← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:00]
A
Everybody, welcome to Crypto Town Hall. Hopefully you can all hear me. We're in the glitch and I'm on Bluetooth here, so hopefully all is well. We've got crypto rallies after wild weekend. What is next? Well, we've got bitcoin trading about 90,400.
- [00:20]
We had a massive dip and then immediate rip. Of course, on a Sunday when liquidity was low and somebody can make a lot of money, it still just absolutely baffles my mind when you see something like price going.
- [00:35]
Down 3 or $4,000, immediately back up and then higher, all in a matter of three or four hours and you then get the tweets about three or 400 or $500 million in liquidations. I don't understand how people are sitting there on high leverage when. And bitcoin's trading in a range hasn't done anything convincing literally in months and just getting liquidated on a move where price goes back and forth within a matter of an hour. But it seems that people are very bored and very desperate and looking for ways to gamble. I would love to go to the panel here, talk about, I guess, price action, what was happening over the weekend and what's going on right now. Anybody, thoughts? Go ahead, raise your hands. I'm kind of driving here while hosting, so jump on in.
- [01:32]
I don't hear anyone.
- [01:33]
B
I mean, I think, I think you're right on the gambling front. Like we've obviously seen a bunch of that over the last few months and it's where a lot of things are pushing overall. So I think it's also just goes to the general instability everyone's feeling across the, across the board on markets right now and really not sure what's going to happen. Obviously it's Fed Week. Everyone super excited for FOMC meetings. I assume we're going to get a 25 basis point cut and watch them continue to ride the middle of the road and everyone continue to be kind of like what the gonna happen next.
- [02:14]
A
I think Bloomberg has it at 99 glow said of a cut this week and poly market 94% and I think even CME head watch was 89%. So we're getting a cut. The question is at this point is that even relevant, especially when it's so high?
- [02:31]
B
No, I think when you've got 94% of people calling it, I think that's the definition of priced in basically on it and there's no way that they, I think over or perform or you know, go go deeper on that and cut the full 50 obviously Moran is gonna descent from the 25 basis point and cut and say we should have done 50, but I'm guessing he's the only one given. Again, like all the jobs data, all the GDP day, all the data is so mixed and so they're just I think gonna keep doing that.
- [03:10]
C
It's not really the cut, the map matters, it's the forward guidance and whether or not they announce RMPs, which would functionally be very akin to QE where the Fed's printing bank reserves and then injecting those into the banking system by buying in this case bills. So QE normally is long end, but this would be treasury bills which would be much, much more akin to like outright debt monetization given the fact that banks are of course can create print dollars, they're the big buyers of treasury bills versus pension funds and insurance funds which are not depository, they buy the long end. So you already have kind of a debt monetization dynamic going on.
- [03:59]
D
Right.
- [03:59]
C
This is what Michael Howell calls yield curve control, not yield curve control I think and, and, and this would be even further in that vein. Plus it would be a liquidity injection. I don't think it would be very large, but I do think that that is the other key thing to watch the repo market stress. Obviously this is they need to do something when even, you know, the top Fed officials themselves are basically coming out and arguing whether it's the former SOMA manager, your current SOMA manager, Fed chair Lisa Cook actually, who is the governor in charge of financial stability, they're all warning about it. So I think it's highly likely.
- [04:43]
That you see those RMPS announced which would be again kind of functionally akin to QE where bank reserve creation would obviously be starting back up.
- [04:58]
A
What does this all mean for crypto? I guess you know, to shift it. So we clearly know that we're getting a 25 basis cut point. We clearly know that it will be, as you said, that's more important than the actual cut itself. I don't know if it's going to be which way Powell sneezes or whether he looks up or down or what color tie he's wearing that people are going to use to judge it. But do you think that Bitcoin is actually trading on any of this right now? People obviously make the argument that forward looking liquidity is going to be what drives Bitcoin. But I would make the argument based on what we've seen with gold, silver and stocks that Bitcoin has been uncorrelated for a very long time right now and it's not trading alongside any of these. So it's hard to make the argument that bitcoin is reacting to this if you're making the argument that everything else is.
- [05:48]
C
I think I would argue that it is, it leads for, you know, for sure. And if you go back to kind of that double top around 120, whatever like 123 or whatever it was that was right before like literally like two weeks before bank reserves started to really decline and kind of fed net liquidity to bring that metric back started to decline. So yeah, no, I think that like bitcoin has been obviously much weaker due to the fact that these liquidity stresses have been building for the past, I don't know, three months, four months.
- [06:29]
A
Right, but then why is everything else up I guess is the question. I mean you see what's happening with silver Gold, I guess that would rationally make sense. But stocks are what, 1% off the all time high? 2%.
- [06:39]
C
Yeah, stocks.
- [06:41]
A
What is it leading? What is bitcoin leading? Yeah, like and how long of a lag is there if it's leading?
- [06:46]
C
Yeah, I don't know. I personally I'm bullish though. Like I would be, to put it very simply, I would be buying these dips on bitcoin. I'm hoping we get a dip to 70. But yeah.
- [07:00]
E
We'Re still, you know, we're still unwinding the DAT bubble in, in crypto and in bitcoin and that's why it's been trading much lower than the rest of the market. Right, we, we kind of know that. Yes, we thought bitcoin was going to be this asymmetric hedge to you know, geopolitical risk globally. It's not. It still kind of trades like a big tech stock and a big tech stock that had this massive influx of capital over the summer that's unwinding in interesting ways. And altcoin market, the same thing. Right. And then some of the altcoins that just aren't coming back ever or we're kind of seeing blow ups also the kind of major liquidity event that happened a little over a month or a month and a half ago where all these alts just took that massive dip. The market took a massive dip that cleaned a lot of people out and they're kind of like I might go trade other in other places.
- [07:57]
A
Right.
- [07:58]
E
And then you've got prediction markets kind of sucking the retail wind out of the, the meme coin market. And I would say some of the smaller altcoin market. And so you're just seeing a lot of capital in other places currently that was in, in the cryptocurrency and altcoin market. Right. You're kind of seeing bitcoin even kind of trade down this morning when the market opened. Right. It's really kind of moving towards that feel of hey, the ETFs have inflows, they have outflows, and those get traded on business hours and trading hours. So not sure what it all means. I mean the macro environment as well. You look at a report came out from Redfin, I think it was like a week or two ago, like 15% of the homes were delisted in September, were at risk of selling at a loss. 70% of the homes listed in September were on the market for 60 days or longer.
- [08:55]
Basically, people are taking their homes off the market at the fastest rate in 10 years. There's just not as much liquidity out there as I think people would like to believe.
- [09:08]
And even if it is out there, the prices for everything are so wildly out of control that it's hard for people to even justify. Their brains haven't justified yet that I have to go pay $380 for a Christmas tree. Right. Or I got to go pay, you know, like 20, 30% higher than what I thought for a meal.
- [09:30]
You know, for a family. And those things start to add up. And I think people are still, we're not, we're not at a place yet where we had this like major rally where people can really wrap their minds around like this is a new environment that we're living in. Talk to any kind of mortgage banker out there at some of these big banks. They kind of thought two, three months ago that next year was going to be a big year for them. And now they're kind of pulling back saying like, man, we're just going to kind of slog through these high rates for a long time. So not, not a lot out there to be rosy and happy about. But again, this could be buying opportunities for some of these altcoins that are really going to eventually come back and come back in a big way if you pick the right ones. And then obviously you should always be slamming as much as humanly possible into bitcoin.
- [10:16]
C
Yeah. And also consumer credit, revolving credit that came out Friday growing at a 5% annual rate. So the debt based consumer spending, I think that that's really a great point. Like, you know, I, I always point out in the bitcoin spaces we are trying to get, you know, young people to understand bitcoin as a savings technology and you know, currency debasement, all this stuff, right? But like they have no money that, you know, they, they're, they're working two, three jobs with a side hustle, right? Living paycheck to paycheck, like they have no money to put into bitcoin. I'd also point out Japan with yields rising and the potential kind of carry trade issue, that, that's a liquidity dynamic in the, in the very large sense. Maybe not specific to the US but kind of overall. It would also point to that.
- [11:14]
F
Something to add on the point with a massive liquidation events is the amount of bitcoin on the exchange or the BTC exchange reserves. This going down, down now trending down for a significant amount of time. And we also looked at this and saying, well, this is now institutional adoption and, and, but the fact that all that spot has been taken and absorbed, it means that we have a very unstable BTC price on the short term because at this stage now it's just a big liquidation or the big rich guys fighting each other and then over the weekend with the load of quid. That's the, that's the move. So I think the big stability for btc, if you want to be bullish, you know, shortterm, let's, let's take it from a trader point point of view, just bullish. Short term, you almost want to see that stabilize and then you want to see the lower time frames like the four hour and maybe even the daily start trending upwards before you can really start thinking moving up weekly time frames. We've got hidden bullish divergence. The underlying signals is there for rally maybe just maybe minimum to 100, you know, as the baseline, the breakthrough. Then the sky's the limit again. So it's there, but it's just not ready. And I think maybe the timing factor, everybody's in such a hurry to get the low in. Everybody's such a hurry to get the Santa rally or and so forth that might be undermined, undermining price at the moment for us.
- [12:50]
A
Can you guys still hear me? I thought I got disconnected, connected, so I'm not sure.
- [12:56]
D
Okay, good. Having trouble here too.
- [13:03]
Can you hear me, Scott?
- [13:04]
F
Can you guys hear me?
- [13:06]
D
I can hear you, Dave. Okay, well, look, you know, it's funny, I. We were talking this morning about where, where consensus is and you know, it feels like the consensus in the crypto world is dismal, which to me is actually a good thing. You know, remember Every one of the indicators Joe was talking about are lagging indicators. Right. You know, we know we had a couple of months where liquidity was being sucked out of the system or at least evaporating in the system and it wasn't coming back in. And so that's going to change next month or so and we'll see how that goes. I mean, the truth is that, you know, it is, it is. There is some very real issues in the economy.
- [13:58]
And so those very real issues are going to force policy responses and we're trying to anticipate in the market what those, those policy responses will be. And I'll just leave it there. I'm going to be mobile, so I'm probably going to be doing mostly listening. But I just think that you always have to be looking as markets anticipating as opposed to looking backwards. And that's really the main point here.
- [14:23]
E
Dave. I think some of those are lagging. I don't think the prediction market bid taking retail capital away is lagging. I think that's still increasing, increasing rapidly. We're seeing volumes on polymarket Gal Sheet growing day in and day out. So that's pulling a lot of that capital over there. You can now bet in a short term fashion even on the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies there. So that is pulling some capital out currently. And I wouldn't say that the home market is a lagging indicator either with regards to, you know, basically sentiment and consumer sentiment thinking, especially in young people, you know, if you live in California or you live in some of these markets, you know, even like Colorado, Boulder, Austin, some of the prices of these homes that you got to, you have to, you know, put down. It's like these kids are just like, I'm never going to own a home, right. Like, like I'm never going to be able to run my own business. Right. And I think, yes, you're still going to have outliers and people that smash through those barriers because, you know, it's, it's America and that's what we do. But on the average, you are, you are going to see a lot of people just kind of saying, opting out in some sort of way. I don't have the answer. But you know, I definitely think that people are kind of saying to themselves, you know, what's the, you know, how do I, how do I really get ahead? And that's why I think you've seen, seen a lot of it turn into like just gambling. They're like, like I might as well, just try and do anything I can to try and get ahead because it's so like the time value of money, like we need to go teach that again, you know, back in like the middle schools and high schools of just, you know, hey, you can be a multimillionaire if you put away 500 bucks a month, 800 bucks a month. You just got to be patient. But we're, it's, I think it's just a really wonky spot for this kind of Gen Z younger generation to be saving. And you're feeling that in the sentiment, the market.
- [16:29]
B
Yeah, I think, I mean there is definitely a massive shortcoming in financial literacy. But also going back to what I think Robert was saying, I mean, I think there's interesting where the, the actual lack of wealth and money in millennials and Gen Z is not as bad and I'd say as it feels when you actually look at the hard data. They're not actually doing that bad. Obviously you can talk about inflation numbers and where money gets spent and that gets into a complex thing. But I think the bigger problem in that, right, is it's the feeling around it. It's not just that there's a lack of financial literacy. It's that people are disillusioned about the future and burn the fuck out. And so they don't want to save 500 or $800 a month or something so that it nicely compares pounds in an S and P and grows millionaires because like they're pretty sure they're never going to get Social Security and they're never going to own a house and stuff. And so they rather just go like buy zero day options, you know, and YOLO on fandom.
- [17:42]
D
I mean, I think that Scott and I were making, or Scott was making the point about the rise of calcium prediction markets, but you just made the one. I was going to respond this morning. The fact that zero day options are the fastest growing and maybe the largest product in US financial markets today.
- [18:03]
And it's been that way for over a year, is a sign of desperation, I think, from a lot of people. Everybody's looking for lottery tickets, everybody's looking for an easy way out because frankly, you know, the, the standard work hard, save money, build, you know, build wealth is seemingly out of reach for a lot of people. And that is, that's the kind of pathology that is end of empire shit, not, not, you know, healthy. And we definitely are in that world. I mean, people can wave their arms around it and say whatever they want, but that does seem to be the case now is that investable? Does it matter? Is it likely to change in the next six months or a year? Probably not. I think in five, 10 years when people look back, they'll say ah, well we should have known that that was what was going on.
- [18:57]
C
Yeah. The unfortunate reality. At least bitcoin, I don't know the alt stuff, but at least, at least with bitcoin, like you know, 30% ker that, that, you know, you tell someone in tradfi that, you know, you guar guarantee them a 30% keger, they'll, they'll, you know, it'll blow their mind. But for the average young per person where, you know, the, the income needed to qualify on a house tripled. Right. In the span of five, five years. Like, like in my case, it, you know, I gotta admit it's kind of hard for me sometimes not to. To put it into some meme coin or zero day option. Just five grand into some zero day and hope I hit it. It's hard for me to save in bitcoin and I know this stuff, right. I spend all day in macro land and monetary policy. And it's hard even for me because of just how much.
- [19:54]
Our real life, the middle class livelihood ripped away from us. You know, in terms of, you know, the move in asset prices.
- [20:11]
A
I think I'm back, but only as a speaker. So I missed a lot of that conversation, unfortunately. But I was discussing this this morning and you guys can tell me if I'm being redundant to anything that was just said. But to your point, Robert, of what you just said has been something I've been thinking about a lot, which is that rampant speculation is not generally a sign of a healthy economy or of happy people. Right. And now it's like with predictive markets and crypto before that and even GameStop and options and Robinhood before that, we've basically just handed did the speculators like nuclear weapons to destroy themselves?
- [20:55]
D
Well, the point you missed, Scott, was that which I didn't get to say this morning is that zero day options, particularly in the S and P are so damn popular that they've been handed these weapons of mass destruction well over a year ago and they've been using them like crazy.
- [21:12]
A
Yeah, but the average person who's using poly market or gambling on meme coins is not using zero day options.
- [21:18]
D
I don't think contraire. I mean these are the biggest, it's the biggest volume product for the retail accounts at Charles Schwab and all the other online brokerages. I mean they actually bought quite a few of them. There's no you know, Ameritrade, E trade, whatever, that's Morgan Stanley. But you know, it's, it is a huge product and, and it is a pure product.
- [21:42]
C
Just from my anecdotal like personal experience, the people, people I know, the young people I know that are doing meme coins and prediction markets and, and all that, they're also doing zero day options on like the Mag 7.
- [21:57]
G
Yeah.
- [21:57]
B
You're also, you're also literally betting against the same guys, right? Like Kolshi has deals with Susquehanna and Citadel to take the other side of the sports gambling markets right now. So literally you're betting your zero day options on the S P against the same guys you're betting your Raiders game against.
- [22:17]
D
That is true.
- [22:20]
Yeah, I mean it is absolutely true.
- [22:23]
A
I mean, but historically also just like beyond that. Dave, the point I was making this morning and that Robert, was just as I came back on is that there's a desperation to speculate because there's no other way to survive. That has happened many times in history and it's usually not before positive events.
- [22:44]
D
Oh no, there's no doubt. And, and, but my point is that the signs have been here and you know, maybe they're accel accelerating now. I, I can't really tell. Look, all, all this boils down to is a very simple thing and I see Gary is up here and I quoted you this morning, Gary, which is to say that I don't see any way out of an acceleration in the quote extend to pretend and pretend policy and the run it hot. Do our do the best you can as we get into next year to you know, try to turbocharge growth at any cost regardless of the pathologies that that might actually create. I mean to me it all seems bound in the same thing. Do you agree? Especially since I quoted you.
- [23:33]
H
Yeah, yeah man.
- [23:37]
I just don't know what they're waiting for.
- [23:43]
I was listening to Jim win just earlier and he's still, you know, encouraging much lower prices. I, I actually can't build a case against him. I don't think there is, there's any organic crypto buyers, right?
- [23:59]
D
No, there's no, there's no panic crypto buyers. That's not how bottoms work.
- [24:05]
Bottoms work when everyone is, is time based and otherwise capitulation. I mean keep in mind something and, and I said this this morning and I'll say it on this too.
- [24:16]
H
You'll just feel warm.
- [24:17]
D
So when is to go touch grass? Gary, you live in a beautiful Place weather down here in Florida is gorgeous today. Just go look at the sun and the sand and the beach. It's all good. I'll leave you with one thing about Wynn, which is, you know, his notion that he could be long term bullish about bitcoin and believe the four year cycle demands, you know, this response. At least he's semi intellectually honest. He believes that the amplitude of the moves, you know, are still going to be big. All these other people who say that it's a small move amplitude and this, this last bull run, there's no way you can get to higher bitcoin prices, you know, whatever, with this sort of size moves. Just think about it that way. You just can't get there. Right? Yeah.
- [25:12]
H
Who are you referring to?
- [25:13]
D
I missed all the k, all the KOLs, but, but, but win is one of them who says, well, I'm long term bullish bitcoin, but I think it's going to drop, you know, 70%, except it didn't rise.
- [25:24]
A
Aren't we quoting the guy who made some money on a meme coin, then lost $1 billion on a poor leverage trade, has been directionally wrong 90% of the time and just happens to be right at this moment. Like what, how he's not right.
- [25:37]
I'm just saying, like when, when, when James Wynn become like fucking Warren Buffett at the oracle of Twitter. It's, I mean, I, I don't even understand how. And he is constantly. But how is he a topic of conversation? Is. I, I don't know, because I don't follow. But is he an expert on anything? Like, where's the credentials? I lost a billion, so I paid my entrance fee and now everybody gets to listen to me be bearish.
- [26:06]
H
Yeah, sometimes, you know, you, that's what you, you pivot to. But, but I wasn't trying. Look, I think there's a lot of KO wells out there that are speaking about markets. All I was trying to show was that the mark, there was 150 people in a room. Okay? There's nobody there. People are worn out. I mean, this is, look, and there's a lot going on. I mean, I mean, we have an event outside of.
- [26:36]
Government control. You know, that's not good. There's just a lot going on that needs to get settled and we're going into the end of the year and nothing is going to happen until mid January. So I think we're gonna do this. Look, if I had enough bitcoin coin, I'd be moving this market around to, you look at a sailor picking up 10,000 bitcoin coin in the 90s. That's gonna be a good purchase. Okay. Like, wow, I wish I could pick up 10, 000 Bitcoin right now. That would be so awesome. 20 years. Unbelievable. I think that's what I was trying to say. I was just. It's the same old news over and over. We're just grunt like the thing is if y' all weren't scheduled for 10:15, there's really not much to talk talk about. But it's good to see all you guys. We're gonna get rich. We just might have a few headaches in between there.
- [27:37]
And concerns. But I don't see how holding on to this asset like nothing has changed for me at all.
- [27:45]
A
I've just gotten more excited to buy.
- [27:50]
Whatever.
- [27:50]
H
Well actually at these prices it's kind of encouraging me to. Okay, let's let me go create. Let me do some work. Create more fiat so I can put it into $90,000 bitcoin. Because I think you're going to be able to buy 88,000big point again. That's going to happen, dude. I, I guarantee it's gonna happen.
- [28:11]
A
I told you that. Hey, I didn't expect to be right.
- [28:14]
H
Yeah, yeah. Well, you're still. Do you still have your bid there?
- [28:19]
A
No, I failed. I. I filled on on the, the first, that first hit of 88, I. I built. Yeah, I waited six months, seven months. But yeah, I got it. I also bought Meyer. Just for the record, I'm not bragging because I also was a dollar cost averaging, you know, 1 20, 115, 110. But my actual like active bids that I had kind of heavily from April, May or 88. Yeah, Mark, you can go ahead.
- [28:47]
I
I'm. The perspective I have is here at the Bitcoin Mina conference and.
- [28:56]
Catching up with a few people. The one insight I have is still the old how early we are. Unfortunately, guys, I know that as we spin the wheel on bitcoin saying that's not the one we always want to hear, but we say that right before it goes parabolic. So that's what I'm saying is we think it should be going higher. We understand the system is going to continue to debase and that this thing stands out as one of the only viable.
- [29:33]
Technologies available, pristine outside the system. And we are still too early. Sometimes we're too close.
- [29:43]
I. The one thing I like about coming here is you do meet some very smart, studied people and it's good to have another Come to Jesus about. All right. Why are we doing this? Tell me the numbers. How's it compared to TCP ip? Okay, what's the adoption rate? Oh my God, we're so early. Which means this thing get it knocked around 15,000, you know, 20, 20% spreads within a week. Not bad spreads, but range within a week. That's just part and parcel. You can't put this in in normie equity.
- [30:22]
Chart language. This is a different animal. So that's what I got here. Besides, you know, sailors. Just a crazy beast. I have no idea how he keeps his schedule.
- [30:33]
A
Where to get the billionaire. Do we know anyone? I mean by right. 90,000, 10,000 something Bitcoin. It was just under a billion dollars. I mean we've seen seen him kind of putting along, you know, with 50 million and 150 million here. By the way. Not small numbers. I'm being sarcastic. But then every once in a while he just spikes one of these billions and you just.
- [30:58]
H
Yeah, dude, like his last few purchases, I was worried because I'm like hey, hey, you seem to be like slowing down here. This was 10,000. I like it, dude. It's awesome.
- [31:10]
A
And I think bit mine bought. He bought 600 and something million in each last week. So Sailor's not the only buyer in the crypto market.
- [31:21]
H
How comfortable do you think he is right now compared to Saylor?
- [31:27]
A
You mean as far as like on the risk side? I mean I think he's very happy to be buying cheaper since he can.
- [31:35]
The odds of blowing up, I would, I would have to think are higher than Sailors just based on time in the market and structure. But I, I don't know. I'm not trying to cause fud. Wouldn't you agree?
- [31:46]
H
I mean, wouldn't you assume I'd be nervous as if I was him?
- [31:51]
D
Dude, right.
- [31:51]
A
That's a much easier.
- [31:56]
H
They should rename it Tom Lee Coin.
- [31:58]
D
Really?
- [31:59]
H
Because what's his name in the skinny little freak show most certainly isn't going to take it 800 level whatever it's supposed to go to, you mean.
- [32:11]
A
I think buterin was likely to take it 800 if we're making jokes, right? Because it was obviously there was a lot of weight on that.
- [32:19]
H
I gotta say. I saw him do a presentation the other night and if that's their leadership, like did he sing, bro, the guy looked like he, he, I, I don't know what he was doing. Okay. Just didn't.
- [32:35]
A
Well, I, I, I introduced him I guess at the Paris, Paris blockchain. He spoke. I think it was Paris Blockchain. And he just came out and said, like saying in Japanese for like, seven minutes.
- [32:53]
H
It's a. It's a new era.
- [32:55]
A
Wish I had that kind of balls. I'm gonna start doing that on my show. You guys are gonna just come on here, and I'm just gonna start singing in foreign languages for the first 12 minutes instead of the starting music. That could actually work.
- [33:08]
I
If you dance like him, though, that might be a game ender.
- [33:14]
A
You never know, man. And it's, you know, this. This new generation, they like some things that, you know, are unexpected, could really appeal to the kids.
- [33:24]
I
If the speakers show up in furry outfits, who knows? It may expand the audience.
- [33:28]
A
And you kind of gave us a little, like, hint, but okay, so in Abu Dhabi right now, you effectively have finance week, right? Which is like a huge traffic conference. Formula One, Polo Break, Solana, Break Point, Bitcoin, arguably the biggest, like, week of events anywhere that you can basically put together.
- [33:52]
I
Yeah, they are buying culture. That's it. I met a tourism guy, was in at the meeting today, and they're buying culture. They're going to build five museums on an island where that are going to replicate natural history, the Louvre. And they actually get exhibitions from these museums as well. Well, so it's not just fake. They actually will import some of the works over time in a cycle. So that's one thing. The. The overall vibe is there's more money than culture, and that's why they're trying to buy it. They're trying to buy.
- [34:29]
B
Yeah.
- [34:30]
A
How about the. On the actual bitcoin minus specifically, like, is it. You know, it's about meetings. You were. Okay, it is because you were a bitcoin.
- [34:39]
I
The big room is the big room. Big rooms, not filled.
- [34:43]
Still great people, great audience. But it's almost built for the publication of the videos after.
- [34:53]
So that it. It's about. It's like the VCR game. It's not about the initial run in the industry.
- [34:59]
A
Not like Vegas. Not like Vegas, no.
- [35:03]
I
And. And not like.
- [35:08]
Not 20,000. I don't know, but I would say something like, well, the main room there, Falcon slash, Nakamoto stage, was probably.
- [35:19]
400 max people at the bigger settings.
- [35:25]
And yeah, it's not a. It's not a filled room, but there are real. There's some real people here. So it is about getting the audience with the authorities, with the sovereign and the investment authorities. And you do have some access to them. So that's why it's very different than a Vegas or Miami before that kind of conference and the VIP room makes a difference as far as connecting with people. That's really what does help. But overall, no, it is. They don't have plebs out here. So you're not going to fill the room.
- [36:09]
A
Yeah. I mean, it's easy to fill a room in Vegas. Right. It's a lot harder to get people on a plane to Abu Dhabi.
- [36:16]
I
Yeah.
- [36:17]
A
I would imagine that you would anticipate it being a more institutional event. I was just curious kind of what the vibe is on the market, you know, treasury companies. Because when we went to Vegas, Gary, you know, in May, they all. It was just treasury companies. That was it. Right. Bitcoin treasury company pitches left and right. And I mean, that only took a few months. Where people standing on all of that. Are those the conversations. Are there conversations about building on bitcoin? I mean, what. You know, when you're saying people are taking meetings, is it just people raising money for their money for their dad?
- [36:53]
I
Yes. No. So there's. I met a guy doing something called Muscat. Muscat. Musket, which is a payment system. He's a Brit and he's raising capital for that. He's been Bitcoin about 10 years. It's going to be a. Something to try to compete with Square. So you have some investments. Another group is doing.
- [37:19]
What type of leveraged bitcoin investment.
- [37:25]
So there are businesses that are trying to raise capital that are. That are bitcoin, Bitcoin focused. So that's. So it's not just that. Although today was on the enterprise stage was all bitcoin treasuries. You know, Dylan, Meta Planet is all over the place.
- [37:42]
A
When's the last time they bought bitcoin and they bought bitcoin this quarter?
- [37:47]
I
I don't know.
- [37:49]
D
Yeah.
- [37:52]
A
It seems like there's a lot of dry powder running out. I mean, how many of these guys, besides Seller and I guess Tom Lee, have you seen active purchasing from.
- [38:02]
I
And I think that that says a lot. They're definitely the. They're definitely not licking, you know, in other words, licking their wounds. But they're overall, the deaths are, you know, they're not pounding their chest. But it was there today, you know, was on stage, Callahan running a group. You had, obviously Nakamoto, you had Lauren Asthmas, who works for.
- [38:31]
Etxo, slash, you know, BTC Inc. So of course you're going to have bitcoin treasury, because David's, you know, group is heavily focused based on that right now.
- [38:45]
And then, you know, it's the Same.
- [38:47]
H
I was knock his presentation.
- [38:52]
I
They were on a panel. So it wasn't just NACA.
- [38:56]
Similar stuff. There's not new information. There wasn't any discussion that I heard of.
- [39:01]
H
Hey was the panel made up of like was the panel called the 90% down crew or how was it labeled they there?
- [39:13]
I
I, I will, I. The one thing I'll give credit to the treasury guys is they recognize where they are.
- [39:21]
They're not making light of it world. They're not making light of it.
- [39:27]
C
And.
- [39:29]
I
Who knows what, what, what, what comes next. I, I sure, I sure don't know.
- [39:34]
H
What do you think they're saying? I mean the, the truth is I think too many launched all at the same time. Right. But what are they saying behind them? You know behind closed doors? I'm wondering because you have to look some of the boards have to look around and go whoa, whoa, maybe we got too many of these and there's no plan here.
- [39:53]
I
No, there's no what? There's no plan?
- [39:55]
G
No.
- [39:55]
H
There's no more money to buy bitcoin which was the strategy. It's going to be easy for us to raise money. We're going to be able to buy bitcoin in multiples over you Joe Individual and it's just not true. It's not accurate at all.
- [40:14]
I
I agree. I'm not pretty to the, the inside of the room.
- [40:18]
H
I would, you know Scott and, and a few other guys were in a closed room and we were sitting on the boards of these. What would we be saying to each other? Like I don't know. I'm not trying to poo poo on it.
- [40:32]
I
I don't know what, I don't know what the exit, what, what the exit strategy is. You know the how do you. The only way to monetize it is to, is to capture the discount and sell bitcoin.
- [40:45]
That's the, that's the fiduciary and sailor committed to it by doing derivatives or bitcoin. So that's the only thing you can do is a Treasury.
- [40:56]
And they have to I don't know why they would even balk at it. You have to do that. Why would you sit there with a discount when you can monetize it?
- [41:05]
H
No idea. I just don't to me what has to happen is that these guys need to get either merge two broken companies or we're going to start seeing problems which won't be good for the bit. I'm not sure it'd be horrible for bitcoin but I don't know how long this can go on.
- [41:26]
I
Cleaning them up would be absolutely helpful. I. I don't know if it means, you know, people said. And it might have been said on this call so that I. I'll probably regurgitate saying something about Sailor has options, including, you know, buying Nakamoto at a 50 discount. He can sell Bitcoin or maybe he buys another debt at a discount instead of buying Bitcoin because it'll. Would it, you know, would that help move it higher? Could he be that, you know, the Buffett impact.
- [42:03]
A
I don't think.
- [42:03]
H
I don't think. I don't think anyone should wait for him to buy a company. I don't think he'll do that. He's been poo pooed on buying company so many times, five, six years ago. He hates the whole merger idea because he knows it doesn't work too cold.
- [42:19]
I
No, he wouldn't buy the company. He would just buy the shares.
- [42:25]
H
If you buy the shares, you're not buying any of the liabilities.
- [42:30]
I
No, no. You're just. You're just fine.
- [42:34]
H
Right. If it comes with any baggage, there's no reason.
- [42:38]
I
It's like, it's. It's like the GBTC trade, which, you know, probably a bunch of us on this call at a very bad and then very good time if you stayed with it on that trade.
- [42:52]
Because I don't know what other liabilities these guys have.
- [42:56]
I guess they have somebody.
- [42:57]
E
I don't know why they would ever sell sub market price for whatever Bitcoin that they have. Right. I mean, there's. There's no crying in the casino for these guys.
- [43:08]
At this point.
- [43:09]
H
Yeah, but there must, Joe. There must be liabilities and covenant.
- [43:13]
E
I wouldn't buy them. He'll wait for them to capitulate and then he can just buy the Bitcoin at a lower price where he's not liquidated.
- [43:21]
And then, I mean, looks like this, this last purchase for them.
- [43:26]
95 of the proceeds came from common shares from a. A strategy sale, and then 5% came from stride Preferred shares. So, I mean, he's just. He's running the playbook, you know, he's going to keep running his playbook. I don't know why he would delve into. I mean, there's so many of these companies now. Maybe they try to figure something out, but like, why pay legal fees? Headache.
- [43:51]
A
What?
- [43:51]
E
You know, are there employees that you actually have to bring over brand. Like there's just too much there. It's like, just let him sell the Bitcoin culture.
- [44:01]
H
Yeah, he's got a peculiar culture, dude. Not everybody just fits into his organization.
- [44:07]
I
Yeah, I, I, and if, if you listen to him, Joe, I, I think you're right as far as running the playbook. And his playbook has changed in the last nine months. I would say evolved just to be the digital capital, which he's more interested in developing product than being cute. On how to buy bitcoin. I mentioned it only because I don't know what else you would do as a, as a dad that doesn't have cash flow to buy new bitcoin and just hoping for the discount to go away.
- [44:44]
E
I think that's why strategy somewhat worked is because they did have revenues.
- [44:49]
D
Right.
- [44:49]
E
Even though it's dwarfed by the amount of bitcoin that they have and the speculation and the potential S and P entry. They did have cash flow. They do have a bi tool, but long term, it's like, why wouldn't you want to operate a business that throws off fiat cash and use that? Right. We still live in that world. It would be just operate an epic business and a lot of these younger founders that are launching tokens and what they're doing, I'm like, just figure out how to make money and start making some money and if it's not working, pivot into something new until you actually see a customer paying you. And then you can do all these funky other things on the outset of that. Right. And that's what the big companies do on public markets anyway.
- [45:33]
I
Right.
- [45:33]
E
They're buying back their stock, they're making profit, they're buying back their stock, they're just doing that. And then speculation comes when you get the crazy awesome CEOs like, you know, Alex Car and Elon that are, you know, getting these huge pay packages and, you know, trade at 500 times earnings. You know, you could be that person and be that thing, but you, you have to live on a foundation of, of actual fiat money coming into your business, at least at this stage, or stable coin or whatever interesting thing that you're doing, but it's really difficult to do.
- [46:08]
And you know, the, like we talked last week about the killer app. Like polymarket has a killer app, is the killer app. Everyone's talking about it, but it's done nothing for the matic price, it's done nothing for the poly price.
- [46:23]
So, you know, you got to actually make, make money.
- [46:27]
A
Yeah. I think the reality that we're seeing is that there had to be a repricing of these things because none of those things should fundamentally move Price or they were wildly overpriced in the first place. I mean, even if you see these, this fundamental adoption or, you know, usage increasing, like what is the value of a marginal increase in gas fees or revenue from gas when gas fees actually should be arbed away and become lower as there's competition?
- [46:58]
E
Coinbase has no gas fees.
- [46:59]
A
What is the value of any of these things?
- [47:01]
E
What I said Coinsbase basically has no gas fees.
- [47:06]
You can use Base and use USDC without gas fees. They're listing almost every token that will be traded on any Dex on Coinbase, that game is now kind of over.
- [47:17]
A
Right.
- [47:17]
E
From a centralized perspective, you'll be able to buy Dex coins. These things are all merging into one. It's like, where's the revenue there? I know they said they were never going to launch a token. They might launch a token, but that would crush Ethereum. Right. All the eth use on these other chains, that's the value of Ethereum. Like when Mark said tcp, ip, Ethereum is the closest thing we have to that.
- [47:40]
But again, there's no actual revenue coming from these things. Then there's staking, which ultimately is inflating the chain and inflating out some of the value there. So it's a tough game for them right now.
- [47:56]
A
Yeah. Even when I had this very public sort of conversation on X with Joel Katz, David Schwartz from xrp, because I, I guess said something that was somehow determined to be critical of XRP and obviously got assaulted, you know, from every direction. But you and I engaged in a constructive debate about it. And he even was saying when we were debating the value of xrp, that eventually the gas fee should go to zero and it should effectively not have much value on their own token. Right. So I don't know what the answer is there, William, go ahead.
- [48:37]
G
Now, I was going to ask, why did, why would something, whatever you said happens on Base, why would that crush Ethereum? I didn't get that.
- [48:49]
E
I'm saying if BASE launches their own gas token and people no longer need to hold Ethereum as gas fees. Ethan, Base. That's not bullish for Ethereum.
- [49:05]
G
I don't think that's related. Again, people think that what's.
- [49:12]
If some of these L2s are successful, that it's bad for Ethereum. And this focus on gas fees and revenues, that does not make any sense for Ethereum because it's more than that. It's a lot more than that. Ethereum is the security layer. So whatever is good for Base is good for Ethereum. And.
- [49:39]
Users don't think of, oh, I'm going to hold now this token instead of the other token, they just do transactions and the whole thing grows. It's the whole ecosystem that grows together. And right now Ethereum should not be seen anymore as a revenue user extraction kind of a platform. It's, it's an infrastructure, it's a public good infrastructure. The closest to it is TCP ip. If TCP IP had a token, imagine what the value of that would be.
- [50:26]
E
Yes, but if the underlying token utilized is no longer Ethereum and there's no gas being used there, and those infrastructure is completely different and they're just using the coding language that was invented, how does the value flow back to Ethereum?
- [50:44]
G
Because Ethereum is the underlying, it's no.
- [50:48]
E
Longer the underlying, it's no longer, no, it is.
- [50:52]
G
Base is an L2. When base stops being an L2, then yes, Ethereum will stop being the security layer, but that's not going to happen. All of the security is underwritten, quote is underwritten by the base layer of ethereum. So the L1, that's where the buck stops.
- [51:20]
The base is just think of it as an outpost of, of the ecosystem. Ethereum's function does not stop. I mean, look, I mean, Polygon has their own token and some of the other L2s have their own token, but a Ethereum still secures the transactions. That's how it works.
- [51:51]
E
Yes. And would you say that all of the value is still continuing to flow to Ethereum and it's performed like that over the last four years?
- [52:03]
G
Well, Ethereum is still mispriced. Right now. I have an upcoming report, I hope to release it this week, where I'm proposing a methodology to evaluate Ethereum like a public grid and along three dimensions. I'm not going to give you the whole spiel, but what we see right now is the captured value. There is hidden value in terms of flows and trust surplus that I'm quantifying. And that's kind of when somebody understands that, then you will see that Ethereum is a lot more than what's being perceived and what's being seen.
- [52:42]
D
Right now.
- [52:49]
A
I have lost the entire panel. Can you guys hear me? I see no speakers, so I, I know you were having a conversation with Joe, but Joe seems to be gone. Unless he's.
- [52:57]
I
Yeah.
- [53:00]
Yeah, I can hear.
- [53:01]
A
Okay, well, I think we've, I, I've been working through enough glitches today. We're gonna go ahead and wrap this one up a couple minutes early and we'll run it back tomorrow. So back tomorrow for another crypto Town hall. Thank you, gentlemen. It's hard to run this thing when the platform doesn't work. So go ahead and cut. Cut bait and. And we'll. Thank you, guys. Have a good one. Bye.
- [53:24]
I
Thank you.
- [53:36]
D
It.