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- [00:00]
A
Good morning everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town hall every weekday here on X at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. I think this is the earliest that we've ever started at 10:17. But I saw Gary, Matt, Jason, Tomer, David already up on stage and figured that we could just get running. This show is a hell of a lot more fun when Bitcoin is $97,000 than it is when it's $87,000. So I figured we would get started and get a really good gauge on sentiment at the moment. Before we do that, of course we do have an awesome sponsor today, which is 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 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. 0G AI. So as I said, I see Dave requesting. Let me get him up. We've got Bitcoin trading 96,900 ish. It tapped 97,000 today. I've been talking about the chart and a likely breakout coming. I had Mike alfred on my YouTube show this morning. He got me even more bullish and my biggest position at the moment is microstrategy, which I am not particularly unhappy about at the moment. Dave, is this the breakout we've been looking for? You know, we keep saying one green candle, one green candle. I don't think this is quite the 10,000 God candle we need, but it is a green candle and we'll start somewhere.
- [01:45]
B
Let's, let's. Let me clear when you say we, not me. I don't want to see one green candle. I want to see weeks of these small green candles in the morning.
- [01:55]
A
To be clear, I'm not saying what I wanted to see. I'm saying that's all it would take for everybody to all of a sudden show up and be bullish.
- [02:01]
B
Well, I'll tell you that I keep saying this and I'm so happy Matt's up here because he's going to be, you know, he and I are going to be saying very similar things, which is what Gets people excited is fear of missing out. And how do you get fear of missing out? Grinding rallies. How do you get grinding rallies? Buying, which has been consistent for over a year now from the institutional world, people allocating small percentage of their portfolio into bitcoin at the same time as sellers getting exhausted and you know, at the same time the crypto community flipping from mega bearish, which it's been now since October. I haven't looked, but maybe this morning we have the bitcoin green fear. I haven't looked this morning. Let's see.
- [02:45]
A
I think, I think it's neutral. Yeah.
- [02:48]
B
Okay, so. So the run from October to now of fear is finally over. It was the longest run in history and that's a very, very big deal. So when you start talking about the meta forces, what, what causes a huge rally, what gets you to parabolic? You don't go from bearish to parabolic immediately. I mean, yes you did In March of 20, you know, in the pandemic, you know, 20, 20, you know, when $5 billion got, you know, they took out a sledgehammer or howitzer, whatever you, whatever you want to call it. V bottoms are incredibly unique. They don't happen very often and they always have some massive fundamental reason for them when they occur. What is far more likely is a bottoming process where it, you, the experts, the quote, smart money says it's going to keep going down and it doesn't. And it stubbornly stays in a range. And they keep saying it's going to go down, it's going to go down and it doesn't. And the sellers don't have any power powder anymore. And so now the sellers become speculators. And when it flips the speculators then, and the buyers are consistent, then all of a sudden it starts to rally and it starts to rally slowly. When I say slowly, I mean In Bitcoin, 3 or 4% a day is actually slowly, but 2 or 3, 4% a day for a few days, you know, maybe a week or so. And all of a sudden you start getting through technical levels. That's when you start to have the, the possibility of major candles and, and you need to take that in perspective. So when Mike and you were talking, and I love Mike, I think he's amazing and you know, maybe he, you know, it's great to see someone who I generally agree with, who's even snarkier than me, but the point is that, you know, there are still technicians, lots of them, who have made the point that, well, you know, you heard even McGlone on Monday. Well, I'd be shorting it at 94 with my stop at 100. Well, he'd get, he'll get stopped out. We're going to hit 100. The real question is how many people who have stops there. Will that trigger the rally to the all time high? Maybe. But the strongest possible rally is one that does what it did yesterday and today and stays around these levels. And then tomorrow you get to 99 and then the next day you get to 101 and then it, maybe it falls below 100 and then it starts getting up and then it starts grinding higher. At some point all the shorts throw in the towel. Now at the same time all the four year cycle people who are out of the market are like, what the hell? We're not going to buy, be able to buy back in at 50.
- [05:19]
A
Or there's, there's going to be so many people shorting 100 to 102 exactly.
- [05:26]
B
And that's if you need fuel to.
- [05:28]
A
Go higher, it's going to actually be the shorts that pile in. When we get back to that psychological level, it's also, you know, the 50 ma on the weekly for the bots and the technical traders, there's a lot of reason people are going to either be shorting or taking profit and shorts are just liquidity for right buyers.
- [05:43]
B
But that, but it's important for people to understand that that's what actually happens in markets. The strongest rallies climb a wall of worry. But all. And I've been screaming, you know, screaming from the rooftops how bullish I've been for a while. But since Matt's here. Hey Matt. You know, I know you generally agree with what I, what I'm saying, but I'd love to hear it from your view.
- [06:02]
A
Matt's a. Matt is a notorious giga bear.
- [06:06]
C
Yes. Yeah, well, well, well known.
- [06:11]
A
You might only be second to Tom Lee with the coverage of your bullish headlines in the media.
- [06:17]
C
Yes, I've been bullish for eight years at Bitwise and over that time frame have, have generally been right. I mean that's the thing about, about being bullish in crypto. It's generally been right. It's, it's. I'll join you on the rooftops, Dave. Yeah, this is a beautiful rally. It's, it's been surprising to me which, which has been great to wake up to these, these solid candles. I do think it's going to be really interesting to see what happens at the $100,000 level. You know, that's, that's fairly well supplied. There's definitely some supply at the hundred thousand dollars level. I think if we break through that, it could be off to the races. But the, the fundamental driver of this, what Dave talked about, which is this persistent buying demand from institutions, you know, that with a relaxing of the bearish sentiment as we turn the New year, I think just translated into this, we're, we're seeing, you know, we saw what, three quarters of a billion dollars of flows into Bitcoin ETFs yesterday. That's a very big number. And I don't see that slowing down. I think we're starting to see all the work that went in last year started to pay off. So. Yeah, still bullish. Still bullish.
- [07:32]
B
Hey, Matt. So I think, I don't think people really understand. I mean, you posted a. What your most recent post actually was an hour ago. You talked about 99% of advisors already allocating and you called them diamond hands. I don't think people in this audience understand the investment philosophy and the type of money that's going into Bitcoin and probably into Ethereum as well. Although I'd love to hear your point on that. In terms of what the average holding period is for the people going in, as opposed to the crypto world where people are looking to scalp and get in and get out. I think it's worth explaining what you mean by that because a lot of the people who, when they hear Diamond Hands, they think, oh, they're going to hodl for everything. That's not the case. But it is certainly the case that it's a longer holding period on average. Right?
- [08:18]
C
It's a very long holding period. You know, let's take a narrow example. So at the end of last year, we saw all the major wirehouses, by which I mean Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Merrill lynch, even UBS at a small degree, open up access to crypto assets for the first time. So for the first time ever, financial advisors who control, in that case, let's call it $20 trillion of wealth, were able to talk to their clients about allocating to Bitcoin. And so one thing that's happening, and we know this because we talk to these advisors and receive reports Hunter tweeted something just a few minutes ago about one of those Wirehouse Advisors putting 1% across all their clients, is they're having conversations with their clients to kick off the new year about what they're doing with their investments this year. And they're Talking about making a 1, 2, 3, 5,% allocation to crypto and they're starting to roll that into their accounts. When they make that allocation, they're not resetting that on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. They don't even meet with clients more than, you know, maybe four times a year, in some cases once a year. So these are making multi year investments. And the, the statistic that you were referring to, Dave, we do this survey of financial advisors every year. We've done it for eight years. And the incredible fact was we asked people who allocated at the start of 2025 if they plan to increase, maintain or decrease their exposure in 2026. And remember, 2025 was a terrible year. Right? It was a, it was a brutal year. We all felt depressed, price went down, vibes were bad. We were at all time bearish on feeding fear and greed. And 99% of these advisors said they were going to increase or maintain their exposure. 99% in the, in the worst year in the last like three or four years. That's why this money is so sticky. And again it's, you know, it's, it's trillions of dollars of, of wealth making a 2 to 5% allocation to crypto. It's just, it's just so much money in the end, it doesn't come all at once. It's a trickle, not a flood, but it's a persistent trickle.
- [10:39]
A
Matt, Gary Cardone here.
- [10:41]
C
Can you see these investors? Are they, this is a pretty loaded question, but are they new to the digital asset space? Are they, you know, consistent kind of bitcoiners? Yeah, mostly the, the investors I'm talking about are new to the crypto space. So these are everyday mom and pop investors that work with a Morgan Stanley advisor that don't have any exposure and are going from 0 to 1. Of course crypto native investors, Gary, are also coming in and we see that happening as well. But I think these wirehouse advisors, this is in many cases their first time investing in the space. So it's a new group. To me this is really, really important. This is what needed to happen. We need new old money.
- [11:34]
B
You know what I'm saying?
- [11:35]
A
The old money needs to come in.
- [11:36]
C
I love that.
- [11:37]
A
A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean it's transfer to a different buying base, right? A new floor. Matt, you talked about that endlessly when we talked about kind of the old whales selling, but who was buying. It's just a redistribution for a next move up. In my opinion, by the way, we have a, just, I'm not going to call it breaking news because Nobody's surprised. But everybody was holding their breath for the surprise Supreme Court to rule on tariffs today. They punted again. They offered three rulings and none of them were on tariffs. So didn't happen yet. But yeah, Matt, as I was saying, I think, you know, just a new holder base and you can see that the behavior in the market has just changed since the new year started. Mike Alfred and I talked about that this morning. But you don't get the 9, 39, 45 sell off every single day. We don't have evidence of huge tranches of coins being moved to exchanges to sell. It feels like the tax loss harvesting and the profit taking is over.
- [12:31]
B
Hey Scott, when's the last time we had a day with NASDAQ down 1% and Bitcoin up over a percent? Because I think.
- [12:38]
A
Yeah, but we get it. But all the time we get NASDAQ up and bitcoin down. And I've been saying, and many people do, if you want to make the argument that your asset is uncorrelated and that's a good thing, that also means that you don't benefit from the up moves in the rest of the market.
- [12:51]
C
Right?
- [12:51]
B
Well, but watch gold, silver and bitcoin up, NASDAQ down. I mean Nvidia down. Really? Because that's what, that's what it is, is. I mean it's one day does not make a trend, but it is, it is the kind of thing that, that crushes correlations when these things happen. And it is unique. I mean it may not last, who knows. But. And the Russell I think it is notable for. Sure.
- [13:12]
A
Yeah. And what I would tell people when I'm looking at markets right now is if you fear a bear market coming or a bear trend, you look and you see if money is exiting the market. But if you have Nvidia and the Mag 7 down. But now the Russell is making new all time highs on a day to day basis. You're just seeing a rotation. The money's not leaving. And Mag7 to Russell is not dissimilar from bitcoin to altcoins. And in this trend at the beginning of the year so far we've seen altcoins keep up or outperform bitcoin on this move up. That is not something we've seen for a very, very long time. That was a lot. I know Mark then Tomer.
- [13:51]
B
Yeah, yeah, I, I saw Homer, then Mark, but okay, I don't care either way.
- [13:54]
A
Yeah, Mark, jump in then Tomer.
- [13:56]
D
Yep. Okay. You know Dave, your, your point about the correlation and all that is is so true. The fact that correlation actually increased at the end of the year to like 60% on a three month basis between bitcoin and the inequities. Even though bitcoin underperformed by almost 30% on a three month look. So it underperformed but the math of correlation is daily. So it's screwy. I think people look at correlation and I'm going to pivot this question to Matt. When people say correlation I think that's not the metric to use for the reasons I stated it was 60% correlation in December20. Yet Bitcoin underperformed by 28% on a three month look back. Matt, are people looking at the historical returns and about things like putting in a little bit and how the math of drawdown and excess returns impact versus these broad metrics. What is the two slides that you think are converting people or is there not that kind of magic bullet and it's just broader based?
- [15:09]
C
Oh wow, that's. That's a great question. It depends on the type of client you're speaking to. When you're speaking to a quant focused client, we tend to show those slides on portfolio construction and specifically what we look at is the historical impact of bitcoin on like a three year rolling return basis where the math just shows it's the best portfolio ingredient in history and has been for 15 years. So I do think that is the portfolio impact as opposed to isolating correlation is for that quant focused people a big part of the story. For the rest of the crowd, I think there's been a lot of interest in allocating to crypto for years and people have just been scared out by various risks and so it's just making it simple for them to allocate through an ETF structure that really gets them across the line. So it depends on the client.
- [16:13]
D
Got it. And then the last one on this, I've talked to a few wirehouses and the different heads of research, Adam, and they're a little frustrated because they got the green light. But there's still only like five people that are bitcoin aware in the salesforce, you know, at the advisor level. And you know, it hasn't really dripped down to have that person who's a private debt, you know, melting ice cube advocate to adopt bitcoin. Is that when you're talking to these firms, do you still see those same five people roll in or is it starting to broaden out?
- [16:46]
C
Yeah, so it's really a boots on the ground Question, to be honest, because yeah, what the wirehouses have done, this is a great question, is turn on the spigot. But no one shows up to fill their bowl unless people go and talk to them. So as an example, I think Bitwise did five or six branch meetings with wirehouses yesterday and we'll do another five or six today. And until you do those branch meetings, by branch meetings, a firm like Morgan Stanley will have a branch in most major cities in America. Companies like Bitwise will go and show up and do hour long educational sessions over lunch with, you know, 20, 30, 40 advisors. That's actually the process that gets the, the money flowing. It doesn't just show up. You're right. It's only four or five people who have been crypto native because it's, it was risky to do so previously when the firm didn't approve of it. Now they've made it okay to do it. But you need to go in and make this top of mind for people. You know, Bitwise does that. Some of our friendly competitors do that as well. And that's why I said it's a trickle, not a flood because you have to have those in person meetings and it literally means like flying to Des Moines. And that's the process that's going on right now.
- [18:07]
D
Awesome. Thanks my friend. Yep, well done and keep going.
- [18:11]
C
Appreciate it.
- [18:15]
A
Hey Tomer, what's up?
- [18:16]
C
Hey.
- [18:17]
E
I haven't been listening this week yet and so you may have discussed this, but I think one of the other interesting things that's happening is as strategy has raised the payment on STRC as of January 1st to 11%, we've suddenly seen the price hit over $100, which means that they've been doing at the market. And so we've had the first week of issuing STRC at the market and the volumes keep growing. Just while my hand was up $14 million more of STRC traded, which is probably all incremental issuance by strategy themselves. It seems to be that right now the demand is already at close to $100 million a day for issuance of this, which is finally a way for strategy to accumulate bitcoin without issuing at the market shares at the market, but issuing prefs at the market. And that's going to just create a steady buying demand. As long as they're in that sweet spot of paying enough, it's a high cost of capital, 11%, but it's buying something that I think we all realize is probably returning more so for your investment. Scott?
- [19:29]
A
Yeah, I mean, Tomer, he was able to buy 1.25 billion this week. Right?
- [19:33]
B
Yeah.
- [19:34]
A
Although in a sideways market while microstrategy was down. It's pretty, pretty impressive.
- [19:40]
F
Yeah.
- [19:40]
E
It was only 100 million. That was the STRC or it was, it was less than 200. It was still shares, which is tough because if issuing shares at the market is, is what there's a lot of criticism of, but not with, you know, and it's very good for strategy, for its balance sheet. It's not necessarily short term, good for the shareholders, neither here nor there, I guess if it's at, at 1. But yeah, go ahead.
- [20:04]
A
Sorry, I'm not the best fund, I'm not the best fundamental analyst of stocks I'll go out to. I'll openly say that I have a very. No, but I have a very strict way that I view things and just find myself learning to counter trade sentiment. I mean probably the best, my, my best trade ever was buying Tesla when it went down to 180 when he smoked weed on Joe Rogan and people said that meant Tesla was going to zero. And I kind of publicly was like, I'm buying this, it's the bottom. Well, I mean I was posting about MicroStrategy looking like a bottom here in the 150s actually was December 1st. It went up and back down because I just think the microstrategy going to zero crowd was so loud that it's time to counter trade it. Right. So it's like, I'm not saying it's going to an all time high or that, you know, whatever. I thought it was ripe for a very, very big bounce and mean reversion in sentiment and rational thought.
- [20:56]
E
I mean I've just this to the fundamental thing. I viewed STRC as a rocket on the launch pad, but not having the ignition. And as they were raising the interest rate payable, it was getting closer and closer. And we now have ignition, we have takeoff, we have liftoff. And that is, you know, can. How high can this rocket go? Will it continue to accelerate? Will it maintain an altitude? That's what remains to be seen. But the, all the hoopla that was surrounded it at its launch and then all the pessimism around the fact that it wasn't getting bought at the market, that it wasn't getting priced at a hundred dollars. Well, now it is. And so that's a phase shift because that means that it's liftoff time for strategy.
- [21:40]
A
Yeah, and it's an incredible flywheel because obviously buying STRC requires at least some level of comfort with Bitcoin. And the higher bitcoin goes, the more people will be comfortable with the 10% yield on STRC and the more you'll get the institutional money that doesn't want to buy a 4% bond and would be willing to try to get 10%.
- [22:01]
E
And even just while you and I have been speaking, another $3.5 million of STRC has been sold on the market, which again is probably all issuance from strategy themselves. So, you know, they're making millions of dollars, they're buying millions of dollars a minute and may not seem like much in a billion dollars, but there's lots of minutes in a day.
- [22:21]
A
I'm still old enough to remember when buying a million dollars or something in a minute was a lot of money. And so I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to go ahead and remain on your team. That, that's a big deal.
- [22:30]
B
I see Lou's hand up, by the way, Scott, so I don't know if you.
- [22:33]
A
Yeah, go ahead.
- [22:35]
D
Oh, hey, thanks. Actually, I had another question for Matt, you know, and that I know. Is he still here?
- [22:41]
C
Oh, yeah, for sure.
- [22:42]
D
Oh, yeah. Hey, Matt.
- [22:44]
A
Matt shows up on the big days, Lou. He's not leaving when bitcoin.
- [22:48]
C
Keep the candle.
- [22:49]
A
Stay here.
- [22:51]
D
You know, I, I, I know you're heading off to Davos next week and a lot of interesting stuff going on there. How are you going to be spending your time? What do you.
- [22:59]
C
Oh, I love it. Yeah. Yeah, Great question. I'm excited to head over to Davos giving a couple speeches at the crypto specific events, including at USA House. I think it's going to be an incredible gathering of, of the smartest minds. It to me, this is the year to really talk about crypto and bitcoin in Davos. It's the year that we're crossing over into the real world. It's the year that we can't, can't ignore crypto anymore. So excited to meet with the people there and talk about what that means, what it means for crypto to intersect with the real world. So I'm just tremendously excited to be there.
- [23:43]
D
Cool, thanks.
- [23:43]
C
Yeah, love it.
- [23:48]
A
I don't see any other hands, Dave, do you.
- [23:53]
C
David?
- [23:53]
A
Now I see David Garrett going up. Yep, go ahead.
- [23:56]
G
Hey, just wanted to give a shout out to Scott for buying MicroStrategy. I was just interested to see MicroStrategy has actually been performing better than Bitcoin and I'm just curious as to what extent is it, should we be trading? You know, are we Looking at altcoins here in terms of this move, or are we looking mainly around MicroStrategy, the fact that we've got MSCI not making any decisions about what's in the index or not. You know, what's the better way to play this turn?
- [24:24]
B
Well, I mean, it's a very complicated question. I mean, when it comes to microstrategy, the expectation, the math is the math. I mean, it's going to overshoot and undershoot, obviously, because that's how things work. But bitcoin rallies strong. Microstrategy will outperform. Bitcoin stays even. Microstrategy will underperform. Bitcoin drops. Microstrategy will underperform a lot more. Right, that's just the math. And so it's a leveraged play that has embedded theta. And the more STRC sells, the higher that theta. I mean, just consider for a second that STRC is paying people an interest rate that's 1% higher than President Trump wants to cap credit card interest at. Just consider that. Which of course will tell you how farcible it is to try to cut cap credit card interest rates at that level. But that is important and people need to understand what that means right now. If he's right, and I think he is, that bitcoin will significantly outperform that hurdle rate over the next couple of years, then it's an incredibly smart bet on his part. And it's a huge. I don't like the word flywheel, but it is certainly a lever. It's a leverage bet that has much less risk of being liquidated as you would as if you were in perpetual swaps and you don't pay. The time delay, time theta decay is probably less than trying to manipulate or create your own option strategies unless you're really professional. And so you need to look at it that way. As far as MSCI goes, I think that they realized that kicking something out when it, after it's had a massive amount of underperformance will open them up to make their competitors basically tell them, these guys are a bunch of idiots. And it's not an index fund. It's not passive. It's a bunch of people in a room making decisions about your money. And that is the worst possible thing that could happen to an index provider. If you want to lose, have your index be considered to be manipulated and be backroom kind of decided. Then the FT and S and P, they probably would dearly have loved the MSCI kicking MicroStrategy out. Because if MicroStrategy does what I expect it will do, which is bounce back this year in 26 versus 25. And MSCI cut them out right at the bottom. They would have looked so bad. And so I think that this is, this is a systemic thing, which is to say people shouldn't be worried about this. And there were, it was a lot of selling on the back of it. In fact, there were a lot of bitcoin selling on the back of it. So it is an important, important thing. Matt, I got you to raise your hand.
- [27:10]
C
Yeah, you did well. You tapped into my deep love of indexes and msci. I just want to point out something that builds on that. That may be obvious but worth stating is the way MSCI makes this decision is it does a consultation with clients, so it asks its clients what they think about it. Part of it is MSCI making a business decision and the other part is how much clients talk and their own view. One thing I don't think it's commented on about this MSCI decision is it suggests that clients didn't say you should remove it. They were either agnostic or they probably got a lot of inbound from clients saying that we think it should stay included in the market. And I think that tells you something important about the institutional investor community. My guess is a lot of it was agnostic, but even that alone is a real shift from where we were two or three years ago when people would have definitely said we want this out of our portfolios. So I think it speaks to a change in the institutional mindset to where crypto is either neutral or positive and sort of the negative Nelly side of it isn't loud anymore. And it honestly surprised me, made me recalibrate my view of how some of the largest institutions think about something like MicroStrategy a bit.
- [28:38]
A
Matt, I want to, I don't. Yeah. Do we want to keep talking about MicroStrategy? Dave? Well, Mark has comments.
- [28:44]
B
What Matt just said is very important because. And needs some amplification because there's passive investing. And look, I started my, I literally started my career building the first program trading system on the street. So I've been involved in passive investing essentially for more years than most of the people on this panel or a lot of people have been alive. And there is enormous benefit to passive investing. That means, which basically is you put your money into a vehicle and you don't have to think about it. You can make a bet that's a decade long bet and be comfortable that, that you're not Going to, going to miss it. And that matters. And so when we start talking about a post clarity world and when I say post clarity I mean post, we get a bill, we don't get a bill. There's rules, whatever, whatever happens. But we're not talking about the whatever. If you believe that fundamental theses such as the sound money thesis with Bitcoin, the smart contract thesis with Ethereum, the AI and crypto together, whatever and bitwise has been at the forefront of this. If you believe that then passive investing is going to be the vehicle that's going to achieve probably the greatest amount of AUM in crypto for the same reason it's the greatest vehicle. It's the biggest vehicle in individual vehicles, it is in equities and that's a lot of new money. And so I just wanted to, since Matt is up here to let, let him talk about you know, what he's seen with his products and the rules that would allow that to happen. Because it's a long term wave, Scott. I mean it's, it's not something that's going to happen tomorrow but it is something that a lot of investors care about.
- [30:26]
C
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that. Tee up. I mean it is the major way investors, you know, professional investors allocate to the equity bond etc market and it's a. Index based strategies are shockingly vanishing fraction of the crypto market. You know we run the largest index fund in the world. It's about a billion dollars in most markets. It's 30, 40, 50% of the total market cap. So you would think it would be something more like a couple, you know, a trillion dollars in in index strategies. I think it will get there and what it will mean that money is money that comes in and as mentioned stays for, for 10 years.
- [31:05]
B
Right.
- [31:06]
C
That is extraordinarily sticky money. So I do think that's going to be a. We're hearing big demand for that. We're hearing big demand for model portfolios of ETPs that help people get simple exposure to the market which is sort of a specific way of doing that with individual ETPs. I think you're going to see people allocating broadly to crypto across all those, those theses this year. I think it's going to lift the market higher.
- [31:37]
D
And Matt.
- [31:38]
B
What?
- [31:39]
A
Go ahead, Mark.
- [31:40]
D
Thanks. Jumping in. I heard you pivot from the, you know, from the allocation to your fund, the passive billion and people looking for model portfolios. So that's effectively their white labeling under their brand. But they're using your, your Allocation methods which is definitely something that's obviously in traditional market.
- [31:59]
B
But the.
- [32:00]
D
Have you seen folks ask for SMAs or is that under the idea of a model portfolio?
- [32:08]
C
Well, yeah, yeah, 100%. I mean right before this call I was on, on the phone with a major investment bank in the Middle east that was looking to develop a crypto SMA program. You know yesterday had a call with a major wirehouse, or not major wirehouse, major advisory firm, you know, north of $30 billion in assets that was looking to develop SMAs. Those are separately managed accounts, in other words accounts that are managed for one individual. And sometimes those are just broad based exposure to the crypto market.
- [32:43]
F
This space was downloaded via spaces down.com.
- [32:46]
B
Visit to download your spaces today.
- [32:49]
C
Sometimes they want an option overlay strategy but it's a big and growing part of our business and the broader business. You know it goes back to this, this sort of core point which is crypto from an asset management perspective is going to look a lot like every other area of the market. They're going to be index funds, they're going to be active strategies, they're going to be SMAs and it's going to become part of most people's allocations. So yeah, that, that market is, is really exploding. You know, I think in the first 12 days of this year we've had seven or eight inbound requests for SMA strategies or model portfolio solutions. And you know, each of those represents a firm with 5 to 10 plus billion dollars in assets. So it is, the demand is real and it's, it's accelerating this year.
- [33:45]
D
Awesome. Thanks my friend, appreciate it.
- [33:51]
A
I have another question for Matt. Sorry to focus on you here, but we had all the news from. Well, you and I just have like a running conversation over years about the pace of institutional adoption and the steps that we've seen kind of along that path. We had the Morgan Stanley news, I guess it was last week or two weeks ago. I think it was last week that Bitcoin. Then they announced Solana, then they announced Ethereum Trust, then they announced the were building a wallet. What do you make of an institution like Morgan Stanley coming in sort of as more competitive to a bitwise or a BlackRock than just saying yeah, we're going to allow clients to buy the Bitwise or you know, BlackRock products. It seems like it's a, it's a big signal to create their own products rather than just do what most have done, which is open the door.
- [34:34]
C
It's, it's a huge signal. I welcome the competition, you know, we like blackrock being in the space. They've definitely stolen share, but it's been good for Bitwise because our AUM has gone up as well. The same is true on Morgan Stanley. The difference between launching your own ETF under your own brand and allowing your advisors to buy other ETFs is actually a really important distinction. Scott. So you know, it's worth noting this is only the third, fourth and fifth ETF that will have the Morgan Stanley name. The reason it's an important distinction is you can't walk back from it easily. Right. So Morgan Stanley could Green Light Bitcoin ETFs and allow their advisors to buy Bitwise and BlackRock and Fidelity products. And then it could quietly decide it doesn't want to do that anymore and make it hard for us to meet with advisors or put on various restrictions or otherwise sort of truncate that flow. But if it is putting its name on a Bitcoin ETF and launching it, it can't really walk that back. It shows that having crypto is a fundamental part of their long term view of how the markets are developing. So I think it's like putting your toe in the pool as opposed to jumping into the pool. And they're clearly jumping into the pool. And I think you're going to see it elsewhere. Charles Schwab is supposed to turn on direct exposure to Bitcoin in client accounts. I, I think, you know, this shows to me the level of commitment. This is not a testing the waters thing. This is a all the way in thing, which is actually really important. A lot of these same wirehouses that are coming in now almost came in in 2021 and then FTX happened and they put it on pause for two plus years. Know once they do something like announce their own ETF with their own brand, there's no walking that back. It shows it's a, a key strategic initiative. Again, the third, fourth and fifth ETFs to ever have the Morgan Stanley name. It's pretty, it's pretty crazy.
- [36:49]
A
Yeah, that's exactly sort of what I was going for. So good, good to, good to hear it. Maybe we should have an actual conversation about the market now. I mean we do have Bitcoin trading 96,700. Like I said, a lot of people are looking to that hundred level, which means it's not necessarily inevitable, but just kind of going around the panel. What do you guys make of this upside move that we've seen over the last few days? It certainly feels a Little different, in my opinion, than what we've been seeing before. Just jump in, throw out hands. Just think it's worth unpacking. What's going on, David?
- [37:25]
C
Just go ahead.
- [37:27]
G
Yeah, I would just say I'm looking at it breaking out of the range that it's been sitting here since it fell off from the highs on October 10th. So breaking north of the Bollinger bands, it's encouraging. RSI looks a little too high maybe, but I think given Matt's commentary about what he's hearing from financial intermediaries channeling money into the sector looks like a buy to me.
- [37:54]
B
Love it. I mean, I'm curious, Scott, you know, you're talking about Bitcoin, but the bigger move, and probably the more important technically is Ethereum, isn't it? Isn't Ethereum over the various moving averages that you always look at as signifying the bottom is over?
- [38:11]
A
So, yeah, I mean, I should say that. I mean, clearly that I'm going to pull up an ETH chart, so I don't speak out of turn, but I've been saying kind of all week, and this was my evidence that things were a little different this time is that not only did bitcoin break above the 50 ma on its daily chart, but we saw the same with all the large gaps. Right. And so we were in a very distinct downtrend for technical analysts. And so I had looked at Solana XRP eth. I didn't really look at most of the others because I think they give us all the signal we need. But of all of them, Ethereum two weeks ago is the only one that's above the 50 ma on the weekly. So if you're looking at charts for anyone who's interested on a bitcoin, a lot of the bears in bitcoin point out that bitcoin lost the 50 ma on the weekly. That's only ever happened in bear markets. You generally see it retested and then you go down to the 200 ma. That would mean Bitcoin retests 101 where it is now and then drops to 60k. I don't think anyone here necessarily thinks that that's happening.
- [39:10]
B
I think that.
- [39:11]
A
But Ethereum is already bucking that trend, is my point, by trading 2 weeks square, squarely above the 50 ma after losing it.
- [39:19]
B
Right. And, and, but what you just said, I think, is the majority of the crypto KOLs have called for that literal pattern.
- [39:27]
A
They do think it's going to happen.
- [39:29]
B
Yes, that I think that it is. There is it is more or less outside because this is a, this space we attract. Most of the panelists are fundamentalists, right? You know, we're looking at the fundamental trends, we're looking at what's actually happening. I mean, Gary, Matt, myself, you know, Bruce are all, you know, we haven't heard from Bruce are all fundamentally believing that Bitcoin will outperform in the long run, et cetera, et cetera. Most of the crypto kols are all believing that, that the four year cycle is intact one way or another and that a run to a 101, 100, whatever, that's where you short it. And then we're going to, back then it's going to be gloom and doom and we're going to go back down and test the, the 200@ 60. I've heard that more than any other single thesis. So to say that that's not what we think. I mean, look, I don't think it because I think that these sorts of things from my past life of a decade of looking at statistical chart patterns and trying to, to see if they back test. I can tell you they don't. I'm not saying they don't and that they're negative. I'm saying they don't as in there's no correlation. Correlation is basically zero to these things actually working. We just happen to remember the times that they do work and there's generally reasons why things happen. And so I think. But to say that that's not the, that that won't happen. I mean, look, I'm telling you, most of the technical traders that I know believe that's exactly what's going to happen. Which is why the 100 and 101 level is so important in a sense. I mean a grinding rally is what will make those people not believe that. That was my point.
- [41:04]
A
If it starts closing weekly candles for those technical analysts above 101, you know they're gonna have a hard time, right? Not fomoing right.
- [41:13]
B
And they'll invalidate.
- [41:14]
A
And that's where you get to tell.
- [41:15]
B
You that, that, that they've been invalidated. And then, and, and people could be invalidated in time space or in price space. So we always think about stops as, and McGlone always talks about stops as a price. It's not just a static price, it's also in time. Right. You know, so if it, if it consolidates at a level that's well above where they're thinking, they'll can say, the smart ones will say okay, this is invalidated. And they'll flip. And that is when you get the next big run. That's really my point. And what I was trying to get you to say, and you did, and it's important for people, is that Ethereum is already doing that, which is, you know, I don't want to say Ethereum is going to lead crypto higher, but in a sense it will.
- [41:54]
A
It is right now.
- [41:56]
B
Yes, Matt?
- [41:57]
C
Oh yeah, I have to run. I have a meeting with a multi hundred billion dollar consultant in two minutes. But I just wanted to add a few last thoughts. I agree with that. All from a technical perspective. A few fundamental notes worth monitoring. I still think it matters what happens on the Clarity Act. I've been pleasantly surprised that we haven't heard Democrats worrying about sort of political enrichment. That's the thing that I thought could kill that. I know there are issues with it, but I think progress on the Clarity act still probably does matter. I also think some of this rotation, for what it's worth, is a reaction to the Fed news and expectations for a new Fed governor. So there are a lot of sort of fundamental reasons driving interest. But wanted to say I really enjoyed this and you guys should keep talking. I'll be back next week if you'll have me post Davos and share some more insights.
- [42:55]
A
A, I'm offended that you would dare talk to them instead of us. Your call. But B, I hope price doesn't fall off a cliff now that you left us. Then we know go to you.
- [43:07]
C
Thanks guys.
- [43:08]
A
Then we know that we did Matt on the show every day. Thank you. Were you about to say, Mark, did you have your hand up?
- [43:16]
D
Yeah, I was. We've been talking about, you know, distribution of coins, the absorption. I think Dave might have kicked off the call about that, about how that, that line, you know, in this 90s 80s absorbed a lot of supply and then you have people, I think being distributed. I don't know if we've talked about Carolyn Pham heading out and I think there was another CFTC commissioner that went to another foundation as well. So I think as intelligence spreads like what Matt was saying that there are five guys and now there are, you know, a few more people who are dipping their toe in. It's huge because the institutions can do all you want, but it took BlackRock to start and Fidelity to load up the ETFs and they weaponize their sales force like nothing, especially BlackRock. And I think now that you have some of the people unfortunately leaving government service, but going into these institutions, the credibility is going to increase. So back to Dave's point also about fundamental. Yes, a fundamental approach. Lot of tailwind. But I wouldn't say we're going straight to 126 new all time high. But I love the risk reward here a lot.
- [44:29]
A
Is Gary Gensler working at Binance yet?
- [44:34]
D
Where do you get who writes your copy? So good.
- [44:37]
A
My brain. Welcome. Dave and I both have debilitating add so you can tell we come up with the hot.
- [44:43]
B
Yeah, I mean I do think the funniest thing about Gensler is how recently he's been very pro bitcoin. And so, you know, and that gets you to the thing that if in fact, and we've, and I think it would be good to go the rest of the show without talking about the shit show that is the swamp politics in Washington. But if in fact everything devolves and we don't get any regulatory clarity on crypto and we go into the election cycle, that doesn't mean that that's not necessarily the worst thing for bitcoin. It's bad for a bunch of stuff. It's bad for US businesses, bad for the US economy. But I don't see that hurting bitcoin. I think that getting a bad law that stops defi, that entrenches banks and codifies massive $100 billion subsidies to the banking industry is worse than no law. But I know that is a minority viewpoint. That's my hot take. But the truth is that people like Gensler, he, he unders, he gets it. And when he's freed from Warren, when he's teaching, that's what he says. Then you put him in power and what does he do? He goes nuts, effectively as a shill for the banks. So you know, whatever, I mean that's the world that we live in. It's, it's, it's disgusting. I mean it is, I, I, it's almost impossible to believe how the rhetoric goes. I mean, you know, coinbase is, has their, has their own agenda. But the truth is that there's a lot in what's going on that just disgust people. I mean like truly disgusting, you know, the numbers of how much the banking lobby is pushing forward. It is so reprehensible it's almost impossible.
- [46:30]
A
I just want to support that because I don't know if you saw this story, but first of all, the markup on clarity has been pushed back and that's because there's been 130amendments requested, including of course banning stablecoin deal. 130amendments have been requested to the Clarity Act. So I don't think this is going to happen very quickly. And the bulk of them surrounds the banking lobby's complaints. I mean, yeah, crazy.
- [47:01]
B
It's, it's. I really don't want to go on a rant about, about this. I'd rather talk about, you know, the fact that inside crypto that certain things are waking up. Right. You know, some of the stuff like the Solana community has a lot to crow about in terms of transactions, et cetera. You know, it's a very constructive technical chart. I think my personal one that I always watch is bit Tensor, which is rapidly approaching 300. It dropped as low as 220 not too long ago. These are big moves. I mean, you know, you're talking 30, 40% moves off the bottom already. And that's generally what gets people's attention. And there's reasons for this. Now, whether or not it will actually pan out, who the hell knows? But there's a lot happening. And bitcoin, in my mind, has the best risk reward that it's literally ever had. I will continue to tell people it's over 40% undervalued and has never stayed this low relative to its network strength in its history for this long. We are in uncharted territory. And so generally, when things revert, they don't just go to the level. And that's, I think, what you and Mike were talking about this morning. And so there's a lot to, to like here. But, you know, we'll see. We'll see what happens. As, as I said, you know, it's.
- [48:16]
E
A bit of a meme, but bitcoin doesn't care, right? Bitcoin doesn't care whether Washington sorts out its stablecoin legislation or not. And it's just, it's doing its own thing. It's figuring, figuring it out. And the swamp that is the legislative process with all the lobbyists turns out to be irrelevant after us expecting it to be positive for so many months and everything gets caught in bureaucracy and slowdowns and whatnot. But TikTok, another meme. TikTok next block. Bitcoin just keeps on marching, keeps on keeping all of the promises that it ever made. And I think that's what, that's why so many of us are so encouraged by where it, where it's going, because we know where it's going and, and it's perfectly predictable. And you never know Tomorrow what Washington D.C. is going to do, isn't going to do who's going to Step in front of something that you expect and so on and so forth. I'll stop there.
- [49:11]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's true. I mean, look, you know, Bruce, we haven't heard from you. I mean, you know, other than putting on a wig and entertaining the masses, I mean, all the stuff going on in D.C. must, must burn you. I mean.
- [49:25]
F
Yeah, I, yeah, I wish that we didn't have to talk about these tyrants at all. You know, they're, they don't, they're not additive in my opinion, to the economy. And by the way, you know, speaking of all this centralized slop, I don't think that's additive either. I don't think that helps us. You know, the, One of the dumbest comments ever, any reporter ever made about bitcoin was this clueless person who said, well, my teeth are scarce, but my teeth aren't valuable. And it's one of the dumbest comments ever. But the, there is one silver lining of truth in that, which is that scarcity alone doesn't make something valuable. And if we strip away, if she.
- [50:04]
E
Lost all her teeth, she'd see the value of her teeth.
- [50:06]
F
She would. But, but, but it's not, they're not money.
- [50:09]
B
Infinite pizza.
- [50:11]
F
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very similar thinking. I mean, the teeth aren't money. And if we strip away all of the properties of bitcoin other than scarcity, I mean, we're in such a stupid world of money printing that scarcity alone, the kind of, some of the sailor narrative of, you know, unlimited supply of phony money versus a limited supply asset can make it go up. And some of these, you know, I agree with some of these short term bullish sentiment about the blackrocks and things like that, but that stuff doesn't really actually make bitcoin valuable. What makes bitcoin valuable is honestly the opposite of what this is. It's the decentralization, permissionless asset that's unstoppable, that is not controlled by any central party. And if you strip all that away and you put it in these, you know, junky centralized products which really just serve to enrich centralized firms. You know, black rock is not something that's going to further the, the, the technology or further the use. You, you know, it, it, it actually in many ways sets us back because you have millions of people being onboarded to this fake phony paper Bitcoin backed by, you know, banks that have histories of being grifty and you know, at odds with what I think are the real values of this technology in this space. And you're just kind of back into the system and you have millions of people who are onboarded to this phony paper stuff that you can't even use. You can't use it as, as money. And, and then you have more and more of these, you know, regulations which neuter what the purpose of, of bitcoin is. You know, you have all kinds of, of, you know, Elizabeth Warren Trying what, 30 different amendments trying to say you can't use this or that. We got to regulate developers. And even the Genius act, which a lot of people praised, you know, the Genius act prevents a bank from actually issuing a money system based on Bitcoin. So you can't have Venmo say, all right, you can, you know, we're issuing Venmo bucks and they're backed one to one with a set or, you know, you know, a partial part of a bitcoin. And that's a shame, you know, I mean that's a big, big step back in the, in the wrong direction.
- [52:24]
B
I want to push back a bit on that, Bruce, because I, I know in an absolute sense what you said is factually accurate, but where the market is going to go. And look, I've been doing this for a long time, as you have, and I've seen this stuff. The word that I hate more than anything else when people use it when they talk about legislation is they talk about, they say two words, unintended consequence and unforeseen consequence. Unintended consequences, yeah, sure, those happen all the time. The consequence of the Genius act, it is not unforeseen. What will happen is there will be a set of service providers that gives people the following functionality. The ability to leave small balances, very small as a percentage in payment accounts, which are stablecoins. But in a world where tokenization exists, be allowed to sweep what they don't need for payments into investable assets. One of those investable assets that will be incredibly popular when all of this stuff is said and done is bitcoin custody. Bitcoin held by, not in an etf, but held whatever that you could take if you wanted into self custody. That is what a lot of people are fighting for. That is literally what Paul Atkinson is fighting for with Hester Purse at the commission, at the sec. That is what they want. And I'm not guessing because I've talked to them about this. So I know that bitcoin as a savings vehicle being implemented courtesy of the Genius act being making stablecoins go mainstream and courtesy of tokenization will happen in the short run. No, you're right. And the banks will use this to make money. But just understand there are people who agree with what you're saying who understand the need for that option for people to be able to take self custody as a fundamental right. And as long as that is the, the inv. That is the direction that is very positive for Bitcoin, even though it seems in the short run that it's being co opted, that's the pushback. I, I don't know if you agree or disagree, but at least we're trying to get to a point where what you're saying the fundamental part of it is, is taken into account because you're right. Right. For obvious reasons that if it goes purely centralized. Well, what the is that about?
- [54:44]
F
Yeah, I mean as a savings vehicle, it's only going to be useful as a savings vehicle if it has value. And I think it's only going to have value if it has these principles. You know, in the early days when we onboarded people to Bitcoin, you say, here's this crazy nerd money. There's a new form of money, it's called, you know, Bitcoin, you know, with a capital C. And people were like, what the heck is this? And you'd say, well, I mean the pitch was the same and, and a million people made that pitch from 2010 to 2013 14, you know, and it was, this is something that's controlled by math and code and verified by a distributed system and it's unstoppable and uncensorable and you can have complete control over it. Here, take out your phone, Write down these 12 words. Now you are completely in control and I'm going to send you a dollar and you have a dollar and people's eyes light up. They say, wow, that's really me. It's instant. It was even, you know, in some cases before they had seen Venmo. So even more impressive, but the fact that they owned it and controlled it without ever putting their name in any KYC database and that they have control and that they're part of, you know, what at the time was whatever 100 million or billion dollar vast network and now is obviously much larger than that. You know, that's the value proposition. And now what you have is, oh, buy this stupid meme coin that sits next to your, you know, AMC stock in your Robinhood account, or buy this thing that sits next to your wealth management account in your Morgan Stanley account. And that's just not interesting. It's not money. And it's not going to have value long term. The biggest risk of this is apathy. And when you have easy come, easy go, people who are brought in to fake bitcoin, which has no unique properties, I mean, the current salespeople out there, you know, the wholesalers for the BlackRock ETF, they're not making that pitch that the people made in 2012. They're making a pitch. The number go up, it go up because you go up. It's just a stupid pitch. It doesn't make any sense. It. It has no depth. You know, why is it going up? Because there's not that many of them.
- [56:52]
B
You know, exactly the same pitch. They are literally following the playbook, but it's not.
- [56:57]
F
They're not. They're not telling you you have control over your own asset. They're telling you to put your thing in your dumb, stupid KYC thing back centralized with the same thieving, stupid banks that got us into this mess and that the whole purposes of the system is to design, to destroy.
- [57:11]
B
It's a bit different. I mean, it's more the, the pitch that they're making is the pitch that was made about gold investors. I mean, there are a lot of people who said, but gold is not.
- [57:20]
F
Not great money because it doesn't move around and stuff. Bitcoin has superior principles. Of course you can move it and use it as money. I guarantee you none of these people at all. These things that, these fancy Morgan Stanley Wealth Management and BlackRock and anything. They're not talking about the, the stuff that people who onboarded bitcoin were talking about in 2012. They're not saying there's a way to break away from these evil banks. Here's the way to disrupt the Fed. Here's a new money that's better than the stupid, corrupt money that's printed out of thin air by Jerome Powell and Janet Yellen and a bunch of other crooked fools sitting in offices that they stole, you know, paid for with money that they stole from you so that they can fund wars all over the world. Here's something you can break away from the tyrannical banks who robbed you in 2008 because they were so stupid that they did some prime debt, stole $800 billion of your money under Elizabeth Warren and burned you with regulations, and you're in this stupid captive system. Here's a way to say f you to the system and have your own control of your own money. They're not saying that you don't think.
- [58:16]
E
Financial advisors who are at the Bottom rung of banks are going to say that about banks.
- [58:20]
F
Of course, that's what I'm saying. Of course they're not going to say that. They can't say that. And they don't even know it. They don't even know it because they've been onboarded by this, by this, this, you know, shadow of an image of something that was cool, that designed to change the world. And they, and they've taken just a sliver of it and say, oh, number go up because there's not that many of them.
- [58:38]
B
Well, now look, I have had multiple conversations with people at blackrock and multiple other these organizations, and I can tell you there is an entire layer of people in these institutions who would agree with large swaths of what you're saying and disagree, of course, with on the margin. There are people who look at it and say, listen, to get Bitcoin to be in the popular, you know, to get the level of global adoption, you need to make it easy to for Aunt Minnie in Minnesota to own some and not be afraid that either she's going to lose a hardware while she.
- [59:10]
F
Doesn'T own some, she owns a claim on a claim on a claim of some. And she can't even use it to buy anything. So they're scamming her. And by the way, if their system works and bitcoin goes to a million and they have 100 billion in their fund, they're not going to suddenly turn. Okay, yay, now it worked. Now we can have sovereignty. Okay, we're canceling the etf. Everybody go ahead and take your money. Now you can have control. No, they're going to use their power.
- [59:35]
B
Like they always do, only that you're, you're acting like it's, like it's purely digital, that it's a binary decision. Yes or no?
- [59:42]
F
Well, they're going to have a huge incentive to not allow that kind of thing because their, their pocketbook depends on it. They're going to have a huge incentive to have you not use it as much.
- [59:53]
B
They is not a monolith.
- [59:55]
F
Well, okay.
- [59:56]
B
All right.
- [59:57]
F
Larry Fink is Larry Fink more vote motivated for you to buy Bitcoin, keep it in your own wallet, in your own custody without AML kyc. Or is he more motivated for you to buy his fake papers phony bitcoin claim on a claim on a claim. Which one is he? Which one does Larry Fink want you? If I'm an executive at BlackRock and I say, hey, Larry, what do you. What are my marching orders? For 20, 26.
- [60:19]
B
What's he going to take more money if it's both?
- [60:22]
F
No, I don't think so.
- [60:24]
B
It's 100%.
- [60:25]
F
I think if I said everything that, you know, I've worked at these firms too. And I think if I said everything I said on this call and I worked for Larry. Think, think I think he'd fire me. Well, is what I said things you.
- [60:35]
B
Said, but not a lot of the stuff you said. I mean I think there are plenty of people I know there are people at BlackRock that think that and thought that IBIT would be unbelievably successful. Not because it's going to hoover up all the bitcoin and become bitcoin. In fact, if it did that, it would be can it would be cannibalizing itself. And I know because those are the words that they use. I mean I, I, I've been involved in this part of the business for a very long time time. And I can tell you that index funds have been massively successful precisely because people and people always accuse them of they're going to cannibalize equities. No one's going to own individual stocks. And the index funds people believe that there's a certain point of index fund ownership of assets that turns them into cannibalistic and make the, makes the assets less valuable. That has always been the case. That has been the case in the entire history of index funds. Bitcoin is so far away from those levels. Think of it, north of 20% of all stocks are owned by index funds. And 40% if you include closet index funds, funds that more or less index for a large part as their benchmark Bitcoin, you're less than 5. It would literally Larry Fings market share would literally need to go up by almost an order of half an order of magnitude before it got to the point where we even exist today with stocks. So but, but they know that if it does get to that level, it's going to be problematic. It will be but stocks are already.
- [62:02]
F
Centralized and they're not money. So it, so the cannibalization is different. And, and my point is that the focus, you know, the thing is that I don't see these things as victory. I'm not cheering for, you know, I don't think that that sailor strategy says a really nice guy. He's cool and he's a good advocate for business bitcoin. But I don't think his, his strategy furthers it. I don't think the centralized treasury companies do And I certainly don't think BlackRock furthers our ideals. And we only have one chance to change the world. We only have one chance to make this work. And if it doesn't, and people are apathetic with that.
- [62:34]
B
As a matter of fact, I think what we have is a chance to grow exposure and grow the understanding.
- [62:41]
F
But I don't see it as exposure. People are using it less than they did. We've regressed so badly in the last 10 years. It's, it makes me cry. It's so sad. Ten years, a full decade ago, a decade ago we issued the first publicly traded company with a tokenized thing on, on counterparty. A decade ago you could go and, and you went to a Bitcoin conference. 100 of everything was paid in bitcoin. They negotiated with the hotels and the restaurants and everything. You could pay for everything in bitcoin, you know. Yet companies who were saying I'm gonna, I'm not gonna, but you know, blockchain.info said we're not going to have a bank account. We're going to have only bitcoin. We're going to be the first company that runs everything only on bitcoin. We're going to pay our companies in bitcoin, we're going to pay our suppliers in bitcoin. You want to work with us, you got to be on bitcoin. This, this is a decade ago, 10 years ago. And now we're way far behind on every single thing. I just listed is worse than 10 years ago. And we're going down a path where it's going to be even worse. If we continue this path where we're cheering for blackrock then we, we don't win. We're just gonna, we're gonna wake up and it's gonna be this dumb boring asset that nobody cares about.
- [63:54]
B
And I'll say it a million times, you can, you can believe that the optionality of people in countries like Iran and Venezuela need bitcoin. And there are people in the United States, myself included, who believe that keeping a portions of one wealth, one's wealth in self custody is essential. There are people who are waiting for tax rules that are reasonable that don't screw you if you spend it at the same time as saying that the more broad based, the adoption and the understanding of the value proposition, whether by BlackRock or Bitwise or others is a good thing. I don't see it as a, I.
- [64:30]
F
Just don't see it as the value proposition and I don't see it as, as adoption. I see it as fake adoption. It's not real adoption and it's not the value proposition. It's a value proposition that says we're centralized and we control it. That's completely the opposite of what bitcoin is in my opinion.
- [64:48]
E
This is a great conversation that's happening in a lot of places. Not just places where Bruce shows up, but in a lot of places right now. I think it's something that's going to take a while for people to see through and break through and come to firm opinions on because I, I know people here have firm opinions on it, but it's a conversation that's happening a lot lately and I, I welcome it.
- [65:08]
A
Yeah, unfortunately, yeah, unfortunately we need to wrap because it's a great conversation. But tomer, it's one that we have had here pretty endlessly. Not with the same passion that Bruce brings. But we obviously and Bruce, you and I talked about this actually at length when we started to see the reports that long term sellers were or long term holders were selling.
- [65:27]
D
Right.
- [65:27]
A
And you and I had a conversation myself and Iago and a lot of people would be been there for the beginning and we know that there's a huge population that didn't just see a huge number and say hey, it's time to take profit. They said exactly the things that Bruce is which is, you know, like I, I didn't sign up for BlackRock and Donald Trump.
- [65:43]
E
It just to me the, the point is it requires doers on the part of what Bruce is saying has gone away. We have less doers who are holding conferences and accepting only bitcoin and paying people in bitcoin companies, paying people in only bitcoin and so on. So like it requires doers.
- [66:00]
A
Maybe that's because nobody wants to spend.
- [66:03]
E
Can, you know, asking why it is that we're seeing less of this activity that what existed before and trying to address the issues when you get a correct answer why is what we have to do because I, I like I. Spreading the word is really, really important. But doing stuff is also even more important.
- [66:22]
A
Agree. And speaking of doing stuff, I need to go because I have another call in because Gary, who's on stage right now is coming to join me for a in person podcast conversation in about an hour and a half. Gary, I'll see you soon. And everybody else, thank you so much for joining. It was really a great conversation. I love when we go down the more fundamental rabbit holes of why we're all here in the first place. And Bruce, you're always doing an exceptional job of giving us a lot to think about at the moment. I guess we can all just turn off our brains and be happy. That bitcoin is a little higher than it was a few days ago. That's all we got for you today. We'll see you tomorrow for another crypto. Town Hall, 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. Give everybody on stage a follow. They've all earned it. Otherwise, we'll see you tomorrow.
- [67:07]
B
Later.