← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:00]
A
Good morning everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town Hall. Every weekday Here on X, 10:15am Eastern Standard Time and Happy New Year. This is the first show obviously that we have done this year. We took last week off. I hope that all of you did not miss us too much. For most of the time that we were away, the market was unsurprisingly, wildly sideways. I think I joked that the price was exactly the same when I came back and checked X for the first time in a week as it was when I left. But today we do have a bit of upward momentum for markets in general. Obviously gold and silver have continued to fly, but we have Bitcoin at 93,622 ETH, almost 3231.69. Rex RP215, up 15% on the week. Solana at a buck 35, $135 up 9.21% on the week. Many believing that this bump up in markets in general is a reaction to the action in Venezuela. I think we could debate that. I think that it's just the beginning of the year and things are generally a little more bullish and things are popping and I think that bitcoin is still in a range, so not much to celebrate here at 93,000, although any momentum is good momentum. I took a look some charts before we dive in this morning for the first time in about a week and a half and, and for those who are technicians, there's actually some interesting things happening. Bitcoin back above the 50 day moving average, which it's been long under, so that is generally considered a relatively bullish sign. But still under the 50mA on the weekly which is up just above 100,000. So if you've looked at the history of bitcoin corrections and markets, we've never lost the 50 ma on the weekly without heading to the 200 ma, which is under 60,000 right now. I don't think we're going there, but just a cautionary tale. So a lot of people think we kind of make a move back up to 100. That's the backside retest of the 50mA on the weekly and prices go down. But as you look on the daily we're back above the 50. But notably Solana, I only looked at a few charts this morning, but Solana, XRP, Ethereum, all also back above their 50 day moving averages. So maybe there's a little optimism in the altcoin market as well. And, and of all of those named Ethereum is back above its 50 day weekly moving average, which is kind of that same story we were talking about with Bitcoin, which I think Ethereum moves generally bullish for the crypto market. And maybe that's hints that Ethereum could outperform in the not so distant future as it is right now. So that's kind of a great summary of where we're at. I think maybe the first topic we can dig into is if any of this price action actually has to do with what's happening right now in Venezuela. You guys just raise hands. As you know, I can't always see who is or is not on stage. So it's really helpful if you jump in and raise hands. Tony, go ahead. I see you.
- [03:03]
B
Hey, Scott. Happy New Year.
- [03:04]
A
Happy New Year, everybody. Good to be here.
- [03:06]
B
Good to see the price action with Bitcoin, but I don't think it's anything.
- [03:09]
A
To do with Venezuela.
- [03:10]
B
I mean, if you look at the conditions, Bitcoin was oversold, right. December sentiment in extreme fear. And then we saw the whales. They paused their distribution and they started accumulating. So it's just a cyclical pattern playing.
- [03:23]
A
Out with the markets.
- [03:23]
C
Right?
- [03:24]
B
Markets don't go down forever, they don't go up forever. And we were oversold. And whether this is a relief rally, dead cat bounce, or a move to.
- [03:32]
A
An all time high, I think that's.
- [03:33]
B
The big question in everyone's mind, is this a continuation? But it's good to see some positive.
- [03:38]
A
Price action, but I don't think it has anything to do with Venezuela. Good morning, Carlo.
- [03:45]
D
Good morning, Scott. Happy New Year Avenue. It's probably too late to keep saying that. So sorry.
- [03:51]
A
Well, Dave. Yeah. Dave Weisberger informed me this morning on macro Monday that somebody told him that after January 3rd, it's like wearing white pants after Labor Day. You're not allowed to say Happy New Year anymore.
- [04:02]
D
So major, major social fumble there.
- [04:05]
A
I say it, I'm saying it. I said it.
- [04:07]
D
Okay. Thank you for backing me up. I wanted to put on my criminal defense lawyer hat for a moment and talk about the Maduro arrest because that's obviously significant. He is appearing in a Manhattan federal court today. I had a chance to review the indictment. It was unsealed. He is looking at probably a life sentence when it's all said and done. Given the narco terrorism and the machine gun charges and the tons of cocaine that's going to be piled onto his sentencing guidelines. He's going to appear today and be given the opportunity to request court appointed counsel. If he hasn't already secured Counsel, he really should have had somebody on retainer as soon as he knew he was indicted back in 2020. But if he doesn't have a lawyer, they're going to appoint him a court appointed lawyer, then they're going to address release. I don't see any chance he's going to get out on bail. He's going to be detained, pretrial detention. Having done hundreds if not thousands of these hearings, there's just a mountain of evidence that's going to justify holding him throughout the trial. And really his only out here is if he has anything of value to offer in the form of cooperation. But I think the biggest leverage they've got on him is the fact they also indicted his wife, which is rare. But this puts a lot of leverage on him now to cave in and settle to avoid his wife potentially getting a life sentence. So I'll continue to monitor this and I'm happy to answer any questions about it. But that's obviously a big deal today that the US Grabbed him and in an ironic point, they grabbed him on the same day in history that they grabbed Noriega and he was arrested and detained in the Southern District of Miami. So history doesn't repeat, but it certainly does rhyme on this occasion.
- [05:52]
A
Jeff, go ahead.
- [05:55]
B
Carl, I had a question for you since you're an expert in this space, Trump and the administration trying him in New York, because my first thought was that's a little odd relative to like, as you just described, like a favorable court, a favorite setup would imply a different jurisdiction. So I'm curious, like, what your theory is on New York as the venue of selection here.
- [06:21]
D
Yeah, no, that's an excellent question. Because the crimes happened mostly internationally and there's narco terrorism involved in this. There's not a whole lot of limitation as far as venue. You don't have to, in this particular circumstance, prove that at least one aspect of the crime occurred in one jurisdiction to gain venue. Also, remember this indictment came down in 2020, so it was under the original Trump administration. It remained active under Biden, and he remained active under that sealed indictment into Trump too. And the Southern District is pretty notorious for handling large, high profile cases. They're set up for this. The judges, the courthouse, the whole system is set up for this. Yeah, they could have prosecuted this in the Southern District of Miami, but I think it's just a carry order from the fact this happened back in 2020. That's the reason it's there.
- [07:21]
A
Good answer. I guess. Then the next question, I mean, we have the Monroe Doctrine and Noriaga as President. There's a lot of reasons, but, you know, why is it the United States is right to do this in the first place?
- [07:34]
D
Yeah, this is an issue that's going to definitely come up because whether he has private counsel or a court appointed lawyer, they're definitely going to attack the nature of the removal from Venezuela and the extradition to the United States. This was not done through normal channels. This was done because he's a fugitive and because there isn't really a legitimate nation that recognizes him as a legitimate leader. So the argument that they have politically prosecuted and arrested the leader of a foreign country and that this was somehow an act of war is largely going to be, I think, rejected by the courts. They're also not going to entertain extradition issues in this case. I think just like those arguments failed in Noriega's case, they'll fail here because the evidence seems to be overwhelming that he was involved in narco terrorism and was importing tons of cocaine into the US and he really doesn't fit the mold of a legitimate leader that would have that kind of sovereign protection. And largely this is going to be up to the US to decide now because he's on US shore. So I think that's going to weaken all of these arguments.
- [08:47]
A
I think it's also important to note that all of that has nothing to do with why we actually did this. But go ahead, Dan. I mean, I think it's very interesting to dig into the Noriega comparison and the rights of what we did to Maduro. But I don't think any of that speaks to the reason that the United States is interested in Venezuela.
- [09:06]
E
I hear that there's some oil in Venezuela.
- [09:09]
A
Yeah. And that maybe it's important area of the world when it comes to Russia, China and others. But I guess we can unpack that on the politics show that we don't have. Dan, go ahead.
- [09:22]
F
Hey, morning, guys. Yeah, just a little side note slightly. I find it funny that they went and captured him because what the US does a lot with a lot of people is kind of tricks them into coming to the US the case that comes to mind is the case of Fat Tony, who was wanted by the US for kind of criminal conspiracy and negligence and stuff with the US Navy ships in Singapore. And they, they told him, we love what you're doing. We want to give you a medal for what you're doing. We're going to fly you to San Diego and all that kind of stuff. And he was like, great. Flew There to San Diego. As soon as he arrived on US soil, they were like, it's a prank. There's a camera right there. And they arrested him.
- [10:01]
A
Yeah. I mean, I will say in this case, the fact that, you know, the previous administration already had a $25 million bounty on Maduro's head made it pretty unlikely he was going to fly into Medal.
- [10:11]
F
Yeah, he wasn't going to go there.
- [10:12]
A
The fact that they've got a lot of tricks in the US we have a lot of tricks.
- [10:16]
F
They grabbed him. That what. I'm actually very tired of being a European and I'm currently in Europe. All the hand wringing and the bleating of like this breaks international law and all this kind of stuff. I'm so, so tired of this. I've been saying for a while there's no such thing as international law. International law is some fairy tale that we all told ourselves since about 1990, the collapse of the Soviet Union. It means nothing. All it means, all it is, is your power to do stuff and who's going to stop you. That has been the history of humanity and we're back at that now. I like that the gloves are off and that we're doing this. People saying, oh, this might embolden China to go into China. If China could go into Taiwan, they'd be in Taiwan. Okay, this, this is not about international law. So I'm, I'm glad that we're now realistic about these kind of things.
- [11:03]
A
Yeah, I think we should. I would love everyone's take, but try to keep this tied as well to markets. My fault for not doing that, but I, I don't want to just generally have a conversation about the politics. Yeah, go ahead.
- [11:14]
E
I think maybe to try to bring in bitcoin to the relevance of, of this thing is, is sensible and, and in a world where there's no such thing as international law, there is Bitcoin, which is inviolable. Global law rules that, that if for nations that want to protect some assets, I'm not saying this defends your border, but as a, as a settlement mechanism that is not politicized, that is that any two nations, regardless of who's. Who their enemies are and what other power their enemies have, it's, it's usable by them for settling trade between one another and for any entities within those nations to settle trade between one another. So I think the emergence of bitcoin as a settlement tool, as a, as an international trade tool in a world where all the, all the fiat currencies are Politicized and we're starting to see hoarding of other commodities that have historically been monetary. It does get interesting. It's still early, but to try to bring the conversation back around to bitcoin. Yeah, that's a point worth making.
- [12:26]
A
And Tomer, I want to bring in Dave on this since I saw that he popped up. But Dave, you talked about a macro Monday this morning that there was conjecture which we cannot speak to whether it's verifiable or not. But it was even on Zero Hedge that Maduro himself had a big fat bitcoin stack.
- [12:42]
G
Yeah, it's funny, I saw Jeff jumped on. Jeff park, who's up here, also jumped on the bandwagon last night. My first reaction when I read the Zero Hedge story was, well, I put huge grain of salt on the story, but if it's true, it's massively bullish and people should understand why, if it is true that in his capacity as a chief money launderer for a large narco terrorist organization, he laundered his profits and put it into bitcoin and the United States has the ability to seize that bitcoin all of a sudden we could very easily have a full bitcoin reserve without buying a single having to pay for a single sat. And that is not a small thing because if the US has a million bitcoin or would could have it in their, in their possession as backing the dollar, you know, an equivalent to Fort Knox, it creates a massive incentive for the United States government forever. Both parties like enduring for bitcoin to go up in price. And people should never underestimate being on the right side of what the government wants. The government always doesn't get what they want, but they certainly have mechanisms and they certainly have levers to pull. It also would eliminate a massive amount of overhang that people think is there. It's funny because I saw all these people making this just horrendously terrible take saying, oh well this means all this bitcoin is going to get sold for dollars. And it's like really, if you're trying to hold on to money, if the US hasn't, it hasn't grabbed it yet and you think that trying to sell it is going to be doable without getting caught. Well, good luck with that. And it literally is one of some of the dumbest takes I've ever seen on, on the X platform.
- [14:23]
E
So it's the first I'm hearing of it. David, wouldn't the take be that the, that the U.S. government, if they seized a Whole lot of bitcoin would then sell it because they haven't demonstrated any interest in actually holding on to bitcoin.
- [14:36]
G
Well, actually, Tomer, no, I'm actually surprised that you're saying that because I'm asking.
- [14:42]
E
It as a question.
- [14:44]
G
Our bitcoin Reserve is at 300, some 1,000 right now because there's already an executive order. This administration will not sell it for sure. But if you think that Congress, let's say the Lummis bill, no one wants to spend a penny. And so the reason that there is resistance to spending it, the reason that they can't get a few Democrats is because people don't want to spend money. But if it doesn't cost anything and you can have it, basically you just handed a Fort Knox of bitcoin. It would make passing that bill really easy. Right. That's the important thing that everyone just, you need to understand that money talks and bullshit walks in the United States politics. And so if you can tell if the senators can do something that costs nothing, that politically could show that they're not on the wrong side and they're not part of the anti crypto army and it's not necessarily just helping Trump, all of a sudden now you have something that's a political winner. I think that, you know, you have to read the tea leaves here. I mean, Jeff, you commented on this as well yesterday. So I'm curious if you're thinking about it the same way if you're behind the mic. I can't tell.
- [15:48]
A
It was up before. Yeah.
- [15:50]
G
Oh well, it's interesting because I saw he posted about it. But I think that you have to look at this as interesting. Obviously it's complete wild speculation. And while Zero Hedge generally has a far better record than most at some of this stuff, it's, it's not obvious. But it is not crazy to think that, that they do have a, a bitcoin hoard along with some of the other stuff that they're going to track down from laundered money. And it does however have other interesting, interesting characteristics. But you know, I just want to leave it at there. At a bare minimum, it's a possible positive tail, you know, event.
- [16:26]
H
Right.
- [16:26]
G
It's a white swan that, that people have to think about. And I think that some people are.
- [16:33]
A
I think William has end up.
- [16:37]
I
Yeah, I think there are two factors because going back to the essence of our topic, which is crypto, I think that there are two factors. One is the January effect, as they say, which is an effect of the tax loss Harvesting that might have happened. That always happens in December and funds or people have more money to put back into things that they sold in December for that reason. That's something that's a factor. And the second kind of derivative of that is I saw a headline that there were $645 million of inflows already into Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs already in January. So could be like a derivative of the tax loss harvesting effect or could be additional new money so that, that these are small factors. I think we cannot ignore them.
- [17:40]
A
Yeah, I think JW there black. Prof. Hey. Yeah.
- [17:47]
C
I think Dave captures the next steps correctly. If this rumor about a, about a bitcoin stash is true, I think the US government will hold it during Trump administration and it contributes to an unofficial bitcoin strategic reserve that exists via executive order by decision to not sell. It also fits into the narrative that's my favorite crypto privacy. Right. This would be a much more useful tool to Maduro if it wasn't so easy to trace. Bitcoin's easy to trace and therefore easy to seize and easy to use government power as it is to use wrench attack power at the small scale. Just read about another brutal wrench attack this morning. And to be honest, I don't even have much. I'm down bad, but I'm still scared about this. It's a reminder of the use of government force and power and the use of small scale people broke into your house in the middle of night power. That makes the privacy narrative all the more important. I mean, imagine if Maduro had a zcash stash that was shielded. We would never see it, we would never know. That's one of the ways in which I interpret the story.
- [19:03]
A
Yeah, I heard he actually had a huge stack of barcoin, but not sure.
- [19:09]
B
Chris.
- [19:11]
G
Yeah, I mean it is, it is interesting because people will always talk. However, this. And then JW makes an important point. Bitcoin is censorship resistant, not censorship proof.
- [19:22]
H
Right.
- [19:22]
G
We kind of understand that. You know, the FBI loves it when the bad guys use bitcoin relative to cash because it's a hell of a lot easier to trace. But for individuals, it's a hell of a lot harder to seize. And you know, certainly when it's not at scale, it's a lot easier to move and use and that matters. So it's it. I saw a lot of people saying, well, you know, this kind of, if they do grab it, it will prove that it's not censorship resistance. Like there's a big difference between someone who owns 5 million or less, you know, whatever. I don't know what the number is, but some significant to individuals but not significant to, you know, to, you know, to billionaires, amount of bitcoin. And that's where the demand needs to come from. And so yeah, it does matter. It's sort of like when the Canadian truckers thing happened, you know, that, that showed, you know, the government, you know, stopping, you know, contributions, you know, censorship resistant money is a theme and it hasn't been talked about in a long time. And JW is right that this could cause more people to be talking about it. And that does matter from, you know, because remember we're still, weirdly, we're still in fear, in, in the extreme fear and greed. And despite this morning, we're still inside of a trading range. And I think that for it to break out of this trading range is going to require new money and that new money is going to need to have impetus. And this is one possible impetus.
- [20:42]
A
Yeah, Jeff's here. Jeff, Dave, tried to invoke you before, but I don't know if your mic was.
- [20:47]
B
Sorry, yeah, my wi fi, my WI fi was having some problems. So sorry about that. But, but I completely agree. We need new flows, new narratives. And the thing that I find really interesting with Venezuela is yes, there's this one theory of like maybe that's a stash and that stash can be eminent domain, which is an interesting theory. But a more long term value accrual strategy here that I fantasize a little bit about is the external balance sheet theory, which is we know the US can't openly accumulate bitcoin at scale without triggering backlash politically and we know it has to be done in a budget neutral way. So there's this one version of a world where like Venezuela is almost like the perfect candidate to be like the sandbox to do some things where by design like they are cut off from like the correspondent banking system because of sanctions.
- [21:45]
A
Right.
- [21:45]
B
And so one like kind of strange but plausible theory is like, look, it's going to take a long time to fix Venezuela and it's probably, probably not going to be super clear as to the black and whiteness of what kind of political alliance the country that will democratically emerge will look like. And it's not going to be like one day all of a sudden the sanctions are lifted. Right. So a weird thing you could kind of do is use bitcoin as a crypto rail interim to have an off balance sheet accumulation strategy. Like by the US and take it as like a potentially political win on every side because like, it's also plausible that the Venezuelans themselves really need a way to store wealth. And if they feel like bitcoin is the thing for which they're able to settle on until like hyper dollarization comes to them, it's like a really interesting sandbox where like you get this temporary administrator custodial supervisory relationship with the US where they can legitimize the bitcoin interest. Right. Venezuela is almost like the perfect sandbox to be like, they're sanctioned, the dollars aren't flowing, but they have energy production. Maybe there's a way you weave bitcoin accumulation not just at the sovereign level, but at the Citizen Level Level 2. And I don't know, anytime you have a narrative change like that where you can imagine new buying pressure to come, like those things can I think, take a life of its own. So this is more of like a far fetched version of what a strategic bitcoin reserve could look like long term in the way that it has to be created with a political will outside the US But I just have this view that this thing is going to take a lot longer to like find a bridge to productivity gains. And I don't know, Bitcoin just feels like a really easy interim solution for everybody wins. And the local people also kind of cheer it on because they have nothing else to save in. So yeah, I don't know, it's an interesting thought that I've been having kind of more longer term on it.
- [24:00]
A
I mean, if they have effectively free access to electricity at this point too, shouldn't mining be a huge be on the docket for Venezuela now? If we're looking for budget neutral ways, why not mine? I'm not saying they would do this, by the way, but why not mine bitcoin in Venezuela with all that free oil, free energy infrastructure, I think there's a lot of ways that this could go, but I don't think that bitcoin's really a priority in the Venezuela situation of the United States government. We'll see. Dan, go ahead.
- [24:31]
F
Hey, yeah, here's an interesting question. If it turns out Venezuela does have this 600,000 Bitcoin and now the US seizes them and it on its balance sheet, can we say that the first shots in the first bitcoin war have been fired?
- [24:45]
A
Well, we did do this, Dan. I mean, it's not with the government, but the pig slaughtering thing that we just saw. The United states took what 126,000, 120, something, thousand bitcoins. We return those to the victims of the scams.
- [25:00]
F
Yeah, that happens everywhere. Happens in the UK as well. But I mean international, the first state on state kind of bitcoin war.
- [25:06]
G
Not, not really. I mean they're gonna. The US Is the only way the US could keep. If. If it were determined that the bitcoin were part of the Venezuelan official government coffers, then you'd be right. But I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be able to take it then, or wouldn't want to. If on the other hand, it was laundered drug money, that's a totally different thing.
- [25:27]
A
Okay, but that's what we're doing. We're taking some of their oil. Dave, but aren't we somewhat taking some of the oil? I mean, I'm not saying we're like going in and stealing all Venezuela's oil.
- [25:35]
G
But mechanistically, no, I think that the. Look, we talked about it. This is more of a rabbit hole than a crypto show needs, but we talked about it a bit this morning. The closest corollary to what happened here is what happened in Panama. And effectively what happened in Panama was when we took out Noriega, Panama descended into chaos, meaning the drug cartels got even stronger, but they were more varied, et cetera. And it took years, I mean, many years, over a decade to stabilize. And you know, in the end they were better off, but in the beginning they certainly were not. And Rubio totally understands this. And arguably a large part of the policy that we, that we are looking towards is to avoid that. And so that's going to cost money. And so the question of how do you do that is where this is coming from. And I think there's. This is going to be in the courts. This is not a trivial situation. The question really on the bitcoin is much simpler is are we talking about laundered drug money or are we talking about Venezuelan looted money that he stole from the people? And if it's, if it's stolen from the people, I think it's going to be much, much harder for the US just to take it. If it's drug money, it's going to be a hell of a lot easier. That's the point. But all of this is complicated and we are to some degree, I'm talking out of my ass because I don't have data. I'm just speculating on what the pieces are. But I can tell you that that is where, where it's going to matter.
- [27:00]
A
Maybe.
- [27:00]
E
How can anyone even distinguish what he took from exactly people and what he, and what he made from drugs? Like, I don't think he kept separate sets of books.
- [27:08]
G
No, it's, it's, as I said, it's extremely complicated. That's exactly what I said.
- [27:12]
A
Exactly.
- [27:13]
F
Regardless, it's not going to get sold whether it's his and it's whatever. If there is 600,000 bitcoin in either his personal possession or the Vanilla Scholar government possession, those coins are not going to be sold for a long time now. So at least we have the security. They're not hitting the market.
- [27:27]
G
At least I would guess exactly right.
- [27:34]
A
Maybe then, considering this is crypto town hall, we should sort of pivot away from Venezuela specifically to maybe forward looking into 2026 and how people are feeling about the market and potential catalysts that anybody on the panel might be looking for to see the mythical bull run that everybody has somewhat been waiting for. Maybe predictions on 2026. Since this is sort of our first show, I wrote a long newsletter on my predictions, but I'll save that for the readers. But anyone here thoughts on what could really spark another run for the crypto market?
- [28:14]
F
I mean, yeah, Trump's going to get his SEC guy, right? That's coming down the line. We all know that Trump's going to get his SEC guy in place.
- [28:23]
A
Bad guy.
- [28:25]
G
Sorry, Fed. Fed, sorry, Fed.
- [28:26]
F
Yeah, that can only be bullish, right? We have Trump's Fed guy coming in, plus rate cuts. I don't know how we can be bearish going into the.
- [28:34]
J
This space was downloaded via spacesdown.com visit to download your spaces today.
- [28:38]
F
26 in my opinion.
- [28:42]
A
But the four year cycle's in.
- [28:45]
F
Jason. Go ahead, friend.
- [28:46]
B
Yeah.
- [28:49]
G
Thanks for having me.
- [28:50]
H
First of all, I think that there's a chance that, you know, we're starting to see some extensions of what we generally have thought as the four year cycle. You know, I think that we're probably going to see some type of bull, you know, come back this year which, you know, might break the, you know, what we've thought of as a standard four year cycle. I mean, we've only had four, right. We're still really early in bitcoin. I think that as we see contraction in altcoins and a lot of the 2021, 2022 vintage kind of L2S and Protocols either run out of money or fold as we've seen with a bunch of projects over the past year, that'll just draw more money into bitcoin as well as some of the other primary L1s. So I think that we have, you know, a macroeconomic contingent a good year ahead. But I don't think that it's going to look like a lot of the other bulls. I, I, I hope that people aren't faked out by, you know, a lot of altcoins as they, you know, want to, you know, reinvest, you know, prior gains. But you know, we'll see. There's a lot of factors here that you know, kind of are still unknown, but I do feel strongly that, you know, we might be breaking out of the, the standard four year cycle, but I guess we'll have to see.
- [30:17]
G
Yeah, well, it's, it would be interesting if you know, Fred Krueger had pointed out some things which, which was interesting which is the four year cycle as a four year is silly. A log cycle however would show that it would be different and at which point that particular would, we're still in basically that, that modality which would mean that we haven't gotten the bull market yet, which of course the bull market of, of 2025 never materialized.
- [30:47]
F
Right.
- [30:47]
G
Couldn't agree, couldn't agree more.
- [30:48]
H
Log cycle makes way more sense.
- [30:50]
G
Right. And so you know that, that math is more logical but obviously any of guardrails, you know, markets just don't move like that. And anyone who thinks that you could look at three data points and say, okay, this is what's going to happen, you end up sorely disappointed. There's so many examples of that and it's just kind of silly. I can't tell. I see three hands up. I see Dan, William and Jason. I don't know if they're real.
- [31:16]
A
I don't see them. So you run with it. I do see William's hand up. Go ahead, William.
- [31:23]
C
Sure.
- [31:23]
I
I think there's one thing that maybe we have been still underestimating, which is the effect of the Genius Act. As you remember, there were five institutions that were granted conditional approval and these are not the ones you would think of necessarily. Circle, Ripple, Bitgo, Fidelity and Paxes. And this is a strategic shipped, I think and we're going to see more and more effect of that into 2026. More importantly, what this means is that it's a knock on the banks, on the current banks with less power for them. Because specifically now the crypto industry, especially with stablecoins and Defi, is gaining more regulatory recognition and political influence at the expense of traditional banks. So that shift means that the crypto sector can compete more directly with the banks core functions particularly in payments and deposits without being bound by legal regulatory constraints. I know we've talked about that before, but we haven't seen the full effects of that because it's going to unravel in 2026. And these five banks are just the beginning. So I would keep an eye on that.
- [32:57]
A
Dave, I don't see other hands, do you?
- [33:01]
G
I see Dan and Jason, but they could be phantom hands.
- [33:06]
A
Dan saying no, we got a thumbs down from Dan. So definitely a fan.
- [33:11]
G
So, yeah, I mean, look, it's funny though. I wonder if anybody thinks that it matters. I mean this is one of those weird things. But during this show over the last month, you know, we saw, and right before the show, the 945 sell off and then a stabilization. We didn't see that today. It's the first time in over a month. And you know, who knows whether there was a program of selling, tax law selling or why. But you know, one wonders, you know, if we're, if the regime has changed, you know, or because we've seen bitcoin kind of being again anti, you know, when silver rallied, bitcoin was, was down. And we're not seeing that today. I'm curious what, how people are looking at that because from my perspective, I still think that a large part of what happened crescendoed last year and it's over. And so when you talk about catalysts, I think the biggest catalyst is the fact that so many people had given up, that there are a lot of people waiting for lower prices. And that's really the issue.
- [34:11]
A
Yeah, I think we're just, it's a new year and that as much as that should be arbitrary, you know, after all this time off and you know, tax loss, harvesting and the whale selling and all of these things, maybe the catalyst is just the blockade being lifted.
- [34:27]
G
Yeah, I mean, you know, when you look and you see, you know, bitcoin about to hit 94, you see Ethereum about to hit 3200, you know, with supposedly nothing and fear and greed still sitting at fear, I, you know, it, it doesn't, it feels like the upper end of the range can certainly be penetrated this time. But most of the technicians that I've seen, I mean, it's weird because this panel seems to be more bullish. Most of the technicians seem to think, you know, even people like James Wynn, I, I hate giving him necessarily airtime, but you know, he was very clear about it. He went bullish in the high 80s or in the mid-80s and, and said that he sees a relief rally to 100. Now I. And a lot.
- [35:07]
A
Well, that's what I talked about at the beginning. Dave, you weren't, you weren't quite here. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. But like that's the, that's the 50 ma on the weekly. Every time we've ever broken it in history, we've retested it as resistance and gone to 200. So if you believe that four or five times is significant, significantly important from a statistical perspective or a chart perspective, then you're anticipating up to 100 and then down to much lower to the.
- [35:36]
G
Yep.
- [35:37]
B
I think also. Sorry, go ahead, Dave.
- [35:40]
G
No, you go.
- [35:42]
B
I was going to say, at least in the near term, I think I'm feeling a little bullish just based on positioning because as Scott alludes to tax loss, harvesting is real and that flow I think probably does kind of mitigate some of the potential buying pressure to come. And then when you look at general options positioning, we are now entering an expiry into the week where we are basically seeing more like short gamma type exposure by dealers. And it may not be permanent. Like it is going to change pretty quickly based on new positions people are adding as the new year starts. But I think what's pretty clear is like it's a clean slate and it's a clean slate which means people can put on positions. Whereas like into the end of the year it really felt like you couldn't put on anything new because like there were so many expiries you just have to get through. So like one really clear example of that is when you look at the put skew and the call skew like all throughout December pretty much the put SKU was like rich but like the call skew was negative. And all of a sudden on Jan 1st it finally flipped positive and you. And you see like a pretty dramatic reversal in the call SKU finally turning positive where like puts are still favored but now like you actually have some breathing room to like layer on like actually new, tactically interesting trades. And so what you're seeing is like calls are being bid again and you actually see that in the market today. Like when you look at the bigger block trades, all throughout this morning people are buying. I see 98k call strikes for month end, Jan 30th. I see 98k strikes. I see 100k call strikes. These are like series of new calls that are being bought which directionally is finally a little bit different than all of December, which was basically mostly selling. And so that I think like does give us decent positioning for, for, for the next few weeks. So I'm, I'm like cautious and optimistic. But, but I do agree at some level, like I don't know some of these things like the floor can just shift beneath you if some certain types of trading activities come back. And we should be pretty acutely aware that it's a trader's market. And if you especially believe 2026 is set up for higher for longer type of environment where you may only get still two cuts that keep the tenure above 4.3 because the Fed can't really move the 10 year plus there's I think still a lot of reasons to be tactical about it. But I don't know, I feel for the first time like looking into just like positioning. January is like a, it's a clean slate in ways that like most of like the last quarter was not and so far like it does look bullish positioning. So.
- [38:40]
G
I'm looking at something that I'm not sure. First of all, I don't know if it's accurate, but if it is, I think it is very meaningful. I'm looking at Bitbo. They do their 30 and 60 day volatility prediction, you know, the 30, the estimate of, of you know, where implied vols are and it's showing that 30 day is, has been more or less collapsing and is still, you know, reach going down down to 1% and the 60 day is more or less ticking up slightly and has been more or less flat at 1.9%. What basically what it's showing is, is 30 day volatility is much, much lower than 60 day predictions. Meaning that people are looking for catalysts, you know, more than 30 days from now as being very relevant generally in my opinion, if that's true then the catalyst will happen sooner or it will happen later, but it won't happen in that window. But I'm just curious if you think that's meaningful because it seems like a statistical anomaly.
- [39:36]
B
You know, I haven't paid attention to that and I'll look at it after and come back to what, what I have looked at is like the quartile ranking of realized volume and the quartile ranking of implied volume. And I think what you're alluding to it shares like a pretty similar story which is when you look at realized volume 30 days out, right, it's about 39, 40% and that's actually kind of like towards the lower quartile range, like the low quartile cutoff is 39%. The high quartile cutoff is 45%. So we're at the low end of realized volume. But then when you look at implied volume quartile charting 30 days out, we're actually on the higher end because the implied volume is around 44. The cutoff for the top 25 quartile is about 44. So it's the exact reverse. Implied volume is rich while realized volume has been very cheap. And that's true for 30 days out, it's true for 60 days out, and it's also true for 90 days out. It's not as obvious like within the month.
- [40:39]
G
Right. But what that means so for, for listeners is it means people who are short, people who are selling volume, these short volume strategies are making money right now. And the real question will be, does that become a crowded trade? Because if that becomes a crowded trade, that's the, that's where you get explosiveness. But until then it dampens volatility and that's a very important point. Anyway, I saw William, you had your.
- [41:04]
I
Hand up, just a quick one to back up what Jeff was saying. On coin glass they track the long to short ratio and for bitcoin it's turned now positive on the longs, 51% versus 49 approximately on the, on the shorts. So it's only one signal. But that, that is a, a bullish indication. So far it was not the case for most of December.
- [41:39]
A
I don't see any hands, Dave. I keep glitching, trying to bring people up on, on and off of stage. But you guys can keep running with this one theory. The options conversation when I have you and Jeff on stage is not what I'm going to particular.
- [41:53]
G
Yeah, no, but I think from a listener's point of view, people need to understand we've been in this incredibly tight range. So every time we get towards, you know, the mid-80s, the fear is it's going to break through that and crash down into the 60s or whatever. Every time we get towards the mid-90s, the thought is we're going to rocket back up to all time highs. And there, there is some truth in both. Right. It's not obvious and it's not that likely. But why is, was why I was talking with Jeff about it is if there are a lot of market makers that are positioned, or a lot of people who have positioned the market makers to be short volatility, market makers won't be short volume. But if there are a lot of people who are short volume, that means that they've sold a lot of Calls or sold a lot of puts. If you've sold a lot of calls and it starts approaching your strike, what that means is as it gets closer and closer, the hedging needs to buy more and more to cover. And so it becomes a important thing that people have to understand while it's being done, while people are putting on those positions. It mutes volatility once. If it starts to break because of fundamental demand, it exacerbates volatility. We saw that in silver in spades. That's why silver rocketed the way it did. It was exactly that. And we see this all the time. When you break out of trading ranges, what happens? And so that's something to keep on, you know, to keep, keep in mind. Because, you know, look, October 10th was a major, major blow to people who were in the. In playing with leverage. But you and I have seen it, Scott. Humans are going to human. You know, I don't know what the statute of limitations is for people to forget and be like finding, you know, Dorian and finding Nemo. Oh, okay, I'm gonna go 50x leverage long again. I don't know. But you know, it's like you get those people will start coming in and they're going to come in when. They're going to come in when it's already breaking out and hope that the breakout continues. And by the way, every time there's been a. Towards a breakout over the last n months since certainly since October, it's failed literally every time.
- [43:58]
E
Yeah.
- [43:58]
A
So they've gotten pushing 94 here.
- [44:00]
G
Yeah, yeah.
- [44:01]
A
Not that that's meaningful, but I do think it is worth noting that we're still pushing at 11:00am yeah, yeah, no.
- [44:10]
G
That, that is the point, you know, but look, we're talking about markets and markets always tend to surprise people. So, you know, just, just take that with a grain of salt. I don't know if there are any other topics you want to cut because we have people like Bruce and Gary up here. You know, I don't. Because I, I was a little bit late as I'm doing.
- [44:29]
A
I mean, there was no specific news. But I think continuing on the, you know, 2026 kind of the idea of this, I guess this slight bullishness to start the year, like we said, it's in a range. But what maybe could really break us out of this range, I think is the most interesting conversation. Or we can just let Bruce yell about Venezuela, which I would totally be here for. Yeah, I don't know what his take is, but I know it's going to be good, right?
- [44:56]
G
Yeah, I think that's probably true. So Bruce, you know, why is my head up my ass? Because I'm sure you think it is.
- [45:04]
J
No, you know, I don't have that strong of opinions about Venezuela. Honestly, I, I don't really care that much. I, you know, I care about America. I'd rather see Anthony Fauci locked up in chains and, and, or maybe even Xi Jinping for, for pushing that woke folk on Americans with, without the informed consent. So yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't care too much about the Venezuela thing. You know, I'm glad to see a filthy commie get out of power, but I'm not a big fan of US Military misadventures and spending money and.
- [45:37]
A
Bruce, that's exactly, that's been exactly my take that I just to interrupt like the nuance that people are missing is you can be really excited about the fact that a dictator is gone and that that could be good for the people. Although we have a long history of fucking that up as the United States, but still not think that it was the United States job to do it.
- [45:57]
J
Yeah, yeah, it may not be our job. I mean, we've had a really, really, really, you know, hold the phone, you know, before we, before you go and do a victory lap, you know, look at the track record of our country and even this administration and I've been, you know, very favorable of this administration about some things and very unfavorable about other things. But you know, they have a big knack of, of you know, having victory laps and you know, Trump has even said it blatantly. He, you know, he said, you know, declare victory and move on. You know, that's, he's a marketing guy and that's what he does. But very often they'll say, you know, oh great, you know, we, we the Epstein list or whatever. And then it, and then it fizzles. You know, we're going to drain the swamp and you know, promise after promise that doesn't work. You know, it's only been two days. You know, the, it's real easy. Remember, remember Iraq? Remember when the statue of Saddam fell and they put the American face mission.
- [46:51]
A
Accomplished on the aircraft?
- [46:53]
J
And remember when he, when, when Bush dressed up in his fighter pilot Zelinsky uniform and, and went to the, to the, to the photo op where they spent a million dollars on banners on the aircraft carrier. He said mission accomplished. Both of those things happened very, very soon. They were in with within a. I could go back and look at the day. It was in a few months. You know, three days in, they were saying, oh, we won the war. Oh, three days. Well, you know, it was 20 years and a trillion dollars and, and a million lives and thousands and thousands of troops later. So things don't always work. The world is a complex thing. It's not our job. I wouldn't, I would. Would have been involved ourselves, you know, in it. But, you know, hey, great, you know, if it, if it works so far. I mean, if it works as is, that would be great. I still don't know if it'll be quite worth it. It's just not our job. And we've had such a terrible track record of these things. But, yeah, I don't care that much about it. We got enough problems at home. I mean, we've, you know, we've got commies right here. Communism is bad. And, and the reason I say, you know, this, this mean word of commie is because it's actually evil. You know, it's not like, oh, I don't like them because I don't like their politics. No, they're actually evil and they want to kill you and steal your stuff. And the ideology is one of massive, massive death that has left 100 million people killed by their own governments by some sort of, you know, statism, basically. Not just communism, but, you know, communism and fascism, which are sort of opposites in some ways, but also. But. But they share that. They're both statism and socialism too. And the, this is evil. Evil, evil. And we have it right here in our own country. You know, we've got things closer to home to worry about. You know, I'd rather see some of the commies here, you know, locked up in chains. And some of them deserve to be, by the way. You know, I mean, there's people like. I mean, the crazy thing is, you know, there's people that, you know, you got to be careful even saying this out loud. But any country, when you're, when you're facing. When somebody's really, really, really bad, and there are countries in the world where people are really, really bad, where the leaders deserve to die, you know, they deserve to die. And you're never allowed to say that out, out loud if you're in one of those countries, because by the time you get to that point, it's too late and you're not to.
- [49:05]
G
Allowed.
- [49:05]
J
Allowed to say it. So there's evil in the world, and there's evil even right here in the United States. There's a lot of things we need to fix up. And. And I'd like to, you know, reduce the statism. Statism is a disease that kills, and I'd like to reduce that. Bitcoin's one way to do that. If we can fix the money, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe we'll have some sl. Doing.
- [49:24]
G
You don't. You don't believe in the warmth of collectivism?
- [49:28]
J
No, sir. We agree on that. Right?
- [49:32]
G
Ever.
- [49:32]
J
Yeah, yeah. No, I've said before, Mamdani's religion is a very, very dangerous religion. It's a religion of death and destruction and subjugation of people. And his religion is the religion of statism. That's his religion. You know, he's a statist. And statism is the world's most. There's a video. It's great. It's by Larkin Rose on YouTube. It's called statism. What's that?
- [49:56]
G
I said, he's very clear.
- [49:57]
J
Clear.
- [49:57]
G
He doesn't hide from it. He basically said, says the government should be fixing everything. That's.
- [50:03]
J
Yeah, he doesn't know anything. He's a clown. And everybody should go and watch this video called statism, the world's most dangerous religion on YouTube by Larkin Rose. And he talks about it. He talks about how it is a religion. It's. It's worship of the state. And it has its own rituals. It has its own heretics like me. It has its own high priest like Foushee. It is. And science was. Is kind of an offshoot of it. You know, they're like the high priest. And it's really, really brilliant branding to call science. You know, it's just a wing of statism. It's not real science. Like we learned in sixth grade about the scientific method, where you have a hypothesis and you test it and you prove whether it's true or not. That's what real science is, this modern thing that is called science that says men can turn into women and you need to have a mandatory woke poke and all of this other nonsense. And that's just statism. It's just a breed.
- [50:56]
A
Is the new vaccine terminology. I've never heard that one.
- [50:59]
J
Oh, yeah, I didn't.
- [51:01]
A
When you first said it, I was like that. Yeah, yeah.
- [51:04]
J
The woke. The woke poke. The woke poke. And I, you know, I don't mean to make light of it because there's a lot of people who've lost loved ones and there's, you know, a lot of serious health issues about it. And, you know, both. Both my parents died, which I think I can't be positive, but I think that, that it might have contributed, you know, especially in my dad's case where, you know, he, he was, you know, had a few health issues, and then three weeks later he died because of, they. They said massive blood clots, which is a side effect of it. And luckily my kids stayed away from it, I stayed away from it. But my wife did get it, and she's had some side effects. So it's very, very, very serious and, you know, very tragic and sad. I mean, there are massive, you know, there are. There are massive drawbacks of it. So I don't mean to make light of it, but I do call it the woke poke, because, you know, it's. Wokeism is part of this, this whole, you know, pseudo science. You know, it's a church of woke. It's a. It's a religion. You know, it's got high priests and everything else, and it's worship of the state and worship of ideology. And you. And you do what any cult wants to do. If you, if you, if you ever study cults, what they do is they try and separate you from your family, they weaken your family, and they want you worshiping the cult. That's exactly what the cult of statism and it's, you know, subset wokeism does. You know, they, they. They want to. They want you to. They want you to use special words. I mean, listen to, look at the super. Super, you know, statist. They talk like another language. You know, they, they. They talk about all these terms and, you know, they invented acronyms and things like that. You know, that's, that's very much cult behavior, and it is a. It is a very, very evil death cult. And it's been killing people for a long, long, long time. You know, 300 million people have been killed by their own governments in the last century. 300 million people. I mean, it's way, way, way more dangerous than, you know, the Ebola virus. You know, it's way, way, way, way more dangerous than almost anything else. And so we should. We should keep that in mind at all times and say, you know, this is a very, very dangerous, deadly thing. You should avoid it at all costs. Only use it if you absolutely, positively have. Have to. You know, I'm very big on guns, but, you know, I train a ton, and the really good trainers are really, really good on safety. I train up at Sig Sauer best, you know, one of the best places to train in the, in the world. And, you know, I'm in the very advanced classes and these Instructors are like world, world, world class every single time. I mean, you never, ever, ever have bad muzzle discipline. It never gets pointed at anybody. You never have a trigger, your finger accidentally on the trigger, and you clear the weapon every single time you take it. That weapons are a dangerous, deadly thing. And you got to be real careful of them. And they're not trivial. That's the way government is. Government is not trivial. It's super, super deadly. And you have midwits or dimwits like Bernie Sanders, oh, they want to regulate the lift and Uber and deodorant. You know, all this nonsense, you know, like, just flippantly like, oh, there ought to be a law. You know, there ought to be a lies. Is. Is. Has caused a lot of death, a lot of destruction, and it gets people like Maduro and Mandani in power and they cause massive destruction. And it's not, not just the outright death, it's economic destruction, destroying businesses, you know, just like these, these Covid tyrants, shutting down millions of businesses or, or, you know, costing millions of jobs and, and tens of thousands of businesses. You know, it's a very, very dangerous thing. So, you know, it's, you know, if you're, if you're a minarchist or a libertarian, you even, even you agree that some government is necessary in some ways, but you should always be looking at it through a lens. It's like, okay, I'm releasing Ebola Zaire. I'm, I'm, I'm handing a, a fully automatic AK47 to a toddler. I got to be really, really careful with that. There better be a damn good reason for you to do it, and you should do it in an absolute minimal possible way that we can. And that's why you've got to look at government. Otherwise you end up, you know, like the people of Venezuela or California for that matter.
- [55:14]
A
See, I knew Bruce could fill the rest of the time, but we do have hands up. So I'll go, I'll go, William. Then James. JW Then we'll wrap up. Go ahead, William, quickly.
- [55:23]
I
I wonder, Bruce, what do you think of the fact that since we're talking about Venezuela, I think there is a second shoe that hasn't dropped yet, because taking Maduro out is not going to on its own, set Venezuela on the right track of handling their oil better and cutting the ties with the countries that we don't want them to be cozy with. And do you think that there's a second shoe that hasn't dropped that we are still waiting?
- [55:49]
J
Well, it's not going to help the Venezuela people at all. That oil money, and it's not going to go to the American people either. That oil money is going to go to cronies, just like the oil money in Iraq went to cronies. They're never going to see those quarantines that they have, that Rubio was talking about, how they've quarantined the oil and they have control over it that will never be released for probably 20 years. Who's going to release it? What are they going to do? Like, oh, let me hurry. It's like, it's like once, once somebody gets on welfare and they get a whole bunch of benefits for a whole bunch of kids, they're not like rushing to get off the system. And that's all corporate welfare is. This is a big, big boondoggle. And given Trump's track record, he, he's, he's a pay to play guy. Let's just face it. There's no polite way to say it. He, he surrounds himself with people and he enriches his friends and he rewards his family. That's what he does. So, so the people at the top of that food chain are going to be inner circle Trump loyalists. The most objective they would be is Republicans, but more likely they're going to be close loyalists to Trump and maybe even family, and that's who's going to get the money forever. And the people are going to end up screwed just as bad as they were before, most likely. This isn't a humanitarian mission. That's not how the world works.
- [57:01]
A
Jw.
- [57:03]
C
I was just going to say, I want to cede all my time to Bruce. Don't call it a rant. He just went over the entire reason I got into crypto, crypto in the first place in, in his participation today. So thank you for that, Bruce.
- [57:15]
A
Yeah, you tied it right back, which is the point. That's why we bitcoin guys.
- [57:19]
C
That's why we, that's why we bitcoin. And to me, other things too, in addition to bitcoin. But yes, that's the point. And it's just got me thinking about what the future holds. There's a lot of very bullish things for price action in the future. Stablecoin legislation, the Genius act was mentioned and I think that will be bullish, too. But the thing to keep your eye on and not, not over obsess about, but, but obsess about a little is how various crypto projects will evolve and.
- [57:47]
A
How.
- [57:50]
C
You know, like, I don't think BlackRock buying a lot of Bitcoin and and managing ETFs threatens Bitcoin. But there could be a time where if there are large dominant institutional shareholders and they get decide who are who, you know, which fork is the right fork and stuff. There, there, there is a, a lot of ways in which this could go bad for stables in which AML rules could be very aggressive and force stablecoin issuers to freeze any use privately of of stablecoins in the wild. There's a lot of ways in which at the intersection of tradfi defi, at the intersection of government and crypto, the tools that I believe in and that I want to see grow could be co opted by government and large Corp. And that's the opposite of the cypherpone ethos we got here too. And so I'll keep my eye on it. I won't flag the alarm unnecessarily, but I will keep an eye on that.
- [58:47]
A
All right, well I think that's a great summary and you kind of said what I was going to say to wrap it up, which is that the reason I got into Bitcoin largely is to opt out of all this. It's funny that we have to have these conversations when they're the things that we own Bitcoin to avoid entirely. Before we do wrap though, something I forgot to do at the beginning is that we do have an awesome sponsor today. It's not interview, just a quick read here. I want to tell you guys about Zero G. AI is reshaping the world, but right now it's stuck in the hands of just a few big players. But what if AI could run openly, verifiably and on chain? That's what zero G is building. The world's first decentralized AI. AI operating system open to everyone. Imagine a network where you don't just trade tokens, you train, store and run independent AI models at scale. No lock ins, no black boxes, no single point of failure. Just quick, cost effective, auditable AI that anyone can build. If you believe the future of AI should be a public good, not another corporate monopoly, join us at 0g.AI. That's the number 0 and the letter G.AI. all right everybody, it was a great conversation today. Thank you so much for participating. I can't speak for Dave, but I know that I was really itching to get back here after over a week off, about a week and a half. So great to have all of you here. Dave, I also can't speak for Mario or Ran. I can't speak for them, their opinions as hosts, you know, on whether they're excited to be back. But we're very excited to be back and we will be back tomorrow. Thank you, everybody. We will see you then later.
- [60:18]
B
Foreign.
- [60:33]
J
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