← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:01]
A
Bitcoin hit $117,000 overnight as the world and markets brace for the first rate cut in many, many months. Wondering how Jerome Powell will speak after announcing the inevitable 25 bip cut. Will he scratch his nose in a strange way, blink awkwardly at the audience? And how will markets react, up or down? We're going to discuss that and everything else happening in the news today. We with Santi. Let's go people.
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B
Let's do, let's do.
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A
Good morning everybody and happy rate cut day. To those who celebrate the most anticipated and probably projected cut of all time, the most important Fed meeting. Until the next Fed meeting, I have Santi Santos here to discuss all of this. He is the CEO and co founder of Inversion, but also the host of Empires. You, you do this, you, you've done.
- [01:12]
C
This before, you think? I'm pretty good at just getting this set up and everything. So we'll see.
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A
Yeah, the mic sounds great.
- [01:19]
C
The mic sounds great.
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A
I don't know if I'm obviously a professional man. There is so much to unpack today. Of course it's hard to do a show without talking about the Fed, which is arguably my least favorite topic because I don't think we should have one. And when you go down the deep rabbit hole of what the Fed is, we don't have to do that now. But either way, markets obviously today holding their breath and wondering what Powell's going to say. I think more than how much of a cut we're going to get. Here you go. Bitcoin price taps 117k as traders embrace for Fed rate cuts. I mean it's basically 100% priced in. It'll be 25 pips, right?
- [01:56]
C
Yeah, yeah, that seems to be the case. And look, it's almost like impossible not to think about crypto in the lens of monetary policy. Right. I mean we've all seen that chart of the price of bitcoin and global M2 liquidity and it sort of tracks very, very closely. And so as much as we want to talk about and over intellectualize the technology and the forces behind it, which look, they're very interesting dynamics happening specific to crypto, but the reality is rates and Fed policy really, really matters because at the end of the day, crypto is a risk on asset class. And so as rates come down, you should have more liquidity coming in through riskier asset classes like crypto.
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A
Yeah, it's interesting. So obviously we have very mixed views on what this 25 bit rate cut will mean. Right. Many people think that this is the big catalyst for the next massive bull run. We talked about Tom Lee saying that yesterday. We have some data that would support that idea. By the way, when the Fed cuts interest rates within 2% of stock market all time highs, the S and P has gone on to finish higher over the next 12 months. 20 out of 20 times. So 100% hit rate. But then many kind of saying this has been projected for so long that a mediocre 25 bip cut could signal a top right. And I think there's a lot of negative data we can get into. But I mean where do you generally stand on that? A lot of people are asking for 50. I think if he did 50, the market would panic because it would be like Powell signaling something was more broken than the market anticipates.
- [03:22]
C
Yeah, I, I tend to agree. Like it's, it's very positive, at least in the medium short to medium term. Yeah, of course you got to look at job, jobless claims and consumer sentiment and a number of other things. But as I think about just you got to overlay that with there is AI and a lot of positive effects there. So I think like the two most important things, if we were to add another thing that we should monitor is Nvidia earnings and Nvidia.
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A
I mean, Jensen Huang.
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C
Yeah, well, Jensen Huang might be equally as important as Jerome Powell these days, you know.
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A
Yeah, but there was just breaking news on that. I'm not sure if you saw it this morning, but let me pull it up as I happen to be thinking about it, but China just banned Chinese tech companies from buying Nvidia chips.
- [04:09]
C
Yeah, I mean we'll see. But it's definitely important. I mean like the, the risk of course that a lot of people might point to is the magnificent seven and the share that they encompass of the aggrid market, which is drawing eerie comparisons to the dot com crash where tech just became an overwhelming majority of the market and investor portfolios, for better or for worse, are just overly exposed to seven technology names. And that's just the nature of affairs. So obviously rate cuts are one thing, but if investors feel pain in their overall portfolio, then a lot of it is dictated by, you know, Amazon and Nvidia and a few names though Nvidia is most important to, to look at if, if our like just trading.
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A
Yeah, I agree. I mean do you think that he takes a dovish or hawkish tone today? We won't hold you to it. My prediction, I'll say is that he makes the cut, but is super ambiguous about the future data dependent, no commitment to future cuts. We'll see how jobs react, inflation revisions, blah blah blah.
- [05:18]
C
Yeah, as he should. I mean he's had a very difficult job for the last couple of years. I think he's landed the plane as good as anyone could. But he's meant to be ambiguous. That is the role of that he should take.
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A
So yeah, I think people just want him to say we're going to start a cutting cycle here with 150bips coming over the next six to eight months. Right. It's not going to happen.
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C
I mean I have paid attention to a lot of kind of equity research like internal S and P targets for JP Morgan's of the world. They've all kind of revised up in the last couple weeks in anticipation of a rates cut. So I don't know if that's bearish, more than bullish candidly but you almost want to be investing when everyone is calling for, you know, a much bearish picture. That's something that I pay attention to a lot which is when everyone is, you know, more bullish and the sentiment seems to be quite positive going into this rate cut. How much of it is it priced in already?
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A
And that's what I'm saying. I actually if gun to my head I would say that the market would be a short today. I, I don't know. The first, first of all, the first reaction is usually wrong. I don't know which one will be first but I think you get this 25 bip cut. He's sort of like we said he did, non committal. And then people say damn it, what's next? And there'll be uncertainty again. And listen, there's a few. So on the bullish side, right, we, we talked about cuts before. You have the US economy running very hot now. The Atlanta Fed's projecting that Q3 GDP will be 3.4% which is a massive expansion. So if you believe the bessant trump you know, tariffs and grow our way out of this. It looks possible. But then you flip to the other side. There's so many crazy, crazy metrics out here. US stock market heads its most expensive valuation in history surpassing the dot com bubble and the run up to the Great Depression. Okay. Unrealized losses on investment securities for banks. 395 billion growing a lot kind of starting to reek of the Silicon Valley bank days searches for help with mortgage surpasses. 2008 housing crisis. I'm not trying to laugh. Student loan delinquents have exploded higher to hire I mean it's like over and over. US housing market has reached its most unaffordable level in history and there's now a 48% chance of recession. I don't believe in these metrics, but bottom line is you have this sentiment that markets are exceptionally high, so everything's good, but when you actually lift up the hood, it's pretty ugly out there. I think for the average person. Probably why we bitcoin.
- [07:43]
C
Yeah, I mean the reality is rates continue to be high. Right. And so if you didn't lock in your mortgage and then you're in a tough spot, I mean rent does continue to go up, like new housing starts have not been that great. And so yeah, the average consumer, I think the Main street is feeling the pain. And so. But look, I mean I think I'm not here to be any expert in the medium or short term. I think it pays to zoom out. And I think you have a lot of. It's incredible how much edge you have when you think in multi year time frames. And I think, you know, we're here to talk about mostly crypto, but you know, there's other forces at play where I mean the AI stuff is very real. I think you're seeing a lot of capital flow in there. A lot of companies investing Capex into that. That's why I think Nvidia is so important because one of the line items you want to track is how much new orders did they take in. That will tell you how much companies are willing to spend on H1 hundreds and their chips, which is a huge number. If that starts slowing down, then I think again there are first and second order effects of that. Right. Nvidia goes down, I think it's fairly priced now. And so one of the things that I do think about a lot is where are we on the hype cycle? We know the hype cycle in crypto really well. It just happens and it's extreme. Where are we in the AI hype cycle? Because a lot of expectations I think are baked into the market. A lot of these companies are saying we're spending all of this money in Capex and we expect to see and realize some of that value. I think the market at some point loses its patience if you don't start showing real P and L. Hey, profitability went up 20% because we invested $300 million in chips. You remember when Deepseek came out, I think it was like earlier this year.
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A
Boy, the market, we did it all for 5 million bucks, right?
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C
Yeah, the market really Took it really, really. You know, the reaction of the market was very bearish because there are companies that are spending hundreds of billions of dollars and at some point I think the market's going to wake up and lose its patience, which is like, when are am I going to show the improvements with all of this AI spend? I think a lot of that's like my biggest worry. Put aside rate cuts, put aside other stuff. If I were to think like, I think the market at some point will lose its patience.
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A
Speaking of the market losing its patience, let's talk about Bitcoin treasury companies.
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C
Yes.
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A
Nice segment. Right, so listen, I, in my very deep, deep, deep research, I saw that you have in the past shown some skepticism towards bitcoin treasury companies. I think I was probably the most outspoken, aggressive and hated skeptic towards them because I went to Las Vegas, as I've said, for the bitcoin conference and this was obviously a brand new trend at the time. If you eliminate microstrategy. And I was pitched like 25 of these things within the first two hours of walking in the door. And I said, this is the next bubble, right? And at that time I was very convinced that it was going to be the catalyst for a bitcoin drawdown. Like we'd get our normal 35% drawdown, then they'd all puke and we'd get 55%, something like that. Not that it would kill bitcoin or anything. I talked myself off the ledge and realized over time that was probably just really bad for the shareholders or anyone who believed the hype and bought into these than it was for bitcoin. And I saw you had a great thread at one point. Maybe I'll be able to find it, bring it up about how this was kind of reminiscent of specs. I think you wrote that in July, so obviously you were well aligned with what I was thinking.
- [11:06]
C
Yeah, definitely. It was, it was interesting because, you know, there's a research by an analyst at JP Morgan that talked about like SPACs were all the rage a couple years ago and the only people that actually ended up profiting from that was the people who put them together because they're taking a huge cut and charging a lot of fees to structure these things. I mean, there's nuance, right? I mean, I'm not here to tell you that DATs categorically as a whole are very bearish. I was, I was worried when Microstrategy a couple years ago was, was really getting started. I was like, this could actually have a material impact if it, if it falls apart. Very few dads that are being structured today are going to be like MicroStrategy. MicroStrategy has an advantage because they were able to structure and dictate really, really beneficial terms. And the reality is most of these other dads, one, they're not Michael Saylor. Two, the asset is very different than Bitcoin. It carries way more risk, way more volatility and more importantly the structure of it is, is not as favorable. And they have, you know, they have contributions in kind and so they're getting locked tokens and you know, anytime you have an illiquid asset versus you know, debt maturity, maturities and obligations, it just, it's a recipe for disaster. So you know, I would, I would be cautious. I think most ads that I've looked at don't have really good structure or they're. There's potentially some legal considerations here where there's just, you know, some you're taking over like a public company that has some. It's not a squeaky clean company in and of itself. And so it just exposes you to a whole host of things. So look, the benefit of crypto where we are now is there's a lot of ETFs, there's other ways to express a long view on a particular asset. Brother in Christ, don't overthink it. It would really suck in three years time if you were very bullish on Ethereum and you ended up buying a dad that you're paying huge premium over Nav and that dad, there's a very real scenario where that underperforms the underlying and so don't overthink it like this. A lot of these assets, I'm not here to tell which ones. If you have a long term view that they're going to be a venture like return, keep it clean, buy the ETF or buy spot and chill, go do something else.
- [13:20]
A
Yeah. I think you have to just deeply understand these and you have to pick winners maybe bit mine is the MicroStrategy. I just think MicroStrategy is put in the ceiling for what the premium to nav should be. MicroStrategy owns 600 and something thousand. Bitcoin is trading at a 1.4 premium to nav. Don't buy anything that's at a higher premium than that.
- [13:37]
C
Yeah. The other thing I'll say is there are some dads that are interesting that I'm looking tbd. Right. Can you justify premium? Yes. If you have an underlying business behind it. If you're Staking, if you're validating, if you're, you know, obviously Kyle and Jump have put together a really large dad for Solana Forward. Interesting. I don't have exposure to it. I've done some DATs before, contributing cash, not in kind. Those are the ones I like. And now I hear NASDAQ is putting in some restrictions of the percentage of the headline number that is raised in lock tokens because obviously it's about to get very ugly.
- [14:12]
A
I keep hearing from people, treasury companies, I can't talk right now, but we're under lockup and there's a lot going on behind the scenes. I think the NASDAQ's about to crack on, crack down on these very heavily. I mean, you brought up Ford. I just saw today they have another 4 billion. So to your point, we were on this show last week, they announced their 1.65 billion raise. And on the show my guests were like, yeah, but it's in kind, you know, Galaxy and Multicoin and Jump are just going to send in all the Solana they have. And then Samani came out, who I'm talking to tomorrow. It's all cash and said it's all cash. And now and. And then they, on the weekend just bought 1.5 something billion dollars worth of Solana. So to your point, if they're going to raise cash and buy it, that's better. I'm not saying it justifies a bigger premium. And I've also come to the conclusion that a bitcoin treasury company to beat bitcoin is effectively impossible. Anyone who's ever bought an Altcoin to try to do it or traded in this market knows that there's no native yield, there's no, you know, beating bitcoin with bitcoin is very hard. We can debate all day whether Solana or Ethereum are worthy treasury assets. It's semantics. But if your goal is to say, I am a hedge fund, I have a benchmark and my goal is to beat that benchmark, that's a hell of a lot easier by staking Solana at 12% than it is by trying to beat Bitcoin.
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C
Yeah, and look, I pay a lot of attention to who's actually buying these things. I think in the early days it was a lot of institutions, a lot of funds. From what I understand now it's a lot of, it's just retail that, you know, you miss the microstrategy trade. So we're jumping on this stuff and I'm a bit worried. I think a lot of the participants here trading these things are just much, much more sophisticated than your average retail player. And they are hedging it. They are doing really sophisticated strategies. And so again I was talking to someone that had structured SPACs before and it wasn't based in Canada because in Canada you saw some of these vehicles a couple years ago and he's like, look, in a, in a bull market, beautiful. These things can work. In a bear market, it is ugly. And so we're at the like. One of the things that I think about is going back to your initial where are we on the cycle? Most of the people I talk to and personally I think we're in the second half more so than the first first half.
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A
I agree.
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C
The closer you are to the end of the cycle, the less exposure you want to have to financial engineering and these type of vehicles because they unwind and they unwind in a very ugly way. And if you don't think that these things can trade at a discount, boy.
- [16:34]
A
I got that was the narrative that was the one that gave, that made the spidey senses tingle. The hardest was how everyone told me as long as you're buying bitcoin, you can never trade below that. And man, first of all, I mean yes, GBTC was different, but it was at a 50% discount. The amount of bitcoin they held given it was closed ended. But I mean we've seen plenty of examples in markets where things have traded at discount. Hell, iron before exploding was trading at a discount even to just the equipment and facilities that they owned. Right. So that was obviously a good trade. That said, listen, I've been super skeptical, I've been super aggressive. I got a lot of hate mail yesterday, kind of. But Bailey I think did a very good job of clarifying what was going on in his thread yesterday at Nakamoto. And actually as a trade I bought a bunch of yesterday because I was just like this is irrationally beat down and I think in two X's right. But, but as a long term belief I don't want to own anything at a premium to the point I just want to basically own bitcoin.
- [17:36]
C
It's kind of counter to like the reason of being like look, the reality is like being custodying your own assets and like the reality is very few people like will actually end up owning crypto assets this way. Like not everyone can manage all that. So I get the benefit of the distribution of public markets and evangelizing it. And I get that argument for people that like Samanis of the world that say, hey listen, Solana, in this type of structure can be bought by more and more participants and that's a good thing for the market for exposure and whatever. And some assets just don't have an etf. So I guess this is like a way to allow participants to get a greater exposure. This is one of the things that I tbd, right. I was sitting there a year or two ago thinking before the Bitcoin etf, you would have thought the microstrategy wouldn't perform the way that it has when you had more Bitcoin ETFs. But look, one thing that I didn't fully appreciate back then, that I do now is the market loves levered exposures to assets. And again you would have said, oh, there's going to be a options market for Bitcoin. So then the, the premium is going to collapse. But yo, kudos to Sailor.
- [18:41]
A
He's been able to say that he's a unicorn. A, like I said, he's got the lead and B, he realized that MicroStrategy was that he had the opportunity to offer people who didn't have Bitcoin exposure a way to get it with MicroStrategy. And when the ETFs arrived, he found new ways for people without exposure to Bitcoin to get it by all these convertible notes and unlocking pension funds and kind of that institutional wall of money that still couldn't get in. That's why metaplant to me was a bit of a unicorn. Because in Japan they did what MicroStrategy did. There's no ETF in Japan, there's no institutional access to Bitcoin. So Meta Planet does very well and you get the tax advantage of buying a stock instead of buying Bitcoin, which is like a 20, 20% gap in how much tax you pay. There's not going to be many, I think, that are unicorns like that. I think we could put this conversation to rest. We do it every day. And I kind of want to tilt towards what you're building at inversion because you are very heavily at the crossroads of tradfi and crypto. And so I just want to give you the opportunity to talk about basically building private equity on chain, GDP on chain, sort of these catchphrases and what you're doing.
- [19:50]
C
Yeah, look, I've done private equity before and I parafi we're investing in stablecoins, defi a lot of the tech. The idea for inversion is very simple. The technology has come a long way to the point that it is ready to be deployed at scale. And traditional businesses can be made vastly more efficient with this technology. That's it. We're going to go buy real businesses, deeply unsexy businesses, and make non crypto businesses, non crypto businesses, and layer in this technology and make them more efficient. Like in the same way, like 20 years ago, a lot of businesses were running on spreadsheets and you bought the business and you implemented a CRM and software and that business was just made vastly more efficient.
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A
So smart.
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C
The same is going to be true for crypto. If you really understand this technology and I've been investing in this space since 2012, you just appreciate if you use a stablecoin, you understand that it is vastly better than a wire transfer. And so it's at that intersection, the technology is mature enough, the regulatory environment has changed dramatically and now is the time to scale this technology. And I've just grew frustrated. I see a lot of really good projects in crypto, have built really good product, but we don't have enough users on chain. And the reality is we are selling ourselves short as an industry. If we just lead with speculation like Scott, we're not going to onboard a billion users through an exchange. That's just the reality of things.
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A
And we will. That just won't be here in a year.
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C
So I think I want to get stablecoins in the hands. I want to get this technology in the hands and implement it in businesses because the reality is people can really benefit. We're looking at traditional businesses like telecom, trade, finance. And the impact we talked about AI earlier, I'll go as far as saying the impact that crypto can have on a business in terms of improving profitability can be greater in many cases than implementing AI. Yeah, and that's. No one's done it. I want to do that because once I do that, the analysts in Wall street are going to look at that and say, holy, we've totally overlooked the value proposition of crypto. And they don't believe it.
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A
Were you already building this before Genius and Trump and all this? So it's crazy because you got this massive unlock, like you were actually way ahead of the curve. And all of a sudden everyone said, stable coins.
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C
I've been thinking about it for four years since I left Parafi. I was like, there's going to come a time where we will be able to implement this technology at scale in businesses. And the biggest blocker had been the regulatory stuff. And I started. I was in the Trump Hotel in New York when he got elected And I was like, the time is now. So I went full, full gas after that. And we just raised around and we're. We're hunting. We're looking at a lot of businesses where we feel like we can make a really material transformation.
- [22:45]
A
So I'm really exciting, literally just eliminating bank payments and getting them to adopt stable coins. You've already meaningfully improved the business and can go cash flow that out to your investors or sell it 100%.
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C
Like a business, as an example, has 5% operating margin. It's paying 2 to 4% for payment processing. You know, you remove that with stablecoins, you drop down to 1%. That's a 20 to 40% improvement on the profitability of that business. It is not chump change.
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A
Yeah. If private equity goes and makes a couple percent difference in a. In a company, that's all they're really looking for, Right? And then you show them AI.
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C
Yeah, I mean, totally. Of course we're going to use AI, Right? I mean, we're using AI internally. Like, the team is small now because we are getting so much leverage out of AI. But the reality is the private equity as an industry is challenged.
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A
Right.
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C
Rates are high. So putting a bunch of debt and leverage on a business just doesn't work anymore. And I was just talking to a friend of mine who's a partner at one of larger private equity firms, and he's like, the industry is no longer works. The returns have come down a lot because, you know, they're just using leverage and that doesn't work anymore. Like, value creation is kind of really broken in, in private equity land. And so we think we can offer a very, very compelling value prop. Like, we're. And the best part of it at Scott is when we go talk to business owners, they understand, and they want to learn about crypto. They're like, hey, no, now we want to learn. We just don't know how to do it. A year ago, totally different. They're like, wait a minute. We hear all the negative headlines and we don't want to be a part of this. We don't want to touch this. It's radioactive material. And timing is very different.
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A
I mean, it feels like there's such a wide gamut of what private equity does, Right? I mean, I think you've got like, all the way down to Pretty Woman corporate raiders, Richard Gere. They just come in and chop you up for parts, right? And then you have, as you said, those who just have money and put leverage on a business and make a lot of Money. And then there's guys. And, you know, I have a lot of friends in private equity. I went to Penn in the 90s. Everybody up in private equity. Right. Or at a hedge fund or something. And then there's ones who kind of take your approach, go buy small, great businesses with a real intention of improving them and sell them at some sort of multiple, or just go in there and run it and make a lot of money. And that's a very, I think, reasonable and honorable way to approach private equity. And if you can do that by actually improving the back end with this technology that we believe in, it's such a huge win.
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C
Yeah. Look, if we do this right, the industry will grow orders of magnitude, because even though crypto's come a long way, it's still not relatable for most. Most people just think that the industry is crypto and a bunch of casino and meme coins. Again, if we can prove that we can acquire businesses and make them more efficient, we will onboard hundreds of millions of users through our acquisitions. And the best part of it is, you know, the retention of that user is much higher because we're selling them a core service. They don't see crypto on the back end.
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A
Right.
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C
And the same way that when you swipe your credit card, you don't. Or you're using a website, you don't care if it's aws, Asia or whatever runs in the back end. And that's the great part of this tech is we can buy business, not cause any disruption, but rip and replace infrastructure. And I want to onboard a billion users on chain, and those users never know that they're using blockchain infrastructure. And, you know, there's like 30 or 60 million active users in crypto today. All of them are here because Bitcoin's at 100,000. What do you think happens if Bitcoin goes down to 25k?
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A
How dare you?
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B
I'm not saying.
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C
But if prices go down, a lot of those users just walk away. And again, I want to get to a state where these blockchain systems are working and humming on the background, and it's totally uncorrelated and independent from crypto asset prices like that. We're still at a point where this industry is so reflexive, and this is the way we break it, and. And. And someone's got to do it. I just got tired trying to convince others to do it. I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna do it on my own.
- [26:53]
A
Yeah, I was having, like, a Twitter debate. With Pierre Rochard yesterday, who obviously is huge in the treasury thing. And he kept saying, you know, when bitcoin goes up, it will be the bulk of these companies holdings, even if they have cash flow. When it goes up. When it goes up, when it goes up. And I was like, what if it goes down? That was literally what I said.
- [27:09]
C
Exactly.
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A
Do we not think it could at some point maybe go down? That they would be holding a toxic asset on their books, at least for that amount of time?
- [27:19]
C
Totally. It's almost like you were saying, like, oh, the NASDAQ went down, so my CRM and my supply chain automation software is terrible. I'm going to stop using it. Of course not. And I think that's the part that no one is really focusing on. Like as much as dads can improve the narrative and the visibility of this technology, there's just, it's so easy and tempting to just focus on prices because it feels great. We're in a bull market. It's all great and dandy, but I want to build something that transcends cycles and I think that's, that's what I want to get to. You know, less talk and narrative about prices as much as it's fun and more focus and emphasis on, on applying this technology. Because the reality is if you onboard a billion users, you best believe that your chain of choice, if, if, if it's a good product, the amount of value that will be captured by these daps and protocols is, is enormous and much more so than what your dad can do, you know?
- [28:20]
A
Yeah. So yeah, I'm a, I, I really have just come to the conclusion that if we all believe in bitcoin, companies that make money should just buy some and call it a day. Just like we should as individuals. Right. Take some of your money, buy bitcoin, hold it for a really long time, it'll improve your life, it'll improve your portfolio and that's it. Why do we need to do more than that?
- [28:43]
C
Yeah, totally. Don't overthink it.
- [28:45]
A
Santi, man, you really, really great. Thank you so much for joining. People can follow you. I know it's in the show notes, but what's your before? I don't have it brought up.
- [28:55]
C
My handle is Santiago Roel. R O E L or inversion underscore cap.
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A
Awesome. You're a crypto punk, right? There you go.
- [29:03]
C
Yeah. Long time holder. Yeah.
- [29:05]
A
One of those guys. A believer. Punks have never lost value. I don't think punks have ever lost value against eth. It's really like the greatest investment anyone could have made in crypto, pretty much. Besides buying bitcoin.
- [29:18]
C
We'll see about that. But hey, Scott, thanks so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.
- [29:21]
A
And you can also check him out on Empire with Jason Yanowitz. Awesome, man. Thank you so much. It's great to have you. Hopefully we can do this again soon.
- [29:29]
C
Anytime. Thank you so much, Scott.
- [29:32]
A
Awesome conversation. Echoes a lot of the thoughts I have. I think nobody today cares much more about anything than what is the Fed going to do? I'm going to bring on Chris in a second. Of course, it's Wednesday and our very long time, I think it's been a year now, sponsor Aptos. We have a thread here by Nick Gcat showing the gajillion things that have happened for them just this week. Obviously you saw Avery, their CEO, in the suit and tie on the floors of the house, and I know that he's participating in all the things that are happening there today. I don't know if you guys saw this, but there's a Republican and Democratic senators continuing to talk market structure today. And yesterday we had that meeting with Saylor at all Tom Lee, all on the floors of Congress. So obviously a massive impact. And Avery, who's a, who's a great advocate, I think, for the space, has been a part of that, as always. Check out Aptos. Amazing stuff, Chris. We were just, you know, talking to him. He's like, yeah, I'm trying to. I want to build stuff. You know, I. As much I love talking about prices and markets. You know, we got to start. Let's talk about prices, markets.
- [30:45]
B
Yeah, well, you know, Fed, The Fed's coming up and, you know, I. The one thing I think I hate most, the retail traders try to do is position themselves for, you know, big news events. Right. And the reason why I don't like it is that most people are going to get shaken out, right? They're gonna. They're gonna be too large. They're gonna think, man, if I get this right and I do all this big size and all this big leverage, I'm gonna make all this money in a very short period of time. And yet what most of them end up doing is because they're using the big, you know, the big position size, the big leverage, they end up getting liquidated along the way, and then it goes the direction they probably thought it was going to go because of all that volatility, right? So, I don't know. I'm a big fan of not positioning for. For news Events, you know, I'm kind of, I tend to get out of markets when they happen and just, you know, let them happen. You know, as we talk about, as you said earlier, often the first move is the, you know, is the fake out is the knee jerk reaction. And so, you know, we've got that coming up and you know, we've had bitcoin kind of still pushing up a little bit and kind of still doing its thing and you know, we've had the NASDAQ and, and the S P and, and the Dow and everything still pushing up as well. But the way I'm seeing it, you know, again, 25 basis points is the base case. I think we get that cut. The real thing comes afterward with the guidance. And you've mentioned this a couple of times.
- [32:11]
A
Those are all the things pal could do. Pal put on a hat. I can't believe he did it.
- [32:16]
B
So here's the thing. I think, I think if we get the 25 basis point Rako, which is, I believe what we're going to get, it's, it's what's priced in. We get a small pop and then we, you know, see what it says with the guidance. If the guidance is neutral or hawkish, we get to sell the news event, right?
- [32:34]
A
Yep.
- [32:35]
B
Because it's priced in. And so, you know.
- [32:37]
A
Exactly. You need something else. Now that Everybody knows the 25 bips is coming, what's the next thing to be excited about?
- [32:44]
B
Exactly, exactly. But on the off chance that maybe it becomes, you know, there's some kind of real dovish kind of hint to his language, I think we can see that pop extend higher. And so, you know, again, for me it's important just to say, okay, first of all, do we get the 25 base point? If we do, great. If once we do, you know, how is that language looking afterward? Now, you know, there is a very, very outside chance, very, very small outside chance that we get a 50 basis point cut. And if we do that, most people think, oh, that's automatically going to be bullish. Well, not necessarily. It could be bullish. Right. We could get more than just a pop. But it's going to depend on what are the real flows. When, you know, when that happens and when we get the, the, you know, the guidance afterward, are we really seeing the, you know, the ETF inflows and whatnot coming in? If we are, then we can look for price to continue to rally higher. But it really is going to significantly depend on, it's not like, oh, 50 basis point rate cut Automatically we're going to Valhalla, right? And so that's kind of what we're looking at. If it's neutral, you know, if they hold, then, oh my God, the market's got to reprice, right? Because they had it priced in for a 25 basis point rate cut. And so I think we see extended volatility. Then we get a pullback and whatnot as the market does that repricing. So that's kind of the way I'm looking at this. I put a tweet out about it yesterday, but so as far as bitcoin goes, here we are, right? So we've stopped just shy of my117,440 area. So again, I'm looking at this as three waves down here. So if we can break out above that, that should indicate that this, this is complete here, this pullback. And overall, we're heading out to a new all time high. Much to the chagrin of, believe it or not, there are still bears out there. A lot of them believe the top is in. I'm telling you, it's. It's crazy. But we break above that and there's very little reason to believe that we won't be breaking out higher. So that's kind of where I've been looking, is where we're still looking. I like the move up here. This is a nice clean move. We got a nice, you know, big candle spike of volume on the breakout above the. Above the monthly pivot here on the daily time frame. That's fantastic. Everything else aside, if we take everything else off here, most often what we'll get when we see this setup where we're kind of coming in sideways between that S1 pivot and the pivot and we break out above that pivot is we'll see a push up to the R1 and then a pullback down to the pivot. Or you know, depending if we push a bit higher, maybe down into the know the lower half of this range here and then we get the breakout higher. So it kind of gets us like this, this, you know, like a 1, 2 and then a 3 kind of. And that third wave is that one. We would get the breakout to the new all time highs where you get that participation, everybody jumping in, figuring it out. But see, you want to after that.
- [35:36]
A
After that is when we go back to 25k, right?
- [35:39]
B
Well, yeah, immediately. I mean, you know, the, the a penny new all time high. And then, you know, that day we're back down to 25. It's. It's the way it's got to be, right?
- [35:48]
A
Correction.
- [35:50]
B
But, you know, you wanted to be. You wanted to be down here, right? You wanted to enter here or at least here, or maybe even, you know, right about here. But most traders, what they're going to do is they're going to enter long on the breakout here. And the problem with that is that you'll often get a breakout in a pullback. And that pullback will either knock them out at their stop loss, it'll liquidate them or something before it continues higher. And so, you know, that's why helping them stay.
- [36:21]
A
You're breaking up and how to get into them. There you go. You were breaking up for a second, but I think it's either my Internet. Go ahead. You were breaking up there for a second. You went robotic. But one of our Internets was weird. You're good, actually. You're frozen. Can you guys hear me in the comments? And can you hear Chris? I don't know.
- [36:45]
B
I don't know if you can hear me.
- [36:46]
A
Yeah, I can hear you. It's breaking up. Your face is frozen. But whatever.
- [36:52]
B
All right. My face is ugly anyway, so. But yeah, so the key is to get in, you know, at these lower areas and then let the rest of the market, let the rest of retail traders FOMO in and carry you higher on the breakout. That way you have all that room. You have a lot of cushion for whatever happens there with price action. So I like it still right now, if we're going to pull back, I'm, you know, whether it's here, we go up higher and then pull back. I'm looking for this 113, 300 area to kind of hold this support. And as long as we can do that and get a bounce off there, I think we're good to go. Continuing higher there. So in a nutshell, that's kind of what I'm looking for. Let me see here.
- [37:31]
A
I hear something funny be just to like, as a example of what trader mindset versus, like, fundamental mindset is that I literally spent days, like, criticizing Nakamoto treasury companies how how like, stupid the whole structure was and all of these things. I even wrote a newsletter a couple days ago. I was like, I don't know if I would buy these like it does. And then my trader mind came back yesterday and I saw David Bailey's thread, which was like, pretty positive. I mentioned this earlier and I taught and David talked to David Weisberg and then I. I bought it at a buck. Yeah, you know, like, yeah, my fundamental mind Was like, I don't know. I, I don't think these are a good long term investment. But like, I, I kind of like, I looked at the chart and I said, well, we've got, we're massively oversold. We got bullish divergence. You got a huge gap. This thing's gonna, it's gonna 2x even if it like is the worst company in the world. I'm up. It's a buck 64 today.
- [38:23]
B
Nice.
- [38:24]
A
And I could. And honestly, I was considering buying it at 120 the day before. But it's just funny because that's my trader mindset. I. That could have been. Not really, but like, you know, it could have been like RJ Reynolds selling cigarettes or something. I look at the chart and I was like, as everything in my body is saying these things are bad, but I'm gonna make some money here.
- [38:42]
B
Yeah, yeah. And it's funny you mentioned that because I do. I've started going on this trading spaces every Tuesday and yesterday they were like, okay, so what's your trade? And I was like, naka, I'm good with naca. I love it. I love the setup here.
- [38:57]
A
Down that candle. Like they look at the, I mean, the read of all the volume. Look at the buying volume at down.
- [39:02]
B
Yeah, it's got the capitulation volume at the end there. Yeah. And then look at the volume.
- [39:07]
A
Yeah. So good.
- [39:08]
B
Yeah, it's hard. It's hard, you know, when you, when you know what you're looking. It's hard not to get excited when you see that opportunity. And so, yeah, so for me, I'm excited about that trade as well. So I've got Giga here, you know, and we're kind of bumped up into this monthly pivot here. Looking for this to break out higher above the weekly pivot. Monthly pivot area, basically 13 cents or I mean 1.3 cents. And then I've got targets of 1.6 and a half, 2.1, and basically 2.4 and a half as my targets to the upside there. So I think, I think that low may be in here. Just looking for this to break back out above here to head us toward those targets. So I think it's a pretty decent setup there for Giga. Arrow is another one that we've done pretty well with off these lows down here. Just locally here looks like it's three down, three up, and then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So that would give us a flat correction right at support. So I believe we're headed up higher here. And so then I've got a target of. Right now we're at a dollar 27 and a half or so. Got a target right here of two dollars and six cents on this at the moment, which gets us pretty close to this previous swing high, which is what I'm usually looking for. So, you know, again, arrow here, A E R O I think is looking pretty decent for some continuation up there.
- [40:33]
A
One of my analysts, Fong, is extremely like very deeply, fundamentally bullish on this and he told me to buy it at like 40 cents. And I just. Because I. Everything goes in one year, not the other. I didn't. But yeah, apparently this is like the main decks on base. So, you know, you see all this incredible news. Coinbase is behind base and you've got. I know nothing about it. This is what I. Yeah, me either. And base is getting a token and you got to believe base is the most popular layer too. And if you believe the base is going to work and there's going to be speculation, this is what you buy.
- [41:04]
B
I mean, it makes sense. You know, again, this was, like I said, we made good money off it down here running with this up. And so I think, I think this is the low. I think, you know, we continue higher and higher, but locally that's my initial target there. And I like what you said there, just adds more to the idea of what I was looking at in the charts. Right. So works out well. Let me see here. And then I've got FLR here and again flr, I believe the bottom's likely in down here. And so we've got this, this pullback which looks to be complete right there at the monthly S1 pivot. We've broken out above the pivot there, the monthly pivot. I needed a breakout above 0.02435 to signal that low was complete and we were headed out higher. So I believe overall we're going to head up higher here toward again, locally. My first Target here is 0.03442, which again gets us pretty close toward this previous swing high here as we're doing that. But ultimately, you know, again expecting it to go even higher. But right now that is my local target based on this, this kind of correction that we had right here. So overall I think, you know, things are still looking constructive across alts, across bitcoin. You know, whatever happens today, knee jerk reaction ultimately isn't going to change the overall trend. I don't believe. I think everything continues to go up. I think I saw total 3 was at like 1.12 trillion yesterday. So. And it's been, it's been lately hovering there around the, the last couple of weeks around that 100 above that 1 trillion to 1.03 trillion. So we've had a good move up from that here over the last last week or so and it's continued to kind of stay up there. 101.07 to 1.12 kind of area. So I like it. Everything's looking kind of constructive. So excited to see where this goes.
- [43:02]
A
It's gonna be interesting day. What if nothing happens? He just talks. And markets are just like.
- [43:10]
B
People are. Two people are too positioned one way or the other. We get volatility either way. Right.
- [43:14]
A
Because again, everybody's probably both ways. Probably both ways. Darth Mall Fed, everybody's liquidated and same price at the end.
- [43:22]
B
Exactly, exactly. And you just kind of kick yourself, why the heck was I even in this? Why didn't I just wait?
- [43:28]
A
Yeah. You know.
- [43:29]
B
Yeah. So for me, yeah, when it comes to news events, I mean, really, if I'm in a position and I've been in for a while and we've got some good profit in there, I might leave it in through a decision or through a, you know, major key kind of news event. But if I'm just getting started position or I'm about to or whatever, I'll usually just hold off. I won't sit there and try and put it in because it's too easy to get, you know, knocked out. Like you were just saying right there before it even continues to potentially even go in your direction. And it's just, it's just a pain in the butt. It's not worth it.
- [43:58]
A
Well, it's going to be fun one way or another. Where can people check you out when you're not here with me for this glorious 15 to 20 minutes of my life?
- [44:08]
B
You know, you can follow me on X there at TX West Capital. And of course you can check us out over@members.texaswestcapital.com it's eight years, dude. You started, mother. When we first started, right around September 11, 2017 is when you joined.
- [44:25]
A
You started, you had the Trello, which I joined. And then I convinced you that I would start a discord with you. And if you did it, then I would moderate it, which I did for years.
- [44:34]
B
Yes, yes.
- [44:35]
A
I was his moderator, guys. I worked for Chris.
- [44:39]
B
And then, and then Scott said, listen, man, we need to do a newsletter. And I'll be honest with you, I was so overwhelmed. I was like, how the heck am I going to do a newsletter? And he's like, well, I'm going to show them like this great, man. Do it. And look what's happened, man. And so, but yeah, so this is eight years, man, as of just the other day. Eight years. So we're doing a promo real quick here, 55 off right now for our liquidity cartography. So if anybody wants to join in that you can get 55 off. Just do 5. 5 off. You know, 55 in the word off as the code there in the checkout. And you can get that off. And man, join us there, guys. We're teaching things other people aren't going to teach you. That's what we do.
- [45:22]
A
5. Only fans, friends, you know, if that's.
- [45:26]
B
What you need to say.
- [45:28]
A
Only fans.
- [45:31]
B
Fans, man. Eight years, man.
- [45:34]
A
Gosh, I can't believe eight years, man. That's crazy.
- [45:39]
B
It is, isn't it? So much has happened.
- [45:42]
A
If anybody doubts when we say we were here, you know, in 2016-17, there. There you go.
- [45:47]
B
That's right.
- [45:48]
A
Definitive proof. Amazing, man. All right, well, I'm going to run. Thank you so much, guys. Check everything Chris has going out, of course, Santiago as well. Great guest. And otherwise, we will see you tomorrow with Iago. Thanks, man.
- [46:02]
B
Take care.
- [46:03]
D
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