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The Wolf Of All Streets
CPI’s Shockwave: Bitcoin Skyrockets! Plus, The RWA Takeover
00:54:23
CPI’s Shockwave: Bitcoin Skyrockets! Plus, The RWA Takeover
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- [00:00]
Scott Melker
Is flying, surpassing $99,000 on the CPI print that just dropped. Stocks also flying in futures. Looks like markets were just waiting for a catalyst to pump once again. We're going to unpack those numbers a little bit, but I'm more interested in talking about one of the biggest narratives of 2024 that I believe will probably be the biggest narrative in crypto in 25, and that is real world assets. Nobody better to discuss that with than Sid Powell from Maple. Guys, this is going to be an amazing show. We got Texas West Capital, Chris Higgs on the back half. Let's go.
- [00:40]
Sid Powell
Let's do.
- [00:55]
Scott Melker
What is up everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of Allstreets. Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel and hit that like button. And if there's something that you're going to want to hit that like button for, I would say that it is very obvious that Bitcoin at $99,136 after this mega bounce is probably something to start celebrating. We're going to see, I think if the market's first reaction is the right one. We tend to see markets absolutely fly in one direction on news and then correct. We'll see if that is what's happening here. But interesting to see that we got that CPI print and bitcoin up a few thousand dollars on it. Good morning, Sid, how are you?
- [01:37]
Sid Powell
Hey, Scott. I'm good, I'm good. Thanks for having me on.
- [01:40]
Scott Melker
I love that we kind of live in this upside down world where I don't know if good news is bad news or bad news is good news or if markets are supposed to go up and down when certain things happen. So we had obviously a CPI print of 2.9% that's up 0.2% from 2.7. So inflation rises in line with expectations. Yeah, we get to have a bunch of bankers throw out an expectation. And as long as I'm not going to say that I believe that those expectations when they make those predictions have more information than us. But. So CPI goes up slightly, but it's great news for markets because it's what they expected. Now to be fair, core CPI went down slightly if you're looking at it. So it was 3.2% year over year estimate was 3.3. It came down 0.2%. So markets love it. Whatever. It seems like we were in one of these like hating uncertainty, waiting for some excuse. But I mean, inflation still up.
- [02:40]
Sid Powell
Also, also people I think were a little bit nervous after the jobs Print. So you know job, job numbers 250k beating the expectation of 160 and then wage levels up 4%. So I think people had inflation on their minds and this probably signals that the inflation concerns were not as bad as people thought coming out of the jobs report. So I think that's why you're seeing the kind of, the positive bounce.
- [03:09]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I mean my audience probably sick of us talking about how muddled all these numbers are but every single day you get some print that seems to conflict with the previous print and it turns people bullish or bearish and then when you're not looking in two months they revise it all anyways.
- [03:25]
Sid Powell
That's true. You always got to look out for the, for the post fact revisions a couple of months down the track as we saw with all the jobs reports last year.
- [03:34]
Scott Melker
Oh my God, it was like 800,000 jobs over a 10 month period or something that they quietly realized basically all of the data you guys were trading on for the last year, we were lying.
- [03:44]
Sid Powell
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought it was supposed to be China's numbers you couldn't trust.
- [03:48]
Scott Melker
That's right. I think that we are the new China. Congratulations. I mean before we dig deeper into rwa, I just kind of want to talk about what's been happening with the market in more context because here obviously standard charter saying bitcoin was caught up in a macro driven sell off. They say may fall further. They wrote this a little bit earlier today, sorry, 11am UTC. So they were wrong. Right. So basically what's happening, I think they're right about the first half which is that we've just kind of seen a risk asset sell off in general and everything sell off as people wait for the inauguration away for this data market hitting uncertainty. But the may fall further. Well, I think now we're getting the clarity and it and it's rising. But I mean do you agree generally that what's been happening in crypto over the past few weeks has just kind of been. This has been one of those phases where everything's kind of down and we can kind of.
- [04:39]
Sid Powell
Yeah, it was a bit of a shakeout. I look at, I mean outside of the large caps, I was looking at the defi coins. A lot of them gave back most of the gains that they made since, since the election in November. But you know, looking year over year, they're still up 2x but I think, I think from here you're probably going to see more of a positive trend in prices, particularly with defi which I think is kind of a sector that stands to gain the most post inauguration with a different regulatory or different regulatory leadership and a different approach from regulators there.
- [05:14]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I agree. So listen, I think we're getting some clarity. We'll kind of watch the market as the show goes on. Of course, you got Chris on the back half to talk about the charts anyways. But I want to talk about real world assets and defi obviously, because we talk about this all the time, but we have these hype cycles in crypto where it's like Defi summer or Metaverse fall or NFT summer, and it's kind of this first iteration in bubble and then it pops. And then as excited as we were, it takes maybe another cycle to start to see the real use cases and for things to play out. So I would say early last year, RWA was like the narrative. It was kind of almost marked like the end of the bear market. It felt like, right, yeah, bank talking about tokenizing everything and all these things. You guys have been doing this forever. Yeah, seems to have cooled. I think 2025, this will be the thing that we see legitimate movement in as opposed to all these other narratives like AI agents. I think. Give me three years. Yeah, let me know. You know, and maybe gaming, we start to see really this, this cycle too. RWA to me is the one and that's you. So let's talk about maybe the state of RWA and then we can dig more deeply into like specifically where you think we're going to see the real use cases.
- [06:29]
Sid Powell
Yeah, well, I think like, like you said, Scott, so super hot narrative early last year. And really this kind of kicked off with, I mean it was, it was partly driven by things like chokepoint 2.0, so pushed all the crypto companies out of the banking system, so they had to find good savings products. And the first real RWA product in that category to take off was tokenized T bills. So we've seen billions of dollars of T bills tokenized in crypto. You've seen teams like Ondo leap to the front there. We've seen some of the large traditional asset managers, Franklin Templeton doing tokenized T bills. But then we kind of stalled out after the market started to rip again. Because after, after the market started to rise, it was less exciting to be in 5% tokenized T bills. And we also started to see a narrative around yield compression and Fed cutting rates again. So we did a pool that was doing tokenized receivables. We still see a lot of interest from issuers there and also fund managers in doing tokenizing their funds that might be private credit. The area that we've been most bullish on in RWAs and what we focus on is tokenized private credit. I mean Maple did over 2 and a half billion in loans last year and all of those were tokenized on chain. So that's the area where we're kind of most excited. We still see that a lot of tradfi assets getting tokenized. The issue is the duration is just too long for the average crypto investor or crypto allocator. That's why we like over collateralized loans, tokenized private credit. Because this is all short term stuff, it pays good yields and most importantly, I think this is the thing that a lot of people forget. You can't get good exposure to it through traditional finance.
- [08:28]
Scott Melker
Yeah.
- [08:29]
Sid Powell
And that's been, that's why I always.
- [08:30]
Scott Melker
Kind of like, I mean I know it's like the first iteration is let's tokenize T bills, but everybody can just go get a T bill. Why do they need a token of a T bill? I mean it's kind of a proof of concept to me, but it's got to go a lot deeper than that.
- [08:42]
Sid Powell
Yeah, yeah. But the reason was that not everyone in crypto could go and get T bills lost, you know, in 2023 and 2024 and that, and that's why that took off. And so where we've tried to focus is on the things that they can't get. So you can't buy in traditional finance. You can't go to Morgan Stanley and buy bitcoin backed loans or loans that will pay you 12% collateralized by liquid, over collateralized with liquid bitcoin. And so that's kind of why we've seen a lot of allocator interest in, in that category. So RWAs though, I think hopefully off the back of more institutional participation last year, like the bitcoin ETF approvals, favorable regulatory environment, we're starting to see more of these traditional players come in and look at can they, you know, can they hold on chain assets? So that's, that's where, that's why I'm pretty confident that RWAS will pick up this cycle.
- [09:34]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I mean numbers on what you guys are doing. Maple yield performance. 2024 was breakout year. So you had 16x TVL to 562 million. That's not a drop in the bucket. I mean that's a lot of money to move high yield.
- [09:49]
Sid Powell
The second from the left there, that's all organic USDC yield. And so that averaged 16.8 over the course of the year. So it was the best performing yield product on chain over the course of 2024. And that came from doing over collateralized loans to institutions. So we lent against bitcoin, we went against Solana. But institutions are really active in the borrowing market. Last year, I think they'll be active again this year. And so we expect that we could duplicate that performance over the course of this year.
- [10:19]
Scott Melker
How do you manage over collateralized loans if price drops 50% or something like that?
- [10:26]
Sid Powell
You have to have two levels. Yeah, it's a margin call. So you start a loan at 70 LTV. So let's say you give me $145 Bitcoin, I give you $100 loan. We would then do a margin call at 80% LTV and then we would do a liquidation at a 90% LTV. So that's like 1:10 to 115. And so you got a two step process. And once you margin call somebody, they've got 12 hours to respond. So over the course of last year we had over 40 different margin calls and we only had one partial liquidation. So no losses. And that customer then ended up repaying their loan after the fact. But so it's a proven product.
- [11:12]
Scott Melker
And listen, if someone gets liquidated, it's because they took on too much risk themselves. It has nothing to do with the protocol. I mean people default on loans every day. Last time I checked, they go tow people's cars every single day. It's a vibrant business in the United States. It's taking back cards for people that make the payments. Right.
- [11:29]
Sid Powell
In that case, that was just somebody who set their, you know, set their initial margin level too high versus what they could respond to on a Sunday. So you know, it was kind of an own goal there I think though, as we look at this year. So you've got a narrative of rate cuts may be delayed post the jobs report. Goldman Sachs is sort of talking about out to June. But either way, I think as rates compress, it's good for crypto lending. When rates compress, we see risk on assets go up, yields and interest rates on chain go up as the basis goes up. So you start to see crypto lending will outperform quite meaningfully what you can get in traditional finance and private credit.
- [12:15]
Scott Melker
That's why I think what happens when we go back to zirp, zero interest rate policy, if we believe that eventually the Fed just cuts and cuts and cuts and cuts and we go back to 2.5% mortgages and negative rates. How much does that affect the business? I would imagine by that time people have so much liquidity that they're using it in different ways.
- [12:36]
Sid Powell
Yeah, I think leaving aside the underlying structural risks of running a zirup again, what you're going to see is that as rates drop, risk on assets will trade up. So bitcoin and crypto assets will trade up. People will pay more to borrow. So you see spreads between crypto and traditional lending widen again at times during the last cycle they were as much as 15%. So you're getting paid a 15% premium for lending in crypto versus what you're getting for holding T bills. And as you said, there'll be a ton of liquidity. So people will want, they'll have too much money, they'll want to lend and, and there'll be an abundance of people willing to borrow if risk on assets are trading up, if Bitcoin and bitcoin will be flying at that point.
- [13:22]
Scott Melker
See, here's another tweet. Genuinely believe that the Maple Finance high yield pool is the best lending opportunity available anywhere on the planet. 16.5% APY fees, net of APY net of fees. So that's the pure USD. But here you're talking about 150 to 200% over collateralized by bitcoin each sole then it says a few other alts lending to the largest institutions in crypto with legal recourse. Ultra I love like the disclaimer and ultra liquor with an average withdrawal time of three days so you can get your money out relatively quickly. How do you decide with these products how far down the risk curve or market cap you'll go like, do you do fart coin loans? You know, because it's $2 billion man. Can you loan against fart coin or is it too volatile?
- [14:06]
Sid Powell
Farcoin I'd say is a little bit too volatile, but it's like anything like if, if you, if, if you ask me for a million dollar loan and collateralize it with $100 million of fart coin, if I, I'd probably look at that. One thing we did turn down though was twice over the last six months we had requests to lend against usual USD 0, which we declined both times. So we don't go right down the spectrum. We've tried to stick to the larger caps and then of the defi stuff we've done, it's been like a PT token against usde. So effectively it's like a zero coupon bond that we were lending against in that case, and again, more than 2x over collateralized. So we do, we do a pretty thorough review. We do technical, operational, underlying mechanism and that's why we saw like the 87 cent thing in usual. And so we couldn't accept that as collateral at the end of the day. So we do a pretty rigorous review on everything that we accept. And most of the book at this stage is BTC Ethan.
- [15:14]
Scott Melker
So yeah, that makes sense. Obviously that would be primarily the large ones, unless it's an outlier where somebody just over collateralizes so massively. I mean, I think I'm assuming that Defi learned a lot from the curve drama last year. Was that last year?
- [15:29]
Sid Powell
Yeah, yeah. And it's important to note to one of those points in that tweet you just showed. We have legal recourse. In pretty much every other Defi loan, there is no legal recourse. So if you sell your curve and you still suffer a shortfall, that borrower Igorov is walking away there. Whereas for our institutional borrowers, if there is a shortfall, we still have recourse to go after them for the other assets on their balance sheet.
- [15:57]
Scott Melker
That's a big, big difference because he apparently used that money to build two very large mansions in Australia. Nobody was able to go take those mansions back.
- [16:08]
Sid Powell
No, no, I actually used to. I used to live pretty close to where those mansions were in too rack back in Melbourne. But we actually saw a lot of Defi founders ended up buying pretty substantial real estate portfolios off the back of borrowing against their tokens last cycle. And the problem with that real estate is, I mean one, it tends to hold its value, but it's a liquid. It's not like they can cover those.
- [16:35]
Scott Melker
It's not like they can repay those Defi loans. Yeah, I'm sorry man, I definitely hear you. But the founder of a project should not be able to use tokens that he minted and gave to himself as collateral to buy things.
- [16:48]
Sid Powell
But hey, that's just $100 million of debt for as an individual.
- [16:54]
Scott Melker
It's just bananas to me, but I've got RWA xyz. We kind of bring this up each time. I don't know how accurate this is, so I want to ask. But this is obviously without stablecoins, which are well over 200 billion now, I think in their entirety, saying that we now have $15.11 billion in total RWA on chain. Right. And I think maybe even last time we kind of had you on, it was about A billion in tokenized treasuries. That's 3.79 now. Right. So that's grown. It was over that because BYDL had just kind of launched. But I mean, there's a 3 or 4x since you and I have even been talking about this in the last year, just in the Treasuries. But do you think 15 billion is about relatively accurate for RWA in total right now? Less stablecoins.
- [17:42]
Sid Powell
I could see that it sounds like probably slightly too high for me, but not by too much of a margin. I wouldn't say it's actually 5 rather than 15. I'd say it's close, but perhaps slightly overcounting. I did see hash note in there, I think has grown super, super well over the last few months. Incidentally. I think a lot of that is actually usual tvl. The money that goes into usual is used to buy hash note T bill products.
- [18:12]
Scott Melker
That's interesting. Honestly, they weren't even on this list last time we looked at it and now they're 40% of the market.
- [18:19]
Sid Powell
Massive, massive, massive product for them.
- [18:22]
Scott Melker
Global bonds 118 million. Meh. Private credit 9.75 billion. That's a big number. But I think the story here is that it's all up and to the right when you look at all these charts generally.
- [18:36]
Sid Powell
Yeah, yeah. I think a big driver is you can see figment, not figment figure in there. They have their HELOC product, which they do on the provenance blockchain. So I think that's a substantial chunk of it. But that one doesn't really find its way into kind of the rest of the defi ecosystem because they're doing it on their own chain. It's more like a kind of ecosystem unto itself.
- [19:01]
Scott Melker
But there you are. 2 billion in private credit with 87 million defaulted. So pretty good. Yeah, Maple. Obviously looking at that there. So listen, there's a. You know, I think just we kind of mentioned stablecoins. We've had this interesting situation here that I don't think people have been paying attention to. But stalled stablecoin supply cast out on Bitcoin's bullish recovery. I disagree. Okay, so all of this is before inflation. But, you know, I think we had this notion. You just see these tweets. Tether minted. Tether minted. Tether minted. Tether minted. That we've been seeing an increase. But actually. And I think a lot of this might have to do with MICA compliance and cutting back in Europe of people using USDT for Various reasons but we actually haven't seen stablecoins increasing really over the last month.
- [19:49]
Sid Powell
No, but also I think that's consistent with like we haven't seen risk assets do that much over the last month. And you know, paradoxically stable, you know, stable coins increase as, as people start to trade into risk assets because they need more liquidity to trade between them. You know tether USDT took like a three bill market cap drop off of mica but they're 140 billion. So it's kind of a drop in the, you know, a drop in the bucket for them. And most of their, you know, most of their activity happens in Asia anyway. So I think those guys have pretty strong network effects. I don't know that this Mecha non compliance will really jeopardize their long term prospects. I think it is a good win for Circle and Coinbase though because they can start to push USDC trading pairs across all of those European exchanges. So I think it's a win for them. We've seen USDC market cap has picked up a lot. It's back up closer to what like 45 or 50 billion. So that's recovered a lot. And they are making a big play for, for the trading pair market. You know they're trying to push onto the European exchanges, the Asian exchanges. So you know, tether has a fight on its hands. But I think the big story of last year as well was new stable coins like Athena usual not allowed to call stablecoin.
- [21:07]
Scott Melker
Those are synthetic dollars. Synthetic dollars? Yeah. How dare you?
- [21:11]
Sid Powell
Yeah, yeah.
- [21:14]
Scott Melker
Which is, we don't call them stable coins because there should be differentiation. I think we got trouble for algorithmic stable coins.
- [21:23]
Sid Powell
Yeah. And I think it's, it's kind of a measure of the sophistication of the market that you have different, you know, different specialized designations for different types of coins, whether it's synthetic dollars, algorithmic stables, fiat backed stables or over collateralized stables. But I think you know, stablecoins are going to be a massive trend over this year. Stripe buying, bridge ripple launching rlusdc, rlusd, revolut is looking to get into the game. PayPal obviously already in the game. I think more neo banks and traditional finance players are going to try and get into this because it's a way to effectively monetize treasury holdings and deposits and this is ultimately a threat to things like Visa. Why do you want to keep paying for the use of these credit card networks when you can just send stables for an infinitesimally small transaction fee?
- [22:23]
Scott Melker
Yeah. I mean, I heard the clip on the all in podcast of Chamath. I think they asked each guy what's going to be the big winner of 2025 non crypto specific. And he said stablecoins, of all things everywhere. That was his answer. Was that stablecoins? And for the exact reason you said, why pay the fees to Visa and mastercard when stablecoins can now be effectively incorporated at a lower price into everything?
- [22:48]
Sid Powell
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It totally disrupts those networks. Same with the Swift network. Whenever I have to pay a wire, I'm paying 25 to 40 bucks, pop. Whereas I can just send money to people who, through stablecoins, much, much easier. So I think that's going to be a massive winner. But I do think they're in a bit of an arms race. Right. Like, it costs a tremendous amount to set up a stablecoin and it's a ton of marketing dollars. It's kind of like, you know, it's like railways 150 years ago. I think there's going to be massive consolidation and I think most of the newer entrants into the market are going to struggle to hit that network effect.
- [23:31]
Scott Melker
Yeah. It's not RWA specific, but I think with regulatory change, there's an expectation now that we're going to see a lot of more institutional products, such specifically ETFs, obviously. Right. And even JP Morgan, after Jamie Dimon goes on TV and calls us rat poison or whatever, again, says, same as cigarette smoking, you should be able to smoke cigarettes. I don't endorse it, though. You should be able to do your bitcoins, guys. But JP Morgan says all COIN ETF inflows may be as high as 14 billion. That's a pretty big number. When he's talking specifically about Solana and xrp, I mean, it's important to note that I think they're talking about total value. So we now have over $100 billion in total value in ETFs of Bitcoin. But that was not all new inflows. Right, but you're starting from zero with these. So it's a bit different and nuanced. You don't have GBTC holding 26 billion to start, but I think there's consensus that these are probably getting approved this year and who knows what happens beyond that, and that this is saying they will be relatively popular. I mean, still a drop in the bucket versus bitcoin and the expectation for eth, but a real thing, I guess. Like, do you expect this to happen? How Much is the regulatory change do you think affected then rwa? If we're going to start to see these products trading on the stock exchange and you don't need to necessarily go on chain for exposure to some of these things?
- [24:50]
Sid Powell
Well, I think so. Starting from the top, I do think these products are going to get approved this year. My expectation would be SOL or XRP are the first cabs off the rack. You know, they have the highest market cap, they've been around a long time and we've just seen a lot more institutional demand for them. You know, anecdotally over the last week we've had a lot of requests for borrow against xrp. So I think, you know, a lot of institutions are holding it, they have a bullish outlook on it and they want to borrow against it. So I think they'll be the first ETFs, you know, even at 14 billion, I mean on the combined market cap of both of them, it's what, like 500 ish billion between the two of them. So that's like 3%. But I do think the next step beyond that would be RWA or DeFi coins finding their way into ETFs. And what this will do is it'll make it easier for institutions to sell it through their existing network. You can think of an ETF as just like a TRADFI wrapper. It's like how you have wrapped BTC, got BTC utility and DeFi. Well, an ETF is just like a wrapper for Wrapper for Defi. I think Grayscale already proposed a list of assets that included Defi tokens like Ondo and Athena and infrastructure ones like Jito in an ETF product. So I wouldn't say we're too far away from that.
- [26:18]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I tend to agree with that. So we run out of time so fast here. Looking at 2025, I kind of asked you earlier which things you see would bring meaningful adoption. But like, what are you most excited about? I guess for this year? Just generally, I mean RWA specifically, but for crypto in, in general, do you have the expectation of the master monster bull market that everybody's looking for? I mean, what are you kind of looking forward to this year?
- [26:43]
Sid Powell
So this cycle I am expecting a big bull market. I think Defi is going to outperform. I think Meme coins are going to recede. I think GameFi could also outperform as well. But I view Defi and Meme Coins are kind of antithetical. Right. Like you had to create Meme Coins to produce tokens that had no utility because you get sued when you did defi tokens. And in defi I see either some kind of favorable regulation for issuing tokens, turning on fee switches, which is a big thing, we actually have a governance post up at the moment, or potentially retail access in the US to DeFi, which would unlock a massive market. So those are three things I'm excited about. I think defi is going to outperform the cycle.
- [27:25]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I think so too. So I think that obviously people were launching memes, as you said, because it was like an FU to the sec. But I don't think that's the only reason they've caught a bit. I mean I think they've caught a bid because the native crypto people are always just looking for the next casino or PVP to play in and that's been it. And because it's so decentralized and easy to launch, it's just, you know, that's where I think the mindshare and money has gone. But like I'll be very disappointed. You know, we've had the bitcoin and meme coin barbell and utility hasn't really moved. I'll be very disappointed especially in, in like light of us having everything aligning from a regulatory and legislative perspective if we don't like prove it this time. Like to me it feels like with, with Trump coming in and no more excuses about the anti crypto army and maybe we get banking rails back and all those things. Like there's a lot of pressure I think on the crypto industry to show that we're like worth worth what we've been saying this whole time and to really see some mainstream adoption. So I'm hoping that that happens and we go back to real utility.
- [28:31]
Sid Powell
Yeah, I think we can walk the walk as an industry.
- [28:34]
Scott Melker
I think so too. I'm just going to ask you when aptos, there are aptos, I work with them very closely now. I think they're amazing. I don't think Maple's on aptos yet. Can I help?
- [28:48]
Sid Powell
We're not on aptos yet. We've been in discussion with them and we've actually also looked at some aptos backed loans as well. So accepting it as collateral and lending against it. So we're definitely interested. I think they're a great team and I'm excited to see what they can do over the course of this year. I want to see that ecosystem grow.
- [29:10]
Scott Melker
Awesome. Well, Sid Maple Finance and his name is Syrup. Sid. It's all very Clever. Works together. Serb. Sit on X. I still giggle every single time I see it. I say that to you. When will I see you, man? You're going to be at Paris Blockchain. Token 2049. What do you got coming up?
- [29:26]
Sid Powell
I'll be token. Token 2049. I'll be at East Denver and I'll be at DAS New York as well.
- [29:32]
Scott Melker
ETH Denver. I'm not. I've never made it to ETH Denver, but it seems amazing. And it feels like I would just go skiing and not go to the conference.
- [29:40]
Sid Powell
That's the risk. That's the risk. But definitely It's a good 2049. Either way.
- [29:45]
Scott Melker
Cool, man. Well, we'll. We'll catch up and do something in person. Don't. Don't let me off the hook on that. Cause I always love seeing you there.
- [29:51]
Sid Powell
No, no. Love to. All right, Scott. Thanks for having me, man.
- [29:55]
Scott Melker
All right, man. Thanks so much, guys. Go follow up. Serb Sid. Thanks, Sid. Bye. Sometimes when I. It's like, awkward for me to say goodbye to a guest. That was like I was hanging up the phone on a phone call on that one. That was good. It didn't feel right. Sorry, Sid. But yeah. So I obviously had to ask Wet aptos just to give you guys a quick update on what's happening there. Pretty crazy how much adoption there is, both of them. But of crypto, I think right now in general, like I said, if we can't walk the walk when everything aligns for us, we're in big trouble. I want to see gaming really bubble. I want to see 100 billion in TVL and RWA. I have no idea what the hell's happening with AI agents at all, because that shit is so over my head. But if you're looking at just what's happened in the last. Well, now it's 15 days of 2025. Circle now has issued USDC on the Aptos testnet. That's kind of why I alluded to maybe Maple doing something there, because obviously USDC is so deeply incorporated in what Maple does. ChainLink has arrived. AAVE deployed on the testnet push protocol. Coming to Aptos. I'm actually interviewing Avery, I think tomorrow, sometime this week. The new CEO now that Mo is gone. Although Avery was always there to talk about all of this in the coming days. The chainlink thing is really cool. I'll read it because it's easier. Big moves on aptos. Chainlink data feeds are now live on its mainnet, empowering developers with secure, high quality off chain data. For DApp DAP Innovation AAVE v3, a DeFi heavyweight makes its debut for Aptos Testnet their first step beyond EVM blockchains. That's huge. With main net plans on the horizon. Plus Aptos based USDT is now live boosting liquidity across the ecosystem. So USDC is there and now Tether is there as well. There's no affiliate link, there's no nothing. I'm just telling you guys about Aptos because it's awesome. And now speaking of things that are awesome, I've got Mr. Christopher inks here with me today. Sir, we're up today. We always about Wednesdays, how we're down on Wednesdays. We're up. What's going on?
- [32:03]
Chris Higgs
I was looking forward to it man. You know I was talking to, to our people yesterday at the Academy and last night Market Rapid. I said, listen, I said, you know, here's where CPI is expected to be. I think there's a good chance we could come in soft and with PPI coming in soft yesterday, that would be the catalyst to send stocks and crypto higher and then probably mark the top of, probably kind of signal that the top is in for the 10 year. Everybody's been all about the 10 year yield which you know, 4.9, 4.97 was where it topped out. But man, you know, look at it.
- [32:39]
Scott Melker
Usually look at it, look at it. The glory.
- [32:42]
Chris Higgs
Exactly. And here's the thing when, when people are talking about odd things that are happening. So we're up like 100 basis points in September since the Fed started dropping rates in September. And everybody now is like, oh my God, you know, it's, it's 10 year, man, it's going, it's going to go. And you know, it's usually around that time that the market reverses. So we had that. I've been talking, I've got a DXY chart here, I'll show in a minute. I've been talking about that and what I think is going on there. And so it looks like the top is possibly in on that as well. And then we've got, you know, just these setups this week. We've had these crazy setups. So many alts pulled back on the hourly to the S1 pivot and got a, and got a little bump off at the beginning of the week. I mean the setup was there to, to kind of just take off today. And so so far we're looking pretty good, man. Oh man, look at this. I don't know how many people paid attention to that Monday candle.
- [33:34]
Scott Melker
But that is like, that was, that was one of the best candles we've had. It's been a lot, it's been a long time since I saw the full range of human emotions across crypto Twitter like that. Oh my God. We're below 90. It's over 2. Holy shit. The day closed green.
- [33:51]
Chris Higgs
Yeah, I mean the day, I mean here, this is the coinbase Bitcoin USD chart. We had a, we had a swing low there of 89, 028 and we had a swing high of 95, 900. So you're talking about what a 60, almost a $6,900 swing and it only closed. Let me see here. 94, 506.
- [34:10]
Scott Melker
Depends on the exchange. But it was, it was, I mean it was literally within five bucks on any given exchange from open to close.
- [34:17]
Chris Higgs
I mean that's like really crazy after that big six thousand, you know, seven thousand dollar swing. And so, you know, and it did it right there through the, through the low here. You know, again, volume kind of as we look at through here we got this nice decrease in volume throughout the range. Usually the first thing I look for when I'm looking for accumulation or reaccumulation and then you start analyzing the, the price, action, volume relationship at specific areas within the range and it just continued to look like reaccumulation. So you know, again, I've not been worried. Looks like we printed a spring there just above the, the daily pivot right there at the hourly S1 pivot. We're up above the hourly pivot now. Breaking up above the, the daily pivot here. Well, I've got, actually that's the daily paper out there. I'm a little bit off on that. But yeah, so I mean, you know, it looks good. I, I believe we're up now. We did have a bullish divergence off these, off these two swings lows as well here. So I don't have it on this chart, but it's right there. You got the higher, the higher lows there on RSI and the lower lows. I mean it was just such a perfect candle right here. There's, there's little to no reason why you shouldn't have been long the next day with all that that was happening right here on this candle on Monday.
- [35:27]
Scott Melker
I mean, you know, I don't, you know, our guesses aren't always right. But I pretty like this is what I was looking for for once. You know, six days ago I drew it. You know, I thought we would fake out the head and shoulders that everybody's so scared about, you know, finally tap this huge. I mean, first of all, you knew or you had to Hope that between 88,090 there had to be liquidity in a reaction on the first real dip into there. I would have been very surprised if even just the standing bids that were living in that area didn't send price doing what it did. But the close was amazing. But yeah, my theory was we actually capture that demand people short, the head and shoulders break down and then bam. And it's kind of instant liquidity.
- [36:09]
Chris Higgs
Yeah, yeah. I mean it's beautiful. I love it. I love the way it looks. The structure is great. Based on the height of this pullback, we got about a pattern target of about 122, 781 on this chart. So again, this is the Bitcoin USD chart on Coinbase, but you know, some up around that area, depending what exchange you're looking, I won't be too far off of that. But that's just the next step up. That's not the top at all, I believe. You know, we'll get up there, we'll get a pullback, a decent pullback, and then we'll head up higher once more after that at least. So, you know, again, bitcoin bears, they, I'm. I'm sure on your timeline they come out as well. They've been on mine and you know.
- [36:47]
Scott Melker
I guess just bears tale as old as time though. And listen, like, I'm not saying by, by the way, like 80 could have, could happen. Like, I still don't know, like we're still in the middle of a range. So it's. I don't think you dunk on anyone. But all I'm saying is that if you put together a story of what's likely to happen, if you guys understand why you see these wicks or these, you could call that what's an sfp, A swing failure pattern. That spring, same thing. We have different names for them. But why that happens is not coincidence. Right? I mean, just for like a quick lesson and then we'll go on with Chris's charts. But if you want to buy a shit ton of bitcoin, sometimes you have a whale that's actually selling into a price where there's liquidity. So the same person who's looking to buy is often the one who pushes price down to an area by selling. And you know, there's liquidity there because of two reasons. One is that retail traders and anyone who is afraid of the breakdown below 90 triggers their stop loss, which is a sell order, which are buy orders for the whale who's looking for liquidity. And tons of people who short a breakdown too early, they see it below 90, they say, that's my queue. They short. That is a sell order into someone's buy order. So it's. Talk about liquidity hunts these things. In this case, yes, hindsight. But that's what happens when you drop down into an area like this. Now, even if somebody didn't push it down there purposely to do that, you still had tons of liquidity and people that just like myself, I mean, I bought it literally, I was like 89, smashing it on Monday, you know, like.
- [38:22]
Chris Higgs
So, yeah, it's human emotion, right? I mean, and. And the one kickback often get on that, right? Because that's how I trade, right? I trade on. On my understanding of human emotion and psychology that's going on in the markets. And the one kickback I get from a lot of people is, oh, but everything's, you know, algorithms and whatever it is. And they're not wrong. It is. But those algorithms are based on what humans do, right?
- [38:45]
Scott Melker
I mean, that makes charts work better because the algorithms are all programmed to the same levels. So you don't even need to wait for a person to smash it because it's sitting there waiting on the algorithm.
- [38:54]
Chris Higgs
Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, that's why I teach things the way I do, right. That's why I use things like Elliott Wave and Wyckoff and price action, especially price action and volume analysis, to help people understand how and why the markets are moving like they are and how to capitalize on it. You know, you got to understand where you're looking first. You know, if most retail traders, they get in there and it's just like, okay, I need to buy in right here, right? It's like, oh, my God, my emotions are here. Let me buy in real quick or let me sell. But if you're understanding where you're looking and why and what's, you know, probable to happen there, right. I hear a lot of people talking about trading being possibilities. It's really probabilities, because anything's possible at any time in the market, but it's what is most likely to happen at that time is what you're looking for. That's what's going to separate you from everybody else out there. And you can't do that unless you understand that price action is driven by human emotions. And human emotions have a specific action, reaction, movement to it. It's not random. Right. And so once you get that, then you start getting this doesn't mean you're going to be 100 correct. Guys, listen, you're never going to be correct 100. I've been doing this 30 years, I still get it wrong. But that's why proper risk management is so important. And if you've got proper risk management and you do it consistently, then you're, you're halfway there onto being a successful trader because you're not going to lose it all before you figure it out, which is what unfortunately happens with most people. So bitcoin looks great. I've got a couple of alt charts we can pull up here. Well, you know what, let me look real quick here. Dxy. So I'm looking at this again as a large flat correction here. I've got it as a 1, 2. It could just be an A B. We'll get a C down to around 90 or something like that, that. But this is, we've got three waves up for A, three waves down for B. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 waves up for C. You can see it stopped there just prior to my110,256 target. We're getting a good rejection off it. What I'm looking for is a daily candle to impulsively break down and close below the daily pivot at 107.515. That'll signal to me the top's probably in. But prior to that we do have this ascending support. So if we can get a nice daily breakdown and close below that, that's probably a pretty good indication that that tops in. And like I said, you know, if we're looking today, soft cpi yesterday we got a good CPI or soft ppi. Yesterday we got a good CPI report today, you know, Jobs was still looking really good. You know, that's what you want. You want a strong economy, you want inflation coming down. And so if that is what it is, 10 years, you know, that 10 year yield should be topped out, the DXY should be topped out, which is someone who's already looking for, headed the other way, which gives us room for, you know, much, much less headwinds in the face of, you know, risk on assets like stocks and crypto and bitcoin.
- [41:54]
Scott Melker
Pretty clear bearish divergence there. I can just see it on your chart.
- [41:57]
Chris Higgs
Yeah, yeah. I mean it's, it's absolutely beautiful there. We just wanted to continue to come on through, give us some follow through and then we're looking, you know, down toward 90, 93 at least.
- [42:06]
Scott Melker
Can you imagine the smell Holy. That's 150 Bitcoin right there. I mean easy if not. If not higher. Oh it be easy to me. 9093.
- [42:19]
Chris Higgs
I've been talking about this triangle on gold. A lot of people are trading gold or at least looking at it you know with. With bitcoin. So we had a triangle here. It may be complete right here. Instead of coming. If it comes down a little bit further. We'll look at that 264860 target. But I think we might be done right there at the daily pivot. Breakout above wave d here at 27.35. That'll indicate the pattern's probably complete. Breakout above wave b here at 2761 30. That. That'll say it is complete. Based on the height of the pullback here. We got a pattern target up there around 29.75. So basically $3,000 coming in with gold. So if you're interested in gold you're finally getting some after all this sideways since the end of October here. That swing high in the end of October. It looks like it's ready to go. And then a couple of charts here. Let me see here. This is GFI USD. It just. It looks clean. It looks like we've got a leading diagonal here. 1 Tom Looks like we've got an ABC for W x and then ABC for Y here. So that gives us a one and a two. That'll give us a minimum expected wave three up here at five and a half dollars. Basically right now we're at a dollar 43 and then five waves up around 7.90. 98 cents at least there. Breaking out above wave x at A$91 is going to add confidence to account and say okay yeah, that's most likely what's happening. So it's. It's just a really. I had never heard of it really. But I saw it and it's really a clean setup. I like it. So there's one. As you can see on the Daily Stochastic. RSI is just. Just crossing bullishly there and threatening to break out. So it looks like it's getting set to go up here.
- [44:07]
Scott Melker
Everything looks pretty good today.
- [44:09]
Chris Higgs
Everything's looking. Yeah. Everything's looking good. This is.
- [44:12]
Scott Melker
I haven't even looked at dominance though. Like I can't really tell if alt are outperforming or just kind of tracking the move. It looks like actually dominance is slightly down taking a look. So.
- [44:21]
Chris Higgs
Yeah.
- [44:21]
Scott Melker
Yeah. But I think it's nice to see though. That makes sense. With risk on. I think you know, you see bitcoin go, but general market confidence people are more likely to kind of put some money into Altoids. We can see right here, maybe it was 5, 862 at the top 5, 58.2, 58.62, then 58.2. It's a pretty nice little movement.
- [44:40]
Chris Higgs
Yeah, yeah. And, and I think, you know, again, I've been saying this over and over again. You know, I've said this since the beginning of last year. And, and you know, I think it was Matt over there at Bitwise who also said the same thing afterward, which is that I, you know, I think this becomes, you know, because of the Bitcoin ETFs. You know, I think I've not even said it here. I don't, I don't know necessarily that we have to see bitcoin dominance drop off. You know, we're going to have the continued inflows. ETFs should do it, you know, even better than they did last year. So we're going to have even more inflows into bitcoin. But you still have the people that are going to trade alts and alts are going to have some reason, maybe we'll get some alt ETFs coming out this year reason, you know, more institutional inflow into that or even some higher end retail inflow into that. So I think, you know, we're going to see it both rise together. So I, I don't think people should put as much importance on that bitcoin dominance as they have in the past. But I do believe it goes higher. I think we've still got it going higher and so we'll see how that comes out there. Right here. This is KSM USD. Looks like we got a nice wave four pullback here. Let me see here. Based on the height of that pullback, that gives us a pattern target up here of about 84.32. So it's a nice run here from about $32 where it's at right now. Yeah, yeah. So I mean that, that one looks, that one looks pretty good there. You could probably draw you a descending resistance right here. And so you're going to get the breakout through the descending and the horizontal resistance right around the same area. That's usually indicative, indicative of a strong reversal happening. So, you know, if you want to wait for that, you can wait for that. But I do have that $84 pattern target here. We had this nice accumulation range right here. Jump across the creek back up to the edge of the creek. Which begins a, you know, which is a reaccumulation range. And we head up. So the structures there looks absolutely great. Let me see here. Tia. TIA was one I saw this morning as well. I think we've got a rally up here at least to $15. But honestly, I. I think we. I think we run it to the all time high up here. I think we run up around $21 at least. But minimally, I've got a 15 target on that. It looks like we could have a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And then of course we have an ABC. So w x and then ABC is a Y here. So it looks like a one and a two, which again, that would give us five waves up beyond the all time high there. Loon. Hey, what's going on, man? Yeah, glad you like the two.
- [47:17]
Scott Melker
Thanks. Gotcha.
- [47:19]
Chris Higgs
Yeah, yeah.
- [47:21]
Scott Melker
There was a lot of fun around TIA too, which to me is a buy signal. There was like all kinds of debate with the VCS and this and that and blah, blah. I just saw it. There was, you know, there was the.
- [47:29]
Chris Higgs
Same thing with Saul at Saul's, you know, nine dollar and change area. Remember, everybody was hating on, oh, it's going to zero, you know. And that's when I said, no, it looks like it's a good buy right here. And where are we? You know, we've been 200 and whatever dollars since I bought.
- [47:42]
Scott Melker
I bought 175 again on Seoul. That's my highest buy, I think, ever during the show on Monday. Yeah, I bought Bitcoin89.5 and sold at 175, 194. Not bad. Pretty happy.
- [47:55]
Chris Higgs
Nice.
- [47:55]
Scott Melker
But not as. Not even as a trade. I just wanted to add to the bag for the bull market kind of. Yeah, that was a meaning sizable dip, even if it went lower.
- [48:03]
Chris Higgs
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, again, I. I think we've still got, you know, really good upside for, you know, alts and bitcoin and stocks and, you know, whatnot going on here. The other thing here, xlm, another one is dinosaurs. You and I were trading this back in the day when you were over there with us over at Texas West Capital and 2017. As a matter of fact, the end of 2017 had a lot of good trades in XLM. You know, here we go with the big move. We've got the breakout here. Nice large body, nice volume with that. That should be a legit breakout. Daily pivot holding its support here. And so based on the height here of this pullback, again, looks like a wave Four, we got a minimum expected target up there of around 98 and a half cents from where we're at now. Again, you know, these pattern targets, they don't have to hit. They often hit and sometimes they even go further. But it's just one way we get started on. Okay, well if we want to enter, where can we start looking for targets? And that's usually what we do. But yeah, this looks clean, this looks ready to go. We might get a rally up here toward about 56, 56 cents or so near this, near this high, and then get a pullback back down here toward 41 or 42 cents and then take off. So I think we're, you know, probably got like a 1, 2, 3, 4. We'll get a 5 up there. So it'll give us a 1, a 2 and then we'll go. So if people want to wait for that pullback, they can do that. If they just want to buy up there and then wait for the pullback and then buy again, you know, you can do that as well. XRP is the other big one everybody's been talking about. Again, I've been talking about this triangle for a while now. We're good. We're out above wave B. We should be a going based on the height of the pullback. 3.73, almost 3.74 pattern target, which is a new all time high. Now I don't have it on the coinbase chart here, but I think it was what, around 3, 25, 330. Somewhere right around there was the all time high on xrp, something like that?
- [50:11]
Scott Melker
Yeah, it passed it.
- [50:12]
Chris Higgs
Yeah, somewhere right around there. So they'll give us new all time high there. I don't think that's top. I think, you know, we get up toward there, we pull back and then we break out again. So probably a $4 plus target overall for the end of the cycle. Maybe higher than that. But yeah, we finally got the breakout looks good there. And finally Zen here. Zen is another one. Look at how beautiful that is. There a nice bullish engulfing candle Zen.
- [50:37]
Scott Melker
In a long time. I love the throwbacks.
- [50:40]
Chris Higgs
Look at this, man. I mean, look at this. It's a great accumulation range right here. We got some great step up. I mean it's absolutely beautiful the, the structure. And so, you know, if you want some bigger confirmation. Daily candle impulsive breakout and close above about $30 and a half. That's the daily pivot. And you should, you know, likely be long on that, at least toward the pattern target up Here based on the height of 87.67 cents. Now that's five waves up from here. But as you can see we, you know, we do have lower lows here. So it's possible you look, you've got a 1 and a 2 and potentially a 1 and a 2 here. So this would be, you know, potentially a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Gives us 1, 2, 3, 4th, 5. So we're going to go up higher overall but you know, great local accumulation right here since August. Since August. And overall just accumulation running through since way back here in June of 23 back there around the same time that that Ethereum hit. It's. Oh no, a year after Ethereum hit its, its low there, but good breakout here on this here. So getting above that daily pivot impulsively and closing above it on the daily should, should have us heading up there. So charts just look absolutely great right now. I think lots of opportunities, just beautiful.
- [52:01]
Scott Melker
Reversals ever since two days ago. I mean I just kind of tweeting this but like we were at 89000 at this, you know, at 9:35am I think it was when we had the dip on Monday because I remember like right around when the market would have opened but the markets were or open, we're at 99. We went from 89 to 99 in 48 hours. And you know, you could just look at the emotional state of crypto Twitter in shambles mostly because their altcoins were down, not because Bitcoin was 90. And here we are 10,000 higher, talking about 100,000 again back above the 50 ma. A lot of things happening. Just you know guys, don't get too emotionally attached to what you read or what you feel is going to happen because.
- [52:44]
Chris Higgs
And don't sit there and focus on all season. I mean if you, if you've been waiting for all season, you have been taking advantage over the last year of the alts that have been running when they have, you've really done yourself a disservice as a trader. Don't sit there and wait for all seasons. Look, when the opportunities are there, take them, go with them. You got to do it.
- [53:02]
Scott Melker
Absolutely. Guys, we got to run. I got spaces in 20 minutes and I'm supposed to be watching my wife's tennis match while I do it. A good husband today. It's cold too. It's crazy Florida. So I'm gonna run, go watch tennis and do spaces from a tennis court, interrupt everybody's matches. Everybody give Chris TX West Capital a follow check out Texas westcapital.com the group's amazing. I've quietly rejoined. You guys might not know, but I'm lurking. I'm lurking. I see Fibo Swanee in the comments.
- [53:31]
Chris Higgs
Yeah, Fibo saw that. He was like, what's this? Is this legit?
- [53:35]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I'm in there quietly. It's been a long time. I started that discord with Chris back in the day. Helped convince him to do it. Feel like I need a little more edge and some more contributions from whatever is happening. So I'm in there lurking. So I get if I'm in there, it's good enough. Good enough for me. Hopefully good enough for you. All right, man. Well, thank you guys. Give Chris a follow. Check that out and otherwise I will be back tomorrow with Matt Siegel from Van Eckle. Be a great show. And Dan Chart, guys. All right, everyone. See you tomorrow. Bye.
- [54:05]
Sid Powell
Let's do, let's do.