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- [00:01]
Scott Melker
It's been another crazy week for crypto news and the market. And once again we have to focus squarely on what's happening in Washington. There are a lot of stories for NLW and I to break down. So we're going to get to it right now on the Friday 5. Let's go, let's go. Let's dope. What is up everybody? I'm Scott Melker, also known as the Wolf of Allstreets. Before we get started, please subscribe to the channel and hit that like button. Gonna bring on NLW right now. It's the Thursday evening 5. Just in case, you know the entire world explodes by Friday. But yeah, we're recording this night before. Yeah. Which happens every time we try this. So it's almost guaranteed. But we've got some big stories and once again man, we've got gotta look at Washington. I mean this was a crazy, crazy week. We pretty much thought that stablecoin legislation was a slam Dunn bipartisan support crypto army, you know, anti crypto army was completely dead. It didn't exist anymore. And then we had complete mayhem and insanity. Maybe you can just break it down.
- [01:23]
NLW
Boy, there's so much to break down. I think that what I would say and I'll start with the good news. It's not clear to me that this is exclusively the return of the anti crypto army. There's a piece of that, but then there's also this other piece which is a very different story. So let's try to unpack kind of those two sides. So the first is, let's talk about the, the straight up theatrics anti crypto army side of this. I think best embodied and Maxine Waters staging a walkout of.
- [01:57]
Scott Melker
Want to see it?
- [01:57]
NLW
A mark appearing? Yeah, let's do it.
- [01:59]
Scott Melker
You want to see it? We got like the clip of not the full walkout to this joint hearing. Let's try this one more time. Adding to the stage here we go to this joint hearing because of the corruption of the President of the United States and his ownership of crypto and his oversight of all the agencies. I object. Okay. And then a bunch of them marched out, right? And like there is.
- [02:25]
NLW
Four of them marched, okay.
- [02:27]
Scott Melker
A very small bunch of them watched out and then they kind of had their own like we're gonna have our own party on the side and cry and held their own round table on the side. By the way, I have it on very good information that Maxine Waters in these past few hearings we have a lot of people from the industry that were there is Biden level dementia at this point, like cannot put together a sentence. Three aids standing around her, trying to get her to read sentences. Pretty bad.
- [02:52]
NLW
Yeah. Yeah. Well, so, so, okay, so to some extent this feels like it was pretty inevitable. And this did not really have to do with market structure legislation or stablecoin legislation. This had to do with political opening because of, you know, Trump's rocky popularity, because of tariffs and tariff related insecurity. And this group of Democrats once again thinking that hanging crypto around his neck is a smart political move. You know, this was really not about any of the substantive things. That was actually the frustration for people who are in the room who are trying to get this done was kind of like, let's separate these two things. And what I think is actually pretty ironic is that one of the more popular bipartisan positions is that elected officials shouldn't really be able to profit off of their, you know, insider knowledge. Like this is opinion that Republicans and Democrats hold in fairly equal measure. Maybe that's overstating the case. But, you know, there's a reason that we, you know, Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker is a joke, right? This is both sides of the aisle. People don't like it. And so this splinter group that went off into the other room, they spent most of their time kind of ranting and raving about Trump and the Trump family's, you know, connection to crypto and stuff. And they came up with this bill that would prohibit people, you know, who are elected officials and their immediate family from being involved in crypto in certain ways. And what I think is ironic about this is that hold aside the theatrics and the grandstanding, I think that there's probably a, a whole bunch of support that you could get for that. You know, you get bipartisan support for that. I mean, like, there are lots and lots of people in crypto who aren't super fans of meme coins being launched, you know, the weeks before the inauguration.
- [04:40]
Scott Melker
Yeah, exactly. But at the end of the day, they pushed the vote through today. The Republicans thought they obviously had the votes and we're going to just go ahead and make it happen. And it failed. I mean, it failed 48 to 49. And for those who are quick to blame the Democrats, which is obviously our knee jack jerk reaction, last time I checked, the Republicans hold the Senate. And therefore two Republicans being Josh Hawley and Rand Paul, joined those few Democrats in voting no and making sure that this didn't yet get to the floor. To be clear, this is not a complete failure. Correct. This is, this is just kind of going back to the drawing board.
- [05:21]
NLW
Yeah, no, this is. So this gets us to sort of this, the second side of this, which is the more substantive frustrations with, with the stablecoin bill. You know, the, so the face of this sort of, you know, the Democrat side of this has been Ruben Gallego who took $10 million or something from, from Fair Shake, you know, who wasn't seen as a, as a crypto antagonist. And what's really hard to, to parse out is how much truth there is to the sort of Democrat pitch that, that a bunch of things that they had thought were, you know, argued for were kind of, you know, changed on them. And so they're throwing their bodies in front of it. Like it doesn't seem basically that this is pure obstructionist where they actually don't want stablecoin legislation to come to a vote. It does appear to be they are not resolved on these issues. And the, the train was leaving the station in a way that they had to kind of lie in front of the tracks. That's. And so whether you think that that's right or wrong, that's still very different than again, Maxine Water staging a dramatic walkout or something like that. So I, it is very possible that by next week at this time when we're doing this show, things could be more back on the, the line. It's very hard to tell from outside. There's sort of a, a bit of a fog of war. And the quotes that I'm seeing in, you know, various media don't have me convinced one way or another about this.
- [06:53]
Scott Melker
Yeah. And then there's questions obviously as to how this affects the stable act on the House side. Right. Because you had both houses sort of come together for this round table that she marched out of that clearly got a bit of a snowball effect for an anti genius act sentiment which did cause it to get at least rejected for now. And now we have one on the House side as well that probably has a lot of people with their eyes on that saying, well, if didn't happen in the Senate, maybe we'll flip over here as well.
- [07:24]
NLW
Yeah. Yeah. Look, I am going to, for the moment choose to be optimistic. I think, in fact, this is my sort of, you know, hot take. The ridiculousness of the sort of political grandstanding sort of walkout may actually weirdly get more Democrats on board with trying to treat this seriously because it just looks so pathetic and stupid and of a different era in some ways. That, you know, if it, if, look, we'll know by, like I said, we'll know by this time next week if this is really just the Democrats saying we still have serious issues with this that are not addressed and you're trying to move it too fast and we had to slow you down, but we want this to happen. We'll know really fast. That's not a position you can fake for long and that's at least what the, what the rhetoric is. So I don't know, it could be okay, but it's weird right now.
- [08:20]
Scott Melker
It's very weird. I also think it will be okay. And I think there's things that we don't know. Right. And like you said, maybe there's just some nuance here and a couple sentences get changed and all of a sudden we're celebrating the genius act, you know, moving forward by next week.
- [08:34]
NLW
Look, I mean, the other piece of this is that there is, there is a lot of politics happening around crypto right now that have nothing to do with crypto. There are assessments being made that have to do with political openings from, you know, from totally unrelated issues in terms of like, you know, Trump popularity and not the Republicans do have a little bit of a feel of God, I want to get this through now in case it gets worse in terms of, you know, our power. They try Democrats are sort of throwing their bodies in front of that because probably there's a little bit of an assessment there that maybe they're in a better position than they were three or four weeks ago. So, you know, and that's the part that we can't control as an industry. And we just kind of have to, you know, put, put our chill hats on and hope it gets fine.
- [09:19]
Scott Melker
Well, moving out of Washington into the houses of power in our wonderful states of America, New Hampshire becomes first state to approve crypto reserve law. This is definitively good news. So we can't be upset about this one at all, especially when this came on the back of the first, earlier this week, a rejection in Arizona, which we'll get to, and of course, Florida, who many expected would be a layup for a strategic bitcoin reserve, basically saying it's not going to happen here. And as that follow up quickly, Arizona governor did sign into law the second bill that came onto her desk for state to keep unclaimed crypto, sort of a strategic bitcoin reserve law. And Texas moving forward with their bill as well, which is obviously bullish. But New Hampshire gets all the, all the flowers, I think right here for getting this done first.
- [10:09]
NLW
Completely appropriate for the don't tread on me state to, to, to be first, first to the bitcoin party. I mean, Bruce Fenton is cheering, you know, fist pumping somewhere, but obviously, obviously, you know, makes complete sense.
- [10:26]
Scott Melker
It does make complete sense. They were going to be first. They moved relatively fast compared to others. But let's dig into those others because I think everybody knows the news that New Hampshire got approved. Great. We can get into the nuance. I don't think it's necessary to be quite honest.
- [10:39]
NLW
It's New Hampshire that's a nuance.
- [10:41]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I think Arizona is the stranger story, obviously because the governor vetoed the first one. The second one was a very watered down version, I think, and that did pass. So we have a kind of strategic bitcoin reserve builder.
- [10:54]
NLW
Yeah, I mean, look, I think that once again, if we're talking about the, the, the larger politics that crypto is subject to, I think Arizona is another great example of this. This governor vetoed an extraordinary percentage of the bills that have come through her. I think it was something like 85 out of 250, whereas the previous high was something like 49 in the legislative session Senate, the, the, you know, the, both bills, both houses in, in Arizona are controlled by, by Republicans, but she's a Democrat, so there's much bigger tension going on there and it's very hard to get a sense of again, how much it's about crypto versus just it, sticking it to them. You know, look, the, the, if we want to like actually read the text of the language without over interpreting it, she basically says state punch pensions aren't a place to, to, to be experimenting with this stuff. Never mind the fact that one of their biggest pensions has a big investment in microstrategy, but they are, you know, look, I think, I think some people are sympathetic to that. The people who are working to advance this in Arizona point out quickly that it didn't say that they have to buy anything. It just said that they could at some point in the future, should it make sense. So I don't know. It was, it was already watered down. They picked a version that was even more watered down to some extent. I, I, you know, I feel like a lot of these stories all come back to us not necessarily being primarily political watchers and just actually having firsthand experience for the first time of how frustratingly incremental everything is in politics. Even when you get wins.
- [12:35]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I think we'll take our wins. And once again, the story is New Hampshire because they really did it.
- [12:39]
NLW
Yep. Don't tread on them.
- [12:41]
Scott Melker
Next story here, Apple eases NFT crypto rules for iOS apps. Following antitrust ruling, Apple's loosen restrictions on develop developers ability to offer iPhone and iPad apps directing users to external purchasing methods including to NFTs. Guess the bigger story here is that 30% that they tax everyone on for anything, right?
- [13:01]
NLW
Yep. Yeah, I mean look, once again courts making things safe for crypto the, the strangest of bedfellows that have been for the last, you know, three, three or four years. Look, this is, I think this is pretty unreservedly good news. No one likes the Apple tax. Apple, you know, has huge power to constrain activity because of this. You know, unfortunately for crypto, this is sort of, you know, a few, few years past the prime of when some of these opportunities would have been most exciting. But who knows what stuff it opens up in the future that wouldn't have even been, you know, able to be considered in the past. So again, I think this is another unreservedly good news thing for, for the industry creates lots of space that will not materialize into real exc for some time, but it opens up a whole new set of entrepreneurial activities that are going to bear fruit at some point.
- [13:53]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I think there's this consistent theme in all the news that we report on a weekly basis that it's big because we're removing friction and we're moving past friction that could prevent things, but it's too early to tell how much that will actually open the doors to how much we've built, how many people will actually take advantage of this. But it's nice to know that we can.
- [14:14]
NLW
Yep, yep, absolutely. And I think that part of the reason that it, it is so frustratingly slow in some ways is that we still have not recovered the core thing that we lost around ftx, which was normal people thinking that we're completely and utterly insane. That still remains the case. And until there's new blood and new energy, we're just cycling capital. Now of course the cool thing about this cycle is that a lot of, there is a lot of new capital from those institutions that we swore up and down. We're just waiting to get in for a decade and they, they finally did start to come. So it's not like there's nothing new that's happened, but boy, has you know, the, the, the regular kind of person not come back at all. You know, I think about this all the time and in the immediate wake of that everyone, everyone felt like and Said we set ourselves five years back. Sam said us at least five years back with, with, you know, with FTX in particular. We're only on year two and a half, you know, and, you know, the rest of things recovered so much faster in some ways, like everyone would come with it, but, you know, individuals have not.
- [15:19]
Scott Melker
Yeah, well, I can't speak for NFTs and all of that, but I think Bitcoin has fully recovered from that and is on its way. We have a number of companies adding to the Treasury. This is not a story we were going to discuss today, but that train has left the station. I think he is still, largely, to your point, set back the crypto industry in the United States. Even as all of this friction is removed. I got to do an honorable mention right in the middle of this because you brought up SAM and FTX, which is that today former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky sentenced 12 years for fraud.
- [15:48]
NLW
12 years. And these, these guys are, I mean, look, here's, here's a question for you. How much do you think that this is crypto specific or is this sort of the new paradigm that white collar criminals should expect? Because one thing that was always interesting to me is how much, again, like they were being made an example of for the crypto industry versus there being a shift and, and trying to have sort of less tolerance for, you know, for, for fraud in general.
- [16:17]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I think it's, I think it's actually more of the latter. I think that people who thought they would do it as an industry specific thing probably think Sam would have gotten life and that Mashinsky would have gotten 25 years.
- [16:28]
NLW
Yeah.
- [16:29]
Scott Melker
So, yeah, I think that when I look at the sentiment, it's like, why so little? I can't speak to whether it's why so little? But that, that is definitely the sentiment across the board. But of course, you have very emotionally and financially hurt people by these actors. So you're never going to get, I think, an accurate perception from the public of what those sentences should be. But that was an honorable mention. So moving on, we have, I guess, back to Washington. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant says US should be the premier destination for digital assets. Listen, they've been saying these things over and over again. We're getting it from every person in government, from every department and every regulator. But still, nice to see that they're beating the drum on the United States becoming the center of crypto in the world.
- [17:16]
NLW
Even more than that, Bessant is the one who is either tasked with or has tasked himself with starting to lay out the vision for what this global economic reordering looks like on the other side right there. We're clearly in the midst of a big global change. No number of these trade deals, US uk, you know, China being negotiated in Switzerland this weekend is going to have us return to the old paradigm. There is going to be something new that's going to look and feel different. And I think that it is positive that the people who are sort of taking the wrecking ball to, to the existing system clearly see a place for crypto and digital assets and stable coins in the sort of the future that they are trying to enable, if not design.
- [18:02]
Scott Melker
Yeah, I think that in the midst of this conversation, we have to obviously mention what happened with the Fed this week. Takeaways from the Fed rate decision and Powell's briefing, of course. Also in the context of that, we got the announcement of an announcement that ended up being Trump hails UK trade framework as first of many tariff deals. So we've got some tariff clarity, we've got Powell standing firm, but market's still going up regardless of all of it.
- [18:28]
NLW
Yeah. So Powell, Powell, this was maybe the least eventful FOMC that we've had and since Powell took office, I don't even know. It was very, very. It was a whole bundle of nothing. I think he said wait and see about 38 times was his sort of catchphrase for, for this, which is completely predictable, you know. And look, his position is that he has just no idea. Yeah, he has in this case. Yeah. He has no idea what is likely to happen next and which things are gonna get wonky. And so they're in wait and see mode. Meanwhile, I think what's interesting about markets right now is they are. This is the less optimistic thing. Markets are trying to price in the resolution of the trade wars and tariffs. And at some point even if we got deals across all of these things, they're going to wake up and realize that the whole system has been still fundamentally changed. We're not going back to something similar to what we. We're not going back to 2024 when it comes to China. Even if we go from 145 tariffs to, you know, 10 across the board and no de minimis exemption, that would be enough to transform everything. So markets are desperate. Markets are so looking for good news right now. And, and God bless. I, I don't want my price to.
- [19:54]
Scott Melker
Get hurt, but boy, I was going to say the same thing. It's like any excuse for people to buy they're looking for. I mean, what a V shaped recovery. I think it was nine, almost 10 days in a row to the upside. Just crazy. And bitcoin led it all, which is amazing. Right? You got to remember that stocks only made it back to basically liberation Day and then slightly above as of today, which when people list this will be yesterday. But bitcoin went from like 82 to over 101. Yep. Big, big difference in the way that bitcoin has behaved through all of this. And I think it's just funny as an honorable mention, as a part of this, I mean, Trump literally said buy, buy stocks, right? He goes on tv, is like, this now is a really good time to buy. We're going to pump the markets. Golden age. Buy stocks now before China stocks this weekend. So he is actively giving them what they want if that's what markets are looking for.
- [20:45]
NLW
Yep. No, I mean, you know, look, I, I, I, I am never one to say to sort of doom and gloom, you know, like, I think in general we're better when we're optimistic. So I hope it continues. But I think that this, it's gonna be, it's gonna get weirder before it gets clearer is in, in my humble.
- [21:05]
Scott Melker
Opinion, I think it's gonna be a very, very strange summer. Yeah, very, very strange summer.
- [21:11]
NLW
It might be a little less boring than our normal summers.
- [21:13]
Scott Melker
That's right, it might. So we have the final story here, which is huge $2.9 billion deal. I think this is the biggest deal it is ever. Yeah. Coinbase buys Deribit to expand in US crypto options market includes 700 million in cash, 11 million shares of Coinbase Class A common stock. So when this was first reported a few weeks ago that it was likely, I think it was more like 4 billion if I recall correctly. So it's a little bit down from that. But I mean, this is just monster news because Deribit is far and away and it ain't even close. The largest exchange for futures trading and options trading in crypto.
- [21:52]
NLW
I mean it's, it's huge. Huge for Coinbase, huge for Derbit, huge for, you know, I mean they, they, they're building a juggernaut. They're building a juggernaut that, you know, I mean, look, it's been very clear for a very long time for anyone watching that Coinbase's ambitions do not extend at the water's edge of crypt. You know, they stop at the water's edge of crypto. I think that, you know, this is the secret that, that I look, some bankers I think actually get. I think it's why you see so much antagonism and sort of, you know, so much political fight right now around stable coins is bankers have gotten the memo that crypto is coming for them. You know, I mean, again, this is a whole different era and it's been besmirched in time. But do you remember the headline when Sam Altman or when Sam Bankman fried said that he was going to buy Goldman Sachs one day and slip.
- [22:44]
Scott Melker
But yes, I do remember that.
- [22:45]
NLW
Yeah, yeah, I know. Too many billionaire Sams. Yeah, it was, it was, it was huge. And, and the thing was no one thought he was unserious. And there, a lot of crypto people realized that. They thought that that's actually the trajectory that, that we're on, you know, crypto system eating the regular system. And you know, they're, they're building a.
- [23:06]
Scott Melker
Juggernaut that can question on this deal is that, you know, we have the headline which is buys Deribit to expand in US Crypto options market. But to be clear, Deribit does not operate in the US So I was sort of pondering this. Is this a move to control this futures market, to have the biggest exchange but to expand internationally, or is there actually something here that would allow them to offer these products that just aren't allowed in the United States?
- [23:34]
NLW
I. My read. So I, I think that headline was confused in my. Yeah, I, I think that this is Coinbase competing out rather than competing in. Yeah. Now there may be fringe bet like it is. There is infrastructure that can be ported over as, you know, licensure gets ready and all that sort of stuff. So I don't think that that's a, that's nothing. But this is Coinbase saying we're, you know, we've been, we've been fine to chill over here in the US as this big market, but we're coming for you, you know.
- [24:03]
Scott Melker
Yeah. We're taking over the world and we're going to own the leverage derivative side of it as well. Which it really is just massive news. But yeah, I think that's a bad headline because I don't think that this implies that all of a sudden that volume's coming to the U.S. nope. All right, well, we did it. We nailed it. The late Thursday 5, aka the Friday 5. I wonder what the price of bitcoin will be tomorrow because as we're talking Today, it's over 101. And I think last time we did this, it moved like $5,000 in 12 hours or something?
- [24:33]
NLW
Probably. Yeah.
- [24:35]
Scott Melker
More. All right, well, I still think these are going to be the biggest stores stories of the week, and I'm sticking to it. Guys. Give NLW a follow. Check out the breakdown, of course. And that is all we've got for you today. Thanks, man. Cheers. That's dope. That's dope.