← The Wolf Of All Streets
The Wolf Of All Streets
Bitcoin's $80K Air Pocket — Why the Rally to New Highs Could Happen Faster Than You Think
00:35:26
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- [00:02]
A
Bitcoin is back in the 70 thousands and there is a huge air pocket up to 80,000. If we get a little more momentum to the upside, this rally could happen much faster than you think. And at the risk of stating the obvious, everyone hates this rally. Bitcoin was up 6% yesterday, still up today in about 24 hours. And the timeline was full of people calling it a dead cat bounce. Here's the thing, though. Wall street just put 1.4 billion in five days and 2.1 billion into the Bitcoin spot. ETFs, someone's buying and they don't really care what crypto Twitter thinks. And when we want to talk about inflows and ETFs, we bring on the best. So I've got James Seyfert here from Bloomberg. Let's go.
- [00:42]
B
Let's do. Let's go.
- [00:57]
A
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the lovely Caribbean, where we're having a sunny day here and another amazing show with another amazing guest. I'm going to go ahead and bring on James right now. Good morning, sir. How is your mustache?
- [01:13]
B
Good morning, Scott. Thanks for having me. It's been a little while, but, yeah, money's pouring back in.
- [01:18]
A
It seems that way. We're going to get to that in one second. So first I want to start with kind of a headline analysis right now. I think a lot of people have been shocked by this rally. As I mentioned at the beginning, it's been kind of a hated rally. Bitcoin's air pocket above 72,000 could mean quick run to 80,000. This from CoinDesk, they're taking a look at basically where coins have been bought and sold in the past. There was a huge amount accumulated in the 60 thousands, putting in a bit of a floor. But this area from 72 up to 80, there's been very little time there in the past and very little accumulated bought and sold there. So I think bitcoin could surprise a lot of people if it gets kind of above the 73 or 74 area. I know that your wheelhouse is not top talking about exact price, but it does feel like with one little more catalyst, we could actually get a bit more upside here.
- [02:04]
B
Yeah, I mean, I mean, it was a. It was an elevator down to the, to the levels in the low 60s. Right. Like once we broke below that 80 range, I feel like it was like a couple of days. I don't know the exact time. I'm going off of memory, but it was really quick before we got down to 60 and 10 and usually markets, even if we go down from here, usually markets tend to go up higher in the short term after something like that.
- [02:26]
A
Yeah, I guess we could see one of those like big rallies, put in a lower high and back to doom, death and despair on the timeline, right?
- [02:34]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [02:35]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean there's a couple articles about that before we get into the inflows, which is what everyone really talked to you about. But of course we have, you know, Bitcoin traders alert. The rally is nearing a two year make or break price zone. Kind of a lot of things align here. I don't know if people remember, but you know, the previous all time high was 69,000 in the last cycle and 74,000 was kind of the next really, really major level. So I don't think it's a mystery why we kind of stalled at 74,000 here. So I just, I guess I caution people, this is exactly where you would expect the rally to go to. So I think you need to see more up, ironically to count on seeing more up.
- [03:13]
B
I mean, this asset class and bitcoin in general, it's like there's a lot of technical trading, it's huge momentum, that's why it's so volatile right now. You can argue the merits of like what the, you know, quote unquote fundamental value of bitcoin is, but it's really hard to actually pin down like a stock, you have underlying cash flows. And I'm not somebody who's like a huge technical analyst believer, but I mean in crypto, time and time again it's like it hits these resistance zones, it hits these support zones more so than like traditional assets, which I typically look at. So there's real reasons to be paying attention to these things, particularly in bitcoin.
- [03:47]
A
So let's talk about why this might be happening. Obviously, let's focus on the one that is your specialty here. So, so over a billion flows into Bitcoin ETFs yet the price isn't rising. And analyst explains why. So that was yesterday. Last I checked, price was rising, but price wasn't rising while this was happening, I think effectively. Right. So we saw kind of the big bump yesterday, but if you look back at those stories, it was 1.4 billion in kind of the previous five days. And as you pointed out to me right before the show, you can throw out the numbers, I mean of kind of how big this rally has been on ETF inflows.
- [04:18]
B
Yeah, I mean the numbers since the 24th, we're looking at 2.1, 3 billion doll. So obviously that's a meaningful number. But the flip side is, if you look from 1010 to basically February 23rd, those ETFs, the Bitcoin ETF saw 9 million in outflows. And that's what everyone in the media was talking about. Everyone's rushing for the exits in the Bitcoin ETFs, they've seen nearly 9 billion outflows and it's turned around rather quick. It's funny, when I was looking at this, you guys were talking about this too. I listened to some of your episodes. Like bitcoin was very correlated software for whatever reason, we don't need to go into what was happening there, but they were, they were selling off heavy together. So you look at the software stock ETFs, Bitcoin ETFs, tons of price going down, but there was money coming in hand over fist into the software stocks. They were seeing billions and billions of dollars in buying incomparably smaller ETFs and the Bitcoin ETFs, and the fish just weren't really biting in bitcoin. And that's changed as of basically February 24th. And I think that's kind of more the technical stuff we were talking about. People were worried like this can go much lower and they don't want to start buying. And then you have two higher lows and all of a sudden, and then it doesn't like collapse on the Iran news last weekend. And all of a sudden people are like, you know what, maybe now is the time that I'm going to start buying again and start calling a bottom. Maybe some of it's long term, but I think a lot of it's just near term dip buying swing trading.
- [05:34]
A
I think it's really amazing though to see how the narrative shift just with simple 6% moves in either direction. Like, what's bad news at 63,000 is great news at 72,000, you know, and the narrative last weekend was, oh my gosh, I can't believe that bitcoin dipped when we went to war. It's not a safe haven. And then a day later it bounces and goes up while other markets are going down. And all of a sudden bitcoin safe haven narrative is right back. And it's all in the difference of, you know, 68 to 74,000 in price.
- [06:03]
B
Yeah, I mean, in this asset class, and really any class asset class, it's not always price that follows narrative. Sometimes it's just narrative that follows price, which is definitely the case that I see in crypto and bitcoin, particularly on my timeline. So this doesn't surprise me at all. And the other thing I'd say on that is like you debate this on your Monday morning macro meetings all the time for whatever reason. If people believe that, if you just look at the characteristics of bitcoin, a lot of them say this could be a long term store value asset. The way it's built up, it's better than gold in many instances. Obviously the volatility isn't one of them. But none of that matters. It trades like a risk asset. The market right now does not see it as a sort of value or safe haven. So it doesn't surprise me at all that it would go down on the Iran news. Right. This thing trades like a risk asset
- [06:46]
A
and it was the only thing you could trade.
- [06:48]
B
Exactly. It's what happens every time. When it, when missiles started filing the first time between Israel and Iran, like bitcoin dumped hard. Like I, I don't know why people are like, it didn't go up. I'm like, I don't know why you think it's going to go up.
- [07:00]
A
Yeah, not in that moment when it's the only thing. Anyone who's panicking, not like they can just go be like, ah, Nvidia, Nvidia should be down. I'm gonna go sell that. You just can't literally not even option. Can you put this 2.1-ish billion into context of the outflows that we were reporting on for the weeks and weeks and weeks seemingly ahead of it? I mean, has it basically retraced all those. I know Baltunas tweeted yesterday that they were all net positive, I think on the year now, which is pretty crazy when you look at the price of bitcoin that flows are up, right? Yes.
- [07:32]
B
Yeah. So we are actually still slightly negative. There's like 600 ish million. That's the net flow year to date. Obviously since 1010 we are, we've, we've reversed a lot of that. 9 billion. It's like 7 something. 7.8 billion I think or 7 billion. That's an outflow since 1010. So obviously whatever broken 1010 markets collapse. We started seeing tons of outflows. We can talk about automated, automated deleveraging, what have you. It doesn't really matter, but everyone points to that. But like no one goes back and looks at like what happens since the April bottom and these things took in 20, 30, 25, $30 billion. So yeah, we saw 8.9 billion come out from October to February. Now we've seen 2 billion come in, but like everyone was talking about those outflows and no one's pointing out the fact that 30 billion came in in the preceding six months. So like, yeah, it's a big deal. Yeah, it's 10 to 15% of the flows that came out during the outflow. But honestly, if you told me an asset was going to fall 60% and it was only gonna, only gonna see 10 to 15% of those inflows reverse, I'd be like, that's a pretty damn good situation. Like I would take that 10 out of 10 times.
- [08:36]
A
Yeah, it's sort of the like human expectation that a path is going to be straight, but it's obviously rocky, but directionally correct. Right. I mean, if you look at any chart of any asset and I'm sure inflows and outflows are going to fit into that over time. It's just up and to the right with peaks and valleys.
- [08:51]
B
Exactly. Yes, exactly. If you, if you're looking at any ETF category or any asset, like look at all the biggest, most expensive or I guess expensive. Wrong. Most, largest, highest valuation stocks, all of them went through like 70, 80 drawdowns and came back like it, like it, like it, it happens. Right. So I don't know that that's one thing that I always come back to when people start talking about this is like there's going to be, it's volatile. You don't get that upside without having to deal with downside volatility. Like that's part of the way markets work. Like you need to take on risk to earn return. But yeah, I don't know, there's, if you look at any ETF category, it's not straightened up to the right. There's always going to be pullbacks. You want to go 2, 3 steps forward, 1, 2 steps back. This so far has been one of those. One, one step back. I would say now we're stepping forward again. Could it get worse again? I don't, I'm not going to pretend to know. But like over the long term you should expect these.
- [09:47]
A
What are we at total 90 billion ish dollars somewhere in there.
- [09:50]
B
Yeah, we're around 100 billion in AUM
- [09:52]
A
in these and it was in the 80s like a week ago.
- [09:55]
B
Yeah, we're at 90. You were right, 94. But on a net inflow basis, they've taken and fixed 56 billion since they launched. After everything we talked about, they're still
- [10:04]
A
taking impose a rounding Errors when you look at the total AUM is I guess my point.
- [10:09]
B
Yes, you are 100% correct and I'm
- [10:12]
A
on the timeline and I still see just a ton of bearish takes. Right. I mean obviously I don't think people are tracking the flows as much as you are, but the other story that's been huge right now is that bitcoin miners are no longer in HODL mode or saying that they'll no longer just remain in HODL mode. It kind of lit the world on fire when Marathon said they were going to sell and Core Scientific announced that they had sold a bunch. But this seems, you know, people are viewing it as a lack of conviction. But if you take a look, it's actually just going in on AI infrastructure because they're making more money there.
- [10:49]
B
It's completely logical. Like when you take a step back, a lot of this stuff is completely logical. And if you. The other thing I would say is you were just talking about with the money, people are still buying the ETFs. There's not a lot of selling, but there is a lot of selling from OG holders. Like I'm not, I'm not an on chain specialist but I follow a lot of them and they've been saying for months that like the OGs, the big OG chains are OG wallets. Like they are selling and they were selling every time it was over a hundred thousand. So it shouldn't be that shocking that we're here where we are. I mean.
- [11:15]
A
Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with you. I think that maybe one of the narratives we're starting to see is that that selling finally sort of hit a, you know, peak in the 60s and you know, obviously was higher above 100, but there was still net selling from those wallets down into the 60s and I think they accumulated a lot, which was that top story about 400,000 bitcoin. Hard to see exactly where they came from, but in that 60 to 70 dip. So I mean that's what you want to see, right? Like there's always been this argument of whether we're in a brutal bear market or crypto winter or whether this is just another 50 something percent drawdown in the middle of a bull market. And I'm starting to, I, I've always kind of believed the latter, but I think I'm also like bolt hearted and a bit of an internal optimist. So it's not like I would see another one.
- [11:59]
B
I tend to be more optimistic on this too, but I've always been up the case. I Thought the four year cycle was going to be like less of a thing this time. And we didn't get that massive blow off top. So I didn't think we'd necessarily get that blow off explosion. To the downside, which we haven't yet. I mean if you tell me we stop at 60 or 59 and that's the lowest, I think that's makes sense. If we go down into, you know, sub 40 and get that full 70 pullback like we have in the past, then Ali Crow and I was completely wrong. Yeah, I got lunch McGlone the day before he wrote his first piece calling.
- [12:32]
A
Wasn't he like your boss or something?
- [12:36]
B
Yeah, so when I, I, so I started in a different department. When I came to Bloomberg Intelligence, which is the research army, I reported halfway to McGlone. So split between McGlone and, and Eric. So I still talk to McGlone pretty frequently. But I went to lunch with him in Miami the day before he wrote his 10k call and I was like, I don't know. 10 is ridiculous. We didn't even get there during, you know, the most recent sell off. Like I think 50 or 60 makes more sense. Maybe even 40 if you wanted to go there. But he was, he, was he insistent. He believes that we're going to get to 10. So yeah, I love that guy. That was months ago. We could agree to disagree. It's all good.
- [13:10]
A
Oh really? I didn't think that was possible in 2026. I thought our AI agents are just going to argue for us and never agree on anything. But yeah, it's amazing how much pushback we get when anybody comes with a contrarian take on like a crypto focused channel.
- [13:25]
B
Some of it is nasty and vitriolic. I'm like, guys like this is a market. I mean I think part of it is there are people that have like their whole life savings in this thing, which I kind of get. You're a strong believer in it, but like stocks are great too. So are plenty of other things. Like you don't need to have 100% in these things.
- [13:42]
A
Also to me, like just as a complete aside, like if you deeply believe in something and you believe that like it has lasting power, staying power and that it is this important. Like you should be completely unshaken by the opinions of others. Like if you actually have high conviction of in it, every opinion should just be noise. Like who can't? It's a price opinion. It's not like they're even. It's not like, you know, someone who says it's going to 10,000 is necessarily saying like this is a stupid asset or it's worthless. Right. Those things. It's like a price prediction. Like why do you care? If you believe bitcoin is going to become the global reserve asset, then you're going to get a chance to buy a little more of that global reserve asset lower. If people want to fud it.
- [14:24]
B
Yeah. I mean, you should always be flexible and willing to change your opinions and views. But like, I haven't seen anything that dramatically changed my views. Aside from maybe like anyone thinking that bitcoin was going to be a major medium of exchange. I think that stablecoins have taken that. So I would take a hit to the narrative on that side. Right. But like for the most part, all the other stuff about like potentially being digital gold and all these other things, I don't think that narrative shifted as far as the way I view the asset and the asset class overall.
- [14:48]
A
Yeah. The peer to peer cash narrative from the white paper is struggling a bit, I'll give you that. Speaking of things are struggling a bit, Crypto bill hits new impasse, raising doubts over its future. I know this is going to be shocking, but the banks aren't really willing to make concessions right now to the crypto industry. But interestingly, I keep wondering how Brian Armstrong has accumulated so much power. How can one bald man have all this power? In the words of Kanye West, Trump met with Coinbase CEO before bashing banks over crypto bill. So Brian Armstrong went in there for a secret meeting at the White House. They sat down and talked and then Trump just came out firing at Jamie Dimon, firing at the banks, saying that the banks are not willing to make the concessions that the crypto industry is. The crypto industry has come to the table. It's time for the banks to do their part. They're holding out. You got Jamie Dimon coming out and slamming stablecoin yields, saying that they should become banks if they want to do it. And we all know that they can't become banks even if they try. I mean, this is pretty much crazy. What a fever pitch this has come to and how really like Brian Armstrong is now. It's like on level with Jamie Dimon in this fight.
- [15:56]
B
Yeah, I think one thing that helps Armstrong is that he's like more factually accurate in the way that he's assessing this thing from my point of view. I mean, I'm not a banks analyst or won't pretend to be a regulations expert, but I know enough and like, you also take into account that like this whole thing from the banks is like a whole like takesy backsy thing from genius. Like, like they're trying to undo something that was already settled at this point. It just, it's not a good look for the banks. And at the end of the day it's like, how is this that much different from a money market fund or a high yield savings account? It's just like there, there's a lot of inconsistencies with the arguments that are being made and there's already concessions that were made ingenious. So just stick with the concessions that were made ingenious and the situation makes sense. It's just like the banks trying to kill competition and blowing things out of proportion. And this is another thing where I disagree with people within my department on exactly what's happening here. I work with people who are much more on the banking lobby side of the arguments in this situation.
- [16:49]
A
When you were saying that, it made me think of dumb and dumber was can't triple stamp a double stamp,
- [16:56]
B
can't
- [16:56]
A
go back on the genius act. It's really crazy because it's like they're basically using clarity to like relitigate genius. And we haven't exactly the debate on anything that's important in clarity. My hot take might be that Brian Armstrong's right and no bill could be better than a bad bill at this point because a bad bill is just going to let the banks take over.
- [17:18]
B
Yeah, I, I, I, it's a, it's a decent argument. I would also say, like, granted, there's a lot of rulemaking happening at the CFTC and sec, even OCC and different things that are actually, the OCC stuff is a little more hindrance to the, the stablecoins argument, but we don't need to go there. The problem is like, if there's no set statutes and regulations and laws, like, we could go back to somebody like Gary Gensler in office, maybe worse. It'll be harder because things have been set up and rules have been made under this administration. But like, you want this stuff, you know, encoded, enshrined in law if you can. So you only have a couple more years of this current administration before, who knows, maybe a Dem comes in and things could not look so great. So I, I don't know. I get the argument, but, but we'll see. And I would say my, my colleague Nathan Dean, who's down in D.C. and covers this stuff, he's like a D.C. insider, he's talking about what Those things are. He's never gone below like a 60 odds of clarity passing this year. He thinks it's going to happen later this spring. He thinks ultimately a deal will be made. I know Poly Market and other things have gone way lower at times, but he still thinks this will mostly get done. And last I talked to him, he hasn't really changed his tune. He thinks it's just going to be more back and forth. So anyone looking for optimism?
- [18:24]
A
I like it because I'm 10 like 10 5. I want one hand.
- [18:31]
B
I mean I. Yeah, there's just so much other good stuff in there. Protection for developers, all these other. There's a lot of good stuff in there that really needs to get done and I really hope that this. What's happening over stablecoins isn't what stops us from getting through and if it does, I hope they can get the piecemeal other things that everyone's already agreed on through.
- [18:46]
A
Yeah, I mean yesterday we saw the pretty surprising news that Kraken had effectively gotten the master account with the Fed giving access to Fed Rails. Obviously it doesn't give access to the full suite of amazing Fed products that everybody wants, but I'm going to shock you with this one immediately. US Banking group pushed back against Fed grants cracked and master account access. They're even pissed about this. Right. And Waller telegraphed this months ago saying they were going to start to offer and pilot these skinny accounts and that's exactly what we're seeing here. These sort of partial accounts to give them access to the payments but not the lending and the yield side of all that. But like we are deeply concerned that the Federal Reserve bank of Kansas City has approved an account request for a limited purpose master account which appears to be a skinny account before the Federal Reserve Board has finalized its policy framework for those accounts. Right. I mean they're just. The banks are just shaking in their shoes right now it seems.
- [19:39]
B
Yeah, I think it was. Yeah. Wasn't it Waller that also around the same time was basically like my job is not to protect incumbent banks from competition. I'm not here to protect their margin. Like competition is part of the market. That's the way I view this. And, and honestly as, as like bullish. I am on the uses of stablecoins long term and for this stuff. Like I really don't think this is going to be a big deal for the banks in the near term. Like they'll have plenty of time to build their own Rails and do things if they want and build in this ecosystem like if you look at money market funds, yeah, they're growing but they really haven't hit the bank's deposits. Same with like these online high yield savings accounts. Like still all the money is in these JP Morgan and Bank of accounts that are paying less than they round to zero and you could just. It takes two seconds to open account another bank and get you know, three and a half percent right now. And still like most of the money is in these deposit accounts that earn next to nothing. And it's like a captured audience for now. Now obviously that can change but like I think there's a lot of the concerns are overblown and I don't know it's a narrow banking model. That's what. And I think the Fed should allow people to decide how they want to do their banking.
- [20:44]
A
Shocking news. The Fed is a cartel and they like making money and don't want anybody. I know this is shocking but Matt Hogan had the best tweet about this. I was just digging it up as you went. I got it here, said exactly. Yeah. Imagine if the situation were reversed and stablecoins were status quo such that everyone had their month money in entities backed one to one with U.S. treasuries. And then some guy came along and was like I have this new idea called fractional reserve banking. We would laugh them out of the room. The creature from Jekyll Island. Everybody should read the book and I'm not going to give you a masterclass on what the Fed cartel is, but I mean when you see this exposed like the banks just are businesses that make money from their customers are not there for the benefit of their customers, man. It's the fact. Or they would give you a yield anyways.
- [21:31]
B
Yeah, a lot of the. I think there's a lot of like missing a forest for the trees. It was like I felt the same way about people arguing that bitcoin ETF shouldn't exist. Like you're just missing like the higher level thing that's going on here and why this shouldn't be as big of deal why you shouldn't be so anti. It reminds me of Nick Carter has this quote, I don't want to butcher, I'll butcher it. But basically he's like if you were to come up now and try to invent physical cash like the US government would be like what you want to create this thing that we have no way of tracking and can be done anonymously and there's no trail and you're just literally can hand a briefcase back. It would be Outlawed, they would not allow physical cash to exist today. So yeah, it's all kind of the similar sort of thing. And I don't know, it's all overdone. It's a lot of theater. I think it's more theater than anything.
- [22:18]
A
It's all theater. But meanwhile, I guess as a slight positive, as the Clarity act sort of stalls, we do have the SEC and CFTC very much moving forward. I think we had news yesterday the CFTC was pushing for perpetuals in the United States to be widely legal and a lot of other products that we're used to in crypto internationally coming here. And the SEC still just kind of moving forward here. I mean, Eleanor, who was on the other day that the SEC posted an interpretation to the Office of Information Regulatory affairs outlining how federal securities laws apply to certain crypto assets and related transactions. I don't think that this is massive news or something. We need to dig too deeply into the weeds on beyond the fact that directionally you can see that the SEC is still very much pushing forward for clarity and doing everything they can on their part without this legislation to make sure that we have good rulemaking and standards in place for a long time to come. Yeah.
- [23:11]
B
First of all, Eleanor is great. She's breaking a lot of news on this front. I will say she's doing a great job as an independent journalist. The other thing I would say is like, this goes back to what I was talking about. The sec, cftc, they are like very forward looking, libertarian minded. They want some of this stuff to thrive. They want to create rules. They want to do the opposite of what the Biden admin was doing, which was like regulation reinforcement. We've heard it a million times. But the SEC really is doing this and honestly they're putting hard lines in the sand on various different things that I'm like, okay, good. Because I was worried like, are they just gonna let everything go? And like, what I'm talking about here is like in the ETF world, there's been a bunch of these filings for like 4.4x and 5x leverage ETFs. And there's, there was like these issuers thought there was like loopholes that they could get them launched. And the SEC earlier this week Bloomberg broke this news like they called a meeting and they basically told all these issuers and lawyers trying to back get around this to be like, yeah, no, this is not happening. Stop, don't even, don't even try it. So that not only are they being forward looking, coming out with Rules, doing things like what you just spoke about. But they're also like drawing lines in the sand. Like, okay, we're forward looking enough. But like, this is too much stop. Which I love to see. And I hope they just go after more of the bad actors in the space too. Like there's a lot of good things that are happening and go after the bad guys too.
- [24:21]
A
We don't even hear about the bad actors in the ETF space out there.
- [24:24]
B
Well, not in the ETF space, just in crypto in general. Like last time the SEC was going after people in crypto, they were like letting all these scammers and fraudsters go and they were suing Kraken and Coinbase and Gemini and you name it. And it's like, come on guys, these are. Granted, they might have done some things wrong. Talk to him about it. But like there are so much. Like I could just go in my timeline and give you links to Twitter accounts that are obviously doing fraudulent, manipulative things.
- [24:45]
A
And maybe you can give a quick update on the generic listing standards, because obviously we had that news, you know. Right. Kind of when Trump was elected. That they were. And then the months afterwards that we were going to get generic listing standards and we were going to basically see you ETFs just being approved willy nilly. Is it just that the market's down, that there's been kind of less focus on that?
- [25:05]
B
Yeah, I think there's. People are kind of done. I think for the most part most of the, the interest on the ETF side is more in the Bitcoin and Ethereum. But there's also a lot of interest in Solana and xrp. I just wrote a note today about like who the holders of Solana are. There's a lot of institutions that are holding these Solana ETFs. They're worth selling in. The Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs in Q4. We don't have the data so far for this year, but advisors were net sellers in Q4, so contributing to some of the outflows we saw in the ETFs. I would say so. And hedge funds were huge sellers. But to your question about the ETF rule, I mean, I'm tracking like 190 different filings now granted like 40 of them have launched already, but like issuers are still shooting the spaghetti cannon of crypto ETF filings at the wall. Right. 2x versions, 2x inverse covered call, defined outcome, where you're protecting your upside and your downside. Pure spot, all of the above, I, I, my view and my view has been and continues to be that I think we're going to see well over 100 of these things launch in 2026 on various different coins.
- [26:06]
A
There you go.
- [26:07]
B
But we're going to see a lot of liquidations maybe in the back half of this year, Maybe in early 2027, because like the 20th ranked crypto on market cap by market cap. I don't think it needs, you know, five different ETFs to exist. Like Bitcoin can handle it. There's enough demand, there's. But I think one or two issuers launching a variation of different coins is going to make sense. We're going to see them out there and the issuers are launching these things because they can be very profitable. Even if it's unprofitable for nine months and say some token or coin or chain does really well and shoots up the standings and all of a sudden people look for an ETF and it's been sitting there wasting away, takes in 70, 80 million, 100 million in a couple of weeks. All of a sudden that's a very profitable product. So a lot of these issuers are going to sit out there with these products and just hope that the fish come to bite at some point. And that's what we're seeing.
- [26:53]
A
People have slowed down the launches. I want to be conscious of your time. You have two minutes or you have more?
- [26:57]
B
Yeah, I have two minutes. Yeah, we're good.
- [26:58]
A
Last, last thing before I let you go because of, you know, Morgan Stanley saying that they're coming in with a Bitcoin etf, right? And interestingly, it's going to be custody by Coinbase and BNY Mellon. So BNY Mellon, we're seeing the big custodians come in. Is there room for more Bitcoin ETF still?
- [27:13]
B
So this is a very good question. My initial instinct response is no. But like Morgan Stanley is an outlier in the sense that they have a captive audience, right? Like if your indie issuer is going to come out and they don't have like trillions of dollars with advisors in assets that they can put money to work in, probably not going to make sense. Morgan Stanley has trillions of dollars with their brokerage and wirehouses, high net worth platforms. So like all of a sudden, if they have a bunch of clients who have bitcoin on their own or interested in bitcoin and Morgan Stanley's launching a Bitcoin Solana and Ethereum ETF in the coming months, they could Just take that money and port it over there. They'll probably wait a little while for it to build up liquidity and stuff like that. But we call it byoa. Bring your own assets. So you have these issuers that can do. Why would I pay blackrock 21 bips or bitwise or whoever Vaneck, when I can just launch this, do it at, make some tidy little profit, but also not pay other people. So I think we'll see more of this. One of the reasons it works in crypto is it's still new. Like you don't need 15, 20 different S&P 500 funds. People have tried that for the most part. People still want the S&P 500 name brand ETFs, but Bitcoin's still kind of new enough. I guess you could make the argument same as some of these other crypto coins. So we'll see.
- [28:29]
A
Morgan Stanley, just basically they can take a little profit for themselves and take a little profit away from their competitors. Just sell it to their audience and they don't need it to be a hundred billion dollar AUM asset, right?
- [28:38]
B
Exactly. One hundred percent.
- [28:40]
A
James, thank you as always for your insight, man. It's great to see you. Hopefully we'll do this in person soon, man. Thank you.
- [28:46]
B
Yeah, see you soon.
- [28:47]
A
Scott, let James go and just cover the last couple stories that we had here as we ran out of time with him. Sometimes I forget to like ask us and I just take for granted that they can all rattle off here with me for 30, 45 minutes or an hour every single day. But there are some other interesting stories that align with the things that we've been discussing. One of them that I love here, Crypto Campaign Pack fair shake marks first win wins in 2026 US congressional primaries. It is midterm season already, which is crazy to think about that we're sitting here in March, but we're already having these primaries for the upcoming elections in November. And Fairshake, which absolutely rocked it in the last election, already having a major impact here. I mean, looking at the what to know here. The 2026 congressional elections are underway. The first primary is held on Tuesday and the initial results show several wins for pro crypto candidates backed by the Fair Shake pac. So good to know that our industry is still pushing and that candidates are still willing to talk about whatever they want, we want them to for money. Because I mean, anyone they're backing is like, hey, do you want to win your election or do you want to lose? Do you want our money or do you want us to give our money to your competitor? Cool. Also a little bit cartel y when you think about the way that politics work and lobbying in general. But listen, if you're going to need politicians in your pocket and need advocates for the industry, this is the only way that it works. This one caught my eye. One of the super PAC's major efforts, however, was in getting crypto critic Representative Al Green out of office. What's next, Marvin Gaye? Crazy. I didn't even know Al Green was in office. I'm so in love with you. Love that guy. I sang that to my wife at her wedding. And that race was close enough to warrant a runoff election. So Al Green is trailing on Tuesday. It's bad news for Al Green and the soul community, but clearly there is a lot of crypto money right now still in play and it's already influencing elections. Think we just got to touch on everything that's happening in the macro right now because you can't talk about crypto anymore without being an expert in wars and commodities. So President Trump has broken a multimillion dollar gold deal between the US and Venezuela. I love at the bottom, the US is eyeing Venezuela's gold. That's our gold. Venezuela is a state. Japanese oil refiners have asked the government to release oil from national reserves amid supply constraints due to Middle east tensions. More good news, China just ordered Sinopec and PetroChina to stop exporting diesel and gasoline, not slow them down. Stop. This is crazy because that means that China is seeing a major potential problem with their supply and is going to hoard all of it and keep it there. They are literally going to release zero oil. So clearly the commodity catastrophe is continuing. As you can see, Brent oil prices surge above 8,250. That is really high price for oil. Coal futures surge 0.72% to $138 a ton as rare. Qatar LNG facility shutdown drives power sector demand for alternative fuels. Gasoline sourced the highest price since May 2024. That is really, really bad for the Trump administration in advance of the midterms if they can't get those prices down. Nothing says you're about to lose like making Americans pay a shit ton of money at the pump. So very clearly impressive that bitcoin remains where it is in context of everything that's happening in macro. This is one of those times when bitcoin could have definitely dumped massively because of fear and risk off appetite. And yes, there's been some risk on appetite in general, but the World is basically on fire here. Commodity markets. And bitcoin is not only hanging in there, but it's actually rising. And, you know, going back to sort of the title here, if we can blast through that air pocket, we could very quickly be at 80,000. And if we are at 80,000, even if that's a lower high and even if we don't get much momentum from there, the narratives are going to shift. And all the good news that we've been seeing and that we know is good news and doesn't seem to impact the market, it really starts to matter when prices go up. As I've always said, there's no better marketing for bitcoin than, sadly, higher prices. I think that is true. And if bitcoin can get up to 80,000 and then we start talking about, oh, wow, Morgan Stanley's online, they have ETFs, and the clarity bill has tailwinds and potentially is going to get passed, all of these huge news stories that have done nothing for the past few months are all of a sudden going to matter dramatically. I will be back tomorrow with. We don't call it the Friday 5 anymore. I've had some of you guys ask because apparently you haven't watched my shows. Like, where's nlw? He quit. He hates us. He hates you. Likes me. He doesn't want to do crypto anymore. You know, he kind of pulled that Cartman, you guys, and getting him, you know, took his ball. He's, you know, more focused on AI. I think somebody took over the breakdown podcast, and I think that the quote was, I'm done pretending to care about crypto. And I, you know, sometimes I feel the sentiment. But now it's given me an opportunity to Friday freestyle and wing it, which is something I'm actually working on, an opportunity to do a hell of a lot more of. So stay tuned. Hopefully that will be coming soon, that news. Otherwise, I will see you all tomorrow.
- [34:25]
B
That's dope.