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Brendan
Foreign welcome back, everyone, to the crypto market rundown, where we talk about everything that's going on in the great world of cryptocurrency, from the fundamentals in the news to the technicals on the charts. We spend the time doing hours of research so that you all don't have to. And here we are once again coming off what I would call another Black Swan event. And it feels like every single week we come back, we say, man, what a, what a crazy way to kick things off this week. What a, what a crazy environment for crypto that we come back to. And we are fully continuing with that theme, with what we saw over the weekend with all of this tariff news. So we're going to talk about not only why the crypto market kind of crashed, we're going to talk about what we can expect moving forward. We're already seeing this conflict get resolved. And you know, I saw bitcoin even yesterday, was pushing back up above $102,000, as many altcoins even recovered 30, 40, 50% to the upside, marking one of the greatest buy the dip opportunities that we've seen in a really long time. So we're going to talk about what happened, we're going to talk about what we think kind of moving forward into the remainder of this year. We're also going to talk about some big events that we have coming up this week. We have David Sachs, the new crypto czar, hosting an event later today, February 4th. So we're going to be covering that and what's going to be going on there? We also have Trump announcing a sovereign wealth fund. And, you know, we got a little bit of alpha about the guy that's going to be in charge of this thing in a hint or a sneak peek for everyone, he's very, very pro crypto. So we got a really cool little clip that we want to show all of you on that front. We have the ETFs hitting record levels of daily trading volume, and of course, we survived the largest crypto liquidation event in history. So if you're not excited, if you're not hyped up for today's episode, you better grab your coffee, you better put that phone on do not disturb, because we got a really, really fun episode in store for all of you. Isn't that right, T Val?
TiVo
Yeah, man. And a special episode in the sense that the largest liquidation in history, like you said, we're going to cover that. And that is why for our regular listeners and the people that come every week, for both the Interviews and the rundown, you'll notice a little switch. So because this was such a large event and there's so much going on inside the community for us, we had to switch some things around. So this rundown is going out today. If you notice that there wasn't a interview posted this morning, no worries, we're moving that to Thursday. It's going to be Chris Perkins from Coin Fund. You know, that's going to be an awesome listen to, to get the insight of, you know, some more big time money managers in the space and how they're trading the markets here in 2025. But because this is such a timely thing and this market is just again, breakneck speed, we've been talking about it with, you know, deep seek AI last week up into the tariffs and the trade wars into Sunday night and then a reversal on Monday. It's, it's something that, you know, recording this, I don't want to hold it because I don't want something to happen today or tomorrow and it gets stale. So if you're waiting for that normal interview, no worries, it'll be coming out Thursday morning. And we're here today to cover the breaking news as soon as we could of this wild, insane, record breaking price action. And I know that's what you're going to dive into first. Let's get into it.
Brendan
Yeah, I mean, let's talk about this, this crypto crash that we just had, right? Because it was pretty nasty. Not so much for bitcoin, but especially for altcoins. That's what's really, really got hit here. And so before we get into the numbers and the charts and all that, let's just briefly talk about what happened. Because it feels like every weekend for the past, you know, what, four or five weeks, it's just been fomc, you know, news and data. We've had the Fed, we've had the AI crash, we've had, you know, you name it, all sorts of China FUD and the list goes on. And now we have trade wars and tariffs and that was what really caused this recent crash over the weekend. And you know, we've talked about this a little bit before but because this went into effect and really became popular over the weekend, well, all the traditional markets are closed, right? You look at the indices, the stock market, all that stuff, what people would usually use to react to this news because it is traditional in nature, right. There was nothing bad that necessarily happened to crypto. This wasn't like, oh, something bad happened to bitcoin. The Reserve isn't on anymore. We are having bad regulatory news instead of the good that we were expecting. The crypto people are getting kicked out of office. Ethereum went offline like it's nothing to do with any of that. It's all related to the TRADFI news that we've continued to see. Because what we've had over the last couple of months is this growing correlation between the crypto markets and the US TradFi markets. And for anyone out there who's listening, TRADFI stands for traditional finance. And so because we've seen this, this growing correlation between the US risk markets and the crypto markets when the tariff news got announced over the weekend. You know, tariffs are historically a negative short term catalyst and then they end up turning into a much more positive long term catalyst. So a little bit of short term pain for long term gain. Right? And so when the tariffs got announced and they were going through, and then when China and Mexico and Canada said, hey, we don't like these tariffs, we're going to, we're going to counter this, we're going to fight back, we're going to give tariffs of our own, then there became the fears of a trade war and that this could continue to escalate and escalate in which both parties would have short term pain. And so the initial reaction there from risk on investors were, hey, we're going to kind of pull back from the market. We're going to step away from risk here because we're afraid of how this can escalate. Again, it's historically a short term negative thing. So you saw risk on investors across the board just stepping away from the market, taking profits. We saw the stock market gap down several percent. We saw crypto pull back even more than that. And I think it's important to understand that when we ask ourselves, you know, why was crypto effective from something like this? Again, really nothing to do with crypto in the first place. Well, that's because again, a lot of this escalated over the weekend. And with the stock market close and indices closed and all that, the only way that people could react, the only way that they could get exposure is by trading a 247 decentralized market like the crypto one. And so that's why we started to see bitcoin sell off. That's why we started to see this other stuff sell off, because that was the only way that people could get exposure to the downside at a time where everything else was closed. So that's point number one. Right? Point Number one here is, hey, you know, all these risk investors were stepping back and the only way to really do that was through crypto. And you know, even if, if, if it was just during a weekday, the same risk, the same risk on investors would have stepped back anyway. So that's point number one, right? Tariffs and kind of the short term pain that that creates for any kind of risk asset. The second thing here is that when we look at the effects that these tariffs had, they directly boosted the strength of the dollar. We saw the DXY going up to near multi year highs. We saw the strength against the Mexican peso in the US or not the US and the Canadian dollar. You know, the US dollar was growing in strength as opposed to both of those. And that was just really just boosting the US dollar strength as a whole. Which is important to understand because when we look at the strength of the dollar and how that correlates to bitcoin and crypto's performance, they're almost always inversely related. You can go Back to the 2017 cycle where Bitcoin hit 20K, we saw the DXY tanking. You can go to the subsequent bear market during 2018 and 19 where the US dollar, or excuse me, when crypto fell all the way down to 3k from 20k, the DXY exploded, which is the US Dollar Currency Index. Then you go to the 2021 rally, the DXY crashed, Bitcoin went up to new all time highs. We have the bear market that we just saw where bitcoin fell from, you know, 69K down to 15K. The DXY exploded as bitcoin fell there. And so again, we historically have this inverse relationship between the strength of the dollar and the crypto markets. And so that's the second reason why we saw crypto see such a nasty pullback there. It's again between risk investors and the strength of the dollar as that correlates to the crypto markets. And the final takeaway here is, you know, why did altcoins tumble so much? Because if we look at a lot of these altcoins, I mean they fell by 30, 40, 50% on some of these assets. And that's just over the weekend, not even from the cycle highs. And you know, that usually is the case because they are operating at around two to three times the volatility of bitcoin. So we saw bitcoin fall roughly 14% from Friday's high down to kind of the bottom that we just saw on Sunday night and Monday. And what that means is if we multiply that by three. In this case, we get around 45%, which is where we saw a lot of these cryptos fall. And it was a pretty nasty pullback across the board. Again, relatively everything saw pretty steep downside. And you know, the large caps got hit pretty decently, anywhere from 20 to 30%. The mid caps got hit around 40 to 50%. And so it was a pretty nasty pullback across the board. And so for everyone that was wondering why, what in the world happened? How does this affect crypto? That's kind of the story, that's the backstory, and I think that's what we need to understand from the get go. So the next logical question here, TiVo, is what's next? What is next? Because now what we've seen since even December, borderline the start of this year, is that we have seen all these crashes, all of these attempts from the bears to throw everything at the market to try to get it to stumble and just none of it works. I mean we recover and recover and recover and we'll see this on the charts in just a second. But bitcoin fell down to a higher low of 91k. It held the 91k support that we've been talking about and now it pushed back up over $11,000 that same day to recover to the upside. Because what we've seen here is we've seen tariffs, we've seen trade wars news, we've seen FOMC events, interest rate talks, the Fed doing the unthinkable during some of these meetings. We've seen the AI crash, China, fud, you know, the list goes on, so many other things and the markets keep on recovering and we can't even break below 90k. And so my thoughts here are if, if none of that is going to be able to let us break 90k, I'm not sure what will. I think we have to have some sort of just atrocious data come out like the, the reserve is in the dumpster, regulations are turning bad and the economy has to go and turn into a dumpster fire. And I think unless it's like one of the most like just extreme situations, I am not sure what else can be thrown at this market to make it dump because we are just, we're chugging higher. It doesn't matter what it is that would normally crash us. Just none of the FUD is working. So I'm a little bit riled up from this. Maybe I've had too much coffee. I'm even, you know, repping a bitcoin shirt today because I'm feeling optimistic and hyped up. But I don't know how you can't be. I don't know how you can see a dip like this again, one of the best buying opportunities that we have seen in a long, long time and not be excited because I did some buying. I know, I guess maybe you're not as, maybe you're not as excited if you didn't get any buys in. But I mean what a time t though.
TiVo
Yeah. Just to throw up that chart that we found on the right side there of the total liquidations. I think it's a good reminder of how quickly, you know, things can get wrecked there. So you see the bottom right hand corner down here? The 24 hour wreck 2.32 billion literally setting records. And obviously the majority of that was, was the longs. And so kind of like you, you teach and we preach here is, you know, don't touch leverage unless you know what you're doing. And this is how quickly it can go. I mean 12 hours, 1, you know, 1.4 billion. You know, you could just be having a nice Sunday evening with your family, go to bed, wake up and all those positions are wiped out. And you know, we hope, we hope you're not in that camp. And like you said, the recovery as quick as it goes down, that recovery, the snap back and we're kind of in this weird time period where we're adherent to again the tradfine news. But we're, we're moving at such a quicker pace or the volatility is so much higher which we know as you're in crypto that's what you expect, that's kind of what you want unless you're in that 2.3 billion of the 24 hour wrecked. But yeah, I agree with you on the, the $90,000 hold. Like I was sitting there, I got kind of, you know, angry in a sense because it like, like you painted perfectly all this was happening. Not because any, it had anything to do with crypto really. It was, it was this trade war thing. And so I was just like God, these people don't get it. You know, like if you, if you were selling, if you were panic selling on, on tariffs and like why then tariffs invalidated your original know thesis for being long whatever you know, projects you were long. Especially bitcoin. Like it made, it didn't make sense. It made me angry. Like I was on the couch Sunday night, pissed off, just buying. I was buying, buying. And so, so I hope that that proves out to be the right, you know, the right thesis. But I was upset because, you know, all these, you know, new people and bitcoin the future and this and that and then like, like, do you not remember that this is what this guy likes to do? He likes to shake it up. He likes to be on Twitter, he likes to fire off his tweets. And, and just like we saw from Sunday night into Monday afternoon, you're one tweet away from the recovery. And I think, and I mentioned this at our end of year show, to your point, what could break 90k? I think it's inflation. You know, you start toying around with tariffs and right now I think it's just kind of like a little bit of a jousting. Now if stuff like that does go into effect, it takes months to get through into the real data. And so I think inflation and the Fed is kind of maybe bitcoin's main, not enemy might not be the right word, but hurdle, like if the Fed reverses and sees inflation coming back, but the data does not suggest that at all. So I'm not too worried about that. We already got our Fed scare earlier than we thought at the end of December. So, yeah, I'm excited. And I think the rest of the episode here after we kind of showed you this scary liquidation thing is there's, there's plenty of reasons to be excited about the market. Like, nothing. It feels like these two weeks in a row, deep seek AI scary shakeout tariffs, scary shakeout. It's like you got to have tunnel vision into the future, I think, because this is, this is a great example of two really, really highly volatile events that are there to shake you out. And there's going to be more like you can't predict. I'm shocked that we had two of these two weeks in a row, these type of bloody Sunday nights into Mondays. But there's going to be more because it's basically, you know, love it or hate it, like our kind of political discourse right now is basically a reality show. And there's going to be more excitement and, and, you know, good and bad, I think, and we're going to talk about some of the good. But yeah, you got to take it with the bad and, you know, be aware of that volatility and not get, you know, shaken out. But again, never personal financial advice for anybody on the show. Just kind of two guys talking crypto and their, their opinions. But there's a lot more, a lot more to come here.
Brendan
Yeah, I mean, let's just even go ahead and throw up the charts so we can take a quick look at what's, what's actually going on over here. Because you know, here is that move again. We've been seeing these sell offs and here is 90k. And 90k is held, you know, all of November, all of December, all of January now, even coming into February now, you know, the fourth straight month of using 90K as a massive, massive support zone. And the buyers are still so eager to accumulate. I mean, look at the size of this wick. It came down the 91k and then the high of the following candle was pushing up towards 103k almost. So just a ton of buyers that are super comfortable buying around that 90k area. And you know, 108, 100, 910k up here seems to be the big newfound resistance level with kind of 100k acting as the intermediary or the heart line of the sideways channel. So I'm looking at this, you know, I don't know how you can't be optimistic around 90k now. If this breaks and we start seeing closes below this, I think there's a reasonable argument to say, hey, maybe we do see some more downside. But until 90k breaks, I don't even think you can create a bearish argument for this thing. And it's nothing that I'm too concerned about. So, so long as 90k holds, you know, we look at bitcoin dominance, this is another big thing. TiVo. Bitcoin dominance with this move to the downside went up to 64.35%, the highest level that we have seen since February of 2021. Which means that, you know, bitcoin dominance now is higher than it was, you know, at any point previously in 2025, at any point in 2024, 2023, 2022 and almost all, all of 2021, we are at multi year highs for bitcoin dominance. And again we're pushing back up to an area where bitcoin dominance historically tops out at right around that 70 flat area. We saw it top out here before altcoins ran over in 2017. We saw it, you know, around 2017, 2018. We saw this again around 2020, 2021. And you know, here we are of course four years later from both of those pushing back up towards that area in 2025. So something to keep an eye out on. With bitcoin dominance hitting record highs, we've seen some really, really big drawdowns. If we kind of just look at a Couple of the large cap altcoins. You know, here's xrp, which saw about a, you know, what was this over the weekend? It saw about a 27 or excuse me, this is Solana. That's all a 27 pullback for XRP over here. We saw an even bigger drawdown. This thing fell about 43% to the downside, you know, and then we get into some of the more mid cap altcoins. You know, let's just take a look at Avax for example. And you know, this oops, and this is the wrong one, but this thing fell about 43% as well. You know, we go over to something like Immutable X, another fairly popular altcoin. This thing fell almost 48%. And so, you know, a lot of these cryptos got rocked by this move. But what we're kind of seeing across the board is that there's a pretty nice recovery. You know, Suey bouncing off the 200 day moving average, Solana bouncing off the 200 day moving average. XRP didn't even test the 200 day moving average. It closed well above it and wicked off well above it. And so a lot of these larger cap altcoins are, you know, still doing okay. And it's a lot of the, the, the more mid cap altcoins that are really getting rocked from this move. And I have to give a shout out to one crypto and let me just preface this by saying I don't have exposure to this project, but someone put it on my radar and said, hey, have you seen what Mantra is doing? It's shooting up in the all time highs while everything's crashing. This is crazy. It's not a small project. It's almost $6 billion in market cap. So it's one of the bigger ones out there. But it's hitting all time highs while everything else is crashing. So I want to throw this kind of on everyone's radar. Again, I have no exposure to it, but I say this and I show this because there is always an opportunity in the crypto market, even what seems to be the darkest of days, or should I say the darkest of weekends, there's always an opportunity out there. Even if it's not Bitcoin or Ethereum or Solana or something. You know, we can look at other mainstream altcoins and see that there's opportunities. In this case it was something like Mantra. So yeah, I mean, big moves around the board over here, bitcoin, seeing about that 14 retrace that we were just looking at and altcoins seeing anywhere from, you know, maybe 40 to 50% of a retrace.
TiVo
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C
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Brendan
So if you survive this, congratulations, you have now survived the largest liquidation event in crypto history. And TiVo said earlier, you know, we saw over $2 billion in liquidations and I was reading and watching something from the Bybit CEO. It's just a fairly, you know, large crypto platform. And he's saying, hey, over the entirety of this fall, I think that we are well above 2 billion. He said this is probably closer to 8, 8 to 10 billion dollars in liquidations from this most recent crash, which regardless, either way you look at it, is the largest liquidation event in crypto history. So if you survive this, shout out to you. Kudos to you. And you know Tevo like you said, I was, I was looking at this Sunday night buying. I was buying bitcoin. I was buying altcoins. I was. You know, we've kind of been waiting for a crash like this, right? You know, maybe we're a little bit due for it on some of the altcoins, but, you know, this still isn't anything out of the ordinary. The large caps are holding structure and. Yeah, I mean, nothing too crazy.
TiVo
Yeah. Harvey Dent, Harvey Dent famously said, the night is darkest just before the dawn. I feel like, you know, I think people, when you look back almost a year now, coming into March, where we had that first, you know, bitcoin breakout and altcoin rally and you know, we kind of all like, is this it? Is this it? And then especially for altcoins and eth, just not really breaking out for the rest of the year. I think there's a lot of people getting tired in that wear you out phase because they're just thinking that, you know, this is supposed to repeat just like it did last time. And, you know, it's something, you gotta follow the data, right? It's something that, you know, we talk about and you're looking for, but at the same time, like, if everybody had a crystal ball, like everybody would be billionaires, right? There's, there's, you just gotta follow the trends and see what's coming. And that's why we do the show every week, because stuff's always changing. This felt, this felt like a very violent, you know, maybe the night is darkest before the dawn. And again, I don't think it's gonna happen next week or, you know, tomorrow for any, by any means. But it felt like that was the one where, you know, people would throw in the towel, especially in eth, especially in their altcoin projects. Like, if you're sitting there Sunday night and you're down 30, 40% watching the screen on top of that, plus liquidations happening, it felt like one of those, you know, local bottom moments, definitely for sentiment and because everybody, everybody was, and me included. Just as, you know, as soon as Trump happened, you got the Trump pump, which, you know, happened. And then the Fed really took the wind out of that sales, which, which sucked. But then you just kept kind of being like, well, it's going to happen, it's going to happen. Like, it has to happen. Trump's in. It has to happen, it has to happen. And then you just get, you know, boom, right hook from the Fed, boom, left hook from deep Seek AI, boom, right hook from tariffs and if you know, you thought of any time in any market, you know, if you think it's an easy layup, you're gonna, you're gonna hit some speed bumps in the way. So you know, people that are newer within the last three months, six months, you know, even a, even a year maybe they haven't experienced, you know, that with their altcoin bags yet. So welcome. You're, you're now, you're now in the club for, for a crypto trader. And you know, if you' I personally think again, never personal financial advice, but I think the dawn is coming and Harvey Dent's quote is a perfect summary for what happened over the weekend, Sunday into Monday.
Brendan
Yeah, well, I think this begs the question, Thibault, what is next? And here we go. We don't have to wait long for what's next. Later today, February 4th, we had the newly appointed crypto czar, David Sachs, and he's set to hold a press conference at 2:30pm Eastern time today to discuss, quote, unquote, discussing or securing, excuse me, America as a leader in the digital asset economy. So there's a lot of speculation around what this means. You know, what does it mean to secure America as a leader in a digital asset economy? Well, I think the most obvious speculation here is through a crypto strategic reserve.
TiVo
Right.
Brendan
And that's kind of been the new way that it's been dubbed instead of a bitcoin strategic reserve. And what that alludes to is that hey, maybe some altcoins could get thrown in here. And I think we talked about this last week a little bit, you know, what could those altcoins be? I don't know. I think it has to be a lot more selective. I think it's being labeled that so that altcoins could probably be re examined at a later time. I really do see the first crypto that's thrown into something like this be bitcoin. But I don't know, I mean, Teva, do you have any speculation here? I know people are hyped up about it clearly hopefully for good reason.
TiVo
You know, I, I hope and, and along with everybody else that he just goes bam, bitcoin strategic reserve, you know, this reserve. And I just don't, I, I think news like that kind of would come like in the fleet of the night or something like maybe a little bit more quiet, that the action was actually done versus holding, holding a press conference to say here's exactly what we're going to do. Because you also don't want to get front run in the market. Right. Like, if they're going to put that big of a buy in, you know, I don't think that they would forecast that. And so I think in, in life, in trading and I just, in life in general, I like to live by. It's never as good as you hope it will be, and it's never as bad as you think it might be. And so we're going to land in the middle here. And so back when was it a week or two ago when they signed the executive order and David Sachs was in the room and Trump was there in the Oval Office, signed and said, you know, David's gonna give us great crypto, you know, crypto's ours here and sign the executive order. You know, we all wanted bitcoin strategic reserve. Buy, buy, buy. And, and what? You know, it wasn't that, but it also, it was the first week and he didn't forget about the crypto community. So it wasn't as bad as you thought. It wasn't what you wanted. It was in the middle here. David Zacks is going to go do something. And so I think we're, we're in the same camp where you want David Sachs now to come out and tell you what he's going to buy and how much they're going to buy. He's not, I don't, I personally don't think he's going to do that. But he's also not doing nothing. I mean, here we are 10 days later, he's having a press conference. So it's not nothing. It's going to be in the middle. I think he's going to come out with, with a nice, you know, 20 minute kind of presentation of his frameworks that he's going to be looking at. And I think there will be a couple Easter egg there, a couple Easter eggs, some hints about where he's looking and what, what kind of research they're looking into for the frameworks to be able to build some type of, you know, digital asset reserve or, you know, get the government involved in crypto. But I think this is going to be the framework conversation. I don't think he's going to show his whole hand. I think there'll be a couple Easter eggs and then again, you're going to have, you know, Twitter is going to be upset because he mentioned altcoins and then, you know, the altcoin people are going to be upset because he didn't mention specific ones. And the bitcoin people are going to be upset. But at the End of the day it's progress. Like we're now talking about a high level government official who has the power to be doing this stuff. Like this is what we all wished for six months ago, a year ago, two years ago, four years ago. So, you know, the progress is being made. It's just not going to be at the, you know, pace maybe that you want. But I'm excited to hear what he has to say. But I don't think there's going to be any crazy announcement today.
Brendan
Yeah, I would agree. I think that's, that's much more in line with what we're likely to see here is something probably just saying, hey, here's the long term picture, here's what we're painting, here's the ultimate vision that we're looking to accomplish. And you know, I don't think we get anything that's going to send us to new all time highs out of this news. I hope I'm wrong. I hope we do. I hope we just destroy the market.
TiVo
And bags are packed, baby.
Brendan
Bags. Yeah, let's, let's freaking do it. We're time for one of those. But yeah, I think you're right. We probably get something that is a little bit more vision focused and that's perfectly okay as well because what we saw here was that we got the sovereign wealth fund that was just announced from Donald Trump and this could have big, big implications for the crypto market as well. So we went ahead and pulled a clip from some of the guys, some of the guys talking about that and how it relates to the crypto markets.
TiVo
Yeah, so let's just give the people a quick view here of, you know, this is the President of the United States signing, signing executive order for sovereign wealth fund. Very interesting. You know, the biggest one that we know of is the, you know, the Saudis. And so it's interesting to be following suit. There's going to be a lot of winners and losers here, but let's just see the clip. Historic moment. Kind of your Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessant and your Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to begin a process that will hopefully result in the creation of an American sovereign wealth fund.
D
It's a very exciting event. We're going to have a sovereign wealth fund which we've never had. We have a lot of things that create wealth. And you've seen that over the last two weeks. I think we've created more wealth. Other people have created de wealth. The people, my predecessors, we're creating a lot of wealth. Scott Maybe you'd like to say something about it. And I'd ask also Howard to say something about it.
TiVo
So Scott, Scott Bessett, Treasury Secretary, and. And then Howard London. So Scott is also a bitcoin guy. He has some exposure to bitcoin. But we pulled this specific clip of Howard, Howard Lutnick, and I believe we have played this before. But it's a. It's a great reminder of listening to this clip and being like, oh, wow, this guy's in charge of the sovereign wealth fund. So this is. This was Howard. Howard Lutnick on Pomp.
Brendan
Or Cantor. I don't have a big enough percentage. I probably have, you know, if I can't say, because then people can figure out that. No, how much I have, I would say I have hundreds of millions of dollars. Okay, okay.
D
Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars exposure to bitcoin.
Brendan
And it will be billions. I was going to say. So next year when you come back.
TiVo
I have hundreds of millions of dollars and it will be billions. With conviction. Now, this was, this was to set the scene. This was before the election. You know, I think this was around the time that he was definitely hovering around the Trump camp and there was questions on if you get. If he gets elected, would you take a position? And he said, you know, he's interested. But this was, this was not post election. So this is, you know, I mean, what a quote. I think we all. Well, we all can relate. We hope our bitcoin bags are worth much more in the future. But again, this guy's in charge of creating this sovereign wealth fund. You got to put the pieces together. Brendan, what are your thoughts? I mean, I think it just speaks for itself. It's hard to break down.
Brendan
Yeah, I mean, let's look at what Pomp said there. He said, hey, when you come back next year. And this was videoed last year. So they're saying, hey, next year you're going to go from having hundreds of millions to being a crypto billionaire. And that's referring to this year, 20, 25. And, you know, that would imply that, you know, they believe that there's going to be a lot more to come. And again, if this is the guy who's in charge of the sovereign wealth fund and he is that optimistic on crypto, again, we've looked at people in all sorts of positions, right? The cryptos are the sovereign wealth fund, you know, all these different positions across the board. And they're all so optimistic on bitcoin. They're saying, hey, we have millions or Hundreds of millions of dollars in exposure to this thing. We think it's going to be bright, we're going to push it. We think it's the future. It doesn't always have to be overcomplicated, right? If the people who are, who are going to be running the country and running all these, these big funds in the next era of finance, if they are saying, hey, we own this, we think it's going to be big and we think that it can go from hundreds of millions to billions in our own portfolio, well, you know, I don't want to overcomplicate it. I just want to say, okay, let's, let's ride the wave. Let's ride the wave of whatever they're pushing. Kind of like a Nancy Pelosi stock trader on autopilot, right? You're just saying, hey, I'm not going to overcomplicate whatever those people, behind the scenes, the politicians are doing, the big ones. I'll just ride the wave. I'll just kind of agree with them. So again, you don't have to maybe invest in, you know, this crazy little project or Altcoin or company or all this stuff. Sometimes you can just look at what the big whales and politicians are doing and say, okay, I'm not going to overcomplicate it. You know, you're going to push this. I'm just going to be along for the ride. You know, they're the big yacht that's creating the wake. We're kind of on like a little surfboard in the background and we're just coasting behind them. But that's the way that I look at this. You know, again, how can you, how can you not be optimistic and bullish after hearing stuff like that? So I saw a video of some person this morning saying, guys, bitcoin's going back to 30K. You know, things are done here. And I just could not disagree anymore. Again, maybe we see a little bit of volatility. I'm not even saying that we can't break 90k. I think anything's on the table. We all know how volatile bitcoin can be. But you know, when I'm looking at this again, I think you, you really have to have some sort of wild argument to truly believe that bitcoin is going to not be optimistic at any point in the coming year. Meaning that I think that at some point this year bitcoin sees new all time highs above anything that we have seen before. And so, yeah, I'm pretty, I'm pretty bullish. Pretty, pretty excited.
TiVo
Yeah. I think you make a great point with comparing it to like the, the Pelosi's of the world and the politicians that are, you know, outperforming the top hedge funds in the land. And you know, you can be upset at that and you can be upset, you know, the angle of the other angle would be, well, you know, Trump and his cronies and Howard Lutnick are just going to pump what they own and blah, dah, dah, dah, and you, and you'd be right. I think like history shows, that's what these people that get into these high positions too. However, I think this might be the first time in history, maybe I'm wrong, but this is the first time in history where you can just do a little bit of research like listening to this podcast or going on X and they're telling you what they're going to do basically before they do it. Nancy Pelosi doesn't have an interview with Pomp or an interview with anybody sitting down telling you that, you know, the AI and the infrastructure of AI is really going to change our country. You know, me and my husband Paul, who's a big time investor, we're going to be investing a lot of money into investing Nvidia and we're, you know, because this is what we think the future is going to be and we're going to be doing this infrastructure bill and the infrastructure bill is going to be giving so much to data centers and AI and you know, computation, blah, blah, blah, and, and this is where all your tax dollars are going to go. And that's why we're investing in it, because we think it'll go up, you know, not by financial advice, but this is what we're going to do. She doesn't do that. She just kind of buys in the fleet of night. And you know, luckily we have unusual whales and other people tracking it now with the technology you can kind of track these trades. But I think it's, it's a fascinating case study and again, you know, people know where me and you are positioned. We're on board, our bags are packed. Maybe we'll be right, maybe we'll be wrong, but it'll be interesting to look back on in four years and be like, hey, they told us what they were going to do. Did they go and do it and what were the results of it? We don't know yet. But they're, they're telling you what they're going to do. So take that, you know, as a grain of Salt when you're, when you're making your own decisions.
Brendan
Yeah, could not agree more man. And you know we're seeing stuff really trend in the right direction here. The last thing that we want to share with everyone is that we just saw The Ethereum, the US Ethereum ETFs post a record $1.5 billion in trading volume amid all of this tariff turmoil. So let's take a quick look at this and I think if we scroll down there might even be an image or something that's referencing this. But yeah, I mean look at that. These spot Ethereum ETFs seeing all time highs in terms of volume. And so this, this, this begs a bigger question of what is the state of Ethereum because it has been underperforming not only Bitcoin but many of the other large caps. You know again we just saw Mantra hitting new all time highs. We saw Solana hit a new all time high this year. We saw XRP test the all time highs. I, I think we even saw like bitcoin or not Bitcoin BNB and the Intron have some crazy run. So a lot of these large caps are going crazy. And then there's Ethereum which has yet failed to come really close to its all time high. It's been underperforming on the green days, it's been, you know, negatively overperforming on the red days. And so what is the state of Ethereum? And a lot of people are speculating here that Ethereum's time in the spotlight is coming back here and that a metric like this could again keyword is, could mark some sort of, of, of turning point for the EBTC ratio and Ethereum dominance as a whole. So yeah, I mean, you know, I think we're going to keep a closer eye on Ethereum down here again with Bitcoin dominance starting to come close to the area that it usually tops out at. I think it's, it's an okay idea to re examine Ethereum and say okay, you know, how is this and the rest of the altcoin market kind of positioned if we do see a top out here in Bitcoin dominance, so something to keep an eye out on. We love seeing records broken around the ETFs. We continue to see a lot of inflows over there as well which pushed really just the whole crypto industry in a good spot.
TiVo
Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think that ETH has been you know, just beaten down both price wise and, and on the timeline it's been tough and people have called the bottom before and said, oh, like this is, you know, everybody's throwing in the towel on eth. They're taking their dot eths out of their profiles. Like this is the bottom and it really hasn't been yet, I guess, or at least underperformance when we're talking about a bottom. And yeah, I'll, I'll make, I'll make a little prediction here. The people like predictions. I'll throw one out and I think that ETH is going to have a moment this year. Hopefully a little knock on wood. My desk is made of wood. But I, I think you're going to have like a very similar to that run that, you know, XRP and all the old dino coins made that run and it caught everybody by surprise. I, I, at least I obviously, I hope but I think ETH is going to do that at some point and it won't be, you know, XRP was underperforming so much that it had that room to do that 2,300% in that short time period. I don't think, you know, ETH has the room to do that. But yeah, I, I think it's gonna really, really surprise people and it's gonna happen quick when it does. So that, that'll be, that'll be a little, you know, clip it, hold me to it and we'll, we'll see. But I really think that we're talking about like you know, maybe a 30, 40% day or two days for eth coming up, you know, this year at some point and that's going to kick start it onto that, you know, trends toward all time highs.
Brendan
Yeah, I saw Eric Trump talking about it saying, you know, hey, he's so bullish on either he was buying ether something big was going to happen with something along those lines saying about how he was, he was pretty stoked for eth.
TiVo
So I'll pull that up in a second here. I don't know why we didn't have that on the sheet. That was a good call. Was it Eric Trump's Twitter?
Brendan
Yeah. You know, maybe he's pumping his own bags. Maybe he's, maybe he knows something that we don't know. I mean, who knows, right? There's a lot of speculation around this stuff. But yeah, I mean there's a, there's a lot happening and yeah, we got it on the screen now. So in my opinion is a great time to add to eth. I love how the first comment, the first comment below. Yeah, dude, all the comments are like, what a horrible idea. Again, we've, we've talked about how it's not the most popular thing to add to ETH at this time. Right. You know, we've seen ETH kind of get, kind of get bodied by a lot of the other large caps in terms of performance. But, you know, who knows? Right. Again, that's why we're speculating here. We're not saying, hey, this is guaranteed to happen, but we are speculating around this idea.
TiVo
So we hope everyone and World Liberty Fi, they were tracking World Liberty 5, which is obviously the Trump family's, you know, crypto exchange project they're working on. So they, they transferred a bunch of ETH to, because, to Coinbase's custody, to the custodian Coinbase. And so people were, you know, whether, oh, are they dumping it on it? Is it a pump and dump? You know, I think the, the main thing is like looking to stake, which again would be like a long term view of it. But yeah, people are saying that Eric Trump knows, you know, some people in high positions, you know, I can't off the top of my head think who that is. Oh, maybe the President, United States. So yeah, we'll see. Again, just breadcrumbs, right? Found the breadcrumbs. Trying to create our own, you know, puzzle that we're trying to solve. But I thought that was, yeah, notable.
Brendan
Yeah, I mean it's all you can do. All you can do is follow the breadcrumbs and there's certainly a lot going on over here. So hey, we appreciate everyone tuning in here. We love doing these episodes and we love doing them completely for free. So all we ask is that if you like the content that we're making and putting out there, consider hitting that like, button. Consider hitting that subscribe button. And if you really liked us, then check us out on some of our other platforms. We got a great community over at Crypt Nation and if you're on Spotify or Apple podcasts or anything like that, then leave us a review as well. But again, we appreciate everyone watching. We got a lot of, of great market updates coming your way in the future. So until next week, everyone, we'll see all of you very, very soon.
C
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CRYPTO 101: Crypto Rundown – The Tariff CRYPTO FLASH CRASH... What You Need to Know
Release Date: February 4, 2025
Hosts: Bryce Paul & Brendan Viehman
Episode Title: Crypto Rundown: The Tariff CRYPTO FLASH CRASH... What You Need to Know
In this episode of CRYPTO 101, hosts Brendan Viehman and TiVo delve into the tumultuous events that unfolded over the past weekend, leading to a significant flash crash in the cryptocurrency markets. They dissect the factors contributing to the crash, examine the market's resilience, and explore upcoming events that could shape the future of crypto investments.
[00:00] Brendan Viehman kicks off the discussion by highlighting the recent "Black Swan" event that shook the crypto markets. He remarks:
“...another Black Swan event. And it feels like every single week we come back, we say, man, what a, what a crazy way to kick things off this week...”
[00:00]
Key Points:
[03:25] Brendan provides a comprehensive breakdown of the crash's underlying causes:
“...a lot of this escalated over the weekend. And with the stock market closed and indices closed and all that, the only way that people could react, the only way that they could get exposure is by trading a 247 decentralized market like the crypto one.”
[03:25]
a. Correlation with Traditional Finance (TRADFI):
b. Strength of the US Dollar (DXY):
c. Altcoin Volatility:
[11:52] TiVo underscores the severity of the liquidation event:
“...the 24 hour wreck 2.32 billion literally setting records. And obviously the majority of that was, was the longs.”
[11:52]
Highlights:
[15:56] Brendan reflects on the market’s resilience:
“As long as 90k holds, you know, we look at bitcoin dominance, this is another big thing...”
[15:56]
a. Bitcoin's Strong Support Level:
b. Bitcoin Dominance:
c. Altcoins’ Recovery:
[25:50] Brendan introduces the imminent press conference by David Sachs, the newly appointed crypto czar:
“...discussing or securing, excuse me, America as a leader in the digital asset economy.”
[25:50]
a. David Sachs’ Press Conference:
b. Trump's Sovereign Wealth Fund Announcement:
[36:10] Brendan shifts focus to Ethereum (ETH):
“These spot Ethereum ETFs seeing all time highs in terms of volume.”
[36:10]
Key Insights:
Projections for Ethereum:
[38:10] Brendan emphasizes the importance of tracking institutional moves:
“...how can you not be optimistic and bullish after hearing stuff like that?”
[38:10]
a. Following the Leaders:
b. Opportunities Amid Volatility:
[43:11] TiVo and Brendan wrap up the episode by reiterating their bullish stance on the crypto market's future. They highlight the importance of staying informed, following market trends, and seizing opportunities even during periods of high volatility.
Final Quote from TiVo:
“...Harvey Dent's quote is a perfect summary for what happened over the weekend, Sunday into Monday.”
[25:50]
Key Takeaway: The crypto market, while currently experiencing significant volatility driven by external factors like tariffs and institutional moves, remains robust. With strong support levels, increasing Bitcoin dominance, and optimistic projections for Ethereum, Brendan and TiVo encourage investors to view the recent downturn as a strategic buying opportunity rather than a signal to exit the market.
Brendan Viehman
“another Black Swan event… what a crazy environment for crypto.”
[00:00]
Brendan Viehman
“...the only way that people could react, the only way that they could get exposure is by trading a 247 decentralized market like the crypto one.”
[03:25]
TiVo
“...the 24 hour wreck 2.32 billion literally setting records.”
[11:52]
Brendan Viehman
“...as long as 90k holds, you know, we look at bitcoin dominance...”
[15:56]
Brendan Viehman
“These spot Ethereum ETFs seeing all time highs in terms of volume.”
[36:10]
This episode of CRYPTO 101 provides a thorough analysis of the recent crypto flash crash triggered by tariff news, exploring the intricate relationship between traditional finance and cryptocurrency markets. Brendan and TiVo offer valuable insights into market resilience, institutional influences, and future projections, positioning this episode as an essential listen for both seasoned investors and newcomers seeking to navigate the ever-evolving crypto landscape.