Fear Crushes Crypto, DeFi Keeps Printing Revenue #CryptoTownHall

Summary

The Wolf Of All Streets – Crypto Town Hall

Episode: Fear Crushes Crypto, DeFi Keeps Printing Revenue
Date: June 3, 2026
Host: Scott Melker

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Overview

This episode dives into the current waves of fear influencing the crypto markets, Bitcoin’s dramatic price swings, concerns over institutional moves (notably MicroStrategy and “STRC”), and the growing narrative that AI, robotics, and new tech IPOs are draining liquidity away from crypto. Guests and panelists unpack myths and realities, debate the legitimacy of recent sell-offs, dig into the role of regulation, and scrutinize the evolving interplay between crypto and legacy markets.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Deals with Fear and Bitcoin’s Price Drop

• The episode opens with Bitcoin’s price (sitting at $66,600—a “devil's number”) and general market sentiment.
• Scott Melker highlights how fear (not just institutional selling) is driving volatility. He downplays MicroStrategy’s (MSTR) small bitcoin sale as a primary cause, instead pointing to big-picture narrative shifts and capital flows.
  • “I think it’s nuanced...the notion that...[Michael Saylor] selling is not particularly relevant. I think the fear that the biggest buyer in the market may not buy — that might be more relevant...” (01:27)
• Liquidity is moving into hot sectors (AI IPOs, tech stocks) at the expense of crypto, not out of markets entirely.

2. AI and The “Great Vacuum” Narrative

• Panelist Amateo argues that AI continues to “siphon everything out of the market—liquidity, attention, data centers” (04:32), a vacuum that’s not ending soon.
• Dave challenges this, noting the pattern of Wall Street inventing post-hoc narratives and citing how legacy sectors supposedly hurt by AI often rebound, suggesting “Bitcoin isn’t uniquely vulnerable.”
  • “I think there’s other things going on in the world of crypto...Wall Street loves to see what happens and then invent something to explain it.” (05:33)

3. Market Cycles in Crypto and Tech

• Gaurav draws parallels between crypto “honey traps” (sudden rallies in dead tokens to lure investors before a dump) and similar phenomena in dead tech stocks rallying ahead of reinvestment into hot sectors like AI.
• Liquidity cycles and capital movements are discussed alongside concerns about deficits, money printing, and US economic policy.
• Gary introduces a thesis: AI companies themselves may not profit much, but the beneficiaries are the companies that adopt AI. This framework may also apply to crypto infrastructure—value accrues not to base tokens, but to users building atop them.
  • “Transparency always leads to commoditization...Are open-source or base crypto assets priced too high versus the value being created on top?” (13:37–15:12)

4. Crypto, Regulation & The Clarity Act Debate

• Carlos highlights a “massive gaslighting campaign” by traditional banking and anti-crypto politicians (esp. Jamie Dimon), mischaracterizing the Clarity Act as lacking anti-money laundering (AML) protections, despite regulatory text stating otherwise.
  • “Senator Lummis was on CNBC and basically called out Jamie Dimon...he keeps sounding alarms that there are not sufficient [AML] protections in the Clarity Act—which is just not true.” (24:03–26:30)
• Scott Melker discusses the new “national security” narrative, which paradoxically both strengthens government oversight and raises red flags for privacy advocates. AML mechanisms in stablecoins are distinguished from the inherently decentralized nature of Bitcoin.
  • “Most bitcoiners—that would get your Spidey senses tingling...we’re Patriot-Acting ourselves with the Clarity Act.” (26:30)

5. MicroStrategy’s Strategy, STRC, and Bitcoin Treasury Management

• Mike (“grain of salt”) explains that MicroStrategy’s (Strategy/STRC) bitcoin buying/selling is about maximizing bitcoin per share—not calling tops or bottoms. Selling some Bitcoin to “harvest” tax losses while buying more is a sophisticated, long-term play, not panic.
  • “Tax-loss harvesting is not difficult…it’s been around for, I don’t know, 75 or 100 years…their goal is to drive up bitcoin per share.” (33:23)
• Dave and Mike debate the nuances:
  • When institutional holders like MicroStrategy or Strive act, it triggers market speculation, but their aim remains accumulating more BTC, not destabilizing the market.
  • The major threat isn't MicroStrategy, but other digital asset treasuries with impaired assets that might trigger forced selling.

6. DeFi, Hyperliquid, and New Price Discovery Layers

• Gracie Chin shares how offshore exchanges like Hyperliquid and Biget are now key venues for pre-IPO and real-time price discovery—sometimes even outperforming traditional finance (NASDAQ) in speed and volume.
  • “Perpetual contracts on Hyperliquid...generated roughly $320 million in volume before the NASDAQ opened. The crypto-native contract already found the real price.” (52:06)
• Dave underscores this as a critical trend—crypto becoming a venue for true product and asset price discovery even outside of “crypto-native” assets.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Scott Melker on Bitcoin’s drop:
  • “People are clearly selling to get into something else. I don’t think they’re exiting markets.” (01:27)
• Gaurav on ‘honey traps’:
  • “Liquidity would jump in, those shitcoins would rise 20, 30, 40x…a honey trap to attract people…then get more money and eventually take it to whatever’s coming next.” (06:59)
• Gary on AI’s commoditization:
  • “I don’t know how these [AI] companies are going to make money, but I could see margins expand for users of AI...transparency always leads to commoditization.” (12:00–13:39)
• Gracie Chin on Bitcoin price targets:
  • “In this cycle, bitcoin can easily go around 50 to 55K…In the long run I’m optimistic...but in the short run, the AI IPOs are just taking the money outside of crypto.” (19:04–21:42)
• Carlos on Clarity Act FUD:
  • “There is a massive front being waged against passage of the Clarity Act…writers with law enforcement and intelligence experience just signed a letter supporting it.” (24:03)
• Mike on MicroStrategy:
  • “Their public metric is we want to grow bitcoin per share at 10% a year…they’ve quadrupled the amount of bitcoins in two years, which is crazy.” (40:01)
• Dave on distressed digital asset treasuries:
  • “What is absolutely true is non-MicroStrategy digital asset treasuries are a clusterfuck.” (37:16)

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Important Timestamps

• Bitcoin at 666, Narrative Overreaction – 00:34–01:27
• AI Draining Liquidity Narrative – 04:32–05:19
• Crypto’s ‘Honey Trap’ Cycles – 06:59–10:07
• AI Company Value vs. User Value – 12:00–15:12
• Market Structure, USDT, and Leverage – 16:59–18:44
• Bitcoin Price Discussion (Gracie Chin) – 19:04–21:42
• Clarity Act and Regulation FUD – 24:03–28:36
• Tax-Loss Harvesting, MicroStrategy’s Playbook – 33:23–35:06
• Crypto Treasury Management & ‘Clusterfucks’ – 37:16–38:26
• Institutional Crypto Buying Nuance – 44:09–48:54
• Hyperliquid as a New Price Discovery Layer – 52:06–53:28

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Conclusion

Throughout the episode, the panelists dissect the complexity behind Bitcoin’s recent price action and broader crypto market volatility, arguing that fear is being over-amplified by sensational narratives. They emphasize the flow of capital into new tech frontiers (AI, robotics) rather than an outright flight from markets, and stress the impact of evolving regulations. The group’s discussion offers a nuanced, “inside baseball” look at the motivations of institutional players and how new crypto-native platforms are reshaping market structure and information discovery.

Listeners get a candid, multi-layered analysis of why “fear crushes crypto”—and why DeFi and innovative exchanges continue printing revenue no matter the headlines.

Transcript

[Scott Melker]

Well, that was challenging.

[Dave]

Yeah, that was weird. Can you hear me, Scott, by the way? So I'm, I'm.

[Scott Melker]

Yeah.

[Dave]

Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah. So I'm just, I'm. I'm in a. In my, my northern place.

[Scott Melker]

Must be nice.

[Dave]

Yeah, well, whatever. I mean it was interesting doing. Using the full self driving from Florida up to the northeast. I will say it was, it was a much better experience than, than, than I expected and a hell of a lot better than a gas car. And I always thought it would be more of a pain in the ass, so that was cool.

[Scott Melker]

How awesome would it be if you could just sit in the back, sleep, see the nap?

[Dave]

Yeah, that's supposedly that was my question about a year out. Supposedly I'd be fine in the front seat. The front seat's perfectly comfortable. It's just, you know, it, it yells at you if you, you know, you try to do anything. So I'm like, you try to play a game. Yeah, it's not going to be happy. So what do we think about bitcoin being at 666 during this show? You know, while we couldn't get the spaces started is devil number.

[Scott Melker]

That's why the spaces couldn't start until we had the devil's number.

[Dave]

Yeah, it, it feels. I just went to 667. Damn. Well, whatever. Anyway, we had. We were 666 while the space started. So we got that going for us. I mean all I could say is, is, you know, I was, I happened to glance down, saw what was happening yesterday and it was a good day to be in my car and not be trying to figure out, you know, what the hell's going on and all the people. I mean, is this all sailor related? I mean, what do you think?

[Scott Melker]

No, I mean I wrote a whole newsletter on it. That'll be what the Daily Wolfs around, I think. Well, so I think it's nuanced, obvious. Not the 32 bitcoin that he sold.

[Dave]

Right.

[Scott Melker]

I mean what do we have the market like 800,000 bitcoin a day in spot volume. So the notion that. But the narrative around it or the fear around STRC I think could be one of the five or six contributing factors. I mean, STRC is trading below 97. I think on the VWAP, they're still in the 99, so they're not going to probably adjust the dividend right now. But I would say that the narrative, if you really want to dig into it, is probably that there's fear because MSTR is trading Below NAV and STRC is trading well below par that he won't be able to buy. So I think that might be the more relevant part of it. I don't think him selling is particularly relevant. I think the fear that the biggest buyer in the market may not buy. But I think right now I think actually a pretty valid narrative is we're getting a lot of FOMO on the kind of AI IPO trades coming and we've kind of been predicting that a lot of liquidity is going to be sucked out of other things. And I think that's probably starting to happen. I mean everything else is going to highs while bitcoin goes down. People are clearly selling to get into something else. I don't think they're exiting markets.

[Dave]

Yeah, I think I, I, I, I know, I know what I think the, the only, the only narrative that I don't know because I was, I was trying to and obviously it's so damn hard. I was, I told you I was driving. You know, it looked like there was some interesting news on the quantum side that is, you know, I, I, look, I think that's the narrative that won't die until bitcoin is post quantum and I think that that matters. I think that if you're selling bitcoin now to buy, to be able to raise cash to buy SpaceX and you're not selling other, other NASDAQ high flyers, I think you are, are you're smoking some high quality stuff is is the way I would phrase it. I think that is a, a crazy scenario. But you're right, people do crazy. So I guess we'll see.

[Scott Melker]

Anyway, yeah, I think, yeah that I, I literally made the point on my show this morning. I was like, but if that's going to be the narrative narrative, have to see liquidity coming out of a hell of a lot more things than bitcoin to fund hundreds of billions of dollars of, you know, investment in ipo. So it's going to be everything liquid.

[Dave]

I'll repeat something. I don't know if Fong Lee or Sailor, I know you talk to them every once in a while, but I mean, look, if I, I'm, I'm going to say it simply. If I were on their board or if I was a strategic advisor on how to accumulate more bitcoin this week taught me something and should teach them something about how to do so. And if the goal is to be able to buy cheaper, then every once in a while sell and then buy more, you know, and use smart techniques to do so, you know, and they're not stupid people, so I don't know if they're going to learn this lesson, but there's a way for them to trade which will definitely help them. And I think the people at STRIVE could see it. Anybody who's in this game, you know, this is a week is extremely important for that anyway, without going down that rabbit hole, you know. Amateo, I see your hand up. What do you think?

[Amateo]

Hey, guys. Yeah. I just say that it seems as though AI continues to just siphon everything out of the market, out of activity, whether that's liquidity, whether that's data centers. And I just don't see this vacuum ending anytime soon. And attention. Right. So, I mean, I just think that the great AI vacuuming of all things just continues and accelerates, and then we have all of these correlating things with Saylor and strategy that go along with it. And I think that this is going to be prolonged pain as this trend continues until it comes back around.

[Dave]

Yeah. The only problem with that narrative is if you remember Gary and I, Gary was. Was very poetic about this. Not poetic's the wrong word, but, you know, specific about this. And you.

[Gary]

Poetic sounds awesome for me.

[Scott Melker]

I like it, I like it, I like it.

[Dave]

But. But the point that you made about the. The incredible amount of money that went into stocks that are. That were supposedly going to be disenfranchised by AI, like Oracle, you know, and others. Yes, it's not just Oracle, but the entire software index dropping 30% on fears of AI taking it. Just destroying the SaaS business and then having the whole damn sector rally right back to where it was. Makes the notion that somehow Bitcoin is uniquely vulnerable to AI when there's huge evidence that AI agents will probably want to save in Bitcoin. And so to me, I find that strange. I think that there's other things going on in the world of crypto, and that's worth talking about that we always kind of dance around the edges whenever we see days like yesterday when bitcoin gets slammed and everything goes down. But it's a strange narrative. I think that we always make the joke that Wall street loves to see what happens and then invent something to explain it, and there's only a loose correlation, but whatever. Anyway. Gaurav, did I. Unless. Amateo, was that a new hand or is that an old one?

[Amateo]

That was an old hand. I think there's. There's more than just narrative to that conversation, but we can go to Gora for sure.

[Dave]

Well, I'd like to hear it, but yeah, Gorav, go ahead.

[Gaurav]

Hey guys, good to hear from all of you. I think there are two. I don't know if, if it is the same for the larger markets, but this is. In my little journey in crypto of the last 12 years, I've often seen this happen where if, let's say one segment was in a bad shape and it has lost all the traction just out of nowhere for about a week or a month. I mean, crypto is small, so the 10 years are also small. For a week or a month, the liquidity would jump in. Those shit coins would rise like 20, 30, 40 times. Obviously the volatility is higher in crypto because of the low market cap and it is nothing but a honey trap to attract people to these already dead stocks or already dead tokens and then get more money and then eventually take all of that to what's coming next, you know, whatever is coming next. In that case, how does that imply to the crypto, to the stock thing? You know, two days ago when we, when Gary was talking about, about all these tech stocks rallying up that are already killed and by the way, there's no reason these, these stocks should be performing as good as they are. This probably could be the same phenomena and I'm clearly not as educated in the financial markets as I am in crypto, but I'm simply correlating the two phenomenas that these old dead stocks that didn't have enough liquidity and the public has already lost their interest, they are rallying to capture some interest, get the old loyalists to reinvest and then somebody takes that benefit and then all that liquidity goes to whatever is coming next, which is the AI stocks. Does it make sense? Is it a valid theory?

[Dave]

I mean, sounds valid. Look, Gary's post on 55k incoming k is so close to here. It's entirely possible. Obviously anything is possible. To me, as I said, it's about capital flows and it's about what are people thinking. The only thing that we know for sure, we know for sure there will be more liquidity. They will print we are going to be running fiscal deficits for as far as the eye could see. And it looks like they're going to accelerate it. The real question is what will happen? Will Powell behind the scenes do what has been the unthinkable and in the history of the Federal Reserve, it's never happened, that a deposed chair is still exerting power after, after their, their term is over? Generally the chair gets to set the direction. And there's, there's clearly the markets think there's a risk that that's not going to happen. And that. That could be very interesting. We'll see. You know, this.

[Gaurav]

But that. Yeah, but that. By the way, the deficit and the recovery to the deficit has been a long conversation for a very long time. But recently with Elon and others talking about the narrative of AI bringing all the money of the world to the US and obviously the majority of services, and hence the money that was depleting out of the US was to countries like, you know, Asian countries like India for software and human resources, which is, you know, which has been cut down by a large percentage. So obviously the people taking those decisions might find that a surety within this idea of, you know, point number one, all these AI IPOs bringing all the money of the world to the US and that covers up the deficit to a large extent, obviously projected across the next 10, 20 years. And then the ongoing outflows of the country to human labor cost that is already covered to a large extent by AI for software and soft services and then further covered for human and hard services by the likes of Optimus and other robots. I think that could be an argument on the table of these insiders and large policymakers to be maybe print more because there is this big resurrection coming right on the horizon.

[Dave]

Yeah, I see Gary's hand up. So rather than me answer that, that's kind of very twisty logic. Gary, what's up?

[Gary]

Well, I just wanted to respond on Garage Hope. Hopefully I'm pronouncing your name correctly. Your comment about.

[Gaurav]

Yeah, everybody does that, so I'm. I'm used to it. It's got of.

[Dave]

But Mr. Dube.

[Gary]

Mr. Dube, I'll call you that. The, the comment about, you know, AI sucking up all the bit. All the capital and these companies that are generating revenue, real revenues, the IBMs of the world. I'm beginning to wonder if the only benefactors are the companies that will use the AI and that the AI companies themselves will never make money. They're raising too much money, man. I don't know how these companies are going to make money, but I could see how I, as an individual or corporation, if I have a margin of, say, 30% or 15%, I think my margins are going to expand greatly. I don't think I'm just going to lose all my business tomorrow. And the benefactor of the tool, maybe the earnings that you can see into these companies are being revalued today.

[Dave]

So can I answer that a bit, Gary, because I want, I, I think

[Gary]

that, I don't know that there's an answer to it. It's just a thesis in mind that

[Dave]

oh wow, it's similar. So I, I think that, that it boils down to utility versus, you know, you know, commoditized utility versus, you know, added value. So for example, in the case of, of AI, if you come to the conclusion that there will be n number of providers of trained compute and inference and that it's becomes ultimately commoditized such

[Gary]

that it has to.

[Dave]

Well, but if that it has to.

[Gary]

Transparency always leads to commoditization.

[Dave]

So, so the point here is that

[Gary]

fair though like that and AI is really a transparency.

[Dave]

I think the answer is ultimately yes. And so the scramble among the AI companies is to build enough consumer or sticky consumer services that are priced in such a way as to not make switch for switching costs. Right. You know, because there's a lot of services that are essentially, I mean, Internet service providers were a classic example of an obvious frigging commodity. Cell phones are an obvious freaking commodity. Not, not the cell phone itself, the cell phone provider networks underneath it. Yet they're still, they still make a fair amount of money. So it's, I think that the descent of the Internet of the AI companies to what you're saying will take more time and ultimately some will differentiate and some will not. What is, what is really important here though is you're make, you're saying something that is so, so profound for crypto and this is crypto town hall, which is if you are a infrastructure that is ultimately a utility planning on being a utility for other companies to you to make your point that the companies that use that infrastructure will make more money, a dramatically more money than the crypto tokens or, or open source infrastructure is something that's not priced into a lot of crypto markets. And I think that is hugely important. Does that make sense, Gary?

[Gary]

Yeah, I mean, I think we're just, we gotta look at things a little differently than we've ever looked at them

[Dave]

for now, that doesn't mean, by the way, I'm not saying that no crypto assets will be valuable. I'm merely saying that if they're undifferentiated and commoditized or seen that way by the companies that are actually making money, that that's going to make them challenging. Anyway. David, I see your, your mic is up and you have a hand up as well.

[David]

Yeah, yeah, no thanks, Dave. Yeah, I was just going to add to, you know, Gary's earlier point about, you know, AI basically sucking all the cash away from crypto. So we got to look beyond just AI because we're also looking at the rise robotics. We're also looking at, you know, trillions of dollars being put into space with Gold Dome. You've got a lot of growth markets out there that are competing for capital right now and offering better returns along with it. So, you know, from that standpoint, I also agree with your point that, you know, eventually crypto is going to be commoditized and it's going to be the users of crypto who are going to be making the profit off it, while the cost of acquiring or utilizing crypto is going to decline. So, you know, from that standpoint, I'm glad to see that Gary's note was 55. I'm glad to see you're driving the old, the old speed limit there, Gary. We'll see where things pick up from here.

[Gary]

Hey, if nobody's going to buy it, I'mma talk this thing down as long as I can. Like, it's stunning to me that somebody can just, you know, this market's really bizarre, but I do think I'd love to know Scott's view on this, but Scott, I think I'm going to buy sub 60 bitcoin. I $60,000 bitcoin. I just don't see the strength here.

[Scott Melker]

Yeah, it's a rounding error down from here. Right. I think we did 10% in two days, so what's another 10%?

[David]

Right?

[Scott Melker]

Yeah, I think the setup here screams for, I think also like Coinbase Premium and perps and open interest are still have a lot of people positioned long, even though I think we saw 1.8 billion yesterday. So I would imagine that the most bullish scenario actually is a very quick flush well into the 50s and sets up what looks like a bottom on every like cyclical chart. So, yeah, I, I, I think so. But, you know, been wrong many times

[Dave]

before there because it just drives me crazy is this Coinbase Premium notion. It, it you're looking at the wrong thing. It has nothing to do with the Coinbase Premium. It's what it is is USDT is trading at a slight discount. Not, I mean, not a lot. But what is it, 14 basis points, 13 basis points? Or am I getting 1.3 basis points? Whatever it is that USDT trading below par means that the premium of the US dollar versus the binance, which is in USDT looks like a premium. And if it flips, it's the opposite. But what it does mean, whenever USDT for a long period of time trades at a small discount in a non arbitrageable discount is the best answer. When it does that, what it's indicating is there's not a lot of creation, there's not a lot of demand for crypto from the world because the USDT has been the single best vehicle for most of the world to entry new capital in the crypto. So it's telling you that new capital is not coming in. And so that is important, but it's a backward looking indicator. I just want that to be clear. It doesn't speak to leverage. Now leverage of course could be, you could very well be right. But I just want to make that technical point because it is relevant. Anyway, I see new hands, I see Grace, I see your hand up and then I think amatea. Sure.

[Gracie Chin]

Hi everyone, I'm Gracie Chin. I'm a little bit new to the, the town hall but I, I know both my.

[Scott Melker]

We've had you here before, Gracie.

[Gracie Chin]

It's been a long time, but it's been a while. It's been a while, at least like half a year.

[Dave]

It would be great to get your view on Scott's point on leverage because.

[Gracie Chin]

Yes, yes, I want to bring more

[Dave]

than all of us,

[Gracie Chin]

I want to bring two views here. Number one is personal view on bitcoin price. I heard a lot of earlier discussion from, you know, Dave. Mr. I don't know how to pronounce your name either. Dubal, sorry. And a few other folks about bitcoin price.

[Gaurav]

You've done that before, Bracey.

[Gracie Chin]

It's G. G. Okay.

[Gaurav]

We have met a bunch of times.

[Gracie Chin]

Okay. Sorry, I have very bad memory. So in terms of bitcoin price, I actually just made a send a TW this morning, but it was in Mandarin and I purposely did that in only in Mandarin because I want to keep that voice slightly closed in in my, my Chinese community. But basically what I said earlier today is that I think in this cycle bitcoin can easily go around, you know, 50 to 55K. And I obviously had a lot of fire firebacks from that tweet. Know crypto exchange users and you know, Chinese community kols are basically targeting me and quite blindly criticizing me, saying that I as a, you know, CEO of crypto exchange should not say something like that. I should always be, you know, bullish about crypto, especially bitcoin. But basically my personal take is that in the long run I'm still very optimistic. You know, central banks around the World are printing money like crazy but. And commodities like bitcoin, gold and silver are due for a uptrend but in the short run factors like the rising CPI and inflation which may lead to interest rate hikes along with massive IPOs in the US stocks and the AI sectors they are just. You guys mentioned that they are just taking the money outside of crypto and then we've heard you know, potential. It might be rumor but basically there might be wow wealth like micro strategy and Mongox selling. So I think these are all short term factors that can drive price down. And my personal all in sort of price in this cycle is obviously around 50k. Yeah so that's my personal take but I'm happy to share a bit more. You know both Binance and Biget etc listed US stocks for offshore exchange users. But I'll stop here just in case anyone want to jump in for some insights.

[Scott Melker]

You got plenty of people who I'm sure want to jump in,

[Dave]

but I'm not sure.

[Amateo]

Yeah I just had a question and this is just kind of to the panel. Most generally I'm seeing a lot of posts about how the sailor consolidation of bitcoin, the amount that's owned the STRC and the potential for for selling. Now I'm not trying to be a doomer here by any means or be overly negative. The question I have is I've seen some content that's been geared towards that this potential tail risk and the optics of it have made other institutions more gun shy or less interested to get exposure to bitcoin. And I just wanted to get an idea if that is just fud, just baseless FUD or if that's something that any of you guys have seen in your conversations.

[Gracie Chin]

I think MicroStrategy it makes sense for them to sell definitely not the whole all the bitcoins that they hold which is like about more than 3% of the total bitcoin supply but it makes sense for them to sell high and try to buy low. And again I think I'm not very fuding in terms of the whole microstrategy going bust like FTX and bring, bring the whole market down. But I think as a company, Michael Saylor as well as you know MicroStrategy it does, it just doesn't make sense for them to hold forever. They, they haven't sold when bitcoin was more than 120k but, but right now it's, it's still more commercially, commercially rational to sell if they think the price can go lower and they get to, you know, buy it back at a lower price.

[Dave]

Carlo, is that a legacy hand? I, I don't think we've heard from you this morning.

[Carlos]

Yeah, good morning. I think one of the things that's really weighing down crypto right now and is the fact that we are just witnessing a massive gaslighting campaign coming from the bank and anti crypto army side. You know, Senator Lummis was on CNBC and basically called out Jamie Dimon for what I have been saying and I actually wrote about it yesterday. Is that his. He's either not reading the Clarity act or he's not being honest about what's in the Clarity act because he keeps sounding alarm bells because he keeps sounding the alarm bell that there are not sufficient anti money laundering protections in the Clarity act and that this endangers the financial system. And you know, I wrote about and released this article yesterday on my substack talking about this very thing. And I ran through the proposed regulatory language that is in the Clarity act and more importantly, I ran it through the proposed FinCEN regulations from treasury that apply to the Genius act and they mention anti money laundering no less than 400 times. So I think one of the problems we're seeing right now is that there is a massive front being waged against passage of the Clarity Act. And you know, thankfully Blockchain association came out yesterday with a letter signed by 160 individuals with experience in intelligence and law enforcement who basically all supported passage of the Clarity act because it ties exactly into what Senator Lummis is saying. We need market structure for the institutions to come into this.

[Mike]

This space was downloaded via spaces down.com visit to download your spaces today.

[Carlos]

And the narrative that's being pushed right now are by the people that stand to lose the market, most from market structure because they want to continue to push fear mongering. But they are losing. And I think their, their time is running out. The clock is running. We know that the Senate has teed this thing up, it circulated the bill and it looks like it's going to finally get calendared for a floor vote. So I am optimistic. I know, Scott, you think the ethics clause is going to pull this thing down, but I think they're going to be able to pull enough people across the aisle to get this done because it is just that important to get done.

[Scott Melker]

I mean, this new national security narrative is definitely a big fresh push. Right? We literally never heard that before. And all of a sudden you get this Blockchain association letter, as you said. But now Everybody tweeting it and talking about it. Interestingly, it comes at the same time, by the way. And the claim there is that the Clarity act basically gives the cops more reach and more power and it's a security, national security threat. Which is kind of funny because I would think most bitcoiners, that would get your spidey senses tingling that, you know, we're patriot acting ourselves with the Clarity Act.

[Carlos]

But there's nuance in that. There's nuance in that. Can I, can I respond to that?

[Dave]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Scott Melker]

I don't, I'm not saying I believe that. I'm telling you what the narratives are. Yeah, go ahead.

[Carlos]

I mean, I've read the FinCEN regulation and they constantly point to the fact that the majority of the fraud that goes on in stablecoins particularly is on secondary markets. And the ability to freeze and to burn tokens, which is baked into the regulations that are probably going to get approved, is a mechanism to stop that. Now, while that should give concern to the crypto army, especially the bitcoiners out there, the difference is very clear. Stablecoins are regulated digital dollars and they are subject to AML because they're launched by entities that can be forced under these regulations to shut down, freeze wallets and burn. Bitcoin is a decentralized platform that doesn't have that mechanism baked into it. So you're trying to give the market confirmation and clarity that stablecoins don't present a threat to the financial sector because they have these anti money laundering mechanisms in place. There's no way any of this stuff is going to get mainstreamed and institutionally adopted. If it doesn't come with these restrictions. There's just no way the government's ever going to let that happen. So I think it's something that you have to accept, but it doesn't necessarily mean that obviously all of blockchain technology has become a surveillance state because that's why we have bitcoin.

[Dave]

Well, I mean, yes and no. I mean, the fact is that bad guys using bitcoin compared to bad guys using cash, the bad guys get caught a lot more using bitcoin.

[Gracie Chin]

Bitcoin.

[Dave]

I mean, it's, it's just, just fact. I mean, you know, the FBI will have been saying this for years. I mean, it is harder to cover your tracks in, in, in bitcoin than it is in a lot of other financial assets. That's the real problem with Jamie Dimon is saying, I mean, when you see billions in fines, what does that tell you in Terms of the amount, the raw amount of actually laundered funds through the traditional financial system is a staggering number. And we know that, and everyone wants to ignore it, but that's, that's besides the point. I mean, look, there's, there's two huge narratives. One is this national security narrative. It's true. I mean, whether it's economic competitiveness, whether it's just, you know, the way they're framing it now, it's, it's, It's a true narrative. I mean, we know that's true. The other one that's absolutely true is investor protection in the event of a bankruptcy. Without clarity, there is literally no way to avoid the investors getting screwed because they're going to stand behind, you know, stand as general creditors, which means the lawyers get money in front of them. All of that matters. And, you know, Elizabeth Warren could talk out of both sides of her mouth, but there's no answer to that argument. And so, you know, then the third narrative, which is this notion of, well, it's really illegal, it's really bad. Well, okay, but then do you really want Americans to be using offshore exchanges, or do you want them to go through. Through regulated exchanges? All of those arguments are for the lack of a better word for those who ever play bridge. It's that those are Trump arguments. There's no answers to them. So that what happens when they come up is the opponents ignore them. And the real question is, will people let them? And the answer is probably yes. I mean, that's the question. Because we got wars going on, we got elections, we got this, we got that. And the real question is, can you get. And you used the word before, Carlos. Can you get attention to the actual issues? Because it's very, very hard to justify the other side of this. It's damn close to impossible. So all you do is just break, push it into tribalism and hope that nobody notices that you're saying stupid shit and hope that no FTX happens between now and the elections. Because if it does, and if it could have been prevented, then that would be a disaster. And that's what's actually funny about watching fear. Extreme fear in the crypto market is, well, what happens in the case of a bankruptcy, Gaurav? Is that a new hand?

[Gaurav]

No, that was, like, ages ago when I wanted to respond to Gary and then wanted to respect to Grace C. And then wanted to respect. Respond to Carlo.

[Dave]

So. Okay, Too old. Well, you know, look, I, I see grain of salt up here. Grain. I'm fairly confident, you know, I'm sorry. I keep wanting to use your real name. Sorry about that. I'm pretty confident you want to talk about the strc and you know that that particular topic is. Am I right?

[Mike]

You're right. And my real name is Mike. I've used it on my book. So my real name is.

[Dave]

I know that you told it to me. I just didn't want to.

[Mike]

Yeah, so my real name is out there, but so many more people know me by grain of salt. So, you know, going back to what Gracie was saying. So. So look, strategy's goal is to increase bitcoin per share. It's not that they're going to sell bitcoin and buy it back cheaper. I think that, you know, some, you know, strategy on Monday of next week will announce that they buy anywhere between 2,500 and 3,000 bitcoins. And one of the common things that came up on on X is like, hey, look, if you're going to buy 10 bitcoin and then sell one bitcoin, you have a net of nine bitcoin. Why don't you just buy nine? What he was signaling to the market was because what he said for years was, hey, you never sell your bitcoin because they had previously sold Bitcoin in 2022, people internalized it. That Sailor would never sell bitcoin for strategy. That was an assumption that people made. So by him saying, you know, by him saying, if you buy 10 Bitcoin and sell one, you signal to the market now you're being tax lot efficient. And that's where sometimes people are like, oh, you went too fast. I'm like, look, text loss harvesting is not difficult. It's been around for, I don't know, 75 or 100 years. And so what they're showing to the market is, hey, and they put this in their slide publicly that they have 129,000 bitcoins above a hundred thousand dollars. It would make sense for them to sell some of those now, right? Book a tax loss carry forward.

[Dave]

Right?

[Mike]

Which any, anybody that's competent in investing knows what a tax loss harvesting is and they'll do that and then they'll acquire more bitcoin next week. And their goal is to drive up the bitcoin per share. The interesting part about that is that that's done a 4x since they started. So the bitcoin per share for Strategy is up 3.9x since they started. If you're to buy an ETF, it's always 1 to 1. If you buy Bitcoin it's always 1 to 1. That's their KPI. I'll take any questions on it. I don't know why people miss this.

[Dave]

And, and right. I, I, I personally, I mean if, if you ask me, I mean I've said this a few times. I mean I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm lobbying for it because I'm, I'm not. But I mean if I were sitting in the, the, as the, the director of, of, of of a director of strategy advising on trading, I would say that that this week has taught you that doing something that you can't do if you're a broker and you write build algos for people. I mean when I say can't, I mean I literally fought for compliance compliance with at Citigroup for years on this topic. It is well understood by people who, who do execution strategies for a living that if you have the flexibility to sometimes sell when you're buying and sometimes buy when you're selling to misdirect the market that you can ultimately get a lower overall price based on market impact and various things that you're doing. And there's, there's a variety of ways and what this week has taught anybody with a, who, who understands market structure that there's an opportunity for strategy to actually do better than they've been doing long term by incorporating strategic sales.

[Mike]

Yeah, but, but I'll push back on that a little bit. So, and the data tells us something a little bit different than that. First of all, from a narrative perspective, if strategy would have sold bitcoin when the price was high, let's say bitcoin goes to 150,000 and so all of their bitcoin is now in profit. If they were to signal to the market that they sold it again the same number, 32 Bitcoin, the narrative would be oh my God, the top is in strategy is selling. So that that's how it take place. The other thing if they publish their addresses every time they move coins, if anything has taught us is that if the addresses were published and anytime they move coins but don't necessarily sell it, it would spook the market every single week. It just would or every single day. So that that would be problematic. The, the weirdest thing about strategy that people what's counterintuitive is that they acquire more Bitcoin when the price of bitcoin is higher, not lower. And the, the so their top five quarters have all been when the price of Bitcoin has been higher and the other part that's counterintuitive. Q1, 20, 26 was their second best quarter out of 25 quarters. Acquiring Bitcoin during a bitcoin bear market. So their access to capital, so the narratives are they won't be able to access capital when there's a bitcoin. Bitcoin drops 50%. That's not true because Q1 was the second best quarter ever. I think Q2 is tracking to be right now is the sixth best quarter ever. So whether the price, when the price of bitcoin is the highest, they accrete the most bitcoin per share. And that's where this gets. People get like lost. And it's like, well, it's a little bit more complex when you're dealing with $55 billion worth of something versus somebody. It's like, you know what? I own two bitcoins. Oh my God, I'm so happy for you. That is great. But when you scale 2 bitcoins to 840,000 bitcoins, the level of sophistication goes way up. And I think a lot of commentary that we see online is people that don't have that level of sophistication not being mean, I'm just saying they, they don't seem to understand the difference in, in magnitude.

[Dave]

Yeah, I mean, there are multiple things that you just said that I don't agree with that. There are things that I do. There's a lot of nuance. The truth is that if their goal is to acquire as much bitcoin as possible and there's demand in the fixed income markets for them to be able to pay yield and they have the ability to make that yield, it's going to continue to push higher. And these little pockets that we get every time there's a downturn are just turned out into opportunities. The real question is every time people start going through this, well, if he's not going to be able to buy anymore, he's going to lose his access to capital and he's gonna have to sit in his hands or it's gonna, he's gonna have to sell. That's when you get these, these downdrafts and we get them all the time. I mean, let's, let's face it, we've seen it multiple times. I don't see that here. I don't. But you know, anything is possible. But what is absolutely true is non microstrategy digital asset treasuries are a clusterfuck. I mean, I'm not, I guess, you know, not all of them, but quite a few of them are. And, you know, there was a tweet.

[Mike]

Let me chime in on that last part. Except for strategy and Strive. And I pick Strive out particularly because they have no debt and it's the only other one to get out of Pref. And they're the seventh largest Bitcoin Treasury. Pretty much all of the other ones are charitably a clusterfuck.

[Dave]

Right. Arguably the most bearish post I saw over the last week was Dan Held basically saying three different digital asset treasury companies asked him to. I can't remember whether it was CEO or join the board or whatever. And he said no. What does that tell you? Well, that tells you that we got a lot of companies out there with impaired assets that they may be forced to either sell or I don't know what they can do with it. And that's selling pressure. And that is what is why. I think. I think that is actually what's happening here. And I think that's a large part of what Gary is talking about. I mean, who are the buyers for that? I mean, you can. Can you buy Bitcoin cheaper by buying it from them? Will they sell the asset? I mean, Nakamoto, I can't imagine him selling his Bitcoin because if he does and it dissolves, you know, he loses his salary and his gravy train and all the other stuff. And who knows? He could end up losing control of his golden goose. But there are others that might be in a different situation. I think it would take. There's going to be a distressed. You know, distressed equity and distressed debt are incredibly profitable if you know what you're doing. And my guess is that's going to end up in this sector. I mean, I don't know if you agree with that, Mike.

[Mike]

We're already there. You and I are. You and I are in agreement with this. Absolutely. Those people. I'll talk to you afterwards about what you just said. I don't want to talk about that publicly, but. Yeah, so, so. So, look, there's other hands up. Let's, you know, go to them. I don't want to monopolize the call, but. But I want people to realize that. I'll make one quick distinction. I think that there's a. There's two things that people sometimes miss on this is that strategy's original goal. And I think what's shifted with Saylor is getting close to the 1 million bitcoin mark. And Fred Krueger used a great term yesterday, and he said, you know, we now have a guy that publishes with an 8K or a 10Q, right. Their, their quarterly and earnings in the 8K. Pretty much every time he has to do something materially with a satoshi level number, we'll get to a million bitcoins September of this year. And so I think what happened is, is that I think now he's big enough. I think what happened was in January 2024 he had less than 200,000 bitcoins and he has now quadrupled the amount of bitcoins in two years, which is crazy once you see that statistic. And so now what he keeps on saying, he's been very particular about this metric is bitcoin per share. Not the absolute number, it's the growth. Their public metric is we want to grow bitcoin per share at 10% a year, which is a very low percentage. And that means in seven years they double the amount of bitcoin per share. That's from the rule of 72. They just rounded it down from 7.2 to 7. They said 10% a year is their metric. They're at 13% so far for this year. So they've exceeded their metric with their. What their metric is for growing bitcoin per share. So that's where they're going to get to, I think, to a million bitcoin. And they're big enough. They were not big enough at all in 2024 and, and that's where it is today. So I think it shifted a little bit from the nominal number to the growth rate. That's what's more important, the growth rate of bitcoin per share.

[Dave]

Gaurav, is that a new hand? Good?

[Gaurav]

Yep.

[Dave]

Yep.

[Gaurav]

Relatively older. To the, to the shift of. With respect to the shift of topics, Mike, my response is obviously with the spirit of conversation on the Twitter space and definitely no offense against your remarks. When you look at founders and when you look at people who have achieved a lot of, let's say, exceptional achievements in their enterprise, most of the times it is less sophistication, more motivation, less maths, more story like msrt, which was like almost a lot of times against the popular belief it is the motivation of that guy Saylor. So as much as I agree with everything related to sophistication as it falls today and as it looks today, abstraction of wallets, nobody knows their wallets, and so on, I don't agree to the idea of sophistication, of buying the tops. The buying pressure or the buying ideology came from the underlying belief that bitcoin will never fail. And no matter how much it drops. I mean, obviously nobody's calculating the quote, no matter mathematically, but they keep buying. And it did work out till date. So that is one thing that I wanted to point out based on my little experience with enterprises and entrepreneur of the last two decades, then about.

[Mike]

Do you want me. Do you want me to. Do you want me to speak about? Do you want me to.

[Gaurav]

Sure.

[Dave]

Yeah. Sure.

[Scott Melker]

Sure.

[Gaurav]

Please. It's.

[Mike]

Sure, sure. So strategies found. Obviously, Michael Saylor is the founder of it. He could have retired, and then he tried to rebuild the company. This is all public information. He tried to rebuild the company multiple times, and he couldn't grow against Microsoft. So then he found bitcoin.

[Dave]

He did it.

[Mike]

I think the part that I'm not getting with what you're saying here is, is that he, you know, buying the tops, gave him the optionality. He bought the tops and the bottoms. I think what we would say to anybody, when you buy the top, right, and the price of bitcoin drops, you have the optionality out of tax loss harvest. That's sophistication. Do I hear other bitcoin people talking about that?

[David]

No.

[Mike]

And I typically don't hear people selling, saying they want to sell the top either. And the reason why is because, oh, I'll have to pay taxes. Taxes are unjust. It's unfair. They're stealing from me. And I'm like, what's the sense of holding an asset right, if you never get to use it? And then we get to the part where we talked about briefly about Nakamoto and that, that David. Dave talked about it, is that if you pledge your bitcoin as collateral, the borrow against it, now you have it, now it's impaired because it's pledged as collateral, which is for them, it's over 40%. They're like, oh, we don't like that either. So I think people have a negative bias with everything. We want to see everybody fail because they're emotional. Maybe it's just because of jealousy. Why is Michael Saylor a multi billionaire and I'm not? Why is he successful and I'm not? I don't understand what he's doing. I think the market is emotional.

[Dave]

Emotional.

[Mike]

The fact that we blame him for selling 32 bitcoin and the price of bitcoin drops off, I think that's purely emotional. You can respond to what I said. I think that what he did, he did what he said.

[Gaurav]

No, I agree. You're absolutely correct. I mean, that's What I actually was implying that whether or not that the whole buying up was sophistication, I think that was certainly emotional and goes, no, it wasn't emotional.

[Mike]

It was, it wasn't emotional. What he, what he did was he had conviction to follow through with it. That's what we don't hear from a lot of people. Yeah, but the way you said it was, it sounded like, oh, he's buying the top because it's emotional. No, when he was buying the top, that's.

[Dave]

No, no, no, no. Let me be very clear.

[Mike]

When he bought the top, that's when the stock was at the highest. M nav. Which is counterintuitive. People are like, why would you buy the top? And that's when he had the highest multiple. So it was the most accretive. If you could sell, if you could sell a $1 stock for $3, you arbitrage the $2. People don't understand what I just said right there.

[Gaurav]

Let's quickly switch gears to, to understand the second part, which is the stock per. The bitcoin per. Stock that should enable, like that, that commitment should, should probably have, you know, made him strategize to buy the bottoms, which, you know, a lot of people are talking about. What do you think about that? Where is that?

[Mike]

He did that. I just said that in Q1 of 2026, which is. Which was. We'll assume that that's. This has been the bear market that we're in. It was their second best quarter ever out of 25 quarters. Now in 2022, they had approximately like 125,000 bitcoins. So again, this goes to nominal numbers. He just started buying it. He just started. I don't know if he had his first convert done yet. So that was very early in the journey because it was only two years in. Now we're looking at a company that's coming up on six years and now they come into this at approximately 600,000. They were at 625,000 bitcoins, maybe a little bit less at the end of the year. And now they've acquired 170,000 bitcoins year to date. So in a downturn, like I said, Q1, 2026 is their second best quarter ever. And Q2, which is another down, down quarter for bitcoin, is right now, I believe, number five or number six out of 25 quarters. So they've done both.

[Dave]

Can I ask the question that most of the audience cares about? Because this is just right to the chase, especially because we're kind of over time already is this, what do you view as the odds of non tactical small tax law selling but net selling of bitcoin that a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, strategy will have fewer bitcoin on, you know, on its balance sheet than it does today. What do you rate the odds?

[Mike]

They will always increase the amount of bitcoin that they have and they will always increase the amount of bitcoin per share.

[Dave]

Right. So if that is true, I'm not saying you're wrong, I actually tend to agree with you. If that is true, then that is telling you that people who are selling today are, on the basis of this news, are going to, as it always happens, are the people who are locking barn doors after the horses have bolted and Gary won't be as happy and won't be able to buy bitcoin in the 50s and the 40s. That's what that says to me. But you're right in a sense. The fact is there's emotions here and people will, will think and not necessarily agree with you, but that is the, that, that's, that's where the rubber meets the road here. And Gaurav, I assume you agree on that.

[Gaurav]

I do have questions, but we are running over time, which is around the yields and how would the sustain. Probably we have another space tomorrow to discuss that because I don't think bitcoin outperforms our expectations tomorrow.

[Dave]

So.

[Gaurav]

Well, on the topic.

[Dave]

Okay, it's funny, I just got, I just got some texts from, you know, from listeners that, that have integer percentage chances, which is, which is of course interesting because if you think about the yield, the market sort of is pricing it as a higher probability than zero because if it's zero, then STRC is like the greatest product on, on the planet. So, you know, essentially it's. No one gets a chance to buy high yield debt at, you know, from AAA companies. Right. And zero would be implied triple, you know, wouldn't try aaa. So anyway, it, it's a longer conversation. But

[Gary]

what

[Gaurav]

I, I was saying, we have discussed this so many times in the past two years.

[Dave]

Well, sure, but when you see big

[Gaurav]

moves, when I see the final outcomes,

[Dave]

I think it's, it's worth, it's worth it. So it's probably worthwhile. Okay, before we go, I see David's hand up. So what, what's up?

[David]

Yeah, my last question is given the fact that we've got a dividend record date for STRC coming up on Monday 15 June, you know, people should just step in and do a dividend capture strategy and then you know, not hold it obviously because you don't want, you don't know if it's going to hold its peg or not. But nonetheless you'll get the payout.

[Dave]

Well, we'll see. I mean it is interesting but. Well, we'll be back on Friday. Hopefully we'll get the spaces started earlier so that we don't have to run run over. But you know look we're, we, we've fallen below 666 so you know, I don't know. We'll see. Gary, you got to get the engines ready for you know, for the next whoosh down. Okay. All, I mean I, I will point out one, one quick note. There is one crypto in the top 10 that is up today. Actually there is one and I think it's the only one that's tracking what tech stocks are doing and that's hyper liquid. And that continues to be a really interesting story but I think that given what happened yesterday, that's why we didn't really focus on it.

[Gracie Chin]

Since you brought up hyper, can I just jump in and share one interesting case?

[Dave]

Sure.

[Gracie Chin]

That both hyperliquid and Big get kind of become a price discovery for some pre IPO stocks. Actually I think this happened in early May that there was a US AI AI stocks called. Let me find the name. I think it's called CR cbrs. It's not small but I'm not familiar with CBRS before it's launching on NASDAQ that day actually it was open on perpetuals for Hyper Liquid and Big Ed already. And the high catalyst perpetual contracts actually generated roughly 320 million in volume before the NASDAQ debugged and then before also before the traditional market even opened the crypto native contract price already find the real price which is jumped, you know from 290 to nearly 380. And after it really opened a Nasdaq the that day Intra High was 363x3 386. So I, I started to see, you know hyperloop began and all some other offshore exchanges become this price discovery layer for private companies for Wall street, which is quite exciting.

[Dave]

Gracie, I would love you to come back because we really should discuss that because it goes so much beyond that. I mean on the weekend Hyper liquid Bloomberg is quoting hyper liquid oil prices on the weekend now. I mean it's just there is so much going on in terms of what's actually happening on in the world of price discovery. I think that you hit on a really important topic. But since we're literally about to close the space now, you know.

[Gracie Chin]

Yes. I'll join you next week or maybe the week after.

[Dave]

Very, very important topic, I think. Yes.

[Gracie Chin]

Agree. Yeah. Thank you for having us today, Dave.

[Dave]

Well, thank you. And, and we'll see everyone here hopefully on time on Friday Morning at. At 10:15. Take care.