← The Wolf Of All Streets
The Wolf Of All Streets
BTC at $104K, ETH Steals the Show! Alts About to Pop? | Crypto Town Hall
00:56:41
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- [00:01]
Scott
Good morning everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town hall every day here on X at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. And man, today should be fun because bitcoin almost hit $105,000. Currently is trading at about 103,500, was sustaining around 104,000. Obviously a massive move, but for once, for once we can have a conversation about how Bitcoin went up and bitcoin dominance went down largely on the back of ETH, which is up 20% in 24 hours right now with Bitcoin up 4%, Ethereum up almost 30% on the seven day with Bitcoin up about 7%, I was a bit early and often, but damn if I haven't been screaming about Ethereum for a while being massively oversold with I think irrational fud and inevitably about to make a monster move. And what we have seen, I think alongside Ethereum's move this time, which is reminiscent of previous cycles, is when Ethereum moves, it's a dart throw, fun alt season and everything moves right. So. But Ethereum went up. Layer twos went up. Meme coins on Ethereum went up. Things that had not moved and forever seemed dead, all up 20% ish across the board. So really lends to the question of what's next. I'm going right to David Towell because you are the Michael Saylor of Ethereum in my mind and I'm going to call you that forever. Forever and ever and ever. That's not a bad thing for you to see.
- [01:41]
David Towell
No, definitely not. I mean, Jack Muller certainly will not let the Ethereum people live down the fact that every time Bitcoin hits 100,000, Ethereum seems to hit a lower price. That chart was, was very stark. But look, I think the, the, the strength is, is, is nice to see. The question really is what fundamentally has changed to drive this move?
- [02:16]
Scott
Yeah, fundamentals matter. That's cute.
- [02:20]
David Towell
Thanks, man. I'm still, I'm still, I'm still living a tradfi world.
- [02:26]
Scott
I'm kidding.
- [02:28]
David Towell
So. But there is, I will say, you know, I've been in discussions so around the Ethereum Michael Saylor of Ethereum title. That's you. Yeah, exactly. I've been involved in a lot of discussions around financing recently for, for my project for centaurus energy/layer1 and conversations from various types of capital sour. And this is for purposes of, of informing the audience here about what's going on in the space. You know, I'm sure I haven't been on in a while, but I'm sure You've spoken about Jan over and upset strategies and at the same time there is a lot, and this is conference, there's never a non conference season in crypto, but this is an incredibly intensive conference season in crypto and there is a lot of discussion going on regarding the financialization monetization of crypto to the chagrin of the purists on the validator node side of things. Those folks are certainly, all of them are private right now. All of them are eyeing public markets because they know there's going to be consolidation in their space. The first one to get there, to be able to use equity as a currency to fuel rollups is, is going to be, you know, if not a winner, certainly out ahead in terms of a, A, a head start on the rollup strategy and the same thing. You know, there, there's been a number of articles, I don't know how many have been paid for or non paid for, you know, about, about the salana, you know, vehicles and what their ability to scale, you know, is going to be. And I, I just, the, the, the, the sources of capital on the side of the folks that have been involved in those are really sources of capital that are looking for venture capital like returns. Right? That's why they're in these crazy converts, you know, that only work on a 10x basis and nothing else. And that's okay, that's cool with me. I totally get it. And I get the bull case generally for crypto and I get the bull case for those that are Solana only as well. But the traditional finance people are looking increasingly at this space and that for me is the most important thing. They're not, sorry, they're not sold, but they're increasingly looking at this space at a period of time where the rest of the market doesn't seem to be performing the same way as crypto is performing. It becomes increasingly important for an asset manager to look at this space and to your point, Scott, of what the hell are fundamentals? You know, they need to go ahead and talk about fundamentals and everything going on, especially with the strategic Bitcoin reserve in New Hampshire. You know, what was an important point for folks that look at this from a fundamental standpoint? That yeah, they do want to go ahead and invest in this asset class. Why? Because it's runaway asset class and it's doing really well. But in order to go ahead and cya the whole thing, they've got to come up with a fundamental story for, for the asset class. And so, and so therefore everything going on fundamentally and stablecoin legislation in Congress, you know, helps their efforts. So I think we could be at an important point. We're certainly not. I will not go ahead and, you know, say it's, it's a done deal. We won't be able to. I don't think for crypto we will be able to argue out loud in a very meaningful way that crypto is a standalone asset class to every single person in tradfi until we get to the end of the year. And the end of the year, returns for crypto are positive, largely, very nicely, healthily positive. And the rest of the market is either flat to down. I think at that point, you know, folks will have no point but to go ahead and have an introspective moment about the S class. But nevertheless, we have a good set of circumstances going on.
- [06:59]
Scott
Yeah, I mean, I would argue that it's definitely open people's eyes to see that, you know, the cues are back to basically where they were on Liberation Day, actually, still a little bit below. And bitcoin went basically from 82 to 105. So, you know, as much as we can laud the performance of the stock market here and the V shaped recovery and then it went all the way back up to where it started. Bitcoin's up like 25 since then, you know, or more. So, Matt, since you're here, took all of a day for all of the Ethereum depression to disappear. You and I, you're one of the early and often Ethereum guys with me and David. That's who we are. We've been preaching that Ethereum was going to perform well, right?
- [07:44]
Matt
100%.
- [07:46]
Scott
So what do you make of this move? The fact that we actually have Ethereum outperforming Bitcoin as bitcoin goes up. I mean, that's been years, I feel, since we've really felt that.
- [07:56]
Matt
Yeah, it's been a while. And it broke out of its technical downtrend. Look, there was a lot of good news in the market that hadn't been built into the Ethereum price. I tweeted about it this week. But there's huge, huge moves on bringing, you know, equities onto blockchains. Ethereum is obviously the leading group there, whether that's, that's Robin Hood or what Superstate is doing or others. So there is some fundamental good news there, but mostly I think people were just waiting for an excuse to buy eth. Right. It successfully executed a pivot from a philosophical perspective. And then it followed that up by Successfully moving through the PETRA upgrade. And, and then we got news that, you know, real world assets are moving on chain and people were just waiting for a moment to buy it. Means to me the big takeaway I have, and I'm still processing it, is that crypto investors aren't done with eth. They just wanted to see a series of positive developments, right? They wanted to see it stop digging a hole from a leadership perspective, which it did. They wanted to see it deliver on the development, which it did through petra. And then they wanted to see, you know, sort of some sort of bat signal that the craziness in the macro economy is gone and people might start, look, look toward risk assets. So I'm feeling pretty bullish, right? Will it sustain this kind of massive move up? You know, it probably has to consolidate a little bit. But I, you know, the big question in is eth. In ETH is have we hit a bottom and turned. And I think there's a case to be made that we might. I think there's a case to be made that we might. So I'm feeling pretty good today.
- [09:39]
Scott
Not that the technical indicators tell us that much, but I was looking at ETH on the weekly and it literally like just basically was coming out of over oversold against Bitcoin like barely today. Right. So I mean if you even look at a technical indicator, the amount that it was oversold on anything longer term is pretty astounding. So yeah, I agree with you that it'll pause, but there should be a lot of room to go if the market continues like this.
- [10:07]
Matt
A lot of room to go. I'd also note that a lot of new investors came into Bitcoin over the last 14 months and usually some portion of those investors eventually diversify and rotate into other assets. And so there's some pent up demand to diversify and rotate into ETH as well that I think will come. It's unfortunate that we stumbled on the stablecoin bill. I think that is, you know, maybe, maybe the, the dark cloud in this story is that Washington seems to be going, you know, offline a little bit. But I do think there's just, you know, people were so depressed around this asset. When you look at the use on eth, when you look at transaction activity and you aggregate up layer ones and layer twos, it's doing great, right? The, the, the blockchain is scaling, use is scaling, new applications are scaling. So I think the fundamentals to go back to that earlier point are actually, you know, trending in the right direction. So yeah, long term this probably has some legs. You know, we never thought ETH was dead. I still don't think it's dead and it's nice to see it, you know, perking back up.
- [11:16]
Scott
Lot of hands up. Ryan, go ahead.
- [11:19]
Ryan
Thanks Scott, man. Yeah, you've been saying it, we've said it on this spaces several times now that ETH was underperforming, that ETH is still the most utilized blockchain on the planet. It has all the utility, all the apps, all the users, the conferences are insane and yet we're sitting here scratching our head looking at the price going what is going on. I think short term markets are all speculators and emotion. Long term plays are going to be proof around utility and usability. I do think when base launched the layer two for ETH and showed that you could use ETH in another network with more utility, faster, cheaper transactions and still utilize the core token without introducing a new altcoin like Arbitrum did, I really think the base model is the future for eth. I think we're going to start seeing more and more layer twos pop up where it's just utilizing ETH without a network token and that's when we're going to start seeing all the securities, real world assets and true utility of ETH just explode. I think we're about one to two years out from that and that's when the AI agents are just going to go insane.
- [12:33]
Scott
Agents C.
- [12:37]
Zoe
Yeah, just. Good day everyone. Yes, obviously it was oversold and the price move. I think that people should understand that obviously all this is these violent price movements etc. They're triggered by few buyers. This is not retail or some type of kind of iPhone moment or some kind of enlightenment that retail, that ETH is underpriced. And ETH still has its fundamental crisis which is it's unable to appeal today to retail in general. I mean retail spend time today from a utilization perspective on other blockchains and eat the main net basically kind of needs still to reevaluate its model with the L2s, with the roll ups, et cetera. So fundamentally, I mean nothing changed here in eth. ETH was oversold. We saw a few. If you see who is actually buying ETH plus the kind of short squeezes, etc. This is what justify the price. But the fundamentals of ETH are still the same. ETH is as exactly was said before, might be the place where the institutional type of applications that we will see will be built. Because simply it's the most battle tested system and that's where usually financial applications go towards when they choose technology. So it's. Yeah, so what's happening today is obviously great if you haven't got liquidated on your positions on it, but, but there is nothing changed fundamentally here.
- [14:31]
Scott
Jonathan then David.
- [14:34]
Jonathan
Yeah, the, regarding Ethereum and the shorts that Zoe was just talking about, you know there's almost 1.2 billion over the last 24 hours liquidated and longs and shorts, but 865 million of that is on the short side and 440 million is just Ethereum and.
- [14:54]
Scott
Whoa, are you in a spaceship?
- [14:56]
Jonathan
That was not me, was it?
- [14:58]
Scott
I don't think that was awesome.
- [14:59]
Jonathan
I don't know but I thought there were aliens for a second. Well, what's really interesting, and I mentioned this back in April here was that when you looked at the on chain metrics, especially the, the number of Ethereum addresses in profit like just exactly a month ago, rather the 8th of April it was at like 32% of all Ethereum addresses were in profit, which is lower than FTX Terra, the 2022, I mean where they were still sitting around 50%. And even today when you look at the number of Ethereum addresses and profit, it just came back to the same percentages that that existed in profit when FTX Terra collapsed and FTX collapsed. So if, if people are wondering, I'm not a like a huge fan of Ethereum but I'm a trader and a speculator and if anybody's wondering is there, do the on chain analytics say that there's still room to go? Oh hell yeah. Because this, this is still like down in the dirt.
- [16:12]
Dave Weisberger
Love that.
- [16:12]
Scott
Go ahead David. Oh, I can't see, just for the record because this is stasis and I'm a co host, I can only see four people on stage so I'm sure there's like 15, I'm sure there's like 15 of you guys and every once in a while you'll raise your hands. I have no idea.
- [16:29]
David Towell
So Dave, if you would indulge. Dave, if you would indulge me, I just have a quick point which is as you know Scott, my previous life is in restructuring and turnaround, both balance sheet and operationally in, in companies. And Ethereum is an operational restructuring right now as well, just like Boeing is an operational restructuring right now. Leadership change and you know, just a reformation that's going on. And I go ahead and I bet on what was clearly a brilliant design to start with. May have gotten a Little bit away from the original principles and maybe had gone a little bit too far astray and now coming back to a much more core competency. A focus on profitability, a focus on marketing. And I think all those things will serve Ether well over the next little while.
- [17:29]
Scott
Wow, David, that was a perfect, perfect description of a decentralized non security that does not at all.
- [17:36]
David Towell
You got it, man. Listen, I just, I just care about making money. I am not in this for principles.
- [17:42]
Zoe
But just, just very quickly from. I may jump on that point that, that, that is not the case today with eth. That's the problem. If, if ETH fake that little bit and wanted to take a little bit more risks like the other blockchains and have foundations and have teams, where there is coordinated efforts of marketing, where there is an actual environment where because it used to be a lot more efficient in basically type of picking winners and picking leaders when it comes to new onboarding super app. And as they became what they are today, they basically moved away from that and becoming this huge decentralized thing where. Where they focus about philosophically on things. And they forgot that they were basically like a nascent startup that need to grab market share and to maximize adoption of whatever they're building. So unfortunately this is, this would be great if there was. If we were really doing that right now with it, if there was like an actual consciousness built around. We need to restructure, we need to coordinate marketing because all other chains, they might not seem like they're doing it, but they are doing it. And yeah, well, I really invite the Ethereum foundation, et cetera, in trying to find ways in which they can do this turnaround. They can do it effectively because they are in a position where they can once, if they do it, they can grow immensely because obviously it is what it is.
- [19:17]
Scott
Dave Weisberger, you're about to be up. I just do have to point to the thing I just pinned to the nest, which is that Steak and Shake is accepting bitcoin payments at all locations starting May 16th. Go Steak and Shake.
- [19:29]
Jonathan
Well, that'd be great if you could find one that didn't look like it was like sitting as a backdrop.
- [19:34]
Scott
Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan. They're bitcoiners now. We love them no matter what. You can go in there and get salmonella, but if you can pay for it for bitcoin, we like you. Do you know how many people that are literally deplorable, that our industry loves? Literally, if they're like, I bought 0.01 Bitcoin I'm a bitcoiner. It doesn't matter. And literally be like, it doesn't matter. Dave Weisberger, are you on stage? Like you're so far down in the audience for me.
- [19:59]
Dave Weisberger
I am, I am here. I am on stage. Can you not hear me?
- [20:03]
Scott
I hear you. Just don't see you.
- [20:05]
Dave Weisberger
Yeah, well, you know, we love the living in the glitch. I enjoyed it all last week when you were, when you were in Dubai.
- [20:11]
Scott
People don't know, man. They don't know until they know.
- [20:13]
Dave Weisberger
Yeah, exactly. So look, there's a couple of things here that's worth talking about. I did a quick video this morning talking about it. The short squeeze in ether was textbook. And I mean textbook. And we haven't seen one like this in a while where you saw more ether shorts liquidated than bitcoin. And the biggest liquidation since the election. That's important because short liquidations have been few and far between. The entire first rally, post election rally happened with not even close, I mean, to the amount that was liquidated in the last 24 hours. And so much of that was dominated by ETH, which you almost never see just based on size of market cap. Right. You know, when there's a big move in crypto and, and bitcoin went up as well, so that matters. The other thing that's interesting is the amount of the price move. What you saw with bitcoin yesterday during this move, is it just ground higher? There was no, you know, parabolic move, There was no anything. Ether started grinding higher and then had a very big candle, short term candle, which, you know, obviously culminated the short squeeze and it retraced about 50% of that and then stayed there for a while. And now it's kind of softening as risk assets are selling off a bit here. But, you know, it is what it is. Now why is this important? What is important is if you want to establish momentum, it needs to move, grind higher from here. And if it doesn't, it could very well just have been a short term trade. And it's important to understand the difference. I tend to agree. I've said with you and on your spaces that the PETRA upgrade matters and, and the roadmap matters. The thing about Ethereum is it's already trading. In fact, it hit a 3,300 billion dollars market cap. So it's not small, it's still based upon the notion that it will. The people who own it believe it will be the platform that will start tokenizing real world assets. Except for there are a lot of other layer twos, layer ones that are fighting for that very thing, whether Solana or, or Aptos, which I know is.
- [22:14]
Scott
And a lot of purpose built layer ones that are being built to do that.
- [22:18]
Dave Weisberger
That's right. And so you're seeing a lot of different things going on. I am less bullish on Ethereum than I'm on Bitcoin, mostly from a risk reward point of view. Not to say that I'm not, because I am long Ethereum as well. It's just a smaller position. But Bitcoin, the risk reward to me is arguably the greatest risk reward in any financial asset that I've ever seen in my entire career, which sadly spans over 40 years. So just understand. And that's because I don't think I find anybody who doesn't irrationally hate the notion of a digital asset that doesn't see Bitcoin as becoming digital gold, which would imply somewhere around a 10 times 1000% rise. And so that kind of likelihood is just hard to find. But there are lots of people who are skeptical whether Ethereum will get there. The real question is people like. And Matt, I know you agree with this. If you're on here, I can't tell you show as a listener to me is I think that most of the smart people and institutions out there believe that the entirety of the market cap of the, of the infrastructure of finance moving forward is going to be many, many, many multiples of where we are today. The question is which are the, which are the platforms that are going to win and that that's the vector. And that's one of the reasons why when Ethereum moves, you see Solana move and you see everything else move. And then of course all the people in the casino, you know, just stop selling all the other crap. And so that's why at the same time Doge moves and Fartcoin moves, which, you know, always pisses me off, but you have to know that that's what's happening and it certainly has been happening.
- [23:55]
Scott
Thought you were a Fartcoin maxi, but I guess I misheard. Go ahead, Steve. Hey everyone, I just want to interject.
- [24:03]
Carlo
So I think we still have two.
- [24:04]
Scott
Major bull cases for ETH too. I think that people are underestimating that when or if the ETF providers allow staking to be part of it, and then two, if treasury years fall and then e stake rates are above what treasury yields are, I think that that can make it much more of like an institutional vessel asset. Well, we've got Matt on stage. Matt, I would imagine you would agree with that.
- [24:34]
Matt
It's, it's certainly going to help. It's certainly going to help, you know, and, and we're still hopeful that the SEC will prove staking. I, I, I don't think it's a game changer in terms of demand, but on the margin, it makes it, it makes it helpful. We don't get a lot of questions from our institutional clients about why there is not yet staking in ETH ETPs. They're still at the stage of understanding what Ethereum is. So I'm bullish on ETP demand and I think staking will certainly help, but it'll help at the margin. The biggest story is, does Ethereum get its narrative wheels back on and what does that do? I also think, for what it's worth, I think an equally important driver of net new flows into eth through ETPs would be if we get index funds approved in an ETP format. You know, most institutions like to invest via indexes. I think a portion of them will want to do so in the crypto market. And you know, if you have a market cap weighted index, ETH is, you know, 15, 20% of that, and I think that could actually be a pretty good source of flows if we see that happen in the market.
- [25:45]
Scott
What's the timeline on that in your mind?
- [25:47]
Matt
We really don't know. I mean, there are a couple applications for meaningful indexes that come up for SEC review this summer, but including, including one from Bitwise, you know, we're talking my book, but I, I don't know. And if I did, I couldn't tell you if the SEC would approve them or not. So we'll see. But you know, I think we'll get there eventually and I do think that will be significant source of demand, you know, when we do, whether it's this summer or it's later, I don't know.
- [26:15]
Scott
In the conversations that you're having where obviously I'm not surprised at all that they're not asking about staking because they don't know what staking is. Right. They're just not to that point. And as you said, I would imagine. But how much would you say, percentage wise, the ones who at least know that Ethereum exists, how much percentage wise do you think they're willing to allocate to Ethereum versus Bitcoin, since those are really the only two options for ETFs or ETPs right now?
- [26:40]
Matt
Yeah, we hear a lot of 2 to 1 and 3 to 1 ratios to answer that directly. So two parts Bitcoin, one part ETH, three parts Bitcoin, one part ETH. We do get an increasing number of questions about how to build a crypto sleeve, which is to say people make the decision they want to allocate to crypto. What do they put in it? Do they put microstrategy in it? Do they put Coinbase in it? Do they put bitcoin? Do they put eth? So the frequency of that question has increased a lot for the people that do allocate both. Yeah, we often see a two to one or three to one ratio and then you know, they rebalance it once a year to get back to that sort of combination.
- [27:19]
Scott
Okay, better question than what percentage of the people you talk to then are even considering you. So that's, that's the ones who do. Right. And they're doing 2 to 1 or 3 to 1.
- [27:29]
Matt
Look, I will say I'm giving a lot of speeches on bitcoin right now because the fundamental, you know, demand supply mismatch in it is hard to argue with. You know, it's why I agree with Dave. I think it's the best asset in the world from a risk adjusted perspective right now. But at the end of every speech I've given and, and, and I do this, you know, 10 to 12 times a week there are questions about eth. I will say they're rarely questions about Salana to give you a flavor of institutional interest, but there is always a question or two about ETH. So somewhere amidst a crowd of 50 or 100 or a TH000 financial advisors, there are people who want to know about ethics. So they're there. There's just a smaller portion than is now comfortable with Bitcoin.
- [28:15]
Scott
I would imagine that even if we get Solana and XRP and Doge and Trump ETFs approved that the expectation that they'll have high flows is pretty minimal. The, the.
- [28:26]
Matt
From the, from the retail crowd I think they could have high flows. From the institutional crowd I think the flows will be de minimis in longer tail assets. But they're still, you know, a big source of demand is, is retail. And I think that source of flows could be significant for those assets.
- [28:44]
Dave Weisberger
The thing is, is is match point and index funds is a very big deal. And I know you, I saw you put up the Hundreds but I 100% so I know, I think you agree but the audience doesn't really get it. You know, speaking as someone who got. I hate to admit this but was, was one of the first inventors of the basically, I'm on the patent for the second ETF ever issued. I started my career in program trading. I watched the rise of Vanguard. I saw Gus Souder, who is a fairly famous dude, build Vanguard. And we watched what became BlackRock. It started as Withnia Bullet, by the way. Wells Fargo something investment advisors that got sold a couple times became blackrock, State Street. All these people. I watched it. And effectively the entire world has learned that the best way to invest in equities is through ETFs and more importantly, through index funds. And there are so many people who understand the narrative and don't understand the crypto technology that the ability for index funds to be created and to grow is a massive driver. I'm not talking a small thing. I'm talking like an order of magnitude. More funds will start coming in over the years after they're approved, which is, I think, exactly why Elizabeth Warren and Crenshaw and all of them were doing everything they could to stop that from happening. So it is a very, very big deal. It's not a small thing. And I think that it is virtually certain. You know, we've talked about a lot of news in the show. I don't know if anyone saw Hester Purse's speech earlier this week where she wants to create a sandbox and allow creation and custody of digital asset digital securities. You know, it would be fascinating to see people do digital digital index funds. You know, it seems that she's opening the door for that sort of thing. And so that is another very, very big driver. There's a lot of things going on underneath the circus. I mean, the circus we saw yesterday in the Senate was despicable. And, you know, I think that, that, you know, that's about the, you know, the vote against the cloture on the stablecoin bill. But all of this stuff is just kind of pointing out the fact that investors are very, very interested in all of these narratives. And I think it's really important for people to understand that.
- [31:06]
Scott
Carlo.
- [31:10]
Zilian
Good morning, Scott. Morning, Carlo, yeah, broke this down with David on the morning show this morning. Hugely disappointed with the political gamesmanship that killed the genius act. These things could have been resolved in a different way. And to at the 11th hour throw all these hurdles was obviously a calculated ploy to try to leverage these things and jam them in, which is politics as usual. But this is being done at the expense of something that the country vitally needs and stifling stablecoin innovation on the presumed justification that we need to push back against what Trump did with his meme coin and so on and so forth is really not the proper venue for this because one has nothing to do with the other. And this bill had a lot of the things that Elizabeth Warren has been complaining about when it comes to digital assets. So this is of course the end result of her winning her seat again and still wielding power and not backing down from her war on crypto. We're just going to have to take a reset, put it back on the legislative agenda. Sadly, we're on the heels of the August reset, so I'm really disappointed that we did this and how it happened and we should and could and definitely need to do better on this.
- [32:30]
Scott
Yeah. And I think it's notable that obviously I think basically every Democrat voted against it. Right. Including Gillibrand, who was a sponsor, who was one of the writers. And I've spoken with her quite a few times. I think that was surprising and I'm trying to figure out why they would have done that. Maybe there's just something else going on here. But Paul and Holly, who are two Republicans, obviously also voted against it, which was the way that it was rejected. And you know, if it had gone on party lines, obviously this would have been approved. So it's kind of just a head scratcher.
- [33:00]
David Towell
Scott, it's my understanding that, that the bill that was served up for vote was reformed or was in some way changed from what it was that Jill Brand, you know, was, was co sponsoring.
- [33:15]
Scott
Yes, that makes sense. There has to be something else going on here. I mean, don't vote against the bill that you post sponsored.
- [33:20]
Dave Weisberger
Yeah, but, but what Hagerty said publicly was this was a vote for Klotcher. This was a vote to be able to get it to the floor, to be able to propose amendments and discuss it. So they basically shut down debate on is one thing to vote against the bill in its final form, which that this was not that vote. It's a totally different thing to stop it. And, and you know, it has been alleged there's all sorts of allegations flowing back and forth. One of the allegations is that certain factions in the crypto lobby from a certain firm who, you know, we generally, you know, are happy with, wants Circle to be the big winner and is trying to push for a version that will help make them the big winner, which is, you know, in the crypto community to effectively use regulation to create a competitive mode for you is about as antithetical to our philosophy as one could get. It's exactly why, you know, I've often said that FTX blowing up long term was a good thing because the dccpa, the thing Sam was pushing, would have been disastrous for DEFI and innovation in the United States. It worries me that Coinbase is running the Sam playbook right now. And I would love to hear, you know, either. I would love to hear from Coinbase official spokesman to say whether or not they do that. I'd like to see a real official policy and know that it's backed up because it is extremely troubling those allegations. They're only allegations. I don't know that it's true, but it is extremely disturbing.
- [34:47]
Scott
My favorite part of that speech you just gave was that you were vague about who it was at the beginning purposely, and then you just named him at the end.
- [34:53]
Dave Weisberger
Well, no, I mean, it's been alleged. I just don't like. Look, I have friends there, right. You know, they're, they're, you know, so I'm not, I don't want to, to accuse them of doing something they haven't done, but it's, it's way out there in the public. There are a lot of people who are making that accusation. I don't know if it's true. I, I hope it isn't. To be blunt.
- [35:12]
Ryan
Yeah.
- [35:12]
Scott
I can't speak specifically for Coinbase, but the, the once behind doors battle between Circle and Tether, and specifically Circle trying, I guess, you know, cut out. Tether has become very public in the past few months and obviously I believe Coinbase profits more from USDC than Circle even does.
- [35:32]
Dave Weisberger
They do, but there's a difference. You kind of expect, you know, Circle to do that. That sort of, I hate to say it, it's almost as American as apple pie and baseball.
- [35:40]
Scott
You know, the competition.
- [35:41]
Dave Weisberger
Yeah, you know, it's that people compete using regular using, lobbying. I was part of it, you know, for four years. I hated it at the time. I still hate it. And we're supposed to be better than that, but it is what it is.
- [35:56]
Scott
Ryan, go ahead.
- [35:59]
Ryan
Yeah, it's funny, when it comes to stablecoin stuff, we forget that Circle is obviously very much in Coinbase and it seems very American. USDC seems like the chosen coin, but we forget what a juggernaut Tether is like just billions and billions of dollars. And not only that, but they're building a massive mining infrastructure. So it's almost comical that Coinbase is going to focus on USDC when probably a year or two from now, Tether is going to be the one transferring all their Bitcoin transactions using all their mining equipment. So Tether is doubling down on strategy and they're building a massive infrastructure that I don't think anyone realizes right now. So a lot of people are going to be relying on Tether for the bitcoin infrastructure in years to come.
- [36:59]
Scott
And I don't think Tether is going anywhere in the United States. I mean that could be why this legislation is being blocked. But I mean, you know, their relationship with Cantor Fitzgerald and Lutnick at this point you would have to imagine was very strategic for this very reason. Go ahead, Jonathan.
- [37:13]
Jonathan
Yeah, I was just going to mention that is that Tether. For a long time I thought I and I to a little bit still think that it was like the hidden dark cloud that, that was just hovering over everybody that if Tether went down that would be one of the worst things ever. But it's, it's basically been granted grace for at least four years and it's been granted a lot of legitimacy with Cantor Fitzgerald and softbank. Cantor owns 5% of it. You know, they, they, they manage all the treasuries that they, that Tether holds. I mean it's, Heather's a big beast. They have a lot of money and now they, they have an entity that's going to be listed on nasdaq. They have a massive bank and one of the most prestigious and respected names on Wall Street, Cantor Fitzgerald behind them. I mean they're not going anywhere. They're, they're going to get more involved and bigger.
- [38:15]
Scott
Zach, I was trying to get you on stage for like 30 minutes. I think you're here.
- [38:20]
Zach
Yes. Although the tech and Twitter is just.
- [38:23]
Scott
Oh yeah, just making sure you're here because it said you were requested that it said it added you, but you're showing as a listener. So. But clearly you have some thoughts. You were trying to jump up.
- [38:34]
Zach
Oh, sorry, this was on a previous topic. Happy to not interrupt here.
- [38:37]
Scott
Cool. No problem. I mean the stable coins just sort of happened here as a topic, but I think it is a big one. To be clear that this act has not been rejected, the genius act. There's actually been conjecture to be back on the floor as soon as Monday or Tuesday. So for anyone who's listening in the audience, it's not dead. It just did not move forward and it was sort of in the 11th hour because everybody believed that this was a slam dunk and that stable coins were sort of the low hanging fruit.
- [39:05]
Zach
Well, yes, but the question is what concessions will need to be made that will give Democrats political cover to go back and sign on to this. The two complaints of Democrats here are one, that the Trump family is doing a stablecoin that, you know, the Saudis and Binance are supporting and that this bill will lead to a huge amount of corruption to the benefit of the Trump family. And then the other concern is about KYC AML strictness with regard to the Trump stuff. Republicans are not going to sign on to a version of the Genius act that bans the president from having a stablecoin. Richie Torres, you know, put forward an amendment to it that would do that. I just don't think that the Republicans can do that politically right now because of their relationship with Trump. And then right now, KYC AML and the Genius act is just about as strict as it could possibly be on primary issuance and redemption of stablecoins. You're not allowed to have a stablecoin in the United States unless it has the technology to comply with corporations court orders to freeze and confiscate stablecoins. The only thing that this bill doesn't have from a KYC AML perspective is direct application to secondary peer to peer transfers of stablecoins. So if I'm sending you usdc, we don't need to KYC each other. Right. We don't need to have whitelisted wallets or anything like that. I think to the extent that you add that to the bill, then the line between a private CBDC or a private stablecoin and a surveillance CBDC gets really blurred. And I would think that should be a poison pill for people that care about crypto. The status quo where stablecoins are legal in America but don't have an adequate regulatory framework is better than turning stablecoins into a regulated CBDC nightmare. So I don't know what it is. Maybe it's just rhetoric, maybe it's like, who knows? But what do the Democrats need to see to be able to vote for this?
- [40:53]
Scott
Yeah. And I don't know what flipped them at the 11th hour. That's the other question. Because it had broad support and all of a sudden this letter came out of nowhere. That has to be pressure from someone.
- [41:05]
Zach
Well, if you look at the two items in the letter, I think that makes the politics of this honestly relatively clear.
- [41:12]
Scott
Right.
- [41:12]
Zach
Where is the Trump stuff coming from? It's coming from the Democrats seeing a political opportunity to highlight what they view as corruption by the Trump family.
- [41:20]
Scott
Right.
- [41:21]
Zach
That they've got a meme coin and they've got World Liberty Financial. And this is a good political thing to hit The Trump administration with. And then the KYC AML thing, at least to me, reads like it's pretty clearly coming from the just out and out anti crypto Warren wing.
- [41:36]
Scott
Yeah, the latter is definitely Warren. I'm just wondering who the directive comes down from on that first part. I mean, Carlo, you already made the point, Right. So it doesn't need to be reiterated too much. But the Trump stuff can be separated from stablecoin legislation. They have nothing to do with one another. They really don't. Right. And so I can actually sympathize a bit. Listen, if we hate Nancy Pelosi insider trading, and you're on the right, you, you should be able to sympathize with the argument that whether you believe Trump is or is not insider trading or profiting from crypto, that you can see why there would be an argument that we don't want politicians profiting from financial instruments. Does anyone disagree with that? I mean, I'm not thrilled about the. I was probably one of the most outspoken people against the Trump meme coin when it dropped, just because of the timing and the optics, you know, but that's what you get with Trump. You get, you get all the good parts and the promises and the deregulation and. But you also get the grift. It is what it is. Jonathan, go ahead.
- [42:34]
Jonathan
The difference between what Trump is doing and Nancy Pelosi is when Nancy Pelosi's, you know, her stuff is she just doesn't even want to talk about it. And Trump in a lot of ways doesn't either. But Trump's surrogates, his family, they're not hiding.
- [42:49]
Scott
Yeah, I heard that.
- [42:50]
Jonathan
It's very blatant out there, which, Which I think is, Is trolling.
- [42:54]
Scott
Like, I'm just saying, at the most basic level, there's an argument that's pretty well litigated that people who are voted into power should not be able to profit from their constituents. I mean, that, that's not debatable. You can say that Trump is not doing that. I can see that debate. But I get where there is discomfort with his personal participation in the market.
- [43:21]
Jonathan
I think what the, the, the other side of the aisle is most upset with is that what the Tr. What his relatives, his sons and everybody, they're just very open about it. Like, there's no conspiracy to, to, to uproot because it's, it's right there. They're not hiding anything.
- [43:41]
Carlo
Yeah, I mean, I think it really sullied what we were doing here, and like, not the best time, but the good news is that bitcoin doesn't care. And you know, the arguments for these things, stablecoins, bitcoin, they're, they're very strong. And you know, it's, it, well, it hurts, but in the end of the day, the momentum's in the right direction. But I think very much Trump and Melania both just really made it very easy for anyone with it, with, you know, who already wanted to oppose what, anything that this, this administration is doing. Give them arguments to say, look, you know, take cheap shots and, and valid one.
- [44:20]
Scott
Right.
- [44:20]
Carlo
You know, he was selling watches before that no one cared. Now this is like a digital piece of shit instead of a, a physical one. And you know, what it does is just lends credence to the arguments against crypto in general. And that's too bad.
- [44:32]
Scott
All right.
- [44:35]
Zilian
You know, I thought that occurred to me yesterday when I saw this thing get the thumbs down and then I saw the amazing run up on alts and memes and so forth. Is this actually might be kind of an indirect boost to L1 alts and alt season because there's only a finite amount of attention in crypto and money moves in tranches. And if the stablecoin act passed forward, that might have drawn more attention to stablecoin interest and might have taken that interest away. Because we've talked previously about how stablecoins could potentially be a threat to some L1s and the viability and the use cases for them. So maybe this buys a little longer alt season, which benefits a lot of our bags and I think inevitable that stable coins are coming. It is the future of finance. So it's just an interesting take on this. This might actually buy a little more time for L1s to continue to go up while we get this worked out on the stablecoin front or might be worth discussing.
- [45:39]
Scott
I mean, we started the spaces with a talk about the price action and the move. We definitely got some quote unquote good news yesterday, I guess on the macro front that the United States and China are sitting down in Switzerland this weekend. The trade deal with the uk for whatever that's worth. I mean, do we view that as the catalyst for why we finally got this massive explosive move in Ethereum or things across the board? I guess. Why yesterday? I don't explain the way, but why yesterday?
- [46:09]
Dave Weisberger
Well, you can't ignore the PETRA upgrade and you can't ignore that it was a short squeeze. Right. You know, there are a lot, you know, you just can't. Right. You know, there was no Excitement. If you look at the Ethereum price action that went into the first, the big merge, it was a clear buy the rumor, sell the news event, right? If you look at the price action going into Petra upgrade, it was a clear sell, you know, sell the rumor. And what we got, we got by the news. I mean it's, it's just, I mean, I hate to say it but it's, it seems pretty damn obvious.
- [46:45]
Scott
But Dave does. And the short squeeze, no question, as you said, I mean, but what's important.
- [46:50]
Dave Weisberger
Is all risk assets moved up.
- [46:52]
Scott
And so that was the next question.
- [46:54]
Dave Weisberger
And so because markets are not binary, right? You know, it takes things, you know, in a, in an environment where risk assets are selling off, it's hard to get buying interest. But when risk assets are going up, it removes one of the most critical sellers, which are the short term traders. The short term traders aren't selling. They're, they're in fact they have to buy because they're getting their, their short position squeezed. And you saw a level of liquidations that was that big. It's a chicken and egg thing, right? But that's the sort of thing that happens and it happens a lot. We see this thing. I've said this many times, Scott, and you've heard me say it. Crypto doesn't trade mean reverting. It trades on momentum extreme. Most of the stock market trades. When you talk about growth in value, it boils down to momentum versus reversion to the mean. You know, we always hear you, you and I hear Mike McGlone talk about reversion of the mean that plays out over certain periods of time. But we live in a momentum economy in a momentum market and that is true. And crypto, is that on steroids?
- [47:54]
Scott
So yeah, we saw that yesterday. Yeah, we saw that Yesterday. Bitcoin like sniffs 100. It gets people excited. Then to your point, there's the PETRA upgrade and people finally take the look at Ethereum and if Ethereum goes and the short squeeze happens, as I said at the beginning, that's what sparks the everything move on altcoins. Oh yeah, because there has not been Ethereum bullishness in so long. It just got money flowing in like crazy on the expectation that the long awaited alt season was finally here.
- [48:24]
Dave Weisberger
Now the thing that's interesting about this is the, in previous years you might have seen people caring about things like the stablecoin bill, blah, blah, blah. But the fact is we care about that because we understand that that that will help reform the financial system. We understand that that will inspire building and help the digital, you know, help the digital economy. Most people in crypto look at stablecoins and go, oh, that's boring. And so, you know, the fact that it didn't cause any market reaction is completely unsurprising, if a little bit sad.
- [49:01]
Scott
Yeah, Zillion.
- [49:05]
Zoe
Can you guys hear me?
- [49:06]
Scott
Yep. You're good?
- [49:08]
Zoe
Yeah. Yeah. So I look, I think besides, obviously it's quite a little bit of a disappointment here in the stablecoin with the stablecoin act. But again, for me the stablecoin act is very important to include. I was actually talking to Carlos when he was visiting in, in the Dubai token 49 and I found out through Carlos that basically the, the act is US dollar focus. It's not like a general stable coin. And I see like a little bit of a dislocation here because this act is going to give the basis for stable, should give the basis for stable coins in general. This is how you're going to attract worldwide crypto companies to be, to be set up in the US and launch stable coins. No matter which, which currency are denominated those stablecoins in. Right. So setting up a bill for stable coins, US stable coin, that becomes a us to US business basically. Obviously you guys see it from a US perspective, but from a world perspective, in order to attract investments and to attract kind of the finance, how do I call it, 2.3 or open wheel, whatever, to the new financial world, the new financial markets, you have to have stable coins that are denominated and you have to be a place in a safe place to run and to issue stable coins that are denominated in currencies other than the US Dollars in order to provide debt markets in those currencies in order to provide all type of services in those currencies. And obviously I was really surprised to see that Carlos, who is not involved but who is, is very interested in this subject, did not see this and I think most of the US do not see that. But in order to build an environment, and this is what UAE is trying to do here, is in order to build an environment where you become an international financial center, you can't be monocurrency denominated when you provide a framework for things. You have to provide a general framework where people can come establish an issue under your supervision, under your guidance and under your environment. So this is where I was surprised. So I'm actually quite happy that the first draft was not, was not accepted. Maybe the second draft, whoever is drafting this should, should should take into perspective a global scope. This is how the US will become a destination for, for, for global issuers. Because otherwise you're going to have the US issuers that are going to issue US dollar stable coins and they're going to try to find utility of those stablecoins elsewhere. But, but I think from, from like in really like really setting up an environment that will include everyone, you have to set up an environment that is currency agnostic, that only provide an infrastructure and in an oversight in order to be able to issue.
- [52:04]
Scott
And they need to include tether because what you just described is tether which is not actually regulatory approved in the United States and largely not that available.
- [52:14]
Dave Weisberger
I think, I think it's, it's naive to think that, that, that it will go in the direction we want it to go. I mean this is the real question is, is fighting against the banks? I mean I've been, you know, it's too bad he's not up here. Austin Campbell. By the way, anybody who wants to read a fun article that is completely on point here, Austin wrote a great takedown. I reposted it as well. You can find find it on mine. A great takedown of the vote. But the real people who are fighting against the stablecoin bill are the community banks and Warren. Right. They're unlikely allies. So you have the community banks who understand what I've been saying from the beginning. It doesn't matter if the bill allows you to offer interest on stable coins or not. That the velocity of money and the ease of transfer will allow will basically spell the end of their $6 trillion of deposits that get no interest. Because it will become so easy for financial institutions to offer automatic sweeps like brokers do now to money markets, but just without any risk, without any limits. And you'll actually be able to pay people and do all the things you need to do in banks. So much simpler in an online format that community banks understand that fractional reserve banking in the old way is pretty much going to go kaput and they understand that and they're fighting this thing tooth and nail. That's the real enemy here. Let's be perfectly blunt about it. Yes, we have allegations of other stuff, but that's the enemy. There's no way that you're going to be able to get something passed that's going to be even more international to allow even more competitors. So it's just not going to happen. I mean, I wish it was. I mean it's not that I don't agree with you, Zilian I just think that it's literally impossible.
- [54:12]
Scott
I tend to agree with you, Dave. I like the vision though.
- [54:16]
Dave Weisberger
I love the vision. I think it's absolutely the right way to go. I mean we all kind of understand that crypto is native, multi currency, native global and that that is a major benefit for the average person worldwide. But in this environment, you're not going to get that. You need a first step which is let's get, let's rework the payment rails inside the system by, you know, because stablecoins are literally a thousand times faster and more secure, less risk than the method that's underneath ACHS and Swift right now. That's just true. You know, you call it what you wish, but, but, but that's a fact. And that's why there are, you know, anyone who understands the financial system, Democrat, Republican, doesn't matter, understands that now. The political wrangling is just disgusting. But it is what it is.
- [55:07]
Scott
It is what it is. And just like that, we've been here an hour and it's time to move to rap. Dave say to you, you did a great job from the listener arena down there of participating. Couldn't see you, but you're very savvy at this and get in there at the perfect right moment. So thank you. Also check your text messages. I also have to say, Dave, I always say this when I come on the show. We've talked about this before. Every time I go to a conference, it used to be like, I love your show, Scott. Whatever. I would meet people. Then it became the people who came up to me got 10 years older. Last year, everyone who came up to me was 10 to 15 years older than they used to be who were fans of my content and they always with their kids, they're always adult males and they would say, I really love Macro Monday. Right? Nobody started was like, I really like your show or your channel anymore. It's got I really like Macro Monday. In token 2049, every person who came up with me was like, I love Dave. Every single one of them. They're like, macro Monday is cool, but I'm on Team Dave. Like as if the rest of us weren't even there. Over and over and over again. So once again check your text messages because I need to talk to you today and everybody else, please give everybody on stage a follow. These guys are amazing. Every once in a while we get girls here too. It does happen. Just hasn't. Hasn't been of late. So I'll say we love all of our, we love all of our panelists, both male and female, and we probably need some more female representation. As I look around at this group of chads and otherwise, we'll see you back on Monday for the next crypto Town Hall. Thanks, everybody. Have a good one.