Bitcoin Demand SURGES As Governments & Wall Street Scramble To Accumulate!

Summary

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The Wolf Of All Streets – Episode Summary

Episode Overview

Title: Bitcoin Demand SURGES As Governments & Wall Street Scramble To Accumulate!
Host: Scott Melker
Guests: Iago, Matt Hogan
Date: October 9, 2025

In this lively episode, Scott Melker discusses the explosive global demand for Bitcoin, institutional adoption, government accumulation, and surging flows into Bitcoin ETFs. Joined by regular commentator Iago and special guest Matt Hogan, the trio navigates the evolving landscape of Bitcoin, gold, and traditional finance, highlighting macro drivers, market structure changes, ETF developments, and government strategies.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Debasement Trade Goes Mainstream

• Debasement as the Macro Narrative: The hosts observe that “debasement”—fears over currency value erosion—is driving both institutional and retail behavior across hard assets.
  • Notable Mention: Silver hits all-time highs, shadowing gold, signaling increased flight into stores of value ([00:56]–[02:24]).
• Mainstream Endorsement: Leading financial voices—Paul Tudor Jones, JP Morgan, Ken Griffin—are all referencing “debasement.”
  • Quote: “You’ve heard debasement more on CNBC in the last week than you heard it in the last 10 years.” – Matt Hogan ([03:34])
• Iago’s Take: Asset rallies are driven by dollar weakness—holders of these assets are “getting poorer slower.” The shift is not just away from dollars, but from Treasuries, fundamentally changing portfolio allocations ([04:10]).
  • Quote: “A big chunk of that is due to dollar weakness. You’re just getting poorer slower because you’re holding these assets.” – Iago ([04:10])
• Historical Context: The shift from Treasuries back to gold as principal reserve asset is a return to historical norms, not a break from them ([06:42]).
  • Quote: “That period where Treasuries were above gold is really anomalous... we're returning back to normality.” – Matt Hogan ([06:42])

2. Market Structure & Institutional Adoption

• ETFs Transforming Market Flows: Record Bitcoin ETF inflows; ETF issuance and approval delays due to US government shutdowns have become oddly characteristic of the crypto industry ([08:18]).
  • Quote: “It is the most crypto thing ever to wait 15 years to get generic listing standards... and then have the government shut down for an interminable period.” – Matt Hogan ([08:18])
• Staking Comes to ETFs: Inclusion of staking in new ETF products for ETH and Solana is accelerating, with nearly all future ETF offerings expected to offer staking yield ([09:46]).
• ETH Market Dynamics: Rising staked ETH could increase inflation and reduce individual staking yields. Iago notes that Ethereum’s algorithms automatically adjust inflation as staking percentages rise ([11:51]).
  • Quote: “As the amount of ETH staked increases... they algorithmically built in increased inflation. So you actually don't need an expert. You need a calculator.” – Iago ([11:51])
• Derivative Markets & Volatility: The growth of sophisticated Bitcoin options markets (IBIT options now surpassing Deribit) is dampening volatility and supports a less manic, more “grindy” upward price trend ([13:15]).
  • Quote: “The future is more grindy than it is God candles. That is what happens when you get this large explosion in the derivatives market.” – Matt Hogan ([14:00])

3. Governments Accumulating Bitcoin

• Sovereign Wealth Funds Enter the Scene: Luxembourg’s fund allocates 1% to Bitcoin—small in nominal terms but huge as a precedent ([20:34]).

  • Institutional Playbook: Government adoption follows the pattern seen with financial advisors, hedge funds, pensions: skepticism, then exponential curve of adoption ([19:02]).
  • Quote: “I think next year we're going to see purchases by... a dozen countries.” – Matt Hogan ([19:02])

• US Government Response: Senator Lummis discusses the idea of US government accumulating a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Speculation abounds that the US may be quietly buying, or will be pressured to act as others do ([22:01]).

  • Quote: “The US will always do the right thing once it has exhausted all other options... The good news is the US is rapidly exhausting all other options.” – Iago ([22:37])
  • Quote: “I think the probability that we buy bitcoin is significantly greater than zero. Maybe it's not the base case, but I don't think it's priced in at all.” – Matt Hogan ([22:50])
  • Price Impact Guess: “What’s the price if the government is buying Bitcoin, Scott?” – “$500,000 in a month or two.” – Scott Melker ([23:59])

• Global Macro Context: Confiscation of Russian reserves by the West marked a turning point—nations see the need for sovereign custody of reserves ([26:18]).

  • Quote: “That was one of the most important events from a monetary perspective that I’ve seen in a few decades... you have to self-sovereignly custody your own wealth locally.” – Matt Hogan ([26:29])

4. Bitcoin, Gold, and the “Store of Value” Narrative

• Bitcoin as Digital Gold: Bitcoin is increasingly compared directly to gold on broadcasts and by institutional analysts ([28:15]).
  • Quote: “This is the first time I think that we're actually really seeing the narrative pushed of digital gold or store of value.” – Scott Melker ([28:15])
  • On asset lists for institutional investors, Bitcoin and gold are nearly universally present, with diversification being key ([29:07]).
• Virtuous Circle for Crypto Wealth: As Bitcoin whales proliferate—wallets with more than 100 BTC hit an all-time high ([33:05])—Wall Street and political structures will increasingly align in support.
  • Quote: “A lot of the world's wealthy people are going to be crypto investors... lobbying is going to be oriented towards supporting them. There is a virtuous circle to that.” – Matt Hogan ([33:13])
• Macro Trade Vision Realized: The narrative and warnings espoused for years by Bitcoiners about debasement and sovereign custody have played out on the grand stage ([26:50]).
  • Quote: “All of the insane things that bitcoiners have been screaming for all these years have come true over time and on the biggest stage possible.” – Scott Melker ([26:50])
  • Counterpoint: The real surprise, Iago notes, is not that someone saw this macro trade coming, but that a technology (Bitcoin) existed to exploit it ([27:25]).

5. Ethereum, Solana, and the Multi-Chain Thesis

• Which Chain Wins Wall Street? Matt Hogan discusses Ethereum’s dominant position but gives Solana “challenger asset” status: its market cap is smaller, providing more potential upside as institutions diversify ([31:29]).
  • Quote: “Solana has an incredibly compelling technology that processes transactions in a blink... The thing that’s attractive is it’s one-fifth the size of ETH and money buying both will have a greater impact on a smaller asset.” – Matt Hogan ([31:29])
  • Melker and Iago agree the smart move is diversification; nobody can fully predict the winner ([32:30]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “This debasement trade is the trade of the quarter and you ain’t seen nothing yet.” – Matt Hogan ([02:26])
• “We’re experiencing... what used to be this sort of, you know, bull market overextension, mania... is being transformed into a grinding upwards process.” – Iago ([13:15])
• “ETFs do more flows year two than year one, more flows year three than year two... I think it’s a one way train.” – Matt Hogan ([15:47])
• “The world is screaming at you that the debasement trade is real.” – Matt Hogan ([02:07])
• “Governments are on the same exponential adoption curve as every other institutional investor category.” – Matt Hogan ([19:02])
• “Money in a bank is not yours.” – Scott Melker ([26:41])
• “Bitcoin maxis call me a shitcoiner and shitcoiners call me a bitcoin maxi. It’s an incredible needle to thread.” – Scott Melker ([31:13])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Debasement Trade & Precious Metals Rally: [00:56]–[06:42]
• ETFs and Government Shutdown Impact: [07:24]–[09:46]
• Staking in ETFs & ETH Dynamics: [09:46]–[11:51]
• BTC ETF Inflows & Derivatives Market Impact: [12:12]–[14:39]
• Government Accumulation (Luxembourg, US): [18:33]–[22:01]
• US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Discussion: [22:01]–[24:20]
• Macro Events: Russian Reserves, BRICS: [26:10]–[26:29]
• Bitcoin as Digital Gold Mainstreamed: [28:15]
• Multi-Chain Future: Ethereum vs Solana: [30:50]–[32:30]
• Rise of Bitcoin Whales & Crypto Wealth: [33:05]
• Wrap & Outro: [33:42]–[34:03]

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Episode Tone

The episode is energetic, irreverent, and intellectually engaged—a balance between deep macroeconomic analysis and the wry, self-aware banter that defines veteran crypto commentary. The guests combine long-term conviction with pragmatic skepticism about timelines, often poking fun at both their own community’s historical “doomer warnings” and mainstream finance’s slow awakening.

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This summary captures all core themes, key arguments, and the flavor of one of the most significant episodes for understanding the current interplay of Bitcoin, traditional finance, and global macro trends.

Transcript

[Scott Melker]

Bitcoin demand is surging across the world. We have the most wallets ever with over 100 Bitcoin governments weighing up to $75 billion in Bitcoin for strategic reserves. And of course, the highest inflows that we've seen into Bitcoin spot ETFs ever over the last week. Very clearly there's a lot of demand for bitcoin. We're going to dive into that, of course, with Iago. Cause it's Thursday. And special guest, crowd favorite, Matt Hogan, who has more hot takes than anybody in the industry at this point. And I just love watching the reactions to all of them. We'll discuss it all now. Let's go.

[Iago]

Let's do.

[Scott Melker]

Good morning everybody. Happy Thursday. I hope that you all survived that brutal bear market of Tuesday. Price almost back to an all time high. We're down about, I don't know, $2,000 or something from the all time high. Terrifying $123,514 Bitcoin as we speak. And people seemingly just like completely in shambles because we went down to like 120 the other day. But there's a lot going on in the market. Let's start right here. I just want to give a mention to gold's cousin silver, making an all time high breaking 50 bucks. Now, this has taken literally forever to happen, like quite literally as long as metals have existed. This is the highest that silver has ever traded. But this might give us clues as to what could happen in the crypto market. Obviously see, silver often follow gold, which has broken over 4,000 is still rocketing. Could this be an indicator that, you know, generally this debasement trade is increasing and that could mean more for bitcoin and all coins. I mean, Matt, what do you take? Not specifically on silver, but we've all been talking debasement trade.

[Matt Hogan]

Yeah, I mean, obviously the world is screaming at you that the debasement trade is real and it's happening and we're getting this like alt metal right Rally, which you called out, Scott. I think absolutely. That spills over into bitcoin, that spills over into Ethereum. I think it's going to lift those markets.

[Scott Melker]

Digital silver, Digital.

[Matt Hogan]

Well, you said it. I'll let you say that you've learned. I, I will say, you know, one effect, one reason I think this is just going to accelerate into year end, at least for the audience I serve is the audience I serve loves to pay paint their portfolios at year end. They want to sit down with clients and show them that they held the hottest trade of the year last year. They all bought Nvidia at the year end because they wanted it on their end of year statements. This year they're all going to want to own gold, bitcoin, silver, ethereum. I think you're going to see those flows accelerate. We're seeing that in Bitcoin ETFs, as you hinted at. So of course you have a debasement trade is the trade of the quarter and you ain't seen nothing yet.

[Scott Melker]

Yeah, I don't want to dig too deeply into it because I went off on the debasement trade yesterday. But you have Paul Tudor, Jones, J.P. morgan, Morgan Stanley, Ken Griffin from Citadel all in the last two weeks saying debasement, right? It's become the, it's become the catchphrase. I have your, you have a tweet here literally before all of them start talking about basically saying debasement could be the word of the year in 2026. So you said that on October 4th.

[Matt Hogan]

You, you've heard, you've heard the word more. You've heard debasement more on CNBC in the last week than you heard it in last 10 years. It's just exploded into the conscious. It's not like a word we talked about.

[Scott Melker]

No, but we talked about it all the time. We being our echo chamber. But now the world seems to be catching on. And Iago, interestingly, I asked you if you had any hot takes from token 2049. You said, yeah, price went up for once during a conference. But what interested me more is what you said afterwards. I haven't really been looking at it. I've been looking at all these other markets. Right. So obviously these precious metals even have your eye right now.

[Iago]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a structural change. It's huge. It's, it reminds me of that scene in the Big Short where they're celebrating the, the, you know, the, the, the two young guys are celebrating their win and, and their, their mentor, Trader Ben, turns to them and system, you know what you're celebrating? Everyone is getting like, families are getting destroyed. This is, this is a very, this is a very like people who are on this trade to a degree are making money. But as I've pointed out before, the problem with debasement trades is that yes, we're seeing all time highs in gold, bitcoin and silver, but a big chunk of that is due to dollar weakness. Right. Every, you and everyone else are getting poorer. You're just getting poorer slower because you're holding These assets. And so, so that's one part of it. But the other part is this really is a big deal. It's a structural change. It's a shift away from US$t bills. It's not the dollar that's being sort of competed away here. It's, it's Treasuries.

[Scott Melker]

That's right.

[Iago]

It's the government's ability to borrow. We, we're currently seeing 3% inflation in Japan. Japan, right. They've never had inflation. They it, this is nuts. So I think this trade is going to accelerate and the speed at which it accelerates is partly going to be a question of how ugly things get.

[Scott Melker]

I mean here's the chart. Foreign central banks hold more gold than Treasuries. Right? That hadn't happened since 1996. Very, very clear trend where the gold interest is coming from. A lot of it is retail as well now because they always catch up to the trade. But it's very clear who's buying gold and the price of this is going up. And it's exactly the reason you said nobody wants to hold treasure.

[Iago]

But also look, look, have the United.

[Scott Melker]

States government yelling like we're going to grow our way out of this. We've given up. Why would you ever want to hold that debt?

[Iago]

But look, look at this, look at this graph, right? Like if you're doing technical analysis on this graph, look how high gold still has to go before it comes anywhere near where it used to be.

[Scott Melker]

Right?

[Iago]

75%. This is in a multi trillion dollar market. And so these are huge tectonic shifts. Bigger than anything we've seen. Bigger even than the global financial crisis in terms of the structural change.

[Matt Hogan]

Yeah, I think that's really right. The other thing I would say about that chart is you could continue those lines back for 5,000 years. And the reason I say that is that the period that we had where Treasuries were above gold is really anomalous, Right. I think it's like a fiat blink. We've all grown up in it. That's been our lives. So we think that is normal. I think it's the case that that is not normal. We're returning back to normality. That's why I think that line is going to continue to stay above on the gold side for a very long time. I think it's a one way move. I don't think we're going back. That was an odd window we just all happen to grow up in. But I think it was the anomaly. We're back to the Normal.

[Scott Melker]

Well, speaking of going back to the normal, the United States government is broken, which is what we anticipate as the normal. And we have a United States government shutdown that seems to be nowhere close to being resolved. Donald Trump taking it as an excuse, apparently I read yesterday, to fire half of the irs, which I don't know how I feel about that for those particular people in the irs, but seems good for crypto people getting audited. But here we go. Crypto ETFs stuck at the finish. I didn't say that out loud. IRS crypto ETFs stuck at the finish line as US government shutdown freezes progress. So we have this interesting scenario, Matt near the guy to obviously unpack it for us. We were expecting this wild slew of approvals. I think we had 30 of these filed in a day or something. Just news all over the place. You guys changing your Solana one to Staking, right? I mean, so many things, but can the SEC actually approve any of these that are there during the shutdown?

[Matt Hogan]

It is the most crypto thing ever to wait 15 years to get generic listing standards that let us launch and then have the government shut down for an interminable period. I mean, you really couldn't have written that script. The answer to your question, Scott, is nuanced. There are some ETFs in traditional wrappers that can go auto effective or that can, that can move forward toward launch without official government blessing, but most of them require work. So things like crypto equity ETFs can continue to march forward, but many of the other ETFs require back and forth with the government. And it's not that it's impossible to get things to launch, but it sure is a lot easier and a lot less risky for issuers if it can go back and forth with the government. They can't come back and say you should have made these disclosures, etc. So it's, it complicates our lives and. Yeah, I just, I sort of can't believe it.

[Scott Melker]

Can you? Yeah, but like you said, it's the most crypto thing ever. You can believe it, you just don't want to.

[Iago]

But.

[Scott Melker]

Right. So one of the, one of the news here items was, you know, bitwise Invest filed amended Solana etf, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Staking. Right. So we saw obviously that Grayscale had their two staking go live. You guys are way ahead of this. I don't understand the order at which these kind of things are approved, but very clearly Staking is coming to all ETFs to according across the board for assets that allow it. Is that accurate?

[Matt Hogan]

I think that's, I think that's pretty accurate, yeah. Obviously I can't speak to that specific filing, but broadly speaking, yeah, investors, most investors want to stake their assets and so you'll see ETFs that allow staking on virtually everything. For what it's worth, there are some investors that, for interesting tax reasons, don't necessarily want to stake. And I think you may see non staking ETFs as well. There'll be a fraction of the size of staking ETFs, but yeah, you know, do you want Solana staking yield or E staking yield along with your Solana or eth? I do. So I think we're going to see people do that.

[Iago]

I. I have a question here. So they have been thinking about. So as the. This is true for Ethereum, not so much for Solana, but as the num percentage of Ethereum, right, ETH which is staked grows, two things happen. One, the inflation rate on ETH goes up and two, the revenue per staker somewhat diminishes. And at the same time we're seeing this significant effort by the Ethereum community, the Ethereum developer community, to reduce fees on chain. And so do you think that there's going to be an appreciable impact here of actually increasing the amount of percentage of ETH which is actually staked and in that way accelerating ETH inflation at just the time that sort of ETH consumption is being reduced?

[Matt Hogan]

Yeah, so it's a great question. I think the first part I definitely agree with. The percentage of assets that are staked will significantly go up. You think about what BlackRock and others have done on the Bitcoin side, you look at the flows into Ethereum ETFs, they're clearly accelerating. So a lot of those are going to be locked up and staked in a way that they weren't necessarily in the past. You know how much that influences inflation. I think I'll leave to the Ethereum experts and how dynamic that relationship is.

[Scott Melker]

Yeah, the Ethereum experts, Jago, will tell you that it's ultrasound money. It's more deflationary than Bitcoin. It's superior. Oh my God.

[Iago]

I mean, they might say that, but algorithmically, the way it's been structured is that as the amount of ETH staked increases, in order to continue to provide a yield, they algorithmically built in increased inflation. So you actually don't need an expert. You need a calculator.

[Scott Melker]

Okay, that works. Calculators are good. But you know, meanwhile, just sort of to wrap the ETF topic here as we move on, crypto ETFs seem to double by year end as bitcoin heads for 148,500. Okay, that's an oddly specific target, but I like it. This week we had the third highest Bitcoin ETF inflow ever. That was two days ago. I think last week was the biggest week or second biggest week ever. And Monday was this, this is the third highest day. But Monday was the second highest day. And you have ibit. Sorry Matt, I don't like talking about ibit. Your presence, it's all good. I'm a bit wise holder, but Ibit watch, they're about to be at 100 billion. And one more thing that I mentioned to you guys before the show, which I found astounding. Open interest, notional open interest on Bitcoin now is larger on IBIT options than on Deribit, which has forever been the largest options and futures market for so tradifies in control. Yeah.

[Iago]

That'S a very big deal. Not least because it means that there's. So if you have a robust options market, it has a significant dampening effect on overall volatility. And I think we've, we're experiencing that right now. Right. Bitcoin volume is at historic lows. And so what used to be this sort of, you know, bull market over extension mania that we should be experiencing in, you know, October, a year and a half after halving, is being transformed into a grinding upwards process.

[Matt Hogan]

Yeah, I think that's really true. I think your base assumption should be the future is more grindy than it is God candles. I think that is what happens when you get this large explosion in the derivatives market. I would also just add, you mentioned it. I mean we're above $5 billion of inflows into Bitcoin ETFs this month and it's very early. That puts us on pace for this to be by far the best month for Bitcoin ETFs. I think we're going to see record flows in October. I think we're going to see record flows in Q4. I think this year's flows will be bigger than last year's flows. I think it's accelerating, Scott, because it's October for flows.

[Scott Melker]

Price.

[Matt Hogan]

It's October for flows. We just turned on Morgan Stanley. Wells Fargo is gearing up. Those are big pools of assets I posted yesterday or A few days ago on X. I think this will eventually get to be a trillion dollar ETF category and I don't think that's absurd. We're at a couple hundred billion now. I think price is going up, flows are accelerating. I do think this will be a trillion dollar category.

[Scott Melker]

We're going to have a higher market cap for crypto based ETFs and we're going to have for the assets that underlying them.

[Matt Hogan]

It's the ETF ification of crypto. It is happening. But I, you know, you see this, you see it in Ethereum too, right? Well, north of a billion inflows so far this month and accelerating from here.

[Scott Melker]

Yeah, bitwise had a chart, I think I showed it yesterday that showed the gold ETF launch and basically had kind of flat and then parabolic after the gold ETF and kind of comparing bitcoin to it. And bitcoin was still short, it was October of the flows from last year. But obviously going to surpass and probably just follow that exact precedent.

[Matt Hogan]

100%. Yeah. I mean that's what ETFs do. They do more flows year two than year one, more flows year three than year two. Eventually we'll get to $100 billion flow year. I just don't see any reason to expect that to slow down. You know, I'll point out something so obvious, but people overlook about ETF flows. If you ask any bitcoin investor, did they buy all of the bitcoin they hold today, the first time they bought bitcoin? The answer is no. So even just the people who bought it last year are probably going to buy more than they did last year this year and then more again the next year. That's what we all did. So I think it's a one way train.

[Iago]

Yeah, especially if, you know, you size into your winners basically. One of the interesting things while we're talking about Vol and options markets, I think that is happening right now is that right now it looks like the bitcoin market is more orderly than the much larger gold market because there's significant challenges now that there's, you know, Shanghai deliverables.

[Scott Melker]

Right.

[Iago]

There's significant demand, there's significant demand for deliverables in Russia. These are places which is hard to get to in the best of times and you need to transport gold. So there are specialists who deal with this transportation of gold. But you're seeing dislocations in the primary market, in the London market due to sort of lack of immediate supply or sort of lack of liquidity. Around gold simply because it's a physical asset, whereas bitcoin is behaving in an more orderly manner. And that more orderly manner is a profound benefit if you're looking at assets that are important for, you know, important as reserve assets. So we've, you know, we've long known that sort of bitcoin can be teleported around the world and there was an obvious benefit, but the derivative benefit of it, which is probably more important on a day to day basis, is the ability to have more orderly flows around derivatives and delivery.

[Matt Hogan]

I love that. It's worth noting if you remember when oil traded for negative, that was because of a mismatch between physical oil and the futures market. I do think that is a benefit of Bitcoin. You can't have that because you can teleport it around the world.

[Scott Melker]

The problem with the oil trade was that if you were able to get it at a negative price, you had to take physical delivery of it. It's like you empty your swimming pool and start taking, taking on the oil. But yeah, it's a, it's a point well taken. I mean, and moving on from the institutional flows, which obviously a lot of the ETF flows are retail, but clearly we have massive institutional interest as well. We can go to the governments, which I put right in the title.

[Matt Hogan]

This is Bloomberg. Okay.

[Scott Melker]

It's not like this isn't like some random coin gape or, you know, who talks about these things. Government swaying crypto reserves target billion dollar pot basically. Trump clearly has said we're not going to sell any more bitcoin. The United States government has an executive order saying. So if you extrapolate that policy.

[Iago]

Scott, I think we've lost your, we've lost your sound.

[Matt Hogan]

Did you. Yeah. All right. Yeah, well, we, we can take it from here. Yaga. Well, well, Scott works on that. I mean, I think the thing I've been thinking about on this government side, what this story is talking about is that these governments have all seized bitcoin. They're going to convert them into reserves. This has happened so many times in crypto's history where people are skeptical of a category of crypto investors. They were skeptical of financial advisors, they were skeptical of hedge funds, they were skeptical of pensions, they were skeptical of endowments, they're skeptical of governments. And then time and again what we see is there's a few early pioneers and they follow this exponential growth curve. And then you wake up and today many financial advisors allocate many family offices, allocate many hedge funds, allocate endowments and pensions are further along that curve. They're now Harvard is allocating. It's not rare, but it's not common. Governments are doing the same thing. A similar story. We saw Luxembourg make an allocation from its sovereign wealth fund. I see no reason to imagine the growth in government holdings of Bitcoin aren't following that same exponential growth curve that we've seen in every category of investor. I just don't understand where the skepticism come from. And I think next year we're going to see purchases by, I don't know, a dozen countries. I don't see why we would imagine we would get anything but that looking at the track record.

[Scott Melker]

Can you guys hear me?

[Iago]

Yeah, we can.

[Scott Melker]

Okay, good. It said they could still hear me in the chat and that there's some issues on YouTube as well. So I don't know. And luxembourg, by the way, 1% is of the sovereign wealth fund. That is a huge signal. And Luxembourg is an exceptionally very big signal.

[Iago]

We shouldn't overestimate how much immediate impact it has because this is a very small fund.

[Scott Melker]

Right.

[Iago]

They've got multiple different sleeves in their sovereign world fund. This particular sleeve is 700 million. So you're looking at about 7.3 million. Yeah, euro going into, into this. But it, Luxembourg is the financial center of the EU and this, their sovereign wealth fund doing this is, is basically opening the door. It's legitimizing the ability for sovereign wealth funds like the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, Norway, to begin to do the same thing. And Norway have already taken positions in crypto related corporations. The next step is for them to start taking positions in the assets themselves.

[Matt Hogan]

Yeah, this is a real thing. It's 6am here in California. I've already done a call with a government entity looking at Bitcoin today. So this is a story that really is happening. And I think people who are skeptical of it aren't seeing the inside. It's going to take time to play out. But I do think we'll see even those larger funds, as Iago mentioned, move into this over time.

[Scott Melker]

What's the United States going to do about our strategic Bitcoin reserve? Lummis is saying, by the way, she's working on a de minimis tax exemption for bitcoin payments. We've heard that a million times. But that's just common sense that if I buy coffee, the old meme with my bitcoin, it shouldn't be a taxable sale of an asset, you know, but we'll see. But she also said last week the United States could start buying bitcoin for the strategic bitcoin reserve anytime. I think maybe, maybe they've been buying it the whole time and that's why it's going up. And they don't want to announce it and undercut.

[Iago]

I don't.

[Scott Melker]

I don't think they can do that.

[Iago]

You know, Churchill said of the United.

[Matt Hogan]

States that the United States will always.

[Iago]

Do the right thing once it has exhausted all other options. Well, I mean, the good news is the US Is rapidly exhausting all other options.

[Matt Hogan]

I agree with that. My view of it is that the market is pricing that possibility at zero. And I don't think the possibility is zero. So I think it's a positive catalyst. On my screen right now is another article from Bloomberg. Gold's rally is helping China build a world less dependent on Trump and the dollar. I think there's a possibility that those sort of headlines push the administration into acquiring bitcoin as an alternative. I don't think that's a zero chance. It may not be the base case, but I do think the market is writing it off to zero. And that's been. Yeah, there's that story. You can imagine the administration looking at that shining, glittering picture and the word China and wondering how it's going to take a run at this. I don't think that's a crazy conspiracy idea. So I think the probability that we buy bitcoin is significantly greater than zero. Maybe it's not the base case, but I don't think it's priced in at all. Into 100.

[Scott Melker]

Way higher than zero and completely not priced in. Yeah, yeah, I put it like 50. 50. Not now, but like, you know, like, as a real possibility, I'd put it at 50. 50.

[Matt Hogan]

And what's the price if the government is buying Bitcoin, Scott?

[Scott Melker]

$500,000 in a month or two.

[Matt Hogan]

I agree. I think that is right.

[Scott Melker]

A, because of the actual buying pressure and demand. B, because of the game theory of central banks around the world that are accumulating gold and the signal that they would have, and C, because we would all fomo in like complete idiots to buy as fast as humanly possible, everyone who owns it would buy more.

[Matt Hogan]

That's right. I'm aligned with that. And again, I just think that's not in the market at all. Right. I don't think people are thinking about that.

[Scott Melker]

Yeah, you kind of shook your head at me with my 50 50. Maybe I'm being hyperbolic.

[Iago]

Well, I. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I don't, I think it depends on the, on the, on the time frame. The. It's effectively a hundred percent in my view. But the question is time frame. And this question is important to us as bitcoiners. But I think it's much more important to the US government how quickly they can get their act together and whether or not they can front run Luxembourg or Luxembourg and the rest of the eu, you know, front run the US The US is in a weird position, is sort of the creator of the current reserve asset. What Trump has done is accelerate. So he, he, he sort of brought to the fore this idea that the US is over indebted part a big part of his campaigning and his sort of approach to tariffs and approach to weakening the dollar have highlighted to the world that this is a real thing which on the one hand allows the U.S. i think it's smart, right. It allows the U.S. to, to deal with the problem and to get ahead of it, but on the other hand also accelerates it because money, all forms of money, bitcoin, treasury bills, anything, it's all a confidence game. And so by trying to get ahead of the problem of the confidence game, the, the Trump has accelerated the, the reduction in trust. But it's not just him. Biden before him in freezing. 300 billion of Russian.

[Scott Melker]

Yeah, I think it might have been 6.

[Iago]

It was 6, it was 600 billion in total across Europe. In the U.S. with the roughly 300 billion split each way, that was the.

[Scott Melker]

Signal that, I mean that was the beginning of the gold rally. It really was. And the brick and the uptick in like brics, you know, rhetoric that that was going to come.

[Matt Hogan]

Yeah, I think that was one of the most important events from a monetary perspective that I've seen in a few decades.

[Iago]

Right.

[Matt Hogan]

That told you you have to self sovereignly custody your own wealth locally.

[Scott Melker]

Money in a bank is not yours.

[Matt Hogan]

That is correct. That is what we told the world and there's no going back from that. Right. That is a trust that breaks once and then it's broken.

[Scott Melker]

Can we just talk about how crazy it is that all of the insane things that bitcoiners have been screaming for all these years have come true over time and on the biggest stage possible. I mean bitcoiners screamed about don't leave your money in the bank sovereignty being your own bank screamed about debasement literally from day one. And here we are when you got Ken Griffin from Citadel saying buy Bitcoin because of the basement. It's, I mean, I Said it's kind of weird yesterday, like I don't want to cheer for the evil. You know, it's like the emperor and Darth Vader buy bitcoin.

[Iago]

It's the biggest macro trade, right? And macro trades are the biggest trade. So it's the biggest trade of our lifetime. The fact that some of us managed to see it, it's not weird. It would be surprising if, if no one had seen it. What is weird is that we actually had a technology to take advantage. That's what's nuts that there was some that we weren't completely helpless.

[Matt Hogan]

It is that I agree with that. I do am continually shocked you tweeted the the Citigroup interview with cnbc. Scott Citigroup is saying people are so happy to turn to bitcoin as this steady asset and not chase the crazy momentum driven trade in equities. It's unbelievable. It felt like an April Fool's joke.

[Scott Melker]

You have guys on TV bringing up bitcoin and gold charts and talking about how historically bitcoin follows the price of gold. This is the first time I think that we're actually really seeing the narrative pushed of digital gold or store of value. We've yelled about it forever. But I don't see any of these big names on TV talking about bitcoin trading like Nvidia anymore.

[Matt Hogan]

That's exactly.

[Scott Melker]

Really like bit. You know, every single person actually who talked about the debasement trade had a different list of assets that you should own. Bitcoin was on every single one of them. You know, JP Morgan was like gold, silver, Bitcoin. Paul Tudor Jones threw in the nasdaq, which a lot of people agree with because you know, rich people will just buy tech if things are going down and those should all fly. But bitcoin was on every list. NASDAQ wasn't on every list. Silver wasn't on every list. Gold and bitcoin were both on every list.

[Iago]

I think it's worthwhile pointing out why they need to have more than one on a list. Right.

[Scott Melker]

So.

[Iago]

I won't get into an explanation of why diversification is so important. But. But anyone who's managing wealth professionally understands the value of diversification, no matter what your overall thesis. And so if your overall thesis is you need to protect against the basement, you're not going to just hold gold or just hold NASDAQ. You're going to try and have five or 10 different buckets. And the fact that bitcoin is up there in the top, you know, three buckets means that it's going to end up being part of every single portfolio.

[Matt Hogan]

Yeah, I think that's right. And that is just to make the obvious point, a lot of money. There's a lot of money that's rotating.

[Scott Melker]

Yeah. Especially when we just start like in all these different ways, being passively included in 401k and IRA buys and included in all these funds. Oh, I have to ask you, Matt, before we go. People seem to be getting approved for crypto index ETFs. Last I checked, Bitwise filed for. That was one of the first. And it was about to get approved and we literally celebrated. And then 24 hours later, people remember, you came on the show and we were like, wow. And you were. And you said, you know, maybe the optimistic view is that they're going to approve generic listing standards and they're waiting to do anything until that happens. So maybe that was the case, but somehow some of these other ones snuck in there and you guys are still on indefinite pause. Is that the. I don't know the technical term?

[Matt Hogan]

Yeah, pocket veto. Indefinite pause. Veto. And. And now the government is shut. Yeah, this is. This is. This is my nightmare. Thanks for bringing it up, Scott. I appreciate it.

[Scott Melker]

Welcome and be awesome. I can say to Trigger you today, I got one more. So you said that Solana is the new Wall Street. Like that, you know.

[Iago]

Yeah.

[Scott Melker]

Everybody freaked out at you.

[Matt Hogan]

Everybody freaked out. The beauty of crypto Twitter is, is, you know, I've been called a bitcoin shill. An Ethereum shill. A Solana show. Last I looked, they're all up massively over the last five years. So maybe I'm. Maybe I'm just invested. Yeah, you, you've.

[Scott Melker]

You bitcoin maxis call me a shitcoiner and shitcoiners call me a bitcoin maxi. It's an incredible needle to thread, Matt and I.

[Iago]

Can I ask for your elevator pitch? I mean, Tom Lee's claiming that Ethereum is the Wall Street. What's your elevator pitch for? Why it Solana?

[Matt Hogan]

Well, the real truth is I don't know which asset will win. Ethereum has the dominant position, the dominant share of stable coins and tokenization. It has the best shot on goal. But Solana has an incredibly compelling technology that with which processes transactions in a blink of an eye. It's the challenger asset and it is architected to serve that market. The way I invest in it is I own both of them. I think the market is so huge, I think they will both win. But Ethereum is the dominant player Solana is the challenger. The thing about the Solana that's really attractive right now is it's one fifth the size of eth and as institutions start rotating into the stablecoin and tokenization trade, I think they're going to buy both and money buying both will have a greater impact on a smaller asset. So I don't think it's the, the market is telling you it's not the base case assumption that Solana will win. It's a challenger asset, but I think its chance of winning is greater than zero and it's a small asset.

[Scott Melker]

So it has exactly time somebody asks, I'll just show them this meme. It's so that's the thing is I go, he didn't say it's not Ethereum. Matt's been taught we've been talking about Ethereum and what the bid that it would catch and all this interesting for years before it happened. It's just the context actually matters. It's crazy. We do have to run in a second but there was one more story I just wanted to bring up because addresses with a balance of over 100 bitcoin has reached an all time high as well here. So everybody's buying Bitcoin.

[Matt Hogan]

Yes. Also a derivative of this that people don't think about is a lot of the world's wealthy people are going to be crypto investors.

[Scott Melker]

Investors.

[Matt Hogan]

That's already true, but it's going to be really true. And that means Wall street is going to be oriented towards serving them. Lobbying is going to be oriented towards supporting them. There is a virtuous circle to that and I think that that chart is one way of showing that that's true.

[Scott Melker]

And imagine when somebody, Iago builds an entire new financial system on top of that asset. It crazy. You can't imagine. All right guys, I gotta go.

[Iago]

One day we can debate Matt and I, Bitcoin versus Ethereum.

[Scott Melker]

Let's do it.

[Matt Hogan]

That'd be fun.

[Scott Melker]

Again, debate or conversate because I have a feeling Matt might agree.

[Iago]

No, it's because it's much more fun if we manage to disagree. So we'll try.

[Scott Melker]

Okay, I will just bring Mike McGlone on to argue with you guys.

[Matt Hogan]

Well, there we go.

[Scott Melker]

That's what we usually do. We need a. If we need a heel, you know, like WWE style, we just bring on Mike and people yell at him. All right guys, that's all I got. I gotta run and go hit up SiriusXM. I do that show there on Thursdays as a guest. So thank you Matt for waking up very, very early to do this with us. Thank you Yago for waking up on time to do this with us. Really appreciate it. Missed you last week. We'll see you again obviously tomorrow for the Friday 5 and next Thursday with D. What's up Wolfpacks? Scott Melker here and today's show is powered by Easybitcoin app, the app that rewards you for buying and holding Bitcoin. Set up a recurring buy and earn 1% extra in Bitcoin automatically. Then let that stack sit tight and start earning a 2% annual Bitcoin reward dropped into your wallet monthly after a three month recurring buy streak. On top of all that, earn 4.5% APY on US dollars you keep in your USD interest account. You can even opt in to have the interest auto converted to Bitcoin. It's friction free. Set it and forget it. The best way to let you grow both your Bitcoin your bucks easy. Bitcoin is live right now on iOS and Android. Hit pause, click the link below, download the app and start stacking sats the smart way. Your capital is at risk. Crypto markets are highly volatile. This content is informational and not financial advice.