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A
Well, good morning, everyone. Happy Wednesday. I guess yesterday reversed Monday. Ish. And now we're kind of hovering here. And I thought Gary did a really good job of capturing the mood in terms of where the market is. I'm curious what everybody else is thinking, but my thought is, yeah, you know, despondency and despair without major price action. It's constructive over time, but it's not the kind of V bottoms and rocket ships that people in crypto want to see. So that's where we are. I mean, Gary, you've been taking a lot of crap these days for. For kind of calling it as it is.
B
Dude. Seems like people don't like reality. You know, I would love to be able to say bitcoin's going to go to $190 million, but I think before that happens, you actually need something called buyers. People that actually have fresh cash or credit or go into leverage, and they start buying tens of thousands of Bitcoin at $61,000. Until that happens, we go lower. My boy Jason Williams, who's been in this space like, three times longer than me, he wouldn't even like. He thinks we go to 50 before we see 75. So I couldn't even get the guy to take a bet at 52. 55. I mean, there's so much bearishness in this market. And by bearishness, I mean people are not writing checks, moving money to exchanges, and buying bitcoin. It's simply not.
A
It's true. I mean, it's true. It feels like, you know, I did a post this morning where I basically said, you know, it's literally the exact opposite of how it felt. I mean, people who were buying Bitcoin between 110 and 120, you know, toward the end of the summer, were giddy. You know, it's like, we're going higher. You know, it always feels great. And right now, you know, sticking your toe in the water and dcaing or whatever you're doing feels like shit. I don't know about you, but I far prefer and your performance is far better if you spend. If when it feels great to buy, you dial it back, and when it feels like shit, you dial it up. The problem is, it is one of the single hardest things for human beings to do. It's sort of like why, when you learn to ski as an adult, it's so damn hard. It's because in skiing, if you start to fall, the absolute right thing to do is to push yourself down the mountain in the direction of where you're falling and you can get yourself back. If you sit back even a little bit because of panic or trying to slow yourself down, that's it, you wipe out. And you're, you have what my kids would love lovingly call a yard sale all over the mountain. Trading is very similar. Right. And so understanding that, you know, I can't, I'm not bullish, but I'm not, I understand that you need to, you know, capturing bottoms, bottoming is a process. I mean it's so rare that you get V bottoms and people in crypto are so conditioned because of the COVID V bottom, you know, and a few of the others that we've seen that they just, it's just, they get, they get wrecked, they go in and they go crazy leverage. So yeah, I mean that's basically the way I'm looking at this. I mean when 1010 happened, the best estimates were six to eight months for it to wind get its way through and probably a year before the sentiment improves to where you're in anything really constructive. Although who knows what the hell price is going to do. Well, it's eight months now. You know, we hit a bot pretty close to six months. So we've been bouncing around ever since. You know, this is the second test of the low recently. But you know, yeah, you're right, it feels like crap. And you know, what does that mean in terms of absolute price action? Well, it's a question of, you know, are there more coins to be sold here or are the sellers exhausted too? Because you get these low volume periods, Gary. It's both. Right? I mean,
B
it is, but, but I think the problem is we have now sellers. I mean, let's just think about this realistically. A few people have been doing this a very, very long time. We have to get now through 63, 65, 67, 70, 73, 75, 78, 82, 81, 83, something like that. Then you got to punch through 89, 87, 88, 89 and hold it. And then you got to go 93, 98, 100. There are going to be so many sellers at 100, it's going to pop your eyeballs out. Like that's. We know that now, guys, these people have a cost base of a thousand bucks. Until that gets washed out, we have a problem. I just.
A
Well, that's been the case. But Gary, that's been not just to be, just to be clear, that's been the case though.
B
Yeah, yeah, but, but to lift this
A
balloon, we started seeing these coins.
B
But to lift this balloon now dude is taking it humongous amounts of cash and none of the bitcoin billionaires have any fiat cash or they are not. They're now diversifying.
A
Yeah, of course they are. They've been diversifying Free for better.
B
Well there you go. You have more leakage from bitcoin than you have, you know, air going into the, into the, into the balloon. You need seventy thousand dollar air pumping in this like, like strong and they, that money has so many options today it didn't have three years ago.
A
Well, you know, we, we'll see anyway Carlo and then.
C
Good morning Dave.
A
Good.
C
Well I'm going to take a little bit of the contrarian view. I, I, I spoke about this briefly on the Morning Finance show and I'll continue this underlying theme. I think that my thesis has been that we're seeing a massive rotation of liquidity out of the NASDAQ and out of crypto and Bitcoin in preparation for the SpaceX and the AI IPOs that are coming. If you took a look at what has been launched now with Fable by Anthropic, if you've played with it at all, you can clearly see that the innovation is happening much faster than anyone could have anticipated. And for everyone who thinks that this is a bubble, I take the contrarian view. I think that AI is the single most disruptive thing that is about to happen to humanity since the creation of fire. It is the industrial revolution on steroids. And the urgency to catch up to this is what makes it different than the dot com bubble, which is what everyone seems to compare the current chart trajectory too when they look at AI. And what I'm curious to see is what happens on the other side of these IPOs where the liquidity will then flow back. The thesis is this, as far as I'm concerned, Dave, before I kick it back to you, the entire economy of AI is going to be built over crypto. And to dismiss that is to overlook the single most important fundamental driver for blockchain technology going forward. And the currency of that economy is going to be stablecoins because the agent to agent economy is happening. Mastercard just announced that they are enabling agentic payments through cooperation with several crypto providers. The economy that's coming is bigger than anyone can really wrap their head around because of its exponential pace. I put out a piece today which I'll put in the nest for anyone who wants to read on the stablecoin strategist on Substack where I talk about the fact that Coinbase has Just basically closed the loop in payment infrastructure by leveraging everything that they've been doing, including the 402 Agentic payment platform that they built, to deploy payment solutions for stablecoins across the board. This is exactly where it's all going. And the big intriguing thing about SpaceX and the reason everyone is so hyped about it is. And I don't know if Elon's going to deliver on this or not, but the biggest challenges to AI are the cost to compute and the energy to compute. And brick and mortar data centers, the amount of water it takes and the amount of energy it takes to run them is why SpaceX is so compelling. Because if what he's proposing actually happens, where he deploys data centers in space, where they don't need to be cooled by anything other than the natural environment of space, and they run on solar energy, which is an infinite power supply, then he provides the massive scaling effect that AI needs. If that happens, then SpaceX is an interesting play. But before I kick it back to you, my thought is there's a lot of liquidity being sucked out of things that I think are building the underlying railway for all of this that are being overlooked and neglected right now. That may be potential buying opportunities for people. SpaceX is being a very hype driven IPO and I'm not exactly sure how that's going to play out, but I'm really curious to see what comes on the other side of all this. Dave?
A
Yeah, before I interject. Rudo, you had your hand up before.
D
Hi. Hi, guys. Hello, everybody. I want to add to what Carlos had to say regarding the bubble side of the market and just I can't claim it. I wish I could claim this quote, but Ray Dalio said this really beautifully. A bubble pops when wealth sells wealth for money, because you can't spend wealth, you can only spend money. And I think the tough question that we need to ask ourselves when we look at the whole SpaceX IPO, is it wealth being sold or is it wealth looking for more money? Dave, you're brilliant at hypothesizing both sides of the argument, so I'll leave it to you. But that's the one thing. And then when we look at bitcoin, the other side of bitcoin, or you know, from a trader perspective, now when we were 60 the first time after the massive sell off, now there was massive imbalances created in the price structure that warranted the argument that should 60 hold, we will go back to 80 thereabout before the bears will reload, you know, to add more fuel to the fire. And statistically what we tend to always do in the human condition is we tend to not trust supports holding and we tend to not trust resistance and we always want resistance to break. But in reality it's always the opposite side. You know, supports tend to hold longer than we, than we think and you know, we keep on betting resistance will break. And resistance tends to not break. It only breaks once, you know, it might test it four or five times. So we're sitting back at that same support level at 60. We're sitting with an imbalance now where price moved way too fast. So there's an inefficiency in how the market moved at around 69 to 71. And we're sitting in a situation where rightfully so who's going to want to buy bitcoin right now? If there's no buyers, there's no stops to get taken out. The argument is it becomes really hard to go lower. So from a trader perspective, not fundamentals or long term view, I think the short term for bitcoin is probably upside again. Take those lazy late short traders out of the market before then we maybe go and capitulate because yes, the data is there, there's no capitulation, there's no whale selling and there's also no whale buying for bitcoin at this stage, which means the demand is not really quite there and we don't have all the long term bottom signals yet. That's my little piece,
E
Dave. If I can jump in for some reason Android app has no hand up option anymore.
A
Well that's weird, Ryan. I was actually going to call on you anyway because I saw your clapping emojis. I didn't see that.
E
I'm sitting there clapping like a dumb monke. Like if Elon's development of SpaceX has anything to do with Android development of X, I'm like oh geez, like these data centers are going to be a shit show. But man, there's so much here. We started with what Gary was saying and he's exactly right. Like we have, like we have so far to go to bring the price back, right? But the funny thing is we're following the same exact pattern that we've always followed. There's always some type of narrative that seems to suck the oxygen out of the room supposedly around this time of the cycle. It's almost ironic at this point where this summer we're most likely going to start scraping 50, if not a little under. But it does seem like AI is kind of sucking the oxygen out of the room, right? But let's not forget the narrative. And actually, Carlos said it too, is like, okay, well, AI is going to be using Stablecoin, AI is going to be using blockchain, but AI is not going to be using Bitcoin. It's too slow. There's not enough transaction throughput. Bitcoin's the store of value. AI doesn't care about the store of value. AI cares about the fast transaction layer and the immutability of the blockchain. So all these different MasterCard, Visa, Discover, Chase, all of their pushes towards stablecoins, they're going to be looking to control the narrative and looking to control their own chain and also be issuing their own stablecoin in order to capture that side of the market as well. Bitcoin is going to remain the safe haven, just like Scott said in his podcast. It was a week ago or two weeks ago. It's still the same technology, it's still the same structure that we got excited about and believe in. And we can get very myopic about the granular flow of in and out of the token, but the narrative is still, long term, the same. The shift in the narrative right now is we have a competition over electricity and energy, where AI is sucking so much of electricity and energy that it's really causing the bitcoin miners to have to decide between HPC and bitcoin mining. So a lot of them are making the shift. Even though it's incredibly expensive. They're investing in the architecture and compute in order to back AI because they have the power contracts. What we're going to see over the next couple years is that bitcoin being a flexible load, and I've been saying this for years, bitcoin being a flexible load actually counterbalances the inflexible load of AI. So we're going to scale these massive power creation facilities and AI compute facilities and training facilities and inference centers, and we're going to quickly realize that we need a flexible load to counterbalance the grid. And that's where bitcoin mining absolutely shines. And that's the long term, long tail narrative of Bitcoin. Now, AI data centers in space and
F
all that,
E
I imagine we're going to have to balance it with some type of flexible load in space as well. That's how a electricity grid works. You can't have a constant high load and not pair it with a flexible load.
G
Lou, I want to say that one underappreciated part of Impact of AI on bitcoin. I think we're going to start entering a time where every day more investing is going to be agentic investing, going to be driven by AI. And I think AI will understand bitcoin much better than most retail and institutional investors. And increasingly AI will become a part of. I'm sorry, bitcoin will become a part of every portfolio managed by AI.
A
Yep, I was actually going to make that point, but I'm much happier for it to come from somebody else. I think that's very true. I mean it's a question of when the bitcoin treasury phase started. Some of us made comments, you know, Scott and I both, that putting bitcoin in the treasury of a company depending on of cash that they're not planning on using and they don't see a good application for in terms of M and A makes a lot of sense. And so it shouldn't be a bitcoin treasury company, should be treasury companies, companies that are created purely to hold bitcoin as an access vehicle. Doesn't seem like there's room for very many of those because why, you know where it's differentiation agents are Effectively when you start having agentic portfolio managers, particularly in operating businesses which have cash flows and need to put it someplace, I think you're going to find that it will that they will invest differently than a lot of humans. And I think that you're right, that is an underappreciated thing. But that's also not going to happen tomorrow. Right. To go back to it anyway. Matt, your hands.
H
Yeah, great. Thanks to be here. Ryan made some really good points there about the flexible load. But one thing I'd push back though, Ryan, was the study coming out on March 3rd of this year from the Bitcoin Policy Institute where they surveyed 36 AI models, including Anthropic, Deep Sea, Google and I believe OpenAI and Xan across over 9,000 monetary scenarios. And Bitcoin was predominantly the number one choice then followed by stablecoins. But I do agree with you on the mining side, but just if I can maybe give a little hopium here in the room because I'm in a lot of these rooms. Gary, I totally agree with a lot that you're saying. Obviously Jason Williams knows his shit, but if we could have a bullish scenario, what would that look like? Maybe we hold 60k through the summer and August, September inflation cools and maybe we see some rhetoric cooling from the Fed which yields could ease in. Right. I'm thinking in October, November, you get ETF inflows coming back, that could really help change the narrative. And maybe by December the momentum in the short term covering and media attention kind of changes things back. But I still think it's a long road to hoe. We're going to have to see some money come back into these markets in the ETFs.
A
I mean. Yeah, but that's what real bottoms look like. And you know, it is arguable on the four year cycle and the narrative and all this stuff that we would already be at 40,000 if it wasn't for STRC, which is. Which I don't mean it in terms of a narrative. I mean literally dollars, billions of dollars invested in bitcoin which muted the price impact. And so if you look at the four year cycle and compare Ethereum, it's a lot closer to what you would have expected. Or if you look at Solana, you know, it's a lot closer. But bitcoin has held up relatively well. And the reason is because there's been fixed income money that's gone into bitcoin. And I'm curious, you know, just that's in price space, in time space. Yeah, you know, that's why, you know, Gary, you and I had the conversation about time based capitulation. I mean the other thing that's really important about data centers is everything that was said was true. There are clearly a lot of bitcoin miners have moved to AI. And Bitcoin, you know, hash rate is not as strong as it was. It's still way higher, you know, based than from a price perspective even with today's post. AI, you know, lots of moves, moves Bitcoin hash rate and compute looks to be price looks to be at a severe discount to that even after that. And so the real question is what happens if there is another move higher, another cycle higher in an environment where it's harder, it's harder to bring hash rate online. Right. Which is very interesting. I'd be curious. I was trying to get Jason up here because I could see him listening and using a emojis, but I don't, I guess either the invite's not working. I tried inviting Jason, so not really sure why, but I'm curious, you know, what you think, Gary, what do you think? I see your hand up now.
B
I forgot what I was gonna say. Well look, you know, there's so much going on that it's hard to. It's just a lot going on. I think what I wanted to respond to was your comment about. Seems like all the miners are moving to AI. My observation is the miners that are moving to AI cannot compete in Bitcoin. They're producing Bitcoin at prices 20 to 40% higher than what the market will absorb. And then you have this disconnect with the small decentralized miners that aren't buying on the grid and they're producing Bitcoin for $37,000 all in including GNA. The delta there between, I call it 80 grand and 37, that's a monster delta. So I see the big boys, the marathons of the world, have no choice. They're having to shift because their business is broken. You can't, you know, you just can't buy a produced $90,000 Karn and sell it for 40, dude. I mean that's a, that's not a good business model. This is going to be really great for decentralization like that secured that concept of oh, you have to be at source on energy really to me says that bitcoin miners will never be macro big, big, big players. They won't be able to scale. You need to be at source on the energy. I see Jason putting his black hand up. Maybe he's got some counter or something to add to that. But it seems like a, you know, a world of two worlds, right, and like winners and losers. So I don't know, I don't know if that makes sense.
A
Oh, it, it does to me. I mean, look, the other thing that's going on in bitcoin mining is obviously there's sovereign mining going on and, and people and there's a whole lot of game theory. But Jason, I'm very curious, you know, you know, what you think about that.
I
I, I appreciate the opportunity to speak, David. You know, I, I said this before that I was watching miners pivot to AI and hpc. It looks like they can get way higher margin on those AI workloads. It looks like it's about 3 to 4x the revenue per megawatt compared to bitcoin mining in some cases. So I also think there's probably very favorable economic support to public and private miners to go with a very traditional compute set versus buying asics. And, and I, I hope that made sense. Like I'm, I'm kind of thinking while I'm talking. So you, you go to the street, you try to borrow money, you're trying to do deals and I think they understand purchase power agreements, they understand traditional data centers and they're willing to fund
B
and finance that and off take agreements.
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the key.
B
Offtake agreements for 10 years. Right. Instead of selling into the spot market.
I
Yep, yep. So I think that that pivot is a natural one. They got rack space, they've got PPAs and they say, wait a minute, we can make 3 to 4x per megawatt to go with this standard data center pack where there's like again, a buyer of, of last resort. That was so cool about bitcoin. You didn't have a sales process. You got the, you operationalized your mine and turned it on and you were selling. It was beautiful. But then you had to be efficient and all the rest. Right now you've got an unbelievable buyer, unlimited buyer in AI. And I think the pivot makes sense. Dave, I need to spend time looking at how bitcoin's hash rate has fluctuated. I am shocked that, that it's flat or up. That that doesn't make sense to me. So that the compute is going someplace and the, and the air mining is going someplace. Is it Iran? Is it moved back to third world countries? Is it North Korea? Is it China? Is the United States doing clandestine operations that I don't know about that they're, they're just coming in and filling the gap. I don't know.
A
How about all of the above?
I
Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Dave. Like again, I'm just thinking out loud and most of the time I sound pretty retarded when I do that.
A
Well, no, I think actually you're thinking out loud really is useful. I mean if you believe and look, there are lots of people who are very polarizing figures in this space like the other Jason. Jason Lowery. Whether you think software is ridiculous or not, what is very clear is there are sovereign nations who think that there is at least a rational chance that Bitcoin will become a very important financial instrument backing one's currency at some point in the future. And so it is a low cost relative to sovereign option to create profitable, but even maybe not the most profitable bitcoin mining setups to be able to be there. And that's why you're seeing that. And it makes perfect sense. Right? You know, Bhutan was one of the most obvious ones and then they sold a bunch of bitcoin, that's fine. But I'm sure their mining operations are still there. Anyone who has low cost power and shitty grids and shitty ability to get that power, like Gary said it best source of power, like, you know, we don't know what happens in China, but during the rainy season for them not to use their excess power from hydro would be crazy. And they're a lot of things. They're not crazy.
I
And I left off Russia, by the way, who stole my mine when the war in Ukraine broke out. So I had a mine connected to a 6,000 megawatt hydro plant in Krasnoyarsk, Russia that just was literally stolen by Putin, embargoed by the United States and they just took it.
A
That sucks. Anyway, Lou, you got your hand.
I
I just looked. So bitcoin hash rate peaked Monday, October 13, 2025 and is down since then.
A
So it's down, of course. Well, of course it should be. The question is, is nowhere near down. Is down as much as price.
I
I know, but it's down. It's down.
A
Yep. And it should be. It would be illogical for.
I
Because that's the programmatic monetary policy of bitcoin, right?
A
Yeah, exactly. I mean, you expect, you expect that that almost has to be the case. I mean, Lou, you've been very patient.
G
I was actually going to go back to something Gary said a while ago about that. He doesn't think that we're in a bubble. I actually think that we are in a bubble. If you take a look at the NASDAQ multiple are at all time highs for NASDAQ multiples. And I don't know, has anybody on the call done the work on SpaceX? The only model that I've read so far is Ark, which is famously, you know, the most bullish, you know, models in the world. And even Ark with their models has a tuna two and a half billion dollar price target for 2030. So, you know, very low returns if they hit their mark, which, you know, nobody's ever hit the model for ark, but certainly companies have exceeded their price targets. But I don't know, has anybody done the work on SpaceX?
A
I mean, all I can say is I've not done the work. I mean, 100 price to sales is at IPO time is a recipe for it to follow the traditional pattern, which is the IPO hype. It has a good first day, a few weeks later it breaks the IPO price. A couple months later it's a little bit below the IPO price. And then price discovery sets in over the the next year and who the hell knows which direction it goes? I mean the narrative for SpaceX is one of the most amazing narratives ever and it's the one that Carla was talking about. I mean, I keep harping on, you know, vertical integration and with, you know, in the entire stack and it is an incredible narrative. There's no question about it. And so you could look at that and say, great, so we're going to have XAI X.
G
This space was downloaded via spacesdown.com visit
A
to download your spaces today. Tesla and SpaceX all as one company that is delivering robotics in a vertically integrated manner. You know, chips, machines, compute, AI power, all of it. And if they do that, will they be one of the great companies, if not the greatest company on the planet? And that's where the excitement's coming from. And that narrative, you know, look, anyone who shorts those narratives, boy, you got to have iron balls. I mean, you know, all I got to tell you is I've seen so many times when prices can be irrational in the face of these narratives for very long periods of time. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. But Lou, the point about the work is it's really about people's perception of that narrative.
G
I mean, no, I'm not saying I agree with you. Stuff can be overvalued for extended period, period of time, but I think that's the definition of a bubble.
A
Well, I mean, you want to, you want to talk about extended periods of time, talk about Micron. I mean, I know people who have talked about Micron being overvalued since the 90s. It's only 20x since then. You know, it's like, and it was all the basis of, you know, there's so many different. It's a funny story if you really think about it. But you know, these things can be, can go a long time. The one pushback I'll say about Internet bubble and valuation is unless you really believe somehow that Besant and Warsh are not going to work together for the next two years, then if you believe that and you believe that the Fed is going to use traditional financial models and hike rates or keep liquidity low and that somehow we're going to get our budget deficit under control. I mean, if you believe that, then great. I think it's a fairytale. The reality is we are going to see. I mean, this isn't Larry Lepard the big print. This is the constant print. This is 2 trillion plus deficits as far as the eye can see. And in that world, using current dollars to value things is hard. Now, different companies have different, different impacts to that and different assets are impacted differently. But we are in a, we are in a crazy deficit spending, monetary devaluation cycle and it's everywhere outside of Switzerland.
H
Matt, on the SpaceX thing, one thing that just makes Me feel like it's a little toppy is the tokenized stocks that Kraken and Bybit are offering, these X stocks which just give you access really to the price. And to me that just seems like a little, I don't know, I mean did anybody, anybody else look into that part of it?
A
Well, I mean getting that is a time honored tradition sadly. I mean I had this conversation with a couple of my friends from Securitize and we were talking about the difference between tokenized stocks where the stocks still sit at DTCC or wherever the hell they are, and an actual real tokenization where you can get the benefits of tokenized stocks. And I think that's a really important conversation by the way. And what Securitize wants to do is actually break the model. Not break the model, enhance the model to be more efficient so that you can on chain collateralize and do all sorts of stuff with the actual real stocks. But the first thing that's happening now is just using tokenization to be a more efficient version of what in the rest of the world they call GDRs, global depository receipts or in the United states they call ADRs, in other words basic shadow representations that are price only. And you know that trend has to happen. But it is it bad or good? I don't know. I don't know that it means anything other than the fact that more people want access then can get it the way the current systems work. I don't know if that makes sense to you.
H
Oh yeah, that totally makes sense. But I think for retail traders the danger is thinking that they own the same thing as a direct shareholder when they really don't, they don't get voting rights, they don't get any of that. All they do is get, you know, basically exposure to the price to price action.
A
Yeah, that's true. But you know, sadly. Well, I don't know about sadly. You know in Silicon Valley a lot of stocks, I mean you get voting rights if you own the shares, but it doesn't fucking matter because the super voting rights are in the shares that are owned by the Zuckerbergs or the Elon's or whatever. And that tradition is very, very strong. And so I'm not sure that matters so much. I mean it should, one would think economically it would. But you know, it basically means you get you in all of the stocks that are like that, you have no chance for, you know, proxy fight kind of corp, you know, good old fashioned bidding wars for equity. Yeah, you're right. With the access Stuff you don't get it. But I don't think that really matters as much. What is going to be interesting though, I'll tell you what matters is as those platforms have when issued shares trading as an indication for the ipo. How does that impact the ipo? Pop, I'll be fascinated by that. I have absolutely no idea. I'm not gonna, I'm not going to make a. I'm not going to make a guess. But the other big thing is what happens when the insiders who get cash in the ipo, what do they do with that cash now? Don't expect them to deploy it like on day one. I mean, that's insane. But I do think that that matters. And you know, I guess we'll see. I can't tell if there are any other hands up. It doesn't look like it. I'm, I'm on my phone, so I don't know if that works better or worse. Oh, I see Scott trying to get up. Let's see if I can get him up here. Scott, are you here?
F
Yeah, I just arrived, but missing the conversation so far.
A
Yeah, that's all right. Yeah, yeah, we were just, you know, the, the, the general mor.
C
Looks like you've gotten robotic.
F
I was just gonna say I didn't know if it was me, so I didn't want to step in, but I can't hear.
E
AI took over. Dave. Dang.
A
Oh, that's weird. It hasn't changed on my end. You guys all sound good. I still sound robotic.
E
No, you're good now. You sound great.
A
Yeah, I'm at a Tesla Charger, so, I mean, I think it says I have a lot of bars.
F
I heard you talking about SpaceX and then. Hey, Dave.
I
Hey, Dave, if you want to charge faster, throw another guy on the car.
E
Oh, that's funny. You know, it's the, the Grock microphone listening at the charger is interacting with the Grok microphone listening on X.
F
But Dave, what was the point you were making there when you went robotic? Oh, my God, he's robotic again.
B
Scott, the question is, and you're pretty close to this. This is Gary. Where do the buyers come from? I'm getting so much heat, people are saying I'm selling all my bitcoin, that I've lost my metal, that I'm a, I'm a Wall street suit. Where do the buyers come from? Because I know there's plenty of sellers. There's sellers from here. Are there 61 all the way up to 100k? Oh, yeah, Gary, we're getting ready to find out, dude. We're gonna find out, Lou, in the next four months where the sellers and buyers are. And if there are more sellers by one penny than there are buyers, the market goes down. So marginal commodity.
G
Argue with that, huh? Hard to argue with that. Hard to argue with that. I was just asking you of the people you know who are selling, were they people who deeply understood bitcoin and, and said, you know, things have changed. Bitcoin is not what I thought it was. Or these people who got in for financial reasons thought they could make a buck and now are going, you know what? I don't think I can make a buck. And now they're leaving. They don't really understand bitcoin. Don't really understand anything other than they thought it was a good trade because very. I mean, I know have met thousands of people who have seen the bitcoin light. And I can count the number of those people who have said, you know what? This isn't for me anymore. I can count them on one hand.
B
Well, I think, you know, look, I, I listened to Scaramucci interview Mike Novogratz and I would encourage everybody to go listen to that. Just listen carefully to the words and notice the body language. Scaramucci literally said, look, I don't have any more energy for bitcoin. And he looked at Novogratz and said, and you don't either. These guys have been around this space. I mean, Novogratz has been around a long time. Do you get burned out being in an industry forever and, and having $8 billion sitting in assets you can't exit? People get tired. And people that are entrepreneurs and have built companies, whether they've been successful or not, they know what I'm talking about. This is a part of the journey that no one like you're telling me Vitalik isn't exhausted, much less weigh in over his head. So I think, I think the industry needs.
G
Jensen is exhausted.
B
No.
G
Is Jensen exhausted?
B
No, dude, but he hasn't been in. He's been Namidia for 26 years, man. Lou.
G
Yes, he has.
B
27 years. Nvidia took to do this. We are 17 years old and we don't have any capital. Come on, man, let's just be realistic about.
G
We've got more than a trillion dollars of capital. We've got valuable things in the world.
B
You don't have new capital.
G
There is new capital where every.
B
Where's it coming from?
A
Day.
G
Every single day.
A
Yes,
G
there are going to be more people buying, but Lou, today there are let's.
B
Lou, let's just look at today. Is there more buying or selling today?
G
Look, I. I have a word this morning. Markets.
B
Sir. Sir, when the price goes down, there are more sellers than buyers. And when the price goes up, there are more buyers.
G
No, no, that's.
A
That's not true.
G
There could be one seller. There could be one seller, and there could be a million buyers if the one seller is big.
B
I said more sellers by volume. It's not about how many people are selling.
G
So there could be one seller. Marginal, there could be one seller. And now you're saying, you know what? Bitcoin's dead because one guy is selling. That's what you're saying. One guy and you're gone. One guy decides to sell and you're gone.
B
Sir, I'll just repeat the same thing. When there are more buyers than sellers, the price goes up. And by sellers, I don't mean quantity of sellers. I mean quantity of the thing they're selling.
G
That's correct. And. And, and about 51% of the time they're on. On days, there are more sellers than buyers. 51% of the 51% of the time, there are more buyers themselves. So 49% of the time, there's more sellers than buyers. That's how markets work.
B
I've never heard that particular rule, but maybe it's a new rule.
G
It's not a new rule.
A
Go take a look.
G
Go take a look on how the percentage of days the markets go up versus the percentage of days the market goes down.
A
I think that. I don't know. I've heard all these various theories. What I can say is we're seeing very muted price action. Very muted. Right. We agree on that. Right, Gary? I mean, you're saying down.
B
Well, the, the response. The response from the industry would appear that it's not muted. Actually, that's. That I find very interesting, because I agree with you today. It's muted, but it's not bullish, man. Like, we need a flow of new capital. Guys, I don't even know what the argument's about. You need a flow of new, fresh capital.
A
Let me, Let me phrase it this way. It does. It's. It's nowhere near as binary as you're saying. It doesn't happen immediately. If it's like the same thing, if
B
you remember, it doesn't happen immediately. That's exactly right. Especially, Dave, when you have a bunch of shiny objects, like there's a lot of shiny objects to get people's attention. It has nothing to do with crypto. And those shiny objects have the best credit ratings I've ever seen in my life. Some of them
A
100%. You're 100% right. And yet the price is exactly where the price is. And my point is, well, I'll make two or three. First, everyone who was saying that SAS companies in the early part of this year were dead and literally would have zero probability of going higher. And that's why they were getting absolutely crushed. And at the time, you might remember, because I came on and I said, well, anyone who's ever owned a company and use SAS products understands how sticky they are. And people are way underestimating that.
B
Oh, they way underestimate estimate how difficult it is to get people to migrate off a solution they're already on. Inertia is a real thing.
A
And I made that point, and I took enormous amounts of shit for it. People like, are you crazy? They're dead. You're a Luddite. You don't know anything. And I'm like, okay, well, sure. And now, you know, you look back a few bumps, and it's like, maybe Weisberger wasn't so fucking stupid, you know? I'm gonna tell you the same thing when it comes, like, Mike Novogratz is amazing. He's built an amazing company's done amazing things. His record, when he gets on, when he gets emotional, either too high or too low, he's been wrong with almost frightening accuracy. I mean, you know, it's like he's been right directionally, but not timing wise. And which is great because he builds a company based on the directional long term. And so I have enormous respect for what he's built. But when he gets on, when he acts, like, emotional, either. This is amazing, and this is going great. That's generally closer to a top than a bottom. And at this point, I think that he's a really good bottom signal. I hate to say it, but I'd say that that interview that you posted, and you're right, it's worth listening to, that's the kind of thing you see as bottoms are being built. And as Scott, you and I always say, every time bottoms are a process, they don't happen immediately. So could you and Jason be right that we continue to languish through the summer? Of course you could. I'm not saying no. I just don't think the downside is as far as you think, because I do think there is new money coming in.
B
But I've never even. I've never even suggested a downside that so I don't. What do you think? My, what do you think? I think it's going to.
A
I think you're hoping to buy in the 50s and I think you may very well get there and you would love to be able to buy in the 40s. And I just, I don't know. I mean, my, my gut tells me that we're much closer to the bottom than anything else and that there are asset allocators out there. Not big names, but people like inside of Fidelity and BlackRock who are, have 1 or 2%. It's like, maybe now it's a good time to average down. There are a lot of people who average down in the sense of dca, not in the sense of, oh, it's cheaper, I want to keep buying. But there are a lot of people who put their money in 1% allocations. And going from 1% to 3% may not sound like much, but it's a hell of a lot easier to do it when the price is lower. I think that you'll see some allocations and rotations. It's this whole theory of buying the laggards in a market that's generally buoyant because of liquidity is what I think you're going to see. But that, that's my thought. I mean, which isn't that different than yours? I mean, I'm not calling for a rocket ship. I don't see, oh man, I don't
B
hear anybody calling for it. See that, that. And, and they can't substantiate it. Like, and if you can't do that, I just don't think we're the cool kid on the block, man. And oh no, we're not. And the old people with all the, the old money, dude, they think bitcoin's very complicated the way it's been pitched to them compared to buying IBM.
A
Yeah, well, that's probably true anyway. Jason. Yeah.
I
They have two points. One, I think some of the long, long term bitcoin holders rebalanced their portfolios. They met, you know, they, they grew absolutely right. They rebalanced. They got smoked with dats. That really killed them, a lot of them. You know, even Adam back, you know, a lot of my buddies smoked, so they got smoked. And then two, my second point. Why am I forgetting my second point? I think it's gonna happen quick, Dave. So when I, when I say, like, I think we touch 50 before 75, I think this happens very quickly. I think we kind of degrade, degrade wick down and then boom, we start to make a long move back up. And that, that has to do with this rebalancing the IPOs. All this stuff has to play through. But I think it happens fast.
B
Jason, can we just talk about that for a second? I don't know how long, Dave, you want the show to go on, but to me this is the most important part. Are we going to have a long kind of creepy crawl and just grind down, which is time capitulation. People are going to get like, especially the bitcoin community, they hate that, right? That kind of time grindy impatience. If we grind down, I would much rather see Jason's viewpoint, like it hits 48 just on some kind of puke fest, whatever, or 42 man. And you got like three contracts trade there and then it shoots up to 58, 60 overnight. And then you have something I could. Then you have compression. Right now all we have is mushiness.
I
But Gary, the thesis and the reason I think it moves fast is because the velocity of money, the way money moves now I don't have to call my wealth advisor and he's, you know, he's on vacation. None of that stuff's happening anymore. It's, it truly is a 247 dynamic market and that velocity of money will move very quickly. Boom. The IPO thing happens.
E
Boop.
I
Rebalancing, boop. Then plays back on. Because it's a very, very liquid, highly liquid market and of the velocity is there. That's why I think it happens fast.
B
I hope you're right. I think that's the least amount of pain the industry will suffer.
G
Gary.
I
Yeah, Gary. It'll happen faster than that. Charging Tesla station happens for Dave today.
A
I'm done. I doubt that. I doubt that. I actually, I actually moved to the, to the Trader Joe's parking lot where I'm going to go in and do some when it's done, not that anybody really cares because it's, it's, it's, it is what it is. I mean, the one thing that's really interesting, you talk about money moving fast. I mean we were talking about, you know, we had the smelting town hall days when silver rocketed up to 120 and it's now half that. And you know, that hot ball of money tends to find its way around and move around and it's, it's very amusing. I made the point that I think that silver and bitcoin have an interesting correlation. Their volatilities are very similar. Recently silver has been more, of course, but you know, they both fall in the same amount. You know, the hot ball of money matters. And it does. It sets what's going in. And it doesn't matter whether it's a commodity like silver that's being used in EVs and missiles and all sorts of shit, or if it's Bitcoin, it's just monetary premium. So you do have to look through that. And right now, the consensus is that liquidity is right, is leaving the system, not going into the system. I think that consensus will be proved wrong. And so that's a very. That, to me, is the important question. Yes, Jason,
I
one point and I'll shut up. I'm very bullish on the market, though. That's another thing. I think that the whole. Whole war machine needs to be refreshed, recapitalized and restocked. I think we shot a lot of missiles, and there are a lot of buyers for all of those defense systems. They need to be refreshed. They're still being worn out. And, you know, there's just so much money that needs to flow, man, It's. It blows my mind. So that. That's why I'm super bullish on the market. I think Gary's dead right. A lot of things are sexy. Velocity of money is moving all over. And I think the next six months, like, I can. It's hard for me to see two years out, but the next six months, I think, look very, very good for investors that have assets that appreciate, like, hard assets.
A
Okay, Gaurav, I think you were trying to talk, right? No, I was simply asking who.
B
Who is judging?
A
What are the. What are the metrics? Where is the analysis around liquidity coming in or going out?
D
Like, who's doing that?
A
Are there any reports how to do that?
F
A lot of it can be seen in the ETFs. I think, to give a judge, I
A
was talking much more macro. I was talking more macro. I mean, budget deficits are not going down. Fiscal dominance is not decreasing anywhere. If anything, they're increasing, and they haven't been increasing accounted for.
B
What. What do you mean by fiscal dominance?
A
I mean, us spending more than 2 plus $2.2 trillion more than it takes in, in revenue. That.
B
Yeah, but that's always been the case, right?
A
Yeah, no, well, always the last couple of years. Yeah. And that's why the markets have done what they've done. I mean, you know, it's supply and demand. More dollars means the value of them are less, and therefore, things priced in dollars look at higher price.
B
I do agree with that formula. See, this is the formula that I don't think changes just because it's called bitcoin.
A
And you're right, it doesn't. The difference is, is that companies are impacted by the same policy. So some companies who have no assets and who's earning and have no pricing power because of competition, well, they can't go up as much. But others will. Right? I mean, anyone who hasn't heard Scott's, you know, nine minute, you know, Daily Wolf on that topic on bitcoin a couple weeks ago, that that's literally the bitcoin story. But it's not just bitcoin. It could be said about many other things. Right.
F
Yeah, I wanted to ask what. I mean, yeah, Dave, thanks. I wanted to just mention, you know, Gaurav kind of asked the question about flows. It's, it's obviously, I think imperfect when it comes to bitcoin. But I just happened to have done a real deep dive on this, getting ready for my show at, at noon because there was an article on Coindesk that basically said that ETFs had round trip back to the Trump election night. I don't know if you saw that, but. And the idea was that, you know, they were back to 77.5 billion, which is the same that they were when Trump was elected after peaking at 170 billion.
E
And I read the article and I
F
shook my head and I said, well, that's dollar amount. The market's down half. Right.
E
If we're talking about, you know, the
F
dollar value of the bitcoin and the ETFs, of course it's down massively. But when you actually do a deep dive into it, you know, it's only, I think in bitcoin terms it's only 7.2% off the all time high. And even this 13 day outflow streak of 4.4 billion I think was a 7% trim entirely. But then I did some more digging. It actually shows who sold and who didn't. And 40% of all of that selling from the tops was hedge funds. Jane street was a huge chunk when they divulged their 10,800 sale. Brokerages were like 53%, 18,000 Bitcoin or something. And actually advisors were basically flat and banks had added. So it's like the hot ball of money the hedge fund carry traders have exited. I think it's very transparent and most people who bought it as an investment have just held onto it. And it's the same amount of bitcoin as near the peak, you know, it's off 7%, like 1.37 million Bitcoin down to 1.27 million Bitcoin.
H
Hey Scott, I gotta jump in and ask you something really quick. The one thing that you mentioned there in that list that really struck stuck out to me was banks. Do you think that they're pre positioning maybe because they know clarity is coming?
F
I don't think so. I think, I think, I don't know. But it's not, I mean, you know, they're kind of rounding errors. I mean I think JP Morgan, I
B
think their money is slower, Scott. And the hedge fund is very fast money.
F
That's right. So it's. Yeah, exactly. I agree with that. I don't think anyone believes clarity is coming. Does anybody here believe clarity is coming?
C
Well, you and I, Scott talked about this offline and if this ethics provision that they are proposing which would allow states to bring lawsuits against the DOJ if they don't enforce these ethics provisions, which is probably unconstitutional, probably puts us way behind the curve on getting this thing done.
F
We have three weeks.
G
Three weeks.
A
With three weeks. July 4th.
F
We have three weeks. So you saw the story last year. JP Morgan, Citibank, Wells Fargo, et al creating their own stablecoin tokenization. Stablecoin platform. Right. So basically the four biggest banks in the United States got together and said regardless of the Clarity act, we're going to create our own Rails and cut everybody out and do it ourselves. Right. I don't know if you saw today the three largest banks in Japan did exactly the same thing.
A
But remember, they don't care about, they
F
don't care about, they don't care about the Clarity Act. They, they, they're fearful of the crypto industry eating their lunch and they're just going to create their own product that they can use at least amongst themselves to circumvent having to use stable.
C
That's the point. That's the point. They're creating depository token network which is in an intra bank network. So basically the choice for the consumer, which. This isn't really even a consumer product, Scott. The choice is either you're going to make your wallet your bank with actual stablecoins or you're going to make your bank your wallet with depository tokens. And that's the game, the shell game they're trying to sell right now to consumers.
F
Yeah, it was just like, I think that those are massive signals that Clarity act or not. No, just to answer the question, do you think that it's to get ahead of the Clarity Act I think that they're all. Everybody is moving forward as if there will be no Clarity Act.
C
Well, that's exactly what I think, Jamie.
F
And by the way, that's worse for the banks because the Genius act is terrible for the banks and what they're looking for in clarity. Even the compromise would help the banks more than the crypto industry because right now, last I checked, Coinbase is offering yield on uscc.
C
Exactly. And that's what Jamie Dimon was getting at on that Maria Bartiromo thing where he said they're going to continue to fight. This is his, this is his last stand on stable coins. I think he's going to lose in the end on this because you're right, the Genius act already puts the banks in a tough spot. So if the Clarity act dies, it's probably a win for stablecoins.
A
I think that's a pretty good place to wrap up. I mean, look, personally, I think the banks are going to figure out that they need to push for some version, version of clarity to get some level of compromise. You know, look, this needs to be bipartisan and it seems pretty likely nothing's going to happen this year. Midterms will happen and whichever way, you know, look, we know the House is going to be spending their time on, on impeaching Trump and the Senate won't be convicting, but, you know, it's not at all clear. I'll tell you what would make a Clarity act absolutely happen. One more foreign fuck up where US Investors are hurt. That arguably, had there been a regulatory regime, that wouldn't be the case. But we'll see. These people have their heads so far up their asses, it's really hard to understand why. I mean, an ethics provision for all trading, prediction markets being probably the most important. You know, crypto being second and stocks certainly being important. You would think a more broad one would matter. But they don't really give a crap about any of that. They just want to use it as political fodder. Right? So that's, that's where we're at. Anybody disagree? Anybody more hopeful than me?
F
You're in the wrong place for hope, buddy.
B
And that's what Bitcoin should go up, right? Because we have no hope. There's not going to be any clarity. It's a show. We were supposed to get in the strategic Bitcoin reserve. Trump was going to put us into the, like the Hopium that's occurred this year. Like, it's just out, out of control, man. Like, I just don't know how you guys are getting all bullish here. We have a lot of wood to chop.
A
Which one of us guys is all bullish? We're like, you know, we just don't think it's going to go down.
B
Lose bullish, I just lose bullet.
A
Long time frame though.
B
Well, I am too.
E
Don't, don't.
B
What I've learned from bitcoiners is that the key to this game, buy this shit as cheap as possible and keep buying it. But you got to get your price point correct. Just like real estate, you got to get your entry point right on bitcoin. That's just the facts.
A
Of course it is, Gary.
E
Don't, don't, don't we all wish we were more bullish the summer of 2022? Like, like when we were scraping.
B
No, I wish I'd had more dry powder. And that's exactly what we're. It's not really about being bullish. If you don't have dry powder, it doesn't matter how awesome it is. There's no dry powder for this, this industry right now, or very little.
A
You, you mentioned, you mentioned summer of 22. This feels a lot like the summer. Totally. What happens in the summer of 22 in the fall of 22, if FTX hadn't been a big fucking, you know, stolen fraud and CZ didn't pop it by crushing his artificial bullshit collateral with the that was FTT token. What happens without FTX blowing up? My guess is 30 was holds and it moves higher.
E
Yeah, this is wild Dave, because we do this to ourselves, right? Like there's always something. And that was the point I was saying like earlier is like somehow there's a, there's a collective subconscious here that we will find a way to shoot ourselves in the foot and keep the cycle perpetually going. Like regardless of logic. Like, we will find an ftx, we will find a Luna, we will find Mount Gox and we will create the cycle because we're all expecting the cycle.
A
Well, you may be right, my friend. You may be right. Any case, we will see you all again on Friday morning and we'll see as we get inching closer. I don't think the Space, the SpaceX IPO is Friday, but I don't know that we'll actually know anything during this show. I think you start seeing what will really happen later in the day, but I guess it will be interesting. So take care everyone. Bye.
Podcast: The Wolf Of All Streets
Host: Scott Melker
Episode: Bitcoin Down, Confidence Gone… Perfect Setup? #CryptoTownHall
Date: June 10, 2026
In this episode, Scott Melker and a panel of prominent voices from the Bitcoin, trading, and finance communities gather for a live Crypto Town Hall. The discussion is prompted by the ongoing price slump in Bitcoin and general market malaise. The roundtable explores the sources of the current despondency, the shifting liquidity environment, the accelerating AI boom, its effects on crypto markets, and scenarios for both near-term pain and long-term opportunity in Bitcoin.
“There’s so much bearishness in this market. And by bearishness, I mean people are not writing checks, moving money to exchanges, and buying bitcoin.” – Gary [00:53]
"AI is the single most disruptive thing that is about to happen to humanity since the creation of fire. It is the industrial revolution on steroids." – Carlos [06:25]
“If there’s no buyers, there’s no stops... it becomes really hard to go lower.” – Rudo [11:41]
“Bitcoin’s the store of value. AI doesn’t care about the store of value. AI cares about fast transaction layer and the immutability of the blockchain.” – Ryan [13:13]
"Bitcoin being a flexible load actually counterbalances the inflexible load of AI... that's where bitcoin mining absolutely shines." – Ryan [14:04]
"The miners that are moving to AI cannot compete in Bitcoin. They're producing Bitcoin at prices 20–40% higher than what the market will absorb." – Gary [20:54]
"The danger is thinking that they own the same thing as a direct shareholder, when they really don't." – Matt [33:06]
“It happens fast. Rebalancing, boop! Then plays back on. Because it's a very, very liquid, highly liquid market.” – Jason [47:14]
"The choice is either you're going to make your wallet your bank with actual stablecoins or you're going to make your bank your wallet with depository tokens." – Carlos [54:49]
“Everybody is moving forward as if there will be no Clarity Act.” – Scott [55:16]
On Human Psychology in Trading:
“When it feels great to buy, you dial it back, and when it feels like shit, you dial it up. The problem is, it is one of the single hardest things for human beings to do.” – David [01:36]
On New Narratives:
"AI is the single most disruptive thing since the creation of fire... the industrial revolution on steroids." – Carlos [06:25]
On Bitcoin Mining’s Shifting Landscape:
“You just can't buy a produced $90,000 Karn and sell it for 40, dude. I mean, that’s not a good business model. This is going to be really great for decentralization.” – Gary [20:54]
On Long-Term Crypto Cycles:
“It’s nowhere near as binary as you’re saying. It doesn’t happen immediately.” – David [41:06]
“We do this to ourselves, right? Like, there’s always something... we will find a way to shoot ourselves in the foot and keep the cycle perpetually going.” – Ryan [59:19]
On Value and the Next Leg:
“If you don’t have dry powder, it doesn’t matter how awesome it is. There’s no dry powder for this industry right now, or very little.” – Gary [58:39]
This Crypto Town Hall maps out the exhaustion, uncertainty, and shifting power dynamics currently pervading the Bitcoin and wider crypto ecosystem. While near-term sentiment is gloomy, some panelists see constructive undercurrents, the seeds of future opportunity, and a complex interplay between macro liquidity, regulatory stasis, and the runaway momentum of AI. The prevailing consensus: expect further volatility, opacity in regulatory outcomes, and a slow, painful process of finding the next true market bottom—alongside the perennial hope that on the other side lies renewed growth.
Key Theme:
Crypto is in a waiting game, drained by new narratives and new industries, but uniquely equipped for the next chapter thanks to its flexibility, global reach, and role as a hedge in an ever-shifting macro landscape.