← The Wolf Of All Streets
The Wolf Of All Streets
Crypto Bloodbath! $1.3B Liquidated in Market Meltdown | Crypto Town Hall
01:03:22
Crypto Bloodbath! $1.3B Liquidated in Market Meltdown | Crypto Town Hall
Loading summary
Transcript99 lines
- [00:01]
Scott
Welcome to the crypto bloodbath. Good morning. It's 10:18am Eastern Standard Time. This is Crypto Town Hall. We do the show every weekday, 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. Some days are better than others. Today obviously a down day for markets. Bitcoin currently trading at $86,588 and dropping fast, seemingly. Ethereum down at $2,370, down about 11%. Tom, in the last 24 hours. Solana also down about 11%, trading at $135.78. I think we all know that markets aren't looking too happy at the moment. Excited to dig in with the panel on what the charts look like and fundamentally why many believe this correction might be happening. Luckily we have Peter Brandt here. Peter, would love your thoughts on the bitcoin chart right now and what's happening with the market.
- [00:58]
Peter Brandt
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'll post charts online and you know, chart patterns. A chart pattern. It is what it is. Price is what it is. It always humors me when I'll post a chart pattern that's clear and people want to argue about it. Hey, here's the reality. We have a three month double top in bitcoin. Now you can take that for what it is. You, you can argue it, you can say it's wrong, you can agree with it, you can say I'm a liar, you can, you can respond any way you want. The reality is we have a 13 week M type double top in bitcoin. That's reality, folks. Does it fail? Does it meet its target? Does it begin a bear market? Hey, those are things we don't know. What we know is we have a 13 week double top in bitcoin, period. Now deal with that for however you want to deal with it. But that's the reality as things stands right now. Yeah.
- [01:55]
Scott
So Peter, quickly, sorry about my mic as usual, not necessarily working. So we obviously we had the top around 183 back in I think December and then the more recent top around, you know, 109. The lowest point between those I believe was, you know, just around 89, which we're kind of breaking down below. So I assume that that's sort of your confirmation of the double top is this break below 89, is that correct?
- [02:20]
Peter Brandt
Yeah, I mean until, until it's double top fails and somehow which means we got to climb back ab that midpoint low. We've got to consolidate there and then start back up until we have that. We have about 75,000 targets. Again, you can argue with that, you can say I'm full of it. You can respond any way you want to respond. But as far as I'm concerned as a chartist, we have a 13 week double top. It has been completed. It has a target of 75,5, which by the way would be a pretty good retest of the parabolic advance that we started back in 2013 or 2023. So.
- [03:03]
Scott
Yeah, 78, 385, depending on which exchange you looked on, was the previous all time high. Right. So if you're looking at the high from. Sorry, I'm doing it on my phone, basically March of 24, which has never been retested as support. Right. So a lot of people have looked at that area all the way on the way up and saying that was kind of begging for a retest. But usually in these pairs, parabolic advances, you don't necessarily get it, but that aligns what you're saying with sort of that area.
- [03:33]
Peter Brandt
Yeah, I mean, yeah, you take that 72, 73 area. Exactly. I mean I always looked at the weekly chart of bitcoin as kind of a continuation inverted head and shoulders pattern that started with the March 2021 high. And you know, and so we had a left shoulder back there. Then we went down into the bottom of the head in November20, rallied up. We had, you know, this seven month consolidation that started back in March 2024. Then we broke out. You know, if we, we crack here and we move back in the mid-70s, it's a retest of the neckline of that weekly chart pattern. It's a retest of the parabolic curve that we have and you know, we we'll deal with from that. Now do we have to go back down there? No, we don't. But we can always negate this double top. That's, you know, patterns are always negatable and that can occur. And obviously those who think this decline is full of crap would say, yeah, we're not going to go back down there and retest. We're going to find a bottom here and we're going to go straight to 200,000, whatever. But I have to deal with what I consider to be the latest input. And the latest input of information for me is a 13 week double top. And as a chartist now I have to deal with that.
- [05:00]
Scott
It makes perfect, perfect sense. Do you have any specific thoughts on the rest of the crypto market outside of bitcoin or the context of this into markets in general, this move? Because it seems like stocks are pretty flat here.
- [05:15]
Peter Brandt
Yeah, I'm a long standing bear on eth. I mean I always have been. I think ETH is full of crap, but I'm. No, I mean I'm a bitcoin guy. Look at bitcoin there. The rest just, it's just a whole big field of pretenders.
- [05:35]
Scott
Makes sense. Fullest, you obviously are looking at the charts, actively trading this on a day to day basis. How do your views align with Peter's? What are you looking at?
- [05:45]
Fulus
Hey Scott. Yeah, maybe I have a slightly different take to Peter. I just think that yeah, this price action that we're getting kind of reminds me of the range that we had last year between March and October. And I mean you'll remember, most of the panel will remember and most of our listeners will remember that sentiment in that range was basically the worst indicator of where price was actually going and what you should have done at that time. We had moves to the top of the range, let's call it the range back then was basically between like 70k and maybe like high 50s. And every time we move to the top of the range you got the same moon boys coming out of the woodwork saying, yeah, this is it, new paradigm long your longs. We're all going to make so much money. It's top long season alt, season coming, et cetera, et cetera. And you know, every time, every time, by the last time, by the breakout we got in November, there was a rejection, There was like, there was like six or seven rejections before that happened. Likewise at range lows. And this kind of comes into my point. Every time we went back to like 60k, 58k, there was a dip in May that went to 57k, there was a dip in July that went to 55k. There was of course that big dip in August that went all the way down to sub 50k. But each one of those, each one of those dips, you know, the same perma bears are coming out and saying that, you know, we're going to go lower, we're going to go to 30k, like set your stink bids, bull market is over, etc. But I, I still, you know, at the time and, and now looking at this price action, I still think we're in a range and range rules apply. Right now at the moment we're deviating quite low below the current range which is like arguably between like 100k and call it like 90k or even like 105k and 90k. Right. This is a pretty low deviation, but we've seen low Deviations before. We've actually seen this exact type of range PA last year. We saw it the year before. Right. BTC consolidates and then it either moves up out of the range or down out of the range. Now maybe this is the breakdown. Maybe we're just going to retrace the entire Trump pump that we got in October, November last year. Maybe this, this is the end of the bull market because it's been a very varied bull market for a lot of coins. But I just haven't seen enough evidence to say that that is the case. And I think this is really where it's important for people to focus on their own charts, focus on their own analysis. Don't get caught up in the, I guess in the hysteria or in the high emotions that always come when price is dumping like this. Right.
- [08:27]
Scott
Quickly, follow us. Are you telling me that you can be a trader without getting opinions from a thousand people on X? That's possible. Peter, what do you think that is possible? You need the opinions of a thousand people on X to be able to make a decision.
- [08:44]
Fulus
X is like the ultimate double edged sword because if you curate your X feed, well, you can get some, you can get, you can have. Basically it's like this freedom of information that basically we've never had before. And I'm sure Peter can speak on this more than I can, but I always think back on the guys who got into, got into finance, got into trading markets in, you know, in the 70s and 80s and yeah, guys like John Bollinger talking about drawing his Bollinger bands on a paper chart.
- [09:11]
Scott
You know, watch my grand. My grandfather was a stockbroker and when I was a kid I watch him at the breakfast table, you know, drawing his charts by hand.
- [09:22]
Fulus
It's amazing. But the last point I'll make here is that just there's so much information that the, the issue isn't trying to find the information, it's basically trying to block out. And I think that's what, it's very important for traders now. Especially if this is your, your first time or one of your first times experiencing this kind of downside, this kind of market volatility is just to try and block out the noise. Focus on the quality. Focus on, focus on what, focus on what you can say for, for certain. Focus on the, the empirical facts and just try and, you know, try and think about the plans that you had before emotions came into play. It's not always easy. But I do think, I do think that we haven't seen enough here. I know There's a lot of guys calling for 70k, 80k. I just haven't seen enough yet. I think that there's a very good chance that range low supports holes and we bounce. But the final point, I will say is that to counter that is basically you want to see, you do want to see bull step up. I don't think that this is where you should be knife catching. I think that this is a scenario where you wait for confirmation and enter with conviction rather than trying to knife catch every low. Because we're just sweeping and sweeping and sweeping again.
- [10:29]
Scott
Yeah, just quickly. I mean, for the record, you know, if we count this as sort of the low of this move, let's call it 109 top, we're still only down about 21.1% from the top. I think it moved to 75. Let's just call it round to be a 31% drop from the top. Peter. I mean, both of those are par for the course, if not shallow for previous bitcoin bull markets. So I guess before we kind of move on, I want your thoughts on whether it dropped to 75. Does that change your opinion on whether this is a bull or bear market or what's likely to happen after that? Because we know we've had 35, 40, 50% drops in every bull market in crypto Bitcoin specifically.
- [11:10]
Peter Brandt
Yeah, I mean, full disclosure, 60% ownership position in bitcoin from an investment point of view. I mean, I've not been below that percentage for a very long time. I still think we're in a bitcoin bull market cycle that will end somewhere between 125 and 150 in August, September of 2025. I mean, but now that's. As an investor. That's an investor is a separate bitcoin portfolio that I have as a trader for the company account. We're short bitcoin futures. So, you know, how do I reconcile that? I don't reconcile it. Why should things always have to be reconciled? So, you know, they're separate positions based on separate time frame is based on separate decision making metrics. So yeah, I mean, a correction back in the 70s, no correction, real corrections in Bitcoin are 80%. So there's all kinds of 20, 30, 40, 50% corrections in Bitcoin over time. You can find all kind of them. I'll try to update my bitcoin corrections table and stick it on Twitter some point today. But yeah, correction into the mid-70s, that's kind of actually kind of a yonr from a Historical point of view.
- [12:32]
Dave
Yeah.
- [12:33]
Scott
Dave, you had your hand up.
- [12:36]
Austin
Yeah, yeah. Actually, I was going to say pretty much exactly what Peter just said. I mean, look, you know, you have to look at time frames and you have to look at a couple of things that are structural in the market that are important. You know, we've talked about, people talk about, well, you know, remember we're talking about yesterday, about the carry trade or is it the day before? I don't know, it's all, it's all a blur. But if you look, the March futures are trading at the lowest premium to the, the, to the February futures one month out that we've seen since the start of the cycle. In basis points terms, what does that mean? It means that there's literally no demand right now for buying forward from all the brokerages that are using the futures. Now when that happens, that means that all of those carry trades get unwound. And it doesn't mean that there isn't another side of it. But when that happens at the same time as those same buyers who are saying, oh, I need to, I want to wait for it to drop below 90 to buy, of course, we all know what happens, you know, when the markets drop, people walk away. And so you get these air pockets. It's classic, you know, trading behavior. But I agree, I mean, you know, from a chart perspective, I mean, even from any rational perspective, I mean, we broke the 92 range with the 92 bottom of that range with conviction. And so now you look for the wider range and figure out where the hell it is. And we're in negative price discovery. And you're going to see that for a bit. Now, all of that said, none of the fundamental drivers have really changed with one exception, and it is worth noting, the one exception, we haven't talked about it a lot. I never really put a whole lot of credence in the Bitcoin strategic reserve being this big announcement that was going to trumpet it. But the likelihood of that is down. And we're watching multiple states where the likelihood, where it's failing at the state level, where we had Dennis Porter on here talking about how that was going to happen, I always thought it would be more corporate and pools of capital and what will happen in the back half of this year are all the brokerage firms going in. So it's not like the bull case has changed. It hasn't. But in the short run, you have to be very cognizant of what's going on in the market struck in the market dynamics and you know, I always get really leery. Just like, I don't like being long when everybody's talking about, well, okay, we're going super bullish, and I always want to see the other side. You know, with every professional saying 75 or 70 or things like that, I tend to think, you know what, that's just too easy and pat. And markets tend to do the opposite of what people expect. But right now, when you're seeing bitcoin leading the world down, I mean, you know, it's rare when you look in coin glass and you see bitcoin as by far the dominant liquidation of the long side. That has not been the case during, you know, what we've seen since this meme coin, you know, inspired altcoin disaster started unfolding. Of the liquidations, Bitcoin was a smaller percentage. Now Bitcoin is literally at its dominance level of liquidation. And that matters. Right. It's telling you that there was a lot of leverage, a lot of people who kind of had given up in the short run on alts, but were levering on Bitcoin, and oops, that's what's happening to.
- [15:47]
Scott
That is 1.4 billion in the last 24 hours is the aggregate right now. It's a very large number for this market.
- [15:53]
Austin
That's right. It's a big number, and a lot of it is bitcoin. What I'm trying to tell you, what I'm trying to say, Scott, is it's a fairly conclusive proof that a lot of degens who were getting crushed in alts started aping in and over levering on Bitcoin. And that is, you know, given that the percentage of this move isn't that big, I mean, we're talking 10, 20, 30, you know, 30 times or more leverage. And when that's being done, you know, all bets are off.
- [16:19]
Matthew
Yeah.
- [16:20]
Scott
And yesterday you, you, myself and Matt Hogan kind of had a conversation, obviously about these outflows. I believe you were here. We were talking about the outflows of the ETFs. We had, I think about 500 million last week. Well, we had 500 million more yesterday from.
- [16:37]
Austin
And, and the numbers get bigger today. Right. And. And the reason.
- [16:41]
Scott
But that's the carry trade closing because it's no longer a viable trade. Which means that people who bought spot Bitcoin or spot ETFs, as we were discussing, are using the ETFs for the carry trade, were short futures, and buying spot ETFs are closing those positions in profit, which means selling ETFs which means outflows.
- [17:02]
Austin
Yep, exactly. Right?
- [17:04]
Fulus
Yeah.
- [17:05]
Scott
Austin.
- [17:07]
Jason
Yeah, I was going to say, you know, it's interesting listening to you guys talk from the equities perspective. I'm a grouchy old fixed income person by trade. And you know, the running gag on the floor used to be all markets are funding markets. I think the reason for, call it the short term wrong footing of crypto on this move is as markets get bigger and we all agree that bitcoin has gotten significantly bigger, especially with the ETFs, you start correlating more and more with global macro whether you want to or not. And we're living in a world right now where expectations on interest rates are being revised, expectations on core economic returns are being revised. People are sort of internalizing the American policy of increased tariffs and looking at, well, maybe we were wrong about the future path of inflation. And at the same time we have this trend in crypto of people rotating from alts and delivered bitcoin bets. We have global macros showing up and being like, actually maybe you should revalue all of the risk assets. And so I think one thing that's happening, as you guys have said, is people were not really ready for things like the carry trade dynamic this time around with the ETFs in play. I think the other thing I'm watching here is are we seeing Bitcoin becoming a leading indicator for what could be happening in larger global macro markets based on, on this move? Because if this is fundamentally driven by funding, if this is fundamentally being driven by the clash of crypto expectations and real expectations on economic returns, what does that tell you the next leg is.
- [18:45]
Scott
Go ahead, Dwayne.
- [18:48]
Dwayne
Yeah, sure, thanks. Good morning. Yeah, so there is, you know, just to I guess jump on those comments as well, there is something to be said about, you know, the, the concerns about inflation here. So if we look at the last, you know, the last cpi, we have an uptick inflation and it outsized forecasts. So I think that has something to do here with the three month low that crypto has experienced here. I mean, bitcoin has experienced here. And I think it also just in general does coincide with more of a tumultuous time in regards to crypto in the sense of the meme coin fiasco that we've seen with celebrities here in the meme coin frenzy also as well. When you put that together, like a lack of near term catalysts, it does put the bull market overall into question. So I think when you put a lot of these you know, a lot of these issues together with tariffs and with some uncertainty in regards to the administration as well, you get this pot of gumbo, so to speak, where investors have to navigate through that. So I think that's really what's happening here. So, you know, we're seeing a real overall risk off maneuver here with bitcoin and I think that's going to, you know, then that does relate to what's happening in market as well. Even with the commodity complex, if you look at gold, silver, copper, etc, they are down today as well. So I think that's a good indicator of where we're going.
- [20:19]
Scott
Yeah, my one of my best friends, lifelong, I'm not allowed to say where he works, but I'll say it rhymes with shit. Adele, he texted me this morning at 5:00am hey, what the hell's up with your bitcoin? As usual, because you troll your friends at 5 o'clock in the morning on a Monday at all times. And I said, hey, what do you think's going on with bitcoin? He said, okay, from top down, obviously tell you where he works. He said, listen, he's like, wall street woke up yesterday, we don't get the crypto news. He's like, we found out There was a $1.5 billion hack this weekend or on Friday. It's like we didn't know that till yesterday. He's like, we view that as definitely part of the reason this is selling off. He said, they don't really look so deeply so they just get the headlines. And Libra and the Trump token they view as a ceiling for the industry for quite a long time. And they also, to Duane's point, think tariffs are a poor tool and the amount of uncertainty in markets is leading to a sell off. I'm not telling you those are the reasons, but I'm telling you this is coming from somebody apply at one of the biggest institutions. Those are the things they're pointing at for the reason that we're seeing this sell off is that they're very concerned, I think short term about Trump policies and not so much long term with the deregulation and all the things that are likely to happen. But meme coin, market hack not favorable for bitcoin when they all woke up on Monday. I don't know if anybody has thoughts on that, but that's what I'm hearing sort of directly. Ryan, go ahead.
- [21:56]
Ryan
Yeah, so I'm not much of a trader historically when I've tried trading and just looking at the markets, I've done Very, very badly. I'm an engineer. I've been an engineer for 20 years. And I look at the patterns with the way people trade these technology tokens, essentially, and it's a lot of greed. They throw their money around with being very reckless. And by the way, the quote unquote hack that happened with Gnosis, I think there's a lot more negligence than they're leading on. A lot less hack and more negligence. I'm on a lot of teams that use Gnosis safes and the different multisig tools, and we review the bytecode before we sign things and we make sure that we know who initiated the transaction. And it's a lot of security procedures even when we're transferring a million or 10 million or whatever, let alone like 1.4 billion. So I think this industry is still me being one of them. A bunch of kids kind of getting our stripes and learning that we're in the real world with real money, and all the more professional institutions are looking at us like, why would I put my money there? The one other comment I'd say is I thought historically, and maybe some of the other panelists here could answer this. I thought historically, when you move out of crypto would be a hedge for the dollar. And if you're selling back into the dollar, you think that the dollar is going to be strong. Is this a bullish indicator for the American economy because people are moving back into the dollar and they think all the cuts are going to make it stronger? Or is it just people are just looking at the markets, reading the tea leaves and think this is just a cycle?
- [23:43]
Scott
With bitcoin, I think there's like 12 very loud Bitcoin maxis on Twitter scream about the death of the dollar. And that's not on the radar of anybody on Wall Street. I just don't think they have a concern for getting out of the dollar. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've never heard any of them who are into hardcore old bitcoiners ever show that real concern. Because where are you going to go, Ryan, if you're on Wall Street?
- [24:08]
Ryan
No, exactly. That's why I'm so confused by it. Because when you actually look at the fundamentals of what bitcoin is and how it works, it's still one of the most sound things we can use at this point. There's no other financial system on face of the Earth that can do what bitcoin can do in the volume that it can do it. So the technology has not changed. We're still working with the same code base, even more engineers that we've worked with before. We have more building on top of it. We have more innovation and people coming into the ecosystem. So we're looking at a price as an indicator of the technology. I think the technology is going to prove true over time and people are going to, they'll jump in, they'll jump out, but over the long time, long term, it's going to be the tsunami. So we're watching the tides pull back, thinking, oh no, it's going to crash. I think we're just gearing up for the flood.
- [25:05]
Scott
Dave.
- [25:09]
Austin
I think Austin was. Had his hand up before me, but did you.
- [25:13]
Scott
You and Austin can fight in the, in the.
- [25:16]
Jason
I was gonna say, Dave, go for it.
- [25:18]
Scott
I'll go next, but you'll both go.
- [25:19]
Austin
Okay, cool. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, you know, always want to be polite. Look, I, I had this theory this morning and I posted it, you know, as a reply to Jeff Dorman who was kind of annoyed with OTC desks, you know, talking about bullshit. And I thought, find that funny because we all know that, that you know, when the press calls and says, why is this happening? You're generally going to regurgitate bullshit. I think that your friend at Citadel probably nailed it much better in terms of, you know, proximate causes for whatever. But that's not pools of money. I do think in the.
- [25:52]
Scott
He doesn't work at Citadel, Dave. I didn't say that.
- [25:54]
Austin
He works, he works at some, some place.
- [25:58]
Scott
Benedell. It's a new bitcoin company.
- [26:00]
Austin
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. So in any event, I think that there's a lot of muscle memory in the crypto world and people. And maybe it's completely coincidental with, with some ridiculous notion of Sam Bankman fried posting on X yesterday. I mean, but people remember Luna blowing up and they remember that after Luna blew up. And by the way, it had very little to do with Luna. If anything, they remember Voyager and all the various for selling events that killed the last bull market. And I do think that there's fear out there that, oh my God, Bybit had a, you know, $1.4 billion. The meme coin blow up has been horrible. Oh my God, this is going to, going to accelerate and the whole thing's going to come crashing down. Now the difference between the, you know, these proximate causes and what happened is massive. Most importantly, there isn't the collapse of a lending market where bitcoin collateral has to be liquidated, except for idiots who over leverage themselves. And so you know, if you expect that that's, that that's what's happening, then selling bitcoin in that scenario is more a question of, okay, there are some people who are selling because they have to sell. And there is that true. Remember, bitcoin rallied over 100% last year. A lot of people made a lot of money. A lot of traders made a lot of money. And those traders are going to owe taxes. And when they see bitcoin starting to fall below the range, it's like, oh crap, I need to pay my taxes. I'm going to have to sell my bitcoin to do it. I may as well do it now so that way I don't have to sell more if it goes down even further. And so you do get that sort of acceleration loop. And by the way, that is exactly. Someone on the spaces yesterday mentioned it feels like March of 2000. And that's what happened in March of 2000. The NASDAQ dropped 14% in one day, which for an index is a very big deal for Bitcoin. 14%. People panic when, when it's, it's equities, it's a really big deal. You start hitting circuit breakers and shit like that. So understand, we saw that by the way, it retraced all of those losses even in the Nasdaq, and the collapse didn't happen until six months later. Now, I'm not saying that we're gonna have a collapse six months from now, but what I'm telling you is that these sorts of scenarios are a big deal. I mean, just, just right now, I mean, it's only a couple of days, but the February future, a couple of days from now, people are selling at a discount, you know, 100 to $200 discount. Right. You know, that's actually happening and it's been happening since we've been on this call. So there are a lot of flows that are going on and that's despite, by the way, it rallying. What are we up, you know, a thousand, about a thousand bucks off the bottom. And you're seeing that. So you have to understand that there's a lot of crap goes on, but when people get into panic mode, all bets are off.
- [28:49]
Scott
I didn't even see that it had dropped below 86, but looking now, and you said we're a thousand off. Pretty, pretty wild price action. Austin, you were next.
- [28:59]
Jason
Yeah, I was going to say to a previous comment, one of the obnoxious market dynamics that people should be aware of is often when we revisit expectations in the general economy in the US Lower the dollar is going to get stronger, not weaker. Right. It's a little bit like the Winston Churchill problem of it's the worst asset except for all the others. As people revise their expectations down on things like bitcoin and people are panicking. And as you can see from futures action, there's a lot of fear in the market. What does everybody pile into the dollar? I would not take that as an endorsement of the long term path of the dollar. I would take it as criticism of everything else. But just be aware, even if you're a bitcoin maxi, even if you're a dollar hater, in short term periods of fear, people are going to pile into the dollar. It will get stronger, other things will get weaker. It does drive technical price action and it's a very flows based thing, as Dave was saying.
- [29:54]
Scott
Yeah, absolutely agree with all of that. Matthew, what are your thoughts of what's happening at the moment? Obviously sowing some weakness across the board in the crypto market, while other things are generally flat.
- [30:09]
Dwayne
I keep. Well, good morning everybody. I hope you, hope you're doing well. Scott. I kind of wake up today and just have this nagging feeling that something isn't necessarily like, right, like the narrative isn't quite right and that there's a little bit of, yeah, there's a lot of just conflicting messages and things like that. And I heard, you know, Dwayne mentioned a lack of catalysts. And I would just, you know, consider all the things that have been going on in the crypto space that are bullish for the space especially. And I want to point out the shackles coming off from the SEC with regards to OpenSea and Coinbase and now Robinhood. Like, you know, when Trump talks about short term pain, is this what he was talking about is this kind of the rigmarole that we're going through? And I just kind of like sit back and say like, okay, well, this is the point in time where people have been begging, you know, at 108,000 Bitcoin, like, gosh, I wish I could have bought it at 90 or at 95 or, you know, how low does it go? And I think that there's a really obvious case here to be dollar cost averaging, you know, in, into this and in stages to be able to buy back lower at the prices that you're looking at. And the fact that we're looking at this at an $85,000, $87,000 Bitcoin right now is just pretty, pretty remarkable considering six months ago. It was in the 60s and 70s. So you know, I think people buy in when there's euphoria and they freak out when things don't quite go their way. And a lot of this stuff gets, you know, collapses, kind of like a flawn in a closet. Because a lot of people start taking out leverage and a lot of people start saying, well, if I could just, you know, mortgage my house again and buy some bitcoin, everything's going to be great. And, and I agree with a lot of the things that people have spoken on here about that. I just encourage people to remember that this is a longer term play. The technology is still sound. No blockchain got hacked, right? A company got hacked. And this is always same narrative every time this happens. Oh no, the technology is bad, absolutely incorrect. The technology is working perfectly. It's the, it's the institutions that have messed up in this sense. And we've got clients right now just continuing to say, hey, let's go buy on the dip. Let's keep adding and stacking sats or stacking XRP or ETH or whatever it is. So again, come back to this nagging feeling that something's not right with this narrative. Like nothing drastically has gone wrong. So if anything, to me it just feels a bit manipulated and a bit like a good entry point.
- [32:40]
Scott
Matthew, Jason, listen, you're on the ground obviously for those who don't know an RIA and fund manager. Do you have clients even mentioning things like the hacks and Libra and Trump meme coins or any of this? Or are they basically still don't even notice those headlines and focus on Bitcoin?
- [32:59]
Dwayne
I think the most important thing that I've seen over the course of the last few days has been actually looking at a client email. Right now I'm terrified of leaving my assets on an exchange or in my closet. And this idea that self custody is the paragon of this ecosystem is wrong. Being your own bank is cool until it's not cool. That's why we work with an institutional grade custodian that provides insurance on accounts and we work with people to put their wealth into places that we feel like are secure spots to keep it for the moment. That's, there's, there's a lot of different ways that people can participate in this ecosystem, but keeping your wealth is just one aspect of being able to make sure that you get to benefit from it. You know, getting it, getting your wealth is one challenge, keeping it as the other. And I think a lot of people feel scared about providing their assets either to an exchange or in some sort of soft custody capacity or keeping their assets on a ledger. That's like the number one thing that I'm hearing right now, which should start.
- [34:08]
Scott
To change at least that perception. For better or for worse. With the overturn of SAB121 and Bank of New York Mellon and State street and all of them coming in as custodians, you would think, right Matthew?
- [34:17]
Dwayne
I mean that's absolutely, absolutely. The custodianship of digital assets is going to be a new wave of how people start to become okay with it and how you get people from traditional finance more interested in it. And this all comes back to how do they create new financial instruments or like peripasu instruments that help people get access to it either through an ETF or an index ETF or all these kinds of things. So totally agree that keeping your assets secure is one of the number one things that will drive adoption in this space.
- [34:51]
Scott
Zillion.
- [34:54]
Zillion
Hey, just. Good evening everyone. Just a quick note on what's happening with the liquidations, etc. Look, I, I, for me, this is basically the, the culminating factor of many years of kind of disinformation to let me explain myself for retail. And the exchanges have been marketing to retail mostly that being in crypto is equal, sorry, being in futures leveraged products is equal to being in crypto. Right now if you go to spaces where there is newcomers or, or even like one, one cycle ago, commerce, etc, you would, when they talk, their exposure to crypto is their exposure to leveraged products. And exchanges have been marketing heavily towards that simply because that is one way exchanges make a P and L and market makers make a P and L. So it's really sad to see that when you have liquidations like this and big dumps like this, they really happen during a time period where there is extremely low liquidity in the market. So they usually happen when everyone is asleep and they go chase liquidation levels in, in a very shallow market and these type of behaviors, I think, and, and I am really thankful that it's gonna finish very soon when we're going to start to have, you know, more regulatory framework, a supervision, supervision framework for these places. I'm not accusing anyone. These are now standard market practices. Right? But at the end of the day, it hurts a lot of retail. At the end of the day, we know that the people that have been liquidated to these levels, these, this is basically $1.3 billion of people's savings, okay. Of people that this is not gambling money for a lot of people. These are investments and investments into the future. So I find it really sad once again that obviously the game is still played as it's been played for the past six, seven years. Okay, A little bit more. More organized, a little bit. A lot of buzzwords, a little bit more structured, but it's still a very dirty game simply because you don't see this level of liquidations when the market, during the US Market is open. When you have depth in the market, you see it and very in. In very entrenched hours where there is very little. Why? Because the aim is to manipulate, manipulate by big holders. And this is really unfortunate when we have right now a push for legitimation of crypto.
- [38:04]
Scott
Dave.
- [38:06]
Austin
Well, I mean, ordinarily I would agree, but that's not actually what happened today. You know, just the math is the math. The liquidation curve over the last 24 hours is rather smooth. And it actually, if anything, accelerated a little bit again at the US Open when we dropped down during this call, you know, to below 86,000. So, you know. But yes, I mean, the fact is that I often talk about the manipulation effect of this market and the way it can be done and how people do this structurally and how in every other regulated market, if you do things specifically to trigger liquidations, if you try to do momentum ignition strategies, what's called volatility. Arb. For those of you who don't know this, the entire Japanese stock market was very, very similar to the bitcoin market in the 90s. Okay. I'm actually writing a book that the working title is Million Dollar Frat Boys. Talking about a lot of the crap that went on on trading desks from the 80s through the 90s. But in Japan, you had this situation where the Japanese firms were only able to trade in futures a lot of the funds because of Koretsu. They couldn't really trade baskets of indexes. And so you had this kind of weird liquidity situation where the futures are more liquid but settled, that is, were driven by the spot price on expiration dates. Well, in any event, so you had significant market manipulation. We used to call it liquidity arbitrage. Well, the same thing happens, and I've talked about this on these spaces often when the perpetuals are more liquid and you can then dump spot to trigger liquidations and perpetuals, which of course causes spot dumping, etc. It is a game, and it's a game that people, you know, some people are making money at. And most of the world would Prefer for those sorts of things not to really be legal or for those sorts of things to be at least under control or for you to be able to understand it. And you know, in, when you talk about that in crypto spaces, people get mad. They go oh my God. But you know, regulators don't do any good and we shouldn't have this sort of thing. It should be caveat emptor and things should be able to move however you want to move. Well, you can't have it both ways. If you want to have a completely unregulated market, you're going to have liquidity arb. You're going to have these sorts of liquidations. If you do want a regulated market, then you understand that people who are buying and selling for the purpose of manipulating the price as opposed to for investing or buying. When you want to buy and selling, you want to sell well, those are differences and you have to choose your pick, your poison.
- [40:47]
Scott
And so isn't it fair to say that you would, if it was a regulated market, you wouldn't even have perpetual swaps. That wouldn't be a product.
- [40:55]
Austin
Bullshit. It's a great product.
- [40:57]
Scott
No, no, I agree. I'm not saying it's a bad product. I'm saying in most highly regulated markets it doesn't exist.
- [41:02]
Austin
Well, it doesn't exist because of monopolies. So we don't want to go down that rabbit hole. I will debate that one. That's the hill I will die on the perpetual swap. And real time liquidation is so far superior to the dated futures and 24 hours or margin calls, it's not even funny. I mean it is dramatically lower risk. If you had this sort of situation in markets with those sorts of futures, with all the uncertainty of oh my God, when the liquidation is going to happen, are the margin calls being made? What's actually happening? I was on a trading desk during the crash of 87 and trust me, nobody knew who was going to what bodies. They just knew a depth charge went off in the, you know, in, in the ocean or in the pond. They had no idea what was going to float to the top of the, of the ocean. Nobody knew. And it took a week of Hong Kong's market, for example, was closed for a week before it was able to reopen. So no, I disagree with that one violently. I do think that people are afraid to be clear.
- [42:01]
Scott
I wasn't saying that they shouldn't exist. I agree with you. I'm saying they wouldn't. Highly regulated in our most highly regulated markets, like you don't have perpetual swaps on Tesla and the New York Stock Exchange.
- [42:11]
Fulus
Right?
- [42:12]
Austin
No, but, but you could, you could. But they would never allow 100x leverage because it's insane. Right. You know it, you know, and you've heard me say that. I mean the thing, the most important part of all this is this is what happens when you allow ridiculous leverage. This. Anyone who thinks this is new, it's not. I mean they used to have what's called bucket shops. If you read, you know, funny book, but it's a great book. Reminiscences of a stock operator from the early, you know, basically charting the last, the, the end of the 1800s. And yes, I said 1800s. They used used to be able to buy or sell stocks on 98%, you know, 98%, whatever. So it was about 25 to as much as as 50 times leverage. Right. And that one of the reasons they outlawed that when they did the laws after the crash of, of 29 was because what they found was retail was just getting absolutely annihilated by using that leverage. So yeah, I mean over leverage is not good for uninitiated people. It's that simple. And we see it all the time in crypto.
- [43:17]
Zillion
Dave, just a quick one please. So just so I understand something, so when you have like structure like crypto markets where usually the market is heavily on one side and you have an industry that is running on these perpetuals.
- [43:35]
Peter Brandt
Right.
- [43:36]
Zillion
Who is on the other side of the trade?
- [43:38]
Austin
Well, it's, it's, it's not, it's not all one sided. I mean the thing that I always point out and in, in normal, saner times people say, you know, they, they say well oh, you could trade OTC with less market impact. And the only reason that that's somewhat true, it's not really true, but it's somewhat true is that if you go to, if you even if you have the technology like you know, my, the company that my co founder called Coin Routes does to look at all the spot markets and say okay, I'm going to buy on Binance and USDT and Coinbase in US dollars in Kraken and dollars in Buybit or OKEx and USDT and I'm going to be buying Spot. Even if you could do that, you still are missing all the liquidity that's in the perpetual markets. Because what the OTC guys is they pull all of this stuff together and then they make their prices based upon the entire Dec of the market. So basically all these things move together. Austin was talking about funding before. What you have to understand is it's the entirety of the market when you're trying to find liquidity. Now when you get to periods of intense fear and volatility, you get air pockets and you get people trying to push one way or the other, at which point, who knows. But it's not a one way market. If it was a one way market, it would go from $1 to $100,000. That's not what happens. What happens is there are always people with bids and offers and I could actually go use our software and tell you how much, but there's a lot on both sides and it's much more complicated and interdependent.
- [45:12]
Matthew
We do have a sponsor. Today we're going to be joined by Legend, which is AI Agents for Sports. And I think Antonio is up here to speak on behalf of the project as well. And just a disclaimer before we get started that projects on this space are working directly with ibc, who does marketing, incubation and investing and are not necessarily working directly with crypto Town Hall Scott or myself in particular. But Antonio, as we're transitioning here to the ama, do you just want to kick it off with a bit of an elevator pitch about what you're building with Legend?
- [45:49]
Dave
Okay, sure. Hello to all of you and thanks for the opportunity to be with you in this session. And we are at Legends. What we have created is probably the biggest football database in the world associated with AA where you can query almost anything that you want about that. So we have more than 140,000 athletes and more than 1,000 leagues also with live odds from the main bookmakers in the world. And you can query almost anything about odds, betting, journalist reports and stat insights. And it can be checked in AI.blegends.com so that's like the main vertical that we have and then we have another other two verticals. One is more around staking. It's like prediction markets combined with Defi. Imagine that you have Poly Market on top of Lido. Let's say it's like where you play instead of betting is where you play with the deal that the staking is we're going to to give to you. And then a third one is where we have digital awards, digital trophies and medals. We've been probably the first Web3 company featured but international Olympic Committee and we have created the first ever a World cup in digital format with the World Baseball and Soto Confederation. And I believe that is like a big summary. As I told you started with the biggest football database. But we are soon adding baseball for American football, more basketball and more sports.
- [47:17]
Matthew
How long have you guys been building this? Because those are some pretty significant partnerships and relationships.
- [47:23]
Dave
Yes, as I told you, I mean the agents, we just launched the platform today. We have another agent. Before it was a Twitter account, but with the digital trophy it was the first vertical that we worked on. It was like almost three years ago, starting with the World Baseball and Sodor Confederation as I told you. But we win with fisu, with European Aquatics and also probably the biggest event we ever made was with the Pan American Games of Santiago, Chile 2023, where you have like from Canada and the United States to Argentina and Chile was like more than 10,000 athletes where we deliver for them their digital diplomas in the form of NFTs. As you can imagine, it was actually the first time ever that they didn't deliver the physical diploma. It's like the Olympics actually the Pan American Games belongs or is hung under the umbrella of the International Olympic Committee and they are the first time ever that they didn't deliver digital, sorry, physical diplomas and just deliver NFTs to more than 10,000 athletes.
- [48:21]
Matthew
That's very cool. I'm interested, what was the reception of these athletes to getting an NFT digital trophy versus a traditional alakid?
- [48:33]
Dave
It's a very good question and you can imagine it depends on the athlete if it's an early adopter or not. We've seen with the past of the Dan is that sometimes you are delivering both the physical and the digital diplomats sometimes or metas or trophies. Sometimes you are just giving the digital. What we've seen after these years is like as well as happened with photos that before everything was physical. Now you have have still physical photos maybe for your wedding or very important moments. But most of the photos are digital. I believe with metas and trophies still the World cup, the NBA rings, the Olympic is going to be physical. But I believe that all of them will have like the digital counterpart as official as the physical one. So you can like let's say distribute them in the digital ring at the beginning. I mean also for the athletes is like a new, a new asset that unlock new possibilities. Because before the trophy or the medal you just have it in your room. Now you can wear it with you. And it also unlocks the possibility for us. We allow both the organizations like the world governing bodies or at least to embed media content into the trophy. So for instance, it's like can be photos or videos or audios of the official photos from the organizations or even you as an athlete that you can unload or let's say embed a memory there with a very interesting theme like what we did in the Pan American Games, it was not only the Pan American Games, but also the Para Pan Americana. So for the visually impaired and for the blind athletes, we created an audio version of the diploma. So we recorded the voice of the president of the Paralympic committee, just a 50, 60 second recording. And then with artificial intelligence, we generated more than 600 diplomas for these blind athletes that were competing at the Pan American Games. So being digital unlock, let's say, new possibilities that you didn't have before in the, in the physical.
- [50:34]
Matthew
That's, that's pretty cool. Like, did they, did the athletes really enjoy this? Like, it seems like a really great way to prove authenticity of these awards as well.
- [50:45]
Dave
Yeah, I mean, it's actually what you say. I mean when we get into the blockchain world, let's say, I mean even myself, I have more than 12 years of experience like creating technology for the sports sector. So we really thought about how to use blockchain in a useful way. And for the trophies, it makes sense. No, because at the end of the day, being physical is just, let's say a state of the art. Because the trophy, the purpose of a trophy is certifying an achievement. It has been done physically, let's say, for centuries, but now you can do it digitally and being an nft, it actually allows like let's say the Pan American Games or the Olympic Games to, okay, I have the trophy, I have the medal, let's say my wallet. And now you have it in your wallet. Actually I'm transferring it to you, so it makes sense to be with blockchain.
- [51:33]
Matthew
What was the origin story like for the company when you started it? What was the reason why you guys wanted to build this?
- [51:41]
Dave
I mean as I told you, we, this was like the, the, the root, let's say, or the seed was a previous company that was also in the sports sector. It was, we were working. Something was not so sexy. Let's say was like more competition management system, referee assignments, online payments. No, it was like more on the membership side like the club management or competition management side. And from there being also, let's say engineers. It was okay. We were into the blockchain war, into bitcoin since a lot of years ago. So it was okay. How can we use blockchain for real use cases where it makes sense, let's say, to use blockchain and that was like the region of the creation, let's say of the project.
- [52:23]
Matthew
And beyond just athletes and their digital trophies, there's also a fan engagement aspect. Can you touch on that? I believe it's called Legend Steak. So how do fans interact in this environment as well?
- [52:37]
Dave
Yes, I mean for us it's like the fans is always at the core of everything. I mean what we believe is like, you know, sports has a big communities. We started with the trophies actually there we made also some things for the, for the fans. It's like where we allowed athletes also talking about blockchain, it was like to fragment their trophies. No, you as a fan, you would love to have a, let's say a piece of the original ring of the NBA or a piece of the original World cup of football that Argentina won in the last World Cup. So with blockchain, what we allow athletes and organizations to actually frame in the original trophy. So as a fan you can collect a piece of the original one and not a replica like every other NFT collection. Okay, so that's what we started with the trophies. Just to let you know, I mean like, like always the fun is in the middle of what we are building about. And what you say about the staking is like in stake.blegends.com we've created, as I told you, a new way of using let's say gamification dynamics or gamified dynamics that you may find like in poly market or like in other, let's say betting platform. But we are not betting. It's like you don't bet like $100 or 100 USDC against me. What we both do is okay, we stake our tokens, you stake your tokens, I stake my tokens. Even you imagine you're going to stake Ethereum, you were talking before that you have just like a 3% or 3.5% EPR. So imagine that we stake those tokens into our platform and what we do is to play with the deal. Okay. So if you win, you get your stake back, your deal. And my deal, if I lose, I just take my stake back. Okay. So it was like trying to use this, let's say prediction market dynamics, but without risking your principal. Okay, that was what we've done with also like another thing we've done with funds in our ecosystem.
- [54:36]
Matthew
Very cool. You set some metrics off the top. I believe it was at 140,000 athletes that you guys have worked with, with.
- [54:45]
Dave
Let me explain it to you, okay, what they said at the beginning, it was for the AI.bl.com okay. It's the platform of a agents where you can today create your own agent to have like customized and very deep analysis about Betty notes about stating sites. There is where we have a database of more than 140,000 football players. Okay. More than 1,000 leagues. We will be soon adding basketball, baseball and other sports. And if we go into real athletes that are in our platform, they are the. Let's say that decision or the main onboarding of these at least has been let's say done through the digital medals. There is where we have already 60,000 athletes, including Olympic winners, World cup winners and also more lower, let's say category with these tips that are not so well known as athletics or basketball. But there is where we have 60,000 athletes that receive one of our let's say trophies, medals or certificates of participation.
- [55:54]
Matthew
My question off of that was going to be what is the user growth been like from fans as well? So the athlete involvement is really impressive. But I wanted to hear more about how many fans are on board as well.
- [56:07]
Dave
Yeah, if you take, I mean we made the calculation, but this number, if you take all the funds, because we have almost all of the Sofia accounts of all these 60,000 athletes. Okay. So it's like a second level of reach that we can have there. If you put all of them together, we are summing more than 800 million so funds that they have in the Sofia accounts. Okay. So for us it's like the first step onboarding the athletes and then getting access to all their funds by let's say, engaging the athletes into the, into the ecosystem.
- [56:42]
Matthew
That's amazing. So what's next? What's next on the roadmap for you guys? I know today was a pretty big day with the launch of the agents, but what else do you guys have going on in the sector?
- [56:52]
Dave
Yeah, I mean for us the evolution is always working in this intersection of sports and on chain, let's say web3 blockchain. Always trying to figure out new ways of using blockchain in a useful technology. I mean I told you, even the partners that we have on the let's say sports sector, but Even also in Web3, we are partner of, you may know, sophias.com, from Chile, we just made a joint program with them through delivering trophies, like 30,000 trophies to 30,000 of their users. The evolution is to keep, let's say growing on the three verticals that I told you that are already a lot but trying to become the standard we do for the Trophies Also trying to become the biggest database or the biggest platform for digest your own export data with artificial intelligence. And then also trying to create a new way of, of mixing poly prediction markets and defi.
- [57:57]
Matthew
Amazing. Yeah, I don't think prediction markets have really been solved yet for sports. That's a really interesting vertical. When you go in poly Market most of the volume is for anything political, but when it comes to sports it seems like such an untapped market. In web three right now.
- [58:16]
Dave
Yeah, I mean in sports there are a lot even in poly Market. They even have like the Poly Market or PolySports Twitter account or X account and they are working on that. And there are so many, so many, so many like betting platforms in the world that we are trying to create a new way of having let's say all the fun without the loses. So I believe that you understood it. But it's like okay, the dynamics are the same. You choose a football match and you, you play there but it's like you are not risking your principal. So we believe that there is so many because there are many fans that bet. Okay. But I believe there are even more fans that love sports but that don't like to bet. Okay. So we are trying to target all that sector for all that segment of users that love sports that like you know, would love to predict but don't want to roost or to, to reach their principle. So we are even encouraging them to, to to save, not to increase their savings of their, of their assets and play with the, with the deal.
- [59:13]
Matthew
Yeah, I think it was karate combat obviously very enclosed within their own ecosystem. But they also introduced a sort of zero loss betting model where you stake tokens on, on each outcome.
- [59:30]
Dave
I know that, I know that, I've been talking to them. Yes. And they do that for their, for their combat, let's say just for grade combat. But we believe this. I mean it's one good thing to do. But I believe it's much bigger that you can actually do with any other let's say sport match in the world.
- [59:46]
Matthew
Oh 100%. It just opens the market size much more rather than being in an enclosed environment.
- [59:52]
Dave
Yeah, even a detail. I told you. I mean in the stake.blegend.com you can use our own token in order to stake. But we've opened the platform for other tokens that wants to use as infrastructure. I saw that. I see that. Imagine like pancakeswap maybe that you know that, that you go there and you have a lot of tokens and you can choose which token to use depending on the APR that they are offering to you. So we just actually launched like one week ago with paid network is one quite well known launchpad so you can stake legend tokens and also paid tokens in different matches. And the idea is to to onboard new tokens and become an infrastructure and provide to any token that wants to offer extra utility or to engage the users in an engaging way on a regular basis week after week with all these football matches or basketball matches to allow to we provide all the technology about predictions about the staking. So you just have to put your tokens as a project, you just have to put your tokens in our platform and bring your users to engage with these prediction markets without losses, let's say.
- [61:05]
Matthew
Very cool. Well we have the Legend account up here. It's Blegendsok, the green logo for anybody who's tuning in. I encourage people to click on their profile link is in the bio to make sure that everyone's following official links. Antonio, as we're wrapping up here, we have more than 4,300 listeners right now in the space. What would your call to action be? How can the listeners get involved? How can they help anything that you want them to do?
- [61:37]
Dave
Yeah, I mean I will invite all of you to access the main websites that I told you. It's like blegends.com is the main web page but you can go to AI.blegends.com and experiment with the AI agents. You can go to stake.blegends.com and check out the staking palette I told you and you can even go to museum.blegends.com and see all the trophies and metas and certificates that we deliver in the World Cups and in everything that I told you before. And of course following us in Sophia, as you say, belegends underscore. Ok, both is the same. Let's say profile both in Twitter and in Telegram. So just invite you to go there to throw a line, ask the community about anything that you wish hopefully. Okay. Buy your token and enjoy and get involved with our community.
- [62:27]
Matthew
Wonderful. Well, congrats on the launch today and I appreciate you guys joining us. If you're tuning in, make sure to give Legend account a follow and also Antonio a follow as well. Want to thank all the other speakers for joining too. And everybody stay safe on this red day. I know it's a pretty depressing day in the market right now, but it's awesome to have conversations about sports and maybe think a little bit less about bitcoin price, Solana price, eth price and things like that. So, Antonio, I appreciate you joining.
- [62:58]
Dave
Yeah, thank you. Let's put some light. The good thing about the sport is, like, it's not correlated to the crypto sentiment. No, it never stopped. So thank you. Thank you for your time and for the opportunity to join you.
- [63:10]
Matthew
Yeah, well said. No matter how low Bitcoin or Solana goes, sports are going to be around to entertain us. So I appreciate you joining and sharing. And congrats again on the launch today.
- [63:21]
Dave
Thank you.
- [63:21]
Austin
Bye.