Scott Melker (2:28)

So I think you told me last time that you actually predicted this. Last time we talked, you said all of the crypto natives got liquidated on October 10th.

Rand Nooner (2:36)

So the retail people got liquidated on, on October 10th. They don't have any money to come back and they've got a lot of ptsd. But. But it feels like I'm not seeing deal flow. People aren't bringing us deal flow anymore. It's like there's no one looking for money anymore, which is the. That's quite strange. Like, when a market's not looking for money, that's quite like a. Like a strange place to be. Although. Although, I must say, like, when we came into this year, I came in a little bit bullish, and I still am cautiously bullish. Right? And I'll tell you. I'll tell you why I'm cautiously bullish. Number one, I don't know if you noticed. In fact, as a chartist, you probably should have noticed. And I know you're a chartist at your core, even though you don't really chart much anymore. But if you look at the daily on Bitcoin, like the breakout of the, of the downtrend was on New Year's Day. So it's like, it's almost like.

Scott Melker (3:29)

And we broke the 50 ma. And you know, it's Thursday as we're recording this, but it tested it beautifully today as support. And we saw that on Ethereum, Solana, XRP, they're all back above their 50 MA. On the daily.

Rand Nooner (3:41)

They're all back about their 50. And then you can see here where the breakout happened was 31st December 1st of January. That's where the breakout actually happened. The Coinbase premium turned positive, which means that there's, you know, in the us, in the US using Coinbase, there's more net buyers than there are sellers. So there's a Coinbase premium that's up there. So generally, like, we came into this year a little bit more bullish. It kind of felt like the worst was behind us. And it's a little. And it feels a little bit more bullish now. You kind of know what happens in crypto. You get one green candle, then everyone and everyone FOMO's back in. So I think we just need to get that, that one green candle. The one thing that I'll show you is just get it first so we can see it is. This is quite cool to see. I hope it's still. It's still as good as it was, but I mean, that's the first week of the new year in crypto. If you look at it in, in this visual, that's the first week of the new year in crypto.

Scott Melker (4:39)

I can't.

Rand Nooner (4:40)

We're a weekend. And that's the first week of the new year. So you've got big moves of 65 and 60 and 40. So it feels like the momentum is slightly coming back, but not enough to, to bring people in and, and to bring FOMO in here, which is what.

Scott Melker (4:58)

People are going to be brought in, is the question. So, like, on the bullish side, I agree. I actually feel bullish, even though sentiment is so abysmal because the charts look decent. Altcoins have outperformed bitcoin a bit, as you just showed on this move up. Bitcoin got a little bump. Altcoins generally got a bigger bump. We haven't really seen that in a while. I just question who's going to come back in and buy this stuff? Like, what's going to be a catalyst that's going to bring back retail even. And if they just lost their money, even if they want to come back in, how do they.

Rand Nooner (5:28)

So let me, let me, let me, let me tell you what I think is confusing, no, what is hurting the market the most and confusing me the most is that, like, I think of fundamentally, every market in the world is going up. The rising tide. It really is lifting all ships. You've got stock markets which are absolutely flying. The NASDAQ is at an all time high. The S and P is an all time high, up 20 and 25% last year. Then you've got silver up 200%, absolutely outperforming. You got copper up 50%, you got gold up 70% last year. Pretty much every single world market and every single commodity is basically going up. There's nothing going down except oil, which is, which you kind of actually want in, in situations like this. And then there's that one market which isn't performing, which is crypto. Like, there's one market that's not performing in that, and that market is crypto. And that's the part that's very confusing. And I think that that's the part that's hitting everybody out there because we, like crypto has always been this market that gives you outsized returns. Specifically when, when, when risk markets are running, then crypto runs much faster. When risk markets are dropping, then crypto drops much faster. Now you've got risk markets running and you've got crypto dropping much faster. But I've got a couple of things that, that, that I want to just talk about. So the first thing is if you look at bitcoin up until the 10th of October. So let's quickly, just quickly get a chart up here and just actually look at the screen up until the 10th of October. So here's the screen and here's the chart. And if we go back and we say, okay, where did we start the year? We started the year over here, which was at 92,000 give or take, and then we went up until 10th of October, we were up 37% and if the year would have ended there, then we would have said, hey, we had a bull market, not a great bull market, but we had a bull market for, for bitcoin. If you zoom back a little bit more and you say, okay, let's just take one year a year on year October until October. So you say, okay, well we'll start here in October, 8th of October and then we'll go all the way up to the 8th of October here. Then that would have been 100% return on a 12 month rolling period. But something happened on October 10th. Now what happened on October 10th, I think you'll agree with me, wasn't natural. Like you and I are both crypto native people and October 10th wasn't a natural event. It happened late at night on a weekend, no liquidity, the market makers all collapsed. I don't know, like, I'm not coming with conspiracy theories and stuff like that, but let's just agree that it wasn't natural. And so we had this massive correction which took us all the way down to here. And if you kind of look at this, you kind of say, okay, look, something, this was a bad correction. Some, a lot broke here, a lot of people got washed out and you need time to recover. Like when, when, when, when markets break to that extent, you need time to recover. And now if you look at it, we are about 90 days later, so about 12 weeks later and we're starting, we basically started the recovery about 10 weeks later, 72 days later we started the real recovery. Right. And that is very, very, very similar to when FTX collapsed. So if you go back to 2020, this is the, the, I think the November is, is the final collapse here for ftx which was about here, November.

Scott Melker (8:45)

Yep.

Rand Nooner (8:46)

And then it took about before the, the 13th of Jan or the 15th of Jan was when the recovery started. Right. So it took time for the, the casualties and the bodies to rise, to rise before the market actually recovered.

Scott Melker (9:02)

And so that's like early February. I mean based on that timeline, if we just say that was early November and this was October 10th or actually sooner. Yeah, no, sooner.

Rand Nooner (9:10)

Yeah, well, well, yeah, but I don't think you need to count days. I think you need to more look at the principle and say, look, this collapse on October 10th was 10 times the size of the collapse that happened on FTX. And so it's going to take, it's going to take time to recover from the damage that was done. It is going to take time to recover. It could be argued that the charts are telling you that the recovery started higher highs, high, higher lows, breakout breakouts on key levels. Coinbase premiums coming back, Altcoins outperforming, bitcoin, Bitcoin dominance actually declining. So the signs are there that we may be at the beginning, I said this cautiously at the beginning of a recovery. Now the question then becomes where does this recovery take us? So if you look at the, the, the possibilities for where the recovery may take us and I actually what. Here we go. So actually, actually, luckily I actually have this chart here. So there's the 200 day moving average and the 200 day moving average with for Bitcoin is at 107,000. Now this is why this chart is of so much interest to me because if you look at the bounce, so, so if you look at the, the bitcoin we had the death cross and then we have a bounce. Now in bull markets we will bounce above the 200 day moving average. In the bear market which is what happened in 2021 and 2022 and what happened here in 2018 and 2019 we bounced but we tapped the 200 day moving average which here would be 107,000 and then the bear market actually continued. Right. So the, it's almost that fake out bounce that gets everybody back in and that took us back to, to, to, to, to the bear market. And so if we're in a bull market then we want to bounce above the 200 day moving average. If we're, if we're going into a bear market then typically you have a rebound and that rebound could take us back somewhere near the 200 day moving average. And that would be decision time as to whether this is actually a correction in a bull market like 2021 or a beginning of a long bear market.

Scott Melker (11:14)

The flip side of that or just an additional thing that people look at is on the weekly you have the 50 and the 200 ma and we've never had the weekly breakdown as Support on the 50 during a bull market. And we had that here. That's at about 101 now. And we've always gotten a retest of that as resistance before heading down to the 200 ma on the weekly, which is at 60,000. So the very bearish side is we get a test of 101 or so right wherever the 50 MA is, because we've broken it down and we retest it as resistance, and then we can continue into a massive bear market and go down and touch the 200 which is rising.

Rand Nooner (11:52)

So work with me here. When you think about Bitcoin, what is Bitcoin.

Scott Melker (11:59)

Narrative?

Rand Nooner (12:00)

What is it? What is it? Is it. It's either a technology. Well, let's look at. Let's think about things as what are crypto assets? Real crypto assets. Not shitcoins, but real crypto assets. So when I say real crypto assets, let's just talk about Bitcoin Eth. Solana, what are those? For me, when I think about them in their purest form, they are technologies and they are commodities. Okay? So you'll agree with me that they are technological networks. Ethereum, Bitcoin and Solana are all technological networks. The second thing you'll agree with me is that the commodity there are commodities. Bitcoin is a comparison to gold or a digital gold, which makes it a commodity. Ethan Solana, are a commodity in the sense that they are. They power a network. They're almost like an oil that powers a network. Right. And so that makes them both commodities.

Scott Melker (12:52)

You literally call it gas.

Rand Nooner (12:53)

Yeah. Yes, you can just call gas. The third thing is if you think about where this. So that's commodities are all in a bull market. And then you think about technology, technology is in a bull market. Now, in technology, what is in a bull market or what is driving the bull market? It's AI, Right? So like, if you think about technologies and you think about what's driving this technological bull run, it's the AI revolution, right? Now I have a question for you. What are AI? AI is becoming transactive. And the question is, when AI becomes transactive, then how is AI going to transact? And you know, I know I'm a crypt. Yeah, I'm a crypto, bro. And so I. I'd like to say it's crypto. Crypto, Crypto. But there is really no other way for AI agents to transact trust trustlessly between each other with immediate settlement at rocket speeds. You can't have every transaction settled on Visa or MasterCard. They have to be settled on some kind of Trustless, immediate settlement technology, which is blockchain technology. Right? So you've got a commodity bull run. You've got a technology bull run and it's being fueled by AI. And these crypto networks are technology commodities and, and, and probably the rails on which AI is going to transact. And this is the part that is, if, if all of those markets are in a bull market, then why isn't our market in a bull market? Now one, so let me give, let me run you through the options. One is we actually are in a bull market, but we're looking at it in a correction. So in other words, you look at the rolling 12 months from October 8 to October 8, 100 return on Bitcoin bull market. Like say what you want, that's a bull market. Okay. And so maybe we're just in looking at it because markets don't respect calendar days. They don't go, oh well, it's June, we've got to run. They just run with us with an emotional cycle. And right now we're looking at it at a point when it's down and we're saying, oh, we're in a bear market. But actually had we just shifted our perspective three months back and still looked at it on 12 month rolling period, we would have had 100% return. Right. Two is that there is some truth to this four year cycle, like the hand of the four year cycle and we, you know, the four year cycle ended somewhere around October 6th, October 10th. And maybe we, we are in this, in this, in this thing. The third thing is that maybe something's broken in crypto and maybe because we're so close to the, because we've been here for so many years and we, we believe so, you know, like we've, we've drunk the Kool Aid for so many years. Maybe something is broken and we just can't see it to admit that something's broken. Like maybe we just have a viewpoint that because we're so indoctrinated with, with what this technology actually is, we, it's not, we just can't see it. So those are the options. There's another option which I read about the other day and that is that the reason why people invested in Bitcoin was, is because it was a way to hold your own store of value and hold your own keys and basically not be reliant on any third party intermediary. That is why Bitcoin was created and that is why we bought into Bitcoin. That is what gave us the big returns but now the problem is that the majority of the Bitcoin is being held in, in custodial services, which are completely, completely, completely centralized. So Bitcoin is not serving as the asset that it should be. And also on top of that, it's not giving people the high returns that it used to, which makes it less attractive. So that is another, another theory that I've read. But all these theories just seem like, bear, like mid, mid correction theories. You know what I mean?

Scott Melker (16:42)

Well, I like the October to October and then you just have a 35% correction or whatever it is which you see seven or eight or nine times in every full cycle. And then we continue up. So that one number three I think it was. I don't think that we're like drinking the Kool Aid. I think the problem is that the adoption of our asset class has largely been by institutions. And the way that it's happening does not actually make it that investable for retail. You can see this massive mainstream adoption of the technology and it's happening in ways that doesn't actually make the assets that we've been holding go up. Right. So like, let's say that just listening to what you say, let's say that AI transacts with stablecoins. Okay. That would be the most rational thing. I doubt it's going to be a highly volatile asset. Maybe it will be. But what if that is Chachi USD GPT on a layer one created by OpenAI stablecoin created by Sam Altman that's on his, on their layer one and they all transact and we don't make any money off of it.

Rand Nooner (17:53)

No problem. Then the competitors won't use it, which means it won't be a universal AI currency.

Scott Melker (17:58)

Right?

Rand Nooner (17:58)

Right. Or it won't be. And also I think every agent, I think every agent, my, my agent and your agent can make decisions or we can make decisions on behalf of our agents in terms of what they accept and what they don't accept.

Scott Melker (18:11)

Of course. I think the point I'm making though is that as you see, you know, circle or stripe or all of them create their own networks. There is a push and pull between sort of native crypto assets and protocols and the ones that we can actually invest in and corporations trying to to some degree co opt it and make sure that it's a walled garden. The profit.

Rand Nooner (18:31)

I think you're missing the point. In terms of all those are blockchain technologies. Right. Like AI agents have to use the only technology right now. The only technologies right now that AI agent can. AI agents can use for trustless immediate settlement is either a centralized database or a decentralized trustless currency, which is right now the only technology that has that is Bitcoin is crypto. And so like, I mean you can, I've tried to poke holes in this theory as a lot, but ultimately I can't see a way that, that the future is not in a decentralized digital money. Not gonna say it's Bitcoin.

Scott Melker (19:09)

I think I'm just not articulating the point that that can be completely true without us making money.

Rand Nooner (19:16)

Yeah, but chances are, chances are that they will use the Rails that exist and that are widely as, as widely accepted. Right. So let me, you know, I think, yeah, think about it like this. Think about it like this. The US dollar is a network, right? It's because. And the reason why it's a network is because. Because me and you both agree that it's right now the best currency to be holding and therefore it gives that currency network effect. And that is not dictated by anybody except the fact that me and you both agree that the US dollar is the best currency for us to be transacting. It's not because someone told us, hey, listen, you have to transact in the US dollar. So I don't think that it can be dictatory. OpenAI can't dictate what money we use when we use our own AI agents. And the future is going to be powered by our own AI agents. I mean, I can already see it, you know, I can see businesses like ours and businesses around ours already using AI agents to do most of their work. And the next stage is to just switch on transactions. It's just, it's literally that simple.

Scott Melker (20:18)

So let me present not necessarily my belief, but another bearish case on this just so we can talk it out, because this is something I've been thinking about and presented to a few people. We keep talking about a bullish narrative of a move back to fundamentals and utility. The coins that should do well are the ones that can be valued like a stock or you can see exactly the network effect. You can see the burn and the buy and burn mechanisms and all these things, which is great. But I think in that regard you can make the argument that everything at its current price was purely based on speculation and not utility. So to actually see a coin go up because of utility, it needs to be priced way down to its actual value.

Rand Nooner (21:02)

Possible. You may be right.

Scott Melker (21:05)

Why is it worth based on its gas fees right now? So yeah, it's great if we see a move to utility. But aren't they all overpriced because it was basically a speculative casinos that got us here.

Rand Nooner (21:17)

You're not answering the question of why every single market in the world is running and one market isn't. Like, look, tell me. Every single market there's money here.

Scott Melker (21:25)

I think that there's money in bitcoin and I don't think that the money that's come into bitcoin has any particular interest in Coin 97 on Coin Market cap.

Rand Nooner (21:34)

Yeah, but it should have interest in coin number two and three and the holders of coin number two and three will sell into that strength and buy number four and five because they're going to be looking for higher returns.

Scott Melker (21:43)

Right, that should happen. So I guess the, the, then the inevitable question becomes where does that flood of liquidity come from? And by the way, these are bear market type conversations where I'm convinced we're fully in a bear market. So I think you made the point earlier.

Rand Nooner (21:58)

One point, at what point will you be convinced that we're in a bear market? Because like I started off on October 10th and I said there's a 30 chance the cycle's over and now I'm kind of like more towards a 50, maybe even a 60 chance that the cycle's over. Like I'm really now at the point where very, very, very soon you've got to make a call as to whether the cycle's over and we're going into a bear market or we're going to recover from this correction. So at what, what would be your, at what point would you surrender and say, you know what, this is the end of the bull market.

Scott Melker (22:32)

I think if we do go up to 100 and get fully rejected and make a significant move down, I'll be pretty bearish because that would be that same pattern that we've seen on the weekly over and over again. But I think at this point anything, and it's kind of weird because we're at, in the 90s, so saying below 74 or something, we'll have got a 20% drop before admitting we're in a bear market. So it's of, kind of nonsensical, but those are the kind of levels that I, I would look at. I mean right now it's hard for me to get bearish entirely when we're just kind of down 25%, you know? Yeah, I know many times I, I.

Rand Nooner (23:12)

Well, I agree with you. I think, I think what we saw in the other, in the Previous things was we saw recovery and, and the one thing we're not seeing here is we like we're not seeing a quick recovery. But again, in 2021 we also never saw quick recovery. We had a long, long, long correction. We were all convinced the cycle was, is over. Right. And then, and then, and then it's just. So it turned out that the cycle wasn't over.

Scott Melker (23:30)

But why would we get so here? I mean, humor me on this. I guess we never got the upside that we expected if we're believing in the four year cycle or that we think, you know, we should see these outsized gains. So why would the downside be disproportionately large either? If we had dampened volatility and we only got even if we say a 2x right for October to October, we shouldn't expect another 85% drawdown. Right. Shouldn't we just now it should be of this 35 or 40% drawdown. And there's your bear market because if we don't get the gains, why would we get, you know, disproportionately large?

Rand Nooner (24:03)

Yeah, yeah, look, I get, I guess probably now the biggest risk is that the stock markets take hit. Because I'm not sure. Yeah, because if the stock markets take a hit now, then I mean crypto is going to shit the bed. Like it's just, it's that simple. If the stock markets now take a hit, I don't want to be around when that happens.

Scott Melker (24:22)

So what are the, you know, what are the catalysts that can bring liquidity? I think last time we talked or over the past few weeks, most people have said Clarity Act. Right. If we get more, no pun intended, clarity on what these assets are and they're not securities anymore and we know exactly what we can and can't do, that markets will go up. I think, I personally think the Clarity act passing is priced in. We've been talking about it for a year, so it actually happening shouldn't make a big deal. And also we've had enough statements from the administration that none of this stuff is securities. That just finally saying it in legislation I don't think would make a difference for the market. I do think it's a very big deal long term for the industry. I just don't see it as a catalyst for like I said, you know, coin market cap 97 to go flying.

Rand Nooner (25:06)

So. So I think the rising tide is going to lift all ships. I don't think the Clarity act is going to be the catalyst because as you say, I Think the Clarity act is already. Is already priced in. I think that, I think that the only thing that can pump this market is something that we don't know about. And I'm going to remind you that in 2022 or 2023, 2022, when the bull market started, it started because SVB bank went, went under or was. It was. Was about to go under, whatever it was. And then everybody. And everybody cashed out of the USDC Circle had a whole lot of, of US Dollars deposited. Yeah. And we were on the spaces that day. We were on spaces that day.

Scott Melker (25:49)

We had just started Crypto Town hall and I was like, well, USDC has a $3 billion hole if the Fed doesn't come in and fill it. By the way, I thought bitcoin was going to go down. I was like, I'm going to buy bitcoin because at least I know I'll have bitcoin. And it went up 20% or something right afterwards. I kind of got lucky. But it's not like I was a genius saying that bitcoin was going to pump on the Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley Valley bank collapse.

Rand Nooner (26:14)

I came on to Crypto Town hall and I said, people are cashing out of the USDC because I don't know how that is still backed. And that's actually what started the bull market. So I think everything that we can talk about here is priced in. Clarity. Act is priced in. Interest rate cuts are priced in. Potential stimulus is priced in. I think it's clear now that we're not really going to get a strategic bitcoin reserve. We're just going to get the US holding onto the bitcoin that they got, and that's from people.

Scott Melker (26:39)

We're gonna get a hundred thousand here, 100,000 there.

Rand Nooner (26:43)

Exactly. So, so I, so I think the catalyst is something that we can't speak about and we can't imagine. Like, it's not. You know, I think, I even think that to a certain extent, liquidity is priced in. Like, you know, like, I know you can't really price in liquidity because liquidity is the water that raises the level of the thing. But I think the market kind of knows that liquidity is coming, and so they're pricing in all the other assets as if liquidity is on the way. So, so I think it's like, for me, this is the, the most exciting part is that when you don't know what could pump a market, that's when the market will pump.

Scott Melker (27:16)

Of course, this very conversation and the nature and Tone of it means that we're probably very close to some massive.

Rand Nooner (27:24)

Exactly. It doesn't make our lives. It doesn't make. I mean, look, we. We run a crypto business, right? So our business. You and I run a crypto business, and it doesn't make our lives easier because, you know, we got to try and be interesting every single day about a market where people are disinterested. Like we have.

Scott Melker (27:43)

Including. Including us to some degree. Right.

Rand Nooner (27:46)

I mean, I have people in the.

Scott Melker (27:46)

Office I want to make content every day, but there are mornings now when I wake up and say there's nothing to talk about.

Rand Nooner (27:52)

Yeah. I mean, I pinged you. I pinged you before this conversation. I was like, scott, what are we talking about today? Like, I just don't see, you know, like, I mean, yeah, granted, there's certain things happening in certain protocols. This morning, there was a fallout at zcash. It wasn't a fallout at zcash. It was just some reshuffling of zcash that was like, the big market news, but a very small part of the market actually. Actually care about that.

Scott Melker (28:14)

Yeah. Are you still bullish on zcash after this?

Rand Nooner (28:18)

Yeah, I'm bullish.

Scott Melker (28:18)

Last we talked, you kind of thought that that was a very interesting play.

Rand Nooner (28:23)

I'm still. I still maintain my conviction. It really reminds me of bitcoin in the old days and even much more after today, you know, like, you know, I remember in the old days that there were the internal squabbles between the bitcoin core devs as to the size of the block, and some left and some stayed. And that's exactly what's happening in zcash. It's like these reorganization wars are par for the course when you're creating a revolution. You know what I mean? It's par for the course.

Scott Melker (28:47)

I want to touch on something you said earlier when kind of talking about sentiment and the signals of the lack of interest here. And one of them was that you're not seeing any deal flow. Nothing's coming across your desk. I mean, my telegram used to be, you know, a thousand unread messages. Now it's a graveyard, right? And it used to just be people I didn't even know finding my name and reaching out and, hey, bro, like, trust me, bro, invest in my good times. None of that is. So are you investing at all? Like, I know we've talked about this. You buy Bitcoin and you take the dust and, you know, you reshuffle. Or is it just, like, buy bitcoin Ethereum, Solana, a couple few select high conviction plays and call it a day.

Rand Nooner (29:33)

So I have a crypto investment allocation, which is the amount of money that I'm willing to invest in the crypto market. And I'm fully invested. And so any money that I'm investing now is money that I'm shuffling from one token to another. There's, I'm not, I don't have any more money that I'm allowing myself to put into crypto. I'm irresponsible on crypto because I believe in this market and understand this market. And so, and so like, but, but I can't put any more money into crypto. The line has been drawn, you know, that's it. That's. We've drawn the line. It's the end of the line. Like, can I put any more money? So it means that any money that I'm putting in here is money that I'm shuffling from Eth to Solana, Solana to Bitcoin, Hyper liquid to, to, to lighter, lighter to, you know, like, as the. So it's like I'm just shuffling my things around trying to, to be in the right place at the right time.

Scott Melker (30:24)

That's a tough position if you're not exceptionally good at this.

Rand Nooner (30:27)

Yeah, I mean, I'm not, I'm not very active now, I've got to be honest. I'm not very active because, because there's not much going on like, there's not much going on, like. Yeah, I mean, you know, I bought lighter the other day just because I knew it would run. And I bought World Liberty 5, but I, and I sold a bit of this. It's like you take, you take, you're just moving from the one to play the other and then, you know, that's.

Scott Melker (30:49)

How you're approaching it. Then where's this new money coming from? Right? When the guys who are like irresponsibly long and are saying I put everything into crypto or like no more money into crypto, how can we be convinced that new people are going to put new money into crypto?

Rand Nooner (31:05)

I'll tell you how it works. Got one green candle. That's it.

Scott Melker (31:09)

My favorite saying is there's no better marketing for bitcoin than higher prices. It just goes up and everybody wants it.

Rand Nooner (31:17)

One green candle. Bitcoin goes back to 100, 120, 110, 120. The altcoins start running. You switch on the bubbles every day, the bubbles go, are completely green. And then at that point retail finds money to come back. We just need the green candle.

Scott Melker (31:33)

So how do you approach this from a business perspective? I mean, do you just assume that like every other time that it's been down and numbers go down and there's less interest and, I don't know, less money flowing in general, that it'll just come back?

Rand Nooner (31:46)

So what are my options?

Scott Melker (31:48)

Do we pivot and become AI influencers?

Rand Nooner (31:50)

You know, like, I mean, let's talk about the options here. The options are to start making other content. Now, look, I don't make content because I enjoy making content. I make content because I enjoy crypto. And so I make content about something that I enjoy, which is crypto.

Scott Melker (32:05)

Right.

Rand Nooner (32:06)

I don't think that I'm, I'm not a media personality or a, or a broadcaster. Like, I'm not in this business because I want to broadcast. I'm not going to broadcast about sports or AI or gym tomorrow because those things don't interest me. I mean, AI interests me. But I don't know enough, I don't believe that I know enough about, about AI. I don't have an edge around AI. So for me, I make content because I enjoy crypto, not the other way around. I don't, I don't make crypto content because I enjoy making content. So I, although I do enjoy making crypto content, I enjoy that, but I enjoy it because we're not going to.

Scott Melker (32:43)

Go become like Keto diet influencers or.

Rand Nooner (32:46)

Yeah, sure. I'm a crypto investor right now. Right now I'm still investing in crypto and I still have, I still have a lot of conviction and I've been through these tough times before. I think the reason why this time is a little bit tougher is because it's very boring. It's, it's not. You know, when a market goes down, it's not boring. It's. There's opportunities, there's, there's blood on the street, there's news. What's happening here? I mean, you know, when I left on vacation, Bitcoin was at 88, 000. A month went by. When I came back, Bitcoin was at 88, 000.

Scott Melker (33:20)

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's pretty absurd. Yeah.

Rand Nooner (33:26)

Look, I'm, I'm bullish. I'm bullish until otherwise, like, I haven't yet thrown in the towel and said, okay, I don't think it's going to recover. I'm bullish that there's a recovery underway and let's wait and see. We need one green Candle.

Scott Melker (33:40)

It's almost this be careful what you wish for situation because we spent all the Biden years just praying that we would get some endorsement from the government and institutional adoption. I mean, do you remember like when Bakkt came in the first time in 2019 and we were like the institutions are here. New York Stock Exchange. I mean we finally got all of that. And careful what you wish for because now we have to show up every day and talk about JP Morgan. It was a lot more fun when we were not talking about J.P. morgan every day.

Rand Nooner (34:10)

Okay, I want to show you something. So this here is this year is March 14, 2024. And you'll see that the price of Bitcoin is $73,500. March 14, 2024. Gary Gensler was in the SEC. Biden and Biden, Biden Harris were the by far, by far, by far the favorites for the election at the time. The the Trump, Trump coming back into power. Trump hadn't even started his running on campaigning on, on, on, on Bitcoin at this point, right? That is where we were here. And now we are exactly 22% higher than that. How does that make sense? Are you telling me Gary Gensler out new SEC chair Trump. Trump's whole family invested in crypto. Much stronger economy. Every single market in the world running commodities and technologies and all of that is being priced by the market. Is 22 higher than the Biden Harris era. Like what am I missing here? What am I missing?

Scott Melker (35:20)

I don't know. I think that means it's coming. That actually makes me bullish.

Rand Nooner (35:27)

22, 22. Since, since, since, since the days of hell. I, I mean do you remember how bad, how bad the days of Gary Gensler were and when we had no.

Scott Melker (35:38)

Hope but we had an enemy? You know, like back then we had a. If you were wwe, you know, WWE wrestling, but they only wrote in good characters. Imagine how boring WWE would be. We need a heel like we need enemies and we don't have them anymore. Maybe that's where we need common ground to fight against.

Rand Nooner (36:00)

Maybe that's it. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's why zcash, you know, people fighting for privacy now because more than.

Scott Melker (36:07)

A 10x in three months, it can still happen, right? I mean, shouldn't that give us hope that these things can still run like crazy if the right people get together to pump them? I don't know what did it, but you know, if the right catalyst happens because I still hear about privacy every day. I talked to the founder of Canton Network today and he was talking about why the big institutions need privacy for their order books and such. I mean, it's a real narrative. Yes. If you were in zcash, you capitalized.

Rand Nooner (36:35)

Yeah. Look, I think let's give it another couple of weeks into the year. I think people, people are largely getting back to work this week, next week, and then let's see if we can, if we can sustain momentum into this pump. If yes, then we've got to watch the key levels. The key levels. 100, 107,000. If we break through those back in the bull market, we are. If we don't. Let's chat again.

Scott Melker (36:57)

Hey, what happened to Web3? Is that a thing still? When's the last time you said Web three on a show? When's the last time you're like, you know, we're going to be exchanging NFTs in the metaverse.

Rand Nooner (37:11)

And Yeah, I was thinking about, I was thinking about Metaverse. I was thinking about Metaverse the other day. Do you remember the news that Facebook changed its name to Meta? And do you remember how three month.

Scott Melker (37:24)

Pump on mana and sand and anything Metaverse adjacent, even though they had no reason to, and people were buying in the sandbox or whichever one it was for like $3 million.

Rand Nooner (37:38)

And remember that? So Facebook changed their name to Meta because their whole positioning was about the fact that they are actually a Metaverse. And you know, now that they've abandoned their spend on Metaverse, they've cut it. They made an announcement. They made an announcement that they've stopped the spend and the share price went rocketed up because they weren't going to spend any more money on Meta, but they rebranded the entire company to Meta and then they pulled the plug on the spin on the Metaverse.

Scott Melker (38:06)

Yeah, they'd be much better off if they were still Facebook. I also saw that Nike, I think, abandoned their nft NFT project this week. Just do it. Yeah, I mean, I really resonate the all we need is a big green candle and there will be some completely unforeseen catalyst and we'll have wasted all this time talking about what's going to happen and what could come and then one day it's just going to happen.

Rand Nooner (38:32)

Look again, I've seen these markets before, these stages where they're apathetic is the, is where everyone gets caught off guard. But the question, I mean, the question is, how long would it last? It's lasted quite a while, but the question is, how long does it last from here? Like, that's the part that Shakes people out and then they get shaken out, and then that one green candle comes and everybody just fomos back in.

Scott Melker (38:50)

Well, I'm the psychopath who's still deploying new cash into crypto.

Rand Nooner (38:54)

Just you probably, you're probably the right guy.

Scott Melker (38:56)

Bitcoin, Ethan Solana. I haven't stopped.

Rand Nooner (38:59)

Well, I want to know where you get in the cash from. The question is, where you getting the cash from?

Scott Melker (39:04)

You know, I moved and sold a house and some things, so it's, it's certainly not from this market at this point. But listen, I know we're gonna go soon, but let me ask you this, though. What else would you buy? If you got a huge amount of cash that you felt you needed to invest, what would you buy? Right now, I'm not buying silver coins at all time highs. Maybe I should. I'd still rather buy bitcoin.

Rand Nooner (39:30)

I would, I would spread my money out across, across a range of. Of assets because at this point in time, like, I'm so over invested in crypto. So, like, spread your money out across a range of assets and just the rising. And wait for the rising tide to lift all ships. I mean, that's. Seriously. Say again.

Scott Melker (39:50)

Are you saying crypto assets or you'd go, no, not.

Rand Nooner (39:52)

I mean, I've got enough crypto assets. If I, if you said other than crypto, so I'd buy. I mean, I am holding gold, and I mean, I hate saying it, but I probably buy some more gold. Yeah, I mean, I, I, you know, like, I don't know. I've been recently looking at some property investments in places like Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but I mean, like, it's, it's tough. It's tough. It's. It's, it's tough.

Scott Melker (40:13)

It feels like everything's at the top and then everything doubles.

Rand Nooner (40:16)

I mean, I, I, look, I've been buying silver since, since 22 and $23. And now when I look at this chart now, I mean, can you tell me how in good conscience you can buy chart like this?

Scott Melker (40:27)

Like, you just can't bring myself to buy silver. I would be a silver seller if I still had a bunch of silver.

Rand Nooner (40:33)

Yeah, I mean, how do you buy. How do you buy this chart? How do you buy charts like this? You can't. I mean, luckily I got in, like, somewhere here in the 20s, but I mean, how do you buy that chart?

Scott Melker (40:46)

Yeah, silver looks ready to run for a very long time there. So to your credit, you bought it when you should have.

Rand Nooner (40:52)

I don't know.

Scott Melker (40:53)

I think we're going to get some more definitive direction one way or another in the not so distant future. This sideways can't go on forever. These are the worst periods. And it always, you know, it also, by the way, we say one green candle, it could be one red candle. Right. And things then also get equally exciting.

Rand Nooner (41:09)

I saw, I mean, I don't know if you saw yesterday, but MicroStrategy for now is not being removed from the MSCI indices.

Scott Melker (41:15)

I think that's great for now.

Rand Nooner (41:17)

It's making a slight recovery. You can kind of see it's gone from 150, which was the low, to about 170 now, which is pull up RSI.

Scott Melker (41:24)

That's a monster bullish divergence right there with oversold RSI. I really like my micro strategy here for being.

Rand Nooner (41:30)

Yeah, but, but, but, but micro strategy needs. But micro strategy needs Bitcoin to run.

Scott Melker (41:35)

Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Rand Nooner (41:39)

It needs one green candle in Bitcoin. And then I think MicroStrategy will have its heyday again.

Scott Melker (41:43)

So I'm going to title this conversation One green Candle.

Rand Nooner (41:47)

One green candle, sir. One green candle.

Scott Melker (41:49)

So let's hope we have AI write a song for it. Green candle is all we need. Yeah, well, listen, man, I think we covered it all. I don't think there's much more to unpack. We'll just. When we get the one green candle, promise me that we will record again and talk about the one green candle.

Rand Nooner (42:09)

We will record again. And you know what? If not even for the money, just because it makes coming to work much more exciting. Like coming. I just want to be excited to come to work again. And excited to come to work again means that the market has to do something.

Scott Melker (42:24)

Yeah, I said that almost exact thing to me the other day. I still love it. There's nothing else I'd rather be doing. But like I said, you know, on a random Thursday, when I wake up and there's literally no news, I wish the algorithm wouldn't punish me if I just chose not to show up that day.

Rand Nooner (42:40)

Exactly.

Scott Melker (42:40)

Show up no matter what. Because you know that if you take a day off, all of a sudden your views go down. Right?

Rand Nooner (42:46)

It's crazy. Nice to see you. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to all. All our viewers. All. All your viewers. Obviously, we'll stay in touch. And as soon as the market starts. As soon as the market starts doing it. I think we should do this a little bit more often.

Scott Melker (43:00)

Yeah, I want to do this at least once a month. Perfect. Thanks, man.

Rand Nooner (43:05)

Cool. My friend.