← The Wolf Of All Streets
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- [00:00]
A
Morning everybody and welcome to Crypto Town all every weekday 10:15am Eastern Standard Time right here on X. And we have a nice little bounce across crypto markets to talk about bitcoin trading right about $105,000 right now. Obviously it was trading above 106 before markets opened but James Lavish just pointed out a macro Monday this morning. Had to flush some leverage for idiot who can get liquidated over a $1,000 move before bouncing and heading right back up to where we were before. A lot happened this weekend. We have you know, Trump floating 50 year mortgages and $2,000 stimulus checks. We got the government unshutting down on all of this, potentially buoying bitcoin at a very key hundred thousand dollar ish support level. So a lot to unpack, a lot to discuss some macro, some very crypto related. Dave, where do we start?
- [01:13]
B
Bring realization that the Republicans are if anything going to overreact and certainly will not ignore the drubbing they took even in was in Democratic stronghold states, you know, on, on issues of affordability. And so you're going to see messaging and buttons being pulled, pushed and levers being pulled to make life better for the younger voters one way or another. I phrase this as simple. The, this, this shutdown wasn't about austerity versus versus profligacy, it was about profligacy versus more profligacy. And the only difference really is if you get right down to it is Republicans insisting that things that were temporary that have been used to help non Americans need to stop but they both agree that they need to help Americans. There's no, there's no, no difference there. This is a true unit party situation when it comes to spending meaning to, you know, meaning that there's literally no end to deficits. Right. You know, these two trillion dollar deficits which by the way could be worse if in fact tax receipts are down. The, the unique, the uniqueness of this large drop in government spending for a month that's going to now catch up very quickly could very well actually exacerbate the full year deficit a bit. But the truth is that there's a huge amount of liquidity that's about to enter back into markets and never, never forget how sensitive bitcoin is to liquidity. So I think that's the context that you have to really look at and we'll see. I mean anyone who believes, I don't know of anybody, maybe someone on the panel thinks that all of a sudden we're going to get real forms in a way that's going to be constraining to the money supply and we're going to start spending less money. I just don't see it and I don't see how anyone can look at it that way.
- [03:35]
A
Maybe we should start here with do people think that the market has bottomed? I think that we are certainly bottoming. A lot of the signals I like are there, but still, you know, ways to go, I think to start to prove it. But I would love to open it to the panel and see what people think of this bounce, this move kind of up around 105,000. If it's meaningful, they think the bottom is in. Anybody raise your hand and jump in. Tom, then Ryan.
- [04:10]
C
Hey guys, good morning. Good evening. So I think the thing that I took away from this weekend is the equity markets and crypto markets, but man, is he really leaning into it, right? $2,000 stimulus checks, 50 year mortgages on the back, the big beautiful bill which had a ton of different tax breaks. I mean, anything and everything to stimulate risk markets and risk assets is what he's going to do. And he just keeps proving it time and time again. So I think any dip into the midterms is just a bible dip because this man just wants to see markets go up and he just keeps putting his actions in that light. So I think unless you have some big black swan events, you know, these tips are just great buying opportunities.
- [05:03]
D
Ryan, I think we're just following the same pattern that we've seen over and over and over again. I think, you know, we went down last week, we're going to go up this week, we're going to probably go down right before Thanksgiving. We're gonna crescendo second week of December and then next year we might be tapping down around 75 again. I, I think we're following the same pattern. As much as everyone wants to think that we're following a different pattern or we've broken the pattern or, you know, maybe the pattern is just elongated, if anything. But as far as time horizon, I don't, you know, I think on a longer time horizon, maybe six, eight months out, we definitely have not bottomed in my opinion.
- [05:57]
E
Richard.
- [06:00]
F
Yeah, I tend to agree. I don't think October was a great month for crypto in general. And I think that's going to weigh heavily on, on sentiment. You know, having highly liquid the market I don't think has done us any favors. Even if we were aware of it. It was made very, very obvious. And I agree with, with Ryan. You know, as much as you want to be optimistic about the Trump administration's efforts. I don't think single handedly that that's possible. I'm still a believer that, you know, the cycle is intact until proven otherwise. And you know, think about what the sentiment was like last week. People were seriously asking questions and starting to really analyze, zoom out and analyze technical charts. The prices were heavy and it was like, it was a bit doom and gloom. So it's easy to look back in retrospect and say, oh, we swept 100k level and you know we're going to turn around and go. But you know, I think there's a lot in crypto. If you're in crypto primarily.
- [07:10]
B
You'Re in.
- [07:10]
F
It for more reasons than just holding bitcoin. So I want to be clear about that. You know, a lot of people are invested in crypto startups and crypto projects outside of bitcoin. So we can't just keep tracking bitcoin and Ethereum and possibly Solani ETFs and that being the mainstay of our hope. I think there's a real concern that altcoins are in big trouble unless we see a new wave liquidity. I don't know if the stymie check does it, but it's definitely going to have to come in in a different form. Right now I have real concerns about the altcoin markets. So the season as we know it I think is under, is under a serious question.
- [07:55]
A
The season part of the cycle though. I mean, Richard can't, you know, if you believe that the cycle's intact and haven't been proven up otherwise, wouldn't that have implied that all coins should have had.
- [08:04]
F
Yeah, let me rephrase that. Sorry. What I mean is the bitcoin halving cycle, not so much the, the altcoin season aspect of the BDC ratio starting to shoot the lights out and bitcoin dominance, you know, falling off a cliff. It's more that four year cycle because that's what people have been hammering, dancing that, that's the thing that's, that's losing the, the, the narrative around that that's losing tech and I just don't see it yet.
- [08:35]
B
So I just want to make the point that if you just look at the chart and zoom out, we had a repricing from November of last year. So this time last year after the election to January of basically a doubling in bitcoin, give or take, and we've been in a range since then, full stop, that's, there's not been One quote for your cycle that's looked like it. So to say it's intact is. Is just funny. I mean it's just funny. I mean There was no 3x5x10x. This was a re rating based upon a massive change from an administration that was openly hostile, that tried to spread fud, that wanted to literally put crypto out of business and make bitcoin go into the history books as a failed experiment to keep the dominance, the fiat. And that change from that administration that embraces bitcoin, called it a. Literally called it a strategic asset, has created, owns over 300,000 in a strategic reserve that they say they will keep is a very major difference. And so that was a repricing. It was almost a one time repricing and we've been in arrange since then. So I find it interesting. But what I what's great if you're bullish is the amount of doom and gloom and basically on everything I went and checked this morning, every sentiment index is at what is normally bottoming levels, not not topping level. They're all really pessimistic. And even this action today, you know we're. Yeah, if you look at last week, last week we crashed. If you, you could call it a crash. 15 from you know, 115 or whatever down to below 100. But we've managed to hold the same range. I mean it hasn't changed anything. And so that's really the point. But anyway, this has gotten a bunch of speakers. I see William first and then Eric.
- [10:51]
E
Yeah. So just on the basis that there is a lot more adoption to come. I'm talking about crypto in general. There is lots of room to grow. We haven't, we barely have adoption in crypto. So if you believe that the adoption is going to increase then you can believe that there is room to grow as far as valuations. And that's kind of the simplest way to think about it that I can't think about it.
- [11:28]
A
I think you said Eric, Dave, I don't see any hand. So Eric, if you had your hand up, go ahead.
- [11:34]
B
Not again. Well, I see Tom's hand but I think that's a shadow from before. But I saw Eric go up after Williams and I see William's hand still up. So this is.
- [11:43]
A
I see none.
- [11:45]
B
I love this platform.
- [11:48]
G
Yeah, I'd love to see Elon spend a few more bucks and make spaces a little more functional.
- [11:53]
B
Those three developers that taught that Scott insists are working on it. I'm not sure they're working on it.
- [12:00]
A
They've been diverted to big building robots. Sorry.
- [12:05]
G
They've been working on Optimus's hand lately. But anyways. No, I mean, if you look at what William said, I actually feel like he's right. I feel like we really haven't scratched the surface of where things will go. So if it's, you know, a range that we're trading in, I think it's a viable range and a testament to that. I'm surprised it didn't get a little bit more play in the, you know, kind of social sphere. But JP Morgan Chase announcing both a larger position in in Bittense and then also increasing its position in BlackRock's BTC ETF. This is unheard of a couple of years ago. And so now they've started not only accumulation positions, they're doubling down and enlarging those positions and that's great for them. But where I think that actually takes us is that starts to give freedom and it becomes a catalyst for these other institutions to say, hey, why aren't we doing this as well? And so I feel like this is, is now going to be a story as we go into Q1 of next year where we see major institutions start to, you know, I don't think that this is going to become 10 or 20% of their balance sheet, but I think that this starts to become meaningfully low single digits for a lot of these institutions going forward. And that can only be, you know, bullish for the long term case, not only for the bellwethers being Bitcoin and Ethereum as currently constructed, but I really do believe that there will be a bid that starts to catch in the alts and kind of to echo the conversation we had last week, like, how can you possibly, you know, have appropriate price action versus like what, what the fundamentals of the tokens are. I've said this for a while, but I think that you'll start to see M and A in this space. I think that there will be interesting aspects of certain protocols that are of enough value to other protocols or other tech players that you start to see some real and meaningful acquisitions in the space. And that to me is when, you know, the speculation starts to really come in and you could actually see a quote unquote altcoin season because then folks are going to start betting on which one's next to be acquired.
- [14:56]
B
So you think Dogecoin could buy fart coin?
- [14:59]
G
Let's go. Let's go. I mean, I still like, you know, I still think of a couple weeks ago, I forget the Name of the company but the company that took a 25 million bonk treasury position. I just wonder how that's performing on their balance sheet.
- [15:19]
B
Yeah, I think it's performing well. Never mind.
- [15:23]
A
Yeah, now I see hands. I see Stephen.
- [15:27]
B
Steve went up first but I think. And then I think Ryan went up when I made the fart coin joke. So go ahead.
- [15:34]
D
I'm just gonna make one quick point. I think that retail has been pretty absent this cycle and that's noticeably different.
- [15:43]
B
I did see an announcement that the commissioner fram the CFTC is going to push to have leverage added to spot.
- [15:51]
D
Market exchanges domestically in the US does.
- [15:54]
B
Anyone think that that'll be enough to.
- [15:56]
D
Sort of reignite retail back into this cycle?
- [16:00]
B
I think that you have to break retail into, into two pieces. Retail has not been absent in this cycle in terms of US U. S retail in brokerage accounts by buying ETFs and MicroStrategy, etc. Etc. Retail in the United States has been entirely absent. So yes it will impact US retail degen types but it will depend on the rules. Coinbase already has perpetual swaps on their exchange and, and I think you'll see more and more of that and so, and that will start to become a product. But right now it's still relatively low volume. But I do think that there is something to that. And you know, look, I've talked times, I mean she's behind prediction markets, she's behind safer, more well described closed leverage. You know, all these things. The, the real, the real issue is is will it be as, as cheap and cheerful in terms of trading costs as the foreign exchanges are. And the answer is we'll see. I mean people should remember that Kraken used to offer leverage and they just got their, their knuckles slammed by it. So this is another major change in terms of opening up markets and all it will do do is increase volatility. I'm not sure it brings it back but it certainly makes it more volatile. Now I lost track of who was next. I think it was Ryan.
- [17:33]
A
That was Ryan Richard. I think.
- [17:37]
D
Thanks. So one thing I want to underscore and remind everyone is that these are not companies. And we talk about mergers and acquisitions and we talk about investing and these different coins and projects, but we forget that these are not centrally controlled companies that you can control by simply owning the token. It's very, very different. And where some of them are companies like Ripple or a few others, most of them, just because you own the coin or the token does not actually give you any voting rights in the ecosystem. And even if they say they give you voting rights, it could come down to some of the core devs just forking the nodes or forking the chain and taking away those voting rights. So we just have to remember that we're not investing in regulated companies. A lot of these tokens and protocols and meme coins are, are very unregulated and a lot of times the true founders and programmers behind them are completely unknown by design. That's a lot of these decentralized systems. So just we have to keep that in mind when it comes to mergers and acquisitions. It's. I've looked into taking over old projects before and taking over old chains before, but there's always is this legacy risk that it's really a community and it's not just buying a company or a project.
- [19:21]
B
Yeah, that, that is an incredibly important point, by the way. If you want to understand the single, one of the most important drivers behind Commissioner Atkins and the others at the sec, what they want to do is to make that impossible, I. E. Make it impossible for an asset to be listed where there is no accountability from, from the founders and the, and, and there's no disclosures. They want to end that. And frankly, I think that's a really good thing to end that. But, you know, but you're right. Right now that's it. It's very, very unclear and that that matters. Anyway, Richard, I think you were next. I mean, I'm seeing a wave of hands, but I can't tell how many are.
- [20:07]
A
I only. I see. But I did see Richard earlier.
- [20:12]
F
I just want to, I mean, I don't want to labor the point. We seem to be, you know, touched on a topic. So I want to just circle back to this and get an understanding because, you know, having been here for a number of years and watched let's call it the, the playbook that happens in crypto. So you know, historically it was, it was a lot rotation in and out of alts into Bitcoin. Understandably now stable coins have become the de facto means by which people are moving in and out of ss. But you know, for the most part the bitcoin dominance is the thing that, that we watch, you know, and, and what I'm hearing and, and I'd love to hear some further views on this is that ultimately, look, know me wrong. I mean we're invested in a ton of companies and we, we spend most part of our days working with founders and that. So it's not that we're native. We Absolutely believe in what we're doing and, and, and the space. And it can be terribly difficult at times when interest falls off, you know, off the cliffs, so to speak. But practically what, what I was alluding to was, you know, the whole year we've spoken about this big build up to this moment where we started the rate cuts and there's these momentum shifts towards getting a turnaround, certainly with the attitude around crypto, the acceptability in certain markets and all that. But I was more referring to the expectation around Q4 being this, this, this moment that we were all anticipating. You know, you look at the historical charts in October, November, December, all, all generally are, are, are really good green months. But what I'm hearing is, is that ultimately that this is, this is going to change and it's going to be more of a consistent thing because traditional finance is slowly but surely going to immerse themselves in the space and just keep acquiring, whether it's ETFs or taking some treasury tokens into a debt strategy. And that becomes the play and effectively negates the traditional models that we've, we've experienced. Am I understanding that right?
- [22:34]
B
I think that there's a word salad problem there. I mean, traditional finance is not monolithic, nor are these assets monolithic. So I mean, ETFs are simply an access vehicle to buy crypto that will eventually single asset ETFs within five years will be very, they won't be that big of a deal. What will really matter with ETFs is what they're really designed for, which is creation of indexes for people to own sectors within the, the protocol spaces. I think bitcoin is slightly different because bitcoin kind of is its own sector. So you'll see that as, as far, far as, you know, M and A goes, look, there's, there's a massive M and A wave coming, the key players in each of the major infrastructure areas in crypto because frankly, all the traditional financial companies are way behind the eight ball there. And we've seen this before, we saw it with electronic trading. I've seen it multiple times. That's happening. Protocols are different. So I mean, Ripple Labs is positioning themselves as too big to be acquired. But understand that it's the companies that are actually building in the space, but they're, they are, they've been buying companies like left and right. This will, will increase. So you will see a lot more of that. Now. What does that mean for the pro protocols themselves? Well, there's, there's a race going on who's going to use them. I mean we look at things like TVL and honestly there's not one crypto that if you used any of those metrics you could come up with. I shouldn't say that there are probably a couple but it's hard to justify valuations based upon what you see currently. It's always based upon what could happen and so that's why there's that level of risk. The one point I will push back on as you said something about stablecoins and being access to it. Make no mistake, the reason Tether is the most valuable country, the most valuable company in the world per employee is because Tether has been the access vehicle for buying and selling crypto and people are willing to accept no yield for it. And so that's why to expect that trend won't continue when the US opens up to US stablecoins and when foreigners might not have even increased appetite for buying things on chain when it broadens to more assets. I think it's foolish. I think those, those trends are locked in and that's what people are saying.
- [25:24]
F
Yeah, maybe I'm, maybe, maybe I phrased it incorrectly.
- [25:28]
B
I'm fully aware of that.
- [25:29]
F
What I'm saying is, I mean if you've been doing this, you know, circa 2017, 2019, there was still an element of people rotating straight in and out of. So, so let me, let me say this. The BDC pair is very important way of, of looking at altcoins and that doesn't seem to be the trend any longer.
- [25:53]
B
Correct. Like that will be. You're right, you're absolutely right. Right look we, the data set is that from, from. At least from the, you know, from coin routes was that. Yeah, the BTC pairs were important but they were already becoming way less important by 2019. 2020. Tether was once Tether got to the point where people weren't looking at it as, as, as the, you know, the tether truthers of, you know like I don't know if anyone follows Bitfinex but you know a lot of people believed what he, he was saying for she repeat believe what the account was saying about Tether for all those years. I think it's pretty clear no one really believes it anymore and frankly it might have even been true in the early days. We just don't know where it is now. Right. But yeah, you're right it's, it's moved towards stable coin buying and selling undeniably. Tom, do you. Is that handle you see hand or is that Real.
- [26:57]
C
No, it's a real hint.
- [26:59]
E
Yeah.
- [27:00]
C
So I think what we're seeing is just the industry growing up.
- [27:03]
D
Right.
- [27:04]
C
So you've had consolidation M and A start to increase traditional markets access through IPOs and others. And now when you have things like this Coinbase announcements today on the back of the Echo acquisition, you're having professional platforms where you're having these token launches now versus kind of the Wild west atmosphere that we had previously. The Wild west is always going to exist in crypto because it's permissionless open source technology. But if you have the choice after, when Coinbase starts listing things directly and, or when the Clarity act comes through and you have protocols that choose to follow it and protocols that choose not to, you know, who do you think investors are going to turn to? Majority of capital is going to flow to the more the safer protocol because they follow these, these regulations now there will always be other that kind of fall outside those bounds. But you know, we're starting to see the industry just have a new set of guardrails which is going to increase the ability for further capital to flow and for further acquisition opportunities in the future. So we just have to make sure we're not going to lose what makes crypto.
- [28:21]
G
Crypto.
- [28:22]
C
But you know, at the end of the day, if we want institutional and traditional capital from, you know, mom and Pops, 401ks and retirement accounts, we have to put up some of these guardrails for some of these guys. So I think we're going to continue down this path and it just means all systems go for more and more flows and in the space.
- [28:46]
B
Logical. Carlo, good morning.
- [28:48]
H
Good morning, Scott. Good morning, Dave. Good morning. So first off, amazed to learn today that Dave has past connections to La Costa Nostra.
- [29:03]
B
Used to play a poker game with several made men that long after my grandfather was kicked out of the mob for refusing or not not believing they could fix games when he was a bookie. So yeah, you got, you got that going on. I. It's definitely an interesting point. I knew it twice at the age of three.
- [29:28]
H
I'm gonna think twice when I take a contrarian view. So I think this ties in and to a broader conversation and you kind of touched on it with respect to tether and its accumulation. I've always said, and I continue to maintain that stablecoins under the Genius act are going to be the driving engine for global demand of US Dollars and US treasury assets and that that's going to ultimately be a Trojan horse for onboarding more crypto. So I don't think we're going to skip alt season this year. I think we have an all along gated cycle and I think as we start to see more and more wallet integration and adoption of stablecoins in the US marketplace that's going to ultimately pivot to more wallet interest in L1 chains. And the thing that cannot be ignored I know that Ark has built their own standalone but I think the thing that cannot be ignored here is that you need L1s to run stable coins efficiently. Unless they're all going to build their own standalone chains and yeah, that's possible. L1s are still a part of the crypto economy and will continue to be until that changes. Tom and while that's the case, there is interesting stuff being built and I think that that stuff is going to be deployed especially like we also talked about when we get market structure clarity because then you're talking about the essential need for smart contract execution. Stablecoins can't do that. Stablecoins are a payment remittance chain. You still need a good Strong High Throughput L1 for real world assets and for tokenized securities and I don't think that's going to change.
- [31:33]
A
Do you see any hands up? Dave I don't.
- [31:35]
B
I see Ryan.
- [31:38]
D
Yeah, I, I agree. I could see a big push in the near Future for more L1s that are driven off stablecoins where stablecoins are the main network token and transactional token and then putting up KYC AML guardrails around that layer one and then all the banks filing in behind it. I have a hard time picturing a future where the banks and governments at large file in behind Ethereum or something that they can't intrinsically control and gatekeep.
- [32:20]
B
I kind of come out on both sides of that. I think that the L1s that are going to get used are going to be the ones that have the highest cost benefit to the users and implied in that is that they stay cheap enough for them to be for them not to get a huge percentage of the revenues. So it's not not going to be like Linux where you know where, where nobody made money for for building it and every except but you made money by maintaining it or handling it, et cetera. But the truth is that when you have commodity products and you can move from L1 to L1 with some but not incredibly expensive so switching costs it holds down the value of the actual underlying utility. It doesn't make it work worthless that let's be really clear and it's not even clear that the market caps of the cumulative L1s for all of these applications isn't lower than it will be because there are so many applications that can be used on these things. But those people who are expecting massive, explosive growth in the L1 ecosystem writ large, I think are on drugs. I think that they're. That the math doesn't work. It's, you know, just simply put, people can switch. Those switching costs are the way economics works. And we've seen it every single time. Now, that doesn't mean that there isn't value. It just means that people who are calling for 100x's because the coin is low when it's already a 200 million dollar asset or 200 billion dollar asset are. Are literally delusional to the point of. It's. It's almost clinical how delusional they are. Because in the history of humanity, no commodity that can be replaced with switching has ever gotten to be like that. Right? Ever. Literally ever. And nor will it, because it's just not the way economics works. It's. It's like ignoring supply and demand. Now, I can't tell whether Carlo or Ryan wanted to respond.
- [34:34]
H
I think you got to pick your winners. I mean, I agree with you across the board. You're not going to see every. Every L1 in the top 20 win. But I think within the top 20, you've got chains that are building and solving for real world issues. And they'll win. They'll just be a smaller pool of winners. I don't think we're going to have a crazy alt season like we've seen before in market cycles. But I still think there is a utility for some of these L1s to build lasting things that are not going to go away.
- [35:13]
B
Yeah. I do want to make one point about alt season. I think we did see an alt season, except the alts were gold and silver and, you know, via the contracts for differences markets. I think you saw a absolute and equities wave. What'd you say, Scott?
- [35:30]
A
And crypto adjacent equities.
- [35:33]
B
Yeah, and crypto adjacent equities. Exactly. So I think you saw a ton of hot money moving into the momentum. And the difference is that cycle ended. I mean, anyone who owns any Nakamoto knows an awful lot about crypto adjacent equities. Or. Or. Well, they're quite a few. I'm picking on Nakamoto because I own a small piece of it and I will hold it for the next n number of years until whatever. But it's a Tiny piece. And you know, it is what it is. All of these things have done have relaxed to momentum. Remember, what we see as alt season in crypto is not baked in the cake. What is baked in the cake is momentum trading as a religion for degen trading gambling types. And they will go to whatever they can that has momentum. And when momentum fails, they'll move to the next thing. That will happen constantly. There's no stopping that. Whether or not altcoins in the sense of layer one or, you know, different bridging protocols or layer twos or meme coins become the next hot thing. Well, anything's possible. But understand, it's. It's not like we've repealed human nature. Human nature is to seek out that momentum. I think Ryan was next.
- [36:59]
D
And then Carlos Legacy hand.
- [37:05]
B
Okay. Sorry, Carla, go ahead.
- [37:06]
H
Yeah, no, nothing to add. And you said it perfectly.
- [37:10]
B
Yeah, and. And people listening need to understand what this means. You know, you. If you're living in a bubble. Crypto used to be its own ecosystem divorced from everything else. It isn't now. And so it. That's going to change the dynamic, but it's not going to change the fact that humans are going to human. Got to quote you there, Scott. That was a good one. And so people will chase momentum. And a large part of why the sentiment in bitcoin is so bad, and it really is really bad compared to the price. It's extraordinary, really is because it's been in a range for a year. It gapped up to January. Yeah, it's been an elongated range, but from Bitcoin's perception, perspective, it's not that elongated. I mean, what was the bottom? 7:75 to 125. Okay, but that 10. But it didn't do what people sold in the same period of time, you know, moved silver removed even more. And so people tend to chase these things. And now everyone's kind of saying, okay, where's the money going to go? And we'll see. I mean, I have my own thoughts. I'm curious what other people think. Nothing.
- [38:28]
A
I don't see hands. Yeah, I don't see Anne.
- [38:30]
B
So it's. I'm surprised. I figured for sure we'd hear an ethereum Rah rah William here on stage. So whatever. We don't have any. Anyone from the XRP army up there, although they keep chirping. You know, I, I just, I. I find they love us. Well, look, I wish Nickel would join us, honestly, because, you know, it. It would be interesting. I. I have nothing against the notion of XRP as having high utility. Honestly, I know there's very strong opinions on this one, both sides of it, but what I'm against is that this notion of XRP flipping Bitcoin, which I think is one of the most ridiculous things ever. I mean it could happen. But if XR flips Bitcoin is. Because Bitcoin has failed and XRP is being held aloft by a ripple labs. It's not a bullish scenario for anybody. And so it's, it's, it's, it's amazing. And if you ask me why do I say that? It's because the only reason why Bitcoin can be a digital store of value is based on its network and its distribution. And it's, and the way that it is is felt. There is no way that 50% of a coin being held between the, the, the number one founder and, and a company is ever going to be treated the same. It's just not. And you can, you can look at that any way you want, but to not, it's, it's, it's one of those things that you could be a denial. You can deny what's factual or you could dream. And there are a lot of people buying dreams. Okay, William, I got, I got. I finally did something to prompt you.
- [40:18]
E
No, no, I'm not gonna say anything pompous about Ethereum. That's not the point. But I think if you want to see something that will help. I'd love to see a lot of these zombie chains go away. I mean it's going to be impossible.
- [40:39]
A
But they can't because they have tokens.
- [40:41]
E
There's a lot of.
- [40:42]
A
What's the market cap of ftc?
- [40:44]
E
Exactly.
- [40:45]
B
William, can you or anybody explain to me how FTT still has a, a market cap bigger than most of the companies in the Russell 2000 index? Can anyone explain this?
- [40:59]
E
I don't get it exactly. Except explain to me why Cardano is at the cap. That it is. It doesn't do much. Polkadot.
- [41:10]
B
What about Ethereum Classic.
- [41:13]
E
Oh that. Yeah, exactly. There are lots of them. What do they do? They have a token. They have lots of money in Treasury. They can fake being alive for maybe 10 years, maybe 15 years.
- [41:28]
B
I still remember. Unless everyone remember bitconnect. Yeah, I still remember. There were at least three months that on coin, market cap or crypto compare, I can't remember which one literally labeled bit connect a scam and it maintained a billion dollar valuation. So I, it's just something about this. I don't Understand now, was it Ryan but flipping negative or Rich were flipping thumbs down? So you disagree, you think that that FTT has real value and Ethereum classic.
- [41:59]
F
No, no, no, that, that was me. That was me acknowledging the absurdity of what you were saying.
- [42:06]
B
Yeah, no, but, but understand when people look at that and you know, meanwhile James and I have to lavish and I have to deal with Michael Glo talking about millions of competitors in crypto. I guess there's one element of what he says is true. There's, there is, are people in the world of crypto who effectively are keeping what is a shell game going. And it's not a Ponzi because I'm not getting new money in, but it's definitely a shell game, right? And it doesn't do us all any good. I just don't understand how it's possible or who does this stuff. I mean the difference is in the equity markets at a certain, certain point, if a company fails listing standards, it moves to the pink sheets. And even there, there it starts to go. I mean I've seen bankrupt companies trading for real value with huge percentage moves up until the day that they finally went, you know, belly up. So I mean, yeah, this stuff happens, but it is, it is crazy. And it, and it's sort of like you could be betting on Pokemon cards just as much as you're betting on tokens at that point.
- [43:13]
E
I'll just say one more thing about the xrp, because it was mentioned. I mean xrp, I don't get it, but they're like a cult. They have so many people that believe in it that they got to the retail. I've heard several stories of friends of friends that are into XRP because they look at the price. They say, oh, it's only two bucks and two and a half dollars, so it can go to 10. They don't look at the market caps instead of saying like, why should, should I buy a hundred thousand dollar whatever token? I can buy a two dollar one, it will go much higher. That's all they look at. That's it. It doesn't make sense.
- [43:55]
A
Well, science, William, you're just confused.
- [43:58]
B
You don't understand. It's like, does anyone, anyone here old enough to have the old game Monopoly? In Monopoly, one of the cards is share split. You make blah blah, blah, money. Well, share split air splits don't make anybody anything. It just allows for different trading dynamics. And effectively this unit bias problem, it's just, it's one of those things. It's, it's inherent in Human nature. It's kind of crazy. I mean, it's one of the reasons that for years, and I still think it's true, that bitcoin would be way better off if it were priced in sats, full stop. And it's one of the reasons why the ETFs have helped Bitcoin. Because if you own iBit, you don't care, right? You know, if you own, you know, Bitwise's ETF, ITB VitB trades at $57. It doesn't trade at $114,000 or whatever, $105,000 or just 57. So the ETFs helped Bitcoin by removing a lot of the unit bias problem of people buying it. Because people say, oh, I could afford 100 shares of Bitcoin, I. I've had people say to me, oh yeah, no problem, I could buy 100 shares of Bitcoin. I. This thing, it's called Ibit, right? And I shake my head and I don't know how to respond because I don't want to dim their enthusiasm. On the other hand, it's absurd, right? I mean, Ryan, I see your hand up, that might be a legacy hand again, because we love this platform.
- [45:36]
D
This was a real hand. So a couple thoughts for several different topics that we kind of crossed over. One, Bitcoin is kind of in its class of its own because of the energy infrastructure and how it stabilizes the grids and, and it kind of plays opposite of AI's energy usage. So as we see the grids grow and more power plants coming online, you know, we will have need for bitcoin mining to counterbalance, especially in on smaller grids. So like, that's point one is bitcoin. Bitcoin is in a class of its own because it's remained proof of work. The other thought was, you know, why are there so many legacy chains just floating out there? And there was actually a fun idea that was floated to me last year was this idea of, it's called a vampire attack, where you can actually create a new layer one and you issue out tokens based on burn receipts from all the other coins. So you get, you basically incentivize people to burn their, their old wallets and then submit those receipts to mint coins on your chain. I thought that was really, really fun because there's like you said, you know, tons and tons of legacy chains, like thousands of altcoins out there. And it would be a kind of a fun project to see people burning all their old wallets to Mint into the new ecosystem. But as far as XRP or ETH or, you know, any of these others, ETH is going to get swallowed up by layer twos. All the transaction volumes could eventually just be on layer twos. No one really wants to use layer 1 because too expensive and too slow and then that just gets more centralized as you go up the layer stack. Bitcoin will just stay in a class of its own as long as there's proof of work and it will scale alongside AI. So I'm long term bullish on Bitcoin. Even though there might be pullbacks in the next six months, eight months, the market is going to do what, you know, speculators or people coming in, out or, you know, different black swan events might happen. But 10, 15 years from now, I'm. I'm keeping my cold storage and staying in Bitcoin.
- [48:16]
B
Yep. I think the only difference between you and I on that regard is, is I think that the markets are always perverse and always surprise people. And the surprise would be to the upside. At this point, that's really the only thing, I think. But in the long term, I think we end up in the same place place and so be it, you know, we'll see. William, I, I know you're not going to let that insult go on unanswered.
- [48:43]
E
Sorry, I. I got distracted for a second.
- [48:46]
B
Yeah. Can I remind you that Ryan basically said Ethereum gonna be eaten by layer two.
- [48:57]
A
Best response ever heard yet.
- [48:59]
E
I'm not going to say anything because it's not, it's whatever.
- [49:05]
A
We did have, we did have a couple, I think, relatively big news stories. I mean, the CFTC looking to bring leverage to American crypto exchanges, obviously. But then also, I don't know if you saw this, but Coinbase launches platform for individual investors to buy tokens before they are listed on its exchanges.
- [49:26]
B
Yeah, I saw that. I hadn't dug into the details. Does anybody know what that really means? That's not security tokens. You're talking still, you know, utility tokens, commodity tokens, whatever, but before they actually list it. So this is like a.
- [49:39]
A
A pre sale platform.
- [49:42]
B
A pre sale platform. Wow, that's fast. Fascinating. And. And how are they going to kind of. Yeah, how are they going to possibly deal with the conflict of interest question of the. Or are they basically just going to say the things with the most val. The most volume that by definition deserves to be on. On our exchange? I mean, that's a fascinating question. I'm just curious.
- [50:05]
A
I don't know. I guess we'll have to dig into the mechanics. Anybody know? If not totally cool because I don't know how much has been announced.
- [50:15]
B
Yeah, I. I have no clue. I mean I. I was literally. Look, I had clicked on the Journal story during Macro Monday but realize that I really can't be reading and responding to Mike and you at the same time. So I haven't had a chance to read it and dig in. Just curious everybody else.
- [50:34]
E
Yeah, I just thought of something. If you want to be cute. It's like saying that Walmart is going to be eaten by Sam's Club. That's all I'm going to say.
- [50:47]
C
That's funny.
- [50:50]
A
Ryan, you're.
- [50:51]
E
They're owned by the sound club. Owns. It's part of the same network.
- [50:56]
B
Yeah, exactly. Ryan. Legacy or real hand?
- [51:01]
D
No, real hand. Real hand. So I mean we've. We've seen the business model with pre listing and fundraising throughout the years. Coin List was one of the bigger ones I've seen and they have a great platform. It really seems like Coinbase might be targeting platforms like that. So I'd imagine it's going to come across something very similar to what Coinlist has done.
- [51:32]
B
That makes sense, that is logical. I want to go back to one thing. Someone said something about Ripple and the call or xrp XRP in the cult and I that was by the way an intentional miss for years years Ripple because of the SEC suit and everything kept saying and every kept get trying to distinguish between Ripple the company and XRP the token. Today the incentive have changed completely to where the company wants to promote the token by words because they own so much of it. It's so helpful to their balance sheet and the community. Cheers everything that the company does. So the company is. Is building a real business like a very real business in terms of bringing custody prime brokerage not just for crypto but FX prime brokerage together with hidden road wallets, etc, trying to build a vertically integrated business that is on the scale of, for lack of a better word in many respects the institutional business that Coinbase has, that's a very real business. None of that has a damn thing to do with XRP except for two things. One, there will be some products that might use the ledger but not really clear how much demand that will cause and two, XRP is enormously important to their balance sheet as collateral.