Loading summary
Transcript136 lines
- [00:00]
A
Well, good morning everyone. Looks like Armageddon didn't happen, at least not today. Doesn't mean it can't happen tomorrow or next Monday or whenever. But you know, we heard some predictions over what would happen over the weekend that predictably didn't happen. And here we are and markets are interesting this morning. I guess now most markets are up a bit. Bitcoin obviously bounced off of its 200 week moving average again and here we are. And I don't think that this is remotely surprising, but that's just me. So, you know, curious how everyone else is looking at it. I mean Gary, I don't know if you were predicting this to happen now if you think this is actually necessary and it is the classic bull trap and we're still sliding back into the, into the 50s to the 40s. But you know, how are you looking at this and you know, and put it in context of the, the show in the Middle East. I, I don't know what other. I know it's real and there's human cost but, but you know, I don't even know what to make of, of what's going on anymore.
- [01:01]
B
I'm not, I don't even care anymore. I think the whole world is just bored of this at this point. Don't really think it matters. But on bitcoin, awesome that we have, we've had a little relief rally here. I personally don't think it holds but would love it to. I think we, we have to test the low again just to go check it, Check it out a third time.
- [01:33]
A
We did, we did test it twice.
- [01:36]
B
Well, we're in the summer. Dude, it's May. Excuse me, it's the middle, it's 8th of June. The, the, the extra, you know, powder in this market's going to drop. It's going to go to, I think it's going to go to a lot of these. Look, SpaceX is over subscribed by 2x200%. You know, I just, look, I just don't see the big, I don't see anything that's going to create this big run. People are talking about $10 million Bitcoin. It's, it's, it's just, it's a little out, out of, out of my reality. But we'll see, man, we'll see.
- [02:13]
A
I'll tell you my reality later.
- [02:15]
B
I would like it, I would like it to go another $10,000 down because I'd like to buy a lot of it here.
- [02:21]
A
I look at this in two ways. First, I think that the SpaceX IPO is going to be a watershed event. I think that most of the selling to buy it has already happened and now the real question is what do the insiders do with the money and what do people and how does it trade after market? I would be ridiculously surprised if whatever the closing price is on, I guess it's, is it Friday, is it Friday is the day or is it, is it a week from now? It's Friday, Yeah. I would be really, really surprised if the closing price on Friday doesn't become a point of resistance over the following weeks. And you know it, and it goes a bit and, and it softens, you know, particularly as unlocks happen. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, that's kind of a thing. I mean outside of Google's ipo, I can't remember big IPO that didn't break its IPO price within a month. I'm sure there are some, I just don't know about them. I mean David, you're, you're, you follow this stuff pretty closely. I mean what do you think? Am I, am I out to lunch?
- [03:31]
C
No, not at all. But I am interested, looking at some recent IPO activity, namely the spin off from Honeywell last week, the quantum computing item really didn't meet a very strong reception. And I put that down to the fact that people are just gearing up and saving their money for SpaceX, which given the potential involved with Starlink. Yeah, I think it's going to be a major stock, clearly. And yeah, I think it's going to be trading over its IPO price in a month.
- [04:04]
A
Okay, well we'll see. I mean, I don't know. I mean, look, I, I'm, I believe that SpaceX combined with Xai will be a massive story by, you know, 2028 because I think by then they'll have data centers either in space or about to be in space where their compute power and sourcing electricity from pure solar energy and the links back down to Earth will make it the low cost producer for AI compute and inference. That's what I think. I have absolutely no idea how long it takes to get there or what the economics are or any of that to know what will happen with the stock. You know, effectively that narrative will, will take hold at some point and after the, the economic equilibrium of all the insiders selling and people buying, you know, creates whatever that bottom is, the bottom be above the IPO price could be below it, I don't know. At that point I think that narrative will start to emerge. But I think we have a long time for that and trying to. But we'll see. I mean it's obviously, yeah, I would
- [05:10]
C
just say ahead of that narrative which definitely exists, is that Starlink puts SpaceX in a position to compete with every cell phone provider on the face of the planet. You know, their reach is well beyond any cell network that exists now. And I wouldn't be surprised if they try to take, you know, some of the money from the IPO and just try to hoover up market share. And you know, if they've got mobile telecommunications dominance in place, then, you know, some of the risk associated with putting data centers in space maybe, maybe mitigated.
- [05:53]
A
Fair. Brian.
- [05:56]
B
Morning.
- [05:57]
D
Yeah, I was just going to say the recent price action and recent jump is not super remarkable to me. I kind of look at it as us moving with the macro, recovering from the recent sell off and maybe slightly less worries about microstrategy. But I still think there's going to be two key items that are moving the market and those remain intact. So number one is AI is sucking all the attention in capital from everything else. You have AI companies that are generally beating earnings and the stocks are moving up accordingly and these moves are massive. So you have something like intel, which is half a trillion dollar market cap, moving up 30% on earnings. And then Gary mentioned the IPOs like SpaceX and Anthropic. It's just really hard to get folks to pay attention to crypto right now. And then the second big driver of the crypto markets in my opinion is Just Saylor. And where is, you know, within the bitcoin community? I think he's bought something like 14 billion of Bitcoin this year, mostly through issuing STRC. I think like it's nice to see that coming back, which is this massive, massive positive for bitcoin because if that effective yield gets too high, it's going to be prohibitively expensive for him to issue more and therefore he won't be able to keep up buying bitcoin at his recent clips. But so to me those are the two big things, like when is some of this attention going to disperse from just AI? And can Saylor continue to issue mostly STRC and buy bitcoin at a high clip?
- [07:24]
A
Carlo, how are you this morning?
- [07:28]
E
Good morning, David. I'm well, Carlo.
- [07:30]
A
I'm glad to hear it.
- [07:33]
E
You know, I tend to agree with what is being said. I have been taking this position that I think that AI has been a major, major drain on liquidity leading up to the hype. Of not only the SpaceX drop, but also the AI drops that are coming and that these IPOs are definitely very hyped legitimately. So, I mean, there's a lot of excitement around what's going on. But you know, from my personal perspective, I'm looking at other things that I think are suffering from this liquidity pivot and that I think are undervalued right now and underappreciated because of this attention shift. And it's a good opportunity, if you believe in these things, to perhaps look and buy some, some distressed stocks that are the collateral damage of this. As far as the Bitcoin thing, I tend to agree. I mean, I looked at a chart of NASDAQ versus Bitcoin, which has traditionally been a very correlative chart. But Bitcoin has decoupled of late from the Nasdaq and I think a lot of that has to do with the AI run that we are seeing. And I'm curious to see after these big IPOs whether that adjusts and whether Bitcoin responds positively once the liquidity flows come back. Because I tend to agree with you, Dave. I think the people that got in early enough on this and got pre IPO access to SpaceX when the lockups are released, are going to take profits and there'll be some price fluctuation there and there'll be a flowback of liquidity again. Everything, I think largely rests in the crypto sector. On what happens with Clarity. And there's a couple of big events. Number one, Lummis has said that the Clarity is on the five yard line and she's making a very big push to get this on the floor for a Senate. The crypto lobbying front has put out a 200 signature letter from major sector players basically making their push stand with crypto. And over 200 organizations sent a simple message to Senate leadership. It's time for the Clarity Act. If the Clarity act passes, Dave, I think that's gonna be huge momentum. Another thing that's sitting on the radar before I kick it back to you is I put this out today in my Stablecoin Strategist newsletter on Substack. There are some tax provisions that are being revisited in some proposed legislation that do impact the crypto sector. They're up for some debate tomorrow. And these particular provisions impact crypto and stablecoins. The long and the short is if you are a Genius act equivalent stablecoin issuer, then you're gonna enjoy cash equivalent parity as far as tax consequences for spending stables which in my analysis, number one, creates a real tension for non compliant stablecoins that are not genius act compliant. And also Bitcoin is not on parity with stablecoins under this proposed tax regulation, which I think impacts the narrative of using Bitcoin as a, as a form of fiat for payment at point of sale. So this is not final legislation. This is just drafts that are being debated, but certainly something to keep on radar. Thank you, David.
- [11:05]
A
Yeah, I want to table that one, but I think we can come back to it. A couple other things first. But anyway, Andre, you had your hand up, I think, right?
- [11:14]
F
Yes, thank you, Dave. Yeah, it's not a phantom hand.
- [11:19]
A
Oh.
- [11:20]
F
So, GM Yeah. I think Carlo, you mentioned this kind of disconnect between the NASDAQ and Bitcoin. I think what, what tends to be forgotten most of the time is like Bitcoin tends to be this kind of canary in the macro coal mine.
- [11:34]
G
Right.
- [11:35]
F
We talked about this many, many times. Right. And I think the risk is after this kind of Bitcoin correction of more than 50% since October is that stocks might follow now. Right. With the lag. And I think the current drawdown, Bitcoin implies at least, I think 20, 25% correction, which doesn't mean it's like the end of the world. But I think there's this kind of. I mean, we talked a lot about the fact that AI is taking the oxygen out, out of the room. Right. Etc. Liquidity out of the system. And I think that trade is going to exhale soon. Right. So I think semis, they do look quite frothy.
- [12:19]
D
Right.
- [12:20]
F
And I'm looking at something that is called fractile dimension, which is like a hurting kind of indicator and actually flashed a kind of contrarian signal. So I do think there's some kind of correction potential and Bitcoin might have signaled this in advance.
- [12:41]
A
Yeah. Maurizio.
- [12:45]
G
Hey, guys. I just wanted to share some color around some of the behavior that we saw on Friday and this week. Because what stuck out to me very much this time around was that the behavior we saw and the impact this drawdown to 60 had was very, very different this time around than February. In February, it seems like there were liquidations, people were voluntarily repaying loans, taking risk off. What we saw last week was the polar opposite. This caught very few people off guard. And in fact, it caught a lot of people. Many people were actually waiting for this. Based on the behavior we saw, we saw a lot of people react and essentially take proactive positions buying bitcoin effectively buying the dip pretty aggressively on Friday. And this isn't to say that further price corrections cannot happen or that we cannot go lower, but I noticed a very significant shift in sentiment and behavior, at least in the limited subset that we have eyes on. So I just wanted to share that because I did feel a big shift
- [13:59]
A
and I thought it was important. That is a big difference. I mean, look, there's always when you get a test of, of a double bottoms, you know, look, I'm not a big technician. I think a lot of technical analysis is, you know, on its own voodoo. I think it's, it's a tool that people can use as it'll helps you understand price points. But things like double bottoms are matter and they matter how what, you know, they matter. Why. So if there are people who are out there who are waiting most of the time when people say they're not like Gary. So when Gary says, oh, you're up there still. When Gary says he's waiting, what he's basically saying is he has dry powder. He thinks that it's going to be a slow period of time where he might get a chance to buy things cheaper, but eventually he'll figure out a way to deploy his capital intelligently. Most people, however, when they say they're waiting, they're full of shit. And it goes down. They watch it bottom, it starts going up, they watch it go up. They say this isn't real and they buy it 10 or 15 or 20% higher and lather, rinse, repeat. I mean, you know, look, I ran a market maker for years. I understand how, you know, retail psychology, you know, that's just reality. So when you're saying that the smart money, because your clients are not mom and pop retail and they're pretty smart people if they're buying.
- [15:22]
G
That's right.
- [15:23]
A
Telling you real. That there's, that there's real demand at lower prices. And people are saying, listen, if I had, if the market's going to give me that chance, I'm going to take that chance. And that, that is a tell. I do think that matters. Right? I mean, yeah, that's what. Thank you very much for that.
- [15:39]
G
No worries.
- [15:40]
A
Okay, cool. I think jw, I think you're, you'll all the. I see Carlo and Andre also, but I think those are phantom. Yeah, yeah.
- [15:49]
F
Jw, not, not a phantom hand. I just, I just want to add to, to his point. Like, I think I also think Bitcoin's quite resilient.
- [15:57]
H
Right?
- [15:57]
F
We saw like 4.7% correction in the Nasdaq on Friday.
- [16:01]
H
Right.
- [16:02]
F
But over, over the weekend, I mean, bitcoin recouped all of these losses, right? It's essentially up since Friday. Well, the Nasdaq hasn't really recouped all of these losses, right. Even with today's price action. So I think bitcoin at these levels because it may have already anticipated this kind of tightening financial conditions. And there's some tightening financial conditions going on.
- [16:28]
H
Right.
- [16:28]
F
If you look at the credit complex, right. Private credit, leverage loans, business development companies, they look like shit, to be honest. Right. And so I think they do signal some kind of tightening in financial conditions. And bitcoin may, may have anticipated this. And because it has, has anticipated this earlier, I think the downside is much more limited at these lower prices.
- [16:55]
C
Well,
- [16:57]
A
there's no doubt that financial conditions in the short run are tightening. I think a lot of what's happening with bitcoin is the people who want to own it aren't looking at the financial conditions over the next week or month. They're looking at over the next several years. And they see no choice for financial conditions to loosen dramatically to achieve the goals that government wants to. And that's a bigger deal. But that, you know, but you're right, I mean, you know, obviously, you know, strc, for example, is high yield debt. I mean, call it whatever the hell you want it. It's high yield debt collateralized by people's expectation of bitcoin surviving and continuing to be worth, you know, roughly, you know where it is or you've less, no more than a 50% drop, you know, give or take. But you know, we're seeing all that play out anyway. Block profit. I saw you had your hand up.
- [17:47]
H
Sure, thank you. Thank you. Just wanted to flag two long term trends that I think are interesting. The first just builds on Carlo's presentation and it is that I think in the near term, even to long term, the implementation of the Genius act will have a ton of spillover into crypto. I think it makes agentic payment easier and the world of agentic commerce wants to be financed by open source tokens that can finance the development of open source tools. So I think that spillover from Genius act implementation to make stablecoins more part of the regular economy spills over into crypto and has a lot of implications for crypto generally, including Deepin. But on the other side, I think a negative long term trend to watch for is as somebody in the ZCASH community, we had an interesting day on Friday and I don't know if anybody wants to talk about that. So I sit on the board of the foundation that supports zcash and we found a bug that could have potentially, theoretically allowed for the minting of counterfeit zcash. Highly, highly, highly unlikely it was ever used. We found it with Claude 4.8. One of our researchers found it with 4.8 on a six hour coding run and he's our lead security engineer. So we found it and almost certainly it has not been used. We have a way to ensure with a new development called Ironwood, that it will never be used and has never been exploited. But the real question is where's everybody else's bugs that are going to be found with, you know, with, with Claude mythos or with 4.8? And I think that's going to hit a lot of protocols and there'll be a reckoning. Not saying crypto's, you know, going to end, but there will be reckoning and there will be a reshuffling and the projects that live will be the ones that invest in security first, like zcasted.
- [19:40]
A
So I mean it's funny, we had a lot. It would have been great to have had you. Of course you probably didn't have as much information on Friday. Yeah, the exact commentary that we were talking about throughout the non bitcoin crypto sector was literally what you just said, which is the panic among everybody about oh God, what's going on here, Is there a vulnerability in this protocol? Is a vulnerability in that can there be excess minting, etc. And that swept through the crypto complex like a wildfire in a very, very dry summer in the west coast. So, you know, and we don't know is the short answer. I mean I mentioned this weekend and I mentioned on Friday that look, you know, the idea that Zcash is leading the market lower, you know, at 240, I mean honestly, that felt like a screaming buy. 320 when we were on the show, felt like it was. I didn't trade anything. I'm not trading actively right now for lots of reasons, but the most important of which is if you're not going to be sitting at your desk, you know, glued to it, I, I tend not to wanted to trade, but it felt like a pretty good buy. And here we are today. What, what is Zcash at right now? 4:30. So obviously, you know, these are pretty big moves, but what's funny is the falls in many others and I'm not going to go through every token, but there are many, many Tokens that fell not as much as zcash on the way down, but actually have not gotten close to recovering. So what you're basically saying is that the. The market is being fairly rational, and so people are looking at a token by token. But it is. It is a big thing in the crypto complex now. I can't tell from hands. My guess is intuition. That's a new hand.
- [21:25]
C
Yes, it is.
- [21:26]
A
Okay, cool. So you go. Yeah.
- [21:28]
C
And I would just say that, you know, on my day job, we focus on cyber security for Web3. And, you know, I would say that, you know, what happened in terms of zcash, you're starting to see more and more, not just code vulnerabilities, but a lot of social engineering vulnerabilities around crypto. And, you know, we work very closely with a wide range of clients. We developed around AI tooling, and we think that. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. That people have to operate with the sense of operational development, security first. So happy to help people in this regard. If anybody wants to come and talk to fio. Thanks.
- [22:06]
A
I would imagine that Friday was a good day for advertising for your company.
- [22:12]
C
Everybody else, you mean? We. We thank others. It's. It's the kindness of strangers.
- [22:18]
A
Interesting. Now I see. Mauricio, your hand and Andre's hand up. Are either of them new or are they phantom hands?
- [22:26]
F
Mine's phantom.
- [22:27]
A
Okay. Yeah. Because it is this. Every time we get people complain that you don't call on me, it's like, well, because I can't tell if they're real, but I wanted to pivot a bit. Gracie, are you behind the mic? Can never tell if someone's there. But the reason I wanted to pick on Gracie is because she's in.
- [22:49]
I
I am here.
- [22:49]
A
Oh, you're there.
- [22:50]
D
Good.
- [22:50]
A
Great. So one of the really interesting things people talked about both Friday and today is the impact of leverage. And it feels like one of the reasons that I thought that the idea of gloom and doom and some cataclysm over the weekend seemed unlikely was because it would be really expensive at the funding rates that existed last week, to build up a large spot, you know, long spot, short, you know, per position, in order to, you know, do a coordinated dump. You know, it feels like there's just not as much leverage on the long side. And I was just curious what you're seeing if that's crazy. I mean, we did see a little bit of liquidation of shorts, but that's Nothing, really. I mean, 300 million or less. I mean, it's who cares really? But it feels like there's less leverage in the system on the long side, you know, right now than there is in the build up to a lot of these other bad events. Which is what would you know, like October 10th, for example, the, the leverage leading up to that was significant. I'm curious, do you have any perspective on that? Because you're much closer to it than I am.
- [23:54]
I
Yeah, honestly, over the weekend I tried to stay quite away from the market as well as exchange business just to detox a little bit. So I don't have the most updated info on that. But one thing we observe is that from the exchange point of view, when Binance, Big Ed and a couple of others all launched stocks recently, we actually launched it much earlier since last year with on those tokenized version. But recently because Binance launched it like it's the direct broker dealer sort of model, our users on Twitter start to chat a lot more on stocks than just bitcoin. But of course since bitcoin is at this very critical 60k sort of price range, I've had a little discussion with my friends and, and our internal researchers around the price projection. My personal take on that is this is just a short stop of a further drop. But again, this is personal take and not representing my company. The 53.7k to 62k ish band is a very contested zone. And of course if we just do the calculation according to the last four cycles in 2011-2013-2017-2021, those four cycles in terms of the peaks and the lowest point in each cycle versus the peak is about a 70% drop. And that means from, you know, 12.5k, 70% off, that would be 37.9k. I honestly don't think it would be that bad, but we might need to be mentally prepared for a 40k sort of price range. And I shared a bit last week around my personal all in sort of, you know, buyback price of bitcoin in this cycle is probably 50k ish. And I, I shared that in in my Chinese community on Twitter and all my exchange users who were pretty angry at me because they thought, you know, as an Exchange CEO you cannot be so bearish on bitcoin. Yeah. But just, just some price range in my mind to show it you.
- [26:44]
A
Yeah, no, I think it's great to hear it. I mean, look, I'm more bullish than you are, but I think that we are, that this is a double test, you know, second test of a bottom of a range and I think that we will end up in a hated rally. And the hated part is really important here. So the more that the crypto community is bearish, the more grinding kind of nature of a rally that you get as all the macro stuff sorts out, I think is important. This space was downloaded via spacesdown.com visit to download your spaces today. You know, I would make the argument, and I have made the argument that absent strc, this cycle would have been exact, would have made the four year, you know, cycle bros very happy because you would have seen 30 to $40,000 bitcoin. I think that that buying, however offset. And so we've already had the kind of move that you would have expected and so that expecting it to happen again unless it blows up, which is I think last week why so many bears were basically yelling about, well, you see, SDRC is going to have to unload and MicroStrategy is going to have to sell all their bitcoin, which is of course a load of bullshit for a lot of reasons, but I think that's why you saw it. But yeah, I mean, you could very well be right. I mean, I, I, you know, look, cycles are cycles, right? You know, the madness of crowds is, is, is real. And what you're saying is, is, you know, you're looking at it and you're looking at it in a way that's very similar to a lot of people in the crypto community and there's nothing wrong with it. You and Gary are saying essentially the same thing as far as I can tell. Right? I mean, Gary, I assume if you're listening behind mic, that you're, you're kind of where Gracie is. I can't tell. Now I see Maurizio and David both with hands up, but I'm guessing those are both phantom.
- [28:39]
G
No, mine was not phantom. I just wanted to add another point around your comment before you handed it over to Gracie around leverage to the long side. And I just wanted to again make a point that at Lennon, we lend dollars for people that don't want to sell their bitcoin. And so our loans start at 50% loan to value. So typically when you have a big correction in price, that would cause the LTV of the aggregate book generally to grind a little higher if people are not adding collateral to their loans. So I just wanted to highlight that at these levels, as of the last open book report that we did, so every month we publish our book size, our collateral and the aggregate LTV or the average LTV ratio for the book. And as of June 2nd, which was just a few days ago, the average LTV for our book is down to 52% or it's basically at 52%, which is where our loans start. So all this to say that the leverage that is, at least in our book, the one that we look at, and again, it's just a fraction of the overall leverage in the market. It is in a very healthy position. Meaning what I interpret from this is that those people that might have been overextended probably already got wiped out on the original drop in February. And the leverage that remains at these levels is actually quite healthy and ready to much better prepared, if that makes sense. I don't think these guys are going to get blindsided by a further drop. So I think, at least in our type of profile, I think this leverage at these levels is actually quite healthy.
- [30:19]
A
Yeah, I mean, my. Look, I think it's very important to understand what you just said. I think that that is very important information. I was actually talking about something very different. I mean, I often talk about what, you know, paper bitcoin, that it's bullshit in terms of price suppression. But I'm very concerned in the way that the bitcoin and crypto markets, and it's actually worse than the rest of crypto, is susceptible to manipulative strategies that allow you to, on weekends dump spot and buy back perps because you're set up with a very long, large, long in spot and short in perps position that if you sell spot, the purse react more. That is, in my opinion, exactly what happened on October 10th. And it happened to have been at a time when the markets were uniquely vulnerable. And the vulnerability in the markets was extraordinarily similar to the vulnerability of the markets this weekend. But the difference was going into October 10th before the vulnerability manifested. There was plenty of time to put that kind of position on. And I don't think that the funding rates allowed that position to be put on because it would cost you a lot of money to do so. That was what I was trying to get at, which is very different than what you were talking about. But it is important because you can't really anticipate, you know, when these sorts of behaviors will take place. That's all. Does that make sense to you, Maurizio?
- [31:41]
G
No, it does. And in fact, you know, those, those. I think there's just. I think your point is basically like there's, there's different forms of leverage. But I think it, you know what, what I've seen in the past is that even when you are selling Spot to, to make that futures, you know, that that pairs trade work, you end up basically collateral damage for people that are taking leverage on spot bitcoin as well. So I think that the fragility of the spot bitcoin leverage market can also impact the velocity or, or the sort of quantum size of that drop because if it catches the spot leverage people off guard, that adds fuel to the fire. And I think that in this case there's not a lot of dry wood in that part of the market, if that makes sense.
- [32:24]
A
Yeah, no, it does make sense and I think that that's a, a lot of what we're seeing. Look, I, I, Scott used the word this morning on our macro Monday show that he wouldn't be surprised to see bitcoin quote float back up into the 70s. And, and his reasoning is when you get this being oversold as much as it was on every time frame, at the same time as sentiment, at the same time as you get a retest and well, the word successful is obviously a silly word, but you know, a successful retest that the sellers are like exhausted and you start to see the market push higher and then you'll see and maybe then you turn around and I think what Gracie was saying is a hiatus. I mean, we'll see. But I don't see a lot of, a lot of impetus or volume beyond this until we see what's going on macro wise. And the two big macro things are the price of oil and inflation and what will the Fed do and obviously the Clarity act and what will happen there. Those are the two big things. I mean, I will say this on taxes, as Carla went down that rabbit hole is, I think that it is incredibly unlikely that, that we have a, that you're going to get any meaningful legislation on taxes in a scenario running up to the midterms where Washington is as dysfunctional as it is. But the real question for bitcoin is de minimis usage of bitcoin to not be taxed. That's the real one. And they're not talking about that. Frankly, that won't happen until post 2028 and we see where the hell we are. I don't think there's even a chance of that, which is too bad in a way, but it does mean that you, that stable coins become spending and bitcoin is still an investment and an investment only, right, Dave?
- [34:14]
B
I must say I'm very surprised at how bearish this is. I thought I was. I think I'm being pretty realistic about this thing getting weaker. But Man, I'm hearing people talk about testing the 40s, 50s. That's amazing. And the dry powder, I think the dry powder issue is a major, major, major issue to bitcoin right now. Well, I don't know how you get to 73.
- [34:39]
A
I agree with you. I think that, I agree with you in a sense, but in the opposite way. I'm actually happy to, you know, as someone who is, you know, long term bullish and doesn't have a lot of dry powder. Although I don't, you know, I don't, I'm not, I'm not leveraged. So I'm kind of in that, in that middle state. I kind of look at this as. Yeah, you know, the more bearish the community is, and the crypto community is clearly bearish, the less likely it is that we're going to get that, that break down into, you know, below.
- [35:09]
B
The bitcoin needs fresh powder, dude. People can say whatever they want with clarity. No clarity, dude. You need some new money in this market. 100 so stale. It's ridiculous. And I think the old guys are so fed up with, you know, Michael Saylor that they're just dumping there. The, the whole thesis that most of the people bought bitcoin on 13 years ago is completely gone.
- [35:35]
A
Oh, that's not true. That's not.
- [35:36]
B
I think it is actually the whole sovereign nature, the, the self sovereignty, you can't, you can't confiscate it, dude. If they, you know, drop ATF people on your house, you're gonna come, you're gonna surrender your secret.
- [35:51]
C
Oh, the majority of the thesis that
- [35:54]
A
the US dollar was going to be inflated to zero and bitcoin couldn't be. That's it. Thank you Lord, you very pithy and very real. I think that's the thesis that most investors that matter now, a lot of OGs. You're right. There are a lot of OGs who are disgusted by the fact that BlackRock and Fidelity have taken over the narrative and they have been selling non stop. By the way. That's called distribution and it's incredibly healthy
- [36:21]
B
for it is so important. Dude, until we get those coins back at 60, 50, 48 average, we have too many cheap coins that are sitting back doing nothing. It's, it's a liquidity issue.
- [36:35]
A
So. So in my mind, you can't have it both ways.
- [36:37]
B
Exactly.
- [36:38]
A
On the path to bitcoin being, and I don't subscribe to the 10 million nonsense, but on the path to bitcoin being digital gold, which would imply 6 or 700,000 give or take depending on how, what percentage. And this is the whole Peter Schiff conversation I had on Friday. What percentage of gold is monetary premium as opposed to, you know, usage, jewelry, etc. But on the path to that you have to get distribution. It has to be held more widely held. It has to be. And widely held by the way, when it's Fidelity and blackrock, that's widely held because that's, that's. There's a lot of people underneath that. It's not just individual companies. Even MSTR to a degree is widely held because of how many shareholders there are in msr. But it has to happen. And in order for that to happen you need, you need whales to give up their coins and, and when they do it tanks the market. And so you know, we've seen that that's been a non stop trend since, you know, basically going back a year now. So you know, we saw the first one was last June, July was that big 80, 000 coin sale from Galaxy which was reported in July. And you know, etc. And I've studied that one because I know exactly how it was done.
- [37:48]
B
But you know, Dave, my, my, sorry to break you off but my, my concern is we have to get through 73, then we have to get through 83, then we have to get through 93. What happens at 100? These guys missed. Their wives are so pissed off they didn't sell 1 10, right? They got 10,000 Bitcoin. They've been sitting on this stuff for 12 years. They're irritated with the philosophy now. I just, dude, I just don't see how this. I just see exits, constant exits all the way up to the, to the $125, $126,000 number. And people are saying it needs to go to 130. Bullshit, dude. It needs to go to 16170.
- [38:28]
A
I mean the funny thing about that, I can hear Eddie Murphy's voice saying, talking about, I mean, do you agree
- [38:33]
B
it has to move hard. It can't just do 130 grand. 130 grand is failure.
- [38:39]
A
But I think you, yes, I agree with you, but that's why I think it has to be a grinding kind of rally. Not any massive omega candles or whatever the hell people use use, whatever that means.
- [38:49]
B
We're going to have a time capitulation which is painful as. Dude, I'd rather us just strike right down to 38. Get it over with.
- [38:58]
A
Well, it might be over with. I mean, I guess we'll see.
- [39:00]
B
And set the Spring? I don't think so, dude. This spring's not set yet, okay? It's got to get through too many levels. Dude, I love it to, I'd love it to explode. I just think it's got to get through like seven levels.
- [39:11]
A
I don't think that markets like this explode. If I think of bitcoin right now as a lot like the way the S and P was behaving in early 2009 and late 2008, right as it was bottoming and you know, people are saying, oh my God, it's going to go much, much, much lower. And it was hated. And, and to be fair, the person, the, the, the, the analyst who most correctly predicted that and made his fortune based on his calls, Tom. And that rally took a long time. It took a long time. 2009, it was a good year. But you know, people are like, in 2010, no one believed it. By 2012, people started believing it and, and you can see what it actually did. I don't see that would not remotely surprise me, that sort of mentality going into the bitcoin market. But I guess we'll find out, won't we, right? You know, but.
- [40:04]
B
Oh yeah, we're gonna find out
- [40:07]
A
is as much as it used to be. But what lawyer said is true. That's the thesis. And there's two theses underneath bitcoin. One is the important one, the sailor one, what lawyer just said, which is we're inflating dollars, we're inflating yen, they're inflating euros. But the only thing that's not inflating is Swiss francs. And they're doing everything they can to keep the price of their currency down. But that's the main use case. The other, self sovereignty, etc. I actually think it's kind of important. But the UI UX is such that people are still scared shitless whenever they, they transfer bitcoin in size. And that can't be for it to be a major utility. And with the tax situation, I don't think there's a lot of urgency to improve that. I mean, Carlo, you're big on self sovereignty. Am I out of my mind here? Carl may have walked away.
- [41:02]
E
Sorry, took a minute to get to the button. No, you're not. And I think that's the friction that we still have to overcome. For the bitcoin purists who look at it as the alternative to Fiat, I agree, because Fiat obviously has huge headwinds and challenges, especially the fact we're printing it to infinity. But Fiat is still universally accepted at the point of sale. And as long as that remains the trend line, then I think that's why in the short term, spending in stables is the strategy. Stacking in sats is a play on the continued debasement. But until we reconcile the tax implications of spending in Bitcoin, we're going to continue to see that friction at the adoption level of Bitcoin as a currency standard.
- [41:52]
A
Yeah, I think that's right. And that's, you know, it's, it's interesting when you get these days that are the calm days, you know, the, the recovery days, and you look around, you know, people are trying to figure out what the hell's going on. I mean, I just keep looking at a lot of tokens out there. I mean, Ethereum's had a, you know, it got, you know, we, we had William on, on Friday and he was talking about 1550 as the line in the sand level. It got really close and then Tom Lee came out and bought a bunch and so keeps keeping, you know, and the question is, is how long can he keep doing that relative to the market. But, you know, look, it is. The Ethereum Bitcoin ratio has been comfortably below 0.026. Excuse me, 0.027. It got down as low as 0.026. But Bitcoin dominance is still strong. And to me that, that matters because when you look through the rest of crypto, that's not like if you look at Solana and how weak it is today, or Hyper Liquid got down dramatically lower. It's bounced. That one's bounced pretty heavily. We talked about. Zcash has bounced very strongly. The ones, the tokens that people aren't paying attention to are languishing. And honestly, in many cases that makes sense. I mean, I've been saying that a long time and I think that if you look outside of Bitcoin and if you look at bitcoin dominance, a large part of my thesis is I think Gracie was right except for strategy. And to some degree, Bitmine on Ethereum effectively cushioned the blow. But the blow is seen. It's very, very real in virtually every other token. Not all of them, obviously. There are a few near and zcash, et cetera that have escaped it. But through most of the crypto ecosystem, those are the sorts of magnitude falls that we've seen. I don't know if anybody else has opinions on that or. Adam, do you think this is the final shakeout before we get to some measure of reality? I don't know if you're behind the mic, but I know that's a top topic that you care about. Maybe not. Well, I mean, for me, I've been talking about this non stop since 9 this morning, so I'm, I'm perfectly happy to call it here unless anybody else has other topics that they care about. But it feels like we're in a watch and wait phase and you know, playing with 60 between 60, well, almost 64,000 now is whatever. Right? You know, it's, is it a, is it a port in the storm eye of the hurricane or where are we? And I guess we'll find out. I mean, I'd like to like talk, see, do a little bit more work on some other tokens and figuring out what else is going on for Wednesday's show. But as far as Clarity is concerned, I mean, Carlo, I mean, it's the last topic to talk about. I personally, you know, it feels to me like if you're willing, if the, if, if you're willing to oppose Clarity, knowing that it allows for less regulation, it allows for more pain and more fraud, then you're pretty much willing to, you know, declare yourself. You know, you're basically saying we don't care about it politically anymore and, and that's a big deal. And the reason I'm, I'm mentioning that is I'm looking at a story from the Kobiasi letter, or I'm pronouncing that wrong, that, that SBF is formally applying for a pardon, which God forbid Trump is stupid enough to pardon him. But I did love Simon Dixon's response, which was I wonder how much money a pardon costs these days. And does he have enough ftx? Does he have enough stuff under the couch cushions to be able to get it? So I don't know if anyone cares about that, but that, I think if, if you want to get another leg down in crypto, that's the best way for it to happen. I think World Liberty would find itself getting crushed if that if, if, if he did pardon him. But I guess we'll find out. I don't think they're that expensive in the grand scheme. Well, but, but what would actually happen to the value of his son's holdings is I think the crypto industry gets crushed if he pardons sbf, don't you? Anyone think that, that Clarity or any other actions could have a chance at that point? I think it'd be disturbing to a lot of people, but it would be
- [46:11]
E
so par for the course that I
- [46:12]
A
don't Think it would have market impact. Really? See, I disagree. I think that, that there are still people who. Well, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go there, bro.
- [46:23]
B
It might drive the price up. It might drive the price up because you think, wow, do two years make a billion dollars? Seems like small FTX cook, he would have made everyone rich.
- [46:36]
A
So, I mean, it's kind of weird, right?
- [46:37]
B
Like he, he was doing, he was
- [46:40]
A
trading with other people's money. But I think it'd be worth more now if we let him cook. I don't know, maybe we, maybe we
- [46:46]
E
need some sort of, I don't know, maybe these like, scammer wizards are, you
- [46:51]
A
know, our future leadership. Oh, my God, man, that's dark. That is so Dave.
- [46:56]
B
I just don't know how anybody can think this summer is going to be bullish for bitcoin when you have a $900 billion token market that is weaker than it's ever been ever, ever, ever. Like, it's on its last legs here.
- [47:13]
A
And that's why, Gary, it's because.
- [47:15]
B
And then you guys are going, okay, well, we need retail involved for taxes. Retail is not going to use bitcoin, folks, okay? And the reason is they will. The merchant will have no in. The consumer will have no insurance policy when they buy with bitcoin. Buying Mars bars with bitcoin is not going to get you chargeback defense. And this is going to be Visa MasterCard's moat.
- [47:37]
A
Of course it is.
- [47:38]
B
So if you, if you're, if you're waiting for the retail to buy hamburgers on scale with bitcoin, that's just not going to happen. Like, you guys are smoking dope. If you think that's going to happen that you don't. A consumer can refund and charge back for 187 days. They're not going to use bitcoin coin to buy a candy bar at the exact same price.
- [47:58]
A
Oh, I agree.
- [47:59]
B
And give away those rights.
- [48:01]
A
I don't think that, that, that's part of it. I mean, look, I think that there's a. There's a huge argument with stable coins and providers with stablecoin rails.
- [48:09]
B
Stable coins will still have dispute rights that.
- [48:12]
A
Well, they will because the provider.
- [48:14]
B
Exactly.
- [48:14]
A
Elves are going to provide that. I agree. But that's not the bitcoin use case. The bitcoin use case is gold and you don't use gold. No one's taking a gold bar and taking shavings and going and buying an ice cream cone with it. I'm sorry. It's just not happening. Right. You know, to me, I agree, but.
- [48:29]
B
But people are saying when bitcoin gets institutionalized at the retail level, that's when it explodes. And I'm like, I just don't see the case unless Carlo and the lobbyists are going to remove the insurance rights from Visa and MasterCard. Like, they have a massive advantage over.
- [48:47]
A
Over. I don't think that that's where I get into most of the disagreements with the OGs.
- [48:54]
B
Well, that I'm just trying to get people practical. The retail is not our. Like, that is not the day. Taxes is not the problem on retail. If I keep saying, hey, we got to solve taxes, did you have. You got to solve the insurance problem, the refund?
- [49:09]
A
Absolutely right. What matters to people is the ability. The biggest single thing that's been talked about over the last couple of weeks. And Mauricio, you're here, so we may as well approach this topic is a formal request by Lummis and others to reform the idiotic accounting rules that hit banks with 1200 and basically that make it impossible to hold Bitcoin on the balance sheet without it being considered impaired. And the notion that Bitcoin should be treated like every other financial asset based on its liquidity and volatility is. That's a big deal. That's a huge potential unlock. I don't. I do anticipate it happening because the FASB people have even talked about it. And so the Basel people, I doubt that they'll be able to legislate that. But I do think that that is the big unlock.
- [49:56]
B
Really.
- [49:58]
G
I 100% agree with that. And I echo what you said, David or Dave, around using Bitcoin as cash. I actually don't think at all that's the unlock that gets to the next leg up. I think much more, much bigger unlock would be this reinterpretation of the Basel 3 that would allow banks to do more with Bitcoin because right now they are effectively boxed off from touching it or doing structured products with it, which I think is what's allowed so much proliferation around SDRC and other types of structured products around Bitcoin. I think when you start seeing more banks trying to do the same, that becomes really interesting because bitcoin's biggest, biggest attractive, I think to me, the biggest draw for Bitcoin is its volatility.
- [50:48]
H
Right.
- [50:49]
G
And if you can start using that volatility to put out some exciting structured products, that becomes really exciting. And I actually, the fact that sentiment is so down is one of the reasons actually I'm bullish because this is exactly when it's when people last expect it, is when everybody's given up all sorts of hope that you start seeing the recovery. So I actually think positive about people basically giving up for the summer. I think that's actually a good thing.
- [51:17]
A
Well said, Brian.
- [51:20]
D
I was just going to say, I think everything is just about net flows and bringing in net new capital. I think in the run up to IBIT coming to fruition and 2023 and 2024, that obviously made it so much easier for a lot more folks to access btc. And that in my mind was the main reason why BTC doubled from 35k to 70k over that time. To me, the next massive potential inflow of new capital will be potential central bank buying. I think if that happens, there could be this international war over BTC and that's when we could see $1 million per BTC. I think the same thing actually goes for altcoins as well. So in markets like 2020, 2021, when you have net new capital coming in, all tokens are seeing positive net flows and all are moving up. I think what we're seeing now is you have no new money coming in, you actually have some money potentially moving out and so you're seeing capital get reallocated from most tokens to the chosen few like Zack Near Hype vvv, while others are mostly just languishing in this market. So I think we need something to really come in and cause people to want to buy tokens, to see them move up. And I think like, yeah, for btc, like that's the one big next massive potential driver that I could see.
- [52:36]
A
Yep, I think that's true. And Gary's saying the same thing and just doesn't think it's going to happen. And frankly I, I tend to think that it won't be a wave, it'll start with a trickle and that's what really has to happen. Right? You know, it's, you know, sentiment is
- [52:51]
B
we need capitulation, man. We need vomit all over the place with blood coming out.
- [52:58]
A
I don't know, I think 50 down despite sailor, what he's bought looks a lot like capitulation to me. That's where you and I differ. It feels like that we've had that selling. It just hasn't had as much price impact because when we, where we don't have Sailor, we, we've seen 70, 80, 90% drawdowns. So, you know, we've seen huge drawdowns and so that, that's the difference. And, and I guess, you know, the, the beauty of this is, you know, in the next couple of weeks as we see what happens with SpaceX, we'll see some interesting capital flows and we'll see where we are. I mean, I, I, I don't know. I mean I'm not, I, I am not one who, I'm not going to pull out my crystal ball and say boom, this is it. Because if I did that, if you,
- [53:38]
B
if you had a bunch of fresh capital, would you be deploying at 63 or would you wait?
- [53:43]
A
I would be slowly deploying over the next two or three months.
- [53:48]
B
Dca, which kind of says you'd wait,
- [53:50]
A
which is not fully waiting. It's just it, the world is not as binary. I don't look at the world binary. I mean you can't be, you can't have run quantitative desks for years.
- [53:59]
B
And, but, but let's say, let's say you had 10 million, $100 million, a billion dollars. How would you deploy into Bitcoin right now?
- [54:07]
A
Slowly, Very slowly.
- [54:09]
B
Right?
- [54:10]
A
Slowly. Yeah, but not zero. Slowly. Yeah, right, that, that's right. You know I, I agree. I think between now and September I'd be surprised to see huge moves. I think there'll be range bound moves.
- [54:23]
B
And you do agree that these markets love Max Payne, right?
- [54:29]
A
Yeah, I think Max Payne is, is, it doesn't go that burn far below 60 so the people who do have capital have to pay up. I think that's more Max Payne. But, but yes, of course I do. Markets exist that way.
- [54:40]
B
That's right. I don't think we've had maximum yet.
- [54:44]
A
Yeah, no, I, I, I understand and, and, and that, but I don't, but
- [54:48]
B
I'm also talking my book. Be clear. I am talking my book.
- [54:50]
A
I want, I understand and I am too. But as I said it's, I mean Gary and I, I never trust anybody who, who is 100 certain of anything in terms of market, I mean.
- [55:03]
B
Well, you should always trust me because I'm never certain about anything.
- [55:06]
A
Well, that's one of the reasons I appreciate your voice all kidding aside. I mean you, you and I, you know, talk about these things and we, we understand where we're coming from at least. So anyway, Mauricio and Brian, I see your hands up. I don't know if those are new or old.
- [55:18]
G
No, that's a phantom. I'm done.
- [55:21]
B
Same Dave on that. One thing I am sure of. Bitcoin will be higher in four years than it is today.
- [55:29]
A
Right. In which case, then you should be the tax implications make it make it kind of squirrely. But you should probably have money parked in STRC then, because if it's going to be higher in four years, STRC is not going to fail. That. That's the interesting thing. But the problem with that is it means when you think it's going to go up, taking the money back out again has interesting implications. So there are, there's other strategies that you could follow. But, but that is important. Right. So anyway, on that note, we are at time, so we will see you all again on Wednesday morning. And thank you very much for joining us.