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The Wolf Of All Streets
Bitcoin Is Crushing Gold: Here’s Why $250,000 BTC Is Closer Than You Think!
00:51:54
Bitcoin Is Crushing Gold: Here’s Why $250,000 BTC Is Closer Than You Think!
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- [00:01]
Scott Melker
Much to the dismay of one Peter Schiff and all of his gold bug friends, Bitcoin has been eating the lunch of gold. Making a new all time high of course in the bitcoin gold ratio. And this is showing also inflows ETFs basically everywhere. So what happens when bitcoin really starts to catch up? Hint, price probably goes up a hell of a lot. Also, there are reasons to believe that price could skyrocket to prices as high as $250,000 and faster than you think. I have two of the best researchers in the game today to discuss. We've got James Butterfield from Coin shares, of course, Marcus Thielen from 10X Research. You've seen both of them before. And Texas West Capital be joining with the charts on the back half. There's going to be a lot of alpha in this conversation. Let's go. Let's do what's up everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of all streets. Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel and hit that like button right down there below. Just the one that looks like this. I don't know if they still have one that looks like this, but don't do that one. That one's bad. Never hit that one ever. Guys, we're gonna go ahead and bring on our guests right now. We've got James, of course, James, you've got to have been on here at least 100 times by now, and Marcus. But I think this is round two. Marcus, is that right?
- [01:34]
Marcus Thielen
That's correct. That's right.
- [01:36]
Scott Melker
Only the second time. It's gonna, it's gonna take you a long time to catch up to James for being honest. But it's nothing against you. We've just known each other a really long time. Listen, let's take a very quick look at where the market is today. Bitcoin reached 108,000 yesterday, as we all know. Currently sitting around 104,669. Yesterday's candle was a bit ugly. Of course. I signed into Twitter and we're going back to 75 because now we're down $4,000 from the all time high of yesterday. It's interesting to me actually how much of a roller coaster sentiment has still been at these prices. I don't know if you guys see that if it's just happens to be my feed, but every time we see a drop, drop, maybe it's PTSD from previous markets, but I think everybody just expects we're going to get that 30% retracement at some point. James, I know you sent a note sort of about your expectations corrections being a normal part of the market. Are we done with these 30, 40% bull market corrections for now?
- [02:31]
James Butterfield
I think it's your feed. I don't see that sort of negative sentiment, if I'm honest. I mean, there are things I think could really create a pullback and I think one of the Arthur Hayes mentioned this one, if Trump's policies don't get enacted, there's a presidential order, I think they can. They call it in the US where he can sort of push things through without getting. Yeah, executive order. That's the one. So what I was thinking of, and that is they're talking about buying considerable amounts of bitcoin within an executive order. I think that'd be very positive. But the Bitcoin act is slightly different. It might take a lot longer. And so, yeah, the market's hyped up the recent corrections. I mean, we can't be disappointed. I mean, we've been. What I found, amazing, astonishing is every time we see sort of a mini correction going down to 96, 95,000, it bounced back. It bounces back well over 100 very quickly, which I think is showing remarkable strength. And in the fund flows data, we're seeing just. I think We've seen the seventh or eighth consecutive week of inflows since the U.S. elections. We've seen $15 billion of inflows into crypto ETPs. And year to date, we've seen over 45, nearly $46 billion of inflows. This is incredibly supportive and just shows how widespread bitcoin is becoming now as an investable asset.
- [04:01]
Scott Melker
Have you noticed anything, Marcus, that I'm talking about, or do you think that it's generally extremely bullish and do you anticipate us getting one of these major retracements still? And then I want to talk about all of those things that are supporting price that may prevent those. But first, just what. How are you looking at the market?
- [04:22]
Marcus Thielen
Yeah, I don't think we're going to get a big retracement. I think these are all just like, you know, speculation and, you know, some people calling, you know, kind of the, the witchcraft, you know, predictions and everything. So, yes, I get those tweets as well. Subscribers asking us also, you know, they're like super levered, you know, right now into this. Every time we get a $2,000 retracement, everybody seems to be like panicking. But I think the reality is that, you know, stable coin inflows have been like massively strong, you know, since the elections. A lot of money is coming in. I think there is really like a, almost like a, like a fat put now in the crypto market where you got not only the Bitcoin ETFs buying, but also I think Wall street is waking up to the, to the Ethereum ETF buying. I think we're seeing a lot of inflows there. So the answer is like, you know, this whole kind of, that we're going to get a US Administration where there is a lot of risk and overhang. I think that seems to be all gone now. And I don't think the market is necessarily trading or believing we're going to get a bitcoin strategic reserve. It's more kind of like there's just like real money coming in. And I think, you know, Larry Fink and you know, Larry Fink has been walking around the last 18 months telling everybody that bitcoin is digital gold. And he looks pretty smart now because, you know, these ETFs were launched at like 40, 40K and we're like, you know, 100K. And of course we're like complaining a little bit when we live it down. So I think the momentum is strong. I think everybody who allocated ToWards Bitcoin and ETFs looks pretty good, gets even bigger risk limits for next year. And I think the drive higher is going to continue.
- [05:53]
Scott Melker
Let's talk about that strategic reserve, James. I mean, in my opinion, this in the title, you know, here's why 250,000 Bitcoin is closer than you think. That's obviously one of the catalysts that could send it there and much further. Right. I mean, in my opinion, if we get any, whether it's executive order or it's the Senate bill from Cynthia Lummis, if any of those things happen or there's a true hint, the game theory of central banks being effectively forced to buy bitcoin, the United States did, is very difficult to price.
- [06:20]
James Butterfield
Yeah, this is incredible. Just a year ago, we wouldn't have even dreamt of something like this. Us talking about buying 5% of Bitcoin over the course of five years and funding it from FX reserves and maybe even gold reserves as well. That echoes some of our current meetings recently. One of our clients is making a very big clip into Bitcoin ETFs and selling gold. So, yeah, I think. And also what's happening here, even if the Bitcoin act doesn't happen, just the fact the US Government and now Talking about it is an incredibly positive thing. I mean, one of the issues we've had for many years is going to see clients and they say, the first thing it says, look, I've got bitcoin in my pa, but I'm not buying it in my institutional fund yet because I'm worried about the credibility amongst my peers. Suddenly you've got the largest government in the world, the largest economy in the world buying bitcoin. That stigma of buying bitcoin goes away. And we've already seen in 13F filing data that US corporates aren't really buying in a huge amount yet. So there's still this potential wave and this improved credibility that really lends support to that. And I'd say that we are getting this kind of nation state FOMO at the moment. So we've had a discussed in Parliament, in Japan, in Braz, in Argentina, obviously in El Salvador and in even Europe. There's a lady that talked about, even.
- [07:47]
Scott Melker
Germany famously sold all their bitcoin six months ago. Right.
- [07:52]
James Butterfield
So, yeah, this is amazing to see so many governments taking it so much more seriously now. And I think that's going to be very supportive for Bitcoin in 2025.
- [08:02]
Scott Melker
Yeah. And quickly, before we go to Marcus, the 250,000 number, obviously that was one catalyst and the other, just to dig in a little more deeply, is from one of your notes, when talking about price targets, is simply just doing the math on whether it eats more of gold's market share. As you said, it obviously is and everything indicates that that's happening.
- [08:21]
James Butterfield
Yeah, I mean, it's 10%. It's quite easy. The way the gold price has moved. It means that it's quite simple arithmetic. 10% is 100,000 for Bitcoin, 25% of gold's market share is 250,000. And we've been spending a long time speaking to clients about the 100,000 mark and where after that it's taken us perhaps a bit longer to achieve that 100,000 mark. It'll probably take us longer to get to that 250,000 mark, but it's not unreasonable. I think I've said this quite a few times on your show, that 25% of gold's market share is not unreasonable at all. And Michael Saylor, by the way, he's saying, well north of 100% of gold's market share. So that's a very lofty prediction. I hope it comes true.
- [09:00]
Scott Melker
But he's the only man on the planet who can do it himself, apparently. So you have to believe him because he's going to try to do it without anybody else buying. Marcus, what do you think?
- [09:10]
Marcus Thielen
Yeah, I mean, we have, you know, various surveys from like younger people, right? They prefer, of course, digital gold. They prefer bitcoin, you know, over gold. I think there's all these, you know, surveys done that really people over 60, they, they own gold, but nobody really under 40 owns gold. And I think there is something like 90, 90 trillion US dollars is going to be inherited down over the next one or two generations. So I think this is like a natural move. But I think what's actually more interesting is that the number of people that are owning bitcoin is actually higher than the number of people that are owning gold. Right. Except of course for jewelry. There's apparently like 1 billion people in the world owning gold as jewelry, but only like 100 million people owning gold as an investment, be it in bars, in coins, or sort of again, in financial forms versus Bitcoin is something like 500 to 600 million people is an estimate. And I think the interesting aspect is also that we are kind of crossing this 8% hurdle. And 8% hurdle is sort of like this global adoption hurdle that we have seen, you know, anything from, you know, from computers to ride sharing to, you know, social media and, you know, net streaming services. So, and I think bitcoin is really close to this 8%. It's probably now around 8%. And that's usually when the S curve kind of like takes over. So I think you can make really, really like a strong case that this is not going to, going to stop. And I think it's sort of like everybody, I think, is hoping for a 30% correction because everybody wants to buy more. But because everybody is hoping for it, I don't think we're going to get it.
- [10:43]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I mean, I had a conversation with Peter Brandt about it technically, obviously kind of a famed old school technical analyst. And he was like, when bitcoin breaks like a previous all time high, you know, and it went through 74, whatever, and everybody's now looking for 75 again as a retest. He's like, that's doesn't really happen with something with this much momentum. It's like it might happen in the next bear market and freak everybody out. Like it took us a long time to get back to 20, but very little reason fundamentally to believe that we're going to get something that huge right now, especially with all of these tailwinds that we're discussing. I mean, we talked about Governments, obviously, when you dig into the cabinet appointments of Trump and what's happening outside of his cabinet appointments, it's like this. It's a, it's a, it's a wet dream for crypto. It's unbelievable. Every single person is more pro crypto than the next, regardless of their position. You have French Hill, who's going to take over the head of House Financial Services Committee. He's saying that he's going to obviously pass crypto legislation. He's taking Patrick Henry. Then you have the next U.S. senate banking chair, which is Tim Scott, meeting with David Sachs, who's the crypto and AI Czar, and saying, I mean, his quotes, I've got to now find them. But the quotes are astonishing. Astounding, what he's saying about crypto. In my opinion, it is the next wonder of the world. I'm going to be the chairman that creates a Digital Asset Subcommittee for the first time. I mean, this isn't rumor. These are the guys that are going to do it, right, James?
- [12:10]
James Butterfield
Well, this, yeah, I think this is really positive. And I know there's some skepticism around the bitcoin app being approved. I think Polymarkets says around 30% chance of it being approved in the first 30 days. But yeah, you look at Trump's highs and there are so many that are pro crypto, I think the chances of it being pushed through have much higher than the poly markets currently suggesting.
- [12:33]
Scott Melker
I agree. Listen, I think the executive order, whether it gets challenged or not, him filing it does so much for his fundraising in the future that it would be almost silly not to do it.
- [12:45]
Marcus Thielen
And I think actually the one point that's really overlooked is, I mean, everybody knows that bitcoin trades in, in big cycles, but I think nobody really talks about why these big cycles actually popped. Right? I mean, why did we really crash? And when you look at, it's usually sort of like regulation, enforcement actions. In January 2014, it was the PBOC that told basically all the banks to stop issuing or working with crypto firms in China. And of course, China was the biggest driver of the 2013 bull market. And then actually in December 2017, January 2018, it was really the SEC that was starting to send around enforcement actions because of the Howie test and security and unregistered security offerings. And I think even like in 21, right. We had like these episodes in April where there were some issues from a regulatory side. You know, yes, there was some rate cut voice, but what I'm saying is the bull markets actually tended to Peak because there was some regulatory issue. And this time it's not going to be the case. There's not going to be a case of higher interest rates, you know, that's going to be raised from zero to something. Right. We are far away from this lower bound. At the same time, there's no issue really on the regulatory side. So it's very difficult to see how this bull market is actually going to, going to stop. Right. So I actually start to believe we might not see those cycles anymore, that we're going to get these 80% drawdowns because there is now a constant bid.
- [14:13]
James Butterfield
I'm really with you there, Marcus. I hear about this annoying four year cycle on a very frequent basis and I've always been skeptical of it. Partly, I think many people apply that four year cycle down to the halving, but this is perfectly known information so should be fully priced into perpetuity, so to speak. And I think that another thing that's really going for bitcoin, at the start of 2022, there's this argument about does the Fed believe inflation is transitory or not? And then they took out the transitory terminology on the 4th of January or something and then the market, it popped the bubble of bitcoin and the Fed was extremely hawkish. We're at a time now where, yeah, maybe the Fed cuts today, but they don't in January, but January, the trajectory is completely different to then. It's one of much more accommodative monetary policy, particularly if Trump gets his way as well. So I think that's another quite supportive factor for bitcoin.
- [15:10]
Scott Melker
Yeah.
- [15:10]
Marcus Thielen
James, you said something like extremely important there, right. Everybody looks at the halving cycle, right, and talks about there's less supply in the market, but things don't go up because there's less supply. Things go up because there's more demand. And I think people don't really understand or really look into it why there was suddenly more demand. And I think that is really the crucial part. Right. I mean, of course we have all these different cases from the ICOS to, you know, to the Silk Road and everything where suddenly demand increased. I mean, it's not suddenly like, you know, you take out supply and then mysteriously, like six months later, suddenly prices go up. Right. It's not that the market suddenly like waits. It's usually something else that that happens, that that really drives demand. And I think now we're really seeing where demand is coming from. Right. I mean that's, I think, you know, a key factor. So I Don't think that the supply matters or has really mattered in the past. Right. And it's going to matter less and less, you know, the smaller really the mining numbers become. But it's really like the demand that we have seen and the demand was usually killed by regulation, but this time it's not going to be killed by regulation because there's like the four year, you know, US administration in place. So I think that's a big change this time.
- [16:18]
Scott Melker
What really supply overhang is around. I mean the supply reduction at these market caps is a rounding error. Right. I believe in the four year cycle but not because of the having. So I'm kind of halfway in between. I believe it's because of the election cycle and because of global liquidity and various other things. I think I tend to agree. But I do think that when looking at the four year cycle, the flows are going to matter. Bitcoin will eventually flow down to altcoins. In my opinion. We will see this massive pop in 2025. We will get overheated probably and then we will see some sort of boring retracement during the summer. These are my base cases, maybe 30% chance. But whether that's because of the having or not, markets are cyclical in my opinion. Go ahead James.
- [17:02]
James Butterfield
What's interesting is the anatomy of the demand. So in the developed world it has a store of value and people using it as a monetary policy hedge and that's the big reason. But a lot of them say I can't see it ever being adopted because well, you know, I have the euro or I have the dollar and it's pretty stable and I'm okay. You know, we have a good example of bitcoin demand in the UK When Liz Truss announced her tax cuts, funded tax cuts, it really destabilized the sterling, the British pound. And on that day we saw volumes in bitcoin go from 70 million a day averaging to $900 million. So the moment your fiat currency looks slightly sketchy, people really start flipping into something like bitcoin. And we can see that in emerging markets. And that's where the people buying in emerging markets and the demand for it is very, very different. In Turkey we've had massive depreciation of, of the lira. We've seen Argentina and Venezuela similar sort of scenarios and there is some of the highest ownership and they're using it for different reasons. They're not using as a store of value, they're there to do day to day trading. In Lebanon is another good example. Huge Stable, Stablecoin usage there. It's easy to just open up a Bitcoin bank account or wallet, so to speak, on your phone. Much easier than, than say, trying to own the dollar, for instance.
- [18:25]
Scott Melker
Yeah, that, that all makes perfect sense. Do you think we get this altcoin cycle that many people are expecting when you take a look at how the market is starting to shake out? I mean, it does feel like every time bitcoin gets boring, we're starting to see those little pushes now and we see the Ethereum inflows for the first time since those ETFs were effectively launched. And definitely a lot more interest. Even if the price isn't outpacing Bitcoin.
- [18:50]
James Butterfield
Bitcoin feels a little bit untouchable at the moment. And then altcoins are scrapping amongst themselves. I mean, we've seen that in Solana and Ethereum. So Ethereum's really. We've seen I think $3.8 billion in the last four weeks or something of inflows for Ethereum, so suddenly become a real darling amongst investors. And that's at the expense of Solana, which is much smaller in terms of assets under management, but has seen around $15 million of outflow. So I think. So I think people are looking at, I don't necessarily think it's an altcoin thing. They're looking at the year today and thinking, okay, well, Solana's done really well. I've owned that. Bitcoin's doing really well. Rotation around. Yeah. What is not done so well and what's not at all time highs? And there aren't that many of them. And you know, we've actually seen some of these traditional older coins, Altcoins perform quite well. I think it's purely because they've not achieved all time highs yet and people are buying them for that reason.
- [19:42]
Scott Melker
I also think there's an effect where people sign into their Coinbase account for the first time in four years because they hear this Bitcoin thing has gone up and they just see xrp, Cardano and Litecoin and Algo and all the things they bought in previous cycles and probably still think those are the only coins that exist. Go ahead, Marcus.
- [20:01]
Marcus Thielen
Yeah, it's also of course like a liquidity issue, right? I mean, right now of course we have like Wall street buying and Bitcoin is Of course the 2 trillion asset. You know, Ethereum is around like what, like 400 billion, you know, maybe going to 500 billion. And you know, Solana is of course much smaller and everything else is also a lot smaller. Right. It makes a big difference for an investor, you know, to justify, you know, to putting in 100 million or more. So I can imagine, you know, when you look at, you know, Larry Fink, he has been saying many times on, you know, on CNBC basically that he sees also a lot of value in Ethereum. So I think, you know, next year I wouldn't be surprised if the, you know, the BlackRock Salesforce started to push Ethereum. We haven't really heard much around that. Right. It's always when Larry fingers on TV that he pushes for, for Bitcoin. But I think Bitcoin is sort of runs by itself now and you know, they want to diversify. So I think next year we probably going to hear a lot more from blackrock how, you know, what value is Ethereum, how people should have exposure there as well, how it's diversifying, you know, buying portfolios and everything. So I think that can be really like a big push. And you know, and it's, it's, it's big, right? I mean $400 billion, it's big and you know, it, it, I mean I do think it can go up 50% next year. I wouldn't really surprised about it.
- [21:18]
Scott Melker
I think Ethereum will outperform Bitcoin from here through the rest of the cycle, but then we'll have inevitably a much larger drawdown and underperform. I was talking to Matt Hogan from Bitwise yesterday and he pointed out something interesting. He said basically Ethereum Is I think 23 ish percent in market cap of Bitcoin. But the flows into the ETFs over the past couple of months since basically the election have been, you know, 40, 45% or something of the Bitcoin flows. That's pretty meaningful that they're double what they would be expected based on the market cap.
- [21:51]
James Butterfield
They're a very different investment proposition though. Bitcoin's this store of value and emerging store of value, whereas Ethereum is way more like a tech stock. It's like Amazon Web Services but with a currency rolled into it and I think a more democratic version of that. I do think investors have to recognize that. And although it's not the case at the moment, I do believe Ethereum will start moving in line way closer with tech titans than it does with Bitcoin. In the past and I suppose over the last six months we've seen that deep correlation between the two and as the asset class matures, I think that will likely be the Case, let's talk.
- [22:26]
Scott Melker
About MicroStrategy before time runs out on us. Obviously, we have MicroStrategy being included in the NASDAQ, as I say here, kicking off a new era of momentum risk, how MicroStrategy and others are taking on billions in debt to buy more Bitcoin. Obviously, we've seen a number of miners doing this, which is not surprising. But we really haven't seen the convertible notes outside, I think, of the crypto industry and of course, this rumor. MicroStrategy, to pause Bitcoin purchases in January. This would be basically in a blackout period as they get added to the NASDAQ 100 leading many people to say, so what happens when we don't have a guaranteed $2 billion bid a week in demand? But I think there's a lot more Demand than just MicroStrategy here. But James, let's just talk generally about what MicroStrategy is doing, what it means that they're being included in the NASDAQ and sort of how this proceeds.
- [23:19]
James Butterfield
Yeah. So MicroStrategy, I actually met Michael Stode, I think in Miami two or three weeks ago, and he's engaging this thing called bitcoin yielding, which some companies starting to do, like some mining companies, metaplanet, a Japanese company too, where basically the total amount of Bitcoin you have relative to total amount of shares outstanding, you have increases. So you're, as a shareholder, the total amount of Bitcoin you own is increasing in some respects in that company. Many people, though, felt that, okay, as soon as the Bitcoin ETFs come along, why own MicroStrategy? It should be short MicroStrategy, long, long, long Bitcoin ETFs. But that hasn't worked out. And I think it's partly because of this bitcoin yielding thing. It is a leveraged play on, on the, on the Bitcoin price in many respects. And that's why it's continued to, to outperform. I mean, he's doing it by gaming the bond market now. He can now issue bonds at 0% coupon. And the bond market, the convertible bond market, by the way, is where kind of semi, okay, semi crap companies tend to raise debt. Here's a shark amongst minnows there. He's totally gaming it. And those bond investors, he's tapping into bond investors which couldn't get access to Bitcoin before they now can through MicroStrategy. But a lot of our discussions recently have been, well, where does it all end? Where does it all go wrong. I suppose one way would be if you start selling it so that bitcoin yield declines. But when I met him in Miami, there is absolutely no way he's ever selling. So one of the risks actually is if Michael Saylor dies, for instance, that I think could be quite detrimental to share price of microstrategy business.
- [25:03]
Scott Melker
I mean. Yeah. What happens to a Tesla or SpaceX if Elon Musk, you got this key figure that is effectively the entire strategy and the business. Go ahead, Marcus.
- [25:13]
Marcus Thielen
Yeah, I think people have worried for Berkshire Hathaway that Warren Buffett died for the last 20 years and nothing really has.
- [25:20]
Scott Melker
Yeah, but he's taking something that's going to make him live to a thousand so that he can have a $5 trillion cash pile.
- [25:26]
Marcus Thielen
Yeah. And I think the whole executive committee is on board what he's doing there, that microstrategy. So I think the issue is unfortunately, I think a little bit that the shareholders are sort of buying, you know, twice the nav or sometimes even a three times the nav. I think the shareholders are not really doing the math here. I don't really see how you really get leverage exposure. I think it's a story, but I don't think it really holds up. And you really look into the details and when you run probably like a, you know, two times leverage bitcoin ETF against it, I think you see that over the last kind of like couple of weeks actually the share price is not going up and it's not really performing in line with bitcoin. So something is I think clearly off here. I mean we were, we were very bullish when we got this breakout of, you know, $177, which I think was in, in October. But of course we got like massively higher. But I think as soon as you, you ramp up, you know, a couple of, you know, X's above your, your really, your niv. I think it really means that everybody who's buying the shares and there are a lot of retail investors, they're maybe not doing the math, not really looking, you know, maybe that is hearing really the, you know, the news that this is apparently like a lever play. And I think there was, and I kind of confirmed this, but there was a story earlier in the year that because, you know, the Chinese, they can buy US U. S equities through the Hong Kong southbound flow, but they weren't allowed to buy the Bitcoin ETFs so they were buying proxies and they were the ones who are really Ramping up the share price again. Again, I cannot confirm this, but that's the story I heard in March when I was in Hong Kong. But nevertheless, I think investors buying the MicroStrategy shares here, I think they're overpaying it. And Michael Saylor, he's using the overpaying for it and to buy more Bitcoin, basically diluting the shareholders. So I look at it a little bit differently. I would rather have a 2x levered Bitcoin ETF than the shares right now.
- [27:25]
James Butterfield
What would cause a collapse in that premium that MicroStrategy has to the price? I think him selling would be one of those quite important ones, but one we just really struggling is, you know, what would cause, you know, what would cause him to sell. It would be a massive fall in the bitcoin price, I think would be one of those. But by our calculations, the bitcoin price would have to fall to around 9, 18 or 19,000 before he has to. He's absolutely forced to sell.
- [27:55]
Scott Melker
Right. We had that same narrative, by the way, the last time, remember, we were on the drop and everyone said, if it goes to 25,000, he's liquidated. If it goes 21,000, he's liquidated, it's over. It went to 15,000 and he laughed it off.
- [28:05]
Marcus Thielen
Yeah, Actually almost like exactly a year ago, I think, 28th of December last year, we published a report and we showed every time when the shares are 20% above NAV, they would come out and issue more shares and dilute the shareholders and then the NAV would compress back to one. And we were talking about how they have actually, really a smart financial engineering team that is looking for this 20% overvaluation and trying really to take advantage of it. And I think they're doing the same thing now, just on a massive scale now with 200% overvaluation or sometimes. So I think really they are looking for the lower valuation and just taking advantage of it because shareholders or the people that are buying these shares are really not as informed as in taking.
- [28:49]
Scott Melker
I mean, there are other. Right. There are other aspects. I mean, the amount of debt that he's raising now, the amount that he's buying, the velocity at which he's buying it have definitely upticked massively. And there's also then the narrative. Right. As you said, there's a lot of people who just want to be a part of this. You get the FOMO aspect of it, 100% and Bitcoin price is just flying, which has obviously been supportive and it was the most heavily shorted stock on Wall street which just means you get the squeezes up.
- [29:19]
Marcus Thielen
It reminds me a little bit of the during gold bull markets usually the gold shares of these gold mining companies tend to underperform. Usually people expect them to outperform because higher beta but usually management does really some stupid decisions like really taking too much gearing, buying too much overvalued stuff and then the share price is underperformed versus a commodity outperform. So I don't know, maybe one day this is going to be happening as well. And I think we're already seeing this, that the shares are not really, you know, catching up. I mean we were at like 500, now we are like you know, at 380 or something, right?
- [29:51]
James Butterfield
There's he's the only company that's really doing this in any significant scale. And one of the risks perhaps is there are more companies that are not so overvalued that could do it. Like Meta Planet. Well, I said we added it to our funds three months ago and it's performed incredibly well. But there is a general trend of more Microsoft not being one of those, but we thought it might be for a while. There is a trend of companies adding Bitcoin as a Treasury reserve asset and if we see more of that happening Then I think MicroStrategy looks less appealing in that respect because there's other cheaper companies doing it.
- [30:29]
Scott Melker
Is this one of those situations where I love Michael Saylor, I always have to give the caveat. I love what he's doing. I think it's incredible financial engineering but you can't look at this and see the premium and not think about the GBTC premium that everybody was taking advantage of in the last market that eventually collapsed and people couldn't get out and some would say was sort of the black swan or the widowmaker for the entire market. Is there a risk here of our beloved sailor becoming the. The main story on the way down in some. The main character on the way down in some form? If you said right Bitcoin has go to 18 or 19,000 then the answer is obviously no.
- [31:08]
James Butterfield
In my mind that was a liquidity thing. No one had access to close down funds. You couldn't really sell it easily at all. Well you could when it was at a premium, which is great but when it trade, when the bitcoin price fell, it traded a discount. No one wants to crystallize losses. I think it's quite different. We've got MicroStrategy just making it into the Index, suddenly it becomes a lot more liquid. So, yeah, maybe there are, like Marcus said, a few of these quirky things around, around regulations that stops him from.
- [31:39]
Scott Melker
Buying like in January isn't there now? And with the inclusion in the NASDAQ 100 and the ETFs will be included, there's also sort of a forced buying that obviously comes with the rebalancing of those funds by all of the issuers of these.
- [31:53]
James Butterfield
And hedge funds make quite a lot of money. This is a classic hedge fund strategy. If they know that forced buying is coming and they use that. This is classic buy on the rumor, sell on the news, so to speak.
- [32:04]
Scott Melker
David Weissen said the same thing. You generally see things go down on the listing because there's been that opportunity for that sort of arbitrage or guaranteed trade. So maybe we'll see a dip in microstrategy at that point. I did have that story. I'm sorry to keep you guys over. It's just a good conversation. So if you gotta leave, you let me know. But we did see the story that says if they pause in January, maybe for a blackout period, I think that also just lends to the question that eventually maybe not, but eventually you think their dry powder kind of runs out. You can't have five, six, 50 weeks in a row necessarily of buying billion dollars worth of bitcoin. Right. We know that he's trying to raise 42 billion, but to do this for a year, you'd have to be raising 100 billion and use.
- [32:45]
James Butterfield
He can wait. He's done it a lot, lot quicker than he said he would.
- [32:49]
Scott Melker
So he, I just mean, doesn't panic the market in any way, shape or form. Is this the buyer that's been pushing the market up because there this expectation that he does it? I mean, do you think it could change anything for the market?
- [33:01]
James Butterfield
Oh, as in systemically?
- [33:04]
Scott Melker
Systemically even just spooking the market like Michael, you know that he doesn't buy for a month and all of a sudden that's $10 billion less of buying that month, which is not that significant.
- [33:14]
James Butterfield
We know the bitcoin market is very vulnerable to. I mean, just when Elon Musk started saying he wasn't accepting bitcoin as a payment anymore, and it was very, you know, bitcoin was very vulnerable to those kind of statements. So, yeah, I think it's still vulnerable to things microstrategy and what Michael Sayer says do.
- [33:32]
Scott Melker
Awesome. Marcus. Any final thoughts? I am going to let you guys go.
- [33:37]
Marcus Thielen
Yeah, I think, you know, the difference with GBTC was it was in the hands really of two to three entities. Right. It's really just like three hours. And, you know, BlockFi themselves, you know, took some leverage versus here. It's almost like you're socializing the losses because everybody who's buying in the high NAV is taking the hit. Right. So MicroStrategy is not taking the hit, you know, I mean, because they, they're buying it at niv. They're just selling the shares above the NIV to the new shareholders. Right. I think that's really the difference here. And, and so I don't think there's really like massive systemic risk here. It's just, you know, at one point I think people will realize they're like overpaying for it. And, you know, again, I would rather have my money in a 2x levered BTC ETF, you know.
- [34:17]
Scott Melker
Yeah, absolutely. James, any final thoughts before I let you guys go?
- [34:21]
James Butterfield
I think I've run out of things to say now.
- [34:23]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I think we pretty much covered it. I mean, we didn't get into the rumors that a number of other companies are going to start buying Bitcoin now, especially because the gap accounting strategies have changed. But that can be a conversation for another day. Guys, you can follow James and Marcus. Both of their X accounts are down in the description. Both incredible researchers, tons of alpha and well worth the follow. So please do that. Marcus, James, thank you so much. We'll have you back soon.
- [34:51]
James Butterfield
All right, thanks.
- [34:53]
Scott Melker
So I've noticed in the background that Chris Inks is having some major camera issues. It's really funny what I can see in the producer room that you guys can't, but switching through all these things. So just hoping that we're going to be able to get him on here, but if not, in the meantime, of course we have our sponsor now every single Wednesday. And I told you we did. I did a big deal with, with Aptos sponsoring basically across all of our channels because it's one of the few exceptional quality companies and blockchains and projects in crypto that I believe is up to the standard for us to have for a regular sponsor. Of course, you can check out their website, aptosfoundation.com org Excuse me, aptosfoundation.org Obviously we've seen sort of this proliferation in price of some of these newer L1s that are heavily hyped and making waves. Sui being one of them. Aptos, of course. And honestly, I think that's going to continue to be one of the Major narratives of this cycle as we see these faster, cheaper blockchains continue to gain market share from the Ethereums and Solanas. I think they'll all do well, but I think that these are the ones that are going to do the best. And just to put some numbers behind where this is actually coming from with aptos, if you start to look under the hood, it really matters where the developers in crypto are going, where the developer activity is. They saw insane growth in 2024, obviously, just to put a few numbers to it, 96% developer growth, securing the second spot in 2024 developer ecosystem. So the second most developer growth of all of them, over 1,000 new developers joined the Aptos ecosystem in 24. Developer activity on Aptos increased by 96% from Q23 to Q4 3 of 23 to Q4 of 24. And now Aptos ranks as the second largest blockchain ecosystem for developers, as highlighted in the 2024 Electric Capital Developer Report. That's where we're getting all of this data in this case. So this is not just a matter of price or interest. This is where the actual developers are going to build. And you'll keep seeing on a regular basis just how many things, how fast the velocity of news is around these guys. I absolutely love Mo. Obviously Shake is a good friend of mine, really happy to have them on board here. And I ask you, there's no affiliate link, nothing you need to do. Just keep your eyes on aptos, everything that they're building. Obviously we'll be continue to talk about them. And in really good news, aside from that. Chris, you got your camera working?
- [37:25]
D
Yeah, man. Finally. What? What?
- [37:27]
Scott Melker
I saw like 50 little like different default screens. It was like some. Someone said XRP or something. One of them was like Chromecast. One of them was like Game Station, one of like xbot. I don't know, you know, like, here we are.
- [37:41]
D
Yeah. Finally. Finally it's working. So, you know, technology, I, you know, I'm old enough to remember when they said technology was going to make life so much easier and so much better. And I tell you what, I don't know about you, but I work a lot more and I get a lot more frustration. So they lied to us, I think.
- [37:57]
Scott Melker
Yeah. Can you share your screen? Let's say.
- [37:59]
D
Yeah, yeah, let me get that up here.
- [38:01]
Scott Melker
Now he's gonna try to share his screen. It's not gonna work. Watch. Let's see it.
- [38:04]
D
That's right. Yeah. No.
- [38:06]
Scott Melker
Okay. Boomer.
- [38:09]
D
You say Boomer.
- [38:11]
Scott Melker
Yeah, we're boomers in crypto, Dude, I'm Gen X, man. I think you're younger than me, actually, by a little bit.
- [38:18]
D
By a year. I think it's a year exactly, isn't it?
- [38:21]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I'm November 17th, 1976.
- [38:25]
D
Oh, okay. Well, maybe I'm two years and a day older than you then.
- [38:29]
Scott Melker
Oh, that's. Yeah, that's right. You're 50. Yeah, yeah. You have my wife's birthday or something? Yeah, it's. Right. It was.
- [38:35]
D
Yeah. All close together. Was it crazy?
- [38:37]
Scott Melker
Yeah. My wife's the 18th. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [38:40]
D
So, man, you know, bitcoin. Bitcoin. Doing bitcoin things, you know, almost hit 110,000. What I love is something I've been talking about for a while, even though we were looking interior accounts and whatnot, was this idea that we came in sideways between that pivot and that R1. So looking, Tom, for a touch of the R1, and then watch and see if we get a rejection there. And so that's what we're getting so far. I think you mentioned earlier in the show that we had this ugly candle yesterday, and it. You're right, it isn't very pretty. And so we've got a pullback just to our previous area of resistance right now. And so I think what we may be having here, I think we've got. So again, we've got this on this particular chart. It's a running flat, Tom. And then we get a 1, 2, and then potentially a 1 and a 2 in progress back down toward. Let me kind of zoom in here a bit. Four hour here. The 50% pullback on this would be right around a hundred thousand nine hundred dollars right around this pivot on the hourly. And so that's kind of what I'm looking for now. I'm looking for a rejection here to kind of bring it back down there. And if we can get a reversal up out of there, then things really get fun. Because all of a sudden, Tom, we're looking at a, you know, an interior 1, 2, 3 up here at around 125. 333, which gives us minimum expected 5 of this larger 3 up around 131, 926. And that kind of gets us up here to around a five at about142,833. And remember, that's just off this low here. This doesn't account for the wave count prior. So this is all interior to this other larger wave count. So that wouldn't be the top. That would just be this kind of, I guess a local top, so to speak, we'd have a, a good pullback I think after that, after that 140/ somewhat thousand dollar target there. So that's what I'm watching at the moment here. I'm just looking to get that pullback. Now here's the thing. If for some reason we do end up kind of just like torching down through that, well then the idea is the same. You know, again we move in sideways between the pivot, the R1, rally to R1, pull back to the pivot and then go. So again if we do kind of just continue torching on down through this, I'd have to go out back and figure out what this may be. But generally speaking, I'd be looking at this daily pivot section here and looking for a potential pull down toward this one down here at 87, 754. I don't think that's going to happen. That's not on my top of the list of things that'll probably likely happen. But always keep it in there just in case because again, the only thing that we control is how much we lose, right? We don't tell the charts what to do.
- [41:24]
Scott Melker
And I kind of got bitcoin dominance rising again as this is all playing out, which is normal. I mean all the interest and liquidity gets sucked right into bitcoin. But how are you viewing all coins here? I mean it's supposed to be in January when they really pop, right? If we look at Cycle.
- [41:37]
D
Well, yeah, but I mean, you know, it's hard, it's hard to be upset with all coins as it is since this summer. I mean a lot of them have been doing really, really good at some really great returns. I've got hbar here in hbar. I've got here on a, a fifth wave heading up. Now what you're going to see here as I show you, a few of these are going to be these. Look, these wave fours look like triangles. Finished or nearly finishing and heading up. This one I've just got here is three waves down. But based on the height here of this wave four pullback, we've got a pattern target up here about 53.5374 as that target. So that's just, you know, just a pattern target. Based on the height here of the pullback it could, it could end up going higher, it could overextend, but we're at least kind of looking at that. So as long as this wave 4 holds down here at 0.2333, 7. That's where I'm kind of looking now. You know, again, could this turn into a triangle? You know, possibly here. But you know, this was our, our kind of pullback here with the Wave 2, and we're already pretty big with Wave 4. So I don't know that we get a full triangle out of that. I think maybe like a 1 and then a 2 here or something and head up. But I've got inv here, USD again, you know, talking about triangles here. And so coming off this nice accumulation range down here, we kind of get this 1, 2 and then this 1, 2, 3, large 4, triangle 5 of 3, which now we get just basically another triangle here. A, B, C, D, E. So, you know, looking at a rally through this, basically this R1 pivot here at about 54, 31 or so. Again, based on the height, the height, the highest point of this pattern, this pullback for wave four here, we've got a target up there at $79 and 5 cents. Locally here you can just watch for an impulsive breakout and close on the, on the one hour, you know, the four hour here above this hourly pivot at about $50. If you can get impulsive breakout and close above that, that should indicate that that lows in and we're going to rally up higher. But we do need to kind of break out above this one right here, which is 5,000, 519, to signal that this triangle is probably complete. Because when we do it, we get us an A, get us a B, get a C, get a D, and then we get an E here. So the idea with the triangle is that you break out above that wave B or I'm sorry, that wave D. And that kind of says, okay, yeah, you're probably headed up. And then you wake up, break out above wave B. And it says, okay, yeah, your pack, your pattern's completed and you know, you're heading up there. So looking pretty good there with that as well. Just want to get above here right now and then above wave B and then head up there and then I've got. And by the way, if we jump out here to the daily, you can see that we just kind of, you know, we're doing this consolidation here basically right between the Daily, the R1 and the R2 pivots here. And you can notice that you've got this lower lows here on the oscillator, on the rsi, much higher lows in price. So it gives us that hidden, bullish divergence, stochastic rsi has bottomed out and reset. So, you know, again, it looks like we want to get up daily is posting, you know, a bullish engulfing candle right now. So we are looking like we're headed up there. And then I've got SD here. And again, you know, same idea, almost the same kind of structure as the last one. You know, you have your triangle then you have your 1, 2, 3 into another triangle here. Let me zoom in that four hour one more time here. And so, yeah, so again, you know, A, B, C, D. And I think we're going to get a pullback here. We might be pulling back as it is right here into E, but really looking for a breakout above, above this. Swing high here at A$41 and then the next one we have to break out above is the $56 here. And again, once we do that, based on the height here of this pattern, we have a pattern target up there of $2.60. So a lot of movement still to go in there. But we're seeing the same kind of thing. If not the, the two triangles, we're at least seeing the, this triangle right here on a lot of alts right now. And this seems like, you know, the same story we've been talking about time and time again, you know, since at least since the summer where, you know, I've been mentioning that the alts are kind of forming these similar patterns. And when you see all that, you know, that that just tells you that the all market in general is moving in lockstep. You know, it's not just a few kind of moving out there, but the, you know, the whole kind of alt system ecosystem there is kind of moving together. And that's what you want to see when you're heading into, into alt season. You want to see where a lot of your alts are kind of printing these same or similar patterns right around the same point because that just shows you the, you know, the flows in and out of altcoins, you know, into bitcoin and all that. So, you know, if you're looking for altcoin season, I mean, first of all, if you're still looking for and you're still like, where's altcoin season? And you haven't been making money with altcoins and you haven't been paying attention, you know, all coins have been flying since, you know, this summer quite a bit. Yeah, probably more of an all season coming. But man, oh man, you've potentially missed so much money already coming in here. If you're just waiting for that shooting fish in a barrel kind of thing.
- [47:21]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I, I mean as you said, a lot have moved, some have not, but we've had a little bit of everything. If you've got the dinosaurs that have all this supply overhead and people that we thought would be looking to sell on the pump getting up to like 60, 70 of their all time highs on 5x moves, there's gonna be a ton of money flowing down eventually. Oh yeah, it's gonna go nuts. Like if XRP and Algo and hbar and Cardano. These, these have bag holders bigger than any bag holders. Right. If they can make these kind of moves, there's real demand coming into all coins.
- [47:56]
D
Yeah. And I think a lot of those guys, you know, a lot of people hold on to those really. Even though they had them, you know, they were hoping they get the rally but man, I think a lot of them really kind of gave up or just like man, you know. And what probably happens now is they, they were thinking this whole time, oh my God, if it goes up and at least gets halfway up or something, you know, I'm going to sell just so I can, you know, make, you know. Yeah. And then they're sitting there now, they're going, oh my God, what if it keeps going and they're not selling and.
- [48:24]
Scott Melker
You know, double from here it has to. Look at that movie. Yeah, we know, we know how this ends. But I think there's going to be a massive, massive alt season coming. And this is just the first hints.
- [48:36]
D
I, I think, I think we've got a great 2025 and not just in, in crypto. I think we've got a great 2025 continuing in stocks as well. You know, bitcoin continues to outpace gold. So you know, if you look at the bitcoin gold ratio, I think you've shown that a few times. Bitcoin broke out. That, that ratio broke out above back there. Yeah, right there. In November, I believe it was. Right.
- [49:01]
Scott Melker
Yeah, it broke through like first week of December, kind of last week of November right there. Yep.
- [49:06]
D
Yeah. So I mean that's absolutely fantastic. You know, we love to see that. Unless your name, you know, sounds like, you know. But you know, we get it up there and I see a lot of people freaking out about, you know, microstrategy and what they're doing is a lot of FUD based stuff kind of out there right now. I, I think a lot of it is just people continue, you know, every cycle you always have people that are in disbelief when things do Something that they didn't expect. And the more it continues to do what they don't expect, the more stringent, the more starch, you know, starkly that they hold on to that, to that disbelief and they kind of double down and triple down and quadruple down on it. So you got a lot of people out there. I think they're going to get wrecked trying to continue to get wrecked trying to short microstrategy. Honestly, I don't think that you even worry about that till, you know, potentially till the end of the cycle. Again, I've still got much higher up on that. You know, if we head up a bit higher here, I think I've got like a $724 target, potentially up to, you know, a thousand or eleven hundred dollars. Tesla continues to look good. Just the other day, you know, within the last week we had, I think it was last week as a matter of fact, beginning Tuesday or something like that, we had six of the seven of the mag, seven all make brand new, all time highs. The only one that didn't was Nvidia. So, you know, we've got a lot of this that continues on there. I, I think, I think right now is not the time to be worried about everything come crashing down into cycle stuff.
- [50:41]
Scott Melker
Totally agree, guys. Follow TX West Capital next week. Well, next week's going to be Christmas.
- [50:46]
D
Christmas, yep.
- [50:47]
Scott Melker
And the weekend New Year's. So see you in 2025, whatever year it's going to be. Maybe I have to shift days or something so that we don't have to wait three more weeks to do this again. I mean, I love the holidays, it's wonderful, but I hate the, like nobody does anything. I can't do nothing. I hate it.
- [51:04]
D
Yeah, yeah. A lot of people, they don't get that. They're like, well, if you're so successful doing A, why are you also doing B? Because some of us can't sit around on our rear end and just not just twiddle our thumbs and not do anything. Drives us nuts.
- [51:15]
Scott Melker
I just want to show up. All right, guys, we can follow Chris also. Chris, I texted Ted. Check your text messages. I texted you like yesterday or the day before. That's all I got for you guys. See? Yeah, maybe maybe you got a new phone. New phone.
- [51:29]
D
Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah, maybe.
- [51:31]
Scott Melker
Okay, well, somebody else got a really interesting text for me. Anyways, that's all I got for you guys. We'll see you tomorrow. Thank you. Bye. That's dope.