Bitcoin Hits $74K - Is The Bottom In? #CryptoTownHall

Summary

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The Wolf Of All Streets — Crypto Town Hall

Episode: Bitcoin Hits $74K – Is The Bottom In? #CryptoTownHall
Host: Scott Melker
Date: February 2, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on Bitcoin’s sudden drop to $74,000 after wild volatility in broader markets, especially precious metals like silver. Host Scott Melker leads a panel of industry figures (Dave, Adam, Rich, Panos, Gary, and others) in discussing market structure, unprecedented price swings, the ripple effects of liquidations, and the current malaise gripping crypto. Along the way, the panel dives into the reasons behind market panic, the impact of hacks and misinformation, institutional attitudes, regulatory failures, and possible scenarios for Bitcoin’s next move.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Bitcoin’s Drop, Market Structure, & Volatility Comparisons (00:00–06:11)

• Scott Melker opens with Bitcoin’s price hitting $74,000 – still a “higher low” in its ongoing trend but an alarming move:

  “Bitcoin, which apparently is too volatile ... has gone down 41% since the $126,000 high in October. So silver did in six days what Bitcoin took four months to do.” (01:10)

• He contrasts Bitcoin’s “volatility” with silver’s 41% drop over just six days, teasing out double standards in perceptions.

2. Dave’s Account Hacked – Social Media Woes (02:10–05:40)

• Dave recounts his account hack via a phishing email disguised as X legal:

  “I got one from an … anx.com email address whining about copyright infringement... So I responded to it, and within seconds the account was gone.” (02:10)

• The group discusses impersonator issues affecting multiple community members and the lack of real customer support at X/Twitter.

3. Silver’s Wild Ride — Systemic Risks & Collateral Damage (06:11–09:04)

• Dave explains silver’s rapid pump-and-dump — unusual for a $5 trillion asset:

  “This pattern... you would see in a microcap gold miner or a biotech stock... there was no follow through and then the rug gets pulled. Boom. But this was a $5 trillion asset.” (06:34)

• Raises the question of how much leveraged capital was wiped out, implying the fallout is not yet clear.

4. OKX vs Binance, USDE, and the 10/10 Crash (09:04–12:24)

• Dave unpacks the mechanics behind the “10/10” event—a massive crash triggered by USD E de-pegging and compounded by faulty price feeds and over-leveraged positions:

  “If you called that arson, now imagine arson where you have some sort of fire accelerant all throughout the building... And that’s what happened.” (10:24)

• Argues the lack of industry-wide risk controls and regulatory surveillance lets manipulative events spiral.

5. No ‘Rotation’ from Metal Gains to Crypto (12:46–15:20)

• Panelists dispel the narrative that profits from gold and silver would “rotate” into Bitcoin:

  Panos: “I expected this money to pivot into crypto and it didn’t... It’s not the same consumer.” (12:46)

• Emphasizes that different market participants drive metals and crypto, and “tourists” panic out at first volatility.

6. Fundamental Unknowns & Epstein Email Fallout (15:20–19:11)

• Gary observes that concurrent dumps in metals and crypto suggest deep background factors (“something fundamental going on”), speculating on geopolitical/confidential news (e.g., Iran, Epstein leaks).
• The panel discusses new revelations in the Epstein email dumps, including links to Ripple and Tether, funding connections, and early Bitcoin core developers.

7. OKX, Binance, and Market Structure — Debate on Blame and Remedies (19:11–24:26)

• Rich introduces a write-up by Haseeb on the crash, defending objectivity. Dave offers a pointed rebuttal, highlighting flaws in collateral management and risk controls:

  “If you have a risk of collateral drop and you don’t have a haircut on it, that is a problem. Every other major exchange in the world... does leverage has that.” (23:09)

8. Market Reputation, Internal Rivalry, PR Maneuvers, and HyperLiquid’s Rise (24:26–26:18)

• Rich laments crypto’s self-sabotage:

  “We tend to beat each other up internally ... more than people outside of the industry can.” (25:01)

• HyperLiquid absorbs market share from Binance as traders seek stability.

9. Canton Chain Explained — Institutional Adoption Potential (26:20–34:39)

• The panel explores Canton, an institutional blockchain with privacy-by-design, permissioned access, and backing from the DTCC—potentially “the biggest news in history about a market that moves 4 quadrillion in assets a year.” (26:20)
• Cautious optimism about Canton as a model for institutional crypto, but Adam notes typical “fake volume” concerns.

10. Macro Backdrop, Geopolitics, and Career Collapses (34:39–37:25)

• Gary and Dave connect resignations of figures like Jamie Dimon and Bob Iger to reputational risk from the Epstein leaks.
• Dave on Wall Street misogyny and the need for industry-wide house cleaning:

  “If everybody who was involved with this stuff really sees their careers end... that’s by far the best thing that could happen.” (37:18)

11. Market Forward View — Capitulation, Whale Behavior, and Sentiment (37:25–53:48)

• Gary and Dave debate whether “the bottom is in,” with skepticism about a quick bounce. Gary calls for a broader washout; Dave lays out reasons for and against further downside.
• Scott: “I care about the price because I’m sick of buying it higher than where I could have bought it. But beyond that, I'm really happy to see lower prices…” (48:54)
• ETH’s unrealized losses (Bitmain) nearly historic, per Kobec letter.
• Dave:

  “If [Bitmain] were actually forced to sell, forget it. I mean it’s going to be at 800 by the time he's done.” (43:50)

• Panos references Raoul Pal’s “liquidity playbook”—expect government stimulus and rate cuts ahead of the midterms as a bullish macro catalyst.

12. Crypto’s Need for Self-Regulation (53:48–56:21)

• Dave and Scott argue the industry must unify on self-regulation and circuit breakers to avoid crises—failing which, mainstream trust could collapse further:

  “The industry needs to do something ... to create a self regulatory organization, something where rules could be agreed upon.” (55:01)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Scott Melker (on volatility comparison):

  “Remind me once again how bitcoin is too volatile here in its ‘bear market’. I don’t hear people screaming about a silver bear market.” (01:10)

• Dave (on silver’s flash crash):

  “When that happens, you have to ask yourself how much money is going on?... How much leverage was wiped out? How many people lost everything?” (08:13)

• Panos (on rotation narrative):

  “This is not at all a move from gold to silver to bitcoin, in my opinion.” (12:46)

• Dave (on cascade effects in crypto):

  “If you have some sort of market surveillance, you can find the people who are doing these sorts of things and restore confidence.” (11:46)

• Gary (on sentiment):

  “I see no reason for Wall Street to walk in here while we're going through another... Like I don’t know why we do this to ourselves. This is the only industry that goes out of its way…” (38:09)

• Dave (on compliance):

  “When you oversimplify this stuff... there is a problem in confidence about crypto markets and crypto derivatives among a lot of the investors.” (23:09)

• Scott Melker (on ETH losses):

  “Bitmain’s unrealized ETH loss is 6.6 billion ... on track to become the fifth largest documented principal trading loss in history.” (42:57)

• Dave (on self-regulation):

  “Wall Street firms... always work together on some sense of regulation. Now, of course, part of what they do is they try to buy off and get regulation that advantages the people who are already there. But... coming up with agreed rules... that's just normal. And our industry's never done that.” (55:01)

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Key Segment Timestamps

| Timestamp | Theme / Content | |------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00 | Bitcoin $74K drop, comparison to silver and gold volatility | | 02:10 | Dave’s account hack, social engineering scams | | 06:11 | Silver’s unprecedented price collapse and systemic leverage risks | | 09:04 | 10/10 Crash, USDE, market manipulation and lack of regulation | | 12:46 | No rotation from metals to crypto, tourist money bailing out | | 15:20 | Fundamental unknowns, Epstein emails, Ripple/Tether connections | | 19:11 | OKX/Binance blame debate, collateral controls, risk management | | 24:26 | Crypto’s reputation, exchange infighting, HyperLiquid’s market share rise | | 26:20 | Canton chain, DTCC partnership, institutional blockchain analysis | | 34:39 | Macro/geopolitical ripple effects, boardroom shakeups | | 37:25 | Downside risks, buyer exhaustion, whale activity, capitulation arguments | | 42:57 | Bitmain’s ETH losses and potential for major sell pressure | | 48:01 | Bitcoin and altcoin technical levels, market psychology | | 51:02 | Raoul Pal’s liquidity thesis as Fed/macro bull case | | 53:48 | Industry failures, need for self-regulation vs. outside regulation |

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Memorable Moments

• Dave’s account hack story as a cautionary tale (02:10–03:30)
• Silver as a “meme coin”—absurd volatility in multi-trillion-dollar assets (06:11–08:13)
• Dissection of the epic 10/10 event—liquidation spiral, collateral collapse (09:04–12:24)
• The futility of expecting metals-to-crypto “rotation” (12:46–15:20)
• Speculative but pointed analysis of Epstein’s crypto links (16:21–18:42)
• Canton’s DTCC news ignored in a down market—a sign of capitulation (26:18–27:07)
• Bearish consensus despite the pain: “We do ourselves so much disservice...” (38:09)

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Episode Tone & Language

The episode maintains a candid, combative, and sometimes humorous tone—participants speak in industry shorthand but constantly explain for the benefit of listeners. There is both deep skepticism and a raw, pragmatic optimism about the future. Self-deprecation and inside jokes are balanced by blunt warnings about recklessness and the need for professionalism.

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Summary

This episode captures a pivotal moment of market stress, laying bare the systemic issues haunting crypto: from infrastructure flaws and DeFi contagion, to social engineering threats, infighting between major exchanges, and the fragility of market trust. The hosts and guests provide no easy answers—but deliver rich, firsthand insights that ground the volatility in clear-eyed analysis, historical perspective, and a plea for real self-regulation and maturity in crypto before another crisis strikes.

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Transcript

[Scott Melker]

Good morning everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town hall. Every weekday here on X at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. Bitcoin hit $74,000 overnight. It put in a low $80 above the April low. For those who check charts, that means that we officially still have a higher low and a series of higher highs and higher lows since the lows around 15,000. Absolutely crazy, but that is the truth. So for those who look at long term market structure as higher highs and higher lows, we still have that intact. If Bitcoin has in fact put in a low right above $74,000. Of course, all of this in the context of the wildest few days in markets that we've seen a long time, because last I checked, silver and gold are not supposed to be going up 20, 30 or 40% at a time. And silver had a peak to trough drawdown of 41% since last Tuesday in six days. Most of that happened in a 36 hour period. That's 41%. Bitcoin, which apparently is too volatile and nobody wants to touch because it's such a high risk asset, has gone down 41% since the $126,000 high in October. So silver did in six days what Bitcoin took four months to do. So remind me once again how bitcoin is too volatile here in its quote unquote bear market. I don't hear people screaming about a silver bear market. Very funny how the time it takes and the way that it happens changes sentiment when the numbers can be largely the same. We do have the newly reinvented Dave W. He was hacked on his actual account, so now we have just a purple circle with a D here for Dave. But we did just do macro Monday together this morning, so we're lucky to still have any, any form of Dave, even if it's a fraction of his other account. For now. And you guys should all message premium and support and help get him back.

[Dave]

Yeah, it's, it's, it's so, it's, it's unbelievable. I mean, yeah, you know how we. You get these emails and you ignore them. Well, I got one from an.literally.anx.com email address whining about copyright infringement because I quoted the Mandalorian and I thought maybe that was true. That sounds like the kind of stupid thing they might do. So I responded to it and within seconds the account was gone. I mean it, it's. I, I can't even understand why they would bother because it's not like they get anything from it. There's no money involved. But whatever. Kelly Kellum and some other people told me, you know, that I have. That I know in real life told me that they were getting DMS from me. Anybody who gets a DM from that account, please, dear God, don't give any money, don't click on any links, don't do anything. So that, that's.

[Scott Melker]

How's your trading going, bro? That's the one they're probably getting because that's what all the imposters of me do.

[Dave]

It's the only thing that people will do is just, it's just stupid.

[Adam]

Funny enough, Dave, it's actually the same email that you got is what they sent out. I got one from you and I got one from. Yeah, I posted yesterday and said, hey, I think Dave's been hacked. But yeah, it was literally like. It was literally like, hey, you've. You've violated some copyright. Click this link to fix. It was literally that.

[Rich]

Yeah, Dave was definitely patient zero because I got the same thing.

[Dave]

Yeah. So in any case, I'm, I apologize for being an idiot. But you know, we, we all have, we all have, have those things. It, it, it's, you know, whatever. But anyway, the, I got an email this morning saying they couldn't verify that I am me, which is kind of crazy considering that I'm paying for premium. Right. You know, and they also paid me a content creator, which I'm the only one who could possibly tell them what the money is. But there's nobody way to talk to a human being at X. You know, which one would think the largest company, large, largest public news source in the world. You might actually have some people who would care about content creators. But, you know, so anyone who's listening, you know, feel free. I, I don't feel like paying for premium twice. So, you know, as far as I know, it's still there, but we'll, we'll deal with it. But at premium is the, is, is the, the email address maybe, or the, the, the chat address. Maybe if they get enough, they'll actually look at it, but whatever.

[Scott Melker]

I just can't believe Dave is the pangolin.

[Dave]

What'd you say?

[Scott Melker]

You already. You're the penguin.

[Dave]

Well, what was it. What was the south park episode? I.

[Scott Melker]

You know, with Mickey Mouse and the pangolin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Next level.

[Dave]

Mickey Mouse. Yeah, there we go. So, anyway, so. So I'm an idiot. I'm perfectly happy to, to tell that. So all the people who are listening, you know that, you know, if you, if you think that I Have no humility and that I don't make mistakes or I of course make mistakes. But you think that I don't admit mistakes. Believe me, this was stupid. And so I apologize to everyone who gets those. Who's getting dms from me. But that, that said, we have a fun market, don't we?

[Scott Melker]

Finally, Finally. I mean we, you know, we've all of these assets actually dropped down to pretty key support levels. I mean, you know, eth literally like almost to the penny. Tapped its 20, 23 March or April high, saw Salana. Right. The 200 weekly ma which you know, obviously is the target a lot of people are looking for for the bitcoin trade down to you know, 58. So yeah, things got exciting. But I think I do not want to do smelting town hall. But it's just worth mentioning, as I said before, the insane volatility there and that, that kind of. I'm not saying it's over, but it kind of that move ended how we all anticipated.

[Dave]

Yeah, I mean it's. Yeah, yeah. Thanks Matt. I see the. Yeah, I like the. I like the notification. That's helpful. I'm glad somehow I got your notification, so that's good.

[Scott Melker]

Hey, good.

[Adam]

Good news, Dave. The account's actually been banned now. They did previously. They changed it to like ex legal support. They actually had a gold check on it for a brief period of time. But if you click on your old account now it says the account doesn't exist. So that's actually moving in the right direction. I bet you'll get it back today.

[Dave]

Yeah. Okay. Well, let's hope so. So, but let's talk about silver for a heartbeat because I think that people totally don't understand what's happening. We. This is the sort of thing that and, and it's mindboggling that what I'm about to describe happened in a multi trillion dollar asset. But this pattern that we saw in silver over you know, last, you know, last end of last week and continuing today actually. But certainly the end of last week is something that generally you would see in a micro cap gold miner or a biotech stock. Right. You know, or a meme stock or pump fun. Right. You know, a meme token, you know, effectively you see something that sits at a level, it breaks out of the level, it goes way beyond that level and there's no follow through and then the rug gets pulled. Boom. But this was a $5 trillion asset. This happened. So let's talk about what the levels mattered. 80 was the level where the CME raised their margin requirements and it crashed all the way down to 70. People were saying, oh my God, look at the volatility of Silver. It went from 80 to 70. This is amazing. And people were like, oh my God. And then of course, it stabilized in the mid-70s and started creeping back over. When it got back up over 80, it started rampaging. It was like it went into what we call price discovery and went all the way to 120something or other in days. I mean, you know, hours really. And that's just an insane amount. But of course, because it happened so fast, there were no ways for the order book to fill in. There was no demand there. And whenever the buying stopped, all of a sudden, guess what? Kevin wars gets nominated. People say, oh wait a minute, that's not going to be nearly as much of a dub as we expected things should go. And they started selling and there was no one to sell it to. And so it literally went all the way back down to where it was before the move started. And now that's where we are today. We've seen this before, but you don't see it in $5 trillion assets. Normally you see it in micro caps or in memes, etc. But when that happens, you have to ask yourself how much money is going on? And I don't know if anyone here knows, this is an open question for the panel and anybody else out there, how much leverage was wiped out? How many people lost everything on 1010? We know a lot of people lost everything and the damage from 1010 was significant. In fact, one of the stories we should talk about at some point, Scott, is the. Is Star from okx's treat. You know, his posting over the weekend that of course got some rather, you know, sharp rejoinders from, you know, from Binance that's probably worth talking about. But that's what we saw in Silver. And when that sort of thing happens in a market that big, there's going to be some bodies floating to the top of the pool. We just don't know where or who or how many. Anybody have an idea?

[Scott Melker]

Nobody. Nobody has any ideas. So I didn't actually dig too deeply into the. Okay, I saw it in passing on headline but there's been a long standing, I know, kind of rivalry between them in Binance. I think that CZ started okx.

[Dave]

Well, I mean it's not about rivalry. I mean I actually in the account that is now frozen did a pretty interesting response and slash amplification of what Star said. So Star actually did a really Good job of explaining what the problem was with what I called the accelerant to 1010, which was USDE for those who don't know. 1010 started. Obviously there was a lot of shit going on, but there was clearly because of when, when the actual significant crash started. There was I think clearly a manipulation impulse. And, and I described this in length in a post that I did of how liquidity, arbitrage, or momentum, ignition, whatever the hell you want to call it. Cause roughly speaking, you build up over a course of a week, two weeks, whatever you in n number of cryptos, long spot, short, short perps. Perps are easy, they are five times more liquid. So then when you start selling the spot, the spot market goes down way more than you and you can buy the perps cheaper. We know that that sort of thing happens. The difference was if you called that arson. Now imagine arson where you have some sort of fire accelerant all throughout the building that you didn't know existed. And that's what happened. So what occurred was USD E because two things happened. Binance's price feeds had a problem and USD therefore on Binance depegged. When it depegged, it took down on Hyper Liquid, the collateral value went down by 35%. Well when the collateral value goes down 35% the liquidation amount gets enormous. And of course that's then started snowballing because it just wasn't liquidity at that point. And so you had this huge snowball effect. So Starr made the point, which I think is absolutely accurate, that when you accept collateral that has that sort of risk, it's a huge problem. And it's exactly what happened with Luna by the way. And the rejoinders to this were silly really because his point was, okay, maybe he made it a bit too pointed, but he's basically accurate in what he said. But what everybody misses is the fact that people talk about this and say, well we shouldn't have any regulation in crypto, let it all be the wild west. Except for the fact that 1010 doesn't happen in a world where at least if it did happen, there would be people being walked out in orange jumpsuits. If there was actually a coordinated regulatory approach, or if Binance, OKEx, Hyper Liquid, Bybit, et cetera, all work together on controlling manipulation. If there was an industry self regulatory organization, at the end of the day, if you have some sort of market surveillance, you can find the people who are doing these sorts of things and restore confidence. And that's something we miss. And that's really the point that I wanted to make there, but it is, it's, it's a big story because arguably the reason we're in crypto winter and have been is because of 10 10. It's probably the proximate cost. Now I know I just had a bunch of stuff that either pissed people off or was, was controversial. So somebody has to care about that. Come on, Carlo. You bring up the high demand proof.

[Panos]

Of Dave in this age of AI this account.

[Scott Melker]

Yeah, well, so did Twitter with his real account. So it's really hard. Dave, he can't even get his because.

[Adam]

Of proof of Dave.

[Panos]

I think it's deep fake Dave season.

[Dave]

Yeah, Deep fake Dave. Except for this Dave is pretty unfiltered. So, you know, it's. I am who I am. That's why I put my real picture up there or one of them.

[Panos]

Look man, the silver trade and the contagion that has come from it is certainly interesting entertainment. But my take is I think that the consumer market woke up to all the attention that metals got. Commodities are the first thing to run when you have this uncertainty about the dollar. And of course we all expected, or at least some expected. I didn't expected this money to pivot into crypto and it didn't. Not surprised by that. It's not the same consumer. I think from my take, I think you have a lot of tourists that are entering the market right now looking for opportunities and the moment they see any kind of volatility in the asset of, of, of the moment, they're quickly panicking and pivoting out. And these are not people that are going to buy bitcoin. They're just not wired to buy the total risk off asset that bitcoin is. I think they're going to come around to it. But, but this is not at all a move from gold to silver to bitcoin, in my opinion.

[Scott Melker]

Yeah, I've been harping on the no rotation narrative for weeks. I just didn't understand why people believed that. Naturally, if silver and gold topped that, all that money would flow into bitcoin, which seems to be an echo chamber narrative in crypto, but maybe that money just goes down 41% in a day and there's no profit to rotate.

[Dave]

Well, I mean I said it on macro Monday, but let's repeat it again and then Panos, you have a hand up. So it's not that you would go when the rotation happens, when silver tops its rotation happens when silver and gold get boring. Because people forget just how incredibly low bitcoin's volatility has been.

[Scott Melker]

But if they get boring now after a 40% drop, I don't think so. So you mean like an alt season in the past where bitcoin goes up and gets boring and money flows down to altcoins? That's what you would see.

[Dave]

Well, no, not just that. I mean, there's a ton of money in the world. I mean, crypto is really small relative to everything else speculators like to. To play both long and short in. In the. In the. In the cool new toy and the cool new toy right now with the volatility that's going on in silver, it's on both sides is silver and gold. I mean, it's crazy to think that silver and gold are the cool new toy, but they are. That's what I mean, you know, so it's not the same. It's. It, look, it rhymes, but it's. It's not the same. It's not history repeating. It's. It's a rhyming. Yeah, I didn't want to. I don't want to jump on top of you. Panace, you there? Sorry.

[Gary]

Good morning, guys. Yeah, well, I mean, we was discussing this last week, I think it might.

[Dave]

Be Thursday or Friday.

[Gary]

And I said, like, I don't think there's going to be a rotation straight away into btc. And Gary even said that he thinks bitcoin is going into the 70s, which it did over the weekend. But I think there's something fundamental going on. Like when you see all these markets dumping at the same time, gold, silver, like moving like meme coins, and then bitcoin in the crypto market crashing that hard as well. I think there is something fundamental going on in the background that we don't fully understand yet. And you know, you can speculate on my. Maybe it's war with Iran, maybe it's even the stuff that come up in the Epstein emails.

[Scott Melker]

Right.

[Gary]

There's a lot of things going on in the background. And I don't know if you guys want to talk about some of the stuff that is connected to bitcoin in the crypto space that were in those Epstein email dumps, but I think they're very, very interesting.

[Scott Melker]

If there's anything compelling, it's worth discussing. I didn't dig too deeply into it. I obviously saw block blockstream emails that effectively said they would pull his allocation and block stream Epstein's if he continued, I guess down the road with Jeb and Ripple and Stellar. And then I saw something about Brock Pierce basically trying to get Epstein secondary, I think shares in the Coinbase offering. Anything else?

[Gary]

Well, yeah, I mean, so obviously there's the funding that was going to the core developers, Adam back and all that, but that, I don't think that's really.

[Scott Melker]

That relevant about that.

[Gary]

Yeah, yeah, but I think the most interesting one I saw was the one about Ripple and it was an email between Epstein and Reid Hoffman.

[Scott Melker]

And if I think Reid Hoffman was cc, but it was from Austin, is his name Austin Hill or something, I don't want to butcher it, but something like that. But I think Reed Hoffman was on cc.

[Gary]

Yeah, he was on cc. And if you know anything about Reid Hoffman, he's a very strong proponent of stable coins. And if you actually read that email, I actually made a post about it. What it says is I'm just going to read the section that is relevant here. So he says Ripple and Jed's new Stellar, which is xlm, are bad for the ecosystem we are building and it does the company damage to have investors who are backing two horses in the same race. Now I'm very curious on what ecosystem he's talking about. Now. I have an opinion on what it is and I could be wrong, but I think he's talking about Teva. Because if you, if you actually look at the. Some of the meetings that were going on between Epstein and some of the early bitcoiners, including Brock Pierce. Brock was one of the founders, quote unquote, founders of Tether USDT he used to be called. When it first launched, it was called real coin in 2014 and then it changed to Tether. But I, I'm really curious on what ecosystem Epstein is talking about and is it Teva usdt?

[Scott Melker]

Yeah. I think the assumption, just to be clear, was that people thought it was about Blockstream and bitcoin. Correct. Because it came from Austin at Blockstream. I. I could be misquoting.

[Gary]

Okay.

[Scott Melker]

Too tickly.

[Gary]

Okay, that makes sense then. That makes sense.

[Scott Melker]

I don't know that, that. But. But we don't have context, so you could absolutely be right. I'm just saying, I think that because the email from someone that block stream that, you know, it was a. Maybe Ripple's a threat to Bitcoin, but I can't. I have no idea. Did anybody else do any look at any of these? I mean there's so much. It's kind of overwhelming. Not much, I think. I think. Yeah, go ahead, Rich.

[Rich]

Sorry, Scott. I'm going to just jump back to the Dave part on OKX and finance. I just shared something on the, on the chat here just pinned it for the sake of objective objectivity. I wouldn't say objective journalism because I didn't write it. But Haseeb is pretty trustworthy individual, very objective, fact driven guy. And you made full disclosure of being not directly invested in OkX but there's a lot of cross pollination with, with Athena, with OKEx and with, with Dragonfly. So I think for, for a look, I mean he's, he wasn't completely exonerating Binance in their participation. You know the part that they played in Tintin, which we all know was a devastating turning point for what looked like we were on our way with the crypto markets overall as everything continued to go up, we just kind of. Everything just, just turned around. But I think for, for clarity, this, this is a really good write up from somebody that is very close to, to, to both OKX and Athena and gives a pretty good summary of it, you know and, and respect to him for acknowledging his involvement in both Athena and okx.

[Dave]

Yeah, he, he was, he, he made bunches of mistakes in this. I actually, I don't want, I can't find it because my account's been suspended but I actually, you know my reaction.

[Scott Melker]

I just shared Stars Star's tweet to the space if you're looking for it just so you can see it up there for content.

[Dave]

He, the first thing is he says that the BTC bottomed a full 30min. See I mean he's just wrong. I mean he's just freaking wrong. The data is not true. Binance's price feed was messed up and so he probably has bad data there. Plus it's not about BTC bottoming, it was about all the altcoins that got crushed. Sui etc etc. It's just not true. USD E is what was, was one of the major reasons why Hyper Liquid was the biggest. The, the, the, the place where the most liquidations happened. And the fact that, that if you write this without looking at anything other than Binance, without which by the way, with all due respect to Binance, their entire matching engine and pricing feed was fubar. And the problem is Hyperliquid and others, you know, used Binance's price feeds and of course when the price feed is fubar, bad things happen. Right? So that's what happened here. I'm sorry Rich, but you know it's like Khasib had his is way conflicted on this and this was like written to me this looked like written by a statistical Internet. You know it's Just, I'm sorry, but it's just wrong. And when he says it only diverged on Binance's second one, well, that's completely missing the fact that Hyper Liquid was using the Binance feed and that's why they took down the collateral. And, and he doesn't even talk about the automatic, automatic deleveraging. And the reason Star is revealing it is who cares, right? You know, it's, it's just. I'm sorry, but he's just wrong and I would happily debate him. I doubt he would be willing to do that, but I would happily debate him.

[Scott Melker]

I mean, I think you would actually, if you actually want to discuss it with him. He's a friend and he's pretty much open, 100% agree.

[Rich]

I don't think he would back down from, not from a confrontational point of view, but from what I.

[Dave]

It's just that we have. Look, speaking as someone who unfortunately or fortunately has been involved in most of the conversations about circuit breakers dating all the way back to the 80s. I mean, literally in my case, you know, from the crash of 87, you know, there is a, there are some holes in crypto's market structure because of the cypherpunk ethos that permeates it. And unfortunately, some exchanges did a much better job than others. Like for example, OKEx did a better job than Bybit, than Binance. BYBIT did a better job than both. Hyper Liquid has an interesting design. I think their design makes sense, but their design has a, has an enormous vulnerability if Binance in particular has problems and understanding all of that matters. And when you have none of these exchanges, by the way, haircut their collateral. And so if you have a risk of collateral, of a collateral drop and you don't have a haircut on it, and that is a problem. I mean, no. Met every other major exchange in the world that does leverage has that. You know, people forget the reason why FTX got so big was because they allowed broad collateral. But we all saw what happened when, you know, you know, when the collateral that was being posted is something that's equally volatile. In their particular case, it was all the SAM coins. Right? But you know, it's. When you oversimplify this stuff, it, it's, it. This is one of those situations where there is a problem in confidence about crypto markets and crypto derivatives among a lot of the investors. And by the way, this is where the new money in crypto is coming from. People look at it and they say, well, wait a minute, these sorts of things are Problematic. We know they're problematic, but, you know, we accept that kind of volatility because we're in this for the long haul. That's not true inside the crypto. Most of our of our listeners are people who play with leverage. And if you're playing with leverage and you don't know that you could get rugged, well, that's a problem. And so I think it's really important to understand the reality of what's going on.

[Panos]

I'm sorry.

[Dave]

I mean, Rich, go ahead.

[Rich]

Now, you'd have to apologize.

[Dave]

We just.

[Rich]

We're here to talk, man. I mean, and I'm always here to learn and listen as well. I just thought it was worth bringing up, you know, on the same topic. You know, it's been this battle between Aster and HyperLiquid. I think CZ's working really hard to maintain PR at the moment. It seems like, you know, in typical crypto fashion, we tend to beat each other up internally in this industry more than people outside of the industry can and always do. And, you know, it's disappointing because we're on our knees again, and I think we've been laughed at from the outside. It's just so silly, you know, if you think about how hard we've all worked in this space to build reputation, whatever aspect of crypto you find yourself in, you know, people looking in, just thinking, gosh, look at these clowns. You know, they're so fickle. And I feel sorry for CZ because I think he's done a lot of good for the industry. But that being said, to the point of Hyper, they taking full advantage of this opportunity to double down on marketing and regain market share. I mean, I was looking at a stat this morning. It looks like Hyper Liquid have absorbed all of Binance's perpdex market share. So Hyper seemed to be just capitalizing on this kind of shakeup on sentiment and kudos to them. And to that point, the markets are not in a great state. But we've been saying this for. For quite a while on the show that you've got to be more attentive to finding outliers in the sense of what's holding up well in these kind of massive drawdown moments. I'm looking at things like Canton just rock solid amidst all of these shakeups. And likewise, Harper seems to be holding up, so we're going to have to.

[Dave]

Have to work a lot harder.

[Scott Melker]

The Canton makes so much sense. And if you remember, I was freaking out because it was such a sign of what a Down market we were in when the DTCC made the Canton announcement that the Canton token didn't move at all. And I literally, I was like besides myself, I couldn't believe that nascent sort of chain that nobody was talking about got literally the biggest news in history about a market that moves, a platform that moves 4 trillion in assets a year. 4 quadrillion. Excuse me. The DTCC made an announcement in Canton. It didn't move. But I think that just shows that there are fundamental reasons for things to go up and news actually does matter when it's that big. It just took time. Dave, did you have a comment there?

[Dave]

Yeah, I actually had a nice conversation earlier this week with the new us, you know, head of Canton Networks. I know a little bit about it. I haven't finished all the research I was doing. But it is, it is an extremely interesting model and I think it's very real and it might be one of the new winners in, in the system and we'll see. I don't own very much of it right now, probably my stupidity but I, I do think that it is, it is one of those interesting models. It would be great to get them up as a sponsor spot to actually talk through. I think the in. I think people would find it very interesting and I don't want to bastardize it and do a bad job of explaining what he explained to me so But I do think handheld in particular is. Is probably the first. Maybe it's. I don't know how big of a wave it will be but of a. Of a token economics that work with a. This space was downloaded via spacesdown.com visit to download your spaces today April process that is. Is. Is trying to work for the institutional market and what their differences are. I do think that, that it is an interesting one and frankly there is going to be an enormous amount of value created in this ecosystem and so the question of finding where those winners are going to be is. Is literally why people want to listen to us. So it is some of the, some of the things that we should talk about anyway.

[Adam]

Adam, be very careful. Dave.

[Dave]

I don't know.

[Adam]

I, I just, I, you know I researched Canton a while back and you know, typical crypto model like all fake trading, fake volume, fake market cap. So just be careful, you know, have your eyes wide open if you're getting in there. I mean not to say that isn't big news and you know, if it was a better market environment that news would have, you know, whatever massively impacted the price. But sorry, go ahead I heard you.

[Dave]

As I said. No, no, no, I think you're right. I mean, as I said, I don't know very much. It's just one of those things where their, their claim to fame, broadly speaking, is, is they allow for permissioned blockchains for institutions permissioned in, in a sense. Right. You know, so that it could be controlled by the people who are using.

[Scott Melker]

It and with extreme privacy.

[Dave]

With privacy baked in. So if you think about institutional applications and why you would use. Makes intuitive sense now, what will that do for the token? Well, that's an interesting question. They have some very interesting token economics procedures or, you know, processes. Then I don't know if it's baked in the cake. I don't know any of that. I think it's really, it is, as I said, I classify it as extremely interesting because eventually what has to happen here is there's three years or I, I think we're not getting legislation. I hope I'm wrong, by the way, but I think we're not getting legislation. But I do think that the CFTC and SEC are going to try to get their acts together to come up with something that is going to be really hard to dismantle to allow for innovation in this sector. And we'll see how that all goes. But they clearly are, are working on the inside of that with some heavy hitters. The most important part is not so much the DTCC is going to make them valuable, although I think there'll be some of that. It's that when you have DTCC and the other players that are, that are talking to them, you have enormous, and I hate that I'm saying this, but you have enormous lobbying power.

[Adam]

I mean, that may be the key, Dave. Right? I mean, it's like we look at ads, right?

[Dave]

Yeah, I mean, we all, we get crazy from this.

[Adam]

Yeah. I mean, it comes to that point where it's like, well, why wouldn't the, you know, whoever needs to use a chain, a bank or whoever just use their own or build their own? And I understand there's some technical lift, but it's not crazy technical lift to do your own chain. And it gets back to this idea of what are they going to use, you know, permission chains or are they going to use public chains?

[Dave]

And.

[Adam]

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I, I understand the bet with, with Canton, but you know, for me, I'm like, if you're going to go private, private, you know, blockchain, why not just build your own? It's not that difficult.

[Dave]

Well, no, There is, there's a very strong reason. There's a bunch of strong reasons.

[Adam]

No, I get that there's like the, you know, if they get, if they kind of push their model through and have enough lobbyists and they get kind of anointed, how there's value in that, you know.

[Dave]

No, no, let me explain something because I don't think that this is generally understood by a lot of people, Wall street decision making. And keep in mind, I was a managing director on Wall street from 2000. Right. So there's years of experience of understanding how the decision making process is. First of all, there's this entire notion that better to use core technology, that you can defend, that there's no conflict of interest. And so the notion that firms are going to use that major Wall street firms are going to use their own technology, they're far more likely to work as a consortium or want ownership or have stakes in companies that are providing to many people. It's just the way the decision making is. It also gives you plausible deniability if there's a problem with it and it gives you more confidence because there's multiple pairs of eyes and there's other ways of auditing, etc. Etc. So I, I don't think you're going to see a JP Morgan blockchain, a City blockchain, a Goldman Sachs blockchain, a Morgan Stanley blockchain. I think that all these firms are going to adopt. They're going to pick within the structure of everything they're adopting, they're going to try to pick winners. I mean, there was an old expression, and it dates us because you don't hear it very much anymore, but you never get fired by using IBM. And that's because at the time, that's my line.

[Adam]

Yeah, Honestly, Dave, that makes me more bullish. Public blockchains, you know, frankly, it should.

[Dave]

Because it's exactly what's going to happen. That's why a public blockchain that can offer the privacy and the ability to obscure. Understand. Like just think of a very simple example, Adam. One of the things, if you want to run a stock market, you want to tokenize equities, you absolutely have to have the ability to obscure who's buying. And you can't have, like we have with Bitcoin, you can't say, you know, oh, Joe's wallet is. Or let's, let's make this more. Carl Icahn's wallet is buying, accumulating this stock. You can't have that happen. We have this whole process called 13F, which has specific rules on within 30 days you have to disclose this, whatever. But the truth is immediate transparency would break the stock market mentality, would break m and a break it completely gone. So you need to have those features. And a lot of people don't really talk about it, believe me, they know it inside Wall Street. And that's just one stupid example. There's tons of them, right? So too much transparency is not good. There's a reason there's these things called dark pools. And I was an early inventor on dark pools. And the fact is, if someone is trying to buy a million shares of a stock that trades 10,000 shares a day and you told anyone saw that that was happening, well, the stock's going to go up huge. You're going to get nothing bought. So what do you do? You, you as careful as you possibly have, you're going to be accumulating for months, but you're, you're going to look for all liquidity you can, but you're going to try to keep your, your fingerprints down. That is something that is really hard in crypto in, in pure public blockchains. But it has to be there if you want to get to, if you wanted to have tokenized equities, for example, those are, there's a lot of other examples. I hope that makes sense to people. I, I, I don't know. It's, it's just, it's, but it's, it's, we kind of went down the Canton.

[Adam]

Path, but no, it totally makes sense. Yeah, I just. Whether they're the winner or not. Yeah, that's obviously very risky, but yeah.

[Scott Melker]

I have no idea if they'll be the winners, so to speak. Adam. But they have a really huge customer.

[Adam]

Yeah, yeah, it's a big deal. No, it's a big deal, but at.

[Dave]

Some point all this stuff's gonna matter. I mean, to Gary's point, you know, look, sentiment is, is horrendous and, and it isn't improving. Although here we are, we're back almost at 79 again. So, you know, woohoo.

[Scott Melker]

I was above 79 for a minute.

[Dave]

Everything is like a Simpsons cartoon. You know, it just, it's, it's, it's funny. We're definitely in a simulation at least, at least it certainly looks that way. Right? I mean, Gary, what do you think? You think 60s or you think this was it?

[Gary]

Well, first I would like to congratulate the winners for the weekend. Garden Brown, Peter Mandelson, Bob Iger, One of my favorite people, Jamie diamond and many others have had their careers completely, you know, destroyed for their past. So welcome. Well done, gentlemen. Well done for awesome careers. I actually think some of what we're seeing here is related to this story. If I was a rich family and I had this in my background, I'd be packing my bags and going somewhere else. So I think they're conveniently and coincidentally extremely well timed on a Friday. I just think it's, I do think they're related. I could be badly wrong, but I.

[Dave]

I think most people, I can't speak for most people.

[Scott Melker]

Are we talking about Epstein? By the way, was that a list of people in the Epstein files? Because I wasn't on top of it.

[Gary]

Yeah, you know, like Bob Iger, Jamie Dimon, all these people are retiring early. Okay, this is, this is not going to stop. This is going to get worse. We're going to see more board. There's no way you're going to leave people on boards and advisor roles at schools when they have this in their background.

[Dave]

So I hope.

[Gary]

Well, I don't think it was a coincidence.

[Dave]

It was too obvious. You're right. Somehow always seem like Teflon to me.

[Gary]

Well, no, no doubt, no doubt.

[Dave]

The misogyny and the. Look, you know, I'm, I, I told you guys I'm writing a book and, and a lot of some of my funniest stories have to do with the ridiculous misogyny that I've seen on Wall street over the years. And I'm, that I'm not a fan of. This is, is obviously another level. When you get to pedophilia and you get to abuse and some of the stuff, the best possible outcome will be everybody, I don't care what party, I don't care what company. If everybody who was involved with this stuff really sees their careers end and they have to go off, shrink into, you know, out of the public eye, that's by far the best thing that could happen. It's just so hard when you're looking at these emails. Some, some of them are so obviously and some of them look like they're very real. And I, to my eyes, I don't know how to tell the difference. I mean, do you.

[Gary]

Dude, I, I can see myself going to one party, but once I know what, what's happening at these events and there's evil people, I, you know, returning twice pretty much makes me guilty or just completely stupid. But hey, let's get to Bitcoin. I think, I think we test. I don't think we're going to go to 85, 88. Okay, like this is just the way I look at this. Does this thing have any momentum to move 10 or $20,000? On the upside? I don't think so. I think the crypto bros. Contrary to what Glassnode just posted, which was, you know, the 10,000 plus Bitcoin holders, that is whales, I guess, are buying bitcoin. And people with less than 10 bitcoin are selling bitcoin. That really surprises me. I, I do understand people let the small players are not buying bitcoin. I didn't think the, the whales were buying bitcoin either, but I could be wrong. And I just don't, I don't see the crypto bros. You know, holding this market up. And I see no reason for Wall street to walk, walk in here while we're going through another be a cz. Like I don't know why we do this to ourselves. This is the only industry that, that goes out of its way. Instead of beating up Jamie Dimon, which you probably shouldn't do because they got a bigger stick than you do, they beat up on each other. And it's so embarrassing. Okay? You do not see Chevron writing New York Times Times articles when Exxon has an oil spill. You idiots, man. You guys gotta understand this is an industry. It's not a junior high school football match. It's it. We do ourselves so much disservice. Like old people see this kind of crap, they're not going to come into this market.

[Scott Melker]

By the way, Gary, 1010 was a blip on the mainstream radar. But the more attention was we put on it, the more people are going to realize it was way worse than ftx.

[Gary]

Totally, dude. And by the way, you know, I'm a little worried about this chick that with Tron guy.

[Scott Melker]

Just girlfriend.

[Gary]

Dude, we don't need another group of CEOs that have moral problems, okay? Morality problems. And then the industry just like we do not need this. I was really impressed that, you know, Sailor didn't get caught up in this thing. We do not need any bad news here. And I don't see how. And we don't have any good news. So tell me how this thing doesn't go and touch the 200 day moving average. I would love to have that discussion. And I'm okay with the crypto community hating me for a few weeks. If it's going to 57, I want to know I can withdraw all my bids at 75 and figure out how to grab another 20 or 30 million dollars. To try to buy $57,000. I think that would be an awesome event. And it's probably what we need, quite frankly. We actually need a fucking washout to get sustainability back in this group.

[Scott Melker]

Gary, we were like 120. I posted some, I don't know, some tweet showing the weekly, or actually it wasn't then it was. It had to have been when we broke down below the 50 ma on the. The weekly. So I think it was at about 105. And I posted a tweet right when we did it saying, historically, if we lose the 50 ma, you know, and it goes down to 50. And your brother, Your brother messaged me. He's like, we going to 50, bro.

[Rich]

I just wish.

[Scott Melker]

I don't know. But now it looks a lot. Looks a lot more likely now, you know.

[Gary]

But, you know, I made a comment the other night on a show and then know some of these old bitcoiners show up with $300 Bitcoin, and they start saying, cardone selling his position. Because I basically made the same case at 100,000. I'm like, hey, it's at 90 grand or 88. I don't see this thing punching through a hundred. These people that don't have jobs anymore, they're not making any money. They're just jacking off with their $300 Bitcoin sitting in their wallet. That's not helping this industry. We need those guys to step up and either buy it or shut the up because they're. They're distorting what's happening. Like somebody with $300 bags and they're not buying. I, you know, I would say they're a seller of bitcoin. Like, what we need is PE new people buying more Bitcoin at 88 grand. And I don't do that, dude.

[Scott Melker]

Sailors. Well, I do it, but sailor, you and me. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm not doing the sizes any of the other three mentioned people there, but, like, I.

[Gary]

We need it all.

[Scott Melker]

Extremely excited about these prices.

[Gary]

Like, like. And if you really walk through that process and let's say that happens, what happens to alts, what happens to eth? If ETH falls apart, which it looks like it's doing, it's going to pull down the entire crypto space. It's too big. So I would just love to hear where this upward momentum is, is you can have as many meetings in D.C. as you want. That bill ain't happening, okay? It is not happening. Sachs hasn't pushed it through. So I Think we're sitting on in a really, you know, maybe we are four year cycle. Maybe I was wrong, man.

[Dave]

But I.

[Gary]

Would love to know why this thing isn't going to 60. Scott.

[Scott Melker]

In fact, I didn't. I just wanted what you just said about eth it was really interesting. I can find the tweet, but I talked about it on my show this morning that this is from the KOBEC letter. Can't seem to tag it above, but bitminds unrealized eth loss is 6.6 billion. Unrealized once again. Now on track to become the fifth largest documented principal trading loss in history. If sold unrealized losses are now at 60, 66% of the size of Archegos in 2025, the largest loss ever recorded.

[Gary]

So I mean, and I'll bet you it hits a record for the most for, for the quickest. Well, well, I mean this is a staggering amount of money that's been lost in five months, guys.

[Dave]

Well, it's only lost if they sell. But if they sell, it's way bigger than this. If Tom, if for whatever reason now I, I am not fighting this and I am not saying that he has any cash issues. I'm not.

[Gary]

Well, he bought this morning, Dave.

[Dave]

I'm aware. So what I'm saying is if, if and, and it's a huge if that it's an incredibly unlikely if. But if he were actually forced to sell, forget it. I mean it's going to be at 800 by the time he's done. I mean that's just, that's just absolutely, almost absolutely certain because remember it was like 1200 when he started to buy. So it, that's just the dynamics of the market. Now that said that if is not going to happen. I don't know it, but it doesn't seem like there's any particular reason why they would have to sell. And so, you know, but you're going to see that FUD will happen. You're absolutely right. You know, we had William up here before. You know, you're talking about ether. I mean, you know, there's, there's a lot of cross currents there. But to me it's, it feels like, it felt like, it feels like in the low 2000s it's a great time to buy and then lighten up when it gets well over 3,000 again because that's the range and that doesn't mean that it can't go higher. It just means trade ranges. It's like I personally think, Gary, that buying here around these levels In Bitcoin, you know, between in the 70s, based on where it was last year and what's going on and the amount of inflation, all sorts of reasons and monetary printing, yada yada, I think is it's probably long term, a good buy. Is there a potential downside? Of course there is. I mean, if you're leveraging, if you're, if you're going to over leverage yourself to the point where if it hits 60, you're wiped out, then my father would say, have a simple word, he'd say you're a schmuck. Because it can, you know, it can happen. The truth is that it's still not that likely, right? But the, the, if you tell me the amount of leverage or amount of people who are actually making that bet, will you get a pretty good idea. So that, that's really the thing. I mean, we, we, it's. All the bad news is here. The, the one wild card, and McGlone keeps saying this, but he's not wrong, is if the stock market continues to hold in and we don't get a major geopolitical thing. I mean, a large part of the reason Bitcoin's at this price is because people think all hell's breaking loose with Iran and everything else. Right? And I don't think that's happening. I mean, maybe I'm wrong. I mean, I don't know. I mean, God knows geopolitics impacts people's lives more than it does markets, so it's kind of silly to speculate on it, but yeah, that your answer is why does Bitcoin not drop this 60? It's because we are already at a higher magnitude loss relative to the, the magnitude profit in the cycle. And the amplitudes of those things were pretty much there. I don't think there's a whole lot of people to sell. And your point about the 300 bags? We know for a fact.

[Gary]

Yeah, but the problem is there's nobody to buy, bro.

[Dave]

Well, no, no, I'm trying to explain something to you. We know, okay, fact that a lot of people, a lot of whales sold over a hundred. And I'm sure some of them, it may not be a lot of money, it may not be even 10% of the money, but there's some of them who have cash sitting there saying maybe now here it's time to start nibbling back in. People can't help themselves. It's like the old expression, why does a billionaire keep struggling for more billions? Well, the answer is because they can. And I think that's one of the reasons Glass Note is saying that. I think some people are in fact a doing that because they've taken their money out and now they can play it again. Right. Especially if you're a believer. So don't underestimate that. There's a lot of stuff going on.

[Gary]

But you're, Tell me, tell me what's going to drive it to 88, man.

[Dave]

Nothing. I mean, the same thing that drove it from 100 down. What drove it from 100 down to 70 or 70.

[Gary]

Yeah, I think it's a, I think it's a much quicker way down than it is on the way up, though, for the audience. I, I think anybody that's thinking this is going to turn around to 88, 92, 98, 100 grand in a month. They're smoking.

[Dave]

Oh, did I say a month? No, no, no, no, no. I, I, well, I think that's, but.

[Gary]

We have to like my, you know, I think we have to be realistic with the audience because the audience is here to, hey, what the is going on? And it's chaos right now. It's, it's a scary place to be in the market right now, is what.

[Dave]

I would say, the way I would feel.

[Gary]

Do you think so? See, I don't think it does feel capitulatory yet. It does feel like people are vomiting. Yeah, but, but look at each other.

[Scott Melker]

Yeah, but we, we look at the 200 ma on Bitcoin, Gary. Obviously that 58, 000 level that everybody's watching on the weekly. I just want to point out that Ethereum is now below its weekly 200, which was at 24.50. And Solana is trading exactly at its weekly 200. So, so we are seeing that in the market already. And if bitcoin is a stronger asset than those, maybe this, these could be signals around here that, you know, the market could be bought. Once again, could totally be wrong. But.

[Gary]

Well, I just, yeah, I mean, you know, you talk to a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people. I don't see a lot of people buying. I see a lot of people panicking. I see a lot of people in spaces saying, I don't care about the price. You know, one bitcoin is one bitcoin. Every time I hear that, I'm like, oh, here we go, man. Now we're into justification.

[Scott Melker]

Yeah, I care about the price because I'm sick of buying it higher than where I could have bought it. But beyond that, I'm really happy to see lower prices because Listen, I got the, I got, I started getting the text this weekend from the like non bitcoiner friends who have been buying it. Participating. One of my very close friends, big hedge fund guy, you know, small position, but started buying in the 120s when he and I were talking about it finally I've been telling about it for 10 years. Okay. But you know, he was buy it and he's like, well, it's down pretty far. This thing is trading like shit. Like it's over. He said it. So I don't think the crypto people are saying yet, but there's people who have touched it who watch markets and watch charts. Like this thing trades like shit. He's like, it's over, it's broken. And I'm like. And you know. But when you start hearing it's broken, we're down 41%. I would like to remind people 41 is what silver did in six days. Is anybody out here screaming about the silver bear market? I don't know. It says, and that's a guy who watched Silver. So I think we just get like a extra shake of the unfair stick when it comes to sentiment.

[Gary]

Yeah. Now on that point, I mean, I can't imagine buying silver or gold here. Like, talk about terrifying.

[Dave]

I think Silver in the 70s is, is a very important range. It's been that way. And we could talk about why I actually like it at these levels. Long run, I think that in the short run, man, the volatility is insane. But we could talk about, you know that in, in other spaces, I would say this. The one thing to keep in mind is the bitcoin market is extremely small. It doesn't take a whole lot to cause panic. On the downside, it doesn't take a whole lot to cause panic on the upside. In fomo, things change really fast in these markets. So whenever you say the, the, the one of the expressions that is music to my ears is I don't see any way X could happen. When you start hearing that, it generally happens. And, and by the way, we were hearing at 120 in the 120s. We were hearing, ah, we're never going to go below 100 again. I mean, come on, you know, we're, this is done. We've broken the stuff cycle to new super cycle. There's no way that can happen.

[Panos]

There's one factor I'd love to add to this if I could, and I'm not going to take full credit for this, but it comes out of a post from Raoul Powell and His GMI newsletter. We haven't seen a full liquidity port yet. Look, if you believe that there is a four year election cycle and a four year liquidity cycle and if you understand that the party in power wants to win the midterm and in order to reach that goal they have to turn the economy around, then you're going to see an infusion of liquidity and a rate cut. They're going to run it hot like we've been talking about for weeks. And that's the catalyst. But we've had several hurdles in the way of that, including multiple government shutdowns and protracted confusion on the Clarity Act. But I think things will fall into line and that liquidity is coming because it's the playbook and it's the only playbook that they have for preserving power for the midterms. And I don't think you can discount that as a potential instant force multiplier for bitcoin going up.

[Scott Melker]

Interesting. It seems like we don't have any sort of consensus. Go ahead, David.

[Dave]

Yeah, no, I think that, look, my crystal ball is in the shop. You know, I'm not, I'm not saying it, I just want, when you're, when you're trying to figure out what bottoms are, I mean, I, I have the, it's indelible in my, in my memory what it felt like in the December after FTX bottom. And by the way, 1010 was not as bad as FTX. There is a difference. 1010 caught was a horrible liquidation event. It was a lot like Luna, in fact, in fact it was a, a lot like Lun and the scope and size and who lost money, et cetera, very similar. FTX is something different. FTX shook the confidence of the market to is this thing going to survive at all? And as I will, I will repeat the data. Three quarters of our institutional trading clients at coin routes stopped trading for three months and more than half of them went actually bankrupt. Those numbers, that didn't happen with 1010 here we had a lot of individuals with a lot of things. It's a black mark, no doubt. It's different. FDX was, if everything could be stolen from me, you know, why should I put any money here? We're not having that now. So it is, it's. There is, there is, it is a big difference. But even there, you know, people say, oh, it was a V bottom. No, it wasn't. There was a little bottom from 16 up to 20 and then it stayed around those levels for a very long, long time. And it was. And volumes fell off by like 80%. We haven't seen that either. But we're seeing the same sort of sentiment. And that, that to me is, is really interesting. Volumes are not down.

[Scott Melker]

Yeah, I think the point I was making is if the pissing contest continues and it becomes a mainstream story and people start to see what went on behind the scenes, it will be a much bigger event than FTX with the size of the liquidations and the sentiment, if there's renewed mistrust and let me.

[Dave]

Give a more positive story, Scott.

[Scott Melker]

The problem with FTX was Sam on Capitol Hill, right? And, and the American Airlines arena, I mean the FTX arena, they just couldn't get a bigger, you know, look, I.

[Dave]

Made the point at the time and it was true that it feels like death now, but I think that the world, that CZ did the world a favor by, by hitting Sam with the kill shot because Sam would have ended up getting a set of crypto regulation that would have made defi impossible and given him a competitive edge and a monopoly. And it would have been terrible for the industry, but it was horrible to live through it. I mean there's no question. But I did say that I'm sure we could find it in my, in my locked account someplace. But you know, whatever, but, but that's not what I'm, what I'm trying to say is I actually want to be really clear. I do not believe that Star was trying to have a pissing contest and doing the things that Gary was saying. I think he's basically trying to say, listen, we need to clean up our act and as an industry and we shouldn't be marketing this way, we shouldn't be doing this stuff. And I actually think it was, yes, I'm sure there was something competitive to it, but I do think that the industry needs to do something that there was talk about six years ago but never actually went their way. The major companies in the industry getting together and figuring out a way to create a self regulatory organization, something where rules could be agreed upon. People make fun of Wall street all the time, say how hyper competitive it is. But one thing that Wall street firms learned in order to build this massive thing that Wall street and the City of London and all the major firms, they always work together on some sense of regulation. Now of course part of what they do is they try to buy off and get regulation that advantages the people who are already there. But the truth is that coming up with agreed rules, rules on how trading could be stopped when there's obviously technical problems. I mean that's just normal. And our industry's never done that. And honestly, if the leaders of the various companies get together and decide that this is something they want to do, it could make the system, it could make the industry better. And I don't know if that's what he was trying to start that kind of conversation or not, but I do think that there's some element of that. I don't know if that makes sense.

[Scott Melker]

To you, Scott, but yeah, it does. And I think we're right against the wall here with time. I want to mention one thing that's interesting. We're all talking about fundamentals, excuse me, technicals on all of these charts. Well, silver overflow its 50 week moving average. Not even talking about the 200 that we're talking about in crypto, but their 50 week moving average, which is just a simple mean reversion for any chart. 46 bucks, of course it's rising, but I mean, Silver was trading at what, 126 with the 50ma at 46. You want to talk about just a classic Wall street mean reversion. I think Silver has a long way to go down before it potentially sees upside. I'm with McGlone that the top is in for Silver for quite a while. And I was screen, you know, and it is interesting that when it was at 126 it was like it's going to 50 and it went to 70 from 126 in two days. Basically, you know, in four or five days that's almost to 50 right there. I already make, I already call that a good call with the rounding error. So it's pretty astounding. I forgot to do something at the beginning, Dave, which you so wonderfully did last week for us. We do have an awesome sponsor today which is Zero G. So let me give you a read on them before we wrap. AI is reshaping the world. But right now it's stuck in the hands of just a few big players. What if AI could run openly, verifiably and on chain? That's what zero G is building. The world's first decentralized AI operating system open to everyone. Imagine a network where you don't just trade tokens, you train, store and run independent AI models at scale. No lock ins, no black boxes, no single point of failure. Just quick, cost effective, auditable AI that anyone can build. If you believe the future of AI should be a public good, not another corporate monopoly, join us at 0g a I great show today. Now we're tying smelting Town hall back into crypto Town Hall, Dave. So I like it. You know, we're like, we're not just talking about silver. We're talking about it in regard to everything else that's happening in Crypto. I feel like we are reaching a fever pitch. And bearish sentiment doesn't mean the bottom is in forever. But I feel like, once again, it could be one of those things where the bottom's in for now, or we could go to 60 tomorrow. I have no idea. I. Gary.

[Gary]

Well, Bitcoin's ratio to silver is. Is 1,000 to 1 right now, so maybe there's a new relationship we can build a narrative upon.

[Scott Melker]

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And until. Until we're proven utterly wrong once again. The good news is that we'll be here tomorrow and every day until that happens to unpack it. So thank you to all of our amazing guests. Guys, if you're in the audience, give our guests a follow. Seriously, it's the least you can do for them showing up. You might be shocked at this, but we don't pay them the big bucks to be here and talk to you guys. Guys, you might also be shocked that Dave and I also do not get.

[Panos]

Wait, I don't get paid?

[Scott Melker]

No, you don't get paid, but neither do we, so it's fine. And. But yeah, the least you could do is follow them. Obviously, anyone who's on stage here with us every single day is very giving of their time, and they're giving of their time on X as well and have great insight when they're not on this show. So just ask you give everybody a follow. Otherwise, we'll see you back tomorrow. 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. Dave, I hope will be. Be seeing your. Your yellow background with your avatar face.

[Dave]

I'm gonna probably go. Go to a real face. Not this one, because I'm tired. There are too many copycats of me already, which I figure out. Why. Do people copy you, me and other people? What is the frigging.

[Scott Melker]

Oh, well, they. I can tell you, for me, they're trying to scam people. There was a guy who got scammed for 3 million on Instagram by an imposter account when I was kicked off. So, yeah, they. They're. They're doing the thing we joked about. They're DMing people and saying, hey, bro, how's your trading going? You know, I started a fund. Send me some money or. Yeah, it's brutal.

[Dave]

It is brutal. I'll say. Anyone who wants to follow me on this account. Hopefully it'll be dead within a few days. It might not.

[Scott Melker]

You'll actually get rid of it. Right. So that'll be good. Yeah, but I'm fine. Yeah, let me do that. I done that. There we go. Perfect.

[Dave]

Yeah.

[Scott Melker]

Followed you back. One of the. One of the brave, brave ones.

[Gary]

Oh, Yeah.

[Dave]

I had 78 people following this. This non verified account, but whatever. Anyone?

[Scott Melker]

95 you're pumping.

[Dave]

Whatever. Anyway.

[Scott Melker]

All right, well, hopefully we'll see your real face soon tomorrow again. All right, guys, thank you very much. We'll see you guys tomorrow. Bye.