← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:00]
Scott
Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Crypto Town hall on this Thursday, May 8th. We are here every single weekday at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. Dave, can I just start calling you my co host? Is that fair at this point?
- [00:17]
Dave Weisberger
Well, it certainly seems like that, but.
- [00:20]
Scott
That'S okay with my co host Dave Weisberger here with the ghost of Mario and brand newer Dave and I here to talk about everything happening obviously in the market. And Dave, I mean you look at price and that's all anyone wants to talk about, right? Bitcoin trading right now 99,400 or so pushed right up under 100,000 before retracing a bit this morning. You know, this is the moment when everybody gets euphoric, of course, because you can smell that big psychological level. But maybe the story if we want to talk markets before news is that for once ethereum is up 8% in the last 24 hours while Bitcoin's up 2.2%. A lot of technical indicators. I've been sharing it pretty aggressively because I hate fun and I hate people liking me and I want everybody to troll my post. So I've been saying Ethereum had this incredible monthly candle, looked technically massively oversold. I think that the FUD is overstated. Ethereum obviously does have problems, but the it's going to zero and it's dead situation we've been having meant that maybe Ethereum was due for a little bit of a rally, but Ethereum looking really good obviously. Solana up 5% in the last 24 hours. Sui up 13% which is a chart that I love had beautiful bull flag under resistance. It's breaking out. So maybe that's a long winded way of saying Bitcoin pushed up and altcoins pushed up more, which hasn't really been a thing in a while.
- [01:51]
Dave Weisberger
Yeah, I mean look, there's a few things going on here, right? Bitcoin is a hated rally, you know, and it's funny because I've been, you know, I've got. People have called me a permeable so many times over the last month, I just laugh. You know, I thought that the triple bottom in the high 70s was important. I thought that the institutional buying was manifesting and is slow and patient and the kind of thing that crypto people aren't used to. But this is so obviously spot led and continues to be spot led that it's funny. I mean I posted this morning about the funding rates. I mean we're seeing no derivative speculation, no froth. There's no mention from retail on Google, none of that. All of this from a bitcoin perspective is just there are patient accumulators who are, I'm not going to say price insensitive, are not going to push the price consistently, but they're not going to let it go down either. And they're just going to float with the market and participate. We used to call those participation algorithms which for those who understand stock trading tend to be over time the best way to dollar cost average into positions when you want to accumulate them. You're seeing that behavior in a variety of different ways play out in Bitcoin. At the same time we've said that people have been selling bitcoin in the crypto sphere and using, using it to potentially speculate or sell what they had to. I would think that the money that they've raised is now, you know, going from the sidelines into, into alts. And I think Ethereum from a trading point of view, I've always thought that you're right on the trading point of view. I just don't know enough about what Ethereum will do and where the use cases will be for the long term view, but in the short term view, I mean, yeah, it looks oversold. There's no, no two ways about it and has looked oversold. And you're pointing out the bullish divergence last month is seemed absolutely right as well.
- [03:46]
Scott
Yeah, maybe. Don, we've got you up here, man. It was great seeing you obviously at the banter party. Speaking of Rand nooner in in Token. It was great to catch up there in Dubai. First question that's the most important that I asked everyone at Token. Are you sick or did you survive? Got me there. So sick that the mic button doesn't work. Okay, we're going to go ahead, continue on and move into the news that we have because there's actually quite a lot of news at the moment right now that's extremely bullish and is getting I think is getting drowned by price and obviously trade talks. But we have some very crypto specific news that I think is incredible. First of all, Coinbase to acquire Deribit for roughly 2.98 billion in cash and in stock. Expanding into crypto derivatives. Deribit is the largest futures platform in crypto by far has the bulk of global trading is a massive move for Coinbase. Obviously we can talk about inflows on spot ETFs but I think we know that when price is up we generally have these massive inflows. We got approval of the second.
- [04:55]
JW
Go.
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Scott
Go ahead, Dave.
- [04:57]
Dave Weisberger
I was just going to say you glitched out a bunch. I missed a lot of it. Did anybody hear everything Scott was just saying?
- [05:03]
Don
I did.
- [05:04]
Dave Weisberger
Okay, then it must be for some reason.
- [05:06]
Scott
Sorry. Yeah, you never know if it's you or the, or the machine but. And then continuing on, STR Asset management plans to merge with asset entities to form the first publicly traded bitcoin asset management company facilitating tax free stock for bitcoin exchanges. So this is a micro strategy type. Type strategy so to speak. But specifically for asset management company we also have the CEO of Bitcoin magazine who's here often, David Bailey to raise 300 million to launch a bitcoin focused investment firm. And then on top of all that, Arizona passed itself second attempt at a bitcoin strategic reserve law. It fell short of I think what a lot of people would like. It's pretty defined as to how they can do it. But after seeing the governor veto one just a few days ago, the second bill that came across was approved. This of course right after New Hampshire approving their own strategic bitcoin reserve. And then you have obviously Besant continuing the roadshow for digital assets in the United States saying that the United States needs to be the capital of digital assets and to dominate the world. And in that space it's just, it's insane how much. Oh, and finally US banks can buy and sell customers crypto assets on their behalf. OCC says that's one of the bank regulators. So that's all in the last 36 hours. All of that. It's. So bitcoin should be going up, right? I don't think it's as strange as it would be. I mean Sasha, what do you make of all of this news? Jump on in.
- [06:35]
Sasha
I mean I think it's exciting where we're waiting to see everybody flocking back to the US after everybody left and even CZ now is asking for presidential pardon so that he can be involved in a management capacity with a binance US entity.
- [06:54]
Bill
Right.
- [06:55]
Sasha
So I think that's really exciting. I think. Well I always try to stay a bit more distance to, to the, the price changes in the market because that's, that's a bit more short term. But yeah, I think a lot of unlocks that were. That we were waiting for and that they're starting to, to come up and, and we'll. It's going to be an exciting conference season.
- [07:21]
Scott
Do you, do you give credence to all those news stories for this? Move up to 100k or do you think that this is more related to, you know, Trump announcement of an announcement on a trade deal with the UK and then of course them coming together for talks in China? I guess the question is do you think that right now we're being driven primarily by macro or do you think that this is, you know, unique to crypto move?
- [07:47]
Sasha
I think there was a scare, right? I mean like there's still a lot of macro uncertainty. You know, Jay Powell's like his keep saying, like they don't have the data to know what, what to do right now and they're all like in wait and see mode to try and see what, what's going on. We don't know what's going on with the tariffs but obviously what, what everybody expects with the tariffs is you know, sudden inflation and prices to reflect tariffs and then as a one off and then no more inflation. But and, and so I think the, the scare and the market of with the tariffs is you kind of diminish the US brand as you know, somewhere where you can predictably do business because you completely inflate the uncertainty. And so it's hard to invest, investor gets scared. And so that created a lot of flows out of those positions which as we know the correlations go to one. So that impacted the crypto markets. But now I think, or perhaps people are starting to realize that there is a lot of uncertainty. The dollar has gone down quite a bit and what's a hedge? And these days what we're seeing is we're in 2020, we're in 2008, where the dollar was a flight to safety. We're not yet really seeing this in this market. And so I think bitcoin has a role to play there. Is that what's driving the market? Perhaps not, but I think that's an interesting thing to keep pushing forward.
- [09:31]
Scott
Rest of the panel, jump in. Would love your thoughts on this.
- [09:35]
JW
Hey JW here. I'd say the regulatory news that you just cited is, you know, it's two or three years ago would have been, would have been mega ultra bullish during the dark days of the Biden administration for crypto. And I think we're probably getting a little bit, a little bit too complacent about how important all those things are. So long term bullish and it should have more price reaction. But, but you know, in terms of, from my view as a, as a, as a cypherpunk lawyer, what I don't see yet that I still want to see, I'm glad to See, in the Senate negotiations of the stablecoin bill, I'm glad to see John Thune looking the Democrats in the face who are trying to bluff him and say they're going to kill the stablecoin bill if he doesn't add more aml. You know, kind of their mantra is more aml, more cowbell. Always more aml. The more AML the better. And Thune looks in, looks at him and says, I call your bluff. I'm bringing it to the floor today. I hope that wins. I hope that, that we have more momentum from national security Republicans losing and pro crypto Republicans and pro crypto Democrats letting crypto grow in a way that doesn't tolerate within the AML BSA regime. The stablecoin bill as is would be fine. There's some AML stuff at the issuer level, but then in the market, stablecoins can't exist without AML kyc, at least as for now. So I'm pleased to see that. I'm pleased to see Thune sticking to his guns and pushing back on that. I am hopeful. Yeah, yeah.
- [11:08]
Scott
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I think just maybe for the benefit of the thousands of people here who might not be following it as close as you, can you maybe just give us the quick tldr on what's actually happening today because it's meaningful. That's really happening.
- [11:21]
JW
Yeah, sure. So stablecoins are going onto the Senate calendar to get voted on. Democrats can stop it. You need a bipartisan vote. And so some of these Democrats who've claimed that they're going to vote against cloture on the stablecoin bill, who previously supported it, who have been previously supported by the crypto industry in their election, have. Have gone with Elizabeth Warren asking for more AML and threatening not to vote for cloture. Thunes called their bluff and said, okay, I'm putting it on the calendar. We'll see if you go ahead with what you claim you do, given what's on the line, which is to say any future support from the crypto community. So I'm proud of Thune for putting his chips on the table there. There's a little bit of risk with it, but I think it's important because, look, if crypto legislation, the future market structure legislation, current stablecoin bills, if it all gets wrapped into the AML KYC regime, and eventually, if that's applied to defi, let's all go home. There's no point to crypto.
- [12:27]
Scott
Yeah. And if they give an today if they give an inch today, that's just going to be an opportunity for the last remnants of the anti crypto army.
- [12:33]
JW
Right, exactly. And KYC Defi is not defy Defi can't have a chief compliance officer. And without defi there's no point to any of these L1s except Bitcoin.
- [12:45]
Scott
So if that comes to a vote today, what does that mean for it moving forward? Obviously we have one act in Congress. This is the act that's in the Senate and this is genius. Right. And the stable side, the stable act is coming out of the Congress. What's the next step?
- [13:04]
JW
Well I think if it passes the Senate, I think it'll pass the House and largely the frame that it passes the Senate when the Senate goes first, the Senate says look House, we couldn't pass anything other than this so take it or leave it. And that usually gets forced down the House's throat. So that's probably what will happen which is fine as it exists now. It's fine hopefully that we won't get, you know, more cowbell, more aml, the better amendments from Democrats that are successful. Hopefully we get the successful cloture vote today in the Senate side.
- [13:35]
Scott
So I think yeah, it's amazing how fast this is all happening. I mean the amount, you know the, the, the SEC completely obviously reversing course was, has, has been huge and at an astounding rate. The fact that we're actually getting stable coins on the floor, Operation Chokepoint 2.0 being rescinded. This OCC news just today, I mean you can't really have asked for much more in the past couple hundred days.
- [14:02]
JW
No, I mean it's good for to me this is the Christmas, this is what I've asked for for Christmas for five years. The other thing I'm watching that I'm hoping is successful is killing the cases against Samurai Wallet and Tornado Cash. That's another privacy threat. Long term, if Bitcoin's going to become more significant, it's going to replace gold if it's become a payment mechanism even. We need some kind of privacy. The only way to get privacy now really in Bitcoin some level of privacy is with coin joins or with. There's some privacy inherent in lightning. But the operator of the best coin, Joint Protocol Samurai Wallet got indicted by the Southern District of New York for money laundering and operating unlawful operation of a money transmitter without a license and conspiracy to commit both. So they're looking at 20 years but hopefully that case goes away. Main justice has said they're no longer to bring cases like this. In a memo, the defense has said, hey, we have evidence now that you went to treasury and said, is this illegal? And treasury said no. And you withheld that exculpatory evidence from the defense, which is a big violation in criminal law. So hopefully that case dies, the samurai guys get out and we get samurai wallet up and running again. Because without some semblance of privacy, Bitcoin doesn't really have a future. So hopefully we're going to win that fight too.
- [15:22]
Scott
Yeah, we had Zach on here yesterday who broke that down really thoroughly. And it's pretty scary that that's still happening. So we definitely need that. That, that would be a huge step. Every lawyer who's come on stage in the past few days has pointed to that samurai case.
- [15:37]
JW
Which I go samurai.
- [15:39]
Scott
Yeah, it's not the big one on people's radar.
- [15:42]
JW
Hey, it's my obsession, man. When, when they, when they got these guys, I probably generated 100 pictures of samurai standing against an army on my Twitter feed just in solidarity and donated. And guys, look for the links to donate to their defense fund. You can, you can Google that pretty easily.
- [15:59]
Scott
All right, so let's talk more about Coinbase and Deribit. Dave, are you back? Are you working?
- [16:07]
Dave Weisberger
Yes, I. I had to reboot my phone.
- [16:10]
Scott
Yeah, I do that at least once a spaces, unfortunately, when I'm dark.
- [16:15]
Dave Weisberger
Yeah, I've been luckier than that. I mean, look, it's. If you look at what, what are your bull. What are your markers for bull markets? You know, the markers for bull markets are smart money starts accumulating. Smart firms start the M and A program processing. This is a big deal. People don't understand how big a deal it is because the playbook for all the biggest financial firms in the world is in. In the US Is that options are one of the biggest products to be able to sell. Right. So, you know, we have a lot of options exchanges. Almost every retail broker does more money in options. Now, there's very good reason to believe in crypto. That won't be the case because options are very important products for a lot of reasons. But the dominant reason, 80% probably of volume, is to get expo. Get leverage for, you know, Delta, you know, just for the ups and downs, straight stuff. And crypto has perpetual swaps, which are incredibly efficient and therefore not as important, but it is very important. And Coinbase jumping in here and getting this done before or Nasdaq or the CME Group or CBOE Group or the ICE could is given the green light by compliance to go after targets like Deribit, to me, just shows how smart Brian Armstrong is, because there would have been a bidding war had he waited six months. And that is a very big deal for crypto for a lot of things. Now, I have a very strong personal reason to care about this, because I think the M and A hysteria will come, and therefore, you know, my company, Coin Routes will probably be one of those that people will want because, you know, find profitable companies that are market leaders in very important parts of the ecosystem. That's going to be very, very, you know, vanishingly rare. And that's cool. But deribit was in a really interesting position because it's where pretty much all the options they've had the critical mass, and Coinbase saw that and grabbed it. And they were not out competing other crypto firms, or maybe they were, but they were certainly trying to jump the gun on traditional finance, and that matters. That's my take on it. I mean, I don't know.
- [18:29]
Scott
What do you think that 100% agree would love the panel's thoughts, because that's exactly what I think. Matteo, go ahead.
- [18:36]
Don
Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that's really remarkable here is like, Deribit is an exchange that we, if Trump hadn't won, we'd probably be seeing sanctions and levies over and all sorts of attacks against. And now we're seeing Coinbase move in and acquire them. I agree, Dave, that M and A being back is a huge signal to the market. And I think that the price action today is a hope that we get some tariff global economic stability starting to come out of all the chaos, which allows for more capital deployment, but I think Coinbase jumping on this is not only really exciting and a huge marker of kind of what's to come in this portion of the season of the cycle. I know we say cycles are broken, but this version of it. But I think the thing that's just most remarkable to me is that this is even happening and that this would happen in the regulatory environment and just shows what a complete change of sentiment it is around these platforms that that Coinbase would feel emboldened to be able to do such a thing on a futures and perpetual platform.
- [19:49]
Scott
Yeah, I guess a big question then, Sasha, I'll go to you. It becomes whether this is a play to bring these products to the United States or whether it's a function of Coinbase's international expansion, because Derby cannot operate in the United States for anyone who doesn't know, or both or you know, or, or both and I guess it will remain to be seen. Sasha, go ahead. And then.
- [20:10]
Sasha
Jw yeah, so yeah, I think it's, it's a, to me it's a huge signal and it's, and it like in the long term, like typically the way, the way it works in traditional financial markets is you build the liquidity on the futures market, then you start building your options market on top of the liquidity you built with the futures market and you start having those futures market. Everybody expected the CME to completely lead that market. But the truth is today.
- [20:40]
Bill
People are.
- [20:41]
Sasha
Still pricing options and derivatives based on derivative data and it's not very accessible for US investors. So people have different ways of trying to getting access to those instruments. But if Deribit can get with, now that it's part of Coinbase, the golden moat in financial services is liquidity. Right? So that's what, that's the biggest, most liquid platform for these types of instruments. And if Coinbase can take that, grow it, make it more compliant, give easier access to their services and bridge the liquidity that they currently have to that platform, have that part of their derivative offering, it's huge because it's not just crypto. I think down the line it's better tech, more efficient ways like perpetuals, when, if that at some point gets the regulatory green light in the next 10 years. And you can then apply this to any kind of financial instrument, not just crypto.
- [21:45]
Matteo
Right.
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Sasha
Also equities and anything you can think of. So I think that's, that's the big picture why this is a huge move by Coinbase.
- [21:59]
Scott
JW.
- [22:01]
JW
Yeah, look in this weird world of crypto exchanges and sexes interacting with Tradfi and the different iterations of those combinations that the future will hold. And there's some interesting speculation about how that will look for the last couple of years in the SARS annual theses. It's exciting. On the one hand, it's always good to see tradfi intersections with C5 joint ventures and graphite products. Anything that buys my bags is great, pumps my bags is great. But at the same time I want to keep it cipher punk. And that makes me a little nervous sometimes when I see these joint ventures and stuff. So I am happy to see when, when Coinbase is in the driver's seat and Bitcoin base is the acquirer, rather than having a crypto entity, the acquired firm strongly prefer to see our kind of cypherpunk culture aligned buyers in the driver's seat doing the acquisition, rather being Acquired. The day I read about Goldman Sachs buying a crypto exchange, I'm going to cry. But I'm really happy to read this news that portends well for trying to keep it cipher punk, which is the key, right? If we lose that, we lose everything. I mean, every SIFMA conference I've gone to and talked with crypto about people, there is not a single soul there that gets it, not a person. So I'm glad Coinbase is the acquirer here.
- [23:25]
Dave Weisberger
I think it's the one thing that I would add, Scott, is I think it's under. People underestimate in the traditional financial world. He just meant, you know, JW just mentioned sifma. You know, I hang out with those guys. I was in multiple committees of CFMA for many years, and I think that it has been assumed for the last decade, not decade, but the last five years, when, when you're looking at Coinbase's stock valuation that, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're playing now as they got good margins. But don't worry, when ICE and NASDAQ and CBO and, and. And some of the big international stock exchanges get involved, they're going to swamp this thing and they'll, you know, and they'll be buying Coinbase. Coinbase is setting themselves up to go into tokenized equities and go the other way. What if. What if rather than the big financial firms perpetuating their monopolies, the large crypto firms grow to a position where they're actually dwarfing them or out competing them? What if it's true disruption and that this. This move actually makes that more likely and signals that it's game on? And I think that people don't necessarily know what's coming. And I think that's kind of the point that I think JW is kind of getting to, other than philosophically.
- [24:44]
JW
Yeah, that's a great point. And we haven't talked tokenized equity yet. Coinbase eating Tradfi is a great future. I love that idea.
- [24:55]
Scott
I think everybody does. Danish jumped on stage. What's up, man? How are you?
- [25:00]
Danish
Hey, what's up?
- [25:00]
Scott
Thanks for having me, Don. We have Don and Donnish.
- [25:04]
Danish
Oh, you said.
- [25:05]
Scott
Donnie.
- [25:06]
JW
It's fine.
- [25:07]
Scott
Don, you. You missed me before. I was trying to talk to you. I don't know if you were glitching. I didn't. Yeah, I didn't know if you were there. Yeah, let me. We'll go to Danish and then we'll go back to the market. I would love your thoughts there. Danish. What's happening?
- [25:20]
Matteo
I Think a world where we think that Coinbase is going to take over tradfi markets is highly unusual given the fact that tradfi markets have been built to keep themselves in power. So I think we're a little bit far away from that reality. But just wanted to make a quick comment on bitcoin that people are interested. I think this is a very interesting time for bitcoin. I think the momentum is actually being driven by a very important narrative which is adoption from government. I think people are perhaps thinking technically they're thinking four year cycle. They're thinking many different reasons but this one is one that will work on new potential buyers of bitcoin. I think that's what we. There's a lot of smart money that's coming in currently. You can tell from a variety of different technical announced.
- [26:13]
Scott
I mean it's Drive Asset Management $300 million fund being raised by David Bailey. It's I mean strategy upticking. You have everybody at that conference. The institutions are going to buy more, not less.
- [26:25]
Matteo
And it seems as though we're going to see ultra high net worths come in. But more importantly, family offices will now have a real conversation around. If you're a family office based in the great state of New Hampshire, which went first again you might say, well the state's going to be backing this. We should probably start having that conversation and we're going to actually start seeing tons of activity from tradfi. And if you think that you saw some entry of people taking some portion of their 401k and coming in, that is nothing compared to what we're about to see in terms. So Gary and I for the first time really disagree. Gary was telling me that hey, this is going to take time. You know Gary, I think this is the first time I've been right against you. I think it's going to be a lot faster than people think. And I think that most people don't realize how quickly the dominoes will fall. The fast followers are coming. I think we're going to expect the narrative for this cycle. Seems like it's going to be the entry of government leading to dominoes for Tradfa that it seems like the obvious narrative for this and we're going to hear more and more about this very quickly.
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Scott
Gary, what do you think before we move on?
- [27:40]
Gary
Well, I'm most certainly the most bearish person on bitcoin. I've been so unsupported, obviously thinking it was moving at such slow speed. I think this is lightning fast, man. What we are doing on the world stage is. It's amazing. People are going to look back at this and go, how stupid were you? I mean, I was just watching sailors deal. You know, he quoted this beautiful quote by Peter Tail. He said there's, there's less courageous people than there are geniuses on this planet. And that explains where we are with bitcoin right now. People have been scared to stick their neck out. And to your point, Scott, I think, and maybe Donnishes, I think people are going to be scared not to stick their beak into the bitcoin pool for risk of what it might mean for their career because I think it's going to be devastating. I mean, look at what the lady did in Arizona. We can say that. I think she backpedaled. Okay. I think the lobby team that worked on her did a really good job of presenting three or four different solutions bills for her. They backed her into a corner. And I'll take the crypto just sitting in Arizona. That is a awesome first step. And everybody's showing the enemy is showing their hand through this process. I think that is really, really helpful for us to start marking down who, who is stopping this. I don't, I'm not an Arizonian, but if my governor resisted something that made a lot of sense to Senate and Congress and the population and then they still vetoed it, I think she's probably part of the problem.
- [29:21]
Scott
Yeah.
- [29:22]
Matteo
So if you are a registered investment advisor that works with ultra high net worths and you are not having this conversation right now, you will be fired by the end of this year. This is like, this is clearly trad fi's expectation you will be fired. Like it is not even like a question. In fact, you should already be fired because they don't have an allocation. Like that's kind of where people are going to play catch up. And people don't know. You think there's FOMO in crypto. The thing about FOMO and crypto is there, there's a lot of early adopters, but the thing about TradFi that many of us know is that there is a giant early majority. That early majority is, is coming. And I think we may cross the chasm in the next few weeks. And I think that is the crossing. The cash was happening.
- [30:09]
Scott
And they don't sell.
- [30:11]
Matteo
And they don't sell.
- [30:12]
Scott
They don't, they don't do years of due diligence to buy an asset and to just get shaken out by the first candle down. So it's just not the same as retail.
- [30:21]
Gary
Hey Scott, if I could just bounce in also. Look blackrock think less than one year ago I was in a space like this and we were theorizing, postulating, you know, wondering what would happen if BlackRock ever said hey, put half a percent of allocation into bitcoin. We thought bitcoin would go to $8 trillion overnight and you know, you'd have Gamma Omega super cycle candles. I mean some new bizarre nomenclature we pop up with. He just said 2%. Yeah, like, like 2%. That is a 400% increase over what we were begging for, hoping for, believing that at half a percent it would be the best thing ever. And we're way above half percent guys.
- [31:16]
Scott
Yeah it's. And that only continues saying it and now he really, as you said that was a very solidified 2% right? We had kind of a maybe 1 to 3, 1 to 4. Now he said 2%. And they're telling this to every registered investment advisor in the country that has exposure to BlackRock, right?
- [31:34]
Gary
Absolutely.
- [31:35]
Scott
This isn't just telling your average people, you know. So Don, now that we got you here and your mic is, is working, what do you make of this move up towards 100k conversation so far? I feel like we do have this euphoria at resistance here for the technical traders but I think all bets are off long term as Danish and Gary are sort of saying.
- [31:57]
Danish
Yeah, yeah it feels that way surely because obviously this move was mainly driven by Sailor Keep who keeps buying all these billions throughout each resistances. Doesn't really matter. ETF flows have really ticked up again the past few weeks and obviously we saw BT being extremely strong the last few weeks of all the tariff drama and I think it only needed some kind of catalyst in this case all the other markets going up as well to really follow the trajectory Gold has already set. And I think it just took some time to churn all these coins, switch them from one hand to the other and yeah, took us a while to build a base around this 80ish area and now we're back into this range. Looks pretty strong obviously. Yeah, the sentiment has kind of flipped pretty quickly here because the altcoins have finally started moving. So I mean long term I think it looks good. I'm still of the assumption that we are yet to see new highs on especially btc. Not sure about all the altcoins but good to see some action back in the markets again at least.
- [33:10]
Scott
And as I'm Speaking Bitcoin is at 99, 8:30 so it's pushing pretty hard right now towards 100, it would be pretty likely, I think that we're going to at least get that test. Once again, people seemingly very euphoric here. But it's pretty crazy, Dave, that you and I were talking about like a tradable bottom. What is it? A month ago, literally 30 days ago, we were at 74,000. Yep.
- [33:34]
Dave Weisberger
I mean, you know, I, I called it at 78. I mean I thought the best tweet back in that, in that week was Billy Barhardt who's, I can't tell if you're a speaker or a listener. Yeah, you know, your, your liquidity tweet back then was, was, was perfect and I think that it's playing out exactly as you said.
- [33:54]
Scott
Bill, come collect your flowers.
- [33:58]
Bill
I think you tried to invite me. I, I, I gotta say this, this, this software has just got to be rewritten from scratch spaces. I just wasted, yeah, I just wasted 15 minutes trying to get up here. Yeah. So look, I think we'd be a little bit higher if it wasn't for the tariff narrative vis a vis the money supply discussion. And you know, there's really not much to discuss. I mean, I think that the tariff discussion is still a bit of a weight on the money supply, which is clearly a balloon and you know, it's not going to go straight up but, but clearly that trade is working and you know, I hope people are paying attention. I mean, I was recording a couple of videos last night and was doing some homework. I think we've got 9 trillion ish that needs to be reset by September. That will cause about 2 trillion in new money printing when you factor in incremental interest, incremental debt, higher interest rates to refinance. And that is going to cause just a flood of cash, you know, a la Covid markets to, to come into the system and you know, repo facilities being reset, replenished. It's just, it's just a, a time of, you know, on the one hand I'm, I'm, it's nice to see Doge is basically causing maybe a little bit less borrowing than you know, would have been otherwise undertaken with new issuances. But there's no denying that we've got a couple of trillion dollars that's going to need to be, I'm using air quotes here printed in order to deal with interest rates being higher and Covid short term borrowings coming due. Ironically, I think Trump had a tweet during COVID which said why aren't we doing 100 year bonds? And if he had done that then Bitcoin might be at 85k right now. But, but he didn't. And, and it didn't happen. So anyway, yeah, looks like the balloon that is crypto is, is being slightly weighted down by the, the anvil that is tariff negotiations. But I think that anvil will go away in short order.
- [36:14]
Scott
So is this at this point in the cycle, if we believe in it, usually we have a sell in May and go away situation before a down summer, this time different.
- [36:25]
Bill
I don't think that way it's possible, but I just look at what the macros are telling me. It's telling me the dot plots are saying that we're going to get a cut in July. If that cut doesn't happen, I would be concerned. Just because everybody's pricing it in. I don't think it really matters per se in terms of liquidity, but it does matter in terms of the news and the narrative. But you know, it's not going to be straight up. I mean, look, I mean there were some, clearly some, some, you know, blips in liquidity over the past couple of months, but it's by and large up into the right. And so again, I think, I think the interruptions will be, will be news driven. Do we get, does peace break out in, in Ukraine? Right, that's another balloon.
- [37:12]
Scott
Or does war break out in India and Pakistan?
- [37:15]
Bill
Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, if, you know, I think the one thing that even the libs have to give Trump is just the president of peace and he just desperately wants peace everywhere. And so there should be a dividend for that at some point. We'll see. But you know, if it pushes oil down, you know, sub 50, which is certainly possible, you know, markets will scream even higher because it'll, it'll offset inflation fears. And I think that's the other thing I think, you know, I think inflation is, is drastically lower than what the, the talking heads would have you believe. And that's, you know, look, Bill, Bill, totally, dude.
- [37:54]
Gary
Where is all this inflation bullshit noise coming from other than housing and T shirts that no one needs, like if T shirts go to 38 bucks, I don't call that inflation because it's not absolutely needed. Where the hell is inflation coming from? Because I see crude oil down, I see gasoline down, and I see no reason why either of those would see a big reversal.
- [38:19]
Bill
Well, I could give you my explanation, but then I'm accused of being just whatever you want to call like a doomsday guy or some, I mean, look, I think they make it up. I think they make up the numerator on unemployment. I think they basically pick and choose the data that they want to report against. I think clearly Powell is playing a game of, of kindergarten chicken with Trump. And you know, it's the American people that, that, well, the world now because of the way Treasuries work, but it's the world that suffers as a result. And it's, it's insane, but that's the world we live in.
- [38:55]
Scott
But that said, Bill, we had obviously the, before the pause, we did have a pivot and the Fed cut and rates didn't go down. So could we argue that right now, even though maybe people disagree on what Powell is doing, that maybe the Fed has been somewhat neutered anyways and what they do is going to be less impactful?
- [39:15]
Bill
I think that was pricing in demand for future new issuances and, and the resetting of short term expirations coming in 25 and, and markets knew that, you know, 25, 50 basis points of cuts and then in bank rates, we're not going to address the demand issue for those new issuances. And that's an ongoing problem. If, if the tariff discussions somehow don't include international buyers of our debt, stablecoins are not going to solve that problem. So, you know, it's a supply and demand problem. Right. There's only so much debt the market can absorb before it says you got to pay anymore. And that's what's going on. And at the time everybody was, oh, inflation's coming higher. And I kept saying, no, inflation is not going higher. This is a supply and demand problem. No one wants to buy your worthless debt. And so I think that's played out a little bit and I think we're getting a little bit of a benefit now for the market's perception that maybe Doge is working a little. We'll see. But the, the real sign will come when the refinancings begin in the next few weeks. And you know, the market has to absorb a couple of trillion dollars in new bonds. We'll see.
- [40:40]
Scott
Lou and Amateo.
- [40:45]
Lou
Yeah, I mean, yeah, obviously big fan of bills, but we'll say in terms of one thing that the libs don't have to admit. Trump is not the president of peace. He's the president from the perspective. And by the way, I think they all suck. Yeah, it wasn't like I was a Biden fan. He seems to be the president of appeasement to me. You know, if he had been president during World War II, he would have given Russia or he would have given Germany England. But that's another thing. You know, I think, you know, also the reason that people expect inflation. There's this book called Wealth Nation written, I think 1776, maybe, something like that, which says if you want to build a wealthy nation, trade with other people who are better at building stuff that you are, and you can send them stuff that you're better at building. And when you do that, you get stuff cheaper. When you stop doing that, then the price of stuff goes up. It is just math that is going to happen by definition. The awesome thing, though, is at any day, and I assume he will at any time he wants, he can end the whole disaster and sign a trade deal with, with China. It'll probably be worse than that we had, but my guess is he will relent and do that at some point because the longer. Yeah.
- [42:08]
Scott
I lost Lou there was that on my enders at Louis.
- [42:10]
Don
I lost same.
- [42:11]
Scott
Yeah, go ahead, Emmett. Yeah, go ahead, Em.
- [42:14]
Don
Yeah, you know, kind of to lose point. It's quite relevant. Trump is speaking right now to this big announcement that just went live and there's just a few developments on these trade deals. That includes the rare earth deal with Ukraine. We knew about that, but it is signed, including rare earth minerals, which that coupled with the investments in, in the US Obviously brings a lot to chip and battery manufacturing. So that's significant. He also mentioned that a breakthrough deal with the UK has been reached that's going to include fast tracking US Goods through customs into the UK So creating a really big alliance in trade with the UK the additional details are coming up. And then obviously we have the meeting with China, which he says will be interesting. So, but that there's just meetings planned with every country. So it looks like there is progress being made and that there is results coming out of the pressure that was applied via tariffs and that, you know, global trade is, is being just renegotiated as a part of this. I think it's been very chaotic, not the way that I would have handled it. But hey, these trade deals are coming around full circle. So curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this.
- [43:42]
Scott
Anyone can jump in. Go ahead, Bill.
- [43:52]
Bill
Sorry, it's a microphone is glitching again. Hey, so on trade deals, you know, I think somebody. I don't know where to start. Two things. One, to say that, you know, Trump would have just, you know, capitulated in World War II. It's just pure insanity.
- [44:12]
Lou
Well, didn't he want to give Ukraine back pieces Of Ukraine too.
- [44:16]
Bill
Yeah. I'm not going to argue with you. I'm not going, I'm not arguing what you said. So anyway, and in terms of the tariff negotiations, look, I think, you know, people thought that, you know, everything, they were flying by the seat of their pants and were acting nuts. I know I'm not in the, I'm not in the sausage factory, but I will say that I fully expect the mainstream media to give, you know, the administration zero credits. And I'm not, you know, look, I'm not here to just pump, pump Trump, but that they will give him zero credits for any deals that put the, you know, American trade situation in a, in a better place than what it was when he took office. Right. It's just not going to happen. Right. And so luckily bond markets won't be confused by that, but, you know, certainly the public will be because, because the mainstream media will basically create their own narrative around this, as they always do. Right. So damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. From, from my perspective. But, but look, I mean, the bottom line is, is that when it comes to crypto, right now, go walk on grass. Because if you're, if you're over trading, it's not going to help because it's clear where this is going. So that's.
- [45:41]
Scott
Mateo. You agree with that?
- [45:44]
Don
Yeah, I mean, I think that the trade deals weren't even a part of the conversation between administrations and foreign countries. It was all back room deals and very little actual exposure to what was going on. So, I mean, I think that this is, is positive. I don't know exactly what we're going to see from the initial market reaction. I think in general, the market in crypto has just become comfortably new, numb to progress and developments. I don't think all of the regulatory infrastructure, stablecoin developments are all priced in. I don't think the markets have the ability to digest this because of all of this macro pressure that's just been keeping the basketball underwater. And I think that the macro headwinds, hopefully, you know, I'm one global piece. I think that's super essential because it seems like the, this thing that just keeps popping up, creating more pressure on the markets. But assuming we can figure out a piece of amongst ourselves and resolve issues in a different way. Seems like some of this dark pressure is clearing and it's depressurizing with upward momentum and I just don't see that stopping anytime soon. And it's exciting to see.
- [46:58]
Scott
Yeah. If you're allowed to jump at any Time without raising your hand officially, by the way.
- [47:01]
Dave Weisberger
Okay. Co host A so the. I don't think it's intentional or was intentional, but if you had a, if you basically set out two months ago to create a market scenario where smart people could accumulate at a lower price knowing where it was going to go and at the same time increase the number, the amount of FOMO when the price does start to rally, you would have done exactly what this administration did. Now, as I said, I don't think it was intentional. I don't think it's 4 week 4D chess or any of that crap. I think that the tariff presentation in the Rose Garden was badly mishandled. I think that Scott Besant, on the other hand, knows exactly what he's doing and there's a lot going on here. I do agree with Bill that I think that ultimately we'll get to the place where we probably want to go. And I certainly agree with Bill, Bill, that the mainstream media is doing everything they can to effectively resist. I mean, whatever the hell that means. And what Lou said about Ukraine, I mean, we could go down that one, Lou. But just remember Obama was what was, was the president when.
- [48:09]
Lou
I hate them all. I hate them all. They're all horrendous people. We don't, we don't have to like, we don't have to like any there.
- [48:18]
Dave Weisberger
We agree on, we agree on there. I don't trust any politicians and I'm particularly disgusted with Speaker Johnson in the House that they haven't even thought about codifying the executive orders that would stop the corruption and fraud that Doge is finding. But the reason for that is obvious. There are lots of Republican congressmen and congresspeople and families that are making money off of that crap too. But that's a different story. But if you really just look at Bitcoin, the fact that MicroStrategy now has, you can complain and Donis and I are going to debate this one out. You can complain about things that microstrategy you doing as much as you want, but empirically this is now four straight weeks or their weekend buying was high was below the price that it traded on Friday and you know, the Friday, the following Friday. And, and that is very different than what normal pyramiding looks like. So it is, it is really interesting what's happening here in this market. I am do not believe that.
- [49:14]
Lou
So David, I'm sorry, what, what is, I didn't catch what that's indicative of.
- [49:18]
Dave Weisberger
It's indicative of a rising market where liquidity is, is there and people that have been selling are going to end up regretting those sales and buying back in higher. That's what it's what's happening. It feels pretty clear that it continues to happen. And you know, look, we're at a critical technical level. Sure, you know, whatever that means. The vast majority of people who are accumulating bitcoin today are buying it believing that it's 90% plus undervalued. Just remember that. So those are not people who sell when Bitcoin drops $10,000. Traders are the ones who have been net short investors, accumulators have been net long. And that that dynamic has yet to change. And I don't think it changes for quite a while. So see what happens.
- [50:09]
Bill
Can I ask you or maybe comment? Do you respond? I think there's something related to this which is this narrative around. It's different this time for altcoins because the money is going into ETFs. I haven't spent hours analyzing this, but I've certainly spent enough time to look at this to believe that maybe 20% of the new money globally is going to into exchange traded products for bitcoin and the rest is, you know, no different than the last cycle. So. And I think you may have speculated that it was more. And if I'm, and if I'm associating that with you, David, and with somebody else, sorry about that but. But someone said it. And I'm curious to know if people still think that's true because my take is, is that a 20, 20% of new money coming into bitcoin via exchange traded products is not enough to prevent the traditional grab for what we call alt season.
- [51:17]
Dave Weisberger
No, I think you're right, Bill. I think that what we call alt season though happens because people in the crypto world have made a lot of money on a bitcoin run and then they take their profits and put it into all.
- [51:28]
Bill
Yeah, that's my point.
- [51:29]
Dave Weisberger
But I don't think that's that. I actually don't think that that's what's going on. I think that new money, whether or not it's microstrategy, Oh, I see 79 other companies buying it.
- [51:40]
Scott
Yeah.
- [51:40]
Dave Weisberger
Whether through exchange traded funds or spot bitcoin. I mean this is very clearly spotlight, very clearly.
- [51:46]
Bill
And yeah, 100, there's very little leverage. I agree with you. I agree with you.
- [51:50]
Dave Weisberger
So I think that most of those buyers are long term buyers, not flippers. I think the flippers will come. I think that today, today, especially if we, you Know, if we get an impulse higher between now and tomorrow, I think you'll start to see flippers buying in, hoping for, you know, follow through. But the, the truth is I don't think that it's the flippers so now. But that said, it's really important to understand something that you and I both know, which is there's a lot of value being created in, across the crypto system. And yeah, there's also a lot of crap, but there's a lot of value there. And sure. But in the short term, money is going to get deployed and so I think we'll have a different all season.
- [52:28]
Bill
Yeah, I'm ultimately all about the use cases and I'm super bullish on a whole bunch of them right now, which is why I mostly make my bets. But in the short term, I like to follow the flows. And I'm wondering, okay, I understand how we got to 420 or 300 wherever Solana was because of Trump and people had to buy Solana. I get all that. But now, you know, if we're creeping back up 20% on certain alts, I think Sue's up like, like 70% from its lows. Where is that money coming from? Is it new money? Is it, is it reallocations from bitcoin? Is it people having to close levered positions? You know, how would you, how would you frame that?
- [53:11]
Dave Weisberger
I wish I had the data on this, but my strong suspicion is that marginal, I think a lot of marginal crypto dollars got despondent and left and, and that, that does tend to be the case at capitulation bottoms. I mean, Scott, you look at this stuff all the time. I mean, didn't some of these all charts all look like capitulation bottoms?
- [53:32]
Scott
Yeah, I've said a thousand times, but we've gone from capitulated capitulation bottom to small bounce to capitulate a bottom on things like eth over and over again. Right. So I think a lot of people just kind of gave up. But a lot of these altcoins look great. I mean, to Bill, Bill's point. Right. I mean a lot of these had hugely tradable bottoms. They were great. They just got lost in the 98 of all coin charts, looked horrible and are dead. So it's just people stop looking entirely, I think.
- [54:01]
JW
Yeah.
- [54:02]
Bill
The other thing I mean related to that that I've been worried about is, is that this, there's this emerging narrative about bitcoin dominance basically not, not coming back in favor of alts. And I think there the issue is just the outweigh, you know, the fact that Ethereum far outweighs everything else. Right. So my understanding is that the standard Bitcoin dominance number does include, you know, Ethereum. So if you factor out Ethereum, we're clearly seeing a big bounce in, huge bounce in, in alts versus Bitcoin. And then the question is, you know, will that, will it matter enough to the point where they gain enough traction and enough market cap to potentially mute the impact of Ethereum, which is clearly still down significantly over the last, the last several months?
- [55:02]
Lou
Yeah, it's my view I'm bullish on, on alts. I have a word that I use to describe the tendency of markets to swing between bubble and crash and bubble again. I, I call that capitalism. That's just what the market does. It hits lows, sometimes it hits new lows. Alts aren't going away, you know, they're just in an extended bear market.
- [55:24]
Scott
Yeah, that makes sense. I can't believe we're right up here against time, Don. I mean before we go, you, you're looking at altcoin charts every single day. I mean this conversation, what do you make of it?
- [55:35]
Danish
Yeah, yeah, I really do. Well, I think a lot of these altcoin moves are also justified by just a lot of shorts closing out. There's some of these beaten down coins that are. I'm just gonna name one like Eigen layer or whatever. It's up like 20% today and I think a lot of people were just perpetually short on these things for like a year because it has basically been down only on a lot of these things. So makes sense that the moves up are pretty fighting now. I think it will be pretty key from here on out on a lot of these coins if they really want to turn this trend around that you see some kind of higher low mate and then to really see the bid come in and not it just being a short squeeze in the end. And the same counts of course for eat. It's nice that it's catching up but yeah, we got a long way to go for this to actually turn this trend around on the higher time frame.
- [56:32]
Scott
Very long way. Yeah, yeah.
- [56:35]
Danish
EBTC is now at 0.02. I think last year somewhere in the summer, just a year ago it was at like 0.06. So it's a 3x. Not saying it's going to get there but just to. It's. It's down so much, it's insane.
- [56:50]
Scott
People were already unhappy about it.
- [56:52]
Don
Yeah, people didn't even.
- [56:54]
Scott
Weren't even happy at 06.
- [56:56]
Danish
Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, Long way to go, but let's see.
- [57:03]
Scott
Awesome. Perfect way to conclude everybody. That was another great, great conversation. Give everybody on stage a follow. If you're out there in the audience, there's like almost 5,000 of you. If you're bothering to listen to us, you should bother to follow all these people, because then you can get insight outside of this hour every single day. Otherwise, we will be back tomorrow, of course, for the last crypto town hall of the week at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. Everybody have a good one. See you tomorrow.
- [57:30]
Dave Weisberger
Bye.