← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:01]
Tomer Strolight
I don't know if Dave is there, I just couldn't.
- [00:03]
Dave
A little bit, a little bit of glitchy this morning but I'm in a hotel in Washington D.C. so I apologize for that. But interesting days in the markets, lots to talk about. I see my good friend Mike McGlone fresh off calling again for a ten thousand dollar Bitcoin is. Is up here. I don't know if you wanna, if you wanna, if you wanna start Mike, but we all know what I think of that. But what's your take on, on the volatility?
- [00:30]
Mike McGlone
Well, hello Dave. And we. We still have to get together and bring to so I can pay off some of those bets. But the take on volatility is we're in a bear market and risk assets the best volatility in risk in markets and our best trading opportunities are in bear markets. And the bottom line is really harkens back to my history in markets as I was in the trading pits. Everything was massively leveraged and all we wanted was volatility and help our customers mitigate risk and stay alive. And this is a just a tremend environment. And I think people who are long risk assets and think that the rules of economics and history and supply and demand don't apply. I wish them luck. And the reason I say that first of all there's like I said, great opportunities. Our chief strategist, our chief Anna Wong our economist still thinks US equity markets are going lower and most significantly Gina Martin Adams. I'm putting about $4,000 as a key. I'm sorry, 4,000 is a key support target in S&P 500. And if the stock market keeps going down that's all that matters. It's this deflation catching up to the reciprocal to the inflation and it's following things like crude oil. My target crude oil remains $40 a barrel. Admittedly started saying that about two years ago. But I think the key thing, the bottom line that really struck me this week. I've been in Indianapolis for the Bloomberg Farm Fuel and Food conference and I was struck by the amount of people there from all around the world in the country who goes in Indianapolis in April. But they did. And what struck me is how the rules I presented on a few things and talked to a lot of people, a lot of people asking me about bitcoin. And what I do enjoy is when you, you can strike really sense what when you make a market call how people react to it. And it's either you're an idiot or your eyes wide shut or how could you even say that? Which is, you know, having done this for almost four decades, decades. It's just the thing I'm still pointing out to. But the key thing that struck me is how the rules of economics do not provide, do not apply to Bitcoin. So the key thing you learn as a producer and any type of commodity, you are inherently long that commodity. You should always be hedging to some extent to risk as it goes down. And I just love things like miners, bitcoin miners buying bitcoin and thinking, oh my gosh, let's double down on this. Our business. If the price goes down, we lose out of revenue and we lose our investments. It's just silly kind of stuff that you see in extended bull markets. So to me, the macro remains equities. We're going to have some great trading opportunities. The tariff situation is not going away, it's going to be delayed. But if you look at the top three economies on the planet who become wealthy and who are net predatory by exporting to the U.S. they're net exporters, that's China, Germany and average of their GDP from exports is about 25%. I mean average. Germany's 50% and China's down to 20% and average of their 10 year old bond yields are below 2%. First of all, I think we're going there. I've been wrong early but you know, seen that before. I was wrong on crude oil and other things. But the bottom line is they're being shut off. Maybe not overnight, but the main they're being shut off. And there's severe deflationary forces out of China that some of us saw from Japan that are just starting to trickle down significantly. And if the US stock market keeps going down, this is a normal deflationary cycle from what we did from the inflation the Fed will eventually have to ease. They can't yet. And the thing is we don't have the fiscal stimulus anymore. And so I look at it overall macro is. I keep putting that call out partly until I have a good reason to to stop it. I'll end with this.
- [04:07]
Dave
I will.
- [04:08]
Mike McGlone
It is significant that Bitcoin has been significantly outperforming all the other cryptos. I expect that continue and it's been doing pretty well in this environment. Considering that the US stock market's down what, 10% on the. I don't deny that Bitcoin's down 6. What is it on the year? It's down 13%. That's really good on a risk adjusted basis.
- [04:31]
Dave
Well I mean picking January 1st, given everything that was going on around the inauguration is kind of an interesting cherry pick date. You can pick other time periods. But rather than just listening to me, anyone who wants to listen to Mike and I argue, I urge you to tune in Monday at 9:00-Macro Monday on both the Roundtable channel, the Wolf of Wall Streets channel. Hell, even I post the link so it's, it's easy to find. So rather listening to me. Anybody else want to take the other side of this or do you guys really want to listen to me? I'm sure a few of you actually disagree on the notion of bitcoin as correlated as risk asset in the long run. I mean, Carlo, I know you're up there, Mark, I know you think the same thing, etc. Etc. Okay, Mark, go ahead.
- [05:17]
Mark
Yeah, and absolutely, you know, we, we risk being in the echo chamber, being in digital assets or in particular if you're just focused on bitcoin. I am, I, I could not have guessed the degree of outperformance that bitcoin has had given deleveraging. I mean the reason we had the rally yesterday is because Besant, whether he flew down there or he had a, you know, a video call with, with Trump, he went in and said do not go on true social yet we, we are having an unwind. I cannot refinance $10 trillion at four and a half or five percent and something's going to break here. You need to announce a rollback so that the problem is in our levered, in, in our levered, you know, U.S. treasury market. And that always spills over into equities. But look what happened. It was a basis trade as well as some European selling that caused that. Just like it did in March 9th of 2020 when, when we were roiled in treasury markets end. So the leverage in the treasury system caused that. I'm surprised and I'll put it out there that we didn't have more prefs unwind or basis trade unwind in bitcoin. But maybe that's why it's down 13% year to date because we had it earlier. Bitcoin always fails earlier. It's the earlier canary. It leads markets lower, you know, sometimes higher. And the fact that we're last night's close, it was the best performing asset across, you know, oil, gold, equities, European equities. It was crazy. So I am way impressed. And it means that I don't maybe fully understand the market structure of bitcoin because I thought we were going to have more fails and maybe it got washed out early.
- [07:10]
Dave
I mean, I could comment on that, but I think let's. Before we dive into Bitcoin, I think that there's some other crosscurrents here. I mean, what happened with the Treasury Secretary is less relevant than the fact that it happened. And I think that people need to understand that. There were a lot of people. I was on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Monday with a lot of senior people. I'm about to be with another group of Senior People in D.C. from the Wall Street. And the single most important point that everyone is is who's going to win in the internal tug of war and the internal tug of war between the Treasury Secretary and Peter Navarro the trade guy and Howard Lutnick. And if the Treasury Secretary wins and is seen as strong as opposed to leaving, that was extremely important for a whole host of reasons. I mean personally, you know, I had the pleasure of having a few meetings and work with Robert Rubin when he was Citigroup and then he was a Treasury Secretary and probably that was the last Treasury Secretary that understands markets as well as this one does. And so it's not about, you know, what you said, Mark, is interesting. It's not about, oh, we can't roll. I mean, obviously we can roll. I mean we've been, we were paying short rates of that high. It's just not, it's not good. You know, we want to roll at preferential rates. The reason to term it out is to get lock in rates that we could actually afford and move things down. So I mean, look, they can push things out. He could kick the can for another year if he wants to. That's not really, it's not the emergency. The emergency is losing the bond market and losing the actual markets. That's the emergency that's important.
- [08:48]
Mark
Absolutely. Where I think it's 20 or 25% of revenue is assigned now to interest expense. And unless we get interest, interest expense T bills down to, I think it's 370, which is our current cost or a little lower than that, we're going to have an increase.
- [09:07]
Dave
That's right, 100%. That's why he's yelling at Powell to lower rates. And the inflation print this morning certainly helps. I mean, Billy Barhardt was on. It's too bad he's not up here. It was on X this morning talking about inflation coming down. He actually is calling for consumer deflation and based on what's going on in China, yada, yada, yada, you Want depreciating, et cetera. But you know, look, the real question here, there's two real questions if we're in crypto town hall. First question is, is this a constructive environment for Bitcoin? And the answer to that is a resounding yes. Because is there anyone, I mean, you can do a show of hands, is there literally anybody who thinks that our fiscal deficit is going to contract over the next year or two and that we're not going to continually to have to have money getting pumped into the economy? Is there anybody who thinks that. Dark side. You think that? You think that or you agree with me?
- [10:08]
Ryan
No, I agree with you, Dave, completely.
- [10:10]
Dave
Okay, I was just checking. I mean, look, I'm not trying to lead the witnesses here. I'm just, you know, I. I have not talked to a single human being who thinks that anything going on. The only per. I mean, every once in a while someone will say, well, Doge is making massive cuts. I mean Doge is making surgical cuts that are being exploit that being put out of context by the media. What they're really trying to do is decut regulation so that companies can actually grow. I mean, you know, we've talked about this ad nauseam and I don't want to jump into that on a day where the volatility is this crazy. So the question then is if Bitcoin is constructive, if the Secretary of the treasury is actually pro bitcoin, if we have a crypto czar in the White House, if we just got Paul Atkins nominated yesterday, I'm hoping he pops into the conference I'm at, but I doubt it. Although I'm going to meet the acting SEC Commissioner tomorrow. This is an extremely constructive environment. And the question really is, okay, does that mean that this is the time it's going to fail as an asset? And I just don't see it. Right. I mean, as far as the rest of crypto goes, it's also constructive for platforms and for assets that have economic value. Good. I was about to call on you, Carlos, so I'm glad you raised your hand. Yeah, no, you're definitely talking our book. And I can't disagree with anything you're saying. I'm curious. You're in D.C. and you're going to meet the acting chair. Are you going to the roundtable tomorrow? No, I'm not. And it's funny because I'm at noid, which is a members only organization, he a bunch of congress people. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to publicly talk about it. Although I think it is, but his schedule is public. They'll come and talk to us. I'm actually moderating a panel with some reasonably senior people in our industry today. The roundtable panel. Look, I'll just say it, it's a very uneven panel. There are a couple of people on panel on market structure that actually understand what they're doing. I mean, Greg Tusar certainly understands what he's doing from Coinbase. There are a couple people there who barely know how to spell crypto that are on that panel. And it's just because they're lobbyists that have the year people in D.C. so I don't put a whole lot of stock in them. Instead of putting experts, they put who they know. I think that will actually change going forward. But for now I just know it would be aggravated if I was listening to some of those people, which I know sounds ridiculous and I'm saying it to thousands of people, but it's true. And if you go down the roster yourself, you could probably guess, you know, who are the traditional finance people who think they know about crypto but have never actually done anything in the space. So, you know, an interesting question that I put out because I know we've got a lot of moving parts right now, Bitcoin being one of them and tariffs of course, being an incendiary event. That's definitely a hot button issue for crypto. We had the DOJ's announcement this week that they're rolling back their crypto crime task force. That was a stunning development from my perspective on the legal front. And my takeaway from that is obviously, as I've always been saying, it is not crime season in crypto. Fraud will still be pursued. And if you're building in this sector, do not take this as an open ended invitation that you can just engage in all kinds of debauchery. And if you are building with a crypto lawyer on your team, you better be sure that crypto lawyer understands these risk factors and is strategically positioning you accordingly. The other interesting development is obviously stablecoin. Bill, I posed a question as a poll question today. Do you think that if we see mass adoption of stablecoins, Dave, by financial payment rails, that it's going to lessen the use cases for the L1s that currently exist, like SUI and so forth, because it begs the question, if everyone's going to launch their own compliance standalone stablecoin, what does that mean for the stuff that we've been seeing built that's super fast, high latency, and it's supposed to fix a lot of problems. It's something I've been kind of debating. Well, I know my answer, Zach, do you want to answer that question or you want to talk about something else? Because we could dive into that. But the Reader's digest version is stablecoins becoming ubiquitous means that entry into through KYC compliant rails of money into the crypto sphere is going to increase exponentially. And it means that assets that can trade in venues, that can trade vis a vis stable coins or move stablecoins into dollars in trade are going to attract significantly more volume and it's going to be more interest. So the question then becomes do the assets have value? And there's. You have to prove the use case. The stablecoins are orthogonal to whether or not a on chain platform is going to take over for use cases like securities finance. Right. You know, financing activities. Right. You know, and various other things. What we call RWAs, which I always think that was quaint in the crypto sphere is really a question of is the fact that you can do real time trading settlement of assets and create and not create liquidity, but unlock liquidity in those assets valuable. And if the answer is yes, then these platforms, the ones that win are going to be worth a lot of money. And if the answer is no, they won't. Because at the end of the day you still can't earn yield on stable coins. So they're essentially just a substitute for cash in in the form of payment rails faster, cheaper but still passing through KYC AML regulated banking sector. But if you really want to, if you want to play defi and earn yield you get, you still got to play on an L1. Well yes, that's absolutely true. And the other thing is by not allowing yield in stablecoins they're trying to make it hard for people to fund yield and take advantage of the process. But the point is making it easier people to enter the process is still going to create the equivalent of money market funds within the crypto Sphere on the L1s that are the most attractive. I mean if you think of like the aves of the world, all of a sudden the ability to seek and seek compliantly and seek safely yield will go up. And those solutions are coming. You know, I'm not going to talk about specific ones that I've talked to, but the truth is is there's, there's a real use case there. I mean should they be allowed to offer yield? Yeah, of course they should. They've created an extra step in the process that just opens up opportunity for other people to provide that step. Thank you. It's something I've been grappling with and I. That. That's a lot of clarity. Okay. Anyway, Zach.
- [16:41]
Zach
Yeah, yeah, Dave. Perfect. Because I, I wanted to talk about rwa because that's really, you know, when I look at crypto, I look at Bitcoin as like kind of a whole different strategy. I look at it as 401k on steroids. I don't try to trade it. Right. Everything else is. It just. It's a trade.
- [16:58]
Dave
That's.
- [16:58]
Zach
That, that's really how I look at it. And one of the things I'm trying to look at now is this is a much different environment than 2021, where, you know, during that, you know, risk on season, you could literally throw a dart, you know, blindfolded and hit bullseye. Anything in the top 100. I don't really think that's going to be the case anymore. I think it's, you know, going to kind of drive into the RWA sector. I like the AI sector too. But when it comes to rwa, I mean, speaking to Mike's point earlier, you know, Ondo has been a pretty volatile asset. You know, dipped down below 70 cents, shot back up to 88 cents on the news. Bittensor Tao yesterday was down to 175. It's at 233. Those are the type of plays I'm looking at short term. And here's the thing, like, one of the things I'm trying to do is just listen to Larry Fink, right? Because essentially you could say the ETFs got approved because of that guy. Where did his conversation shift to? As soon as he got his wish with the ETFs, all he's talking about is tokenization. Right? And so that's kind of where I'm speculating the most. Where are the institutions going to put their money in the altcoin space first, you know, assets potentially like Ondo, hbar, Chainlink. I mean, just go to the RWA list and, you know, do your research and find what you like. Chainlink's interesting because it's an infrastructure play. They've got their hands in everything. You know, they're intertwined with, you know, a lot of those big players there. That, that's kind of where I'm looking to see the next big wave. Once we get back into a risk on environment where, you know, altcoins could actually move that. That's kind of what I'm trying to do.
- [18:35]
Dave
So yeah, and we'll go to Ryan in two seconds. I just want to make the point that, look, I have nothing against Ondo. I like the people. I think they're doing some interesting stuff. The real issue with Ondo, no institution is going to invest real institution, until there's token economics that actually makes sense. A governance token is a stupid fiction that we had to invent because of Gensler's rules. The rumor has been Ondo is going to try to come up with token economics that pass through some of the economics of the network. Once that happens, it becomes investable. That's the real question. And so this is the. Carlo and I both together say, cool your jets, people. We need a market structure bill. We need token economics passed on. We need clear jurisdiction. It's not at all clear that, you know, a company that has economics that is not selling ownership, but is selling a future stream of economics. What that thing is, is that a security? Is it a commodity? What is it? And if, and once we know what that is, how it's going to be regulated? What is clear is the regulations are not going to be. They're not going to be prescriptive, they're going to be principles based. It's going to be some element of what we sort of want. Probably not everything that the crypto sphere wants, because it just will never happen. But that needs to happen before real investors, not hedge funds, like we're talking pension funds that are not alternative investors, can go into these things. Right. Ryan, I think you had your hand up. I'm sorry.
- [20:00]
Ryan
Yeah, no, I just find it so interesting because if you really look at the mantra and the history and just the general spirit of the crypto space, from inception, it's always been from a distrust of the regulators. It's always been from a distrust of government, of, you know, we need an immutable ledger because we cannot trust the powers that be to properly govern these things. And now we're looking back at the governing bodies going, give us clarity, give us regulation. And we're like, wait, what the heck is going on right now?
- [20:33]
Dave
I want to push you in a direction here. Just keep in mind this trust of the government. You can't find someone who distrusts the government more than me or. It's very hard to. And it's very hard to find someone who thinks that they've done a good job. The issue is we actually have an administration staffed by people who share that distrust and want to try to reshape government in their interest. Now, will they succeed or not? I don't know, they might fail miserably and we may go back to hating it, but that is what's going on.
- [21:00]
Ryan
But this is a great point because we don't know what to do with ourselves in a lot of ways. There's a lot of the cypherpunk crypto guys that are so used to looking at the government as the, the opposition and now we're looking at, wait, wait a minute, we actually have crypto people in the White House. We have crypto people on these, you know, panels now and committees and we're kind of sitting here scratching our head because it is completely a mindset shift right where we're trying to work with them, but for the last decade we've been, you know, trying to work around them. So a lot of our technology, a lot of our practices, a lot of, you know, the way we engineer things have always been in a way to avoid the regulators, to get around the systems and to not have to work with them. So it's just what my whole point was, it's just a very different mindset. So I think we're still bifurcated in the industry where you still have the crypto cypherpunk outliers that are still building things the way they've always built them. And then you kind of have this new group of projects coming around that are more like companies that are looking at it going well, how do we get the big players involved, how do we work with the regulators, how do we make this more professionalized? I'm really curious which projects actually survive in the long term because the moment the regulators change or the administration changes and becomes less crypto friendly, then the tide swings the other way, or, sorry, the pendulum swings the other way.
- [22:32]
Dave
So, you know, I have kind of probably the most unique perspective on this panel because I started in electronification of trading and I'm actually writing a book about the journey. But all I can tell you is you would not believe we felt the same way. People in electronic trading in the 80s and 90s felt the same way about the knuckle dragging barbarians that were the specialists on the floor and the lacrosse players on the desks that basically controlled Wall Street. And we all looked at it as, you know, we are going to make this democratic, we are going to make this better, etc. Etc. And to some degree we succeeded, and to some degree we got co opted. And so having watched that develop, it is not remotely surprising. We just think about the fact that we've deified Michael Saylor, a multi Billionaire with properties in Miami who you know, we treat as a patron saint, but he comes from corporate America. You call it what it is. I mean you're talking about huge concentration of capital and you know, some level of co option in order to get access to the trillions of dollars that it's needed for hyper bitcoinization is necessary. And that's the way it looked Tomer.
- [23:37]
Tomer Strolight
And then zillion, hey, I'll try to say something a little bit intelligent here that's, that's different from what's been said I think in this whole space. And people know I'm a bitcoiner and bitcoin only. What's unique about bitcoin is nobody can change it. And so bitcoin hasn't changed one iota from when it launched. And although moods and narratives and things may change and people may seem more amenable to government regulation, intervention, this, that the other bitcoin remains immune from government modification and it's not seized by the government and it's not changing. If anything we could get into a discussion about what about bitcoin might change. But bitcoin itself as a protocol isn't changeable and it's not trying to cater to anybody's attempts to change it. Regulators have to mold the regulations around what Bitcoin is rather than change bitcoin to be what they want want it to be. And I think that really is what distinguishes bitcoin. And there's a lot of fine hairs to split here, but from the overwhelming majority of anything else that people declare to be crypto, which has active participants changing it, trying to improve it, trying to change it, to make it air quotes better but the best thing about bitcoin is that you can't change, is that you can't change it. And that's what provides incredible predictability and reliability in a really unpredictable, unreliable, chaotic world. And I think that's really the continuing growing draw of bitcoin is once you understand how it works, you understand that it isn't going to change. And so you don't have to worry about what some politician is going to do in the short term or what some business executive is going to do in the short term, especially if you run a node and take self custody of your bitcoin, you're immune from all of these things. And the world is just filled with people who want to change things and make it better quickly, faster in anticipation of everything else. And, and so we end up with this incredibly, wildly chaotic world. I was just on vacation For a week I came back. I had no idea what I'd missed, but I knew that nothing had changed in bitcoin. And that, I think, is what really separates it here. There's a lot of people trying to find use cases for crypto. I remain a skeptic about that, and I won't go into all the reasons, but bitcoin's really, really different. It has no founder, it has no board of directors, it has no employees, it has no budget. It doesn't care what anybody says about it. And so it is completely predictable and reliable within the context of what it is. I'll stop there because I feel like I've been talking a little bit longer than maybe I should. But I just want to point out the distinction between bitcoin and everything else that's trying to go on in both crypto and the rest of the world.
- [26:30]
Dave
Well, gold hasn't changed in thousands of years either, but the way people use it has. And if Eden Yago were up here, he would talk about how bitcoin is getting. People are working on technology to make it more usable, but bitcoin itself doesn't change, which is a really important. Yeah, and I think you're right.
- [26:47]
Tomer Strolight
I don't disagree with that, Dave. I think that people will figure out how to use Bitcoin better, but they won't be able to change bitcoin. And bitcoin can be used in better ways than gold because of all these different things. So I appreciate the point that you make.
- [27:01]
Dave
I didn't see who was first. Ryan and Zach.
- [27:04]
Zach
I just had a quick question for Tomer, because I've been wondering this for a while. So Bitcoin is by far biggest part of my portfolio. Active strategy. The only thing I'm interested in hearing maybe anybody on the panel speak on this. I can never see a world where I'm going to walk into a Starbucks and pay with bitcoin over cash. As long as those things coexist. Right. And so the whole thing with the Lightning Network, I know in the bitcoin white paper, you know, it's means of transaction.
- [27:33]
Dave
I just. There's.
- [27:34]
Zach
I never, ever am going to walk in and why would I spend my bitcoin when I can spend my shitty cash?
- [27:43]
Tomer Strolight
Well, I guess if. If you're 100% in Bitcoin, you've got to convert it to cash. So why not just spend or borrow against it if you can? Okay. But if you're. If you're borrowing against it, you're.
- [27:56]
Dave
You're. You're.
- [27:57]
Tomer Strolight
In a sense committing it one way or another. But I like, I think if as long as you think that it's going up forever and you're able to borrow against it, then, then you would borrow against any investment that, that you can. But if you, if you picture a world and this could be 100 years from now, so it might not be you or me doing this, but if you picture a world where it is the money and nobody wants anything else's money, then you're going to be spending it one way or another like it's, you may have some intermediate form that you converted into to spend it. And again, people could debate whether Lightning Network is native or not or you know, custody, what, what, what have you. But at some point you have to spend your savings to, to consume if you're all in savings. So I, I think it's more a semantic point than, than, you know, you may not, we, in the short term we may not be spending Bitcoin on chain to buy things. But I, you know, I've, I've been running a Lightning node myself for close to three years now and whenever I'm at Bitcoin conferences or at Bitcoin meetups and stuff, we spend, we spend over Lightning with each other all the time. And if you go on Nostr, people are zapping each other Satoshi's left, right and center and it's the only medium you can, you can use there. And it's happening with regular frequency and it's instant, fast, private, fearless transaction. So it actually really reaches the, the dream state within the scale that it's being used right now of what people would want from private peer to peer electronic cash. And it is working. And I'm not trying to debate you and say you're going to spend your Bitcoin, do what you want, but it's technically possible now and there's people doing it to a small degree.
- [29:34]
Buzz
Just quickly, Zach, just a quick follow up on that. Do you think it's a bad thing? Let's take the stance that okay, Bitcoin's probably not going to be used as a payment currency. Let's just use that as a static because we could debate that all day. But do you think it's actually a bad thing if people are not using it as a payment currency and they're using it more as a store of value?
- [29:55]
Zach
No, not necessarily. I think it's a perfect form of store of value and it's already moving in that direction. I mean it's outperformed gold immensely in the last 12 years. Right. And if you ask a 30 year old on the street, are you buying bitcoin or gold? I think we're already knowing that answer. So I mean, I think it serves a perfect store value. Not to mention, you know, if shit hits the fan, you don't have to fill your pillowcase filled with gold bars. You can just grab your hard drive and leave.
- [30:24]
Buzz
We had Peter Schiff up on a panel a few nights ago and we were talking about this with him. And the argument that I made is that if you look at the history of gold, it was once used as a medium of exchange, much like bitcoin was originally written to be in the original Satoshi White paper, and then it was used as a unit of account. So over history people have always said, okay, one gold bar can always buy you a really nice suit. And now it sort of uses a store of value. So I actually am personally have the belief that bitcoin needs to go through that same trajectory to actually become a true store of value. And I think it's doing great thus far.
- [31:03]
Dave
Yeah, just jump in very quickly because.
- [31:05]
Yoav
We'Re shifting away from the conversation of the cyberpunks and the evolution of the crypto movement.
- [31:13]
Dave
First I want to say that I really miss the days where new projects were invested in by OG bitcoin holders.
- [31:22]
Yoav
They were much better capital allocators than the current cash kind of based VCs because they would back a project in various ways.
- [31:33]
Dave
So I really miss those days.
- [31:35]
Yoav
This is one thing, another thing. And this is a question I think, to Dave and to the people that.
- [31:41]
Dave
Actually saw the evolution of other trading.
- [31:44]
Yoav
Other fintech, really in general, is it.
- [31:48]
Dave
Because what I missed is for me the predominant thesis that really helped a.
- [31:54]
Yoav
Lot of people grow immensely in this, in this environment and especially in my.
- [31:59]
Dave
My cohort of 2015, 2016 is the.
- [32:03]
Yoav
The, the mental, the mental do the crime and pay the fine. And a lot of them has lived.
- [32:11]
Dave
Especially some of the biggest platforms that.
- [32:15]
Yoav
We have actually have lived with this way of doing business.
- [32:22]
Buzz
Obviously some founders were a lot more.
- [32:25]
Yoav
Risk averse, had a lot more eyes pointing at them.
- [32:29]
Dave
So they were unable to basically kind.
- [32:31]
Yoav
Of quote unquote break the law and then pay the fine once they capitalized. But, but for me, the winning thesis for any founder that, that basically founded something pre 2017 or 2017 and up.
- [32:45]
Dave
Was especially when it comes to exchange.
- [32:47]
Yoav
Or exchanges etc, is basically this.
- [32:50]
Dave
Was this also the case in electronic trading?
- [32:53]
Yoav
Or this is like really was a, this, this, this trade really paid off in crypto because it really paid off for many of them.
- [33:00]
Dave
It paid. It was a little bit different. I mean, if that wasn't an electronic trading, because you have to distinguish between the assets and the technologies that are disrupting and electronic trading. It was the assets. I mean, look, Night securities, which is now part of Virtu, completely disrupted the NASDAQ market and took it over. Right. Citadel, the biggest players, the biggest trading firms in the world didn't exist. They weren't banks before when electric or electronic trading started. But that's value. I mean, Citadel has a lot of value. So yes, to some degree it happened. The bigger example of that was the Internet bubble where tons of companies were worth ridiculous amounts of money and went bankrupt, but the aggregate of the value of those companies is dramatically higher today than it was during that bubble. So you have to distinguish it. In crypto we always have this problem where people make conflate the assets themselves and the businesses that they're helping to support. And so you have to look at those differently. Anyway, we're going to. Ryan, I think you were next and then Mark.
- [33:57]
Ryan
Yeah, so sorry. The conversation walked a lot. So a couple of comments here. One, a project has a bunch of Bitcoin OGs jumping into it is one called Morpheus, which is a combination of AI and web3 stuff that's probably one of the first truly decentralized projects I've seen in a long time for bitcoin as a transactional currency. So I got involved in bitcoin mining in late 2012. By 2013, 2014, we had pretty much given up on bitcoin being a transactional currency. We just realized it was just too expensive and there just wasn't enough block space for it. And then two other points is Michael Saylor, if he really cared about bitcoin and not just his investment, he would be getting more involved in the bitcoin mining space and looking at bitcoin mining pools and disrupting more in that space, especially in the US and how that all ties into tariffs to bring it all back around to the title of the spaces here with. With the majority of the mining hardware coming out of China, if we have all these tariffs, it means all the publicly traded miners in the US cannot retool as hash power globally keeps going up. It's just too expensive. So now any.
- [35:15]
Dave
Can I make the point that I believe those. That the current, the recent spike in hash rate is a, is clearly part of a, of a hash war that's unfolding and I think nailed exactly what's happening, which is fascinating.
- [35:32]
Ryan
My buddies have a lot of L7s, Litecoin, Dogecoin miners. They're able to sell them right now for double what they paid for them several years ago. The prices of miners themselves are going through the roof. And this is really interesting because any nation state that's gotten involved internationally for mining that doesn't have these tariffs, example Abu Dhabi has a massive mining farm. They're going to be able to scale so much faster because they're the de facto clients now because all these publicly traded miners are going to have to pay an arm and a leg to try to retool. So it's really rebalancing the hash power. And I think a lot of the publicly traded miners in the US as long as these tariffs are in place, are kind of screwed.
- [36:19]
Mark
So one question on, on that. This, this is Mark on Do you think that the US miners pulled forward a lot of equipment, put it online and today's point, that's why hash rate is well ahead of price at I think the biggest gap we've seen in, in a long time.
- [36:38]
Ryan
There's just, there's no way to pull forward that much equipment. A lot of times they'll pre order the equipment and they'll get on a delivery schedule. So sometimes if they bought far enough into the future, they can still take delivery. But what we're seeing is a lot of the miners are retooling into AI. The problem with that is it's about three times more expensive to put out AI than it is bitcoin mining. So it's very capital intensive up front. The customers are not guaranteed, the return on investment is not guaranteed. So it's just a really precarious move for a lot of the miners. So. So yeah, it's, I think the spike in hash rate is very much a lot of international sites coming online.
- [37:24]
Buzz
Right.
- [37:25]
Mark
And will, will that create an imbalance somehow where if price doesn't follow that the they'll go offline because it's not as profitable? Does this put a clock on them at all given that kind of. Or, or have the costs come down enough?
- [37:42]
Tomer Strolight
Well, well, on the margin. So on the margin, once you buy the equipment, it's a sun cost and so it's your electrical power that becomes the variable.
- [37:55]
Ryan
Yeah.
- [37:56]
Tomer Strolight
Your electricity power is still.
- [37:58]
Ryan
Yeah. I will say if you know, Trump is true to his word, what he said last summer is he wants all the bitcoin made in the us all he has to do is come out and say tariffs don't apply to bitcoin mining equipment. Problem solved. We would see all those stocks rally. That would be a tip of the hat to his promise last summer. But until something like that, I would.
- [38:20]
Dave
Think David Sacks, who actually was just out a few seconds ago calling for a rate cut after the inflation numbers came in better, which is also interesting. I think there's a lot of things going on here. But the one thing that isn't likely to happen is a world where there's trillions in assets potentially chasing an asset that is relatively small right now. Where the head people. You have Larry Fink calling for the same thing that we're calling for. Right. It seems unlikely that this hash rate being higher isn't an opportunity. I hate double negatives, but that's sort of how it came out. And I'm curious, does anybody else really believe Mike made the joke about bitcoin miners buying bitcoin? But the reason they can is because the capital markets, you're giving them free money to do so. And so the real question is, you know, does this end in tiers and bitcoin failing or does it end with bitcoin with the most obvious arbitrage closing, which is a much higher price of bitcoin to go to basically correspond to what's going on in the mining sector. That's the question. Anybody want to handle that one? I know Mike, you're. You view failing. Got it.
- [39:32]
Mike McGlone
I don't look at it as failing. I just like to point out I sometimes you just point out simple mean reversion levels and you look for a catalyst. And that's what I did in crude and so I've done in copper and in natural gas. And it was profound to say gold was going to go to 3,000. Now I think it's somewhat profound to say it's going to fourth on. It was profound to call from for bitcoin to go from ten thousand to a hundred thousand. Now I'm calling for simple reversions and I'm worried about what simple catalyst it might take to get there. And I'm hoping I can eat that call. But right now I see the process of simple reversion. The only thing that really keeps me it's going divergent strength. But let's look at the whole space. Things like ethereum. It's going to be flipping by tether. I think it's just a matter of time. It's overdue. Which to me the key question I want to ask the space which is what I see happening in the spaces Peer to peer cash is being proven that crypto dollars are awesome. The technology is amazing and a global worldwide transactional basis. Why would you take the risk of having Bitcoin, Etherium or anything else when you can transact in dollars fluently, just like email. And to me that's what's happening though is this reducing of regulation is showing. Finally we're going to harness this technology, use crypto dollars to transact in dollars globally, which shows the value of this dollar. You're not doing it yuan, which means taking excessive risk in things like bitcoin. Makes sense. You never want to use it to pay for some just use it like gold. And gold's had substantial drawdowns in its history and this is just the drawdown process in bitcoin at the moment. I just don't know how long it's going to last. I think contrary to most people who, I just think it's going to be more than most, most people think.
- [41:08]
Dave
Well, as I said, we'll argue on Monday. Anybody else have any thoughts here before we go to our sponsor today?
- [41:15]
Mark
Hey Dave, I was going to follow up on what Tomer was talking about. You know, Bitcoin's store of value still the persistent use case has been, you know, from day one. And the ability for it to build, you know, relies on the, I think the most important two legs of the trilemma is security and decentralization being there to persist. But the, the biggest part is we do have that proclivity to want to build more, do more. You know, management consultants say I'd like to build in the, in the winter and all this, all these little taglines. But Jesus, the, the structural differentiation of bitcoin in that how the proof of work is set up, the decentralization which is key, queuing the bybit, potential rollback of Ethereum, that claim. So we all want to put all real world assets on chain, et cetera. But the reason why bitcoin will persist and it may have a drawdown like Mike says to 62. Like what? Like Mark Newton at. I forgot what firm he's at, put out there. Tom, Tom Lee's firm. That that may happen but the fact that we had almost a, you know, a failure in the treasury market like we had in, you know, rolling over in September of 19, like we've had in other periods. The bloating treasury load ain't going to stop. The deficits aren't going to stop unless there's a debt jubilee, which God knows what that looks like. So that problem set against bitcoin's integrity of its structure. And that is something that, you know, I'm just, I think is hard to celebrate every day, but it's something that really should have the discipline for everyone to understand. At least that's what I do. I have to revisit that every day. So I think that's why I think that's important.
- [43:18]
Dave
But the core, the point that you're making, which is one. Let's just boil it down, is as a store of value asset, Bitcoin is. Is unique inside of crypto. Everything else is talking about being able to get into the flow of funds to create a new financial system, a new system for investment in things, in art, in gaming, in deepin types of infrastructure. All of those things are unique. There are many, many sectors. I mean, one of these days we'll get Jeff Dorman from ARCA on here and he can wax poetic about that. But the fact that bitcoin is the lead horse in the asset race in crypto is why we talk about it kind of interchangeably. I'm not a maxi by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't even consider. They're not really the same. At some point, the correlation between Bitcoin and what we currently call altcoins will. Will go very, very low. Right now, that's not the case, but that will happen. But, you know, that's sort of the thought process. Anybody else have any last thoughts before I turn it over to Buzz and Paulina Ryan?
- [44:21]
Ryan
Yeah, one one side comment here. You know, a lot of people in the Web3 space that want exposure to Bitcoin because bitcoin is very hard to get unless you're inside the KYC AML bubble. They've been using wrapped bitcoin. Just recently, Coinbase delisted wrapped Bitcoin. And we're really wondering for the defi space where you can freely move these stable coins around. You can go in and out of altcoins, you can go in and out of all these dexes and wrapped bitcoin was always kind of like the safe harbor to get investment into Bitcoin. We're really wondering if Coinbase is going to roll out their own version of some type of a controlled wrapped Bitcoin, or how do we merge the web3 space into Bitcoin? So that's. That's still like an engineering problem that we're all looking at.
- [45:08]
Dave
Yeah, I have very strong opinions on that, but no facts. My very, very. My very strong opinion without fact is that there are multiple firms. Now with ZAB121 gone, there are multiple firms that are designated custodians, are going to work with tech companies to create their own version of bitcoin backed things. Those things will range from pure bitcoin, you know, like wrapped bitcoin, to bit bonds to others. And watch the space, because that's going to be extremely important later. But I think, you know, it's one of the reasons I'm so bullish, even in a shorter term than than others, because I think those things are going to start to show.
- [45:44]
Ryan
My general rule of thumb is if people, you know, if governments, entities and organizations can't control a system, they're going to do everything they can to replace a system with something they can control. And I think the wrapped bitcoin space is possibly going to be that direction.
- [46:00]
Dave
It could very well be. Well, with that. Buzz, you ready?
- [46:04]
Buzz
Yes, sir.
- [46:06]
Dave
And I apologize that I need to cut out, but I got to head over to this conference. So, you know, thank you everyone.
- [46:11]
Buzz
Enjoy, Dave.
- [46:12]
Dave
I'm sure we'll meet later today, but Buzz can handle it. And enjoy our sponsor.
- [46:18]
Buzz
Sounds good. Well, today we're joined by Paulina and Yoav from Travala or Ava foundation. And I think this is going to be a really good ama. I've had the the pleasure of speaking with them a few times now. And for those who haven't heard of Travala, it's the world leading Web3 travel company, so you can book travel by paying with crypto. It's kind of a, a no brainer in terms of if you have a lot of crypto and you want to book travel. But before we get started, I do have a disclaimer. So Mario's company, ibc, does marketing, incubation and investing. Sponsors on the show are working with ibc, not necessarily crypto town hall Dave or myself specifically. And IBC's hiring, so they're hiring for writers, journalists and moderators. So if you're looking to join a great team or your project wanting to do an AMA just like this one, just DM either Mario's account or the crypto town hall account. So, Paulina, I want to welcome you and Yoav to the show. Why don't we start out with just a brief elevator pitch of Travala.
- [47:22]
Tomer Strolight
Yeah.
- [47:23]
Paulina
Thank you so much for having me here today. I'm Polina. I'm Travala, social media and community lead. I'm very happy to join and speak about Travala. So Zach made an interesting point earlier in this Spaces actually that I really want to comment on is that he said that nobody, he never seen anybody to pay for coffee with bitcoin. So today I'm going to tell you that Bitcoin has a real world view utility and you can book travel with it. And Travala, as you just said, is the web free online travel agency and we offer hotels, flights and activities that are bookable with crypto.
- [48:03]
Buzz
I think it was Yoav that I was joking with last time I was speaking with you guys, but I was joking. That can't be more of a no brainer. It's booking travel with crypto with pre taxed crypto income anonymously. Welcome to the show.
- [48:21]
Yoav
Yeah, exactly. Buzz. Good, good to be with you again. Yeah, I think that that's always the case. We touch on, but happy to also introduce the AVA Foundation. So yeah, a little bit about the ABA Foundation. Polina has touched on Travala. So from a foundation perspective, we really look after the AVA Token ecosystem and the AVA Smart program, which is the travel loyalty ecosystem within Travala. And from an EVA foundation perspective, our focus is really on ensuring that seamless loyalty experience which enables travelers globally to receive these incredible crypto booking rewards and a whole lot of other perks and travel discounts.
- [49:14]
Buzz
Wonderful. How does a Web3 based loyalty program provide more value to users than traditional loyalty programs?
- [49:25]
Yoav
Yeah, so I think that's always a great question. You know, the simplest difference to point out is the AVA Smart program and the difference between with a traditional program is the crypto rewards. So you know, here you're getting a lot more flexibility and transparency than with a traditional loyalty program. You know, traditional loyalty program you have points that expire, you don't even know when they expire. You're not even quite sure of how they accrue and you know when you need to use them. By with a Web3 based loyalty program, besides the point that the points never expire, you actually have the ability for those points to appreciate in value because they're given back in like Polina touched on, you can get it back in Bitcoin, in EVA token or travel credits. But those are some of the key differences and you got that benefit where it doesn't devalue, doesn't ever expire.
- [50:35]
Buzz
Wonderful. And Paulina, just because you're working on the social communication side, you guys are obviously doing a big push to onboard more Web2 users to Web3, which we've talked about a ton in spaces like this can be a huge challenge. How has that been and how Are you guys approaching that challenge at Travala to bring more people into the industry?
- [51:00]
Paulina
Yeah, that's a really good question. So at Travalo we make the entry point into Web3 really simple, even for people who never use crypto before. First of all, we support traditional payment methods like credit cards, so anyone can book just like they used to. But even if you pay with your card and you can still earn crypto rewards through the AVA loyalty program, and that's a real hands on introduction to crypto without really needing setting up any wallet. So I just want to break down the flow. So we are also integrated with the big metasearch engines like Trivago, Kayak and Skyscanner. And so here's what often happens. Let's say you're going to to go on holiday and you're looking for a hotel on Trivago. So like typical Web2 travel company and you found a nice place and you probably looking for a cheapest offer and it often happens to be Travala. And you go on our website, you book with your card and then you see the little surprise that you are eligible for a gift back in Bitcoin. And I believe that even if you never use crypto before, I'm sure that at this point everybody probably heard of Bitcoin. So suddenly you're thinking, wait, I can get free Bitcoin just for booking a trip. And that moment of curiosity is how we start onboarding Web two users into the Web three. Right? Because let's be real, everybody loves free stuff. So once they complete the trip, they can receive their gift back. And a lot of users sign up and start exploring and getting more familiar with what Travala is about and what crypto in general has to offer. And we are working with the AVA foundation also to introduce a new feature that will make the next step even easier. And soon users will be able to upgrade their loyalty. Membership is just one click by purchasing AVA with fiat and automatically locking it into the program. So this way they can unlock even more rewards and start using crypto without like there is no need to be a Web3 expert to start. So it's simple and very seamless. And it's our key mission to onboard new users to crypto.
- [53:37]
Buzz
Just want to call out to people who are tuning in as well. Both the Travala account and the AVA foundation account are in the listener spot. So definitely make sure that you're following official links, make sure that you click on both of those accounts and follow them as well. Just follow those official links and give them a follow. But Yoav, I know with the AVA Smart program, there's an NFT strategy built in and we talk a lot about on the show how NFT hype is really tailed off. Like it used to be just buying pictures of monkeys or JPEGs of different animals. Right. And now we've kind of seen this transition to using NFTs as more of a digital credit or like a digital VIP coupon or something like that. How are you guys factoring NFTs into the the Smart program?
- [54:32]
Yoav
Yeah, so I, I think if I was only talking about NFTs, I wouldn't be as upbeat. But you know, when we look at it as part of the, the Smart program, it's, it's a, it plays a real kind of integral part as part of the overall utility that gets unlocked. So, you know, if you look at, I know this is kind of not necessarily the word we all want to be using, utility, but, you know, true utility NFTs are pretty rare. And you know, we recognize this potential quite a while back, you know, over three years with the Travel Target NFTs and within the AVA Smart program on the, the top tier, the diamond membership, it essentially forms a core part of that top tier, the travel target NFTs. So, you know, when you have the Travel Tiger NFT in use on the, the top tier, that allows you to unlock a whole host of additional benefits. So, you know, you look at just the value of the program and already has a whole ton of benefits. But with the Travel Target nft, you know, you already able to unlock, you know, exclusive giveaways, travel giveaways and rewards and, you know, additional perks that you wouldn't ordinarily get. So I think, you know, you look at kind of the core utility there. It's not just a nice looking nft. But you know, I mentioned the luxury travel giveaways. There have been some incredible luxury travel giveaways that, that we've done and that happens regularly. There's also additional travel credit rewards for completing tasks. And those are simple, you know, simple tasks. Airport lounge access. And you can actually double or triple your additional rewards. So you can hold more than one Travel Target NFT and be on that top tier and you just adding more, more of that ability to earn rewards. So, you know, it's not just something to trade on OpenSea. That's an integral part of the Smart program.
- [57:02]
Buzz
Wonderful. And Paulina, what's your vision for the Web3 travel industry over the course of the next, say three to five years.
- [57:15]
Paulina
I think we're going to see some really big changes and I think that even maybe top travel booking platforms will start integrating crypto payments closer to the end of the decade. Not sure about the next three years. And we'll probably see some innovations in the web3 identity management. It's like, you know, like when instead of sharing your passport details that can be quite sensitive online or for checking, you could simply use a blockchain based identity that could be more efficient and safe. And in the longer term, blockchain could even be used in things like travel ticketing systems, you know, to help create more transparent system system and to cut down on fraud and that would increase efficiency. And as for Travala, I truly believe that we have the potential to help onboard next billion users into crypto. And like just hear me out. The travel industry is growing really fast and in just last year there were 1.4 billion people traveling. And last year Travala reached an important Milestone. We hit $100 million in revenue. And in 2025 we're expecting to see more people traveling than ever before in human history. So I know that some big players might not like it, but blockchain adoption is growing and it's growing fast and Travala is all in and we believe that the future of travel is on chain and we are so proud to be leading the way.
- [59:00]
Buzz
Seems like such an obvious use case, right? Why don't you think Expedia, these other travel giants have even dipped their toes into something as simple as offering Web3 payments yet alone using blockchain technology for solving things like fraud and other things that you've, you've alluded to.
- [59:21]
Paulina
Yeah, it really sounds like a no brainer, but I guess, I don't know, regulatory landscape or just that they are boring big companies that don't really have the vision for crypto, you know, because I know that everybody who is in the space, like we are also passionate about it and you know, like, like Tomer said previously in the space, I think he dropped already that people will figure out how to use Bitcoin better, but they will not change like fundamentals about it. And I do believe that the future of travel will be very closely intertwined with crypto. And Travala is so well positioned in the space and our core mission is to make sure that travel is accessible for everybody. Not only for people who, who have like fancy credit cards, right, but also in other regions where people don't have bank cards, for example, or unable to open them because of the minimum Requirement limit or for some. Any other reasons. And crypto is really bringing the world together. It's so easy to pay. You can just go on the website and you can pay with your favorite cryptocurrency, whether it's Bitcoin, ava, some altcoins, like, we even accept meme coins. You know, like, if you made a lot of money on your favorite dog coin, you can just go in, no exchange needed. Just pay for a plane ticket and go see your grandma, you know, because she probably misses you a lot.
- [60:55]
Buzz
That's. That's a good way of putting it. Yoav, can you. Can you. Final question here. Just touch upon the. The growth strategy of how you guys are tackling getting more members into the. The loyalty ecosystem through the SMART program?
- [61:12]
Yoav
Yeah. So, you know, we've seen the last couple of months, we've seen kind of an acceleration of new members joining the SMART program, and this continues to be a key focus of ours. So looking at key partnerships and key initiatives around, you know, driving more members to join. You know, I mentioned this in previous spaces, but anyone can join for free. So there's, there's no barrier of entry to joining a SMART program. But I think the other things that we're looking at is we've got a proven use case with the SMART program, but we're looking at, you know, how do we extend this in the future? So, you know, we're looking at things like the AVA Open Loyalty Protocol, which, you know, would essentially extend this to potentially other communities. And that's something quite exciting that we're looking forward to. So, you know, being able to take the value of the AVS SMART program to other crypto communities, that's a big focus. And looking, you know, continue looking at additional incentives that we can overlay within the program just to, you know, continue driving that reward and, you know, making sure this is the best Web3 travel loyalty program around.
- [62:41]
Buzz
Love it. And just for. For listeners who are tuning in, the Travala and the AVA accounts are both down there in a listener spot. So. So make sure that you're giving them a follow, checking out their website. Make sure you're following those official links as well, either Yoav or Paulina. Do you guys have any final calls to action for people who are tuning in or something that they could do today to help you guys out.
- [63:05]
Paulina
For sure. Go to travala.com and book that flight. You know, it's never a bad idea to book a vacation. And, and you can book vacation with the favorite cryptocurrency so, yeah, write this down, travala.com anytime. And we have this support team that is ready to help you out if you have any problems. And we have real humans working there, not just bots. They will be able to help you with any questions. Thank you.
- [63:36]
Yoav
Yeah, I just wanted to add while you're, while you're on travala.com just add that forward slash smart. So revala.com forward slash smart. And you can just sign up for free to the the Smart program. You can start getting giftbacks and kind of real crypto rewards, Bitcoin or AVA token. So go join the program.
- [64:01]
Buzz
Appreciate that. So it's free. Check it out. And there's a lot of crypto conferences coming up around the world here in the next few months, right? This is like crypto conference season throughout the summer. I know that Zach, who's still up here in a speaker spot, he's usually speaking or advising and whatnot at a lot of these conferences. So hopefully a lot of folks in the audience check out Travala if they're going to different crypto conferences. So it could be a great use case. But I want to thank you both for joining the show. Of course, the Travala and the AVA foundation account down there as well and wish everyone a happy day. So yesterday was great with the, the tariff pause. We had some green in the market, so let's keep our fingers crossed and hope for some more green today. So thanks everyone for tuning in.
- [64:48]
Paulina
Thank you, Buzz.
- [64:51]
Buzz
Have a great day.
- [64:52]
Yoav
Thanks, everyone.