Crypto in Freefall! When Will the Bloodbath End? | Crypto Town Hall

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Wolf Of All Streets – "Crypto in Freefall! When Will the Bloodbath End? | Crypto Town Hall"

Host: Scott Melker
Release Date: March 4, 2025
Description: In this episode of The Wolf Of All Streets, host Scott Melker engages with a panel of experts to dissect the tumultuous state of the cryptocurrency market. The discussion delves into recent market volatility, the implications of political maneuvers, the concept of a multi-crypto reserve, challenges in state-level crypto legislation, and insights into sustainable crypto gaming models.

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1. Market Overview and Initial Concerns

The episode kicks off with Scott Melker expressing his concerns about the current cryptocurrency market's volatility and unpredictability.

• Scott Melker [00:00]: "Hard to look at this market and take us very seriously at the moment."

Scott references a recent bull market surge triggered by a tweet from former President Trump, which initially propelled major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum upwards but subsequently retraced, leading to significant price drops. He highlights suspicious trading activities, suggesting possible insider trading or highly timed leveraged trades that massively influenced the market.

• Scott Melker [02:16]: "Ethereum, Ripple and Cardano are still up like a bunch. So do we really need anything else like you mean?"

2. Panel Reactions and Analysis

Alex offers a somewhat optimistic view, noting that despite a general market downturn, certain cryptocurrencies still show strength.

• Alex [02:16]: "I don't know why everyone's so bummed out."

Matteo brings a critical perspective on the influence of political figures on crypto policies, suggesting that such actions amount to market manipulation rather than genuine governance.

• Matteo [06:07]: "A liquidity event to the upside fueled by this. There was people who knew that this was going to happen."

Dave delves deeper into the political implications, referencing Arthur Hayes's message advocating for simplicity in economic policy and theorizing that orchestrated recessions might be used to manage national debt strategically.

• Dave [11:07]: "What's the best way to do that is a few things. Arthur makes the point that if you engineer a recession now, it will give the Fed powder to be able to both cut rates and inject liquidity to bring down that debt."

Steve contributes by expressing skepticism about the feasibility of Congress passing a multi-crypto reserve and anticipates forthcoming announcements from White House crypto summits.

• Steve [15:30]: "I think there's no shot that the multi crypto reserve gets passed through Congress."

Lawyer adds to the conversation by discussing the rapid market reactions to political statements and the potential existence of insider trading.

• Lawyer [16:44]: "Do I think that meant there was an insider? It really looked like it. On the way in, on the way out. That was ballsy as hell even if you had inside information."

3. Discussion on the Multi-Crypto Strategic Reserve

A significant portion of the episode focuses on the controversial idea of a multi-crypto strategic reserve proposed by Trump.

• Scott Melker [05:06]: "When we slide beyond the Bitcoin strategic reserve, I think we start to play in the waters of a sovereign wealth fund."

Alex and other panelists critique the government's involvement in holding diverse cryptocurrencies, expressing concerns over political manipulation and the inefficacy of such investments compared to reducing national debt.

• Alex [05:32]: "I think the idea that we're going to like have huge amounts of these things on the balance sheet or really even should."

The panel unanimously expresses skepticism about the government's ability to manage a multi-crypto reserve effectively, citing potential corruption and lack of strategic purpose beyond investment.

4. State-Level Crypto Legislation Challenges

The conversation shifts to the difficulties faced in passing state-level crypto bills, with Zach and Steve highlighting the lack of substantial legislation and the prevalence of poorly drafted bills.

• Steve [20:28]: "Zero of the 33 bills from the 24 states actually call for buying a bitcoin. Net buying of Bitcoin."

Zach emphasizes the ineffectiveness of current bills, suggesting they are more about garnering headlines for crypto donors rather than enacting meaningful policy changes.

• Zach [21:32]: "Some of it is just cheerleading and wanting to be pro bitcoin or pro digital asset."

The panel agrees that better-crafted, model legislation is necessary for meaningful progress in integrating cryptocurrencies into state policies.

5. Sponsor Segment: Arland Game

The episode features a sponsored segment with Siddharth from Arland Game, introducing a deflationary, on-chain strategy game designed to integrate seamlessly with both PC and mobile platforms.

Key Highlights:

• Deflationary Model: Every in-game action burns the RAM token, ensuring a decreasing supply and increasing token value over time.

  • Siddharth [47:20]: "Every action in the ecosystem burns the RAM token, making the economy truly deflationary."

• DAO Governance: Players can stake RAM tokens to earn DAO tokens, which grant voting rights on game development decisions.

  • Siddharth [44:51]: "The DAO is an important part of the game ecosystem. So we will be reinvesting the revenue from the DAO into from tournaments, from staking and the game development."

• Sustainability: The game aims to create a sustainable economy by rewarding player actions and ensuring long-term engagement through staking and resource management.

  • Siddharth [47:20]: "For every person coming in, if you are active, you will be rewarded with token based issuance for your actions."

The panel encourages listeners to engage with Arland Game, highlighting its innovative approach to blending blockchain technology with gaming.

• Greg [55:12]: "If you would like to see smart contracts utilized in games, if you believe that gaming is still a good market, it's a good investment, show your voice, be active."

6. Closing Remarks and Additional News

In the final segment, Scott Melker provides updates on recent developments impacting the crypto ecosystem:

• SEC Drops Investigation on Kraken: Marking a positive regulatory shift.
• Yuga Labs Clearance: Suggesting NFTs might not be classified as securities.
• FTX Unlock of Alameda Assets: Noting the potential selling pressure from the release of 3.03 million Solana tokens worth approximately $431 million.

Scott emphasizes the ongoing supply issues within the crypto market, indicating further challenges ahead.

• Scott Melker [35:00]: "We also have Yuga Labs saying that they are also somewhat in the clear, many pointing to that as evidence that NFTs themselves are likely not to be viewed as securities."

7. Final Thoughts and Future Outlook

The episode concludes with the panel reflecting on the cyclical nature of the crypto market and the importance of fundamental values over transient political influences.

• Dave [27:41]: "If you're talking about what's going to be an investable thesis investing in that kind of A shit show isn't."

Alex reiterates the confusion surrounding the current market sentiments and the detrimental effects of politicized actions on crypto adoption.

• Alex [30:37]: "The more that this looks like politicized and grifty, the less likely that anything good happens."

Scott Melker wraps up by encouraging listeners to stay informed and engaged, underscoring the resilience of the crypto community amidst ongoing challenges.

• Scott Melker [57:01]: "The times are tough as we see them, right? And even though there is a time, you know, that the bitcoin went down and it seems everything is falling apart, there will be better times."

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Notable Quotes:

• Scott Melker [00:00]: "Hard to look at this market and take us very seriously at the moment."
• Dave [11:09]: "I think Scott Besant has convinced him that the single thing to optimize economic policy for is to bring down the 10 year and the long end of the curve so that we aren't in this crisis management of funding our debt."
• Lawyer [16:44]: "I don't think he ever wants to see it go down. But if it needs to be in order to get the debt down, that'll happen."
• Siddharth [47:20]: "Every action in the ecosystem burns the RAM token, making the economy truly deflationary."
• Greg [55:12]: "If you would like to see smart contracts utilized in games, if you believe that gaming is still a good market, it's a good investment, show your voice, be active."

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Conclusion:

In this episode, Scott Melker and his panel dissect the current state of the cryptocurrency market, grappling with unprecedented volatility influenced by political actions and speculative trading. The discussion underscores the challenges of integrating cryptocurrencies into governmental frameworks and the pitfalls of politicization. Additionally, the episode highlights innovative approaches within the crypto space, such as sustainable gaming models, while emphasizing the need for robust, well-crafted legislation to foster genuine growth and stability in the market.

For listeners seeking to navigate the complexities of the crypto landscape, this episode offers valuable insights into market dynamics, regulatory hurdles, and emerging trends shaping the future of digital assets.

Transcript

[Scott]

Are we having fun yet? Peak exuberance Yesterday bull market renewed everything going to a billion because Trump truthed Untruth Social about a crypto reserve including xrp, Solana, Ada, Bitcoin and Ethereum yesterday. Then the entire move basically retraced and, and here we are lower than where we started. Hard to look at this market and take us very seriously at the moment. Obviously we've got a small panel today, but we can dig in deeply on what is going on here, why we would be seeing this sort of massive, we won't call it a pump and dump by intention, but pump and dump of prices across the board. I mean we're seeing 10 to 12 to $14,000 candles a daily basis. Now back and forth. We know that some insider deposited $4 million to Hyper Liquid 30 minutes before the Trump tweet about the reserves, made over $6 million longing Bitcoin and ETH with 50x leverage. So that means that a 2% move on either Bitcoin or Ethereum at that moment, which could happen as we all know in 15 to 20 minutes if not less, would have entirely liquidated their $4 million but made $6 million longing those and then the real story sorted Ethereum with 50x leverage at the dead top, turning that $4 million into $81 million on those two trades. To have been able to perfectly time a top on ethereum on a 50x leverage long is either the greatest move in the history of trading or is quote unquote, there is no real insider trading in crypto as we know, but somebody trading with knowledge of what was about to happen at a level that would make Nancy Pelosi blush. So let's dig into this with the panel, Alex. I mean what is there to say right now?

[Alex]

I don't know why everyone's so bummed out. I mean like, sure, the entire market is back like below where it was before Trump was elected, but Ethereum, sorry, Ripple and Cardano are still up like a bunch. So do we really need anything else like you mean?

[Scott]

Yeah, Ripple and Cardano, really interesting how they have been included in the reserve. What do you mean make of that or let me, let me also. I should also say that the more we've dug into his tweets to be very clear or truths, it should be very clear that what he says on Truth Social does not necessarily mean, and this is true of any president, it's not specific to him, but does not mean that it will necessarily happen.

[Alex]

Right?

[Scott]

It's, it's him saying I've passed, I've made this executive order. This is our intention. But for the United States government to actually accumulate these assets, to my knowledge, from speaking with lawyers here and elsewhere and politicians would likely require some sort of budgetary approval from, from Congress.

[Alex]

Yeah, that's my understanding on it as well. And certainly if it didn't have that, then any, anything he did do could then just be instantly reversed the next time a president comes into office. Same way he rolled back a bunch of eos. Um, I don't know. I think the mo. I think the generous but also not totally unlikely explanation for the inclusion of those two is simply that's basically an index fund of like the top eight, you know, cryptos that are not stable coins and not like Chinese based. So I think. I don't know it. The fact that it chose to highlight them while leaving out Bitcoin and Ethereum in it is a little bit weird. And I, you know, assume if you go in and look at the holdings of affiliated companies and people, you'll see plenty of it on there in advance of it beyond just like those levered longs that you saw. But it's not like he picked random, you know, coins 30, 40, 50 spots down, like the top 100 list. So that part doesn't feel quite as crazy to me. I think the idea that we're going to like have huge amounts of these things on the balance sheet or really even should. I can get the argument for Bitcoin on it, but the idea that like the government need the strategic reserve of random coins is just absurd. Beyond me. I don't. No one can even describe what a strategic reserve of these things is besides it being an investment. And I feel like most of us feel like the government's really bad at making investments and shouldn't be doing that. So why aren't we spending that money?

[Scott]

Yeah, I mean I could see the argument actually here for the Bitcoin strategic reserve. I think we agree on that. Right. And when we slide beyond the Bitcoin strategic reserve, I think we start to play in the waters of a sovereign wealth fund which has been floated that the United States could have a sovereign wealth fund. And that seems like it would be a much more natural place to speculate on other assets outside of Bitcoin.

[Alex]

Exactly. That is exactly where you do it. And it's also again, something I want absolutely. The government having absolutely nothing to deal with. Like we think there's corruption right now in how Congress passes laws and like directs money to defense contractors or non profits that they like a sovereign wealth fund controlled by a president. Like, it's unbelievable how much corruption and self dealing would happen with that and how poorly that would return compared to, again, just like returning money to people and paying down the national debt.

[Scott]

Matteo, what do you make of this insane price action? I mean, listen, the crypto reserve, this was the thing that was supposed to spark the next run of the bull market. Bitcoin straight to 150,000 on its way to a million. And it seems like we even managed to muddle that.

[Matteo]

Good morning, Scott.

[Scott]

This is just your, your mic is a bit quiet for me. I don't know if you can step closer. Okay, go ahead.

[Matteo]

How about that? Is that better?

[Scott]

It's roughly the same. Go ahead.

[Matteo]

Okay, I'll speak up. So, yeah, I mean, this is just absolute madness. I just can't help but feel like we're getting the same thing when it comes to crypto policy, specifically from Trump. Trump, which is, with all due respect, his degen children dictating his crypto policy and informing his posts and his content and influencing the market. Obviously that was also correlated with this trade. I think the only thing that would help to dissuade that conspiracy would be that it wasn't an identical match to World Liberty Financial. But at this point, I would expect, you know, a post next Saturday about Tron and Athena being added to the strategic reserve to match the investment assets. I mean, that's how absurd this is. But I think the reality is pretty straightforward. There was a liquidity event to the upside fueled by this. There was people who knew that this was going to happen. The reality is this cannot happen without congressional approval and an actual mechanism to do so. It's not just the bitcoin strategic reserve isn't passing saliently in the states, which shows that there's headwinds when it comes to. It's going to be much higher and stronger headwinds at the congressional level. So I just think that reality set in. There's now this rumor that there's going to be no capital gains taxes on crypto announced on Friday. Maybe Trump can make an executive order to that effect. I would say that's just the rumor mill, but if that was the case, I was grokking it this morning. There is no way that that can happen either without full blown congressional approval and a change to the actual tax code. So I just think we're getting these things of, of trying to instill promises made, promises kept, but ultimately it's just creating these reactive liquidity events.

[Scott]

Yeah, I guess the question mark here is that the upside move on Sunday, regardless of it being a Sunday. But we do know that the market moves more strongly on a liquid day when nothing else is open but the market moved to the upside on his truth social announcement makes a hell of a lot of sense, right? Nobody was surprised that, wow, we've seen Trump say crypto reserve for the first time. He's actually listed specific assets. This should pump the market way up. There's no reason that should have retraced entirely in a day that we have, rationally. So I think that's the real head scratcher and probably what's causing so much confusion and just despair.

[Dave]

I mean, I mean.

[Alex]

Dave.

[Scott]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Alex]

Well, I'd say two things there. One, I think if there's been a theme of the last six months, it has been the insane shortening of cycle times. We see it obviously, especially with meme coins, but I think just in general, the cycle times have only been accelerating. Second thing is, of course, like, sorry, being like, I can't believe it dropped back down ignores the fact that, like, Trump basically announced yesterday that he's. Everyone had thought that the tariffs. Not everyone. There was strong sense that the tariffs with Mexico and Canada were a bluff or that were leverage on more deal making. Obviously it made clear it was not. The market's really unhappy about that. It's going to fuck the economy hard. It's going to drive consumer prices up. We've had really weak economic numbers. The GDP contraction is estimated at 3% for Q1. And at the end of the day, if consumers don't have money, and I think, you know, a lot of institutional and fund money was investing ahead of what they are expecting an eventual, you know, incoming of retail money is. And if the retail money isn't coming in because we're going to hit a recession, which is absolutely where the fears are right now, then, yeah, I think they're losing faith. And that's what you saw yesterday in the markets.

[Scott]

Dave, would love for you to unpack some of this.

[Dave]

Yeah, I mean, look, there's three cross currents. I think Alex did a great job of explaining one. You know, I hate, I hate. You know, sometimes I agree with him, actually more often than I agree with him. But I think that the best treatment of what happened yesterday is. Is Arthur Hayes's last. His message that he sent out yesterday, you know, called kiss, Keep it Simple, Stupid, or whatever the fuck it stood for.

[Alex]

I don't know.

[Dave]

With him, you never know. And basically what he talks about is Something that we've all talked about, we all understand. And if you listen, anytime John Deaton talks, he'll tell you the midterms come up quick. So what is it that this government cares about and you can't optimize for everything? So what does he optimize for? Well, he can optimize for a couple things simultaneously. First he wants to be able to say, promises made, promises kept, full stop. We know that. And that's happening in many different vectors. I won't divert into that. The second thing we know is that Scott Besant has convinced him that the single thing to optimize economic policy for is to bring down the 10 year and the long end of the curve so that we aren't in this crisis management of funding our debt. And so that is what they care about most. Well, what's the best way to do that? Well, the best way to do that is a few things. Arthur makes the point that if you engineer a recession now, it will give the Fed powder to be able to both cut rates and inject liquidity to bring down that debt. At which point rolling debt and lengthening it out becomes significantly more possible. Now you, you have to be a little bit of a conspiracy theorist to say that, but can he afford to do that politically in 2025? Fuck yeah. Could he afford to do it politically in 2026? Absolutely not. Because then they'll get crushed in the midterms. So what's the best political reality? And if you're saying, oh my God, but they're playing with people's lives, the answer is yes, politicians do that doesn't make me happy about it, but it's crazy not to look at it.

[Zach]

Do.

[Dave]

Does the Trump administration actually care about the stock market in 2025 or does he care about it in 2026? And the reality is they care about it in 2026. I don't think he ever wants to see it go down. But if it needs to be in order to get the debt down, that'll happen. So that's thing cross current number one. Now that, by the way, if you're in a market where you're anticipating what's going to happen is actually quite bullish for bitcoin and gold. Gold is actually acting that way and we could talk about that as well. But let's, let's not go down that rabbit hole. So what's the second cross current? So the whole strategic reserve issue, the most important question is going to be, as Alex noted, are we going to get Congress to be able to go along with anything and whether or not, or at least or the public to go along with it. And so what happened? Well, my first reaction was a well constructed index is not horrible. I mean, I personally would have preferred a bitcoin strategic reserve. I think it makes much more sense. It's the only one that's hard money. I'm very, very outspoken on the subject, but I didn't think it was horrible. What I didn't anticipate was the incredible visceral reaction, not just of Trump critics, but of independents, which are the swing voters who are basically saying this is just an example of another grift. Why the hell should we be giving corporate welfare to donors like Hoskinson and Garlinghouse? And that perception becomes reality. And I think a lot of people looked at that and therefore equated that, met that announcement with the same nonsense that happened with the Trump and Melania coins and even the Libra coin, which by the way, were dramatically worse. So I do think there's an element of that and I do think cooler heads will prevail. But I think that's a large part of what happened. That plus the almost universal belief that Trump couldn't do this on his own. And so he may be talking about it, but it doesn't mean anything. If he is able to do it on his own or if he can get something done under the treasury, well, that's a different story. And I guess we'll have to wait for the State of the Union to see what he says about stuff tonight. In, in, in a way, it'll be, it'll be interesting to see if any of this stuff makes it in. I would have bet before yesterday or before the weekend, I would have bet no mention of crypto or bitcoin in the stated union at all. I'm still sort of leaning that way, but we'll see what happens.

[Scott]

Zach, thoughts?

[Steve]

I think there's no shot that the multi crypto reserve gets passed through Congress. You know, we're having an event next week with Lummis on the sbr. I think there will be some great announcements coming from that. The White House is having its crypto summit on Friday. I think we'll get some interesting announcements potentially following up on the president's tweets from last weekend. But, you know, I would be surprised, given the blowback even from the industry, if the president, you know, I'm on record saying that the White House could use the exchange stabilization Fund to create a crypto reserve by executive order. I would be Surprised if, if they actually did that included assets like ADA and xrp. I think to the extent they do that people are correctly seeing this as grift. Right. We just know that Charles Hoskinson and the XRP team, especially Brad Garlinghouse, are going to the White House and throwing money around. And I think that would be a huge missed opportunity and counter signal for the industry if the United States government is buying the bags of large donors.

[Scott]

Lawyer, I totally missed your hand up earlier. Sorry about that.

[Lawyer]

Yeah, I mean what's interesting and important to me is that we've seen that Trump, like Trump, I completely agree with Dave, like now's the time to do what he needs without sort of fear of political retribution. And he knows that if he any all the pain that we're seeing and that he can bring, he can change with even just a tweet, never mind policy enacting changes. So now's the time to create whatever scenario he needs and when he wants it to come back, he will. So I'm not that worried. I'm not that surprised that it pumped on a tweet and then dumped on the realization that that doesn't mean anything is happening anytime soon. Do I think that meant there was an insider? It really looked like it. On the way in, on the way out. That was ballsy as hell even if you had inside information. So I'm not sure, but shit, that's a lot of money.

[Scott]

Yeah, I agree with you, but you would think that it would have at least made a higher floor, right? So you get the good news, you get the pump. People just kind of realizing that doesn't mean it's going to happen immediately. Shouldn't send you all the way back down and below. It's still the good news that we're looking.

[Alex]

No, but it's.

[Lawyer]

Yeah, but people are like, oh, I was right. Oh, I was wrong. You know, they're buying, they're buying and selling and then buying all at losses in many cases. So I don't know. People are very emotional. Yeah, I mean I think Dave probably.

[Scott]

Making a quick 70 mil on hyper liquid, which is clearly not even the place that the biggest whales would probably trade on a 50 on a 50x leverage short beyond ballsy. That that just doesn't listen. And I'm not saying that's the reason for the drop, by the way. I'm just saying somebody knew they could make a lot of money, that the drop was coming for whatever reason. So I don't know where, where that was coming from, but man, it reeks. It reeks really bad. Siddharth, I think you had your hand up.

[Siddharth]

Hey, thanks for having me. So I just wanted to ask, since there is a speech today in Congress from President Trump, would that kind of, you know, revitalize the market? Because, you know, he could name drop a lot of things again, right? Like. Like how we did, in truth, social. That's what I wanted to ask.

[Scott]

I don't think.

[Alex]

I don't.

[Scott]

Personally, I don't. I don't think so. I think that the market is kind of exhausted by, you know, the statements and probably wants to see action. That was a huge state. I mean, you don't get a bigger statement than we're getting a crypto reserve. The first time he's actually used words listing the specific assets. If the market couldn't. Couldn't stay at least a bit buoyant on that, I can't imagine what else can be stated at this point that's going to. To drive it. And that's kind of what I was alluding to before. I mean, I don't know if you guys agree, but we were looking for the approval or a statement from him saying reserve and crypto or bitcoin, and we thought that that was the singular catalyst that could send this market. And if you take a look, I think, as Alex pointed out, the states been slow to adopt would be the understatement of the century. The five that have actually had a chance to really vote on these have rejected it. So not much momentum, at least in those states. One of those states was Wyoming. That's where Senator Lummis is from. And if you look at Lummis tweets now and statements, it seems like there's absolutely no momentum behind the idea of passing a strategic bitcoin reserve bill at the national level. Right now, she's literally telling people to go out and call their senators and congressmen and tell them what bitcoin is.

[Alex]

Right.

[Scott]

So that. That is not anywhere close on that level to being pushed across the line. Go ahead, Zach.

[Steve]

I just did a deep dive on this. I'm giving a speech next week at the Lummis and BPI summit about the state sbir bills. They're also, in general, they're not good bills. Zero of the 33 bills from. From the 24 states actually call for buying a bitcoin. Net buying of Bitcoin. Only 8 or 9 of the bills are bitcoin only, depending on how you look at the language. Almost all of the bills impose a cap, even Though most state law doesn't prevent pension funds and state institutions from buying bitcoin. So the net effect of these bills is just to limit the amount of bitcoin rather than to say we're going to buy bitcoin. There is some bitcoin friendly language saying that bitcoin is good for hedging against inflation and bitcoin is a good store of value. But I think that's the best thing you can say about them. About half the bills are four pages or fewer in length. It looks like a lot of them were written sort of just by chat GPT. So, you know, I hope, you know, it looks like that these sort of slate of state SBIR bills are not making it very far. But I think one of the things we need are just like actual better state bills.

[Scott]

Is that a function of the process for. Let me restate this. Do you think that the bulk of these bills were effectively filed as a good PR move for the person filing them?

[Zach]

Right.

[Scott]

Because we know how this works. Right. So basically one state senator or congressman from any district, anywhere can file a bill, get put in the news, who is a nobody otherwise in this community all of a sudden knows who they are, even knowing that that bill likely has no chance to pass.

[Steve]

Yeah, I think some of it's that a lot of it is just cheerleading and wanting to be pro bitcoin or pro digital asset. And then I think the folks, the outside sort of policy folks drafting these bills are not maybe the most serious policy people we have. I mean, this is definitely something that like, I didn't realize this until like the last week or so when I was looking into this. And we're going to definitely try and get people with experience writing legislation to take another crack at this. But right now this is, it's not great.

[Scott]

I mean, but you have to imagine, to be fair that your average state level congressman or senator is literally not even a full time politician. A lot of these people.

[Siddharth]

Right.

[Scott]

I mean, I know some of them in my home state, they have other jobs and I'm saying they can't possibly have the best people on the planet to, to write their bills. You're talking about like literally I have a friend who's a state senator, he's a roofer, like has an amazing business. The guy's a good politician, but I can't imagine that he went to school for writing legislation.

[Alex]

Right.

[Scott]

Or necessarily has somebody great on his team to do that.

[Steve]

Yeah, I think it's outside policy groups that wrote a lot of these. And so that's not on the state senators. And you compare that to like the, the Lummis Bitcoin act, which is very thoughtful and well written and, and thought through. You know what, you know, I don't want to front run announcements, but I, I think like the right thing here is for the industry to come together and develop a model state bill that, you know, each state can take a look at and they can modify in the way that they see appropriate. But you know, to really think through what, you know, how do you get actual bitcoin buying, how do you have, you know, long term storage and what's the policy objective here? I don't think that's too much to ask for the industry to come together and just at least give a template. But you know, I actually think it's not so much of a tragedy that this, these current ones are failing.

[Scott]

Understood, Dave. And then Alex.

[Dave]

Yeah, I think that you're underestimating, you know, animal spirits. You know, when you look at, when you look, look at investing and what happened had I made the point over the weekend that if the rally that we saw over the weekend was confirmed by real money flowing in behind it, that it would change the technical picture that we've been dealing with, unfortunately. And frankly, I'm surprised by it. I am surprised that no real money came in behind it. But clearly that was not the case. And we're right back where we were to the point where the, what we are now at is a world where, yes, Trump mentioned it, but the wall and almost immediate uproar is the only way I can describe it from inside the crypto community convinced that the non crypto investors or the crypto curious or the, you know, the real money investors as I like to call them, that this isn't going to happen. And they have absolutely no idea. It's an incredibly confusing message. And you've said it yourself, Scott, most people get into crypto. I mean, I get people asking about crypto all the time and you know, for a while it was, they were asking about Dogecoin and we were just getting to the point where people were talking about, you know, talking about bitcoin and talking about Solana and the current in memes and this comes out and now all of a sudden we have the, the XRP army muddying the waters and all this other crap going on and accusations of grift and this and that. It becomes very distracting. And so if you're talking about what's going to be an investable thesis investing in that kind of A shit show isn't. Now, will that stay that way? No, of course not. This too shall pass, but it's really not that surprising when you think about it. I mean, we sat yesterday morning at 9:00. I would have been very surprised to see this happen. But, hell, you know, the market is basically saying, Mike McGlone was right. You know, you know, gold keeps turning higher, the Nasdaq and the rest of the stock market is getting crushed on tariffs, Bitcoin is correlated, is being treated more, and crypto is being treated more like the rest of the market. And so that pump, that selling with no buying in the midst of confusion, and we have this, you know, these are the kinds of places where opportunities are created. But it's not as surprising as you're making it out to be.

[Scott]

I suppose I just think the full retrace is surprising even for me. And I feel like we've seen it all, as I said on Twitter, and you and I kind of jested about it. This is maybe the most ridiculous two days that I've seen in crypto, which is saying a lot. You pointed out Trump and Melania might be more ridiculous. I think that that's a fair assessment.

[Dave]

I mean, look, it is insane, but it's insane for ridiculous reasons. I mean, it's like collective. We knew when, you know, we knew based on what happened the last time. We know that the deep state paroxysms about what Elon and Trump are doing is going to be violent. I mean, the thing we saw this morning, which is hysterical, people haven't seen it, of Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer literally supposedly giving an impromptu talk and all three of them reading the exact same words criticizing Trump. TDS is a real thing, and people are crazy about this. And there are plenty of people in crypto who are like, oh, my God, this is Trump doing it. He's destroying us. And everyone has the attention span of a hummingbird. I mean, all I could say is, if I could say two words to the audience, it's zoom out, zoom out. Look at what's going on. The fundamentals are what's going to matter. And this stuff is insanity, Alex.

[Alex]

I mean, God, there's a. There's so much here to go. I mean, I think, Dave, I think the issue is that people are zooming out to the larger economy. And I think that's why we're seeing so much, is people are freaked out and scared and don't know what's going to happen. I think I am a little Surprised at how bad to. I think, Zach, you were talking about at how bad the state level crypto bills are. Given that this was known, it was going to be a push. I actually kind of can't believe that the people pushing this did not put together better model legislation. But, yeah, I think what you're just seeing in all these places is one or two people who want to get a headline for themselves, and so they get it introduced and they don't actually care what the bill does. So it's written as short and weirdly as possible just in hopes to like, get it through so that they can say, I'm the person who made the bitcoin reserve in this state happen and get a bunch of crypto donation dollars flowing into that.

[Steve]

I mean, look, we kind of know what happened here. I don't want to necessarily call anyone out by name, but like, the people writing these bills are more concerned about breaking announcements on Twitter deeply about policies.

[Alex]

Yes, 100% that is the case is simply. Yeah, I guess you have. You have that joint union of two people as you have a state senator who wants to get a headline so that they can get crypto donations, and you have people who think that they will be able to pump the brace of bitcoin by making everyone think that all 50 states are going to create reserves. And so they are marketing and that's all that's going on there. And at the same time, you're basically having any odds of any of those actually happening to generally by Trump continuing to like, over politicize. Not just over politicize, but increase the sense of grift around crypto. Like one of the worst. We talked about it at the time, Scott. Obviously you, I think, could not control yourself in a delightful way talking about the fact that, like, the single worst thing that could have happened for crypto was Trump launching a meme coin because it just basically guaranteed that you would never get a single Democrat supporting any of the, you know, certainly any kind of SBR type legislation, but really just immediately slow, you know, basically puts all the Democrats against it because it looks like a Trump grift and even makes the moderate Republicans uncomfortable with it. And so the more that this looks like politicized and grifty, the less likely that anything good happens.

[Scott]

Steve, have you been listening? I know you were on and off stage, but I would love your thoughts here. McClare, can you hear me? I think you might be in the glitch, which happens often, often here.

[Zach]

Oh, here we go. Microphone was off.

[Scott]

It's A funny thing. This is what happens when you're like, guys our age use technology.

[Zach]

Yeah, exactly. No, I've got, I've got some pretty strong opinions on the strategic bitcoin reserve. I actually think even with, with, with bitcoin only, it's a pretty bad idea, not only for the country, but also for states. I got into bitcoin because it is anti government money. I don't want it being, although I don't want a lot of it being held by the government to prop up fiat currency. So that's just my philosophical feeling with states. I think it's a really tough one. I actually, a few people from the state of Tennessee came to me asking about a reserve in Tennessee and I told him it was a bad idea. I said, you know, we, we need you guys to continue to represent us in the state and if you pass a bill where Tennessee is now buying at the top of the market when it's time for re election 18 months from now at the bottom of the market, you won't get reelected, number one. And number two, we lose all of our support. So just, just, just avoid it. I think it's, I think it's all bad news. You know, I think there's better ways to support that. You know, I'm all for states supporting mining activity. A lot of states and a lot of, like Tennessee Valley Authority, for instance, generates a lot of electricity. And so why not have a private company set up bitcoin mining with free electricity and then split the proceeds with the government and take bitcoin that way. I'm all for governments earning it. I grew up in Texas where we had oil rigs and behind our playgrounds at school and that's what paid for the schools. Why not let bitcoin pay for infrastructure on the state, not by buying it, but by earning it. So I am philosophically aligned with that. I think that's a great idea. But somebody else had said this is all marketing and headlines and I kind of agree with that. A lot of it is. It's a griff on its own.

[Scott]

Yeah, Dave, he sounds like you. You're breaking down the mining side of this yesterday. It's exactly kind of what you were saying.

[Dave]

I mean, it's the logical thing. I mean, look, there are lots of ways the federal government can be supportive and constructive for crypto. The most important thing we all want is a regulatory platform that, that allows innovation to flourish. We do know that one of the places the federal government is going to invest, because it has to, is in our electric grid. And we all understand that a transition, a transition towards an electrified economy, presuming at some point in the future we get better nuclear technology, which both parties seem to finally realize is necessary and, or potentially cold fusion, at some point electrification is necessary. There is literally no better way to cost effectively start building a better grid than to support Bitcoin mining. I mean, we know that now. Does that mean the government have to do it themselves? No. But is it part of it? Yes. Is that the conversations that we would prefer to have? Do we want a separation of state and money? Everyone in the Bitcoin community certainly does, but we have to get to a level of acceptance to get there. And so the reason that a bitcoin strategic reserve, and I was jokingly saying it's not priced in, because it isn't, is that it doesn't imply that level of acceptance as money. And we believe, I think most people on this call believe that bitcoin is at a 90% discount to its, to its actual value that it will establish. And until that reconciles, until we get through a few cycles, we get there, we're going to be living with that. And that's fine, that doesn't matter. But I listen to Stephen and I'm thinking, yeah, that's true, but the practical side of me is, yeah, but we want people to actually understand what Bitcoin is and governments owning it more or less accelerates that process. So I'm kind of torn on the issue, but I think he's basically right. I mean, it shouldn't matter in the end.

[Scott]

Just as an aside, we do have just a little bit of news. Obviously yesterday it happened during the spaces that the SEC dropped their investigation on Kraken. We also have Yuga Labs saying that they are also somewhat in the clear, many pointing to that as evidence that NFTs themselves are likely not to be viewed as securities. And then I think the other thing probably worth at least mentioning or discussing briefly is that the FTX unlock of FTX Alameda has unstaked 3.03 million Solana worth about 431 million, transferred it to multiple wallets. So a whole lot of potential selling pressure there coming for Solana. And we have quite a few of these unlocks happening this week and in the coming weeks and seemingly indefinitely, which I think a lot of people point to as a major supply problem for the crypto side of the industry. Steve, I don't know if you were about to jump in. He's got his mic off but can't hear You. Steve, can you hear us?

[Zach]

Yeah, here we go. Yeah, so yeah, that's, that, that, that, that's really interesting. You know I still think we're at the bottom of the mark of the local market right here. You know 85, 80 was sort of our number going into this. We had the, we had, we had the pop, we had, you know, we had the market come back down. But, but no, it, it, this is probably still the, still the local top. There are, I think there are certain tokens that are, that have already reached their all time high for the year. You know, Solana is one of them and I know that's a very unpopular opinion but we've got massive unlocks happening right now in Solana. And are you going to see 295 Solana this year? Probably not. ETH still hasn't hit an all time high since what was it, 21. And I certainly don't think that there's going to be an all time high here. Despite the fact that there's an etf. Institutional investors just aren't interested in eth.

[Scott]

They'Re interested in Ethereum industrial context. You launched the first one. For people who don't know.

[Zach]

Yeah, exactly.

[Scott]

It's not just a random opinion. For those who don't know, you're actually actively involved in all of the etf.

[Zach]

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. And when we did E futures there was, there was zero demand. I mean nobody cared. You know we, we were talking to institutional investors and when I say institutional investors a lot of people think we mean financial advisors. Like that's, to me that's a whole other, that's an intermediary for retail. When I, when I say institutional, I mean insurance companies, pension, sovereign wealth funds, they control about 80% of the wealth in the U.S. i mean, sorry, in the world. So you know, so, so that's where the real money is. They, they care about Bitcoin. They've sort of like, they're looking at, at eth. Like okay, well you know, for, for what it is, it's old technology. We're looking at what's next. Right? They're, they're investigating things like Salon for instance or hbar and, and, and, and even xrp which I know a lot of people consider that to be a super Dino coin. And you know, and there, there's a lot of controversy around it but the reality is is they're building a lot of crazy things right now and, and people are taking notice. So some of the more enterprise focused solutions as opposed to more open protocols or what they're investigating right now. And ETH is just sort of, you know, it's just being leapfrogged over by, by a lot of people that are, you know, that are evaluating these things. So, so I think that, you know, bitcoin will still hit an all time high this year. Ethelon probably not. And then there's a handful of others in the top 20, including Litecoin, which has, and I didn't expect the kind of reception I got when I filed the Litecoin ETF last year. And it's been absolutely insane, the number of institutional investors and financial advisors that have a lot of interest in litecoin even over eth. So we'll see what happens there.

[Greg]

Steve, why is there that interest in litecoin?

[Zach]

I think it's because of marketing and marketing is everything. But for the longest time CNBC listed Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin as the three tickers that they followed. So there is that strong brand recognition. But there's also a psychological thing where Litecoin, and this is how it was built. Litecoin was built to be more of like the silver to Bitcoin's gold. Four times the processing speed, a quarter of the security and a quarter of the price is essentially what it was meant to be. And a lot of people understand it because it's essentially, I mean, it's not a fork of bitcoin, but it's essentially a fork. It's the same code. So a lot of people understand it because they already understand bitcoin. And psychologically it's like, oh, it's a cheaper bitcoin, right? I mean, when people see stocks, two companies that do the same thing, regardless of how well those companies operate, if one looks cheaper than the other one based on price to earnings, they're going to buy the cheaper one. But even more so, when you look at the dollar price, people think, oh, Berkshire Hathaway is too expensive because the equity is way too high. You'd rather buy something that's in the 20s or 30s. Once something crosses 100, actually 120 is the psychological level. They start looking for things that are cheaper on, on a dollar level in equities. So Litecoin is that cheaper version of bitcoin. So yeah, it's quite interesting how that's been playing out.

[Greg]

It is interesting with that, excuse me, that unit bias and how it can play in like that. We do have a sponsor today. We're here with Arland Game. And just a disclaimer before we get started. Sponsors on the show are not necessarily working with Crypto Town hall, myself or Scott specifically, they're working with ibc. But as we get started here, Arland, why don't you give an elevator pitch exactly what you guys are doing.

[Siddharth]

Right. Ahoy, Crypto Town Hall. I'm Greg. I'm the partnership manager with Pirates. So nice to be on the space. What would you like to know?

[Greg]

Yeah, maybe just kick it off of exactly what you guys are working on. A bit of an elevator pitch.

[Siddharth]

Right, right, exactly. And I think it's all about elevating also the atmosphere. I mean, it's a pretty grim strategy game. All right, Is it any better now?

[Greg]

Yeah, yeah, we can hear you loud and clear now, but you cut out for maybe five second.

[Siddharth]

Oh, okay. Sorry for that. Right. On the topic, Arland is a fully on chain strategy game which is integrated with PC and mobile titles, including a PvP battle royale on Unity and casual pirate adventure. We have a model that we are introducing. Unlike the inflationary play to earn model, every action in the ecosystem burns the RAM token, making the economy truly deflationary. We have DAO governance coming in and we are open sourcing the project for coding. We are introducing the new quality of game development and game building. So we are bridging the web 2 along with the web 3. We plan on launching on Steam. And we are doing this true crowdfunding which is needed in the blockchain space. This is what we are doing.

[Greg]

And for people who are playing the game, how exactly do they earn?

[Siddharth]

There are multiple ways to earn the game. You can stake the RAM token which you are purchasing from Dex. You can mine the resources in the game. 100% of the RAM which is spent on certain auctions which are also there in the ecosystem is burned, which is eliminating the inflation of the token and increasing its price. So for every action that you take in this strategy, the value of the RUM token that you have acquired that you are using in the game ecosystem increases. So there is certain incentive to hold on to the value along with building into the gaming ecosystem.

[Greg]

And there's a two token model. Right. There's the RUM token and the DAO token. Correct.

[Siddharth]

Currently we have the RAM token and we have another token which is called aarc. That's the R coin. The R coin is utilized currently in the PvP battle royale. And RAM token is the central token which is used for resource gathering. It is used for the staking mechanism. So the more RAM you stake, the more you are earning by keeping it in the ecosystem for the liquidity for the dao. We plan on introducing a measure that the players who will be contributing to the system and will be staking the RAM will be rewarded with the dao. And this DAO will decide on certain mechanics. For example, for the code being open source, the DAO tokens will decide with whom the game will be developed further.

[Greg]

So for players in the community, how do they acquire the DAO tokens and are there incentives to be an early adopter? Right now.

[Siddharth]

There are certain incentives, yes. So we plan a fair launch for the DAO and we plan on having some airdrops. Both of those will be community driven. The community is the one behind the game and the revenue will be allocated to the DAO itself from those actions. So the airdrop will be there for RAM holders and active players. You will be able to track your contributions on our website, which is accountareland.com so we plan on making it highly visible how much RAM is in circulation in relation to the DAO that will be introduced for the development of the game. So we are introducing it as a mechanism for the game development and publishing.

[Greg]

That's cool. And I do want to just make a call out to listeners who are tuning in and make sure that you're clicking on the Arland game account who's up here in the speaker spot. Give them a follow and try to follow along with the website as they're talking through their game as well. So when the DAO is operational, how much control will the DAO have over the future of the product and the game?

[Siddharth]

Right. The DAO is an important part of the game ecosystem. So we will be reinvesting the revenue from the DAO into from tournaments, from staking and the game development. So the community will be able to fund grants for open source developers to see the game developed further. So there will also be voting mechanism development of the battle arena, which is on Unity. We also plan on introducing certain other games. For example, we'll have some naval battles in place in order to accompany this on chain strategy that we are talking about.

[Greg]

You touched on this a little bit earlier in regards to some of the problems that other play to earn games have, mostly in inflation. Maybe go a little bit deeper on how you guys are solving that inflationary problem with pde.

[Siddharth]

Right? Right. So as I stated, we have a certain amount of tokens which had been created and the amount of those tokens will steadily be decreasing and it takes a certain amount of time for the ecosystem to establish itself. So we had prognosis made for the types of different resource burning. So every action that you take in a strategy will be increasing the value of RAM and reducing the amount of ram. So there is a public contract which is visible on which you can see the interactions and those interactions are refreshed say every 24 hours. So every 24 hours you see how many other players have interacted within the ecosystem. And while we are planning for more visibility for now this is all there. And this contract is visible through our Twitter. It's there to be found and that's it. So the deflation of RAM token decreases the supply, right? So with the activity the supply would be decreasing, you would be rewarded if you are keeping the token staked, right? So for every person coming in, if you are active, you will be rewarded with token based issuance for your actions, for your activities. And for the players who decide that they want to hang on to RAM token, they can stake it and they will still be earning an incremental amount, right? The value of the token as the amount of tokens decreases overall.

[Greg]

Wonderful. What makes the actual game experience different from other Web3 games that are coming out recently?

[Siddharth]

Right? Well, in the Unity 2021 battle arena we have already introduced the physics, we have the water engine with custom shaders. We actually had two full fledged developers for games developing that. You know, the guys, they are full time employed, you know, in other companies also making games. But this is a project that they decided to undertake for their own interest, as in have their own input in a gaming studio. And they said, okay look, well blockchain is the right place to do it because it drives innovation, right? It drives the introduction of those qualities. We are looking forward to introduction of AI controlled NPCs to micromanage the markets and the liquidity in the strategy ecosystem. Again we are open sourcing the project and taking a brave step. No company can shut down the project and it is decided with the community how the code should be further developed in order to introduce certain qualities to the game. So we are introducing those mechanisms for the community to decide where the game would be headed.

[Greg]

During the last cycle, Play to Earn had a huge uptick in player onboarding and bringing a lot of people in from web 2 to web 3. But during this cycle, GameFi hasn't really had its moment to shine. What's your thesis on the gamefi category moving forward? Just not only in the next year or so, but in the next three to five years as well.

[Siddharth]

Right? Well, it's a subject that is being developed and on my personal opinion it takes certain time for the projects to mature. While in the initial stages of NFT games being designed, it was just speculative in its nature and it was short term projects that were attracting the attention in order to extract the value and then jump onto the next project as basically the idea matures. And as those projects they kept just going down, they weren't providing with their rewards, neither for players nor for the people investing and actually staking and having the value being put through. It's a matter of having a sustainable economy that is deflationary, that rewards actions and that actually has influence on the development of the game. We want to see the games developed and we don't want to see them stagnate and just keep going to a point until which they just stay in this kind of matter, you are no longer interested in it. It doesn't drive new users. In order for it to be sustainable, it needs to drive new users and we are doing just that. We are bridging the web two because we have a free to play model. We have the people who can access the game client which is online and they can try it out, they can battle it against other players. For those people who are the risk takers, who will like to see the resources being used burned in specific amounts, they are also welcome to do so on the strategy part of the game on the browser. And we plan on coming to iOS, we plan on coming to Steam, so we are actually advocating also for this cause. So it's not only a matter of making a game, but it's also advocating for the cause of just cryptocurrencies being used in games as smart contracts.

[Greg]

And what does your roadmap look like? It sounds like they've accomplished a lot already in terms of the game and the game development. But what's coming next? You mentioned Steam a little bit earlier, what else?

[Siddharth]

Right. Well, we have a Telegram mini app which is a mini game that should reward the activity of players and it should better showcase the amount of players that will be in the gaming ecosystem. We have an active game launcher which launches updates for the Unity based game we have been introducing lately. Just within the last year we had introduced the resource farming into smart contracts which basically influences the amount of RAM token in general and burns it in real time through actions through the browser. So that took a lot of time to develop. It took well over one and a half years to actually set up a working micro economy. But we had achieved that and we plan on doing so much more. The players are able to have ownership of Islands as NFTs and as they perform certain actions within the strategy environment, the amount of the realm token decreases in its entirety. So you are purchasing the RAM for Dex, right? And its value is rising up as people are playing. And as I stated, this is a simulation. And this simulation has been created with our game designer, has been created with the person who is the main coder for the smart contracts in the game with Dominic, and we plan on showcasing more. So it's a work in progress, but we believe that this is a good way to crowdfund the game and to show the viability of smart contracts in the gaming ecosystem. So for video games, it's great.

[Greg]

We have about 4,000 people who are tuning in right now. And if you are tuning in, I do encourage you to click on the Pirates of Ireland account and give them a follow and definitely check out their website too. It's a, it's a really great looking website. What other call to action would you have for the audience who's tuning in?

[Siddharth]

I would say for all the audiences. If you would like to see smart contracts utilized in games, if you believe that gaming is still a good market, it's a good investment, show your voice, be active. If you are on a community like Steam, say, okay, look, there are people who are making games on smart contracts and they are utilizing certain qualities which are just far superior for the visibility of the project, for the reward part, for the distribution of rewards in between the community members. Right. So we don't really need to be in this one place whether this is Steam or whether this is Epic Games. And although I can say that Epic Games already endorses games which include cryptocurrencies, Steam is still not quite convinced. It's a little bit of a situation, just like there is in the US Government and just having the regulatory side of things approved. It's still not approved in Steam that smart contracts should be utilized in games, just as it is not approved in the US Congress, that cryptocurrencies should be a fully viable currency and they should be established as such.

[Greg]

Makes sense. Well, I do appreciate you joining today. And again, if you're listening in, make sure to click on that Pirates of Ireland account. Give them a follow and I appreciate you joining. If anything else, last final call to action before we head out.

[Siddharth]

Guys. I will say this. You know, the times are tough as we see them, right? And even though there is a time, you know, that the bitcoin went down and it seems everything is falling apart, there will be better times. And I can say for sure. Being a gamer, being a risk taker, you know, min. Maxing on stuff with that in mind, you know, like smart contracts. They have their future in certain parts of the economy and if it will not be in securities, it may as well be as part of the games themselves. So get involved, show that you're there, show that this is a good thing for the games to be coded with smart contracts in them. Show that it's better than Kickstarter, it makes it more available for the publishers, for the developers and it drives the cost down and brings the revenue up. This is basically what we are trying to achieve here. Cut out the middleman and have the money distributed to the users of the games and to the people developing them.

[Greg]

Well said. Well, I, I appreciate you joining and for people who are tuning in, have a great Tuesday. Markets are dipping a little bit here, but I like that sentiment that we'll be back and tune in tomorrow. So we'll be live tomorrow at 10:15am Eastern Time. And thanks everyone for joining. Have a great Tuesday.