Fear Peaks as Long Term Crypto Signals Turn Loud #CryptoTownHall

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Wolf Of All Streets

Episode: Fear Peaks as Long Term Crypto Signals Turn Loud (#CryptoTownHall)
Date: January 21, 2026
Host: Scott Melker
Guests: Multiple industry experts (including Dave, Gary, Florian, Ryan, Amateo, and others)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into surging fear within the crypto markets despite relatively stable Bitcoin prices, the massive liquidation event that swept through traders, and how long-term signals are flashing for sharp-eyed investors. The panel discusses psychological factors driving the market, the unique behavior of "crypto-native" versus external retail participants, the interplay between precious metals and digital assets, and what might catalyze the "next wave" of significant market movement. The broader macroeconomic context, particularly the strength of gold and silver, is dissected for its implications on Bitcoin and crypto sentiment. The tone toggles between analytical, skeptical, and sharply candid, with the host and panelists frequently challenging each others’ assumptions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. State of the Crypto Market: Fear, Liquidation, and Leverage

• Massive Liquidations Despite Stable Prices
  • $1.08 billion in crypto leveraged positions were liquidated, affecting ~180,000 accounts, as Bitcoin hovered near $90,000.
  • "It just blows my mind the amount of leverage." — Scott (00:23)
  • Drawing parallels with the FTX liquidation event where $1.2 billion was wiped out in a similarly short time frame.
• Psychological Fallout & ‘Time-Based Capitulation’
  • Veteran traders are exhausted, and "crypto natives" are more fearful than ever as minor retraces trigger disproportionate emotional responses.
  • “There are people who have very strong belief in a potential option of bitcoin that are not selling. And there are people who have been in crypto for years and they're the ones who are selling. … We're still in a bottoming process.” — Dave (03:11)
• Occam’s Razor and Stop-Loss Hunts
  • Simple explanation: Stop-losses are hunted around key psychological levels, generating cascading liquidations with little underlying price movement.
  • “If people know that there’s a lot of stop losses at 90,000, someone’s going to hunt to try to trigger those stop losses and buy back at 88 or so.” — Dave (03:57)

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2. Who’s Selling, Who’s Buying?

• The Absence of Retail FOMO
  • Crypto-native retail participants mostly lost significant capital in previous downturns (notably October 10), are exhausted, or keep getting liquidated.
  • Broader, mainstream retail (“the Uber driver and your barber”) has yet to return — “all it takes ... is higher prices for them to come.” — Scott (05:49)
  • European retail is more active (especially in silver and gold), but U.S. retail remains on the sidelines.
• Old Money vs. New Money
  • Incoming demand needs to come from “new money,” potentially via institutional allocations as financial advisors slowly warm up to small crypto positions (2–4% allocation discussed).
  • “It doesn't take much. Just do the math. … There just isn't enough supply.” — Dave (07:01)
• Catalyst Obsession and Market Narratives
  • Panelist skepticism about pinpointing catalysts: “You don't know that catalyst has happened till after it's occurred in the market. The price has already moved.” — Dave (06:56)
  • Euphoria and narratives are written in hindsight.

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3. Range-Bound Markets & Sentiment Indicators

• Technical Analysis & Sentiment
  • Current action is “range-bound”; volatility is extremely low, and yet fear indexes have spiked into extreme territory.
  • “Anyone that wants to tell you that we’re in this bear market that are fearful… the pattern is so just obvious. … Stats haven’t changed.” — Ryan (08:15)
• Disconnect With Broader Markets
  • Only crypto seems paralyzed by uncertainty; equities and other asset classes continue to hit new all-time highs.
  • “Markets hate uncertainty, but apparently only bitcoin and crypto markets hate uncertainty because everything else is … making new all time highs.” — Scott (09:25)
• Macro Factors Overshadowing Crypto, Including Precious Metals
  • The panel suggests that Japanese bonds and macroeconomic liquidity have more sway than widely cited news headlines.

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4. Metals Mania & Macro Interplay

• Gold and Silver Parabolas
  • Precious metals (especially silver) are behaving in “a way we haven’t seen in many decades.”
  • Bullishness tempered by warnings of sharp corrections coming.
  • “Hard for me to believe that silver continues this climb. When it starts to retrace, I don't think that's going to be good for bitcoin.” — Gary (11:55)
• Bitcoin’s Weakness and Correlation Breakdown
  • Bitcoin is now “completely disconnected from all other markets” — seen by some veterans as a warning signal.
  • “I've learned painfully that the retracements during a crypto winter are pretty painful. So Bitcoin can retrace 50, 70. … So it's looking weak.” — Florian (18:17)

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5. Manipulation & Structural Market Differences

• Commodities vs. Crypto: Market Structure
  • Detailed discussion on the differences between gold/silver and Bitcoin markets concerning manipulation:
    • Commodities markets are controlled, with prices often set via paper contracts and futures.
    • Bitcoin markets are globally visible, verifiable on-chain, and harder to manipulate longer-term, though still subject to short-term “stop loss” raids.
    • “There is no electronic spot market for gold and silver. … Bitcoin is uncontrollable or very hard [to manipulate], but you can manipulate it in the short term.” — Dave (34:21)
• Structural Deficits and Physical Scarcity
  • Silver is uniquely constrained: few pure silver mines, high industrial demand, and a slow production ramp-up cycle.
  • “There is just very few pure silver mines operating on the planet. There is not many coming into production anytime soon. … Those copper mines cannot ramp up silver production just because the price went up. So I think this will take time.” — Florian (25:20)

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6. Big Picture: The End of the Petrodollar, Crack-Up Boom, and Systemic Shifts

• End of the US Dollar’s Era?
  • Emerging markets (China, India, Russia) are buying gold, not Bitcoin, as faith in fiat crumbles.
  • “We're seeing the end of the US petrodollar system and something else is coming along. … I think gold will not top out at $5,000. … Silver can easily hit 200, 300, maybe $500, no problem.” — Florian (18:17, 18:45)
• “Crack-Up Boom” and Market Outcomes
  • The “crackup boom” thesis — where all asset classes can melt up when monetary authorities keep printing — remains the prevailing long-term narrative, but expect painful volatility and dislocations.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Sentiment & Capitulation
  • “At what point does the crypto-native folks have nothing left to sell? … I think we're rapidly approaching that.” — Dave (01:41)
• On Structural Change in Buy-Side Dynamics
  • “Any new money is going to take new money, not the crypto market for a while.” — Dave (04:49)
• On Why Bitcoin is Different:
  • “As a result, the paper bitcoin to sell to depress the spot doesn't work. And in fact, most of the big liquidation events have been because people have done things … in Bitcoin.” — Dave (34:21)
• On Precious Metals:
  • “Silver is hard to get, I can tell you. There is just very few pure silver mines operating on the planet.” — Florian (25:20)
• On Hopeful Maximalism vs. Reality
  • “I'm still running into way too many people who strongly believe that this must come back immediately. … But the reality right now looks different.” — Florian (18:17)
• Dark Humor & Morale:
  • “When people like Gary, as bullish as they are, get more morose, that to me is so much closer [to the market bottom].” — Dave (13:08)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Massive Liquidations and Market Fear: 00:00–03:57
• Retail vs. Institutional Participation: 04:49–07:00
• Catalysts and Market Narratives: 06:28–08:11
• Sentiment & Range-Bound Analysis: 08:13–09:25
• Precious Metals Surge & Macro Connections: 11:27–18:17
• Crypto Winter, Technical Analysis, and Sentiment: 18:17–23:56
• Commodities Market Structure vs. Crypto: 25:20–34:21
• Big Picture: Systemic Financial Shifts: 18:17–end

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Closing Thoughts

This episode serves as a robust health check on crypto-native sentiment, market psychology under duress, and the often-misunderstood mechanics connecting Bitcoin, gold, and silver in the context of a shifting global monetary order. The discussion is candid, data-driven, at times skeptical, and openly uncertain about the near-term, while maintaining a long-term view on the once-in-a-generation disruptions unfolding across digital and tangible asset classes.

For listeners seeking guidance in the storm, the message is clear: respect market structures, recognize sentiment extremes, and be wary of narratives spun in times of high fear or euphoria.

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Transcript

[A]

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Crypto Town hall every day here on X at 10:15am Eastern Standard Time. Topic today, fear peaks as long term crypto signals turn loud. I guess we can dive into the fact that we've had a small retrace in the market and somehow that means that we are once again fearful. I think the most astounding stat that I saw today, which I focused on pretty much on my show, was the fact that there was, I think, Dave, I'm getting an echo from your mic. Like $1.08 billion liquidated yesterday and just a massive amount of traders, like 180,000 individual accounts liquidated and Bitcoin still trading right around $90,000. It just blows my mind the amount of leverage. But before, Dave, before we dig in, we do have an awesome sponsor today, which is Zero G. Just going to tell you a bit about them as we do each day. AI is reshaping the world, but right now it's stuck in the hands of just a few big players. But what if AI could run openly, verifiably and on chain? That's what zero G is building. The world's first decentralized AI operating system, open to everyone. Imagine where you don't just trade tokens, you train, store and run independent AI models at scale. No lock ins, no black boxes, no single point of failure. Just quick, cost effective, auditable AI that anyone can build. If you believe the future of AI should be a public good, not another corporate monopoly, join us at 0g.AI. That's the number. 0g a I. So I think as we move into the conversation, obviously all eyes right now on the World Economic Forum. I did not hear Trump's comments, but have seen a few speeches over the past few days. But here we are, Bitcoin, $90,000 and a billion liquidated, and we're back in fear.

[B]

Dave, I mean, all I could say is that it's a question of who you're measuring. It's like selection bias or measurement bias is very important. So, you know, alternative me, which is the people who do the bitcoin, fear and greed are measuring people in the crypto. Everything is crypto native and crypto native people were morose and despondent yesterday. And when things started dropping again, I mean, look, all I could tell you is anecdotally I posted a sarcastic tweet or post or whatever the hell we call it, you know, about giving up because of Greenland or whatever, and it got like, you know, close to 40,000 views and, you know, it doesn't matter. I mean, you can post sarcasm and get more engagement than you do when you post things that actually make sense. And all, you know, there is, you're tapping into emotions and the emotions of the crypto community are terrible. And frankly the question is, at what point does the crypto native folks have nothing left to sell? And I think we're rapidly approaching that. Meanwhile, there's a voracious appetite for it from people who believe, as Chris Perkins said this morning, you know, and, and, or is better, as Scott Besant, you know, said yesterday on your show, you played that clip of him. You know, I would say humiliating, but I don't think that central bankers have shame.

[A]

Oh, that was Brian Armstrong.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I was Brian Armstrong. Okay, well, there was another one with the send on Bitcoin too.

[C]

I mean it.

[B]

Look, at the end of the day, there is a, there are people who have very strong belief in a potential option of bitcoin that are not selling. And there are people who have been in crypto for years and they're the ones who are selling. And so what we're seeing is what I've been calling time based capitulation. But I think that when you see it going from neutral to extreme fear in a day, at the same time the price barely moves. And more or less we're back where we were yesterday afternoon right now. I mean, I think that has to mean something now, but that's an FTX level liquidation event.

[A]

1.08. I think FTX was 1.2 in the same amount of time. It's just astounding that there's still that much leverage to be liquidated in the system.

[B]

Well, it just tells you how many, how many people got. Basically what happened was there were people who every time you get to the top of a range, they expect it to break out. They go 20, 30x leverage or more and it's wrong and it crushes them in their face. This time what you had is people who put in less leverage than that got stopped out. And you know, market makers, there's always, people always talk about hunting stops. You know, Gary's probably smiling behind the mic because it doesn't matter what, what, what asset class you're talking about. It could be oil, it could be equities, it could be anything. You know, if there are, if people know that, that there's a lot of stop losses at 90,000, there will be, someone's going to hunt to try to trigger those stop losses and buy back at 88 or so or below. And I think that's what we saw. You don't, you know, Occam's razor, simplest solution is usually right. So I think that's what we saw. But the fact that that terrified people so much should tell you something, and I think that that's kind of important. Chris said something else on your show which I think is important, which is that people underestimate the psychic damage inside the crypto community of October 10th. And I think that's really, really critical because, you know, that takes time. So, you know, if you put all this together, it tells you we're still in a bottoming process. I mean, the price is much more robust than you would expect given, you know, the, the fear and everything that's going on around it. But any new money is going to. It's going to take new money. Not old, not, not the crypto market for a while. The crypto market will come back in when bitcoin is well and truly marching towards all time highs and beyond it. Until then, I don't think you're going to see it. It has to come from outside. Which tells you you expect bitcoin dominance to be pretty high over the next couple of months.

[A]

Yeah, it's basically the same point that I made to him is that we kind of view retail as a monolith, but it's actually buckets. There's crypto native retail and there's the rest of retail. And crypto native retail lost all their money on October 10th and keeps getting liquidated. Bigger wall of money that bought Doge and NFTs in the previous cycle. You know, the retail FOMO that we talk about, the Uber driver and your barber, they're not here at all. And all it takes, as we always joke, is higher prices for them to come.

[B]

Well, they are, they are in Europe, but they're not here. They're in silver and they're in gold, but more silver than anything else. And so whatever. Anyway, I see Matt put his hand up, so, you know.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Dave, I just had a quick question.

[C]

You brought up a really great point.

[D]

It's.

[B]

It's not the old money, it's the.

[C]

New money that's going to come in.

[B]

So just curious, what do you think is going to be that catalyst to.

[C]

Bring that new money in?

[B]

We see David Sacks already predicting that banks are going to fully embrace crypto if we get this legislation passed. Would that be the catalyst or what do you think? I think that people in crypto are obsessive about the word catalyst. And I'm not trying to be pedantic, although I guess I am. I mean, Scott and I both have the same New Year's resolution just to call out silliness every time we see it. I think that people obsess. You don't know that catalyst has happened till after it's occurred in the market. The price has already moved.

[D]

Moved.

[B]

We don't know. What we do know is that there are, is a lot of at Bitcoin and, and crypto in general is really a small speck in global asset allocation. It doesn't take much. Just do the math. What happens as financial advisors, 86% of which don't touch crypto, you know, you go yet they're some of the most opinion leaders. I mean, some of the most influential ones, you know, think that you should be there. What happens when crypto becomes, or bitcoin become a 2 to 4% allocation among financial advisors? Well, there just isn't enough supply. There just isn't. And so we don't need a catalyst. What you need is it to continue to move in that direction and for people to look around and say, wait a minute, the last 20 times we saw this happen, it dropped 10%, it only dropped 2%. Maybe that means something. And all of a sudden your bottoming process stops and you go from morose to, you know, over a period of a few months, euphoric. And then you look back and say, well, what caused the euphoria? And then people will make up stories. Right. Amateo. I think it was you then Ryan. I'm not sure.

[A]

I think so.

[D]

Ryan was first.

[B]

Oh, Ryan was first. Okay. Sorry Ryan.

[E]

Yeah, no worries. Good morning, guys. So, I mean I keep running the charts through my AI model and it keeps confirming that we're still inside of a range. And just to confirm that like anyone can go and look at. So Coinbase added the week long charts. Now if you just go look at a week long, the weak segment of the chart and just zoom out and just look at the pattern. And then anyone that wants to tell you that we're in this bear market that are fearful, like the pattern is so just obvious. It's ridiculous at this point. So the stats haven't changed, the numbers haven't changed, we're still inside the range and it's still one week we're in a bull market, the next week we're in a bear market. I'm particularly bullish. I mean, heck, we're adding Venezuela and Greenland and we're going to have lots of space for data centers and lots of energy reserves. Like, geez, a lot going on in the world. No wonder we're sideways in the markets. I mean, people are distracted and looking at every little thing.

[A]

I mean, it's funny that markets hate uncertainty, but apparently only bitcoin and crypto markets hate uncertainty because everything else is seemingly having no problem making new all time highs repeatedly. Amateo, I think you're up.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, I don't know, it just feels like every time we get headlines, crypto gets an additional shock and we also see the VIX spike up. And I mean, obviously that's standard protocol and standard practice, but it just makes me wonder if we are, if we are starting to see liquidity issues become more systemic or if it's just business as usual. Do we get the soft landing and do all this influx of energy continue to just spike markets and take everything crazy? Does the print that's coming print our way out of this? Or does the gold and silver and the precious metal signal of a possible recession actually take into effect? And I feel like we're just in this like very gray area on this. And since the end of last year, as metals started to really run, I just saw a lot of people expecting this to very quickly hit certain levels and start to fall down the risk curve. And obviously at some point that will happen. Right. But I guess my question to everybody else here is their thoughts on the precious metal trade. If it's signaling larger liquidity, debt and bond issues across the globe and, and concerns, or do we still expect this to just trickle down the risk curve and this to just be a soft landing that rises assets in general going into the rest of this year.

[A]

Matt, I would say that it is interesting that everybody is associating bitcoin's wobbles right now with tariffs in Greenland when it's probably actually Japan's bonds have a larger impact on the market. So I think that that's a point well taken. I did see Gary had his hand up and then also I know Florian, this is what you're looking at all day with metals and so you might have some great perspective here. But go ahead, Gary.

[F]

Yeah, look, I guess I'll say the, the negative thing out loud, but silver, gold, we're doing something we haven't seen in many decades. Hard for me to believe that silver continues this climb when it starts to retrace. I don't think that's going to be good for bitcoin. I got to tell you, I think bitcoin looks weak here. I don't Know how we're holding on to this premise that we're not going to test something below 89. You don't have any organic buyers? No. Crypto bros are buying bitcoin right now.

[B]

They're broke.

[F]

So this is all new money coming in. Old, old money coming in for the new money is what we're hoping for and I just don't see it. Guys, I'd love to hear the counter on that. Silver and gold don't look like they're going to stop anytime soon. And if they do, and this is my question to the, to the, the group, once they start to retrace, what does that do to bitcoin?

[A]

Dave, you were jumping in before and then I think we can go to Florian.

[E]

But.

[B]

I hate to say it, but you know, when, when people like Gary, as bullish as they are, get more morose, that to me is so much closer. And I think you kind of know that when I start feeling morose, that's how I know we're closer to a bottom than a top. And it's, it's funny. I mean, time is important here. You know, you have it. It takes time to overcome a lot of stuff. But to the notion that price action in the short term is, is determinative is just wrong, just not true. You know, the. Look, there's a bunch of things going on.

[F]

Dave, what does that mean, determinative?

[B]

I mean, it's like prices, we always use this expression and we know it's true. Markets can remain irrational longer than we can remain solvent, you know, because it. Things take a while to work out, but in the end it tends to make a hell of a lot more sense. And you know what we're seeing in the world of bitcoin, this isn't quantum, as some people are saying it. This is. There was a massive amount of distribution last year. A huge, literally epic. I mean, when you look at liquid, the chart of liquidations October 10th was so much larger than anything we've ever seen before. I mean, arguably you can, you could say that Luna was bigger, I guess, but not to traders. Right. They're an asset crashed. Right.

[A]

It's just different.

[B]

It's, it's different. But, and, and you could say the GBTC trade was the widowmaker. And yes, that's true because it was systemic risk in the system. And you could argue that microstrategy was the echo of that. And so the real question is, is, is there a wave of forced liquidations from crypto? And I think the answer to that is pretty clearly, no, we've seen it already. It's already come out and so strip that out and look at all the, everything that's going on. And I think price is, is, is doing what you expect. I think Ryan is right. I've been saying this like I've been yelling it. Basically, when you see a range this tight and it's historically tight, I mean, bitcoin volatility is historically low, right? Even given all this. And so you're seeing low volatility at the same time as extreme fear, do you realize how fucked up that is? I mean, it's just not normal. And not normal generally means something. So I'm reading the tea leaves and trying to parse it together and saying, well, okay, these are the trends that we're seeing. And I do think that there, there's, there's a lot of vested interest. I mean, yeah, you know, there's, there's a lot of cross currents on it. But I do think that looking at the price and saying, okay, we're sitting in this tight range with low volatility, when everybody's puking their guts out, what's left? You know, a certain point there's just nothing left in the stomach to puke out. And I know this, that's a gross analogy, but it's, I mean it's pretty, pretty accurate, you know, given what's been going on. So that's what I'm trying to say. Gary, does that make sense to you?

[F]

Well, well, it doesn't answer the question. You know, I think we will have a retracement of 30 plus percent on silver at some point.

[B]

Oh, silver is a different story.

[F]

What does bitcoin do when silver and gold turn around and go the other one? Because you know it's going to get bit up too hot, right? It's going to overshoot.

[B]

Well, the real question is what's too high given how much gold is. Funny, because I've been listening. A decade ago gold bugs would tell you that keeping up with all the money that had been printed to that point a decade ago, and I'm using those terms specifically, gold should be at 5,000, which is about to be where we are. Since then we've doubled the global amount of money. So those same gold bugs are talking about 10,000 now, are they? Right. Well, I mean objectively, if all the central banks in the world continue to buy gold instead of US Treasuries, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Do I think that's likely? Absolutely not. Do I think 5000 is probably a medium.

[C]

This space was downloaded via spacesdown.com visit to download your spaces today from Fair Value.

[B]

Yeah, probably. So how much does it retrace? Does it become less volatile again, whatever. But you know, that's interesting. Silver is a bit different because silver was, you know, when gold was basically the monetary play and silver was totally demonetized, we saw gold silver ratio trading between 80 and 120. Right. But if you go back to the 70s when all this started with fiat, it traded in the 30s and its ratio in the Earth's crust is 20. So I still think silver ultimately ends up in the 30s, just like it did in the 70s, which means it could outperform significantly. And the reason for that is because even with all if every single project that has gotten funded turns out and delivers as much silver as the people think that it will, as of today we still be in structural deficit because of all the new things that are there. Now Florian has his hand up, so let's let him talk about this because he looks at these markets much more than I do. But I do think that you have to look at silver slightly differently.

[C]

Yeah, thanks for having me. Well, first of all, regarding bitcoin and crypto, I mean, I think we simply have to accept that the music is playing somewhere else right now and the behavior over the last three, four months clearly points to a bear market. I'm sorry to say that, but that's what I see. I've been around now 13 years. That's then the fourth crypto winter. And I have learned painfully that the retracements during a crypto winter are pretty painful. So bitcoin can retrace 50, 70. It has already retraced 90, 95% in the first and the second crypto winter. So it's looking weak. It is not really correlating with any of the other markets. I mean, NASDAQ Tech has held up rather well up until recently. Bitcoin did its own thing. So I think that's a warning signal. I think there's many reasons to be skeptic going forward for the next few months. We had this bounce a week ago or something. It failed slightly below 98,000, which is just the minimum retracement of this whole move down since early October. So that is clearly showing weakness. When we talk about the altcoins, many like Solana, I mean Solana is completely disappointed in that cycle. Ethereum made a slightly new high, but overall I think it's been rather weak. And I mean, we should not forget this has Been going on now for 15 years. And it's totally normal that a sector needs a breather. And it takes a while to digest all this. And when we speak about sentiment, I mean, I'm running still in. And the same is true here in this conversation. I'm still running into way too many people who strongly believe that this must come back immediately. And this is a bull market still and you have to buy any dip. But the reality right now looks different. I mean, I'm willing to change my mind immediately, but I assume the best thing that we can see for bitcoin going forward over the next few weeks and months maybe is a bounce back to 100,000. Maybe the falling 200 day moving average coming in around 155,000 right now is probably the best case. And as long as bitcoin stays below that simple moving average, yeah, it's an old school technique, but it has worked out in the last three crypto winters. And as long as bitcoin stays below that moving average, I'm not willing to load up in that sector at the moment. I could imagine that this might end, like always in a complete panic at some point later that year, maybe in summer or autumn and then probably it's very interesting again. But I think there's still way too many people in this sector hoping for a turnaround immediately and hoping for their shit coinbags to go up again. So I think I would be very careful going forward. And yeah, bitcoin is completely disconnected at the moment from all the other markets. Maybe in the future, at some point that will be a good thing, but right now it's clearly a bad thing. So I would be careful here. And speaking about the precious metals, I mean if you look at the bitcoin gold ratio, the ratio has topped out in the 40 zone multiple times over the last few years and is now moving down slowly in favor of gold. I have basically a head and shoulders pattern there pointing towards 12 to 1, 10 to 1. And I think speaking about gold itself, I mean it's a secular bull market since early 2000, 26 years in the making. Yes, it's going totally bananas. It doesn't look very healthy if you're long term in the markets. Of course it looks scary if something goes up like this. But I think what's really going on is, I mean we're seeing the end of the US petrodollar system and something else is coming along. The emerging market, central banks, Chinese, Indian central bank, the Russians, they don't buy bitcoin, they buy Gold, they need an alternative to the dollar and more and more people waking up that this is a fiat Ponzi scheme system in which we're living and they trust the physical metal here. And I think going forward, I think that gold will not top out at $5,000. In the short term, yes, probably a few more days and weeks and we might see a sharper pullback here. But I think gold can easily go to 10, $15,000 down the road and I think silver can easily hit 200, 300, maybe $500, no problem. The vast majority of people on this planet is still completely under invested in the metals. And if a fiat money system is basically imploding where you want to run to. So I think in the big scheme of things, that's what's going on. And yeah, it looks crazy. Many people are surprised but I mean in the gold box scene, so to speak, we've been always talking about it. Yes, it took much longer than many people have expected and hoped for. But the end of the day, I mean it's, it's playing out pretty clearly in front of our eyes.

[B]

So Florin, I have two questions totally, they're totally separate. One, who are these people that are buying every dip and are very bullish? Because I, I, I, I mean maybe Mike Alfred, but not a whole lot. I mean certainly Mo. I hear a lot more people saying where Ryan is that we're in a range and a lot more people being morose saying well you know, wake me up when, when it happens or I'll buy lower. I'm just curious. I mean, you mean regarding crypto. Well, yeah, I can tell you.

[C]

I mean it's been one of the clear sentiment signals for me over the last few months. I mean I've been still bullish in October. Remember I thought that we would still go higher but the more bitcoin showed weakness, the more I ran into people who basically told me no, this will, this is the only thing that goes up forever and I have to buy every dip. And I still meet strong believer into bitcoin. And I mean we just heard it here in our conversation before as well. So I don't see, I mean that's the typical sentiment that you see in a bear market, right?

[B]

People don't want to bear market since October. That's, that is absolutely, you can make an argument 2025 post inauguration was a bear market. Yes, we saw a, a bottom on the tariff tantrum early in the year and it got back to different to, to the all time high again. But More or less. It never, there was never euphoria, there was never a bull. But arguing that doesn't matter. I have a more important question for you. There's rumors, of course, there always are when there's big moves that some banks or players in the system, in the precious metal system are in kind of deep trouble from the silver move being caught off sides, kind of like, you know, what's it Melvin Capital got caught off in, in GameStop. Have you heard anything about that? Because that would be a very interesting phenomena because they can't really control the silver market like they did nickel. So I'm not really sure what the power.

[C]

Yeah, exactly. Look, I mean this is not a secret that for years and decades there have been 150, 250 paper ounces of gold and the same is true for silver being traded to basically hold the price down. And you can easily do this in the futures markets where people sell silver and gold have to. And I've been for that reason very skeptical when the whole thing with ETFs and Bitcoin futures started because that's exactly the way you can manipulate a market and then you have a huge bunch of derivatives and the market gets more and more transparent in the end of the day. And that's been going on for decades in the gold markets. In fact, the top in 1980 came into play when they introduced the futures gold contract in New York. And we have for many years now heard the problems in the LBMA in London that there is so much unallocated gold, meaning they have sold gold on a paper contract to a third party. They never touched the gold, they've never seen the gold. And at some point, of course with the rising gold prices, those family offices, institutional investors got skeptic and they wanted to see the gold or sold that position with them and made sure that they got the real physical gold on their hands. And that's been going on for years and decades. And I mean there is a few people who really they basically every week came up with new reports digging deep into the commitment of trades report and who are those four huge big short players in the silver markets. And yeah, I mean there's rumors that, I mean two weeks ago there was a big report about the UBS being massively short. I don't think it's true, but overall, yes. And you need to remember one very important thing. Silver is an industrial metal. It's being used. Most of the gold that has ever been mined is sitting somewhere at the vault and might come to the market. At higher prices or not. But silver has been used and most of the industrial use. Those companies, they don't really care whether Silver is trading at 30, 50 or 150 because it's just a small part of their production cost. But they need to make sure that they have it. And so there's a lot of drivers. And of course silver has been sleeping for many, many years. I've been many times writing about the mother of all cup and handle patterns. 45 years in the making. Finally it's breaking out and it's a violent breakout now and it's a massive catch up. And I don't think that this trade is over. Silver is hard to get, I can tell you. There is just very few pure silver mines operating on the planet. There is not many coming into production anytime soon. Most of the silver that is being produced is a bit byproduct of the copper production. And those copper mines cannot ramp up silver production just because the price went up. So I think this will take time. Remember as well, it takes 10 to 15 years to build a mine. It's a long, long process and a very capex intensive process. So I don't think that this is over anytime soon. We might see a healthy pullback in the breather. Yes, especially if, I mean it looks like the stock market is probably correcting here a little bit further with all this geopolitical stress. But we've seen this last year and you mentioned it before as well. I mean I think January it started the pullback and then also bitcoin got in trouble. And then at the end of that pullback also silver got a hit. Of course at the end it's all about liquidity in the markets and if it disappears then all markets get into trouble. And as we all know and remember two months later, suddenly the liquidity appeared again miraculously. And bitcoin made a new high. Silver started to run and the stock markets also made a new high. So I don't think that we are in front of a huge crash here because I believe in the larger scheme of things that, that we are in a crackup boom. I think that they're going to print more money and that overall all markets will move higher. But right now the music is clearly playing in the metals and I don't think this is over. And by the way, another very interesting ratio, the gold silver ratio. The last bull market in 1980 topped out at 15 to 1. We're currently trading around 50 to 1. So I think there is still the best is still to Come. But it would be healthy to. To see a breather here at some point. Usually the first quarter into spring is always very strong for the metals. And then, let's say, yeah, late spring into early summer, usually you get a nice pullback. And that's usually also a good buying opportunity from a seasonal perspective.

[B]

So, yeah, just parenthetically, just to note, the ratio in the Earth's crust is somewhere between 19 and 20. And that does matter. And that's one of the reasons why pure silver mines are, you know, difficult, because silver is, is. Is underpriced relative to its rarity, you know, rel. Certainly relative to gold at 50 to 1. So it's not a small thing anyway. Amateo. Is that a ghost?

[F]

Yeah.

[C]

No, I mean, the. In the Earth, you basically find 10 ounces of silver for one ounce of gold. Right. And if you go back 500 or a thousand years, that's been always kind of the ratio around 10 to 1, 15 to 1. And don't forget, I mean, silver has been always the money of the people. And then in the late 1900s, actually, the Americans and the British started to basically push silver out of the system. And yeah, I mean, if. If we're really seeing history here in the making and we're moving away from the US Petrodollar standard, this confetti party, which is going on now for 55 years, basically since the end of the gold window in 1971. Yeah, I think silver will come back. And it's coming back already. And again, I mean, it's a critical element now, a critical mineral. You need it a lot in the data centers. You need it for any of the future technologies. China has cornered the silver market. They don't export any silver anymore. And finally, the west is slowly but surely waking up that, yeah, we've been basically sleeping, walking here into that situation. Everything woke was more important than making sure that people have jobs and business are running and that we have the materials to produce what we need to produce. So here we are. Half of Africa is basically under the control of the Chinese, and the permitting process in the Western world is very lengthy, very complicated. And the Trump administration now is doing everything to turn this around, the Europeans slowly understanding that. And, yeah, there is not enough silver for all these future applications. So it's going to be very interesting how this is playing out.

[B]

Okay, Smelting town hall.

[A]

I was just gonna say we, we went a deep dive on smelting town hall.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna tell you. Was that a ghost hand or maybe.

[C]

No, I. I say one more thing.

[D]

Sure, sure.

[C]

Of course, The classical argument, I can see it already. So you can see that more and more old minds that were out of business for 10, 20 years are trying to get into production. Okay, so of course at some point, let's say two, three, five years from now, there will be an oversupply because now money is coming into that sector. Many of those old mines that have not been profitable for years and decades are being ramped up again. It takes time. This is not happening in one or two days. This is a process of probably a few years. But that will of course down the road lead to an oversupply again. And you can also imagine that all these Joey Six packs who are now storing and voting silver at home, at some point they will bring it back to the market. But it's not right now. It takes time. Maybe in two, three years we're going to see a totally different situation.

[A]

And Mateo, you're allowed to desmelt us.

[D]

Well, I was going to just double click on one smelt and that was. Dave, you were kind of alluding to this. And so were you, Florian. I mean, I think we've all been asking a lot of questions about, about the actual amount of metal that's not paper that's out there. I don't know whatever happened to our Fort Knox audit that we were promise, but we didn't get a live stream of that. But I was just sort of curious about this idea of an emperor wears no clothes moment on metals. And if we do expect to see that and if flora you kind of anticipate that and what you think, you know, does that, does that induce even more hyper scarcity that makes us even more of a blow off or does the uncertainty and fear kick off the shock and the drawdown?

[B]

Well, I do want to make one. The answer to that is I have no freaking clue. Right. You know, you only see the stuff that happens when someone dies, you know, or goes into the death throes and people have to start throwing money at it or changing the rules. You know, we were, we're now weeks past the CME doing it. Right? Cme not once but twice in the space of a week changed the margin rules when Silver traded over 80, got it down to in the 70s and now we're trading at 93 or 94. Right. So that didn't work that. So in other words, their playbook from the Hunt brothers and the Hunt brothers was clearly an attempt to corner a market. Understand there's a massive difference between bitcoin and gold and silver. And it is a massive difference. And it is. And there's also a difference inside of gold and silver that also, that speak to this. The difference is, is there is no electronic spot market for gold and silver. There are controlled fixings in London and there's dealers that look at a price that's derived from futures. It's backwards in crypto or in bitcoin in particular, While there's huge perpetual swap markets and futures markets, they absolutely are tracking and are linked to the fully transparent electronic spot market that goes on all around the world. As a result, the paper bitcoin to sell to depress the spot doesn't work. And in fact, most of the big liquidation events have been because people have done things like, well, you know, frankly, you can do this. And people have, they've done it in Bitcoin. On October 10, somebody did it in a broad spectrum of coins build up over time. Large spot long positions hedged with short perpetual swap positions. And then strategically, at a moment of weakness, dump the spot to drive down and create liquidations in the perpetual swaps. That doesn't work in gold and silver, you know, as a manipulation, because there is no electronic spot spot is controlled by a cartel. And so it makes it. That's one of the reasons why, you know, banks have been fined billions of dollars over the years for manipulating the price of gold. But the manipulation is generally to control the price. Bitcoin is uncontrollable or very hard, but you can manipulate it in the short term. So there's two different types of manipulation going on. And that matters because everyone who thinks that the same narrative works in each market, not so much. Now the change is that there's another market, the contract for differences market. It's also paper, it's also derivatives, but that market has gotten extremely liquid and large. It's actually, according to the best research I can get, I can find as large or larger than the futures market. And so it's still a paper market, but there's people who are trading on both sides of this and it's not cartelized. And so the, the dynamics of the markets are different and they are changing. And so you have to do it that way. I don't know if that answers the sort of question you were asking Amateo, but. But those differences do matter.

[D]

Yeah, no, I, I think it makes sense to understand how the markets work even better. And I think those differences matter tremendously when it comes to the value prop of bitcoin and the variable, the verifiable on chain attestation that we can do around these things and.

[B]

Right. And by the way, say for the bitcoin community, the reason I disagree with Florian on the short term is I think that, that we, I think that there's a lot of people who have put a lot of money because they understand that difference in transparency and they understand that difference in absolute scarcity. And yet.

[D]

Well, yeah, yeah.

[B]

The crypto community is like, I don't care. I'm looking at the chart squiggles and, and, and this is an interesting. This is not going to happen. Anyone who thinks this changes tomorrow, you know, we'll be talking about this for months. Is, is, is sadly the way I look at it. But there are certain trends that are inexorable. I mean Florian used the word crack up boom. Crackup boom has a lot of pathologies to it. I see Robert on the panel. I know you care a lot about crackup booms and what that means. I mean, what happens as the Japanese bond market continues to melt down? What happens as, as populism takes root on both the.