← CRYPTO 101
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- [00:00]
Host 1
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- [03:31]
Brendan
All right everyone, welcome Back to the Crypto 101 rundown presented by Gemini, your bridge to the future of money. And we hope everyone's having a good week so far. We always do these rain or shine, good or bad, bullish or bearish. We love coming in here and talking about what's going on in the markets. So from the fundamentals in the news to the technicals on the charts, we go and try to find everything that's going on and then we bring it to you and we package it all in under an hour. And the only thing that we ask is we say, hey, if you like this, consider hitting the like and subscribe button. And of course, if you want to see all the visuals and charts and videos and data and all that different stuff that we put on the screen, as well as me and TiVo's beautiful faces, make sure that you head over to the YouTube channel. It's the Crypto 101 podcast on YouTube and you can check out all of the visuals over there for our Apple podcasts, Spotify, Audible listeners and everyone else who are on all those other different sources. So it's good to have you. It is February 4, 2026 and the market continues to move downwards. Getting some pretty deep moves here today. We have Bitcoin down to around $74,000. Ether back to around 21, 2200. Solana back beneath 100 bucks. It's at $93 here. Playing with Fire. XRP back to a dollar and fifty. And the list goes on. You know, there's a few altcoins that are holding strength, but obviously, you know, we're going to get into the charts and we're going to talk all about the charts and the technicals as we always do. But from the fundamental side here, TiVo, lots of other stuff going on. How we feeling, man? Happy Tuesday.
- [05:16]
TiVo
Happy Tuesday, Wednesday.
- [05:18]
Host 2
Happy Wednesday. I've been out of it a little sick, but that's not going to keep us from bringing the rundown to the people again. Rain or shine, sick or healthy. And the markets are looking a little sick as we're going to cover here sharply. You saw the title. It's the crypto crash. What's going on? Can you tell us, can you show us in the charts? Obviously there's a ton of macro news going on, everything from politics to things outside of politics. And it's, it's, it's not a fun time. It's not always, you know, in the bull market and the, the prices are rocketing. We've had a lot of blast on these episodes and we told it like it is. And, you know, we're not going to hide from the fact that the market's down. We're going to try and cipher through this and do it together and continue to educate and I don't know, I guess safe to say in the sense that we're not going anywhere. We're going to ride this thing out and keep on, you know, keep on educating and keep on trying to bring the good word of crypto to the people. So we've got, we've gotta, we gotta do the technical analysis show again. It is what it is. But we do have some tidbits around the Clarity Act. There's some timelines coming out. Paul Atkins continues to push for the clarity act. Our 401ks next for Bitcoin and crypto. We have some news on Ripple. The XRP army will love that Metamask and Ando. And then we do have some Brighter days news at the end of the show, but you're gonna have to wait for that at the end. We have some, some, some news that will get everybody excited and maybe the savior of crypto is coming back. So we'll save that for the end of the show. But let's pull up the charts. We can Kick it around. And yeah, we got a good show, Good informative show for everybody.
- [06:55]
Brendan
That we do. Let's go ahead and take a look at bitcoin first over here, and then we'll move on from there. But with bitcoin, like we said back in the $74,000 area, what this means is, hey, we're pushing into the lowest point that bitcoin has been since pretty much November of 2024. It's, it's, it's deep water. And when we look at this off the high, you know, that means bitcoin is down now over 42% from the highs from where it currently is, it's around 40%, but peaked a trough around 42% for Bitcoin on this retracement. And so the big question is, like, why is this happening? And I think there's a couple of different things that we can look at. Obviously, there's the October 10th liquidation event. We've talked about that a lot. Largest liquidation event in history continues to have lingering effects. A lot of the bullish leverage was just wiped out of the market. And then on the dips that we have gotten, they continue to get wiped as they double down lower. And it's just set up for a bit of a cascade to the downside as continual liquidation events happen. The other big things is that you can look at the strength of the dollar rising again. You know, the, the current administration came out, and with the new Fed chairman, they're talking about new strategies and approaches based off his history and what he believes. There is different people. I believe Scott Besant, Secretary treasury of the US Talking about strengthening the dollar. And then that's not necessarily a good thing for bitcoin. Obviously there's different, like, geopolitical and macro fears that are going on. And so we kind of just put that all inside of one big case of maybe fud, Right. We use the term FUD F U D over here, which stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt. And when it comes to the crypto markets, you know, this is nothing new. You know, we've seen this kind of stuff happen. But as it continues on, you know, there's. There's the fear of all these different things that are going on for more of, like a macro geopolitical end. And then you also have the dollar strength and what's happening with the new Fed chair. And I would put that in a separate pool and say, hey, that's another thing that people are looking at and just a little bit maybe more nervous about, you know, hey, what's going to happen, how's this going to play out, what's going to go on? And so there's a couple of things that are working from like the fundamental side as to what's contributing to this. And I think that that's the big three. And if we were going to add a fourth, I think you could say, hey, the Clarity Act. Everyone was looking at this thing getting passed in January. I think at one point it had an 80 something percent chance. And then as we continued on, it didn't. Right. And then not only did it not get passed, but then there was conflict between the banks and then some of the US crypto native companies and they had disagreements. And so now, you know, they have two different visions of what it should go for and it's getting kicked down the road and you know, there's just fears. Right? You know, it's like, hey, you know, things aren't necessarily moving in that direction that we thought it was. You're seeing ETF outflows. And again, it just all feeds into this idea of fear, uncertainty and doubt, which we call fud. And so when we look at the charts here, we are coming back to a really important technical level. TiVo. And from a technical standpoint you can look at this and say, hey, previously this was bitcoin's all time highs over here back in 2024. We are up here, we hit this area multiple times, topped out at it and then eventually, you know, guess what? We retraced. We retraced pretty heavily. We retraced 35% to the downside, we rallied to new highs and then we came back and we tested this same all time high resistance level as a new level of support, which is what we are seeing in here. Well now we're coming back down to that exact same level. It was resistance in 2024, support in 2025, and now that we're coming back to it in 2026, it is still being used as support once again. And so we're kind of keeping a really, really close eye on this area because as we zoom in, there's kind of a little bit of risk to the downside saying, hey, if we do zoom in on this, the risk is that if we break here, there can be another decent move to the, to the downside. If we break here, there's a good chance Bitcoin goes to the mid 60,000 area. We're beneath the 200 day moving average, but we're beneath the 20 and 50 day moving averages. We're breaking down out of a massive consolidation and bear flag. And I think that the big thing that I'm looking at moving forward is saying if we look at the vrvp, which stands for the visible range volume profile, you can see on this guy that it essentially measures volume by price. Now usually you look at volume by time, you say, oh, well, how much volume was done in this candle? How much volume was done on this day, this week, this hour, this is different. And it says how much volume has happened at a specific price area as opposed to the time. So it's on the right hand side of our screen and it helps us work in these pockets. And what you tend to see is that the most consolidation and support or resistance happens in these pockets of volume. And so in between these pockets of volume, what you, what you can see is that we kind of move from one area to the next very fast. So you can see that there was one big volume point of control right around here, right in the 80s to 95 area, or 85 to 95, and that's where we consolidated. But when we start breaking out of this range, you start seeing an acceleration to the next volume point of control. And so, you know, we're at a technical support here. But if you're looking at the next big volume level, that's more so in the mid-60s, you know, 67 over here down to maybe, you know, I would say this says 65. I think it depends on how we graph it. But you get the picture of what I'm trying to say where it's saying, hey, you know, around this area, mid-60s, that's going to be the next big volume point of control. And if we break here, we could very easily kind of go down to the next one, which could be a little bit lower. So that's one of the technical things that I'm looking at on the charts. And just again, you know, looking at it, we've received a lot of questions and a lot of thoughts and saying, is it time to buy the dip? Is it time to sell everything, Is it time to short, long leverage, etc. And you know, first and foremost, we cannot give you financial advice. We are not financial advisors. That's not what we're here to do. You know, what we're here to do is to get all of the news, all of the fundamentals, technicals, do all the research for you, and then present it, and then you can make your own decisions. You know, what I can say that I'm doing here is that, you know, I want to be A little bit more safe. A lot of us like crypto, and we're in it in the first place because we like volatility, and we're here for a higher risk, higher reward scenario. And that's a big part of crypto. If you want low risk, you know, it's just not the area for you. You know, I'd say bitcoin is the lowest of the risk, but, you know, that's an inherent part of the crypto market. And it's always been like that. When we kind of look at the game plan, at least my game plan, you know, this is something where it's like, okay, I'm okay dollar cost averaging or dcaing into something like bitcoin, maybe some of the other large caps, if that. But, you know, we're at a stage right now where it's like, I want to be a little bit more risk off until we get more information. We're coming off of new yearly lows yesterday. And so anytime we're coming off of new yearly lows, I'm saying, okay, well, we probably need a little bit more data, a little bit more candles to kind of print, and then we can get a better idea of where we're going from there. So I'm looking at this. You know, we're kind of still on the edge of a cliff, clearly in a downtrend, clearly in some bearish market environment. And am I okay accumulating because Bitcoin's down 40% from its highs? I am. I believe in bitcoin long term. So if it's down 40%, I'm okay picking some up. Historically, when it's been down 40% or anywhere around that, it's been a pretty decent buy. The other thing I'd say is I don't want to use all of my dry powder here. I don't want to liquidate all of my cash reserves. I don't want to start invoking and going long with leverage. I think that it's. It has a time and a place, and I can get, you know, pretty aggressive with my trading style sometimes. But with where we're at right now, I want to make sure that, hey, if we have deeper moves down, if we have an extended bear market, I want to be able to factor that in. And for the higher risk things, I want to save the higher risk kind of all in stuff, you know, maybe mainstream altcoins, which are two to three times more volatile than bitcoin. I'm looking to save that until we get a much more clear picture. And right now the picture is not clear. Super clear. Right. Coming off of yearly lows yesterday on bitcoin, multi year lows for a lot of altcoins in the past couple of days. So until we start to see a little bit of consolidation, a little bit more data other than just today's candle, which hasn't even closed yet, I'm just waiting to see, okay, you know, what does this picture look like? I'd much rather miss a little bit of the bottom, but know that it's a much higher chance of a reversal and continue to keep trying to bottom ticket and catch the falling knife. And you know, it's an easy way to get burned. So that is one of the big things that I'm looking at over here on bitcoin. But you know, it's been a volatile time for everything, Thibault. I mean, it's not just bitcoin. We've seen the volatility over here in the silver market. You've seen it over here in the gold market as well. I mean, you can see it over here happening. And I mean, this is the NASDAQ chart. How disgusting is that? You know what, back and forth chop since October. Russell looking maybe a little bit better and stuff, but just pretty much chop or negativity all over the place here. And all of tech continues to get hit. And yeah, I mean, just a difficult time across the board, but you know, you're seeing some strength come back to the dollar and that's making people freak out. But a few cryptos have done well and I just wanted to highlight these. You know, one of the things that we did see is hyper liquid here rallying off of kind of the end of January, this thing being able to rally up about 68% and do quite well. You know, other ones like Pump, which we've talked about over here, trending well off the end of December, you know, still up 36%. One on a nice run, trying to hold a decent level of support, you know, syrup in recent months, doing okay, you know, not kind of back at the yearly lows like some other cryptos are also shout out to you TiVo and shout out to us. Looking at Canton, right? We've just did a podcast with the Canton team, ticker symbol cc. And then we also just did another podcast with their immune, who is like one of the big backers of the Canton ecosystem and they run a treasury for Canton and they do a bunch of other things. And that podcast is going to be going live in the coming weeks as well. And so, you know, again, we're trying to give everyone as much alpha as we can. We've talked to the syrup team on the podcast. We've talked to the Canton team now twice in the last couple of weeks, you know, with Hyperliquid and Pump. You know, we've talked about it on the shows or on the pods and other things. And we really are trying to do our best to make sure that we keep everyone in the loop, especially what. What is overperforming and holding pretty decent at a time where most things are bearish. But listen, that's what we're seeing. I just say, hey, you know, buckle your seatbelt, don't get too aggressive. Let's. Let's give this a second to digest the move down and let's wait to see what happens. But I'm okay doing some dollar cost averaging on bitcoin itself. And you know, there's clearly a lot of fundamental stuff happening and we'll get into those and I think people will like what they have to hear over on that front.
- [18:51]
Host 2
Yeah. And I think I'll pull up. We didn't put this on the sheet, but I will pull up the. We'll go through the fear green indexes real quick. We haven't looked at those in a while. As you can guess, extreme fear across the board. No matter which one you like. This one, the, the alternative one is the. Looks like we've been in fear for about a month. I know. Compare that to the. Or scroll down and then you can see. I mean we're clearly on the, the low end historically of this fear greed index. But I think if we switch over to the coin market cap one last month we were in neutral. And then I think I like this chart the best kind of the one year where it's the fear and greed kind of laid over across the bitcoin price. You can see we were down at a 10 with the Bitcoin price at 85k back in November coming off of that largest liquidation in crypto history. And then Today we're at 14 with price at 78. Still room to run down on. On the, the downside there all time this metric has never gotten below. Looks like it's never gotten below a 10 for the release. They're only giving us back. They didn't bring it back to 2022. So in the last three years here we have. I haven't gotten below a 10. My guess is we might go test that level for this, for this, you know, cycle here. So something to keep in mind, it's, it's, it is scary times, but there is the, the blood in the street is, is when you buy. That's what Warren Buffett always says. But yeah, that just feels, it does feel a little different in the sense of there's so many more chess pieces on the board. Like, it felt like back in the FTX days and we were here making content through those days. It felt it was very serious and it was very scary, but it did.
- [20:44]
Host 1
It was like it was a bad actor that flushed everything out.
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Host 2
Now it feels like, you know, hey, we don't, we never really got the answers to this October flash crash. Right. So that could be a bad actor. I saw Cathie Wood blaming Binance.
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Brendan
Specifically, I saw the OkX CEO also doing the same thing and going after Binance.
- [21:07]
Host 2
Yeah, let me see if I can, let me see if I can find that clip. Well, it's not that long clip. It was like a 30 second clip, but she was, yeah, she blamed Binance. So you still have some, you know, singularity actors that are causing events which, you know, people don't like.
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Host 1
It just.
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Host 2
There's so many more players on the board. And I guess that kind of rolls into our next subject with, with the Clarity act is we want all this, you know, the Clarity act and getting rules, and not rules, but regulation and legislation passed through because we think it'll make the space better. But at the same time it is, it is creating kind of a cloud of dragging the space into the political realm when, you know, we're not going to deep dive into every problem of the world today. But anybody who turns on the news or reads the newspaper for even just a minute can, can kind of agree that the world's just in an interesting place right now and there's just so much news on a macro level, it's really hard to keep track of. And it kind of feels like bitcoin and crypto are getting drawn, drawn into that volatility as well. But we'll start. Okay, we'll, we'll switch. Since we brought the Clarity Act. I'll bring. Just talking to Brendan number three. We'll move after the Clarity Act. So what's going on with the Clarity Act? Let's give everybody an update. I'm starting to see some, some whispers online at least. And that's the only, the best I can do is there's some reports of, you know, Democrats and Republicans refers to as the Republicans really wanting it obviously because they have the, the White House and the administration. Administration. But The Democrats are starting to, it seems like at least reconvene to talk about the crypto market structure. I saw that kind of a fact of a matter that the Dems. One is that they kind of want to put in some stops, some placeholders where, you know, maybe the President's family or just elected officials in general can't get too involved into the space. And then I think, you know, obviously the Trump family will have some pushback on that with World liberty. Fine, whatnot. But at least I guess the conversation's going and growing. And this is something that the administration, we kind of brought this up on the show before. The administration, I don't want to say needs it, but they need a win here.
- [23:25]
Host 1
I think, I think we've always kind.
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Host 2
Of been, we always leaned pro crypto on this show. Clearly that's a bias that I think we can all put our hand up and say over the last couple years in political cycles we've been pro crypto, but this, I think the administration is losing its pro crypto stance a little bit, specifically with the price action. You know, you said you're going to do this, you said you're going to do the bitcoin reserve. You said you're going to pass legislation. It's like, okay, you've kind of done a little bit of what you said, but you haven't brought it to the finish line. And then if you, if you talk about price action, I mean, the, the, the extreme fear, the streets are in despair. So if, if this is, if this is a cohort of people that you want to tap on, it's February and the midterms are in November. If this is a, if you want to be holding rallies, if you want to go to the crypto conferences this summer and go rally for, you know, senators and Congress people for the midterm elections, you gotta, you gotta get some action going because this cohort is going to completely tune you out if you don't. So I think that's why it's important to see the Democrats starting to talk about this type of stuff. Obviously the Republicans are interested and we've kind of covered the whole back and.
- [24:37]
Host 1
Forth with Coinbase and the banks, and.
- [24:38]
Host 2
There'S a lot of stakeholders that want their say. So again, there's, there's, there's no finality of what this bill will look like and it's going to take a lot of time. And I do have a timeline clip here. Brendan, sorry, I went on a little bit of a rant, but leading into this of what could be the timeline. Here's a clip of Patrick McHenry kind of laying out a timeline for you. So let's see what he says and then I'd love your thoughts.
- [25:04]
Patrick McHenry
I think we not only get a market structure bill before the midterms, I think we get a market structure bill before Memorial Day, and I think the Senate will act before Easter. I think it comes together, there's a major emphasis on this. What we saw. You heard from Patrick Witt about the group he brought to together on yield crypto came in and said, look, we want to negotiate. We actually want a reasonable compromise here, a reasonable approach to yield. And the bank sat there and listened and offered nothing. Well, that's not going to last long in Washington if the, the group that is holding it up, the banking industry, is unwilling to negotiate on something that has to be resolved to unlock market structure. I think.
- [25:48]
Host 2
So I toss it off to you. Brandon, any thoughts?
- [25:51]
Brendan
Yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's. He's makes a good point. I mean, it seems a little bit like if they're unwilling to negotiate at all with the people who have been running the industry the entire time and seems a little bit unreasonable and they're kind of shooting themselves in the foot. I saw a, I saw talk that Jamie Dimon went up to Brian Armstrong from Coinbase, right, CEO of JP Morgan, going up to the CEO of Coinbase at Davos and saying like, what did he say? I think he went up to him and said, you're full of shit or something like that. And that was the beef and drama. And I think that he makes a good point in that video. And it's like the banks need to compromise some here. And that's just the way it is. They're the ones coming into this industry and they're saying everyone else needs to compromise except for us. That doesn't make any sense. And I. So I think that there's, there's room for both sides to compromise some. But what do you have? Oh, yeah, this is, this is it. Jamie Dimon to Brian Armstrong. I mean, yeah, this is like, I don't know, it gets me a little bit frustrated. The other thing I'd say about the first slide that we had up right before the video is that, you know, I think everyone can agree that having more crypto structure is good. And I think the more. I think also everyone should be okay with the idea of limiting politicians and how they trade anything, right? You look at like the stock market and you have Nancy Pelosi beating every single hedge fund every year. And it's like these ridiculous numbers. And you see it on both sides, right, left or right, doesn't matter. They all do it. Right. So it's not a political thing. Literally, all of them do it. I think everyone's okay having that. But again, if we're going to do it in crypto, let's do it in the stock market, too. Like, let's do it everywhere. Because I think that's something that most people find frustrating when it comes to the actual market structure bill and all this stuff, you know, hey, he's saying by Memorial day, that is May 25th of this year. So if we can get market structure bills passed by May 25, I think he's right. It unlocks a lot of liquidity. It unlocks a lot of potential. There's a lot of stuff that can happen there, and it's a matter of time until we do get these passed. Right. And I think that's what a lot of people are waiting on. When are we going to get the market structure stuff passed? When are we going to get the Clarity act passed? When are we going to get all of this going? Because there's so much potential for what happens afterwards, and that seems to be what people are hung up on at the moment.
- [28:28]
Host 2
Yeah. And I actually, I'm glad you brought up the Jamie Dimon versus Brian Armstrong. Jamie Dimon, calling him full of shit is. I think that that summarizes kind of where this market structure bill is. Right. The banks don't want anything to change. These banks are, well, you know, making you listen to an earnings call for JP Morgan.
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Host 1
It's record profits, record revenue, record this.
- [28:50]
Host 2
Record that, record stock price. Why would they want anything to change? So that, that's. You got to think through that. And then obviously, you know, whether it's, you know, Coinbase or Robinhood or anybody who's new on the block, you know, very profitable, very successful companies in the eyes of the average person. But they are the new kids on the block, and that's a fact. Yeah. So I thought it was an interesting take here from McHenry. It's like, you know, hey, the imbalance in Washington won't last if legislation's going to move. The banks need to come to the table. And so, you know, the administration kind of has to make a choice. Right. It's like, hey, you know, we've taken the lobbying from all these banks over this year, but also we've. We've taken tons of money from, you know, the Coinbases and the Robin Hoods. And how many times have we seen Brian Armstrong, you know, doing his press hits from the rotunda of the, the Senate? Right. And how many times has Vlad been in Washington, D.C. most recently for the quote unquote, Trump accounts, which is, we've talked about that on this show, is how, you know, every newborn child is going to be gifted a thousand dollars of, you know, S&P 500. You know, whether it's a mutual fund or ETF, I'm not quite sure, but it's $1,000 invested in the S&P 500 via some format. And I think the consensus is that Robinhood might be the best platform for that to host these Trump accounts. So there's a lot going on in Washington for the crypto leaders, but the.
- [30:17]
Host 1
Banks have been there forever.
- [30:18]
Host 2
So it's like it's a little bit of a push and shove. There's a dance that's going on and if there's any movement to be done, it has to be on the part of the bank. So it's an interesting, it's an interesting storyline that's going to keep unfolding.
- [30:33]
Brendan
Yeah.
- [30:33]
Host 1
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Host 2
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Brendan
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Host 2
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Brendan
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- [31:54]
Brendan
It done, I would agree. Again, it's the banks coming into a new industry. It's like you said, they come out and they're like, oh, record profits. Record this, record that. And then they're coming into a new industry that's not their own and expecting everything to conform to them, when that's just not always necessarily the way that it works, or at least the way that it should work. You know, with them coming in here and being like, we set all the rules, it's like, okay, well, number one, you probably don't know what's best. Like, let's listen to the people who are the actual experts on the matter and have been doing it for a decade plus, and let's hear out what they have to say. And to not be willing to negotiate it at all, it's just, I don't know, I don't think it's the way it works, from what I understand is that, you know, even right now, they're not super serious about it. I was talking to Bryce about this, and he was basically saying that the word on the street is that they're not even sending in, like, the big dogs like the. The Presidents and the CEOs and the top executives aren't even the ones kind of going to get this resolved. So they're kind of just like, whatever, which is frustrating, right? You wish that there, if that is true, you'd wish that they would show a little bit more urgency and sincerity while you're seeing that from more of the crypto native side. So, I don't know. Time will tell. You made a good point earlier. And I want to go back to this because I know we want to talk about what's happening with Paul Atkins and his views on the Clarity act. And we'll get into that in just a second. But you make a good point that, like, we're heading in the midterms here. And this is something I was literally just talking to a couple of my buddies about, who are, you know, in the finance space as well. And the big thing that we discussed is, hey, we're going into midterms. Obviously, you know, it's going to be a political season around that. And one of the big campaign points and promises was, let's, you know, make the crypto industry and push it forward and let's do good by it and all these things. And when you look at how much it's down since, you know, a new administration took office, obviously from the fundamental end, I would say a lot of positive stuff has happened. But when you look at the actual performance, that's still going to leave a sour taste in someone's mouth. You can say, hey, we've done this and this and this and that. But at the end of the day, if people's money is cut in half with a lot of these things, they're going to be frustrated. So I think you made a good point of like something. There should be some level of urgency to say, hey, this stuff needs to get moving, it needs to happen. The market needs to start recovering some. Otherwise you're going to have frustration from those losses bleed in and probably affect some of the midterm results. You know, obviously there's other things that are probably, you know, arguably more important than what the crypto market is doing, depending on how big of a crypto fan you are. But I think it's a, it's a good point. You know, I think that that should act as some sort of like urgent push to say, hey, let's get this thing back on its feet. Gold's hit new all time highs. Silver's hit new all time highs. The stock market's coming off all time highs. The M2 money supply is hit new all time highs. And then you look at the crypto market and it's down, you know, what, 40, 50, 60 plus percent. And so I hope that that acts, that's kind of where my brain's at. I hope that that acts as a push to say, hey, let's get this stuff done and let's get it done fairly fast.
- [35:16]
Host 2
So yeah, I'm pulling up something, bringing up something random here but like, you know, BlackRock, Fidelity and JP Morgan are building tokenized money market funds on Ethereum. So there's like a case if it was a different, if there was a different position by the banks of like, oh well, you know, all crypto rails are bad and this technology is crap and we shouldn't use it. That's one stance, but that's not the stance. It's like they're clearly using it. There's clearly efficiency of this new era of technology that brings about better banking and better banking in their mind means more profits for them. But kind of, you know, the rally of the, you know, the Brian Armstrongs and the Vlads is, you know, Vlad's named his company Robin Hood. Right. Robin Hood of giving back to the, the people type of thing. And again, these people are making, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions. So, you know, don't cry for them by any means, but they are trying to at least give a new look of it. And I think that's the rally cry of the average crypto investor. And somebody that gets excited, that wants.
- [36:21]
Host 1
To go to ETH Denver, wants to.
- [36:22]
Host 2
Go to consensus or wants to listen to this podcast is they're just looking for a little bit of change. And you know, these, these, these products could, could give back, you know, maybe some percentage or a couple basis points or give you money markets where you can store your bank account, your funds and get a little bit of yield. Because we've talked about on this program is like, you know, hey, if you have your standard bank account at your local bank, like you have money sitting there and it's not doing anything for you, but that bank can go out and lend it 10 times over, they'll lend it back to you for an auto loan, they'll lend it back to you for a mortgage, and they're going to collect, you know, 6% on it. And you're sitting there, you know, just struggling to get by. So it kind of is just the storyline of, of is this a good technology? Is this something that's going to be used? Clearly the answer is yes. And so the legislation around it is super important. And the banks are fighting to keep and grow their profits, which is what they've always done. And it'll be interesting to, to see here. I do have a clip of Paul Atkins, kind of like you mentioned, of his take. So here was, this was from last week. I'm not sure exactly what event this was, but let's, let's tune in here for a minute and hear what Paul has to say.
- [37:34]
Paul Atkins
The SEC and likewise at the CFTC to make accommodations. And you know, Congress has given us broad exemptive authority. And so, you know, we can use it and we should use it where appropriate. And then so, you know, we'll see what, what Congress comes up with. But I do feel very strongly that, you know, notwithstanding what we do on the rulemaking side, you know, it would be, it's really crucial for Congress at this moment in time to step forward and come up with rules that, you know, legislation that can guide us and that can undergird our efforts because, you know, people come and go and commissions come and go and, you know, the last thing I'd like to see is to have you know, something happen in the future that kind of upends a lot of the things that we will have put into place that people then rely on. And then, you know, the prospect of having rug pulled out from under them is not an attractive, you know, prospect. So anyway, so that's what's important about legislation.
- [38:43]
Host 2
So Congress call to Congress, let legislation guide us. And then I do have another clip from Paul specifically talking about crypto and 401ks which we've talked about on the program before. It seemed like it had a hot lead on maybe going through and then it kind of tapered off. So I haven't heard anything about this for a while, but this was on cnbc, so let's take a listen.
- [39:03]
TiVo
How do you think about crypto versus any other kind of investment for the average American family out there?
- [39:11]
Andrew
Well, Andrew, a lot of people are already exposed to crypto and other sorts of assets like that through their pension funds and because they're a managed by professional managers in those pension funds. So we're Talking about the 401ks now where we have to do things with respect to the different markets very carefully. We're focused right now on private securities, private equity funds and things like that where again, a lot of people are already exposed to those in their managed pension funds. And so we're looking to allow people to have access to Those through their 401k through the, you know, professional management of the what is allowed into their funds, their trustees that are looking after those funds. But I think the time is right ripe to, to go forward with that.
- [40:10]
Host 2
So as you can see from the price action that was at least a couple weeks ago, but the sentiment stays true, is like there is a lot of legislation going forth.
- [40:20]
Host 1
I think it'll be a positive catalyst.
- [40:22]
Host 2
It just, it feels like it's a very, very cloudy, it's just a foggy New England morning out there when it comes to where this space is going, when it comes to this Clarity Act. And there was a lot of thought put into, you know, getting the market structure bill and getting 401ks and the Bitcoin strategic reserve. And again the election had a lot of momentum behind it. The price followed that momentum into and past the election. We got to our all time highs and it definitely feels like things have stalled in the progress point for crypto. And while things have stalled, the macro environment has flipped in regards to hey, are we going into this country and taking over? Is Iran going to attack? And all the stuff that you've seen on the headlines that we don't need to go into destabilizes markets. And, you know, I think what we can. I'll save it for the next topic of some interesting bitcoin takes, but your final thought on legislation piece, Brendan?
- [41:23]
Brendan
Yeah, I mean, clearly it's wanted. I think it's needed. It's probably just a matter of time until we see it. The big hope of everyone that's in crypto right now is how fast can we get it? That is everyone's hope, you know, can we get this as fast as possible? Because it is important. And so that's all that I'd say is, you know, hey, let's. Let's try to get this thing done as fast as possible. And I think the sooner that we get it, the sooner that the market can turn around and start getting just a handful of bullish catalysts that just aren't possible yet. And also gives people more security, it gives the institutions more security. It gives a clear line of what can and can't happen and how we can do things and operate. And so my hope here is that we get this done as soon as possible. And so time will tell, but that's what I'm looking out for.
- [42:12]
Host 2
Yep, great. Final point. Kind of transition to some bitcoin thesis. So I'm going to play a clip from Stephen McClurg, who is the CEO of Canary Canary Capital. And we've had him both on the summits, we've had him on the podcast, and I'll look to get him back because he had an interesting take and a call for this bear market, one of the first ones that I saw online. So let's hear him talk about this is back in November, kind of a take of why he saw bitcoin price maybe heading to the downside. And then we can discuss on the.
- [42:50]
TiVo
Theme of bitcoin and why that price has been down. There's really been three factors. One of them has been old wallets, whales that are selling. I know several people that bought bitcoin at a dollar and said, well, when it hits 100,000, I'm out. You know, some wild number. Well, we're there and they're selling. The other thing to keep in mind is the basis trade, which has been extremely important in the etf, Bitcoin. And that's been unwinding because the basic trade has collapsed and now they're moving into things like, you know, XRP, Solana, Hedera, or some of the areas where there's ETFs and there's really good Basis trades. And then the final thing is miners. Miners are whales. And there's a big debate over the four year cycle right now. And that four year cycle really is the miners beginning to sell to pay their bills. And what's happened this last year that's made that cycle be a little bit off is that miners have had to sell or early due to AI causing energy prices to go up for data centers. So that means that the small to medium sized bitcoin miners have to sell earlier than they previous than they have in previous circle cycles in order to actually pay their bills and pay their energy bills.
- [44:00]
Host 2
So I thought that was really interesting call and then I'm pulling up his, his tweet next here. He kind of refreshed this. He wanted to be wrong, but he did, he kind of did call it back Again. That clip was end of no, end of November. And then this tweet was that he's referencing here was the beginning of December. So interesting kind of as we headed into the year there was two takes. He was on the other side of this, of the four year cycle's dead. The four year cycle's dead. We're going, you know, the keep going the, the rah rah into the end of the year. And then all of a sudden now we're in, we're in a bear market. So it was again, the headlines are, are a part of what you need to do to get all your thoughts and education in, to make your decisions along with your technical analysis and a number of other things. But I thought Stephen kind of has been right on and I really think that AI, the AI and the mining thing I really found interesting. It was something that I've never really thought of before until he mentioned it.
- [45:03]
Brendan
Yeah. And he mentions right there, he says my view is that bitcoin is further to fall probably 60 to 65K. And that's what we were kind of saying earlier at the start of the episode, you know, I guess conveniently with this point is that there's a possibility. Right. And there's never a certainty, but there's a real possibility that you see bitcoin go back to the mid $60,000 area. And he's talking about it from more probably the fundamentals and probably some technicals. We were talking about it just from the technicals. It still remains a possibility on the table. So you know, keep that in the back of your mind. We hope it's not true. We hope it doesn't. You know, maybe you do because you want to do some buying but yeah.
- [45:42]
Host 1
You know, I just find the AI.
- [45:44]
Host 2
The AI thing of, of making the prices for selling Bitcoin is interesting because if you relate it to something in the, the traditional markets. I'm pulling up a, just a quick Google chart of the tech software sector ETF. So the past year it's down 20% but in the last month alone it's down 20%. I thought it kind of tracked in the last year of like obviously everything crashed into the tariffs of last year and then rebounded. So did bitcoin. But in the last month alone for.
- [46:14]
Host 1
An ET is an etf, Brendan.
- [46:16]
Host 2
This isn't a stock, this isn't crypto, this is an ETF. ETFs are supposed to be much, much less volatile. So if you dive into the makeup of what's in this etf, there's all these software stocks that are just crashing so hard. And they're crashing so hard because the.
- [46:32]
Host 1
Narrative right now is that AI is.
- [46:34]
Host 2
Going to take out these software stocks. It's going to be so much easier to create different apps. So your, you know, your sales forces of the world. I'm just trying to pull some out of my head and you know the Microsoft is caught up in this like a 20% downturn, one of the top, you know, market cap stocks in the world. So it kind of, it's different obviously it's not the same but it is.
- [46:55]
Host 1
A similar thought process of this AI.
- [46:57]
Host 2
Disruption that you know, nobody really saw coming back in, you know, 21, even 22 FTX, you know, that, that, that bear market of, for tech stocks as well. I didn't really hear anybody, you know, that that AI narrative didn't really start until 23 into 24 I think which was, you know, the catalyst to get us to these all time highs for the stock market. But I, I thought, I thought the comparison to software was just interesting because there's a ton of volatility going on over.
- [47:28]
Brendan
Yeah, spot on man. Well, let's, let's look at this XRP news, this ripple news because you know, the XRP army, they either love us or they hate us over here. It depends on the day, right? Depends on the title. We report all the news, good and bad. So on the bad news days, they hate us. On the good ones, they love us. It's a good news day. So it's time for all of you XRP fans to love us. It's time for you to show your support. XRP here adding Hyperliquid to its prime brokerage platform and its first DeFi integration. This is pretty cool. I mean, Hyper Liquid's taken over and we, we talked, I think what, a week or so ago or we talked. At some point they did a billion dollars in trading volume on silver alone in a single day, which was nuts. And they just continue to be used. They continued. I mean they just dominate market share and stuff. They are a really good platform. Platform. I will be interested to see how this works because they're still not allowed in the United States legally. Maybe they have a workaround. Maybe they remove the things that aren't allowed. Maybe it's only for people outside the United States. You know, I'm not sure. But this is a pretty cool thing and I would actually say it's a really good move. I bet you, you know, a lot of other major exchanges, people would love to see this on them, right? People would love to see a Hyper Liquid direct to integration on a lot of the other big exchanges. And people would enjoy it. You've seen direct, direct kind of feeds from things like Jupiter into Coinbase where they're saying, hey, we'll let you trade anything that you want on Solana on Coinbase now through a Jupiter Dex integration or aggregator integration. We've seen it with Aerodrome saying, hey, you can trade any token on base through Aerodrome. I think a lot of people would love to see this kind of integration with a lot of the other ones. And so Ripple's doing it here again. I like this. I'm a fan of this. I think it's a smart move. I like Hyper Liquid and I think it makes sense as well. Just saying, hey, let's kind of bridge the decentralized side and the centralized side of the crypto industry. Let's bridge it together. And then this allows everyone to kind of do what they want. So I'm a fan of this. I think it's a really good move and it was getting me thinking. They mention is his name. It's talked about somewhere in here, but the head of Ripple prime, you know, that might even be a potentially. I know we, we might not have a connection, but that might be a good podcast. Guess is to get someone from over there on to talk about what they're doing and stuff because I think it's a cool move. So time will tell, but.
- [50:13]
Host 2
And then, yeah, like we showed earlier, Michael Higgins. All right, I'll try and I'll try and find, reach out, see if we can get somebody on. But kind of to your point of the charts was Hyper Liquid is, you know, holding up well when Everything else is falling off a cliff. So interesting project, doing some good things and then transitioning again to more people that continue to build. So Ondo Partners with Metamask.
- [50:42]
Brendan
That they did. Sorry, I have a smile on my face. Inverted Investing. It is good to see you, my friend.
- [50:49]
Host 2
Oh, he's back.
- [50:51]
Host 1
He's back.
- [50:51]
Host 2
Yeah, right. Friend of the program. Invert Investing was busy shorting this trash. Now it's time. Yeah, but okay, we'll give you that. Invert Investing is a commenter on the show. He's been around for a couple years, but if I'm not mistaken for investing, you were, you were, you know, you were bearish and shorting at 60k, 70k, 80k, 90k, 100k, 110, 120, 130. So you know, let's, let's be honest here. We missed you. We're glad you're back. But I wouldn't say that you called a top when you were, you know, making nasty comments in the 75k range. So we're back to where we were when you basically left the show. We haven't heard from you in months, brother. But we, we are glad you back. All, all jokes aside, we, we love all our listeners, Bears and bulls. It's what makes a market. So shout out to Inverted Investing.
- [51:44]
Brendan
Yeah, no, it is, you know, we're glad to have you back. And that's the thing is like you.
- [51:48]
Host 2
Trade there it is honesty. He said, he said. Very true. I got stopped out and I took the hit. There it is. That's what all we want.
- [51:54]
TiVo
We want honesty and we all do.
- [51:57]
Brendan
We all do, right? We all, we have all taken the hit. So we're not on here to say we're always right and we never take hits. You know, it goes both ways. You know, we love seeing you in here. Inverted investor, obviously we banter a little bit back and forth and sometimes we're bullish and you're bearish and vice versa. But no, it's good to have you and if you are making money off the short here, all the power to you, man. Great trade. But what we do hope is that we hope that we, that you stick around when we are ripping next time and we hope that you're profiting off of the all time highs the next time around. But no, glad to see that you're doing well on a short and it's good to have you back. TiVo, to your point, you know, talking about this Metamask Ondo partnership, Hondo is interesting, man, because they have been everywhere Everywhere you saw them in the background of a couple of those clips. They've been sponsors, they've been doing partnerships and connections and updates and upgrades and everything. However, the price action on their token has been brutal. And it all comes down to tokenomics. They truly are one of the best groups at what they do when it comes to tokenization and real world assets and all of that. They are one of the best groups at what they do when it comes to that. The issue comes and people are always like, well, if they're doing all this and they're so good at it, what about their tokenomics? Why are they suffering? Well, the tokenomic structures, it's rough. When you look at their unlocks and how much they've inflated from different unlocks and those kind of events, it's a lot. I believe. I don't have the number right in front of me, but I believe that last year there was an unlock that was like almost what it was like a, somewhere like a 30 to 40, 50% unlock in the supply. Just huge inflation events. And so that's something that's been plaguing them down. But they're back in here again. From a fundamental standpoint, they're doing a lot of good things and I think that they are one of the best top of the, you know, top of the list groups when it comes to tokenization. But Metamask partnering with Ondo to offer tokenized US stocks, ETFs and commodities. What does this mean? Well, this means that now from your Metamask, you are going to be able to trade things like US stocks, ETFs and commodities from your Metamask account thanks to Ondo. That's a cool feature. That is a cool feature. Again, we continue to see the worlds of the decentralized side and the centralized side kind of start bleeding together. We saw it happening with exchanges, we're seeing it happen with wallets. And you're, you're going to continue to see this where they look more and more similar and you're able to trade more similar products. And from a traditional financial standpoint, I think they're going to fall into this pool as well, you know, you know, with a lot of these old brokerages, oh, you could just trade stocks on them. I think that moving forward you're going to start seeing all assets be traded everywhere. And so that'll probably make everything a little bit more competitive. But really cool Update here from MetaMask.
- [55:02]
Host 2
Yeah, anything that you find cool, it's worth looking into in my mind, my friend. So very good breakdown there. Something that we will continue. But one more in the chat, Ziggy. Ziggy always said he finally caught a live. So Ziggy, thanks for joining us live. Really appreciate it. Really appreciate everybody. If anybody's new, you know, bottom right, hit or hit our logo, give us a sub. And if you can give the video a thumbs up, it helps us grow the channel and get new people. Bad news for inverted investing though. Brendan, I really bad news. If you're inverted investing, it is, you know, hold your breath here. Inverted investing because, brother, the McRib is coming back. And as we've sold on this show and the McRib comes back, historically the price action of bitcoin has increased. We'll pull up the chart here. Here's a couple notions. So we're going to be looking in 2026 in April. Apparently the McRib's coming back. We'll be on the lookout for it. Maybe it is the only thing that can save us. Brendan. I don't know. The price action has been so bad. So just a fun little tidbit there for the people that you know, number one, if you're a McRib fan, congratulations. And hopefully for the bitcoiners, we can turn this ship around with some good legislation news, some and some good fundamentals. And then of course, the McRib.
- [56:22]
Brendan
Yeah. I was going through X this morning and I was like, what catalysts are there? What's going on? And I kid you not, this is the first post that I come across Talking about the McRib coming back and how it's bullish for bitcoin. And I was like, oh my. Well, the history kind of speaks for itself going back to 2020 and the McRib is the catalyst. So don't fade the McRib long. The McRib. That's what it says. This is going to be one of those things. Thibaut. Maybe we even plot this on the chart. We've had, what was it we had the crypto bagel, we had the Bryce Paul call and we had the Solana ad. And now it might be time for the McRib. The McRib bottom. I hope it happens. If it does, I will be going and getting McRib. I don't think I've ever had one ever. If we bottom out here, I will have to get a McRib. I might even have to refrigerate it and eat it on a rundown. If we skyrocket to all time highs from here. But will the McRib fail us. That's the ultimate question that we want to leave everyone with today.
- [57:27]
Host 2
You let us know in the McRib. I'd have to go back and find the tweet, but I think the McRib came back in spring, summer, maybe. I, I don't want to say it was the exact April low, but there was a soft roll out of the McRib at some point between, like, May and June. And we went all the way up to, you know, 122. So, you know, nice little 1520 rip since the last time it came back. So it is, again, all jokes aside, it is a funny metric to throw in there, but hey, you know, if the clock, if it's not broken, don't fix it. So it's something that we'll. We'll keep. We'll keep tabs on. That was. It was a fun live. We went way longer than I thought. It was a, you know, tough, tough price action day. But, guys, we don't, we don't hide. We're here. We're here for you. We're here for the community. We appreciate everybody that tuned into the live and all the listeners, you know, out there. If you're struggling and, and looking at your bags and kind of downtrodden, you know, there will be. There will be brighter days. And we'll be here with you through that to bring you all the news, to bring you all the developments, you know, in the crypto space. We really appreciate everybody listening. We'll be back later this week. I'm going to try and get Brian on maybe, maybe Friday or something. So we'll put out another episode this week, and we have tons of more awesome interviews of people building in the space. Like Brendan said, a lot of bullish stuff going on that we're doing and interviewing and learning, and we're going to bring that all to you. So appreciate everybody tuning in. Hope you have a great rest of your day and we'll talk to you next time. But that's all for now.
- [58:54]
Brendan
Bye.
- [58:55]
Host 2
Bye, everybody.