [01:45]
Dan Cecilia
Hey, TiVo, it's great being here. And I want to say what's up to the crypto 101 nation? So excited to be here. You know, you guys do some great content, and I just hope that I could follow up the great interview with JJ and, you know, learn some stuff as we're on here. So a little bit of background on me. I started in crypto in 2017. I originally was a licensed derivatives broker in Chicago, so I was trading in tradfi and kind of saw the initial bitcoin bubble that that happened in 2017. And while everyone else was calling it a scam or worthless or rat poison, I kind of ran toward it and tried getting more involved. That introduced me to ETH and you know, in 2019, around Covid, I launched my own company where I was helping founders develop new founders develop their crypto teams. So I was doing everything from building websites, building applications, finding early stage employees for these newly funded crypto founders. And in 2020 I fell down the rabbit hole of NFTs. So was working on NFTs, was trading NFTs, got really deeply involved in crypto. Twitter kind of began understanding what it meant to be a crypto native, all the ups and downs and the volatility. In late 2021 I launched an NFT project called 3D Frankenpunks on Ethereum. So me and a co founder founded that. We launched a 10k collection. It was a cryptopunk derivative. So if anyone's familiar with NFTs and CryptoPunks, we were trying to create a collection that sort of allowed community members and holders access to blue chip collection cryptopunks. So we sold that out in January 2022 and for the next two years we ran that project and I kind of headed up some of the growth for that. After the 2022, 2023 bear market, FTX Luna blow up, NFTs kind of had their moment and sort of declined. So we kept building through that, kept looking, staying involved in crypto and, and basically led me to where I'm at with Tastytrade, which is, if anyone's not familiar, is a traditional finance broker. We specialize in options futures and futures options. So we're primarily derivative online broker. And they brought me in to head up growth for their crypto business. So for the last year or so I've been helping the team over at Tastytrade been out their crypto business. So we've seen some really great growth there. It's been really fun. I do a lot of content on their live media network and my goal is to just help sort of newcomers to crypto understand how to navigate the space, understand what to look for and hopefully they can learn something and I can learn something as well. But I'm always down to do something in crypto. If it's, if it's crypto, I'm in there and I hope that people can learn from me and take away some of the stuff, some of the stuff that you can do and some of the stuff you can't do because I'VE made a ton of mistakes and we're all just learning. So yeah, that's a little bit of my story.
- [05:26]
TiVo
That's what crypto 101, man. We're all here to learn. And I think that kind of, that attitude to just down to do and down to talk, kind of what makes this space great. Right? That's the one thing I've noticed is how this show has grown and how fun it's been to, you know, whether we're talking to, you know, Franklin Templeton, Tastytrade, bitwise like those high end people, or whether we're meeting people at conferences and talking on the floor and learning. You know, like everybody seems to have a really cool backstory like yourself, you know, with your NFT projects and how you got into the space and all that fun stuff. So it's, it's definitely one of those areas where, you know, it is everybody just kind of collectively learning together and growing together. And I kind of loved what you said, really. Hey, if it's crypto, I'm down. And that's basically what we're here today to dive into the rundown. So thanks for that intro and, and we got a, you know, we got a large rundown list here, so let's dive right into it. Basically we want to start with the Friday volatility going into Friday and over the weekend markets were quite red across the board. You know, both tradi and crypto. I think Ethereum at one point hit a 10% correction and the macro level that was causing this was a revision of the jobs numbers. So the jobs numbers came out and it wasn't necessarily what the, this month, the, the July numbers were. It was more, they, they corrected from a couple months prior and they threw out this new job numbers like called it a correction and it was one of the largest corrections to the downside, meaning actually less jobs. I think it's, I think it was some number. I don't know if you know this off the top of your head, Dan, but it was like, I think it was like the largest correction in 50 years or something. So it kind of, it kind of spooked markets and sent it to the downside. And then there's kind of this whole political backstory around what causes that and how it happens. Like that's not really something we're going to get into, but I think, and we're gonna, this story is going to grow in this first segment here of, of the outlook of what, you know, I think, and Dan, I'd love your opinion and we have a video kind of talking about the outlook for August, but, well, it caused that short term volatility. Here we are Tuesday, now Tuesday, August 5th, and we're basically, you know, recovering pretty strongly into it. Kind of showcasing that, you know, this is kind of the most hated rally basically off the Liberation Day lows. The dips are pretty shallow. Even though it was a violent kind of correction quickly, the dips are being bought because there's record number of cash on the sidelines. And also, just depending on who you are, your strategy and possibly your political views, you might be sidelined going back all the way to that Liberation Day April low. So was there anything around on the volatility, the price action Friday into the weekend and then this bounced in that you're seeing?
- [08:05]
Dan Cecilia
Yeah, look, I think we need to give some context here because, you know, since that Liberation Day low, we've had kind of a historic recovery and especially into July, right? The entire month of July, we saw, you know, massive gains in not only Bitcoin, Ethereum and some of the altcoins, so. And the stock market in general. Right. So I think expectations were really high. I think, you know, the late summer months are always kind of a time where things take a pause, especially in the tradfi markets. And people have to realize, and I think it's been well covered on this podcast, that crypto is still pretty correlated to the traditional markets. Right. So anytime you get some, you know, bad news or revised numbers or economic data that doesn't support some of the recent price run up, that's when you're going to see that decline. And you know, you're talking about an asset class in crypto that has, you know, three, four times the volatility of traditional markets. Right. So Ethereum, I think, and I haven't done the numbers yet, but I think it's historically it's like a 60% volatile asset, Bitcoin, you know, 40%. So when you get these corrections in the traditional markets, crypto is always going to decrease rapidly, right? There's a lot of leverage in the system. The market structure is different. You get that cascading liquidation in the perps markets, which becomes a risk off type of rapid decrease. So that's where you get those 10%, 15% dips and then quick V like recoveries, right. So the market structure is a little bit different. The market's smaller in crypto and still correlated to traditional assets. So with these revisions of job numbers, which I believe it was like, I think the job numbers came out In July or from June was like 75,000 was added, but the revision from the previous month was like only 15,000. It was some crazy historic revision. So I think that was unexpected and, you know, really caused sort of a pause in what we saw in that July run up. Now, I think, like we're sitting here, August 5th, Friday we had that big, you know, risk off kind of event. We're still, we're still trading at 3600 on ETH, about 114, 115 on Bitcoin. So, you know, I think we're kind of recovered. I think we're kind of sitting here in a sideways trend now for a little bit. Like I said before, the late summer months, especially into August, typically Tradfi takes vacations. I know that's not like the scientific or analytic way to say it, but typically markets kind of pause and are a little bit slower in the late summer months. So, you know, I'm still, I still believe we're in a bullish environment for crypto. You know, we'll have to see what the Fed does in September. You know, 90% chance of September rate cut. And so I think, I think buying the dip here has always been, I mean, in this environment is probably not a bad move, but you might want to monitor it through August. Right? We could be in this little sideways trend. Bitcoin could range between 110,115k. We'll just have to wait and see. That's kind of where I'm at. But I think anytime expectations get above where the reality is, any type of news is going to come out that could kind of bring us back to reality. So that, that's my take on Friday's sell off. But, you know, we'll have to wait and see.
- [11:42]
TiVo
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- [13:52]
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TiVo
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TiVo
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- [15:25]
TiVo
It'S a great tee up there. It's, it's always kind of a fluid process of taking in all the data. And I remember obviously last year was very unique with the election cycle, but if you just kind of zoomed in on, on August we had that great run and this is 24, I'm speaking of that great run. You know, February, March, April, hit those new all time highs. Everybody's going into the summer pulled up altcoin summer, you know, all that stuff everybody was saying and then it didn't really come to fruition with a blow off top. And you know, looking back, hindsight's always 20 20. It kind of made sense because you're going into the election cycle but then there's, there's always that random black swan and I don't know if you, you recall the, in August it was that Japan Nakai trade, right? The Nakai trade unwinds all this, you know, all this volatility happens. The markets have to flush out because they have to unwind this currency trade. Again, that's not, that is not what I do here as the producer and you know, host of Crypto101. But it's that, you know, financial unwind of some kind of swap with a currency. Then you use that currency in the swap to make money. Then to get leverage, you leverage it and they had to unwind the whole thing. So then we're sitting here being like, well, you know, we're sitting here hoping for altcoin summer and then you kind of could kind of feel the momentum maybe of the election. If you were a bitcoin bull, you probably were pulling for Trump just for crypto, you know, sake only but you could kind of be like, okay, maybe we're in a good spot here with this. And you start buying the dip. Buying the dip. Then you get this nakai trade. You get flushed down. You know, I think we might have hit 6,056K on Bitcoin at that point. And it's this black swan event that, that gives you this whole new data point and something to consider. And you know, we say here all the time, Dan, it's just zoom out, zoom out, zoom out. This, yeah, Jobs numbers, you know, fed probability, like all that stuff is, can be sometimes noise, especially if you kind of in the zoom out game. But I think that's what this show is. We're just kind of bringing you the news. I, I, I'm with you. I don't, I don't think the jobs numbers, anything super serious other than you got to digest it. And then like you said, the 90% probability, and that's something that rocketed the odds of this. I mean, I think, I think it was like 25, 30% before this data came out. Then the data came out, it went right up to 75, 80%. And then even like a couple days, you know, Sunday, it's like the, the market opens up and it's a 90% of a rate cut. And so historically we, we know that is, you know, when we're cutting and printing money that's, you know, bitcoin. Bitcoin reacts to that traditionally higher. So something, something that we need to, we need to watch. And I think that kind of tees up. I totally agree with you. The trad fi, that's always the narrative of, you know, the selling may go away and then, you know, that's, that's kind of the tee up for, you know, the markets are slower in August. We're big Tom Lee fans on this podcast. We talk about him a lot. He's always just making noise with his price targets and predictions. But he, he's somebody who I think has nailed this kind of most hated rally of people kind of being, you know, positioned maybe off sides. And so he kind of has a different take on August here. And so since it's only August 5th, I thought we would, I thought we could play this, listen to it. He does talk about inflation a little bit as well. So something that can bring us into our next topic. But let's, let's hear this clip from Tom, the only, the only true person I heard who's super bullish on August. And I guess dovish is the word on inflation. You have not thought that there was going to be necessarily a big impact from the tariff regime.
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Tom Lee
That's right. And I think the biggest takeaway is first of all, if you look at the latest inflation report, the goods component that are tariff driven, it's been only mild. But also if you use the same inflation measure Europe uses, which is inflation x housing, we're actually under 2%. The Fed, if they were, the ECB would be cutting right now.
- [19:21]
Dan Cecilia
That's interesting.
- [19:22]
TiVo
So by the end of the year.
- [19:24]
Dan Cecilia
Or what target are you using now.
- [19:26]
TiVo
And what time frame?
- [19:28]
Tom Lee
I think we're gonna rally pretty strongly in August. So I think, yeah, I think we can get back to 65 or get to 65, 6, 600 all time highs this in the next couple weeks and.
- [19:38]
TiVo
Then 7,000 in the next 12 months. Above that.
- [19:42]
Tom Lee
Yeah, probably well above that next, well above the. Yeah.
- [19:45]
TiVo
So Tom Lee is just the definition of a permeable.
- [19:48]
Dan Cecilia
Yeah.
- [19:49]
TiVo
And you got, honestly, you gotta, you gotta love it. I think it's, it's always fun when people kind of look at him sideways obviously when the markets are ripping, you know, he's right a lot of the times. And then you get everybody else being very, very bullish. But I think it's always fun when there's these like shots of volatility in the downtrend and, and you just see Tom up there just kind of, you know, given his permeable take and everybody starts to look at him sideways and you know, again, zoom out. Long run he's been pretty right. So I thought he made some interesting points there basically around in the inflation, the inflation numbers. And so if there's any longtime crypto, one on one listeners or people that have attended our summits, we've had on this guy truflation. So we've had on truflation before and truflation kind of uses the same formula that he was saying over in Europe they kind of take out housing, they look at inflation at a different way. And so as you can see here, truflation, that first line has, has the US inflation right now under 2% which is the, the goal of the Fed is to get inflation to 2%. And so you know, comparably to the BLS at 2.7, it's, it's, it's lower. So that's why you're starting to hear a lot, especially from Tradfi, there's a lot more people calling for rate cuts. And then as you can see from the 90% odds of the rate cut decision coming up in September, that You know, Tradfi is kind of leaning toward, towards a cut here, especially after that jobs data. So Dan, thoughts. I know you kind of touched on the rate cut part of it, but thoughts on the inflation? Thoughts on, you know, the permeable of, you know, is this something where everybody, you know, this next week or two jobs date, everybody's like, well, it's a, it's a, it's bearish. We're going to sell, we're going to sell. And then, you know, you never really want to be on the same side of the boat as everybody else.
- [21:35]
Dan Cecilia
Yeah, exactly. So I first want to say something about Tom Lee because I really enjoy like financial entertainers and he's like a permeable, always optimist, which I consider myself sort of a cautious optimist in the market. So definitely somebody I'm always tuning into. I just love kind of the takes he has, especially on mainstream financial media. So I generally think he's right in the long run. I think markets are up into the right generally, obviously with some areas of corrections, but on the inflation, the economic data. So we know there's a 90% chance that we'll cut rates in September. Like that's pretty priced in I think obviously from the data we have. So rate cuts are usually good for gold, they're good for bitcoin, they're good for those risk on assets. But the caveat there is if we have too much of a weakening economic data or the economy truly is going into, I don't know, a recession, maybe that's not the right word, but a downtrend with those jobs numbers, which we'll have to see how that data plays out over the next couple months. And that might be bad for some of these high risk assets, right? So like the altcoins, some of these web three deep, you know, tokens that sort of benefit from liquidity flowing in on chain through bitcoin, through ETH and some of these other majors. So I think like rate cuts are usually good for bitcoin. I think a weakening economy could be bad for altcoins or this altcoin narrative, right? In typical cycles, especially in crypto, you see sort of rate cuts happen. Money printer go burr to use a cat, you know, to use a cliche, flows into bitcoin, bitcoin takes off, bitcoin runs up, people get rich in bitcoin and then what do they do? They rotate into eth, right? People start bringing stuff on chain, they start doing more on chain and that usually rotates to altcoins. That's where you have that defi summer narrative. That's where you have some of that altcoin narrative. You're obviously seeing a lot of the big buying up with it with corporate treasuries. So I think we have to monitor some of this economic data just to see if these job numbers are sticky, to see if the economy is weakening because that could give a pause to this sort of narrative that rate cuts are good for all risk on assets go risk on money printer go Brrrr. I think it's. There's a little bit of nuance there that we need to pay attention to. But in General with that 90% price, that 90% rate cut in September, priced in, you know, should be good for gold, should be good for bitcoin, should be good for some of these, I guess typical inflation or risk on assets rather than. But we got to monitor some of this economic data. So I don't know, I don't really necessarily have a take short term on whether or not August will be record highs in the S and P. And some of that typically, from what I know, which could be wrong, August is usually a muted month. Like I said, this late summer a lot of tradfi takes a break. Obviously crypto's 24 7, but I don't know, I think we trade sideways a little bit. I don't see any catalysts in the near term to push Bitcoin above 120k, push ETH above 4000. I think we're, I think we're range bound typically in August for crypto traditional markets. Sure. You know, we'll have to wait and see. But I think a lot of this is priced in now. I think the only thing is, is we have to monitor this economic data and see if these job numbers are, you know, revisions are sticky and we are kind of in a weakening economy, so tariffs are priced in too. So we'll see.
- [25:32]
TiVo
Yeah, I mean, I appreciate the honest take. That's what we love to do here is just get kind of everybody's opinion and there's obviously a lot of people that come on that are just absolutely bowled up. I think. I think our team's pretty bold up for the most part. But I agree with points you're saying. I also think that it's interesting how mature this market's got specifically for bitcoin. Right. Like a couple of weeks ago when Galaxy, you know, dumped the billions onto the market and barely moved the price, you know, a quick dip and then went back up. That's the type of stuff that I know that our team season is like, well, you know, man, this, this is a strong market. So while I might agree with you that, like that next catalyst might not be there for the quick upside, it feels like it's coiled, right? This market's coiled. It feels like, you know, all the narratives around definitely Ethereum, which we're going to touch on here in a second, and all these companies that are, you know, the treasury company stuff, you know, while that maybe one day could. We've talked about that on here too, is like, could that be the next catalyst for a larger downdraft? Possibly if, if the treasury company thing doesn't work out for all the people that are trying it now. But in the, in the, in the right here and now seems like a really, really bullish catalyst. And I think that narrative of, you know, it's hard, see, it's hard to be bearish. And I know you didn't say downward, you said sideways. But like J.P. morgan, J.P. morgan's now giving you a credit card directly tied to Coinbase that's going to, you know, buy crypto rewards. It's like, well, you know, it's hard to be bearish in that, in that, in that scenario where JP Morgan's giving you the tools to go buy more crypto. So overall, I agree with you. Short term, you just got to look at the data, see what happens. What do you think? Okay, like somebody like yourself, definitely short term, sideways, what is the next catalyst? Is there anything on your mind, Dan, that you could see that could propel these markets higher? Because it feels like that's where they kind of want to go.
- [27:22]
Dan Cecilia
Yeah. So I think you touched on it with some, you know, JP Morgan offering a credit card for bitcoin. All these treasury companies coming online running this sort of Michael Saylor playbook. But in, in some of these Altcoins, Ethereum, you know, being the next one, that's what Tom Lee's. What is it? Bit mine. Bmn.
- [27:42]
TiVo
Yeah.
- [27:44]
Dan Cecilia
I generally think that the setup long term to the end of 2025 is very, very bullish for crypto. Right. You have Paul Atkins, the chair of the sec, coming out with Project Crypto. All of these tradfi companies are getting involved. Banks are offering, you know, like you said, crypto credit cards, which the CEO of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, who you have to respect, he's one of the most powerful people in the world. He typically hates, you know, he's, he's a bitcoin hater. But hey, if it's going to make the money, they'll offer it. Right. I think the regulatory environment's changing. There's kind of this, I don't want to say infinite bid, but there's this bid from these treasury companies buying up eth, buying up Bitcoin. That typically leads to leverage too. So the more leverage you kind of do see this quick run up. So you touched on Ativo in your previous statement. The market's reflexive, right. So you called it a coil. I think there is a lot of traditional money on the sidelines that have been waiting for this regulatory clarity, waiting for the signal from the sec, waiting for interest rates to be cut to kind of pile in and sort of begin to make, take their stake in this asset class. So that could be those, those things could be the catalyst that propels us to new all time highs. And you know, if you're, I've been in, you know, I'm not like an OG OG, but I've been in since 2017. I've watched how these cycles play out. Again, this is still, this is still a small asset class. It's, I'm looking at the market cap for all crypto. $3.8 trillion. That's small compared to every other asset class that's been around for hundreds of years. So these markets are very reflexive. You will see those 15, 20% swings. It makes it a fun trading asset. So I think short term, it's very hard for me to kind of make these predictions short term. That's why I say I think we're sideways in August. I think we'll get some days where we're up, we'll get some days where we're down. But long term, given the setup, given the regulatory environment and given just kind of like this, this TRADFI money in the wings waiting to come in, I think it's, it's bullish into the end of the year.
- [30:04]
TiVo
So touch on, I pulled up the project crypto there. That was the one that you brought today. So touch on that and your thoughts and then I'll take it from you and we can touch on some treasury company stuff.
- [30:14]
Dan Cecilia
Yeah. So this I haven't dug into like the full report of what they said. I watched a little bit of the interview from Paul Atkinson. But basically what this is is a change in, is a, it's a shift in narrative out of the sec. Right. I think in past years you've seen and obviously want to use. You remember Gary Gensler, you know, everything's a scam sort of choke point. All this stuff that kind of was trying to create, you know, basically choke off the crypto industry. You have a complete 360 here with the SEC regime now where they, they want to support crypto in the States. They see it as a innovation hub. They want to support this, they want to take a, I guess you could call it a sandbox approach, right? And provide rules and clarity for companies to operate and experiment and innovate. Right. So I think that bodes well for companies like Coinbase, companies like Robinhood, right? They come out, they announce they want to do this, tokenize everything. You know, I think this, this quote in here from this article from Paul Atkins was they want to move the traditional financial system on chain. So I think that's very bullish for these Coinbases, these Robinhoods, Krakens, some of these early players in the space that have kind of operated in this gray area, you know, and now have clear regulatory rules to tokenize private equities, tokenize stocks, launch their own chains, help, I guess, help the SEC write these rules, right? So I think that's incredibly bullish. I think all, you know, traditionally industries that were innovative that get clear regulatory rules, they typically, you know, the ones that are to benefit the most from it are companies like Coinbase and Robinhood. You know, you can look back in the 90s, the tech companies, Google's meta, Facebook, Amazon, right? Internet stocks, regulatory clarity comes out. Those are the ones that benefit long term. You know, one of my best trades, just to take a little side note, was Coinbase in 2023, goes public in 2021 or 2022, trades up to like $400 and then you have the FTX Terra Luna blow up, trades down to $40. I mean, if you're not buying that company at $40, I mean, you know, that's, that's in a, you know, look at it now, it's back up to its all time highs. So I think, you know, take a look at those companies. I think that those are the ones that benefit. And then obviously just those startups, those innovative companies that want to take advantage of tokenizing, tokenizing equities, tokenizing, I guess, everything, right? So I think it's incredibly bullish. I'm happy to see that these regulatory bodies want to work with our industry because it wasn't the same in the past. And it's, it and I think it's, it's generally good for users of crypto, right? If there's clear rules, that means that there's safe rail, there's safeguards you can operate, you know, you know what you can and can't do. And it's bullish for the U.S. right. I think there was this narrative a couple years ago where the US was going to fall behind the rest of the world because they weren't keeping up with crypto. I didn't necessarily believe that, but I think with this project crypto, these clear rules, what tokenization will mean, I think the US benefits, US innovators benefit from this. So I'm happy to see this. I'll have to dig into the. To the actual, I guess report or some of the details there. I haven't dug too deep into it to see specifically what he's talking about. But yeah, seems good for. Seems good for our industry. And it seems like Coinbase, Robinhood, some of these publicly traded crypto companies will benefit from this.
- [34:14]
TiVo
Yeah, we were on the show here. I know. Brendan. Brendan, I. Our listeners have heard it endlessly. We're big, big Robinhood trader. And there's a clip from the podcast that Brennan and I did back almost year and a half. I guess it was what, 20. Yeah, a year ago. A year and a half ago was. There's a clip I clipped it made like a memento. Is like us giving Robinhood out. I went on this Robin Hood rant, was like, this is like a crypto proxy that nobody's talking about. And it was like $9 and 80 cents and you know, now it's at $100. So we, we know all too well the, you know, buying low on these crypto companies when everybody was trying to throw the baby out with the, with the bath water on that last, you know, crypto winner type, you know, bear market. But let's. We're not the only. So I guess that that's where I was trying to steer us was like, you know, near term, you know, short term, who, who really knows? Nobody really knows the future. But long term, there's all these things that are super bullish. So when you see this volatility that happened this weekend, there's a lot of buyers that are stepping in. We showed the clip of Tom Lee here. I'm sharing. You mentioned Bit Mine. So Tom's a chair for Bit Mine. They turned into an eth Treasury. They went and bought more Ethereum over the weekend and Tom was saying that it's a big milestone. Bit Mine now owns over 800,000 ETH tokens valued at 3 billion BMR. BMW BMNR quickly rose to rank number three by dat size. So it looks like they're comparing all the, the companies of who's holding just cryptocurrency on their balance sheet. Obviously Micro strategy one, merit two and, and Bit mine now number three. So bit mine's basically come out of nowhere in the last month and again their stock was something that I think 10x when Tom announced it basically overnight. So you have, you have, you have Tom buying another, another favorite of mine is Eric Trump buying the dip. I know he, he had the, the famous one where like eth, you know, went down like 10:15 and he'd posted Buy the Ether Ethereum looks good here and it continued to go down like another 30% before, before actually being a profitable call. I think he's in the green now. But Eric Trump who obviously is a, is a powerful person just in the world right now with his family saying buy the dip. And then of course the, of course Michael Saylor's basically buying bitcoin every weekend at this point. But I, so I think you, you have your, your traditional characters are kind of staying steadfast, zooming in long term view. But you, you brought to my attention. I've seen some of this stuff on, on TV and, and on the timeline but you kind of threw it out there. So I thought it was interesting. You pulled up James Chanos here. So he's basically talking, you know, talking a little smack on the timeline, going, going after Micro Strategy. Everybody celebrates every time Micro Strategy buys some bitcoin and they're launching their financial products and they actually Micro Strategy just had what they called a historic earnings report last week where strategy was, was profitable with their financial products and instruments. Obviously probably easier to do when bitcoin is in an uptrend. But you know, know what's your takeaway here from Mr. Chanos on, on kind of throwing some shade and I, I can click the other tweet too if you'd rather have that one.
- [37:36]
Dan Cecilia
But this is, this is good. I, I, I thought it was interesting just because you know, if, for those that don't know, Jim Chanos is a kind, I think he's like a traditional hedge fund manager. He made a, you know, made a bunch of money. But then I think something happened with one of his holding companies or one of his recent funds where you know, it blew up. So it's just interesting to kind of hear these guys comment back and forth on Twitter. I find it entertaining. I don't know if there's any like merit to it, but I always want to, I always look for kind of like Is there smart people pushing back against what, you know, Saylor and all these guys are saying, Right. I don't discount that. Saylor is positive for bitcoin. His microstrategy play is relatively innovative and, you know, is a proxy for the price. I think where you have to give pause, and I think this is what Chanos is kind of saying, is once you start seeing, you know, these financial engineering, I'll call it a scheme or play, you kind of got to give pause, right? Because it comes very complicated. I think there's strategy, mstr, which is the regular equity, then there's a number of preferred shares that he's listed. But basically the play is he raises, he sells more shares, and from the proceeds of selling shares in the public market, they go out and buy bitcoin. Bitcoin price goes up, he's able to borrow more, sell more shares, and now he's doing it across all layers of the capital structure. And again, caveat, I'm not like a financial analyst or CFA or anything. We might want to find some of those people because they'll. They'll be able to dig into the numbers and let us know. But I think you got to give pause here. When you're seeing these just crazy earnings calls, you're kind of seeing this, the stock become a darling. It's going to be listed in the S&P 500. I just want to look and see what are people pushing back against and just see if there's some merit to it. Because, again, I think once expectations get away from reality, things can get a little crazy. So I just thought it was funny that Jim Chanos, who has been in the media for. I don't know if it's. I don't want to call it a scam, but stuff he's done in the past with his holding companies or whatever, is kind of pushing back against Saylor. And, you know, some of the content that these strategy people are putting out and these strategy bulls on Twitter kind of gives me pause. And I think it should give any savvy investor pause to kind of look and be like, all right, I. Is this really an innovative product? Are they really building things in the bitcoin space or in general, or is he just running a financial alchemy playbook? So I think with this new issue, I think it's STRC preferred share. I don't know how long this goes. I think there's a lot of smart people that are running numbers on it that we should. You know, I'd love to take A look and see if we can dig in and you know, whether or not bitcoin decreases which causes an unwind in this trade. But just really what I was trying to point out here is just look for, look, you know, look for people pushing back. Are there smart people pushing back and calling out some of the, I guess numbers around this narrative. That strategy is this S&P 500 innovative company. You know, I'm generally bullish bitcoin. I'm a bitcoin holder. I'm not a bitcoin maxi. So I don't kind of drink the Kool Aid, so to speak. I just, I just thought that, you know, Saylor's been in the news, the stock has ran up. It's the largest holder of bitcoin. You know, he's issued a bunch of equity across all the capital stack. I just don't know. You know, it becomes very opaque is what I'm trying to say. It becomes, it gives me pause. So am I a buyer of some of these other preferred shares? No, I think, you know, there's some smart analysts out there that can dig in and really see, you know, is this a sustainable model? And we'll see because it just gives me pause Again, let me, let me.
- [41:53]
TiVo
Dive in here for. I did some quick, quick research here. I feel like, I feel like Jamie from Joe Rogan podcast. Pull it up Jamie.
- [42:00]
Dan Cecilia
Yeah.
- [42:00]
TiVo
Jim Chanos famously became so he's a short seller. So he famously predicted Enron. So he saw the Enron collapse. I'm sure he did well on the dot com bubble as well it seems like. So you know, and then that when you make those big calls, kind of like a Tom Lee, right? Like Tom Lee we just had and have been bringing on a lot is like you know, he was hammering to buy Bitcoin at 4 or $5,000 a Bitcoin on national television and that got draw a lot of attention now he's right, you know, so he gets put on like a pedestal for his opinions. Probably Chanos the same way, you know, Enron calls Enron does good in the dot com bubble. And then, and then he took on Tesla. So it looks like he took on Tesla in 2016 and, and just kept going and going and it gave obviously significant losses for Chano Chanos and then that is aum dropped and then you know, I'm sure he was older as well. So he kind of wound down the hedge fund there.
- [42:54]
Dan Cecilia
Right.
- [42:55]
TiVo
I by no means think believe that Jim's sleeping on a box. And then the New York City Streets of Wall Street. But you know, I think, you know, you had some wins and then obviously had probably some very public losses. So yeah, you know, when, when the short sellers start coming for Michael Sailor, I saw somebody else. I can't remember exactly who it was. It was another famous short seller who was saying that they're actually, they're long bitcoin. So long bitcoin, short micro strategy. And I was like, I thought that was kind of just an interesting take of, of the space. Like okay, kind of like what you're saying is, is the believe or disbelief in, in the, the financial instruments that Sailors pitching. It makes sense. The bitcoin's going up, it's going to work. When it goes down, what happens to these, these instruments that are giving off this crazy yield and just, you know, always inserting a disclaimer. Nothing that Dan and I are saying or ever on crypto101 is financial advice for anybody. We're just a couple dudes talking crypto. But these financial products are interesting and I, I really want to try and find somebody. I'd actually like to try to host a debate is like bring on a microstrategy bull or somebody specifically that loves these, the strike and these other instruments that are giving off this crazy yield and then pin them up against somebody who, you know, thinks it's a scam. And I'd really love to kind of host that debate. I might try and try and find that.
- [44:11]
Unknown
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- [45:12]
Dan Cecilia
Yeah, you got, you got to get like oodie where I don't know if you're familiar with udi, wertheimer who's like a big bitcoin bull on Twitter. And you got to find like a CFA that knows how to do all this analysis and financial whatever projections. And then you got to find like a bitcoin maxi and just pin them up against each other. Because I think that would be really entertaining and I would tune in for that.
- [45:39]
TiVo
Yeah, that's a good idea. Because the way I was thinking of it, because I did again, I call it Twitter math. I did the Twitter math of, like, find all these people that are posting their screenshots of the yield that they were getting. And I was just thinking, I was like, okay, well, maybe it can't go forever and you're going to lose, like, even the people that were making tons of yield. They were like, well, your principal is probably eventually going to go down. And I was like, okay, bitcoin is this volatility vehicle, sailors trying to multiply the volatility. And so this is a weird thought, maybe I'm just stupid, but I was thinking about it like, is it a house? Is it. If you buy a rental property and then you think the rental property or you get the rental property to the point where it's cash flow positive, is it like a volatility times 100 of a rental property? Because eventually you buy this house and 100, 200 years from now, the house isn't good anymore. You're going to have to knock it down and rebuild it. But then you also have the land. So the land would be worth something. So I don't know what that initial principal would be left. But if you got all these returns over, say, call it 50 years of renting this property or before the house needed to be fully redone or knock it down, you know, you could have bought the property for 100k and then made 200k in rent over the 50 years, and then subtract some costs or whatever, and then you're left with the initial of, you know, whatever the land's worth. Is that, Is that a stupid way to think of it? Like housing volatility times 100 or a thousand?
- [47:03]
Dan Cecilia
No, I don't, I don't think that's a stupid way to think about it at all. I, I think about it where, and I've talked to some traders that are kind of following these corporate treasury microstrategy closely. It's that M nav number, that multiple of net asset value where you end up buying the stock at a 2, 3, 4x of what the actual assets on the balance sheet are Worth. And then just like any. It's Finance 101. What are they producing? Are they producing new code for Bitcoin? Are they producing new products on Bitcoin or are they just buying bitcoin cheap, issuing paper equity against it, creating some type of vehicle for traditional finance participants to get involved and then kind of running that playbook up until something breaks. Like, I think there's been some. That's where I want to dig in and find somebody that actually can do the deep analysis across these preferred shares. Because it's not just issuing base equity or equity, microstrategy equity. He's issuing preferred stock. Right. And so that yield typically is guaranteed in a preferred stock. And obviously there's probably nuance to it, but I just don't understand why any participant would look at Bitcoin and then look at MicroStrategy and be like, I want to own MicroStrategy stock instead of just Bitcoin. Right. If you're a bitcoin bull or see it as a digital gold hedge, whatever. I think we're at a time in the industry where it's very easy to get large exposure to it, even if you're an institutional buyer. So that's where I think this financial alchemy with these across the capital stack of him issuing different preferred shares, different flavors of yield, convertible debt, you know, equity, diluting equity, buying bitcoin, whatever his, his playbook is, which was innovative to start, I think, I think we've seen this in, in history. It always kind of gets to a point where you can't do it anymore. So, but again, this is the market, right? People love, people love kind of running these arbitrage strategies, running these different, you know, yield strategies. So he issues a preferred share and sells it to some investor that wants that guaranteed 11% return and doesn't want to deal with the volatility of bitcoin. I think, you know, to your point of whoever you were talking to, that's running a long bit, long spot, bitcoin, short microstrategy. You know, I think it's, there's interesting ways to express views and I think that's what he's giving the market. Right. An interesting way to express a view in, in, in these different, you know, in these different stocks or different preferred shares. So that's kind of, I'm monitoring it. I'm, I'm not involved in microstrategy. I haven't bought it. I'm a, you know, you have on here. I'm a spot buyer. Like, I Just I buy and hold. I don't get too involved in some of this stuff just because it's, it's financial alchemy. Right. And I'm sure there's people that will push back against that. And again, I'm not an analyst, I'm not a cfa, but you got it. Again, you have to be savvy. You have to take pause and say, is this sustainable? Are they producing something? Is it just a vehicle for hyper speculation? Is it just kind of this looping trade which I think you mentioned before? So yeah, I get very concerned when there's all this financial engineering. I call it financial alchemy, but really what it is is financial engineering. Are they producing anything? Are they building a product? I don't think so. It's a vehicle for bitcoin.
- [51:02]
TiVo
Again, it's a good conversation and at the end of the day they do, I guess again, I can't get into the alchemy of it either. But they do own a shit ton of bitcoin. Right. If you believe in bitcoin in the future of bitcoin and if it's not going to zero, it's going to a million. I don't know, I don't know. I don't know how you, you know, it's what makes a market. Right. And that's, that's a tasty looking chart for sure. Yeah, yeah. I think, I think the coolest or the most interesting thing with microstrategy is how involved sailors in the space. And also, you know, everybody's kind of taking his playbook and doing it on so, so many other things. Kind of like we talked about with bit mine and everything else. But let's put, let's put a pin in the, the microstrategy stuff for now. That's, that's enough for one day. Definitely. Again, when it's going up, it's easy to talk about. When it's going down, it's easy to call it a scam. Right. But I think it's been around. And, and it's, I think the, the, the, my last point was that when we did the 20, 22, you know, lows in that bear market, you know, everybody was saying that sailors, you know, a thousand dollars of bitcoin price away from getting liquidated and losing the company. And then he kind of came out and, you know, disputed that and kind of said, no, that's not how this works. So, you know, some of that stuff just ends up being timeline hearsay and it's pointing fingers. And again, unless you can really open up the books and like you said, get somebody who's a true, you know, CPA or CFA and just figuring out the ins and outs of these products. You know, you just got to do your own research and, and you know, at the end of the day, everything we do is risk up into whether it's investing or even just driving down the street at this point. But moving on y. The. Now let's, let's just move on. I got, I want to jump into the, the Fear Greed Index. So we, we actually covered this last week, Dan. So me and Brendan, we, we cycle through a couple different things. We'll do Fear Greed Index. We'll do we like the Google. I, I used to get shit on the, the Google search volumes. People would say like, oh, that doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't matter. And then all of a sudden the price rips and the bitcoin Google search rips and all coin search rips. So I feel like I got vindicated on that. But we brought up the Fear Greed index and as you can see here, it's neutral. And last week it says up here it was 63. I think two weeks ago when we brought it up, I think it was in this, it was in the 70s. Yeah, there it is, 73. So we brought it up a couple weeks ago. We had it in the 70s. Now we're kind of resetting down to neutral. I think that's, I think that's good. I think that's healthy. Right? We kind of said that at the time with Brendan. You know, once it gets up into this green, the 70s again, it could definitely go higher, it could definitely go lower. No, we don't have the crystal ball, but kind of if you get that healthy reset into the neutral without losing, you know, too much momentum in the price, that's always kind of a good sign of a healthy base there. So are these, is this tool or do you have any tools? Do you like to look, look for sentiment wise in the markets, whether it's fear greed, Google searches, anything you.
- [54:04]
Dan Cecilia
So I think you can take a look at all of them. The Fairgreed for sure. I think it gives you sort of a general view of where we're at, sentiment wise. I'm a fan of what you said, the Google search engine. I think there's a lot of information to be had from what's trending on Google. It could really inform where we're at sentiment wise. And I think sentiment is important in this market. Right. If you could see Google search Trends trending up for something, then it gives you some insight into what people are talking about. And price follows narrative. Right. So I generally think fear and greed, the sentiment are good things to look at. You can't look at them isolated. What I like to look at is the ETH BTC ratio. I like to look at that and just see sort of like where we're at as far as that cycle of everybody buys bitcoin, People get rich in bitcoin, they go further out, they buy Ethereum, move things on chain and then the last is the altcoin season. That's how I've always read markets at a high level, crypto markets at a high level. And then another thing that I've been recently looking at is something called BVIV which is the Volmax Bitcoin 30 Day Implied Volatility Index, which is anyone familiar with the VIX index in traditional markets? That's exactly what that is. It's just a tradable index that shows bitcoin volatility. So I look at all that stuff. Those are indicators where you can kind of see, taken as a whole, gives you a good insight into where we're at in the market. So if anybody wants to take a look at the bitcoins version of the Vix, that's BVIV on TradingView BVIV and it just gives an outlook of 30 day implied volatility in the options markets, the deribit options markets. So fair and greed. Great sentiment check. Google Trends, great sentiment check. I'm sure you know, reading Twitter, reading crypto, Twitter filtering, great social sentiment checks. And then you can back that up with a little bit, I guess some of these derivative market indicators, right. Bviv, the Bitcoin VIX index. That'll show you volatility, that'll show you kind of where we're at. So I think you got to look at all of them. Right. And then the last one which I think you have on here, monthly flows into the ETFs is, is money flowing, you know, into the space. So yeah, those are all good indicators to look at. Fear and greed is, is kind of just a fun sentiment check, I think.
- [56:47]
TiVo
Yeah. And it's, it's definitely a backwards kind of looking at least a week, if not maybe more.
- [56:52]
Dan Cecilia
Right.
- [56:53]
TiVo
So it's actually what I really like with, with it is if I'm feeling, if I'm feeling a little too bowled up, maybe a little greedy and I, and I go and check kind of the, the fear and greed and I see it in the, the 70s, high 70s. You know, I'm just like, man, this is kind of, this is kind of what I'm feeling. I'm feeling a little greedy. And then it's always interesting to see where it is a week or two later. And again it's not a perfect science but as you can tell here we, we brought it up two weeks ago and then sure enough, a little bit of a sell off. And again that kind of goes back to your feelings and thoughts. Can't necessarily predict the macro. So my feelings and thoughts were I feel a little greedy here. Maybe I'm going to take off some leverage and then you get hit with the jobs number. If the jobs number didn't hit then who knows like what the Fear Greed index would be, you know. So it's, you know, it's all, it's all part of making the, the proverbial cake here. There's a lot of ingredients that go into your strategy and what you're doing and we're crushing it honestly. We're, we're going over here. So we got a couple, couple final thoughts here as we approach the hour but just wanted to thank the live audience and the YouTube. You guys always continue to show up as this grows. We've had Jordan, friend of the program, Dan, east coast lobster always here for the lives. East coast lobsters. Actually he ordered the, pre ordered the Solana phone. He was asking if anybody got their Solana mobile phone yet. So I told him when he gets that we got to get a review from him. But thank you guys. If you're watching on the live, please give the video a like and if you're new here, please subscribe. We're doing multiple of these a weeks and, and thank you for joining us. But just to kind of continue the, you know, why is this market strong? The underbelly of this market is super strong. Kind of some new ETF data that we got. Again we try to bring you guys some, some new little data that we find each week. The IBIT is now the second best ETF for monthly flows. Literally. Look under that, right under Voo. Voo. I mean that's like the Vanguard Ultimate S&P 500 ETF and then ibits number two, right? So the, the inflows just keep, keep coming and then I know that, I know that you, you threw us some ETH BTC ratio stuff. You threw a trading view chart to me, Dan, and the coin glass thing. Which one would you want me to pull up first?
- [59:10]
Dan Cecilia
I think since we're on The ETF stuff. Let's pull up the coin glass one because I just want to show, if you scroll down a little bit, this tracks daily flows into all the Ethereum spot ETFs. That chart on the right, total Ethereum spot ETF net flow. If you change it to USD, you could see, look at that July chart, it's that green, it's the green bar chart on the side, just you know where it shows price. But you had record flows into the ETH etf. If people have been following the ETF stuff over a year ago when Ethe and some of these, the BlackRock ETH A1 launched bitwise, all these ones launched Fidelity, people were like, oh, ETH is dead, right? There was no flows for this. There was nothing. It's now been over a year and July was a record inflow into the ETH ETFs. So obviously that the price reflected that. I think in the middle of July there we got like a $700 million, $750 million daily flow into these ETFs. So I think tracking that and you know, seeing this buying happen in these E FL ETFs, price followed, it pushed price higher. The corp, obviously the bit miner, the sbat, the corporate treasury playbook for ETH supported that. But you know, tracking that through the entire month of July, you could see it was like a record flow. So you know, if you do take a look at, and I don't know how much time we have, that ETH BTC ratio chart, it bottomed I think around end of June and now it's back up, trending upward. So I think all this data sort of supports that shift from okay, Bitcoin's been on a run and then people kind of flow into eth. Right? So yeah, I just wanted to kind of point that out because it's been over a year these like ETH ETFs, nothing was happening. Everybody was into IBIT obviously, IBIT's one of the largest ones. But you see right around the beginning of June, up until July, you really had these flows take off.
- [61:27]
TiVo
What are your thoughts here? I mean obviously once you get a lot of flows in, it can go both ways. But this is an interesting, this last bar here, I mean total volatility to the downside too off the, off the jobs numbers. I'm sure that's a lot of high frequency traders, probably some algos there. But like once you pile in, you kind of set your stop loss or whatever algo you're trading on. But that's a wild outflow there after, I mean, seeing those inflows.
- [61:52]
Dan Cecilia
Yeah, I mean, think about it. For the month of July, I think we had a 40, 50% return in ETH. So again, I think, you know, this just gives a little bit of a pause. The jobs numbers on Friday didn't necessarily help, but, you know, I think with Bitminer, you know, Tom Lee, some of these corporate treasury companies, a lot of development on eth. We talked about it before. These institutions are building things on, on Ethereum on chain. I think it supports sort of the price of eth. So again, these daily swings and these flows that always happen. But the trend, I think has been pretty bullish. So I'm still monitoring that. But yeah, I think we'll just have to wait and see.
- [62:41]
TiVo
Yeah, couldn't agree more. I mean, we love doing this each week and going over these numbers because as the space grows and again, the zoom out works exactly for this type of chart too. It's like, you know, the Ethereum. I remember when the Ethereum ETF got greenlit and went live. And I kind of went with the same thought process that I did for the Bitcoin one. Even though the Bitcoin ETF went live, there was that random ass sell the news type of event around it. And I just, I wasn't buying that. I was a big dip buyer back then. And we were on the show as well, just extremely bullish across the team. And then that worked. And it worked pretty quickly. Whether you bought the Bitcoin etf, Bitcoin Spot or even Microstrategy was a good buy back then.
- [63:23]
Dan Cecilia
Right?
- [63:23]
TiVo
Everything rocketed to the upside. So I kind of went with the same thing with, with Ethereum. I was just like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy the Ethereum etf. And it seemed to kind of be working. Obviously there was that, you know, this, the, you see the July of last year and then we had that rocket into, into the end of the year and I was just kind of, I just kind of thought it was working on that same train and that, that Ethereum dip caught me out of nowhere specifically. I've talked about this on the show before. I had to lean on my team and my community of just being like, hey, are we still heath believers here? I mean, this thing's, this thing's going down in the face of such a bullish environment. It made no sense. And, and I, you know, I, I again, the markets can stay crazy more than you can stay liquid. Right? So, you know, I wasn't a seller, but I was, I was losing my faith in the Ethereum, just price action. And luckily my team kind of like, hey man, we're going down with the ship on this one. We believe in it. So it was a good, you know, pack some more bags down there. But it was, it wasn't easy and it didn't make much sense to me. And then, you know, as you can see what happened, just that absolute breakneck back to where we are right now. So it's just another, another data point that we're excited to keep tracking for you guys. And again, we do this every week. So if you're new here, you know, consider subscribing and, and joining us along for the, the bull market of a lifetime here. So we got, we're running out of time. We had some more stuff planned, but obviously, you know, we'll bring Dan back another time in the future. But for our last topic of the day, and we talked about this in, in the pre show, Dan had a little laugh about it. Is is USA Today shilling xrp? I was scrolling and this one obviously got tons of shares and comments and more, more trolling than anything. But, but USA Today bringing out is XRP the smartest cryptocurrency to buy with 500 right now? I didn't even click and read the article, Dan. I don't know if you did, but I say this, we say this on the show all the time. We're not, we're not XRP haters by any, any stretch of the imagination. But I always wonder how, you know, my friend who's not into crypto, I try to tell him I do a crypto podcast, check it out, and they have no interest. And then, you know, bitcoin rips and then crypto starts ripping and they text me and they don't want to ask about, you know, Bitcoin. They don't want to know about Salon or Ethereum or anything. They just be like, hey, is XRP a buy? And I'm just like, you have, how do you get. I don't understand how these people just automatically land on XRP all the time. But maybe it's the USA Today X account, because what, what type of shill is that? What are your thoughts around the XRP and the USA Today shilling?
- [66:02]
Dan Cecilia
Yeah, so I briefly skimmed the article. There's not much insight into actually what, you know, if it's an innovative thing or if people are using the chain. I have a funny story similar to what you just said with like, Normie friends kind of calling you and asking you your opinion. So back in, I want to say February 2024 or 20, February 2025. I had a buddy from college who, you know, I haven't talked to in a while, must have found out I was in crypto. He texts me out of the blue and goes, I've had XRP since 30 cents. It's at all time highs now what do I do? Should I keep buying? And usually when I get that text, which I've had them in the past, I'm like, yeah, we're at probably a local top here in the price. So I told them and again, this is not financial advice or anything. I said you should take some profits, you should hold a moon bag. So maybe like take 80% off the table, hold 20% and then kind of, you're still exposed but you've taken your gains. So I think that's a good illustration of what XRP has come, has become a symbol of in the space. If you're following Mainstream Financial Media, USA Today, MarketWatch, Yahoo Finance, CNBC, they always end up talking about these like dyno coins, these XRP, which was from whatever 2017. And you know, I've had a, I've had a. I've been a hater for the longest time just because I'm so deep in the space. Sometimes you kind of get jaded. But my view on XRP in general is it's been around for a while. It kind of pushed the space forward. Their biggest claim to fame has been the lawsuit fighting the SEC for some of this stuff. And I actually talked to a very, very smart fund manager who runs a crypto fund at Consensys in Toronto this past May or March and he had a really interesting take because I was a hater. I was like, XRP is worthless. They kind of shill this banking rail narrative. They're not, you know, all this stuff. And he just kind of simply was like, listen, it's been around for a while. Mainstream's adopted it. It's always in the news. You might as well just get on board. So I don't, I kind of was like, yeah, you're right. I probably should just kind of sit there and say, you know what, XRP for what it's worth is just a proxy for the space. It doesn't need to be like this new Swift banking Rails or whatever. Even though that's the thing that they always talk about. But yeah, I don't know, like, I'm always cautious with the mainstream media on Crypto. Right. Because it's always spun in a way where either it's not well informed or it labels the space a scam. So one of the interesting things about this article which I came across was the author, the journalist that writes this, they write in there, XRP is focusing on real world utility and, and building real products that will revolutionize the banking rails. It's a refreshing take from Web3, which is typically a scam and Defi is a scam and it kind of like labeled the rest of the space a scam. But XRP is this innovative project. So I don't necessarily think that narrative's true, but I think you can look at it and say it's been around, it has mindshare, people buy it. You know, maybe that's worth having exposure for. Maybe, maybe the USA Today is right. I don't know. I would have liked them to have tweeted that maybe a year or two years ago instead of at, you know, close to all time highs on xrp. But the last, the last thing I'll say on this is I don't necessarily believe that the XR XRP will be adopted by banking institutions to be this like new swift thing, this new swift innovation because come on, like JP Morgan, these major banks, they're going to want their own blockchain, they're going to want their own stable coins, they're going to want to capitalize on their own infrastructure and make money off of it. So I don't necessarily know if that's the narrative that you want to follow, but XRP has been beneficial for our space, has been beneficial for the industry. They fought a lot of early lawsuits to kind of give us this regulatory clarity. And I think that's, and I think it's worth, you know, remembering that and maybe that's a reason to have exposure long term. So, you know, it's been around for a while, it survived multiple cycles. You have this XRP army behind it, the strong community behind it. It's always in the news. That's probably a reason to, to, to have some exposure.
- [71:03]
TiVo
So that's all great points, especially around the community. The XRP army. Yeah, we hear from them on both sides. You know, sometimes they're, they're listening, they like what we're saying. A lot of times we've gotten some hate from the XRP army in the comments as well, but especially with the meme coin narrative and you know, Pengu I think comes to top of mind for me of like building out utility. But you know, doge still trades well. Fart coins, the future of finance, you know, these things have not, not too much behind them. So if XRP has this awesome narrative, it's getting into people's ears and thoughts and mind and, and they have a huge community and they actually do have some type of utility that they're trying to build. Yeah, it's hard to fade. I, I like the idea of it being just kind of like an overall proxy to, to the markets. So. Yeah, just a, just a thought. What's that?
- [71:53]
Dan Cecilia
I said I'm a fan. I, I, I was. Yeah, I was.
- [71:56]
TiVo
You better be a fan. The XRP army's gonna come after.
- [71:59]
Dan Cecilia
Yeah, I know.
- [71:59]
TiVo
You don't want to be, you don't want to get clips saying anything bad about xrp. That's for sure. They'll come find you. Yeah, they'll come find you. The, yeah, I just thought that was, I, I literally just thought it was so funny. Like this whole tweet with USA Today, like out of USA Today from the top rope. I was like, hey, is this, is this personal financial advice? USA Today, you might be, you might be hearing from, from our lawyers, but awesome time. Dan, thank you so much for joining us today on the Rundown. It was a special one having you as a guest. Everybody else, you know, thank you guys for tuning in the live. Thank you guys, our podcast listeners. We appreciate you guys so much and we're doing a lot more episodes. We're getting a lot of awesome feedback from you. We'll be back with later this week with Brian and Joe. Until next time, enjoy the rest of your day and we'll talk to you soon.
- [72:57]
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Tom Lee
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