← CRYPTO 101
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- [00:01]
TiVo
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- [02:17]
Brian
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
- [02:18]
TiVo
I thought crypto and bitcoin theory. I thought it was dead. Thought quantum ended it. I see a bounce, Brian. It's green. I don't know what's going on. We're going to break that down. The s and P500 rocketing. The NASDAQ's up 3%. The Russell 2000 is up 2 and a half percent. Oil's down 5%. What is going on? We're going to break it all down for you today. We've got bitcoin's new quantum threat. We're going to talk about it. Break it down. The Iran war, is it ending? Going to talk about it. Break it down. Bitcoin on the verge of six straight months of red. Never been done before. We're going to talk about it. We got a little clarity. Act update for everybody. Morgan Stanley reveals what their bitcoin ETF is going to look like. Spoiler alert. It's cheap, interactive brokers, goes to Europe. Black Rock keeps hiring crypto people in their, in their hiring process. I see a digital assets director position. We're going to look at that. And then I got to get Brian's take on the poly market Situation Room, which Brendan and I talked about last week, but I got to get Brian's take on it. So, super fun show today. Thank you all for joining us. Brian, welcome back. It's been, I think, like two weeks since we've seen you.
- [03:21]
Brian
I know I've been jonesing to get back on, and I know you need to call me in because I'm the resident quantum expert. So talk a little. Talk about the quantum. The news is definitely building up a little bit of a quantum threat here. But we'll, we'll break it down in a digestible way for everyone. But, no, Excited to be on, man. It's always fun to chop it up with you. And there's always something new in the crypto markets to talk about.
- [03:46]
TiVo
Yeah. And just markets in general. So, like, like we said, the, the thumbnail. Everything's red. Bitcoin's dead. The new quantum threat that we're going to break down first. But before we do that, there was some breaking, some breaking news. It's unconfirmed as of now, but I'll tell you what is confirmed. The markets are certainly reacting to it. So the Iranian president reportedly has said that Iran is ready to end the war, but insists on certain guarantees. This is, per Bloomberg, an official report. And then again, as we always say, Brian took one political science class at the University of Delaware. So I am an expert in this. The president is different than the supreme leader. If you want to get into Iran politics, there's a Lot going on there, clearly. But this is the first official report of, you know, this side or the Iranian side wanting to try to figure out how to get this done. There's been some whispers as well out of the White House that like, hey, you know, I don't think I have enough political capital to keep doing this. We're willing to wind this down as well. Heard a, heard a quote of an aide saying we're willing to leave the Strait of, leave the war and the war without the Strait of Hormuz being open. That'll happen on its own. Trump telling the rest of the world, we have our oil, we get it in the Gulf, you guys go to the straight of Humus and get your own oil. So obviously a lot of jargon, but that jargon of ending this war kind
- [05:11]
Brian
of just shows you.
- [05:13]
TiVo
And I'll bring up coin, market cap here is just like, we truly are a coiled spring right now. Everybody's afraid of. Not afraid. We want it to end. But like from a, from an investing standpoint, everybody's afraid of being on the wrong side if this war ends and you're not invested properly. Because before this whole thing started, things looked pretty good, if we remember. It feels like forever ago, right, Brian? But we remember back to December, January, you know, markets were at all time, highs across the board and things were looking good for 26. We were eyeing up a couple rate cuts. Maybe the table was set, it felt like for a good 26. And then this obviously a black swan, a curveball. So anything that's sticking out to you in the crypto markets. We see Bitcoin up here almost up 2% in 24 hours. Ethereum up 3 and a half. No super high flyers. What do we got there? Zcash. Zcash has done a run this year. Little privacy action. But I like, I actually like this. I like that the, the bitcoin Ethereum are leading this on the news and that pairs well with again, kind of the S&P 500, Russell and NASDAQ.
- [06:21]
Brian
Yeah, great breakdown there, TiVo. It's a full time job keeping up with exactly what's happening in the crypto market or the overall financial markets and what's happening in the geopolitical world, especially with our current administration who, you know, we take the truth social and Twitter to just basically air out any sort of news or dirty laundry. But to jump back to the first share that you had, the Iranian president. I know we're not going to get that deep into politics and who's actually leading Iran and what matters but where there's smoke, there's fire. It does seem like Iran, or at least from these early tweets, that they want to have peace and, you know, less volatility, more peace is going to be good for all financial markets, specifically the crypto market. And then we have the White House, the administration, saying that, you know, they want to get this a done deal as well, and the market's reacting in a positive way. And there's a few really interesting ways to look at this. I mean, we've had over the past couple days, some, some not so great news as well. And we didn't see those major flash crashes down into the 50s like a lot of people have been predicting. We've been literally trading in like a 1 to 2% range with any points of news have been happening. And we're just kind of chugging along. Kind of goes to me, just kind of, my gut feels like the people that are here now are here to stay. You know, we, we probably washed out a lot of the short sellers, and we've talked about that. A lot of the retails moved on and they were underwater with their ETFs. They probably moved on. So everybody right now, we're just kind of holding our bags and waiting for that next move up. And, you know, there's a lot of catalysts we talk about, but, you know, there's some black swan events. We're in war with Iran. We have news around the Clarity Act. So just my overall takeaway, this, this isn't surprising to me that we're looking at a $67,000 Bitcoin, a $2,000 Ethereum, and I wouldn't be surprised if later today we were down to $1,900 Ethereum or we were up to 2200. We're just trading in a really tight range because we're just looking for any sort of bullish news to break out. It does feel like the volatility and the reactionary sharp moves down feel like they're in the rearview mirror, at least as of right now, and we're just kind of chugging along.
- [08:43]
TiVo
Yeah, I think when it comes to the last Macro Iran comment I'll make is, you know, they're running out of options. It's like you're either going to start doing boots on the ground and ramp up this operation, or you kind of got to scale out of it. So it seems like, especially from a sense of like, political capital that the, the administration's trying to, to gauge here. So it feels and it hopes for, you know, the, the sense of just trying to get to a spot where the world's more peaceful, of scaling this operation down. And that, as you can see, is, it's kind of like, it's kind of like, you know, me, football guy, an old college athlete. It's like, it feels like the play has been sent out and then, you know, okay, we want to call a timeout because we know what the defense is running. So that's kind of how I look at it. You know, when you see here, you know, this report comes out today and then, you know, the S p shoots up 2.5%, the Nasdaq up 3 in a matter of mere minutes. That's, that's chasing, right? And then you see on the flip side of that, the, the oil trade, oil falls off a cliff and you know, in 5%, in three minutes here, three minutes after this report came out. This report wasn't even confirmed when it first came out. So you can kind of, you're sifting through, you're sending out the play call, you're seeing the defense, you're calling then. Okay, now if you, if you're going to look at the end of the day, I bet everything kind of comes back to an even. My guess is oil is going to go down, you know, it's not going to stay down 5%. It'll go to, you know, 1.52%. Same thing with the, the S P and NASDAQ. All those things might come in a little bit, not stay as high as they were. But you're getting the read of, of when this does happen. Where's the market leaning? That's where it wants to lean. And then obviously if things don't go that way, then there's more pain to be had. But there's been a lot of pain already, which we've covered on this show not only in bitcoin, but in all markets, especially the software markets. I mean, some of those, some of those, I want to call them projects, some of those Companies are down 30, 50%. It's, it's, it's a wild, it's been a wild start of the year, but kind of going into what this thumbnail and the title was Bitcoin. Another quantum Threat. Bitcoin's dead. Once again, Brian, I had to bring you on as our, our quantum expert. So can you break this one down? I also just saw a tweet from Chamath. We'll pull up after, but give the people a high level overview. There's a Google report that came out and it took over the timeline. But my thought was we'll learn about it and then we can kind of break it down from what we saw on the timeline today.
- [11:21]
Brian
Yeah, Google's basically saying that the quantum threat in crypto is something people should take more seriously right now. And we've been saying this for a while now. We've said on the show that crypto people need to take the quantum risk serious. And the reason matters because Bitcoin, Ethereum and a lot of other crypto networks rely on something called an elliptic curve cryptography for wallet security and all their digital signatures. What really got the attention is that Google's research suggests that the amount of quantum computing power needed to break this encrypted in the future may be a lot lower than older estimates. So this isn't just some random fear or some hype. It's an issue that a lot of researchers are talking about in actively posting reports about. At the same time, this really needs to be emphasized. This does not mean crypto is suddenly broken today or by any means. Current public quantum systems are still at the point where they are not cracking mainstream crypto wallets right now or even really that close to doing it. The bigger story is really about preparation. And we've been talking about this, the Ethereum Foundation's been talking about this. Michael Saylor Coinbase has a quantum resistance committee. So the bigger story is that we need these crypto companies, these, these chains to really take it seriously. And Google's taking it seriously enough that their own timeline for moving forward towards this post quantum security is the bigger question whether crypto wallets and networks and custody providers are going to do this in time. So really the takeaway is, yeah, the threat's legit, it's worth watching. But it still looks more like this long term infrastructure upgrade story than a reason that crypto holders really need to panic right now. And we also have individuals like CZ that have come out and said that, you know, there's no need to panic on quantum right now. It's a lot easier to, what was it to decrypt, de encrypt and encrypt or break encryption. So there's a lot of paths here where this could go in a very positive manner with this quantum computing and the cryptography. But people need to start within these organizations right now. They need to be paying attention right now. And that's what Google was basically saying. I think they gave a timeline to where this could start impacting certain companies and chains and this is going to affect a lot of lot of different companies, not just crypto is closer to 2029 and 2030. So we certainly have more than enough time to get a legit fix. And there's a lot of ideas being thrown around now. The bigger question is, is that Bitcoin doesn't have a centralized CEO like a JP Morgan or a Google, where it can just flip the switch right now and say, hey, we're going to do this upgrade. There's going to be a lot of people on board that need to talk about different solutions. But that's being worked on right now. And this has always been a threat. We've been talking about this. Even When Bitcoin was $126,000 at a high, it was pretty much a very similar threat is now. But with the price being down, with people just with clickbait and people wanting to kind of lean in prices down, this is a reason why it's down. We're hearing more and more about this quantum threat, but a lot of these chains are already taking it very seriously. And to kind of cap it off, I'm wondering if that Zcash pump recently, today, I think it was up what, 15% you said is because they really marketed a few weeks ago that they were quantum resistant. So maybe some people are going into zcash just because of that headline. But personally I'm not really overly concerned about this. I would love to know your take as well. I know you're not a quantum expert either, but would love to know your take. It feels like more clickbait and rage bait more than a real problem happening right now.
- [15:16]
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- [17:49]
TiVo
Yeah, I mean I just pulled up the Zcash chart where you're talking about it 24 hours 12 one week 10% but the one year still up. I mean 562% but way off the high by 50% at back in November. I guess that's not the yearly high or the one year to date high back in November was 700 almost. So that's, that's if you're buying that. And I think we, we definitely said on the podcast like that's a hockey stick if we've ever seen one. Be careful folks, but where there's smoke, there's fire. Right? And then you know, zcash taking that, yeah that, that quantum type of narrative that's been so popular across, across the crypto sphere and, and just again it's not, I think you can tie kind of quantum in just to the, the AI story as well in my opinion. It's like hey, this is the future of tech. What's, what's going to happen with it? I, I, yeah, I'm not a quantum expert so I can't sit here and pretend to be by any means but I, I will say I've said on this show and in conversations, okay, well, if Bitcoin's gonna get hacked by Quantum, then that means that any financial service platform is going to get hacked. So what? Well, the only difference is to your point is like, okay, well, the financial service platform of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, they can make their decisions and go and upgrade and learn this process. And I think in the way I'm trying to see the field here is I can totally see how this will create a ton of volatility. It. It already has and it, it will continue to do more. I, I agree there. It's time that kind of the Elders, this is what the chamath tweet was that I saw that we were going live on air just, just went out an hour ago. You know, pat himself on the back. He's, he's already talked about this in the podcast last year. But it's time that the Elders start spending more effort organizing on a time scale to make crypto quantum resistant. And, and so who are those elders? Obviously, for Bitcoin, it's Michael Sailor. But then I think with all the, you know, all the change in the last, you know, two years almost with these ETFs, is there's, there's new, you know, Blackrock. Right. Blackrock is now, I don't necessarily want to call them an elder, but they're a huge stakeholder. And then you have all the, you know, different miners, and then you have all the original core developers. So we've covered on the show how, you know, some of, you know, people are working on this stuff. And I think it's. I think Coinbase started a fund to, you know, not investigate, but also donate and spend money towards it. So they're an elder. Vlad, Robin Hood. I think they're, they're, you know, elders. So I think it's kind of all the people that you've seen in Washington parading around for crypto regulation that need to really, you know, maybe spend less time trying to get what they want that's going to help their stock price and try to figure out what's best for the space. You can't blame CEOs and companies trying to go for what's best for them that's in the DNA of a publicly traded company. But, yeah, I kind of, I kind of do agree that, you know, this, this narrative is almost getting, I don't know if out of control is the right word. It's getting ahead of its skis without, you know, kind of another side of a debate. Right. There's no other side of a roadmap of an argument which can, can snowball. So it's, but that, that's kind of the journey of any, any new technology. Right. There's ups and downs. How many times has bitcoin died? We could bring up that chart. So it's, it's definitely the lead of, of this cycle right now, of, of the downtrend. But that, that compares with IGV too. So it's kind of hard to sit here and say that you have an answer because nobody does at the moment. But it's, it's something that not just bitcoin has to navigate, the whole financial system and the world as a whole has to navigate. So where does that lead us?
- [21:49]
Brian
Yeah, there's certainly paths for a solution here. I mean, they've been mapped out pretty clearly from a lot of top leaders, but they just haven't fully been implemented yet. So I do believe that that's as long as everyone's just taking it seriously. If we were just brushing this under the rug saying like, hey, this is a threat, but we're not gonna do anything about it, but there's clearly a lot of people that have a vested interest to make sure everything's going to be okay and right, and this isn't an immediate threat by any means. That's not what the Google paper is saying either. There's a lot of smart people coming out like, like CZ you have on the screen basically saying that there's really no reason to panic about it. But I do see the other side of panic. Like if you were just new into crypto and you were just learning what blockchain is, or you're trying to understand the difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum, you see Google say something about your coins could be or taken. And I don't even want to get into depth how it's not even all the bitcoin on chain, it's bitcoin held on older addresses and digital signatures held. There's a whole other layer here. So it's not even all crypto and all the bitcoin. But I get it, it makes the water a little bit murky. We're all trying to scratch our heads figuring out why we drop so much from, you know, our all time highs and then you start hearing about quantum coming from Google. But just to really put a bow on it, there's a solution here. There's a lot of smart people behind this and they're all saying that there's A lot of upgrades already going on between bitcoin, Ethereum and other chains to make it cool, quantum resistant. And you even have a guy like CZ who he doesn't need to like. I mean, I don't know if he's the most trustworthy guy in the world, but he doesn't really need to say anything if he doesn't want to. And he's openly saying that there's really no reason to panic about it either.
- [23:38]
TiVo
Basically, notably raises that satoshi. If quantum computer crackled addresses, those coins could move to hackers unless the community acts to lock them first. In the long run, more computing power is always good and crypto will stay post quantum. So CZ like you said, says no need to panic. I think the Ethereum foundation was definitely one of the first to be very vocal about the work that they're doing. And hopefully, you know, kind of the bitcoin elders, as Chamath said, need to get together and push forward and just start the communication process which I think we see is going on. So something to cover, something to talk about. And that's, I think, you know, part of this space. Why we, why you got into this space in the beginning, at least for me, was just kind of the future of tech and, and wanting to learn and wanting to believe. And I think this is just the next iteration of that. So I think you're in the right place. And especially for us doing the show and doing the education, it's, you know, there's so much to learn so it'll be fun. But going back to the price action, which nobody, you know, loves to see when you're read, but hey, you got to, you got to talk about what's going on, Brian. And bitcoin's on track to finish. It's six straight month in negative territory, something that has only occurred once before. The previous stretch was 2018 to 2019. Bitcoin declined by roughly 60% over that six month period. I was at IBM at the time. I just discovered bitcoin back in 17. So I got to run, ride the run up. I was like, what is this magical money? And I kept putting more and more into it. And then I watched it as fast as it rode up, it slowly decayed and you start to learn, you know, diamond hands and you know, the volatility of bitcoin's story. So haven't seen this since 2018-19. But we are in another one question at that 2019 bottom, was that a good time to buy that?
- [25:32]
Brian
Seemed like that was a Pretty good time to buy if you ask me. That was, you know, usually whenever there's a pretty major correction, it's usually a big time to buy. When did Covid happen? That was 2019, right?
- [25:45]
TiVo
That was 2020.
- [25:48]
Brian
Okay. Yeah, yeah, it was a pretty good time to buy and you know, you could. And we're, it does feel like we're kind of moving towards that four year cycle as well. Little different setup this time around. But it, it does seem like we're, you know, we're still flowing in that foury four year cycle.
- [26:09]
TiVo
Yeah, those were the days. Those were the days. So 12, 12, 18, 11, 18. And then it trickled down. Yeah, it was a tough, it was a tough run there for the bitcoiners. But if you were in that time frame and bought that dip, man, hell of a buy down to that run. Went all the way down to 2018. 2019 brought Bitcoin down to about $3,400. Those are the days. Those are the days.
- [26:39]
Brian
Jenny wealth opportunity right there. I remember when that, when it came down to like four grand and I was like, oh, and just the news, like people were cleaning their groceries with bleach wipes and things like that. They're like, you touch this and it was a scary time. But again, fundamentally nothing was broken with crypto then it was just overall geopolitical macro. Covid everything along those lines were crashing and turned out to being a huge Jenny wealth opportunity.
- [27:07]
TiVo
Right. And so it's during these times, like you kind of look around, especially in the space, you're like, okay, well you know, who's building? That's kind of been the mantra that I've been sticking with here over the last, you know, six weeks of who's building in the space. We want to talk to them. And that's why we've had on, you know, Robin Hood. We had, we just interviewed Coinbase yesterday, we just interviewed Solana foundation today. All those interviews. The Robinhood's already out, Franklin Templeton's already out. But next week will be Coinbase and we'll have Solana the week after that. So it's like we're building, we're talking to the big players that continue to build. And that's what makes me, you know, bullish in the space. And, and especially, you see we've covered this, but Morgan Stanley's getting ready to launch their spot bitcoin etf. And I bring that up because their, their, their pricing just came out. So they're going to charge 14 bips, making it the cheapest spot Bitcoin Bitcoin ETF on the market and 11 bips cheaper than their big competitor Black Rock there on Wall Street. I thought this was really interesting. Eric kind of says it here best. You know, none of their advisors will feel conflicted. They're gonna say, hey, if we're recommending bitcoin, we're going with the Morgan Stanley one because it is the cheapest, which I thought was really, really interesting. And then I can pull up this next tweet with the stats of what is gonna go live here in the next week or two. What do you think? Are you a buyer, are you a buyer of the Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust?
- [28:39]
Brian
I, I mean, you know, I'm, I'm running a little bit low on dry powder. Not gonna lie. I've been goggle. I've been gobbling up as many dips as I possibly can. So the short answer is yes, I would if I was going to get. I, I already have a pretty substantial, you know, Bitcoin ETF holdings from, you know, when it was first initially released. I couldn't wait. I, I die. I dove right in. But if I was going to add to it or get into it, I would certainly look at 14 bips. If it's the lowest fee, it's the lowest fee. And it's exactly what it is. And this is just gonna bring more financial advisors and more eyeballs to Bitcoin and it's gonna be exciting, for sure. And this is real competition in these financial markets. You know, they're undercutting BlackRock, and BlackRock's gonna probably respond in the next few weeks or months and possibly undercut this. And the person who benefits at the end of the day are the people that want to buy Bitcoin who want to get exposure to the etf. They could get better fees, better rate.
- [29:42]
TiVo
Yep. And it's coming. It's coming early April. Not an April Fool's joke. Not an April Fool's joke. The lowest Bitcoin ETF is coming to a brokerage near you via Morgan Stanley. So again, I love seeing Morgan Stanley building. I'm seeing Interactive Brokers continues to build. I saw this this week. Let's see. Interactive Brokers launches Bitcoin and crypto trading in Europe. That's an access that opens up to 450 million users for Interactive Brokers. They're continuing to build. We mentioned BlackRock, you know, not a competitor of Morgan Stanley. They all do different things, but these are the giants of Wall Street. Your JP Morgan's your Morgan Stanley's and obviously BlackRock up there as well. BlackRock's hiring a managing director of digital assets. Brian, are you still going to be on the podcast next week? I heard you might be a front running contender after with all your quantum expertise.
- [30:39]
Brian
I'm not going anywhere. You have to, you have to drag me out of here, guys. It's. Even if, even if something happened, I'm still showing up on the rundown as a guest. No, I will not be applying for this job. But it's great to see. I mean, BlackRock obviously doesn't think bitcoin and digital assets are going to zero and they're some of the most powerful voices in the entire world. We again need to, we again need to zoom out a little bit and it's cliche to say and take a step back and realize that there's some big players involved that have huge interest and huge stakes in digital assets becoming the future. And this is good to see. It's good to see that BlackRock's, you know, continuing to grow their experts. And I'm sure we'll probably have this guy on the podcast. Whoever gets hired super producer will definitely get him.
- [31:28]
TiVo
Yeah, we'll find them. I'm sure there's, you know, seven degrees of separation in my world somehow, some way. So we'll, we'll be able to track, we'll be able to track them down and get them on. No doubt a new friend of the show to be the managing director of digital assets over at blackrock. And then we, we mentioned this a couple weeks ago, but Square was launching a, their payments for Bitcoin. There were some like, I don't know if it was a giveaway, but it was if you had, if you went and used and paid something with Bitcoin, you were getting a Bitcoin back for the Square product. So that launched, which means that the businesses that accept Bitcoin skyrocketed. You know, before this year it was under a million and now, you know, with the new Square implementation because, you know, a lot of different, you know, small businesses use Square to do their credit card processing. So now they automatically will, you know, with the new software or whatever, will automatically accept Bitcoin. So it brings it to just under 5 million businesses that now accept Bitcoin as payment. So I think that's always super exciting to see. You know, it's always kind of been a niche thing. Like you've seen the, you've seen videos of it online. But now with the Square, the Square platform and then, I don't know. I don't think you were on. I think Brendan was on with me. But we were Talking about how MasterCard launched that credit card. Did you see that with Metamask? So they're, you know, they're talking about using whether it's stable coins, some type of crypto. Rails. Still not a ton of specifics out of that credit card yet, other than they're partnering with MetaMask. But this is, this is where the puck's going. It's. It's slowly moving. And then I think if you pair the regulation of like, okay, what is property versus what is a commodity? What's a taxable event? It seems so hectic right now with the negative price action, the fog of war, and kind of what we'll roll to next is the Clarity Act. It's like we. You don't necessarily know where the puck's going to end up, but this is where it's going or at least trying to go. And, and again, that kind of brings us back to who's building in the space, because once it ends up there with regulation, you know, the possibilities are endless and the growth is endless, truly worldwide. And the US Is definitely trying to be leaders in this, which they should. So any. Any thoughts on. On payments before we jump into state, the Clarity Act?
- [33:49]
Brian
Yeah, the only thoughts are this is great. You know, it's just gonna give more opportunity for people who accept payments and retail users to, you know, explore Bitcoin as a payment mechanism. And there's a lot of other great cryptos that could be great payment mechanisms. But this just goes to further show you that the ecosystem's growing, it's getting broader, and it's not stopping.
- [34:11]
TiVo
Couldn't agree more. So let's move on. I think I'm having something wrong with X. Or maybe it's Riverside, but it's not sharing audio on this one. I gave it a quick test. So. No bad.
- [34:23]
Brian
Oh, so the link. The link was good, it looks like.
- [34:29]
TiVo
Well, maybe not. Maybe X is having a problem. But I did have. I did this. Nobody cares about this. But I did have problems with a podcast earlier with Riverside. So it could be Riverside, but we have something coming out from the Ripple CEO Mr. Garlinghouse saying on Fox Business that he's saying that the Clarity act is, is getting ugly. It's. Watching the sausage get made has not been critic. Been pretty, but they gave me more optimism that we'll get there. What do you take away from that?
- [34:58]
Brian
Yeah, it's interesting because we've seen some, a lot of back and forth about this clarity act and it's really tough to see exactly what's going on. They're obviously talking more and there's some more clarity around it, no pun intended. But that happened there. And we have the Ripple CEO saying that, you know, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of moving along and, and it's, you know, not great, but it's moving along and he's saying he's more optimistic than ever. So I think, I think the big takeaway here is I think last week senators of the White House struck a compromise Senators and the White House, I should say sucker struck a compromise on the ban passive yield on stablecoin balances. But they allowed limited activity based rewards. Insider ins. So insiders are pretty much saying this is 99 resolved. So that's great to see that 99 of people inside this are saying that this, this big point around stable coins and getting yield is resolved. And it does sound like that it's banning passive yield and that's basically just holding the stable coins in, you know, your coinbase account. You're going to need to do something if that's some sort of activity and that could just be something as easy as staking, you know, you want to stake your balance and you click a little button. So I'm not exactly sure the details of this, but where I will go with this TiVo is what was it a month ago when people were talking, we were reporting like, oh, the clarity acts as close as ever. And I started talking about, I think the guy's name was Saunders. And that's when Jamie Dimon like attacked the reporter saying that like there's no win win situation. And Brian Armstrong was at the White House that next Monday and I basically knew and I both, basically I was like this feels farther off than I really think. You know, we had Trump getting on the timeline and pointing the finger at the banks. It didn't feel like it was that close. It does now to me feel like it's getting pretty close. We have a lot of reports out there saying that it's 99% done. It does sound like they are going to be banning the, the passive yield on stablecoin balances. Again, I don't know anything for sure but I've heard, I've read a lot about that. But they're going to allow these activity based rewards. So that, that is a way to look at it is maybe win win and then I see a report coming out where you know the Ripple CEO is not supporting it or Coinbase isn't supporting it. I'm really going to trust that the, the strong minds of crypto are going to lean into where this needs to go, but we don't want to sign a bad deal here, but we want to get this deal done. Just off the top of my head, how this looks right now. If they are going to ban a passive yield, meaning you have $50,000 of stablecoins, you need to do something to get the yield. And if that's as simple as just, you know, staking it on one of their platforms, you're gonna get a nice yield. I don't find, like, that's a huge loss for the crypto companies. It's gonna add another layer of a step, but it could be a nice compromise where the banks feel like, you know, they're not gonna lose a ton of liquidity if they just open it up for a ban of passive yield. I truly see both sides here, but it seems like, I mean, we even have the Brad talking with the Ripple CEO talking about how even though it's not working out perfectly the way he imagined, he's saying he's more optimistic than ever and I do think the deal is going to get done this year.
- [38:28]
TiVo
Yeah, I think it's a, interesting question to pose of like, obviously, you know, there's the people making the decisions, lawmakers and the, you know, the minds that be in crypto. But with what's gone on and this isn't, this is just kind of the expertise from that one political science class I took in college is like, traditionally during midterms, there's some type of switch, right? The incumbents lose something, they lose seats, they lose the Senate, they lose Congress. And because it's, it was a sweep from the last election and the way things are going now, I would be betting on my, my, my betting apps that somebody's going to flip, definitely Congress, possibly the Senate. So then, you know, for the most part, you're probably what's going to, you're going to end up with like a stalemate, which isn't bad. I think traditionally, and we'll probably get more of these stats in the fall once you see a clear thing. But I think traditionally when it's a stalemate in the Congress and Senate, the market's like that because there's no regulation that's going to pass. It's just a stalemate. So what? The rules of the road are the rules of the road for the next two plus years. And you can kind of take off running with it. But I think for crypto specifically, it's interesting because, you know, maybe this is an opinion, but in my opinion, the crypto base went all in on, on Trump and definitely kind of more the Republican side was trying to champion it more while it was kind of a bipartisan issue. You know, I think definitely for the White House it was Trump's the crypto president. And you know, I mean, price action wise, just pull it up like nothing's higher than when he took office. So that's not necessarily a good look. And then when it comes to the mean coin game, you know, I think our team did a great job trading the Trump coin positively, especially in the momentum moneymakers group. But, you know, there's a lot of people that probably came in late and, and might have gotten wrecked by that. And I think if you take personal thoughts aside or investments aside, what it is, is it's a rallying cry for the other side to, it's basically, I feel like there's a lot of ammo now for the other side to go anti crypto, which is not what we wanted. Right. We always wanted crypto to be a bipartisan issue. You know, the future of technology. I think it is that way in, in the professional space, especially in, in the, the Wall street, you know, adopting it. So I don't think that's going anywhere. But I, I do think you left the door open for a rallying cry for some anti crypto people coming this next cycle. So be careful what you wish for. We all got what we wanted for being honest in the Monday morning quarterback room. But, you know, now you gotta, you know, how bad do you want this legislation to pass? Because then the Clarity act and there's things you do want in it or do you not want it to pass? Because if it doesn't pass and then you lose, you know, you lose the house and then that house gets packed with a couple more anti crypto people like you're kind of back where you were almost four years ago. And maybe, you know, I, I guess that's almost to say like that won't happen because of what's going on on Wall street. And that's like the lifeblood of the American economy. But what's your thoughts there? That was kind of a rant I've been thinking about in my mind recently with, with the upcoming midterms.
- [41:43]
Brian
Yeah, it's, it's an interesting thought. I mean, we, we, man, did we get a Trump pump or what? Like, you know, we were all so euphoric whenever Trump took office and everything for our crypto bags. And they have, they have pushed some good legislation through. You know, we even had. What was it last week, where David Sacks. Did you see that? Maybe you cover that? That David Sachs, he, he completed his 130 day window as the AI and crypto czar. So he stepped down and. But then he was moved into that new advisory or co chairman role. So he's still going to be heavily involved in AI and crypto decision, one could argue. Like this administration and David Sachs, they did a lot of great things. We're talking more about crypto and blockchain rails in more apps and more exposure than we've ever seen before. And that's absolutely true. But there's also a lot of things that need. I keep using the word clarity because it's on my mind, but we need structure, we need clarity. And yeah, yeah, he, so he, he completed his 130 day year tenure and he.
- [42:55]
TiVo
And just because we did, we actually didn't cover this. But to clarify, the 130 days, it's like a special appointee role, right? So it's when you sign up, once you start, you have 130 days and then it's over. If not, you have to become an efficient official member of the cabinet or something. And because David Sachs has so much, you know, business acumen and things to do in his own world, he didn't want to do that role or upgrade that role to an official member because then you got to get rid of your businesses, basically. You got to, you know, offboard yourself. So that's why it was the 130 day tenure. But still going to be on in some capacity, like you said. Sorry, continue though.
- [43:32]
Brian
No, you nailed it. I guess whenever this happened again, it's very clickbaity at first, like, oh man, David Sacks stepped down. But then when you read further that he was like, he's like co chairman of this new AI board and that's with like Zuckerberg and all these really bright minds. They're still going to be heavily involved with crypto and AI, but being part of the private sector, this is standard. You only get 130 day tenure. And that's exactly what happened. But he's still going to have a, a very large role role. With that all being said, I, I kind of looked back like, did he do what he was supposed to do? I would grade him as like a, A B, Like B, B minus, Like a B, like a solid B, B minus. Maybe just because Maybe we didn't get this Clarity act across the ground, but they pushed a lot of favorable legislation and structure and got, got it in. And even though the price came back, you know, not, we're still trading at like a 65, $70,000 bitcoin, which is not a terrible price. But from when you look at where we were, of course it makes everyone feel very reactionary. But I feel like he did a pretty good job educating people and bringing a lot of important bills to the, to the table. And he, and I do think I would probably grade him a little higher if we got this Clarity act across the board a little bit faster. Now with that all being said, I think the Clarity Act's going to, I'm pretty positive. I think the odds are pretty much still probably a 50, 60% chance in 2026, but I'm feeling more positive about it now than I was a month ago. Whenever Jamie Dimon screaming at a reporter going, if Coinbase wants to be a bank, they should be a bank because I understand the bank's point of view. They don't want liquidity to just get wiped out if you know you're getting all these massive rewards by just holding it passively. But I understand the crypto side as well. They're like, well we can offer this yield, so why not offer it? It's good for retail at the end of the day. So with that all where I just kind of verbally vomited on everyone that I do think the Clarity act is a key piece of information. And it seems like we're really close right now. And it feels like it's going to ban this passive holding of the stable coin. But there's going to be a way in, just small ways to activity based rewards that they're cutting out, which could be as simple as clicking a staking button where we're going to be able to offer some really great yield, which is going to bring even more eyeballs in new entrants to the world of crypto and stablecoins.
- [46:02]
TiVo
Couldn't really add anything more other than I would give him a B plus as well with a good Clarity Act. And I don't know, the, the Bitcoin strategic reserve, it feels like kind of was a vanity act. And I, I try to be. I mean, we got comments from the, some of the listeners have thought we were being kind of one sided politically where I was just saying, hey, we're just covering the news. This is what's going on. And, and especially when, when, when kind of, you know, you're getting kind of what it looks like what you wanted. But if we're, you know, we're, I think we're financial journalists when we come on this show, we're traders as well. We talk book a little bit. But we're also try to be financial journalists, at least from my perspective of trying to, you know, every week bring together what we're talking about. And I got to be honest, like, I was super excited about the Bitcoin strategic reserve, but I, I feel like it was like it was, it was a vanity project. We never even kind of got like an audit, right, like an official audit of what's going on. And you know, maybe there's clap back of a reason why, but I thought that would have been at least a good thing to do is kind of audit the holdings for the US which they, they kind of mentioned, like, here's what we hold, but like not specifically the amount. And then there was that rumor months ago of like, oh, the U.S. is selling, somebody's selling, they don't know about it. And you know, then there was the talks of adding to the bitcoin strategic reserve through a non, you know, a non cost to the taxpayer. Mr. Lutnick was supposed to be in charge of that. You know, it just felt like, you know, it was a rush to start. And then now, you know, we're into it, you know, approaching, you know, maybe the end of year two and nothing's on the Runway, still plenty of time, maybe I'll be proven wrong. But you know, as a financial journalist, it's, I'm trying to circle back on things that I wanted to see done. And we, I don't think we've really seen it. So, you know, hey, that's, that's the way life goes. And you know, the Clarity act will be a huge part of, part of how this story ends. And we'll be here to cover it for you. So we'll wrap up. No, sorry.
- [48:08]
Brian
Finish your thought and we'll move on. I was just saying really well said and I, I think another big takeaway that's happened with this administration is that, you know, the past administration that we were like literally like shutting crypto companies out of like starting businesses in the United States, you know, they're moving overseas and going elsewhere. And we've, we've definitely been way more favorable trying to keep these crypto companies of these builders and web three more localized in the United States and building and getting all the advantages of that. So that, that is something that goes under noticed. But Man, I, I loved the talk about the bitcoin strategic reserve. Like I was so hyped on that, that was getting so much press. And I do think once the market starts to come back a little bit stronger, we start to see more people flock in. We're gonna probably start hearing more and more about it or we're gonna hear more people clamoring that they want the United States to invest in bitcoin. So you know, we're in a bear market right now. So you know, it's bear market vibes. We're talking about quantum computing instead of strategic.
- [49:12]
TiVo
I remember covering it, I remember covering in the early, like January is, you know, oh, we're in a bear market now we're in a bear market. I'm like, bear markets, like nobody's talking about a bear market. And then most certainly, most certainly feels like a bear market these days, especially with the fog of war. But yeah, just, it makes, it makes the run up that much more sweeter. When you remember the down days, like I remember when we were doing the pods during like the FTX time and just, you know, kept building, kept building and it was, it's quite rewarding on the way up and you gotta, you know, plan your trades and trade your plans to make sure you're, you know, catching the upside and profit taking and understanding, you know, what's a long term investment versus what is a momentum money maker. And that's how we're going to end the show because Friday we're going to have Brian, we're gonna have Joe, we're gonna do a normal rundown and then of course talk about a little momentum moneymaker action on the back end. What's going on the meme coin streets? I know we got a wrecked update coming Friday and as everybody knows, if you're interested in joining the momentum money maker, whenever Brian's on, I put a dollar, try a while one dollar. Check the description below. But we're gonna get a full update from those guys on Friday. Brian, really appreciate you coming as we're banging against the top of the hour here. YouTube live. Not a bad turnout since we didn't promote it. Should be a little bit more active on Friday. I have it scheduled for Friday at 1:00pm I believe I put it in the community. 1:00pm on Friday, 1:00pm Eastern. If anybody wants to join us on YouTube, we'll be there. Brian, thanks so much for joining me and we're going to talk to Everybody Friday at 1. Thank you guys, but that's all for now. Goodbye everybody.
- [50:58]
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- [51:00]
Brian
Meal and Hunt Tricks Meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi?
- [51:07]
TiVo
It's not a battle.
- [51:08]
Advertisement/Commercial Voice
So glad the Saja Boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.
- [51:12]
Brian
It is an honor to share. No, it's our honor. It is our larger honor.
- [51:18]
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No, really, stop.
- [51:20]
Brian
You can really feel the respect in this battle.
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Pick a meal to pick a side
- [51:26]
TiVo
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