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Cramer Says “Own BTC”—Is the Bear Market Here? | Crypto Town Hall
00:56:13
Cramer Says “Own BTC”—Is the Bear Market Here? | Crypto Town Hall
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- [00:01]
Scott
Morning everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town hall. Every weekday at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time here on X Spaces. As usual getting all of our guests up to discuss the big topics of the day. Perhaps the biggest topic of the day is that we are officially in a devastating, never ending bear market because Jim Cramer, as stated, if you want to own Bitcoin, own Bitcoin. I own Bitcoin. You should own bitcoin. Bitcoin's a great thing to have in your portfolio. Is it over? Is it over? Let's go to the panel. I would love your opinions. Guys. Listen, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a humorous topic. It's the title. We'll move on to more serious things. We all know it's not over, but Jim has been an exceptional counter indicator. How are you guys viewing this? Andre, what do you think? Jim Kramer, the harbinger of doom, death and despair for Bitcoin usually is.
- [01:02]
Andre
I mean his track record, his inverse Jim Kramer tracker is really amazing. Right. I think it's on par with Nancy Pelosi's calls. Right. But that's a different topic. I think, I think maybe a couple of observations on the market. So I think what we've observed more recently, we, I mean to be honest, we had relatively high correlations, right. Between major crypto assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum and the S&P 500 going into this market correction. I think the rolling three months correlation between both Bitcoin and Ethereum and The S&P 500 was around.05 0.6. Right. So relatively high. And judging by the performance of Bitcoin, there was certainly some de risking and crypto assets as well.
- [01:50]
Carlo
Right.
- [01:50]
Andre
But that being said, I think there are some interesting observations that are worth noting. Right. First, the BTC price stabilized while NASDAQ futures continue to make new lows. I think that was yesterday during the US afternoon trading hours. So this implies that, that the downside. So that Bitcoin had some limited downside. Right. There was some decoupling evident already. Right. Some buying, dip buying, which actually supported Bitcoin While Nasdaq futures, S&P 500 futures continue to slide. Right, that's definitely worth noting. I think the second point is the crypt crypto asset sentiment has already declined significantly, at least based on our indicator. So sentiment's already as bearish as during the last correction, below 90K. Right. And I think this also implies that downside risks are relatively limited already, which would increase the probability of a decoupling if us can, equities continue to slide today. Right. Which is I think as of now the case.
- [03:00]
Dave
Right.
- [03:00]
Andre
I think Nvidia paired all gains in, in the pre market, maybe. Last point. So people often stress, I think people often stress that correlations are high. Right. And between crypto assets and equities. But I mean history shows, I mean short term dips often leads, often lead to long term surges.
- [03:31]
Matteo
Right.
- [03:32]
Andre
Long term rallies. And I think this was also demonstrated by a great study by one of my colleagues at Bivwise. So usually Bitcoin as markets de risks. Right. S P 500 declines by more than 2%. Right. Bitcoin usually also declines.
- [03:50]
Dave
Right.
- [03:51]
Andre
But during recoveries, bitcoin usually outperforms. So it's definitely always a good time to buy. Right. But taking all this together. So first signs of decoupling sentiments already relatively bearish. And history shows it's usually a good buying opportunity. I mean, yeah, I think downside is relatively limited.
- [04:16]
Scott
That's just my Bitcoin's at 103,000 right now. I love that, like, yes, we hit an all time high of 109, 358 that day that we went all the way to 109, but like closed at 102. Right. So I mean our highest daily close ever is effectively what, 106,000, 170 somewhere like that, depending on the chart. And we're talking about bearishness. Like I know we're joking with Kramer, but there was a lot of concern obviously this week with deep Seek and what that can mean for tech. And we saw this sell off down to 97,000. But what's notable to me is we've had these fundamental moments where we become very temporarily correlated. Like to your point, I know that the correlations have been large, generally directionally, but like on, I think it was the 13th, I think Monday, January 13th, we had that big day where, you know, bitcoin kind of opened at 94, dropped below 90 and closed right where it opened. And yesterday we had a dip effectively, you know, from 103 down to 97, 7 and still closed above 102. Right. So like these dips are being bought instantaneously in size. And we're seeing, you know, you look at the candles, there are these long down wicks every time there's a significant debt.
- [05:32]
Andre
I think every market technician will tell you that intraday recoveries, they tell you so much about support.
- [05:40]
Carlo
Right.
- [05:40]
Andre
And buying interest in the market. And as you said, I mean we, we recovered like a couple of thousand dollars.
- [05:47]
Dave
Right.
- [05:47]
Andre
Within one day.
- [05:49]
Scott
Right.
- [05:50]
Andre
So these intraday recoveries, I think they're also, they, they support the hypothesis there's so that there's so much buying interest. So still, you know.
- [06:00]
Scott
Totally. But Carlo, go ahead.
- [06:02]
Andre
I'm still worried about Jim Kramer.
- [06:05]
Scott
Gotta worry about Jim Kramer. You have to. Carlo, my, my official legal counsel, sir. How are you?
- [06:12]
Simon
Good morning, Scott.
- [06:14]
Carlo
Yeah, look man, if you've ever seen the movie the Bronx Tale, you know that famous character, the mush, everything he bets on, he loses and yeah, the mush. I don't think even Kramer can mush bitcoin. And you look at yesterday, and I have to agree with Andre, you look at yesterday where the entire NASDAQ got completely cooked on speculation about this China AI revolutionary technology that's going to drop exponentially the price of what it costs to run AI. And it killed Nvidia's price. Bitcoin dipped. Alts dipped.
- [06:51]
Simon
Bitcoin recovered nicely.
- [06:53]
Carlo
Alts are still a little bit down. But I think we're starting to see a little bit of decoupling here, in my opinion. And I don't think we're anywhere near bear market conditions. I think this is just very typical progress. Yeah, for sure.
- [07:08]
Scott
Don't you think it's fair to say? Actually maybe we're seeing evidence if we're looking at bitcoin and crypto as a whole, as in one market, which I do not personally, but I think bitcoin is an entirely different asset class than the rest of crypto. But maybe, Carlo, to your point, it's fair to say that crypto and altcoins are treating more like risk assets and tech stocks and bitcoin is not.
- [07:32]
Carlo
Yeah. And what is bitcoin dominance today?
- [07:34]
Simon
I know you cover this very closely.
- [07:36]
Carlo
What is that looking like?
- [07:37]
Scott
Today it's 59.15%, 59.16%. Yesterday it went as high as 59.57. But we are generally seeing a, you know, a local trend up. Since January 16, it's been nothing but up, basically.
- [07:51]
Carlo
So we know that that's going to probably break at some point and we know what follow follows.
- [07:56]
Simon
So my, my thoughts, I'm going to.
- [07:57]
Carlo
Stick to the script. You know, I'm not going to panic sell here.
- [08:00]
Scott
Agree. Agreed. Dave, go ahead.
- [08:04]
Carlo
Yeah, I mean, all I'll say is markets climb a wall of worry. And I said it yesterday or two days ago, whatever. You know, when this, this sort of stuff happens and you see the shakeout with a bid, that is extremely bullish and it's really important to Understand that. That it's hard for markets to go straight up. Straight up, you know, can happen, you know, blow off top when there's euphoria. But I don't think we're anywhere near that. And, you know, it's actually quite healthy that more the bears come out of the woodwork and that's where the supply is. I mean, you know, people were talking, you know, about, you know, 75 or 70,000, you know, price points to enter back into bitcoin from the crypto sphere. And all the tradfi folks who are just, you know, relentlessly buying are basically saying, hold my beer. And that's what's happening. And eventually those same people who are looking to buy at 70 will be fomoing in, you know, past 150 to some number in, you know, in this cycle. You know, I laughed this morning. You were talking with Andrew about, you know, what will be the n Jeff park, what will be the catalyst. And the catalyst is going to be the price going up. I know that sounds absolutely tautological, but it isn't. Because there are people out there who have made a lot of money having bitcoin for many, many years who just look at it and trade it in and out. And, you know, if you're holding it because you think it's going to be over 500,000 or a million someday, then you don't trade it. Well, that's. The people who are buying today are people like that. And the people who are selling are the ones who are trying to make a quick turnaround or maybe make more money in altcoins or doing whatever they're going to do and that's going to stop. And when that stops, supply and demand takes over. And, you know, people keep saying, where is the supply? And, you know, you can't ignore the fact that a lot that 60% of the supply hasn't sold in a long time. Right. You know, there are a lot of people sitting on major profits, and people like to take profits and they like to go buy nice things. You want to buy a car, you want to buy a house, you want to, you know, do whatever. And so that's what we're churning through. All this other stuff is noise. It really is. Because at the. At the end of the day, all we really care about when you're investing in bitcoin is will it reach escape velocity and eventually catch gold and go beyond it. And if the answer you believe is yes, you're going to buy, and we're seeing that bid play out in the Market. The market dynamics are very structural. Every single time we start to move to the bottom of this range, there's a bid. And you know, we all know where it's coming from and whether it's. And that's before corporations really start to en masse. Ape in. And that's before the all the states and other small sovereign governments come in. I mean, you made a great point this morning about Meta. I mean, it doesn't take much for Meta to say, let's start putting bitument on the balance sheet. What's that? What's the price the day after that?
- [10:49]
Scott
Dude, how I was thinking about that. I know, I was joking. And you're alluding to the show this morning, and I made a joke basically that Zuckerberg has probably the same almost an equivalent level of power over his company as a Sailor does over MicroStrategy. Not quite, but he can unilaterally make this decision, unlike a Microsoft. And since he's on his redemption arc, you know, like, I think that what I said on the show is that, you know, fellating Trump and Elon Musk behind closed doors, but I don't remember the exact quote. But you know, what would make him cooler in the eyes of Trump and Musk and a community that despises him and make a bigger statement than him just adding a little bit of bitcoin to the meta balance sheet. And, and they made the point, Andrew or Jeff, that, you know, obviously like he was. This isn't his first foray. They did Libra and dm, which eventually became Aptos when it spun out. But they tried crypto, right? They tried making stablecoin effectively for Facebook. That could happen. And those kind of catalysts, you just can't price it, as you always say, Dave.
- [11:53]
Carlo
Yeah, and look, and we haven't even gotten to the obvious fact. I mean, I've been saying this forever. Scott Besant got confirmed yesterday, which is great news. Not it was, it was really in doubt, but, you know, still important. And Scott is not a fool. Nobody, if they're going to accumulate an asset to try to make themselves look good, talks about it until after they've at least accumulated their first tranche. Nobody. So, you know, I don't know what's going to actually be happening, and I don't think any of us do. But, you know, were there to be a the US in any way accumulating bitcoin into a strategic stockpile, absent a congressional bill getting put to Trump's desk to sign, they're not going to Talk about it. There's not going to be an EO saying we're doing that. They'll do it first because they can. And everyone who says they can't. I know Carla, you said they can't. I think you're wrong because I don't. I didn't see anything ever authorized for the, for the Fed or the treasury to buy mbs, you know, mortgage backed securities during the global financial crisis. They just fucking did it. I think if they want to do something and say hey look how much money we made for the government. I mean it's the most obvious trade in history and we'll see. I mean that's why I never really expected anything to on that. And yeah, so you know, we're still quote languishing just below the all time high because people are like, oh, they're depressed that, that they haven't heard anything yet. Well, I never expected to hear anything unless there's real momentum for the llama spill and, and we'll see how that goes.
- [13:22]
Scott
Amateo.
- [13:25]
Simon
Yeah, I think happy to be here guys. Interesting market conditions. I think Meta is actually a really good conversation because they just capped all time high on Meta and the irony of that is they're probably the one who stood to be disrupted the most by the deep sea announcement because they are competing in the open source AI model world and they got probably disrupted the most as well as ChatGPT. But we're not seeing a huge market reaction there. We're seeing it on the actual hardware costs. So I mean I think to Dave's point, he's absolutely right. Who's buying? Like every time we get close to the 100,000 mark, there's clearly quiet buyers that are stepping in. There's enough infra where this stuff doesn't have to happen like on chain visibly out in the public. There's market makers achieving all of this I think due to the regulatory change and migration here. I wouldn't even be surprised if Facebook reboots the Libra program and starts to look at that again because that was obviously an administrative attack through the banking sector where the banks were warned that they would be attacked by the government very verbally if they actually went through with this. So I mean again I'll kind of come back to these spaces where it's like it's all about the rails. And I think I would imagine everyone is looking at this when there is now a financial rail layer that is allowed to be able to be implemented across these social properties from X to Facebook to instagram it only makes sense for global commerce and they actually have support to implement these things. And I think when you look at that, it's probably going to be coupled, maybe not in X's case, but like with a Bitcoin strategic reserve, to your point Scott, to win over the community as they go to implement these financial rails. Because that's really important that they have the support of the community as they try to implement some kind of cryptocurrency mechanism to stimulate global commerce within their own ecosystems. That of course eventually settle to the dollar.
- [15:45]
Scott
So I mean X payments are coming, right? If X payments include Bitcoin, what does that look like? Yeah, go ahead Simon. Saw your hand.
- [15:54]
I
Yeah, I was just going to say you can't underestimate. We have already innovated everything in so much in the Bitcoin community already, but we just weren't able to execute it. So imagine when all of this pro innovation environment comes. So you know, just, just an example you. So yesterday Nvidia crashes if Bitcoin continues to be, you know, somewhat of a different type of asset where you immediately go risk off and you go into the dollar within your brokerage account or maybe you go into a gold ETF or maybe you go in into a Bitcoin ETF if that pattern changes and people start to recognize that going from stocks to Bitcoin ETF is something you do under a set circumstances. And then there's the approval for the in kind redemptions. So you can now go from stock to Bitcoin ETF to in kind redemption and then you have a service where you're able to borrow against your bitcoin, put it on a bitcoin debit card and now there's a network of stablecoins that are connecting all of these different technology companies. All of that is how people have been operating outside of the financial system for a long time anyway. But now that is all going to be possible, you know, as, as more and more of these different types of financial products come through in a pro regulation environment. So you're just going to be able to live completely outside of the traditional financial system. From brokerage to stablecoin to Bitcoin to self custody to debit card to, you know, back, you know, leverage on, on your Bitcoin as well. Not saying whether you should be doing any of those things, but the whole infrastructure has already been tested. We just haven't had a pro environment to execute it at scale.
- [18:10]
Scott
Yeah. Now Matteo, literally as we were talking about payments, you sent me a tweet behind the scenes via dm. It's just above literally announced two minutes or four minutes ago, X partners with Visa to offer direct payment solutions on the social media platform. I don't know what that means for crypto but I mean we were literally just talking about that. It happened.
- [18:29]
Simon
Exactly. So we were just talking about the financial Rails coming to social and this announcement drops as we're talking about it. X and Visa launch a digital wallet as a power move. Mario also posted this. This is a long awaited digital wallet system. So far the deal allows users to link debit cards, send money instantly and transfer funds directly to bank accounts. So I mean cool, but like we're going to have remittances, there's going to be fees, it's Visa. And then you also have just the rabid crypto community on X who are going to go after this when it comes to the X payments and financial solution and want to be integrated in this. It's going to be more borderless, it's going to be more competitive. Naturally I would expect them to use traditional global Rails in Visa first and foremost. Foremost that's going to help them do the test case transactions etc. That's kind of a logical step but I would expect crypto to follow here because it's just going to be more competitive. I don't imagine this is a exclusivity agreement.
- [19:39]
Scott
Yeah, I don't think that the Visa news eliminates the chance that we get, you know, Doge payments which we know is all we all know is probably coming. Right. I saw one piece of news that I want to talk, I guess a little bit more about price action and what's kind of happening behind the scenes means I want to talk about world liberty of Financial. They bought I believe another $10 million of Ethereum on the dip. Now they've bought a bunch of assets. I think that people watching very closely to see what Trump does. What do people make of the fact that they've been focused on Ethereum? Right. I mean in my opinion, and I've been willing to go out the limit, say this for quite a while. Ethereum is in a very key buy zone. There's maximum fud. It's going to zero Ethereum foundation reorganization. People think those are bad, think those are bottom signals personally in my opinion ETH BTC ratio back to like the key support on the, on the chart from 2021 quite, quite literally all the way back. And insiders are obviously buying Ether. I mean some saying maybe you know, they're going to port or, or duplicate Trump token or something else on the Ethereum blockchain and we need to provide liquidity. But it seems like they're heavily focused on eth. We have FEFE here and, and fellows who haven't spoken at all. And you guys are kind of, you know, you look at the charts and the analysis. I mean, what do you think of ETH here?
- [21:05]
J
You know, I was very, very, very interesting. You say that because I'm, I'm giving a lot of thought to eat, to be honest with you. Because what if this time is different?
- [21:12]
Carlo
Right.
- [21:12]
J
So we're all wondering about like I, you know, we talked with Ren and in November you were like I'm long in eth. And then no and then in December long and east and January is like I'm not gonna long it. I rather missed the trade. I'm, I'm back and forth. I, I'm with you on this. I, I, I am long beneath and, and I, and I do think that we're going to bottom out. What I really want to see is relative strength compared to bitcoin. If we can see a higher high on the EBTC chart on the daily. This is basically what I've been really waiting for. And we got quite close to it a couple of times already but we didn't see that, that V shaped recovery that we would be expecting now. Also going back to the fact that, you know, a lot of people say that Trump is buying it and I, I have doubts on that. I'm not even sure he's actually knows.
- [21:52]
Scott
I want to be clear world buying it. And that's the dudes he trusts with crypto stuff, right? Exactly, exactly.
- [21:59]
J
And also we've seen, we've seen on chain data of how these guys manage stuff that they, they trying to get orders on chain and they are being front rows. I'm not even sure that they, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to say that they're thinking like oh let's buy Eve because that's the second biggest. Like, I don't think it's that, that but, but, but, but it's also not, it has to be calculated at some point. Now I've seen, you know, Baron Trump launching a real estate empire. I could imagine that to be tokenized through eth. Like I could see background forwarding for unfolding with this, with this thing and that that's the reason why they're loading up on eth. But, but I definitely want to see relative strength compared to bitcoin. And when we see that, I think that's when I'm really going to take.
- [22:37]
Dmitry
A heavy E position.
- [22:42]
Vlad
Hey, Scott. Hey guys, thanks for having me on. Yeah, I mean I, if you hit the nail on the head there talking about ETH btc, it's, it's the chart to watch. Right. If you're, if you're trading an asset and you're looking to capture upside in, you know, in my opinion it makes zero sense to trade an asset that is down trending on the BTC pair for like over 800 days now. We're almost at three years. It's like two and something years. That BTC has just been bleeding out. Now I am, I am not anti eth by any stretch of the imagination. I own a big ETH bag that I bought in the low 1000s. I do think that it trades higher this cycle. However, lots of guys I see longing it and buying it and taking scalps on it. And I just think it makes zero sense to do that when you have another asset very similar to eth trades a bit cleaner than ETH called Bitcoin and it is capturing more upside. It has captured more upside over the last two years and you can see that the evidence is there in the BTC chart. Now I have been trading E like pretty much, you know, on and off for the last couple of years. So I have been around for the various times and it happens kind of like once every month or two. Everyone on my timeline starts saying that the ETH BTC bottom is in and things look good for about, you know, five days and then the whole move retraces. There have been like, I don't even want to count them how many times that my timeline is called the bottom on each btc. So at this point I'm done, I'm done trying to time the bottom, trying to guess where the bottom of BTC is. I would rather be, I would rather be crazy late to that move rather than trying to guess when it's going to occur and buying an underperforming asset rather than, rather than basically any other altcoin. But also because a lot of them on the ETH pairs look so a lot of the, the let's say altcoin on ETH pairs look very bullish rather than trying to guess the bottom line. I think I've, I've made this point on the show before when you're trying to long into a downtrend, especially a high time frame, multi week or multi month or even multi year downtrend, there is no point trying to guess where the acid in question is going to bottom right. Wait for the market to tell you, wait for the structure to break, wait for the actual evidence of buy pressure, of buyers stepping in to happen. And then you might be. You might miss the first like 30 or 40 of the move, but that's fine. You're still capturing the meat of the move. Those are my thoughts on eth and I. I want to just touch on something you mentioned at the start there, which is. Which is the basic, which is the sentiment in the space at the moment and how it's so bad considering that BTC is trading above 100k. I think it's not rocket science. I think that the vast majority of crypto Twitter, of the people that we engage with on a daily basis, they either have very little exposure or no exposure to bitcoin. What they do have a lot of exposure to is underperforming altcoins that are bleeding out against BTC that have not done what those holders thought they would do this cycle and what has become abundantly clear, subject to change, of course, but thus far this cycle, the tactic that worked in previous bull runs in 2021 and 2017 of just holding random altcoins and hoping that they would go up with the rest of the market, a rising tide lifts all ships kind of thing, is not a viable strategy in the same way it was in those previous cycles. The market has become much more PvP for all we obviously have. There is a. There's a supply and demand issue now. I saw some figure the other day. It's like something, there's like 36 million tokens today. There's a million tokens being created every week or something like that. We're on track for close to 100 million tokens by the end of 2025, which is just wild, wild statistics. Compare that to previous cycles. In 2017 we had something like 3,000 tokens. In 2014 we had less than 500 tokens. So there is a supply and demand issue here. And I think there's an increasingly fine margin this cycle between holding on to coins that you believe in and having conviction and having the kind of overconfidence that's just going to result in round trips. So yeah, the sentiment question is very easily answered. To me, it is a result of people who are overexposed to underperforming altcoins and guys who maybe made a bit of money last cycle, who made a bit of money in 2017, who are not making money this cycle because the Paradigm has shifted. It is more PVP market now. The hot ball of money is rotating very, very quickly. Narratives only last days or weeks. We saw the, the AI agent narrative was going to be the narrative of 2025 and like it seems to have lasted all of two weeks and, and now those coins are all down 60, 70%. So I mean, yeah, just that things have changed and a lot of people are failing to adapt and I think, yeah, a lot of, you know, you look at bitcoin now, it's 103k or 102k. Guys don't have exposure to that coin and therefore do not care. And that's the basic fact of it.
- [28:24]
Scott
Yeah, Dave, go ahead.
- [28:26]
Carlo
Well, lots unpack there. Ethereum, when it came out was the promise of the world computer. Everybody, literally almost every altcoin in the last few cycles was based on Ethereum. But if you look and compare Ethereum to Solana in this cycle, and I'm not talking necessarily about only meme coins, but you know, is what it is, Salon is kicking its ass in pretty much every single way. And the fact that Ethereum moved to proof of stake got rid of its real claim of decentralization. So it's hard for me to look at Ethereum and say, hey, it's going to outperform Solana. That doesn't mean you don't want to hold some of it. It doesn't mean, you know, whatever, you know, it'll have, it has an etf, yada yada. But the truth is at some point, technology, people who invest in technology invest based on momentum and based on the shiny new toys and you know, Nvidia did it has done extraordinarily well. But when you look at other tech investing, the one thing that people always forget about tech is tech can become obsolete and can be, you know, effectively can be surpassed. And we will see what happens with regulation and whether or not utility tokens, tokens are all going to be on Ethereum or not. But you know, talk to programmers and find, find programmers who say they'd rather program in solidity than rust. And if you could find one of those, that would be the first one I've ever heard of. And as a result, you know, I look at all this and I say, well, the reason Ethereum is falling compared to Bitcoin is because Solana and to some degree things like Sui and others, I mean, are Aptos, whatever you can go through the whole list are effectively the piranhas eating at what Ethereum's promise would be. Because the Metrics underneath Ethereum just aren't that great. And now it doesn't mean that it has to go down, it just means that it is less likely to perform unless the new upgrade that's coming out I forgot when, but it's in the spring is significant and I guess we'll have to see what that news does. And these sorts of fundamentals do matter and you said it right. I mean it's been someone said it's an 800 day downtrend against Bitcoin but the reason is it's also even longer of a downtrend against its competitors in the L1 space for smart contracts. And I think you can't ignore that fact. That doesn't mean that people that indexes which are coming in crypto and people who are closet indexing and buying everything won't buy a piece of it. So it's not necessarily bad but in terms of the kind of big performance it needs to see something that is going to get excitement into its community. And I don't mean excitement around, you know, people like the XRP army who I laugh about how cultish they are but I mean excitement about okay here's what we're, how we're going to use it and this is where it's going to be important because if they capture a large percentage or the largest percentage of the utility market, utility token market which I do believe is coming in the United States then there's still significant upside there but it really is going to depend upon upon that.
- [31:29]
Scott
Mat.
- [31:32]
Simon
Yeah, you know I think we're talking about a lot of things in a bitcoin dominance uptrend cycle for over two years that has kind of given us a perspective on the market expecting these things to stay the way they are. Taking a step back to World Liberty Financial when you look at the purchases and that they're making eth they're also purchasing w you know, wrapped btc, aave, Athena link. I think TRX is more like Justin sun lobbying these guys to be included in the mix here. But I think what you see here is a defi product in the making and liquidity reserves of a multitude of different Ethereum functions being acquired for something that we can't quite see yet. That's really apparent to me and you can't ignore that even though the leading stable coins are multi chain as a whole the majority of the liquidity of USDC and USDT is on Ethereum. So I think that that is the purpose of these acquisitions and I think we're going to see something that emerges out of it, that that kind of is going to look obvious in hindsight with the way that they're purchasing ETH and other things. Whether ETH will actually be able to compete with these other L1s, I think there's going to be a category of its own. And then I'll just sort of wrap by saying I think what we're seeing right now is obviously a lot of people just, just desperate for alt season. As others have spoken, Bitcoin dominance is sort of, you know, re established a trend. The, the question here is this, is this a sort of double top that we're reaching on bitcoin dominance? And then the market conditions change and once they do change, I do think they'll change really quickly. I think eth, regardless of its tech is going to start to, to perform well and we'll see that bounce on ETH btc. But I think the one thing I'm eyeing, and I'm actually curious about your perspective on this Scott and some of the other more sophisticated traders here, is just this RSI on bitcoin on the weekly. You know, when we have dominance starting to re establish the trend and we still have the RSI on the weekly that I'm seeing at like 70 that looks like it could use a reset and why we're seeing sort of liquidity flow from alts as a whole as there may be some anticipation or fears around this as people want to be positioned carefully. Maybe it doesn't need that because maybe there's enough corporations, entities, countries buying quietly to grab this liquidity. But it's something that I'm eyeing.
- [34:23]
Scott
I'm just curious others thoughts, anyone specific thoughts on that? I mean RSI on the weekly for bitcoin tends to stay very overbought for a very long time. So only at 70 I don't think is a major concern. You tend to see it stay there for the entirety of the bull market, which is interesting. But anyone else specific thoughts on kind of the weekly chart or that idea?
- [34:46]
J
Also for me, for me I've been, I've been, I've been, I've been quite vocal about this. I think the dominance will not make a new high in the coming, you know, months. I think the dominance has peaked and I do think that it is a retrace. If you look at the formation that is happening, it's everybody's calling for a breakout on dominance and higher and higher. Now obviously I think a lot of things are dependent on the national reserve announcement and a lot of Things are dependent on Trump Now. Bitcoin is, I'm not saying it's moving as a shit meme, pain on an X tweet shill. But if you look at really how bitcoin traded with Trump announcements and everything else, I would definitely not be surprised that all TA goes out the window the moment Trump announces a national reserve or, or whatever that might be. And the same goes not only for bitcoin but also for eth, as we discussed with someone just mentioned with the seriousness of the chain and whatever. So for me I do think that short term, I think everybody is looking for a catalyst on why we dumbed and that we dumb because deep seek and it is most likely and there is a decoupling. But if we look at alts, alts are literally they're dead. So if you really look at most of the alt charts, I'm not even talking about just the AI agents that being the biggest thing just 30 days ago, looking at major, major protocols being down 60, 70%, that's insane. So that means that at some point we are going to get a rally. But I do think that the believed alt season that people say so people look at the dominance and they say once dominance starts breaking down, we get an alt season because this happened last few cycles and obviously if the dominance of bitcoin coming down, the dominance of altcoins needs to go up. But if you look at mindshare for example, it's clear that the mindshare is not equally divided among DeFi tokens and AI tokens and memes. And there's always a narrative that is leading and this is exactly what we see here as well. So we see AI dominating now, but you don't know if there will be a shift in something. For example, a very good example could be again Baron Trump launches a real estate empire and it launches on whatever eth and the whole defi summer arise and everybody will talk about defi. No one will care about AI. So I think it's not going to be an old season that we've seen in 2017 and 2021 where you close your eyes, you throw a darts, the next morning you wake up and you made 50%. I don't think that's happening. I think it's going to be a rotation market. And Jordy Alexander said very nicely that 2025 and I agree with him will be the hell for investors and traders paradise. And I think that's very much.
- [37:14]
Matteo
Thanks for that. Fev. We do have a sponsor today. It's Primex and Vlad, I know we're, we're joined by you as well. So thanks for coming today. But before we get started with that, just want to put out a bit of a disclaimer. So Mario's company, IBC does marketing, incubation and investing. Sponsors on the show are sponsors working directly with IBC and not necessarily crypto town hall Scott or myself specifically. And IBC is also hiring for writers, journalists and moderators. So if you're looking to join a great team or your project wanting to work with Mario or ibc, just DM the crypto town hall account up there and somebody on Mario's team will get in touch with you. So Vlad, why don't you kick us off just with a primer of exactly what primex is.
- [37:59]
Scott
Hello guys.
- [38:00]
Dave
Yeah, great to be here. My name is Everyone.
- [38:02]
Dmitry
Dmitry is also here.
- [38:03]
Dave
Yeah, actually, yeah, two of us are here. Yeah. In a nutshell, primex is a protocol where you can amplify your earnings in defi. You can either trade with leverage on spot dexes, AMM based ones like Uniswap, Balancer curve, or you can farm yield as leverage. Pretty high leverage for low risk assets such as LRTS, LSTs and so on. So that's what Primex is still about.
- [38:32]
Matteo
And how does Primex differ from some of the other leverage farming or trading protocols in the market right now?
- [38:42]
Dave
Yeah, so the key difference, I would compare primex to other lending protocols and the goal for us was to achieve under authorization, meaning that you can borrow more value than you lock when you are using a lending protocol. And that's what we do essentially. So we provide the possibility to use that lender liquidity that we have in the protocol to access different kinds of assets on chain. And one of the, I would say the competitive advantages is that we can enable leverage and limit orders for those tokens that are not traded on centralized exchanges at all. So that's a unique value proposition. And this way you can also trade meme coins or even AI agents that are not yet even listed anywhere else. Yeah, so that's the key difference. There is not so many leveraged protocols in this space yet. So yeah, the competition is not that high. But yeah, there are definitely some lending protocols in the space already.
- [39:41]
Matteo
So in terms of.
- [39:43]
Dmitry
In other words, it's a modular protocol that allows us to integrate a lot of other defi protocols that we are amplifying with leverage, including leverage trading, leverage farming. Yeah, that's the idea.
- [40:00]
Matteo
So in terms of the lending aspect, I mean aave of course comes to mind and I assume that the key differentiation from that product is the under collateralization.
- [40:12]
Dmitry
Yeah, this is right because the way how we use the liquidity provided by lenders is that it allow us to enter specific, let's say whitelisted strategies, either trading pairs or farming strategies and this liquidity never goes directly to the wallet of the borrower so we don't need to over collateralize it. Additionally we have automation thanks to the network of keepers who are involved into such actions like stop loss, take profit, other conditional orders and liquidations as well. Yeah, this is the difference.
- [40:55]
Matteo
So I know World Liberty was talked about earlier on the show. How has that changed for you guys to see World Liberty using a product like AAVE or using other defi products. How have things changed for you guys since that news broke or those actions?
- [41:11]
Dave
Rather not much yet, but we actually anticipate some. Yeah we see it as really, I mean this year we see as a bullish momentum I would say for defi in general. So we actually are pretty optimistic about the Ethereum ecosystem, I mean all the L2s and we think that there will be more on chain action in the next few months. So yeah, that's a broad answer but we are pretty optimistic actually yeah being an EVM protocol.
- [41:46]
Matteo
Yeah I mean it's hard not to be optimistic when you see the President. I mean I know that we were corrected earlier on the space that it's not necessarily Trump that's making these plays and it's World Liberty fi, which are his folks that he trusts to make crypto actions but it has to be a really promising indicator for you guys. I have another specific question just about the under collateralized lending, does that add more risk to the user?
- [42:13]
Dmitry
Actually not because the protocol is separating the risk of the trader and it's not propagated to the lender. So if we compare this type of risks to for example the the risk of an LP in a perp protocol there it's a zero sum game and all the profit that is generated by a trader is automatically a loss for the LP pool and for liquidity providers. Yeah, in our case it's different. Lenders provide liquidity in a passive way and the trade happens when a position or portfolio is open or closed or rebalanced. The trade happens against the whole sport market where we wrote this, these changes, these trades and yeah in this implementation the profit that the trader can get or a loss is exchanged with the whole market. Yeah, if we can compare it in such a way. So of course while Keepers are working correctly and liquidating a position that is entering a potentially risky level. This risk isn't affecting lenders.
- [43:39]
Matteo
Yeah, and the. I mean that first off, that was a great answer. But I know that you guys have some of the highest APYs, like in terms of a protocol, especially an EVM protocol. What's underlying those APYs? How do you sustain those rates?
- [44:01]
Dave
So it's made available thanks to our architecture. We did have pretty high leverage, for example E spec tokens like LSTs, LRTs. And we also have pretty high leverage for yield bearing stablecoins. And this APY is a result of that high leverage multiplied by the base APY of that specific asset. So if you look at the market, for example, there is a few greats. Yeah. Many great opportunities. And those assets by Esina, for example are among the most popular ones. We have pretty good leverage for those. So you could actually access this leverage for. Basically, yeah, you can open a position with leverage and long seen us stablecoin for example. And that's how the APY is achieved. Yeah.
- [44:55]
Dmitry
I'd like also to add here that the way how it's achieved is the maintenance margin that is needed to in a lot of other protocols to incentivize a potential liquidation because the role that is liquidating normally takes the position with a discount. And this is something that is making the, the value at the liquidation moment of a position still quite high. Yeah, in our implementation we are incentivizing keepers because we are compensating their gas fee plus some small interest on top. So this is something that allow us to make much smaller levels of. Of value in a position. Yeah, and this is the leverage that is increased. This is the reason why the leverage is high and it's multiplied by the original APR of for example an LST or lrt. And yeah, this is the, the total interest that such a leverage farmer can get.
- [46:10]
Matteo
So another one of the features that's highlighted in your docs is unlimited trading pairs, including meme coins. And of course what's really hot right now is AI agents. Why is this important for you guys to have those unlimited trading pairs? And how does that kind of set you guys apart from other sexes or Dexes and things like that?
- [46:32]
Dave
Yeah, definitely. So for some protocols like burps, Dexes or synthetic centralized exchanges, sometimes it's more difficult to add the new asset that do not have, that does not have any, you know, previous trading history. For us it is possible to provide to add leverage for assets that have at least 100k of liquidity in the X pool and also provides all these features like stop loss, take profits and position management, which is pretty cool. So for us, I mean it's one of the advantages because we have more flexibility being a different protocol compared to fully centralized or semi centralized, if you can call them that way platforms. So that's something that we can offer as a protocol and we also have pretty convenient interfaces to trade these tokens on a few chains.
- [47:27]
Dmitry
Yeah, the idea is that there are great new tokens that represent innovative projects and markets should not be exclusive just to the big players. This is our mission to allow all the long tail of assets get access to advanced trading capabilities. And in our implementation it's much easier to list such an asset because the risk of even a potential manipulation of its price doesn't directly generate a risk and a loss for an lp. Yeah, because our lender is just passively providing liquidity. So yeah, the profit that is generated by a trader in this case is the loss of the whole market across the spot are dexs where such a trade is routed.
- [48:26]
Matteo
Did you guys also want to touch on the AI powered DeFi agent that you're building? That's something that I'm pretty obsessed with right now is agents. Especially just with the launch of Operator last week. I feel like the general public is starting to really understand what these are, which is exciting.
- [48:44]
Dmitry
Yeah, indeed. Dmitry.
- [48:47]
Dave
Yeah, I think I just wanted to say that AI agents and in our case AI I would say simplifies the way how people interact with the protocol because in our version 2 it will be possible to enter a portfolio that consists of multiple different positions.
- [49:10]
Vlad
With the.
- [49:10]
Dave
AI helping to build this portfolio, if that makes sense. So you can basically use ChatGPT like interface to open a new portfolio consisting of multiple different positions and you can hedge that way within that portfolio. So that's pretty exciting. And.
- [49:28]
Dmitry
There are two directions that we are working on related to AI. The first one is a significant improvement of the user experience that just simplifies the way how the interaction between the app can happen using prompts and in the end of such a communication a transaction is created. This is also quite interesting of course because it allow us to both trade or entering a farming position or selecting some opportunity with some values for stop loss and take profit in other settings. But another direction is not about the communication between the app but with the real automation and intelligence like rebalancing portfolio to try to improve the P and L. And yeah, it's something where we have some small but still valid improvements in our Backtests comparing a similar portfolio without rebalancing and the one that is constantly readjusting the proportion of the assets following some algorithms, not of them are really machine learning based. Some of them use some deterministic but still efficient statistical algorithms. But yeah, it's something that we are planning to introduce in the next version that is about automation.
- [51:02]
Matteo
And primex has a token that's launching soon. Do you want to go into that a little bit, talk about some of the utilities and benefits of the token, how it's used?
- [51:14]
Dave
Yeah, definitely. It will be possible to pay fees in the token, which is pretty basic. The token is it also it can be staked because we have some portfolio, some protocol fees that are aggregated to our treasury and we have staking for users. It is also part of our incentivization for keepers because the keepers are partially paid with these PMX tokens on top of the position asset, if you can call it that way. So yeah, it has quite a few utilities. It's also part of our rewards program of course because we just concluded our mainnet beta stage and we are attracting new lenders and traders to try the protocol and participate in it. So we have a few programs going on now. Yeah, so quite a few.
- [52:08]
Dmitry
Yeah, there is staking now starting from the day one after TGE that is backed by protocol revenue and yeah, different utilities in the app itself, like tiers for all the roles. Yeah, the token has value because it's. It compensates different activities in the app.
- [52:31]
Matteo
So is there a concrete TGE date that we could let the listeners know about right now?
- [52:38]
Dave
Yeah, it is, yeah, sorry, go ahead.
- [52:43]
Dmitry
Okay, so the listing is 31st of January on gate and Max and Dex pool in the base network Univ3. So three markets for now, but more to come and we have an ongoing sale now for the early participation on our website directly in the app.
- [53:10]
Matteo
And that's somebody that anyone can participate even if they're listening in and maybe want to do their own research.
- [53:17]
Dmitry
Yeah, of course. But please do your own research. Definitely. Yeah, yeah. There is a lot of information about the protocol, all the security audits, also legal information about the token. Yeah, so all is on our website.
- [53:36]
Matteo
Sounds good. And the for anybody who is listening in, if you click the primex Official account there, it's primex Official. It's got the beautiful logo here up in the speaker spot. Their website is linked in their bio. So it's primex Finance is the official website. Make sure that people are not navigating to any scam Sites or anything like that. Just want to make sure that listeners tuning in are, are safe. And so guys, Vlad, for as we're wrapping up here just at the top of the hour for new users, what's the best way for them to get started with primex? Are there any incentives or like, like a big reason for them to get involved right now?
- [54:19]
Dmitry
Yeah, okay, go on.
- [54:23]
Dave
Yeah, thanks. So yeah, we have a few programs going on. We have, it's called primex Rewards program. You can participate as a lender trader or yield farmer and you can earn either points or you can participate as lender for even more lucrative rewards. So yeah, we also have referral program fully on chain. So yeah, you can check it out. We have quite a few programs and I think they'll be running for a couple months from now. Yeah.
- [54:57]
Matteo
Excellent. Well, I commend you guys for what you've been able to accomplish thus far. I know even myself during the call I've been tinkering around on the website and seeing how I, I might use the product. So it's definitely going to learn and, and read some more. But appreciate you guys both joining the show and if anyone's tuning in, make sure that you give Vlad a follow. He's the, the co founder and CEO of primex. He's up here in a speaker spot as well. And the, the primex official account as well as primex Underscore official also up into a speaker slot. So Vlad or primex, any final words for the audience?
- [55:35]
Dave
Thank you.
- [55:36]
Scott
Yeah, thanks everyone.
- [55:37]
Dave
It's great to be here. Thanks. Thank you for having us.
- [55:41]
Matteo
Excellent. Well, thanks guys for joining. Commend you guys for the success you've had thus far and good luck with the TGE at the end of the month here just a few short days away. So with that I hope all the listeners tuning in have a wonderful Tuesday. Make sure that you check the pin posts advertising some job opportunities or if you want to do an AMA just like this one, just DM that crypto town hall account and give Primax a follow. So thanks everyone for joining and have a great Tuesday.
- [56:10]
Dmitry
Thank you.
- [56:12]
Dave
Bye.