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Scott Melker
Ethereum is less than 3% off of its all time high and looks set to break it as soon as maybe during this show it could happen. We've seen it happen before. But the story right now also is that a lot of altcoins are ready to follow. It seems like Solana is ramping up. And a lot of tokens, obviously that are affiliated or a part of the Ethereum ecosystem are also ramping up as bitcoin trades sideways. And all of this during this summer doldrums when things are supposed to be boring. And while we have just incredible news story after incredible news story, here to unpack it all with me is David Young from Coinbase, one of my favorite guests. One of your favorite guests. Let's get into it.
Chris
Let's dope.
David Young
Let's dope.
Scott Melker
Good morning, everybody and happy Wednesday. Welcome to the show. And welcome to the show. David. Good morning, sir. How are you?
David Young
I'm pretty good. How are you?
Scott Melker
Is that a Coinbase shirt? It's got the red, blue.
David Young
Yes, it is.
Scott Melker
It's the perfect blue. It's representing. We got to get you a higher frame so that you can like be a walking advertisement for Coinbase. I love it. Listen, the story right now, hard to talk about anything beyond what's happening with Ethereum. Right. I mean, you've got in, it's within a hair's breadth of that all time high at 4,000, 868. I mean, it's got a lot of catching up to do still. So I guess the question being, is this where it kind of tops out and we see the end of this trend, or is it going to pull a bitcoin? Because remember, 4800 on ETH is basically comparable to 69,000 on Bitcoin. Right. If we're talking about last cycle's highs, not as a ratio. So a long way to go if it breaks above and pulls a bitcoin.
Chris
Yeah.
David Young
And we're seeing that its dominance metric has gone up to around 18 of the total crypto market cap. But as you point out, it's nowhere near where it was as far as previous cycles. So I still think it has room to go. I think the market conditions are definitely supportive of it. I'm talking about both what's going to happen on macro, but also on the regulatory side. So I think that also if you're looking at what's happening on Chain, and I think a lot of people are more focused on the price and kind of how, you know, like whether this is going to trigger Profit taking, etc, how much more in terms of data activity that's going to be? I think that the most part, like it still depends heavily on the stability risks kind of evident in the macro side of things, which in my mind is still very favorable. So I think that this could probably carry us into a new Altcoin season.
Scott Melker
Altcoin season. What a harbinger of amazing things to come if we actually see that. But not there's a reason obviously that we're seeing this Ethereum pump and it's not just because there's interest in altcoins. Right? I mean we've got this guy out here, the Michael Saylor these days it seems, as I like to call him, of Ethereum. But you've got Tom Lee saying he's going to raise as much as 20 billion more for Ethereum buys. There was also an article today that said 8% of Ethereum supply is now sitting in ETFs or company reserves because it's a smaller asset than Bitcoin. Obviously it's a lot easier for these guys to gobble up a meaningful percentage of the supply. 20 billion would be a lot of Ethereum.
David Young
That's a really good point because the volumes in ETH are like 5x lower than they are for Bitcoin. So every billion dollars more of like buying flow that kind of goes in is a lot more meaningful than the same amount that goes into Bitcoin. So I think that this is clearly what's driving price. But you raise a really good point because if you look at the Altcoin market cap versus the Altcoin or alt season index and I'm looking at like coin market cap for example, like you see that there are very divergent paths. Like we're in kind of like a new all time high as far as the Altcoin market cap is concerned. But if you're looking at alt season index, we're like in the mid-30s, not even breaking 50. And you really need to be above 75 to really be considered in Altcoin season. But you know, like, I recognize that a lot of that has to do with eth. A lot of that has to do with these digital asset treasury companies buying, buying. But I think that we could still see that given that this is driving more activity within the D5 space, within the on chain space, I think that this could probably propel a lot of the Eth betas first of all. And we're kind of seeing it with Lido and some other things, although that has its own narrative and then I think you could kind of see that into like assets further out the risk curve.
Scott Melker
Yeah. And also the ETF inflows for Ethereum have been just outstanding. We had a billion, just over a billion on Monday, 2 billion, I think, aggregate in the last five days. And wildly outperforming the Bitcoin ETFs. Does that indicate anything different to you about who the bid is? Or you think this is just people following the hype in the treasury companies?
David Young
Right now I'm a little cautious when I take the ETF flows at face value, not because I don't think they're meaningful, but because a lot of that is netted off against the basis trade. And, you know, I feel like I'm a constant PSA reminder of that because, you know, you have to kind of look at where the leverage funds shorts are and many of these are hedge funds who are kind of playing this. So some of that 1.8 billion dollar ETF flow is kind of spoken for with shorts on the other side. And that's fine because they're trying to capitalize on that quote unquote, market neutral kind of play. Whereas with respect to like the, the dats, like that flow purely has a market impact. So I think that that's kind of why I favor more like looking at what Tom Lee is doing, what Bitmine's doing, to kind of understand what's happening in the market at the moment.
Scott Melker
So interestingly, we had Tom Lee's narrative when he first said Ethereum is the new Bitcoin was stable, stable coins. Right. He went on, I think. And by the way, I don't buy into that. I think stable coins are a commodity. They'll be everywhere. But it was an easy pitch to Wall Street. Right. He said, listen, I'm doing this on eth because genius just passed and stable coins, incredible narrative, powerful. If you believe that narrative, though, you have to be a little bit cautious right now about what's happening with stable coins elsewhere. Right. This was a huge announcement. USDC issuer Circle to launch new layer 1 arc block blockchain this year. Endless conjecture on what this means, what it will be. But they hinted to maybe also doing tokenized assets and not just stable coins here. But it's got to make your spidey senses tingle a bit when USDC says they're going to launch their own layer one, that they would likely consolidate a lot of USDC traffic to that chain and that could definitely hurt that Ethereum narrative or other chains that are looking to stable coins for Growth. Yeah.
David Young
I think this is one of those stealth narratives that people need to be paying attention to because many of us kind of assume that the L1 wars are over and they're not, not by a long shot. And I think Stripe also had a very similar kind of announcement about this. So the idea of trying to bypass Ethereum because of its high fees, because of its scalability issues. Yes, a lot of it has changed. Even on Ethereum, L1 transaction fees are a lot cheaper than they used to be. So it's gone other days where like during like high season, you might be paying like $20 or $40 to kind of get a transaction through. Like, that's not the case anymore. The average fees are like sub $1. So I'd say that it's a different place. And of course you have these L2s where you can kind of pay like sub 1% or I'm sorry, sub 1 penny. But still, I think that with the advent of like Canton having its own L1, more real world assets trying to launch on that, I think this is absolutely something that's not over yet. I think that the idea of a multi chain kind of trend still definitely is there. We still have to worry about fragmentation. We still have to worry about potential innovation in stablecoin ecosystems. Anyway, if you're an eth buyer that is. So I would say that this is something that we definitely need to be paying attention to.
Scott Melker
Yeah, I mean, hasn't Tether made a similar hint? I saw some news that Tether hinted at their own chain as well, but didn't make an official announcement. And we know that they're going to come into the United States with some different plan in the coming years. This really could be a major trend and just huge. It makes so much sense actually for Circle to do this, as mad as people are. And I wrote about this morning, but if you're Betsy from Compliance at some company and you sent a bad stablecoin transaction of $500,000 to a vendor, you can't call the Ethereum foundation and ask for them to help you. But in this case, you could call Circle and probably get help. I mean, part of their pitch is that this has to be purpose built for institutions. I'm not saying that the world should cheer a centralized blockchain that allows rollbacks, but for these purposes, if you want these to be used by institutions, you literally have to have like customer service and usability for the average person.
David Young
Yeah, I mean, listen, I like, I think Ethereum was one of the first shows ever came to talk about with you. And I'm still very bullish on its prospects. But yeah, you can't argue that with the advent of real on chain payments and stable coins, kind of taking the world by storm, increasing adoption, a lot of these companies like Circle want to evolve beyond Ethereum's bottlenecks. I don't think they're trying to snub them, but certainly I think that if your business is trying to unlock seamless global transfers, then yeah, you might need to kind of consider whether you need to have a more isolated ecosystem. They have to worry about security vulnerabilities like any major hacks, things like this. So I think that this is going to be absolutely part of their considerations.
Scott Melker
Yeah, I asked this question yesterday, nobody had a good answer. I don't know if you have one either. But you touched on the fact that right now Ethereum fees are exceptionally low. I'm too blockheaded to understand how I can be paying $0.80 transaction on Ethereum when the network is seeing basically all time highs in transactions. Because I remember last time it was like this and you were paying $112 to mint a $1 NFT.
David Young
Yeah, I mean absolutely. This is one of those things that has changed and probably not a lot of people have noticed the Ethereum transactions on the L1 themselves have become a lot more competitive. And part of that was in reaction to the L2s because L2 fees were just, you know, falling lower and lower, which of course they themselves were also trying to compete with Solana and other like newer L1s. So I mean this is I, I think a good thing in a lot of ways that the competition has kind of led to it. This is what it should be that like when you, you know, introduce more, you know, competition into the, to the system, you want to reduce that friction. Of course I would say that still not low enough relative to what a lot of people want to do. They still kind of want to maintain like the level of security that they have with Ethereum. So I think that this is kind of the question behind why these newer L ones are still kind of emerging.
Scott Melker
Yeah, and it definitely makes you question how many L2s we need. Yeah, I mean they can, I still, I still think they're dramatically cheaper on a percentage basis, but I think there's a threshold at which people don't care. Like a basic floor. If you go from 50 cents to 5 cents it's a huge drop. But someone who's sending 50 grand doesn't really care about a 50 cents, right?
David Young
Yeah. But you know, like once upon a time, like we were talking about ZK roll ups, we're talking about like other things and ZK hasn't gone away. I think like prove and succinct definitely are examples of that. But you know, like, I would still say that, you know, the range has dropped to lower than a penny to like 10 cents. 10 cents even seems like way too much to pay for an L2 these days. So things have definitely changed from where they used to be.
Scott Melker
Yeah, well, one L2 that you're probably relatively familiar with, it's been doing exceptionally well is base, obviously. And there was announcement yesterday from you guys. Coinbase revives stablecoin bootstrap fund to boost USDC and DeFi. Coinbase has revived. It's fun starting with supporting the stable coin on aave, Morpho, Camino and Jupiter. Can you explain exactly what this means?
David Young
Yeah. So first of all, I would say that one of the big changes we've seen is that there's been a bigger migration onto base and the TVL growth has actually gone up to around like $5 billion in August. But as you know, I don't, I'm not here to kind of shill Coinbase, but one of them, I'm going to.
Scott Melker
Just keep asking him Coinbase questions and he's going to pretend to be a third party. It's perfect. We're used to this. It's part of our game, our routine.
David Young
We do and then I protest and I'm like, no, no, no, Scott, I won't. But let's talk about it. So coinbase relaunched its stablecoin bootstrap fund from back in 2019 and it's going to deploy not just USCC but also euroc. I never knew whether I should say like your rock or EUROC anyway, But EUROC into D5 protocols like AVE, Morpho, Camino, Jupiter. And the idea is that it's going to try to reduce slippage, boost efficiency. It's kind of trying to support growth amid this, you know, record 40.7 billion dollar increase in active loans. So I think that this is kind of a prescient time to kind of bring this back.
Scott Melker
Okay, so with this coming back, what does it mean generally for base and for basically stable coins on base as we talk about them going on to other layers, does this aggregate or bring a lot more stablecoin action onto that chain?
David Young
I think that that's probably one of them. Be the either direct or indirect effects of this. Certainly we've been seeing I think liquidity in the stablecoin sector go up on its own. Well, not quite on its own. A lot of that has to do with kind of the regulatory environment being a lot more favorable. But now we're up to like $270 billion. A lot of people have been questioning, I think on the Wall street side of things, can this move us up to the 2 trillion mark that some of the like, you know, bigger funds have, have kind of claimed that it could be or Scott Besson I think it could. I think that where that lives is definitely a matter up for grabs at the moment. I, I think by the way, there's a mistake in thought that like this 2 trillion dollar increase is just going to be in the United States. I, I tend to treat that as a global figure. I think that this is going to happen for like emerging market countries and other places as well. With that I think that being, you know, 10 of the like M2 money supply in the US is definitely well within bounds. So it's really a question of like.
Scott Melker
I don't think 2 trillion sounds big. Maybe it's because I'm in the echo chamber and I, and I live here, but we a, we've seen how fast things can just rise in crypto and they catch, either just catch a bid or catch interest. But this is the biggest layup crossover we've ever had between blockchain technology and something that literally everybody needs. I mean, this is just taking the technology and saying we can do this better. It's one of the few cases where that's actually worked. Stablecoins have been the killer act for a long time.
David Young
I mean, money market funds have $7 trillion in them right now. I would say that there is an argument to be had that, okay, how much of the US treasury and we're talking about T bills lower than like three months, how much availability of that is there for all these stable coins that would emerge, for example. But I don't think that's the problem that many people believe it is. Especially when we're talking about kind of disintermediating the traditional financial system, like the banks, things like that. But you know, obviously the banks are worried and so they have lobbyists kind of poking holes at the idea of like, oh, but what if, like what's going to happen to loans because people are going to want to deposit the banks and well, they're like, it just means that the loans won't come for the banks.
Scott Melker
Exactly. They just don't get it. There's the, hey, let's use stable coins in the legacy system. And then there's when the light goes on and say, oh, you can do everything on this faster, cheaper and better without the legacy system.
David Young
Exactly. So I think that we're going to see it, I mean like the amount of energy required to be used by the banking system, I mean all of that's going to be, all that's going to go away because transaction is going to be instantaneously settled on chain. I mean there's so many good things that come out of it. I think we just as an industry need to do a better job of promoting that idea. Like this is greener, it's more efficient, it's going to be faster, it's going to be better for everyone, cheaper. I think we just need to, I mean it's a very cowed on, but we just kind of need to push it.
Scott Melker
Yeah. I mean right now we're seeing stablecoin interest literally everywhere. And in my mind, something I want to talk about next is there's kind of two approaches it seems to how everyone's approaching the market in general and stablecoin. So I think recently we saw announcements that bank of America was exploring a stable coin. I think Citibank was exploring one yesterday, I think it was Wells Fargo or two days ago, all exploring their own coins. But then you have this other approach which is, and not to show Coinbase once again, but effectively to just partner with Coinbase. We'll call it Crypto as a service. Right. You go to a native like Coinbase happens to generally be Coinbase. You guys are talking to PNC here. Obviously we can get into all that, but you either basically partner with someone and through API access like JP Morgan and the credit cards, you just give everyone access without building yourself. And then there's those who seem to really want to kind of reinvent the wheel. So I think it's really two approaches. I'm not sure which one's going to win. Great for Coinbase and anyone who's building these things though. Yeah.
David Young
And again, I hate to sound like I'm shilling it, but we have been growing this part of the Coinbase aspect. I mean, if you aren't paying attention, like we have crypto as a service that where we like. Coinbase is the infrastructure partner of choice for I think over 250 or 240 of the world's leading banks, brokers, fintechs, payment providers. Like we have these licensed entities across major financial hubs. We have support over 3, 30 different jurisdictions. So I think that given the regulatory clarity we're getting, given the fact that crypto is increasing its geographic reach, I think that this is going to be the place where we will scale for institutions that need to offer crypto to their clients. So this is, you know, probably one of the like, themes that many people probably have recognized is happening in the background. But to kind of put a point on it, this is what's going on, I would say, like these secure regulated offerings that banks want to provide for their retail clients, for their private banking clients. I think that, you know, you're going to go to Coinbase for your custody, for your brokerage or stablecoin payments, secure lending, tokenization. I think like all of that, I think that's the name of the game at the moment.
Scott Melker
The JP Morgan news, I know it's like two weeks old, but blew my mind like when I read that one. The fact that a, they're basically giving every JP Morgan client access to crypto trading. But it's just an API from Coinbase. Right. So they're not building anything. Nothing. It's just an API pass through. I don't know how that works from a business perspective. But then the credit card points, being able to fund your account and use them to buy Bitcoin. And this coming from JP Morgan. Right. Listen, I think the company has actually been very bullish on crypto for a long time. Quietly, but certainly the CEO hasn't. But when JP Morgan makes an announcement like this, isn't that a signal that there's, I mean, everybody's coming one way or another. I don't know about Vanguard, but everybody else has got to be coming.
David Young
Yeah, I think that they're all of your traditional financial. It's, it's not a matter of if now, it is clearly a matter of when. And especially I, I think we didn't talk about it, but like the announcement from last week with executive order to actually allow, you know, alternative assets like crypto into people's 401k balance sheets. I think that that's also going to be transformative because now we're talking about the clients, now we're talking about the banks. Like all the traditional financial, like players are all going to be moving towards this. I do kind of want to caveat and say, like, you know, for people in crypto who expect these things to move fast, they're going to take a little bit longer than you would expect. I think like, for example, the banks have moved like ridiculously fast for banks, but still like for the pension Funds. And for the other ones that are going to be including crypto and 401ks for example, I would still expect that that's going to take probably one to two years, maybe even longer than two years for many of them to kind of adapt to those rules, to kind of change their infrastructure to kind of allow this stuff. But the one thing is the genies cannot be put back in the bottle.
Scott Melker
I want to circle back to kind of the beginning of the conversation, just talk markets, because you always sort of have a premise for what's coming. Obviously we take a look at coin market cap, a lot of green, right. And when you look at the seven day, I mean people are bored of Bitcoin, but it's up 6% in seven days. We're back to that thing where 6% apparently isn't enough just because we haven't made a new all time high this week. But I mean, you've got Ethereum 32%, Salon up 23%, Doge up 23%. This does start to smell like altcoin season. But I mean, how do you view maybe the end of this quarter and the next quarter? This has sort of defied the gravity of summer doldrums. So usually we would think August the first 13 days would be somewhat miserable or at least sideways. And we just have news story after news story and kind of pump after pump here.
David Young
Yeah, I mean, first I kind of look at liquidity from two angles. Number one is we look at it from M2. But I mean, a lot of people throw out that M2 statistic. Like, all right, look what has global M2 kind of look like, I would say, like just customize it slightly. So this is kind of what we do. We look at it relative to the markets that matter. So obviously there's a lot of crypto activity in the U.S. but more than the U.S. i mean, like let's go into like what's happening in the eu, what's happening in South Korea, what's happening in other parts of Asia, what's happening in Brazil. Weight those a little bit more heavily and then figure out what the right lag should be. We think the lag should be somewhere around like 110 days based on our regression analysis, which kind of shows you that we're kind of in that period where things are kind of like chugging sideways. But there's, we're primed for a breakout starting in September. And the other thing is, I also customize my own like crypto liquidity index. Stable coins feature very heavily in that obviously stable coins have grown a lot because of the regulatory environment. So that's also why this has happened. But this is also pumping more money into it. We've seen it decrease over the last three months or so, but probably over the last three weeks it's been going higher. And so this is definitely contributing now to, like, the move we're seeing up in crypto. I think that this really does put September as the, the right place kind of for this to happen. And of course that's going to coincide with other things, right? The Fed's going to be cutting rates. We're probably getting regulatory progress on the Clarity Act. And I think that we should not discount how rates are going to affect our markets or how they're going to affect risk overall. Because some people think about it and say, like, yeah, but we'll be. Become a local top because we'll give me. We're gonna, you know, buy the rumor, sell the fact. And I don't think so. Like, if you look at it. Yeah, exactly. Like, I, I definitely said earlier that money market funds are somewhere around like $7 trillion right now. That's like the highest they've ever been. But think about it, because, like, where markets are right now, and I'm not talking just like crypto, I'm talking about, you know, equities and other things. It's a very weird environment to be in where both money market funds, I. E. Cash balances are super high, yet markets are doing this. Well, that definitely gives me the signal that people are not invested here, or rather they're not fully invested here. I think that there's still a lot of capital to be deployed. And we know why that happened, right? Because April basically was a very short window where, like, you know, there was an opportunity for tariffs. But, like, when the tariff threat started to kind of get abated, it was very hard to kind of put your money in fast enough. And you, you had like, less than a week to do it before, like, markets kind of like recovered. And, you know, not for nothing, but it seemed a little expensive again. So I think that as a result, this has been a hated rally. I think that people have not participated. They were upset that they haven't participated. And once we start seeing rates get cut, then of course your, your, your returns on money market funds are going to drop. And so as soon as those cuts come in September, October, I think people need to reassess and be like, it's, it doesn't, it's not cost effective for me to be in money market funds anymore. I have to rotate that capital. I think that's going into crypto and other risk assets.
Scott Melker
You have to wonder if that causes like a one or two or three month just below off top, like kind of, you know, the liquidity spigot opens, everybody panics back into the market and forms a local top so that they all lose by waiting so long. I mean if retail doesn't buy the top en masse then you don't have charge to look at.
David Young
Yeah, I, I mean that's what I struggle with when it comes to Q4. I mean our thesis had been that we would see those lows in the first half of the year, new all time highs in the second half of the year. I think that it's more likely to kind of fall into, you know, like end of Q3, early Q4. But I don't know what's going to happen towards the end of Q4. Honestly it's kind of a black box for me at this point.
Scott Melker
Do you think that the four year cycle that we've had in the past is dead? A lot of people looking at it and saying Q4 is the end. We've seen this every time. So going to have to sell everything and panic into a bear market for the next three years. I don't personally think that's what's going to happen here. I don't think the having is particularly meaningful. There's a lot bigger things going on but I mean there is that mentality that that could be what happens. I mean do you think that we see the same cycles that we've seen in the past? Do you think it's a different market now?
David Young
I think it's a different market now. I think a lot of things have changed that ETFs were the first instance. Now we have the, you know, the dats and you know, we can argue all day about the longevity of these things and whether there's going to be consolidation and other things but they have fundamentally changed the way we've kind of perceived this stuff. Especially with staking ETFs on the way. I think that there's going to be this real comparison by a lot of investors of like, well, who can do it more efficiently, who's going to stake more efficiently what's going to happen with like, with staking, who's going to provide me that yield and ultimately if I'm looking into 2026, it might be a bit of a question mark for me in terms of like what ultimately will happen in Q4. In terms of profit taking or other things, or like, are people going to be buying it too expensive? But I'm very optimistic about what's going to happen in 2026. I think that we're gonna, like. Yeah, I, I think that we're gonna see a change of the framework on the fiscal side of things. I think we're going to change. See, I see a change on the regulatory side. People forget that, yes, we just got the Genius act passed, but it takes about 18 months for all of that to be implemented and fully, you know, built into our financial system. So I think that those changes are only going to be evident next year.
Scott Melker
Anything else you're super excited about that we have not discussed or might be on your radar, not ours.
David Young
I think the D5 side of things definitely needs a second look. We've kind of seen it. A lot of that has kind of dealt with some of the older names like Arabe, where like the utilization rates have just skyrocketed. But also I would say some of the younger players. Pendle is a good one, for example. I think that's super interesting right now, especially given the fact that you have this option now to kind of swap your floating funding rates for fixed funding rates. I think that this could, these newer innovations, I think could also start to transform our space. I mean, if anything, kind of at least makes it known that we need to continue looking at perps and some of the more unique things that are, you know, pertinent to our space.
Scott Melker
I wonder if we're going to end up the same trend we talked about before, which is building it on your own or going to some sort of infrastructure provider as a service for DeFi as well. Because we know that once institutions get their feet wet with crypto, they're going to start hunting for yield.
David Young
Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, even like the Dex to sex ratio is up to. I mean, it did go above 20% at one point, but we started the year, I think, around like 10% and we're currently around 18 or 19%. So definitely, I think the path is towards more participation in the DeFi space.
Scott Melker
Yeah, it's so much coming, it's hard to imagine that we would do a 75% Bitcoin drawdown bear market like next year. I don't see it. Maybe I'm blind, but these stories that we have on a daily basis were the kind of things that would have moved the market 20, 30% just two or three years ago, and now they're, you know, completely brushed off as normal.
David Young
Yeah, the conversation is now, what is the floor for bitcoin? It's no longer, hey, like it's going to zero. It's more like, is it going to hold at 100 from now on? And I think that that's the right question.
Scott Melker
Absolutely. Thank you, David, as always. Guys, give him a follow on X because he's actually there. Years later, I see you.
David Young
I know, four years later and you've convinced me. So now you got on a while.
Scott Melker
Ago, but, you know, it did take a while. You had the best, like, I don't remember. D, triple. D double. Triple.
David Young
That's 3Ds. Yeah, yeah. But now I have a much more professional one. Just my name, you know, we should.
Scott Melker
Have kept that one around just, just in case. Anyways, guys, give David a follow. Thank you, man. As always.
David Young
Thanks.
Scott Melker
All right, guys, as usual on Wednesday, we talk about Aptos right here. I tweeted this yesterday. In a world chasing the next utility chain, my longtime partners, Aptos are playing a different game. Meta roots backed by BlackRock, Franklin Temple foreign. I saw this news, but UFC strike to migrate to Aptos. I think it's fair to say that right now Aptos is dominating, doing exceptionally well. One of the busiest chains this week, as you can see. So go check them out right now. Especially if you're trying to build something, trade something, do something, you can all do it, do it there faster and cheaper and with more security. Now I'm gonna pray right now I'm gonna say a prayer to the, to the gods of Streamyard that when I bring on Chris, we're 2 for 3 with his thing playing a beat and not coming on with the mic. Can you talk?
Chris
Are we good?
Scott Melker
Yes.
Chris
Oh, man, thank God.
Scott Melker
We did it. I. I was, I was ready to.
Chris
Dance, you know, I don't know, man. I don't know what it is because again, you know, we do that beards and bitcoin show just, you know, a few hours later on Streamyard.
Scott Melker
And that's on Stream Yard.
Chris
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's only the, the invite to, to this show for the last three weeks. The two of the last three weeks, for whatever reason had that issue. So, hey, we're here. It's working now.
Scott Melker
So we're here, we're here. And we're not just here, but the market is right here relative to all time highs. We gotta say, man, you, me, David, who was just on Matt Hogan, there's been a couple people I've been having on my show for literally ever who are like eth's gonna do it, man.
David Young
Yep.
Scott Melker
Like, every time it goes lower, I'm telling you, we never gave up faith on that. And, man, it's paying off. We got eth. We'll do bitcoin first. But I'm just saying, like, the fact that eth is sniffing an all time high. Bitcoin sniffing an all time high, too. Sniff. So, yeah, so take a look at that first because I'm looking at your chart and that looks damn good.
Chris
Oh, yeah, this looks great. And everybody kind of freaking out with this move here that we had here on. What was that, Monday? It's an ugly candle there. But, you know, again, we just kind of got this pullback, and it looks like it wants to break out higher. So if it does, I. I think we only get a little bit at first. I think we get like a little sneak out here around 125 or so, and then we get a pullback. But if we do that, if we. If we can get that around 125 and then we kind of get this pullback down here toward 118 that. I've got targets sitting up there closer to 149, 000 heading off there because that would give us like a 1 and a 2, 5 waves up, gets us up there around 149, 000. So I really kind of like that opportunity, but we're going to play it locally right now, so, you know, we're going to look for this to kind of continue up here and. And potentially hit that125,000 area to kind of set up that move, you know, for bitcoin there. But I mean, it looks great. The structure looks great. We had a great pullback the. The back up the edge of the creek there. The BUEC with the previous reaccumulation range there and that printing another reaccumulation right on top of it. I mean, man, this thing's just kind of setting up to go, I think.
Scott Melker
Yeah, I think so too. So do you think that that means we get a, like, little pause in the altcoin excitement, that maybe we go back to the, you know, down in bitcoin, up in dollars or flat in dollars kind of situation? Or do you think that this is one of those situations where they might run together? We've actually seen a few bitcoin pumps of late where, you know, altcoins actually outperform. Like bitcoin goes up and bitcoin dominance goes down. It's the dream.
Chris
Yeah. Yeah. No, I. I think. I think this might be one of those things where they kind of go up with it. You know, I've got three charts here we'll look at in just a minute. But they're looking like they're set up to, you know, they've got a little bit of a push higher, kind of like bitcoin here and then a pullback and then a bigger move up coming. Ethereum a little bit more difficult. Ethereum looks like locally it's about to top out right here around at all time high. And so I'm not expecting it to do a whole. I'm not expecting like to break out above the all time high and shoot up. It could, but I'm expecting it more to kind of get around that area and then pull back and then kind of really take off. So I think if it does kind of break out just slightly, I think a lot of people might get caught trying to buy that breakout. But you know, it happens often. Right. You know, the, the rule is that you usually get a run up into a, into a resistance level, like an all time high or a swing high or something, you know, a little bit below, a little bit above and then you pull back and then you break out. That's more the rule. But everybody kind of always looks at the oh my God. The minute breaks out it's going to run just because every so often it does that. So I usually tend to take a little safer approach to that and don't just buy the breakout.
Scott Melker
So what else are you watching while this is happening? You got to be watching Ethan Solana right now. I actually brought up randomly this morning. I just looked at an ETH vs Solana chart, which I rarely do, and Solana is obviously beaten down, but had massive bullish divergence, oversold against eth. So maybe it's going to rotate a little bit to Solana.
Chris
Yeah, like I said, you know, Ethereum. If I pull that, I guess let me go and pull that chart up here real quick. Let me see here.
Scott Melker
Yours looks like me like 700 different charts of each thing with there's so.
Chris
Many, man, where's my Ethereum here? There we go. We'll just look at a local chart and I'll pull it up. All right, so here we go. And you know, we've got this again. This move up here toward this all time high up here. Right. So we're almost there locally was what I'm talking about here on this move here. You see we got 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 here. So I think it kind of tops out about where it is here and then we get this pullback before we actually get a decent breakout. But this has just been, you know, a great move off this low here. We were talking to in the academy, we were talking to our students about buying this low down here. Especially after this bullish engulfing candle printed off that pivot. And that's been, you know, 34, 3, 500 up there to basically 4, 700 now. So, you know, Ethereum's been a great run so far. But just locally right here, again, I do expect that we're, you know, this is, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. So I do expect we will be topping out most likely somewhere in this area and then kind of pulling back first. And so if we see that and then we look at, Would you say Solana? Yeah, Solana. Let me see here.
Scott Melker
Making your life hard by going off.
Chris
It's all right, man, sorry, I got charts here already set up. Why is the MES coming up on Solana? Give me a minute.
Scott Melker
Just type in Solana and go straight to it. You'll catch it.
Chris
Let me see here.
Scott Melker
Poison.
Chris
I don't know why the other one's coming up there, but there we go. Let me kind of pull this out to the daily here. Again, kind of getting up there to the end. But again, you know, we've got what appears to be 1, 2, 3, 4 and just a really overextended fifth up here. We're hitting the R1 pivot on the monthly. You know, we're, we're overbought here on, on stochastic rsi. RSI is about to hit overbought. So again, you know, kind of looking and this is the range high up here from way back all the way over this thing. Effectively this has been range bound since this swing high up over here in March, mid March of 2024. So this is just one kind of large range and we got a spring down here and so now we get our move up here. So really locally here looking for this kind of again move just right up around where it is kind of a pullback and then a rally higher. This local one, two here has a wave three target up there. 344. After we get this pullback here, we should be looking to run it up toward that. So, but the, the good news here is this long accumulation that we've had here, you know, for over a year means that once we get going here, we should really kind of, kind of get going on that, you know, and kind of really get Us moving because you have this longer term sideways kind of building toward this breakout. So I'm definitely liking Solana here as well. But again, locally, likely toward a topish area, a really local top. Get a pullback and then we start looking for some bigger movements out.
Scott Melker
Yeah, maybe we'll get that little pause. I'm telling you, maybe these are all going to run right into the all time high. Bitcoin will run up a little bit. Everybody will say alter dead and then we blast their all time highs.
Chris
Well, but they say alts are dead every. Every time. They're not moving up like 20% in a day. Right. I mean, so, you know, let's jump over here real quick. I've got these three charts here. I've got near, near anyway, doing a great, you know, looks like a great reaccumulation range here, heading our way out. Again, these, you know, these are all. You're kind of seeing the same thing across most alts locally here you're getting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5th wave up near the previous swing high, no pun intended. So kind of looking for this to run up here toward this $3, $3 and 8 cent area. Pull on back down here to around 267 or so as my initial targets, a 50 pullback, but expecting it basically to stay above this monthly pivot at $2.55. So we get, you know, again, this fifth wave, kind of push up there, pull back and then that gives us locally here wave three up at about $4.28 here. So, you know, and you're just going to kind of see this across a lot of alts. So if you're not seeing the alt that you want to trade in here, see if it kind of comes up the same way here.
Scott Melker
How'd you get the dancing Doge on there? What's going on there?
Chris
Do it.
Scott Melker
That I had just saw a little Doge come dancing onto the screen.
Chris
It does it every time. Every time I pull up those. Does it not do it for you?
Scott Melker
I don't know. I haven't pulled up Doge in a long time.
Chris
Well, there you go, man.
Scott Melker
It doesn't f around and find out.
Chris
There you go.
Scott Melker
Is that any Doge pair?
Chris
Yeah, if you pull up Doge, it should. It should work.
Scott Melker
I didn't get it.
Chris
You didn't get it? Oh, I guess I'm special or something. I don't know.
Scott Melker
Now I'm gonna try different ways to pull it up. Which dose chart are you looking at? This is important.
Chris
Doge USD on coinbase Maybe it's just.
Scott Melker
Because of that mine is. Oh, is it so mad.
Chris
Locally here?
Scott Melker
Nothing. I get nothing. Isn't so insulting.
Chris
It's all right.
Scott Melker
Anyways, you can keep going. I want a dancing doge. It's ridiculous. I paid for this thing.
Chris
Once again, we got a one and a two here. We're breaking out above wave B. So this wave 3 target minimum expected up here at $0.58 basically should be in progress. But once again, locally, here, 1, 2, 3, 4, we're getting this five. So looking for this rejection here. Expecting a pullback that kind of stays right around the. The monthly pivot here at 0.218 and then looking for that next move up. But you know, again, this being a one looks like a one, two and a three here. I'm sorry, 1, 2, 3, up. So we've broken it above wave B. So overall expecting that to kind of run up there toward that 58 cent area. And I've got FLR USD here and just locally here, I like this. It looks like a pretty clear 1, 2, 3 triangles of 4 here. Should be complete based on the height of the pullback here. You know, we've got this pattern target up there around 03323. But again, it's just, you know, a fifth wave locally, again, like everybody else. Right. Breaking out above wave B here at 02613 is going to add confidence to this count and you know, say that that triangle is complete. But yeah, looking for that pullback there. And then guess what?
Scott Melker
I literally introduced. I, I interviewed those guys yesterday.
David Young
Did you, Claire?
Scott Melker
Yeah.
Chris
Well, there they go. There. Now they can get excited. Look, he's talking good about our charts.
Scott Melker
Okay, I didn't say that out loud because I don't want, like, things to. But yeah, it was really cool. I never met them and talked to them yesterday. And then you just randomly bring up a flare chart.
Chris
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it looks, it just looks so good. I mean, you know, again, there are no guarantees ever on things, but once you break out above wave B, you know, the odds are in your favor that it's going to head up there. And so, you know, it just hits that wave five and then it pulls back into the, the triangle back there, down toward the pivot again and. And then we're off, you know, one more time for higher. So. But we're seeing the same thing across many, many alts. And so again, you know, if you're watching this, you're like, oh, but he didn't do my chart. Whatever your Chart happens to be. Look and see locally here on the daily charts. See if you can count, even if you've never done any kind of wave counting. You're just looking for swing high, swing low, right? So you get a 1 and a 2 there. And then you get a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 is 3. Triangle is a 4. And then you've got your 5 there. Then you pull back down here, then you take off again and you make that money, right? I mean, that's what we're here to do, is make money. We're not here to bag hold. Right.
Scott Melker
I'm here for the dancing dog. I literally went off camera and got a mitt so I could make.
Chris
So you could dance it yourself.
Scott Melker
Bring up the chart. I can't get to go onto the chart, though. It goes behind the charts. Annoying.
Chris
Baby steps, baby steps.
Scott Melker
You know, I. That was cool. Like, I. There's got to be a setting that I'm missing or something. We went to stream this today on X too, and, like, it's not really working. It just says untitled. Like things are just broken, man. I don't know.
Chris
But, hey, it worked for me this week to get on here, so at least there's that.
Scott Melker
Yeah, that's good. I'm just keeping it up. You got anything else or.
Chris
We.
Scott Melker
We cooked through them. I think we cooked through.
Chris
Oh, man, we jumped on through them already, so.
Scott Melker
That was awesome, man. Thank you. I'm glad we were able to hear you. Everybody give TX West Capital follow on X, which is sometimes working. Check out everything else he's got going on, man. Thank you so much. And we will see. I'll be back tomorrow and I'll see you next week, man. Thanks.
Chris
Appreciate it, man.
Scott Melker
Peace. Bye.
David Young
That's dope.
Chris
That's dope.
Podcast Summary: The Wolf Of All Streets – "Ethereum SET For All-Time Highs! Altcoins Ready To Follow?"
Release Date: August 13, 2025
Host: Scott Melker
Guest: David Young from Coinbase
In this episode of The Wolf Of All Streets, host Scott Melker welcomes David Young from Coinbase to discuss the bullish trends surrounding Ethereum and the potential cascade of growth into the broader altcoin market. As Ethereum approaches its all-time high, the conversation delves into market dynamics, institutional interest, and the evolving landscape of blockchain technology.
The episode kicks off with Ethereum's current market position, nearing just under 3% of its all-time high at $4,000. Scott Melker highlights the imminent possibility of Ethereum breaking this milestone, potentially even within the duration of the show.
Scott Melker [00:01]: "Ethereum is less than 3% off of its all time high and looks set to break it as soon as maybe during this show it could happen."
David Young agrees on Ethereum's upward trajectory, noting its dominance in the crypto market has risen to approximately 18%.
David Young [01:51]: "Its dominance metric has gone up to around 18 of the total crypto market cap."
He emphasizes that despite past peak ratios, Ethereum still has substantial room to grow, supported by favorable macroeconomic conditions and regulatory developments.
The conversation transitions to the potential emergence of an altcoin season, spurred by Ethereum's performance. Scott points out that other altcoins like Solana and various tokens within the Ethereum ecosystem are also gaining momentum, even as Bitcoin remains relatively steady.
Scott Melker [00:01]: "A lot of altcoins are ready to follow... during this summer doldrums when things are supposed to be boring."
David cautions that while Ethereum's rise is a strong indicator, the overall altcoin market isn't yet at the threshold typically associated with an altcoin season. He references the Altseason Index, which currently sits in the mid-30s, well below the 75 mark that signifies true market-wide enthusiasm.
David Young [03:18]: "But you know, like, I recognize that a lot of that has to do with eth. A lot of that has to do with these digital asset treasury companies buying, buying."
However, he remains optimistic that increased on-chain activity and Ethereum-focused investments could drive further growth into the altcoin space.
Scott Melker brings up the significant inflows into Ethereum ETFs, surpassing Bitcoin ETFs with over $2 billion aggregated in the last five days.
Scott Melker [04:38]: "Ethereum fees are exceptionally low... the network is seeing basically all time highs in transactions."
David expresses cautious optimism regarding these ETF flows, suggesting that a portion may be offset by basis trades from hedge funds aiming for market-neutral positions.
David Young [04:58]: "A lot of that is netted off against the basis trade... hedge funds who are kind of playing this."
He contrasts this with Digital Asset Treasury Systems (DATS), where inflows have a more direct market impact, supporting Ethereum's price growth.
The discussion shifts to the competitive landscape of Layer 1 (L1) blockchains. Scott highlights Circle's announcement to launch their own L1 blockchain, Arc Block, which could centralize USDC transactions and potentially impact Ethereum's growth narrative.
Scott Melker [05:47]: "Circle to launch new layer 1 arc block blockchain this year... this could definitely hurt that Ethereum narrative."
David underscores the ongoing "L1 wars," noting that despite Ethereum's improved transaction fees, new entrants like Arc Block and Stripe's initiatives aim to bypass Ethereum's scalability bottlenecks.
David Young [06:50]: "This is one of those stealth narratives that people need to be paying attention to because many of us kind of assume that the L1 wars are over and they're not."
He emphasizes the importance of multi-chain trends and the continuous innovation within stablecoin ecosystems.
Scott discusses the strategic moves by major stablecoin issuers, including Tether and Circle, hinting at their ventures into their own L1 solutions. He points out the practical benefits for institutions, such as enhanced customer service and transactional rollback capabilities tailored for institutional needs.
Scott Melker [07:11]: "They have to have like customer service and usability for the average person."
David elaborates that while Ethereum remains robust, the rise of specialized L1s for stablecoins signals a diversification strategy to enhance efficiency and security for real-world asset applications.
David Young [08:07]: "I think that this is absolutely something that's not over yet... something that we definitely need to be paying attention to."
Addressing broader market conditions, David introduces his analysis based on liquidity indices and the global M2 money supply. He forecasts a potential breakout in September, driven by anticipated Federal Reserve rate cuts and increased capital deployment from high money market fund balances.
David Young [22:10]: "I think we're primed for a breakout starting in September."
Scott reflects on the bullish trends, noting that despite high money market fund levels, market rallies have persisted, indicating untapped capital ready to flow into crypto and other risk assets once interest rates become less attractive.
Scott Melker [25:03]: "Once we start seeing rates get cut, then... I have to rotate that capital. I think that's going into crypto and other risk assets."
The latter part of the episode features in-depth technical analysis, primarily focusing on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Dogecoin. The hosts discuss wave patterns, resistance levels, and potential pullbacks that could set the stage for significant upward movements.
Bitcoin: Anticipated to reach targets around $125,000 before a potential pullback towards $118,000, setting up for a surge to $149,000.
Ethereum: Expected to test its all-time high with a strategic pullback before potentially launching into a new bullish phase.
Solana: Showing bullish divergence against Ethereum, with projections aiming at $344 after a consolidation phase.
Chris [32:09]: "But I'm very optimistic about what's going to happen in 2026."
Scott and Chris also touch upon decentralized finance (DeFi) developments and the increasing ratios of decentralized exchanges (DEX) participation.
The episode wraps up with a consensus that while traditional market cycles and narratives evolve, the fundamental bullish outlook on Ethereum and the broader crypto ecosystem remains strong. David Young emphasizes the transformative potential of stablecoins and institutional integrations, while Scott Melker reiterates the momentum building in the altcoin space.
Scott Melker [29:50]: "I think that the four year cycle that we've had in the past is dead... There's a lot bigger things going on."
Listeners are encouraged to monitor ongoing developments, particularly in Ethereum's market movements and the strategic initiatives by major financial institutions and stablecoin issuers.
Notable Quotes:
Scott Melker [00:01]: "Ethereum is less than 3% off of its all time high and looks set to break it as soon as maybe during this show it could happen."
David Young [04:58]: "A lot of that is netted off against the basis trade... hedge funds who are kind of playing this."
David Young [22:10]: "I think we're primed for a breakout starting in September."
Scott Melker [29:50]: "I think that the four year cycle that we've had in the past is dead... There's a lot bigger things going on."
Final Thoughts
This episode of The Wolf Of All Streets provides a comprehensive analysis of Ethereum's current market position, the potential for an altcoin season, and the strategic moves by major players in the crypto space. With insights from David Young, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of the interplay between institutional interest, regulatory developments, and technological advancements shaping the future of cryptocurrency.