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- [00:02]
A
Bitcoin is now trading below $87,000 and the fear and greed index is back.
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B
To historic lows around 11.
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A
Now, there's a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the future of crypto and bitcoin with tokenization narratives happening across the board, institutions and governments. But honestly, everybody just wants to see.
- [00:22]
B
Price go up and that has not happened.
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A
We're going to unpack all of that with Andrew Tillman and special guest Tom Levy today on the show. Let's go, guys.
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B
It's going to be a great one. Let's do.
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A
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Big City. You know, the big city vibes are.
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B
Important to keep when bitcoin is trading at around 87,000. So we moved the studio obviously to a big city.
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A
We've got Andrew, Tom and Tillman here today.
- [01:07]
B
I feel like you guys are in big cities too.
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C
Big city.
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A
No, Tillman, you're not in a big city.
- [01:13]
B
You're on the cast of Robin Hood.
- [01:19]
A
I think Andrew said you had a.
- [01:20]
B
Strong Indiana Jones vibe, but I was committed to making a vest joke.
- [01:24]
C
Listen, I've got a whip right outside the camera view and it's got your name on it.
- [01:31]
B
Scott, be honest.
- [01:32]
A
I heard some of this from Andrew's basement today. So I think some of the gimp.
- [01:35]
B
Has a whip down there. Rest in peace to Peter Green, who played Zed in Pulp Fiction. He died this week. Zed's dead, baby. Zed is dead. So listen, I want to actually start. Tom, you had a tweet here that I want to talk about.
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A
Why does it feel like we have less new and interesting crypto startups? One key contributing factor is less capital deployed by VCs. Crypto VC funds raised 20 billion in 2021, almost 40 in 2022, and now.
- [01:59]
B
Less than 5 billion for three straight years. What?
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A
Despite less capital being deployed, valuations remain.
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B
Historically high and higher than traditional VCs.
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A
You must be really excited to have.
- [02:09]
B
Started a venture venture capital fund not so long ago in the crypto space.
- [02:13]
D
Oh, that's amazing. Well, in. In all seriousness though, it's actually really good if you are deploying capital and preceding seed right now, the valuations are a bit higher, but there is so much less competition. So on the other chart you have there, you'll see that 2021 and 2020 we raised 20 billion and then $40 billion almost. And a lot of that capital, almost all of that capital is deployed. So all those vintage 2122 funds have really shot their load right now and then they're going back into the capital markets right now trying to fundraise and you've seen the inability of these folks to actually fundraise because you still don't have distributions, you have crypto market price down. So these folks aren't able to raise which then comes into the broader VC markets that they're not able to deploy because there's no capital. So if you are still fighting in the trenches, there's still a lot of opportunity here. But evaluations are still not come down to sort of make it that much more attractive for the folks who are still left. You're still paying a bit higher prices.
- [03:13]
B
So what are you doing? Are you just sitting on the sidelines and waiting for the right opportunities? I mean, if valuations are too high and there's less money chasing them, is it just basically impossible for projects to raise? I see a hell of a lot less pitches and I see the opportunity to put a lot more money than I ever would into everything. Meaning that nobody else is putting their money anywhere.
- [03:38]
D
Yeah, sort of in tandem with this you're seeing much larger raises. So the pools of capital that are remaining are sort of coalesced in series A, series B plus and are firing in these huge rounds. Right. You've seen revolut for over a billion Kraken, you know, mesh, zero hash, a ton of these, you know, poly markets, bigger rounds. So the ones that are left are really firing into these more sure things is they have clear exit paths now in the IPO markets in the US Precede and seed. It's just a lot less, you know, capital being deployed there and then there's less startups which means, you know, less pitches on Scott's desk. But you know, in terms of what we're seeing across that space, there's a lot of interesting areas that you know, are starting to come to fruition now that we have a call it more grown up mindset in the space. You know, there's a lot of speculation for a long time but now we're seeing things like a lot of RWA products, you know, things like asset backed securities, you know, mbs, you know, really, you know, nice cash flowing products that really don't fit well in traditional markets because they may be of smaller size are starting to come on chain in crypto in meaningful ways. You know, you have the things that folks are seeing like prediction markets which are, I call them legitimately real world use cases in terms of how you can use them for hedging or you know, whatever you want up and above Speculation in sports betting, which seems to be a lot of the driver of today, vault products which again provide a level of all world, real world yield.
- [05:01]
B
And things like that.
- [05:02]
D
So you're still seeing a number of interesting opportunities come, but it's taking longer for these rounds to get filled. There are less VCs involved and the timeline to the next phase and growth is, is much longer than it used to be in 2021, 2022, even 2023.
- [05:17]
A
What I hear when I listen to.
- [05:18]
B
That is how right I was. I know you didn't say that specifically, but I've been saying for a very long time that crypto adjacent equities and IPOs have just replaced the interest in altcoins and launches. Like people would rather buy bullish the day before it launches than they would to buy a token that's going to.
- [05:38]
D
Unlock for four years, but 100%, 100%. Would you rather buy DraftKings right now at you know, 13, 14 billion or would you rather buy, you know, poly market pre equity 15 billion? People are starting to have these, these conversations when you have these enormous, you know, outcomes for these crypto companies and they're comparing them to real businesses in the traditional world.
- [06:03]
B
So man, Andrew, I think he just said that maybe these aren't real businesses. That's what I heard.
- [06:07]
C
Well, I think it's about time that utility is the dog and not the tail utility. I think in the 2017, the last time I remember money really flowing was in the ICO craze and into the space and you know, there was a lot of money to be made and I think there is a lot of money to be made still. I think there's a lot more confusion. I think honestly the whole meme coin and not to cast blame, but the whole Trump coin, you know, fiasco and then all of the, you know, rug pulls that we saw from the Libra coin, you know, just that whole whipsaw that people had to endure at the front end of this cycle or you know, several months ago. I think it taxed everybody, it wore everybody out. And I think that the whipsaw above and below a hundred thousand, you know, the market does what the market does for a reason. It grinds you out of your position. And how many times have we talked about people being bored in the market? Well, I mean it sounds like the VCs are bored too. It's like everybody's sitting on go waiting until there's a real, you know, a firing gun that gives the signal that it's the Race is on again. And so there's no, it's. It says, sounds like it's a total, you know, buyer's market and there's more buyers than there are sellers. And, and you know, that's, that's the same across a lot of fronts, to be honest with you. It's so, you know, doesn't, doesn't shock me. I'm still very, very hopeful that what Coinbase did through the ICO launch, even though, you know, bad timing and in a bad cycle, part of the cycle right now, but other than that, I think it was a sterling example of what we're going to see in the future. And I do think that is going to spark a lot of utility driven conversation around these launches. And if you see a follow through of, of users, you know, going after that utility, I think Defi specifically has some examples of, of some opportunities that could really unlock a lot of users and get a lot of money flow coming in very quickly. But, you know, Pump Fund was an example of this. There's still that desire. I just think everybody's been burned so recently so many times. It's kind of like which horse do you pick on riding? Because I'm, I'm sore from getting bucked.
- [08:39]
B
Off sort of thing.
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E
Y.
- [08:42]
B
I hadn't looked at Monad, so this is the one. Obviously that was the highly hyped launch on Coinbase and I guess maybe not. It's not a full Christmas tree, so that's good. But clearly not the best performance.
- [08:56]
C
Well, it's, it's all relative. Right. Compare it to the other alts and it, it's done amazingly well. I think the ICO price, launch price was 25 or two, two and a half, two and a half cents. So yeah, we're down a little bit, but to be expected when everything else is down 12, 15, 20% too.
- [09:14]
B
I think I could be wrong. Tom, you might vote this and then we'll go to Andrew, but I think investors were at like 40 cents or something. Right. And then because there was some like, shock that the public sale was lower than one of the investment rounds or something like that. Yeah.
- [09:26]
D
Materially higher than the current price. So everyone's lost here. Everyone's lost here.
- [09:32]
B
Good times. Andrew. Yeah.
- [09:34]
E
I would think that the initial charts that you showed of, you know, the reduction in, you know, VC money in the crypto space, you could probably just do a different version of those charts that shows the increase in the AI commitment on the VC side. Right. So I would think that those, those charts would, I Don't know if mirror would be the correct, correct term, but there's probably some meaningful correlation across the broader spectrum of VC money. Crypto, VC money is a real niche of a niche of a niche. But from a broader VC standpoint, rocket ship of investment that's gone into the AI space over the past two years. You know, that's a big, big, big pivot. You go from 40 billion down to 5 billion, that money has gone somewhere. That money has adjusted and found a different place that they find, it finds more interesting. Now will there be a time and place where, you know, the idea of AI and the idea of crypto maybe, you know, will meet again? Who knows, we'll see. There's lots of theories associated with that or maybe there's a lot of hope associated in, in the crypto space that at some point AI and crypto become best friends. But in terms of, you know, the actual investable dollars, one would think one would posit that the move in AI and IT and it grabbing nearly all of the oxygen associated with just markets in total would have something to do with the drop in overall VC money into the crypto space.
- [11:28]
B
Yeah, I want to pivot a bit to the actual price because that's what people generally want to talk about here. I mean we got coin market cap, of course, looking at Bitcoin around 86,8. Ethereum now back below 3,000. Just getting slaughtered in the past 24 hours once again after having a nice bounce. But I want to zoom in more on this, which is that we're at the. Well that, that worked out great. And just tell you guys, that's exactly what I intended that to do. The fear and greed index is at 11. Right? We had extreme fear 10 last month. That's about as low as it gets. Like I saw the stock one got down to 6 or 7, but we rarely ever get below 10. So sitting here at 87,000, which I would argue has been sideways chop like, well, where's this extreme fear at this point coming from? And is that, are they right or is this a counter signal?
- [12:18]
E
Well, this is the point of the show where I lean into my think kink, okay, and tell us, tell us.
- [12:24]
B
How hot Larry Fink.
- [12:25]
E
Yeah, so last week, here's the big difference between institutional money and traditional institutional money. And then crypto, Twitter, Right? So Larry Fink is out there saying nation states are buying the dip on bitcoin. I mean what, what level of a sizable headline, a ground shaking headline, would that have been three years ago? I don't know what it would have done to Price, but I'm, I'm certain that it would have moved it up and to the right. Right, like that. Literally, Larry Fink said that out loud to, to the public. So we have, you know, the world of traditional finance, which is finally embraced by Bitcoin and to a, to a, to a certain extent crypto. And they're allocating to it and they're in, in his words, buying the dip. They see this as an opportunity. And then we go to our funny little app called Coin Market Cap and the fear index is all the. It was on E almost. So there's just this massive disconnect between the two worlds that, you know, and in that massive disconnect is probably a very, very unique opportunity in the medium and long term. Short term, different conversation, but in the medium and long term. At some point those two worlds get back, you know, collide again and you get Price in your point.
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B
Can you imagine what this would have done to Price if we weren't in this miserable like side chop for those.
- [13:58]
A
Who can't read words just in 11 trillion dollar Charles Schwab add Solana Futures to its trading platform. Solana Futures on Schwab, like this is.
- [14:09]
B
Stuff from Stranger Things upside down breaking.
- [14:12]
A
JP Morgan will now accept Bitcoin as collateral for loans. And then you go beyond this and you see what the DTCC has been.
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B
Saying and what SEC Chairman Paul Atkins has been saying.
- [14:23]
A
I mean, we're at peak adoption, at.
- [14:26]
B
Least of the technology and of the asset class across every institution you could ever dream of. And here we are, 86, 800. I mean, Tom, like everything we asked for, we've gotten were we are we just spoiled. Like, what's the deal here?
- [14:42]
D
Yeah. So, you know, there's a quote by Paul Atkins the other day. He said he expects the entire US Financial market to migrate to blockchain infrastructure within the next two years.
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B
Two years.
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D
What would happen two years. What would happen if Gary Gensler said that? I mean, it would be an avalanche.
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B
Back in the day.
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A
So when Gary Gensler said something bad than they do now when somebody says something good.
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B
But go ahead.
- [15:08]
D
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, we have these amazing fundamental underpinnings. And I think unfortunately we're. We're fortunately or unfortunately, we're growing up as an industry. And now these major assets, because of how big they are, are going to take time to move with the flows of traditional markets. So you've had these very positive momentum indicators, not only from the institutions you mentioned, but hey, Vanguard Just said you, you can trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and I think Ripple on their platform as well. That's 50 million users and advisors who are opening up bank of America, you know, now allow advisors to have up to 3 or 4% allocation in their portfolios for crypto. But the speed of which those institutional flows move is not at the speed we're going to move at in crypto. You know, we move at quick leverage, 100x per paces. These guys move over quarterly meetings. So it's, it's going to take a few more quarters here. But I think Q1 and Q2 are going to be fantastic given all the underpinnings we've seen here. And you have people right now kind of window dressing their portfolios in the tradfi side for the end of the year. Hey, I banged whatever, 15 to 20% of my portfolio. Like, I'm not going to throw in this crypto thing last minute. Guess what? We're going to wait till Q1 after I book my numbers. So I think Q1 and Q2 are going to be fantastic. And you're just seeing all the underpinnings right here, right now.
- [16:27]
C
I would totally echo and agree with that. I think that, you know, the, it's no different than turbulence in an airplane. I think the, the passengers feel the turbulence. But we're up in the Gulf Stream and we're making incredible headway and, and picking up a lot of time because the prevailing winds are behind us and blowing us to our destination. We're going to get there quicker than anybody thinks. And the reaction to that arrival is going to be bigger than anybody thinks. And I think the reversal is going to be bigger. And, you know, if we look at any other cycle, including this one, 30, 40% pullbacks are our mainstay. And so what is, what's the difference between this cycle and the other ones? Wall street wants a position, and it takes longer for them to accumulate a position than the previous cycles, you know, and so they're going to shake the tree harder than they ever have. And you're seeing, like I, I said this to somebody the other day, if you, if you really took the temperature of the markets when we broke a hundred thousand the first time, it was kind of laissez fair about it. I mean, I, I don't know if y' all remember, but we waited for that day for like a decade. And then when it came, we were kind of like, let's throw a party, 100,000 party. And then we went back down we were like, let's throw another 100,000 party. And this, this hundred thousand dollar mark that we waited for for so long that in a lot of people's mind the, the big bag holders was the first stage of exit liquidity. Like that's where they wanted to take some money off the table. Well, I think psychologically that's too good of an opportunity for the large buyers to pass up, you know, yanking us back and forth over that pricing threshold and creating the resistance and, or the foundation off of that pricing level to, to really build a foundation and go higher. So I, it doesn't surprise me at the same time, obviously I was sitting there cheering it on when it broke 126, thinking we were going to 135 and like thinking it was an inevitable, you know, thing. But the markets have a way of making a fool out of all of us. And you know, if you're in leverage during periods like this, this is what is, makes leverage dangerous is boredom and you know, ranging prices that whipsaw you back and forth into losing lots and lots of those trades.
- [18:51]
B
But I mean we have this guy buying a bill a week. Should be wearing your vest if we're being honest. I mean, what if we didn't have Sailor buying a billion a week right now?
- [19:05]
A
Where are we sitting, Tom Lee? Right in the entire market right now.
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B
Is he just, you know.
- [19:13]
E
Yeah, we need to get some Tom Lee memes that look like that too. Somehow, somehow it's his hair that's fighting the bear, you know what I mean? Like, like that's, that's what we, for the markets to really spin up. I mean, listen, the banks that are funding the process with Sailor and strategy are like, you know, as happy as they've ever been. And I would assume that the guys running those particular desks slash divisions in those banks are going to have a really sizable bonus year given the amount of business they've done with Sailor and the, the capital that they've made available to him. So yeah, I mean, where would we be, you know, this year without, you know, Sailors work and the amount of size that, that uh, he's done on the, on the bitcoin side. It, I, I think 20, 26, you know, as per Tom's comments are, is going to be significant because you're, you're, you're going to see the, the fruit finally sort of come to bear with the amount of scale associated with Tradfi and the quote unquote product that will be created around Bitcoin and Ethereum. Principally, you know, you're, you're, you're going to see again the options markets, the structured product markets, the, you know, all the stuff that, you know, Wall street likes to do to generate meaningful fees really, really start to take off. It's been a conversation and it's been a we're doing this or we're going to do this, you know, sort of process through the second half of 2025. But then you're going to see all of that happen and see how it's going to affect the crypto markets for real in 2026. It's going to be fascinating.
- [21:12]
C
Well, I think the story that everybody, if you're in the space, it's always been hard to do crypto. Pick anything, just name something and I can tell you a big pain in the side or thorn in the side that plagued that specific experience from a user interface or from an ease ability or from interconnectivity. Like if you, some, a lot of the days, in the old days you'd have to get into a specific coin to do anything. Now a lot of those, you know, interconnectivity points have been built and now a lot of the innovation that I see that's most exciting allows users to participate in DeFi and not even know that they are right. It's, it's integrated at the exchange level. You, you couldn't do that as an exchange, you know, until now. This time is very unique. And so you see these large, large on ramps that are going to be utilized. Why are they going to be utilized? Well, because they give the user a lot more than they, than anyone else is giving them. They give them a higher yield on their deposits. They give them more lending options and more functionality as a bank themselves to make money and arbitrage opportunities off of their money. All of those things are being woven into the fabric, right? It, they're not ready to go until it's easy to use them. If there's one thing that I've missed in every single cycle, it's the I, I grossly underestimate how easy something has to be for mass adoption, right? And so if you look at some of the things that we've been claiming and hailing is to be kind of disruptors and huge market movers in the crypto space and how they translate into the traditional markets. A lot of them have been really hard to use until now. And so I, I just see this wave of adoption coming and even on the, the purchasing side, right, you see this natural buy pressure from Wall street that's coming in at even a paper level, at a product level like microstrategy or strategy. Now like all of this buying pressure is now systematic. It's Almost like the 401k 1% volume every day in the markets. It's just this constant buy that lifts everything and it's really attached to the inflation curve or to the inflation, you know, of, of the dollar. We're starting to see that type of rising tide floats all ship activity in the crypto space which means it's going to change the way the four year cycle works. It's going to change everything we know about the market because now we have a new master essentially. And time will tell when they let it pop again and, and we see price appreciation go where it is. But you know, I would, I would venture to say that, you know, if you look at the gold and the silver market over the last 20 years, you could see some unique products being built like ETFs. And you saw a lot of price manipulation based upon the fact that you have counter levers in the market that now it can be used for those purposes. And I see the same thing, the maturity and the adoption of crypto and is bringing those types of products and those types of levers to, to, to this market. And it's exciting. Why? Well, because it guarantees volume, it guarantees flow like that, those types of infinite money loops where people can make bets and offset their bets and they're doing it in tax advantage vehicles or according to their charter rules. The, the, to the extent their exposure allows. Like those are all things that, you know, I, I saw that CME is now doing spot Solana pricing. Right. So this integration, the CME is, is now doing that. So you know, if we're talking about like the, the innovation on the crypto exchanges, they're like light years ahead of that like Coinbase and those other ones. But you're, you're even talking about the CME and the NASDAQ and these kind of traditional spaces having to adapt, adapt and adopt this technology.
- [25:15]
B
I mean here you go. NASDAQ Moving forward with 24. 7 stock trading. Expect to have 24 trading on weekdays by Q2. Right. I mean, and I had seen another story 23 hours. So there was one hour of maintenance. But speaking of being light years ahead.
- [25:29]
A
Right.
- [25:30]
B
But I guess the problem though is like once we have stocks 24, 7, 365, once you have, as Tom said, Poly Market Public now available to the United States, people like we need crypto to be a lot More than the thing you can speculate on when other markets are closed and with higher leverage. Because now you're going to be able to bet on the weather. I would even say there's going to be a time when you can bet on the weather with leverage, because why not? And you'll be able to bet on options. 24 7, 365. So what's left for us? We don't need meme coins.
- [26:07]
D
Yeah, we're already seeing a ton of markets, particularly in prediction products. So things around inherent leverage that you can utilize to juice up your bets. We're seeing parlays which are coming in from traditional sports betting, which they've renamed, I think combos or something Kalji did, which is like, hilarious. We're also seeing rehypothecation and utilization of positions to actually use as collateral. So, for example, if I bet on, you know, Trump decides to run for a third term and wins or something like that, and the outcome is not for another three years, but that position all of a sudden went from one cent and then he announces it and all of a sudden it's 45 cents. And I made all this money. Can I use that position as collateral and some of my other investments. Now, another recursive loop of leverage here. But you see this in traditional finance all the time, right. I have an asset. I want to find a way to actually utilize that and, you know, put it in another position or de risk or whatever. And you're seeing a lot of interesting things around prediction markets. Now, I think we do have to be careful, though, because the prediction market activity in particular right now is largely driven by sports betting 65 to 70%. And that is predicated on some recent regulation in the new, you know, big beautiful bill by Trump that made it very punitively, you know, very cost prohibitive to actually do sports betting these other platforms and have another, you know, a number of other tax advantages from doing our prediction markets. But, you know, that is very fragile. If that changes and all of a sudden that flips back. These platforms do not look as interesting as they used to. Yes, there's inherently a number of other things right now, but I think we're still in the euphoria phase. We're all excited we found, you know.
- [27:45]
E
Something what does look interesting in 2026 is what are. What's the consequences, good or bad, of significantly cheaper money? Because we're going to get it right. We're going to get meaningful reductions in interest rates and, you know, a prediction that I'm Very comfortable making is at some point we'll see consolidation in the crypt industry associated with exchanges. You know, I'm reminded that, you know, Morgan Stanley bought e trade for $13 billion, I think right around five years ago. That's an interesting number. Right. Who's to say that there isn't an exchange here in the United States, you know, fully compliant across the board, given the regulatory environment that we find ourselves in where there isn't a purchase by a Morgan Stanley? Right. So, you know, Morgan Stanley, I know a bunch of guys there from, you know, my tradfi days. There were whispers of a, you know, some sort of crypto opportunity that Morgan Stanley would jump on and those continue. And that said, that has everything to do with just the customers that exist at that exchange and adding millions and millions and millions to the Morgan Stanley ecosystem. It also shouldn't, should be noted that Morgan Stanley is one of the, you know, only, you know, principal money management firms that has, you know, has retained global reach.
- [29:18]
B
Right.
- [29:19]
E
So a lot of the money management firms, whether it's Merrill or, or some others, they won't, you know, they basically consolidated and sold off all their assets everywhere but the United States. Morgan Stanley didn't do that. So the ability to service customers on a global scale and bring in 50 million new folks associated and have access to Morgan Stanley and Morgan Stanley has access to. That's the only reason they bought E Trade is because Morgan Stanley effectively went from 3 million customers to 5 to 7x that number when they purchased E Trade. So the same thing could happen with our crypto exchange given the, you know, big, big wide lanes associated with the regulatory space and real clarity there, as well as cheap money and the opportunity to go out and make a, an acquisition to the tune of, you know, 10, 15, $20 billion. I probably don't need to name the exchanges that would fit into that particular slot, but there's a couple of them.
- [30:24]
B
Yeah, that makes sense. I like what Tom kind of said about the fragility of a lot of the things we can currently do. Right. We'll see what happens, obviously, with the poly markets, but I think one of the biggest ones worth discussing, obviously is this, that the Senate Banking Committee confirms bitcoin and crypto market structure. Bill will not advance in 2025. No surprises here. I think we've got like three more days of the government pretending to do something in 2025, which is like three minutes of actual, like, they're the opposite of crypto years. Like, you know, in a normal year is a year in crypto, it feels like 17 there. They just like do three months. But now this is getting punted to 2026. I'm old enough to remember at the beginning of the summer when this was going to be done in August, President Trump said it had to be on his desk. Right, listen, we know the government's slow, so I'm not, I'm not criticizing him specifically, obviously, but the point being that this keeps getting kicked and the further it gets kicked, the further we get to midterms, the further we get towards the odds of this not happening. And talk about fragile, right? I mean, if we don't get legislation, all it takes is a new head of the Senate Banking Committee or a new SEC chairman, even in a couple of years, and all of a sudden we have the pendulum swinging back the other way and everything that we've seemingly built starts to come apart. So I think it is worth noting how fragile the current Goldilocks phase is. I think is why it's so frustrating to people that we haven't seen price move in this beautiful Goldilocks space.
- [31:59]
D
Yeah, this is, this is very big. So what are the remaining issues right now? Stablecoin yield, who's going to get that and why? AML, KYC for DeFi. It seems like we're almost there on that. Who's going to have the jurisdiction over crypto? SEC or cftc? And then finally, which seems to be the biggest sticking issue are Trump related profits on crypto and how, you know, going forward, his associated entities can potentially profit from the space. So that's a few things to still work through. Right now it seems like we're, we're at the finish line here and there's a lot of agreement, but it's going to take some time. And the priority when we come back from recess here is actually going to be the government shutdown bill, which they.
- [32:40]
A
Can shut down again in January.
- [32:42]
B
I mean, let's go, let's do it. Shut it down. But, yeah, I mean, Tom, you're right.
- [32:48]
A
This is, see, it's, it's going to.
- [32:50]
B
Clearly go further down the list of priorities.
- [32:54]
C
It is. But at the same time, I think the genie is out of the bottle. I don't think you can put the cat back in the bag. I think that if you just look at the, the, the innovation and the rate of innovation, that Coinbase alone, I could take you through a litany of things that they've done in the last six months that are so disruptive and so inclusive and rewrite the rules as it relates to invitations of IPOs and public offerings and yield on defi. You can participate in yield farming through defi without even knowing what defy you're using all these access points. With 130 million customers. If I just take anything from the past, look at every other administration, look at any other period of time, Coinbase has always gotten the pass. I mean, yeah, they've had to bite, fight a little friction here and there, but for the most part they've been the golden child that can do no wrong and that has gotten, you know, given, been given the green light to do all of these innovative things. You can't stop that because the rest of the world is already got the recipe. So I think at some level, all the politicians know that this is going to keep going with or without us. And, and so all you're doing at some point is hurting, you know, the U.S. economy from being able to participate in it. And I don't, I don't see any legislation. Yeah, we may not get clarity as soon as we thought and yes, this may drag out a little bit, but I don't see anybody stopping innovation because there's.
- [34:26]
B
Yeah, yeah. What we can and cannot do. Right. Obviously you said the golden child and I thought of this movie. Do you guys remember this movie? It was so.
- [34:35]
E
Yeah, yeah, it's hilarious.
- [34:46]
B
Before we let you go, like, let's just talk market once again really quick. I mean, will any of these things be a catalyst and what do you expect, like in your mind as you're handicapping it, Nobody has a crystal ball but 2026, right? There's the four year side. We have to talk about this every show it's mandated for your cycle. Crowd says top was in in October. See you in, I don't know, like 2036 or something. I don't know. There's. Yeah, and then there's the 2026 is going to be amazing. Yay, crypto.
- [35:17]
D
Yeah, I, I'm, I'm sort of a permeable. So this is hard for me, unfortunately, but, you know, structurally bullish. But you know, one of the issues that caused this crash, it was Trump talking about tariffs on China 100% tariffs on Texas 10. And then all of the structural leverage and unwind that came from that was still working its way through the system. And then we had this whole Japan currency yield sort of crisis again. Tradfi sucking liquidity out of what is now a huge macro asset. You know, these things are going to clean themselves up next year and the four year cycle is is completely dead. If we're going down next year, it's not because of that. It's because of things like politics. The Clarity act not being passed. Midterm election years are generally challenging for risk assets. So all of those things are structurally much more important than if Bitcoin emits a fraction of a percent less on markets. Now, my view is clarity gets passed after we go through the government shutdown issues that we have to resolve in January. The next item on the docket is certainly crypto, and that will be barring any other black swans that will be the focus once we have that know there have been projections out there from grayscale and other big providers, Coinbase, that are looking at 300 billion plus on the sidelines waiting to come in. Once we have legislative clarity on if these things are commodities, securities, and what they can actually do with them, because that trickles down to not only the actual traders and, you know, folks who want to hold the assets, but the custodians, the record keepers, all of like the financial plumbing that still exists, who still have real challenges with these assets. So, you know, structurally, I think second half, you know, Q2 onward, very, very strong for, for crypto more broadly. And you're likely to see another, you know, continued influx of easing, whether that be reduction of qt. Like we've seen quantitative tightening, further injections of liquidity. Basset just came out right before the show and said, hey, we're given 1 to 2k stimulus. Checks out, like whatever your view is on inflation, that can't be good for it. But hey, guess what he did. So there's, you know, there's a, there's a lot. Yeah, he said 1 to 2K tax refunds in Q1, 20, 26.
- [37:24]
B
And we also, Trump also said we'd raise like 18 or 16 trillion in tariff revenue or something. And I was like, dude, you pay off half the debt in six months. Good job. There's no way these guys, how are they going to do $2,000 stimulus?
- [37:37]
C
Yeah, but the print and press, this.
- [37:40]
D
Is where you know where it's going.
- [37:41]
C
Right?
- [37:41]
D
So you still have this broader backdrop of financial nihilism, which people feel like the only way to make it is 10 leg parlays or crypto. So guess what? If you're get, if you're getting money in your bank account, these. I feel like an old man, but, you know, younger kids, younger generation is like, I can't buy a house. I'm just gonna, just gonna give it a shot here. So let's Keep. Let's see what this bitcoin thing could do for me. I've heard it's gonna hit a million. So, you know, I think you're just gonna see a lot of the formal flows and that does happen in the back half of cycles, which I still think this is one broad cycle. You do see 20 to 30% corrections across bull markets and I think this is just that.
- [38:15]
B
Good news is I found a clip. We're good. It does have music, actually, but I'm not going to play it because I don't really know how. But yeah, I mean, listen, I think everybody here is more optimistic about 2026 and less concerned about the cycle. But I can't speak for everybody, but that's certainly how I feel. I think Andrew and Tom and I have discussed that enough. So, Tom, man, thank you very much. We're going to let you jump and go about your life, watching TV and waiting for something to invest in to pop onto your desk. No VCs work as hard as the government now.
- [38:52]
D
A lot of good, A lot of good Netflix shows out there for the.
- [38:55]
C
Yep, sure. The VCs are sitting on lots of cash and the government isn't. So, you know.
- [39:01]
B
Well, guys, give Tom a follow at sunlevy89. It's right there. I even brought up the names. Thanks, man. See you soon.
- [39:08]
D
See you soon, guys. Thanks.
- [39:09]
C
See you, Tom.
- [39:10]
A
What's up, guys?
- [39:12]
C
What's up?
- [39:13]
B
You know, I tried to Google, I used the Google machine to, to look up Tom Lee's hair when we were doing the bear thing and you just get like, Tommy Lee from yes.
- [39:23]
C
Oh, man, I didn't realize.
- [39:25]
B
There is one of him. All his glory he made it in. But even as.
- [39:29]
E
Yeah, there's money. Yeah.
- [39:31]
B
Tommy Lee's hairstyles throughout the years.
- [39:33]
E
There's another one. You know, I saw a few. A few weeks back.
- [39:38]
B
It was.
- [39:38]
E
It was slicked back a little bit. I was a little disappointed. Gotta be honest. I need to send him a note.
- [39:43]
B
Yeah, we gotta poof that thing up.
- [39:44]
A
The market can only be as.
- [39:46]
B
It can only go as high as Tommy's hair.
- [39:50]
E
No, we need somebody that can do one of those, you know, one of those tweets that says for every hundred likes, I'll make Tom Lee's hair higher. Right? And bigger. And then at some point it gets so big there's. There's like one of those little weird little green little wases, like poking out looking, you know, from the hair.
- [40:13]
B
I haven't heard that term since the last.
- [40:15]
E
Yeah, that Weird little community still exists somewhere.
- [40:20]
B
What? Do I want to talk about this?
- [40:22]
E
Yeah, let's talk about it.
- [40:23]
B
Let's do it. Should we try Arch Public? I totally misquoted last week, and then I went on a tweet tirade after the show on Tuesday because I was wrong. I said on the show, I was like, I think I'm down like 11, 12%. Of course, Bitcoin was like, you know, up in the low 90s.
- [40:40]
A
And then right after the show, I.
- [40:42]
B
Saw a sell trigger on my eth.
- [40:44]
A
Yeah, I called you guys. I was like, what the.
- [40:47]
B
And I was back above cost basis on ETH. Literally up on the ETH position when it was like 3300ish. Now the cost basis is lower again.
- [40:56]
A
So at that point I was down.
- [40:58]
B
6% on Solana, up 0.6% or something on ETH, and down 7% on Bitcoin. Now I think we're back to about down 10% and buying again. Nobody has ever cheered for bitcoin to go lower probably than me or anybody else using Arch Public. I'm so here for this sideways thing. Somebody posted a tweet that showed a chart with a huge green candle up to 185.
- [41:23]
A
And it was like, bitcoin does this tomorrow.
- [41:26]
B
What do you do? Everyone's like, lambo exit. I'm like, cry, cry.
- [41:31]
C
Exactly. It does change your emotions.
- [41:34]
A
More money eventually coming, and I would.
- [41:35]
B
Like to, to buy it now instead of at 185,000.
- [41:39]
C
Yeah, no, it definitely changes the way you approach the markets, and in a good way, I think. Traditionally, you react to the markets as price goes up. You feel the euphoria and you chase that price increase. And you really, you know, if you read any books of any significance, if you listen to any of the professionals in the space, they'll tell you to counter trade the market. Right? Buy when people are fearful, sell when people are greedy. You're supposed to be doing the opposite. And it's hard to do that. The emotions of, of doing that, you know, you, you're too in love with your money to do that without it be consternation. And so automation helps do that, and automation gets you disciplined about keeping powder dry. You know, I, I, if you talk to anybody right now, there's kind of two schools of thought, yours where it's like, yeah, keep going lower. I've got dry powder and I want to keep accumulating at a lower cost versus somebody who, you know, doesn't have dry powder and has a cost basis up at 126. Because they purchased everything up there. You know that concentration risk is hard.
- [42:47]
B
And all those treasury companies.
- [42:49]
C
Yeah.
- [42:50]
B
What.
- [42:52]
C
So, so great point. And so there is a way to de risk volatility. And you know, you hear Scott talking about in a down market that there was a sell event. Well, that sell event, according to his software that he's programmed, can only sell when it's in profit because. So it's keeping track of his cost basis on a specific.
- [43:13]
A
Can I show you this while you're talking because. Yeah, yeah.
- [43:16]
B
I just wanted people to see it because we fixed the chart.
- [43:19]
A
See all these longs.
- [43:21]
E
Yeah.
- [43:21]
B
Or below cost basis.
- [43:22]
A
We got above cost basis. Which by the way you could also.
- [43:25]
B
Be selling below cost basis and still helps you.
- [43:27]
E
Yeah.
- [43:28]
B
Because you're selling something you bought lower. So it's not really like it's, it's a potato, potato. It's how you want to approach it.
- [43:34]
A
It literally got above cost basis and just unloaded profit from all of these longs and then just started dollar cost averaging again as it went lower.
- [43:42]
B
I mean it's insane.
- [43:43]
C
Well, it's, it's what took to, to the point that you're saying if you've heard from anyone, volatility is an asset, but you have you no way of really using volatility as a means to make money. This is what they're talking about. It's like markets are moving up and down. There is volatility in both directions, even when it's directional in one way. Like if you're in a down market. Right. And we've been in a down market for the last couple of months. It doesn't mean that there's not going to be short term volatility upside that can be harvested. And so to the degree that you're sitting there watching the market 24 7, you can take advantage of those things or to the degree that you want to take advantage of them while you're living your life, automation can take advantage of those opportunities. And so what is, what happens in those events? Well, you're taking profits off the table and you're reloading your account with new fresh liquidity that then you can be, you know, buying at a lower cost basis when the price starts to retrace again, which you can see on the chart, it did three additional purchases. What's interesting and what I just want.
- [44:48]
A
To point out, like if you look. So every single one of these longs is the dead snipe of the bottom.
- [44:55]
B
Of a big candle.
- [44:57]
A
So if you were manually just Timing this and you're like, every one of these days I want to buy. You might have bought here or here or here. You're buying the dead bottom of that period that you've set.
- [45:07]
B
This happens to be on a six hour. I also have a daily ETH running. Right. I mean we can look at all the things I've got going over here. Right? These are all of my algos.
- [45:16]
A
But so, but I mean it's just absolutely snipes the dead bottom of every.
- [45:20]
B
One of these candles.
- [45:21]
A
So yes, like price went lower than here, but I wanted to buy that.
- [45:25]
B
Day and I got.
- [45:26]
C
Well, let's talk about if you want to accumulate a position in something, whether it's Nvidia or Bitcoin or ETH or whatever it may be, when should you be buying?
- [45:38]
E
What?
- [45:39]
C
What is the best time to buy into a position? Number one, if something's volatile and you're making a meaningful investment, you should be spreading those purchases out so you get a healthy exposure to a long period of time. That's called getting a healthy exposure to a cost curve. You want a cost curve over the longest period of time that you can stomach right before the exponential move or the move that you're planning on capturing. But you know, when, let's just say you have six months to place that capital over that six month period. When should you buy? Well, you should buy when you have the most liquidity to buy. Well, when do you have the most liquidity to buy? When there's more sellers than buyers. So when are there more sellers than buyers on big red candles? When are you getting the best price on big red candles? When can you measure market exhaustion and turnaround so that you can make, you know, great bottom buys on big red candles? And so the software, again to Scott's point, you know, it's going to do things that you as a manual trader are not going to be able to do, which is only buy on big red candles. So it's very disciplined about that. It's not going to chase. If there's a big green candle, you're never going to see it going, oh, I got to get in. It's programmed. You're telling it only buy when there's a discount in price. And if you take that mentality and you do it systematically in small chunks over long periods of time, you can set it and forget it. And it's just a system. You know, as price goes increases, there's more dry capital and more profits that have been harvested. As price goes down, there's more Dips. And the only time you really have to think about it is when there's prolonged dips or prolonged movements up. You know, you may find yourself rich in cash and light in position or rich in position and light and cash. And there's, you know, rebalancing efforts that you can do on your own inside the software by just changing the settings. It's all user driven. So you can literally change any of these settings to make, you know, your purchases larger, your purchases smaller, your cells larger, your cells smaller. You know, you can time, you can create a, you can say okay, I want to buy on a red candle that's this big or I want to buy on a Kevin handle that's this big and you can make it exactly the way you want it as the bottom line.
- [47:52]
B
I would just like to remind people that a, my goal is accumulation, not necessarily like having more dollars. So that's kind of irrelevant. But if that was even your goal, using my strategy, which is not a strategy built for that. I started buying ETH with this thing when it was $4,800 and last Tuesday at 3,290 was even. Yeah, okay, like yes, it went lower than that. But like I top ticked the beginning.
- [48:22]
A
Of this strategy like to the day.
- [48:24]
B
On all of these assets and still was making profit on a sale a week ago.
- [48:32]
C
When you start trading something is the timing and, and you. No one can time the market. There is no one out there. If anyone's telling you they know exactly what's going to happen and they, the future, they're lying to you. They're guessing. And so anytime you're guessing about something, you have to actually create strategies that protect you from yourself. Right. Scott's biggest risk, when he came to us and said, hey, I'm, I want to put some capital into some positions and I want to, I'm going to top by. Well, he, he, he was flat out saying I want 50% of my capital placed at 126. It was when we broke that all time high. He was fomoing like I've not seen him FOMO before. Well, who's his worst enemy in those moments? He is his worst enemy.
- [49:18]
A
Right.
- [49:18]
C
So the software and those parameters are a governance that allows you to go, okay, I, I'm not afraid of missing the boat. I've got a system, I've got automatic strategies that are watching the market. They're going to respond on my behalf. I don't have to sweat it. And then you just let time take care of itself and time take does take care of itself.
- [49:36]
B
Why?
- [49:37]
C
Well, because the price moves and you have rules in place that have activity attached to that movement. So when it moves, you get to see your program actually execute and, and those trades take place. And that's a very powerful notion that once you see behind the curtain, and this is kind of the, the, the, you know, the final point here is that once you have seen automation and you've used it and you've controlled it and you know you can control it and you can maintain control, control of your money, you'll never turn back. It, it provides you a freedom and a comfort and, and it's not like you're get, you're betting on anything other than the tried and true methods that mathematicians and market analysts have been using since dawn of time to manage volatility, which is dollar cost average. This is just the next level of dollar cost averaging. Like, yeah, it's, well, well, it's, it's just the next level dollar cost averaging is going, I'm going to spread out my purchases. Well, great. If you spread out your purchases, the question becomes still, when do you buy? Is it Tuesday at 9:00am well, there's no, there's no market data that's driving that decision. It's you just picking an arbitrary time and date to enter into that position. That's a very unintelligent way to dollar cost average. An intelligent way to dollar cost average is what I talked about earlier. Picking very big dips across that curve and entering your position on all of those dips and spreading out the capital across all of those dips. So you get the exact opposite of what Michael Saylor gets, which is big orange dots on the tops of every candle. You just want big orange dots on the bottom of every candle. And a lot of people would go like, well, you think you're smarter than Michael Saylor? No. Michael Saylor buys the tops because he gets the most, most amount of debt at the tops. He gets to borrow against share price. His share price is highest when Bitcoin's highest. So when is he gonna buy Bitcoin? When he has the most amount of money to buy it. When does he have the most amount of money? When bitcoin's at its highest. So it's, it's not, he's not buying it because he wants to top blast every candle. He's buying at that because that's when he gets to buy the most. You get to buy the most. Unless you have a public company that can raise debt like that. When Bitcoin's at its cheapest. You know, don't follow Michael Saylor's example is my point on when you, when you dollar cost average into Bitcoin, he's literally buying the tops of candles.
- [52:08]
B
Andrew. Yeah, I mean, I know, I know you're riveted by.
- [52:13]
E
Yeah, listen, what we hear from our customers is our tools just dramatically shift the way they think about the process of allocating to crypto. And there is no, there is no end to what our tools can do. If you want to scale out of a position, there's 40 different ways to do that. If you want to scale into a position, there's a hundred different ways to do that. If you want to arbitrage a position to increase another position, there's 50 different ways to do that. And then, most importantly, at least from my vantage point, it's one thing to have tools, but you could hand me a toolbox and I'm not going to know what to do with 97 of the things that are in that toolbox. That's just the way that I've, you know, gone about my life.
- [53:11]
C
That's the path he's chosen and he will not deviate.
- [53:15]
E
Same thing with automation. You can be handed tools for free. We give all this stuff out for free. But our concierge program teams, you know, have the ability to dial what it is that you want to get done perfectly. They know how to use these tools ad infinitum. And Scott's gone through that journey. Right. It's like started here and then maybe I want to do this, but I want to do this. And what about this? And okay, I feel really comfortable with this now. I want to even dial it in a little bit tighter and you'll have the same exact experience and they'll never stop getting on calls like this with you to discuss it, adjust it, and talk to you about how you can make the changes you need to make to get exactly what it is that you want from all the tools that we provide people.
- [54:02]
B
Yeah, I think that about sums it up. We got arch public here, archpublic.com you guys can check it out. Go participate. Available on Kraken, Gemini, Robinhood, Coinbase, and more coming.
- [54:18]
C
Yeah, we also are going to be at the Bitcoin Investor week in February with a bunch in New York, Anthony Pompeiano's Bitcoin conference, if you will, and super excited about that. If you're a customer of ours, we'd love to have you out there and love to meet you, you in person. It Be very similar to what we did with the bitcoin conference. But we'll have. Absolutely.
- [54:45]
B
There's no doubt about it when you guys find out about it. Really?
- [54:49]
D
Yeah, yeah.
- [54:51]
B
I love my audience, but maybe tell me first.
- [55:00]
C
We could have told you 10 times and you wouldn't have heard us.
- [55:03]
A
Whatever.
- [55:05]
B
There's a squirrel.
- [55:06]
A
I'm.
- [55:06]
B
Because I'm looking at Tom when he's there.
- [55:11]
E
Yeah, we, we. We're gonna do some really cool stuff at that event. We've pretty much taken over the entire VIP experience at that event. We're gonna do some special, you know, they call them activations for that. That. That group there. Got a bourbon thing. We got, you know, all sorts of stuff that we're going to be doing that's going to be really, really unique and people will. Are going to love. So yeah, it's going to be a good time.
- [55:39]
B
Sounds amazing. When they come, it's gonna be amazing. What are the dates in February? I've always wondered.
- [55:45]
C
The 13th. Listen, you're coming. Even if we have to show up and club you over the head and drag you up there like Valentine's Day like Gary did. No. Remember Gary did that to the big bitcoin conference. Your car broke down or flat tire.
- [56:00]
B
Sitting on the highway staring at flames.
- [56:03]
E
Yeah.
- [56:05]
B
You turned through Payne's Prairie in Alachua County. It's a good time. Dodging alligators and wild mustangs is a good time.
- [56:12]
C
Yeah, it'll be a blast.
- [56:14]
A
All right, guys, that's all we got. Obviously I gotta run. Do crypto.
- [56:17]
B
Town hall. Tillman and Andrew and I will be back next Tuesday for sure. And I will be back tomorrow. That's all we got. Thank you, gentlemen. Check out arch public.com later.
- [56:26]
A
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